ALTERED STATES

[oldbill4823]

This is a new section all about altered states of awareness.

This is the place to talk about our subjective experiences whilst under the influence of substances.

Please be responsible with this new section.

We at Monstrous do not advocate drug taking or breaking the laws of your country.

We do however take very seriously the profound effects such things can have upon our experiences.

This is the place to discuss them.

[oldbill4823]

EXPERIENCING THE DIVINATORY POWER OF SALVIA


I had started corresponding by email with an elderly woman who professed to have some knowledge of esoteric subjects, a self professed witch.
She had moved into a near by area and something about her intrigued me. After several emails were exchanged I suggested that we meet up in person. This was arranged and a suitable halfway meeting point organised.
As I thought about the meeting I wondered about what it would be like to conduct a relationship entirely in an altered state of awareness. The idea intriuged me.

On the day of the meeting I arrived early. I wanted to check out the area before hand just to make sure I had had some idea of the environment when I changed awareness. Also I wanted to make sure there were no unfavourable omens or portents.

The effects, although light, came on quite quickly and in a state half way between I entered the restaurant. There were a few customers, locals just drinking coffe and watching the sports, reading newspapers etc.
A few foreigners or tourists sat at tables outside in the sun. I quickly dismissed all these people as not being her. I imagined that I would be able to sense her straight away as she entered.
Although I have no idea what she looked like, with my awareness now expanding I felt around the room for the people feelings and quickly sipped their moods one by one.
It was obvious that she was not yet here.

I ordered a cappuchino from the waitress behind the bar, pulled up a local paper and sat at the bar. I literally blended right in and appeared as a local, self occupied, involved with my own things. It actually felt as if I was hidden from view.
It was as if I had slipped behind the normal layer of awareness and was residing just behind a curtain of perception that humans could not normally pierce. From my position at the bar I had an all round awareness of everyone in the room by just raising my head to look into the mirror on the otherside of the bar.

I actually felt cloaked in awareness in full daylight, hidden in another layer of being. I waited patiently and decided that I would just read the paper and enjoy the coffe whilst I waited. My attention of the rest of the room remained most keen though. Several people came and went and though i knew their movements I knew directly that they were not who I was waiting for.

A short while later a stout woman bustled into the room she looked around at the the customers as if sizing them up, then sat at a table behind me. She seemed a little prickly and impatient, confident and brusque, quietly bullying. Most of all though, impatient. I stayed at my seat at the bar still hidden behind a layer of awareness. I was curious to see if she would meet me somehow in this other level of awareness or wether she would remain in her current state. I continued reading the paper sipping my coffee, hidden. I watched her get up go towards the ladies toilets then return a few minutes later, looking all around and the glancing at her watch. I was effectively hidden from her in broad daylight only four or five meters away from her table in a room of perhaps 5 people. That was quite surprising. Watching her reactions and finding them nearly unpleasant I vacillated as to wether i actually wanted to meet her or not. I wondered if I really wanted to drop out of orbit and into her awareness or just pass on by invisibly. After several minutes of observing thus I got up off the chair and waked the short distance over to her table. I then introduced myself. When she asked when I had entered the room I glossed over the matter. She said that she had not seen me enter at all and that I had just appeared from nowhere. Still having the expanded awareness I could tell that this didn't even register as unusual in her mind it was just a phrase slipped into her conversation. It was definately unusual to me though. I couldn't help but wonder what sort of witch she was if she couldn't even sense me waiting for her just outside ordinary awareness.
 
From this point on I was curious to know how the salvia would affect the following interaction now I was with her face to face. We ordered some coffee then moved to a table outside to sit in the sun. I clearly remember that for a good half an hour she talked about herself whislt I made appropriate sounds to continue the flow of conversation. The general level of awareness had moved from the magical to the mundane despite her talking about her life and then esoteric subjects. The conversation was in fact very everyday, banal even, and entirely one way. I was quite at a loss as to how to revover any real magic to the moment. This was just a normal mundane social ineraction full of pleasantries, conventions, and the gloss of our individual social masks. She assumed a position of control of the general themes of conversation and kept saying "you don't really know why you are here do you?" I could sense that she felt I was there due to her and that this was some sort of coming out experience declaring my interest in all things magical. I could tell she had quite enjoyed my company and she moved the conversation towards a future interaction. I was a little dissapointed with the moment and quite confused as to what to make of the event. She assumed a position of control of the general themes of conversation and kept saying "you don't really know why you are here do you?" I could sense that she felt I was there due to her and that this was some sort of coming out experience declaring my interest in all things magical. I could tell she had quite enjoyed my company and she moved the conversation towards a future interaction. Personally I couldn't get out of there fast enough. With her clutching the sides of my face and inflicting me with brutish kisses we said goodby. I wriggled out from beneath her grip and for want of a better word fled the scene. I had other things to do that day needed to get on with them.

The days immediately after this encounter I remained quite confused by the experience. I reall didn't know what to make of the events. They were not obviously clear. Thinking that perhaps it was unwise to try and use salvia in that way again I propmptly forgot about it and concentrated on the rest of my life.

Shortly afterwards She sent me an email saying how delightful she found me and very gently saying that I was on the verge of opening up to a life of magical awareness. I found the email so pompous I felt quite enraged by her massive self importance; I tried reconciling the fact that such a reaction was just a measure of my own but this didn't really help abate the way I felt. I did not respond to her email.

About two weeks later she sent another email, even more gently written than the first Considering her overbearing nature that I had sensed at the cafe that day this infuriated me even more. I found it quite ugly. In the email she suggested some very light introductory books that would help me understand the things she spoke about. Again I was quite incensed that she had so misunderstood me and missed what was placed directly in front of us both. Again I did not reply. I clearly did not understand what the salvia had revealed to me. I certainly did not really much like her pompous self importance. So I waited and waited, then decided not to respond at all. I concentrated upon the life in front of me.




All the above happened nearly a year ago. I had recieved no more emails from her and had promptly forgotten all about the woman. Several weeks ago I found myself thinking of her, then several day later I recieved an email from her. She told me about the unfortunate turns her life had taken in the past year with he death of her sister, another relative diagnosed with cancer and her being forced to care for her young niece whilst her mother underwent chemotherapy. She also told me about a course in Shamanism that was due to be held nearby. The course was all about using movement to enter heightened awareness and altered states. I decided I was interested in this and therefore wrote back to her for the first time since our original meeting. I literally dropped back into her awareness again.

The weekend just passed I attended the course. It was taken by a young man who had spent several years with shaman from different cultures. He taught how by paying attention to our senses in different ways we access altered states and enter into internal silence. These states we practiced in the gardens outside. He went on to explain that in these states we were capable of creeping up on things without being noticed. We could literally stalk wild animals by remaining outside their awareness effectively becoming invisible to them. It was exactly the same state of being cloaked that I had experienced at the restaurant waiting for her to arrive. A state of knowing things directly free from the labelling of the mind. A state of listening with the awareness of the body. In such a state we enter into heightened awareness and can actually hide from the normal social awareness of people. A hunters state.


Writing down the thread of these experinces I feel that I know the divinatory properties of salvia directly. Its a bodily knowledge, not mental conjecture. This is one of the salvia experiences that bought such a revelation of its divinatory properties. It wasn't obvious at first but time and patience have revealed what is really going on when I take this stuff.

I can't claim to do anything unusual when I enter salvia space time. The key is merely in understanding (either during or afterwards) that you are entering headlong into aspects of time, directly experiencing the future. The rest then becomes crystal clear of its own accord. The threads seem to straighten themselves out becoming obvious.