PsiloPutty

I'm surprised nobody has incorporated the word "chimpery" into a meme. I like that word........Chimpery.

Mingyur Rinpoche has talks on YouTube about his panic attacks. He said that he got over them by making friends with them, and by truly not being averse to them being present. If you could do this, then you could welcome the experience, whether it's a panic attack or nirvana.

I've watched that video before, but I don't remember him doing non-stop meditating for 90 hours. I think we have to define "non-stop" here. Fairly certain that Leo slept, ate and did other activities aside from just sitting on that couch for 90 hours, which is what I thought you meant in this thread. You're talking about doing a solo retreat then? It's something I will do in the future as well......planning on next year. I did a vipassana retreat this year, but I meditate better alone, so I'm going to figure out a place to do a solo retreat.

I get the feeling that if we reduce all this talk down, we'll find that we're all talking about the same thing.

Boy..... that escalated quickly. I think you are on the right track if you want to be out of your comfort zone.

Well, how long have you done so far? Not in segmented separation, but at a single stretch?

Hell yes you're going to feel worse. And hell yes you're going to feel like you are treading on your very sanity sometimes. This stuff likely goes against most everything that you've been taught to pursue in life. Exploring anything in this entire realm is counter to any first world paradigm of worth or success or truth. We are taught from infants to be good little rats and to pursue the cheese that our parents were taught to pursue, but only because their parents taught them to pursue it, etc. Taught that the meaning of life is to get ahead; to get to the top of the Rat Heap and amass the most currency, the most cheese. Anything that diverts our attention away from that Royal Pursuit is looked at as distraction, as a masturbation, as time wasted. (Maybe someone remembers which video of Leo's references this rat race line of thinking.... I forget right now, but it was a good one.) What you and I are attempting to do is to go back and mentally unpick the knots that have become tied in our psyches over the course of our lives, in an effort to grow and realize truth. This action is a form of surgery, and if you're like me, you can feel when it's happening. It can feel wrong, dangerous and reckless if you look at it in terms of classic comfort, but if you instead learn to recognize that flavor of discomfort as evidence of a knot loosening, you can use that feeling as fuel for progress.

@Outer I used to be a lot more conscious of how long I'd sit, especially with strong determination sitting, but I recently recognized my ego getting more involved than I expected. I still check the time when I'm done, and use it as a rough metric, but you're right; there's a huge potential for the ego to insinuate itself into meditation, and while it may help with motivation, it's obviously counterproductive to have it be a major player.

I haven't watched it, but I will.

Is this a genuine deja vu thing, or do you mean it philosophically, like life is the same thing again and again and again? ETA: If it's deja vu, maybe you're like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, and the only way to break out of the repetition of similar days (and lives) is to "wake up." He broke out of his predicament by applying love and compassion to everything. Then he was awakened. Groundhog Day is really about enlightenment to me.

2hrs 30mins seated without moving for me, but it took 6 months to crawl it up to that. I don't necessarily go for "times" when I do strong determination sits, but it now takes that long for me to get to the crisis-point in my SD sits. I'd kind of rather have it happen sooner..... then I wouldn't have to sit for so long to get to that point.

My love-friend, you are right! I focused love on the memory when it was done. Have you read "Be Love Now" by Ram Dass? It'd be right up your spiritual alley.

Did the first hour with Do-Nothing, the second hour with mantra repetition, and planned to just wing it after that . At about the 1:45 mark, I was a complete blank screen. No thoughts, no sense of presence, no identity. I was like a lump of coal that could sit there forever and ever. After a couple minutes of that, I felt a strange feeling of sadness and hopeless desperation creeping in like a fog, but it was from a memory that was taking shape, rather than my own mood/feelings at the time. The memory that took shape so vividly was a day when I must have been 18 or 19. I hadn't thought of this day in 25 years, yet recalled everything. I'd come home from work to eat my lunch, and I only had a short time before I had to go back to the store. It was, I think, the lowest time in my life. I was abjectly lost. Severe depression was a theme of my life in those late teen years. I was dangerously close to latching onto and following the call of suicide that came to me, and that day at lunch was the closest I'd come to simply giving in and doing it. My mother, my sweet mother, she knew I was down and wanted so badly to make her baby OK. She had no idea, though, the thoughts that I was entertaining. She made me a toasted cheese sandwich with tomato soup, and as I told her how good it tasted, I thought that this could be my last meal. I had a pheasant gun at the time, and knew that ending my suffering was a trigger pull away. I thought how all my co-workers would wonder why I hadn't come back from lunch. I stared at my soup and thought all this as I chewed. Sitting in meditation, never stopping my mantra, I relived this entire memory, but from a detached position. It was like I experienced the whole thing again, but from an observer's POV. I sat and cried. Silent tears running down my face and neck and chest in the darkness. The tears were an observer's sympathy and compassion for that poor boy. He was so inconsolable, so tragically lost. My whole body shook for probably 5 minutes. I calmed down and went on to finish the sit, but felt like I moved past some aspect of my ego and shadow that was hanging out in my subconscious. I feel lighter. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're having a good Monday.

That's a great post. If we treat others with compassion and empathy, we really treat ourselves with compassion and empathy. We're all in this together.

A kickass, motivational post. Thank you.

@Mikael89 I think you're in a bad mental space, and I hope that you see things (yourself) differently soon. I hope you don't think I'm being snide, because I'm not. Your suffering has been palpable.

I used to drink a lot; it was a monkey on my back. I have a beer once or twice a week now, and am happy that booze isn't a big part of my life anymore.

No thing would be anything without everything. You guys rock.

I feel ya. The sometimes lasting shift in consciousness that psychedelics imbue is wonderful. I haven't looked at the world or myself in the same way since my first trip. I rescue bugs and talk to fuckin' apples now. LOL, I hadn't done weird stuff like that since I was 6 years old. Feels good. You're not insane. You're more you than you were before.

@now is forever I find myself often thinking about the interconnectedness. I was affected by Tsuki's thread today because you bumped it, so I thank you for that, but I should also thank whatever it was that made you bump it, but it doesn't stop there. Maybe you were bored because your friend cancelled your dinner plans, so you dug through the archives and found this thread. I need to thank your friend. Maybe your friend cancelled because his grandmother needed help moving an old TV that she got from her husband for her birthday in 1979. I thank your grandpa and I thank the TV. Maybe he bought her the TV because he realized that he takes for granted all the little things she did for him. So we trace it back to love and gratitude. LOL, we could go further, but that seems like a happy place to stop. And I realize that everything I just wrote is likely a fantasy, except for the love part; I'm pretty sure that everything starts and ends with love.

@now is forever Thank you for bumping this thread. I would likely have never seen it otherwise. Tsuki, wow. Riveting experiences, and thank you for translating them into words for us. Some of the most profound posts that I've ever read here. It played out like a dramatic movie in my head. A movie that, at the end, you think to yourself "dang, I wonder if that could happen to me, too.....".

You know what we're going to say, it totally depends on you and your personal psychological makeup. Some people are completely fine without trip sitters, but I've never done salvia, so I don't know if it has special circumstances.. What dose was your mushroom trip? If it was small, like under 2 grams, that doesn't really clue us in as to whether or not you would be okay without a sitter. If you've done full doses before, I think you're probably fine without a trip sitter. I know what you mean though, I think it would negatively affect my trip to have someone in the house with me, especially if they weren't a very close friend. And if the person had never done anything like that before, you would be better off alone. You would want someone who is familiar with psychedelics. Otherwise, what good are they to you if you need help during the trip? Shit, they might call 911. Sorry for the run on paragraph, I'm one handed at the moment. No, not whacking off.

I'll check this out when I get home from work.

How'd you learn the habits to begin with? Through reinforcement and repetition. That's a good way to replace them with new ones, too. It's awkward and frustrating as shit at first, but with persistence, it happens.

Like...….what do ya mean?