Man, for now, I would say just forget about that. Your mind is filled with fantasies of being some crazy Buddha. Don't worry about that for now. Spend the next 5 years just learning how to survive and thrive in America. Then revisit the Buddha issue.
Remember, Buddha was 27 years old when he left behind his life of luxury, success, and family. He had a wife and child. He was experienced with the ways of material living. And then it took him another 6 years to finally get enlightened. So you've got plenty of time. 23 year olds are basically babies. You have virtually no life experience or survival skills. So build those up.
This is not unique to you. Most 23 year olds these days are like this. As was I at that time. You'd be amazed how much can get accomplished in 10 years. Way more than you could image.

@daniel695 Becoming conscious of your emotions is the core of all development and awakening work because emotions run your entire life.
It doesn't matter what medication you're on, you can still mindfully observe and inquire into emotions. Your entire life is run by emotions 24/7. The issue isn't that you have too few emotions, it's that you're totally overwhelmed by them to the point where you cannot even tell where an emotion ends and your life begins.
Observing and deconstructing emotions is very challenging work, for anyone, regardless of medications or not.
You could start by observing every day in which ways you suppress emotions.

I'd say my mind-body is in a fluid flow ranging from Green to Turquoise along various lines (intellectual, emotional, spiritual etc). 
For a while, I was firmly centered in Green. The strongest hurdle I had to get over was the deeply emotional connections with humanity - especially with people that are disadvantaged, marginalized and ostracized. People in poverty, the homeless, abused children, domestic violence victims, the mentally ill etc. Yellow seemed so cold to me and I thought I would stop caring for others if I evolved into Yellow. 
I'd say that the biggest change from tier1 to tier2 is an energetic shift from seeking for personal needs (tier 1) to seeking to experience the magnificence of life. Tier2 is transpersonal. There is a very different relationship with the person in the mind-body. 
I'd say psychedelics played a big role in transitioning to tier2. They gave me many yellow and turquoise level experiences. I was already centered in Green and within striking distance of tier2. Psychedelics boosted me into yellow and turquoise. When I returned to my Green level baseline consciousness, I was able to integrate these lessons and perspectives through meditation, yoga, journaling etc. Imo, psychedelics aren't a particularly effective spiritual tool until the Green stage. Jumping from blue/orange to yellow/turquoise is a really big jump and I can't imagine integrating it.
For example, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what "nonlinear" and "post-logical" thinking is. Psychedelics showed with absolute clarity what this is. After a while, direct experience and lessons become embodied. There was a shift from thinking about it to being it. At first, my default thinking mode was logical and it took effort to think post-logically. Yet my brain has been rewired and the default is post-logical thinking. Thinking logically and rationally takes work now. And I find it boring and tiresome. . . I don't use psychedelics often anymore and small doses have a big effect on me. It's like those yellow and turquoise conscious states now arise even in a "sober" mind. As if the software of the brain was updated to a higher conscious level.  

I'm curious to see everyone's experience here on which are the top 3 videos Leo produced that profoundly changed your life in some way.
Put which one 
Then add what it did.
For me:
Episodes on Absolute Infinity => Made me realize god cannot be a person, thus shedding any monotheistic views and leading to more research into non-dualism and eastern ways of looking at it.
Episode on Moralizing => helped me shed the decades of programming which lead to harsh criticisms of myself and others due to violations of so-called societal norms.
Episode where he explains the work of Derrida that all language basically is circular and cannot explain anything; (could be the strange loop video I don't remember) => this had a profound impact on me because I am very logical and analytic person; so I believed if something is illogical then it is untrue, but this video showed that is not the case, and truth exists beyond logic (like a strange loop or nondualism).
 
What about you guys?

There are six conditions which need to be met before permanent change up the Spiral can happen. They are:
1. Potential: How open are you to new ideas about the next MEME.
2. Solutions: Have you solved the Problems that were raised by your current MEME. Notice that every MEME brings its set of problems that need to be solved before you can move up. 
3. Dissonance: You need to feel the limitations of this MEME. You need to see the negative side of this MEME, and to be unsatisfied with it. This cannot be faked. You actually need to learn about all of the problems that this MEME cannot solve, and be aware of it. 
4. Insight: Learn that the limitations that you found in the current MEME can only be solved by the ideas of the next MEME. Become aware of this, and learn about how the next MEME can help you. Become encouraged by the next MEME. 
5. Barriers: Is there anything stopping you from moving up. Maybe you live in a household where the next MEME’s ideas will not be accepted. Maybe you haven’t felt enough dissonance about your current MEME. Maybe you don’t know enough about the next MEME. Either way, any problem stopping you from moving to the next MEME must be dealt with, or at least neutralised. It cannot carry on being a problem.
6. Consolidation: You will need some time of support when you move to the next MEME. You’re still quite uncertain about the massive change that you just made. You will need somebody to help you when you are new to the MEME. There is every chance that you will slip back to the previous MEME without this consolidation.
Moving up the Spiral is a very delicate matter. Those six conditions can really save you a lot of time. 

I wanted to make this thread to spread some more love/positivity into the forum as I believe that threads like this can be very beneficial and practical.
 
The other day I was in the gas station getting a drink, when I noticed an older man (probably in his mid 70's) with two walking canes and a "U.S. Marines Veteran" hat on. When he was headed to the door to leave, I noticed that no on else was going to help him open it. My resistance to help strangers is high, as I am a very introverted person, but the spiritual side of my conscience got the best of my thoughts and so I was like "F it, I'm just gonna do it, no big deal." and I went and said "Sir, let me get that for you." As soon as I said that, his two gleaming eyes (older people just have those eyes you know?) slowly looked up at me and seemed to completely reflect my love back. What followed was one of the most fulfilling and happy feelings I have ever felt.
It was at this exact moment that I realized "Holy sh*t. This is where I can find true happiness. This is what spirituality is really all about: Love, LOVE, LOVE!" It's all about love. That is the point. Love is literally the point. It is everything, and if you consciously act with love, it will always reflect back to you.
It blew my mind how such a small gesture could completely change how I felt about myself and the world.
After I opened the door for him and he walked through, I said "have a great day" and went on my way.
 
 

@kieranperez It sounds to me like you need to focus on handling some of your basic survival needs. Learn to survive in the world a bit more so that you develop a knack for success and getting stuff done. As you meet those lower level needs, you'll be ready to move up into higher needs.
A skyscraper must be built on a solid foundation. Don't worry about spending a few years learning how to do business. Business is important to learn. Practical skills are important to learn. You want to handle all of your survival needs so that then you have lots of free time to delve into spirituality, art, etc. It's kinda hard to do art when you can't pay your bills.
Learning to get practical stuff done is part of your developmental growth. I had to learn a lot of practical stuff before I could get Actualized.org off the ground. Actualized.org runs due to practical know-how, not airy-fairy spiritual ideas.
Go learn to be a programmer or whatever you need to move you along towards your dreams. I learned lots of scripting and programming because it is so useful.

@kieranperez Bro, just wanted you to know that I really appreciate the brutal wincerity, vulnerability and honesty from your post. 
I don't comment a lot here, Kieran, but you really struck me with this. 
Not many people are able to put their heart on their sleeve like that. Keep your heart pure, your head up high and your intentions genuine. You will get where you need to go if you keep this attitude.
Don't beat yourself up so much. 
If you want to accelerate your journey though, the best, easiest and most impactful way would be to start documenting your journey. Just flip the camera and start talking. Nothing fancy.
A lot of people can relate with your struggle. Your built up influence through pure relatibility could maybe get you out of San Francisco eventually. It will also play as therapy through self-expression for you, and you too will see that people can empathize and that you are not alone in this. 
 

@Alex bAlex Contemplate: What is judgment?
Locate judgment and observe it in your direct experience.
You guys need to start locating all of terminology in your direct experience.

Locking this because Red Pill is toxic garbage.

Not in the slightest.
But I did have a powerful vision for my life, I was very ambitious, and I was following my heart. Which is really all that matters.
You are young. You've got many years to put all of those things in place. Obviously don't waste time sitting around on your ass, but don't panic either.
Right now what you're missing is hope and faith in your vision.
Vision is useless if you don't have rock-solid faith in it. You need to train yourself to believe in it. Visualize it every day with a hopeful vibe. Do not visualize it pessimistically, negatively, full of fear. That is terrible. That is counter-productive.
Holding a big vision is not easy. It is scary. Your mind will not believe it is possible. I used all sorts of mind programming techniques to reinforce my vision and overcome various doubts. But the most important thing is HEART! You must have HEART! That is what carries you through everything. Your life purpose must be non-negotiable. You are doing it no matter what. There should be no option for failure because you already know there is nothing else you'd rather do.
There will hundreds of doubts in this journey. You have to really cultivate hope. Not in luck, but in your hard work. Your vision will get actualized through honest labor.
And remember, a big vision requires lots of patience. You don't need to be Buddha by next month. Recalibrate your exceptions and split your vision up into smaller chunks, so you are not evaluating your progress based on whether you are like Ralston or Buddha. That may not happen for 40 years. And that's okay, you don't need that to enjoy your life.

@Moreira Yes, there are many hippies and bums in Hawaii. But I did not say living on the beach like a bum. I said buying your own land and building a small shack. That is very doable if you save up some money. In Hawaii you can even live off the grid using solar panels and a rainwater catchment tank. Heating and A/C are virtually unnecessary there.
See my Hawaii solo retreat blog videos.
Also, you don't need to slave. Learning how to make money is not hard. There many ways to earn six figures per year and enjoy the process. You just need a vision to do it. You can't be doing it out of a desire to become a bum. Cultivate a desire to genuinely contribute to humanity. It is so much more fulfilling and pays well when properly designed.
Learn some business, sales, and marketing skills. This is easily acheieved online through courses, workshops, audios, and books.
You also need a plan for getting old. Your health will worsen and so will your ability to work. Healthcare ain't cheap. Don't take stuff like healthcare for granted. Without government you'd probably die in your 50's or 60's due to lack of healthcare, disablity, etc.

@Conceptually-made Given your age I would attribute this mostly to lack of experience. Socialization is a skill set. Being intimate with women is a skill set. You need many hours of practice to get good at it, especially if you're shy, awkward, under-socialized, autistic, or very introverted.
Put yourself into a lot more social situations/relationships and practice being very authentic, vulnerable, and intimate. Not sexually, but conversationally, emotionally, etc.
Do not confuse sex for intimacy.
A little game you could play with yourself is to try to see how fast you can get real intimate with a total stranger. Like, walk up to a random person at a Starbucks and try to get intimate with them within 15 minutes of conversation. The trick is to do it without creeping them out. The first few times you try it you will come across weird and creepy. But through experience you will learn how to make it feel natural and positive for the both of you.
Oh, and BTW, the whole trick to sleeping with women quickly is building intimacy quickly. You can do it within 1 hour of meeting her through lots of training. There are many tricks to speed this along, like being fully present, having very strong eye contact, speaking slowly, smiling, being warm and friendly, and touching her body frequently in a non-creepy manner.
It's amazing when done right. But requires enormous practice unless you're "a natural." Which obviously you aren't otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

@Giulio Bevilacqua Most of Western philosophy is mental masturbation and will take you further into delusion.
If you are already into spirituality and nonduality why waste your time with Western philosophy? Why not invest that time deepening your spiritual practice?
Be careful not to do things just because other people are doing them. Be independent and don't do useless things with your life. Be highly selective with how you invest your time.
Maybe spend your time studying something more practical.

We are all intimately familiar with consciousness at the individual / personal level. There is also a social level of consciousness. 
As an analogy, we could say each cell in your body has a level of individual consciousness. Each cell can sense and respond to other cells in their environment. Each cell has behavior that is influenced by their environment. Yet, they are unaware that there is a higher social cellular consciousness at the personal level. Collectively, all cells give rise to. . . you. Consciousness at the organismal level. At this level, the organism is aware of itself and has behavior that is influenced by their environment. Yet, just as a cell is unaware of consciousness at the organismal level, an organism is unaware of consciousness at the social level. 
Entry into tier 2 in the SD model involves transcending personal consciousness. From here, social consciousness can reveal itself. 

@optimize First of all, these are quality problems. Acknowledge how far you've come. You've build something rare and you ain't done yet.
Secondly, yeah! Welcome to survival! Survival is a cut-throat activity. It is not easy to balance between business & art. It is not easy to run a conscious business. Which is why virtually no body does it.
Yes, your business can get fucked at any time, and if you neglect it for too long, it will probably die. Such is life. There is no life without death. The solution is to accept it and face your fear of failure/business-death. I used to get these fears a lot. I still get them to some extent but a lot less so after my many mystical experiences, which teach me that death is inevitable and nothing to be afraid of. After you experience a few physical deaths, business death doesn't seem so serious any more.
That said, if you are going to be running a business you should run it well, strategically. Think about ways to make your business more future-proof and self-sustaining. You can do that without being paranoid about it. Make the distinction between being strategic and proactive vs being paranoid. You can do one without doing the other and vice versa.
Of course your survival is tied to your business performance. Business IS survival. The solution here it is not get too wrapped up in survival. Yes, survival is necessary but don't make your entire life about survival. Don't make your entire business about survival. You must skillfully evolve your business beyond survival to incorporate play, artistry, beauty, and consciousness. This must be done while still keeping one eye on your finances. Just like how an artist cannot paint all day long without eating food. But it would be a mistake for him to get so paranoid about food that all he does all day is eat food and never paints. A balance must be struck between eating food and making art. Likewise between business and art.
Most successful entrepreneurs end up workaholics. You should probably make time for other stuff like relationships, travel, spirituality, etc. Do that without neglecting your business. If you're earning $100,000 you should have enough money to hire a bit of extra help. Consider hiring an online contractor to help you out. Consider how to align your art with your biz.
Yes, I always feel a desire to grow and expand my biz. But I have to be disciplined and say NO! to lots of opportunities because biz is not as important as spirituality, for example. I pass up on a lot of opportunities because biz cannot be your #1 priority in the end. That way lies disaster.
How do I handle fears of my business getting fucked? At this point I've basically stopped caring. I've almost stopped caring if I die. This was made possible through spiritual work and profound mystical experiences which show me that biz and life are just a hallucination. None of my life or work really matter. This is all just a game. It's being done for fun and artistry. You could get run over by a bus tomorrow. So why worry about it? Getting over the fear of loss of my business took many years of work. It also helped that I saved up a comfortable nest egg. My YT channel could die tomorrow and I would still be able to live for 15 years without working. I strategically designed it this way. You can too. Not in a week, but in a few years time you could.
Sometimes I still think of the business aspects of things, but at this point in my life, career, and development I spend more time thinking about living in a cave than running a business. You are not at this point yet. Maybe you'll get there in 5-10 years of work. It all depends on what your goals are for your life. For me, the point of business is to enable my passion and artistry. Design your business such that it allows you to do your art. Artsy fartsy stuff is not waste of time if it part of your life purpose and your life purpose is fueling your biz. The whole point is to align all these things in a balanced way.
If you set up your business properly, you should be able to take time off to pursue spirituality, travel, leisure, art, relationships, etc. That will take some years to actualize, but it's worth it. The first few years of building a business usually requires LOTS of hours of non-stop work. But the whole point of all that work is so that in the future your business is more or less on auto-pilot.
Tie the artsy-fartsy stuff to the success of your biz.
Remember the importance of dynamic balance. See my balance video.
Have a long-term strategic plan.
Automate, outsource, and streamline stuff as much as you can.
Fear is always a psychological self-deception game. Your fear is something you want to contemplate and face head on. Just building your biz more is never going to solve the fear of losing your biz. Your biz could be making $1 billion per year and you'd still fear losing it. Even more so! Because fear is never based in reality, it is purely mental. So explore that. To really overcome fear you must do deep spiritual work. Fear is inevitable without enlightenment.
Overall, you're on the right track. Just fine-tune things and take it to the next level. Next level does not necessarily mean: more money & bigger biz. Next level means: a new balance, or action at a higher level of consciousness.

@Djdumoul When I started by first biz I was 24 and I moved back in with my parents for a short time (about 3 months). It was a bit humiliating and stifling but a necessary step towards actualizing my life purpose. After about 3 months I was making enough money to move out and live on my own. And I was even able to help pay for my Mom's apartment after she separated from my Dad.
The key is to hustle and make shit happen. Don't be dicking around. Create results!
Teach yourself how to survive in this world.

In my personal opinion, it's very important to make the rite of passage of living on your own sooner rather than later. The longer you wait the harder it will be to make that leap. And once you do, you will grow in a way you've never grown before. Living with parents into adulthood clips your wings and robs you of the struggles that will test you and bring out your greatest strengths.
So, if I were in your position, I'd start growing a business right now while living with parents and give myself 6 months to a year to be financially independent. And I'd be hitting it every single day.
Now, it doesn't have to be something that you love, but just something that you are okay with doing and can make a couple grand per month easily with without spending all of your time and energy that could be going toward your music. So, with preference to something that you can make passive income with like affiliate marketing.
Then, once you get the financial freedom, you can start trying to monetize your passion more.
Heck, you could even grow a YouTube channel and social media following where you talk all about music for people who want to learn, then you can offer lessons over Skype to anyone who's interested. And there's a TON of people out there who would be. And you could even sell courses on it to monetize it while you're trying to make your music career to take off.

@CreamCat Nice video!
I knew kids like that guy in elementary school. They would just draw all day long in class and they were fucking GOOD. My Mom is actually like that.
From what I can gather, it requires a certain highly specialized brain type. Which then leads to 1000s of hours of practice because their brain type loves doing it.
I would guess I'm the same as that guy, but with philosophy instead of art. To me philosophy is like an artform, and it comes as easily as that guy's drawings, but then there is also of course a ton of practice that goes into it.
To do that much practice demands that you really love doing it.

The older generations are not staying still. They too are evolving. Just not as fast as you whippersnappers would like.
Like I said, it's due to the rigidity of the mind. The mind is resistant to change. It's a fundamental survival mechanic.

@VioletFlame Examine your own resistance to change and you will have your answer.
Change = death

What matters more than the substance is your intention when using it.
MDMA, mushrooms, and Aya should all be real good for that.
Give mushrooms a try. They can be healing in a twisted sort of way.
MDMA is great for PTSD.
Since you say you've done a fair amount of psychedelics already perhaps what you're missing in contemplation. Try doing contemplation using a journal on your issue. THEN follow that up with more psychedelics. That will orient your trips in the right direction, yielding more clarity.

Yes.
Also, yes.
You can drastically change your emotional life by doing this work. I'm without a doubt the happiest I can remember in a long time.
But it often gets worse before it gets better. So just be aware of that.

@Lynnel
Trust me you’re not alone on this. 
As much as we can say we are a stage orange culture, the reality is that most people I see have a completely dysfunctional relationship with success.
You’re likely unconsciously holding yourself back because success is a very emotionally demanding thing. So we self sabotage without realizing it.
Don’t just buy into the stories your mind tells you about why you can’t or shouldn’t be successful. Look for the fear that’s underneth those beliefs.
Also, I would suggest going on a success-positive campagin. Surround yourself with people who view success in a positive way and see the way they view the world. Because there’s going to be slight changes in mindset that seperates you from them.

I think one thing that is largely ignored within the spiritual community is the importance of acknowledging your past. But I think it's so important that I decided to write a massive post about it. To me this idea of digging into your past was unheard of until maybe two years ago. The past has already happened. Why would I care about the past when only the future lies ahead? Shouldn't I just let go instead of "dwelling" on it? As I've come to learn, your past might be affecting you much more than you might be aware of, and I think it's important to understand exactly how. I understand that it's different for different people, so I will try to focus as much as possible on my own experiences so you can make up your own conclusions.
How does your past affect you?
So when I started this journey I would find myself wondering why I had so much struggles with low self-esteem, social anxiety and chronic depression despite all my efforts trying to improve it. I had read multiple self-help books, watched self-help videos and seen a therapist, all that to no effect. It seemed like I had all the tools in the world to handle the problem, but with no results. I then went into spirituality, started reading Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, Adyashanti etc. in addition to practicing meditation. I felt calmer in a sense, but I could still feel an inner turmoil dorming under the surface. In retrospect I can see that I had become a master at denying my own feelings and experiences, as I still felt crushingly empty and disconnected. My spiritual practice was not healthy.
So I started doing research on child development and I began putting the pieces together from my own past, and I soon came to realize that my struggles were a completely natural reaction to the experiences I had growing up. I was never beaten, my mother never said anything blatantly cruel, and I have many memories of her warmth and love. My childhood did indeed feel like the best time of my life. So accepting that my childhood had been less than perfect required quite a "leap" of thought. Denial and minimization (seeing experiences as less severe than they really are) is indeed extremely common when it comes to these things. My parents were frequently fighting and they divorced when I was four. My mother was very authoritarian in her parenting style, which led me to rebell and we were fighting a lot. I was whipped around (not litterally) without empathy. If I did anything that annoyed her she would angrily criticize me for it. So growing up in an environment like that, is it any wonder that I grew up feeling like people were judging me harshly and thus feeling socially anxious? No. Even though I was no longer in such an environment, I still expected the same treatment from others. Could you honestly say that any of these incidents could be considered traumatic? Not by any modern definition. But it still affected me greatly, and I know that these types of experiences are not uncommon in today's society.
The bottom line is that we internalize the dynamic we grow up with, and you treat yourself the way you yourself was treated. Your upbringing is thus, in my opinion, the key to understanding why you are the way you are. For example, if you were unempathically whipped around as a kid, there is no wonder your're treating yourself (and others) the same way today.
So how do you heal your inner dynamic?
The answer is to grieve your painful experiences, in order to "transcend" them. It's important to deeply understand what you've been through. Former therapist Daniel Mackler goes further in depth on grieving's role in emotional healing:
Four Stages of Emotional Healing (1 of 2)
Four Stages of Emotional Healing (2 of 2)
Video on grieving specifically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c95sfyv-M8M
For those who would like more detail, I'm going to mention a model I really like. When saying "inner dynamic" I guess it almost sounds like there are multiple parts of you interacting with each other. And in my opinion that is not too far from the truth. In everyday speech it's common to say things like "one part of me wanted to do that, another to do that ...", so this model seems correspond with our inner experience. (See IFS for more). It also makes sense from a neurological standpoint, insofar that certain stimuli seem to activate different "networks" in our brain, which could be regarded as different parts of the whole making you. Now in fully healed people, these parts generally work together without conflict, as an integrated whole. In fragmented people they're split off and in conflict. The most primitive form of splitting is right-brain/left-brain splitting, where the left-brain deems the right-brain as illogical and unreasonable and the right-brain deems the left-brain as too harsh and too cold.
With this in mind, the word "self-compassion" might make more sense. That is, you speak reassuringly to different parts of you with the compassion and patience you would to a small child, pet or a loved one. I can provide an example. I'm driving in the car and suddenly notice a part of me feeling very fearful that other drivers are judging my driving. My muscles tense up and I become hyperaware of how I'm holding the steering wheel etc. So I say to myself "this fear is just remnants of the past, it was true in your upbringing but right now people are probably not scrutinizing you heavily". And amazingly enough, after 1-2 minutes of doing this I can notice myself relaxing. Previously I would have been thrown into an endless spiral of me trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with me and how to fix it. (Did I mention how my mother for a large portion of my life tried to "fix" me?)
How does this relate to emotional intelligence and your relationship with others?
You cannot accept experiences in others that you have denied in yourself. I noticed that once I started becoming more open to my own experiences and how they affected me, I also became able to emphathize with such experiences in others instead of minimizing and invalidating them like I had done in myself. By treating myself with kindness, I effortlessly started extending that same kindness to others.
Final note
As a final note I would like to recommend a book that has helped me so, so much in my emotional healing:
The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame by Pete Walker
I honestly think anyone could have benefit of reading that book.
Well that's about it. Cheers