I wanted to write a piece about my journey so far, and how it seems now that it is parting company with DMT. We all have different journeys and experiences, so I thought this may be of use as a record of one persons journey, what I think I got out of it, and how it has changed me.

I have catalogued a number of my first experiences on the Nexus, my early revelations and attempts to understand what I was experiencing.

You will have seen me on other threads arguing against demons and fear. And struggling to understand what everything was all about, by writing about it and discussing. Sometimes seeming very opinionated, but only by sticking a flag in the ground can you take a look at what the world looks like from that position - but I reserve the right to then pluck up that flag and try a new position.

Before giving a summary of the sets of lessons I have been through, I will say where I am now. From my very first experience the changes were tangible. I think I would describe it as suddenly being able to imagine what was previously unimaginable, the scope this opened up for possibilities of what reality is was epic. The dust was blown off of my mind, and the walls around my reality fell away.

After this full journey I am happy and more empowered than I ever was before. My next journey is to walk a paradox between knowing that I am an infinitesimally small point of awareness which is unknowing and static, but that I have a universe at my disposal within which there is action and novelty.

Some desire leads to suffering, but lack of desire leads to a static bliss state which I do not think I am ready for or want, or simply by this desire for sensation I cannot stay in it - Like a kid playing a computer game, I know my back is getting achy and I am hungry but I need to finish the next level.

I know I can create here anything I want, my ego swells at such a thought, and thus ultimately gets in the way of making it possible. Who knows where this will all go, but it is a trip to do without DMT. Balancing these beliefs and energies is the next thing to master.

My time with DMT has been relatively short to some of you, but the number of experiences has been not too few. I have maintained a sequence of using at least weekly, with a full week to fully integrate the experiences - so I would say I have taken around 30-50 experiences.

The whole process has been a journey, and one with no destination in mind. The fools journey; setting off only knowing that fate will find my way. I feel though that I have exausted for the time being what I can gain from it, and in fact my more recent experiences have told me so, and told me to focus on my life.

Each session felt like a lesson, and to begin with it felt that it was another reality of deep importance - perhaps even THE reality or the after life or something of that level. I now think of it as a visualisation of my "inner world", breaking down barriers that life normally keeps closed. Perhaps in a way it is all of the above.

Interestingly the following differentiates my experiences from other reports I have seen:

1. I have never felt myself as being in the experience as a human, i.e. I have not taken a body with me or felt that elements of the experience could affect my body - as during my experiences I have had no body, and been just an observer visually and to some level emotionally.

2. I have never seen anything that would be considered of this world, or that could be placed in this world. No "people" or even human faces, not even eyes or other things from here. I can anthropomorphise experiences, and I can imagine my mind back filling experiences with such material world elements, but otherwise all has been visually abstract or "alien".

I think these are quirks of my own personality, and the symbolism I give myself. Perhaps this was all part of my personal lesson.

Let me break down the stages of my lessons into small groups.

Fear
In my initial experiences I flinched and was concerned about having a "bad trip", Sometimes I would sense a scary "face" or whatever equivalent entities have. And try to deal by not focusing on that thing. These lessons took me through fear and to analyse what it meant - it was a lesson I was already on in real life. I learned to some how let go of fear, I would love to rationalise this and say there is a way of thinking about it, but it is not about thinking, it is about managing emotions. Once I overcame this, nothing was scary I took on a level of detachment as the observer, an untouchable awareness. Then everything took a shift to a different level.

The Mind
I found the mind, or perhaps as some would say the ego to be a barrier. Thoughts were barriers, literal physical barriers - appearing as large fractal objects obscuring the lessons. Emptying my mind was necessary, or intentionally directing consciousness away from thought. Holding a verbal intent for a trip was a definite no - it would always reverberate and repeat and block everything. Relaxing and letting go and allowing what comes to come was important. It seems, as you will see below, that this does not mean inaction, action still happens without ego, decisions are still made without verbalising or as "corporialising" them in hyperspace.
Once I acheived the empty mind for a journey I experienced a blue place, blissful and one that seemed to be home. Others were there and things seemed to be happening, again once this was continuously acheived another change happened.

Entities
These were always a mystery, initially geometric "gods" but once fear and awe were bipassed enities became like equals. We danced. One showed off to me what it could do, how it could move there better than me, I got invited to a party in a "library" where I learned how open they are, you can see right into them, peel back their layers and see their souls. I felt I may have crossed a line here, perhaps overly aggressively involved in my investigation. I now started to meet and recognise entites in following journeys.

Dirt, Decay and imperfection
I had some odd trips where everything was real different. And when I had started to feel that everything is about beauty and perfection these lessons really helped to understand the world. Here are some of them:
1. All the visuals in one rotated around decay. It was like a normal trip, but where there were normally smooth surfaces and more geometric shapes all was deformed, bloated, wrinkled, rotting.
2. I was shunned by entities as just an infinitesimal observer, they made a point of ignoring me and I existed as a speck of dirt, infinitesimal in size, and part of the environment that was routinely walked over and past.
3. My pattern entering hyperspace was distorted, and the experience was of meeting a particular entity. This distortion was her personality, and I came to understand that our personalities are the light of awareness shone through the pattern of our personality. Personality is imperfection.

I learned from this that all these things are part of existance, we cannot think that only beauty and perfection is right and other is wrong. We cannot reject that "negative" part of ourselves, all must be accepted. We can strive to improve, but all beauty is from imperfection, and all imperfection is beauty.

Who made this? the fall into Shamanism.
This made up my last lessons to date, and has been a continuous experience for some time. My trips would seem devoid of useful lesson, or just shapes and distraction. I would get bored and some part of me would decide to seek out who/what was doing this. This would expose the entity creating this illusion and I would chase them as they tried to hide.
This became easier each time, and more of a game. In my last journey I quickly trapped and caught the entity. A wasp like buzzing thing, hexagonal bee-hives yellow stripes and relentless active energy. This was it, I had caught it. Now I could command it. But I refused, the consequences of me going down this line were too great, by using this I would make myself vulnerable to it. For each action this way there would be a reaction. I think this is the beginnings of Shamanism, and personally devoid of a good purpose for this I let it go. I like simplicity and would rather move forward with unconscious strength of will, than struggle in complexity of spirits (for now).

For the last 3 or 4 trips I have had a finger pointing me back to the real world. My next lessons are here. I am on a route of self realization, and my self is too messed with on DMT - the visions are warped and frantic, and now more power is given to things like the wasp spirit, which should just be an active part of what I have at my disposal in a more abstract way.

I hope some of this is of interest, I will still be on the nexus of course, throwing my oar in when things drift into metaphysics. And I welcome any alternative interpretations on the above particularly the later stuff about catching entities. The wasp has been trying to entice me back, yesterday I got asked to do a TV interview about wasps "Just watch this 30 second film and then tell us if it has changed your opinion on wasps", so I think perhaps part of me wants that route - and I think it is the ego.

It sounds like this has been a deeply moving and instructive chapter in your life. And like all phases of our lives, it changes and eventually gives way to whatever it is that comes next. I like the analogy of hanging up the phone once you've gotten the message, because what is this if not a means to an end? What's the point of endlessly chasing it?

In any case, I hope your experiences serve you well. I imagine they'll look very different when you look back at them from a distance. But by all means, do stick around. You're a much needed voice of reason.

Thanks Art,

I almost included the Alan Watts Quote, and I just looked it up in full:



and yes, meditation and constant consideration of the moment are my next steps.

As for a voice of reason, wow. I do a lot of reasoning I guess, but it doesn't mean it is right. I am beginning to think there is no Truth that can be put into words.

This is not goodbye of course, but if I was to continue with DMT it would be recreational - and I would get drawn into a distracting mysticism - which in its own way is as distracting as this world is from the greater reality, and has only hinted at by my DMT experiences.

The Nexus has supported me through this journey, and made it a safe and productive one. But the Nexus is not just about taking drugs, it is full of Philosophers and Metaphysicists trying to find an underlying truth, both through psychedelics and through life, meditation and other methods. For this reason it will remain a part of my journey.

OP is a nice summary to read, thank you.
Blessings

upwaysidedown, I really loved reading this.

I'm also taking a break from DMT at the moment--not because of any bad experiences or anything, but because I got exactly what I was looking for at this time in my life...I got more than enough of what I needed. I love the entities for accepting me and teaching me lessons...laughing with me and messing with me like we were always best friends--like we knew each other intimately from before I was born.

I love what DMT did for me.

I can really relate to "If you get the message, hang up the phone."

To OP

I am thoroughly impressed with your introspection. This post you made is representative of what many of us go through in these experiences. You walked us down a path and told a grand story. I highly respect what you have brought forth here! Truly wonderful to read and truly wonderful to know you are out there somewhere in the world. I am all smiles at this moment!

I agree, it's like a red carpet laid out.

On a critical note if I may:
Where is the neutral observer gone? Did something non neutral wager eventually won of the never critical observer?
* was the non critical observer not brought back to 'this realm', partly?
* to be put off in one realm, okay, but is this-realm then so much better? I mean the objections found for hyperspace can be valid in any realm. As in: what is it one is escaping from, or trying to find elsewhere? This works two ways. There's at least one reason I can't object to: intuition. Dunno why.
This critical remark is fueled by not knowing more about:
I for one am interested in the common ground, although it looks so separate.

On the other hand I tend to believe it is not solely "message" stuff, but also nutritional or grease for the neuro and whatever system. Like you can't fully defend to say: hey I had enough of vitamins, no need for those anymore. Or like : hey I got all those yoga assana's done well so I can leave that now. I know the comparison is leaking but my point remains that they molecules are/can-be of maintenance value, and for that not necessarily breaktroughs and their grandiose effluents are an absolute necessity. They potentially tune the day strong below that.

Hi Jees,

My first message from DMT was "lame method", and I have been insulted by something telling me I was doing this all wrong. And I have never desired entertainment from DMT, so with no "meaning" brought back I got restless.

I have learned a lot, but this is my own journey - I was never a "neutral" observer, but I had a demand for advancement and learning. For whatever reason I am told my main learning needs to now happen from physical reality, lessons easily understood here or better to be mastered here. Perhaps my next journeys to "there" are do be done consciously and without drugs, or maybe I need to realise I chose to have a physical life existence and I should focus on THAT.

I (perhaps erroneously) sense an undertone that you feel I may be saying that everyone should stop when they get where I got (as I think most do), I definitely don't mean that. For me, DMT was taking centre stage in my lessons, even when I was not getting an effective lesson. I needed to stop so that I could see everything else clearly, others such as yourself can probably balance it better.

As for where I have been since writing the original post - lucid dreaming and starting to understand the difference between inner eye and physical vision (which I think DMT confused, as there was no noticeable shift from one to the other) and I think the closed eye visuals may well be a drift into inner eye (the one with which we dream and imagine) rather than actual visual distortion of our eyes (although clearly both seem to happen).

A shifting of path, and some time of being lost between journeys, DMT was so easy a crutch for me of managing my progress - just puff and go. But since stopping, actually focusing the journey and direction for myself has been hard, and the shift I think led me to fall ill in the confusion. This weekend all of myself has regrouped.

Meditation, listening to dreams and managing energies and beliefs (basically a continued inner journey). This is the next step for me to manage. I wish that made more sense to me, then I would be able to explain it better.

Thank you so much, and I've never though you were telling people what to do.

OP is one of the best personal resume's ever seen, TY again. Yet it does red carpet a possible route where a lot of factors are commonly recognized, and by that it comes across as something that gives support or at least guidance and understanding.

My remark was honest, yet also a bit fishing for more

I've seen many deep divers not really illustrating shocking well results, this alone told me that it has zero guarantees. Same for traditionalists of any kind. So this was clear to me before doing spice. The tool and it's wielding, that is it, and I LOVE to read how you practice that and write about

If our alchemy method is lame method, then yoga & tantra are lame methods too, and sutra is lame method too, and surah is lame too, sunna and tasawwuf too,and being stuck in hyperspace as a gandharva clown is lame method too, and doing nothing is lame too, and waiting for natural death is lame too, and spontaneous enlightenment without further warning is lame too, art would be lame too and so would be regular work, and jumping frenzy is lame method too, poetry too, but ask THEM if music is lame too? Maybe THEY just say that because you didn't give/bring/burn them any (harmal/haoma/sauma/tobacco/meat)?

But it's important to take breaks. We are in a break right now (moar then a year)

Intezam, I most definitely do not think it is a "lame method", but perhaps the larger me that is me feels it is lame for the plans I had for myself - as such it is personal. Perhaps my higher self has a stick up its arse. But it says go away and find that thing I need to find in the wilderness that is physical reality. What can I say, for all I know it may as you have said been literally my method.

My mind/heart craves a simple calm truth. And there are many ways to see existence, its like that picture that looks like a duck and a rabbit some see the duck, some see the rabbit and because its just an analogy we know it is both - but for existence it is probably an infinite number of possible things you can see it as. And when we look at existence in our search for truth we can disappear into investigating the rabbit, or investigating the duck, or one of the many other possibilities and lose track of the other.

The grid I was about to overlay onto existence was very complex, and it is the one I imagine that you inhabit, and I love the way you swim in it Intezam, I have always been in awe of where you are - it definitely has beauty - but I think my mind is too simple for all that. There is a different view of it somewhere for which the me I am now is perfectly suited. Or perhaps I will forever be on the hunt for the one solution, sort of the spiritual unified theory.

I think for now I have gone as far as I can in investigating hyperspace until something else in me has changed, I am sure I will be trying DMT again if/when that thing changes or after a long time to see if anything has, or to remind me what was. I would not claim to have gotten to the bottom of the mystery that is DMT, but I can claim that I have personally hit a dead end beyond which I cannot pass (or choose not to, as the next steps I am tempted towards is to dominate and use the disturbed entities that exist near the surface. Because from DMT I know no way to help them).

...boat of life...bla bla bla BEDA PAAR!!!!!!

Yes, I think you summed up where I'm at. I literally love Alan Watts BTW.

You're headed in the best possible direction. I can offer help making sense of the next step as I've spent tens of thousands of hours working it.

I'll relate some things that will sound made up. I've never entertained faith, so I hope you don't believe them. You'd be a fool to, but you'd be a greater fool not to confirm whether what I have to say is true.

I remember exactly how it feels to be at the beginning, not knowing exactly what life is, or how to approach it. It took a very large amount of work over the last eleven years to figure it out. I didn't study one tradition, I studied all the major traditions at substantial depth. And I practiced a lot. And I spent a great deal of time testing the teachings I read and correlating them with my life experience.

The value of this to you is that it could save you a significant amount of time. I am presently highly self-realized. I have not perceived the illusions of time, space or matter in years. Not from drugs, but by following the path, as best one can find it, this tends to happen, and not just to me. I will detail my own realizations later, but first some background.

Eleven years ago I stumbled across a teaching that implores one to undertake as much meditation as possible. In hindsight this teaching has some flaws. Those flaws have much to do with it's association, in a "lineage" like fashion, with earlier flawed teachings. The form of meditation it teaches is priceless though. The author learned this form of meditation from Hindu gurus including Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and so on. He claimed that "illusion ended forever" after two years of practice, with as he said "more twelve hour practice days than two hour practice days." While from my own experience I have no doubt that he's experienced a high level of self-realization, I'm certain that illusion didn't quite end forever as this teacher has since promoted teachings and teachers which are in disagreement with each other. Why would anyone do such a thing if they really knew the whole truth. They wouldn't.

Being very skeptical, I didn't readily believe the first teacher from whom I learned this form of meditation. So, I studied all the teachers he said he'd learned it from in order to confirm he'd gotten it right. This done, I put it into practice. After only a few hours of practice I realized that it could not only be done seated with the eyes closed, but also during any daily activity which doesn't require thought.

About to take a trip to see family for the holidays, I decided I'd practice hard during the twelve hour drive through the Rockies. During my holiday stay I practiced during everyday activities, just here and there, but quite a bit. No one even noticed I was doing it. On the return trip I started practicing continuously again. After a few hours everything changed. My whole perception of reality suddenly shifted. It was as I was no longer limited to my human body, rather I was all existence. It was very peaceful, but also energetic, and everything became profoundly gorgeous. I later learned this state is sometimes called a satori or a samadhi.

It lasted for about a week. A few days were really solid and then it slowly faded out. During this period I had what is called a kundalini awakening(which I'd never even heard of), experienced full consciousness in deep dreamless sleep, and most surprising to me - as I'd held a scientific, materialistic, deterministic belief system since my teen years - I experienced a literal miracle. The miracle violated all the laws of motion, as well as the law of gravity. I was the guy who believed the stories about Jesus were fairy tales concocted by followers so petrified of the finality of death that they authored and believed a delusion to avoid that fear. In fact that belief persisted for awhile longer. I've since experienced seven other miracles, some during meditation, and some not.

At first I was very impressed with the teachings of the gurus who taught this form of meditation, but after long years of further study and practice I learned that while their meditation teachings are great, and the rest all shares the same kernel of truth, their other teachings are - in some ways - fatally flawed. By discovering the flaws in their teachings I learned that meditation alone is clearly not a complete path. Were it, these teachers who were so skilled in meditation would certainly agree on the basic features of reality, and they do not. Buddha, Sankara/Ramana(same teaching), Nisargadatta, Socrates, and so on, did not agree on major points. So, while becoming very proficient in meditation is required for full self-realization, it does not seem to get one all the way there. If it did, it's greatest masters would agree with one another.

This is getting long. Are you still following this thread? And how interested are you in hearing what I can offer in terms of guidance, perhaps there might be something specific?

Thank you upwaysidedown.

Thanks for sharing your insights, here is IMHO:
I think the disagreement, the contradiction, the paradox, is one to inhale and cherish rather than using it as a measuring stick. That said, the disagreement/agreement on it's very own has not much of an indicative feature. But the way how one handles the difference is all the more telling. The 'master' (lol) simmers in it and laughs, while the student has a hard time dealing finding out which one has the better value and/or using them to make another point in the hope to nail it once and for all.

If the great masters would agree with each other, I think it would be in the way they handle their still profound endless differences on many things.

For building up a science it is not the most productive way, there people really need to accommodate same stretches to get somewhere, and still, the one who goes out-of-the-box gets boo boo and/or flowers at the stage.

I hope we disagree a lot about this all and simply love that

Beside of that, our heterogenity, based on our different perspectives resulting from different I-am-experiences, nourishes and enriches our whole experience and evolution as species. When one let go of the need to be validated by others, as a compensation of lacking selflove/-validation, our diversity becomes a strength and we are able to create the best output possible.

Colours of life.


tseuq

Hi Yogi, I am interested to hear anything from others on these subjects. I have had a similar week of "oneness", but I struggle to get time for meditation given the life I currently have. I was brought into TM at a very early age, if only I had kept it up! So any guidance on approach would be appreciated. Right now my biggest breakthroughs have been via dreams, over the summer I was hitting one or two lucid dreams per week and working on maintaining the lucid state - but I don't have the energy now I am back in the weekly routine. The best advancements though have been through natural dreaming, and also the awakening process when I can visualise and deconstruct those dreams (so not quite lucid dreaming, but more an intentional poking at them and seeing what happens).

However my goal is not to reach that state of separation from life, I am choosing not to pursue that. But to immerse in this life which I am in (for whatever reason) and seek the lessons that are here for me.



I go with what Jees says, I would not expect Masters to agree - I see us all as following very different paths but with common elements along the way, I do not believe there is one truth. But what you have done in your extensive research and comparison to find what works for you is admirable, and if what you say is true (and I have no reason to disbelieve you as nothing you say contradicts my own experiences, in fact it reinforces them) then I would be silly not to ask for more information on your techniques and lessons learned.



Beautiful, I think that says exactly my thoughts on the lack of a single truth. We are all here to seek our own truth, and solve the bit of reality we came here to solve.

One thing I am learning to do is listen to others, I have habitually believed I know better and need no teacher - that I can force my way through by myself. I have learned there is a difference between listening to others, and making someone your guru. I don't think I would ever do the latter - my rational approach is full on skeptic fortunately the internet has given me access to many such minds and their teachings and sifting them is great fun, but one can have a tendency to just pick the bits you like which concerns my skeptical mind.

When I say "love", is it just white noise in the hyperspace.

You create, you make sense.

Thus, it is never me you see, but always yourself.



tseuq

Paying to much attention to the performers, rather then the play being performed, can be detrimental to your progress if we are in fact being scored by the creators by our responses to the spectacle of existence they paint around us. Thinking too much about the puppeteers of form and causality can also make one's own dance with Maya become unflowing and flawed by distraction and possibly hurt our own future positions in the extradimensional society we have been gifted to visit in the flesh, when we return and remember our place in it. Our dance with causality likely has a score, and that karmic count determines our hyperspatial positioning post-death.

That being said the quality of our heart and the amount of ego that encrusts and armours it is also measured, perhaps even more then our fleshly choices in the material realm and serotonergics can scrub the mirror of your heart clean faster then most techniques excepting the most fervent bhakti/metta bhavana/ecstatic sufi techniques. 5-meo-dmt, 5-meo-mipt or perhaps mdai/5-apdb/5-apb or other non-dopaminergic 5ht1a hitting empathogens can help you accelerate your progress on the path by making your heart purer faster without too much distracting content that activates curiosity and builds thought trees of speculation like 5ht2a activators tend to.

Dreamwork is a path in itself but you are still engaging with another face of the entities and there are no answers there, only secrets. And the lessons taught there when you aren't mucking up the agenda while lucid are the same lessons taught in life, Karmic Yoga, the slowest of the yogic paths taught by observing circumstance. Of the four paths to Union the Hindus {source: Vivekananda} ranked Bhakti (buddhist lovingkindness/sufi ishq) the fastest, followed in order by Raja/Dhyana (concentration/samadhi), Jnana (philosophical realization, Advaita Vedanta, Kabbalah, Kashmir Shaivism, or other cognition heavy techniques), then Karma Yoga last where lessons are learned through physical trial and error in a chess game with Fate. The Hindus absorbed meditation from the Jains, who also taught Buddha, and Jain meditation goes back thousands of years before the Rig Veda and the Proto-Zoroastrian Haomists that wrote it if the Tirthankar lineage timeline can be belived. The Hindu evaluation of the speed of the roads to unity I believe is based on solid millenia of experiential research and sharing of results.

Bhakti aided with 5ht1a heavy hitters like 5-meo-dmt, or just mushrooms or ayahuasca with reverential intent to scrub your heart clean till no self remains only Saint are other options rather then throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Chasing entities, grilling them, second-guessing them, or trying to decipher them leads to no good end, we are like the blind man touching the elephants hide, and trying to imagine the shape of the beast. Too much is hidden to ever get an accurate picture of what is actually going on. But peak tryptamine and religious experiences all teach the same basic truths, so we can focus on the lesson and not the binding of the book, the bond of the paper, the personality behind the handwriting. Thinking too much about entities is like staring at the hand pointing at the moon and not seeing the moon itself, which is a tragic loss of unknown magnitude, considering we don't know the rules or length of the game we're playing.

(apologies if that was cryptic, or if you don't agree with my conclusions drawn from similar circumstances. I took a break from shamanism as well, but am returning because it is harder to wrestle the ego for control without periodic entheogens/empathogens, and it is easy to hammer it silent to better hear the message of the teachers with the chemical toolbox provided for that purpose.)