Tightrope Walker

Are you eating well? Are you spendin a lot of time alone or in company?

@Jed Vassallo I don't understand. I'm on the website and the videos are embeded directly from youtube.

HI dear friends, I come from reddit and there's something I need to address, if it hasn't been already. The thing is, they're talking about taking measures against Leo and actualized.org. They range from reporting his youtube channel (for supposedly "promoting" controlled drugs), and they go as far as to consider reporting him to the DEA for possession of illegal substances. This is not the first time i see this, in reddit, quora, and I have even seen other users straightforwardly threaten him on this very forum. It is not my intention to bring negativity here, I just think it would be an immense loss if, at the very least, his more than 400 hundred videos get taken down from youtube. I have downloaded many of them, but I don't have enough space on my disks to store all of them. I also think that maybe uploading them on a different platform would be a cautious thing to do. I remember maybe one or two tears ago when in one of his videos he said that as his videos were going to get deeper and deeper, he was going to risk more in his life. I believe he was talking about your purpose in life, and how sometimes it may imply some extreme consequences, like being assasinated for example, like in the case of Abraham Lincoln, John Lennon, or even Christ. I don't know if Leo is aware of all this and if he has already taken some measures, I don't know if he's already fully aware of the constantly changing Youtube policies and how these could affect him (most probably he does), but I do know there has been a lot of information lost in the past in the Internet, and I would hate losing this channel since I think I grew so much thanks to it, as so many other people. I love it's "no-bullshit" approach and frankly, I think these people are way out of context in the way they're judging him. Should we dismiss them as just trolls with no power over here whatsoever? We're in strange times, freedom is being taken away by people who can be considered even less than trolls. Should we be worrying? I thought I should start a new thread but I wasn't sure where to post it, so I posted it here since this is were reddit took me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/f9n4iw/leo_guras_new_favorite_drug_dpt_has_killed_at/

I believe the key is here. We tend to have like this neurotic need to change something, to try something different, to resist. How but, try to stay in silence more and more, and see what happens, since trying to do something from a sick mind doesn't seem to do the trick, right? Maybe, as an experiment, suspend the necessities of ego for a certain lapse of time , for example, the need to "improve", to put an end to all of this, etc. Try and see what happens, take note. I believe that, whatever it is, it's never going to end, it doesn't have an end, it's endless, and I can't change that. I probably can change my bitter attitude towards it, though. That alone could make a huge difference. To tell you the truth, for me it's almost three consecutive years trying every-single-day. And I still feel so far from it. It doesn't matter anymore, it's like planting a tree. Maybe you will die before the tree, but there's also other people, our kids, next generation of humans, you know, other people besides oneself. Hope this helps my friend, try to relax your mind, you're gonna be OK.

As I said, it is a long, tedious road. Of course it is the hardest part my friend. Work for what? To be happy. Nothing outside of yourself can make you happy. Which is good news. You don't have to change anything outside of yourself. In fact, I don't think you can. But you can actually change things about yourself. About your psychology. And what is the point? Well, you may know what is the point, or you may not know what is the point, but there is most likely a point. In fact, I believe that is one question that hunts us since the begining of mankind. What is the point? Maybe the point is beyond our cognition. For your ego, there is no point. Money, drugs, sex, you can learn how to have all that, and your ego would still not see any point, becoming more and more bored. The point is to be here and now and happy with what is. Ok, let's get practical, try this: do your best effort to eliminate (even if it is for just one or two seconds) your thoughts. Look around you, but don't think, don't add any story to what you see. If you just forget everything you remember, everything you think you know, every point of view you have about this, every memory from yesterday, or the day before, and just see what is happening right now, even if it is for ONE OR TWO SECONDS... is there anything so fucking wrong right now? Out of your own mind, I mean. One last thing: accepting what is, of course it is not some magic solution you're gonna get today. It's like someone's gonna tell you "accept what is", and you're gonna say "omg, you're right" and just like that you become "enlightened" or something. Fuck no. Accepting what is, that shit is gonna take years of practice. Learn how to meditate, keep it a daily habit, and fuck what your mind thinks. Yesterday it thought something else, tomorry's gonna change of point of view again, moods change, everything changes. Reality is still real. When I'm depressed and see no point, I try to remind myself that I'm being kind of immature and my traumas are resurfacing, yet again, and clouding my mind and my thinking. It's like I'm sick or something. So I just meditate and accept my mood for that day. See it that helps bro, there are many possible solutions, but you have to step out at least a little bit of yourself.

Many hows. One possibility is becoming aware of your resistance to what is. Becoming aware of yourself, of the voice inside your head that may not be as real and absolute as you think it is. I came across actualized.org three years ago because of a youtube suggestion called "why am I so depressed?". And Leo just said "because your psychology is SHIT". Trying to turn this psychology into something else is a long, tedious road. To be honest, sometimes I tend to lose patience and see it all pointless and think stuff like "this is never going to change, my psychology is going to be shit forever". What I found has helped me lately is just stop expècting anything. Just keep trying, even if I keep failing. Don't do it just for the reward, do it for the sake of doing it. I tend to be a pesimist myself, but I try to be more rational and objective. So, one afternoon I ended up thinking "ok, suppose this is gonna be shit till the end of time, if I don't try something, I make absolutely sure this is fact, but if I do try, at least I know I tried. And who knows, maybe I am surprised to see some years later that things have changed in one way or another for the better, even if it's not as my ego expected. Hope this helps.

@tarax Actually I believe I do grind my teeth at night, and while I'm awake too. I've only become aware of all the tension in my body after I started my meditation habit. I've had a few trips with psychedelics where my whole body relaxed in such a way that when I relaxed my jaw a loud click sound happened. Maybe that's the reason my ears got better, because I'm working on those tensions and trying to relax. However, I still spend most of the time unconsciously quite tense. Hopefully it will keep on improving over time. @solr It's gonna be extremely difficult given the distance and my current economic reality, she lives more than 3200 miles away from me. However, I do think you may be right. I could probably make it a goal to go and meet her this year no matter how I do it. True service may be the best strategy against ego's mechanisms. Thank you friends a lot for helping this guy with your answers!

@Hardkill You know, with time I got to be intimate with quite a few people, and one cannot imagine how many of them have to live with some kind of condition, it's just that it doesn't really show. Most people see me play and don't imagine I have this issue going on. Most people probably has some kind of problem or limitation, some of them cannot eat certain stuff, others have some kind of problem in their knee or articulation, some have a problem with headaches, some are getting regular treatment for some organ that is failing, and so on. But you don't get to know that about a person until you know them more closely, because at face value, they all look perfectly fine and normal. As for me, I have some periods where my ears feel more sensitive, but mostly, I'm feeling more and more comfortable. Sometimes I forget about this, which is good and unthinkable three years ago. Comparing to before, yes, they're a lot better, to me it's a fucking miracle. I just have to take some precautions with loud noises, and avoid headphones as much as I can, even though given my work as a musician, I may need them often when recording and stuff. It certainly is! @Shadowraix I was re-reading your intricate answer and there is something you said that made me realize something: nothing's gonna be better with me just moving there. It's an external solution, on the inside it's gonna be the same, and so on the outside, no matter where I am or who I am with. Man, it's actually harder than that. It's gotta be an honest inner effort to accept things as they are in order to actually go do what I have to do, what I can do, what I truly desire to. Wow, thank you so much for this. Now I have a new question: what are some possible ways this resistance could be tackled head on as you say? Or at least, how to eliminate delays to start doing this consistently, as I believe it's not something you can achieve in a couple of minutes with permanent results. I guess I can forgive myself, and become at peace with my current state, but I can't imagine forgiving myself unless I actually start doing something about it.

@Shadowraix Those are some very good questions I can ask myself in order to get things clearer and I thank you very much for that. I desire to contribute with high consciousness music (as progessively high as I can), while at the same time tackling the music bussiness so I can cover my basic needs. Right now I'm writting music that reflects where I am in life: I'm talking about feelings of guilt, anxiety, paranoia, repressed feelings and so on. Even though it may seem like negative stuff, I like this and it helps me become more aware of all this and to contemplate on these thoughts and emotions. Taking into account my experience with other bands as a listener, I know it can be a healing relief to some people to listen to some songs about these feelings, so you know you're not alone in this struggle and realize there can be actually something done about it. This is a very interesting insight, I hadn't really thought of it that way. I don't think I would move there if everything was perfectly fine, I guess I would help with money every month and I would go visit once in a while as she grows up. Maybe one day when she's older, in the improbable case she wants to move in with me for some reason, I would find it perfectly fine. But I don't feel like I want to go and live there right now, I had other plans before this happened and I don't seem to be ready to give them up. I would only be doing that out of guilt and pressure. Of course not, but I'm afraid of myself, and afraid of time. She's three years old now, I'm almost thirty, and I still haven't figured my shit out. I could probably try to work harder on doing this, it's just that I keep trying and failing and as time runs out, sometimes I begin to lose patience. @zambize I do think she's better off without me as I am right now. I believe I would be a terrible father and I would probably cause more damage to her by being present than by being absent. Then again, my ego could be making all this shit up in order to escape from it, I don't trust myself and my mental mechanisms anymore. You're right, I've been trying to find out what exactly I feel I need to do, but I could probably try harder and more seriously, the situation requires it. You made me think about the fact that I don't tend to imagine more positive scenarios where we can be all happy and at peace. Sometimes negative thoughts and emotions make it all seem so somber that it's hard to react in a positive way. Thank you for that, I guess I could be contemplating on both sides of the picture, bright and dark, and probably get some fresh insights. Thank you so much for your answers and your support guys, you're helping me a lot and I'm really grateful! May all the love you send be returned and multiplied.

@Hardkill Thank you for your support, it does make me feel better that you think I'm not that bad of a person after all, I really do apreciate that My ears never got to be the same again, but they're so much better. As I long as I take good care of them and not expose them to overwhelming noise, I'm able to keep making music, so I'm very thankful for that.

Ok, this is gonna be a long story, I feel like I need to write it all down. My deepest thanks to each one who is gonna read the whole thing. When I was 24 years old, my father died. I had just been discovering new faces of truth, taking shrooms and reading about ego and stuff, and I became depressed to understand how I had misled my life until that point. Then, he passed away at 52, as a result of a neurotic life where he had many addictions and a condition of being a pathological liar. I even got to meet three siblings that he managed to hide for more than 15 years. So, I saw the opportunity to actually do what I would never do but I deeply wanted to do: after I finished college, I took a backpack and went on a long trip as a musician on the road through three countries and more that 30 cities. It was quite awesome for a while and I felt quite thrilled, but at the same time I resented my parents so much, because I felt psychologically very ill, and I blamed it all on them, so I wasn't exactly dealing with that wound very wisely. After nine months of travelling, I met a girl and she really fell in love with me. I was just very happy to be having sex with her because she was a sexy, young, foreign girl that I liked. And sometimes it is difficult for me to get the amount of sex I would really like to get. However, for her it was more than just sex: she fell so in love that she left her group and joined me in my trip. All my egotistical brain could think was "this will be fun for me", but I wasn't measuring the possible consequences. I wasn't having enough empathy to realize that she had very different feelings. To make it short, after a month or so, she became pregnant. At the same time, I had developed a rare condition in my ears, they were hurting very bad, progressively. I thought it would go away but it was getting worse. When I found out the news that she was pregnant, I considered the possibility of moving in to her country in order to take care of the child while forming a band there and starting a music career. But I was very worried about the pain in my ears, so I sent her to her country and I went to Peru to see a Shaman. We had some intense ayahuasca ceremonies, there was a particularly pleasurable one, and a particularly unpleasurable one. As the pain wouldn't go away, the Shaman said I should see a doctor. So, after a year and a half of having left my country, I went back and I saw a doctor. He told me I had developed Hyperacusis, a rare condition that they didn't know much about. He told me there was no cure and that I should just stay away from noise and endure with the pain. I felt all hope fading away, and my heart breaking into a million pieces. That was the moment where my worst depression period started. I seriously considered killing myself. I had felt like killing myself many times before, but this time, I was doing some research on how to do it in the quicker and less painful way. To me, my life was over, I had been an irresponsible fuck who got a girl I didn't even know pregnant, and I couldn't even talk because the sound of my own voice made me dizzy, as my ears had become extremely sensitive. It hurt like a motherfucker. I had a friend who supported me and told me I should find a way to still make music, even if I went deaf, if that was my true desire. He told me that if I was really willing to end it all, then, I didn't want to live as a musician that much. So I accepted the support from my friends, because my family couldn't really support me, not economically, not emotionally. Some of my friends gave me a place to sleep and be alone, away from the noise. As it turned out, I slowly started playing again, because I really do love that so much. But I had to use ear plugs, and I couldn't sing because I felt like my head would explode. One of my friends got me a job as a receptionist in a hostel during the night shift, where I could be in silence and have at least some money, because I couldn't even buy me food. After some time, the pain was getting more endurable, and hope was slowly starting to come back. But I was also becoming anxious because my daughter had already been born and I had missed that. So, I took a risk and started playing in a band again, taking some precautions for my ears (I still do to this day). I had a fight with my mom, for the first time ever I yelled at her and told her to go fuck herself. Of course, I'm not proud at all of having done that, but I'm not gonna lie either: that was the moment when I truly felt my resentment toward her fading away. However, after that I had to find a place to stay, and luckly, I was now able to afford one. Shortly after having moved in to my new room, and after having watched Leo's no-bullshit guide to meditation, I started meditating, and a serious project in a band with one of my friends that I mentioned earlier (the one with the advice about my true desire). My plan was to raise enough money in order to move to the country where my daughter lives, and be with her. But as time went by, we made an album, we had some succesful presentations in our city, my ears were slowly getting better (I didn't believe that to be possible, specially after having read so much discouraging information about hyperacusis on the internet) and I realized that, as shitty and egomaniac as I may be, I really didn't want to be father, I just cared for music. I was planning to move close with my daughter, but it was out of guilt. In my heart, I hated the possibility of having to raise a child I didn't even want to have in the first place, with a girl I really didn't love, or even know that well. So, I told her that as soon as our band would make it, and I had enough money, I would go and finally meet my child (who by then was already turning one year old), and support her, at least economically. I asked her for patience. Me and my friend (and his family) moved to a neighbor country, because ours was falling apart and it was becoming impossible for musicians to thrive there. Most of my fellow musicians who stayed have already turned it into a hobby, or live in poverty, with just a few exceptions, who nevertheless need like three jobs to make ends meet. I have been living in this new country for more than two years now, and the band hasn't "made it" yet. According to my friend, it is my fault. And he's probably right. My daughter now is three years old, and her mother still waits to get some support from my part. But I feel rejection. In my mind and according to my supposed principles, this is wrong and I'm and irresponsible fuck, but those are my true feelings. I hate that I got her pregnant and I regret it so bad, I wish I could turn back time. It feels like it's gonna hunt me for the rest of my life. Even though most people in my social circle don't know about this (only my closest friends and relatives), I feel the guilt and paranoia inside my mind that everybody's gonna hate me. A couple of days ago, the band was on national TV. As it turns out, the TV channel airs in her country too. My daughter's grandmother watched us, and she got really angry. She wrote to our facebook page asking when am I going to support my daughter. I wanna be really honest with you guys, sometimes I even forget I have a daughter. I go weeks without even sending a message. Her mother asks me to call her, to be present any way I can, even if I can't physically go there. And I agree with her, but then I just... forget. I don't know, I don't really seem to care about it, even though I believe I should. And I can't have respect for a person like that. I hate myself. But at least I don't hate my father anymore, how could I? He traumatized the shit out of his children, but he was still present somehow. Sometimes I wished he wasn't though. Likewise, I find myself such an egotistical sick fuck that I actually believe my daughter's better off without me. I've been following actualized.org for almost three years. Thanks to Leo I started a daily meditation habit two and a half years ago, and it made wonders for me. I'm still a sick shithead, but I feel like I was so much worse. However, I have reached a point where I do realize I have been neglecting my problems, ignoring them, and just messing around without achieving any actual deep purpose. Almost three years have passed since we started this band, but we haven't made it, I haven't worked hard enough, and to be completly truthful, sometimes I just indulge too much, smoking weed all day and doing nothing productive. I supposedly took all this time away from my daughter because I cared so much about music and I was so thankful to be able to do this after my health issue. But my actions don't show that. I stare at the mirror and I see a phony. And I see a future where things happen to him, things that happen to all people like him sooner or later: the day he gets to pay for the consequences of his acts. I'm not at peace, and I don't know what to do. I try to change but I end up following the same old patterns, again and again. I try to quite my bad habits, I get success for two or three months, then I go back and never try again for years. I have these thoughts in my mind about what should be the right thing, but my feelings tell me otherwise. For the last couple of weeks I've been thinking stuff like I have already failed, I should probably just go to her country and take care of her, maybe find a 9 to 5 job, even if I don't want to, because here, I'm not actually doing anything important. I'm just delaying stuff in order to pleasure myself, and one day, it will be too late to correct that. But the minute I seriously consider it and start planning on it, I feel a loud "noooooo" inside my mind. Is that my ego? Should I just go against it? Should I sacrifice my own desires for my daughter? After all, she's an innocent child and did nothing wrong, and to this day she hasn't even met her father in person. It's just that... I suspect that this girl got pregnant and did it all on purpose in order to attach me to her. And she succeeded. Sometimes I hate her because of that and I don't want to talk to her ever again. And I don't want to be in her country, I really don't, I just want to live as if nothing had happened, but it's not gonna be possible, deep down I know it. After all, I did it all to myself, I could have been wiser, smarter, more empathetic, more clear about my true purpose. Even if I couldn't have been all that, I could have just used a fucking condom. So I probably deserve to deal with the pain of sacrifice because of my stupid thoughlessness. So, what do you guys think a true actualizer would do? What would be the most conscious thing to do, the highest decision, the shreya. Your opinions are very important to me, this is a beautiful community and I thank in advance to each one who took the time to read this and drop their opinion here. I need to take a decision, and your opinions will be really useful for me. Thank you all.

@Richard Alpert "you need to kill your parents..." Ok, done! And now? "...not physically but metaphorically" Oh, fuck...

Wow, nice topic!! If I had to tell you my experience I would be repeating @HII's words.

Love it! Looks like what happened to my face once, while trippin on 2ce.

I'm from Argentina so most of my music is in Spanish. However, I'm releasing an album in English this year. I've got another post related to it that you may be interested about =D.