bmcnicho

@Recursoinominado Unfortunately yes, at double speed while falling asleep. In general I enjoy debates, even though this was pretty low quality. The issues being discussed do have societal implications that are worth thinking about though.

I just had my deepest trip ever on these seeds. I think they have as much potential as any other substance. There are physical side effects though, so they’re not for everyone, but they’re completely legal and easy to order online. This is my 5th experience with LSA. I had previously worked my way up to 12 seeds, but this time I only took 7 and it was way stronger than 12. I guess the potency of each individual seed can vary a lot. I took a 5 mg THC sativa edible with it, which is also psychedelic for me. The effects started at around 5 pm. I was hiking in the forest, and felt a sense of oneness with everything around me. I was absolutely flooded with insights about how to better express love in my daily life. I had received similar insights in previous trips, but not integrated them well. This time though, it felt like I really got the message. Then, I laid down in a field and stared at the sky. Usually the visuals on LSA are pretty subtle, but this time they were much stronger, with things looking a bit like they do on a moderate dose of mushrooms. I then dropped down into a neighborhood, a straight road would take me back home, but it was a place I had not been in a long time, so it felt cool and unfamiliar. LSA can have pretty strong time dilation, so it felt like I was walking for a very long time. About 4 hours in, after I had been home for awhile, things started to take a darker turn. I was confronted with levels of existential confusion and complexity greater than I had experienced on other substances before. I saw that my unresolved emotions and lies that I’ve been telling myself were blocking me from breaking through completely. LSA can be kind of like a truth serum that tries to break down psychological defense mechanisms. I wasn’t yet ready to let go completely, so I encountered lots of emotional resistance. About 5 hours in, I started dwelling on the possibility that me and all of reality would someday start exploding forever and never stop exploding. And that since this explosion is still a finite form, it itself would need to explode into Infinity/Nothingness. And any form it could take would still not be the Absolute, so it would need to continue exploding in a never-ending, recursive, unresolvable paradox. This may have just been my mind trying to conceptualize something that’s impossible to conceptualize. Or maybe it was a paranoid delusion, I don’t know. My takeaway was that at least for awhile I should be careful not to dose too high. Maybe I am destined to awaken someday, but it is not yet that time. About 6 hours in, I was able to calm myself down a bit and resume productive contemplation. I’m autistic, so I was trying to understand better how my mind works compared to other people. I became more self aware that I’m still mentally off in certain ways despite being outwardly functional and well adjusted. Things started to wind down and I fell asleep about 2 hours later at 1 am, although I woke up briefly at 3 am and was still tripping. In the future I’ll start a bit earlier in the day. My main takeaways are first: I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING Reality is so much more vast, complex, and paradoxical than I could have imagined. All human knowledge is contextual, metaphorical, reductive, and imaginary. The second takeaway is that we exist in this human form to master human life and everything that exists here. I believe that this life is some kind of “training ground” for whatever lies beyond in the greater universe. Infinity can unfold in structured, ordered forms or in chaotic, incomprehensible ones. I think that somehow mastering your mind and human life here makes you better equipped to handle these things. So that things can be stepwise and integrated versus an emotionally painful flood.

@funkychunkymonkey Yeah, lower doses are pretty good for contemplation. You have a lot of mental clarity, access to insight, and are a bit less altered than with other substances. With higher doses though, it's easy to get lost in intense visionary states, so you wouldn't be able to consciously deconstruct as much.

I just wanted to share this quick story to emphasize the importance of going into these experiences with the proper mindset. As far as bad experiences go, I'd say I got off pretty easy compared to other trip reports I've seen, but it was enough to make me realize that I need to reevaluate my approach moving forward. My previous trip was 3 weeks earlier and it was my most intense and difficult so far. So that experience made me go into this one with an expanded understanding of what these substances are capable of. Before, I was a bit naive and thought these substances were just a way to access interesting insights, mystical states, and sensory experiences, but I didn't realize their capacity to radially transform reality to a possibly unlimited degree depending on dosage. This caused me to go into this experience with more fear and apprehension than previous trips, but I thought that I should be courageous and force myself to do it anyway. I see now that it was probably a sign that I should've waited until a different day. What was strange about this experience, is that for the first 4 hours, the effects were very mild despite me taking a larger dose than last time. I usually feel full effects by 2 hours in, so I thought that this was because I used a new batch of harmine hcl which was less purely extracted than the previous batch. So maybe I wasn't fully mao inhibited despite weighing out 230 milligrams. It was after midnight at this point, so I fell asleep for about 20 minutes. I woke up in a memory wiped daze and realized I was tripping hard. It caught me by surprise, so I ended up resisting a lot. I was blasted with a cacophony of electronic alien noises of all imaginable sorts and felt like my mind was possessed by a pure trickster energy. My mind was scrambled, basic things no longer made sense and I was made aware of many of my neurotic tendencies in normal life. The sheer strangeness of it is a bit baffling to me. These effects lasted for about an hour and a half and wore off at around the 6-hour mark, which is strange, because by 5 hours in the effects are usually over. I now believe that the harmine was still fully effective, and the first 4 hours were me resisting the effects. With other substances I've taken, it seems like I'm locked into the expected effects of a given dose for the full duration, but ayahuasca confuses me to the extent that I seem to be able to almost completely shut down high doses by not surrendering, although I imagine there would be a dose where this would no longer be the case. I definitely think it was my poor mindset that caused these negative effects and not the substance itself. I'm very conflicted right now, because I am interested in accessing these expanded states of consciousness, but I'm terrified by how radical and strange psychedelics can be. This causes me to enter the experience with a very manipulative and self-contradictory mindset, wanting to dissolve boundaries and expand my awareness in some ways, while wanting to preserve my identity, and sense of reality in other ways. So, I guess I'm imagining a very specific type of experience that I think will benefit me and trying to force it to be that, instead of being open to whatever it has to show me. But this is the one area of life that isn't supposed to be about ego manipulation and survival agenda, so I can't imagine bringing my human toxicity into this mystical state would go well for me in the future. So probably I need to take some time off to reflect and decide firmly how seriously I want to take spirituality and how far I'm willing to go with psychedelics. Part of the problem is that with the state of the world becoming more uncertain, I've been feeling an increased sense of urgency to make quick progress, as I don't know for how long conditions will remain stable for. But this process cannot be rushed, and it won't conform to some timeline I try to impose on it. I'm still fairly young and have a good deal of mental immaturity to work through, so that may hold me back for awhile. The aspect of this work that's most difficult for me is giving up control, probably because I had issues with authority figures growing up and a sense of control is very important to me. But accessing the deepest levels will require giving up control, so I don't know exactly how I'm going to do that.

@funkychunkymonkey Harmala alkaloids are legal and DMT containing plants can be purchased online. Ayahuasca definitely has immense potential, but so far, it's been more difficult for me to deal with than mushrooms. It's very direct and requires complete surrender.

@Karla By the state of the world, I was mainly referring to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, but also it seems like the US is on the brink of a large economic crash, plus there’s increasing political and climate instability around the world. All these factors combined are making me want to make lots of progress now while things are still stable. I’m a bit skeptical about Kambo. I guess the idea is that physical purging would purify something psychologically, but I’ve also heard that it was more done to eliminate stomach parasites in a jungle environment, which wouldn’t be needed for people today. Sometimes in ceremonies they dose pretty low, you would definitely feel strong effects at a higher dose. I had two previous experiences that went a lot better, they were more of the visionary type of experience that would be expected. This time was just utter chaos.

https://youtu.be/SQQaOMfGsu8 I found this episode of Verkaeke’s series on Socrates to have thought provoking implications for the consciousness work we’re doing here. Leo often speaks about the highest states of consciousness, becoming one with the Absolute/God. Vervaeke illustrates how aiming for the Absolute all at once might be a bit too destabilizing and extreme. The video begins with a nice summary of relevance realization in cognitive science. Basically how the mind needs to focus and reduce its view of reality in very specific ways in order to accomplish tasks and understand the world. But that focus can’t be too narrow, because that would make the mind susceptible to self-deception. So a delicate balance needs to be maintained. The alternative spiritual approach Vervaeke proposes, finite transcendence, involves the successive process of transcending limitations of the mind, to achieve insight, higher consciousness, and more integrated ways of living life. He views God as a universal process that you can participate in, rather than as a state of being. I don’t know if Leo would necessarily disagree with this. Vervaeke might be describing an intermediate process that could eventually lead to the kinds of awakenings that Leo talks about. It did help me understand the potential cause of the chaos and confusion I’ve been experiencing on psychedelics lately. Something like what Vervaeke is describing could be a more balanced and integrated approach than trying to blast myself all at once.

I did some more research, and it seems like the main psychoactive ingredient, muscimol, is safe, but there's other toxic substances in the mushrooms. I guess the main risks I had heard about are the result of ibotenic acid. I'm thinking an extract would be the safest way to consume it. I was looking at tinctures, but it took me a long time to find one that said it was 100% decarboxylated, otherwise there might still be some ibotenic acid left in it.

I’ve heard conflicting things about amanita. It does have anti-cholinergic effects, which can be damaging, but it sounds like the experiences tend to be a lot more positive than other deliriants for some reason. The effects do interest me, but I’m always wary when there’s disagreement over whether something’s safe to consume.

@UnbornTao What are your thoughts on the paradox of “You’re already enlightened” in relation to this?

@Yimpa This sounds a bit like the paradox of “You’re already enlightened.” I understand intellectually that the infinite already exists fully within everything that is finite. We’re not discovering anything that wasn’t already true, of course. But I have a feeling there’s a bit more to it than that, otherwise what is it exactly that we’re trying to awaken to?

So for some reason these entities are insisting that me and her trip together even though we don’t want to. They threatened to keep coming back in her dreams until we agree to. The problem is, me and her aren’t on very good terms right now, and I prefer tripping solo. And even if I did want to, I don’t like the idea of being ordered around by these entities of unknown origin. I think I’m safe from them, as I’ve only had an entity contact once on a high dose of Ayahuasca, while she contacts entities regularly under a wide variety of circumstances. I’m concerned, because I’m not sure how bad this could get, and I probably can’t trip safely until this is resolved. Are there any ways to get these entities to leave us alone? Of course you can find all kinds of spiritual rituals online, but I don’t know how valid any of that is.

@Salvijus She previously thought that these were benevolent entities, but now we’re not sure. She tried calling generally for positive entities to intervene but nothing happened. Entity contacts happen to her regularly under certain conditions, but she isn’t able to initiate the contact. Would doing a prayer work for someone who’s non-religious?

@UnbornTao What I’m imagining and have seen small glimpses of, is becoming one with the Absolute such that I would no longer have a finite form. I’m imagining something immense, chaotic, and unintelligible. That could easily be completely wrong, I’m just extrapolating from the experiences I’ve had so far.

@Squeekytoy Understandable, I usually watch long lectures at double speed. Do you disagree with his first point? About the interrelatedness of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty? The main takeaway for me was later on though. He illustrates well how finely tuned cognitive processes are necessary for making sense of the complexity of reality. The practice he describes for transcending limitations has balance that I was lacking.

@Razard86 But if there was absolutely zero self-deception, wouldn’t that just be Death/The Void? Later in the video, Vervaeke goes on to describe the relationship between knowing and not knowing, how knowledge is dependent upon ignorance, because focus and filtering are required for intelligibility. The main idea being that the finite can still participate in the infinite without dissolving completely.

John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist and in this video he discusses the abilities and limitations of current artificial intelligence models with an impressive level of depth and nuance. He then describes how wisdom and spirituality can be used to guide these systems towards positive outcomes.

Physiologically, psychedelics are very safe compared to almost anything. The main data we have is that people who went hardcore with psychedelics in the 1960s seem to be mostly fine now. The same doesn’t necessarily apply to newer research chemicals though, or to extreme levels of use. I haven’t heard anything specifically relating to serotonin imbalance with psychedelics. If anything, they might improve brain health in that respect, as some people with depression report significant improvement after as little as one experience. In my view, potential psychological effects are the greater concern. After about a dozen trips, I’ve already noticed that my sober mind has been altered slightly in certain ways. Nothing drastic, but the thing is especially with high doses you can’t know what’s going to happen in advance, or how these experiences might change you. Psychedelics have been shown to cause permanent changes in various brain structures. Many of theses are positive, but it’s still important to keep in mind. My attitude towards psychedelics has shifted a bit after a few intense experiences. I now view taking these substances to be a bit more like high stakes gambling, although I do believe that the odds can definitely be in your favor if you approach things properly.

There are many indications that Artificial General Intelligence could only be a few years away, and theoretically Super-intelligence would follow soon after. This could radically change and threaten the world in ways that are difficult to predict. GPT-5 is expected to release in December of this year, with GPT-6 following sometime next year. Both will be huge steps closer to AGI. It occurred to me that this is around the same time that Leo said his Psychedelic Awakening course would release. My concern is that things could be so chaotic in the world around this time that there wouldn’t be enough time or stability for us to implement the teachings. I understand that creating an entire course, especially on such an advanced, original topic, requires a huge amount of time and work. My proposal though, is that if the beginning of the course was ready a few months early, the course could be split into 2 parts, giving us more time to implement the teachings while things are still stable in the world. Of course, there is disagreement on the AI issue. It’s possible that AGI could still be 10 or more years away, in which case, this post is irrelevant. However, I think the risk of this all happening very soon should still be taken seriously. An open letter calling for an immediate pause on all AI research recently got over a thousand expert signatures: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Yes, I’ve experienced non-locality on mushrooms, it’s very strange. Like the location of one object can only be understood relative to another object, but this entire field of awareness has no location. Everything you might think you are has always existed nowhere

@Leo Gura Got it, no worries. This news has just made me take my mortality a lot more seriously. But I’m already planning on making this year my most productive ever with currently available resources. I think the motto of Emperor Augustus is especially relevant at this time: Festina Lente, Hurry Slowly

@Jodistrict I have read Faust. I definitely see that analogy applying to things like stimulants and other more dangerous, addictive drugs. Psychedelics seem a lot safer, though. Most of the trip reports I’ve read so far seem to describe psychedelic entities as having mostly positive intent. By a sacrifice do you mean something like promising to make positive changes in life? I can’t say that I’ve deliberately made a sacrifice like that, although I do go into the experience with humility and respect. That might be worth trying going forward. I don’t feel as though I’ve been drained of power in some way, at least so far. Generally, I’ve gained clarity on things, and expanded my conceptions on what’s possible, but I guess I have no idea what will happen if I continue

@Jodistrict I think that’s important to keep in mind, although I don’t know exactly what people mean by “paying a price”. Do you mean that in the sense of difficult integration work? Certain experiences can be a bit destabilizing for awhile afterward. I’ve only done about a dozen trips so far, maybe I’ve been lucky that things have been mostly positive, although I’ve been careful to not push my doses too high It really does feel like starting out that I’m tapping into a flood of heightened potential. Do you think that there’s a long term price of some kind? Or more so just in the weeks following an intense experience? So far I’m getting the sense that these substances can be overwhelming positive when handled responsibly, but I can’t help questioning if we’re “meant” to know these things

@Richard Purdy I’ve only had two psychedelic dreams so far. Both times, the dreams were very different from any actual substances I’ve tried. So neurologically, it was probably the normal dream pathways essentially emulating psychedelic-like effects. I’m guessing that’s more likely, although I don’t know if this has ever been studied. However, if your dreams have been very similar to the real thing, then it is possible that psychedelic pathways could be triggered during sleep. Repeated use of psychedelics is thought to reinforce certain pathways, leaving them open to being activated in other ways. That’s also a possible explanation for how marijuana can become psychedelic for some people, despite binding to different receptors

My interpretation is that right now our consciousness is essentially playing a game with itself where it’s focusing its intelligence on keeping a particular human body alive. This isn’t a physical body though, I guess you could call it a thought-form. One of the challenges of this game is that the “brain” is energy intensive to keep running, the food required to obtain energy is scarce, and if the brain stops running, the dream ends. Of course with access to infinite intelligence, all challenge would cease to exist, but if our level of consciousness is arbitrarily capped relative to brain complexity, then challenge is maintained as a more complex brain would require too much energy. Therefore, a well adapted person’s abilities and attention are limited mostly to things that either directly or indirectly benefit their survival. Where psychedelics come in, is that plants and fungi are surviving in the same way. Chemical defenses are an effective strategy to avoid being eaten, and altered versions of neurotransmitters are a logical choice, as they will incapacitate animals such as insects or slugs, while being harmless to the plant which does not have neurons. The chemicals of particular interest to us are altered versions of serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin is primarily responsible for maintaining wakefulness, the consistent reality we must survive in during the day. Melatonin induces sleep, a time when, while the body is inactive, our consciousness is more free to exist temporarily in alternate realities (nighttime dreams) that can benefit the mind in waking life. Serotonergic psychedelics, being somewhere in between the two in structure and function, therefore induce what I would call a waking dream state. It combines the energy and clarity of wakefulness with the freedom and mysteriousness of sleep. The result of this is that human limitations on consciousness can be removed, as the serotonin system seems to be central in how the mind constructs its reality. This can be taken to the extreme of completely losing connection to the human form and gaining connection to radically expanded levels of consciousness and intelligence. One thing to consider though is that we didn’t have knowledge of chemistry until very recently. Before then, “psychedelics” as a concept didn’t exist. Instead, these experiences were thought of as coming into contact with a living spirit, whether existing within the plant itself, or in a transcendent realm with the plant being a deliberately placed sacrament. This conception sounds more “spiritual” than describing it as physical chemistry, but I think they’re different ways of describing the same thing. All human understanding is metaphorical, as reality is always more complex than mental models, so both conceptions have their own strengths and weaknesses. The difference between “physical” and “spiritual” is merely a construction of the mind.