For as long as I can remember, I have suffered tinnitus. It's a high-frequency tone in my head, and it never stops. Tinnitus is recognized as a symptom of many causes. Stress, hearing loss, tumors, infections, medications, and ear wax are identified as causes.

Meditation has been a part of my life for a long time. Strangely, there is an obvious connection between my meditation practice and my tinnitus. The first moments of meditation are always the more difficult. Loosening my limbs, clearing my mind of events of the day, silencing the mental chatter. Eventually, I start to sink within. As I become calm and fall further into my mind, images begin to appear. At first, it seems like I am imagining shapes emerging from the fog. Soft, ghostly patterns, faces, and sometimes geometry appears and fades away. If I maintain my focus, the imagery becomes more pronounced. At this stage, the ringing in my ears grows louder. Colors begin to paint the imagery. First, soft and faint; with time, brighter hues and more vivid splashes of violets, blues, greens, and reds. The ringing grows ever louder, and then *snap* it drops sharply in frequency. My ever-present high tone is entirely replaced by a distinct, lower tone. Oftentimes this snap will shatter my concentration. This level is a difficult depth for me to attain and the excitement of achievement is often enough to bring me back up to the surface. If I manage to remain in 'second gear,' I can spend time in a delightful realm of bright colors, beautiful visions, and astounding geometry.

If meditation is like paddling in a canoe, then DMT is like being fired from a canon. I haven't dared to take a breakthrough dose, but I have a good sense from experience that that dosage is somewhere in the low 20s. What is important to me here, is the direct similarity (albeit enormously intensified) of the imagery and corresponding head tones between meditation and DMT. DMT presents the same first gear, second gear, and then novel third gear, which is a robust oscillating tone. At 18mgs it reaches a scary, near-deafening sound that feels like everything is about to be ripped apart.

The similarities between the two modes of altering consciousness fascinate me. Also, the experience with DMT has dramatically assisted my meditation practice because I have a much better sense of where it is that I am going. DMT has provided a struggle-free synopsis of a chapter that I have not read yet.

Meditation has made me question if my experience of tinnitus is more than a mere physiological phenomenon. DMT has me nearly convinced that it's a kind of concrete sensory feedback signaling and confirming exploration beyond the normal boundaries of consciousness.

It's an interesting relationship, great topic SeekingPelican.

I never had tinnitus before until I did DMT. It would kick as a high frequency in as I'm going through the portal and then keep rising in volume and dropping in tone, and if I'm not fully broken through will sound like jangling bells and chains whilst I'm inside. If I fully break through all will be silent though.

After a bunch of experiences the tinnitus became permanent. Now I live with it. At first I was worried, but I got over that. Now it's part of me.

When I am waking up I will often take control of my dreams and remain in that state for some time. I will cruise around and do whatever I want in those states. I often have the ability to effect the content of the dreams as well as being able to control what I do. I used to do this as a child but I forgot how to do it. Since starting down this path I remember how again.

What is really funny though is that if I come out of the dream state for whatever reason I notice the tinnitus start again. It's like someone flicks on a switch on a noise machine. But it comes in from real high and then descends just a little, then rests there. If I relax back in to the dream the tone descends and then stops again. It's like I have a sensory cue that makes me aware of the change of states of my consciousness.

I've not really meditated deeply for some years. I accidentally scared myself in meditation and haven't really delved back in there so deep since then. I might be more prepared for that sort of experience now.

Thanks for making me more aware of this. It's something that had been running round in my mind but I'd never really talked about before.

I also have tinnitus and never get relief unless in hyperspace where like Northerner, it is silent unless I am hearing talking, I am actually not sure if it is me hearing or if it is just coming straight into my head but this isn't really what I wanted to talk about.

I want to bring up my findings with low dose mushrooms. I used to grow them and do not have any spores and also have not been able to find any growing around here yet. But at one point I was microdosing and walked by the mirror and caught my own image and when I saw into my eye I got the idea to just re-wire around the nerve damage and as soon as I thought about trying it the tinnitus stopped. I think it was silent for a few weeks although I am not 100% sure on that time frame. It creeped back up and I lost access to my shrooms. I read Paul Stamets books and in one "Mycelium Running" he states that a friend of his reversed hearing problems with Psilocybin.