King Merk

You're mixing up love (your strong attachment to something) with Love (essentially another word for God/Truth/ Consciousness/Oneness/Etc). What I believe you're describing is Leo's affinity to "figuring it out"or trying to "get to the bottom of this". Which, I'd assume we all have to a certain degree just to be here. Leo is a "seeker" just like you and me. I think that's what he means by "loving truth". Oh and your spiritual journey has already begun friend

God is the salamander

Pain inspires me because how easily he took out my dude Jiraiya. But for real I feel like pain is just an innate characteristic of feeling. It can be inspirational sometimes but definitely not always. I'd say to channel it into positivity, think of the thing that is being gained through the pain. Find a meaning for the pain. For example, the pain of an intense workout is the ingredient needed for stronger muscles. Or the pain of a heartbreak is needed to develop a fuller capacity to love. But obviously the idea situation is transcending pain.

Yea Leo will add his book on epistemology to the list whenever he finished writing it lol

Trying so hard to convince himself... by convincing others. Mhm.

What is consciousness? What is nothing? What is something? What is love? What is growth? What is mind? What am I? What is perception? What is real? What is being?

Self reflection

Hey y'all, here's a trip report pulled straight from my commonplace book. I'm quite ignorant on the subjects of kundalini, chakras and Daniel M. Ingram. Any feedback/suggested resources would be appreciated. Thanks(: --------------------------- It's 8:30pm and I'm about to drop a tab of acid. My spiritual growth since my last "awakening" experience has been surreal. I've grown exponentially. I've developed more spiritually in the last month and a half than I have in any other period of my life…. Time to dive the fuck in and go even deeper. So, questions I'll be seeking insights into: 1. How can I be more loving and accepting of others? 2. How can I live more authentically? 3. How can I "be" more? How do I separate the thing itself from the concept I create/attach to it? ---------------------------- Okay, it's 5pm on Saturday. Trip report time. My trip can be divided into two very distinct portions. I started the trip by setting my intent and taking the tab. I put my headphones in and began to meditate. I lied on the ground meditating for about an hour and a half. It was great and I got some solid insights into how I can be more loving and accepting of others simply by becoming more conscious. Less ego, less judgment. I really embodied love while laying on the floor then. I loved everything. I even wrestled with my dog biscuit for a while. Like a long while. This state of surrendering to what is/accepting the now was very nice and something I need to focus on doing more in my day to day life. I also realized I need to start reaching out to my friends more often, to seek intimate conversation with them. I'm naturally prone to be hermit like and wall myself off from others. That’s my default tendency. While meditating, I got a rush of energy travelling up my body. I'd never thought about it before but this happens pretty frequently for me. It happens multiple times every time I trip but also randomly when I'm sober. I'll have a "wave" of chilling energy that makes my shoulders elevate and my entire upper body shake left and right like I'm a salsa dancer or a snake slivering across the ground or some shit. I was blown away by the fact that I'd never really took notice to this phenomenon before. I intuitively thought this could be "kundalini" energy? (I haven't research this phenomenon much at all). This spurred me to do Osho's kundalini meditation I learned from Elliott. It was great. I was able to entirely step back and surrender control of my body. The music/energy took over my movements. I shook and shook and shook some more. It was interesting not having control of my body. I was simply watching it all happen. I still was thinking but I wasn’t moving consciously. It's like I was pure mind during the meditation. While doing the kundalini meditation, I felt this huge restriction around my waistline. Everything else in me felt very expansive but my waist area felt as if I had a band wrapped around it that was restricting expansion. This caused me to desire to ejaculate (which I didn’t) but it was interesting to say the least. I desired deeply to have a "release" in this area which felt heavily sexual. Could this be a blockage in my sacral chakra? Was that what I was feeling? Definitely something to look into. As a funny side note before I transition into the second half of the trip, I somehow convinced myself that I wasn’t very high during my acid trip. Between hours 1-3ish from when I took my tab I felt strangely sober. I felt much clearer and coherent than I typically do while tripping. I even had a deep desire to be at the ocean because I felt like I was a gigantic whale swimming through the ocean (real sober right? LOL). I knew the ocean was only a 3 hour drive if I went out to my truck. I then entertained the thought of driving to the coast so I could go meditate on the beach while tripping and conclusively decided it was a bad idea because I would crash and die before I got there and I have much more work to do in life. Back to the "serious" stuff. We now transition into the "second phase" of the trip at about 3.5 hours in. I've often heard Frank Yang speak of the "Dark night of the soul" as a phase of conscious development. I remember he posted link on IG to a video of Daniel M Ingram, the man who created the "mind map" that references the dark night phase of awakening. I pulled up a vimeo video Ingram has posted explaining his mind maps. Note: I had no prior knowledge of Ingram and his maps. This was entirely intuitive and spur of the moment. It blew my fucking mind. I've never heard someone discuss awareness like Daniel Ingram. I understood none of what he was saying but it all felt so right and accurate. I can't put into words what exactly happened for hour 3.5-4.5ish but it was scary as fuck. I was convinced that the world around me wasn't real… I mean it was still there. My room was still present in my awareness. But I saw through it. Not as a belief. Not as a philosophy. But real as fuck, that it's all….idk? Something? Really unreal? Something other than what it is when I'm sober, that's for sure. It's like I died. And I wined like a little bitch during the process. I begged for my life. After I gave in, I was convinced I was enlightened and leaving this earth/human realm. I'd transcended. I went to text my buddy to ask if all of this was real but I stopped myself because it was so obviously real so there was no point in messaging my non existent friend. It was obvious that I would never be "Marcus" again and that I had transcended into whatever. It was quite the mind fuck. I continued on studying Daniel Ingram's work for literally the next 6 hours. I read portions of his books, watched his vimeo videos, listened to a podcast he's done and even checked the actualized forum for content on him. Oh and I bought his book. It should be in next week. He's an interesting character. Very technical on the meditation side. A self proclaimed pragmatist, he "focuses on results and drops dogmatism". He is however deeply entrenched in Buddhism so many of the shit he's talking about (Jhana, dharma, nana, etc) I don’t understand do to lack of knowing terminology. That being said I'm willing to sift through it and see what's there. He seems to be a very deep stage turquoise individual and hopefully a great resource in my awakening process. We shall see. As another side note, I felt completely hopeless during this second phase. I felt as if everything I know, all the work I've done up to this point is useless. I felt like my world was flipped upside down and I'd have to clean it all away. Now that I'm sober I don’t necessarily believe that but it was an interesting feeling of deep despair/hopelessness that I don’t often feel. There's something of value for me in looking into chakras, kundalini and various other "woo-woo" phenomenon. There are other realms that can be accessed through elevated states of consciousness. I don't wish to diverge from my trip too far but his explains why I would see ghosts and feel entities as a child. Funny, actually not funny at all, but I just remembered my old house that I have strong memories of seeing ghosts and feeling "things" in, was the site of a murder. I remember my mom telling me this when I was younger. Apparently the previous inhabitant was a man and his child. Thee man killed his child by putting him in a boiling hot bath tub. Yikes… And I also remember when we were pulling up the carpet to stain the concrete floors and there was a massive blood stain in the living room floor and it scared me. However I would see ghosts and speak with entities at other houses and locations so I know it wasn’t a simply localized phenomenon. But definitely enhanced there. I remember at my other house I lived in a few years later, the entities of a native American tribe would stand at the wood line and watch me play basketball on my goal. They'd only show up at dusk/night and I wouldn’t dare go into the forest at night. In fact, the day after I went camping back there (the first and last time I did this) I found a fucking soaking wet goat laying on the forest floor with his neck broke and twist all the way around. A very real, non ghost goat.. The whole "ghost realm" is creepy as fuck and I do not understand it at all. I probably wouldn’t even believe in it if I hadn't experienced it for myself. Kind of glad I can't access it any more. Anyways, excuse the tangent. Overall this trip was great. It gave me new resources/leads to go down, a newfound inspiration to get more serious about the technical aspects of my meditation practices, motivated me to seriously go do a vipassana retreat and provided me with some specific steps I can take to live a more authentic and loving life.

Seeking advice. Realistically, I have one hour per day to devote to my consciousness practice. For the last few months I’ve been doing 30 minutes of mindfulness meditation (using the note, label, savor technique) immediately followed up by 30 minutes of self inquiry. Personally I find mindfullness meditation to be boring as shit. I have a hard time focusing and taking it very seriously. It’s definitely a grind to do mindfullness meditation for me. This is a stark contrast to self inquiry, which I’m innately drawn towards doing. I love chasing the ox tail down the rabbit hole and trying to figure out what in the fuck I am and why I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. Ive been doing “standard” meditation practices for about 5 years now. I’m starting to think I’m advanced enough to drop my meditation all together and focus entirely on self inquiry and watching objects from a state of not knowing. So my proposition is shifting my practice to 60 minutes of straight self inquiry per day. The goal is Truth realization and I feel that self inquiry will be more likely to get me there than simply meditation. Is this a reasonable change to make in my practice? Or am I diluting myself simply because I don’t like mindfullness meditation? What do y’all think?

The greatest book I’ve read is the book of not knowing by Peter Ralston.

You’re in a good place my friend(: Stay present.

Something I’ve noticed is my teachers/mentors are typically reflective of where I am on the spiral. When I was younger and stage blue I was very into religious teachers. I was into my ethnic identity and people who spoke of loyalty. As I embodied orange I started praised people like Brian Tracey, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robins, Elliott Hulse, sports stars, I became a marijuana dealer, the RSD guys, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins. As I moved to green I was really into reggae music and the teachings of love, peace, harmony. Guys like Bob Marley, Rastas, liberalism, Aubrey Marcus, Joe Rogan. Now that I’m more yellow I’m very into spiritual teachers like Leo, Rubert Sira, Eckhart Tolle, Frank Yang, Osho, Sadhguru, Peter Ralston, Paul Chek, Daniel Ingram, Ram Dass, Alan Watts.

Meaning is a tool the ego creates to facilitate its own survival

I’ve dropped many of the judgments I applied to myself previously in life. I’m no longer negatively driven by guilt, shame, or a neurotic desire to please/impress others. However, one judgment I’m struggling to drop is judging the unconsciousness of others. It drives me fucking crazy when I hear people around me sabotaging their own life by playing the victim role and complaining about the circumstances they choose to put themselves into. Complaining of being stuck in prison when they themselves are the prison guards who simply need to take ownership of their lives. I understand I need to be more empathetic, loving and accepting of people and where they are in life... but I’m struggling in actually doing that. What mindsets/tips/exercises have y’all used to drop your judgments of yourself and others to become a more loving and accepting individual?

Can I tattoo this on my leg? Set this as my alarm? Read it every day to remind myself? I fall into this trap of “conceptualization” over and over again... thank you for the reminder.

That’s good that your older perspectives seem delusional. Likely means you’re growing. Keep doing your consciousness practices. You don’t have to have DMT to realize God. When the student is ready the teacher will come... even if that teacher is an entheogen

Try your direct experience. If Wim Hof breathing works better for you then you should stick to it. Dont turn Leo or his teachings into a dogma. It’s a good thing to experiment with different techniques and teachers.

It's rare that we question our must fundamental assumptions about life such as "I have a body". I was contemplating as to what it would be like to have to learn that I have a body and a sudden flashback occurred of a song I learned in kindergarten... you may remember it. Realize we have to LEARN our most basic assumptions about life such as "I have a body, I am a man, I am white, I am American, the sky is blue, my name is Tom, killing is bad, etc" Nothing is quite as obvious as it seems

Quick story. Background: I've been doing a wide variety of psychedelic drugs for 5+ years now with great benefit to my overall wellbeing. I have a dear friend of mine I sometime do psychedelics with that occasionally has a psychotic reaction when he does LSD. Not every time but when he does it's bad. This is beyond a "bad trip". A little about him, he doesn't have any underlying mental disorders. He's a well educated physicist, athletic, relatively healthy and even owns his own business. I say this so that you know he's in no way some "weirdo brain fried hippie". However, he is a typical American/stage orange/scientific materialist/atheist with little to no consciousness work. I don't believe he's ever meditated. I've done LSD with multiple people over the years and I've never seen anyone react the way he has. I've been with him on three different occasions over the last few tears where he completely lost awareness of who he was and flipped the fuck out. I'll make this brief as possible. The first time it happened he went completely psychotic and was running around our schools campus with his shirt off, yelling at people and climbing atop building. After having the cops called on us, I chased him down and got him to run back to the room. I then forcibly locked him in our bathroom (or should I say sober tank lol) and sat in there with him for hours. While we were in there he couldn't respond normally to any dialogue. He's occasionally blurt of some random word out of context but that's it. When he "came to" he had zero recollection of what happened other than that he'd felt like the laundry detergent bottle was shooting him with a sniper rifle. The second time he kept asking me questions that were completely irrational, physically blocked the doorway out of my bedroom and speaking gibberish. This again lasted for hours. The third time was the scariest of them all. He'd taken a single hit of acid at a concert the night previous. I wasn't there but we lived together. Apparently he never felt anything that night at the concert. Him and his girlfriend came home later that night and went to bed. Around 6am his girlfriend woke me up (we all lived together) and told me my friend really needed some help. I walk into his room and my heart dropped. He was lying in his bed on his back with every single muscle in his body flexed. One arm was outstretched as if he was a zombie with his wrist bent back as far as it could go. His face resembled that of a goldfish with a circular lips, jaw clenched shut and eyes popping out. He was gasping for air through his teeth with every breath. Hell of a thing to wake up too. I asked his girlfriend how long he'd been like this and she said for the last two hours straight. I sat there massaging his muscles and trying to talk to him but he was completely unresponsive. In his eyes was an abyss of nothingness. Like absolutely no one was home. I left for class an hour or so later. Around 10am (notice this is about 15 hours since he took the tab) I got a call from our other roomate while sitting in class. He informed me that our high roommate had regained control of his body. He not only broke up with his girlfriend (who thereafter left him alone at our house going crazy) but was also running around our suburbs yelling at people to worship Jesus and not letting them drive away from their houses. I raced home only to find he'd gotten in his car and driven away. When I saw him later that evening he literally spoke with me as if nothing at all strange had happened and had no recollection of anything that had happened until I told him. SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS SHIT I know he wasn't under the influence of some other drug as we typically get LSD in bulk from the same source and share it. So the same drug from the same batch that made him go crazy was extremely therapeutic to me. What I don't understand is the extreme differences in experience between our two reactions. All psychonauts know first hand the ego dissolving effects of psychedelic. And of course there will be variation in people's experience while tripping but don't understand how a single tab of acid can make someone so seemingly healthy in their day to day life have such a psychotic reaction. Anyone else have similar experiences or an explanation to my buddie's behavior?

I've been doing psychedelics and meditating for a little over 5 years now. Something interesting I've noticed along the way is how much more powerful psychedelics seem to be to me now days. I find myself favoring smaller doses rather than the larger "heroic" doses of my younger self. It feels like as I become more conscious, my sensitivity to psychedelics increases. Or perhaps I'm just more familiar with the terrain and can make my way deeper down the rabbit hole at an accelerated rate? What do y'all think? Has anyone had a similar experience?

You could start by trying to drop all the negative judgments you have towards marijuana. You could just consciously smoke weed instead of "blitz out to music". Maybe the error isn't the tool itself but how you're using it? If you smash your skull in with a hammer instead of hitting the intended nail in the wall it's not the hammers fault. See what I'm saying? Theres a myriad of other things you can do with marijuana such as meditate, read, learn an instrument, draw, do yoga, journal, etc. The list goes on. And all of which can be done stoned... or sober. Your choice. Personally, my favorite thing to do to chill out at night is turn off all screens and read by candle light for an hour before bed... hope that helps bro.

If you think you'd be a better leader then you can discuss that with your manager. Make sure you can back up that with evidence though. And if it's too bad, you could simply move on and find work elsewhere. Another option is simply to use this as an opportunity for growth. You're obviously a bit triggered by the situation. Step back and ask yourself why that is? Also ask yourself how you being upset benefits the performance of the team? It likely doesn't. My bet is this could be a great opportunity for you to exercise humility as well as teach your new team members some things with your "unparalleled level of expertise". Try not to play the victim bro. You're aware enough to be stepping back and analyzing the situation and that's awesome. Keep working on yourself.

I have a bachelors in science, does that count as background in academia? haha. I'd be happy to help. Message me your letter if you still want feedback.

No one knows your life better than you bro. Stop looking "out there" for your answers in life. Everything you need is within you... That being said if you haven't taken Leo's life purpose course definitley do that. It's been insanely helpful for me. Well worth the initial investment.

This is coming from someone who has went through the course multiple times... It's worth way more than 250$. Find a way to raise the money bro. You can make excuses or you can make it happen