Tag Archives: ego

My Virgin Ayahuasca Trip Report: Dancing With A Sadistic Mother

ayahuasca trip report

Ayahuasca Trip Report: Set & Setting

I will keep this section brief for two reasons:

  1. The group I sat with operates within the US, and therefore is “underground”
  2. Most readers have expressed the most interest in the “juicy details” of my experience

I would like to acknowledge, however, that the two dozen fellow journeyers in attendance were the most genuinely loving and intelligent people The Big Toe and I have ever met. We wondered if this medicine attracts this quality of people, or if perhaps it produces these qualities in people (the vast majority of the participants had already taken many doses). We came to the conclusion that it’s likely a combination of both.

During the Pre-Ceremony Introduction, I met with the Shaman and told her of my experience with “heroic doses” of LSD for entheogenic purposes in the past.

Related: Virgin Voyage – My First LSD Experience & My Second LSD Trip – 25 Years Later

She asked “So, you’re not afraid to surf the big waves?”

I smiled and said “Hang Ten!”

Famous (and egotistical) last words…

My stated intentions for the session were:

  1. To know the Truth, no matter what
  2. To know the next steps on my journey to the Truth

Ayahuasca Trip Report: Session One

The ceremony began and soon it was my turn to approach the alter and take the medicine. The cup was filled to the brim… Laird Hamilton had nothing on me.

Within about 30 minutes I could feel the medicine coming on slowly, unlike my experiences with high doses of LSD. My body became warm and lighter, with a bit of dizziness.

I kept with my intention “Show me the Truth and my path towards it”.

Then she spoke to me for the first time. Now, there wasn’t an external figure that I could see (although many others have reported such an experience). This voice was from an internal source, but most certainly wasn’t ME. Those of you who’ve had this experience will know what I mean. Everyone else, just stay with me…

So she says:

“You’ve got to fucking be kidding me, right?”

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Bullshit Spirituality Practices

bullshit spirituality

The Origin of Bullshit Spirituality Practices

Correlation and causation aren’t the same thing, no matter how inviting it is to act otherwise. Our quick attempt to equate them is a fool’s game.  Take it from a fool who’s played this game like a drum.

What the hell am I talking about and what does this correlation/causation distinction have to do your spiritual practice?

And more importantly, how does bullshit spirituality work its way into this messy mix?

Well I’m not talking about the bullshit fact that most tantric practitioners realize they’ve contracted crabs about 7-10 days after a practicing session on their “path”.

That’s bullshit spirituality for a different post (note to self).

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Dharma Movie Reviews: Fight Club And Buddhism

Fight club and buddhism - this is your life

I’ll never forget the first time I watched Fight Club.

It was Friday, October 29th, 1999, as a matter of fact.

I was in awe the entire time. My girlfriend reached over and closed my mouth, as the experience was literally jaw dropping. This fascination was certainly enhanced by the fact that I had been deep into the study of Zen Buddhism over the previous two years. I distinctly recall every single scene representing a teaching from the Zen tradition.

Within the trendy Buddhist communities or hipster movie crowds, the interplay between Fight Club and Buddhism is no secret. Director David Finch and both Brad Pitt and Edward Norton have mentioned it in interviews. I have certainly spoken at length about it in the last 15 years to anyone kind (or high) enough to listen.

Now that BT and I created this WUH platform, I thought I’d throw it up here:

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Nondualistic BadAss in Black

Nondualistic BadAss schoolbus

Almost 20 years ago now, I received a call from Hairy Yogurt Das.   We hadn’t talked in a while and after some introductory chit chat, shit-giving and banter, HYD said, “From a dualistic perspective, I’ve got some bad news.”

“What’s that?” I replied.

“Michael’s dead.” he responded.

“What happened?”

“Crashed his Harley.”

So, the most unusual thing about this interaction isn’t that Michael (one of HYD’s closest friends) was killed.  It was that HYD clearly knew that in the bigger scope of things, there is no such thing as “bad” or “good” news.  It’s just the manifestation unfolding.

However, if you want to get relative, something like this could be considered pretty fucking bad compared to Michael winning the lottery or even having a bad cup of coffee.  With the intention not to insult me by assuming I wasn’t operating at a state where anything was other than what is was, he qualified that he had some bad news from a “dualistic” perspective.  His parents raised him with proper manners, I’d say.

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The Jnana Yoga Path Of Intellectual Masturbation

intellectual masturbation cartoon

I was a dedicated practitioner and advocate of Jnana Yoga for more than a couple of decades.

I also masturbate a lot. At least more than the reported national average… but who actually admits truthfully how often they flog the dolphin.

In this post I’m going to explore the concept of Jnana Yoga being “spiritual” intellectual masturbation.

The Jnana Yoga path is that of knowledge or wisdom. I want to be clear that what I’m doing know, writing this blog post, or anytime that I think or talk about any of these “spiritual” topics, I’m essentially practicing Jnana Yoga.

So this blog is nothing but a Jnana circle jerk. Everyone is welcome, no judgments.

Some teachers attempt to make it clear that Jnana Yoga is not pursing intellectual knowledge, but rather knowledge of Unity or of Bhraman or Whatchamacallit (who remembers that candy bar?).

intellectual masturbation chocolate bar

Doesn’t it feel good to think of God as “chocolatey”? Or is that just me?

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My Second LSD Trip: 25 Years Later

LSD trip voyage upwards

A full twenty-five years later, Big Toe and I met up in Boulder, Colorado to take our second big LSD Trip and psychedelic adventure together.

Related: Virgin Voyage: My First Psychedelic Experience

Honest to Goddess, I hadn’t consumed any mind-altering substances in that two and a half decade time period. From a spiritual path perspective, there simply didn’t seem to be any need for it.

Then I started to get an “itch”; but it wasn’t exactly an itch, it kind of felt like an ache. So I’ll call it an “Itch-Ache”.

There was something else that I needed to experience, or so I convinced myself.

As you may recall, on my first LSD trip, I spent a good deal of time after the “peak-behind-the-curtain period” in The Void. This was planned for that first trip, and was certainly liberating in many ways that I was able to carry into ordinary relative reality.

LSD trip into the Void

This Itch-Ache felt like a calling/desire for more than the loss of Ego into the Void, but rather a sense of Union. I was unsure exactly how this sense of Union would present itself, as I felt confident that the path of pure bliss, surrender and love wasn’t MY path. I had always been drawn to the more Jnana Yoga Path of knowledge and intellectualism, somewhat characterized by my leaning towards Alan Watts over Ram Dass.

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A Conditional Acceptance of the Bhakti Path

Hello Bliss Seekers,

This one is kind of a sticky-wicket. What I mean by that is that “sticky-wicket” is really fun to say out loud. Please stop reading and quickly say “sticky-wicket” out loud.

All You Need Is Love?

For those you that haven’t been exposed to all the super cool and eastern sounding Sanskrit words thrown around by seekers immersifying their egos in “Eastern philosophy and spiritual practices”, thank your lucky fucking stars. Bhakti basically means love. The Bhakti path is a path of love and devotion. Is it dualistic or non-dualistic? It depends on if the seeker has the ability to truly embrace non-dualism.

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On Spiritual Ego

 

spiritual ego

A health check for your practice

From time to time it makes sense to take inventory of our practice and if we are effectively “moving forward”. As a start, you may want to ask yourself some of these questions?

  • How would I describe myself spiritually?
  • Where am I on my current path?
  • How dedicated am I?
  • How long have I been practicing?
  • How do I feel about my progress?
  • Do I feel more centered, calm, and peaceful than a month or year ago?
  • How do I deal with those less conscious that I have to interact with in my life?
  • Should I be doing more or adding time or dimensions to my practice?
  • How knowledgeable am I on the foundation and writers in my given path?
  • Do I feel good about my dedication and consistently?

Maybe even add some more of your own if you are serious about this. I suggest you briefly write out your answers before moving on. Look at the answers and assess your opinions, perspectives, and beliefs about who you are as a spiritual seeker and where you are on your path and what goals you may have achieved or are striving to.

Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step and are now looking, right in the face, at a steaming pile of dog shit called your Spiritual Ego.

This is a nice extra piece of luggage we can add to our existing baggage of beliefs around who we are and why we are special or a victim. The beauty of this is that we actually feel good about all these perspectives because they are “spiritual”.

We now have another dimension we can add to our beliefs about who we are physically, mentally, emotionally, professionally, and financially.   We have a spiritual dimension that makes us even more balanced, interesting, and pretty fucking deep.

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Virgin Voyage: My First Psychedelic Experience

psychedelic experience reaching the void

A Recount of My First Psychedelic Experience

This definitely ain’t Kansas.

As some of you are already aware, the totality of my drug experience (not to mention my psychedelic experience) throughout both high school AND college consisted of four beers. I suppose I should point out that the term “beer” is used lightly here, as they were really four bottles of Little Kings Cream Ale.

Seriously, I was that straight-edge (before that was a term) and vanilla, up until I was 24 years old.

Although slightly painful to admit, I was a Midwestern Country Bumpkin when I arrived in San Francisco, sight unseen, to study Religion and East West Psychology at The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Although I had obtained my BA in philosophy with additional foci on religion and psychology, I somehow missed the books and lectures on mystical experiences, induced both by various techniques and the use of drugs.

That all changed at CIIS, as there was a corner section of the library dedicated to the topic of the psychedelic experience for enlightenment. Mind you, that wasn’t the exact description header for those two bookshelves, but even I could figure it out.

It was like porn to me.

Like real, old school porn, before the Internet; when it wasn’t so easy to obtain, and that seemed to exponentially increase both the desire and appreciation for it. That’s what this new and tasty information was for me… Enlightenment Porn.

But I digress…

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The Philanthropic Egomaniac

Philanthropic Egomaniac burning money

Hello Fun Seekers.

For better or for worse, I’ve been exposed to more than my share of wealthy individuals during my tenure of this life. I ended up in some private school from 8th-12th grade. I was on scholarship helping to satisfy their “diversity” claims. I guess socio-economic diversity needed its token representation. Needless to say, you couldn’t swing a dead cat at back-to-school night without hitting some extremely wealthy, white, overachieving, stressed out, type-A parent right between the eyes.

Then I ended up raising kids in San Francisco, ground zero of shitty public schools, and we became the wealthy, white, overachieving, stressed out, type-A parents that sent our kids to insanely expensive private schools.

What I learned from my exposure to the other parents at this school is that if you are really into accumulating wealth, only an idiot would go into the software industry (me) if they could find a way into the financial services industry, especially any type of venture capital, merger and acquisition type of shit.

I got to hang out with these types for good part of seven years, until we pulled the ripcord on the whole circus and I quite my job, left the high-tech world, San Francisco, private schools and bolted to a small town and started over.

All this is an elaborate set-up to overcome the objection that the first philanthropic offended mother-fucker tries to slap into the comment section at the bottom of this article. This objection is the classic, “you wouldn’t say these things if you really knew these people and how big their hearts are, and how hard they work, and how much they love everyone, and blah, blah, blah…..”

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