Davino

Yes, but that's the exception. De-escalation will work most of the time and if it doesn't you didn't have many options to begin with

@Leo Gura De-escalation is an art in this regard, there's many literature on the subject. I'm sure this conversation has many connections in the collective sphere with wars and conflict in general now that I'm thinking about it.

There are different figther archetypes. It's true that there is a monk fighter archetype in martial arts, but don't overspiritualize everything

The less armed US civilian:

I'm interested in a state of the art video about God. The cutting edge, something among the lines of the poetry video. The message-bottle has been thrown into the sea

It is so. But how deeply do you understand the other side? I'm 2h in and is very eye opening.

Do you think personal development has made it harder for you to find a life long partner? As the difference in SD is so abrupt.

Wow, that was a real fight indeed. Hands are actually the worse part of the body to hit with, that's why gloves are worn in the first place. Kicks are better but you need flexibility and elbows are also good but you need to break the distance. There are tones of martial arts that use objects, which end up being more useful for street fighting, the best in this area is Arnis. A more specific martial art is Kendo very brutal but just uses sticks. Although since guns exist, martial arts for self-defence have become pretty useless, a knive or a gun and you are done. If you ever want to try a martial art I would recommend you BJJ, it's safe, useful, fun and a sport for intelligent people. It is. If you would like to check the most real fights, there is a company called King Of The Streets. Fights are bare knuckle, no rounds, no rest till one can't go anymore and no rules. It's not my cup of tea and I don't like the subculture, but it's good to see how humans actually fight 1vs1. I like this fight you will feel the spirit of such combats and how everything changes moment to moment; Warning it's graphic.

Ou yeah man, the good old herb. Enjoy

@Keryo Koffa You'll need to deconstruct science. You are awakening but still have lingering scientific worldviews that corrupt your sense making. I higly recommend you see Leo's video on the subject. It will blow your mind and clean everything for you so that science is not limiting you for answering questions like: What is consciousness? What is Reality? What is other? What is I? and so on

@Basman Martial arts teach you precisely that. If you train you will see how limited you actually are and you won't overstimate your capabilities on the streets. This is a common thread among practiciones, the more they practice the more they would avoid an actual fight because they know how unpredictable is a street combat.

@Yimpa Hope you post a trip report. What will be your choosen substance?

I agree. But I tried to give insights into the phenomena the individual was facing, instead of directly suggesting to: "Just keep your mouth shut". I get what you are saying and I know it's the mature river mouth where he will arrive, but in my opinion you failed to address him where he was at. Maybe I overrated screaming for the means of releasing energetic blockages. Maybe you also underrated it. Tripping peacefully and in balance is clearly the mature approach.

You are losing the point, the end is not screaming in itself. Scream can facilitate the release of the trauma and the energy. The shit to get out is not the scream, it's the trauma in the psychosoma, for that a scream can help you. It's like giving birth, you don't need to scream but for releasing it may help you. Of course, if it's screaming for its own sake and just because you're high on psychedelics that is something to mentally let go of. This is clear.

Why do you think you screamed? Maybe it was such an energetic release of the egoic structure that a scream was needed. People with huge traumas stored may also need punctual screams to let that go. I don't scream loud either but there's something about inner screaming that rips away my inner structure. I can bypass physically screaming but I totally understand how in a specific situation a total energetic release via screaming, growling and convulsion can be absolutely life transforming.

There's a difference between a punctual scream of energetic release and screaming because you are losing your mind

Not often, but sometimes it is. Although it can be an internal scream rather than an external one. It usually happens at the end of one cycle of healing. Think of it as an onion, when you get to the end of a layer, there's a breaking of a deep rooted inner pattern in the psychesoma/muscle-memory/energy. This final breaking usually happens in a internal contorsion and feels like breaking something stuck inside you, screaming can usually help with this primal release. Then a new layer will open up for deeper healing and you'll work through it as usual till you get to the end of such a layer which you'll need to again physically break. Stop elucubrating excuses and just do it, the path will balance itself out. It's not like that but even if it were it's a bargain. Such a release would cost you years of therapy and hundreds of hours of personal work and sport to get that deep into the hardware. You will feel such a release, like you had a constant brain fog on you and now you feel so much lighter and refreshed. If you really need to scream for a release is because what was stored in the first place is at least as painful as a scream, if not more... What is stored is trauma in the end, when it gets out, that capsule is reopened (and FELT) to be finally released, in that intense moment a scream can help you get it out. Imagine you are shitting a big pieace of shit that doesn't get out of your ass, a scream can give you a final push and get it out, or you can calmly relax and let it go silently while its tearing your ass. So it's more like ripping off a band-aid, you can do it directly and scream or slowly and go through it. but hey you can relax and let it go also, without scream while it's tearing your ass before leaving to never come back.

I've been noticing that some situations make me shake internally, I still manage them properly but they take out my inner balance and stability. This desire has been coming again and again, Self-Grounding. I want to become rooted in myself when situations may come up in my life, to be able to stand my ground without shaking, to have a deepness of character. I have some critics to stoicism but there's something about stoicism that my personality and psychology would benefit from. It's not that I'm ungrounded but there are many factors from my personality to my physical build (very tall and thin) that are not prone for a strong sense of inner grip. I was wondering if you could offer me any tips for becoming well-established and robust in my inner ecosystem.

There are only two good books written about salvia for Awakening. One is his book and the other is Salvia Divinorum: Doorway to Thought-Free Awareness by J. D. Arthur It's not like you have much to choose from, so read both plus a bunch of trip reports and become ready for all that to be skull fucked by a an elf. So in the end, forget all and surrender everything at the feet of Salvia before tripping. Pray a Hail Mary and inhale

@Water by the River Thanks for taking the time to answer. I'll contemplate what you've said on my own. You've raised good points. In general, if I don't answer to a well-thought post that you send to me, it's probably because I'm thinking about it before answering.

@Leo Gura I've really contemplated it through and it feels intuitively wrong. That's not how reality works in my experience, every cut into infinity must present its lights and shadows. I'm sure there are Infinite states of consciousness that are totally innaccessible through Psychedelics, maybe entheogens can't trigger some receptors, or another unknown methodology is necessary like DNA modification or who knows what, hope you get the metapoint beyond the examples. What I'm trying to say is that Psychedelics surely present access to many infinite and Godly states but not to All infinite and Godly states, making that assumptions is what feels intuitively wrong. If someone wants to become as conscious, as infinite and as Godly as existentially possible I cannot assume that Psychedelics will grant me access to all such states and that most certainly other methodologies can present new infinite and unique states, totally orthogonal and alien to those generated by Psychedelics. In my opinion, this is a more epistemically secure position to work from a priori. So when exploring consciousness I should be open-minded regarding all facets that are presented to me and make sure to get the fundamentals of each one. Instead of using psychedelics as a depth-first search for those facets that I'm biased towards, they should be used to look even with greater emphasis to those places where I don't wanna look. Yes, I think I've fallen into that trap myself. I sometimes feel consciousness is like a cheese, and then we make little holes while exploring it, psychedelics being this digging machine I now can see how they might be used to explore those channels that I'm biased towards and get a skewed perspective of the whole cheese. How important do you think trying a wide variety of psychedelics is? I get it's important but I would like to get a bit more on this. Because honestly I loved to try and explore different substances but since I've discovered the 5meos I've been quite disillusioned with other psychedelics all together. Maybe I should get back with exploring, do you think you could share with us a more in depth list of research chemicals that you have found useful? I know you have done a lot of experimentation on your side and you could save me years of trial and error. I'll reinvent the wheel anyway but hey I wanted to give it a shoot in case it never crossed your mind. I'm sure you could add a lot of value to the Psychonaut endeavour with such list. So is an excessive desire to make sense of psychedelic experiences a trap? Maybe it's better to consciously feel and be with the experience, before rushing into cartographic activity. Mmm, it's true that the passion psychedelics experiences and insights have, can actually bypass some epistemic filters, the beauty and profundity can be mesmerizing and that can fool me. This is advanced, never thought about it. Usually I'm just delighted, but now I'll take this into consideration without losing my ability to lose myself in that passion. I'll work on striking that balance. I'm a neophyte in God-Realization.

Yeah, that is a legit criticism. I'm not for the one or the other debate, I'm here for both. According to Ken Wilber individuals who do both end up being more advanced than those who do just psychedelics or just meditation, which makes total sense to me. But there's the same problem with meditation see? even more as most of the practice one is totally lost in many lens and doesn't even know what is searching for, only heresay without any direct experience. I like more this conversation because I'm now seeing more clearly the limitations of both tools. I'm not here to grapple about metaphysics with you but about investigating the actual limits of psychedelics and meditation/yoga. What is in your opinion the limitations of meditation practices? In what way they present traps for Ultimate Truth? How can psychedelics become a helpful in that sense? In the same way, how can meditation be used to compensate the psychedelic downsides?

Don't think so, he still wrote books recommending facilitators after he stopped offering such services. My thoughts are that he discovered a very niche niche form of energetic therapy that comes from non-egoic consciousness. I've experimented a bit with it and there's a lot of potential for healing no doubt, but as I said it's very niche. 5meo can open a million other doors for exploration.

Turkmenistan How is it possible that I knew nothing about this? It becomes painfully clear that my knowledge of North Korea is primarily because it is considered an enemy. The documentary made me reflect on the dangers of lacking nationalism. I’ve often thought about how national identity creates many problems, but I had never considered how the absence of nationalism can generate just as many issues. Due to its nomadic history, Turkmenistan never developed a strong national collective identity, which the USSR exploited to well-known extents that we acknowledge but rarely contemplate. The USSR literally sucked the blood out of the country and its resources, providing only the bare minimum for survival to prevent revolt. Ironically, they made the whole population literate. After the USSR's fall, this lack of nationalism was further exploited by the dictator, who created a national identity centered around himself and his agenda. Through propaganda and free resources, he fostered learned helplessness, ensuring the people survived just enough to avoid rebellion while he acted as selfishly as he possibily could. So the lesson here is too much nationalism definetely not good, but no nationalism will be exploited by other nations so it's also a bad strategy.

Breathe, everything is okay. Don't just read, do with me. Take a deep breathe; everything is fine. Focus on becoming more present and aware. From the meditation POV thoughts are just phenomena as there are sights, sounds, feelings... when meditating focus on the phenomena that is present and not on thoughts, when you catch yourself lost on the thought phenomena return to your anchor, breathing; once grounded, then let go of the focus on the breath and abide in the present moment, in simple open awareness, like a cat sunbathing. Here is a nice meditation for you. Pranayama is also good. From the self-development POV we'll need to understand how your mind works with introspection and emotional maturity. Also realize that most of the time worries are an intelligent mechanism designed for you to look in parts of your life that you are denying, although obviously it can enter into cyclic patterns of self-torture. In addition, your ego will develop with you, so it's better to become friends with it and understand models like Spiral Dynamics that explain its evolution with useful conceptual frameworks and maps. The following video presents the ground for understanding mind and its mechanisms. And a more practical lens to navigate the issues you are facing is Self-Love From the Psychedelic POV, these tools can offer a tangible way to purge yourself and accelerate the above mentioned processes.