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Why DMT Scares Me
- Thread starter Voidmatrix
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My wife didn't have the decade of McKenna influence on her thinking that I have, and once put it very succinctly after I felt our more recent sessions were partly contradicting my own (tentative) models of these states at the time.
To paraphrase her: If psychedelics opened our senses to some kind of non-local quantum dimension of entities/beings/aliens etc. (or whatever flavor of that model), don't you think we'd first experience - and probably need to learn to navigate - the quantum levels and dynamics of our own brain, perception, and immediate environment, before going even deeper and into another parallel dimension altogether? That really made me think.
I don't want to debate of course, since who knows at the end of the day, but I felt it's worth mentioning because I have never seen that question be raised before. My view of it isn't solid and varies, but I don't think the dichotomy between inside and outside (or external beings vs. just being in the mind or some mix of that) are the only two possibilities (not saying you think that), but unfortunately they're just about the only two that get considered.
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Is your wife a member? I want to talk to her now. Jk lmao.
Anyway, I kind of agree with this. Part of my approach is to better understand myself to better understand the space and better hold a sustain presence in the space instead of grasping and white-knuckling. So, I am still at a granular level, though am deepening. It's time.
I've noticed this too and think it might be because the other possibilities are harder to put in words that can be understood through the same magnitude of consensus as the inner vs outer relation seems to. Since I write and share to connect, I have to pick and choose how I present ideas so as to be understood to some degree. The possibilities seem a bit limitless, and while I consciously hold that, it's hard for my system to.
One love
A Paddle?
Do i need to start self flagellation? Maybe it will quiet my mind but the slapping sounds may disturb the neighbors !!
My safe word is Hostilis!
Do i need to start self flagellation? Maybe it will quiet my mind but the slapping sounds may disturb the neighbors !!
My safe word is Hostilis!
My visions in the space have all but disappeared, and I worried about that for years. Reflecting back, some force made it so that I pay closer attention to my own inner space before venturing farther. And for better or worse, that's my focus. Now I don't really know where inner ends and outer begins. Maybe there is no real border apart from an imaginary one that we create. So entities could be both out there and inside. It all plays out in our minds, and our conception of what the mind is is constantly evolving.
I feel that a focus on outer visions is quite misleading. It just captures our attention similar to how vision in general captures us. So I try to see where the whole scene is happening and who is seeing it. If anything, it's liberating and creates a space where thoughts are just objects. Most likely, I need to get into meditation for real. It's all leading in that direction. Medicine sessions are like a hack that provides the space and contrast to sense it all better. Yet, that capacity is a part of us. I feel training attention is where it's all at. It's like creating a skill that will allow you to use your mind as a laboratory. You need the right conditions for a proper penetration of your psyche. So if one wants to go beyond psychotherapy, some inner capacity should be developed. That's my conclusion after years of oral brews.
For instance, when I started to sing kirtan (basically mantra repetition), my whole psychology changed. Sure, most likely all the years when I just drank my brews were kind of maturing me, but still. When you apply a tool that works for you, it all speeds up considerably. So finding what fits you, being curious, and being open will lead far. For me, psychedelics are like a preliminary practice on the spiritual path. I don't see them leading you all the way, but they are a tool that can help create a foundation. Without psychedelics, it would take me a lifetime to just clear my family trauma. Now, I'm interested in what lies beyond my personality and conditioning. It's as if my character just matures by itself; it's a natural process. The aim has shifted towards something I don't know. I can't even really say my direction apart from general pointers like space, love, and god. I have no idea what these words mean.
So yeah, talk with yourself, but see who's talking. Where is this talking taking place, and so on? Maybe it'll spark a curiosity in you, too. Entities are fascinating, but what are they apart from your mind? Like they say in wisdom traditions, the mind and what it experiences are not separate. It's a pure mystery, and the main thing keeping me alive. No matter the hardships in life, it's all just too marvelous to lose. We'll all get there, whatever that means, no matter what we want. Still, going deeper consciously is much healthier. Even if you know nothing, it gives authority. Maybe not knowing is the ultimate knowing. That's one of the reasons my psyche relaxed a bit. Northape is one more story in the mind, nothing more.
I'm going to get to what you guys are talking about in a bit. I wanna focus a lil on what's being cleaved and parsed right now. What the work is showing in this long moment.
Let's see, how can I elaborate on this. DMT is so incredibly powerful and evocative to the extent it seems too good to be true. When something is too good to be true, there can be a sense of anticipation of the "other shoe dropping." This connects to "punishment" because of childhood experience. If it's a certain magnitude of good, my alarms go off.
Underneath these feelings is a sense of unworthiness that keeps the window of tolerance for good narrow.
I am conflating the intensity before an experience with the same feelings of inclement doom in my childhood. It's really interesting at this level.
Relative to the inner and outer worlds discussion, I kinda see like a line on paper. If we were to take a microscope and try to find the defining line between the drawn line and the paper, we would never find it. Instead, what we'd get is a gradient where the white of the paper slowly cascades into the color of the line and visa versa. That is, there is no clean cut delineation at a certain scale anymore. This analogy can be used to understand the spectrum of inner vs outer.
One love
Let's see, how can I elaborate on this. DMT is so incredibly powerful and evocative to the extent it seems too good to be true. When something is too good to be true, there can be a sense of anticipation of the "other shoe dropping." This connects to "punishment" because of childhood experience. If it's a certain magnitude of good, my alarms go off.
Underneath these feelings is a sense of unworthiness that keeps the window of tolerance for good narrow.
I am conflating the intensity before an experience with the same feelings of inclement doom in my childhood. It's really interesting at this level.
Relative to the inner and outer worlds discussion, I kinda see like a line on paper. If we were to take a microscope and try to find the defining line between the drawn line and the paper, we would never find it. Instead, what we'd get is a gradient where the white of the paper slowly cascades into the color of the line and visa versa. That is, there is no clean cut delineation at a certain scale anymore. This analogy can be used to understand the spectrum of inner vs outer.
One love
Why would we experience anything in our dimension first? Yes, it's a possibility, but I don't see how it's more compelling than one being directly shot into an altogether different space. Maybe those quantum phenomena that seem fundamental to our reality are just completely meaningless. I'm not saying anything is or is not, but I always fail to understand why one would find certain hypotheses more compelling than others once other dimensions etc. have been accepted.
I personally maintain agnosticism in the literal sense. I sometimes feel more attracted to a given perspective and sometimes to another, and I let it be so, without believing in it. It can be useful to look at the same for one perspective or another depending on what one is dealing with.
But how could I pretend to actually know? I have absolutely nothing to base my beliefs on. For any possible belief, the exact opposite is equally easy to argue, at least as long as no axiom has been accepted yet.
I can understand faith, as faith is an explicitly unjustified belief, and that's the point of it. But in these matters I can't understand supposedly justified belief.
I personally maintain agnosticism in the literal sense. I sometimes feel more attracted to a given perspective and sometimes to another, and I let it be so, without believing in it. It can be useful to look at the same for one perspective or another depending on what one is dealing with.
But how could I pretend to actually know? I have absolutely nothing to base my beliefs on. For any possible belief, the exact opposite is equally easy to argue, at least as long as no axiom has been accepted yet.
I can understand faith, as faith is an explicitly unjustified belief, and that's the point of it. But in these matters I can't understand supposedly justified belief.
By the way, I'm not criticizing anyone, this is just a friendly expression of what I think. I honestly don't understand how one could fully believe anything over anything else when it comes to these topics, other than faith.
This goes back to this statement for me:
I really don't land on anything with respect to an interpretive lens. It only seems as such in any given context because I have to distill ideas into words. But that's hard for a system to hold. But I'm overall with you. I don't know how anyone lands on a given perspective and sticks with it outside the parameter of mind that lends itself to thag need, ie, needing to pick a camp.
One love
I change like a leaf in the wind. Even in one day, my perspective shifts a lot. When I read what I write here, I'm just as surprised as any of you.
Yes, there is some underlying worldview, but if anything, I only have faith in it. Time and time again, life shows me that I know nothing. It's hard to argue with life
I think people are just spitballing ideas, not overly solidified beliefs. Just possibilities
I may be misunderstanding people but, to clarify if necessary, my wife was not saying she thinks it's some gradient that eventually leads to entities/other dimensions, or that it would have to be a quantum gradient specifically. I think the point was: why should we assume that the DMT experience is a direct jump from ordinary reality into some radically other dimension when psychedelics already seem to profoundly expand the relationship between perception and the reality immediately available both around and within us.
In other words, we already know with a fair degree of certainty that they can loosen perceptual boundaries and bring normally filtered aspects of this dimension/reality/ourselves into greater awareness, even on comparatively low doses where sensory experience is incredibly enhanced, unconscious content emerges etc. So instead of interpreting this increasingly strange flood of information as evidence of an entirely separate dimension, we might be experiencing the vastly expanded territory of our own perceptual/cognitive/neural dynamics and environment, be it at the quantum level or otherwise. And if we were accessing some genuinely other dimension, it would still be reasonable to expect that whatever we encountered would be experienced through - and probably heavily colored by - the dynamics of our own perceptual and cognitive systems, which are themselves on a solid dose of DMT
I may be misunderstanding people but, to clarify if necessary, my wife was not saying she thinks it's some gradient that eventually leads to entities/other dimensions, or that it would have to be a quantum gradient specifically. I think the point was: why should we assume that the DMT experience is a direct jump from ordinary reality into some radically other dimension when psychedelics already seem to profoundly expand the relationship between perception and the reality immediately available both around and within us.
In other words, we already know with a fair degree of certainty that they can loosen perceptual boundaries and bring normally filtered aspects of this dimension/reality/ourselves into greater awareness, even on comparatively low doses where sensory experience is incredibly enhanced, unconscious content emerges etc. So instead of interpreting this increasingly strange flood of information as evidence of an entirely separate dimension, we might be experiencing the vastly expanded territory of our own perceptual/cognitive/neural dynamics and environment, be it at the quantum level or otherwise. And if we were accessing some genuinely other dimension, it would still be reasonable to expect that whatever we encountered would be experienced through - and probably heavily colored by - the dynamics of our own perceptual and cognitive systems, which are themselves on a solid dose of DMT
Interestingly, this could be the very recipe necessary to enter another dimension.
Again, just spitballing.
One love
Add enough sympathetic resonance and you just might find out!
