psychedelic enlightenment my experience

[Ismene]

Do you have experience of that? Has mindfulness helped you through the tragedy of suddenly losing a loved one for example? That's when I discovered the limits of mindfulness - when something desperately serious happens to you. I've got to say mushrooms helped where mindfulness couldn't.

I'm not knocking mindfulness - it has it's place - just nowhere near psychedelics when you need saving.

 

[Doldrugs]

Mindfulness is most useful with anger for me, but it has also been a lifesaver for my anxiety, for which psychedelics are useless to me. I wouldn't even be able to take psychedelics if I didn't have experience with meditation. I would say psychedelics have helped me develop mindfulness further. I like them as synergistic tools.

I personally find using mindfulness difficult against depression. I've had pretty bad depression my whole life, while the anxiety ebbs and flows (as it does). So it's hard for me to separate myself from it. Lexapro has been immensely useful against it. I have had very powerful experiences meditating, however, that lead me to believe it has no limits. It's just a matter of practice.

 

[murphythecat]

whats vague about buddhism. if you follw theravada, there NOTHING vague, nothing left for interpretation. its clean and clear and very precise in its teaching.


monk burning themseves is very weird and rare and most monk im sure disagree with his decision. you cannot take a stupid monk and generalize that all monk would do this.

nirvana is the end of all perception, the cessation of the mind. there no you and the ilusion of self fully destroyed. I suggest you to stop all this misinformation and prejudice and at least make a inform opinion of buddhism. there is many traditions in buddhism and a lot of them are somehow and sometime in complete contradiction with the theravada (which is the first tradition based only on the buddha teaching). all the tibetan deities, ZEN, ect are very different in the method to get out of suffering and even their definition differ. for me, ZEN and tibetan buddhism makes no sense on a lot of point.

The trouble is like all religions Buddhism is so vague it can be interpreted in anyone of a thousand ways. You choose to interpret in a way that makes sense with all your other western views. The Tibetan monks who studied Buddhism and meditated for 700 years in Tibet created one of the most brutal slave-master feudal states mankind has ever known. They'dve called what they were doing Buddhism too.



How do you know what's going through a burning monks mind? For a start they do it for political reasons - not spiritual reasons. They're doing it to create a political effect. Just like the muslims driving the plane into the world trade center sat still and calm as they ploughed straight into it. Don't confuse burning yourself in public with a spiritual act.

And one more thing - don't Buddhists believe in reincarnation? So did this monk believe he might reach nirvana this time if he went out in flames? Was that why he was so calm? Because the guy was thinking "I'll be in nirvana soon if a burn a bit longer".

 

[murphythecat]

if you suffer, you are not mindful. as you canot be mindful on one thing and also be sad. its either you are concentrated, or your not.

the definition of minfulness is so misinterpretated, its ridiculous. go look at the theravada definition of minfulness, then explain how you can be sad AND mindful.

Do you have experience of that? Has mindfulness helped you through the tragedy of suddenly losing a loved one for example? That's when I discovered the limits of mindfulness - when something desperately serious happens to you. I've got to say mushrooms helped where mindfulness couldn't.

I'm not knocking mindfulness - it has it's place - just nowhere near psychedelics when you need saving.

 

[murphythecat]

tibet buddhism is not the buddha teaching. therefore, I discard tibetan buddhism. I only follow the buddha teaching and am a theravada practionner. tibet buddhism is a reinterpratation and the buddha would not agree with a lot of their beliefs. japanese zen is also not theravada and the buddha would disagree. be very careful with reinterpratation made by a culture.

reincarnation is more a hindouism concept. go read about it.

There's a lot more to Buddhism than mindfulness tho isn't there. You can't just interchange the terms "mindfulness" and "buddhism". What about all that shite about reincarnation? Do you just discard the bits of buddhism that don't appeal to the western viewpoint? The Dali Lama is a "buddhist" and yet he thinks it's his right to become King of Tibet - surely you wouldn't think proclaiming yourself King of thousands of people is very "buddhist"? What about the japanese zen buddhists who trained the kamikaze pilots? They believed the emperor of Japan to be a "fully enlightened being" and since zen "treats life and death indifferently" why not fly yourself into the enemys ship?

As Christopher Hitchens put it:

A faith that despises the mind and the free individual, that preaches submission and resignation, and that regards life as a poor and transient thing, is ill-equipped for self-criticism. Those who become bored by conventional "Bible" religions, and seek "enlightenment" by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals.

 

[Auranova]

When I first started exploring psychedelics, it was purely for recreation. I too always felt like I was just tripping balls and couldn’t understand how people were claiming to find spiritual revelations on the stuff. Psychedelics don’t allow me to sit still and meditate upon the mysteries of life because they make my mind too “busy”. But eventually, after several trips I realized that small bits of ‘enlightenment’ actually just happened along the way – an unusual thought pattern here or there. Doldrugs put it well: “Psychedelics allow the mind to travel new paths instead of taking the same old ones. This can help people have personal realizations.” For example one time out in nature I was sitting on a log tripping my ass off enjoying the pretty patterns and suddenly became aware that a bird had landed on the opposite end of the log. I thought nothing of it until it started hopping towards me, slowly and deliberately until it was only about 5 feet away. I suddenly became acutely aware of the birds curiosity in me, which led to this mutual curiosity and intense feeling of connection and oneness with the bird, and all living things. We’re surrounded by trillions of amazing living creatures that we pay trivial attention to as we plough through life wrapped up in our petty concerns. And then the next minute I’m just tripping balls again and drooling at pretty colors.

For me, the most profound moments like these are when such tangents are about people I love. Snippets of realization about something I can do to improve my life. I attribute this entirely to the drug allowing my mind to open a path that results in a unique perspective that was otherwise ‘closed’ by years of entrenched though habits. I believe that psychedelics offer a unique kind of enlightenment that can’t be had through other means like religion or meditation. But to think that it’s more important than those other means is fallacy. Balance is key and too many psychedelics is probably as hard on the mind as too much religion.

 

[Ismene]

tibet buddhism is not the buddha teaching. therefore, I discard tibetan buddhism. I only follow the buddha teaching and am a theravada practionner. tibet buddhism is a reinterpratation and the buddha would not agree with a lot of their beliefs. japanese zen is also not theravada and the buddha would disagree. be very careful with reinterpratation made by a culture.

Arn't you just interpretating Buddhism in the way you want to? Like everyone else does? You can pick good bits out of every religion can't you.

As the buddhist said to the hog dog salesman "Make me one with everything". The buddhist then asked for his change and the hot dog salesman replied "Change comes only from within".

 

[swilow]

The enlightenment I've been discussing here isn't about "connection with the deity" or feeling really weird and/or awesome. It's about separating yourself from the part of your mind that makes decisions for you

Are you sure that's really enlightenment? It sounds like mindlessness to me; the part of your mind that makes decisions is You. I thought enlightenment was the quality of being aware of all potentialities and valuing them all equally, and some corresponding emotional liberation which is often unarticulated.

Who knows though really, your definition may be better then my own. There seem to be myriad explanations as to what enlightenment actually is, so there's no reason to think that any one of them is more wrong then another I'd love an enlightened soul to drop in with a definition but we are short of those it would appear.

I don't agree. I think they carry the same potential.

I feel that psychedelics and precepts of meditation, such as a quest for a nirvana-like state and a focusing of the mind of the present, are synergistic (as you mentioned) but I can't see how they carry the same potential. They are very different things that get lumped together in the New Age section of the book shop, but the connection besides that is tenuous. In fact, a lot of mindfulness techniques are critical of drug use and imply that they oppose each other. I disagree, but I still think the two concepts are pretty different. Mindfullness doesn't get you seeing crazy shit generally...

 

[Doldrugs]

the part of your mind that makes decisions is You.

The most important lesson of mindfulness is how untrue this is. When you're hungry, or angry, or hurt, or whatever you aren't the one making the decisions. We go on autopilot a disturbing amount of the time without even knowing it. The point of mindfulness is to make what you're saying actually true. To make deliberate decisions regardless of what our brains and bodies are pushing for. It's admittedly difficult to grok until you've achieved it, at least momentarily.

 

[murphythecat]

Arn't you just interpretating Buddhism in the way you want to? Like everyone else does? You can pick good bits out of every religion can't you.

As the buddhist said to the hog dog salesman "Make me one with everything". The buddhist then asked for his change and the hot dog salesman replied "Change comes only from within".

following the founder of the religion and the one who discovered the way to out of suffering and follow only his teaching doesnt seem to let place for much interpretation.

also, buddhism doesnt ask you to have faith, it ask you to practice. faith is useless, try it for ourself, meditate, learn to meditate, then come back to me and say it doesnt bring: peace, calm, compassion, ect.

The most important lesson of mindfulness is how untrue this is. When you're hungry, or angry, or hurt, or whatever you aren't the one making the decisions. We go on autopilot a disturbing amount of the time without even knowing it. The point of mindfulness is to make what you're saying actually true. To make deliberate decisions regardless of what our brains and bodies are pushing for. It's admittedly difficult to grok until you've achieved it, at least momentarily.

indeed. mindfulness on a single object permits you to learn about the mind, about ourselves, our thought pattern, our addiction to sense contact and most importantly, the stress we endure ourself, the stress that we go thruw thinking its necessary, the stress that we force ourselves to go thruw everyday. it helps to see how we are controlled by our thoughts and how we are affected every moment by them.

 

[Doldrugs]

Right. You are not your thoughts and feelings. You are distinct from them. This is the lesson that was so important to me. It's a lesson you can't really understand except through doing it.

 

[murphythecat]

yeah, only mental states. the thoughts is not you, merely a process. it really helps(meditation) because it makes you step back from our ordinary way of being and make you see just how stressful it all is.

Right. You are not your thoughts and feelings. You are distinct from them. This is the lesson that was so important to me. It's a lesson you can't really understand except through doing it.

 

[Ismene]

I personally find using mindfulness difficult against depression. I've had pretty bad depression my whole life, while the anxiety ebbs and flows (as it does). So it's hard for me to separate myself from it. Lexapro has been immensely useful against it. I have had very powerful experiences meditating, however, that lead me to believe it has no limits. It's just a matter of practice.

I'm certainly with you that it can be useful for depression but you're still stone cold sober arn't you. Surely the psychedelic experience offers more than that simply because you're in a state of euphoria that surpasses all understanding, feeling the greatest you've ever felt in your entire life, the intense emotional catharsis, the tremendous laughter - I think that offers a lot more than being stone cold sober can.

 

[Doldrugs]

Being euphoric isn't even close to as useful as being mindful. Not even close. Psychedelic euphoria is good for temporary stress relief, but so is booze. I like psychedelics because they're an adventure, because they change the way I think, because they challenge my mind. If euphoria is what you want, get opiates. Hell, just get weed and nitrous.

 

[Ismene]

I don't get much euphoria from booze, weed or nitrous. Not much from opiates either - certainly nothing even remotely close to psychedelic euphoria.

If you get more euphoria from being stone cold sober than you do from mushrooms then we'll have to agree to disagree I'm afraid Dol.

 

[Doldrugs]

I never said I get more euphoria from being sober, although I will say I've had euphoria equal to anything I've gotten on drugs from things that happened to me when I was sober. I don't think euphoria is particularly useful. It's fun, sure. But it doesn't solve any problems, and it's not inherently interesting. Enlightenment, no matter the definition, has little to do with euphoria, so I don't know why you're so stuck on it. If euphoria was all psychedelics offered, I wouldn't do them.

 

[Ismene]

following the founder of the religion and the one who discovered the way to out of suffering and follow only his teaching doesnt seem to let place for much interpretation.

So which school of Buddhism do you think is the right one? There's thousands and thousands of different schools. How do you know you got the right one?

try it for ourself, meditate, learn to meditate, then come back to me and say it doesnt bring: peace, calm, compassion, ect.

Tried it for years - it didn't do shit.

it helps to see how we are controlled by our thoughts and how we are affected every moment by them.

I'm not so sure you need to be a buddhist to realise that tho - it's pretty obvious that we're affected by our thoughts. You don't need Buddha to tell you that.

 

[Ismene]

I don't think euphoria is particularly useful. It's fun, sure. But it doesn't solve any problems, and it's not inherently interesting.

Have to disagree with that - euphoria is incredibly good for you. Physically and mentally. If you think booze euphoria is similar to psychedelic euphoria you don't experience the same thing I do.

Enlightenment, no matter the definition, has little to do with euphoria

I didn't think we were talking about enlightenment - you were claiming that being stone cold sober is as powerful an experience as being on a psychedelic. I said it wasn't.

 

[Doldrugs]

I didn't think we were talking about enlightenment - you were claiming that being stone cold sober is as powerful an experience as being on a psychedelic. I said it wasn't.

I don't get consistent euphoria from psychedelics. I find them very challenging. Using them for pure recreational euphoria seems like a waste to me. I'm talking mostly about their usefulness. I didn't say "being sober is as powerful as being on a psychedelic," that's just you intentionally misquoting me. I said mindfulness and psychedelics have similar potential as tools. Which has nothing to do with euphoria.

 

[murphythecat]

theravada is the first tradition and the one that use only the buddha teaching and scripture . as its the first buddhism school and the one based only on the buddha teaching, I know its a good one. theres other good schools like mahayana.
Ive seen enough people saying that they lost 20 years on zen contemplation without gaining any real result, while theravada practinonner that within one week retreat give up everything and put on the robes.

well, you didnt meditated using good methods if you meditated a lot without any results. If you meditate in the proper way, you will get results. just access concentration will bring levels of peace, calm and a deep feeling of contentment within weeks if you practice properly. but you need to know how to apply the method. most jum to fast into one pointedness and the mind cannot do it as its not ready.

a good guided meditation is from him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgXomux53oM

The euphoria from psychadelic is amazing, but meditation is more about peace and calm, and the bliss that can develop from that is much more deep and profound as its imbued with a lot o insight into your mind, while psychadelic show you that euphoria is possible, but doesnt show you how to attain it.

read about the Jhanas, which are the goal of any meditators. the jhanas are the way the buddha find enlightenment. its been very well documented that the Jhanas are the mean to liberation. and the jhanas are attainable with meditation only. first jhana is describe as bliss, upon bliss and one pointedness on the bliss: you cannot move, you cannot think, you cannot desire or even control the bliss: all you experience is the bliss.

ajahn brahm describes very well all the meditation steps to attain those jhanas.
meditation is the science of the mind, the way to learn and look at your mind under a microscope. it helps to make your oridnary state of mind stop its usual way of being and see yourself as a whole new light:
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books/Ajahn_Brahm_The_Jhanas.pdf

So which school of Buddhism do you think is the right one? There's thousands and thousands of different schools. How do you know you got the right one?

try it for ourself, meditate, learn to meditate, then come back to me and say it doesnt bring: peace, calm, compassion, ect.

Tried it for years - it didn't do shit.

it helps to see how we are controlled by our thoughts and how we are affected every moment by them.

I'm not so sure you need to be a buddhist to realise that tho - it's pretty obvious that we're affected by our thoughts. You don't need Buddha to tell you that.