Hi Ska! I like that last line you wrote about how understanding life's purpose is an experience. I think I just had one of those, today while smoking changa (3 hours ago). I think normally I don't smoke enough. This time I smoked quite a bit, hard to say exact DMT content because there's the powder vs. the twigs etc.
Anyway I understand a lot more now (I think) than ever before about the nature of the universe. I think our souls are mostly well reflected by our brains in terms of our limitations. What I was told is that we come to this planet of our own choosing, either because the spirit world is too painful for us, or because we want to help others advance. And it is hard to advance while in the spirit world, because advancing has no meaning once time has no meaning. So we come to the 4th dimension (on Earth) in order to be able to advance in terms of our consciousness.
Before DMT, I used to think that destroying Earth would be a good idea because we've fucked it all up and most people are suffering, so on the whole, it would be best if it simply did not exist. But now I feel like, if we destroyed Earth, we'd still want to come back to the 4th dimension, perhaps on another planet that we'd have to get used to/re-evolve on, or even wait until a new suitable planet was formed, perhaps billions of years from now.... though to us in the spirit world (hyperspace) perhaps these billions of years would not even be perceived....
I understand now why Karma is not some kind of reward/punishment system as I thought before when I poo-pooed it... it is simply the natural way of things. If you hurt others, well, you may not feel any pain from that now, and maybe never directly, but at some point you will be advancing to a higher level of consciousness, and when you do, you will be sorry for what you have done, and you will want to atone for it. Of course, this does not explain what exactly is hurting other people. I mean, if I had to kill one person to save ten, I don't know if that would be bad or good karma, though my logic says it would be good in most cases.
I have a more nuanced understanding of the value of suicide now. I think suicide has benefits and drawbacks. The benefit being you get to start life again without having all of the memories of trauma from your current life, even though you may still have some bit of their imprint on your soul. The drawback is that you have to waste a lot of time just to get to the age where you can begin to think about philosophy, and how to make your life meaningful, etc, and plus there's no reason to think that your next life will surely be any better than this one. So in most cases it seems wise to try to figure out this one, but I won't say in all cases...
Anyway I had a lot more epiphanies, and perhaps it is all just fantasy and hogwash, but I'm beginning to think it's not...