Ego traps in "new age" spirituality

[ControlledChaos]

Disclaimer: this is not intended to attack anybody with these beliefs. It is issues I have personally experienced from people I have personally encountered and does not extend to everybody with these ideas.

Since I have recently relocated to somewhere with a large community of people within the "new age" or spiritual community, I have encountered a number of issues with interacting with these people. I myself am on somewhat of a spiritual journey, but the behavior of some of these people is making me question if this path is even right because I know for sure I do not want to end up with their mentality. It seems in some of these peoples' pursuit of slaying their ego, they have grown it to proportions beyond their control, which is manifested in pretentiousness towards anybody they perceive as "unwoke" as well as a reckless disregard for consequences and rational thinking.

For instance, one of these people I know spends inordinate amounts of money on 'organic' food and genuinely believes that if I do not do the same I am part of the "GMO reptilian matrix" and "low vibrational". When inevitably they spend all of their money and go broke they either get a handout from one of their parents or beg/con/steal some money from somebody, then celebrate it as having "manifested" more money. They even have the audacity to treat others as "GMO matrix sheep" if they don't give in to their begging. When I attempted to explain to them that not everybody has a parent that can give handouts on a weekly basis they told me I just "wasn't woke enough to manifest" more money so that I could spend it all on overpriced food.

This person is an extreme example, but he's definitely not the only person I've met whose used their spiritual practices as a way to be holier than thou while simultaneously throwing personal responsibility out the window, pinning the blame for anything bad that happens on "bad energy", "GMOs", or their zodiac sign. Even worse is just outright dismissing bad things entirely and saying that everything that happens is part of their spiritual path and that it's fine because they're woke and their path is the correct one. It seems like objectivity evades them as they consistently throw conspiracy theories and magical claims with no evidence to back them up.

What makes me conflicted is that people like this helped turn me into psychedelics to begin with, but seeing the attitudes and behaviors of these people who clearly take them frequently makes me question their efficacy at actually breaking down ego traps. That isn't to say I don't think they can but it definitely isn't a silver bullet. These encounters that I've mentioned here don't so much turn me off from spirituality in general but it definitely makes me feel like I need to approach it from my own perspective and develop my own spirituality organically instead of just listening to all the "established" practices. I think that's my relationship with DMT and mushrooms personally, to help me develop my own spirituality independent of the ideas others are putting out there.

And if anybody here is part of the new age community please know this is not an attack on you, just me venting about my personal experiences. Maybe you'd even have some insights on how to handle these problems constructively, which I would appreciate. Thank you for your time reading.

 

[Psilosopher?]

This is a major problem, not just in this community, but every single subculture on Earth.

Elitism of any kind is often a manifestation of deep insecurities. The need to put people down, purely because someone is not a diehard fan is a very common trend in any community that is not in the mainstream. Anime, video games, music, philosophy, spiritual beliefs etc. The list goes on.

This elitism is particularly potent in the psychedelic community, since the experience is so goddamn intense. It feels so real, it can either humble the most arrogant arsehole, or prop up the ego to astounding proportions.

Elitists of all kinds fail to see perspectives outside their own, and judge everyone by their own twisted standards. This leaves them with a feeling of immense superiority, and refuse to see other perspectives as being valid. The possibility that they are wrong is not even a consideration.

These attitudes seem to be an education problem rather than anything else.

In the spirit of pretentiousness, here's a quote from Aristotle:

"The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought, without accepting it."

 

[metta-morpheus]

And to add another quote...

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don't know

I agree with OP. Everyone’s path to spirituality is unique to them and can only be walked by them.

 

[Voidmatrix]

This is a major problem, not just in this community, but every single subculture on Earth.

Elitism of any kind is often a manifestation of deep insecurities. The need to put people down, purely because someone is not a diehard fan is a very common trend in any community that is not in the mainstream. Anime, video games, music, philosophy, spiritual beliefs etc. The list goes on.

This elitism is particularly potent in the psychedelic community, since the experience is so goddamn intense. It feels so real, it can either humble the most arrogant arsehole, or prop up the ego to astounding proportions.

Elitists of all kinds fail to see perspectives outside their own, and judge everyone by their own twisted standards. This leaves them with a feeling of immense superiority, and refuse to see other perspectives as being valid. The possibility that they are wrong is not even a consideration.

These attitudes seem to be an education problem rather than anything else.

In the spirit of pretentiousness, here's a quote from Aristotle:

"The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought, without accepting it."

This made me laugh. Definitely in agreement.

Most people are looking for what to believe. Most people also want to be told what to believe and think. They don't necessarily want to figure it out. Nor change their thinking in order to make attempts to think more "accurately."

"The first things one learns often become the last things one questions."

We're conditioned to "be right," and to "know." There is a sway that people who speak with conviction have that others end up being attracted to.

There is also the unnoticed effects of cognitive biases. I encourage ypi to look up a list. Also, there seems to be this behavior of relegating certain kinds of information to a point of "that means nothing to me," when it is from a thought paradigm that is "contrary" to what they already think, and feel they should be aware of. In this case, avoiding rational thought and scientific insights. Though they may seem disparate from spiritual affairs, and while they may be their own "thing," they're still interconnected imo.

As for the elitism part, there's elitism of those that are at the top of some field, practice, sport, or trade, and there's the elitism of those that have to "show" something to everyone else, and that need to always reside on a pillar higher than others. This latter subset are actually closed-minded, despite what they may say about themselves. Marcus Aurelius was elite, but didn't act that way (unlike Aristotle, who effectively advocated for a sort of caste system). Their egos are inflated, though they claim to be diminishing it (and that too may be in error, because as I've come to understand over the past few months is that ego is more something to be balanced; it's neither good nor bad, it's a facet of self).

Most individuals never attempt to put their thinking patterns through the ringer of intense, authentic, and honest scrutiny, effectively lying to themselves and causing self-delusion.

One love

 

[Icyseeker]

This isn't anything new in terms of spirituality. People have been using spirituality to further there own goals for ages. Look up osho and other related cults. Anything with a line of belief can be used as a leverage for gain.

With science everything is verifiable and can be tested against. With spirituality its more of a rough guideline to live ones life.

Take karma for example in the Buddhist tradition karma is an understanding of cause and effect in relation to the individual as he/she goes through the rebirth cycle. The simple understanding of it would be that doing good on to others will generate good karma. While doing misdeeds on to others will generate bad karma. Most lay persons (without the foolish ambitions of enlightenment) will accept this rule and try to generate good karma in their current life in hopes of better reincarnation in the future. That is how my grandparents explained it to me.

I think thinking through your own life and forming your own ideas about life will give better results. A lot of new age stuff seems like it is just the mixing of many different schools of thought without proper vetting. Making it look like the frankenstien of belief systems.

 

[Jungleheart]

Be careful being around these people. There's often more to lose than to be gained. They will use you to prop their ego up and you will end up drained. Better to protect your energy and resources by focusing elsewhere.

 

[Ramma]

You were a happy child, immersed in your world of wonder. But as you grew you realized many people didn't share this world with you, most people didn't think about profound things. Furthermore they would put you down for valuing philosophy/idealism; having wanderlust, innocence, playfulness, and knowledge as core values/your personality.

You already know most people don't have that. You and me listen to Fairy Fountain and Astral Observatory to go into where the knowledge lies, showcasing our core values; our type values love and romance and games.

Notice that you have strength as a baseline; you mention in your posts how strong experiences don't make you afraid to do it again if necessary, thus the name you chose; Controlled Chaos, cause you can handle negative emotions, while being mostly happy through life. You have a positive attitude towards life and an openess to experience. Original thinker with strong intuition.


Conservative estimate; 65% of humans don't value knowledge, so you talking to them about it will get you put down at best, crucified at worst. Some types of people are worst than others on this front and can vary. Some might just not be able to follow you (they aren't original thinkers and value 'equality' so if we're all the same then no one is better than anyone and all ideas are equal, so any idea is a function that cancels itself out and thus = 0. So you'll never advance anywhere if you talk to these types since they value unkowingness, conformity, and authority "Nothing can be known for sure, so what do you know? If you don't have a Masters degree or are famous everything you say is useless'.

About probably 50% have a psychological profile where they will hate you for this. To them, the lowest class common denominator is the arbiter of reality and sanity and anyone asking about hypotheticals (eg, philosophers) should die. They are conformists and presentists who believe themselves to be arbiters of reality. By which they mean consensus reality. They aren't interested in solving problems, so why think. What does the lowest common denominator care about society, civilization or culture?

For them to exist, you can't, and viceversa.

So, concering the types mentioned in your post with which you are having conflicting emotions, that's because their values are totally different from yours (as a group at least; that being that of the hippie archetype, individually there can be outliers). These types are different than those I described above. For the most part, these are actually my least favorite type of people. If your interested in these types you can PM me.

Machinery on DMT exists because technology is a key component of all consciouss life. The more technologicaly advanced the beings, the higher level they are, since they can live forever because of technology and thus accumulate more knowledge to keep perpetuating their species. Just like humans have done. So yes, indigenous people were seeing machines and did 'predict the future'--unless they probably didn't, cause it's hard to decipher the vision and most people don't think about the future of humanity, hence they can't make the correlation between the vision and the future, meaning prophesying.

 

[shroombee]

Since I have recently relocated to somewhere with a large community of people within the "new age" or spiritual community, I have encountered a number of issues with interacting with these people. I myself am on somewhat of a spiritual journey, but the behavior of some of these people is making me question if this path is even right because I know for sure I do not want to end up with their mentality. It seems in some of these peoples' pursuit of slaying their ego, they have grown it to proportions beyond their control, which is manifested in pretentiousness towards anybody they perceive as "unwoke" as well as a reckless disregard for consequences and rational thinking.

If you're recognizing these people don't feel right, then just take a deep breath, and move on.

"The wise guru will not attempt to wake people up."

"The first things one learns often become the last things one questions."

Nice. Where does that come from?

 

[dragonrider]

Oh, i know exactly what you mean.
These people are living in an utterly childish and decadent fantasyworld.

Don't ever think of telling them so, however, because we've all heard the phrase "foaming at the mouth" before, but you will actually witness it happening then and it's not so pretty.

These people are everything they despise, but worse.
They are the epitome of the western, materialistic lifestyle. They are the epitome of entitlement, privilage and capitalism.

Much more so even, than the bankers, businesmen or politicians they undoubtedly despise so much.

I would say, treat them as much as possible as the superficial phenomena they ultimately are.

Difficult, i know.
They have a tendency to get under your skin. Often partly because of all the shit they get away with.

Or maybe look at them as pets, be it less usefull ones, who are not that much of a nuisance as long as they get a cookie and you don't contradict their views.

You can love them as long as you have absolutely zero expectations.

 

[Voidmatrix]

"The first things one learns often become the last things one questions."

Nice. Where does that come from?

It was something that I stated in a conversation at work. It apparently struck one person who told me to coin it and make sure I remember it. It is an observation that has come about from my philosophy of mind studies. And thank you

One love

 

[Tomtegubbe]

"The first things one learns often become the last things one questions."

Nice. Where does that come from?

It was something that I stated in a conversation at work. It apparently struck one person who told me to coin it and make sure I remember it. It is an observation that has come about from my philosophy of mind studies. And thank you

One love

Excellent quote(?)

Coming from a religious background, having used years and years trying to figure out how to make the system work, before daring to question the more profound assumptions I had built my faith upon, this one really struck. Now I'm in the phase of confronting the beliefs that go beyond the symbolical, how I came to view the world and myself growing up. There's so much so deeply ingrained, I'm yet unable to see, let alone question. But the process is a wonderful one!

 

[Voidmatrix]

Excellent quote(?)

:surprised I was trying to be accurate since I consider a saying, but avoiding highlighting myself. So much for that plan :lol:

Coming from a religious background, having used years and years trying to figure out how to make the system work, before daring to question the more profound assumptions I had built my faith upon, this one really struck. Now I'm in the phase of confronting the beliefs that go beyond the symbolical, how I came to view the world and myself growing up. There's so much so deeply ingrained, I'm yet unable to see, let alone question. But the process is a wonderful one!

I like to use the analogy of a physical structure here. With physical structures, there's foundations and underpinnings they are built upon. If something needs to be changed at that level, it's going to take a lot of planning, work, and labor. It's very much the same with thought structures whose building blocks are the initial ideas that thought structures are built upon. When those are questioned, entire paradigms of thought also change from the bottom up.

One love

 

[dragonrider]

"The first things one learns often become the last things one questions."

Nice. Where does that come from?

It was something that I stated in a conversation at work. It apparently struck one person who told me to coin it and make sure I remember it. It is an observation that has come about from my philosophy of mind studies. And thank you

One love

Excellent quote(?)

Coming from a religious background, having used years and years trying to figure out how to make the system work, before daring to question the more profound assumptions I had built my faith upon, this one really struck. Now I'm in the phase of confronting the beliefs that go beyond the symbolical, how I came to view the world and myself growing up. There's so much so deeply ingrained, I'm yet unable to see, let alone question. But the process is a wonderful one!

But don't be to hard on yourself.

You will find or have found out already that there are some things you're detached to emotionally.

You cannot tell yourself not to feel the way you do about these things. Sometimes it's better to just let new information sink in.

 

[LouSkywalker]

I have found that many people in the DMT culture(around here) have some pretty frustrating ways of approaching science. Science is our ally. Science is how we acquire our entheogens, and it's our duty as literate individuals to spread scientific knowledge about our movement. Take my approach to giving back as an example:

I regularly see a clinical psychiatrist who is very supportive of psychedelic research, and he suggested to me that when I use psilocybin mushrooms, I should document anything I can and contribute to underground research if possible. With that in mind I've started taking detailed notes and timing my writing as well as time spent editing, both in the days prior to the therapy, and in the following days.

The instant onset creativity I experience in the aftermath of a dose of mushrooms has led me to conclude that thus far it's an effective short-term cure for creative blockages in myself, and should these changes remain constant or increase, I'll have made at least a single individual use case out of myself regarding the effects of psilocybin on writer's block.

I'm just one guy, and that's the best I've come up with, but I feel like in the same way that we strive to integrate experiences, it's each person's duty to monitor the effects they experience in some kind of scientific way, both to show that there's true entheogenic value drawn by us that merits giving back, and to increase the amount of subjective experiences on record, and the diversity of documentation tactics. These are drugs with objective conclusions being drawn from very subjective experiences, and every honest contribution helps.

I know not everyone has the luxury of class A mental healthcare from a professional who welcomes psychedelic discussions and I admit I'm lucky to have that, so I encourage others to test the waters if they see mental healthcare professionals and ask something like: "What is your view as an industry professional on research into psychedelics that is newly being explored after years of red tape?"

Do this with someone you trust, and have a relationship with, not a first visit, unless of course your goal is to scout for the right kind of doc.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that my physician basically agreed I was making use of "early access" mental healthcare when I described my regiment. EDIT: To clarify, I use the Hopkins method of silent/ambient darkness and large doses of psilocybin; "Shine a light in every corner, What are you doing in my head and what can I learn from you". That's what he endorses as having merit in my use of entheogens, not necessarily other drugs, but he also didn't see anything wrong with me exploring DMT, he just highlighted that psilocybin was a lot more in the clinical spotlight, as well as ketamine, and that he wasn't aware of the drug nearly as much. His clinical interest was my mushroom use.

I guess my point is, work with these substances in a way that strives to conclude things, in some way. If you can draw a reasonable conclusion that adds discussion that could lead to value, try and repeat the experiment, even if it's something that seems trivial, more knowledge leads to more applications.

To get back to these "frustrating behaviors" -

One guy won't google changa to see that it's an MAOI+ DMT. "You need the MAOI in your blood first, smoking(vaping) MAOIs does nothing." - I pointed out that it serves to slow down the exit from the body not potentiate the entry, he still calls his enhanced leaf changa. That's misleading, but I guess better than calling changa enhanced leaf, safety wise.

"You need to align your body south to breakthrough" - citation needed to say the least.

"You didn't breakthrough because you kept your eyes closed" - The absurdity speaks for itself

"Meditating helps break through because you can release endogenous DMT" - MAYBE with kundalini yoga mastered over decades, but there's no way you're endogenously contributing to your dose when toking.

My advice is to be the change you want to see in the world. Counter these people's energy by deflecting it and shining your own, brighter. As for thieves, freeloaders and egomaniacs, all societies deal with them and I see the behavior more in drinkers and chronic cannabis smokers(I am one myself, not knocking daily cannabis use inherently) than in psychedelic circles, and I only engage with people who use these things in entheogenic spirit.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I think it's also good to note that most people believe what tends to be the most appealing, comfortable, and convenient. They may state that they feel what they believe is "true" but that is undermined by bias they are unwilling to acknowledge and check. "Truth" tends to have nothing to do with subjective preference (except for maybe some personal "truths").

One love

 

[BundleflowerPower]

It seems in some of these peoples' pursuit of slaying their ego, they have grown it to proportions beyond their control, which is manifested in pretentiousness towards anybody they perceive as "unwoke" as well as a reckless disregard for consequences and rational thinking.

I feel that. I feel like sometimes, westerners, come into contact with non-western teachings and so forth, then abandon their westerness, and along with that, they abandon reason.