Cocolove

I'm 16

Doing personal development, will improve your social life. It will make you not be a needy friend. You should do both personal development and build a social life. You seem to cause yourself pain because you think a social life will make you happy. You need to realize it won't, and that can happen from building a social life while being aware, or from personal development. What do you do when you aren't socializing/ living social life that you want? If you play videogames, watch tv or youtube, or some unconscious shit like that you're gonna end up unhappy. Work on replacing it with meditation, self inquiry, and contemplation, that will help more than anything.

I get a ton of visuals, morphing fractals and colors. Especially closed eyed but open eyed too, if there's a plain surface like a ceiling.

I only lasted 45 minutes. I had a ton of nausea from the mushrooms, and I got super cold, I was shivering. Went on to have a great trip. Meditating without sds

There is no wrong way, and there is no one right way

I mix strong determination sitting, mindfulness, and focusing consciousness on consciousness(self inquiry). I start off with mindfulness, then move on to former two, with the same times as you respectively(recently jumped from half hour to while hour. I also have wondered if this is proper, but I do it because I notice the best results.

Just did a 1 hour SDS, I think im going to do another and then dose and do another as long as I can. Ill come back and tell the tale another day if I do

Stretching your hips and legs consistently will get you closer to the lotus position. I do the lotus position with my left leg up, I find this allows my legs to not fall asleep too much. If they do fall asleep, let go and ignore it. Pay attention to it and realize its just a sensation. Watch yourself freak out about it.

Wherever you go, there you are. You can meditate anywhere my friend.

I've had wild visual hallucinations in a float tank 100% sober. Those things are wild, wish I had one.

No, you're not deluding yourself. These kind of experiences can have so many different characteristics. All I can say from my experience is how important it is to watch yourself analyze it once it's over. The "ego", you, will want to make sense of it through thought. Let it happen while maintaining awareness and you'll save yourself from letting this get you into an "ego trap".

you might even be yellow, watch all the spiral videos and see where you line up, and move from there. Don't oversimplify, that is, spiral dynamics is a model and although it is incredibly useful it should not be the sole guide of how you move forward with your development. Keep up that meditation practice

similar situation, would love to see some replies.

Meditations seems to induce the same type of experience as self inquiry, often times. I use different cues. If i'm meditating i'm focusing my awareness on my present experience, and if i do self inquiry i focus my awareness on my present experience as well, just by asking, "what is this" or "what is consciousness". I've meditating for decades, there's no difference between the state of not meditating and meditating, so so have you.

Can a 16 year old inherently not benefit from psychedelics, due to age, along with an actualizing lifestyle? The school system is teaching us they are neurologically damaging, but doesn't really talk about psychedelics. I don't know what to believe, my guess is there isn't concrete evidence they are, and they affect everyone so differently, every trip is so different, it's probably case dependent and any possible damage is not firmly based in a materialistic paradigm. Thoughts?

@Seed exactly what I got after doing holotropic breath work sessions.

Do it all while maintaining awareness This is a good way to enjoy it

@Haumea2018 For me high doses and dmt give me a few day long ego backlash, and i seem to get nothing back from them, but low doses I find I actually benefit from a lot. I'm able to do some good contemplation and long strong determination sittings, much deeper than unassisted.

Jokes on you Leo, I don't watch tv, play video games, and barely eat junk food(awareness alone is curative technique on that one) :))

For a taste of Leo talking about time watch his neti neti guided meditation.

That boredom is probably the most exciting thing you could experience, its all a perspective.

I'm 16 and have been following Leo for about a year. I've began meditating, contemplating, awareness throughout the day, etc. I've seen the way I think become so much more mature overall(Yellow) and I'm more skilled at meditation etc. I'm unable to put into place the practice that I know could produce so much more results. In recent videos Leo has mentioned the mass of followers who do not practice what he suggests and just watch because its easy to just watch. I've considered myself in the middle. The longest I've meditated every day is for a week, I have failed at meditating every day so many times. I guess it's a problem of lack of discipline. I came on here because I have an intuitive feeling that there is something i'm missing, but I'm sure I just need to discipline myself. Any advice from people who have been in a stage of development where they are unable to discipline themselves in the practice they know will get rid of the neurosis and inner demons stopping them from wanting to be alone with themselves, doing spiritual work/meditating?

Were you trippin?

Update: I've meditated(strong determination sit) for 8 days now, 20 minutes, 30 minutes the past 2 days. I'm in high school and have noticed how much free time the mind has and so i've doing self inquiry about 3 hours a day, not timed or anything fancy like that. Mostly asking what is suffering and simply watching myself suffer. Or taking a phenomena and asking what it is and simply watching it. I'm replying because i've realized what you just said, how ill go multiple hours without being aware and suddenly realize its happened. It's kind of reality shattering.

thanks to both of you, that's actually very helpful