To nexus readers- the following LONG post is something i wrote for my online whining diary (blog) but thought some here would be interested in. It's nothing but what i do, and most certainly don't, know about this thing we're all here about. Thanks in advance for reading, I've gone over it a few times but sure there are still typos and conceptually convoluted spots. Maybe i can help clarify any questions, then again, maybe not. PAX IN LUX, NULL
acasta gneiss
One man's quest for fulfillment in a greedy culture
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Veracity and Conviction in the DMT Experience- the reality-or not-of shamanic healing
DMT seemed to answer many, if not all, of the existential questions that I've struggled with in trying to gain an understanding of myself in relation to the universe as well as comprehending the nature and reality of the divine. Without a doubt, it showed me a universal force of creation which sings an eternal song outside of time and space, manifesting this universe in the process. The only word in any language to adequately describe this force is ineffable, the inability to describe something in words. One can begin to approach a description of the experience, but that which is experienced is indescribable. A four-dimensional object, which is unperceivable to us in this reality, describes a three dimensional object in space with its shadow. Our entire universe, all that we are able to perceive, is just that, a shadow of a higher dimension. All of our attempts to describe it have fallen into the abyss of belief, becoming religion, attaching dogma and morality to the pure experience and pulling humanity further and further away from its initial, shamanic apprehension of godhead.
We are a species dedicated to knowledge, to gaining wisdom through understanding. In kabbalah, the ancient Hebraic mystical tradition, the three initial emanations of the divine creative force called Kether, are Chokma (wisdom), Binah (understanding), and the 'invisible' Da'ath (knowledge), reflecting the intellect of men and women in that interpretation of the divine, which also states that they were created as the image of god. While human aspects cannot truly be granted to the creative force of the universe, attaching words like Love to it and things associated with those concepts within us as humans in our attempts to describe and understand it are appropriate given the ineffable nature of the Mind of God. At the same time , it seems to me that the human mind is an approximation of it. We, as humans, are the sensory organs of this force in a sense: as we understand ourselves it understands itself. Each time a person is born; a new intellect picks up humanity’s thread of understanding and commences to continue to unravel it from that point in history, for itself or sometimes adding to 'our ' knowledge. But whether or not an individual human life makes a 'difference' in some measurable way to posterity, the knowledge it gains of existence is another tiny incremental step toward the illumination of the species of humanity, towards the goal of greater understanding. Tikkun Olaam is balancing the karma of the world. .
Along those lines, that of having an experiential knowledge of the existence of the divine, and trying to reconcile that with having a desire for an empirical understanding of these things, I'm having a crisis of sorts. Actually a very complicated and very big one. Several years ago, the acquisition of a small amount of 5meo DMT and its subsequent ingestion resulted in a psychedelic experience far beyond anything I'd ever experienced in my past, and I'm a fairly experienced user of psychedelics and drugs in general. A full on death experience of the nature commonly described in the N.D.E. accounts of survivors of physical trauma ensued. I injected far too much thinking I was dosing a less potent drug., and the effect of the drug slammed into me with a golden lightning bolt that split across my vision. Completely convinced that I'd killed myself I proceeded to lie on the floor where I had fallen and feel my heart beat its last beat, and my lungs exhale their last breath, that I somehow perceived to flow out from my prone body like a growing puddle of water seeping a part of my life force back into the earth as it seperated from my consciousness which was pulled in the opposite direction.. I felt it pulled from my body, out of my head and along a tunnel of silver light. At the end of the tunnel was what felt like absolute pure mind- something i was part of, not the other way around. The mind of God, Eloah VDaat in Hebrew, in Sanskrit, Samadhi, the eternal void where all exists as potential before manifesting as even energy, just pure thought in the divine sense, co-existing somehow within my human mind. At some point, i was 'reminded' of my self on earth and forced to return with a deep gasping breath. Upon returning to my body, I vomited a huge black serpent that began to dissolve into black smoke as it left my body. Absolutely stunned at the seeming objective reality of the entire trip, now i was mortified as I could literally feel every scale of this thing pass my lips, I felt it as it coalesced inside my torso into material reality, pulling itself together from deep within my lungs, liver, mind, and glands of various systems within my body that have held onto 'psychic toxins' caused by bad living. It was my 'bad karma', MY evil. Shocked and terrified at this, I misunderstood, were there a shaman present this thing would have been pulled from me and exterminated, I, in my terror at releasing this monster into the world clamped my jaw shut ,severing the snakes body and retaining what was left of it. It was the final lie of evil looking into the face of its own end, convincing me to retain and therefore preserve it. It couldn't hurt anyone, let alone exist without ME. That which the psychedelic had gotten me in touch with was trying to free me but I prevented it.
To me, the reality present in all this was as objective as the table I'm sitting at writing this. It is startling to me, that even while being open to esoteric knowledge, apprehending it is an entirely different thing. The lack of an ability to empirically measure such things as black smoke psychic snakes let alone the spiritual illness that creates them frustrates any attempt to wield Occam's razor. Applying western rationally to this thing, regardless of the fact that western civilization would not exist without psychedelics is nearly impossible, the two ways of thought have diverged completely so as to be anathema to each other. While western culture has feared psychedelics to the point of putting people in cages for messing with them ,they may be the perfect cure for the neuroses that western culture causes . Full circle of the entheogen, in the beginning we learned how to seperate ourselves from the world with them, creating the juggernaut thru history that is human civilization , now that we're fully disengaged from the earth as a species we can reconnect and move ahead with their instruction. That is, if that is the message of psychedelics, to move into the future with considerate deliberation, as the individual as well as the species.
While it may sound like a failure the way I put it in that short narrative, on a whole, that night was the most healing I'd been able to benefit from in years of attending various drug treatment facilities trying to get a grip on a long term heroin addiction. Addiction is deadly, with that to heroin being a particularly nasty one; three out of four heroin addicts die from consequences directly related to the lifestyle. That fact alone implies to many that the condition is a disease, but along with all other reliances to things, I decline to assign that appellation to it, unless termed in such a way to allow effective treatment and cure. It is most definitely a dangerous condition, an illness of the soul, mind and body: more often than not in reaction to some trauma; all addicts are self medicating pain that is very rarely merely physical,but to continue to apply nearly century old thinking to it is wrong. Losing friends and acquaintances at a regular rate on a rapid interval basis is untenable to me, and suffering from suicidal depression myself even after having stopped using heroin, I was desperate to find something at least approaching cure, for myself and for others. Cure, the word is usually responded to with gasps of disbelief at any 12 step meeting, which is the most used treatment modality in the United States and which teaches that there is no cure for addiction, and that we are powerless over it. Those two tenets, I feel, are as deadly as the addiction itself. I had become powerless to make a choice only because I had let myself. Terrified of my subconsciousness where all the demons I had brought to life in my addiction were created and lived I continued to use to ameliorate emotional pain that the reliance to heroin itself was causing! It became a chicken or the egg thing. Was I using heroin because I was depressed, or depressed because I was using? It really didn’t matter at that point, because nearly a quarter century of using had changed my brain chemistry to the extent that I had a very real dependence on opiates such as a diabetic relies on insulin. Without them in my system the consequences could be deadly, I had been addicted so long the withdrawal symptoms had nearly killed me before with seizures from dehydration after twelve days of nonstop vomiting, or if making through that, the chemical imbalance in my brain led to such deep states of depression that killing myself sounded better. It was only through entering a methadone program, taking that drug daily under supervision as replacement for illicit opiates that i was able to get away from the truly deleterious elements of the lifestyle. But that was frankly in spite of the program and environment it was given in, which was one similar to the American penal system, a place of higher education in profligacy, rife with new drug experiences in the form of powerful prescription benzodiazepenes and others that are eagerly hawked at most methadone clinics. There is very little in the way of therapy, let alone hope for cure, in those environments. The state of the art of addiction treatment in the United States is one of ancient research and little real understanding, let alone efficacy. I think it is a shame and travesty that while 80 year old treatment ideas are still expounded, truly effective pharmacological agents that could be used to unravel the mysterious knot of consciousness surrounding addiction gather dust on the shelves, psychedelic research being banned out of fear based legislation. Those days are coming to an end though, with a trickle of university studies on their efficacy being touted on the cover of prominent national publications as I write this. Soon with any hope, that trickle will become a wave of reason, sweeping across the landscape of mental health treatment with effective life saving new modalities.
In the meantime, we suffer. Trying to find some meaning in the world, I had been doing research on mystical states and such and had read of the studies using psychedelics to address things like depression and addiction, aiding patients by capitalizing on the spiritually healing nature of the substances. Particularly interesting were things I was reading about dimethyltrptamine, the vision inducing component of the ancient South American shamanic brew ayahuasca. Having a personal knowledge of the power of psychedelics to strip away the veils that cover the eyes and re introduce meaning into the life I take for granted, I put my call out to the universe for DMT, and it came. Really, it was like that, except it wasn't DMT, but its 5-methylated cousin 5meo DMT, and the experience is that which I just briefly related. Since that night I have explored DMT further, having obtained extracts from acacia confusa on several occasions. However, my initiation into this molecule came much earlier in 1990, on my 21st birthday when the Grateful Dead, who I love, played Eugene Oregon ,where I was at the time living. A friend from out of town came over with some synthetic DMT made in a chemistry lab at a certain northwest collegiate institution notorious for its chemistry department student’s zealous approach to their studies and we smoked it. I remember little of that evening other than the sensation of a shattering of-everything, and a feeling of near psychic compassion lasting weeks after that one dose. I was pretty sure that DMT had some type of special property since that encounter, making it in my mind the, 'apex 'psychedelic of sorts.
So now, as I said, several years later, I find myself with the means to continue that thing that I began, and have access to enough extract to perform several experiments, towards the end of expelling that which I had begun to. But, I find myself trepidatious after an initial experience with it using harmalas from Syrian rue to potentiate and prolong the effects of smoked DMT. The setting for it was perfect in the geographical sense, but the outcome has me weighing the veracity of my conviction to the reality of the nature of hyperspace and that of this path. I’ve found myself doubting after experiencing some very uncomfortable things after several days of MAOI dosing with the rue and after one trip with DMT. At first, I was astounded at my lack of reactivity to stimuli that would normally cause great distress, sadness or anger, but as the week went on, I found myself falling deep into a rage- reacting terribly to people who admittedly have been huge thorns in my side for some time, but I really blew up, engaging these people, more than one, in furious verbal fights that took no prisoners. My emotions have been very raw, I can cry at the drop of a thought when usually I can’t be persuaded to by deign or design. I’m wondering that the cause of this could be one of several things, or combination thereof, I’m praying, literally that its one over the other and that my passion for psychedelic healing is not misplaced and the objective reality I think I discovered in hyperspace truly does exist, being a road to travel in my journey of healing towards wholeness.
I've dosed DMT twice in this session. (Being a prolonged period of time in which i will experiment with DMT, intending to dosoweekly, or less, depending upon its effects upon depression). One that was a little more than expected, the next a week later with a partner, i fully dosed after smoking a bowl of Syrian Rue seeds, as i stated earlier. At the point in this trip where the psychic purging was about to begin, i became hyper aware of my friend and remembered another time we tripped where he told me that he had no demons to exorcise, so to speak, making me in my fragile state feel inferior, even though was groundless to do so. So i held back the tears this time , again withdrawing the poison. I felt i accomplished something at least on a pharmacological level, and like i said the week began great. I think that there are, like i said, several things happening now however that are less than desirable:
1. Too much harmalas. I kept smoking the seeds without DMT for three days after., in the morning and evening with cannabis as a meditation aid, giving lucid visions. I think i may have over elevated my serotonin to toxic levels, i did have headaches but no pupil dilation, which are both symptomatic of serotonin overload. The rage symptoms are similar to that which I've suffered from other serotonin raising drugs-SSRIs and St. John wort. The short acting seratonergic tryptamines seem to have a positive effect there however. I should research more to see if others have the same things happen, and if safe, only dose Rue with DMT.
2. I loosened some psychic detritus that's now crashing around my psyche, causing problems.
I think both of these things, rather than pointing to a lack of practical efficacy, illustrate the need for proper guidance and initiation into and through this state ,to extract the most benefit from it with the least damage. I do feel that I approached the dosing with MAOIs recklessly, not paying enough heed to the power of these substances. This is brain chemistry, and a good experimenter doesn't fall victim to his first one.
(3. Leary said there are three dangers to psychedelic drugs, long term memory gain, short term memory loss, and he forgot the third. So did i.)
This is the crisis, these two competing hypothesis regarding the now painful after effects of the vaped anahuasca trip. One is a purely rational stance, positing that i did some sort of damage through reckless use of plant medicines, creating a toxic level of serotonin in my blood and or brain. I honestly don't know as much about this mechanism as I do the other competing hypothesis, the more esoteric explanation. The problem, one calls for cessation, the other calls for more DMT. That's where i am, with my western critical thinking mind wondering if i made a mistake, if I've deluded myself with a drug, and am hurting myself, or if i need to smoalk moar. The frustration of the reality of the experiences with it that I've had in combination with the fact that it all flies in the face of reason and damn near treads waters that would be called superstition by the fully ignorant could be damning. I embarked on this path to discover truth and wholeness, on a personal and universal level for both of those things, with nothing less than the breath in my lungs riding on the balance. And apprehending a truth that is far stranger than anything i could have imagined prior to doing so still opens up yet more questions. Is that dark hairy demon of the ego that comes out of the shadows of hyperspace to taunt me with it's omnipresence upon my return to this reality and body an archetypal shade from the depths of my subconscious; ancient, evil, and personal to me at the same time to be exorcised along the lines of parable and myth? The ancient and arcane knowledge passed down through the depths of time, from cultures like the Egyptian, that for thousands of years devoted the paramount importance to matters that now we consider foolish-that of the origin and destination of the human soul, the nature of the divine, and humanity's position in it-was devoted to balancing the soul within us that comes from the creator with the life force flowing to us thru the creation. This was the purpose of the myths and the pantheon of gods in these ancient cultures and something wholly absent in ours today. That this knowledge survived after the sacking of Rome and the fall into the dark age that followed testifies its power.
In our climb back out of the pit of ignorance into a rebuilt civilization, the old gods were left behind to weather in their effigies. We have, with the scientific process and western critical thought discovered things about the mind, identifying parts of the physical structure of the brain and been able to discover the function of them relative to the mind, thereby for many proving that there is nothing more to anything than a series of endogenous chemical reactions that are the sole mediators of consciousness. Losing sight of any greater importance to this reality than transient and momentary need fulfillment, we have as a culture become empty and soulless, addiction and unhappiness is ubiquitous, ignorance called knowledge is the norm. Love is the rarity, and I'm no better than anyone.
I know where my feelings lie, I know what I believe, belief being either the straight and wide path to truth, or a narrow and convoluted trail through brambles to the edge of the pit, where one falls into the morass of delusion. Although i cannot photograph the face of god nor can I record the song of angels, even though i cannot stuff and mount the head of the hoary daemon exorcised from within me nor place in an aquarium a pitch black boa made of fractal smoke, I know these things are resident of the inner space of dream reality, where all things exist and from where they manifest, taking forms for me to recognize and interact with, in order to rearrange my reality. I also know that I CAN measure the change in my life. The removal of the possibility of suicide after seeing the face of god, the fact that even though i still have a long way to go, heroin is no longer an issue for me. Those this are measurable and stand as testimony to the veracity of this experience.
Shamanic healing is real, and the archetypal states of consciousness it puts us in touch with allow us to heal in extraordinary ways. Whether or not at this time we can come up with evidence of the empirical reality of say ,McKenna's elves (which have become a stumbling block of belief for some who trip over the concept), we can place into columns in data tables numbers that reflect beneficial response from these substances-psychedelics be it DMT, psilocybin, or whatever, once the research starts being done.
Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest -Roger Bacon
*γνῶθι σεαυτόν*