TimStr

@Fleetinglife Great share! I think Curtis is actually very nuanced in the way he portrays his theories. He never offers a specific interpretation to be taken factual, yet he still is able to tie a great ammount of historical events together into a narrative, that questions the mainstream one. That narrative is definitely shaped by his own position. But I feel he is aware, that it's not about the specics of the narrative but about the questioning.

@Tristan12 Go for legumes (lentils and beans) and pseudograins (quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth). Both are healthy and calory dense. Lentils are packed with minerals and b-vitamins and the pseudograins give you the benefit of a grain (fiber, calories and minerals) without the gluten. Simply add your favourite spices or a curry mix or put them into a soup or a stew.

@Vision Sure thing! Glad that you find it valuable.

Art will not be replaced by AI. Art will use AI to evolve itself.

You can approach learning an instrument like practicing a martial art. Sure you gotta learn a whole lot of kicks, punches and whatnot. But the real reason to do it is to practice core values and principles that will help you throughout your entire life! Many people confuse mastering somrething with devoting ones entire life purpose to it. You can play your keyboard for just 30min or so each weak. But if you consistently show up to those 30min with a serious attitude, you will inevitably experience some of the fruits of mastery! However, don't do it, just because you feel obligated to do it. Harness some inner motivation. Also, I recommend reading Victor Wootens "The music lesson" if you want to really inspire yourself about practicing music!

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Yep, I do have some issues. Sometimes it took forewer to load, sometimes it didn't load at all.

I am a professional musician as well. Let me tell you, not knowing what kind of music you want to make is the best thing that can happen to you, because thats really what you need to create something truly original! You talked about narrowing your work down to a specific style. I would invite you to think about style differently than you maybe do. It's not something you find out there and pick. Like, your probably not going to stumble about a genre and say "Nice, for the rest of my life I will just do that kind of music." Style is just the natural continuity that will develope in your creative output OVER TIME if you start seriously pursuing the stuff you love most. There are a couple of things that are helpful here: Spend tons of time researching. By that I mean listening to music a lot. Get to know everything that is out there. But not just blindly and randomly but by following the stuff, that you like and want to hear more of. (A great source for this is www.discogs.com/. If you find an artist you like, you can go there and check what other stuff they have done and who they have collaborated with.) Keep notes. Write about what it is that makes music most meaningful to you. ALWAYS BE IN THE PROCESS! This is the most important thing! Don't wait for your style to come to you before you start making music. Make little things, songs or snippets to recreate ideas, that you like. By that you will inchworm your way towards uniqueness. Lastly I just want to tell you: I have been there before! All artists have! It's a good thing because it challanges you to reorient yourself. If you have any other questions or just want to talk, feel free to PM me.

I've had profound mystic experiences with cannabis. There is a great book about this edited by Steven Grey called "Cannabis and Spirituality". Check it out, its a great resource! The basic jist is: Cannabis, compared to most other psychedelics, is a nonspecific amplifier. That means, that it doesn't nudge your experience into any special direction. So set and setting become even more important with cannabis. If you set out to have a deep experience by meditating and not distracting yourself you can basically go as deep as you can go with DMT, especially if you work with edibles. But you can definately just stone out and watch cartoons and cannabis is ok with that. I've found cannabis especially helpful when I work with the body and do yoga and breathwork. And I've had some amazing results combining cannabis with other psychedelics. I had a moshroom trip once and about 1 hour after it was over, I vaped some sativa oil. And that basically started my trip all over again. It wasn't like a weed high at all but just like a second mushroom trip. Again, cannabis seems to be a nonspecific amplifier. It just deepns your trip!

Now this is porbably going to get lots of hate, but I just have to say it: @Leo Gura: You are doing it wrong!! This first part goes directly to you. I don't want to piss you off, but I am about to get really offensive. You helped me out so much in my life by always being straight to the point. Now I strongly feel, that I have to do the same for you. All this comes from a place of genuine compassion for you. What you are trying to do with your work is amazing and I really want to see you succeed. And thats why I have to say it! You are doing it wrong!! You are trying to realize nonduality by being in some oneness with god state all the time that you found on psychedelics. But you fail to see, that this state (can be called "small nonduality") is based on the assumption of a duality between nonduality vs. duality. "Big nonduality" would involve both, that nondual oneness with god psychedelic state and the dual, seperate from god "normal" state. Being in that oneness with god state is NOT awakening. Awakening is realizing, that oneness with god is everpresent, and that taking a psychedelic cannot bring you any closer to that. This is one of the main pathology of working with psychedelics. They show you these profound states. But the mistake is to build up an identity in that state and then get attached to that identity. That is the main blindspot that you have and that is holding you back. Here are two main things, that I think are really harmful about all that: Firstly, and this is just my personal belief: You won't realize "big nonduality" that way. If you continue to use psychedelics the way you are doing right now, you're only going to fuel that identity, you created for yourself in the psychedelic state, that you are so attached to. You will probably try to prove me wrong by taking even more psychedelics. And honestly, I think that I can't really help you with that and that you just have to learn that the hard way. The real problem here is not that you are getting stuck, but that you are misleading people. Over the last yearsworth of videos, I saw you developing a strong hybris and, dare I say, messiah complex. You are just way too serious about that shit, dismissing any practice other than psychedelics! Which is really ironic because you have been talking about cult psychology and zen-devilry in your videos. Now your in that position yourself and you fail to see it because of your seriousness! Thats why the spiritual journey demands a great sense of humor. Allthough you have to be very serious to get anywhere, being able to laugh about yourself is crucial to not get stuck. All your really doing right now is blasting yourself nuts with 5-MeO to scratch that God-addiction itch of yours. And you are totally loosing that down-to-earth-ness which was one of your greatest qualities. Stop doing that! Its not going to work and its harming people, that try to follow you and getting them stuck! Secondly, and this is way more important imo: You are making the stigma of psychedelics even worse. If we ever want to get them legalized we have to advocate for responsable use. You did that in your first few videos about psychedelics. But lately that psychedelic evangelism of yours went way over the top. I bet if you could, you would go around the world and plug 5-MeO into everybodys ass, starting with mine... This attitude is not going to help! Stop it, please! We all really want to live in a world, were these substances are legally and openly avaliable to everybody for responsable use. What we need for that is a significant number of people, that show how to make use of these substances without causing collateral damage. We need you to be an example by taking a very nuanced and careful approach. We don't need another hippie, frying his brain with substances. And we definately don't need another spiritual teacher, that is getting lost in the rabbit whole of his own teachings and possibly even dragging other people with him. Please be very aware about how people recieve your teachings, Leo. You will probably dismiss what I am saying by means of some epistemic assumption, that I am making. Something like "Notice, that you are just god talking to itself". Or you will say to yourself, "This is just the devil, trying to use gods teachings against god himself." Yeah, if you do that, you totally failed to see the point that is to be understood here: You are doing it wrong!! My last piece of advice is something that a fellow actualizer and good friend of mine once said: "I think the best thing for Leo would be working some stupid job, refilling the shelves at wallmart or something!" I am serious! Stopping to do psychedelics and still maintaining total presence while living a profundly mundane life, would require an enormous spiritual realization. Blasting yourself and talking about how awake you are does not. I challange you: Don't do any psychedelics for at least one year! Face the grief that will be coming up over the illusory seperation from god and simply be with it, until you realize, that there was no seperation in the first place. This will benefit your teachings, both in maturity and profundity. Just to be clear: I am not interested in having a discussion about the personal behavour of Leo or of any teacher for that matter. I want this to be about learning whatever we can about the spiritual path. And in my opinion the main thing Leo is teaching us right now is, how NOT to do it! This thread is probably going to get locked or deleted. I don't care. All I really want is to help you out, Leo, by sharing my honest opinion. Please spend some time thinking about what I wrote.

@DivineSoda I have worked with a variety of psychedelics including mushrooms, AL-LAD, ALD-52, N,N-DMT, 5MeO-DMT and Salvia. And while I wouldn't consider myself to have anywhere near as much experience as Leo, I got enough of them to see that they also hold the potential to massively corrupt you. They can work wonders by showing you states of awareness that you couldn't imagine, but they can also have the trendency to get people way lost in the psychological head trip. I think, thats also the reason, why people like Martin Ball, Octavio Rettig and most shamans I know work with psychedelics purely on an energetical level. They don't talk about insights and things to be understood and sometimes actively dismiss it. For them, its not about getting into a state. They think of them as medicine, that does something to the human body and energy system.

@RedLine Adeptus Psychonautica did a great video about all that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BOSwQAM27M

@RedLine I mean, that Leo thinks, that being in psychedelic, only-god-is-present states IS being enlightened or at least getting you there. And while I cannot possibly know, what might work for him on his spiritual path, I see the way he is teaching and endorsing psychedelics lately as a pathology of that. Basically, I am saying that while psychedelics are extremely powerful tools, they have the potential to corrupt you massively. And I believe, that @Leo Gura has unknowingly fallen into that trap. Which is sad in and of itself, but can become really harmful to people that follow him and to the stigma of psychedelics.

Let's have a thread, where we share and collect quality sources of political news! I would love to have a big list of websites, youtube channes and other media that is sorted by country/region. We could rate them roughly on how conscious they report news. That would be of great value for people that are just starting out with conscious politics. A couple of months ago, Leo shared a small list of youtube channels about US politics on his blog. Here is the link: https://www.actualized.org/insights/my-political-awakening If you have other resources for where you live, please share them here! (Me personally, I would be very intrested in resources about european and german politics.) Thanks for contributing guys.

Don't worry guys, Leo will be back in one week: https://www.actualized.org/insights/leaving-on-30-day-solo-retreat

Update: I found another great documentary about a israeli sufi.

Hi folks, for those of you, that don't know what I am talking about, Turning is a spiritual practice of the Mevlevi branch of sufi islam. It was discovered by the persian mystic Dschalal ad-Din ar-Rumi and passed on by the mevlevi brotherhood. Side fact: Rupert Spira learned this technique and I think it is one of the main factors, that contributed to the depth of his realization. I wanted to ask if anyone is aware of people, that teach the turning, preferabely in continental europe? I am aware of The Study Society that teaches turning in London, but I'd appreciate any other tips, as well as any discussion on the topic. Has anyone of you tried it? How was it?

Nik Bärtsch is pretty far up the spiral. High stage yellow, tapping into turquiose. His approach to music is similar to Peter Ralstons approach to martial arts. In my oppinian playing his music literally works as a spiritual practice! He rediscovered the missing link between spirituality and music. Whats interesting about him is, that he makes strictly instrumental music, so the turquoise does not come in the lyrics, but in the music itself.

@Ampresus Many spiritual teachers talk about the bodily aspects of enlightenment. As far as I understand it there are a couple of different aspects to it: strong determination: Having a strong determination to make your body do "hard things", that can't be achieved by your self but only by your body, after you surrendered the self. An example would be the Mount Hiei Monks. They run 30 to 80km for 100 consecutive days. expressing spontaneity: Tuning into the just-happeningness of motion to find, that a self is not nesscesairy for movement of the body to happen. Shinzen talks about this: Martial arts: many martial arts like aikido and kendo are grounded on a non-dual metaphysics. Also Peter Ralston's Cheng Hsin (eastern) yoga: using the body for spiritual purification I hope this is good fuel for your research.

@okulele Thanks a lot. I will give it a try, teaching it to myself.

Here is an interview with poeple, that tried it:

@KenDo Get a bit into Rupert Spira, he has one of the clearest voices on inquiry. He hs a bunch of guided inquiries on Youtube. Ask yourself, who is the one, that percieves the memories. Who is the I that percieves the experience of a memory. Stick to your experience. Self inquiry is not a process of thought but a very close examination of your first hand experience. Don't think about who you are, but try to pin it down in your perception. Try to grasp it.

Yeah, I can relate to that. When a psychedelic starts to kick in, you're already in an altered state even before an awakening happens. Yeah, I am back in the realm of forms for over a week now and the realm of forms hardly changed. But it was hugely insightful to see, how I recreate all my egoic patterns, my addictions, self-judging, denial and so on.

Fuck. If you told me a week ago what I am going to write now, I would have laughed at you. On May 25th I realized absolute Truth. What I did: During the week, that passed I had a 6.5d solo retreat and with some intense 10 to 12h of daily practice. The weekend before (May 18th-20th) I went on a nice camping trip with 3 of my friends and fellow self-actualizers. We did some inner and regular self-actualization work together and enjoyed time in nature. This was a great preparation and helped me to put some space between practical everyday life and the retreat. My intent was to reconnect myself with spirituality and to go deep into the work. I combined several different practices, kriya yoga, labeling and do nothing meditation, holotropic breathing, walking meditation starting at 5am in the morning. On the 4th day I took 300µg of AL-LAD. I tried to time everything in a way that I was a least likely to get disturbed by my housemates. Here's my schedule: M = meditation SDS = strong determintion sitting SHF = "see, hear, feel" (labeling) Holo = Holotropic breathing Allthough I was able to follow through with the entire schedule without missing one single practice (which I am kinda proud of ), I ended up having a lot of what I would call half-assad sits and sloppy meditations. I had to move and open my eyes a lot, even during strong determination sitting, and I ended up getting lost in thoughts a lot. Nevertheless I was able to enter a state of great calmness by wednesday. I also did 1h of walking meditation 3 times/d, just walking around in a park next to where I live so I wasn't really that isolated from the rest of humanity allthough I didn't really speak to anybody. In case you might be wondering, I had psychedelic trips before this one. I was actually doing psychedelics before I stumbled about Leo and the concept of personal developement. And over the last 5 years I had a couple of mushroom and salvia trips, one 25I-NBOMe experience and 3 AL-LAD trips prior to this one (100, 200 and 150µg). What I experienced: The actual retreat and practice itself was rather ordinairy. I had to go through some emotional work and purging to enter a state of great calmness and equanimity on day 3. To cultivate this internal peace helped a great deal with preparing me for day 5. The holotropic breathing also did a lot. I typically fall asleep soon after the breathing is over after a state of trance where most of the purging seems to happen for me. After waking up I alway feel so relieved. On the 5th day, I prepared everything for the actual trip. I sat down and said to myself: "I am ready to learn! Whatever may come, I am open and will accept it." Then I orally administrated the 300µg of AL-LAD and listened to some music for about 35min to help myself relax a little from a mild pre-trip anxiety. As I noticed it starting to take effect, I turned off the music and laid down on my bed. I started to see visual phenomenon and allowed myself to get fascinated by the patterns of the ceiling above me. I just let myself ooze into them and start to get absorbed. Everything got more and more intense and suddenly everything (my whole visual field, but also the inner world of mind and the fields of sound and touch) collapsed into one giant mosic like totality. And then, I suddenly realized what happened. I was no longer there. There was just infinite formlessness. I became Truth. I should note, that the experience was profoundly beautiful and profundly shocking at the same time! My human body just contorted in awe and horror. I felt every single emotion at the same time. I also noticed, that I started to hear sounds. High ringing type of sounds, that augmented the chirping of the birds outside and low drone like sounds, that seemed to be related to my breath Now the really profound thing was, that I seemed to be able to switch back and forth between this state of being absolute formless infinity and the state of being a contracted human form. This was immense! I experienced how I (absolute infinity) contract to create form, mind, relative reality, ego and suffering. I realized, that I am god and how I am constantly creating everything. I realized, that what most people call hallucinations or visuals on psychedelics are actually artefacts of how creation of form from fromlessness happens. They are just how absolute nothingness looks like when it creates reality. This switching back and forth produced enourmus insight and I was able to learn so much! It went on about 4-5h and then, I started to stay more and more in the domain of forms. As the trip became milder and taper off, I decided to take a long-ass walk because I wanted to be outside and in nature. It was so beautiful. My mind still was in this hyper-intelligent mode, that it seems to enter on AL-LAD and started to produce insight after insight, and it integrated all the theory and concepts about nonduality with the experience. The trip was about 8 to 9h long and I entered a nice afterglow, that lasted the whole next day, as I continued my retreat. I returned back to the state of great calmness, I had the days before the trip and the experience became more and more of a memory. I started to realize, that this glimpse won't be permanent. But the insights stayed with me. What I learned: I became Truth. I experienced, what I truely am. Everything is in perspective now. I learned how creation and existence work. I understood how I (the Big I, nothingness, god, infinity, formlessness...) contract to spit out all dualistic forms including my human form, the mind and reality. I also realized, how I have to create suffering and ego in order for this to happen. This was an profundly powerful and eye opening insight. It also showed me, how I (my human form) can literally not exist and be happy at the same time. For my body even to take a single breath, I have to create form and therefore suffering. And it made this whole issue of having to physically die to get enlightened very clear. Letting go completely litterally is the way, that I can return to nothingness. There can only be Truth or there can be creation and suffering. I understood every single contemplative practice, how each one works and in what way it is supposed to reveal Truth to you. Kriya, breathing, and all the different meditation techniques, Leo and Shinzen talk about make total sense now. I also learned how to meditate intuitively. The way Infinity came to me and the way, I had to let go sort of made a permanent imprind and I was able to recreate the way I focused my mind and surrenderd myself on the next day. It's basically a combination of open, choiceless awareness and a very deep surrender (simular to the do nothing technique). Leo's guided meditation video actually get's pretty close to it. Allthough I am not able to recreate the deep state I had on my trip, I can archive a calm and extremely peaceful no-mind kind of state that way. I learned how life purpose and spirituality work together. This became so clear to me by becoming infinity and seeing how reality comes into existence. Maintaining a minimal sense of self for this mammal, that I am to survive is best done by aligning myself more and more with the truth and with living an integrated purposeful life. I learned how the whole issue of authenticity and relating to other people is connected with spirituality. This was huge insight. The only way to relate to other beings without creating suffering is the way of utter vulnerability. Like if you literally would lay you naked body in the arms of another person, exhale your last breath and say: "You can have everything! My entire existence, it's yours!" This kind of surrender is the exact same surrender that is needed for enlightenment. I learned, that the biggest trap, I can now fall into is to cling to the memory of my awekening too much and to have too strong of a desire to recreate it. Whenever I am clinging to the memory, I am not surrendering to the Truth. What's next: More practice and more tripping. This experience of infinity I had is already fading and I see, how I have to do a LOT more work, to make it penetrate the core of my being more. I want to take my spiritual practice way more serius and I want to embody what I have learned. More theory. Even though I have studied quite a lot, I now feel like I needed the experinece to truly understand any of the theory. There is so much more to learn now. More life purpose work. I am curently building a life around being a musician and I want to do it in the way that is as alighned to Truth as possible. Having seen infinity made it increadibly clear to me how this has going to happen. Doing more for my body. I have seen what increadible miracle it is to have the form of a human being and I want to take care of this mammal that I am as best as I can. And allthough I have a pretty clean diet, I have all sorts of tense muscles in my back and consume quite a lot of caffeine. Getting more into fitness and exercising is inevitable right now. Working on truthful and authentic relating to others. I want to be able to open myself to others way more and to become a lot more honest. Tips and advice: Unlike Leo, I would advise you to have your first experience of Truth with AL-LAD rather than with 5MeO-DMT. I understand, that this is sort of personal, but if I would take the 20min of my trip, that where most intesne and imagined myself getting blasted into this state within a few seconds, I wouldn't have been able to let go so smoothly and I guess wouldn't have learned nearly as much.> Think of it this way: If you were trying to understand light, and you can choose between a lightbulb, which is nicely dimmed on and off again, and a single bolt of lightening, I guess for a first timer, the lightbulb is much more helpful. Probably my most important advice: Study the theory! If I wouldn't have been studying the theory of nonduality for the last couple of years I would literally have gotten nothing out of the experience. My mind wouldn't have been able to make sense out of anything. It would just have been some hallucination for me. Having concepts of what I was experiencing helped a great deal with recognizing it as absolute Truth and the way that AL-LAD makes your mind become this hyperintelligent wisdom machine worked greatly with that (which is another reason why I would recommend AL-LAD over 5MeO for a first time experience). On retreat, practice starts to take on at different dynamic on its own. Stuff comes up and it might be getting very hard to do some of the techniques as good as you would be able to do them in your daily practice. Don't judge yourself for that and don't judge your performance. Surrender to whatever happens and try not to get frustrated. The retreat is at play here and it will give you whatever you need to learn right now (sort of like a trip). Thinking in terms of good or bad retreats is not useful (recisely like thinking in terms of good or bad trips is not useful ). Solo retreats are perfect settings for breakthrough doses of psychedelics. If you are serious about experiencing Truth for the first time than this is definately one of the most recommended alternatives. If you're struggeling with this issue of life purpose vs. spirituality, consider psychedelics. For me they made the solution to this increadibly clear. They actually showed me, that there is no real difference between the two, especially, if you understand how your core values relate to Truth. Lastly: Remember, that letting go is the key! I am so greatful right now. Awakening is so powerfully life transforming and liberating. Thank all of you for walking this path together. I hope this report is helpful. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer.