Trouble letting go when reaching high states of consciousness

[Dlavjr]

Lately I've been noticing that marijuana has given me much stronger highs than ever before. This started becoming even more so apparent after my last DMT trip, which you can read about here

I haven't touched psychadelics since, because I wanted to let the experience settle. However, nowadays when I smoke weed, I feel like I might as well be taking psychadelics. Today, after smoking a bowl, I completely left my body. I could feel my consciousness meld with the room, I became everything, and felt all sorts of sensations. At one point I remember feeling like I was totally liquid. I couldn't feel a physical body anymore, no physical room that I was in, I had become all of it. How such an intense feeling can't happen from weed, I'm not sure. I closed my eyes and felt eternal and infinite, as if everything I've ever experienced has been pure illusion. Now, normally I'd imagine this would be a liberating experience, but for some reason, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't let go. I tried very hard to let go and allow all the sensations to happen, and let myself become one with everything, but I was overwhelmed with such intense anxiety, anxiety so extreme that it kept me distracted from telling myself to let go. While sober, I'm pretty content in the moment. I've gotten good at being present, letting go of my thoughts, and just going with the overall flow of things. With weed, however, I'm consumed by anxiety, I can't let go of my sense of self, and I end up trapping myself in thought loops instead of letting go as I should be. What is it that I'm experiencing? How is it even possible that weed can get me to have that intense of a trip? I haven't touched psychadelics yet but experiences like these (this one being the most intense) have left me concerned on if I'd get an uncontrollable anxiety on other substances as well. Personally I think that I subconsciously just haven't let go from how my last DMT trip went, and my mind just keeps drifting off there. What I'm experiencing doesn't feel like awakening, as it seems like I'm seeing awakening through an ego perspective, causing the ego to essentially see its own nonexistence. I'd like to overcome this, I feel like I've hit a wall in my progress, any advice is appreciated. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Dlavjr
Poor title did not represent content

[Dlavjr]

I'd like to add that similarly to my DMT trip, my experience of oneness and awareness felt extremely familiar, as if I'd experienced it in a dream or sometime in childhood. I felt like I'd begun to remember that I had created everything, but again I just couldn't dissolve the ego no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't let go. Even sober I feel like I'm constantly phasing in and out of awakening, but I can tell it's always through an egoic perspective rather than absolute, I just can't shake it. I have all these intense realizations but it's still seen through the perspective of "I", despite the fact that I'm fully aware that there is no "I". It's clear I'm missing something crucial, I just can't figure out what. 

[erik8lrl]

What is this ego that you are trying to dissolve? 

 

[Forestluv]

I wouldn’t be too concerned about what input the mind and body is resonating with. At various times, I’ve resonated with meditation, weed, psychedelics, sensory deprivation tanks, holotropic breathing, lucid dreaming and on and on. I just roll with the resonance and momentum. And that shifts around. 

For now, you may resonate with weed in a way that that is offering a new perspective and opportunity for growth. For me, discomfort is often a sign of growth. Or perhaps the resonance with weed right now is off and a change of direction is best. I would trust intuition and body wisdom over thought stories in my mind. Let go of the thought stories and listen to the guide along the path. 

[Dlavjr]

1 hour ago, erik8lrl said:

What is this ego that you are trying to dissolve? 

 

My ego. Trouble is, when I reach a higher state, the ego is what holds me back from being able to fully be absorbed into it. I get this underlying sense of dread, knowing that I'm going beyond my "self", and I can't let go of my attachment. 

[Dlavjr]

8 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

I wouldn’t be too concerned about what input the mind and body is resonating with. At various times, I’ve resonated with meditation, weed, psychedelics, sensory deprivation tanks, holotropic breathing, lucid dreaming and on and on. I just roll with the resonance and momentum. And that shifts around. 

For now, you may resonate with weed in a way that that is offering a new perspective and opportunity for growth. For me, discomfort is often a sign of growth. Or perhaps the resonance with weed right now is off and a change of direction is best. I would trust intuition and body wisdom over thought stories in my mind. Let go of the thought stories and listen to the guide along the path. 

Weed has always given me some good opportunities for growth, but now I'm incredibly cautious about recreationally enjoying it the way I always have, because it seems to send me to such a high state of consciousness that it's just not something I want to be doing in social settings anymore. What mindfucks me, is that weed brings me to that state, but I feel such discomfort and anxiety that I can't bring myself to let go. However, when sober, I feel like I have no attachment to anything, but I can't reach that extreme state for longer than a brief moment. I've kind of gotten to a point where I'm constantly creating thought stories and analyzing everything that I experience and I'm just chasing my own tail. 

[erik8lrl]

@Dlavjr Yes, but what is it? What is this thing that's holding you back? Why do you think of it as something separated from God/infinite love? 

Edited January 5, 2020 by erik8lrl

[erik8lrl]

The more you try to let go, the farther away you are from truly letting go, it is a paradox. 

So just be, surrender and accept what is. 

[iamme]

You can't kill the self which we all call "I" but you can renounce the concepts, the limitations that you call "mine".

 

[traveler]

I similarly experience this with weed. It's like hanging on the edge of a cliff with one hand but being unable to take the leap or like getting all of your stories beat out of you furiously but the only story that remains and the only story that doesn't let go is the story of the ego. I've found myself on this brink of death a couple of times before. The overwhelming fear of non existence is the main concern of the ego. 

[WelcometoReality]

13 hours ago, Dlavjr said:

What I'm experiencing doesn't feel like awakening, as it seems like I'm seeing awakening through an ego perspective, causing the ego to essentially see its own nonexistence. I'd like to overcome this, I feel like I've hit a wall in my progress, any advice is appreciated. 

The wall exist only in your mind, it likes to create obstacles that it has to overcome.

@erik8lrl Yes true surrender just happens.

[Dlavjr]

I'm thinking I'm just going to stop smoking weed, because it gives me such intense anxiety that I end up creating an air tight wall of thought and I just get caught up in endless thought loops. It gets me to experience awakening pretty easily, but the experience ends up getting ruined by my own attachment to thought rather than being. I actually found myself shaking uncontrollably yesterday while I was feeling myself become one with my surroundings. For now it's probably better that I ingest what I've learned, and try to just surrender myself. I've begun reading Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now", as well, which will hopefully give me some good insights. 

[Dlavjr]

1 hour ago, traveler said:

I similarly experience this with weed. It's like hanging on the edge of a cliff with one hand but being unable to take the leap or like getting all of your stories beat out of you furiously but the only story that remains and the only story that doesn't let go is the story of the ego. I've found myself on this brink of death a couple of times before. The overwhelming fear of non existence is the main concern of the ego. 

It's incredible because when it's happening, I can actually feel my ego "sense of self" feeling the fear, there becomes an almost tangible separation that you can see and feel, I'm just not sure how to handle it. I heard once that you can't fight or suppress the ego, but you can coax it into surrender. Perhaps that's my issue, or perhaps I'm conceptualizing this whole process too much and getting caught up in content over structure. 

[Nahm]

@Dlavjr Feel directly into the fear. It is not what the thinking thinks it is. That is being “written off” by repeatedly believing there are two of you; the Self & the ego. You’ve never experienced being two, only ever One. Bring attention to what you have thus far in life been inattentive to - the acceptance of such ‘write off’ thoughts. Inspect them, thoroughly...rather than just saying “oh, it’s my ego” and calling it a day. It is not “the ego” which is “let go of”...it is the unconscious repeating of the thought pattern, that there is an ego, which is surrendered. In such case, in removing the ‘write off’....you’re “listening” to feeling, intuition, conscience - source...you...rather than an arising thought....”ego”.

[Dlavjr]

23 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Dlavjr Feel directly into the fear. It is not what the thinking thinks it is. That is being “written off” by repeatedly believing there are two of you; the Self & the ego. You’ve never experienced being two, only ever One. Bring attention to what you have thus far in life been inattentive to - the acceptance of such ‘write off’ thoughts. Inspect them, thoroughly...rather than just saying “oh, it’s my ego” and calling it a day. It is not “the ego” which is “let go of”...it is the unconscious repeating of the thought pattern, that there is an ego, which is surrendered. In such case, in removing the ‘write off’....you’re “listening” to feeling, intuition, conscience - source...you...rather than an arising thought....”ego”.

That actually cleared up a lot, thank you. I do have a habit of dismissing certain thoughts and feelings as "ego", and it's caused me to create a separation within myself while trying to do the exact opposite. I tried contemplating my fear, but I never tried facing it head on and letting myself feel it. 

[Nahm]

@Dlavjr ????

”Fear” is a word created to describe how we feel about stuff, having forgotten there is only Love, and no “stuff’. Anything sufficiently inspected, vanishes...as what a thing is (including fear)...is but our own projection of what is. When we see through fear, we’ve assimilated it, in now knowing it as our self, our own being. This is why, when overcoming fears, we feel bigger, fuller, larger, more whole, unstoppable, ultimately realizing our true immortality, and the full circle shocking obviousness of it. 

[Stakres]

On 1/4/2020 at 10:57 PM, Dlavjr said:

Now, normally I'd imagine this would be a liberating experience, but for some reason, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't let go. I tried very hard to let go [...]

What I'm experiencing doesn't feel like awakening, as it seems like I'm seeing awakening through an ego perspective, causing the ego to essentially see its own nonexistence. I'd like to overcome this, I feel like I've hit a wall in my progress, any advice is appreciated. 

What do you think is awakening? Question everything you were lead to believe in this forum about awakening. Awakening is probably not what you were lead to believe here. It's much simpler than that.

Question, why do you try very hard to let go of ego? Why do you overcome that? Why do you feel you've hit a wall?

[Dlavjr]

6 hours ago, Stakres said:

What do you think is awakening? Question everything you were lead to believe in this forum about awakening. Awakening is probably not what you were lead to believe here. It's much simpler than that.

Question, why do you try very hard to let go of ego? Why do you overcome that? Why do you feel you've hit a wall?

I try not to conceptualize what awakening is because I feel like that will lead to delusion, which is what I'm afraid of. I feel like I'm getting tongue twisted by overthinking it, however I think my body is telling me that it's time to stop smoking weed, because all these neurotic obsessive thoughts are only really prominent when I smoke. 

My experiences with, what I will call "degrees of awakening" (I in no way mean to imply that I'm fully awakened, but I feel like I've had incredible insights pointing me towards it) lead me to believe that enlightenment is achieved through acknowledging that everything is happening in this very moment. What's tripping me up is the mindfuckery that I've experienced in drugs, where I experience different facets of reality and see the endless of the scope of being. I try to let go of my ego because, when faced with these experiences, I have a hard time just allowing them to happen, as my ego immediately senses the danger of nonexistence, and my thoughts run rampid into worrying about driving myself insane, my whole life story being fabricated, etc. I feel a separation in that part of me, again while sober, understands that I imagined my entire life story, and my sense of self is limited to what I percieve it to be. However, another part of me, usually when actually faced with infinity and experiencing the endless, formlessness that I experience through weed and psychadelics, gets an intense sense of anxiety and fear. It's like I understand that I need to let go, but I can't. I feel like I've hit a wall because everything just seems to be looping back into itself, but it seems like the answer for me is to just let myself experience the fear, and let my experiences become one. I think I've made too many separations, too many dualities, and I'm straying further from the point. Correct me if I'm wrong. 

[Forestluv]

@Dlavjr There have been times I’ve felt on the edge and my sense was to take a deep breath and continue through it. And there have been times I’ve been on the edge and my sense was to back off and allow my mind and body some time and space to integrate and acclimate. 

[WelcometoReality]

On 2020-01-05 at 2:55 PM, Nahm said:

@Dlavjr Feel directly into the fear. It is not what the thinking thinks it is. That is being “written off” by repeatedly believing there are two of you; the Self & the ego. You’ve never experienced being two, only ever One. Bring attention to what you have thus far in life been inattentive to - the acceptance of such ‘write off’ thoughts. Inspect them, thoroughly...rather than just saying “oh, it’s my ego” and calling it a day. It is not “the ego” which is “let go of”...it is the unconscious repeating of the thought pattern, that there is an ego, which is surrendered. In such case, in removing the ‘write off’....you’re “listening” to feeling, intuition, conscience - source...you...rather than an arising thought....”ego”.

Wow. Very nicely put.