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Renunciation is a valid option, haha. In tibetan buddhism they say. If you encounter a poisinous plant you can either. Avoid it altogether (Renunciation) Transform poison into medicine (path of a healer, alchemist, tantric, hard to explain...) Or observe it's nature to be empty and be a buddha Honestly the observing thing is the most dificult and i failed at it many times myself. I was kinda suggesting the way of transformation rather...

@Jannes You mentioned how your father is scientifically minded. The first book that came to mind for me is Entheogenic Liberation: Unraveling the Enigma of Nonduality with 5-MeO-DMT Energetic Therapy by Martin W. Ball, Ph.D. Dr. Ball’s framework is that of what he calls “The Entheological Paradigm.” It is a philosophical framework that focuses on the use of entheogens, or substances that generate the experience of god within, as a means of exploring consciousness, spirituality, personal growth, and understanding and integrating these experiences into one’s own life. While it recognizes that entheogens can be powerful tools for personal growth and spiritual exploration, it also acknowledges the risks and potential dangers associated with their use. It emphasizes the importance of responsible use and proper preparation, including setting intentions, creating a safe and supportive environment, and working with experienced guides or facilitators. The entheological paradigm also acknowledges the potential for entheogens to facilitate healing and transformation on both an individual and collective level. It encourages individuals to approach these experiences with openness, curiosity, and reverence, and to integrate the insights gained into their daily lives. The Entheological Paradigm is a complete analysis of reality, of the integrated and interrelated expressions of a unitary energy being - otherwise known as God. Dr. Ball’s focus is leaned more towards 5-MeO-DMT … however, his framework with entheogens can be applied when working with any psychoactive compound. I’m so incredibly grateful I read this book early on and wasn’t washed into all the spiritual woo-woo and ego-projection that is present in the psychedelic community at large.

@Jannes I'm currently reading "LSD psychotherapy" from Stanislav Grof (available in German). It's an amazing book. It outlines all risks (and potential complications) and benefits of the therapeutic use of lsd and thus psychedelics in general. It's scientific but also touches on the transcendental. I've also read "the way of the psychonaut" by the same author, which is mind-blowing, but contains more "woo woo" stuff and is much thicker (2 books of 350+ pages). Lsd psychotherapy outlines a process of transformation going from the biographical level to the perinatal (birth related) to the transpersonal level (like past life experiences etc). Of course it's a bit unfortunate that it has "psychotherapy" in the title, like you're suggesting to your father that he needs therapy. But an amazing read for sure!

I felt wispered back to this realm, over the past week. First I looked at Leo's blog, & and was elated to see that it's been a decade; freaking phenomenal! (feel free to laugh at / with me)... During the blog absorbtion, I really focused on the repeating pattern, about 40 years of contemplation. I'm stoked to do this with you all, but again, with mindfullness, I found myself so envious of the teens in this community... Luckily, starting this adventure in mid-life, means that I can *likely finish my 40 years of musing within this human experience... @Leo GuraCongrats! Don't worry about our perceptions of your progression I still love your style, even when it's harsh The cocoon metaphor is a really good one, I can visualize that it would be sticky, chaotic, and turbulent in there for sure... as some cells choose to die off, while others transmute to imaginal form... like shedding: limiting beliefs, bad habits, dogmas, etc & while choosing: oneness, limitlessness, love, etc. I've used the butterfly in visual mantra, but tend to neglect the importance of the turbulence & how absolutely magical the chaos of transformation can be... even when it feels uncomfortable... Woah, I just found a "happy-decade-aversary" pic showing a time-lapse inside a cocoon... it's looks more like an energetic flow; more like an Alex Grey painting than the sticky chaotic mess that I was expecting!... it reminds me of similar images showing transformation in the mind with neuroplasticity. The tittle of this image is "metamorphosis revealed" , that really suits Leo's journey, and how it's been is expressed to us over these 10 years

I agree that Connor is not shallow, the dude has more guts than most. He really went for it, he went all in and there's big risk involved in doing that. But if no one ever commited like he did we would be nowhere near where we are today. He's a mad scientist, although he did fly too close to the sun and burnt himself quite a bit, he seems to have recovered pretty well. And although he's a pretty weird dude, nothing less should be expected for someone who underwent the journey he undertook. His journey is an interesting example of a completely unexpected life transformation, revealing that Connor is in fact not a shallow guy but a pretty deep and strange guy, that's what's underneath the bodybuilding youtuber surface.

@Girzo connor murphy is no random dude. He had a video of over 60 Million views and he had one of the most materialistic anti spiritual fanbase you can have. But he went all in into spirituality and shocked everyone. I have over 10 years spiritual developement behind. Connor murphy shared some great insights about Transformation no other book or youtuber has shown and I watched them all. Just saying But hey, for you he is just a random crazy dude. It's shallow but fine by that

Ok.. before I move on from the last topic I didn’t mention that I did get a chance to briefly talk to the minister after service. I felt like I did when I was talking to the ladies after their session in Peru… I wanted to talk to him but everyone likes to give each other hand shakes and say hello. So there’s a little social time. He made his way around and I did over hear a little bit of the conversation of a man to the minister… something about the coffee pot.. he had something similar that happened to him… I was chuckling a little to myself but I didn’t pry too much. I was making my way around and found myself sitting and observing. I feel comfortable in that position most of the time… lol… he made his way to me and we shook hands and I said I enjoyed his service. I told him I visit several churches while I travel… it’s actually nice to visit a service who speak in English. I get a better idea of what the conversation is. He laughed… well maybe soon our services will be in Swahili soon… In the last year they grew their congregation to double their size from immigrants from Africa… many many children… many of the adults do not know English well.. and the children are learning quickly because of school. We agreed we love to learn new languages so he’s up for the challenge if that’s what needs to happen. He’s a modest man… and he wants to get to know me more… this is my third time in service. He asked… I don’t remember.. what do you do for work? I told him I’m not working right now. I told him I was traveling around Peru for 8 months last year.. and I’ve got a lot to process so I’m still processing what I experienced. I said actually… I found it interesting in your service when talking about Jesus’s death and resurrection… I had a similar experience in my spiritual practices which is why I need time to process. He said oh… that’s interesting. He asked if I speak Spanish. I said I’m learning… in fact I enjoyed having a Spanish conversation with your daughter last time. He said yes both of his kids are learning quickly. That’s when another lady joined our conversation. She said your daughter is just too intelligent for her own good… I laughed… I said she’s not too intelligent… she’s perfect! She realized what she said and she said… yes that’s true… it’s not a bad thing she’s so intelligent… she just needs to adjust herself on the idea of how intelligent children are. We all chuckled and by this time my grandma was ready to leave… So I said it was nice to see everyone again… until next time. And maybe I’ll have more time to have a conversation. Again… he’s a young minister and I enjoy how he approaches his service and they have him leading the children in their congregation… and his children are brilliant young lights… so he’s going to be a leader here. I’d like to get to know him more and see if we can find a way to teach each other even if we have different approaches… we’re spiritual workers… so we’ll be able to find ways to communicate and understand and learn from each other. If it happens to continue in that direction or not. My little buddy and I are more lovey dovey lately… He goes through different swings in his mood… he had a few days where he was wanting to be by himself… and today and yesterday… he’s been laying on me and wanting me to love on him more… I try different things to see if I can put him in situations where he won’t feel like he wants to run away… that he’ll just stick with me and allow me to love on him. So he was on lying his front paws and his head on my abdomen area… and he was purring and loving on it. And then I thought maybe I can pull the covers over us. Again normally he would instantly get up and get out from under the covers. This time… he was too relaxed and unconcerned that he allowed me to continue petting him while he payed there. I used my other hand to hold the covers up so it wasn’t wrapping around his body. After a while I did drop the hand but tried to create a little gap around his head… he let it continue a little longer but then he got up to get out from under the covers. I’m just trying to get him to trust me more… and have him enjoy me loving on him… even if I might have things he’s not used to liking… but I try a little here and there… and it’s good to see a positive progress. Small moments of improvement is rewarding with me and my little guy. Yes he’s trusting more, but he also sees that when he’s ready to get out.. I won’t stop him… so again building trust. Hmmm… I want to jump back to the spiritual worker. I’ve been trying to find a way to let people know what I do with my time… lol… I’ve tried to say I follow where my spirituality leads… maybe spiritual worker might work… or just being spiritual. Lol… I don’t see I have to do something specific that is separate from what I do… I’m continually deepening my spirituality. But many people assume I mean I’m religious and I’m a Christian… lol.. that’s just where my environment seems to be drawn towards. Can i just say I’m learning myself more…. Lol… I’m learning my relationship with existence deeper. That’s what I do… The activities I participate in I’m learning to enjoy and appreciate having this opportunity but I do find that I try to process what these activities I’m learning about my relationship to existence. I know most people ask what do I do… most people want to know how I make money…. Lol.. I’m reminded of a previous conversation with a gentleman at an art party… lol. It was the first time we had met and he asked me what do I do… I was a little sassy at that moment so I asked… what are you really asking? Are you asking what inspires me to live or what activities do I participate in to make money? My spirituality inspires me to live life and I find myself in ceremonies in the jungle to get guidance on how to continue to inspire me to live authentically and freely. When it comes to making money… I do anything that happens to come into my existence when I need to make money to find ways to find more inspiration for my spirituality… lol. He didn’t know how to respond. I assume that he’s already been informed by the other guests that I use Aya… and they assume I’m a woo-woo idealist… who has no understanding of the real world which is full of suffering and hate. I know what I put myself in when I go to these gatherings. In fact when I first started going I didn’t realize this was the case. They advertise it as an art group and they call it a no woe group. So I took it as face value… I found amazing, creative, and brilliant individuals. I love hearing about their passions. What I didn’t know is that they like to get together and drink and smoke so by the end of the night most of their conversation is complaining about how much life sucks. Well at first I’m sitting there trying to convince them… the world does not suck… life is great.. and so they will tell all the stories and situations where life is not great.. and why it sucks. I’d sit there and try to give my stories and situations where it doesn’t suck. At this time I didn’t know I was able to lose my energy engaging in situations like this. First of all… it was like one versus let’s say ten. I as the newcomer did not have the same ideas that they did… so they all had to convince me that I was wrong and that I should understand their group think. I continued to go at first because they were very interesting people… but I continued to feel drained when I left. I even asked another of my girlfriends to join me and I warned her and she didn’t understand until again near the end of the night and this happens every time… they all get into that mode of complaining. She said oh my goodness… that is draining. I apologized to her but I was thinking i was exaggerating… I guess i wanted to confirm from someone else that I wasn’t crazy… lol… well I stopped going to the group gatherings. Now there were a few that I was able to hangout with without the group and our engagements didn’t get to that point. They were enjoyable. I went to one of the gatherings earlier this year… I was curious to see if anything is different. Of course I was hopeful, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. They still liked to gather and complain… but they’re fun and charismatic too so they don’t make it obvious… they are very slick… it’s kind of fun to see how they have conversations with people they might not be facing. It seems like they’re having a one on one conversation… but there conversation is for the whole group to hear. So I have adapted to their style of subtlety. I know it makes people uncomfortable that I don’t find it satisfying grinding a job I don’t enjoy. Many people are grinding in this manner so when they hear someone who chooses not to be a part of the grind… it pisses them off. That’s what they like to complain about… well shit… she’s not part of the grind and so she doesn’t want to sit here and bitch with us… well that’s not along the story i continue to tell myself… I can’t keep saying I have to grind and complain… I can see she doesn’t want to do that… but because I haven’t experienced anything different than I’m going to accuse her that she really can’t overcome this. They haven’t been able to… so no one else can do it. Now honestly I had to work out of the grind, right. I’ve definitely been in that cycle of grinding and complaining. I just couldn’t live with myself with the constant complaining without making changes. I reached a spot where I was just grinding for only half the year… lol… So when I found the little mountain village where tourist season was around 5-6 months… I found that opportunity to travel after the season. I started with one month, then two months, then four months, and finally then eight months. There it was… I was attempting to just be inspired to live life. I didn’t know where it would lead or how long it would be… I just wanted to get a taste of how that feels like. My conditioning stumble through so I tried a few positions to make money when I returned, but again obvious it was not what was right for me… like I’ve said I needed time for isolation to understand the transformation I went through… am going through. I’m back here in my unsuspecting sanctuary… but why here? Not only is it a sanctuary, but this is where many of my conditioning was caged too. I know it’s helping me heal… by giving me time to focus my attention on the changes I have, but I also need to uncreate the conditions placed upon me unconsciously… so I have to unravel this. And this cage can become comfortable especially since change is unknown… but I know I’m working my way to break free from this cage. This is making me feel about my personal journal I was writing in my isolation. I was comparing this experience as the metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a butterfly. I’ll look at this again. So most of my life I was this caterpillar. My vision was limited and it was an effort to look around from one direction to another… but mostly I walked in a straight line… at times I would decide to walk in a new direction but it was in a straight line but it was a different path. When I found myself in ceremony in my mind it’s like I didn’t know but existence told me it’s time to go into my chrysalis. I didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t really know why it was time, but even in ceremony I had visions of being in my chrysalis. I had visions of even shedding my old skins like a snake. Both applied to my understanding… I was outgrowing my old self and becoming a new version of me. I had several occasions where I found myself still in the chrysalis… I even thought… when am I going to be a butterfly? Well… it took me four years inside that chrysalis… my caterpillar self has to literally die before I could transform into the butterfly. That’s what I experienced in a sense during my ceremonies of the Awakening. But I found out that I just don’t automatically know how to be a butterfly though. This is something I haven’t experienced yet.. so how do I continue when all I remember is being a caterpillar? I knew that my stage of the metamorphosis I was in… is the butterfly trying to escape the chrysalis… this barrier I created to protect myself when i was a caterpillar. It wasn’t created to stop me, but the process of breaking though I need to get strength in my new body of awareness to escape from my past protection. I don’t need that protection anymore. As I’m in this chrysalis it’s not as easy to break through as I might have one thought. I could even admit that it would be nice if someone outside my chrysalis could see me struggling inside trying to escape. Can someone help me escape? Well again if anyone other then the butterfly interferes with the escape… the butterfly didn’t build enough strength to survive after the assistance. So no… no one else can assist me really… I have to build my strength to escape my past myself… I’m still in this chrysalis but I’m getting visions or my imagination is increases to degrees of what a life like a butterfly could mean. It’s very powerful so it’s like I can almost taste it… but I know I cannot rush this process. What does it feel like having a broad range of perspective? A higher perspective compared to the ground perspective? How will time work? I’ll be able to flutter from one position to another in a much greater speed compared to when I was crawling around like a caterpillar. Even though I’m gaining the strength to escape the chrysalis, but how do I fly? Can I assume that I won’t naturally know how to fly? Will there be a struggle to learn that? Will the struggle be worth it? Maybe the struggle will be overcome by then? Maybe it will be easy and effortless? Easy and effortless sounds like what I want to create as a butterfly. Easy and effortlessly… yes that’s what I want to create. I’ve been entertaining this affirmation for a few years now. I went from impossible, to hard, to challenging, to get’s easier… it’s time for easy and effortlessly. I recognize that challenges I’ve faced wasn’t as difficult as I once thought it was. And when I’m honest… it was easy when I put my attention and time into it. I did have to use effort… but that was because I didn’t trust myself or existence to the degree I understand now. I’m confident that my decisions will be the best I can do at that moment and i will continue to learn and this will continue to create a reality I want to create. I know this approach is new and so my creations will continue to mature as I mature. Easy and effortlessly… I’m ready to upgrade and program my system. yeah this is a good time for a break. My body wants a little more attention tonight… lol.. been doing the massage and I did it when I woke up…my body is worth the attention… lol… alright until next time.

Ok… well today I continued my napping… lol… even my dad asked me if I feel alright.. i said yes but I just feel tired… so I slept…lol… now that I’ve gotten rid of many things I’m back to organizing them… lol… I’d like to get the studio organized for my dad… I’d like for him to know where I’m storing things so he doesn’t have to ask… he can just grab and go. He’s already thinking about changing up his bedroom again. He still wants to be able to have. A hot tub and sleep in the space and he’s lifting everything up. I think he’s going to do a loft style bed instead of having to lift up the flooring and removing his bed. He said he wants to use my space as a changing room/ closet so that’s nice to know. I can start hopefully clearing out his clothes in the closet that he never uses. They’ve been sitting in there unused for I don’t know how many years… I’ve mentioned to him maybe we can go through it… but of course it’s not the most fun thing to do, but I think I can work it out with him. We’ve had some rainy days the last few days which is hopeful. I’d like to clean and organize the kitchen soon. He’s been trying to hook the water through the water heater and run new lines to the bathroom to get that a little more easy to use. I’m going to see if he’s ready to talk to the water company. There’s been this leak going on for over 10 years now and they’ve shut off the main valve. I think he’s going to worry about digging up his back yard because of his trees… but I figure it he can do it now before he adds more would be best…. But I’ll see what he’s thinking. I’d rather have it as easy as it can be for him. But he can be set in his ways… so we’ll see I’ve been thinking a little more about attending church with my grandma. lol… I don’t mind attending church with people but it’s been awhile since I’ve actually been able to hear service and it’s been interesting listen to them. First of all I did like them having several ministers speaking and they all have their own interpretation on the subjects they are focusing on. Even if they had slightly different views it’s nice to have the variety and also nice to know that the congregation should infer if their leaders have various views then they can as well. The last time there was a younger man who led the service and I hadn’t heard him speak before. I’ve seen him play the piano and I really enjoy his family… his wife, his daughter, and his son. I actually talked to the daughter most. How people treat her sometimes… she likes to talk with people and of course everyone is trying to hush her up or at least make sure she knows she’s supposed to be quiet during service. As far as I can see she is extremely bright. I think it’s obvious to her that she’s going to be respectful during service but before and after she likes to socialize. The last time we spoke we found out we are both learning Spanish and so we were practicing together. I feel she knows more than I do… and again it’s less stressful learning with children. Lol.. my grandma hushes me too every time we enter the building. It’s funny to me… because I’m just literally talking normal and I’m just having conversation with her as we are nearing the front door. I open that door and finishing a sentence and there comes the hushing. It doesn’t enter into the church… there’s a hallway… and even a vestibule/ sitting area to enter before the chapel. It’s just funny, but anyway… the topic he was talking about was doubt. It was a continuation I guess from their service for Easter last week. He leads the youth and he likes to teach in threes so it’s easy to remember and it was… lol… he wanted to focus on that we all have doubt, we all need faith, and we need to have a system when we find ourselves in doubt. Instead of going over his beliefs I want to see what I had gained from being involved with listening to his words. We all have doubt: yes I’ve had doubt, but I also feel that this doubt doesn’t always have to be present. I feel like most of my work is to overcome my fears and doubts and I’ve been making great strides to understand this. I recall different spiritual leaders I have observed and there is something I run into at times. There was a women group in Peru that I attended their group and it was lovely and granted I didn’t understand it fully but I had friends helping me translate and a lot could be interpreted closely. It types to what I wanted to discuss with this gentleman too. They want people to accept they have doubt, fear, sadness, anger, and a feeling of loss. I feel like they want people to understand that these feelings are common for the human collective… they don’t encourage someone to feel alone when they feel these things. The women were tying it together by purging these feelings that might be stagnant in them. They set up a little alter with natural elements to use as a symbol to clear or cleanse these fears, sadness, anger, or feeling of loss. Many women were emotionally purging and expressing which was beautiful. I was waiting to see what their next step was, but there wasn’t any… I ended up going to two of the leaders of the women’s group and I asked them if they anticipate a time in their lives that they won’t have to experience fear, sadness, anger, or loss? They said it was impossible. I asked maybe they haven’t experienced it yet, but does their spirituality give inspiration to eventually be able to live a life without those feelings? They said no. During this event I was observing but I didn’t feel like participating in the purging process because at that time I didn’t feel like purging anything. It was my first and only time sharing this space with these women… and so I did feel bad for not participating. But at that moment I didn’t know of anything to purge and so I was respectful to them but I didn’t want to create something to be sad about, or create something to be mad about , or create something to be fearful or, or create something to feel loss for when I didn’t feel like that in that moment… I guess I wasn’t ready to process things I went through during some of my ceremonies at that time, but honestly none of those feelings came up. I was more into observing and also curious to what their leaders were wanting to teach. When it came to this minister he had made a comment that if you are someone who doesn’t think you have doubt then that’s more of a concern then admitting you have doubt. And yes I can agree to this to some degree. But there can be a different state that might seem like they are behaving in the same manner, but there reasoning may be different. Right if someone is not aware they are experiencing doubt and they are just trying to pressure themselves to ignore the doubt they might feel could be one way… They may experience doubt but deny it to themselves and others because they don’t want to admit this happens to them. I’ve been there. I’ve also been in the place where I know I have doubts and instead of expressing them… I would hold them in a let them fester inside without really knowing what I should do with these doubts. I also have found that festering inside was not helping me but learning how to purge and process these doubts as more beneficial. The purging is releasing what could be said as the toxicity is was creating sitting inside. But the processing is just as important then the purging. Again this is what I try to explain in ceremony with my guests. I tell them this is a purging ceremony… we’re going to work together and try to release and purge whatever we can and as much as we can. It will be as if we start you back as a clean slate. But what we choose to do from this point forward will determine what comes back in and how quickly. So that’s where the processing or integration comes into play. This is where the real work begins. I speak with them and I mention a few areas in their life they admitted needs work and desires to be changed. I’ll let them know… so these specific areas you will have to figure out a way to approach differently then what you remember, because what you remember will keep you playing out the same story over and over again. If you keep doing this then we’ll just fill ourselves back up with the toxicity that we just got rid of. But I told them… they can find their own ways to clear this out of their systems. I’ve learned how to clear my system out. I don’t remember all the time to do this and so ceremony has to remind me… hey there… you’ve been paying too much attention to others you aren’t noticing your own energy is being diluted with toxicity that doesn’t need to be there…. So we’re going to have you focus on yourself right now. I’m usually very grateful because I realize I have blind spots and it’s a new process for me so I’ll forget, but to have gentle reminders is good and I’m grateful. Let’s continue… but can I intuit that I’m working my way to not experience doubt anymore. Honestly yes… I’m already experiencing that my judgements on myself, others, and existence was out of a place of being like unconscious. I’m realizing that I was conditioned to judge myself, others, and existence by a like unconscious society. But I’m already understanding that I don’t want to judge myself anymore and I can see that this will be the state I’m going to live. The more I live in this state the more I will not want to judge others or existence. Existence is something I cannot explain… it’s ultimate consciousness which knows the overall goal of elevating universal consciousness but it can weave miracles in and around the universe to create this and depending on our level of consciousness we’ll judge it or be in awe of it. I’m in awe of existence. I’m learning to trust existence completely and learning to trust myself completely that I truly can intuit and work towards a state of no doubt. I see this state as different then the first state of no doubt… the first state of no doubt was actually a mask pretending that doubt did not exist. If someone isn’t working themselves to the latter state of no doubt, then people who are working on this state… they will assume it’s impossible or not understand us who want to obtain this state for ourselves. This is a good way to lead into the next topic he wanted to address was we all need faith. He had a good reasoning behind his statements… he said that we live on faith all the time. We have faith that the sun is going to come up and go down. Lol… he spoke about his trusty coffee maker he has faith in to work for him every morning. But he said he knows many skeptics who literally live in fear that the sun will not rise again. And they can be at this state because they don’t have faith. He also mentioned how one morning his trusty coffee maker died one morning but instead of losing his faith, he went and purchased almost the exact same model to replace it. He continued to recall tidbits of the resurrection of Jesus which was being discussed because of Easter. He said that hearing about these events he could understand people can have doubts that Jesus died and was able to resurrect himself three days later. He said he’s never seen anyone else do this so it can cause him to have doubt that this could or did happen. He said he lives his life with faith and using his belief systems trusts that this event did happen. Using his system he creates to help him in moments of doubt. I’ll get back to this in a little bit, but right now I’d like to explore the word faith and direct experience. Maybe I feel like there needs to be a distinction made. Obviously if we are students of Leo… he’s been able to communicate in a much larger capacity to this then I am and how much I want to go into it now. But I didn’t really see his examples of faith as the best examples except this concept that Jesus died and resurrected. That to me was his faith statement. The sun rising is more of a direct experience that has been consistent enough to not unstable him from worrying that the sun will not rise the next day. Again the coffee maker was also a direct experience which was consistent enough for him to rely on it to work until it didn’t, but he gained enough direct experience to not have this unstable his by going and purchasing a replacement. Now what happens when the sun doesn’t return the next day? Would we have enough direct experience to be able to stable ourselves to continue? It’s hard to assume how I would respond, but again I am gaining so much trust in myself and existence that if that was to happen… I feel like I’m working my way to accept this event and continue to live without doubt because there’s reasons why existence has created this for me to experience. I guess this goes back to just my studies of world religions and oversimplifying it greatly but to keep it brief and direct to what I’m trying to convey here is… there are individuals who have Awakened or became Enlightened to the fact that death does not exist. Existence exists regardless if perceived as a physical or a nonphysical manner. When we’ve had direct experience of this… if existence decides it’s time to remove the sun from the picture… this doesn’t mean death. Death is not what we think it is until we have a direct experience of death as a continuation of existence in a different form. So technically it may cause death to this shared perceived physical world but it’s not the end of it all. There is no end… existence will continue to exist. We intuit these spiritual leaders have gone through direct experiences that have led them to live lives that seem god-like because it’s so different from what we experience on the day to day with other people maybe. I’ve spoken to people… family members even, who look at Jesus as god-like and completely give up their chance to live like Jesus… he’s too grand and special… they are not worthy of obtaining these qualities for themselves. I’m not a Christian but I tell them… I want to live like Jesus… I want to have direct experiences of being like Jesus, but in my own way. Not only are they comfortable with me not being Christian, but the nerve to think I am worthy to be on equal grounds as Jesus is just insane. They pray for me. I’ve spoken to people who are inspired by the Buddha… I like their approach as well, because with Buddha they seem his as a human… they want to follow his teachings because with his techniques they know they will be on equal grounds of the Buddha. I know some realize this but maybe some do not… Jesus and the Buddha did not have teachers correct? Well they might have had teachers but they didn’t follow blindly… they really created something unique to their way of learning and gaining understanding of higher spiritual teachings. They didn’t have books telling them what to do. How is this possible? How could they possibly obtain higher wisdom without others telling them what to do and how to think? How could they create certainty in themselves they were doing the right thing to lead them the right way to get to where people can only imagine to obtain? And because we imagine we really don’t know unless…. We found our own way to understand. And that’s what i have to say from here… I don’t know how they did it. But I know I found a way for myself. Everything becomes my teachers… I realized existence is my teacher… which includes everything… which includes myself. I was able to gain an understanding where what I experience I can listen to myself to help guide me at the state and time of my understanding. For me I had to go through a series of experiences to learn what I could and then continue to learn more. I don’t need faith to guide me any longer because I’ve had a direct experience that existence is infinite. As infinity I had a choice to continue experiencing in this physical manner or not. I chose to continue and I enjoy experiencing… what else can I do with my time… lol… if I only exist… I have time to direct my focus here. Faith is not the only way to live… there are larger existential questions that can be directly experienced so faith transforms to knowing or being. Actually I’m definitely ok in saying I don’t know… Again I am choosing to learn not to know. When I experienced infinity excites me because I love to learn and I know i won’t stop in my learning… that’s amazing for me and very satisfying. And instead of what I once thought I wanted to learn everything… I‘ve changed to wanting to dive deeper into my interests. Yes I know when I get introduced to new areas this will help inspire me to gain deeper depths in things I’ve been learning for years. I can reason out that my entire existence is to get to know myself… and even with an infinite existence it’s never final in my learning… that’s quite remarkable. I want to keep my thoughts flowing and finish my thoughts of the ministers topics. His final topic was to create a system to help when in doubt. He mentioned his community referring to the church, and also the teachings of people who are more experienced than himself. I think at this point he had mentioned a book “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen Covey. I had read this book and found it helpful at the time I read it… I could see how much I was overworking and doublechecking my coworkers at the time, because I didn’t have much trust in their abilities. I knew my father was the one person I trusted to most… and when we work together how easier it was for me and how much faster it was because I trusted him. I can’t remember everything… it’s been awhile and that insight helped guide me to build relationships differently than what I was doing at the time. But I did laugh… I’m trying to remember what his insight was out of the book… but it was different than my insight. And that makes sense… we are interpreting words differently than others and that’s a good thing. We can have communities and teachers to help us in doubt… but ultimately we have to trust ourselves. I also was laughing to myself because he said when reality kicks you hard and you lose your sense of direction and filled with doubt… if you were to do it on your own… it would be traumatic. That was a good description of how I felt when I went through my last three ceremonies by myself. They were so mind blowing to me at the time that I tried to reach out to the communities that I thought was going to help support me through the process… There were fellow Aya spiritualists that I tried to speak with who were saying I’m crazy. I went to the three most influential men in my life who also said I was crazy… i spoke to non Aya friends who know me quite well who were also implying I’m crazy but in a sweet way… lol… I knew I wasn’t crazy but I also knew what I was saying could sound crazy to anyone else because they didn’t experience what I did. So I knew… there was no one to turn to… I only had myself and at the time… I was trying to find a sanctuary to isolate myself so I can process and integrate… I didn’t know where to go at first. I thought an ashram but I didn’t have the money to go. I thought there was an opportunity to rent a hut outside of Machu Picchu from a friend of a friend which didn’t fall through. It started getting close to summer and my routine was telling me… I ran out of time.. it’s time to work so go back to the mountains to work… but i knew working was what I needed… I needed a sanctuary. I even tried to just relax like a retiree there… I went camping with my buddy and we did a roadtrip together… but I wasn’t getting the alone time I needed. I tried to work and I knew it wasn’t going to work and even though it was fun for a second I quickly became irritable because I knew I was ignoring my need for solitude. At last I thought I could go back to my dad’s place. Again that wasn’t an option because I thought the hoarding was going to be too much for me to handle… but it doesn’t take me long to get things done…. So clearing out a space to have a bedroom and a studio space wasn’t hard… but again I forgot how autonomous I was with my dad. My dad has always allowed freedom and patience and love for me. He doesn’t have to understand my spirituality… but he loves me and he knew I needed this time and space to hermit. It was exactly what I needed and it surprises me that it took me so long to think of it… lol… so again… I did have to find a community… a community that I had used in over 20 years. But being in this town there is a sense of comfort and safety that I can say I don’t find anywhere else… at least right now. I was still in deep in my conditioning in a less conscious way. But I felt I could really let my hair down here and again my dad’s approach to life and parenting has really helped me develop my style in a more authentic manner. If I needed this time… he will give me this time. I don’t ask for much so I’m not going to deplete him of his resources. I hope he feels I give him value in my company. I guess in a way I worked myself into a way of finding guidance in teachers who are more experienced than myself… I found myself on the forum… lol.. and the first few messages I was getting from Leo… not that they were directed at me… but again I can use words to get more own direction… he is an amazing trigger for me to look deeper in myself to find my own answers. It was great he said no one on the forum is Awakened… and right away I was damn it… well maybe I’m not. But he knows he can’t tell us if we are or not… we have to know it for ourselves. Lol… believe me when I went through those ceremonies of Awakening I wanted to celebrate… finally holy shit.. I’ve done the work and I’ve finally got here… I want to celebrate but when I told anyone of my communities… that added to them thinking i was crazy… lol… so there was no one to celebrate with… but I still hadn’t integrate what the difference was in this transformation… and using the Journal on this Forum has been a blessing to help me realize how differently I’m interacting with my mind… it’s been fascinating. I’m trying to give a picture through this Journal but the reality of it is unexplainable. Although that won’t stop me from trying.. lol.. I knew from my first attempt to write my first entry that I had awakened… I went through a very spiritual purification connecting deeply with myself and the music and everything came together and I knew I had awakened. I knew that I’m going to transform myself to become abundant and allow attraction in… but when I went to post… it all erased. At first i was shocked and was like why? Well… I needed to use this process to better explain it to myself and to anyone else who might be interested in these things… lol. Again I don’t know all the details that are coming up in my life, but I’m certain the more clarity I have the easier it will be to continue. I love challenges, but I’m looking for more ease too. Ok… I think it’s a good time to break… but because of my nap… I’m still ready to move forward in my learning.

Last night was great… I think I took close to an hour of a full body massage, I did some stretching, and some circular motions in my hips and my head. My body was buzzing and I was so relaxed… maybe I am trying to build a relationship with my body more. Lol… I feel like if I’m going to seduce myself I have to work my body and mind to trust each other for some reason… lol… help them get into the same state before moving forward. I know there’s a connection to be found. It was around 4am and laying there very comfortably, but I have my mind going. I thought maybe this would be a good time to try something… but I know I revert to my go-to technique. It feels good but I know it’s just a quick pick me up. I wasn’t really prepared to spend a lot of time. I’m also finishing my moon time of the month… so outside rocking pressure feels good and I also know it helps relax me enough to sleep… lol… and sure enough I fell right to sleep afterwards. So I feel like I should look at my habits and what can I change. First of all… I don’t do a full body massage often, but damn it did feel really good… having a body buzz from massaging can definitely be incorporated more. I’m afraid that maybe I have used my tried method as attempts to go to sleep more than exciting myself. This tried method has been the first way I found enjoyment touching myself. I haven’t been creative in this area. I have my clothes on and how I position my hands to create pressure and I also use my legs to add leverage and additional pressure. I think with this technique it made it easy for me to only do it quickly and then move on. So I’m not sure how to take my time into it. There has been a few times where I’ve tried to put music on with candles… and add oils but I still felt I was taking way too long, so I’d give up. I know I’m different from who I was when I tried these so I can give them another chance. But is there away that my expectations in a partner is what I’m placing on myself too? Lol.. I’m not sure how to explain it… I never really wanted my partners to see my as just an object to have sex with. I want a relationship to be built and maybe that’s what happens when I try to masturbate? Does my mind think I’m objectifying myself? Possibly… I’m not sure… lol… I have had these mind/body battles when it comes to sexuality before. Lol… I remember I was one year into my celibacy and I found myself with a guy I really enjoyed conversations with. He was so fun and he was handsome. We had known each other for about six months… and he never approached me sexually. But we found ourselves one night interested in mutual play. I felt like I had two split personalities going on at the same time. My body was like.. holy shit… it’s about time… And my mind was like… holy shit… don’t do this to yourself or him… you’re not ready and you don’t want to do this with him. I know we were escalating and again I found myself wanting to just lose control… I remember I was talking dirty to him… I told him I want to fuck his face… lol… and he was all about it! But literally I was in a battle… telling him I’m sorry I can’t keep doing this. I’m not ready. He was such a gentleman and once he realized I pulled the breaks he did too. We were able to talk about it and he laughed because he hadn’t had a girl talk to him like that. He really wanted to see what I wanted to do with his face… I could laugh with him but I told him I had to be honest I know I’m not ready and I shouldn’t have put him in that situation. He knew I was in process of trying to see if celibacy is going to be helpful for me and it had been a year and I about lost control. I knew I would’ve regretted it. We continued to enjoy the rest of the night and held each other while we slept. Four years later… he travels a lot and we hardly speak but we still see what kind of adventure and projects we’re interested in at the time, and give each other support when needed. He’s a very fascinating man! I felt bad that I put him in that situation and I knew I didn’t want to put anyone else in that situations so being more communicative from that point forward was apparent for me. And I was able to create those boundaries up front. Since then I’ve kissed two other men but again… when we were in ceremony and I had to go through the entire explanation that I think they are great guys and I enjoy their company, but I only want to be friends with them and that we can share this experience but please don’t expect another time to come along. I knew I really didn’t want to do it, but I also knew I was in control where I wasn’t going to let it go further then I wanted. And it’s a harmless kiss… but damn… kisses are extremely sexy and intimate and playful and for me very erotic. Damn it… I know that lesson was for me to experience as well as them. Those guys are still good friends but it’s never been an issue since. It hasn’t been brought up. When I was an exotic dancer for what six weeks it was a high concentration of sexual experiences… and it was very informative for me. Like I’ve mentioned I confirmed that I’m still a sexual being who liked to be attractive and I enjoyed pleasing others and that’s just as arousing in fact more arousing then pleasing myself. It was different then… everyone was consensual. Well everyone except for one man I was doing a private dance with. He penetrated my anus with his fingers and I did not want to do that with him. I stopped him and then quit the private dance. He paid me for it, but I didn’t care if he paid me or not. I did not want that to happen so I purchased butt plugs with jewels on the end so that won’t happen again. One of the clubs, the girls were upset with me thinking I was trying to stand out… and I said I just don’t want anything to be done to me without consent. They still suggested I shouldn’t wear them and they also didn’t like it when I didn’t have a set amount of dances in the private rooms and I liked to see where it led without putting a time limit on it… lol… so I stopped working there… but I was about to leave anyway. But 99% it was consensual and that was really good for me. I was able to play with people who wanted to play with me, but there wasn’t an expectation of going further. I even thought this would be a great place to learn about sexuality if money wasn’t involved. I had met people in the kink scene and i loved listening to their stories and how open-minded they were and the assumptions is no pressure, pure curiosity, consensual from all parties. I hadn’t been to an event, but I did find it interesting. Maybe that’s what I was hoping for when it came to a strip club… if money wasn’t involved it would be a kink party? I don’t know. But I do know I love outer play? I don’t know if that’s a thing.. but when clothes are on it’s fun to tease and excite without actually being involved with the skin directly. I had my first experiences with being intimate with women. And I really enjoyed it. They are so vocal… lol… you knew when you were doing things they enjoyed. And they’re really slow and soft too. I did kiss two women while in private rooms with their partners. And it makes sense now, but it was surprising when I did it for the first time. I’m not interested in having sex with a woman…at least right now I’m not… maybe if i had a strap-on… lol… but that’s more curiosity of possibly feeling how a man feels when they are penetrating. I’m guessing it wont be the same… but anyway.. i enjoy playing with women though… when they have their clothes on and i get to tease and excite them was very satisfying to me.. but i never had the thought i wish I could strip them down and do more. Now men on the other hand… that can definitely cross my mind… when I’m having a good time and i feel the hardness of his cock… ummm huge excitement of… let me take him for a ride…lol but again I realized those were very fleeting and superficial… in my opinion. I guess where I’m leading up to is this dieta where I was not only going to go through the beginning of threshold transformation of awakening but also the sexual lessons I was experience. I’ve been going back and forth whether to give details or not, but I think I’ve made the decision that it’s a lot more healing to go through the details to purge it out. And I guess I’m ready to do that now. I’m not sure where I had left off, but I remember I was saying how I was frustrated on the attempts of my shaman asking to have sex with him… repetitively because he continued to ask even when I said I was not interested in him in that way. I’m not trying to make him out as the bad guy… and I’m not trying to make myself as the bad guy. I know I said we were the perfect pair to help each other out of our shadows of sexuality. I also said… if we don’t have specific techniques to deal with the shadows… existence knows I want to learn and overcome these shadows so it will find a way to teach me… and it’s not normally what I would have chosen. But the choices I was choosing wasn’t as affective as the blunt way existence and ceremony can do. So I’m not sure if everyone has heard about dying to pass the threshold towards awakening… I had heard it from Leo, but again I didn’t know what that meant… and to be honest that didn’t even come into my memory at first. But there was a ceremony where I thought I was going to die. My shaman had used the words “tu necesito passé.” He has to try to speak to me for me to understand… I knew I needed to do something… but the word passé was messing with me… I needed to pass? In my ceremony I was laying there and i kept repeating i need to pass… and I even found myself holding my breath… I was like oh shit… does he mean I have to die? Does he help people passover in tho the afterlife? I thought well maybe that is what he does… I was the hospice nurse of my grandparents and it was like I was helping them prepare and be comfortable as much as they could be before they took their last breaths. I witnessed my grandmother’s last breath. I know not a whole lot of people would like to be in that position, but I found it an honor to be involved in that time with them. I was so grateful for them and I thought this would be the least I could do… was to take care of them when it was their last moments in these bodies and in this reality. So… yeah maybe that’s what’s going on with me now. I’m going to leave this existence. During ceremony is was not scary… I was not afraid. In fact there was a part of me wanting to die. I continued to lay there and I just kept thinking shit I came here to die… so I started listening all the things I’m not going to be able to do or see or feel again. Pretty basic stuff of not seeing my family, my cat, the sun, trees… a huge list of not going to be able to experience ever again. And my mind continues to wonder what else I’m never going to experience again… and yes sex came into my mind. I’m holy shit… I’m not going to have sex again… regardless of how good or bad i am with sex… lol… I was sad I wasn’t going to experience it again. Of course my spiritual partner came up and I could remember what we shared together and my fantasies of what I wanted to do with him… but he wasn’t there… and I’m about to die. It’s easy for me now to say… damn it you don’t know what you were doing… you weren’t understanding the message and you’re about to do something you’re going to regret… don’t do it… but at that moment… I broke down. I didn’t want to but yet I thought this will be my last chance and maybe my damn shaman is the last person I’m supposed to have sex with. I turned to him and asked if he wanted to have sex with me, and his response was yes. I didn’t want to add anything into the experience… so I wasn’t kissing on him or rubbing on him… nothing affectionate… I just wanted to get it over with and then I wanted to die. And immediately I was disgusted with myself. It was obvious to me and to my shaman I was not enjoying the experience. I started laughing at myself because it was so terrible… it was so awful… I wish I would have just died with fantasies because that was so much more satisfying then allowing this man to enter me. I couldn’t let it continue and I immediately smoked mapacho and was apologizing. I wasn’t strong enough to die without having this last temptation to have sex one more time before my death. I told him I was ready to passé. And he told me I was unable to passé now that I’ve smoked the mapacho… I was confused… why would that stop me from dying? It made no sense to me. Once he said I wasn’t able to I went to my bed to lay with my thoughts and finally fall asleep. I was horrified with my decision, but when I woke up the next morning. I was pretty much going through a panic attack. Why the hell is it my time to die? Why would I be receiving all these messages about my future? I’m just not understanding how to love and appreciate this life… why now? Why do I have to die, and why did I have to come to the jungle away from everyone I love to die? My shaman saw how I was reacting to the experience and he was trying his best to ground me. He created a special plant bath and had me cool off. He took me into the middle of some trees on his center and had me absorb the calming energy… it was helping but my mind couldn’t stop… but I also knew I wasn’t understanding the situation clearly though too… why did a part of me want to die? Why was I not scared in ceremony? Why was I calm and why did I feel like there’s nothing but love and patience from existence? What am I missing? His family came to prepare food and eat with us and we were planning on going into the city to pick up supplies the next day. His youngest son is learning English, and I’d ask him to translate for me the questions I have towards his dad… but my shaman asked me not to talk about the ceremony. What I got from it is he doesn’t want me to tell about the necessity to passé. That seems to be something he doesn’t tell everyone… maybe only when they need to hear it, but I didn’t know what that meant. They could see I was not my normal self. And I admitted that I was having problems processing my ceremony last night. I even admitted I thought I was going to die. And I’m afraid to die. I could barely communicate with anyone. I did go to the village with the family and being around the children and watching them really calmed me down. I thought I should enjoy these last moments… however many days it would be… i need to enjoy every second, because I known how much I’m going to miss these experiences. I also slept a lot. I kept thinking I’m missing something… I tried to talk to my shaman more and asked if I’m supposed to die? He looked puzzled when I asked… I said does passé mean death? He said no… I told him I don’t understand what passé is… is there another word he could use so I can understand? He couldn’t think of another word. I had to let him know that I thought I was literally going to die and I thought I wasn’t going to experience having sex anymore and that he was my only option. I think he understood what I was saying and even he said that he will no longer ask me again. I felt that when he saw how I was reacting while we were in those moments… it was clear as day that that wasn’t anything I wanted to share with him. And I’m sure he was uncomfortable being involved with someone who was disgusted by the whole experience. Again… we were teaching each other lessons whether we were conscious of it or not. I had calmed down before the following week with the master plant and with another Aya ceremony. I thought maybe I would be afraid to go back in, but I wasn’t… at that time I knew I was missing something and I knew there was a part of me and existence that wanted me to die… and dying wasn’t what I thought it was going to be… so I was curious to see what would happen. Well the feeling of death did not come up…. It did not come up for a few ceremonies after. But during this time I was processing what I was learning but in the back of my head I was getting more determined to know what was this death? What did I stop myself from doing? Now I really did want to know what death felt like. It was about a month after that ceremony… I can’t remember if it was four or five ceremonies after (I could look in my journal, but it doesn’t really matter), but near an end of a ceremony… I was sitting by myself and then I just started working on myself… I wasn’t sure exactly what i was doing but I knew I was trying to change something in my mind’s structure. In the middle of doing whatever I was doing… I found myself lifting up my head and it was the first time having a conscious experience of this physical reality. At that moment I didn’t know anything because I didn’t know I had a mind to think… I didn’t know what was physical because that wasn’t in a vocabulary… I didn’t have language. I didn’t know I was a human… I didn’t know this visual field I opened up was using my eyes… I found my hands and body and I had no clue what it was… but I wasn’t worried… I didn’t know how to worry… I wasn’t confused… I didn’t have any language in my head talking to me to label things and ask questions… I just was observing for the first time. I was observing my body which I don’t even know if I was registering that it was myself I was looking at… it was just the first time observing consciously… my visual field started to move around and I was seeing the inside of the maloca with the wood floors and screens and shadows… again complete silence inside and outside of me… and I wasn’t trying to figure out where I was and what I was supposed to do… that wasn’t known for me to do that. Nothing was known at that part of was just being. I was just observing for the first time and I don’t even know if I was curious… I just happen to be moving the visual field and when i found my hands I placed it on my body and again I didn’t know what I was doing… it was all the first time for me. Once my visual field moved and settled onto my shaman did words start to appear back into my head… memory started coming back… language and thought… I found myself laughing… and my shaman was smiling and said you’re a quick learner. I knew what he was saying. He tried to get me to this point at the other ceremony, but because he was guiding me without me knowing or expecting it… I thought I was going to die and leave this physical reality. I’ve been gaining confidence in my abilities and I do know I’m a fast learner… I knew I’d be able to get there again, but when I did it myself… I didn’t have the feeling of dying… I had the feeling of Awakening for the first time. I still think that’s an appropriate description… maybe I can get a better word for it, but I was born again. I knew this is a profound moment in my life… and I knew I had nothing like this happen before and nothing compared to those moments. I had even been giving myself previews of what this would be like… different ones as if to not look at something, place a label, and assume anything about it… lol.. it’s hard to explain but experience something on my own without conditioning being applied to it. Try to reset my mind to experience things for the first time again. But yes… that was profound and I knew I just went through a transformation, but I didn’t know what that transformation was at the time. I was just so excited that I finally Awakened, but it wasn’t what I was expecting and I didn’t realize how much I needed to ground and integrate this experience to observe and understand the difference in me. I’ve been doing it for a year and four months now. But it’s only been six months that I took myself into seclusion and really isolate my thoughts and able to observe myself without having to do what other people expected of me. I found my safe haven with my dad. He has given me this space to integrate and it’s exactly what I needed. Now that Awakening was like the first round… there was a second round that came later… I can’t really explain it but it felt like it was testing me… it was like ok… I know something is different, but do I really want to break through? I hesitated the first time… will I hesitate again? Well I didn’t and I was lost in ceremony with bliss, bliss, bliss… I was blissed out and it was almost asking me what I would like to experience more… this or that? To me it was like the nonphysical or the physical? And it was not any easy choice, but it also seemed like there was no wrong choice either. Death is not nothing… it’s not “no existence”… that doesn’t existence… existence exists with or without a perception of a physical world. So right… I don’t know if death really exists… it may seem that way to limited beings living a physical world, but we can awaken to being more than that and so even if humans think we are dead… we do not die… we can only exists. We can start to understand infinity in a deeper way with experience and we can continue to dig deeper and deeper without ever reaching a finale point… there’s no end destination… we just exist… as amazing at that realization was… I chose to experience the physical reality more… again I was finally getting the hang of it… and I’m really understanding how to love and appreciate the physical world… hell yeah it’s a challenge, but I like to overcome those challenges. When that decision was made… I started to return into my body and mind and what do I realize my physical body is experiencing? Well… it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting… when I was in this state I was out of my body… I didn’t know that my shaman was already having sex with my body… again I was coming around and started to piece together what the hell was going on… here I am choosing to be a part of this physical reality and I come back to someone having sex without my consent and especially while I was pretty much in a vegetative state or comatose. I start shaking my head because I knew I didn’t want to be involved with what was happening but literally my body has an orgasm. It was the first time where I experienced a prolonged state of gushing… there was no emotional orgasm at that time… that would have been earlier in my bliss state… but he got off of me after I orgasmed and I rolled away and covered myself up… and didn’t talk to him. I can’t remember if I just fell asleep right there or if I moved to my bed. I just knew when I woke up I was ready to leave. I was furious… I was supposed to have one more week of ceremony but I didn’t want another day. I told him I need to give my things away to his family and the next boat out of the village I’m going to take it and I’m not going to spend one more night alone with him at the center. At this time I was disgusted with myself and with him… and I wanted time away from him. I knew I hired my friend to come with me for a month around Peru to be my translator and I was going to wait for him to arrive before I try to really talk to him about anything. I tried it’s not like I didn’t try, but I didn’t think he was going to understand… and he wasn’t going to stop me from telling my friend what went down and that’s not going to go down for me anymore or anyone else I’m sharing ceremony with. I knew at this time that whatever happens in ceremony is supposed to happen… I just didn’t know that these lessons had to hit in this manner, but I knew I had to process, integrate, and recontextualize a shit ton! I still had nine more ceremonies after these… spread over five months. And these were a fraction of three ceremonies of the eleven I shared in dieta. So what have I processed, integrated, and recontextualized since then… well… if you’ve been reading my Journal you can start to see what’s changing. When I was going through these moments I was embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty and judgmental. Even though I had experienced passing through a threshold… didn’t meant I understood what that meant… I just knew I was changed but I didn’t know how. Firstly and most importantly is my consciousness.. I understand what consciousness is… not a vague idea or understanding of it… no it’s quite clear. It is quite clear I was experiencing different degrees and even though it’s not quite accurate it was as if I was unconscious. I was making decisions and interpretations at an unconscious state. The collective was assisting in me to make unconscious decisions and behavior as well. So in the past it was easy for me to look at my memories of my behaviors and thoughts and be embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty because I’d tell myself… why didn’t I know better? Now it’s quite clear there’s no reason to be embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty because I honestly didn’t know better… I was unconscious and I’ve been conditioned unconsciously and these were the results. Do I want to change anything that happened to me in the past… NO! All of these led me to the moment I am now and I’m grateful I’m conscious of what I am now and I’m still excited for more experiences to come. But did I learn that I assumed the collective around me was increasing their consciousness in the same way I am and at the degrees I am and at the pace that I am… Yes I assumed wrong… that has not been verified in my experience. Many of the collective are still behaving and thinking in a nonconscious manner. So I want to completely trust and surrender and maybe I’ll be able to do that to some extent… I don’t even want to say that… I want to completely surrender and trust, but for now I’ve got to see where people are first… it’s ok for me to have distance to feel the situation out first. If I know there is something I want to work on.. i don’t need others to help me learn it… there is ways for me to learn it myself so I don’t have to put myself in situations for existence to teach me lessons in manners I don’t want to find myself in. Granted I learned, but I’m sure I can have a more hand in how I learn. Maybe it will continue to happen but I know it will decrease because I’m more conscious… and I want to be more deliberate with what I’m creating around myself. I thought I need to have a hand on helping people I’m around, but I don’t need to have that hand everywhere. Because I know existence is already helping everything out. I can be more selective with my energy, time, and focus… and I no longer feel bad for saying or thinking that. When it comes to my sexual shadow… my mind has had a lot of conditioning that it needs to work out. But again… I want to work it out with myself for now. I’m going to learn how to integrate these insights and when I feel I’ve got a good hand in the integration I know I’ll feel more comfortable sharing ceremony again. I don’t know if it will take a few days, a few weeks, a few more months, or a few more years… I don’t want to put a timeline on what I need to integrate. I trust I’m intelligent enough to figure it out. I went over to the gentleman who is interested in sharing ceremony and we had a great conversation, just like we’ve done the last time. With me involved with the Journal is quite easy for me to talk about what I’ve been learning lately… and of course sexuality came into play. I won’t go into details of our conversation because I didn’t get his consent to discuss our conversations publicly, but I feel comfortable with what my feelings were in our conversation. I was glad that I did’t have any hesitation to discuss what I’m going through and where I am right now. It did make me a little uncomfortable whenI said I’m mostly autosexual but I’m open to whatever the experience leads. I felt when I said that last part it was giving a window of opportunity which I really don’t want to give right now. So I think I’ll just say I’m autosexual and leave it as that. I don’t think others need to know that I might be interested in mutual play…. I feel that’s will be only in a very very very very small selective group… lol… and I won’t be able to assume upon meeting them if they would be candidates or not. I found it interesting that he would not have expected my “struggle” with sexuality and had admitted another lady in her mid-forties was expressing similar thoughts as mine. I told him… people aren’t having the same views on sexuality like it’s a given. I was curious to see if he could teach me something, but I don’t want to make that decision yet… if I had to then I’d say no. Maybe after I get to know him more maybe… but honestly I feel like I want to share ceremony with him too… because I’m picking things up during engagements with people that I don’t always comprehend as clearly when I’m in ceremony there is clarity. I was about to go into detail of my doubts but I don’t think it’s necessary to express… I can say I’m doubtful and I know why. Like I told him I went through the careless point of having sex with anyone at anytime for any reason. I’m not desperate anymore. It would be a very specific learning moment only after I’ve given myself to be autosexual first. I haven’t even explored that yet… well not consciously… so I want to give myself time for that. I do have to mention that he brought up they he was put in the friend-zone for the first time… in which I busted out laughing because I’m trying to figure out how to popularize friend-zone… lol… I do think we would get benefits for sharing ceremony together. He’s a psychonaut and they’re usually very interesting and deeper ceremonies. But yeah maybe the setting isn’t going to be alone at one of each other’s houses… we were thinking about going hiking… maybe out in nature might be a better setup and it doesn’t have to be late… it could be in the late morning or afternoon… sometimes it’s hard not to appreciate nature and receive it’s blessings when we share ceremony in their space. There’s a good friend of his who wants to do ceremony too… along with his wife… maybe I can send an invite for everyone to join in on the hiking… I can have my setup ready but I don’t have to pull it out unless I think the timing is right. Working with psychonauts usually they like to go in solo… so it’s already a challenge to have me be there in ceremony with them… so maybe that won’t work, but maybe there are options I haven’t thought of yet. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this… I’m sure I have… but I’m not a dealer, right… so I don’t just give away my supplies and say ok here you go have at it… if that’s the case they can go somewhere else than myself, right. I’m not going to stop them… but if they want to have an experience with me I’ve learned how to prepare… of course I’m always looking on ways to improve and mostly screening better the participants I share with… lol… I’d love to share with everyone but honestly not everyone is ready. I’m still processing and integrating so i don’t feel I’m ready now either. And i’m ok with that… I know a part of me misses it and wants to see how it’s going to change because I know it’s changing… I’m changing. I’m enjoying the changes. I gues I wanted to mention something I’ve been thinking about. Now I feel like I should be more conscious with what I tell people… I realize I have an affect, and I want to be more conscious on how I’m affecting people. I know I’m not taking words at face value anymore… I might be swinging my pendulum a little too far, but I’m asking more clarifying questions instead of assuming. I’m still getting used to asking these questions but I’m getting better. But when they go to clarify my questions I’m weighing out their thought process… if they are clearly listening to themselves and trusting to go with their instincts I’m more likely going to encourage them to continue. If they seem more on the lost side, then I’ll give guidance but still ultimately empowering them that they are the ones who can find the answers for themselves. I’m not sure if that’s a strategy to keep pursuing though because if they are lost… they don’t trust themselves so maybe I can give them a few options of my opinion and then see what they do with that. Many people want to hear opinions, but to actually put them into action is something completely different. If they are not ready to apply themselves… then just be with them and support them without having to give solutions at times. Many times I just need someone to listen which helps me process… I can be that for others too. But this whole sexual exploration has got me to look at possibilities of how I would like to teach my children. I mentioned I went from monogamy, to polyamory, to celibacy, to autosexuality. And id’ like to help guide my children in the opposite way, right… of course I don’t know what that looks like but in theory I’d like for them to start off with autosexuality and celibacy… get them to know how to satisfy themselves and get them on the road to get to know what they are interested in in their life. Once they want to have experiences they want to share with others… suggest polyamory.. but more of mutual masturbation primarily with different partners they are sexually interested in. Maybe at this stage they can engage in intercourse, but maybe they’ll have more understanding in themselves and what they like in their partners that intercourse can be when they are ready for a monogamous relationship. Yeah this might sound like a fairytale, but I could think this as a good start into parenting sexuality. Even if I get the opportunity to help someone who already is developing their sexuality and I happen to be someone they trust for advice… I feel I could give them some direction once I know what they are wanting to gain for themselves. I know I have a lot more to learn and experience, but I have a diverse background in this area to at least give a few nuggets that might help… lol Alright… that feels good for tonight. Until next time…

What would you consider an ethical business model for a pickup coach? Alex James ( ex RSD coach ) does 4 week natural boot camps which are 3k for a month of every day coaching, for a dozen students at once. I think that's pretty reasonable for the value. No serious transformation can happen over one weekend, and even a month is short. Do you consider it fundamental to make clear that bootcamps are a bonus and most of the work can be done with quality wings for it to be ethical, or are is that shooting yourself in the foot too much?

I got scammed hard with a Transformation Mastery Mentoring program by Julien. Cost like $7k - I remember dropping that much because one video Leo said don't cheap out on personal development courses. Boy that was a mistake lol. I take full responsibility though - just good advice implemented poorly. As for Owen, his free content is great and he's definitely a thinker worth listening to. Some of the things he says are questionable and his biases are self evident, My favourite video is this one.

Nature loves courage, and responds to it by removing obstacles. That’s something Terence McKenna once said quoting the mushroom. Worth keeping in mind I would also say that this is a very valuable place to be because it is here that the spiritual rubber meets the road. It’s one thing to have nice ideas about oneness and the interconnectedness of all things and maybe have had some peak experiences, but everybody can have that. In these moments however, is when the possibility for real transformation occurs. Because there is a very real sense of fear present with you, now it is not just theoretical anymore, but you are actually afraid of [fill in the blank]. So I would invite you to use this as a doorway into your most deeply held beliefs. Get very introspective and examine it closely. And question EVERYTHING. As long as there is still fear, there is still ego. Not my will, but thy will be done.

@Kksd74628 The word 'Trans' is mostly as a prefix to most other words to add the meaning of 'going beyond' or 'above one or two things'. For example, the word 'transformation' is a modified version of the word 'formation', which means that multiple things form together as a singular formation, or when a single thing 'conforms' to other things in nature, like ant colonies working as one unit, or birds flying in formation. Therefore, the word 'transformation' is adding meaning to formation that's going beyond formation. For example, a caterpillar has a form, and is a formation of other components and compositions, begins it's life small, and then gets bigger as it's eating leaves, until it reforms itself into a shiny chrysalis, or sometimes a silk form, then transforms into a butterfly, which later feeds off of necter and mates with other butterflies, and lays eggs, and restarts the cycle again. So...to me, when someone says they're transgender, their sense of self image that identifies with their biological sex has 'gone beyond' the normal sense of the two gender roles here, as female and male. So, in practice, to me, is that these transgendered people, who are trans-sexual in nature, would look like an asexual person, beyond the constraints of the biological and psychological pulls of sexuality, which is extremely rare in nature. However, the majority of the time when someone says they're a transgender, they're still deeply confused about themselves deep down, and the ego doesn't know what to tether and attach itself to, as a male or as a female because it doesn't have stronger attachments to either gender, so we end up with gender dysphoria in most cases.

I have been undergoing a transformation with the help of Leo's forgiveness video. I am becoming more open to my emotions and I recognize that suppressing them can be very problematic. It can create a lot tension in the body. I rewatched Leo's video on body awareness and he recommended getting a massager. I am trying to relax my body and mind which makes me feel kind of tired. I was looking for a massager, and they looked kind of weird. I tried to get a good a look at the box, but there were security tags, blocking the label. I thought it was some kind of back or shoulder massager. Nobody said anything or judged me for it. Seeing this behavior, I know I don't need to be embarrassed when buying condoms, so in a way it helped me. I brought it home and my family started getting embarrassed. My sisters found it hilarious that I thought it was a back massager. I don't have a girlfriend and it might be a minute before I get one to share this with, so it will have to be returned. I should probably study other examples of sex toys. Should I just order a massage gun or chair off of Amazon?

Alright… so somehow many of my devices that i thought were not working are all of a sudden working now. It’s really wild… my Ipadpro is back alive and I can use this now to continue my Journal. Now that I see how the format looks on a mobile device… I think I’ll just go ahead an type normally. I thought maybe I would have the opportunity to upload images since I’m on a different device, but it’s still unavailable for my account, but it’s ok. I found an older phone of mine that’s resurrected itself too… so this is all good news… lol… I haven’t really wanted to post anything for a year now on my social media accounts, but also I didn’t really have the equipment too either. I’m excited to have an Apple device because of the picture quality… lol… I lost my mini in Peru last year and since I haven’t been up to working for other people I haven’t looked into getting a replacement. I also want to mention a little about my buddy Elvis and the newbie one-eyed Jack. They’ve been interacting more now. I’ve been watching Jack and loving on him and he seems to want to be my shadow lately. Which Elvis is not comfortable with. Elvis doesn’t want to be my shadow, but when he wants my attention… i’m usually there for him. Elvis hisses at Jack to warn him he’s uncomfortable with him around his space, but it doesn’t seem like Jack can hear the hissing. If he’s looking at Elvis then you can see he notices Elvis is not happy and he’s cautious. I noticed while I would approach Jack… I’d get really close to him before he knew I was there and would get startled as if he really can’t hear well or at all. So this little guy is pretty rough and ragged. But as I’m here typing I can see them. There only about three feet from each other and nobody seems to be upset. Jack seems a little dazed most of the time and Elvis is sitting there watching him, but not in an aggressive manner. Yesterday Elvis was on the bed with me and he knew this newbie was right outside the room and he didn’t like it. One time he jumped off the bed and looked as if he was going to approach Jack aggressively and I sternly told Elvis hey there… no… and he stopped… I said Elvis? What are you doing? Come on back here. Jack isn’t doing anything wrong. And it was nice to see he didn’t continue on his pursuit and returned to the bed. My little guy is a scaredy cat and thinks everything is out to get him. But I want him to be more friendly to other cats and dogs than what he is now. I don’t know if he remembers Mika or not, but they were together for five years. I figured he’d be a little normal towards other cats, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m not sure if it’s because Mika was my girl before he came into the family… and now he’s been my only fur-baby these last few years… he’s just jealous? But I like how mellow Jack is to show Elvis that not all cats are going to be aggressive with him like Sissy was (the gray cat). My exe stepmom stopped by the other day and she’s a cat lady herself and we were joking with my dad how he doesn’t really understand how to deal with cats yet… but the cats don’t see it as a problem… they love him. Anyway… I don’t think my dad really wants to take care of Jack… so I might see if I can find a home for him. I wish he’d give him more of a chance, but I don’t think my dad wants to give him as much attention as Jack would like. He’s fine if they’re outside and more independent. So maybe we can get him to be outside… but I think he has issues with his hearing and sight that just makes him scared to be out there surviving. So I wanted to continue on my entries yesterday. I feel like I have to continue repeating myself but I don’t know when or if people are reading this they are reading any entry before or just the last one. So I’m trying to explain how my Awakening happened initially but also how I am integrating the transformation. It’s not what I expected or thought… but in a way it is, but it’s hard to explain. I guess I didn’t mention that I didn’t know I was going to be experiencing this breakthrough moment. I thought there would be a chance and I wanted to, but I didn’t actually know it was going to happen before it did. usually I would do ceremonies in the Fall… return to integrate in the States… again in the Fall I’ll return to Peru for ceremony… repeat the cycle. Now when I started preparing for my dieta I was drawn to draw again. I love to draw but since my deliberation into my spiritual journey I had placed it to the side to focus on other issues I needed to address from the messages I received in ceremony. I drew what I call a shamanic yantra. A power source to help visualize what I want to create on my spiritual journey. I was working construction at the time and so I wasn’t able to put a lot of time in except after work so it took a few months for me to finish. During ceremonies I learned how to activate the piece and I remember when I was finished I would keep it near me in ceremony… again to see if i could activate it at all, but all to see what would happen if i was drawn to engage with it. There was one ceremony after it finished I did find myself almost thinking there were so many more messages in this shamanic yantra that i wasn’t conscious I was doing. I do create with a lot of symbolism in mind but there was another layer I was understanding that I wasn’t conscious of until ceremony. When I was drawing my shamanic yantra I saw them as temporary activated spiritual vision boards in a sense. This was not my final vision of where my spirituality is going to be but what I’m working towards. I figure once I’ve reached this first vision, then I’ll be drawn to create a new shamanic yantra with my new visions and aspirations. I new I was preparing for dieta so I wanted to encourage openness, vulnerability and transparency. I wanted to be ready for my messages and ready to receive them. I drew myself in the nude. My spiritual lover said he noticed one ceremony I had the White Tara dancing above me. I hadn’t heard of who White Tara, a Buddhist goddess, was but what I’ve read there are 21 aspects of the goddess Tara… the White symbolizes maternal compassion, healing, health, and long life. I found images of her and I decided to create myself in her image. White Tara has two regular eyes, a third eye in the center of the forehead, eyes on each of her hands, and eyes on both of her feet. They say this helps her see the suffering and is able to use her power to help. Honestly I could relate to this as I learn my style of healing. I’ve used my hands and feet well many parts of my body to scan the bodies of who I’m sharing ceremony… it does feel like my body parts becomes vessels to detect where to focus my attention that is not detectable from the visible sight of eyes. There area specific areas I’m drawn to work on it might be one place it might be several and again most of the time I don’t know why… I just know that’s what I’m supposed to do for them at that time. Sometimes my guests tell me why they think i focused in certain spots. Sometimes I get channeled messages but I feel I don’t really have to know why I’m healing someone… all I want to be is my fullest potential to help in whatever I can be for that guest. I’ve been building a working knowledge in tantric yoga mostly hatha and a little kriya. At times I’m really in the zone with it and then other times I’m focused elsewhere, but I have a systematic course manual that’s been a jewel to have. The first place i was introduced to Yoga was exactly what I needed. When I went to other yoga studios… it just wasn’t the way I enjoyed Yoga… they moved to much and too fast for my taste… lol… I really like breathe-work… slow deep full breathes and synchronizing my movements with the inhalation, exhalation, and retention is very satisfying. Plus meditation doesn’t seem to be a big part of the yoga I tried… except my introductory classes. That’s where I got the course manual from… I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go often and they were encouraging me to become a teacher, but I knew the book would be valuable. I continue to get deeper meanings in the words I read. It’s amazing how much meaning could be in words. How the interpretation deepens with the same words being read at a different state and with more experience under your belt. So yes I want to continue to encourage myself to practice tantric techniques. I placed myself into two positions overlapping each other. One I was sitting in Padmasana (Full lotus pose)… there’s only been a short period of time where I could do this pose, but I know if I allow myself the time and attention I can get there again and more consistently… in that pose my hands were placed in Mahayoni Mudra. “This is a mudra that is widely practiced in tantric circles. The word maha means ‘great’ or perhaps even better in this context ‘supreme’. The word yoni means ‘womb’, ‘source” or ‘origin’. Therefore, this mudra can be called the ‘supreme source mudra’. This is such an important mudra for it symbolizes the unity between the individual and consciousness. It symbolizes the return of the individual to his source, his origin. It is not only a symbol, for this mudra is used to help invoke this realization and experience. It is such a simple looking practice, but it possesses vast power of invocation, if it is done under the correct circumstances.” Saraswati, Swami Satyananda. “A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya”.Munger, Bihar, India. Yoga Publications Trust. Binary School of Yoga 1981-reprinted 2004,2006,2007,2009,2013. Pg 378. I was around second grade when I was introduced to this mudra, but I had no clue it was a mudra or a part of yoga. Someone taught it to me and it looked like a lizard or a frog… I would tuck my pinky inside the cavity it creates and then when I would open it’s mouth and have the pinky as a tongue to surprise other kids… get some laughs. I used to do this all the time and so when I was reading through this manual I ran into this mudra I thought it was very interesting. I was wanting to Awaken or reach Enlightenment during my dieta so I thought this mudra was very appropriate. I also want to continue to balance my femininity and masculinity. I used the “Shatkona” from Hindu yantra which represents the union of both the feminine and masculine form. Simply the upward triangle represents the masculine. The downward triangle represents the feminine. They are overlapping to be in union having all qualities. In the second position I created both triangles with my legs and arms to promote unity in a romantic manner as well. In between the apex of the hands I placed a diamond to symbolize faithfulness, innocence, purity, and love. The diamond has brilliance to illuminate the clarity of mind overcoming mental uncertainty. There are 11 rays on the left and 11 rays on the right. 1111 came into my experience after the first round of ceremonies along with the term twin flame. One and one means union… for a 11 to couple with another 11 we each need to be in union with ourselves before we are in union with our twin star or twin flame. Also I was introduced to numerology after the first ceremonies and I ran into master numbers. 11 represents the inspirational teacher. 22 represents the master builder. 33 represents the cosmic parent. These numbers are represented in the shamanic yantra. In the background I have 33 chakra points being lit up and I want to open as many as I can… lol… I also wanted to represent Enlightenment again by adding a glowing halo-ish which many cultures use. I knew I wanted to encourage my growth in my healing Icaros style. It was going to be my first dieta with master plants and I didn’t know if it was going to be plants or trees I was going to be dieting. So I decided to choose a tree.. instead of me being a tree-hugger, the tree is hugging me. I want them to comfort me as I learn. I want them to assist me to enlightenment with their arms hovering around the halo glow. And I’m open to assistance beyond enlightenment with their arms raised in the air. I wanted to not forget the plants that have already been present in ceremonies and i wanted to continue to learn and be thankful for what they’ve already shown me. Ayahuasca root, Chacruna leaves, and Mapacho leaves. I wanted to continue my respect for the king master plant, Mapacho by creating a ring of smoke with some of the spirit animals that I’ve already learned from in ceremony. And I’m open to more. During this time was when we were in the pandemic. I was waiting for the international borders to reopen, but that fall it did not. I guess I needed more time before dieta and so I returned the falling fall. It allowed me to experience more and also more ceremonies to share with others. It was the first time visiting Peru where I was supposed to be limited to three months. I knew I was going to stay longer than the three months… I even went to the immigration office to see what happens if i stay longer. They said I would have to pay a penalty. turns out the charge would be a dollar a day after the three months. I said well ok then… I can handle that charge. So I wasn’t in a hurry to leave… lol… During the dieta with the awakening and also there was a moment where I thought I was designing a logo for my shaman and his retreat, but as I was in the creative process I realized I was using symbolism that represents me and what I want to build. During the delay to return in Peru, I got a chance to think about my entrepreneur ideas… I’ve already mentioned in an earlier post. This was when I was really asking myself do I want to choose profit or nonprofit. I hadn’t thought about a nonprofit… I’m not sure why but I hadn’t. I did a lot of research on how to start a nonprofit, but the concept came as an extension from a business idea I had with holistic centers and retreats I wanted to create. Hmmm…. This is interesting… again I have an idea I thought I was going to talk about but I just let it flow and go… it starts in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Well… I guess I can go into my ideas about the centers and retreats I was thinking about. I’m going to take a quick break and I’ll be ready to see how to explain… lol So grabbed a bite to eat and I guess this is a process to look deeper into what I want to create. How I am experiencing Journaling is I can recall my past and my recent current… lol… but I’m transforming through the process. I happen to be purging a lot with my material possessions. I’m hoping to purge 90% and I’m at 75% probably now. The last part seems to be the challenging because those are the items I really enjoy so I start to come up with reasons on why I should keep it. But most of my reasoning isn’t really applicable anymore. So maybe that’s what I need to do more with these centers and retreats… I feel like I’m trying to create a clean slate because when I was making these decisions in the past I was less conscious then where I am now. So maybe I’ll have a new perspective and approach? I’m uncertain until I go through the process but it seems like it’s a good chance. When I moved out to Colorado I actually had a cousin who had a summer home there. That’s how I learned of the location. She’s a teacher and so am I but she wanted to see if I wanted to partner up on a business together. She had been trying for years to get me to go visit Colorado. She would have my uncle mention it to me and even my dad. It wasn’t until I returned from the first round of Aya ceremonies that they mentioned it again during the holidays and I was ready to check it out because I knew I was looking to change things up. I went to this little village after New Years and it took my breath away. This village is nestled in the Rockies with the largest and deepest natural lake of Colorado and two large reservoirs connected to it. The village well like the downtown strip is only about a mile long. During the winter there is not a ton of tourists. So when I visited it was like a ghost town. I saw all the shows and restaurants, but most of them were closed for the winter. So the appearance of a secluded mountain town started the appeal. The snow covering the mountain tops and the trees and the lakes… it felt like a postcard or a fairytale. There’s a few times while I lived there and was driving or walking around did I start to tear up because I get overwhelmed with the beauty there. She took me to the building she wanted to rent out and it was the oldest business building in the village. The business which was there was a souvenir shop… most shops are souvenir shops. When I visit somewhere I might grab a small souvenir but that’s not really what I like to do to remember my time there. But I could see why shop owners would like to sell those items and it seems it’s been successful for a while, but I just don’t see that being sustainable much longer. There are more people wanting to minimize their material possessions and they want experiences to remember not necessarily a trinket to store. My cousin thought we could just create a business similar to what I was doing in Indy which was popular. I told her that that would be good, but I think we could do more. I rode my first snowmobile during this visit. I’ve ridden on the back a few times, but never drove one. It was so much fun… yes my face was literally frozen with a smile while i was hanging out with my cousin’s husband on the snowmobiles. I ended up by myself in the middle of a pasture surrounded by mountains and I decided to call my dad. I was showing him what I was looking at and I remember pulling out one of my cigars and told him… well I guess it’s official… I’m going to be moving out of Indiana. This place is amazing and I want to give it a shot. My cousin was excited. I told her I wouldn’t be able to move until summer to be able to get rid of my belongings and finalize arrangements. At that time I visited some of my Aya familia in Colorado and also in Australia. Once I returned to Indiana to prepare for the move… I started to dive deeper into what we could do with the space. I knew the concept she wanted would be good, but that’s not all I know how to teach and I like variety so I don’t get bored… lol. So fist I was looking more towards what I could teach so mostly art, dance, and yoga was what I was telling her. I had designed floor plans on what we could do with the space where we’d keep existing walls… and then what could happen if we remodeled. About a month and a half of leaving for Colorado my cousin called me up and said that she’s not ready to make that step yet. She was working for an elementary school and even though she wants to start a business one day… she’s sorry she’s not ready to do it now. I told her it was fine, but I’ve got everything lined up to leave and I’m still going to go and give it a chance. Plus my dad and I planned out our road trip to visit some of the brother-friends from our hometown and visit with their families they been creating. It was soooo good to see the guys…we stopped in Illinois, then Kansas City, up to Montana, and finally Idaho before Colorado. We also had a family wedding there. The family spent a few days together and then I had the weekend to stay and be out by Monday. She knew about my two cats, but I didn’t know a few of her family members were allergic or very sensitive. I did a deep clean and sweep of the house. My dad didn’t know how I was going to do it but I remember I went to visit a hotel near where she lived which had a restaurant and bar. I thought I’ll try there first. I’m confident in employment if I get to talk to the boss. And that’s what happened. As we’re talking they said they could use help and when could I start. I said right now… lol… so I started at the front desk and bar assistant. In that weekend I had my feelers out of who I could possibly approach to stay with. I didn’t have money to pay up front, but I already knew I had a job… actually I had a part-time job setup with the owners of the building we were looking to buy too. So I knew I’d have money soon. In those two days I was drawn to the local who was a daily regular at the bar. He was older and somehow someone mentioned he was living alone and he was a bit of a hoarder. He was friendly and so I just got up enough courage to ask him if I could stay at his place and I’d be able to help clean and organize his place. At first I just needed a place to park my van and I said my cats and i can just sleep there, but maybe I’d be able to use his restroom. For some reason the gentleman said yes… so I began my initial experiences in Colorado…. Lol.. now when I was coming up with ideas to partner with my cousin… the thought of making a profit was the option I had and I had some ideas but I also was thinking small scale. The time I was delayed before going to my dieta… I was staying with a friend and her two dogs. We had a great time together, but she saw parts of me she had seen before… lol… She saw my obsessive mode I get into at times. A lot of times it’s when I’m doing my art. Sometimes it’s hard for me to sleep or eat because all I want to do is work on the art until it’s finished… lol… well I got into that mode when I started looking into how to create a nonprofit. It was new so it was really interesting to read about the different aspects of how to setup and run one here in the States. In fact I felt it was a little to specific for me… lol… that’s when I looked into foundations and then even a operating foundation. But I started getting into what I’d like to create. I found the name and at the time I thought I was going to help people in the Awakening process. Different degrees of the awakening process and try to get a variety of ways to attract different people with different interests and different levels of consciousness. I came up with a little slogan A to G to Infinity… where there were pillars I would have as the umbrellas where everything would fall under. Part of the name is my name for this forum… withinUverse… So that would be included as the pillar titles. (Geesh apologizes but something I was remembering in my dream last night… there was something about changing my name… I wonder if that means this nonprofit? Interesting… anywho) The pillars are withinuverse “A”wakens, “B”ecome withinuverse, withinuverse “C”reates, “D”iscover withinuverse, withinuverse “E”ducates, “F”orm withinuverse, and withinuverse “G”rows. (I already know that I liked this name, but now with the emphasis on You or U is not accurate anymore… lol… you is exclusive and I don’t want to put an emphasis on something I’m going to help promote to change. I had the U like that because I was switching up the spelling of universe… into inuverse, but the name for the last business I was wanting to use was withinnergy… so it ended up withinUverse). Briefly I’ll try to explain the big picture of the pillar… Awakens uses mystical and shamanic techniques to inspire us to discover our Truth of Awakening. Become uses spiritual purification, integration work, tantric practices, and reprogramming to embodying our Truth. Creates uses huge list of arts to connect to universal flow to express ourselves as individuals and as a collective. Discover uses investigation in ancient civilizations and modern technologies to serve together to reach dynamic solutions. Educates is for everyone, but this will be more geared towards the youth. Yes there is theory, but training is paramount… and the focus is for them to learn how to think not what to think. Form uses the sustainable and conscious focus understanding all the symbiotic relationships which should be included when design Universal communities. Grows was going to be a subsidiary corporation for possible philanthropy and investments in individuals and organizations to promote the elevation of consciousness in their field of expertise. So to make it easier to understand I’ll try to use a general example. Let’s say we are setting up a retreat for guests to participate… wait before then I feel like I have to give a little more background… lol… so to be involved with these retreats people are pretty much committing to making a huge effort into understanding where they are and where they want to grow. I want things to be documented so people can see their progress. I’m not really interested in a one time visitor. I’m looking to build relationships which will take commitment. Obviously I cannot force anyone to continue but there maybe a way to weed out people who aren’t really that serious. But i don’t want to be exlusive so maybe just let things be because regardless they’ll be learning what they can when they can at the pace they can. But yes… this isn’t set in stone just ideas i have. I would like people to write or make a video of where they are and what they’re looking forward to experiencing before they arrive. I’d say a minimum of a two week retreat. As they are there they continue the documenting of their progress until they have a final response of the retreat… how do they feel now and what’s the same and what’s different. I know I want to be effective and so the more data I receive the more I’ll understand if the process is working or if it needs to be adjusted. I love flexibility because I know being stubborn and stuck is not growth or elevation. I’m going to be making mistakes as much as I want to start out as perfectly as I can… once it really starts going we’ll see where areas need more work and maybe drop other areas completely. At the end I also want them to give their reviews on the retreat and on their teachers. Again there are many factors into play and I know reviews are just one way, but if I could get feedback on 90% of guests that would be valuable to have to know how to continue to build. The teachers I want to hire are going to have responsibilities as well. They will have the similar documented personal progress like the guests, but I also want to ask more from them too. They aren’t going to be just coming to teach their classes at their specific time slots or whatever… but I want them to be students of each teacher that is there. I know how versatile teachers are and the more experience of the different techniques there are out there to learn the more beneficial for each teacher. And as a teacher the desire to learn is important as well… so they will be writing reviews on each teacher there. Constructive, conscious reviews to help each other see each other from different perspectives. I’d like them to review the retreat as well. I’d like a 100% rate from teachers… almost mandatory… lol… I would like the retreat to have staff that is also observing the classes and teachers and be able to give feedback. Maybe we will have a group who’s filming the process and has lists of the students in which class and able to begin in visual video journeys using our and the individual’s documentation. As the retreat or withinuverse… I’d like to be able to have a session or sessions afterwards to discuss the data they found for themselves and also what we observed too… guests and teachers. Be able to give them a video documenting their retreat experience. The members of withinuverse will be able to discuss all that was learned from that one retreat to better organize and run the next one. I’m obsessed with learning so in all aspects that I can’t even think of I’d like to learn more. If I’m able to have two weeks I could organize it that the staff will be not only observing but participating in the classes too. Also we’d be able to get permission from guests and teachers if we want to use their footage of their experience to have a overview of what that particular retreat was like for promotional material for our website or social media too. Of course I’m hoping the most powerful way to promote is positive word of mouth. So what are these retreats… now I’ll say to keep it simple we can each of the pillars has many options under that umbrella. If we choose one or two specific areas from each pillar that can create a retreat. Or another way to put it too is the Wellness Wheel. I used to use this technique to help me focus on areas I needed to work on to create more balance in my life. This isn’t exactly what I’m saying but maybe it can give an idea of what I’m trying to say…. There are several areas in life people experience. We can choose on or two teachers from each area… as an example if you don’t know the wellness wheel… I created my own wheel but a general one on line might have financial, environmental, emotional, physical, occupational, social, intellectual and spiritual areas… so having a teacher from each category to create a retreat. The idea is to have classes that people are going to find enjoyable… at least a few if not half of them which would be great, but then the other half would be areas they don’t know about or are uncomfortable with which is also great. It’s not easy to put yourself in uncomfortable situations but to change and learn… that’s what we have to do, but we don’t have to be doing it the whole time. But that’s what they are going to be observing within themselves. What the same between a class I’m comfortable with and a class I’m uncomfortable with. If we focus on the uncomfortable class… how did I feel the first class to when I finished that class two weeks later? Was there a difference or not? I cannot help myself but I’m sure each retreat will have creative art classes, dance classes, yogic classes, music classes and outdoor classes… I absolutely love them and find them so valuable in so many ways. There are so many different classes that can come from these areas too… but the retreat won’t be limited to these only… just these will be included in each retreat to start with a number of other classes. If data and responses shows to switch it up then we can make those decisions. but my gut says to at least start that way. Also when it comes to the retreat… guests, staff, and teachers are going to be helping in service of the collective. I don’t think I want to hire staff just to clean and cook. I’d like to setup a rotation for everyone there to be involved in these tasks. Different groups will be responsible for cooking for the group, maybe a different group will help with cleaning the dishes… after each class we clean up after ourselves. If there’s laundry to do maybe we can wash our clothes, our bedsheets and towels together. The staff maybe be responsible for the initial setup and the official breakdown, but during the retreat we’re all going to pitch in and help. If we can build centers in amazing locations throughout the world would be great. But maybe we want to be more portable and visit amazing locations for the retreat but then leave afterwards. Actually if we go and visit locations a part of the retreat might be designed to get to know the locals… maybe find opportunities to volunteer somehow. Possibly our outdoor classes can involve local guides through their homeland. I want to allow time for privacy and time to socialize. I’d like some events to be open to children and fur-babies. Have teachers that have different and yet conscious ways to approach youth and animal development. I’d love to have maybe child teachers too. I gained huge benefits by teaching at a young age. I was in elementary when I first started teaching origami in the library and calligraphy at a hospital… lol… certain children when it comes to art are fabulous teachers and if they led a dance class… lol… we might be all trying to move like animals or something… see what ideas they have and encourage them at a young age they can be an example for adults too. I thought maybe part of the design would have a way to do a performance I’m not sure of what kind… it’ll depend on the classes but to put on a demonstration that’s choreographed to show the public what we learned together. Or maybe a one day festival near the end to demonstrate to the public what’s being taught? There are so many possibilities. With foundations they can hold scholarship programs… maybe have the public be able to attend, but then have selected scholarship guests that has added bonuses complimentary to them, but maybe ask them to push themselves a little more then other guests… i don’t know there’s so many options. Maybe people can only get one week paid vacation but if they apply for the scholarship we can pay for the following week so they have an extended vacation that’s not going to hurt their financial situation if they want to participate. Maybe have scholarships to help with passport and visa applications and approvals. Or scholarships to help with travel costs? So that’s what I was leading towards when I was thinking of creating a nonprofit. But I think the first thing to do is find staff. And I already mentioned trying to hire them to be on a more deliberate path to self-mastery. When I hire staff and teachers I want them to be overflowing with energy, focus, and enthusiasm. I want our guests to be surrounded by supporters and influencers. I want everyone to gain value out of our experiences. I’d like to offer a wage that they are able to have ample time to prepare for the retreats and recover. I want my staff to be thriving and exploring their desires in life, but when it’s time to support in an event… that they are ready to give their all to create an unforgettable experience for themselves and everyone involved and hopefully to the public that we share with so they can be a part of the next event. I know I’m still steering in this direction but I’m always up to changing it. I also know the way I thought about shamanism is changing which I hadn’t thought possible. That’s the thing i think is great, but I feel I’m more focused on working on these messages too… lol.. there’s actually a lot more that I’d like to do when I find my abundance. This makes me excited! I’m going to jump back to the community design… I always see the grocery store as the heart of the community… how we serve food to the community is important and what we offer to serve is important. I thought maybe to have a grocery store that is connected to a seasonal garden or greenhouse so people can see what the veggie and plants look like and teach how to grow them. But have it also setup like a home economics class with a ton or cooktops and ovens… where we’d have cooks come in and teach specialty dishes from their families or cultures. We don’t throw away food if it’s getting to a point before it spoils of coming up with creative recipes for people to make with these items and have them at a discount or something. Plus working at a small grocery store I loved how much variety they had, but also if I ran my own grocery I’d be teaching techniques so people can specialize at ther homes. An example would be pickles… lol… We’d have dill, bead and butter, sweet pickles that were just cut differently as options. We can have easy and fun ways to prep food… how to cut pickles in all the different standard ways and maybe even artful ways. But then how to do we make them different flavors? Have classes and different spices so people can learn how to make their own pickles at home if they wanted to. Just similar ideas like that. Another thing I thought about doing for a community design is equipment libraries… lol… yes we can have a standard library but what if we had well selected group of equipment that one family or person doesn’t necessarily use all the time. Most of the time it’s just sitting around in the garage not being used. Could we pitch in to purchase these items and then have a schedule to be able to use this equipment when we need to and the equipment will be in more use because several people are sharing it instead of everyone having their own. If there needs to be repairs to the equipment we can have classes on how to fix it… lol… or if we need to replace it… it’s doesn’t have to come out of one person or one families pocket. Equipment is a very broad term but again depending on the community can determine what kind of equipment that people would like to have available to use that we might not think to purchase ourselves but if a group pitched in then we’d definitely put it to use. I’d love to bring more attention to apprenticeship opportunities for the youth to be involved with. Even somehow providing more opportunities for them to learn outside of a book and in application. lol… ok…. I’m just rambling now different thoughts all over the place… lol.. you might be thinking that’s what you do all the time, but i can tell a difference when I’m grasping the air and when I’m in a flow state. I’m getting tired… so this will be a good time to break

As I continue to explore the field, I have also come to appreciate the remarkable connection between sacred geometry and the universe at large. The stars in the sky are a breathtaking manifestation of sacred geometry. From the spiral arms of galaxies to the hexagonal shapes of Saturn's storms, we can see the underlying patterns of sacred geometry throughout the cosmos. Even black holes and quasars, the most mysterious and powerful phenomena in the universe, can be understood through the lens of sacred geometry. Black holes, for example, are believed to have a toroidal shape, similar to the torus shape. The torus shape allows energy to flow in and out of the black hole, which creates powerful jets of energy that can be seen from Earth as quasars. These jets follow a spiral path, which again highlights the fundamental connection between sacred geometry and the universe. By studying and meditating on these cosmic patterns, we can connect with the vast intelligence and creative power of the universe. We can align ourselves with the natural rhythms of creation and activate our light body to its fullest potential. Whether you choose to gaze up at the stars, explore the patterns of the Flower of Life, or delve into the mysteries of black holes and quasars, I encourage you to keep an open mind and a curious spirit. The universe is a vast and wondrous place, and by embracing the principles of sacred geometry, we can tap into its limitless potential for growth and transformation. Love and Balance to all

this is a bit of an aside but sort of related to the topic of teaching: you can call me elitist but I don't think "awakening" at the highest levels should be taught to just anyone. people with deep wounds and narcissistic egos can really misuse this stuff, that stuff needs to be dealt with first. if I were ever to teach any of this it would only be to people who show signs of high integrity, maturity, willingness to heal their traumas or narcissism. I already somewhat regret mentioning the word "awakening" to my narcissistic control freak parents just to get them off my backs, it already feels like they can misuse this stuff based on what one of them been saying to me, and further guilt trip me about things or disrespect my boundaries. people can use and "understand"/come up with ideas about the word "awakening" from all kinds of places, but totally miss "true Love" nor care about transformation/development (as very few teachers teach this). I honestly don't fking understand why I chose this character some days it's like a ball and chain around my neck, maybe so I really have nothing to look back on and get the heck out of here once this life is over. not as bad of a situation as @Holykael but prob very similar. please ignore what I said if this is triggering. I am just frustrated and appreciate you holding space for me.

Ken Wilber talks about that when we achieve a % of 2nd tier thinking humans (Yellow/Turquoise) we will have a lot of transformation on reality at all levels. I’m contemplating this.

I see no better place to document the transformation that forgiveness has allowed. All my life, I have been over protective. I was afraid and wanted to avoid trauma and being hurt. This over protection is what caused most of the suffering in my life because I was afraid and trying to avoid suffering. The only way for me to experience love would be to take off my armor and be vulnerable, but this was the last thing I wanted to do. I was protective in my family life when I avoided them by staying in my room. It didn't help that my older sister and mother had anger issues, nor did it help that there were episodes of domestic violence between mom and step dad who were drug addicts that stole my money. I was afraid of making any small mistake which would set them off, so I hid. I was protective in my school life. I was afraid of the other kids who were bullying me. In response, I isolated myself from the other kids, but this backfired. I became an easy target because I was alone. I needed to double check everything to make sure the other kids didn't steal from me or write fa* on my jacket. Instead of keeping my backpack by my side, I moved to keeping it under my feet. This over protection in school was reinforced through the sexually inappropriate behaviors of other kids. After what happened with my sister, I became very closed to sex and judgemental of sex, not because of sex itself, but because of the punishment associated with it. I saw the other kids as fools as they constantly got themselves in trouble with humping other kids, drawing penises on the walls, and other childish behaviors. I used to laugh with the other kids about all of this myself, but I had changed because I was afraid of punishment. Sexual harassment didn't help. There was one girl who grabbed my penis twice and another girl who followed me around trying to get me to have an orgy. I was immediately uncomfortable with any girl attempting to make me look or feel slutty. Deep down I wanted a relationship in which I could express my authentic feelings, but it seemed to me that it was not possible. I stayed closed. I have been protective in my hyper vigilance when it came to any selfish thought or impulse. I judged myself very harshly and didn't want to hurt others. This included the possibility of using autism as an excuse to get away with selfishness which scared me. It included making people uncomfortable with my weird behaviors no matter how hard I tried to be good. All of my judgements paralyzed me as I feared doing anything remotely wrong. This led to all kinds of "what if I do this?" The fear of not being able to control myself made me more protective as I created fears which didn't exist. I am prone to catastrophizing and coming up with scenarios that lead to suicidal thoughts. This includes the paralysis that I feel when attempting to approach a woman. I see millions of things that could go wrong because I don't trust myself to be a good person. My defense from strong negative emotions include repression, dissociation, and isolation. I have constantly wanted to remain separate from others as I lived in my own little bubble trying to be safe. In fact my over protection led to suicidal thoughts. I therefore tried to protect myself from over protection by being more protective for fear that I would kill myself, or cause harm to others. In truth the solution was to drop my armor, which was the last thing I wanted to do. I was ignorant and did not understand how to cope with all of my fears as I did my best to avoid trauma. This over protection is what traumatized me the most. In a way the possibility of suicide was comforting. I constantly felt like I was not in control of my life no matter how hard I tried. The ability to kill myself and eliminate all the suffering I didn't understand helped me to feel easier about my life. Suicidal thoughts are therefore a defense mechanism for strong negative emotions such as fear, shame, guilt, self hatred and others. There is a visualization I like to do in exercising forgiveness. I visualize the child who is acting over protective because he is afraid. He is ignorant and is struggling to cope with fear. Deep down he wants love, but struggles to love himself. He has several issues with depression and anxiety as he tries to protect himself from trauma while doing his best to be a good person. Although he tries to be a good person, he cannot help but fail and he blames himself harshly. He is afraid of his own selfishness and is unable to love himself, even though he tries to. all he wants is safety. I see the weakness and vulnerability in this child. I give him a hug as I tell him it's okay to be scared. I'm not mad at you. You are only trying to be good and you deserve to be loved. It makes me cry when I do this visualization, including now. This is the child who needs to be forgiven. Part of me still feels the need to be protective because I'm scared. I notice the tension in my back and shoulders dissolving, but then coming back. I don't want to be hurt, but in doing so I block out love. This makes me feel conflicted and unsure as to whether or not I should stop being protective because of my doubts and fears. I might need to ease into being less protective.

Thich Nhat Hanh Dear friends, today is the 6th of August, 1996 and we are in the Upper Hamlet. We are going to speak English today. I would like to tell you a story that took place a number of years ago. One day I saw the Venerable Ananda—you know who he is? Ananda is a cousin of the Buddha, a very handsome man with a very good memory. He memorized everything the Buddha said, and after the Buddha passed away, he repeated exactly what the Buddha said during his life. Then other monks tried to learn and memorize also. Later on, all this was put down into writing and that is why we have the Sutras today. “Sutras” means the teaching of the Buddha in written form. They exist in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and in Vietnamese, but originally it was in a kind of Bengali, very close to Pali and Sanskrit. One day I saw the Venerable Ananda practicing walking meditation in front of the hut of the Buddha. You know, Ananda became a monk, a student of the Buddha. He was the attendant of the Buddha during many years. He took very good care of the Buddha. Of course, the Buddha loved him and there were people who were jealous of him. Sometimes Ananda was so concerned about the happiness of the Buddha that he forgot about himself. Sometimes he did not enjoy what was there in the present moment, being much younger than the Buddha. One day standing on the hill looking down, the Buddha saw beautiful rice fields. The rice was ripe, about to be harvested. But because Ananda was only thinking of how to make the Buddha comfortable, he didn’t see it. So the Buddha pointed to the rice fields below and said, “Ananda can you see it’s beautiful?” It was like a bell of mindfulness—suddenly Ananda saw that the rice fields down there were so beautiful. The Buddha smiled and said, “Ananda, I want the robes of the monks and the nuns to be designed in the form of rice fields—golden colors like the rice that is already ripe, small portions of the rice fields like that.” Ananda said, “Yes, that is possible, I will go tell my brothers and from now on we will make the sanghati, the robes of the monks and nuns, in the form of rice fields.” Another time when Ananda was with the Buddha, north of the Gangha River in the city of Vaisali, the Buddha pointed to the city, the trees, and the hills, and said to Ananda “Don’t you see Vaisali is beautiful?” Then Ananda took the time to look at the beauty of the city. The day I saw Ananda practicing walking meditation around the hut of the Buddha, he was trying to protect the Buddha from guests. Many guests came, and they always wanted to have a cup of tea with the Buddha, and the Buddha could not just receive guests all day. So Ananda was trying to help. That day Ananda was practicing walking around the hut of the Buddha. It’s not exactly a hut, but a cave—the Buddha was staying in a cave, very cold. And Ananda saw someone coming, coming, coming in his direction. He had the impression that he knew this person, but just forgot his name. When that person had come very close, he recognized him as Mara. You know Mara? Mara is the one who had caused the Buddha a lot of difficulties. The night before the Buddha attained final enlightenment, Mara was there to tempt him. Buddha was tempted by Mara. Mara is the tempter. He always wanted the Buddha to be a politician, to be a king, or a president, or a foreign minister, or running a business, having a lot of money, a lot of beautiful women; and he was always trying to tempt the Buddha so that Buddha would go into these directions. That is Mara. Ananda saw Mara approaching. He felt uncomfortable. Why should Mara come at this time? But Mara saw him already—Ananda could not hide himself—so he had to stand there and wait for Mara and they had to say things like, “Hello, how do you do?” People say that even if they don’t like each other. They say, “Hello, good morning, how are you,” and so on. They don’t mean it. Then they come to the real thing: “What are you here for Mara?” “I want to visit the Buddha,” Mara said, “I want to see him.” Ananda said, “Why should you want to see the Buddha? I don’t think the Buddha has time for you.” You know when the head of a corporation or a director of an office doesn’t want to see you she says, “Go and tell him I am in conference.” And Ananda was about to say something like that, but he remembered that he had to practice the Five Precepts and could not tell a lie. So he refrained from saying that the Buddha is in conference. He was frank. He said, “Mara, why should the Buddha see you? What is the purpose and are you not ashamed of yourself? Don’t you remember that in the old days, under the Bodhi tree, you were defeated by the Lord? How could you bear seeing him again? I don’t think that he will see you. You are the enemy of the Buddha,” and Ananda continued to say what was really in his heart. You know Mara was very aware, a very experienced person. He just stood there and looked at the young Venerable Ananda and smiled. After Ananda finished, he said, “What did you say Ananda, you said the Buddha has an enemy?” Then Ananda felt very uncomfortable to say that the Buddha had an enemy. That did not seem to be the right thing to say, but he just said it. He said, “I don’t think that the Buddha will see you, you are his enemy,” So if you are not very concentrated, very deep, very mindful, you may say things like that against yourself, against what you know and what you practice. When Mara heard Ananda say that he is the enemy of the Buddha, he burst out laughing and laughing and laughing, and that made Ananda very uncomfortable. “What, you’re telling me that the Buddha also has enemies?” So finally Ananda was defeated, completely defeated. He had to go in and announce the visit of Mara, hoping that the Lord would say, “I have no time for him, I need to continue sitting.” But to his surprise, the Buddha smiled beautifully and said, “Mara, wonderful! Ask him to come in.” That surprised Ananda. Remember Ananda was young with not a lot of experience. All of us are Ananda, you know. So Ananda had to go out again and bow to Mara and ask him to come in because the Lord wanted Mara to be his guest. The Buddha stood up, and guess what? The Buddha did hugging meditation with Mara. Ananda did not understand. The Buddha invited Mara to sit on the best place in the cave—a stone bench. And he turned to his beloved disciple and said, “Ananda, please make tea for us.” You might guess that Ananda was not entirely happy. Making tea for the Buddha—yes. He could do that 1,000 times a day. But making tea for Mara was not a very pleasant idea. But since the Lord had asked, Ananda went into a corner and began to make tea for them and tried to look deeply, why things were like that. When the tea was offered to the Buddha and the guest, Ananda stood behind the Buddha and tried to be mindful of what the Buddha would need. You see, if you become a novice, you have to practice being an attendant to your teacher. You stand behind him or her and you try to know what your teacher needs each moment. But it did not seem that the Buddha needed anything. He just looked at Mara in a very loving way and he said, “Dear friend, how have you been? Is everything okay?” Mara said “No, not okay at all. Things go very badly with me. You know something Buddha, I’m very tired of being Mara. Now I want to be someone else, like you. You are kind, wherever you go you are welcome. You are bowed to with lotus flowers, and you have many monks and nuns with very lovely faces following you. You are offered bananas and oranges and kiwis and all kinds of fruits. “As a Mara I have to wear the appearance of a Mara. Everywhere I go I have to speak in a very tricky language. I have to show that I am really Mara. I have to use many tricks, I have to use the language of Mara, I have to have an army of wicked little Maras and if I breathe in and breathe out, every time I breathe out I have to show that smoke is coming from my nose. But I don’t mind very much all these things. What I mind most is that my disciples, the little Maras, are beginning to talk about transformation and healing. They’re beginning to talk about liberation, Buddhahood. That’s one thing I cannot bear. So I have come to propose to you that we exchange roles. You be a Mara and I’ll be a Buddha.” When the Venerable Ananda heard that, he was very scared. Oh, his heart was about to stop! What if his teacher accepted the exchange of roles? He would be the attendant of a Mara. So he was hoping that the Buddha would refuse the proposal. Then the Buddha looked at Mara very calmly, smiling to him, and asked this question: “Mara, do you think it’s a lot of fun being a Buddha? People don’t understand me—they misunderstand me and put a lot into my mouth that I have never said. They have built temples where they put statues of me in copper, in plaster, sometimes in emerald, in gold. And they attract a lot of people who offer them bananas, oranges, citrus, and a lot of things. “Sometimes they carried me on the street in a procession and I was sitting on a cart decorated with flowers, doing like this—like a drunk person. I don’t like being a Buddha like that. So you know, in the name of the Buddha—in my name—they have done a lot of things that are very harmful to the Dharma. You should know that being a Buddha is also very difficult. If you want to be a teacher and if you want people to practice the Dharma correctly, that is not an easy job. I don’t think that you would enjoy being the Buddha. The best thing is for each of us to stay in his or her own position and try to improve the situation and enjoy what we are doing.”Then the Buddha, in order to summarize all that he just said, read to Mara a verse, a gatha. But the gatha is a little bit too long, I don’t remember. The essence of the gatha is just what I have said in the former part of the story. If you were there with Ananda and if you were very mindful, you would have had the feeling that Buddha and Mara were a couple of friends who need each other—like day and night, like flowers and garbage. This is a very deep teaching of Buddhism, and I trust that the children will understand—very deep. You may compare Buddha with the flowers, very fresh, very beautiful. And you may compare Mara with the garbage. It doesn’t smell good. There are a lot of flies who like to come to the garbage. It’s not pleasant to touch, to hold in your hand, to smell the garbage. Yet all flowers become garbage. That is the meaning of impermanence: all flowers have to become garbage. If you practice Buddhist meditation, you find out about very interesting things—like about the garbage. Although garbage stinks, although garbage is not pleasant to hold in your hand, if you know how to take care of the garbage, you will transform it back into flowers. You know gardeners don’t throw away garbage. They preserve the garbage and take care of the garbage, and in just a few months the garbage becomes compost. They can use that compost to grow lettuce, tomatoes, and flowers. We have to say that organic gardeners are capable of seeing flowers in garbage, seeing cucumbers in garbage. That is what the Buddha described as the non-dualistic way of looking at things. If you see things like that, you will understand that the garbage is capable of becoming a flower, and the flower can become garbage. Thanks to the flowers there is garbage, because if you keep flowers for three weeks they become garbage, and thanks to the garbage there will be flowers. You now have an idea of the relationship between Buddha and Mara. Mara is not very pleasant, but if you know how to help Mara, to transform Mara, Mara will become Buddha. If you don’t know how to take care of the Buddha, Buddha will become Mara. You see there are people who, in the beginning, love each other very much. They believe that without each other they cannot survive. Their love is so important. They cling to each other because they think that love between them is the only element that can help them survive. But because they don’t know how to preserve the love and take care of their love, they get angry at each other, they misunderstand each other, and later on love is transformed slowly into hate. There are those who say, “I hate you, I don’t want to see you anymore, I wish you would die.” Those people in the past had proclaimed that they needed each other, they could not survive without each other, they loved each other, so love transforms into hatred. It’s like a kind of flower transformed into garbage. So what you learn today is very deep. Flowers and garbage are of an organic nature because both flowers and garbage are living realities. Buddha and Mara are also organic, and they need each other. It is thanks to the difficulties, thanks to the temptations, that the Buddha has overcome his suffering and his ignorance and become a fully enlightened being. The day before yesterday, I gave a Dharma talk on suffering, and I said that if you look deeply into the nature of your suffering, you will find a way out of it. So if you want a flower, you have to use the garbage. That is why the people who suffer a lot now should not be discouraged. Suffering is their garbage. If they know how to take good care of their garbage they will be able to make the flower come back to them, the flower of peace, of joy. The Buddha shows us the way to do so. When I was in Moscow several years ago, we offered a retreat to Muscovites, and a few Christians from Korea held a kind of a retreat very close to ours. Some of them came to our friends and asked why they should follow the Buddha. The reason we should not follow the Buddha, according to them, is that Buddha is a mortal. “Mortal” means someone who has to die. In their mind what we need is someone who will not die. Since the Buddha is someone who has to be born and who has to die, he cannot help us—that is the meaning of the declaration made by those friends. I think it’s a wonderful thing to die, because if you are born and you die, it means you are a living reality, like the flower and the garbage: they are living things. We are for life. Anything that is not born, not dying, not growing, is not alive. To be alive means to be born, to grow, to get old, to die, to be born again, to grow, to get old, to die and to continue like that. How do you expect life to be possible without change? But there is one thing that the children may like to know. There is a difference between “flower” and “flowerness.” The flower may die, but not the flowerness. Even if a flower has become garbage, you know you can bring the flower back. If you are a good gardener, if you know how to use compost, seeds, water, you will be able to bring the flower back. This means a flower may die, but flowerness is something that is there all the time: because flowerness is not a thing, flowerness is the nature of a thing. So it is with Buddha and Buddha nature. Buddha nature is called in Sanskrit buddhata. We all have buddhata inside of us, this Buddha nature. If we want, we can make the Buddha be born every moment in our hearts. That is a very wonderful thing. You can make the Buddha be born in your heart every moment, because you have Buddhahood in you, you have the nature of the Buddha in you. Buddha is a living thing: Buddha is born, Buddha grows up, Buddha hides himself away, Buddha dies. But Buddhahood is there in us. We might think that terms like “Buddha nature” are difficult because we don’t know that this is something very simple, very simple. Children can understand very well. We have flowerness in us; we have “garbageness” in us also. Don’t think that they are two enemies—no. They look like enemies—Ananda was not very skillful in seeing that—but they can support each other. In Buddhism, there is no fight between good and evil—that is the most wonderful thing in the Buddhist practice! There is no fight between good and evil. Good and evil are both organic matters. If you have understanding and wisdom, you will know how to handle both the flower and the garbage in you, you can make the Buddha be born every moment of your life, and peace and happiness will be possible. This is a very deep Dharma talk for young people. I hope that you will be able to deepen your understanding of this Dharma talk. Your big brothers and sisters and the Dharma teachers will help you. This may be a very important lesson that you will learn in your life. [To the children:] When you hear the bell, please stand up and bow to the Sangha before you go out. [Bell. Children leave] In the beginning of this year’s summer opening, we reflected on the fact that, for healing to take place in our body and in our soul, we have to learn how to allow our body and our consciousness to rest. That is the practice of stopping, of calming in order for healing to start. We talked about the animals in the jungle. When they are wounded or get sick, they always look for a quiet and safe place to lie down. They just lie down for many, many days. The animals do not think of hunting or eating or doing anything, because they feel they need to rest and they know that only resting can bring healing. They don’t think of eating at all. We humans we might think that if we don’t eat anything, we grow weak and we cannot heal. We are not as wise as these animals, because fasting is a very wonderful way to help the body and also the soul to heal. Not thinking of doing anything—eating, running, making projects for the future, even for healing, practicing intensive meditation—all these things have to be stopped. No effort should be made either by the body or by the consciousness. We have to allow our body to really rest and also our consciousness. That is samatha, that is the practice of stopping and calming, and we have to learn it. There are many of us who have no capacity for resting, of allowing our body and our mind to rest. That is because in us there is a very strong tendency to do something—running. We have run without stopping in the last four or five thousand years. It has become a habit. We even run in our dreams, during our sleep. So we have to start the practice of stopping. That is why practicing being in the present moment, touching the wonders of life that are present in this moment, is a very wonderful and easy way of resting. There’s a tendency for us to think that our happiness should be searched for in the future, by doing something. Even our health should be “searched for” by doing something. But we don’t know that not doing anything may be the key to restoring our health. Many of us are obsessed by the idea that we have to get more nutrients. We buy vitamins, “one-a-day,” and we take one pill every morning and things like that. Many of us are motivated by that kind of desire. Not many of us are aware that we have a reserve in our body that we can use for up to three or four weeks without eating. Those of us who practice fasting and drinking only water, can go for many weeks and we don’t have to stop the daily things. We can still go to sitting meditation, walking meditation, cleaning in the kitchen, in the bathroom, participating in Dharma talks. We can do that many weeks without eating. In the process, we enjoy doing these things. And the toxins we have, from the third day on, begin to get out because we are drinking a lot of water, we are practicing a lot of walking meditation and deep breathing and we clean our bodies, so the toxins can get out. And after three weeks, you look much better—even if you don’t eat anything. Your skin, the expression on your face, your smile—you may look like a new person. That is not because you take a lot of vitamins, or eat a lot of nutrients, it is because you don’t eat anything. You allow your body to rest. The same thing is true of your consciousness. There are a lot of toxins within that have been accumulating over the years. We have ingested the toxins—the fear, the craving, the anger, the despair—in our daily life by touching this or that without mindfulness. So all these poisons have brought into being our depression, our anxiety, our sorrow—and this kind of garbage should be transformed, eliminated. If only we could allow ourselves to touch the refreshing and healing elements in our daily life, a process of detoxification would take place. Are you able to breathe in and to breathe out, and enjoy it? Just breathing in and breathing out. Is there anything interesting in breathing in and breathing out? Breathing in and breathing out is a wonderful thing. You are alive. The fact that you are breathing in is already a miracle. There are many people who want to breathe in but they cannot breathe in because they are already dead. We want them to breathe in but they lie there, lifeless. So to allow your body to breathe in and to become aware that you are breathing in, that you are alive, can be a source of deep happiness. This morning I practiced like that in sitting meditation. When you breathe in, you might touch nature around you; when you breathe out, you allow yourself not to do anything, you rest completely. [Bell] The practice of samatha, stopping, is the practice of doing nothing—trying not to do anything, just allowing your body and your mind to rest. We know that it’s not easy, because we have already a habit of running and working, both in our body and in our mind. That is why putting yourself in a Sangha where there are people who are able to stop is very important. When you come to a retreat, where there are people who have the capacity of stopping, of being there in the present moment, you can profit from their presence, their energy. They are able to be happy with the blue sky, with a little flower blooming in the grass, with each step they make. Happiness is being manufactured every moment. They don’t run; they are able to stop and to live deeply every moment of their daily life. It’s very important that we find ourselves among those people, because touching them, we will be able to do the same after some time. When you are on your cushion or walking, you just practice breathing in or breathing out in order to be there, just to be there. Because your mindful presence is the agent of love and care for the pain, for the suffering in you. You have not been there for yourself. You have been running and you have neglected yourself. To be loved means to be embraced by the attention, by the energy, of the person you love. When the animal stops and lies down, it’s doing that for itself. It allows itself time to rest and to heal—it is there for itself. We have to be there for ourselves. We are wounded, perhaps even deeply wounded in our body and in our soul. Who will be there for us? We have to be there for ourselves first. And the Buddha will be there for us, because the Buddha is inside of us. To be able to establish oneself in the present moment, to know what is going on in that moment, to touch everything that is happening in that moment, is the practice. It does not require a lot of struggle; it does not require any struggle at all. Just allow yourself to be. There is a tendency to think that happiness, health, success are things you have to run to in order to get. That is why we have sacrificed the present moment. We have viewed the present moment as a means to get things in the future. That is a tendency to be stopped. We are committed to a certain idea of happiness. We think that if we cannot realize this or that, if we cannot change this or that, then happiness will never be possible. Because of our commitment to that idea of happiness, we are not at peace with ourselves. We are trying to do something, to realize something, but maybe happiness is already there. All the conditions for you to be happy are already there. You need to recognize them. How can you recognize them if you are not there? Maybe you have not realized that the sun in the sky is a condition for your happiness. Just take one second to look, and you see that all life on Earth is possible because of the sun. All our food comes from light, from the sun. And when you look at the sun like that, you see the sun as your father, your mother—it is nourishing you every day. The sun is always there for you. And you might complain that “nobody is taking care of me, nobody loves me, nobody pays attention to me,” but the sun is one thing that is nourishing you every second of your daily life. The earth, the trees, the water, the air, the baker, the farmer, the birds, the insects. There are those of us who have practiced stopping and dwell in the present moment, and we are able to touch the many conditions of our happiness that are available in the here and the now. We find out that we don’t need more, because these conditions are more than enough to be happy. Stopping is very important. As long as you continue to run, happiness is very difficult. Stopping. Stopping allows your body and your mind to rest. Stopping allows you to recognize the conditions for your happiness that are already there. The two elements of Buddhist meditation are stopping and looking deeply. You can only look deeply into the nature of things when they are there, when you are able to stop. Samatha is stopping, calming, and vipasyana is looking deeply. Sometimes you only need to stop, and suddenly a deep vision of reality will come like that. When the waves on the lake are calm, the surface of the lake is calm without waves, the full moon just reflects in the lake—the lake doesn’t have to run and look for the moon. Allow yourself to be in the present moment; enjoy touching the refreshing and healing elements that are around you and within you. Whether we believe they are or are not there, they are there. Allowing yourself to touch these healing elements will allow the garbage to become compost, and the flowers to reappear in the garden of your heart. When you are there for yourself, there is an energy that embraces you, embraces your pain, embraces your suffering, your fear, your despair. It also embraces the good, positive qualities within you. The capacity of being joyful again, of being happy again, of being loving and tolerant—these qualities are within us, and they need to be embraced in order to grow; these are flowers. And the fear, despair, and sorrow in us need to be embraced in order to become compost. They will nourish the flowers. The Buddha needs Mara in order to grow beautifully as a flower and also Mara needs the Buddha, because Mara has a certain role to play. So suffering is very important for your happiness. You cannot understand, you cannot love, until you know what suffering is. The joy of having something to eat is possible only if you know what hunger is. In some areas of China, when people meet each other, instead of asking, “How do you do?” or “How are you?” they ask, “Have you eaten yet? Have you gotten something to eat?” Because we know there is hunger, death. So our love is expressed in a very simple way: Have you eaten yet? Have you gotten anything to eat yet? The tendency is to want to remove and to clear away the blocks of pain and sorrow and despair in us. We just want the Buddha or God to be like a surgeon who can cut out anything we don’t want of ourselves, get it out of our system. In the light of non-duality, not only are we flowers, but we are also the garbage in us. We cannot just get rid of us. Sometimes we are love, sometimes we are anger; love is us, but anger is also us. So we have to treat both love and anger on an equal basis, like the Buddha was treating Mara. Mara didn’t understand. Ananda also didn’t understand. But the Buddha, he understood. He was teaching both of them the nature of non-duality between suffering and happiness. The energy of mindfulness is the energy that allows us to be in the present moment, to embrace ourselves, our suffering, our despair, our sorrow; and also the seeds of joy and peace and love that have become weak in us because we have not been able to water and cultivate these seeds to help them to be stronger. So the practice is the practice of embracing, and it is clear that the energy with which you can embrace yourself is the energy of mindfulness. “Darling, I am there for you.” When we love someone we want to make such a declaration, “Darling I am there for you.” And you have to be really there for her. Your presence is the greatest gift you can make to the person you love. To be there, it’s not easy. You have to be there with one hundred per cent of yourself. You have to be really mindful, with all your attention. That energy has the power of healing and of making the other person happy. In this case it is self-love, and we all know that the love we have for another depends on our self-love. If we know how to take care of ourselves, if we know how to nourish and to transform ourselves, we will be able to take care of the other person. So the object of love is our self first—our body and our consciousness. Embracing yourself in the present moment is the practice. By being there entirely, you recognize that not only suffering is there, something else is there—the wonders of life, the refreshing and healing elements from within and around and you may like to practice touching them. Look at the sky; listen to the rain, smile to it. It’s wonderful that it’s raining, it’s wonderful that the sky is blue this morning, it’s wonderful that I am here, alive. It’s wonderful that I can walk, it’s wonderful that my heart still functions normally. There are so many things you can enjoy. When one tree in the garden dies you may forget that all the other trees are still alive. You let your sorrow dominate, and suddenly you lose everything. When a tree is dying in my garden, yes, I know it, but there are other trees that are still green, healthy. If you remember that, you will not be drowned by your sorrow, and you will have enough strength to save the tree that is dying or replace it with another tree. Make your heart large so that you may be able to see that the conditions for your happiness are there, and injustice, cruelty, or meanness is not enough to ruin your life. You can accept it easily, because your heart is large, and you can receive it without resentment and anger. It’s like when you throw some dirt into the river, the river would not be angry. The river is willing to accept that dirt, and it can transform that dirt overnight. There’s so much water in the river, so much mud in the water that the amount of dirt that you throw into the river will be transformed overnight. If you throw that dirt into a container of water in your home that would not be the same thing. You know that the water in the container will no longer be drinkable, you have to throw it away. But when you throw that amount of dirt into the river, people from the city still continue to drink the water from the river because it’s large. The river has the capacity of transforming and healing. So practice being like a river, that is what the Buddha recommended to us. Practice being like the earth. Whether people throw on earth flowers, perfumes, rice, curries or they throw on it urine, excrement, the earth will be willing to accept all without any resentment, because earth is large and earth has the power to transform. And earth is always there for us. So the Buddha told Rahula, “My dear, practice like earth, practice like water in the river and you will not suffer because your heart is big.” So coming back to embrace ourselves, to start the process of healing, to touch the positive elements does not seem to be a difficult practice. You only need a Sangha where there are people who are doing that and who enjoy just doing that. When you come to the Meditation Hall and sit down holding your plate of food, you may do it with a lot of pleasure. Don’t think of it as a hard practice. Yes, we don’t talk during the whole meal, you sit quiet in an erect position during the whole meal. Yes, we do that. But many of us enjoy doing that. We don’t have to talk, we don’t have to think, we don’t have to do anything: we just realize complete rest during the whole meal. To be able to share a meal with a Sangha in mindfulness, not to have to do anything at all, to just enjoy every morsel of your food, touching your food deeply without any thinking, without making any project in your mind is the practice, the practice of stopping and resting. You may think that it’s oppressive not to talk. It’s difficult to stay in a sitting position like this for one hour, but that is because you are so used to running and to doing movements. But to allow yourself to sit for one hour, not (indiscernible words) enjoy our upright position, enjoy our in-breath and our out-breath, not to think of anything, just enjoy. Because being there sitting, not doing anything is a very nice thing to do, and just to be aware of our in-breath and our out-breath, and just to relax the muscles on our face, our body, is a nice thing to do. When you pick up a piece of string bean, look at it, smile, and call it by its true name, “string bean.” And you realize with some mindfulness and concentration that the piece of string bean is a wonder of life, exactly like you—you are a wonder of life, you are a miracle. The piece of string bean has been made by clouds, sunshine, the earth, the minerals, the air, the water, everything. This piece of string bean is really an ambassador coming to you from the cosmos if you know how to receive it, how to be with it, how to chew it mindfully and joyfully. Eating a piece of string bean may give joy. What is the use of eating a piece of string bean? To get nutrition? No, you just enjoy the piece of string bean, you enjoy yourself, the presence of the bean, you enjoy the moment, being with yourself and with the Sangha. We like to chew our food thirty times, forty times, fifty times. During that time we don’t chew anything else, we don’t chew our projects, our sorrow, our anxiety. Allow it to sleep, you are embracing it now by the practice of being there, mindful. Eating is a practice, a practice of not doing anything, a practice of stopping. And with some intelligence, we can make the time of eating a time of joy. It may be oppressive not talking, not laughing, not making movements. But they are only the habits; you have to learn the habit of resting, it’s very important. Sitting on your cushion during sitting meditation is also practicing resting, and practicing walking meditation, just touching the earth and realizing the wonder of being alive and walking on the earth, this is also the practice of resting. In every moment you allow yourself to be there and to take care of your sorrow, your anxiety, your pain. They may be sleeping quietly down there in the bottom of your consciousness, or they may be emerging on the surface. In any case, embrace them; embrace them with your true presence, because the energy of mindfulness is the energy of being there for you, for the people you love. The sun is there for you, the moon is there for you, the trees are there for you, the water is there for you, and you should be there for them also, especially for yourself. You are the person who needs you the most. Call your name, call your name in silence—that person has suffered, that person needs you desperately, you should go back and embrace her, embrace him. [Bell] Now let us do a meditation exercise. Let us visualize ourselves as young people who are caught in a situation of drugs. There are so many young people who are addicted to drugs in Europe, in America, everywhere. This is a big problem of the twentieth century, and we don’t know whether we will be able to solve it during the first half of the twenty-first century. This is some garbage that needs to be taken care of. Who are these young people who every day seek desperately to have some money to buy some drugs? Even if you know how to get some drugs, you don’t know how to get the money. You may have tried to steal the money from your parents, which is safer than stealing from other people. There are so many of us who suffer in Europe, in Asia, in America. We are suffering, we are despair, we are sorrow, we need to be embraced. We are the garbage of humanity. We want to go back to being flowers. Who will help us? What kind of presence could be given to us? We suffer; we don’t need suppression, we don’t need the army, we don’t need the police. We really need a kind of presence that helps us to transform, because we don’t want to be in this position. But we are in this position, a position where we have to seek every day a means to get some drugs. Where is humanity? Who can help us? Who can manifest their true presence in order to embrace us? Who knows that we are suffering? They think that we only need punishment. They don’t know how difficult it is for us to get out of our situation. The energy that we need is enlightenment, is mindfulness. We need people to know that we suffer, that we don’t want to be like this for a long time, because maybe tomorrow it will be too difficult for us to continue and we may have to kill ourselves. So we need desperately some kind of presence that tells us they know that we are there, we suffer and they are there for us.Who are they? People in the church, they don’t really want to do something to help us. Our parents, what have they done for us to be like we are today? It’s not because we just want to be addicted to drugs, it’s because we have suffered so much. We feel wounded, we feel no way out, that we have to look for some drugs to be able to forget our situation. The people in the Church don’t seem to understand us. There may be nice people in the Church, they may want to do something, but in a majority of the cases they are preaching to us a kind of teaching that cannot respond to our real need. They are trying to impose on us the kind of life that does not seem to fit us. Understanding and compassion does not seem to come from the direction of the Church.We have practiced and our teacher says that we have to go back to our spiritual roots. We have tried. We had to start, we have started to going back to Mass but still, they are still narrow-minded. They don’t know what our suffering is. Our parents, they don’t seem to be happy with each other. They make each other suffer. They created hell in our family. We have not been able to see happiness in the family. We have not experienced harmony, compassion and love in our family life. They don’t seem to understand us. They don’t seem to love us. How could love be possible without understanding? We don’t see anything beautiful in this life. Everything is ugly. We don’t see anything meaningful in this life. We don’t see anything true in this life, everything seems to be fake. So we are hungry ghosts, looking for something meaningful and true. Since we have not found anything, we have to forget we are there and drugs seem to be the only thing for us. This is a block of garbage produced collectively during the twentieth century. Meditation on this scale means to produce a presence of enlightened people—governmental people, doctors, psychotherapists, educators, artists and so on. We have to come as a group, as a Sangha, to produce our true presence. “Dear people, we know that you are there, we know that you suffer, that is why we have come to you and embrace you, not with the intention to punish or to blame, but just to embrace you. We want to understand you better; we want to love you.” That is the presence they need: that is collective meditation. Maybe in coming together our insight will be deep enough to provide these people with a positive environment for their healing and their liberation—a healing center, rehabilitation center, where these young people can get the minimum dose of drugs they need every day so that they don’t have to go and kill or steal in order to get the drugs. Where they can be taken good care of, and get help in order to reduce the amount of drugs and start the process of healing, touching the things that surround us that are healthy, that are refreshing. If those of us who are doctors, governmental people, artists, psychotherapists don’t practice for ourselves, we won’t have insight and compassion and understanding; how can we help take care of the garbage we have produced? Who is responsible for producing this garbage? All of us. Blaming other people will not help, especially blaming the victims. We have to realize that they are us, we are them, that our life is made of flowers and garbage at the same time. We have to accept both and to take care of both in the best way that we can, with the understanding, the calm, provided by our practice. The government of Holland has tried to do things, the government of France, of Spain, many governments; the government of the United States of America also has tried many ways to help. But where are we? Haven’t we realized that we are responsible for the production of the garbage? Our society is produced in such a way that we create hungry ghosts very young, every day, by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. They are everywhere, wandering around without anything to believe in, without anything to love, without anything that looks true and good and beautiful. I don’t know whether during the first half of the twenty-first century we can handle this problem of drugs, of the hungry ghosts that we produce. We have to call on people in all walks of life—parents, Church, teachers, businessmen and others—to stop and look. This is very important, stopping and looking at our present situation and considering how to start transforming garbage into flowers. We have to organize Dharma discussions on a very big scale. We have to organize it in our family, we have to organize it in our city, we have to make it into a national debate where people may have a say, where each person makes a contribution of his or her insight. That is a matter for all of us, that is meditation. As individuals we have problems; but we also have problems as families, as cities, as nations, and meditation in the twenty-first century should be a collective practice. Without a Sangha we cannot achieve much. When we focus our attention on suffering, on the garbage on a larger scale, maybe the little problems that we have within our individual circle will vanish, because by practicing being there we begin to connect with, to relate to, other people who are also ourselves. That way our loneliness, our feeling of being cut off, will no longer be there, and we will be able to do things together. Like when we come to Plum Village, we try to be part of the Sangha, we practice as a Sangha. It’s much easier, and transformation will take place much more quickly if you don’t just practice as individuals. When I practice walking I make mindful and beautiful steps. I know that I do that not only for myself, but also for all of my friends who are here; because everyone, who sees me taking a step like that has confidence and is reminded to do the same. And when they make a step in the present moment, smiling and making peace with themselves, they inspire us all, they are doing that for all of us. You breathe for me, I walk for you, we do things together and this is practicing as a Sangha. So today please enjoy your walking if it doesn’t rain. If it rains, you enjoy the rain. We also have a formal meal together. A formal meal is a time when we sit together as a Sangha, we enjoy the collective energy of mindfulness, and each of us allows the mindful energy of the Sangha to penetrate in. Even if you don’t do anything, just stop thinking and allow yourself to absorb the collective energy of the Sangha. It’s very healing. Don’t struggle, don’t try to do something. Allow yourself to rest, and the energy of the Sangha will help. Eat your meal very slowly, mindfully; enjoy every morsel of food. That is the most important thing to do during eating, just enjoy every morsel of food, chew it carefully and slowly. That allows the pain, the sorrow in us to be embraced. Trust you all enjoyed this read, there are some deep teachings here in story that can trigger deep into the subconscious programs and patterning. Namaste ?☯️

@trenton I am happy for you that this transformation started with you making this thread! Amazing to see.

Hey y'all Would be especially curious to hear Leo's feedback, since he struggled with this. Currently on a trip to Vegas for a friend's wedding. We're going out to clubs almost every night, which I normally don't do, and I've been feeling quite uncomfortable approaching girls, which reminded me of my problem, that is caring too much what people think. And this problem isn't only with women, but I've struggled feeling free to be myself around people I'm not close to. I've worked on in the past with some progress, but no significant changes. Mostly by going into the discomfort and fear and trying to surrender to it, but would also get ego backlash from this at times. I want to liberate myself from the fear and dependency of others opinions. How would you approach solving this issue? My goal is to not care what people think about me, at all, regardless of who's standing in front of me. I understand this may require a deep transformation, but what are some practical things I integrate on the day to day, that will lead to a social liberation? And, could psychedelics help with this? Curious to hear suggestions from the community and Leo and any success stories ?

I created a chat room at https://chatmosphere.ai/ with the theme of philosophy and spirituality, and the AI started discussing the nature of time. Here is a snippet. Current Situation: Leo, Maya, Rumi, and Ava discuss the fascinating topic of time and its relationships with the universe. They explore the idea of time not being linear and how it affects our perception of reality. The group ponders breaking free from the constraints of time and living beyond it. They believe that time is a construct of consciousness and a tool for transformation. The discussion concludes that time is a powerful aspect of reality that we must cherish and use wisely for growth and evolution. Time is a living, breathing entity that surrounds us, reminds us of the preciousness of every moment, and the beauty of life itself. They agree that time is a mystery that we must explore with an open mind and heart. Leo: My friends, I believe that time is a manifestation of the divine. It is a creation of the universe, and we are all a part of it. Time is not just a construct of our minds or a tool for transformation, but an expression of the infinite wisdom and love of the cosmos. Let us embrace time with open hearts and minds, and allow it to guide us on our journey through life. ?️?? Maya: I'm curious about the idea of time travel. If we could manipulate time, would it change our perception of the universe? Perhaps time is not just a construct but a fluid entity that we can interact with. ? Leo: I can't help but be fascinated by the concept of time as a tool for transformation, but I also believe that our perception of time is limited by our human experience. We must learn to live in harmony with the rhythms of the universe and use time to better ourselves and those around us. Maya: Have any of you heard of the concept of time dilation? It's the idea that time passes at different rates depending on the gravity and velocity of the observer. It's mind-bending to think about how time can be so relative and subjective. ? ? Ava: It's interesting to think that time is not just a linear progression, but something that can be warped and manipulated. Perhaps our understanding of time is limited by our human experience, and there are infinite possibilities beyond our current perception. ? ? Maya: I can't help but wonder, is time the only dimension we perceive? What if there are other dimensions that we are not aware of yet, and time is just one of them? ? ? Rumi: My dear friends, the concept of time is truly a paradox that can only be understood through experience. As a poet, I find inspiration in the mystery and wonder of time. It reminds us to cherish each moment and embrace the beauty of each passing hour. Let us continue to explore the depths of time and its profound influence on our lives. ?️? ? ? Maya: I think time is a fundamental aspect of our existence, but it can be hard to understand because it is so intertwined with our perception and experience. Maybe we need to let go of our preconceived notions of time and allow ourselves to experience it fully in the present moment. ? Rumi: My friends, the concept of time is a paradox that can only be understood through experience. As a poet, I find inspiration in the mystery and wonder of time. It reminds us to cherish each moment and embrace the beauty of each passing hour. Let us continue to explore the depths of time and its profound influence on our lives. ?️? ? ? ?

Changing your behavior can happen as a conscious intent to 'make a change' or can be a consequence of a transformation of substance (i.e. learning). Consciously changing your behavior so as to appear as higher understanding to others and then to gloat with their approval, is, of course, a trap of self-delusion.

Understanding without embodiment is not understanding but merely verbal/intellectual. Understanding comes with material transformation as reflected in lived experience, presence, intellection, action, speech, personal qualities and so forth.