Batman

Who is the one who knows he is God during trips? Who/What goes back to the dream? Awakenings on psychedelics are real, but they are only glimpses that occur due to the sudden and drastic alteration/ending of the mind. When the substance effect wears off, the mind re-asserts itself and might even come up with new iterations to preserve the thought based identity. Doubting the authenticity of the psychedelic awakening is one of the ways the mind preserve its status quo. The mind got many tricks "up his sleeve" to prevent awakening, doubt and fear are very common. The only way for you to really know is to go beyond all doubts and fears, and become conscious of YOU, who/what you really are.

@Tahuti You are completely deluded. I hope you won't drag others into your delusions.

Yes, he is correct. I tripped for about 100 times on various substances, including LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, 2CB, DMT, Ayahuasca, whatever. They only provide temporary experiences and glimpses of truth, but they don't shift your consciousness of the truth in a persistent way. This can only be done without substances. You have to get out of the mind prison by your own, without the use of a drug that alters the mind in such a dramatic way. I would even say that I wasted precious time due to my fixation on tripping. You can trip, but if you want real and permanent change in your consciousness of truth, you can't forsake meditation/self-inquiry/koans. Drugs can only take the mind to its source for a short time. They have serious limitations.

Regarding your first question - self inquiry and emotion work. Inquiry takes you back to the pure being, and emotion work will dissolve the energies in the body that "cements" your sense of self.

I think you should inquire why do u seek so much attention, and why do u think other members of the forum should fulfill your endless need for attention. You are masquearading your need for attention under the mask of providing value or quality posts for forum members. You are not authentic with your self, let alone others. This new thread is the epitome of your need for attention, for it screams "Go ahead, shame me". There is no need for that. Your relentless activity in this forum represents lack of a better thing to do in life. Sorry if this hurts, but to me it seems that you are trying to satisfy your needs as a human with your tiresome posts. My suggestion is: stop looking for other's attention and approval. Checkout of the forum for some time. Get some hobbies - participate in some group sport, play a musical instrument, be a foodie, whatever. Stop this downward spiral of conceptual munching, your mind is all over the map. Ground your self with yoga or interaction with others. Do serious self inquiry. But most importantly, listen to your heart. I don't really know u and all of this is just from glancing your forum activity. Ask your self deeply what is going with you and what do u want. Be honest. What are u feeling? Take care.

Whoever thinks is going to get enlightened by ingesting substances, sells himself a bill of goods. Psychedelics alter mind and perception, and awakening is not about that. However, because of the immense power they have on stripping filters, it is pretty easy to taste unfiltered consciousness with them. I would say it is the fastest way to "see" formless nature, because without the perceptual overlay of ego it is simple to recognise that "things" are not as solid and separate as we thought them to be. The only problem is that after the effects wears off, consciousness return to mind identification and to the belief in separation between objects.

Depends what you are contemplating or intending to acheive. If you want intellectual understanding and more precise/nuanced conceptual schemes, than thought is the medium. But when you are going for awakening, than no, it is not about getting a conceptual answer. It is actually the other way around, it is about unraveling all identities (which are conceptual).

I agree, generally I would say that all psychedelics are not magic pills. They are tools that under the right conditions can help in different ways. The healing people are talking about in Ayahuasca ceremonies is no other than Kundalini that goes throught their system and causing them massive emotional release. If they didn't drink enough, it will probably will be a weak kundalini activation. But if you drink enough, this is what happens, which is also the reason a lot of times it is hard to handle such amount of energy in you and people can freak out because the mind lost control of the feelings and emotions that were repressed for a long time. I understand that Kriya is regarded a potent energetic practice that can lead to higher states because of the energy manipulation. And this may be very beneficial for emotion work if the state is brought about by emotional release. But for awakening? I think people here confuse states with awakening. Awakening can happen in many states and circumstances, is Kriya practice the right one for it? I doubt so, because the focus and intention is on doing physical movements.

I never took Kriya Yoga practices, but I sense that it is the same with meditation and other breathing practices - just ways to manipulate the mind. This may help in achieving states, but any state is temporary. Some states may be more conducive for awakening, but there is no guarantee in that. IMO, this is more of a lifestyle thing. The mind is trying to find practices that will make it feel better, which is ok and might be useful - if you feel better and have less mind agitation than there less distraction to awaken. And sure, connecting the mind deeper to the body surely helps. So if this lifestyle promotes your growth and well being, why not? But I would be cautious to believe that yogic practices will produce real awakening. It is a bit like psychedelics, hoping that if we manipulate our inner self we will awaken. Sure, psychedelics can cause lead to glimpses/tastes that only lasts while the substance is effecting us, but when it is over it just becomes another experience for the mind to grasp hold to. If you want to awaken kundalini so much, why bother with all this occult practices? Just go to an Ayahuasca ceremony. It will dissolve your mind in 30-60 minutes and kundalini will rise and push out of your emotional/energetic body all sort of crap that you hold on to. It will be a lot more effective and fast than sitting your anus on your heel and bending forward 1000 times. For real, why bother to spend so much time on breathing and stretching when you can just go and drink ayahuasca? It will be a stronger kundalini awakening than any yogic practice can get you. So, if you want to shape the body and the mind in a yogic fashion? why not, it is probably the best way. But if you want to awaken, I think you should consider self-inquiry.

You don't have to drop all your conditionings, only those that don't serve you anymore or aren't true. I am sure there are many things you learned and are benficial for you and others. You also aren't required to "deconstruct your persona", only to see that you clearly that it isn't who you are. Of course you can not accept your family members never existed, how could you? It would mean that you never existed and does not exist now. But if this is only intellectual for you, it doesn't really matter. When you awaken and see clearly that you never existed as a separate self and that no thing exists because every thing is empty of any selfhood or solidity that the mind creates, you will know that it was always the case. All the intellectual knowledge or views about consciousness or non-duality are discarded. Awakening is only about the truth. Death depends on context - all forms, including life forms dissolve and die eventually. Some regard awakening as the death of the ego, which may be one way do describe it. Craziness just describes a mind that is very unstable or holds thought forms that misrepresent the truth in a fashion that may be unsupportive of life processes.

Start by gradually becoming more and more honest and authentic with an intention to become 100% authentic/honest. Remember, honesty serves the truth, dishonesty serves the ego. You cannot become more concious and less ego-identified by misrepresentation, false pretense, lying, hiding, and all forms of manipulation. Your judgement of others is based on thoughts that you project on them, which also reflect how you feel about your self. If you felt inferior in life, you will project inferiority on others by judging there abilities or appearance. This generates a delusive feeling of being superior to them, which comforts or appease your buried feeling of inferiority. This doesn't solve the core issue, only closes your heart and soothing your feelings for a very short time. In the place you are now, it sounds like psychedelics could show you for a few hours how tainted your perspective with ego hypnosis. MDMA is also great for opening the heart and interacting with others without all those false dispositions we project onto others. IMO psychedelics are not enough if you want deep transformation. This requires a devotion to a process of becoming more and more conscious of our unconcious tendencies and buried emotions and letting them go.

Ashrams and monasteries tend to be too much cultish/new agey/dogmatic system/guru worship. If you want to clean destractions from your mind space or physical space, just do it, don't create more destractions by going to an Ashram or Monastery. How about enlightenment intensives? Or vipassana retreats or other retreats that follow a direct path like inquiry?

This is a pretty sharp explanation that might help you:

It is a common phenomena when you are interested in spiritual stuff that this energetic center will start to change in activity. More areas that are affected are the top of the head (the "Crown" chakra), the throat, the center of the chest, the solar plexus, the lower abdomen and the base of the spine. All those places are correspondent with where the main 7 chakras are located, which also correlate to central nerve plexus and endocrine glands. When spiritual practices / insight / awakening / psychedelics affect the mind, it also has affect on the energetic centers. When you are altering your mind by any way, you may start feel different sensations in those centers. The sensations in the center of the forehead are very common when one begins to come in contact with spiritual experiences/knowledge/etc. This center is related to thought, intuition, perception, which are greatly affected by the mind. When you are deidentifying from thoughts, or deconstruct your identity structure, it is possible to sense even stronger sensations in this center because of the way that thought dominate perception and use of the brain. It is really a fascinating phenomena, but you should not give to much consideration to it. Some seekers tend to stuck on all this chakra stuff and divert from the direct practices to awakening/realization. They start reading tons of books on energy body and chakra maps and manipulations. They begin to practice focusing on the sensations, or look for chakra healing/alignment and do energetic practices like reiki or kundalini activation. This stuff do work because they affect in some way the subtle body, but I see it as a indirect new-agey way of effecting the mind. Why beat around the bush? The chakras/nerve plexus/endocrine glands are affected by the architecture of the mind, so it is best to directly deal with the mind. So my suggestion is to remain curious but not to get to attached to experiencing this stuff. But at the same time I am saying to not pull on it, I suggest also to not push it away. It is totally ok to feel what is going on in those energetic centers. Sometimes even raw emotion can be related to and come from there. Letting it pass through is important in emotion work. But this is usually related to the energetic centers that exist under the head, which are more about survival, emotional relating, manifestation, connection, self expression. The centers in the head are more "spiritual" in the sense that they more revolve truth, thought, identity, perception, wisdom. So sensing where energy is stuck in this centers can hint you on what you should work on in your life, if you want to. When your practice gets very potent, one-pointed or very concentrated on identity structures/scaffoldings/mechanisms/views, it will probably effect all the energetic centers.

How do you know it is "Alien"? Alien to what? Did you take a drug?