This thread should be required reading for anyone considering any kind of serious meditation practice. Yes, meditation works. Yes, awakening is real. But sign on the dotted line before you hurt yourself.https://twitter.com/euvieivanova/status/982981406279258112 …
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Psychedelics definitely create similar concerns. This raises the general problem around the Western psychological models and understanding of psychosis. I have some draft essays on this that I never got around to finishing. Maybe that's content for a future tweetstorm.
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a short-lived name for those substances (before Humphry Osmond coined "psychedelic") was psychotomimetic drugs. That's not quite right but it's understandable why a naive interpretation would lead there. psychedelic means "mind manifesting" and that's a bit more accurate.
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other labels that have been proposed: phanerothyme (means "spiritedness") which Lisa Bieberman wrote about helpfully here http://www.csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/bieberman-phanerothyme.html … entheogen (means "giving rise to the divine within") which is reasonable for the mushroom and ayahuasca shamanic traditions.
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I would suggest this class of drugs might be usefully regarded as "path of perturbation" aids. where sitting meditation shows you your mind by making it still, the drugs show it to you by making it vibrate with enough amplitude to drown out the normal background noise.
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we need not understand psychosis or clinical treatment of it. that's not what the psychedelic experience is, really. it's an awakening. it ought to be treated just the same as awakening from meditation.
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All good points. I was actually trying to say that the current psychological understanding of psychosis is flawed, and this leads to viewing psychedelic and contemplative effects as psychosis, as many of the descriptive components can sound a lot like psychotic symptoms.
End of conversation
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I agree that teachers & clinicians should be versed in psychedelics - fine. But even if we chuck psychedelics out the window, we still have the same proplem w/r/t meditation alone. Am I missing a logical step/connection here?
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maybe? I'll connect the dots more explicitly if it helps. a strong psychedelic experience is almost identical to the experience in mindfulness meditation of realizing the interiority of your awareness. the observer observing the mind, not the external world.
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this is the inflection point that initiates the long post-awakening period of realigning the mind and experience of reality that many struggle with. "the dark side of awakening" and "dark night of the soul" are analogous (or maybe identical) with psychedelic integration.
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psychedelics are faster than meditation. the accelerated pace of it forces confrontation with these after-affects in a way that can't really be ignored the way a McMindfulness stress reduction teacher might be able to ignore the dark side of awakening on meditation.
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the issue is how do we make sure people get the support and guidance they need to reintegrate after an awakening? well, I'm suggesting that the psychedelic path makes the necessity of it so glaringly obvious and in your face that the blindspots are less likely to develop.
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it's the very fact that its faster and more dangerous that makes the importance of safely handling awakening so clear and present.
End of conversation
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