I had a very difficult experience smoking changa recently. I have not smoked since. The experience has left me with fear. I am doing my best to integrate my difficult experience but it is proving to be much harder than I had ever anticipated.

The experience was super-real. During the experience I felt as though birth, life and death are all the same moment. All on one string.

I was on a gurney being pushed along a hallway. The lights were bright in the hallway and blinded me as each light passed above my head. I felt as though I was in and out of consciousness. The gurney ride ended in a room with a very bright light above me. I was surrounded by medical professionals. They were all talking medical terms. Locating tools and seemed very concerned. I felt someone put there hand on my head and caress my head and hair.I heard someone say "We're losing him!" I felt the life and energy slowly pulling from my body. I felt so scared. This was my death. This was it and I was releasing my mortal coil. The feeling of letting go of this life was so painful. I had a flash of my whole life and felt as though I was not done and was sad to leave. The lights dimmed.. the noise of the room slowly became silent. And then there was nothing. Black. Nothingness.

When I returned to my body I cried and felt as though I just had a premonition of my own death in a hospital. The experience seemed so real it shook me up pretty good. Fear is a bitch. Wapatish! I got hyperslapped!

Advice on integrating fear?

It's powerful stuff man. It can plunge you into your deepest fears, worries, along with pervading consternation. Ime, through that it can and will weave messages, unspoken messages; sometimes not. The experience will certainly test your fear.

Advice in integrating fear?

Go live life and enjoy.

^^^ That is some sound advice.

That whole thing sounded like a very heavy trip, no doubt. Life and death is a very mysterious thing that we can only hope to understand. Fear (and most emotions) is another enigma in and of itself. Integrating can be quite challenging at times.

However, you cannot be unafraid if you have never been fearful. Take the good with the bad, the happy with the sad, the ups and the downs and everything in-between. Fear sucks, my friend but you seem like a strong/level headed person (based on your posts ) and you will be able to integrate and make sense of all this when the time is right!

Keep your head up! You've got a powerful support system right at your fingertips!

Sending good vibes your way!


-The Grateful One-

Well, you survived the ordeal, and you weren't 'lost' after all, that suggests a celebration is in order!

Not necessarily a keg-party kinda thing, but something (internal or external) to mark a new phase as you go onwards from here.

Manifest your newly expanded potential!

To quote 3rdIs signature (I forget whether that is his mantra or...) :

"Inhale, survive, adapt"

While the experience itself was probably very difficult and took a (short term) toll on you, it is also a rare glimpse into the dying process, how you react, and potentially (and most importantly imo) how you can best prepare for the real thing now you have had a trial run.

Working with DMT can be gruelling and can require some fairly major changes during integration, but in the long term, make sure the experience wasn't in vain. Ask yourself how you can make this work for you. What, exactly, made the experience so fearful?

Now go out and embrace your life, and be thankful for the human experience you have been blessed with!

Good luck with your integration.

P x

You got great advice up there, d. My initiation into DMT space-(5meo) was a death experience. While it was different in substance from yours, the effect was similar. It was life changing. However, my death was peaceful, and accepted. I just... Let go and died. It struck me in your narrative how you struggled with this. You just had a dress rehearsal for your demise. Whether or not you were in a divinatory state and witnessed your future death is unknowable at this point, but you are fortunate to have that glimpse. Finding peace and fulfillment that cannot be rescinded, through self love that comes from within-that should be your goal. Today IS a good die to die. At any given moment, your life is complete.

Integration from an experience like that- what i call transformative spiritual experience, is the reason for the integration project- (which btw, is going to happen, we're sussing out details to make sure it works, thanks for your help and support, d). We have nothing in our culture outside if religion, which obscure truth IMO to make sense of it.

But, you have tools at your disposal. It was pointed out that you have this great support network you are already hooked into. I know I don't have to tell you to take advantage.


The most difficult aspect I had to integrate from my experience was the annihilation of consciousness at death. Catching a glimpse of your utter dissolution into the source of all that is, and losing all that you are like so much trash in the process can be a tough pill to swallow. Our egos hold onto the importance of our individual lives as if it turning the light out on or consciousness would deprive the universe of some integral part of it. Religion and mysticism almost without exception serves to support this egoistic delusion. And having an experience like yours can send one off looking for something to attach it to, something that helps describe and define it. Be thankful, very very thankful, for the nexus.

Today IS the first day of the rest of your life.

This is a great post.

theres nothing like a reminder of your impending doom to give your motivation for life a kick start, now get to it

And the biggest joke of all
Is the one that everybody knows
It goes Time is the only road
And we know where time goes

-- Peter Mulvey

Remember to live in such a way that you're ok with dying any time.

Peace.

hey,

maybe this website can calm you a bit:

http://www.afterlife101.com/Chapter8.html

Look, you "died" but you did not go the whole way. If you actually would have died, that expierence should have been much smoother.

You got the greatest gift you could have been given, you just don"t know it yet.

much love,
332211

Thank you very much for the responses.

I have walked alone for so long it is nice to walk along a side some fellow travelers for a change. The advice is needed and accepted. The nexus has become a leaning post for me in many respects lately. Living within your own heart is a big place to live. Closed off, locked up in the prison of your own mind.

I have been going through quite a bit in my life lately. Lost. I look for a new perpective. Climb to a new vantage point to take a look around. I see fear. I see someone seeking. Someone seeking outside of themselves for answers. The answers are within. The answers do not come in the form of words. Analysis changes the answer. Transforms it into something it is not. Looking from this new perspective I see the answers form to be something of a feeling. Something that is beyond anything the mind can grasp a hold of. Gripping sand in your hand.

Transformation is becoming nothing. Death was my glimpse into this concept. Becoming nothing and seeing the nature of existance. The beautiful process of life. We are born, live our lives and die. They all exist in the here and now. The choices are always in the present. Death is already here. Already a memory. So then is life and birth so the choice is to say 'yes' to the process. Say 'yes' to birth, life and death. Acceptance of one moment is acceptance of the whole.

Fear is a signal. It represents unbalance and unacceptance. Balance and accept. Accept everything. Accept the fear. Take it all in and transform it into nothingness. Death of fear. Death of unbalance and unacceptance. Turning it into life. Turning it something new. Love.

Welcome back!

You were not seeing the full spectrum of your experience, you were stuck inside of it because it was so real and shocking. Step outside of it for a minute and think about what is happening from a deeper level. Remove yourself from the experience and step back to another position as an observer for a little while until you get over the initial shock of it.

You will come to an understanding soon that will allow you to embrace the entire experience for what it was. It was created just for you.

You shouldn't be scared, you should be elated, you are alive, something new is being created from within yourself, the old you and those concepts are done!!!

Death is change, plain and simple, this was part of yourself refusing to die and using your mind to hang on to it out of fear. Out of death comes life, you have to recycle that energy from what has died into what you are giving life to. Sometimes we have to have these experiences to shake us up and they make us look deep deep inside and then we ask the questions. When we start asking the questions is when we start growing again.

What we call death is not the end, is is only the end of our level of understanding from this level of consciousness. We need not be afraid of it.

Your true self is emerging...

You are going to die a few times before you really start to live.

Psychedelics affect me on an unusual time scale. Salvia initiates a powerful 2-day cleanse that culminates in a moment, exactly 48 hours after the experience, of great potential energy/ up-in-the-airness. Ayahuasca induces a 3-day long cleansing process that culminates in a swift, graceful purge of energy, matter, and thought-forms at exactly 72-hours after ingestion. Kratom affects me for like 5 days. I only say this to make clear that my experience is/s are not typical.

After taking Ayahuasca in microdoses for 4 months, and letting the tension build, my unconscious mind/body fabricated a near-death experience for me. I woke up and had what felt exactly like a heart attack--complete with the feeling of dead tissue in my chest, and a loss of a lot of energy.

In the following week, at night I felt my soul beginning to slip from my body. I felt my consciousness being forced to let go of many aspects of my personality/ego/relationships in my life, as my heart raced and struggled to keep up with what I presumed to be a loss of the strength of my heart. I had visions of my soul travelling through the afterlife, hearing drumming, envisioning me on my death bed, my family and loved ones surrounding me, mourning the loss of my precious life. "He had so much to live for." This is was all with no psychoactive substances active within me.

I would have mourned, had I the energy. But no--the energy I had left could only be dedicated to restructuring my priorities in life; survival is such a futile effort, especially when death is clearly imminent. The highest priority now would be to make connections with loved ones. Connections that I had let fall by the wayside in my fight to become a stronger person in mind, body, and soul.

I called people I loved. I called my ex girlfriend of 2 years. I called the girl of my dreams who lived 5 hours away, that I felt unable to hold a relationship with. I visited my old college and floated around with my small, dying heart, and let it feel what love it could experience in its final, weak moments. (In striving to purify my heart, I committed internal genocide. I had learned the hard way that the heart is not meant to be pure, but simply to be open in all its inherent imperfection and "badness." ) I found and hooked up with a girl who strikingly resembled my ex of 2 years.

There's the psychedelic experience of the death-realms, the knowledge and sight of the unity of birth and death, and then there is facing your own immediate, personal mortality. As someone with a lot of health problems, you can imagine that the psychedelic insight into death and mortality for me packs quite a wallop.

For a full week, I believed that I had 1-2 more days to live. Of course, a sensible person would have gone straight to the hospital. But since I was so sure death was near, I had to make amends and prepare for my death as much as possible. I had to connect with love--that was, and still is, my highest priority. I had formed a question I never thought I would be asking at age 25: How can I make my death a gift?

How can you make your death a gift?

Many great responses so far. Very much enjoy reading through.



Yes. Thank you. This, my friend. This. Think about it.. any of us could die at any point in time. We have no set date. The present is it (whatever that is for you) and all that will ever be.

Damn. I love this place. Where else can one go with " hey guys? I died last night and it was kind weird and hard to deal with. Can anyone relate and maybe offer some advice? " and have it followed up by several rational, thoughtful, caring responses that helps one put such a thing into the context of their life? Awesome stuff, awesome stuff people, thanks.
&

Who was it who said something along the lines of this is the most important thing we can be talking about as humans in this time, what could be more interesting than the psychedelic?

My advice with fear.... Eventually you gotta face it, but you dont need to rush. Fear is natural - but you dont want it to control you. It can also be nice to take a break when you need to do some valuating or just relaxing from an experience....

I remember years ago I was going through a transformation in my life.... Everything in my life was changing and psychedelics were the only thing that seemed to help me navigate what was going on. I had zero other resources at the time to understand my spiritual crisis and was kinda dependent in a way which is not good at all, but that was where I was. I knew of no books or community I could turn to, no practices, just the psychedelics were the only thing I knew about which helped (I have since found many other helpful practices ect).

Well, one day someone dosed me extra. I had gotten sugar cubes from him and didnt know that they had anywhere from 1-4 hits each, I thought they all had one hit. So I ate 4. 10 minute later I blacked out and next thing I know I was waking up in a padded room of a hospital 8-9 hours later with no memory of the night. Apparently I had freaked out and started yelling and my sober roommate called an ambulance for some reason.... (what I really needed was someone to calm me down and comfort me, but I guess I was in no space to ask for that)

Obviously that was pretty scary, but for me at the time I was even more scared of losing the only tool I had for understanding what was happening in my life at that time. I knew the psychedelics were teaching me and healing me, and I was scared to lose that.

So the next weekend I took 4 more just to prove to myself that it wasnt the substance that freaked me out but my own mind. Had the best time ever that day, and I learned a valuable lesson about how scary our own minds can be and how psychedelics can really bring forth anything that is within you. I also learned a little bit about the nature of fear I think...

Note: Going overboard with dosage is not responsible, and I look back on that phase of my life as a kinda crazy phase that while it healed me, I was also lucky to survive.

You died and your life ended.
But now you have a second chance, don't waste it.
Maybe its not as simple as that for you but that's how I see it.
Good luck

Fascinating thread. Peace and support to OP.

Question: Do other posters ever experience(psychedelically catalyzed or otherwise), a state during which there seems to be, thoughtless/egoless awareness?? By this I'm attempting to describe that consciousness/awareness/sensibility field in which one has "forgotten" who they are, in a personal/ego sense, but is still experiencing an awareness that can be remembered/recalled at a later time.

This altered state of consciousness(ASC), wholly or mostly devoid of personal ego, can be useful to practice entering. It can help us appreciate that a foundational awareness/consciousness(Nature, Satori, God, Samadhi...) pervades the totality, or at least is experienced to.

The psychedelically induced "egodeath" experience, while reliably engendered(with appropriate substance/dose/set/setting), can be abrupt, terrifying, even excruciatingly painful. As anyone ever trapped in the medicine induced "death/rebirth loop" can attest. This mind state, even when encountered by "seasoned" travelers can be SO frightful/agonizing/schizophrenic/insane...that one questions the very FABRIC of reality and surely wonders, "why in the hell would I do this to myself, what if I never come home, what if, what if, what if....?????????".

But interestingly, for those on the medicine path, we often CHOOSE to return to these realms. It is quite archetypal, likely the genesis of ALL human myth, religious root stories and profound prose/poetry.

Food for thought.......please share yours! Peace.