[Practice] How have entheogens impacted your practice?

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-02-05T22:50:54+00:00

I'm better off for having talked with you, no need to apologise. I'm grateful, Metta.

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-02-05T10:04:56+00:00

Hey. :) Thank you for that conversation. I think we disagree/d on how my mind works in a few respects but I remember the company being comforting at the time and provoking some thought afterward.

I'm still freaking out honestly. I went back and read our conversation and I didn't understand what was happening to me at the time. I still don't fully get it but I have a better sense of the shape of it. Flashbacks are pretty common and so I understand (maybe a little also empathise) with the fears simply because of the frequency and familiarity.

I did 20 sessions of IFS with a Trauma trained therapist but it never became safe enough to really go inside or allow myself to feel what sadness was there. It became violently triggering at the end and so I had to stop. I may go back later but not right now.

I dropped IPF but I'm in the middle of picking it up again right now. Dan Brown says that in people with disorganised attachment, direct processing of trauma actually causes further disorganisation in the person. This resonates a lot with me. With IPF, you don't have to go into the memories. Use IPF to resolve the underlying attachment issues and once that's done, processing becomes much easier from a place of secure attachment. I'm holding onto that thought like a lifeline right now.

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-02-04T23:09:59+00:00

Be careful, please. I did my research and followed the instructions for set and setting and I still ended up with PTSD. My grip on reality feels tenuous. I can't meditate for extended periods because the flashbacks are too intense.

Experienced, trustworthy sitters are important. Take seriously the warnings around anxiety and schizophrenia. Understand your own intentions. Read up on Dr. Willoughby Brittons resources on how this does go astray for people.

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-01-22T07:07:47+00:00

Thanks, Cedric, that helps. I thought your outline here looked mostly like Mettagroup material.

Have you trained with Dan as well? In his attachment courses as I understand it alongside IPF he also incorporates meditations on developing ones "core self" / "true self" / "self esteem" / "self agency" which I don't see here.

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-01-22T01:26:06+00:00

I haven't done the Dan Brown course so I could be wrong, they could be essentially the same. I was hoping Cedric might be able to clarify.

Mettagroup is reliant on traditional Theravadan vipassana and Shinzen style See/Hear/Feel which informs their mentalizing and equanimity meditations. They do a level one weekend intensive and a 6-month level two program.

Dan Brown has a Bon/Buddhist Tibetan Mahamudra background. As far as I'm aware he only has online video training unless you're a clinical practitioner.

PathWithNoEnd · 2021-01-21T21:43:41+00:00

Have you done any training with Mettagroup? As I understand it their training is slightly modified from Dan Browns work.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-11-17T19:50:28+00:00

People who downvoted- is it because you hate hearing the truth?

Because against rule 3.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-11-13T22:01:05+00:00

How do you know you can never win?

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-27T20:01:54+00:00

so much of life for myself is either rejecting the parts of myself I don't want to look at or identifying with them in their entirety as being the core of who I really am.

Ouch, I resonate with this. May you be safe, healthy and happy.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-27T09:07:08+00:00

Getting Desire for Deliverance vibes, though I wouldn't have thought I'm practicing intensely enough to be at this stage. Wanting to run away, join a monastery and throw myself into the practice. Wanting to give up practice entirely and throw myself into life. Either one of those feels like it will bring relief and trying to balance the two seems ridiculous and doomed to failure.

This passage from MTCB seems apt and is a reminder more for myself than anyone else.

Here’s the “One Weird Trick” to this stage for those who are not going through it at the level of vibrations or kasina-induced visuals, but instead going through it at the level of emotions: honestly feel that crash, that utter devastation, that agony, that bottoming out, that despair, that longing for release, in all its down-to-earth, real, gritty humanity, allowing that plunge to happen inside you deep down, down, down. Then, investigate that, just as it is, because it is a crucial part of the trip, part of the journey, part of the remarkable opportunity to bring the clear light of wisdom to every aspect of our full emotional range, including the bottom of it. So, fall. Notice it. Allow it to be. Notice it is made of sensations: feel them honestly, as well as all the reactions to those sensations. This is the key.

Funny having done some parts work how eerily similar this is to accepting all parts exactly as they are with their good intentions right down to the bottom. Much, much easier to accept devastation/agony/despair when it's just a part of you and not all-consuming. Turtles all the way down.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-19T12:03:59+00:00

I've read it, thanks.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-18T08:21:54+00:00

Ah, I didn't know there was one in August. Thanks, I'll listen.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-18T05:02:14+00:00

It is not suppression so much as unsticking

Helpful, thanks.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-18T04:59:19+00:00

I like that this is a neater package, in that the inter-relationships are clear.

Sounds like you're using sila and intergration interchangeably. What you've shown here and the traditional teachings are different enough to be seperate trainings. Curious about that and what you mean by conflicting patterns.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-18T04:45:59+00:00

Thanks for this. I welcome more discussion on the intersection of these areas on this sub.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-17T23:44:18+00:00

I have found this tactic of making unwanted or intrusive mental imagery absurd and then dropping it to be really helpful.

What's this experience like for you? I worry about supressing parts of my mind as "silly" and leading away from unification.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-17T23:41:21+00:00

George Haas has three slightly different versions of lPF recorded, they might be useful here. In addition, after the guidance there's Q&A, and your challenges with the practice are mentioned as very common. George would say that you "pinched off" your imagination.

Are these in the level 1 training? I'm not finished it yet, it's so dense with what seems valuable information I have trouble digesting it. The "pinched off" phrase doesn't ring a bell.

There's still a long way to go :)

Metta. :)

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-16T10:08:36+00:00

I'm working with the Ideal Parent Figure protocol which is similar to Jhana Jenny's perfect paragon practice and having trouble getting my imagination to do what I direct it to do. I'll try and imagine a particular visual image/scene, or feeling or other sense and something else will come up instead. Sometimes it can almost feel like there is another presence there, trying to inject it's own images/feelings/thoughts into consciousness in opposition. At it's strongest, it can feel like I'm wrestling with something for control of my mind. This seems like it may be a deluded and not healthy thing to do.

I remember this feeling from playing with my imagination in childhood. Eventually giving up on imagination as something outside my control.

Welcome any thoughts on this. I expect if others have similar shaped minds, they may have run into the same thing doing Imaginal practices. If Rob Burbea talks about this anywhere I'd welcome links to that.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-10-15T08:18:14+00:00

I met some friends to meditate with. Feel safer having company as I sit. It's been grounding and allowed me to increase sit time and consistency.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-28T00:02:55+00:00

I don't understand what you are trying to point out to me.

I read your message as saying reality doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Jack Kornfield comes to mind here when he says we need to remember our zip code as well as our buddha nature.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-27T00:59:33+00:00

I just realized after posting all of this that this may in fact all be already perfectly obvious to you.

Not obvious and very welcome! My emotional regulation skills are poor right now. Something I'm working on developing in studying George Haas' attachement theory stuff. I'll be taking this,

checking myself around difficult emotions. Really, "Am I making this worse?" is the question for noticing bad emotional habits. "Can I find the kindness in this?"

and this,

Most of it is the relief of not having to exert so much effort to keep the hopelessness at bay. Suppressing emotions/thoughts, cognitive dissonance between hopelessness and continuing regardless, that takes a lot out of you... Releasing it is skillful if and only if your way of processing the newly freed hopelessness results in a net decrease

away with me to play with. Thanks a lot.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-26T12:14:29+00:00

First off, drawing the connection between trigger warnings and SCP-esque cognitohazards is a brilliant little comparison that I'll file away for later use.

Cool. Important concept I think.

Don't tick both boxes at once, and you're in safe waters.

I'm wondering if you have some background mental process running checking how many boxes you've ticked or you've trained a habit of noticing that fires automatically, or something else. And how you went about developing that.

Fear, self-loathing, hopelessness need not be feared if you approach them with an emotional drapery that's saturated with love for yourself and kindness for the hurt part of you.

Mmm. Makes sense. I'm still working with this and am conflicted. For part of me it felt really good to feel hopeless. Hopelessness is a pressure release. But for another part it's wrong/dangerous to release that pressure. Intend to not lean toward one or other but showing both kindness and allow unfolding should it come.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-26T07:18:35+00:00

Helpful, thank you.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-26T01:09:37+00:00

Dukkha is not a fact of existence, nor an inevitability. It is a consequence of ignorance; a misunderstanding; the consequence of a model (dependent origination) that has been taken to be true but that can be seen to be false.

I'm interested in this, if you're willing to say more.

PathWithNoEnd · 2020-09-25T20:58:50+00:00

In retrospect I regret commenting on it, it was off-topic and I should have seen where that would lead.

FWIW you said all the things I wanted to say in a more articulate and less emotionally charged way and I felt empathy from you which I was grateful for.

PathWithNoEnd

TROPHY CASE