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Northerner
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Psychedelic media and literature is boring. 7
#27105851 - 12/24/20 01:44 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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It all started with McKenna and Leary, both of whom I cannot tolerate. Nick Sand has got in and written his opinions on the subject and now there's 101 other authors who have penned "How to have mystical experiences, what it means and why you should". Booorring. Like everyone should circle round and watch and cheer whilst these people mentally masturbate. Which is quite ironic because many do and then go on to discuss and debate these people's opinions on the unknowable.
It's not from a cynical point of view I'm coming here, but from a realistic one. If one wants to understand the psychedelic experience they should really just get tripping then think about it. There's no study required. All these people's words are just voices messing with your exploration of the realms, not guiding spirits.
I know I'm unlikely to get any cheers here, pop culture loves this sort of bullshit. But I just call it like I see it.
Art on the other hand can convey a lot. It's not all I, I, me me, you, you, you, you, but is an actual expression or attempt to capture these ineffable experiences in a way that connects with different people on their level. It either resonates or it doesn't, and the reasons for the resonation are completely personal. The viewer is not being herded like cattle into a particular belief system, just shown what someone else saw or felt. So much purer, so much closer to the psychedelic experience itself.
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The nearest we ever come to knowing truth is when we are witness to paradox.
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PrimalSoup
hyperspatial illuminations



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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner] 2
#27106041 - 12/24/20 03:14 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Yeah. Sometimes you're a human experiencing the universe, and sometimes you're the universe experiencing a human. No points for which one psychedelics show you. 
But I suspect they all suffer from an unfortunate tendency to try to express some special sort of knowledge they think they've acquired, for whatever reason - even when the expression has basically nothing in common with the thing itself.
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if you stand too close to the machine it'll start to eat youPrimal's simple tested teks and projects: Wheat Prep 2.0 Acidic Tea Tek Potency Project!
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Green_Hands
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: PrimalSoup] 1
#27106107 - 12/24/20 03:54 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I completely agree and more.
If anything I'm worse than you. My opinion is that they did more harm than good to a bunch of impressionable kids who took it in a worst possible way.
And to let other people mindsets influence experience instead to make your own opinion about your own mind is... Silly?
But hey. To each its own and no one should really care.
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Looping our reflections, our obsessions draw us in Fix and fixation, no sentience beyond
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Big_Dub
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Green_Hands]
#27106119 - 12/24/20 04:02 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Lol McKenna was always telling people to eat mushrooms. I like listening to McKenna bc he was an erudite, but ofc he got a bunch of stuff wrong
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drr

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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Big_Dub]
#27106194 - 12/24/20 04:49 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I never could get into reading, or even worse listening to Terrence McKenna talk in his creepy voice about the elves or whatever. It seemed like on the internet people thought that was really cool around the time I started eating mushrooms.
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Loaded Shaman
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner] 1
#27106671 - 12/24/20 10:59 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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You're expecting people that were natural orators to not talk in depth about a topic, which is already going to be a bad time.
Every single thing those authors wrote lead me to more research that eventually took me away from those authors, on my own path, and in a completely orthogonal direction to finding myself, which almost bears no resemblance to the stepping stones that got me started.
However:
I find it weird that people that are open to psychedelics and the messages they give, would still be able, or want to, get hung up on/in a forest for the trees issue like this. It's like the lower mind can't resist drama, no matter how much the higher mind claims to have seen.
Clearly different strokes for different folks .
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Northerner
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Loaded Shaman]
#27106773 - 12/25/20 12:46 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm glad that my estimation that some people do have differing opinions on this topic is correct. I actually expected a lot more disagreement than agreement in this venue.
It's funny that the crossroads meets not only on the topic itself but on the perception of people who do and don't like it. Almost political or religious in nature. Most curious.
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The nearest we ever come to knowing truth is when we are witness to paradox.
Edited by Northerner (12/25/20 02:08 AM)
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Loaded Shaman
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner]
#27106828 - 12/25/20 02:40 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Correct. It's interpersonal psychology to the highest possible degree. Any perceived disagreeance on my end is always from a position of genuine light hearted inquiry and Socratic method-esque discussion. Always from the heart and head combined, never too much of either on its own.
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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Green_Hands
The Great Devourer



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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner]
#27106841 - 12/25/20 02:56 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Northerner said: or religious in nature. Most curious.
Because it is. Im sure most of us here have strong opinions on topic. Name of the forum is dead giveaway.
And deeper we go on about things we dont agree more tense it becomes.
Not just this, all topics which fall into subjective category are bound to make... tensions. What's good is that if we can agree not to agree there can be cooperation, collaboration and progress.
Even my wife fundamentally see the world in different light than I and that's ok. And she have similar amount of psychedelic experiences as I do. So that have nothing to do with it.
It almost broke us, sure, because with time divide grew ever wider. Until the point of breaking. There is also question how each one of us got into the topic of psychedelics. Trough pop culture? Trough own cultural background? Personal research? Religion? Anthropology?
Cause we are collective. We are scattered all over world and we all come from different cultures.
And last we came to personal traits. I have deeply rooted issues with all kind of authorities. Which costed me so far more than I got from it but it seems to be integral part of who I am.
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Looping our reflections, our obsessions draw us in Fix and fixation, no sentience beyond
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epilectric
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Green_Hands] 1
#27106901 - 12/25/20 04:50 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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i've felt this way for a long time: these are just people ranting away. i used to listen to a lot of McKenna. he is a good rhetorician but certainly not any more of a guiding spirit than anyone else could be. ge still had some cool ideas, just like anyone else can entertain nice ideas but not everyone is a good speaker and has days and weeks of his speech uploaded on youtube...
music and art for me, too, are potentially a lot more inspiring than speech. but still, McKenna encouraged people to gather their own experiences instead of listening to some new age guru like him... and he always pointed to the limitedness of language, all of us three agree here.
Edited by epilectric (12/25/20 04:55 AM)
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CrazyDragon
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: epilectric] 3
#27106966 - 12/25/20 06:55 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm going to respectfully disagree here on a few of your critiques.
The idea of, "just take it" and you'll see for yourself in theory is great, but the problem is most people will not. And many people who do take much smaller doses than they could that would allow for a true full blown experience.
In a Shroomery forum, a lot of these concepts are 'duh' but for the general public, it's seen as another drug.
I also feel like it really is an unexplored world where we should share our stories once we come back. There's plenty to learn and appreciate.
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LeafRaker
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: CrazyDragon] 2
#27106977 - 12/25/20 07:09 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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As an older person, my impressions are not just colored by the fact that so much of this literature and media are underwhelming, but that it actually seems to have been harmful to the cause of psychedelic usage. Leary especially, but other canonical authors as well, did a lot of self-promotion and self-congratulation that played into the demonization and prohibition of psychedelics. If your experiences with psychedelics were exclusively in the past ten years, you might be surprised at how hostile societies (the english-speaking ones, at least) were to psychedelics for more than half-a-century.
I think there's also something about the experience itself not yielding good writing. I think I'd say something similar is at work with writing about sex. Almost the entirety of the literature on the topic would be charitably described as an embarrassing simulacrum.
-------------------- Knowledge is finite, ignorance is infinite.
Edited by LeafRaker (12/26/20 12:04 PM)
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epilectric
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: CrazyDragon]
#27106979 - 12/25/20 07:10 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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sure, i guess the OP was mainly referring to idolizing and gurufying these people rather than just taking up their ideas in an emancipated manner
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jdawg333
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: epilectric]
#27107090 - 12/25/20 08:46 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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You're right, psychedelic literature is really boring. Those figureheads are often very annoying to me because the lesson I learn from actually taking decent doses is that classification and knowledge, while sometimes useful, can also sort of torture you if you get hung up on it especially while tripping. McKenna also dilutes the beauty/power of the psychedelic experience when he tries to 'bring back' everything from his trip for a neat story- a cool exercise but I think it gives people the wrong idea of what tripping is about.
I would like trip guides/psychedelic dudes that provide interesting exercises, paradoxes, optical illusions, and music that take you deeper into the trip, rather than the idea of a more guided mystical experience a la Leary. It's always been more of a playground for me at it's best, when people get too stuffy or academic it kind of just grates on me nowadays. I do like people that explain the psychedelic experience as clearly and literally as possible, you can usually tell if somebody is BSing or is in on certain phenomenon. RGV is a champ
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Northerner
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: jdawg333]
#27107113 - 12/25/20 09:11 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Yeah man, people chasing ego death, level 5 trips and breakthroughs are the result of this sort of media.
I like to read other people's trip reports if they are detailed and the person isn't trying to get too wordsmith with it. These genuine reveals about what people are actually experiencing are specific and interesting. There isn't any broad claim of anything. Just real people in real life sharing real stories.
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The nearest we ever come to knowing truth is when we are witness to paradox.
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CrazyDragon
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner]
#27107149 - 12/25/20 09:44 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm a little surprised to see how many people share these thoughts.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that tripping is so intensely personal that we can't share our stories, and there isn't benefits from doing so.
Although I have had trips where I didn't necessarily take anything away from it, aside from having the experience, there were other ones that were very helpful specific to problems I had and wanted to address. I've had fruitful plans come out of experiences that were almost like a map of what to do next.
If you believe an experience can be so fundamentally transforming (maybe you don't) and objectively helpful (under the right circumstances), then I applaud those who are brave enough to try and explain the craziness of what they saw and what happened after they integrated what they learned.
I emphasize, for many who have been tripping for years, there's a lot of 'duhs' when people try and explain the experience. But for most of the world, it's stigmatized. There's MANY people, industries, groups, etc that could benefit from the experiences, but haven't been considered it.
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Northerner
splelling chceker


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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: CrazyDragon]
#27107537 - 12/25/20 02:58 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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No one said what you are disagreeing with dude.
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The nearest we ever come to knowing truth is when we are witness to paradox.
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Rise against
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Northerner]
#27107620 - 12/25/20 04:26 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I've listened to some of Terrance McKenna's speeches for entertainment value mostly. I can't say I relate much to his experiences. I'm not sure I would have ever taken high dosages if I hadn't come across mckenna, and for that I am grateful.
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wolf8312
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: Rise against]
#27108151 - 12/26/20 01:36 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Have always found Psychedelic literature boring (I liked how to change your mind when it got going though) and never enjoyed Leary and certainly not McKenna whose descriptions I do not relate to in any way. He might as well be describing a fictional TV program for all the relevance it has to my own life or experiences with mushrooms or DMT. I also grew out of reading trip reports for the same reason except in cases where the focus is on the consequences of the experience (awful trips) as opposed to descriptions of the visions themselves.
As the author is consciously or unconsciously portraying himself as the expert on the subject they will often avoid all mention of the ‘meat hook realities’ (as Hunter S Thomson put it) in case it might reflect badly upon their persona as the psychonautical warrior who flies fearlessly through hyperspace on a nightly basis!
When Denis McKenna revealed the fear and difficulties his brother had actually experienced with psychedelics I felt even more disillusioned with Terrance to be honest and his childish fanboy supporters (who backlashed) who refused to accept any diminishment of the pointlessly misleading and often even harmful (5 grams) legend.
The fact that they like Terrance himself couldn’t realize how such stories of human vulnerability would have enhanced and not diminished his reputation as an experienced psychonaught is in my opinion typical of the kind of mentality (especially in the wider community) which led Terrance to repress this information in the first place. Instead though he only really presented to the world one side of himself and the experience. He went through all those awful experiences but refused to be honest about the very thing that would have made his writing and the topic itself more interesting.
I actually bought Denis’ book hoping to read about the real story because I thought now that would be genuinely interesting. Not only his hellish experiences with the psychedelics themselves that I can only too well relate to, but also how he had (paraphrasing his brothers words) apparently felt compelled to go on projecting the image that his followers expected from him.
Unfortunately though the book focused on none of that and was just as boring in my opinion as almost every other book that was ever written on the topic.
-------------------- "I'm every nightmare you ever had. I am your worst dreams come true. I am everything you ever were afraid of." Pennywise the dancing clown
Edited by wolf8312 (12/26/20 04:13 AM)
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Loaded Shaman
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Re: Psychedelic media and literature is boring. [Re: CrazyDragon]
#27108155 - 12/26/20 01:41 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
CrazyDragon said: I'm going to respectfully disagree here on a few of your critiques.
The idea of, "just take it" and you'll see for yourself in theory is great, but the problem is most people will not. And many people who do take much smaller doses than they could that would allow for a true full blown experience.
In a Shroomery forum, a lot of these concepts are 'duh' but for the general public, it's seen as another drug.
I also feel like it really is an unexplored world where we should share our stories once we come back. There's plenty to learn and appreciate.
Very well said and agreed.
I say exactly what you said all the time, especially in mushroom ID threads by complete neophytes; the community almost refuses to acknowledge a lot of what they assume is "common sense", in fact ISN'T, lol.
A lot of users have what I call "experience bias", where they forget all this shit is brand new to like, 99.98% of society.
McKenna eventually lead me to where I am and I'm eternally grateful for that!
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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