LSD x2 - Be As Little Children, Confused All the Time
Reinterpreting the Psychedelic Experience
About LSD x :
LSD x is a “Dangerous Ideas” Series on Reinterpreting the Psychedelic Experience — presenting vignettes that enhance our ability to think and reflect about ourselves and our environment, to amplify our creative potential.
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Part Two: Evolving Experiences of Confusion and Comfort
We’ve forgotten almost entirely those years of childhood when everything needed explaining. Gone, too, are memories of those earliest years when all we did or could do was cry for help. Now, despite those experiences, we may find a much smaller dose of confusion wholly disconcerting.
Is that reasonable? I contemplate the sources of our confusion to better understand this common stress point.
In youth, being ignorant of something does not necessarily imply a state of confused-ness. Solving a math problem can be hard when we’re just discovering math as a concept, but ultimately scratching our heads is a long way from angst.
Generally, as children we take it for granted that we know very little, and consider whatever peaks our curiosity as being worthy of asking our adult superiors to explain. And we take for granted also that those adults are not always especially knowledgeable on such matters.
You don’t know—that’s normal. You get an explanation, or you don’t—that’s normal. If you don’t get an explanation, you don’t worry about that unexplained thing. (Or, perhaps, you go the child prodigy route and set off to understanding it independently, becoming the next great student of a fascinating subject.)
This natural state of affairs causes no discomfort for us, if even we immediately assert our ego by sharing a newly learned ‘fact’ (factual as far as we were told), and proclaim pridefully, “I know this fact about this thing!” whenever we encounter others thereafter… until we learn another more impressive thing for sharing.
That’s telling.
It reveals an urgency toward pride that is natural in the human spirit. But this is the fledgling ego. It’s still malleable and adaptable and due for a few hundred humblings that every child (not overprotected by ultra-modern parenting sentiments) is heir to. Those pie-in-the-face moments are critical for becoming a non-asshole, later down the line.
There’s more to consider here, but it would exponentially branch off into speculative psychology, so let’s press on with the thesis:
As an adult, the attitude toward learning changes; not knowing things does not feel natural; the world is generally figured out; you have agency in the management of your own life and in the navigation through your environment. We can debate the extent of each point, but we should all agree that generally speaking this is true of adults in contrast to children.
Joined to this better understanding of your self, your world, and your life, are the mounting pressures of expectations from peers, family, authority figures, colleagues, and competitors—that you’ll know things.
The expectations affect you in ways that disrupt your comfort. You’re not supposed to ask too many questions, because you’re supposed to be fit for duty, by now. (The duty of self-sufficiency.) So when you don’t know any given thing, there is more pressure to act like you do (even to the extent of fooling yourself). This, I believe, is a very common form of insecurity, but also a very self-destructive form. Pride cometh before a fall.
So then, what’s even worse than not knowing a thing you’re supposed to know?
Being confused about it.
A powerful psychedelic experience can be overwhelmingly confusing. (Profound befuddlement is one of many psychic states psychedelic users refer to as part and parcel of a ‘bad trip’.) It’s one reason psychedelic psilocybin proselytizer Terence McKenna coined the term heroic dose for consuming a large amount of magic mushrooms: most of us are not eager to be confused.
Yet we are learning more and more that psychedelics have psychologically rehabilitative properties when administered by professional psychotherapists, and learning too of their particular, potential efficacy for those with severe distress from PTSD (or better put in the original vernacular, “shellshock”). So might rendering ourselves to a state of confusedness somehow be beneficial for us?
Let’s forgive ourselves for thinking about this out loud, and dare to speculate, with respect to the research scientists who no doubt will do a better job of it.
Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel of confusedness, where not merely a humbling occurs, but where, on the other side of that confusedness, there is also a Great Sigh of Relief. A Cosmic Sigh that sounds like an Om.
Ahhhhhooommmmmm. Everything’s okay. Being alive is crazy! But everything’s okay.
You’re still here.
I like to think that captures the emotion of the inquisitive child. I remember being one.
At some point your fascination with the madness of reality, the sheer unexpectedness of it, the undeniable improbableness of being here, subsides with youth, subsumed by adult rigidity and the type of mentality that allows for stability in your career and relationships. Yet, we reward the unorthodox thinkers in our society for their ability—not to go against the flow—but to explore secret currents. We reward the ones who can dance to the unheard music, and explore the unknown shores.
Please, share your reflections on this idea and include your own theories on the value of confusedness, below.
I’m sure I’m missing a whole spiel, related, about “Eating the Fruit of Knowledge,” but there’s more to come.
Fin.
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Dane Curley
Very interesting thinking about my complacently dim younger self. I’ve never thought about that before.
Such is life, the tunnel of confusedness. Seek the fleeting light, and confused you will remain. It’s when you finally see yourself, and everything around you, as the light which you seek that life starts to make sense.
But I still see all this as a shameless plug for MMEDF. Good work ;)