Since taking LSD on January 28, 2017, I am completely amazed by the unexpected afterglow that has remained in the week following. In some ways, it felt like my first LSD trip, as previous trips had this feeling that I was dipping my toes into what could be but never quite there. I am in a flow state that I have years aspired for with only temporary successes (usually during and after meditation, writing, or playing music), and only mostly known I feel as if I have been meditating non-stop for over a week.
Self-consciousness that spirals into social anxiety - the feeling that people are watching and thinking negative of me - is largely gone, for there is no self to be conscious of and subsequently indulge in these maladaptive and deeply engrained projections. Certainly the thoughts still manifest like clouds, but they are met with a tender acceptance and compassion – which synthesizes to an easily accessible source of humor. But what people think of me is entirely their business.
Those that I know and love who have naturally negative feelings, I am less seeing it as something wrong that I’ve done. In the past, my high affective empathy would make me feel another’s pain or anger or anxiety and I’d swiftly wish them to change it because it would make me feel guilty; anger would often result. I’d want to help people who didn’t wish to help themselves, and when they inevitably failed, I’d resent them for it. In empathy’s place seems to be stronger compassion, where I do not stretch my ego into there’s and can do my bet to be there for them. The difference between compassion and the limitations of empathy need to be further discussed, since the research is only in tentative stages and the public misconception have the definitions intertwined. There is neither blockage nor shame. In its place is a transformative self-love, willing to accept whatever comes into me and express my being like my life is a musical performance. One way of describing it is: I see myself how my loved ones see me rather than my projective and deluded fear of how they see me.
That lingering inferiority complex has vanished! To use an example: I’ve been playing the piano for a number of years, and people have often celebrated my skill. Though better in recent years, there’s always this lingering feeling that I’m not good enough. “If only I knew 109 songs instead of 108”, “if only I could be just a little bit better.” Since taking LSD, I’m amazed and proud of the ability. I’ve never had this before and wish to release my talents – and not for success or external accolades, but to truly release a part of myself, independent of the outcome. This goes for anything in life I wish to accomplish.
I observe and embrace the equipoise of feminity and masculinity. This seems most expressible in the diversity of music. If I wish to dance to Lady Gaga in the rain and embrace a flamboyant personality, then let it be. If I wish to headbang to death metal and embrace a peculiar happiness, then let that be so too. If I wish to listen to Mozart and sniff wine, or embrace psytrance, then why not? And why can’t my fashion be equally contradictive, contingent on what I feel? Can I not be both Clark Kent and Superman? There is the acceptance of my dominant and animalistic sexuality without some self-conscious guilt that its complete release contradicts my usual introverted and compassionate demeanor. My adaptively to others, a thousand egos, is celebrated rather than condemned. Contradictions of my personality, my adaptively, my myriad of alter egos, the diversity of humor, are not fragmented contradictions at all but pieces of a puzzle that make up a whole.
Every face and place is enriched with novelty. Humans are amazing and complex and equally beautiful. Those that I disagree with in the past, be it political or self-induced suffering, are currently not condemned and judged by my mind, which appears to be a passive way of wishing them to change to something other than that they are. Rather, there is a natural tendency to try and understand their perspective and provide compassion accordingly – even to Donald Trump. The proverb that anger is a poison that does not harm anyone else but ourselves seems as clear as day.
Synchronicity’s and everything having meaning makes perfect sense on LSD (pattern recognition of the brain?), and in a way while on my trip, my ego felt heightened in that everything had a “meaning” that centralized around myself. But no doubt the Jung’s of this world were onto something when it came to understanding the nature of the subconscious. But what I’ve accepted is I know not the mysteries of the universe, be it answerable by science or something else, and that my logical mind will not know the answers. Equally so, nor does religion or anything New Age. And one should be wary indeed of anyone that claims otherwise. The mystery is to be lived.
And all the love and appreciation I have of Eastern philosophy – emptiness, impermanence, the illusory nature of the self – all seems so clear. The only true thing to be sure of is consciousness itself, in this moment, and it is the contents of consciousness – sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings – that are in a constant state of impermanent flux until death. And, at the moment, rather than seeming as independent concepts, every thing that comes into conscious all seems interconnected – there is nothing in of itself without being connected to something else. I accept that there is nothing to find or solve, for it is always been here – and indeed been hiding in the constant attempt to seek. But all you need to do is observe and pay attention. When you try to find it, you lose it.
Perhaps I’m fortuitous in that I’ve had a love for these teachings for a number of years, and I was able to assimilate all of this knowledge onto an intellectual level into a subconscious level during my trip. I am aware that my ego will always be with me, and I need to form a healthy relationship with it rather than trying to change with condemnation.
Will this afterglow fade, or is Alan Watts truly correct in that “when you get the message, hang up the phone”? Certainly I must continue meditating and engaging in self-care and self-love, but there’s something extremely subconscious and effortless about all of this that I sense may fade. Perhaps my future will now consist of taking a good dose of LSD once or twice a year to remain ‘aligned’, so to speak?
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