Looking forward to listening to the podcast which I've just stumbled across. After several years of psychedelic exploration that took me into the mountains of Costa Rica and a deep dive into plant medicines with the cutting down, cultivation, cooking and consuming of Ayahuasca along with a half dozen other entheogens such a DMT, Psilocybin, MDA and cannabis I discovered that I have aphantasia about a year ago.
Since which I've experimented with macro dose levels (14 gram) of home-grown psilocybin and found that the link between the inner nondual conscious state and outer free will conscious state of awareness can connect in ways that are beneficial without the distraction of the hallucinatory blast off to bog it down. From my very first 3g Psilocybin journey several years ago to the macro dosing state of late I had the sense that the outer conscious free will seeking mind was able to sit in the front seat with the inner conscious mind driving the car, and on occasion even getting behind the wheel.
Once I discovered Aphantasia and the possibility of me having it I reached out half a dozen prominent members of the psychedelic community (Robin Carhart Harris, Manesh Girn, Rick Doblin, Adam Zeeman, Michael Pollin) and sadly, had a very limited response from most to date given its newness to the scene of science.
I found it to be an abnormal and somewhat dangerous response, or lack thereof to some degree, given people doing trials who may have aphant could be left confused or even traumatized further without knowledge of their lack of a mind's eye that one gets with the typical psychedelic experience, as I was for a time.
Now it seems a sort of a superpower to be able to take macro dose levels which explore the depths of your nondual conscious state as opposed to the blast off effects of traditional journey states of hallucination.
Yeah the possibility of gaining imagery w psychedelics is a fascinating and potentially dangerous one. We are working on a few papers for this atm to hopefully spread the word to the people running these clinical trials - it's very early and not at all clear what is happening and how likely it is to gain imagery etc. there are only two case studies atm, both of which didn't test imagery before hand and rely on memory.. which is a bit of an issue..
Hi Joel, thanks for the reply and feedback on the studies.
The correlation between memory and visualization seems to be relevant given my somewhat lack of both, particularly since a blindsided attack that took place 30 years ago which left me briefly unconscious with a head injury. But I do fall back on Einsteins theory of “I do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” He also said, “…The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”. I have a very strong memory for certain things and given I go through approximately a book a week, along with copious amounts of other content, I believe it may be important to register information in the mind without the need to recall its exact recollection as that could lead to overload and breakdown of the software.
The discovery of finding out that I may have Aphantasia has been a small speed bump in the path that I was on during an upending of my personal and professional life, but being a supporter of the stoned app theory of evolution, whereby entheogens may have helped to develop and expand human consciousness, it’s an interesting dichotomy to find an overlap of what could be a portal to a direct link between our internal motor function of consciousness, which is operating the internal system (mind and body) without any help or hinderance from “us”, and the outer free will form of consciousness, that acts on behalf of, and in tandem with, our inherent tribal instincts to survive in the rapid reactionary way in which we do daily.
If there is a connection between our two conscious states, then advancing those connections between those two layers of existence and awareness may just be the next step in our evolution and progress as a society toward maximizing wellbeing. I plan to stay on the journey with psychedelics (sanely and safely) in order to dive deeper into the possible connections that can be made between the two states of consciousness, as it seems the only thing that may actually provide answers to life’s most important questions of human progress and flourishing.
Thanks for your feedback and please let me know if you have ever spoken with Sam Harris as I believe you may have mutual interests to overlap on which may be valuable to the conversation.
Not so dualistic in terms positive or negative, just different feelings or emotions one associates as intuition showing up at the same time both being a result of SMILE. So, a very general example could be security v a growth opportunity, self-interest v collective interest, compassion v drawing a line in the sand.
Thank you for sharing the podcast. So much of the conclusions you drawing from your research are inline with the personal journey I have been in conjunction with my faith beliefs.
I do want to address the what felt like a flippant reference to intuitive eating as nonsense and not part of intuition. The journey I was referring to was greatly influenced by the principles of IE. The principles helped me identify the generational and childhood trauma responses I had developed around food, eating, my body; particularly last supper mentality. These principles began a personal healing process which has allowed me to access greater trust in my intuition.
Looking forward to listening to the podcast which I've just stumbled across. After several years of psychedelic exploration that took me into the mountains of Costa Rica and a deep dive into plant medicines with the cutting down, cultivation, cooking and consuming of Ayahuasca along with a half dozen other entheogens such a DMT, Psilocybin, MDA and cannabis I discovered that I have aphantasia about a year ago.
Since which I've experimented with macro dose levels (14 gram) of home-grown psilocybin and found that the link between the inner nondual conscious state and outer free will conscious state of awareness can connect in ways that are beneficial without the distraction of the hallucinatory blast off to bog it down. From my very first 3g Psilocybin journey several years ago to the macro dosing state of late I had the sense that the outer conscious free will seeking mind was able to sit in the front seat with the inner conscious mind driving the car, and on occasion even getting behind the wheel.
Once I discovered Aphantasia and the possibility of me having it I reached out half a dozen prominent members of the psychedelic community (Robin Carhart Harris, Manesh Girn, Rick Doblin, Adam Zeeman, Michael Pollin) and sadly, had a very limited response from most to date given its newness to the scene of science.
I found it to be an abnormal and somewhat dangerous response, or lack thereof to some degree, given people doing trials who may have aphant could be left confused or even traumatized further without knowledge of their lack of a mind's eye that one gets with the typical psychedelic experience, as I was for a time.
Now it seems a sort of a superpower to be able to take macro dose levels which explore the depths of your nondual conscious state as opposed to the blast off effects of traditional journey states of hallucination.
Yeah the possibility of gaining imagery w psychedelics is a fascinating and potentially dangerous one. We are working on a few papers for this atm to hopefully spread the word to the people running these clinical trials - it's very early and not at all clear what is happening and how likely it is to gain imagery etc. there are only two case studies atm, both of which didn't test imagery before hand and rely on memory.. which is a bit of an issue..
Hi Joel, thanks for the reply and feedback on the studies.
The correlation between memory and visualization seems to be relevant given my somewhat lack of both, particularly since a blindsided attack that took place 30 years ago which left me briefly unconscious with a head injury. But I do fall back on Einsteins theory of “I do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” He also said, “…The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”. I have a very strong memory for certain things and given I go through approximately a book a week, along with copious amounts of other content, I believe it may be important to register information in the mind without the need to recall its exact recollection as that could lead to overload and breakdown of the software.
The discovery of finding out that I may have Aphantasia has been a small speed bump in the path that I was on during an upending of my personal and professional life, but being a supporter of the stoned app theory of evolution, whereby entheogens may have helped to develop and expand human consciousness, it’s an interesting dichotomy to find an overlap of what could be a portal to a direct link between our internal motor function of consciousness, which is operating the internal system (mind and body) without any help or hinderance from “us”, and the outer free will form of consciousness, that acts on behalf of, and in tandem with, our inherent tribal instincts to survive in the rapid reactionary way in which we do daily.
If there is a connection between our two conscious states, then advancing those connections between those two layers of existence and awareness may just be the next step in our evolution and progress as a society toward maximizing wellbeing. I plan to stay on the journey with psychedelics (sanely and safely) in order to dive deeper into the possible connections that can be made between the two states of consciousness, as it seems the only thing that may actually provide answers to life’s most important questions of human progress and flourishing.
Thanks for your feedback and please let me know if you have ever spoken with Sam Harris as I believe you may have mutual interests to overlap on which may be valuable to the conversation.
A little light on the Aphantasia field but a nice chat.
Wonderful podcast. Question- thoughts on competing intuitions?
interesting Q. As in one positive and one negative at the same time? cancelling each other out - that kind of thing?
Not so dualistic in terms positive or negative, just different feelings or emotions one associates as intuition showing up at the same time both being a result of SMILE. So, a very general example could be security v a growth opportunity, self-interest v collective interest, compassion v drawing a line in the sand.
Thank you for sharing the podcast. So much of the conclusions you drawing from your research are inline with the personal journey I have been in conjunction with my faith beliefs.
I do want to address the what felt like a flippant reference to intuitive eating as nonsense and not part of intuition. The journey I was referring to was greatly influenced by the principles of IE. The principles helped me identify the generational and childhood trauma responses I had developed around food, eating, my body; particularly last supper mentality. These principles began a personal healing process which has allowed me to access greater trust in my intuition.