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Comment by loa_in_ | Hacker News Reader

Mushrooms are very contradictory in their nature to the modern "cog in the machine" lifestyle. It's a bit like being subjected to a software fuzzer. I imagine if learning from one's inputs, one will be afterwards less sure of concepts one was very sure about, but also less sure about concepts thought previously to be impossible. That will surely increase cognitive load, especially when one's life is pretty straightforward.

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Agreed.

Before a controlled high dose Psilocybin experience I "felt" my emotions: Anger, Fear, Frustration.

Afterwards, I gained the ability to observe and "catch" my emotions in-flight. Not sure if it was neuroplasticity induced by the substance, or "you don't know what your brain can do until you know it".

I liken it to previously having Ring 1 access to my thoughts, now I have Ring 0 access.

Definitely persistent: DRAMATIC improvement in my happiness and wellbeing.

YMMV

Do you mean you can catch them and stop them? Or catch them and say "oh I'm starting to feel angry" without letting the anger consume you, but still let it exist. I'd love any elaboration you can share on this

Your second sentence is more on the right path (speaking for myself at least). It's about labeling and observing the literal physiological sensation that is occurring in your body and choosing how to react vs. identifying strongly with the current emotion and reacting.

Easier said than done, of course!

And mindfulness meditation is training yourself to detach your conscious sense of self from those physiological sensations, noticing but not reacting to them at all!

The feeling still exists, but I can observe it and can run a secondary self-introspection loop to unpack that feeling, and often dig deeper and resolve where they feeling is coming from.

Another way of putting is that I'm self aware that the "qualia" of feeling angry is being projected into my conscious experience as a token, rather than simply experiencing "feeling angry" qualia.

I liken it to being able to set a breakpoint on my emotions, and then single step through the root cause of that emotion.

I seriously didn't have that functionality in my brain before that hero dose trip (even after doing many years of meditation).

Sounds a lot like vipassana meditation. I equated it to an "overwatch VM".

This is the best insult I've ever received.

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