fryingLotus

I hear you on that one. Someone in this forum mentioned the book 'never binge again' it's free for kindle if you have one. I highly recommend it, I've been making a lot of progress since reading only about 25% of it. Oh god this makes me feel stressed, but no worries, I'll chill out with an ounce of sugar and butter. Haha only joking but yeah I've read Dan Buettner's book on the blue zones, it's really eye-opening. 'hari hachi bu' eat until 80% full. Wow thank you and I'm glad you got out of the trap. I've been doing the above and I have a 'normal eating' instruction list I wrote which I try to read as much as possible. Barring this I've just been trying to detach from the thoughts and ignore them - this seems to be the most powerful thing of all. It always seems that you can never reason with the thoughts, this just seems to empower them further. I need to start doing this. I keep losing focus although I am making progress. Anything to keep the commitment in mind. Thank you for the story - it sounds very similar to mine, as well as what you've done to tackle it. No restrictions was a big one, removing all of the labels from food in my head as well. I had no restrictions for a long time, but I still saw some foods as bad and some as good. (This seemed to create an urge to eat the bad foods more, as labelling them bad caused some kind of restricted food label). Leo's addiction video was pretty good, the do nothing meditation was useful also. As mentioned, I've done a vipassana retreat so can sit there for an hour no problem, but there was something different having the eyes open, just sitting in reality without drifting off into body scans. I mentioned above but I'd highly recommend the book Never Binge Again.

1. It takes loads of time to eat healthy (at least 1,5 hours preparing/cooking a day). I hate that. How long does it take you to prep your food now? I can make a meal in about 20 minutes, sometimes less. For example, I can take a tin of black beans and cook with garlic, veg, seasoning etc and cook rice at the same time. A curry will take around 45 minutes but I always make big batches. The last gave me 7 meals; I eat 1 and the other 6 go in the freezer (that's 6 minutes per meal). 2. I am too addicted to food as one of the main pleasures in live and not willing to give it up. That can be tough, but you don't need to give up the foods you like, only moderate, although sometimes giving up is easier. Maybe ask yourself why are you not willing to give them up, what would you really be missing? Or, what would happen if you didn't use food as a pleasure/to fill a void, rather than as a necessity? (Food can still be pleasurable healthy) It can be a painful process to let go of things but it's empowering to go through. You could sit and write your feelings on the pros and cons of what life would be like if you did give up this habit. Also, as above, you can moderate. You don't have to eat healthy 100% of the time, and try to do things one bit at a time. 3. Social difficulties: Never eating grains/dairy literally means I have to break up with my girlfriend and cut off a few friends. That's crazy haha, why would this be the case? I don't eat meat or dairy but 90% my friends do. I'll happily sit there with them while they're tucking in a steak or watch my girlfriend engorge on cheese. But yeah, like mentioned above, it's good to have positive people around you too. You don't have to drop your friends but there are meetup sites where you can meet some likeminded people. It's kind of why I come to this forum.

1st May 2019 Yoga (yin), vipassana, followed by a dose of Changa. Smallish dose, all I had left, about a capful. Feeling before hand: Scared, anxious, apprehensive. I did my best to wean these off, reminding myself it's just my ego wanting to keep me as I am. I observed the feelings the best I could without reacting. Told myself I don't know what will lie ahead, I will just take it as it comes. I also vaped some CBD beforehand just as a bit of a mental massage. (I've had a solid vipassana routine for some time now but I missed this at the weekend, then I was sick on Monday/Tuesday so today's short session was all I had. It didn't seem to matter.) Prep & trip I sat down in meditative posture on a round cushion, told myself a few more times that I surrender everything and that I am just an observer, before putting my finger on the bong's peephole, putting my mouth to the top and the flame to the black leafy substance in the cap. I took a small hit to try and gauge the how the smoke feels (normally I can't handle the smoke and it's a bit of a mental game) however it felt creamy and cold due to the ice water in there. I only held it in for around 10-15 seconds and let out a cloud of smoke, at this point I felt this was incorrect and I should have held onto it for longer. I then finished off the rest and I sat there still in the room, nothing much changed although everything was warping. I realised it was all gone and the effects were light>moderate but this thought went and I just shut my eyes. I observed the constantly moving, endless, soft but clear, geometric world. I had a negative thought and the shapes formed a finger which pointed at me, as if laughing (you thought you could breakthrough haha). That kind of thing. I then went back to being aware, removing attachment as best I could, and this instantly faded. Then the feeling of death came up which is the reason I'm writing this post. I started feeling really connected to the fact that I will die someday and there will be nothing left, no I, no thoughts, no friends, no family. I will cease to exist and I will not maintain my human state/ego once this has happened. This was quite a painful feeling and I felt the sadness in my stomach, to which I just thought this will cease to exist as well. I sat there feeling this as long as I could, it was extremely humbling. Afterthoughts I then gradually felt myself returning to normal, and as this feeling went, the thoughts came saying that this is just my ego protecting itself, although I'm not sure this is true as I wanted to see more down this path. I ponder death when I can remember in normal life, and sometimes I think I will be fine with death, but this has just shown me that I have a lot of work to do, a lot of priorities to make, and habits to change. The only issue being that this fades and fades until I'm into a normal routine once more. As part of my daily meditation, I think I will start practising self-inquiry, or just pondering my own death, more seriously, sat down quietly for say 30 minutes. One more point, with my eyes shut the common thought it always 'what is this??' so I thought, this is reality. This just seems so alien to me as I'm a human from Earth with perceived limits experiencing a world with none (or something like that, my train of thought is now more or less back to normal). Again, this was a small>moderate dose, nowhere near breakthrough, just put me into a deep state, connecting me with this feeling of death.

I didn't know which sub to post this under as it applies to a few. Long story short I quit my job to travel across South America for 4 months. Reasons for travel: self-inquiry, lots of free time to think (mainly on self-purpose), work as a photographer, practice guitar as much as possible, and see as much of the continent as I can. My current self/habits Self-inquiry Around 1 hour daily Vipassana meditation where possible. Yoga. Some dabbles in pondering what I am or believe I am. Past DMT, mushrooms, LSD, Ayahuasca and San Pedro experiences. Health 3x callisthenics workouts per week. Weekly running. Photography/guitar Pursued photography on and off, some jobs but not committed 100% and recent focus has been on guitar. This is still a strong passion which I've invested a lot of time and money into. Guitar seems to be my stronger passion but I still have doubts where it will take me. I sometimes feel as though I've lost the care and passion I once had for music. Sometimes I'll listen to tracks I wrote in my teens and I can immediately feel the heart and message I was trying to portray. At the moment everything just feels like I'm covering up emptiness with things I think I should be doing because they give me moderate pleasure or gave me pleasure at some point in my life. It also feels like my goal is productivity rather than life purpose/acting through passion - I had a drug stint in my life where I basically regressed to a crack fiend state which resulted in heavily negative views of my self and the world (and for the cherry on top I comforted myself with the only that didn't induce more anxiety/depression whilst I was doing the thing (food) so this meant occasional bulimia and daily binge eating. It felt like I went from 100% to below 0 over a number of weeks - I could feel the anxiety and depression getting heavier and heavier every day and my weight fluctuated constantly. It was pretty scary, I was a complete wreck and I had no idea how to handle it. So essentially I think my driving force behind productivity comes from here as a counter-weight to all of the 'wasted' time, although I'm also a procrastinator and don't really push myself. My first view of ego death was a ketamine+mdma trip back in my teens that just completely blew my mind. I had many similar sessions that were incredible. The only problem was becoming too involved with the party scene instead of being mature enough to start the hint, start meditating and perhaps take psychedelics in controlled settings. But yeah, I was young and wanted to take everything to the extreme. Either way, all of this has lead me towards meditation, yoga etc. I still have small hints of the passion here and there with guitar and I now relate this to a kind of spiritual experience in that everything else shuts off and I'm completely consumed - hours can go by, food is forgotten about and once I'm out of it my bladder seems to be more urgent than breathing. I think it's dzogchen described in the Tibetan book of living and dying - the moment before another thought rises. I'm not saying it is this thing, but it's the closest description I can relate the feeling to. Whichever of the above 3 I work on more, the other suffers and this results in guilt. (Don't even get me started on social/family - this is something I neglect too much. I'm on and off engaged with social/family but more off). I have really good relationships with people now also which took a very long time for me after the 'stint' as I used to be in my comfort zone surrounded by new faces but then was too scared to even look my parents in the eye - everything and everyone felt alien, or I felt like the alien. Okay enough about my feelings... Overall I always seem to have too much to do and too little time to accomplish it. Even recently during my current unemployment, I'm finding it hard to tackle all of the above, although it's still early days. Goals from travel/routine More Ayahuasca + San Pedro. 5-MEO-DMT (hopefully). 1-2 hours daily Vipassana. 30-60 minutes self-inquiry. 30 minutes do nothing. Photograph and write about my experiences. 2 hours of guitar per day. Life purpose (not that I'll necessarily find it, more so just work on it as much as possible). Completely give up old eating habits (almost done!) Drop as much anxiety as possible (my main 'fear' is people - I still sometimes feel my voice shaking when talking to certain people but I try my best. I just know there's so much more I can do to completely be rid of this so it's not so demobilizing). Improve Spanish. Other more 'generic' goals (meet new people, volunteer in the Amazon, experience the culture, try foods, go on hikes look at sloths etc). Meditation, self-inquiry etc will be on overdrive during the Ayahuasca sessions as I don't really plan on just laying around too much and I also don't want to be engaging too much in photography or guitar at this time (if at all). To me the list seems pretty crammed and I'll need to adjust as I go along as there are a lot of things I want to see whilst I'm out there as well. This is kinda how my life has been for the past 5 years, since I started full-time work after university, leaving work with a lot of tension and anxiety then sometimes too tired to work, ie I've fallen asleep sitting up playing guitar multiple times. I noticed this the most on Saturdays where I had no commitments during the day or on Sunday. Finally, my mind could rest and I could focus on the task. I get that I'm playing a victim here but nonetheless I've left my job and I have 4 months ahead of me to work on myself. I've been watching Leo's videos on and off for a few years and have recently come back to the channel learning about non-duality which has sparked some serious interest. This being said, I thought this was a good place to ask this question amongst like-minded actualizers who may be able to advise me on any steps I can take to really take full advantage of this time as it may be the only time in my life I have this opportunity. Thank you if you read my partial life biography. I could go on and on but I tried my best to stick to the main points.

Brainwashing is a word with negative connotations, so maybe conditioning or daily reminders of what your life is about and where you want to go would be ideal. I can sit and talk about consciousness, yoga, near death experiences etc with one group, and then revert to geeza English waffle with another. Both conversations have their pros and cons but both also completely influence who I am at that point, how I will feel when I get home, how productive I am and in which areas, what my goals are etc. My point being that reminders can be powerful, and you can use different mediums to bring you back, so to speak. Sometimes I'll get lost in work, friends, daily routines etc, then watch one of Leo's videos and just be taken back to it all. It's as if I've been asleep and I just wake back up and start working again. I'm not a complete whore for Leo but his videos have always made the most sense to me, whilst some others just seem to throw ideas around they've read on a blog etc and thus they lose their value. But there's lots of things you can do for yourself to keep you centered. Maybe you could make a daily habit of say 10 minutes just to write down what you want to do in life, where you find enjoyment, what's important to you etc. The world is a complete sensation orgy and there are only certain people that can keep their cool throughout life without much effort. Sure, they still work hard, but I'm assuming they just found their passion and went for it, blocking everything else out.

Yeah that's it. My girlfriend used to hate it as she'd see it as me not looking forward to anything. I'd try and explain that I'm just here in the now etc but still I get what she means. On the other hand, if there's something coming up I'm nervous about I will do everything in my power to prepare.

I have a feeling the answers here will be very similar. (I added on a few bonus points as I'm greedy) Meditation. Vipassana retreat. Travelling around Peru for 6 weeks. Starting the gym/running. Taking dissociatives/psychedelics (wow - the first breakthroughs are incredible). Stopping drinking (I now drink moderately, enjoy it and go home once I've had enough. No guilt, no shame, reduced anxiety, and more money in my pocket). Meeting my girlfriend - not really a choice but choosing to pursue the relationship was. Starting guitar again. Putting myself out there with photography. More and more keep coming to mind...

I've not been very excited about the trip but this really shot a spark through me ha, thank you. I'm generally quite neutral and don't get excited really (although am generally quite happy) which annoys my girlfriend a bit haha. Needless to say this will hit me soon - not long to go now! Thanks for that, I searched through the blog but all I found was a photo of Leo back in his prime with long hair and a bowling shirt. That's it, a single focus. Mine will be (and is currently) to go deeper into my life purpose. As you can see I have too many (and there's more I haven't written down). It's hard but I'm confident I'll be able to move one to the top of my priorities and put the rest as hobbies as time goes on. Acting without labels, I forgot about that. I've already been feeling this more since leaving my job and walking around as a civilian. There's so much of me that is structured by my job, some good and some bad. To be honest, thinking now I think I've completely underestimated how transformative this trip is going to be. What was your focus? Oh for sure, I really feel as though I can't take squeezing everything into tiny time gaps anymore. I need time to think and act without worrying that I've only got 45 minutes before I need to sleep before work etc. I know this time will come again but this trip could not have come at a better time for me - I've had it in the back of my mind for almost 5 years and I've grown so much in this time that I think if I did go any earlier then I would not reap as many benefits as now. This is easy to say though and in 10 years from now I will see again how little I knew.

Photography and guitar are both hobbies I guess but I see myself doing well with either one. I seem to be more drawn to guitar than photography, but photography is something I can much more easily begin making money with. I will 99% pick guitar and just have photography as a hobby I occasionally get work with - I would rather be a master at guitar than a master photographer. But either way, thinking will probably be the most I think I will gain out of this, as well as the experience. Even now my mind just feels so much freer as I don't have work looming over me, sucking me dry of all energy and time. I'm made a note to interview myself and journal. I think sometimes I'm not too comfortable with writing everything down in a notepad someone could just pick up and read so I'm going to stick all of this locked into evernote. Money is not too much of a big deal as I've been saving a while but I'm just going to spend as minimal as possible whilst I'm out there so yeah the rest on psychedelics ha. Time is the biggest factor - I didn't get much holiday at work but I feel in a better position of understanding now to explain to my partner in the future that I want to take 2 weeks off by myself to go on a solo retreat. That's it, I don't want to blink and it's gone. It's been hard for me to accept that I need to drive focus into a single area as there are so many things I want to give 100% to but it's just not possible. Do you have a link to the solo retreat notes? 5-MEO's not a maybe ha, it's a hopefully as I'm not sure how reliable my source is and Peru isn't meant to be big on using toad venom in this manner. Although I will do my best to speak to as many people as possible to see if anyone low key is offering it. Most of the curanderos out there just offer Sapo as I'm sure you're aware. I'm assuming there will be some gringos out there offering everything. I've also heard that there are gringos offering stronger Ayahuasca than the normal shamans, ie not a tourist dose to avoid freakouts. I'm going to speak to the shamans about this also as it's a shame being I've drunk Ayahuasca 11 times and I've not had a single 'breakthrough' experience, deep insight etc. Maybe it wasn't meant to be like that for me, but at the same time I've always taken a basic approach of potent brew = strong experience. Again though, a friend and I took mushrooms before, I had more than him and I only had mild effects. He on the other hand had almost a complete ego death (gone from this reality entirely but still was aware of who he was). This is just something I've come to accept in that I can never know how an experience will turn out, but I'm hoping with my meditation practice that I can go deep regardless.

I watched some a 5-hour lecture on the holographic universe theory a few years ago and there's a study in there from the UK that ran tests which came out showing that before the subject made up his mind they could tell which option on the test he would choose up to 6 seconds before he carried out the determining action. So essentially I guess from this example you could see this as being tricked into thinking that we are thinking our own thoughts. "There have been some studies that have shown that when people are beginning to move a hand, or beginning to say something, that there's actually activity in the brain - in certain nerve cells of the brain - even before they become consciously aware of what they were trying to do." I mean it could just be that our brains are slower than we think but it's interesting none the less and falls into the concepts discussed here.

Weed + self-inquiry seems to help propel you forward a bit, or breakthrough certain concepts. Still, better to do sober and only use it very moderately, rarely at best. This is just personal opinion though.

Precisely - I've been aware of this for years but I think my commitment just wasn't there. I left room for myself to act on the urges. Thank you! One thing at a time is a very useful point. It's very easy to think 'I want to do everything now and change right this second'. My past is a lesson to myself that this is not always possible, if ever. I think it's both, or more so that I identify the empty feeling with food, or that I've just always tackled that feeling by stuffing my face. My brain makes up all kinds of excuses to eat. I keep trying to remember to write down all of my thoughts to see what's there. Do nothing meditation feels as though it's helping. I've actually just left my job and have months of travel ahead of me. I completed a vipassana retreat recently and meditate daily, anywhere from 30-60 minutes depending on how much time I have and how tired I am. With no job and travel coming up I will be integrating this into my life much more. Exactly! It doesn't matter what the food is - I have always overeaten/binged. I am male. Thank you, I was practising yoga daily for about 20-30 minutes but that time is now taken up with meditation. It's more so 2 sessions per week rather than every day but I understand what you mean. Sometimes just some pressups help but sooner or later the urges return so I'm looking to get past just giving into them. Thanks for all of your responses guys.

Thanks for the reply. I' feel like I've gradually broken down my own arrogance, naivety and ignorance of meditation ability a lot over the past year or so and the retreat was definitely eye-opening. The whole revelation of how I'd just been playing into sensations in the past without even realising made me laugh and cry. I feel as though it was extremely humbling in that I can see how this breakthrough is microscopic in the grand scheme of things. Also, one thing that kept me going was that the purpose for this type of work is ultimately seeing the truth of the universe, so the idea of attempting to get there half-heartedly just seemed so stupid. Although, in terms of the laws of nature there is no stupidity; everything just works as it does. If you go round in circles your whole life never putting in legitimate effort and hard work then you will just yield the results equal to the quality of work. Basically you reap what you sow, but phrases like this just get passed to the point where they just lose their value. Learning these things through experience just makes you think how many other things in your life you've taken for granted or have never really taken advantage of due to just shrugging them off. I tried Leo's 'do nothing' meditation a couple of times yesterday and it's pretty hard haha. One thing I learned is that I am really craving shutting my eyes to relax a bit. I'm now conscious of this during vipassana in an effort to keep my focus alert on the task as my eyes are always shut. I've now left my job and have 4 months of travel ahead of me so there will be lots of meditation and self-inquiry, so I'm confident now that things will begin to change a lot for me. Also, Flylo has a new album coming out soon. Cool cover below:

First post here. Okay so there are many realizations I've had through meditation/vipassana before/after but this is the one which stands out to me the most. I took part in a 10-day silent retreat and on the 6th day (somewhere around the 65th hour) everything started clicking into place about the technique. This was brought on by internalising some of the teachings and comparing them to my current state, technique and where this was at the time. I said something to myself like 'This is just a sensation (referring to concentrated areas of pain in my back/legs), like all other sensations (gross, pleasurable, numb), nothing more nothing less. It will come and go, it cannot be infinite because that is the law of nature.' This flicked on a switch, and I was able to observe all sensations with no reaction. I could feel (or see telepathically/mentally but not visualize) thoughts as they passed through my mental space with no attachment. The sensations became nothing, they had no control over me. The painful sensations were now just sensations like all others. Everything was just coming and going. I felt like an observer, invincible, godlike. This felt like a break from physical life, a taste of equanimity. There was no trying anymore. Everything just flowed and I sat there in awareness. I could have left after that point and I took a lot of positivity which I hold to this day. Well after that, things flipped around and it took me around another day and a half of meditation fighting with myself to return to that state to gain a greater understanding of the constant changing state of mind. I essentially had to start again from scratch, slower than I initially had to bring myself back to being calm through the remaining sessions. I now practice daily for 1 hour (sometimes less). I find it hard to concentrate as I wake up reasonably early to start my meditations and I find myself falling asleep a lot but I still push through when I can. I still haven't gotten back there and at the moment it just feels as though I'm breaking down some anxiety, depression, anger etc so I'm a bit calmer during the day. This of course has its benefits and I find it crazy how much this stuff comes back in full force when I don't meditate for a few days up to 1 week. I used to watch Leo's videos a few years ago and now I'm back but with greater focus, so I'm hoping to continue the journey with some online support as there are not many people in my life that support this lifestyle so I guess I let this lead me astray.