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Should we always surrender?

Fantastic question. I struggle with surrender, something inside me screams Never Submit!

Probably why many of my DMT experiences have been challenging. I have always thrived when on the edge of a precipice. Comfort in excess makes me depressed
 
I still like the question. What if refusing to surrender can train you to dominate the experience from a different angle?

There are not many times in life where surrender is the best option. Instead of being subjugated by an experience perhaps there is a way to master it as well
 
I recently summarized some thoughts on this sort of thing in this thread

Basically I think relaxing/letting go is always going to be a part of the formula, but is still best coupled with techniques that bring coherence/the ability to navigate the experience.
 
No. We should not always surrender. It depends on what we are surrendering to. If you are surrendering into love and accept what is, that is a good thing. If there is something that feels like fighting for, then fight for it. Fight for love. I do not feel that everything in hyperspace has your best interests in mind. If you feel like you should fight, do. This could lead towards greater power or a needed humbling. Either way the feeling is there and I would say go with it. How much choice do you really have in these psychedelic situations? A good intent to battle anything negative and surrender into the higher self, the higher vibrations of love is a good course I feel.

I have fought it and won and I have fight and was extremely humbled. In any case I think that it was what I needed to do. Learning how and when to surrender is a highly personal. Some of us have a lot of fight in us and we bring that energy with us into the experience. I work with what I have and some of what I have is fight. I don't like to be bullied around and will stick up for myself. Will I be humbled? Is this the best choice? I don't know.. I just know that sometimes I feel empowered when I choose a justifiable fight.

In most cases this does not even present. Most of the time surrender is pretty easy with no fight. Those experiences wash over you and it feels as if there was never a choice but to surrender. I am not sure how much choice I truly have with DMT when I am in the throws of an intense trip, If I fought during an experience I feel like I was supposed to fight. There is a purpose or reason behind it just as much as surrender. All the emotions can come up during an experience. I say work with them, allow them to wash over you, feel it and accept what comes. Sometimes anger and sadness put up a fight, they won't go without one. Let it do it's thing and learn what it needs to. I find control of a DMT trip is largely an illusion.

Make of it what you will after the experience when you are integrating. I think you can look at your motivations for fighting or surrender afterward and glean a good amount of information about yourself from that. Did you need to be humbled? Do you need to stick up for yourself and develops confidence? Did you need to learn how to surrender? Maybe you have to experience a little of all of these thing enable to fully understand what surrender means to you. How do you define surrender? Letting go can be letting it all go. Somethings you cannot let go of until you realize your holding it to begin with.

My mind keeps wandering to Dylan Thomas and his poem 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
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Good question.

I think its definitely a bit of both of not being able to let go or surrendering to the experience in its entirety. They are both subjectively different types of experiences that we can only go through ourselves and compare which experience brings us more or less insight. I'd favor the ladder. Being stuck in limbo on DMT isn't exactly 'fun' but I will admit tends to drive a lot of motivation towards the next opportunity to load up your vessel.

Personally, I find breaking through as a far more slippery experience and is easier to accept as you slip into it and mentally navigate the effects from there. This usually only comes on when my life has improved or changed in one or more ways through my own efforts. However, breaking through can come at the cost of potentially transient experiences, although this isn't always as consistent once you've trained yourself enough times in that referred-to state of mind. At that point it feels much more natural to approach the experience rather than having to force yourself into it. Priming your upcoming experiences can help develop methods for entering the DMT state.

Comparatively, not letting go is sometimes all you can do. Not being able to let go into the experience usually means that I have unmet needs which must be taken care of before pushing any further.

Ultimately, it is up to you. Do you want to stand on the sidelines watching it all dance around, or do you want to be in the driver's seat with the pedal at your control? Hahahaha! That's usually when the DMT rips you out of the operating vehicle and takes you somewhere you never even thought was possible. That's when you know you're doing something right - when the DMT takes control and invites you to join on in.
 
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I think we should also distinguish between surrender in the diminishing sense and surrender in the sense of a certain utility of acceptance.

While we don't want to surrender to an external force attempting to dominate us, we can surrender to the fact that it is happening, for doing anything else prevents one from responding accordingly in their best interest.

In the case of psychedelics, surrendering almost always grants more control within the confines of the threshold of that which we can have in an experience. We are surrendering a certain amount of agency by putting a psychedelic into our bodies to subsequently produce effects felt and had in the mind. There's a certain amount of control we surrender to these psychedelic compounds. There's no fighting that really. What comes with it, we must also surrender to.

One love
 
I think the vast majority of the time fighting is futile but at the same time, as has been said above, so is fighting the fact you're fighting.

Ive found it's quite interesting in moments like these, to watch different aspects of myself and their various reactions to happenings in the space. When it gets tough and a part of me is resisting like someone trying to stop the weight of the ocean from entering a submarine. Then freaking out when it starts imploding. It's no fun when one identifies with this part, one could even say it's traumatizing.

Then there is another part that laughs at the hilarity of it all, super amused by the feeble mammal writhing around trying to assert it's power against something so vastly greater than it. Though that part then starts getting carried away in it and totally absorbed in the hilarity that it turns the volume up on the experience and the experience can go a bit sideways there too, at least for our egos.

Over time it has become easier to perceive within the experience a part which is neutral, witnessing, doesn't react, doesn't judge, it just witnesses. It has a strange unwavering peacefulness to it. Usually this is the aspect of self I think is most useful to come into when things get tough but easier said than done sometimes.

I have also had an experience, when purging out long standing depression and sadness where resisting the world of heaviness descending upon my body, fighting the lethargy, taking a big breath in, singing and dancing was actually exactly what was needed at the time. The act of defying the depressed part of myself urging me to lay down and cop the experience of despair and heaviness of the world and my tiny fragmented part of it on the chin, that I'm not actually sure was really part of me to begin with, and instead staking a claim to life and my right to be here in existence was incredibly powerful and life affirming, one of the most healing perhaps. It definitely felt like a fight within the experience.
 
It's neat to see other people using the same words of surrender and letting go that I've described it by too.

I do think you can't fake it tho. Like, it's pretty normal to feel pre-launch anxiety. Sometimes the intention to surrender could be an attempt to avoid something unpleasant? Kind of like when someone submits to a punishment, and tenses up n closes their eyes to avoid the full force of the lesson.

Some of my most disappointing trips were simply duds, and I wonder if it was because I was too expecting. I think two things were maybe happening - a false surrender amid emotional lowness, and putting it all on the DMT to deliver a spectacle, like it's my personal jester.

I think there needs to be surrender, but it has to be genuine and you have to actively participate (I'm not exactly sure how). But I think doing it while in a creative mood vs a low mood could influence the amount of energy I'm subconsciously exchanging. I feel like I was tripping in black and white for a while before noticing some subtle ways I might be influencing the effects.
 
I wouldn't recommend surrender. But it's part of the drug, for some people, like me. Luckily other drugs seem to be able to blunt or get rid of it. and I have never gained anything from surrendering to it except feeling bad. No information, nothing useful coming back, no fun while I'm there. Deliberately refusing to surrender to the nonsense helps me get what I want from it a lot. Especially dealing with some of the annoying entities.

If you want it to take you for a ride, pushing you around where it wants you to go or feel what it wants you to feel. Do that.
If you want something else, don't let it.

Be wary of purple things.

Edited for intensity.
 
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Hell no dude. But it's part of the drug, for some people, like me. Luckily other drugs seem to be able to blunt or get rid of it. and I have never gained anything from surrendering to it except feeling like shit. No information, nothing useful coming back, no fun while I'm there. Deliberately refusing to surrender to the nonsense helps me get what I want from it a lot. Especially dealing with some of the annoying entities.

If you want it to take you for a ride, pushing you around where it wants you to go or feel what it wants you to feel. Do that.
If you want something else, don't let it.

I highly suggest rejecting or kicking anything entirely or mostly purple, right in the ass.
Hi there, and welcome to the Nexus, @s2cndchance based on your post I think that you need to read the attitude page, https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Attitude_Page#Respectful_communication

Other than that great to have you🥰
 
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