BigDogRaven

I thought this was very well done. Sorry if this has been posted before.

Dismissive/Avoidant I have much work to do......

I found this quite eye opening:

^^^^^^^^^^^ This

Lots of heavy stage blue, with orange as well:

For me personally; I find the strength for the discipline comes from the fact that I am unwilling to accept the consequence of NOT doing it. I just can't face the fact that I was too week to 'get up and run'. IDK, maybe a pride thing. I'm sure it's a flaw, but I also somehow gain strength from knowing that most other lack this strength. Somehow makes me feel better. I now feel this is a flaw in me as it means in some way Im thinking I'm better then others who lack this. NOT who I want to be now tho. Another paradox......

There is a part 1 too, but this one is better IMO:

THIS ^^^^^^^ If you get to bed early, and KEEP doing it, you will adjust. This is at least how it was for me.

@PepperBlossoms Hi, in regards to your OP; I will add my 2 cents. This is coming from my life experience. Most on here are of the younger age, I'm 54, so I have few years under my belt. This is a good question, where I see things currently; I tend to try and say NOTHING. In the past I was the guy who always said something. I feel this has not served me well in my life. I have many regrets about these situations. Now I consciously try and shut my mouth. This has been a point of emphasis for me recently. I actually tell myself sometimes ahead of time to STFU (shut the fuck up). My big mouth has gotten ruined many a relationship for me. Granted I have such a long way to go with this personal development, only been at it for a bit over one year. Namaste

@Ryan R Beautiful! I will be bookmarking this post. Lots of helpful insights in your post. Thank you! Sorry I have nothing to add to the OP.

@SamC THANK YOU

@Leo Gura I really appreciate your well said input here, this helps me. Im finding this work very difficult at times too. Im going thru major ego backlash now. After a bit over a year of PD work, this is a set back, and a major test. The other day I wished I never discovered Actualized.org. But I know this is the path I must take.

I understand you are a fan of ART, possibly an artist yourself? Can we see some of your Art? How is your health these days? Can you show us your new house? Congrats on the upcoming milestone!

awesome

@FlowerNote I feel this sometimes....

I use OneNote. I really like it. Some of my categories: ME -travel -Music _goals -Aspirations -values -strengths -weaknesses Words of Wisdom -quotes -core principals -longer quotes Yoga journal Thoughts -journal entries Books Vocabulary Psychedelics Images

Coming up on 1 year now. I was searching Google for info on Karma, one site had Leo's video on Karma. I watched it, was impressed with his style and passion. I decided to check him out further. Down the rabbit hole I went. A life changing channel/site for sure. BTW; I'm 54 and feel like I am starting to wake up a bit from my very selfish life so far.

I agree, good point. It does feel like part of me. Sadly. I have much work to do........

well done

very helpful and insightful trip report, thx for sharing/

I just recently finished this book too. 5/5 no doubt. Very inspirational.

@IJB063 excellent post. Thank you for sharing this.

Here is my trip report on 1.8 g of mushrooms. I discovered Actualized in Nov 2019. So relative newbie. I have been devouring the videos, working on the book list which I purchased, meditating. I felt ready to do this. I am 53 yrs old. I have had maybe 10 other trips in my life with shrooms or LSD or MDMA. However, they have all been recreational and were quite some time ago. Never did it occur to me to use for personal development. Anyway; I tried to take detailed notes, get my thought down. I will copy them here. I am gratful to have found Actualized and Leo's teachings. Here is my report" Today is the day. It's now 12:15. I went to 10am 'secret yoga'. Read and meditated this morning. I feel ready. The mushroom dose is 1.8g of very, very dry shrooms. Im unsure on this dose as they are so dry. Consuming half of what I got from James. The set and setting are great. It's kinda a rainy day. Im not nervous, but lots of anticipation. My intentions with todays trip is; asking myself some deep questions, and hoping for insight. What am I? What is the point of existence? What is the substance of reality as I know it? 12:20-consumed. Went down EZ with a few pistachios. 12:46; just watching a few YT vids, waiting. I feel a bit warm and flush in my face. Inside I feel calm and relaxed. 1:00- feeling it now. Subtle, but coming on. Not sure how long I'll be able to type. Already feels odd. A bit of nausea, not like a sick type, not feeling like tossing cookies. Just feel it in my head too, a bit hazy maybe. I seen the carpet warp, and faces appear in the carpet patterns. Much more to come I think. Judy is here by my side. Im filling her in too. My hands feel a bit tingly. 1:55. Its working. No real hard visuals tho. I feel like I am typing slooooooow. Stomach is fine, not hungry. This is not anything like pot edibles. I feel it in a different area. Started to watch fractals on YT, 3 min in turned it off. It's not what Im here for. Going to close the laptop for now. I feel good. Kinda thinking at this point I could have upped the dose. Too early tho. Im going to go outside and blaze some weed now. 5:00 On the come down now. Can still feel it, but the best part is past. WOW, incredible. What a profound experience. Words are going to be hard to come by in describing this. Not what I was expecting. MUCH better. This took me to places I never imagined, but I now realize were always there. I just couldn't see it. So, I went out back to smoke some weed. I wasn't going to smoke, so I thought, but felt like it was the right thing to do. I have heard on various trip report that smoking weed can cause a bad trip, etc. I wasn't concerned about that. I went outside, and it had recently rained an hour prior. The sky was overcast, temp was about 54F. The first thing I noticed was how green everything was. All the plants looked much more vivid. I smoked qtr of a joint. We have a bird feeder hanging off back fence, close by. I have been filling it every few days for a year or more now. I have been paying attention to the birds a bit more prior to this. At least I thought I was paying attention. Anyway, I added some food to it as I seen there was quite a bit of bird activity. I sat back and observed. I seen SO much I never saw before. Suddenly so many things, everything, seemed somehow connected, I could see and feel what the birds were doing. I could see the detail in what was going on. I could hear the wings and chirps more. I could hear their feet on the ground. It all meant much more then I ever saw. I could see the brilliant, beauty of it all. Everything looked and felt so beautiful. I looked at the budding flowers, deeply. They seemed; infinite. I thought about how if you trace this flower down, down and down, there is NO END. It will never end. It is the same in the other direction. I could see how the trees played into all of it, the sky, the light rain. I could feel it as much more then I normally can see. Like a door or window in my vision opened. Or the lens of a high powered camera zoomed in. But the zoom view was actually how it IS. My ego version of self sees it distorted. IDK, I started to wonder where I fit into this if all I see in nature is connected. Then it hit me that I am it too. I am not separate from it. Even more- I AM IT. Literally, I am ALL of it. It's all the same. I felt like somehow it was……ONE, but acting separate, for the…….IDK, sake of it. Because it IS. IDK. It was incredible tho. Nothing is literally everything and everything is………..just IS. All this did not come to me at once. This was over a couple hours or so. I started contemplating on the stuff I have been reading, watching, etc. Ralston's book about nothing. I just recently finished that. I caught a pretty good glimpse of this. Honestly more then a glimpse. I am reluctant to say it, but I felt like I had a full non-duel experience. I was ready for this trip. I had an idea what was maybe going to happen. Nothing like that at all. I felt like 'this is not a drug'. This perception is actually what it IS. IDK, SO hard to put in words. I know that I am on the right path now, to spirituality. I know there is more I want to see. I can feel it. I wanted to tell people about this, but I realize there is no way to properly describe this. One has to experience it. This was what I now will call a life changing experience. I am putting this down as fresh as possible from the time. I feel right now that in some ways, in many ways, my life will not be the same after this. My perception has permanently (hopefully) been altered for the better. Next time-up the dose! Outdoors is by far the best place to be. Next time pick a beautiful day, and watch the natural world in full splendor. Next day: It's 6:30 am the day after. Now that I am back in 'normalcy', I will try and convey my feelings and memory of this now. I still look at this as incredibly profound. I cant shake the perceptions I had about reality and my world view. I want to figure out what I will do with this new insight. How can I carry this to my everyday life? My firs thought is to stay the course with my recent practices; meditation, self-inquiry, reading, open-mindedness. This will of course help. Plan another psycadelic experience soon. Look into getting LSD. I have enough mushrooms for another trip. I felt like I was very much ready for this trip. It was far better and more insightful them I would have thought. This moved me along the 'path', quickly. Can I retain this? The timing was good too since we are on 'house arrest' for Covid19. The fact that I pondered this for a while, took the proper preparation steps, was all part of it. Setting my intentions, set and setting, were crucial. I tried to steer or plan my trip, however it took me in a different direction. Which was far better then I planned. Contemplating my existence and existence in general during the trip was helpful. I thought about the question of; if a tree falls in forest, and no one around, does it make a sound? I came up with…….not totally sure, BUT possibly there is no tree and no forest without an 'observer'. One other part I thought of was; with how much I saw nature 'alive' and flourishing, I thought sure it will make a sound. So, more looking into this is needed. Any comments? Thank you.

@Vipassana this is seriously impressive. All who are doing this; my deep respect.