impulse9

it's from an old cartoon

Happened to me a lot as a teenager. Sounds like classic depersonalization. Honestly the thing I found that helps with this enormously is simply physical activity and a lot of it - it reconnects you with your body, so maybe try that.

Could be your lymph system. You may want to try to eat lots of hot peppers and take cold showers. Those two cured my chronic shoulder pain that I've had for over a decade. Look into Wim Hof method. (Just a suggestion - I am not a doctor)

Easiest thing in the world. Simply ask yourself how happy you are.

@K-Dog have you considered the possibility that you're infected with a mind virus of global hysteria and now you're trying to spread this panic to other people? For all you know, nothing that you've been told is correct. There's plenty of climate scientists who've been violently pushed away from the mainstream or outright fired for stating their opinion. Basically if you don't preach doom and gloom today then your career is as good as finished. The reasonable expectation is that the Earth is indeed warming, it's not nearly as bad as it's portrayed in the media, and we'll get over it one way or the other. Leo's message is much closer aligned to truth than yours.

There is no other. Hurting others is hurting yourself.

Psychedelics can soften the soil if the ground is too rocky - but they can't grow the seed.

Sounds about right

This entire thread

Well here's the thing. Your mind is the divider itself, it is your mind which divides things into halves. You have to rise above your mind to see this, which is mind-bogglingly paradoxical when you think about it (of course it's only paradoxical when you THINK about it, so again you're dividing )

The ego is the one who asks what the ego is.

Sometimes you need to drop all analysis and just stand in awe of the marvelous mystery.

Cannabis.

Wolfram has been claiming he will arrive at some grand unified theory through some kind of finite state automata for ages now, and so far he's had fairly little success proving his theory. His work is important but I don't think it leads where he thinks it does

Stop trying to understand psychedelic experiences logically, unless you want to go insane. Understand them the same way you would understand the beauty of a setting sun. There's nothing to tell, and the more you talk the less you end up saying.

Let me know when someone finds consciousness somewhere in the brain. People think that strong AI is possible too - let me know when someone formally defines intelligence and its inner workings, because without that there's no way to make a machine think. Truth is far weirder than most are willing to admit.

You don't need to know everything and sometimes knowing too much is a burden. Funny how this works.

Personally I find it funny how the non-spiritual people underestimate psychedelics by assuming "it's just a drug", and on the other hand the overly spiritual people overestimate psychedelics by assuming using them will just propel them to nirvana with 0 effort on their part. It's not enough to rise above ego, you have to rise above psychedelics as well. The only reason why anyone has benefited from these substances in the context of spirituality is due to all the work they've done before and after taking them. Without that work, all you have is a lightshow without much context. Just like coffee can help you stay awake but it's not a substitute for being motivated to do work, psychedelics can help you see the truth but they are not a substitute for spiritual work.

All of you act as if you take something back from your trips, when we all know perfectly well that you don't when we're honest with ourselves. What good are all the mystical truths in the world when all you get is confusion upon landing back on Earth? I've done enough psychedelics in my life to know that this is the case, but perhaps some of you prefer to live in the fantasy world where you get the spiritual goodies for free by popping a pill. It doesn't work like that. Unearned wisdom is worthless. Now if you actually use psychedelics in a smart way - perhaps as a tool when you get stuck on your spiritual path - then they may be beneficial. But don't assume you're gonna just pop psychedelics one after another and end up enlightened, because it won't happen. I personally know people that have done psychedelics almost every day for years on end. They're not enlightened, they end up fucking delirious.

I've done both reality shattering psychedelics (namely Salvia Divinorum - the others I've done don't even remotely compare in terms of scale, grandiosity and the experience of cosmic wisdom) and I've been meditating since early age and I've had more profound experiences with meditation. And the insights last longer and stick much firmer with meditation. With psychedelics it's fleeting, with meditation it's not. Don't get me wrong, I think psychedelics are marvelous tools for inner exploration, and my own trips have showed me beyond a shadow of doubt how very little we actually know about who and what we are, which is basically nothing. They are important tools, but the fundamental issue with them is that it's borrowed power. And this is why you don't take anything back from your trip, only the increasingly vague memories of something impossible that happened to you. It's a true mindfuck. But consider for a moment that you could access such power on your own. Imagine for a moment the implications of someone who is able to access this universal wisdom at any given moment, on his own power. This is supposed to be the endgame with meditation. What's the endgame with psychedelics? A life of scratching your head and coming up with ever more ludicrous theories (yes - I love McKenna but come on)? These are very important considerations that one should make in their life before proceeding on the spiritual path in either direction.

I would put that on its head and say psychedelics are a waste of time if you're meditating. "If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen" -Alan Watts And yes - I'm sure Leo would disagree. But we're all entitled to follow our own way. For me personally, psychedelics have been integral in my development of outlook on life, but I see no point to using them regularly. You may feel wise and all-knowing at the peak of your trip, but once you land back on Earth you will have forgotten all of it, and your Ego will be scrambling in a mad panic to collect the pieces. That's why it's worth infinitely more to get there on your own accord. Beware of unearned wisdom and all that.

Here's a thought - try it and see for yourself. What do you have to lose?

Personally I haven't experienced any higher wisdom than that offered in the Castaneda books, and I've looked far and wide. I know this is a controversial opinion for some but there you have it. Even Leo, with all his wisdom and intelligence (and I love Leo, don't get me wrong) falls short when it comes to the depth of wisdom offered by Don Juan. The problem, the way I see it, is basically this. Our culture has trained us to interpret the world through logic and reason, however there is a point at which logic loses all its power, and that's the point where shamanism (true shamanism, not the cartoon snake oil version most are familiar with) begins. The main takeaway is the concept of personal power. When you have enough personal power, a simple thing such as the scent of a flower can enlighten you and propel you into indescribable ecstasy or even a completely different world. When you don't have enough personal power, the highest wisdoms can be revealed to you and it won't make a damn bit of difference, you will continue to face the world unenlightened, uninspired and frustrated. The way we gain personal power is by "stopping the world". We create the world through thinking, and so we should strive to stop thinking, and this is how our personal power is allowed to grow. I disagree with Leo when he says that this level of shamanism is simply some type of lower order, non-holistic wisdom that is only useful in the context of tribal cultures, I think this is a naive misinterpretation. Personally, I think this wisdom if of higher order than even that of Buddha, non-dualism and similar schools of thought. Even psychedelics, according to Don Juan, are simply stepping stones, their use lies in breaking the mold in people that would otherwise never in a thousand years be able to break through and experience reality outside of the mental constructs that comprise out mundane reality as we know it. Outside of this, psychedelics have no use and one should rely on their own power instead. The truth - the actual truth - about life is incomprehensible, inexpressible, unknowable, and infinitely deep. Shamans are those who can enter this realm of the inexpressible and the unknowable at will without the use of any substances or even discipline. They defy logic by rising above it, and they tell us that this logic, this rationality we hold so dear, is nothing but a tiny point in front of our eyes, blinding us so we don't see the infinite behind it. Here's one of my favorite quotes from those books: "The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery." ―Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality Are you able to let go and enjoy this mystery? Listen to your heart for the answer.

I actually wish Leo would review the Wim Hof method (both the breathing protocols and cold therapy). It's worked wonders for me personally and many others share the same viewpoint.