lennart

Day 9: not done yet by soja - ?

Day 8: Down, Down, Down by sting... again Nice song

Day 7: whats the difference by dr.dre and xzibit - I am currently learning to play this song on the piano and I really like it.

Day 6: Αυτη ειναι η ζωη by Panos Mouzourakis - a greek song - Nothing special in it - kind of repetitive

Day 5: Windmills of your mind by sting - forgot to post yesterday - love that song and the video is nice too

Day 4: yellow by coldplay - love that song - makes me happy

Day 3: Kill this love by Blackpink - a mixture of korean and english lyrics - not my type ? - but again I want to try out diffrent genres

Day 2: Sting & Cheb Mami: Desert Rose: This song is a combination of oriental/ arabic singing and the english lyrics by sting. In the music videos they show magnificent pictures of the desert and also the relationship between a horse mother and her child. I really like this song.

Day 1: Whatever you want by status quo. - a rock song - I think he is singing about a women - I deliberately picked a rock song because I usually dont listen to rock. I forget to mention that the purpouse of this is to build momentum with a habit.

Yesterday I had a Great mushroom Trip. It was in the evening when I spontaneously Decided to take mushrooms. At First I was a bit nervous because I had a difficult experience in the past. Then I watched a Video from the YouTube Channel wombed who is also a member of this Forum about expressing your true Voice through singing and at one point he Said something like „mother nature loves you and supports you“ (He was in nature) and I immedeatly thought about my mother and Feld her love. Then I cried for maybe half an hour which felt really good and I also felt Love to myself and was shocked when I realized how hard and mean I was towards myself. Then I watched some funny youtube Videos and felt emotionally really connected to the persons. Eventually I fell asleep.

@cetus56@Nahm@Serotoninluv Hey I was wondering what your experiences with mushrooms or other Psychedelics have been so far. I appreciate any contributions

The Trip was Great but I frei like I am basically where I was before that Trip in terms of my anxiety and boredom.

I did 18 minutes but the effects were only physical. I had intense vibrating and buzzing sensations in the Uppervody area and the was this very high sound in my ears. But no emotional releases or something

@Leo Gura Do you recommend for a beginner who has an overactive mind to first just do concentration meditation like breath counting or paired with mindfulness practice?

@Leo Gura What was your biggest challenge so far?

Hello guys and girls. I recently noticed something about the process of personal development. If you are familiar with shinzen young then you probably know about his concept about expansion and contraction. It basically states that everything in this existance is made out of expansions and contractions. After lesrning about this I started to notice it almost everywhere. For example in personal development there is first the gathering of information which can be looked as contraction and then the practice phase which can be looked as expansion. Thought its cool to look at it that way.

Thank you! I think standing meditation is very important and usefull because it realignes the body and lets you release tensions. In sitting meditation I always hat the problem with backpain. Ithink one can cure that through standing.

Has anyone of you ecperience with standing meditation? Specifically zhan Zhuang that is a qi qong form of standing meditation. I heard that it helps enourmously with your posture and energy levels. What are your experiences with it?

Everytime I meditate my body gets tensed and I dont now why. Its only in meditation. Do you now what I can do? Or had you the same experience?

Introduction I did it with some friends in a park. I know what you think. Dumb Idea.... But maybe not. Soo before I write about my trip I want to explain to you where I come frome. I have social anxiety and I feel uncomfortable with nearly everyone (except my mother and my girlfriend). A few days before the trip I started listening to Shinzen Youngs Audiobook "Breaking through difficult emotions", where he explains how to surrender to emotions. While listening something inside of me clicked and I started to realize how I was fighting my emotions of insecurety and anxiety in social situations. I understood it mentally but it was still challenging to embody it. When my friends do something I usually don't participate very often because of my social anxiety. This time I thought I should meet them again because if I don't they might exclude me from their social circle. I know this fear is stupid but I believe it lies in the fact that the exclusion from a group would have meant death for our ancestors and that primal instinct is still in me/us. Trip When I was with my friends I had the usual anxiety. But after we smoked the weed I could do what Shinzen Young spoke about in his audio book: being extremely open and mindful with the unpleasant sensations associated with this feeling of anxiety. I could ease into it. That kind of reduced the suffering because there was no resistance against those feelings. Thats when I had insight that I could live my whole live like this and that I don't have to suffer from any unpleasant body sensation. Through practice I could be living in this wonderful conscious state my whole life whereas before I thought that I could only access it in meditation. On my way home I could also be very mindful with my body sensations, which weren't pleasant (pain in the knee, sleepiness, coldness). Although they weren't pleasant I had the feeling that they couldn't really hurt me if I would only let them flow through my body. Conclusion I think the setting for the trip was exactly right for me because I learned that it is possible to experience unpleasant body sensations without suffering in the "real" world and most important with other people. Know I have the motivation to conquer my social anxiety.

@AdamDiC From my obversation you have two options in life: eather you go with flow of the masses and just do what everyone else is doing because its easy and it doesn't take serious effort or you do what you know you want to be doing even if its radically different. For example the author Joseph Campbell quit his PhD shortly before finishing it because he realized that it was not fulfilling him so he decided to go into the woods and live in a cabin for 5 years where he did nothing but read books. If you will just do what everyone else thinks is appropriate you will wake up at some day and realize that you missed a great opportunity! I wish you good luck

Thanks for the replies my friends I am sure that we will all conquer our social anxiety if we continue in this path. I wish all a good day

@AdamDiC Whaaaaat your fucking 17 . That is crazy haha. I think you should definitely do it because you will regret it if you dont.

Thanks man. Yes I recently started. For me meditation was always an on off thing but now I meditate for 45 min everyday and it feels great

Inspiration!!