The art of lying perfectly still and just listening

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Back in high school I got in touch with what I guess you could call a form of meditation. After smoking weed I would lie down in my bed, be perfectly still, and blast some creative tunes through my head. After a few minutes my body would dissolve and I could feel nothing but the beautiful beats in my head and the swirling geometry behind my eyes.

I had lost touch with these wonderful experiences until my recent acid trip. Has anyone else experimented with this sort of meditation or something similar on psychedelics? Anything I could add to this wonderful experience or maybe a completely different form of this?

 

[Solipsis]

Wonderful isn't it? Try some yogic breathing exercises, sensory deprivation, even sober when lying in bed I can get really good results from just techniques like tensing, pulling up toes to the body etc or pressing the heels away when I inhale, then before exhaling relaxing that tension but even further than it was before, then exhaling slowly, all the while just waiting for your breaths to start spontaneously - which for me can make the breathing rate go verry low. Or just relaxing with every exhalation and smiling with every inhalation...

I used to have a 'mindfold' but I competely wore that down... very nice for going deep and inward.

Also I used to simply have journeys through time and space in my mind, reliving modified memories etc... by having my blanket over me on the couch. But that was on a LOT of lsd.

Of course there is also mindfulness, which you can always easily get going at a very basic level by telling yourself "just feel body part X or sensation X and pay attention to it, nothing more". Proper techniques for all of this are of course better, but the very basics should be accessible if you just remember the core of the approach.

 

[perpetualdawn]

Yeah this is great, one of my favourite things. Just listening to the music, wholly experiencing it without interference. It really is a kind of meditation.

I also really like finding an ultra quiet place on acid, and just listening to the quiet, doing the same thing, but with no music at all. It tends to produce the most wondrous auditory sensations, with all this feedback with your attention.

 

[Xorkoth]

For sure. I like both listening to music with no other input, as well as listening to the world in silence, and realizing there is never complete silence and that ambient background noise creates its own music. Or my head does. I generally prefer listening to actual music because then there are physical vibrations that add to the experience but I get down in my head pretty hard sometimes. Also the experience of hearing the minute background sounds of the machinery of existence become music is a uniquely wonderful experience. Very inspiring sometimes.

Related to this but different, my friend and I occasionally do "tryptamine jams". We're both musicians, and we'll take high doses of tryptamines along with, often, just a hint of dissociative (3-MeO or MXE - we'll dose like 5mg of 3-MeO or 15mg of MXE and around 40mg of a 4-sub-tryptamine) and play music together starting on the come-up and proceeding through the end of the trip. All kinds of great states and music happen, very intense immersion and usually getting to the point where we feel guided in this organism that we've created, each next note being self-evident, sometimes unlocking new muscle movements. But anyway, this one time I remember we were doing that, and it was during the peak and I had to pee. So we stopped for a minute, and while I was in the bathroom, all of the little sounds - the water in the pipes, the creaking of the house settling, the movements of my friend, the faint sound of a neighbor's TV - organized into this OUTRAGEOUSLY beautiful and intense melodic/rhythmic flow, I came running out of the bathroom like a wild man with my eyes bugged out and tried to get on it on piano but my friend hadn't heard the same so we veered into something else.

I remember as a kid I would always listen to the sounds of nature and hear a symphony. I remember as a teenager, when I'd mow the lawn, the drone of the lawnmower engine would invariably produce clearly audible and amazing church organ-style music, oh my god it was so great. Made me love mowing the lawn. That was before drugs too.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

haha I would love to have a jam sesh during a trip unfortunately I don't know many musicians other then myself and they are all very rusty.

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah I'm lucky to be in a band and also have other great friends who play and we're all really passionate about it and far from rusty because we all play together all the time.

Probably my very favorite way to spend a trip, most of the time. Not an inward journey so much, but very fun/useful/revealing/inspiring.

 

[TheAppleCore]

Are you talking about music in your imagination, or actual music?

Because I loved listening to imaginary music when I was a kid. I wish my mind still produced such fanciful sounds.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Real music, I forgot my deep appreciation for buckethead until my latest experience. Although I have heard music coming from background noise before.

 

[spacejunk]

Just in reply to xorkoth, the telepathy of jamming on psychedelics is something else
(And i don't even believe in telepathy, generally speaking)
Magic.

 

[pupnik]

getting in synch leads to synchronicity type effects.
drumming and dancing are the most obvious, but nodding and just being there can be enough.