Embracing death

[bismillah]

Some of you may remember that several weeks ago I had a revelation about my own mortality during a mimosahuasca trip. Somehow that was the first time I ever really realized that I will inevitably grow old and die---but hey, better late than never!
I've been playing with that thought since then and planned another session in order to explore this feeling further, which took place this past Friday. I used 45mg with harmalas but probably only vaporized some 30 mg for my big first hit; I left quite a lot in the pipe.

I've previously been very comfortable with this exact dose range but I'd say the first 5 minutes of my trip were hell this time around. I collapsed forwards onto my keyboard and found myself stuck in the pocket between a very dark and claustrophobic, ethereal space and my piano, and I felt like I was in the process of dying. I was sweating profusely and felt profoundly sick. At some point I was compelled to purge, but I stopped myself so that I didn't make a mess.

I mean, I achieved the intended effect, I guess. I was exploring my fear of death. But it felt like part of me was holding back and that internal struggle made my experience dark and panicked instead of dark and revelatory (I was ready for it to get dark). Eventually I came down a bit and had a very uplifting and motivating rest-of-my-trip, but it sort of felt like my now more sober brain was putting a band-aid over what I had just witnessed.

I'm wondering how I can embrace these feeling and go deeper. This has been a topic that's been on my mind for a little while, and although I've made some initial progress with how I feel about it, there's obviously still more to be found. Maybe next time, a few weeks or months from now, I should try again but bring a yak bucket? Just ideas.

 

[FranLover]

You dont really need psychedelics for that. Its all in the mind. Go into the mind and find the soul. Walk through the infinite corridor of the soul and find the door labeled Life; beyond this door lies the knowledge of Divine Purpose, a direct result of the cycle of life and death. And so feel death, make it real and tangible: feel the death of all your loved ones which will happen very soon, sooner than we can imagine. Further, feel the death of all the ancestors. Go beyond this and grasp the death of all people throughout the whole of historicity; be the poor little girl in the hollocaust, be the father watching his family mauled by a warmongering neighbooring tribe, be the slave who constructs a building only to be later sacrificed to no one and for no reason, be the ancestral ape like man who consequence of a single second of unawareness now has his head inbetween the jaws of a lion, see the natural world in its purest state and see that life is completley one with death (predator and prey live and die together in the natural world, everyday the tribe looks into the face of the crocodile or the rhino or the lion; they see death for what it is, just like children; as removed as we are from that we must remember that that is the life we were meant to live and lived for thousands and thousands of years before the advent of agriculture and larger populations. How we live now is exactly how we should, but the forgetfulness of where we came from is the cauae of a deep ignorance; let us always remember our birth and our origins, the essence of God

Be in the battlefield and see and be the death of the universe; 1 million dead at Stalingrad...what does that mean? Go into it, see 1 million individual faces and minds and see how senseless their death was; do you see it? This is called the burning of the face of the earth, infinite potential of creation lost for absolutley no reason whatsoever (Maya weaves the ultimate illusion upon the world, unseeable to the naked eye, undefendable to the unguarded soul.) See the suffering of the entire world since time immemorial; place that suffering close to your clean heart. See its true cause; ilussion. See its true essence; impermanence.

The mind being infinite, there are infinite possibilites of exploration, all that is needed to unlock this potential is to comprehend what the hidden gems of the soul are; pure eternal and unconditioned cosmic knowledge, wisdom of the highest caliber, bar none. With that in mind its easier to locate the gems; they are there and with correct concentration or pure intent the jewels will reveal themselves. There are thousands of ways up the mountain, but the mountain remains the same. Thousands of explorations into the meaning and feeling of death; see your house now, look out the window, see that you will die and all those trees will live longer than you, all those birds would have died but their offspring will be soaring the skies long after you are gone; see beyond the illusion of life. Death is the truth. This is because death represents the meaning of the Void, meaning; supreme strategy. The universe is based on complexity, on multiple step plans with thousands of ramifications and plan Bs and Cs. Death is the next step in the plan of the soul. But something that is infinite can not die. I dont know if you follow what I just said...I'll make it clearer; who is it that dies?

Ralph Waldo Emerson "what lies behind us, and what lies before us, are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

 

[Tony6Strings]

Great post Fran.

 

[bismillah]

Agreed, that's beautiful.

 

[Exitwound]

Deeply inside I know that there is no death, that death is a subjective experience of a certain protein bags who think of it being somewhat meaningful, but... Even having taken a peek at divine nature of the universe, for a certain protein bag it is hard to accept that at some point this journey ends. All your instincts and other subroutines instilled in you since birth are protesting such acceptance. And it is fine.
There is nothing wrong about being afraid, especially of the final unknown - death.

I like the phrase that I read somewhere "don't beat your poor brains too hard into submission" - please take your time and embrace your fear, it is there for some reason, think about why it is there.
It took you X years to get where you are right now, don't expect yourself to change in a matter of weeks or months

 

[Xt]

I'm not sure if there is anything 'to do' so to speak. I can relate to your experience and have encountered similar things with the freebase. It does seem to be one feather of many in the cap of dmt and, whilst momentarily terrifying it has been useful. Death touches us all at some point, and often grazes us many times. I see this as an opportunity to know it's face.

All that said and done, set and setting can help alleviate some of the more jarring aspects of DMT freebase. Not rushing, using in beautiful, bright settings. Planning trips in advance and using some personally crafted ritual can all help with this instantaneous 25 dimensional steamroller that we sometimes call the hyperslap.

These two paragraphs are not specifically talking about the same thing, as i am not claiming your experience was a hyperslap but, may be of use regardless.

 

[corpus callosum]

This is a topic which intrigues/troubles us all, and in some cases as well as personally, professionally. :shock:

A really astute work I would vociferously recommend which touches on this and so much more which underpins the human condition of which death and its conception is intrinsic is "The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the true nature of Self, Mind and Consciousness" by Peter Ralston.

I think 5 MeO DMT is a more fitting tool to derive some experiential tastes of "death" than DMT, and elaborates on a conceptual appreciation that anything derived solely with the intellect may offer.

The "right" response of all "sane individuals" when seriously contemplating the prospect of ones death is one of recoiling from the enquiry, or a kind of auto-manipulation to by-pass the visceral feeling it engenders. The unquestioned view being thought evokes fear, mandating reactive action of avoidance. But Ralston considers the components of fear in a pretty astute way and discerns several ingredients which apply to fear as a general entity, not just pertaining to issues of mortality.

He posits that evocation of fear is composed of:

1. An unwillingness to attend to the issue;
2. A predication that a future exists;
3. A mind-generated conceptual imagining of a future scenario (which is by definition not Now) replete with the possibility of adverse outcomes;
4. The associated physical condition felt as fear.

"Embracing death" under this schema would entail dismantling point 1.

Easier said than done!

Point 2 veers into non-dual territory ie Now alone, exists, but as an absolute beyond direct perception (unless chemically facilitated, or via other means such as meditation etc).

Point 3 reflects the acme of conceptualization capacity which is the human brain but bears an intrinsic glitch which confuses concept with reality.

Point 4- no explanation required here.

If any validity applies to Ralstons thinking one can see how 5 MeO DMT measures up to other agents as more targeted for the work ie an initial writhing unwillingness to let go would approximate death of the self more completely than DMT; the non-dual aspect imparts the Now concretely, and conceptual capacity is rendered wholly absent in the usual fashion.

 

[nexalizer]

The book that corpus callosum mentions looks really interesting. Added to the list!

 

[xss27]

Fear of death is a conception, a bundle of thoughts organised around primarily the body-minds fear of termination/survival instinct. But are you the physical body alone? When you descend into deep sleep at night, the portion of sleep where there is apparent oblivion yet where you still exist within, where is the fear of death then?

What is born will die. Were you ever born though?

 

[FranLover]

What is born will die. Were you ever born though?

The Illusion of Existence. The snake in the string.

 

[👽℞]

Every night when I am preparing to sleep, I pretend that when I do fall asleep, it will be forever. Embracing death every single night. Tomorrow is a promise for no one. I find this practice helps me take account for my life. If I can fall asleep with no regrets, I can also die with no regrets. I live my life as if I will die when I go to sleep every night. Death can teach you how to live.

 

[sbios]

Funny, my initial aya ceremonies took me to the realizations that there are more than just the physical state especially beyond the physical body/realm. There was a scripture I read, a conversation between Buddha and his young boy. It's kind of like a thought experiment where he asks a serious of questions to inquire about the relationship between the physical part of self. It goes like this, but I abbreviate much: Ask, if this hair, fingernails and extremetes are you? So suppose you take each part off separately, do you still regard them as self? The same goes to the fluids in the body, each of cells compose of the body, the skeletons...etc. If you look at each individually you'd see it in itself is not you, but of you. So in reality, this body (with continuous replacing of the parts) is a collection of materials that one utilizes but there has to be an intelligence, a force or an essence that is behind the scene so to speak.