FirstglimpseOMG

Acetone is to be avoided if you possibly can. We used it as a very effective solvent in the print shop, but it didn't take much inhalation of stray fumes or absorbtion through the skin of your hands to give you an awful, raw, impairment/buzz/headache feeling. Not a nice buzz, all senses dulled to the point of feeling it in your mouth & tongue. You can almost feel neurons & brain cells succumbing to the shit, and you feel like puking. Pregnant women were told to steer clear of it. I can't remember how flammable it was but I think it was a very flammable solvent. I'd look up the Material Safety Data Sheet on it, within the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. Nice & toxic for sure.

I've heard & read Eckhart Tolle say that ego diminishes as you become more & more conscious of it. Ego has big troubles under the light of awareness. I'm thinking that a road to awakening without the constant setbacks & challenges isn't what most folks wil experience. I've heard Leo say basically that if travelling this path was all easy and straight-forward and intuitive, we'd all be enlightened! I imagine that if you were making progress before this interuption in your 'connection', that even your anxiety is a form of awareness of the ego and will continue to diminish unconscious ways of living!

I think I'd rather get closer to BEing the source than getting further away from it by looking at source/God/awareness, consiousness, etc., as something separate. In other words... DUALITY.

Very interesting topic eh? How's this for a twist on lucidity during dreams and non-duality in dreams. I can explicity remember fragments of a very recent dream. Some older man had done something selfish or harmful directly to me by being weak in some way that affected me negatively. In other words I was the 'victim' of the consequences of another's action or non-action, and should have felt slighted or diminished in some way. (Or normally would have anyway, but in my 'real' [ha ha], waking life I am working hard to transcend any victim mentality, as it is usually pretty worthless & 'suffery'.) So anyway, in my dream, I seemed to become lucid that I was dreaming just before I reacted to this perceived slight, and instead of reacting angrily, or in any kind of 'poor me' manner, I embraced him and told him quietly that I understood that his weakness had driven him in action, not any intended malice, and that it was okay, I loved him as a brother, and that I was fine, unbesmirched and happy that both of us were here to have the chance to 'fuck things up' sometimes. WTF eh? A little consciousness & growth in my waking state now transferring into my dreams... I've grown there too? Ooooh I get chills lol. Either that or my dreamly ego's all pleased with itself for trying not to be an unconscious asshole during my waking hours.

I imagine the dream state, the normal waking state & deep sleep are all couched within the same 'I Am' awareness. I imagine the only difference, really, is your level of awareness of the core 'I Am' awareness. I am starting to find it a bit comical when folks make definitive statements about modulations of consciousness with only an inkling of what they are discussing.

Well, he does come across as authentic to me. I think for most it's not hard to recognize that in others, just as the bullshitters are pretty quickly apparent as such. I've caught moments of emotion in a Leo vid or two where it's pretty obvious that he just gives a shit & wants the best experiences and the best, most happy and fulfilled life for his audience. I guess it's his higher purpose showing through in his demeanor & his actions. Plus it helps that he seems not to want us to trust him on his content. He often says not to believe him or take him at his word, but to investigate and see for ourselves what's up.

In Sam Harris' book 'Waking up' he went on & on about the split brain experiments pointing to the likelyhood that the brain must produce consciousness, as a universal consciousness couldn't be split, in one person, into two independent consciousnesses.

I was watching Rupert Spira the other day & he simply said "Perception IS reality." I'd like to share a vivid dream I had a few years back, and never forgot. *I find myself in a dimly lit basement. Low ceilings, smaller, unfinished, old. Damp 8×8 wooden beams make up the wall & ceiling frames, damp brick walls between the wall beams. Cement floor, but foot wide paths of wood beams are laid on this floor from room to room, high enough to walk on and not step in the 4 inches of water that is everywhere....* Not sure why I was having damp, old basement dreams, I might have been apartment hunting at the time, on a low budjet lol. Here's the best part though... *While walking along one of these beams, I became suddenly and distinctly aware that I was dreaming. Very cool! So I decide the perfect thing to do was to dip my bare toe into the water and see wht it felt like. Honestly, honestly, that was the coldest, wettest water I had ever dipped a toe in! I'll never forget it.* That has implications that are.. yup, unbelieveable.

Amazing to think of the monkey mind saving brilliant insights to distract you with just as you're about to go deeper.

Enlightenment had better be bloody good if it's gonna top Doritos & chocolate milk.

It's cute how this refutes one of Sam Harris' arguments toward consciousness likely arising in the brain. Poor Sam Harris, he tries so hard to be right about something.

I have never tried to have lucid dreams, only experiencing them sporadically. It makes sense that the more aware you are during the 'waking dream', the more likely that awareness will persist more and more during the 'sleeping dream'. I'm more interested lately in how to realize more and more awareness during deep sleep, where there are no dreams, only empty awareness. Rupert Spira was saying that we can fall asleep and have a dream. In this dream, the dreamed central character can fall asleep as well and have a dream, and that dreamed character can subsequently fall asleep and begin to dream. ..And so on & so on. The awareness never sleeps thing is different though, and pretty elusive apparently, I'm still rather confused about a lot of this stuff.

@Joel3102 Go Rupert! He's reaching me like no other teacher has yet! Mooji opens and melts my heart. Leo opens my eyes and exposes a whole world, creating revelations and shifting paradigms. He lso facilitated my first real introduction to non-duality, and shortly therafter, my first (holy ***!) actual non-dual experience (and much ongoing clarity since). Echhart clues me in, and my heart and mind open, with many 'aha's while reading and listening. Rupert Spira somehow inspires me to the nth degree, and instills a growing fascination in a way that I can't really describe. He slays me several times a day with that love, clarirty, and calm, knowing patience. I'm so grateful and intrigued by all!

Have I lost energy or built up a natural curiosity, seeking, exploring, sharing & bonding with another human being, knowing the joy of love and connection. Creating and enhancing on purpose, naturally. Buiding a tension for the sake of a shared peak and release. Am I forgetting about, or ignoring spirituality when I'm lucky and adept enough to connect with another beautiful human and get close? Personally, I can't see how every single interaction with anyone isn't an opportunity to honour and appreciate and love a little bit. Whether I have a "hi" and a smile for a stranger, or 800 more kisses for you when you thought I was done.

I don't know much of anything, holee. I thought dreaming was dreaming and that reality was physical, go figure! Just when ya thought stuff couldn't get more strange or fascinating.

@PureExp I'm only just beginning to grasp the reality that becoming fully lucid during THIS dream, and learning (re-learning?) that with full awareness and realization of my true nature, this shared dream is a play that exists to be not only experienced from a place of pure peace, love and bliss of existence, but is also fully shape-able. I never knew I had the power (I, ha ha). Everything gets slowly better and better. The world slowly becomes more alive & 3D & high def. Each interaction with another human, each one becomes an opportunity to love and appreciate and share. I think I'm actually growing a fair bit in the last year, it's pretty crazy for this guy who thought he was something else! @cetus56 Mini marshmallows! How many beautiful women!? Oh ...it's up to me? There's a music video in there somewhere... and something else for the bucket list!

I'll have to work on that. I can't remember having a good sex dream lately. Not while asleep anyway haa. I'm pretty fascinated and excited by the idea of realizing awareness during deep sleep. Apparently you can work up (wake up?) to awareness where there was seemingly no awareness before during the depths of dreamless sleep. Apparently awareness NEVER SLEEPS!

The interaction with others in dreams is usually fuzzy for me, not so detailed & mysterious, that's fascinating. And having another dream-hopper enter your dream sounds like it could be the basis for a good movie or book, very strange!

If you can become lucid within the dream, maybe hop on one of those tigers for a ride.

Listen, and Jeff and his mates will tell you a story, sorry, no lyrics. If you're not welled up with tears of joy by the end, listen again with eyes closed. You're not allowed to watch & listen on your phone, trust me, this deseves decent speakers & a sub, or good headphones. Thank you Jeff.

I start thinking I know what I'm talking about and then realize that I don't so much. I've found that watching Rupert Spira's collection of videos on Youtube shoots so much clarity and love through my whole being, beyond words, that in response to your dilemma I would whole-heartedly and confidently recommend soaking up as much Rupert as you possibly can for a week straight. Trust me on this one if you can.. he's got it going on in a special way. I'd rather cop-out and direct you there than think I have a way with words that would come close to helping you see and feel more clearly and directly like he manages to do.

How cool would it be for Leo to do Burning Man this summer? A 5-meo booth or something, or just experiencing it all and putting together a video montage of the best goings on, along with a Burning Man episode? I bet he goes once and he'll go every year lol. (Nice projection, I know.) I'm gonna get there summer 2018 somehow!

Oh I have to weigh in on this one.. I think sex is a part of life like eating and surviving. I think every sexual encounter that ends in an orgasmic release is a mini version of the very existence of your life. Longing, desire, a search. Engaging, exploring, loving, LIVING. Connecting, enhancing, embellishing, sharing, adding to, bringing magic forth that was hidden, sharing, building, expanding, experiencing. CREATING. Peaking, understanding, realizing, manifesting, en-joying, EXPRESSING. RELEASING, understanding, appreciating, feeling divinely grateful, loving all in peace and contentment and joy. Resting in peace. The way I've often looked at lovemaking can be seen in any genuine intimate encounter, taking only a fraction of your lifetime to occur, or it can be seen as a micro-cosmic mini version of your whole human life and existence. Each orgasm can be seen as a mini-death, with each and every birth of desire and longing search, lead-up, ultimate experience and final release being your life. My thoughts and my experience is that "lovemaking" is just as possible with someone you've known for 10 minutes as it is with someone you've known for 10 years. (Done right, with love and responsiveness, giving, enhancing, exploring, LOVING!) I may love you explicitly and exclusively for a lifetime.. or I may love you explicitly and exclusively for an hour, or an afternoon. Same LOVE.

It sounds like magic to me, I'm excited by the possibilities. I'm actually astounded that I've found out about such a substance. It's pretty strange to look back at all my purely recreational use of psychedelics over the years, particularly when I was in my late teens. Occasionally, I'd have some new core realizations about life while tripping along, but mostly I figured I was using my mind & imagination to mess with reality for as long as it would last, simply because it was fun. I never realized that my trips were closer to what 'reality' really looked like, all warpy and sketchy and ethereal & malleable, all potential awaiting manifestation. Very, very hilarious in retrospect, remembering that feeling that the world seemed rather mundane the day after a good warp session. That might be pretty telling of our ego's ability to separate and categorize every aspect of our current experience so well that it sucks any magic out of the everyday. (Every moment, unless you've lost yourself in something creative or immersive eh?) Chickenshit little self-misguided personality, looking at and living magic every second of this manifestation and almost completely missing it all while bitching, moaning & getting all churned up because one of those metal/glass/plastic/rubber things rolled into the space we were going to roll into between those marks on the ground, as we travelled home to consume calories & 'push' media in our cage after slaving the day away for some 'organization'. Glad I woke up a bit, how the fuck did that happen?

I have not yet had the opportunity to try 5-meo, though it is inevitable when the time is right. In the meantime I'm awful curious, is the visual aspect of this incredible 5-meo blast as huge as the feeling and knowing of being the one, timeless, boundless, infinite creator of it all. Is the visual experience of this even remotely describeable?