Well, that's the trouble with "personal discovery" - it tends to be personal, and insights thus derived to lack general applicability.
Speaking for myself, on the rare occasions in my life when I've taken a psychedelic (LSD or psilocybin, never DMT as here), I've found the experience useful simply because such a radical change of perspective offers access to insight which might not be available in a more ordinary frame of mind. Such insight is, in my experience, occasionally of value. Of course, such insight is, also in my experience, much more often the kind of thing that makes sense only in hindsight and with the benefit of confirmation bias, which is to say, it doesn't make sense at all.
I think it's very easy for people to make too much of experiences like these; to be taken out of the world, as these substances do, can be wonderful or terrible or both at once, but I can't imagine a case in which it could be neither, and our culture doesn't really provide a good conceptual framework for dealing with wonder and terror. And I know with certainty that it's very easy to talk such an experience to death; in the case where it does offer beneficial insight, such insight is generally of such an intimately personal nature, and so inextricably bound up in one's unique and individual experience of reality, that to try to make it comprehensible to others is often to make it incomprehensible to oneself. At the very least, you want to let it settle a good long while, and integrate into your personality if it's going to do so, before you try to elucidate it to someone else - and, beyond that, there's a very solid point to be made that, if it really is going to change you, it'll do so in a way that doesn't need to be explained to anyone.
Whether any of what I've just described has any use to you, I have no idea, and this is the kind of question you could ask five people and get twelve answers in any case. But maybe it's been worth your while; in any case, I hope it has. I'm happy to answer any further questions it might elicit, although of course I can't promise those answers will be any more useful than this one has been.
That was one of the better descriptions of psychedelics and their value that I've read in a while. No new-age "woo" while still not discounting the value that can sometimes be found in them. It's been a while since I've had any similar experiences but the main thing I always took away was that these things, occasionally used, can be valuable tools for deliberately shifting your perspective. Just as (physically) looking at something from another angle doesn't always offer great insight, occasionally it gives you some new bit of info that you can integrate into your overall concept of a thing.
I agree with soylentcola: this is one of the better general purpose descriptions of the general effects and possible advantages of psychedelics.
I can share a pretty concrete benefit that I received in one of my very rare experiences: for the first time, I was able to clearly see some of the not so good edges of my ego. This awareness allowed me to make some substantive modifications in my life that have brought some big, long-term improvements.
Each of my once per year experiences have proved to be beneficial, though often in very subtle and indirect ways. As you said, it's easy to get that mixed up with confirmation bias.
Speaking for myself, on the rare occasions in my life when I've taken a psychedelic (LSD or psilocybin, never DMT as here), I've found the experience useful simply because such a radical change of perspective offers access to insight which might not be available in a more ordinary frame of mind. Such insight is, in my experience, occasionally of value. Of course, such insight is, also in my experience, much more often the kind of thing that makes sense only in hindsight and with the benefit of confirmation bias, which is to say, it doesn't make sense at all.
I think it's very easy for people to make too much of experiences like these; to be taken out of the world, as these substances do, can be wonderful or terrible or both at once, but I can't imagine a case in which it could be neither, and our culture doesn't really provide a good conceptual framework for dealing with wonder and terror. And I know with certainty that it's very easy to talk such an experience to death; in the case where it does offer beneficial insight, such insight is generally of such an intimately personal nature, and so inextricably bound up in one's unique and individual experience of reality, that to try to make it comprehensible to others is often to make it incomprehensible to oneself. At the very least, you want to let it settle a good long while, and integrate into your personality if it's going to do so, before you try to elucidate it to someone else - and, beyond that, there's a very solid point to be made that, if it really is going to change you, it'll do so in a way that doesn't need to be explained to anyone.
Whether any of what I've just described has any use to you, I have no idea, and this is the kind of question you could ask five people and get twelve answers in any case. But maybe it's been worth your while; in any case, I hope it has. I'm happy to answer any further questions it might elicit, although of course I can't promise those answers will be any more useful than this one has been.