Jodistrict

Real Buddhism is a path and not a set of concepts. Buddha didn’t speculate about metaphysics because he focused like a laser beam on the path that ends suffering. That is why he never talked about God, because it was irrelevant to ending suffering. All this talk: “I am God”, “Its a dream”, blah blah blah, are just words forming concepts and is useless. Follow the path and go into the silence where there are no words or concepts.

What is criticized here is mostly Western Buddhism. The Buddhism practiced in the East is at a whole different level way beyond psychedelics. But even in the East it has become mostly bureaucratic and the authenticity is shrinking.

It’s interesting how having horns, pointed ears, wagging one’s tongue, and having a red tint gives a feeling-sense of evil to the Western mind. When there is objectively nothing bad about showing your tongue and moving it back and forth. It’s all imagination.

The ego is a machine.

Social security was meant to be self financing. It's not for free. People pay into it during their entire working life. But congress took the money out over the years calling it borrowing. The system should be made truly independent and it will work.

I once took 9 grams of mushrooms and I felt like I was plugged into a light socket and being electrocuted. The visions were too fast and intense to make sense of it. I don’t believe taking high doses necessarily does anything useful. You are trying to force something with a chemical rather than doing the work and developing your consciousness in everyday life.

I am beginning to wonder about the shaman’s dose. The fraternity brother can chug 25 beers in less than 5 minutes. However, there is even a greater brother who can chug 30 beers in less than 5 minutes. Is the fraternity brother a greater shaman or just insensitive? The other path is that less is better. Develop your sensitivity and go into the journey calm and relaxed. When you go into the silence, the silence teaches you.

It’s a testament to the safety of the tryptamines that they are being massively abused by irresponsible, ignorant people but we still only hear occasional stories of someone being injured. There are even people who do 5-meo at parties. We never hear about the deaths caused by adverse reaction to aspirin.

Having taken alot of psychedelics, I respect Ralston’s point of view and I am willing to consider it seriously rather than being defensive and finding out reasons why it isn't true. Ayahuasca and mushrooms keeps me trapped in my mind and there are too many visions and stories to examine the mind itself. How much is imagination and fantasy and what is coming from deep knowledge? Bufo Alvarius goes beyond the mind directly to the present moment and an intense awareness of my being. However, the effect is short lived and temporary. I haven’t tried synthetic 5-meo yet. San Pedro connects one to the heart and doesn’t mess with your mind. Perhaps San Pedro or Huachuma is the most useful. A heart centered consciousness is healing.

"Nick Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur died after an accidental cliff fall at the Ovingdean Gap in Brighton, England in July 2015." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_More_Time_with_Feeling According to the above article, it was an accident. What if he had drunk alcohol and then slipped off a cliff, would anyone blame the alcohol? Or how about blaming the cliff? Or what if you slip off the cliff because you were paying too much attention to your smartphone. If something like LSD is preconceived as being dangerous, then the facts are used to justify the conclusion.

The daughter of a famous TV host, Art Linkletter, died in the 1960s. She actually committed suicide but Linkletter blamed it on LSD. She jumped off a balcony. Linkletter was very influencial in vilifying and spreading false information about LSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Linkletter#:~:text=Diane Linkletter (October 31%2C 1948,at the age of 20. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/09/richard-nixon-war-on-drugs-timothy-leary-216264/

https://www.shazam.com/home

I have been using “psychedelics” for healing for about three years. I would like to offer a contrarian view to the hype. First, they work differently for every person so it is hard to generalize. I have seen people who take ayahuasca once and then say they don’t need it anymore. Other people go to ceremonies for years and nothing happens. Be careful about the hype. A popular one is that “ayahausca (or insert your favorite psychedelic) is worth 15 years of therapy”. These statements are obviously just marketing slogans. This is what happens when business gets involved. The other factor is that most people conducting ceremonies are facilitators. That means they are responsible for delivering the medicine and providing a safe space. But they don’t have a clue about healing or therapy. Thus, you are basically on your own. The other factor is that psychedelics create an illusion of “deepness”, that something is really happening, when it is just triggering your imagination. It takes a strong intention to direct the mind to deeper knowledge and healing. Lastly, I would encourage you to start your healing now even if you don’t have access to them. You don’t need them. Have a meditation and mindfulness practice.

I take Bufo Alvarius on a regular basis, with a guide and by myself. A lot of the “deepness” of psychedelics is illusory. You aren’t really connecting like you think. It is just stimulating your imagination. I recently completed my first Plant Diet in the Amazon. I learned that the Plant Diet is actually a rigorous ascetic discipline. You purge and cleanse yourself every day (including vomiting for 5 to 6 hours at a time) and only then do you take the master plant Ayahuasca. If you are worthy, she will share her wisdom with you. In other words, the Plant Diet is just as rigorous as a real meditation. You get nothing for free in life. The magic pill is the real illusion.

He does and is not afraid of the word "God". But his life purpose is to make meditation something rigorous that is accepted by Science, so I believe he downplays talk of God for that reason.

I studied with Shinzen many years ago and heard the story of his first enlightenment. He was accepted into the monestary of a Vajrayana Japanese Buddhist sect. He had to meditate by himself for six months day and night. Every morning he had to pour ice cold water over his body. This was in winter, and these place have no heat. The way you make real progress in meditation is by putting in the effort. It is effort. Not genetics. Doing a half ass meditation for 40 years gets you the results you should expect. It is just going through the motions and make pretend.

A Bodhisattva is not playing that game.

The universities are already a farm where they teach sheep to be sheep.

The jungle would be better.

I recently returned from the Amazon, and they have plants that enhance the dreaming state like Bobinsana and Clavo Hausca. This is a good way to go. Your dreams can go deeper into your unconscious mind than psychedelics.

Universities have turned into a debt slavery scam for millions of young people. They get useless degrees, especially in the liberal arts, and then can’t get a job and have to hope for debt foregiveness. The system needs to be rethought. It should not be a place where everyone automatically goes. Most people should go to some kind of trade school and learn a specific skill. I studied philosophy on my own. How can anyone seriously contemplate the meaning of life in an environment where you attention is focused on receiving a grade for regurgitating a professor’s opinions? Does anyone else see the absurdity of this?

I recently returned from the Amazon and did a proper plant diet with a shaman. I discovered that the plant diet is actually a rigorous ascetic discipline. I did it for two weeks, but real shamen do it for 30 days to six months. During the diet you only eat yams, rice, beans, and what you can kill in the jungle. There is no salt and sugar. You drink water from the stream. You make a bed with sticks so that you sleep above the ground. You spend all day purging and cleansing. During a purge you will be throwing up for five to six hours straight. You take chiric sanango which feels like ants crawling over your body. It’s only after the rigorous preparations of the plant diet that you take Ayahuasca. If the plant finds you worthy, you will receive her wisdom and visions with clarity. So to sum up: the proper use of Ayahuasca is a rigorous discipline equally demanding as meditation. There are no quick fixes. There is no magic bullet. Psychedelics by themselves will do nothing for you. There is no magic key. This is fantasy.

I found a great resource. On this webpage, you can download free pdf's of medicine songs and spiritual songs. The song books have the lyrics along with the cords that you play on a guitar. I suggest starting out with the Ibiza Sagrada songbook. https://songfisher.org/book.html

It takes strong determination to succeed at meditation. I know a monk who meditated in Burma and he spent several months sitting up while he slept, and his sleep was only for a few hours a day. He wouldn’t sleep laying down. That is the lengths people go to make meditation work. It isn’t easy. Nobody does that in America, so people just see the results and say it was a natural gift.

The Buddhists believe that Buddha had been working on himself for multiple reincarnations in the past. That could be confused with genetics, which is a recent explanation of scientific materialism.