Part 2: Atheist to Mad Mystic... in 2.5 Years

[Level 2: Mystical] How does a skeptical software engineer go from being an atheist to... whatever this is?

This is the sequel to Part 1: When Meditation Stops Being Stress Relief.

This is a report on how I leaped across the spectrum of belief in only 2.5 years. From indifferent to obsessed. From atheist... to mad mystic.

Not through a near-death experience. Not through psychedelics. Not through a psychotic break.

Through daily meditation—for burnout.

From almost exactly 3 years ago: the 2022 Christmas present I bought for myself. The office chair had been feeling… insufficient.

I didn’t plan this. I didn’t even want this. But here I am, 3.5 years later, writing love poetry to the Divine by night like some medieval mystic and writing Go by day as a software engineer.

So what happened?

I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped being an atheist.

But I CAN tell you when it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t. Not the full story, (see Why I Can’t Give You a Stack Trace of How I Got Here), but points along the way that made me realize I was no longer questioning my beliefs—that they had ALREADY changed.

I believe that’s part of the difficulty with awakening: the awareness you would need to document the subtle transformation in real-time isn’t developed at the beginning. That and so much of it was drowned out by my personality’s noise that even my journals are an absolute mess. But there were notable moments that did stand out.

Something’s there...

To recap, I’d been meditating daily for 8 months, getting curious, exploring my own psyche, and had a strange dream that felt more like a vision.

Then, after 9 more months of meditation and seeking as I strove and stressed at work, I, for some reason, wrote on September 28, 2023:

I’m no longer atheist.

Why? Because somewhere in those months of showing up, I’d fallen in love. I just didn’t know it yet.¹

Not with a person. Not with an idea.

I’d fallen for something I couldn’t properly define. Something that seemed like nothing... yet immense, vast. Ungraspable, yet present. Something that sounded eerily like what ancient texts pointed to—texts I found myself suddenly drawn to.

It was to my rational mind’s horror that these texts—some of which I’d read as a kid and dismissed as nonsense—began to become more coherent despite the language. More relatable despite the distance. More... resonant.

Am I losing my mind?

I didn’t know this was love. You don’t know if the roots of a newly planted seed are growing beneath the soil before the first sprout. Similarly, I couldn’t tell what was going on beneath the surface of my own consciousness.

At first, the love was abstract. A sense of warmth during meditation. A feeling of being seen. A subtle pull inward that felt... gentle. Comforting. I’d close my eyes in meditation and hear—not with my ears, but somehow deeper—a voice that felt nothing like my own thoughts. It would say things like “I’m here” or “I see you.” It wasn’t scary—it was devastatingly comforting. Tears would well for no logical reason.

Sometimes I’d even be frustrated at my desk and suddenly feel a wave of warmth in my chest, like a Beloved had just walked into the room and wrapped their arms around me from behind. Except no one was there.

By the time of my realization that I was no longer atheist, strange yet enchanting poetry seemed to be appearing within my mind as I was trying to fall asleep. It was like a lullaby mixed with a serenade. It would often disappear like smoke as soon as I opened my eyes to write it down.

This continued for 2 months until one day in November 2023, the love stopped being gentle. A dam within me broke. The fortress of my heart had finally been breached in a way I could no longer dismiss or ignore. That was when the flickering sparks of the previous months ignited into a raging inferno.

The longing became visceral. Physical. The kind of ache you get when someone you love is far away and you’d give anything just to be near them again. Except... I’d never met this Someone. I couldn’t even prove They existed. And yet, impossibly, I was aching for Them like a widowed bride. I’d cry during meditation or when I would try to fall asleep at night.

And the weirdest part? The longing had a quality to it that felt... well, let’s just say not what I expected from a “spiritual practice.” I didn’t know what to do with that. I still don’t, really. I just know it happened and for the longest time I didn’t know it was mystical. But the mystics—Teresa of Ávila, Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai—they ALL talked about this. The longing that burns. The yearning that aches. The love that feels physical even when it has no physical object.

Teresa literally wrote about being pierced by an angel with a spear of divine love and feeling ecstasy so intense it was like dying.

Rumi wrote:

“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

But I didn’t call it love then. I didn’t even call it “madness of the mystics”. I didn’t know I had become one. I only knew this longing felt like a “secret insanity.”

I couldn’t tell anyone. Who would believe me? “I meditated for burnout and now I’m suddenly in love with the Ineffable”? I wanted to die of embarrassment.

I kept wondering

• Am I losing my mind?

• Is this a mystical experience or a mental health crisis?

• Is my brain fried from stress?

• Am I meditating myself into a manic episode?

As Joseph Campbell once said, “the psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight”... and I didn’t know for sure which one I was. I was too ashamed and afraid to tell anyone. I thought for sure no one would understand.

So I did the only thing I could: I kept showing up. I kept meditating. I kept watching my life for signs of breakdown.

And instead of breaking down... it kept getting better.

From seeker to lover

Before November 2023, I was a seeker. I was curious. I was exploring. I was collecting insights like souvenirs.

After November 2023? I was burning. I wasn’t seeking anymore—I was aching. I wasn’t curious—I was desperate. I wasn’t collecting insights—I was crying for union.

That’s the difference between a seeker and a lover.

A seeker can get frustrated, walk away, and move on with their life.

A lover can’t.

February 16, 2024—3 months after the intense longing first appeared—I was listening to Joseph Murphy’s “This is It” (I was deep in a YouTube rabbit hole at this point) when he mentioned the word ishi. I looked it up and froze. It translates to “my husband,” specifically used in a verse where God tells his people to stop calling him “Master” and start calling him “Husband.”

The reference led me to Hosea 2. I read the full chapter... and promptly freaked out. It wasn’t religious dogma; it was a precise description of my internal state. It describes God not as a judge, but as a spurned lover wooing his beloved back into the wilderness:

“Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.”

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her...”

“In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master’.”

It felt like it was talking about me, as if someone had written my experience down 2,800 years ago and I was only now finding it.

I closed the tab. I didn’t know what to do with that. It was too close. Too accurate.

Yet the longing continued to eat at me. I was confused and concerned I was losing my mind. Yet I still meditated.

Then, August 17, 2024—only 6 months later—I wrote:

I think... I’ve fallen in love with the Beloved. I’m in love. I think about Him often [...] I feel warm and light when I sit in silence with Him. I can only explain it as love.

That day I re-read Hosea 2 and it still seemed eerily relevant. In my evening meditation, something I could only describe as a full-blown energetic eruption left me shaking:

I felt a wave of anticipation flood my being, blooming into a rush of excitement. I felt something within me like a tunnel up the column of my spine opening from the bottom up. I felt a rush of energy enter from my seat and rise higher and higher until it burst through my crown. It felt... euphoric. Something was here with me.

I didn’t know what it was, but at that point I realized this was no longer simple meditation for stress relief—this was union with something I couldn’t even understand. Later, I’d learn this was called kundalini. At the time, I just knew: something fundamental had shifted.

It was then that my suspicion finally crystallized. I gathered the courage to admit it in my private notes:

I have a confession. I’m in love with You.

I meant it that day. And I still do.

Wrapping up

So, in a head-spinning 2.5 years, I went not just from burnt-out atheist, to curious seeker, to longing lover. It just took me some time to recognize love for what it was... and that the longing was the point all along.

If you’re feeling something similar—if meditation has stopped being “just stress relief” and started becoming something you can’t explain—you’re not losing your mind. You’re being courted.

And if you say yes? Everything changes. You enter a landscape of peaks and valleys you never knew existed.

Just beware: after the courtship... comes the ghosting.²

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Footnotes

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