And I guess those of us who are stuck in a rut of a cycle of depression / anxiety /anger have all this energy ballooning in our heads too often (or in our liver, kindeys, spleen...) . When there is no release it gets stuck there. Facing the demon, feeling sad, then feeling nothing but dread. And when it gets all too much the energy might travel up and down the arms, causing restlessness. Not sure if it's warm or cold... scary... hence all these release mechanisms most if not all of us have. Life is suffering.
My often neglected meditative practice reminds me that what I want to do is observe the energy, neither to wish it away nor to long for it anywhere in any way, to simply observe it and see in what ways it is beneficial for me and my well-being (ultimately this is always equivalent to everyone and everyone's wellbeing... karma...) and then to accept what I see, albeit with a genuine desire to improve... persistenly yet always gently bending the energy to move in beneficial ways.
And to always remember that everything changes, nothing's permanent and that the present moment is where i sow the seeds for how it will change. the ego puts many things into force to reassert itself, creates cunning ruses to yet again win the battle against the real self (I, you...) . The self, defeated, the ego satisfied by the unbeneficial routine it has once again enforced upon the true self and what one really needs to achieve peace / contentment / serenity.
Ah, process... now, for fear of stating the (perceived by some in the OD forum particularly) clichéd elitist attitude regarding psychedelics, I think psychedelic drugs are indeed sacraments, and they're so very different from all the other drugs out there. They're the only ones that don't actually fool the self, that don't feed the demons. As much as I may be drawn to desperate sexual activity, drinking and other pleasure-button drugs, gambling, either stuffing or starving myself, shopping.... I am so drawn to psychedelics for this very reason, and I am so grateful it makes me want to cry.
They remind me that Jean-Paul Sartre's miserable existentalist philosophy is misguided. That he is wrong when he says we're all totally isolated individual consciousnesses and when he says that all connecting is illusion/delusion. That in fact, the Buddhist / Taoist path is what is really true - that we're all one, that we're all part of the same thing, and that we're all connected. That all sense of isolation/loneliness is in fact illusion, a mere paper tiger, a figment of a sick imagination - in short, it's the ego's ruse to reassert iself. Yet the ego is bound very much to the body, we live in the physical realm on some really obvious level that all egos perceive... and survival of the body is of the utmost importance to each and everyone of us who is in their right mind, I believe. Yet the ego, which resides in it along with the true unadulterated self, has a very strong hold on most of us, me being absolutely no exception. Hence all the unbeneficial defensive thought patterns most of us have built up inside of us. They're not so much a clutching at straws than a stubborn holding onto a meare handful of unattractive straws when there's a whole daisyfield of wonderful flowers out there too... all free, in abundance, no matter how many you take it's never theft as the more you take and use the more they multiply ... it's free for the taking and giving... you cannot hold onto it so you have to let it go and if you do so freely it will come back when the time is right, when it needs to and/or when you need to. And THIS shall aways be so
Michel Foucault best sums up my ego's ongoing fascination with psychedelics: "the exotic charm of another system of
thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking THAT."
(The Order of Things) ... And then when the ego gets its shattering, its bashing... THAT becomes THIS and "I" understand that THAT is an illusion.
But I ramble. No doubt it's my ego talking, wondering if I really want to go too much into True Self... if all is one, everyone is totally up their own arses anyway and, well, if you don't like the smell of, tough shit, baby, cos that's the way it smells round here. that's just the way it is and always has been and always will be, no matter how well you wipe it, desanitize it, deodorise it, play with it, rub it, are disgusted by it, secretly love it ...
peace and love ... for consider the alternatives!!!!! choose peace and love, again and again and again. we're really all the same and are all presented with essentially the same difficulties in life. To a very large extent. the differences are literally mundane. It's how we react that will determine future appropriate versions of what is essentially the same human drama for each and everyone of us, beyond creed, beyond ethnicity, beyond purchasing power and current economical condition or even physical well-being ... it holds true for the complacent fat rich people wo have never done honest day's work in their life and to the homeless wo struggle for survival every day, physically cold and hungry.
