Today I had my first trip ever on psychedelics. The only other drug I have experience with is weed, which I've done around 7 times in my life. 
Just for background I have been watching Leo's videos for over 6 years now and am very familiar with his teachings about Love, Truth, etc, you all know. I am 24 years old. 
Not sure what the norm is when organizing trip reports, but I split mine up into 3 sections: 
Pre-Trip - thoughts and feelings beforehand
The Trip Itself - any in-the-moment things I wrote down
Post-Trip - my thoughts and feelings afterwards
I also tripped with my friend who is a little more experienced and he did 1.8mg. He is spiritual in the casual sense but does not have any kind of framework for understanding existential matters like I do from Leo's videos, nor is he very concerned with that kind of stuff. 
 
PRE-TRIP
6:57am
Just looked at and contemplated my list of top 10 values. Felt good to ground myself in that, and I feel more energized and more excited to take the mushrooms because I feel like I have some direction that I want to go in now. Before I was feeling more anxious and fearful because my mind wasn't clear and felt foggy, just felt more prone to negative thoughts. Now that I grounded myself in my values, my mind feels much clearer and I feel more excited about taking the mushrooms. Still have a slight headache though.
What's most meaningful to me in life? That will be my intention.
7:15am
Also, what value can I provide to others?
 
THE TRIP ITSELF
< > = post trip elaboration
10:40am
Ate mushrooms.
11:29am
Heavy headed, still feel good, also sleepy but probably cause I still haven't eaten.
(I didn't write time stamp for these)
It's a placebo
<idea from "The Universe Is A Dream," I saw how the mushrooms is just a placebo or in other words an excuse for us in the dream to get closer to God Realization. It's like we (God) had to convince ourselves that we need psychedelics in order to awaken because admitting we can awaken right now defeats the purpose of the dream, if that makes sense. It's hard to articulate.>
I can't remember. But that in and of itself is evidence of God. Thats why it's a separate thing! I feel like I am channeling a higher consciousness now, like separate from myself. But the separateness is there because if I were to admit that I am that would be too great to handle.
12:20pm
Everything makes sense.
It's all Love.
It's so simple.
I feel like I can predict the future when I am on shrooms.
I don't want to disrupt other people's dream.
Everything is a distraction from ___
2:24pm
Earlier was a lot to integrate (hold in my mind), but I have some takeaways now. My "purpose" is to be more charismatic. I've been in my shell a lot, and it's important for me to be able to communicate more effectively with others, but a big piece of that is being more happy/joyful. I'm communicating with myself after all (when I talk to other people), and that gives me comfort
My purpose as of now is to see more beauty (details of the dream) and help others discover more beauty around them and within themselves. Also something to work on is developing more charisma.
Forgetting is a convenient way of perhaps dismissing Truth when it arises. God is very clever.
No visualizations. I have no choice but to fall back into the dream. Fear of bursting other people's dream.
 
POST-TRIP
The Experience Itself:
• Every time I write to myself, I feel like I'm channeling a higher being or something, but that being is ME!
• Felt like seeing life from a birds eye view, then as I was coming down I felt like I was slipping back into the dream.
• Felt like I was having trouble articulating what I was experiencing (writing notes/insights down), precisely because God didn't want to be seen.
• Felt like solipsism, like I was the only thing that exists. I don't think it was God Realization, but a sort of introduction to it. 
• It's so hard to articulate what was happening! I wanted to tell my friend—"It's all a dream!! We're in a dream!!" but I kept it to myself because I knew he would think I'm crazy if I said it with such conviction, and would maybe be too piercing and actually terrify him? I didn't want to burst his dream. He took my silence like something was wrong, but then I assured him I am "feeling the shrooms," and am just internalizing it. 
--> for example, I struggled for the longest to even tell him, "It's all love," and, "It's a dream," and when I finally said it in a nice calm tone, what I noticed is I would be making eye contact with him but he would look away! Because it's like he knew it's true but didn't want to admit it/wake up to it.

• I was concerned with being caught outside of the dream.
--> for example, I felt like I had to sneak to my phone in the other room to write insights I was having, and when I began writing insights about how we're all in a dream, my friend came in the room and asked if I was ok! And I told him yes, but I knew he was going to check on me because it felt like he was subtly trying to keep me from being aware of the dream, like the crabs in the bucket analogy.

• Life felt very deterministic. Like we don't actually have control over what we do, except I suppose we have the choice to awaken, which happens gradually as much as we can handle.
Insights:
*some of these I felt like I was conscious of, but it was like half-baked awareness and not complete consciousness/awareness. Or am I only saying that so that I can continue to have a reason to pursue more spirituality? Guess it doesn't really matter either way.
• Life is so simple.
• Life is so empty, but thats what makes it so beautiful!!!
• We're all actors in a dream
• God works in implicit ways
• God communicates through humor/playfulness, and through beauty. Which is why I want to be more charismatic, so I can communicate to others more effectively.
• God reveals itself in ways that we can handle, such as lyrics in music. It's like God is winking at us, nudging us to find him.
• Life is just God exploring itself more and more.
After Thoughts:
• Human civilization is so fuckin complex. Thinking about how we all just want more Love, but our ways of getting it has been so all over the place. I know it's all Love, but I'm not directly conscious of that yet.
• Ethics is very important to me when dealing with people
• Challenge of life purpose I wrote (see more beauty and communicate it to others): showing others more beauty/love will inevitably result in some people rejecting me, and thats ok because rejection doesn't invalidate the love/beauty in any way.
• Have no tempation to increase dosage. 1.5g was great.
• Feel like my purpose is to guide people towards Love, towards beauty, to see what the dream is and gain appreciation of it.
• I feel like another aspect of my purpose is to figure out how to communicate the dream more implicitly/cleverly to others, because we are so stubborn we don't want to wake up! But that's where so much beauty lies in life.
Action Items for Dream Integration:
• Self care. I need to give myself more love, just by doing things I enjoy. Keep it simple.
• Self image. Read Psychocybernetics. Change my view of myself. For a minute I saw myself as a charismatic, charming guy and I felt really inspired. Felt like I broke out of my current self identity for a bit and it was liberating.
• More personal development. I need to do more learning, and continue developing good habits in my life, basically work on more ego development, before I move on to more psychedelics. I got plenty to chew on from this experience for a while.
 
Lastly, I am still a bit confused about what kind of mystical experience this was. I assume more clarity will come the more I trip, but my inner wisdom is telling me to focus on my personal development more, and maybe in like 4 months I can trip again with a new intention. Any feedback or tips on how I can improve moving forward is appreciated! 

Hello everyone, hope you're all having a beautiful day! Just wanted to share with you an excerpt from the book "I: Reality and Subjectivity" (pp. 171-173) by Dr. David R. Hawkins, which I hope might be of interest:
 

Other = Self
Everything is you.
You are telling you to wake up. Before you entered the dream you left yourself clues so you could awaken from the dream.
You dream that I am awake so that you could awaken yourself.
If you didn't think I was awake, how could you follow my words to awaken yourself? Before you can awaken you first have to create the fiction that others awoke before you.
Yup
You want "others" to awaken as a distraction from waking up yourself, haha
If you really cared about awakening you would stop concerning yourself with the unwokeness of others. Can you see how good a distraction it is to complain about how others are not woke? This is a trap the ego creates for itself because it is to scared to awaken.
One of the biggest mindfucks of awakening is that once you're fully awake you realize there is literally nobody else to help or save. There is no reason to be a teacher or guru. The teacher or guru role is itself a bullshit illusion.
One of the biggest traps in this work is the fantasy that you will become this great teacher and savior of mankind. Well, that turns out to be an illusion the ego imagined in order to feel a sense of purpose and meaning. The reality is that you awaken and then that's it. There's nothing left to do. There is no one to save, nothing to fix.

Two year back I heard Leo talk about the advantage of keeping an commonplace book. He also recommended to use Onenote 2010 as a primary software for keeping notes. I did that for two years but suddenly my Onenote 2010 software crashed which scared me for a while because I did took all my notes on it for the last two years. I bought the office 2016 suite and opened it but all the format was ruined and the hyperlinks had all became useless. I began to think from that point on if this again happens in the future what will I do? I thought and did some research on that for a while than I found a alternative software to Onenote which is free. The software's name is Obsidian.md  ( Here is the official website. ) I did had a lot of pain on migrating to obsidian.md but it was all worth it. 
Why obsidian.md instead of Onenote?
 One of the top reason is that it is future proofed. It is future proofed because your notes are all plain text based which means that as long there are computers that can read plain text (markdown). It is free. Short and sweet. It has a amazing UI and the graph view is just mind blowing.  Files are stored in your local file system which makes your personal data more secure. As Leo says to choose the software which has an powerful tag search. This software includes that too.  No lock-in. It is future proofed. Even if somehow obsidian shutdown you are still able to read your notes because the notes can even be opened by a simple text editor like notepad.  It has an interactive graph which shows what is linked in your notes. I can't explain it well you must see it for yourself. This could be an example :-(https://publish.obsidian.md/help/Plugins/Graph+view). But it is much more cool when you have thousands of notes like I have.  I also came across personal knowledge management (PKM) which is an interesting topic while trying to learn it. If anyone of you is interested on migrating to obsidian than the following links might help you.
 This channel is good for beginners trying to use obsidian. The channels name is linking your thinking. He has a playlist for beginners which is really great to get started on it.  There is Obsidian Help vault which will help you to know the app better. If you don't know where it is then it is on the bottom of the app. Making your own notes on obsidian will be better than copying that of others. Markdown is easy to learn but sometimes can be complicated if you don't get a hang of it. But I think looking at the obsidian help vault you may be able to learn it. It may be really hard to migrate to obsidian because it kind of lacks on it. Sometimes you must just bite the bullet you know. I had thousands of notes on my Onenote, I copied all my notes just by copying and pasting them in obsidian. If you haven't started keeping commonplace book, lucky for you, you might just start to keep it using obsidian. The only downfall is that it doesn't have an mobile app but I think no one will be using mobile for taking their notes
 
I am still kind of a newbie in using this app but I hope this will help you in some sort of way. The channel that I just mention above was also my starting point hope it helps you. For some reason I have a feeling that Leo already knows about this app because he is just an amazing guy bring out various new concepts to our lives. If Leo is reading this than my life has been changed because of you especially because of the video called life advice for young people part 2. I actually realized from that video how much work and effort you were keeping to produce the Content of yours.
 
I am sorry for any of my grammatical errors.

Let's pull together a list of the best books on politics and governance.
I'm noticing that one of the biggest challenges with politics is that people (including myself) are just damn ignorant of the historical facts of governance and geo-politics from around the world. We spend way too much time debating culture war issues and partisan demonization vs actually studying how societies around the world have been managed.
Politics and governance is not my area of expertise, but I want expand into it more. I want you guys to become more educated about it too. To do that I feel we need to build a foundation with books.
So search the web for the best political book lists. I'm talking about non-partisan, non-ideological stuff. Well-researched stuff. Stuff that goes into the details of how government works.
For example, I want a list of books that Michael Brooks from the Majority Report was reading. See what you can find. It shouldn't just be about American politics but international politics.

Hello everyone, long time lurker but first time poster. I am facing the same predicament as the OP so had to chime in. This is a huge topic but I want to share some of my current research.
According to psychological research, the attraction of conspiracy theories relates to anxiety and a loss of control. By demonising an outgroup as evil and assigning them blame for all bad events, a simple us-versus-them narrative replaces the infinitely complex mess that is reality (as far as the mind is concerned). Note that the various historical acts of violence against Jewish people have all been preceded by stressful times and an uprising of conspiracy theories. 
Another factor is a lack of a sense of belonging to a group/community in our socially-detached modern times. By having a common enemy (Illuminati, round-Earthers, normies, Lamestream Media, Deep State, Hillary's e-mails...), a brotherhood/sisterhood bond is formed and gives people an almost family-like connection. This also benefits from the traumatic bonding and sense of victimhood whenever educated people mock their world view. Indeed, we want a tribe more than we want mere intellectual integrity.
Consider also the crude brilliance of the tactics used. Whenever efforts are made to suppress the spreading of dangerous lies, conspiracy theorists will view this as proof that the wicked media is censoring their truth under the direction of the Deep State. If no such effort is made, the lies of the day spread like wildfire online and they are empowered regardless. Reminds me of a certain president who will either win, or will declare the election as rigged. 
In my opinion, social media is by far the biggest driver of this insanity. Social stressors in society merely create the perfect storm of background conditions. Companies like Facebook derive a maximum of revenue when users spend lots of time on the site consuming a mixture of content and advertisements. The so-called 'brain hacking' algorithms achieve maximum user engagement by progressively feeding more extreme content, and enabling echo chambers which drift further and further from a balanced world-view. Anyone with the slightest insecurity is going to be vulnerable to radicalisation in some form.
None of this answers the OP's question. I haven't seen my friend in some time, and currently cannot due to the pandemic, but I will either have to avoid discussing these topics to avoid losing her altogether, or else artfully try and challenge her views. It is not easy as I find myself getting somewhat triggered by it all. I have a very strong aversion for harmful bullshit which probably stems from my own mother being emotionally unavailable when I was young, due to her Catholic fanaticism.
This article is helpful: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/
Another one: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/famous-facebook-and-google-investor-condemns-brain-hacking-2017-8?r=US&IR=T
Hope this helps.

This guy is the epitome of a systems thinker. Amazing!
He makes all other political analysis seem like the work of shit-eating cavemen.
 

In his recent newsletter Peter Ralston was asked about psychedelics.
Question (roughly):  how come you promote states like clarity, openness and presence as necessary prerequisites for fruitful contemplation yet dismiss psychedelics as useless when it comes to consciousness work stating they are just states and not direct consciousness. Can psychedelic states not also be used to enhance contemplation, not to do it for you but help do it for yourself?
I am interested in what this forum thinks about his answer. Keep in mind though that he is deeply awake and also did have his fair share of psychedelic experiences.
Ralston:
I disagree with your argument. I hear the logic, but the truth in this case is different from the logic. The first thing we should notice is that the drugs are not of your own making, they are chemically induced. Whereas creating a state of focus and presence is an activity you generate. This is significant.
There are many states you can generate that are not at all helpful to pursuing consciousness, even ones that seem like they are. You could have a state of anger or distraction, which probably don't help much. You could also have a state of feeling one with the universe, and that doesn't help either, but you could easily think it does. So, it is with psychedelic states. You might think they help or produce some beneficial state because you experience something awesome or unusual. But that doesn't help at all. Like I have said, you can become directly conscious while being angry or on drugs, but I'm also saying the anger or drugs have nothing to do with it. People fool themselves into thinking drugs can help. A mistaken notion. I lived in the late 60's in Berkeley, California in an era of a great deal of drug taking. It was probably the beginning of the whole psychedelic attempt to become more conscious. We even called them "consciousness raising drugs." I did more than my share for a while. So, I tell you from a personal experience of both drugs and consciousness, the drugs don't help.
That isn't their purpose, and I think those using them to attain enlightenment are mistaken or lazy, wanting something else to do it for them or help them. This is nonsense because "direct" means only YOU can do it, nothing else. As for states that help in contemplation, they do so simply because they support your intent and efforts to contemplate. Drugs don't. And you are the one generating the states. Drugs aren't generated by you. States helpful in contemplation aren't random they are simply what creates the activity of contemplation. Without focus and openness you really can't contemplate. They are simply part of that effort.
The contemplation itself is an activity, it is not enlightenment. It is simply more likely for you to become directly conscious if you intend to do so, and you give it your all. Drugs just provide a different experience by altering the chemicals in your brain. Neither chemicals or brain activity has anything to do with enlightenment. You can do them if you want, I am simply asserting there is a flaw in your logic—it doesn't work that way. You seem to be trying to convince yourself by getting me to go along with your beliefs. Sorry to disappoint, but I won't. Even if I had no counter logic to offer, I'd still say no. Simply because I know the truth directly. Peter

Yes, that's very likely.
Some of you guys are exceptionally spiritually talented. I know because I've interacted with some very advanced people here. But that's still pretty rare. Most of you are mildly talented. Which means you got a lot of work to do.
The most advanced people are gonna be so advanced they won't even spend time listening to me or being on this forum. Most people who resonate with my videos are gonna be mildly to moderately talented. If you were more talented than me then you probably wouldn't follow my work.
In a sense, the ultimate reason you come to me is because you want to feed off my talent. And of course the talent is not really mine, it was God-given to me for reasons unknown.
So here we are.

Years and years of constant practice in your mind and in front of a camera.
Most of my practice is done purely in my mind. Every day. For 20 years.
I'm constantly framing and explaining things to an imaginary person in my mind.
But then you also need live speaking experience which you can get by speaking to a live camera or joining Toastmasters and attending weekly meetings.

At first I was more committed to life coaching and blogging. But then once I saw the potential of YouTube I went all-in on that and got very committed about that.
It wasn't luck. It was serious marketing work beyond what people understand.
Saturation was much less of a problem in 2013 when I started. Today is harder. But then again, I see new channels succeeding even now. You just need a great idea, passion for it, and some marketing savvy.
Keep in mind I use to be an online marketer, so that background helped me a lot.
I remember back in 2013 when I told myself, "If I can just get 10,000 subscribers, that would be my dream come true and I would be happy." Lol
Well, things would obvious have unfolded very differently. No way to know. In business you have to be very opportunistic and ferret out the stuff that works. It's not hypothetical. Whatever works you work with. If one thing fails you try another, and another, and another, and another, and another, until finally you strike gold.

Armonadafinil is a medicine. Yeah be carefull. Tried the statment stack? microdose Mushrooms + niacin + lionsmane.

Hello – I’ve discovered writing trip reports in this fashion really helps me with integration and the last two I’ve shared seem to be received well from the forum, so here I am with my latest haha. This will be kind of long, but it’s very powerful material.
This will be written using personal pronouns and from a perspective of ego, but please do your best to intuit the relativity here.
Background:
To really understand this trip, I have be fully honest about what’s lead me to this point in my life. I was unfortunately very misguided, unknowledgeable, and unwise when I graduated high school. See, I went into University without much of a plan or vision about what kind of life I wanted, all I knew is that everyone kept telling me I had to go to school. It didn’t matter if I had to take out student loans, I HAD to go. Well, fast forward and I’m senior about to graduate school and I have a little over $100K in debt. Yep. I felt foolish, I felt so much regret, I felt like an fucking idiot. How could I have let this situation unfold? Why didn’t I have the simple foresight to see this path was wildly un-strategic and a bad idea? To be honest, there was and still has been this deep existential dread associated with these loans that really sank into the core of my being as I went through school; it was like these loans provided a background vibration, or context to my waking experience that pounded away at my excitement for life, just dulling it with every beat. As if this wasn’t enough, two weeks before graduation I go to the emergency room where I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a pretty brutal autoimmune disorder that if not managed correctly will slowly destroy multiple body systems and kill you. It pretty much slowly damages the body even when you have good control though. I remember feeling so hopeless that night in the hospital room. Not only did I have $100k in debt, but now I had one of the most expensive chronic illnesses in the United States (look into insulin costs) that could really ravage my body.

So this trip felt like some sort divine healing session where I truly tapped into all of my pain and trauma from this situation, but in a theme of going full-circle, simultaneously tapped into my inner potential and why I’m here living this life. The only words I can use to describe what the peak felt like was going Super Saiyan, which I’m sure a large majority of the forum knows about from the anime Dragon Ball Z. I don’t mean to sound cheeky or humorous here, it’s just the only term I could think of to describe what happened during this trip.
Set:
I wrote down 4 questions: What is vision? What is intention? What is will? Who is doing all of this?

Setting:
As per usual, my room, my music, and my cat.

Themes:
-       Super Saiyan
-       Vision and Life Purpose
-       Lightwork
-       Will
-       Patience
-       The Principle of Keep Going
 
Super Saiyan
One of the most amazing faculties of psychedelics is that they allow mind to tap into different experiences of time. During the peak, write before I felt like I achieved a state of “Super Saiyan,” it felt like a giant energetic bubble was growing in my body, almost like a ball of lava, within which all of my pain, particularly the pain from my loans and illness came crashing into awareness all at once. I experienced the years of my college education in this one moment. I experienced all the existential dread from those loans at once. I experienced the emotional pain from every finger prick and insulin injection, every high and low blood sugar episode at once. I felt all my helplessness at being chained by the American education system, I felt all of my helplessness at being the bitch of the American Pharmaceutical Industry, having to pay absurd amounts of money for health insurance and medicine just to live. And as the bubble expanded further and further, something snapped inside. Everything went full circle.

It felt like kundalini or some other energetic force shot through the emotional bubble inside my body, and suddenly I was at complete and utter peace. It was like I was in the eye of my storm. It felt like I had completely let go of all of the pain, all of the trauma. However, just like in physics energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed and that’s what this emotional surge did, it completely transformed. The energy from the pain was still 100% there, but it no longer was trauma, it was vitality. It felt zen. It felt like perfect harmony. It felt like perfect balance. It felt like with every breath I drew in, I could feel the universe providing energy for my purpose and with every breath I drew out, I felt like I as God was breathing out this purpose into the world. It was like a hurricane of energy was emanating from my body and mind instead of being stored inside as mental pain and bodily tension.
This state of Super Saiyan is one of complete nowness, complete peace, complete fearlessness, complete effortlessness, and interestingly enough, complete formlessness. As motivation, inspiration, pain and suffering ebb and flow through life, you can find inner indestructibility as your true self. To act from this authentic space of inner potential is what it means to go Super Saiyan. And what's so beauitful, is that it is available in every moment.
 
Vision and Life Purpose
I realized how incredibly powerful vision is. Vision can be the context for your entire life. Every action you take, no matter how small (brushing your teeth) or how large (working on your life purpose) can be done within this overarching meta context that we can call vision. Recently I’ve felt in somewhat of a limbo with vision, almost like I’ve been embarrassed or scared to fully embrace my life purpose, but this is no longer the case. I’m here to teach other’s about spirituality and help the collective consciousness of humanity wake up. I will do this through public speaking one day. At this moment, I’m very focused on paying my loans off by the time I’m in my mid 30s (I’m 23), so I’m using YouTube as a way to get my voice out. My channel’s name is Existential Wonder if you’re interested. Eventually however, I want to find a way to do this through public speaking rather than video.

Anyways, your vision is like a beacon for the energy of your form, your ego, your avatar, your survival as an individual, to align and attract towards with action. The more you understand your true nature, the more you will understand what your life purpose is and what type of vision you need for your life. Initially it may seem like there’s a paradox here. If your true nature of formlessness, and nothing actually matters, why pursue Life Purpose? And isn’t Life Purpose all kinda egoic in nature? It’s about the individual, and I’m not an individual, I’m infinite formlessness. One of the interesting features of God is that it operates at multiple levels, multiple perspectives simultaneously, so even though yes you are God, you are also a human doing human work, doing human survival. The nature and context of this survival can be more or less aligned with your soul, your “higher self.” I know some people on this forum dismiss such notions of higher self, but what you need to understand is that your higher self is just as much you and not you as a coffee cup. It’s simply an energetic force that resides within the whole of your experience as living as a human. It’s your self-actualization. Believe it or not, you as God want this energetic force, this energetic potential to play out and manifest. More on this later. Essentially though, vision is the beacon to center this massive energy and infinite potential that you have as an individual. As the energy grows inside of you, as you feel the call to Self-Actualize, and find your purpose, vision is the lightening rod to harness and create a single pointed focus for the energy. This helps you align all of your actions towards your mission rather than being swept away by devilry. Let vision be the context for all your action.
I encourage everyone reading this to find your purpose ASAP. Can’t recommend Leo’s life purpose course enough, it’s incredible.
 
Will
Ah, the ol free will vs. no free will debate. I know there will be non-dualists here that disagree with me, and there will even be scientists who’d disagree with me, but I don’t really care.

The fact of the matter is that you do have will, you do have choice. Your will is to self-actualize and return to yourself, to find enlightenment. This is what you're here to do. This is what you truly want to do. Let me reiterate, this is what you WANT TO DO. This is your DEEPEST SEEDED DESIRE. So here’s the thing, in every moment you can either choose to act from a place of devilry, or place of authenticity. The freedom of both is available, that’s how much freedom you really have as God. And no matter which option plays out, it’s the Will of God haha. It’s kind of a mindfuck… And it doesn’t make sense. But please realize Free Will is you becoming conscious of the fact that in every moment, you are truly free to act from whatever place you want. You are 100% free to be a devil (to play out your hedonism, addictions, cower from your fears, and embrace laziness, and basically be selfish), or you can be you (act from a place of fearlessness, self-actualization, truth, love, and selflessness). That’s really what free will means. It means there is the freedom for the energy to play out whoever it’s going to play out and if you think you can’t start taking action that aligns with your true nature, you are wrong. To dismiss free will is to dismiss the energetic freedom available from taking action.

I wish I could explain this more, but I’ll leave you with this: Never underestimate your willpower. Don’t try to figure it out with your rational mind. Become conscious of your Absolute Freedom.
 
Lightwork
Leo’s latest blog post really brought this to my attention. During the trip, it felt like that I became conscious that I am in this particular life very much on purpose, almost like this life was chosen by me as God. It was important that I be chained to multiple western systems (student loans and healthcare) because I’m not here to leave society as hermit or monk, or to live life modestly and out of sight. I’m here to help humanity wake the fuck up very much as an active member of society. It felt like I became conscious that all this suffering I experienced from my loans and illness was all necessary to get my ass in gear so to speak. The suffering was needed to give me the energy for my life purpose. If I wanted to live a life of seclusion and meditation, I’d have been incarnated as someone who goes off and lives that life. No, I’m here to help plant the seeds of collective awakening for humanity.
Now I have to be careful here not to get some kind of messiah mentality. I don’t feel like a messiah or Jesus figure. I don’t feel special, or better than others. I realized on the trip that this lightwork role can only truly be manifested from a place of humility and selflessness. The moment you think your better than others or casting judgement on other’s, you’re being a devil and don’t understand what Truth and Love are really all about.

This trip felt like I finally, and fully accepted the mantle of responsibility for my suffering and for my purpose here as a member of humanity. And Leo’s blog post of lightwork really resonated with how my life has been and continues to be. Oddly enough, it felt like this life really was a choice, these struggles really were a necessary part of the path that I accepted long ago… Before birth. I remember this energy inside of me feeling so ancient, like it had been slumbering and waiting for a moment of activation. But who knows man. Psychedelics get some weird mind states going.
 
Patience
You’ve got to be patient. Patience for yourself as you wake up fully as God, patience as you self-actualize, patience as you manifest your life purpose, patience as you work through your traumas and suffering. In the state of being Super Saiyan, part of the overwhelming peace that I’d achieved was that I found the importance of patience through this transformational process. Patience is one your strongest allies, and I became conscious of just how important it really is for all facets of life. Your path will take time, transformation and evolution takes time. Just be patience and trust yourself. When you can act from a place of patience, you are literally aligning with the forces of biological nature here… So just be patience and breath.
 
The Principle of Keep Going
I’d discovered this life principle a while ago, but I really rediscovered it on this Trip. It’s entirely self-explanatory, which is why it’s so effective and beautiful. Just keep going. No matter what struggles you’re forced to endure, no matter how much you suffer, no matter how much pain you have inside, keep going, please keep going. You owe it yourself on all levels, as an ego, as the collective consciousness of humanity, as the collective consciousness of Earth, and as God, to keep going. Keep persisting and never give up on your path. Until your last breath, keep fucking going dude. You have the tools to available. Actualized.org is literally a gold mine of the techniques, habits, strategies you need to succeed at your purpose no matter what flavor or variation it takes on. We are all incredible fortunate to have found this place.

Life is going to throw everything it has at you; your inner devil is going to keep tempting you over and over and over. You’re going to suffering enormously. You’re going to feel unmotivated, lazy, helpless, depressed, ashamed. Your negative emotions are going to try and rule your life, but you’ve got to find that inner peace and inner stillness that I promise is inside, and keep going. Keep going until you see who you truly are and what you’re here to do.

As this dynamic of the trip was playing out, an image flashed into mind. It was an image I drew years ago in a state of deep depression, but I see now more than ever what I was drawing.


Now more than ever, I feel ready to face the work of this lifetime. Thank you for providing the space to share.

@JalenS23 @Leo Gura thanks for the reply. Yeah I agree. The calories thing can be the biggest challenge for most people. The easiest way I’ve found is by making bananas my staple. I’ll buy one to two 40 pound cases of bananas each week for about $20 a case from Whole Foods. (Most grocery stores including Walmart should be able to sell a case of bananas for a discounted price as well other fruits in bulk if you talk to them) That comes with like 80+ bananas in a case. With each banana being about 100 calories a pop, I find it an easy staple. Throw a bunch into a smoothie, freeze them and make banana ice cream, dehydrate them if you’d like (dehydrators aren’t at all necessary to eat this way) or just eat them on their own. They’re def the bulk of my calories. I usually save the bananas for the tail end of my days. For my breakfast and lunch I usually consume the more juicier fruits, juices, coconut water. I also include frozen berries, some green powders like Spirulina or Barley Grass juice powder, maca powder. Leafy greens in my smoothies. Even some flax, hemp, or chia seeds. I’m also not a big fan of preparing big complicated raw gourmet meals. I find them super time consuming, generally hard to digest, and can potentially be unhealthy if they’re super high in fat and full of salt, complicated poorly combined ingredients, lots of nuts and seeds, oils, etc. If I do eat a salad, which is usually like once or twice a week rn for me personally. Its usually just mixed baby greens, cilantro, alfalfa sprouts, lime and avocado. I like to keep my diet simple and can get by with about $100 a week. Sometimes cheaper, sometimes more expensive. I find It all depends on really how the person wants to eat as well the access they have to quality produce

Excerpts from “Theory Z”
(from Abraham Maslow's : The Farther Reaches of Human Nature)
 
1. For transcenders, peak experiences and plateau experiences become the most important things in their lives….
2. They speak more easily, normally, naturally, and unconsciously the language of Being (B-language), the language of poets, of mystics, of seers, of profoundly religious men…
3. They perceive unitively or sacrally (i.e., the sacred within the secular), or they see the sacredness in all things at the same time that they also see them at the practical, everyday D-level …
4. They are much more consciously and deliberately metamotivated. That is, the values of Being…, e.g., perfection, truth, beauty, goodness, unity, dichotomy-transcendence … are their main or most important motivations.
5. They seem somehow to recognize each other, and to come to almost instant intimacy and mutual understanding even upon first meeting…
6. They are more responsive to beauty. This may turn out to be rather a tendency to beautify all things… or to have aesthetic responses more easily than other people do…
7. They are more holistic about the world than are the “healthy” or practical self-actualizers… and such concepts as the “national interest” or “the religion of my fathers” or “different grades of people or of IQ” either cease to exist or are easily transcended…
8. [There is] a strengthening of the self-actualizer’s natural tendency to synergy—intrapsychic, interpersonal, intraculturally and internationally…. It is a transcendence of competitiveness, of zero-sum of win-lose gamesmanship.
9. Of course there is more and easier transcendence of the ego, the Self, the identity.
10. Not only are such people lovable as are all of the most self-actualizing people, but they are also more awe-inspiring, more “unearthly,” more godlike, more “saintly”…, more easily revered…
11. … The transcenders are far more apt to be innovators, discoverers of the new, than are the healthy self-actualizers… Transcendent experiences and illuminations bring clearer vision … of the ideal …of what ought to be, what actually could be, … and therefore of what might be brought to pass.
12. I have a vague impression that the transcenders are less “happy” than the healthy ones. They can be more ecstatic, more rapturous, and experience greater heights of “happiness” (a too weak word) than the happy and healthy ones. But I sometimes get the impression that they are as prone and maybe more prone to a kind of cosmic sadness … over the stupidity of people, their self-defeat, their blindness, their cruelty to each other, their shortsightedness… Perhaps this is a price these people have to pay for their direct seeing of the beauty of the world, of the saintly possibilities in human nature, of the non-necessity of so much of human evil, of the seemingly obvious necessities for a good world…
13. The deep conflicts over the “elitism” that is inherent in any doctrine of self-actualization—they are after all superior people whenever comparisons are made—is more easily solved—or at least managed—by the transcenders than by the merely healthy self-actualizers. This is made possible because they … can sacralize everybody so much more easily. This sacredness of every person and even of every living thing, even of nonliving things … is so easily and directly perceived in its reality by every transcender …
14. My strong impression is that transcenders show more strongly a positive correlation—rather than the more usual inverse one—between increasing knowledge and increasing mystery and awe… For peak-experiencers and transcenders in particular, as well as for self-actualizers in general, mystery is attractive and challenging rather than frightening … I affirm … that at the highest levels of development of humanness, knowledge is positively, rather than negatively, correlated with a sense of mystery, awe, humility, ultimate ignorance, reverence …
15. Transcenders, I think, should be less afraid of “nuts” and “kooks” than are other self-actualizers, and thus are more likely to be good selectors of creators  … To value a William Blake type takes, in principle, a greater experience with transcendence and therefore a greater valuation of it…
16. …Transcenders should be more “reconciled with evil” in the sense of understanding its occasional inevitability and necessity in the larger holistic sense, i.e., “from above,” in a godlike or Olympian sense. Since this implies a better understanding of it, it should generate both a greater compassion with it and a less ambivalent and a more unyielding fight against it….
17. … Transcenders … are more apt to regard themselves as carriers of talent, instruments of the transpersonal, temporary custodians so to speak of a greater intelligence or skill or leadership or efficiency. This means a certain peculiar kind of objectivity or detachment toward themselves that to nontranscenders might sound like arrogance, grandiosity or even paranoia…. Transcendence brings with it the “transpersonal” loss of ego.
18. Transcenders are in principle (I have no data) more apt to be profoundly “religious” or “spiritual” in either the theistic or nontheistic sense. Peak experiences and other transcendent experiences are in effect also to be seen as “religious or spiritual” experiences….
19. … Transcenders, I suspect, find it easier to transcend the ego, the self, the identity, to go beyond self-actualization. … Perhaps we could say that the description of the healthy ones is more exhausted by describing them primarily as strong identities, people who know who they are, where they are going, what they want, what they are good for, in a word, as strong Selves… And this of course does not sufficiently describe the transcenders. They are certainly this; but they are also more than this.
20. I would suppose… that transcenders, because of their easier perception of the B-realm, would have more end experiences (of suchness) than their more practical brothers do, more of the fascinations that we see in children who get hypnotized by the colors in a puddle, or by the raindrops dripping down a windowpane, or by the smoothness of skin, or the movements of a caterpillar.
21. In theory, transcenders should be somewhat more Taoistic, and the merely healthy somewhat more pragmatic.
22. …Total wholehearted and unconflicted love, acceptance … rather than the more usual mixture of love and hate that passes for “love” or friendship or sexuality or authority or power, etc.
23. [Transcenders are interested in a “cause beyond their own skin,” and are better able to “fuse work and play,” “they love their work,” and are more interested in “kinds of pay other than money pay”; “higher forms of pay and metapay steadily increase in importance.”] Mystics and transcenders have throughout history seemed spontaneously to prefer simplicity and to avoid luxury, privilege, honors, and possessions. …
24. I cannot resist expressing what is only a vague hunch; namely, the possibility that my transcenders seem to me somewhat more apt to be Sheldonian ectomorphs [lean, nerve-tissue dominated body-types] while my less-often-transcending self-actualizers seem more often to be mesomorphic [muscular body-types] (… it is in principle easily testable).
 

 
 

Julien is probably the most spiritual guy in their team and  has decent skills of conveying spiritual stuff to stage orange audience. Although he still sounds pretty shallow imo

If you want higher consciousness dating advice check these guys, they are hardcorely into nondual teachings and meditation. It's way better than RSD
 

@zeroISinfinity You are going to be creator no matter what. The only question is whether you are creating consciously or unconsciously.
To refuse the call of taking ownership of your godly creative capacity is a creation you create. If you choose to sit in your Mom's basement your whole life eating Cheetos and jerking off to anime, that's what you as God created. But you did so not aware that you could have created something else. And so in effect you created a devil of yourself.

@Empty Jesus is a good role-model. As he said, don't cast your pearls before swine.
As for what you can do, you can awaken yourself and demonstrate your wokeness through your life. By being a powerful role-model people will naturally gravitate towards you. But you'll have to train yourself to be that way.

You are best off teaching yourself Yellow and above through independent study. You will learn more through independent study than in a university. Take responsibility for educating yourself. This becomes necessary if you want to grow beyond the center of gravity of your society/culture.
Read 100 good books around this topic and you will be wiser than 99% of university professors. And you won't have to go $100,000 into debt to do it. In a sense, these days, universities are looking more and more like scam. It's not worth the price of admission when you can achieve better results by yourself at 5% of the cost. You just have to be self-driven and passionate about learning/truth.
If you read and carefully integrate the 200 books on my book list you will have a deeper understanding of reality than 99.999% of people. And I'll be adding more books soon.

I was only talking about pre-sex communications. Once you have sex with her, then you can text her more seriously.
You must distinguish between pre-sex and post-sex behaviors. They are very different.
Pre-sex, while you're dating, there must be some gaming going on. After she falls in love with you, you can cut the gaming.
You don't need to manipulate her too much via text. The key is not to display neediness and desperation. The biggest mistake made with pre-sex texting is that the guy fucks it up by trying to say too much, trying to be too edgy/cocky/funny. Trying to attract her via text doesn't work. So actually my advice is to not game girls via text. Use texting mostly to handle dating logistics laced with bits of humor.
Make your texts totally non-needy and unimportant. Don't be sending her long letters via text. Never try to logically convince her of meeting you. All that crap will blow you out very fast.
Here are good kinds of texts pre-sex:
Hey gurl, let's grab a coffee. Coffee! Lets go Saw this shirt at Walmart and thought it would be perfect for you [insert pic of ugly shirt] Meow... Moo Hey dork Let's hang out When you free this week? Let's do something this week How's the recovery going? (from last night's club/bar) You're the weirdest gurl I met last night. I want to build you a mansion out of Legos and stock it with exotic baby animals. Reading a book Chillin by the pool Making juice Clipping my toe nails, thought you should know Trimming my nose hair, thought you should know Going to club XXXXX tonight. You? You remind me of a dog I just saw You seem great and all but I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with you. I bet you snore like a pig. I want to stick a scorpion in your pants Hope this isn't too forward but I mailed you this basket of puppies [insert pic of basket of puppies] A few of them might arrive dead, I was too cheap to swing for overnight shipping That kind of stuff. Keep it lite and chill. Zero investment is key.
This is the extent of pre-sex texting.
NEVER, EVER get sexual via text unless you've already had sex with her a few times. It comes off way too creepy and needy. Act like you don't care about sex.

That is indeed a bar that you will need to cross. I know how hard it can be. I spent 20+ years and my career within the objectivist paradigm you are contracted within. 
As difficult as it is, it can be done. I would say the two most important components are open-mindedness and curiosity. The effort is well worth it - I’m telling you this as someone who made the same arguments as you for over 20 adult years. You can’t see that you are contracted within a paradigm. Expansion beyond that objectivist paradigm is more liberating and mind-blowing than you can imagine.
You believe in other minds you see as great. I did the same with scientists like Sam Harris. Yet in doing so, you limit and squander your true potential. For you have the potential to expand beyond those limited minds. Yet you will need to take responsibility. You’ve got to want it, be open and curious. You have no idea how much your mind can expand. It’s not about me or Leo or some mathematician. It’s about you. How far do you want yo expand? How high do you want to go? What levels of genius do you want to reach? Those are questions you need to answer. If you want to reach your potential - open-mindedness, curiosity and observation. And so far you have shown very little. I spent a lot of time trying to explain genetics to you and in the end, you defended your beliefs and showed no openness and curiosity to learn and expand. Similarly, people have tried to show you post-logical concepts and you show the same behavior. You just aren’t teachable. This is not a mind that is open to learn and grow. If you would like to read about such a mind, read up on Leonardo Da Vinci. A book on him was one of my turning points. Da Vinci is a great example of a mind in which logic and science was within a much broader awareness and mastery. Science and logic was within a more expansive holistic genius. Yet you will need to be the one to take responsibility to expand beyond your comfort zone and grounding. At this time, it appears you are extremely entrenched within a contracted mindset and highly motivated to defend that mindset. It’s as if your ego’s existence depends in it. It took me 20 adult years to crack through it. I hope you can do so earlier in life because what lies beyond is magnificent. Beyond what you can imagine. 
As well, at 17 years old you prefrontal cortex is still developing for several more years. Your brain will develop higher capacities for nonlinear and abstract thinking.

Mostly dangers of being too unfocused or too conceptual.
Theory and practice must be delicately balanced. Few people know how to strike this balance. They mostly veer off too much in one direction or the other.
If you like my work, being too conceptual will be one of your biggest obstacles. If you don't like my work, studying too little theory will be one of your greatest obstacles.

I'm not really familiar with what he does.
But it's very easy to do years of Vipassana but not be awakened or really understand the depth of consciousness work. In fact I would say that most Westerners who practice Vipassana have no idea what awakening or nonduality really are. Because they are following a very narrow practice on blind faith.
I have met people who have done Vipassana for 5-15 years but have no idea what the world enlightenment means. Not to mention many other aspects of spiritual work.
This work goes so deep and has so many layers to it that you should NEVER assume that a person who does any kind of practice is awake or understands spirituality. It's all too easy to turn spiritual practices into narrow robotic habits and dogmas.
Sam Harris supposedly also does meditation and has even had some degree of realization of no-self. But his worldview is still thoroughly materialistic and dualistic, and he is still missing 98% of spirituality. This is extremely common in the West especially. Westerners tend to dabble in spirituality while thinking to themselves that they've figured it all out. This is to be expected.
As a general rule of thumb:
When someone talks about spirituality, does spirituality, or teaches spirituality -- NEVER, EVER assume that they are at the highest stages of it. Always be skeptical. Especially with Westerners. True masters are very rare. Fully comprehensive teachings are very rare.
Most people who do spirituality are doing it very poorly, pathologically, and half-assing it. This is to be expected given that almost no one understands the full scope of the mind's self-deceptiveness.
Even awakening will NOT make you immune to self-deception. So watch out!

That's good progress!
That's the trick! There isn't a "how". Formlessness cannot be reached through any method or process. Formlessness just is. You are it. You cannot reach it through any steps because it is the zero-th step. It is impossibly direct.
Although psychedelics can put you there in minutes.
The reaching of formlessness is a spontaneous occurrence, like a lightning strike. You cannot predict it or make it happen. But you can increase the odds by intensifying your inquiry & concentration.
Of course they are a part of you -- because everything is a part of you. But they are not essential to you. For example, a thought or feeling can arise and then disappear. It's disappearance does not change your essence. So what you are -- your essence -- is independent of all arising phenomena.
What you're missing is that you must distinguish yourself from all form. You have to separate the formlessness which right now is intermixed and confused with various forms. Then, later, you will realize that formlessness and form are in fact identical. But at the same time, they can be distinguished! It's a paradox.
Your first awakening experience is you realizing that formlessness is distinct from all form. It's you realizing that Consciousness/You is distinct from any content that arises.
It's sort of like a TV realizing that it is distinct from the images it displays. In the unenlightened state you are like a TV which is attached to the forms it displays, not realizing that in fact all forms could disappear without affecting the TV's existence.
What you are looking for with self-inquiry is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness without any forms.
But be careful, what I said above does not mean that any particular forms must be eliminated. So don't get some silly idea in your head that your sensory field will somehow turn off or go black. That's not what I mean. I mean you must realize that the sensory field is always occurring within formlessness. Like water is always occurring within some container. The True Self is the container. Find yourself as the empty container which holds the world. Right now you are so identified with the world that you cannot see the transparent container.
Form = the material world
Formlessness = the transparent container which holds it
And ultimately, Form = Formlessness
That's what "nonduality" means: not two.

You need to immerse yourself more in the field and do a lot more research. As you do lots of research you will naturally start having new ideas, you will start seeing unfilled opportunities. It's very hard tobsee these opportunities without immersing yourself and lots of diverse source material.
The secret to creativity is lots of diverse source material.
You say you want to run seminars, but how many seminars have you attended yourself? If you attend 20 seminars I can guarantee you will have some good ideas about how to create some new kind of seminar.
The reason you are stuck is because you lack relevant experience. So go get more experience.