Bill Eichman

I wouldn't know how to give you peace of mind. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you are feeling disturbed about. I can give you a useful suggestion. Distract yourself by working HARD on yourself. Pick one or two things you want to improve in yourself and study and train obsessively to make that improvement real. If you need to, you can keep your spirits up by telling yourself that the improvements you are making will attract other interesting women to you, even more interesting than your estranged wife. Of course, those improvements would also attract the attention of your wife. It's fairly difficult to block negative feelings. The effort of trying to block them actually gives them energy. It's much easier to generate replacement feelings which are more positive, and which you charge with meaning and attention so that they drown out the negative feelings you had been having.

If you don't put yourself out into the world and interact with people in ways that allow them to know you, the other things that you mention doing won't have the critical success factor they need in order to allow you to find connection. The easiest way that I have used successfully and repeatedly to find connection is to go out to "interest events", that is, to classes or meetings focused on something that interests me. (Or in my case I found it worked even better if I actually GAVE the class or organized the meeting. But just going to such things was also effective.) Assuming you want to connect with women (you mention tinder), that will work out best if you pick a subject matter that will bring a good percentage of women. Look around for lists of classes and events near you. Look at places in shops where there are bulletin boards on which people can put up posters promoting their stuff. I've started three long term relationships and several more short term connections that way. It does work.

When I think of John Bennett I think of G.I. Gurdjieff and Idries Shah. Bennet was an expansive guy, who wrote many books. I've read that second article you posted before. I would describe it as a kind of mystical numerology that Bennett is trying to fuse with General Systems Theory. Some of the ideas that he suggests - that processes can be viewed as being describable with a kind of geometric, structural, or pattern mathematics - seem possible, but, when you look at how people seem to apply his ideas, it mostly looks like numerology. The real ideas of General Systems Theory are interesting enough that they don't need the ideas of monad, dyad, tetrad, etc added to them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Bennett

It's a little more complicated than "just have fun". And Leary's psychedelicized practice of the reading of the Bardo Thodol, Tibetan Book of the Dead, well, that's some fairly heavy shit, and not exactly easy for fairly skilled trippers to pull off. It's definitely possible to guide people towards having powerful, meaningful, and awakening LSD experiences. It's also a very serious and real ethical responsibility. To take a friend into those experiences who did not want to go could end up imposing a great ethical debt on your life, and it might actively injure you or others. On the other hand, it might all turn out for the best. fate is funny that way. (But, if you do experience it as obligating you to ethical debt, or causing an "injury" to you or your friend's mind, well, it won't seem so funny, altho ultimately fate is fate, and fate is neutral.) I would suggest this. How do you ordinarily guide and direct yourself when you trip? Do you take teh LSD as a sacrament? Do you meditate or pray, or do anything ritual, or do anything with the intent that it affect your experience? It's fairly ethically balanced to say to your friends, "Hey, this is how I do it. And since this is how I do it, I'm going to do it that way. You don't have to do it the way I do. You don't even have to watch, altho you're welcome to, I don't mind. For me, what I want is to have this kind of thing happen. (and maybe say a few words about whatever your ideas are about what you think you are getting from this molecule. But just a few.) You guys, decide for yourselves what you want. But, let's all watch out for each other, okay? We're together, because we are taking this thing, and it's gonna be something real. We take care of each other." Then you do whatever it is you do when you take LSD. They watch, they participate, or they do something else, as they choose. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Now here's the thing. The crux of the matter. When the LSD has come full on, and you are all tripping balls, another set of principles and obligations become active. And there is nothing you can do about their activation. they are inherent to those types and levels of mind. You have more experience. You may even have started to build up true abilities. Let's call these the powers that come with awakening. You may know how to use those powers. You may have no idea that those powers exist, but still have them. Or you may have none of the powers of awakening activated yet, which in some ways would be a stroke of good fortune, but still, you have more experience. Unless one of your friends is a born natural talent who leaps ahead of you in the powers of awakening, you are going to be the leader, by virtue of experience. And it's in the actions of the leader that the paths of a group trip experience are chosen. And when those moments come, be who you are, and do your best.