Salvia Divinorum - Experience - Selfish Indulgence?

<body stylesrc="../../technical/backgroundforotherauthors.htm" background="../../technical/paperwords.jpg" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#000080" alink="#800080"> <p align="center"><font size="5" color="#008000">Salvia Divinorum Scotland ~ Experience ~ Selfish Indulgence?</font> <hr> <p><strong><font size="4">Selfish Indulgence? </font></strong></p> <blockquote> <p>‘Uncompromising’ – now that is a great word for it. I was also thinking ruthless, merciless and overwhelmingly harsh. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write – it has really helped me to know that others can relate to this. I agree with every word you wrote, it must be a delusion, and yet there is no way that it can be because qualitatively it is all of this world that is an experiential delusion in comparison. Yes I was ‘appalled’ – to suddenly find myself so uprooted and groundless. It reminded me of the film ‘The Matrix’ – except in that movie the ‘real world’ is our world here, and real human beings have been plugged into an ongoing fabrication. In this Salvia aided comprehension the real world actually turns out to be ME – now how the hell did I do that, and what the hell do I DO with that knowledge now? I certainly felt quite <i>physically</i> odd for hours and really for up to a day after smoking that 1/2g – yet I think it was a reverberating raw ontological and epistemological shock. I am in no rush to go back there for 2 reasons – first I know for sure that right now I simply do not have the tools to deal with that .. what .. it!*!. It is as you say, we are thoroughly programmed and orientated here – and I just fled out of <i>there</i> screaming last week, not even remotely equipped to deal with it. Second – it somehow seems somewhat backward looking. Like I said in the report, it was an overwhelming realisation of how fragile, beautiful and pregnant with possibility this life here is, and that there is so much to do here in this world, so much ignorance and suffering to overcome and move beyond. And a sense that this really is the point, to make this a game worth playing, to grow beauty and love and to obliterate fear. I experienced that ONENESS, that NOW, just to remind myself really, to stop wasting my time on backward looking trivia. Now, if we get this world sorted out, if we overcome all the pain and the tragedy – then, and only then, will plunging out there into that indescribable infinity be anything other than a selfish indulgence.<a name="free"></a> But I am free to be that indulgent – I just think that it would be a mistake. After all, whatever path I follow – sooner or later I pop right out back into now, like last Saturday night, and not one second will have passed by.</p> <font size="2"> <p> </p> </font> <p>You are the first person I have heard speculating on the ‘global’ timing of Salvia right now. I have been thinking exactly the same thing since I first came across her. There is something very odd here, a part of the cosmic stage props showing perhaps? Your thoughts on the sociological/historical side to this really interested me. I think there is something to develop here. I have been sharing some related thoughts by email in the past few weeks with a guy who has developed the ‘Lila – Journal of Cosmic Play’ website (some well worth reading articles on it). Basically we have been bouncing ideas off each other concerning the global-individual ‘healing’ question with regard to the macrocosm/microcosm ‘split’. We are agreed that the ‘split’ is only apparent, that work and healing on peoples ‘inner’ life should equally affect their ‘outer’ world and life (and vice-versa), and that herein will lie any ‘salvation’ from the chasm our species is rapidly approaching. But there is this question of the enormous inertia and resistance to even considering ‘change’ out there. I do wonder if Salvia has some role in this, but I share your pessimism and qualms too. My own immediate orientation to this is an emphasis on ‘individual responsibility’ – the need for an urgent wake up call and reminder that it all begins in our every daily concrete actions and all that flows from them – and this requires some serious attention and reorientation. We are what we <i>do</i> here, not what we witter on about in our own heads and beyond.. I am seriously tired of hearing so-called radical revolutionaries screaming on about ‘capitalism’ in the streets, and then trotting off to Burger King in their new Nikes. Perhaps the <i>cannabis brigade</i> are one viable ‘constituency’ in all this. Sure there is a lot of escapism going on there, particularly with the widespread tobacco/cannabis-analogue abuse. But pure cannabis is an entheogen, and it does occasionally break down boundaries and open up some minds to alternative perceptual options. With my own Salvia experiences I have noted that I began with relatively high doses, achieved ‘breakthrough’ (fairly quickly) – and since then less and less Salvia has taken me further and further (or <i>I remembered more and more</i> – maybe no difference)… until last weekend. I am seriously under the impression, after last weekend, that I am getting to the point where the mere smell of it might trigger me. But that scares me shitless I don’t mind telling you. It’s one thing to know, somewhere in your psyche, that you’ve smoked/taken something that will wear off soon. But to just go off there, without that ‘security’ of coming back – well, I would fear complete psychotic breakdown. Sorry I wandered a bit there, my point is that once a certain ‘threshhold’ is breached here, an equivalent macrocosmic ‘breakthrough’ – whether it be a critical number of us humans ‘waking up’ (!*!?), or whatever – it will take on an unstoppable momentum of its own, spreading with greater and greater ease. The main point to decide now is, of course, where is the fulcrum point - and exactly what kind of lever might do the trick…</p> <p>Anyway, I won’t bore you with any more, I just wanted to return the favour and to let you know that you are by no means alone in your musings on this very strange time, and this very strange Goddess-like plant teacher. </p> </blockquote> <hr> <table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td width="10%"> <p align="left"><a href="../../experience/selfishindulgence.html"><Back</a></td> <td width="14%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../experience.html">Experience</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../home.html">Main Menu</a></td> <td width="15%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia.html">Salvia Menu</a></td> <td width="26%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia/effects.html">Salvia Effects</a> / <a href="../../salvia/effects/feedback/index.html">Feedback</a></td> <td width="13%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../menu2.html">Menu 2</a></td> <td width="10%"> <p align="right"><a href="../../contact.html" title="contact details and links to information on salvia prices and availability">Contact</a></td> </tr> </table> </body>