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rahli

Sociopathic empathy on entheogens??

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I recently had a fairly weird experience where a couple of folk went well out of their way to deceive me. These folk are well known in the entheogenic scene with one of them being publicly described by themselves as being enlightened by their experiences with DMT.

In hindsight I do feel quite silly falling for their petty scam, but being a self sufficient adult and considering myself to be part of an "evolved" scene, this outright broad sided me. Took me a good half hour in my heightened state to figure out the extent of their actions. At this moment of realisation I was overcome with a dark energy which I projected out, to seek those that had wronged me. Bad idea I know. I soon put a stop to it.

I spent a good time thinking of how I was going to deal with this situation. I had a major stumbling block. How could these folks regularly partake in entheogens yet still go out of their way to attack someone who had recently shown support for their perceived indifferent behavior towards others? then it occurred to me. The real prize wasn't what they had abused my generous nature to reward themselves with, as it was such an insignificant prize. That would be too childish and I was dealing with adults here. The real prize was the conflict and power they seek over others. It then occurred to to me that at least one of these folks was likely a sociopath.

What greater lust to wield your power over others than when they are willfully powerless?

This got me thinking. The transformative action of enthoegens, is in my opinion the self introspection that immerses the participant, whereby they see their interactions with those around them in such fine detail that empathy for others is magnified and the self is more accurately defined within the human fabric of their lives.

How could such pettiness evolve into such detailed preparation to attack me for no apparent reason? How could this be the action of those who had discovered what I thought was the real power of entheogens?

I have a couple of questions for the community.

Do sociopaths feel a heightened sense of empathy while immersed within the entheogenic state?

Is the entheogenic community a target for these types of personalities?

If you do happen to read this, be aware that I hold your secret and I've planted this seed. Water it if you will and I'll watch it grow!

Edited by rahli
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Sociopaths are often excellent at using the empathy of others to gain power over them. Perhaps their use of entheogens actually does allow them greater insight, but still without the necessary empathy to make a genuine connection to others?

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.

Edited by bogfrog

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It's hard to know what goes on in other peoples minds, especially a sociopathic mind. I would have thought by definition a sociopath would not be capable of empathy on any level, but we all know how Entheogens can be a trigger for empathy in many people so who really knows.

Without knowing the details it's hard to put it into perspective, to me it seems like a big step to label a scam artist or conman as a sociopath although there is a fine line between the two.

I don't think the Entheogenic community is a target for that sort of people, I think that personality type appears in all walks of life and in my experience it happens a lot less in these circles. I can see how the community could be viewed as an easy target, but most of the exchanges here are very positive and overly generous.

Sorry to hear it Rhali, it sounds like a tough lesson.

I hope the experience doesn't leave you feeling a loss of faith in humanity. Sometimes a hard lesson can be one of the best ones.

Maybe in the future you'll pick up scams on your radar before it's too late and you get burned.

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the brain and mind is such a mystery, what is a sociopath? without ever entering another's mind can one really ever know?

everything exists on a spectrum, everything changes, it seems that everyone gets stuck in some form of identity or another, but how do we know what is absolute?

why are there good and bad people? people are influenced by so many things from conception, influence is such a powerful force, i think the idea of good and bad is very simplistic.

yes many people wish to maliciously take advantage of others, but why? in my opinion people should aim for understanding above all else, is there ever a child born "evil"? i believe that every child wants to be loved and accepted, and we are all children.

i could say that i am a sociopath with extremely high empathy

 

 

Edited by chnt

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I recently had a girl write to me from South Africa and tell me how disappointed she was with the consciousness of people involved in the Ayahuasca scene over there. I said, it is no different anywhere in the world. I continually hear this, from people coming back from South America disillusioned about the shaman or this person or that person.

As for the general entheogenic scene, it can be quite political and I can see it as an evolved scene, but only to a degree. I take people as I find them, not based on who they say they are. People of a pure intent and honest realisation I find to be quite easy to spot, because they are self aware and realising we are all fucked and that we are all completely divine. There is a certain humility and creativity present then - also a realisation of paradox.

And then there are those who carry on in a state of denial and ego, and they are quite easy to spot, because they rely on various kinds of groupthink to orientate themselves and are not really centred in their intelligence and do not possess an understanding of paradox, and lack creativity. and for me, that's MOST PEOPLE!

And hey, entheogens can really bring this everyday psychosis to the surface, and how many people are really able to deal with that?

Personally, I don't have any illusions that human beings are anything but crazy, silly, childish monkeys. There are always exceptions, people who are aware that they are crazy, silly, fragile, childish monkeys and are really working on themselves because of that awareness - but they are quite rare!

DMT doesn't enlighten anyone, it can show you some stuff, but that doesn't change how you act in the world, the issues you may have, the nature of your ego and problems and how you may effect others.

What you are describing sounds like it could be a lesson in discernment. Sounds like you had high expectations, which is perhaps where the problem started.

I recently had someone send me a series of abusive messages on facebook, after they didn't like what I posted on my wall! It was a bit of an eye opener as to how they saw the world! It really hammered home that a lot of people actually see the world like this guy, and underneath their nice guy exterior, they are just another psychotic faking being sane or even nice! So many people just have this undercurrent of obvious negativity churning away, which they are not putting effort into dealing with!

Anyway, Rahli, you're a good soul, just don't let the bastards get you down!

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Bogfrog your experience sounds like a powerful lesson and I'm glad to hear you've now worked your way through it. Good to hear your on the good fight.

Sally d you may be right that it's a large leap that this individual is a sociopath going by this one action. Maybe this is just my way of not loosing faith in the entheogenic community. It is likely that these folk are just desperadoes and I'm overanaysing their reason for attacking me. I guess the older you get the more you expect others to be on top of their situation and not have to pull desperate tricks to get the things they want.

There is no way I can know if either of these folk are sociopaths or just desperados as has been highlighted a couple of times in the thread. They have had their shot, got away with crumbs and taught me a very valuable lesson. Upon reflection the whole situation has been well worth it with the lesson I have learnt.

So where does this leave the desperado within the entheogenic experience? How do they justify their actions. Is empathy and morality attached to the entheogenic state or do these folk also use these tools to hold power over people as whitewind has suggested of the sociopath?

Let's put forward a scenario. Let's say someone deceived you to give them an entheogenic substance. Tricked it out of you with quite an elaborate scam. What do they seek to gain from this gift? Would the deception and negative energy be directly attached to their resulting entheogenic experience? If so then are they not seeking to foster conflict and confrontation. Or are they just so desperate to escape reality that they are willing to burn the waking world around them?

These are all questions that I never thought I would have to ask within my current journey. I have delt with and warded off far greater attacks but on far different paths. Maybe the real leasons to be learned on this path are only just becoming apparent.

So be it.

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DMT doesn't enlighten anyone, it can show you some stuff, but that doesn't change how you act in the world, the issues you may have, the nature of your ego and problems and how you may effect others.

What you are describing sounds like it could be a lesson in discernment. Sounds like you had high expectations, which is perhaps where the problem started.

 

Interesting take on the situation folias. I tend to agree with your first quoted statement somewhat when it comes to changa and dmt but the power of ayahuasca tends to teach me her lessons in humility. Is this not why ayahuasca is portrayed as a medicine and not just a recreational drug?

I'm not an advocate of plant spirits as such, which would assume there is a purpose to drinking the vine, but I do believe that a positive path will be well traveled and a negative one will be blocked by the individual's own conscience. Maybe this is where my problem started as you suggest. Assuming everyone has a conscience. I guess I better lower the bar a little?

Edited by rahli

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In the Ayahuasca world you can commonly find a lot of egotism. Either the people invovled are tough nuts who have not got the lesson or what I have noticed, Ayahuasca can act like an amplifier of the ego.

Ultimately, the plants can only do so much, if the individual is not embedded in their own intelligence and inner work, then only so much work can occur if they are not integrating what work is occuring for them. And the work is only really occuring in one's life. You do find some people can have powerful experiences or set themselves up as being enlightened or a shaman or whatever and just ignore the data and not see the work they need to do or how they are acting, or not acting with integrity etc!

My expectations for human beings is quite low, so I am continually being surprised when these expectations are exceeded and they often are as well! :-)

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Thanks for your honest insight into the ayahuasca scene folias. I did expect that there would be egotism within the scene but to me this does not translate into outright scamming and deception which is what this thread is trying to uncover and understand.

Are these deceptive scammers in your opinion sociopaths, desperadoes or just plain old egotist as you are implying?

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You should PM me and tell me who these people are with specific circumstances and I am sure I can give you some further insight!

Edited by folias
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Thanks for helping me understand this situation better folias. Even though I am not willing to make the people involved publicly known, you have been a great help.

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Sorry for your problems rahli.

I think you are right not to make public knowledge of the wrongdoers - I see the ego as a defense mechanism and so egotists frequently have a severe problem with aggression and will vigorously defend themselves, no matter how much in the wrong you can prove them to be. On the other hand, it is important for letting other people know so they can learn from your mistakes. It is a crying shame, the ego gets in the way of learning, accepting defeat, and crashes on regardless causing serious harm until something incredibly severe comes along to stop it. Count your lucky stars you can see what is happening here, the best you can do for now is just move out of the way and inform those who are listening. You can, of course, learn from your experience, this is cold comfort indeed but sometimes that's all you get. I've had a lot of that, and my biggest problem is that my ego gets fired up to protect myself from being hurt and I end up damaging myself instead. I realise that this is the problem of so many people - their ego fires up to protect themselves from someone else's wrongdoing (or even the wrongdoing of nature's forces), and they can't let go. These people are the obviously damaged, they often know there is something wrong but can't prevent it from happening. Talking about the problems may allow the ego to subside, once it has been proven it no longer needs to be defending.

The worst are those egos that have been nurtured from birth, and have never been effectively challenged. I believe that these people are the most sociopathic of them all as they don't understand what it is like to be harmed, physically and emotionally. These people can be charming too, why not as they have never had anything to destroy their equilibrium? Nurturing the ego from birth is what has caused most of our problems, as it is completely unaware and lacks empathy for others.

The best way to deal with all these problems is to be firm and sure of yourself, but also very gentle. You want the ego to subside, and the stronger it is the more quickly it fires up in it's defense. If you see it as a defense mechanism, there are only two ways to handle it. One is to attack it and destroy it, the other is to try and prevent it from arising in the first place. Most of politics and business of today is the most primitive, aggressive variety where egos continually go head to head; in reality no-one backs down and they only concede certain points if they are forced to, normally in return for a concession of some sort to make it appear more civilised (usually the tokenism of money). Most normal people can't function in that environment, which is why only the most sociopathic can survive there.

The Ayahuasca community is not really like that, which is probably why you are so shocked. It also means that people can be vulnerable, as it is unexpected. However, it is unlikely that the behaviour is of the most sociopathic kind, perhaps it is mere ignorance. However, if ego is firing up here though it should be tackled before it becomes the cancer it can be, and that might need quiet, gentle discussion and not overt attack. If we want a community based on gentleness and discussion, we need to deal with these issues before they become major problems.

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I originally saw this and possibly considered this was about me, but quickly could not even consider that as I had only met Rahli a couple of times at two different festivals and the exchanges had been pleasant and convivial.

When he PM'd me to tell me who these devious, attacking, scamming people were, it turned out he was talking about me and a friend! and I was quite frankly very surprised.

It turned out he had given me and friend the last of some goodies, the way he writes here you would think we tricked him out of it. Truth is, we didn't need it or really want it, as it was the last of what he had, but as I recall, he seemed to insist. His issue seemed to be that we didn't give him something back in kind. I frankly cannot remember, but I thought that we did! or didn't have anything to offer at the time! I apologised to him for this in PM after he made these posts, as normally me and my friend are very generous people. In fact, I feel that my friend is a paragon of generosity and a good example to us all.

What Rahli would not have known is that around the time we were sitting with him, that my friends stepfather died and that he was actually not in his normal psychic space, and only later realised later did he realise that at that exact time we were with Rahli, that his stepdad had died. I was aware at the time we spent with Rahli, something was going on with my friend, but did not know what it was. So this lack of oversight on our part to reciprocate his generosity, was not due to Rahli but to other factors he could not have known about at the time. Perhaps Rahli was picking up an energy involving my friends realisation of his stepfathers death? and took it to be somehow related to him?

In my memory, we had a good talk and then left on good terms. He also sent me a couple of PM's, after I came back the eclipse I had a lot of correspondance and I failed to reply to two PM's, short and friendly, which also apparently left a bad impression on him! Not replying was not intentional, in fact, in my memory I had replied and only had good will to him and the valuable connection he had made with another very astute entheogenic explorer and grower who I have known for many years.

I'm posting this because I don't think he really realises what he has done. We have PM'ed about these issues and he seemed to be in denial about what he wrote and it seems he would have liked to have brushed it all under the carpet, and did not apologise to me or hint at taking responsibility.

I have to say, this is a classic case of the BS that I have to put up with because of people's ego's unable to accept they are just a crazy monkey and just deal with their own issues, and project some imagined fault or blame some other conveniently crazy monkey (an entheogenic explorer!) rather than dealing with their own BS. In this case, what is blamed for, I think is really very small. That he uses words that he uses like "attacking" and "scam" I think is so off beam, that I can only implore Rahli to get psychological help and feel that only by humiliating him, to a degree, is he going to see that there is a problem and that the problem actually does not lie with me, but with him!

I just want to highlight a paragraph I wrote earlier in this thread.

"And hey, entheogens can really bring this everyday psychosis to the surface, and how many people are really able to deal with that?

Personally, I don't have any illusions that human beings are anything but crazy, silly, childish monkeys. There are always exceptions, people who are aware that they are crazy, silly, fragile, childish monkeys and are really working on themselves because of that awareness - but they are quite rare!"

And this is not an attack; it is a call for sanity. I wouldn't write this if I didn't care. I could let it go, but I really think Rahli would do well to take a good, long look at himself.

I mentioned this to a friend, and he said I should not reply to this, and that, "fuck him, this is his shit, just don't go there!" but I feel this also contributes to highlighting a point, out of something I have been saying for years on this forum, about the nature of projection and ego.

I feel that Rahli should have PM'ed me before going public. This is exactly the sort of thing I mentioned at entheongaia, that rarely, if ever, do people come forward and try to work out issues they have with me - and that I feel this is an indictment regarding the level of interpersonal immaturity and insanity which is clearly so rampant in Australian culture.

whitewind wrote:

>If we want a community based on gentleness and discussion, we need to deal with these issues before they become major problems.

amen

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the brain and mind is such a mystery, what is a sociopath? without ever entering another's mind can one really ever know?

 

it is a vague, poorly defined term, but it is usually used to refer to anti-social personality disorder

i could say that i am a sociopath with extremely high empathy

 

 

 

or you could say if you have extremely high empathy you cannot possibly be a sociopath..

a douchey cunt, maybe, but not a sociopath

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douchey cunt indeed, there was a point or 2 wrapped up in there, in case you didn't realise...

how do you know i cant be both at the same time?

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I once read an article that showed fMRI scans of psychopaths compared to a 'normal' individuals - and they found that areas of the brain didn't light up when they should... Google 'psychopath brain mri' and you get multiple articles - here's one (but it wasn't the one i read): http://www.dailymail...fear-guilt.html

In the spirit of this thread - it would be interesting to see what goes on in a 'socio/psychopaths' brain after a healthy dose of an empathogen. Maybe this is the legitimate use for MDMA, to 'normalize' a psychopath. If there's physical brain damage, the areas might not light up - but if they do, then it could be hypothesised that a few MDMA sessions might train this part of the brain to become functional, thus giving the person a wider range of emotions to choose from in their daily lives.

I wonder if sociopaths are wired differently (or chemically) like a psychopath? Or do they choose to be who they are...

Additional: I find it interesting in the article above, the end statement "I am optimistic that our ongoing collaborative work will shed more light on the source of this dysfunction and strategies for treating the problem,' says Newman."

Just because everybody is doing it doesn't make it right - maybe all the empathic people are dysfunctional...

Edited by IndianDreaming
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Yes, direct communication is the key to avoiding these situations.

It is a shame that the scenario-

'members of our lovely network, at at gathering, sharing "things" with the usual generosity.'

somehow goes pear shaped , then escalates online, a missed email here....a public letter there......

reading this thread from the start was a mystery, at least you guys, thru PM sorted out some stuff ,

maybe threw some water on the burning bridge and helped us fill in the gaps and join the dots in the story as well.

without getting deep at all, or going into the semantics of an entheogenic sociopath.

to me, the moral to the tale seems, if you think your scammed, sort it out sooner rather than later,

front the person "excuse me X, i thought we had a bargain " or "im wondering if we have had a misunderstanding?"

but I cant talk, im way too passive , and yes I would bottle it and swish around my head, being distorted by substances that should be doing lovely things in my monkey mind instead. ( hopefully i can purge it out in my garden first opportunity)

I hope you guys can leave this issue without any bitterness.

Without this situation, it sounds like you would have respect for each other.

P.S for us neutral readers, the subplot of the energy burst/recently departed is very interesting.

how much is stuff thats happening on "other" levels, impacting our level and possibly creating distractions, that cause scenarios like this?

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P.S for us neutral readers, the subplot of the energy burst/recently departed is very interesting.

how much is stuff thats happening on "other" levels, impacting our level and possibly creating distractions, that cause scenarios like this?

 

Well, at the time of talking to Rahli, later my friend E found out that his stepdad died at that exact time we were talking to Rahli. I noticed his shift of energy at the time, but didn't understand it, until he mentioned this me later. Rahli is obviously a sensitive guy and picked up on it and obviously felt it to be something personal related to him.

There are so many times where I feel some pain or something strange in an interaction, or where there is something off or not quite right - but that's life! And you don't always really know what it is about!

I'm going to post some of what E emailed me, he said he lost his login details:

"i actually gave him some goodies when we first met, i also shared my food with his kids, and offerred tea leaves. all in all it felt quite a powerful interaction and experience.

the only reason i havent been in touch with him since, as i have still been intending to follow up on our kinnection, is that i have had family and life crisis that has been thoroughly consuming..

we then took a very decent amount of our time to sit with him and discuss his families health.

my father died whilst we were talking, which i felt move through me and lead to a fairly blunt and forced premature exit on my behalf.

totally strange and twisted perception of that occurrence ??? WTF ?

please forward my sentiments on my behalf.

its a strange world at times.

perhaps the sensitivities and vulnerabilities that are brought to light in true and sincere empathic states of relational dialogue such as we shared, can then react out of a reactionary woundedness into fear/paranoia /villanisation/ egoic process as somekind of self sabotage to recieve or open to care and healing from strangers?

i dunno but it is reminiscent of some of the more painful relational process im experiencing at the moment where i feel attacked by those whom i have taken time and energy to extend myself out of true care, compassion and sincere involvement in transpersonal healing process."

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Do sociopaths feel a heightened sense of empathy while immersed within the entheogenic state?

Is the entheogenic community a target for these types of personalities?

 

Enthoegens offer unique spectrums of power. If you take loads of them and don't ground the power properly you'll go mad and die, in one form or another. Yet this power can also be used productively in all parts of life (including health, art, engineering and most definately politics) and it's at the disposal of the individual to do what they will with it.

Sociopathology can definately be empowered by entheogens, just consider how sorcery is perhaps the main organiser of politics in traditional Upper Amazonian ayahuasca communities (a worldview where there are no 'coincidences' but infinite politics debated by those who have access to 'visions' and 'revelations' as primary sources of truth). Don't expect it to be all love, light and vegemite over this end.

In my opinion, ayahuasca is largely a neutral deity or helper-spirit that works in ways similar to how the god electricity can be used to power deadly tasers and also life-giving defibrillators (to use a health/politics metaphor) --- or in reference to empowering art, the god electricity can be used to help generate amazing or increadibly boring films, depending on those directors and film crew channeling the deity.

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