Carl-Richard

It's also in the human identity to be able to follow a higher moral impulse and suspend our lower impulses. That's not dysmorphia; that's what we are. You might feel attracted to eating meat on a primal level, but you can also realize that you don't have to eat meat. This is what makes us so incredible. You might feel compelled to beat a rude person into a pulp, or molest some innocent woman, but you can realize you don't have to do that. You're exactly not a crocodile. You're a human.

Imagine if you were scared of dogs.

I think you actually have to hop on gear to get past a normal BMI as a non-fat gym rat.

The moments leading up to cessation (while meditating eyes closed and seated in half-lotus position), I would describe as a progressive sense of stillness, both in the mind and in the body. The progressive unwinding of tension in the body that occurs in meditation starts coming to a conclusion, and your body becomes very still (close to zero movement). The tiny muscle twitches in your legs start to disappear and you can distinctly sense them relaxing at another level. The space between thoughts become wider, and the thoughts themselves become quicker and more subtle and faint. The very last moments leading up to cessation, I would describe as slowly getting injected with an anesthetic, where all your senses slowly dampen and "equalize", until you lose all sense of being in a body and having a mind. The visual static behind your eyes gets smoother and more clear, and the visual field expands and zooms out slightly. The now unmowing body starts losing its sensation (interoceptively as well as externally, like the pressures under your butt and the feelings in your face and head), and it feels like you're slowly fading out of existence. This loss of bodily sensation is maybe what is most reminiscent of anesthesia, and the sense of being headless is an experience all by itself. The sounds in the room get dimmer and slowly disappear. The mind is now essentially quiet. The moment of entering cessation itself, I would describe as entering an enormous "place" which has no sense of time, no sense of space, and you feel that it's a place that will last forever and has lasted forever. It existed before you were born and it will exist after you're gone. And it's a place of perfect stillness, tranquility and bliss. Of course, the main "attraction" or challenge of the experience is the sense that you're going to disappear forever and never come back, that your sense of identity is fundamentally collapsing and that you're being erased from existence. This can feel extremely terrifying, literally like you're dying, but this is only the last throes of the ego before it can choose to rest and you identify yourself with the larger identity of Consciousness.

What's a normal physique?

It's almost like "spirituality" is no different from religion...

You just changed your religion

Like @Osaid said, schizophrenics do it all the time to check if their hallucinations are indeed hallucinations. By the way, as a rule, if you think something needs to be tested, it probably has already been tested. And you have the internet, so you can easily check these things.

Leo once said he managed to change his face into a lizard, and I think he tried to take pictures of it, but it didn't show up on the pictures, so he thought he needed a better camera. Is that an extraordinary state according to you, and should he have been "allowed" to take those pictures?

@Jowblob So Leo was allowed (or not allowed) to record himself in altered states of consciousness because there is ultimately no free will and there exists this map of consciousness and you're at stage 3E? Do I have to say that I don't have the slightest clue how that answered my question?

So was Leo "allowed" to record his altered states or not?

That's like pressuring someone to do reverse tequila shots. Imagine pressuring someone to do DMT (up the butt)

I'm in that boat of not drinking while other people drink, and it feels a bit like going to a fast food restaurant and not ordering anything because "I prefer to eat healthy food". It just feels odd and out of place (and kinda suspicious). The thing is that people go to some social gatherings specifically to drink. Meanwhile, if you're ever at a social gathering where drinking is only a side thought (like a sports game or a music concert), you'll probably feel less out of place and less people will ask you about it. So it's sometimes just as much about context as it's about culture.

Leo has recorded himself in altered states of consciousness many times, and he was "allowed" to do that. I also got the moisture warning when trying to charge my phone a few days ago, and I really wanted to charge my phone so I could listen to music while falling asleep. Was I not "allowed" to listen to music while falling asleep? Your inferences are quite concerning. Taking LSD for stomach pain, before sleeping and allegedly hallucinating teddy bears is also quite concerning. I just wanted to point that out as most people here seem to think that is normal.

If you grow up in a certain society/culture, you will tend to be pulled up to that level. If you're already an adult when arriving or if you're culturally segregated, it's less likely to happen.

Here is one difference: spiritual gains, or more generally personal development gains, are generally more conducive to growth and tend to produce a deeper and richer feeling over time. With material gains, at least after a certain point, the feeling is mostly a temporary high, and it's shallow and without much meaning. That is why money only correlates with happiness up to a certain point (just after your basic needs are met). After that, it's mostly a temporary high, unless it somehow feeds into your personal development gains (for example certain forms of technology).

I don't know, but it's something about him honestly and calmly describing the absolute monster that is inside of him and the "broken" aspects of himself that feels like listening to an exciting and terrifying bedtime story. It's also very interesting from a pharmacological perspective. For example, I had never thought that steroids could cause anxiety (people usually associate it with aggression and dominance), but I guess it makes sense. 1:58:28

Well, not so much when you have the full-blown symptoms, but the stages before that can be difficult to pin down.

My dad has bipolar type 1 and my uncle had schizoaffective disorder. I've done LSD a dozen times and didn't land in a psych ward (although I was probably close at one point, but it was probably more due to my general life situation and other drug use, not any single LSD trip). There are some very general early signs from birth like reduced cognitive functioning, but those aren't very good predictors. You don't really get good predictors before the prodromal phase, which lasts anywhere from weeks to years before the "real" symptoms occur. Examples of prodromal symptoms can be depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, difficulties concentrating.

The usual answer is therapy, but medication can also help.

Medicine and therapy can help rebuild your brain which has been damaged from constant stress, get you back on your feet again, develop some desire for life again and create a foundation of vitality where you can build a meaningful vision that will sustain you into the future. How you view things right now is not necessarily how you have to view them, and you are able to change. All you need is a little push to get the ball rolling. Looking for outside help, whatever help you can find, is one of the best things you can do. We're not made to sit with our problems alone.

Hell yes. I use YouTube probably more than anything else, so why not get the best experience?

Because you're caveating by saying it's the "feeling" that is the same.

The point you're trying to make: desire is desire, whether it's for spirituality or materialism. The equivocation you're trying to avoid: there is no difference between spirituality and materialism.

@MarkKol It's a profound waste of time... if you have an exercise pill. That's the context of that video.