So last week, or close to, I smoked a hit in my garden.

Late night. Trees obeying the winds whimsy. Moon overhead, boldly proclaiming the will of the sun. Few clouds, pale blue, wispy, edges glowing.

Sat breathing deeply I try to clear my mind, a difficult task but given enough time the echos of my days experience reseed from my being. rolled in with the tobacco I'm about to consume is a small, I'm not sure how, hit of D.M.T.. Gazing upwards I let out a great sigh which I use as a sign to begin. cigarette to lips, fire to cigarette. As I'm smoking, the sky slowly clouds over and the wind begins to pick up. Sacrament taken I am thrown into chaos with the trees as they violently struggle with the wind in its new found ferocity. I picture the presence of mad Gods above, concealed now by the clouds. For now I don't look up. confused and lonely, lost in dead ends I feel a truth of my situation. I feel it though not with anguish, nor anger, or even self pity, although I have in the past, but with a subtle smile for I know it is just a joke. I know, although struggling, I could plot my behavior to a more fruitful course. I had even been doing so, but sometimes I lapse back into a defeatist point of view. The humor I feel for this situation raises my mood and with it my posture straitens and I become more relaxed. I feel that I am balancing on a point of clarity. With an investigative look up I banish the "phantoms" that plague me. Shadows of my own self doubt superimposed on the forces around me. At least that's one way I could look at it.

Very nice creative writing. Always a blessing to ceremony in Nature - which often retrieves our spirits to a more holistic state of being. Yes, the human conditions (or issues of the ego, perhaps?) of self-defeat + self doubt. What an interesting balance that has to be struck as humans between the limited but necessary self-protecting mechanisms of the ego compared to our eternal yogic/transcendental selves.

What I can't grasp is why it isn't easier to uphold the feeling of understanding and accepting the absurdity of the world as we see it which is ultimately insubstantial. Why is it so much easier to lapse back into the depths of the phantom plague? Being in that place is much more difficult and heavy on the mind, body and soul. It's like the troll toll...

When I first began smoking spice this was how I would feel. Chaos swirling around, confused and scared until, I would see it as a joke and start thinking YES, YES semi morbidly, even though I am not a metalhead it was like headbanging to Morbid Angel for the first time. Then the menacing would reveal a whole bundle of fun. Embrace it for what it is, even though like thrash or noise music it could be scary at first and good vibes will be had.

Unmode, a difficult question to answer. Why lapse back into the phantom plague? I can only give an answer specific to myself, although I'm sure generalizations can be made, and I would need an example. Here I found one:

I am currently trying to improve my drawing skills but a lot of my habits and my daily routines are not involved in helping me get there. My habits are a part of my identity so on some level It is painful for me not to follow them and, If I don't I start to get anxious. Whilst feeling anxious it is easiest to follow something I have already done, like a quick fix, as doing new things brings friction and I have to fight for new understanding in unfamiliarity. So I find it more difficult to change the current of my life because I have to dig new channels. If I don't do this my waters will stagnate and the longer I stagnate the further I get from the world, the harder it is to reintegrate/communicate, the more energy I need to accomplish my goals.

So I could say something like, there is a threshold, a certain amount of energy is needed to enable self emancipation. so something as simple as a change of diet could lift me and my spirits. Another thing, I could remove some energy that I have stored up in ideas such as; a worry for a particular thing or pride in something. If I am proud of something I have done and I keep going back to appreciate it I am just wasting emotional energy that I could be riding forward, same with the worry. Sometimes I could get so proud of something that it turns into a worry, what if I can't do better? This is ridiculous but happens and is just more wasted energy. Better sometimes to act and not think.

You said:
"Why is it so much easier to lapse back into the depths of the phantom plague? Being in that place is much more difficult and heavy on the mind, body and soul."

I think the heaviness, the way that everything feels so burdensome, is down to not having much free energy. Try to figure out where your energy is hiding and release it, what useless ideas are you clinging to? Destroy them, or don't, maybe your ideas are perfectly fine and just need to be used slightly differently. this is quite abstract and I don't know if it helps at all.

In summary, I think its easier to fall into "the phantom plague" because all you have to do is worry or moan, i think that as soon as you start acting you'll slowly climb out and start to feel better. Moaning is all good but only if it leads to action. I know that this question is more than this question, and that life is more difficult than words, stories and sentiment but, I hope you find yourself.