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Psychedelic ZenBuddhist Registered: 09/03/04 Posts: 1,855 Loc: Here & Now Last seen: 4 years, 1 month |
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I chose to ignore the trepidatious feelings I had leading up to this journey, which initially made me question whether to trip or not. These qualms were indicative of the rough edge I subconsciously realised the experience would have. Although of a dark tone, the trip was comedically black rather than despairing. Taken at the tail end of a period of slight depression it was exactly what I needed, creating a balance to my outlook.
Even more so than usual much of what had recently impacted on my life, especially annoyances at work, listening to the very tense early Talking Heads albums and watching the film "Brazil", amongst other things, fed into the details and tone of the trip. I had the sense throughout that the trip, despite not being an entirely easy ride, was just the right dose, with the right days of relaxation leading up to it. There had been no riding on Sunday due to the school being closed for unspecified reasons, although that caused me to worry about what those reasons might be. I actually skived off work to trip this day, with the next day off in lieu of working on the following Saturday used to relax and integrate the trip. I skived the Wednesday to be with Amy. After my second bout of meditation (at around 10.35ish), shortly before taking my dose, I nearly forgot to chant, "You will come back safe and sound" ten times. In response to this, almost as if to make amends and bolster my mindset, I also completed ten chants of "There is only love" and deeply resonating "OM"s. After taking exactly 4g at 11am in a tall tumbler of orange juice (I had had several cups of lemon and ginger tea during the morning) I continued watching the "Ross Noble: Sonic Waffle" DVD I had started earlier for about fifteen minutes whilst continuing to fill in the felt tip grid pattern I started the previous trip. "Bob Marley's Greatest Hits" saw me through the onset, a pleasant pressure building inside my head, at one point making it feel as if it was going to wrap around itself. The reggae kept me buoyant before the main themes of the trip transpired, which were quite a contrast to this easygoing vibe. The usual routine of pacing about, breathing deeply through the transition, watching the tie-dye swirl and ripples sweeping across the room occurred as the reggae induced relaxation and I kept my mind clear. Whilst going to the loo one final time (the lemon and ginger tea clearly aiding the flushing of my system), on the floor lines ran counter-directionally to the diagonal pattern of the floor tiles. Back in the living room, looking up from lying on the sofa, it felt and looked as though I were gently sinking downwards and the ceiling and surroundings expanding away from me. Bubbling energy swept through my system, cleansing me, shifting things around. In an incredibly pleasant closed eye reverie, with the usual colour bursts I clocked onto the idea of aliens operating on me, repairing and modifying me, which didn't worry me in the slightest as the intelligence I believe I encounter when tripping has always done right by me. After the first wave of the trip passed (the way the effects of the strain taken come in waves was very noticeable this time) a calm settled in, which felt and looked somewhat close to baseline and I had the compulsion to look at my reflection. I entered the bathroom and gazing at the mirror I saw myself as an Alex Grey portrait. A halo and edging of blue energy surrounded me, radiating outwards. The features of my face were bluing in places with a silvery veneer, flattening out to be baser characteristics evoking a fairytale/mythological character. Looking close up I could see veins, blood running through them, my skin aging and turning into wax. I was struck with the notion of myself and all living things as walking pieces of art, our primary act of creation should be the art of living creatively. Although I sensed and could see a lot of strength in myself, I couldn't quite fathom the emotion I was giving off, it seemed too passive to gauge but with a hint of sadness. Towards the end of the Bob Marley CD it started to jump so I switched to "OK Computer" (which was perhaps too much of a contrast) this brought about disturbing (although I calmly took them in my stride) closed eye visuals of bodies being crushed by machinery like lifts and in accidents, blood spurting and gushing graphically. I had to eventually turn off the album, which I usually love, as it was annoying me. It evoked a resonance of dreary, moody teenager hood, the lyrics, especially "Crushed like a bug in the ground" striking me as incredibly naff and immature. Riffling through the selection of music I had laid out I swiftly settled on the reliable Shpongle album "Tales of the Inexpressable". This kicked the trip into another gear; a new wave of awesome vibrations passing through everything, assuring me that I didn't need to take another dosage (not wise anyway considering some of the negativity that had already surfaced) and lifting the mood. Throughout these three albums I drifted through many CEV experiences, some are lost from my memory or were too abstract to describe and chronology is nearly impossible to pin down. I had the thought to let the visuals flow, accepting them as just a dreamlike state (the theme of distancing myself from things by treating them as pretend would occur several times). This goes hand in hand with the notion of a psychological state of "extreme hallucination anesthetic" I had, which lets one observe all the bizarreness of a trip with acceptance and without panicking. Out of moving vibrant, primary colour shapes emerged a sexy woman dancing in a short skirt, shaking her very visible arse she proceeded to, what I interpreted as, huff bits of reality up her muff. I could feel and see the mushroom entity opening up parts of my brain relating to different emotions, peeking in, and I would feel the emotions as each section was opened. This went through many permutations and some were abstract, indefinable, or perhaps one of them was in fact the sensation of not knowing quite how you feel! Perhaps connected to this I pictured an art piece of a brain cut up and each section placed with a label stating which memory or aspect of the person it is. I jokingly entertained the idea of doing this to my own brain! There was a clockwork device on a tabletop, Svankmajering (in reference to the stop-motion animation style of Czech director Jan Svankmejer) towards me. It had a nose like a hedgehog, and as it was creep(y)ing up on me I realised it represented me, perhaps relating to how insanely busy I have been at work so far this year and how it has made me feel like a machine. I perceived what I deemed an extremely naff CEV which looked like a bad 1980s video effect; in front of lava like background in segments which looked like pieces of a shattered mirror I saw images of a wedding with smiling idiots in very eighties style clothing and hairstyles. I deliberately broke away from this by opening my eyes. Through an infinite progression I saw myself operating my body as if a puppet, my hand (the hand of my mind) in my back, subsequently a hand in my back and on and on in a spiral to the core of my being, the true essence of who I am under all the layers. This I took to represent the detachment I/we all can feel and the discrepancy between our spiritual self and the awkward flesh body we try to use to convey who we are. Coming out of a wave of CEVs I opened my eyes, and to combat the bummer of a mood I found myself in I was "told" to look at the tree out of the living room window and be at one with it. As I lay on the sofa looking outside I felt a peaceful Zen mode in my mind. Staring out of the window, the light flared, curling patterns emerged at the edges of my vision, the opening looked like a heavenly portal. Somewhere along the line I switched the end of the sofa I was lying on and as I drifted through an abstract CEV vignette I didn't know which way round I was, or who I was, or where exactly I was. I knew it would come back to me so it was no bother and I quite liked being that lost in my mind. In a similar vein I was contemplating how I was seeing the back of my eyes as well as viewing a brain-like pattern in my minds eye (it felt to be very much seen by my third eye), the imaginary image as vivid as reality. I reached a peak, falling down a tunnel made of playing cards, with cuts-outs of people also drifting downwards. There was a whiff of a connotation that we were all falling to our deaths and I felt accepting and fatalistic about this (albeit in a pretend nihilistic way) this can be explained by how close I veered to ego death. The specific thought that it was all only a play came to mind, as I have said play-acting being a recurring theme throughout. The cards opened out to a space evoking the idea of a church and the white light shone in from the right, expanding but not quite reaching the splendor it has in the past. The white light emerged again behind the image of huge black drapes, beaming through the gaps. With a sense of anticipation of whether what was behind them was positive or negative I heard, in a monotone sarcasm (recalling the voice of the deadpan comedian Norman Lovett) "Oh no a giant preying mantis is about to eat me" which made me crack up with laughter, whilst at the same time feel concern about this representation of apathy within myself. The theme of sarcastic apathy emerged again when confronted by a chasm before me, demony tendrils reaching out from its centre, I thought "Oh, how inventive, a chasm, what a banal and obvious imagery". I went through permutations of identity questions; "Who am I?", "What am I doing?" etc, answering all with an apathetic, resigned "I don't care!" I considered very bleak ideas about my alienation from people in terms of tastes (not watching much television, no interest in sports) and attitudes (vegetarianism, teetotalism, no caffeine & no refined sugar), feeling a sense of loneliness and isolation. I thought about something Alan Ball said during a commentary for an episode of "Six Feet Under", about the Buddhist concept of Mara; your own specific, personal demon and how he had encountered his in an altered state of consciousness. This was something I had been thinking about a lot during the week before the trip. I understood apathy to be my own personal demon. An important part of this is that I am afraid to get passionate about things for fear of mania being followed by depression, that underneath it all things aren't worth getting enthusiastic about if I'm going hit a low and crash afterwards. Carried over from the previous week I felt bitterness about the soul destroying, monotonous work we'd recently had lumbered on us which seemed to have reached new heights of idiocy in a Kafkaesque situation of no matter how carefully the jobs were done there always seemed to be something deemed incorrect. I was very annoyed with my boss who always seems to tow the company line and never back up her team, and I felt insulted by her. I thought about how I sometimes wish I'd taken the Manager position but then realised ... I DON'T REALLY CARE - otherwise I wouldn't have taken the day off! I realised my current problem is not so much about work, but about boredom! Analysing myself through ideas I have gone over many times before I deemed it all to be boring Freudianism (perhaps rewatching "The Sopranos" again influenced this) and became critical of myself, deeming myself a whining, privileged, middle class fool and that my problems were so very, very obvious and boring. My "Tsking" and the facial expression I felt myself to have, at my apathy, reminded me of my dad. There was a sense of purging about all of this; I knew I was pushing myself to the limits of a negative perspective on myself, the worst aspects of how I could possibly be. The important point is that this was not a downer of a trip and all of these thoughts and ideas were to an extent "play acted" for me to observe this behavior in myself from a distance. I was ranting, grumping, and then breaking off to see how ridiculous all this was. It was very funny, but only so due to the cautionary truth to the humour. In response to these feelings of alienation and apathy I vowed to be more creative, to have some projects completed before the next trip. As the trip progressed I turned my attention to my surroundings, which went through several permutations. I saw everything with a misty soft focus, like the look you have through bleary eyes. I blinked and shook my head, initially thinking that I had watery eyes, but it was as if the room was filled with fog, or the incense was producing far more smoke than was actually possible. For a while all details, especially the framed pictures, had a ribboning effect of creases hanging around all the lines of detail. A beautiful, bluey-green, slowly rotating, geometric grid-like pattern, shooting out in lines from a central point, with intricate shapes weaving into each other, emanated from the grill in bridge on the top left hand corner of the Jules et Jim picture, at its focus was a purple and white light, which was beyond/within it/behind the grill. I made Socrates (a stuffed grey squirrel monkey soft toy, the best trip toy ever) dance around singing to him that he was the "Mushroom Monkey" and asserting, "Mushrooms make you THINK!" This signaled a lightening of mood, especially as I was affectionate to the monkey, which in a way was being so to myself. Whilst listening to "Illinoise", which was an utterly perfect choice for that point of the trip, the brass arrangements in the music brought a melancholy nostalgia and feeling of regret about no longer playing music. I recalled the joy of playing in an orchestra, and had a disquieting remembrance of one of the darkest periods of my life, when "something broken inside" me around the age of 16 when I had a nervous breakdown after going to Hungary with the music school. I spent a fair amount of time considering the concept of reality, trying to fathom it, teetering on the edge of an understanding beyond words. I deemed that our sense of reality is all just electrical chemical activity in the brain, it's not actually happening, "It's all in the mind". I commented aloud "Reality's a funny thing" and was incredibly amused, as if I were sharing a joke with reality itself. Sadness about my mother came up, I understood that she has so much affection to give, and had an inkling of how she must have felt about both her children leaving home (empty nest syndrome). I understood how the problem when I was younger was that she was overbearing with her worry. I also felt resentment about this, thinking "Fuck you mum!", and things I wish I'd said, like "I know you love me but back off". The most unusual occurrence was when I saw a leafless tree, beyond the garage visible out of the living room window, moving quite vigorously. I could not work out why or how it was moving the way it was. I became a little upset and worried, thinking that an animal might be stuck in the tree and have hurt itself, the movement looking like the tree was weeping. I soon realised that it was actually a very windy day and that explained the movement. Subsequently I have discovered that the tree was perhaps never there at all! I don't recall it having been there before and it isn't there now. During this peculiar event my mind wandered through a narrative of the idea of going outside and finding out what was going on with the tree. I came up with the weird notion of encountering a creepy man operating an outdoor tap, which controls all of one emotion/element in the world, which he would switch off forever changing the world for the worse. This was perhaps a failsafe devise of my brain preventing me from going outside in a still far too tripped out state. Often through the trip I would think of how much I love Amy, how my sexuality is totally specific to her and even though I enjoy looking at other women, the idea of intimacy with anyone else is odd/unappealing because they're not Amy. Thoughts of having children arose again, I felt warm about all the experiences to come, teaching, sharing music etc, laughing at silly things done and said. However, I also had worst case scenarios come to mind (losing child, losing Amy etc) and questioned why do I do that, and came back to the concept of my apathy. I resolved that to live life more fully was well worth the risk of things going wrong. With "5 Leaves Left" playing, I made a fairly fun phone call to Amy, and despite sharing the fact that it had been a "weird trip" (a phrase I often said during the duration) we laughed a lot about how the echoey sound of her voice over the phone makes me think that she works in a castle. I also, half jokingly, remarked about how I'm helpless with electrical stuff and would get into a "Where's Amy" panic if I needed to use the washing machine, or use the bread maker. While watching "Bill Hicks: Sane Man", which was again very funny, I did a spirally oil pastel picture, just to be creative in some way. Sometimes I felt it was good, but it turned out fairly naff. However it was fun to play around. I told myself that I can do whatever I want; it's the doing that's important. I spent the rest of the day watching episodes of "Six Feet Under", exercising and just chilling until Amy came home and I tried to make some sense of the day by garbling a largely nonsensical version of these events. The next day I did work around the house in bursts, feeling more exhausted, albeit in a mellow, chilled, clear headed manner and having to lie down and doze. I did manage to make copious notes for this report (2½ pages)! -------------------- "You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind" Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw
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Friend Registered: 05/27/06 Posts: 7 Loc: Earth Last seen: 17 years, 5 months |
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Thanks for posting this. It was a great read. You seemed to have described things that i have a difficult retaining knowledge of after a trip. It also seems like your trips serve a purpose(for a lack of a better word). I believe that these experiences help us "work" on our self(or lack there of) and i gained a sense of that after reading this.
In addition, I can relate to this much better than "shrooms at school" or "first time" or "parents down stairs. I am not judging(i was those people before), but this was up my alley. One Love. -------------------- A man that knows something, knows that he knows nothing at all
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