Timeframing: The DMT Experience

-Lex
Trip: 4/12/14 Documentation: 4/13/14

I don't even know how to explain it, the trip. I cant even explain it. Im here trying to write about what happened but it is so profoundly unfathomable that all I can do is sit here and shake slightly. It is 4:44 pm, the day after the trips. The DMT experience made me forget what being on shrooms was like, I barely remember. DMT...it was so bizarre. Weird. I don't even know what adjective would accurately describe it (there is none). I remember being very nervous and anxious beforehand, not knowing how to inhale the smoke from the pipe properly. The first inhale was a slow burn, my chest shook and all I could feel was the fire ants pushing themselves into the walls of my lungs. Second hit, I just about choked. I remember sitting there half wanting to gag. I think I drooled on myself from coughing haha. Third hit, I sputtered and coughed and felt nothing after that but the burn. I sat there in utter numbness. Balam Acab was playing in the background and the light from behind Sergio was making the room glow but that was an observation that I didnt need DMT to create. Then suddenly I remember saying oh I feel it a little, but only a lightheadedness like I was growing towards an approaching acid trip, or finally feeling hydrocodone kick in. I felt the same, stable for a little while. I feel it a little more. Atticus put his hand on my lower back so I could focus on breathing properly. He told me to direct all my breathing towards his hand, deep breath in, deep breath out, work through the burn. It felt nice, I still felt his hand there even when it was gone. I felt warm. I felt warmer. And then suddenly, something in my peripheral vision started to define itself. It was Hunter's leg. It looked like some sort of HD image, a model of something digitally animated on a screen. It moved towards me. I said something like, Wow I feel it. Wow. Oh my god. Wow. Everything felt so collectively happy, like things were beaming around me as if to congratulate me on finally sensing them. Hunter smiled but I never looked at his smile to know that he was. I just stared at his leg. Then every single thing around me breathed in HD. Like a hyperrealistic animation and I was the entity inside of the film camera hyper-focusing on everything; I was a macro lens of sorts. I was in an animation program, I was in a whole world. I started tilting back and forth, my upper body moving forward and then back and then forward again, I was like a rocking horse moving on a fixed, steady track. I was trapped in that cycle, it felt like I was tracing my consciousness from the outer ring of a concave to the inner curve and then out again. Even writing it now has caused me to repeat the motion, it feels comforting, a slight bobbing. I think it was the slow motion vibration of my consciousness trying to show me that it was there, living inside of my body. Over and over and over, it moves on a fixed track. Beckoning me towards something and away from something at the same time.

I decided to move around after that. Balam Acab was playing and I felt like I was in some sort of playground. I tried to compare what I was seeing to something I previously encountered. I remember picturing Boo from Monsters Inc. (haha) and thinking that I was seeing through her giant green, glassy eyes. Giant circles, concave, full of penetrating emotion. My walking was rhythmic. I walked into Hunters room with my notebook and started writing. At first I was trying to force myself to write something interesting. I kept becoming aware of what I looked like outside of my world, before coming right back into it. I was moving and fluctuating between reality and a nonreality, and it took awhile for them to blend into one. I had anxiety about how stupid I looked, rocking around and moving my hands all over the place to touch things. I ended up on Hunters bed and I was still rocking and things moved slowly and gracefully and my hand moved in sections like my elbow would move and the rest of my hand would follow to conform to the new point in space where my elbow was. The paper became the focal point in this otherworldly narrative. Everything else blurred around me until the notebook pages had more clarity than anything I had ever seen before. (after my trip I was worried I didn't experience an alternate reality, only a modified version of what I normally saw, until I came to the realization that the exploration of the paper became my new reality and everything was melted into that. I created my own world with my pencil, it was brilliant). The notebook looked like a smooth-shaded, animated model. I was fascinated with the way the pencil seemed to affix itself to the surface of the paper, but like a layer under, as if it were a transparent covering over it that I couldnt actually see, a gate-way, I could feel it without touching it. I wanted to be alone, I remember.

Before this happened I remember walking to Atticus and lacing the tips of my fingers through the spaces in his outstretched fingers so they fit, and my fingers swirled around his. I wasn't doing anything, I wasn't consciously moving my fingers, they were magnetized to his. My fingers swirled around his like a Jacobs ladder with the blocks bending around each other. It was so smooth. I was fascinated, everything moved so gracefully in that same fixed motion I was describing with my body as a rocking chair. Now that I think about it, literally everything was moving around in a course, as if it were mechanically driven. Nothing strayed away from its fixed path even thought it was actually creating a fixed path. It was random yet planned and predetermined. I realized consciously how strange I must have looked to everyone, and stopped. Thats when I had walked into Hunters room that first time. I remember in Hunters room my fountain pen ran out of ink and in that moment, it felt like the trip was over. I had no more purpose anymore if I could not document things. My reality was my canvas, my notebook, nothing existed without it. I still felt a burning between my ribs from smoking through the pipe.

I walked back out of the room and everyone was by the door. I thought they were watching me and it made me nervous but I wanted to know what it felt like to touch them so I did. We hugged, it was nice, a collective embrace, but I felt distanced. It was nice until I felt like they were compressing me, I was being compressed, becoming smaller, downwards like a shrink to the ground. I told them it was too tight and felt too constrained and I pulled away. Hunter suddenly looked terrifying and ugly and wicked in the eyes and when I looked into Atticuss eyes I felt a little more comfort. His red hair matched his purple shirt and it blended together, I kept telling myself they were complimentary colors, they had to be.

Actually, now that I think about it, that happened later. Things keep rushing at me and Im suddenly remembering things piece by piece as I write. I actually walked out of the room and everyone was sitting down and I said, I think its over, its fading and Hunter said wow, that was so short and I laughed and tried to explain my experience.

Next thing I know Im walking towards the kitchen with a pencil and the notebook in hand and everything starts up again, and I tell them Wow, wait! Wait! It isn't over! and start pacing and Im alone and I test my feet to see how they work. I start to notice the whole time Ive been standing Ive been bobbing my knees and I contemplate letting myself melt so I get lower and my upper body starts dripping over my knees until Im melting into them. My paper was bigger than ever and it was a part of my body, half melted inside of it. I was a cocoon. I inspected the papers clarity as I melted more and more into the floor. I was mesmerized by my paper. I felt that it was so deep, like a black void is deep, but this was white and the whiteness of this void went on forever. I put the tip of my fountain pen into one of the black holes where the paper is punched through. I felt like I was peeling a flap of skin off of the void when I stuck my pen in there. I was peeling myself. I started writing what I felt and I was aware that my words were getting bigger and they didnt want to be contained by the blue lines but they didn't stray from them either. They looked so beautiful on paper, the graphite letters. So smooth, but so textured in a way that I cannot explain. I wanted to write forever. I wrote, The whole trip is an exploration of this page.

I went back into the room. 5 people all lying down calmly but I didn't want to be calm. I sat down anyway. I closed my eyes and decided I wanted to draw what I saw in the darkness of my eyelids. A strange night landscape, swirls of bismuth crystals building on top of themselves. It all looked slightly like the cover of the Great Gatsby, but more digital. There was a half sun in it that was painted but it looked like the circle on the new Tycho album at the same time, like a defined vector. I drew it the best I could, it kept moving around sort of like my granular dystrophy and the dots that follow my vision wherever I look. (granular dystrophy is a genetic condition where opaque deposits inside of your cornea cause you to often see small, translucent spots in your vision). I followed them and drew them. This is what I ultimately came up with:

I opened my eyes. Atticus was meditating. I asked myself how he could be so calm and still when he must have felt as vibrant as I had. I explained to everyone how I felt, how thoughts were spreading out of me and how I had to keep writing down what I was saying, thinking, and did. Hunter said he felt nothing, he saw nothing, only blackness, emptiness, dark voided space. I thought, how? HOW? He said he was jealous that I had so many thoughts. Sergio said I was so lucky to be visualizing and thinking so much. Atticus walked over to Hunter who was lying on the couch. I watched Hunters bed arm. I watched its speed. It was slow yet moved like the elbow of mine earlier. I watched it move way too much, I tried to stop it, I could slow it down just by concentrating on it. I said I can control speed right now! and tried to describe it. I told him to stop moving so much, it was annoying. In a flash I realized that he wasnt actually moving at all. I forgot about this realization I nan instant and started altering the speed of his arm again. Atticus said something about me timeframing. I understood this concept but didn't understand the concept. Everyone was so calm and collected and I was raging. I kept saying my knees hurt from bobbing and my hip bones and lower back hurt from moving like a rocking chair and I laughed and said I couldn't stop, and I laughed some more as I rocked and rocked and rocked.

Im having trouble remembering specific things after that. I remember walking back and forth and then walking into the mirror because I wanted to look at my face in the mirror. I was afraid to. I waited a long time until I did, but I did. I remember staring at myself. Nothing. Nothing moved, not like the shrooms. All was blank. I think I stopped moving too, but I cant remember or be too sure. I don't really know what happened, I thought all would be vivid and morphing like the effect of the shrooms but it wasn't. There was a disconnect. I got bored with my face, I didn't identify with it. I didn't care about it, it was nothing to me. If anything it was an inconvenience and I hated putting myself through the tediousness of trying to search through it in the mirror. I wanted to experience textures so I turned the sink water on and watched as beads of water slowly morphed through my knuckles. (As a side note, I just noticed something very strange. When recalling memories in generally, I usually remember them blankly in my head without a specific focus on an image etc. But to bring these memories of the trip into focus, to the surface, I have to stare the void of white paper (originally I wrote this on paper before typing), and within the marks of my letters I see exactly how I felt and Im not even exposed to DMT anymore. But I can feel my hand and my pen and my paper become so much larger and I wonder...I wonder if Ive always had the chance to reach into my mind and my writing like this before but wasnt aware of it until it forced itself upon me. If I can see right now like I did in the trip, or with a similar resemblance, what other extraordinary things can I see and do?) Anyways, back to the water. I cupped water into my palm and the edges that met the sides of my skin gleamed and in each gleam I saw a little land of welcoming people, like little spirits hovering on yellow-white ground. I let them spill and then did it again and was reunited with them. I think I thought of them as synonymous to Iceland, but cant remember and Im not sure how or why that popped into my head just now.

After that endeavor I remember someone saying it was 3 am and I had an oh shit moment and said I had to sleep (was hiking at 8 am that morning). Atticus told me to assure my mind that I needed sleep and assure it that it was okay to slip away forever, it was okay to die. I said I understood and felt that it would be easy. It was okay to die. It was okay to die, I was already dead. There was no difference between life and death, they were comprised of the same energies. I realized that my body was meant to die but my Self, no that was not. The lights went out, I laid down. I don't remember what the mattress felt like but I remember how my body felt in each position that I put it in. I didn't feel like I had limbs, they were just extensions of light radiating out in patterns around me. Closing my eyes was strange. I had all these racing images in my head that were like pixilated things layered over each other like cartoonish pixelated palm trees and then a layer of squares and then more trees and more geometric patterns and I felt like I was in some sort of ethereal casino. There was no sound heard yet everything seemed so loud. The Balam Acab playing before was lost, it was quiet outside of my body. When I was a child I used to focus on on the darkness in my eyelids and would always see this tiny, microscopic shape that was comprised of so many small circles, in a sort of hexagonal pattern that wasn't noticeably hexagonal. I used to think it was an atom and that maybe I could see atoms. I see this every time I focus on my on the darkness in my closed eyes, and have ever since I was young. Nothing ever came of it, I couldn't figure it out. I still see it. Well, when my eyes were closed during the trip it was visible, in this sort of blue, red, green color scheme its always in. And it started expanding, it started becoming these giant rings and not just small circles. There was one for each color of the general rainbow and I knew they were each of my chakras fused and swirling around each other. I think the rings were shaped like the egg of life, which is a symbol from the flower of life that is said to resemble the shape of a multi-cellular embryo in its first hours of creation. Suddenly the whole thing felt like a burning yellow, and I felt it in my solar plexus (the solar plexus is coincidentally yellow which is something I didn't readily register until after the trip ended). I knew in that moment that everything came out of my solar plexus chakra, the Manipura, and I think thats where my consciousness resides, not in my head like I thought. Usually when I meditate I focus on my head, my third eye. I was so wrong, that is not the center of my being. When I meditate on my back, I always place a crystal below my belly button. Then I move it up a chakra, up again, until it reaches my forehead over time. Every time I place it there and let go with my hand I start to develop a headache, a pressure. Almost unbearable, but still pleasant. Multiple times Ive had to take this crystal off of my forehead because it was just too much. I thought the reason for this was that my consciousness was too powerful there but now I think its because my third eye chakra, the Ajna, is not where my center resides. It is in my solar pelxus. As a child and to this day, Ive hated wearing yellow. I look awful in yellow. The solar plexus/Manipura is yellow. I think that maybe my body or perspective rejects yellow because in its material form, it tries to hard to express my consciousness when my consciousness is meant to remain internally.

So after discovering where my center lies, I started to experience everything from there more vividly than before (or maybe just more noticeably). When I was tripping earlier on shrooms, there was a moment when we turned the music off for a full minute to see hoe it would effect us. It was unbearable, I felt this pain in between my ribs and it felt as if there was an entire imploding sun inside of my chest, literally sucking itself into itself, and sucking me within it as well. I was doubled over trying to breathe but it took effort. I asked if Hunter and Atticus felt it too and Atticus said something like, wow, now that you mention it I feel it too and Hunter felt it strongly and I felt like I was inducing it, like I was the center and their solar plexuses revolved around me like gaseous planets. It was too much.

I just touched my solar plexus now and I felt nauseas. I feel sick. I want to throw up. I am going to cry. It is 6:11 PM on April 13th and Im not tripping and I feel my consciousness even more strongly than I did while tripping. It is a swirling gaseous orb, completely penetrable. Disrupting it feels like pushing a finger into the slit of a large wound and exploring it until the pain alone induces death. Except you are actually sticking your finger into your own wound. Oh god.

I feel like I have awakened myself.

It is brutally painful.

A few hours ago I said these things to Hunter in tweets: On the drive home I literally started hallucinating, induced by overwhelming stimuli Music is an amalgamation of concentric spirals, it rushes through small spaces nothing vibrates but everything shakes and finally I see the truth behind the essence of things

I went hiking to Pedernales State Park early this morning, about 6 hours after the trip ended, and I felt like I was walking on a living, breathing, giant solar plexus, gaseous planet, wow the earth. Rocks were soft, I soaked into them. Water was just a tissue paper surface with nothing but air underneath, and it breathed. The ripples were breaths through its surface.

Atticus said you have themes when you trip. I want to document mine from the two trips and see if they happen again: 1. Oceans 2. The Solar Plexus 3. Things spherical, circular, concave, moving at a fixed rate, revolving Something really bizarre about that last one. In my trip notebook I have this one drawing that was done during both the shroom trip and the DMT trip and the were both about separate things. It was this concave thing. I don't know why I spoke about concaves during the shroom trip (we discussed them for a long time) but in the DMT trip I used it to describe the motion I was feeling I had to conform to, like a rocking chair slowly moving back and forth at a fixed rate. The first two images are from the shroom trip, and the third was from the DMT trip. I feel like this must mean something but I have not been able to figure it out yet.

It is bizarre in ways I cannot explain. I also have many other drawings that depict things that make sense somewhere beyond my own understanding. It is really beautiful what stream of consciousness does. I feel these are expressions of my own consciousness but could not fathom why.