Life Is A Trip
Life is a trip….
Go explore!
Experiment with something new today!
And also, stop caring so much about what other people think….
No one really cares anyways.
Going to Sarnia, Ontario Today!
Good Morning World,
Another day on planet Earth and to be honest, today I’m not too sure what to blog about!
I want to try to provide value as much as I can along my Journey in life but I also am not a fan of recycling things I’ve already discussed and dived into in the past so today I’m just going to blog about me and my life!
Today I am off to Sarnia, Ontario with Adam Martin to film several videos with a real estate investor for Matt McKeever’s YouTube Channel!
Should be an interesting day as it’s not like my typical, sit behind the laptop and do my normal physical activity type stuff so it’s nice to have day’s like this that offset my normal patterning.
Personally, with all the wild and crazy experiments I do on myself, I enjoy a rather structured and predictable lifestyle so that way I am aware of what factors outside of the experiment may be affecting the results but living a life like this can get monotonous with time so having days like today that throw my rhythm off is great because I get to see my Journey and the world in a different light!
Along with that, if you are aware, we are releasing a video EVERYDAY on Matt McKeever’s YouTube channel so another video will be coming out for him and I also have a video launching today as well about ‘How Magic Mushrooms Changes People’s Lives’ by sharing a few pages from the current book I’m reading ‘Becoming Supernatural’ by Dr. Joe Dispenza.
Besides that and hopefully having some time to get to the gym after our trip to Sarnia that should be it for most of the day, I was considering vlogging today (still debating if I should or shouldn’t) to document what a ‘situational day’ in my life looks like but I guess we will see what happens!
Well, that’s it for me!
Thank you for reading and being part of my Journey :)
Taking 3g of Magic Mushrooms LIVE on YouTube - Blue Meanie Strain
Yesterday I ingested 3g of Blue Meanie Magic Mushrooms and shared my experience LIVE on YouTube!
Did you see it?
Watch it here:
I'm Quitting Normal People for 2020
Good morning World!
I have to say, for the first week or so doing a blog post everyday was a bit of a challenge but over the last few days it’s been a lot easier to fire these out (I think I slipped up once or twice but definitely already creating A LOT more blog posts then I did in 2019!).
But yesterday I launched a new Vlog on my YouTube channel taking you through a full day in my life during a Monday Team Meeting with the #Clique as well as what I ate, how I lifted and a bunch of other fun stuff like talking about Mandrills (crazy looking monkeys) eating Iboga roots (a hallucinogenic African plant) before getting into a fight with another!
Check it out and let me know what you think in the comment section!
Lots of people seem to be enjoying it so far!
Ostinato Rigore World!
The Transgender Experiment: MTF - Emily Tressa
For those who may not know, in May I will finally be launching a concept on my YouTube channel that I’ve been discussing for MANY years now: ‘The Human Experiments’.
I won’t dive deep into it here but very high level my goal is to create a network of fascinating individuals from around the world who are also experimenting with their lives, bodies, minds, and lifestyles in unique ways by creating a ‘show’ or channel that is dedicated to featuring them while also challenging them to participate in scientific testing during their experimentation.
I know, it sounds crazy but in an effort to bring this concept to the world I will be highlighting each of these ‘Human Experiments’ on my YouTube channel with a 5-7 long docu-series to justify, rate and explain why I believe creating this network would benefit society greatly in the long term by creating a new and much deeper/detailed scientific method for the world to utilize.
To make this possible I will have to study (in great detail) the lives from people around the world who have YouTube channels and I believe fit this narrative and my qualifications of what it means to be a ‘Human Experiment’.
One aspect that is new in society that I believe is an ‘experiment’ and that I am interested in learning more about are those who are going through gender reassignment surgery and to understand how long term this surgery has affected the individual.
The other day I stumbled upon the video featured above with Emily Tressa which I didn’t dive into fully but over the coming weeks I will be diving deeper into this video as well as the rest of her YouTube channel to see if she is a fit for the Human Experiment Network!
As of right now I have been following Ashton Colby for a year or so now who is going through a FTM transition but I had yet to stumble upon a MTF transition. Looking forward to learning more about this concept in life and hopefully connecting with Emily in the future!
Love seeing people who are openly and honestly sharing their Journey with the world!
HOW NATURAL GROWTH HORMONE AFFECTS MUSCLE GROWTH
‘I have yet to see any strong science or evidence that would cause me to believe otherwise and Layne’s article and the scientific studies he utilizes doesn’t disprove this theory’
A comment from my video challenging the research Dr. Bio Layne Norton used in his ‘Growth Hormone: Great Expectations’ article:
This Is Why I Do All This...
This is why I do this!
I don’t care to change the current inherited systems, models, mentalities and lifestyles of those who utilize them.
My goal is to influence the upcoming generations to think, live, love and work differently!
To see that there are other ways to go about life, science, politics and education that the previous generations couldn’t or were unwilling to see….
But, I realized early on that it would take A LONG time and A LOT of effort to ‘have an effect on a generation’. ESPECIALLY the new gens growing up and that will be coming into the world in the next 5-10 years!
For the last 5 years now, across a multitude of different searchers/niches and social platforms I’ve left my mark through various documentation style videos that leads viewers down the rabbit hole of my crazy life Journey while seeing my mentality, theories, morals, values, etc, in the process.
By being ‘authentic and real’ I’m managing to connect with thousands of people EVERYDAY and I only really just started my Journey in regards to creating. The last 5 years as been solely be documenting my life and my crazy experiments that I would’ve most likely been conducting on myself anyways!
The upcoming generations will be A LOT more critical and A LOT more ‘informed’ then us.
They won’t fall for the same type of fake bullshit that many of us did (and our parents did) in regards to role models and those they mirror their morals/values from.
They’ll want to see a lifetime of your legitimacy documented online before they can trust you.
So, I suggest to everyone out there right now to start documenting your Journey NOW!
If you want to have any type of ‘legitimacy’ in the next 10 years you need to start now or else you’ll become irrelevant to the upcoming gens. If you’re not documenting your life now, how they will be documenting their lives as they grow up, they won’t resonate with you, you’ll be ‘old’ and ‘outdated’. You won’t have YEARS of documentation for them to analyze/dive into, you’ll be considered ‘questionable’ because they/we won’t be able to see your rise.
I see so many people ‘trying to change the world’ by fighting every system in the process but why not ‘create a new world’ or a ‘new framework’ for the coming generations to adopt and let them fight the systems in place from a new perspective and a new way of being….
Prince Charming isn't coming to save you from that sofa...
Everyone talking about boomers, millennials, and gen x lately but no one talking about the 'Disney Generation'!
Most of those who were raised watching Disney movies throughout their childhood have a distorted view on life, love, happiness, work ethic, etc.
Instead of playing outside and learning life lessons for ourselves, we were taught by people who sat in a building and drew on paper all day.
They sat in boardrooms and discussed what angles they should take, what color peoples skin should be, how characters should talk and what 'morals' they want to instill upon children.
We were taught that no matter what happens things will get better, a knight in shining armor will come to save you or a bunch of dwarves will make you happy with your life and everyone lives happily ever after.
Now that most of this generation is all grown up, many feel lost because they were told and shown as children that as long as you hope and dream, things will get better.
We live in distorted realities as princesses and tarzans with hopes and dreams to one day finally attain our 'happily ever after' and we are passing this down to the next generations!
We live as contradictions.
We have high hope and faith for something better for ourselves due to these propagated cartoons we consumed in our infancy telling us we deserve the best of it all and yet we live in the ‘real world’ with ‘real’ issues/problems that many ignore and push to the side negatively affecting their health, relationships and finances in order to continue to live in ‘fantasy land’ in their heads.
Until we can change this, until more of this generations realizes the propagated morals/ideals/mentalities/life lessons that were instilled upon them are FAKE, many will continue to live in this distorted reality, chasing something that isn’t REAL.
YOU’RE NOT A PRINCESS, YOU’RE NOT THE ‘KING OF THE JUNGLE’ OR A BOY WHO CAN STAY YOUNG FOREVER IN NEVERNEVELAND!
It’s all fake just like the lessons you ‘learned from them!
Stop living in Disney Land and come to the real world.
Don’t do what your parents did by placing you infront of a screen to learn from cartoons!
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN, let them learn from watching YOU live out your morals and values!
Oh ya, and if you’re over the age of 20-25 you need to give up on the Disney movies!
If you’re watching it with a child then sure, that’s one thing, but if you’re regularly spending 2hrs out of your life to watch a Disney movie then you’re a child and live in comfort zones…
Ladies, Prince Charming isn’t coming to save you from that sofa….
Animals & Psychedelics by Giorgio Samorini - Book Review/Notes
WOW!
For such a short read (only about 85 pages) I can’t believe how jam—packed full of knowledge this book was in regards to information I was rather quite unaware of!
I literally could’ve made notes from every page of this book but because it’s such a quick read I tried to only capture information that I could really utilize in future discussions/debates/videos so if this concepts you see here interests you, understand that my notes below are very light in regards to all the valuable information inside in regards to Animals & Psychedelics!
Hope you enjoy my notes and pick this book up for yourself!
Changing My YouTube Channel
As I mentioned in a previous livestream and blog post, the style of my YouTube channel is changing!
I will be going back to a more vlog orientated style of documentation and will be creating less videos focused around specific themes or topics. I’m doing this for a host of reasons but in general I feel this style of video and recording/sharing my life in this format helps me share the aspects of life that I am passionate about while providing value in regards to displaying aspects of my life in regards to optimization.
I actually JUST realased a new vlog taking you through a full day of fasting, making a video everyday for Matt McKeever’s YouTube channel, sharing concepts from Animals & Psychedelics AND I also share my FULL gym workout.
Yeah, A LOT goes on in my life so check out today’s vlog World:
Elephants Get DRUNK?!?!?!
Recently I began reading ‘Animals & Psychedelics - The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness’ by Giorgio Samorini which ‘rejects the Western cultural assumption that drug use is unnatural’ and that ‘Samroni opens our eyes to the possibility that beings who consume psychedelics—whether humans or animals—contribute to the evolution of their species by creating entirely new patterns of behavior that eventually will be adopted by other members of that species.’
I’ve been absolutely loving this book so far
"the pursuit of inebriation has been proposed as a fourth drive - akin to hunger, thirst, and sex..."
"Animals engage in intoxicating drug consumption... this moment of drug-induced inebriation produces a deconditioning, that allows for new behavioral ways to be established in a species."
"If animals, birds, and, yes, insects avail themselves of inebriation, then we must see this as a natural impulse to take drugs to alter consciousness, and it exists in man as well. Perhaps, then, the problem of 'problem drugs' is no problem after all."
One interesting concept that I was unaware of is that elephants get DRUNK!!!
Yes! Apparently, “Pachyderms’ passion for alcohol has long been famous. African elephants are avid for fruits of several kinds of palm tree… As they ripen, these fruits tend to ferment quickly, sometimes while still attached to the tree. Elephants will devour the fermented fruits already scattered over the earth and then shake the tree… fermentation of these fruits produces ethyl alcohol in concentrations as high as 7%, and this process continues when the fruit enters the animals digestive systems… groups of elephants appear to compete over the fruits… trying to eat the most fruit in the shortest time.”
After reading this part I of course had to look for some videos on the subject and came upon these fascinating videos of elephants drunk and playing:
“Once drunk, the elephants become overexcited and tend to jump & startle at unusual sounds… they scare easily and react defensively, becoming extremely aggressive. A herd of drunken elephants is considered a serious danger to humans.”
WOW. I honestly had no idea that elephants (and apparently many other animals) seek out inebriation in the form of eating fermenting fruit and even return to these sites to get drunk again!
Cool stuff World!
A New Year = Blog Post Everyday
Well, it’s another year and another decade.
Cool.
Everyone seems to get so excited about a number changing on a calendar.
Personally for myself, I really don’t care. It doesn’t affect my life, it’s not something I’ve accomplished or done myself so I personally don’t see the necessity to celebrate it or dictate my life around making ‘major changes’ because of it.
This year is different though.
This year I have been tasked, as the VP of Media for Matt McKeever’s YouTube Channel and Social Media, with the goal of launching a YouTube video EVERYDAY over 2020!
For those of you who may or may not know, this is no easy task and I have been preparing for this over the last couple months.
In lieu of this challenging task that is my ‘job’ I am having to treat this year differently so I thought, why not also do a ‘daily’ thing for myself? I personally believe creating a video everyday for Matt AND for myself would be way to daunting of a task, I will still try to create regular videos and livestreams but I thought that creating a daily blog post, although much easier in regards to skill, time, effort and energy is still an admirable feat and will allow me to further flush out my ideas/theories with the world which transition to my videos anyways.
SO, here we are. The first blog post of 2020 which will be followed by 364 more.
In a recent livestream video I discussed how my YouTube channel will be changing in regards to how I will be documenting my path which will be a lot more ‘vlog’ style rather than just sitting down to breakdown and discuss certain topics and these blogs too will be a lot more about sharing rather than purposely taking an angle of trying to be informative.
I hope these blogs as well as my videos can provide value to you along your Journey as I have some BIG plans for concepts I will be launching in the next few months!
Looking forward to a new challenge and sharing my daily thoughts here with you guys :D
Why You Can't Trust Dr. Bio Layne Norton
If you’ve been following my Journey over the last several years you will know that I’ve been quite fascinated with the concept of Natural Growth Hormone Levels in men, it’s effects on the human body and whether or not we can manipulate certain factors in our lives to naturally increase GH and if so, does it benefit us long term in regards to muscle growth?
Basically, does elevating natural growth hormone levels in the body help with muscle growth? Should we be focusing on trying to increase it naturally or is it a waste of our time?
Over the years I’ve had people challenge this concept and even try to justify that Growth Hormone doesn’t affect muscle growth at all! Take for instance:
Going back and forth on this topic in a recent discussion on Twitter, Stuart Phillips (Ph.D Professor at McMaster University) & Brett Chrest (BU Biomedical Science Major/Pre Med. Research Assistant at Brandon University) both shared Dr. Bio Layne Norton’s article on Growth Hormone (https://www.biolayne.com/articles/supplementation/growth-hormone-great-expectations/) in an effort to ‘squeeze my mind out of this GH centered paradigm’ but after analyzing the article and the scientific studies Layne Norton uses I found that he cherry picked data, manipulated verbiage and mislead people in the article in order to make these claims leading me to create this video ‘Why You Can’t Trust Dr. Bio Layne Norton’:
What do you think? Can Dr. Bio Layne Norton be trusted when he utilizes WEAK science like this in an effort to justify claims in regards to health and fitness advice?
Personally, I don’t believe he has enough or really any scientific evidence to concretely discuss anything in regards to how NATURALLY ELEVATED LEVELS OF GROWTH HORMONE in the male body affects or doesn’t affect muscle growth LONG TERM and by making such a claim based on scientific evidence that focuses on supplementation which he cherry picked data for by using studies with men +65 years old to cover ‘all healthy individuals’ along with the other misleading data in his article proves why we can’t trust Dr. Bio Layne Norton!
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond - Book Review/Notes
Today I finished reading The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond which was a plethora of valuable information for me along my Journey!
I do have to state though that there were several aspects I didn’t agree with (such as the chapter on: ‘Why Do We Smoke, Drink and Use Dangerous Drugs?’) and in general much of part four/five of the book is speculation, based on logical guesses and deductive reasoning but I do have to say, this book provides the best ‘evidence’ I’ve seen in regards to how/what/when/why we evolved as the Human Animal.
I plan on using many points and notes from this book to justify the necessity for #Optimized, my online course, which helps arm individuals with the knowledge and skills to manipulate aspects of their lives in order to optimize their body, mind, hormones & lifestyle.
In general, I believe many aspects and factors in our lives as human beings, such as the need to eat, sleep, fuck, fight and be social (which I believe can dominate over us if we do not conquer/control them) are remnants of our animalistic instinctual past as is clearly laid out in this book where Jared Diamond breaks down our evolution from apes which we share 98% of our genes with. He deduces in this book that the small 2% change in our genetic structure from apes is what lead to our current modern day all stemming from an explosion of language/cultural development over thousands of years.
Although that language/cultural development is important and makes us distinct and unique from all other species on this planet, my goal with this book was to find/research/study those differences between what makes us animal and what makes us human in order to help flush out my theories in regards to how to optimize these different factors that affect our animalistic instinctual nature and our (newly attained) human traits to delay gratification and appease our need to transcend time.
Here are some of the notes I took from the book:
Go 'ALL-IN'
Find YOUR Purpose.
To do this, you need to find your passions in life.
You don't usually just stumble into your passions though.
You need to continually be experimenting with new skills and knowledge, but not lightly, not just for 'fun' or as a hobby, it needs to be done RIGOROUSLY.
Don't give up on that book or that new workout routine or that article you're writing.
Maybe it's your passion and maybe it's not but the time, effort and energy that goes into developing that new skill or knowledge will transition to somewhere else in your life or will reveal aspects in the tedium of it all which you can re-direct towards your passions in the future.
When you discover your true passions and go ALL-IN on them they will come together to make you the person you are meant to become, you will find your purpose through the strife.
I feel most people who are 'lost and confused' with their direction in life have SOOOO MUCH discovery to go. Most have been doing what they were told to do in life and have no clue what they are passionate about or they found 1 or 2 things they are passionate about and just 'dabble' with it. .
Go ALL IN. Do it for YOU! Do it because discovering your passions and your purpose in life will benefit others and the world. Do it because nothing else really matters. Do it because it's what you were meant to do...
Journey To 1000lb Club
405lb Sumo Deadlift!
It's been 1.5 years (possibly even +2 years) since I've tried the Sumo stance on deadlifts.
Although with my body structure I'm a lot more comfortable with Sumo I spent the last couple years finalizing my Weak point development and conventional deads just weren't my strong suit, I always felt like I was fighting against myself until recently. .
But I have a new short term goal which is to 'join the 1000lb Club' before I turn 30 in April which will require me to lift a total of 1000lbs across deadlifts, squats and bench press all in one workout! .
I'm not doing this because I care about the numbers or because 'I want in the Club' but I want to prove and justify that if you implement the concepts of #Optimized in your life you can achieve the results you desire NATURALLY! .
I'll be sharing my new PRs over the coming months as I slowly train and build up my strength to accomplish this feat! .
Turning 30 Years Old...
I turn 30 in less than 6 months!
It's pretty wild to think that in the next several months I will have completed a full 30 sun spins and although I don't really care about dates on a calendar I believe this is a great time to reflect on who I am/was and where I was/how I got to this point as well as where I want to go/wanted to be at this point.
I believe living in the NOW is extremely important. When we 'live' in the past or the future there is nothing but ego in these moments which many people are constantly doing. Allowing yourself to be present and mindful as much as possible reduces the effects of the ego because when one is totally in the NOW there is no judgment, no prejudice or preconceived notions but I believe this also isn't 'human'.
Being in the NOW, as powerful as it is and can be for those who learn to accept this notion, is also very limiting. As a human in this modern world we have to be aware and even live in the past and future for a host of reasons which makes us this 'superior animal' or 'human' but it is very 'individualistic in nature' due to the ego.
You can't see your life or the life of the collective without analyzing it through your own egoistic perspective and if you're completely present you just are...
I believe one aspect of life that is extremely important for everyone to understand and implement into their own lives is this concept of reflecting on the past/future to ensure you're consistently attaining your goals in life but not 'living' in it, this is what I believe makes us human.
This beautiful contradiction which speaks to so many levels of the human condition. the ying and the yang.
Like every factor in life, I believe you can 'optimize' this and conquer it in your life or allow it to dominate you.
Track your goals, write down where you want to be in 10 years from now, document your achievements and your failures and then regularly reflect on it. Don't dwell, don't get emotional, don't 'live' in your past accomplishments or your future goals.
This is what it means to be human: balancing the animalistic aspects of our minds/bodies with the powerful ability we have acquired to perceive and transcend time!
Don't Judge My Story From The Chapter You Walked In On.....
I always knew my Journey would be a LONG one...
As we enter the new decade I will be going into my 5th year on YouTube and only then will I be finally implementing my first major reason for beginning this Journey in the first place.
I've created HUNDREDS of videos documenting and sharing full days of my life as well as video series highlighting my growth and development with various 'experiments' that cover weeks, months and years of my life and although I have all this content out there I still feel extremely disconnected from others. I have to say that it's not easy having literally your whole life as well as your deepest theories and visions for the world out there for others to analyze and review yet still feel like no one understands you or what you're creating.
I find so many people 'walk into a chapter of my life' by watching a select few of my videos (which is more like a sentence on a page in a chapter of my life) and they assume they know who I am or why I'm doing all this.
I'm just here being me and sharing my experiences with the world.
Although I appreciate all the amazing support and love that comes from sharing myself and there are some things I want to 'challenge' with my short time on this planet I'm not trying to 'impress you' or 'be inspirational' or 'to gain clout/notoriety' (although all this comes 'with the job' so to say).
Please don't judge my Journey (or the Journey of others) based on a sliver of life you're walking into. It's highly doubtful you truly understand who I am, what I'm trying to do, the thoughts in my head and what I want after watching a few of my videos and this is the future of many others similar to myself who are taking a similar path in regards to life documentation.
It will take the summation of my life on this planet for others to truly understand the point behind it all....
So keep judging.
Keep telling me what I should do or how I should live or how I should present myself to the World because you must be doing it right....
The Doors Of Perception by Aldous Huxley: Book Review/Notes
The Doors Of Perception
By Aldous Huxley
Hungarian Experiment Book Review/Notes
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.” (pg.12)
“I am and, for as long as I remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon, of how the Lungarno used to look before the bridges were destroyed, of the Bayswater Road when the only buses were green and tiny and drawn by aged horses at three and a half miles an hour. But such images have little substance and absolutely no autonomous life of their own. They stand to real, perceived objects in the same relation as Homer’s ghosts stood to the men of flesh and blood, who came to visit them in the shades. Only when I have a high temperature do my mental images come to independent life. To those in whom the faculty of visualization is strong my inner world must seem curiously drab, limited and uninteresting. This was the world – a poor thing but my own – which I expected to see transformed into something completely unlike itself.” (pg.15-16)
While reading, this part really stood out to me and in my notes I wrote down that, ‘I GRATELY resonate with this.’ I too feel that I am a poor visualizer. I can’t hold images in my head and look back at them as I find others are able to do or claim they are able to do. I very rarely, if ever, can recall my dreams and in general I regularly question ‘how good my memory would be’ if I didn’t document so much of my life.
Last night while I was struggling to get to sleep after a long day and as an experiment to put my mind at ease I thought I would ‘go through my day in my head’ which is something I don’t often do but I wanted to see after reading this section of the book and Mr. Huxley’s explanation of his own view on life, if I could recall the images from the day. I spent the day shooting videos in Brantford, Ontario with Matt McKeever for his YouTube Channel and a real estate investor named Sarah who we were highlighting and featuring for his channel. As I lay there, unable to sleep, my mind racing, I tried to envision their faces, what they were wearing. I tried to see the colours of their clothes and although I could remember faintly what she was wearing, a turquoise dress shirt with a grey ‘robe’ overtop and Matt with a grey blazer and black t-shirt but I felt I could remember this but I couldn’t ‘see’ it in my head. I regularly find myself ‘remembering’ and seeing things from the perspective of the the video we shot from, more then the real aspect of life and my own perspective. I find that whatever I can ‘see’ while recollecting images in my mind are extremely weak and I seem to be pulling the images more from what I document through camera rather than my actual memory of it.
I regularly question for myself if my ‘experiences’ aren’t as great or that maybe those who are great visualizers such as artists and musicians have a greater ‘experience’ visually than I do or others similar to myself such as Aldous Huxley. I find I’m able to express my experiences in life greater through words then through ‘art’ or visualizations which I feel, according to the very minimal understanding of Mr. Huxley’s life, we have similar perspectives in this manner which from the start of this book I felt I greatly resonated with his words and him.
“According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind At Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind At Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition onto which he has been born – the beneficiary in as-much as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called “this world” is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language.” (pg.23-24)
I found this concept of the Mind At Large and how ‘making biological survival possible by it being funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system’ and how it leads to a ‘measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet’ and how this lead to us as humans inventing language which is meant to express and share and inevitably has advanced us as human beings is also the thing that holds us back.
“The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.” According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind At Large.” (pg. 22-23)
“Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language.” (pg. 24)
This was another interesting aspect that stood out to me that I had not really considered in life. The concept that our brains and nervous system and sense organs are ‘eliminators’ rather than ‘producers’ and that their functions are ‘to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by…useless and irrelevant knowledge’ and that most of us only know what comes through this ‘reducing valve’ and then able to be articulated through this rather weak communication system we call language.
“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion’s chemical surrogates – alcohol and ‘goof pills in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.” (pg. 67)
Interesting concept on how people have a natural urge to ‘transcend self-conscious selfhood’ which as Mr. Huxley states is ‘a principal appetite of the soul’ and how if we can’t find this transcendence by ‘means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises’ that we turn to ‘chemical surrogates’ or things in life that can briefly make them transcend their selfhood by means of intoxications with drugs/alcohol.
“In a world where education is predominately verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced who to say what when? Even in this age of technology the verbal humanities are honored. The non-verbal humanities are honored, the arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence, are almost completed ignored. A catalogue, a bibliography, a definitive edition of a third-rate versifier’s ipsissima verba, a stupendous index to end all indexes – any genuinely Alexandrian project is sure of approval and financial support. But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system – when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. Verbalists are suspicious of the non-verbal; rationalists fear the given, non-rational fact; intellectuals feel that “what we perceive by the eye (or in any other way) is foreign to us as such and need not impress us deeply.” Besides, this matter of education is the non-verbal humanities will not fit into any of the established pigeon-holes. It is not religion, not neurology, not gymnastics, not morality or civics, not even experimental psychology. This being so the subject is, for academic and ecclesiastical purposes, non-existent and may safely be ignored altogether or left, with a patronizing smile, to those whom the Pharisees of verbal orthodoxy call cranks, quacks, charlatans and unqualified amateurs.” (pg. 76-77)
I think this section is quite self-explanatory but I wanted to keep it documented for my sake, “when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system…no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it.”
“A person under the influence of mescaline or lysergic acid will stop seeing visions when given a large dose of nicotinic acid. This helps to explain the effectiveness of fasting as an inducer of visionary experience. By reducing the amount of available sugar, fasting lowers the brain’s biological efficiency and so makes possible the entry into consciousness of material possessing no survival value. Moreover, by causing a vitamin deficiency, it removes from the blood that known inhibitor of visions, nicotinic acid. Another inhibitor of visionary experience is ordinary, everyday, perceptual experience. Experimental psychologists have found that, if you confine a man to a ‘restricted environment,’ where there is no light, no sound, nothing to smell and, if you put him in a tepid bath, only one, almost imperceptible thing to touch the victim will very soon start “seeing things,” “hearing things” and having strange bodily sensations.”
I just wanted to save this piece for myself 😊
Well that’s just some of the main takeaways I got from Doors Of Perception by Aldous Huxley. I really enjoyed it and found it to be a nice quick read but I thought I gained a lot from it. I’ve heard of this book in the past but what turned me on to reading it was while reading ‘How To Change Your Mind’ by Michael Pollen where he regularly referenced key points from Mr. Huxley’s book which intrigued me to pick it up.
Thank you to both Aldous Huxley for sharing his experience with us and Michael Pollen for turning me on to reading it! I will definitely be diving into more of both their books!
Putting Mental Health On A Pedestal
Personally I think it should be more like:
when you're feeling sad or overwhelmed, taking the time for YOURSELF should be as normal as going to the gym when you're getting overweight and rundown.
I personally believe we are putting mental health on a pedestal. Yes, it's extremely important to be aware of and to learn to mitigate in your own life but your mental health is as important as your physical health and that's a self-care thing that people need to learn from a young age to implement for themselves.
I really don't believe counselling and therapy should be the first line of defense or the first thing people think of when feeling 'overwhelmed or sad' at points in their life.
Feeling that way at times is a normal aspect of life that everyone experiences and passing on what I believe should be 'self-care' to someone else is like getting a personal trainer at the gym. They can't physically make you move and change, they are just there to guide you along the process and know how to do it better but it's still all the effort you put into it and if you think someone else can fix your problems in life then you're only holding yourself back.
I really don't think a majority of people need counselling, it should only be for the more drastic of situations, and yes, we have A LOT of drastic situations in our modern day society, but with my vision of the world with #Optimized human beings, growing up and understanding how to optimize their minds and bodies from a young age, I believe many would laugh at this poster because it's basically saying that when you 'experience life' (life is as much overwhelming and sad as it is happy and joyous) you need therapy and counselling.....