Petez

Hey I just found a video of Shinzen Young talking about the difference between enlightenment and depersonalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zIKQCwDXsA

Wow, something very similar happened to me acouple of months ago. I have been meditating daily for about 2.5 years and I don't really smoke weed that often (I find that it makes me anxious and paranoid) and I don't do psychadelics. Anyways, I smoiked quite a bit a while back and I started getting super paranoid and panicing when the weed started taking effect. My heart was racing, was taking really fast breaths and I completely lost my memory for a bit. I didn't know who I was, where I was or that I was even a human. It felt like I was going to become stuck in this mind state forever. It also felt like the walls around me were becoming more "alive", but to be honest I'm not sure exactly what happend. I had a couple of panic attacks and later fell asleep, feeling super shitty and stressed. The next day, when I walked outside, it felt like the first time I ever went outside. Everything had a "new feel" to it. My sense of self had dropped away. It wasn't anything pleasurable though, I rather felt lost and shitty. My memory was terrible. I had this feeling the next day and also sporadically the day after that. It seems to be depersonalisation from the panic attack I had when I was high as a result of the panic attack. ANYWAY; just wanted to share my story and tell you that you're not alone in having had this experience. Also, when it comes to weed, I saw a YouTube video by psychedsubstance called "weed is different after psychs". It basically explained that many people become paraniod and anxious when smoking weed after having taked psychadelics. Since meditation and psychadelics pretty much does the same thing to the mind (ego-death), it could be that meditation triggered the depersonalisation. I'm not really sure how the depersonalisation relates to enlightenment as of today, but I will keep meditating and trying to figure out more about this stuff. I'm definitely not smoking weed anytime soon though lol.