BipolarGrowth

All of my answers will be coming from the lens of some helpful strains of Buddhism I’ve found in the past months which have added quite a bit to my growth. It can be a very fruitful way of thinking about this stuff. In this framework, the mind is just another sense door like any of the 5 senses. You have sensations which occur in your head which we call thoughts, but they’re really just like a tiny itch arising in your body for one example. It arises without your control. It exists for a time. Then it vanishes. If you do vipassana meditation (which you can do at any time whether “meditating” on a cushion with eyes open, eyes closed, music, no music, at work, at the bar, while eating food… you get the point), you can penetrate and clearly see thoughts as they come as sensations alone. 1. Do you regard this sentence to be a thought or would you call this something different? In other words is it only a thought if it is not spoken/written? The sentence isn’t a thought. It’s a representation constructed as a byproduct of thought. I consider thoughts to only occur within the mind itself usually as words, images, and memories/future projections (these two are more of an amalgamation of thought rather than a “singular” thought. 2. Do random sounds inside your mind (for lack of a better word) constitute a thought? Ex. if you produced garbagunk in your mind would you consider that a thought? I would consider these a type of thought, but they’re less attached to the ego mind in most cases. 3. Does a thought have to consist of words? No. Plenty of sources will at the very least say that thought can happen in images. 4. Are all words thoughts? If they are heard in the head, yes. If they are “externalized” from the inner mind experience, I don’t consider them thoughts. 5. What if you said "a" to yourself. Do you consider that to be a thought? Yes, it just doesn’t have survival utility, so the ego will find little need to support such a thing. This is if you think of it in the head/mind as a sound before saying it. Once it’s turned into just sound sensations, it’s not a thought. You can talk/type/write for hours, weeks, or however long as it goes and have no thoughts. It’s just hard for people to access this state of no mind at the beginning. It becomes pretty common I think as you go later on.

Authenticity is so important. It’s crucial.

Psychedelics will be a great tool. Start using them if you are comfortable with that decision. They are the quickest path to truly deep insight. They will help you expand your meditative practice. I highly recommend you start reading and implementing this book which is entirely free online and one of the highest quality meditation/enlightenment manuals. This stuff will be what really helps you get to the point of locking in permanent levels of awakening that do not go away. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/ I highly recommend trying Bhakti yoga. I highly recommend you learn about kundalini/chakras and how to bring this process on. Do things intuitively. Don’t follow rules. Follow results. There are an infinite amount of ways to awaken. Try all of the typical spiritual methods that you resonate with. Don’t get hyper focused on one technique. Everyone says to meditate, meditate, meditate for example. Yeah, it’s great, but I got most benefit from using multiple other methods then meditating more once I had already reached stream entry (1st path of awakening in Buddhism). Even now I hardly meditate compared to other people. There are things on this path which I can guarantee you would not believe if I told you. Have faith that there are shocking and ridiculous unexpected capacities for growth to occur in areas you don’t even know about yet. You’ll find stuff when the time is right. I hope you discover what works for you.

This is my favorite recycled joke ever. The highest dharma.

Fear is amazing. Enjoy this limited time gift while you can.

It always wants exactly what’s present/experienced.

Neurogenesis doesn’t mean that the negative effects couldn’t possibly be far worse than any (likely small) neurogenesis that occurs. There’s just too little info to say what’s going to happen at this point. There are probably more straightforward and researched ways to impact your brain health than DMT, but a lot of this depends on what condition it is we’re even talking about here. This thread is like calling a doctor’s office and asking if a new compound there is hardly any significant research for can cure a problem, but you’re unwilling to even tell the doctor what your problem is other than it’s in your foot. No details about what’s happening with the foot, just that it’s a foot problem… Any doctor would say I need more info and probably recommend a more tested solution than the obscure chemical you have an affinity for.

The best friend I ever had probably was someone who would vent to me for hours, and I was always able to share anything I wanted to too. It just depends on the friendship. My best friendships were actually always based on an ability for people to share space and do this. So many great car rides/drives listening to our favorite music and talking about our biggest problems at the time and other deeper interests in life… I miss it.

Have you met painbows? *exits the room respectfully with the knowledge that the important work has been done*

Can you define what enlightenment is to you?

Wrong.

Just watch.

Wouldn’t healing the brain be affecting it? What is the issue you’re experiencing?

Yeah this sounds pretty familiar lol. It’s just more and more depth. Momentum keeps going to essentially exponentially stronger levels. I’ll have to examine it from the “vault of beliefs” perspective and see how this impacts things.

I’m just curious when all these shifts slow down. Did you notice a point where it basically reached a “baseline” which continued on rather unperturbed? Or are new facets/“perceptual” upgrades/whatever we want to call them still getting revealed to you regularly?

You’re welcome Vibroverse self.

Edibles are simply the form that most people seem to report a psychedelic effect with. There are a number of people who experience psychedelic effects when smoking, vaping, etc. Smoking concentrated THC is the most psychedelic form for me. $5-$10 of dabs (concentrated THC) was 100x more potent in one instance for me than 6 grams of shrooms or 10 tabs of LSD were (not suggesting anyone use those amounts, just giving my data). I know I’m an odd case though. This was also only on one instance where it was in that 100x more potent category. THC in stronger forms like that is rather unpredictable how powerful it will be for me. Oftentimes smoking concentrated THC is comparable to one of those high dose serotonergic trips or sometimes maybe 5x stronger. This variance of 1x to 5x to 100x is from the same batch. It’s not a question of “was this laced on the stronger experience?” The chemical itself was the exact same. Be careful for when the Divine selects your trip to randomly blast you past all previously experienced possibilities seemingly without rhyme or reason which can be known to you in any reliable way. The great news is, for me at least, dabs or edibles are the safest during trip and off trip compared to those other substances listed above for me personally.

The switch happened maybe 10 years after starting to use cannabis. So I’ve only had 1.5 years at this new effectiveness. High dose trips (be careful anyone reading, of course, follow strong safety protocols) on serotonergic psychedelics would probably be the best thing that would be transferable advice on how to do it for yourself. It seems to be how it occurred for others. Maybe really intense meditation awakenings could also cause the switch to some degree. Realistically, we’re probably talking about having experiences which alter how your brain processes these mind-altering chemicals to make them more psychoactive. Psychedelics are probably the way this is happening in all the cases I’ve found this happening. Also, it continues to get more effective. It overcomes the effects of tolerance. Most people who consume THC notice huge drop offs in effectiveness from tolerance. Around the time I start running into tolerance issues, without fail for the past year, I will have a huge trip from a low dose and be upgraded from that point forward. I basically call this the divine chemical upgrade or something like that lol. It’s quite humorous. Also, my huge shifts in baseline consciousness have an effect on the effectiveness too, so this is another thing to consider. It’s a feedback loop. THC raises baseline even when completely sober, higher baseline raises effects of THC.

Ayahuasca did it for me, and this was a way worse fear than spiders for you I’d be willing to wager.

THC is a better psychedelic for me than any others I’ve tried. I’m biased because it works quite differently for me than most people, but I’m sure a good number of people serious about this work will find similar things for themselves if they gave it a shot in this way. I say this because I’ve seen a number of people report the effect I’m talking about, just at a somewhat reduced effectiveness. Once you break a certain barrier, it turns from a counterproductive drug which causes munchies and laziness to huge awakenings which can be experienced much more frequently than using typical psychedelics. Of course, most will need to use higher dose edibles or concentrated THC (dabs) to get the effects I’m referring to, but it’s worth it. It’s much more sustainable and healthier than using other psychedelics being used at the same rate. Something amazing can happen for your spiritual growth when you can be regularly entering strong spiritual states on a daily basis or almost daily basis. It’s a cumulative growth. Increasing the frequency of being in ultra-high states of consciousness can make your progress curve become like an asymptote pointed straight up rather than like the graph of an S&P 500 stock growing slowly. I don’t know of any safe chemical/psychedelic options to try to achieve this with other than THC. Serotonergic psychedelics simply cannot be used often enough in a sustainable way to reach what I’m talking about. You’ll burn yourself the fuck out. Regularly using THC for spiritual growth is one of the greatest factors which triggered immense growth for myself in the Theravada Buddhist four path model and stages of insight process which is almost always seen as something accessed through meditative practice (at least to the degree I’ve progressed in it) alone. This progress remains in completely sober states. This approach probably only works well for maybe 10% of serious seekers, but I share it because it’s truly life changing stuff for those it can work for. Obviously stop trying it if it doesn’t seem like you’re getting similar positive effects or it’s causing overall negative effects on your life. If you try this, make sure to experiment with high quality delta 8 and delta 10 THC as well as other forms of consuming it (tincture, vaping, smoking regular bud, and so on). Feel free to test any high quality products of other THC types that you find. Delta 8 and delta 10 seem have some very useful characteristics to them above delta 9 THC. Don’t keep yourself locked down on one variant.

The ego is as much emptiness as anything else. It’s just patterns of sensations which are ever changing. No problem having an ego. Ego sensations remain after awakening. You just understand what they are and see through the “illusion” of solidity to the ego. You also can’t have “seeing through the illusion” without an “illusion,” so there’s no reason to go hating the fact that there is an “illusion.” Everything else is just as illusory as an ego. The idea you need to rip out some thing called an ego and that’s the solution is mainly a thing spread by newbies in spirituality who haven’t gone through the intricacy that the process being pointed to in that kind of speaking/thinking/theorizing involves.

I mean if you want to twist it to your nondual agenda, then yes. You are absolutely correct, and you are not doing anything related to how religious people interpret things ?

@WokeBloke go see the discussion between @Fearless_Bum and I on the last couple pages of this thread It covers some more intricacies of this question.

There has to be some basis of perceptual difference for people to even make the thought-based distinctions though. You might reject this idea possibly by bringing up theoretical distinctions which are more or less “fully” created in thought alone, but I come at this seeing thought itself as just a sixth sense door. I think you agreed earlier that thought was the same infinite intelligence as everything else or something by a similar name. You probably get the idea. I know you’re pretty familiar/experienced with the nonduality stuff. I’m just pointing back to duality because integrating the two has been of a lot of value for me, and I was just sharing in case someone here might be interested in contemplating “further” into this. No need to go back and forth on the perceptual difference topic between you and I though. I think we’ve essentially said what was needed at this point.

The hug circle is a great improvement. I hope everyone keeps being willing to participate. I think micro-dosing will help you potentially more than big dose trips for now. Having a healthy integration of stage red doesn’t mean using it often necessarily. In a lot of cases, the more you go up the spiral, the less need you’ll have for it. Regardless, never build up an identity of always being averse to stage red.