Quote:

Almost as soon as I realized I had replaced myself, my mind was flooded with the answers to every question I'd ever asked until it became too much and I fell to the ground weeping into my hands. Repeating "How could I be so indifferent towards my creation?" 

---

ActualityOfBeing said:

Understand, and in doing so be free from, the depression. The “messiah” concept, in the sense of “other”, stems from avoidance of emotions, which is causing the depression. Or put another way, depression is the result of avoidance of one’s own sensations, via creating a “separate self” in the mind.

Your ‘regular’ experience is conceptual, so your trips are conceptual. The mind is ultimately dictating, and also not. By embracing your emotions, you will experience (in your trips) the other-than-conceptual aspects. You will absolutely love it.

---

not the OP, but this struck a cord with me. you might be on to something here - all my life i've felt like i was somehow stuck in the wrong body, that the appearance was all wrong (like having black hair when i felt it should be blond, brown eyes instead of green, wrong facial features, etc) and it's always made me feel uncomfortable, like i'm possessing a body other than my own. its like there's "my body" and "me", a sort of mental image or self that's entirely different, and i always feel like one day i'll find "my real body" and finally feel comfortable in my skin.

but that concept has always been "my real body", as if it were something that existed and is separate from my current one. after seeing your post, i feel like this is probably not the way i should be viewing it - instead, maybe i should view this body as the "building blocks are mine, but the builder was drunk when he built it." that doesn't really change the fact that it's not built properly nor does it really change how i feel about that wrongness, but it does make it so that it's :my: wrongly built building, not someone elses.

maybe it would help me feel more motivated to take better care of myself, if nothing else. maybe long enough to learn some shapeshifting magic, or at least last long enough for gene therapy for adults to be a thing.

its also interesting because i, too, don't get much in the way of visuals, and even huge doses don't really seem to hit me nearly the same way most people describe their own trips.

DivineHippy said:

So I've not tripped a lot, but every single time I do I come in contact with an entity within me that terrifies me. That entity is a messiah complex 'ancient self' that emerges. It terrifies me because I know it's bat shit crazy when I feel overwhelmed by said sensation. I hate it because it's not like I don't agree with the well-meaning sentiment of the energy that permeates me, but it makes me paranoid of tripping because I'm afraid one of these time's I'm going to become convinced I really am the messiah and then it's off to the loony bin.

Let me explain a little bit further how this complex developed. My first trip was heavy, around ~800 micros heavy. To jump straight to the main event, at one point in my trip, my mind started to wonder and I suddenly realized I was no longer in my body. But more importantly I wasn't at the festival I had consumed LSD at. Instead I was at a gated entry way to a medieval castle guarded by entities of pure light. They had forms, and features, not too dissimilar from humans, but were very evidently not. Their clothing was similar to silk and seemed to move as if we were standing in a windstorm. But the winds came from the entities guarding the entrance. "Where am I?" I asked, I felt their smile, and their words echoed in my mind, "welcome home." As they both stepped aside, revealing an opaque crystal door that seemed to have a pale blue glow. As I made to move towards the door I seemed to suddenly be sucked into the Cathedral where I suddenly found myself standing in a throne room. There before me was an old man with a vaguely familiar face.

I couldn't put my finger on why I recognized him, I'd never seen him before, but I knew him some how. Almost as if inspired by the figure it dawned on me. I was looking at myself and just as suddenly, I was upon the throne. Almost as soon as I realized I had replaced myself, my mind was flooded with the answers to every question I'd ever asked until it became too much and I fell to the ground weeping into my hands. Repeating "How could I be so indifferent towards my creation?" Until my brother started shaking my shoulder saying "yo! hey man! Are you okay? Talk to me! What's going on?" And just like that I was back in the camp at the music festival, curled up in the fetal position in the front seat of my car.

I haven't been able to fight the feeling since that I'm supposed to "save creation" but how the hell do you even do that? lol I mean seriously, these thoughts are fucking bonkers, I'm a scientist by trade, as I've always been fascinated with the idea of understanding the universe. So I have a pretty strong grasp on the whole cycle of life, survival of the good enough, etc. I'm a very pragmatic individual, spiritually speaking. So this experience (and the one's I've had like it almost every single time I've tripped) keep taking me to that point. The only reason I continue to use LSD is because psychedelics are the only thing I've found to reliably give me long term relief from my depression.

Has anyone else struggled with a messiah/god complex creeping into their minds as a result of doing psychedelics? As in, the possibility literally PLAGUES you emotionally, but you rationalize it away as the delusion it is. I've always heard people say that psychedelics are supposed to cause ego death, but I can't imagine anything more egotistical than the suggestion that you are the messiah.. It's such a fucking weird scenario, right? Like I don't wanna be a messiah, I don't want to feel responsible for everyone's pain; hell as my depression suggests, most of the time I don't even want to be alive. But here I am, a walking contradiction. Someone who the universe (or at least my subconscious) is trying to convince to be a figure I couldn't even stomach the idea of being.

Like seriously, even if I was the messiah, no one would believe that in the 21st century. For starters, I'm a no-body. I grew up in despot poverty, I've been an economic failure for over a decade and was a burden upon my family. I've never brought an animal back to life, I can't walk on water, I can't seemingly do anything a normal person can't, other than develop a messiah complex without actually believing I'm the messiah. Anyways I hope I'm not alone in holding this paradoxical view as a result of psychedelics..  it's just not something I've heard of people typically report... usually people meet or are influenced by divine energy/knowledge, but I've not met someone who's become God, at least not without them obviously being off the deep end, completely convinced they're actually God. Maybe people who have have had this experience, but rejected it just don't like being open in person about such, so let's see how common this experience is on an anonymous message board. lol

---