Arman

Nice post Nailed it

For someone who's first language isn't English, your grammar and communication is really good. You're going to do fine. I knew you were 14 because you remind me so much of myself around that age, even posting on forums. This is a crazy time for you... by 16 you'll start to think of yourself as an adult. I started smoking weed and taking psychedelics at 16 and 17. Those experiences played a big part in making me who I am but also robbed me of much balance in my early 20s. I thought my life was going to be an easy fairy-tail (magic stories they tell them kids) when I started taking psychedelics and getting into spirituality and self development. You feel like you've been chosen and given a golden ticket to an easy and incredible life. It's true, in a way, but the use of drugs made those times very chaotic (crazy), and it took years of deep struggle and inner work to find balance. I discovered many years later that I was using that stuff to run away from myself and my unhappiness. When I realised that, I started to see how lost people get with psychedelics. The ones who use it too often stray (stray: to move away from) further and further from themselves while at the same time being convinced they are making progress because they're blinded by shiny 'truths' True growth doesn't look fancy. It is about quiet self love, peace, ability to help others, being able to feel happy just sitting by yourself and making a cup of tea. Look up the word 'glamour' and try to understand it. When a thing appears glamourous, it looks fantastic and appealing in the surface, but it's true reality (substance) is weak, it robs you of your humanness. Beware glamour. Follow simplicity. It will lead you to the ultimate happiness. They turn psychedelics into another religion and get dogmatic about it. Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing. If you suggest that psychedelics may not be optimal (the best) for spiritual growth, their teeth and claws come out. Real spiritual work isn't glamourous, it looks mundane (simple/boring) and it doesn't look as appealing as the glamour of psychedelics. They can distract you all the way into infinity. You can make 100x more progress by simply making a commitment to forgive yourself and others for errors. Do you have any computer/tech related hobbies? At your age I was playing around with animation, web design and Photoshop. Playing with that stuff paid off in a HUGE way because creative tech is effortless for me now. In this online entrapaneur era, it pays to find out what excites you and learn how to build things. 'Integrity' means to be whole or complete, but people use it in a slightly different way. When someone says one thing and does another, they are broken up, they do not have integrity. Integrity means being true to yourself. It means doing the right thing and being honest. It means taking the more difficult or less appealing path because you care more about truth and peace than about short-term pleasure.

Sorry, I should have read the thread more thoroughly.

The kid is like 14 and complaining that he doesn't understand the words in self help books because they're 'made for adults' 5meo will FUCK HIM UP its called context bro To OP: no drugs for you. stay in school kiddo. find a creative outlet you enjoy. you will get WAY more gains out of making a hobby out of self-development than trying psychedelics right now. You're lucky to be a part of this world of self improvement at your age. Read those books anway, take it slow and look up the words in Google. Take satisfaction in trying to understand things that are initially confusing or frustrating and you'll go far. If you want to enter the world of spirituality, try the book 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle. The audiobook is usually available on YouTube. Even if you don't understand it, listen anyway. If you really start to understand it, it'll mess you up just as much as psychedelics, but in a gentler way

Maybe you could raise turkeys

Most peoples goals are fueled mostly by the desire for personal gain. Most people who say they want to help people or change the world don't actually want that (even though they believe it), but they get off on the identity and juice they get out of it. It's really just a coping mechanism of the ego. But we all have these 'narcissistic tendencies', and it's not something to get worried about. It's human nature. We have the base desires of wanting approval, security, control, etc. Aurum's got it when he says 'Who told you it's not okay to be selfish?' You don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume your goals and drive are worthless because they're motivated by desire. You're taking an emotional and judgemental attitude to 'me-oriented' consciousness, but it's not about right and wrong. Self-less consciousness isn't better because it has any moral high-ground - its simply a more effective operative paradigm WITHIN A CERTAIN CONTEXT. It's useful to get there eventually, however to get there you have to explore, understand and transcend 'me' oriented consciousness first. Typically you have to get some decent selfishly motivated results first, otherwise, you're just bullshitting yourself when you say you only want to help others. How can one help others when they haven't even proven that they can help themselves? Congratulations, this 'serious concern' of yours has granted you an opportunity to be honest with yourself and then accept that wherever you're at is perfectly OK... and in fact, highly opportune.

Meditate as much as you can while still balancing life obligations and cultivation of assets and purpose. Meditation helps to dissolve the inner barriers to what you want and make the external pursuits easier and the path towards them clearer. Before it was like travelling through molasses. Now it's fun and easier and it only gets better and better.

That's a lot of sad-face emojis bro. I count 10 in one post. You're speaking a lot without actually saying anything at all. It's just victim mentality cycling itself. It will create literally an infinite amount of problems. Solve one and you'll find another. Do you think you can solve anything or take action feeling the way you do?

You can buy them on Amazon, load them into the Kindle desktop app and learn how to rip/convert the ebooks from their native .mobi kindle format to epub using software (look it up). There's not really any book retailer that rivals Amazon as far as so know. All you can do is look up the individual books to see if they're offered by their own publishers site or elsewhere.

It is not a tool I would suggest as a means to liberation or self realization, but I think it is an easy tool that anyone can add to their toolbox for easy and fun immediate relief or expansion in one or many areas of their life. Allow me to explain. Part 1 of this post is is really all you need, but I have added elaboration for those who want more information in part 2. Part 1: Introduction EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique is a practice that involves tapping parts of your body while being guided, either by yourself or someone else, through an emotional problem or subject in your life in order to release the energy behind it and experience relief and expansion in that area. Years ago I remember stumbling upon a few guided EFT videos on youtube and thinking it was ridiculous and I dismissed it as bullshit for the gullible because I thought it looked wishy washy. How could lightly tapping parts of your face and chest and saying some words possibly help? I figured people are getting relief through placebo. Although back then I was still armed with skepticism and pride, I did try it a few times. Each time I was very stunned at how effective it was for me. I used it on anxiety and fear and each time felt complete relief. What was a mystery to me was that if it was a placebo, why was it more effective than anything else I had tried for relieving these tensions, even compared to my meditation practices? I used it once or twice more through the years in times of turmoil, each time with great effectiveness and relief, only to forget about it after its use. Today, my personal perspective is that emotional energies are the primary culprits that keep us from being happy, free and expansive. Or rather, it is are inability to deal with and process these energies that stop us from effortless living. But before I go on and bore you with further details and thoughts, why don't you try it for yourself? This is one guided practitioner I like. Scroll through his videos until you find one that you feel meets a current struggle, emotional disturbance, etc. Drop your preconceptions, judgements and thoughts temporarily (don't worry, you can pick them back up right after ) and try it out. --------------------------- Part 2: Q&A Q: Why would this wizardry work, and are you an idiot? A: A great deal of our behavior and how we feel is a result of reactivity to emotions held within the body. These emotions are sometimes obvious and easy to identify like anger, fear, or anxiety. Other emotions are more subtle energies. Sometimes entire energy structures of emotions are built upon simple beliefs or assumptions that we have adopted long ago. Due to their uncomfortable nature and our ignorance of what to do with them, these emotions become buried and suppressed. While hidden from conscious awareness, they become energy saps and are constantly emerging to the surface of our experience through the areas of health, relationships, abundance/purpose, and spirituality. Much of our behavior stems from simply avoiding or escaping these emotions, and entire problems and belief systems are constructed upon these things. The way of releasing and dissolving these emotional energies is simple: awareness and releasing resistance. These energies are held because at some level we believe that are useful. As Leo says, awareness alone is curative. When we know they are not serving us, they automatically release. Often the release and healing of inner energies and life subjects feels like a gargantuan and intimidating task. The truth is that we have built these subjects up like a child builds fear to the imaginary monsters she perceives in the dark. The primary pain and struggle of life is not the energies themselves, but our resistance to them. When we drop our resistance to our resistance, often we may be pleased to discover that the root is not difficult to deal with at all. These are many practices that allow one to be present with emotions and energies to allow for their release. EFT is one effective method that methodically shifts one into a state of allowing. Even simply acknowledgment of our emotions can produce tremendous results. And I might be an idiot, but it is up to you to decide if it is effective and worthy of use. Q: Ok, but what's with the tapping? That's nonsense, right? A: Maybe. Maybe not. As I moved forward in my journey and became more familiar with other practices and consciousness work, I started to understand why EFT might work, at least on the level of allowing emotions, though I still could not understand what the tapping had to do with anything. I thought: Maybe it's purely placebo but helps to create an air of ritual and give the practitioner a sense of 'doing' more to create investment? Eventually I became more familiar with how the energies of the body move in relation to emotions and beliefs. This understanding came through a combination of study and first hand experience. In the West, we give all our attention to the physical body and primarily believe that emotions, thoughts, our personality system and consciousness exist mostly or entirely within the brain. Eastern health and medicinal systems place much more attention on what are referred to as subtle energies. Here it is useful to examine the meridian system which is a paradigm of energy movement throughout the body that is reflectively interconnected with our psychic (of the psyche) existence. This structure suggests that all thoughts, emotions and beliefs have an impact and a corresponding imprint upon the functioning of our energy body, and therefore our experience. The meridian system is a system of energetic superhighways throughout the nerves and organs of the body. Our health, spontaneous creativity, expansiveness and effectiveness are the spontaneous and effortless result of the movement of life energy throughout these pathways. It can be also be thought of as light and natural intelligence coursing throughout us; each complex structural pathway corresponding to certain levels of function, expression, corresponding organs and energy centres known as chakras. As we are born into this world we adopt belief systems through other people, as well as through traumas and highly charged experiences. This causes us to sever parts of ourselves and push it down because at some level we believed that if we did not, we would not survive. These belief systems and emotional traumas manifest as blockages within the meridian system. We stifle energetic pathways. If energy does not move through, the experience and behavior is blocked off. The energy system that is completely flowing results in a radiance, joy, perfect health, effortless experience of connectivity and love. One is effective in all endeavors that they pursue. The blocked and stifled energetic system results in resistance, fear, pain, struggle, grief, ineffectiveness, inability to connect with others and endless permutations of health issues. Much of the spiritual journey involves the purification of the body/energetic system so that higher orders of function can be grounded. We block off higher experiences, success, love, etc because it would mean an increase in life energy into spaces that we have blocked off. This causes discomfort which results in self sabotage in order to return to our 'comfort zone'. Blockages can also occur through the form of fixated energy as a result of intense desire, or intense aversion to a subject. Grounding non-dual awareness as an integrated and constant experience is the natural result of a purified energetic system. This is why from a linear framework, self-realization has demanding and enduring physiological counter-parts that as far as I know, cannot be bypassed. Hatha yoga, pranayama, reiki, accupuncture and many forms of healing massage are examples of methods that work at the level of subtle energies. These energies can be released through many methods, from physical, to psychological, to more subtle based intention of consciousness. Ie. simply choosing to let go. The tapping of EFT likely has roots in the stimulation of the meridian system which facilitates release and energetic flow of the meridians. I sure took the long way around of answering that, didn't I? Q: I tried EFT on a subject and feel relief, but won't those feelings or my problem just eventually return again? A: Releasing at the energetic level is an effective way of creating permanent change. Some subjects are highly charged and will require multiple releases, or in the case of more intense subjects, might require some long-term dedication. We have a lifetime of suppressed emotions that can take time to fully release, but that doesn't mean we can't experience the immediate benefits of releasing our resistance and attachment to them, and experiencing the shifts in our outward experience as even deceptively subtle releasing can create large butterfly-effect like impact on our lives. Therefore while your emotions or issues may return in time, you will have made improvements and it is another opportunity to release. By experiencing the gains and shifts as a result of release and integration on subjects, it provides further motivation to release through EFT or other practices. Eventually these reservoirs do end. On a lot of smaller issues, the problem simply won't return. Other times it is possible that entire longstanding problems on any subjects can heal with miraculous speed, even within minutes. This is because entire frameworks of belief and emotions can be built upon a single point of experience. When that is dissolved, everything that was built upon it crumbles. If much of your behavior is built upon the feeling of being unworthy, then even a small amount of release on that reservoir of feeling can have large impact on your life. Don't take my word for it, these are just words. Find out for yourself. Discover for yourself how easy progress can be. Q: Is it necessarily to use the specific framework of EFT, like the tapping and the talking? A: No, EFT is one way to release energies, but there are many ways. Mindfulness is one example of a practice that automatically allows for release because it is a non-resistant form of awareness. While engaging in mindfulness however, there are many layers of subtle resistance and emotions that we are not fully aware of. That is why practices that are specifically intended for release can be very effective, because it equips us to let go of them and allows for deeper diving. Simply knowing that we are able to release and be free of our negative emotions is a big step. The fundamental thing that is tying all progress, healing and growth together is the act of release. Growth and expansion is not the result of doing, but rather of undoing. It is revealing the true unlimited nature that lies beneath all limited programming. When we release the energies that create our illusions of separation and smallness, then we become more in tune with our true nature. Energetic release can be engaged through prayer, all forms of yoga, through confession, through journaling to become more in touch with your emotions, through self-inquiry, or any variety of means. What is important is that you find a method that works well for you and use it consistently, so as to achieve the most positive results. Q: Do you have any suggested reading on the subject? A. The books that have helped me along the way and that I usually suggest are the works of Eckhart Tolle, The Presence Process by Michael Brown, Letting Go by David R Hawkins (I suggest his other works, too), The Work by Byron Katie. Q: Are you sure you're not an idiot? A: That's it, I'm PM'ing Leo. Q: How often should I practice, and how can I get the most out of these ideas? A: I suggest you practice as often as you can and like. The more we practice, the more effortless and enjoyable it becomes. Sometimes hitting deep emotional hurdles can cause an uproar of resistance that will cause us to stop wanting to release. The ego is very tricky, particularly when we start to dissolve it. The effectiveness and speed at which we move from our current state to expanded states of freedom is directly proportional to our level of commitment to being free. My suggestion is to pick a practice that works for you and stick to it for an extended period of time until you start to achieve measurable, results that are UNDENIABLE. This will provide motivation as well as experiential understanding. You will develop your own insights and framework of how and why this stuff is so effective.

If you create/find work that you can do remotely (from your computer anywhere in the world) then you can 'live' there for months at a time on tourist visas and still be able to support yourself. Then you can look into more permanent solutions if you decide you want to reside there year in and out. Look up 'digital nomads' for reference.

Mine is Paramahansa Yogananda. Who is yours?

sorry, I am just some regular joker on the internet. did not mean to allude otherwise perhaps there is a small percent of the population who is living in the woods alone or something... for the rest it's unavoidable. even if you withdraw from society, you still have to deal with all the same projections you would in a relationship. if you're afraid of others when you're with them, you'll have to face your fear when you're alone or suppress it for example if you find yourself angry with people, theres no way you can escape that anger by avoiding relationships. If you try to avoid relationships to avoid that anger, then soon an inatimate object or random life circumstance will fulfill the role of another person and make you upset just like a person would, until you deal with that aspect of yourself. that's why I'm saying that even if you're alone you'll have to deal with relationships. without trying to sound overly poetic: at the very least you'll have to master your relationship to yourself which are the same dynamics of relationships with others. when you realise that every single one of your relationships and how you experience others are just a reflection of yourself and how you CHOOSE to experience them, then you'll see why there's little difference to being alone or not.

no, it only stops you from getting to happiness if you judge it as a barrier or a problem. none of it has any inherent meaning except for that which you apply to it

you don't need it per se, but you can't avoid it either because that's resistance. as long as you're human, you're going to have to deal with relationships and moving through the world. even someone who sits by himself has to deal with all his inner demons and relationship dynamics by himself. what then is the difference between spiritual work by doing nothing and spiritual work by being active in the world? the happiest people are freely engaged in life without being attached to it

try being happy for 1 full day, start to end, using spiritual techniques. see how you go you're right to say that you need nothing outside of yourself, but before you jump the gun, can you create sustained unshakable happiness and peace now? What use is happiness that only applies when you're in a cave or your room alone practicing? Those are just more conditions and chains.

there's no mind without an observer If you eliminated the observer you wouldn't have any memory or experience to be reporting back. something still observed that experience what you're experiencing is brain function (or more accurately malfunction) as a result of hyperventilation. non duality is transcending that altogether, not scrambling it up I can't tell you what it is but I can tell you it's not

this isn't non duality - it's a stupid immitation you might as well be sniffing glue

I'm afraid it's too late for that. You've buried us in your burdens and we all hate you for it. Every last one of us. I'm sorry Apology not accepted.

really good advice

She didn't fall into your model so you think she's not ready to heal here's a counter perspective for anyone that thinks they're not 'prepared' to heal: healing takes no prerequisite knowledge, study or particular psychological or intellectual positions, just the willingness to grow and let go.

you just gotta get out there more. that's it. you don't need visualisation or anything else fancy the easiest way to improve your social skills is just to get momentum by consistently socializing. everyone feels the same when they have been in seclusion or not going out for a long time. the awkwardness, the anxiety, the feeling like there is something wrong with you. you're likely attaching and projecting ideas of past traumas onto the experience but it's not necessary. It's just your mind trying to make sense of how you feel because it doesn't have context for just how reasonable it is for you to be socially rusty right now. even if you're an effortless social butterfly, after not having been socializing for a good while then you'll probably find yourself getting in your head by the most benign interactions. literally just saying hello to someone just walking down the street. "Man my hello sounded really weird... why did I say it like that? so stupid... why didn't they respond? are people staring at me?" just be easier on yourself - understand that it's not that weird and that a lot of people feel the same way you do. it's like freaking out that you're physically weak after you stopped working out and now you're trying to figure out what poisoned you to cause this atrophy. relax, learn to be ok with anxiety, push your comfort zone a little and you'll start to feel better. stop labelling the experience as anything at all

yes, and yes 1.5g of regular psilocybin is probably equivelant to about 75ug of LSD in terms of intensity so you can still engage in fairly cerebral activity and follow along assuming you are of typical build and temperament pardon?

learn to be able to hold tension. a lot of humour is the ability to sustain tension. particularly if you're not someone who typically considers themself funny. holding tension means to be at ease with and not succumbing to the tense feeling that comes after you make a joke and there isn't an immediate response. it means not caring whether the other person laughs, and it means you are just being yourself humour is at its best when it's purely a giving or sharing energy and people can sense when you're approval seeking or being out of character someone who can't hold tension will make a joke, and those who know him will unconsciously test him by not immediately responding the way he hopes. by giving him a queer look or something. if you can just hold the tension like you'd just said something benign about the weather, you'll grow in the moment, but if you can't stand the tension then you'll want to look into their eyes for some kind of approval and they'll know instinctively that you're trying to be something you're not. when you can handle tension and act accordingly (when you're perfectly ok with the feelings, the appropriate thing to do or say is INSTINCTIVE AND SPONTANEOUS - no rehearsing) then the energy immediately dissipates and elevates. if you can't handle the tension and 'go beta' (don't love that term but it gets the message across) then the tension suppresses and the energy goes murkier this is kind of abstract and cerebral but once put into actual practice it will make sense. until you go out of your comfort zone it'll just be theory though it's the difference between becoming ashamed and saying "haha... I was trying to make a joke. sorry that was dumb" VS finding humour in the fact that nobody laughed and carrying on the conversation like normal by being able to sustain the tension you create, you're giving other permission to be comfortable around and laugh. if you can't even be comfortable with your own behaviour and creations, why would others?

damn it I just realised this probably another of snicks troll accounts I've been bamboozled