Spiritual Journal, 11/29/01
Dec. 13th, 2001 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche6:28 a.m.
Emergent insight. This is what psychoactive entheogens induce, produce, and/or enable.
Consciousness is an emergent quality of the brain's properties. Likewise, insight is an emergent quality of the properties of a brain whose impulses are sufficiently altered.
These are the Moments of Truth.
* * *
Of all the people in my collegiate social group, to me I seem the least likely to have headed in this direction. I'm such a strange, uncategorizable person, often directionless and ambivalent.
This year, I attained several 'goals' of which I originally had no intention of achieving or even pursuing. Philosophy meant little to me; enlightenment, a mere abstraction. I had no idea, when I made the conscious, rational, adult decision to ingest marijuana that I'd be led down this path.
Now, I have a bunch of ideas and theories. I happen to feel the ideas are good and the theories plausible. I don't know any of them to be true. I question the very existence of eternal truths. But, in me, I have found twin reservoirs of faith and wonder. This is why I feel I have something to contribute to the whole of the universe.
So far, in my few years of existence, I have learned little. However, I have regained, and refined, my ability to learn. Like a child before Christmas morning, existence itself excites me so much I have trouble calming my heartbeat and falling asleep. I am infused with the energy of life.
Emergent insight. This is what psychoactive entheogens induce, produce, and/or enable.
Consciousness is an emergent quality of the brain's properties. Likewise, insight is an emergent quality of the properties of a brain whose impulses are sufficiently altered.
These are the Moments of Truth.
* * *
Of all the people in my collegiate social group, to me I seem the least likely to have headed in this direction. I'm such a strange, uncategorizable person, often directionless and ambivalent.
This year, I attained several 'goals' of which I originally had no intention of achieving or even pursuing. Philosophy meant little to me; enlightenment, a mere abstraction. I had no idea, when I made the conscious, rational, adult decision to ingest marijuana that I'd be led down this path.
Now, I have a bunch of ideas and theories. I happen to feel the ideas are good and the theories plausible. I don't know any of them to be true. I question the very existence of eternal truths. But, in me, I have found twin reservoirs of faith and wonder. This is why I feel I have something to contribute to the whole of the universe.
So far, in my few years of existence, I have learned little. However, I have regained, and refined, my ability to learn. Like a child before Christmas morning, existence itself excites me so much I have trouble calming my heartbeat and falling asleep. I am infused with the energy of life.
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Date: 2001-12-14 01:31 am (UTC)oh btw, i forgot to mention; for the previous entry.. thank you for posting that. i wrote the book down on my extended book list.
btw, i just thought that id mention that philosophically, consciousness as an emergent property of the brain was never fully accepted, because it could not fully explain the actual sensations that we have. i mean, the associations could be made, but the physical sensations could not.
i forget exactly what they were... i could dig it up, but i think ghost limbs were one of the unexplained phenomenon.
don't get me wrong, i personally am not disagreeing with you. the literature, however is out there. it's just that, this might not be in the books you are reading as the books you read dont seem concerned with metaphysics (top-down approach) as it is with a biology (bottom-up approach)