[HN Gopher] Seeing God and Burning Plastic
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Seeing God and Burning Plastic
Author : SherryFraser
Score : 27 points
Date : 2024-10-15 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ofthetwodreams.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ofthetwodreams.substack.com)
| triyambakam wrote:
| I get the impression that the well furnished Ayahuasca tourist
| experience has not been the predominant one for very long. I have
| met a great number of people who stayed in very rustic conditions
| to endure their Ayahuasca experience.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I've never done the ayahuasca ritual but I extracted and
| freebased DMT using acid-base extraction and the whiskey bottle
| method back when _Mimosa hostilis_ root bark was easy to buy
| online, which did "change my life" (I was in high school so life
| changing insights weren't hard to come by), but I absolutely hate
| the woo-woo that has grown around the drug.
|
| DMT is by far the most intense known drug except maybe datura -
| especially when ingested like in the ayahuasca ritual - and could
| possibly lead to real insights into our psyche and social
| conditioning, but instead it's a bunch of celebrities and
| influencers peddling drugs that promise people they people can
| talk to god.
|
| The most common trip report describes people talking to aliens or
| god, which is just so damn fascinating. I saw my life "flash
| before my eyes" on my trip, which is one of the possible
| explanations for near-death experiences (I'm highly skeptical of
| the original research though). There's just so much to research
| here and none of it is going to get done in a Brazilian jungle.
|
| _> At the end of the hike, she told me that the best way to deal
| with the problem of plastic accumulating at her center was to
| burn it in large, ceremonial heaps. The smell of the smoke, she
| said, clears her retreat of bad energy._
|
| In my mind this practically proves that these "shamans" have no
| actual insight* and are just exploiting the demand (good for
| them). By some accident of fate, the tribes living in South
| America discovered that combining a tea with MAO inhibiters and a
| tea containing psychedelic alkaloids could lead to a crazy
| experience. That's it.
|
| They've got no more insight into the nature of the universe or
| god than the first person to discover nixtamalization and make a
| tortilla.
|
| _> I've done Ayahuasca several times, each ceremony
| fundamentally life-changing. In one ceremony, the shaman helped
| heal years of abuse. One led to my divorce. The penultimate
| ceremony convinced me to make this film, instead of using my
| savings to buy a house._
|
| I don't know anything about the author's circumstances beyond
| these few sentences so I'm not one to judge especially given my
| own "life changing" experience, but this reads to me like a manic
| response brought on by intense psychedelics. It brings to mind
| Arctic Monkey's guide to Burning Man decompression. The first
| rule is that you don't make life changing decisions right after
| going to Burning Man. The high/glow fades, the consequences stay
| with you.
|
| All that said, looking forward to watching the documentary when
| it comes out. Thank you for reading my nonsensical rant.
|
| * I'm nonreligious and don't believe in anything supernatural so
| I never thought they did, but burning plastic to clear negative
| energy is beyond stupid. When does burning plastic not produce
| noxious fumes that should immediately signal that something is
| wrong? Just dig a fracking hole and bury it.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I'd say let them be.
|
| Mainstream industrialized consumption of... well basically
| everything that is productized and sold at scale will
| invariably hit the lowest common denominator.
|
| Because each and everyone of us is in our own path, so it's not
| hard to think that to accommodate for the sum of all current
| experiences you have to accommodate for the median.
|
| That being said you can pretty much gloss over all this if you
| stay true to yourself and your path, and maybe help those near
| you get out of the herd mentality.
| will-burner wrote:
| >I've done Ayahuasca several times, each ceremony fundamentally
| life-changing. In one ceremony, the shaman helped heal years of
| abuse. One led to my divorce. The penultimate ceremony
| convinced me to make this film, instead of using my savings to
| buy a house.
|
| Yeah the author seems to think this paragraph is pro ayahuasca.
| Healing years of abuse - definitely good. Getting divorced -
| could be good or bad depending on the situation. Spending all
| your savings on making a film instead of buying a house. This
| one is leaning (could be good) towards more of a bad decision
| than a good one to me.
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