Switching Characters on LSD

[okulele]

I have been working with LSD for years now.

In the early days of our relationship, it was all about fun, play and hallucinating. However, as I started learning about enlightenment I started experiencing something I would call - ego deaths.

What I mean by ego death in this case is, my usual character - me - would disappear. I could still remember my name and my personal history, but it was plain that it was absolute fiction.

This would leave me somehow open, and I would "host" many, many other Characters changing one by one inside of me, or AS me. These Characters would have their own habits, ways of handling the body, patterns of thinking. It is as though they have lived entire lives developing these traits and then coming inside me.

These Characters usually change every couple of minutes.

 

Character expamples:

• The homeless man - Of course, I don't know if he was homeless. I knew nothing of his personal story. But that's what I thought of this Character by watching his - my - traits. He was very heavy in his body, he smelled bad to himself, there was a clear victim attitude.
• The priest - Again, I don't know if he was a priest. I don't know his story. He was highly conscious. I called him the priest, because I prayed to someone, when in this Character, in a way I have never knew that was possible. I was basically sending love to a picture of a person in my mind, clearly knowing that  the actual person is receiving it.
• The shaman - Probably the highest consciousness Character I stumbled upon. I was sitting cross-legged, when this one "came onto me" - when I became him. I had a feeling a was something between I man and a monkey. There was a very strong grounding sensation, connection to the nature. My body was filled with consciousness, I could sense every "meridian" very clearly.

Non-Character examples:

Sometimes, when I would disidentify with the body, I would experience the world not as a person, but as an object.

• The torn bird - I was having the experience of being a dead bird, or one on the verge of dying. The right side of my body was torn open (probably by a predator) and I was in great pain. Every sensation was very intimate, just as if my own body was in that state.
• The teddy bear - This was the strangest one and by far the most unpleasant. My "body" was dead. Not that it died, but there was no life inside of it. I just felt the cloth I was made of. The button that was there instead of my eye, made me think I am a teddy bear. A dead object.

I would get many more animal experiences, when not identified with the body. Mostly experiences of great suffering and pain. Butchery and car accidents.

The Pattern

There is a pattern that I noticed about the Character appearance.

The level of consciousness that I was at, at the moment of the Character Switch, determined what level of consciousness Character I would host. 

This means, that in order to get a more conscious Character the next time, the old Character had to become more conscious himself! That proved to be tricky sometimes. The less conscious the Character, the more difficult for him/her to remember "how to be conscious".

In this way, these kinds of trips make me climb the ladder of consciousness while seeing how the Characters develop accordingly.

 

I am not really sure how the Non-Characters come about.

Lessons

It is very easy to overlook our own characters, that is ourselves, because we are the only ones we know.

This experiences showed me that there are other possible ways of thinking, acting and feeling. For example, we do not usually see that our thoughts have a very specific pattern only unique to us, as does our handling of the body. Having seen the other possibilities, makes it easier to see my own character patters when they are back and going.

 

Also I have seen, just what the self really is. It is patterns. Patterns of thinking, feeling masculine/feminine energy, handling the body, holding tensions in the body, and so on.

There is really not as much substance to it as I thought

 

 

Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your opinions or comments on this!

[snowleopard]

@okulele Fascinating ... I've experienced similar character-shifting scenarios in the sleeping dream-state, wherein one is the same psyche playing a different persona role, as if in alternate incarnations, so to speak. Frankly, I've no idea what to make of it.  Seems a lot like dissociative identity disorder as well.  

Edited February 13, 2018 by snowleopard