[Mage]

(05-11-2019 12:37 PM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

(05-11-2019 03:37 AM)Mage Wrote:  

Yes Alcohol is even worse then mushrooms. Or most of the lightweight drugs. I do not use either.

Good for you. But you haven't any right to enforce your opinion of what you think others ought to do with their bodies through the use of force (vis a vis the state). Which is what you're implicitly endorsing because you believe the ends justify the means.

Whaat? I never endorsed a prohibition. I am merely saying you better should not be using these substances and treat the government decision to decriminalize it with suspicion rather then some sudden act of good will. If government would sufddenly turn to all about freedom they really should start from more important things like freedom of speech, allodial rights or whatever not drugs.

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To all of the defendants of psychedelics. You reap much more benefits if you do honest meditation instead. But that requires more discipline and morality.

Are you speaking from your own experience with both meditation and psychedelics, or from a position of self-righteousness because you took the so called 'honest' path? I agree with you that consistent meditation practice is an amazing boon to your life. But it's a false dichotomy that you need choose one or the other. They are both tools.

I practice meditation and have good results and positive influence in my life. To suggest that you need to try drugs to be able to speak against them is another lie that drug using people often use.

No you do not need to try every shit in your life to kno w it is bad and speak against it. Drug users use this deceptive rhetoric. Even Muslims use that deceptive rhetoric that you cannot criticise Islam if you are not Islamic scholar and that suggests youdo not know what you are talking about, This is false logic

Everyone who uses this false logic is a liar.

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Psychedelics is a quick cheat path.

I would say that using psychedelics productively and therapeutically is a long term project and there's nothing quick or easy about it. It's only a cheat path if you use them nilly willy, in which case the only person getting cheated is you.

Therapeutically? Sorry I do not believe in prescription medicine for psychological disorders in 90% of cases as practiced in West. It only makes people dependent on it and makes new problems.

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No high quality spiritual teacher recommends using the quick cheat way of using psychedelics.

Hmm, really? What about the shamans of countless cultures who use them to facilitate vision quests, rights of passage, and other spiritual journeys?

These shamans usually come from cultures where meditation is not well known and practiced like native Americans or Excimos. Why would you learn from cultures that haven't even invented wheel when you have much richer teachings from European and Asian traditions?

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I don't know which spiritual teachers you're referring to, but nobody who understands anything about psychedelics or has any substantial experience taking them or sitting with somebody who has taken them would call them a quick cheat way. If that were really true, people would only need to take a psychedelic once and then all of their spiritual and existential questions would be solved.

I said it's a dead end at some point. of course nothing is really solved. It can merely convince you that there is something more then the mundane world.

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And no Steve Jobs and similar "successful" people who attribute their worldly success to drugs are not spiritual teachers they are fronts for corporations and what comes from their mouths is what is good for corporations and consumer society and not for you.

Ah the old standby, the corporate bogeyman...

Steve Jobs took LSD and evangelized about it to his friends back when he had no corporation to speak of. Let's see what he actually said:

"Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

By the way, in the excellent biography by Sir Walter Isaacson about Jobs, it also mentions that he spent countless hours meditating. He in no way categorically ascribes his material success to LSD.

It's a tool in your toolbox and you can use it rightly or misuse it as any other tool.

I'll also say that I have a friend who is a very successful entrepreneur. And you'll be happy to hear, Mage, that he's both procreated with his wife (twice!) and is quite gregarious. Anyway, his whole family has a history of depression and several of his immediate family members are on prescription anti-depressant drugs.

He also has highly depressive tendencies but he went a different route. He took up exercising (BJJ), spending more time with good friends, going out into nature for hikes and adventures, and taking psychedelics. He reckons he completely cured himself of all depression.

Did the psychedelics do it? Certainly not by themselves but they helped. You speak of corporate interests and consumerism squashing the individual but look how in this case my friend avoided daily consumption of psychotropic drugs pumped out by big pharma and dispensed like candy by doctors when they are KNOWN to be dangerous, and instead enjoys occasional psychedelic trips with drugs KNOWN to be virtually harmless.

The examples you listed all mention that the people used various methods in combination so there is no proof that psychedelics did the trick.

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Drugs is a quick path, but it's a dead end.

Again, I don't know where you're getting your information but in my personal experience and that of people I know very well, it's not quick and it's not a dead end.

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Meditation is the proper way to achieve superior results but it is slower.

This is a false dichotomy.

It's like saying that going out into the sun every day is the 'proper' way to produce Vitamin D and taking a D3 supplement is a quick cheat path. And no 'high quality' nutritionist would support it.

But of course going out in the Sun is the proper way of doing it and taking vitamin D is a less desirable option. Fuck these "high quality nutritionists" who want you to spend money. I wonder how did people survive before artificial vitamins were invented.

Now I am not strictly against taking vitamin D, but you really should go into sun first and in my experience it is enough. It is no life for a man to take vitamin D and stay indoors for whole days. Vitamin D will never substitute real outdoor time.

Meditation and drugs is a false dichotomy. You may play with both once you are a noob, but you better drop drugs once you get better at meditation or you risk going crazy once you activate higher chakras. There are millions of examples of people who ended up in crazy-house or had to drop all meditation and relapsed to Christianity because they took drugs in parallel to meditation.

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Both meditation and psychedelics have a place in your toolbox. But then again, "if your only tool's a hammer..."

Drugs are the hammer. Meditation is a fine scalpel, even more like a set of various tools. Were you trying to suggest that meditation is something primitive like a hammer and drugs is some sophisticated tool? Seriously? Wrong, meditation is more like a set of many tools. You can meditate in many different ways. Well probably you can take drugs in different ways too, but it is still much more like to just taking them and then just being dependent on the result. Ergo the term - tripping.

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It is the consumer identity in you that says you need an external object, purchased by money to get spiritual. It's a deception. At best I see it as a good way to convince some atheist about existence of higher realities, even that will not always work, and for that you need only a one time use. Repeated use is not really justified.

Let's be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a consumer per se.

And in fact you cannot NOT be a consumer unless you go off the grid and become self-sufficient. And even that requires preparation that involves buying the setup you need.

If it weren't for the amazing system we have in which some people produce and most people consume we wouldn't even be fussing over this from the comfort of our computers, thousands of miles apart from each other. Nor would you have food in your fridge, nor even a fridge.

It's unthinking, mindless consumerism that is the problem. In fact, it is unthinking mindlessness that is the problem.

If somebody's a diabetic and they need to 'buy and consume' insulin to stay alive will you hold them in contempt for their 'consumer identity'? The fact that we can get the things we need and want so easily and so plentifully is a miracle. Thank GOD for consumerism!

It's the ability to be discriminating, mindful, and informed about what you consume and how you consume it that matters, not the consumption in and of itself.

Osho referred to his conception of man as Zorba the Buddha. In short, he believed (and I tend to agree) that there's no reason you should live as a starving ascetic and torture your body for the deification of your spirit. You are not split between spirit and body; you are both. And you should enjoy your life and get your enlightenment however you can get it. Because you may well keel over one day while naval gazing anyway.

And you don't need any money to go out into the field and pick magic mushrooms.

You are now taking it to extremes like if I would have suggested that any use of money is evil.

Osho is not really the best or cleanest teacher to listen to.

Well you can pick your mushrooms alright, but how many people do collect any other consumable from a nature directly nowadays? 99% of people buy anything they consume like food and water.

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And lastly - procreation is not the same as sex. If you still make the mistake of confusing sex with procreation then you have been asleep your whole life! Look at western society - sex seems to be everywhere but procreation is at it's lowest ever. At the same time in traditionalists societies sex is absent from public sphere but procreation goes on in overdrive.

I know man, I'm even somnambutyping this as we speak. I'll wake up one day and understand the distinction. Don't give up on me!

And while I'm all for procreation, I seriously doubt that legalizing ALL drugs much less a few psychedelics would have any substantial impact on birth rate. There are much more significant cultural and sociopolitical factors that influence the decision to have kids, how many, etc., than whether or not you chew on mushrooms from time to time.

Finally, whether or not I procreate and to what extent is my business and mine alone. And you have no right to enforce through state violence your subjective notions of how much people should be breeding, participating in politics, shooting guns, or whatever else YOU think is good for me.

That's why I said before that your first post advocates an "end justifies the means" morality. Which is to say, no morality. Ends ("more procreation", "gun range businesses booming", "churches overflowing", etc.) justify the means ("state telling you what you may or may not consume").

Of course drugs is not the only way that is culpable of dropping birth rates. But it's one of the things that could contribute to that. I think you understand that. One more distraction among social networks, TV, video games, party culture etc.

I already said I am not suggesting any regulations. Why did you accuse me of that. Dishonest thing you did. I am merely speaking against drug use even if legal.