All the talk of empathic substances around here has me reminiscing... during my first brush with MDMA I was amazed with the realization that this almost unimaginably pure emotion was capable of being run on human hardware. It seems so novel, I almost can't imagine anyone having something like an MDMA experience without the chemical.

On the other hand, since then I've been able to cultivate a sense of love and empathy almost as a reflection of my experience. I could see a yoga or technique reaching similar states of mind after some concentrating.

Does anyone else feel that empathogen states are a completely novel addition to the human psyche?

You're touching on something I'd forgotten. The first time I took MDMA, I became a grinning idiot saying over and over again, to anyone who would listen, "This is like nothing I've ever experienced before!"

It changed me. I've never come remotely close to that peak experience, but, as you say, it became accessible. Perhaps it's like a smell so ubiquitous we filter it out, however, once it's separated and amplified in our awareness, we can't help but notice it thereafter.

The MDMA rush, specifically, is unlike anything else I've felt. And, again, I've never duplicated that first time. It seems like the consensus is that kind of event is a one-off (or so I gather).

Peyote can take me there, but it feels less pushy in it's execution and more in tune with human physiology. Plus, if you think glow poi looks cool on MDMA(and it does!), wait till ya see it on mesc..

MDMA is like god throwing humanity a bone, once it realized how far down the rabbit hole we have gone. It changed my life for sure and brought me back into my body. Dancing is such a huge part of my life now and without MDMA I don't think that leap would have been possible to the extent that it has been.

I guess I am lucky in that even with 8 exposures within a 10 month period, none of the magic of MDMA has been lost for myself. I plan to keep it that way and take a nice long break from it until next summers festival season.

There are a number of MDXXX compounds in cacti that have not been fully explored as well. This "adamic" state as Metzner coined it is not exclusive to MDMA. Mescaline, MDA, MDMA, 2cb etc all qualify.

this feeling is how it was planned to be. we can feel it naturally under perfect conditions. it just shows how rotten society truely is, that we are denying ourselves this bliss.

I can reach similar states of empathy and love while sober when I am around good people. MDMA can sometimes be real deep, but even when it is deep there is a little superficial or exaggerated pushiness about it.... Sometimes it is a little over-the-top. I think I get a deeper and calmer love and empathy with cactus - seems to be deeper and more honest.

But I have found myself in similar states of love when I am with good people who I really love and feel open and free with. I think it can be a natural state, though it is hard to have when you dont feel totally free and accepted by other people.

I'm also of the opinion that love is our natural state, that it's environmental factors/conditioning which fragment how it shines through, limiting our capacity to love to small circles, rather than encompassing all of existence.

So rather than gaining love as a novel state, as new addition to oneself, it's more that a removal of obstacles reveals love to be our natural state.

I believe the first MDMA experience is so novel because of the release of an accumulation of slight fear, anxiety, and traumas all throughout your life. So if you want to recapture the MDMA experience its simple, retraumatize yourself. Isolate yourself from everyone, watch a ton of porn, be rude and mean to people, cultivate a sense of terror by absorbing all the horrible and negative and cynical worldviews you can. Recoil from every experience, enter deeply into suffering and judge everyone harshly for a while. Then when you take MDMA again it should be closer to the first original time . Good luck!

What about long time serotonin storage? ^^

Haha, not to disengage your points. But my own conclusion maybe to cultivate such a experience is to endogenously find a way to bliss

They are connected

Wonderful.

Love can be an active "loving" of others, of what is, of the facts as they are. Love can also be a "feeling loved and accepted."

Love, as an active orientation, is not a feeling per se. Can and do I "love" even in the midst of "feeling terrible" or feeling blue or feeling tired? I ask it as a question because I'm curious about what this "love" is.

It's easier to love when you have been loved and when you feel loved and accepted. It's easier to become an active Lover when you genuinely arrive at a place of acceptance.

I can genuinely say that love, in my experience, has nothing to do with how I feel or with the environment or with a stimulating chemical. Stimulating chemicals can be an immense help in relativizing what may have seemed to be a fixed state or a hard reality or "environmental conditions." But getting to that "place" has been a process of growth. There is no rush.

Many methods can loosen the "fixity" that is as Swarupa said hiding that "light" under a bushel of beliefs, hearsay, and rigid defensiveness. A danger is that you might associate the "light" with the method and so get caught there and think you need the method or the chemical. Or that you need "others" to accept you. Or that you need a "safe environment".

You may very well need or think you need many of those things right now. I respect what I need. I don't go around bombing out my defenses or other people's defenses. It took me a long time to build the walls and to place the razor wire around my heart. I respect that fact.

But I also respect the fact that change is afoot and that slowly and gently something or some not-thing is revealing itself. That some not-thing is free. It is natural. But it is not the half-love of just liking what pleases me or of good feelings only.

Nor is it mania or being "up" all the time. A danger of the amphetamines is that one might take being "up" for love. There is nothing, in fact, that is novel about being "up". It is nice to be awake and "up". No doubt. It is fun. It is native to us to be awake. It is one half of our lives.
I respect that.

But it is only one half. I respect the sadness, and the anger, and the hate. I'm not so keen to push them away. Is that acceptance of my old friends those negative emotions something akin to love? Can I accept the sense of not being accepted? Can I accept my own inability to accept huge portions of my own experience?

Maybe I'm not ready for that big game yet? I have to trust myself and guide by my own lights. Maybe I need to contact enough of the "good feelings" first before I feel ready to plunge back in. Maybe the "good feelings" feel novel to me because my defenses, the razor-wire I placed around my heart to protect it, are now keeping me out?

Phenethylamines can help. They can also be a trap. Be careful. Trust yourself. Is that trust and care for yourself love? That trust and care is not a state. It is not novel. Perhaps it is akin to something that emerges or grows or comes out from under the bushel when you make room for it?

Well then. Make room for it!

I think you can get to *similar* states without taking anything and using other methods, but MDMA is undoubtedly quite useful.

Empathy in general is extremely novel and underrated in an evolutionary sense. To me it seems like a far more advanced trait of consciousness/behavior than modern evolutionary theorists give it credit. I think it's a far better indicator of a species level of consciousness/awareness than say using a stick tool to grab insects out of a log.