Alex M

Amazing.

Had to come from the Daily Mail.

I use an air purifier at home constantly (certainly during the summer months). I live in a rural area and it's excellent for purifying dust / pollen / bacteria. Can purify a room in about 10 mins. I'm sure they would work for other air pollutants. Do your research, don't be cheap and get good quality filters and change them regular.

I'm freelance web designer full time. Have been now for about 15+ years. Like Leo mentioned the challenge is getting a constant flow of clients. Also working out ways of retaining residual income, rather than clients coming in and out of the door. So hosting / maintenance contracts and retaining future work will all help build up constant flow of money without a great deal of work involved. The main area of over saturation I see is the vast amount of poor designers / developers, that charge little money. But in the grand scheme of things this is only an issue if you are competing with them. Build your skills, set your rates and stick to them, if clients don't want to pay your rates, they are not the clients you are looking for. You also mentioned 'web design' I would call this more frontend work, so design skills are an absolute must (so good X D / Illustrator / SCSS / GSAP / Javascript skills) and being able to beautifully code from designs and again like Leo mentioned being unique. Anybody can grab an off-the-shelf 'theme' for a site and change the colours, but this is not web design and this is the main area of over saturation.

@Huz It falls under the class of 'tryptamine' which in the UK is a Class A drug and illegal. Although that being said, you will be able to get it if you do your research. I'd be curious to know if Leo takes a leap of faith and tries a very very small dose to see for impurities or if it's lab tested to verify the contents? When you are dealing with pretty much unknown research chemicals I suspect getting the contents lab tested first is almost an impossible.

AKA: > Shutterstock <

Is this a cultural thing? or are males seen as a monetary gain over females?

Why is this?

Yes I understand it's a very tricky subject for sure. Reproducing is a very easy thing to do, any idiot can do it. But raising children is difficult. I see an awful lot of people (both men and women) that bring children into this world and the child suffers greatly. Because the parents are not cognitively capable of bringing up a child, so they abuse, beat and inflict trauma and the child suffers. When that child grows up the cycle will (not always) be a large proportion of the time repeat the same cycle of suffering. Because the child doesn't know any different.

Just out of interest do you think it would be better for a women to have a child that is incapable of raising the child and thus causing a lot of suffering / trauma / abuse or aborting the child at an early stage?

What is the purpose of an IQ test?

Which video series of Leo's will give me a deeper understanding of nonduality? Would it be the 'Understanding duality' series? Also anyone got any good book recommendations for better understanding?

@The0Self Thanks for the replies. I understand what you are saying to some degree. I will continue to read / do self enquiry to further understand. Thank you for taking time to reply.

@Wilhelm44 @EmptyVase Perfect thank you.

Best method to protect password Use a different password for every website you use. 30+ characters long, no words. Use 1Password to manage all your passwords. Use 2FA where possible.

@The0Self Detailed post thank you. One question I have. How do I know if I need to do a heavy metal detox? If I have no obvious signs of brain fog / fatigue / more serious issue like ADHD or autism. Is this still something that one should consider doing?

These type of posts generally turn into chimps flinging shit at each other. Including this one.

@Danioover9000 @diamondpenguin Stock images. e.g. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-walking-through-fairytale-forest-102692894 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/man-meditating-sitting-yoga-position-on-742548562

Nothing stolen. Leo's not some stage red thief. The thumbnails are stock images. The tricky part is using ones creativity to curate nice meaningful images. Which I think Leo does well.

Hi all, New to the forum. I posted a trip report in the Mega-thread above. Just following on from that report (you don’t need to read it if you wish not too). I’m curious what the members of the actualized community (that do psychedelics) have in place to gain the most insights from the psychedelic experience? I’m using mushrooms at the minute, starting slowly and getting a feel for them. Do you use an eye-mask and go totally inwards for the duration of the trip? Do you have strong intension(s) and try and keep focus of these throughout the trip? Or is it more a case of going with the flow and seeing what is presented? Any insight would be great.

First post on Actualized.org so why not start with a trip report ?. Sorry if it’s a little long. I’ve been a long time watcher of Leo’s videos (first introduced to them by my partner maybe 5 years ago now). I come on the forum from time to time and have a read. I’ve decided maybe a good time to start posting because I have more and more questions going through my head that the community may be able to help answer. So let’s get to the trip itself. A little bit of background before I start. I’m in my 40’s now, I tried mushrooms twice in my 20’s in an immature fashion. At a party with no real idea of what I was really doing. First time was a little whacky and fun, the 2nd time was challenging, negative thought loops, going crazy etc etc and this put me off them. Now in my 40’s I’m much more grounded, I’ve worked through many parts of my life and got my shit together much more. Aside from Leo’s videos I’ve been watching and reading more about the studies at Imperial College in London and the Johns Hopkins in the US and the ground breaking work they are doing with psychedelics, which is amazing to read and watch about (all be it from a more therapeutic stance). So a perfect time for me to pick these substances back up and see if I can expand my mind a little more. The first trip I tried (this was a couple weeks before this trip report), I was starting on the light side, just to get a feel for them again. I had 1g psilocybin cubensis. I ground them down in a coffee grinder and steeped them in tea (making sure the water was not boiling) I had chamomile to help with any nausea and a little honey for taste. The effects of this trip wasn’t so great. Little effect in terms of insight / sensory, it mainly felt heavy bodily, nausea and a slight heaviness in feeling. This lasted maybe 4 hours in total. I’d not eaten since dinner the previous evening (so a good 16 hours of nothing in my stomach). Which kind of puzzled me because I wasn’t expecting much nausea being steeped in tea. But from researching I do realise it’s very individual. The next trip I had was a couple of weeks ago, again on a Sunday morning 9:30am ingested. This time round I opted to up the dose to 2g (same batch from previous). I’d also done a little more research because I was hoping to avoid the nausea. So I did a lemon tek this time round. Also realising the trip maybe a little more intense, but I was ready for that. I had my partner trip sitting me, she was sober and holding space and there if I needed her, without really getting involved and shaping any of the trip. Again didn’t eat for a good 16 hours, grounded down the shrooms and steeped them in lemon juice, stirring every 5 mins or so for around 30 mins. I strained the bits of mushrooms twice really squeezing ever last bit out of them and then discarded them. I had the lemon juice with water to make it a little more palatable. I went to the living room, lay down on the sofa. Eye-mask and music on and relaxed doing some light breath-work. My mood was great, my intension was set (to try and get a better sense of what reality is and just go with the flow of what the mushrooms wanted to show me). After around 30 mins I could feel them hitting me the waves of euphoria started. I taken the eye-mask off and the general signs that I was tripping had started, colour distortion and general distortion in things like the carpet patterns. These were fascinating to get sucked into, the more I focused my attention on items the more magical and trippy they became. Each time I had a drink of apple juice when I brought the glass to my mouth the colour of the juice in the glass would then interact with everything in my line of sight changing the colour to match. This external trippiness went on for some time. Then the peaks of the trip came in what my partner said afterwards were 3 waves. I can’t remember the first wave. But with each wave the the body load was very intense, not in an uncomfortable way, it basically smashed me to the ground (my body was so heavy that movement was difficult). The nausea was also intense with each wave. I had a bucket ready, each time these waves hit me it made me retch, thankfully empty stomach so nothing was coming up. The second wave was powerful and my awareness was through the roof. I lay with my eyes closed and felt really connected with myself, visuals were strong with my eyes closed and had a strong sense of compassion for myself and this was really emotional, it allowed me to really forgive myself for not taking care of my body in my younger years (20s). Although I’m perfectly healthy, I did abuse my body a little when I was younger. My partner held my hand through this period, which really grounded me and helped massively. The 3rd and last wave was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Again massive body load (I could hardly move). I closed my eyes and the only way I can describe it, was the whole of reality (and everything contained within - including myself) just started to fracture away in many many, almost an infinite number of parts. This went on for god knows how long (time no longer existed at this point) and when it finally stopped fracturing away there seemed to be nothing, just an infinite expanse of nothingness. I had no sense of anything (who, what, where I was) it just felt like pure love (I know it sounds like a cliche). I felt connected to everything it was the greatest feeling I’d ever felt and I seem to bath in it forever. My partner said I had my eyes closed just saying “this is amazing” over and over. Then after some time my general sense of me seemed to return. I’ve not pieced together yet exact how I returned (and I’m not sure if I will). This last wave eased very quickly and it was like I’d gone from totally tripping to being generally back to my base reality very quickly. At this point visuals were very much back to normal. I could then move around, so got up and had some food and went into the garden to play with the dog. The total trip length from ingestion too feeling relatively normal again was 4 hours. Im still spending time integrating what happened and how it effects my everyday life. I had a total loss of self, some might call this ego death. Although I’m a little shocked at doing this from only 2g of mushrooms. Other reports I’ve read are generally 4+gram at least before this happens. I guess everyone is different and maybe I’m sensitive to psychoactive substances. I’ll spend more time integrating before I go again. I’ll do this dose more times because I still feel there is loads of insight to be gained. I do have many questions, so maybe I’ll just post them separately in the main ‘Meditation, Consciousness, Enlightenment, Spirituality’ forum. Thanks for taking the time to read ?