"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."
- Louis L’Amour
Psychedelic therapy improves neural connectivity. A more connected brain may be the reason psychedelics facilitate new ideas and breakthroughs.
These ideas come in many shapes and forms.
The Idea Dojo
Macrodosing often brings profound insights.
Some insights strike you during the trip.
Some in the hours after returning from the trip.
Some after taking the medicine but, strangely, before the actual trip starts.
They can be ideas as grand as illuminations about the nature of your existence… or as simple as a new strategy to take at the office.
Some feel like a “light bulb” moment.
Some feel like a reminder of an idea you already knew, but had forgotten.
Some feel like a download, like when Neo proclaimed “I know kung fu”
Some feel like a concept you had previously grasped intellectually, but now you feel on a visceral level.
Get it while it’s hot
There are also some ideas that seem like the most important thought you’ve ever thunk, but before you get a chance to write it down… it disappears forever like dust in the wind.
Sometimes you’ll have a stupendous idea when you’re deep in the 5th dimension but bringing the idea back with you to waking consciousness feels like an impossible task.
Then, true to form, when you’re back in a normal state, all you’re left with is a feeling that there was something that you wish you could remember.
The feeling can gnaw at you because one idea can change your life.
As Cobb quips in Inception, “She was possessed by an idea, this one, very simple idea, that changed everything.”
I suggest having a notepad nearby for when these aha! moments strike.
Your motor functions are impaired at higher doses so use whatever concentration you can muster to scribble it down.
Seven realizations
Words often don’t do this justice. Or perhaps the experiential knowledge of it just can’t be captured by the intellectualized concept.
Nevertheless, here are seven:
Complete and utter dissolution of the fear of death. This paradoxically enhances the desire to live, do, and bring meaning to life.
There is something much much bigger than what this reality offers our current senses. My meeting with God made that clear. It also gave me an understanding into what prophets from antiquity may have seen.
We are infinitely connected to all things in the universe. For example, I saw a version of myself in every person from the genius billionaires to the homeless vagrants. Moreover, I see how they have all impacted and created me.
The three elements of reality are time, space and attraction. Attraction has many forms: gravity, strong force, weak force, nuclear… but at the abstracted human level it manifests in a nuanced form: consciousness. One could argue that it abstracts even further as love.
Every sensation, experience, thought and memory is a unique neural signature that’s triggered by a particular cascading-waterfall of neural connections. The memories, or what can feel like time-travel while macrodosing, illustrate that these experiences are re-livable if that particular cascading-waterfall-neural-signature is triggered.
I am just an organism. The idea that I am Ray, or even a human, is just a story with a lot of words that we all agree on. The idea that “I am a human” is a cousin of the concept that I am a fan of, say, the Washington Wizards. Both are just stories with a lot of words. At the core, I am just an organism.
Our thoughts are not ‘who we are.’ Thoughts are something that our consciousness is aware of, and can act on, but they are separate from our “self.” Much like our hands are tools for grabbing objects, our brains are tools for thought-making.
If you stubbed your toe you wouldn’t act as if that defines you. Rather, you’d acknowledge it and move on.
It’s the same with thoughts. When you have an unpleasant thought, acknowledge it and move on.
The butterfly effect from one idea, just one, can change a life.
What idea might change you?
See Volume IX here: Seven strange aspects of macrodosing
Psychedelic Diaries refresher
This ten-part series chronicles monthly, full-dose, psychedelic therapy over five years. It will cover the insights, challenges, and overall impact.
Volume I: When you journey inward
Volume II: Five tips to prepare for a macrodose
Volume III: Entering the “Mozart Zone”
Volume IV: Seven “Mozart Zone” observations
Volume V: Making your macrodose playlist
Volume VI: Seven types of profound macrodose trips
Volume VII: Seven challenges to macrodosing
Volume VIII: Seven realizations from macrodosing
Volume IX: Seven strange aspects of macrodosing
Volume X: Mastering the macrodose
raymond.a.christian@gmail.com