rigorousintuition.ca

This one gets into some of the theory regarding Psychopathy:



(Depicts violence towards the end of the segment).

Illuminating the Shadow:
An Interview with Connie Zweig

By Scott London

In psychology, the dark side of human nature is often described as the alter ego, the id, or the lower self. The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called it the "shadow." By shadow, he meant the negative side of the personality, the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities that we would prefer to hide.


Connie Zweig

While Carl Jung coined the term "the shadow," the idea of a dark side of human nature dates back to antiquity and has figured in some of our most famous stories and myths, from the dark brother in the Bible to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

For psychotherapist Connie Zweig, the shadow represents one of the most important yet least understood aspects of human nature. We all have a shadow, she says. The challenge is to meet it face-to-face. Unless we come to terms with our own dark side, she says, we're condemned to be its victim.

Connie Zweig is the author of Romancing the Shadow. She has also edited a bestselling anthology on the subject called Meeting the Shadow. Zweig is the founder of the Institute for Shadow-Work and Spiritual Psychotherapy in Los Angeles.



Scott London: Of all the metaphors that have been used to illustrate the shadow in recent years, my favorite is Robert Bly's image of the big bag we drag behind us.

Connie Zweig: Yes, he said that we spend the first half of our lives putting everything into the bag and the second half pulling it out.

London: What did Carl Jung have in mind when he formulated this idea?

Zweig: He believed that everything that is in our conscious awareness is in the light. But everything of substance which stands in the light — whether it's a tree or an idea — also casts a shadow. And that which stands in the darkness is outside of our awareness.

As Jung saw it, the shadow operated at several levels. First, there is the part of the mind that is outside of our awareness. He called this the personal unconscious or personal shadow. That is the conditioned part of us that we acquire from our experiences in our childhood when that which is unacceptable, as determined by the adults around us, is cast into shadow. It may be sadness or sexual curiosity. Or it may be our creative dreams and desires. That's personal shadow. But there is another level as well. Jung also talked about the "collective unconscious" or the "archetypal shadow."

London: What are some of the most common manifestations of the personal shadow?

Zweig: The personal shadow is that part of us that erupts spontaneously and unexpectedly when we do something self-destructive, or something that is hurtful to someone else. Afterwards, we know it's been around because we feel humiliated, ashamed, and guilty.

For example, one of my patients — a young woman in her 20s — has had a series of brief relationships in which she very quickly has unprotected sex with men she does not know. She feels so devastated afterwards, filled with shock and self-hatred. She says, "How could I? I thought I saw this the last time. I thought I'd never do it again. I thought I really understood why I was doing it, and that it would never happen again. And here I am. I can't believe it." This is her shadow — her sexual shadow is acting out in ways that are bringing her terrible pain and grief.

I would say the personal shadow is that part of us that feels like it can't be tamed, can't be controlled. For instance, many parents who struggle with their children with impulses of rage that rise up, and they yell, or maybe even hit the child. Then, afterwards, they say to themselves, "Oh, my God, I can't believe I did that. Who am I?" That's the shadow.

London: There have been a spate of books and conferences about the shadow in recent years. Why do you think this subject has become so popular now?

Zweig: In some ways our collective denial has broken down. I think that has been happening gradually since the 1960s. We've lost faith in politicians. We watch them enact their own shadows in the headlines everyday. And we have lost faith, to some extent, in celebrity heroes because we read about their failings and double-lives everyday in the news. I also think that a lot of people in the New Age or counter-culture — people who have been really involved in spirituality and Eastern philosophy — have had experiences in which either their teachers or their communities broke their hearts in some way.

And on a larger scale, there are so many topics that were in the cultural shadow which are now out in the light. For example, domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, alcoholism in epidemic proportions. These are topics that would not have been commonly spoken about 20 years ago and are now understood by everyone.

Continues at: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/zweig.html

LSD culture in America is fraught with paradox- truly a double edged sword...

I anticipate that different people will have different perspectives on all this- offering it up as food for thought- no more, no less....

http://tripzine.com/pit/chapters/The%20 ... Action.htm

The Case Against the Spirit World Model of Psychedelic Action

By James Kent

Overview: Psychedelic Drugs and Mysticism

Since the dawn of time humans have ascribed mystical properties to those things they do not fully understand. In ancient times as to this day, humans worshipped the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the plants, animals, and a pantheon of invisible all-powerful deities. Yet as the mortal powers of science have scrutinized the material world it has become clearer and clearer that spirits forces have little to do with workings of our reality. From the quantum scale to the furthest reaches of space we have found no room for pixies, demons or demigods, and this is widely accepted to be true within every modern field of scientific research save for one: Psychedelics.

Psychedelics are an interesting case study in mysticism for two very simple reasons: they produce mystical experiences and have a long history of traditional ritual use in order to produce mystical experiences. Because these substances are mystically effective and come pre-loaded with archetypal spiritual dogma, they can effectively be passed from generation to generation as secret keys to unlocking mystical experience. In modern times Gordon Wasson, Timothy Leary, and Terence McKenna all sold the notion of mushrooms, LSD, and DMT as gateways to hidden spirit knowledge, higher consciousness, and higher dimensions. For many modern psychedelic users the entheogenic or mystical context is the primary context in which they seek these drugs, and many hope to find a full-blown religious experiences awaiting them on the other side. And, in truth, many of them are not disappointed.

It is somewhat fashionable in the psychedelic community to use the term “entheogen” to describe all psychedelics and intoxicating plants, even though psychedelic substances are just as likely to produce delusional paranoia as divine awakenings. And while psychedelics can reliably produce mystical mind states – including communion with spirits, aliens, elves, and gods – I assert that it is naive and dangerous to use the content of the psychedelic experience as the basis for wider spiritual belief. In the U.S.A. we have a constitution which protects religious belief, so it is understandable why psychedelic enthusiasts rush to promote psychedelics as a religious endeavor to legitimize their use. Similar to those who would explore the medical use of psychedelics, the spiritual approach is always one of the first places an enthusiast will go in order to retain some credibility in the light of prohibition, and it is perfectly reasonable. But do we really have to believe it?

As someone who has explored psychedelics for some time with the full intent to verify these spiritual claims, I must say I have come up with few reasons to believe the mythology of the psychedelic spirit world any longer. Although psychedelics can produce spiritual experiences, and can have bona-fide therapeutic effects, I have found very little which would lead me to believe that spirit entities from autonomous spirit worlds are responsible for the informational content or healing powers of these experiences. And with that in mind, I now present my best case against this notion of psychedelic spirit worlds and spirit teachers, and why it can be dangerous to blithely conflate psychedelics and spirituality.

The Rational Argument

1. Psychedelics are hallucinogenic drugs, which by definition means they make you see things that aren’t real. Whatever other argument I present here, this is the one you must always come back to. Some hallucinations, particularly those that are spiritual in nature, feel very real. But the same drug that can make you see spirits can make you see demons, memories, mandalas, mundane scenes from everyday life, and just about anything you can think of (and many things you can’t). However, no matter how real or bizarre or lifelike or spiritual the experience, it all fades back to dust when the drug wears off; the pocket holographic universe in your mind folds back into 3-D space and the dream is over. Let it go.

2. Psychedelics are about the self; they are a form of self-exploration. You get out of the experience what you put into the experience. If you have a spiritual experience it is because you are a spiritual person or at a spiritual place in your thinking; if you have a bad experience it is because you are at a bad place in your life or are being destructive or negative in your thinking. You would not blame the gods for a bad trip or even a mediocre trip with no mystical fireworks, so why would you give them credit for the good ones? In other words, you are not an empty vessel passively receiving the mystical experience, you are the biological organism that is producing it.

3. Simply because you heard voices or saw gods or met elves does not mean that the experience has any deeper meaning beyond your own imagination. It is much easier to prove the case for delusional psychosis than it is to invoke an entire spirit world to explain your personal insights, so why make the spirit leap just because it “felt real” at the time. Dreams also feel real, but we tend to dismiss them because they are weirdly surreal, easy to forget, and we are sleeping at the time. We should have the same kind of removed perspective for our psychedelic experiences as well. We can use the content of the experience to see what it tells us about ourselves, but should not blindly rush to believe everything that comes out.

The Physical Argument

1. The human brain perceives reality on a very narrow spectrum of visible light and audible sound waves, this is how external information enters into waking thought. The human brain is a biological device, and in order to “see” something there must be electrochemical stimulation in the visual cortex. If you are making the case for spirit beings or invisible landscapes that can only be seen under the influence of psychedelics, you are making a case for the human brain being a kind of radio that can detect “spirit energy” that no other camera or mechanical energy-sensing device can perceive. While this is an interesting argument, it makes no sense. If there is a spirit energy out there that the human brain can perceive, other more sensitive devices should be able to perceive this spirit energy as well, yet none exist. Invoking the clause of “only I can see it (when I’m on drugs)” makes the claims of psychonauts all the more far-fetched, and when you ascribe spirit powers to visions produced by a chemical that naturally bonds to receptors in your visual cortex, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how neurochemical stimulation of the neocortex results in perception. The visions are from the psychoactive molecule exciting neural activity within your brain, not from spirits emitting external waves on a higher-dimensional frequency that only you can perceive.

2. If there are autonomous spirits and a spirit world that the human mind can perceive, then these spirit formations must be made out of something. In order to morph and cohere and reflect light and create sound vibrations that the retina or cortex or neural network can perceive, these entities have to have some substrate in which to exist. Without resorting to alternate dimensions or dark matter which exist within the brain or within the psychedelic molecules themselves, the average psychonaut has no answer as to what it is the spirit world may be made out of or where we might find it. Some may try to invoke higher vibrations or alternate dimensions, but all of this speculation requires a mystical gateway to information in a spirit realm, and neither gateway nor information nor realm has any physical fingerprint in hard reality other than the firing of neurons in a brain. Attempting to externalize psychedelic visions into a spiritual framework only creates more questions than it answers, when all that is needed to produce psychedelic visions is a human neural network and a pinch of selective seratonin agonists.

The Psychosis Argument

1. While there has been no satisfactory objective proof demonstrating that a spirit world exists, there has been an abundance of proof demonstrating that psychosis exists, and that the human mind is perfectly capable of fabricating detailed alternate realities without the aid of drugs or spirits. There have been many models of psychosis offered, including the dopamine model of psychosis and the cholinergic model of mediating waking/dreaming states. Hallucinations, mystical experience, and delusions of grandeur are par for the course with psychosis – as is paranoia and irrational belief – yet many people who use psychedelics spiritually or recreationally are not fond of using the term “acute psychosis” to describe the effects, though this description clearly fits in high dose cases.

2. While psychedelics may give some people insights and an expanded consciousness, they can also lead to irrational behavior and the degradation of reason. In very simple terms, there is a psychedelic use threshold that eventually leads to mental irrationality in the user. It is unknown what this precise threshold is, and it is probably different for every person, but chronic use of high-dose psychedelics can either exacerbate existing psychotic tendencies or lead to other forms of mental irrationality, such as self-professed clairvoyance or telepathic contact with aliens, spirits, deities, and the like. Are these long-term effects best termed spiritual enlightenment or chronic recurrent delusional psychosis?

The Validation Argument

1. If we are to throw out all the arguments posed so far and concede for a moment that psychedelics offer some access to the wisdom of the spirits, there are still a few problems. In order to prove the autonomy of the spirits encountered on a psychedelic trip, various tests have been proposed to see if new information can be gleaned in the spirit dimension. According to traditional lore, shamen are able to use psychedelics to diagnose and cure disease, divine the use of plants, find missing objects, and perhaps even see the future. These all seem like very magical and mystical things when posed in that context, but if you take into account that human beings can do all of those things already, without the aide of psychedelic drugs, then you start to see how flimsy the whole spirit-knowledge thing becomes. There are a few famous reported cases of people making amazing discoveries with the aid of psychedelics, but the people who make these discoveries are usually brilliant to begin with. It would be one thing if history was filled with tales of Navaho wizards finding the secret cure for smallpox, Mayan wizards finding the secret formula for gunpowder, Or Amazonian wizards finding the magical power to save the rainforests, but we know the opposite is true. When faced with real hard-world technology, the sacred wisdom offered by the psychedelic spirit realm shows its painful limitations.

2. If information is actually received from the spirit world during the psychedelic session, then it has become patently obvious that much of the information from the spirit world is not to be trusted. Even traditional shaman warn of trickery and deceit from the spirit realm, so what good is their data? One would assume that if you were to commune with actual spirits that they wouldn’t steer you wrong, but often they do. So what are we to make of their purpose, and why would we place such importance on their knowledge? Clinging to the spirit delusion forces one to adopt paradoxical conclusions such as “Spirit entities exist, but they confound and play tricks in order to make it impossible to objectively test their data and thus prove their own existence.” As far-fetched as this statement may seem, many people willingly ignore all the other evidence and swallow such spirit logic as long as it allows them to retain the belief in these entities. The other option, which is “Perhaps I just imagined it all while high on drugs,” seems overly simple in comparison, and yet the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

The Dangerous Argument

1. If psychedelics are considered to be spiritual, and spiritual is good, then it should be good and spiritual to do as many psychedelics as we want. This may sound right on paper, but it is hardly a guarantee in the real world. People who approach psychedelics with a spiritual attitude may be less likely to abuse them, but others may cloak rampant abuse in spiritual terms to make their destructive behavior seem more legitimate. And even those who are spiritually rigorous and limit their use still run the risk of becoming occult, messianic, megalomaniacal, and delusional in their larger spiritual beliefs. While the usual result of this process is merely a spiritual quirkiness or New Age eccentricity, it is not unheard of for these initial quirky beliefs to turn dark, experimentally risqué, and antisocial after prolonged use. There is a line that must be watched here, the spiritual argument does not hold for all personal use models.

2. The greatest untold secret of religion is that the shaman (priests) invented spirits and the spirit world in order to gain power within the tribe. Yes, it sounds cynical, but it is the truth. Think about those who invoke spirits to back up their edicts and see what you think. Invoking spirits give legitimacy to the shaman’s decrees. If the shaman thinks the tribe should move down-river he tells the tribes that the spirits want the tribe to move down river, and that they will be angered if they don’t comply. It is easy to argue with a shaman, it is harder to argue with the spirits. Since the shaman is the tribe’s mediator to the spirit world, the power to intoxicate the tribe and give them spiritual visions only enhances the shaman’s power and ability to influence the tribe by spiritual deception. With tribe members of lesser intelligence a clever shaman can have them thinking and believing whatever he tells them, and this is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago.

3. If psychedelic spiritual practice is to be rigorously imposed it must be done so in the framework of institutionalized, organized religion. The traditional shamanic model is a blend of paganism, animism, and pantheism, and it has been demonstrated by syncretic offshoots like Santo Daime that these traditional religious practices can be further blended with the practices of Christianity, Catholicism, and Buddhism to some degree of success. However, for every successful syncretic church there lies the risk of rogue cults or cult leaders who use the trappings of syncretic rituals as venues for sexual exploitation, antisocial programming, and cult brainwashing. The oversight in organized psychedelic churches must be just as rigorous if not more so than in mainstream churches; the potential for abuse of power is simply too high for this trend to go unchecked. In smaller psychedelic cults there is no oversight for spiritual abuse, so this document is their oversight. Don’t believe psychedelic gurus.

What to Believe about Psychedelics?

While I would say that the evidence against psychedelics as a gateway to the spirit world is overwhelming, there are many who still hold out the hope or belief that this is a viable theory. It is my assertion that people who have spiritual experiences on psychedelics have merely awakened a spiritual aspect within themselves by entering into the experience with a spiritual mind-set. The content of any psychedelic trip is typically the result of the context in which the substance is ingested and the spiritual or entheogenic trip is merely one of many possible results. Within the proper sacred ritual setting, the ingestion of a psychedelic will result in a bona-fide mystical experience and this is something we should not forget. Within this entheogenic experience the user may hear voices; see spirits and disincarnate entities; feel the presence of God or Gaia or the other; or perhaps have an astral journey where they leave their body and travel through time, to alternate dimensions, or across the barrier of life and death and into the spirit world. These are all what we would expect from a decent and fulfilling mystical experience, and it is true that psychedelics can, in the right conditions, deliver these experiences with far greater ease than any other technique known to humans. This fact is almost indisputable at this point.

The psychedelic experience is very sacred and awe-inspiring, so it seems logical that any information revealed within the experience should be considered divine in origin; all-important. And yet, when the all-important message from the spirit-journey is eventually remembered or filtered down or revealed in a sober mind-state, it is often riddle-like and vague, or something that seemed important at the time but is in reality quite mundane, or something that is fascinating or meaningful only to the subject who received the epiphany, or flat obvious to everyone else in hindsight. This muddled-message syndrome can leave the subject feeling depressed and isolated for days after any full-blown mystical psychedelic contact. Like an alien abduction, the experience is so strange and absurd and startling and crazy that people may feel unable to talk about their experiences in any meaningful way without making loved-ones worry about their sanity. It can be elating and devastating at the same instant, so how does one integrate such experiences back into the mundane doings of hard reality?

When this feeling of spiritual isolation turns outward it leads to art and story and perhaps even mythology, turning the psychedelic experience into a metaphoric icon that can be shared with others. When this isolation turns inward it becomes occult philosophy and metaphysical belief that weaves itself like a circle into pseudo-religious dogmatic forms. The cyclical path between these two outward and inward extremes should be familiar to anyone who experiments seriously with psychedelic drugs. People who use psychedelics for any length of time will also experiment with visual art, music, the manipulation of language, and the creation of occult belief systems. This ongoing process of turning entheogenic experience into shared cultural form only serves to strengthen and enlarge the archetype of the invisible landscape we think of as the “psychedelic space”. Where there was one only plant-spirits, jaguars, snakes, icaros and santitios, now there are machine elves, hyperspatial aliens, wicked jesters, trance music, and even Elvis, Mickey Mouse, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Yahweh, and all the old-world Hindu deities along for the ride. Hence, the spirit world is not a fixed autonomous space, it is a epiphenomenona of our own cultural imagination which grows and shrinks in proportion with our own subjective cultural awareness. The psychedelic space is not autonomous, it is a reflection of who we are.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that there is a fundamental connection between spiritual experience and belief in a spirit world, and the more powerful the spiritual experience the more powerful the belief; this is an easy assumption to make. Since psychedelics offer such powerful spiritual experiences, it is easy to see why people view psychedelics as spiritual objects and craft elaborate rituals and mythologies regarding their use and purpose. This is a very natural human thing to do, and in many ways it is easier to invoke spirits and a spirit world than it is to believe that your brain is capable of such profound experiences.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that the human imagination allows for the infinite exploration of all possible forms, a feat which is mystical and godlike in its own capacity. By activating the human imagination in such a dramatic way, psychedelics give us raw access to that infinite well of godlike creation. When we designate psychedelic content as spiritual in origin we dismiss the wondrous capacity of the human imagination, simultaneously denigrating our own creative capacities and undermining all testable reason. It must stop.

And thus I say that we as a culture should abandon this notion of a psychedelic theology once and for all, and reject the claims of any expert or shaman or guru who claims intimate access to sacred psychedelic spirits, spirit realms, or mystical secrets. Instead of pondering over spirit dimensions and non-physical entities we should stay focused on the miracle of the human mind and the human body, and the notion that psychedelics can unlock the self-reflective power of the mind to produce infinite permutations of complex forms, for good or for bad, mystical or mundane. This is their true function and their gift, and we should not lose sight of that simple power.


Excerpted from Psychedelic Information Theory, by James Kent

Agreed with James Kent on most points. However, to say that this spirit world is a creation of our collective imagination does not mean that it is not real. For most people who think this way it is method of communicating their experience, and it is real enough as a social phenomenon in the sense that it can affect the way people behave. The best examples of this are the ayahuasca churches, Native American Church, and native tribes that use these substances traditionally. Many native people would consider Mr. Kent's analysis arrogant or even racist, as he uses the white man's abuse of the substances as evidence that the traditional interpretation of the experience is wrong. When he says that there is no evidence of a spirit world, he completely negates the countless generations of native people who have used these substances over thousands of years, and for many people these surviving cultures are stronger evidence than the non-explanations western science has to offer.

In the case of white hippies using psychedelics recreationally, I think he is right on the money. You really have to take the experience with a grain of salt in the interest of staying grounded. What is real about psychedelics is the creative product of the experience, which is the reason why people believe in it. It usually speaks for itself. When imagination harmonizes with reality then you get the great creative geniuses that shift human evolution forward, like Francis Crick, Steve Jobs, and Rene Descartes to name a few.

As far as the thesis in the above article I will only say that when it comes to this subject, the lack of human knowledge is almost 100%, so to say that something must not exist simply because it doesn't show up on scientific instruments is pure hubris. Also, Rick Strassman's DMT experiments would seem to contradict the thesis, or at least provide the possibility of a real basis for supposedly delusional phenomena. I have read many of the online excerpts from this book and I think Kent is among the best writers on the subject.

LSD culture in America is fraught with paradox- truly a double edged sword.

All the sharpest blades cut both ways.

undead wrote: Many native people would consider Mr. Kent's analysis arrogant or even racist, as he uses the white man's abuse of the substances as evidence that the traditional interpretation of the experience is wrong. When he says that there is no evidence of a spirit world, he completely negates the countless generations of native people who have used these substances over thousands of years, and for many people these surviving cultures are stronger evidence than the non-explanations western science has to offer

In the case of white hippies using psychedelics recreationally, I think he is right on the money...

I'm thinking that his intended audience looks more like "white hippies using psychedelics recreationally" but if he were trying to disabuse traditional native people of their beliefs, I agree- that would be extremely problematic.

As far as the thesis in the above article I will only say that when it comes to this subject, the lack of human knowledge is almost 100%, so to say that something must not exist simply because it doesn't show up on scientific instruments is pure hubris.

So one reasonable stance could be towards being agnostic on these matters- maybe embracing the metaphor without believing too literally in the ideas...

I think that not taking oneself too seriously and being honest with oneself is the best policy for psychedelic experiences. That is what . I always tell people when they are having a difficult trip or perpetually looking for something - just be honest with yourself about yourself, because yourself is the only thing that you will find, and understanding that this is the ultimate goal makes getting there a lot easier.

For example, one person I know once had a problematic relationship with LSD. He would take it too frequently and in too high doses. Eventually he lost control of himself, became disconnected from reality, and had to go to the psychiatric hospital (willingly) to get sorted out. One of the examples of his craziness that he cites is that he "thought that he was the one sent by God to save the world". Now, this is a feeling that practically everyone who takes a psychedelic will feel at least for a moment during the experience. This is also a feeling that motivates a lot of very normal people to do good things.

I would suggest that this is one of the best parts of the psychedelic experience, allowing people to feel this feeling. One only needs to keep in mind that they are not the only one. In fact, it is them and everyone else on the planet. So you have the difference here between "I am inspired to do something to help the world" vs. "I am the one and only person sent by God to make the world right." It is not surprising that the latter notion would drive people insane, given the pressure and responsibility involved as the one person who will save the entire world. Also, realizing that God is only your higher consciousness and not a white guy with a beard who lives in the sky makes it easier to understand this feeling, and the lack of a person to explain this is often the cause of insane trips off the deep end like the one I referred to.

So don't take yourself too seriously. Also, be honest about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Being honest with yourself can sometimes mean confronting past trauma, and this is often a cause of bad trips. Being honest with yourself also means not making up self absorbed fantasies to make the experience seem more glamorous and real than it is. Most people who have intense contact experiences on psychedelics will not speak on it lightly, at least not to unexperienced folk, because you tend to understand to futility of using words to describe them. Taking things literally is never a good idea when you are discussing subtle phenomena that have no normal words to describe them.

Generally it is good practice to take the most humble and serious stance that you can toward the psychedelic experience. I mean taking the experience seriously, not taking yourself seriously, because approaching a psychedelic experience in a serious way will usually lead to taking your self (ego) less seriously.

An article on how the psychedelic spirit world doesn't exist is kind of pointless. Nobody is in a position to say with absolute authority what is a sane and correct psychedelic experience, really. Definitely not western scientists. Not traditional native practitioners either, although many suspect (including myself) that they are much closer to the truth. It helps to keep in mind that the map is not the territory, and that words will never exactly convey reality. Therefore if a word is useful it can be used to communicate something, provided that it is used in a flexible way.

James Kent uses advanced words and concepts to describe psychedelic experiences and so if everyone reads his book, then we can evolve from spirit worshiping apes into self-neuroprogramming demigods. This is generally what I am trying to push for with actual psychedelic sessions, for myself and others. Most people on earth right now are trying to evolve to something beyond living-dead zombie serfdom so nature spirit worshiping with psychedelics is usually a step or two up from that. Most people on Earth are not intelligent enough to understand neuroscience anyway, so their trips are bound to be inhabited by all kinds of unscientific entities.

If I had the time to do some serious reading on psychology I would start with James Kent and also John C. Lily.

The Tin-Foil Hat Crowd: Daniel Pinchbeck, U.F.O.’s and the Evolver Movement

By Nicholas Powers
August 8, 2010

The panelists talked about U.F.O. wreckage and aliens fusing a human head on a cow. I looked at the audience, assuming they weren’t buying it until a woman asked, “Who here has had contact with U.F.O’s.” Like an army lifting their spears, everyone raised their arms. Faces shined with bright defiance. Near the back wall a man in a bright psychedelic shirt waved both hands and danced. I laid my head down, thinking: I’m in a room of crazy people.

I was in the Commons, a hall on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn on a cool mid-June night. The event was “Aliens Amongst Us” organized by the Evolver Movement, a neo-Hippie social network whose website promotes the “transformation of humanity” but those who came were not activists but devotees. They wore dreadlocks, hemp necklaces, “energy” channeling crystals and many had a faraway look as if they left some part of themselves in the last acid trip.

They were the New Lost Generation, folks who’d fallen through the cracks of our crumbling empire and found this mystery cult with its promises of secret knowledge and chemical salvation. At its top stood lanky, sandy-haired Daniel Pinchbeck who years ago, was a New York literati and editor of Open City. He felt empty but ignored it until his friend overdosed on heroin. Pinchbeck fled to the Amazon to drink potions from shamans to cure himself of nihilism before he died like his friend. Those dizzy vomit soaked trips became his book Breaking Open the Head which made him a counter-culture guru. Now he hosts Evolver events, circled by mostly white, well-off audiences who look to him for meaning. And he gives it to them; shaman drug rituals, Mayan prophecies and a suspicion of reality that adds up to escapism. Our world is a wreck but Pinchbeck has them look outside of it for a truth that can heal it and the crazier that truth the better.

But the Crazy was hidden until the woman asked who had contact with aliens. The hands-in-the-air-salute exposed the insanity and none of the panelists said a thing. Sitting on the couches were Bill Birnes a raspy wrinkled salesman of the otherworldly who headed History Channel’s U.F.O. Hunters, therapist William Gibbs a slow, bloated man who treated victims of “alien abduction” and dark suited U.F.O historian Richard Dolan who wore a confident smile.

Pinchbeck pointed to an older woman who talked of the life changing wounds left in the wake of star-ships. She screamed “people who have been abducted have increased paranormal abilities.” He called on a young Brit who yelled, “I’ve seen the labs,” her hands clenched into fists, “they are making human alien hybrids and people must be told!”

I’ve seen this defiance against reality years ago at Nation of Islam meetings. In the late 90’s my mom lived in Hartford and during my visits she showed me closed schools and corners where shootings stained the sidewalk red. The streets were filled with pain and people looking for answers. They packed the mosques to listen to dark-suited men preaching how the white man invented AIDS or Jews controlled the media or that every president is a Mason or that the Illuminati controlled us. Sitting there I sensed that proof wasn’t needed, what mattered was belief. If we could name evil, give it a face then we could fight it.

But when we left those halls we didn’t see Jews or Masons or the Illuminati. We saw the same people we always saw; the mother who slapped her child in the street, men fighting on the trash-strewn corner, the homeless guy lying on the sidewalk as dark urine trickled from his pants. We learned in the mosque, not to understand but to pity them as puppet-like victims, manipulated by mysterious powers only the Nation of Islam could see. Our job was to cut the strings, no alcohol, no pork, no Jesus, no “Jewish” media just submit to Allah and become purified. Some joined but most didn’t, held back by hopelessness or the shame of showing naked need in public or the sense that one could not survive the world by retreating from it.

The few who joined the mosque shouted with bright defiant faces. The world-government wasn’t going to keep the truth from them anymore because we had a Messenger. I remember Minister Farrakhan stepping to the podium to announce the Million Man March. We were Fallen he said but could be Saved if we submitted to the Word of Allah. We would gather in D.C. and show our strength. His call and our response got louder until we spoke as one man and in that sublime moment our power was revealed. Afterward, dizzy with adrenaline we bought tapes and newspapers and “cures” for ailments of the soul.

But years before the mosque, I felt that awe as a child. Dozing in my grandma’s home in Puerto Rico, I lay in a mosquito-net shrouded bed, reading a science-fiction book when her boyfriend Daniel yelled for me. I dashed to the balcony and saw a twisting line of smoke in the sky. “It was U.F.O.” he said. The book I’d been reading was the story of a young boy, planet hopping in a space ship through the star-speckled void of space being of course, chased by aliens. Grandma said it was the Devil’s Writing but when I jumped out of bed and ran to Daniel’s side, both of us pointing to the sky in wonder, I was also pointing to the images the book left in my mind. But what kind of space-ship leaves a trail of smoke? Does it run on diesel? More likely, it was a jet or meteor but Daniel’s wonder at seeing a “U.F.O.” was as real as our joy at Farrakhan’s vision of a redeemed Black People. Both were glimpses of a world beyond this one.

The wonder of transcendent visions comes from our need for wholeness. And it is an old story. In the ancient plays of Sophocles, King Oedipus is divided from his fate by his hubris. In the tragic vision of Modernity; we are divided from the expanse of eternity by the smallness of our bodies and from life by the language that describes it. And being divided means the need to be part of a larger reality is central to the human condition. Yet our need for transcendence is always defined by history.

As a boy in Catholic Church I was divided from my body by the concept of sin, transcendence was floating as a spirit in Heaven. As a teen, I was divided from myself by racism and transcendence was the Nation of Islam’s vision of a black-ruled world. Raised in an orphanage, I was divided from my family by class and transcendence was the Communist prophecy of an equal world. As a man divided by bitterness, transcendence was the euphoria of the Obama campaign.

Whether it’s one’s body, color or place in society; transcendence is reclaiming what was lost and faith is the first step. Whether it’s a messiah stepping down from Heaven in glory or a U.F.O. streaking through the sky or a media haloed politician saying “Yes we can!” we are trained to reach for lights in the sky.

And for the sake of that faith people close their eyes and reach for the dream. The more they’re told it’s not real the harder they hold it. And that’s what drove me to the Evolver event “Aliens Amongst Us?” I wanted to see how certain and how reckless they’d be in their persecuted truth. Ufology shares with the Nation of Islam a vision of hidden truths censored by invisible forces but at the mosque, it resonates with the real violence of our racist history. What did Ufologists lose that they search for it so fervently in the sky?

I arrived at the Commons and opened my notebook when a woman in the front row dropped her marbles on the floor. Wow she lost her marbles. That’s a Good Sign. I chatted with the man next to me. He had a weathered face, kind and shy. “What do you think about this,” I asked. “Well, if aliens really came all this way for us,” he said. “I think they’d say Hi.” We laughed as Pinchbeck began, “I’m glad to see a packed room of people. My concern about this event was that Evolver is trying to build credibility and I was afraid we’d lose it. But it’s important to see Gnostic Theology, the Truth of native cultures, aliens and spirits as all part of the same continuum.”

He introduced Bill Birnes the host of History Channel’s U.F.O. Hunters. The wrinkled raspy man began his gothic tale, “There’s a veil of fear. If you dare mention U.F.O.’s you are marginalized. No one will deal with you.” But Birnes is brave and tells us that U.F.O. wreckage has been turned into modern technology like F-16 jets using “cloaking devices” to disappear. He just flows with Crazy, Pentagon conspiracies, men screaming in the mountain lab as aliens attacked or aliens fusing a human head on a cow’s body. “After we aired the photos there was major payback,” his voice was red-hot. “You’ll be protected they said but I hope you enjoyed your show because it’s cancelled.”

The air tingled. Wow. The Truth is Out There. Pinchbeck turned to a bloated man next to him, William Gibbs a therapist who treated “alien abductees”. He had a wisp of a smile, “I’ve always asked big questions and U.F.O.’s are an anomaly that defies scientific categories. I’ve been a psychologist for a group who were convinced they’d been abducted…”

His voice receded and I stared around at people held rapt, barely blinking. I wondered: What if they’re aliens? I imagined them pulling off their human skin, reptile faces glistening, long forked tongues flickering as they sipped their Starbucks chai-tea latte. After draining the last drop and still thirsty, they’d grab my arms and pull me apart. I’d be alive just long enough to see my hand being swallowed down an alien throat.

I snapped out of my day-dream to U.F. O. historian Richard Dolan’s earnest monologue. He spoke in a soft velvety tone, “Jets chasing discs that out-flew them. We have more than 100 reports. Our military was asking, ‘Whose flying these things, the Soviets? But why are aliens contacting us? We are the greatest show in this quadrant. We changed our civilization in the blink of a cosmic eye. They are aliens living amongst us.”

“Are they benevolent,” asked Pinchbeck. “People think in terms of Good Aliens or Bad Aliens. Is that helpful? Are we being controlled?”

Dolan rubbed his hands, “All I can say is that we are part of a larger narrative.” I was numb at this point. My pen twitched but it felt like someone else was writing. Dolan talked of aliens creating a hybrid-race to take over the world and his words struck something in me. He was saying was that some people on this planet are less human than others. I reflexively snarled. So what should we do? Force people to get DNA testing? Wear arm-bands with a blue star? Force them to live in alien ghettos and maybe gas them?

Afterwards, I asked Dolan if his vision of “aliens amongst us” doesn’t parallel the language of racism in making a hierarchy of humanity. He said he doesn’t promote violence but that aliens are on earth manipulating us. Of course he’d never personally incite violence; it would be a career killer. But if people took his paranoid vision of the world seriously what else would they do but round-up aliens? His voice left the feeling of oil in my ears.

Dolan’s vision of a mongrel species threatening our purity is as old as the Civil War when racists stoked fears of black people mixing with whites. It’s as old as Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. The terror of miscegenation rises when people lose their power, privilege and sense of invulnerability. If U.F.O.’s are not real but a blank screen to project cultural anxieties; is the paranoid imagery of invisible puppet-masters and species-mixing displaced white anxiety? As I left Dolan was telling people huddled around him, “when Obama met the Bilderberg Group, who is deeply involved in this cover-up.” What next I thought the New World Order, 9/11 Truth, the Masons, Illuminati or the Elders of Zion?

I confronted Pinchbeck, “I think what you’re doing here is dangerous.” He squinted for a second. I said U.F.O.’s were people’s projections onto explainable natural phenomena. He said that was a dualist was of thinking, reality was more inter-related. I said that was slippery Hegel.

We went outside, I borrowed a cigarette and we stood there blowing smoke.

“I think what you’re doing is dangerous,” I pointed at him. “You’re spreading false hope and escapism.”

“You keep using that word dangerous…”

“It is. We have real problems on the planet and telling people to do drugs or waste time searching for aliens is a distraction. I mean, look, I defend your freedom of speech but that doesn’t mean it’s worth saying. This isn’t real. Hunger is real. Poverty is real.”

He eyes searched for an escape, “These states of consciousness are real. I’ve experienced telekinesis, making things appear and disappear through alternate dimensions, telepathy…”

I studied his face. My lips squeezed like a zip-lock bag and I quietly shook my head. It felt cheap to bring in miracles to a debate. Sensing my frustration he told me to read The Structures of Consciousness by Jean Gebser. He talked about indigenous cultures and that our modern rationality is destroying the planet because we are disconnected from the larger holistic reality.

I looked away from him and remembered the wood-cut drawings of Tainos being hacked apart by Spanish soldiers. “If they had the power of telekinesis or talking to plants or being in touch with galactic intelligences then why couldn’t do some Avatar shit and defend themselves against the Conquistadores?”

“The European consciousness was something they never dealt with before it’s why one soldier could kill so many native warriors.”

“Daniel,” I spread my hands as if to let go of the conversation. “Maybe it was the small-pox and horses and armor and swords.” I paused. More smoke. We were both exhausted and he said, “Read my books and e-mail me.”

We shook hands and I left, head reeling, running my hands over my face as if wiping away his words. Crazy.

http://www.indypendent.org/2010/08/08/t ... -movement/

undead wrote:I think that not taking oneself too seriously and being honest with oneself is the best policy for psychedelic experiences. That is what . I always tell people when they are having a difficult trip or perpetually looking for something - just be honest with yourself about yourself, because yourself is the only thing that you will find, and understanding that this is the ultimate goal makes getting there a lot easier.

For example, one person I know once had a problematic relationship with LSD. He would take it too frequently and in too high doses. Eventually he lost control of himself, became disconnected from reality, and had to go to the psychiatric hospital (willingly) to get sorted out. One of the examples of his craziness that he cites is that he "thought that he was the one sent by God to save the world". Now, this is a feeling that practically everyone who takes a psychedelic will feel at least for a moment during the experience. This is also a feeling that motivates a lot of very normal people to do good things.

I would suggest that this is one of the best parts of the psychedelic experience, allowing people to feel this feeling. One only needs to keep in mind that they are not the only one. In fact, it is them and everyone else on the planet. So you have the difference here between "I am inspired to do something to help the world" vs. "I am the one and only person sent by God to make the world right." It is not surprising that the latter notion would drive people insane, given the pressure and responsibility involved as the one person who will save the entire world. Also, realizing that God is only your higher consciousness and not a white guy with a beard who lives in the sky makes it easier to understand this feeling, and the lack of a person to explain this is often the cause of insane trips off the deep end like the one I referred to.

So don't take yourself too seriously. Also, be honest about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Being honest with yourself can sometimes mean confronting past trauma, and this is often a cause of bad trips. Being honest with yourself also means not making up self absorbed fantasies to make the experience seem more glamorous and real than it is. Most people who have intense contact experiences on psychedelics will not speak on it lightly, at least not to unexperienced folk, because you tend to understand to futility of using words to describe them. Taking things literally is never a good idea when you are discussing subtle phenomena that have no normal words to describe them.

Generally it is good practice to take the most humble and serious stance that you can toward the psychedelic experience. I mean taking the experience seriously, not taking yourself seriously, because approaching a psychedelic experience in a serious way will usually lead to taking your self (ego) less seriously.

An article on how the psychedelic spirit world doesn't exist is kind of pointless. Nobody is in a position to say with absolute authority what is a sane and correct psychedelic experience, really. Definitely not western scientists. Not traditional native practitioners either, although many suspect (including myself) that they are much closer to the truth. It helps to keep in mind that the map is not the territory, and that words will never exactly convey reality. Therefore if a word is useful it can be used to communicate something, provided that it is used in a flexible way.

James Kent uses advanced words and concepts to describe psychedelic experiences and so if everyone reads his book, then we can evolve from spirit worshiping apes into self-neuroprogramming demigods. This is generally what I am trying to push for with actual psychedelic sessions, for myself and others. Most people on earth right now are trying to evolve to something beyond living-dead zombie serfdom so nature spirit worshiping with psychedelics is usually a step or two up from that. Most people on Earth are not intelligent enough to understand neuroscience anyway, so their trips are bound to be inhabited by all kinds of unscientific entities.

If I had the time to do some serious reading on psychology I would start with James Kent and also John C. Lily.

undead, thank you for your valuable contributions to this thread!

The article above is devastatingly on the mark. I would also add that I have known people to develop (near) messianic beliefs without any chemical inducement from without whatsoever...

--------
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I'm posting this here because Daniel Pinchbeck is a seriously virulent disease whose crimes include doing a PR piece for a strikebreaking clown brigade at the LA Hilton (documented here) and sexually molesting a friend of mine at a burning man gathering years ago. I told her that she should sue him, but she didn't. Too bad.

----

Wednesday, July 20, 2011
PARADIGM GRIFT
by Xanadu Xero

"Pretend To Will The Transformation"

If I were a little or immensely more talented (mit schvantz) I'd be Ricky Gervais. I'm aware I am graisse de canard, he is fowlicious, Peking, but he thinks like me. I'd say I think like him, but I'm older. I know I flatter myself, but fuck.

In point of fact I've been contemplating blogicide. Between Ricky, Doug Stanhope and some dead wacks of yesteryear, I have scant left to say. What's the point of going on then, one might ask? Masturbation?

Exactly.

Plus no man jack of(f) them swank brains can lay out in lurid detail DID I SAY 'LURID'? the fervent tales of my indie-wack pasts, including this pert crumb I now toss to you. (Crumb = no sex.)

HOW MAYA MACKIN'
*2012*
VIVA GLAM!
Impresario
DANIEL PINCHBECK
of the UBE (United Pinchebeckistan Emirates)

self-knighted "Sacred" Warrior, Shame Man, whoops,
'Shaman,' Virgin Issue of OGs Tim Leary and Terence McKenna,
DRUGZ' very own MARY and GOD
(legit!)
P.R. Agency Deigned Heir Apparent to their

*P*s*y*c*h*e*d*e*l*i*c*

Spirito-Cerebradelicool MulitverCivic Crowns
(or what-ever)
with an "I" on the Causal World'$ prize...

How that dude,
P I N C H B E C K,

THREW ME OFF his circle jerk blog site, Reality Sandwich (www.RealitysandwI(T)CH.com - 'rich itch')

and (chortle) why.

WAIT. Hold that thought...

>Flashback!<

INT. COOLEST SCENE IN THE MULTIVERSE - NIGHT

Smoky. Sultry. Sacred. DANIEL, a middle aged capitalist, leans against exposed beams in chakra toned silks, posing like Young Einstein. You can almost see the Crop Circles in his eyes. He is a Dadra of causal and metaphorical texture.

He has cornered a FEMALE, half his age, who appears to be biological. She sips a Red Bulltini.

FEMALE
'Reality Sandwich?' Whoa. Great name for a site, Daniel.
Isn't that from, like, Kerouac?

DANIEL
A Ginsberg poem.
(pause)
My mom fucked Kerouac. I sat in Ginsberg's lap.

(Author's note: I'll bet! Allen Ginsberg was quite the pro-NAMBLA pedophile. HOWL indeed haha! Kerouac, the plot's dissolute mom-boning gay boy, but(t) a smidge behind.

Good parenting Mrs. Pinchbeck, oy vey iz mir. Your kid's so meshugeh he BRAGS about it.)

DANIEL (con't)
Once, on an Ayahuasca journey in the Brazilian
Rainforest, an Indiginous Shaman used my cock for a sundial.

FEMALE
Wow.

DANIEL
Are you a model?

>End Flashback!<

And yet again the valiant Purple Helmet Sacred Warrior begins a Vision Quest to smash the Pink Cookie!

It's always the same Avant-Garde.

* * * * *

PINCHBECK, YOU'RE A MIRROR OF ALL YOU CLAIM TO DESPISE

That was the 'SUBJECT' of one Reality Sandwich comment - Submitted by xanaduxero on Wed, 10/15/2008 - 20:17.

I say "was" because the comment - commentS (there were a lot of them, including that which sparked this snort) disappeared shortly before I was kicked off the site.

Now, they may have been censored... but then again they may have spontaneously combusted and gone to Spirit, cauz ka-raayzeee things happen when Pimpsational "Paradigm" Pinch b in da house yo, bringin SexyBack!

Thank Jah (Jahmal) I willed the transformation to manifest my Yiddishe Totemic Swine, Shmulick, from the astral plane.

"Shmul," I mewled in waves through the pith of each chakra, starting, sadly, with the best one, the Orange. Cosmic Morse Code blast thru my Sahasrara's pupick. Of course Shmuly already knew. He oinked in Aramaic, "Shlimazel! Make a paper trail!" So I embalmed the comment's 'BODY':

STOP CENSORING ME, YOU SHAM.

YOU DO NOT ENTERTAIN NEW IDEAS.

YOU ARE CLOSED TO EXPANSION.

YOU ARE MINUTE MINDED AND ARROGANT.

YOU PIGGYBACK OTHERS' IDEAS AND, I'LL LAY ODDS THAT YOU'RE A LOUSY FATHER.

I'M NOT GOING AWAY UNTIL YOU ANSWER ME.

Nope. And the longer you don't, the more public I'll be.

YOU are more dangerous than the RIGHT, because at least they have the BALLS to stand by what they're about.

This protest is not about me. It's about FLACCID MESSIAHS influencing the young, grasping for power and money pretending they're not, CENSORSHIP, mirroring the "Paradigm" you claim to be replacing, and, frankly, prosaic thoughts and bad writing.**

Daniel and NWO sitting in a tree... K-i-s-s-i-n-g!

Word out.

*

(** Example A: "Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson realized the American Revolution had failed to provide institutional mechanisms to keep the creative spirit of insurrection alive in the populace.")

*
You may have found the above comment to be less than optimally feminine. You may feel I lobbed a supernova when a feather would have singed. Plus (you may muse) the latter approach would have been "classy." And perhaps you thought, fleeting, "What a bitch, who'd fuck her?" Or, "That old hag should Get A Life."

Gotcha. Really. Grokkit. I understand. But you see, Gods/Goddesses/Deities Gender Neutral and/or Original, that spunk spewed at the end of the end, geyser-esque. All backed up because I queried this:

What if we just commit to The Golden Rule? Do we really need anything else?

"Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You"

Isn't that verbatim-esque what every other "sacred" text & whatnot says?

or

is the "But Only People Like You, Those You Want Something From & Those You're Sexually Attracted To So You Can Get Something Or Get Laid" implied?

That is all I wanted a response to.

Danno refused, lugubriously ignoring me time and again while every fucktard query ("Daniel how strongly do you feel that the word SACRED has a dynastic symbiosis with the SACRUM? Blessings.") got our Psychedelic Martha Stewart's full attention.

As for why a Sacred Warrior would wield such limp douchebaggery ... I'd say the answer is from the same file as 'if Medicine's focus was on curing disease, not treating disease, no one would make any money.'

Here's the Pinchster in his own soporific words. Note the recurring theme:

"Ignorant people have been tossing the word revolution around like a used Hustler Magazine on this blog. > (Sorry Larry Flynt. You were good to me and you saved the First Amendment. I was your "Hustler" interview of the month twice.)" <

> "Over the past decade, I have engaged in an intellectual and spiritual odyssey that began when I was in my late twenties, in the depths of an existential crisis. At that time I was a journalist whose work had appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, among others, and the editor of a New York-based literary magazine, Open City. <

I tried ayahuasca, the sacred “medicine” of the Amazon basin, brewed from two jungle plants, in a ceremony in downtown Manhattan. > I also took an assignment from a music magazine to go through a tribal initiation in Gabon <, on the West African equator, using a psychedelic rootbark, iboga, that sent me on a long trip back through my childhood,

> also featuring prophetic hints and telepathic views. I wrote about these experiences, and many others, in my first book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, published by Random House, in 2002." <

> "I am an avatar and messenger sent at the end of a kalpa, a world age, to bring a new dispensation for humanity – a new covenant, and new consciousness." < (via 'transmission')

"The more who can read the "map"... the more will survive. > We aren't charging for this and I ask is that you buy my old book and soon, my new one... frequently."<

> "Suffering from nihilism, I found that > I desperately needed to interrogate my world view, and to see if there were any other options." <

And he found them! Blessed be!

Classic options that have lit up the lives of Bush, Cheney, Hitler, L. Ron Hubbard, Stalin, Bernie Madoff, the Pope - among other celebs.

They are: Self-Aggrandizement + Claims Of Superior Knowledge in a blend customized to cash in on and manipulate others by preying on their fears.

One wor(l)d - $EMINAR$.

The mantra: KA-CHING!

*

"It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood." --Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson, 1919

*

Hey Pinchbeck! What if you *emulated* Jesus, Buddha and the rest of the boy band, not in theory but MOMENT BY MOMENT instead of dissecting them? It's always the same message, with this or that ego torquing the skew.

We Humans waste years playing nyah nyah with piffle. Why?

What if we all, starting RIGHT NOW - just fucking behaved?

I will now limn what BEHAVING means with examples tailored for you and the Pinchbeckistan(TM) citizenry.

1.) When you're in the bathroom at a party, YOU DO NOT look through cabinets and drawers for Vicodin, even if you were going to 'only take one.'

2.) If you accept money for a service, say, building a website, IT IS NOT OKAY to disappear to Costa Rica for a month, even if you think that 'time' is a grotesque man-made construct, and "only when the clock stops does time come to life." (William Faulkner)

3.) If you have a child, (attn: Daniel) YOU DO NOT spend time/money traipsing to the Amazon AGAIN to take drugs and fuck bimbos - sorry, 'priestesses' - AGAIN when your last three 'enlightening' ayahuasca 'journeys' could not solve your self-absorbed prick problem.

Instead do something quantifiably constructive for World Consciousness, like supporting your kid in her world with the choice to find her own path, and not cram her into a myopic, prurient trip like your parents did with you.

Daniel: "I would have no problem with my daughter attending a Daime ritual when she is a bit older, perhaps nine or ten, if we go down to Brazil together." Dude, why don't you take her to Disney World instead?

3.) From evidence you see live every day and in media, YES IT IS WRONG to fuck your buddy's girlfriend.

It Is Wrong for the moderne homo-sapien to have sex with people he does not intend to honor in the future with his future. The outcome is almost always negative for fucker or fuckee, it does NOT advance what is fine in Humankind, and it wastes time we cannot spare in this endgame of our species' disintegration.

And no, monogamy is not 'natural' to the human animal. That's my point.

We must, by will, override our Animal at this carrefour in time like we did back when with shitting outdoors. It wasn't 'natural' for us to poop inside a building but we knew that was part of growing a civilization as we, ourselves, defined it. We made the collective decision to defecate in private and, with that, moved Humanity forward

Looking to the sky, earth, 'shamans,' gods, 'spirit guides', totems, 'ancient wisdom' or drugs for SIGNS to indicate direction for every fucking move is ARCHAIC thinking. We must leave that way back in Animal and step up.

We, Humanity, have evolved to an amazing point. We can now make substantial Darwinian decisions ourselves, consciously, as evolving human beings, for the Higher Good.

Or not.

We say we don't want our Beast to win but REALITY CHECK - it's winning. It's winning in you, Daniel, with your bullshit loft partie$, $eminars, celeb courting, self-lauding, media whoring, eliteist behavior, promiscuity, fame/money driven views, exploitation$ of '2012' based on the few Mayan codices that survived... ignoring their possible invalidation by the many that did not.

Humans are ape-adjacent, so INCREDIBLY far from a wave. We're simple life forms still, mold in a petri dish. It's LUDICROUS for us to pimp walk around like we da Big Brains, da shizz - SEZ WHO?

Clearly, there is Other out there. Clearly we cannot understand it, agree what it is, or interpret it beyond the confines of our obvious limits.

Howzabout we bag the crap and go to work on building Human harmony on this Earth which we - including you, Daniel - are trashing, insuring the death or living hell of our descendants?

Which brings me to...

4.) When someone asks legitimate questions that challenge your views, Daniel, IT IS WRONG to throw them off of your website. Especially if you bill yourself as an open souled and minded 'Sacred Warrior' questing for truth.

*

My questions started with a whisper. Well, a 'whisper' for me. I mean it had a little cha-cha, yeah, I self-amused, but Reality Sandwich is boring as hell. Here it is:

AYAHUASCA IS THE NEW ABSINTHE! VISIONS ARE THE NEW BLACK!
Submitted by xanaduxero on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 14:28.

I'm old, like a gazillion in dog years, and I've heard The Newly Expanded's 'MO BETTA CONSCIOUS THAN THOU' Ayahuasca babblings for, like, two decades now. The Church of Diame (sp?) devotees, the South American "I lived with the Shamans" crowd, the "I went on a raft and met _______ who recognized I was a Special Whitey so he shared his ancient secrets and ______ with me" gaggle etc. What strikes me like a 2x4 of collapsed star-like dense matter is that NONE of these people, NONE (with the exception of mah man, good ol' Daniel P., who co-brewed this site, who I don't know)** have done JACK SHIT with their astounding expansions, JACK SHIT but verbally jack off at cool soirees, say "Namaste" a lot and try to get laid. WHAT GOOD IS CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPANSION, ENLIGHTENMENT, FAME, "GNOSIS" et al if it doesn't further humanity as a whole? It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. You see jaguars? BIG FUCKING WHOOP. If you really have an edge here - APPLY IT. Selflessly and relentlessly. OR... you are just a 2.0 version of all that you claim to despise.**

Q: What was I even doing on Reality Sandwich if I think it's so frickin dull? A: Trying to kiss ass. (**Ass kiss Ex. 1.) Sigh. That never works for me.

I had submitted an article to Reality Sandwich (sounds like a three-way with ugly people), and they accepted it. I was thrilled because every hot guy on the SpriChill Global Downtown rave scene thinks that Pinch is the shit. Also, quite frankly, my inner Olivia Twist simpered, "Maybe THIS is my place... Maybe this kind of writing is what I was meant to do!"

I kept signing on to see if my piece was up yet, and while I was there, since I no doubt would become a regular contributor why not make my presence known? HA, to quote Stanley Kowalski.

I started responding to articles. Some were nice, and I praised them. Some were inane. It never occured to me that on an EXPAND YOUR MIND site run by visionaries with a mission to aid the ascention of Earth's sentient creatures, any point of view would be off limits. Plus, I'm no teenage tweaker. I'm a middle-aged mom.

Yet... my comments began disappearing. Comments like this about a piece on "Synchromysticism" with content like, "I was thinking of a parking space - and there it was!":

"OY FRICKIN' VEY Submitted by xanaduxero on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 23:28. The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." Oh, how chic-ly metaphysical. Makes me crave a Mapplethorpe retrospective with poi twirling and a merlot rated 90+. Sometimes, gods and goddesses, a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes it's more, but trolling for magic in "mundane" circumstances is most often - pardon my synaptic bourgeoisity - cerebral chicken choking, vanity, a waste of time. Please, define 'art' here and, while you're at it, 'mystical' and 'esoteric'. Like 'hot' those words can mean a zillion things. Actually, scrap that. Explain instead why (writer's name) takes such Hollywood credit for musings that dock in most everyone's head from the age of six. And why they really matter when one can simply practice The Golden Rule and examine our own actions with a goal to improve.

That was termed "A PERSONAL ATTACK" and expunged by the Pinchbeckistan musketeers.

HUH?

So I pursued, dogging them about their censorship, hypocrisy and the fact they were behaving like the Christian Right with cooler dogmas and hotter outfits.

Here's another post, not even my words - direct from Wikepedia:

AH, CHILDREN, ITS JUST A KISS AWAY...
Submitted by xanaduxero (not verified) on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 21:38.

"The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority.

The government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling unapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime, or, in Newspeak, crimethink.

It also had much to do with Orwell's own "power of facing unpleasant facts", as he called it, and his willingness to criticize prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies".

The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness.

- Wikipedia

Its so easy to be all you claim to despise.

They canned it. It disappeared.

Comment after comment CENSORED. I wrote Daniel e mails, many, asking why. What I got back was silence, but for a cyber smirk in the form of of Nurse Ratched's - pardon, Sacred Lackey Jonathan 'Shy-Of-XY' Phillips' - recurring regurgitation of comment "rules."

I then inquired why a comment trouncing me for my thoughts wasn't censored too, if crowd control was so strict.

At last, Sacred J. reared back and POUNCED:

Hi Xanadu, I've removed the comment you tagged below as it was indeed a personal attack. However, I wanted to inform you that after sending you the comments guidelines a number of times and reminding you of the comments policy of the site, you've continued to make personal attacks against members of the community. We have received many, many complaints from RS participants from these attacks** and since you've continually refused to follow the guidelines of the site, we have decided to delete your account. It seems apparent that your interests are different than those of this site and I'm sure there's many other places on the web you can turn to for news, discussion and information that's a better fit for you. I wish you the best in your future journeys. Sincerely, Jonathan

(** Yeah, right.)

I wrote back:

"You are not god, how can you know my "interests"? Your interests, may I surmise then? Sex with girls you can't get with looks or charm, power and money. Fuck you, Jonathan and your Sacred Bullshit persona. Enjoy the knowledge that your ass licking skills have just netted you this sorry gig brown nosing a fraud."

*

I am THRILLED to announce to you, dear readers, that THIS... IS NOT THE GOOD PART OF THE STORY.

The good part of the story comes NEXT... when I re-joined the mostly All White All Male Reality Sandwich az Ghetto Sista LaVondelle.

*

TO BE CONTINUED...


Q: What's a paradigm?
A: Twenty cents.


**************

Posted by Xanadu Xero at 9:50 PM

http://xanaduxero.blogspot.com/2008/12/ ... grift.html

American Dream wrote:So one reasonable stance could be towards being agnostic on these matters- maybe embracing the metaphor without believing too literally in the ideas.

Very well put. God bless you too American Dream. Together we shall dream ourselves a better world.

You might even find it best not to believe too literally in anything at all.

Too much of it spoils a thing.

Moderation is best. The middle way. Balanced carefully in the middle, One avoids the Fall.

But of course we know that in order to find how much is enough, you have to first find out how much is too much.

Your tummy ache will tell you when you have had too much. Remember and be wiser next time.

undead wrote:I think that not taking oneself too seriously and being honest with oneself is the best policy for psychedelic experiences. That is what . I always tell people when they are having a difficult trip or perpetually looking for something - just be honest with yourself about yourself, because yourself is the only thing that you will find, and understanding that this is the ultimate goal makes getting there a lot easier.

For example, one person I know once had a problematic relationship with LSD. He would take it too frequently and in too high doses. Eventually he lost control of himself, became disconnected from reality, and had to go to the psychiatric hospital (willingly) to get sorted out. One of the examples of his craziness that he cites is that he "thought that he was the one sent by God to save the world". Now, this is a feeling that practically everyone who takes a psychedelic will feel at least for a moment during the experience. This is also a feeling that motivates a lot of very normal people to do good things.

I would suggest that this is one of the best parts of the psychedelic experience, allowing people to feel this feeling. One only needs to keep in mind that they are not the only one. In fact, it is them and everyone else on the planet. So you have the difference here between "I am inspired to do something to help the world" vs. "I am the one and only person sent by God to make the world right." It is not surprising that the latter notion would drive people insane, given the pressure and responsibility involved as the one person who will save the entire world. Also, realizing that God is only your higher consciousness and not a white guy with a beard who lives in the sky makes it easier to understand this feeling, and the lack of a person to explain this is often the cause of insane trips off the deep end like the one I referred to.

So don't take yourself too seriously. Also, be honest about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Being honest with yourself can sometimes mean confronting past trauma, and this is often a cause of bad trips. Being honest with yourself also means not making up self absorbed fantasies to make the experience seem more glamorous and real than it is. Most people who have intense contact experiences on psychedelics will not speak on it lightly, at least not to unexperienced folk, because you tend to understand to futility of using words to describe them. Taking things literally is never a good idea when you are discussing subtle phenomena that have no normal words to describe them.

Generally it is good practice to take the most humble and serious stance that you can toward the psychedelic experience. I mean taking the experience seriously, not taking yourself seriously, because approaching a psychedelic experience in a serious way will usually lead to taking your self (ego) less seriously.

An article on how the psychedelic spirit world doesn't exist is kind of pointless. Nobody is in a position to say with absolute authority what is a sane and correct psychedelic experience, really. Definitely not western scientists. Not traditional native practitioners either, although many suspect (including myself) that they are much closer to the truth. It helps to keep in mind that the map is not the territory, and that words will never exactly convey reality. Therefore if a word is useful it can be used to communicate something, provided that it is used in a flexible way.

James Kent uses advanced words and concepts to describe psychedelic experiences and so if everyone reads his book, then we can evolve from spirit worshiping apes into self-neuroprogramming demigods. This is generally what I am trying to push for with actual psychedelic sessions, for myself and others. Most people on earth right now are trying to evolve to something beyond living-dead zombie serfdom so nature spirit worshiping with psychedelics is usually a step or two up from that. Most people on Earth are not intelligent enough to understand neuroscience anyway, so their trips are bound to be inhabited by all kinds of unscientific entities.

If I had the time to do some serious reading on psychology I would start with James Kent and also John C. Lily.

I am quoting this because it is so well written and astute. Not just with regard to the use of psychedelics but other meditative techniques of which there are many, infinite perhaps.

I like washing up meditation.

I offer the washing up to Cosmic Mind.

I pray that I be enlightened.

I do it humbly, attempting to give it my whole attention. Rapt.

Then the thoughts come tumbling in, and I see the connections everywhere. I don't really see them, its an intellectual thing. My imagination sees the thoughts, ideas, values things and so on connected in meaning, interconnected radically. Ahem.

I don't need LSD.

I neither condone nor encourage nor advise nor prohibit the use of any chemical to alter the Mind. I would generally advise against it, although professionals in "mental health" have some evidence of its therapeutic benefits. The worse idea of course, is Prohibition.

On Pinchbeck, yes he does seem rather shifty and unpleasant. He makes my spidey sense tingle and not in a good way.

He also makes a useful target for those who would defame, slur and libel good folk who dare to entertain narratives alternative to some stultifying dead materialist orthodoxy.

That article you posted there undead really made my hackles rise for any number of reasons. You probably know that already.

Now excuse me, I have to go start a new thread entitled "Materialism-Induced Delusional Syndrome."

Materialism is a delusion, you know. A useful one, perhaps.

And I love Xanadu Xero! Gosh! I'm already married though. Oh well another bookmark to some clever cookie I'll never have enough time to read properly. Thanks for that one undead.