SDS effects

[Danielle]

For the longest time now I've been thinking about starting a journal to document my SDS journey. Now I feel like I've gotten to the point where it's necessary to shed some light on all repetative circles one goes through during this whole purification thing. 

Some basic info about me:

• 19 years old
• Student of English and sociology
• Been meditating for 1,5 year - SDS combined with self inquiry- minimum 40 min a day
• Along side meditation, also have a concentration and contemplation habit
• Never used a psychedelic

Realizations I've had so far:

1. I don't exist
2. I'm not a human being
3.  Space doesn't exist
4.  External reality doesn't exist
5. All suffering is a product of resistence
6. Suffering is made up and illusory
7. I am already dead

Things I've noticed repeating througout my practice:

• Insomnia
• Bursts of anger
• existential crisis
• Crying non stop for days
• Sensitivity to everything
• Moments of deep gratitude
• Moments of awe and love
• Doubt in this whole thing
• Questioning everything I know, feeling confused and lost
• Moments of forgiveness
• Feeling blank and numb
• Feeling suicidal/ homicidal
• Massive mood swings
• Laughing at random moments
• Moments of bliss and peace
• Revisting past trauma
• Laying on the floor screaming
• Feeling exhausted for no apparent reason
• Feeling energetic- dancing around or jumping all over the place
• Feeling lonely
• Feeling misunderstood
• Feeling disconnected from everything
• Losing interest in things I used to love
• Feeling stuck
• Feeling hopeless
• Feeling nostalgic
• Feeling 'high on life'
• Feeling overwhelming compassion for people 
• Losing desire to find out the truth
• Being nihilistic
• Feeling motivated
• Feeling doubtful/ skeptical
• Feeling blessed
• Feeling cursed
• Feeling insane

I will write insights whenever they come to me. Hopefully they will benefit all of you who are going through this pathless path 

Edited December 17, 2017 by Danielle

[Danielle]

Here it comes again - huge resistance in my body and mind. I can't sit still for longer than 10 minutes, I feel really tense, which is always the case after a state of clearity and bliss. 

Most of my life I thought I knew stuff and the last year, upon hearing various spiritual teachers it's beneficial to not know anything , I adopted that attitude. I did exactly what one shouldn't - i pretended I didn't know anything while I thought to myself : yeah I might be wrong about some little things, but really, I have it all figured out.

What a joke! Now that I've really started to question everything, I see how horrifying it really is. Is anything really real? Is Trump an alien? Am I living on flat Earth? Is scientology the answer to life's questions? Is wheat evil? Does global warming exist? What is death? What is anything?  Do other people exist? I just DON'T KNOW

And I  can finally accept it 

Edited December 18, 2017 by Danielle

[Danielle]

I finally understand what Ram Dass meant when he said : if you think you're enlightened go spend a week with your family. It feels like I went to a freak show. Whole lotta noise, every neurosis imagineable, unconscious behaviors that  have been repeating themselves for the last 30 years all combined with lack of any self awareness. 

 The one thing that bothers me the most in family reunions is the fakeness, complete lack of authenticity , white lies, critizing without looking themselves, denial of shitty situations altogether. When I am real with them, it backfires on me and they all do their best to invoke the inner chimp in me. And the tragedy is, they mostly succeed. 

[Danielle]

The more time I spend in nature, the more clear it gets: people are not living. I asked myself that question so many times during all these years : i'm alive, but am I really living? It feels like my city environment is so fakely structured, so out of touch with our nature. It's so beautiful to be out of civilization, no buildings blocking my view of the sky, no cars, just stilness. I've noticed being out in nature produces a similar effect as meditation, sense of presence. Just complete silence. Perfection. Chaotic order, absolute joy produced by simplicity.

 It's enough for it to exist to be completely amazed by it, nothing else is required. Any other concept that is put on it is already ignorance of its raweness, there is no way it could be captured with a limited system like  the human language. 

Another benefit of being more out is the natural meditative state that comes with it, making it easier to be more mindful for the rest of the day. It's pretty much effortless and free, a great therapy for the mind and body 

 

 

[Danielle]

 For the most part of this spiritual journey, I've been trying to distance myself from things I labeled as unconscious and refused to do activites I secretly wanted to do, but heard that were unconscious. Same applied to people, if I labeled you as unconscious, you can be sure I made judgements about you and basked in my superiority ;Hehe I'm so above you people!  What a waste of time that was!

In reality, all I was doing was hiding the doubt in my self worth, calling people chimps to justify my own fear of being misunderstood. All I did was resist and judge, ironically, just to be spiritual.

It's been fun to play this game for awhile, but I think it's over. I can't play anymore because I see how much they suffer and my judgements certainly won't help them. Their worldview is incredibly limited, so unconscious, like mine was rather recently, so I'm beggining to understand why they act the way they act. That would've been me if I hadn't been so lucky to ran into a few enlightenment videos.

Trying to distance myself from people and stuff is a denial of reality, spiritual bypassing, total refusal of what is and won't ever get me where I want to be. If I'm totally honest with myself, all the things I denied up till now ended up to be beautiful and valid when I fully allowed them. I'm finally overflown with empathy for them. 

[Danielle]

Out of all the amazing talents and acts I've seen people do, nothing comes close to the talent of creating problems out of thin air or manipulating the facts in such a way it leads to unnecessary suffering. Seriously, people are geniuses at that! The amount of useless suffering is astonishing and frankly, pretty sad. My main story revolved around being a victim, of being helpless to outside factors, of being abused and rejected by people. You can imagine what a relief it was to have the following revelation:  There is no such a thing as an oppressor, opressors are the biggest victims themselves - to themselves; it's ridiculous. They create suffering to themselves - they feel shitty, but that isn't enough, they must see that delusion reflect in the outside world - create suffering for others to make it more real. Such a great play that is. 

It's never been as clear as now. When I heard gurus say : All suffering is made by you, I nodded my head as though I understood what they meant, lol. Most of this year doing 'consciousness work' meant filling my head with a bunch of concepts about the nature of suffering, pretending I know stuff, arranging them very carefully so I can still have my current paradigm of being a victim untouched. And then one day, phew! Gone, all of it. Okay, most of it. It really came down to two options: 1. Continue with my now seen through story. 2. Stop with the whole thing and just relax.

Needless to say it's a whole another level of clearity when you choose the second one.

[Danielle]

I can't recall  the exact moment when the seeking took over the seeker. There was a shift in perception that I can't put into words even if I wanted to. There is no way of communicating it, only if direct experience slaps you in the face with its radical intensity. 

This change can't be described, not even hinted at, only if you have had it, you know it. It's like I accidentally discovered a new planet while I was looking just for a city. The expansion is unimagineable and far far from what I thought will happen. See? Just words, words, words

 Aloneness in the rabbit hole is the term Leo said that is actually perfect for what I'm experiencing. It feels like I'm leaving behind everything and everyone in this collective delusion that all of them agree upon. It sounds so dramatic, but it's really not. It's so beautiful I want to everyone to experience it. It's soo magical, so deeply moving I could cry for days. Who am I kidding, I probably will.

I just want people to know - to become aware they are inside magic, actual magic, actual miracle, more words that can't describe what I'm trying to say...I found a sentence though that could actually capture what I so desperately want to convey: No matter where I go, I'm always held by the divine. 

Edited January 1, 2018 by Danielle

[Danielle]

All my questions disappeared, all my ideas about what is and what should be, all my concepts about life and most importantly, about myself. 
Emotions and thoughts don't have the weight they used to have. They just pass without no traction. I have no preferences, no wants to change anything, no desire to bring resistance back up. It feels so good to allow what is. 

I lost all illusion of control!
Maya will play itself any way it wants. 

I asked myself: Why me? when I was suicidal.
Nowadays I still ask that question. Why me? Why did I get so lucky to see so clearly?
It sounds rather disempowering when I say it, but it's really true ; I'm so lucky i suffered so much. 

Edited January 6, 2018 by Danielle

[Danielle]

Guess who's back in ego land? Since my insight about everything being divine, that exact same divine decided to test me.

Oh here's some old repressed trauma, is it divine? Here's some self deprecating thoughts you thought you were through with. Is that divine? Here is someone questioning your vegan agenda, how about that?  And the biggest of them all: confortation. I've been running from it all my life, avoiding conflicts at all costs.  The shear thought of hurting someone or even worse, them having a low opinion of me if a conflict arises is horrfying. 

I've managed, however, to face them all and ofcourse feel shitty,  sucking up people's pain and heavy emotions, but also laugh at myself for taking it so seriously. I feel like there's a hurricane of negative emotions coming my way. But I'd choose this hurricane every time over numbed down, painful state I feel other people having. What seems to be the end of me seems to be the best possibility out there.

 

[h inandout]

When I saw your profile pic, I knew I had to read this one.  It's really cool to see someone completely different from me going through the bizzare roller coaster of emptiness.  It's helping me reestablish some clarity today.

[Danielle]

@h inandout i'm glad you found it helpful 

[Danielle]

Nihilism tends to kick in just in time when I'm done processing what exactly happened during my latest 'awakening'.
Ever since I realized there's nothing to do, I've been running around doing everything under the sun. When that wore off, I ended up exactly where I started before I had all those insights.

Just meaningless this, meaningless that staring at my face. I stopped listening to spiritual teachings, thinking about them, forcing myself to act in a way they feel true. When you exhaust thinking about those teachings, you just stop and think: what the hell am I doing? I have no idea what these people are talking about, not until I've experienced it.


This cycle of awakenings and dark nights is becoming predictible and boring, but only when I'm in the midst of a dark night ?
Nihilism itself feels so stupid and empty, it doesn't come with strong negative emotions, it's just pure mental mastrubation for the sake of it.  I don't wish for anything to be different than it is, anyone to change to fit my ideas of a more loving world etc.

 Every theory I try to come up, story of my life or whatever I try to figure out in any capacity just fails to sustain itself and ends up being a blank - raw direct experience with a bunch of unnecessary commentary. So, in a nutshell, all of this is just mental masturbation thinking about mental masturbation. 

Until the next mental masturbation, I'll be what I am, solitary woman.
 

[Danielle]

Life is meaningless. All there is is emptiness. Bla bla bla. 

Aaaand it's gone!

Now that's nihilism's done here are a ton of emotions that will overwhelm you all at once. The tragedy is, since they are coming and going too fast, you won't be able to attach yourself to one. Too bad!

Two words could sum up my whole sense of identity: denial and repression. Repression is now coming to the surface. I've repressed all my desires to fit other people's idea of me. I've repressed all my anger because I'm afraid of confortation. 'I can't be angry, I'm a peaceful person who never gets into arguments.' I've repressed all my true feelings about people to avoid hurting them and just being in contact with people that I don't even like.

I've repressed all my beliefs that are considered to be 'crazy' in society to avoid their disapproval.

I've repressed all the words I wanted to say, but couldn't because 'that doesn't sound like something I would say'. 

This is ridiculous!  Even worse than that, I've been constructing this fantasy world in my head, just ideas on top of ideas, stories of everything and nothing expecting it to come true while repressing any type of action to make that fantasy come alive in reality. 

And here comes the best part: denial that I'm repressing anything! I've been under this mechanism since I was a small child and only now I've seen it. Can't say it's been fun to be under this mechanism, so I'll just show myself out. 

[Danielle]

When nothing is going my way and there is no point to anything - all of sudden it's there. The solution arises out of nowhere, shakes me out of my delusional conceptualization addiction and kicks me in the ass. There is always a way that things work themselves out, things simply fall perfectly in place, as though by design! Look at your life, it's a testament of love. Drop all your ideas of what's true and see what's true - you are held, right now, you can't escape it. 

And the beauty, the aliveness!!! It kills me that i can't have it. I can't own it. I can't grasp it although I try so hard. 
It's always there, patiently waiting for me to get over my bullshit - staring at me at all times, waiting for me to notice it once in a blue moon, and when I do, what a love that is! 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Danielle

[Danielle]

All the things I thought I wanted turned out to be empty and in the process of getting it, I realized I didn't really need it or even want it. My desires exhausted themselves and here I am not wanting. True not wanting. I don't want to be perceived as special or as an inspiration. I don't want to have a different life. I don't want to be anyone else. I don't want to escape this limited form. I don't want a different destiny. I want this one. I want this pain and all these problems. I want this society I don't belong in. I want this boredom and emptiness. I want the feeling of not being good enough. I want all my imperfections and traumas.

I want everything I didn't want. I want everything I denied. It's not real 'wanting' it's a more so complete yes to everything. Prior to this, my innermost desire was to escape this particular life, this character Danielle. Spirituality was like the perfect way to escape myself and my life while telling myself I was facing it. I just switched between distractions, before it was 3 hours of watching Shameless and after it was 3 hours of listening to Mooji or whoever. I actually thought I would gain something by listening to them, what?! The whole idea just seems absurd to me now. Sure, they can guide you out of dead ends and bring clearity, but they can't give you anything. Not really. All these spiritual ideas were just lies on top of lies on top of lies. Truth takes care of it anyway, my complex blabla isn't necessary. 

There is just a silent yes present here. The tension in my body has decreased and I've been entrenched in bliss followed by hysterical laughter. I don't know how long this will last so I might as well say it now when it's true. 
Give me all the pain! Give me all the suffering that ever existed. 
Swallow me alive, I don't care. I'll say yes no matter what.
There is an just an ocean of love in me that can't say no anymore. 

[Danielle]

 Spoiler alert: huuge post ahead of ya! Tuesday, 30. January - Friday 2.of February
 4 day half assed solo med/contemplation retreat (half assed because of my inability to meditate for more than 3 hours per day + i went to take an exam on wednesday- had human contact) aka TORTURE 101
 The following post contains coarse language and due to its content should not be read by anyone!

Context: My roomate unexpectedly had to leave so I got the chance to be all by myself with nothing to do. So I did!


Rules
No internet
No music
No friends
No books
No self help related stuff
No texting
No forum
No youtube
No distractions

Used my phone for writing down these ramblings, metronome beats for concentration and insight timer for meditation
My days consisted of meditation, contemplation, concentration and only basic things for survival


Tuesday - breakdown
Ramblings

• I miss my cat. I consider myself to be an intorvert, but holy shit does having someone around make a difference. Even if that someone's an animal. 
• People need their devices to continue living miserably
• Internet withdrawls
• Sweating out resistance
• Mind's endless shitshow- never ending distraction. Even if there's nothing to do, mind still finds something. 
• Full appreciation of things- oranges taste amazing. All food for that matter.
• Observing a spider i didn't know i had became super amusing
• Good ol' why the fuck did i do this?! This is torture. Maybe Jack Nicholson was right, maybe  I can't handle the truth. 
• Trump probably started a nuclear war, half of the population is gone and i don't know anything. - mind using all kinds of justifications to make me want to go back online. 
• I'm addicted to music/noise. I'm addicted to escape. I'm addicted to daydreaming: through music, writing, listening to people etc.
• I feel like a mad person. I feel like an animal!
• Internal screaming (mostly during sds)
• Fascination with things
• Not being able to write. I remember feeling really frustrated because I couldn't write whole sentences and also couldn't write with paper and pen. I never realized how much satisfaction I derive from it.
• Flashbacks of feeling like this as a child, being connected to reality

Emotions
Boredom
Loneliness
Joy
Rage
Laughing

Meditation: 3 hours
Contemplation: 8 hours


Wednesday - breakdown

1. Crazy / nightmare dreams. Incest sex dreams, dead animals, murder, rape - all that good stuff. Woke up like two times during the night, had enourmous headache
2. Resistance bigger than yesterday
3. Feeling like a baby-watching oatmeal drop from my spoon
4. Feeling older than my generation
5. Interactions feel amazing. I'm hyper aware of everything and feel more open.
6. Father-son image. As I was walking to the university, I saw a father holding his son's hand and just walking through  the city. And in an instant, I saw it. It was so obvious. I saw one being pretending to be both the son and father and I laughed and laughed. ( probably shouldn't have out loud though, since there were other people around me ups)
7. Questioning my sanity
8. Talking to myself/singing
9. Silence is driving me insane
10. Actual screaming
11. Feeling like someone let me out of my cage
12. Life slowed down
13. My desire for truth doubled
14. Things began to take an eternal quality

Bottom line for this day: Curiosity killed the cat! 

Emotions
Terror
Bliss
Awe
Peace
Feeling insane
Laughing
Fear (of death and insanity)

Meditation: 2 hours
Contemplation: 7 hours


Thursday - breakdown

• Woke up tired because of my fanatic dreams of reliving every trauma. It feels like I'm reliving my life in my dreams.
• Always been an observer, not a participant
• Existential pondering then 10 min of looking at my nails and hands. I literally spent 10 whole minutes looking at them, wtf?
• Phone is another limb of mine
• Tried beatboxing lol, failed
• Mind all over the place,daydreaming
• It's AMAZING to be
• Heat during sds
• Making faces in the mirror
• Happy baby pose half the day
• Fuck internet
• To be is the greatest joy there is

Emotions
Peace
Satisfaction
Fulfillment
Boredom
Anger
Relaxation

Meditation 3 hours
Contemplation: 7 hours


Friday - breakdown

• Why am I not always living like this???
• Stress is caused by a bunch of noise
• Tension in my body
• Desire to stay like this, not wanting to go back to ordinary living
• Desire for a radical change
• Scared of how detached I feel from the people i love. Do i even like them or just like their validation?
• And finally tears- love for truth, calling from the divine
• hahahah the gurus were right, you really don't need anything to be happy. Like really oh my god what a relief! I don't need the latest clothes, my phone, the internet, books, like any posessions, people, music etc NOTHING
• I love you the internet, but I love the truth more
• Truth is so fucking all consuming and radically loving it just left me not wanting anything. The truth is all I need
• The calling is unavoidable
• Thank you thank you
• Being connected to reality is what i need. Nothing else
• I don't no longer miss anyone or anything
• Never laughed so hard in my life as to the idea that youu need something to be happy.That idea is absurd. Youuu are it, I can't even begin to tell you. 
• What i'm experiencing is unbelieveable,impossible, but so fucking real!

Emotions
Excitement
Tranquility
Restlessness
Worry
Fear
Ecstatic bliss
Gratitude
Laughing while crying

Meditation: 1,30 h
Contemplation: 4 hours

 

These last few days were life changing.  On friday night I got back home, so my retreat didn't last 4 full days, oh well. I don't think I'll ever forget what I realized here and I look forward to doing more of these in the future, no matter how notoriously laborious it gets.

Main takeaways:

• I gotta face my demons more often
• I finally figured out what I want!!!  On Thursday I finally got it. The list goes as follows : truth, deep spiritual connection and life purpose/ contribution. Due to yesterday's realizations that list now looks like this: nothing. I'm guessing those desires will come back though
• I'm so addicted to noise, it was so shocking to see that. I was having serious withdrawal symptoms. 
• My love is endless. My life is an utter lie and I just want to serve. That's all folks! 

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by Danielle

[Shroomdoctor]

@Danielle This is really inspiring 

[Shin]

[h inandout]

I love your crazy-ass Danielle!

Edited February 6, 2018 by h inandout

[Danielle]

@h inandout