Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Since I see there are some interested in this topic, I will add a little more.

If I had found what I was looking for in LSD, I would still be doing it. Instead what I found interesting in glimpses from acid was what the dharma is all about 24x7, so I picked up on the dharma and have been doing it ever since.

The essence of my acid trips was insight into the workings of the mind and how to de-program the scripts that society had blindly embedded in my brain. It turned out that the dharma was not only about the same thing I saw on LSD, but all of its methods were designed to do exactly what I did not know how to do on my own. The dharma is a path or method for enlightened awareness, and from what little I know of that state, this is where I want to be.

The drama and power of LSD is mind shattering, but the time it takes to put that shattered mind back into stable form takes much longer than the slow and steady practice of dharma. I tried to put the acid puzzle together, but there were too many missing pieces and half-truths. I could not make a whole picture by myself. The dharma turns out to be an integrated path that includes all of the pieces I knew of from LSD, plus those that I never figured out by myself, and they make a complete image.

There is a part of me that does not like to follow the leader, follow orders, get in line, and or in any way take anything from "others." I have always been self-taught and walked out of high school never to return. I was a maverick; some would even say a rogue. I was shunned by society for not following the rules, but sustained by a few caring teachers of life.

It is a sign of the power of the dharma that a great dharma teacher single-handedly subdued those rebellious tendencies in me and, in a word, tamed me, at the same time making me of some possible use to others.

My acid experiences were most precious to me, the only chinks in the armor of society where light shone through, and I carried them like a parched man carries water in his hands thinking that was all there was.

An analogy I share with myself is of a thirsty man crawling across the desert that comes to some green leaves with a few drops of water on them. I would have stayed right there scrounging for water drops, when by going only a little farther was an oasis and a fathomless pool of water. The dharma gave me the tools to reach the oasis and all the water I care to drink.

I have had some of the rough corners rounded off of me by my dharma training, corners that only hurt myself and any others I came in contact with. I can't say that my dharma path has always been easy, but because it actually works, it is far easier than any other route I am aware of.

I am not a religious man and I don't consider the dharma a religion like the Catholicism I was raised in. So, kind of late in life, all I really care about is learning and practicing the dharma, and doing my very best to share it with others who, like I was, are still trying to carry water in their hands. I probably have limited compassion, but I do have compassion for those folks like me who are searching for awareness.

And I appreciate those of you here who share some of the same experience.

[Photo by me of the Mahasidda Tilopa, one of my heroes.]