Insight disease -- when did you first catch it?

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The Doors!

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Just to bring it all back to the path!!

You know the day destroys the night (Noting the dark night?)
Night divides the day (nanas)
Tried to run (Aversion!)
Tried to hide (wasn't noting)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)
Break on through to the other side, yeah

We chased our pleasures here (embedded)
Dug our treasures there (disembedded)
But can you still recall
The time we cried (dark night?)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)

Yeah!
C'mon, yeah (Keep noting!!)

Everybody loves my baby (A/P)
Everybody loves my baby (A/P)
She get(s high) ..equanimity!
She get(s high) ...equanimity!
She get(s high) ...equanimity!
She get(s high) ...equanimity!

I found an island in your arms (The Witness-2nd Gear)
Country in your eyes (3rd Gear!!!)
Arms that chain (Illusion of Duality)
Eyes ("I"'s) that lie (Illusion of Duality)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)
Break on through to the other side (Stream entry!)
Break on through, oww! (Blip-What was that?)
Oh, yeah! (Bliss wave!!!)

Made the scene (noted)
Week to week (Momentum!)
Day to day (Momentum!!)
Hour to hour (MOMENTUM!!!)
The gate is straight (Concentration)
Deep and wide (High equanimity)
Break on through to the other side (1st path!!!!!)
Break on through to the other side (1st path!!!!!)
Break on through (note!)
Break on through (note!)
Break on through (note!)
Break on through (note!)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (fruition-fruition-fruition-fruition)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (FRUITIONS!!!!!!)

Nice!

Since my intro yesterday I've remember that an important campanion book to me when I got the Kornfield book was "What the Buddha Taught," by Dr Walpola Rahula, This book was basically a Theravadan primer and made the teachers very concise and clear to me. So, looking back, I can see that the two books had a huge influence on me. For some reason, I just believed most of it.

I think I might have caught insight disease while taking magic mushrooms in Amsterdam when I was 18. When they came on, I was standing next to the fridge looking at my friend, and suddenly I felt as if every thought is more lucid, important and true than the one preceding it. so I kept saying to my friend "another one, another one and ANOTHER ONE!" meaning. 'now thought', 'now thought', 'now thought'. Every thought in the present felt as if it was the truest thing in the world (but I dont remember any specific content of those thoughts

Well, and if that wasn't A&P, it's more likely I crossed it while doing body-scanning on my 3rd Goenka course.

1st (and only) time I took psilocybin (also in amsterdam) I literally saw my whole reality dissolve before me. I don't recall what happened for the next while beside some vague recollection of darkness and dissolution mixed with unity and ecstasy. I remember thinking "time to put myself back together and come back to the room" after that I felt like I had touched God and seen all of the secrets of the universe. It was the most significant event of my life probably in terms of emotional impact. It felt like a big question was answered on a very deep level. Since then I've been trying to make sense of that and get back some of that feeling.

Nick that was priceless...

When I was very young I used to have these dreams. They were very abstract and very sinister, as though there was something really wrong happening, but without any shape or form to it, no story. They were basically just a sense of a muddy, dark visual field with things moving across it, or a dark pool with little electric eels or radio dials moving within it. I didn't think much of this until a few weeks or months ago, actually. Now I'm wondering whether it had something to do with insight.

More apparently, the first (and only) time I went on an LSD trip (on Good Friday, of all days, yeesh!), I saw my identity -- Ryan Pirtle-McVeigh -- to be a fiction made up of "oppositionals" as I called them, with language and meaning as completely fabricated, and then at some point I was floating in a realm of no body, no world, just light and the knowing of it, with some thought about that, but without any expectation to ever return from that, and then there I was, returned, in a room with a body and a world, in addition to something and consciousness of it. Oh, and there was a strong sense of unity and oneness and love and elation and bliss and joy and an evangelical enthusiasm, a sense of "I've got to tell everyone the good news!" Then I spent the rest of the night feeling as though I had completely ruined my life. Imagine going through all of that, resting a day, and then going to Easter mass the next morning. Whew! Hinting at freedom, but quite the snare, to be really honest about it.

Ryan

For me the catching of insight disease has been a life-long affair with several important milestones.

1. discovery of altered states of consciousness (THC)
2. discovery of the constructed, mental nature of all experience / rejection of naive realism (philosophy/psychology/neuroscience, dextromethorphan)
3. realizing there is something special about consciousness and its relationship to our scientific understanding of the world (hard problem of consciousness)
4. discovery of unitive/existential consciousness (psilocybin, Huxley's "Doors of Perception")
5. discovery that altered and existential states can be induced by contemplative practice (fortunate accident!)
6. discovery that certain contemplative practice is developmental and culminates in enlightenment (MCTB, DhO, KFD)

I'd say that 1-4 set the stage but things really took off at 5 and 6 kept it going and made it more mature, focused, and deep.