I believe in anarchy, because I see an EVIL in this world that I don't believe a little psychedelic community(I don't even see this as a "community" necessarily anyway) is going to passively dissolve. Is this community growing as fast as the rainforests of our planet are being cut down? If we cant be political enough to even voice a collective opinion on such things than this is just very very sad and pathetic.

There are some pretty damn even mofo's out there, that need to be brought down as quickly as that is possible. I don't have the answer, but I do believe in anarchy in it's most original and pure form.

Obviously.

That is the point. You can choose to take up a burden... or not. You can also do as the great bluesmen said and "lay your burden down."

Obviously it is a choice. Obviously it comes from you. And obviously, whether you are awake, asleep or tripping balls when novelty comes your way... it is the same burden you can choose to assume in bringing it forth.

I have trouble seeing how anyone doesn't see this. No offense to you Jbark. Nor my esteemed colleague Ice House. I have agreed with plenty that both of you have said over the years, and find you both to be intelligent and articulate.

I would love to say that our debate here is purely semantics, but I know better. It is a fundamental divide in how people perceive the value of ego and worth. Don't get me wrong, I love a good ego death as much as the next psychonaut, and I spend a ridiculous amount of time in meditation... but I am not anti-ego. The ego has a valid and useful purpose. That is why we created them for ourselves.

To wear an ego around but despise egos is like wearing an ironic costume to a costume party. Why bother?

nothing wrong with ego..and it's not(IMO" an illusion either..I get sick of hearing all this new age crap people spew out sometimes. Ego is ego and it exists, and it exists for a good reason. Transcending something does not mean that thing is just illusion or does not exist.

I even think its possible some otherwise potent spiritual traditions are a bit confused here..just my opinion. I think the most pure and innocent time was when we were just people of the trees. Before this whole dichotomy took root.

Seems like you got it all figured out HF.

I'd love to hear about this process of ego creation you have engaged in.
This would almost seem to imply that you birthed yourself...
If you birthed yourself then you must have insight into this zen koan.

What was your consciousness before your were born...

Peace

Actaully I have had the experience of birthing myself and I went from what I was before I was born(my parents etc) to what I could be next(my future children). It was very clear and not something I saw, but something I experienced.

I don't believe there are people out there without egos who are not vegetables with feeding tubes being taken care of by everyone else..but that is just my opinion, I could be wrong...but how are you going to function if you have no sense of self and cant distinguish boundries? I think the real issue is how people homogenize the concept of ego, as if all ego is the same thing..and then inevitably turn it into a sort of pseudo demon.

I think that if someone is sitting there saying they have no ego left, and they are functioning in this world, than they are probly sort of really caught up in semantics and confused about what ego really is.

I think most people build up the ego until it is a fortress they are sort of trapped within, instead of a transparent house they know is flexible and understand there is an "outside".

I have in mind the fact that in the West, at least since the sixties counter-culture, teacher plants and chemicals have been feeding into the formation of alternative communities. The same can be said of the aya 'lodges' in Peru, which are their own form of community/business; and also the syncretic religions like Daime and UdV... Maybe similar things on a smaller scale are happening with DMT... Perhaps all of this also has an esoteric history which we are now rediscovering, along with a kind of experiential kinship with the indigenous peoples who've kept the entheogenic fires burning...

So communities of sorts are growing up, and a conscious community will think about its own politics. Or else it will reproduce old cabbageheaded politics.

Regarding the debate here between Ice House and Hyperspace Fool, and others: at some point in western history the path of inner liberation (spirituality) got separated from the path of outer liberation (political activism). The two paths attract different types of people, and the lessons learned on those paths often consolidate those differences, to the point of mutual incomprehension and condescension.

But there is also a dialectic of experience and self-interrogation on each side which sometimes weaves them back together; without ever producing unity. At best the spiritual people come to understand - usually in the middle of an economic crisis or a war - how desperately naive they have been about the socio-historical domain. The activists suddenly realise - usually in the middle of a personal life crisis - what treasures have been sleeping inside their souls.

The plants are one of the sites where that meeting can happen.

And that is all to the good. Humanity needs both. It needs a more thoughtful and empathic relation between inner and outer, personal and social, mystic illumination and revolution.

When I was younger I said like many people.... I'll never use algebra or advanced math.
I could have probably lived my entire life and never used it, sure.

Of course the once or twice I found myself in a situation where it was useful, well, I was happy to already know it.

@ Chadaev

While I agree, in general, with your assessment of this dichotomy in society, I don't think that is what we see here. Entheogen activists tend to be rather spiritual. Speaking for myself, I would say, as resident wizened old mystic, debate enthusiast, and pitcher of woo around here... I would be both far more active than most and far more involved in working with the spiritual and cosmic sides of things.

If anything, it would be the more strict rational materialist skeptics of the Nexus that embody the type you paint as activist. And, in a rather unique conundrum here, they also tend to be the ones trying to cool the jets of the hot-headed cosmic cats who want to overturn the system and push the mysteries in the faces of the sleepwalking masses. Thus, making up the bulk of the ant-activist, "all about the chemistry" crowd for whatever reason. There are exceptions, and you certainly do have some material minded anarchists and rabble rousers... as well as some rather zen types here.

Which brings me back to my brother joedirt and the ego subthread. (see next post)

I engage in both the typical piecemeal constant ego mask maintenance and fabrication that everyone else is doing (only far more deliberately and consciously) AND a much more comprehensive type which I will describe briefly.

Many people might recognize this sort of ego manufacture from their ego-death experiences, though in the cases of entheogen inspired ego-death, this can be a gradual and not-altogether conscious process, as you slowly rebuild your sense of self from the cosmic all... often by rote and according to your old blueprints.

Shaman and mystics tend to drive their own bus in this, and realize that they can wear whatever masks (personas) they choose to, and become creative in the "self" they construct.

For me, my most frequent experience of this is in the related topic of Lucid Dreaming and Dreamwork in general. I have had more than my fair share of entheogen fueled ego dissolution, and have managed the feat sober via meditation and energy work... but I Lucid Dream every night... and time can be ridiculously dilated in dream.

In dreaming, we tend to invent related but slightly altered egos for ourselves based on the dream we are manifesting. You might find that you even look different in some dreams... you might have another name... usually you are involved in situations, activities and scenarios that are not identical to your current "real life" dramas. Many people won't notice this due to the "amnesiac return" that happens when you cross between dream worlds. Most people remember almost nothing of their oneironautic activities. Even I, when I remember 10 dreams in the morning, know I am only recalling a small fraction of what really took place. The fact is that you could live out entire lifetimes in your dreams... and often do.

The thing about being an experienced dreamer is that you can maintain consciousness in the transition between dream worlds. You can go directly from waking to lucid dreaming without falling asleep (i.e. WILDing Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming) and you can choose to leave a dream and go to any of an infinite number of other dreams as you see fit.

This gives a conscious dreamer many opportunities to manufacture egos... as well as dream worlds. You can play any role you want. Most frequently I tend to white out... and in a situation reminiscent of the first Matrix film... reconstruct reality from nothing. It is in the transition from manifestation to inhabiting the dream that you assume your new identity. You become the lead role in the film you were designing. New memories flood in, and if you are not rather careful to maintain your lucidity... the knowledge, memories and info you had that don't match the new ID will be lost--temporarily--and you will believe the dream to be real.

The interesting thing about ego creation that often gets overlooked... is that you don't have to be egoless to do it. Naturally, it is almost assured that you will manufacture an ego for yourself if you come down from egolessness... but there is no requirement that you take off one mask to make another... or to modify the one you are wearing.

In dreaming I tend to have a basic über ego... something between my waking ego and my superconscious highest self. It is from this state that ego creation is generally enacted. This is mostly because when you are truly egoless, you have no desire. Without desire, curiosity, or even interest... there is no impetus for creative ego manufacture. Another reason why most people tend to return from ego-death as the same old ego that they were before... with an afterglow of enlightenment perhaps.

I guess I have rambled on long enough... but to answer your koan:

Time is an illusion. Therefore there is no single thing or state of being that can be considered before. I am thus the totality of all time and space... having played infinite roles and observed this multi-dimensional thing we are from every possible angle. I am the watcher of the watcher of the watcher... and even that is just one of my masks.

lgreok rororo rir ririr jviekeke edk' dkdkef krfrrr kkkkek fkfkk olppppppfm'adffppff kfpdpdpdlld. gfjroijgrei ggrtitittignrotpeoggg g gjgigg ig99in43 g99rgirrgrgpirirrkf,;;; m

Err... sorry about the bizarre spelling and grammatical errors. Or are they really errors? It makes me pause in awe and wonderment...

Wasn't back yet... my bad. But it's all good and it's all God! And I think this last post by HF sums up sooooooo much of this voyage we embark upon... the dream of existence and our discovery of what we are doing behind the scenes of our mind-stuff. What is oneself? Where can it be found? Where is it not found? Whose is it, for who dreams this dreamscape, in reality? Just who owns this dream... or is it up fro grabs? Is it mine, yours, all of ours collectively... or no one's at all? Is it an utter illusion or is it as REAL as we make it?

I cannot say for sure... because I do not know. "My knowledge comes from an unknowing". Is this then, a special unknowing? Is this then, some kind of total confusion? I believe I do know... but I cannot pull it down into linguistic terminology. There are no human words for this kind of experience, nor any way to make something so insubstantial, concretely substantial. But there is the BUZZZZZZZ...

When mind is still and does not move from zero-point, who is left to freely observe it's effect? Is there an effect or does this need a subjective witness to exist? It is so overwhelming to pin down, sometimes... that I only know that MOST of my own perceptual intake is a game of hide and seek I play within myself. Again, what is within myself and what is outside of myself? I live to embrace this Gnosis.

Self... the final frontier? Where does mine end and yours begin? In this exact moment, I cannot see any lines of separation but somewhere in the back of my smokey memory loops, I remember many expressions of just one experience.

And I am not saying I am megalomaniacally having a discussion with myself... but I am so empty of definitions of I/me/mine... that... "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Thank you John Lennon and a big thank you, dearest brother, Hyperspace Fool. And EVERYONE else on this Nexian thought-wave. You folks all rock my world!!!

onion egos

Yes, this is so true. ^^^

We are all egos fascinated and perplexed by the Grand Riddle. We, as sentient monkeys, sit in wonderment, as we peel away the concentric layers of the Cosmic Onion, one by one, deeper, deeper, deeper and still deeper... only to find nothing tangible left to observe in the very core and epicenter.

But oh, what a wondrous feeling, when the curious peeling is incrementally undone!!!

Where does the onion begin and where does it end? Where does oneself begin and where does it end? It doesn't begin or end... it simply IS existent for some progressional sequence and a cyclical whirl through time. We are that, in it's relative entirety, as well as dream away, by accepting our perceptual field as being real and solid.

Universally, Omniversally or whatever we want to call the macrocosm... it's all the same enigmatic surge of beingness, becoming itself and then releasing the Sacred inter-phase and thus, returning to the silence of the transcendent Void.

We are ourselves, "onion egos" in full bloom. Operation Onion has begun... and we are the external surface, the concentric rings within, as well as the ineffable emptiness in the central interior of the onion. And it cannot be found by the ego. No things... no limits... no membranes of separation. But oh, the sheer bliss, oh the enraptured sweetness, flooding throughout this eternal moment, blossoming effulgently on it's own terms. To mego the ego... this is no burden at all, it is a joy beyond compare!

We are so many onion rings in endless transition, eh? Funny thing about peeling onions... they make you cry. Perhaps this, then explains the flood of joyful tears? I honestly don't know.

All I can do is smile at the sky, in beatific, rapturous wonderment and so, bloom exponentially, beyond my wildest dreams!!!

HF comparing your experience with MMJ activism and entheogen activism and thinking whats right for one is right for the other is exactly what the entheogen community does not need.



I love this statement, above.

I see a place for activism for entheogen use but I get the impression its very different from what you consider activism.

I understand you have experience with MMJ activism. I hope you're not comparing the two in suggesting that the two situations are similar, they are not. Confusing that is very dangerous for the entheogen community as a whole. Suggesting that you know how to effectively represent the entheogen community as an activist because of your MMJ activism is not wise.

Ego is what pushes most the activists Ive ever met, I have met my share. Ego gets in the way here, nothing good will come from any radical activism that attempts to promote or support entheogen use within the, as you call them, sleepwalking masses. The past has taught us that all too well.

HF I appreciate and respect you point of view, I love your passion and energy level.

Our position as entheogen users, teachers, advocates, and activists or whatever you are must be a position that protects the huge gains we have made in the past decade or two. Radical activism will only create negative press and bring closer scrutiny upon us by law enforcement agencies.

Don't let ego get in the way on this topic.

Any activism on this topic should be strategic, it must build on gains that have already been made and not delay, impede, or destroy hard scientific/analytical and clinical/therapeutic work that is taking place at this time.

Im just curious, when you mention activism in the entheogen community, what does that look like what does it entail? Maybe we share the same beliefs and are just not verbalizing it.


Respectfully,

IH

I suspect a lot of activism actually comes out of very damaged and sensitive psyches which are seeking reparation for what the world (in the guise of parents, schools, bullies, circumstances, etc) did to them early on. And the way they seek reparation is in the generous form of harnessing their egos to an ideal for the world. They know that those who damaged them were in turn damaged. And from their pain they empathise strongly with the pain of the downtrodden, the least of this world. This is why they are 'idealists'. Generally with very strong superegos - hence, at least when times are tough and the left is thin on the ground, the self-righteousness, hardness, and lack of humour which comes from fighting losing battles and, nonetheless, just not giving up.

To speak of 'ego' seems to have become a spiritual shorthand, with American ego-psychology joining hands with its apparent contrary, western Buddhism, to naturalise the language. Genuine interiority is clearly much more complex.

(As for a lot of what is diagnosed as 'egotistical' in the everyday, selfish run of the mill world, it is perhaps better thought of as being in the grip of transpersonal psychic forces - up to and including the death drive. 'Ego' credits too much autonomy to a lot of people. They are bounded selves, to be sure, but their egoism, like their opinions, their interpretation of their emotions, etc, is only a minor variation on the transpersonal muzak.)



But the cat is out of the bag. People are producing glossy promos for ayahuasca and telling anyone who can watch a youtube video to come to Peru and shazam, all their problems will be over.

We don't control the cultural process.

And fortunately it's not an entirely negative process.

How to respond within it? Try to be models of responsible and brave and creative usage. Take up the argument within institutions where the door is only 95% closed rather than locked and bolted. Develop mutual support systems. Refuse to mirror your workmates the way the demand to be mirrored... And, hopefully (no?), try and be ready to go on coordinated offensive in support of those who bear the brunt of state repression, when it comes and where it comes. Or should we let people swing in the wind, lest we ourselves be flushed out? ... A genuine dilemma to be sure.

Curiouser and curiouser

But not sure I got that last paragraph. The materialist skeptics are a) like activists outside the Nexus (how so?), yet b) are anti-activists when it comes to prosletysing about entheogens?

It would be highly speculative, but still, someone knowledgeable should definitely try to elaborate on this sketch. If we cross-tabulated basic what we can discern of ontological stance (spiritualist, materialist, etc) and politics (reformist, revolutionary, neoliberal, etc) on the Nexus, what map would we get? Can you fill it out a bit HF?

@ Chadaev

I was responding to your comment below about activists realizing in a personal crisis the spiritual side of things (which tends to be how skeptics find spirituality IMHO). The polemic is somewhat faulty was my point, but instead of expounding upon a polemical analogy that I didn't quite jibe with... I say we toss it. There are a wide variety of people with a bewildering range of responses to advocacy and activism... which are two things that are not mutually exclusive.

The danger in taking up another person's analogy is that you find yourself limited to a playing field that doesn't quite include your conceptions. Hehehehe.

So I say we refrain from further convolution of the matter here. This ties back to what I want to say to:

@ Ice House

I fear that we have so derailed this thread, and left the path entirely... that we should really carry this conversation over to a more appropriate venue. The fact that the OP has not bothered to chime in, and that we only superficially are touching upon his question at this point... makes me think we need to jump threads here.

I am happy to discuss at length my feelings on the differences and similarities between cannabis, entheogen and other drug prohibition activism. It is a thorny topic, and one that deserves a thread of its own in the "Coalition For Entheogenic Liberty" forum IMHO. However, since it dovetails with a running theme on the thread I started already to channel another tangent here about Utopian Political Philosophies... I will post my reply to you there.

(note: This is my reply to you IH)

My apologies to Disembodied for commandeering his thread.

HF, imitating the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, screams "New Thread! New Thread! Move down, move down. New thread, new thread... move down."

the old thread finally fits comfy tho.

Cool. I've been conscious of derailing things too. Although conversations always lay their own rails...

Anyway, thanks HF and IH and everyone else for speaking from the heart.

I am not against threads evolving and changing topics and behaving organically... I just find that:

a) If the OP never chimes back in and we have left his or her post far behind, a new thread is in order.

b) Threads that get many many pages deep become too dense for newcomers to read all that came before, and thus limits participation. It also makes it rather difficult for one to find the conversation later.

So, IMHO 100 posts and a MIA OP make me feel that this valid and interesting conversation deserves its own spot. I know the OP doesn't own or even moderate the thread they create... but it is a bit like partying in someone else's house when they are not home. ;-)