TheAlchemist

All I can say is I find both Metta and Kriya to be very powerful techniques in regards to affecting my awareness, most techniques don't affect me anywhere near as quickly. I would experiment with that for a few months and then re-evaluate

Vaping DMT is enough horror for me lol Very interesting point, never had the desire to watch horror movies after starting shadow work and taking psychedelics. I think meditating on the experience of fear that arises from horror movies and accepting it could be useful.

how long have you been doing it?

I can vouch for this too. My second strongest (after 30mg dmt) mystical experience was on a high dose of cannabis after having not smoked for almost a year. Stronger that many shroom or LSD trips. The effects have been very different after getting into spirituality than they were 5 years ago when I smoked quite often. I have no problem classifying Cannabis (sativa) as a psychedelic now, whereas before it wasn't really psychedelic at all for me. It just shows how much intention and prior context matters, I'm willing to believe that for some people small-moderate doses of shrooms are probably not even really psychedelic because they don't have that context to hold them in. But of course it probably also has to do with the unique chemistry of the individual using it etc. so probably it isn't like this for everyone. I think Terence McKenna had an interesting perspective: the best way to use Cannabis is to do it rarely, but when you do it take a massive dose.

In these conversations about gluten I usually don't see people taking into account the highly promising benefits of feeding the gut microbiome. It has been demonstrated that many healthy bacteria strains in the gut can be fed with rye especially well, since it has a really good slow digestion profile and it it is broken down almost through the whole length of the intestinal tract feeding different bacteria along the way. The intestinal tract is basically as diverse as a rainforest, and if you don't feed the bacteria that keep the system in balance, unexpected consequences might happen, which we are have just in recent years begun to understand. Overall if you don't have celiac disease or other gluten sensitivity, the net effect from high quality rye seems to be quite positive. Thesis= gluten good Antithesis=gluten bad Synthesis=gluten in some forms and in certain cases bad, sometimes good and healthy. Before the last decade the power of the microbiome wasn't understood anywhere near as well (especially how it affects brain function), and that aspect is changing our understanding of the body system quite significantly. It's quite a new aspect of consideration in regards to human health optimization, but many people (understandably) want to cling to the old paradigm where the role of the microbiome wasn't understood.

I have found that weed is quite a powerful psychedelic for me now after having used psychedelics. Many years ago, before using other psychs it had a very different effect on me compared to now. I would bet that if someone like Leo who has tripped extensively tried a strong sativa, he would have a powerful psychedelic experience from it. But I could be wrong

Buddhist ultra-nationalists advocating for violent action to preserve their traditions.

Studies have been done where they looked at the brain activity (neurophysiological responses with EEG) of men to different female body types. The best predictor of self-rated attractiveness and also activity (related to attraction) in the brain was a low waist to hip ratio, and large breasts. These qualities cause a reaction in the male brain because they have some survival value. Since we were getting into the topic of titology here, there are many interesting theories as to why larger breasts have evolved. One of them is that large breast trigger a similiar reaction in the male brain as large hips (which have survival value for increased ability to give birth safely) due to the similiar shape. This way those women with larger breasts have reproduced more, because more men on average have had an attraction to them. In many studies "unnaturally' thin women have been demonstrated to consistently cause a negative, anti-attraction reaction in the male brain. Runway models being thin has more to do with the aesthetics and how it makes the clothes drape better. Now, we can't make any oughts from what is observed here. And a lot is still unknown or inconclusive, this is just one perpective. Still, it is undeniable that many of these are powerful mechanisms hard wired into our brains, and they are bound to affect what we pursue. These forces of evolution create the basis for the distinct biases men and women have. And here we are, having a difficult time understanding each others brains that work very similiarly in most other ways, but quite differently in regards to attraction.

It seems to be possible to bring awareness even to the deep dreamless sleep state. "Losing" consciousness just happens because the lure of the dream is so strong, just like in the daytime when we are deeply entrenched in thought, we kind of lose awareness. With enough consistent intention you can become conscious in the dream and even beyond the dream. When sleeping and attempting to lucid dream I once became lucid in an empty space where there were no dream images. From this empty space I could observe myself creating my dreams in real time. I realized that my mind (in the dream creation process) simply grasps to those images, sensations, memories and ideas that are have the most "pull" to them. It seems to be a completely out of control process, these images just spring up, and for one reason or another a certain world is created in the dream as opposed to different one. Just like when I really observe my thoughts, I sometimes grasp how they are just completely automatically being formed, jumping from one thought to another with no middle man in between.

@integral I'm torn between strongly wanting and strongly not wanting to have your superpower ?

I get the sense that these discussions are not progressing anywhere. The same people are making the same points as for the past months in these threads. Not a lot of embracing of opposing perspectives is happening. How can we have conversations where each one of us honestly aims to see the truth in the other persons perspective, instead of trying to see the faults?

Like probably many of you, I have recently been out in public both with, and without a mask. Something very interesting that I have noticed is that my thinking and my way of seeing the world and other people is affected by whether or not I wear a mask. When I don't wear a mask, I tend to relate more with other people who are not wearing a mask. I feel more separate from other people who are wearing a mask. Ideas and narratives that support the idea that wearing masks is dumb, not useful etc. are more attractive for my mind, because they are self-serving and they help reduce cognitive dissonance. They help reduce the conflict that exists between how people around me are acting, and how I am acting. The more people I see around me wearing a mask (while I am not) the more the cognitive dissonance increases. My mind sees that this discomfort can only be relieved by either a) getting in line with other people's narratives or b) by grasping onto a powerful narrative that justifies my choices. On the other hand, when I am wearing a mask in public, pretty much the opposite thing happens. I begin relating much more with people who are wearing a mask and my mind starts grasping onto narratives that make me feel better about that. There is this tribalistic ingroup-outgroup dynamic that happens quickly and quite automatically, and my mind grasps to those narratives that support my choices. I do believe I have a rational basis for wearing a mask and an understanding of why masks work, but it's also useful to at times take a break and seriously consider if I am just acting out some narrative (pre-packed package of justifications) my mind has grasped onto. Have you noticed this dynamic operating in yourself? How do you think these processes unfold in society at large? How can we avoid slipping into these ingrained patterns in ourselves? Just more self-awareness? Or more detachment or "transcendence" perhaps? Or is it even a bad thing to slip into these patterns if it helps society at large?

Talking about being innovative and creative; This guy embeds wisdom into music. Listen to this song, it's a great little education on how to start having great ideas.

Listen to this. See if you feel things clicking in a profound way just during the first 30 minutes. If the style suits you keep going and I think you will get quite a deep sense of higher level understanding just from this one video.

I find that dense/informational/abstract books are much better in text format while biographies or books with some kind of storyline are better in audio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale Check out the Kinsey scale. There is no reason to categorize sexuality in such black and white ways that we are used to in the Western world. In the field of sexology and also psychology there is a quite large consensus nowadays that sexuality is more of a spectrum than the strict categorization we have been indoctrinated with. I think this idea of the spectrum of sexuality is much more intuitive and makes much more sense. Btw I don't think having performance anxiety has necessarily anything to do with your sexuality, it's interesting how people are jumping to that conclusion here.

If you look beyond the hype and look at what the World Economic Forum (which is not some secret convention of evil elites, but a largely Green value based coming together of politicians, intellectuals, business leaders and reporters) is actually suggesting, you might find that it's not as crazy as it's made out to be in that video. What they are mostly focusing on in their proposal is something called stakeholder capitalism as opposed to shareholder capitalism (which is prominent in the US). That is not some radical communist China idea, it is already common practice in many European countries. It's actually quite a soft policy; at worst it will do nothing to address the existential threat of climate change or increasing wealth inequality. There's seems to be no reason to believe that it is a step towards some communist credit score dystopia. The statement "you will own nothing, and you will be happy" is the perfect provocation for anyone with an gram of libertarian inside them. It's not well thought out since that reaction wasn't expected. It refers to working towards a circular economy, which is one great way to reduce carbon footprint and the damages of overconsumption. Collaborative consuption and the sharing economy is already on the rise, this is just about creating incentives to encourage that. There's no reason to believe a democratic goverment is gonna force you to give up your personal diesel car for example, but it might become significantly more expensive (due to the externalities being priced in) to own than to use collaberatively, which is much more efficient and smart in many ways. https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1909715/the-difference-between-stakeholder-and-shareholder-capitalism/amp/

Yeah that's what I said. Somebody who can levitate, would probably (hopefully) be conscious enough to not want to show it to the general public, knowing the possible consequences.

Also if somebody could levitate, they might be conscious enough to not want to show it to less conscious people. Seeing someone levitate with our own eyes and if we managed to accept it as real beyond any doubt could shatter our paradigm so radically that most humans would go psychotic and society would totally collapse. I can already feel my reality getting unstable when I do illusory form practice, and taking dmt puts me at the limit of what I can handle for now. I would be 100% convinced I'm in a dream if I saw some dude levitating in the sky and I would probably become insane or something for a while before I could fully accept it.

Yeah that's how it's supposed to work. It helps in filtering out the lowest quality posts, spammers, scammers, trolls, edge-lords etc. If everyone is downvoting you, it is more likely to be because the post was low quality, not necessarily because people disagree. It might not be because of that in your case, but you are getting lumped in with the low quality posters by the algorithm. I really don't recommend using a public forum such as reddit as a training ground for developing your pressure handling skills or something. At least not if you want to engage there in any meaningful way. Try to reflect on if you are bringing any value to others with what you post there, that will help you in other areas of life too. Are you sharing a unique perspective that is somewhat well structured? Are you asking a unique question that hasn't been answered already? These are the type of questions you can think about if you want to have meaningful conversations online. Even with this post, I am not totally sure what exactly you are asking and what it has to do with self-actualization, which leads to a situation where you are less likely to get a meaningful reply from someone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocentrism

Check this out. This place is the real Burning Man