This started a discussion.
I disagree…
Yay! Another blog is
born!
First a side discussion, relevant to this…
Meditation and psychedelics have much in common…
And many differences…
More similarities if we are using psychedelics to heal, or
to evolve as humans.
Less, if we are using psychedelics recreationally…
Yet, we can learn from these medicines, in either case.
The great teachers of meditation will tell you there is no
goal.
Yet, most of us who meditate, want to be something other
than we were when we started…
That is laudable…
We all want to be happier, more content, have less
suffering…
That may or may not happen with practicing meditation, or
exploring psychedelics…
What we may learn, eventually, is that in the end you have
to let go of being anything other than who you are…
That is where the healing and human evolution begins…
In meditation, we tend have more of a choice, usually we can
stop at any time.
Yet, there are stories of a severe crisis that can arise during
the practice of meditation…
Excessive mediation, in the unprepared, unguided, or those
with personality disorders, can lead to very frightening experiences…
Similar to a “bad trip.”
With psychedelics, particularly at high doses, you have much
less choice…
Most often, you are going for the ride, whether you want to
or not…
On the other hand, those of us who have studied meditation
and psychedelic therapies, may say that there are no “bad trips,” only
experiences from which to learn…
We can argue over the myriad forms of crisis…
I will argue that ultimately, it comes down to the fear of
death…
We often speak about ego dissolution…
When the ego is starting to fall apart, we feel as though we
are dying…
We are afraid of real body death…
In general, nobody dies from meditation or psychedelics,
very safe practices, in most cases.
We will leave aside discussions of latent schizophrenia,
personality disorders, and rare instances of occult heart disease…
This feeling of dying is real…
The ego is a very strong construct…
It does not tolerate threats to its integrity…
What has been arising for me in meditation, is that ego “dissolution,”
may not be the best description for what happens…
This discussion gets difficult, as experiences in meditation,
and during psychedelic use, are ineffable…
What is true for me, may not be true for you…
I have written before that what we might learn is that the
ego can be taken off…
Similar to a comfortable overcoat, often useful to have on,
but something you don’t always need to wear…
That brings me back to the title of this blog.
What came up for me in meditation is that the ego does not
dissolve…
A better description for me is that we can “see through” the
ego…
We observe how the mind constructs the ego, we observe how
the ego is constantly shifting…
This ego construct is not a solid or fixed reality…
This observation may be a revelation…
We are less likely to be drowning in our unconscious
projections and perceived limitations…
We are better able to observe how and where our thoughts and
behaviors arise…
We are more free…
I believe this how meditation and psychedelic therapy work.
This is how we become happier, more content, with less
suffering…
We are better able to feel connected to others…
Better able to see the deep intrinsic beauty of
existence…
Often we see it is our own poor little ego selves, wanting
things to be other than what they are…
That is suffering…
That is where we have opportunity to let go…
But, who is doing the observing?
That is the origin of the statement referring that there is
always a witness…
I spent time in meditation asking why that did not make
sense to me…
My personal experience has been that after the ego is seen
through, then the next tin solder to fall is the witness…
The witness also can be seen through…
And the witness falls away...
And the witness falls away...
That is the non-place of empty-fullness, the total light and
total dark, the non-place of ineffable peace…
A paradox, where even any concept of paradox, disappears…
What arises is that there was no-thing, really, present, ever…
No concepts…
Subject without an object…
And even those words... are too specific…
Namaste
