I agree

Never stand behind a cow !

Isn't that kind of elitist? It seems kind of like a holier than thou stance where you basically say that you won't share with anyone, ever (even if it benefits them) and that they must make it themselves. What if you gave it them (and they took it) and then they knew they had no interest in it?


And yet saying that this site is about teaching "true seekers" (a loaded phrase) to manufacture a drug is acceptable? That seems off, way way off.

Maybe it does.

Some offense taken.

I agree.

The elitism and exclusivity speaks volumes about the experience and naivety of the writers.

ad·vo·cate
Noun:
A person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy.
Verb:
Publicly recommend or support:

I'm sorry, what your implying is not clear.

Do you mean that you present yourself publicly in a way that is inconsistent with your true behavior and or nature and or belief?

If you are not elitist in private that's totally cool.

Honestly, I think certain people come on to the nexus and just make stuff up for what ever reason....

alrighty....i feel pretty compelled to throw my hat into this ring now. you know, the hat with the entire top singed off when my mind exploded back in the jungle...

i truly appreciate vovin's original post. it's important and very well thought-out. it was written with love and compassion (you can feel it), NOT elitism and snobbery. the impetus to write such a thing comes from much experience and should be respected. i've been on this site for some time now and vovin was already a bit of a legend when i arrived. reading his 'phoenix' write-ups, i feel a kindred with him. he and i share an 'extremism' that i wonder sometimes what the purpose of it truly is. helping others who read such reports is an obvious answer....but that's just the tip of the iceberg...

i work with folks on the path. i have turned away as many as i've held space for. many folks have come via the nexus. others of their own channels. the important commonality is that they all are seekers on the path and personally i believe this is the ONLY way DMT should ever be approached. even talking to folks about your experiences in a way that comes across as 'pitching it' or 'selling' the experience is irresponsible. in truth, i rarely if ever talk about my journeys anymore for this reason. i used to love nothing more than to sit down and recount my life-changing voyages into the unknown. the things...the impossible yet more real than here things i have been/seen/known....hell, there aren't any words in our lexicon to convey those experiences anyways!

but more than this, i found that some people would show up at my door with an eager desire to meet 'the golden ones' i had written about. or to see 'that thing' that other guy had written about. or to know the 'love bliss' that what's her name was recounting....

these folks got a great evening-long conversation and nothing more. i will not in any way be a part of that. DMT is something that should be squarely in the middle of the path of those who have been walking on that path, not those who bushwacked through from a completely different path because they heard from a friend that this one was 'amazeballs.'

DMT has fundamentally changed pretty much EVERYTHING about my life. some things are easier for me now (letting go, accepting life on it's terms, understanding that i am more than my physical form) and some things are harder (superficiality, conversations with close-minded folks, living a life that is in alignment with what has been opened in me). it is a double-edged sword and i am hardly proficient at wielding it just yet...

if my life can in any way be helpful to those new to this path, please hear the love and seriousness in my words. i have used DMT more than anyone i know. i have had 7 true-to-god ego-deaths now that completely changed my perception of life forever. i have gone through madness that had me contemplating suicide for over a year. i have restructured my life to embrace this new perception but it's no cake-walk being a sound-healer/guide in a world where car salesmen are held in higher regard. everything that i thought i was was atomized and now i live a life that could only be described as 'very real'....and that is much harder than it sounds.

i personally thought i was ready for all of this. that i was cut from this very unique cloth. that i (like vovin perhaps) was meant to be one of the cartographers of this new mind-scape. one who was designed to bring much back for others as we tenderly pushed forward into a new reality...

it was all ego. i am nothing. noone. in the final analysis, its all between you and source. if you choose to go down this rabbithole, that is what you will come to realize quite quickly. during a genuine breakthrough, it won't matter who is around. it will only be you and source and the two will be indistinguishable from one another. you will be given the gift of liberation from an identity that is infinitely too small for you...you will touch your own divinity.

be careful what you ask for though....most do not realize what a safe haven their false-self realities are! what is seen can never be unseen and if you are looking to see cool shit then go straight back to the safety of your old comfortable patterns....there may come a time when that won't be possible. a genuine, level III breakthrough is not something you 'come back' from. it is a part of you forever. it changes you. hear me well...IT CHANGES YOU.

i am grateful to vovin for writing this original post. it is important beyond anything where DMT is concerned that an initiate on this path know EXACTLY the scope of what this medicine can do. this is deep work. the deepest. and though i believe in DMT with all my heart and soul, i know more clearly than ever that the SET AND SETTING is everything. i built my healing room in a matter of months. the SETTING is the easy part really. the SET, or headspace, is where the real self-honesty needs to be found...

Are you in a place where you can COMPLETELY let go? do you meditate? have you made peace with your life? have you let go of ANY and ALL expectations? are you as empty as you are able to be? let go of everything...then let go of letting go.

only in THIS space do i feel properly prepared to work with DMT. i am not saddled with 'more questions than i had before' as some have written in this thread. i am not because i have no questions for DMT. i ask nothing from it and i expect nothing from it. we are dealing with something beyond our current parameters of comprehension. it is a new way of experiencing that goes beyond recognition/name/categorize/label/know. it is the proverbial hand in the river. all things are yours. all things are you.

as lovely as that sounds...it comes with one formidable hitch: you have to let go of what you THINK you currently know...and THAT is not what the ego is designed to be cool with. the more of a handle on your ego you can get (meditate!) the better off you'll be...

alright, rant over. thanks again vovin for this VERY IMPORTANT thread!

with the deepest love and gratitude!!

antrocles,

That was an absolutely incredible post that I resonate strongly with. Something that you said though stuck out to above all else...SET AND SETTING. That is literally 99% of the ingredients, 'I feel' for having that "reality confirming" experience...and as I like to call it "this is it" or "breaking through the breakthrough".

Out of the hundreds of smoked experiences that I've had....only 1 of those experiences dissolved me in such a way, that there was no more questions nor answers....there is only THAT.. no ifs, ands or buts.

What seemed to lead to it was this perfect combination of set and setting, which I so happened to stumble across, but was clearly not ready for the ramifications. It really is a place of NO DISTARCTIONS and a place of COMPLETE comfort, somewhere you can be and just BE...no thoughts..and like you said "let go of letting go".

You could dose high dosages time n time again and while you might have extremely intense experiences or whathaveyou, that doesn't mean your going to have THAT experience....that experience that "unlocks" your nature according to your our unique design. Everyones different.

As Gibran said to me in reply to a thread I had started several months back in regards to "THAT" experience I had .. "YOU NO LONGER BELIEVE, NOW YOU KNOW". That statement couldn't be any closer to the truth.

^^^^ How can you argue with that !!

You don't that's the point!

Tattvamasi, yeah man I've had 2 experience that were like that.

Though I have to be honest there is always going to be a strange part me, this 'I', that questions it. But when you are in the clear light of the void there is no denying it what so ever. It's real as anything else is real. However it's not the hypespace most people think of. The visions stop. All thoughts stop. You hear a pop and your mind stretches to infinity. Hell those are just words, and there are no words to describe this ineffable state. Satori, Supreme Samadhi. It's very real.

HyperspaceFool made a comment in another thread that in his experience those of us with an outside practice in concentration, meditation, kung-fu, etc have different experiences, and I fully believe this as I NEVER had godhead moments when I was a teenager out 'tripping'..and I took retarded doses of LSD at times.

Psychedelic expand what your mind is set upon.
Gaining enough power in concentration to hold your mind on no-thought during a psychedelic trip long enough and your mind will start expanding your no-mind right into satori. It's completely unlike the entire rest of the psychedelic state....don't get my wrong I like the whole deal, but the Satori moments...those are the real reason I do these drugs.

These experienced don't come often for me, but I do agree with HF that an outside training certainly increases our odds of having them.

BTW ant, Great post!

Peace

Sorry to sound repetitive, but I just want to thank everyone for the thread and particularly Antrocles for his post. It could be a sticky by itself. I just came back from a really pleasant experience triggered by reading it.

Much love and gratitude to you.

I have to admit that all of the insights others report from DMT are things I think people should realize on their own.

I guess I feel the same way, but felt that way well before I ever took any psychedelics, let alone DMT. So when I did take it, nothing changed, there was no insight to gain.

I just enjoyed it.

Great word antrocles

"Are you in a place where you can COMPLETELY let go? do you meditate? have you made peace with your life? have you let go of ANY and ALL expectations? are you as empty as you are able to be? let go of everything...then let go of letting go."

Thank you

While my thoughts on this matter haven't really changed since this post: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=340966#post340966 a bit earlier in the thread, there are some new things being discussed here that have pushed me to chime in once again.

A running theme here for me is that there are precious few things I am absolutely certain of in the grand sense... most other things, including things I hold dear and see extremely clearly have the ability to flip from true to illusion to true to illusion and often settle in some nether state of true-illusion.

A side effect of this is that I can often see both sides of most debates and find myself squarely on both sides. I was always able to argue a debate from either side and was often able to win on both sides. (Debate rests to a great degree on skill with logic and syllogisms and not in being correct IMHO)

So, in the interest of Devil's Advocacy, let me share some alternative point of views on what is being championed and discussed here:

1) Elitism & exclusivity

When I am honest with myself, I find I have no problem with elitism and wonder why so many people go so far out of their way to avoid it... or more accurately avoid being perceived as elitist. The fact, that we tend to gloss over in this faux-altruistic PC world we inhabit, is that people are NOT all equal.

This stings a bit, but it is obviously true. We can not all run the 100m like Usain Bolt. We can not all calculate 9 digit multiplications in our heads. No amount of practice is going to turn a severely mentally retarded child into the next Fermi or Spinoza.

Some of us are stronger than others. Some are more learned. Some of us have decades of intensive experience. Some of us just discovered this realm this year. We are not equal with each other as psychonauts... how much more so with people who live in plastic little boxes, believe in law & order, and hit the drive-thru KFC on the way back from church?

We ARE an elite group. And those of us who have managed to have and integrate super-consciousness breakthrough experiences into our sense of self are an elite group within this group.

I see no problem with this. Denying it and thinking we have to be "open" to and respectful of people who have no idea what they are talking about here... is foolish. Not in the good way that I mean in my name. Not in the "controlled folly" of sir Don Juan Matus... but slightly idiotic.

Sorry if this is not what you want to hear. But we wouldn't consider being "open" to letting Kindergarten kids drive sprots cars on the autobahn would we? We accept elitism when it is about who gets to be in the mission control room for JPL launches and who can conduct experiments at the Large Hadron Collider... this is not really much different in principle.

I find that the insecurity and guilt that prompts people to forgo elitism is unhealthy. Worse, it diminishes the value of titles and groups that deserve to be elite. If everyone who goes twice a week to karate class for 3 years gets a black belt and is called a master... the word is now meaningless. The true masters of the world don't deserve to be debased by being equated with people who worked out for a few hours a week when they weren't selling toilet paper or parking cars.

I am an elitist. And proud the f*ck of it.


2) Breakthroughs

I have as much love for the old B-thru as anyone else around here. I also agree with the whole chorus that if you haven't experienced it... you have no idea what you are talking about and should probably keep your opinions to yourself. No offense.

"Who feels it knows it, lord." - The great Robert Nesta Marley (better known as Bob)

And yet, I don't find that the breakthrough of the breakthrough is actually the most useful or even impressive of the states that can be achieved with spice. As my esteemed brethren have so elloquently already stated about this, that merging into the void... that coming face to face with infinite divinity and then having the last border drop and finding only the infinite as your very self... this is life changing stuff. If it doesn't change your life, you are either exceptionally hard headed, didn't quite get there, or have simply forgotten the bulk of what happened (typical with entheogens as well as dreaming).

This is all more than true IMO. And yet...

I find that relatively light doses of spice, especially when combined with other entheogens and dissociatives, provide visions of impossible beauty, entity contact, and all with a much higher recall factor. Thus, a non-breaktrhough trip where you are still aware of your body and could easily open your eyes to dispel it can often be more profound than the full on forgot who I am trip. I have been able to bring a shitload of useful stuff from various hyperspaces by trawling the shallows over and over again.

For me... and I acknowledge that this is personal subjective opinion... and it is also not static for me as I am liable to change my mind tomorrow... For me... getting to the edge of a K-hole type experience on a disso with a dash of LSD, meditating in the dark for few hours and THEN smoalking micro hits of spice with the occasional N20 balloon interspersed can take me so ridiculously far down 9 adjacent rabbit holes simultaneously that even my heroic Aya doses have trouble comparing. Furthermore, it is all rather comfortable this way, and I can easily flip on a light to scribble notes as it is happening. Thus, I can bring back gems of wonder that I can use in my artistic endaeavors and find solutions to my real life issues.

I can thoroughly question entities who might not be the supernal oneness of all creation... but are considerably wiser and more knowledgeable than humans... and remember what they told me!!


3) Gifting, sharing, and bestowing spice

Here is a subject that I flip-flop on from week to week and one that my feelings on have undergone a number of very profound evolutions since I was in a position to consider such things.

When I first smoalked spice, it broke me so thoroughly open that I was not remotely normal for a couple weeks. I could barely tolerate being forced to live in this hollow empty shell of a world and play like anything here made a bit of difference. All I wanted was to be back in the company of those glorious beings that I had communed with in a time that literally stood still for 6 or 7 creation and destruction of the Universe cycles. (I was already on 500 mics of good L, 2 brownies of dubious power, and perhaps 5 grams of cubensis... and my lungs are such that I can take huge doses and hold them indefinitely.)

I needed to talk about this, so I did. Later on, people would ask me about DMT and I would tell them my impression (setting the bar impossibly high for most of them).

Somewhat later than this, I became "apprenticed" to an ayahuascero and had the privilege of doing aya nearly every day for the better part of a year. (We had solid access to wild Caapi and Chacruna) As this time went on, we conducted numerous circles where we gave our brew to many people of many walks of life, and I came face to face with the responsibility of giving this elixir to people. I don't regret any of that, and I feel it did them all a heap of good... in the long run anyway. I had no problem sitting there and giving reiki to people who were curled in fetal positions screaming like their lives depended on it... and talking people down from some pretty scary precipices.

My decision to never lead such circles again came in the late 90's when I had a group that I couldn't seem to trust. I had informed them of the diet and been especially strict with questioning them about breaking the MAOI rules... and even still, after the third time asking I knew someone was holding back. So I took this young woman aside and asked in my most serious "I will f*ck you up if you lie to me" voice one last time. In this private conversation she admitted to me that she took anti-psychotic medication and anti-depressives daily, and had consumed both chemicals within the last 24 and 12 hours respectively.

Needless to say, I was somewhat pissed... while understanding her reticence to have all the people there know she had mental health issues. But more importantly I realized I had dodged a bullet. If she had drank the brew and died from some combination of toxic shock syndrome and serotonin syndrome... I don't know what I would have done.

Then and there, I became a clam about DMT and other hallucinogens for a while. When I decided to open up again it was only to very close friends and people I judged to be worthy... and only in small groups or one on one.

That was pretty much my M.O. for quite some time... but then my feelings started to change again. I went through a phase of thinking that anyone who really belongs in Hyperspace will figure it out for themselves (the existence of sites like this was a big push in that direction as the information was relatively easy to come by now).

But, another feeling came up as well where I realized I had the power to shatter people's worlds and that a lot of people needed this... even if they had no idea that they did. How could someone even know they wanted to have such an experience without having had something along those lines already?

There is also something profoundly heady of knowing you have the power to alter someone... permanently perhaps. It is not PC to admit that this is a good feeling, but it is. There are a few of my dearest friends who still come up to me and laughingly imitate their first feeble words to me after having their world shattered... generally something to the effect of "I'm never going to be the same..." The love between us is deep and I can't say the world would be better off if I didn't take it upon myself to explain to, nudge to accept, and administer to these lovely people what was, in fact, a life changing experience for them.

My feelings are that many people who actively sought out DMT and thought they could handle it... were destroyed by it. Meanwhile people who had no concept of it, but I deemed, in my judgment, would benefit from it... generally did.

How to deal with this?

There is no easy answer. Especially when you factor in the illegality of this stuff in most countries. Even if you wanted to share it far and wide, even talking openly about this stuff in some communities can get you in a world of trouble. Most police departments view extracting a bit of spice from some plant material to be manufacturing a schedule I... a felony.

So, what should we do?

I don't know. And I honestly think that none of you do either. This is not an insult. I just think that there are no easy pat answers here. You have to learn to trust your intuition and err on the side of caution.




Well, that is about long enough to be an attorney for the Devil. I relinquish the remainder of my time to the esteemed psychonaut from another location on this Gaia organism to follow.

HF

The distinction of attainment and innate ability does not warrant treating some people as better than others in an overt sense. I find racism to be a form of elitism, for example. An IQ higher than that of most living people does not make someone more elite, a physical skill that is uncommon does not make someone more elite, (IMO) I know many high ranking martial artists that while elite in the skill sense of their art are not elitist in practice or view.




I find that elitism is born of insecurity and a need for validation, in my experience elitism is as much about looking down on others as it is to be considering someone else as set apart. Elitism is about thinking you are better than others, in general, not at a specific task. It seems to be attached to a sense of entitlement and arrogance. It comes down to someone thinking others are beneath them. That is what I have seen in my short time. Other result will surely vary.

I will share this because I think it hits the nail on the head:

I think we are talking apples and oranges here, as I am talking about elitism within certain narrow confines of abilities, skills, and talents... and you are clearly talking about a more generalized superiority complex.

Racism and other broad types of elitism (esp. when tied to def 2b of your dictionary quote) are rather abhorrent. Often extremely so.

The kind of elitism I am talking about is not this though.

What I am talking about is more of a clear-headed acknowledgement of the skills and abilities that we have. It makes sense to give privilege and treat certain things exclusively. It is not PC to acknowledge this, but I could give sh*t about being PC. Especially here where most of us know that we are an exclusive group whether we want to be or not. We, as users of entheogens, are excluded from society at large and forced to keep our "hobby" to very exclusive enclaves of trust and respect.

If you forget this fact and become less exclusive in your entheogenic circles... you might end up in jail.

Right or wrong... this is just a fact.

I think that you would also be surprised at how much elitism is in the upper eschelons of the martial arts world. In fact, my teachers generally expected students to bow and scrape, wash windows, clean the floor, take out the trash and basically do whatever they were told. Masters historically would put "noobs" through some serious hoops to be admitted to a system that is rife with exclusive levels, privilege, and plain elitism. Some masters made you come and sit in front of their dwelling day after day for years before they would teach you anything... to show you were serious.

Beginners are not acolytes... who are not adepts... who are not masters. This is institutional in the martial arts and for a good reason. The senior students in a Kung Fu school can tell you to stand in posture for an hour and you will do it. If you are not at a certain level, you don't even get to be taught by the sifu, but have to graduate from basic classes taught by senior students... who are your superiors in the dojo.

This is not egalitarian. This is not airy fairy hippy stuff. It is not about recognizing that we are all essentially equal in spirit or our fundamental unity.

Likewise, a rock concert is a profound display of elitism and exclusivity. The people in the audience are not allowed to come onto the stage and express themselves. They are not even allowed backstage. And the backstage crew is not allowed into the VIP areas. And the VIPs are not allowed into the VVIP zones... and no one but the band and their closest bros are allowed in the dressing rooms and tour buses.

This is like this because it wouldn't work any other way. I wouldn't have wanted to go to a Grateful Dead show where every Deadhead was allowed to wander on stage and ramble their nonesense while Jerry and the boys were going to town.

You wouldn't want to have basic training cadets being considered Seals or Green Berets would you? No. It is an exclusive club that you have to work hard to be a member of... one that carries with it many privileges and honors. And, you should definitely treat those guys with a level of respect somewhat above that you give to guys at your local gym... if only for your own health. I hesitate to think you think that being a Navy Seal is born of insecurity and a need for validation.

No. The most elite circles I have traveled in don't want validation... they don't even want you to know they exist.

You are correct, apples and oranges.

I was referring to elitism found in some of the content of this thread that has to do with a superiority complex and looking down on others as unworthy.

I do not view hierarchical structures in organizations to be elitism at all.

Nor do I view exclusivity in terms of achievement as elitism.

Mostly I view elitism as pretentious, condescending, arrogant and high and mighty.

I do not view having used or extracted (DMT or anything else) as an achievement that entitles one to discriminate against, judge, or belittle others who have no such experience. I realize that many here will disagree with me about there. It is just my view though, an opinion and nothing more.

I resonate with the realism in your post, HF, but it's difficult to translate some of your analogies to the world of entheogens users.

In martial arts, or in the military, you have ranks. They are bestowed according to practice, discipline, convention and tradition. It's easy to allow or deny privileges according to the promotion ladder, and that ladder is essential for the proper functioning of an academy and the relations between the academy members. The skills and knowledge can be evaluated easily. But I cannot see a way to do that in the context we are discussing, not without falling into arbitrary pits and improper judgements.

In a community like the Nexus, and other than the moderator attribute (that actually might have or not to do with the experience of the person with entheogens) the only objective measure you have is the number of posts, and a certain overall quality, content and consistency in the posted contents. But we will agree that it's not possible to assign reliable ranks according to the number of posts. If I think about myself, I might have by now more posts than the majority of users, but I still am, by any means, a freshman. And I will stay a freshman for a very long time. And there are hundreds of people here who have a deeper personal understanding of the entheogenic experience than I do, regardless of for how long they've been around or how much they've posted. Ok, this is pretty obvious.

Once we go past the line that separates whoever has experienced a psychedelic properly (yet another tricky word) from whoever hasn't, we do require more humility and flexibility in order to discuss entheogens and tag their users than in martial arts, craftsmanship or any socially established discipline. Because the "noob" who doesn't know what an alkaloid is, or how to grow a plant, or what does set and setting imply, may as well have a deeper gift and an instinctive understanding of how to deal with the experience, of how to learn from it and integrate it in his or her life, than most of us do - no matter how many books we have read, how many substances we have tested or how many times we've broken our teeth in the kitchen.

I understand and agree with a the proper understanding of elitism, but some key factors are very slippery to judge. And defining a discipline when it comes to entheogens use, beyond strictly technical aspects, is as tricky -if not more- than doing it in a religious structure.