kinesin

@Flim Often when meditating, you just feel weird sensations throughout your body. It doesn't mean anything, they're just subtle perceptions which you wouldn't otherwise notice if you weren't sitting there meditating. Don't get caught up in them, don't ascribe meaning to them. Anything you 'think' it might be is just a thought anyway. Also it's such a predictable meme at this point to mention bodily sensations on a spiritual forum and get answers like "oh yeah bro that's just your third eye opening/kundalini energy awakening it's totally normal you're ascending now". Not everything is a mystical experience, if you think that way about everything you're gonna lose touch with reality.

@Adrian325 General wisdom regarding MDMA frequency is not to use it more than once every 3 months or so, because otherwise the 'magic' wears off and you can never get it back. Once very convincing argument I've seen against more regular use despite that is that a couple of decades from now, MDMA will probably be used quite widely in a therapeutic context, and the last thing you want is to not be able to enjoy those benefits because you already used MDMA recreationally too many times.

@Gabith Your dad's belief is perfectly valid, but it is just that - a belief. There is no generally agreed upon answer to the hard problem of consciousness. Within the field of consciousness research your dad's position is referred to as the strong reductionist model. I can't help but wonder, given the strength with which he presents his perspective as the actual truth, that he could possibly be exaggerating his belief in that position as an attempt to pull you away from the spiritual perspectives you're exploring and back into the realm of science. Alternatively if he genuinely does believe it to such an extent, rather than try to change his mind I'd suggest simply informing him that his position is one among many, and that the wider debate is far from settled. Here's an outline of the main positions in the consciousness debate - https://iep.utm.edu/hard-con/

@Snuitje Don't be afraid to roleplay as a believer in Ra for a while though, if you want. I do believe that there is real value to be gained from exploring specific beliefs, even just in the sense that doing so gives you meta-awareness of the nature of belief in general, and how powerful subjective feelings of 'truth' can be. The only thing you want to avoid when exploring any given belief is to be trapped in it permanently - to believe it so strongly that you no longer want to ever let it go.

@Adrian325 It sounds to me as if you're contemplating non-existence and non-perception by thinking about what lies in the blind spot between your eyes, but that your mind is giving far too much importance to that spot in particular.

@Brittany Compare these - "Women are more emotional than men" "Women are more emotionally attuned than men" I believe women are, on average, more likely than men to pick up on the emotional difference between those statements, whereas a lot of men would just say they're communicating the same point and that any emotional connotations are in the reader's head.

@levani You'll get the most therapeutic/spiritual benefit from restricting your psychedelic usage to once every 6 months or so. Think of it like defragging your hard drive - it isn't something you need to do all the time. If you're feeling an urge to trip again and it's only been a few days, you should inquire within yourself as to what your motivation might be for taking it, to ensure it isn't pure recreation or an avoidance behaviour.

@Gabith Feelings can definitely be wrong, intuitions can absolutely be misleading. That said, I believe that sometimes the subconscious mind has done far more processing of a situation than we could possibly imagine, and the gut feeling which arises as a result can be genuinely true. I've had that same feeling as you only twice in my life, when meeting a girl and somehow just knowing that we would be together, and both times it turned out to be true. That said, it's hard to ignore the role of confidence in all of this - because if you feel in your gut that you will undoubtedly end up in a loving relationship with that person, that feeling is going to affect the way you interact with them, and it'll probably make it more likely to happen. But of course, sometimes these feelings turn out to be misleading. We've all heard examples of people who become certain that they'll end up with someone else, but then it doesn't happen because the other person just doesn't feel the same way.

To burp and fart freely, without shame.

The hyperrealistic dreams occurred at night while sleeping, but I would also willingly re-enter the dreams while awake during the day to explore them further using a technique Jung called active imagination. At that time, I was acting under the belief that the symbolic content and messages I encountered in the unconscious was actually the true substrate of reality, and that waking material reality was nothing more than a shadow of that deeper substrate, kind of like rolling hills whose contours are actually the result of ancient structures buried deep underground. I encountered archtypal entities in my dreams and had continuous, coherent 2+ hour conversations with them. The visions of the future generally came to me in the form of noticing patterns/trends in reality which my mind would then extrapolate from, kind of like if someone threw a ball and then paused time and challenged you to point out where it was going to land, except rather than predicting the movement of a ball you're predicting the 'movement' of a higher dimensional hyperobject whose movement manifests in our reality in the form of seemingly disconnected events. As to what to take from all this - I suppose it's to recognise that there are real powers and insights to be gained from such explorations, but that the feeling while you're exploring it that it's all-encompassing truth is actually an illusion. For example now I'm more distant from these ideas, I know that the symbolic forms aren't the substrate of reality, but they're simply part of an incomprehensible whole. I know now that the wise old man I encountered and spoke to for 3 hours in my dream wasn't actually the objective embodiment of wisdom like I thought at the time, but simply one of the ways my mind was contending with that concept while under the spell of that specific belief system. Similarly, though there will undoubtedly be power and utility to be found in encoutering 'Ra' as you have been doing, it's important to not mistake the map for the territory, so to speak. These things which you're currently interpreting as Ra do have power, but if your belief structure happened to be different you'd be interpreting those very same things as coming from a different entity, or something else entirely. If you responded back to me with something along the lines of "nah you don't get it man, this is actually Ra for real that I'm encountering! from ancient Egypt! the very same Ra!" then I'd tell you that you're at risk of major delusions and should ground yourself immediately, but I get the impression you have enough insight to recognise your perceptions as being a lens upon reality, and not reality itself.

If people knew what enlightenment truly was, they wouldn't pursue it. Not because it's anything bad that they should avoid, but rather because from a pre-enlightened perspective, enlightenment seems like something exciting and mystical, almost supernatural even. Many people pursue enlightenment because they want a taste of that, but only once they reach closer to it do they realise they were motivated by an illusion. It's a little like how a 5 year-old child might imagine what their own life will be like when they're 40 years old... they have no chance whatsoever of actually imagining any of it accurately. Once they actually reach 40 for real and put their mind back to those old memories of how they imagined adulthood might be, the only reaction is to smile at their former innocence and naivete. How could they have possibly known? The reality is far more mundane than anything they could have imagined, but also so much deeper.

I had a few different forms of visions over about a 2 year period while I was exploring Carl Jung's writings. I saw archetypal imagery in many places, and this imagery seemed to 'speak' to me psychically, for example one time in a friend's apartment I looked at some mold on the wall and saw an old crone looking back at me, and I got the impression that I was being warned. I also had hundreds of hyperrealistic dreams which were symbolically profound, and engaged regularly in what Jung called 'active imagination' which is a form of symbolic daydreaming. I also experienced countless occurrences of synchronicity which I interpreted as psychic messages from the realm of platonic forms, and for a time I believed I could predict the future. It stopped naturally as my interests shifted to other things after a couple of years.

@Denys I've encountered this idea that psychedelics don't have any effect on 'enlightened' people a few times online in recent years, but I can't see how it could possibly be true. If an enlightened person eats spicy food, do they sweat? If they're injected with an anaesthetic, will they pass out? Being enlightened doesn't mean that suddenly the molecular functions of your body don't do anything anymore, so I find it practically impossible to believe these compounds would have no effect on them whatsoever. Also the suggestion that enlightened state of consciousness 'the same' as an LSD trip is frankly absurd. If they're constantly seeing the walls breathing, colours shifting, textures repeating etc during their normal day to day state of consciousness then they're more likely to have schizophrenia than to be enlightened. Are they microdosing daily, by any chance? It could be the case that they simply have tolerance buildup. Alternatively, they could be regular non-enlightened people who have read that enlightened people aren't affected by psychedelics, and they could be lying about not feeling any subjective effects in order to preserve their spiritual ego.

Same as you suggested, pretty much. Explore rabbitholes to your heart's content, but in the background just ensure you keep eating and sleeping properly. Keep going to work, keep hanging out with friends and family, and to some extent keep your explorations personal and avoid the urge to monologue to everyone you know about what you've realized. The only real risk to exploring any given belief is if it causes you to neglect the body or starts affecting your behaviour, and causes you to do something drastic which you might later realize was a mistake. Another suggestion I'd have for anyone exploring a given belief system is that after 3 years or so, you should force yourself to abandon it and explore an opposing system, to avoid the risk of becoming so entrenched in a given perspective that you come to believe it's actually the truth, as opposed to simply a truth.

@spinderella I notice that both of the examples you gave actually relate not only to 'making people mad' but specifically to disappointing them. It's understandable that you'd want to not be burdened with such feelings because they are painful, but let me reframe your thinking a little. It's not only perfectly natural to be concerned for the disappointment of another person, it's ideal - your consideration for their feelings is a good thing. If you reached a point where you no longer felt any concern whatsoever for another person's feelings when telling them such things, that would only mean you'd become emotionally hard as a defense mechanism against negative emotions, but that hardness wouldn't necessarily lead to better outcomes. Infact, it'd make things worse, even if you personally felt unburdened. Remember - bravery isn't about not experiencing fear at all, it means experiencing the fear and still moving forward to do what is right, regardless. Once you learn to push through fear, you'll find that these scenarios happen less and less. For example that guy who you went on 4 or 5 dates with - I'd imagine that after 1 or 2 dates you had a pretty good feeling that you weren't a good match, but likely felt pressured by this fear to continue seeing him anyway. By succumbing to the demands of the fear, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where suddenly rather than having to part ways after 2 dates, you have to do it after 5 of them once he's probably developed some genuine feelings for you, thereby causing him to feel the more intense negative emotions you wanted to avoid all along. If you were able to push through that fear and nip it in the bud, you'd avoid the circumstances which the fear is there to warn you about.

You should read it so that 'Ra Material' is just another item on an infinite list. You don't need to explain the feelings you're having to me, I had the same experiences myself when first learning about gnosticism and also Jungian archetypes, complete with visions, the all-encompassing sensation of seeing behind the curtain etc. I understand that you're currently on the rollercoaster and will probably remain on it for at least a few months more so really my efforts to help you see beyond this lens of Ra are futile, but still I can't help myself but to try.

@Snuitje I will say one thing - there are countless rabbitholes you can go down. Countless religions, philosophies, conspiracies (not a dismissive usage of the word), theories, explorations etc in the world and all of them contain certain facets of truth, all contain insights and lessons. All of them can give the impression that you're getting a glimpse behind the curtain, and all of them can produce mystical experiences and visions if you allow them deep enough into you. All of them also contain traps and pitfalls, and can lead to madness if you aren't careful. I believe it's important to go down some of these rabbitholes at least once or twice in your lifetime, but that ultimately we must emerge from them and instead recognise the entire field of rabbitholes. Any one of these holes can feel like the absolute truth while you're in it, but if you don't zoom out and see the bigger picture, you're inevitably going to fall into varying flavours of delusion. Attached is a huge, though non-exhaustive list of topics and ideas which could produce similar effects to the ones you experienced, though each individually are merely singular structures of belief. It's my belief that only once you transcend such singular truths can you begin to approach true god-realization

@LostSoul My understanding is that the 'issue' with humans is the fact that we seperate reality into parts by the use of concepts and language, and that this conceptual/object-based understanding of reality creates a set of illusions which get in the way of a more fundamental, embodied sense of being where really everything is just one unified thing, God. Awakening is, in part, the process of re-entering the stream of raw reality which precedes all observations, labels and understanding. Some other organisms may have a similar issue, but for the most part yes, awakening is a uniquely human concern. To go on a tangent for a moment... I believe that the biblical genesis and garden of eden narratives can be read as quite informative accounts of the first conscious human's process of creating separation within reality (for example the process of 'separating the waters' aka seeing distinction between the land and air, despite everything actually being one unified whole as it is in pure unpercieved reality). Likewise Adam went around naming the animals, which I interpret as giving worded concepts to each thing, and in the process 'creating' it by separating it from the raw reality stream... but along with this the humans also noticed their own nakedness, and gained knowledge of the fact that they would die. In this process of labelling, humans were 'kicked out' of the garden of eden, which I interpret as being the pre-conscious state of perfect union and harmony in nature before conceptual understanding popped up and separated us from god. Hopefully there's some apparent relevance to what I've said here, and how it relates to the human struggle to return to the garden of eden.

Did something change in your outlook recently? I actually find myself agreeing with you occasionally now

@RMQualtrough I realise that this is a spiritual forum so people are going to answer from a spiritual perspective, but those answers miss the mark. I have extensive experience with anxiety of various forms - spiritual, cognitive and physical, and I've learned that each needs to be dealt with differently. As you say that your anxiety doesn't seem to stem from any particular thought or concern, and it's eased by drinking alcohol, it sounds to me like your anxiety is of the physical sort, so allow me to paste a comment I made previously in another thread outlining some information about the mechanism of anxiety in the nervous system and how to treat it at the source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Rising

@N92 Passion comes and goes. Infact the way it tends to work is there'll be a period of intense activity relating to the practice which may last for months or years, and it's then followed by a period of doubt and disinterest that can also last for months or years. Allow yourself to stick with the practice through that down time though, and the passionate intense period will eventually come back stronger than ever, with new skills and insight which you'll later realize were a direct result of the down time you had. The universe has given you a precious gift - truly, not many people get the opportunity to be world-class at anything. If you decide during a temporary down time to make a permanent decision to quit, then at some point in your future you'll be haunted by the realization of just what you threw away.

Just try your best not to be a homeless drug addict 5 years from now.

Both. The 'correct' position (meaning the one which is aligned with God, aka what is good and true) is the functional one. An animal's response to such a situation is perfectly appropriate to its situation, and a modern human's horrified response is also perfectly appropriate to our situation. There's no one-size-fits-all solution which applies to all organisms across all situations.

It isn't 'humans', it's specifically modern humans. Prior to the past hundred years or so attitudes toward parenting were a lot different because it wasn't a tragic but rare possibility that your child might die, it was pretty damn likely. Infact over the past 2000 years, around 50% of people died before age 15, and around 25% died in their first year of life, and these numbers are similar for animals living in the wild. What this means is that people in the past didn't look at their baby and think "this will be my child, I will raise them into a good adult", to think that far ahead would be foolish considering their chances of actually surviving to such an age. Think of it this way - if a person lives to age 100, their death isn't generally considered so tragic because they've lived a full life. Now consider some point in the future where the average length of life is 2000 years... and dying at 100 suddenly seems quite tragic indeed, because people would have an *expectation* of something that currently seems impossible. In this sense now when we look at a child we expect it will grow to adulthood, and for that child to die would be a tragic case of a life cut short, but people in the past (and wild animals) didn't see it that way. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past