I think I have come up with an apt analogy for my first breakthrough, if indeed it was one (trip report in nursery "first steps"):
Imagine the utter terror experienced by a newborn: jettisoned from the womb, umbilical cord clipped, drawing in its first gulp of air and opening its eyes to the hostile light of the world for the first time; oxygen flooding virgin lungs, a whole cardiopulmonary system shocked into action, those little orbs set in a tiny skull that have never seen more than the dim red glow of placenta being opened to a universe of reflection and refraction, shards of light bounding around in a seeming assault, a barrage of alien colour and intensity; and the sounds - never such cacophony, billowing around the small cartilaginous shells that heretofore have heard no more than the dull distant thud of their mother's heart, now subjected to screeching frequencies unimaginable...
I have to think of my experience as a birth for it to make sense. Something that will soften to some level of comprehension, or at the very least diminished violence, in subsequent trips, like the newborn slowly adapting to a novel, strange reality...
And the death of my old self, the precious illusion (if it indeed be one) of my old mind, the shedding, the passing on, the evolving... For every birth requires a death, and every demise, a blossom.
I hope that strikes a cord with someone.
Anyone ever notice that maya, pronounced in reverse, is a phonetic analogue of I am?
JBArk
Imagine the utter terror experienced by a newborn: jettisoned from the womb, umbilical cord clipped, drawing in its first gulp of air and opening its eyes to the hostile light of the world for the first time; oxygen flooding virgin lungs, a whole cardiopulmonary system shocked into action, those little orbs set in a tiny skull that have never seen more than the dim red glow of placenta being opened to a universe of reflection and refraction, shards of light bounding around in a seeming assault, a barrage of alien colour and intensity; and the sounds - never such cacophony, billowing around the small cartilaginous shells that heretofore have heard no more than the dull distant thud of their mother's heart, now subjected to screeching frequencies unimaginable...
I have to think of my experience as a birth for it to make sense. Something that will soften to some level of comprehension, or at the very least diminished violence, in subsequent trips, like the newborn slowly adapting to a novel, strange reality...
And the death of my old self, the precious illusion (if it indeed be one) of my old mind, the shedding, the passing on, the evolving... For every birth requires a death, and every demise, a blossom.
I hope that strikes a cord with someone.
Anyone ever notice that maya, pronounced in reverse, is a phonetic analogue of I am?
JBArk
