Christianity and LSD

i've found very little incongruent between what i think are "christian" beliefs and what are generally held beliefs that psychonauts develop in the course of exploring LSD and other psychedelics.
of course there is room enough for psychedelic exploration and Christianity. what you may find tho is there is also room for psychedelics and vast amounts of dogma as well. so in the process of seperating out the dogma of Christianity while tripping, try not to replace it with equally whack stoner dogma.

hippy dogma wont improve your life any more than the Christian religious kind does.

 

Do what you want as long as you are happy with it and nothing can stop you

 

add in "as long as you don't trample on others freedoms" and i would agree whole-heartedly.

:love:

 

Mat.22:36-40 “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”
Jesus said unto him, “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

:love:

—Don't let the infinite myriad of confusing Corporate Religiosity Cult: rules, regulations, puritan moralities, traditions, standards, pietism, observances, prohibitions, doctrines, theologies, superstitions, mythologies, ceremonies, rites, rituals, no's & dont's contrived by themselves fool you about what Jesus actually stood for & said. (After all, they're the ones who killed & would still kill Him so they could keep their jobs & high lifestyles, maintain their stranglehold of power over people & dupe them with all their pseudo crap in order to keep extorting their money with fake promises of salvation through continued church attendance!)

If
GOD IS LOVE
then
LOVE IS GOD

 

The Lord's gonna work it out if we ask Him. I just figure that's been the answer to most of my problems. I rarely get some profound answer. I'm not that holy. For one thing, I cuss all the time. When people act like it's something terrible I always wince since God can read your mind anyway, so if you are think somebody is a motherfucker & you call him a poop-head, you don't get to release that anger, plus God knows you were thinking motherfucker all along. (Plus you sound like Ned Flanders from the Simpsons). I guess maybe though I seldom get the big answer, I get the patience to endure because I am shitty at being patient. And I don't go to church. Can't stand it, reminds me of a funeral. And being sort of a mind reader, I can just imagine what those people are thinking. My Dad always said they left the parking lot so quickly because the roast was in the oven. But those quiet morning moments, now that I'm not busy boffing some girl are great for clarity. It clears your mind to direct your thoughts upward & not grab the newspaper or fill your head with TV which is usually total downer shit anyway. Or I gain another, more positive perspective on the problem. And sometimes later when I'm working on the project, I do get the hints & signals or reminders to do certain things. I think that impresses me more than some flashy miracle, that I avoided trouble I otherwise would have gotten into had I forgotten to do something. I'm basically useless. But people think I'm so talented. I guess I don't take the credit since I know I am hopeless at doing normal stuff even & that I can pretty much assuredly make the day unravel by not acknowledging the Creator & that I'm down here trying to do it all on my own. I mean, that must be why stuff is so hard. I used to say we run into these brick walls since it's a round world with square corners. There's a certain resistance, people get in the way, traffic gets in the way. That's why I pray; but it's like thinking on my feet prayer. I'm not that good at closing my eyes & doing it unless my eyes are already closed. Pathetic, right? That's why things aren't easy, to make us desperate. I really don't know how people get along without it. I guess they just blow it off when stuff goes wrong. I'm always thinking it could have gone right if I'd prayed. Oh, the best miracles I get —and this is proof, is when I lose things & I pray & bingo. Or in the dark. That was my favorite thing at one time when I couldn't turn on any lights. I tried it on my sister the other day. She like lost some letter. And I mean she is totally disorganized & it could have taken hours. I like prayed out loud, which is also rare for me. And it's like —she finds it right then. Those are easy miracle because of the math involved. More complex problems take more time. Also if other people are involved, then their will is in motion so that equation is much longer. Sometimes I dreamt of like Heaven & it was just like this sort of but things worked out. Like I'd drop a glass & it would break but then come back together. It's hard to explain but I think that's going to be more like it. I'm sure it's gonna be beautiful, but I mean nature is already beautiful. But the problems won't be there. Or we might be able to go back in time & fix them. Wouldn't that be cool? Like major stuff. Maybe even revisit our former lives & fix shit. Or see why something deserved to go 'wrong'. It's like the cartoon of the guy cussing on the mountain road cuz he has to fix a flat & then you see this big boulder hitting the road ahead where he would have been. That's simplistic, because we seldom get a clear explanation of things, but in retrospect even now, I can see more clearly why shit happened to me 6-7 months ago that I was confused & angry about, —I mean a terrible disappointment, —like 8 years of work seemingly went down the drain because of a certain asshole. And I mean that. It's not just me. The cops knew the guy was up to no good & even they couldn't fix it. But now, I'm not totally pissed off about it. I mean, I can see some daylight. I can see where maybe I had done my best & that's all I could expect to do. You can't fight city hall, sort of a thing. So, that's the heavenly side of events even now. It's not like I'm walking on fucking clouds & not saying fucking & never upset somebody, but considering my personality, believing has definitely improved me in many ways. Cause I'm still bad but I could be way worse lol.

 

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. atleast you see your sin.

 

Basic things hinder people, envy , false pride, jealousy and insincerity coupled with ignorance that will not see self improvement.
Christians are as guilty as others, often worse.

 

and what does that have to do with the topic?

 

Enlightenment .
This what LSD and christianity have in common.

Think about it before you reply, please?

 

I agree, I have experienced ego death on lsd and in the days following until my ego was able to rebuild, I felt I was in a good place and closer to divinity. I wouldn't recommend doing it all the time or taking too much at once.

 

In my personal opinion this sentiment is diametrically opposed to the message of the psychedelic experience, and seeing as it is a basic foundation of the Christian faith, I cannot see Christianity being compatible with the psychedelic experience insofar as some of its dogma is highly aristotelian, dualistic, and based on guilt and hierarchy; all of which are blasted apart by a sufficiently proper dose of anything.

loving Jesus because he represents love, I can dig that. It doesn't make sense to me, because I feel like you're only loving the one named jesus because that's who your teachers and peers have presented before you, making the choice a little arbitrary (can i not pray to nelson mandela? how about mother teresa? how about buddha? seems arbitrary). but loving love is definitely psychedelic, in a general sense. but as soon as you start to include the guilt-trip aspect of christianity, i feel you lose touch with the message present in the mystical experience. perhaps you are conflating your personal psychological insecurities which we all have, into some grand divine "template" of existence; ie, "I do a lot of bad and stupid things, therefore I must be bad and stupid, and there is a perfection I know to exist, but it is outside of me necessarily given my badness, therefore I have fallen short of the glory of god", says the glory of god.

 

these are the words of paul the apostle, i guess it depends on whether you have faith in christ as to whether a person would consider them true.

there is no guilt trip in christianity. it is a message of love not of fear. if you are hearing a message of fear you are hearing the wrong one.

Jesus is the author of love.

 

Enlightenment .
This what LSD and christianity have in common.

For people who claim to be christian there is an opportunity to find enlightenment, i don't always see this.

But what i notice is the cars are always washed clean outside church.
Christian=clean car?

 

Sounds like your basing your opinion on popular concepts of what Jesus said/did and not what the New Testament actually says.
In actuality the real Biblical concept of sin isn't that far off from some aspects of the psychedelic experience. The Biblical concept of sin is not any action, thought or deed, but rather a condition in which humanity exists which is not exactly on track. The Greek word Paul used conveyed the idea of "missing the mark" as in missing a target.

It has gotten perverted into the popular concept that you speak of.
Jesus never was about "clean up your act!!" he is about "re-awaken your relationship with God".
Two very different messages.

The idea of "go and sin no more" also follows this concept. It's not "don't go do bad things anymore" it's more like "now that you are started on a better path, don't change back to the old one".
As experienced as you are with psychedelics and the inner universe, Mr. Writer, I'm sure that message can resonate with you.

As a person who has experienced the classic "baptism in the Spirit" pretty much as outlined in the book of Acts and spent many years in that arena, I will say it is real and not to be just lightly dismissed.
Remember at it's core Christianity is an experiential religion, not dogma and doctrine. My beliefs are based on experience, not dogma or indoctrination.

As a person who has also taken a fair number of magical mystery tours (I think I'm in about the 250+ range now) I don't see them as diametrically opposed at all, in many ways they are in harmony.


I think the moment it all came together and I "knew" what love as God views/feels/expresses it and sooo much of the Biblical messages coalesced into clarity was when I first saw and held my first daughter. Words can't describe the unconditional love and acceptance that flowed from me.
Know I "knew" what unconditional love is. I knew now why there is a "Father-Child" connotation to God's relationship with man.

Part of the problem with Christianity and just about every other religion is that humans have a very difficult time with unconditional love.
Love without conditions.
Rarely do we truly give it or receive it.
In our minds we must strive and work to earn our way, here and into Heaven.
Jesus spoke of grace, unmerited favor. Love without conditions or requirements.

So for me and my experiences and understanding of Christianity and the psychedelic experience, they co-exist rather well.
:sunny:

 

One little known or mentioned fact is that of all the religious leaders/founders, Jesus is the ONLY one who claimed to BE God, and that the way to "salvation" was via belief and grace. Every other one taught a method or path to follow to reach nirvana, enlightenment, heaven, whatever.
In that respect Jesus stands out from all the others.

It is kinda disappointing when I see so many intelligent people just lump Christianity and Jesus' message into the same pile as all the others. It just really shows more of a lack of knowledge and understanding of the topic than anything else.

 

after tripping on lsd recently it really opened my eyes to the ways i had fallen from the light. life wears on you ya know, weighs you down. was able to bring my focus into a greater clarity than it has been in a while. this also included aspects of my faith.

lsd opens your mind to the truth. Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life.

if there is any truth, these two must be related.

God is love. eace:

 

Definitely the infinitesimal constructs of the universe are related to God, from microcosm to macrocosm; and are created to reflect His eternal image & power, like the Mandelbrot Set & Fractal Geometry proves how each & every form is contained & repeated within itself. All this energy originated from One all-powerful source. Its seems we go around bumping into all these clues but some seem to never take the hint. We are all permitted to fall from the light in order to cry out to The Creator in order to find our way back. :bigcry:

Right now, things are out-of-wack because when Satan rebelled against God, he caused chaos. Universal reconciliation, cosmic redemption & all things restored is the ultimate point of it all with mankind being the focus. I really believe that is why the Universe is so big, because this Earth contains a culture that will go to seed the rest of its habitable parts after this all gets sorted out. So, even Armageddon is not the end, but the beginning of a thousand years of peace right here for the peacemakers who will inherit the Earth & rule it in perfection with The Lord at the helm.

http://jesuschristlsd.com

 

So, what, as a sacrament? What would be the purpose of combining the two?

The only scripture that comes to mind, as far as whether or not one can take LSD while remaining in line with Christian doctrine, pertains to some verses that talk about drunkeness.

Ethanol is both a dissociative and a depressant, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is pretty much the exact opposite.

Not only that, but Genesis did state that God gave mankind every seed-bearing plant for his use, and ergot seeds do--indeed--come from a plant. (Well, ergot is actually a fungus--and poisonous, but hey.)

My advice, without having read any of this thread, would be to respect the substance, as well as the Creator--if that's your thing.

I think that this quote that I found on Erowid said it best:

 

I'd say pick one but not both. Critical thinking is not faith. Nor is the opposite true. But---Desos seems to have melded both. Exception that proves the "rule"? Or maybe I'm just wrong and all religious folks should indulge.

 

. . . "I can see your darkness."