sneezing

I may be gluten-intolerant. But there are many factors. I had quite a bit of candy recently, since Sunday, and that's what I recall starting my sneezing. It's probably yeast (candida)-related.

Twice today I've chewed two leaves to stop my sneezing. Each time it seemed to work for a while (better this second time, perhaps), but at the "cost" of feeling weird at work. Too weird, I sometimes fear... Can't say I exactly "recommend" this usage of Salvia leaves, but I was desperate (I was having sneezing fits for several minutes at a time), so feeling a little "weird" for a few minutes seems potentially worth it. Though something always feels "wrong" about being in the salvia-based altered-state around other people who are working. It's hard to say why...

I guess it's just not a state I would normally attempt work in. For that matter, what am I doing right now (practicing my typing, to see if it is even possible? So far I've done okay, but I had to backspace a lot...)

spinal undulation

What may be a Salvia-insight is that, again, I think it would be helpful for me to "loosen" my spine. My habit of "cracking" my neck during mild Salvia sessions concerned me a bit, but I'm fairly sure I haven't been hurting myself. Nevertheless, to move toward a healthier type of exercise, based on my observation of myself making undulating fish-like movements while salvianated in bed, I thought to find some information about undulation of the spine, so I found these:

google for:

undulating spinal

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg-PTkpE06A

http://www.scribd.com/doc/76363495/Self-Awakening-Yoga
Well, I haven't read much of that yet...interesting that it mentions Kripalu...


This is exactly the sort of undulation I was talking about:

http://www.yogaia.org/about.htm

"The Key to Yogaia is the undulating spinal wave, in every movement of the practice, whether standing, sitting, or kneeling, bending back and forwards, twisting, reclining, or upside down."

Again, it seems to me to be a salvia-insight that this sort of undulation may help me loosen my spine, which may be, perhaps, to open up the energy centers/chakras of the body.

Dale Pendell: Pharmako/Poeia

A very interesting chapter on Salvia is reproduced on this page:
http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=172878

Perhaps connected to some degree to a statement on that page, here's my rather poor/crude comparison of three drugs:

Alcohol:

Inhibits pain, enhances emotion (disinhibits), can amplify both good and bad emotions. Also boosts the ego. This can be dangerous...

Cannabis:

Inhibits pain and anxiety at all levels, but does not boost ego.

Salvia:

Inhibits the irrational dramas and baggage that one carries with them throughout much of their incarnation. One is left as a pure awareness, without any verbal thought, forgetting who or what they were as that personality, and perhaps remembering (or at least having a deja-vu feeling of) who they were before this incarnation.

Actually, I still have some trouble with calling Salvia a "drug." Sure, I suppose it is, technically, but it feels *so* different from anything I've called a drug before that. It's more like a key to unlock secrets of the universe that we have hidden from ourselves (as part of our agreement to play this "game" of life here, this game of experience, and to learn the lessons it has for us.)

spinal energy travels in a circle during sex?

This is an apparent insight from this morning's Salvia-extract experience. Again I had a sub-hallucinogenic dose, and napped soon afterwards. I again did some spine-cracking movements (neck and upper-back), apparently hoping to loosen the spine further and grind some of the calcification off of the bones (I sometimes do this for several minutes, though it wasn't quite that long this time.) Anyway, while doing this, I was thinking about how it seems like energy moves up and down through the spine, and it seems like the interface between multidimensional-consciousness and this body is through the spine. And it seems as if sex moves energy up and down the spine, so it occurred to me that if a couple is having sex, that sex-energy can move in a circle, up one person's spine and down the other.

I don't know if this is true, but found this page from a search for "sex energy circle sacred":

http://wildtantra.com/2011/10/wildtantra-circles-of-light/

..with a quote from Osho that agrees with my apparent insight:

“Tantra gives you a dimension of a higher relaxation which is positive. Both partners melting with each other give vital energy to each other. They become a circle,
and their energy begins to move in a circle.
They are giving life to each other…”
Osho

disassociating from sleepiness?

A novel use for Salvia?

When the pull of sleepiness is coming on, trying to get me to fall asleep at work, just one or two leaves, chewed, seems to pull me out of it. It's a strange new use I've found for it. I'd like to hear if anyone else has tried that, and if they have an explanation for why/how that can work. It's fairly clearly not a stimulant, so how does kappa-opioid stimulation cause cancel out the effect of sleepiness?

http://journals.lww.com/anesthesiology/Abstract/1995/01000/Effects_of_Opioid_Microinjections_in_the_Nucleus.19.aspx
" the kappa agonist caused no changes in sleep‐wakefulness states."

http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/101/4/542.full
"sleep-producing effects through agonism at the kappa-opioid"

Strange... actually, more intense amounts (smoked extract) often helps me to relax my body and nap afterwards (fall asleep while/after coming up). So it's dual effect is hard to explain.

I also have this fear/hypothesis that daily use might degrade sleep quality, but it seems unsupported by the evidence. I'm functioning regularly on 5 to 6 hours a sleep, which for me seems amazing that I don't "crash" even more than I do every day.

I like this page

https://www.google.com/search?q=guided+salvia+trips
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http://home.comcast.net/~sresnick2/hookah.htm


Reading this, anyone would be curious to try it, wouldn't they?

Yet all I've gotten from Salvia in two years is many "insights" or impressions, sometimes profound-seeming at times, and mild hallucinogenic effects, including "swirling" in the field-of-vision. I guess I just kept "chickening out" rather than go deeper, or my 20x bought extract and my ~20x (or 10x?) homemade extract were just too weak to take me past level 3 or 4.

I'll probably go deeper eventually, but I've come to believe that wherever I may be able to "travel" on salvia, it doesn't really matter, because I *chose* to be here, on earth, at this point in time, and I should honor my own choice by not (seemingly) trying to escape from it, even temporarily. It's probably okay to do once-in-a-while, but doesn't seem right to do very frequently. Still, as I've said, I think I could continue to experiment approximately monthly...

red pill

I was thinking again how Salvia seems like the "red pill", this evening, but it has little relevance to anything right now. Except that I need to be honest with myself, and honest with others when I *do* volunteer information, but probably should be careful of what I volunteer. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill

Also, it's been two days since my most recent chewed salvia experiment, walking home from Greenlake and getting the strong impression that I could get in trouble if I do that at a higher dose (some cop might stop me and wonder if I'm a danger to the public, take me in for questioning, despite Salvia being legal; one in that state may be perceived as being "scary") ... I'm not sure how accurate that impression was, but it seemed accurate at the time. I realized I could not dare attempt an "intense" chewed-salvia experience in public, even if in public means being among total strangers (walking around Greenlake or back from Greenlake). Perhaps that should be obvious to me after an experience I had near the end of a hike, but the context was different and it didn't seem so obvious at the time.

lay off it?

I'm thinking if I land a new job soon, which I need to do, it's time to lay off the salvia for a while. But since I'm still curious to continue the explorations, I have a compromise; my sessions are to be done on the last Friday-evening of each month. This way I should have plenty of time for preparation, and an entire weekend to get back to "normal". Why would I want so much recovery-time? I'm starting to get concerned about possible lasting effects on memory or attention. I feel like I'm in a mild stupor today, and much of this week, as if I were either severely sleep deprived (though I'm not) or otherwise off-balance. There are many factors, like not bothering to take vitamins lately, and having a rather unbalanced diet. Overall I seem fairly healthy though, so I think the major fact is daily experiments with Salvia this week (none today). So I've come to the conclusion that it may be a very bad thing to do daily, and that I should have an absolute limit of once a week, aiming toward 2 to 4 times per year in the long-term. I think the "fear" that drives me to experiment daily is that once I stop doing it daily I might not want to do it again for a long time. That happens sometimes; I go a couple of weeks without trying any, then I keep asking myself if I want to do it again and keep answering "no way; I hate that stuff!" It's hard work doing salvia, and I feel I only do it right now because I have some hard problems to solve, and once they are solved and I'm back fully-engaged in the "game" of life, there will be no need for regular/frequent use of a kappa-opioid agonist. Sure, it's the "red pill", and opens the door to the "other side" of this holo-fractal "matrix" of reality, but all that doesn't matter right now, because as long as I choose to continue playing this "game" of life (and I do), there are some requirements I need to meet, like making money, and doing salvia *really* isn't helping me do that in any apparent way, and might be impairing slightly. What makes me realize this is partly a lingering dizzyness/lightheadedness, and partly a scatterbrained-ness and tendency to pace around and avoid things I should be doing.

Although, there's been the opposite at times. Sometimes I felt like a smoked extract knocked me out of many of the time-wasting activities I was engaged in and shifted me toward something that might/could theoretically be more useful.

I'm still a little undecided because there is somewhere I'm trying to go with this. I want to reach a point of energy-centeredness from which I operate most of the time. A point I might reach, temporarily, with a good dose of DMT. Or maybe there's some sort of meditation or "fractal energetic yoga" (per Martin W. Ball) that can get me in that state. But Martin says the symmetric yoga developed out of the unity-state, not the other way around.

(Later)

I think this almost-drugged-super-tired state I've been in is due to

1. coffee (not today)
   
2. poor sleep
   
3. stress
   
4. diet/mineral/vitamin deficiencies
   

Until I do the things to eliminate those factors, as well as eliminating salvia for a week or two, I won't really know.

financial crisis and my state of annoyance.

Still mildly frustrated that I didn't sell $4700 worth of options a couple of weeks ago (or at least $2000) but instead got distracted and failed to fill an order, stay out of the market til last week, and make back $10,000 to $50,000 this week by buying a couple dozen options on friday. I *knew* to, didn't I? Somewhere deep down? (I sure wanted to buy on Friday...) But always seem to do the opposite of what I know to do. Anyway, I haven't been very productive since about 1998, so I guess wiping myself out and putting myself $52,000 in debt and in a situation where I don't have rent is a perfect way to force myself to solve these problems. Maybe I'll become homeless in a few days, that might be an interesting experiment while I look for a $30/hr job or better... I'd rather pay my credit cards off faster without having rent to worry about. I shouldn't have to pay rent after putting $600,000 into other people and their property, anyway. 10 acres worth, in total... I guess I should be hiring a lawyer to go after some of that property. But I can't get back the $2 million it's cost me... I guess I should just build a better site than facebook and take over the social-networking world! Or, actually, something more original than that. I have many ideas. I guess I just have to start digging in and trying to implement some of them. Can I do so in time to save myself from a financial crisis? Not really, because I'm already in one.

So this is what having a few leaves this morning takes me to?

Just bring up the same stuff that's on my mind anyway... nothing new. But I'm ranting and raving and practically biting off the head of every contractor that tries to call me about a job opportunity, today. Not good...

no news

I haven't been writing new reports lately, because I don't have any new insights to report, or none that seemed particularly profound at the time.

This blog post mentions some of the same the same insights I have had (namely that physical reality is not "real", per se, as insane as that may sound), and overall is a far more interesting blog than I am likely to write anytime soon:

http://unchartedjourney.blogspot.com/2010/08/salvia-insights.html

==

I wrote this as a reply to a poorly-written web page.
I hate to cite it because it's really not worth reading, but here it is:

lookthatuponline.com/2010/03/effective-way-of-using-salvia-divinorum-extract/

My reply is below:

Who writes stuff like this? Bad information is worse than no information at all; and this is very poor English and not accurate.

Salvia extract is typically smoked, though vaporization may work as well. Reports of success with vaporization are few; it's generally best to just get a very high strength extract such as 40x or better, and be careful to inhale *all* of the smoke (to conserve extract). Only do this with a sitter present! And be very conservative on your first dose! 1/20th of a gram of 20X extract, breathed in fully through a glass pipe, is generally enough to go quickly into the salvia-trance and lose touch with "normal" reality, as well as forgetting where you are and what you were just doing.

The chewed experience lasts longer and may be easier to understand and integrate. If you can find a good enough price on bulk leaves to feel comfortable chewing them, you might find the experience more interesting and educational. Salvia is a sort of personality-inhibitor. You may find that your body habits and ego-personality may suddenly seem to be gone, and you are left with a dissociated consciousness which is still in your body but seems to no longer be so tightly attached to the body; at least that is my experience. At high doses (of smoked extract), you may see swirling in the field of vision, and other visual effects. The eerie thing about it is that your brain seems to believe that what it is seeing is *real*, and can be nearly traumatized by the confusion. Perhaps this is a result of Salvia showing you something about the energetic nature of the structure of concensus-reality.

Be careful! Some people may become psychotic in this state (out of fear or panic?), at least temporarily.