I'd like to hear y'alls opinion on saving your positive revelations, insights, realizations (or negative) from your journeys. I've considered writing which simply does not work well for me in the middle of watching what's revealed behind the curtain. Recording, that might be useful in some circumstances but I don't think I want to carry around something on an outdoor adventure. I've thought of other things, I'm sure none of it is original, but I'd love hearing if anyone else has found successful ways of helping to retain what you find valuable during your voyages. TIA ! :love:
In terms of saving the mental processes, I find writing trip reports post trip helps me out quite a bit to retain insights and revelations because then I can revisit the experience and look at what was learned on the trip which then can be utilized to influence on future trips. I also enjoy reading other's trip reports as well because if there are descriptions and ideas I can relate with it feels like it reinforces my insights or makes me question them. I don't really have any techniques developed to retain insights and realizations mid trip, I feel I can project my trip to a degree through guitar playing, like my creativity becomes unrestrained somewhat. Recording a trip seems like it has even more limitations than writing imo. For instance anyone who has smoked a solid dose of salvia and watched the numerous youtube salvia video trip reports, would probably realize it doesn't really capture the experience at all. I'm sure same could be said about DMT, DPT, LSD, and most trips.
I read a few too but I don't come away with that. The thing with writing them myself is by the time I'm doing that, some of the things I'm wishing I'd saved are fuzzy or gone. It's the big ones that stay. [/QUOTE]I don't really have any techniques developed to retain insights and realizations mid trip, I feel I can project my trip to a degree through guitar playing, like my creativity becomes unrestrained somewhat.[/QUOTE] Ya you mention playing during your trips alot. I don't have that skill But you're saying that helps you retain non-musical aspects of your trip too? Totally agree wit ya. Thats just it. theres no way to convey the entirety, salvia is a good example of aspects of a solid psychedelic experience that are hard/impossible to record. What I'm trying to address are ideas, and as ideas can be captured I'd like to find an effective way to do that. Thanks for chiming in
I carry a pocket notebook and make notes about any number of things. Although I'm a writer, I don't write very detailed or long TRs. I too enjoy other people's TRs.
I usually do some intense thinking about my trip a few days after. Sometimes i'm able to elaborate more on certain ideas or revelations that occurred during my trip. Though, sometimes I find that some epiphanies were just so strongly ingrained in me during my trip that i'm not sure how i could forget them! ha But another way I find I can remember things from my trip.. is by drawing. When i look back at what I drew after my trip, I can usually remember what was going on in my head at the time. Every line, every dot, every shape has some kind of feeling, or idea associated with it. Like when i look back at my drawing..it's like one side of the page i could be feeling one thing.. while on the other i can tell i was experiencing something completelyyyyy different at the time. It's like the whole drawing is divided into little 'sections'. You can even tell some of the energy I was feeling at the time by what comes out on the paper (some very deep, dark, thick lines.. others lighter and more wavy). I think they look pretty cool But yeah, it's always awesome to just kind of sit back and let your mind wander as you draw/paint. I traveled to some very far out places.. :sunny:
Well, I'm a writer and a blogger so I definitely tend to write things down during and after my trips. However, unless you're constantly taking notes it's impossible to record the whole experience and what you learn from it. While it may not be ideal, I am usually forced to focus on one insight to take away and concentrate on it, explore it, think about it, until you can't help but remember it. I hope that was helpful... I'm really stoned. ^.^
guess i agree most with GB. writing trip reports helps me remember some of the details/chronology of my trip. looking back on them months later helps me to retain some of the things i might have learned. i've mentioned before that i think this has sort of distracted from my trips in the past - my need to make a report about the trip in on my mind during the trip..which i didn't particularly like, but couldn't avoid. another, more unintentional way of remember stuff is through music that i was listening to. when i hear the song later it might make something click, or "flash" a specific memory in my mind. this i have found most true for my one salvia breakthrough. also, revisiting certain places i was at for a part of the trip. for example, i often go on walks in the park, but my path is unique each time. and there is often one area where something profound happens. when i revisit that particular area, it's almost like that part of the trip can come flooding back and i can almost re-experience the effects to a small degree. all of this is more to remember the general vibe or feel of a trip. or to just remember the experience for the sake of it. not necessarily holding onto a specific lesson, so i may not have really answered your question
Volupta and I experimented with a voice recorder. We recorded most of a very emotional LSD trip, so its there forever should we wish to hear it. i've realized though that most of the realizations on psychedelic trips are either too difficult for my being to incorporate permanently and realistically no matter how I may have recorded it (or have the buddha himself scream them in my ear) or they are instantly sublimated into my subconscious like most things we learn, as a pattern of thinking or a direction of psychological/emotional energy. so recording the verbatim stuff is fine if you are writing a book or trying to otherwise access the verbatim stuff, but what the verbatim stuff is communicating is either here to stay or beyond your reach.
^^yeah, it's like you get slammed hard with a lesson and it sticks...or a lesson comes rushing past you, and you might understand it for a moment, but it's inevitably lost. i think the question is how do we retain THOSE ones?
Zactly, And I would like to see if it is possible. You've both mentioned ideas that I want to try to focus on next time I have a deeper personal voyage. I've had the same experience as you PS with past realizations being triggered by a place. That last beach trip was at a place that I had a few of those, which are part of me to this day, 30 years later.
