Azrael

You have to see that "you" or "your ego" or however you wanna call it, isn't bad. It's everything you have to your individual existence. Everything you can feel, sense, think and make sense of right now is your ego. It is that deep. What spirituality simply tells you is: "Look here, although you have your very limited individualistic view on things, that itself is being made in every moment just as the flowers are made to grow, the birds are made to sing and the sun is made to rise. You are fundamentally this self-enforcing power that does that in and of itself." And that's profound and very interesting to explore. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't follow your passions, deny your character and strengths and be a yogi. You can do that, but really don't have to. You'll see a funny thing with enlightened people. Most people who start out on this quest and begin to see into the reality of things a little bit will make it the one and only, the greatest and nothing else now matters anymore kind of thing. That's a phase and it's an important one, because you begin to shift your neurotic attitude that was mainly focused and your life onto what is greater than that, so you become neurotic about it. When you can see the reality of things and who you are and how shit works on a consistent basis though, this neurosis over time just vanishes and you begin to live a very moderate, chilled life, focusing on whatever you naturally want and not praising one thing and blaming another. So all in all, there is nothing wrong with you following your passions. It's great that you have such good motives, act on them. This world needs people like you doing that, I'd say. Cheers

Let me say it another time. You cannot reach enlightenment through anything. And I know exactly what thought you have right now: "Yeah... but you kinda can because meditation and self-inquiry makes you more aware and then someday this awareness will be enough to recognize that you are everything and nothing." So let me say it again. You cannot reach enlightenment through anything. Just that it gets in. Someone like Leo who seemingly does a lot of meditation and self-inquiry and focuses his whole life on this quest might not be faster then you doing 20 minutes of a breath meditation once a day. Why? Because the "speed of you recognizing your own nature" is bounded by when you will give the show called you. When will you be really earnest to yourself that you just don't know how you miraculously keep on living from moment to moment, how thoughts just come up, actions just come up, the flowers just grow and even your game of "I'm a free agent who is responsible" is kept up. This is a shoving away of shit you tell yourself and believe to the point where it becomes apparent. And this shoving away is being done by giving it up, not by keeping it up. By giving up the journey, by knowing that there is nothing you can do, by knowing that everything that you do is just another very nuanced game that you can get it with effort. So maybe the best meditation to reach enlightenment is to sit for 10 minutes, crying your eyes out and praying to God, nature, it nothingness that it makes you give it up. I sincerely think this might be better then anything else because this would at least foster the attitude you need to understand. Every other meditation technique is more about how can "I" be better, calmer, more focused, more relaxed. Well, that's mostly a joke. So, why am I being such an asshole here with you? Because it needs that. It's important that you get this down sometime so that you don't try years over years getting something that isn't there. Luckily, I got that early on (after about 1 year of my journey) when I studied Taoism and Zen. Maybe you wanna look that up. So, to end this rage: How do I meditate now for most of my journey? I sit down, sit for 60 minutes and get up. Whatever happens in these 60 minutes is completely accepted. And when it can't be accepted, that's accepted too. I mostly don't move because I practiced strong determination sitting for a long time (so apparently still do, but really don't care anymore). With this technique most other techniques will come up over time, like focusing on your breath, repeating a mantra, counting the breath etc. Just because you don't limit yourself. Right now I'm also using HoloSync with it, that boosts my integration process and especially my spiritual quest like nuts. It's ridiculously potent. But yeah, that's about it. You could name it: Giving up. Because I am giving up with every second to that that makes me. And by that, I become that. Cheers to you

From that answer, you can read the solution you wanted me to say. Go ahead!

Don't distract yourself here. I'm not saying that there isn't a lot of good stuff out there, but keep it simple. What you are trying here is getting rid of your bad side and always feeling good and pleasant. Well, be surprised but even a Zen master will feel shitty when his friends and family dies, just because it's natural for a human being to go through that. Now, we Westerns I think make too much outta this. We beat ourselves up about any little thing that comes up: work, relationships, packets from Amazon needing that extra day when you paid for Prime. You name it. To get at peace with this (not to get rid of this but to really be okay with it, you do this): When you are in a state of envy and regret you acknowledge how it gets you. How do you feel? Maybe very loaded. What thoughts arise? Probably automatic chains of negative and compulsive thoughts. Okay, great. Now you do this: Feel on the inside into these feelings and listen to your thoughts consciously and say to yourself on the inside: "I'm very sorry that [...] didn't play out as you wanted it to be. Life is a bitch, I really don't like seeing you suffering over this, but feel free to rage about it however you want. Whatever feelings you may trigger, feel welcome to do so. It's okay." Talk to yourself like you would trying to calm a 5 year old down. Get on your own side and stop opposing a side of you. Then integration shall begin. Cheers to your regrets, Azrael

Put it off, clean your Mac and make a Windows partition. Then game the shit outta that thing when you need a pause from becoming enlightened or finding your life purpose.

@InsidesOut, yes the Ken Wilber video is the one that inspired me for the title and gave me the concept, you caught me.

Listen, it's like this. What you're trying to do is you want to understand it logically, you wanna make sense out of all that. Which is of course understandable. Because that's the way we humans mostly go about our business. But if it comes to recognizing your own nature, you have to see that logic, scientific investigation and especially words are and always will be a subset of the thing itself. These methods and frameworks are something that come out of your own nature but never ever can represent it fully in its integrity, because there is more to it. That's why when I say "If you don't understand it, you begin to understand and if you understand it you need further investigation" I am pointing to what I just described. I'm pointing that your ability to abstract and model reality will not be sufficient to catch it, to get hold of it. It's like using a net to catch water, it'll always slip away. So how do you get it? You sit down and accept that everything your mind comes up with is not the thing you're searching for. And after some time you'll begin to see that there is something underlying your thoughts, your feelings and everything you know that let's these things exist. They come from it and go to it. It's the same with birth and death. You say awareness is born and will die. I'd say look again. If that's really the case what then birthed awareness into being and what takes it out of being, hah? What's underneath that. What is this ground of being that is ever-present but seems to slip through your fingers when you try to look for it? What is this thing that isn't a thing? Of course these are all brain-twisters but they're supposed to wake something up in you that knows exactly what I'm talking about. What you have to do is to look further into this until some day it's looks right in your face and you can't deny it anymore. Then there will be a sudden shift. I know this is hard to understand, it was for me as well in the beginning. Just trust in your ability to see it and it'll come with patience. It's actually not that hard. It's just that people like to make it very hard and put it on a pedestal when it's really the ground that holds the pedestal up. Cheers

Hahaha, good one. I started smoking a few months ago again (after being 4 months in an existential crisis). And trust me, if you do this you probably even as a non-smoker will want to smoke a cigarette. Just because the feeling of coming from this into your normal body-mind-apparatus is way to crazy. Also, don't confuse being aware with the "vegan, lets all do yoga and be friendly"-kind of lifestyle. I'm not anti this, but awareness simply makes you more aware of who you are, it's a recognition and not a sudden change of all your habits. This change of habits seems to happen over the time but it's a very long process and also doesn't make everyone the same. Some people authentically have a temper, some are very nice, some just don't give a fuck and some like me use a quarter of a page to justify their negative behaviors, know and won't change it either way because it's so nice being authentically bad. Cheers, man. Btw, don't take me too seriously here. I'm having a little fun with you.

It's basically like this: Let's say you go to sleep this night and dream. Let's say this dream has 75 years of subjective time. You grow up, mature, get old and die in your dream world. You have all of your dream problems and dream pleasures. Now in this dream you've actually heard people say that this is only dream and you found this so interesting that now you are one of these people who try to find out whether it is or not. One day in your dream you get on a forum, read a very fascinating experience and ask the author: What is your own nature? So, what does he say? Stop asking the question and see what stays. See what stays when you don't look for it. See what stays when you are in deep pain, see what stays when you are in love. See what was before you were born into your dream. See what stays when you'll die. Btw, you can find this out. It's actually not that hard. It's actually way harder to make up the illusion that you don't know. If you don't understand this, you begin to understand it. If you understand it, you have to further investigate. How do you know when you're in love? You just do. I can show you a thousand brain scans of people who are in love and read books about it, but all that is trying to explain a blind person what "blue" looks like. You'll find out, when it appears. Trust in your intuition, trust in your own awakening. Also, how do you know when you have to learn for a math exam that you got calculus and can learn deeper math? You know, when you got the message what calculus really is and when you don't need any specific method anymore to recognize how to solve a calculus task. Same with anything else in life, you'll know when you got it down. Trust in your senses. You have nothing else to rely on, anyway. Good question! Let's go back to the dream metaphor. Let's say in this dream you chose to jump out of an airplane and as you jump you notice that you have forgotten your parachute (because its just a weired dream, right? ). So now because you think all there is is this dream, you are going to die in 3 minutes. Close your eyes and visualize that. How does it feel? Right in the last 3 seconds. That'll give you a taste of the first halve of the experience, the dying. What you don't know and can't even fathom, even in retrospect, is the waking up when you hit that ground and explode. They come back, but it feels like before the trip your mind was very dirty and after it it feels like being completely washed, clean, good smelling and just fine and calm. And you keep some of the awareness you experience in the trip. -- I know I am kind of a dick not answering your questions like you want it to be - very scientific clear-cut experiences and descriptions. Truth is, how I answered your questions will do way more good to you then any description of anything far out you can ever read. Cheers, the angel of death

Oh, you're welcome: https://soundcloud.com/marthavanstraaten/sisyphosarbeit I love this mix, it has some very melodic, African/South American vibes mixed with new music perfectly to chill and just let it play. It's actually from a DJ living here in Berlin and was made to trip on LSD. It's hard to say right now because I'm at the very beginning with the experiment. But what I noticed is that you "carry some awareness out of the experience", your meditation is supercharged and it feels like shit is changing in your brain, very much like when you meditate a lot. So I think it has the effect of something like 1-3 years of meditation in 30-40 minutes. I know this sounds insane and its not that you are a completely new human being when you come out of the experience, however it's like your are literally forced to recognize your own nature and that in itself is so transforming that even when it doesn't stick the first few times, all of your worldly worries and beliefs lose a lot of seriousness. So I think if you do MeO for a few months the effects will proportionally get deeper until it breaks you and your brain just has to give up your old system of thinking and dive in this new one, because it has just seen something that is impossible and cannot be processed with the old beliefs. That's my theory at least. We'll see. Maybe I'm wrong and shoot in myself in a mental hospital. But I don't think so. Good question, but no it can't because any concept you take into the trip will explode in 5-10 minutes. I mean seriously - read again the part in the post where I talk about the breakthrough trip - as you lie on your bed your body sends you all kind signs of "you are fucking dying right no". Your whole mental apparatus explodes and your mind has nothing to grasp and so is just gone. You are in that moment kind of mentally insane. You have never had something like that. Even deep no-self states on LSD or shrooms are at least for me always a very orgasm-like blissful experience. Not existential terror. MeO is existential terror because it slices you open. And then you literally see what's left. And whats left is nothing shorter then a very precise view how there only is a complete still moment that is connected to an every-flowing, ever-changing dualistic world that moment by moment arises out of this ever-still moment and goes back to it. And that is as spiritual as it gets, that is God with a capital 'G' starring in your face. That is what is happening every single second of the day. That's why this experience is so profound. After this you can just sit down and get a taste in your normal existence of what really is, even with your lowered kind of awareness. That's why meditation and all this is supercharged after the experience. You become extremely grounded. I share your thoughts on LSD. I loved it and used it for about a year very periodically but I now kind of switched to shrooms as a normal psychedelic for spiritual exploration. I like it better and especially the closed-eye-optics. I love 'em. You are welcome, feel free to ask any time. I love sharing my experiences with guys who are in for this as well.

Yeah, I actually searched for this myself some time ago and saved them all for bad times. Here are related videos:

Man, I love your comment. This attitude is what is needed - in my experience - to really get something out of these experiences. Do the research, try it and work yourself up the psychedelic latter and then these tools will literally blow your mind. To your questions: If I use psychedelics for spiritual exploration (what I do most of the time but I'll also drop it sometimes with friends to be out in nature or on a music festival) I always do it alone, simply for the reason because that way you really can focus on the trip and learn from it. If you have others around who are not tripping, it will just feel weired. For the "just in case"-scenario: If you do the research and work your way up - for example you do 2g of shrooms, then 4g and this might be your breakthrough dose - you have nothing to fear. It is important though to do that increase to see how far you can go. If you can barely stand a mushroom breakthrough dose, you are not advised to try something like high doses of LSD, n,n-DMT or something like MeO. Leo's suggestions for tripping safe are really good. I'd say I follow 60-70% percent of them, but I'd advise a newbie to really stick to them. If you have more experience you can broaden some rules like tripping outside, not putting your knives away etc. I'd say the most important rule for psychedelics is - if you are starting out - to do it in a safe environment (your home) and have the whole day off. A safe spot is by far the most important thing to have when things get wanky the first times. In my personal experience I have a few things I do different then Leo: I mostly have tripping music on (4 hours chilled music mixes) that orchestrate my trip. I get the point that music can distract you but for me its really deepening my exploration and helps me to stay calm even when shit is going wild. Have music at least as a kind of relaxation technique ready to play when you don't feel good. It'll change the circumstances instantly in my experience. Also, I can't stress enough how important it is to work yourself up the latter. This will really prevent any too bad experiences. If you ask me, do the following: First do shrooms low/high dose a few times until you've broken through at least 2-3 times. By the way, you'll know when you break through. This is epic on all psychedelics. Then do LSD low/high dose until you break through with this. Why LSD? Because it's a whole other thing to trip 12 hours instead of 4-6, especially if you are breaking through like 4 hours in the trip. This will really make you experienced with letting go. Do at least 2-3 breakthroughs with that. Then do normal n,n-DMT, also low/high dose. Because with this stuff we at least get into the environment of 5-MeO. You thought 12 hours of tripping and letting go is heavy? Think again when reality breaks in front of your eyes and you shoot out of your forehead into ... whatever. Do a few breakthroughs with this. This is actually how I went about it. Took me a year to go through that chain, but I wasn't really interested to binge these experiences down. I like to have profound experiences with a psychedelic for some time and then also dive in the after effects. The thing is, if you follow the recipe I just gave and you have like maybe 1 year of meditation experience, it will still not be comparable 1% what you'll have with MeO. Not even 1%. That's insane if you've done regular DMT. You'll think, that's it. It doesn't go any higher. But see for yourself. The advantage you'll have if you did all the other substances before MeO and you had breakthroughs on all of them, you will at least be able to let go. And this is the one and only thing you need for MeO and can't really be acquired any other way in this respect. So, that's my take on this. Also, always have one specific question you want to investigate in your trip. Have one, not 10. Like "What is reality?", "What are thoughts?", "What is always the same?". Your trip will nicely take this question and build a whole world around it that you will experience and can take the insights from to your regular life. It's insanely satisfying. I hope this gives you a start. Have fun, be careful and you'll have a good time. Cheers

Yeah, I actually can report with direct experience that this is very profound. I do this with all of my psychedelic experiences. It seems to me that the whole trip kind of illustrates the question you're asking. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, I thought this as well as I saw the video, but I would've hoped that he came up with actual, good critique. He is basically mis-interpreting Leo here and laughing at him. This shows me that this guy himself is completely delusional and trapped in his spiritual ego (even if he claims to be enlightened what he might be - you can still be an idiot and delusional after your awakening). I like Leo's video because I have experienced most of the things myself and it's very important to know that they are normal and will pass. Leo says at no fucking point that angels, visions or what so ever are real. He says it seems real - which is actually the case if you have seen something like that. But that's about it. Also, as he said: Be open to what can happen. The rational newtonian-worldview we are brought up in is not sufficient to describe reality as a whole. No framework is, that's why it's so ridiculous that this guy makes such a video - not seeing his own delusion. So yeah, of course you should be skeptical to what Leo teaches you, especially if he goes far out with things like drugs or what not. But if you really do the research yourself (as he does I guess most of his day) you find that he doesn't just come up with things because he is bored. But if you just watch something that you can't understand because you are not open enough to at least research it yourself and then laugh about it or misinterpret it, doesn't help you very much here. And I myself find a lot of descriptions from guys like Rupert Spira or Alan Watts more fitting then anything else, but in the end these are all just pointers.

Oh, you can. This just needs some time. The observer is a thought right, but more actually a bunch of very close connected thoughts, emotions and perceptions. If you shine enough light on it, you will sharpen your awareness enough to see what this is actually made out of and then be liberated from the recognition that you are your observer. Keep digging.

That's actually a very interesting question, dude. I should investigate this more but basically as you can also find out by just sitting and wondering about "What's coming up next?" you see that every few seconds your attention is grabbed by something else. Even if you feel like you're in a stream, it's more like various attention spans being played very rapidly and continuously after each other, if you look closely. It's fascinating.

Yes of course, could be a possibility. We'll see what time brings us. I think it largely depends on how you use these substances. Do you want to have a fun experience and build up your existing spiritual beliefs or do you want to shaken even deeper structures loose and let them go. As with everything, you can use it to your benefit or to your destruction. 5-MeO-DMT is in no way a little fun experience. It needs a lot of will power to make that jump.

That's basically the question that draws me to these experiences. I have the intuition and faith that it can. But it needs to be further investigated and then time will show. However, I also have to keep in mind that right now I'm still pretty hyped up and flushed about the experience. This will probably wear out in a couple of days. What would be interesting is whether the awareness stays that I got right now and if it gets proportionally more with these kind of experiences and how it influences the whole spiritual journey. I think it could be the most direct and quick path to enlightenment if used in the right way (with meditation/self-inquiry and integration). But we'll see. However, and I talked with Leo about this, I also think that this method is so direct in its approach that most seekers are not willing and/or able to stand it more than once if at all. It brings you to your complete end. And thats horrifying and liberating at the same time.

It was very worth it to start at a lower dose. I would even recommend to start with 10mg and then work yourself up increasing with 5mg. You have to see whether you can stand the experience and you do that with the lower dosages. Also, these lower dosages in themselves were very intense and transformational.

I watched it this morning and just was like: "You fucking kidding me man, this is exactly what Huz needs right now + the same exact thing I thought about last night when I wrote the post."

Brother, listen. I was in a similar state of mind this year for about 6 months. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing that happened was that my mind began racing, negative thought patterns would come up, emotions were triggered. I would get up and do my daily stuff and I was in constant fear all the time. I was in fear when I met people on the street, I was in fear when I went to university, I was in fear even when I was home alone because I thought that my family and friends thought bad of me (...which of course they don't - at least not in such a dramatic way one spins it.) My meditation was basically me sitting while being screamed at by my inner stream of thoughts. I briefly had moments of silents or peace. These 6 months were covered with 3 major awakenings that I had which mostly resulted in 1 week of bliss per awakening and then the terror would even worsen. In the last weeks I would sit in the bus and my head would be spinning scenarios of me killing myself (and I'm not at all, not even fucking remotely suicidal, never was) but it just felt very good to spin these scenarios. That this happened made me then even sicker, that I thought about this. It was all very twisted and I was totally lost. This had to happen to purge my whole childhood / youth drama out of my brain. I knew that this was happening at the time - but still it didn't really help because it was so bad. And I would be having all of this while becoming more and more aware of how I was one with the universe. My awareness expanded a lot in this time which is in retrospect the reason why I felt so shitty. It shined light on so much neurosis that was covered in the dark that it just needed time to burn out all of this shit. So, how do you go about it? Look Matt Khan videos and begin to reconnect with your shadow, your inner child. Don't deny one side of yourself as being bad and responsible for this fuck-up, but see it as a little five year old inside of you who is completely lost and makes you crazy. How do you talk to a five year old? You say that you're sorry that he has to go through such deep and transforming times. You say that your are sorry what happened to him in the past and that your only wish is to make him happy and enlighten him. Actually, really say this to yourself on a daily basis and come in contact with all of this emotional baggage - not trying to get away from it, but care about it. You'll see, it'll magically dissolve because you stop resisting it. Build a daily routine. Sleep 7-8 hours, eat regularly, take a shit, take a daily walk, see nature at least once a day, and don't meditate too much and too hard in times when you are completely off. Meditation is great and you should still be doing it daily, but if you don't even have the power to handle yourself, you don't wanna make you bleed out faster. Take your time. In my worst times I did 30 minutes of a Daoist breathing meditation. Do your HoloSync. You do that, right? This will probably solve most of your problems very fast. Give it some time, but it did and does wonders for me. I love it. Do sports once a week. This is extremely important. If you are not a sporty guy, do at least once a week 10 push-ups. That could be a start. You wanna get rid of all this adrenalin that builds up. I did swimming for two years once a week, now I do a workout with a kettle-bell. Give in on some old ruts. If you wanna smoke, eat some ice cream, watch netflix marathons, do that. You are not in the position right now to work all of these out and thats fine. I binge on way to much stupid shit as for example very delicious spicy food, cigarettes, drugs, whatever I want. I would not restrict myself because I trust my intuition fully. From time to time it kicks one of these old ruts out just naturally. I'm just making sure I'm feeding it with more and more awareness, the rest happens for me automatically. Also, way more important then living the healthy vegan-yoga-idealistic lifestyle is that you accept your desires, find your authenticity and root yourself in that. Then no problem or habit can even remotely bug you. You can consciously cut on those things (if you want) when you have the power and inspiration to do so, not when you are carrying this heavy corpse around every day that is sad and unmotivated. This leads just to disaster. Stay at home if you like or connect with some friends here and there that give you good vibes and just follow through on that. In reality, all of this takes some time but eventually will make you the most rooted, clear-thinking and on-point person that you can think of. Keep remembering what I said in my shrooms post: All pain simply comes from the fact that at some point you started to believe your own story. And if I read your story, I see that you do that a lot and suffer from that. Now, probably this is all happening automatically and you can't do nothing about it. It was for me at that time. That's fine. Nature sometimes just wants to be in deep, deep pain so that the fun after it is even way better. Nature is a beast, trust me. And lastly, if it gets too hard, you can always write me. You know that. I help you man. Peace will come and knowing as well. In retrospect to my own fuck-up purging time: I am now as authentic, confident, happy and rooted in what I do more then ever in my life. I have to this point experienced every possible emotion I can think of in every extreme, from the complete non-duality of things to the worst nightmares of fear and anxiety. I am so intimately bounded to me as an individual that nothing normal can really shock me any more, because I went through all of it. And you will be, too. So in the end this builds the most important and intimate foundation you could ever ask for. You just don't know it yet. So, cheer up. Nature is just building your strongest version and this needs some transformation. Cheers

If been using HoloSync now for 1.5 months, and I have had a big boost in my practice. My mind calmed down a lot, negative thoughts mostly went away and I feel very good, alive and motivated to do my studies, have fun at work and with my friends. But they use a slightly different and well-developed version of binaural beats. It's expensive, but worth the price. They have a whole system set up for several years that cleans you deeper and deeper. I can really recommend this if you wanna super-charge your meditation. Still doing "Do Nothing" + "Strong Determination Sitting" while listening. Works like a charm. Plus, they do this now for I think roughly 30 years, have like 2M people doing this and a lot of scientific studies backing them up. I like that a lot.

There is no one right way here. Sometimes you can just listen to your mind and still be aware, sometimes it will confuse you so much that you think you do something wrong here. "Being confused & not knowing whether you do it the right way" is just a very nuanced game you play with yourself, so that you can tell yourself you have to do a lot of more work. Of course this is just coming up and you are not intentionally doing this - but this is exactly the point. All of this confusion, not knowing it, being frustrated has to purge for a sometimes very long time so that it can leave your mind. But this is hard to see in the beginning and one is very confused. I was as well. Be patient. The answers will come when the questions disappear.

Let it happens as it comes. Sometime you will get so aware, that you stop thinking. That's fine. Sometime you will just continuing talking to yourself, that's fine. Some other time maybe something else. The point of this technique is this: After enough sitting down doing nothing, it will strike you that you actually don't know where your decisions come from. They - in the end - arise like hiccups. Even if you think very strategically and clearly, where is this coming from? Where is 'you' coming from? As you get a taste of that you see that every doubt you have, is god playing a game with himself of "What if my world wasn't perfect?". That's about it. In any will, whatever happens, its okay. Just relax, keep sitting and have a smile on your face. Whatever you do is the only thing that could happen either way and you are the master doing it. Sounds like I'm a little off here, but trust me. At some time this will come to you and blow you away. Cheers