i tripped out on the night of 5/2. i tried my best to recollect my experiences the next morning, so here you have it.  i had the most influential experience of my life last nite when i was stoned.. i couldn't believe it. it was like a dream x 10000...

my mind was absolutely racing when i wrote this (the morning of 5/3), and i haven't even edited it yet either, so please try to understand i rushed through it all to save as much overall memory of it as possible. it started out as a big icq message to my friend, but it evolved into much more than that after i transcribed it onto wordpad, as i added shit on, then later html-ized it. wait till the music starts before you start reading.
 
 

it was like a movie sorta.. taking every possible bit of my creativity and using it as sort of a museum. its plot centered around my mind, how i'm being trapped and held down by sort of a dark force that inhibits me. this dark force was given life the first time i smoked up, about a year ago.  When that happened, i learned for the first time that the 'real' me deep down inside really didn't like the me 'up top' was handling things.  i envision my consciousness like a big hollow glass pyramid, where i (my voice, my consciousness) live inside, at the top, being given signals from all the other things down in the bottom of the pyramid (the bulk of it all). i only have ablout the first top 5 top feet or so of the pyramid to myself, underneath that there's all these clouds and stuff i stand on. when something from down under wants to send me a message (an emotion or something), they send it up through all the haze, kinda like lava trying to find its way to the top of the earth. a lot of messages get misconstrued by many factors, like me trying to hide that part of myself (that opinion) from the public, or the emotion not being strong enough, or any number of other possibilities that deny passage.

anyhow, this dark force seemed to take control of me ever since i started smoking. when i was sober, i would always seem to be thinking to myslelf, "what would the 'real' me (down at the bottom of my consciousness, the pyramid) be thinking of this?" -  because i was just a dumb little order-sender at the top of my pyramid.. i was nothing this is where my dream comes in. it started off as me getting really really stoned. at that time, the hazy clouds of my pyramid descended down to the bottom of my consciousness, where you could see all the untouched facets of my psyche. it looked like a dark maroon cave, with high mountains all over, with lava flowing everywhere.

the plot starts off with a rebel alliance of some sort, designed to try and get the conscious me to see their point. they'd been working on designing a 'way of thought' for me that would infiltrate the dark force conglomerate of me. the way my creativity handled this rebel alliance is kewl - i saw a little blue kid, sorta like a smurf but drawn in anime style, smuggle out a briefcase with the emotion 'message' inside.  the message inside the briefcase were these two things: 1. that this dark force isn't the real you inside you at all.. it's not some voice like a consciousness or anything. it's part of YOU - it's just your anger towards other people that you've turned inside on yourself. i saw it as kind of like a .wav file's visual output, you know, that spiky looking wave, turned it inwards on myself.

2, the second part of the message was "you're doing fine." i'd wondered about this a lot myself, now realizing that i'd been under the dominance of the dark force for long, but it was always something to think about whether my actions after i had originally started to smoke were being approved of. i'd changed my life considerably after i'd started smoking to try and alleviate all the negativity i'd though the "real me" hated, but i never knew when to stop - when this part of me would say "ok, that's enough, you're functiong on a managable level". with the new rebellion's ideal, i was doing fine in whatever aspect, since i had no longer needed to be under control. i was my own person, ahead of what anyone or anything could tell me.

anyhow, this all had to be smuggled to the surface somehow. so this little blue warrior set out on his quest. by now, my high was coming off, and this little thing's mission was to race to the top (or as far as he could go) to get the message as far as he could. this thing really wasn't the little blue creature all the time; you know how dreams are.. he could be symbolized as any number of things, switching back and forth. like i saw him as a bunch of different cartoon characters, like aeon flux and some sort of counterpart at one time. basically it had to do with what situation he got himself into and what my sunbonscious chose to borrow the imagery from in order to tell the story. i wish i'd remembered more of this part of the story, since this is really the kewlass adventurous shit.

a lot of things that make you just go 'wow, i hadn't thought of that' in a movie were here'. i constantly caught myself stopping myself and saying 'aw man..this would make an excellent movie', but i knew i'd be forgetting a lot of this by the time i woke up. one thing i do remember though - did you ever see the movie legend? in it, they use these plates to reflect light all the way down this tower to strike in the heart of the devil. that's sort of what happened here.. on this little blue dude's way up my consciousness, he scaled a mountain, since the mountain reached the highest point he could ever reach in my consciousness pyramid. it was sort of a tower and a mountain combined in one, but i'll get to that later. it took him an entire lifetime to climb this mountain. on his way up the mountain, he'd put these reflector plates on key points of the mountain so they'd reflect in just the right way that it'd puncture my consciousness when it had all been filled up and i'd been sitting at the top of my pyramid again. the light's source had been the rebellion's headquarters at the start of his mission, and its destination was to work itself up a single ray of hope through all the haze and garbage to the top of my active consciousness.  in a way, it resembled his quest.  anyhow, about the mountain.. it has to do with my consciousness like i was saying before. within this pyramid, there's land formations and everything.. mountains are the highest point that you can get to, which are the best points to launch things like emotions off if, to hope for the best possible recovery when "i" at the top am receiving them. to make a long story short, at a crucial point in my trip, it was the part when the little blue dude had scaled the mountain successfully and placed the last reflector plate at the peak of the mountain, just as my consciousness rose to that point where he could go no higher. at this point in time i'd seen the mountain more of a tower, as he was actually inside the thing and there were bars on the top, as i could see myself floating up and up, as i was watching him slowly drown under the tan goo. i could see him grasp the bars. he was an old man now, more in his 40s or so.. it had taken him most of his life to scale this mountain. he was with some sort of girl in a beautiful dress, also screaming, gasping for air at this point. from this point on i had crossed over - i was no longer part of the rebel alliance but more on my own and only remotely in contact with them. at this point i felt more solid, as i was coming off my high. i could hear him talk to me and reassure me through a walkie talkie, but i knew we would eventually lose contact altogether. as the layers of consciousness rose up and up and up, i started to see things in a bigger and bigger sense - back and back my consciousness went as it was rebuilding itself. things got more generalized and less detailed. not only that, but things got simpler and simpler as my layers of consciousness folded up around myself. at first it was an encumbrance of objects swirling around me, then i remember distinctly lame-headed snowboarders wishing me good-bye, and one of the last manifestations i had was of a very oldskool looking cartoon with cows dancing (like those old bosco cartoons) that paired up and disappeared, one by one, as the 50/50 matched up.

i'm gonna skip a whole bunch of shit now cuz i just can't remember it all.. but i know that it ended with a full circle.. it was beautiful. i saw it from a double standpoint - the more my high wore off, the less of a perspective i had on it from a dream standpoint and the more of a perspective i had on it as an awake standpoint. anyhow as it all concluded, i could see the one shining ray of light pass through the little pinprick hole in the haziness and knew at the same time that it was the rebel's message that the little blue guy had sent me all along. i saw this from both sides; i saw not only the light from the little blue guy (who was long gone now - rotten skeleton at the bars in the tower)'s viewpoint and knew my conscious self would understand it, and i saw it from my own standpoint (my conscious self) as a ray of blinding light. in my conscious top of the pyramid point of view to see what this little teeny ray of light was, and the thing overcame me with the two messages sent to me by the rebel alliance. at that moment, i woke up.
 

it's a full circle story - the only reason i remembered it was because this whole little faction inside of me wanted me to. creativity rocks. at one point in the dream, i saw it as a spaceship (with light and dark forces fighting onboard) passing through a bubble of goo called creativity.

one more thing.. i'd been listening to music through the entire thing. the kind of music they call 'trance' - music designed to get into your brainwaves through really relaxing yet fucked up composure. each tune had its own flavor, and the variance made my story take emotional turns during its course. while hearing a saddened tune, i'd look at the story elements through a more careful and dramatic poise. if it was a more furious, invigorating tune, i'd see more of the action sequences. sex didn't come up very much or at all in the trip. i listened to robert miles, orbital, aphex twin, and moby that night.

as i was in this, as i said before, i could see myself saying 'god, this would make a wonderful movie!' since a lot of it was drawn directly from my creativity - things you see maybe once in every few movies you see, where things just work out such in a way, whether speaking in symbolism that connected just right or a song that fits perfectly with the visuals. regardless, this was a movie with an audience of 1- me. i sort of knew that noone would really get the full picture on this, at least not if i portrayed it in the light in which i had experiewncd it (which would never happen anyhow since i can't remember 90% of the details) but it was nice being able to really see my thought streams and i knew that if some day i was to be able to see this all on the big screen, it would be kewl to see my though patterns coinciding with the movie display.

there was no 'double side' to myself - there was no me and him that was always doing battle. it was always just me, gotten deluded, persecuted, and belittled by my own anger, turned inwards on myself. the way they set it up, i remember, was a complete 50/50 - they knew that both parts of the message could be seen from either point of view - the dark force's or the rebellion's. so, they set it up in a way that it was head on, 50/50 balanced, so that all i (my consciousness top of the pyramid self) would have to do is sway one way or another and the see-saw of it all would lean immensely one way or another.

as in my normal dreams, the viewpoint would often shift at random. at some times i would be living my characters (the blue guy, aeon flux, etc) and at some times i could see them as if i was watching them on tv. i suppose growing up around tv and film does that - teaches you to see yourself through a projection. i would often comment on myself, and this was as much a partt of the experience as any other (ie: if i was to make a movie out of this in real life, i'd leave my comments in there). things such as comments about how i want to make money off it and what should i put here - technical questions and shit like that were as much a part of the colloqialism as any toehr, since it was all a part of the dream and the environment couldn't be complete without it.

i'll never forget the little blue guy.. i know they're all down there, cheering their asses off for me. it's how i envision that, and i know it. i know there was never really any little blue guy - it's all in how my mind chose to see him, and visions are a key factor in my conscious self. i think that's why this partular experience stuck with me so well - like a kid watching a cartoon, the images played on my mind like nothing else could. i see him now in one aspect that i saw him in whem i was under - crystalized, like a glass mask of his teenage self, with a starry background.

oh yeah, i figured out what dreams are, too. i suppose you could call them tests, for the lack of a better word. i didn't really want to say that since it's not really that at all - i don't know exactly what triggers it, but you could see it like sort of a hockey puck getting hit around by a bunch of hockey players standing on the outside of the hockey rink. random wisps of left-over thought being shuffled around by your various emotions and defenses - test emotions, left over thoughts.. like pinball in a way, just being tossed around. the starter image is whatr your dream consists of (the plot), and things are passed around from pocket to pocket, adding a detail here or a twist there.  they're trivial compared to what i had last night, though.

one thing i kind of regret to say is that one point brought up by the dark force is mostly true. it's kind of like how the empire in star wars couldn't be all bad, ya know? something must have persuaded all those planets to form an allegiance with them somewhere along the line. anyhow, one of the dark force's points last night was to get me to tell the truth, and i agree with it. it sucks because i can't do both, and i can feel the rebels within me telling me to fight for this. i can either keep on controlling myself, this time through the mask of telling myself to tell the truth.  it isn't a half bad idea - perhaps they used rationality this time because they knew the opposition had a good point. on the other hand, i can live my life as i see fit, as the rebels would want me to, since by their standard i'm above myself and any form of self control.

the latter promotes more self-admiration and charisma, but lemme explain the benefits of the dark force's proposal. by telling the truth constantly, i would connect those lava pathways that so desperately try to make their way to the surface all the time. if somehow i could find the way (i've been struggling with this for a while now) to not cover up my true intentions by reflex, i'll be able to think and say what i truly feel, all the time. however, this really isn't a very human practice - the truth hurts, and i'm afraid it would hurt others a little too much in this insecure society. however, i don't have much to lose. ;)

by telling the truth all the time, assuming i would go ahead with it, would theoretically make all the haze and muck corrode and degrade, since all it is is the crap left over after an unresolved issue lets sit or something you don't want to admit gets buried down. through the light of truth, so many successful holes would be drilled into between my consciousness at the top of the pyramid and the thinkers down at the bottom, that all the trash in between would start to fall away, thereby letting more and more of my true self slowly start to re-emerge. hopefully.

one downside to this way of life though, as i've experienced before, is that my mind thinks too much, in any situation. i often found myself thinking about 'is this really what my real real self would want?' - and i find myself back where i started. this is what the rebel's message was, ultimately, i believe. circular reasoning had a big part in the dream - sort of a cliffhanger plot arc would be represented with light and dark going back and forth, zooming out in sort of a fractal atmosphere. in this situation, the rebels' message was to see the emotions as a means rather than an end. i wouldn't live to see my emotions - my emotions should trail beside or behind me as i live. that, i think, is the key to living ahead of yourself. i'm too sober now to be able to reflect on this to the level that i'd want to; all i can do is hope i've got it right. i'm feeling pretty accomplished right now though, and i know what that means. ;)

i was thinking of this at one point in the night, as i was still tripping.. i saw it as kind of like layers being taken down and down in a service elevator, wach level a little harder than the last. i asked 'them', how do i get down to lower levels? they replied calmly, "we'll take you down, but it's up to you to be ready for it" (i'm unsure about that - the second part of that sentence prolly isn't accurate). i saw them taking me down, but i could see it wasn't gonna be fun - some bulldozer looking things with rotating spikes were coming at me (i could see myself from a bird eye view in this point) from all four directions. this was to hint that i'd be about to be opening up a whole can of worms that i might not be ready for. i thnink i've experience this once in my life already - for a while in the summer it felt as if i was fucking my mind up from going to deep and not being ready for it, since letting bad things in when you're that vulnerable has that many more consequences.
 
sometimes when i'm sober i punch a hole in a crust of my conscousness - my top self punching a hole dowawards and having a brief glance at what the underneath world looked like. i knew this was happening, to an extent, as its happened before (like when i ran a mile straight for the tirst time or when something really good happens) but i never really had a good visualization of it until now. seems i can't really hold onto things well unless they're in a solid viewable form - i guess tv's done that to me as well. anyhow, i saw it as kind of like punching a hole down into the pyramid, and seeing a glowing parade of activity from down beloe, with millions of miniscule voices cheering for me all at once.  or, another analogy would be to say that for a brief moment i'm a puppet being let down into the midst and having just enough time to look around for a second, but by the time i need to get ahold of my surroundings, i'm on my way up. yet another way to see it (this is one i saw while i was tripping) would be to see the hole as something the underlings had punched up from below, like a kid throwing a rock through a celing window. the clueless drone (my semi-conscous repair funtion) would walk over there in a very 'ok-george' manner and patch the thing up. but in that brief time i have to see the other side, whether it be me dipping down into it or the bottom breaking up into me, it's always a welcome change.
 
 
 
 

if this is all true, i hope to god i'm interpreting the rebels' action correctly, since i really really want to live that way. i should start evaluating my character on how much ahead of myself i am. there is no "plan". i just have to keep it in check to realize that i'm ahead of myself, always.