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It's a tired cliche to share one's fundamentally incommunicable drug experiences in the comments when the topic comes up, is it not? Let's have a go at it. The

It's a tired cliche to share one's fundamentally incommunicable drug experiences in the comments when the topic comes up, is it not? Let's have a go at it. The author paints an image of conflict between himself on lsd, and himself off lsd. Himself the perceiver, and himself the analyzer. I don't think these are integral to the experience. He mentions perceptions like '...the notion of “teetering” was meaningless too—I was on both sides of the precipice at once'. I can identify this dissolution of boundaries and commingling of opposites in my own experiences. If you try to interpret the experience in terms of dichotomies and distinctions, your words will be inadequate to describe it. The inadequacy of such understanding might agitate you. There is something here for the analytical mind to gain too: learning to coexist with uncertainty, doubt, paradox, and mystery and yet keep going and keep analyzing. You don't have to lose your head on LSD, but you'll find in the deepest places that there is no distinction at all between the analyzer and the dreamer. In regular old life, too, I believe that distinctions, drawing a line between 'this' and 'that' can be as much a handicap to understanding as an aid. Distinctions tell things apart, but unity and continuity are as integral to reality as difference and change. The wholeness of being engendered by psychedelic experiences is difficult to describe because distinctions are the easy aspect of language, and wholeness the difficult. True ugliness and true beauty walk hand in hand in that strange place. It does one well to let go of the distinction between good and bad when one is on a trip. Forcing it won't help though. "Have you ever tried to relax? It is a paradox!" I read Laozi for the first time at the end of a "bad" trip. It was a joy. To this day, it is the only text that makes perfect sense to me in the waking world and that other world, the world of dreams. That was my last trip. I wonder how the next one will be, when the time, place, and person are right for it?

EC1 11y ago
What by Laozi did you read?
- taurath 11y ago
  I assume the Tao Te Ching
- danharaj 11y ago
  Dao De Jing. I read then Ursula Le Guin's rendition. since then i have also read Waley's translation and fragments of some others. i would say that reading widely and thoughtfully a variety of interpretations is worthwhile. The only 'layman' interpretation i find satisfactory is Le Guin's, but perhaps that is nostalgiac bias? I find other unscholarly attempts to be a bit vague and artificially 'mystical'. Scholarly translations are great because they really try to put the work in context and preserve its delicate meanings. That's rather important considering that the text, like many ancient writings has been corrupted through transmission and interpolation, and translation is fundamentally lossy.
  - carapace 11y ago
    The translation by Jonathan Star to me to be pretty good.
bonoboTP 11y ago
"Have you ever tried to relax? It is a paradox!" No, it's not. Anger management is possible. (Often other emotions as well).
- gerbilly 11y ago
  My take: you are both right. 1) "It is a paradox": Relaxation is not the absence of anger, relaxation is the abandonment of stress. Stress is the clinging resistance to things as they are. You can't "try to relax" because trying implies dissatisfaction with your un-relaxed state, and dissatisfaction is stress. You can only relax fully by not worrying about whether you are relaxed or not. 2) "Anger mgt is possible" : strong emotions, even positive ones, also cause disturbance. Disturbance is a form of stress. So to relax, one has to first learn to deal with emotions. Not to say you have to try to get rid of emotions, which would make them stronger, but to find a way to experience them without struggle. Once that is achieved then you can relax. But more subtly in order to relax, one does have to begin by first being dissatisfied with stress, which is itself stressful, but if this dissatisfaction is used skillfully it can help lead to relaxation. :-) So, in order to fully relax, one has to engineer disturbances that are less stressful than the stress you are trying to eliminate, and to modify your approach as you go. It also gets complicated because there are feedback loops in the system. Manipulating one thing, brings up another thing to deal with etc...
  - bonoboTP 11y ago
    Well, that sounds nice in the abstract, but I can relax when I notice that I'm worked up on something. I understand the philosophical point you're making, but it's an abstract, philosophical, existential stress that you're talking about, not everyday stress. Simply the non-enlightened state of mind, caring about distinctions etc. And then you go on explaining how you can't rationalize yourself out of that state-of-mind. That's true. When you want to relax you step back. You don't "engineer disturbances" or whatever. You step back and calm down. You breathe, you shake off the ballast etc. > So, in order to fully relax, one has to engineer disturbances that are less stressful than the stress you are trying to eliminate, and to modify your approach as you go. It also gets complicated because there are feedback loops in the system. Manipulating one thing, brings up another thing to deal with etc... I think you're trapping yourself in your own traps. Relaxation isn't an intellectual thing like that. You don't need to think through all the small-scale biology of muscle contractions to walk, either. It depends of course what kind of "relax" we are talking about. Do you mean getting rid of anxiety? Where you can worry about the fact that you worry? Sure those are tougher nuts to solve just mentally. You often need external things for that, like exercise, therapy, medication etc. But I often feel worked up on some issue to the point of faster heartbeat etc, and then I feel like "hey, let's not get worked up so much" and then my heart slows down again. People are often advised to "count to 10" in such cases. This monotony looks a bit like meditation-chants. Perhaps it's a kind of mini-meditation, I don't know. One thing I know is that trying to engineer it, thinking with that usual nerdish attitude doesn't help (at least me). Relaxation is an action, it's not a logical mathematical derivation.

EC1 11y ago

What by Laozi did you read?

taurath 11y ago
I assume the Tao Te Ching
danharaj 11y ago
Dao De Jing. I read then Ursula Le Guin's rendition. since then i have also read Waley's translation and fragments of some others. i would say that reading widely and thoughtfully a variety of interpretations is worthwhile. The only 'layman' interpretation i find satisfactory is Le Guin's, but perhaps that is nostalgiac bias? I find other unscholarly attempts to be a bit vague and artificially 'mystical'. Scholarly translations are great because they really try to put the work in context and preserve its delicate meanings. That's rather important considering that the text, like many ancient writings has been corrupted through transmission and interpolation, and translation is fundamentally lossy.
- carapace 11y ago
  The translation by Jonathan Star to me to be pretty good.

bonoboTP 11y ago

"Have you ever tried to relax? It is a paradox!" No, it's not. Anger management is possible. (Often other emotions as well).

gerbilly 11y ago
My take: you are both right. 1) "It is a paradox": Relaxation is not the absence of anger, relaxation is the abandonment of stress. Stress is the clinging resistance to things as they are. You can't "try to relax" because trying implies dissatisfaction with your un-relaxed state, and dissatisfaction is stress. You can only relax fully by not worrying about whether you are relaxed or not. 2) "Anger mgt is possible" : strong emotions, even positive ones, also cause disturbance. Disturbance is a form of stress. So to relax, one has to first learn to deal with emotions. Not to say you have to try to get rid of emotions, which would make them stronger, but to find a way to experience them without struggle. Once that is achieved then you can relax. But more subtly in order to relax, one does have to begin by first being dissatisfied with stress, which is itself stressful, but if this dissatisfaction is used skillfully it can help lead to relaxation. :-) So, in order to fully relax, one has to engineer disturbances that are less stressful than the stress you are trying to eliminate, and to modify your approach as you go. It also gets complicated because there are feedback loops in the system. Manipulating one thing, brings up another thing to deal with etc...
- bonoboTP 11y ago
  Well, that sounds nice in the abstract, but I can relax when I notice that I'm worked up on something. I understand the philosophical point you're making, but it's an abstract, philosophical, existential stress that you're talking about, not everyday stress. Simply the non-enlightened state of mind, caring about distinctions etc. And then you go on explaining how you can't rationalize yourself out of that state-of-mind. That's true. When you want to relax you step back. You don't "engineer disturbances" or whatever. You step back and calm down. You breathe, you shake off the ballast etc. > So, in order to fully relax, one has to engineer disturbances that are less stressful than the stress you are trying to eliminate, and to modify your approach as you go. It also gets complicated because there are feedback loops in the system. Manipulating one thing, brings up another thing to deal with etc... I think you're trapping yourself in your own traps. Relaxation isn't an intellectual thing like that. You don't need to think through all the small-scale biology of muscle contractions to walk, either. It depends of course what kind of "relax" we are talking about. Do you mean getting rid of anxiety? Where you can worry about the fact that you worry? Sure those are tougher nuts to solve just mentally. You often need external things for that, like exercise, therapy, medication etc. But I often feel worked up on some issue to the point of faster heartbeat etc, and then I feel like "hey, let's not get worked up so much" and then my heart slows down again. People are often advised to "count to 10" in such cases. This monotony looks a bit like meditation-chants. Perhaps it's a kind of mini-meditation, I don't know. One thing I know is that trying to engineer it, thinking with that usual nerdish attitude doesn't help (at least me). Relaxation is an action, it's not a logical mathematical derivation.