lulay

Hey Uncle Aunts (Nottingham hey? was reading about some of the dire violence going on there of late amongst the disenfranchized youth)

What you say raises some interesting points i wish to xplore.........when you say that meditation can be just as good as hallucinogenic inspiration, i personally cannot see it. for a start there is no dancin'1 unless of course you mean moving meditation? you have to define for us what you mean by 'meditation', it's form and so on. i am of the opinion it was a replacement for the WILDER aspects of hallucinogenic experience which could not be entertained by the authorities of the very strickt and mechanical monastary institutional system

Secondly you state that we should rather educate ourselves ABOUT Nature, about sustainablity. YES SIR! but i add, BOTH. That AND ecstatic orgia. Both are compliimentary and need to be the Set&Setting for the experience.

This insight is vital for what i am talking about. What i have round our research-wise is some how earlier cults that DId use various sacraments (hallucinogenic) for their ritual, also devised Nature/body-denigrating dogmas also. For example, Orphism, the reformers of the originary Dionysian earth religion--who had as their motto 'soma sema', which menat 'the body a tomb'..ie., the believed their spirit was 'trapped' in matter....

So, when there is a symbiotic relationship with hallucinogens the respect for Nature MUSt be paramount.....though i must admit, when i took LSD, i had lost my love of Nature, yet it spontaneously reopened me to it

Shven

True. I was playing DA a little there

I beg to differ. I know people who have encountered some seriously scary stuff while in a meditative trance. Though I haven't myself.

Uncle Ants

Hmm. Most of the dire violence in Nottingham involves drunken youths beating each other up on a Saturday night or drug dealers shooting other drug dealers.

I don't know from personal experience that meditative and drug induced states are the same - well actually common sense says they aren't but sometimes they may have some equivalence. My experiences of hallucinogenics are limited and my experience (not entirely successful) of meditation was definitely of the sitting still variety That said it is something I have discussed with people who have tried both to a different level than myself. Some have said that they can induce similar altered states and I've no reason to disbelieve them. I'm guessing but could well imagine that ecstatic dancing (amybe drumming too) could induce some kind of hypnotic altered state too.

Not sure what you are asking here. If you are saying that you believe hallucinogens to be necessary to understand our proper relationship with Nature, I think I'd have to disagree.

lulay

Hi Unlce ants

ok, meditation. you say yu haven't experienced what you claim--ie., m. being similarish to Tripping, but have heard others say so. i would distrust that......not being patronizing just honest. you cannot know how the TRIP. as you tourself confess, you hallucinognic experiences haven't been 'allthat'? so, this is very personal for the person. all we can know is what WE feel

you are right. drumming and dancing are also ancient ways from ecstatic expression. not really called 'meditation' though. And even the shamanic scholar, Mircea Eliade, retracted his nearly life long insistence of the pre-dominance, and orginality of non-hallucinogenic "techniques of over hallucinogenic ritual, claiming the latter a "decadent" development--towars the end of his life, after surveying all the evidence which contradicted his position

Wht i dont understand is why, when we have a inspirational food that inspires our emotional freedom, do we insist on underestimating it, ESPECIALLY with the world as it is

I know Terrence McKenna was as passionate as i am about this, and i actually met him once in manchester at a book signing,,,shook his hand ('True Hallucinations)...and he advocated 'heroic doses' and being quiet and listening to 'entities'. i am not exactly into that (but i'll leave that for now. i've just remembered the last bit of what you asked me...heh)

you don't understand where i say that we need BOTH educational understanding of Nature, ANd exztatic abandon, right? let's get into that a bit.....

you could see two complimentary approaches to Nature, rational--ie., study of say Ecoliteracy (Fritjof Capra), and NON-rational, the immersion of our bodymind in ecstatic abandon. THAt is what i mean

of course, it is good to study about Nature and not do that, but...to ACTUALLy release your/me rigidity..........this is the SOURCe of healing. i am not saying this for fun. it is writ in mythology also that this release is the source of healing. resolving rigid mindsets, howEVER seemingly clever, intelligent....is ecstasy

lulay

yes (and please see message above Uncle ants)....it pisses me off also when i reread what i've written and i see typos etc. i am passionate about what i write and want it to be at least a little eligible, but its the soddin system i suse. it cuts me offline after a short period...varies from 20-30 mins. many a time i have lost all my efforts, and it leaves you mad. when i type i dont usually chek the clok so i lose track, thus i CAN rush. soorry about this inconvenience. at least its not in chinese..hah

Uncle Ants

Hmm. Well it is very personal of course you can't be on someone elses trip, so you can't know what they experience, only what they tell you. So its clearly one of those things which doesn't have a right answer. I actually said that, as I understood it they could be similar - my own limited experience would suggest that they can also be different. Shven points out that he has heard of scary experiences from people in a meditative state as well which suggests that they can be similar. (an aside: something one does wonder of course is whether or not the use of hallucinogens by people who are experienced in the discipline of meditation has the potential to be a more constructive or controlled experience than any old Joe taking some acid)

Not sure that people necessarily underestimate it but fear it. Given that there are actually very real dangers involved (especially if taken in heroic quantities), both physically and mentally, that fear is not entirely unfounded.

Hmm. Now my penchant for spending a day on an empty cornish beach - thinking nothing and doing nothing except getting a bit stoned, watching the tide go out and come back in (and maybe having a nice pasty for lunch) - just, you know, being there, is in its way extremely enlightening (for me) and does make me feel at one with the Great It ( )- but its not exactly a rational approach. It hardly counts as ecstatic abandon though. Where does stoned beach sitting fit in?

lulay

Good Day uncle ants

you wonder whether those "disciplned" in meditation my be able to utilize this skill in hallucinogenicically inspired domains, unlike "any old Joe taking some acid"

My reponse is that meditative discipline and ecstatic orgia are two different ways........The whole point for me of abandon, is what it means. NOt 'deliberately' having an agenda of control. abandon is not deliberate control

NOW, this is not to say that elemnts of 'yoga' might not SPONTANEOUSLY happen. for example, i have been known to be dancing --abandoningly--and then suddenly assume hatha yogic postures. just doin it. not cause i am choosing to control. i am just going with these moves. moves which pre-figure all the words about them. they are means for the organism to instinctively stretch, and so on. but to meticulously try and direct a trip along disciplined lines is for me wasting the potential for loosening out of all that. do you know what i mean?

you said: "not sure that people necessarily underestimate [hallucinogenic experience] but fear it. Given that thereare actually very real dangers (especially if taken in heroic quantities) both physically, and mentally, that fear is not unfounded."

good good point, and it gives me chance to bring in McKenna's theories here too

I am not a fan of so-called 'heroism' anyhow. it is a macho thang. It is like 'look how much I can take--to the other boys your trying to impress.
i'm not suggesting though Terrence was of that attitude. but his whole means of apporach i cant relate to. his way was to take massive amounts of psilocybin mushrooms, and with no music, in absolute quiet, get in contact with 'entities'. so he was really emphasizing INTERIORIZATION

i on the other hand am encouraging PARTICIPATION IN NATURE. observing it, feeling it, with fingers toes, ears. Really becoming intikmate with Nature. of course interiorization will come into this. inner and outter are continuum. but not JUSt interiorization, and getting 'carried' away by the 'fairies' type of thing

also. this is an important note i think. it is not the AMOUNT you take. it is what YOU BRING to the experience. many people are of the 'entertain me' attitude. like "awwww, man, where's the visuals?!"....but tis YOU who are a major part of the whole experience. the hallucinogen acting as inspirer

(LOVE this bit Ants):

"Hmmmm. Now my penchant for spending a day on an empty Cornish beach--thinking nothing and doing nothing except getting a bit stoned, watching the tide go out and come back--just you know, being there, in its way extremely enlightening for me, but it's not exactly a rational approach. It hardly counts as ecstatic abandon though. where does stoned beach sitting fit in?"

haha....Beautitiful. i also LOVe the coast. have you ever, ants, been listening closely to the tide going in and out, and had a really deep experience where time goes all weird, as does perception?....i have. the tide sense of time is not mechanical but organic. and organic time's where its at!

not it Is ecstatic abandon but in a different flava, is all

i am looking at it like this:

We are a CONTINUUM of potential actual experience---dynamic. but most of us get rigid, and cling to a familiar boundary, hallucinogens encourage flexibility of this boundary. and the INtegration form those intense abandoned flexible boundary-less experiences creates an opening. for one it insights one into the aliveness of matter....hence sitting on a beach, even when 'straight' is never the same again.
this doesn't mean to say you then claim that one part of the continuum is IT. what i'm encouraging is allowing all potentials freedom. does what i have said make sense?

0

I have never taken an hallucinogenic drug. However, I am a student of Hatha and Triki Yoga. I practice the art of Dynamic Stillness to bring peace and harmony to body, mind and spirit. Having said that, I will continue with what I believe to be my two cents.

There is no short cut to enlightenment. There are loopholes. Boons that get you along on the path, but the journey is ever long, ever trying. There is no easy way to get yourself in tune with everything around you. While you are taking the short cut, something else in your life will get taken away from. Such is the law of cause and effect. Thus, I am of the school of hard knocks and hard work. The easy path is not my path because at the end of that path there is no joy in a job well done.

Lulay, you speak of feeling nature. Of having experiences that put you in tune with nature. I second the opinion that these states can be reached without the aid of such drugs. I have reached them myself. I have seen many things during my meditative stances. The dance of life, the flow of movement can sometimes best be seen if one stands still and simply breathes rather than moving along with it.

From that perspective one can see much because the body and mind themselves move not at all. I find stillness within myself, concentrating on my breathing until my mind empties and the breath becomes as it is meant to be: a long refreshing drink from the oxygen of earth, held within to feed the body life-sustaining energy and then released with the toxins we hold within our cells along with it.

What good is feeling nature if one cannot attain perspective to act along with nature as well? If we are indeed part of nature, then this feeling should be able to manifest itself without outside aide. It should be a feeling that is with us all the time, a conscious lifeline back to the sustaining body of our Earth. There is no control with hallucinogenic drugs. Years later, if drug use was heavy, the person is burned out; wasted looking; capable of digressing into such a state simply by seeing a vivid color that reminded them of an experience.

With yoga and meditation, the goal is to attain a unity with oneself and the nature/reality surrounding you at all times. These exist in mutual harmony. The awareness of all that is around you never fades. It is with you upon waking, with you as you slumber, with you as you go about your day. It is this peaceful tranquility that allows body and mind to fall into mutual balance. Life becomes a song to be sung rather than a trap we seek to escape.
I practice yoga throughout my day. I stretch while I wash dishes. I stretch when playing with my son. I take joy in physical activity that will challenge my body as I occupy my mind with focusing on a job well done.

What is lacking in other approaches is discipline. Enlightenment is work. Everything in this life requires work and effort. If neither of these are expended, often times we cease to acknowledge the gift of knowledge that has been given to us. We end up taking it for granted. Such is human nature.
If there is no discipline, there can be no practical solution to the problems facing us today. Where there is apathy, there is also a desire to take the easy route or take no route at all. In honing yourself, you define your entire world with grace and light. By showing the path of determination and gratitude, you humble those that come in contact with you. When seeking balance in oneself, we are able to see the path before us as clear as the water flowing from mountain to vast ocean: a path free and clear of obstacles that undisciplined minds create for themselves.

This is the reason for the backlash in every movement that has graced humanity. What starts out as a brilliant solution, a wonderful way of viewing reality, ultimately becomes mired in the path of least resistance. People are so busy trying to find an easy way to go about ending problems that they rely on others to solve them or make loopholes in their own philosophies to enable them to enjoy rewards they believe are promised to those who simply get to the finish line, no matter if they cheated to get there.

Thus the pendulum swings in the other direction, going to another extreme in thinking rather than finding the balance of the center. Apply this to any concept from feminism to religion to politics. Those on the end of the spectrum are two sides of the same coin. Only those in the center attain perspective.

To help nature, to experience nature, Lulay, I believe that we must first experience and nurture ourselves. It is only when we complete that task that we can seek to help others. Help yourself to be a better person; and you will help the world and nature as well.

My two cents.
Tangie

lulay

Hey Tangiellis

"There is no short cut to [en-light-en-ment]" you say

well, i am not headin there. why? because i've learned that there is no GOAL to get TO. that having the abstract-concept 'en-light-en-ment' to get to traps you in the time-it-might-take. are you with me. it is a trick--fostered by the Gurus and whatnot, who hold out this carrot--ie., if you do abc, then THAt will get you 'enlightenment'. what that does is keeps their monies coming in, and keeps you doing what they claims will get you 'there'. no, love...i am me. take it of leave it. me= a dynamic continuum of emotions, moods. you know. bein real

"this flow of movement can sometimes best be seen if one stands still and simply breathes rather than moving along with it"

i am a natural dancer. i LOVE flowing along with it. its flow and my flow flow

"If we are indeed part of nature, then this feeling shuld be able to manifest itself without outside aide. It should be a feeling that is with us all the time"

We ARe Nature. and Nature eats. it eats itSELF. through death life through life death. try and not eat and manifest. 'all' that ahllucinogens are is food, and symbiotic food which opens the bodymind up for deeper communion with Nature. symbiotic meaning that it is both beneficial for us, ANd NAture, when we really ecstacize with Nature and both of us become refreshed....born again. this is the meaning of the "Sacrifice of the Son" in its essence. the son mythologically refers to the Goddess's (Mama Earth's) Son/Lover who Is NAture. and when we eat him, we both die and are resurrected.

"There is no control with hallucinogenic drugs"

the FEEAr of their being no 'control' is the rigid mindset which doesn't ant to let loose and feel spontaneous abandon. really there is control, but it is a very deep sense of controller IS the controlled. spontaneity. it doesn't mean you loose the means to walk, or dance. all of which need control. but not the control of a controller tying to control. don't know if you dig me here?

"years later the, if drug use was heavy, the person is burned out, wasted looking"

this can apply to yoga. don't know if you've looked into its history. but it is very commensurate with asceticism, which means neglect of the bodies needs. some yogis have been TERRIBLY wasted, and have had to be looked after by others!

"What is lacking in other approaches is discipline. enlightenment is work. Everything in life requires work and effort. If neither of these are expended, often times we ceases to acknowledge the gift of knowledge that has been given to us. We end up taking it for granted. Such uis human nature"

....err, yes, as ideologized by the dogma of the Protestant work ethic

i am afriad thats what that sounds like. I assure you that hallcucongenic experience is not work at all. it is the deepest fun. but of course there may be terror too

0

I am selftaught. I follow no guru and I give my money to no religious figure. Goals are not as important to me as the journey I undertake to get there. But my goal in this case is to be the best person I can, to refine myself in order to help others. That is a neverending process just as learning is. You can never know it all. There's too much information out there to know everything, but it sure is fun to give it a try. Thus enlightenment has no finite goal because knowledge is not finite.
As am I. Everything I stated previous is MY PERSONAL OPINION. Not to be confused with "You are wrong and this is the right way." There is no right way for everyone. What works for me doesn't work for you. So this is why I posted why I feel your way would not work for me.
With meditation there is limited control. I would be bullshitting you if I said that some of my experiences in those states had not scared me. Because I have had many traumatic experiences in my life, total abandon is not recommended. I have had some very real, very scary hallucinations without any drugs of any kind called "flashbacks." These can take over a person and render them completely immobile. For a person such as myself, who has been diagnosed with mental disorders like Panic & Anxiety Disorder, drugs of the type that you discribe may possibly have the side effect of driving me insane. No thank you. I know that such drugs work for others, but I am in no hurry to try them myself.
And those who have practiced yoga and end up this way often were not practicing it correctly. The kundalini energy they were channeling often gets stuck in certain regions of the body; the mind and body are not cleansed and purified if a proper diet has not been sustained. As I stated in another thread, we are what we meditate on. Meditation on negative images and subjects like death, destruction and chaos will beget exactly that.
Some yogis can have others looking after them; but such yogis are incapable of functioning in reality. I am not seeking this type of life.
I have seen acid droppers years later, I have worked with a few of them. Sometimes they are simply not at home; for several minutes I have seen a couple of them space out, then return with no knowledge that they have tripped. Others have left one job after another because they are not able to function properly in society. Take a long look at Keith Richards. Some of the people I know act like this; this is not exactly a vision that makes drug use look good to me.
Prostestant work ethic? I have a work ethic period. If I didn't, I would have perished a long time ago. It's the way I survive. Doesn't make me a religous nut, just makes me a person with a viewpoint different from yours.
And I'm about as far removed from a Protestant as you can get in my beliefs and my attitude towards life.
I assure you also that meditation and yoga are fun for me. There has been terror because I had to face the reality of myself and the problems that I have, but I have gotten beyond those ordeals. I am happy, healthier, more eager to learn, listen and love. I feel at ease in my own skin, which is something I've never really felt before.
I'll have to take your experience at your word, as you will just have to take mine. Different strokes for different folks.

Best Wishes,
Tangie