Thoughts about different stages of consciousness + trip report

[Naol]

A) Access an infinity of stages of consciousness

My bf and I don't have the same experiences during trips and I have been willing to investigate that. His experiences are more about being connected to his self without any concepts. He is present to his body, mind and environnement, but without expectations, fears, limiting beliefs, projections… He told me he experiences his "lived body" as Merleau-Ponty (french phenomenologist) puts it. In a way, he his staying "humain",  identifying with his body and mind , without the "noise" of concepts.
 

My experiences are different. I am usually not connected to my body anymore, or my self. I don't see my environnement because the trip takes me far away from this reality. I realise the infinity of God, its love, its beauty, that I am God. In my opinion, what my bf experiences is one kind of truth, and I experience other kind of truths, being in stages of consciousness in which knowing is coming without the necessity to be aware of my environnement to find truth in it. Knowing just appears and I am focusing on it, so my relation to my body / self / environnement is almost non-existing.

 

For this trip, I decided to try to access the stage of consciousness my bf seems to access easily, the "lived body". I think I succeeded, and here are my thoughts about that and stages of consciousness.

 

1 - A model of consciousness stages

 

I watched the movie "everything, everywhere, all at once" recently and it helped me to come with this representation of consciousness stages (see image). If you watched, it could help you to understand too. In this model :
      -  Each kind of stage can be understand as one "universe" in itself, in that we can endlessly explore this stage. Each universe contains some truths. No truth is more valuable than another, but some are more distant from our everyday life than others

The center point is the stage of consciousness we live in most part of the time, in which we are identifying to our body and thoughts

Obviously, in this way to put it each "universe" or stage contains substages of consciousness (that is why I represented layers to each point)

The further you go away from the everyday life stage of consciousness, the less you identify to the body and thoughts about yourself. For example, when you realise you are God, you don't identify that much to your body, or yourself (see image). You are less Morgan, John (or whatever) and more God.

All of these stages of consciousness are suppose to be included in consciousness (?). But not sure about that.

In a same trip, we can access different stages of consciousness (and so different truths), but that is not always the case

The number of stages and truths we can access through these stages is infinite.

This model is imperfect, but my point is that we can access stage of consciousness in which we are more or less identifying to our body and mind. For me, the stage in which we connect to our "lived body" is a stage not that far from our everyday life stage of consciousness, compared to the one in which we understand that we are everything.

 

What do you think about this model? Does it seems accurate to you somehow? What are my blind spots?

 

 

2 - Rationality prevents us from accessing consciousness's stages further from ego

 

Rationality is an attachment that can prevent us from accessing stages of consciousness that are far from our everyday life stage. I am talking here about rationality not in the sense of seeking truth, but in the sense of wanting the realisation to fit a certain frame that we are attached to, which is a resistance to truth. I think the way to get over it is to cultivate a strong and honest curiosity.

Also, it is a question of how much mushrooms - or whatever else - you take. I guess if you take a lot your rationality will not be weaken.

 

 

3 -  It is useful to explore stages of consciousness in which we are still identifying to our body and mind

 

I feel like what @Leo Gura is doing is, in a way, going as far as possible from the "ego" (if I understand well). I have been following this path, but being connected to my "lived body" during my last trip, I had a totally different experience than usual which allowed me to tap into my personal power and erase my irrational fears. I felt energetic, strong, curious, kind of "masculine", the center of my experience ; while in my everyday life I feel vulnerable, pretty anxious, a bit sad, not confident and pretty much alway focused on external things, wondering if my mom, sister, bf, cat or whatever is feeling good or if I should do something for them. I was less empathic at this moment, focused on myself and my thinking and this was GOOD!

Actually, this reminded me why I can't stand talks about how women are naturally (and so should be) taking care of others, empathic and so on. That is fucking exhausting even when you don't have kids, and this is what prevents a lot of women to shine intellectually - or in other ways. I suffer from this interpretation of gender because it is printed so profoundly in myself that I struggle a lot to get rid of that and find my place in the world as someone who is trying to be wise and unleash my intellectual potential. Part of it is that I don't know any women who are teaching spirituality in a way I resonate with (means really trying to find truth) so I struggle to find a model I can identify with. Plus men who are teaching spirituality / personal improvement are often speaking from their male experience and are often ignoring women problems. And since Leo said is audience is 95% male, I get it. If you know women who are teaching spirituality in an interesting way, I would love you to drop a comment about that I have been trying to find other way to overcome these beliefs about gender, but I haven't succeeded yet. But anyway I digress.

 

In a way, this kind of experience is much more easy to integrate in my personal life than the realisation that I am God, or an awakening to Absolute Truth. Depends on our personal goal, but I think somehow it is useful to go this way if we want to improve our everyday life.
In a way, it could work a bit like Spiral Dynamics: each stage is necessary to gain wisdom, and it's worth it explore stages in which you are not totally detached from your ego.

 

4 - Soooo subjective

 

I just realised how my perception of reality is profoundly and deeply unique. It not possible for anyone to get exactly the same experience. And I would never have access to anyone experience, and so not understand them completely, which is beautiful and sad at the same time. This also could mean that I will never ever realise God completely, among other for this reason. 

 

 

B) Tripping with gf or bf to look for truth + deepen the relationship

 

1 - Integrate the knowing and epistemology

 

Tripping together with my bf is pretty useful to avoid epistemic errors. We are tripping half alone half together. By sharing our discoveries about the nature of consciousness, each of us is able to integrate more his understanding about the nature of consciousness or correct it. This is helpful to confront our viewpoints, and stay open to the other's truth.
 

 

2 - Deepen our relationship

 

During our trips, we are showing to each other sides of ourselves that we don't usually show. We are both alternatively very vulnerable and very strong. We understand better dynamics that occurs between us. We are acknowledging how much our experiences are different. We are able to connect more deeply in a new way. Some gates between us are falling apart and we are, trip after trip, more authentic to ourselves and each other. These experiences are truly beautiful, I think it it's worth it to try.

That's it! Do not hesitate to give me your thoughts about all this. Sorry for my english, not my native langage. Also, if you know a way to avoid headache after an intense trip, I would love it. Thanks and take care  

Edited September 13, 2022 by Naol