Can I use psychedelics as my psychology teacher?

[Tristan12]

There is a lot I want to learn about emotional healing work. I spend a lot of time contemplating the questions I have, and of course I have books, people to talk to and other resources to learn from, but i'm specifically curious about using psychedelics for learning, specifically for questions I have that would be difficult to get answered otherwise.

I know that you can of course get some really profound insights from psychedelics, but what I want to know is could I take a psychedelic and then list off a bunch of questions I have and then get them all answered directly? I know that psychedelic insights often come from a journey or experience on the psychedelic that eventually provide an answer, rather than being like if I was to ask someone a question and they give me a direct answer. If I took say mushrooms or ayahuasca or something, is it likely that I could communicate with an entity or just contemplate on my own a list of different questions I have and quickly get answers to them as if I was asking those questions to a real person? The thing that concerns me is how specific and detailed some of my questions are and i'm not sure if they're the kind of thing that psychedelics could provide answers for.

Also, i've thought about using psychedelics for the sake of exploring and learning about my shadow and subconscious mind, and to understand how to work with it. The fact that psychedelics can thrust you head first into your subconscious mind seems like it would be such a good way to learn about it and understand it rather than only reading books about it or trying to access your shadow sober.

If I had a trip and set the intention to learn about that, is it likely that the psychedelic would show me about my shadow and how it works and basically the entire trip be a detailed learning experience, answering any questions I have? Or is it more likely that I might get some brief or less specific insights and the psychedelic would take me where it wants to go instead?

Thanks

[actuallyenlightened]

From my experience, it's not very efficient trying to get specific questions answered. My mind seems to know which part of the shadow to dissolve next and following a different order doesn't feel right - kind of like trying to understand how a transistor works before learning about electricity. I believe understanding psychology is the type of thing that is intuitive - where once you solve a part of the shadow, it just clicks in your mind and seems obvious. But the work is much more emotional than logical in nature. 

Without doing this work, someone can logically tell you all of the answers and you can memorize them without really understanding them

[Leo Gura]

Yes, of course. However you shouldn't expect the answers to just come to you, you should expect to do the work to think the matters through until the answer emerges.

Contemplation on steroids, basically.

[Tristan12]

44 minutes ago, actuallyenlightened said:

From my experience, it's not very efficient trying to get specific questions answered. My mind seems to know which part of the shadow to dissolve next and following a different order doesn't feel right - kind of like trying to understand how a transistor works before learning about electricity. I believe understanding psychology is the type of thing that is intuitive - where once you solve a part of the shadow, it just clicks in your mind and seems obvious. But the work is much more emotional than logical in nature. 

Without doing this work, someone can logically tell you all of the answers and you can memorize them without really understanding them

I'm interested in learning about emotional healing and psychology not just for the sake of healing myself but also just for the sake of having the understanding, since this work is my life purpose and area of mastery and something I want to learn as much as I can about. I'm working on trying to create healing processes that can be used sober, so I'm more interested in using psychedelics to assist in gaining the understandings to figure out how I would do that, rather than using them for healing directly. That's why I'm wondering if I could ask/contemplate very specific and nuanced questions on psychs and still get solid answers.

[Tristan12]

34 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, of course. However you shouldn't expect the answers to just come to you, you should expect to do the work to think the matters through until the answer emerges.

Contemplation on steroids, basically.

Okay. Do you find you are still able to contemplate very specific and nuanced questions while on psychedelics? I get the impression they would be good for more broad questions like what is death or what is consciousness, but I'm not so sure about something very specific. For example I know ayahuasca is known for its healing abilities and I would be curious to take it just for the sake of understanding the psychology behind it and how the healing actually gets created, for the sake of trying to recreate it sober. I don't know how likely it is I'd be able to get that specific of an answer.

Also, what psychedelics do you recommend specifically for contemplation? I've heard that some tend to take you where they want and others let you have more control, which i'm guessing is what you'd look for for contemplation. And i'm guessing you wouldn't want too high of a dose, for the sake of still being able to think and use your mind relatively normally?

[AuroraDream]

Mdma has been personally my best learning experiences. Learned so much about myself then anything else, on the trip, but more so after the trip, as i would a nice afterglow for about a month where I could continue to feel into myself easier than normal.

 

I also learned that a lot of the questions I thought I wanted to know while sober, I realized I was just playing with fire, and didn't actually want them answered. Because contemplation can get very much so potentiated on psychs. You can potentially learn anything or get any answer but may or may not be authentic timing or ready to recieve those answers. The mind being so out of touch from being for so long can trick us into thinking we want things that we don't actually want or are ready for and psych showed me that. I've only taken m a small handful of times and its been a full year of learning

[Leo Gura]

19 hours ago, Tristan12 said:

Okay. Do you find you are still able to contemplate very specific and nuanced questions while on psychedelics? I get the impression they would be good for more broad questions like what is death or what is consciousness, but I'm not so sure about something very specific.

The issue will be that psychedelics put you into such profound states that your petty human questions become irrelevant. So you will tend to ask bigger, more existential questions. But you could also ask smaller questions if you were still interested in them.

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For example I know ayahuasca is known for its healing abilities and I would be curious to take it just for the sake of understanding the psychology behind it and how the healing actually gets created, for the sake of trying to recreate it sober. I don't know how likely it is I'd be able to get that specific of an answer.

You can def inquire about psychological blocks and how healing works.

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Also, what psychedelics do you recommend specifically for contemplation?

It's hard to say because people react uniquely to each chemical. You'd have to experiment around and find what works for you.

The higher the dose the less relevant your petty human questions will tend to be. So stick to lower doses and less powerful psychedelics. For example, the 5-MeO class is probably too powerful for contemplating human material.

[LSD-Rumi]

@Tristan12 Use microdoses at first, do like 20 of them to prepare you for bigger trips. Don't start with high doses. Microdoses are far better for healing purposes.