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Taking as much as you can from a trip.

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psihonaut

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 11, 2010
Messages
33
Hi, fellow psychonauts.

In short, I'm interested in how to get the most out of my trips..., after they are gone. One of the things I regret most from my limited experience with psychedelic drugs is my inability to remember certain feelings and reasonings with the same clarity and fascinating implications as they were when I was tripping. I can only really resonate with them while I'm under the influence and, sometimes, even then I can not fully dwelve within them. How do you go about taking as much as you can from this experiences?

I've used a recorder and heard thoughts and train of consciousness later and it helped a bit, but still only at a reasoning level, not fully-emotional with crystal-clarity.

I'm thinking about video recording, but don't see how that will help much, except for maybe the mindfuck and the fact that it will surely be an interesting watch.

Allot of what I take with my after a psychedelic experience, if I go deep into thinking about it and the implications that they have and how to integrate the experience, I brain-stall and don't fully understand what goes on. How do you people deal with this?
 
Are you spiritual, do you practice a religion? Do u feel that you are transported through, while on acid to a surreal universe or getting visions of the metaphysical world?
my inability to remember certain feelings and reasonings with the same clarity and fascinating implications as they were when I was tripping.
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Can you remember any of these thoughts now? The ones that are simple probaly make the most logical sense cause' you were trippin'.
 
Are you spiritual, do you practice a religion? Do u feel that you are transported through, while on acid to a surreal universe or getting visions of the metaphysical world?
Click to expand...

I do not practice any religion. I was born and baptized as an orthodox christian, but 'faith' in the christian God left me, while in my adolescence, and never came back. I played a little with eastern religions, buddhism and zen (to which I got the closest), and still do, but mostly at a rational level. I'm an agnostic dancing on the path of spirituality and doing this with skepticism and with psychedelics, and amased by the results, but kind of saddened because I can not really re-feel those states of mental bliss.

Psychedelics do transport me an surreal universe and I do get glimpses of something that feels like it clearly transcends my own psyche and self, so yes, I have metaphysical episodes. The most fascinating thing is that this happens in a a world that most people view as being dry: evolutionism, existentialism, skepticism and agnosticism taking a spiritual form in my head. I want to remember, feel, imprint that in my DNA and grow myself on top of it.

Can you remember any of these thoughts now? The ones that are simple probaly make the most logical sense cause' you were trippin'.
Click to expand...

Yes, I do remember some of my thoughts, that range from my love towards certain people, love in general to more abstract notions and geometrical madness.
 
Read some crazy books.

I recommend:
Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations by Terence McKenna
Anything by Alan Watts (start with The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Really Are)
I Am A Strange Loop and Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstatder (especially if you have an affinity for mathematics)
The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami
Stuff by Ken Wilber (I'm haven't read a great deal of his work but A Brief History of Everything is probably a good start)

Also, read everything Tom Robbins has ever written. In fact, start with that. Jitterbug Perfume and Skinny Legs and All are particularly fantastic.

You sound like someone who's thirsty for the creative output of people who have pursued the same path as the one you're on, and have taken it further and written about it.
 
I think it's part of the nature of the psychedelic experience that you can't bring a lot of it back with you. If you could get to those spaces in your everyday world you wouldn't trip to begin with. Think of it this way; the mundane world and the psychedelic world contrast for a reason. Without a solid foundation to compare it to, the psychedelic experience wouldn't be the wonderful and astonishing experience that it is. If you hadn't spent your whole previous life structured in a certain culture and worldview, your first trip wouldn't have any boundaries to break down, it wouldn't have any realities to obliterate.

That being said, the best way to get the most out of trips is to bring back what insights you can through some sort of art, skill, or creative discipline. This way you can find a way to express and share, communicate what you have experienced. Whether it be painting, music, writing, rapping, basket weaving, speaking, dancing... It could be as simple as letting your new understandings effect the way you look at the people around you, how you talk to your friends and family, how you breathe, how you interact with your environment. The name of the game is change, and even the smallest steps will branch out into patterns of infinite reach.

I highly recommend the following lectures by Terence Mckenna and Alan Watts, on this very subject. The talk by Mckenna is called, "Dream Awake" and the one by Watts is called "The alchemy of LSD". Here's a quotation from Mckenna's:

“The subtle mind understands that we have now reached square one.
By openly confronting the necessity for paradox and by openly
confronting the fact that we can only enclose our dilemma by
speaking in at least two modes at once we begin to actually honor
the complexity of the situation. And so tonight the thought I want
to leave with you is the simultaneous project of awakening and the
simultaneous project of entering deeper into the dream.. for the
purpose of cultivating, evoking, experiencing, remembering,
transmitting and communicating beauty-- which feeds back into the
awakening process... This awakening must not be
disempowering, and the mantle that can be spread over the awakening
to counteract the possibility of disempowerment is this wish to
evoke, realize and serve the project of bringing ever greater
amounts of beauty into the world.”

edit: here are the links: Watts: http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=1500
Here's the Mckenna lecture:
http://erocx1.blogspot.com/2009/01/terence-mckenna-dream-awake-
complete.html
 
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psihonaut said:
I do not practice any religion. I was born and baptized as an orthodox christian, but 'faith' in the christian God left me, while in my adolescence, and never came back. I played a little with eastern religions, buddhism and zen (to which I got the closest), and still do, but mostly at a rational level. I'm an agnostic dancing on the path of spirituality and doing this with skepticism and with psychedelics, and amased by the results, but kind of saddened because I can not really re-feel those states of mental bliss.
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I really like the way you put this, I know exactly how you feel.
 
A friend of a friend I met recently had one of the more interesting methods of recording and looking back on his trips.

He was a very hyperactive individual who claimed to have ADHD. His friend got him a voice recorder for his birthday and he used it during our entire 2-ce trip together.

After the trip we went back and listened to some of his crazy ramblings and thoughts. It was actually extremely interesting.

Just throwin' in the ol' two cents.
 
on occasion if a fitting mantra pops up whilst exploring, that can be a handy bookmark to an idea or experience. if you only hold onto the words however, you can erode all the meaning away from it and be left with an empty husk of syllables.

I enjoy little rituals too. tend to avoid going too nutty over them, because people seem to fall into loops or just go through the motions. visiting certain places in nature, having a certain food, reading a specific passage; making things sacred can be a wonderful means of integration

recordings never quite do it for me. when I can understand what I'm getting at, its usually something I've been able to remember anyhow and it acts just as a friendly reminder. art only leaves me frustrated with myself; but connotations can spring eternal, especially if you've got skills
 
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