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Author Topic:   Shamanism As Social Catalyst (excerpts from Terence McKenna's "Food of the Gods")
Valus
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posted June 07, 2009 06:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

SHAMANISM AS SOCIAL CATALYST

In claiming that religion originated when hominids encountered hallucinogenic alkaloids, Wasson was at odds with Mircea Eliade. Eliade considered what he called "narcotic" shamanism to be decadent. He felt that if individuals cannot achieve ecstasy without drugs, then their culture is probably in a decadent phase. The use of the word "narcotic"-a term usually reserved for soporifics-to describe this form of shamanism betrays a botanical and pharmacological naivete. Wasson's view, which I share, is precisely the opposite: the presence of a hallucinogen indicates that shamanism is authentic and alive; the late, decadent phase of shamanism is characterized by elaborate rituals, ordeals and reliance on pathological personalities. Where these phenomena are central, shamanism is well on its way to becoming simply "religion."

And at its fullest, shamanism is not simply religion, it is a dynamic connection into the totality of life on the planet. If, as suggested earlier, hallucinogens operate in the natural environment as message-bearing molecules, exopheromones, then the relationship between primate and hallucinogenic plant signifies a transfer of information from one species to another. The benefits to the mushroom arise out of the hominid domestication of cattle and hence the expansion of the niche occupied by the mushroom. Where plant hallucinogens do not occur, cultural innovation occurs very slowly, if at all, but we have seen that in the presence of hallucinogens a culture is regularly introduced to ever more novel information, sensory input, and behavior and thus is moved to higher and higher states of self-reflection. The shamans are the vanguard of this creative advance.

How, specifically, might the consciousness-catalyzing properties of plants have played a role in the emergence of culture and religion? What was the effect of this folkway, this promotion of languageusing, thinking, but stoned hominids into the natural order? I believe that the natural psychedelic compounds acted as feminizing agents that tempered and civilized the egocentric values of the solitary hunter-individual with the feminine concerns for child-rearing and group survival. The prolonged and repeated exposure to the psychedelic experience, the Wholly Other rupture of the mundane plane caused by the hallucinogenic ritual ecstasy, acted steadily to dissolve that portion of the psyche which we moderns call the ego. Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a calcareous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche. The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved-as it dissolves today-the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao. This dissolving of individual identity into the Tao is the goal of much of Eastern thought and has traditionally been recognized as the key to psychological health and balance for both the group and the individual. To appraise our dilemma correctly, we need to appraise what this loss of Tao, this loss of collective connection to the Earth, has meant for our humanness.


MONOTHEISM

We in the West are the inheritors of a very different understanding of the world. Loss of connection to the Tao has meant that the psychological development of Western civilization has been markedly different from the East's. In the West there has been a steady focus on the ego and on the god of the ego-the monotheistic ideal. Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego. This God is not someone you would care to invite to a garden party. Also interesting is that the Western ideal is the only formulation of deity that has no relationship with woman at any point in the theological myth. In ancient Babylon Anu was paired with his consort Inanna; Grecian religion assigned Zeus a wife, many consorts, and daughters. These heavenly pairings are typical. Only the god of Western civilization has no mother, no sister, no female consort, and no daughter.

Hinduism and Buddhism have maintained traditions of techniques of ecstasy that include, as stated in the Yogic Sutras of Patanjah, "light filled herbs," and the rituals of these great religions give ample scope for the expression and appreciation of the feminine. Sadly, the Western tradition has suffered a long, sustained break with the sociosymbiotic relationship to the feminine and the mysteries'of organic life that can be realized through shamanic use of hallucinogenic plants.

Modern religion in the West is a set of social patterns, or a set of anxieties centered on a particular moral structure and view of obligation. Modern religion is rarely an experience of setting aside the ego. Since the 1960s, the spread of popular cults of trance and dance, such as disco and reggae, is an inevitable and healthy counter to the generally moribund form religious expression has taken on in Western and high-tech culture. The connection between rock and roll and psychedelics is a shamanic connection; trance, dance, and intoxication make up the Archaic formula for both religious celebration and a guaranteed good time.

The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious. Gaining access to the unconscious through plant hallucinogen use reaffirms our original bond to the living planet. Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism.

The monstrous forces of scientific industrialism and global politics that have been born into modern times were conceived at the time of the shattering of the symbiotic relationships with the plants that had bound us to nature from our dim beginnings. This left each human being frightened, guilt-burdened, and alone. Existential man was born.

Terror of being was the placenta that accompanied the birth of Christianity, the ultimate cult of domination by the unconstrained male ego. The abandonment of the ego-dissolving rites of the visionary plants had allowed what began as an individually maladaptive style to become the guiding image of the entire social organism. From within the context of an unchecked growth of dominator values and history told from a dominator point of view, we need to turn attention back toward the Archaic way of vision plants and the Goddess.


PATHOLOGICAL MONOTHEISM

The drive for unitary wholeness within the psyche, which is to a degree instinctual, can nevertheless become pathological if pursued in a context in which dissolution of boundaries and rediscovery of the ground of being has been made impossible. Monotheism became the carrier of the dominator model, the Apollonian model of the self as solar and complete in its masculine expression. As a result of this pathological model, the worth and power of emotion and the natural world have been devalued and replaced by a narcissistic fascination with the abstract and the metaphysical. This attitude has proved a double-edged sword, it has given science explanatory power and its capacity for moral bankruptcy.

Dominator culture has shown a remarkable ability to redesign itself to meet changing levels of technology and collective selfawareness. In all its manifestations, monotheism has been and remains the single most stubborn force resisting perception of the primacy of the natural world. Monotheism strenuously denies the need to return to a cultural style that periodically places the ego and its values in perspective through contact with a boundary-dissolving immersion in the Archaic mystery of plant-induced, hence mother-associated, psychedelic ecstasy and wholeness, what Joyce called the "mama matrix most mysterious."


ARCHAIC SEXUALITY

This is not to imply that the life of the nomadic pastoralist is free of anxiety. Doubtless jealousy and possessiveness persisted among mushroom-using archaic humans, if only as a vestige of hierarchical organization in the social forms of protohominids. Observation of modern primates-of their dominance games and their violently enforced hierarchical structure-suggests that protohominid societies that were premushroom may well have been dominator in style. Thus, we may have experienced no more than a brief abandonment of the dominator style-a brief tendency toward a true dynamic and conscious equilibrium with nature, at variance with our primate past and too soon crushed beneath the chariot wheels of historical process. Since the abandonment of our sojourn with mushroom use in the African Eden, we have only become progressively more bestial in our treatment of one another.


An open and nonproprietary approach to sexuality is fundamental to the partnership model. But this tendency was synergized and strengthened by the orgiastic behavior that was certainly a part of the African Goddess/mushroom religion. Group sexual activity within a small tribe of hunter-gatherers and group experiences with hallucinogens acted to dissolve boundaries and differences between people and to promote the open and unstructured sexuality that is naturally a part of nomadic tribalism. (This is not to imply that contemporary mushroom rituals are "orgies," despite what a small sensation-hungry segment of the public may choose to believe.)

IBOGAINE AMONG THE FANG


The Bwiti cults of West Africa, discussed in Chapter 3, offer an instructive example: use of a hallucinogenic indole-containing plant provides not only visionary ecstasy but also what its users call "open heartedness." This quality, a caring awareness of others, is widely believed to explain the internal cohesiveness of Fang society and the ability of Bwitists among the Fang to resist commercial and missionary incursions into their cultural integrity:


Neither Bwitists nor Fang felt they could eradicate ritual sin or evil in the world. This incapacity means that men have to celebrate. Good and bad walk together. As Fang frequently enough told missionaries, "We have two hearts, good and bad." Early missionaries, aware of these self-confessed contradictions, evangelized with the promise of "one heartedness" in Christianity. But Fang by and large did not find it there. For many, Christian one heartedness was a constriction of their selves. While "one heartedness" is celebrated in Bwiti, it is a one heartedness which is coagulated out of a flow of many qualities from one state to another. It is goodness achieved in the presence of badness, an aboveness achieved in the presence of belowness. It is an emergent quality energized in the presence of its opposite.


Paradoxically ibogaine, the indole hallucinogen responsible for the pharmacological activity of the Bwiti plant (Tabemanthe iboga), is widely recognized both as a factor holding married couples together in the face of Fang institutions like easy divorce and as an aphrodisiac. It is perhaps one of the few plants of the many dozens claimed to be aphrodisiacs that actually performs as advertised.' Most other candidates for the title are in fact merely stimulants that can cause a generalized arousal and sustained erection.

Ibogaine seems actually to change, to deepen, and to enhance the psychological mechanisms that lie behind sexual drive; one experiences a simultaneous sense of detachment and involvement that is empowering. Yet in situations where sexual activity is neither sanctioned nor appropriate, ibogaine does not cause, or even raise the possibility of, sexual behavior. In these situations it functions much as ayahuasca functions among its traditional users; as a boundary-dissolving visionary hallucinogen. Here is another example of research only waiting for social attitudes to change in order to be done. If the impact of ibogaine on sexual dysfunction is found to be congruent with its folklore, then further research might be especially promising.

These powerful plants that change our relationship to our sexuality, and our view of self and world, are the special province of peoples whom we are accustomed to thinking of as primitive. This is but one more indication of the extent to which unconsciously imbibed dominator attitudes have robbed us of participation in the wider and richer world of eros and the spirit.

For easily discerned reasons, the dominator societies that arose to replace partnership societies were far less eager to suppress group sexual activities than they were to suppress the hallucinogenic mushroom religion. Group sexual activity without the dissolution of the dominator ego would help the most ego-obsessed males gain power and rise in the social hierarchy. Since domination of others ultimately includes sexual domination as well, this would explain the persistence of orgies and group sexual activities in many of the mystery religions, at the festivals of Dionysus and the Roman Saturnalia, and within paganism generally long after the heart of the pagan world had ceased to beat. Eventually, however, the dominator anxiety about the establishing of clear lines of male paternity outweighed all other considerations. Then ego domination finally achieved complete preeminence. Through Christianity's ruthless extermination of all heterodoxy, orgies were recognized and suppressed as the subversive, boundary-dissolving activities that they are.

CONTRASTS IN SEXUAL POLITICS


Several important contrasts emerge from a comparison of the egobased dominator society and the nonrigid, psychologically unbounded partnership society. Much diminished in the partnership model is the proprietary attitude of men toward women that is so centrally a part of the dominator model. Less prominent as well is the tendency for women to seek extended commitment to pair bonding from men in the pursuit of security and vicarious social ranking. Family organization is not rigid and hierarchical. Children are raised by an extended family of cousins and siblings, aunts and uncles, and former and current sexual partners of their parents. In such a milieu, a child has many different relationships and a variety of role models. Group values are not usually at odds with that of the individual or his or her mate and children. Adolescent sexual experimentation is expected and encouraged. Couples may bond for any number of reasons related to themselves and the welfare of the group; such bonding may be-but is not necessarily-lifelong. Sexuality is rarely taboo in such societies, only becoming so as a result of contact with dominator values.


In dominator society, men tend to choose sexual partners who are young, healthy, and capable of bearing many children. And the strategy of women within a dominator society is often to bond with an older man who, by being in control of group resources (food, land, or other women), could ensure that a woman's worth won't be devalued as she becomes older and passes out of her childbearing years. In the ideal partnership society, older men may have
sexual relations with younger women, but without threatening the bonds that have been formed with older women; however, women are not driven to seek reproductive security under the protection of older men.


This situation arose because power did not lie exclusively with aging and powerful males. Rather, power was distributed between men and women and through all age groups. Ultimate power in such societies was the power to create and sustain life and so was naturally imaged as female-the power of the great Goddess.


Jean Baker Miller pointed out that the so-called need to control and dominate others is psychologically a function, not of a feeling of power, but of a feeling of powerlessness. Distinguishing between "power for oneself and power over others," she writes: "In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be."'

Partnership societies do not simply replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy; such concepts are too limited and gender bound. The real difference here is between a society based on partnership and roles appropriate to age, size, and level of skill and a society in which a dominance hierarchy is maintained at the expense of the full expression and social utilization of the individuals within the group. In the partnership situation the lack of concepts based on property and ego inflation made jealousy and possessiveness less of a problem.


The generally hostile attitude of dominator society toward sexual expression can be traced to the terror that the dominator ego feels in any situation in which boundaries are dissolved, even the most pleasurable and natural of situations. The French notion of orgasm as petit mort perfectly encapsulates the fear and fascination that boundary-dissolving orgasm holds for dominator cultures.
http://www.dgswilson.com/text/FoodOfTheGods.pdf

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katatonic
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posted June 07, 2009 09:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
well i dont want to knock psychedelics, and since i have used them extensively in the past, don't know if i would have experienced any of those things without them. too late for me. but i know people who are able to access these states without drugs. i wonder! THIS makes perfect sense to me:

"In a basic sense, the greater the development of each individual the more able, more effective, and less needy of limiting or restricting others she or he will be."

funny how our modern society has such a hard time with this one. but i do think we are improving on the whole...

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Valus
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posted June 08, 2009 12:27 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message
Right on.

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Valus
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posted June 11, 2009 12:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

What is so beautiful about psychedelics is that they are a truly democratic solution, in the sense that, they make spiritual experience immediately accessible to all people, and no longer the prerogative of the spiritual "elite". With psychedelics, you dont have to be born a saint in order to become a saint. You don't have to be one of the most mentally balanced people in the world, in order to achieve perfect mental health. You don't have to have Pluto conjunct your Moon in the 1st, to channel. You don't have to sit in lotus posture for decades, to encounter and dialogue with archetypal beings in a dimension more wakeful than ordinary wakefulness. You don't have to be the rarest type of human being, in order to experience divine, unconditional compassion welling up from your soul. You don't have to be a genius, in order to discern and unravel the most deeply rooted prejudices of mankind. All of these gifts can be ours, if we are simply willing to deepen our relationship with the divinity expressed in the natural world; our relationship with the Goddess. This is an energy which does not demand, but, rather, nurtures, excellence. This is not an understanding based on hierarchies, karmic rewards and punishments, or any system requiring a recognition of personal merit. This is something wholly other. Not straining, but openning. Unconditional. Not asking anything of you, but offering itself freely. These are the fruits of the earth.

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katatonic
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posted June 11, 2009 01:34 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
i would just caution you , V, that lots of people lost it due to psychedelics. they are not safe for everyone!! and there were plenty of egomaniacs and subtle domination trips going on in the hippie era, just as in every other time and movement. though i didn't know anyone who took psychs "just for fun", and getting high was seen as a revolutionary and transcendentally educational process, there was a lot of baggage that accompanied most of us and our relationships. communes - yeuch! never visited one that wasn't a little communist prison of sorts...people were made to feel LESSER if they had any personal demands or preferences that didn't meet the approval of the group, in short it was pretty ugly...

that said they can be an excellent tool for breaking down the barriers set up in our 3D society and those transcendental experiences really do happen...but you need to have a healthy sense of self to get to the good stuff...

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Valus
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posted June 11, 2009 05:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

What distinguished the hippie era was its emphasis on personal freedom as well as social responsibility. So many progressive things happened, or began to happen, during that time. Its not an indication of what a psychedelic society would be, but it is an indication that we were definitely on to something. As for communes, I'm sure they weren't all catastrophes. But, even so, that is to be expected, as we experiment with various means of social organization, in our transition from a patriarchal to a psychedelic society. First, we need sociologists willing to explore the question, and this has only just begun to happen. You have to think on a historical scale. We are talking about changes here that go beyond Uranus, or even Pluto.. its not just a challenge to the prevailing institutions, or even a challenge to the zeitgeist, but, a challenge to a way of thinking which has held the high ground for thousands of years. It's not going to be a smooth transition, and even the best of us will be brought face to face with our own demons. Charismatic personalities will arise and the society will learn to deal with them. Edison said, "[I did not fail a hundred times, but I succeeded in learning a hundred ways not to make a lightbulb.]" Well, those communes did not fail; rather, we fail if we refuse to learn from them. Learning means not abandoning experimentation when Utopia isnt produced on the first attempt, but, discovering what went wrong with a particular experiment, and trying something else. That so many things were attempted during the 60's is remarkable.

Certainly, psychedelics werent the only thing many of those people were experimenting with. A quick comparison of Jim Morrison's early work with his later work will show you the difference between Jim on mushrooms and LSD and Jim on alcohol, amphetamines, and barbituates (from Lizard King to Self-Parodying Lounge Act). By the 70's psychedelics were being pretty well suppressed, and people started turning more and more to cocaine, alcohol, ludes, etc, in order to "transcend" the banality of western society. And we can definitely talk about what happened to people as they tried to integrate their perceptions with a hostile, patriarchal culture, -- but that isnt going to tell you anything about the dangers inherent in psychedelics. Thats just what happens to revolutionaries, in cultures like our own. They get martyred, or beaten down somehow. But that's how changes happen. Young people always struggle to define themselves in opposition to a culture whose values are outdated and in need of revision, but the struggle the flower children faced was transgenerational. They were questioning values on the deepest levels. And just as young people tend to be idealistic, and to be disillusioned by experience, is it any wonder that so many of this generation were so effectively discouraged and beaten down by the "realities" they encountered in our society; and in their attempts to uproot themselves from it, and to uproot it's influence from within themselves? The issues with property and relationships are particularly obvious in a transition to a cooperative society. I've no doubt that there must've been trade-offs in a commune, just as in the larger society, but I doubt they were little communist prison camps. After all, you were able to come and go as you pleased. It was your choice to be there. If you didnt want to sacrifice personal demands, what were you doing in a commune in the first place? Maybe they were right to discourage your participation.

The dangers of psychedelics are well known and thoroughly exaggerrated, but what about the benefits? Since the 60's, we have seen unprecedented advancements in civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. We have seen the entire culture shift, and open to receive esoteric wisdom from traditions all over the world. It is difficult to imagine these advancements in collective consciousness without the intervention of psychedelic plants, which began in the mid-50's and was largely suppressed by the early 70's.

I dont think doing something "just for fun" is a bad reason to do it. On the contrary, any other reason would seem disingenuous to me. Why do it, if it isnt fun for you? Learning about yourself, transcending conditioning.. this isnt "fun" for you? Then is it just work? You poor thing. Seriously. Follow your bliss. I read Nietzsche "just for fun", but I dont know anyone else who does, lol. And I wouldnt recommend him, either, to anyone who was going to take him too seriously, or only read him because they thought it was their duty. What is wonderful about mushrooms is that they ARE fun, and that is no mistake. Nature knew what she was doing, making them fun, just as she knew what she was doing when she made sex fun. And yes, it is okay to have sex "just for fun". In fact, if you are doing it for any other reason, something is probably very wrong with your lovelife. I take mushies "just for fun", I f*ck "just for fun", and I contemplate the deepest mysteries of the universe "just for fun". I do it because I love to do it. Don't you?

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katatonic
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posted June 11, 2009 07:06 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
i didn't say it wasn't fun! i was trying to draw a line between people who get high for "kicks" that have nothing to do with the mysteries of the universe, just getting out of it - and people who actually get something more substantial out of them. and there is nothing wrong with fun for sure. kesey's merry pranksters had fun WITH A PURPOSE - to shake things up...but i see a huge difference between the way my daughter's generation use drugs and the way my own did.

as for communes, i didn't take part in any for exactly that reason. i DID share housing with people who were reasonably able to share responsibilities, live and let live, without constant "house meetings" and navel examination. those never appealed to me much! and we never felt the need to call them communes or criticize each other for "unhip" behaviour.

yes a lot of ground was broken then but apart from the newer substances a lot of it was harking back to earlier groundbreakers. you can look at william morris and beardsley and escher for sure and KNOW that they had some similar insights and catalysts. equally you can look at martin luther king jr and know that he was not taking lsd to get where he was...

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Valus
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posted June 11, 2009 07:31 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

Sure, some people take it just for kicks, as they would drink beer. But they get more than they bargained for. And I dont mean they get their heads fried. I mean, they get their minds openned. Dostoevsky wrote: "It is always rewarding to talk to a clever man." Whether or not you approach the man with respect, he will respect you, and give you just what you need -- not necessarily what you want, but what you need. It is unfortuneate that kids these days are not educated on the social and spiritual implications of these substances, and that they are more strongly encouraged to get drunk, than to take mushrooms. But that is no fault of the substances. The entire culture has darkened since the 60's, when psychedelics were the prefered drug, and were easily obtained.

yeah, the communes you describe sound lame. But you should take a look at south american and central american indian tribes, and see how their "communes" work. They've organized themselves around the psychedelic experience, and they appear to live healthy, happy, peaceful, and deeply spiritual lives. Compare those "communes" to what you see on the news every night. Know what I'm saying?

Again, its silly to name a handful of great souls in history who had experiences without taking psychedelics. We arent worried about the Martin Luther King Jr.'s, we are worried about the bigots who shoot them. I'm sure Martin Luther King could have had a lot more insights if LSD were culturally embraced, because he would still be alive to have them, lol. "LSD is a substance that periodically induces states of psychosis in people who do not take it." (anonymous - quoted by mckenna) Martin Luther King's ideas ignited psychosis, lol, because people were not "ready" for that kind of wisdom. Imagine if he spoke at Woodstock. Would someone shoot him there? I doubt it.

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katatonic
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posted June 11, 2009 07:39 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
course not. but mlk is a prime example of someone who accessed the dream state or next dimension through meditation not drugs. nothing wrong with that, and many people who took drugs now prefer meditation. no side effects physically unless you count lowered blood pressure, longer lives and generally less stress...

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pire
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posted June 11, 2009 09:24 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for pire     Edit/Delete Message
Interesting stuff,
May be it s different in europe i dont know. I ve lived in rural France up to my 20s where drugs where not seen as "cool". I ve smoked weed but never tried anything else (alcohol is socially the norm here, and i get ****** from time to time). During my 5 years in london in my twenties, every house parties i've been, someone would propose me différent kind of drugs. Not sure about psychedelics. I dont have anything funeamentally against. I would consider taking something for a sexual experiment if in the right situation with mr right. But, my point is that im happy to not have done it before because i've got addictive tendencies in me and in my family. I cant imagine what would have been the result of pire-naturally-lost-24/7 on mushrooms. Now, i approach my thirties, and i knoW where i stand.

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Valus
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posted June 12, 2009 11:21 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message
well, i just wrote a long,
brilliant response, lol,
and it got deleted.

maybe i'll come back later
to set you two straight.


V

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pire
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posted June 13, 2009 08:50 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for pire     Edit/Delete Message
i'm sure you'll find the words valus.

in my point of view, drugs are not a problem in themselves but they can be for certain people, that is why i wanted to give my side of the story, which is: drugs are not necessary to live ecstatic moment.

i'm cautious regarding drugs for two reasons;
as i said, i know how i would end up if taking some. some people know how to control themselves and others don't. well i'm in the second category!!!
also, i think shamanistic rituals are monitered by shamans, so they know how to take care of people who take some if there is a need for it during the experience. they tested it and know the limits like good fathers. that is something that is NOT natural in the world of drugs today. people try drugs because they don't like life itself most of the time. to escape. and here the 2 points i'm making come together.

drugs are neither good nor bad (well they surely are good ) except for the one who sees it as a way out. it's like in EASY RIDERS at the end, peter fonda saying to dennis hopper "WE BLEW IT". well my scorpio friend explained the meaning of it to me, here the character of peter fonda realises that his dream of freedom was not drugs or the lifestyle wanted by the character of dennis hopper but something more inspired... and more real, like when he congratulate this farmer who welcomed them to his house "to be free ... to do his own things in his own time"

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Valus
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posted June 13, 2009 01:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

pire,

You are just repeating the old cliches. Why is it that, when anybody suggests anything contrary to the mainstream, somebody thinks they have to trot out the old standbys? As if we are not all well aware of them. But consider something novel: If drugs are about escape, then everything you do to enhance your life is about escape. Spirituality is about escape. And if you are likely to addict yourself to drugs, you will "addict" yourself to whatever lifestyle, and whatever ideology, you choose.

Psychedelics, though, are not addictive, and that is something you quickly learn. They are not escapes. They are ecstacy and work. They are the work of psychic integration. The confrontation with the unconscious. People know the doses that are safe, but there are fools in any walk of life, who will ruin it for everyone if people only focus on the fools, and not the "true believers", so to speak.

Every spiritual path has its pitfalls. All true occultists can tell you how frequently the highest laws are misused, and how often practitioners fall into delusion and error. There are horror stories of people awakening kundalini too early, and so forth. This happens in every tradition.

As I see it, psychedelics are comparatively safe when compared to experimentation with the archetypes of religions and symbolic languages, like astrology. Those things are more likely to be misused by the ego, whereas psychedelics undermine and override the ego. If there are complications, they are far more likely to arise from the surrounding social constraints, pseudo-obligations, and expectations. With psychedelics, you have less of an opportunity to misdirect your course, or to direct your course (on a personal level) at all. You are, in essence, putting yourself in the hands of a wise father. A guide more ancient and profound than any you are likely to find on earth. That is my experience.

Its funny that you mention Easy Rider. I'm not sure your friend understood it, or explained it correctly. The way I recall the ending, its not the drugs that get them. Its the narrow-minded townspeople who can't let them be the peaceful, groovy explorers that they were. Peter fonda didnt want to explore America, he wanted to settle down and explore innerspace. It had nothing to do with giving up drugs. He took acid in that movie, after he made his decision to have a place "to be free.. to do his own things [i.e. to smoke HERB, take MUSHROOMS, PEYOTE, LSD, etc.] in his own time [now! lol! and any time he wants to]". Instead, they were gunned down by conservative cranks as they rode along, minding their own business. You're gonna have to do better than Easy Rider.

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Valus
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posted June 13, 2009 01:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

kat,

The people you are talking about probably gave up a lot more than psychedelics, and, if you ask me, they probably owe that, at least, in part, to their relationship with psychedelics. Just because you move on, doesnt mean the relationship wasnt responsible for bringing you to a place where you could move on. Do you see? I'm sure they changed all sorts of things. Psychedelics have a tendency to do that. Although I seriously doubt that MLK ever got himself dismembered by self-tranforming machine-elves, or the like. According to some cultures, he has never really been initiated into manhood. But what he understood and what he did was amazing. Nobody can doubt that. It reminds me of the spirit of an entire generation of young people who were willing to speak up, protest, and go to jail, in order to bring attention to the abuses they saw. You remember the 60's, don't you?


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katatonic
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posted June 13, 2009 02:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
valus i'm just trying to broaden the picture here. do i remember the 60's lol! i was on the steps of my local courthouse in a peaceful protest when my highschool sweetheart got his head cracked open at age 14. i was in washington around the same time. i hit the west coast (and happened to land in one of ken kesey's favourite trip-stops) at barely 17. not sf but oregon, which actually was way more genuine and had the advantage of super natural beauty of every kind, from deserts and hot springs to rivers and rainforest and mountains and one of the more spectacular coastlines in the world, all pretty unspoiled at the time. hitchhiking to the bay area was a regular pastime, and i also stowed away on an airplane to la one night under the influence and found myself bunking up in the home of southern california's main lsd producers...they say if you were there you can't remember it but that is hogwash. i have communed with the spirits of land, sea and air, humans and other beings and i was privileged to be able to access the best of the best minds and substances...i never had myself deconstructed by elves either but experiences equal and different to that. i won't trivialize them by trying to explain, it's not my talent or mission to do that. the experience was enough.

as i said i don't regret any of it, and i'm not trying to turn you off it. but i saw plenty of people go to places they couldn't come back from, and i don't mean in a good way. so it is often a good thing to have a good, trustworthy, experienced guide, just as shamans in training do until they have passed the rites...

and i also know plenty of people who declined to take any substances in those days who got their vision and transcended without the aid of any chemicals. as i said, mlk accessed the dreamtime, no doubt about it. and he surely was not alone. in the middle ages they did this through their religion. and it is not just the remarkable people we know about who have gone there...so there are many choices. my main point. not to argue but add-to!

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Valus
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posted June 13, 2009 02:45 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message
I agree with everything you said.

But I have Mercury conjunct Mars.

In Sagittarius.

In the 12th house.

For starters.

I really think I need a path
that is as "chaotic"
and unstructured as this.

My mind has a mind of its own.
(mercury in the 12th)
My will has a will of its own.
(mars in the 12th)
My dream has a dream of its own.
(neptune in the 12th)

I hear the warnings,
the concerns and fears,
but I am young
and full of faith and hope,
determined to follow
these mysterious promptings.

And, with my Sun/Venus/Uranus
conjunct the Midheaven in Scorpio,
It probably is my talent and mission
to dispense this kind of information.

I think Chiron has a lot
to do with psychedelics,
and my Chiron is the only "planet"
occupying one half of my chart,
Squaring the Moon and
Opposing the Sun.

Chiron is there to complete
and balance, in its maverick way,
the energies concentrated
in the other half of the chart.

Chiron also
tightly squares Jupiter,
in Leo, in the 8th house,
trining the Mars/Merc conjunction;
which it rules, along with the 12th.

So, Jupiter gives abundant faith.
Some would say too much faith,
but, then,
the people who are well-balanced;
people with the trines and sextiles,
dont change the world.
They hardly dare to dream of it.
They say what's already been said
and do what's already been done.
They make steady, quiet progress,
then they die and leave the world
much as they found it.


"You need chaos in your soul
to give birth to a dancing star."
Friedrich Nietzsche
(sun in the 12th)

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katatonic
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posted June 13, 2009 04:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
p.s. i don't know where you live but there are sites all over the world that are either natural energy conductors or have had structures built on them to concentrate energies that can help you access the sacred...which you probably already know. they are very real, the energy is palpable...

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Valus
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posted June 14, 2009 03:55 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

Yes, there's a place nearby that's called "America's Stonehenge", or something like that. I definitely felt some serious energy there, and so did my girlfriend-at-the-time, who was very psychic. Walking alone in the woods, we both felt like we were surrounded by presences. I remember feeling pretty dazed. There is a famous abandoned mental hospital nearby, too. Well, there used to be. They've torn it down and built homes there now. But we used to go exploring there, years ago, and I felt subtle things. Mostly, like maybe they (the spirits) wanted to be left alone. When I took mushrooms recently and visited a cemetery, it was the opposite. I felt like they were very happy to receive us. That they understood us. That they appreciated our presence, acknowledgement, and attention. And we were talking about families and matriarchs and things. I think that, the way these things work, it doesnt matter so much if what I was thinking was reflecting the objective world, or if it was "just" imagined. The notions or visions which occurred to me, real or imaginary, were appropriate reflections of the very present process of psychic integration taking place in the no man's land between the conscious and unconscious mind. The medicine allowed me to tune more deeply into my soul. Then the lines between imagining, seeing, and creating began to disappear. The world became a lucid dream. And I understood, as I am always understanding, more and more deeply, the importance and sacredness of dreaming. I saw that the world is a magnificent theater, and we are all artists of improvisation. We could all be so much more like children, playing, pretending, acting out mythologies, unravelling our personal themes, slipping in and out of past lives, or present lives occurring just beneath the veil of egoic consciousness... There is so much we can do to bring magic to life, when we let ourselves play. It is in a spirit of play, as children, that we enter the kingdom of dreams.


"I have a dream." -- MLK

You sure he didn't trip?

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MysticMelody
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posted June 14, 2009 12:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MysticMelody     Edit/Delete Message
"There is so much we can do to bring magic to life, when we let ourselves play. It is in a spirit of play, as children, that we enter the kingdom of dreams."

beautiful

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MysticMelody
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posted June 14, 2009 12:15 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MysticMelody     Edit/Delete Message
katonic, I like your "add-to"

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katatonic
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posted June 14, 2009 01:05 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
re mlk i am sure he DID trip, he just didn't do it with drugs!

mel - about the places? yes, i find i am more and more sensitive to earth energies as i go along...

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Valus
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posted June 14, 2009 09:25 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hW6Dm_m5t4&feature=related

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katatonic
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posted June 14, 2009 10:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message
valus you might enjoy knowing that i used to deliver ram dass's dinner to him about once a week...though he sold up and moved, i think to hawaii recently. quite a character...!

my favourite shaman of the period... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_lCMpJzxBM (NOT garcia!)

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Valus
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posted June 15, 2009 02:24 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Valus     Edit/Delete Message

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pire
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posted June 15, 2009 06:20 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for pire     Edit/Delete Message
Drugs affect the will power too. Taking away power, not bringing it. The dreamstate is already in you.

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