holding on to what you learned

Tripping gives glimpses of enlightenment.

Some people I think are basically unchanged - just go on with mentally/spiritually/physically unhealthy lives.

Others turn toward the light. So the idea might be less to "hold on" and more to let the light shine, to integrate these amazing experiences. Besides moving toward livelihood with meaning, it's good to do healthy things like gardening, baking, backpacking, festivals, and other positive things.

To me, having these psychedelic experiences is grace - they're real and the more they're integrated in my life the happier I am.

 

^^^do you find that you can trip with others and kind of guide them towards "the light?"

i like initiating people into psychedelics, especially if they show characteristics like respect, love, kindness...and i try a bit to show them the spiritual side of tripping.

 

I'm just now moving toward the idea of guiding. In earlier times the idea of guiding seemed too Timothy Learyish - kind of contrived or self-conscious or something that didn't seem that hip - like TL. And besides, there was that thing about the guide not dropping, so forget that.

I think I understand things better now and I'm no longer in a hurry to do everything that can be done/experienced. So I can see not tripping while accompanying someone on a trip. I have an associate who takes a lower dose when he accompanies people. I could do it either of these ways (no dose or low dose) or just go ahead and dose. I'm sure when I do it with someone who's dying I'll take no or low dose. (I've done that once, with a high dose for both of us.)

As the idea of guiding evolves in my head, it seems like no or low dose in most cases for me.

Pork, I know you dig Shulgin. One of his close associates was Leo Zeff, "the Secret Chief," a psychologist who guided many people in individual and group settings. I mention this because (a) I'd looooove to tuuuuurrrnnn youuuu ooonnnn and (b) Zeff, Shulgin, and so many others have said/are saying what you said: "i like initiating people into psychedelics, especially if they show characteristics like respect, love, kindness...and i try a bit to show them the spiritual side of tripping."

By turn you on, I mean letting you know about this extraordinary book, The Secret Chief Revealed, available from MAPS. MAPS has the newest edition, which some vendors don't.

All that to say, yes, I understand completely what you're saying.

And that would be another part of the answer to the OP. Along with right livelihood, gardening, going to festivals, and so on would be turning toward and turning on people with "characteristics like respect, love, kindness..."

 

Oh ya definitely! Initiating people into psychedelics is the best. On one hand your mere presence in a new trippers trip can help them a lot! even just by being able to explain to them certain things their going through if they bring them up while its happening can help them not feel too overwhelmed or to be able to better deal with thoughts like "Woah shit should this be happening? is this normal? whats happening? I'm GOING CRAZY! I'm gunna be stuck in this trip forever! etc." On the other hand, I find I learn a lot from them as well! since their experiences during their first trip can in turn be very influential on my own trip at the time. It can also help me incorporate what I used to go through on acid with what's happening to them at the time. This, in turn, can lead to a better understanding of my own past trips. Some people I know don't like to trip with first time trippers because they think of it as 'babysitting' or that there's no way to tell if they'll react good to psyches haha but I think that's quite a selfish way to look at it. The flow of learning goes both ways.

 

for me, i like to take an equal or higher dose than those that i'm initiating. lately it has been ladies and my younger brother, so they are suited to lower doses. if it was one of my buddies that wanted a higher dose, i'd let him have it.

thanks for the recommendation. sounds interesting.

exactly! when i dosed my brother with LSD for his first and only trip, i felt like he was teaching me things i've never thought of before.


this is a GOOD thread

 

What you said. I'd like to keep this one alive. I'm looking at a long awaited reunion with lucy in the near future and as such I've been doing some reading.
My reason for revisiting her is personal insight and growth so my reading has been along those lines. I found this excellent page on Erowid that is a reprint of a handbook used back when L was being used in therapy.
I'm amazed at the observations on the experience related in the book. It's from a professional viewpoint, a guide to therapists and not so much directed at trippers. But I find their observations of effects and commentary on the experience to be very accurate.
It's not a short read.
http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/guides/handbook_lsd25.shtml

 

^ "The therapist cannot learn these things for the patient, just as the teacher cannot learn for the pupil. It is the role of the therapist, as it is of the teacher, so to structure the situation as to maximize the opportunities for learning. The expertise of the therapist lies essentially in his knowing how to structure the situation so as to fit best the personality of the patient and of himself and the environmental variables which seem of greatest relevance."

I find this sort of interaction is quite similar to the whole 'initiation into lsd' idea. The same sorta things have to be seriously considered in each situation, such as what set and setting would be best for the person to facilitate learning and self-discovery.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that just talking with someone about your tripping experiences in depth after a trip can help a lot in order to hold onto what you learn. For example one time I was tripping with a friend of mine who's a really experienced psychedelic user and the last 2 hours or so of the trip we just sat in a room after having quite an active day tripping outside and just talked about everything that happened and discussed really trippy concepts that arose from the the days experiences for about 4 hours before I went home finally. I found this helped me a lot to cement the ideas that I had during the main part of the trip that I may not of been sober enough to express at the time since every 20sec. something else that was extremely mind blowing would happen and distract me. So in a way it allowed me to remember the ideas I had and sorta piece them together into the whole trip while also still not being completely sober.

Another thing I find helpful is the day after a trip just getting together with some friends (ideally the same friends from the previous acid trip) and smoking mad weed and just analyzing and discussing the trip with them. This is epitomized in the bicycle day (April 19th) + 4:20 the next day combo:sifone:

 

What I've been learning about is more intentional tripping. In the earlier days it was take the acid and away we'd go, people sitting or lying on the floor and the rule was, speak only the Truth. Or in the woods or park. Or walking around our cool old neighborhood. (Going back to the OP: it's important to live in a place with good energy - not an okay place, but a place that feels good and right.)

Now I understand there are other ways. It's like this: you're going to have what can be one or maybe THE greatest experience of your life. What some of these very experienced people (like in the book I referenced above or the Council on Spiritual Practices) are saying is that the potential for the highest place of your life is important - important enough for someone to take the boddhisatva path and forgo their own experience to support and guide another person's experience toward that highest place. But I still dig two or three people or a few thousand of us getting together to take us all higher and higher.

Some of what raven~song is saying is part of the more intentional tripping I'm learning about. We'll see where it all goes.

 

Man, you newer guys laid out some words there.... good stuff :2thumbsup:

Raven, ya I couldn't agree more with comments on discussion of the experience with a tripping partner. Back in the day I had always tripped with someone except one time. Curiously, that was my only bad trip was tripping solo but around other people. It was always during the afterglow, the last few hours that wonderful and amazing conversations took place, usually with some cannabis and maybe a beer, reviewing and cementing what was experienced.

I find myself in this dilemma now that it will probably be that I trip solo this next time. It's one of the things I'm working out as to set and setting. I'm not at all concerned about it going 'bad' due to being solo, but I feel from past experience that it will be a bit more shallow without that opportunity to share the experience in that magical afterglow where what I feel is valuable is seperated from the rest and integrated in discussion.

Moment and Raven, thanks for your contributions, good stuff. :sunny:

 

hmm, that is a part of tripping with someone that we overlooked in another thread discussing the diff btwn tripping solo and with others. generally, we decided that solo tripping was "deeper." but tripping with a very close friend or two can get just as deep i think. now when i think about this...that discussion during the afterglow is very valuable.

i agree. best newbies ever

 

I was thinking today about this question of holding on to the reality - beauty - truth of the trip. I would say the idea is to integrate the reality, beauty, and truth of the trip with life more than holding on, though who among us hasn't wanted to hold on. Thinking that it's important to connect to a spiritual center or place or state of mind (not sure of right term) - whether a church, a meditation center, one's individual practice, psy fests, etc., etc.

Then this evening reading words from Myron Stolaroff, one of the old-time trippers saying that it's important to fashion one's life in harmony with the conviction that life has a spiritual basis. So yes, a place has a place, but more than that is creating a life ever more in harmony ... :sunny:

 

^ True!

I'd say that 'holding onto the beauty of a trip' is actually just letting go of our opinions, judgements and definitions that we use to filter our experiences and distort our perceptions of reality into whatever 'dream' we see fit. We get a good perceptual cleansing during a trip but inevitably we return to being focused on the ego and our judgements return to limit our happiness, appreciation, and understanding of the inherent beauty in things. So if anything the process of integrating a trip afterwards is just trying to apply the right behavioral/psychological changes in one's life to try to return/maintain that unbiased understanding.

The truth and beauty in things is and always will be there there's no need to hold on, just to let go of the 'lies' we cling to desperately. The classic "going with the flow approach" :2thumbsup: