Jodistrict

This is why most people have to first go through intense suffering before they get the desire to awaken.

They are openly used in ceremonies in Mexico – mushrooms, ayahuasca, bufo alvarius. Countries in Latin America have indigenous populations that use these medicines so they are part of the culture.

The traditional religions actually make a lot of sense. You can pray to Allah 5 times a day and still have plenty of time to build your life. The unfortunate alternative is to confuse left brain activity stimulated by endless reading with spirituality.

If you are on a meditation retreat, the best thing you can do is follow the instructions.

It’s unethical to lie. Giving false promises would be an example of a lie. But, I believe it is also unethical to be dishonest. You can be dishonest by not saying anything and leading someone on without correcting their misunderstanding. Having someone give you love and then withdraw it creates an intense state of suffering and betrayal and makes the world that much meaner. Also, false gurus do the same thing to manipulate people – love bomb and then withdraw affection to control behavior. It is cruel and evil. I actually prefer strong women who are street smart and don’t fall for this. They tend to be very positive about men and don’t have the traumas that the next man has to deal with.

The Osho organization is still going and has a website. I took two of their online seminars and they were worth it. The people seemed happy and intelligent. So his organization seems to have survived his death and isn’t culty.

Shinzen Young gives an explanation in his book: “The Science of Enlightenment”, where he roughly says that the unconscious mind with its history and traumas is what separates our present consciousness from source. To get from surface consciousness to source we travel through the unconscious. The most direct path to source is a straight line. But our traumas can make us go sideways, so that we may believe we have arrived at source but we are only going sideways in circles. I refer you to Shinzen’s book for the correct explanation. I recently had a profound mushroom journey, so my previous beliefs are all up for review. The mushrooms took me directly to God consciousness without going into the past.

In my opinion there should be a rule in the Forum rules on what talk is allowed with regards to suicide. I would advocate banning all suicide talk. But, certainly using spiritual teachings to argue that suicide is reasonable or valid shouldn’t be allowed. In all cases, they are misinterpreting spiritual teaching meant for advanced practitioners and are 100% wrong. The purpose is to wake up and live a happy life, not to kill yourself.

I did a day Wim Hof seminar and have been taking cold showers every day. But we were instructed not to put the head under cold water, just the body. Putting the head under cold water is an extra shock and not necessary.

One change I suggest is that suicide talk be banned from the forum. Posters contemplating suicide or writing suicide fantasies should be immediately shut down and referred to professional help. An Internet forum can’t handle these issues, but takes on the responsibility if a platform is being provided for their expression.

I recently tried to explain enlightenment to someone who has a PHD in clinical psychology. His mind was so full of useless knowledge that it was a futile effort. There are very few people who understand the concept even in Buddhist countries. I took a course from a Buddhist monk years ago who told us that at any one time there were only 2 or 3 enlightened people in the world and everyone else had to just keep reincarnating and working on it. That discouraged me from even trying.

I prefer ayahausca which lasts from 5 to 6 hours, giving time for downloads, and good to use with music. 5MEO is too short and intense. I recently tried Yopo which was strong but brought up dark energies.

Too much left brain mind chatter can be demoralizing and lead to massive confusion. It is better to meditate and quiet the mind.

Isn’t Spiral Dynamics what the postmodernists call a grand narrative? It has great explanatory power, but that is part of the problem. History is neatly categorized into slots conveniently ignoring complexity and contradictions. I tend to favor the Hindu model, that the world starts in a high state of spirituality and loses the knowledge through time. Deevolution, not evolution. As for stage blue, I have known people from the World War II generation, which was stage blue, and in my opinion, they were more advanced because they were plunged into deeper levels of suffering and needed to develop character to respond. The fundamentalists beliefs are Bhakti yoga – they keep the left brain occupied so the right brain can develop. Stage orange is naturally seen as obviously superior to those who value the comforts of materialism, but the plunge into materialism is the deevolution.

This indeed is the most conspicuous feature of the modern period: need for ceaseless agitation, for unending change, and for ever-increasing speed, matching the speed with which events themselves succeed one another. It is dispersion in multiplicity, and in a multiplicity that is no longer unified by consciousness of any higher principle; in daily life, as in scientific ideas, it is analysis driven to an extreme, endless subdivision, a veritable disintegration of human activity in all the orders in which this can still be exercised; hence the inaptitude for synthesis and the incapacity for any sort of concentration that is so striking in the eyes of Easterners. -- René Guénon "The Crisis of the Modern World"

In one part of the interview, the researcher mentioned that they carefully screen the volunteers to keep out people with severe mental disorders. In addition they have an environment where any medical care is readily available if necessary. Despite that, about 30% of the participants went through a period of highly negative experience. The Shaman in Mexico who conducts the ayahuasca ceremonies I attended doesn't turn anyone away who seeks help. I have never seen anyone freak out in his ceremonies and everything is peaceful. He has a special gift to hold space, and I have had some people tell me that he knew what they were experiencing. The Americans didn’t know about mushrooms until Gordon Watson wrote about his experience with an Oaxacan healer in the 1950s. The interview doesn’t mention anything about the value of ceremonies or healing done in groups. It views psychedelics as drugs and not medicine or plant healers. Nor do they seem interested in consulting people in other cultures whose experience and knowledge far exceeds their own (he mentioned he has been doing research for only 20 years). The West doesn’t consider anything legitimate unless their Shamen in white coats bless it with their statistical voodoo. The good news is that JP seems to grasp the importance of psychedelic medicines, and introducing them into the culture that is fucking up the world can’t be a bad thing.

“They found that as they increased the clock’s accuracy, the heat produced in the system grew, increasing the entropy of its surroundings by jostling nearby particles. “If a clock is more accurate, you are paying for it somehow,” says Ares.” What the article is suggesting is that for a clock to be more accurate, he has to be more ordered, which means the clock as a system would have less entropy. But since the total entropy, clock plus surrounding, must increase by the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of the surrounding will increase. This happens by the clock mechanism generating more heat. This is not a surprising result. There are other systems that become more orderly and hence decrease in entropy, consequently generating heat, such as stretching a rubber band or paramagnetism.

No, I experimented with different dosages, all with the same result. The point is that it is a different substance.

Well, several concerns. First, they could take the chemicals they find useful and then keep the real psychedelics illegal. I am also thinking of things like the chocolates that have THC and CBD and is called cannabis. The reductionists assume that cannabis can be embodied by two chemicals and they throw everything else away. When I have used these edibles, it has resulted in paranoid states and nausea, nothing like the effect of a naturally grown plant. It is actually a different substance but they still label it cannabis. Similarly, a mushroom is not just psilocybin, it is a complex living being. The substances could be reduced and altered with the same name used, and growing the real thing made illegal. I don’t trust how stage orange is going to package psychedelics in order to maximize profits, not awareness. They can transform the products and use the same name for a totally different substance. The eggheads see what they call “hallucinations” as just an annoying side effect. In their lower state of consciousness, they have no belief in awakening and view the idea with contempt. To get the "hallucinations" you will need to be monitored by "experts" who have a presumably been tested with a multiple choice test and given a piece of paper to put on their wall, which will make their fees high (which is good for stage orange). Also, why would the ruling elite want the world to be awakened? That is dangerous for them. LSD was quickly made illegal. Richard Nixon complained that his soldiers didn’t want to fight in Vietnam because of LSD. Richard Nixon was right. The indigenous people don’t see chemicals, they see plant teachers – separate beings worthy of respect and composed of incredible complexity.

The one thing I liked about “The Outer Limits” series is that the aliens could be evil. But those were the days when people were more in touch with reality and knew there was a dark side.

It is important to keep in mind that ¨UFO¨ means ¨unidentified flying object¨. That means the analysts couldn’t fit the image into one of their know categories. It does not imply that the image is an alien spacecraft.

I was attending a Unitarian church until the Covid lockdowns when they closed. The services were all on social justice and nothing on spirituality or inner work. But they did have a meditation group that met each week.

The video below has an interesting discussion of psychedelics by Culadasa. He frequently took psychedelics in the 60s. So he is a meditation teacher who is speaking from his own experience with psychedelics. He also mentions the recent Ayahuasca trend. His position seems to be that if you follow Buddhist meditation with the proper instructions, you will reach a state of awakening more quickly with meditation than with psychedelics. The effects of psychedelics are all over the map, whereas the Buddha provided a systematic method. Culadasa’s book “The Illuminated Mind” is the only meditation book out there that gives an efficient meditation path with 10 stages, and clearly defined goals and milestones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E48ByR0Xt6U

The companies producing these vaccines are free from legal liability. That means the people who are sensitive to the vaccine and suffer long term damage to their bodies are expected to bear the full cost of the benefits to society. Given this situation, everyone has to weigh the risks and benefits for their own particular body and make a decision. Let everyone decide and respect their decision as you would want them to respect yours. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html

Tell them that you are going to get it and don’t argue. It is your body, your choice. If you keep it a secret, it will come back to bite you. You don’t need to argue and defend yourself.