TrippyMindSubstance

@Matthew85 Fair enough, I appreciate the input! @Leo Gura How do you navigate the balance of surrendering to God vs exerting your own (ego's) will upon reality? There were times where I've found myself on both ends of the spectrum, where I either realize that: - my will will always ultimately fail me with no option left besides total surrender to the truth/oneness/death and getting to this point of complete surrender is the purpose of life or - the truth/oneness/death is always "chasing" me, and the very act of resisting surrendering to it is the exact process that creates existence, or in other words, running from death is the driving force/energy of life. So in this scenario, resisting surrender and exerting my own will is the point of life I feel like this is all totally circular though, where even surrendering to God is a sneaky attempt at manipulating reality because if I surrender to God, I'm doing so with the belief that it's going to make me enlightened or whatever and my reality will be better because of it. But at the same time, if I exert my will upon reality, it's not really "my" will, as in I didn't choose to have these desires, I just mysteriously have them (or you could say God put them there) and me acting on them can be seen as me surrendering to the will of God.

So I tried to relax and let all distinctions subside, but it didn't seem entirely possible since reality is distinctions. I know @Nahm has spoken about creating your reality before, so I checked out his youtube video about it and something definitely clicked. My entire initial post was essentially me creating frustration for myself by constantly repeating these thoughts about how I'm frustrated about the fact that I can't create my reality. I was creating that reality for myself. It's true that I'm not completely powerless because I have the power to make myself feel frustrated like that, and I also have the power to make myself feel good by thinking good feeling thoughts, and that is what I should do right now. I've had experiences where I was in lots of physical pain, and I couldn't just feel good by thinking nice thoughts, but again, all that I have right now is this present moment. That memory, as well as the thought of some future experience where I'll be in too much pain to be able to feel good just by thinking nice things is just another thought occurring in this present moment. In fact, it is a counterproductive thought that is pushing me back into that same frustration I was feeling at the beginning of this post. Right now I will focus on some nice thoughts/feelings that I like and let that make my reality more peaceful, satisfying and joyful.

@Matthew85 I understand that to some level but I still struggle with it because the idea of going through this process of deconstructing beliefs and replacing them seems like nothing but another thought right now.. another carrot on a stick for me to follow with the hopes of it bringing me satisfaction, but ultimately distracting me from the present moment. I know it's kind of a bad response to what you said but I just have this intuitive sense that my answer can only be found right here right now, not after a few years of work. @LastThursday I think I get what you're saying, but I'm struggling to "stabilize" it. It feels like the understanding is flickering in front of me but I'm struggling to see it for long enough to completely make sense of it. Let me try to focus.. So it's not God creating my reality from "the outside", it's reality creating itself. There is only one reality with no "outside" force to shape it. Reality is distinctions, and me being in control of those distinctions vs god being in control of those distinctions is just another distinction to further "grow" the present moment in complexity. I feel like I'm currently lost in a sea of distinctions and only digging myself deeper and I need to relax and let the distinctions fade in order to see the truth.

My goal in spirituality is to experience oneness while sober. I think I've been getting closer and closer to experiencing it while sober. First it took psychedelics mixed with weed, then just psychedelics, then lower doses of psychedelics, then just weed, and now I have these little glimpses, for example last night as I was falling asleep there were a couple seconds where I was in it, and then I was out before I could really experience it. If I do properly experience it while sober, I will probably enjoy it and try to get as much information out of it as possible, for use in the future when I'm "back to normal". Once I'm back in my normal state, I will probably make some use out of the insights I got from the oneness state, but then I will want to experience it again, putting me in this loop of seeking mystical states, rather than just living my life. I'm starting to lose touch with my goals in all of this. I want to experience these states, but it sort of feels like I'm just chasing a high, and that these experiences don't really bring me that much use, other than being temporarily enjoyable. I feel like my true growth in life comes from doing work in the "real world", and I'm not completely neglecting this, but I feel like I'm so distracted by spirituality that its making it tougher for me to enjoy my life in the real world. I would love to kill off this desire to keep experiencing enlightenment/oneness/whatever, and just enjoy the state of consciousness I am regularly in and just act from there, but if I try to suppress or push this desire away, it eventually catches up with me and I don't feel like I'm living authentically because my true desires are out of alignment with my actions. Any tips on how to navigate this situation? I'm currently trying to satisfy both my "spiritual" and "worldy" desires, but they seem to be in conflict. For example, I wish I was more passionate about my career, but my spiritual side tells me that chasing money, status, etc. is unsatisfying, and ultimately pointless, which obviously kills my motivation to work harder.

@OneHandClap Thanks a lot. I'm really glad I posted here and talking to you really helped me ground myself and get back on track. Have a great night

@OneHandClap My mind has questions: what is all this? where did I come from? are other people real? But this is just my mind trying to escape from the moment, thinking that I need these answers, that if I don't have these answers, I somehow won't be able to have peace. But I am already at peace

@OneHandClap Fair enough. This idea of avoiding pain and having to deal with the pain of working for hours is currently just an idea in my mind, just an imagined concept in this moment. Right now I'm just sitting here, and I'm fairly comfortable, and what I'm experiencing right now is actually very mysterious and beautiful. I guess there is a fear of "what happens once this beautiful moment inevitably gets interrupted by something unpleasant!", but that is just another arising thought. I just need to keep letting go..

@OneHandClap I agree with a lot of what you said and its stuff that I definitely know already but seem to forget when I get too caught up in things. I guess it all comes back to the ultimate spiritual practice being that of surrender/letting go/loving the moment unconditionally. The only thing I disagree with or maybe just don't fully understand is the idea of survival being the ultimate drive. I know Leo really harps on this and I agree to an extent, but I feel like once our physical and social survival needs are taken care of, our main drive becomes that of thriving, meaning our main drive becomes seeking out pleasant sensations and avoiding uncomfortable ones. If you have no more fear of death, the only thing left to do is just chase pleasure and happiness and help others achieve pleasure and happiness right? I feel like my desire for these mystical experiences comes from the desire to have fun and avoid physical pain. The mystical experience is fun in and of itself, and if I get some useful insights from it, I hope to use those to make myself more comfortable and avoid physical pain more in my day to day life. One of my biggest causes of physical pain is the fatigue and discomfort that I feel in my body that comes from working for hours doing a job that I don't really love. I guess I hope that these experiences can somehow help me get out of this problem. If everything was about survival, it would make things too easy: just surrender to the fear of death. Once you do this, you get over it and realize there is nothing to fear. However surrendering to physical pain doesn't seem to fix anything. It sticks around and its still painful, there is no "getting through to the other side" with it. I guess you can surrender and let time pass until it's over, but if it's over then it will inevitably come back again. Can God really not design a way out of this cycle? And if he can, why am I still stuck in it?

@Valwyndir Man it's crazy, I've experienced the exact same thing with some of my psychedelic experiences, and other times I was able to comfortably abide in this non-dual state where I can see that everything is mind, we are all the same being etc. without feeling like I'm going to disappear, I wonder why this is? Leo described the same experience in his "What is Reality" video like 20-30 minutes in when he talked about emergency sirens going off or something like that when you start going down that slippery slope and unravelling reality a little too much and shit gets a little too real. I was sober when I watched the video for the first time but as he start saying that stuff it started happening again and I had to pause it because it felt like if I didn't I would have dissolved myself out of existence lol. I guess it feels like this fear reaction is in a sense the "force" that keeps reality infinitely going? As you approach this non-existence (which by definition can't exist?) there comes a point where your survival instinct (which is really just the physical impossibility for nothing to exist) kicks in, and your fear of non-existence fuels you to stay alive by any means, and staying alive basically means not being still? Move your mind by thinking thoughts or move your body or make sounds, just do SOMETHING to keep existing. I guess as you look around you in life this is all you see. Motion/Vibration? Birds chirping, animals running around, humans going through their motions, etc. Nothing is truly still, except for the stillness/nothingness that forces everything else to stay in motion. It's interesting then how you can then flip things to see this fear of death as actually equivalent to the love/joy of existence depending on what perspective you look at it from. Are we running from death, or are we running towards life? I don't really know why I'm even writing this, I guess this is just journalling since apparently I'm writing to myself. Anyways, peace man have a good night.

Hey guys, I'm curious as how to many of you have had an awakening experience/non-dual experience while completely sober, and how it went. I remember reading someone's post a while ago where the person had quite an intense one while sober, and I'm wondering how many others have had similar experiences, because it's obviously much more rare. I know the term awakening/enlightenment/whatever can be vague sometimes, but just for some more clarity, some examples would be: undeniably seeing everyone as yourself undeniably seeing everyone/everything as God very clearly experiencing/seeing that underneath it all, we are all the same one consciousness experiencing infinity, seeing infinity wherever you look What I would not count as an awakening would be for example having deep insights about yourself, society, or reality etc. which is just intellectual and doesn't involve a fundamental change in your direct experience. Personally, I haven't ever quite passed that threshold where it's a full on awakening while sober, but I feel like I've been getting very close, especially over this past year. I'd say I've had at least 20 difference experiences where I was like 80% there, but just not quite enough to have that radical shift occur. I've experienced this many times while on psychedelics, even on super light doses, because I feel like they provide me with a sort of momentum, where if I start moving in the direction of awakening, I sort of accelerate into it. This allows me to get over that threshold, but when I'm sober and moving at that steady pace, I can't seem to quite get over that hump. So yeah, that's it, I'm just curious! Feel free to share any experiences, advice, struggles etc.

I'm at a point in my life now where I'm ready to start trying to eat healthier, the main reason being that my energy levels are generally quite low, but also I constantly get headaches, I have periods where my body feels "inflamed" very often (this usually comes with a headache as well and my body feels hot to the touch as if I have a fever but I don't, and I generally just feel pain in my muscles and joints) and I also experience weird bloating and stuff sometimes where it just feels like my body isn't digesting things well. I don't expect a change in my diet to fix everything, but I thought I'd add in the extra problems because it would be interesting to hear if someone experienced something similar and actually did see some changes. But like the I said, the main reason I'm doing this is to try and increase my energy levels and I want to hear how some of your experiences have gone in order to help myself set my expectations and maybe to get some motivation too if I hear that some of you have had some pretty drastic results. And just to get a sense of where I'm at now, my diet is pretty random but I would say that more than half of my meals aren't "whole foods". I eat a lot of bread, sugary things, ramen noodles, frozen chicken nuggets, pizzas, occasional fast food etc. Maybe one third of my meals are "healthy" but only healthy in the sense that they consist of whole foods, not necessarily things that I have consciously experimented with in order to find out which foods work best for me. So yeah, what effects have you guys experienced after shifting your diet to something far more healthy than you were eating before and should I expect a pretty big increase in energy levels?

@BipolarGrowth I'm trying to say there is a balance of when you should try to bend reality and when you should just surrender, but the wisdom to know when to to do each one can only come from accepting the fact that you do have a desire to bend reality, and trying to do it when you really want to, until you eventually learn when it "works" and when it doesn't. The other argument I'm trying to make is that in a sense there is no way to not "bend reality". If you say "Maybe we should stop bending", what you're really saying is, "If we stop doing this one thing (taking action) and start doing this other thing instead (surrendering), our lives will be better". Surrendering is an action you take. It's more subtle I guess, but you're still "doing" something that you think will make your life better. So if you are honest with yourself and you realize "Yeah I guess I am trying to make my life better by always surrendering to everything" that's completely fine. If this is really what you believe is the best way to make your life better, go all in. Surrender as much as you can until you get confirmation that it really is the best way to make life better, or until you realize it has its limitations, and then adjust your strategy and try something else. I guess to summarize, I definitely agree with your point that spirituality is just humans trying to experience better states of consciousness, but thats what everything is, whether you're chasing girls, money, or enlightenment, and there's nothing wrong with that. Don't worry about life being boring after you remove all conflict, because I promise it won't be that easy. The process alone of trying to remove all conflict is "the journey" which is what life is all about.

In a way, you definitely hit the nail on the head. If we are honest with ourselves, our spiritual journey is in some way motivated by seeking a better experience, trying to manipulate reality, trying to reduce/escape suffering etc. It can, and is very often used as an attempt at escapism. Even if it doesn't work, a lot of people go into it with the intention that it will numb or erase all their suffering. This is fine though, because if you stay honest with yourself during your spiritual journey, you will undoubtably reach a point where you realize you can't just escape everything and you have to face life head on. So even if people go into it with the escapist mentality, the corrective process of the spiritual journey should fix this for you, and the more honest you stay with yourself, the quicker this misunderstanding will get sorted out. You can't suppress the urge to manipulate reality. Just suggesting that we should stop "bending" comes with the underlying idea that if we stop trying to do this, life will be "better", which is the exact same as trying to manipulate life to make it better. You will always want better. You are born with the desire to manipulate reality and make it better for yourself. Yes, this desire will cause you suffering sometimes, but suppressing that desire will also cause suffering because then you will just end up living in a shit reality. Just like in buddhism where they say desire is the root of all suffering, but if you try not to desire, you are just desiring not to desire, so you don't really have a choice. This is where wisdom and experience come into play, which the spiritual journey should help with. Wisdom and experience prevents you from becoming a hedonist, it prevents you from becoming apathetic, and it prevents unnecessary asceticism. It helps refine your understanding of when to put effort into manipulating reality, and when to just surrender to it, which I believe is a never ending process of refinement.

@mandyjw and @Delis it's really interesting that you guys had such involved/complex experiences compared to the simple "one moment you're not awake, the next moment you are" that I'm more familiar with. Some of the things you guys talked about I feel like I've experienced on psychedelic trips where I didn't feel like I had that light switch awakening, but still experienced things like "My biggest judgments, fears and traumatic moments were seen in an entirely new light and Understanding of Love", "People glowed. Everything glowed", "I started to see things coming to me (consciousness) while walking or driving a car instead of me moving in space". Cool stuff everyone, keep it coming

@DefinitelyNotARobot LOL

This wasn't really what I meant, it's been just about 2 years now since I've done any kind of drug precisely because I realized that I can reach the same levels of spirituality sober if I put in the work, I'm more interested in what you mentioned below and the distinction between the two: I think I have very similar experiences to what you mention when hearing God in music and having it bring tears to your eyes or remembering it and feeling into it to a degree, but again to me this feels more intellectual, even when it comes with feelings of deep joy and peace. In my experience, these are completely separate things from for example, what @Nahm said, which is the "awakening" I can personally relate to the most. It's not really complicated and there's no way you can misinterpret it, its just a very clear, radical change in experience from separation to oneness/infinity, exactly like if someone just flipped on a light switch and now you see it. Those are the kinds of sober experiences in most interested in hearing about, but regardless I'm still interested in everyone else's experiences whether they think they qualify under my definition or not so thank you @QandC, @nistake, @JosephKnecht, @James123, @mandyjw, and @Delis for commenting as well!

Yeah makes sense. I think freaking out is honestly an inevitable part of the process for most people. I do think I've gotten a bit better at staying relaxed for longer before it becomes too overwhelming so I guess the more I do that, the more trust I'll eventually build. I'm sure self love is very important too. Maybe I subconsciously don't feel worthy of having the experience and my mind ends up sabotaging everything with fear?

@Carl-Richard Beautiful post man thanks so much for sharing. I can definitely relate to the terror of feeling like you're about to die or disappear out of existence. A few of the times where I got to that 80% mark, I would realize I'm very close, my heart would start racing and I'd start trembling like crazy or break out into a sweat and then somewhat consciously bail due to the fear of dissolving. I say somewhat consciously because I think sometimes it would feel more like an automatic reflex, I guess due to me not being relaxed/still enough? I feel like this is where psychedelics used to give me that extra push/take away that option of bailing in the times where I was scared of awakening because that momentum I spoke of would be too great for me to be able to turn it around. Man I lol'd at this . I know exactly what you mean about feeling like that tension is what was keeping you in existence or allowing you to focus on your teacher. It's funny you mentioned this because just last week, I had another one of those 80% experiences where I was laying in bed and realized that even though my eyes were closed, there was still some kind of tension in them as if I was looking at something, and I just needed let everything absolutely relax. So I tried my best and it felt like my consciousness started expanding, and I was moving in "that direction", but for some reason I wasn't able to go all the way. This time it wasn't fear that stopped me, it just felt like I didn't have enough of that momentum that psychedelics seem to give me in order to go all the way. I'm thinking that the stillness that meditation apparently generates might be kind of synonymous with this "momentum" psychedelics give me, and if I can build up this stillness in me it might help me have a sober breakthrough. I'm sorry to hear that the spontaneous experiences are causing you some trouble, but glad to hear things are otherwise going well. Hopefully you can continue to stay grounded and make the best of things!

When it happens past the threshold I speak of, there won't be any room for asking yourself "is this it?". That's why I consider that a proper awakening and wanted to take the intellectual stuff out of the definition. When you are truly in the experience, you see the oneness or infinity of everything as clearly as you see the screen you're reading this on. You literally can't not see it. The first time it happened to me on mushrooms, I didn't think it was possible to not see it anymore, and I thought I would stay enlightened forever. I still don't really understand how it goes away to be honest. At some point I just find myself back in separation again.

@Leo Gura Doesn't this apply to science and materialism as well? Even if the absolute truth is that there is ultimately nothing, there is no one else, everything is imagination etc, isn't the point of the illusion to go "into the world" assuming there are certain rules and then playing within those boundaries? Without these rules, you end up with infinite oneness, and with these rules, you end up with something like materialism, do you not? Yes, every time I awaken/merge with God, science dissolves and materialism is ultimately proven false, but then the next step is always to reintegrate back into the world as a separate self, where there are rules and laws that govern that particular created universe. Isn't this exactly why you weren't able to heal yourself on your 28 day retreat? You can't heal your body when the entire universe collapses and your body no longer exists, because of course from that perspective, there is nothing to heal. Not trying to argue, just genuinely curious as to what the problem with materialism seems to be, because from my understanding, materialism = concrete rules, and without rules there is no game, and as far as I understand, "each of us" separated from God in order to play the game.

I've spent a lot of time in the past using the deep meditation technique from this website https://aypsite.org/13.html (I'm not trying to promote anything, just sharing more info about the technique I used if anyone is curious, so think I'm allowed to post this?). The reason that a mantra actually helps quiet your mind is because the mantra isn't really "thinking". The goal is to keep saying the mantra in your head every 5-10 seconds, but what happens is your mind starts thinking about other things. And it might seem easy to just keep going back to the mantra but if you try this for 20-30 minutes, I almost guarantee that you will get so caught up in some thought streams that you might completely forget to go back to the mantra for a couple minutes. Then it will finally hit you that your mind has "pulled you in" and you're supposed be saying the mantra, so you go back to doing that. Then the same thing will probably continue to happen again, and again. When you get caught up in your thoughts and forget to go back to the mantra, this does not mean you're meditating incorrectly. It's simply part of the process, and every time you become aware of the fact that you've been absorbed in a story of the mind, it's like a mini awakening. It really is basically the same type of process as an actual awakening, just on a micro level. Sometimes you'll instantly realize you're thinking, and sometimes it will take a while, but either way having a mantra to centre yourself on starts making you much better at being aware of the fact that you're thinking, and that your mind is constantly adding all kinds of narrative to the present moment. The more aware you become of your thoughts the moment they enter your consciousness, the easier it is for you to simply not entertain the ones that you see don't serve you.

For sure. I definitely didn't mean to say that approach isn't working for him, because sort of what I think both you and @electroBeam are saying, it's almost pointless to debate whether or not an approach like that is fundamentally "correct". At this point of my development, I personally see Leo's approach to psychedelics as more of an invitation, sort of like the universe showing me through Leo that "This is an example of what you can do with your life. You can explore your mind in this way through psychedelics, which might come with certain benefits and might come with certain drawbacks. If this appeals to you, awesome. Do it. If not, look at all this other shit you can do. Pick something that works for you". And in terms of the other stuff that @electroBeam is saying, I didn't have time to carefully read your post, I sort of quickly skimmed through it so hopefully I'm not misunderstanding something, but based off what I understand you're saying, it would definitely be very interesting to create this new way of communication without assuming there are others, seeing everything as finite perspectives etc. I think would be cool to maybe create a separate thread where we try to discuss ideas in that context, but I think it's kind of too late to try and bring that into this thread where the context of "there is you, and me, and other spiritual seekers that might benefit from hearing this kind of advice" has already been assumed. I think it makes more sense to just stick with the one that has been chosen at the beginning of the thread to avoid confusion, but I 100% see the value in trying to communicate in the way that you mentioned.

I'm so glad you brought this up because I don't think it's talked about enough. I think the fact that psychedelics can put you in such a suggestible state is one of their most powerful but also most dangerous/cunning effects. I imagine this could be useful in clinical settings for rewiring dysfunctional belief systems such as OCD or anorexia, but can be counterproductive in less controlled environments where you might just end up reinforcing your current beliefs or even accidentally taking on new ones such as the Christianity example. Ultimately though, I think that the true value of experiencing this suggestible state for yourself is that it exposes first hand that your ideas and beliefs truly create your experience. If you have one trip where you undoubtably see that Christianity is the truth, and then another trip that says the opposite, it just exposes the facts that our minds can take anything and run with it, and ultimately can't be trusted. I've had trips during different phases of my life, meaning I entered them with different spiritual concepts and ideas, and because of this, the trips brought me to some contradictory conclusions, that at the time each seemed final and complete in a way. I think this is what it means to not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. To truly believe one of the conclusions my mind came to would be to mistake the finger for the moon. To see the moon itself is to see how the mind comes to these conclusions, but realize that no matter how convincing it is, it is not the ultimate truth. Depending on your current ideas, this realization is basically what it means to realize you're God. But even this understanding gets colored by the mind. When seen from a positive frame of mind, it's the most beautiful, liberating conclusion to realize it's all basically groundless and nothing really matters. When seen from a negative fear based state of mind, it's the most horrifying and depressing conclusion to realize nothing is real, you're all alone etc. I also would say this is what "once you get the message, hang up the phone" means. If you truly understand this, you realize that "I need to take psychedelics to find the truth" is just another idea and you following that line of thinking again means you are just buying into the minds bullshit again. With that, I would say that doing psychedelics the way Leo does is completely unnecessary and is just a way to get high and have fun by "going deeper", but obviously, all he's doing is going deeper into the mind, which is infinite. This is no different from physicists choosing to study the universe on deeper and deeper levels. There is no end. Both are completely valid ways of exploring our infinite existence. Leo prefers one approach, and the physicist prefers the other. These are just two of an infinite amount of ways that we can choose to occupy our minds and explore/create the universe.

The truth will set you free. I think you should be honest about your psychedelic use. Don't worry about doctors having a biased position on psychedelics, they know more than strangers on the internet do. If anything, try to remember that these circumstances that you're in are happening for a reason. You are helping yourself awaken. Through the doctor, through your mom, through everyone. There will most likely be unpleasant consequences for you after you completely tell the truth, but that's part of the process. These are all things you have to face. Maybe you actually should stop doing psychedelics if you're not completely stable. Maybe you should work on your relationship with your mom instead of just blaming this on "her shadow". At the deepest level, you have to accept ALL the blame for everything.

I'm curious did this experience happen while under the influence psychedelics? If so which one?