DMT - The Subtle Lacking in the Subconscious

[Cazman043]

This is going to be a post based on an idea currently being noticed with my current endeavours with psychedelics.

With my experimentation with psychedelics, as profound, beautiful and meaningful they are, i've noticed a very subtle sense of lack in the back of my mind. This subtle sensation seems to come from the idea that when endeavouring on a mind altering experience, their is a small thing inside us, subtly hiding, which is wanting something in this moment to be different to what it already is, and so, we take a substance to have a journey. Something so small, can become quite noticeable after a while.

My question is this, when taking psychedelics, as beautiful tools as they are, are they not also subtly taking us away from being completely content with this moment and everyday consensus reality? For I'm coming to understand, maybe this is about the journey and not the destination, and psychedelics are subtly wanting to "speed up" the process of the journey to reach some new state of consciousness.

I have noticed that when i take a psychedelic without any intention, i just go into it completely open minded with the idea of "lets just see where it takes me" i tend to have more variety in my experience and it seems to actually be more beneficial than that of when i do have an intention.
SO I also ask, maybe its then best we take psychedelics without an intention, for the intention can create an expectation, and therefore is being subtly driven by your desires to be something/somewhere you currently aren't?

 

[ultraviolence]

Those are some pretty interesting thoughts. I think that psychedelics can teach us to be content with the moment, to notice the small things, to take on different perspectives, all when we are sober. If you don't trip too often, you spend much more time in the moment than not. Even when psychedelics are involved, its more like putting an interesting veil over everyday reality, in my opinion. I don't feel that psychedelics speed up any sort of process towards consciousness, but they can definitely help make big changes easier to handle.

As far as intentions go, I feel like they have their time and place. If I am unable to figure out a life problem on my own, I might take some mushrooms to get a different perspective on things. At the same time, most of the time I take lsd, it is to get out of my head, I'm mainly looking for a distraction so no intention is necessary.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride"

 

[hixidom]

I agree with the phenomenon you've described in principle, and I agree that psychedelics should be used without intention (for me, the experience always transcends whatever intentions or expectations that I had), but my [minor, petty] objection to your post is this:
You mention mental states like "completely in the moment", "about the journey", "open minded". Theoretically these are ideal mental states, but in practice many people cannot attain them (or at least discover that they are capable of them) without psychedelics. That's because humans, being animals, are in many ways unconscious machines. It's all well and good to assume that humans are naturally conscious and aware, but those desirable mental states you mentioned are not possible for me naturally. Psychedelics help me to break out of my daily thinking patterns so that I can think creatively and (more importantly) tap into the point of awareness from which my sense of being bursts forth. Granted, other things like meditation can also help with these desirable states.

 

[PsyDuckmonkey]

This is pretty much "psychedelic use 101" as far as I understand... The first thing I heard about mushrooms was "not to look the dragon in the eye" - that is, I shouldn't try to control the experience. There are many interesting ways to guide the psychedelic journey, but force of will is not one of them. Trying to use psychedelics for a specific reason is likely to end in disappointment.

Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience uses the Tibetan Book of the Dead to teach about psychedelic use, and speaks of very similar things. That "small thing" you mention is your desire and attachment that stands between you and Enlightenment. Most of us have it.

By the way, the most "controllable" psychedelic I've met so far has been 2C-B. It is "semantic" in ways tryptamines aren't, for example a chakric meditation in front of a mirror gave me full visuals of the chakras and the body meridian system as I visualized it; songs and videos integrated semantically into my feelings and visuals as opposed to disintegrating into noise...

If you want a more "pliable" experience, you could have a look at it.