Metathinking during a mushroom trip

[gonzebo]

What is your view on metathinking during a mushroom trip?

Personally I feel that metathinking somewhat takes from the 'here and now' of the, trip, so to speak, and the fact that linear memory is more or less deteriorated doesn't help. I find it much easier to just simply talk with whoever I am tripping with about any ideas that come to my head, knowing that I will remember the majority of the trip, and that I will have time to metathink and analyze my actions and thought processes after the trip.

 

[Guest]

Meta Thinking during a psychedelic trip leads me to no insight or introspection. If I am looking for what I want to find, I will not find it. I think this is true for a lot of people. If you are looking for a significantly introspective, spiritual trip, then I suggest you go out of your comfort zone. Take one more tab. Inducing a "Bad" trip is, in a sense, inducing a insightful trip, in my opinion. I have never learned anything from laughing for 6 hours, but I have learned a lot from taking too much of a substance, or by testing the waters of something uncomfortable, such as tripping in a dark room, basement, or attic in a spooky house.

I assume by this is what you mean by meta thinking. This is how I see it.
And if you do not have a enlightening trip while avoiding meta thinking, i find that occasionally you will indeed realize something WAS significant during your trip, AFTER the trip is over.
So my advice, is to simply go with the flow.

 

[Psyolopher]

I dont know what you mean by metathinking.
But, gonzebo...I agree, its interesting when u explain something to the person you're trippin with that the person actually gets it.

 

[gonzebo]

i'll try to expand more about what I mean

I generally like to trip shrooms with my best friend (whom I also tripped shrooms with the first time). Up to now he's done shrooms 3 times and I have done them 8 times. So in a sense I could consider myself slightly more experienced.

Anyhow, I've developed the sort of attitude during my trip where I always focus in the here and now (the 'nexus of time and space where I exist', as Mckenna would put it ) during my trip, such as the issue I am trying to resolve, answer I am seeking, or simply the many interesting thoughts that come to my head.

On the other hand, the last 2 trips, my friend has spent a good chunk of his time thinking about the qualities and effects of the current trip, and comparing and contrasting them against other trips to, for example, determine which trip was/is better. And it's not like I don't do this, but rather I save it for AFTER the trip. Anyhow, this is what I would call metathinking. it is possible that ''metathinking'' is the wrong word for this, but what I am explaining is what I was getting at originally.

 

[Guest]

Metathinking is defined online by attempting to think past what is usually thought. For instance, when you look at a tomato, you think about the taste, the color, the texture. Meta thinking would be, well, thinking about "This tomato is very hardy, there is less juice than that of an organic tomato, I wonder if this tomato has been hybridized to be more hardy in order to withstand the pressure of hundreds of other tomato's within the cargo of a truck or warehouse"

Another example would be... Watching a commercial on television. A crowd of girls are putting on lipstick, and you notice that the girl with lipstick the commercial is advertising is slightly more attractive than the girls putting on the "other" lipsticks. You wonder if it was done perposely to fool the viewing into subconsciously thinking that their lipstick makes you more attractive than any other lipstick on the market. This would be meta-thinking, or higher thought.

When your friend is thinking about his past trips, he is using his mind, and his ego, to compare the past to his present. This is simply normal thought, really. People like Terrance McKenna believe that this can be a plague. McKenna believes that the only true state of being, is in the here, and now. Which in a sense is true. This has been called enlightenment. It can be hard to achieve for some, and others believe they have achieved it when they really haven't. Some believe its complete bull shit, that the mind creates consciousness and there is nothing else.

I definitely prefer living in the now (to a certain degree) while tripping, rather than reflecting on past trips. Although problems you have had in the past could very well be carried into the now and worked with by reflecting on them. I don't think there is a right or wrong here. But I do think that experimentation with living in the now is beneficial.

 

[Meduzz]

Meta thinking is thinking about thinking.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

I find it much easier to just simply talk with whoever I am tripping with about any ideas that come to my head

Too much talking or trying to listen to someone else is not conducive to having a useful trip, at least not during the peak. Ideally the dose should be such that you don't even feel like talking anymore. That way you'll be truly in the here and now of the internal process, which may involve lots of material from your past coming into your awareness. There's a difference between "dwelling in the past" and allowing (forgotten or suppressed) memories to naturally come to the surface. During a psyche-delic trip such memories should not be ignored and for this reason external distractions (like talking or interacting with a friend) should be kept to a minimum.

 

[tryptonaut]

If you are looking for a significantly introspective, spiritual trip, then I suggest you go out of your comfort zone. Take one more tab. Inducing a "Bad" trip is, in a sense, inducing a insightful trip, in my opinion. I have never learned anything from laughing for 6 hours, but I have learned a lot from taking too much of a substance, or by testing the waters of something uncomfortable, such as tripping in a dark room, basement, or attic in a spooky house.

I totally agree. Although I never went to a spooky house, and I don't think a dark room is umcomforting. I usually induce insightful trips with high doses (that is above 6g of dried cubensis) and I really need a dark room for such a trip. There's not much to say on such a trip more than a once in a while moaned "oh my god!"
The thinking comes totally alone on such a trip, and it goes where it wants, when it wants