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@non_nothing you can keep insisting that you don't exist, but if that was true then you wouldn't feel the need to say it. In my experience: I am. But there's no distinction between I am and being and non-being. At least that's what my thoughts tell me

What keeps you distracted? Do you know what you are? Do you know how this awareness works or where is it coming from? What is more important or more interesting than figuring out who you are? Deep down everybody wants peace, joy, love, excitement, satisfaction and beauty. Everybody wants to be whole. Is there any way to truly get these "things" from the outside world?

The highest form of meditation is described as "being yourself" or simply "being". But it depends on your level of consciousness what it means to you to be. The higher you get the meaning of being gets deeper and deeper. For me right now being myself means being every experience and the awareness of it. For you it might mean a different thing. But note that just because it's the highest form of meditation it doesn't mean that it's the most useful for you right now. If you want to find the the most useful meditation then you can experiment with several of them, or you can try out the Finders Course. It costs a bit, but they claim to have high success rates. Or you can try the Trinfinity Academy for free. Here's a topic about it:

Do you have emotions? Or are you just aware of them? If you don't have emotions, then why are they a problem? When you're watching a sad movie, do you feel like you have to stop the movie to work through your emotions? Probably not because the events in the move are not happening to you. Do you think that you're living your life and it's happening to you? It's okay to have emotions and if you have time feel free to fully focus on them. Just don't make a problem out of them. If you have a solution for the cause of your emotions then use your emotions as the energy to solve the cause of your negative emotions. If you don't have a solution for the causes then use your emotions as a spiritual practice. Just sit with them. Don't focus on the story of your emotions, but focus on the awareness of the emotions. If your emotions are too strong then let them destroy you. Die to your emotions, but keep on breathing. That's how masters are born.

I get similar chills on psychedelics, but I don't know what it is

Yeah, welcome back How did it feel physically? On mushrooms and lsd I always feel a pressure in my head. The only reason why I don't take higher doses is because I'm concerned that I might break something up there (physically)

Life is a spiritual practice described as: "Whatever happens, just keep on breathing"

I loved this course. It kinda prepared me for psychedelics

@Sven you can read this post from hundreds of kilometers from here, on a device that converts radiowaves into digital information, and converts digital information into human-readable characters and renders it onto a surface made of light emitters which are so tiny that they're almost invisible to the human eye. This device can fit into your pocket and does all this wonder without any significant consequences. Isn't it too good to be true? Modafinil is just another piece of technology. It doesn't have mindblowing effects, it just gives the brain a bit of energy. Is it really too good to be true in 2018? If someone would read these thoughts from the paradigm of "everything has a price" then for them what I just said would appear as wishful thinking. If a mind believes that "everything has a price" then that mind will find a way to pay the price. My attitude is a bit different. From my perspective everything serves me as I serve everything. And as I noticed, modafinil serves me well.

First, I would like to thank you, Leo, for telling us about modafinil! Thanks for doing all this research and sharing the most useful results with us. Modafinil is really an amazing substance. I cannot talk about the longterm effects because yesterday was the first time I tried it, but it's already motivating me to write about it. (Yes, I'm on it right now ) So, yesterday I woke up at 6:20, I popped half of a 200mg pill and I started to do my morning stuff. Half an hour passed and I felt motivated (for the first time in weeks) to exercise, so I did some pushups. After the pushups, I felt energetic but still meditative, so I put on my meditation sounds (Holosync) and I started to meditate. This was nothing like any of my meditation sessions these days. I had almost no monkey-mind, I could focus on the sounds, then on the awareness of the sounds, then on the act of listening where the sounds and the listener become one. And all this was so effortless, I just followed the curiosity of the awareness. After an hour of meditation, I looked out the window. It was a sunny day, but the colors were even brighter than usual. I definitely noticed the effects in my visual field. Then I went to work. I'm a programmer, so I need some kind of brain boost every day, sometimes it's coffee, other times it's black tea. But yesterday the modafinil was perfectly enough. Coding was effortless. It's not like I didn't get any hard tasks, but when I was working on them I could focus my attention effortlessly. Talking with colleagues about technical stuff was also effortless. Everything was effortless and enjoyable. Throughout the day I felt like my body was lighter, my skin felt softer and I felt a slight warmth inside my whole body. My mood was also lighter than usual. I wasn't euphoric like on mdma, but I was calm and accepting, I had space in me for every experience to happen. So, as Leo recommended, I'm gonna use this substance as a lever. I'm gonna let it teach me how to meditate, how to relate to people, how to be more social and how to be more aware of what I'm doing in the present moment. Thanks for reading, I'm happy to answer any question you have.

Two weeks have passed since I started taking modafinil. I didn't take it on three days: last Friday (I took armodafinil instead and I had a headache) last Saturday (I took mushrooms instead) last Sunday (I didn't take anything) On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the first week I felt a bit of a "crash", meaning that I was really tired after I finished working. This was the only side effect I noticed so far. On Saturday I took mushrooms, so I wasn't productive that day, I can't compare it with the working days. But on Sunday I wasn't on anything and I spent the day learning German. I could focus, I didn't feel any withdrawal symptoms. On Monday I started taking modafinil again, but this week went a lot smoother, meaning that I didn't feel so tired after work, and at work I had even more energy than the week before. I feel like modafinil is strengthening my brain not only for a day, but also in the long term. I could notice my improvements the most on the game that we play in the office on "coffee breaks" (I don't drink coffee anymore). The game is called Ricochet Robots, it's a labyrinth game that requires you to consider the whole labyrinth to solve the "puzzle". I was surprised how good I got in it. I not only saw good solutions, but I saw them fast. Before modafinil I was kind of a slow thinker. I was still strategic, my work requires structure-thinking, but I wasn't fast at all. It's like now on modafinil my brain has all this energy and it can use it to boost the speed of the thinking process. And the good thing is that I don't feel like my brain is burning out, but the opposite, I feel like it's used more, so it's getting stronger. This weekend I won't take modafinil, but I will probably start taking it again next week. I have no intention to stop because right now I feel like it's improving me. If you have other questions, shoot

Isn't it popping into existence right now? The past originates from here. The future originates from here. And here originates from nowhere.

@Dogsbestfriend for me meditation means widening the attention into a global awareness. This is the opposite of focusing attention on something. So I still don't really see how can meditation help me to focus on my job. @bigzbigi @vela3 I tried armodafinil yesterday (half of a 150mg pill). It wasn't noticeably stronger than the modafinil, but after like 6 hours I got a headache that lasted for the rest of the day. The cause of this might be that I was on modafinil before for 7 days straight. Leo was right, the body needs some days off to recover. So I didn't take modafinil or armodafinil today. I'm totally fine, I don't need them anymore to have energy in the morning, I don't feel any kind of craving for the substance. (So today I'm gonna take mushrooms instead )

I think being HSP is almost irrelevant when it comes to psychedelics. The most important factor is: how much identified are you with yourself. Psychedelics show you who you are, but there's gonna be a lot of resistance in you if you already think you know who you are. There are lots of types of people. It's okay to be anybody before the trip, if you can be nobody on the trip.

That's not very specific How? What kind of meditation gives you energy to wake up in the morning and be productive the whole day? Is it one long meditation or few seconds of mini-meditations throughout the day? Is it sds or lying or walking meditation? Do you close your eyes or let it open? Do you listen to anything while meditating? Do you let your mind wander and observe it or do you focus your mind on something?

We're acting even to ourselves. We're continuously thinking to make ourself believe that we're persons. When I have the monkey mind going, sometimes I just ask myself: "Who are you talking to?" and the act of thinking becomes funny and unnecessary. I feel like thinking is superfluous. The space from where the thoughts arise is the same space that listens to the thoughts. I am the space. So it would be more efficient to just skip the thoughts and let the thinker and the listener be one, as it already is. Does it make any sense?

I think modafinil is mainly used for treating narcolepsy, as Leo said. I don't know if you can get a modafinil prescription for ADD. Yesterday I took it around 3 PM, I went to bed around midnight and I could sleep easily. I woke up around 7 AM. How do you measure the quality of your sleep? I don't remember waking up at night if that's what you mean.

No, they don't. But it's a cool song

I think this is also how the lever effect can come into play. If I will get used to living without resistance, then when I won't be on modafinil the resistance is gonna be obvious, it's gonna feel bad. And then I can consciously let it go.

I think the reason why you didn't like amphetamine is the same as why I don't like coffee. Because it's a stimulant. Coffee pushes me to burn fuel and let out the energy. It pushes my muscles to move or flex, my mouth to talk and my mind to think. But modafinil has a completely different effect, it doesn't stimulate me in this way, it makes me calm instead. I feel like it calms down all my resistance towards everything. And when I don't have the resistance in me, objects and phenomenons can start to pull my attention towards them. Do you see the difference in the dynamics?

@Sven I like how you thought this over. I cannot answer any of these questions. I might share a proper review after a few months of using the substance. The truth is, I haven't thought about the possible outcomes because I'm not so concerned about them. I'm not really afraid of what might happen because I don't believe in negative outcomes in general. I just do what feels good to do right now, I don't feel the fear of consequences. So I'm not recommending modafinil, nobody should do anything that I'm doing.

And you don't like that it affects dopamine because....? I mean, it has to do something with the brain, why is it a problem that it happens to raise the dopamine level?

You must be talking about family in a really broad sense. Link your sources

@Dogsbestfriend how did you replace it?

When I was done dying, my conscience regained So I began my struggle, a nothingness strained Out a flash made of time, my new form blasted out And it startled me so and I burst out a shout At which my legs ran frantic like birds from a nest And I ran until drained, leaving no choice but rest So I fell asleep softly at the edge of a cave But I should have gone in deeper but I'm not so brave And like that I was torn out and thrown in the sky And I said all my prayers because surely I'll die As I crashed down and smashed into earth, into dirt How my skin did explode, leaving only my shirt But from shirt grew a tree and then tree grew a fruit And I became the seed and that seed was a brute And I clawed through the ground with my roots and my leaves And I tore up the shirt and I ate up the sleeves And they laughed out at me and said "what is your plan?" But their question was foreign, I could not understand When then suddenly I'm ripped up and placed into a mouth And it swallowed me down at which time I head south I said hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya Well I woke up to see them, these two mighty steeds With their mouths grinning wildly expressing my needs As they stood there above me, being flanked on each side I felt no need to fear them, no reason to hide So I reached up to touch but they faded too soon Yet their mouths still remained and stacked up towards the moon How that ladder of mouth waved so soft in the night And I looked up in awe at that beautiful sight And I dreamt about climbing into the night sky But I knew had I touched them they'd mouth back "Bye-bye" So I got up and walked down the path in the dark And there deep in the distance my eye caught a spark Of a crab twice my size with incredible strength Oh, it greeted me kindly and then we all drank And we drooled out together right onto the ground And the ocean grew up quickly right up all around And the earth looked at me and said "Wasn't that fun?" And I replied "I'm sorry if I hurt anyone" And without even thinking cast me into space But before she did that she wiped off my own face She said better luck next time don't worry so much Without ears I couldn't hear I could just feel the touch As I feel asleep softly at the edge of a cave But I should have gone deeper but I'm not so brave I said hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya hey ya ya