This is my second time writing this since the first time I ended up falling for a self-indulgent trip down memory lane. I don't want to diminish the impact this testimony might have but I wont make it about my entire life in sin, though it will be quite long.
Quite simply I had once had a similar mentality to Elliot Rodger as I found everyone was capable of having a "fun life" except for me. I purposefully sowed the seeds of bitterness and hatred in my heart. Eventually, despite being secularly-minded I decided to supplant my personality with an alter ego. I don't have to tell anyone here (except maybe the Calvinists) that this alter-ego was of course a demon. As a result of trying to willfully become a psychopath I was given over to increasing evil. First I slashed thousands of dollars worth in tires simply as a test of nerve and to get away with it. I then weaseled out of the legal repercussions through a diversion program because of being diagnosed autistic. But the worst thing was that I was deeply addicted to porn. At one time I was cutting myself for sexual gratification and as another "test of nerve". Luckily that didn't last too long and the scars are minimal. But by far the absolute worst of it was, that being on 4chan I came across child pornography and while some of it certainly disgusted me, I figured I would download TOR and look for some pubescent models, having no regard whatsoever for the legal ramifications. After only about a year I was looking at children as young as five and even boys. Even I had my limit and explicit depictions of sexual abuse still disgusted me. But I will say that this standard was even being compromised towards the end.
Luckily in 2017 the first Syria bombing acted like a splash of cold water on my face. That night, I picked up a Bible and read through Job, which I knew was the most challenging of the books in The Bible for secular agnostic types like myself. Interestingly enough it all seemed to click together. But alas this initial stint of Christian belief was short-lived. I began to accumulate these questions about issues like whatever happens to people who have never had a chance to hear the gospel. Let me say the last thing you want to see on a psycho-educational assessment at the age of 7 is "Corey has a strong sense of cosmic justice". If you're capable of making up your own sense of cosmic justice at that age, then you're the kind who brims with pride. Now that pride was manifesting in many questions regarding theodicy and eschatology and the kind of protestant Mickey Mouse theology I was finding on Youtube was neither helping me personally live a repentant Christian life, nor was it certainly providing edifying answers to these questions. Eventually I became quite disaffected. I had a night where I was just imagining how everyone was going to hell and was given over to such despair I looked on the Bible in absolute horror. The next day I couldn't even feel a single emotion and was depersonalized for some time afterward. This all felt too perilous and I gradually started to slip into the idea that all forms of spirituality probably have some essential and ultimate truth.
So this is where I put myself in even more extreme danger and began researching the occult. Oh and around this time I started -however reluctantly- looking at cp again, though I had been looking at other forms of porn just more infrequently the whole time. I fell hard for the gnostic heresy and Manly P Hall lectures and this made up the brunt of my occult investigation. I was also watching a lot of fedora videos to ensure myself that the Bible was nonsense. Actually, I even watched Islam videos to put Islam on equal footing. I really didn't want to believe is the point. Eventually I had this sense that gnosticism was absurd because it must be profoundly evil to be quite that suspicious of your creator to think of him as evil. So I settled on calling myself a Neoplatonist. Oh and even before this religious interest started, I had been an antinatalist. I came up with some very compelling arguments in favor of antinatalism that even today I would say are logically rigorous (which is exactly the problem). One time I was in a debate in favor of antinatalism using my arguments and my mind went to the issue of "Well what is the fundamental nature that allows a being to be self-justifying?" At this point, realizing I could not justify my own existence and looking on any such beings, like God, in absolute horror at their incomprehensible mystery, I was given over to an even more profound despair. I drank water, it was meaningless, I laid on my bed; what did my orientation in space matter? Finally after several successive episodes of this despair, I imagined Jesus and the despair was lifted entirely. At this point I decided I would become Eastern Orthodox.