Hi everyone, I am new to this website, but I am totally devoted to exploring, promoting, and defending the spiritual use of entheogens. I am in the process of writing an article about the spiritual and mystical aspects of Salvia divinorum and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experiences, beliefs, or opinions of this plant and the experiences it facilitates. Thank you!
Hey, Dylan. Welcome to spr.
The entheogenic experience is a subjective one. Words are futile, imo. Personal experience is everything.
lw
Hey, Dylan.
One question.....
How do you define a "spiritual" experience?
lw
Quote from: "Dylan13"Hi everyone, I am new to this website, but I am totally devoted to exploring, promoting, and defending the spiritual use of entheogens. I am in the process of writing an article about the spiritual and mystical aspects of Salvia divinorum and I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share their experiences, beliefs, or opinions of this plant and the experiences it facilitates. Thank you!
One post , one question type of guy I guess .
I will tell you some experiences and what I think about salvia.
I started to smoke salvia in 1997, when a new friend who grew his own plants introduced it to me. He explained it very well beforehand, saying that the variety of experiences was vast, but that it only lasted a short time. So when I went to smoke it, I had a good mindset. We were in my bedroom and no one else was home. I lived in a quiet neighbor hood in Portland, OR at the time and felt very comfortable and safe, so the setting was good as well.
He explained that he would hand me the bong fully packed and that I would take as big a hit as I could and then hand him back the bong to pack again. When I breathed out the first hit, I was to take the next hit immediately. We were to continue to do that until it hit me. I would be smoking dried leaves that had fallen off of his plants. I was anxious but not scared when I took the first hit.
Then I took the second hit, which was very large. I had the bong in my hand for the third hit when I exhaled the second, but I didn't feel like I was in the room anymore. I had my eyes open, but nothing looked like it had a few seconds earlier. I was on the planet Mars. I looked across a vast landscape of rocks and craters in a reddish, outerspace desert. My mind accepted it immediately as 'real' but I was still confused as to how I had gotten there.
I heard a voice ask me "Are you gonna take that last hit?"
I recognized it to be my friend and remembered that I was using a bong. I looked down to find it, for I felt that I would take the third hit, but I couldn't see the bong anywhere. I looked behind a rock that was to my left to see if perhaps the bong was back there, but I couldn't find it. Then, I saw what looked like it might be a bong. It was a tube of some sort with a circular hole in the top. So I put it up to my mouth.
At that point I heard the voice say "I think you've had enough." He took the bong and the lighter away from me. Somehow, I then realized that I was experiencing the effects of salvia. I became very excited to realize that the mystery had been solved. I had gotten to Mars on salvia. I stood up and began to swing my arms. I watched as they spun off into infinity like longs coils. Then, a burst of energy filled my whole body, forcing me to run. I ran in a tiny circle around and around with the energy of a sweepstakes winner. It was amazing and so bizarre.
I continued to run as my vision returned to normal. I found myself in my room again, with my friend watching me sprint in a circle around my bedroom.
"He must think I'm crazy," I thought but I couldn't speak from all the energy. I wanted to tell him that it was ok and that I was fine and 'knew what I was doing' but to say a word with the flow on energy in me was just impossible. It was like being electrocuted with joy. I stopped running and the energy began to dissipate as quickly as it came on. As it poured down from my head, freeing my mouth, I said "I can talk now. It's still in me, it's still in my legs. Now it's gone."
I felt strange, for I couldn't really figure out what had happened, but I was incredibly intrigued by this mysterious plant. After that experience, I began a long relationship with the plant, investigating the weird dimensions accessible through its use. I remember one other particularly poignant experience with salvia.
I had developed a ritual for its use that involved being alone in a room with the lights off, the repetitious music of fela kuti playing softly, and a sitter in the next room simply waiting for me to talk to me afterwards.
So on this occasion, I smoked some extract in a bowl, but the bowl down and held the hit in until I was gone. I tried to stay laying down in order to forget my body, but I found myself sitting up. Eyes open, I saw that I was in the jungle, in a clearing with a circle of indigenous indians. In the center of the circle was their shaman, and he was deep in thought. Then, he pointed to someone in the circle, who then got up and walked into the darkness of the jungle. Then, the shaman pointed to another person in the circle, who got up and walked off in another direction. I began to worry that he would point to me. I didn't know what was happening. A voice told me not to worry that I wouldn't be picked this time. I was relieved and watched as two more young men were selected from the circle. Then, the forest simply blended into the wood paneling of my room. I was back.
I quickly went into the next room to tell my friend what happened. A few years later I would find myself in the Amazon jungle drinking ayahuasca with a shaman named don Juan.
I don't smoke salvia anymore, as I live in Peru and work with ayahuasca on a regular basis. I think, looking back, that salvia was a wonderful introduction to spiritual dimensions, which helped to strengthen my faith in spirituality, especially when I began to work with ayahuasca. However, I had given salvia to 15 people over the years when I used it, and out of those 15, three had terrible experiences and I vowed not to give it to anyone else after the third person freaked out.
I think that salvia is so powerful as to truly possess the body, turning the participant into an observer during the experience, as if in a dream. Like a dream, anything is possible, including becoming a cartoon character or a piece of furniture. Over time, I got to know the spirit of salvia, who I always percieved as an older sister figure who loved me but also enjoyed making me do silly things. Salvia helped to open the door for me to worlds upon worlds of mystery that would take lifetimes to understand. It loosened my hold on 'reality' and allowed me to feel my true identity without the constraints of societal influence. Salvia humbled my ego and made me a student of reality again, as I had been when I was a child. I give thanks to her for I would not have found ayahuasca and that path I am on if it wasn't for her. She was my first ally.
My experience with Salvia divinorum was to roll a joint made out of dried leaves. Upon smoking it and after, I had a very hallucinating experiece where my perception like slow motion, and very mind clouding, very intoxicating is Salvia divinorum (Diviner's Sage).
Jamison Schuetz
http://www.geocities.com/jsheetz20012005 (http://www.geocities.com/jsheetz20012005)
I just wanted to try and explain my experience with Saliva. I was at first a bit skeptical, but that soon changed. What I experienced was the most intense and powerful event I have ever felt in my life. It was also one of the most disconcerting. When my experience started I had forgotten that I had even smoked anything. Then I felt like I was an almost infinite amount of phases of existence and I was rapidly flipping through them kind of like a flip book. The only thing I could think was that I needed to get back to my own phase of existence. It felt like I was going through realities that started out almost unrecognizable from my own, and the further I was in the experience the closer I got to my own phase of reality. It was all the way up until the experience was complete that I trusted (not 100%) that I was back in my own phase. I feel I truly either lost my mind or actually experienced a real phase shift in my reality. I was curious if anyone else has had a similar "trip". Thank you. Peaceful Pioneer
I have had experiences very much like that. I've felt like I needed to get to my reality before I came down or I would end up in someone elses. A sense of panic would ensue as I turned this huge dial trying to get everything to line up. Strabge stuff indeed.
Exactly! Only I didn't have a dial to turn. It frightened me so much that I don't think I can try that level of salvia again. I would like an experience to be one that doesn't find me scrambling for my current reality and not being afraid of being "trapped". It may not seem rational, but that's where I am in my salvia journey. Thanks for the reply.
I still have the feeling that salvia has something to teach about the nature of reality. It has a feeling of something forgotten, often makes me think of being a small child.
Quote from: "JRL"I still have the feeling that salvia has something to teach about the nature of reality. It has a feeling of something forgotten, often makes me think of being a small child.
I believe the problem one encounters when attempting to describe a salvia induced experience is similar to the difficulties you run into when describing a very vivid dream. Namely, because the memory itself is quickly fading, any efforts made to perceive or articulate what you felt or saw demands that you fill in a number of gaps (which increases seemingly which each passing second) with more understandable and logical data. This results in a majority of the final description being formed with half-truths and imagery which you honestly just make up on the fly.
Because of this, what you eventually are able to say (let alone put into text) regarding the ordeal can feel downright dishonest or simply made up.
link to webcomic about describing a dream (//http://xkcd.com/430/)
This is not to say that the effort is not worthwhile. We go off on tangents for different reasons altogether which sometimes end up being just as meaningful.