Had an unusual experience last night. (Of course, they're all unusual...)
I found myself in a realm of words, a very dark place. Phrases, thoughts, words, parts of sentences, all around me, permeating me. I was adrift there, with almost no sense of self at all, practically unconscious, but then a short phrase popped into prominence in my mind, and for some reason I clung to it like a life preserver at sea. I did not think of it. It was just *there* all of a sudden, amongst all the myriad others. This phrase had the odd property of forcing me to notice it, and then causing me to focus on being balanced and not allowing me to get distracted by all the other thoughts and phrases and whatnot. It kept me centered in that dark and confusing realm.
I took great pains to remember the phrase, which was very difficult.
It was "I Love This Feeling, In The Exact Middle"
This phrase has an unusual quality that caused me to be able to hold onto it. It is prominent, self-referential and creates a property in my mind of "self-correcting focus."
The first part is psychological bait. It focuses the emotions like a magnet on the phrase itself, which focuses them in turn on the feeling of the moment, which is of course the experience itself.
The second part is the rudder. It kept me balanced and not distracted. I kept to the "middle." The word "exact" added power to it, a sense of extreme precision. Using this phrase I began to rise through many, many levels of consciousness toward waking consciousness. It was just like an elevator; holding onto it, and it holding onto me, I rose toward waking reality, through so many levels that it felt like I was at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and rising through miles and miles of "water." It was accompanied by the sensation of awakening, and then awakening again, and again, and yet again, over and over, as if at each level I had to "wake up" to that level, and then strive once more to awaken to the next level, and then the next. I even got a visual sensation of me being balanced on a "waterspout" and the phrase kept me from falling off to the sides as I rose. (Kept me in the "middle.") I would not have been able to remember the deep part of the experience at all if not for the phrase helping me to retain the knowledge of it.
This phrase felt like it was given to me as a gift. I will incorporate it into all my future meditations. I can remain focused with it running in my head regardless of how turbulent the "waters" of my mind are. It feels very powerful somehow.
I should note that the phrase consists of two parts of exactly sixteen letters each, four words to each part for a total of eight. A very symmetrical phrase, numerologically powerful. One phrase in two parts, four words in each, a total of eight words, sixteen letters to each part, thirty-two letters in all. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. Amazing, because I did not think of it. It just happened.
It really is incredible when you're able to hold onto something from the Salvia experience and bring it back with you. I've only managed to really do this a handful of times. Snippets of conversations or phrases. Usually what I bring back is cloaked in mystery and symbolism. It all has to be deciphered and decoded before the true meaning comes through.
ReplyDeleteWithout my new mantra there, I would have brought back very little if anything. In fact it was even hard to hold onto it, as magnetic as it was. And after I was back in regular reality it was even harder to remember it, as I was too tired to get out of bed at that point and write it down or type it into a file. So I had to do it the hard way, constantly repeating it and thinking of mnemonics for that purpose. That's when I realized that it was numerologically powerful and symmetric. All "coincidence" (as if I believe in such things!) too. I never thought up the phrase; it was like it was handed to me. A gift.
DeleteIf I run into anything really wild, I seem to have developed this reflex that alerts me and starts the "awakening" process so that I remember it. I've gotten pretty good at it over time. It feels like I'm stealing it from somewhere else, far away.
DeleteTrue; remembering it is most of the challenge.
ReplyDeleteI should mention that I have twice before been in a similar "areas." I call them "The Hall of Sentence Fragments" and "The Hall of Phonemes" respectively. In one I was inundated with countless parts of sentences, as if I were in a very dark, pitch black concert hall and there were thousands of disembodied voices all around me, just saying random things, but just parts of them. The second was similar but the voices were just saying sounds, like vowels and consonants and phonemes, all one-syllable. Both very eerie. This time it was whole phrases.
It's as if I was in the storage areas of my brain where I keep my language, all in parts, ready to be assembled.
As I rose through the levels, on that waterspout of thought, with my new mantra keeping me balanced upon it, I left a tunnel behind me back down to that dark place where I was immersed in phrases. A visible tunnel, almost. Palpable. That's how I can remember it. Because I left a trail of breadcrumbs.
ReplyDeleteHey, have you ever thought about WHY we forget so much on salvia?
ReplyDeleteI have.
I think I have the answer, at least for me. I wonder if any of you can corroborate it.
You see the Amazing Thing that you want to remember, and then after that you are bombarded with other intrusive thoughts, like the beginnings of interesting stories, tempting you to start thinking about them instead. A sea of tangents. Once you give in to that, once you notice one and start to follow it, you've lost the original thought forever.
Although, another way that we lose memories is when we pass through one of those 'Membranes of Forgetfulness' where memories are just stripped off us all at once, like lint on a roller. That happens sometimes, too. Depends on the kind of trip.
ReplyDeleteI've been pontificating the nature of the amnesic effect and those were the conclusions I also came up with. The tangential misdirection, and the literal stripping away. Over time, I think I've become quite good at ignoring the (what seems like intentional) misdirection and grasping the true substance of the experience. But then I pass through that level of forgetfulness, that membrane, and there's no holding onto the knowledge. I'll begin to fight it, like it's life or death, desperately clutching it like a dying child.
ReplyDeleteBut it almost always all slips away, like wisps of a dream half remembered.
One correlation I did notice was that the better I am at remembering my dreams, the easier it is to remember the Salvia experience. That herbs that are used for dream recall and lucid dreaming do actually improve my recall of the Salvia experience.
ReplyDeleteLike Calea Zachetecha? (sp?)
ReplyDeleteCalea Zacatechichi synergizes so well with Salvia, it's unbelievable. It really does help in the recall department. I've also noticed this with Silene capensis and Ilex guayusa. Guayusa I drink daily now. It is very high in caffeine but it's not terrible for you like store bought coffee. Any of those Ubulawu herbs have an effect on dream states and, as is my experience and hypothesis, on the Salvia experience.
DeleteDo you guys agree that the Salvia experience is very dream-like? I've always felt like it was a waking dream, totally uninhibited and raw, but very much like a lucid dream.
Introducing: The Skull Fuck :D
DeleteAn Exercise in Dream Recall
Purpose: This is an exercise to aid in the recollection of dreams
through the use of visualization and tactile imagery. It is best
performed at the times that one begins to fall asleep.
1. Relax; take a few deep breaths, and concentrate on the present
sensation of the extremities.
2. Allow yourself to feel the gradual decrease in sensitivity of the
limbs as you drop off to sleep.
3. Switch your attention rapidly from limb to limb, but block out
extraneous thoughts as completely as possible.
4. When nearly all sensation is lost in the extremities, switch your
attention to the spine; localize your attention to the sensation
at each vertebra. Send a current of energy up from the base very
slowly to the top.
5. When the current reaches the top, visualize the entire spine as a
penis, and the point where it enters the skull as the
sexually-oriented orifice of your choice.
6. Concentrate now on the sensation of the spine-penis entering the
foramen magnum-orifice. When bringing the sensation to the
conscious level, recall that it is your penis and/or your orifice;
a great deal of sensation is being generated.
7. Hold the images and sensations in mind until you do, in fact, fall
asleep. Attempt immediately to hold up your dream-hands in front
of your eyes.
By practicing this daily, near total dream recall is achieved in a
relatively short time.
But do I want to recall all of my dreams if they're all dreams of my spine fucking my own skull?
DeleteDoes this work, really? It seems a bit contrived.
It's just a method to remember more of your dreams, and become lucid easier during REM sleep. You won't necessarily dream of your spine fucking your skull :)
DeleteThere are lots of methods to achieve lucid dream states but this one actually did improve my dream recall. What good are intense lucid dreams without the recall? Also, I tried this before a Salvia journey once and it was unbelievable. I remembered a very large portion of the trip whereas with just meditating beforehand I was only recalling small bits.
JasmineOctober 25, 2013 at 12:06 PM
ReplyDeleteSorry for the confusion.
I wrote that under the effects of Salvia. Something very unusual happened in my latest experience. It felt like someone who may have been reading my blog just showed up as if waiting. At first I had the odd sense that it was someone from your blog - either you or burningmouth.
You are not capable of doing this are you?
I know burningmouth has had this happen before.
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I don't think I'm capable of doing it, but here's the deal:
We now have five bloggers meeting up here at St. Brian's place. None of us are lightweights. Dioxippus is well networked in the salvia community. Jasmine is a prolific writer. St. Brian is a frikkin' author for 'Christ's' sake. Salviastories now has a chance to add to the scene.
There's a whole lot of fascinating shit going on, and it's going to take the five of us as a group to explore it. What kind of fascinating shit? For starters, it's possible that 'salvia beings' are attempting to contact us. Maybe they are waiting for a small community to form before they show any interest. We now have a small community. Our physical world is sick. Maybe salvia divinorum can show Earth people a cure for this sickness.
This is the kind of talk that revs my engine! :)
DeleteThe plant itself has told me to "share" this with others. That to do it alone isn't how it's supposed to be done. Now that might not mean physical locality specifically. It may just mean to have a group of explorers to help flesh this out.
Then I get those eerie warnings not to do it too. But after much contemplation I think maybe the message is to not share it with the wrong people. When I think about writing a book about it, for instance. That somehow the public aren't ready for these things? Then I feel extremely megalomaniacal, like I have a messiah complex or something :)
JasmineOctober 24, 2013 at 4:47 PM
ReplyDeleteCommon Experiences: the realization that we're not real, just some fictional characters. Usually the highlight of my trips. Not sure if this one is common, but I imagine using salvia eventually reveals this.
Reply
Saint Brian the GodlessOctober 24, 2013 at 8:53 PM
Fictional characters. Interesting you should use those words.
A couple of times I had this flash of a revelation that this reality *somehow* is, well... words fail here, but the best way that I can put it is that this reality is "story" based. As in, it's a story, always a story, and we're all expecting *the next thing* whatever that is, whatever is about to happen next, in the very next second or minute or hour or whatever, and it is those expectations that drive the story. It would follow then that all realities are also stories, "story-based" planes of existence. Nothing is actually real in any sense that we normally think of as something being a real thing. It's all just the story.
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Many, many salvia trippers get the vibe that our Earth-based world is unreal. They believe that salviaspace is the true home-world.
If our world is a simulation then it would make sense that we would get the vibe that we’re not real. But St. Brian makes a good point when he says that the simulation need not be computer based. The simulation could actually be part of the multiverse’s design. We don’t even need to use the word ‘simulation’.
I think the idea of our reality being story based is plausible. We need to find some evidence that it is story based. Or at least the need to come up with a good hypothesis.
These are the kinds of discussions salvianauts should be having. The threads over at entheogen-network are a joke. I don’t hang out at dmt-nexus, so I can’t speak for those guys. But like I said, we are not lightweights. We have found each other. It’s up to us to figure out if we have anything constructive to contribute. I’m ready for a ride like no other ride in human history. (at least as long as my heart keeps ticking).
Since I've opened the can of worms regarding my hesitation to divulge Salvia 'secrets' I have to say, that whole feeling is directly connected to this. I do see life as one big story, an epic tale which we participate in. We tell ourselves stories all the time. We buy into illusions and construct a reality for ourselves, like a writer would build a plot, setting, characters, etc in a story.
DeleteWhen I start to use some of the things I've learned from Salvia in a fictional story context, that is when these things manifest. The warnings...the strange eerie feelings. The nightmares. Roadblocks that suddenly appear to stop me from going further. They could be self-imposed, I will fully admit that. But real nonetheless.
Oh, self-imposed can be very real. A belief can change everything.
DeleteI'm typing now on salvia. I have just experienced the point of my awareness between bodies, my viewpoint alone occupying multiple bodies at once, like a taffy of bodies all smeared together with my viewpoint vacillating between them. It's just the viewpoint. The bodies are extra. Multiple realities in all of which my body exists all in the same place with my viewpoint being able to sense them all, like multiple layers but all the same size. Many realities all superimposed and my awareness being stuck between them, between the realities, between the bodies in each reality all overlapping, all overlapping.
ReplyDeleteI just had a trip similar to yours. I wrote it up. Reader beware.
Deletecopycat
DeleteAs I wrote above, last ight I had the very realistic sensation that my consciousness was in multiple bodies.
ReplyDeleteVery important to note that they were all in the same place, as in, all sitting on my bed and so forth.
My head felt like hundreds of heads all trying to be superimposed but slightly varying from it, slightly not properly superimposed. A smear of heads with my one consciousness in the middle. Felt so real it was realer-than-real. As usual.
The new salvia is fucking fantastic. A tiny tweezer-tip of it, perhaps ten granules or flakes of it, produces great results with almost no lung irritation.
ReplyDeleteI say this because I'm noticing my 'heart fluctuations' are less on it, a lot less in fact, due I think to lung irritation triggering a vagus nerve response that produces slight arrhythmia. I highly recommend trying the very high extracts and simply reducing the amount that you smoke accordingly. It really works.
I've discovered that when the vagus nerve is irritated one can trigger the irregular heartbeat response just by thinking about it. Biofeedback effect.
ReplyDeleteNEW POST IS UP....
ReplyDeleteHope you like math..........
Another interesting aspect of the mantra is that it contains 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 letter words. In reply to burningmouth's comments: The Toltec peoples believed that life is but a communal dream state and would exhaustive discuss their experiences in groups. Humanity as a whole was very enlightened and has fallen into a dark age of consciousness due our solar system transition through a galactic equinox. We are coming back towards the center of the milky way; regaining our consciousness and remembering who we are. There are people who can not or will not embrace this idea and those that welcome it with open arms. That's why some people are becoming increasingly more "evil" while others are moving in the opposite direction. Dolores Cannon has very sound theories on this subject. Many movies, songs and other media telling us what is going on for instance the song 'Radioactive' by Imagine Dragons... "welcome to the new age".
ReplyDelete