Manuel's Journal - Spiritual Wok / Emotional Healing / Financial Freedom & more

[manuel bon]

I decided to start a journal; I want to be motivated to do it, so I am publishing it here, intending to share things about myself, not only so I can keep track of multiple things, but also so you can get to know me.

Here I will document everything I am involved with in my everyday life; I want to make the journal organized so it's easy to read for anyone who decides to open it and me. I will write about my spiritual journey, the search for my life purpose, new experiences, emotional healing and growth, my road towards financial freedom, my mental and physical health, and my relationship with the people around me in my life. I want to share interesting quotes, parts of books I like, or that resonate with me, and my ideas about whatever comes up in my mind that can be significant or not. 

How it will be organized:

Every post will talk about a specific thing, and at the beginning, I will add a color that will represent a specific topic.       

 

                                                                           Here I leave the list of topics with respective colors.

 

🔴 = Relationships, Family, Sexuality

🟠 = Mental & Physical Health, Emotions

🟡 = Money, Financial Freedom

🟢 = Spirituality

🔵 = Psychedelics

🟣 = Life Purpose, Career

🟤 = Quotes, Books, Websites

⚫ = About me, Goals, Ideas

🔘 = Contemplation 

 

I hope I was clear enough with the explanation. Thank you for reading and being present with me towards my growth, healing, and ultimately self-discovery!

Edited September 18 by manuel bon

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Orientation

Some time ago I heard about the CIA's declassified Gateway Process Experiment, but I got interested a couple of days ago when I read a post about it in this forum. I found the Gateway Experience tapes by the Monroe Institute and decided to give it a try. I decided to journal after each session to see the progress. By the way, I have been meditating for four years already, and in the last two years, I got into it even deeper (more about it later).

 

15/09/2024      21:26                                     DAY 1 & 2

 

Today is the second day of the gateway experiment. Yesterday, I did the first audio track, ORIENTATION (Wave 1), and only once. I might do it once again later when Mom and Dad go to their room so there's silence. The only thing is that I hope I don’t get too energetic before sleep.

Yesterday the experience was great and pretty strong: I felt my body was asleep-like, and my mind active, as they said in the tape. Today it was not like that fully, maybe because I wanted to skip the first 5 minutes of the introduction, which is not part of the exercise, but yesterday helped me introduce a sense of calmness before the whole real thing. But now I know that later and tomorrow I will listen to the whole thing, even if it can be boring.

I don’t know for how long I should do each tape; chat-GPT says to do more or less 3 or 4 days for each tape, and I will do so only if I see that I do have different feelings in my state of awareness.

I just ended the first track, the second time for today, and it went better than the first one, except for the fact that toward the end I started having weird feelings of tension behind the knees. But I have to say that at the beginning already it was difficult to find a good posture. I notice also that every time I get into this physically relaxed state, my mind is more active and I have many thoughts. I am not distracted, but it's still pretty active. I don’t know if that's a bad sign. I will ask chat-GPT to get an idea.

Tomorrow I will try to do the first tape twice, and then once the second tape. I'm really curious!

Edited September 17 by manuel bon

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Orientation & Introduction to Focus 10

16/09/2024      19:35                                     DAY 3

 

Today I did tape 1 once and tape 2 also once.

When I redid the first tape, I had no bad feelings, my knees were okay. The problem was my saliva. Same thing for the second tape. This was the only thing that didn’t allow me to fully relax my body and let it sleep, but it was still a great experience. Somehow I went really deep, and now I feel refreshed for real, both physically and mentally, it's crazy; I am truly amazed and happy about the results. I will look at how I should solve this problem of saliva.

Edited September 17 by manuel bon

[manuel bon]

🔵 Trips I already posted

I leave two psychedelic trips I posted in the past, if you are curious check them out.

 

No. 1:  50ug LSD & Weed - Glimpse of Awakening

No. 2: Weed and DMT - Sex with music

 

 

[manuel bon]

🔘 What is Meaning?                                                                                             

21 August 2023     -     08:30

 

- What is something that I see as meaningful? A meaningful experience can be for example the whole story and experience with *ex-girlfriend*. Therefore, meaning is taken from a situation that gives you some kind of impact, where you can learn something, both positive and negative: meaningful things are valuable things that teach you lessons.

 

- Meaning is different for everyone and everything: for me, spirituality is one of the most meaningful things of my life, but not for my brother.

 

- Are there some objectively meaningful things? We can say that oxygen is meaningful, but that is a biased statement: since we are living creatures it is only important to us if there is oxygen or not. A rock doesn't care about it.  Meaning is given only by a conscious being.

 

- Is then "meaning" important only for our survival? Yes, if you're not a conscious being then you don’t have a survival instinct, and nothing is meaningful to you: to us, creatures living on planet Earth, the sun is meaningful, but for the planet, it is not. Earth doesn't care if, in some billions of years, the Sun will grow so much that will suck in itself all the planets (including of course Earth itself).

 

- What is the meaning of life? Since there is no objective meaning to anything, it means that the meaning of life is found only in yourself. You are the only one that can give meaning to your life.

 

- Are there different levels of meaning? Yes: since you are the one who gives meaning to things, you also give them more or less importance. The depth of meaning of something is determined by you.

 

- Am I experiencing meaning right now? I don’t feel like I am experiencing something meaningful right now.

 

- Can I FIND a meaning in this journey from Trieste to Verona I am doing right now? Well yes; I am going to Verona to meet *friend* and his gf, and that might be a meaningful experience. For the first time, we will share nice moments outside of Maastricht, visiting a city and doing new things together that will make us connect and bond on a different, maybe even new level.

 

- Is something meaningful found only in experience\events\acts, or also in material things? For example, can a laptop be meaningful? If an object carries or brings you some kind of value, then it is meaningful. So yes, also a laptop can be meaningful because it can bring you knowledge (and many other things). Also, the emotions that some object gives you, make the object meaningful. The object itself though doesn't give you the emotions, but it's the experience that you have\had\will have through it that does. Do I have a meaningful object? Dad's motorcycle (whole story behind it).

 

- We gave meaning to words and sentences. In this case, the meaning of words indicates something: the word "house" indicates a structure, building, or environment where a person, animal, or any being lives. Other words don’t refer to physical\material objects but to concepts, like "philosophy", and "metaphysics".

 

- Meaning of a story\movie\book, etc.: when we talk about the meaning of such things, we indicate their message, a lesson, something valuable that will make us think, and give specific insights.

Edited September 16 by manuel bon

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Introduction to Focus 10

17/09/2024      08:17                                     DAY 4

 

After 20 minutes of meditation, I did again the second track of the first Wave. Today was less effective than yesterday; although I didn’t have as many swallowing problems as yesterday (I drank a lot of water before and used a higher pillow so I don’t tilt my head too much behind) I had some moments where my allergy disturbed me. I managed to relax greatly, but I had to sneeze a couple of times, and that kind of took me out of the relaxation. Now I do feel energized, so to some extent I did get some benefits, but the session was not great in terms of getting the best results in the exercises so I can progress and continue with the next track. Later in the afternoon, I might do it again (in any case I will do it also tomorrow and the day after).

Edited September 17 by manuel bon

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Introduction to Focus 10

17/09/2024      16:10                                    DAY 4 part 2

 

I just ended the second track for the second time of the day. Now it was better, I didn’t have allergy anymore (I've been using the face mask the whole day), and I managed to swallow only once, just at the beginning of the exercise. The downside was that I was a bit tired, and I thought that it would be good so after I ended it I would be refreshed; in fact, I do feel refreshed, but since I was tired in some moments I lost focus. Now, I don’t know if I did everything properly; to some extent, I feel that I really rested, but I don’t know if my body was really asleep and my mind was awake. But overall it was not bad. If the quality stays like this or gets better in the next two days I will continue with the next track.

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Introduction to Focus 10

18/09/2024      08:05                                    DAY 5

 

Today was probably the worst day: I was almost fully asleep, I didn’t listen much of the audio, and yes, I did relax, but not because I was actively doing the exercise. I know I shouldn’t be doing it when I'm tired (and I do it almost right after I wake up, so I'm pretty zoned out and sleepy), but I wanted to do it in the morning since there is silence, and I am not disturbed by noises or other things. I am in Italy with my family, but next Monday I go back to the Netherlands where I live alone, so then I can set the practice properly with all the other things I have to do during the day. Until then, I will still do it at least once a day, but not in the morning right after I wake up.

[manuel bon]

🟢 MEDITATION

 

I have been meditating since 2020, it's been more than four years now. But I would say that the real serious meditation practice started two years later, in 2022. In this long journey, I understood that my practice is never going to be the same: sometimes I can go deep quickly without any problem, but at other periods I can't sit for more than two minutes without getting distracted or without moving.

Lately, my practice is not good. I am happy because I consistently meditate daily, some days even twice; but the sessions are never good. I let my brain talk and talk and talk, there is no end to it. What I find interesting is that I don't have concrete thoughts, or concrete sentences in my head. It's always mainly random words or concepts that have no real flow or connection between them. I find myself in an unconscious state where thoughts exist and I'm almost asleep, or simply blinded by this fog. 

Right now that I am journaling I am reminding myself and re-realizing that it's fine. I should not be harsh on myself; also, I'm super overstimulated since this summer I'm with my family. Once I go back to the Netherlands where I live alone it will be better. 

Also, I have never really used a specific technique; usually I just block my stream of thoughts by focusing on my breathing, then when I feel my body starts to feel numb I try to expand that feeling, so I expand or try to let go of the body.

[manuel bon]

🟠 Overall Health

I am feeling frustrated because, in the last blood tests, I had a couple of things out of balance. I texted the doctor to see what I could do about it; he will probably respond today. I am not happy because I know I am not having a healthy diet, but I can't do much about it, every time I'm with my family I can't cook, if I tell my mom that I cook for myself she gets offended, or simply she doesn't allow me. Result: I eat pasta every day. And above all that, I am super stressed because of the family situation, and at night I overeat whatever bs I find in the fridge, mainly ice cream.  I don't know how to stop myself when I'm with my family, often I feel helpless. In general, I accept this situation cause I tell myself that stressing about it will not make it better. But I have to say that in the last 2 or 3 weeks I'm not overeating, but still I don't feel great. 

The situation will change drastically when I will go back to the Netherlands. I'm planning to do a 24-hour fast. Then in the future I might do even longer.

[manuel bon]

🟡 Investments 

 

I am kind of new in the world of investment, I don't know much about it. Moths ago I found an interesting company (CYBN) that works with psychedelics, and in my opinion they will do good and interesting things in the world of mental health. As now I have a lot of money invested and for some reason the price went down a lot, I think it's simply due to random fluctuations and not because of some news about the company itself. So I am down a lot of money and waiting for the company to publish the results of the trials (they said end of 2024, beginning 2025). I am positive about the outcomes, but for now that I am in negative I feel pretty frustrated and a bit anxious.

[manuel bon]

🟠 Allergy

In the last week/ten days I've been struggling with allergies; I've been having allergy to dust mites since I'm a kid (more or less since I was 7 I guess), and in some periods it gets really bad.

When I am in the Netherlands (most of the year) I never have it, except for 2 or 3 times a year, but when I go back to Italy I have it most of the time. I really feel the difference of quality between the Italian and Dutch air: in Italy is so polluted, and since I live in the centre of the city many cars pass by my house, so it gets pretty bad.

Dust mites are present in mattresses and pillows, and even though I have special ones for the allergy, many times I still can't sleep properly. I got used to this kind of "suffering", but sometimes when it gets bad I feel like going crazy.

Covid helped me realize that face masks help a lot with the allergy, so in the last week I've been spending most of the time with one on my face, sometimes even while I sleep. I do so cause I don't want to take pills that help just a couple of hours and make me dizzy or my mind foggy.

[manuel bon]

🟤 Eckhart Tolle 

"Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose."

[manuel bon]

🟢 GATEWAY EXPERIMENT - Introduction to Focus 10

19/09/2024      16:49                                    DAY 5

 Today I fell asleep. I do not recall listening to almost the whole second half of the tape. Should I do these exercises sitting? But then I don't want to be disturbed by back pain. I've been meditating for 4 years, but I almost always have pain. Maybe I don't sit properly, but I can't fully relax like that. But how to relax fully and not fall asleep?

Probably I am also lacking sleep, that's why I can't stay awake. I have to sleep more in the next days, sleep earlier.

[manuel bon]

⚫ Just a thought

 

I love life. Problems come just from the mind. How nice would it be if we all could overcome the mind. And just live and love life. 

[manuel bon]

 🔴 People in my life 

 

I'm so grateful for all the people present in my life.

I am so grateful for the decision I made years ago to spend time only with quality people. Deep people. 

I don't have mamy friends, or people around me, but all of them love me, and are real. I don't need to party, I don't need more irrelevant things in my life. 

I am satisfied with a great deep conversation with my girlfriend or friend on a random Thursday night.

[manuel bon]

🔴 Family: general situation

For those who don't know about me yet, here is a brief explanation of what is my family situation. In July 2022, my dad and brother had an accident with the motorcycle: a deer jumped right in front of them, and after hitting it they hit a tree. My brother had many surgeries, and now he is fine, but my dad is still recovering. He has a bad brain injury, and we are all working to make him better, trying to bring him back to normality.

[manuel bon]

🔴 Family Situation - Update:

In the last week, the situation with my dad is going pretty well. Some months ago he started a particular therapy with a Chinese doctor, and we see that it helps a lot. After some time he told us that he should take two kinds of Chinese medicines: both are a mix of roots, herbs, etc., and said that they will make miracles. One kind is for the low chi, energy, he has, and the other one is for the arms, legs, and brain. 

Unfortunately, he said that they are pretty expensive, and the only way to buy them is from him. We did some research and, indeed, these plants can't be found in Europe (or at least we didn't find it online or in Chinese shops). Eventually, we did some calculations, and we understood that the therapies + the plants would be more than 1100€ per month, which is crazy. Apart from this expense, we have to pay so much more for dad's medicines, physiotherapy, speech doctor, psychologist, and more (my parents have some money saved, but their income is really low, just enough to cover these expenses and food). It is obvious that it was really too much, and we started thinking that he was probably scamming us.

Well, my brother has a Chinese classmate, and a month ago she was in China, so we asked her to check in the pharmacies for those plants. So yes, the Chinese doctor was scamming us. He wanted 600€ per month, while the classmate bought 600€ worth of plants which will last for a YEAR.

Apart from this scam, the doctor was right. Already after two weeks of taking these medicines, my dad is better. He is more mentally present, and slowly starting to walk. Let's see the progress he makes in a year!

For next summer I hope that my dad walks fully alone, and starts to talk, at least a bit.

[manuel bon]

 🔴 Family Fight

 

Yesterday was my 23rd birthday and my mom organized a gathering with my family. My grandparents came, cousins, aunt and her boyfriend whom I will call C. 

Everything was nice until we started talking about immigration and politics in general. The problem started with my grandpa and C. My grandpa is traumatized from WW2, and you can't have a different opinion about some things that he's really attached to or convinced about. C. had different ideas and he was really trying to get a reaction from him, so they all started screaming like mad people. I'm a certain moment I decided to stand up and telling everyone to get the fuck out of the house.

My mom wasn't happy about it, cause it's not polite, but the truth is that what is REALLY not polite, is them, who got invited, my mom prepared and cooked for 2 days in a row, and then had the courage to scream in our house. And they are aware of the fact that our lives are really difficult after the accident, and we don't need madness, it's already difficult enough like this.

I don't feel guilty of telling them to leave; eventually after some drama they didn't leave, but I told them that it's super unpolite to act like that, when they know that we suffer enough, and we don't need more of this bullshit!!

Today I feel a bit nervous, my mind keeps talking and thinking about it, I will try to relax and let it go. I just hope that C. doesn't keep with this story.

[manuel bon]

🟢 Spirituality in my life

In general, I feel I am more conscious than other people. But it's also true that I fall into deep unconsciousness many times, and that happens especially when I am around unconscious people. It happens that I am never with more conscious people; unfortunately, I didn't meet this kind of people, not many of them. And if they are conscious, they are not my friends. I cannot see them on a weekly or monthly basis, and they are adults. I need people who can be my friends, and help me and teach me how to grow, to deepen my consciousness, overcome my mind, and be selfless. But it's difficult. 

I moved to the Netherlands and I met people that are more open-minded than in Italy. But still I cannot find people who are into spirituality or who are conscious, or if they are, they are on a "lower level" than me. I always feel like I need to teach how to be more conscious. And if I don't teach it, I fall into unconsciousness. It's pretty tough.

Just to be clear, I don't want to look like I put myself on a pedestal or that I'm better, or above others.