A belief is not an insight.
To understand what an insight is you'd need to have an insight about the nature of insight.

Yup, well said.
Yes, the peak lasts up to about 1h45m. Then a smooth organic comedown.
That was a good entry dose.
50mg+ should be awesome for ya.
I have noticed that DPT activates the 3rd eye area. My forehead starts to tingle and expand in this amazing way.

My point was, the effectiveness of your training will depend a lot on your pre-existing spiritual attunement and how your brain/mind functions. Imagine doing the same amount of practice but your progress is 100x less. That is more like the reality for many peeps.
The average person cannot climb 10 stages in 1 year. That's pipedreams.
But of course you'll never know until you try, so don't prematurely limit yourself.

I mostly keep to myself. I'm not a very social person. I am happy rolling solo most of the time.
A few intimate friends and lovers are no problem. Discussing with them is no problem usually.

You gotta keep in mind that introversion/extroversion is a spectrum. Many people are somewhere in the middle.
For me, I am very introverted and have been my whole life. Yet most people who meet me face to face would think I am an extrovert because one-on-one I can get very animated and go into a deep conversation with some close friend. But I am terrible at small talk or meeting new people because the shallowness of it bores me and drains my energy.
For me, the introversion label fits perfectly. And I know others whom it fits perfectly too. And I also know extroverts who are just the opposite: they go into a bar and light up like a Christmas tree. As an introvert I just can't do that. Small talk wears me out. I need quiet intimate environments, not noisy clubs or bars.
All that said, I can still push myself to go to a bar and be extroverted. It just feels very unnatural.
So a lot this has to do with what feels most natural to you.
Would you rather have 100 friends who you rarely have a deep conversation with, or 3 really close friends? Extroverts tend to have 100s of friends, so many they don't even have time to meet them for more than 10 minutes. An introvert will have a couple good friends but spend hours talking to them.
Of course, as with all theories, categories, and models, don't let it limit you. Use it to deepen your understanding, and if it doesn't help you do that, throw it away. For me it's a handy distinction which explains how I tend to act.

You're not yet understanding what I meant by survival.
You are thinking of survival as some biological evolutionary theory. That is not what we're talking about here. I mean something much more direct and viceral.
To understand you must turn to your direct experience of life and observe how every micro thing you do is a function of survival.
Don't speculate about it, observe it happening in you. It's happening every second.

1g of mushrooms
or
100ug of LSD
Is great to start with. Don't go beyond 2g of mushrooms or 150ug of LSD as a newbie unless you have a high tolerance.

Hello everyone. I wanted to share with you my practice for effective meditation.
I've recently perfected how to reliably hit Stage 7+ samadhi in Culadasa's 'The Mind Illuminated' with self enquiry.
Once you are there, you'll add the insight practice of self enquiry and hopefully make significant progress towards the first stage of permanent awakening: stream entry.
I'm not a stream enterer yet but the reason I want to share this is that I've experienced temporary and VERY reliable no self insights while doing this exact method. Not just once but almost every time I sit.  This is insane. This state I consistently hit prior to self enquiry is like a low dose LSD.
How to check if you are ready for self inquiry: My method's check is visual and the room starts to lose its solid property slightly due to advanced breath concentration and clear extrospective awareness. If you experience that, it is the perfect time to start self enquiry.
 I just want to share the technique with you since I've experienced a lot of intelligent ways of practicing samatha supported self inquiry.
My Method:
1- Start the session and quickly move towards Stage 7 in Culadasa's system.
Here is how I do it.
-- First, stabilize the attention to the breath at the tip of the nose for 20-30 seconds until it stays there with little to no effort. Do this without subtle dullness and energy loss. Follow the breath with bright clarity. (Make sure you are not meditating in very warm temperatures.)
If you can't do this reliably, then you must practice more with Culadasa's system and develop sustained attentional skills. Read his book 'The mind illuminated' for details. Forget about self-inquiry before mastering this. Trust me. Samadhi developed Self inquiry is 50 times more effective than dry self-inquiry in my experience. (Although people still get enlightened without any samadhi practice. It is your choice in the end.)
I presume you can reliably attain effortless breath attention in less than 10 mins. Once the access concentration is on this level, you need one more skill to do proper adept self enquiry practice.
2- Practice Extrospective Awareness with Shinzen Young's 'Gone' Technique.
For this skill, drop the breath practice for now. This is the key part of the puzzle after mastering Culadasa's breath concentration. Once Culadasa gets you to master sustained attention, now it is time to develop adept levels of awareness. Introspective (inner) awareness is a solid choice as well (Body awareness etc.) but extrospective (outer) awareness of external sounds and visuals will be our technique here.
If you don't know, google 'Shinzen Young's Gone Technique'. We won't label anything. The mind will ONLY notice the endings of external sounds. I HIGHLY recommend a piano piece where it is slow and the individual notes can be discerned. Endings in particular. If you are not into music, do it listening to Leo. Focus on 'goneness' every time Leo utters a word. You must develop awareness to a point where you can experience this at the end of most words regardless of how fast Leo speaks.
You can label 'Gone' until you experience this and intuitively feel that you are 'access-concentration' with the sound. Also, do this technique with open eyes. Because we'll synthesize everything in the 3rd step.
3- Combine Breath Concentration with Extrospective Awareness with Visual Check. (IMPORTANT!!!!)
This is the hard work in my opinion. Any meditator can work with these skills separately. But the low dose psychedelic experience reliably comes from simultaneous practice of Culadasa's bright breath concentration and Shinzen Young's clear 'Gone' extrospective awareness. In this stage, once you combine these two skills, you'll have to check if you don't delude yourself. You'll do this with visual fluidity.
Once you think you are 'there', open your eyes, look at the center of your visual field with relaxed eyes. If you experience less visual solidity in objects while you are combining these 2 meditation skills, then you are ready for self enquiry. Remember that at this point, your breath attention is effortless and extrospective awareness of 'Gone' is very pronounced. If not, then you are not ready for self inquiry.
4- Samatha supported Self Enquiry
You are done with the bulk of the work. At this point, the mind is pliant enough to have a permanent and transient insight experiences regarding no self, impermanence and suffering. Now we facilitate the no self experience with the classic: 'Who is experiencing?' 
Pick whatever phrasing you like:
'Who am I!
'Who is looking'
'Who is breathing'
Just make sure you ask the question and bask more in silence until you feel the effects. Consciously let the self enquiry question effect your samadhi. Because if you feel zero effect in concentration and awareness, then you are not doing self enquiry. You are just using it as a mindless mantra. This is a mistake.
Everytime you ask 'Who is experiencing?', You must experience a certain inner tug in your sensory experience. This is a potential insight experience. The more you experience and go deeper like this, the insight into no self will get clearer.
-----
That is it. Do this 90-120 mins a day and you'll progress so quickly that you'll be shocked how skilled you get on a daily basis. In fact, do 2 sits a day like this. I'm standing on the shoulders of spiritual geniuses like Shinzen Young and Culadasa. It is thanks to them that I've experienced these training methods. The strategy MATTERS. 
 I'll write again when I discover a more effective method and/or attain permanent stream-entry.
Hopefully, this guide helps all of you struggling with meditation
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

That is good. I would recommend you do more small dose mushroom trips. They will teach you a lot. Become comfortable in the mushroom space.
No, truth is not just truth. Truth is extremely radical and has many layers and facets to it. Most egos are not ready to handle the full Truth, they will recoil, freak out, reject, deny, demonize it, etc. To handle the Truth you gotta be at a certain level of development and you need a certain degree of purification of mind.
In practice one has to ease oneself into the Truth. Usually with spiritual work this happens gradually over years and decades. With psychedelics this whole process is short-circuited, thrusting you into the Truth within minutes or hours. With smoked 5-MeO-DMT, it's even worse, you're thrust into Buddha-levels of Truth within seconds. That's way too fast for most people. It can be overwhelming and traumatic if you're not ready.
Not all people have the same capacity to handle Truth. For some it's a lot easier than others. A lot of this has to do with how much ego you've got, how much psychological trauma or baggage you got, and how much you desire Truth.
Most people have a very low desire for Truth, which is why they spend some little time contemplating metaphysical questions.

Don't overthink it. It's certainly not done through logic. Logic is there to serve survival.
For me it just comes naturally as a means to my ultimate goal: Truth, Love, and understanding.
If you just desire Truth, and Love, and understanding enough, and work towards that, eventually ego-death will happen and it won't be a big deal.
Psychedelics help a lot with getting confortable with ego death. That is one of their most useful features. You can become so comfortable with it that you don't bat an eye when it happens.
Otherwise try years of Kriya yoga.

A) I don't know what you mean by that. You are painting with a broad brush here. People experience and realize different things.
Nondual consciousness is not a state of ego, it is the absence of ego, and the realization that your true nature is nothing and everything, or infinite, or God.
There are many people here who are unaware of many things. Just because they have some degree of realization does not mean they are aware of the deeper layers.
Ego dissolution also has layers and degrees of depth to it. The ego is a complex and relentless structure. It takes a lot of deconstruction work to fully get beyond it.
B) Do not start yet another nonduality debate.

It's a state of consciousness.
When that state changes, ego goes poof! like it never was.

Nice story bro, but Truth is everything and the only thing.
Psychedelics can certainly take one there. Of course here and there are nowhere and one and the same.
Truth is both temprary and eternal. It is all and nothing.
There is nothing but states of consciousness and you are in a state right now, regardless of what it is. All states are part of the Truth. Whether it is formed or formless is irrelvant.
These nonduality debates are getting really silly.

This is just false.
Psychedelics are not merely "an experience", they can take you to the Absolute.
Just because enlightenment may not require an experience shift does not entail that an experience shift cannot lead to an enlightenment. Psychedelics do not merely change one's experience, they radically elevate one's degree of consciousness -- which is the whole key to this work. Psychedelics put you into an instantaneous samadhi state. From this state one can contemplate and realize all sorts of things, including one's true nature or various facets of the Absolute.
The reason you're making this mistake is that you're trying to understand psychedelics in terms of some traditional spiritual paradigm like Buddhism, Zen, or Vedanta, which tend to discount state changes -- but psychedelics are a totally different path so it is inappropriate to judge it from those other paradigms.
Psychedelics can take you to levels of understanding and awakening which are simply impossible otherwise, or else possible but extremely rare and only for exceptionally gifted practitioners.
It is correct that you will not be able to permanently lock in a psychedelic peak state 24/7. But that is an improper expectation to begin with.
Psychedelics, when used properly, can absolutely take you to the highest, most Absolute Truth. Of course the real trick is integrating it and embodying, which requires a lot of additional work.
Psychedelic insights and realizations square up perfectly with those of Buddhism, Zen, Vedanta, yoga, Christianity, Islam, and any other serious mystical tradition.
Shunyata, Brahman, The Self, no-self, ego-death, Allah, God, nonduality, Shiva, Buddha, nirvana, rigpa, samadhi, Mu, Infinity, The Void, Nothingness, The Dharmakaya, the godhead, union, Absolute Consciousness, satchitanadna, Truth, Love, kundalini awakening, Nibbana, formlessness, etc. -- all of this and more you can realize on psychedelics.

There was a biological weapons labs in Osho's commune. To this day, his followers committed the biggest biological weapon attack in US history.
Think about that.

@Hoyeon Lee The ego-self is constantly looking out to get its needs met. When its needs are not met, or it seriously threatened, it reacts in a knee-jerk manner with heavy negative emotions like fear, anger, and judgment to defend its survival.
The ego being afraid to die goes even deeper than that.
Think of putting a loaded gun to your head and pulling the trigger. That is ego being afraid to die. Now try to imagine what it would take not to be afraid of that and not to resist it.

In our fake culture did you really expect real vanilla beans to be used?
Most people have never even tasted a real vanilla bean. Real, fresh, raw, ground vanilla is amazing! Put it in your smoothies.
https://www.amazon.com/Wilderness-Poets-Pure-Vanilla-Powder/dp/B00ELNQ632/

@lostmedstudent No
There is never a comfortable and convenient way of facing death. You will never be "ready" for it. You must face it and deal with whatever arises. It doesn't have to be so difficult.
It's like you're being told to jump into a cold pool and you keep saying, "But maybe I should go do X before I jump in. Maybe I'm not ready for the cold." It' will always be cold. You cannot avoid that.
On my 24 birthday I went skydiving. I had to jump out of a fucking moving airplane at 12,000 ft. How did I do it? I just jumped. It was not pleasant. But I also didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it otherwise it would have been a lot worse.
Jumping out of an airplane is scarier than ego death on a psychedelic.

That attitude is not going to cut it. That is an attitude of fear.
You need to have an attitude of: "I want the truth and whatever the truth is, I will love and accept it."
Your attitude must be one of Truth & Love. Love for self, love for others, love for the world. Everything you fear and hate you must learn to love and see the beauty and value of.
Whatever you fear, the psychedelics will definitely make you face it head-on, if not in this trip then in the next. You cannot access God consciousness so long as you have fear of creatures or anything else. First you will have to purify yourself of all fear. Because God is pure Love! You cannot access God's infinite Love so long as there are parts of the universe that you hate or reject.
There is nothing in the universe to hate or fear because the entire universe is yourself. But this requires enormous emotional maturity to embody. This is where the real inner growth happens.
Imagine seeing your worst nightmare and loving it. That is the proper attitude. This is the whole point of all of our work. To become unconditionally loving. It's not easy to do for humans. But then again, that's why you're on this Earth in the first place: to learn to love. Earth is a love simulator.

That's exactly right. I know exactly what you're talking about. That's the ego's natural reaction to going directly for enlightenment. It's terrified of the unknown infinitude. Only natural and totally expected.
The solution is to push through it, face the fear head-on, until you breakthrough to the other side. This can take many attempts.
This is why religions call it "taking the leap of faith". You place your faith in Truth as your highest aim and desire, and blindly leap for it not knowing what will happen. From your POV it feels like you will die. But your love for Truth must be so great that you desire it so much that you are willing to die to have it. And so you do. But in reality what will happen is the ego will collapse and you will land in an infinitely deep pool of the softest down feathers. That is paradise, heaven, nirvana, -- AKA, the Love of God.
But you cannot know this before you take the leap.
Fear of death & insanity is what keeps you from entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
But of course, you must realize, all fear is imaginary. You are like the groundhog terrified of its own shadow.
Psychedelics make ego-death a lot easier.

Imagination has many levels of depth to it.
The walls of your house are imaginary, but this is a degree of imagination which is beyond your typical human purview.
In other words, you as God are imagining (at very deep levels), that the walls of your house are not imaginary but real. In this way God creates physics.
If you chnage your state of consciousness you will see that those physical walls were actually imaginary all along.

Definitely this is the biggest challenge of the path: embodying it deeply in everyday life. This is especially difficult with psychedelics because they take you so high so fast, no one can live from those places of infinite consciousness and still interact in the social world.
At high doses of psychedelics you are not a human any more. It is like venturing to new alien dimensions.

Long story short:
The ultimate nature is playful 
I am eternal
I am timeless

I delight in my own creation
Short story long:
Hello friends
It has been a while 
Nine months have passed since I fried my ass off with 200µg of LSD last Septemeber.
After a lot of integration and working on myself in everyday life I found myself in a good spot to drop some acid again.
Once more tripping all alone; no tripsitter, no safety nets. This time at an isolated place in a nature reserve where I am currently working   but with half the dose – 100µg of LSD. I was worried the acid might have lost some of it’s potency due to being stored at room temperature for over a year now, but these worries were unjustified

In comparison to my last trip:
Less visuals, less sacred geometry. No Kechari Mudra this time ;-)
Deeper, more raw energetic kundalini stuff + some surprises
More Death | more Non-Dual | more Love !
 
So here’s what happened:
18:00pm : I drop the tab,  read “The teachings of Don Juan” and listened to the fabulous “Leylines” Album by Aes Dana.

~18:45pm: Can't read anymore, I start dancing. Dancing is great way in & out of the trip. Strong desire to be more aware of my body. Exploring energy moving through the shoulders and neck – I should straighten up my posture! Only slight patterns and visuals at this point, but my mind is already going places..

After some dancing I come to a dead end, gently drop to the floor, arms out to the sides, and watch myself die. I seem to somehow have  skipped the comeup and directly went from "barely any effect" to "full blow trip"! Tingling at the base of the spine, light in my head.
Here the unspeakable territory of yogic states begins. 
This is what I saw

Dry analysis is ego, Light shines through in emotions

This life is my offering to you, Shiva
Angels and demons guard the same door
Ravenous energies moving up the spine
With pleasure I kiss shut deaths eye

How does a self self-terminate?
In the end there is nothing you do, you just give in to what was your deepest desire all along – you surrender and explode in ecstasy!

There was no-Self to begin with!
 

 
 
Oh dear Lord! Self-awareness kicks back in, but the meditator within me doesn’t want the endless orgasm to end – “I can last longer!” – so he keeps the body unmoving and goes for some more rounds on the strange-loop of (non)existence.
I arise from my ecstatic slumber.
I get up and go the bathroom, pulled by strings beyond my control, and face myself in the mirror. Hard to explain what happened there. 
I see myself as I am, with all my tensions and imperfections.
My face morphs through various beings, from angelic benevolent rabbits to demonic shapeshifting lizards. From time to time my reflection disappears comepletely, leaving just the empty bathroom.
I take off my clothes, look at my body. Imperfect by flawless design. 
Divine, tempting!
I watch myself transform into a woman – androgynous mastermind 
Goddamn shapeshifters! ;-)

I walk back to the living room and sit down on the floor, meditation posture.
I vividly experience “energetic blockages” in the right side of my body, specifically in the right abdomen slightly above the navel. Left is conscious, right is unconscious. I had been increasingly aware of several “dysfunctions” on the right side of my body over the last months, now it all was very clear. The root of the energetic distortion lies deep within the right side of the pelvis, hard to explain. This is my karma, this is the work I have to do!
For the first time I connect this to the appendectomy I had 10 years ago. I repressed the entire procedure! I let the memories surface with as much love and awareness as possible. Funny to look at it from the nondual perspective;
I cut out a party of myself
Because it would have killed me
Interesting
 
That was the first part of the trip, the peak; Surrendering, experiencing some esoteric/mystic/ occult/ecstatic far far out stuff you can’t talk about without being tackled from left and right, merging with the Absolute, reentering into karmic existence and clearing out some baggage on the way. Lovely.
The second part of the trip was all about embodiment of nondual consciousness and how I fail at doing that. Huge lesson.
Here's what happened:

I stand up as God, as Myself.
I look out of the window; flawless nature, the sun is setting.
I gaze into the sun. Aligning the small ego self with the big Godself.
Merging with love, drowning in love
Infinite Pleasure,
Infinite Love,
Infinite Death,
Infinite Anything
 
 
Hey, babe… I’m the sun
 
 
I love it all so much; I want to go outside, I want to be with my creation!
 
Egoic fear starts surfacing. I know I am all alone out here in nature, but it could be possible for some coworkers to come by. They can’t see me like this, walking through the garden, all ego-less!?
Inner conflict.
The same resistance you feel when for the first time engaging someone you truly love; fear of how it will turn out, fear of the unknown. But an irresistible urge to do so anyways. You have to trust, and step forward with love!
I put on some shorts (huge mistake! :D) and made my way outside. 
Why did I even lock the door? 
Was I afraid someone would come by, rob, rape and murder me? 
I just kicked in my own front door and shot myself in the head! (with Love) Nothing to be afraid of now, hahaha

It feels good to be outside
But there are still old patterns, memories…
God would have just walked off into the wilderness
I turned right and slowly, consciously, step by step approached the garden and with it my synchronicity moment of the year, a funny little allegory about psychedelics and God-Consciousness;
God-Me walks into his garden and sees a rabbit, feasting and nibbling on the tasty, fresh and young strawberries God-Me had planet just a week ago. Gotcha!
God-Me stands still and intensely focuses his piercing gaze on the God-Rabbit.
The rabbit abruptly stops eating, crouches and contracts in fear.
God-Me loosens his tight gaze, squats down, extends his hand and mentally says “It’s okay you little rascal, come here, I want to love you!”
The rabbit runs away.
What a shame, I just wanted to love it.
I sit down and reflect. If I really am myself, the rabbit, the strawberries and the garden, what does this mean? 
No time to reflect. I hear the sound of an approaching car - coworkers incoming!!
They can’t see me like this, sitting in the garden all ego-less! With fear I contract and run back into the house.
I am the rabbit!

I want it to happen without drugs, that’s the only excuse I have
Fear is the basic mechanism of separation; fear of Death, fear of Love, fear of Self
Back inside, back inside my egoic safe space.
I realize there was no car approaching at all. I just imagined it.
What a shame, I could have just loved it.
 
Too much of this love kills me
 
Inside I sit in meditation and contemplate what just happened. I realize I have to give it another try, I have to come out of hiding.
In addition to the shorts I put on a shirt and again venture outside. Now I feel more comfortable about being outside. I have to slowly adjust myself to these new levels of consciousness. So much energy in the system. I sit in meditation.

Again I hear the sound of a car approaching. Same old fear, wanting to run inside.
But NO! I am creating this! And I choose to create out of Love, not out of fear! 
I sit still. No coworkers.
 
So much energy!! I get up and spontaneously do some impromptu Tai-Chi / Kung-Fu / Martial Arts. So that’s what that stuff is all about!
Most of it must have looked uncoordinated and weird – my first real training session!
Some of those movements however…
If you really focus, intensely zone in…

Mind&Matter moving together

This is how God creates! Directly – effortless will

I TaiChi-myself into a fascinating realization:
Who cares about a few mosquito bites…
I am a motherucking MACHINE ELF! The intelligence that guides the separation, the code that runs the divine operating system! 
Eternally recreating myself…
 
My heart bursts open, it feels so good to be back, I missed myself so much!
Like a father, like a mother, like a son, like a daughter, like a brother, like a sister, like a teacher, like a friend, like a lover

“I love you!”
       Is that really true?
“Sure babe, I’d tell you anything. I AM you!”
 


Not much happened after that, I was just awake for 6 more hours. I meditated in the house, again naked but wrapped in a blanket, exploring visions of myself as a Sage, bathing in this new awareness. Dealing with the aftermath of chemically induced kundalini, trying to get the energy out of the system…
Then I fell asleep at around 6:00am


Takeaways from the trip:
Love! A call to authenticity and spontaneity! I already am on that path, just gotta keep on walking… The destination is radical but it is worth it! (+there is no other option lol)
Getting more grounded in the body! More Yoga, maybe start doing TaiChi.
 
There were two more paragraphs I wanted to write.
One about how I failed my own Zen Koan challenge (realized the answer but didn’t act it out).
The other about Love only being perceived when there is something to be loved.
But I don’t know how to express that without starting nonduality-wars ;-)
So I’ll just leave it at that.
 
Here’s a goodie for you to chew on:

I am that
I (1)
create the Two (and remain in between) 
Did you get it? 
 
 
Love you all!

Fake vanilla flavor is made out of beaver urine.
Remember that next time you go for cheap vanilla ice cream

@Psychonaut It is not going to make sense from your current state of consciousness that your dog is imaginary.
What's needed is not a belief that he was imaginary but a change in your state of consciousness.
Also don't forget that imagination is reality. So your dog is real: as real as anything else can be.
When everything is a dream, all dreamed up creations have a reality of their own.