Andrea Marchetti

The old pond, A frog jumps in. Plop! - Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet... translated by Alan Watts.

@DizIzMikey apart from worrying about what that could be, are you fine now? Did it happen just once? In my opinion you're fine. The stomach is the organ of anger. You puked out some old repressed anger in you, maybe against your father? Does your relationship or thoughts about your father changed after that moment? Or, do you feel you've changed after that moment in some way?

Bhakti yoga is something that it is beyond logic. This yoga doesn't imply the use of intellect. So you are right when you say that Bhakti is ignorant, in a sense it is. I don't think it's stuff that fits with you... But don't categorise it as bad, it can be very useful when done by the people who fit in. They didn't even call it with the right name which is Mantra Yoga. What you tried there is Mantra Yoga. Bhakti yoga is the yoga of love and devotion for god or for some enlightened master. It doesn't consist of repeating sounds, even if mantra yoga can be used as a way to concentrate on god or the beloved master...

I quite definitely think you entered the astral plane... Do some researches about astral plane and astral projection, correlated exercises and dangers. You can turn this into a beautiful thing. Just do your researches, look on youtube some videos about people who are used to astral travel. It can be really scary at first.

It's a healing in the sense that you are more aware of your energies. So, from now, whenever you experience some challenge in your life you will automatically take in account the sensation of where the energy gather or flows in the body, and it will be helpful to put some more light into the problem. It's also a healing in Kria Yoga terms. Kria Yoga affirms that we are energies and that 30 minutes of feeling the energies coming up and down along the spine are equal to many years of normal development... So, in Kria Yoga terms, you are increasing the energy of your heart chakra, which will automatically affect your life. I also feel when I meditate heat on my hands and tingling on my forehead mainly. I feel too that's kind of healing and a pleasuring, a kind of invigorating and refreshening sensation.

it's not all black and white. There are not doctors and patients categories. There are people who are more healthy than others, and one who is a little more healthy can help the less healthy. If you take two people: one is almost unconscious but conscious and healthy about one thing, the other is very conscious but not about that thing... If the first person succeed in teaching the second about that thing it is going to be useful anyway. I see the positive and negative side effects of both ways: one is that only people who are effectively enlightened can share, which is good in quality but bad in diversity. The other is that people share what they comprehend to each other, which has worst quality but better diversity. So don't look only at the Bible, that's only one kind of teaching, or many together, anyway very old. If you look, for example, how ancient greeks philosophers or how G. Gurdjieff was trying to increase awareness you'll see he was trying in the collective way. Which has dangers of course... As like the 'only enlightened ones teach' has.. Are you prepared to speak? Same thing applies to you... So I appreciate what Leo does, even if he might not be completely ready for it. But he is much more ready than most people, so to me is completely fine that he speaks anyway and I am grateful he does. I don't know what 'people make such out to be'... No, please if you'd like explain by yourself what you mean. To me, John Flores is sucked in the evil twin of enlightenment, which is a ego defence mechanism. And not only that... I said 'enlightened people who focus on self-work doesn't exist' because they don't have a self to work with. They still have a self, or what Hinduism call Atman, but the work is done by itself. Consciousness can relax, focus just happens when necessary.

Hey everybody, what's up? I decided, after a long time of curiosity, to give a try to LSD. Few days ago. I started with 25 mcg and I realised that I wasn't going to die, so then after few days I tried 75 mpg, which is considered a low dose. I was feeling great, I had the sensation that all I intellectualised about was becoming reality all at once. I felt alive and genuine. So I was at home willing to share time with my family which is something I never do, I stay alone almost all the time. I said to my mum I was under the effect of LSD. And that everything was fine. She is kind of proud and defending herself all the time, by slightly attacking others, and she said that I wasn't able to understand which direction I was facing to. I felt like she was condemning me and I replied unconsciously that she didn't know what direction was facing to. So I went outside, to breath some air alone. I started feeling like my mind was dividing, I felt like that was something over my control. So I started thinking about my mum ad how she felt and I came back to apologise. Then I came back again alone in my garden... I felt two voices speaking in my head, one was 'bad' and other was 'good'. I think that the episode with my mum triggered this. I've started feeling the eternity of reality. There was no time... Thinking of time made no sense. Reality shifted into this eternal ever present reality. I thought I was seeing now what christianity called hell and heaven. Eternal hell and heaven, I felt that we can really suffer. I felt I was slipping into another dimension, a dimension that always existed overlapped with the normal dimension, but this dimension had no time and space wasn't perceived as we usually perceive it. I felt I was out of my control, facing this eternal sacred dimensions. Do you know that the word sacred means 'what you should avoid'? Well, I understood that... I felt that in that world I would had need a knowledge which is different from the knowledge I am used to... I felt I had the choice to be good or to be bad... Consciously good and bad are concepts I don't like, I think they are relative. But subconsciously I have them, especially after being raised in a christian family... I felt that if, with my intelligence, could understand how that dimension worked I could have a great power, for both personal egoic wills and for loving purposes. I've chosen to be in the good side, that I would never want to be in hell for eternity. With hell I mean passing the eternity I was perceiving with a self that is full of fear, hate, anger... Only you and yourself. I decided I was ready to surrender many things, included myself, before staying there. I felt that dimension was the dimension of demons too and fear is why they became demons. I started panicking about meeting a demon. I didn't know what to do. I was out of my control. I started thinking I was going crazy and I was forever damaged... Thinking about future and past triggered a new sensation of being stuck there forever, because time was inconceivable at that time. So I tried to meditate, to let go. I didn't really worked because I tried... I have seen an eye watching all around it my emotions, my body etc.. I was feeling that eye was immovable and slowly rotating. Watching everything. But it didn't worked. I was saying to myself "Great, Andrea, this time you did it. this time you fucked up yourself." and another voice was saying "Why?! This is not fair, I only tried this drug once... This is not fair."... I felt my mind was divided uncontrollably, I knew I was experiencing schizophrenia... My body was trying to do something, go somewhere, escape. I tried to contact my girlfriend but she could only come to me in one hour... One hour?!?! What is an hour if every moment is eternal? I couldn't even wait for an hour... My mind knew I couldn't do anything to escape that situation. I thought to kill myself, which is something I often thought before and I came to the point where I just said that I will never do, but I knew that killing myself wasn't going to work. I was just inhabiting the body, I was eternal... I remembered watching the sky, infinite and losing myself into this eternal reality where I was infinitesimally small... After a while, jumping into from one thought and another trying to pull myself out I just gave up, but not completely... I relaxed. I thought that it wasn't going to be that bad. I was looking at the trees, to animals, surrended to that situation forever... Everything was beautiful, I enjoyed. I had that feeling before too. But not me. I was tucked forever with myself, no escape... I felt how much I was missing love. Love is so important and I never cared much about love. I was feeling how much I need love and how much I am incapable of loving. I was completely left alone, in my garden. Nobody could understand my situation. My dog came next to me and started licking my hands, I was so grateful to her. This little dog. I felt I was making love with her, on a different level. I thanked her. Then I thought that if everybody ask love from others without giving love then there cannot be love, it is gonna miss. So I thought, where do we get love from if? We are like containers of love, we exchange each other our love... But where do we get our love from? The answer I came up with was that we call love our own self, our nature and our surrounding. Mother nature loves us. I intellectually knew before the importance of loving oneself, but I never emotionally comprehend it. It was like feeling I was going in the wrong direction... The fear of ghosts and entities persisted over all this reasoning. I felt if I was empty of love these entities could possess my body. And I also seen my other dog, with his eyes wide open sniffing around and watching around, I felt or I projected that he was feeling something strange around him... That scared me. It wasn't an hallucination. You don't have hallucination of this kind. Only distortions. Finally my girlfriend arrived, I hugged her. She asked, "What happened?". I said: "What happened?!?!?! Do you know what eternity mean?!?". I felt like eternity passed in those hours. That all that could ever exists was there. I felt connected with ancient people like they were there too... A strong feeling of connection with people all over the times. Slowly I came back to normal, more or less. It's 4/5 days now from this experience... I shared this experience to share some insights I had and to ask help. Because know I am afraid I damaged my mind... I fear ghosts and I can't understand whether it's my subconscious or reality. The fear is my subconscious, yes. But that sense on concrete reality of another dimension. It was more real than normal reality. And now I feel like my reality is not really real. My third eye, I am quite skeptical about these things but open to them, is vibrating. The forehead and temples are often tingling. I've searched online and I've read that when it happens it is opening, this opening is correlated with the spirit world and with other entities. Right now I am feeling it. I have also seen there are people who goes around this astral plane when they want. I feel transformed after this experience. I am much more sensible to other people emotions and more kind. But I am afraid of the unknown, entities and loosing my mind. What do you say? Thanks for reading.

Force it upon your daily life. For example: stay awake until night, don't sleep in the day. Sleep at night. In the morning set an alarm for 8 am. Wake up, stay awake, go to sleep when it's dark. Within 2/3 days you are done.

Yes, talking is 99.99% pointless. Talking can be used in very few ways: informative talking which is useful in utilitarian terms, grooming talking which implies ego, and any kind of poetry which is self-expression. Also, teaching which is a kind of hypnosis. I don't talk much too and when I do people don't like much listening to me, people usually do it as a grooming and I don't really like it because it's not a deep way to meet. I talk mainly as informative talking, like "Where did you put my stuff?". And I am not a poet. I like to teach, but often it's better if I just shut up. I am not ready to teach. An enlightened person can talk useless stuff, because also life is pointless. Just for fun. An enlightened person knows how ego moves, he is conscious about its movement so there is no danger for him to speak shit. He already put the ego at the angle, he faced his fears. He does know in himself and in others simply because he is conscious about it, he is conscious that a certain behaviour comes out from fear. And once he have seen it in himself he can see it also in others. Through empathy. Inherently there is no problem with talking or not talking. Life itself is pointless... A husband was trying to prove to his wife that women talk more than men. He showed her a study which indicated that men use about 10,000 words per day, whereas women use 20,000 words per day. His wife thought about this for a while. She then told her husband that women use twice as many words as men because they have to repeat everything they say. Her husband looked stunned. He said "What?"

I think that behind this behaviour is hidden the fear of failure. You may be afraid of loosing yourself into this pleasuring situation, where stuff is just right. You may be afraid of letting go, of letting it to happen. Because if it happen to fly high then you could possibly fall back down. So you tend to stay suspiciously alert: if it never worked before you may doubt where is the trick now... So you sabotage yourself because it's better to be wont to the bad times rather than coming back into bad times from good ones. The contrast is higher. Let go, let it be right. Don't be afraid to enjoy the high. Accept that it can go wrong too. Fly high when it's time to fly high and fall down when it's time to fall down. Loose yourself into accepting the perfect life, don't hold yourself back. Be courageous. Be uncontrollably vulnerable to success and failure both. The more you are sensible to pain the more you are sensible to joy, and vice versa. Letting go is the key.

Yes, ego is a protection. Reducing ego means more vulnerability. But only those who feeling attacked are defending themselves. More vulnerability means more strength, the strength to face what scares us. Ego is the mask that we put on what scares us. Vulnerability means facing fears. Our interests will change as our ego changes. There is nothing to keep. Egoic interests have no value. Our ego prevents us to dissolve into universe. Ego is rooted in the fear of death, that's the last stone. The goal is not to still keeping... There is no goal. Let yourself to turn into need for truth. There is no goal, because goal is indeed escaping. Keep instead the intense need for truth and don't go anywhere.

Enlightened people who focus on self-work don't exist. Those who do are not enlightened yet... The best people to share the mental work with are those who are really interested in self-development, those who are looking for becoming something more. I don't find in my life people to share my insights or problems with too. I do sometimes write online. I often try to share Leo's or some other's stuff with someone but for most they ignore me. I see the importance of sharing, consider and help each other on the many paths. I would really appreciate a commune for example where this is done; where free thinking is appreciated and cultivated, where life is taken seriously and playfully both, because in my opinion these two opposite are fundamental. Where also discussions are a common daily activity. And aloneness is respected. I would really love a place like this with people concentrated on their path towards higher functioning. But hanging around and talking with people who understand and challenge us is not fundamental and thinking about it as something that must exist and that is not right that it doesn't exist is just self-victimising. It's weakness and it will bring nowhere. However I see the utility of it and I think a good way to meet intelligent people is to travel, preferring places where is more common to meet intelligent people or using websites that allows to meet people you kind of choose while traveling.

If regression happens it means that progress never happened. We can trick ourselves into believing that we progressed and when we do it is a false progression: it's an idea, a vision of ourselves, that becomes the dictator over other competing ideas. Whenever we become more sensible and meditative we can suddenly see that something we thought we resolved indeed we did not and we just fooled ourselves. And it can be frustrating but feeling it is the right way to go. We can't stay in between the good stuff all the time. We must cross over many bad stuff to face and dissolve them. If we don't then we would be evolutionarily dead. And as I said before, some good stuff was just illusory and delusional. It's better to face the truth rather than stay deluded. We can't measure our development, we are driven by it. We don't really drive it. One can never really knows where the right path is. For example, depression is often the only door to true life for many. In my opinion routines doesn't work much. Because it's all about the intensity of will for truth or for peace, or for power. It's the amount of conscious and unconscious will for truth what is really driving down the path. Routines can do nothing if one is not willing to accept truths which go against his ego. You will not loose awareness, you can't. It's only one way. You can be aware of something and completely unaware of something else at the same moment though. Anyway it's not under your control, and it is something that it's happening every moment behind you, so don't worry about it. Worry only about on how to gain more awareness, don't be afraid to loose it. So in the end, be passionate about it. Compare everything else, sex job whatever, with enlightenment and ask yourself what you would take if you'd have to choose between the two. Answer honestly and don't force either yourself into willing something that you don't want with all your being, just know it. That is a way to check how far you are from enlightenment, not in terms of time of course. Enlightenment path knows no time. If one is overwhelmed by the desire of knowing the ultimate truth one would get it instantly.

Ego comes out of passion, not the other way round. Even Buddha was passionate when he went into the forest searching for enlightenment. Any search for something is passion. The only difference between a search for enlightenment and search for sex is that sex is easily achievable and enlightenment is impossible. So if one is really passionate one will go on moving, 'til he goes mad or drop achievement at all. Achievement without passion is not possible. But passion without achievement is transformed.

I'll try to talk to you from a rational point of view... The actualising path is indeed the ego becoming bigger and bigger... Until it becomes God... Nobody says this in this way. During the path we tend to demonise the ego because it is what prevent us to step further. But indeed the ego becomes bigger then before and more subtle. Every step the ego incorporates the step before, it comprehend itself. The mechanism is this: it has to painfully break itself as it is, let some self-less insight come in, integrate into itself. A bigger ego is a more evolved ego. A growing ego is by definition becoming more and more humble, rational, intuitive, compassionate, and all the good virtues... Because it broken itself when it was thinking to be superior or to already know, for example. What people usually reference as ego is instead a strong ego which is thick and incapable of breaking, and therefore growing. So, don't be against ego. Ego is us, ego is you. An enlightened person's ego is permanently God. His ego has became so big that it includes everything, it is everything. So then it doesn't exit anymore... Or it does only exist. Point of views.. An ego who affirm to be god is whether an inflated mad ego or it is really big enough to experience and say that. So check whether it is true or not... Now, the way to check whether it is true or not is to understand the person who say that. And here comes the problem because you cannot understand a person, or whatever, if your eyes are not clear enough. Can you tell how much your eyes are clear? Whenever you judge, check first if you don't have dusty eyes first.

We not only crave for social rewards. We have many needs. When higher needs start demanding lower needs start loosing their grip. There is a kind of escalation, for example the search for freedom is higher than the search for socials rewards. And these two will often battle, for example. Or the need for peace for example, for a solid base where our spirits can relax is beyond sociality. Usually an interest in meditation is not driven by social drives. We are like a rainbow, don't categorise humans as social animals. That may be true, but it does not comprehend the whole spectrum of being human.

@Neo and everybody here, these kind of drugs will not cause you to be addicted. It is impossible. It is incredible how much these substances can cause such a difference in perception and in your daily life too. Be open minded and don't categorise these drugs as same as cocaine or opioids or alcohol. And don't see them as a recreational drug to use with friends. These drugs can be really helpful if used properly. These are powerful tools... Don't condemn them. When Leo said that these drugs will do nothing he was just calming down all the excited people out there who use these drugs thinking that they own what the drug shows them. Which is delusional... But they are not useless, they can show us many things. They are mind opening and also they can be a fuel to keep moving along the path. There is also some dangers with them and that's why one should be cautious about them. Don't judge what you don't know. I am not saying you should take it, just don't have prejudices and be open to new possibilities.

@Godex My opinion is to to not worry. Go on with meditating. Don't be afraid... Try it and see this psychosis going on, watch it. Experiment. I post you a quote from Osho that will change your mind on what meditation is. Take a look, it's quite insightful. Since I can't copy the text I'll paste the link: http://www.osho.com/iosho/library/read-book/online-library-schizophrenia-accept-two-0f5b522c-0d6?p=e91bd15f9f542d06ab4a33793e972a24 And also this, taken from a discourse on different bodies: So shirshasan has been used as a method to take you from the fourth body to the fifth. The main thing to be remembered is to be looking upward. This can be done through tratak – staring at a fixed object, through concentration on the sun, through so many objects. But it is better to do it inwardly. Just close the eyes! But first, the first four bodies must be crossed. Only then can it be helpful, otherwise not. Otherwise it may be disturbing; it may create all sorts of mental diseases, because the whole adjustment of the system will be shattered. The four bodies are looking downward, and with your inner mind you are looking upward. Then, there is every possibility that schizophrenia will result. To me, schizophrenia is the result of such a thing. That is why ordinary psychology cannot go deeply into schizophrenia. The schizophrenic mind is simultaneously working in opposite directions: standing outside and looking inside; standing outside and looking upward. Your whole system must be in harmony. If you have not known your physical body from the inside, then your consciousness should be facing downward. That will be healthy; the adjustment is right. You must never try to turn the outward moving mind upward or schizophrenia, division, will be the result.

It is increased sensibility to your feelings.

I don't know you and your ideas, however get sure you can accurately distinct what is male and what is female. If you face straight problems you should potentiate the male energy because the male energy is what is going outward, and anxiety with people is caused by the tension of keeping and not allowing your energies to flow outwards. However, you can also follow the female energy and going inward, feeling your energies and why you feel them when you're anxious, and that could also resolve that. For example, why do you want to remove anxiety at all? Only because it's unpleasant? Don't think so... Every opposite brings to the other one.. So what is the right path? ... What I found out is that, if you're intellectually driven, sooner or later you're gonna understand that with only the intellect you cannot know for sure whether a way is better than the other; even if you have all the variables... Because there is not really the best way: in order to perfectly know your way you have to perfectly know yourself, and at the same time you have to find a way to find yourself... Have you followed me? Can you see when questions like this simply drop? Even if you deepened these questions at the maximum you cannot answer. The best you can do is to go on with your life as you always do, but without driving it; just watch it and questions will fall. This is the core... In a nutshell, you can't know now which energy you should potentiate. Try with male, try with female... Doesn't matter... All the real work is happening behind you.