Drunken Self Inquiry and Contemplation

[Cepzeu]

Hi all,

I will try to make this post as concise as possible and not go off tangent. 

I usually do not drink at all but I'm spending a couple of months with my family and having a drink once in a while is seen as perfectly normal. We had an especially busy day today with some home construction at home so I had some drinks with my parents when we finished our current renovation project. 

As the day wound to an end my parents went to watch some TV. I decided that a better use of my time would be to do some spiritual practice. 

I don't have access to DMT/LSD/Shrooms/MDMA so I decided to do some self inquiry and contemplation under the influence of alcohol.

I had about 5 shots in the space of an hour and went outside to sit and contemplate/self-inquire. It was dark outside and I'm quite far from a major city so it's very quite outside, with low light pollution. I was alone with little distraction.

When I used to drink in the past it would be to go out to a club, but now I was setting the intention to experience reality as it is while under the influence of alcohol.

Basically, I followed the line of inquiry set out in Leo's recent Self-Inquiry video. Also, I tried to experience everything that was happening, but consciously. (I tried to step back and see the experience for what it was, rather than what usually happens when I get drunk, which is going to a club with mates, not transcending the ego or any of that, or any spiritual work).

 

Anyway.... (I'm still a bit drunk so this feels like a bad text that I shouldn't send but onward I go...)......

 

I had ONE major insight and ONE major visual experience in the last 1-2 hours. 

 

- The insight:

There are different LAYERS which concern the body-mind. In direct experience I saw that the body is simply a meat puppet. I did not identify with the body at all during this practice. It appears as though the body has 1) instinctive control, which can be overridden with 2) mind/prefrontal cortex control.  Explanation: The experience was of, maybe, 8/10 drunkenness (10 being blacking out) - it seemed as though the body was following an instinctual program, and when thoughts arose, the body could be controlled by them. This experience likely occurred because under the influence of alcohol there is an increase in reaction time. I.e. there is a higher resolution between the occurrence of a thought and the reaction to the thought. Basically, my body was feeling floaty, and soft, and happy and it felt good to move my arms and head (classic feelings on drunkenness). Then a thought such as "shake your head" would come into existence. There would be a couple of seconds of delay and then THE BODY WOULD FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTION. I believe the influence of alcohol enabled a delay to occur between thought occurrence and body-reaction.

It felt as though there were two controllers to the body - the "unconscious" or "non-mind" instinctive reactions and the "thought/mind/conscious" override control. It was like the body was a child and then thought was like the child's parent, telling it what to do, and the child just followed the parent's instruction. But when the parent wasn't looking (no mind), the child just played, and did it's own thing. 

I got glimpses of pure awareness experiencing thought occurring but it did not reach non-dual levels. I.e. I still identified as the 'creator' of the thoughts, as though "I" was thinking them. You could say I identified with the mind, but not the body.

Onto the visual experience:

There were a few sources of far-away light such as stars and neighbour's garage lights and things like that (keep in mind this is at night time). 

There were moments when I would cross my eyes and make everything blurry, but upon doing so, looking at the light sources expanded them. It was like there was an imaginary pathway of light coming from the light source and going into my eye. Focusing on the light source made it look light a dot of light. But, changing the point of focus by 'moving up' the imaginary line, created these expansions of the light source. 

The profound thing was that in each of these expansions I could see all of this detail. It was like looking at the sun from a point in space. There were moving rays along the surface of the expansion and it looked to me like a whole galaxy could be 'housed' in that ray of light. The 'expansion' looked kind of like an out-of-focus light source (see following picture), but unlike the picture there was a lot of detail to the out-of-focus ray of light. There was so much detail it felt as though I was looking at another galaxy.

 

 

All in all this was an interesting experience. I've never set the intention of doing spiritual work while drunk. I've experienced Satori before but that only lasted for a short while.

I may add more to this, I just feel exhausted from writing it all down. 

 

 

[Cepzeu]

EDIT: this is a better representation of what I saw within each ray of light:

 

It was like you could zoom infinitely deeper into this 'space'

[zambize]

Would you recommend this to someone else?  Do you plan on doing this again?  Sounds like a pretty positive experience 

[Cepzeu]

@zambize  I mean, it would be an interesting variation to the usual drunk night on the town. 

I may do this again but not soon. It would be damaging to your body's health to do this frequently, so I would not recommend someone use alcohol for habitual spiritual practice.

Despite that, I did indeed have a very positive experience. Usually when you're drunk you don't really take the time to be conscious of your experience. Yes it feels good but you sorta just interact with the outside world. Here, I had a lot of time to sit and deeply experience reality unfold. 

It was actually very fun and also healing to a degree. By becoming conscious of the drunk state, it amplified the relaxation and pleasant body feel. It felt like I was watching my body and mind be playful and childlike and it generated a lot of self love. I have a big shadow built up and low self esteem from childhood trauma. The release of self inhibition which allowed the body to express itself and be playful almost bought me to tears. Even now after I've slept a full 8 hours I feel like a huge weight was just lifted off me.

Also those light Ray 'galaxies' almost gave me a glimpse of what infinity was. It was like within that speck of light was the potential for an infinite world to occur. This also made me feel full of live for reality and nature and the universe.

All in all it was a great experience

 

[zambize]

1 minute ago, Cepzeu said:

@zambize  I mean, it would be an interesting variation to the usual drunk night on the town. 

I may do this again but not soon. It would be damaging to your body's health to do this frequently, so I would not recommend someone use alcohol for habitual spiritual practice.

Despite that, I did indeed have a very positive experience. Usually when you're drunk you don't really take the time to be conscious of your experience. Yes it feels good but you sorta just interact with the outside world. Here, I had a lot of time to sit and deeply experience reality unfold. 

It was actually very fun and also healing to a degree. By becoming conscious of the drunk state, it amplified the relaxation and pleasant body feel. It felt like I was watching my body and mind be playful and childlike and it generated a lot of self love. I have a big shadow built up and low self esteem from childhood trauma. The release of self inhibition which allowed the body to express itself and be playful almost bought me to tears. Even now after I've slept a full 8 hours I feel like a huge weight was just lifted off me.

Also those light Ray 'galaxies' almost gave me a glimpse of what infinity was. It was like within that speck of light was the potential for an infinite world to occur. This also made me feel full of live for reality and nature and the universe.

All in all it was a great experience

 

Sounds like something worth trying for me, we'll see how it goes, at worst it's an excuse to get a bit drunk haha

[Cepzeu]

@zambize go for it! I would like to hear your experience. Although don't post it on any mainstream forum otherwise the government will label alcohol as a hallucination inducing psychedelic and ban it ??