People have often complained to me that they can't get "high" from Salvia, even after they smoke it several times. I believe that this is for no other reason than Salvia divinorum is a Shamanistic experience in the truest sense of the word and completely UNLIKE the innumerable "quick fix" drugs that are everywhere today.

 

It's not a passive experience; you must take part in it. Getting to know Salvia takes time to learn to recognize and understand as you gradually let go of your fears of the unknown, and as you learn the subtleties within your own perceptions. I now know what don Juan was talking about in ""The Teachings of Don Juan"" by Carlos Castaneda. I used to think that it was nothing more than a nice story, until I found myself living the experiences described in the book. I couldn't recommend this book more for those who wish to deepen their Salvia experience.

 

For me, an incredible breakthrough happened when I found that the journey into Salvia space is the deepest if I start my journey AFTER i've entered the deepest meditative state I am capable of achieving.

 

The fact that I have been a serious student of meditation, even though it's only been a little over a year now, was key to this breakthrough. Meditation used to be a nice idea; something ""cool"" I thought I would try. Sometimes I would find some ""quiet time"" to meditate, but it was never a daily ritual. I can tell you now, though, that the possibility of consciousness expansion once the mind quiets is inexplicable. It's FAR more than just a nice concept that bunches of chanting monks, Eastern mystics, or American Indians have discovered...it's a place more real than this flimsy reality on Earth. And that experience, in itself, has absolutely NOTHING to do with drugs.

 

But this is an incredible vehicle to understand the Salvia experience more fully, because it allowed me to enter Salvia space far more deeply than I had ever imagined. My meditation, coupled now with what I feel is my new ""ally,"" has catapulted me to a place that I had long forgotten; a place that has never felt more beautiful, natural and real. There is too much there to experience all at once, and every time I find myself there, more layers unfold before me...the first of which I will attempt to articulate in Part 2.

 

There is a usual sequence of events after ingesting Salvia for me; a sequence that happens almost instantaneously now. But this time it was different: I realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that these realms DO exist, and that they are there for anyone who wants to put the energy into finding them, because I became the center of a consciousness that had absolutely nothing to do with a body. I even forgot that there was a reality that I existed in which involved having a body while becoming more lucid and conscious than I had ever been. And I am not talking about some dim feeling or distant sensation of having no body; I am talking about entering a reality in which the very concept of a body was completely irrelevant.

 

I have decided to call the experience the Non-Body Experience, or NBE. This fits perfectly because it was so incredibly similar to a Near-Death Experience I once had. This place that Salvia has revealed to me has nothing to do with LEAVING the body; the concept of a body here is completely irrelevant. I am excited to find the time to travel back to this place once again, as I confirm once more, that is nowhere new, but a place that I have been to a million times before.