There and Back Again, a Tripper's Tale

[Zigzag Idiot]

I've only sampled the live LSD trip insights. Thank you for posting these! 

I look forward to having the time to listening to them all the way through. Anytime the subject of LSD comes up I think about the spiritual classic BE HERE NOW that begins with Richard Alpert, (before he became Ram Das) and Timothy Leary as two Harvard Psychology Professors. It's hilarious and profound.

[Wisebaxter]

Trip Report 2  

(Skip to below the video if you're in a rush or feeling less playful)

Frodo had just been starting to get comfortable in the Shire after his last adventure when Gandalf arrived, bobbing merrily along on his carriage. "Gandalf!" Frodo yelled, leaping up with excitement before backing away slightly in trepidation. "I'm glad you're here, but I'm far too weary to head out again just yet."  
"No no, muttered Gandalf, you're getting way ahead of yourself. Have you forgotten who's birthday it is?"
Frodo beamed a big smile. 
"Bilbo! Of course! You're just here for the celebration. 
"Precisely. Now help me unload these fireworks. I'm in an even more playful mood than usual this year."

Dosage: 200ug
Setting: Home
Outfit: Playful yet austere, light green, baggy trousers and a thin, long sleeved T-Shirt.
Special Guest Starring: Teotl as the Playful Prankster God, The Cats 
Position of Jupiter in relation to Orion.....

Get on with it!!! Ok ok.

This is an epic post guys, literally the Lord of the Rings of trip reports. Grab a coffee and maybe nibble at it like a gourmet cheese, the post that is, not the coffee. 

I did some Kriya Yoga and meditation as I was waiting for it to hit. Then bam, the visuals start, along with my concepts of reality starting to bend and fall apart. I watched The 'you think you know what's real?' scene from Dr Strange. I love watching this just as the acid hits, to remind me what I'm up against. 

Ok so things started off being quite gnarly. This was 50ug more than I'd taken last time and that seemed to be making a big difference. I was walking around, feeling quite detached from everything, not knowing what to do with myself. I decided to just relax and lay on he sofa. As I lay there I started getting very vivid images come to me of the police being at the house as I'd just killed myself. I considered that I'd only just hidden all of the knives so as I knew where they all were I could go and stick myself with them like a pin cushion. It felt like it would just be a natural occurrence and nothing to be bothered about. I then started living through my own funeral. I started to get quite anxious and I just couldn't let go and let all of this happen. I was getting dark, gory images come to me, very bloodthirsty and graphic. My mind was saying 'let go' but it was far too awful. I had to exert a level of control to avoid spiralling here so I got up and went over to the piano. As I sat down and started to play I began to relax and these words came out. 

'Teotl has shown me one aspect of creation (destruction) and now this is the flip side of that. Teotl wants us to create.' 

Now I began to play more beautifully than ever, with lots of emotion and nuance. A flock of doves landed on the fence outside and the sun emerged from behind a dark cloud. Ok not really, but I was playing really nicely. We are here to create beauty. This is the evolution of form and consciousness. Structure and form is important to oppose the chaos, hence why we're being pushed towards mastery. So Teotl is creating beauty out of forms and structures. This realisation came as some relief, the perfect contrast to what I'd been experiencing. Perhaps this was linked to the ego's survival, quite possibly, but still, the the creativity inherent in reality seemed very apparent to me. When you're learning to create you're doing God's work. You have a desire to create because you are God. These forms of ours have been created to please Teotl, so it can carry out the business of playing and creating. So be pleased with it and keep it healthy 

Ok....so I spent my trip recording audio into my Laptop, perhaps to avoid getting lost in my mind again and risking a bad trip. Besides, I was having lots of fun being silly and playful, which was the case last time I took LSD. Lastly, I had insights coming out of my ass and wanted to get them all down. 

Now, this is all pretty conceptual, mind-based stuff but I think there are some gems here in relation to the relative plane, i.e form. I'm still a rookie with psychedelics and don't have a lot of shit handled in my life in terms of career, security etc, so it seems that the insights I have on psychedelics are very centred around the lower levels of Maslow's triangle, but there are some deeper insights here too I think. I'm going to just list them with bullet points instead of tell the story of what went down, as basically all I did was rant into my mic like a mad man for 12 hours anyway lol. 

• The main insight and theme of the trip was...Playfulness. It became apparent to me that reality is inherently a play of forms and dualities. Everything, from the macro to the micro is play, whether it's planets colliding or particles and molecules dancing around one another in a symphony of survival. Teotl forgets itself so it can manifest as dualities and play. This is why creativity is such a fundamental aspect of reality and evolution, both of form and consciousness. We are Teotl, so that's why we like to create and play so much, it's why we get so much joy from laughter, fun and humour. Of course, you might wonder, so what about pain, fear, destruction? Well to Teotl this is still just play and pleases it, whereas for an ego that feels it has everything to lose, it causes suffering. But this is also Teotl just having fun through experiencing so called 'negative' emotions. There is no good or bad, just dancing and play. Teotl must hide itself and play the the ultimate game of hide and seek with itself through manifesting as an ego. So when we're figuring out our true nature, this please Teotl. Even survival is play.
   
• As Teotl is an intelligence, it takes pleasure in evolving and creating even more interesting, beautiful forms. This is why beauty pleases us so much more than 'ugliness,' because Teotl is an artist and we are hard wired to move towards even more beautiful forms. It's like an infinite, evolving, playful dance. Of course, love, being another aspect of Teotl, is fundamentally linked to creativity. We're our most loving when we're being playful and our creations please us the most when love goes into them. One simple example of the would be the meals we cook. The ones we enjoy the most are the ones we really enjoy cooking and where we get a bit creative and playful with flavours. Of course this could backfire, but this is why Teotl also encourages us towards mastery as part of our evolution. Playfulness combined with mastery is the ultimate combo for creating beauty. Another example, when I watched Avatar 3D at the IMAX, I felt like it was the pinnacle of intelligent, human design and such love had gone into it. Also, remember how the guy in the wheelchair can't play too well until he gets that new body, then he's leaping and running around, playing his ass off. That pleased Teotl  
   
• I saw some people doing stuff outside. My first thought was ‘how can I be out there and in here, if all is one?’ Then I realised that I am out there, because I can see me out there. It doesn’t look like me, this body, but awareness it experiencing it NOW so it must be me. I’m just more identified with being in this 'supposed' location, here. 
   
• I went on a big rant at one point about how much I love Joe Rogen for letting Alex Jones on his show and how much I enjoyed seeing them hang out and just have fun, seeing the shared humanity there behind all of the beliefs and bullshit. The thing I noticed the most was the playfulness, fun and laughter. This always unites us. They’re common components of reality that unite us instead of separate us. As soon as we pigeonhole someone as bad that effects our capacity to see the love in them or treat them with compassion, despite mistakes they may have made. If we could do this more we could stop all the low consciousness behaviour in the world, caused by ego and separation. Again this all relates to the ‘love simulator’ thing Leo mentioned.

So this is what happens when people get divided by politics and ego:

Then watch what happens when they come together in a shared humanity and love for one another:

 

• As humans we gravitate towards the seeds of beauty that shine out from within darkness and oppression. All the best forms of music represent this, R&B, hip-hop, blues, folk. It’s love, playfulness and expression. Reality is like a big stadium where the aim of the game is to discover love, grace and creativity, to create form and beauty from within the illusion of fear and hopelessness. So always create with love. Love is even more intense in the face of oppression or resistance. It has to be to consume them. This is why suffering often leads to awakening. 
   
• I wanted to keep recording and have everything authentic and live. This made me think about how we all prefer things to be live, radio shows concerts, it’s all about having it ‘live.’ Because live is Now, live is truth. The more live things are, the less room there is for delusion to take hold, the less the mind can come in and impose its agenda, based on past prejudices. We get to see people at their most natural and most human when they're acting in the moment, even if they're having a bad time. It's still real. 
   
• I imagined people asking ‘who does this guy think he is?’ But who do they think they are? They should turn that question back on themselves. Once they figure that out we can play more easily. When we all figure out that we’re on the same team we won’t keep scoring own goals. 
   
• I felt that fighting against what felt perfectly natural, to play and have fun by recording my voice, would have represented resistance. To expect myself not to be playful, to deny this aspect of myself would have been crazy, like a dog biting it’s own tail. So - as @TheAvatarState said to me recently, get out of your own fucking way. This also made me wonder whether Teotl, manifested through my form, is just extremely playful, more so than others perhaps. Of course everyone enjoys laughter, but some people are more serious, they need to be to advance Teotl's plan. If Einstein was running around tickling everyone then he wouldn't have been able to concentrate hard enough to have those insights. But then again was he being playful with his work? Hmmm. But regardless, my natural state is playfulness and again, reality, matter, duality and form, does seem inherently playful. I am God so God is certainly playful, but I think there's a scale and we all shine differently and exhibit different aspects of Teotl to a greater or lesser degree. We are it's own playful creations. I'm just thinking out loud here so come back at me guys and we can have a discussion. 
   
• I was playing around doing some kind of sports commentary of my trip and I realised that sport is so popular, again, because it’s all about playing, and when they do commentary for it they’re always having fun. The best way to play a game is always to have fun as well, whether you win of you lose. It’s not about that, it’s just about playing and having fun. You notice the more you enjoy the actual game the better you do at it. As soon as you’re worried about losing, your performance suffers. Just keep playing
   
• I was a bit scared at what happened when I laid on the couch and let go, so I think making the recordings was a way to keep me focused and sane. I considered that my mind jumped to dark imagery partly due to all of the violent imagery we consume from popular culture. It’s all still there in the subconscious. But this is all again, just part of Teotl’s playfulness, experiencing all of these varieties of forms. It feels like it has an adverse effect on the ego, which craves survival, but again, me experiencing this earlier, had just been one more thing Teotl wanted to experience, the playful little imp. I kept picturing God wearing a little Jester hat and during the recordings I kept doing an impression of it, saying things like 'Teotl likes to play hehehehe' in a silly voice. listen to the audio to hear this. Basically I was just being playful. I felt I was communicating this message of playfulness on behalf of God, that I was given an insight into my true nature so I could spread the message that it’s all about play and inspire other people to play
   
• The archetypes we experience in life, through movies etc, are also a part of this play. It acts as an evolution of creativity as the more we consume them the more we’re inspired to create. So creativity is a process of evolution, a process of playfulness. The pinnacle of Teotl’s creativity is evidenced in things like IMAX cinema. The intelligence inherent in reality is amazing.
   
• I perceived the paradox of being God, trying to figure out my own nature, or how I tricked myself. Looking outside myself for answers when I am the truth. I wondered if this game is just another part of Teotl’s trickery and playfulness. It enjoys the game of realising it’s true nature. 
   
• As we grow older the judgements of other stop us becoming playful. We become self conscious, perhaps because our parents, teachers or society tells us it’s not all about play. Children are the most playful as they have the least ego and are the closest to God. 

• The truth is in our hearts as the love we feel, so I wanted to get across the idea that you need to find this feeling, however small it is at present, nurture it and help it to grow however you can. The truth is right there. It's so profound and many people don't realise it as their true nature. It's our true nature as Teotl loves everything, all forms, all experiences, all of its playful creations. So whenever you felt it, when you played with your dog as a kid, or when that person smiled at you as they walked past today, no matter how bad you feel, its always there throughout your day, even if it's just a spark. So nurture the spark and find your way to God. 

• I went out for a walk and realised that Teotl wants movement as movement is play. When you're stagnating you feel so bad as you're not evolving. Survival is inherent in nature and provokes movement. It's not something to be demonised as it's a tool for movement and a way Teotl can experience a larger variety of forms. That doesn't mean you can't realise the truth of it and transcend it of course. Teotl wants you to do this, it wants you to realise your true nature as love and acceptance and transcend the survival impulse, removing it's mask. Imagine you are looking in a mirror and you remove your mask, revealing a playful jester face lol. 

• It was a cold day outside and I was acutely aware of my drive towards comfort and warmth. This also brought the survival impulse home to me. It made me realise that our drive towards comfort stops us from removing our masks as it heightens the survival impulse and keeps the delusion of separation intact. 

• As I walked through the countryside I heard the Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing in my head. I thought about how Teotl loves to see these big movies, but it's making the movie all movies are based on and we're the main stars. 

• I sat watching my cats play with each other....and I realised that....wait for it....Teotl is playful hehehe. But will you play with the little kitties? Or will you just feed them, pat them on the head and go back to your serious work? Hmmm?  

• I became aware that I was being quite bold with by assertions on reality and Teotl. Yes of course, I could feel all of this in my heart and it all made sense, but there's a tendency when tripping to start thinking you have it all figured out. Reality is very magical and paradoxical and I decided I needed to be more humble and realise this wasn't a heroic dose by any means and I was only scratching the surface. Teotl always reveals to you what you need to know, when you need to know it. I must work harder to get basic shit handled and go even deeper. 

• I had a sudden realisation that these enlightened masters must be on such an insane level with their consciousness as I felt that my realisations were profound whereas really to these guys they would be child's play. I am still living within the delusion of form to a huge extent, so if that feels profound, what must it feel like to transcend even that?

• I became aware of the insanity of wanting to be recognised as an ego, as a separate, visible thing, over here when the nature of reality is one. I could feel that in my heart at this point, that I wasn't separate. There was no full ego-death, just a 'knowing' in my heart. I considered how much of my life had been dominated by this need to feel special or important. I then became aware of just how selfish I was on a day to day basis, especially after quickly watching this video:
   

  I promised myself I would look out for any future selfishness like a hawk and try to develop a state of being that didn't involve any kind of survival impulse, no matter what it takes. 

• I decided that from now on I would be honest with myself about everything I do and why I'm doing it. If I'm staying at home and not getting a job because I'm scared of socialising, say that's what it is, not I'm just on a mission trying to get woke. Contemplation will help me here. Examine your motives behind every decision. Where are you being selfish? Where might you be causing suffering? Where are you acting based on fear? What are you actually DOING? 

• I thought about how much more fun your day would be if you experienced canned laughter whenever something funny happened. It would really help you to take life less seriously. We can laugh at other people's lives, but its harder to do it with our own, which we take oh so seriously. I decided I'd download some canned laughter samples and play them throughout the day. Imagine waking up in the morning and groaning 'fuck, another day,' and then playing some canned laughter. That wouldn't lighten your mood straight away, 

• Dont judge others for their instinct to survive, just as you wouldn't judge a pet for meowing for food. Selfish cat lol.  

• Always show compassion, to people like Alex Jones for example. Look for the good in everyone, because it's there. And if for some reason it isn't, then have compassion for that person for not knowing it. Pay heed though, people's love and compassion often manifests in them judging and condemning. Understand this and don’t condemn them for it, because you see them as victimising whoever they’re judging. For example, if someone defends R Kelly, they care about people being set up, about injustice, that’s all. They then dismiss any other victims to defend their position, unfortunately, saying ‘those ho’s needed the cash.’ They just want more fuel to justify their stance and can’t see it from a stage yellow perspective. So that’s what you need to do more. Don’t unconsciously start calling people crazy etc. Remember there's love at the core of their actions. 

• Always be real and people will react kindly. Call yourself out before anyone else. Take the plank out of your own eye. 

• Notice wherever you’re lacking in compassion and ask yourself why. Whenever something angers you, or someone, what are you protecting? If you’re protecting someone from suffering, perhaps the person your judging is just doing the same. So tell them you see that. Then perhaps you can show them you’re position and they can be open to loving more. But don’t shut them down and make them invisible. They have a right to be heard. 

• You need balance and comfort. Sometimes you have to come out of your comfort zone to achieve greater comfort further down the line. Without comfort and security, you can’t innovate. This is why Maslow’s triangle is so powerful. Integrate the low level self help stuff a bit more. Otherwise you get too distracted with feelings of fear, guilt, shame, wondering if you’re doing the right thing etc. You know what the right thing is. It creates the most joy and limits the most amount of suffering in the long term. For example, how many people suffer so you can be comfortable now?

• The experience of concepts are truth, however they manifest in your experience, the internal dialogue, the images, sounds. But the concepts themselves, the ideas contained within them, are not true 

• Notice how you feel guitly for aimless mind wandering? It's because you're not innovating and creating, you're just playing old movies 

• Look at the artistry all around you. The way the ocean moves. The way stones on the ground are arranged. The way a turd sits glistening in the sun upon the pavement. Ok, you may need a microscope to see the beauty of that one. But observe the variety of smells, pay attention to how it's all enjoyed through the sense perceptions. Are you enjoying your creation?

Here's the audio I recorded for the trips:

 

The biggest benefit I got from this trip was realising my own playful nature and the importance of laughter and humour, which had been missing from my life a bit. I'd been a very playful child and teenager but I lost that when shit started to get too real for me lol. I also decided I wanted to develop a humorous video podcast where I interview people about psychedelics, perhaps do some live tripping. I had such fun doing these recordings and I want to use this substance as a tool to help me connect to others and do Teotl's work of evolving consciousness. I even had a funny idea that I could develop an alter ego of Teotl the prankster and dress up as a jester for the podcast, doing the same silly voice I did in the recordings. This would allow me to share insights in an entertaining way. 

Teotl thanks you for reading and hope's you had fun fun fun and that you smiled at least once. 

Edited March 16, 2019 by Wisebaxter

[Wisebaxter]

1 hour ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

I've only sampled the live LSD trip insights. Thank you for posting these! 

I look forward to having the time to listening to them all the way through. Anytime the subject of LSD comes up I think about the spiritual classic BE HERE NOW that begins with Richard Alpert, (before he became Ram Das) and Timothy Leary as two Harvard Psychology Professors. It's hilarious and profound.

Thanks man, I'll definitely check that recording you mentioned out, sounds awesome. I also love the posters you attached. Very powerful messages contained in those. I might print them off and pin them up somewhere. 

[Wisebaxter]

16 hours ago, KyleR said:

That’s mega mate! Need to get on Kriya yoga hearing so much about it. You think there’ll come a point you’re done with weed for good? The paranoia can go deeep but having it sporadically I find can still be blissful, just gotta be on alert for monkey mind?although you’ve had it wayy more than me, effects likely more intense.

Ah look forward to reading it mate! Will check more of the audio out aswell??all just❤️?I’ve done 100-125ug 4/5 times prior, all beautiful experiences with some lessons learnt, felt it was time to go deeper but got out of hand pretty quick and just took me?deeper lessons that I will work towards integrating! 

What previous experiences you had? Mad the difference between the smaller dose, can’t even imagine what the mega doses are like, might need a shaman or some shit for that lol. I’ll do em again for sure, think I’ll be more aware next time, took me by surprise, way more intense than half the dose but had a lot of shit going on mentally too and asked beforehand about facing it all, oh did it show me?

Nice mate, good mate of mine producing tech house atm in his earlyish stages but has great potential imo you see it as a long term thing? Not atm myself, wanna learn how to produce tho 

 

@KyleR

There's a couple of great books on Leo's booklist on Kriya Yoga to get you started. The booklist is very cheap, I really recommend it. 

Yeah I don't feel like weed will be a part of my life now moving forward. I discovered other stuff that gives you a better buzz and is so much better for you. Modafinil for example, is much nicer than weed. Taking that and doing self inquiry gets me much more high. If you're only smoking occasionally though, you'll be fine. It sounds like you have a good relationship with it. 

This was only my second trip. The first trip report is posted at the start of this thread. I did a lot of personal development before I started tripping so I feel like this made a big difference regarding the experience I had, the level of insights I received etc. 

Yeah to go from 100-125ug to 250ug is quite a jump, I'm not surprised it knocked your socks off a bit. Glad you got some progress from it though. Leo says you can get just as much progress from the bad trips. Have you only done LSD? I haven't tried anything else yet. Mushrooms are next up for me I think. Haha yeah I know what you mean about needing a shaman. Maybe they advertise in the yellow pages?  Imagine getting really experienced with psychedelics and setting yourself up a business as a Shaman. Talk about a badass life purpose. Mum, dad, this shit's work, get off my back! 

What does your boy do a living? Oh he's a Shaman...

Tech House eh? Sweet dude, I love a bit of that. Link me some shit at some point, I'd love to listen. Yeah I do want to develop it as a life purpose, but I try not to focus on that too much as it can take the fun out of doing it, focusing on an end result. Better to do it for fun in a sense. But there's a debate that could be had here as that might not give you the motivation you need to work on it some days, when it doesn't feel like fun.  

Edited March 15, 2019 by Wisebaxter

[Zigzag Idiot]

15 minutes ago, Wisebaxter said:

Thanks man, I'll definitely check that recording you mentioned out, sounds awesome. I also love the posters you attached. Very powerful messages contained in those. I might print them off and pin them up somewhere. 

These are pages out of The book BE HERE NOW I got from a google image search for the book. He starts the book in a very rational left brain fashion with regular text. After 20 -30 pages and giving a summary of his submersion  into psychedelics, the book turns into all of these right brained expressions. There are over 100 of these pages.

[Wisebaxter]

6 minutes ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

These are pages out of The book BE HERE NOW I got from a google image search for the book. He starts the book in a very rational left brain fashion with regular text. After 20 -30 pages and giving a summary of his submersion  into psychedelics, the book turns into all of these right brained expressions. There are over 100 of these pages

Wow, I love it. That artwork too, the way the perception of his body evolves from the bottom to the top, through experiencing God's love,

[TheAvatarState]

@Wisebaxter gnarly, thanks for sharing! 

[KyleR]

Mega read mate! You explain so well. You describe many aspects of what I experienced tbh beyond the bad parts, that I couldn’t really convey in as much detail??ultimately love and play tho and believe it’s why pursuing passion is key to a fulfilling life whilst being there for others with no judgements, we all have love and seek love but are twisted in our own little egos of how the world should be, but it’s all just a game! Easy to forget day to day and a lot to integrate and change for me, I’ll be referring to this report for reminders, thanks for sharing

Have you read peak? A fantastic book on what it takes to achieve mastery. 

Cheers, will look into the kriya books. 

Yea you’re right, I didn’t think too much about it, I thought like “one tab is ok, let’s see what two tabs does” going from one to two doesn’t seem as big as 125 to 250 tho?will try 200 next time. I’ve had truffles but they remind me of a small acid dose maybe even less, would love to do shrooms. 

?init, some service that! Get out in the Peruvian jungles 

Yea me n my mate have this discussion often, started as a hobby because he enjoyed it but of course there’s gonna be many days/weeks where it feels like nothings moving, along with low motivation etc but finding that sense of joy will keep the spark alive and creative juices flowing and eventually it will fall into place with persistence and right practice, learning from every phase. Will do mate, like I say he’s still relatively early in himself but he’s creating some good shit now imo.. how long you been doing it now? 

Should be 2 tracks here:

https://m.soundcloud.com/user-416965397/sets/ideas/s-kzxCQ

Edited March 16, 2019 by KyleR

[Wisebaxter]

19 hours ago, KyleR said:

we all have love and seek love but are twisted in our own little egos of how the world should be, but it’s all just a game!

Definitely man, we have this guiding light in us but it gets so lost underneath all of the egoic, survival stuff. Most people don't realise how much this spark can ignite as well and consume more and more. I'm only just started to understand that. I still have a long way to go, for example I spend ages writing my own trip reports but hardly any time reading other people's. It's little things like that, the sneaky, selfish behaviour that goes unnoticed. It easily done though as the world does seem to revolve around us. Breaking this illusion and this small behaviours is so key I think. 

19 hours ago, KyleR said:

Have you read peak? A fantastic book on what it takes to achieve mastery.

No I haven't read Peak but just looking at it online and I'll definitely grab it as it looks fantastic. Books like that can break you out of old habits so quickly I find. I've gotten so much value from Leo's booklist it's ridiculous. He has some books on mastery on there. 

I really loved that track you linked me. I don't have much of a trained air but sonically it's very pleasing and the arrangement is lush. Is that your friends? Pass on that I really enjoyed it and to keep up the good work as he's onto a winner. 

I've been learning Sound Engineering for about 3-4 years, but I have to say that I haven't spent nearly as long as I should have done actually making tracks. That time was mostly taken up watching Youtube videos and making notes (feeling that this was progression lol). This was largely down to me not wanting to spend the emotional about necessary through referencing others artists work and doing the gruelling work of copying tracks and learning how it's done, how contrast is created, how tension is built up. I'm sure you know there are so many elements to music production. Arrangement, composition, mixing, mastering, sound design, then all the elements within that, drums, bass, the list is endless. I found it all confusing and didn't even know where to focus on my efforts. Plus I always got miserable and disheartened by the fact that I never felt inspired to create. Then I read War on Art by Steven Pressfield and realised that you have to treat it like work and just get on with it. I had this misconception that artists should always feel playful and highly passionate about creating and wake up in the morning with an unshakeable drive to jump straight in. But it's not like that. With mastery, you have to do the hard work and learn the skill, learn the technique so you know what you're doing. Like you said they'll be days and weeks where it will feel like nothing's moving, but you have to be disciplined and power through it. Now I work every day without fail and I'm making real progress. 

This video helped me

 

Keep on with it my friend, you sound like you're on the road to mastery, reading the books, doing the hardcore personal development work. You're on the hero's journey like me. We're gonna get there for sure....this is our calling. One thing Steven Pressfield says that I love is start work....and your muse will come. I was so inspired that I wrote a poem about it.

 

The Muse's Rescue

Where are you Goddess?
Why does my pen hover like a frightened soldier
While you withhold your gifts
The breath of love that brings forth creation

Here I feel an answer forming!
For at least you will not keep such mysteries hidden
And leave me in darkness
Left behind whilst others find glory

I must show willingness to sacrifice,
To let my pen land amidst the cannons and smoke
So you know I’m worthy of your blessings
A warrior of light, ready to die for your cause

So I fight, at first naked, shivering under the moon
But with faith that the sound of your hooves will ring out,
With you riding over the horizon, the sun at your back
As the enemy's forces prepare to run me down

[Wisebaxter]

@Serotoninluv @Zigzag Idiot@TheAvatarStateI Microdosed 20ug this morning and man....I feel incredible. With this dosage I get all of the intense love, creativity and insights without the mind-bendy stuff that's awesome of course but quite disruptive to your day. At one point I felt worried my heart was about to explode lol. I felt so good I dropped another 30ug about 30mins ago. Ok I'll be up all night, but screw it I'm on a role now. Gonna try and go a bit deeper into being and have a less conceptual experience than usual. I'm figuring that as the dosage is milder I'll be able to relax into the practices more. 

Ok, screw it, I've now dropped another 75ug lol. I was having such fun, listening to Shpongle, watching visuals and feeling loved up, that I thought 'why not turn this into a proper trip. So my microdosing turned into macrodosing lol. Oh well. This shit's just too moorish....

@TheAvatarStateDude! Shpongle! Oh my God I'm finally getting it

It was annoying me that I had 75ug of acid left so I took that as well. So I'm on about 250ug at the moment, waiting for some of it to hit though. Hoping I can go a bit deeper into being this time around as my last trip was just a crazy word salad. 

Edited March 17, 2019 by Wisebaxter

[Wisebaxter]

 

[TheAvatarState]

4 hours ago, Wisebaxter said:

 

Tug S P E E D M A N! I love that movie lol. The "commercials" at the beginning like Satan's Alley. HAHA.

And fuck yeah, Shpongle is the best. Which songs did you listen to?

[KyleR]

?yes Baxter you mad man, from micro dosing to 250ug, how was it? 

Will check Leo’s book list out??

I’m sure you would’ve learnt a lot from all the YouTube stuff tho, but so important to practice aswell init, you in a good rhythm now? Are you self taught then? I think it’s pretty impressive my mate is self taught but keep stressing to him the importance of mentors, they can share insights that you might not even be aware of not knowing. 

Yea exactly mate! Gotta be diligent and keep taking steps forward. The war of art is a great book btw, love how you can just skip to any page and get fired up to work. I learnt a cool approach from a poker mindset book which illustrates effective learning, I’ll do my best to explain but bit hazy so forgive me?

He outlines the 4 natural stages of any learning process ‘The adult learning model’ (ALM):

1. Unconscious incompetence - you’re not even aware of what you don’t know, you don’t know what skills you lack. I’ll try use music production as an example - all those components you listed I wasn’t even aware of half of them so I was blind to what’s necessary 

2. Conscious incompetence - you’re now aware of what you don’t know, doesn’t mean you’re skilled yet, but now you have the knowledge of what skills are needed to learn.. now I’ve been made aware of the components I can start to take practical steps towards learning them 

3. Conscious competence - here you’ve done some work and repetition to become somewhat skilled, however you still need to think about what you’ve learned or else you fall back to incompetence... Now I have an understanding and start making tracks sound decent, playing about with different sounds etc but have to be thinking about what goes where. I guess a better example would’ve been with the decks aswell as I suppose they’re used to perform more

4. Unconscious competence - you’ve learnt it so well it becomes totally automatic and requires no thinking... I can put a track together with ease, I know how it should be structured and what goes where without having to think. Or I can play a set on the decks in full flow without much thought 

My examples poor as I’m between level 1 and 2 atm with music but I think you get the jist, think of the stages of driving for example when you was a kid barely knew what a car was all the way to passing your test where you can now do it whilst checking Instagram and toking a bong, although not advised?

So thinking what you know now compared to when you first started and what parts have become automatic and what mistakes you’re still making, you’ll be able to categorise which level you’re at. Also when you’re tired or having a bad day you won’t perform or create as effective and just run off what is at unconscious competence. It’s important to think about with the approach to improving. You can only focus on one thing at a time so knowing what part of the ALM you’re in is critical, if you no longer need to think to be good, it frees up space to learn new concepts or focus on improving other weaknesses. If you catch yourself falling back into old habits at any point, it’s clear there’s still work to be done regardless of how you rated yourself. 

If you’re just learning new concept after new concept for example, you might get to the level of conscious competence and on a good day absolutely smash it but then another day when your brain isn’t functioning as good, a lot of that will fall back to incompetence and could make you feel like a total noob again making mistakes everywhere, so it’s important to be aware and make sure you’re actively working on weaknesses while strengthening other skills towards unconscious competence and introducing new ideas.

In the book he described it as ‘the inch worm’ aka a bell curve? a good way to think about this is how good are you on a good day and how bad are you on a bad day? With the idea being the gap in between shouldn’t be too big. The right side represents all your best decision making, which includes what is learnt to the level of conscious competence as on a good day you can recall and use all this information, while the left side represents all your poor decisions and mistakes you know you shouldn’t be making but still do.

The inchworm moves in the shape of a bell curve and when the front end moves forward so does the back end. I.e when you learn something new, the front end of your ability just took a step forward which also means the range between your best and worst has just widened, so the best way to move forward again is now focusing on your back end and improve one of your biggest weaknesses. When you’ve eliminated one of the worst parts of your ‘game’ it makes it easier to take another step forward from the front.

So improvement is happening from both sides and gives you the potential to perform better on a good day and not as bad on a bad day. Hope I’m making sense?it’s easy to ignore weaknesses and just stay hungry to keep learning new things but if you take all this into consideration the greatest improvement happens when you give all your weaknesses the attention they need in order to excel and create more room for the new shit. 

I’m still guilty of ignoring weaknesses but I’ll get there??

Thanks for the vid mate will get on it??

That poem is mint mate! First time I heard about muses was from that book??you write poetry often?

Edited March 17, 2019 by KyleR

[Wisebaxter]

On 17/03/2019 at 11:20 AM, TheAvatarState said:

Tug S P E E D M A N! I love that movie lol. The "commercials" at the beginning like Satan's Alley. HAHA.

And fuck yeah, Shpongle is the best. Which songs did you listen to?

@KyleR @TheAvatarStateHaha I've been a bad bad boy father....playing with the prayer beads. 

As for Shpongle, man I listened to it all, but I think my favourite so far is Museum of consciousness. I haven't delved into it all quite enough to make my mind up though. It's simply amazing isn't it? There's nothing else like it. I dabble in music production too so I know how difficult it is to make something that intricate. The day after my trip I was still having visuals so I sat in Starbucks staring at the clouds and listening to it. At one point I saw a classical painting in the clouds, like a woman's face! I then went to the library and sat like a statue watching a bookcase dance to this one:

The bookcase was doing kind of a bellydance, swaying from left to right. I then started swaying with it  Sometimes my consciousness would focus on the title of a book before everything became unified again and meaning dissolved. So it was kind of like a dance between meaning and just pure being. finally my attention fixed itself on a particular book, just randomly, called 'Hope to Die' by Alex Cross. It was saying to me 'Alex (my name) you should hope to die. This, to me was a message from the universe egging me on towards ego death, which still scares me. Even the summary on the back of the book was clearly outlining my life and the hero's journey I'm on. This always happen to be in the library, even when I'm not on acid. Every time I go there I receive a new message. it seems to be a phenomenon similar to tarot, where the mind creates meaning, but it feels like you're being guided. I've had some uncanny stuff happen.

@KyleR That was a great post bro, many thanks for that. Those 4 stages of consciousness are flipping awesome. That's got me quite fired up actually. I'm gonna really digest the post and then I'll send you another post when I get the time as there's a lot I want to talk about there, plus answer your questions etc. Having fun conversing with you bro, you sound super cool

Edited March 18, 2019 by Wisebaxter

[TheAvatarState]

59 minutes ago, Wisebaxter said:

As for Shpongle, man I listened to it all, but I think my favourite so far is Museum of consciousness. I haven't delved into it all quite enough to make my mind up though. It's simply amazing isn't it?

Oh yeah, I agree, Museum of Consciousness is a masterpiece. You have great taste ?

Believe it or not, that's an uncommon opinion among Shpongle fans... 

Aquatic Garden is probably my favorite track.

That's a crazy story about the book store man, I had a similar experience where my eyes came across "Path of Liberation" and I bought it right there are read it that summer (this was a couple years ago). At the time I knew practically nothing about Buddhism or spirituality, but I just had this intuitive feeling I had to read that book. ?

[Wisebaxter]

31 minutes ago, TheAvatarState said:

Oh yeah, I agree, Museum of Consciousness is a masterpiece. You have great taste ?

Believe it or not, that's an uncommon opinion among Shpongle fans... 

Aquatic Garden is probably my favorite track.

That's a crazy story about the book store man, I had a similar experience where my eyes came across "Path of Liberation" and I bought it right there are read it that summer (this was a couple years ago). At the time I knew practically nothing about Buddhism or spirituality, but I just had this intuitive feeling I had to read that book. ?

What do most people say is the best album?

Wow, what was it that made the book stand out to you? or was it just where your eyes happened to land? Did you just have like an intuitive feeling in your heart when you saw it? 

[KyleR]

@Wisebaxter No worries mate, think it’s a solid approach to learning. Would love to hear some of your stuff as you progress  enjoying chatting with you aswell pal! 

[Wisebaxter]

On 17/03/2019 at 10:15 PM, KyleR said:

you in a good rhythm now? Are you self taught then?

My rhythm has fallen away again unfortunately. I was doing so well but I've not been able to force myself to do it recently. I just enjoy doing personal development stuff so much, whether it's reading to the practices, it fires me up so much. But I'm working on a daily routine for production now and I'm promising myself that as a certain time every day I'll do it without fail. At the moment I just have no structure to it, which means I can keep putting it off and putting it off. Yeah completely self taught. Wish I'd studied it as university instead of the degree I did, but oh well, that wasn't God's plan. 

Do you have a set time for doing your music production? How do you motivate yourself to do it? Or are you just always up for doing it? 

So the four stages you mentioned...you're saying we kind of move between them, based on the state we're in etc? Our emotional state must also make a difference. When I'm feeling negative about my level of progress I'm hovering at stage 2, but when things start to pick up for me or I nail a few things, I move up to level 3. Could it be that sometimes we can be spread across all of the stages, as we'll be strong in some areas and not in others? Like, some stuff I can do unconsciously now, but other stuff I can't figure out for the life of me. 

I'm gonna use these stages from now on to assess my progress. Where did you get them from? 

On 17/03/2019 at 10:15 PM, KyleR said:

The inchworm moves in the shape of a bell curve and when the front end moves forward so does the back end. I.e when you learn something new, the front end of your ability just took a step forward which also means the range between your best and worst has just widened, so the best way to move forward again is now focusing on your back end and improve one of your biggest weaknesses.

So basically, it's important to keep working on the stuff you know you suck at. The key is to get to a stage where some things are happening unconsciously so you can then focus on the things that aren't...that's fantastic dude. I love the post you wrote. Thanks for taking the time and effort to explain all of that to me. I'm going to refer back to that post again and again because there's a lot of information there that will take me a while to soak in and integrate. 

Hey maybe we could collaborate on a track sometime! I see you're UK based as am I. Always good to find a contact that lives relatively near by. I've had this wish for ages to find a group of people that are into both spirituality and music production. Imagine dropping some acid and working on a track lol. That would be a hoot and a half. 

On 17/03/2019 at 10:15 PM, KyleR said:

?yes Baxter you mad man, from micro dosing to 250ug, how was it? 

Hehe amazing man, thanks. I had this awesome chat with my buddy @ZZZZ who I met on here. he done a fair bit of acid and was helping me make sense of some of the insights I'd had around God being playful and enjoying wearing masks. I realised that my main persona 'Alex' is just a mask I wear.  I may ask him if I can post out conversation on here. At one point I even had a mini non-dual experience where I just saw everything as shape and colour, with no meaning attached to anything. It was dope as hell. 

 

[KyleR]

My mate said when he felt forced, his creativity lacked and burnt out quicker, but with no routine his workload dwindled, I guess it’s about finding the right balance and remaining excited to go at it! 

I’ve actually not started yet, but the interest has always been there from very early on. I just play poker atm, but learning other things. Poker is a gruelling journey which requires a lot of work like anything, but aiming to branch out soon. 

Yea tbh I’ve not religiously followed it but was mentored for 2 years by guys following this structure and it makes things clearer when I work at fixing something alone now. I’ll notice in game too that I’ll play really well early on, but as my session fizzles out I’m making mistakes without much realisation until after, which forces me to compare my play between the two stages and work towards fixing my biggest leaks. Reminds me though, I’ve not actually worked on new concepts for a few month! 

Emotion plays a big part too, the following chapter in the book I referred to is actually titled ‘emotion’ and says the brain is organised in a hierarchy: the first level being heart rate, breathing etc and is also where unconscious competence is; the second is the emotional system and the third the mental level, responsible for thinking, planning, awareness, emotional control etc. “When the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions” - so high emotion leads to poor decision making. This is when you can see which skills are in unconscious competence because you can’t think straight to access the other knowledge. 

Imo a good idea is to record what’s going right when you’re flowing and on form, but also record what’s gone right and wrong compared to when you’re performing poorly. Why weren’t you at your best? Is it possible some emotion shut you off? How can you prevent that next time? What can you still do well in that state? This should give you a clearer picture of what skills land where and should make it easier to formulate a plan around them. 

Yea I think when you first learn something you’ll be stuck around level 2 for a while and can feel great when you first learn, but when you’ve had a long day it can easily be forgotten, same for level 3 if you’re really depleted or in a fog. Learning too much will leave your curve flat, on a good day you’ll be fantastic but a bad day you simply have too much information to recall and I imagine it’ll be overwhelming and can be disheartening if you’ve not trained much to level 4. I think focusing on certain areas at a time with good structure, not worrying about what you don’t know yet until you’re ready, but focus on improving your biggest weaknesses and strengthening your strengths to level 4. 

Thinking about my own progress, it’s possible to learn too many things to level 3 because at level 3 we’re competent now and can maintain this for quite some time during practice, but really drilling it in requires more effort before introducing more stuff to level 1/2. I’m clearly no expert but have experience consciously moving through the stages and it’ll be very similar I reckon. 

I suggest identifying two areas from 2-3 and working on them individually. When 3 becomes 4 and 2 becomes 3, you could now introduce another level 1 to 2 and repeat the process. This seems logical but not sure it’s that straight forward and I’m sure level 4 will always need some focus too. It’ll also mean knowing what is already level 4 and what quite isn’t yet, along with something you’ve recently learnt but not practiced much. Forget about learning something new until you’ve worked on this a bit imo. Let me know how it goes if you do! Getting me pumped to focus more in depth aswell! 

Mate that would be sick! I will start learning soon, my mate sent me the software to download etc but not begun yet. I can put you in contact with him in the meantime tho if you wish and hopefully get something sorted in the future. We dropped acid together not long ago and said exactly the same, how sick it’d be bouncing about a studio on acid creating naughty vibes and record labels??❤️

Trip sounded sick mate! Would be awesome to hear your mates insights, I thought I was sat with the gods for a while being prepared for a new life?

Edited March 23, 2019 by KyleR

[KyleR]

 

Big tune mate! Don’t forget this next time your trip?think it’s minimal tech or micro house, either way, beautiful!