Forestluv

Sometimes I sit and observe a pond that is still. After a while, I may throw a pebble in the water. As the ripples moves, a form of stillness has been disrupted. Yet also, a Stillness remains. The relative stillness is obvious and easy to see. The Absolute Stillness is more subtle and harder to see.

There is no perfect mental health. To me, you sound mature and responsible. I’ve gotten a lot of benefits from mini-doses. It’s opened my mind to many things about myself and the world we live in. Who knows, you may resonate well in the mini dose range and just stay there. You don’t need to go into high intense doses for benefits. The nice thing about lower doses are they are much easier to integrate and aren’t taxing to the mind and body.

It depends on the type of traveling. If someone goes to Vegas for blow and call girls, there probably won’t be a lot of growth and self actualization. Yet if someone does solo traveling without a lot of distractions, it’s a great for growth. As well, I’ve experienced a lot of growth immersing myself in foreign cultures.

Yes, to a human that feeling of immense responsibility can be overwhelming. Soul surfing has its ups and downs, yet can be a lot of fun. ?

I guess I’m asking who/what is the YOU experiencing autopilot or manual. Is YOU the experience itself or is YOU a thing that can be described?

No need to close the door. “mr mod” also has a lot to learn. ?

So would it be correct to say: the you state is aware of the manual state which is aware of the autopilot state? Would the “you” be “higher up” than the manual state? Like would you be god? Or am I going off track?

@Annoynymous Ime, edible cannabis goes much deeper and can be quasi-psychedelic. I would couple it with a strong intention for spiritual insights/PD and create a goid setting - such as a meditative environment, yoga, nature etc. Yet be careful, weed can be habit forming.

That yoga experience is a sweet spot. Sure, the ego will try to take ownership, figure it out, scheme for more and control the narrative if what it means. In a way, its trying to take care of the mind and body. Yet in another way, it is noise that distracts. Attachment/identification to that can be relaxed and let go of- and that sense of pure beingness can arise again and be explored.

A few things I would consider. First, breaking up with someone can be extremely difficult mentally and emotionally. I’ve had breakups that took me months to recover from. Second, after a breakup you are not her psychologist or best friend for support. Thats not your responsibility. She needs to develop her own support group. Yet with that said, if someone was would likely face severe hardship if I abruptly cut off all contact, I would try to have a transition period, with clear boundaries that we aren’t getting back together. Leaving doors open and allowing another to have a false sense of hope can be harmful to them. For example, one of my ex GFs and I moved across the country and lived together for five years. I got the better job and owned the house. When we broke up, I couldn’t kick her out of the house. She had little savings and nowhere to go. So we set up a side room as her bedroom for six months , which allowed her time to save money, find a better job and a decent rental. Yet we had clear boundaries as now being roommates. If I was breaking up with someone and thought they could have a mental breakdown and had no support. I would probably shift to being a friend for a short transition time, while they were forming a new support group and independence. Yet this can be hard if the other person has a strong desire to get back together.

@Raptorsin7 It’s very tempting to assume that my spiritual path is the best for others. This occurs in all sorts of spiritual paths, including psychedelics. Just because psychedelics have been instrumental to your path doesn’t mean it is universal for everyone. Be careful extrapolating your own experience and values onto others. I did the same thing when I first used psychedelics. Since they worked so well for me, I thought they would work well for everyone. Yet this is not the case. Don’t be so dogmatic. You have a lot to learn.

@Prevailer I’m curious: who/what is aware of the manual state?

@Prevailer I only see a description of your autopilot conscious states (2 computers). I don’t see any description of your manual conscious state. Only that it is superior.

This assumes that consciousness is within a brain, rather than a brain being within consciousness. Once this is revealed, it’s hard to go back.

I would say we are now past the stage that psychedelics can *potentially* help people with mental illnesses. The efficacy of psychedelic therapy has been clearly shown in clinical studies and we are now moving into the stage of increasing psychedelic effectiveness. Psychedelic therapy is still new to the general public. Due to decades of stigmatization of psychedelics, the general population is still mostly ignorant and sees psychedelics as a scary drug like heroine. To me, stories like how a woman overdosed on LSD and had her bi-polar cured is dramatic and attention-getting. Yet if the goal is to help educate the public about psychedelic therapy, I don’t think its the best poster child. It comes across as a crazy, miraculous cure and doesn’t include any concerns, precautions and side effects. In terms of advancing the movement of psychedelic therapy forward, I think grounded mainstream stories are more effective. For example, psychologists in the US state of Oregon have come together and created a ballot initiative for voters to allow psychologists to use psychedelics to help treat their patients with mental illnesses. The psychologists have made a convincing case using clinical studies and their own professional experience. This type of thing is very influential in changing public perception because it comes across as mature and responsible.

Mindset is a big factor in shaping a trip. Having a mindset that assumes and expects a trip will be terror and hell will invite that terror and hell. There can be discomfort from prior conditioning, yet our mindset, beliefs and expectations are also a big factor. If you are convinced that a breakthrough must be terror and hell, there is a much higher likelihood of it being so as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are in that space, I would spend less time reading about stories of terror and hell and let go of thought stories of terror and hell. I would re-orient my mindset. If you are experiencing high anxiety/panic even before taking a dose, I would use small doses and work to re-orient my mind. As well, I would not get drunk before a 5-Meo trip in an effort to out-maneuver anxiety. I think it would greatly alter the energetics. Even a Benzo would be a better option than getting drunk, yet I would also discourage the use of benzos (except in certain situations in long multi-hour trips).

Clinical studies have shown psychedelics to significantly help some people with mental illnesses. Yet to state “LSD cures bipolar illness” based one one case seems misleading to me. With that logic we could state “LSD causes irreparable HPPD”. It’s much more nuanced than that. There are many different forms of mental illnesses, genetic background, childhood conditioning and karmic loads that influence the effects of psychedelics. Suggesting that curing mental illnesses such as bipolar is as simple as taking 1,100 ug of LSD is misleading. People need to be cautious with claims they read online. Yet people with psychedelic experience also need to be responsible. People with mental illness desperate for relief may read cure all claims like this and be tempted to take high doses of psychedelics to cure themself. This could make matters worse for a newbie with no psychedelic experience. The clinical trials that have shown positive results of psychedelics involved patient screening, therapy prior to psychedelic exposure, a safe controlled environment for the trip, moderate doses and post-trip therapy sessions to help the patient acclimate and integrate. They did not involve having random people with mental illnesses take high doses on their own and then see what happens.

@Lento ok. Looks like I misinterpreted your comment. ??

It is just a metaphor, not literal. Thoughts are just partial truths and can’t capture it all.

@Lento Ime, it would be really hard to reach such meta awareness without psychedelics. Dreams have had a lot of value for me, yet I don’t think they would have been sufficient and it would have been very difficult to develop the skills fir such dreamwork. Dreams have given me some some deep insights, yet generally not the radical nature of psychedelics. In terms of paradigms, I would use an analogy of a hotel in which each room is a different paradigm/state. Dreams can allow me a fuzzy visit to some of the rooms within the hotel. Psychedelics can allow meta awareness of the entire hotel, becoming the hotel and any room in the hotel. As well as no hotel. This isn’t quite right either, yet the best I analogy I can come up with right now. To me, what you describe sounds like visiting some rooms within the hotel. And I see a lot of value in that. For others, perhaps dreams are the key to revelations. If so, thats awesome. I’m not suggesting there are hard rules in what psychedelics and dreams are restricted to revealing.

I would consider Tier1 as attachment/identification of actually being a character. And Tier2 has having the meta awareness that a character is being played. Regarding “the need to transcend- transcend-transcend all the time”, who/what has that need? And who/what is relishing in the state “I’m” in now?

@EternalForest That's like saying there isn't much to do outside of a cave and it's best just to live inside the cave. Yet on the other hand, I do think you make a good point that there is a price to pay for self-transcendence. Immersion into a self construct can have personal highs and lows - since the the identification as the character is so strong. Yet I think you are over-playing this price. I wouldn't use the metaphor of a movie character. Another way of looking at it is someone believing they were a dog. And then saying "transcending a dog identity isn't worth it because I won't get to smell dog butts and pee on fire hydrants anymore". Yea, there is a price to pay, yet I would say it's a small price relative to the reward.

From a nondual perspective, there is one singularity so there is no difference between dream states, sober states and psychedelic states. One can define a sober mindstate and a non-sober mindstate. The "non-sober" mindstate would include all states "altered" from the sober state, including dream states, psychedelic states and many other mindstates (flow states, schizophrenic state etc). This is a low-resolution bare-bones basic duality that loses all distinctions and nuances. . . It would be like saying the sport of soccer is the default and all sports not soccer are essentially the same. Then someone might ask "Isn't tennis and basketball the same?". Ime, dream states and psycedelic states have very different essences. For example, dream states generally have much lower levels of awareness and people need to practice techniques to raise their awareness to basic entry-level awareness called lucid dreaming. I spent months practicing lucid dreaming methods and only reached begginner to intermediate levels.. . . In contrast, psychedelic trips are hyper-aware. For me, the awareness has become so intense that it was traumatic to my mind and body. . . Another difference I would say it that all my dreams are easily contextualized into imagery and language. Some may be whacky and hard to give meaning, yet they can be easily described. In contrast, many trips are post-rational and beyond anything the mind can put into words or images. Yes, one can dismiss a trip as a hallucination. Yet in doing so, one is giving more relevance to a non-psychedelic state than a psychedelic state. Why would you consider a sober mind "normal" and a psychedelic mind "hallucination"? If one calls a psychedelic state a hallucination, then one must call a sober state a hallucination as well. For example, from a materialist brain perspective - in a sober mindstate colors don't exist. The brain converts wavelengths of light into chemical reactions within cone cells, which gets relayed through the thalamus to the visual cortex where the *hallucination* of color occurs. Even the hardest core materialist neuroscience would say colors are an hallucination created by the brain. This is no different than the mind creating another form of hallucination on a psychedelic. There is also further exploration into what is "real vs. imagined".

I think we may be using the term "spiritual entities" a bit differently. In terms of what I think your context is, I would say my mystical experiences don't involve exogenous spirit entities, like aliens, machine elves, spirit guides etc. During one Aya ceremony, there sorta was an exogenous spirit entity. Yet, it doesn't seem quite right to describe it like that. . . there isn't a sense of separation like "me" over here and a "spirit entity" over there. . . So I might not be of much help in the spirit entity research you are doing.

Another view is that Bloomberg would be the Right's take-over of the Left. There would no longer be a Left to counter the Right. In a way, that's more dangerous than Trump.