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That's more or less what I said. The 'form is formless, formlessness is form' realization is easily a deeper and inclusive of nothingness. Sometimes, teachings intending to help beginning meditators or seekers focus their minds less on the 'everyday' objects/objectives in which the left-brained intellect is constantly engaged, choppy, and in solid control, might try to get them to shift their attention. A lot of the approach you advocate is engaging that aspect of the mind, rather than the right-brain (which you allude to indirectly). Check out a TED video by Jill Bolte-Taylor in which she describes her stroke experience. It has some clues.

Nothingness is a limited realization because excludes the form, and nothingness is a wrong term because the absence of form is full of being, absolute potential and it's everything. Realizing the absolute, unlimited potential that you ultimately are and being able to access it is basic to spirituality, the most fundamental step. There you fully recognize yourself as the unlimited being. The point is to be able to access that reality at any moment, but this is not the end of the path, since form exists and unfolds in infinite interconnected dimensions. Denying form as "maya" is spiritual castration. Form is as real as formlessness. Thoughts are form, they are real energetic structures, and they unfold infinitely like any other form. True spirituality is recognizing form as the inevitable manifestation of limitlessness and delving into it to the fullest.

Reality is consciousness. This for me is the Awakening threshold. I don't subscribe to such a point, it is my ever-present experience. Experience is Consciousness, sight, sound, sensations, touch, space, state; functions of Consciousness. Of course, Consciousness is nothing. But nothingness does not fully encapsulate consciousness. The absence of sensations is but another sensation, another state of consciousness, experience of consciousness. See? Although, I have to say that by the way you talk I feel you lack direct mystical experience. This is independent on whether we agree or not. I disagree plenty with Breaking the Wall and he's clearly a seasoned mystic and like recognises like.

I'll eventually get around to listening to Ralston's expression more, but maybe there's a point to be made. Not sure if Ralston distinguishes this or not, but this mind might express that people are seeking a transcendent experience, and they may/may not follow it/them to its most trans-rational, trans-logical end... into the realization of the NOTHINGNESS you speak of. Yes, that is the realization of the formlessness. It is neither necessary, nor guaranteed, nor even likely that that 'penultimate goal' of seeking will emerge. Dunno. A lot of it depends on the existential necessity arising, or so it seems. Here's where @Breakingthewall feels the rub, and that's fine. Most 'teachers' in the various schools of unlearning, at least the one's worth listening to, are teaching to those that are seeking to transcend. The NOTHINGNESS is not the end all be all. In fact, when listening to certain teachers, one has to be aware of whether or not they get stuck and attached to nothingness, in which case the mind has taken credit for realization (as in, my seeking caused/succeeded in finding and now I'm gonna teach the only path, I'm special, everyone else is just dumb and blind... I alone hold the truth, so drink up). Breaking calls this 'limited', because it is. After the realization of NOTHINGNESS (i.e., infinite potentiality, fully pregnant as Beingness), things get even weirder as one grapples with the complexities of informing mind as one uses it to re-engage the world as it is unfolding. During that process, many/most will become enraptured by and attached to freedom itself. They get stuck in the returning phase. Only those that make it fully through this phase are said to be 'enightened'. Typically, there are certain nuances and qualities in the expression that can be intuited if one KNOWS how.

Many here ascribe to the notion that 'all is consciousness', including Ralston, the apparent teacher in question. So, any mention of 'more consciousness' would logically mean that they are lacking the 'needed consciousness' to understand the 'All'. The mind often reverts to amount, a quantity, rather than peel back into the layers of quality, all the way into the NOTHINGNESS to which is pointed. Once realized, only then can one begin to grapple with the mind's protests. You assume Ralston has never done psychedelics when it says on his webpage that he shacked up in Berkley, which is basically the Mecca of psychedlic studies in the US. So, there's that. Psychedelics can be useful for breaking down unconscious, misconceived barriers firmly entrenched in the mind, and these may be conducive to deep insights and profound experiences. No probs. But, they do not 'cause' Truth (or it's Realization), nor do they 'cause' enlightenment. Those are realized in the 'acausal' realm of/as existence. Sure, if you take them, you may experience profound states of consciousness, but that's just mind stuff. All good and fun/terrifying. Psychonauts, if caught up in their delusions, tend to get stuck there by the well, reaching into it again and again, looking for something they think they are missing.

Peter Ralston seems very wise. I believe one of the things he talks about is nothingness, the highest Buddhist attainment, which shows you the non-dual, formless nature of Self. I think Frank Yang talks about the same thing. When listening to Peter’s videos he just seems so grounded and clear. I haven’t attended Peter’s workshops nor I have been his apprentice nor have I done his online courses, but from the snippets online and the podcast episodes now available he seems to be the real deal.

Awakening is God's fractal touch of Consciousness eternally unfolding, touching and morphing upon its own Infinite Formless Selfless Self. Nothingness, Formlessness, No Self, No Mind, Emptiness, Shunyata. But don't forget Infinity, God Realization, Love and Truth. Do you gravitate towards thinking, philosophical existential and metaphysical inquiry, endless contemplation and having a deep thirst and movement for just wanting to understand Reality and Truth just for it's own sake or do you tend to prefer Silent Meditation, No Self, Nothingness, No mind, No philosophical mumbojumbo? There is Infinite Mind. The Mind of the Infinite, but there ain't just one infinite mind, there are an Infinity of minds. Then it's just one mind then, right? Yes, but no also. There isn't just one or many and it isn't so simple as saying, "then it's all non dual then since all and one are identical". You can lump all infinities into one absolute infinity, but notice that there isn't just one absolute infinity, there are infinite absolute infinities. If there are infinite absolute infinities, we can just lump them all into one absolute infinity. Yes but also notice that there are infinite infinite absolute infinites. Keep imagining, it will stretch your imagination. You are not an object, with awareness, perceiving the external world located somewhere, doesn't matter where you are. All of that is arising within your awareness is it not? You cannot deny the obvious. Well actually you can! You are not happening somewhere in a body, you are the substance of existence. You hold everything, but you aren't anything at all. It's wild, your not anything, and you are everything but you are not bound by anything, not even Nothing

Any answer anybody gives other than the Absolute nothingness that is, can appear however it wants because it is totally free to be so and this is total anarchy and doesn't make any sense, will be a story. All stories and made up shit. The answer is total freedom appearing, appearing as any and everything. We use the senses to make sense of what we think we're in relation to. There's no relation to anything and it's all immediate and without true cause and effect. There are no rules to this.

Introduction This will be a long post. I'm extremely verbose when it comes to trip reports, and I'd like to make sure I get all of this out. I've never posted on this forum before, and I've mostly been a lurker. Recently, however, I took a psychedelic mushroom trip and felt I needed to write this post. I feel that the trip showed me quite a bit, but I also have a feeling that I haven't completely peeled back all the layers of my mind. In fact, I imagine there is still much, much more that I have yet to uncover. On one hand, I hope that this trip report is genuinely interesting, insightful, and entertaining to you all. On the other hand, this trip definitely left a trace of terror in my existence, so I wanted to hear what some of the more awakened members have to say. I'm sure that through my words, you can uncover biases, traumas, assumptions, concepts, etc. I'm pretty sure no one will know who I am in real life, so I can be relatively open about the entire experience. If there are any questions at the end surrounding the entire trip, please ask. I'd like to hear everyone's input. Past Experiences Before I even get into the trip itself, there are a few important things that I need to mention that tie into the experience directly. They may seem irrelevant now, but I promise, there is a reason I'm mentioning all of these things. Here they are: 1. I was abandoned by a primary caretaker (father) as a young child. I have no memories of him aside from when I met him for the first time in my teenage years. I had a stepfather adopt me when I was still a toddler, but I know that abandonment has left a core wound in my psyche. I have also been told I was a "bad baby" because of issues I can tell stemmed from these abandonment issues (difficult sleeping without someone there, crying when someone left, etc.) 2. Much of my childhood, I was surrounded by girls/women. I was raised by my mom mostly. However, she was working and going to school simultaneously, so she would often leave me with my grandma. I also had a younger sister, two younger cousins, and many friends that were girls in kindergarten/preschool. 3. When I was in my teenage years, I had a rebellious period, and my drug of choice was psychedelics. During this time, I wasn't very responsible with how I took them, so one day, I decided to take 3 tabs of DS3.0 LSD. After this, I started talking to a friends I hadn't seen since middle school, and he at that point had become a Satanist. Obviously, I was immature at this time and didn't really know anything about reality, so I was still working with a fundamentally Christian worldview, where I was still seeing things in terms of right and wrong, good and bad, Heaven and Hell, etc. To make a long story short, I felt like this was the first time I fell from Heaven and into Hell. And I felt that I did this eternally. I felt the primal fear of annihilation, not able to make sense of my experience at all. 4. Recently, I've been focusing intensely on masculinity and femininity, trying to figure out what it really means to be a man and woman, what the essence of masculinity and femininity are, attraction, etc. I've learned quite a bit from my research, and I have generated a decent understanding of what each of these things are (although this is mostly from other sources outside myself). 5. I've also followed much of Leo's content heavily over the course of the last year and a half or so. I regularly view his blog, forum, videos, spirituality exercises, book list, etc. This has influenced my views on reality and spirituality intensely. Trip Report Now for the actual experience. I'm going to try to put words to this, but I don't even remember everything, so I'm going to do my best. I took the shrooms in two doses, and the whole thing lasted about 6 hours. Really, only the first 4 hours are where the interesting stuff happened. I'm going to be guessing the timelines because I didn't take notes on those, but the whole trip will still be here. I made sure that my environment was clean and set up for a good trip. I weighed out 3.5g of Golden Teachers and crushed them up. I wanted to take them with honey and orange juice as I thought that would help with the nausea. I split the crushed shrooms into two halves, took the first half, and then went to meditate. 15-30 minutes in I only made it through about 15 minutes or so before I started feeling a bit scared. Whenever I take psychedelics now, I always remember that trip where I felt that fear of annihilation, so I try to go slowly so I don't fall into that place too soon. I started to notice my perception change ever so slightly. I saw some visual patterns on the walls of my room, and everything took on a more vibrant hue. There was sun shining off an outside window into my room, and I put my hand up in it, and I saw the beauty of the entire experience. I still felt the fear and uncertainty, but I could appreciate the beauty for what it was. I was still in control. I would be okay. I walked outside to my living room, and I decided that I would be able to take the other portion of mushrooms. I didn't want to take the full 3.5, though, because I was still feeling a big uneasy. I took most of it, so I'm guessing I took 3.2g total. 1 Hour In (I am God Concepts) This is when things began to ramp up a bit. One of the things that I decided to do prior to this trip was watch Leo's "Guided Experience for Realizing You're God" video. I started this about 45 minutes into the trip. I'd watched this video before, but I could just feel that something was different this time. I could feel that I was listening at a deeper level. I could feel myself hearing his words and making connections that I hadn't made before. Like there was a deeper presence hearing the ideas. I watched about the first 30 minutes of the video, doing my best to follow along, slowly getting rid of all sorts of pieces of my mind. I eliminated Earth, the Universe, Biology, Evolution, etc. I started to deeply focus on my hands as just being purely made out of colors and shapes. I made the firm distinction in my mind between the difference between a thought/concept and my hand. I saw that there is a marked difference between the two. I thought to myself at that point that consciousness was what was making both of these, but they are different fundamentally in the way they manifest in reality. After taking apart my mind a bit, it eventually got to be a bit much for me, so I paused the video. I reassured myself that I would be okay, that I just needed to flow with the experience, that everything would be okay. It was at this time I started writing in the middle of my trip. I decided I was going to do a word dump of anything and everything that came to mind, and I'd sort it all out later. I did do this, so I'll write some of the things that came to mind during the experience. The body and mind felt extremely tired throughout this process, but thoughts and ideas were coming to me rapidly. I told myself to just write what I want to write. I asked myself why I limit myself so much, why I avoid doing things I want to do, why I distract myself so much, why I chase sex. I noticed that I have this body, whose requirements I must meet. I saw my body and mind as a system. Just to note, here, these thoughts were just part of the flow. The questions were more rhetorical. But when I was having all of these thoughts, I saw each one having its own voice. I saw and heard the voices as entities, each with a certain type of unique essence characteristic to the thought that was being had. I saw reality as being everything, and I saw models as being pieces of reality that could be built up to make sense of reality, which can be more or less aligned to varying degrees, but no concept can ever get everything. I saw all of this as being in the mind of God. I saw myself as being connected to the mind of God. And I realized that If a concept could encapsulate all of reality, then reality would make too much sense. It would be too easy of a game to figure out. It was at this point I asked what the point of life was, to which I got the following response: TO EXPERIENCE THIS INSANE WACKY THING THAT IS GOD. GOD IS ALL THAT EXISTS. YOU ARE GOD. EVERYTHING IS GOD. THIS PERCEPTION IS NOTHING BUT GOD PLAYING WITH ITSELF. And I felt that everything was perfect. I saw that life is eternal. I saw that God can choose to speed life up or slow it down. I saw that God can design reality in whatever way it wishes. And then I saw why God is living this life right now: because there is nothing that God wants more than this. And the enormous amount of love I felt upon arriving at that realization was immense. I felt the unchecked love towards myself, knowing that the singular being in all of existence loved me so much that it chose to live this life, despite the literally infinite alternatives. God wanted to experience everything human life has to offer, so it chose to live through me. 2 Hours In (Masculinity vs. Femininity) At this point, I began detaching from myself slightly. I saw that despite all of this, my own ego wanted to know what masculinity is. And as this thought crossed my mind, I felt the masculine essence observe me. It wouldn't allow me to embody it, but it did analyze me, looking to see if I was a worthy candidate to carry its power. It was impressed, but it still didn't think I had done enough work. It noted some of my weak points, like impulsivity, lack of complete dedication. (Side note: After looking at this, I feel this is related to abandonment issues). I did realize here that I could step into whatever reality I wanted to, so long as I was willing to pay the price. I saw how I could become something else, but I also understood the idea of mastery and paying the price. I saw that it isn't something I can just will into existence (as my ego at least). I would have to work for it. And this is at the heart of masculinity. I put my definitions of masculinity and femininity very succinctly into words this trip. I defined femininity as flowing with reality and masculinity as pursuing and allowing nothing to get in the way. I saw that living life in a flow state is a possibility, but doing so is inherently a feminine trait due to the nature of these definitions. As I was defining these definitions, I felt myself in my masculine essence. I did not need this masculine entity that I spoke of earlier to give me approval. I just took the essence of it and embodied it. Creating these definitions is a way to engage with masculinity. Cutting through the chaos of reality in pursuit of a definition for these things felt like a masculine action. As I defined these things, I saw that I need a lot of work to truly live up to the divine masculine. But I saw that I had the potential for it. The potential to embody the divine masculine. And I saw the masculine wanting to embody itself through me. Because if there is nothing else in existence, this experience is the only way for the masculine to actually embody itself. And it seeks to be brought out in this life. I saw myself as entering my bachelor stage in my life, and I saw this development of masculinity as extremely attractive. I felt what it would be like to develop this in myself, and I could take on the views of the feminine and see how it would react to the masculine. I could feel the eternal attraction between the two, and I could feel the potential I have to become the masculine. 3 Hours In (The Fabric of Reality and Dreaming Myself) This will be a bit less concise because it is basically straight from my trip report journal. It described the mental and emotional ride I was undergoing through the entire trip, but it is a bit more "shroomy" than the last sections. I began to see at a certain point that even this pursuit to become the masculine was just another game. I actually described it very well in my trip report: This life is all about becoming everything that you can become. In all of the ways that this mind you inhabit wants you to. It’s a game of illusion, yes. And you can accept that illusion and live in it. Or you can step into spirituality and realize it’s all a game. This is nothing more than God playing with itself in an infinite amount of ways that is infinitely confusing with so many different tug of wars going on in all sorts of directions. This is why reality has been so hard for you to understand, because you have so many different things that are coming at you in so many different ways. That’s how the illusion of the game is kept up. Once that’s up, then it’s just you. You don’t get punished or chastised. It’s literally just you. Then there's just another thing to dream up. Because you’re God. And God gets to dream up whatever it wants to. It’s all God just playing with itself in a multitude of different ways, dreaming up the development of all of these different ideas and concepts, when the only thing that ever existed was this moment. This is the Mind of God. This is reality. It is eternal. It is unknowable. It is just this, somehow all congealed into one miraculous experience that you live through. This is one of infinitely many possibilities you can dream up, because you're God. This is the exact story that God wants to be living out right now. Not even the slightest blade of grass is out of place. Everything is perfect, and it always will be. You want the illusion that you aren’t there yet. Like you are almost spiritually there. And you’ll slowly develop in that direction. It’s all exactly what God wants, so don’t worry. Just keep living your life. Keep developing in the ways that you feel naturally inclined to. And at the end, you can say that you lived fully. But there's literally nothing else here. Which is why we dreamed this up in the first place. A game of infinite growth, infinite possibility, infinite potential. A story that encapsulates that. Me. We dreamed up this ego. He is a permutation of infinity. We could go so many directions with this reality, but it’s really just up to you. It all comes down to you. It was dreamt up for you. So I am both the dream and the dreamer. God wanted a dream where he both knew what it was and didn’t simultaneously. So that’s how we got here. But there are so many different aspects of God too, like God is running a giant circus or it’s absolute madness going on at all times. But it all comes to this moment. It generates this moment. Everything you do, every decision you make, every thought you align yourself with, comes down to this moment. And writing about this moment both captures the essence of this idea and doesn’t. I simultaneously live in the moment but I don’t. There are multiple entities in charge, but there’s also only one. Everything is somehow perfectly symmetrical in every single possible way to generate an impossible beauty. And that is part of the experience that is being had. Reality has to be the way it is, but it also doesn’t. It can change. There are many different roads that you as an ego can walk down, but God has set in stone what it wants reality to be. And it’s this in this moment. Until God has decided it’s had enough. Part of the reason that this is so much to understand (wrong word but whatever) is because you are both God and your ego at the same time. There is profundity and emptiness to your existence. Because that’s the dream that God dreamt up. So until God dreams up a different one, then it’ll be the same. You’ll keep being you. There won’t be anything that changes. Now you can see why you don’t need to worry. You are God, and you are you. And everything is being generated in a way that is indescribably perfect and beautiful purely for what it is. It is awe-inspiring that anything exists at all, but simultaneously, it must exist exactly how it is now. So then what does the changing? The ego does the changing. I am the ego that grows and develops in whatever way he wants. That’s why this is so wacky, because that ego can develop in whatever way it wants. There is no set path. You can choose whatever you’d like. Reality has been constructed this exact way because God willed it to be this way. I feel like I’m riding the wave and controlling it at the same time. Such is the Mind of God. There is no need to be like anyone else. There is no need to be anything else. You can just be you, and that’s always been enough. There is simultaneously no understanding yet complete understanding at the same time of God. And that is perfect. It’s almost like God made an impossible labyrinth to escape from to keep being able to play for as long as possible because once the game stops, then there’s nothing left. All the fun stops. Not in a bad way, like there will be a punishment or anything, but it just stops. But I will also be continuously discovering God in all sorts of ways. Eternally. Even after I die, it just keeps going. The discovery, the growth, the humanity, the everything. But how could that even be possible? How could I continue growing after I die? Uhh, because you just did it. There. And there. And there. And there. And there. And there. And there. And on and on until you get it. (Referring to the passing of each moment here in case you didn't get it). Aren’t you seeing the game now? It’s a strange loop of everything existing on everything else. And there is a perfect wholeness and unity to it all. You can play in whatever area you’d like to play in mentally, but at the end of the day, you are God. You are the creator. You get to decide to live in whatever world you want. And this is what you want. So go live in it. Go live in your incredible, illustrious, incredible invention with infinite possibilities. And when you want to leave from this place, you can. But you can always come back here too. But you also can’t because the ego might stop you. But you’re always capable of it as God. A beautiful line that I wrote to describe this continuous, impossibly infinite paradox between myself and God is this: What is the journey without a destination? Yet life is a journey, not a destination. Life is the whole journey. The whole point of life existing is for this. For God to continuously wake up and fall asleep to itself infinitely. And until God decides to do something else, then this is what exists. The point of all of this is for God to awaken to itself repeatedly, infinitely many times. That’s all it is. There’s nothing more. It’s always been just this. 4 Hours In (Silence and Terror) I have no notes on this part of the trip, so I'm remembering the most I can. I started to watch Leo's video again at this point, wanting to get through the whole thing before the end of the trip. I continued on where I left off, slowly eliminating more and more things from my mind. It almost felt like a dangerous thing that I was doing to myself, but I wasn't making a big deal out of it. Like a person that knows they're doing something wrong but masks it in good vibes, so it doesn't seem like it's actually that big of a deal. Every time I got rid of another conceptual overlay, I felt this. And eventually, I reached stillness. It was in this moment that I felt eternal. I realized I could stay in this moment as long as I wanted. I saw that I could extend time on forever if I wanted to. I could turn minutes into hours. I could turn seconds into eons. But only if God willed it. And eventually, I came to the terror. I came to the terrifying realization that I really am all alone. I came to the terrifying conclusion that it really is just me. I came to the terrifying conclusion that I will be playing this game of waking up to myself in infinitely many ways forever. I saw that Leo was right. But I saw that what he was saying was not what I originally anticipated. I saw that his teachings were pointing me to direct solipsism. I recognized myself as the only Being in existence. I recognized myself as being the only one that ever existed and ever will exist. I saw myself as being alone. I saw actualized.org as a completely imagined entity meant to push me to wake up. But when I did wake up, I couldn't have been more terrified. The only time I've ever been more scared than this moment in my entire life was when I had that original LSD trip where I fell from grace into the hands of Satan. In that trip, I felt that I had eternally damned myself to forever be used by an external entity infinitely more powerful than myself until it chose to annihilate me. And in this trip, I felt that same fear. I felt the fear of annihilation and the fear of being trapped in a bubble of consciousness, where there is no way out. It almost felt claustrophobic. I could sense at the very core of my being that what was being said was true. And the whole reason that I dreamt this up in the first place was to get myself to accept this impossibly painful, eternal existence that I would never be able to escape no matter how hard I tried. I felt hopeless. I saw my entire life, my entire existence, as pointing me towards this. I felt my entire existence as coaxing me into submitting and surrendering into this void. Surrendering into nothingness. I felt the fear of this void so intensely. I also saw the surrender and submission into this as an inherently feminine trait (based on my definitions above). I extrapolated this into my ideas about what masculinity and femininity are. I saw reality as being inherently feminine. If reality is about a flow of things, and I'm being pushed to accept this flow, I am being pushed into a feminine way of being. But I seek out so desperately to embody masculinity at my core. But this trip made me see that it is impossible to accept this flow of reality while also maintaining my masculinity. To fall into this would be to embrace femininity at my core and acknowledge that I am fundamentally not masculine. It would be to admit that no matter how hard I try, I will eternally be locked in an existence of femininity seeking to embody masculinity - an impossible goal to achieve. And I would be forced to watch the masculinity around me forever, constantly suffering and wishing that I could have that. Wishing that I could have something I could never have. So I felt like I would always be forced to seek out masculinity in areas outside of myself. I felt like no matter what, I would not be able to properly embody masculinity. And that is what I saw all of reality as. And furthermore, when I had this realization, I realized that God is not all good. I knew this logically, but I had never felt it before. I saw God's capacity for Evil. I saw God's capacity for suffering. I saw God's capacity to relish watching another being in suffering. I saw and felt the essence of true Evil. And in that moment, I saw that it is possible for Reality and Consciousness and God to not be fundamentally Love. I saw the possibility for something much, much, much darker. The possibility of reality as nothing more than slavery of myself by an external entity to myself, using me for its own benefit with no regard for my well-being whatsoever while it puts me through whatever brutal, inhuman, hellish landscape it desires. And I saw it as a possibility for this entity to do nothing other than watch me suffer. And that could be existence. That could be the fundamental truth of reality. So to distract myself, I make this reality. I make this reality where I can get doses of goodness to combat against the impossibly heavy weight of existential void. I do it to escape because that is all there is to do. And knowing that others in my direct experience are also me, I don't even know how I can fully appreciate the positive words that they do say anymore. I don't know how much of reality is actually Love and how much of it is actually meant to make me suffer for enjoyment of another Being. When I felt this existential weight, I immediately ripped out my earbuds and begged for my illusions back. I couldn't feel that. It was too heavy. I was able to quickly talk to some people to get grounded back in reality, but this stuck with me. It still does stick with me. Somehow, both of the most real experiences in my life have pointed me towards this hellish eternity of slavery where I will never be able to escape. And I don't know what to make of that. It's a terrifying thought that this might be the truth of what reality is. I couldn't go any further into the void. I grazed it this time, but it was too much to bear for too long. Post-Trip Now, I'm sure some of these ideas that came up at the end were related to my traumas and fears and abandonment issues I mentioned at the beginning. But I will say that they felt so real and embodied at this point. I imagine that part of the reason they got mixed up in here is because they've been buried so deeply for so long that I wasn't able to process them. And opening up my mind with psychedelics kind of forces you to acknowledge these things whether you like to or not. Combining this with spiritual ideas can lead to philosophies like this no doubt. Despite this, somehow, they still felt so real. It got to a point during the trip where I could feel my mind demonizing Leo and his teachings. I started to look at the illusions that I've heard of as good and Leo's teachings as evil. But I really think that was because of the realizations I was having and feeling like I might be eternally suffering. It got to a point where all of actualized.org felt evil. Even though, I know that these teachings are much more advanced than any other teachings I've come across (mostly due to the attempt to get me to have a direct experience rather than just telling me what to do). This entire experience has made me question whether or not I actually do want Truth. I've never been as close as I just was, and I felt it sear me when it was too much. But I'm still here. I'm making this post now to try to clarify everything and make sense of the entire experience. I'm still working to plumb the depths of my mind and uncover the secrets of Consciousness. So now, I ask to those of you who have been here before: How did you get through this? How does anyone handle this existential weight of impending doom and eternal suffering? How could any human ever go through this and still be alive? What were your next steps? Where is this even in terms of the spiritual process? If this assumption about reality IS wrong, then how in the world am I supposed to make it right, given that some of my most profound experiences have been extremely terrifying? All responses are welcome. If you read this far, I thank you deeply. This is a very long and personal post, but I felt it was needed for my own sake.

The ego has the substance of reality: infinite. It is not a floating illusion nor a mere accident of perception; it is composed of the entire unlimited relationship that reality is. Its existence, as form, is not independent, but neither is it nonexistent. It is an inevitable and legitimate effect of the infinite in motion. You cannot recognize its emptiness, but its total fullness. The so-called "emptiness" is merely a negative concept that points to the boundary of form when isolated. But when you understand that all form is the inevitable unfolding of infinite relationship, emptiness dissolves into fullness. Real freedom is not "letting go of all identification," as if one could dwell in a conceptual limbo without form or content. True freedom is the dissolution of boundaries, recognizing that the limits that seem to separate the self, form, or any structure are merely mental projections. Emptiness, understood as absolute absence or negation, is itself a boundary ,a restrictive concept. How could an ego, with its millions of nuances, its complexity, its interdependence, its real relational structure, be sustained by nothingness? That makes no sense. If you look from an unlimited perspective, everything is empty in terms of separate meaning, yet at the same time, everything is. Being is everything, implies absolute meaning, not absence of meaning, because being is total. Real openness is not found in taking refuge in the denial of form, but in seeing that all form , including the ego, is the direct, inevitable, and absolutely full expression of unlimited reality.

There's nothing left to reduce if I already allow myself to strive for nothingness. I don't need someone to push me into submission; that would have the opposite effect (being submissive seems boring/demanding to me most of the time). On the other hand, the other (the maya in general, not necessarily women) becomes something that will systematically narcissify me, that will prevent me from returning to my emptiness. So I must ensure that the objects I'm exposed to are submissive, to eliminate the separation. Dont know if i'm clear.

Definitely. "I" is the biggest illusion. Nightmares at night is a consequence of the brain. Nothingness is already the case. Mind creates the illusion that there is something.

Why do you dream of nightmares at night ? When you have a nightmare..aren't you yourself creating this bad experience for yourself ? Ultimately ..it's a philosophical question. Some philosophers argue against the problem of evil (why an all powerful all loving God creates suffering?) By saying existence is better than non-existence. And whatever ends up happening in life is better off than pure nothingness. I'm not sure if that's true under all conditions . Would you rather go to sleep and never wake up again? ..or go to sleep and drift off between endless dreams ..some of them are pinky and beautiful and some of them are horrific and painful?

"Pulse getting slower, breath more shallow, noises are starting to get inversely proportional to fading focus, Is this an OBE? Not yet, but what is death, or life anyway? So then I'd say my consciousness is slipping, but that's just a word, and what it mentions, incommunicable? No, it is, but that's... telepathy, always was... I see gestalts... shadows in my periphery, are they the afterglow of a deteriorating memory context and am I making them up, or are they beings from beyond? I suppose the difference is quite imaginary without an epistemically sound way to discern and prove the difference, but that means utilizing arbitrary constructs, I feel so light, and everything is so bright, not unlike I imagined it but so far removed from all my experience used to have access to. Am I still bound to this place, can paralysis demons show up at this point, I wonder what entities will show up, or whether I'll levitate in nothingness, I guess I would know if I cared to actually stop thinking and started actually perceiving whatever is going on right now, but I'm just so excited about epistemology. After all, I gotta be humble in the afterlife, right? I for sure don't wanna be incarnated again."

Here’s a powerful secret meditation technique I learned: 1. Settle in and imagine an empty desert. In this quiet empty desert, visualize a pyramid made out of crystal. See it as vividly as you can. Any thought that captures you, return back to the pyramid. 2. Notice the pyramid fading away to nothingness, along with the desert. 3. Sit in the empty stillness for as long as possible. Any thought that’s come up, see them fading away like the pyramid. 4. As you sit in the stillness, just notice consciousness itself. Don’t try to do anything. Just notice what consciousness is doing. Ask the question: “What is consciousness? What am I?” Don’t try to answer it with more thought, just notice. The answer is a shift in consciousness. That is my secret meditation technique. Hope you enjoyed it.

LOL did someone just say non duality is easy and non-threatening. There’s nothing casual about your existence being an illusion and there being only oneness/infinity/nothingness/everything. That is one of the most, if not the most, radical things to realize.

Introduction Last week I took 300ug of LSD, mostly with the intention to confront fears I encountered during previous trips. Those included: After serious ego loss and intense fear of death arising, fighting to have a purpose for my life, as if that was what would save me from death. The reasoning was, as silly as it sounds: “if I can’t come up with a reason for my existence right now, I will die”. A tribalistic paranoia, fear of being discovered by someone, fear of being closed in the room and someone else being in the apartment, fear that someone is behind me. Fear during the state where I don’t know anything, I literally don’t remember anything at all, what my name is, who I am, etc. Fear of reality “simplifying itself” to the point of death, fear of being motionless / falling asleep during the trip because I think I will die. Fundamentally, fear of death. To counter these, my focus was to: “Let Death into my heart”; Open the gates Accept being purposeless, that it is okay and I will not die Accept no identity and not remembering anything, that it is okay as well Relax and feel into being safe in God Confront other key fears listed above I simplified these points of focus, wrote them out on pieces of paper and laid them in front of me, so that I would come back to them throughout the trip. Moreover, since I always experience profound feelings of Self-definition during my trips, my intention was to focus on 3 key archetypes/energies which are important to me right now, once the identity was gone, to program myself: I am a Man. I achieve my Goals. I Act. I am an Artist. I express my Voice. I Create. I am a Sage. I nourish my Peace. I Meditate. I said goodbyes to my gf I live with, closed myself off in my room for 3 hours and went from there. Throughout the entire trip I wrote in my notebook. I mostly sat on the floor, surrounded by a few sheets of paper, and took everything in, while observing myself and responding to fears. Key Awakenings I don’t exist For the first time, I really awakened to the fact that I don’t exist. This was during the beginning of the trip. I was writing a stream of consciousness in the notebook and I asked the question: “Do I even exist?”. The question reached my awareness and suddenly I was completely dumbstruck. My jaw dropped. My initial reaction was like “Of course I exist!!!”. But I looked and there was no me. Mindfuck. After that, so much energy started emanating from me I thought everyone around me in the residential block was feeling it. It was incredible. Nothing I saw utter Nothingness. It was like I was in a completely empty Void. There was NOTHING satisfying about it for me. I was scared of the truth being negative in some way. In retrospect, I see that I wanted to discover SOMETHING. I wanted to discover some kind of divine love, inspiration, hope, reason. I wanted nothingness to be something good… but no. No love, no hope, NOTHING. It was exactly what it was. Nothingness. Devoid of any features. I saw it clearly, and it was humbling. I AM; SOMETHING is there And yet, in spite of seeing that I don’t exist, of not remembering anything about me and after seeing the Nothingness, I later felt that something was calling to me. It was as if it was hidden behind some veil, completely inaccessible to me. There was SOMETHING there, and it was ALIVE. I wrote in my notebook: I am SOMETHING. But what? This SOMETHING was instantaneous. I felt that I was it, but I was in no control of it. It was Same to me, and yet completely Other. It was writing things through me, without my conscious intent. For the first time, I felt MYSELF so clearly. I AM. Still, I don’t yet understand the dynamics of it. But I feel there is something amazing to be found there, and I’m excited about that. “Alien” vibration penetrating me Okay, so this is another thing that’s been difficult for me in previous trips, which I forgot about. Maybe I cut it out of my memory due to the great discomfort associated with it. Lately, each time I take LSD and lose my identity completely, I feel penetrated by some weird, “alien”, unifying vibration, by which I feel raped, used, taken advantage of. Feeling it, I feel like I’ve made some big mistake taking LSD. I feel possessed. At times, I feel something is taking control of me and I’m acting in weird, unpredictable manners, which is scaring me. During this trip, this happened when I was very high-level, and later on each time I focused on accepting the fear of dying and being no one. I felt this foreign vibration running through me. I felt discomfort, but I tried to persevere. I was set on confronting any fear and letting go of myself. Still, I felt taken advantage of. I don’t have good words to describe it, but that energy was weird, alien-like, sexual, foreign, flowing through me when I let go. If I had to describe it visually, I felt it as something white with 8 eyes, spanning through the entire visual field, inhuman, all-unifying, sexual, flowing. But I might as well be bullshitting myself, that’s not the point. The most important thing is: I don’t know yet what it is, and how to deal with this. I know I must separate my feelings about it from the actual thing, and it’s difficult because I feel great discomfort towards it. I’m wondering whether I can start approaching it differently and experience more positive feelings towards it. She is Other to me Close to the end of the trip, I contemplated what my girlfriend is. I was like: “Well, of course she is me. Right?”. And I tried “looking into her”. But to my surprise, she was completely inaccessible to me. She was Other to me. “Wait… how can she be Other to me, if we are the Same?!” It was a mindfuck to realize others are the Same and Other at the same time. I gained a new level of respect for my girlfriend, in particular. Later, I told her: “I respect you, because I can’t reach you with my mind. You are, and always will be, a Mystery to me. I see you differently now.” This can refer to Reality in general. What I said in the “I AM; SOMETHING is there” section: that SOMETHING was also completely Other to me, even though I was It. Maybe that SOMETHING is in everything I see, including my girlfriend. I think that theoretically, I could realize that I can’t reach anything I see with my mind, and that everything is a Mystery, not just my gf - but that’s beyond the scope of that trip. Miscellaneous I felt the above 5 sections were the most distinct, content-packed and worth sharing. Besides these, I experienced other things/awakenings/insights, such as: “Everything stems from the fact that I’m afraid of Death”. Feeling that I’m always running away from myself. I am this Dream which is leading itself Will/Intention being instantaneous and action in reality “lagging behind”, I was a bit impatient about it “Being the furthest away (from “life-content”), you can’t do anything but love.” “I want to be someone in this world. I want to express my Voice.” I felt like I’m not worthy, not “someone” enough. I want to fix something in myself all the time. Can’t I just love myself? At one point, I felt it was hard for me to stay in the body. I was walking around the room and felt so much energy accumulating in me, I thought I’d die. This single thing made me consider reducing dosing in the future. Looking at my hand felt overwhelming at one point, as if God was beaming its full energy at my face. I was looking away. Also, holding the fully stretched hand close to my face, I felt as if it was completely surrounding me. I was scared of it. Loss of consciousness was disappointing at one point. I was on such a high level. I felt cheated going “down”. I felt the “earthly” life was such an insignificant dream/illusion and it was for low-consciousness idiot beings. But this feeling passed quite quickly. At the end of the trip, I focused on manifesting what I want in life - among others, the 3 key archetypes I mentioned in the intro Focusing on the fact that I REALLY wanted the best for myself, that I wanted happiness in life, I wanted hope, inspiration, energy, I wanted to live and accomplish, that I wanted everything to be alright in the end. Key lessons & how to proceed Next time, I will strive to not want anything from NOTHING and to love it for what it is. Unsatisfying, unborn, raw, pure truth. I can see the fact that it's unsatisfying as actually the best thing about it. Shows me my bias perfectly. Focus on looking deeper into SOMETHING behind the veil. I feel there’s something important there for me to find. Perhaps, this is where I can genuinely discover God/Infinite Love for the first time. Seems plausible, given how this SOMETHING felt to me during this trip. I had God-realizations before, but it was more about me being God - never before did I discover God/Love/Intelligence which is „Alive” and Other to me. Understand my feelings of being taken advantage of by the „alien” vibration. Can I change my relation to it? Is it growth to accept this „foreign” energy penetrating me? Should I learn to be submissive, is that the way? What is this „alien” vibration? Goal: Learn to love and receive it. Experiment with being submissive and accepting something „foreign”. Fuck it, if it’s growth, I want it, I don’t care. Consider lowering my LSD dose to 225ug Consider trying a different psychedelic soon, probably DMT Outro Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, feel free to share. Peace! I got the Magic in me! 🌟

Ever find yourself staring into space for like a quick second; that's like a glimpse into nothingness. The sense of a person apparently came back, but not really because it's not really there. Ever talking to someone and lost your train of thought. It's not your thought, it's thought "thoughting" (already the case), but wasn't being claimed in that moment and it slipped by without a sense of a person claiming it. Nothing can be grasped or held unto and in that apparent moment, that was experienced. Something like a non-dual moment, but not really. No such thing as non-duality. We're just making shit up. No such thing as anything, really. Even Nothing is a made-up word by nothing. It likes to talk about itself and name itself. It's nameless. It's not a void or a black hole, it's nothing. What is nothing? Nothing. Hehe....being everything...which is still nothing....hahahehehoho...i love this shit. Won't be saying nothing when asked what's that hit upside the head.

In simple words, as consciousness goes on increasing, there are breakthroughs in that way. One of the first milestones is non-duality or oneness, which simply said is that the inner space and the outter space are merged into one, inside the body doesn't feel more me than outside the body, both are equally me, I'm in oneness, I'm connected with everything etc. There are many other Awakenings in the path as consciousness rises like no-self, boundless consciousness, eternity, nothingness, the I-AM, Truth, Love, strange-loops, solipsism, perfection, and a myriad of other facets etc. At the olympics of consciousness you reach Infinite Consciousness and God.

I dont know because im not enlightened but maybe there is a difference between you could realize non duality, and thats the same as realizing nothingness (because nothing has no border) but then what’s missing is that everythingness, so the next step is to realize everything, oneness. Maybe I’m wrong as I said I don’t know but I’ve heard something along those lines

There's no one to dissolve into nothingness. Nothingness is all there is.

Sounds like the third law of motion: "Each action has an equal and opposite Reaction" aka. Karma. Recent "spirituality" threads appear to converge upon "stop caring including caring about achieving that state and dissolve into nothingness (which mayn't be nothing, just mindless, thoughtless, (iterate)" or something.

When Leo talks about Reality on his blog, like in his most recent post about Math and Reality, and I look at it from the dream perspective and cognize it from that angle, it fits perfectly. It's like he's talking to the one that thinks it's a human being (the me). The separate self, the person, the separate energy that arose within the body and thinks it's separate from everything else. The dream itself. Experience itself. The mention of the words world and reality leads me to my world, my reality, my experience, my knowledge.....but without the my. It's like he's talking about how it was all formed, how it seemingly concurred. When I envision the mind part and the imagination part, I see it as Absolute nothingness being 'me' and how 'me' is dreaming up my life and everything around 'me' but not what the Absolute itself is being. I look at it as, what's appearing, is the Absolute being whatever is appearing, and that's real. What I'm dreaming about is all mind and imagination and that I'm the dream itself and also imagination itself (the ne), but the Absolute isn't a mind nor imagination. I also look at it as the Absolute being whatever is appearing through mind and imagination, but the latter can't be since the Absolute is everything there is. Meaning the Absolute/God isn't dreaming or imagining anything, I am. When I put myself in his words as the dream, as the experience, as separate from reality it fits perfectly but not in an Absolute way because the Absolute is the 'one' talking to itself, writing those words and being Leo himself. So, I see it as the Absolute/God talking to itself but referring to the 'me', the illusion. It fits perfectly then but not what the Absolute/God/Nothingness is actually being, but is also being but only seemingly and appearing to. For example, it is being a bird, but the me is seeing that bird separate from me and the dream is that which sees a separate bird because the dream is spacial but not really occurring. The sense of separateness and the dream and imagination are one but it's not really real since it's only a felt sense. Let me stop here as I think I'm confusing things a bit, not myself but the way I'm wording it to make it make sense. I'm fascinated with this exploration and will continue to explore more of this and will keep seeing if his words match up to this sense of separateness and if it resonates to the dream and illusory world and existence that i take myself to be in or is itself. I have to also keep in mind that Leo himself is also a 'me' that I see as a separate person, entity, being and how I relate to that energetically. Is he only there because I am (here), and I'm taking him to be someone actually trying to convey a message, or us he just a figment of the imaginary dream I've concocted up that I call Reality. I see the Reality he speaks about as the me's dreamlike reality that's not really there. I don't know, we'll see because I don't really see a reality, I see people, places, circumstances and objects(things), but there aren't any really since it's all nothing being everything and appearing as such and the stories and ideas about all that appears is the dream of separation. Dunno.

That’s a thoughtful post. Here’s a take on the points you’ve presented. 1- With respect to existential questions and the search for their answers, there are two interesting schools of life: the School of Necessity and the School of Futility. People will not seek to find an answer without the necessitated question at hand, which emerges within the mind and grabs the attention. Due to any number of biases, mostly cognitive and/or socio-cultural, one’s individuated consciousness is attenuated to projected likely ‘answers’, desired outcomes, or probabilities. 2- Inconsideration of the above, yes, most peeps’ world views are formed by the ‘outward’ environment, the appearing world. The cognitive and the socio-cultural biases inform one another until a certain stimulus necessitates the search for a ‘new answer’ and/or revision of a previous one. Therefore, if one has grown up in a culture (family, media, social circles, school. etc) that is dominated by say, the scientific-materialist paradigm, many or most of the so called acceptable ‘answers’ are going to appeal to that world view. All good….. Until it’s not. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum. 3- In culturo-linguistic fields, this is called immersion. And yes, the more one is immersed in a new paradigm, the more one is likely to get a sense for, adapt to, and accept the validity of said paradigm. That said, this all with respect to cognition, language, and social settings. This message board is an example of one such paradigm. Note: Some of what Leo is on and on about is learnable, so he considers himself a teacher of it. The material is all researchable on the web and subjectively valid and/or experienced, subject to prioritization, re-organizable, revisable, etc. As with all knowledge, it is impermanent, subject to entropy, and changes. When it comes to Truth, which he claims to have apprehended, one must understand that it is NOT teachable, as it is not learnable or cognizable. It is not a thing. It cannot be researched, revised, or restructured. IT must be Realized. Many will exhaust their mind’s faculties in the effort of seeking to learn more about it, and die, perhaps with some degree of knowledge of the metaphysical, high end physics or ‘spirituality’, and the like, but will never apprehend IT. With any luck, they will fall to their knees, and in that moment of surrender, get a glimpse of, or perhaps a full on apprehension of Truth will emerge, but no one knows when/if. This often takes the form of inquiry into the nature of reality and/or the nature of the self. Many others will go the other route of seeking to subdue or subvert the mind via meditation and other practices, or take drugs (some of them purddy wild, to be sure), and woo woo experiences abound. All of this is done in efforts to create different mind states in which one might get glimpses or experience transcendental states, which come and go. As with any practice or effort, there's always the potential for failure, and with Truth, it is actually quite high, because the mind is that quick and sneaky. After the oceanic feeling, mind-blowing experience, woo woo, or otherworldly event has subsided, the mind kicks in with all sorts of ‘new’ theories and/or expressions meant to clarify what was seen, experienced, or understood. Typically what happens is that the essence of any potential depth of ‘experience’ gets, shall we say, corrupted by the momentum of the dominant paradigm of one’s mind/thinking. As with all trial and error phases in life, many give up and/or find their own comfy spot. That's fine; it's just hasn't found what it was looking for. One rarely notices or fully realizes the Absence giving rise to the sense of presence, or the Nothingness giving rise to Everything, the Absolute that gives rise to the relative, etc. Lots of ways to express the journey and/or the clarity. As one immerses the attention in Truth, it continues to inform the mind of its limited capacity for which it is mostly a tool to be used in the world. But that’s the catch; states (which come and go) are always about mind, which changes. What comes and goes is NOT abiding non-dual Awareness of/as Truth: Peace, Freedom, Love, Beauty, the Good....right HERE, right NOW. And IT's ALL GOOD.

Yeah but enlightenment isnt the finish, it's a stepping stone to a new beginning. Most important thing to understand is that you cant experience everything because the nothingness/shakti/potential is what starts a new interaction with yourself. So shakti/potential is also conscious like yourself