Questions on Dissociation and Spiritual Practices

[electroBeam]

I took some salvia extract (20x) the other day, and unlike most people's trips, I felt a deep deep sense of familiarity. To approximate the experience, the physical avatar was recognized as a bottle of coke that someone was drinking. My memories supported that of a bottle of coke (remember birth as a bottle of coke, and my life as a bottle of coke). It deepened my understanding of pain, as it showed me that identification with any object can lead to pain because the morphing of that object is what causes the pain if you're attached to that object's form.

Yet I reacted a bit differently to most people, and that's what this post is mainly about. I didn't experience much terror, and I wasn't that attached to either the human or bottle form.

And the main reason is because I've been able to get high off salvia sober all my human life without realizing it (on a relative level). I remember as a kid dissociating into objects, for example one time I was doing an exam in school, and I was concentrating so hard in the exam that my human memories morphed into the paper exam and I was the exam paper for a few minutes.

So I did some research and found out that there are people who do this, and they are people with 'dissociation disorder'. And I resonate a lot with the descriptions, yet I wouldn't consider it purely unhealthy.

I tend to get quite dissociated when doing spiritual practice. Its not uncommon for me to get amnesia type symptoms when meditating or doing contemplation, and it is uncomfortable. Its also not uncommon for me to feel like my eyes turn to cockroach feelers so to speak, because I introspect so deeply that my sensory field looses its focus and I just go into pure perception mode, and that's when the conditions are ripe for amnesia and morphing into different objects, or just pure formlessness. Rarely am I in the sensory mode these days, its mainly just perception, its like I don't have eyes, or I'm not supervising the eyes, I trust the eyes can do its survival stuff while I rest in perception.

The downside of dissociation is you can feel very very lost, especially if minor amounts of amnesia kicks in for a few moments. After contemplating sometimes I don't know who was contemplating, what object it was, sometimes I'm scrambling to remember whether the object was a bottle, computer, human, plant or animal. I don't know what form I came from, or whether I actually came from a form. This can feel uncomfortable too.

What are people's attitudes of dissociation on the path? Do people just sit with it, do they try and avoid it (in what ways can they do this), is it inevitable on the path, or is it an anomaly. If people feel deeply dissociated what's your method for getting associated again?

[Corpus]

Dissociation comes in a variety of flavours; the salvia dissociation has an added dysphoric component for many users which is distinct from the dissociation provided by stuff like ketamine etc, and makes it a less sure-fire method for a "good time". To qualify as a disorder, a psychiatrist would want to see other "criteria being fulfilled" such as an adverse effect on several domains of functioning, or causing subjective distress. Assuming this is not the case then at times we all dissociate a little, and ultimately, if not disorderly, it is just another label.

[electroBeam]

6 minutes ago, Corpus said:

Dissociation comes in a variety of flavours; the salvia dissociation has an added dysphoric component for many users which is distinct from the dissociation provided by stuff like ketamine etc, and makes it a less sure-fire method for a "good time". To qualify as a disorder, a psychiatrist would want to see other "criteria being fulfilled" such as an adverse effect on several domains of functioning, or causing subjective distress. Assuming this is not the case then at times we all dissociate a little, and ultimately, if not disorderly, it is just another label.

oh ok, salvia must have been ketamine for me then.

[Grateful Dead]

when I get dissociated from drugs I just let go of the past and focus on whats happening now

not sure if this is helpful for your situation