Hey Null24, thanks for your reply! I love hearing similar experiences and I too have had a similar experience when I smoked Salvia on LSD where reality tore apart leaving me in blackness and then I saw a giant wheel containing generic life events that repeated infinitely inwards towards it's centre. I got locked in some kind of infinite loop until my friend managed to snap me out of it. The impression that left on me was just that the nature of the physical universe that we're invested in is incredibly repetitive and in it's monotonous repetition it wears us down more and more as we continue to spin in this wheel.
I didn't mean for this report to come across as self loathing, I intentionally omit certain details or my interpretation of certain parts of it as I generally don't want to colour other peoples experiences too much with my own as I know that in the beginning of my journey with all this, expecting the things that I'd read in other peoples experiences lead to me going no where. It wasn't until I stopped expecting anything I truly began to get anywhere.
The 10 bulls in zen has really resonated with me through out the years:
https://www.deeshan.com/zen.htmPersonally I believe what I'm seeing is the bull in this metaphor, I don't believe the bull to truly be me as I feel more myself when I'm without it. The bull is a construct of my own making with no real consciousness of my own, It's more like an AI that has learned from what I've fed it and through time it has come to believe itself to be living.
When I trip on LSD, if I let everything slip away until I'm pushed up against the walls of my own ego I see the bull entangled throughout the reflection of my self and as it starts slipping away it feeds be troubling thoughts to try and keep me from truly discovering it.
As I said, I don't think this is some kind of external malevolent entity in the sense of a demon or something like that. It's something entirely of my own creation but it (at least to me and seemingly many others) is a very real thing.
I think many people see the ego as the enemy where I only believe that to be true in part. It's a very specific part of our ego that keeps us rooted in suffering and I just hope that people will be open to that idea so that there's a chance it can be discovered.
'The black dog' is a great metaphor here actually. I did struggle with depression and self loathing through much of my life but I've since come to discover that this certain part of myself has allowed to dominate me during that time. It's since I started to see this thing for what it is that I've been able to make true steps away from these feelings and begin to live life in a way that genuinely makes me happy and fulfilled.
I don't want to be stating any of this as fact and it's only true for you if it's true for you. I only decided to share this because I find it strange that there's so much reference to this topic (that I might be explaining poorly) in so much psychedelic culture and yet so little talk on the subject. I literally can't find a single person online mention this reoccurring visual I get on LSD and yet I've met several people who see the same thing.
There's a lot of media in the form of various peoples art and music that I can draw upon to give examples of what I'm talking about if anyone's interested. Send me a pm and I'll share!