The fear of becoming an old smelly cheese - [Mushroom trip]

[Sanity]

The fear of becoming an old smelly cheese

I have decided to call my perfectionism a disorder, even though I haven’t been diagnosed with it. I don’t know if a diagnose called perfectionism disorder even exists, but I feel like my perfectionism is a handicap from time to time. My trip intentions are therefore heavily tilted towards dissolving or reducing my need for perfection.

I’m currently using the following trip protocol to increase my chances for this intent and personal development in general.

https://www.trippingly.net/lsd-studies/2018/10/13/using-the-psychedelic-experience-for-personal-growth?fbclid=IwAR2DfkVlCMq5N7dJB0wA2VRMx2vJxtOXbM_ZhBmE87MUdNHMP6UrefJgEF8

 

What is personal development for me?

To mention a few then personal development at the current time is all about:

Calming the monkey brain inside my illusionary skull.

Being less reactive in my daily life.

Feeling and accepting more emotions into my life.

Being honest to myself and others.

Having the motivation and courage to work towards my dreams.

Opening my mind to explore radical perceptions.

Accepting myself more.

 

[Trip report]

Blood was flowing before my eyes and I was witnessing the deep dungeons of decay, sickness and old age. The face of a man was infested with yellow blisters and his hair was starting to fall off.

 

I was sitting in my bed with closed eyes and was trying to find beauty in the face. The eyeballs fell out of the face due to decay and I open my eyes and said:

 

 “For fuck shake, I can’t love this shit, this is disgusting”.

 

I was working on reducing my perfectionism urges about visual appearance and health. I closed my eyes again, I wanted to allow myself to love all the imperfections the face had. I was opening and closing my eyes in intervals until I could muster keeping them closed and watch decay and sickness in its different forms.

 

The voice of the trip then asked me “what is the most horrifying and disgusting thing you know?". 

 

I was thinking to myself “ooooh man, this is fucking mental". 

 

Out of nowhere a dark brown table turned up in my vision and a plate was sliding over the table.

 

My thoughts: “what is happening now?”

 

Then from the top of my vision periphery, a slimy smelly cheese fell on the plate making a loud “splash" sound.

 

My thoughts: “haha what the hell is going here”

 

I felt like my trip went 180 degrees.

 

Trip voice: “Rasmus, do you want to be this smelly cheese”

 

I have in previous trips been asked by the mysterious voice if wanted to become random strangers I spotted from my apartment window or people I know. I tried many times to build up the openness and courage to dive down into this rabbit hole. So far I have only failed, my fear has been too overwhelming, it seems too unknown, and I’m afraid of losing myself totally in the process. It feels like, I would completely merge into this other person and forget everything about myself if I did so. Even though everything seems to be an illusion, even myself, then It’s hard to be okay with leaving the illusion behind, and enter a new illusion or freeing oneself from all illusions.

 

The cheese in my vision was slimy and smelly.

 

Trip voice: “Do you want to be a smelly cheese, Rasmus?”

 

I imagined myself trying to get friends and picking up attractive girls while being a smelly cheese. If I were a smelly cheese, how the fuck would I ever be loved? I felt the endless pool of loneliness. I was pulled down into it, I was falling deeper and deeper into the hole of loneliness.

 

I yelled: “ I don’t want to become a stinking old cheese! Ahh!"

 

The loneliness felt too overwhelming to me.

 

Trip setting: So actually I’m not doing this trip alone, I usually have my best pal Kelvin on board while doing the trips. Normally we will be sitting in my bed meditating and doing our trip next to each other. We don’t interfere with each other trips much, its only to make sure, that one of us doesn’t do anything stupid like jumping out of a window or something. When we are near the end of the trips, we try to summarise, what happened on our trips, such that we don’t forget the visions, feelings and findings on the trips. Which we then later write down in rough details, such that our findings in the trip, can be implemented in our daily life if it makes sense to implement that is.

 

I had forgotten Kelvin was in the room, I had even forgotten, that I was in a room and that I was a human at all. Kelvin burst into tears and laughter and told me that he was in the deep dark corners of his consciousness and that the fear of being a cheese, was so far away from his reality that one possibility could be. We were laughing our asses for solid 5-10 min and continued into the depth of our consciousness.

 

My second trip goal merged into the trip experience.

 

The fear of being misunderstood:

 

My perfectionism want's control and it wants me to be a perfect unicorn in the eyes of other people. This means that even in a simple conversation, I have the urges to overexplain my ideas and perceptions, such that the chances for misunderstanding my points are less likely. 

 

Inner demon dialog: Kelvin thinks you are stupid for having such small and pathetic visions. He doesn't understand you, it is out of context.

 

I feel the urge to tell Kelvin the full context.

 

Inner demon dialog: Rasmus you are stupid, the bullies from you high school was right about you, you are just a pathetic stupid looser.

 

An enormous curiosity towards this insecurity merges into the experience. I decide not to tell Kelvin more about the fear of becoming a cheese. I want to explore this sensation of being misunderstood. 

 

A vast amount of feeling comes up from my childhood, the sorrow of not being good enough and that I'm waste of air.

 

I get the feeling of a warm blanket coming over me, it's hugging me and giving me comfort. 

 

The blanket tells me a secret: "They will only understand if they want to understand, give them time to sprout, it might happen, it might not, but it is easier to forgive than to forget".

 

The blanket pulls me into the mind of my childhood bullies, it tries to make me understand their actions, and why they did what they did. such that I could fully forgive them.

 

At some point, the trip explains to me, that I will always be both in front, behind or equal in development to my peers, and in the end, it will only be me competing against myself. Everything is connected, Kelvin, all the people I know and don't know, are in the end myself in disguise. You are stimulating and provoking yourself over and over again until you get it and resting peacefully in it.

 

The voice of the trip: "The people you are surrounded by has the most dominant traits of yourself, if you study them closely, you might find out, who you are".

 

I'm moved into a blurry vision, where I hear a distant voice: "Mooom! mooom! I found it, I really found it!"

 

Woman: "I didn't doubt for a second, that you wouldn't"

 

The woman leans into my chest and gives me heartwarming smile and a kiss.

 

The woman isn't particularly beautiful, but I feel love and in love to such an extent that my chest feels like, it's going to blow up any second.

 

I'm doing the dishes with the little girl, which feels like my daughter, and I feel so blessed to be in the situation that I'm in. I start to cry of joy, while the vision closes down again.

 

The experience merges into the passion of my startup. So currently I have a fulltime job as a Mechanical engineer consultant, and normally when I get home, I would start working on my startup, if I'm not too burned out that is. The trips show me, that my startup will succeed if I believe it enough. It almost feels like, I can manifest the technology to work, due to the fact that everything is an illusion. It shows me, that If I quit my day job, then my startup will succeed, and I will automatically get the necessary money to make it happen and have more than enough to make it my primary source of income.

 

At some point, I open my eyes to the shock, that I'm in my room again with Kelvin, it feels like I can teleport to other realities/dimensions with the blink of an eye. I close my eyes but at the same time opening my eyes in another reality and then closes my eyes again and are back in my room with Kelvin. 

 

At some point in the trip, I start to draw on one of the unfinished drawings in my sketchbook. I remember, when I started on the drawing a few months back, I wanted it to be perfect and gave up in the process, because I gave myself too much pressure. Now I just pulled up my pencil and started drawing from intuition. I didn't really know what I was drawing, I was just drawing. The pencil strokes seem like they were controlled by someone else. I was just the medium in which the drawing was made. I visualised myself as a printer and I was drawing as I was one. I felt the need to both draw detailed and simplistic just to disturb my perfection disorder and prove to myself that multiple art styles can be used in one drawing. At some point, it seemed like the drawing already was on the paper, but I knew I hadn't touched the paper in that area at all. I was wondering if I stopped drawing would it then still be there when the trip was over. I decided just to continue with the drawing, and I noticed in the end, that hadn't even used my eraser at all. Normally I would erase and draw constantly until my perfectionism would be satisfied.

 

While drawing I was wondering, why I even needed to have a job, food and friends. It felt like, everything just was a massive illusion, and that if I truly wanted it to be, then I could just sit in my bed drawing for the rest of eternity without food, sleep and other things categorized as necessary to stay alive.

 

[End of trip report]

So with my current trip protocol, I normally try to put my trip visions into concrete actions to work on in my daily life to get more out of my trips. For a week after the trip I each day dedicate a bit of my meditation on these actions and the trip in general, to see if I can get more insights to my current life situation.

 

Action sum up:

• If I get misunderstood, estimate if it makes sense to make people understand or just leave it be.
• Try to love everything even though you are disgusted by it.
  • Try to love every flaw you have
  • Write down all the disgust you feel and try to understand them.
• Study reactions patterns I daily life from yourself and your surroundings, try to spot the unnecessary ones.
• Be okay with not being perfect, allow things being at their current state and it over time might or might not bloom into something beautiful.
  • Career
  • Drawings
  • Perceptions
  • Body 
  • Health
• Be creative try a bit of everything and mix them to create an even better experience.
  • Drawings
  • Hobbies
  • Jobs 
• Challenge the idea of losing yourself totally.
• Draw less with an eraser at the start of a drawing, feel whatever comes up and draw.

I hope you like it, let me know what you think of my approach, interpretation and whatever comes to your mind. 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Sanity

[Jay Ray]

Wow this is powerful to read.  it reminds me of the weird distorted childhood logic that I had when I was like 4 years old.  

a few months ago during meditation I had that same experience when my inner monolog said "I will never think that spit is beautiful". then a few days later I tried looking at my on spit in the mirror and it looked cool, or alien and mysteriously beautiful and I was shocked that my own spit could look the way it did only buy testing that idea that "it is disgusting" when it is only the cultural idea that it is gross. Maybe an authority figure says that that "this body process is shameful" and it is the shame that causes the suffering. 

I can almost picture this cheese trip thing in my own mind right now and I want you to know that you are not alone. I have without any substances at all had many many times in my life where I have had distorted weird thoughts and they can be very useful if they are not looked at as "wierd" or "something to be suppressed" 

 

 

 

 

[Sanity]

@Jay Ray

Thanks for sharing, it warms to hear that you had similar experiences, it makes the journey less lonely and broadens my perspective. 

It doesn't seem like a silly idea at all, in my experience most advertisement and Hollywood movies seem to paint that exact idea, that you should prevent the ageing body process at all cost. I can't say at the current time if I had experiences besides that, which made me fear this, but there is no doubt that 2-3 decades of advertisement and movies can make you believe and fear stupid things. 

I can only agree suppressing "weird thoughts" won't solve anything, and there is definitely a lot to learn from them. I feel like it takes time or at least for me to dissolve/reduce/love these insecurities and habits, which I have lived with for a long time.

But one step at the time seems to work