Leo Gura

Psychedelics would put her out of business, so she's right to fear them I would take psychedelics over the best gurus, and a therapist is nowhere near the level of a good guru. With that said, therapy is still useful. But it won't work for you if you're short on cash. Effective therapy requires lots of sessions and will be very costly. Session per session psychedelics will grow you 10x to 100x faster than therapy. Talking about psychological matters is nowhere as effective as direct spiritual consciousness. Talk therapy is notoriously slow.

@Seed There are ways to dig it out. For example, shamanic breathing can heal traumas received at the moment of birth, or even before you were born! I bet psychedelics could dredge it up too.

@How to be wise What we commonly call "pain" is not elemental. It is a compound thing which includes several components: 1) a raw sensation, 2) an automatic bodily recoil reaction, 3) a conceptual activity of interpretation, assignment of meaning, and judgment, and 4) an emotional reaction. So what Ramana is referring to is #3 & #4, which are of course conceptual activity which can be stopped. The raw sensation is still there. But once you eliminate #3 & #4, this thing we call pain starts to feel and look very different from pain. The sting of pain is not in the raw sensation but in our conceptual interpretation and emotional reaction to it. So there's no contradiction between what Ramana says and what I am saying. He's just stating it a bit simplistically and starkly so that you realize the important lesson: your mind plays a huge part in how you experience pain. Have you ever had an experience of pain so intense you start to enjoy it? If you get really curious about pain as it is happening, the sting of it lessens. In that moment you are experiencing it purely as #1, a raw sensation. Also notice that most pain is not physical but emotional in nature. When someone breaks your heart, or when you feel sad or lonely, none of that is physical pain. It's conceptually driven. And even if you break your leg, at least half your pain will come from the story you tell yourself about it, "OH MY GOD! Why did this happen to me? When will I be able to walk again? What if my boss fires me? How much is this gonna cost me to fix? How could I have been so foolish? Why can't it just stop?" etc.

Yes, videos are in the works. It's just taken me some time to integrate my retreat experiences and figure out how to live life from a higher altitude. I have to change how I do my work. So I'm sorting that out.

@Inliytened1 "The physical world" is a conceptual abstraction. But the raw sensations of stuff we commonly call chairs, tables, trees, dogs, cars, etc. is what I call Being/Truth. When the physical world is stripped of all concept and interpretation what remains is Absolute Being. At that point the world stops being "physical" and it becomes divine and eternal. Yes, we are saying the same thing.

Always try the direct route first. Sit down and simply ask yourself, "What is my trauma?" If your intention is genuine and honest, and you are open, your mind should supply you the answers. If that fails, do it while on a psychedelic and you will almost surely receive your answers. Just be careful what you wish for. The whole problem with heavily traumatic people is that they are not genuine, honest, or open. They have no intention of facing their trauma. They don't want know the truth because it is too painful. They actively avoid talking or thinking about it. So in such cases therapy or psychedelics are very useful. But even so, if there is no intention at all to honestly introspect, nothing will help. The person has to want to grow. Your mind usually gives you what you ask of it. Most people don't ask much so they don't get much. All the answers to your life challenges lie within you. But you must dig them out.

@Scholar Different personality types, different brain types, different facets to awakening. Awakening will be filtered through the mind and personality no matter how awake you get. Some people are more sentimental and emotional while other people are more autistic, cool, and dispassionate. One awakened person could emphasize Nothingness in his teaching. Another awakened person could emphasize Love in his teaching. Etc. Which is why an integral approach is so good. You can get the best of all the teachings and teachers.

Another way to phrase it is: put your attention on attention itself. What is pure attention devoid of all content? Try doing that for a bit and see how it feels. Notice it's really hard to keep your attention there. The attention veers off within seconds onto some form. This kind of meditation requires serious concentration ability which most people do not have in today's media-saturated culture. You need to be able to concentrate so hard you could burn a hole through brick wall with your focus. This is the key to accessing the deepest levels of spirituality.

What he's saying has value, especially for newbie and intermediate students. But at the same time, suffering IS a conceptual activity and it can be transcended or stopped. It is something you are doing and you can stop doing it. This does mean that you stop feeling, just the opposite, you must feel it fully, with total consciousness. That total consciousness is what allows you to experience the suffering as self-constructed activity, at which point it becomes conscious and it ceases to be suffering. This requires very high levels of consciousness which even most awakened people in the West do not have. But the most advanced practitioners develop it. Which is how monks can do self-immolation. So the deconstruction of suffering is not merely marketing. It's just unattainable for most people because this requires super-human levels of consciousness which only the most hardcore practitioners will attain. The paradox is, by trying to end suffering you end up creating suffering. So that's not a good attitude in this work. Trying to always be in a positive state is not going to work well. If you really want to end suffering you must completely stop caring what state you're in, even if you're getting tortured, you have to be okay with that state. It's REALLY hard to be that conscious. But it can be done. Just don't go chasing it.

I have not vaped it. Because after I snorted 30mg the trip was so intense it felt traumatizing and physically harmful. So I'm not eager to go any more intense than that. The intensity I get from plugging is so powerful I don't need any more intensity. And if I did, I could always up the plugged dose. Properly vaporizing a dose can also be challenging. Vaporizing HCl can be tricky as it burns. It also smells gross and I'm not sure if it's healthy for the lungs. You must understand that people have their own partial perspectives. Martin has some good ideas, but they are partial. He has never plugged 5-MeO. My 5-MeO experiences are different from what Martin describes in his books. People react to these substances in unique ways. I am not against vaping. I've just resonated with the plugging. Sometimes you find something that's so good it is perfect, requiring nothing more. That's where I'm at with plugged 5-MeO. To me, it is perfect. It is just absolutely perfect. Try various methods and see which you like most. Don't turn this into an ideological battle.

Falsehood does not exist. There is only truth. What you call falsehood is an idea which exists in your mind. You're confused about what it is. You're confusing ideas for reality, which makes falsehood seem like it exists when actually it does not. I dare you to take your finger and point to one false thing in the world. Notice, it cannot be done. Anything you point to, is true. If it isn't true, it isn't a thing so you cannot point to it. If you point to a picture of a unicorn thinking that's false, you're wrong. It's true. It's just a drawing of a unicorn. That's what it IS. That's its truth. The mistake is imagining further that this unicorn is supposed to exist as something other than the drawing that it is. See? You get lost in your imagination. That's the whole problem here. Falsehood seems to exist only when your imagination is active. You must imagine falsehood. But even imagination is true. You just need to be aware that it is imagination and not the physical world. People conflate those two very easily because it helps us survive. Falsehood is like a magic trick. It's a clever illusion. An impossibility that appears to be possible when you're not looking at it closely enough.

That's merely a few hairs on the Ox's tail. You can't imagine how deep the bliss goes.

It's important to stay conscious that all "other" is really yourself. Even if the other is harsh. Otherwise you're in duality. So I would practice integrating that experience in a way where you're not separating yourself from whoever/whatever that thing was. Then maybe next time it won't feel so "other" or foreign. If plugged DMT works similar to plugged 5-MeO, it will be an amazing ROA. My best guess is that plugging DMT is better than vaporizing it. Most people vaporize simply because they have not been shown a better way. And because most DMT is sold as freebase. I'll try out both methods and let you guys know my results.

Of course. Par for the course. You can't awaken without facing your greatest fears. Psychedelics help a lot here. They are the best tool for facing existential fear head on.

I like it

There's really no contradiction. Just different ways to phrasing the same thing. Meditation techniques which focus attention are very good. I wouldn't besmirch them as merely "preliminary exercises." Self-inquiry is a concentration exercise. It is also possible to meditate on nothingness. But it's an advanced kind of meditation which is not easy for most people to do because the mind easily clings on to some form. So instead most newbies are taught a technique like: focus on the breath. It is possible to put your attention on Nothingness if you're very conscious. It requires taking your attention off of all form. Basically you're trying to become conscious of formlessness, Shiva, or the Godhead.

It's not feasible in the long-term. And the deeper question is, why are you interested in working that much at all since work will never make you happy? It clearly shows that you have your priorities backward. Work is endless. It's an endless game of chasing one's tail. You want your work to be enjoyable and you want to have lots of spare time for spirituality, personal development, and enjoyment of life. What you want is not effectiveness or success, but consciousness, joy, peace, and health. Working long hours should only be done for short periods of time for critical strategic purposes, like if you're launching a new business you might work really hard for a year or two, but only because you'll then have more free time.

Nothingness is prior to mind, space, or anything else. The answer is "sorta." Attention is put on it through the self-inquiry process. Your mind must become very still and your concentration laser focused. Do not confuse this with putting your attention on some idea or concept of nothingness. I am talking about ACTUAL nothingness, not any idea you have. An idea you have of it, is not it, and it will prevent you from accessing it. So be careful. DO NOT TRY TO IMAGINE NOTHINGNESS. That is a giant waste of time. It will not work and you will not even be close. Or a psychedelic can take you there easily. It's best not to think of it as "putting my attention of nothingness" but rather, nothingness is what you ARE. You are it. It is your truest nature. So rather than looking for nothingness, look for what you are, your truest nature. When I say "you" I am talking to that nothingness you are.

Sounds like you accessed channeling. Very interesting. I didn't know that MAOI would affect vaporized DMT. That's kinda odd since it was already active. I guess MAOI just supercharges any substance. Have you tried plugging DMT salt? That should last 45 mins or more and be smoother than vaping with no MAOI required. Warning: combining 5-MeO-DMT with MAOI can be lethal. Never do that.

Greenish I'd say. He's very similar to Obama.

Plugging is still extremely powerful. And you can increase the dose to the point of whiting out. So lack of intensity is not a problem. It's just more gentle and longer-lasting. That gentleness is very good. You don't want to freak yourself out or overload your system. It's also easier to keep your eyes open.

@Esoteric Yeah, it's mostly bufotinine which is a weird psychedelic with high body load. Don't mistake that for pure 5-MeO.

@Identity Survival, survival, survival.

@Ellenier Very interesting. Great discovery!

Yes, when I was in college I had to work really hard on health to lose 65 pounds. I was really fat my whole life. I still went to college, so it wasn't 100% of my time, but it took a lot of attention and willpower to acheive that transformation and make it stick. Starting my first business and quitting my job. It's basically impossible to become wealthy without learning business, sales, and marketing and being very serious about business. Business does not tolerate bullshit and wishful thinking. You must deliver hard results or you're dead. Most people cannot handle that. It's brutal. See my video: Small Business Advice.