From: David Musick (David_Musick@msn.com)
Date: Mon Dec 16 1996 - 02:48:50 MST
Lyle Burkhead related his story of being an "acid casuality", and this got me
thinking about my experiences with acid and whether using LSD seemed to
improve my life or not. I've had some really wonderful "bliss trips" and some
very frightening and traumatic experiences while on acid. During all my
experiences with acid, I learned a lot about my belief systems and my
attitudes, and all the acid really seemed to do was to magnify and clarify all
my thinking and help me work through whatever I had been thinking about during
the time when I took the acid. During my trips, I generally got a lot of
mental work done very quickly and worked through a lot of personal problems
and psychological weakensses very quickly. Even my most traumatic trips ended
up on a positive note, once I worked my way out of the terror I was
experiencing. But I think my positive results from using acid are because of
my typical attitudes of making the best of my situation and making every
experience something to learn from. With a different set of attitudes, the
acid may have had a negative effect on me.
I stongly believe that all the results of using LSD can be achieved without
the drug, and I have been working on developing the types of states of mind
that I experienced on LSD, for the past few years, with great success. I
think that LSD and other psychoactive drugs are only one way to achieve
certain results with one's mind. I think it is more beneficial to develop the
mental discipline to put oneself in various states of consciousness at will
(although I have nothing against using the drugs -- in fact, I enjoy using
them, but haven't for a while, due to the difficulty of obtaining them
safely). It's taken a lot of work, but my everyday experience now is far
beyond anything I ever experienced on acid, and it keeps getting more intense
all the time.
I feel like I'm on a perpetual acid trip now. All the beautiful and enjoyable
aspects of my acid trips I've learned to create in my normal experience. The
extreme vividness of all my sensations. The intense fascination with every
detail of experience. Seeing everything with a fresh mind. The rapid pace of
learning new things. The creative and fantastic ideas constantly flowing
through my mind. The feeling of the ground being perpetually yanked out from
under my feet as new, more extensive and powerful paradigms develop in my mind
and obsolete my current ones. All of this, and much more are part of my
ordinary experience. This is the result of me deliberately creating these
states of mind within myself by working diligently on it for the past few
years. I wanted it so much that I just kept pursuing it, and now I've
attained it. Now that I've got it, I want more. I want things to be more
intense and fascinating. I want to learn things even faster. More vividness!
More frequent and profound paradigm shifts! These states of mind are the
most addictive things I've ever encountered, and I just keep wanting more.
And I keep enjoying everything more profoundly and understanding everything
with greater clarity and doing everything with greater ease and gracefulness.
It's just so endlessly fascinating...
- David Musick
-- Your true freedom is within your mind, and as long as you direct your own
mind, you will never be a slave, even if others control your body. --
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