I had a salvia experience last night. It was the first time that I used salvia in a way that felt comfortable and natural to me (probably due to past lives) - alone and in a shamanistic way. The particular vial of salvia I have, which is either 40 or 80x strength (don't remember) was bought at a headshop when I lived in Colorado (where it's not yet illegal to sell). So lady Salvinorin had been waiting at the bottom of my box of "special things" for about 8 months to teach/learn with me.
To prepare the set and setting, I sat on my bed in my room, turned on my favorite calming new age music, ground and packed about .15 gram of very high quality cannabis (also from my box ) and smoked it. There, now by being in a comfortable, familiar environment I could overcome the pitfalls I ran into the two previous times I experienced salvia. There would be no other person present that I would convince myself mid-trip had tricked me into taking a substance that would mess me up forever and mess everything else up forever by revealing all the secrets of the universe right then and there. There would be no anxiety (because I was pretty baked). And there would be no distractions. The comfortable, familiar song playing which I often meditate to, and the fact that I'm alone in my room with everything set up for this trip around me would re-assure me mid-trip that I set this up for myself to experience, and it wasn't some horrible trick. I knew that the single cause of a bad trip (besides physical discomfort) during a psychedelic experience is the fear of the loss of self. When the self begins to be deconstructed, the person is afraid that they will never come back together as themselves, that they will be infinitely lost in some void while their body and mind go permanently insane down on planet earth. I knew that's the fear that needs to be overcome because it's unfounded. The ego is never lost. It is always right there again and you find yourself again after the trip. I was never able to allow myself to become unraveled in my previous experiences with the drug because of my friends being present, therefore the drug being used in a disrespectful and inappropriate manner. When salvia tried to show me the all important thing, I always felt like the universe up until that point had been playing a cruel trick on me. And I didn't want to be exposed in front of my friend, learning that this whole thing was just to lead up to this salvia experience and they're in on it too! Trying to explain this to your friend, who is at a different spiritual level and background and therefore experiencing a lesser or non-spiritual trip (such as merging with an inanimate object), while your own trip is coming down, does not lead to happy times.
The song I listened to during the trip was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCVKI4P8Nq4
The intro song on Gandalf's Sacred River album. When I meditate while listening to it, I try to raise my vibration with the expectation of a beautiful thing that's sure to come. This particular song slowly builds up a wonderful, peaceful, calm energy, then drops it away and ends abruptly. The trip followed the same formula.
I took the glass vial of salvia and held it to my heart, respecting it and the spirit of the plant and its unique reaction to man's consciousness as the fullness of the Creator, and asked it to teach me something. I requested that (although I respect the free will of the experience and the plant to teach me whatever it wishes to teach) it teach me to love myself, as I think I've been coming up short in that area lately...
I packed the tiny bowl of the spoon (style of glass pipe) that I have specifically for smoking salvia. Then, I looked at the clock. 1:06 AM. The entire time I was preparing and smoking the initiatory cannabis, I was wondering if/expecting it to line up to a 1:11 or 1:01 when I took the hit of salvia. Now lately, especially when I'm high (for whatever reason), the universe will decide to grant silly synchronicities like that when I expect them to occur just to prove that the Creator is right there, watching over my shoulder so to speak, all the time, and willing to work with me. Once, I was driving away from a friend's house (completely blazed) and decided to meditate in the car because I don't often get the chance to meditate while high. (like to share the experience with friends) I wondered if/expected to see a 111 as I started. I chastised myself for taking such a sacred spiritual tool, something in God's hands, and making it a toy with my own expectations. Well, I felt like someone up above chuckled as I glanced left and right and saw 11, 101, 111, two 1's on one sign that from my angle lined up with a 1 on another sign. (mostly roadsigns) I just laughed out loud at that point... I must have seen 4 or 5 instances of the repeating digit in the span of about 15 seconds. I think we're really drawing closer to the border between 3rd and 4th density.
Now I had to select a piece to pack a small amount of cannabis in to smoke after the whole deal's over during the period of introspection. I kinda knew that no matter what piece I chose, how fast or slow I packed it, or how much I put in there, synchronicity would "catch me" and I would be taking that hit at 1:11 AM. But it was fun to experience anyway. I chose to pack the pinchy (only holds a pinch) because I was already plenty under the effects of cannabis, still would be after the short salvia trip, and would only need a small amount of cannabis basically as a comfort for the introspection period. I packed it at a normal rate, forgetting about the time. I sat up, took two deep breaths of fresh air, grabbed the salvia pipe, and was about to hit it. Then, something grabbed my attention towards the clock.
1:11 AM!!!
Alright, so here I am in the Creator's universe, with the Creator sitting right here over my shoulder waiting for me to hit this pipe and fully endorsing it. So, there should be no fear... So, I hit the pipe, the beginning song on the cd about a third of the way through. I use the normal salvia technique, burning the entire one hit and holding it in for about 10/15 seconds. I exhaled and lay back on my pillow, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the effects. Then, I realized that I was in the salvia time tunnel AGAIN. Everywhere I looked, every time I moved my eyes from one point on the ceiling to another, that point would get drawn back/away/up and out of this reality, towards the edge of the tunnel that was slowly forming. The song built in intensity as did the trip. I began to hear familiar thought-voices telling me "We want to show you something amazing... everybody in the universe must see this." With every single tiny movement of my being, whether some wisp of thought broke out of the void of my otherwise silent mind, or whether I moved my eyeball this way or that, a new geometric segment would be added to the tunnel that was quickly enveloping my entire vision. The end point of the tunnel was dead center in my field of vision.
When I would try to look somewhere else or take a mental step back to try to gain some awareness of what was happening, I would be met with a new segment of the reality-tube that would capture the events of the past couple seconds and add it to the infinitely repeating loop. I felt like I was being very slowly lifted or separated from my body. There was an overwhelming force of consciousness that became aware of me again. It knew me from my previous salvia experiences - the consciousness of the plant as Creator. With every tiny movement of my being (eye movements or thoughts) this being, slowly entering my field of awareness (which was now slowly creeping up on and replacing my field of vision as I was pulled away from human reality) would send another universe-changing impulse that would race through all the infinite creations to meet tiny me in my bedroom. What this impulse would do was re-arrange every event in the universe in order to once again capture me into this tube and keep me from going away from this trip.
I even remember relaxing a little bit when the visual effects of the tube began to amaze me. At one point, I moved my eyes back and forth rapidly while slowly drawing them up my field of vision. This added hundreds of layers to the tube of reality, the yellow paint on the walls of my room becoming part of the tube while the white ceiling became the other half, and I enjoyed the stunning visual of a thread of tube-shaped reality points that I had just purposefully cast into a yellow and white arch shape across my ceiling with my eye movements. And at one point, the geometric segments of the tube seemed to be so intricate that many worlds could fit into the seemingly golf ball sized "end" of the segment.
I felt like I was "turning to face the Creator" if one could metaphysically rotate their consciousness's position to see the God that's always there right underneath/outside/around this reality. But I didn't want to turn and face the Creator, I wanted a salvia trip! So, I was torn between left and right, duality. I even tried to sit up, and even physical movements were accounted for in this continual weaving of the reality-tube that drew me in. My physical movements were jerky, and each one added a layer that was a bit more rough or unrefined, to the reality tunnel. (compared to my thoughts) Every time another layer would be added, I felt this massive consciousness become disheartened with my choice to add another layer rather than to give in. The familiar voices that joined my thoughts expressed her disappointment, telling me things like "Every time we are at this point, this happens, then this happens, and then you this and this and that..." predicting my every movement and my every thought. With every movement, they expressed my subconscious thoughts relating to that movement back to me, dictating that THAT'S why I never get to fully experience this. I got the sense that I had lived a literally countless (think gigazabajillions) amount of lives in a timeless state that were identical or very similar to this one. And every time I lived this life of Aaron from birth to the point at 1:14 AM (glanced at the clock just then) and every time I decided to smoke this plant, and every time I decided to make the mistake of not letting go all the way. And every time I looked at the ceiling there and there and there and thought this and that and moved this way and that way. And I got the feeling that if I did give in and fully face the Creator, that I would be re-born/time travel backwards to my birth and re-live this life again, with this memory getting taken away from me again, only to hopefully culminate in some other different choice, something "new" to the Creator, at the point where I decided to smoke this plant and lay on my bed and look at the clock etc. etc. ad nauseum.
The tube was very deep now. And the presence that I was turning to face was becoming more all-present, more loving, more bright and radiant, more like the Creator. As I continued to "turn" to face more of the Creator, I felt more light enter all of my being, all selves forever forwards and ever backwards, directly proportionate in infinitely precise measurements to the exact metaphysical angle which I found my own consciousness at relative to all-consciousness of the Creator. I realized that I no longer felt any effects of the cannabis at this point. The salvia experience had blown that completely away along with physical reality. Then what was the warm feeling of pleasure and peace that was circulating through my... body? Then, I realized that I was completely separated from my body and I was experiencing a spiritual warmth as I moved closer to the Creator. Imagine the most excited you've ever been about anything in your life. This excitement, this electrical charge of pure ALIVENESS penetrates your entire being the closer you come to the Creator. And the vibrations of the light become faster, and peace, and love, and warmth, and certainty, on a level that can't be experienced in a 3rd density life, increase. This Creator was comforting. This Creator's full presence went beyond male and female, but it contained a female presence that radiates out love. Actually I was even able to identify the Creator-selves of a couple of my spiritually-closest friends contained within that all-presence, excited as can be for my return.
At this point, confusion and fear kept me from going any farther. I was still struggling with the fact that my salvia experiences never seem to be generic salvia experiences, but instead universe-shattering, infinitely repeating loops of perpetual self-disappointment and self-denial of the divine within. I remember thinking "This just isn't fair!!!" about the time loops and reality-tube, just before the song ended and I was released back into "normalcy". I was concerned for a couple minutes after as I tentatively chose actions to do such as take a drink of water. I was half expecting to suddenly remember trying to drink the water after I sat up after I looked there and there etc. etc. all in order to escape the trip. If that happened, I'd be pulled into the tube again. But it didn't happen. And the feelings that lent themselves to that kind of thought slowly tapered off and I was left with only the pleasant salvia afterglow. Because I've never gone that far and never experienced ego death, and because I was confused about what a salvia trip should really be, I listened to my fear which distorted the truth of the beautiful and natural process, convincing me that I would be infinitely trapped in a cycle of reliving my own life to that point if I chose to let go. I should have listened to the voice of love, which was telling me to just let go, let go. I also didn't realize that what the Creator wanted was to merge with me to experience the "newness" of my life, the "mystery" of the new information I was bringing to her, for a timeless forever before letting me go again to go back to this life and gain more experience.
So... do all psychedelic experiences culminate in a death and rebirth? Or is this just salvia? Why does it seem to be the ultimate experience of the soul, rather than a trip? And most importantly... should I go all the way tonight?
Oh yeah, and here's a handy page, along with a special scale exclusively for rating salvia experiences. (Scroll down to "The SALVIA Experiential Rating Scale")
http://sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html
I would place my experience as an I.
EDIT: One detail I forgot to mention. Upon re-entrance to my body, which coincided with the reconstruction of physical reality, I felt like everything was simply zipped right back snugly together. My body felt like it was pulled back together along the chakra line as if it had been split right in half.
To prepare the set and setting, I sat on my bed in my room, turned on my favorite calming new age music, ground and packed about .15 gram of very high quality cannabis (also from my box ) and smoked it. There, now by being in a comfortable, familiar environment I could overcome the pitfalls I ran into the two previous times I experienced salvia. There would be no other person present that I would convince myself mid-trip had tricked me into taking a substance that would mess me up forever and mess everything else up forever by revealing all the secrets of the universe right then and there. There would be no anxiety (because I was pretty baked). And there would be no distractions. The comfortable, familiar song playing which I often meditate to, and the fact that I'm alone in my room with everything set up for this trip around me would re-assure me mid-trip that I set this up for myself to experience, and it wasn't some horrible trick. I knew that the single cause of a bad trip (besides physical discomfort) during a psychedelic experience is the fear of the loss of self. When the self begins to be deconstructed, the person is afraid that they will never come back together as themselves, that they will be infinitely lost in some void while their body and mind go permanently insane down on planet earth. I knew that's the fear that needs to be overcome because it's unfounded. The ego is never lost. It is always right there again and you find yourself again after the trip. I was never able to allow myself to become unraveled in my previous experiences with the drug because of my friends being present, therefore the drug being used in a disrespectful and inappropriate manner. When salvia tried to show me the all important thing, I always felt like the universe up until that point had been playing a cruel trick on me. And I didn't want to be exposed in front of my friend, learning that this whole thing was just to lead up to this salvia experience and they're in on it too! Trying to explain this to your friend, who is at a different spiritual level and background and therefore experiencing a lesser or non-spiritual trip (such as merging with an inanimate object), while your own trip is coming down, does not lead to happy times.
The song I listened to during the trip was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCVKI4P8Nq4
The intro song on Gandalf's Sacred River album. When I meditate while listening to it, I try to raise my vibration with the expectation of a beautiful thing that's sure to come. This particular song slowly builds up a wonderful, peaceful, calm energy, then drops it away and ends abruptly. The trip followed the same formula.
I took the glass vial of salvia and held it to my heart, respecting it and the spirit of the plant and its unique reaction to man's consciousness as the fullness of the Creator, and asked it to teach me something. I requested that (although I respect the free will of the experience and the plant to teach me whatever it wishes to teach) it teach me to love myself, as I think I've been coming up short in that area lately...
I packed the tiny bowl of the spoon (style of glass pipe) that I have specifically for smoking salvia. Then, I looked at the clock. 1:06 AM. The entire time I was preparing and smoking the initiatory cannabis, I was wondering if/expecting it to line up to a 1:11 or 1:01 when I took the hit of salvia. Now lately, especially when I'm high (for whatever reason), the universe will decide to grant silly synchronicities like that when I expect them to occur just to prove that the Creator is right there, watching over my shoulder so to speak, all the time, and willing to work with me. Once, I was driving away from a friend's house (completely blazed) and decided to meditate in the car because I don't often get the chance to meditate while high. (like to share the experience with friends) I wondered if/expected to see a 111 as I started. I chastised myself for taking such a sacred spiritual tool, something in God's hands, and making it a toy with my own expectations. Well, I felt like someone up above chuckled as I glanced left and right and saw 11, 101, 111, two 1's on one sign that from my angle lined up with a 1 on another sign. (mostly roadsigns) I just laughed out loud at that point... I must have seen 4 or 5 instances of the repeating digit in the span of about 15 seconds. I think we're really drawing closer to the border between 3rd and 4th density.
Now I had to select a piece to pack a small amount of cannabis in to smoke after the whole deal's over during the period of introspection. I kinda knew that no matter what piece I chose, how fast or slow I packed it, or how much I put in there, synchronicity would "catch me" and I would be taking that hit at 1:11 AM. But it was fun to experience anyway. I chose to pack the pinchy (only holds a pinch) because I was already plenty under the effects of cannabis, still would be after the short salvia trip, and would only need a small amount of cannabis basically as a comfort for the introspection period. I packed it at a normal rate, forgetting about the time. I sat up, took two deep breaths of fresh air, grabbed the salvia pipe, and was about to hit it. Then, something grabbed my attention towards the clock.
1:11 AM!!!
Alright, so here I am in the Creator's universe, with the Creator sitting right here over my shoulder waiting for me to hit this pipe and fully endorsing it. So, there should be no fear... So, I hit the pipe, the beginning song on the cd about a third of the way through. I use the normal salvia technique, burning the entire one hit and holding it in for about 10/15 seconds. I exhaled and lay back on my pillow, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the effects. Then, I realized that I was in the salvia time tunnel AGAIN. Everywhere I looked, every time I moved my eyes from one point on the ceiling to another, that point would get drawn back/away/up and out of this reality, towards the edge of the tunnel that was slowly forming. The song built in intensity as did the trip. I began to hear familiar thought-voices telling me "We want to show you something amazing... everybody in the universe must see this." With every single tiny movement of my being, whether some wisp of thought broke out of the void of my otherwise silent mind, or whether I moved my eyeball this way or that, a new geometric segment would be added to the tunnel that was quickly enveloping my entire vision. The end point of the tunnel was dead center in my field of vision.
When I would try to look somewhere else or take a mental step back to try to gain some awareness of what was happening, I would be met with a new segment of the reality-tube that would capture the events of the past couple seconds and add it to the infinitely repeating loop. I felt like I was being very slowly lifted or separated from my body. There was an overwhelming force of consciousness that became aware of me again. It knew me from my previous salvia experiences - the consciousness of the plant as Creator. With every tiny movement of my being (eye movements or thoughts) this being, slowly entering my field of awareness (which was now slowly creeping up on and replacing my field of vision as I was pulled away from human reality) would send another universe-changing impulse that would race through all the infinite creations to meet tiny me in my bedroom. What this impulse would do was re-arrange every event in the universe in order to once again capture me into this tube and keep me from going away from this trip.
I even remember relaxing a little bit when the visual effects of the tube began to amaze me. At one point, I moved my eyes back and forth rapidly while slowly drawing them up my field of vision. This added hundreds of layers to the tube of reality, the yellow paint on the walls of my room becoming part of the tube while the white ceiling became the other half, and I enjoyed the stunning visual of a thread of tube-shaped reality points that I had just purposefully cast into a yellow and white arch shape across my ceiling with my eye movements. And at one point, the geometric segments of the tube seemed to be so intricate that many worlds could fit into the seemingly golf ball sized "end" of the segment.
I felt like I was "turning to face the Creator" if one could metaphysically rotate their consciousness's position to see the God that's always there right underneath/outside/around this reality. But I didn't want to turn and face the Creator, I wanted a salvia trip! So, I was torn between left and right, duality. I even tried to sit up, and even physical movements were accounted for in this continual weaving of the reality-tube that drew me in. My physical movements were jerky, and each one added a layer that was a bit more rough or unrefined, to the reality tunnel. (compared to my thoughts) Every time another layer would be added, I felt this massive consciousness become disheartened with my choice to add another layer rather than to give in. The familiar voices that joined my thoughts expressed her disappointment, telling me things like "Every time we are at this point, this happens, then this happens, and then you this and this and that..." predicting my every movement and my every thought. With every movement, they expressed my subconscious thoughts relating to that movement back to me, dictating that THAT'S why I never get to fully experience this. I got the sense that I had lived a literally countless (think gigazabajillions) amount of lives in a timeless state that were identical or very similar to this one. And every time I lived this life of Aaron from birth to the point at 1:14 AM (glanced at the clock just then) and every time I decided to smoke this plant, and every time I decided to make the mistake of not letting go all the way. And every time I looked at the ceiling there and there and there and thought this and that and moved this way and that way. And I got the feeling that if I did give in and fully face the Creator, that I would be re-born/time travel backwards to my birth and re-live this life again, with this memory getting taken away from me again, only to hopefully culminate in some other different choice, something "new" to the Creator, at the point where I decided to smoke this plant and lay on my bed and look at the clock etc. etc. ad nauseum.
The tube was very deep now. And the presence that I was turning to face was becoming more all-present, more loving, more bright and radiant, more like the Creator. As I continued to "turn" to face more of the Creator, I felt more light enter all of my being, all selves forever forwards and ever backwards, directly proportionate in infinitely precise measurements to the exact metaphysical angle which I found my own consciousness at relative to all-consciousness of the Creator. I realized that I no longer felt any effects of the cannabis at this point. The salvia experience had blown that completely away along with physical reality. Then what was the warm feeling of pleasure and peace that was circulating through my... body? Then, I realized that I was completely separated from my body and I was experiencing a spiritual warmth as I moved closer to the Creator. Imagine the most excited you've ever been about anything in your life. This excitement, this electrical charge of pure ALIVENESS penetrates your entire being the closer you come to the Creator. And the vibrations of the light become faster, and peace, and love, and warmth, and certainty, on a level that can't be experienced in a 3rd density life, increase. This Creator was comforting. This Creator's full presence went beyond male and female, but it contained a female presence that radiates out love. Actually I was even able to identify the Creator-selves of a couple of my spiritually-closest friends contained within that all-presence, excited as can be for my return.
At this point, confusion and fear kept me from going any farther. I was still struggling with the fact that my salvia experiences never seem to be generic salvia experiences, but instead universe-shattering, infinitely repeating loops of perpetual self-disappointment and self-denial of the divine within. I remember thinking "This just isn't fair!!!" about the time loops and reality-tube, just before the song ended and I was released back into "normalcy". I was concerned for a couple minutes after as I tentatively chose actions to do such as take a drink of water. I was half expecting to suddenly remember trying to drink the water after I sat up after I looked there and there etc. etc. all in order to escape the trip. If that happened, I'd be pulled into the tube again. But it didn't happen. And the feelings that lent themselves to that kind of thought slowly tapered off and I was left with only the pleasant salvia afterglow. Because I've never gone that far and never experienced ego death, and because I was confused about what a salvia trip should really be, I listened to my fear which distorted the truth of the beautiful and natural process, convincing me that I would be infinitely trapped in a cycle of reliving my own life to that point if I chose to let go. I should have listened to the voice of love, which was telling me to just let go, let go. I also didn't realize that what the Creator wanted was to merge with me to experience the "newness" of my life, the "mystery" of the new information I was bringing to her, for a timeless forever before letting me go again to go back to this life and gain more experience.
So... do all psychedelic experiences culminate in a death and rebirth? Or is this just salvia? Why does it seem to be the ultimate experience of the soul, rather than a trip? And most importantly... should I go all the way tonight?
Oh yeah, and here's a handy page, along with a special scale exclusively for rating salvia experiences. (Scroll down to "The SALVIA Experiential Rating Scale")
http://sagewisdom.org/usersguide.html
I would place my experience as an I.
EDIT: One detail I forgot to mention. Upon re-entrance to my body, which coincided with the reconstruction of physical reality, I felt like everything was simply zipped right back snugly together. My body felt like it was pulled back together along the chakra line as if it had been split right in half.