There are many ways to get around the pre-flight anxiety that many if not most DMT users experience prior to blasting off. Below are some of my techniques for both getting over the hump and then comfortably working through the DMT data without drowning in it. The centerpiece of all these techniques would probably be "Holding onto the last hit to tune your experience."
All mechanisms need a motivating factor for them to continue operations. You need to want this experience to work. Approaching this method with the intent of having a bummer is just counterintuitive, but of course I suppose it's possible. There can be doubt (more on that below,) but just be mindful of it and you’ll be just fine. Is one hand feeding the other? Certainly. You do not need to do this, but if you are currently reading this and experiencing trouble with your nerves when breaking through due to preflight anxiety, these steps will help you manage them.
Centering yourself is huge. I'm not including it in my steps below, as everyone has their own way they center themselves, but the most common is meditation. I try to work on mindfulness for a minimum of half of the time I expect to be in a trance (i.e. freebase DMT should be preceded by 7-15 minutes meditation, at a minimum.) If you find yourself having trouble with keeping your mind a tabula rasa, meditate on the three hyperspace navigation techniques I've detailed below.
You have two phenomenons you’re going to need to meditate on immediately prior to, and outside of the ceremony, and to hold deep sacredness for:
(1) To be mindful of the pace, and when you choose to exhale your last hit. Similar to tuning the strings on a guitar, consider plucking the string as your final (probably third,) biggest inhalation yet. Once the string is plucked a guitarist twists the tuning peg to dial in where he wants the string to resonate. Hold in your hit, and get a feel for the pace. Sometimes you see people so startled they blow the last hit right out - this is not what we want to do.Hold in the last hit, and feel the pacing of hyperspace. If you've done it correctly, you should be traveling through
S.T.U.N. Runner tunnels pretty rapidly, but you should also be able to notice the pace accelerating. Once you're comfortable with the trajectory and pacing, exhale your hit and comfortably float down the tryptamine river.
(2) The intersecting points on the meridians will be your guide to see your way around. When you're first dumped into hyperspace, or just prior, there can be a sense of confusion associated with not knowing how to navigate through the looking glass. Here's a tip to embed deeply in your brain, because you're going to want it to be the first thing you remember once you've exhaled (or are about to exhale) that last giant hit you outdid yourself with. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the Indra's net / grid / matrices that seem to twist and bend all while defining the parameters of hyperspace. Spend less time oggling those elves and more time getting a handle on these meridians; this is a lot like feeling your way around in the dark. Once you have located intersecting points on these patterns, reach for them, dive into them, and explore them. You will use these to navigate hyperspace (and I promise, if your intention is behind it, this should work for you as well!) This might be one of the more difficult notions to articuate, but there's a very specific pressure towards the front of your head when you're in the trance state. This is the rudder directing the yacht at sea, focus your navigation through this point in your skull... so now that you have been given proper coordinates try to steer clear of those choppy waters, sailor!
(3) You are seeking to remember 3 things. Remember quite deeply, and quite personally, and see your way to articulate what you recall and have an intense, unique bond with these three items. This is the most important element to navigating the trip successfully - as it is going to provide you with the access points that you need to resolve the data dump you're experiencing. So much content is delivered in such a short amount of time, and in such a cryptic, archetypal manner, that making sense of it, hell, even remembering it can prove to be a challenge. If you use this mnemonic device of remembering three things that stand out to you during your journey, this will create little memory clusters in your brain that make it easier to access what might at the time seem like senseless / absurd content. So pick three things; the neon brick wall, Poseidon, and the Jack of clubs...whatever you see, latch onto it and try to make peace with it and hold onto it and remember it like you've never remembered before. Shamans of the Amazon consider even a single Ally as an Ally for life, and to be considered a miracle. Regardless of your degree of skepticism, recalling three things quite vividly will aid in bringing more of your trip back to Earth and aid in integration. This vision can quite literally be the difference between Heaven and Hell, so whatever it is that you choose to remember, keep it close to the heart; keep it sacred. Also, even if it's verging on the woo-woo, if your ally Poseidon has your back next time you go into hyperspace, that resolves some pre-flight anxiety right there, now doesn't it?
And if things begin to feel dark or overwhelming just keep reminding yourself;
The experience is going to escalate at a rapid pace - go with it. Trying to stand your ground at the peak of Niagara Falls is going to prove more difficult than riding the water's current. You're here to watch and learn, not to exert your will.
“Don’t be so quick to call this a bad trip. Just stay with it for a bit, take a look at it." Take a deep breath. Are you experiencing tension or anxiety? Why is that? Ask out loud, "Why am I experiencing fear?" or "Show me love instead." Or say nothing at all. Size things up -
“Follow it back to the root." What is causing that negative entity to drip fungal plasma into your soul? Ask the entity. There's a reason you're seeing what you're seeing right now, and if you can get to the root of it, you're well on your way to total integration.
There are plenty of navigation mechanisms. These are just some of mine. The most important navigation mechanism if you do start to feel uneasy is to understand what direction you need to drive forward in. A lot of times people are seeking out. (“I want out of the experience, I want to be out of my body, get me out of this…”) This is a profound transgression against the directions of the grain. You do not go out, you go through. Through is present. In the Inferno you can't escape Hell from the sides, you need to go right through the whole of it. Hyperspace can be like Dante's vision in this context.
And finally, the most tried and true technique if the darkness really has begun swallowing you whole? This is of critical importance to be remembered if you find yourself in the worst of all potential scenarios; The Dreaded Hyperslap. Any anxiety after you blast off or at any time during the journey can be lowered by humming deep and long, getting vibrations from the throat, and it feels quite amazing seeing its efficacy in action. Terence McKenna advocated for singing, but when I'm petrified the last thing I want to do is try and figure out what song I know the words to, and this deep, resonant hum will do the job just as well.
Sorry if this seems less than cohesive, but I thought it only fair to share some of my techniques for properly working in a trance state. If you have very specific techniques for comfortably working your way through hyperspace, by all means share them below.
In keeping with good practice, I don't wish to suggest that I'd invented any of these ideas or techniques. These are a decoupage of practices that work for me, which I learned via small nuggets of wisdom from the like of D.M. Turner, Dale Pendell, Kathleen Harrison, Robert Anton Wilson, Nick Sand, Terence McKenna, Keeper Trout, the Nexus, and of course lots of tryptamines shared between myself, my friends, and the Others.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -lovecraft