I've traced my current position in life back to being a boy scout from an early age up to my late teens.
That said, much of my current outlook on life stems from an interest in the paranormal since I was in my early teens when I would skip school to go and sit in the occult sections of various libraries local to my hometown of Caterham in Surrey,UK.
Caterham sits on a line running directly south from London and is about half-way between London and East Grinstead which is itself about half-way to Brighton.
My home town of Caterham and more specifically the adjacent village of Chaldon, where I lived upto about 18 years is a strange place by modern home-counties standards. The church in Chaldon was built in 1086, the site having been used as a sacred meeting place for a long time before that.
Prehistoric caves have been discovered in the surrounding countryside and a short walk out of Chaldon gives amazing views of the whole of Greater London
Many of my friends share my experiences of the psychiatric ward of the regional hospital where I spent 2 weeks in the later part of the year 2000.
My own "Millenium Bug" was a psychotic episode which stemmed from overuse of psychedelic and psychoactive substances in my formative years and was the beginning of the end of the person I used to be.
Previously, on the first day of 1997, I had a very intense out-of-body experience at a new years eve party thrown by trance party pioneers Escape from Samasara in North London.
What I now see as a classic "white light" experience saw my consciousness literally sucked from this world into a beautiful warm, all-encompassing and reassuring golden nothingness, an amazing sound permeated my being, a fanfare, a symphony, every harmonious sound in one single roaring whoosh.
Plummeting back into the physical plane was a nightmare, I truly wanted to die, such was the horror of this material world.
Luckily I had run out of the venue, a huge run-down leisure centre, into a small park before commencing my astral vacation. My screams and anguish were confined to a mini-cab office which I proceeded to smash up like a crazed psycho. Luckily I wasn't arrested.
And a "spontaneous" experience it wasn't, I had ingested 2 blotters of what turned out to be incredibly strong L.S.D., a drug I had been experimenting, nay, abusing since aged about 15.
Needless to say, my respect for psychedelics has increased many-fold, my experiences to date have been quite tame compared to that event and i am yet to explore the realms of substances such as mescaline, D.M.T. and ayauasca, though undoubtably they will enter my field of experience when I am ready.
I currently work in South London at a community arts centre, The Synergy Centre which plays host to many alternative music and arts events and holistic classes and also runs youth projects in one of the most deprived areas of the country. The school directly opposite the centre is the only one in the country with a permanent police officer stationed inside and has been blighted by gang violence, stabbings and the repercussions of the "postcode wars", territorial disputes played out by the youngsters from the surrounding areas.
I am just discovering the potential of the medium that is Facebook for spreading the word, helping perpetuate the revolution of consciousness that we find ourselves in the middle of and focussing the energy of the masses to really bring about change in our world.
I drifted away from Tortuga about a year ago, I found myself wasting much time on the forum and becoming lost in the ideas behind its creation.
Well, I'm back now, probably not so visibly active as previously but doing my bit to bring this revolution to its conclusion.
Big Love to One and All.