I'm the one who said I have developed a fairly psychedelic state of mind as my
normal state of consciousness, because of the training I've put myself
through. Actually, I haven't used much LSD (less than ten times, normal doses
each time), so it has nothing to do with storing it in my fat cells and
releasing it later. It's all from my training.
The central core of my training is learning to pay deep attention to
everything I can. I keep my focus on my present moment of experience, on my
current sensations and my thoughts, my emotions, everything I can. It's
amazing how different things begin looking when I pay more attention to them.
My old ways of seeing things and understanding things are so obselete compared
to how I see things now. I see at a glance now what used to take me several
seconds or minutes of staring. I see my thoughts so clearly and am able to
follow them so easily and understand types of things almost instantly which
used to take me days or weeks to allow to sink in and fully realize.
There are some "drawbacks" from this discipline, though. Remember when you
became an atheist? It was probably pretty traumatic for you, dropping a
belief system like that (I know it was for me, anyway). Imagine going through
something as shattering as that on a monthly or weekly basis... That's the
kind of shit that happens all the time now that I've trained myself to pay
such deep attention to things. I see through my current layers of belief
systems so quickly that I'm almost perpetually in a state of extreme upset.
Although, I have learned to maintain a semblence of sanity around other
people, and I actually do my work better than ever. When I first started
going through these profound belief system revisions, I felt like I had to
change my exterior life dramatically, but now that it happens so often, it's
much easier (especially on other people) to just go along with everything and
not disrupt everything too much, at least on the outside.
Imagine going for a walk and seeing everything so clearly and being fascinated
by every little detail. Imagine looking down at the dried leaves scattered on
the sidewalk and seeing all the vein patterns in each one of them and feeling
like you've been staring at them forever and then looking up at the trunk of
the tree you're passing and seeing all the intricate details of the bark and
wanting that moment to last forever but still feeling intensely hungry to see
more, so you look up at the naked branches above you and see every last twig
with the sky behind it and the wispy clouds moving. Then you look ahead and
see the sidewalk and all the houses in intricate detail and all the dirt on
them and all the paint chips and *everything*. You hear the leaves crunch
such an overwhelmingly exquisite crunch that seems to go on endlessly, and
then you realize that you've only taken two steps in a brisk walk during all
that time of exquisitely fascinating detail. You walk on, and every step is
that intense...
This is the kind of stuff that I've been working on developing in my mind, and
now it happens on an increasingly regular basis. This stuff is very
beautiful, but it's also very upsetting. When one is immersed in the world of
experience and watching all of one's fleeting thoughts, rising and falling,
seemingly endlessly, everything one is used to holding on to just falls away
and there's nothing but this moment. It can be quite terrifying at times, but
it is generally very exhilarating to see everything so clearly and to
understand things that were hard for me to see before.
I just thought I'd warn you, in case you were thinking of doing such things
yourself. It's a difficult but exquisite path to follow. The key to
developing these psychedelic states is to learn to pay close attention to
everything, to develop a very watchful mind, to keep bringing one's attention
to the present moment. The benefits are greatly increased intelligence and
learning speed as well as much more detailed and exquisite reality. The
"drawbacks" are the feelings of having the ground perpetually being yanked out
from under oneself and having to do "sanity checks" fairly often (just to make
sure). I also have a difficult time sleeping regular hours and am often up
all night, but that may just be me. And (I'm not sure if you would consider
this a benefit or a drawback), time seems to go very, very slowly -- a day can
sometimes seem like weeks or months, so one has to learn to be fascinated by
everything or be horribly bored (stopping at a traffic light can seem like a
LONG time). Also, one has to learn to keep track of slower activities, such
as crossing the room to get something and not get too distracted along the way
by all of the thousands of thoughts and fascinating details one is
experiencing (at first, you may keep asking yourself, "Now, what was I
doing?").
Good luck, if you decide to pursue creating these states of mind within
yourself. And don't forget to laugh long and hard fairly often...
- David Musick
-- Learn to see the "exactness" of everything. --