Forestluv

@Raphael I would trust your underlying feelings. If you genuinely want to solitary time, go for it. I'm more introverted and I often tell people "no thanks". One can do it gracefully like "I appreciate the invite, yet I won't be able to". People don't get offended when I phrase it lightly and after a while, stop asking. For some things, there is more of an obligation and I have to weigh the pros and cons. For example, if my co-workers are going out for drinks after work, it's easy for me to say "no, thanks". Yet if a close friend invited me to her wedding, that would be a different situation. I would likely be somewhat uncomfortable, yet I would go because I value our friendship and it would be a very important event for her.

@Cody_Atzori Below is a fun video you might find interesting. Even at the level of the brain, that "me" is a complete illusion from nothingness. Reality = Illusion.

You betcha. You may want to try some yin yoga - it's perfect to reach these deeper states of mind-body relaxation through stretching. And it will likely take you somewhere. I like YT videos of Aprille Walker at the Ranger Station in this area.

@Nivsch If there are only two options, I would support the higher conscious candidate. I want the highest conscious people to have more power to control the narrative and make decisions that affect public policy. This will stabilize and normalize the higher conscious level in society. If orange-green becomes stabilized and normalized as the average conscious level, those at blue-orange will get pulled up. With orange-green in power, there will be resistance to evolving to high green/yellow, but the average conscious is much closer than if blue-orange was in power. With orange-green in power, mature solid green has a better chance to emerge, imo

I've vaped freebase with a standard vape at 428 degrees F. I'm not sure if it is the optimal temperature, yet it's as high as my vape goes. I have gotten good results (good for me anyway). Yet I have not reached breakthrough levels vaping. For me, vaping gives more management control - almost like a dial of intensity. It kicks in so fast. I can have mild intensity on 2 inhales or moderate intensity on 5 inhales. It's easy peasy and smooth. It takes out the anxiety aspect for me because nothing "takes over" or is possessive. Imo, it is by far the best roa for newbies getting their feet wet. Plus, you just need a couple mg of freebase. Plugging is more like a wave. Once it's in there, the wave takes over. . .

@Scholar Thanks for your take of the video. I find it an insightful view of a psychological dynamic that I had not realized before.

@FredFred That creates a dualism. Absolute truth vs. Absolute falsehood. Absolute includes everything. There is no escape.

I think there could be value in a certain context. For example a psychologist might find value and ask if this individual is engaged in a particular psychological dynamic that leads to misinterpretation and blocks him from a deeper understanding. What might that be? Perhaps learning about what is fueling his underlying thought story, how that story serves him and how it prevents expansion can allow us to develop methods to help people in a similar situation (that want help). For example, we might be able to form more efficient methods of deconstruction and disidentification. This could be helpful to others. From this perspective, his perspective and underlying psychological dynamics would have value. (This of course assumes he is contracted within a psychological self dynamic - which I think he is. Others may see him differently).

It's like looking for my glasses and suddenly realizing they were on my face the whole time. . .

Whoa, let's slow our roll here for a second. . . What I'm seeing is conflation between relative and absolute as well as extrapolating personal experience. Notice how the mind thinks "I had it very similar to his situation". And then uses that assumption to establish truth for subsequent statements. In this case "amazing insights that don't stick". The mind does this again when it says "Again, very similar to Leo's situation". Notice how the mind is again using an assumption to make a statement as if it was true - in this case that psychedelics have caused another person frustration, expectations and demotivation. . . .That is the relative experience of your mind-body. Be careful assuming that it is the experience of another mind-body. This is a filter that creates distortion within the mind. It is a major distraction, ime. . . . As well. . . I'm not saying this is your intention, yet assumptions can also be a sneaky way for the mind to discredit another's direct experience and elevate their own direct experience / beliefs. In this case, using assumptions to label another's experience as having expectations, frustrations and demotivation. I'm more curious about your direct experience with 5-meo-dmt. If I may ask a few more questions. . . If you are willing to answer my questions please don't refer to Leo and focus on your 5-meo usage. You say that you were not able to integrate amazing 5-meo insights into your daily life. I am trying to develop methods that can help people that are unable to integrate their 5-meo insights. I've been working to develop methods in my own experience and value the experience of others. 1. How many times have you tried 5-meo? What were your dosages and roa? (This can have a big impact on the 5-meo experience.) 2. You said you had "amazing 5-meo insights". Could you describe these "amazing insights"? What would you say was your most amazing 5-meo-induced insight? 3. After 5-meo trips with amazing insights, what practices/activities (if any) did you do to specifically integrate the insights? How long after the trips did you engage in the practices and how much time did you invest? 4. Looking back on your 5-meo trips, what is one practice/activity you think you could have done to help integrate your amazing 5-meo insights into your ongoing life? To me, it sounds like you are saying 5-meo yields amazing insights, yet you were unable to integrate them. I'm really curious why you were unable to integrate them. Integration can be a challenge for some people and I think it would be awesome to develop methods to help such people.

Ok, if there is no identification, that would change your post to something like below. . . "The mind-body referred to as "me" is experiencing extreme discomfort from overly sensitivity. There are some people out there, whos energies are so low that "my" mind-body just feels down and worthless all the time. "My" mind-body can't really live like that anymore...it hurts deeply. "My" mind-body can somehow feel their sadness and depression which causes a lot of depression sensations in "my" mind-body." That's certainly better than identifying with the discomfort and suffering. Yet, even if we remove the identification to the mind-body, the mind-body is still experiencing all that crap. Why live with that? Why not deconstruct it, heal and set up healthy boundaries at the personal level so that the mind-body is not experiencing pain and discomfort? "My" mind-body kinda likes the experiences of love, joy, wholeness, laughter, wonder, awe, connection etc. Enlightenment exists whether the mind-body is being loved or trashed. Why not take care of the mind-body with love? Why drink sewer water if we can drink fresh mountain spring water?

@DrewNows This is a great video on understanding healthy personal boundaries for those with sensitive/empathic tendencies. Thanks for sharing it.

@David Hammond I love that video

I've gone through this myself and it can create really unhealthy inter-personal dynamics and cause distress to the mind-body. I think whether enlightenment can overcome it is a very tricky and nuanced question. Personally, I would focus on personal boundaries. Empaths are known for having poor boundaries and it was the number 1 issue for me - by far. Looking back to when I was immersed in the negative aspects of empathy - the best thing I did was to learn about how to establish healthy personal boundaries.

For me, this sets up a polarity of opposites - which can be useful at times in a practical sense yet has caused me all sorts of confusion as well. I find it helpful to think of it as a coin with heads and tails. Is heads and tails the same thing? Well, yes and no. You can look at each side of the coin as being different. This can have practical value - for example before the start of a football game, they will flip a coin to see which team gets the ball first. Yet, from another perspective, they are the same thing. They are the same coin. They are fully connected to each other. Without heads there is no tails. The next question for me is "what if I stop calling it 'heads' and 'tails'"? What would happen? What would remain? Then, a whole new level of meaning for "God", "Love", and "Oneness" arose.

Ime, words and concepts are helpful in a certain context. For example. . . for many years I was in what some refer to as the "oberver + object" phase. I could reach a place in which it seemed like there was a neutral observer simply observing thoughts and stuff in my environment. When I sat in buddhist groups, many beginner's would get confused by this concept, yet I just understood the teacher because I had direct experience. . . So, a couple years ago I'm watching a Rupert Spira video in which he talks about the "observer + object" stage as a halfway point. I had thought it was the final destination, so I was perplexed. Rupert describes merging observer and object into one as the next stage. He gave an analogy of a movie screen and pixels. I remember not really "getting it". My mind really wanted to figure it out and advance to this stage. It was frustrating at times. I spent a couple days trying to figure it out and at times convinced myself I had figured it out. Yet my direct experience was still being "observer + object". I just had to let the "advanced" stage go for a while. Then I started getting curious about it - but not in a "figure it out kind of way". In a curious way. Like I would go hiking in nature and look around me and the thought would arise "How is this like a movie screen?". It was like the Universe was teasing me. This disappeared for a while and then one day I was out in nature and just had this experience and it was like "that's it". That is what Rupert was talking about. It was just a glimpse, yet it was crystal clear and I started laughing. I realized there are many different ways one could try to explain it. Rupert's is just one way. So here's the thing. . . if I didn't watch that Rupert Spira video, would I still be locked in the "observer + object" stage like I was for 20 years? Did he plant a seed through words and imagery into my mind? I say he did. I think that imagery was a seed. Over-analyzing it was like putting the seed in rotten soil with no water. Yet just being chill with it and curious was like rich soil and water. Then one day that seed sprouted like magic. Now, consider the opposite. . . what if I had that realization without watching Rupert's video? Would I have been aware of the realization? Would I have "caught" it? Or would it have slipped by? Even if I did notice it, would I have dismissed it as being "kind cool, but 'woo woo'"? How many glimpses have I gotten in my life that slipped away? I would say a lot. Overall, I would say words and concepts are valuable in what people often refer to as "pointers", yet it is important for me to not analyze the pointer itself. Rather, to relax the mind and get curious as to what is being pointed to. Let the pointer get planted in my mind like a seed. I think it's good to water it from time to time, yet digging it up to keep checking if it sprouted yet, getting annoyed it hasn't sprouted and adding lots of chemicals on it to make it sprout is counter-productive.

@CreamCat You have made some strong developmental/expansion progress over the last year. Nice work.

This is just what is arising for me. . . There is a difference between the mind trying to explain something in words vs. something trying to explain itself through the mind / words. Consider someone who is color-blind. That person reads about colors, conceptualizes about colors and has many discussions about what colors are like. He tries to explain to himself what colors are with thoughts and words. That will ultimately fail, right? Now imagine this color-blind person receives stem cell therapy and can now see colors. He is amazed. His color-blind friend approaches him and says "Omigosh, you can see colors now??!! What's it like?". The person who can now see colors tries to explain it in words, yet cannot to his color-blind friend. He does his best by saying things "It's sorta like this. . . ". Yet nothing can quite capture it. This will ultimately fail as well. Can you see how the two approaches are totally different? In the first, he had no direct experience of seeing colors and trying to figure out what it is like through words. In the second case, actual colors are trying to explain themselves through words.

I think it’s cool you are being honest with where you are at. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince myself of something I didn’t truly believe and it didn’t work. For me, the direct experience is primary, the concepts are secondary. A couple of things that helped me: without the story of being a finite human, what is there? I had to be careful not to engage in the opposite thought story of “I am not a finite human”. Rather, in the absence of any thought story what is there? This allowed me to go beneath the surface level of thoughts and concepts into the deeper level of body sensations. Also, engaging in flow states was helpful. Being in awe of a beautiful sky, being in the zone playing a sport, being in a flow with a musical instrument in which the instrument is playing itself. In all these states, there is no “me”. No human, no story. It is simply being one with the environment and what is actually happening now.

♥️ ?

@noselfnofun I think that is a very good question and I think it depends on several variables - such as the nature of the substance itself, your physiology, energetics etc. Similar to what you describe, I would say psychedelics temporarily reveal “something” and that something can be difficult to integrate into daily life. I often have an afterglow in which I am fully connected and insights are so clear and obvious. Yet, like a dream it can wear off - I find reflecting and writing down the “dream” to be helpful. Yet there are also aspects of a trip that stick. It’s like once I see something, I can’t unsee it. For example, the first time I experienced “ego death” and “rebirth”. That fundamentally changed my awareness and it has never left me. I may forget time to time, but it’s always right back there. For me, each psychedelic often shows an aspect of truth, awareness, enlightenment, nonduality - whatever one wants to call it. There is often a “lesson” and some type of theme. I would say 5-meo has similarities - yet it is special in a way. It is like a crystal. It is clear and contains everything and nothing. For me, aspects of it do wear off. Afterwards, it’s like I’m my higher Self - yet that sense wears off. Yet there are other aspects that are lasting. For example, 5-meo took me to “Mu” in which I was shown all distinctions dissolve to nothing and then reassemble into distinctions again. This had a profoundly deep impact on me that has lasted. I cannot unsee what I was shown, even if I tried. It was crystal clear and very little effort was needed to “integrate” it. I just wrote out the experience in the 5-meo thread and Leo gave some input that it was one side of a coin, that the other side was still missing, that it was important to get grounded in the side I was shown and how I could integrate/stabilize it. It didn’t take much work. Yet I may have gotten “lucky” and was in the “right place at the right time”. Yet I also think there are many variables at play. Overall, I wouldn’t say that 5-meo is any easier to integrate or has mor abiding effects than other psychedelics. It’s more the nature of the substance. For me, it’s the most lucid and clear. And I agree with what you wrote about psychedelics and how advanced a person is in their practice. I had practiced over 20 years before utilizing psychedelics. I had stable job and life. I was fairly mature and well grounded spirituality. If I had tried to use psychs in my younger years, the impact would have been very different. I think this is one key to understanding psychs - they can have very different impacts depending on the person, their level of development and where they are in life. When I was living in the mountains of Peru, I noticed people refer to Aya as “medicine”. Most people in the towns and villages didn’t see the Aya medicine as being good or bad. Rather, it was beneficial or nonbeneficial depending on a person’s condition.

Very nice, looks like you are digging into deeper levels. This may be helpful, maybe not. . . What arises in me when I read your statement: There was a moment in which awareness was aware of itself, then awareness was aware of the awareness of itself. Then awareness was aware of the awareness that was aware of itself. This kept expanding until it collapsed into nothing.

That is not what everyone here is saying. Your thought story is playing so loud you cannot hear what some are saying. Let the cowbell guy rest for a bit - get curious and listen. I know it may seem like the best prescription to cure your fever, but I don’t think more cowbell is helpful here.

@ardacigin I was curious about how your direct experience with 5-meo is integrated into your view. How have your personal experiences under the influence of 5-meo shaped your view? It’s as if you are describing the essence of scuba diving - I’m asking how your own personal experience scuba diving is integrated into that view. That is a key component. What you write about genetics and epigenetics is somewhat true in a general sense, yet there is an underlying inaccuracy regarding the actual mechanistic model of genetics and epigenetics at the molecular and cellular level. This map is really important when designing a larger, more holistic map. At this point, there are statements in your view that are not aligned with the actual mechanics of genetics and epigenetics. You say mindfulness changes the physical mind and DNA in fundamental ways yet don’t seem to have an understanding of the physical nature of DNA and how it is inter-connected to epigenetic mechanisms. For example, if someone inherits an allele with a particular missense mutation in the hemoglobin gene, the phenotype of anemia will arise. Epigenetics won’t change that. Epigenetic modifications will not change the altered primary structure of the protein product - hence it’s secondary and tertiary structure will be still be altered and it will be nonfunctional. Modifying DNA methylation patterns and nucleosome structure will have no influence on that. You can spend a lifetime in mindfulness and trying to alter DNA structure through epigenetic modifications and it would be a complete waste of time. In other contexts, epigenetic changes are play an integral role. For example, after traumatic events and abuse DNA methylation patterns are altered throughout the genome - which can alter gene expression in the brain. These alterations are helpful to cope with the acute event in the moment, yet the epigenetic alterations can persist for years - even decades. These changes can cause phenotypes at the organismal level - such as susceptibility to anxiety. For example, a gene involved in the repression of cortisol is epigenetically altered such that basal cortisol levels rise in the person - this can persist for years. Cortisol is a key stress hormone and increased levels can contribute to the physiological sensations of anxiety. Here, your view is applicable. If we can figure out a way to reprogram the epigenetic DNA methylation pattern back to normal for key genes, the physiology will be improved. Biochemists are currently working on how to do this, yet it is extremely challenging for many reasons. What you propose is an alternate method to reset to epigenetic methylation pattern - perhaps through mindfulness training. This is an area I think has a lot of promise and I am currently experimenting on myself. Multigenetic traits become far more complex and is an interplay between inherited allelic sequences, environmental input and epigenetic modifications. Yet your view is not recognizing the underlying mechanism of how epigenetics is working. In my view, this leads to a distorted view you are proposing that is only somewhat accurate. It is over-generalized inaccurately. In particular, because it is not making the distinction between variations in allelic sequences and the mechanics of epigenetic modifications. Imo, that relationship is key to clearing up the underlying inaccuracies in your view. I’m not saying it is fundamentally bad or wrong. I think you are onto something powerful, yet just need some tweaking. Leo is making a point that is true in a certain context and you are making a point that is true in a certain context. Yet you are not seeing this because you are not making an important distinction between genetics and epigenetics, which I will explain in laymans terms below. I would be happy to go into more detail if you would like to build a more accurate thesis. Epigenetic modifications are a key feature of DNA structure and gene expression, yet it does not alter the sequence of DNA. That is the ”epi” part of epigenetics. That is really important when creating bigger picture models. For example, your “starting point” concept is only partially true. It’s true in the sense that one could consider their allelic make-up as a “starting point” and epigenetics can influence that “starting point”. However, epigenetics is not altering the underlying code, it is influencing how that code is expressed. This is a really important distinction to understand the role epigenetics plays and how we can use this model to rewire the brain. I think epigenetics can be a powerful model in rewiring the brain and I hope it can be combined with practices such as Reiki. Yet one needs to be knowledgeable and skilled with the underlying mechanics to use it wisely and effectively. I’m impressed with your big picture thinking and the way your are integrating multiple fields together. When creating holistic views, I think it’s important to recognize gaps and holes. In this case, I think you point to some insights, yet there are gaps in direct experience and the underlying mechanics of genetics. Imo, adding this in would create a deeper, more accurate holistic view.

@DrewNows I can put up boundaries in certain contexts. For example, I tend to over-share and it often comes back to bite me. I can set up boundaries that I will only share at the same personal level as the other person. I’ve read boundaries is the major issue for most empaths Yet stuff I’ve been experiencing lately is more like magic, paranormal, telepathy sort of stuff. I’d imagine most empaths are introverted.