I'd freeze up and not be able to make a decision because I was so afraid sometimes...
I relate to that completely, in every regard! I couldn't express opinions - didn't know what was right, or what felt right and didn't know my own mind. I was in awe of people who were able to express themselves and I was frustrated at my own inability to do so. This applied to interactions with others. I was better able to express myself alone, to myself and in my diaries...but even there confusion proliferated. I see it as setting up the game though - early years confusion -> then living the lie of conditioned life -> questioning it and becoming aware of it -> untangling oneself and moving towards the prospect of real freedom. It may all be a big fat work in progress (and sure looks like it), but at the same time is just what it is - a number of states/steps that flow, each representing the exact place one needs to be at that time in order to learn what is required through having these experiences! That's where the creative mastery comes in - when we become more consciously aware of what is going on and begin to direct the flow of life, rather than being a passenger!
I was expecting cartoons to be popping out of the woodworks and what actually happened was closer to witnessing divinity
Your shroom experiences - goodness, powerful and sound like they must have brought you to the brink of the abyss!? Good on you for not ignoring them, perhaps that's what pulled you through no? Certainly Terence McKenna takes the view that the spirit of Psilocybin is here to assist in raising consciousness, and, when we take mushrooms, we have access to the distilled energy of learning gained by the sum-total of all trips that have taken place since the beginning of this relationship between (wo)man and shroom!
I think you're right, this right here has been what I've been building to, like all my mistakes and errors in living actually showed me better how to live and allowed me the opportunity of sharing my experience to get out of those dark places where I couldn't express some part of me. Wild how it all works, seems like there are similarities of this kind of thing for some people!
It's so fascinating, I felt like I was finally truly myself, like I understood things on a level that didn't work out into words. I was with friends and I was saying things like "everything just is" and feeling like I could feel whent he weather was changing, and sprinting down sketchy mountain slopes because I understood how the physics and movement would work.
It made me feel like there is no point in spending thousands of hours learning a single skill because when you raise your consciousness enough learning is unnecessary, you just understand how things work and can fully express.
Pscilocybin has been a huge guiding force for me, like it gives me a glimpse to what could be if I opened up enough, so I just try to work on it in normal everyday life. Results have been promising
Seems to me like there is Experience (at a meta level) and then there are the details of any specific experience. To have undergone an experience (especially if this experience has been consciously processed and assimilated) is to open up the possibility of understanding the experience of another at a deep (meta?) level and without necessarily needing to know (m)any details. Thus a mother - who has experienced childbirth, will have a much deeper emotional understanding than a man, of, for example, the sight of a woman experiencing discomfort during pregnancy. I think @jakeybrown, that it may be possible that we access a level of Experience that is universal, pure and without detail (the meta level) - and as such one that has been accessed by many before. Each instance of Experience is accompanied by a unique set of details that come together in the moment and make up a particular experience. The distilled learning from this particular experience then flows back up and the pool of collective Experience expands. This process makes sense to me. Everything is intricately connected. We have played the game of isolation/alienation and still are playing it; but it is an illusion however touchy-feely and real it may appear :D
I think you've just explained to my whence comes my deep love of a series of fantasy novels that I've just read for the third time - Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The characters are pulled into The Land, a fantasy land where health sense allows one character in particular (a doctor) to experience just what you've described above. It's never really made clear whether it's a delusion, but it's a heck of a lot of pages in that land!
I've experienced this kind of thing on psychadelics and other substances, but only ever had very brief glimpses in sobriety. It's that that I'm seeking I think.
12+ years in AA have taught me a lot about myself, fear in particular, and that's a thing I deal with every day.
Same, though it's getting better for me. I've been practicing meditation and that's been really helping get back to that flow-like state where there was just no fear for me.
I almost read those books when I was younger but couldn't get into them. Might've been too young for them.
This is my view also. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have reached my current state of being at a younger age, but acknowledge that I was where and who I had to be at that time, just as I am now. That notion helps me to worry a little less about my own children. I guess I should stop trying to make them listen to Pink Floyd! (apart from Bike, which they both love!)
Cheers @camuel - fantastic that your kids both love Bike - too good man :D