| | Hello! Daniel directed me to this forum, and I'm in the process of reading MCTOB. I don't have any meditation or insight-oriented culture around me, I haven't been to a retreat, and this is my first real exposure to people who seem to have experience with this stuff. I thought I'd use this post as an introduction + description of my reality for reference later on.
In 2014 ago I took (on average) large doses of LSD about once a week for 10 months. This started out (trip #2) with the sense of 'awakening,' where my eyes were opened and I realized the world was not as it seemed. This experience was intense and exciting for me, and I got comments from people who knew me that I seemed different, afterwards.
This progressed into a feeling of intense peace, emotionality, and creativity, and I was very evangelical about it all - this state, the different way of being inside the world, of doing LSD. I did art constantly, and this lasted for several months.
Another notable trip was my highest dose of approximately 600ug, about 25 trips in, after which the sensations of pain and pleasure became permanently fused/mixed/linked with each other. This manifests as an intense 'acceptance' - the feeling of yes, yes - to the experience of deep agony, particularly emotional, and an underlying pain whenever I'm happy.
After this I entered a state of intense contentment, where I felt free of desire. My memory got really terrible, and I stopped performing most actions. My sleep schedule became random/intermittent, and I felt strongly as though I was dreaming, all the time, and my actual dreams became lucid. I compulsively whispered 'I am dead' under my breath, and became obsessed with shaving my hair (which I couldn't do, as a sex worker) to the point of drawing bald self portraits and buying wigs. Hunger stopped being significantly motivating, and I often didn't get out of bed. This might sound bad from the outside, but I was completely free of suffering.
A few more months later, and I realized if I continued down this path, I would probably die, and so I decided to quit acid. I don't fully understand this decision, but I do know that it felt to me like rejecting the Knowing.
After quitting, I tried constantly to stop Knowing. I tried to eject the awareness of what was going on out of my life. I began to feel deeply grateful for all anxiety and fear. I was already immensely grateful for all pain. It took about another 10 months before my function from the outside view returned to where it was before I started doing acid.
Changes slowed over the next few years, but there developed a tension between knowing and not-knowing; I felt like I had left behind an old lover, and I missed her dearly. I did LSD much less often after that (about 2x/year), but each time I did I felt like I had gone home.
One change that happened after quitting LSD was a shift from perceiving me as different from others (in my Knowing) to me as the same; that I did not know anything anyone else didn't, because that thought carries a thousand tiny preconceptions inside of it
Another change was a deep integration of silence. Silence about this state became a recurring theme - in talking to others, in thought with myself. In the years following the LSD, I slipped into holding it very privately within myself, like a secret.
About 1.5 years ago I started having episodes - first alone, and then eventually in the presence of other people - where I meditated and then re-entered the Knowing state. They were very intense, and involve crying, ego death, and painpleasure. I have some amount of control over when they came on - with the ability to prevent them from happening or encourage them on. I have difficulty inducing episodes randomly, without a lot of effort - usually phrases from other people can trigger it, or the sensation that someone I'm talking to Knows as well. Being in a lot of pain also makes it easier.
Very recently (a week) I've started attempting to channel the feeling of the episodes into.... being? Because usually they take me out of commission and make it exceedingly difficult to act in the world - but recently, when I've felt them coming on in public in times I would normally suppress them, I try to instead put them 'into my body' - to force it into engagement with the world around me, instead of looping back in on itself and taking me down with it. It's very difficult to do this without taking steam out of the experience, but I'm also very new to it and I'm interested in seeing where it goes.
I don't know where I am in regards to the common-knowledge map here, and I feel a little hesitant to put too much effort into figuring it out - the A&P seems closest in regards to 'brief intense experiences', though I have them a few times a month and that doesn't seem super A&P-y, but maybe I'm just weird, who knows.
I have really appreciated getting a general sense of what is possible, though - it seems that people have ongoing and more well-integrated experiences than I do. I'm pretty interested with turning my Knowing from something I'm at tension with, something that takes me over and destroys me before the throne of God, to something that I can integrate with still being attached and believing in my life.
I almost never meditate, but it seems like I should probably pick it up. I don't often enjoy it and I'm not very disciplined, though.
Anyway, thank you all and I look forward to lurking here! |
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