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@Emre My girlfriend is an actress and was in a play called the Rocky Horror Picture Show around Halloween. It's the most overtly sexual, raunchy, and bodily juice infused train-wreck of a production you'd ever see. She had one of the lead parts and was fondled by another dude, kissed and was kissed by a lot of people on stage (including women) all while wearing a sexy leotard type thing. I was kinda proud to say that was my lady up on that stage, but that personal security has come over time. I couldn't have imagined that a few years ago. Try contemplating on how her actions are directly influencing you and your mission (you may find that they do not at all) and how you can positively re-frame the way you view whatever act she does. Talk to her about it; it's okay to do so. If it grows from reasonable attention seeking act like that to something less loyal; end the fling and move on.

@Girzo I showed my folks LSD before I tripped the first time and explained to them why I was doing it. It's better to be honest with them than live in fear of them catching you mid-trip which can be traumatic in of itself. Proactively revealing it makes it to where they can't peg you for lying by omission. That's my strict Mom's favorite thing to gripe about

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays my friends. This one goes out to the noobs and mental masturbators out there. First, I would like to thank @nexusoflife for letting me use his reagents testing kit before dropping the night of December 29th. You're the man! I dropped at night because I was at my parent's house and I wanted to do this thing before I got back to school and before extrapolating factors began piling up. I also didn't want to tell my strict Russian Mom until the morning when it was over or else that could have negatively impacted the emotional status of the trip itself. I have a cold as I write this so as a general word of warning - your immune system will almost definitely be compromised if you stay up the entire night. Trip during the day if you can. Let's dig in shall we? PRE-TRIP The entire day before the trip was spent talking about actualization, enlightenment and personal development with @nexusoflife. Several hours worth of conversation and a visit to a local Hindu Temple that featured a main chamber full of hand-carved marble pillars and a vaulted dome ceiling that looked like a DMT launchpad helped put my mind into a pristine set. Once I returned home, I cleaned my bedroom as best as humanly possible and put on comfortable clothing. I dropped at 10 pm and meditated roughly 45 minutes into the come up. I was incredibly nervous since this was my first time tripping alone ( and first trip in a year for that matter) but the feelings subsided once the calming serotonergic effects began. THE TRIP After I was done mediating I sat down and began writing down some insights and a general outline of my subjective experience during the trip. I wrote down a list of topics that I wanted to explore in my own life but abandoned them soon after greeting the mental chaos and instead let the trip guide the insights. - The first thing that dawned on me was how little credit I give myself for the things that I have accomplished in my life. If you are on this forum and even have the smallest intention of changing your life for the better and prefer it over fester in egoic-conciousness, you are are doing better than 90% of people. The intention of taking responsibility for you life and building something from the love that's inside of you is so important. You are on the right track! I neglect self-love perpetually and it is akin to fertilizer for creativity, true condition-less love for others, and relieving the emotional tension I feel from "failure". If you recognize that you are in the same boat as me, sit down for just 15 minutes everyday and give yourself the love you deserve. If you feel resistance, just notice it and continue anyway. I started rubbing the back of my hand on my cheek like a cat after noticing this during the trip. It felt wonderful and I loved it. - Even though your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs are simply projections upon the Truth, making sure they're positive is huge. It can change your entire life if you engineer the bulk of them to be positive. - My mind likes to sneak into every thing that I do and sabotage it with negative mental images and belief. I'm a control freak and a perfectionist. This builds alot of bodily tension. This is where I noticed how essential it is to meditate and practice letting these things slide off. If you are like me and like to theorize more than act, change this now. The proportion (for me anyway) should be 10% theory, 90% action. - Culture is a cess-pool. Be careful when treading through it. Don't hold the opinions of whatever culture above your own personal intuition. The harder you try to fit in the more disconnected you will feel from yourself. - Cut out people that negatively influence your growth immediately. - When you don't know what to do next and feel overwhelmed, actually do deep breathing. I did this many times throughout the trip and it helped get me through the rough patches. - There was a point where I started purging and opened my mouth a wide as a could and simply vibrated all over. Lots of tears were shed. I didn't have background knowledge to understand it and don't really need it. - Everything comes back to the infinite. If you are wasting away on YouTube and Porn you are running away from timelessness and emptiness. You have to learn to accept it. You have to learn to cope with It if you want to live a highly conscious life it seems. - There is a massive difference from personal experience and reading some theory second hand. Most of you have heard alot of these insights before from others but when I actually went in with my awareness and had the insight lock into my mind, it stuck. I ate shit food, watched porn and blew a load, binged YouTube and got caught up in thought traps on purpose to see with heightened awareness how they were negatively affecting me. 5 days afterward, the awareness of their negative effects strongly outweighs the weak pulse of craving. That change has been radical. I can see how this was at the top of AA's 12 step program. - Massive humility to the infinite. I run around acting like I own the place but I was simply floored by the magnitude of power from the small glimpse I had. - If you have no background in personal development, non-duality, or actualization and you plan to trip alone, prepare to have your ass handed to you. I do and it was still difficult. POST TRIP I have a cold but now I suddenly remember to become present 100's of times a day, have stopped using my phone compulsively, feel lighter and less anxious, and simply flow. It feels great. Meditation is my #1 habit to build right now. I gotta practice living in the Now. My folks still don't and probably never will understand why I trip even after 2 hours of explanation, but that's okay. It's part of who I am. Love ya guys. Stop masturbating and get to work!

@nexusoflife I love the trip report man.

Been crying for an hour now. So much needless suffering everyday since my story began. This is not what I expected at all and the perfection of every moment is really apparent. Not even sure if I should write my insights down. Not sure what to do, even writing using "I" is too strange. Jesus Christ

@Nahm

@WelcometoReality Thank you. @zunnyman There might be parts in this that don't make sense. I didn't fall sleep till late and woke up early so I'm a bit of a zombie. Ego is back of course dismissing the whole thing kinda waving its hand going "ehhhhh, you were just emotional" but this morning I can still recognize the source a little bit. The only evidence of something happening psychologically is that stuff feels a little out of control this morning even though both my morning and evening ritual were followed. It was right before bed and I was dealing with some negative emotions already. Usually I have trouble letting these feelings come and go so I popped some headphones in and started breathing deep and giving up. It took a self-inquiry turn. The body tendered up so the holding patterns vanished. My go to inquiry is "I am ...". It's left open ended so that I can search for evidence of a self without language filling in the blank and distracting the inquiry. So a few rounds of this and then it cracked. Completely out of my control, an accident. No evidence of a self. No history of evidence of a self. Pure lucidity of the present moment. So much silence and emptiness it was overwhelming. I saw arms in my field of vision and had a thought like "what the fuck are these ape hooks". Very peculiar lol. Began sobbing but the emotion wasn't identified with anything. So pure. So liberating haha. It was so it. I hadn't cried like that in years. I was shaking and purging with my mouth wide open. The insights came flooding in. My own. These are not adopted beliefs but true realizations. Here are a couple: - Every act up I've ever done has been with selfish intentions. I like to fool myself and think I'm some kinda nobleman but I'm not. Just a little chimp boy that likes to touch his pee pee and smoke pot. Lots of self-deception uncovered. Still judgmental. Still pervy. Still a big pussy. A prime example of a Zen devil ;). - You can't be actually be a victim. All suffering is your doing entirely. Your whole life is suffering. - The more information you collect, the seemingly more difficult it will be to reach insight. There's alot of shit you have to sift through. - When folks say "you're already enlightened" they mean reality has always been there as it is. When you "lift the veil" so to speak you realize you are the whole thing. - It's perfect and always has been and will be. You are perfect my friend! - You're not separate from the experience, you ARE the experience. YOU ARE FUCKING IT! This won't make sense till you see it! - Emotions are greater motivators than thoughts and beliefs. This might be bullshit but I reckon they evolved in conjunction with an identity so they are there to serve in self preservation. Fear being the dominant one, in my case. - Your greatest ally in this kind of work is curiosity and you'd better believe it will kill you. You as an ego do not want this experience. You as an ego is fucking terrified of this happening. You as an ego are going against it's sole function by doing this work. Keep fueling that curiosity. Kill that fucking cat! - Not pushing political views at all, just an insight: Trump is one of the chimpiest of chimps. - Surrender is highly underrated. - It's amazing how much energy goes into preserving your identity. There are more of course, but these are some of the main ideas. The whole thing lasted about an hour. I became my whole room and vice versa - lord knows what would have happened if I was outside. Soooooo lucid. Looking in the mirror was quite an adventure. There was still resistance in terms of how broad my awareness was "allowed" to go, a good indicator that this thing goes deeper and that the identity is still very ingrained. The most amusing part of this whole thing was that I haven't been practicing meditation or self inquiry at all and in fact, if you all saw how my daily life has been going these past few months you'd be shocked that a neurotic, caffeine addict like myself caught a glimpse.

You know the answer to this one

@Marios Tsagoulis Hey man, I resonate with you. This shit is difficult. It's discouraging at times, but remember that whatever you do was meant to happen. Keep going, polish your intentions everyday, and accept everything that happens in between. Good luck my friend!

Here's a video of Jordan Peterson explaining his daily schedule: I admire with this man alot and this piece of dialogue is almost completely contrary to the philosophy of "doing much less with more mindfulness" which is a practice entertaineda fair bit on this forum. Thought it might be an interesting topic of discussion. Do you think that he dismisses the opposite paradigm intentionally?

@Real Eyes Can't agree more. I wish I would have meditated for at least a year before diving head first into them. A grounded internal environment is crucial for understanding the trip.

I wanna give you a high-five my friend. Your post made me smile for a long, long time.

Try The Mind Illuminated as well. Good description of all 10 stages, attention vs awareness, and Awakening.

Very surprised to hear this. Jordan Peterson seems like a deep thinker and articulates intense topics fairly easily. But I guess that doesn't mean he's not susceptible to paradigm lock. His work revolves around transmission and analyzing ideas after all. It's probably pretty easy to get lost in them ;). Additionally, he's a clinical psychologist in the West. It makes sense that he would lean toward integration/strengthening of ego rather than dissolving it considering he's been immersed in the field that promotes that for many years. Regardless, I love the work he does. Definitely a good role model for younger men in my opinion. His grounding and confidence in himself is nearly tangible when I watch his lectures. I would love to meet the man in person.

This seems to be taken right out of The Mind Illuminated. Can't recommend that book enough- especially for newbies. You can autodidact your way to the highest stages with it.

Great trip report. I spent many months in an anxious and depressed hole after reaching a similar conclusion - that reality is seemingly meaningless and simulatory. Just sit with the feelings and don't run from them and they'll pass. And then trip again and learn that it reality can also be full of meaning and completely tangible ;). The train always drops you off somewhere different. Good luck, my friend! @kino

What's poppin' my friends I remember back when I was 12 or so I could sit and read a book for nearly the entire day with little hiccup in my ability to focus. Now I'm 20 and am growing up in an age where novelty information junk food is so prevalent and it seems I've been dragged away by it. I lose interest in things far too quickly for my liking. I watch about 60 seconds of a video before my mind starts looking for new stimuli. I have to read in 20 minute intervals or I'll start daydreaming heavily. Focusing in class requires oodles of will power. I've seen Leo's video on concentration but I'm not sure if that practice is addressing the same issue. In my understanding, focusing unwaveringly on a single point is different than interacting with a single subject for a long period of time. Do any of you lovely folk have any tips on how to start reversing this issue? Also, can somebody clarify if that specific practice will help with staying on task with a subject? I realize this will take years but I know will be worth it. Additional info: I have a young meditation habit, I eat 75% healthy and exercise semi-regularly. I use a smartphone and watch YouTube videos and meme around just about everyday. Thanks in advance.

Clearly you have a deeper understanding of particle physics than I do (or just a really intricate vocabulary) but I don't really see how you can categorize observation as an act of motion. How would you quantify that? Also if observation is how you describe it leading to "no progress, no development, no growth" and "no practical application within reality", couldn't one argue that science itself (based on your own definition as an act of observation) carries those same characteristics? All I'm trying to do is poke holes in your science so that maybe you can see that science has flaws and may not be able to answer every question we have. Additionally, what we are doing here is just theory and projection, which has nothing to do with grasping the true nature of reality (from my understanding). It probably creates even more distance from the Truth.

This is referring to the kinetic energy of particles like protons, neutrons, electrons and smaller. Having those particles reach absolute zero, at this point, is mathematically "impossible". But what about the pallet in which those particles are thrashing about? Remember that old scientific saying of "99.9% of an atom is empty space"? Is movement happening in that empty space? And this can only go further down the rabbit hole in the field of quantum mechanics where just the act of observation changes the properties of particle movement. Just something to consider. Imagine the possibility of taking a step OUTSIDE of the system of motion and viewing it without being involved in the motion. Entering the void and taking a look back over your shoulder at what you were grappling with could allow you to see the bigger picture. That would allow for huge progressions in personal development. Declaring that particle motion cannot mathematically reach zero proves that an absolute void doesn't exist doesn't hold water.

@jjer94 Hey thanks for your response. I checked out that little link you had at the bottom of your post. Pretty cool.

I'm sure I could scroll on through the forum and find an answer that fits but I'd like a tailor made one Little background: I'm 19, a Sophomore in College and have a huge interest in Truth. I've been fascinated by this stuff since I read The Book by Alan Watts when I was 17. Not a day goes by that I don't think about the concept of the Universe/Infinity and what I am. My plan as far as a career path is Forestry Management because I enjoy nature and it upsets me to think that deforestation is a global problem. Eventually, I'd like to save up enough money to maybe become a monk for a while or go on several extended meditation retreats to pursue Enlightenment. Not sure about that one yet. Emotionally, I could certainly be better. In the past year I've began going through a few bouts of depression and have minor to moderate anxiety. I'm fairly certain my psychology got fucked up because of my childhood. I have a hot tempered and strict step-dad who lived vicariously through me in terms of sports, and a really successful (and sometimes absent) Mom who is hyper-critical in terms of grades and life choices. Not in a derogatory way, but in an "always could be better" sort of way. I don't blame them, they tried their best. I do go to counseling on campus, but I find the advice given impractical most of the time. I am not medicated - the situation isn't crippling. I wish I could go more in depth, but the briefer, the more likely someone will respond. I've watched several of Leo's videos over the years and read a handful of books like The Way of the Superior Man, The King, Magician, Warrior, and Lover and many more on topics like Meditation and Enlightenment. I've dabbled in psychedelics and had a miniature enlightenment experience on LSD. Building habits is one of my strong suits. I like to believe that I think deeply about topics. I know for certain I have a big ego ;). Now, I have watched Leo's video on advice for College Students. However, I'm not particularly sure which path to follow in terms of Self Development. Here are a few questions: Is it better to pick a single neurotic issue and attempt to resolve them one by one? Is there a facet of personal development that should be tackled first and then built upon? Can many habits be built at one time AND can they be built in conjunction with resolving neuroses? Where and how do I even start? I don't have a mental map on how to make this self-actualization happen, so to speak. Psychological work is abstract and difficult for me to grasp most of the time. It bothers me to no end - everyday that passes I feel as though I know less about myself rather than more. Could someone please help me outline a big picture map for actualization? I have bits and pieces, not a whole map. Thanks in advance, and thank you Leo for your content. It's phenomenal.

What do you mean, "your other one"? This was my first post

@beatlemantis Thank you so much for your detailed feedback! I have not watched the authentic self video but will be sure to do so. And I'm also going to research Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. That must have taken you a while to write, I appreciate it greatly. Good luck to you!