What is a Breakthrough?

[amor fati]

Last week I had a great mushroom trip.
Allthough I had alot of things on my head I was mentally prepared for the trip
and it had a very cleansing effect. Psychedelics really can break through habbits of thoughts and habbits of action.

Later that night when it was time for nitrous oxide I realised how everything tends to slip in a pattern called the golden spiral, even our very existence. It was really trippy
and it let the energy stream through my system more smoothly, even now a few days later.

I really look back at a good trip. Not very intense but just what I needed.

So you just had a vision of this golden spiral and knew that everything in the world tied into this spiral without knowing why? Without any previous knowledge of the golden ratio? Doesn't add up to me. I feel like a lot of people put too much faith in drugs.

 

[Anamnesicus]

So you just had a vision of this golden spiral and knew that everything in the world tied into this spiral without knowing why? Without any previous knowledge of the golden ratio? Doesn't add up to me. I feel like a lot of people put too much faith in drugs.

No it was not like that at all. I knew before the golden ratio before i had the trip and it was not even on my mind before it. But everything made sense, really every little detail had its place in the whole. I dont know how to explain it.

 

[psood0nym]

Just FYI, a lot of the claims out there about the "golden ratio" have been debunked (its relationship with Da Vinci, the human body, nautilus shells, aesthetic preference--doesn't hold up). There's still interesting stuff about it, though. See The Myth That Will Not Go Away.

I think intense psychedelic experiences like breakthroughs can hijack our sense of certainty and clarity by brute force, independently of how those thoughts and feelings reflect any kind of defensible perspective. In the past I've speculated that, experientially, there is no quick way to discern between insights where networks of ideas are fused together into a coherent framework (applicable insights) and when networks of ideas that are ultimately proven incoherent are fused together artificially via psychedelic mediated cross-signaling in the brain. I think psychedelics increase both types of "insights". Because of their power--and thus, their tacitly assumed authority--it's easy to forget that psychedelics are just molecules floating around in our heads indifferently. The "insight": if we hope to learn from them we can't afford to be indifferent to the ways we use our heads.

 

[MrMan737]

I always thought that a breakthrough was a profound psychadelic experience in which you 'get the hang of' the drug, and become fully immersed in the experience... often characterized by belief of contact with other beings, transportation to another plane, etc...

 

[malakaix]

I've only had a breakthrough once, and it was on DMT. I feel like its hard to explain, its something you have to experience to understand.. but i would say for myself.. that it was a state of hyperspace travel into another dimension/existence.. been fully emerged within infinity.

What's even more interesting is the meditative experience's i've had have a striking similarity to my DMT experiences.

 

[Newmoonrecord]

Yes, what swilow says: a breakthrough means reaching a new level of immersion.

The immersion is actually what most people including myself underestimate(d) when they have never tripped before. After you had your first experience it's hard to imagine what it was like not to know, but I guess it was like thinking that a trip is like a movie all around you that doesn't really affect you. Like seeing a smurf run around pasted in normal reality, leaving you feeling the same otherwise. Like a very benign unrealistic version of a delerium.

Of course the "reality" ( :D ) of the matter is that tripping is immersive, it becomes clear that what you perceive around you is projected from inside of you and when you experience psychedelia it influences every bit of your consious experience. The difference between inner and outer gradually fades and you are affected so, that everything becomes dynamic rather than static and the now is dilated into eternal depths and profundity.

A breakthrough experience takes that and revolves it completely: your state of consciousness is fundamentally different whatever one of the infinite possible things that means.

great post!! honestly this is one of the best descriptions of the psychedelic experience i have ever heard , with regard to helping explain to new users what it will be like vs what they *think* it will be like. Props, dude!