City Tutoring Discussion Forum

Salutations, friends.

I’m a white male in my mid 20’s born and raised in the Midwest.

I don’t formally study anything but I do read quite a bit of classic literature and I’m hoping to get my hands on Mr. Cromwell’s algebra book soon.

I live with my parents and am helping them run and expand their small laser-cut wood-sign business.

I’ve only recently, through divine grace and revelation, found God. I was born and raised a Christian. However, I strayed from God in my later teen’s. I was lead down a terrible path via social media, Reddit specifically. I began using marijuana and occasionally psilocybin mushrooms while living with my parents after highschool (during covid) and eventually they found out. We had a falling out and I left to live with my friend for 4 years into my early 20’s.

Now God had set in motion a very peculiar plan to bring me closer to Him than I could ever have imagined back then; at the age of about 21, still a depressed atheist, my friend and I had stumbled upon and had multiple experiences with DMT. And in those experiences, God revealed to me that death was not the end of life. I had a profound sense of prudence and began to understand that my view of the world as an atheist is almost certainly misguided. It also induced an insatiable curiosity in me to learn about God and spirituality.

It took some years, after my eyes were opened, before certain influences in my life lead me to studying classic literature and philosophy. Very quickly after reading Plato’s Republic a few times and watching lectures of the philosophers that followed Plato, I realized there was a fundamental problem with (most) of their philosophies: they were just beautiful ideas for the most part. They didn’t have an axiom of fundamental principles derived from a divine source of eternal truth.

A lecture I watched about Kierkegaard really helped lock the pieces into place for me recently. It was as if the final veil was lifted when I realized how important faith was. Basically, paraphrasing Kierkegaard: You don’t believe in God because you can make sense of Him and understand His nature, you believe in Him because you realize you never can understand His nature. If you could then there would be no reason for faith.

And then shortly after that, Mr. Cromwell’s video titled something like “This algebra book will humble you” shows up in my YouTube timeline and I was just enchanted by his no nonsense demeanor. I clicked on it because I know from Plato, advocating for studying mathematics as a way to learn more about eternal forms, that it could possibly help bring me closer to truth. I’ve been hooked on his sermons and videos since.

I’m sure this was a long winded introduction, and I hope I didn’t offend anyone by mentioning my experience with substances. But I mention them only because of the profound impact that DMT specifically had in guiding me towards God. I believe they have some merit that shouldn’t be cast aside carelessly, as we so easily do with anything labeled “drug”. (Not advocating for drug use; rather understanding particular compounds and how they alter your ontological perspective so radically)

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far. God bless

Wow, it's actually a relief because now I feel I'm not the only one who had similar struggles. I'm not a Christian, but I have read up on some philosophy you mention. Would you say its fair to say that for example someone who goes to a Christian church but prays without passion or belief is "less Christian" than say for example someone who may be praying in a non-christian temple, say Muslim or Hindu, but much more a believer in a divine force than the person who just goes to church?

To respond to your direct message (as I have to participate in the public forums more before being able to DM anyone) I’ve found it very difficult to stay off of cannabis. If you’ve read The Republic (highly recommend you read it more than once) then you will understand that once you let your desires rule over reason, the rest of your life is a fierce battle of reason and desire. To put it bluntly, I’ve damaged my soul, or rather; I’ve disorganized my soul. The desire for weed was fed too much and now my desire for weed has become quite strong.

Plato’s metaphor for the soul is a tri-part beast; There is the Man (the part that thinks or reasons), the Lion (spirit, the part that feels indignation and the likes) and the Wolf or Hounds (your desires). If you feed your desires more than your reason, then your reason weakens and becomes subjected to your desires. It’s not easy to wrench the Man (reason) from the jaws of the Wolf (desires). It is possible yet it takes incredible willpower. That Wolf will take a long time to weaken and become subjected to reason again, but you must starve it and feed reason instead.

Basically, when you over-nourish your desires you’re simply increasing the difficulty of life. And for no good reason at that. Something conveniently not taught to young children and young adults, especially in public schools.

Not saying Plato’s metaphor for the soul is “true” per se, but it works in some ways for the purpose of explaining why it’s so hard to stay sober after indulging in desires.

And to answer your question in the reply to the public post: I think the fear of God is the most important thing, no matter what religion you belong to. You can disagree with Christianity, that’s fine. But it’s more noble and respectable to have the fear of God, even if it’s not the Christian God, than it is to simply say “I’m a Christian, but I don’t fear disappointing God”. The lack of the fear of God is a sign of poor character, no matter what God it is you believe in.

And I think I should add the following: I’ve had 0 struggles with staying clean of psychedelic compounds. Often times when you take them they produce many undesirable effects. In simple terms, they are VERY scary at times. And as a matter of fact, they often cure people of their addictions to other substances. Ibogaine in particular is proven to cure addiction to opiates (among most other substances) at an extremely high rate compared to traditional therapy. Once again I’m NOT advocating the use of any mentioned substances.

Hope this answers your questions. Hopefully I can get permission after posting enough publicly to continue this conversation in private.

God bless

Hey man, that's pretty courageous of you to try some crazy consciousness altering drugs like that. I'm glad you found something more substantial than drugs, and that is reading up on God, and people's perspectives on God.

"You don’t believe in God because you can make sense of Him and understand His nature, you believe in Him because you realize you never can understand His nature. If you could then there would be no reason for faith." Hmmmm....personally for me there are a lot of interesting observations about urself that draws you closer to God. So in my current personal experience, I can't really make that statement.