yep thats about the size of it for me, but I've always been a weirdo so I can't attribute psychs to that, maybe George Lucas ? I would say for me though I am often very cynical about the path humanity is on and sometimes its hard to see a good ending to it, psychedelics have showed me that the future of the human race, though filled with uncertainty is also filled with prosperity and hope for all. I do however from my psych use (and just living in general)have no hope for the current society being that it is in place and hope to see it flushed down the toilet pretty soon so we can stop being lied to and cheated every day of our lives and hopefully build a new society with new institutions that are actually relevant to people today. But who will lead us in the rebuilding process? Its got to be someone with the know-how and the elbow-grease to lead us to a new land...Sorry got of track. There seems to be a lot of mixed answers between alienation and gaining new social skills, relationships and insights in how Psychedelics have affected our lives. I am constantly being battered between the two so if any of you know how to press pause on this cosmic PONG game of confliction that would be appreciated, but I have a feeling that it won't stop so I might as well play along . As stalepixel said humans seem dull when you are a wizard but it is the wizards that are needed to keep the peace and do the really hard work for society because they are blessed with the power of insight, and killer magic staffs of course. Gandalf died for you dammit! Well anyway I call all wizards, Jedis and Dunedain alike to come forth and start reinventing society and how we see fit because I believe it was Bill Hicks who said :"It's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want". So pick up your staffs, your lightsabers and your elven swords and let us ride to glory and peace and slay the metaphorical societal demon that ails us so. It is time to rebuild the Jedi Temple and say goodbye to the 13th century paradigm that has been forced upon a 21st century society which deserves better. Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now! Ride to Ruin and the Worlds ending! Forth Eorlingas!!! (insert epic music and massive horse charge here)

halleluja!

Psychedelics have helped me be more accepting and patient with others. A first impulse when I started taking psychedelics was to consider myself better than most others, for having "awakened", but soon I realized my pretentious hubris and got humbled again with some psychedelic lessons. I've realized how many things I have to work on myself, and how this is an eternal struggle to self-improve. This in turn makes me realize that everybody else is like me, each one with their own struggles, difficulties, in one or other place of the path. If psychedelics showed me we are a continualy changing process, so how can I judge others in an absolute way? They can radically change any second, just like I did in some or other moments of my life.

Another thing psychedelics helped is to look at human relationships in a strategic way. I constantly question myself: what outcome do I want for this interaction? What message do I want to get across, and how can I do it in the best way? What can I learn from this interaction? In this way I dont just react automatically but rather try to do the best I can in a given situation.

And for a more concrete example of how psychedelics affected my ability to relate to others, I remember very distinctly one ayahuasca experience where I saw from the perspective of my mother, how I talked to her without patience. During this intense experience, I've cried and purged, as I realized how much I should be thankful for her, for having taken care of me and raised me with so much love. I've since then completely changed how I act with her.

Absolutely, Primate.

For me, psychs make things hit home a lot harder. Death is very real, people killing people REALLY DOES happen. With psychs I am able to better percieve(IMO) the depth of these terrible atrocities. They become hard to think about and sometimes, it is hard to handle when you know that other people just don't understand what is going on in the world.

But they also give me the flip-side, which makes it all so worth it. My appreciation for family, friends, life, music, etc. has increased x50. I feel closer to all of them, but at the same time, it is sad to know that they do not share the same appreciation that i do.

Being truthful, there is quite a bit of alienation that comes with the psych. perspective. However, it is what it is. I try to take it inn stride, and just go with the flow. I have always been outgoing and friendly, and I don't think any of that has changed. The biggest thing that bugs me is seeing people that are simply content to just "exist" rather than live. That doesn't necessarily mean consumption, but please think free.

But hey, maybe there is no such thing as free thought.

Yes it is true there are terrible attrocities and people causing a lot of damage. At the same time there are a lot of very good things. Just travel around the world, go to small towns, interact with 'simple' people, its so beautiful! I've met some amazing people in life, so I havent lost hope for humanity. Its a pity of course that people in power tend not to be the ones that work for the benefit of others, but hey, that system is failing and the cracks are getting bigger every day. Lets just do our part to improve it, and make the future generations reap from the good seeds we plant.

Whelp, psychedelics have taught me that I am super-fucked (intellectually) as an entity, and in that respect I can take everyday life a little less seriously. I mean; I am relatively as smart or smarter than your average person and I am hopeless (I will explain further if you need) . The regular Joe-Consumer, without benefit of the consciousness expanding drugs, that poor bastard...

I guess I am saying it gave me more empathy for the plight of humanity and the search for meaning in this ever-expanding universe of entropic decay. And in that respect it made me lose a little of the judgmental edge I habitually have when conversing with 'regular' folks.

Ah, what a question! And such varied answers. I feel like Global and endlessness really nailed it on the head for me. I am an empath and psyches have only made that gift that much stronger, which is cool, because it allows me to see through the barriers that people put up. It gives me a better understanding as to why people act and do the things that they do. Don Juan said that Mescalito show you the right way to live and Terrance McKenna has said the same thing about mushrooms. In my experience, they are both correct. But aya, is a different story for me. She went inside and helped me to heal in ways thay I could never have imagined and then, she showed me how to help other people.
Through my experiences with psyches, I have grown immensely and now I strive to better myself. I try to do this by talking to other people, sharing stories of love and life, reading, and living life as fully as possible. I am able to gain new perspectives simply by being compassionate enough to look for the good in everyone....

Psychedelics is like a dip in the tub for me. Cleansing whatever hate and unimportant views i have towards life. Unfortunately i'm mostly sober so the dirt of the world tend to stick on me. My last was some HBWR seeds and i felt the connection between me and my family members, very magical indeed. After a month it's gone and i could care less about their regular bullshit and just decided to focus on myself. It's pretty odd, this duality of man.

I think psychedelics are tools that show us things. But in the end its up to us if we keep the lessons with us or let them fade away. We can just slowly forget the lessons and in the end just totally ignore them. It's unfortunate that it's very easy to slip into the "old" state of mind very easily(if there's so called ignorance in the "old". However as in my experience the change is slow but sure. With each journey comes new change for the better. Kind of like brain rewiring with new peace and love, slowly but surely.

You are right my friend. i figured going back to the old self is merely a defense mechanism of the ego. If one is surrounded with greed and self centeredness, i can only imagine that one will build a cocoon to protect himself from the bad vibes.

But i went deeper and understood that everyone of us became who we are not because we want to but because nature intended us to be this way. There is peace in acceptance but it's terribly difficult to swallow. One is young, perhaps he'll know better in time.

I believe in fate, so I find it easy to believe that we become what nature has intended for us. I have a feeling that the idea of freewill is merely an illusion and that it may seem like we have choices, in reality there was only one the way it happened that could have been...

I feel also that there is only one way.

i realize there are allot of this kind of deterministic (or fatalistic) way of thinking around the nexus...i read this kind of arguments written by some of the best minds here,i just wonder why it is?
can it somehow be connected to the use of psychedelic?
is the old belief in free will already so out of fusion?

just wondering...

I don't know... Think about YOUR forefathers making babies.

Oh well, actually to me it just seems obvious.

Actually, my belief in fatalism stems from an intro to philosophy class that I took last year. We examined determinism, free-will, fatalism, and a few other areas of philosophy and the arguments that were presented in each case seemed to help me build my own case for fatalism. I could be wrong, but that's one of the joys of philosophy - there is no way to prove any of it. Otherwise it would be science. I can only say thay the events in my life have led me to believe in fatalism. Determinism is a bit to encroaching, yet the idea is similar. I just feel like free-will is an illusion created by our concious minds. The girl who sat next to me held very Christian beliefs and felt that any idea besides free-will was just dumb and not worth talking about. I was a bit dissapointed at such a view. Although, one very human trait is being able to hold two conflicting points of view, as a result for me, there are times when I believe that I have a choice in the matter, but later upon later reflection, I feel that it was the only way it could have happened.

surly, at this dimension,but maybe there are other dimensions where your choice was different?...

i don't know,but for me this fatalistic way of view is a bit depressing.

i had a good friend who had a very deterministic view of life, and we used to argue allot about it, he used to abuse allot of drags, as with the years he was getting crazier and crazier, every time after a really bad thing happened to him, he was telling himself it couldn't have happen in any other way, as to me it just looked like he didn't want to take any responsibility over his own life...
at the end he became really mentally ill, he looked as if he was possessed , as if he let some kind of demon take over his soul, and i want to believe that maybe if he would of used his free will, all of this could have been prevented.

but that just me, wanting to believe that that keeps me optimistic.

I think that free will and fate can coexist at the same time on the same plane and here's why: I had a spice trip on a very low dose about 6 months ago and in this trip I saw a sort of fractal sort of string shoot out of my chest (sort of like the liquidy tube thing in donnie darko). This fractal string I was shown was a representation of the path I was following which led to my fate. However whenever I came to a choice I had to make the fractal string would split off into many other strings that represented all the different choices I could make. When I would choose to follow one string, different Mes in different universes or dimensions would split off from me and follow the different choices from the one I had made. This showed me that though we are all following our own paths to our own fates it is our choices that inevitably lead us there rather than the power of fate itself.

tinteresting argument Primate. It reminds me of something I read as a child in relation to Einstein. I believe he thought that for every choice we made, an alternate dimmension would pop up with the opposite choice, thus creating layer upon layer of alternate realities. Perhaps it is just my inclination towards romanticism that leads me to enjoy the idea of fatalism.

A while back I got a ride from a woman and we were talking about philosophy and I expressed me beliefs in fatalism. Later on we were talking about my time spent working with the homeless with my brother and I thought, "what makes me different from these people?" I'm homeless, but for some reason I'm serving food and praying for these people." She said, well, what makes you different? I told her that I had chosen to be homeless, but in all aspects I didn't feel homeless, because the earth was my home. Thus, she pointed out the fallacy of my logic and my beleif in fatalism, saying that I made the choice.

But did I make the choice? Or is this what the culmination of my life has led me to? I also have to say thatt I believe in karma - so does karma negate the possibility of fatalism or determinism? Of does karma just make free-will more difficult because of our pre-inclination towards something because of the things that we did in past live? Shux, now I can't even say that I'm a fatalist - unless I were to hold onto Primates idea, which isn't all that far fetched.

I think it's difficult to tell for certain about the matter of choosing and free will so to speak. I think it's best to go with the flow.

primat,i like your vision,it makes sense to me that time would would behave more like fractal (like everything in nature) than a fine linear line...

well,sure telle, in most cases its better not to straggle to hard, and just go with the flow.
but in some circumstances it is better to make a choice to go into a new stream that goes out of the main stream....
IMO there are some directions we can choose to take within the flow
i guess all of us did that before, didn't we?