Adrian colby

I’ve been practicing for decades but seriously for 15 years. Only two years ago did I have a successful experience I was willing to accept as self verification. I wasn’t willing to accept it as a thing until I had stayed completely lucid and aware from the second I lay down on the bed, had the experience, to the moment I sat up and got out of bed again. I’ve had plenty of becoming lucid within a dream and a few occasions of lifting out of the body and wandering around the room. but the fully aware experience I would not have described as either astral projection of lucid dreaming. it was more like meditating into a state of no self and when the world and body dissolved, the mind created a completely new one. The worlds, body and narrative… I ‘phased’ in and out of about three of them. I was somewhat aware I still had a body and life back in this reality as a grounded belief but each reality was indistinguishable from this one but fantastical in appearance and more colourful/vivid. the last phase I tried to shift reality again but I felt a pair of hands holding mine and got the impression of one of my grandparents saying “that’s enough now, go back”. i had a bit of sleep paralysis when I focused back into this body but I stayed aware of everything the whole way through from start to finish. after that, it gave me more clarity and understanding about what consciousness is than any psychedelic. when the mind does it off its own efforts, there is better direct understanding. my advice for any astral, dream or sleep type practice is ‘absolute serenity’. it’s easy to lucid dreaming from within a dream when the body is already totally relaxed but to do it from the beginning with intention, you need to be completely at ease, relaxed and serene. Any excitement or fear will knock you out of the practice.

It’s not ‘the one’, it’s ‘oneness’. I understand what you are referencing here and I’ve experienced it both with and without another person. The state itself is certainly, energetically orgasmic but it is not god itself. it’s a likeness of a god state. Mystical unity is an experience of consciousness, and consciousness does not suddenly depend on genital dimorphism to reach non-duality. If that were true, intersex people, queer people, trans people, celibates, mystics, and entire traditions of monks would be metaphysically barred from God. This clearly isn’t the case. Sex can express unity — it is not the source of unity. People contain both masculine and feminine potentials within their own psyche.Jung, Tantra, Taoism, Hermeticism, and even the Platonic tradition all make this explicit.No external partner is required to complete an internal polarity. After years of deliberately avoiding anything to do with sex because I was born with a DSD, I went from hating anything to do with it to unconsciously exploring it out of desire. On the run up to my awakening, I was celibate for several years and certainly very peaceful and had a God realisation during that time. on the return journey I realised I’d made the mistake most Buddhists make by completely dismissing reality as an illusion and bypassing the experience of everything I had deconstructed to get a glimpse of the source. After reintegrating and understanding the facets of reality and that it is there literally for the infinite exploration of conscious experience, I understood ‘meaning and purpose’ in a reality with no inherent meaning or purpose. My choice to explore and be and that path for each person is personal. What is sacred to me is not to someone else. God doesn’t need to explore the same thing through every being. men going their own way and feminism in its own right is not deluded, but extremes of them are, due to extreme polarity bias separating from its opposite instead of realising it exists in contrast ( the whole). From personal experience, when I stopped projecting need for attention and intimacy onto my wife and instead turned the energetic flow of ‘love’ back into myself, it became a healing self love that completed and fulfilled me without the need of another. My wife did not need to do or be anything for me to love her because I was already in that state. It opened my heart and overflowed meaning there was love there for whoever came into my space. There’s a difference in love as projection and love as being. When I realised that state, my wife became more attracted to me. She felt safe and actually loved because she wasn’t being ‘needed’ or expected of. That made me, my personality and mood more stable and confident which was perceived as a strength to her. It also fully awakened my sexuality which in contrast before was completely shut down. It gave me an animation and vitality I’d never had before. However it is a very volatile energy that can not only create but destroy and too many gurus fall into manipulation to satisfy themselves. I am now a very sexual, sensual and intimate person ( that energy is there with or without others, male, female, anything in between, doesn’t matter) but it takes remaining conscious of internal psychological mechanism to not fall back into projection. The one thing that doesn’t happen is that even if I have moments of very strong urge, desire or desperation to experience intimacy with someone, my conscience won’t allow me to carry out any act of manipulation for my own satisfaction purely because I would never want to experience a unity with someone that didn’t genuinely want to connect at a deeper level with me. To me it is sacred, to me it’s god loving itself but that doesn’t mean it is to someone else. sex can mean very different things to different people. Many people do not obsess over sex. Trauma, conditioning, developmental stage, culture, and personal lived experience all drastically shift the role sex plays in someone’s psyche. It might be god to someone and absolute hell leading to suicide for someone else… Sex and intimacy can be sacred but only when approached consciously.They are not intrinsically sacred by default. People can experience unity through, meditation, contemplation, breath, stillness, creativity, service, psychedelic states, mystical encounters, emotional intimacy or through sex. Sex is one path among many.Beautiful, powerful, transformative — yes. Ontologically necessary — no.The danger is when something deeply meaningful to one person is assumed to be a cosmic law for everyone else.

@Leo Gura I’d be guessing this is an attempt at revitalising the likes of the Ancient Greek mystery schools? where there is a period of epistemological deconstruction and mind fortification followed by an attempted direct experience through the substance holding the intention from the study period? it would be nice to see those that get the insight at these retreats ( in person helps to clarify things) and to try and clean up the corruption that’s spread into the ‘spiritual’ community, if you can still call it that. also reading a lot of comments I’m guessing that from the location of the Netherlands you’d be opting for the pure THC? I certainly found cannabis to be a good gateway to a lot of absolute level states with better insights. the other thing I was going to mention was Ollie Martin down the south of the country on the German border who I recall was synthesising 5MeO. He keeps and breeds the frogs but wanted to stop ‘bothering’ them so went into synthesising the chemical instead and might be a source. i had hoped to create a study group at my place when I had set it up to go through deconstruction with people but I gave up on the idea because I was encountering too many people just going to retreats for ‘trauma’ resolution or personal problems. Any of those who I answered with advanced spirituality started latching onto it and using it to deflect from facing sorting themselves out first so I stopped teaching and went into space holding instead with basic psychology, CBT, Socratic methods. it be nice to have the resurgence of a proper mystery school again… I’d change the word ‘mystery’ though.

Think of it like peeling back layers. Your first instance is your interaction with this reality which is relative and through your higher cognitive ability the capability of projecting meaning and purpose onto the occurrences that happen around you or should I say within your experience.You do this from an individual identity and therefore your own bias and preference or even conditioning that you were brought up with so everything can be seen as a duality. When you strip all of that away, you experience everything happening as it is without the projection of meaning on top of it. That would be your non-dual awareness but it is still experiencing form in contrast to other form. If you strip all of the form away you are left with just awareness. there’s nothing but that: alone and solipsistic. A lot of people dismiss and disregard the layers whenever they peel them back to see what is underlying all of reality but when you come back down on your return journey, it’s important to distinguish between absolute and relative. The relative occurs within the absolute and yet you don’t have access to it when you become an individual experiencing separation or form in contrast to other form and on top of that again the meaning and the purpose that you project onto it to experience your life. You don’t have the ability to change your control anything at the skin layer of reality all you have is your understanding of what lies underneath. you can have moments where you become conscious of that but you cannot function in reality purely from that state of mind. this is an issue that occurs with people who have a full awakening and people who don’t have full awakenings if you simply glimpse the non-nature of reality and come back into reality it very often happens that people use non-dual understanding to gaslight dismiss and bypass everything in lived experience. It may not necessarily be that they have a full awakening to get over this but rather an understanding of the whole as an opposed to the part that they’ve just seen underlying everything. I see this happening a lot where spiritual people use it as an identity to gaslight and dismiss other peoples lived experiences instead of understanding that those experiences are part of the whole and are meant to be integrated and understood. trying to force solipsism or non-duality onto everything around you when you are in a state of consciousness that is individual and separate is never going to work. understanding the solipsism is meant to bring you peace, and knowing about what underline the whole of reality not some idea that you can project onto other people. And no pun intended, but that is for you and you alone.

I’ve freaked people out by turning up in their dreams and then reporting what was experienced after waking up. I’ve been known to hijack people who are in the company of a friend ( when I don’t know them or anywhere nearby) and report to the friend saying the exact phrase the person with them has said. I also had premonition lucid dream two nights in a row with the same person where I was clearly ignoring the fact that I loved them and in one scenario wasn’t able to rescue them from drowning in an ocean with no edge or surface. Following two days of silence then she contacted me to say she was in hospital and had suffered a stroke. To this day I refuse to ignore the fact that I love her as she’s created so many heart opening lessons and realisations for me. I’ve had one telepathy incident with her and several with my wife( one being clearly audible even though I had headphones on at the time). the last being dream interpretation or psychedelic ceremony interpretation which people perceive as some psychic power but it’s just the Socratic method of analysing and being astute to how the mind interprets its own states to create lessons and insights. People freak out saying I somehow gif into their heads, messed their brain around and then reorganised if for them making everything clear.. or placing the insight clearly in front of them ( just guiding them to their own insight)

First relationship was a guy in my class that lasted for a year and fizzled out because I just liked girls better I was hurt by thefirst I approached, a friend, but I approached her not directly. It was a childish teenage love letter and the friend never spoke to me again after that which scarred me. ( expressing love= rejection). First actual girlfriend abused me physically for her amusement but love = not being lonely so the attachment was limerence not love, it was a year with potential marriage discussed but she was 19 I was 23. She left me while I went into hospital so wasn’t able to go to her and find out what happened but I couldn’t be friends because of the deep feeling of betrayal and loneliness. Turns out she’d been with plenty others ( but they didn’t actually bother me) what bothered me was I found out she was with me because I was an unusual novelty (DSD). my second girlfriend ( third partner) became my wife after dating, living together and agreeing to run the business of ‘life’ together. I’ve been with her for 21 years and have grown and matured along side her. We both had to have a mature and respectful mindset for that to happen as some of the challenges would have broken us up. I do feel like I have missed important stages and experiences of life especially with meeting and being intimate with others but it’s not really a case of missing out as I really had no interest back then ( Demisexual) no attraction until the person is known for at least two years so it’s considered a kind of A-sexuality. however. My heart started to open last year, I began to stop masking autism ( ran out of energy to do it and got a diagnosis that my wife suspected for ages). Trying to align more authenyically I just sat with the realisation I was just not a monogamous person. As much as I e agreed to tackle the challenges of daily life with my wife, I am not shut down to living and being intimate with other friends provided expectations and consents are clearly discussed before deepening any contact. My rejection of total monogamy comes from seeing through colonialist structuring and conformity which doesn’t ring true for me otherwise I would not feel love for people in my circle or allow it to deepen when it is needed or wanted for connection. I certainly have preferences but with 8 billion soulmates out there why prejudice one! it was a challenge to get over the jealousy and self worth hurdle but realising I am not a posession and my own autonomy doesn’t actually affect her, allowed both of us to continue to explore and experience life without being limited by each other at the same time of agreeing we were both the choice for living and experiencing/running daily household life together. Living the rest of my life without experiencing love in its different forms would be a waste of life to me. I prefer if to hating and so allow it if it is there. We are much happier people if we are allowed to love whether it’s wanted, needed, or just for deepening connection. They are fleeting moments but cherished one’s non the less if I was stuck in the marriage with no option to experience life now then yes the marriage would end but it’s not just about partners and sex it’s everything the ability to explore one’s life without being contained or possessed and controlled by someone e else.

Yes it’s a trap in spirituality if you are trying to deconstruct reality to get a glimpse of the source. It’s a distraction on that side of god realisation or source recognition. however on the return journey it is a recognition of all states of consciousness and the infinite variety to be explored. It’s also a gateway to explore the godhead at subtle levels ( as Leo says, the level of intensity will never be anywhere near the energy of a psychedelic bu t it’s still possible) it really depends on your own authentic purpose. it can become an addiction and take focus from here and now, but in order to do it you have to focus here and now in all states. It’s about disciplining the mind to focus in any appearance of an external reality including this one we are most familiar with. It’s just another facet of the mind to be explored and I don’t obsessively spend my time doing ‘spiritual or consciousness’ work. all I need is right here and there’s plenty to do and learn that offers the same lessons as higher states. being fluid enough and unattached enough to shift states is what I’d describe as a kind of liberation. when the universe becomes your oyster, it’s up to you to decide what takes your fancy.

Of course you can. That’s what the exploration of consciousness is. ( the flip side of spirituality).

You could try astral projection or dream shifting. it takes time to master it though but the exercise itself will strengthen your minds focus. If you develop strong emotions or loose focus, the dream falls apart and you wake up back in your regular body. staying aware while your body falls asleep isn’t easy. You have to be completely serene. Any excitement at all or moving the body at all will ruin it. i used to walk around… or fly around my house at night when I was a teenager but I got berated for talking about it with my family so I stopped doing it and lost my ability. i decided if I was going to verify it ( after I had an awakening) that I would have to experience it fully conscious from start to finish. From the second I lay down on the bed till the moment I sat up on the edge of the bed. it took me 15 years to get it back but I managed it December 3 years ago and verified for myself, it is indeed a real thing. i mainly use it for fun but I have been able to shift into psychedelic spaces/states of consciousness and have ended up in the light a few times as well using it as a gateway to get there. psychedelics of course are the easiest way to get into other states of consciousness but I didn’t really understand what a conscious state was until I started ‘reality shifting’. meditate into a state of no self or dark void with no body. The mind is always creating something to grasp so if you hold your focus another reality and body will form. It will become just as vivid and physical as this reality. When you are in It, ground yourself quickly by touching or tasting things and paying attention to details. You will have different abilities then you have here as it is less finite. theres no end to the strange places I’ve been but I’ve had enough of isolation so I’m trying to verify contacting other people in that state. I’ve had a few interesting occurrences including ending up at a friends house where I’ve never been before ( we had an argument so she was still impressed on my mind when I went into that state so I’m not surprised I found myself in her room). I contacted her and my group the following day, unaware it had been her house and just sent in sketches and renders of what I’d seen. She jumped in and said the pictures were of her house so I described details of furniture and items in her bedroom which were all correct. Just one example. check out Tom Campbell or Bob Monroe. These set up the Monroe institute for out of body research.

Insane forms can tip into peace if it’s sustained because the distinction disappears after a while… or you die if it’s an injury. intermittent and intense… nope. The contrast between the two , the presence of the distinction keeps it going as a ‘thing’. I can’t sit through intermittent and intense pains only sustained pains. I do get this ( not so much lately) but it’s like being stabbed from the tailbone up the spine like a clap of lightening. It nearly make me crash the car when it happens while I’m driving or jumping up out of my seat taking sharp breaths but after the several hour long session with sustained pain I’ve learned to stay focused through it. It helps. i also noticed an anticipation before it happens so I’ve caught myself doing that which has stopped it happening so much. Strangely. If I lend my mind to it, it makes it more intense, if I don’t, if lessens. 🤔

I’d say that’s a distinction between mental anguish and physical pain. Suffering being a result of the former but not a necessity of the later. I had one mushroom trip where I was in quite a high level of pain all over for several hours but I sat still for the whole experience and didn’t allow my mind to produce any thought or narrative. In that instance I observed and experienced the pain but was not mentally bothered by it. More fascinated at following the sensation around the body. I took that and applied if several times to small incidences of pain in my daily life and didn’t react to it. When the mental anguish was not present, the level of pain was diminished. But it’s not something I’d dedicate my life to trying to eradicate. I know the ‘suffering’ is necessary to an extent for survival cause if you didn’t have the thought to move away from what was causing the pain because it was hurting ‘you’, you probably wouldn’t last very long. So I’d keep a little bit of it but try not to allow it to extend into victimisation or wallowing for long periods of time. ( don’t know why I’m saying that. It’s really basic stuff for the level in this forum)

I’m not downplaying the complexity of it ( I’m not expanding what I’ve looked into for the sake of not putting a thesis into a reply) I get what you’re saying and respect that but I’d also caution the assumption you’re making. We all have variations to differing degrees and they do affect how we respond. You’re not the only freak out there. For example: regarding THC, @1mg or less, I stay in it for 7 hrs+ that equates to more time to stabilise and look around. I get the same on any substance regardless of dose. it’s not a pissing contest ( that doesn’t equate to deeper insights unless one knows how to contemplate or observe using these as a tool which is why I think your retreats will be a whole different ballgame for people to teach them and guide them how to do that more efficiently without projecting their bias onto the experience) . The length and depth I can go in doesn’t change that but the way I use and understand my mind does. I do limit dose because beyond a certain point it becomes pointless. My 5MeO limit is 14mg. beyond that it’s just noise and no insights occur( that maybe just the way my person is built or the ointment at which my intellect becomes useless… when I say intellect I’m refering to the platonic description of that part of the mind that knows god not the human logic and reasoning centre) . I get about 40-50mins in that state while others around me come out at 20 or less. They also don’t contemplate or observe, they react so I’m surrounded by crying, screaming, rolling and vomiting and often just freak out confused instead of integrating! I’ve had a few very welcome isolated facilitations without all that ( in the Netherlands). The extension of time and depth I go in, baffled and somewhat frightened my local facilitator including the insights I came out with and until recently I wasn’t aware that my genetic mutation was involved in the same metabolic pathways as breaking down a variety of substances. Which may explain why this is happening. my medical condition is partly caused by a genetic mutation responsible for neurodivergent development, hormones, receptors, regulation, neurology, sexual development. ( I get receptor starvation because my hormones are not metabolised efficiently so I need HRT to increase the amount. Meaning in regards to certain substances, my p450 enzyme is down regulated and the substance isn’t broken down properly and is in my receptor for longer keeping the pathway of perception open ( I’m simplifying, not going into explicit detail here. I do know the details and the gaps in the research). That same enzyme and sub cyp’s is known to break down a selection of medications and plant medicines and it does it ‘slower’ in my case making my endocrine system less efficient but benefiting my psychedelic use because it slows the metabolising of them down giving me more time to settle, go deeper and explore in those states. I’m suspecting it would be similar in your case although the pathway is different it would still be linked to the p450 enzyme production. the first THC experience I ever had, the dose was less than 1mg. I didn’t even finish it I went straight into 5MeO state and I recognise it well. (5MeO was the closest description I could find to what I experienced sober- my first awakening after a spate of contemplative/deconstructive work and meditation so it was the first substance I ever took or worked with.) The THC facilitator freaked out because my body collapsed unconscious as though I had just puffed 5MeO or DMT and he had never had that happen before. I went straight into infinite singularity and couldn’t get out of that state until I figured out how to ‘create’ reality. I remember one of your videos about reality is being ‘imagined’ at an ontological level but until this trip I didn’t understand because I didn’t have direct experience of it. I literally had to imagine a boundary outside of myself to imagine a reality in and imagine every finite detail of absolutely everything and hold it as a belief that it was real in order to maintain the experience of a reality at all. It took forever. I literally had to recreate the universe I just dissolved to re project my awareness back into it. I understood it then. This happened after a month long contemplative deconstruction process that ended in the throwing away of any and all beliefs about anything. The same process that led to my sober awakening experience before I had ever heard of a psychedelic. the facilitator wasn’t aware you could go to that level on THC but I explained you could do that on any substance. It’s more to do with how you use and understand the mechanism of your own mind and how well you go between observing and mapping without rigidly solidifying any of it. I’ve no doubt you’ve reached the levels and insights you have and you’ve dedicated your purpose to this. it’s a great service to have access to your experiences albeit indirectly because we’re not all going to go there. I’m not disputing any of this. You’ve had the time and opportunity to go to these depths. Others haven’t had the same amount of time or opportunity to dedicate towards this. That doesn’t mean they can’t and it doesn’t make you exclusively freakish ( yes it does to the majority here but not the only one who can) and there maybe a mechanism to unlocking that block ( receptor binding time) . Is all I’m saying, it’s worth looking at for someone with any interest. I have experienced this and I am aware of the mechanism within me that may explain why I can go there when others can’t. As you say, just another freak.

I agree on lower dose and was trying to explain this to someone who kept pushing me to just take 5g and it would solve my problem 🙄. It doesn’t! I get far more out of low dose contemplations or just plain meditation contemplations which leads me to my next point of interest. genetic mutation for differing metabolism. I stumbled across this when offering a fun fact about not eating grapefruit before taking cannabis. I’m becoming aware of a persons genetic disposition and a pathway that might explain why people like ourselves have easier access to expanded states on lower doses where others don’t. And it’s not actually a case of dose… I recall you mentioned you had thyroid issues ( I’m not sure you said hypo or hyper). If it is a case that it down regulates, this is actually a pathway that extends chemical binding in receptors so your nervous system has more time to stabilise and explore in the altered state compared to other people making it more accessible to you to have profound insights. I have a genetic mutation in my cyp17 that affects p450 enzyme function the same as thyroid affects p450. This enzyme is involved in breaking down chemicals so if you have a predisposition to slowing down that metabolic process, you’re more likely to have extended receptor binding. More quality time in the altered state not necessarily dose. It’s like naturally lemonteking where the gateway of perception is open wider for longer ( the longer only applied to slower metabolisers) personally I prefer low dose to keep the intellect in tact and to ‘bring’ it into the state. people with regular metabolic systems go into and out of peak experiences more rapidly making it harder for them to settle and observe which is why you get quite a few becoming disorientated and incapable of integrating. Their nervous system doesn’t have time to stabilise in the experience. i was going to write a more comprehensive piece about it elsewhere in the forum but though it would be of interest. im looking at things like grapefruit to help with slowing metabolic processing of the compounds after learning my own genetic-enzyme production and processing pathways operate much the same way and this might help people on a lower dose who normally need a higher dose. It’s more about extending the receptor binding time so they have the chance to stabilise in the state so they can observe it properly.

Yep. I stopped teaching advanced stuff when I saw a few using non duality to gaslight the people still back at trauma resolution. It became clear they were using it to bolster their own ‘spiritual’ identity by dismissing the conscious experience of others as valid. I was holding space at other facilitators retreats but I wanted to start my own that had at least 6 months of philosophy, psychology and deconstructive work before going near a psychedelic but there just wasn’t anyone ready for that so I went into psychotherapeutics approach instead as that is what was needed. deconstructing reality back into the ocean of consciousness doesn’t negate consciousness/existence itself and clinging to non duality as an absolute forgets that the dream is still made of consciousness which the exploration and understanding of duality is a part of. i think a lot of people in this work focus on the contraction back to the singularity as the goal and forget that everything that is ‘imagined’ within it is still a part of the whole. having godhead or even further back to source, realisation can help clarify understandings of duality. even better to have a group of people to engage in a dialectic about it that is in person. @Leo Gura yes certainly interested in details, structure of running this retreat.

You’re not the first I’ve heard mentioning intent to go from isolation to human connection in the past few weeks. It’s a theme that seems to be popping up in a lot of circles. ( I like to think the story associated is about the reconnection between people in a time that fragmenting is getting fairly hairy but ‘shadow’ has to come to the surface to be acknowledged, studied, understood, resolved and integrated before humanity can slowly become even a vague bit more conscious) I certainly can relate after a time of doing serious deconstructive work, understanding and having the experience makes the exploration of the ‘dream’ a natural progression from isolation/one to unity/oneness. There’s no point going further if you fragment from others because of a level of understanding that’s so far removed from others. so it’s nice to offer a pathway for genuinely interested parties to come part the way toward you so you yourself have more conscious connection in this experience. it is very isolating when no one understands the insights and I’ve personally struggled with my only contact being text on a screen. I guided one of my ‘soul brothers’ to go beyond their idea of god and to remember guided meditations and essays I’d described deconstructing back to simply being aware of awareness. He went all the way back to the source on a DMT trip and our bond has got so deep since, it has nurtured the bonding of the entire group. It’s really beautiful to feel such love for so many different types of people but for the two of us particularly the recognition of the awareness seeing itself in the other and there’s nothing like it. id certainly be interested in retreat for advanced exploration. Sitting in a circle with people not going beyond trauma/conditioning work gets tedious especially holding my tongue when it comes to advanced topics, these people are no way ready for. it’ll be a bucket list want but more importantly is the in person connection to experience the full communication that just can’t be captured in text or video. just a question of getting into the States when my type of human is slowly being made illegal. I think flying into and staying in vegas should be ok in that regard🤔

yes that would fit the description. One ‘no thing’ stepping over its own imagined boundary into a hall of mirrors… it being the mirrors capable of reflecting to infinity and reflecting infinity. Nicely poetic. also thanks for the inspire. I’m going to go watch that episode again 😁

I’m not being very deep here just saying something for the sake of saying something for sayings sake….. much like the return journey after recognising solipsism. first the flight of the alone to the alone through deconstructing everything, collapsing and condensing it back to a singularity ( awareness) solipsism. then after solipsism… the exploration of consciousness. What it set out to do in the first place. But forgot… again. instead of being conditioned in a behaviour, you’re now choosing something to experience and learn from. It’s different for each extended node of awareness. For me at the moment it is love and connection with other beings. I found the way to the ‘one’ in isolation but to find my way to unity and ‘oneness’ I do it through connection to other nodes in the dream.

Ah ok. I’m in Ireland and it’s 5 years here. My mom moved here 5 years ago and she’s going through the process next year. She was married to Irish citizen and lived/worked here for 30 years but because she moved to Scotland for close to 20 years they refused to see her as a citizen so she had to start again.

I’m not sure about your timeline but I think, if you were to keep documentation of some kind of job or paying for accommodation and bills in the country, after 5 years you can apply to be a citizen of the country. Would there be a way to extend the visas to get to 5 years? what did you study? Is there other work you can do in the meantime to support yourself while looking for something else?

@Vilius thanks for sharing. My journey was certainly about love but it started as the discernment of ‘truth’ ( a kind of attitude towards seeking). If you talk about synchronicities or coincidental scenarios, they all played into the theme of love and going through the often very painful experiences of false love to find true love. Thus being learns by contrast and it’s now apparent that means experiencing both the pleasure and the pain till both can be held and then collapse. The depth of it just keeps going. Describing it as opening the heart and allowing everything back in after being suppressed for decades and with it came all the pain and self deceptions ( most of which were conditioned behaviours or survival adaptations to parents, peers, upbringing, culture etc). The heart in pain and the heart in peace showed a spectrum from seperation to unity. The peaceful love was always in the complete and self fulfilled or self love state which I describe as profoundly beyond acknowledging, accepting and allowing which is essentially being or existence as it is. Is’ness or am’ness. I started holding space in therapy with this as I got better results from completely accepting the client as they presented. Loving them essentially and not teaching but guiding them to develop their own curiosity and realisations about themselves ( it was all centred on liberation from mental anguish but I did have a few with spiritual issues beyond the trauma trap). I had my own mystical experience that happened unexpectedly and everything dissolved right back beyond god to the source or the mystery. That which cannot grasp itself but knows itself by contrasting against everything in its imagined boundary. It was very destabilising but I had done a fair bit of psychological strengthening before hand so I didn’t loose the plot. Understanding how everything unfolds from the direction of the source into the perceived external has helped with the ‘love’ acceptance and understanding of even the ‘evil’ which I don’t see as inherently bad, sometimes lost or sometimes neccessary. It’s better to understand and learn then condemn. If you wipe someone out for doing bad, another just takes their place but if you learn from one you can see the factors that created them in the first place that are not isolated to the individual alone. it also puts me in the position of ‘choice’ to experience things as a preference and not just some survival fancy. that is where the opportunities for new experiences and raw lessons come from because I’ll come across an issue, explain the financial to the person involved and then become it myself ( mostly a whole other dimension of pain as I live through what I just explained but in the other side of it I have a greater understanding of the dynamic). it is as you say, when that type of love is held as the self being open, certainly it expands to hold everything. But it doesn’t stay there. It fluctuates depending on what takes my focus next. While the heart stays open ( figuratively speaking) the spectrum of emotion and pain take place within it. It took a few years to get used to the pain but now it acts as a compass feeding information but never a state that’s held onto. the main thing I struggle with is meaning and purpose as the choice is so vast and often times what one is truly interested in and part of one’s own authenticity and chosen preferences clash with those around me making it hard to be harmonious. I tend to stray into taboo interest and it rubs my community the wrong way.

Certainly. “Con-text” the word means: to weave together, so using the analogy of “fabric” would be accurate. It would seem everything we discuss has the same underlying structure or process and that is that it goes from one indistinct statement to endless fractalisation and iteration in all directions. Subdivisions and holons within holons. prior to that it’s just a statement with no meaning but contains within it an infinity of potential definitions as you say ( an analogy to the way in which infinity creates reality) Context is the creative act of weaving distinctions into relationship, like an artistry of meaning, so that forms become coherent within a larger whole. context within context creates narrative. Just like one word doesn’t say much but it has contained within it many possibilities if it is put into context by the other words before and after it. Further still, A sentence can clarify the meaning of a word and many sentences can create a story or deeper more nuanced meaning. every concept, word, context, thing can only ever point towards another thing by referencing another thing. Even language only ever references other words and never points at the thing itself. Or should I say ‘no thing’ all of it stops and collapses when it goes into direct contact with just being. It reminds me of ‘Derrida’s différance’. when discussing and contemplating all these things it becomes very hard to make distinctions because they all boil down to sounding like they are the same thing so they loose meanings. And collapse into the same indistinct mental mechanism. A conjoining from differentiated to undifferentiated. The opposite direction to creation. Inherent context = reflection The universe “withs itself” simply by existing in relation. every form reflects against what is not it. This doesn’t need perception; it’s the silent mirror of being. Apparent context = expression When a perceiver arises, those relations are noticed, narrated, or symbolised. That’s context used for communication/transmission, expressed as story, pattern, or meaning.

It would seem everything we discuss has the same underlying structure or process and that is that it goes from one indistinct statement to endless fractalisation and iteration in all directions. Subdivisions and holons within holons for example ‘concept’. An overall generalisation of a thing but delve deeper into it, you find nuance, variety, the differentiation based on the context the thing is in. prior to that it’s just a statement with no meaning but contains within it an infinity of potential definitions. the universe itself being one but when it creates an imaginary boundary in order to self reflect, the differentiation or fractalisation of forms becomes how those forms interact or relate to one another in order for each to find definition or existence. In the imagined universe/ocean of consciousness or God head there are always two contrasting aspects. The ocean of consciousness, light and the infinity it emerges from. In the ocean, a form arises but it is not one thing, it is two ( the thing and the ocean). Like the image of a man. It’s not isolated, it is only the image of a man on a background so there are always two forms and how they relate making each other distinct. Nothing is in absolute isolation other than the ‘no thing’ or one ( infinity). so in that sense, context is not relationship itself but How a form defines itself relative to another form because it doesn’t have a definition or distinction unless it is defined against something else. Context is the creative act of weaving distinctions into relationship, like an artistry of meaning, so that forms become coherent within a larger whole. context within context creates narrative. Just like one word doesn’t say much but it has contained within it many possibilities if it is put into context by the other words before and after it. A sentence can clarify the meaning of a word and many sentences can create a story or deeper meaning. And as mentioned already, it can be a whole containing an infinity of distinctions and/or a whole (distinction) within a greater whole…. Within a greater whole. so we’ve got relative infinities in all directions within the ‘form’ universe or ocean of consciousness /godhead and we have all that contrasting against ‘source’ or ‘infinity’ itself ( a ‘no thing’). It understands itself better as absolute infinity, if it explores snd creates an infinity of stories ( that which it is not) to contrast and define itself against. every concept, word, context, thing can only ever point towards another thing by referencing another thing. Even language only ever references other words and never points at the thing itself. Or should I say ‘no thing’ all of it stops and collapses when it goes into direct contact with just being. It reminds me of ‘Derrida’s différance’. when discussing and contemplating all these things it becomes very hard to make distinctions because they all boil down to sounding like they are the same thing so they loose meanings. And collapse into the same indistinct mental mechanism. A split from undifferentiated to differentiated. Inherent context = reflection The universe “withs itself” simply by existing in relation. every form reflects against what is not it. This doesn’t need perception; it’s the silent mirror of being. Apparent context = expression When a perceiver arises, those relations are noticed, narrated, or symbolised. That’s context used for communication/transmission, expressed as story, pattern, or meaning.

A person only ever has an authority over themselves. They can never fully transmit their understanding to you in its totality but they can guide you to see it for yourself so you become your own authority. If you gain insight and understanding it means you’ve integrated and realised something and will be capable of replicating it off your own efforts without assistance from another. if someone is talking unapologetically, confidently and coherently or even demonstrated the application of their knowledge in their daily lives, you can’t ever be sure of its truth so you take everyone’s perspective with a pinch of salt. You don’t dismiss it, you try to apply it for yourself to verify or disregard it. There’s also a possibility you have misunderstood the teaching if you get nothing from it. the point is to not project authority onto others or judge them when you don’t have access to experiencing their consciousness. You listen to as many perspectives as you can and see where their commonality is pointing, then explore the point for yourself. If you get the point and understand it you will find you can explain and talk about it from your own unique perspective.

Understanding I wanted to have a go at defining “understanding” and to see how it would contrast with Leo’s perspective when he makes his video/episode about it. Since the ground-shaking awakening I had, where even the God realisation collapsed back into the undivided ‘One’; I do my contemplations from the direction of creation as opposed to deconstruction. So starting with the One: A singularity, infinite, indivisible, ineffable, undefinable, a mystery of which nothing can be said because it is ‘no thing’. I call this ‘being’ or absolute awareness. This awareness is inert. it’s not aware of anything, dim in content but blissful in nature. Simply being, still and unmoving. It is ‘no thing’ but not nothing. There’s nothing it lacks, for it is complete. There is no such thing as “nothing”; it is not void or empty. Infinity is full and endless, pregnant with potential. There is an inevitability baked into that boundlessness itself. It is so endlessly full that it overflows. Like a cup infinitely full of water, nothing forces it to spill, but its very fullness ensures that it does. Being infinite and boundless, it cannot find an edge so the only option is to turn inward and self-reflect, because it is the only thing that exists. Being that it is the only existence, it can only be aware of itself. but as it is ’no thing’, there is nothing there to grasp. Like a hand trying to grab itself, or asking the question “What am I?” when it’s invisible and cannot see its own face. Imagine a mirror with nothing before it to reflect. There is no image, no object yet the mirror is still the capacity to reflect. Eventually, in the absence of an “other,” the mirror turns inward and in doing so, it reflects itself. But with no surface to grasp, the reflection becomes an imagined one ( the first form arising in formlessness.) This turning back on itself creates a toroidal field. this ‘field’ has been called the Light, or the ocean of consciousness. The word consciousness means ‘with knowing’. It is the process through which awareness attempts to know itself. Being boundless, awareness can only encounter itself but to do so, it must create an imagined boundary: a knower and a known. The ocean of consciousness, the field of light, the Godhead — it imagines itself into being, becoming the first ‘thing’ awareness can explore and contrast against. God is not what the one is but what the one does. it’s first and principal attribute. Absolutely everything occurs within this imagined ocean of consciousness. All ideas and forms arise from it and return to it and are one in the same as it. not the one itself, but a oneness, a likeness or analogy of it. A thought ripples the still ocean, creating a wave of energy in motion (inert energy until provoked). This energy in motion is emotion, and emotion provokes action or manifestation. The whole, though we speak of it in imagery, is an infinite Mind (a mental mechanism or process.) All the ‘objects’ and ‘phenomena’ we perceive are symbolic representations of these mental mechanisms, though the mechanisms themselves are intangible. Everything we see in this universe is an analogy. a likeness of the one. a oneness but not the one itself. an imagined concept that points to the one in contrast. This movement folds back into itself, forming a feedback loop — a toroidal field of self-knowing. In this division is born the first distinction, the first contrast. The ocean of consciousness is an infinite oneness — not the One itself, but a likeness, an imagined reflection. It is an infinite mind with the capacity to imagine anything, to make distinctions, to divide and define. It can zoom endlessly into sub-divisions, proliferating like fractals, becoming more varied, more individual, further from oneness. A mind that can explore through infinite expression — or get lost in it. Everything that arises from the ocean of consciousness is a holographic fractal of this mechanism. The development of understanding mirrors this same process. The First Flicker of Understanding The concept appears the moment there is a perceived distinction between observer and observed. This is the “self-reflection” stage of awareness — just as the mirror imagines an image to reflect, the mind imagines something “out there” externally to be understood. The simplest definition: Understanding = the relationship between awareness and a perceived form. From here, awareness embarks on its long journey through the ocean of consciousness ( creating contrasts, opposites, distinctions. It “understands” by comparison: hot from cold, light from dark, love from fear.) But all such understanding is relational; it exists between awareness and form. Relational understanding is partial. It can describe, explain, compare but never be what it points to. Eventually, awareness realises the exploration is endless. you can go into greater complexity to infinity and beyond and so it stops. Distinctions dissolve. Understanding collapses. In the end, final understanding is not a definition, but a recognition: awareness knows itself not through contrast, but by simply returning to being itself. It could not know this without the detour of exploring through consciousness without experiencing all of what it is not. so just to recap understanding is the relationship between the one and its exploration of every infinite possibility that the one is not, which is the imagined or the godhead. It fully recognises and understands itself when it stops all imagining and returns to just being. its like a black hole. we know nothing of it until it comes into contact or ‘relates’ to or affects the objects around it. before that it remains hidden, invisible and unknowable. Human Understanding If the Source contemplates through fullness, God and people contemplate through fragments. we divide and dissect to see how something works — zooming in, seeing how smaller parts interact. At the surface, “understanding” means: I get it. I can explain it back to you. This is the colloquial layer. it’s useful but vague. if we go Deeper, cognitive understanding involves: Comprehension: which means grasping meaning or implications. Integration: connecting the new with prior knowledge or experience. Application: using it in context to create or act. Without integration, it’s just memorisation; without application, it’s just inert knowledge. If we go deeper still we have epistemic depth: this refers to how well a belief or piece of knowledge is supported, integrated, and able to survive a challenge. At this level, philosophers speak of explanatory depth — placing understanding into a coherent framework that resists collapse whenever it’s questioned. But a warning: A belief can be logically airtight within its own worldview and still be self-deception — its protected by a persons bias, selective reasoning, or emotional investment. Without direct experience, such “understanding” is false and mistaken for reality this is where we use the saying, the map is not the territory. and so… Direct Experience Direct experience is lived, accepted, acknowledged ( without the need for defence). A person living from direct experience doesn’t need to justify it; they have already met reality face-to-face. From here, understanding becomes a felt clarity ( the aha moment) where the unknown reorganises into a lived pattern. You create a relationship with it. Deeper still, you become it. You can replicate it because you understand its mechanism and it is integrated into your being. It becomes something you do because it is a part of you. Like driving a car. you struggle with the reality of a car when you first come into contact with it but over time you begin to see the relation between when you turn the wheel this way, the car directs itself this way. you integrate your understanding of the mechanism into you being and driving becomes something that you, do. At the far end, understanding dissolves entirely. This is non-conceptual knowing, where knower and known merge. The word itself becomes only a placeholder for unity. you’re not just driving the car, you’re the entire experience and the witness. everything is an extension of you. If you notice, this essay has two distinct sections: one expressive and poetic, the other analytical and dissecting. The first is from the perspective of Source (expressive before it becomes entangled in the self-deceived Godhead.) The second is the Godhead (exploring the infinite fractal iterations of its distinctions. You can explore and express through infinite worlds… or you can get lost in them. it must believe everything is real for it to hold it in its consciousness as a form but sometimes this deception becomes delusional) In the end, all paths of understanding, poetic or analytical, expressive or dissecting, point to the same ’no thing’. The seeker in the Godhead roams infinite landscapes, searching for what it already is. The Source simply rests, needing no search, no defence. True understanding is the collapse of understanding into being the silent knowing of the One recognising itself as infinity having explored an infinity of things. And you can only understand that if you have been there. How do you get there? Become still, and let go of all knowing. and simply be aware of what is. simply be awareness simply be.

First step is usually to see if you are actually embodied. Difficult emotions that cannot be coped with or regulated early on in life can result in disembodying, shutting down or developing stimming behaviours to deflect the energy. dealing with and regulating requires feeling it in the body and it can be very uncomfortable and in extreme cases ( like autism) painful. But it has to be let in and felt. Focusing on the breath ( breathing technique) and focusing on the sensation of the emotion and what it is like and where in the body, describing it to yourself can help disrupt the thoughts that are triggering it. It lessens the intensity to a point that you can then manage to introspect about the thoughts that took place before the emotion appeared. If you remember back to the last time you felt that way, the situation that happened before you felt that way and the thoughts you had, you can identify each time in your life that it has occured. You will see a pattern that often stems right back to a first instance in your childhood where you developed that probably as a survival mechanism as an adaptation to the situation or an inability to cope with or process an overwhelming feeling. if it’s the result of a trauma, you have to be mindful that when you open yourself up to feeling again, it can retraumatise you after years of shutdown giving you the impression you are ok or have moved on. Sometimes it’s not noticeable that it’s happening because it’s so subtle or part of the subconscious. Be gentle with yourself when opening back up to feel and certainly use the breath to regulate. Meditating to practice quieting the mind is a good method to train yourself to stop and regulate. after an introspection session and a feeling of a strong or uncomfortable emotion, somatic release is advised. When you’re finished, don’t continue to hold the tension or fight with the emotion. Allow it to flow. Cry, shake, go for a walk, a run, beat a pillow or a kick pad, singing, dancing, some motion. Holding tension within the body builds up and causes inflamation. sitting and watching how your mind works and how you think about and respond to situations allows you to learn, understand and integrate resulting in wisdom of your experiences. In the future they will become enjoyable lessons not traumatic events.