[aaxxddyy]

how individual karma and no-self can coexist

[aaxxddyy]

I felt as though I could see *everything*, simultaneously I could see my surroundings through my eyes and from some higher vantage point, looking in through the ceiling. I felt as though looking at people around, I could see all the sociological dimensions of their existence as well as the physicality of them. I looked at my phone and had an intuitive shape of its all-round shape, not just what I could see, and I was aware of it as a block of matter projecting a thick flow of light. I was able to see my own hand as a tumult of molecules and energy, a whirlwind of elements. In all it felt as though I was subjected to the complete torrent of information in the universe, too quickly for me to integrate any piece of information before I was overtaken by more. I marveled at the volume of information -- how could my brain possibly have the bandwidth, even to act as a conduit for it? -~-~-~- At some point as I was standing on the dancefloor, enraptured by the light show. I saw a snake/dragon weaving itself around a sword, 2-dimensionally like a rich illustration. Time began to creep by. I was in ecstasy. In terms of the four Bardos described in the Psychedelic Experience, this corresponds to the second Bardo -- the byzantine and alluring visions that begin to draw us back into ego games. Time was passing so slowly... the relentless intensity of the music and the lasers above, made everything seem like one long moment. "This is incredible!" I thought to myself. "I wonder when it will stop?" Gradually fear set in, the fear that this would never end.  This corresponds to the third Bardo, the struggle to regain normality.

[aaxxddyy]

disposable_camera.txt

I had a dream in which there was a massive tent in the forest made of tarpaulin, we went inside and then the people who had erected it came in, they were a jolly bunch but the authorities came to stop us from staying there, we all got into the 4x4 that was at one end and drove away so we didn't get arrested. Outside of the forest, we were queueing for some reason and it turned out they as a family were all on peyote. I chatted to them about mescaline and the girl gave me a camera that she made, it was made of some sort of cardboard and was nicely made, the newer design that didn't have any oil in it (?!) and was more durable. She told me to take pictures of things that I found beautiful. I climbed on to a dome shaped rooftop to take a picture of the sunset. I remembered all this just now because I just took a picture of the sunset out of mum's window with my disposable camera.

(END)

[aaxxddyy]

They're so perfect; For one, another.

love poem

[aaxxddyy]

#Symptoms: *Staring out of the window in class *Slow to learn order of months, order of alphabet, learning to read, learning to tie shoelaces *Avoiding tasks involving mental effort, e.g. mental maths *Difficulty starting tasks *Getting distracted by short breaks and going on tangents of personal interest *Extreme difficulty waking up in the morning and not being drawn back into dreams *Always being late, reading an article or browsing instagram in the morning and making myself late for work/school *Difficulty maintaing focus at work *Difficulty remembering upcoming events *Poor/absent memory of much of life *Not remembering someone’s name immediately after they have told me it, since I had become distracted *Almost never did homework at school or university, even when it was assessed *Always handed in essays late *Lethargic and sleepy during the day *Decent at guitar, cannot play a single song all the way through without lyrics in front of me, know maybe one or two verses of dozens of songs. *Spending ages in the shower and toilet *Performing tasks very slowly *Hate repeating myself *Bored: want to be immersed in some epic gaming experience with a sense of scope, breadth and openness, spend literally hours and hours searching for the right game, installing it, modding it. Play for a short time before getting bored. Become very sick of the first few missions of every game I like from starting over so many times. *Avoid time-consuming activities such as washing, tidying, cooking in favour of reading, watching videos, playing guitar *Chronic procrastinator: familiar with the feeling of being _frantically_ distracted as I run out of time, continuing to click/scroll/read with a rising sense of dread *Waking up planning to go somewhere, become completely sidetracked, waste at least three hours before leaving house *Read loads as a child, after getting a computer became totally absorbed by that, since then have started many books but always got distracted after a few chapters and stopped, even if the book is excellent. When reading, frequently become started on a train of thought and stare into the middle distance for minutes on end pondering *Get bored of watching movies and television alone (with some exceptions, short and punchy things mainly), talk too much about thoughts triggered by the movie when watching with somebody else *Most learning takes place in concentrated bursts just before exams/deadlines *Slow to process things that people say or not really paying attention *'Losing’ hours or days without really doing anything in that time #Coping mechanisms *Using a burner phone *Distraction-free writing software *Website blocking software *Writing lots of to do lists, then failing to check items off *Dual alarm method for getting up in morning *Always needing to have 8 hours sleep *Installing Linux on my computers to curb video game addiction *Eating breakfast at work to minimise actions before leaving house

[aaxxddyy]

pureland.txt

...[Initially] I just thought I'd gotten incredibly high and had a psychotic break I just thought I'd gone mad and there would be this lengthy process in which I would have to try and stay calm and slowly return to sanity

I thought I was writing English in some new and different way and that although I was probably going to die at some point I just had to write what I was feeling because even a fragment of this new verbal logic could have a huge impact in the world

"I feel distached, external. I have been on a spirit journey. I do not know exactly the nature of what disturbs me. I write this missive in the hope of finding meaning in the circumstance of what ails me, and to you the reader I implore stay your judgement 'til you have heard my symptoms. I have gone mad, and while I still live I must dedicate my life to your understanding."

I thought that I'd sublimed And that the writing was going to become some epoch-defining piece of literature

It was like we were speaking some sort of sideways form of English I thought I might have solved reality and woken in a new plane of existence Or I thought that maybe just by speaking to me you would be brought to some sort of transformation in your own means of thinking It was pretty cool In a really intense way

I thought that maybe my life was a piece of 4 dimensional art and I had just fitted the final piece in And that the arrangement of everything in my life had some sort of intrinsic symbolic beauty And that people would look at it and just understand what it all meant

I felt not like a Messiah but like the nexus of all these ideas about the universe Like I'd somehow created a link between different areas of knowledge And created a new form of knowledge And I could think in a way completely alien to any logic or discourse previously

And all previous human thought was just like a prelude to the way I was thinking

I felt like the concepts that I was using were interlinked in some incredible new way, which allowed me to communicate and think in a way so much more rich in meaning than my consciousness had previously that it seemed incredibly incongruous that I hadn't always been that way

Like how could I have existed in any other state? I thought I'd gone to the Pure Land or maybe we were all aliens and I'd done some sort of mad drug that had caused me to feel like I'd lived the life of this primitive creature Everything I thought and said was poetry

[aaxxddyy]

we are all made of stars

[aaxxddyy]

how i am feeling.txt

How I've been feeling lately:

I feel at odds with myself very often. It seems as though I second-guess every decision I make endlessly, and I never really know if what I'm doing is right or wrong. I'm someone who doesn't know what they want. As a result I never feel like I'm truly committed to anything – in fact the idea of being locked in to one of my decisions is really worrying to me.

This sense of internal conflict leaves me feeling purposeless and without direction. Without even knowing what will make me happy, I have no clue as to where I should be taking my life. Part of me feels the desire to live dangerously, to put myself in situations in which all I can do is react to events as they happen without thought. This seems to me to be at the root of human experience, acting with our most fundamental and primal natures.

People love to exist in this state where thought takes a back seat and we are only able to directly experience the act of living. These are the moments when we are the least aware of who we are, and yet they are perhaps the best expression of our true selves.*

Which moments am I talking about? Examples seem to be everywhere. We lose ourselves when we make love, when we eat delicious food, when we gaze in wonder at the setting sun. People all over the world drink alcohol just so they can stop thinking quite so much and live in the moment. The practice of meditation is intended to dissolve our ego and all thought. I could continue: music, dance, sport, whenever a person is completely absorbed in aesthetic or religious ecstasy. To truly love another is to forget yourself. All the best things in life seem to involve very little conscious thought.

What implications does this have for our lives? In their own ways, the religions of the world approach the issue. Christianity speaks about innocence, the state of being that exists before we conceptualise our self. The imagery of Christianity reflects this: Adam and Eve, the virgin mother, a sovereign infant.

Indulging our passions, losing ourselves – is the alternative self-control? How does this link to mindfulness and non-attachment?

*It is interesting that in the story of Adam and Eve, it is the fruit of the tree of knowledge that leads them to cover themselves in the first instance of self-consciousness. I point this out to attempt to draw a parallel between the theme of innocence that is pervasive in Christianity and the idea of anatta or not-self in Buddhism.

[aaxxddyy]

[aaxxddyy]

~notes on nitrous oxide~

that fading moment where everything just /is/ and a kind of black irridescence - purples and greens in a pattern of diamonds or interlocking shapes (?) and sometimes the understanding that this is a very difficult moment to pin down or remember afterwards, like a waking dream.

one of my friends describes the sensation as - simply- "ineffable"

another of my friends describes the sensation as "going into a loophole" and frequently experiences intense déjà vu

my pet turtle on one occasion was forced to express the experience as "nirvana"*

a poetic description would be that the experience describes the moment when atoms collide.

one particular occasion on which i inhaled nitrous oxide from a street dealer outside a london club caused an extremely strange mental state.** i began inhaling from the large grey balloon and then lost several seconds of my life. as i came to, i had the sensation of rising through layers of symbolic existence, my surroundings having a changing significance or meaning as each moment came to pass. almost like all the games in the world had been jumbled up in a mess of chess pieces and football players and pieces of art and i was watching that singularity implode before me. the first thing i became aware of was the presence of my two friends, and it took me a further moment to realise that we were outside. then i slowly grew to know that i was standing outside a club with my two friends and we were surrounded by dozens of clubbers on MDMA who had been kicked out on to the street with us. i saw a girl looking at me as she walked past, and had the revelation that i was surrounded by /other people/, who were all also alive and in the same place as me. my mind had been completely devoid of form and then i lost my total innocence (of the world) in one elastic second, like a baby's brain coming to understand everything an adult knows in less than twelve parsecs. i felt like i had literally just been dropped into my own body with no memory of my own existence, almost like in that old american television show Quantum Leap.

one of my friends had an intense feeling of déjà vu, again!

the other friend, when he returned, exclaimed loudly "EVERYTHING JUST WENT GREEN" and paced around briefly with his fists clenched tight

as we made the ten minute walk to our bus stop, I bounced with energy as I contemplated the experience I had just had. i felt /so/ alive and /so/ present, i gazed at the moon with excitement to exist and laughed out loud.

"This is the first day of my life, Swear I was born right in the doorway."

one of my friends once experienced what he described as "a full body orgasm".

*while this felt the only adequate word at the time to explain my feelings, i do not believe that nirvana can be experienced temporarily, as this seems a direct contradiction of its definition as "the cessation of dukkha" - a cessation does not have an end. for an interesting discussion on this subject, see ‘http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/5874/how-is-nirvana-permanent’. a better word might be ‘satori’****.

**earlier i had ingested 20mg of 2CB

i just saw almost tesselating hand shapes across my vision

****Being now older and wiser and knowing more of Buddhist doctrine, this experience was more like jhana than anything else.