KingCrimson

@astrokeen You can buy the book list on the actualized.org website. I have recommended these YouTube channels before, but I will do it again. One is ManojTheYogi. Very practical. He has an entire course up online where he shows you how to do all the different asanas, pranayama and meditation techniques. I found this to be a great start. The second one is Ryan Kurczak. He has 20+ years of experience and has a lot of practical videos where he is showing you how to practise different techniques, and he also goes into great depth to explain the theory behind Kriya Yoga. The third is The Satsang Foundation / Sri M. He is an accomplished master who teaches Kriya Yoga all over the world. Hope this helps. I still recommend getting the books as well, though. All the best

Leo has read a lot of books in his lifetime. Especially in his earlier videos you can even tell sometimes what exact books the information is coming from. In his more recent videos, he is drawing a lot from his experiences with meditation and especially 5-MeO-DMT, and consequently his content is different, more original and generally on a higher level than a few years ago. If you had read all the books that he read, and did all the self-actualization work that he did, you would have a lot of things to talk about as well. From what you're describing it seems that you are beginning to develop more awareness. This is good. You're on the right track. Keep meditating every day, read books, watch videos of Leo's or other high consciousness teachers, and in time the whole thing will snowball and you will develop more awareness and be able to connect so many dots in a similar way that Leo did it. I wish you all the best on your hero's journey. Oh, and contrary to what the previous poster said, of course reading non-fiction and self-help books is a good idea, but I would suggest reading great fiction as well. Do not underestimate how much you can learn and grow from reading the greats of world literature. I can't possibly list every author that is worth reading, there are so many, but some of my favourites are Dostoyevski, Tolstoi, Hesse, Kafka, Zweig and Thomas Bernhard. Poetry is worth getting into as well. I for example particularly like Shakespeare, Blake, Frost and some German and Austrian ones like Goethe, Rilke and Celan. There is so much great literature to explore and enjoy!

I actually didn't know that! Do you happen to know where you picked that up? I remember I was first introduced to Bill through the band Tool when I was like 15. They used one of his lines at the beginning of their track Third Eye off the AEnema album, but it wasn't until years later that I watched a show of his. At the time my English skills probably wouldn't have been good enough to comprehend what he was talking about, or at least I wouldn't have had the necessary life experience. It was a revelation when I finally watched him perform few years later though, and he has been a great inspiration to me ever since. Anyway, thanks for sharing this! I hope a few people see this thread and are introduced to his work as a consequence.

I love Bill and especially this story of his. He is the highest consciousness comedian that I know of and on top of that a master of his craft and incredibly entertaining. He gets it, and this excerpt is the most prominent example of this. "A choice, right now, between fear and love."

If you have a hard time meditating cross-legged, there is nothing wrong with using a chair to meditate. The most important thing is that you have a straight spine and that there is no pain distracting you from your meditation. Having difficulty sitting in a cross-legged position can actually be counter-productive for the meditation. If you want to develop the ability to sit cross-legged, Yoga asanas are a great way to do that. If you experience pain that does not go away for a long time, I would consider consulting a medical professional, and always try to listen to what your body is telling you. One more thing that comes to mind: I myself am not able to do the very advanced postures (full lotus position) yet, so I don't have personal experience with this, but I remember Leo mentioning in one of his videos that these very advanced postures can actually be damaging to your knees if you sit in them for too long, so be cautious with these once you get there.

You can sit for multiple hours without damaging your body. If your legs go numb, this is due to the nerves rather than the circulation being cut off as some people think, so don't worry about that. As long as you can stand up and feel normal again within a few minutes after ending your session there is nothing to worry about. I got this information from Shinzen Young and I guess he should know what he's talking about having done this for centuries. Maybe somebody else can give a little more detailed input.

To answer the question as simply as possible: Yes, history shows us that protests can indeed overthrow governments. One good example that you might want to read up on is the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Somewhere between 6 and 9 million people took to the streets to demand that the Shah step down from power, and they succeeded.

I used to do this routine exactly as shown in the video. The first 6 weeks are the introductory / beginner lessons. The lessons will gradually become more advanced. But even if you did just the first 6 weeks of beginner lessons and never did any of the advanced stuff, in terms of mere flexibility, you would see huge improvements. Having said all that, developing flexibility is nice, but is only a small aspect of Yoga practice. The real goal is to attain union with God. Folllow the instructions of the teacher in the videos and you will be fine. If you have any questions, you can always just ask him on YouTube as well and he will reply to you.

I wonder if any of you have ever tried overtone or throat singing. A friend of mine took part in a workshop held by professionals from Tuva (Siberia) and taught me how to do it. I am not as good as him yet, but with steady practice I have seen some good results, and it's only getting better. I enjoy it so much that at this point I do it pretty much all the time, while I'm doing chores around the house etc. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought a shruti box for myself to accompany my singing. Now just sitting with my shruti box and doing overtone singing is one of my favourite hobbies, and I do it every day! From my experience so far this seems like an extremely valuable technique for self-actualization. For me, it is the most effective aid in meditation / concentration I have come across so far. This might be because I am a musician and I am not as much of a visual person, but it is extremely easy for me to stay focused on the tone I am producing rather than, say, a candle flame. In order to get a clearly audible and loud tone, one has to experiment a lot with tongue positioning, how to breathe properly etc, so being focused more or less happens automatically, otherwise you won't have much success. Apart from that, I am convinced that the vibrations that are being produced have a profound healing effect on the body. In a rather hard to describe way it feels very cleansing, especially for the throat, ears and nostrils. It is supposed to stimulate the third eye, charge the cerebral cortex of the brain, energize the physical body, slow down respiration, enhance and promote more vivid dreams, encourage cellular healing, harmonize the chakras, and generally expand consciousness. I highly encourage you to try learning this wonderful practice. If you google for it, you will find all the resources you need to start practising. Anybody can do it, you just have to keep at it and the results will come. As with most things, the more you practice, the quicker you will be good at it. My friend also got a pdf at the workshop that I would be willing to share if anybody is interested. I don't have it on my computer so I would have to ask him first though. If anybody here has done overtone or throat singing, I would love to hear about your experiences. Finally, I want to share an amazing artist from Switzerland utilizing overtone singing, other ethnic singing techniques like yodelling, and combining traditional instruments like accordion with synthesizers and self-made instruments to create extremely powerful and deeply spiritual music. His name is Christian Zehnder, and this is one of my favourite performances by him. Impossible to listen to this without getting goosebumps. He is a true artist and one of my absolute idols when it comes to music. Here is another example where Christian is collaborating with a percussionist, playing mostly on self-made instruments. If you like the music of Shpongle, this song has very similar vibes to it: I hope you found this interesting and will gladly answer any questions you have on the topic as far as it is within my capabilities. Much Love to all of you guys

I used to be extremely inflexible. Then I took up yoga. 20-30 minutes of asanas every day will do the trick. After only 2-3 months of practise, I was able to touch the floor with the palm of my hand again. Before, I couldn't even get much past the knees. Consistency is the key. I was surprised how fast the results came. The beginning will be the hardest. Nowadays I can't imagine not doing yoga every day, my body is yearning for the stretch and it feels so good. When I began my practise, I started by following this course. This is extremely convenient since all the postures are shown and explained, and you have a fixed routine that you can folllow. Try it if you like. It worked for me.

No, this couldn't work. No offense, but that is an extremely naive suggestion. This issue is way too complex to be solved like this. Why would changing the name "police" to "civil protection" do anything if everything else remained the same? If anything, this would make me even more suspicious as it smells of Orwellian Newspeak. I am from Europe so I only have an outside perspective. But as far as I can tell, these riots are the consequence of bad policy making in pretty much every domain of government for years and decades. To be honest, considering the financial and racial inequality of the US and the downright criminality and incompetence of their political leaders I am surprised people weren't taking it to the streets way sooner. Basically every single institution of this country is incredibly flawed and needs to be reformed from the ground up. Just one example: In Austria where I live, police officers have to go through 2+ years of training. I have read that in the US, it is something like 2-3 months. They don't have the necessary training to do their jobs properly, especially in a country where so many people carry guns that people have to put their hands on the steering wheel where the police officer can see them. There are so many things about the US that seem just completely and utterly insane and would be unthinkable to the people living in my country. Making sure police are properly trained for the extremely stressful situations they are required to deal with would be one small step in the right direction, but not nearly enough to defuse this catastrophic situation.

I have come curiously close to the end, down Beneath my self-indulgent pitiful hole Defeated, I concede and Move closer I may find comfort here I may find peace within the emptiness How pitiful It's calling me It's calling me It's calling me It's calling me And in my darkest moment, fetal and weeping The moon tells me a secret, my confidant As full and bright as I am This light is not my own and A million light reflections pass over me Its source is bright and endless She resuscitates the hopeless Without her, we are lifeless satellites drifting And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt Don't want to be down here soothing my narcissism I must crucify the ego before it's far too late I pray the light lifts me out Before I pine away Before I pine away Before I pine away Before I pine away So crucify the ego, before it's far too late To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical And you will come to find that we are all one mind Capable of all that's imagined and all conceivable Just let the light touch you And let the words spill through And let them pass right through Bringing out our hope and reason Before we pine away (pine away) Before we pine away (pine away) Before we pine away (pine away) Before we pine away

Stars Of The Lid are amazing. Deeply serene, tranquil but at the same time incredibly moving ambient music. I had the pleasure to watch them perform live in a small church once and it was otherworldly beautiful. I noticed their music (and this album in particular) were used in this documentary on Ramana Maharshi as well. I don't think that's a coincidence. I don't have many examples of stage yellow/turquoise music, but this is definitely one of them.

Thank you everybody for your replies, they have been very helpful indeed! The trauma release exercise looks pretty much like what has been happening to me of its own accord during the trips. It is good to know there is a name for it and that there is an easy way to self-induce the trembling. I have tried it already and it works pretty well. Also, I have researched a few practises to stretch the psoas muscle and might incorporate them into my daily routine. As far as being afraid of the purge, this might very well be true for me. On one of my higher dose trips, I had a pretty cathartic but also scary experience where I had to vomit so much I was afraid I might suffocate. To this day this was the only negative experience I ever had with psychedelics (if you can call it that, as even during the experience I realised how cathartic and healing it was, even though it was extremely exhausting). A lot of shit had been released that day. I always trip alone so I can do whatever I feel I need to do and nobody interferes with my work, but that time a trip sitter would have been extremely helpful. I haven't dared to exceed 400ug ever since. I figured it shouldn't be necessary to take this high of a dose and get rid of it all in one go, and have opted instead to work with doses of 200ug to do this in a slower and safer way. I do notice though that whenever it seems like the time for vomiting has come - interestingly enough, this doesn't happen during the peak of the experience as one might expect, but mostly around the 8-10 hour mark - I do become afraid and would rather not do it. I haven't tried Ayahuasca for the same reason. Not a fan of vomiting at all. I think it might be a good idea for me to tackle this fear and do an ayahuasca trip where vomiting is pretty much guaranteed, but only with a sitter so I can feel more at ease. I am curious @cxsxlx, are you now free permanently free from this knot? Do you think a one-time purge is the way to go rather than slowly chipping away at it? Again, thank you everybody, your help is invaluable.

Hello everyone, I'll try to be as brief as possible while not excluding any essential information. I have been self-actualizing for the past 3 years (that is, actually doing the work rather than just watching/reading self-help content). Ever since my first psychedelic experience, an acid trip a few years ago, I noticed I had stored a LOT of tension in my stomach area. To this day, most of my trips are focused on this one and only thing, and my intuition tells me that this is the single most important thing I have to deal with to heal and self-actualize. During the trip, it feels like this knot (which I had not been aware of before my first trip, but which I am now aware of constantly) is ever so slowly opening up, layer upon layer upon layer. This process feels intuitively cleansing, healing and positive, but at the same time it can be both physically and emotionally painful. Sometimes when I breathe into the knot and it is opening up a bit, all of a sudden an absolutely gut-wrenching emotion will surface. I have no words to describe it, it is nothing that I ordinarily feel, but it feels utterly heartbreaking. The process is also accompanied by a lot of things going on in the GI tract. There can be a lot of gas, belching and burping or even full-on diarrhea and/or vomiting, even though I don't eat much before my trips and generally have a healthy diet. So basically most of the 10-12 hours of the trip will be spent just sitting there paying attention to what's going on in my stomach, trying to breathe into this knot and to let go of the muscles at the same time, gas being released one way or the other, etc. However, no matter how often or how long I do this, it never seems to be enough - I can never get total relief, there is always some tension left, and the knot remains. After my discovery of this knot I tried to make sense of what was going on. I asked my therapist what she thought of this, showed her the way it looks when I breathe into it and she made me aware of the fact that I had a physical "hole" right between the solar plexus and the navel where the Manipura chakra is supposed to be. She suggested that it might just be that I have been tensing my stomach muscles all my life out of fear, but couldn't really suggest what else I could be doing other than what I already was doing, and accepting the fact that I have this hole rather than being so frustrated with it. I have since taken up Kriya Yoga, and it feels to me like some of the asanas are helpful and especially the alternate nostril breathing seems to be like a small-scale acid trip in so far as I can feel the knot opening up during the Pranayama as well, but not with the same intensity as during my LSD trips. Sometimes I just sit there and practise breathing into this knot for hours on end because I want to get rid of the tightness so badly, and while I can feel it getting better ever so slowly, I can never be fully relaxed. Sometimes I feel like not doing anything else except working on this one issue since I am aware of it all the time and it bothers me so much. Especially during alternate nostril breathing I tend to start sweating and feel my entire vibrate as well - is this to be expected, and what does this mean, why does it occur? Is it just a natural part of the cleansing process? I am writing this in the hope that somebody can relate to this, has an idea what exactly is going on and might even be able to suggest a course of action to resolve this issue. My best guess is that I simply have a closed solar plexus chakra that needs to be opened up, and if that is the case, I guess there is not much to be done except what I am already doing (yoga, meditation, breathing into it, intensive LSD sessions). I am a bit frustrated at this point because I am diligently practising every day and have worked on this issue on ~30 trips over the past few years, it seems like I am not really making any progress. No matter how far the knot is opened up, tension always remains. I am sorry if my posting is a bit all over the place, but I think you get the gist. I would be deeply grateful for any and all insights, suggestions etc. related to this issue. Thank you very much in advance!

If this doesn't move you to tears and make you feel your connection to the universe I don't know what will: Also Also, Dvorak's 9th reliably reduces me to tears with it's sheer beauty. I like this version with Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. I could go on endlessly, but these are some of my favourites that I keep coming back to on my trips.

Marijuana tends to become habit-forming rather quickly. I cannot imagine doing any serious self-actualization work while smoking regularly. A joint here and there (once or twice a year in good company) probably isn't so bad, and some people might even get away with using large dosages for spiritual purposes, but I feel like there are way more suitable substances (proper psychedelics) for this kind of work. You need a clear mind to do self-actualization. If you haven't tried it, maybe give CBD a go? It can help some people with anxiety and insomnia without the THC high. I used to be a daily pot smoker for about a year, and while it certainly put a nice, warm, fuzzy blanket over my issues at the same time it totally killed my drive to try and do anything about them, so definitely not a solution. Also, if you want to work with your dreams (keeping a dream journal, interpreting your dreams, learning how to lucid dream etc.) smoking pot will be a hindrance because you will have hard time remembering your dreams.

There are two great YouTube channels that I found that deal with the practise of Kriya Yoga. "ManojTheYogi" has an entire course up online, giving instructions on how to do the practises and giving theoretical background knowledge as well. For me, this was a good place to start. The second channel I would recommend is "Ryan Kurczak". He too offers a lot of practical and theoretical information for your Kriya practise. He also runs a second channel that deals with Vedic astrology, if you are interested in that. If you combine their teachings with some good books on the topic (Kriya Secrets Revealed, A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya, Kriya Yoga Vichara, Patanjali's Yogasutras...) you should have plenty to work on and should be able to figure out how it all works in due time. Hope this helps. Much love!

I'm a music major, a huge fan of the progressive rock genre and King Crimson especially. Here are a few songs that I find particularly moving. Absolutely otherworldly musicianship. If you are wondering what stage yellow/turquoise music might sound like, give "The ConstruKction of Light" a go. If you want some more context and really understand what is going on, there is a great analysis available: http://www.andrewkeeling.co.uk/Keeling-TheConstruKctionOfLight.html If you're into self-actualization, some of the concepts should seem familiar to you. Here's a quote from the paper to illustrate what I mean: "The instrumental pieces stand as landmarks leading us from one psychological state into another, until they are reached where, then, an objectivity prevails. In this sense, the instrumental pieces objectify something which lies beyond purely human psychological states leading us as listeners, in Gurdjeffian terminology, to a different or 'awakened' mode of being. In Jungian terms, this might be termed as 'the call to individuation', or the realisation that the 'collective unconscious' underpins the world of the everyday. The original instrumental pieces 'Fracture' and 'Larks' II' were placed at the end of their respective works and served as climactic points in the structure. In TCOL the pieces 'FraKctured' and 'Larks IV' are positioned differently functioning, as we have seen, as important structural landmarks both musically, and for the purpose of 'objectifying' the pieces which come before and after them. As listeners we feel a sense of 'grace' shining through the spaces created by the instrumental pieces, which is difficult to to codify or verbalise." And another: "Gurdjieff makes the point in Ouspensky's 'In Search of the Miraculous' (Arkana, 1987), that Fourth Way schools differ from other schools in terms of being an impermanent way, and that they appear and disappear as if governed by laws which are not their own. Gurdjieff also says that the 'fourth way' has a work of a definite significance and when the work is complete the 'fourth way' disappears from the given place, in its given form, to reappear in another place and in another form. I suggest that King Crimson are such an undertaking, and part of the work of the Fourth Way. This might suggest that the music created is, somehow, conceived yet not conceived just by King Crimson and, in particular, Robert Fripp. The music shows itself to be multi-dimensional, highly unified and organised in many different ways and, as already stated, an example of 'objective art'."