RossE

I am bumping this thread as I just watched Leo's video on it, I'm intrigued. If anyone knows how to find this seminar that would be brilliant. @Leo Gura could you please direct me to this seminar? PS your video on this subject is fantastic, thank you so much for putting this information out there for us.

@Dizzy so true Dizzy. Those are beautiful words too!

@Mert No problem. Shinzen is a fantastic teacher!

@Jordan wang Oh yeah, I know that I could be doing better things with my time, it's like a cheap form of entertainment for me! But you can still live in alignment with your values and do those things once in a while. I still live in accordance with "truth" I've experienced no matter how many beers I've had, it doesn't leave. This depth of PD is quite paradoxical. You must take action but allow the rewards to come to you while you do not need the rewards to be happy. You must have friendships simply because they are generally desirable, not because you need them. But yes, you will need to develop to a stage where you need nothing to be happy. I can't give you all the answers my man, certainly not on an Internet forum

@Mert Shinzen Young's (the inventor of Do Nothing) instructions for the technique are as follows: Let whatever happens happen. Whenever you have an intention to control your attention, drop the intention. And that's the instructions finished. In your case, you have an intention to stop mindfulness meditation taking place within your Do Nothing, so you must drop that intention in the moment If you notice a will to be mindful during Do Nothing, which you can drop, then drop that will too. The more you do Do Nothing, the less you will need to drop intentions. The intentions fall away. Search "Shinzen Young Do Nothing" on YouTube, the video will help you greatly

I saw the no-self when I was high once, I didn't even intend to, wasn't thinking about this stuff at all. It just happened. I've had glimpses of truth too. This is all while hanging out with mates, not in a quiet setting and with no intent at the time. It's definitely possible!

@egoeimai If only it were so easy! But yes I shall keep going

I can vibe with you on the uni degree ElectroBeam. For the last 2/3 months it kind of made me feel sick seeing everyone so invested in the circle jerk of studying for exams, getting at least a 2nd class honours and then fighting it out for a job in the corporate world. I still got a great degree but it feels like a joke now! I've been in that confused place a lot recently too. Yes it's illusory, yes it's meaningless, but hey the system is still here and you can still enjoy these things. On this path you're basically taking your old life, your old habits and torching them for good. It's no wonder it's disorientating, confusing. Don't beat yourself up about it. In the moment, if something feels right, do it, if it feels intuitively wrong, avoid it.

I've had an enlightenment experience and many "glimpses" after sharing a joint with a couple friends. It's certainly possible that it can elevate one spiritually if they're inclined that way. I would say in general, too much is counter-productive. It has addictive qualities for sure, I know a few people who would probably be called addicts in medical terms. Long-term it's effects are pretty negative if you're a regular. For me, if I did it more than once a week regularly, it would hinder my ability to meditate, eat healthy, learn and all that good stuff.

Man, this is one of my favourite books of all time. If you're passionate about meditation and want to understand how to optimise your practice, the effects of practice, to learn a lot of new techniques, to motivate yourself to keep meditating every day, then I HIGHLY recommend this book. Shinzen has lived in various monasteries and meditation centres throughout his life and has taught meditation for decades. He delivers the meditation techniques and effects through very his own terminology, and because of this you can supplement your learning using this book by checking out his YouTube channel expandcontract. After reading this book for the first time I wasn't that impressed, I thought it was too over the top in terms of detail and language. But after another 6 months or so of meditation, I realise how many gems I missed. If you really want to make the most of this book you need to read it all, take notes, then read it again, and take more notes! There's just that much detail. This isn't a proper book review, I just want to say that if you haven't read this, and are into meditation and self-actualization then GO READ IT. It's fantastic. Cheers

Good morning all. A couple of days ago I did my second mushroom trip, my first one was back in February, which I wrote a long report about. I've linked it here if you want to see a comparison: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/8405-shrooms-report/. I went into the trip with a lot of intentions, the overarching one being to have insights about life. More specifically, I was after the experience of emptiness, God; to have insights into my beliefs, my meditation practice, my career, family and relationships; how I can be a better person; what ego is; what suffering is and how I create it; the usefulness of mathematics and the justification for having such a thing as maths at all: I'm going to be a maths teacher so it'd be pretty interesting for me to get a deep understanding of its validity in our world. This trip was not as enjoyable as my first trip - there were less "meditative" effects and my mind was pretty chaotic for most of it, which has its own benefits I guess, but I'd have prefered a calm mind. I'll start with what happened in the trip then go to the insights I got, of which there are many. I should point out that even after a day of mainly contemplating and writing down what I was experiencing, I can't really describe the most intense parts. The insights I write are what came to me both at the time and just after I came "back"- some of them may seem a little far fetched but I'm just going to say it how I see it, and saw it at the time. I ate 1.7g of dried mushrooms on an empty stomach, at about 5:15pm. I'd meditated for 90 minutes that day and walked to my friends mainly through lovely scenery so I was in a good place. There was only me and my friend there and he was pretty quiet in his room all night. About 15 minutes after I took them I went through to a bedroom to be alone for the trip. Around 30 minutes later, my senses began to heighten a little and my eyes felt bigger, some objects in the room were more pronounced and there was a silence beyond all my sensory fields. Despite all I was hearing, seeing etc, I realised there is much more "room" in those fields for more items, and I sensed the place in which those items would arise in - I'd call this the silence. Around 45 minutes after dropping, the room became warped and I felt slightly sick, but I knew it wasn't going to lead to vomiting and it didn't. The last thing I wrote down at this point was at 6:12pm when I wrote "When you say outside world, what exactly are you talking about? Which outside world? This is the world you are in." The shrooms stepped up a level. I remember looking at the goals I had written down for the trip and thinking how silly I was, how immature the person that had written these goals down was. There was a feeling of "after this trip I'm going to finally grow up, I'm going to finally stop with the bullshit." This created a kind of division within me, and brought out a cynical side to me. The Cynic really took charge for a while as I was sitting there - I was questioning the government, the education system, food, social media, basically all systems in Western society, and dismissing them all. I was picturing everyone I knew as being bought into an invisible "system" which didn't really exist - it was a kind of consensus, an agreement to do things a certain way, i.e. have a 9-5, get married, raise kids, wear clothes, believe what's in the news, and so on. I realised that this is arbitrary and the repetition of these patterns have established the system as a solidified force; the belief in the system reinforces the system and brings more people into it, like a positive feedback loop. I have seen this in everyday life but here it was taken to a new level, like I'd arrived in my country for the first time ever and everyone was possessed. Why it was so poignant is because I realised we are all just animals experiencing a game, there is no reason to have the everyday fears we have, to believe that things must be done a certain way. If you've read Don Miguel Ruiz's book The Four Agreements, it felt similar to the dream of the planet he describes. I guess the very important thing I can take from that is to use the system when necessary, but not to be attached to it, or to take ANYTHING that the system encourages as the truth. I think just after this, the shrooms really hit me hard. At around 7pm I remember sitting in a chair, looking out the window and slowly losing my grip on reality. I didn't know what my thoughts were referring to. I'd have many thoughts about things, be it my friends, my hobbies, my personal development, etc, and I'd realise that none of those things were in direct experience, and I didn't know what they were actually referring to in reality. My hands looked superhuman size at times and the "twisted" shroom effect that you hear people referring to was really there - I'm not sure how to describe this other than it fucks with your memories and perception of reality - noises seemed in slow motion and the room started moving and warping, in addition to my thoughts being made to look totally meaningless. I realised I didn't know what was going on - what is this game we are experiencing? Where is everything? What are we here for? I got up from my chair and started waving my arms around in the air saying "I... I just dunno... I dunno anymore" and laughing in disbelief. I went through to my friends room to ask him what was going on and he just shrugged his shoulders - he looked very fat and lazy, kind of like a walrus. I stood in his room for about half an hour, looking out the window at the trees, my city's castle, the buildings, the cars, the people walking, the sky and realising I had no idea what was going on. What is everyone doing? Where are they going? In addition I began to lose my grip of time - I could tell the time on my watch but couldn't calculate how long ago I had taken the shrooms, how long I had been tripping, how long I had left. Time seemed like an agreement, similar to the system I mentioned earlier. I remember wondering if my friend was judging me for all this - then realising that THAT was just a story in my head, and immediately I didn't care what he thought. I went back through to the other room and there was more confusion, more losing track. Except now things really began to crumble. I started to lose my balance, and realised that gravity is an illusion, a limitation placed upon the game we are part of. I looked out the window and realised that I couldn't go anywhere if I jumped. This is an extremely difficult thing to describe, but if you've had the experience you'll know what I'm talking about. All that really remained as a concrete thing was my visual field and my body sensations, everything else went out the window. My ego began to really cling on, it grasped for anything that it could - science, my friends, spiritual teachings, but those were being ripped away from me. They were just thoughts, just a blip in my sensory field which meant nothing. Which of them was right? None of them are right. They're just stories. The rug of my life was being pulled away. I began realising a lot of energy - through hysterical laughter, rolling around on the floor frantically, and crying. I didn't really know who I was at this point. I didn't know what life was. I was lying on my friends floor and knew that my ego was being torn away from me. I just closed my eyes and took it. What does ego death feel like? Gravity didn't exist. Time didn't exist. The world didn't exist. All that was there was a pure field of potential, a pure void of energy. I realised that all of existence was this, just a field, just a potential for something to happen. You may call this God, if you want. I was certainly shouting "oh my God" over and over. I wouldn't say it felt infinite to me, just that there was nothing there at all. How long this lasted, I don't know. It was like being in a soup, except the soup is a possibility of existence. The mind kept coming up with things, scenarios, people, which would stay for a short time then just dissolve away into the void, the soup. I realised that I create my own reality - my projections, my ideas, my thoughts. It creates the characters in my life, the places in my life, it even creates me every second. I agree to these ideas and they come forth. I saw history flash before my eyes - Einstein, the Romans, the Beatles, Newton, and so on - and realised they were all a manifestation of the same energy which I'm experiencing now, they're all actors. The ego came back as I was lying on the floor. It felt like being re-born again. Time came back, gravity came back, visual field reappeared and everything felt solid again. My body reappeared, as if from nowhere. It was crazy - I feel a bit reluctant to say that I saw how I was created, but that's how it felt. I saw how self and world are created from basically nothing, put here by God to experience itself as something other than what it really is. I saw how all the characters created in my life are perpetuated by the ideas and memories I have of them. I was pretty much back from the trip now and the shrooms had worn off. It was 10pm and I'd no real idea where the past two hours has gone. Physically, I felt like I'd just gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. I was just done, I felt foolish for messing with God, for all the ideas I have, for all the beliefs and baggage I carry around every day. It was an extremely humbling experience. Just then I went and got my phone and started apologising to all my friends, I felt a lot of gratitude for them and realised that all the poison I'd sent them, all the ideas I had of them, all the judgements I make about them are just wrong - so, so wrong. I have a lot of insights from this - about God, and some personal ones. I'll stick to the ones about God. God is doing its best to remain anonymous, to experience itself as separation. It created us all. The patterns we have - in society, in our beliefs, our emotions, in our ambitions, in our approach to life - all helps to perpetuate this separation. We all conveniently forgot some time ago, probably in our first two years of life, that we are the empty source. It couldn't be any other way. Anything good we do in our lives directly serves God. Be it getting married and having family, having a business, exercising, curing illness, it all helps to build up our identity, keep the separation running, and to continue the separation for much, much longer. I now have a more sympathetic view to the social systems we have. Even the "negative" ones - fast food, war, extreme nationalism/patriotism - serve God: they enforce and reinforce the apparent separation between us all. The ego IS separation, the ego IS life! It is created so that God can experience itself through separation! When you are re-born and you see the structure of the ego emerge, this becomes quite obvious. And it's not something that needs tobe bragged about, it's not some divine understanding, it may seem that way. You can only fear death if you mistake your true nature for that of a permanent body that will rot and decay eventually. The truth is that you will return to the source, to that same place we all go, and where we came from at birth. It was a very heavy trip, I may abstain from shrooms for a while! When I came back, I was just crying, I didn't know what to say, I just sat and contemplated what the fuck I had experienced. I was surprised it got this deep from 1.7g, but I still recommend shrooms highly. Even if the trip itself is tough, you will most likely still have a lot of insights. If you got this far, thanks for reading.

@Jordan wang I think if you're looking for people into heavy PD to be friends with, you're going to be looking for a while. Not many people are. My approach to friendships is not to take them too seriously. I have my meditation habit, my spiritual leanings and my open-minded approach while my friends are usually hard nosed scientists, quite success oriented and very mainstream. There's still a lot of common ground between us though, and a lot to learn from them despite what I may think about mainstream people. I go drinking and partying with them, I smoke weed occasionally and I'm heavy into PD by comparison, so don't let that be your barometer. Just chat to people and don't take it too seriously. If you feel a connection, let the friendship grow and weave into new places. If you seriously grow, you're going to be out on your own for the rest of your life. Despite that, there's a balance between being a loner with no friends and nobody to learn from, and somebody who needs friendships for approval and to feel important. There's no easy answer but to find what balance is right for you and who fulfills that balance.

@Outer My explanation, from my experience of shrooms, about you forgetting how to use money, is that you see through the artificial systems that are created around you. They seem ridiculous. You see things as they are: for example, a person handing another person some paper with some marks on it. But in our everyday experience, because of our programming, we create a whole concept, an emotional and psychological narrative about money - how much money we have, how much we need to have, how much we want, how much this costs, how everything is too expensive etc etc etc. A lot of this is probably subconscious because we've used it for so long. Of course, the amount of concepts created and energy you attach to them depends on how developed you are. Shrooms rips the most basic concepts away from me, maybe it's the same for you! It sounds like it from your description.

@Leo Gura Hahaha yeah fuck the walrii! He's not even fat in the slightest, I must really have been tripping hard. @Truth It is a cool quote I guess, but it's not as sexy and spiritual as it sounds. Look around at all the systems you have in culture. Almost all of them propagate separation if you look close. They run on separation because that's how humans experience life. Hell, most of my life runs on separation. When you experience the truth of God, the separation becomes obvious. It couldn't be any other way. You really should do shrooms if you can get your hands on them and you're willing to do a solo trip with no distractions and clear objectives. In those circumstances I can't see how a person into spirituality won't have insights over a 5/6 hour trip.

@Martin123 Thanks for the advice. I don't have much on right now so I'll be taking it easy as you say What was yours like?

@Leo Gura Yeah, I did not expect to go that deep at all, it kicked my ass! I've heard that these sort of experiences happen on 5g+ doses. It was very difficult to understand, which is why I claimed that my insights weren't necessarily true or I didn't necessarily believe in them, because the experience was semi-distorted by the thoughts I was having. Thanks for the tips. How did you feel for the next couple of days after your first breakthrough 5-Meo trip? Yesterday and today I've felt very devoid of energy and have slept a lot, not done many of my usual activities.

Good for you bro. Once you've done the 100 days porn-free, you'll never go back. I think occasional porn-free masturbation is fine, say once or twice weekly.

@mikeyy Most people aren't open minded enough to even try it let alone make it a habit. I think it's a lack of belief in themselves too. I remember showing my friends a video about studies conducted at various universities showing all the positive effects meditation has on the brain. Some incredible results from these studies but they just didn't believe it was possible for them to get these results in their own life. I do agree though. When you slowly realise that emotional suffering is largely based on thought, delusional thought at that, the door to freedom begins to open. If only I could hand these insights to people I know who suffer.

I think you're taking too much responsibility for the situation and expecting yourself to free everyone else from all their problems. I can see that you are suffering for this. Yes, when the urge to exert will and action to help others arises, you should act. But if you cannot help others, if your action does not help, you must become detached. You must realise that some people cannot be helped. You see that their ability to be helped is beyond your control, and maybe theirs too. You'll develop a taste for when to dip your nose in, these opportunities will present themselves to you. Sometimes help is not required, even if you think it is, if you are convinced it is. Sometimes it appears as if nothing can be done on the surface but just underneath, that person is falling apart.

His video on compassion is very good so I'm reserving too much judgement on the response video. I think he's being deliberately obnoxious there.

If you don't need to go to college now for any practical reason, I say sack it and do your self-actualization work. In a few years time you'll know what to do, you'll probably have a life purpose down and you may even decide to go to college after all. If you need to go to enhance your prospects for potential careers, I say go. You can definitely still self-actualize.

I like your style, you've taken a bold jump into the dark and you're being single minded which is good. I'm 21 so can resonate with how you're feeling. Passive income is very achievable in modern society so I wouldn't worry too much about the logistics for now, think big picture. I think for a start you should think about what you would ideally be doing for a living if possible, and what you're best at, what skills and personality traits are unique to you. How would the career you choose be so much better than being an electrician, and so on. For example, I did very well at school particularly in maths, so I teach maths part time to kids outside of university time and I really enjoy it. This is something rather unique to me. There will be something similarly unique for you too which you enjoy, even if it's not as obvious as the job you currently have. That thing is your starting point - start to question and try to understand why you enjoy, how you could make a life purpose around it, etc. Start writing your ideas down for future self-employed, creative careers no matter how nuts they may seem to your rational mind. I'd recommend checking out Leo's life purpose course too.

@Dan Arnautu You could definitely teach right now bro. Within 7 years of experience and the passion you have, you could offer A LOT to other players. Here's a new scale, here's a new chord you didn't know, here's a lick, here's how to solo in D major. I say: fuck it, start advertising, get some students going and see where it takes you. Even if it's only part time while you figure the rest out. As for your degree - if you're not interested and it's not gonna help you, why are you doing it? It makes no sense. If your parents really value your natural drives and desires, they'll come round to it. If they don't... well that says more about their attitude than yours. If you're a guitar teacher how much of the information will you really use? Ponder these things.

@SOUL I disagree. He has seen beyond the veil and wants to give fellow seekers some pointers to see beyond it too. There's nothing wrong with that. You're closing yourself off to helpful information by getting caught in word games. Usually during awakenings people really want to tell others about the experience for various reasons, I know I did on my first few.

@Leo Gura Please can you post a photo of yourself when you were overweight? It would be very illuminating to see how far you've come with your health. And I'm just nosey I guess