Seizures & Synchronicity: The Power of Perspective and Postictal Hallucinations

I have epilepsy, and my story begins when I woke up in the hospital, where my parents brought me after I had at least five seizures.

It was Friday, and I had planned to go spend the weekend on a houseboat with old mates from school, but the next thing I knew I was getting stabbed in the arms with four needles instead.

I lost pretty much my whole day Friday. Time. We must use it while we can.

If we don’t use it, we might as well not be here.

I felt the truth of this more than ever over the weekend of June 11, 2017.

Watching the movie ‘Mean Streets.’

Over the next 24-48 hours after waking up, I had the most drug-free psychedelic experience of my life. It started when I couldn’t get a sound out of my head, and it got to a point that I couldn’t even hear what I was watching on TV because all I could hear was this slowly repeating sound. It felt like it was coming from inside my head, but nowhere near me at the same time. It went on for a long time, slowly repeating and slowly getting faster, before I heard it sync up with a song playing in ‘Mean Streets.’ Soon the movie scene ended, but the music didn’t finish playing in my mind until something like 3 or 4 am. The way that sounds of nature and life around me, like the birds singing and breezes blowing, culminated to conveniently finish the song, was epic in a way I’ve never experienced. It ended with the final note being made by the sound of the very last drop of water to fall out of the empty cooler jug into my favourite Beavis & Butthead glass. if this had made any sense, I’d argue it was the most amazing day of my life so far.

At times it felt like I was nearly possessed and everything I looked at was part of a design. At some points I even struggled to control my body. I remember at one point I frantically stood up and started running towards the sliding glass door in my living room. What would cause me to do that for no reason? I remember asking questions in my mind and being given answers with my eyes, like one point when I closed my eyes and wondered ‘what is the point of being alive?’ Then when I opened my eyes they were looking at the words “Love is all there is” on a ‘50 Life Secrets & Tips’ poster in my bathroom.

After opening my laptop, I felt like I subconsciously knew exactly what to click on and what to read to get messages that felt like they were being communicated to me from somewhere/someone, like they had been laid out and preset for me, like this had all been predetermined. I remember laying in bed, hearing a voice in my head that sounded like it was arguing to stay alive, pleading for me to keep my soul. It sounded like it was trying to convince some entity that I truly do love my life, family, home, and planet. All the while in the dark seeing eerily familiar but indescribable images in my mind, like looking at a Rorschach test I’d already taken.

Two of arguably my most addictive habits, social media and smoking weed, I didn’t indulge in at all that day (and have happily reduced both to a fraction since); I just read, wrote, and did work all day Saturday. I sent 40 emails with various quotes, links, and messages to myself over a span of about 24 hours. It often felt like they were being written or copied through me, not by me. Suddenly I got the intense feeling that life can literally be seen as a game, and if you really listen to the intuitive voices in your head, you will be happy. It was surreal, all the things like that which my mind led me to feel and believe that weekend. One thing I’ve never thought about much until having this experience is a soul, and what exists outside of the concepts we call life and time.

One of the first articles I found after going online that Saturday was this one: “How Souls Choose Their Parents and Families.” I found it fascinating enough to read a few times upon discovery, and reread a number of times since. Souls choosing family members is rather beyond what I’ve ever deemed ‘reality,’ and not something I would have given a lot of thought prior to my experiences that weekend. Despite that, here is one theory presented in the article that has been on my mind ever since: “As diverse as people are, so are our souls and what we wish to create and experience in our lifetime(s).” I don’t know what a soul is, but I’m confident that when we are born, we are not a blank slate, and that right there is worth some thought.

That same day, I was sitting next to my dad while ‘Mean Streets’ was playing, and got a strong sense that I was being tested. I found that things happening on the screen were reacting to my thoughts, and it was very convincing. It felt like I was being tested whether I cared enough to risk awkwardness and turn the movie off, to stop my dad’s soul from witnessing the brutal murder scene at the end. It was very uncomfortable, trying to decide what to do and unsure why it even mattered, but I turned it off. And he didn’t even question it when I did, just said alright, got up and walked away. It wasn’t until I rewatched ‘Mean Streets’ a couple weeks later that I realized one of the characters has epilepsy, and has a seizure in one fairly hard-to-watch scene. I believe now that submitting my dad to watching this scene (not the murder), the very next day after witnessing me have five seizures, is what truly would have made my soul fail such a test. I wonder what the hell is going on here.

A few things I’ve read in an effort to help explain and describe my experience have made me feel anxious and even given me goosebumps and sweaty palms, one of those things being this article, “7 Signs You Are Starting to Live in the Fifth Dimension.” According to the article:

When we are ready to move beyond the 3rd dimension, we must go through the 4th dimension before we can enter the 5th. The 4th acts much like a purifying filter, for it is the realm of the heart that is filled with love, oneness and lightness. The 5th dimension is an even lighter in frequency, having a more pure love, cosmic consciousness and a true multi-dimensional reality.

If what was happening to me had something to do with transcending to a higher dimension requiring love and oneness, that could help explain the arguing/pleading I could hear in my head with otherworldly voices to stay alive, feeling tested as to whether I had enough concern for my family, and the collection of intuitive messages being delivered through me to me to help understand my future.

“Dimensions are not places or locations, but levels of consciousness that vibrate at a certain rate. The higher we vibrate, the more dimensions we consciously experience.”

– Liara Covert

I truly felt like it was being confirmed to me that love is the most important thing in this world, and life is really as magical as you can imagine. I don’t understand how, but I was delivered these clear pointers on how to be happy and successful: use your intuition, spread love and light, share, and help your friends and family without asking for anything in return. Love, goodness, imagination; these are key to increasing your level of consciousness and ascending in nature. Life is energy, and it’s up to us to make our move to the fifth dimension.

It was even twisted and scary at points. I could hear voices making fun of me. Telling me to be a man. Reminding me of people I know who are or were unhappy. Talking a lot about how to be successful, but also how to be unsuccessful. A lot about social media and how modern life as we know it turns us into zombies. It told me that giving up my addiction to social media will be key to making a life and becoming successful. It also told me to get good at something, for craftsmanship is disappearing, and it’s the little things we do every day that are what add up to success down the road.

I felt like I was communicating with a higher part of myself that was telling me it is what had caused me to have these seizures and everything else weird I’ve experienced lately (like synchronicities), in an effort to get my attention and help me upgrade internally through love and commitment. It referred me to a number of things that weekend like Letters of Note, Collectively Conscious, the books ‘Deep Work’ and ‘How to Become a Straight-A Student’ by Cal Newport, and this post about a man named Gerald Durrell:

On Corfu, one of his tutors, Pat Evans (a friend of Lawrence’s) taught the young Gerald literature and the boy wrote several poems that show some talent. At the tender age of eleven, Gerald wrote a poem, ‘Death’, which Lawrence included in a letter to Henry Miller:

On a mound a boy lay

While a stream went tinkling by.

Mauve irises stood round him as if to

Shield him from the eye of death

The post mentions Corfu, arguably the place where I had the most fun in my life in October 2011. “At the tender age of eleven,” bringing back the number 11 (which I have seen a lot lately). 11:11 I saw a number of times that weekend, and this whole event happened over the weekend of the 11th. The runtime of ‘Mean Streets’ on Netflix is 111 minutes. The poem, titled “Death,” was in a letter to someone named Henry (my middle name), and about a boy laying on a mound while a stream went tinkling by, which felt very much like a reference to the time I stupidly crashed my car into a telephone pole next to a stream. Talking to my mom about some of this stuff a few days later, it turned out she’s got mauve irises in her garden.

I was also drawn to a video of a man reading a love letter, which I later realized was written by Gerald Durrell. While watching this video, it felt like this letter was being read directly to me by him, and made me consider the importance of family and that I might consider getting back in touch with my ex-girlfriend. I was repeatedly reminded of the contrast between her and other, less wholesome girls I know. Or at least the contrast in my head between them, and it filled me with concern that I’ll end up with the latter.

Two of the most important messages I recall from this whole experience are: 1. remember to eat well and get energy, and 2. ditch social media. Without energy, I’ll be in a foggy haze, inclined to simply sit around and be bored and unproductive. Being online too often is also conducive to being in a foggy haze. What I gathered is that I should start writing about why I changed my stance on social media. As a young person, and one arguably hooked on it, if I do this now and write articles worthy of posting online, maybe I can start building a list of followers.

It felt clear that writing is what I should do in this life. Perhaps writing about the value in rejecting the fog of addictive bullshit spread by entities like Google, Facebook and Twitter. The fact that our whole society is addicted to the internet and has their attention span reduced to a fraction of what it could be, in turn reducing the number of skilled people to a meager amount.

The opportunity arose yesterday during a call between my dad and his three sisters for me to offer my time to go hang out with my Grandpa, which I felt proud to do. And I’ll be happy to do it. Love and family are the most important things in this world, without them where would I be? Who knows. I might be having seizures on the floor, even worse I might have actually gone on my trip to the houseboat on the lake, had a seizure there, fell in the water and be dead right now. I can only imagine how hard that would be on my family if I had died that weekend. They would probably feel like they should have done something to stop it, which wouldn’t be fair. My friends on the houseboat would probably feel responsible too, not to mention never forget something so horrible.

One thing I sent to myself (or through myself) that psychedelic Saturday was a letter from George Whitman, owner of the world-famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, to Anne Frank in 1960. The line I’m finding most captivating at the moment is this one: “Here in our bookstore it is like a family where your Chinese sisters and your brothers from all lands sit in the reading rooms and meet the Parisians or have tea with the writers from abroad who are invited to live in our Guest House.” What I’m gathering from my fascination with this letter and this quote in particular, is that maybe life is happening all over the universe, and souls choose their experiences in a way. Like in a sort of celestial library of time and dimensions, higher forms of our life force decide where and when to plug into the matrix of existence.

I talked to a neurologist about my experiences that weekend a couple months later, and I was told that hallucinations like this have sometimes been known to happen to people after having seizures. Some people might have them after every episode, some people might only have them once in their life. June 9, 2017 marked my 26th recorded day over the course of about 8 years that I would have one or more seizures, and so far is the only time they have triggered such a surreal experience. I’ve never felt so in touch with myself as I was that day, and have continued to feel ever since. The power of our subconscious and intuition is easy to overlook, sometimes we need to be literally shaken back to life.

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