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> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was comple

by kodah 4y ago

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me. If you were tripping this is called ego death. In some circles, including mine, what you described after: > I started to think that I should be looking to help other people and become a guru, perhaps write a book to help humanity, but then my ego (I expect) came back with a vengeance, kicked my ass and brought me back down to earth with a crash (maybe its a safety system). Can be common. When I experienced ego death I was aware that it would return so I was able to deal with it. I think of it kind of like the trip itself; the more you fight it the harder it fights you. Not sure this helps as it's entirely my own experience and was drug induced, but I do think occasional ego death is worth it. Just be cognizant of what you're doing. The mind is a powerful place.

zozbot234 4y ago
And this is exactly why "tripping" is heavily frowned upon by serious meditators and spiritual practitioners. Experiencing "ego death" (i.e. the three marks of existence) without having the previous spiritual grounding for it to help free you from attachment to the ego, is only a recipe for being even more deeply mired in craving and dukkha.
- jcbrand 4y ago
  > And this is exactly why "tripping" is heavily frowned upon by serious meditators and spiritual practitioners. This is needlessly judgmental. I know life-long meditators, 30+ of years disciplined practice who sometimes take psychedelics. I'm not a fan of various aspects of the psychedelic scene, e.g. the spiritual bypassing and the narcissism that can sometimes come from it, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Usage of psychedelics can be profoundly healing and helpful.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > I know life-long meditators, 30+ of years disciplined practice who sometimes take psychedelics. I'm not dismissing spiritual practice, but psychedelics are entirely incidental to it and can be a snare for the unprepared mind. What's "profoundly healing and helpful" is always the spiritual part, not the means used to achieve it.
    - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      And yet "spiritual" people are at least as prone to narcissism as everyone else. IMO one of the reasons spirituality of all kinds - including both traditional and non-traditional religion - has remained so consistently popular that it provides such excellent cover for more base actions and desires. If you've found a drama-free spiritual community where everyone is deeply chilled and yet also adult and effective without losing a sense of humour, please let me know. That really hasn't been my experience. In fact I think mindfulness, meditation, and so on confuse a kind of metaphysics of morality with what is probably some fairly basic brain mode switching. Being "enlightened" for a brief period does not seem to create good people with any consistency or reliability. It doesn't even create consistently happier people. (Sometimes? Yes. More reliably and safely than other activities? Very likely not.) It does seem to remove certain existential tangles, sometimes. But rather than being about "ego" - boo, hiss - perhaps those are more to do with easy/default vs less accessible modes of emotional cognition. And actually - that's all.
- kodah 4y ago
  Those probably aren't meditators I would be listening to, it sounds as unhealthy as the person that attaches their identity to their ego return. Psychedelics are a tool, and the different doses you figure out are ways of using that tool. Ego death requires a fairly heroic dose, something on the order of 3-5 grams of mushrooms for most strains. This, to me, is comparable to the isolation and introspection without breaks to incur ego death in meditation. Ego death, from my perspective, is also a tool. Done with knowledge of what will happen during and after let's the user experience the absence of ego and helps them live with their ego when it returns. Done without the knowledge of what will happen after, humans often fully embrace that ego as a new life based on wisdom. A false wisdom. My point here is the medium in which you choose is largely irrelevant. How you use the tools and the knowledge you go into them with are the paramount pieces. It's honestly surprising to me that anyone who meditates would have such judgy and pithy opinions, but it's a big world out there.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > Psychedelics are a tool I don't think most users of psychedelics view them as a "tool" for serious spiritual practice. They just think tripping is a lot of fun.
    - kodah 4y ago
      That's an incredibly cynical take and possibly bordering on gatekeeping based on "spiritual" boundaries. Psychedelics can be fun, but in my experience they're fun if your mind is in the right place. They act as a conduit for more deeply connecting with the world around you. On the other hand, if you have work to do then those things have a chance to appear in your trip. That can be healthy, if you're ready to face something, or it can be incredibly terrifying. I've had both experiences through my own isolation and meditation before. As someone with years of trauma, including a year long stint in a war zone, I can attest that my trips were sometimes fun, almost always challenging, and sometimes terrifying. As time has gone on and I've done work to unpack my trips and connect them with my experiences and understanding when I'm sober my trips have averaged to being "more fun" and "connected". This is something I was not able to achieve with meditation alone.
- bigbluedots 4y ago
  I'm finding it fascinating how much dogmatic religious junk is being thrown around in the comments here - discussing an article where one of the author's central points is that none of the dogmatic religious junk helped him.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    A tradition of meditation and spiritual practices with a history encompassing more than two thousand years is the polar opposite from "dogmatic religious junk"; it's filled with observations derived from experience. The Westernized use of psychedelics is barely a few decades old. I think it's reasonably clear what we should choose if we are to remain humble and avoid dogmaticism.
davedx 4y ago
“The little death that brings total obliteration”.

by kodah 4y ago

zozbot234 4y ago

And this is exactly why "tripping" is heavily frowned upon by serious meditators and spiritual practitioners. Experiencing "ego death" (i.e. the three marks of existence) without having the previous spiritual grounding for it to help free you from attachment to the ego, is only a recipe for being even more deeply mired in craving and dukkha.

jcbrand 4y ago
> And this is exactly why "tripping" is heavily frowned upon by serious meditators and spiritual practitioners. This is needlessly judgmental. I know life-long meditators, 30+ of years disciplined practice who sometimes take psychedelics. I'm not a fan of various aspects of the psychedelic scene, e.g. the spiritual bypassing and the narcissism that can sometimes come from it, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Usage of psychedelics can be profoundly healing and helpful.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > I know life-long meditators, 30+ of years disciplined practice who sometimes take psychedelics. I'm not dismissing spiritual practice, but psychedelics are entirely incidental to it and can be a snare for the unprepared mind. What's "profoundly healing and helpful" is always the spiritual part, not the means used to achieve it.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    And yet "spiritual" people are at least as prone to narcissism as everyone else. IMO one of the reasons spirituality of all kinds - including both traditional and non-traditional religion - has remained so consistently popular that it provides such excellent cover for more base actions and desires. If you've found a drama-free spiritual community where everyone is deeply chilled and yet also adult and effective without losing a sense of humour, please let me know. That really hasn't been my experience. In fact I think mindfulness, meditation, and so on confuse a kind of metaphysics of morality with what is probably some fairly basic brain mode switching. Being "enlightened" for a brief period does not seem to create good people with any consistency or reliability. It doesn't even create consistently happier people. (Sometimes? Yes. More reliably and safely than other activities? Very likely not.) It does seem to remove certain existential tangles, sometimes. But rather than being about "ego" - boo, hiss - perhaps those are more to do with easy/default vs less accessible modes of emotional cognition. And actually - that's all.
kodah 4y ago
Those probably aren't meditators I would be listening to, it sounds as unhealthy as the person that attaches their identity to their ego return. Psychedelics are a tool, and the different doses you figure out are ways of using that tool. Ego death requires a fairly heroic dose, something on the order of 3-5 grams of mushrooms for most strains. This, to me, is comparable to the isolation and introspection without breaks to incur ego death in meditation. Ego death, from my perspective, is also a tool. Done with knowledge of what will happen during and after let's the user experience the absence of ego and helps them live with their ego when it returns. Done without the knowledge of what will happen after, humans often fully embrace that ego as a new life based on wisdom. A false wisdom. My point here is the medium in which you choose is largely irrelevant. How you use the tools and the knowledge you go into them with are the paramount pieces. It's honestly surprising to me that anyone who meditates would have such judgy and pithy opinions, but it's a big world out there.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > Psychedelics are a tool I don't think most users of psychedelics view them as a "tool" for serious spiritual practice. They just think tripping is a lot of fun.
  - kodah 4y ago
    That's an incredibly cynical take and possibly bordering on gatekeeping based on "spiritual" boundaries. Psychedelics can be fun, but in my experience they're fun if your mind is in the right place. They act as a conduit for more deeply connecting with the world around you. On the other hand, if you have work to do then those things have a chance to appear in your trip. That can be healthy, if you're ready to face something, or it can be incredibly terrifying. I've had both experiences through my own isolation and meditation before. As someone with years of trauma, including a year long stint in a war zone, I can attest that my trips were sometimes fun, almost always challenging, and sometimes terrifying. As time has gone on and I've done work to unpack my trips and connect them with my experiences and understanding when I'm sober my trips have averaged to being "more fun" and "connected". This is something I was not able to achieve with meditation alone.
bigbluedots 4y ago
I'm finding it fascinating how much dogmatic religious junk is being thrown around in the comments here - discussing an article where one of the author's central points is that none of the dogmatic religious junk helped him.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  A tradition of meditation and spiritual practices with a history encompassing more than two thousand years is the polar opposite from "dogmatic religious junk"; it's filled with observations derived from experience. The Westernized use of psychedelics is barely a few decades old. I think it's reasonably clear what we should choose if we are to remain humble and avoid dogmaticism.

davedx 4y ago

“The little death that brings total obliteration”.