TheThingy

In conclusion - I'm going to an 8-day ayahuasca retreat with catered isolation for the entire time. I'll join the group only for the ceremonies at nights. I listened to @Leo Gura and did the first solo retreat last week. Even though it was 2 days long only, I planed a brutally strict schedule. Was blindfolded and with earplugs the entire time. Did this at my own home, so could navigate without seeing. Had 3 alarms set for each day - the first in the morning signaling to get up, the second at noon to eat, the third at night to go to bed. Spent the first day meditating for 16+ hours. On the 2nd day took 350ug LSD. Lucy really surprised me. Once it kicked in, it dropped me straight to the DMT-like world. Meditated for around 9 hours afterwards. The 8 days will follow the same fashion I guess. I'm slightly worried though about the chance of losing my mind. It's going to be an experience on a whole new level. Looking forward!

I'm following J.C. Stevens book and am slightly confused. I always follow suggested daily routine. I reached the point, where minimum duration of the daily routine is 50 minutes. I am practicing daily for 1 hour. I do all the practices first and during the remaining time I do-nothing/concentrate. Now I reached page 152. The daily routine contains more techniques than any previous routine, yet minimum duration is 16 minutes. 6 rounds of mental Kriya alone is at least 12 minutes and up to 24 minutes (the routine contains mental Kriya 6 rounds twice - printing error?). How does that make sense? I always do the optional techniques and choose the upper counts - 12 nadi, 12 ujjayi, etc. To practice this routine I currently spend about 80 minutes daily - about 50 minutes the technique and I always make sure to leave 20+ minutes at the end for concentration/do-nothing. I have nothing against sitting for long hours. I find it extremely pleasant and look forward to it every day. But I wonder do I misunderstand something?

I have always been tripping McKenna's way - at home, in complete darkness, sitting in half lotus on a cushion if I'm able to on very heavy doses. My wife is always available in another room if I need assistance. However, some months ago I had my first ayahuasca experience on a weekend retreat. It was my first time doing it in a group with 20 other participants. I went deep and had an extremely positive experience until I started to hear suffering around me - mourning, crying, vomiting. A weekend retreat with one ceremony attracts many, to whom it is the first psychedelic experience. No surprise - it turned into a circus. Some got a desire to talk, others wanted to go home, etc. It completely changed the direction of my trip and I just couldn't go inwards anymore. The shaman told me that after 10 ceremonies or so one learns to ignore the noise. Now I have an opportunity to participate in another ayahuasca retreat that is 1 week long and with a group of around 5 people. All participants are very experienced travelers. However, I'm not convinced whether it's a good investment of resources. I feel I wouldn't gain less by spending that week at home practicing silent vipassana with occasional trips in between. I wonder what's your take on this?

I always imagined ego death to be a scary experience, as if watching blood being drained out of my body into a bucket. Laying in bed really helped me to relax and once I got back to my spot everything felt effortless and beyond my control. Would you associate blackouts to high doses that one cannot handle yet? It must have been extremely educational to be able to consciously follow the transitions from body meditation all the way to turning into a matter in the universe. What a bummer.

This was my second trip and very different from my first one. Trip I wake up, eat my breakfast and hit the gym. It is slightly busier Saturday than usually - I have to arrange some things and make a few phone calls. All in all, I feel productive today. When I finally get to meditating, it is already 10:30. I have mixed feelings whether I should trip today because of how in the zone I feel with my usual matters. Let alone a strong dose. However, I juts follow my plan without thinking too much and so at 11:00 I drink a glass of water with 30mg 4-AcO-DMT. I sit down at my spot and start meditating. I am sensing my body, breathing air into various body parts. At some point I repeat "I'm ready to die - show me the truth.", but it sounds so fake. I am not convinced. The come up is like a come up of a storm. Suddenly the room turned darker. I feel the heaviness of the dose I took. I start to worry. It was irresponsible to take 30mg when I am not 100% in the mood for a trip. I am just asking for a bad trip. I feel anxiety come up. My pulse is probably around 150 bpm. I decide it will be much easier to handle if I turn off the lights, set comfortably in my bed, and surrender to what happens by starring at the ceiling. Some time into staring at the moving ceiling I figure I feel very well. The anxiety is gone. I feel curious in exploring any phenomena I see around myself. So I dress up, turn on the lights and get back to my spot. By that time I am really tripping. I stare at the 3m x 2m paradise sunset jigsaw puzzle in front of me. Patterns and colors are moving around. Everything is beautiful. Lots of fun. Suddenly - a blackout. At some point I feel like being a liquid. Just existing there with no purpose. As if the whole universe is just that. Then blackout again. Suddenly I notice senses. A glimpse of 15:00 comes up. I feel a taste of tomato omelet. An occasional glimpse of light. I start to connect the dots. I am standing. The room looks familiar. I look around. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Nothing makes any sense. Random memories pop up. It all looks familiar, but I can't make any sense of it. People, names, places. These are my experiences, but I don't recognize any of it. As if I've been placed in this body from elsewhere. I lost my memory! I look at various things in the room. Maybe I should go play with some of them until I can make more sense of what is going on. I do that, but I can't concentrate on anything. I wander from one thing to another. There is a smartphone over here. I look at the messages. They are in 3 different languages. Do I really know all these languages? I can read it. How cool is that. This is a person I really care about. I look at the photos. Wow. She is beautiful. Seems like I've been nagging her with all this stuff. Poor human being. Suddenly I feel an enormous sense of love. More names and people come to mind. I sit down at the computer to google. That's the organization I must be working for. What are they doing? These are my colleagues. But how am I going to do my job without any memory? What is my position there? Eventually more and more memories come. Bits and pieces start to connect and make sense. I look out the window. It is such a beautiful day. Sunny. I touch the window. Warm. I touch it with my face. Then my chest. Then my whole body. It feels so good. I wish I would have a cat. It would certainly agree with me. Just like that, step by step, I collect the bits and pieces of my life before the blackout. 3 hours later I have a somewhat full picture. I am full of joy. I am ready to go start living my life. Occupy myself with all these things that this current me finds important. I am full of ecstasy. My mind is sharp and clear. Completely at peace. Take away That was a brainfuck beyond scale. Nothing negative though. I don't know what happened nor how to interpret it. I feel like I was planted in this body. My short term memory was wiped. I have to reconstruct everything from the long term memory. The sad part is that the peak of the trip never reached the long term memory. I know I saw things, but it looks like a blackout looking at it now. I underestimate psychedelics. I got to be more cautious. I think I have enough content for contemplation. Another trip will have to wait.

You are right, it can't be an ego death. I am sure it must be a more profound and revealing experience that that. Great tip, Leo. That's the thing I was slightly concerned. A big part of the peak did feel like a dream. The substance made me yawn a lot and so laying in bed and closing my eyes seemed like the best thing to do. Are you suggesting to remain in my spot in a meditation posture throughout the entire trip?

Trip This Saturday, 2018-10-6, I wake up at 4:00. I eat my typical breakfast - oatmeal cooked with chia seeds, wild frozen blueberries, banana, and walnuts. I also cook a pumpkin soup for today and at 6:30 go to a gym. At 8:00 come home, take a shower, and prepare my room for the trip. At 9:00 I sit down to meditate. At 9:20 I drink half a cup of water with 19mg of 4-Aco-DMT. While waiting for the trip to start I am repeating "I am ready to die, I am ready to die, show me the truth, …". I don't feel anything until almost 10:00. Suddenly I start to feel very pleasant within my body. I am moving in the armchair like a loving cat in the owner's arms. All the time eyes closed. I am not sure shall I have the eyes open or closed and so occasionally I open them to see how my external perception has changed. I am looking forward to start to see colors and shapes and other entities, which I already can see vividly with eyes closed. I open my eyes a couple more times and figure that eyes closed is the way to go. I turn off the light and lay on my back in the middle of my bed. The windows are covered. The room is dark. I feel my body has a lot of space within. The clothes on it feel weird and redundant, but I know I'll feel cold if I get them off. I walk around my body - from one arm via the chest and shoulders to another arm. Suddenly the body seems very limiting. I feel like I am trapped in an old abandoned shell. I attempt to escape via the eye sockets and it seems I can do that rather effortlessly. I fly out into the space, but I feel heavy. I look behind and see I drag my body with me. But I don't resist. I just forget it and start exploring. I swim in colorful waves endlessly with joy for a long time until I discover some of my past memories come up. I see our old house I grew up in. The wooden kitchen. Maybe some of my family members, but not so clearly. I start to think how wonderful it must be to use this tool to heal past traumas. Suddenly I see I am in a therapy on a couch, where I hold my hand to the therapist indicating to wait a moment. It's coming. Let me focus. But soon it goes away and I am back swimming in the streams of colors. Most of the trip is streams of colors and shapes. I feel totally surrendered. I pleasantly talk with myself and truly enjoy the now. I travel through space like a fish in water. Eventually I take off my clothes, cover myself with blanket and feel very comfortable in my bed. I keep moving with my head left and right and left and right. Sometimes also the arms. Rotate my body from one side to another. At one point the streams and colors stop and everything turns very serious. I am in some building, dressed like everybody else, trying to mimic whatever everybody else is doing around me to fit in. I start to resist. I want my streams and colors back. I want to fly in space. A moment later I am back to space. Something like an hour later I start to question myself whether what I am doing is the right thing to do on a trip. Shouldn't I be meditating? Have an empty mind? I try to pull myself together. Suddenly another thought comes saying "No, I'll be doing that after the trip. I should totally surrender and go where the trip gets me." And so I surrender. But the same repeats several times - should I do this or that? what Leo would do? I keep classifying is this a trip behavior or integration behavior? Occasionally I open my eyes. I look at the ornamented ceiling, which I know in reality is completely white. I look at the covered windows and doors. I start to question myself: What's the difference between my old reality and this new reality? Is there a difference between being alive and being dead? Where is my ego located in all this? Where is my porn addiction? Can it even exist in this new reality? I try to think about the porn episodes that normally would make me excited, but all the bodies look like old abandoned shells. There is nothing exciting about old shells. Soon after I am back flying in space. I notice the color streams are no longer intense. I start to float in an empty space and enjoy the calmness. I notice the neighbors upstairs are making a lot of noise. They are moving furniture and drilling holes. I feel annoyed, but soon after realize I am being silly and I stop listening to it. I go to pee and check the clock. It is 12:15. I move my concentration to my empty stomach. My body should be sending a signal now that I am hungry, but I can't hear it probably due to being stoned. I keep investigating my stomach. I hear it making a hungry noise. I get up and go to the kitchen. I take an empty bowl and a big spoon. I scoop a good portion of pumpkin soup. While eating I felt a tremendous hunger. I repeat another portion. Still hungry. Suddenly I realize the trip is over. I feel slightly disappointed. I was ready to handle more. By 13:00 I am sober. After effects I was feeling very tired that day. A kind of tiredness, that normally develops into a headache. I went to bed at my usual time - 22:00. I woke up at 3:30 feeling a severe headache. I took a pill of acetaminophen and soon after fell asleep again for a couple more REM cycles. On Sunday I was not at my best. I felt tired. Usually I don't have fatigue issues. On Monday night I had a long deep sleep with very lucid dreams. I could compare these following days to one point in my life, when I was on SSRI antidepressants for a few months. Either the first week or the week after quitting - sleeping a lot, dreaming vividly, tired nevertheless. Today, Monday, I feel almost as normal. I am in good calm mood, feeling less shy than usually, and still not interested in porn. Take away Darken the room and lay comfortably in bed when taking any substance. Keep the eyes closed and be in meditative state during the onset. "I'm ready to die - show me the truth" works really well to keep the exploratory spirit up. Try to not to get into discussion about "proper" behavior when stoned. Future This month I plan to trip every Saturday. I have the following substance list to try in the order I haven't decided yet: 4-Aco-DMT 30mg 4-Aco-MIPT 15mg LSD 275ug DMT 20mg All substances are in powder form and I can change the dosage, except LSD, which are blotters. The 275ug for the first time is extreme and I am not willing to try unless I feel that strong dose of the other substances are peanuts for me. I consider to cut a blotter in half. They are really tiny - no more than 1x1cm. I'd love to hear any feedback and suggestions