What was your catalyst for openmindedness? Share your story

[Knock]

What was it that lead you to become open-minded and willing to accept that your paradigms at the time may be wrong?
What was your mindset before then, and how is it different now? 
Was there a significant event that lead you to this paradigm shift? How would you assist enabling this in others?

[Alex]

Reading the "Power of Now" by Eckard Tolle, this book first made me realise how much BS the mind spews and that I am not the ego. It also gave me some inimations of the bigger Picture. I am still pretty diluted but it's a never ending process to realize and embody Truth.

Also good ol' psychedelics and meditation

The best way to enable other is to have integrty and embody your insigths.

@Knock What about you?

[Rigel]

Mushrooms, meditation and books

Edited November 28, 2019 by Rigel

[hamedsf]

my gene 

[Raptorsin7]

I got depressed because I was losing my hair. Then i realized I was way off with my path to happiness. Then i started meditating. Now here i am trying to become enlightened.

[undeather]

Playing World of Warcraft all day while listening to Self-help & spirituality videos in the background lol.

[Consilience]

Hearing about the Hard Problem of Consciousness on Sam Harris’s podcast and realizing science did not take the significance of this problem seriously. Also smoking a lot of weed and being extremely fascinated with how consciousness was able to change so dramatically.

[Knock]

@Alex Thanks for sharing! If you don't mind going deeper, how did you come about reading "Power of Now"? What stroke your curiosity to read the book in the first place? 

Story time- tl:dr at end

Personally for me, I was very closed minded throughout high school and university. No-one in my environment talked about spirituality, reading books, meditation, self-help, conscious living etc. It seems shocking now, but I simply was not presented these ideas or have any role models that embodied this work. I grew up in a homogeneous rural community in Australia that lacked diversity of people and ideas. Additionally, I didn't have a smart phone or personal computer until I was 18 when I left school, so my access to information and 'stumbling upon' new ideas was throttled. 

It wasn't until I moved into the city to study at university that I began to see some diversity in life and new ways of living. Here I was exposed to various kinds of people who had different ways of thinking to mine, and this challenge many of my assumptions. My mindset and beliefs back then was very much a parrot of my own parents, some great beliefs and values, others no so much. I definitely wasn't an independent thinker, I wasn't consciously living and designing my life, I was simply following the scripts I was indoctrinated with from the past 18 years. Fundamentally, I was lacking in purpose, self-responsibility, self-acceptance and conscious living. Surprise-surprise, turns out I developed low self-esteem. 

Once I was in my last semester of university, it dawned upon me that I would be leaving the safe confines of traditional education, and entering 'the real world' as an adult. This scared the shit out of me. I was comfortable at uni, it had well defined rules and boundaries, expectations and trajectory. I was significantly immature and ill-equipped to take on the challenges of the real world, and deep down I knew it. So i did the one thing I was good at, using my initiative and resourcefulness, I designed my own research project on how to enter the real world, be a grown up, and how to integrate into adult society. I wanted to develop a character that had good interests and would be highly employable, as I knew that interests and personality was desirable in interviews. 

For the first time in my life, I did an internal audit on where I was, and what skills, experience, abilities and interest I possessed. And I had nothing. No discernible skills, hobbies, experience or interest that would make me stand out amongst the competition. It dawned on me that I was a nobody, a boring person that stays between the lines and has no voice of their own. My discernible characteristics? I was moderately successful academically and was nice all the time. Unfortunately for me, those 2 things are not enough to get you anywhere in life. I knew had to make a change.

I knew I had to change something, but I just didn't know how or what. At the time, my friends and the environment around me where talking a lot about politics, an area I had no knowledge in. So, to become interesting, I started researching politics and for the first time in my life, became open minded to a different belief then the one that was passed down from my parents. I stumbled across YouTube and Reddit, places where I was exposed to a large diverse number of opinions and worldviews. The more I learned, the more questions I had, and more I learned what I didn't know. What started off as 1 question about politics, became 100 questions about politics, religion, social laws, relationships, sexuality, morality, philosophy and spirituality. That one question, and the hunger to learn more, has lead me to open my mind, question my lifes direction and ultimately given my the power to design my own life, instead of living in the shadows of my upbringing. 

My mindset now is that of inner confidence. That no matter what happens, I will be okay and I can deal with the outcome. I am consciously living my life with purpose, making choices for noone elses sake but my own. I have moved from a fixed and victim mindset to an abundance mindset, that growth and opportunities are always presenting themselves to you and you are worthy of the success that comes your way when you take action on them. 

TL:DR

• My upbringing didn’t set me up for success, and no, I don’t blame anyone for this.
• It wasn’t until I moved to a different environment, that the possibility of different life perspectives and ways of living entered my consciousness
• When I had to face the reality of life and leave my comfort zone, I was fearful and felt great pain through my perceived (and objective) inadequacy.
• The discomfort from the fear became greater than my comfort of living in my own paradigm, and hence I became open to solutions on how to fix my current situation.
• The more solutions I find, the more unconscious problems I saw. Once equipped with a hammer, I was able to see and fix all the jagged nails in my life.

So anyway, that’s my story. I would love to hear more from you guys ?.
And lastly, how would you assist enabling others to become open minded so that they too will be willing to equip the hammer of life?

[Dryas]

Never assumed that my paradigm was correct in the first place

[wesyasz]

Illness, horrible heartbreak, suicidal thoughts. Eckhart Tolle, first lsd, meditation. Watching crazy synchronicites, my thoughts almost materialising in front of me, few small awakenings while sober, watching how reality is mirroring my emotional state, watching reality in general. Extreme awakening on mushrooms. Now slowly working my way up without any substances. Apart from cacao .

All in a space of just 9 months.

Edited November 28, 2019 by wesyasz

[Commodent]

When all the "solutions" the current paradigm offered failed me. Advice on shallow stuff, like how to make other people like you, isn't really useful for resolving deep emotional issues.

Edited November 28, 2019 by Commodent

[TrynaBeTurquoise]

Around 4 years ago my initial catalyst for radically opening my mind was cannabis. Especially edible cannabis. Made me think about concepts more deeply and seemed to open up a new spiritual plane of existence. Spent hours watching youtube videos about mystical topics that stimulated my curiosity in contrast to the mind numbing entertainment I was used to exposing myself to. Spent countless hours researching articles on the web about states of consciousness/the soul/death/human nature, ect. With my life history/childhood I think it had a unique interaction with me, and probably other factors were playing into my mind opening up around that time too. It helped me break out of a cult christian fundamentalist religion I was born and indoctrinated into. And I began getting highly interested in studying psychedelics. I didn't have my first psychedelic experience with mushrooms until 3 years later though. 

Also to add nowadays it doesn't give me those same benefits. The more often I do it the less benefit I get. More often than not if I do it now and get really high I will be in this state where I wish I didn't do it to myself because I feel this unpleasant lethargic feeling. So I pretty much stopped using it. It used to help me sleep better too but now I feel it worsens my sleep because my body temperature feels dysregulated and my mind/thinking is too ramped up. Going forward I plan on doing it once in a blue moon because once in a while I will get a valuable insight/perspective shift from it. 

Edited November 28, 2019 by TrynaBeTurquoise

[Consept]

Lucky in that i didn't grow up religious at all or with any particularly strong beliefs, in fact I kinda wanted to be religious because they always seemed so happy and to have purpose and understanding, which I craved but I couldn't lie to myself I didn't believe it. So had to work everything out by myself which is impossible if you haven't got a clue. Eventually tried mushrooms didn't know what they would do, didn't know what to expect, gave me a glimpse of something else. 

Started getting into different materials, information, power of now was a big one, sadhuguru, mooji, Paul Hedderman, meditation, and now I wouldn't be able to close the door if I tried 

[Nahm]

12 hours ago, Knock said:

What was it that lead you to become open-minded and willing to accept that your paradigms at the time may be wrong? 

Suffering (anxiety, depression, etc.) “Stuck” in same old job, relationship, psychology, etc. 

What was your mindset before then,

Did not understand the relationship of thought, feeling, creating reality, and source. Did not know that I was, or how exactly I was, limiting myself from achieving everything I wanted to have & experience in life. 

and how is it different now? 

Ever-clear, ever-present, effortlessness, creation creating. 

Was there a significant event that lead you to this paradigm shift?

Episode / build up and breakdown, of chronic suffering. Seeing through the collective paradigm (was actually just “mine”).

How would you assist enabling this in others?

Deconstructing is inherently extremely ego driven / bias, and magnified by the collective conditioning / complete misunderstanding of thoughts, feeling, creating, and source. Someone who has already deconstructed the self readily see’s the bias, as well as the expedited path of well being through to the end. That the path of least resistance is actually the most efficient, that vantage requires having gone full circle. (Enabling is not the word I’d use) 

 

 

[electroBeam]

Leo's first video on spirituality, something like 'a shocking truth you wont believe' or something like that. After contemplating that video materialism took a massive crack. 

[Knock]

@undeather interesting! Why did you choose to play spirituality videos in the background? How did you initially come about them and why them and not edm music or something else?

3 hours ago, Commodent said:

When all the "solutions" the current paradigm offered failed me. Advice on shallow stuff, like how to make other people like you, isn't really useful for resolving deep emotional issues.

Thank you for sharing May I ask a follow up question (open to anyone)? I have friends who tried that self-help stuff, it didn't work, and now they are closed off to the whole idea of trying anything else in the field. They won't even consider meditation, let alone therapy, spirituality content or psychedelics. In their mind, it's all lumped together under pseudoscience. What will they have to experience before they become open to these areas of life? 

[Raptorsin7]

@Knock Tell them to keep doing what they're doing, and see if it works. When they realize what they're doing is never going to work then they will come.

[Knock]

@TrynaBeTurquoise @Consept @Nahm Thank you guys for sharing your experiences. I love hearing about all the different ways we have come to this point, the deep yearning within all of us. Keep them coming

[Angelite]

Growing up in different countries & cities. 

 

Travelling, languages, cultures..

Edited November 29, 2019 by Angelite