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• Site revised and updated, January 2015 •

Welcome.

Some years ago when I was yet fully Christian in my beliefs, I wrote the following sentiment on a card and posted it in my home:

"I would rather know a fearful truth than remain deceived
by comforting falsehoods."

I was quite sincere in that desire to know the real truth, but little did I fathom the journey I would soon take, nor did I anticipate in the least the nature of the truths that would be revealed to someone who actually sought them. The things I learned would take me on an amazing journey from holding a traditional Christian belief structure to a new, surprising, and far broader understanding of human nature, history, and endeavor - a view that can only include Christianity and its God as part of a large collection of sibling myths, connected to far older ideas and beliefs that stretch back into the mists of ancient human society.

My sojourn would take a man devoted to Christianity and to the God of the Bible and unceremoniously set him down in the simple dirt of Earth with nothing of his familiar mental world left to comfort him. It took some time to turn myself away from fear and grief and to finally begin to rebuild a life of peace and of true joy.

I can only partially share my journey with you here, but this is a voyage others have also taken, and although our pathways and the views we have gained may differ in some ways, it is the journeying that matters, along with the principal of shedding our illusions. These illusions have not only bound us, but in many real ways defined us prior to that search for truth.

This is not an easy road. The words "fearful", "shocking", and "surprising" are frequently applied when one's personal paradigms of religion and philosophy of life are challenged and changed. When this happens to us, we must learn to deal with our fears by examining them and talking about them. This, too, is part of the passage.

I approached this project with some trepidation, for as the author of a book on the New Testament and after a life of devotion to Christianity, I had much invested in my prior philosophy of things. I am still on my journey. Perhaps, you are also going down this road. If so, you may find comfort or helpful insights from someone else who has traveled this way. Perhaps this is part of my new purpose now - to present my thoughts and experiences and ask you to respond in kind - for I hope to learn from you as well. To use the old religious term, we can minister to one another and help each other navigate these often difficult waters.

I have said that we have been bound and defined by our past illusions. The task at hand is to redefine ourselves and our purpose in this life. Not a purpose or a definition imposed from outside ourselves, but rather one developed and nurtured by us.

This becomes truly joyful when we realize that we are unbound, awake, and limited only by our own fears.

- David P. Crews
2002, Austin, Texas

If We See No God Before Us

If we see no God before us,
has the measure of our selves
then become unlaced –
torn and flung, haste and horror,
that it should have gripped
so very long – so very hard?

Whose compass then shall we assume
to describe our minded steps?
Or, shall we invent a new current
– harsher and in turbulent seas
for being human-fashioned and yet,
promising no unearthy glories.
Honest in its dealings with us.

The god's mighty river,
that old forever guide,
has dried and grown quiet.
Deep banks, once confining
and directing us to fair lands,
now rise up flat
and can no more be seen
in the earth's fine face.
Now we look for rain.

If we see no god before us,
shall darkness prevail over our
drained and crumbling husks?
Or shall we then have stepped
into the hard sun?
Not too late.
No, not so late. We can still live.
We can find a new pace and
measure with a new reed the
boundaries of our good life.

The time! The time.
The ages of time spent
with this man in our mind.
Shall we be angered, or
shall a smile trace our cheeks?
If we rail at a phantom,
are we yet his fleshy prey?

Were we lost in the echoes
of childhood pretend?
The hoary river is vapor, now dust
– was never there at all.
Now our naked feet strike
a new path, strewn freely
with sweat and bones
and living laughter.
A fine and free new path.

And time enough for us
yet to be alive
in this sublime earth.
 

- Nov. 1999, David P. Crews

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A Note about this Site + Author Updates!

The Joy of Disillusionment has been on the web since 2002 and was originally connected to several "webrings" that linked sites by subject matter. In the years since about 2004, webrings have fallen out of the kind of use they once had as people have changed their web viewing habits, finding most subjects of interest via search engines. This has had the effect of shutting off the flow of visitors to this site that was once very robust. I have left the site online during the intervening years in case someone may find it, but there have been few contacts since that time.

Now, I feel it is important and worthwhile to update, redesign, and relaunch the site here. I know from the conversations I've had with so many that this content is of actual value, and I feel it should be more visible and accessible going forward.

That said, I look back on much of my writing and comments here with a new perspective that comes from having followed my path even further, exploring the world, challenging myself in many modes, and chasing myriad new ideas that are worth the pursuing – and in so doing, I have grown and changed in many ways, as should be.

My current path has little to do with the transitional process out of traditional religious structures like Christianity that is discussed here because I've simply moved on. My newer journeys are chronicled and discussed on my blog: David Crews. There you will find Photos, Essays, Poems, & Musings on Life, Spirit, Ayahuasca & Entheogens, Time, and Travel.

I am always pleased to have a conversation with you on any of these subjects, including the transitional one. You may also find many helpful viewpoints and observations on this site's subject matter in the many questions and answers found in the Conversations With You pages.


A few words About Me:

I live and work in Austin, Texas. I'm a broadcast video producer, director, artist, composer, and voice talent. I own and operate my own video post-production company, CrewsCreative. I'm also an on-air host for KMFA, one of the few listener supported non-commercial Classical radio stations on the air. I've won numerous awards and serve as a judge for the prestigious Telly Awards. I've been in broadcasting for over 40 years.

In the 1990s, in my sincere attempts to make sense of the Bible and after many years of research, I wrote and successfully published a book [Prophecy Fulfilled–God's Perfect Church] with original concepts on New Testament interpretation. This challenging work was influential in the beginnings of the ongoing movement in Christianity called Preterism and has been used and quoted as a reference source by other writers.

As a result of the massive shift in my understandings, knowledge, and belief structures around the year 1999, I created this site in 2002 to try to better come to terms with all the feelings, guilt, anger, bemusement, new joy, new horizons of information, and some personal social issues caused by leaving the traditional beliefs that I had so much invested in. I also wanted to share this process and my own take on it with others who may also be in this situation.

Since the time of this site's writings, my further Journey has taken me to wondrous and strange places. I've personally researched the phenomena of entheogens, especially the ancient and sacred whole-plant medicine of the Amazon called Ayahuasca (The Vine of the Soul). I've twice traveled to the Upper Amazon in Peru to work with authentic shamans or medicine men and women from various tribal and Western backgrounds in traditional spiritual ceremonies representing shamanism, the most ancient "religious" expressions and practices of humanity. My personal experience with Ayahuasca has been life-changing and, although alluded to in some parts of this site, is described and discussed more fully on my current blog, David Crews.

I have spent most of my career working for large corporations or television stations. The existence of my own independent business, CrewsCreative, now, is a direct result of events initiated from my work with Ayahuasca.


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The present moment is not mundane. It is, in essence, extraordinary. -DC

Comments or questions:
david@jaguarfeather.com

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