Kazman

Sorry for the long title, I couldn’t come up with anything shorter. As it says, I got a stomach reaction (diarrea) when going back to dairy after 10 days of veganism. is this normal? Is it just a coincidence? Does this mean I’m extra sensitive towards milk? I’ve noticed sometimes when I’ve quit bread for a long time that the reaction is stronger when I start eating it again (tiredness, foggyheadedness), so is this something similar? I don’t know that much about how these things affext the body, would be great to hear some explanations from people

@Feel Good @pluto @Michael569 Thanks for your replies! Very interesting

No discomfort

@phoenix666 I would agree 100%. @Joseph Maynor interesting, I feel more confident about trying LSD then

Note: I originally wrote this in Swedish and then used google translate and then cleaned it up. Some of the language might be a bit dry and artificial because of this. Dosage: 10 Psilocybe Semilanceata in a piece of chocolate Duration: about 3 hours About me: Third time using psychedelics. I do some Taoist sexual practices. I like the Gurdjieff Work but am no blind follower. I had been shopping with my wife during the day, doing quite common things, but I knew that psychedelic things would happen later. I had tried not to eat too much the same day, mostly salad and food low on carbs. However, I did eat some frozen yogurt at the mall a few hours before tripping. I usually try to fast the day I do psychedelics, but it went well anyway this time, although I felt a bit ill at the end. Preparation: My wife left home. I cleaned up in the home studio / medicine room. I noticed that I was quite annoyed by a lot of small things. That the room was messy. That I had to go back and forth to put things in their right place. That my wife, L, did not leave the house at once, as she’d first said she would. When she finally left and I got everything in order, I decided to dance and release a little negativity. I put on Far Memory by Ozric Tentacles and jumped about. The song is quite long so I was very tired by the end, and I felt better. I thought to myself: “we are technology”. Us humans - we have emotions that get created from our interpretations of our understanding of the world, and these emotions create blockages in the body that you can get rid off by dancing. That's how crazy it is. Not to mention what kind of technology mushrooms are. The Earth, humans, nature, the universe. It's all technology. Then I went into the studio and lay down. I had decided to lay down the entire trip this time, not starting in a meditative sitting posture. I was lying on the floor and looked up at the ceiling lights. The one who was centered in my field of vision looked suspiciously much like an eye from the angle I was looking at it from. But it was a vertical eye, as the third eye is usually drawn. How appropriate. (They were dimmed to the max, I was not staring into a full strength lamp the entire time, that would have been ridiculous. It was a Philips Hue tinted slightly reddish) Before I indulged in my shroom-chocolate, I listened to Gaia's Song by Tom Kenyon. I tried to focus only on the music and my lamp. It felt like the trip has already begun. I went through states of deep focus, deep thoughts and insights, impatience, relaxation, etc. Then it was time. Ceremony: I drank some hot lemon water (a whole lemon in the cup, I’ve heard it acts as an amplifier). I said the following sentence out loud: “I live in truth and serve truth". And then made a sound with my Tingsha cymbals. I had decided to work according to Martin Ball’s recommendations in his book Entheogenic Liberation. Therefore, I had no special intention, no special answer I was trying to get, no issue to resolve. My only task was to relax and allow, to remain open and neither resist nor control the energy. Just to be open and present. It begins I was lying down. For some reason, I was extremely disappointed right from the start. It took a while for something to happen (30 mins?) I was annoyed and angry and disappointed that nothing happened. I had decided and I knew that there would not be more. I was frustrated that I was not in a position to get my own psychedelics, that I had to rely too much on getting it from others. I was frustrated that I only had such a weak dose, when it's so rarely that I get the chance to take anything at all. The first sign that stuff was happening was that suddenly it was only me and the lamp I was looking at. Everything else became black and disappeared. Although things started to happen, the effects felt too weak, even though I waited a good while. I thought “damn, it will not be stronger than this, this will just be me lying on the floor meditating with a little extra boost. There won’t be any getting swept away into other dimensions by the strong currents of the Fungi.” So I had a very negative attitude, and I don’t remember when it disappeared. But slowly but surely the effects of the shrooms became stronger. After a while, I drifted between being in a half-dream state and focusing intensely at the lamp. I always returned to resting in symmetry and looking at the lamp. Somewhere in the beginning of the trip when the effects were coming on, strange sounds came out of me. They were like sighs and moans that were extended and transformed into a long note. I tried not to halt or control it, I just listened to it, and then it just carried on. It became a song, a new kind of voice I did not know I possessed. A relaxed airy tone that reminded me of Tom Kenyon. I like to write long deep trip rapports about all my revalations and visions and insights but I feel I have less of those now with Martin Ball’s more grounded approach. There were several occasions when I could feel visions and insights were coming on, deep sentences that I wanted to write down. But, as I did not let myself be fooled and distracted, there was not much that stuck in my head. Almost everything is a distraction from being. I remember that I realized that I knew and understood everything already. But if I started thinking about what it was that I actually understood, then it went wrong, it was unnecessary, just structures of meaning that collapsed. When the energy of your mind (or put otherwise, your thoughts) reflect or align with your body and heart and being, nothing needs to be said or thought. Everything was just one big affirmation - YES. This is what is. Then Alexander Bard came up (Swedish media profile and philosopher). I have thought a lot about him and about his syntheism and what personal objections I have on it and how I would try to formulate my understanding in a way that he can absorb and develop his explanatory models. The mushrooms helped me realize that the best words I could use to articulate what I had thought so much about where: "Alexander Bard, I'd just like to say that I'm an idiot." A very good summary! I’m just another human idiot who thinks too much and believes he understands something that means something. Then I thought about how I’m always having trouble with relating to other people. My own thoughts and interests are getting in the way, my state of mind is often working on something internally and is not open for dealing with others efficiently, and then it's my wife's own thoughts and worries that get in the way, plus her pregnancy plus our baby and toddler life in general. I did not know I was so sad about this. I had watched porn during the week and L and I had watched a burlesque movie the night before my trip, so I anticipated that those things would manifest in my subconscious in some way, maybe as surreal erotic nightmares like I had in my last trip. But instead, I saw that all this sexual stuff I’m interested in was a longing for our two hearts to meet, I felt it was just in my heart that the sorrow and emptiness sat, and it made me very unhappy. I cried huge tears, like an inconsolable child, I cried so much that I almost screamed. Then I started to laugh like crazy, the beautiful insane laughter I only hear myself make while I’m on mushrooms. There are at least two different varieties of it. One sounds more like wuuhuuhuhuhu and one is more tense, like a cramping old man. Then I cried a lot again. It came and went until I had squeezed out every tear drop I had. I was surprised because lately I’ve been thinking more and more about open relationships, about how strange monogamy is, and that I want us be able to be open to each other about seeing others, so I thought I wan’t very clingy in our relationship. But now it turns out that what I really want is us to be so much closer to each other. I want us to love truly and truthfully. Beyond all barriers and boundaries. I want us to meet on the deepest possible level. I want us to trip together and fuck. And that’s just an example, it’s not like that's the goal, I just want us to be able to take away the robes that are our personalities and be genuine and loving and present with each other. There were several periods of strong energy movements along my spine, shaking in the head, strong shakings in my jaw (which was unexpected, I have never experienced those before), the tongue moved around inside the mouth and on the outside. My entire back swayed a lot, and sometimes stayed that way for a very long time. It felt unbelievable that it could move so sternly entirely by itself, without me doing anything, so I had to check several times that I really did not move it using my will, and I did not. Sometimes my whole body shook, but most of the time my legs were quite still. My hand wrists rotated, it was very nice and relaxing. At one point I felt orgasmic energy flowing upward from my hip along the spine up to T11, the middle of the spine. It was euphoric. A big calming light, time stopped. But it was not an orgasm. I think I could’ve steered myself into an inner orgasm but because I decided to remain relaxed in symmetry without controlling the energy, such sexual phenomena subsided before they reached any climax. (Worth noting that at the moment I had not ejaculated for 26 days, and I had had intercourse once without ejaculating and sublimating the energy afterwards. In other words, I had built up a lot of sexual energy, otherwise my energetic experiences would probably not have been as strong) Somewhere in the middle of it all, I realized that every time I returned to "doing nothing" after noticing that I’d been distracted, I always tried to center myself somewhere around a point in the middle of my chest. But then I remembered that “doing nothing” is not located anywhere in the chest. There is no center, no specific location for any I. At one point I let our cat inside the medicine room. It was after my first wee break. (What a joy it was to pee! I felt my feet on the ground. The feeling of my fingers touching my pants when I pulled down the zipper. The sound of the pee when it hit the toilet water. The beautiful poster above the toilet. How could not you love this, how could you not be completely fulfilled and absorbed by having a wee? It was wonderful.) Well, when I was done, I heard our cat whining outside our front door, he wanted to come in. I let him inside the medicine room and went to lie down on the floor again. He ran around in the room and cried loudly, I thought that this wouldn’t do at all. He finally sat on me, and his warmth and purring was soothing and pleasant, but it only lasted a few seconds, then he wanted to leave the room, he started to run around again and make loud annoying noises. I let him out of the medicine room and he started to do the same thing in the rest of the house, running around and whining. He would not calm down so I threw him back out into the cold. He had gotten his chance. Usually, I feel full of frustration when I throw him out but this time I was full of compassion. I had really tried to make it work but he didn’t want to cooperate and I didn’t want to let him interfere with my inner work. I went back inside the medicine room and again entered my neutral relaxed position. I thought about what it entails to be human. Why are we forced to make such decisions that affect innocent cats? It’s how the world we inhabit operates. Somewhere after this I had my katharsis moment. I looked up and the room looked pretty much normal. I understood that I had processed the required amount of stuff for this time, the rest of the trip was free for myself to enjoy. I stayed in my position for a while and rested in symmetry. It was demanding, I felt finished and wanted to stand up and do something else. But I knew it's one of the tricks of ego, the ego's energetic structure wants to do things all the time, and instead of moving into it, I just remained where I was for a while. After a while of doing this I decided that I would stand up, eat some food and then go to bed. I rang my Tingshas again and felt that I could now allow myself to do whatever I wanted. What a gift! The gift of life! We all have our free will to live our lives just the way we want. I went outside and smoked a cigarette. I felt loving and grateful and free. I reflected on what I had been through. How my thoughts always want to create sentences and explanatory models that are completely meaningless and a waste of time. An sentence came up in my head: "Wisdom!? What nonsense!" I laughed warmly and a little crazily about those words. They were the perfect summary of my evening. Then I felt that I would like to thank Martin. It’s so amazing that there are other people who have walked the same path, people who are just as much in tune (or much more in tune) with their innermost essence and who can help others experience the deepest sides of their humanity and of life. I decided to send a thank you mail to Martin Ball where I communicated the love I felt. Because I know what kind of guy he is, I was sure that he’d reply and thus I started to write my mail to him in my head at once. When I entered the house again I thought that even though words are just words, and languages are quite meaningless, it's still one of the few means we have to communicate, and without them, I wouldn’t have been able to transmit the following message to mr Martin Ball: "Hi Martin. I just wanted to say that I love you. I deeply and truly and wholeheartedly appreciate you and love you. Thank you. Ps. I love you. Love / Kazman" I sat down at my dinner table and was gonna eat. I was a bit unsure if I would like the same things that I usually do, sometimes my taste is not the same on mushrooms, but everything was just better than usual. I noticed at my fourth carrot that I was full and that I only kept on eating mechanically without awareness. I immediately put down the piece of food. I thought that all these different activities: eating things, communicating, meditating, socializing, composing, creates different states of mind, different brainwaves, different ways of operating. No brain condition is better than the others, but some fit certain situations and others fit other situations, and it is important to be aware of how they work and get triggered and when they are appropriate. We are technology. I’ve judging myself lately when I use my phone and felt that I shouldn’t “fiddle around so much with this thing” but the action in itself is not bad, it's only a way to interact with our outside world, to communicate and express ourselves. I could barely stay awake at the table. My body was completely exhausted after shaking so much. I went to bed. I could feel that I had pulled a lot of energy to the top of the head, pai-hui, and to my third eye (even though I hadn’t exercised any pulling, it had happened by itself). Nevertheless, the body continued to move very much. My entire back swayed a lot again. I was very horny. I masturbated a little but did not want to ejaculate. It doesn’t satisfy me, I want something more. It took a long time to fall asleep, my body moved a lot, especially the skull. When I woke up the next morning, Martin responded to my e-mail. He wrote: "I love you too, Kazman. Thanks for the note M" I do not know how to integrate this. I tend to be more focused on getting visions, insights and esoteric wisdom that I then try to integrate in the coming month or so. But now with this new to me approach it's all about trying to process my energy in every moment, always being open and present whatever happens. I guess I'll think about how I can connect more with L, and what I currently do that is preventing me from it.

Fint att läsa! Speciellt att hitta svenskar på detta forum. Thank you for sharing this. It inspires and moves me to know there are other people in Sweden doing what I do.

The following is a text I wrote as a result of insights I had during an Enlightenment Intensive Retreat. Thought people here would enjoy it. Howdy! Let’s jump RIGHT IN. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to say about intrinsic value: The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.” In this text I will use the term instrumental to indicate the very opposite quality: that things, and I do mean all things, have an instrumental value, that is to say, that they may serve a purpose of some sort, and could therefore be considered desirable and useful to some end, but that ultimately, they are relative, and as such don’t qualify as holders of any intrinsic meaning whatsoever. And, it needs to be added, any purpose that one thing may be instrumental to, falls into the same category: it too is but another means to a non-existing end in an infinite chain of means without ends. No purpose holds any more value than what you subjectively ascribe to it. As soon as you make any one thing in particular your end goal, you put it on a pedestal above all other things, and then it automatically makes YOU ITS instrument. Those are the inevitable mechanics. When you no longer recognize that something’s importance to you is simply of relative importance, as soon as you consider it to have a meaning on its own, you become the instrument of THAT. As soon as you think about your happiness as an end goal, you become the servant of your happiness. You don’t want to be the servant of anything! Not even to your desire not to be a servant of anything. We always want to give things their own meaning, because after all, we “know” that WE are inherently important, that we as individuals are holders of intrinsic value. Therefore, other things must be intrinsically valuable as well. It is threatening to think that nothing matters absolutely, that everything is relative and subjective, because that might mean that *gasp* we don’t really matter either! The world view I’m proposing is pretty much the opposite of the perspective held by a romantic person, which is something that I consider myself to have been all of my life. The main characteristic of a romantic is that he or she lives in the illusion that THE ONE PERFECT MOMENT will come. The moment that will make it all worthwhile. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s your holiday or when you win a competition, it can be your dreams of being a street musician in a picturesque setting or your fantasies of having amazing sex out in nature. Whatever it is for you, it’s that one moment you fantasize about, when everything will just be PERFECT. In other words: the romantic lives his or her life thinking that all of it is instrumental, that it is some kind of means to a chosen few perfect moments that TRULY MATTERS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no pessimist, you’ll probably have lots of those perfect moments in your life. They’ll be fun, exciting, ecstatic and all sorts of good things. But! Don’t think for a second that those moments are more important than any other moments. They’re not, because everything is instrumental, everything is relative. I’m not trying to rain on your parade here, on the contrary! What I’ve seen in my own life is that the romantic paradigm is a bullet proof way to stay unhappy and confused, and I wish to help you avoid that. Here’s an example of how it has played out in my own life that I see a lot of other people dealing with as well: I always took a great deal of pride in seeing myself as an artist. A lot of beliefs and values comes with the idea that one is an artist. One of the worst ones is that you think that art ACTUALLY MATTERS. That it is IMPORTANT. If you regard yourself as a suffering artist who is sacrificing your happiness and comfort for the noble sake of art, what I just said may provoke you. I’m not saying art matters less than anything else, but it certainly doesn’t matter MORE either! If you’re a romantic you constantly become attached to specific processes. You can never focus on what truly matters because you always get caught up in superficial ideas of “the most intricate and amazing way” to do something. In my life, I’ve gotten in my own way again and again by thinking more about the APPEARANCE of my process than the reasons for why I’m doing what I’m doing. As soon as you get caught up in thinking about the appearance of a process in a romantic way, you can end up pursuing something that is not serving you, but you won’t stop because you love the beautiful IDEA of it. The beauty of the idea hypnotizes you to the extent that you become happy to be unhappy and put misplaced pride in your suffering. Here’s a metaphor: Romeo and Juliet go on a date and carve a heart and their initials into a tree as a manifesto of their infatuation. This has such an effect on Romeo that he falls in love with the carving itself. Juliet leaves him and he hardly notices. He has forgotten that the heart he carved into the tree is just a SYMBOL for love and not the real thing. This is the trap that the romantic falls into again and again. He falls in love with symbols of meaning and mistake them for the actual meaning, which makes him forget why he’s doing what he is doing. Sure, this is an exaggerated case, but it’s actually a lot closer to reality than you’d like to think. Everything’s relationship with everything else and with the Absolute should always be sensed, ideally. That doesn’t mean you have to be spiritually detached or cold hearted. Just don’t think that things are important. That’s the only real danger. Let me repeat: things are not important. They’re not. Everything serves a higher purpose, because everything we know exists in the relative domain. By definition any object or cause we can think of is included in a system or hierarchy or scheme where it plays a part of some sort. I don’t mean that everything serves the happiness of some supreme being who watches it all like a football game in his couch for entertainment. I mean that everything co-exists with everything else, and that any values or beliefs or judgements added on top of that is an unnecessary addition that can only distort what is already there. I mean that there cannot be any gods outside of the relative domain. If they’re anywhere, they’re in the game. They’re just other players on the football field, and so, they too must be means to a non-existing end. Is truly EVERYTHING just of instrumental value? No. The very word instrumental implies a kind of subordination to some other thing, so what could that other thing be? Only one thing cannot be and must not be instrumental, and that is the Absolute. The absolute contains all possible events and at the same time the negation of that possibility. The absolute could be instrumental to no other thing, because it transcends and includes the relative domain. Anything you do or abstain from doing is still of instrumental value relative to the absolute. That is the meaning of the biblical command that you must serve God. It is not a choice, as in “YOU BETTER SERVE GOD YOU HEATHEN”, it is a law. It means that whatever you do, it IS ALWAYS instrumental to the Absolute by definition. So what’s my goddamn point? WELL THIS REALIZATION WAS A BIG DEAL FOR ME, and it should be for you as well, if you’ve struggled all your life with confused romantic misconceptions that lead nowhere. The point is that you have to be actively cognizing why you’re doing the things you’re doing without glorifying the side effects of your pursuits, without falling in love with the surface manifestations that arise as a result of your endeavours. In other words, without worshipping false gods. That’s my goddamn point.

@K VIL very good way to put it! @vizual You say of course, but is it our everyday experience that the perfect moment won't come? Or are we rather typically looking forward to things as our normal state, deemphasizing our life as it is? Are you? Right now? 10 seconds before you read this? @YaNanNallari This point was not meant to be about romantic love, but rather on a romantic outlook on life can cause troubles. But I should have been more clear and precise in my use of the word, I can see how it could cause people to think I'm talking about something else.

@Voyager I'm sure you could set something good up at home that will get you results, just don't expect that you'll perfectly replicate an Enlightenment Intensive retreat, ESPECIALLY if you've never been to one. The people who hold them have to go through long trainings before they can host their own retreats. Best luck!

@Voyager in my view it would be very difficult to do by yourself at home. Also, it might be difficult with someone you know too well, you may not be able to be fully open, you might be scared of being judged. also, you need somebody else to keep track of the schedule, food preparation etc. All of those distractions are taken care of when you go to the retreat. my suggestion is to go take the repeat at first, get the full experience, then be the judge if it's something you think you'd be able to replicate in your living room with a mate

@OBEler actually there is an episode! in this case for me it was the contemplation technique specifically taught at Enlightenment Intensive Retreats, which is a small series of steps you repeat over and over again. It involves focusing on your self and being open and mindful, so in many ways it is very similar to meditation, although not exactly the same.

No. Not for me anyway. But there are many sorts of orgasms, maybe a truly mindful tantric union crescendo of an epic hourlong lovemaking session can get you access concentration. But just rubbing one out doesn't have anything to do with it in my experience.

@Ilya ok I see! I practiced concentration maybe 1-2 months before the retreat. It's really hard to say how much of my previous work affected my retreat results. All I can say for sure is: every effort you make counts.

@IlyaHow much time the whole process? I don't understand the question. When it happened during the retreat I could enjoy it for 10 mins or something. In my everyday practice I sometimes manage 2 mins, but often its more a practice of calmly returning to my center again and again, and getting lost again and again. @cetus56 It was like getting your head above the water. As if you've always been swimming underwater and trying to breathe in an ocean of disturbing thoughts and distractions and suddenly it's all calm and you can just breathe fully and do your thing with zero to none disturbance. I didn't feel something in particular happened to my awareness, my mind just quieted down.

If that's all I ever did, my efforts have not been in vain ?

Hello there! This is kind of a long post, but I thought it could serve as an inspiration and maybe a clarification of certain nondual aspects to others on the path. Feel free to disagree with and/or correct me. Sorry if it's lengthy at times or a bit repetitive, I wrote a lot of it for myself and some things came up as I was writing and I was curious to see where they were going. It helped me to clarify some things for myself. It gets a bit preachy at times, but again, that is just me reminding myself of what I need to be aware of. Anyway, here it is! A couple of weeks ago I was at an Enlightenment Intensive 3 day Retreat. And I had enlightenment experiences every day for three days!!! Were they the deepest most profound enlightenments possible? Definitely not. Am I enlightened now? Not even close. But my spiritual game has gotten seriously transformed and is now much more on a heart level, in a lot of ways my seeking has ended. Before my spiritual practice was to attain something, to explore and try to figure things out, I was seeking out of curiosity to discover what the hell this god-thing was all about. What I now feel is that my spiritual goal is that I want to serve the Truth. I want to be a vehicle for Truth. I want to allow myself to be the expression of Truth. To live in the presence of the Lord, as close as I possibly can, from moment to moment. Not out of curiosity or a sense of wanting to be superior, but out of love, out of the recognition that Truth is what is real and that Truth is the only thing that truly matters. I want to describe my experience as well as I can but I will leave certain things out to make it more anonymous. First off, if you don't know what an Enlightenment Intensive is, it's an adapted Zen practice turned into a retreat where you sit in so called Dyad-contemplations with other participants. Two and two you give each other a question (Tell me who you are) to contemplate, and the contemplation takes place in a certain specific way that they teach you there, and every five minutes you take turns to switch who gets to contemplate. This goes on NONSTOP (more or less) for 3 days (or more, on longer retreats) and allows for very intense concentration and emotional releases and insights. The first experience, Day 1 So anyway, at the end of day 1, I was in a Dyad, and at this point of the day I was pretty bored and exhausted. I had been going on the entire day without much happening, just an uncomfortable feeling in my legs and in my back from all the sitting, and a tired feeling in my brain from the constant having to focus. I knew that all I could was to continue doing the technique. A thing I need to mention about the technique here is that at the end of it you just open and allow for anything to arise in the present moment. After you've done this for a while, you communicate to your partner as accurately as possible what your experience is, no matter how mundane, uncomfortable, embarassing etc it might be to say it. So this is what I'm doing. I'm opening, nothing's happening, and I feel that I just need to keep it up. So I communicate that to my partner in the following way: "I can only be here and now." (Said in a tired manner, as in: "nothing's happening, just gotta keep it up I guess, just gotta keep doing this boring thing") But as I hear myself saying the words "I can only be here and now" something happens, and an addition that I didn't expect comes right along. The voice saying it sounds very triumphant: "Where else would I be?" And then I just start laughing. A lot. I know I am here. I know I am. There's nowhere else to be and this is TRUTH, its obviousness is unquestionable and therefore it doesn't even seem like a breakthrough, it's just fucking obvious. Where else would I be? Am I an idiot? Of course I'm right here! At the time, I felt something was definitely happening, but I didn't think I was having a direct experience. Soon after it had happened, the bell rang and the dyad was over. I had to go out for a walking contemplation for a while and I felt it messed with my flow. "If only the bell hadn't rung, I was so close!" Is what I thought. I was walking in a field and heard myself laugh. Not my usual laugh, it was much more lighthearted, much more liberated. I've only heard myself laugh like that on mushrooms. Everything was beautiful; the moon, the sky and the trees, but it soon faded, and I was back. Sigh. The second time, Day 2 The next day during the mid-day break, I spoke to the master of the retreat about my experience. S/he asked me exactly what I had thought and felt at the time it was happening, and as I communicated it to him/her, it happened again! It hit me with full force and I started laughing a lot once more. So silly of me to come all this way to the retreat (I'd travelled from another country), to do all this meditation, to read all these books, just because I didn't get that I'm RIGHT HERE. I was surprised and unsure about this. It was nothing like I had imagined it to be. I had all these ideas and words I was measuring my experience against floating around in my head, but it wasn't like any of those. The best way that I can describe my direct experience is that it was completely transparent. NOTHING changed. I just saw everything for exactly what it was. And I saw that it was REAL. I didn't know what to make of it. S/he asked me if I was disappointed. I said that I didn't know, that I was unsure, that I thought there was more. S/he said that there was a lot more, but that the way that I was beaming and the way I described it made him/her pretty sure that it was a direct experience. This happened during the resting period of the day so I had about an hour to think about what had happened. I couldn't possibly go to sleep, I had to make sense of this. I had been expecting TRANSCENDENCE, NOTHINGNESS, EMPTINESS. EGODEATH! Something scary and mystical. But what I experienced was the opposite. IMMERSION. MERGING WITH REALITY. FULLY EXPERIENCING LIFE. BEING! It hit me right in the face. I'd been so obsessed with finding something beyond the senses, something beyond reality, that I'd totally ignored the present moment! Always! Ignoring it to the extent that I have a fucking enlightenment experience and I don't even acknowledge it! I saw how I'm always doing this. As soon as I get something, it's somehow not good enough anymore, anything within my reach is not what I want. Anything real is not what I want. What suffering! What a way to doom oneself into eternal misery! Such incredible ignorance, such foolishness, absurdity beyond comprehension! I started crying. How could I have been so cruel to myself? My entire life! I had always denied what was real. But now I had found out that I MYSELF WAS the essence of reality! I couldn't do anything but cry. You have to be grateful for what is. I have to be grateful for what is. Why? Because that's all there is! Because there can't be more than what is! Stop looking for anything more than what is. I repeat, please understand, it is a LAW that there can't be more than what is! If there could be more than what is then THAT would be part of what is, and there would still be nothing to look for outside what is. What is = What is What is ≠ What isn't This is just silly. It's so obvious. But that's enlightenment for ya. We're so unconscious that we don't know the difference between what is and what isn't, and how we suffer for it. Realizing that made me weep so much. And laugh. Weeping and laughing took turns, sometimes with pauses of beautiful tranquility in between. After a while a thought occured. "I'm so happy that I've realized this." But see, even this was suffering, as I saw immediately. How silly of me, to be happy because of something. These were the words that came to me: "Why be happy because of anything?" And I laughed a lot again. It wasn't a depressive thought, not at all. It was beautiful truth. How silly, even moronic, to take a moment in life and turn it into a trophy, to value it and cling to it and make something out of it that it is not and that it doesn't need to be. A memory, a medal, a prize. You don't need to hold on to anything to be happy, you need to let go! All conditional happiness is suffering! OBVIOUSLY, yet again, and STILL we make the same old mistakes. You don't need to perceive yourself as "somebody who got the necessary insight" in order to BE the wisdom. You ARE THE WISDOM. Always. Day 2, second experience of the day I was in a Dyad later in the afternoon and a lot of embarassing uncomfortable feelings, fears, desires and fantasies were coming up for me. It made me very anxious to communicate them to my partner but we'd just been given a talk about not holding back no matter what the content was and I was totally dedicated to surrender into Truth. After all I had experienced, I just wanted to prove myself worthy to Truth so I could experience it again. It wasn't easy though. I communicated things I've hardly admitted to myself. Things I've never said, and would never say, to any of my closest friends, to my wife, to ANYONE. Things I feel tremendous guilt about. Things that almost makes me hate myself. I felt I was interacting with Truth, showing it I was ready to give up all my barriers for it, all of my defences, all of my dignity. Suddenly the whole process changed and I saw it in another light. I thought: "must I go on like this, forever? Must I rabble my entire list of uncomfortable awkward confessions before I'm allowed some sort of experience?" Then I realized that "of course not! I'm saying what I'm saying because I WANT to say it! The resistance I feel towards saying it is actually a fear of having the desire to tell the truth, but it is NOT not wanting to tell the truth." I'd never seen this before, what an insight! Resistance is not true, it's just me lying to myself about not wanting something that I secretly do want! I had to communicate it to my partner. This is what I said: "It's like I have to prove myself worthy to Truth by revealing all my secrets. But then I realize that I WANT to say these things... And then it's like truth said to me:..." And as I finished my sentence, I BECAME Truth. (But actually, I didn't become Truth, because then and there I had ALWAYS been it) The following words that I spoke, the reply that I got from Truth, was: (In an almost bored tone, like it was nothing) "Well if you want to you can just BE IT." And in that moment I was Truth. In the state of Truth, everything is obvious and self evident and lacks beginning or end. It made me realize something about the interconnectedness between our free will, Truth, and God. We ALWAYS have the power to choose. We just choose something that isn't in alignment with Truth most of the time. Almost all of the time. Because of our ignorance. Martin Ball talks about this. Bashar talks about this. Fundamentally, I, Truth, and God, are the same thing. It made me understand holism on an entirely new level. A meditation technique isn't just some intellectual thing, or something in the mind. Every moment, ALL of our faculties are interacting, and nothing is more important than the ALIGNMENT between our emotions, our thoughts, our expression, our truth, our reality, our words, our energy. It is all energy, it can all work together and open the gate to Truth. Alignment, wow, such a huge thing. Maybe the thing. It is not the words you say in themselves, it is how they align with everything else. This is how magic works, this is how reality works. I find it hard to put into words. Maybe something like this: To be truth, you need to open your energy. Opening your energy is achieved by honesty and openness on all levels of being. We're talking inner attitude, body posture, letting go of rigid beliefs, self acceptance, relaxing muscles, not getting distracted, not manipulating your words or anything in your experience. Not holding back on any negative emotions. Not holding back on any positive emotions, any sexual sensations or desires, or whatever. Not holding back at all, which is true surrender. It could be called holding forth, perhaps, the opposite of holding back. To hold forth is to serve your entire self on a silver platter for the universe to do whatever it wants with. And you don't need to worry AT ALL, because NOTHING WILL BE DONE TO YOU. Because what's there is just there! All the bad stuff that is done towards what is already there, is only done by YOU! You are the one who is hurting yourself by denying yourself, as soon as any aspect of you is accepted to be true, TRULY ACCEPTED, nothing else could ever harm it. So anyway, I was Truth, there was nothing else, and it was all completely obvious. I laughed a lot, the same whole hearted mushroom laugh, laughing to the beauty of the simple but powerful implications of the words: "well if you want to you can just be it". When I told the master about this experience later that day I said that: "Truth is always there. But it is up to my free will if I want to live in accordance with it or not". It really felt like even though I was Truth, Truth was also something external that I could communicate with. It was me and yet it was other, a beautiful paradox. It functioned according to laws, you could join it or struggle against it, because that is how reality is, and I saw that there was intelligence in truth, it was very lively, and willing to interact with you if you so wanted. This made me cry, how emotionally moving and magical to see that Truth is intelligent, vibrant and alive! I've found it to be really helpful to treat entheogens as teachers and guides, to ask the mushrooms questions and relate to them as entities. But now I'd done it with Truth itself, and completely sober at that! I had to weep a lot again. Day 3, last experience The last direct experience was very brief, but in some ways its message was the most beautiful. It happened during the most emotionally intense Dyad of the retreat for me, and even though I'd gotten a direct experience during it, I felt awful afterwards. I wanted to sink through the ground and disappear, I was so ashamed. I can't go into detail about why exactly, out of respect to the others on that Intensive and the person I was in the Dyad with, but it had to do with memories of how I had always been having a really easy time in school. I just got things quicker than most others and I've had to struggle much less in my life than my autistic brother, and there's this intense guilt I feel about that. Also, I always maintain an image of false humility, but deep down I think I'm absolutely superior, and I look down on everybody else. This humility-pretention that I always want to maintain was completely shattered in this Dyad and it made me sooo ashamed of myself. So anyway, there I am, totally ashamed, and I communicate the shame, and just like in the previous experiences on the Intensive, AS I'm communicating, I tap into Truth. I could sense my shame in my body. Exactly where it was. It had a golden, purplish, shimmering quality to if. And what I saw and communicated will be revealed soon, but first I must mention the quality and the delivery of the words, as they themselves, in written form, do not come close to the magnificence of the moment. The words came out in an extremely calm way, with a voice in complete, still ecstacy, like it was an ocean that was roaring with laughter just below its mirror-like surface, almost about to tremble the whole time, but never doing so. Discovering and slowly and carefully tasting one word at a time, not making any haste, and speaking the end of every sentence with impeccable certainty. The voice said: "I have shame. But that is okay. Because it is real. ... And nothing that is real need to be struggled against. ... And ... (What delight, as I knew what words would manifest!) EVERYTHING IS REAL." Thinking about this still makes me emotional. Nothing needs to be struggled against. Everything is, and what isn't, isn't. And that in itself is DIVINE, totally sublime. The eternal heavenly peace of God. After thoughts I was really puzzled by the fact that my experiences weren't at all like I was expecting them to be. But I had some insights regarding that shortly thereafter. Here is what I came up with: The experience of Truth is Truth. It is OBVIOUS. So obvious and self evident that it becomes transparent. You can't measure it against anything else, it's just there. It is not an experience of "ahaa, this is false, and this is false, and also this, and I can compare this state to this, and a little bit to that." NO! It is not like any one thing in particular. Or all the things. It just is what it is. When you are Truth, that realization doesn't come with a list of adjectives and descriptions that you need to think about or read through in order to understand what you already ARE. NO, that's what you do when you're asleep. When you're AWAKE, you just are what you are! The intellectualizing and rationalizing and descriptions and metaphors occurs when you COME BACK from your experience and try to make sense of it and communicate it to others. And the only way I can describe the Absolute, when I think about it, is the same way that all the books and masters already do, even though I think those descriptions led me astray quite a bit. It's not the absolute because it's big and grand, which is what I always thought. If you go looking for something huge and awesome you won't find it. Size is relative, even the biggest object in the universe is relative, it is not Absolute. The Absolute TRANSCENDS sizes. Absolutely. So it IS actually transcendent, in that sense. But that doesn't mean it's OUTSIDE of reality. It IS reality! Also: Truth doesn't change ANYTHING. I was doing some simple yoga and stretching on the third day and it was still really challenging and uncomfortable. Even shortly after a direct experience. Of course! Because that is what's true, that's where I am in my practice! Change is change, truth is what already is. If you want stuff to change, if you want to improve in a certain field, you have to work on THAT. Specifically. If you want to see stars and galaxies and beautiful mandalas and patterns, go look at them in a book or in a telescope, or take psychedelics. You can experience all kinds of things, they're there. But pursuing THOSE experiences or visions in PARTICULAR is very different from pursuing Truth. Truth isn't some other realm that is somehow better than the ordinary realm. Truth is what is, and a psychedelic experience may be a part of what is, but everything else is also a part of what is. You have to make the distinction between the two desires, the pursuit of some wild and sparkling hallucination and the pursuit of Truth. Do you want the room to collapse into pure space with galaxies and entities and sparkles and fairydust? That can be a genuine desire, I know it was for me. But the Truth is there regardless of what experiences you might have. Think about WHY you want the stars and sparkles. To prove something? To whom? And WHO is it that wants the stars and sparkles? Kind of a strange wish, really (Preaching to myself here...) I also realized that my sense of being here and now that I got in my direct experience WAS actually a sort of ego death, although it wasn't anywhere near as violent as that word implies. It was ego death in the sense that I was here and now REGARDLESS of Kazman(which is not my real name obviously). Regardless of where he is or what he's thinking or doing, I AM. That isn't some weird or mystical special I AMness, it's the very same one you're feeling right now. It just comes prior to all the things you do and think you are. Ken Wilber calls it Pure I Amness. Ego death doesn't mean that "okay, I'm not the mind or the body... I'm actually THAT piece of grass over THERE." No! That's ridiculous. You are nothing in particular, you just ARE. You may not be able to know it right now, because as you are now, your experience of having a body and an ego is completely intertwined with your sense of I am here. But one is not dependent on the other. It is not I Am because you are, it's just I Am. Period. God this sounds stupid. Also, it is HERE, regardless of location. Regardless of where Kazman is. Which is omnipresence. But when you get to experience Truth it doesn't feel like omnipresence, since it is here, and you are also here. But the thing is, it is here regardless of where you are, regardless of where it is, it's always here. Prior to location, it is Here. And I love it. I'm totally in love with it. One night by the end of the intensive I was standing in a field looking at the sky and the words that reflected what was in my heart the most, that I spoke out loud, were: "Father. I want to live serving you." It's my new life purpose! I don't know how to best embody it but I'll do my best. This is what I want to dedicate my life to. Surrendering into Truth. Because I see that things will just be more and more beautiful the fuller I am able to surrender. But how the fuck do I do that? I'm a 100% back now. Just as far away from it as always. But now I've seen that it's always there at least, regardless of whether I acknowledge it or not. But I want to keep acknowledging it, as good as I can! I want to become a powerful mystic! Now comes the process of building habits and infrastructure to support a more authentic spiritual life. A life of purification, devotion, service, work on myself, a life of love. It all has to be done out of love. And I have that love now. Although, which saddens me deeply, the normal state of l, the ego, has a tendency to make all of this stagnate veeery quickly. As I've been writing this, I've been painfully aware that the words are becoming more and more just that: words. I find myself thinking more about how to represent a concept in the way I'd like to see myself presenting it and less and less about communicating Truth. I've done my best not to write in a romantic language, but when i read through it, it all seems to be totally inaccurate and misrepresenting. It's scary and heartbreaking to see the ego fall right back into place. But regardless of whether I succeed with my life purpose or not, I know that a life of heartfelt dedication to surrender as fully into truth as I possibly can will be the best one, it is my life and I love it. Smaller Insights or Phrases There really isn't any difference between being open and allowing in the present moment and having an enlightenment experience. Because that is as close to your true nature you're ever gonna get. I have a lot of problems with relating authentically towards other, most of my energy goes into easing tension, making myself be liked, people pleasing, withholding negative emotions and stuff like that. I make things so goddamn complicated. The Truth is simple. REALLY fucking simple. I had a beautiful experience, by the very end of the intensive I was in a Dyad and witnessed another person have an enlightenment experience. It was so beautiful and we both cried a lot. It was almost nicer than getting one myself somehow. I feel truly priviledged to have been a part of that. I can't tell anything more specific about it to respect the other person but wow. I got overwhelmed at times during the intensive with all the flaws I found in my personality. "i'll never finish my personal development process" I thought. But then I realized that self perfection as a goal in itself is not the point. It's not like there's some ideal state you get to where you are the perfect human and you have to take all the steps to it before you can live the good real life. It's just a simple matter of not doing what isn't serving you. If you notice you're hurting yourself through your behaviour, you stop. Of course you have to be ridiculously conscious to see all the ways you hurt yourself but there you go. I use food to feel in control. Sometimes by eating exactly what I want when I want it and sometimes by setting up rules and avoiding eating those things. But both allowing and disallowing myself to eat certain things is control. Those mechanisms are sooo sneaky and hard to miss. You can say Namaste. And you can BE NAMASTE. I want to be as present as possible in my family life. Relating to other humans and all that comes with it is the most important part of life. I love humanness. There is no dark secret or impure desire of anybody that I can't sympathize with as long as it is being communicated honestly and authentically. It is misrepresentation and upholding a nice picture of oneself that I have a problem with. I want to be truth's BITCH. Entheogens = truth medicine. And the truth always SETS YOU STRAIGHT I'm very scared of the dark but I noticed that after the intensive, that was completely gone. It's back now, however. A nice part of going on a retreat instead of a psychedelic trip is that even though mushrooms may get you somewhere MUUUUCH quicker, it ends just as quickly. What I find good with the Intensive is that while it takes a lot longer to go deep, you don't fall right back afterwards. This gives you a golden opportunity to notice things in your everyday life to correct that you just wouldn't pickup otherwise. I still love entheogens though, but I've seen that it's kind of an instrumental love, and what I REALLY love is Truth (should be clear at this point) I want to be a vehicle for truth. A light in the dark. I don't wanna be talking the talk, I HAVE to be walking the walk! I don't want to be a voice in the dark telling the others that there are lamps somewhere. I NEED to BE the lamp, lighting shit up! Helping people see! No doubt about it! A little Poem: I thought I wanted something I thought I wanted everything Then I thought I wanted nothing Now I only want the absolute And it is neither of those (To clarify: It is not NOT one of those either. It is just no thing in particular) A certain pain is associated with being Kazman. It comes often with doing something from duty. Feeling obligated. Not being authentic Final words Of course my understanding and embodiment will just deepen as my life goes on, and I'm sure I'll change my mind and find errors in my descriptions that I've just given. Maybe I'll have completely opposite experiences in the future. I'll do my best to be open for anything. About a week after the intensive I got the chance to speak with a person I look up to a lot who is around 35 years ahead of me on the path. He was quite upset when he heard that there was something called an Enlightenment Intensive. He said all of these modern spiritual approaches, all the Eckhart Tolles and Moojis, can never produce enlightened beings, they just won't. And that one must not get hung up on experiences. And he is right in many ways, I totally agree with him. However, in my view, a few experiences can really help you sort things out so that your determination and faith on the path can be much stronger and grounded in something real instead of grounded in illusions and fantasies. I really recommend these kind of retreats, but make sure you do a lot more as well. 99,999% of the work has to be done in your ordinary state of consciousness, in your ordinary life, because that is where you always are and that is what is keeping you from truth. And that's kind of a big obstacle. Life. Is there anything larger? Yes. I see now that Truth is larger than life itself. Thanks for reading!

@Soulbass thank you so much for reading and commenting!!! It means a lot to me. Yes, a profound experience in many ways, and it has shed a lot of layers of my life that were just getting in my way. Layers of false pursuits, layers of desire for things that I now see has nothing to do with what i really want etc. but at the same time, like I was writing, it wasn't like anything I thought it would be. It didn't feel PROFOUND at all, just obvious, almost to the point of feeling mundane. But it has shifted the direction of my life on a deep level, so for sure, it was certainly SOMETHING. yeah I guess it's something that cannot be communicated. At all. I wish I could just "get people there" and most of all, get myself there more! In the end everything has to be personally experienced and only very vague directions can be given. much love

Was watching the insights from Leo's retreat and suddenly out of my hands came this little doodle: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_TfTFxWAAEessL.jpg:large (I'm at work listening and I'm a game artist, that's why it's so frickin' proffesional :P)

@DoubleYou Amen, fellow aspiring baboon Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it means a lot! I love the silliness of the descriptions that come up. Trying to communicate the incommunicatable. It's impossible but entertaining. Beautiful and the biggest joke, for sure. Just endlessly fascinating.

@Ilya Thank you!

@Orange thank you! There and then at least, I was self accepting, because I was open. Like I'm writing somewhere, you don't have to communicate your entire existence with all its facets to your partner, but on an inner level, you can't deny anything about yourself. You cannot resist or deny any part of yourself, which means that you have to accept it all, to reach the required open state. You have to accept everything that is true. But you can accept the resistance and lies within yourself, that is good enough. You don't have to get rid of them.

Ken Wilber writes about it in No Boundary. He says it has to do with how we tense up to hold back emotions. He suggests that as we notice ourselves getting tense because of some situation or emotion, we should consciously INCREASE that tension, so we increase our awareness of how we hold back and tense up. Noticing a tension and then resisting it by trying to relax can just create more resistance, is what he says. Also, the basic qi gong standing position is supposedly great for making energies flow more smoothly. I recommend getting a teacher who can instruct you personally on how to do it exactly. ( I do it with lower arms but couldn't find a picture of that)

@Joseph Maynor hey, thanks ?

@spinc I can't even imagine what that must be like. Gotta try that sometime In one of Kilindi iyi's talks I think he said: "you'll see Predator walking through the room. Then you'll see yourself flying through the room." (Talking about big mushroom doses as he does) maybe that is what happens.