I don’t know what it is. Something’s different. I don’t know. It feels different.
I can’t articulate it. Most other people can’t tell. I still drive (too) fast. I’m still witty. (At least I think I’m witty). I’m still driven. Yet something’s different.
I am not numb. In fact, I’d say I’m more sensitive than ever in my entire life.
I am not disoriented. In fact, I’d say I’m more oriented than ever in my entire life.
I am not emotionally muted. In fact, I’d say I’m more emotionally resonant than ever in my entire life.
Yet something’s different.
A trusted friend offered confirmation. I pushed her to expand on what she meant. “You’re more chill.”
More chill.
Hmmm. I still laugh. I still get irritated. I still feel grief. With an overlay of chill. Check.
What is it, then, that is different? I feel it and then don’t add fuel. I experience it and then don’t hold on. I am present and then don’t oscillate away.
I pushed her to be more specific. “You seem to get worked up less.”
Hmmm. We get worked up only when we are in the past or future. Maybe that is the difference. I am more engaged with the present moment. Check.
I HAVE, actually, experienced this before. Usually in the days after ten days of silent meditation. It has never lasted this long. It has never persisted without me deliberately and systematically practicing vipassana.
THIS difference is persistent.
Something IS different. It’s like I’ve had sex with the present moment. And now I’m surrounded by present moment porn. Enticing me. Inviting me. Pulling me.
Into the present moment.
I can feel it when I’m driving. On the steering wheel that I’m holding with my hands. I can feel the pressure. I can feel the heat. I can feel my fingers tingling against the steering wheel. I can feel the seat of the car pushing against my back as I drive down the road.
One school of Zen says, “The sky is blue, the grass is green.” I never really knew what that meant. I mean I know what the words mean and I know what the message behind those words on an intellectual level means and I know how that is a goal and I would pretend, if I am totally honest, that I was living that way but not really because I was still wrapped up in meaning and application and impact and the past and the future but…
NOW I KNOW.
Without working to get there.
Actually, I have to resist to not go there. Because present moment porn seems to overpower me. And I want to go there. It feels good.
IT FEELS GOOD.
I don’t even know what that feeling is that I have when I am there because there is no context, no thought, no evaluation.
My friend called it “Bliss.”
Hmmm. We experience bliss at those points in our lives that are so powerful that it seems like time has actually stopped. Check.
It has been 21 days since I first consumed psilocybin mushrooms. I have eaten these psychedelics two more times over the past weeks and this new psychonaut plans another experience next week.
I had no “ah-ha” moment. I did not experience dramatic visual hallucinations. I did not find Jesus. I did not have some deep world-shattering experience.
It was more like going from an old cathode-ray tube television to a 4K HDR television. But not just sight. For every one of my senses: touch, taste, sound, and smell.
Now — days later with the psilocybin long gone from my system — my senses seem to be adjusted UP to, I don’t know, HD. I am definitely not back to the old cathode-ray tube version of life.
And that is one of the aspects that make present moment porn so powerful.
Maybe it was always this way. I just didn’t see it.
Either way. All I know is that…
Something’s Different.
Read the original post about Scott’s Psychedelic Journey:
Something’s Different – A Psilocybin Story | Medium