Hi everyone! I am very glad to be here.
I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian home (Lutheran.) I knew how much my parents despised gay people before I realized I was gay at around ten. I did a great deal of introspection back then. When I was 13 or so, I'd wake up in hot sweats in my bed, fearing I would go to Hell. By this point I had gotten very good at lying to my parents; being their perfect little boy. I learned I could be a different person at school, too. I could wear many different masks pretty easily.
From a devout belief in God I became Deist for a very brief period, then flirted with agnostic before choosing a harsher atheist label. I focused on my career, and on ignoring the pain we inflict on others. I was successful, and convinced myself I was happy, too.
I managed to hold onto my boyfriend (now husband) through my jaded time. I do system engineering stuffs. I dislike alcohol, and my boyfriend and I smoked a lot of weed when we were younger, so we started getting back into that. I was pretty socialist in school, but had hardened myself into an upright capitalist. I had a really hard ego. It started to crack.
LSD never really separated me from my ego. It hinted at it, but never achieved it at the doses I had explored. (Not until I learned how.) But it also made further cracks against my ego. I slowly wanted to become a better person.
I had been knowledgeable in Zen Buddhism prior to my first experience with DMT, however I never really bought into it. All I saw were lies and riddles people pretended to have silly answers for. But I liked a lot of the philosophy.
I very much believed my consciousness originated from my body and mind.
After trying DMT at sub-breakthrough levels a few times, I decided I wanted to see the elves. I wanted to see if I
could see them, or if they were something you had to believe in to see. Because even on 360ug of LSD I had only seen neat visuals, and a blissful detachment of self, but never hallucinations or visions.
My first DMT breakthrough: Shiny tubular shaman things danced with me. I felt so welcomed. I was ecstatic. I felt like something parental was frustrated I was just celebrating, but the shaman things seemed to be saying "c'mon let him get his groove on". Only they weren't saying "groove" -- it was some strange word.
It was the most intense thing I had ever experienced. But I wasn't about to chalk it up to the supernatural, yet. I researched some more, and found some suggested evidence that blasting off while on an LSD trip could crystalize the visions more clearly. So I tried this the next day, on a 400ug dose, post-peak during the nice time of the trip.
I was transported to a room with rainbow walls. The entities seemed to be at a polite distance. I felt i was being oriented or something.
The next day, I thought, and thought, and thought. I was full of thoughts. Full of questions. I read voraciously.
The next day at work, I started to read 'I am that.' by Nisargadatta Maharaj. At this point, I was searching so hard. I knew I had stumbled onto something. But I couldn't understand it.
Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you
are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not.
Struggle to find out what you are in realityThis was a question I could ponder. So I did. I asked it all day in the back of my head as I worked. I thought of nothing else. I don't think I got much work done, actually :/ I was still thinking about it on my walk to the train station that evening.
"I am human..." No; that wasn't right. I was trying to understand my consciousness. I couldn't say for sure that I identified as an ape. I didn't identify as bisexual, despite having some slight interest in women.
I am...what? Not the atoms in my body. A jumble of quantum states? I refused to cheat with a supernatural answer. I tried very hard to remember what it
felt like during the DMT trip. The weird alien familiarity. The--
It was a flash. I stopped walking. It felt like something I
completely rejected: revelation. But there it was -- clarity on who I was. And I started to cry. I wanted to just sit down on the sidewalk and be happy, but my ape had to catch the train.
I realized I had found an entire new mountain to explore. The most majestic one I had ever even considered. I started reading as much about Zen Buddhism as I could. I read the koans, again, and started to understand them. It was a beginning.
In my trips since, I have visited deep expanses of space, where I felt the presence of what I call the source for lack of anything better. I have only visited that once. I very often see the elves, more when I am partying than when I am thinking. My trips vary between a tribal shaman rave where everything wants in me, and quieter moments of experience. I have felt as if I were a thousand people at once. I have felt one with the compressed sawdust that comprise my bookshelf.
Today, I was a frog. I had wanted to be a cat. But I was having the most awesome time, slightly damp, sitting there. Flicking my tongue out and catching a fly, it was so much fun. I could feel the fly in my mouth, it felt neat. I rolled it around my tongue, and swallowed the fake-real fly. It was delicious. It was satisfying. It was fun. I totally enjoyed sitting there, flicking my tongue out to get that fly. It was the bestest thing ever.
Every time I come back, I feel like I understand more. I grok more. At the end, I usually sigh and have the sense of, "I am here, again."
I believe that for a very brief time, DMT allows me to sever fully my connection to my ego, and experience something closer to my true self. It is very spiritual for me, who before revelation, despised everything religious and spiritual. I am studying both Zen Buddhism and Shamanism with much more interest, now.
Although my DMT trips have been some of the greatest experiences of my life, I am always somewhat anxious. My heart rate and blood pressure increase before I do anything, solely through anticipation. I think my ego is afraid, every time. But also excited.
Ego death is the "big death"; physical death the "small death." I have belief, now. I believe ego death is the only death their is.
There is never a sadness to see my ego go. Not even during the anticipation.
But I experience a slight resignation when my ego starts to reform. After those glorious two minutes or so.
My ego does not run this ape's life, anymore. He is working on his meditation and art.
If LSD granted me better empathy, DMT helped me discover my spirit.
Thank you for reading! :3