Tim R

@Richard Purdy You're fine. You don't need to worry about your head, I promise you there is nothing wrong. Relax

No. Your brother yelling in your ear won't damage anything but maybe your hearing and your good will towards him?

"I've had some really good chats with a few other members so they aren't all bad. That said it is my impression that the vast majority of them are complete fucking imbeciles and those are the ones i'm addressing here. So from me, Rob Adeptus Psychonautica to you Actualized.org membership: I was right, you were wrong, deal with it." Pretty much sums up his whole attitude. This is immature beyond belief.

Oh god I really didn't miss this whole "Adeptus vs Actualized" nonsense (why does he even frame it as if there was any feud between the two?..) Gotta say, the level of self-righteousness in this video is pretty unpleasant to watch... He provides no value for anyone with this video, it's just clickbaiting and drama. How unnecessary. And I thought psychedelics make you more aware of your toxic behavior... But it seems that exceptions confirm the rule.

@RMQualtrough It's about how inclusive your state of consciousness is.

Yes exactly, that's because LSD isn't a tryptamine. But because DMT, Psilocybin and Psilocin are various Tryptamine compounds, they have one (mono) amino-group. Therefore, MAOs can degrade them by cutting off the amino-group, which is obviously inhibited by MAOIs. LSD however is a derivative of lysergic acid which has no amino-group in its structure and is therfore not affected by MAOs or the effect of MAOIs. The commonality between the tryptamine psychedelics and LSD is that they both have and effect on the 5-HT2A-receptors (among others).

It's not about the "drugged state of mind". The question you're asking is essentially "how to know what is true?". And the answer is: you don't know. If you knew how to discern between truth and falsehood, you wouldn't have to. Another form of the question "what is truth?" is "what is?" because by definition, the truth is that which is (the case). Being = Truth

Spirituality doesn't mean to neglect the cultivation of your survival skills. It's not society that causes the problems, it's you and your approach to survival and spirituality. Of course spirituality is "useless" in terms of survival - because spirituality is all about transcending survival. If you don't have a strong foundation of survival skills, there is nothing you can transcend. And then you're miserable because you're left with shitty survival skills and a half-assed spiritual life. If you have no solid survival foundation, you need to work on that. You don't have to abandon spirituality entirely, you can still meditate 2 times a day and contemplate a little bit here and there. But don't attempt to realize God if you don't know how to pay your bills or you won't manage to do either. There is a saying in Russia: "За двумя зайцами погонишься, ни одного не поймаешь." which roughly translates to: "If you chase after two rabbits, you won't catch either one of them". Damn, spiritual bypassing is a serious problem in Western circles of spirituality...

@The0Self @Twega MAO inhibitors don't potentiate the effects of LSD. In fact, they even reduce them. The same can therefore be said about SSRIs which act as MAOI. Always do proper research on psychedelics.

Any ideas? Was it because he was so stuck in his mind and so attached to theorizing? Or what? Surely he must've known about it, he has studied (whatever that meant to him) all kinds of spiritual traditions. But he said they didn't show him what he was looking for, until he found psychedelics. But why is it then that I can't even find a single talk where he speaks of nonduality? And trust me, I've listened to everything...? I know that he wasn't very interested in spirituality as such to begin with, but still - you can't tell me that in 30 years of doing high doses of psychedelics he never experienced oneness/nonduality. I remember in one of his talks he spoke of enlightenment as "an act of rational apprehension"... So yeah. Guess he didn't study spirituality very deeply. Side question for @Leo Gura how much influence did Terence McKenna have on your relationship with psychedelics?

I don't like to be visible to passing people when I meditate. It makes me self-conscious, I can't help it because it's as if you shove it in their faces "oh look I'm doing something special!"... Find yourself a beautiful little spot, somewhere hidden, where only the animals can see you. And then sit there until you don't sit there anymore

@Twega Good man!!?

Yeah because people tend to just increase their dose instead of using Oleamide??

@Twega Nice find, I'm impressed. How did you come up with this idea? I assume you stumbled across this article? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22449/

@RickyFitts Thank you

@levani In contemplation, you don't just intellectually think about a question. They key to contemplation (at least the way I understand and do it) is intuition. Intuition is not really the same as thinking. Intuition is non-conceptual intelligence. And contemplation is the cultivation of a connection to this intelligence, out of which you let answers come to you. This intuitive intelligence is inherently yours - better still, you are this intelligence. But because it is non-conceptual intelligence, the answers will not be conceptual, too. Intuition can't be explicated. Therefore, contemplation is 100% implicit.

First off: no, they're not magic mushrooms. But yes, that's Amanita muscaria. Here in Europe they are extremely abundant, every little kid knows them. Be careful with those: They don't contain Psilocybin or Psilocin. They are hallucinogenic, yes, but people have extremely weird trips on them because they are deliriants. They're not psychedelics. I haven't done them, I don't plan doing them and I don't advise you to do them either. For three reasons: 1) As I said, they are deliriants. Like for example Salvia divinorum or Datura, which are extremely strong and can seriously f*ck you up if you're immature and inexperienced, please keep that in mind. 2) In comparison with Psilocybin mushrooms, they hold little value when it comes to spiritual work (again, because they're deliriants) 3) They're poisonous. The lethality rate is 5%. It's possible to prepare them (I think you can either soak them in milk or heat dry them, or both, I don't remember) so that the poisonous chemicals are made harmless, but still, they contain poison and if I were to choose between a poisonous mushroom and a nontoxic mushrooms, I'll take the latter.

@rnd Please tell me that did not actually happen?

There is no "mechanism". In fact, there is no "how" at all. Consciousness is groundless and so is everything that emerges within it.

I'm gonna say "no", with only one exception: If, then only by chance and as a result of experimenting with psychedelics. He has experimented with psychedelics, (LSD and mushrooms as far as I know) but I don't think he has taken any high doses. I don't see how at the moment he could have a mystical experience without them, his mind is too dense. And I don't mean "dense" in the sense of closed-minded, but overly intellectual. As far as I know he ranks rather high in openness. Maybe he has had glimpses of Truth, but then quickly muddied the waters with all his theorizing. Oh boy? I assume you have seen Leo's video on him? I agree with pretty much everything there, so there's that.. His green shadow is probably the biggest obstacle to his development. See, this is so tragic in a sense because he already has a foot in stage Yellow, which is the only reason we talk about him sometimes on this forum. If he wouldn't have that, he'd be a Canadian Ben Shapiro and that would just be the end of that. And because he performs this split between blue/orange and yellow, he can never go full yellow. And as I said, his mind is rather dense. The video in this thread perfectly shows the way he thinks, which is why I shared it with you. He is a (semi-)religious man who has held lectures (!!!) on God, the Phenomenology of the Divine and other such topics (which I highly recommend btw, some good stuff there) and when he's confronted with "you're God" he just backs off and wants to know "what the implications of this are for you morals". Like wtf man, his reaction just threw me for a loop So this makes me wonder. Is this actually the way he thinks or does he just know that he can't start talking about "I am God" on his Podcast because it's too much for his audience? Or is it both? Because again, I don't know what he has read/heard when doing research on God, but he knows that you can induce a mystical experience with psychedelics. Which is why I believe he has tried to do that. Only he might've experienced/ is experiencing some backlash and now he mostly talks about them in a context where he feels at home.

@Hafiz Just do whatever you'd be doing anyway, but alone. And even if there's people around: realize that you're alone anyway

@BipolarGrowth I say this in the most loving spirit: please be careful not to delude yourself into thinking that you hold the answers. Haven't seen any "I'm enlightened, AMA"-threads in a long time. Almost lost faith in all you unenlightened folks??

@Giulio Bevilacqua I'm glad that you asked because you're confronted with one of the biggest misunderstandings in (Western) spiritual circles. Which is the duality of: effort - effortlessness or you could say doing - non doing People start listening to some spiritual teacher and will soon come across the idea of letting go - which will include letting go of desire, effort, struggle, etc. But this can be so, so easily misunderstood. In Chinese Daoism there is a very important principle called "Wu Wei" (無為), which is often translated as "not-doing". And people who first hear about this think that it literally means to "do nothing". But that's not at all what Wu Wei means. Wu Wei means rather something like "doing just as much as is needed, but in such a way, that all goals are fulfilled". Wu Wei doesn't exclude effort. You can put in a lot of effort in an effortless/surrendering way. Think of it this way: What do you do when you are very skilled at something which requires effort? I for example am very skilled when it comes to riding my bicycle. And when I do so, I am so engrossed in the activity (which does very often include a lot of effort!) that it becomes effortless. I become so one with what I am doing, that everything "I do" is the same thing as "me". I melt into riding my bike. There is no more "me" who forces the pedals to move, there is just pedaling. And that's Wu Wei. in the West, we call it "flow". You see, you don't exactly have to "balance" effort and surrender, because they aren't really any different from each other. But for you to understand this, you need to enter a state of flow (which I'm sure you already have at some point in you life). Because then, there is no more forcing, even though what you're doing may be very difficult or hard. It's easy to enter the flow state if, in the first place, you like what you're doing. Otherwise you will obviously have to force yourself and then it's very difficult to be in Wu Wei. So, in conclusion: surrender doesn't mean passivity. It doesn't mean to surrender activity itself. It means to surrender yourself into activity.

@Hulk Consciousness is it.

Ah yes. But you know just as well as me that there is actually nothing positive about the sensation. If there's nothing positive or negative about it, if it's not even neutral - then what? Still Dukkha?