Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Pay Attention to Those Small, Quiet Thoughts in the Back of Your Head.



“Tune in, turn on and drop out.” This was Timothy Leary's advice to the Flower Children back then. He and many others figured that LSD, or any other psychotropic drug would enlighten you, expand your mind and rush us headlong into the Age of Aquarius where we'd all hug trees and each other. Well...

The problem with that was that most people didn't use it for personal growth at all. It was recreation.

Huston Smith, who I know you've never heard of, was the son of Christian Missionaries who tried to proselytize deep inside Communist China. Not an easy thing to do when Mao was purifying the nation of capitalists. Huston grew up in this and became evangelized (Methodist). He eventually became a professor of religious studies and worked along side Leary. They and Richard Alpert experimented with LSD as college professors at Berkely. Huston was there when they give hits of acid to sophomore college kids and studied what happened.

Huston convincingly argued that the LSD experiences and any religious epiphany were exactly the same. Become a Christian monk hidden deep in the mountains and you'll have personal insights into Jesus like St John of the Cross. Or you could drop acid and get them. The two experiences are indistinguishable. The new knowledge comes from literally nowhere and is stunning to know.

Huston went on to say though, most people don't do a damn thing with the epiphanies they receive when ripped on acid. The religious ascetics however, do. This was Huston's main criticism of it and a lot of the 60's trippy-dippy mindset.

I had my epiphany once.

It wasn't on acid. I know my subconscious too well to let that raging gorilla out and I have never dared to try it. No.Thank.You. My experience with lightning bolt realizations came from boring ol' marijuana. That and a Beatles's song.

Prior to 17, I smoked bales due to my older brother buying bales. I won't say when I started to smoke but if you read this blog enough, you'll guess the age. Too damn young. But hey, “Anything Goes” when it's the 70's.

It was recreational for me. It also became one hell of an escape. When high, and having a pair of headphones on my head, I could completely leave my “real” life and go wherever my imagination took me. Now why would I want to leave my real life behind at such a young age? Well...try being an adult at 14 to 40 something mother who decided she didn't want to be one anymore. In short, she was wrecked with depression and made useless by it. I had to step up and be Dad. So, sucking on a joint was a vacation.

One Saturday morning in the spring of 1981, I was crushing out a joint and waiting for that high to climax, then I would listen to music via headphone. That was good for about two hours of space trucking around the Milky Way. I could forget about going to CVS to pick up her script, cut checks for the bills, clean the house and the other usual Dad shit. The next two hours were mine and I'd deal with real life later in the afternoon.

I played the Beatles album Abbey Road and “I Want You (She's So Heavy) came on. I had never heard that song before. To describe it, it's a bit heavy metal/bluesy but there's a turn in the song where they play the same riff over and over again for about three minutes, with no change. If you're straight and listen to it, it's pretty hypnotic due to it's repetition. Now listen to it high as a kite, in a rocking chair rolling to the beat and you end up past Pluto.

But what happens at the end of the song is startling if you've never heard it before. It cuts off, dead. You are put in a trance and suddenly the musical mantra hits a brick wall. You hit that brick wall too.

So there I was, rocking away, drifting back and forth to that repetition when this song cuts off to dead silence. I opened my eyes in a bit of shock and sat there for a minute. Then this thought, which came from nowhere, appeared in my head.

“You can't keep this up. You can't keep escaping. College is coming one day, so is work...you can't hide in a cocoon so deeply several times a week. You have to grow up.”

I'm not kidding, I was startled by that thought. I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the idea that I had to wake up and keep my shit wired tight, like an adult. I had to be competent. I had to leave childhood behind for good. Ugh. Well, the message was so startling to me that I obeyed it. I grew up.

A few years later, in a Cognitive Processes class taught by Don Cousins at RIC, he was talking about epiphanies and how our minds can hatch them. “Where does this strange creativity come from?” He then turns to me and asks, “Did I have any epiphanies?” I said “Yes” and then refused to elaborate. It was too personal. My friend Ken who was in the class as well remarked to me after that he could tell I “shut right down” when asked to share my experience. I never told him either. There are times when you are hit with ideas and they're yours, and yours only.

It's been 34 years since I regularly smoked. I can't do it now. I have tried several times over those past years and all it does is invoke that experience I had then. It's powerful enough to have lasted with me all these years.

So, how's that? A drug induced epiphany told me I had to “cut the shit.” Without having known Huston Smith back then, I used this wake up call to good use all on my own. Lucky me.


What I want you to do now, is play the song (click the pic), close your eyes and let it take you along. I want you to feel that sudden stop that'll come unexpectedly. If you want to drop acid and chug some Bushmills, fine. Otherwise just let the song envelope you. If you hate psychedelic rock, move on.




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