tlowedajuicemayne

It just takes time and dedication. You're not going to be able to sit down and enter a peak LSD state in a weekend. You're going to need years of daily spiritual practice to quiet your mind enough to perceive these states and ground yourself in them. There may be a way to do it without sitting down and meditating per se, but not a way that doesn't involve devotion.

I feel like a guide needs to exist that points out the key differences between psychotic breaks, schizophrenic episodes, serious mental illness issues, etc...vs awakening experiences. Maybe I'm wrong but I read some stuff on this forum sometimes and i immediately think to myself- this person thinks he's awakening but he really needs to go see a professional because he's having serious psychotic issues and is having delusions about those breaks. Could you make a video about this, or maybe comment on it?

Anything by Hazy.

if you want to drop out of high school, fine- go get your GED. You don't have to go through all of highschool, if you're smart enough to take the GED test and pass it, you should do it and get on with your life.

until you have direct experience of 'not existing', discard your thoughts and opinions about it and handle the things in life that you need to handle dude. If something needs to be fixed, fix it.

The best way to be direct and articulate (In my experience) is to speak from your genuine direct experience. For example- if you learned an instrument and someone asked you how you learned it, you would have no issue being clear and direct in your answer about that. This is because you are pulling from your direct experience of a thing, and not your thoughts about a thing. When you try to speak about something of which you have no direct experience, it tends to come out in an insecure way.

Speaking from my own experience here. I spent years eating up all the knowledge I could find on spirituality, psychology, listening to long form talks, etc. For a while it fulfilled me in some way but eventually I started to hunger for something deeper. Get in touch with life, thats the deepest way to learn!

it's such a dumb example. If you were in Detroit you wouldn't be here asking questions. @Leo Gura lol my man leo woke up and chose violence hahahahahah

Paying 600 bucks to do what you can do for free is foolish. You can sit down on your cushion, right now, and begin practicing for free. Also, there is no such thing as an 'enlightenment intensive'. There are meditation retreats and psychedelic retreats but 'enlightenment intensive' is a completely made up term. Spirituality, like religion, has parts of it that prey on the naïve and what you're talking about here is one of those places. You do not need to spend 600 bucks for a 3 day online meditation retreat. Enlightenment is not something that is going to happen in 3 days, or 3 weeks, or even 3 lifetimes for some people. The best thing you can do at this point is find a zen teacher that is close to you (even if its a long drive), who is a part of a proven zen lineage and go to this Teacher and ask for practice instruction. It is worth a long drive, it is a worth a short flight if necessary. The early days of your practice are critical because if you do not find good information in these times, you will spend years going around in circles chasing your tail. Goodluck

Not trying to be rude here, but repeating experiences you know don't work for you and are negative doesn't make any sense. Especially if you're lost in despair and depression like you say you are. I can't tell you what to do here but if you are truly is a state of constant despair, it may be time to sit down and really take an audit of your life. Your diet, your routines, your friends, your thought patterns, etc. Odds are, if you're willing to go get another tarot reading even though you've had profoundly negative experiences in the past with tarot, you're probably doing this in other areas of your life too. Returning again and again to the very demons that torture you. Really sit down and get specific about the things you KNOW perpetuate this state of despair and stop returning to those things in your life. Take a stand and cut them off completely. I would recommend having a therapist walk through this process with you. Therapy can really help if you're truly open to letting yourself be helped. Anyways, goodluck!

I don't know. I don't think that its skillful to turn to internet forums for things like this. There's too much mental illness disguised as spirituality here if I'm honest. When you say 'lose control' what do you mean by this exactly? Also, when you say that you had a spontaneous awakening, what do you mean by this? Given what you've written here- It might be time to go and visit an experienced Teacher who is familiar with the territory of what you're going through. This way you can get some guidance on what to do next, or if these experiences are spiritual in nature at all. It could be possible that you're experiencing mental illness of some sort which could be causing this. I'm no expert but I can say for sure that before you continue going down the road you're going down- you might want to go out of your way to be 1000% sure that what you're experiencing is in fact what your ego thinks its experiencing and not some sort of psychotic break. Like I mentioned earlier, there is a ton of mental illness disguised as spiritualty here on Actualized.org, and many other forums. Taking spiritual advice from anyone online is gambling with your mental health and your sanity. Go and see someone who has traversed this territory, and maybe put a stop to all spiritual practices that aren't basic breath practices or mindfulness practices until you've visited such a teacher who can determine whether or not what you're experiencing is in fact kundalini and not some sort of psychotic or other mental issue.

One of the problems I had early on in my spiritual path was finding a Teacher. Use this to weed out the insincere teachers from the ideal ones- 'You will know when you've found a ideal Teacher because the Ideal Teacher gets no pleasure out of you following his Teachings or not. This is because the ideal Teacher gets all of his pleasure out of following his own Teachings.'

Not trying to be a dick but maybe you should try it with a therapist first. Trying to work through your shadow parts all by yourself and under the influence of something else just seems rather naïve to me. Don't under estimate the reality of your shadow and don't take this process for granted by merely jumping in without a parachute. Once you bring the light of consciousness to something within yourself, you can't merely turn it off again and rest. You have to go all the way through it and integrate it. Don't assume that everything in the shadows is there arbitrarily, its in the dark for a reason. Go see a professional who can help you do this work in a healthy way and once you get the gist, then maybe do it own you own. Sober.

@Leo Gura that sounds great and I would totally do that...if I had any idea what you meant by it at all.

I can't say whether it was awakening or not, only you could know that. What I can say for sure is that whatever it was, it has left you deeply confused. You could spend a lifetime trying to understand your past but you'd never get to the bottom of it truly, because it is gone. What is here right now on the other hand, can be investigated by you to no end and you can get to the bottom of it! I can't tell you what to do but perhaps it would be more fruitful to investigate the latter.

@TruthSoldier IME Practice is not about becoming like stone. It is not about achieving stillness and remaining in it or becoming non-reactive or becoming distinguishable from any other human being. Good Practice is dynamic and responsive, it is not stiff and lifeless. If your practice is getting stiff and lifeless, then you may want to take a break and try not actively practicing for a while etc. See how your practice holds up when you aren't sitting. Thats what helped me atleast. Take some time and go enjoy the world, get back in touch with your body and your social skills. Enlightenment will be there for you when you're ready. Until then, take it easy

Man I can 100% relate to you on this. I hope you don't mind if I give you some advice I wish someone would have gave me when I was going though this kind of thing. This sounds a bit like you're spiritually bypassing. Meaning that there are large areas in your life that you are under-developed in and you're avoiding facing them by diving into some existential quest. I 100% could be wrong here but I'm just giving my face value assessment after reading your article. I would recommend taking a break from what you think is spirituality and focus on dominating short term practical goals as well as beginning to see a therapist who can help you uncover some of these areas in your life you're not willing to face. The numbness and the deidentification, as well as the anxiety is probably emerging as an effect of your bypassing. This tends to happen when we reject or ignore our true desires, intentions, feelings, etc. Anxiety, depersonalization, depression etc. all emerge because we have dissociated from our bodies. This is quite common for spiritual practitioners to do because a lot of us get into spirituality as a means to 'escape'. But the truth is that there is no escape man. Reality is in your face and it isn't going anywhere. If you think that what you are going through is some kind of awakening, this is NOT true and you should discard any ideas like this because thoughts like this only perpetuate your current condition. Also acknowledge, then ignore any thoughts similar to the ones you listed above- I feel so disconnected from myself, I am numb and can't feel emotions, etc...all of these thoughts are lies and only serve to perpetuate and aggravate this unpleasant situation you find yourself in. So yeah, short term practical goals- start dominating those. Start running towards those problems. This will give you your power back. Stop the existential quest and focus on fixing your life. Find work, get out of your parents place, get a girlfriend, make friends, etc. But don't continue to go down this existential rabbit hole until you're at a place in your life where you've developed a strong and healthy ego, you've exhausted your worldly desires, and you have a true desire to learn the Truth. Otherwise you'll spend years going round and round in circles. Hope this helps!

I put a tab and a half of blotter under my tongue and waited. I sat on my zazen cushion facing the wall with my eyes lowered, breathing deeply. I felt shaky, as if energy was surging through me that would let me sit still comfortably. The come up hadn't even begun yet but the anxiety was already high. A tab and a half of this particular batch of LSD was the most I'd ever done, and on top of that these tabs were the strongest I'd ever faced. The come up came on strong and swift. I found myself getting higher and higher. Each level higher bringing about its own fear. Each time I would break through into a higher level of consciousness, I would think to myself 'there's nothing higher than this' and it was only then that it would dawn on me that I was breaking through to yet an even higher dimension. I eventually got off of my meditation cushion and sat down on my bed. It was early afternoon. I quickly glanced out the window to try and ground myself but I couldn't ground myself in physical reality. A revolution was taking place within me, The LSD wasn't about the let me ignore it. I tried to play music to keep me calm but any form of music felt distasteful so I opted out of music. My heart raced, and raced, the fear got more and more intense. I shifted my position to a seated position where my back was leaning against the wall and my feet extended in front of me. I was facing the window and I looked out at the tree's and I noticed that they were no longer tree's. The leaves had taken the shape of geometric patterns that extended deeply into my visual field. I felt fear because I realized that reality was now radically different than it had ever been but I put the fear out of my mind pretty quickly by surrendering as deeply as I could to the experience that was unfolding before my eyes. An energy rushed through my body, like a rapidly flowing river. The river flowed through all of the objects in the room and then to the center of the universe. As the current got stronger, I began to feel a slight pull at my ego. Stronger and stronger it pulled at my ego until I finally let it go. It was so uncomfortable at first to feel my sense of self be pulled away and then tossed into oblivion. It had happened to me before in other psychedelic experiences but it’s a feeling I don't think I'll ever get used to. Anyhow, I realized that I existed without any sense of identity or self. I sat there on my bed, totally nobody. The revolution going full speed within me capturing the majority of my attention. What was the revolution? I couldn't tell, it was too much for my mind to comprehend. As the current of the river got even stronger, I suddenly became one with it. Like a small bubble merging into a larger bubble. I flowed (as the cosmic river) through all the objects in my room and into my cat which was sitting on the window sill. I flowed into my cats tail and waved it. As the revolution within me was dying down in intensity, I began to realize that I was reaching the peak of the experience. I got off my bed and walked downstairs to sit on the couch. The TV was on but I was too preoccupied with my inner state to even notice the outside world very much. I sat on the couch looking at nothing really. My full attention wrapped up in my deep inner state. I felt myself begin to approach madness as I became less and less responsive to the outside world. I was leaving the outside behind entirely and diving deeply within myself. I no longer heard sounds in the room or outside, no longer smelled the air, or felt my body temperature, etc. I let go completely into the beyond. As the last parts of my outside attention began to slip away a feeling that I might never come back washed over me, but I didn't fear it very much. I simply let go into the beyond. My thoughts became more and more irrelevant as I went deeper into my mind. My intellect became like a mosquito. Landing on different parts of the experience trying to suck out any meaning, philosophy, wisdom that it could take back with it into the egoic mind. I was so conscious however that I didn't care that it operated in this way. Large portions of my mind which (I realized) are normally shrouded in darkness or unconsciousness, had now become fully conscious. Where normally the intellect would take up quite a bit of conscious real estate, it was no longer large enough to even capture 1% of my full attention. I was deep in my own mind and with that depth came a great compassion for all life. I saw the landscape of my mind like the stars speckled across the night sky. The darkness of space being the unconscious parts of my mind, and the little specks of light were the conscious sides of my mind. As I went deeper into my mind, there was less and less dark space and more and more light. I began to approach schizophrenia. I saw it coming as I let go into my mind more and more. My conscious attention panicked and then rushed back to see what my body was doing in the physical world. It was like swimming to the top of the pool to make sure the waves were still okay. I immediately realized the futility of such a task. My body was sitting there, starring at the wall to my left, hands in my lap. The TV was on, the AC was running, the house was quiet. I felt the tug to turn inward pull my attention back away from my body and deep into my mind again. I felt myself entering schizophrenia yet again but I didn’t try to stop it this time. The part of my mind which gave things meaning was now under my full conscious control. I was ascribing the deepest of meaning to everything in my experience, even the smallest things were imbued with cosmic levels of meaning and purpose. There was no part of my experience 'inner or outer' that I wasn't consciously making blissful. I gave everything so much depth and meaning that I could hardly handle the beauty I'd made. I felt like a grape that was so ripe it could pop at any moment, releasing the sweetest of juices. The deeper I went into the schizophrenia the more images of my family discovering me starring absent mindedly at the wall began to play in my mind. Visions of my family crying at my bedside as I was completely unresponsive played in my mind. For a moment I grieved the loss of my normal self but just as I began to feel too sad I dropped all human emotions and became something cosmic. Something impersonal. I was now so deep in my mind that I was no longer aware of physical reality, sounds, smells, taste, touch. I was no longer even aware of emotions, or thoughts either. I found myself in the center of the universe as the center of the universe. I was no longer a human being at this point. I no longer cared whether or not I ever came back to my senses. The feeling of cosmic bliss was so deep that it fulfilled me completely. If I had died in this very spot, I would have been okay with that. Nothing mattered at all. I saw that there were no mistakes in the universe, no evil. I nonchalantly witnessed the beginning of man kind. Millions of human beings sitting cross legged on the ground. All of the human beings, animals, and insects serving no other purpose than to be sensors from which I observe myself from within myself (as the universal). I witnessed the first human hug, the first dance, the first song, the first death and murder. All of this pleased me to no end. I wasn't to keen on watching human history long however, or even cosmic history. I knew everything that existed in the cosmos, nothing was a surprise to me. One thing captured my attention more than anything else though- The fact that I was aware. I couldn't stop marveling at the fact that I was aware. Because I was aware, I generated nothing but Love. This was the most obvious thing to do. I generated love, love, love as the universe itself. I didn't spend long in this schizophrenic state, I felt my ordinary consciousness begin to come back as the parts of my mind which were now well lit began to go dark again. I felt my emotions start to come back, then my thoughts, then my visual field came back online, then my smell, taste, touch, and body consciousness. I shifted myself in my chair to appear more normal in case anyone walked in and saw me. I realized then that my ego had also began to resurface. I thought to myself- ''so that's what schizophrenia is….wow. I do not fear that.'' I got up from the couch and walked over to the small bathroom on the far left corner of the living room. As I walked on the carpet I realized that the carpet was bearing the weight of my body. I saw that the carpet was conscious and was feeling me walk across it. I tried to walk gently and calmly as not to cause it any unnecessary suffering. I then noticed that all the inanimate objects around me were fully conscious just like I was. Inside of each thing was a deep inner experience. I flicked the light switch with great care, I used the bathroom with great care, and closed the door without slamming it. Everything had intense cosmic meaning. Meaning was shining brightly from every single being in the room. I was no longer seeing the living room as the living room, I was seeing it as Living Eternity. I went into the kitchen and saw an orange on the counter. I picked it up and looked at it closely. I realized that what I normally referred to as 'the peel' was actually not a 'peel', it was skin. The same kind of skin that I have on my body and you on yours. I looked at a banana and saw the same thing. These were living beings who could feel. I thought of them as 'fruit' as a means to separate myself from them so that I could brutalize them without moral consequence within myself. I thought to myself- so then what do I eat? My intuition responded to my intellect immediately. I realized that eating these beings was necessary when it was in the service of ending suffering (hunger). I felt the floor feel the pain of my standing on it. I said to it- "why don't you move if you are in pain?" My intuition immediately responded- "Because I Love you." I was crushed by that response. I walked across the floor as gently as I could. My cat ran down the stairs and walked into the kitchen with me, carefully stepping across the floor as gracefully as it could. My cat rubbed against my leg to greet me and I saw through the delusion that there was a 'self' in my cat at all. All of my ideas of a relationship between my cat, our history, the ideas that my cat loves me, etc. was total delusion. I saw my cat as if it were a total stranger to me. I felt disgusted by it, and I pitied the cat. I saw that it had no spiritual depth. Its life was empty of all spirit, of all depth. It was purely a bodily existence. I do not believe that I ever got over this realization. Once I had seen that in my cat, I could not un-see it. Note- I did not use it as an excuse to neglect my cat, instead I saw it as an opportunity to treat my cat better. Since its existence was purely bodily, I could easily bring it joy and comfort with things like catnip, quality canned wet foods, keeping the litter box clean, water fountain clean, playing more often, etc. So I took up the responsibility to do these things and carried them out until his death a little over a year later. Beyond this point nothing remarkable took place. There were a few things which I walked away with that I didn't get to mention earlier. For starters, in the bathroom I looked in the mirror and smiled at myself. I saw my teeth were rotted and brown. I was shocked by this. A Jamaican woman's voice said to me loud and clear- 'You eat dead things (meat) and you wonder why you're rotting?' I left the bathroom with a strong conviction to become a vegetarian. As the trip came to a close I had a vision of myself sitting on a zazen cushion in a zendo. The vision had great emotional depth. I felt a strong conviction to devote my life to becoming a monastic. Two weeks later I packed all my things and moved to a zen center. I have lived here for 2 years currently. End.

@Breakingthewall No I'm not schizophrenic but LSD is a schizotoxin or atleast that's what they used to be called. Psychologists used to use LSD to have schizophrenic experiences so that they could relate to their clients better. Fascinating stuff but no, definitely not schizophrenic. lol. As far as going deeper is concerned, probably. idk. I'm taking a break from LSD as I find it deludes me quite alot and I have to spend like a year undoing all the delusion caused by these experiences. Ima stick to DMT from here onward, or 5meo If I can get my hands on it.

@AMTO Yes actually, I've thought about this quite a bit over the years. In my opinion, All beings seem to be totally empty of any True person. We are all bodies walking around with nothing in them.

wow this was awesome thanks for sharing!

my guy, if you wanna know what death is you're gonna need alot more than 1.5 gs! Good on ya tho for pacing yourself!

@Leo Gura Yeah, I think you're right. I certainly don't realize myself as God in my day to day consciousness. If I'm honest though, i just want to know what the Truth is. God, no God, I don't really care. I just want to know what the hell is going on and why the hell I can feel it!

@How to be wise I really don't think I can explain the cat thing in a way that would make perfect sense tbh. It was mostly a direct emotional realization, thoughts about it don't really do it justice. If I were to try to put it clearly tho- I would say that I just saw that there was no 'person' inside the cat. It was just a body with nothing in it. We had no history together, my cat appeared to be a wild animal I'd captured and tamed. It had no allegiance to me. Should I open the door, it would leave and never return. Ultimately I attribute this whole section of the trip to delusion, because it no one can really know for certain what the experience of another being is. That includes the oranges. There is something about schizophrenia which makes you gives random things deep meaning and I think that was happening in this particular instance. ps- I hope you don't go around killing cats. to your other question- In the past two years I've done a bunch of meditation and gone on a ton of sesshin (meditation) retreats. I'm still working with my Teacher on koan practice currently. I've had some oneness experiences on meditation retreats, but nah...nothing like LSD. Psychedelics and 'natural' spiritual experiences are two completely different things (atleast according to my own experience). I recall thinking after I had my first spiritual opening that psychedelics were a knock off version of what I had experienced. That was later disproven when I had God realization on an LSD trip a few months later. So i guess that's a long way of say 'no'. I do not reach LSD like states in my meditation, but i am waaaay more open and developed than I was before I moved here.

I only had access to DMT for a short while before I started smoking it casually at low doses. The feeling of being pulled out of my body was terrifying but fascinating and wonderfully addictive to me. It was only when I began putting down my nightly joint and picking up the e-mesh because 'weed just wasn't deep enough' that I started realizing the abuse potential of casual DMT smoking. I had the suspicion that it could lead to hard drugs and so I gave away my stash and I just stick with taking DMT when I see my psychonaut friends.