Sooo, boys and girls. I had a quite interesting year and I thought I sum it up in this post, so you can benefit from my lessons and have some fun reading. Plus I'll probably share a little forecast in which direction I currently take my spiritual journey. I'll take the major topics and hindrances I faced this year and illustrate them a little bit and cut all of the uninteresting shit. So it goes like this ...
+++ Existential Crisis +++
If I had to sum up my whole spiritual journey this year with one phrase, it would probably be that: an existential crisis. A complete brain-fuck and wrapping every one of my world-views inside out. It's kind of interesting, I started my meditative journey in early April 2015 and for most of that year and the first two months of 2016 it just gave me lots ad lots of typical benefits. I would be way more calmer, I stopped biting my finger nails, I stopped smoking, I had my first clarity experiences, I was very pumped up to do my meditation etc. etc.
Then in early 2016 I watched @Leo Gura's Free-Will-video and meditated after it one the question: "What is going to happen next?". And in this meditation a strange shift happened. It was a very physical kind of opening (like literally a popping in my head) and from then I could consciously conceive that there are thoughts that I consciously formulate and there are thoughts that just come up and fill up the space. From this day on, my whole life should begin to change.
In the next 4 months I had the deepest experiences of fear, anxiety, helplessness, depression, falling apart etc. etc. that I ever had in my life. Besides that, I had the deepest realizations I had so far on my journey, 3-4 deep awakening experiences that always were surrounded with 1-2 weeks of total bliss and then an even deeper amount of existential crisis than I experienced it before. It all ended in early August I guess, right after I had my first Kundalini awakening in late July. This was one of the strangest things I ever experienced and at the time I didn't even knew what it was. I found out 1-2 months later here on the forum and then through research, that what I experienced was a Kundalini awakening.
Now, this whole phase was extremely strenuous. I had weeks and months in which I would wake up and be bombarded from second one with tremendous and ridiculous thoughts. In my daily meditation it would even get worse and make me completely crazy. I had a few sits I had to end after about 40 minutes because it was too hard. I had phases in which when I went outside I felt any kind of distress another person carries around amplified times a thousand in my own body with awful thoughts screaming at me.
Why did all of this happen? Well, I was bullied when I was about 12-14 years old for doing shitty rap music and I have some regular deficiencies and problems most of us have. If you wanna get out of the trap, you'll have to cut every single one of these bindings to the world. And you have to let go of your shadow. And that's not a pretty process. I had 2 times I seriously thought about suicide, because it was that hard. Funnily, right after these times I had even deeper awakenings.
But well, if you go through such a phase yourself (and you will more than one time probably on your journey) go back to this post and see you are not alone. It's natural and its very good. It gives you so much strength, realization and vision. It's incredible. You come out of that as a new human being.
Also, how did I went through all that w/o going completely nuts. Well, I went nuts for some time to be honest. I had times in which I wasn't sure anymore whether this is just purging or whether I'm mentally insane. I followed my intuition that said "Wait it out" and so I did. Everything was okay. I went through it. In that time I tried literally every kind of meditation technique, listened to every Alan Watts lecture multiple times, listened to tons of Rupert Spira stuff, Mooji stuff, did all sorts of things to help me out and they all did to a certain degree, but in the end I just had to take it and experience it. It's hard, and it's okay to give in in that phase and learn from it. I started smoking again for example, because I knew it would help me out here and I could stop it when I'm through and have the mental power for it. For you it might be eating some ice cream, binging on other shit. Sometimes, this is necessary.
+++ Change in perspective +++
Another key change this year was my change in perspective. When I started out on my enlightenment journey the one thing I was mostly fascinated about was: "How is the day to day perspective of an enlightenment being?" Because they always say: "Well, you have it. You are it." But there still is a change that is happening, right? Why are we doing this work otherwise? Well, yeah there is a shift that happens. And it'll start to happen with your first enlightenment experiences and then slowly sink in to your day to day life over time. That's at least my experience.
I can consciously recognize who i really am at every time. I can see it. And this happened with I guess my second deep enlightenment experience. From then on it stuck. And now its for me more about adjusting my whole life to it that I integrate these experiences and deepen them for the rest of my life. Because, although the simple recognition of who you are is a thing you can either see or not, all of the implications that you can draw from that to your normal life, are endless and can be deepened endlessly. And that's where the journey really begins.
To name some symptoms that stuck with me since I saw: I see colors brighter than I did before. I see new patterns in what I perceive. I see a lot of the games that nature plays with itself. I see how things mutually arise and aren't caused by each other. The list goes on and on. But remember: These are just personal symptoms that came with the recognition. It's not the recognition itself. I have phases in which these symptoms will get amplified and I might tap into huge amounts of intuition. This is where the crazy shit starts. I had 3-4 times visions of events I could have never predicted that turned out the exact same way as when I saw them in a dream. I sometimes have an extremely accurate sense of time (like sitting in a meditation and being able to tell when it ends in the last 2 minutes). I have this 11:11, 10:10, 13:13 phenomena going on a daily basis sometimes 5-10 times since I guess like 6 months now. I had a few mystical encounters in meditations and dreams. And a lot of other crazy shit. I'll probably do a whole post on that in the future. I mean, you can think of that what you want, but if you have it yourself going on very frequently you start to at least see how intelligent and crazy nature is. And that your normal one-coffee-bored-consciousness is not where it ends.
But yeah, my perspective changed completely this year. I recognized who I am and am now able to integrate this for the rest of my life and see where it takes me.
+++ Psychedelic experiences +++
This year, I also started to experiment with psychedelics in a more spiritual and integrative way. I started using psychedelics (mostly LSD) in the summer of 2015, but in this year I did I'd say probably like 10 deep LSD trips, 10-15 DMT-trips, a few shroom trips and then of course the MeO-experiences. I also had 2 bad trips (one on LSD and one on shrooms [actually just 1 week ago]) and I found that these bad trips are the ones that do the deepest inner work and that really change your being permanently. So after some time you'll know how to handle them and use them for this. It's great. Ever since my first and last MeO-breakthrough I am still integrating the experience. I had one sober really, really deep enlightenment experience that lasted for 3-4 hours a few days after the breakthrough and a lot of what I'd call clarity experiences. Also, another round of shit came up over the weeks that I had to deal with and go through. But right now I'm pretty good and I think I can do the next experience in a few weeks (after all this x-mas and new year stuff is over).
In the future I think I will mainly focus on 5-MeO-DMT, shrooms and normal DMT since I found these three substances to do the most permanent and deep healing for me. I use 5-MeO to crack the shell, shrooms to heal the wounds and integrate what is puring out and I will start with normal DMT as well again because I think the realizations you get from it will be hugely intensified through the 5-MeO. Every time I take a substance right now, whether its weed, alcohol, some party drugs or what not, I get a medium to strong MeO experience along the way, which is crazy and pretty cool. I don't know why, but it happens to be that way.
Psychedelics have shown to be a huge amplifier on my own journey. It's great.
+++ HoloSync And Meditation +++
Another biggy is HoloSync. I started using the Awakening Prologue in late August this year and will buy in a few days the Awakening Level 1. HoloSync boosts my daily meditation like motherfucking nuts. It's incredible. I go so much deeper. I sometimes am high from my meditation for 3-4 hours after it (sometimes the whole day). It also induces little existential crisis to integrate your shadow and it's worth its price, if you ask me. I love it. Meditation is just so much more fun with it. Try it out if you wanna boost your journey. It has also shown to help me focus, be more intuitive, more creative and just give me a better feeling throughout the whole day. I totally love it.
Also, another thing I've experimented this year with are various forms of meditation. I did my standard "Do Nothing" + "Strong Determination Sitting". I use these two as my standard and then will lay other layers on top of them like doing some Tao meditations, breath meditations, counting meditations, mantra meditations. Right now I do a mix: I do my HoloSync and in the first 30 minutes I do a counting meditation and in the last 30 minutes I do a mantra meditation with the word "no-thing". I hesitated a lot to do mantra meditations because it is always connected with TM and a lot of people seem to not like it for that reason, but I found out for myself that it gives me great results. So the lesson here is: Try out a bunch of things and do the ones that work. Fuck what other people are saying. If it works for you great, do it. Engineer your own techniques.
+++ Going The Whole Way +++
Well, and lastly I wanna take all this and put it in a box. I hope that if you've read that far, one thing you picked up is that I had a lot of highs and downs, a lot of trial and error, a lot of crazy shit, but that's just the journey. Was my existential crisis bad? Yeah, it was fucking nuts. But anytime right I have negative shit coming up for a few weeks I kind of laugh about it in my mind because it has no real power anymore. I know anxiety, pain, anger, loneliness, being tied to these things so deeply and intimately that they don't scare me anymore. Every thing I go through is there to let me know that the person I was always seeking and was always wanting to be, is just myself. Is just giving up the search. Giving up the "wanting to be different". And that everything I should do, comes from an inspiration that arises by itself when I rest in this calm and fulfilled state. But it takes some time to get there. It takes heavy seeking to arrive at the point where you can't seek anymore and have to give it up. It takes massive action. And even then you'll have cycle after cycle that shows you new stuff, that presents new challenges etc. etc. But along the way you'll become a master of it. You'll master yourself and you'll lose all fears and all hectic to get it done.
So if you take one thing away from this post, then it is this: To become abundant, happy and fulfilled and enlightened, you have to take your neurotic being and try go get there by pushing so hard for it that you'll see at some point that you just can't keep up with the work you have to do to keep this happiness. And then you'll fall a deep, deep way to the bottom and realize that you are happy and abundant by default, that inspiration and realization happens by itself, and that action will always come and pick you up when you wait for it to arise. It'll show you the way. It always does. And you'll have the time of your life.
So, go the whole way and see for yourself. There is no rush, there is no one to get there first. It's just a ride you can take if you want.
Anyways,
merry motherfuckin' x-mas from your silly-ass angel of death... Azrael

It's 8:15 a.m. And precisely 6 and a half hours ago, I was on my bed, having an amazing experience. Now I'm here, talking to you about it. 
Part 1 -- The Setup. 
When Leo uploaded his videos about psychedelics, I got really interested. Then he updated the book list, I ordered "Being Infinite," Martin Ball's autobiography. It took a while to arrive but I finished it on Friday.
It got me really interested in using altered states of consciousness for personal and spiritual growth. 
On Sunday, Austin posted a review of Robert Monroe's book "Journeys Out Of The Body," and I decided to try this out for myself. I looked up Emerald's videos on how to have an OBE.
And I went to sleep, hoping something amazing was about to happen. To put it mildly, I was not disappointed. 
Part 2 -- The Trip. 
I know people don't really call that a trip, but you know what I mean.
It was hot as fuck in my bedroom. I was sweating. So I took my shirt off. It took me a while to fall asleep, so I had to set the timer for 1 hour later than what I initially set up. I think I went to bed with too much anticipation. I was too excited, which kinda prevented me to fall asleep. 
Anyways, it's now 1:41, the alarm just stopped ringing, and I'm in sleep paralysis. I hear vibrations, perfect auditory representations of my brain waves. I can't move...
This feeling is amazing. I've been doing SDS for more than a year now, and I keep telling myself I can't move, but in the back my mind I know I can. This was the opposite, I told myself I could move, but in the back of my mind I knew I couldn't. It kinda sucked, though, because I was not in physical symmetry, and that may have interfered with the experience. 
Very quickly I tried just floating outside of my body. Too quickly I presume. Because I didn't. I gave up, quite quickly. I was done with it by 1:47. And then there was a lot of "OH MY GOD I can't believe I just had this experience !"
Because it was still a really powerful experience.
Part 3 -- Reflections. 
So no nifty experience happened. No "other realm" was visited. Just me, on my bed. But... lessons learned. 
I got conscious that I am not this body. I felt that I was not this body. Also I got conscious that those thoughts were this body's thoughts, just like this sight is this body's sight. 
I got a glimpse of a glimpse of a glimpse of a glimpse of the true nature of my own being. And I was MIND BLOWN !!!!
It was so beautiful !!!! I'm in love with everything. 
I'm deep in ego right now... And I'm like "why am I in ego ? I shouldn't be in ego !"
Tonight I'll just go to sleep, just like any other night, then, when the alarm rings, I'll make sure to stay slow and relaxed. Really master the Sleep Paralysis stage. Then I'll move out of my body.
If I am not this body, then who am I ?

You are the awareness in which the notion of having a body, having thoughts, consciously feeling things, making sense out of sense perceptions etc. arises. If you ever have a near-death experience this will become crystal clear, because in the moment of dying every bit of your perception goes away but one no-thing stays and you instantly begin to recognize that you are that (if you are looking for it).

@all, I would just encourage you to really do some research, if you wanna get involved in it. This can be quite fun because you learn some new skills on how to live in the 21th century in which everything seems possible. Of course if you wanna restrict yourself and take normal routes of administration, you'll probably not find it very soon. 5-MeO-DMT is something very exotic and not well-distributed.
If you read my posts on it I give a lot of very direct pointers in which direction to look. Be thankful for that information and act on it if you want. But of course you gotta do some good research. And don't contact me on this issue. I sometimes get several people asking me PER DAY on how to get 5-MeO. And I won't help you simply because you should really contemplate whether you are ready for this. And if you are, you will have the will to do the research and find it.
And that in my opinion is needed, so that the newbies just don't get hold of it and fuck their brains out. If 5-MeO can be used to permanently enlighten you and change your body/mind it surely can fuck you up if you don't use it correctly. Be aware of this. This is not some acid or shrooms that'll give you some fun experience but this will permanently alter your awareness. 

So, I got myself involved in 5-MeO-DMT. But before I start this post, I'd like to point out that if you wanna know a little bit about my psychedelic background and another fun trip report, you might wanna read my report on shrooms first - if you haven't. There I describe my background with this etc. You can find it here.
+++ Research, Planning And a Fun Experiment +++
So, how did it all start? Let's go back in time. Roughly two months ago when Leo released his mushroom videos I wrote with him here on the forum about my experiences with psychedelics, told him about one bad trip that I had and so on. In this conversation he said I should checkout 5-MeO-DMT and that nothing really compares to that.
I gotta say I was kind of skeptical at first. I had done regular n,n-DMT and thought that this would be as "high as it gets". Little did I know. So I did some research over the weeks into MeO, asked some friends who had done it and read a lot. After a few weeks I forgot about it mostly because I had exams to learn for and interesting projects at work.
Then Leo released his video about becoming God. I still remember how I listened to that in the morning while eating breakfast and I'm like: "This can only be MeO." So I waited a week until he made his video about it. So I thought, I better get involved in this. This sounds transformational and scary and I'm up for super-charging my progress. I did some more research and got me 250mg of 5-MeO-DMT, lab-tested with a minimum of 98% purity in HCL form. Don't ask me where I got it, if you can't do the research, don't do it. Onions might have been involved in this process, one rumors.
So, I basically set up an experiment that I was going to undertake. The question I want to solve is: "Can a habitual use of 5-MeO-DMT used 1-2 a month raise my awareness permanently if used for 6-12 months?" This is the question I wanna investigate with this. To do that, I will do the tripping and document what happens with me. I plan to release I'd say at least 1 post per month here on the forum on my experiences - but more importantly on the development that happens in me. This is why I do this. I am actually thinking about making this in a video form (me telling this to you instead of writing). I might do that if the changes that occur are as deep as I expect them to be so that the cost of exposure and the investment in time and effort will be worth it. We'll see. If you like this whole experiment, like the posts and comment, ask questions and so on, so that I see that you guys are interested. If not, I'll document this just privately for me or later purposes.
So, I got all this down and last Thursday, the 6th of October was the day it should all begin. So let's jump right into it.
+++ The First Two Dosages: Light and Medium +++
How do you prepare to die? That's the question I asked myself before I did the first trip. And you really can't. You can just try to be at peace with whatever happens as much as you can be. This is rather difficult, because your mind can simply not come up with any framework that brings it at peace with non-existence. You have to let that go. I was pretty scared and nervous before the first trip, to be honest with you. I did all the stuff I had to do on that day, so that I had time to prepare, to do and integrate the first experiences with this beast of a drug.
Before I started, I laid on my bed, closed my eyes and went deep inside. I talked to my unconscious and asked it whether it really wants to do this kind of experience and whether I could accept to die into it, so that it could become everything. I listened to my intuition that was in for it. That calmed me down a lot and was the basis for the surrendering I had to do here. I would've quit the whole thing if something in me would've not wanted this authentically.
The following is a sum-up of three light-to-medium trips I took on Thursday and Saturday. They are based on 1x 15mg and 2x 20mg of MeO and had similar effects.
I weighted the dosage on my scale, made two halves out of it, turned on my tripping music very quietly and snorted the powder in with a third of a straw. You basically wanna sniff it in with the least energy to get it inside, so that it stays in the nostrils. Then you hold a finger on the nostril opening, do the other nostril, cover that and sit down on your couch / bed.
I sat down on my bed, tilted my head upside down and massaged the MeO into my nostrils. It burns a little bit but not very much in my experience. After 3-5 minutes my reality would get wanky and I would lie down on my bed very openly. I tried to focus on my breathing that got slower and slower while my pulse would be shooting through the top. And I mean through the the motherfucking top. You have not experienced this kind of pulse ever before in your life (if you weren't confronted with a death-like situation). I knew this would be coming, but man. You begin to worry a little bit if you can even physically take this. Then my bodily tensions and pressures slowly vanished, I closed my eyes and all I could feel is my pulse, a feeling of terror in my abdomen and a very slow breath. I mainly focused on keeping my breath going because it felt like it would stop any second if don't consciously breathe. (This is a known feature of the MeO-experience that it feels like your breath stops, however it doesn't. One does not have to be afraid of this. However, if you feel this the first time it is very heavy to say the least. Me whole body gave me signals that I'm going to die right now and it felt like I was on the edge for a good twenty minutes.
So what did I do? How do you face such a situation? With eyes closed I just tried to get in contact with this force that birthed me into life and that makes and shapes me every moment. I actually kinda got hold of this and it felt very much like home and that I could just surrender into it. I was on the verge of psychological death. I totally gave in. In these 20 minutes it felt like I purged 10 years of emotional baggage. Every fear and every fight that I ever had with myself just vanished and disappeared as I faced my own death here. It is - to say the least - transformational and scary.
After 30 minutes the terror kind of went away, I opened my eyes and was just bathed in this clearness. I laid on my bed for I don't know how long and was just there. No thoughts, no interpretation, no worries, no hopes, no fears. Just stillness and clearness. It was sick, I gotta say. After it, a lot of the heightened awareness actually stayed and is still present. It cut out in the last couple of days a lot of unnecessary thoughts. My meditation practice feels super-charged and my unwanted desires mostly went away. I'm not in a meditative state, but just really grounded and authentic. I don't resist myself anymore - at least in the last few days - and every kind of conflict or negative association just melts because of what happened there. Like, you don't have to do anything to stay grounded and aware, you just are because even if a earthly worry would come up it just is not equipped to hypnotize you anymore, because you have faced your own death. And nothing is greater then that.
You faced your personal ever-nearing apocalypse - and nothing else compares. That's it. But that should just be the beginning.
+++ The strong semi-breakthrough dosage +++
For Saturday evening I had planned the last initial dosage. 30mg. Boy, I wouldn't have dreamed in my wildest dreams that 10 godly milligrams could do such a difference. I had expected that I would go from near-death to a kind of void and that this is it. Yeah, think again.
So I followed up on the normal procedure I described above, sat down on the bed massaging my nostrils. 3 minutes in the reality would get wanky again. So I laid down on my bed and expected the upcome to take at least a few more minutes. I don't know how long it actually took but I suspect 5-10 seconds when I laid down and opened up I was just gone. My mind just started collapsing in on itself. Indescribable. Pulse through the top, breath on the verge of being existent, bodily tensions and feelings not there unless a big, mother... god-fucking big existential terror in my abdomen. It felt like my whole nervous system collapsed in on itself, my mind tried to wrap its head around it and just every frame of reference vanished.
You don't even remotely suspect how deep your ego shapes your perception. Every experience you have, everything you take in and make sense out of is combined with your web of beliefs. Even the most little thing like taking a breath is carrying years and years of your ego in it. Every little cell in your body. And now imagine all of this goes down to zero, nada, nothing. Just collapses in on yourself. It is by far the deepest kind of transformation you could ever experience. You are just blown away and every tool that your mind uses to come up with a calming solution of "you can handle that in a certain way" just isn't there. You're basically going insane while you are dying while it feels like every two seconds you are flushed with the doubled amount of awareness you just had. Very, very intense experience, guys. Very intense.
This is such an physical experience that I actually thought I gotta vomit. It felt like my body would explode and implode every few moments. So I ran to the toilet, put a finger in my throat and tried to vomit. Nothing happened. And I'm like: "What the fuck?" I never in my life was so certain that I gotta vomit and I never put my finger so deep into my throat to get me to do this. But I just didn't.
So I laid back down in my bed for about 10 seconds and then got up because I thought I gotta vomit again. Didn't happen. The second time hanging over the toilet I realized that I'm completely transforming right now and that this is probably the cause of me thinking I gotta vomit. This was one of the only thoughts I had in these moments. Dear, dear thought. I was happy that you were around, buddy. At least a little calm.
So I got back to my bed, laid down again, opened up, massaged my navel a little bit (which a friend of mine - a Qigong practitioner - recommended to me to get my awareness from my head into my abdomen which calms you down) and closed my eyes. In that moment all tensions, the existential terror and the complete shock I was in just exploded in this ever-still moment that expanded in all directions while not moving at all. I was that for a brief time and then were birthed again into my ego, were ripped out of again and then were the stillness again. This occurred for some time.
God is a beast, man. A fucking beast.
After having this for some time I managed to surrender into this birthing and dying every few moments and flowed with it for a few moments. It was the most majestic, horrifying, loving, still and moving I don't know what to call it that I have ever seen. Completely impossible. In the process I actually thought I died because there was no indication left that I was alive. Having done that it birthed and destroyed me for some more time, like 10 minutes and I opened my eyes and surrendered to the process. I merged with everything I could see, I was the room, the thing itself and the viewer of it. I was still being pumped with tremendous amounts of awareness every few seconds. Fuck me man, this is nuts I thought.
By looking at the things in my room they changed their boundaries like every few seconds. Like the shelve and the wall would now be one thing, then everything would blur out and then they formed a different object again. No hallucinations, but just every kind of way you could perceive an object in like 30 seconds. I didn't even try to understand this.
After 45 minutes I slowly came out and by that time didn't even care anymore whether I was breathing, my pulse was going through the top or whatever just happened. I was completely wiped clean, bathing in this stillness and nothingness and slowly saw how my ego began to put my world together again.
After that I smoked a cigarette and took a walk. My head was surprisingly still and cool with what just happened and was happy to have even greater amounts of awareness and stillness, no bad thoughts coming up, feeling very authentic. I asked myself whether I wanna do this again for 6-12 months on a bi-weekly basis and my intuition was still in for it.
Why do I call this a semi-breakthrough and not a genuine breakthrough? I think that if I do this a couple of times and increase the dosage 3-5mg I would be leaving most of the terror behind and bath more consistently in the absolute. I was kind of going in and out here the whole time which was kind of crazy. So we'll see next time.
+++ The Aftermath +++
So, I guess you read all of this and just think: "What the fuck, how could anyone ever do something like that to himself?" Let me tell you why. In this moment of complete shock, terror and then dissolving into the absolute you are shown your own birth and death. You actually see how you die every few moments and then are born again a moment later. You see how you are this collection of thoughts, perceptions and emotions and how they spontaneously arise out of an infinite pool of possibilities. 
I'd guess that if you do that for a few times you can surrender so deeply into it that most of the terror dissolves and you just die into the beauty and majesty of it. Of your own divine nature. I also guess from the aftermath that I experience right now that your own mind has to rebuild itself in a higher order after these experiences because it has no framework to handle it with your limited view.
Besides that, I guess that this will lead to the most mature emotionality a human being can have because you learn to accept dying here. That means that over some time nothing really can bug you anymore, because you have experienced and surrendered to your death and have seen beyond it. This I would conclude can lead to tremendous psychological changes that could cause an permanent awakening because nothing else can really handle such an experience. No framework of a normal sleeping mind can do that.
Also, the feeling and awareness you get after these experiences are amazing. It feels like being reborn again, clean. It feels like I have done 3 years of daily meditation in 45 minutes, 3 years of talking and fighting and adjusting myself. It is that powerful. I think that it just gets more powerful the more you do it, although it is scary and horrifying to a degree. But you also see that there is really nothing that can really destroy you. And that itself is transforming.
So yeah, that's my take on the first experiences. If you are interested in me posting more of this and documenting my journey here on the forum, like this, comment and let me now. I'll go through that and see where I end up. I think it's gonna be a good place. The last few days were the most exciting, refreshing and calm days I had in my entire life.
Cheers to 5-MeO-DMT,
Azrael

If you meditate long enough, deep enough, it is impossible for you to hurt anybody for food; it is impossible. It is not a question of argument, it is not a question of scriptures, it is not who says what, it is not a question of calculating that if you take vegetarian food you will become spiritual; it is automatic. The whole thing seems so absurd. Just for food, killing animals, birds, seems so absurd, it falls down.
You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. In India there are communities who have lived totally with vegetarian food; many Brahmins have lived totally with vegetarian food, but they are not spiritual.
I don’t take non-vegetarian food has nothing to do with religion, it is just pure aesthetics. I am not one who thinks that if you take non-vegetarian food you will not become enlightened. Jesus became enlightened, Mohammed became enlightened, Ramakrishna became enlightened — there has been no problem about it.  Your humanity is at stake, not your super-humanity. 
 Just to think that you are killing an animal to eat, just the very idea, is unaesthetic. I am not against it because the animal is killed… because that which is essential in the animal will live, it cannot be killed, and that which is nonessential, whether you kill it or not, is going to die. 
The question is not that you have killed the animal and killing is not good, no. The question is that you have killed the animal — you. Just to eat? While good vegetarian food is available? If vegetarian food is not available, that’s one thing. But the food is available. Then why? Then why destroy a body? And if you can kill an animal, then why not be a cannibal? What is wrong with killing a man? The meat derived from a human body will be more in tune with you. Why not start eating human beings? That too is a question of aesthetics.
It has nothing to do with meditation. You can eat meat and you can meditate. You can eat meat and you can love. It has nothing to do with love either. But you will be showing one thing about yourself — that you are very crude, that you are very primitive, uncultured, uncivilized; that you don’t have any sense of how life should be. 

@The White Belt The mind always creates resistance when you try to make big positive changes to your life. This is normal. I always experience resistance when I start a big important self-help course. Just try as best you can to push through it and maintain consistency. Over time, the mind will quiet down. The trick is to not let the whining get you to quit a good thing.
Remember, that you also don't need to be 100% perfect in doing the course. 80% is good enough. 80% is enough to change your life.
Don't feel bad about finding your life purpose. It's really a necessary component of a conscious life. Even if you got enlightenment tomorrow, you would still want to develop a conscious way of making a living. So by doing this work now, you are helping yourself become conscious, and then in the future take the ultimate step to enlightenment.
Don't feel guilty for walking a comprehensive spiritual path. Just make sure you don't get trapped in success to the point where you neglect enlightenment.
Anything you can do to make your life more conscious is a great thing. Whether it's cleaning up your diet, relationships, career, friendships, or whatever. That is NOT wasted effort. That's all great stuff which is part of the comprehensive spiritual path. Sure, it's not directly related to enlightenment, but you gotta start with getting the basics in place or you will be unable to sustain enlightenment.
Remember, that if you're still young -- like in your 20's -- you've got plenty of time to pace yourself and address many aspects of your life. Just don't take that as license to slack off and watch TV.

You should've seen how I was feeling last night, while sitting in my room, and while outside was raining hard and the thunderstorm was really nasty. I was in a state of being so profound and simplistic, that, from a certain point, I started to enjoy every movement seen outside, like a four year old at the sight of a toy. 
I really didn't need anything, and this state of unconditional joy grows each day passing by, because I realize deeper and deeper that everything that I'll ever need to be content is The Present, The Moment, and nothing more. 
It's just miraculos and ridiculously funny how this thing is right under humanity's nose and yet people fail to see it, because of the wrong growth direction and education. 

@Max_V you can meditate daily, excercise, purify your body of meat, sugar, all toxins, etc, you can treat everything as yourself, you can let go of all tension and strife, you can learn the truth until you have nowhere left to look for it, you can use psychedelics.....and then you can accept that you will never know. Then you can be. 

Well, yesterday night I got a message from @Leo Gura - while watching the 5th season of House of Cards - in which he asked me how much 5-MeO-DMT trips I needed to wake up. After answering his question I shared with him a short version of the story how it all happened -- how I woke up. He suggested then that I should share this with you guys to inspire and educate you. And although it's still strange for me to talk about it in detail, it's the right thing to do. Just a year ago I had one wish and one wish only: To know exactly how it is like. And I will give my best shot in trying to articulate it.
Before I start though, I will give you some perspective where I'm coming from at this. What my background is, because that's utterly important if you want to understand how my journey took place and how the dynamics of the awakening worked.
+++ My Background: How I Got Introduced To Self-Actualization / Enlightenment +++
So let's go back two years. I'm 19 years old, sitting in my old room in my parents house in the night watching Leo's first video on enlightenment. At that time, I moved to Berlin, began my studies and I felt completely fucked up. I mean, my life in general worked out. My studies were going great, I moved to the city that I wanted to live in, ... . But I was feeling just shitty and insecure. I got bullied when I was 12-14 years old for making crappy rap music and it seemed that all that fear and insecurity from that time started to bubble up. I had a chronic feeling of being overwhelmed with my life, being anxious because of that and I didn't have the courage to speak about it to someone because I was deeply convinced that it would make me seem weak and like a victim - and I could not allow that.
So, if you asked a friend of mine at that time, he would've described me as this charismatic, confident dude whose life is going pretty well. That's what I pretended to be on the outside. I am pretty charismatic and confident - so that's not a lie - but I used it as a shield so that people wouldn't notice what is going on with me. Coming back to the night in my parents house where I watched the first enlightenment video, I'm just like: "That's my last chance. I have to try this, if this works (and I just believed Leo at that time because I resonated with his style of teaching) I can live in peace." I hated myself at that time, hated who I was and how my life went, so it seemed like a good idea to kill this guy called Azrael. Also, I was fascinated by the idea that this could be possible. I had never heard about the concept of enlightenment before and although I was deeply interested in psychology / philosophy and naturally way too curious about this world, I had kind of given up on ever really knowing what is going on here. This seemed like a solution to that as well. So, I started to meditate the next day.
+++ My Journey: How I Made It Happen +++
I have one big advantage over other people and that is: I get fascinated with stuff pretty deeply. Like, when there is a topic that I'm interested in I melt into that. I will research everything that there is about it, look at all the experts in the field, fall platonically in love with them, mimic how they talk and think, what they are interested in. I will live in that dream of that fascination. I will think about it all the day, associate everything that I do with it and make it my thing. That's basically me. That's why I am so young and so old at the same time. Because I live that shit. 
And as you can guess, I did the same stuff with my journey. I meditated, self-enquired, contemplated and tried to wrap my head around it. In the first year I was just very motivated and tried to get it all in. I knew nothing about it and I wanted to "get in there". So what happened? I actually began to feel better. I had my first realizations, I had cool meditations, began to experience my first mystical experiences and started to do psychedelics - mostly LSD and DMT.
So, a year goes by and I'm sitting at home. I moved a few months before that to a new apartment and Leo just released his video on "Free Will". Still, one of my favourites of all time. After I watched the video I meditated on the question "What is going to happen next?" for an hour. In that meditation a very strange thing happened. It felt like something cracked in my head and a lot of thoughts came up. I finished the meditation, began to cook something and noticed for the first time that I am able to listen to my thoughts while knowing that I don't say them myself. Looking back at that, I think it was the point at which my unconscious opened a gateway to my conscious awareness and started to really process some shit.
After that, the most horrifying year of my entire life started. My anxiety increased to a top, my unconscious thoughts increased to a top and just hypnotized me all day long. I just couldn't stay mindful. I was scared to leave the house because I was hyper-sensitive about everything. I was a mess. I was so fucked up that I doubted that this is still purging and I sometimes assumed that I am just mentally ill. That I'm a schizophrenic, with PTSD, anxiety disorder and paranoid. That's basically a good description on how I felt for most of the days.
At that time, I had probably the deepest realizations. Funnily, if you are in such a bad state you grow a lot and pretty fast because you are meta-analysing yourself all the time (because you are so fucked up) and through that you naturally have a lot of realizations and crazy experiences. From time to time it would stop for 1-2 weeks and I would have deep moments of bliss and clarity. Then the roller-coaster would start all over again and it would get worse. Just a big fucking mess.
Needless to say that this was also the time in which I tried everything. Every kind of meditation you know, every kind of teaching that is out there, any psychedelic that I could get my hands on. I was on it. I tried it, analysed and tried to use it to get me out of that horrible state. As I will later state, this time was the time in which my mind began to awaken. I just wasn't really aware of that because simultaneously it was flooded by so many disturbing thoughts and my body was fucked up with so many tensions and bad emotions.
This cycle basically kept going for the whole year, intensified and lowered, intensified and lowered. In the summer I got tired of it. I got tired of feeling so bad. I even had suicidal thoughts sometimes (which then freaked me out even more). So I stopped seeking. I still committed to the practice, still did my thing but I just gave up that this would ever stop. I just couldn't see how.
In the autumn and winter of that year I started fucking around with 5-MeO-DMT and shrooms. I also started using HoloSync. At that time I had some interesting changes happening. After my first 5-MeO-DMT sessions the tensions in my head completely vanished. That was nice but I was still in pain, still in fear. I also didn't have the nice blissful phases any more, I just felt mostly tired and sick of this shit.
That was basically my journey. A big fucking mess. A lot of trial and error, a lot of dedication and fascination.
+++ The Awakening of The Mind +++
In the summer of this horrifying year my mind awakened. I had a few awakening experiences before that but non that lasted. In the summer I had one Kundalini awakening. I just sat on my couch, was pretty exhausted and tired that day and thought about a girl that had rejected me at that time. Suddenly this ball of energy came shooting up my spine and into my head where it exploded. The first thought I had was: "Fuck, am I going to die right now?" It was pretty intense. After that I took a walk and was just completely shocked and fascinated with what happened and how I felt. All the anxiety and attachment was gone for this evening. And I could recognize the source. I could recognize where everything is coming from and who I am. I went to a buddy later that evening and it felt like he was a creature - not a human. It was crazy. 
The days after that experience the state completely vanished and I went back into my fucked up mode. However, my sense of self was now completely rooted in source. I could - if I wanted to -  know who I truly was. It was clear. But at that time, I still thought that this cannot be it, because I still felt so damn bad. I didn't know that my body had to awaken as well to be completely rooted in it and to feel the peace and calmness of the awakening.
+++ The Awakening of The Body +++
The awakening of the mind is basically realizing who you really are. Being able to recognize source. That's great, but only half of the deal. You can be able to recognize that with your ego still intact raping you like nothing changed. And you won't be able to realize what really happened because your ego is still there. The daemon is still there. Now, here is the story of how my ego integrated and how it brought me into total balance.
Roughly two weeks ago, I'm laying in my bed waking up (normally). It's a regular morning in Berlin. I'm still a little bit tired and dreamy, thinking about my daily meditation. And I'm like: "Ah, I don't wanna meditate. I just wanna sleep today." I'm pretty grumpy in the mornings btw. This is not the first morning that I think that way and so I begin to think a little bit.
Why do I don't want to meditate any more? This is my favourite and most intimate thing I do every day. And then I'm thinking about the last couple of weeks. How do I feel? How do I feel? I feel pretty good. Wait a minute, I felt good for a pretty long time now. Why am I not thinking about spirituality any more? I used to think about this every day 24/7? Why am I not thinking that much any more in general? I'm pretty relaxed all the time. Where are my chronic tensions in my abdomen? I haven't felt them now for ... Wait a minute.
And it goes on like this. That morning I realised that I had awakened. It was the strangest thing. I wasn't able to tell for some days what really changed, I just knew that I didn't feel bad any more and that all my motivation to do my practice just disappeared. (I still did it of course - gotta be disciplined with this and not listen to your thoughts.) After some time I began to think about myself again because I wanted to know what changed.
A few nights ago I skyped with my good friend @Huz and I came up with a metaphor that describes it pretty well.
+++ The Metaphor: How It Feels to Wake Up +++
So, in the normal non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - wow that's a phrase that sounds pretty evil just writing it - it's like you have an invisible suit that you wear at all times. This suit has one property and one property only. It makes it hard for sensations, emotions and feelings to get out of your body.
So now with having this suit on, when you have a sensation or an emotion that goes through your body it will naturally be resisted by the suit and so ping back into your system. It's like there is a resistance through that invisible suit. So that sensation or emotion will go another time through your body and by that amplify the effect it has on you. Because it cannot get out easily. It might get out after some time, depending on how strong your suit is, but it's hard for the poor little thing. Through that you tend to "attach" to what is going on with you. Even more, you begin to identify with what is going on inside yourself because the effect is so strong and always repeats because of the resistance.
The same thing is happening with your thoughts. You have a thought and it cannot get out because of your suit. It gets back. Makes another round, triggers other thoughts that cannot get out that trigger even more thoughts. Through that a constant chatter of thoughts is made possible.
As you start your practice you begin to unconsciously work on your suit. As you purge more and more shit its resistance gets weaker and more thoughts can go out of your system at first. Then, as this happens a lot of the repressed thoughts are now able to release themselves and your system is flooded by them. Because your suit is weaker they can get out but because of the volume of the repressed thoughts that are now set free it seems like you are regressing - although you are not.
Through that process you might be able at some time to recognize who you really are because so much changes inside of yourself. That's great and that's what happened when my mind awakened - however the suit was still on - although weakened. When the body awakens what basically happens is that the suit looses its last resistance and falls off.
Through that your body is now able to think and process emotions naturally without unconscious resistance of the suit. This of course implicates that you loose most of your inner tensions and that the volume of your thoughts go down, because they are not amplified any more. It also implicates that you are able to recognize who you are much easier because the strong identification with your sensations, emotions and thoughts is released and really everything that you are aware of finds a perfect balance.
This also explains why I did not instantly recognize what happened to me. My meta-analysis, my pain, my tensions, my thought stories just left like a daemon that raped me and through that I just was and am in a state of peace that is not questioning itself all the time and is not trying to get away from itself.
I hope this makes sense.
+++ The Aftermath: What Now Then? +++
Well, I don't now, to be honest. Right now, I am pretty relaxed. I still do my normal day to day shit, I still have all my preferences, dreams and desires. I don't want to get away from myself any more and I know who I am. I am quite empty. I guess that's a phase in the beginning. I will see where it takes me. I will commit to my practice and see what comes next. I hope that I am able to find a lot of more metaphors in the future about this and I'd like to write more about it to help you guys and make me understand it on an intellectual level.
One thing that is very important to understand here is the following: In all my seeking, non-seeking and whatever I did I always made up this picture in my head of "how it would be if I'm there". And that's natural in the non-integrated state of egoic consciousness - oh I love this phrase. I think that this transition took place because when I chased this picture of "how it would be" I was at the same time doing all the work that unconsciously set up all the dynamics and mechanisms to transform my whole being. It took the time that it needed and it didn't give a fuck how I felt about it. When it was time it first awakened my mind and then later awakened the body and when that happened and both came into balance it was just like the picture dissolved and I was shot from my path into a big fucking ocean in which I have to now find out how to swim. It's like I just completed this level and am now at square one again - just in a different world.
Well let's find out what's going on in here, right? Because the levels never stop. That's the fun of the game, I guess.
I'm thankful to all the members on this forum that I had and have great conversations with. Especially I'm thankful for @Leo Gura who introduced me to all of this and is a constant inspiration, source of education and a fucking pain in the ass to be more committed, @jjer94, @Ayla and @cetus56 who made me realize so much with their beautiful writing and lastly @Huz my great good friend from the UK with whom I have the best conversations about all of this and who is always listening and responding to my crazy voice messages.
Cheers, Az
P.S. Feel free to ask me whatever is on your mind about all of this. I'm happy to help and to further clarify what I stated here. I will - in the future - post a lot more about the techniques that I used, about more of the dynamics of the process, new trip reports and all the other good shit that we all love to talk about.

Whenever I can, I spend hours lying on the sand beach observing the stars, galaxies and planets.
Recently, I had an experience that may be interesting to you. After a few hours contemplating the amazing sky, I had strong waves of pure unconditional love for the planet, for my surroundings and consequently it extended to all the beings. I became one with the stars and they all belong to me as I belong to them.
 
Where I live the clear sky can barely be watched most time of the year. Maybe is time to a big move ?

@krazzer That's great. But keep in mind there is more to be grasped and mastered. And just because it sticks around for a few days doesn't mean much. There are many people who have it stick around for a week, a month, even 4 years, and then they lose it, because it wasn't fully comprehended. So don't get cocky. Take your time to fully integrate it.

A life purpose, just saying this, is very profound. It's not just a career. It's not just a startup with passive income. It effects all areas of one's life - how you relate to loved ones, how you relate to friends, how you relate to society, how to take it with you when you go travelling/immigration, how would you incorporate enlightenment experiences with it, how to have a profound mission and impact the world with it, and so on. It's profound, Leo. Flexibility and adjustment are required throughout life in a life purpose. It's lifelong. You are basically discovering yourself along the way throughout life and incorporating that into the life purpose as well as skills to market it and win eyeballs in your own unique ways and have a positive impact in the world. Consider this, right? Don't forget that it's the journey that counts. Each day, when you awake from your sleep, you have a chance to add a drop of something to your life purpose. ☺

@Hardkill you fail because you want to use them. that's not how we treat human beings.
even those who "succeed" actually fail.
the cycle of cravings is endless. wake up!

Never forget: whenever you take the fast, easy path, you will miss the lessons you would have learned from walking the long, rocky path. Even worse, you might never be able to go back, and the lessons will be inaccessable to you for the rest of your life, unless you get your brain back to the bad state it has been before you "cheated" your way through.
And of course, you are encouraging a non-mastery mentality: Results over path.
In the end it depends on what you want. If you actually want to self-actualize, I think you should first do a few years of pure meditation, and maybe later add some fancy stuff that will increase results. But if you just want to get results fast, well then go for it.

@Sagatarius It works pretty well, if you actually do it daily for months with skipping any days.
Emotional upheaval will happen. Your job it to deal with it and stay on track. The #1 mistake people make with Holosync is that just as soon as the emotional upheaval starts happening, they freak out and quit.
Expect a lot of emotional baggage to surface: anger, suicidal thoughts, depression, traumatic memories, etc. Basically all the stuff I talked about in my Dark Side Of Meditation video. That's how you know it works.

@rush If someone told me 7 years ago that I would be well paid for sitting around, reading books, meditating, taking psychedelics, and doing philosophy all day, I would have laughed in their face. What market could there possibly be for that???