> How did you handle meaning after that?

Meaning is real and very important but so is the craving for it and it's a good thing.

Like the craving for love/object of love?

I've had dreams in my teenage years about an ex loving me back and I can still remember how happy I was and a bit hurt when I woke up.

The deep realisations, euphoria and profound happiness -- these are not something the human brain can experience every day, it's in the very nature of the brain's chemistry to downregulate if you feel them too often.

Another example -- the first time I took isopropylphenidate, I was staring at this ancient PLSQL stored procedure bug and I realized SqlDevelop had the option to debug the code just like I could debug my java code. My colleagues were basically pulling at me to go to lunch but I was enthralled by how beautiful the SqlDebugger looked and felt, even in UX terms.

The same about my 1 years old daughter obsessive playing with water and children's excitement when they discover mundane(to us adults) things. To us adults they seem to be on MDMA, but it's just the nature of the brain to be so excited about new experiences that it deems "profound" because it's the only way they can learn about the world -- you have to be motivated to exercise those neural circuitry to learn about the word, otherwise you become catatonic .

Also take for example this experience I had playing Catan board game with my wife and brother in law. It had profound meaning to me :). For once, I discovered how much satisfaction a few pieces of cardboard and plastic can bring to humans. My wife and her brother were highly competitive and I played the broker between them. I would always accept their trade offers. They thought they got the better deal, but just because they gave me 2x of the stuff they didn't want I was far ahead of them in the game. Because they did not want to trade between themselves and only traded with me, it mean I would get 4x the items they could have traded directly between themselves. I would win the game and not tell them, I would just watch them compete and play along with an inner smile. I'm sure life is like this for some people, who have won at the game of life but others just don't realize it. But the very fact that the game had such deep "meaning" (the feeling) to me made me realize the deeper meanings of being together with others, that the human interaction itself has meaning, that money and a lot material possessions are utterly meaningless and we're giving them too much meaning by introducing a lot of negativity in the game of life just to give them meaning, finally that taking life in a light hearted way, helping others (as long as on your terms) and the human ethos are ALWAYS with you (in a Dune "other memory" sort of way) and those are not 0 sum games and can bring a lot of joy into the world.

Anyway, I think that "meaning" is something objectively true and real (controversial, I know), but our feelings and "aha!" is not and it should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

And if it's true for such a beautiful and positive feeling, how much more so for negative feelings?

These experiences made me more flexible, empathetic towards myself and others and more mellow in general to ideas.

A lot of rambling to say that the experience of realizing a deep realization of meaning in a dream/hallucination was utter garbage does not disprove meaning itself, but the contrary, that meaning is something very important and true to humans and we crave it deeply, we just have to find the right places to find true meaning to us, very few people can find true meaning in great mathematical ideas, but ALL of us can find it in the "mundane" and if you find it there you'll find that it won't be garbage the next day you wake up, young or old, 10000 BC or 100.000 AD.

>ALL of us can find it in the "mundane" and if you find it there you'll find that it won't be garbage

Because you will have calibrated you mind to perceive those particular things as meaningful! And then (to paraphrase another poster) you've failed the test, hehe.

Of course, there is no actual "test". Regardless, next one is scheduled in a generation's time. Ganbatte kudasai to the next class of test-takers!

Hallucinogens demonstrate that even the experience of "meaning" can be intentionally induced or suppressed by direct chemical action on the brain. Which realization was expected to "enlighten" people en masse at some point, and I guess in some ways it did. I'd expect taking a pure "meaning potion" would either make people addicted, or make them infuse the outside world with novel meanings, but I ain't seeing that much of either going on.

"Meaning" is just referentiality. Thing A means thing B; these squiggles mean "no swimming"; this stack pointer means that struct over there on the heap, etc. "Meaningfulness" (banned word, hehe) is an abstract quality which you attribute to things whose meaning you've successfully parsed - usually when you parse them for the first time, and you go like, "oh, so now I see what this means (to me)!"

One of my favorite musicians has a pretty dark song about some teenage hoodlums committing a grisly murder over drugs... its exposition just so happens to contain the line, "and LSD to make it mean more than it meant", which I think is the most succinct description of it.

That is to say, "meaningful" itself is a quale, an atom of pure experience that has no identified physical counterpart (though it surely must have one, if it can be induced chemically?) So, just like the means to induce visual experiences is called a display, and the means of inducing sonic ones is called a loudspeaker, the means of inducing abstract mental experiences is... illegal. Huh! :o

Sounds like you had some beautiful experiences, I like to hear that! And I like how you speak about your grappling with this, and I don't think you're saying "all meaning is therefore utter garbage" - it's also satisfying and interesting to me to discuss the possibilities and share my own views from experience.

Saying a deep inner meaning is utter garbage is just a value judgement you are applying to it (maybe one point of that experience was to call you to question your value judgements and confidence in them) - the judgement is also an inner meaning experience itself that may be unqualified to judge the other experience you had - it could also be comforting to 'orphan' the experience so you don't feel the need to integrate it into your everyday reality and the adjustment that might entail. For me, I think the meaning, the feeling and the aha is real and true - but you may be misinterpreting or failing to translate the inner realization into normal consciousness. Also, whatever labels that could be applied, the utility of those learnings or experiences can also depend on context and your goals.

My issue with the part of your words saying "it was just in an altered state, it's meaningless" is why should we impose some other meaning value system from outside us, as "normal waking state" consciousness is a highly conditioned value system, taking as input culture, etc.

I believe people's first relation to the world should be their own intuition and feeling, and development of that should be the primary focus. All other value systems should be judged in relation to the primacy of that. People are terrified that means unexamined raw subconscious should be lifted to reality, in the same way they are terrified of their shadow. True experience with that process of trusting yourself indicates it's not that - it's like any other skill you must develop mastery of with time, it's nuanced - it's not binary.

Another key thing is that the information, ideas, feelings are real - but how useful they might be depends heavily on context - and most importantly - none of those things are you.

In other words, you have all these experiences, you make the meaning you choose, but you don't have to identify with any of it. You are not those things. This separation realization is a more useful way to approach these experiences than the easier and incorrect path of declaring some "utter garbage". How can you judge that? If your inner experience is utter garbage, how can you even trust your judgement of it?

Socially - an issue with encouraging people to distrust themselves or their inner states is it makes them more vulnerable to external manipulation by those who would anoint themselves authorities. "Trust me, not yourself" is classic gaslighting tactic of abusers. "Trust what I label you, not what you feel" is similarly awful and abusive. In my experience, the people who push those lines have been bad people. So take the utmost care with declaring your belief in the unreality of inner experiences!

Also be mindful of the contradiction it entails - if you declare someone else's inner experience false, wrong or untrue, you also admit that your own are similarly flawed, which undermines your very ability to determine the truth or falsehood of anyone else's inner experience, contradicting your point. It's a self-and-other-disempowering notion that can be compelling for how it encourages the surrendering of personal responsibility, yet it has to be avoided.

At the same time, taking the extreme "I must trust my inner and develop that" could be approached differently by different people. And someone's way for that, might not work for someone else. Also every is at some stage of development, if this is not a stage someone is that, they will not see the utility of it. They will be blind to its usefulness in anyway. That is what it is. You're not there, tho, you're further along.