Journey back to Self

Forgive me, essays and writing, it can be bullying to subject a reader to a stream of thoughts. This place seems to keep an undertow of seriousness - and so deserves a serious essay. Already it poses the first question on balance between the sacred and the irreverent. I guess it takes a certain panache to stay light-hearted in the wake of an Atlas rocket.

I am feeling ambivalent like the last unspoken word of a Beckett play.
Being here, it’s an exploration. I don’t want to fool myself - that DMT should be all puppies and rainbows. I am looking for the color though between the black and white, as I spend a lot of time in the liminal spaces.

I’ve returned and re-returned to this introduction essay many times. Each time its a different voice, and speaks to the complex of a constant changing self.

This Original Post: I am a Clipper caught in Irons. The OP, it’s a blind date with people you already know. Where to start - the internal argument never ends. A close friend, a good twenty years older, with the ZZ Top beard and Gandalf’s brows, he told me, “Dude. Your brain is like a pogo-stick but you’re so not unstable like a Mars rover.” I resemble that.

The reason I am here feels like it keeps shifting, in drifts and in dunes of sand and psyche.

I’ve been the intrepid mind explorer since 1982, when I wrote my first tenth grade term paper on Albert Hoffman and LSD. And then waited. I was a good kid, conforming mostly but curious, though never really fit in, often felt like an outsider; but kept straight A’s, honors and AP, was destined for Cal Berkeley. But that never happened: I took my first dose in 1983.

Now I’m half way through life. I have a beautiful family, enjoy my work and colleagues, though culture’s a bit corporate, button down, button up; but lots of love in the life, and lots of alone time too. While the crew sleeps I’m cutting the fog through waves of undulating grays and synapses. I’ve pretty much have always sailed solo. But I think it’s time to start re-learning the lessons of a supportive community.

It’s not a struggle but in some ways a lonely road. I have no peers really to discuss this with. I think this too is a driver behind the essay. The idea of admittance to a community.

Regardless, had I discovered DMT-Nexus or not, I was going to get here: I have all the source material and lab equipment now, have read and re-read many texts, endless times. I’ve listened to countless talks of Terrence McKenna, love to digest books, especially Robert Anton Wilson, Mae Wan Ho, Miller, Mishima, Hofstadter, Borges. As terse as Borges is, every re-reading of his short stories, it’s like visiting with an old friend. Cigar on the stoop and a lazy command of the world. A life time of prep, getting all psyched up, but in slow motion - a stop frame animation of clouds rolling and flora opening - through my mostly steady manner. Scaling K2 or spelunking Son Doong takes planning, patience, stamina. Fearlessness? DMT does not strike me as an impulsive picnic.

So I am returning to where I was scared witless from my first break through:

In 1986 Oakland CA , my first and only Grateful Dead / Dylan concert, already enjoying a wondrous tab of LSD, when a friend asks if I'd like to smoke some marijuana; and so produces the tiniest dime bag I had ever seen, a postage stamp with one distal sized bud. I have one toke and am suddenly propelled into a swirling vortex of kaleidoscopic shards and colored light, waves of crashing geometries and into the most beautiful and terrifying Bliss. The firmament on Fire. And I am introduced...to myself....and the Universe.

I exclaim the wonder! And my friend’s every response is a question, “Or is it?” And he says, “I am you. And you are me.” The thousands around us go into a blur. And I see myself in him, a doppelganger, talking back, serious, funny, macabre, a fun-house mirror right out of Duck Soup. And to the side a third appears, an old man, stooped and craggy faced, long unkempt beard, wild and sullen eyes: we look at one another, both ashamed, lost. At that moment I realize I have to get out of the concert. Dylan is taking the stage while streams of concert goers are leaving, an endless river to the BART, and if I don’t get out of there, I am that old man, stuck, forever lost at the Dead.

In the next week during an Indian Philosophy class in the University I am introduced to the Upanishads, where we discuss Sat, Chit and Anand: pure being, consciousness and joy. Brahma and Atma, self and Self and All, Oneness. I almost couldn’t contain my excitement, that that was part of my ineffable experience at the concert. I’ve reached back millennia and across to an alien culture. More than ever now I am convinced that that little dime bag was in fact bud with DMT.

I have been seeking ever since, walking the labyrinth slowly back to center. A beautiful, strange and Inspiring journey. Dovened with Chasids, studied with Witnesses, immersed myself in Suzuki, Zen, some meditation, yoga, Buddhist studies, transpersonal psychology, even Crowley, Kabbalah, Greene, Hawking, and Lao Tsu. I agree with the skeptics and still call myself a Pantheist. It’s all good - until someone loses an eye. As much I like the edge I still wear safety glasses and a helmut.

There's always been a balance between drive and restraint - circling, spiraling and navigating, charting the stars, back to the DMT experience.

I am at the beach, often, always. Standing in the water at the shore. When is it that I am in the ocean, and when is it that I am on the beach? It is this liminal place of the in-between, neither one nor the other, but both. Where the waves crash, it’s dynamic, energy in motion. I imagine that this is what it is like beyond the horizon. If I use DMT (or is it the DMT calling me?) and get back to the questions, do I get back there again? Do I want to?

As a child I thought I could see molecules. If I relax my gaze even today I feel like I can still see them. A snowy veneer over everything I see. The pointillism of Seurat. It's a color-noise that forms and surfaces and essences arise from. I also thought I could fly. Maybe I was three, definitely not four. I have memories of jumping up high in front of the house, right off from the lawn. My father was reaching up to try to catch me. I was floating away, and I would flap my arms furiously downward, palms up, trying to push the air so I would descend. I felt that if I got too high and too far away, I would float off. I had to return to earth, back to my father's hands.

I feel like I have a lot to say, too much at times. A hundred me's with arms outstretched could not embrace all the thoughts. Is that Avalokiteshvara with her thousand arms? "Should He ever become disheartened in saving sentient beings, may His body shatter into a thousand pieces." The thousand pieces, like the break through on DMT.
Might we pass through these shards on the way in?

A recursive life.

Why am I here on the Nexus? Deconstructing the personal myth? Pirsig did.
The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are, our pattern, our stasis. The static quality that gives rise to form. And then we reach, to novelty, to a disruption, the dynamic quality. I believe this is DMT’s calling to me.

One moment, The Bug-Angels&Devils, the next moment, Bach - Fugue in G minor. BWV 578. The internal argument never ending. They are deconstructing the Art of Fugue. Isn't that what we do? What happens when we break through?

A few years ago I got this yen, this itch, to smoke cannabis again. It had been years. More than a decade. But not to party. It was contemplative now. I started painting. Madly painting. It was returning. Even the cannabis is feeling like a sacrament.
So I allow the falling inward into a thousand lighted strands like clouded cob webs shimmering. Deep into the fugue. And my skin gets warm.

Since I’ve felt a rising sense of compassion. This has been new for me. Guy shows up in the pipe shop in such bad shape. You could see him struggling. He was on the verge of tears at every wince, standing there, trying to hold on. Young man. Tall. He should have been a CEO. Whatever hand he was dealt and played, now he is here. Unbathed. Hair long and matted. Filthy. Urchin, even Rascal like. Everything he owned was on his person: backpack, bed roll, long wooly hat. So strange for the hot weather beachside.

I would have in the past recoiled. But now I feel this rising call to help somehow. This kid needed help. I don't think this was his choice. I think there must be a kindness dividend somehow. Like change. In your pocket.

I blink and the days slip by.

I soften my gaze and let the three dimensional world flatten like an illuminated, medieval painting. I’ve always felt that I could swing a hammer into the field of sight and shatter it like a mirror.

Funny how much digging goes into writing an essay. I am darkening my own shadow, and starting to feel more trepidatious about the DMT journey. I am starting to scare myself, some. Is this something I want? Could I be ascribing far more importance to this than is real or warranted? Do I need more questions in my life?

Freedom of Thought to me seems to be worth fighting for.
Perhaps some day I will proudly say Smoalk Moar. And if not, that is okay too.

Cheers, thank you if you made it this far (brevity isn’t my finest point), and looking forward to contributing beyond lurking and voracious reading.

- Alloklais

You seriously seem to have the calling. Not trying to place suggestion, but you ARE here after all. Also, a comment on that first tiny dime bag at the concert, could have been salvia, although I don't know if it was very prevalent or known then in '86.

I say go ahead and follow your calling. I'm so glad I did. I'm a lot like the pogo stick and lunar rover analogy now in this stage of life (mid 30's). I planned and researched for half a decade and then it still sit in waiting for months after extraction. It has been like x-ray glasses to society, governments, currency, media, trends, and so much more. Bullexcrement cutter of the highest sorts. I always thought I saw through that stuff, but I now know the extent to which their programming had reached me. Not so much answers but an express highway to questions.

I would love to see trip reports of future recent to come travels just to see them in your flow of thought style.

Excellent introduction and welcome!

FloorFan, much obliged for the welcome and encouragement.
Yeah, discovering and asking the right questions for me really seems to set-up the frame for the experience, and so not to get lost in boundlessness. I know it gets abstract. In the end I still have to get the laundry done. Great to hear another voice from across the gulf. Thanks!

Hey Alloklais,

I'm so glad you're here. I very much enjoyed your music.
I wanted to extend my own personal welcome and excitement you've joined this community!
There is no other place like this I think,
This space is truly magical.

I've been sub threshold style smoking the amber of forever and I must say I can relate to your resonance.
There is this weird resistance - if not resistance, than temperance, some kind of self-regulating factor to the plant/mushroom.
I personally have a deep relationship to the mushroom in particular versus the other entheogens. And interestingly, every time I commit to a theorized week long venture into the dark waters of mind, by taking five grams dried every morning and night, I find that this is stupidly, laughably, and obnoxiously silly after being loaded but two hours. I then will have absolutely zero desire to eat them again for quite a long time.
It's as if there comes a center of awareness, a space of perfect peace beyond perturbation. The point to existence is understood - what McKenna called pure understanding. And the essential point to remember from that experience is that all experience is valid - God is Now; it matters not if it's on cigarettes, MDMA, psilocybin, dmt, mescaline, caffeine, love.
Time is always Now.
After having that experience, for me, the cannabis became a sacrament. I think cannabis can be psychologically married to and synchronized with the cognitive atmosphere of the so-called psychedelic headspace. Many report on the nexus of this phenomenon. It's as if having experienced the full range of compounds and their respective effects the cannabis can reliably be used as an ally to 'remember' and 'reenter into'.
Friend, just remember you already know all of this.
You will act in the way exactly as you ultimately intend.
This is why the Nexus is here.

Hi Anamnesia,
Thank you for the welcome, I'm glad to be here!
I'm not sure how to put it in words yet, but I have two feelings to share after reading your welcome: I listen closely - it's so quiet, like the sound of insects walking - knowing when using cannabis or any sacrament has instead become an empty ritual, when there's no gift to bring back from using it. Like this last week, I've had no desire at all to explore those spaces at all, no writing, no painting, no music. I didn't smoke. While the previous weeks I would use cannabis concentrates regularly every night, staying up to watch the sky turn. I have diaries filled of notes, thoughts, ritual. But then that call feels ... not fulfilled, but not necessary now. It comes and goes in waves.

But when the waves crest, there's always this hurry up, hurry up, such drive! And then the table is set. But I'm no longer hungry. The preparation was enough. I keep scaling the ridges, and just before the peak - I ask myself, why am I climbing? As if I forgot the Why. And so carefully, I scale back down. But I have my rigs and gear, always ready to go.

Funny, I had some vacation time from work recently, I was planning to do some deep psychedelic research. My wife was working, my son was in day camp. I had plenty of alone time, freedom, and I had all these plans. But none of it happened. It was enough to get to the beach with a great book, swim in the breakers and nap in the sun: so all the crustaceans could melt off from my psyche.

Wow that's amazing. It comes and goes in waves - yes yes yes.
In the way the day will flow, all things come all things go!
Oh! here we go, approaching the apex the denouement the final enlightening moment when we'll finally understand the point. Here it comes, the peak, the absolute center, the fulcrum of forever! Finally! yes! I'll have that goodie-goodie that all of life is about, that one piece of information that puts me to peace.
And once I get that, I'll have it, methinks.

But wait, what am I after? 'I forgot the Why'.
Why am I climbing? It's the same reason we desire.
There is no why just as there is no try.
There is simply doing or not doing.
There is being here Now. There is not being here Now.

You're intuition is the best teacher their is.
And you will do exactly as you ultimately intend.
I just really love your story. I've had countless times the same experience.

For example, I'll make DMT, or harvest a new flush of fresh mushrooms. And it may be two months before I get on with taking the things.
I love your story! The peak isn't all there is. How can one reach the mountain peak without the slope of the mountain? The mountain lifts the traveler up the slope just as much as when the traveler is standing at the mountain peak. Everywhere is essential; every path is the right path; every obstacle is essential; every human being becomes a sage; everything is perfect, exactly right. I love your story Life is not a race. And if it is you are not a traveler, but a prisoner.

It's amazing how long one takes to "prepare". The preparation, as you said, in a sense is realized to be part of the whole point. Because preparation is as much ritual as is ritual. Ritual, meditation, prayer, music, dance - it's all about digging the immediate happening. You see, when we remember things we can only do so at an equivalent expense of not paying attention to what is happening in the same moment you are doing the paying attention. Likewise is true when we project our minds onto the future - oceans of probabilities, all of which have virtually happened the moment we imagine them.

But there is a focal point that is everywhere the center - like a point on the surface of a sphere. In the same way, no matter what one does, thinks, or feels, one is immediately contacting nothing by virtue of the mental procession of percepts, which are the building blocks of concepts, or ideas. Where as concepts are sentences, percepts are words. That subvocalized mentation in our heads is the chatter, which is Not You. That chatter is the habitual trafficking of language constellating what we fancy to be ourselves, our personalities, our image of ourselves, our feeling that we are centers of awareness that can't remember where the hell we came from. We didn't choose to wake up from birth, did we?

Anyway, Alloklais, I am laughing along with you. So strange that we do that. That's what I mean what I call these things self-regulating. In the media, people want to talk about addiction. Or that psychedelics make you crazy. All this jazz.
But none of them have taken entheogens - but have some mighty strong opinions about them. Amazing. No experience. Full of opinions. Wha? But speaking of addiction, I will testify these things are the furthest from being addictive.

They are liberators of addiction.

Hi Anamnesia,

Our conversation has reminded me about a return to what is most important to me. My meditations have only just touched but time I think to be more engaged mostly about transitional work with the dying, like in hospice or in palliative care. At one time I thought the work may have been about being a psychopomp, the idea of leading a soul through its transition from this life to a next. But not yet...I know there are some other explorations to do first, like a getting a handle here first in my immediate orbit with my own family; and what it means to approach death and dying in a new, conscious and compassionate way.

A couple years ago I found Dale Blorglum's Living/Dying project. I've some videos/talks and have read most of what I could find online. Appears also he does some workshops with Richard Alpert / Ram Dass, who to me played Stan Laurel to Timothy Leary's Oliver Hardy at the start of the psychedelic revolution.

Happy Serendipity tonight, so looking up Alpert I found this both prescient and funny: for 1966 this must have seemed very radical to the establishment, threatening even, a PhD discussing dissolution of the current societal ego; and immediately thought of some of the themes you were touching on from your post:



Though not directly related to death and dying care, to me this 1966 video sets a stage with a tone, even a humorous one. Plus, there is the growing body of work employing psychedelics to alleviate the existential crisis of the dying in our imbalanced culture. And then I think of my parents and their generation: they would have been in their late 30's with three kids then. They're wonderful: loving and solid, but getting way up there in age, so their passing, it's approaching: my guess the next decade? Listening to Alpert talk, trying to find the words to describe the revelation and shedding of his psychological garments, and I started chuckling, imagining that one day maybe I would be shrooming with my folks! I couldn't imagine anything more bizarre, endearing, funny, sad, and loving.