My biggest obstacle in Psychedelics and Spirituality is Fear of Insanity

[Davino]

Today this insight hit me like a truck and I would like your help to work through it and share our experiences.

Today I realized that the biggest bottleneck I have is the fear of going insane. I have recently bought 5-Meo-Malt and have been reflecting deeply for months on how trying this substance will impact my life and how my path will shift. I don't have fear of going insane in Malt although it's a legit concern, it's more of a broad limiting wall in my mind. I limit my own awakenings and trips because of the fear of losing my mind and the grip on my self. I have a deep fear of death also but insanity is just what really is stopping me now.

I'm aware of the need of having a healthy mind and I take great care of myself but I feel that this fear is stopping me from becoming more awake and happy. How have you dealt with this fear? How do you deal with the fear of becoming insane in a psychedelic trip or mystical experience?

I would greatly appreciate your feedback in this topic.

[LSD-Rumi]

@Davino Really? I never feared such a thing, but everyone has personal fears. And maybe because I have a very stable mind and I am a very rational person, so going insane is not for me. Anyways, You will not go insane from a trip or two and it will not happen suddenly. Psychosis happen in genetically susceptible people, and even those don't commonly complain of sudden psychosis after smoking weed or doing acid. It tends to creep in gradually. So this fear is delusional and silly in the first place.

But also, the best solution for any fear is to let the fear become a reality in your mind. Imagine all the worst things that you fear in life happening to you, and then don't resist them, let go of them, don't believe them, see how silly they are, see how it is all personal bias for self-protection and how it is not really bad. Imagine yourself living as an insane person for the rest of your life and accept it.

 It takes time but it works well. You will feel uncomfortable doing it at first but will start seeing massive results after a few weeks or months of doing this practice daily.

[Leo Gura]

Sigh....

As with all fears, you face it head on.

I dare you to go insane. What if you like it

Edited July 10, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Pheonix]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sigh....

As with all fears, you face it head on.

I dare you to go insane. What if you like it

Absolutely terrible advice Leo. What if this guy has some kind of underlying mental health condition that they are not aware of? Psychedelic drugs should always be used with upmost caution and judging by the general demeanour of most people on this forum there seems to be a lot of people suffering from poor mental health with a potential for schizophrenia/bipolar that may be latent and that they are unaware of and seem to follow you blindly and could absolutely be triggered into an episode by following your dangerous advice regarding psychedelics.

 

[Leo Gura]

Don't strawman me. I gave this person the advice they needed.

[StarStruck]

If you are stuck, life is too short to not take risks. Death should haunt you. 

[Sugarcoat]

Insanity is a pretty broad term. What specifically about it is problem for you? What does “losing grip on your mind and self” entail for you? 
 

btw interesting post. Helps me understand more because I’ve never related to this fear much

Edited July 10, 2023 by Sugarcoat

[Yimpa]

Suffer long enough and you convince yourself thoroughly that suffering is all that there is. Then you feed and maintain an abusive relationship you have with yourself. To make it even worse, you act as if there’s no way out of your suffering, hence all the avoidance behaviors.

Now that’s the real insanity. 

[lostingenosmaze]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Don't strawman me. I gave this person the advice they needed.

You told us before to treat psychedelics like a loaded gun and now you're telling someone to face that loaded gun head-on? Not literally, you know what I mean.

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by lostingenosmaze

[Yimpa]

9 minutes ago, lostingenosmaze said:

You told us before to treat psychedelics like a loaded gun and now you're telling someone to face that loaded gun head-on? Not literally, you know what I mean.

I only remembered he said that when you mentioned it. 

Also, notice how you should also treat driving on the road like loaded gun. Despite that, many people still drive like shit. Why?!

[Pheonix]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Don't strawman me. I gave this person the advice they needed.

Strawman you? People on this forum follow your word to the letter. The advice you give to one person that you assume ‘they need’ will be embodied and followed by everyone else on this forum whether you direct it to them or not. You have responsibility as a leader to be wary of the advice that you give, this is your platform.

[Dazgwny]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

What does “losing grip on your mind and self” entail for you? 

This I think is a tricky one. Because I went completely insane on a trip for what I later realised was about 20 minutes or so once the episode had passed. The thing though is that it wasn’t a product of having lost grip on my mind, it was a product of having gained too much of a grip on my mind. There was nothing getting past me, there was nothing able to trick me, I had realised how my entire life was being created, and how other people were, and what they were etc. Knowing of this level drove me to levels of insanity that I had never experienced before. Mind working at a million miles per hour compared to its ordinary state. Seeing through absolutely everything. And the thing is, I did love it, I absolutely loved it. That was until a fear struck me out of nowhere of ‘oh my god, how can I ever go to work again, how can I ever look at these people again’ and so on. I thought oh no, this is me completely screwed now! I’ve done it now, but this is what I always wanted to know, become aware of, now I’ve completely fucked up my whole life. I have gone absolutely nuts here even though it is the complete truth. How could truth send me bonkers, it didn’t seem right, yet it was absolutely correct, and perfect. All this happening in not your straightforward linear style of thinking as you know it, but in a gymnastic type way with not one gymnast, more like a million gymnasts at once. 
It was actually that fear, that was the thing that brought me around to that more ordinary state of thinking, where things seemed to line up more as they do in my everyday state. But once that did happen, I was unable to completely see through everything in the moment, rather I was left with memory of how it was the case. Which was far far easier to deal with. 
I see this as just one of the genius points of gods creation, that you are able to dumb yourself down and not be able to see through everything in that manner, so ordinary life can be lived as you know it. So all in all I loved my bout of insanity, but I simultaneously feared it. And the strange thing was is that it was that fear that stabilised me back into this what is the so called ‘normal’ state. But believe you me, this normal state, is god being so fucking insane it has itself masterly tricked itself that it is normal. For a human it is, from gods point of view you would see it as nuts. Either way, just a part of the genius. 
So I guess I would say that it is fear, and of course the fear of insanity that is a, if not the major block on awakening 

[Yimpa]

I’ve face insanity just now to contemplate this for myself.

Here’s the deal: The mind will rev up any story you continue to give fuel to. 

Bur guess what? Since your GOD, no story in the entire universe and beyond has any control over you. YOU are the entire creation and nobody can tell YOU how to live your life. 

TA DA 

[Yimpa]

@Dazgwny You summed up my experience on point. Nice one!

[Princess Arabia]

2 hours ago, Pheonix said:

 

To me what you're saying is very important. I'm not addressing whether Leo is right or wrong in his response because Idk. I'm staying away from that, but what I will say, is your response to him sounds good on the surface and shows caring for how Leo responds to questions on the forum and the advice he gives in relation to how his forum following receive and implements those said advice. However, when you boldly make the claim that EVERYONE on the forum WILL take his advice whether directed to them or not is not a true statement and sounds "cult like". This is not a cult, and not everyone will take his advice and implement them. I'm not saying he doesn't give good and sound advice, what I'm saying is, remarks like that insinuates that we don't know how to think for ourselves, and maybe that is true for some but not for all. It is very important for me to say to you that I'm not trying to tell you how to respond to anyone and how you SHOULD express yourself however you choose, but what I can do is make the suggestion to you that it would probably be more effective and sound advice to say to us, not leo, in respect to the original advice he gave about the insanity issue for us not to take every advice from Leo and implement them because sometimes he can be wrong and for us to  think about them ourselves and to use proper judgment in how we take advice from others because sometimes they may not be suited for everyone and may be applicable for some depending on your state of being and level of understanding and consciousness. Yes, he does have a responsibility and should be wary, as you say, for the advice he gives, but we also have a responsibility to teach ourselves how to think and to make decisions for ourselves because in the end it all lies on us to obtain the results we want to achieve. Personally, I do respect and listen to most of Leo's advice on certain issues, not all, because there are other areas of life and other people I can turn to if I believe they're more suitable for me in regards to advice I may need to help in my own decision making. To me, Leo is a genius, but then he's also human, even though he claims to not be and is now an alien. Don't quote me on that, though.

[Giulio Bevilacqua]

I feel you. Same “issue” 

[Davino]

9 hours ago, LSD-Rumi said:

Psychosis happen in genetically susceptible people, and even those don't commonly complain of sudden psychosis after smoking weed or doing acid. It tends to creep in gradually. So this fear is delusional and silly in the first place.

I have 0 fear of becoming clinically insane I'm very stable and happy in my life. It's experiencing temporary insanity what really freaks me out. My realizations and trips are very deep but they always hit with the crystal ceiling of insanity and I have not been able to cross this door and keep going further as I have done many times in my path. I am scared what my consciousness can do with no limits on it.

 

9 hours ago, LSD-Rumi said:

Imagine yourself living as an insane person for the rest of your life and accept it.

This is very helpful, thank you.

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sigh....

As with all fears, you face it head on.

I dare you to go insane. What if you like it

Eye opening, really what I needed to hear.

5 hours ago, StarStruck said:

If you are stuck, life is too short to not take risks. Death should haunt you. 

I intellectually get it but being on the brink of insanity is beyond concepts of being alive and death. I'm more fine with dying than with the experience of insanity. I had a cery crude dead on Salvia and death is part of life but insanity seems to be a much profound rabbit hole than anything that I experienced, at least for me. It's like shattering all limitations of yourself.

5 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

Insanity is a pretty broad term. What specifically about it is problem for you? What does “losing grip on your mind and self” entail for you? 

Insanity is the total surrendering of absolutely everything. All that you had learnt and done in your life to be able to understand and make sense of what is going on, to survive, to be a human, to prefer life and health over death pain and suffering, distinctions between real and unreal, all of this just flying out of the window. Forgetting I was ever a human, and then what..? This proces feels like becoming insane.

4 hours ago, Yimpa said:

Suffer long enough and you convince yourself thoroughly that suffering is all that there is. Then you feed and maintain an abusive relationship you have with yourself. To make it even worse, you act as if there’s no way out of your suffering, hence all the avoidance behaviors.

Now that’s the real insanity. 

We are not talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about regular psychological insanity. I'm talking about the conscious experience of insanity.

2 hours ago, Dazgwny said:

The thing though is that it wasn’t a product of having lost grip on my mind, it was a product of having gained too much of a grip on my mind. There was nothing getting past me, there was nothing able to trick me, I had realised how my entire life was being created, and how other people were, and what they were etc. Knowing of this level drove me to levels of insanity that I had never experienced before. Mind working at a million miles per hour compared to its ordinary state. Seeing through absolutely everything. And the thing is, I did love it, I absolutely loved it.

@Dazgwny Thank you for sharing. I really felt that we are on the same line.

2 hours ago, Yimpa said:

Here’s the deal: The mind will rev up any story you continue to give fuel to. 

Bur guess what? Since your GOD, no story in the entire universe and beyond has any control over you. YOU are the entire creation and nobody can tell YOU how to live your life. 

TA DA 

Yes I have gone through that line of reasoning also. However, yesterday I had to be honest with myself and really see that the truth beyond my story is that there is an actual blockage/fear that cannot be imagined out of existence or easily deconstructed.

[Davino]

Thank you everyone of you for taking the time to answer. I really appreciate it. I'm gonna keep reflecting on it with the insights you gave me.

[Yimpa]

3 hours ago, Davino said:

Insanity is the total surrendering of absolutely everything. All that you had learnt and done in your life to be able to understand and make sense of what is going on, to survive, to be a human, to prefer life and health over death pain and suffering, distinctions between real and unreal, all of this just flying out of the window. Forgetting I was ever a human, and then what..? This proces feels like becoming insane.

No.

YOU are imagining all of that.

WAKE UP!

Edited July 10, 2023 by Yimpa

[Yimpa]

3 hours ago, Davino said:

yesterday I had to be honest with myself and really see that the truth beyond my story is that there is an actual blockage/fear that cannot be imagined out of existence or easily deconstructed.

Then it sounds like therapy might be appropriate for you at this time. I do therapy, so it’s nothing to be ashamed about. 

And/or take the psychedelic and report back to us you’re findings, lol.