How To: Natural Drug/Opioid, Pleasure Production Without Substance Use EXPLAINED

[ardacigin]

Hi everyone! Recently, a new and deeper form of understanding and practice has occured in my life. I just want to share what is happening with all of you in the hope that it can motivate you for what is possible.

As someone who has some grasp of how the mind can construct pleasure or pain intentionally through deep equanimity and insight recognition, I didn't expect one could literally suffuse the ENTIRE body (toes- legs-back-arms-head) with actual morphine levels of pleasure and pain killer effect one would get in hospitals for a panic attack. And to able to this on demand, with intentional control. In a few seconds. 

This is beyond curing depression. After some latest neuroscience readings on dopaminergic circuits in the brain and how it changes with practice and time, it matches perfectly with my direct experience. 

So here is what happened. I'll also tell you how it might come to be at this phase in my life:

1- The joy and pleasure I was experiencing in the sides of my head for years now has jumped and spread towards both of my legs one day as I was half meditation/ half sleeping. I'll tell you soon my theory on why it arise all of a sudden.

2- Now, I can experience drug levels of pleasure in 2 aspects of my being almost instantly at the same time: Head and entirety of my legs. The quality of pleasure I experience on my legs is much more sophisticated and has a higher ceiling of hedonism compared to what I was experiencing with my head area. I assume some different brain circuitry has kicked in to produce this pleasure.

3- Unfortunately, this requires a deeper form of mindfulness and stronger detection skills both to produce the pleasure and to maintain it. I can currently do it comfortable laying down but it is unstable. It is overall very challenging to do in daily life. But I feel like I can do it.

The effect it provides can literally erase depression out of this entire planet. I still am shocked how the brain can produce so much pleasure in a few seconds going from 'neutral-no pleasure- dissatisfaction' to 'No-pain, SIGNIFICANT pleasure suffused in every inch of your being- satisfaction'

4- Some days passed. I've practice every day. And all of a sudden, the pleasure has spread to my chest, back and arms as well. Now the morphine levels of pleasure is suffused in the entire body top to bottom. This facilitates much more tranquility and equanimity.

5- Unfortunately, this requires even deeper form of mindfulness and stronger detection skills both to produce the pleasure and to maintain it. I thought:

'This is silly now. There is no way I can maintain this in daily life while walking, talking to people, playing combat heavy action games, watching movies etc. Because if so, this will change my life and I'll have this natural opioid production I can develop at will for the rest of my life'.

6- A day later, I've practice an hour laying down to stabilize this. I had to do some leg stretches while laying down to spread enough awareness and stabilize the pleasure. When it was done, I took a walk and I can maintain it. I can do it. Talked with people, it is there. As long as my mindfulness stays strong, I can maintain it until I waver in introspective awareness.

It is a trainable skill. It requires more care and awareness to maintain but it is significantly more rewarding and healing as well. So it is a no brainer trade off.

7- Now, I've realized that even this whole body drug can be established as a baseline. Now, this is one of the aspects I'll be working on daily going forward with insight practices.

----

How & Why This Mıght Have Occured:

Recently, I've been investigating how pain arises on the nervous system. How it is a mental construct as we experience normally with a lot of suffering. I've been watching 'House MD' and in there, House has this leg pain condition he suffers from due to faulty diagnosis (muscle death) and tries to reduce the pain with popping countless 'Vicodin' pills every day.

I've been fairly focused on my legs these past few weeks and months due to his battle with this pain. I was wondering how his pain is arising and why the brain can't construct pleasurable sensations if he was perfectly healthy and didn't experience this muscle death.

What is playing a role in how to interpret and produce sensations in the body? What is our filter? Are we really as powerless as we assume we are?

I was focusing on these questions and investigating my conscious experience for a long time now. 

And all of a sudden, a lot of pleasure spreads to my legs.

...That can't be a coincidence.

Unconscious parts of my mind must have been churning this issue without me realizing and have arrived at a conclusion independent of me. I assume this was their rationale:

'Yes! We are constructing both pain and pleasure for the survival purposes. In order for the 'self' to take an action. We can actually pump you with morphine and pleasure on the legs as well. But pain and dissatisfacion is there to help you take action so we don't do that on default. 

Hmm. Providing negative stimulus puts us in a bad mood. And depression spirals one further into passivity, pessimism. That would also reduce one's survival chances. I guess it is too crude of a way to force someone to action. It appears it is back firing on us.

Hmm. So one can act and experience life even more effectively and accurately if craving is reduced, satisfaction is increased and pleasure aids our perceptions and introspective awareness. It is a tool you can use, huh?

It makes sense. When you intend for some pleasure tomorrow morning, we'll pump your legs with drug levels of pleasure. Use it to go forward with it. Adios!'

 Thanks, my mind. I knew you always had the potential for greatness. I'll practice and go forward with this realization

If you guys have any commentary or want to share your experiences, let me know below.

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by ardacigin

[flowboy]

Very cool!

I doubt people with actual serious depression have the cognitive energy to learn this, though. Bit of a catch-22

[ardacigin]

7 minutes ago, flowboy said:

Very cool!

I doubt people with actual serious depression have the cognitive energy to learn this, though. Bit of a catch-22

Of course. But it is a learnable and trainable skill. At least knowing the terrain and working hard is much more empowering and accurate (since it is mind generated) than to accept defeat and throw in the towel to spiral further into depression. 

I did this coming from a depressed state of mind 2-3 years ago. Actual unhappy and depressed brain. There is something called ' a discontinuous jump' in consciousness where some of the old habits and paradigms dissolve unconsciously in a second after a long process of maturation. That is what happened to me one day in meditation.

So, it is possible and no depressed person should be hopeless. Do the work. Try to enjoy it. Train the mind and be diligent.

Edited July 16, 2021 by ardacigin

[flowboy]

Awesome!

You should teach this to people and make money. Not joking.

[Consilience]

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing your practice updates and showing this community what is possible with deep practice. I remember watching a video of Peter Ralston where he said he can go from a normal state into ecstatic bliss within seconds and at the time, I just couldn't understand how this would be humanly possible. I fell into the "he must be spiritually gifted" trap which of course is total bs. I mean yeah he may be gifted but getting to this phase of practice is not as hard as people tend to think, it just requires a commitment most people don't have and requires one to deconstruct their beliefs around what is possible with the natural sober state, something this community struggles with collectively. 

Just a slight update on my own progress, yes I'm entering into this type of territory as well. Every time I sit down to practice, within seconds I'm either feeling bliss or perception is breaking apart into a fluid interplay of form and formlessness. I've started breaking into the arising and passing phase of vipassana practice where my moment by moment detection skills are piercing into the dynamics of how reality is unfolding at the smallest resolutions of time possible such that perception is experienced as spacious, almost holographic, ephemeral, etc. If we think of how psychedelics make everything seem fluid and wavy, that's exactly how I experience perception every time I formally practice, and sometimes I'll spontaneously fall into that during just everyday life. 

I'm not quite where you are in terms of the pleasure production. I've spent a significant portion of the last 6 months practicing within a serious dry-insight/shikantaza context but have recently gotten back into jhana practice and to my surprise, I'm able to very easily enter into AT LEAST a light jhana's 1-3, and I believe because of the insight practice 4-7 come quite naturally and I dare say, easily. Jhana 8 is still a mystery to me though; I had a glimpse of it during a meditation retreat but it's absurdly subtle. Right now I'm working on stabilizing and amplifying jhana's 1-3 and playing with 4-7. 

The last big breakthrough I've been having with practice is that I'm starting to directly experience absolute infinity. I honestly have no words nor really understand how to put this into language... But the present moment is infinite. The formless void, the underlying context out of which perception arises and passes back into moment by moment is infinite. 

4 hours ago, ardacigin said:

Talked with people, it is there. As long as my mindfulness stays strong, I can maintain it until I waver in introspective awareness.

This is interesting. Because I've been working in the Unified Mindfulness rather than TMI model for awhile now, I haven't emphasized introspective awareness. When I maintain the overall mindfulness using the See Hear Feel noting technique, I can enter into the spacious fluidity of A&P while in daily life, without having to have direct mindfulness over the mind. Sometimes no formal technique is required and the mind just slips into it. Very interesting the parallels and differences between these models of mindfulness. 

Just out of curiosity:

Have you gone on any meditation retreats? I actually ended up doing 3 online retreats (8, 11, 9 days respectively) with Shinzen over the pandemic and each one skyrocketed my practice to new depths. 

Are you still doing 2 hours daily practice? I'm currently doing 2 hours most days, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. 

[Bodhitree]

I’d watch out for trying to influence these sensations overmuch. 

[OneHandClap]

You may be interested in trying out Buddhist jhanas. They work very similarly with stimulating and sustaining pleasant feelings to enter deeper states of consciousness. 

[ardacigin]

2 hours ago, Consilience said:

I remember watching a video of Peter Ralston where he said he can go from a normal state into ecstatic bliss within seconds and at the time, I just couldn't understand how this would be humanly possible.

Hi Ethan. I haven't heard him say that and it is very intriguing. Can you send the link to me if you can find it :))

Your progress is going really well. Great and deep insights are maturing.

2 hours ago, Consilience said:

Just out of curiosity:

Have you gone on any meditation retreats? I actually ended up doing 3 online retreats (8, 11, 9 days respectively) with Shinzen over the pandemic and each one skyrocketed my practice to new depths. 

I live in Turkey. There are no retreats here and I can't go abroad for retreats right now and haven't had the oppoırtunity due to work, family etc. So I've been doing all this practice at home with maybe 1-2 day retreats at most. I'm curious about online retreats. If it was effective for you, can you send me Shinzen's link  

I also recently watched Shinzen's interview here on dopamine circuits. You might find it interesting: 

 

2 hours ago, Consilience said:

Are you still doing 2 hours daily practice? I'm currently doing 2 hours most days, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. 

I'm not doing 2-hour sessions for awhile now. I'm focusing on quality in each moment but soon go further with endurance training. I'm doing somewhere around 45-60 mins but put the emphasis on daily practice.

Especially when this whole body pleasure becomes second nature, I'll attempt 3-4 hour SDS  sits. But I'm not quite there just yet. It is definitely on my to-do list when I feel ready :))

[Consilience]

@ardacigin Amazing man ? Would love to hear how a 3-4 hour SDS sit goes. And thank you for the guru viking link! 

The online retreats were much more powerful than I would have imagined. Somehow the shared intentionality of the fellow retreat goers transcends space.. lol. You can feel the collectivity of the group even over zoom. Also the most powerful part about onlines are that you’re fully integrated in your home environment, which translates REALLY well with integrating the retreat back into daily life. Ill send you some links for Shinzen’s retreats. Not sure how often he’ll be doing onlines now that the pandemic is more under control, but Ive heard him say he’ll keep doing them because they scale so well, are just as powerful as normal residentials, and allow people who don’t have as much money full access. 

Super stocked to hear about how your first retreat goes, whenever that may be! 

Thank you again for such a high quality post. Always love your Actualized forum content. ?