Raptorsin7

@The0Self I've had the experience of the sense that i'm behind my eyes looking at the world is completely shattered, and it just feels like i'm one thing that encompasses all parts of my experience, instead of feeling like i'm looking at it or separate from it. There's always a sense of this tension at the center of my head just popping and collapsing, and there's a clear perspective shift. Pretty sure that's a realization around no-self, not sure what your definition of liberation is. With where i'm at i'd be content of with just progressing so my perspective changes to the sort of window or block consciousness, where it doesn't feel like I'm localized to the head. I can get like 80% the way there in meditation, but i'm brute forcing it and i'm pretty sure there's a simpler smoother way to faciliate the transition.

@The0Self I've had the experience of liberation on LSD a few times so I have a sense of what I'm going for. If I stay as awareness without getting distracted then the center drops out and the true self is revealed. I'm just having trouble staying as the feeling awareness for long periods without getting pulled out. That time frame doesn't make sense. You can't put a time table on awakening because it could happen really at any time. It could literally happen tmrw if by happenstance I was very relaxed and able to stay as the feeling awareness.

Good luck arc.

What role do you think psychidelics play in this respect. You have experience with psychs in exploring reality and gaining insights etc, but what do you think about the role of psychs to deal with more human-level stuff. Like self esteem, personality disorders, blockages etc

I'm going to work with Tj Reeves over the next month or so, and i'm pretty excited to see what I can accomplish. We are going to work on getting me a digital marketing job, and I'm excited to try and make this happen. I feel much lower today than the past few days. I made some great progress earlier in the week, but I fell into some bad habits over the past few days because i thought i had made so much progress so who cares, and I'm feeling it today I think. I tried to relax and meditate like i did before, and I did not get anywhere close to the release or relaxation as before. I feel the depression and the hopelessness right now. This is hard. I don't know how to get out of this tail spin of thoughts and emotions i'm in right now. It's just overwhelming. A few days ago i felt good, I was breathing deeply, and I thought i had gotten over the hump with my recognition of how much i'm avoiding the present moment and feeling. But today I feel back to square 1 of depression and misery. I have hope because I know it's possible to feel better and have breakthroughs. Just a few days ago I was on the verge of tears in deep meditation, and I was able to relax and play league of legends in a way that I had never done before. But i think it's important for me to understand how I was able to achieve these breakthroughs so I can bring myself back up when i fall into these ruts. Suffering is the call to end the suffering, and so the path will begin again for me. I just can't give up, i know it's possible to get over this. Now that i've tasted it, i can't waste this opportunity.

I will begin to deconstruct me. I have tried for so long to make myself happy and fulfilled. I tried. But today I give up. When i meditate on the present moment there is only presence. I am gone for moments at a time. But for some reason i keep coming back. So i need to deconstruct myself until there is nothing to get back. This where i'm at in my journey in a basic summary: 1. Wake up. I am not satisfied with life. I need to do stuff that will bring me happiness. Procrastinate all day until I meditate or do yoga. 2. Do meditation and connect with the present. No thinking. Just being. But ego always comes back. Present moment isn't enough or ego is too big. 3. Do a bunch of me stuff, procrastinate, go on forum trying to seek bliss and happiness for me, meditate for me, and then go to sleep. I have just read a bunch of post's from @zeroISinfinity and @Nahm, and have gone through their history of when i asked so many questions ask a seeker. All the problems were with me. Time to let myself go. If i operate and act from me and for me then i am fucked. If i operate and act from source/god/love then i can't lose. Sometimes i feel like doing stuff that i know is good but I feel is too much, but that's ok I will just be patient and wait for another idea from god.

@zeroISinfinity Thank you, no worries man do you do your thing.

@fridjonk @Average Investor Thanks guys, i appreciate the support

I can feel the grief building in my stomach and head. When i meditate and breathe deeply, i can feel the emotions come up. This is it. This is the emotional release i've been waiting for, this is going to get me all the way to the LSD high. Things almost completely 180'd. I thought about killing myself all the time for months, now i feel like i have a new lease on life. It's incredible.

@Zigzag Idiot Thanks man. I love that quote too, when i was in deep meditation i thought that quote and felt amazing.

Mood:

Thoughts are powerful. There are a limited number of thoughts experienced each day, and they can really shape your experience. Spending all day thinking about future plans, past mistakes, etc just robs your attention of something good you could be doing. Monasteries are like rehab for people addicted to thinking haha I don't know if this will last, but i'm completely sober, and I feel connected to the core of me, and it seems like things are only going better. “Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.” I thought this quote during a deep meditation session, and I felt a wave of good feeling come over my entire body.

I'm feeling better. But what it really is, is feeling in general. I dissociated from my feelings, and so I was basically just a head. Thinking all day long. The more I feel, the more I am aware of feelings in my body, and the less i'm attached to the thoughts and feeling of the head.

There is no past. There is no future. There is only the present moment. NOW. You can't have it both ways. You can't do it your way, and get the full benefits of enlightenment. You have to surrender all your agendas, there are no exceptions. Whatever comes from the surrender you must accept. I cannot judge, because everything is me. I do not judge. I can express preference, and anyway I choose to, but I will not judge another human as bad. I can acknowledge right and wrong without judgment. I accept my past. It led me here, and here is all good. I learned many lessons, and had experiences that will shape the rest of my life. There are no negatives in my past, there is only acceptance and peace. I do not know the future. Good or bad, I do not know it. I only know the present moment, NOW. I am not my thoughts. I am not the I in thinking. I am the awareness.

I finally have positive news. After months of suicidal thoughts and depression, i made progress with meditation. I realized on the LSD trips, i was able to peak because of i changed my thoughts in response to the high and I felt more deeply then I do when i'm sober. The LSD forced me to feel deeply, and so i had to let go of thoughts like judgment, worry of past and future, and even thoughts related to who I am and the self. It's like the LSD allowed to get through a series of walls in my psyche, resulting in the breakthrough to a connection I've never felt with myself and the world, and literaly bliss flowing into me. I realized I can do all that while sober, it's just a little more difficult because I don't have the LSD heightening my feeling states. I can sit and meditate, and just feel what's there, I never did this before. I was always "trying" to meditate, and would either get frustrated and stop, or just power the session thinking i accomplished something. II realized i'll never get to connection and bliss through thinking and strategizing. It's literally as simple as sitting/laying down... feeling whatever arises and staying with those sensations and breathing into them. You have to surrender everything to your feeling. I haven't got to the same state I achieved through LSD, but i've gotten closer than i've ever gotten with this method. I even got close to full on tears. I found that the more I was able to relax and the deeper I was into the feelings and sensations, the easier it was to get close to crying. I don't know if this will last, i may end up suicidal again tmrw who knows, but this the closest i've gotten to reaching the peak i've been craving since my breakthrough trip in February.

Sorry for the rant below, but i want to provide as much clarity and nuance as I can. So back in Feburary i had a peak experience on LSD, where it felt like there was a mass of tension in my head that was dissolved(for lack of a better term). I had done LSD before and never came close to this kind of experience. After the tension fully released, it felt like the top of my head literally opened up, and after that i felt a weird substance flow through my body. This led to the peak where i felt bliss flowing through my body, and surge of confidence, euphoria etc. Since then i've done a handful of trips, some of which i've gotten close to a similar release, but never quite to that degree. It's always the same pattern though, there's this tension in my head/face and the degree to which i can relieve it is the degree to which i break through into higher tier feeling and being. Even now while i'm sober(Not fully sober i'm on welbutrin (an amphetmaine anti-depressant that actually helps relieve the tension in my head a tiny amount), i can feel that same tension in my head, and when i meditate and breathe there is some kind of release, but nowhere near the point where i can fully release it and let it go. It also is related to my breathing, i've noticed for a while that i had some trouble breathing, and was constantly having sinus problems and nose bleeds. But when the tension release it feels like there's a mass of tension around my nose that is also released and my breathing clears up. I also noticed that I was able to more fully feel tension points in my body, and it was like I was more in tune and inside my body. I also noticed increase in coordination during these breakthrough trips (I'd say i'm mildy autistic given some coordination problems, and repetitive habits etc) So... a few concerns and thoughts I have on this situation are as follows: 1. I am chasing this peak or high, i've been doing this basically since the experience happened. I feel that same tension/pressure in my head while sober, and it feels like there is a block there. On the one hand it feels like i'm just chasing a high and this is just a dead end of self defeating behavior. On the other hand, there's clearly something to this knot and tension located in my head that is affecting me some major ways... it feels like my head is contracted( like much of my body) and for whatever reason the LSD opens the mind/head right up. 2. How do i resolve this conflict? On the one hand, i'm a drug addict chasing an LSD high. On the other hand, there's a contraction in my body (the head) and seeking a way to release the contract is a wise move. I'm a stiff person, i have a ton of tension in my shoulders, back, head etc but i wonder if the release of bliss and sort of astral body i get from releasing the knot in the head is normal? 3. The knot is also influenced by meditation and breathing. I've noticed that the few peak experiences I had, when i would breathe into the knot it would help loosen it up and facilitate the release. I've also noticed that when i used the zgochen technique of becoming aware of the experience of being aware, or turning attention towards it self, it has a big effect on the knot.

@Leo Nordin Just my 2 cents. I don't enlightenment works the way you think it does. If something as simple as highschool is "preventing" you from becoming enlightened then I'd consider the possibility that no matter which way you go you will run into problems. There are multiple paths a spiritual seeker takes on their quest for enlightenment, whatever that means. But one thing that happens is psychologically unstable people use enlightenment and spirituality to bypass the trials and tribulations of living and succeeding in the world. I fell into this category, and I made a lot of decisions based on my own projections and beliefs around enlightenment. The funny/sad thing is that the people who use spirituality in the way I mentioned above are the kinds of people who will ignore everything and just follow their impulse, even though they would benefit most from the advice they callously disregard. Idk if you're like me in that your seeking is a driven by a host of psychological problems, but dropping out of high school seems unnecessarily bold, given your age.

@Forestluv @Leo Gura Do your psychidelic experiences involve a certain part of your body or does it vary from trip to trip? All of my trips involve the same sensations in my head, and they unravel in the same way to varying degrees each trip. Does your felt sense of being change, i know on my better trips I get almost an astral sense of self, sometimes with the sense of self felt as bliss. @Forestluv@Leo Gura If the psychidelics showed me that the release of tension from the head leads to profound changes in my sense of self and reality, then is that I should be striving towards? Or is the tension something that is not meant to be released, and what i experienced was just a peak, and chasing the peak will get nowhere? @Forestluv From what i've read so far, I think there's a link between body tension, personality/character, and general well being. I have a host of psychological problems, mainly involving an immature ego, and I also have a very rigid posture/body as well as abnormalities in how I walk, write, etc. Given what i've experienced on my trips, the release of tension from the head leads to a change in how my entire body is felt and functions, whatever is being released from the pressure in the head, has a dramatic impact on the functioning of my entire sense of self. My coordination is better, I am more in my body and feel connected, and i'm more aware of deeper tension/stress located in different parts of my body. Problem solving and creativity were also enhanced during the trips I was able to release the tension, and i'm assuming the more developed an ego becomes the more creative and effective a person comes at whatever they pursue. I've felt myself slip into the schizoid/anti-social end of personality function over the past few months and it definitely corelates with the rigidity of my body. Imagine the sense of self of an anti-social person, it's reserved, contracted, and closed off from the world. I think you see this manifest in their bodies as well. Now, imagine the opposite end of the spectrum, a loving, self actualized person. Their sense of self is expansive, open, relaxed. This would also correlate with their felt sense of the body, and would also show in character as peace, compassion, and calm. I also noticed a relationship between crying and the contractions in my body. After my peak experience on LSD, the next day I felt a strong urge to cry. It felt as though the intense crying would alleviate pressure in the same area that the LSD had acted upon. But when the time came for the release, my body physically resisted the urge to cry. I imagine for some people full on crying is a freeflowing experience, but I imagine my inability to cry and release is related to all the factors mentioned above. The problem for me is in how to approach the problem. There's clearly multiple facets interacting, and I don't know which point deserves the most attention. Would addressing the tension with direct stimulation work, or does it require forming connections with human beings and having new experiences to unlock more of the self, or maybe some other factor I haven't considered. Interestingly, the release of tension from the head isn't just influenced by LSD. I've started taking wellbutrin, and it does feel like ~10% of the effect that LSD has had on my experience.

@Leo Nordin Hey i was in a similar situation to you while i was in law school. I didn't really enjoy it, and in my mind there were so many great options with dropping out that it didn't really matter whether i stay or go. I ended up dropping out, and i regret not staying and finishing the program. Even if you don't like it, finishing something you started is important I think, and especially with education. You will not look back in a few years and regret staying and finishing highschool, but there's a good chance you'll look back and regret dropping out. I was a lot like you tbh. I only wanted to listen to the opinions of "awakened" people, and i was so sure that what i was doing would work because it was all in the name of enlightenment and spirituality. I didn't listen to any of the warnings haha so if you're deadset on doing it then you probably won't listen either but I had to give my 2 cents given i just went through a similar situation.

@Shiva99 How did you overcome the childish mentality, and the giving up? I had a similar upbringing but i still struggle with being a child in a man's body.

@modmyth How would you uproot the negative belief once you identify it?

Has anyone managed to uncover repressed rage (or other repressed emotions) that were at the root of their depression? I'm struggling a lot right now, and i'm pretty confident that a core issue of mine is i don't allow emotions to flow freely, and i likely repressed many emotions since childhood. I have heard that depression is anger turned against the self, which makes a lot of sense in my case because of constant thoughts of guilt, shame, blaming myself etc. I've always had a harsh inner critic. I do feel my emotions are just blocked, as i feel a strong tension in my head, i feel like that tension/pressure is the blockage that is preventing the free-flow of emotions and energy through my body.

I'm currently 25 and i'm struggling with maturing into a functioning adult and overcoming some ego developmental issues. I live at home and over the past few months i've fallen into a serious rut and i'm pretty paralyzed with moving forward with my life. Although i'm 25, i'd say emotionally/maturity wise i'm still a teenager/child. I struggle with feelings of envy, shame, and a deep feelings of insecurity and worthlessness. When i look at job postings or think about my future, i just think/feel that i'm so far behind and i just feel hopeless and stop the search and look for an escape (mainly through food and video games). My parents mean well and they do their best, but i've been a huge devil in my life, and especially recently. I really resent my parents for how i turned out. I feel like a complete failure and loser, and i'm so ashamed for things have turned out so far in my life, and I blame/resent my parents for how they raised me and what they let happen. My thought process is completely toxic, and my habits are toxic as well (poor diet and little exercise), I take no responsibility for my life, and i'm a perpetual victim as well. The worst part is that i just feel helpless and hopeless, and i have strong desire/motivation to change. I know my life's a mess and i want to be happy and functional, but whenever i think of what it takes to get going, or make some progress, i just feel overwhelmed and give up. I feel like there's a million areas of my life that need improvement, but given what i've read on development there's definitely a hierarchy of stuff to work on, so i'm curious if anyone has resources or ideas on where to put my focus on improving.

It took me 6 years to get the 4 year degree. When i first started college i was very motivated, all i would do was study and i did really well. But i didn't form friendships or form connections, and i wasn't even really enjoying the course work. I was just incredibly motivated to not be a loser and get into a pharmacy program. I was using school and academic success as a way to deal with feelings of inferiority and envy, with the hope that if i achieved success i would be able to turn myself into a good and happy person, and finally be able to be normal and happy like the people i envied. But before my 2nd semester of 2nd year i freaked out because i thought my hair was falling out, and i basically just failed a year of classes because i was so pre-occupied with the thought of me being a bald loser, and my plan to work myself into being not a being a loser basically crashed. I actually overcame this depression and made some big improvements at the time in my feelings of happiness and satisfaction. I was still kinda messed up, i was still akward and odd, only now i had more energy and was less inward and withdrawn and more shamless and just open doing stuff. Idk part of me feels like i'm just defective. I think the next step in my development is to find a solid structure and routine, but i also have a ton of emotional stuff to deal with. Like i have an incredibly fragile psyche. I feel like a little kid in a man's body, and idk if this will get better with getting a routine or something. At this point i've kinda given up on life, i'm basically a recluse, and hopefully things change in the future but right now it's kinda hopeless and i'm just out of it mentally and phyisically.

@Nahm What can i do when i don't have the discipline, will power, drive, or want to do the basics? When i'm this deep in the hell of my own mind, or is the answer always going to be mastery of the basics or suffer and whither until I do? I really don't feel grateful for anything, it's all just negative and pessimism. Also, question about autsim and Asperger's. Growing up i had a lot of these signs and symptoms, but was never really diagnosed. Does that change the calculus on any of this stuff, or is that just another negative perspective i'm focusing on and believing?