Insight From Cannabis Trip

[lennart]

Introduction

I did it with some friends in a park. I know what you think. Dumb Idea.... But maybe not.

Soo before I write about my trip I want to explain to you where I come frome. I have social anxiety and I feel uncomfortable with nearly everyone (except my mother and my girlfriend). A few days before the trip I started listening to Shinzen Youngs Audiobook "Breaking through difficult emotions", where he explains how to surrender to emotions. While listening something inside of me clicked and I started to realize how I was fighting my emotions of insecurety and anxiety in social situations. I understood it mentally but it was still challenging to embody it. When my friends do something I usually don't participate very often because of my social anxiety. This time I thought I should meet them again because if I don't they might exclude me from their social circle. I know this fear is stupid but I believe it lies in the fact that the exclusion from a group would have meant death for our ancestors and that primal instinct is still in me/us.

 

Trip

When I was with my friends I had the usual anxiety. But after we smoked the weed I could do what Shinzen Young spoke about in his audio book: being extremely open and mindful with the unpleasant sensations associated with this feeling of anxiety. I could ease into it. That kind of reduced the suffering because there was no resistance against those feelings. Thats when I had insight that I could live my whole live like this and that I don't have to suffer from any unpleasant body sensation. Through practice I could be living in this wonderful conscious state my whole life whereas before I thought that I could only access it in meditation. On my way home I could also be very mindful with my body sensations, which weren't pleasant (pain in the knee, sleepiness, coldness). Although they weren't pleasant I had the feeling that they couldn't really hurt me if I would only let them flow through my body.

 

Conclusion

I think the setting for the trip was exactly right for me because I learned that it is possible to experience unpleasant body sensations without suffering in the "real" world and most important with other people. Know I have the motivation to conquer my social anxiety.

[AdamDiC]

Nice work man! Remember feelings are like the wind, they come and go. But you are a steady rock. A 500 tonne boulder that cannot be moved. The wind and rain may chip away at you and the sun might shine its grace, but you'll lay there untouched forever. Start meditating too.

[lennart]

Thanks man. Yes I recently started. For me meditation was always an on off thing but now I meditate for 45 min everyday and it feels great 

[AlwaysBeNice]

Yeah it's crazy how easy fear can be dealt with when we learn to just be with it.

Somehow through this mass delusion of demonizing it and collectively avoiding it automatically, it seems like a terrible idea to allow it, but that's what only cause the pain and confusion around it, of course when ur unaware that there's also peaceful consciousness space beyond it it does have more of a grip also.

[cosmicrays]

Congrats. I too have social anxiety and sometimes weed reminds me I can be its conquerer!

[Max_V]

Ye social anxiety is tough. I started developing it when I was 8 years old. Now it has become something that I have a lot of troubles with in my daily life. I can't really go to school anymore because any time I am near people I don't know this resistance to everything starts coming up.

It mostly ends in a panic attack and then I am forced to go home.

Hopefully when my therapy starts I can start working on this. I've tried doing it myself but it wasn't something I could do anything about.

 

[elias]

thanks for sharing.

funny, just thought yesterday about social anxiety in my case. interesting also that I never thought or even considered that possibility before.

 

 

I think - just work through. because their is nothing to fear and through the path only to grow.

[AlwaysBeNice]

2 hours ago, Max_V said:

Ye social anxiety is tough. I started developing it when I was 8 years old. Now it has become something that I have a lot of troubles with in my daily life. I can't really go to school anymore because any time I am near people I don't know this resistance to everything starts coming up.

It mostly ends in a panic attack and then I am forced to go home.

Hopefully when my therapy starts I can start working on this. I've tried doing it myself but it wasn't something I could do anything about.

Why don't you want to feel the fear?

What might help is to think: 'thoughts, thoughts thoughts' when it happens and see that your fear (which has thought at it's base) has nothing to do with what is.

[Max_V]

@AlwaysBeNice That's all I've been doing. Feeling it, doing specific meditations for it, contemplating it. But it's rooted deep in my psyche.

Therapy will hopefully help me dive deep into the cause. 

[AlwaysBeNice]

2 minutes ago, Max_V said:

@AlwaysBeNice That's all I've been doing. Feeling it, doing specific meditations for it, contemplating it. But it's rooted deep in my psyche.

Therapy will hopefully help me dive deep into the cause. 

Sure do therapy and just continue the meditations, it will pass.

But seriously, it's not a problem, it has nothing to do with reality, as it's just old stuff, just some thoughts/sensations that really do not hurt you at all.

In fact, be excited about it, you're discovering a hidden part of you that plagued you for so long unnecessarily!

What helped me recently, after visiting and being told by Ad Oostendorp I mentioned, that to release these suppressed emotions:

Feel them, but don't fixate on them only, also notice the space of consciousness in which they arise (so you can say: don't zoom in too much, don't zoom out too much).

[lennart]

Thanks for the replies my friends

I am sure that we will all conquer our social anxiety if we continue in this path. I wish all a good day 

[Dodo]

On 04/09/2017 at 10:57 PM, lennart said:

Introduction

I did it with some friends in a park. I know what you think. Dumb Idea.... But maybe not.

Soo before I write about my trip I want to explain to you where I come frome. I have social anxiety and I feel uncomfortable with nearly everyone (except my mother and my girlfriend). A few days before the trip I started listening to Shinzen Youngs Audiobook "Breaking through difficult emotions", where he explains how to surrender to emotions. While listening something inside of me clicked and I started to realize how I was fighting my emotions of insecurety and anxiety in social situations. I understood it mentally but it was still challenging to embody it. When my friends do something I usually don't participate very often because of my social anxiety. This time I thought I should meet them again because if I don't they might exclude me from their social circle. I know this fear is stupid but I believe it lies in the fact that the exclusion from a group would have meant death for our ancestors and that primal instinct is still in me/us.

 

Trip

When I was with my friends I had the usual anxiety. But after we smoked the weed I could do what Shinzen Young spoke about in his audio book: being extremely open and mindful with the unpleasant sensations associated with this feeling of anxiety. I could ease into it. That kind of reduced the suffering because there was no resistance against those feelings. Thats when I had insight that I could live my whole live like this and that I don't have to suffer from any unpleasant body sensation. Through practice I could be living in this wonderful conscious state my whole life whereas before I thought that I could only access it in meditation. On my way home I could also be very mindful with my body sensations, which weren't pleasant (pain in the knee, sleepiness, coldness). Although they weren't pleasant I had the feeling that they couldn't really hurt me if I would only let them flow through my body.

 

Conclusion

I think the setting for the trip was exactly right for me because I learned that it is possible to experience unpleasant body sensations without suffering in the "real" world and most important with other people. Know I have the motivation to conquer my social anxiety.

I have similar social anxiety relief when doing weed. I've made so much new acquaintances because of this - because I am able to stand next to someone new and start a conversation and feel good about it - usually on weed I clearly feel what I like to think is the Enlightened state. Weed has also been the fuel for much suffering in my life also. I can see how it is the reason for some of the cycles that I am experiencing and calling hell right now...