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@Hojo I was introduced to him as a teen by someone who really broke down his lyrics for me, and it opened my eyes to how outstanding his writing is. He is the first rapper to receive a Pulitzer prize-- for his album DAMN. I would at least read his lyrics if you cannot follow it in a song. A lot of his songs touch upon morality and spirituality. Though I'm not so sure if it's a blue or yellow stage view of things...honestly I think he touches upon red through yellow in the spiral... still great.

I really like the back and forth of whether or not he loves "war" when he claims to want peace. Peace would require consciously knowing "every individual is only a version of you", and as we all know, fully consciously being aware of nonduality at all times is not exactly easy. Therefore, even if you do claim to want peace, it really will always be a surface level understanding of it. Being in duality will always technically mean being in love of war since others are separate from you, whether or not you like it.

Me🙋🏻‍♀️ It’s in the high 80Fs this week over here, and it’s messing with me mentally. I thrive in the cold!

https://doubleblindmag.com/dogs-on-lsd/ But there's more....the dogs supposedly have autism too... What do we think of this study yall?

@Keryo Koffa I remember he went on a tangent about all the different kinds of palm trees in one video, now I notice the differences in palm trees more heh. Yes it would be fun if Leo made a random video talking about corals or palm trees etc for hours

@OmniNaut amazing share, thank you!

Watch the Paprika(2006) film if you haven't, Inception is actually based off it and much better.

I have not watched any of the movies, because I end up falling asleep somehow, so I cannot actually judge them. I did however finish reading The Hobbit this past summer. Adored Tolkien's writing style, eager to the rest of the books. I have not read fiction in a long time, so it was pleasant.

Go on the r/aita reddit and every week there’s a major post on there about their partner asking to open up the relationship. See how well that goes for them. The ethical rule in the polyamory/open relationship community is that you have to be honest from the beginning. Not waste people’s time and hurt them in the middle of a relationship. A brief threesome is entirely different from having a permanent third woman.

@Ampresus Did Beck in the podcast mention her multiple partnered relationships before, or after, you started the visualization?

Patagonian Mara The Patagonian Mara is a large herbivorous rodent that belongs to the cavy family, Caviidae. Similar to its close relative, the guinea pig, the Patagonian Mara possesses a stout body, muscular limbs, and relatively large ears. It is characterized by its long neck, slim tail, and powerful hind legs, which aid in its agility and speed. These creatures typically reach a length of 60 to 75 centimeters, not including the tail, and can weigh up to 16 kilograms. The Patagonian Mara is a fascinating creature with a variety of unique physical characteristics that set it apart from other rodents.

Literally this morning after my yoga class, this older lady started talking to me and eventually asked if I was a Christian. I said no, and she was like, well do you know Jesus Christ? I was like "yeah, he's cool". lol. Started going on about heaven and hell and encouraging me to go to church. I just politely nodded along and smiled, while politely declining at her offers. She told me a story of how she was late driving to her new job, when she needed to cross 6 lanes to make her next turn. She just closed her eyes and prayed to God to blindly swerve over 6 lanes to make it. She made it, hit no cars, and said that was proof that God is real. oof. She was very sweet overall, it's just hard to find an out when they start their rant, I had to ask about going to the bathroom to end it after 20 mins.

I watched this video as a homework assignment, and essentially this person found his way to recovery from addiction through spiritual experiences that he had, despite many other addiction treatment modalities he went through. He was introduced to CBT, outpatient groups, 12-Step meetings every day, church every Saturday and Sunday, bible study every Tuesday, and frequented an MMA gym. None of these ultimately worked for him, it was his personal encounter with a spiritual experience. Personally, I never really suffered from addiction, but I suffered from suicidal ideations from the ages of 9-21 years of age. From 18-20 I was atheist, and it was my spiritual experience that got me out of it. At the core of what stopped my suicidal ideations was the spiritual experiences I personally had, whether through psychedelics or dreams. I did go to therapy and other things, but what I truly believe keeps me going from falling too down a dark hole, even through hard times, is my touch with spirituality. My goal is to eventually become a therapist myself, and currently I might be taking a job as a case manager for previously homeless individuals who are still actively using drugs (harm reduction/housing first methods). If I personally feel that spirituality has helped me the most, and my clients have never had nor thought about spirituality, where is my ethical boundary in nudging or not nudging them towards it? How deeply can someone truly change without a spiritual experience?

@BlueOak Funny how I have not come across anyone else in my field who is aware of spiral dynamics yet. I wonder when it will get taught, and especially used as a tool in practice.

@gettoefl Very beautiful wording. Nudging versus forcing is a delicate balance, just making sure I don't cross into the forcing side.

Love this analogy, thank you. I wonder if I should just focus on them (my possible work with previously homeless, current addicts) getting practical matters out of the way to be grounded in this reality first too, if Maslow's hierarchy of needs plays a role in their spirituality.

@Nivsch I like this a lot, it helps avoid even using the word 'spirituality' in case that's something they are not into. I definitely want to avoid forcing my view on them, and see how I can help bring it out of them through their own intuition like you said. Thank you.

Going to an international Day of Peace event ft. Jane Goodall today was very green of me. We also all sang happy birthday to her for her 90th birthday. So sweet. Loved getting to see her in person, she's one of my top idols for sure. Figured this would count

@PurpleTree Oh of course. I’m not planning on even mentioning the word psychedelic with clients unless they bring it up first, and even then it’s not my position to encourage it further. What I mean is— is it possible to have deep fundamental changes to your being, changes that are so drastic that it ends a years long addiction to heroin, without a personal spiritual experience? Personal spiritual experience being different from simply reading the bible or going to church— which is just intellectual and heady and not a direct experience with divinity.

@ExploringReality I was 20 when I first found Leo, and I am now 27 too haha. I took acid this past weekend, only half a tab as I was trip sitting friends, but I had inklings of this during the trip nonetheless. Nice post.

https://youtu.be/3fuS9PmV9hg?si=0_htxpSSzv4V3kWf He is great at talking.

Currently I volunteer for a trauma intervention program in my county where we are called by first-responders/hospitals to arrive on the scene of a death or extreme crisis. 95% of the time, its a death, and we give emotional first-aid and practical resources to the family members and other witnesses etc. It's a 24/7 service, 365 days a year, and we arrive to in-home deaths, deadly car accidents, mass shootings, hospital deaths, overdoses, suicides, etc., and essentially help with the emotional part of the process while police/hospital staff/coroners can attend to their more practical part of the job and can leave, so to speak. We help families call mortuaries and stay until the deceased is picked up, or aid in communicating between family and hospital staff. We give a resource book filled with information about funeral homes, group therapy, hotlines, etc., highlighted best to their specific situation. Point is, we are there for someone's worst day of their life after losing a family member, and we help them throughout the very first moments of it. Our job is essentially to be a vessel for them to lean themselves all the way into and hold space for them to grieve as they wish. It is delicate, it is intense, it is softness, you must show reverence the whole time, you must hold strength for them, you must be flexible, you must understand how no words in reality can actually describe what they are going through. It is a highly dignified role to do this type of work, and from what I have heard from friends, its something they would never consider doing and are shocked that I and others are doing it. I was first recommended this program about 2 years ago from a friend who also was in it, and at the time I had just quit an ABA job working with autistic children for 2 years. Besides all the unethical things I saw from coworkers and supervisors, I also made more doing Instacart and delivering groceries to people than working at the highest paying agency in the area. I did the math one day, and I grew increasingly bitter that my standard of living was so low, when nearly everyday I saw the immense benefit I gave to families, from helping teach a child their first word, to helping them stop hitting themselves, etc. It made me angry that I made more on a delivery app and would have to do it after 8 hours of work with the children just to make ends meet. It made me distraught when I delivered to a luxury apartment with someone working from home who majored in accounting and could afford their lifestyle, but because I choose the helping profession, I was still stuck with multiple roommates and nothing in my savings. Not that I want or need a luxury apartment, but you get my point. So when I was recommended the trauma program by my friend shortly after quitting due to my sentiments towards the undervaluation of the mental health field, I politely declined, but inside I was livid that such an important and vital program was being run under volunteer work...now I wouldn't be getting paid at all. Each volunteer has to do a minimum of three 12 hour shifts per month, with one being a 12 hour night shift, but it's still 36 hours I have to be completely ready for and cannot do anything else with while waiting for a dispatch call. Along with a mandatory 3 hour meeting every month. Essentially a whole full work week. I have since joined the program a few months ago, and we get many talks from police officers and other agency presenters in the meetings telling us how important our work is to them, that the police can remain being "hard" and "tough" on scene that they say they need to be while we do the "soft" and "delicate" work. They cannot hug a grieving wife that is sitting on the floor next to her deceased husband as she strokes his beard for the last time, but we can, and it means everything to them that we can. The "hard" and "tough" jobs get the good living wage with pensions and benefits, and the "soft" and "delicate" work gets nothing. I am tired of my softness and delicateness being taken for granted, I am tired of not being given equal treatment for it. I am tired of it being worth dirt and framed as doing it from "the bottom of my heart". Yes, I do truly care about the people I serve, but that does not mean I should get to live off food stamps. I have to become an MFT to make a livable wage in this field, when I would be happy to also do work like this and similarly for life, MFT shouldn't be the only option. I know even the ambulance and mortuary drivers do not get paid well....so many of us, and its because its the helping profession getting taken advantage of.

I started university in 2015 as a Psychology major. I also lived on campus my first year, mainly to get away from a toxic family life back at home. Getting away from home physically, I thought it would mean that all my problems were solved and I would be a healthy and functioning human. Wrong! I had suffered from very low self-esteem, social anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation since the age of 10, and that was not going to solve itself by merely moving out. Though I was dedicated to my education and was doing well initially academically, I soon got into a 1.5 year long domestic violence relationship within a couple months of starting school, which tanked my grades (not being fond of math and statistics did not help, which I repeatedly failed). I was on academic probation with a GPA of 1.9. Being able to safely get out of that relationship was another story, and of course simply getting out of it did not mean my mental health would become stable, if anything it made things worse afterwards. Shortly after, however, in 2017, my ex-abuser's friend took my side and has become my closest friend to this day. This friend soon introduced me to Leo's videos, I think the first one was the video on how to meditate. From then on, I watched many of Leo's videos and also talked about spirituality very often with my friend. Though it was all talk and watching videos at first, with little actual practical initial implementations, I slowly started becoming more accountable for my mental health and made a goal to get my first 4.0 in the spring of 2019, which I achieved. I needed this goal in order to raise my GPA high enough to get into an MFT graduate program, not simply as a perfectionist goal. This was definitely supported by Leo's videos, but I also was in my own individual therapy, had done group therapy internships, quit smoking weed, and had a more grounded view of myself. That semester however, I had an extreme suicidal ideation pop up when I accidently forgot and missed the date of an exam, meaning I would possibly lose out on my goal of a 4.0. Luckily my professor was understanding and let me retake it, though my ideation shook me and I was starting to get sick of relying on thoughts of suicide whenever I got myself in a bad spot. It was like instead of problem-solving and coming up with creative ideas to get myself out of a sticky situation, which is apart of all of our lives, my mind went straight to how I should commit suicide, lol, it was annoying at this point. I decided that if I wanted to continue with my goal of a 4.0 for future semesters, it could not be a life or death goal. So I took a break from school, initially for just one semester in order to really focus on revamping my mental health and get rid of suicidal ideations once and for all. I did not have many specific methods at the time, it was just pure desire to finally put an end to the wanting to end it all. Then COVID happened in 2020, and I decided to wait it out for a number of reasons before going back to school. I got a job for 2 years working with autistic children in the meantime in order to still be on track in my career goals. I also created a healthy balance of good friendships, reading various books on philosophy/spirituality/psychology etc, going on road trips, had a couple purposeful and grounding solo psychedelic trips (in the past the majority of all my trips were in friend group settings and were more about goofing around, nothing serious) and keeping my thoughts positive. Since 2019, I have since had no suicidal thoughts, and my habits are healthier than ever before. Though that does not mean I do not have a lot more to improve on. I still lack a consistent routine and am more sporadic in my self-care, though it is at least plentiful and I do things often pertaining to it and have coping skills. I returned to school in fall of 2024, and these past 2 semesters I have attained straight A's again with max class loads. This time, with a lot less anxiety towards it and less negative attachment to the end result. I have also decided to double major, taking on Human Services as well (I can write a whole post on how Human Services is immensely more beneficial than Psychology to the MFT field, but that's another story). The point is, I have done all of this drastic real world self-improvement, and when I graduate in spring of 2025, even with an additional year's worth of straight A's, my GPA will barely touch the minimum overall GPA required for graduate school. It's so funny how that works. My fate is in the hands of admission evaluators who will have to bother to even look into my course history in detail to see the improvement I made, and find it worth it. I still have high hopes, and even if I do not get in to a school for whatever reason, I am so immensely proud and loving of myself for it to ever derail me. I still have many years of work experience I can do to balance it out if need be, and I can always try again. I think of creative and active solutions now, vs diving down that dark hole. I guess my main goals for now is learning how to create a healthy and consistent routine, find and network with more psychedelic-assisted therapists (my actual dream career), and learning to speak up for myself more effectively since I used to be much more timid and conflict-avoidant. This post was more of a backstory as to why I am creating my journal to build upon what I have already worked on with myself, to share with others who have had troubles moving forward in life as well, to thank Leo in his part for my self-development journey :), and any tips on how to create a consistent daily routine if you are a spontaneous and sporadic individual who once lacked routine as well!

I know this is a bit unrelated, but this reminds of my social anxiety back in high school as a woman. Freshman year, I sat next to the "hot popular girl" in class and felt very proud to have gotten her to even accept my presence, as I was definitely not hot back then and definitely not popular. I tried to fit in desperately and wore clothes like them etc, even though I was still a social outcast and trying to connect with the popular girls felt futile. Come senior year, at the age of 17, I was in a math class with the same supposed hot popular girl. Or so I thought. One day she had a fit for no reason and got up to throw the calculator we were using roughly back into the box, like throwing it in in a loud and inappropriate way as it could break. The teacher scolded her and made her pick it up and put it back in nicely, as she loudly exclaimed she didn't care about education anyway, since she was going to be a cupcake store owner like her mom one day. The dude sitting next to me shook his head and said to me, "Ugh, what a waste of space". It was like a light bulb went off in my head right then! I completely made up her extreme importance in my head and felt the need to match up and compare myself to her for 4 years of high school, thinking she was the hot popular girl that people wanted to be like, when that never actually was the case! She was just a narcissistically mean hot girl that oozed fake importance without actually having any real inner substance to speak to it, and I bought into it! I felt so silly, and ever since I have been happy to just be who I am. and I guess I also think of myself as the hot girl now at 26, just in my own way

Yes, and many of the helper roles are filled by women, who also historically don't receive as much pay as well. It feels like a poor integration of respecting and realizing the importance of the feminine-featured roles in society. Softness is made fun of and seen as weak, when I think it can actually be just as strong as hardness. It definitely takes strength to be soft while attending to parents mourning a child's suicide in the next room...wouldn't ya think? The capitalism part also means a lot of MFTs are coming from a group of people who may have been well off to begin with, as graduate school and licensure is also expensive, meaning less diversity of related life experience for clients to choose from. The volunteer program I see the same problem, with 80% being retired financially stable white women who are comfortable with their free time...not that they aren't good people...but their lack of related life history/culture with the rest of the community has been inconspicuously evident in some cases. I mean I am definitely seeing some sort of change, for instance a scholarship opportunity was recently created for my field where you can be awarded up to $35k, which I have not seen anything like it before. Catch is, I must work with underserved youth/young adult populations for 1 year after graduation to accept the scholarship. Not that I am opposed to working with them, as I have before, but it obviously doesn't pay too well... and I would have to delay graduate school for a year. Still hoping I get accepted though! I want to get to a point that I am not worried about the money like this either, and can just focus on the people I serve and not worry about survival mode. I could start developing myself more in other personal/spiritual pursuits, which I feel would actually help my clients the more I develop, but I can't get there fast enough with all of these financial delays . Not losing sight though, as aggravating as it can be at times.