Kyle Gjerseth

I hear a lot about how psychedelics aren't going to solve all your problems etc. I want to use them to effortlessly allow me to be more productive, allow discomfort and reduce my fear avoidance as they have helped me to do in the past. I haven't done them successfully in over a year due to my medication blocking them. I'm off the meds now and I'm concerned about the dangers and why people say they could make my life worse. I assume they will end my mental masturbation based of past experience but I sense this is toxic thinking and I want to know why people say these things about these substances. Thoughts?

I'm no expert as I haven't done 5 meo...from what I've heard Leo say in his "Dangers of Spiritual Work" episode, this seems rather risky. He said there was an individual on the forum here who did 5 meo and it didn't seem like he was ready and this caused him a great deal of distress. He said you could ruin your whole life like that. I was mentally ill and did a half tab of LSD, the first time I did such a low dose of any psychedelic, and the insights gave me panic attacks. It's my understanding you don't believe you're mentally ill anymore but from my understanding psychedelics can bring up past trauma and that can lead to bad trips. I feel concerned. Maybe I'm not "correct" in feeling that way as I believe the idea that everything that happens is exactly what should happen. That being said you sound way too cocky when you say 20 minutes of hell seems manageable...what happens if the insights freak you out and you are seriously damaged beyond a short 20 minutes? It seems like you're not giving this any serious contemplation. Please reach out to somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to 5 meo. I'm scared you're going to hurt yourself. If you decide to do this I really want you posting a trip report.

Could you say more about that? I feel the same way to a small degree but my understanding was that it's necessary to pursue what you desire. Maybe I need to rewatch that episode.

Lately I've been allowing myself to go on social media, watch porn, eat shitty food, use more caffeine and nicotine, and have a general attitude of laziness. I'm surprised I haven't started to feel depressed. The truth is that my highest desire is to do drugs again but I'm on paper and I don't want to go back to jail. I've been meditating for around 10 minutes a day, far less than I used to. A thought came up in my meditation recently that I could do shrooms and pass a ua. I can't tell if my intentions would be to escape or to gain insight about myself. Based on my past experience with LSD (the only psychedelic I've been able to access), I believe taking shrooms could temporarily relieve my drug cravings and allow me to focus on the things that I'm most passionate about, which are mostly based on forming strong relationships with people (I believe I'm at stage green), planting trees, working at my terrible job more so I can buy gifts for people, researching the mental health field, and avoiding anti-social/damaging behavior. On the one hand I think this temporary "improvement" could be beneficial for my mental and physical health and help to give me a sense of direction. On the other hand I believe this would hinder my burning through karma intention as I believe I simply wouldn't have the desire to do the "bad" things I desire to do as I write this. Even though I've admitted to myself that my highest desire lies in getting high, I feel scared about potentially getting psychologically addicted to shrooms. That's awfully confusing for me as I'm obviously contradicting myself. I've been feeling my cognitive performance decline since I've started engaging in these unhealthy activities more often. I'm very forgetful and my adhd is much more noticeable. I believe doing hard drugs would make these symptoms worse and ultimately prevent me from accomplishing my long-term goal of becoming some sort of mental health professional. Another symptom is anxiety. I feel anxious about asking so many questions on this forum and not providing any valuable insight to people I see struggling on here. "Maybe I'll get banned because I've been perceived as engaging in mental masturbation the whole time I've been asking questions on the forum." Is that possible? I'm asking for people's thoughts/advice on my recent experience. I want to know if I'd be doing things "right" by taking psychedelics again while attempting to burn through my karma.

I have many racist and classist ideas. When I see certain types of people (based on class or race) I instantly assume the worst about them. For example, with african american individuals that have a certain "look" about them, I assume they smoke weed and act in the stereotypical fashion that ghetto rap portrays. With poor seeming homeless people, I assume they are a drug addict and steal things to get money for drugs. I fully believe that these are the minority of these groups, and that most people don't act like this, but I still judge them without knowing anything about them. I haven't really watched any of Leo's content that discusses these judgements, but I would like to know what can be done about my judgemental attitude and the stereotyping of certain groups/cultures. Does Leo have any content that explains this?

I appreciate you Leo but honestly I think that's a bit advanced for me right now. Would you say it's possible that as an addict this sort of non-dual way of thinking could be too advanced for somebody in my mental state? I started watching your videos in 8th grade but was just mentally masturbating to them up until a few months ago when I got clean. I read in your disclaimer that your content isn't suitable for a drug addict. "There's more basic stuff you gotta do yet" you said in your dangers of spiritual work episode. Idk how closely you're paying attention to me but you've had to correct me a lot.

Wow that really helps, good analogy! I think I forgot about the no self aspect for a bit there. Thank you!

I'd like to know if there are any concrete steps one can take to be more loving if they understand some of the spiritual concepts but are still struggling. I'm curious about this because I'm a firm believer in the difference model and what Leo had to say in his "Why People Seem Crazy" episode, especially when he said there isn't any superior viewpoint because we are all constructing our own reality. This being said however, I've had several drugs addict "friends" who have died because somebody wanted to make more money and so cut their substances with fentanyl. I recently read online "Deaths involving other synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl) continued to rise with more than 36,359 overdose deaths reported in 2019." I want to be compassionate towards these people because I too act in manipulative ways to make more money but I don't believe I'm causing physical harm much less the mass suffering of people's friends and families. This makes me feel superior to those individuals and of course fentanyl is but one example out of probably thousands, but with this specifically I feel a strong condescending attitude and a lot of hatred. I desire compassion and understanding but as I've been learning to love other aspects of reality that I'm not exactly pleased with, this particular resentment has remained in my heart and I believe it is holding me back from reaching my full potential, and therefore, perhaps will block me from helping other people reach their full potential as well (I want to be a therapist). Again, I want to know what can be done about these thoughts that I see myself, and a lot of other people having. Does anyone have ideas about this?

Yes and there have been a lot of good things said here that make me feel better. That said, I've never really tried praying, much less having my prayers "answered," so I feel closed minded. Perhaps a better question for me to ask is "What could be the root cause of my closed mindedness/how could I go about investigating what the root cause of my closed mindedness is?" I can't seem to think of a good reason for being closed minded nor has it helped me at all with this personal development and spiritual material I'm interested in and I totally agree with what Leo has to say about it.

I'm confused because a lot of thought systems I agree with advocate it, but none seem to imply directly or indirectly that there is no "other" or that God is me and the entire universe is me as consciousness. I think my problem is that I believe these things that Leo says and I'm not really sure how to contemplate these matters. When I think about this stuff I tend to just say "oh yeah what Leo is saying makes sense" instead of really inspecting these supposed truths. I don't really have much credibility here though because I have yet to watch his contemplation videos. I think I'll do that now

I recently watched Leo's burning through karma episode and I've been allowing myself to do rather unproductive things a lot more than usual. I was trying to "wean off" certain behaviors such as eating candy, porn, social media, tv, and internet, but now I'm telling myself that it could potentially be helpful for me to engage in these things as much as I please, so I will experience the unpleasant emotional responses to these softer addictions. I was also a hardcore drug addict when I started watching personal development content, especially Leo's content, and it's my understanding that I was not suitable for advanced pd and spiritual practices at that time. I got clean for a couple months then relapsed all while still consuming this content. I'm 3 months clean now. I'm curious if this idea of burning through karma is being used as an excuse for me not attempting to cut back on these softer addictions anymore. I'm unsure if I'm deceiving myself, but as I've practiced meditation, self-inquiry, and doing psychedelics (responsibly now) I've come to realized that Leo is absolutely correct that we deceive ourselves to a massive degree, so it's probable in my opinion that I'm deceiving myself now. My fear is that this is mental masturbation, something I've been engaging in for almost my whole life. Can anybody relate to this or give me some pointers? Thanks!

I'll look into that! Thank you

Genius

I'm curious about prayer and weather or not it can be productive...

I like the insight and wisdom in AA and Buddhism and they both seem to advocate prayer. The fact that Buddhism advocates it is probably the most positive argument for me because I, unfortunately, have come to be closed minded to other religions (even though my understanding is Buddhism isn't a religion) because they don't seem as practical in my opinion. I'm not convinced that prayer is generally a good thing because I feel as though praying is just, in a sense, ideology because it assumes that there's some external entity separate from "me" and that would violate non-duality. I'm on board with the teachings that say I am God and God is everything, consciousness, every person etc. but I feel a bit stuck with my contemplation about this topic. I suppose I'm asking for your guy's thoughts on weather or not prayer is ideology, or if it is perhaps a necessary aspect of spiritual practices, or if it's different for everybody and there's not a concrete answer.