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Does enlightenment have a dark side

acidkandy

acidkandy

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just a short question...

Can enlightment have a dark side ?

I mean, when you really take conscience
what is the place of the human race (and what is yours) in the universe,
or when you think about all this kind of ideas you can have during a trip...
(for example, reality is not what we're experiencing)
8(
ARE YOU NOT AFRAID ?

or is this just me...

ps : fucking derealisation
 
That is a very good question. I don't know that enlightenment itself can have a dark side (I tend to think it doesn't, it just *is*), but the dark side can come when the enlightenment smashes your previously held notions and beliefs. That can be extremely distressing.

An anology that comes to my mind right off the bat is back when people used to believe in totality that the earth was flat. They knew that for a fact, they'd known it all their lives since birth. It was just accepted as reality. Which is why it's understandable the furor that ensued (the rioting, the sense of generalized madness) when the earth was proven to indeed be round, obliterating something they'd accepted unquestioningly as a fundamental universal truth. That's a really really difficult thing to swallow.
 
I am active in the Occul/Esoteric community and every single person I have known whome I consider enlightened is also a depressive. Go figure ;).
 
enlightment can not have a dark side ! because enlightment consists -from what i've read- in the full realization of the oneness of the universe and all sentient creatures and that the universe despite all the pain and suffering past present and future is alright and fair. aldous huxlye speaks about this in his novel island. you should check it out. so if you still feel a dark side, if you still feel fear then this ain't enlightment yet !
 
Glog's take on this: Enlightenment can't have a dark side because it is tautologically so.

And on that note, I'm changing the title and moving this to T&A, because this really doesn't seem to be about psychedelics per se and perhaps it will do better over there.
 
Everything has Pros and Cons including enlightening experiences.

I've had enlightening experiences that have been very uplifting.
I've had enlightening experiences that have left me feeling like a pawn(not very pleasant for the ego).

I think it's important to note that there are many levels of "enlightening" experiences that seem to build on previous ones.

Fear of the uknown is common but I find embracing the unknown tends to bring out much more positive experiences.

The question is why do you feel alone.

Personally I find the "dark side" very beautiful retrospectively and have gained much knowledge from such experiences.
 
speaking from a psychadelically enlightened point of view:

high dose trips can lead to a state of what one might call enlightenment.... but this state is totally foreign to our minds... it is a place we are not at all familiar with. Naturally this can be discomforting.

On a high dose (10+) lsd trip I have experienced ego-death, looked god in the face and been floating in an infinite limbo of space/time.... enlightenment? certainly!..... but a "good" comfortable feeling??? anything but!!! During the trip I felt scared and frightened of all I was experiencing.... it was not until days later that I managed to process my experience and realised what happened and gained some valuable insights from it.

I think it is safe to say that most people on this forum associate an ego-less state with enlightenment. But to be totally egoless is to not even acknowledge what is good and what is bad.... just to acknowledge what "is"

so by definition i do not think you can say there is any positive or negative from being enlightened... there just is...

the only positive or negative gained comes from when we slip back into an ego-centric world and asses our experience with a biased ego.
 
I wouldnt say that enlightenment ITSELF has a darkside. But the path leading to enlightment certainly can. When I was a Buddhist last year, on several intense meditative experiences with lots of realization, I was crying my eyes out for hours. Certain realizations are not comforting when first realized. Then again, I was on a high dose of adderall for a year straight. I think that had something to do with it too. Like, 50 mg a day. I wasnt like the mom in requiem for a dream but I still had some crazy shit happen. Like at some points I would be afraid there were government agents out to kill me. It was pretty crazy. But in some ways Adderall also helped push me towards enlightenment. I did not want to take it however, it was forced on me by my parents.
 
punktuality said:

the only positive or negative gained comes from when we slip back into an ego-centric world and asses our experience with a biased ego.
Click to expand...
exactly
 
when you are tripping and putting the world to rights - you feel as thugh you are becoming enlightened to the world and its all such a beautiful idea at the time - even if there is a darkness to it.

I was suddenly enlightened in a trip, about what sustains human life: dustmites.

Loada rubbish! So never forget when your head is swirling and the lights are showing you a new way, that it is purely chemical and your enlightenment will last til the comedown - from there you can decide what all that meant to you and what to do with that 'enlightened' knowledge.
 
I used to have a lot of problems regarding this. Enlightenment can definately be a blessing and a curse. I used to go through very bad phases of depression where I would just think myself into a hole. Overall I think it is true that the smarter you are the more depressed or emotional you are bound to get and I think drug use compounds this. Lately I've been able to put those feelings away. I've found that once you get past your teenage years and get some experience behind you, combined with motivation to better your life (school or work), you get out of that hole and stop worrying so much. I haven't had a depressive episode in years yet I still think about the same type of stuff I used to think about while doing tons of psychadelics, but without the drugs. A lot of it can be hormonal also.. the years from 14-21 are just fucked up in general.
 
CZ-74 said:
I think the ego-death experience psychedelics give is similar, but not the same as enlightenment.

Huge doses of psychedelics dissolve the ego, but do not remove its structure, which will reform when the trip ends.

Before enlightenment, one has to root out any desires and impurities that lurk in the mind first, one by one. This simply does not happen when psychedelics are ingested.
Click to expand...

Psychedelics are good tools for manipulating things like habituation/addiction. Psychedelics are great tools for metaprogramming although ideally such programming should be done without the use of drugs.

To me it sounds more like you are describing "Nirvana". It seems to me enlightenment is not an end result but rather a path to be walked(as someone previously stated). Psychedelics can show you the way.
 
ebola! said:
we're going to have to get on the same page on what we mean by enlightenment here.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree. There are various spiritual traditions that call individual people to experience different paths of enlightenment. There are differences between what these great traditions would call an enlightened individual.

In general I would say: no there's not a dark side. An enlightened sage is a source of light, giving hope and an example of purity to the rest of humanity. I think people who are able to find peace in themselves, even in times of outward distress are enlightened; I think people who can breathe through anxiety and focus on love are enlightened. How can that be bad?

However, the Apostles of Christ all suffered persecution from their society so I suppose that could be called a 'dark side.'

Are you talking specifically about insights gained during use of acid? If you feel overwhelmed with sadness while on psychedelics or if you are unable to integrate your insights into you 'waking' life then I'm not sure I would call it enlightenment. There are certainly mysteries and truths that will be difficult and painful to consider intellectually but I believe enlightenment would be a spiritual understanding that transcends fear.

And if your use of psychedelics causes you distress maybe you should consider taking a break. There are various meditation techniques that might help or some kind of service work you can do, charity of some kind.

It is unfortunate that the tradition of spiritual elders is not widely practiced in this day and age. There have been many times in my own life when I would very much have liked to talk to someone who had found inner-peace.
 
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one can not be enlightened on everything all the time.
It will have ebb and flow just as all things.
You are depressed because you were happy.
A rollercoaster must go up to come down.
 
indeed...

To be enlightened i think is not nescesarily to walk the path of "good" it is to walk a path in which both good and bad are accepted as the reality in which we live. Enlightenment is accepting the duality and recognizing that our egocentric minds cannot acknowledge good without first acknowledging the bad and vice versa. Once this duality is accepted one is 'free' to live life without being a victim of the causal effects of this good and bad in the world. Enlightenment is being free... and one can only be free once one stops the world shaping ones mind via causality and starts shaping the world with ones mind.
 
Well it just *is*. I think that when if you reach full enlightenment you will see things that you used to block out, but they won't bother you as much because they are perceived as the natural ebb and flow of the universe, as the action of the stainless infinite, as nasty as they may be on the surface.
 
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