There was something Aum_Shanti said in the NDE/psychedelic thread, that realy resonated with me. It was about letting go.

When you've taken a powerfull psychedelic substance, there's this moment where you're in a way forced to make a choice. To either let go, and go with the flow of the experience, or to resist and fight it, and end up in hell.

To be able to let go, is a wonderful experience. It feels like a sort of 'coming home'. When you go with the flow, it will (in most cases) take you, right where you needed to be. To me it feels as if there's something realy precious, that in a sense i was looking for all my life, without even counsciously knowing or realising it. And suddenly you just stumble upon it.

But to be honest, i'm still terrified of that moment where you have to make that choice to let go. Maybe it's me, maybe i just cling on my ego too much, but it doesn't realy seem to get easier over time.

I don't know how you people feel about that 'point of no return'. Does anybody feel that it does get easier over time? Or are you still as terrified as i am?

Yeah I do feel fear, sometimes it's easier though, weed helps

More often than not I get pre-flight jitters which I can usually quell so long as I don't rush things. I try VERY HARD to allot 5 or ten minutes to remind myself I've come back to consensual reality on each and every prior adventure. I find this reassuring.

More to your point though...on letting go during the trip... My in-trip mantra is "simply observe." I try not to think any thoughts related to or that include myself. I expend considerable effort in actively trying to remember what it is I am being shown. If I don't, it fades from memory like a dream, and all the effort up till that point (extraction, purification and finding the right time and place) then seems like wasted effort if nothing is retained of the experience. This effort to remember usually de-focuses the ego and puts the emphasis on the internal experience, which, after all, is just a transient appearance to your mind.

That's how I handle the "before" and "during" part of the experience. The "after" is a chip shot by comparison!

Hope this helps. Remember - SIMPLY OBSERVE.

You can practice letting go sans DMT everyday. Just lie on your back and feel the pressure of your skull on the ground and notice what happens to your awareness. Sink into it. To me it feels like falling asleep, specifically falling into an autonomous dream state where you lose focus of your control of thought - While maintaining a wake-state feeling in your body; Which brings you back. Repeat this a few times a day and you might become more familiar with the rush of letting go.

I think "fear" is a main component of our being:
fear of losing a job;
losing relatives
have not enough shelter
not being accepted (enough)
not being loved
not being understood
to become sick and/or suffer pain
the list is literally endless and then there is
fear of the fear
fear of the fear of the fear
...

There was that thread "The fear legitimizes the flash"

Enough material for me to seriously take a closer look at my fear. Pushing it off is no option so all there rest it to make friends with it.

In a Tao-istic course they said: you should have fear, if you haven't you should be worried about yourself. They look at it as just another form of energy and start energy distribution balancing practices to bring harmony. But that's tao-ism, not a steep trip curve with less options to choose from. But it illustrates the potential of balancing fears supremacy in daily life situations, and I think that is a good ground and hummus to do anything with it.

I believe if you make friends with it in daily life, balancing it out there, has fruits also when a steep trip curve emerges, and if not it's good practice anyway. Like if it is not a running competition then it is stretching leggs and massaging muscles anyway. I believe we can work on our relationship with fear gradually and slowly, take time to embrace and balance it, and hope it bears fruits when the shit hits the fan. Like you don't learn to swim when the boat is sinking, better do that in advance, step by step. Even if it helps only partly, well that's cool I think.

Lately I think of this analogy: I imagine a very comfy 1 seat couch in front of me, and place my fear in it, as it is like a part of my personality that I take care of. But it is sitting in that couch right there, close to me, never away never gone, but THERE. Not inside me anymore. Like you say to a dog: "In your basket, now!" You love that dog though. But you place it outside your investigative nature that has a job at hands and in no need right now of the doggy's licks on your face.

Just some thoughts, works in progress, one day is not the other ...

I agree. Sinking into sleep, sinking into dream. It feels alot like a dream. That then offers the question - 'what's a dream?'. We don't know what a dream 'is'. So the statement that 'it feels like a dream' doesn't invalidate the experience any more/less, because afterall we don't know where it is we go during dream , same as we don't know where we're going during dmt. Not saying that the dmt experience 'is a dream', though I think it's intimately tied with everyday reality, our position in it, and with the place/s we go during sleep. All woven together. It's all Dream.

And yeah, if the experience is strong enough - it's swift, comes over you and there's pretty much this autonomous 'slipping into' the experience, there's very little 'reaction' typically ime. You have no choice other than to just be with it, be with the experience, that's all you can do when it's strong, when it takes you deep ime.

That rush can be the most unnerving part. It's never the experience itself 'when you're there'. It's the buildup, that cascading-style effect that compounds and [literally] pours over you, builds within seconds, and can rip you clean from consensus reality. That short window in the beginning has always been the part for me where you've got to hold it together, even if it's just only for a few seconds [though those few seconds can border on the line of eternity ime ].


*btw .. a 'dream' could be anything, it's just a word

To me there are two distinctly different "letting go" experiences:

One is to go with the psychedelic experience, no matter where it takes you, not trying to control it, but not experiencing full ego death. (a "typical" DMT breakthrough, or otherwise strong trips)
(This is the "easier one"...and one can train for it a bit IMHO, e.g. like explained above)
There can be already some kind of "partial" ego death. But this one is IMHO really not comparable to a full ego-death, as one still has a sense of self and is a separate entity.

The other one is complete ego death, where "letting go" means nothing else than accepting death. For what you think you are will die.
This one seems quite rarer to happen on most substances except for 5-MeO-DMT.
Here any sense of self is gone.
(This is the hard one...where IMHO training for it is much more difficult, if possible at all)

Although I did read on BL that there was a guy, who did release doses of 5-MeO-DMT almost daily for years, and after many experiences his fear was gone.

IMHO exposing oneself again and again to this situation probably can train you. But I doubt you can really train sober to accept death in an efficient way. From my personal experience, any training in that direction is nothing but a mental construct of the mind. When it goes really to the point of no return, the mind will still wanna fight it...
But I could well think that other substances can make this transition much easier, like e.g. MDMA.
E.g. the only one "smooth & fearless" transition into full ego death I had was on LSD+MDMA.
The other ego-deaths I experienced were utter hell prior to release.

But again this is just me. I can well accept this is different for others.

What I hear of 5meo scares me (of course) and I'd wager to think never having met such a depth, yet a few smoked deems experiences left me forgetting to be afraid, or having no clue how to be afraid, or the reality being so much chopped up that the concept of fear had no grounds to live on. Needless to say my ego seemed to be messed up pretty well also. When coming back then the usual thought is like "You see there was nothing to be afraid of to start with." All I can end up with is a gigantic non-suppressable tendency to LMAO and actually not knowing why. This feeling lingers for a long time afterwards.

Ideas are very welcome where to place that kind of state(s) where the confusion is so overwhelming that fear doesn't seem to fit into. I can't think of going deeper as one notch further I simply black out which has happened also. It feels as if I'm too immature in those realms to make anything of it and then dangling stumbling like a young clown trough the whole experience, while on the other hand it feels completely successful and any deviation from it seems a total unnecessary works of framing. So it's ambiguous. If that kind of experience happens it always has a very positive overall effect and after effect, due that I settle with it.

It's not always like that, but they stand out like a hack or cheat in the no fear department.

I feel like this entire path has been an exercise in learning how to "let go", to learn what my relationship with fear is, and what it is that I fear.

A chance encounter with 5meo DMT at a time in my life when suicide seemed like a rational idea was the first, most intense, but not necessarily the most powerful lesson. The 5 initiated me by mimicking death so well that I had no question that I had shot up poison and was indeed dying. It was easy. I just died. There was nothing else to do.

After that, my life was completely turned upside down. No longer able to abide and suffer the consequences of a selfish and toxic long term lifestyle of addiction and crime, I changed- overnight. I had no support around me to help me make good decisions and propelled by this urge to effect change, I ended up losing my own home in an act of compassion in which I forgot my well being. That began five years of homelessness, extreme poverty and deep moral and personal searching that nhas finally led me to a place where I finally know my value beyond what is in my wallet and where I feel that I benefit my community in more ways than one.

While I would not suggest that you should shoot yourself up with an overdose of 5meo DMT by yourself and then walk out onto the street a few weeks later into a snowstorm with the clothes on your back, maybe you can start by taking some real risks.

I've found ways to experience letting go of fear that aren't so drastic though, and that don't involve drugs.Step way the hell out of your comfort zone. An example I think is real effective: do you volunteer anywhere? If so, find another gig working with a population you don't understand. If not, do the same thing, the places need all the help they can get.

As far as reducing pre-flight fear, there is no reliable way that I have found works for me. All the breathing and head emptying in the world, all the smudging I can endure won't overwhelm some flash of anxiety that runs through my head with a lungful of spice. I just use a mantra now- "fear not..." sometimes it works, usually I forget.

Wow, that's quite an impressive (not to mention inspiring) story, null24.

And yes, i do a sort of charity work sometimes and i know what you mean. It is a comforting experience indeed, to be able to find comfort outside of your comfort zone.

I also find it comforting to see that i am not completely unique when it comes to these pre-flight anxiety issues.

Hundreds of post about that, yet a search doens't deliver much. It's very common, never doubt about that.

Drink moar harmalas

Even when you don't plan on blasting off

Yes you are unique. Not only that but you are alone and always will be. And once you arrive at some kind understanding about the complete and utter futility and lack of any substance or meaning to your life, perhaps you will lose the fear of letting go. This approach has worked for me on occasion.

like any discipline, it requires practice.

Drugs are not necessary, in some sense, even the wrong approach altogether. Ego is the most active in your everyday 9-5 existence, when it is safe and comfortable. Things are much easier in fact when under threat, in the face of powerful entheogens. The best time to practice is then, when its foothold is the strongest. This can be done at any moment in any day, including this one right now.

we are point A to point B creatures, ego can do a lot of this point A to point B in this existence. We reach our goal and move onto another. The only way is to fixate point B on something transcendent of your choosing, something infinite and beyond comprehensions, something the ego can never hope to achieve. Surrender to it utterly and totally. Even if just for a moment, a few seconds. That is enough practice. Even just for a few seconds... you will see quickly just how much you will resist.