Moments of Total Clarity While Tripping

[peacelovedope]

It went like this, "Yeah, that's why I...holy shit, I GET IT!"
"Get what?" my friend replied.
"Everything!!!!!" I answered enthusiastically.

This was a phone conversation that took place a little over two years ago, during my second LSD experience and third trip all together. It wasn't even related to the conversation I was having with my friend (who happened to be on mushrooms), it just kind of hit me all of a sudden. When I say "it" I mean everything came together in one beautiful moment: total clarity, complete understanding, everything, and I mean everything made sense in that moment; I had it figured out, the answer had been presented to me. As Dylan said, "The answer is blowin' in the wind." I understood what that meant before, but after this moment I REALIZED what it meant.

Now this beautiful moment only lasted a few seconds, but the feeling of having experienced it stayed with me through the rest of my trip and really, what I learned in that moment, although inexpressible in words, never truly departed from me. That trip was the only time I ever experienced this phenomenon and I will always view it as one of the most important things I have ever experienced.

Now then, have any of you experienced flashes of complete and total clarity? How much of an impact did they leave? Is there a term that already exists within the psychedelic jargon that defines this?

 

[Pjkt2501]

While perhaps not a "flash" of sorts, but the coming to mental preparedness for whatever may come, wherever I am. "Be where you be" so I came to think. Combined with delving into more spiritual research and interpersonal consideration, I've come to have a very Stoic philosophy, in which I can't really be bothered when a "plan" fails. Heck, they're all going to. I see it as a mechanism of the universe; in a 'mother knows best' sense.

However this wasn't just a single experience. Psychs have actually left me torn and bruised mentally in the past, but only because of set and setting.

 

[malakaix]

Many times.

Although my most memorable was probably on the slow descent from a wild dose of mushrooms.. after been thrown all over the emotional spectrum of my consciousness experiencing each moment as an individual fragmentation of my being i saw myself come-together as pure manifestation; with an overwhelming sense of having lived thousands of lifetimes i laughed in awe at my very existence and with that realization i accepted life and death as an integral aspect of my being. I decided to capitalize on this feeling of 'being' and spent the next couple of hours walking through the city striking up conversations with homeless people, police, punters, store-owners.. everything was in a motion of flow, never have i felt so charismatic in my life.. there was not a shred of doubt with how i carried and conveyed myself which encouraged everyone i interacted with to open up to me.

 

[Sappy_6794]

Oh yes, that happened a lot to me. I understood life and what dogs think and everyone and everything. It was fucking crazy cause i stared at my friends dog at one point and i was like "HAH! I get you, I understand how you feel, dog" it was great. I finally grasped the meaning of life and I feel like yeah, everything happens and you just have to get over the bad shit cause its a cycle. Good and bad, all that yin yang shit totally made sense to me. I have no fears now because of that trip.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Good and bad, all that yin yang shit totally made sense to me. I have no fears now because of that trip.

Yin and yang aren't about good and bad, they're complementary opposites that must be balanced to harmonize with the natural way. Inbalance of these forces, and the cultivation of false yin/yang have a deleterious effect on the individual/system involved. There's not really a Western style moralistic duality at play here.

Now then, have any of you experienced flashes of complete and total clarity?

Yep, on numerous occasions, it really is a wondrous feeling.

 

[Sappy_6794]

Oh i know yin and yang arent the good bad things, i meant those two to be seperated by the comma, not included : ) i shoulda used a /

 

[ColtDan]

After returning back from my first N,N,DMT trip... shook me to the core. a massive awakening, epiphany, realization, clarity

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Ah, okay, wasn't sure whether or not to read it that way and decided to err on the side of caution and say something about it. Just because.

 

[fridgebuzz]

I once came to the conclusion that the entirety of life was just a regular day in the life of the soul. I thought I was not myself and that who I consider to be me is just a vessel on loan to ferry my soul past an obstacle because I had asked for its assistance perhaps in a previous life.

The realization was as if blindly playing a muted videogame my entire life with a veil over the screen, and then lifting the veil to get a sneak peak at where my "avatar" was in relation to finishing the game.

 

[peacelovedope]

^That's an interesting take on it and all, but what I'm talking about is much more simple. Just a sudden epiphany of:

"I understand."

Just what exactly is existence? Well there's no way words can answer that but I've got a pretty good idea. Not a definitive higher knowledge of the greater functions of the universe, just a good general idea of what may or may not be going on. All you have to do is spread the love and embrace the notion that you're just a part of everything else; and this, my friend, is beautiful.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

All you have to do is spread the love and embrace the notion that you're just a part of everything else; and this, my friend, is beautiful.

Much the line of thinking many of us now turn away from jadedly after the experience is over, but was wholeheartedly embraced by our hippie forefathers(and many people today still). Reminds me of this:

NSFW:

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant ...

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket ...booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) ... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that ...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda .... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning ....

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark —that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

We're all wired into a survival trip now... no more of the speed that fueled the 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling conciousness expansion, without ever giving a thought to the grim meathook realities that were lying in wait for all those peoples who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit. but their loss, and failure, is ours too. What Leary took down with him was that the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture. The desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.