Self Evolution Journal

[Vladimir]

This morning's one hour meditation was very challenging, but I kept applying my own techniques that I recently invented by working on "how to achieve emotional mastery" video and they seemed to work quiet well. I'm using video game as metaphor for foundation of successful self development work, and when it come to doing something that is emotionally difficult, it's important to remember that during the time we persevere through those moments, we also end up building willpower (mana to cast spells against monsters), resilience (regeneration of energy and willpower, how quickly you can we recover after stressful situations - after fighting monsters / facing difficult challenges in life) and strength (increases armor, strength is how "thick-skinned" you are). I think the "why" is very important during these difficult moments, we have to know why we're putting ourselves through torture, what's the reason? Why should I be sitting here meditating when I could just make myself a cup of coffee? Knowing we are cultivating traits like - willpower, strength, resilience and ultimately emotional mastery is going to help, but also knowing the reason why we're trying to cultivate all of those too, why are we trying to achieve emotional mastery? Inner happiness, love, joy, peace, enlightenment - those are the greatest achievements a human being can ever dream of, though I think it needs to be taken even further because a lot of people don't understand that all of these greatest achievements are found within, this one calls for another video - "Humanity's Greatest Treasures Are Found Within".

I still need to figure out if I want to include the video game metaphor in the emotional mastery video, the more I contemplate about it, the closer resemblance I see with self development work in our lives. Level bosses are threshold guardians, spells are skills, mana is willpower, vitality is energy, monsters are challenges, experience is experience, levels of difficulty are difficulties of challenges we face, higher and lower level skills are levels of skill mastery and also how sophisticated those skills are, you may need to learn other lower level skills to be able to build the talent tree up to the higher level skill. Memory is one such high level skill that a lot of people take for granted, there are so many sub level skills to learn if one wants to develop "unlimited memory" - effective reading, creativity of visualizing, symbols, metaphors, connections, knowing how to look for key points, why/what/where/when/who questions, and a bunch of other techniques like rhyming, SEE method and pegging that I've learned from the Unlimited Memory book. Since we're still living in the dark ages of self development and an obsolete monster of a financial system, people don't get financially rewarded for overcoming difficult emotional obstacles in their lives, though gold is a symbol for enlightenment, so this also adds up with the metaphor, because the more we evolve ourselves and do what's emotionally difficult, the closer we get to the enlightenment.

[Vladimir]

Can't seem to wake up this morning, the body is feeling heavy, stiff, feeling joint pain, all symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, breath is constricted, I wonder if inflammation can cause arthritis and muscle pain. Tried opening the jar with coconut oil in it and couldn't even do it because my wrist and fingers would start aching and I felt weak which made me think these symptoms are real and I'm not just making them up. I think all these negative symptoms I'm experiencing are connected, I think at the root of it all is a deep spiritual / emotional trauma causing all kinds of imbalances in the body, including inflammation, cortisol overload, anxiety etc, which I'm hoping to heal with Ayahuasca ceremonies, so I'm really looking forward to that, especially after reading Joe's book The Fellowship of the River, he has really opened up my mind and I now have no doubt about making the right decision about it. 

On the positive side, I have learned a rhythmic, smooth breathing technique yesterday and it seems to be helping me in getting grounded and getting more energy. I was mindful of the way I was breathing and kept it rhythmic during yesterday's Yoga practice, and was able to get into a very pleasant, energetic state that I wouldn't normally feel. It seems like this has been the missing component that I have neglected, maybe because it's too obvious and simple, but at the same time it's not easy to implement because of the way we have trained ourselves to breath habitiually for many years, though habitual doesn't mean natural. This has given me an idea to incorporate breath into the "emotional mastery triangle" of the video I'm working on, I think I'm finally going to record it today, because I finally think I have made it into the piece of artwork that I have initially envisioned. 

[Vladimir]

Told Ashley, the Ayahuasca shaman about negative symptoms of constriction, shortage of breath, anger, anxiety, tension, heaviness, stiffness and joint pain I have been experiencing and how a lot of these seem to come in synergy, all at once to amply the negative effect. She asked me how I wanted to feel after the acupuncture and drumming journey, I told her I wanted to feel more expansive, light, energetic and free from these nasty symptoms. She also explained how important it is to work with these Chinese herbs she has prescribed me and how along with the proper diet and preliminary ceremonies coming up by the end of August, is going to help me prepare for the retreat in Peru. She mentioned that Ayahuma is like the invisible Yoda master that's getting me prepared for the big battle ahead, it helps to recover from emotional shocks and release past trauma which is the medicine she was taking before her first Ayahuasca ceremony. Her first ceremony made her cry for three days straight, a lot of it coming in wails as she described it, because she was in a very dark emotional place back then. 

As I laid down on the table, she put a bunch of needles in me and then begain playing the drum, I could feel losing a sense of my body and getting into an energetic state of flow very quickly, similar to what I get at about 30 minutes of meditating. She asked me to release negative emotional spots of my body and to imagine throwing it into the fire and burning it, some of the heaviness and negativity seemed to flow away as I followed her instructions, I began to feel lighter and more expanded. Then she stopped playing the drums and asked me to think of the first memory where I first experienced negative sensations of anxiety and tension around my chest. I told her about an episode back in Atlanta when I just moved here, when I was in high school and was called on to go in front of the class and say something about a mathematical problem. I felt very embarrassed doing that and could feel anxiety and shame flowing through my body, which I guess was my first experience of a panic attack. From that point on, I thought something was seriously wrong with me, I told her that my social anxiety snowballed from that point on and started thinking like everyone is judging and criticizing me for my accent, so I couldn't speak with confidence anymore. 

She asked me what kind of guide I would call on to help that younger version of me and I told her I couldn't think of any, though I have been using Ganesha a lot in my life, who represents the remover of obstacles. After a while I told her, I guess it would be my mom who the younger version would ask for guidance and support in that moment, in the classroom, though I couldn't think anything that my mom would say to me at that point. We finally came to the conclusion that what I needed at that point was support, the situation made me feel very insecure because I was in a new country, with language I couldn't speak or understand, I was sensitive to other people's judgement, being a full-blown empath as I recently found out and cancer, all of which adds on to the sensitivity, on top of that my grandparents and aunt were not supportive and negative and my father basically betrayed me for lying to me by saying: "you'll be back to Russia in one year", but failed to keep his promise. She asked me what my young self would say to my father, and I told her: "you asshole, how could you do this to me? how could you betray me like that? you told me I was coming back to Russia in one year!" of course I sugar coated it otherwise there would be a lot more cursing in those phrases and they would sound much harsher in Russian. 

After the acupuncture / drumming journey / therapy session was over, we briefly talked about the experience, she told me "good job" for going through some of these difficult memories. I felt uplifted, light and energetic after the session which was the initial intent. We both agreed that I might still be holding anger towards my father even though I have let it go on the thought level. On the emotional and spiritual level I may still have a lot of these traumas and wounds, which have been accumulated for about two decades of me living here. Ahsley told me Ayahuasca is about healing those emotional wounds and traumas, and I told her it sounds like this is exactly what I need and that I feel blessed and greateful for having stumbled upon her on my birthday, which was the greatest gift from the Universe that I did not expect. 

I'm feeling calm, light, peaceful, clear headed and a bit joyful at the moment. I guess the positive vibrations also work in a synergistic way. I think there are great things coming my way and I'm feeling excited about the Ayahuasca healing journey as well as "We are One" project that I have been working on daily, life is starting to become a lot more interesting!

[Natasha]

10 hours ago, Vladimir said:

I wonder if inflammation can cause arthritis and muscle pain

Most likely. Inflammation is responsible for 95% of all human ailments. First step - full body detox to rid the system of the toxins. Then - maintain clean diet of mostly fresh (preferably orgaic) veggies and fruit, clean water, no household chemicals, stress reduction techniques (like meditation), moderate exercise (too vigorous of work-outs flood body with free radicals that also causes inflammation). Google info on foods, etc that cause inflammation and try to avoid those (red meat, gluten, dairy, etc). Chlorella is excellent at pulling toxins out, use it in smoothies and shakes or take in a tablet form. Other awesome supplements for inflammation that work are N-Wobenzyme and Curcumin. Hope this helps. Feel better    

[Vladimir]

@Natasha Thank you dear. I'm already on a very clean diet so I don't think that's the issue and I'm taking Tumeric which I think is the same as Curcumin? I haven't thought about vigorous work-outs causing inflammation, so I'll try to take it easy during my park work-outs. I'm also meditating a lot, doing yoga, getting good sleep, taking supplements, spending time in nature and recently started incorporating breathing techniques. I still feel like I have inflammation though because of all these symptoms, thanks for pointing out 95% statistic, I'll definitely watch this thing more closely from now on.

[Natasha]

@Vladimir Try Wobenzym N - it's a German formula super effective at knocking inflammation down. And read up on Chlorella, it's awesome at keeping body clean from any pollution from air we breathe to foods we eat. If you get it, make sure it's organic, broken cell wall kind. I've taken both and they really work. 

[Vladimir]

@Natasha Okay I'll try both, thank you.

[Vladimir]

When I finished yesterday's morning workout in the park, I meditated for about 15 minutes and then just laid down on the grass to rest and enjoy the sun and nature. I felt so amazing, my body blending in with the surroundings, the warmth of the sun, wind, earth. I felt like I was transported back to childhood in Russia, when I was resting in the sun at the beach on a 3 month school break, back then I felt overjoyed knowing I have so much time to enjoy without school, I felt happy. What I've noticed is I'm starting to feel happier everyday, I make myself laugh a lot more, I'm becoming more creative, I'm actually starting to feel joy again and seeing the beauty and magic in life. I've also finally recorded and uploaded new videos to my channel with the ideas that have been on my mind for a very long time and it feels like the burden has been lifted off my shoulders. 

Though these videos aren't as perfect as I envisioned them to be, I think this is a huge progress towards realizing my dream of becoming a personal development teacher, just like Leo. And the rewards are already starting to come my way, I have shared the video on "how to achieve emotional mastery" with a list of about 150 meetup members which I created for the local community and I got one very profound reply to the video where the lady talked about how she was able to connect and resonate with a lot of points that I was making in the video and that it brought her to tears while watching it. I feel like I have already contributed something significant to humanity just with those few videos, and it far outweighs any financial reward I've ever gotten from being in it just for the money. Even Clever Techie's thanks and praise never felt as rewarding as this woman's message, because I feel like this type of work is truly helping people become happier. 

What I've noticed is that my energy and emotions seem to fluctuate quiet a lot during the day, as I was trying to record the video on willpower yesterday night, I felt like I just couldn't talk in my natural way and felt like I was constricted in blocked around the chest and throat area. Though after meditating this morning, I started recording the video and it just kinda flowed and I was able to record it without much difficulty. I guess this flow will start happening more as I practice talking in front of the camera and start to organize these concepts and articulating them, I'm sure it's a skill that takes time to master, I think Leo mentioned it took him a long time to improve his speech. It seems like the pieces of the puzzle in my life are starting to all come together, this is the most difficult journey I've ever been on, though I'm starting to actually enjoy the challenges, my willpower is growing, my understanding growing as I'm sharing these insights on videos, the whole picture is becoming clearer, no wonder they say "the best way to learn is to teach". 

[Natasha]

8 hours ago, Vladimir said:

felt like I was transported back to childhood in Russia, when I was resting in the sun at the beach on a 3 month school break, back then I felt overjoyed knowing I have so much time to enjoy without school, I felt happy.

I remember those summers off from school spending on the beach too...those were innocent, careless, and happy days   

[Vladimir]

Been doing a lot of shadow work lately, going back in the past and seeing if I'm holding on to anything. Ended up uncovering a bunch of hurt from yesterday's sitting and realized I was still clinging to the past and carrying a lot of shit with me. I was actually shocked to discover just how much hurt and suffering I have created in the 34 years that I've been alive and became mindful of how it is still affecting me today. Though, looking at these 'dark' memories in a mindful way, allowed me to send unconditional love and compassion to my younger versions and people who were involved in these memories. The book about Ayahuasca I'm reading helped me with this difficult journey of digging into the past, "what is consciousness of consciosness? Ayahuasca replied: Love. She told him that love is the acceptance of all things as they are without reservation." I may be getting a little taste of unconditional love, as I sat with these memories, I noticed that they were not triggering me anymore after a while, I then started combining a lot of them together to try to increase the "level of negative intensity" to see if the combination would trigger me, though even the negative synergetic memories didn't seem to have the usual trigger response within me. 

What's helping me let go of these memories is letting go of the idea of perfectionism and always trying to compete to prove that I'm good enough. Very early in my childhood, I installed the idea in my mind that I'm not worthy, probably because of not much love from my parents, love wasn't even a word in our family and both of my parents are still alcoholics to this day. But whatever the reason, I have lived with this "virus" for a very long time and it's still isn't completely uninstalled from my "operating system". I've kinda known that past emotional traumas can cause all kinds of illnesses in the body, but I don't think I fully believed in it until I've read Joe Tafur's book, he finally solidified this understanding in my mind and cleared any doubts. He is the perfect person to write a book about this stuff because he's been on both sides of the fence, the Western medical system as well as working with Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicines and becoming a shaman, so this gave him a unique perspective to see the big picture and understand blind spots in the mainstream healthcare system. What's really adding a lot of power to the message are the "case studies of individuals from all walks of life who suffered from PTSD, Psoriasis, Anxiety, Depression, "Soul loss" etc., these people came to the Amazon because they have all been to countless doctors and practitioners who were unable to help them and could only offer "treating" the problem instead of addressing the root cause of it. 

I've always intuited that our healthcare system isn't really designed to truly heal people, but this book finally put all the pieces together for me and I'm already starting to get insights about my past and how I'm carrying emotional trauma and starting to heal myself during meditations, even before the actual Ayahuasca ceremony. I think being an empath is helping me work with these emotions as I'm very sensitive to my body and that's why I could feel all the past hurt, neglect and body and mind abuse in the forms of binge drinking every weekend, eating shit food, polluting the mind with toxic information etc. These things would really take a toll on me in the past, and a lot of times I tried getting better, by starting to exercise and try to quit drinking, though what I didn't realize back then is that the mind is probably 99% of the work and I wasn't doing any mindfulness work or meditations back then which was a huge missing dimension of the healing process. Though, being an empath is a doubled-edged sword, now that I'm developing love, compassion, joy, happiness and mindfulness in my life, I'm starting to really feel these qualities blooming, I'm also starting to laugh a lot more and overall feeling great, so I'm very excited about what's to come next.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Vladimir

[Vladimir]

Feeling emotional, as if I'm about to cry, the feeling is just lingering around the throat and upper mouth area, it feels like there is an emotional tsunami waiting to be unleashed any time. Was thinking how I wanted to incorporate humor into my youtube videos and came up with some funny things which made me laugh during the morning's yoga class. Then, thought up of some more really funny stuff while contemplating at home and made myself laugh hard enough to make tears come out of my eyes. Wow! I haven't laughed so much in a long time, it feels like things are really starting to move, also the usual lingering anger in the throat is very subtle and only shows up once in a while. Been contemplating if I wanted to still do anything with Clever Techie channel, was re-watching a lot of those videos and realized how well made they are, so I praised myself for being able to make all these videos before my first mystical mushroom experience and before I embarked on this sage-like personal development journey. I've struggled with the decision for a long time now, but I finally decided to 100% quit Clever Techie channel and fully pursue We are One because this is my true bliss and I'm going to follow it. 

[Vladimir]

A lot of ideas and insights came together last night during the contemplation session. I've been having very ambitious goal of trying to redesign my own system of learning information and have been developing new techniques of organizing, sorting, storing, connecting, visualizing, integrating and trying to build the foundation/framework for optimized learning. I have taken insights from these books: Unlimited Memory, How to Read a Book, Systems Thinking and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, I have connected a lot of great insights from these books which developed into new insights of my own which I'm now intergrating and experimenting with to create this optimized system of learning. So far I have the following tools for this system: myths, metaphors (programming, movies, nature, yoga, video games), quotes, symbols, systems thinking, life experiences, mystical experiences, books, life constants (change, direction, elevation, birth, death, ego, truth, yin/yang, perception, language, emotions etc.) - all of these foundational tools, when connected can create a very powerful system for effeciently storing, organizing, remembering and articulating information. Leonardo da Vinci's quote "Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else." came to mind once again, during last night's contemplation as I started seeing how all these things are connected, was it a coincidence that when I walked out of the closet during the 5g mushroom trip, around 5 months ago, I looked at myself in the full body mirror, stretched my arms to the sides and immediately had a flash of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man in my mind. Or is it a coincidence that my first vivid childhood memory is of me being about 2-3 years old putting together jigsaw pieces of the puzzle? Am I putting life's jigsaw pieces of the puzzle together by connecting all these insights together and starting to see more areas of this beautiful piece of artwork?

As I contemplated more on The Fellowship of the River, especially on the "meat" of the ideas that really stood out to me in the book, which talked about epigenetic programming and how it's our "seat of the seat of the soul", and how through shamanic healing and medicine plants we gain access to this code and heal/re-code this "maladaptive epigenetic programming", which we have learned or "designed" in our systems during childhood. I connected the concepts from programming and systems thinking and realized how similar human beings are to machines/systems/programs. Just like machines, we get input in the form of information and output in the form of behaviors and thoughts which make up our whole reality. Epigenetic code can be thought of as a system's structure, the interface from which all the other classes inherit. Taking the concept of "life's constants" I now thought of "healing" as the same as change, we are re-programming, redesigning, debugging, fixing this "soul code", all of these higher level words fall under the big one which is change, evolution, transformation, the cycle of life is all change, "the only constant in life is change". There are high level, senior programmers who design the system interface/structure, they can be thought of as architects and they get paid higher salaries accordingly. On the lower levels, there are junior programmers who "do the messy" work of actually writing the code, all of which inherits and follows the rules written by the system architects. Similarly, we can try to re-design our thought systems by trying to install new affirmation, telling ourselves we are confident and that we are worthy of love. However, if our epigenetic system's structure is flawed, based on the maladaptive patterns we have acquired from childhood, this would be like a junior programmer trying to fix the code on a "low level" and expecting to fix the core structure of the system. 

By attaining higher levels of consciousness and through mystical experiences, we can have access and heal/change/reprogram our structure of epigenetic system which may be malfunctioning and creating all kinds of illnesses in our lives which the modern Western healthcare system can only patch up, in a similar way a junior programmer would create a short term solution without addressing structural system flaws. Indigenous shamanism and plant medicine has been completely ignored by the modern scientific community for a long time, but thanks to researches at John Hopkins like Dr. Griffiths who have been experimenting with high doses of psilocybin, and people like Joe, these things are finally starting to come to light and I think eventually the modern science will merge with the mystical experiences and the two will work together to really heal people's root problems. Of course, this won't be easy, "the goal of every system is to ensure it's own perpetuity", so it seems like our system has been doing everything it can to distract, mislead, misinform and turn people away from these "alternative" healing methods. That's why I see Joe as one of the great leaders in this movement who has been on both sides of the fence and is truly writing from a place of love and authenticity, I can intuit that his primary purpose is really about healing people. 

I think the programming metaphor can be expanded even further, there are loops, variables, constants, arrays, databases, inputs, outputs, patterns, frameworks, user interfaces - all of these concepts are connected to how we function as advanced biological machines (who are now becoming cyborgs by integrating ourselves so much with the technology surrounding us). I thought about the MVC framework which stands for Model - View - Controller is programming, designed specifically for creating web sites more efficiently. The Model is the database, the structure of the system (epigenetic programming), the View is what we see on the web page (our pereception and view of reality, the quality of our consciousness) and Controller (the mediator between the database Model and the View) which is our mind, it's the we process information from our database of epigenetic code and then transfer the information to our perceptions of reality. I think most people don't have a clue how much their level of perceiving reality is screwed, and these very same people live in a very rigid model of reality which "can't change, it's who they are". I've been that way for a very long time, the mushroom experience was able to snap me out of that endless "do-while" hell loop I've programmed into my sub-conscious, because it has intervented on the level of paradigm, which is the best way to re-structure the system according to systems thinking book - "people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems." This is exactly how I see powerful psychedelic experiences, and it's the only way I was able to break out of that loop. Of course, much work is to be done after the experience which involves learning, integrating, processing, connecting and re-building and redesigning our structure of the system, otherwise the experience will just fade away into distant memory. 

"What I really want to underscore...is that because these mystical experiences give rise to these trait-level changes in spirituality and altruism, gratitude, forgiveness, and interpersonal closeness, they really appear foundational to our deepest ethical and moral understanding, the pro-social impulse of mutual care taking and therefore further research into the causes and consequences of these absolutely extraordinary experiences is very likely to be crucial, ultimately to the survival of our species." ~Roland Griffiths, John Hopkins University, Psychedelic Science 2017

[Vladimir]

As I struggled putting together and organizing ideas for the meditation video, I realized this work is "emotionally difficult" for me and the reason I'm getting distracted so much is because it's painful to sit here and struggle with trying to create this kind of content. I dug deeper to see what's underneath this discomfort and realized that I'm clinging to a lot of these ideas, this creates impatience as I'm wanting to get them out there as soon as possible, I also seem to be very passionate and strongly believe in these ideas which I think is a sign of ego, I remembered what Leo said about having "dispassionate mind", I think it's time to review that video if I can find it. Another obstacle is the revelation of my own ignorance, as it turns out I haven't been understandng these concepts as well as I thought, putting together useful video makes this obvious. The third challenge is actually putting the the best insights, quotes, metaphors and ideas together to create the most powerful message that I can in an organized, fun and authentic kind of way. 

So 1) clinging to ideas 2) revelation of ignorance 3) putting it all together is what's underneath that emotionally difficult frustration I've been experiencing, and I only now became mindful of it, as I was creating a video about the benefits of meditation. It also depends on the way I feel in the moment, my energy level and emotions seem to be fluctuating a lot lately. Ashley told me this is normal as I'm working with Ayahuma master plant medicine and dieting in preparation for the ceremony. I've changed so many things in my life in the past 2-3 months that it's understandable why my body would be complaining and trying to bring itself back to homeostatis, I'm really glad I watched Leo's video about mastery so that I'm mindful of this balancing feedback loop. 

At a yoga class this morning, I realized how greatful I am for being on this journey and being able to put the pieces together to start seeing the big picture, I'm starting to notice real changes in my life. I'm so thankful to all the authors of the books that I've read in the past 4-6 months - Terence McKenna (Food of the Gods), Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception), Joe Dispenza (Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself), Carlos Castenada (A Separate Reality), Joe Tafur (The Fellowship of the River), Donella Meadows (Systems Thinking), Kevin Horsley (Unlimited Memory), Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), and of course the master jedi knight Leo Gura of Actualized.org and the wisest of them all - the magic mushroom. As I contemplated more on the things to be greatful for and how it all played a role in bringing me to where I am in life today, memories that used to cause suffering, pain, regret, shame and guilt suddenly became learning lessons, and people that were involved in those memories became great teachers. 
 

[Vladimir]

One of the first video games I ever played was Prince of Persia when I was about 8 years old growing up in Russia. I had to be very mindful how I navigated the dungeon, which was full of traps and riddles, and make careful, strategic moves, because one wrong step and the prince wound end up on top of the sharp spikes. I now see life as the most sophisticated and treacherous dungeon, it's like the dungeon from Prince of Persia multiplied by a complexity of 1,000 or more. We get lost in the ocean of information, pursuing goals that we think will make our lives better, spend time on all sorts of activities and hobbies, allow all kinds of people into our lives, cling to our ideas and beliefs, hoard knowledge, read all sorts of books and go on living our lives, becoming more attached to this information, creating models of reality which make up they way we end up thinking and behaving and ultimately "who we are". 

Yet we rarely stop and question, why are we behaving and thinking in this way? What is causing our addictions? What is my life purpose? Why am I pursuing these goals? Why am I hanging out with those people? Why am I in this relationship? Is what I'm doing with my life really making me happier? And that's because people are mostly running on automatic pilot, with 95% of their behaviors being subconscious. It's like playing Prince of Persia with only 5% visibility of the total area of the screen, with the only part visible is that of prince's head, I wonder how long it would take to complete the dungeon in this way. Yet, this is exactly what people are expecting from their lives, we go on with our unconscious behavior, expecting to get to the holy grail with only 5% consciousness. 

Meditation is how we can start regaining "more area of the screen", to break out of the trap called "bounded rationality" where our understanding about reality and ourselves is very limited, creating all sorts of problems along our life journey. It allows us to go deep into the operating system of our mind, and with time, become aware of thousands of programs that have been running in the background of that system for many years. We can then start understanding where our behavior comes from and uninstall viruses and malware, we can then figure out the conditions which will allow us to break out of the loops (eg: addictions, social anxiety, depression). We can also start installing new thought patterns which will be beneficial to our biological systems and create new, healthy behaviors. 

Eventually, with enough meditation, we'll gain more awareness and reach a point where we'll realize, that life is in fact the most sophisticated dungeon full of obstacles, and these traps that we're dealing with in real life aren't as obvious as they are in a video game. These traps are disguised, invisible, counter-intuitive, seductive, tempting, promising, real, scientific and many of them seem like it's the only "way out". Our traps come in the form of information, to quote the line from the Matrix - "information is all around us it blinds us from the truth". In this technologically advanced era of information, I think humanity's greatest challenge is to figure out how to effectively manage all this incoming data and figure out where to get information which will actually benefit our lives and humanity as a whole.

I think the biggest traps of all in our modern society, has ironically become the science. Science has allowed us to advance our knowledge at a an unprecedented rate, we have created a world where things are moving very quickly and the information is spread out and shared very rapidly. They call it "progress", and on some levels, these scientific achievements are great, though on many other different levels they have huge blind spots which is why we are still living in the dark ages of humanity's development, we haven't become happier as a result of all this technology, on the contrary, many people are as disconnected as ever from their hearts and it has created a dehumanized culture. Science is probably the trickiest traps to snap out from, it's very real - look at everything we have achieved and created, it shows evidence in the "real world" - computers, phones, skyscrapers, Internet, movies, video games, cars - it shows us proof over and over again, and we now rely on science to figure out lives for us. "They'll figure out a way for a better world, they really know what they're doing" we tell ourselves. Thanks to all this real-world evidence and enormous community of "smart scientists with their PHD's" and "research papers backing all this data", we now completely rely on and trust science, we have faith in it - science has become another religion.

Edited August 20, 2017 by Vladimir

[Vladimir]

Have been reading a book called "Decomposing the Shadow" - lessons from the psylocibin mushroom. The author James Jesso talks about presenting a "conceptial framework", a sort of a map for nagivating and understanding the significant mysical experience induced by the mushroom. I connected some of the dots from Systems Thinking book, Joe Tafur's Fellowship of the River and personal experience of being a programmer for more than a decade. The programming analogy seems to be very fitting when trying to understand these things, and it makes sense because humans are systems with a purpose, interconnections and elements. I now see the mushroom as the master teacher, a quality and valuable source of information from which human systems can benefit tremendously, given the right framework for understanding which is what Jesso talks about. The experience can be thought of as "interfacing/integrating" the Human system with the Mushroom system, without understanding Mushroom's API (Application Programming Interface), it would be very difficult to effectively integrate the experience in our complicated human system. People that haven't experienced learning from a master source which is beyond the usual boundaries of 5 senses, language and rationality, can have a very difficult time understanding and integrating lessons back into the "human" realm, especially going into the experience without knowledge, "knowledge without experience is philosophy, experience without knowledge is ignorance, knowledge + experience = wisdom." ~Joe Dispenza 

I think we are getting close to merging modern science with mystical experiences which have been ignored for far too long, people like Joe Tafur are in the middle of this process of integration because he has been through both - studying modern science through medical school and learning from direct experience working plant medicines and shamans in the Amazon. He was able to connect the dots using his scientific knowledge from the medical school to understand how these shamans are able to heal people with their icaros (songs) and visionary experiences under the influence of plant medicines. A quote from Joe Dispenza's book summarizes this process of gaining wisdom from modern science and mystical experiences beautifully: "When you and I can connect the dots of what science is discovering about the nature of reality, and when we give ourselves permission to apply those principles in our day-to-day existence, then each of us becomes both a mystic and a scientist in our own life. We should never wait for science to give us permission to do what is uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion. We should be brave enough to contemplate our lives, do what we thought was "outside the box" and do it repeatedly (sounds like Dr. Dispenza has done his fair share of tripping). When we do that, we are on our way to a greater level of personal power."

Another programming analogy I came up with yesterday night is that of inheriting epigenetics from parents and even ancestors. Joe Tafur talked about an experiment where mice were subjected to electrical shocks, while at the same time activating a particular scent, these mice became conditioned to react negatively to the scent, understandbly so, even without the electrical shock after a while. What was shocking to learn, is that even these mice's babies inherited these "epigenetic" traits from their parents, and the effect also got passed on to later generations, fading away after a "few" generations . Which means, we as humans inherit epigenetic code (the structure of our system design) from our parents and ancestors from previous generations, we can literally be carrying wounds from our ancestors and parents at the core of our system which may be creating illnesses in own our lives. If the structure of the system's code is flawed, patching up the system on the exterior level is not going to fix the problem, this is a job for senior programming architects also known as shamans. The programming analogy fits again because in object oriented programming, there are parent classes from which other classes "inherit" which are called "children classes". Children classes inherit all attributes and functionality of the parent classes but can have their own unique attributes and functions, similar to parent and child relationships in real life. 

The more I learn about this stuff, the closer humans seem to resemble coded systems, I guess having experience in programming gives me advantage because I can use my geeky programming framework on this stuff to organize this information in a structured, step-by-step fashion in a similar way I would code program. I remember hearing about a book in which an author has made a lot of similar analogies relating programming to humans, though couldn't find the name of it, would be fun to learn what concepts he has come up with. 

[Vladimir]

The content of the speech is not as important as the way and style in which the content is being presented. The world is full of insights and truth, but the format in which it is being presented is not reaching enough people to cause change. The most important thing for me to develop is the unique way I'm going to be presenting the Truth with all of my talents - body language, dance, martial arts, voice, comedy, emotions, authenticity, confidence, eloquence. The same idea can be talked about in many different ways, just like a tree has a trunk and branches growing out of it, the thicker branches can be other strong ideas closely connected to the Truth and there can be many other branches supporting them. I should create a hierarchy of ideas which are all going to be supporting each other in the same way the tree is growing, the trunk being Truth and Spiritual Awakening.

Before the content can be presented in a very powerful way, it has to be created, so it is very useful to write things down, record insights, read books, etc. The content can be posted at weareone.space blog as long as there is no expectations of anybody ever reading that content, that's not the main goal. As long as I'm recording insights and have great content memorized to speak about, the writing and talking to others about it (at actualized.org forum) is going to be very productive and efficient. Also, incorporate Unlimited Memory and Systems Thinking so the information can be easily recalled at any time. Having a lot of outstanding content at my disposal at any time is going to give me a lot more confidence when presenting these ideas and recording videos. As I remember from my solo trip in Idyllwild, there was plenty of artistic expression, but the content was missing, I struggled to come up with the content I wanted to talk about, so having fast access to a lot of content is going to solve that problem and I'll be able to create the most powerful messages possible while tripping and eventually back in this dimension.

I should also come up with a list of important keywords that I want to use in my speeches (eg: change, direction, love, truth, ego, death, creativity etc.) I should create an exercise for contemplating all these words and keep asking the question - "what is it?" to come up with more insights and content.

[Vladimir]

It's been about 15 months since that profound 5g mushroom trip that changed my life. I now find myself completely alone, I have disconnected from my family, relinquished my two cats, I have zero friends and just recently broke up with my girlfriend, I'm all alone. To add the icing on the cake I have also been facing existential crisis which was caused by some very profound and terrifying psychedelic trips, I'm also coming off from hape addiction (tobacco snuff) which my x-girlfriend and I were addicted to and used everyday and I find it has a lot of powerful emotions associated with it while we were together, which makes it even more difficult to stay away from. I'm discovering that I've been running away from this place of loneliness my entire life and I'm starting to feel the suffering accumulated which I have been distracing myself from. I've been spending more time in the nature, eating very healthy, sleeping good, taking cold showers and reading books but I still have way too much free time that I don't know what to do with. I know I could easily start filling that time with distractions like watching Netflix, pickup, going to meetups and other social events, watching YouTube, reading actualized.org forums etc. But I think it's better to face this loneliness now and be okay in complete solitude, because sooner or later we all have to face it. I just underestimated how difficult it would be, having to face existential crisis completely alone without anybody to talk to or any kind of support, but it is what it is. 

[Vladimir]

I'm slowly starting to trust people, I'm starting to open up more and become more of my authentic self. I'm starting to feel more confident and comfortable with my voice and feeling more comfortable around people. On Saturday, I went out to Trilogy for Manifestation Dance which turned out to be a great experience of exploring body's movement on a micro dose of mushrooms 0.1g.

Tapping into powerful king-warrior voice

On my way there in the car, since it took about 40 minutes to get there, I was experimenting with my voice and humming, at one point I started to tap into that "boss" state that I keep experiencing on Ayahuasca when I feel like my true self, I feel the King's energy coursing through my entire body and become the force of nature. At that moment I started talking in Russian: "когда я пью айяаску я чувствую в себе настоящюю, Русскую, богатырскую силу! Я ощущаю себя настоящим мужиком, я настоящий мужик! Я русский богатырь!" This was screamed out with a lot of passion and the kind of voice that I've only experienced on psychedelics, I tapped into that state and confidence without taking anything. There was a lot of fury pouring out of me and I felt awesome expressing it with this powerful king-warrior confidence, I also said: "Я хочу жить, я буду жить! Меня заебало! Я хочу жить!" This was said with similar passion but also sadness as tears poured out of my eyes. I realized I'm able to tap into that authentic, passionate place within me that is longing to be alive and live to the fullest, that is longing to express my awesome unique talents, that is longing to tell the world my story and show people that transformation is possible, that it's entirely up to us to transform ourselves and it's okay to be ourselves, live our dreams and become our full potential as humans. I also felt like English language has kept me locked up and unable to express my authentic voice because of it's weakness compared to Russian, Russian language is just so much more powerful, rich and expressive and I feel like I never truly became comfortable with English. At some point I thought I needed to speak just Russian for a while and create some YouTube videos expressing these ideas in Russian which could also help my parents with some of their problems. I came to the conclusion that I actually need to practice both, but start warming up with Russian because that's how I tap into that authentic place longing to be expressed and then transition into English while on the same Russian style wave length.

Exploring new depth of dance and movement

There were glimpses of fear of where this journey is leading me to as usual, but not much as I didn't let the mind wonder and just concentrated on movement and enjoying listening to the music and watching other people dance around me. I really liked experimenting with all kinds of dynamic body movement and learned some moves that I haven't tried before, I was able to tune myself in to the rhythm of almost every song and come up with a unique dance style to match it. I could feel myself resisting certain kinds of songs, but decided to work through that resistance anyway to see what would come out of it, and then was able to create new style of dances as I worked through that initial reluctance and resistance. This tells me there are old patterns of moving and behaving that I'm clinging to, so by working through that initial resistance and trying new moves to the songs that I initially don't like is a great way to explore creativity and new depths of body movement and style. I was really into it most of the time there which was about an hour and a half and felt like I'm finally starting to become that person I keep seeing on psychedelics but in a gradual, gentle way that works for me. I think taking micro doses and going out to events like that is perfect for integrating high dose experiences and empower myself so I can gradually start trusting people.

Talking to women authentic style

I also talked to an Asian girl who was pretty locked up and shy and was pretty hard to read with her monotonous voice and stiff body language, though I persisted talking to her and was still able to have a decent conversation with her, she told me she wants to share a poem at a open mic talk at Trilogy next weekend. Then I talked to another woman who was really sweet and playful and kept touching me as I expressed my playful and expressive side and made her laugh a few times. She kept on grabbing and groping my arm and I really liked that, she was easy to talk to and very expressive, I think I should have kissed her in the elevator, though I wasn't so much attracted to her. She invited me to come dance at a north county dance studio around here in Encinitas and told me there are "Church dances" every Sunday from 11am to 1pm, so I wanna check those out soon. We also did "chakra cleansing" and came together by touching each other's hands making the infinity sign and creating an intention to send out in the Universe, there was a sense of trust, connection and unity during that time and the whole experience of dancing with other people in non-egoic way, exploring body movement, talking to women with my new confident voice and body language, being touched by women and enjoy myself by laughing and expressing my authentic self, combined with a micro dose of mushrooms, really gave me a glimpse of life's beauty and what I can become if I keep exploring these creative abilities and continue to work on spirituality, things seem to be coming together for me finally. We parted ways with this other girl who kept touching me and I criticized myself for not getting her number, but thought it was okay because I'll still see her at a Sunday dance anyway.

Talking to parents about love and their relationship

Holy shit! I talked to my parents about unconditional love and told them very emotionally with tears that it would make me very happy if they fixed their relationship and started cultivating love towards each other again! I realized just how difficult it was for me to tell them that, I was very emotional with tears and sobbing while I told them just those few words, but I felt like I had real impact on them and that they're actually going to listen. I warmed them up by talking about spirituality and Leo's videos over the last several weeks that I started seeing them again and it seems that my dad is especially interested in this stuff now. So I gradually lead them, without even knowing about it myself to this very conversation. Before telling them that, I was talking about Leo's recent video on "What is Love?" and told them that learning how to love should be a priority for people and that love is the most powerful force in the Universe and that it's unconditional. Prior to this conversation, my parents were very nasty and cruel to each other, I could feel the hate energy between them from their body language and how they pissed each other off in every moment they interacted, it became very difficult to witness that and I started thinking about why I even started seeing them again. I then remembered that I wanted to practice unconditional love around their suffering and accept whatever is going on between them but not meddle with their relationship. I did have an emotional impact on me anyway though, and I thought that maybe I'm not ready to practice unconditional love for them in that way and I think this is the moment where the Warrior in me awakened and was able to finally openly tell them: "Mom, dad, there is something I want to tell you" at which point I became very emotional, "it would make me very happy if you could fix your relationship", this was so difficult to do and I'm so proud of myself for being able to tell them that. They became emotional too and teared up, and we all came together in a hug, feeling like we are becoming a family again after a long break up. Of course, I realize this isn't going to be easy for them, but I think they will actually try because it was related to them in such a powerful way. This made me feel like I've grown so much as a person and reinforced the wisdom of: "by healing yourself you heal others".

Sound bath healing with Cloud People

After visiting my parents I went to a sound bath healing which was my first such experience. I could immediately sense the kindness from these people, especially the Cloud People brothers. I have this extra sensory intuition about people when I first meet them and can immediately tell if they are kind and loving or egoic and arrogant etc. The sound bath experience was awesome, I took a micro dose of 0.1g just before coming there, they used all kinds of exotic instruments - cosmic drum, ocean drum, flute, and many others which made me go on a trip. I started having the usual theme run through me: "like this whole thing has been designed on purpose for my awakening, here we go the Kundalini energy is going to rise and I'm going to have to go through ego death, because I'm God and the only one here in the entire Universe, all the events are leading to this place, there is no escaping". I just observed all of that and let it go and was able to work through these fears as my consciousness expanded, I was able to work through it in a very much gentle and gradual way, slowly peeling off the layers and going deeper. The women's singing voice was angelic and it felt like the Goddess herself was singing to me and nurturing my inner child who very much needs this motherly, loving, nurturing and caring energy because of all the terror I have put this little child through. It triggered some emotions with me and there were tears coming out on multiple ocassions during this experience.

We were then invited to share about our experiences, I could feel anxiety and tension well up inside of my body as usual at the sound of these words, but it wasn't at all as intense as it used to be, and I only felt mild nervousness. So I decided to share after some people already shared their experiences and told them how I felt the motherly, caring and gentle energy and how my inner child was longing for it after very intense experiences with Ayahuasca and multiple male shamans bombarding me with icaros while I was having an ego death. I was then approached by two women who turned out to be the mother of the cloud people and a sister, they were the most loving and kind women that I have met on this entire journey, the mom asked me if she could give me a hug and all three of us had the most loving, genuine hug that I have experienced in a long time. There was love emanating from our hearts for each other and we became enveloped in this cloud of love, I could immediately feel my body tension and fears melt away, I could feel trust in love and unity and humanity, I could feel trust on where this journey is leading me to -- more love and unity and authentic connection with real, loving human beings.

We then had a heart felt conversation about this journey and I told them how I developed trust on this journey by contemplating love and unity and just what those words mean. I told them about my Spain travel experience while living in Russia and how I felt separated from the world while I was in Spain, and upon returning back to Russia immediately felt like I was home again, I felt reunited with the world and I felt safe and loved. I also told this story to my parents and I told them that since leaving Russia at the age of 14 I have been looking for that place of home, to be reunited and how this journey is leading me back to this place of wholeness, unity and love. This experience and conversation with these women reignited trust in humanity, love, unity and journey in me, I have almost lost that trust because I have ran into a lot of nasty, egoic, arrogant, low consciousness people on this journey who considered themselves authority, though I always intuitively knew these people were just bullshiting themselves and I can spot that kind of bullshit from far away.

These women had powerful impact on me and I'm now confident this journey is leading me to the right place, the experiences I'm having by micro dosing, going out and exploring my creativity, authenticity and relating to people is turning out to be the most profound, most powerful way to take this spiritual development to the next level, things are finally starting to come together in this beautiful way, I'm pushing the boundaries and working through resistance, I'm working through fear, I'm cultivating love and trust in people and myself and I'm becoming more confident in the process, I'm regaining my personal power and I'm becoming more loving.

I also talked to a woman who was singing with the angelic voice about voice lessons, because the host of the house told me she worked with her to develop her authentic voice and she seemed to be a perfect match for my current situation of wanting to express and train my powerful, authentic voice, she also told me about retreats and accountability partners which is another way to connect with like minded, conscious people, so I think I'm going to take lessons with her.

After leaving the sound healing place, I sat in my car and thought: "this is too good to be true. The kind of life that I'm about to have is just too good to be true…."