To those with kids

Again ROC ? I would really ask myself, "Why does my daughter need to know the SPECIFICS of my DP. What will she gain from her knowledge? Will this alleviate her concern, or amplify it?"

Then, "Why do I want her to know what DP is? What are my needs in this? When I show her the definition on this website and explain my personal details, what am I expecting to be the result of this? That I feel accepted, understood?"

I can totally relate to the deep desire to have our experience be UNDERSTOOD. Perhaps, like most of us, you realize that most people can't understand, are incapable precisely because they lack the experience.

Why do we have this need to be understood? We feel alone? Crazy? And if all people could understand, RELATE, everything would be all better. We'd be cured precisely because we are not alone anymore?

I used to have this fantasy that DP was some sort of evolutionary urge/process that only a few lucky/unlucky humans experienced. But a day was coming soon... perhaps something like the RAPTURE as according to fundamentalist Christians, when the world would be STRUCK instantaneously/totally by a massive DP. A nearby Supernova explosion or some sort of massive planetary magnetic shift. So the citizens of the world are simultaneously DP'd ? total chaos, and we are the ones that come forward and are able to help BECAUSE we have already experienced it. Trumpets blare we are the HEROES. And a new era of humanity emerges, because everyone now knows the true deep depth of suffering. Neighbor helps neighbor, no more wars, yadda-yadda-yadda.

So, what is the fundamental root of this above fantasy?

That DP is some sort of superior-suffering experience, and all are humbled/transformed who experience it? I don't know, I have definitely continued to be a major jackass for many years post DP. Not all that enlightened, though I thought myself to be... anyone else relate to my save the world fantasy?

"VERY common, slightly paranoid, very grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and Self as Center of Universe.

Then when our solipsism (I am everything and everything I need is inside me) gets the best of us, we freak out and shriek in the blackness of deep space."

Janine ? This really is the deep part of it. For me, it was where I discovered my humanity again.

I was so PROTECTED by my own delusions that when reality finally pierced through and exposed myself to my own manipulations, I discovered shame, embarassment and humiliation to a depth I'd never experienced before.

Then I just wanted to die, I felt like I was a ruined man for all to see and shake their heads at. But even this was a grandiose delusion.

Turns out a stay at a hospital to get my head together and years of therapy was the path from there on out.

Still getting more human by the day... no more gnostic space alien for me... though that is still a part, I just don't use it as a wall between me and the world, as protection, as an excuse for all-too-common everyday irresponsibility.