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I think this thread should be pinned or something. It covers all sort of psychedelics, not just 5 MeO DMT.

Who is creating the problem "I am missing my arm" and who wants to get it back? Wanting to get back your arm is failing to see Now as it is and creating a ego-fantasy in which you would have such an arm back. If an amputated would be able to totally let go, they would feel much better than if someone grew their arm back. What Leo might realize is that spiritual healing doesn't mean healing the physical body with magical means, but letting go of his attachment to his healthy physical body and discovering that all suffering (emotional or physical) is caused by lack of awareness.

I see now you simply hinted me to keep that distinction in mind but not necessarily to act from it. Things make sense for me now. Thank you for the great advice as always

My ego is sold out with the benefits of a higher state consciousness of consciousness. Solves all your problem! Costs nothing! What a great deal! my ego says. But then something, anything, happens and unconscious symptoms are noticed. (Any type of reaction or story by the ego is noticed, leading to the mind thinking it is under the influence of the ego.) Then ego is always looking for something to do to fix the unconsciousness or a way to find the source of unconsciousness. (i.e. What is the unconscious belief I've been falling for lately that is causing this?). It reduces unconsciousness to a problem that requires a solution, something needs to be figured out, a lack in understanding. This interpretation of Now is not the way which is aligned with consciousness as the problem is imaginary, it's an idea of the mind. "There's nothing to know" Reality is perfect as it is, including the ego. (If you think the ego is a problem, then that's your ego creating a story about how your ego is holding you back from being at peace right now, effectively succeeding at what its trying to do.) But still, the ego who is a pro at solving all kinds of problems always want to have a go at this one too. The way to "solve" this problem is to let go of it. How do you do that? You do meditation the ego says. So the ego-controlled body sits down for 30 minutes and waits for the problem to be solved. Then it's frustrated because it has achieved nothing and still don't know what is the problem. "Is it just because I'm looking for a problem that there's a problem?" the ego asks. Maybe, but then why would I have been unconscious in the first place if it was only that? In my experience, it is often the case that the problem is looking for a problem. But is this always the case? My ego wants consciousness and is frustrated when it doesn't have it. It has built expectations and misidentified the I with the idea of being a conscious person who has no problem in life. But then everytime a problem show up suffering follows. How do you let go of that? How do you sit down to do meditation without wanting to be conscious? If ego didn't care about being conscious, it wouldn't go through all this trouble!

Isn't conditional perfection in relation to an ego which identifies things as good or bad, perfect or terrible, for the sake of pursuing the good or perfect things and maintain its survival? I was under the impression that I didn't want to care about what's good or perfect for me, that I could just follow my heart to know which is the best solution and avoid comparing alternatives. If I clear my mind the best thing to do just manifests through me, (well sometimes, not often lol). But then perhaps I am simply repressing or hiding the process in which I compare and select alternatives.

I think from now on this idea of "problem creation" will no longer just be an idea in the back of my mind but something I'm actively trying to notice within my own ego. The awareness of that may come slowly and gradually, but I'll keep this idea in mind for sure. I'm not quite sure I understand the distinction you @Serotoninluv and @purerogue are trying to make. I don't quite get the distinction between "It is perfect as it is Now" and "everything is perfect". Isn't everything in the Now? Of course "Everything is perfect" shouldn't mean "I am forcing myself to believe everything is good for me as an ego" but "I drop any judgement of the Now, I stop reacting to the Now as it being a good or bad scenario". If I "seek refuge" in the idea that everything is perect, what's the problem? If a meteorite falls on my house, isn't that a perfect opportunity to let go of my attachment to my belongings and move on? If someone gets harassed in the street, isn't that a perfect opportunity to try and conquer my fears to do the actions that resonate most with me? And if I fail to intervene, isn't that a perfect opportunity to let go of my attachment to being brave and notice my fears?

Thank you. Indeed the realization that there's nothing to know was indeed being misinterpreted as feeling like understanding everything.

In the past, I abused and disrepected the substance, taking LSD every 2 weeks and 5 MeO every other week for 6 months. Only 2-3 trips were meaningful in the lot and 1 trip was pure hell. On my last trip in december, I decided to do exactly that, step back, start implementing in my sober life the tips I have gotten from those 2-3 insightful trips. I decided to stop psychedelics for a entire year (the entirity of 2020), and totally reconsider the frequency at which I take such substance. Since then I started reading books, some of which totally changed the way I go about my life and increased my ability to cultivate consciousness. I've been doing some great progress in the last month, overcoming some challenges I would in the past get drown in. But I miss LSD. I treated it like a toy and I miss my toy. I miss looking at the art my mind creates inside, my reality falling appart and feeling like I understand everything. As far as personal growth is concerned, I don't feel like I need LSD right now, but it would be fun. Thinking about LSD is avoiding the Now and it is what my ego does constantly. It does so especially in harder times, trying to convince itself that I "need" LSD to get out of that situation, which is total bullshit.

Interesting information, thank you.

Martin Ball seems to have a bunch of books http://orobai.tripod.com/martinball/nonfiction.html Reviews are not agreeing with each other. I'll have a look at them myself

Thanks for the enumeration, this is what I was looking for. There's no doubt that I'm (ego) a big fan of psychedelics, yet I've fallen into many traps during my first approach to them and now I'm pretty much constantly thinking about them although I've been sober for a month and a half. Perhaps I'm not addicted to them but I'm at least addicted to thinking about them. I'd just like to find resourcess (readings, videos, etc.) which could help me in these issues and that would discuss the different pitfalls of psychedelic awakening. I see now that giving a list of spiritual teachers who do not advocate for them might be seen as pushing an agenda from my part. This wasn't my true intention, this is just a bunch of names, some of which I consume resources from, which are helping me but offer no help whatsoever in the usage of psychedelics. I'll check out the books of the 3 names you gave me though, thanks.

If you can bear with the rationalist type of depiction of reality for a bit, this post isn't about denying any of the spiritual realizations made by seekers but to realign the rationalist point of view with them. I know many of you threw away logic and rationality off the window because it didn't fit your understanding of reality anymore (after experience). But what if it could fit if we dig hard enough? This is what this post is exploring, in a way. What if when people experience the "infinite" they are simply becoming aware of the signal of every input nerve (the body) but also every neuron that is holding information (memory). What if "the infinite" is just experiencing every memory you have, all at once? (Which I would call the entirety of the Now) Those memories could be memories you usually have access to or memories only the subconscious has access to. Of course imagination is probably a part of this infinite too, that is mixing the memories you had in creative ways to create new stuff in your mind. But this new stuff is always a linear combination of what was seen. I could claim all art is linear combination of what was experienced but the most profound art comes from people experiencing the most subtle things. I realize this is a very dull way of defining art, but it doesn't really take away any of the magic that comes with art. If you feel something when you look at an art piece then there's something in that art piece which makes you relate with your own memories (a subset of your Now). I doubt anyone experienced true infinity and came back, because otherwise they would be able to draw something that is infinitely different from everything I've experienced. Instead, enlightened people seem simply to have a better grasp of being and more free of the ego. There's no doubt that becoming aware of every memory at once would be highly overwhelming and that anyone that would experience that would say they saw infinity. But this infinity doesn't have to be infinite, it could simply the entirety of you, the entirety of the capacity of your monkey mind. This capacity is HUGE, just think about all the people you know, places you've been, movies you've seen, things you studied, games you know how to play, books you read etc. etc. etc. Then imagine the linear combination of ALL of that, that is, every possible thing your mind could imagine based on what you experienced. Isn't that big enough to be seen as "infinity" by the psychedelic users? And I guess ego like this explanation because it is rational. Of course living by rational explanations is a simple trap of the ego because what ego can deform what you consider rational at any time. Yet like puzzle pieces fitting together, I feel pleasure when such a far-fetch concept like "experiencing the infinite" fits my understanding. I guess this is just a simple realization that being aware isn't limited to being aware of every physical sensation but also every memory that is present yet not necessarily observed. If you disagree and you think this infinity cannot be "the limit of my mind" and must be actually infinite, feel free to answer I'm looking for counter arguments. I'll experience infinity at some point too so if you can't debunk me I might debunk myself.

I get that I am the awareness in which content emerges and it's not the content that creates me (the monkey story). The latter, is the rationalist explanation for the world (brains, neural networks, atoms etc.) is just a story which prevents awareness from looking at itself (looking at the empty space behind and around the story). I am in no way advocating for the use of a rationality-based mindset where everything is explained and everything is a story. The rationalist explanation is incomplete, it doesn't answer the questions you asked and I don't blame any spiritual seekers from dropping it altogether. No there's no Past (or Past didn't have to happen) yet there's memories in Now. I believe I was falling under the trap of thinking that my Now was limited to my current body sensations and the few thoughts I can be aware of but no, there's much more to the Now than that. The Now is HUUUGE that's all I can say for now, and perhaps one day I'll see why this Huge is Infinite and cannot just be Huge.

There's no time to Now, this is not what I meant, I apologize if it wasn't clear. What I mean is that right now, you can be aware of all of your past experiences and memories (rather than being stuck in a story composed of them). They are part of your Now, you can be aware of them right now even if they aren't happening right now.

This idea didn't come to me as a will to rationalize or explain anything. I was lying on my bed thinking about the story of John McAfee with his crazy life. Then it hit me that I didn't think about him for years probably yet it was a thought there from the Past and in my Now. I then started enumerating all the things that are in my Past (stored in the mind), people, objects I know, games I know how to play, places, youtube videos I've watched once, things I've said to people, courses I've taken, maths I know etc. etc. I didn't have anything of a breakthrough from this enumeration, but I was lying there realizing how wonderful is the mind for remembering all of this. I wasn't really thinking very hard, I was simply there looking at different things that are in my mind I can purposefully take and put in the foreground. For instance I can think about a chair right now and the image of a chair will pop up in my head. Simple, humble pleasure of realizing how great of a power it is to be able to do that, and how much of an insane quantity of stuff is in there. One I am sure is that I wasn't lost in thought at that time. I was looking at thought for the sake of looking at thought, perhaps in a little forced way (perhaps I wasn't looking at the thought that was making me purposefully making thoughts to look at) but the thoughts I was making were looked at and not identified with. A few minutes later, I started thinking about this possibility. This "What if the Infinite is to simply see all that is in the mind at once?". Probably it was just the ego taking my brief moment of awareness and making it its thing. Yet I had no way to invalidate this possibility and indeed I failed to let it go. It's true that this "I am aware" formulation is as good as an "I know". So basically ego is identifying the "awareness of it being a story/knowledge of it being a story" of these things for its own identity? I don't feel like this particular point is the weakness in the argument. This part of the post is simply saying "I know this is a story but please consider my story". Of course I should know by now that my story's not gonna be considered on this forum It is a good opportunity however, to see how much attached I became to knowing whether or not the story was right. I don't think I was neurotically attached to this story when I first experienced it, but writting it down in this forum may have made it "my story" rather than "a story" and this is where the attachment came into place. It's easy to let go of stupid stories. But when you think you just found out a new theorem (let's say a math theorem) can you really let go of it? This story perhaps didn't excite much people here, but to me when I first experienced it, it felt clever, it felt like a new piece of my understanding coming together. Isn't this what an insight is? Sure but that's an upper bound. There's no way to know if you are experiencing a finite subset of things, which is simply too large for your entire understanding. I'll admit I don't quite see this. We got a bunch of explanations of infinity which are not infinite. You can simply say "all the possible things" or just the word "infinity". Sure those things are pointers to it, not the real thing. But so is an explanation. The explanation is just a pointer, not the actual thing. There's no doubt that everything is within Absolute Infinity, that's the most upper bound you could possibly find. I'm not denying any of that, but simply exploring the possibility of being within a finite subset of Absolute Infinity. There's no doubt that this subset is extremely large and uncountable. If we assume we have infinitely many such memories and experiences, do you agree that experiencing Absolute Infinity is the same as seeing them all at once? I'm sorry if this is annoying to you or pointless. To me however, I feel like I have gained from this. Even if that gain is the simple noticing of my ego running and shouting that it has "figured it out" being yet another story.

Perhaps if I sit enough in consciousness I'll be able to let go my need for the validation of my ideas. Perhaps when an idea that completes my understanding of reality will come, I will simply be observe it and notice the pleasure it brings to my mind without identifying with it. Perhaps this thread is only motivated by the "fear of being wrong" and so I want people to either validate or debunk my claim to feel "right". That is indeed all egoic behavior. Yet when it comes to producing your own spirituality theory, isn't it worth it to double check your ideas with feedback from your peers? Ego still thinks that its worth it in a sense and I must disidentify with that.

That I agree with and I wouldn't argue against that. But likewise, I could be lost in my mind thinking about the pythagorean theorem. It would be as "wrong" in the sense that I'm lost in my mind and this is not awareness. Yet it doesn't make the pythagorean theorem false. I totally agree that this entire thread is selling a mind distraction. Yet I'm am not totally convinced that this mind distraction has no value as a pointer to the Now. Just not yet It's true that in the end it doesn't change anything, whether the infinite is actually infinite or perceived by a limited mind to be infinite since it encompasses its entire capacity. It is indeed a useless detail but I guess it's addictive to the ego because it explains. If I sit silently and observe the consciousness and I drop mental activity, I'll probably stop thinking about it. Perhaps I'll even forget about this whole distraction thing! But I doubt I will come up with a counter-argument against it.

There's no doubts that ego thinks I am not aware and I'm beating myself up every day for not being as aware as I would want to be (ego creating a fantasy of the Now in which I would be aware and constantly comparing) and sure trying to be aware of all that stuff is my daily challenge. However I would never claim that I'm anywhere near aware. Yet I still come up with fun theories to debunk. I would never claim that coming up with such theories is a proof of my awareness, if I were aware I wouldn't play with them as I'm doing right now. I would just be. I am not yet aware of the pointlessness of such theories because I feel like there's something more I haven't discovered in them. I feel like such a theory, if it happen to be relatively true, could benefit my understanding of things because it directly points every part of Past into the Now. PS: It's true that I used the verb "aware" in the previous message but it was a very different, relative and local type of awareness. I might not be aware on the absolute sense, but you can't argue against me that I am aware of the feel of the chair touching my ass for instance.

@Serotoninluv Feel free not to answer if you don't feel like answering, but I would highly appreciate your view on this topic. When writting this I was wondering "Hmm, what would serotonin would say?" I am aware that this is just a story, a theorem the ego tries to use to simplify, project unto concept its notion of the Now and the Infinite. I am aware that to truly be I need to let go of all conceptualizations, including this one. Yet some conceptualizations are useful as pointers to no conceptualization. (Otherwise there would be no point to reading books and learning theory.) Do you think that this idea has merit as a pointer? If not, can you find a flaw that would deconstruct this paradigm? No offense to the entire rest of the forum. I would appreciate if any type of counter-point would be brought to the table but for now here all we have is unjustified direct denial and some off-topic conversation.

When you talk to any unenlighted being under the effect of their ego, (basically anyone), they will have this tendency of defining who they are. They will say things like "I'm good at X", "Y is not for me" etc. to basically explain you what they believe their identity is. From my experience, when you validate their identity, they seem to start liking you. Saying things like "oh you really are a clever guy" or "yeah drawing really is your thing" are naturally things that the ego crave to reinforce its identity. In more negative situations, this can mean the ego you are talking to is playing the victim, and is actively looking for conversation that will reinforce their role as the victim. Naturally, if you try to say things that would go against the role they are playing, the ego generates anger, or even hate. Their ego then starts looking at how pretentious you are and will find something about you which would invalidate everything you said, so that they can continue playing the role they are currently playing. The thing is, both options seems quite bad honestly. Option 1 feels like I'm helping an ego develop itself to cause unhappiness in the person's life and option 2 feels like I'm just creating anger which makes more ego energy. So what do you even do? Avoid validating or invalidating people's identity all the time? Doesn't that prevent a connection between you and that person because they'll never feel "good" talking to you, they'll never get the pleasure of having their ego validated?

While I fully understand it conceptually, I haven't realized it fully yet, only partially. I do notice though when a little bit of my identification with thoughts fall appart, and these few seconds of consciousness are always very pleasurable. So I can imagine how it will feel to walk in a forest with pure AMness. Great discussion with you as always

What you describe here is not hard rules of how you work as a human but what the ego does. The point of meditation is to notice the ego before it acts unconsciously through you. There's absolutely no guarantee that sitting down for 2 hours will give you any consciousness. It is easy for the ego to sit down for 2 hours and lose itself in its stories convincing itself of how useless meditation is. When it comes to meditation, quality should go over quantity. If you don't understand how meditation works or it doesn't reasonate with you, there's little use to neurotically force yourself to meditate to prove to yourself that it doesn't work. The way to get rid of addictions is to notice the thoughts in you that lead to this automatic unwanted behavior. Noticing how you feel when you do the unwanted behavior is also a good idea, as it helps reinforce the idea that this behavior is not something you want. Mindfulness meditation is the training for noticing thoughts but you don't need meditation in order to start noticing thoughts. You seem to have noticed how you feel when you masturbate. That's good work, that's actually some bit of consciousness! But be cautious not to mix up how you feel and what reality is. True it takes away your energy and your mood, but it's not true that it makes you physically weaker or dumber. There can be a correlation between your energy and your performance indeed, but this lack of energy you get could also be attributed by the shame you inflict to yourself after every time your masturbate. Please be respectful to the other members of the forum. This name calling is not giving you anything and prevents people from taking you seriously. You seem to dislike the idea of not taking responsibility for your own behavior, you don't want to blame your addiction on past trauma instead you want to take 100% responsibility for it. That's great, but you have to see that your current ego is conditioned by the past. You weren't born with a porn addiction : porn or even addiction wasn't a concept in your mind when you were a baby. I can't tell you what it is in your past that lead to your current state but that's something you gotta figure out by yourself. And sure, you are 100% responsible for your past conditioning. When you are asked to think about your childhood, how do you feel? We don't really care about the explanations of why looking at the past is BS here but what you feel and why you feel like that. There's definitely lots of unaware feelings that are trapped in there, as for everybody. Yet you are so used to those shitty feelings that you just identified them as being normal and you seem to think that everybody is living the same hell as you.

Thanks for the nice insights. Any book about resonance you would suggest to me? Bonus point if it targets a rationally minded audience. I see what you mean here about being limited to the conceptual understanding of god and consciousness rather than consciousness itself, which is unlimited. I want to make sure I don't limit myself to my own understanding, yet I prefer using the word "consciousness" than "god" for practical reasons. Everybody claims they know what god is, if it exists or not and blablabla. It makes hard to talk about it to anyone. Consciousness though? Most people would agree that its a good thing and people who have no clue what consciousness is at least don't carry a negative stigma against the word. In "there's thoughts of a forest currently flowing and they are separate from I", "I" in this case is not the ego or what the mind think it is but your true self, that is consciousness or god. It's true that the usual "I" employed is the conceptual version of myself, but I prefer naming the conceptual self the ego and the true self I. But in this sentence the I is consciousness. What I don't like about I am the forest is that there's a mixing with the sense of Being with the forest, it's true that it could mean "I stop identifying with the monkey and I start identifying with the forest" and perhaps the first part of this is much more meaningful than the second. Although harmless, the second part is still a bit absurd. To me there's nothing to the right hand side of "I Am." I try to stop identifying with my thoughts so I can stop being this guy I think I am and I can start simply being. I'm not doing that to be something else. But it's mostly just a matter of preference of the naming. Same concepts underneath

Nice comparison, love it Why does one say "I am the forest" rather than say "I am the consciousness which experiences the forest"? Would you disagree with Eckhart Tolle saying that ego is identification with form, that is, mixing up the feeling of Being with thoughts? "I am God" makes sense, especially if God is just a label to mean consciousness. But being the forest? I would go more for "there's thoughts of a forest currently flowing and they are separate from I".

Can you use this to fix climate change please? Just materialize a continent full of trees as large as Australia in the middle of the pacific, should be good. Remove the plastic that's there while at it. Thanks