I didn't say I felt like it was a waste, I have just had mixed and confusing experiences. I guess one thing for me is I have studied and practiced hesychasm (a mystical tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churchs) for a few years now. The tradition of hesychasm emphasizes keeping the mind still and the heart free from any image while in prayer, even images of Jesus Christ himself are discouraged (we are taught to pay no attention to them) because they can be tricks of the devil and also because the goal is to contemplate God the Father who is beyond all forms, concepts and images. We are taught that if it really is Jesus appearing to us and we reject him, he will forgive us because of the ruthlessness of the demons which so frequently deceive us with various thoughts and images.

Now I find it very very difficult to keep my mind free from images when I am tripping and so when my visuals materialized into the image of Christ I didn't know what to make of it, whether it was just a cool visual, a trick of the devil or whether I was actually being healed by the Lord Jesus.

Now I had another very different experience with prayer one time on DMT. In that episode I was intending to smoke a very low dose of DMT to try to help me discern whether tripping was good for me or whether I no longer needed it. I was trying to smoke resin left in my pipe and it was not working, so I heated the pipe on the stove. Big mistake. I got an enormous hit, the biggest hit of DMT I have ever taken and realized I was going to breakthrough which I so so did not want to do.

The breakthrough came and I was resisting it full force because I did not want to go there at all at that time and it was absolutely hellish and ridiculously intense. I found myself floating in some dark realm where the most hideous looking evil spirits came flying at me from all directions, snarling and laughing and bearing their teeth as they prepared to tear me to pieces. I was about to panic when I remembered the Lord Jesus Christ. So I began to pray and this time at the very sound of the Holy name of Jesus, the evil spirits fled away from me in terror. They looked completely dejected, as though I had totally tricked them. I then felt presence of Jesus Christ all around me. He had the warmest, most loving and light filled presence I have ever felt. Words cannot describe it. A feeling of total peace began to wash over my soul and I realized that this feeling was what I had been longing for my entire life. I was then able to have a brief conversation with Jesus. He told me that he was with me always in my heart and indicated that I could be come one with him. He then told me that God could do anything.

Hmm, you know now that I think about it I guess praying while tripping has worked out pretty well for me lol. You are right, I will do it more. I guess I was thinking of some other experiences Ive had like on mushrooms once I tried to pray and I remember feeling it was meaningless and just no match whatsoever for the powerful energies that were swirling around me.

All plant teachers are effective healing tools, as long as one develops a relationship with understanding how to use them correctly. This is the crucial point. It's no use messing about here and there/one week this one/next week that one, unless you really understand the plant spirits enough.

Simply put, if your intentions are healing, keep it as simple as possible. Complications just add, err....complications... There's nothing cool or sophisticated about that, just sillyness.

Well do you think that alternating between mushrooms and cacti from week to week is a workable plan or do you think I should work with only one at a time?

I understand the crucialness (sp) of needing to understand how to use these teachers properly, which is part of why I have come to forum such as this.

My method has basically been eat the plant and hope for the best. Luckily, I seem to have some intuitive ability and so sometimes my intuition will take over and show me how to use the plant. I have gained a lot from my sacred plants and mushrooms already. But I also feel like just a beginner and like I dont really know what I am doing or how to get the most out of my plants.

I definitely agree with you though, you see these plants are not like antibiotics where you just take the pill and it does all the work for you. You must participate in and make use of the experience in order for it to be of benefit.

So far I have learned these things from my plants:

- Trust God, trust yourself, trust God's medicine (the plant teacher)

I find going into the experience in faith rather than a fearful attitude to be very important when dealing with uncomfortable feelings that may arise.

I have also learned that it is best to surrender to the experience as much as possible, especially in the onset phase. Later the trip there is more opportunity for control and direction but you should surrender first.

One of the most harmful things that happened to me was for a while I was into the New Age movement and this was during a vulnerable period in my life when I was suffering from cannabis induced anxiety.

The New Age teachewrs I was following were very adamently against plant teachers and they said that they could cause damage that would take lifetimes to recover from and how they damaged the spiritual circuits of the brain and how dangerous they were and how there were so many safer and much more effective means of attaining spiritual growth.

Because i was already suffering from cannabis induced anxiety at the time, I took these claims very seriously and ceased using all plant teachers. When I did this, my life really started to go downhill. The New Age teachings lead me into a state of extreme confusion and fear. I felt extremely frustrated because no matter how hard i tried I could not seem to heal at all, or grow spiritually even though the New Age teachings said that it was supposedly so easy to do and plant teachers were so harmful and dangerous.

Finally after years of depression, misery, confusion and suicidal thoughts I said fuck the New Age movement. I joined a traditional Christian church and ate some psychedelic mushrooms. I had one of the greatest, most healing trips of my life on those mushrooms and my interest in spiritual growth and healing was renewed. Since then my life has improved a tremendous amount, thanks to both Christianity, plant teachers and various other spiritual teachings I have studied.

However I must confess that somewhere deep in my psyche resides the fear that New Age teachings are right and I am somehow hurting myself in unknown ways by using plant teachers (even though they have helped me and healed me so much).

Well, i'm not even suggesting you actually do 'anything'.

But what i do suggest is if you do decide to work with plants, then do so in a safe and focussed manner. Seriously consider a fresh non judgemental POV, and suspend any ideologies imposed from any 'movements', which may greatly impede the learning and indeed 'teaching experience'.

If anything, you might end up seriously questioning Religion. Consider that.

Are you ready to face the glaring truth. That is the question. And what will you do about it?

Have you even got your life in order first, before you consider all of this?

Just my 4 cents!

To me this sounds like you are fighting the experience and trying to force t to be the way you expect it to be. Hesychasm is like a little box that limits your experience, and psychedelics are taking you away from those limitations. I would say Hesychasm and psychedelics sound like two conflicting and contradictory practices together - seems like they dont really mix. Not saying that means you need to stop hesychasm or anything, but maybe keep the practices separate? Not all paths work together or compliment each other....

With psychedelics the goal isnt so much to follow a rigid system of rules someone else conditioned you to - instead the focus is to know and trust your heart and intuition.

.... In your last few posts you seem caught between following your own intuition and guidance from God, or following what other people told you..... Try listening to your heart for a bit - see what happens The goal isnt to be like everyone else, or let others tell you how to think and live - the goal is to be closer to God right? So then trust the path God lays before you!

Well thats exactly what I was saying, is that I dont find hesychasm and psychedelics mix well. Not saying that hesychists and psychedelics dont mix well, I find that my spiritual practices have greatly improved my psychedelic experiences.

But what I dont find to work particularly well is to try to do both at the same time. When I pray, I pray and when i trip I trip. I try to let go of all expecations, impositions, assumptions and practices when I trip and just open to the experience for maximum learning.

I only mentioned this because others were suggesting I pray while tripping. I always pray beforehand, but when i am actually tripping I like to not try to control the experience, unless it feels right to try to control the experience.

I highly doubt I will question religion. It was psychedelics that caused me to become interested in religion. I grew up athiest but psychedelics showed me in an undeniable way that there is such a thing as divinity and that there is a higher power/intelligence greater than man or man's ego. They showed me how absurdly arrogant it was of me to think my small egoic mind understood reality and that the religious way of humility, awe and respect lead to a much more harmonious existence. They showed me how absurd it was to view myself as separate from nature and many other revelations which can also be found in religion. I consider myself very open minded but the idea that psychedelics could somehow make me question religion and go back to being an atheist/materialist seems pretty impossible to me.

Now I could see psychedelics possibly causing someone to question a certain, narrow interpretation of religion in the sense that the map is not the terrain. For instance I have realized many times that no matter what my beliefs are, God and God's truth are always beyond my beliefs. In my experience, the truth can never be grasped or encapsulated in any sort of philosophical system, because ultimately life will always begin and end in mystery and psycchedelics are capable of separating your conscious awareness from all of your beliefs about existence. But this is precisely what my favorite religion (Christianity) teaches. The fathers of the church taught that God the Father is essentially an unknowable mystery. The closest we can come to knowing this mystery, is to make ourselves clear reflections of it in form. Then we can know our own divine nature. In that sense, existence is like a mirror which allows God to see itself.

But we can never know the mystery itself, because we exist within it just like a character in a novel can never know the author of that novel.

Its very difficult for me to imagine how psychedelics could make me question this, because every trip only seems to confirm it. Even smoking super high breakthrough doses of DMT only seemed to confirm this more and more, showing me that there is not even such a thing as time in the way we think about it and that all is the great I AM, just like religion teaches.

So yeah, I dont really understand how psychedelics could make me question religion. They have been used religiously for thousands of years.

And what do you mean have I got my life in order? Like I said, I suffer from a lot of psychological issues. If I waited until those were resolved before tripping, I would never trip. I trip to help myself heal and it does seem to help. If I got my life in order, I wouldn't really need to trip, would I?

"Hesychasm is like a little box that limits your experience"


The same could be said of shamanism.

All i can say is that it looks like you need to do more research into things. You talk about tripping, when healing is usually deep and often painful, certainly far beyond merely 'tripping'. You see, the really curative nature of these experiences is in 'breakthrough doses', and then the often 'months after' of re-intergration, which ALSO includes MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES to your life.

It's important that you have adequate psychological processes in order to make sure that you can deal with the experience and then make the changes happen by being pro active. If you're too depressed you may encounter problems, so i warn you about the risks, and advise a sitter when you feel better equipped.

It's up to you now, no more 'spoon feeding'. This is your journey, i wish you well, but above all be safe, and .... Do some research!

these responses are all so silly. Picking at someones intentions because they associate the words "tripping" and "healing" with one another is petty and cheap, and makes you sound like you want to show off your higher understanding to the rest of us present. Get over yourself.

No I would not...

Both of these medicines are very powerful teachers. One is not "greater" than the other. If you are unsure as to which one will work best, you need to try them both out and see which is more beneficial for you. Effects are rather subjective. How you choose to integrate them is (once again) completely and utterly up to you.

I have had profound and deep journeys on both of these substances. They each carry their own "flavor" and color the experience accordingly. Try them out for yourself and compare the results. Apply the lessons and then return here (the Nexus) to tell us the details.

It doesn't matter if one is more powerful than the other. What matters is what you take from your journeys. I fear I am starting to beat a dead horse!

Best of luck to you in your travels into the unknown

Man, the tripping comment is seriously nothing in the scheme of the post i made. Why don't you get off your high horse?

I mean c'mon, the o/p is obviously extremely in the dark about this stuff, and should ideally do some research for his/her own benefit-don't you agree?, or d'you have a problem with that idea, that i'm obviously making pretty clear?

Seriously, why spoonfeed someone with info, when they obviously haven't even researched the basics. If they did, they wouldn't be making this thread.

it is an internet forum about psychedelics, and someone asked some questions about psychedelics..

Surprise, surprise.

No need to jump all over them for it.

I've never tried Aya, but I've done a handful of other ones a few times (LSD, DMT, HBWR, some dissociatives) and there is something about mushrooms that's just unique, and, in my mind, even more profound than DMT hyperspace.

On my last mushroom trip (~2/2.5 g in a tea), I just felt like I was somewhere so intensely alien, so ancient and fundamental, but at the same time, so completely familiar and normal. It was beautiful, hideous, fascinating, and dull all at the same time, and I have no idea how that could possibly be. LSD/A feels like a carnival ride to me, vaped DMT, like a dream, dissociatives aren't even worth wondering about.

Nothing has that overwhelming quality of mushrooms, that feeling of being dissolved into something so completely beyond your comprehension.

At it's best, it's knowing that 'this' is what the prophets of the Old Testament, and the Christian mystics, were talking about when they proclaim the Power and Glory of God.

At it's worst, it's terrible in ways that would make HP Lovecraft give it all up and become an ice cream truck driver.

I'm hoping to do Aya sometime soon, probably with fellows here in the States, since I cannot afford a trip down, and don't want to be complicit in the commercialization of indigenous cultures why white psycho-tourists, but even though I am respectful, afraid, and sure that I will be astounded by the experiences I will have, I'm unsure if it will be able to match the glory that is the psilocybin experience.

Blessings
~ND

I find your attitude slightly offensive. Please tell me what the basics are then. Why do you think I took the time to register at this forum if I did not intend to do research? I have been researching psychedelics for some time and am currently reading LSD psychotherapy by Stanlislov Graf. I also have a lot of things going on in my life right now including a physically demanding job so I dont have as much time to dedicate to research as I would like. It is difficult enough for me to make time to trip on things cactus which lasts 18 hours for me. There is only so much time and energy I can dedicate to psychedelics right now, so I hoped to save time through asking questions. I have tripped psychedelic drugs more than 50 times in my life and the vast majority of my experiences have been extremely positive. The very few negative experience I have had, I generally got over within a couple of days and came to value just as much as the positive ones. The only exception being when I was a teenager I abused marijuana smoking all day long every day for years on end and it caused me panic attacks and anxiety but these days I can smoke again without anxiety and I have learned not to abuse it.

Can you clarify exactly what aspects of psychedelics I should be researching? There is a lot of information out there and again, the reason I registered here was to learn from other people who have experience with this path. I am not sure why that doesn't count as research, considering I have learned a tremendous amount about psychedelics from browsing forums which I consider valuable because they have so much experience between all the members, vs reading a book written by one single dude.

However, experience has also taught me that excessive research is not always necessary or even helpful beyond a certain point. Another way to take psychedelics in my opinion is to go off on ones own into nature and take them without expectation, without a head full of "research" and human ideas all based on the experiences of others and to learn how to trust your own self and your own intuition. It is important to know the dosage and safety of the substance but beyond that can you tell me why you think so much research is needed? For me the experience itself is the research, as I tend to learn more about psychedelics from one "trip" (excuse my language) than from months of research.

But I am perfectly open to doing research. I dont understand why you cant be more specific about what you think I should research.

Oh and if you dont like this thread, keep in mind as a new user I cannot post in the other forums.

let's just get back to mushrooms and ayahuasca. The rest is pointless and leads nowhere.

I meant talking about tripping sounded like SJ wasn't serious enough about the matter. There was no 'higher understanding' involved as you so cringeworthily said so yourself Jamie. Why did you even conclude so? Guess what; They say 'it takes one to know one'!



Everyone here has ALREADY given you all the information you need, and now it's being repeated so we've concluded that some like x, some y, some z, some suggest this, some suggest that, plenty different opinions, and enough stuff to further confuse rather than serve to clarify!
There isn't any need to go on and on about it because now that you have the information/ confusion, the rest is in your corner and up to you. This is what i mean with no more spoonfeeding. Only YOU can find out what works for you. What works for x, y, z, may not work for you, cos you are DIFFERENT. No rocket science here.

There's plenty information in the wiki. Have you considered reading other forums like Reset.me or Ayahuasca.com? Those sites are more specifically attuned to healing than this one, imho. Consider working on a positive framework, get your shit in order, really get to understand the importance of SET, SETTING, DOSE, and of course the very important thing called INTEGRATION. That can take ages, and that's where the real fruition and possibility to make long lasting positive changes lies. Find one teacher and stick to it, actually the framework is probably the most important factor in healing that the teacher. If you lack framework, it may lose great effectiveness.

Only you can find ways to work out your issues yourself. Maybe speak to a psychiatrist as well? Get some positive friends, get a better job, better flat, better clothes, eat better, exercise better. Go on holidays, make plans and do them.

Put your worries in a worry book, and take time to work on them by taking positive action. Write lists about your good points, you know, find what works best for you. We're all different and you're man enough to re read this entire thread and understand that you have already had enough information given unto you to get to work with. That was my point.

I'm not suggesting you do anything, but consider things carefully. Be safe.

I apologise if i offended you.

Praying doesnt control the experience. Singing will control the experience. Praying is just asking for help from a higher power - doesnt control anything. Most spiritual traditions liken prayer to connecting and "cleaving" to God - you are joining with the divine in prayer through your love.

Instead of trying one specific limited form of prayer, try a more emotional freeform of prayer. Try prayer that doesnt have limitations set on it. Just ask from your heart to Gods heart. Totally different then what you were trying before, and I think it is very appropriate in your situation and would help you a lot. It has helped me greatly praying during ceremony and has helped many others that I know - psychedelics and prayer mix fantastically.

You dont have to try it, but I think it would be helpful for you because of multiple things you said earlier in the thread.

I had to laugh at this Partially because of how accurate it can be.


I had the exact same thoughts, then I tried it

Mushrooms are incredibly healing for me, and I do use them in a medicinal context most of the time. And if we're talking about seriously deep trips then yes, mushrooms do take the cake. Combining mushrooms with harmalas is beyond insane, the deepest I've ever been with a tryptamine. Changa and Ayahuasca are incredibly healing as well. I get more positive effects from Ayahuasca than Changa; perhaps that's due to the duration of the experience. The intensity has been there no matter the ROA.

Grrr!!