Being new here, I would like to know why everyone chose their specific path and what, if any, assistance everyone had along the way, be it metaphysical, spiritual, or physical assistance.
I was raised in the Christian Church, being a church boy until I was 12 years old, at which time I left the church because of a conflict of interest. After spending a few years moving from church to church trying to find my calling, I took a break from any religious gatherings for about a decade or so, then in January of this year, I felt compelled to do a google search for Occult shops in my area. After finding one close to me, I went to pay them a visit and find out what they were all about. After listening to my situation, the shop owner picked up a book and showed it to me and told me it was a very valuable resource with lots of good information on Paganism and witchcraft, so I bought the book and took it home with me, but then quickly became nervous about what my family would think, so I left the book on a night stand in my bedroom. One day, a month after I bought the book, the book seemed to be pulling me toward it wanting me to read it, so I laid on my bed and began reading. The first five chapters of that book, "The Inner Temple of Witchcraft" by Christopher Penczak, were several pages long each and it literally took five full chapters to detail the history of Paganism. It really sparked my interest and I felt like this was the right path for me, but I wasn't sure which aspect of Paganism I should focus on, and initially, I didn't feel a calling to any one specific path, but then one night I was laying in bed and began thinking about what it would take to learn wilderness survival. The next morning, I still had the subject of wilderness survival in my head, so I went back and read the first five chapters of Penczak's book again and that was when I discovered that my interest in learning to live entirely off the environment was an almost perfect example of Druidism, but I also felt a calling toward shamanism, so I spent the rest of my time focusing most of my attention on researching and following the ways of the Druid as well as trying to achieve Shamanic Consciousness. I was introduced to a website that featured metaphysical brainwave recordings a few weeks into my Paganism practices, and my first purchases from that site were Alpha Wave Meditation and Deep Sleep, with my initial intention being using the Alpha Wave Meditation to help train my brain into getting into a meditative state, as I knew meditation was one of the key elements of Paganism. The first Alpha Wave Meditation session was an experience that is impossible to describe, but it was an exciting and definitely an interesting experience. At the same time, I also began noticing that the Alpha Wave Meditation was affecting me in more ways than just by giving me inner peace, I also noticed that it raised my awareness, I was a lot calmer than usual, I could actually concentrate, and that I was awake yet it seemed like my mind wasn't. That night, I decided to combine the Alpha Wave Meditation with the Deep Sleep to see if it would help me get to sleep faster, but instead of putting me to sleep, it put me into a trance-like state - I could feel vibrations as people moved around the house and I could hear the sounds from the recording, but I was physically unable to move. It was a strange and initially somewhat frightening experience, but once the recording was done, I willingly brought myself back to full consciousness and almost immediately, I felt as if I had just slept like a dead man for 10 hours straight even though the total amount of time I spent listening to the two recordings was only an hour and 10 minutes. From that day, I began focusing all my attention on the exercises in Mr. Penczak's book. taking whatever free time I had to practice the energy manipulation exercises that were described in the book. I happened upon this site by doing a Google search for "Pagan forums" and after exploring the different sites that popped up, this one seemed to want my attention, so now here I am and hopefully this will be my second home as I continue with my practices.