In practice most people will need to take several stepping stones before getting to their ultimate life purpose. I spent about 3 years building a business I hated in order to become financially independent enough to start my dream business.
That's what being a strategic motherfucker means. Most people never think that far ahead, and so their life reflects that.
Most people will not be able to start their dream career right off the bat because there are real-world financial and other limitations. Meaning you gotta plan and work towards it. Build skills, save money, develop social connections, etc.
 

@How to be wise Because happiness is a limited human thing, while Truth is universal.
Truth is much bigger than happiness. Truth is there even if you're not happy. Truth is the only thing you can count on in this evanescent world.
You should want the Truth even if it means it will cause you great suffering.

Psychedelics will definitely not wake society up auto-magically. Psychedelics do not eliminate the work, they thrust you deep into it. And most people have no foundation for how to deal with that.
I do not push psychedelics on everyone. I recommend them only to serious self-actualizers, which is less than 1% of the general population.

Becoming rich has nothing do to with luck.

Sounds like something Leo would say. 

Actually mostly the opposite.
The percentage of the population who are at a stage of development where they can pursue enlightenment is extremely low.
Most people will require 10-20 years of ordinary personal dev work before they can seriously pursue enlightenment. Because they are not ripe for it.
I am not a strict enlightenment teacher, and Actualized.org's goals go way beyond what people like Tolle or Mooji or Ramana taught.
We have a much broader scope here, attempting to understand all dimensions of life: sexual, political, social, emotional, physical, philosophical, scientific, astral, religious, linguistic, motivational, business, leadership, ecology, art, etc.
We do not stop or start with nonduality.

@Cortex People are living in an unrecognized repeat / fast forward but they don’t know it. Long meditations help us real-ize, and we go from repeat / fast forward (finite / falsity) , to shuffle / play (infinite / potentiality / truth). 

Most people are sheep and will remain sheep. Because to not be a sheep you must be a leader.
Being someone's bitch just means that you are wage slave. Society is structured like a pyramid scheme, where the majority of human beings are wage slaves so that those at the top can live in luxury. This is what human society is and has always been.
There is no complete independence, but you can be a leader and a creator and thus buy your own freedom. The only issue is that most people are content being slaves. You can rise towards the top of the pyramid. Everyone can't. But you can.
Being a wage slave means that you do not create what you want, but what someone else wants. Fundamentally this is because you have no idea what you want to create.
Which is why step #1 for escaping wage slavery is to become very clear about what you want to create.
Our system is built upon human ignorance and sheepishness. It is sustainable because most people like being sheep.
Welcome to humanity

It can be painful but also not. It all depends on how you look at it.
Surrender for me is usually very mellow on psychedelics. I just surrender my life and die. There is no great struggle, no drama, no epic ordeal.
But it won't be like that for everyone. The more conscious and developed you are, the less struggle and drama there will be.
When it is realized that the ego never existed, there is no struggle with the death process. It feels totally organic and it is no big deal.
If you are making a big deal out of death, that is ego resisting, and that is itself the only obstacle, the very thing to surrender.
Kriya yoga helps a lot to pacify the ego-mind and all of its drama.
The ego-mind will naturally want to turn this entire enlightenment process into an epic ordeal. That's ego being ego.

Dose: 15mg smoked
Female, 28yo, have been actualizing for almost 3 years now, was religious most of my life, then atheist and now a believer of 5-meo hahaha, jokes aside, the experience happened two weeks ago and NO WORDS can describe it, what makes it very hard to write a trip report, but I do want to write because everything I’ve been seeking in the last years were all about this experience, the final destination, the void, the place we came from, the place we go when we die, the end of the world, the beginning of everything, god, the universe, Alah, Deus, higher power, the source, etc.
“As above, so below, as within, so without” 
I smoked the substance and covered my mouth so the smoke couldn't come out, then every time my friend repeated, hold on! hold on! hold on! it was like I was passing a dimension, so many layers of it and so fast that it went on and on until my mind was dissolved into eventual nothingness
I literally felt like a river of clear bright water was running through my body carrying all the blockages away, garbage, so many fucking things, social conditioning, traumas, beliefs, drama, so much shit, the more I relaxed and surrended to the experience the more my body was being cleaned, the more I let go the better I felt in my body, to the point my body dissolved into that nothingness and emptiness, and whenever I tried to make sense of the situation, whenever I tried to feel my body it was like I was having a full body orgasm, like every cell of my body was vibrating in that same warm frequency, wasn’t good, bad, strong or weak, it was pure perfection, I felt like my body was being embraced by that loving energy, a hug from god  all I start saying from now on will for sure sound like a cult if you've never experienced it, and from this point I strangely started to understand how religion had began, how many people had experienced a glimpse of that energy, this is IT. Like my whole life, everything I’ve lived was just to bring me to that moment, that THING very very special, I’ve tried many psychedelics but this was by far my deepest and most important mystical experience, not close to any meditation or psychedelics I had tried, and I see how 5meo it's known to be the most powerful hallucinogen, actually not even hallucinogen cause it's really a sensation, no visuals or anything.
I came back from the trip saying to my trip sitter (that btw is someone I met through the forum) eu, voce, voce, eu, that means I, you, you, me, in Portuguese and my first thought was to stop talking because the more I talked the more I separated myself from others, that oneness, interconnectedness was fading away, it was sad but at the same time I was glad to be back because having that feeling for a long period of time is for sure overwhelming and might be fucking hard, I understand how enlightenment comes with a lot of time, effort, meditation, stillness and understanding, my body and mind the way it's right now would not comport such thing, it's not an easy peasy thing, it's holiness.
I apologize for my scarcity of words to describe the trip but most important is what stayed with me and below I try to explain the integration to normal life.
Aftermath: My voice sounds much softer now, what made me realize how blocked I was before and how much more blocks can be released, I also was kind of addicted to weed, not addicted but I was smoking it very often, and like Leo says addictions are fear of emptiness, so I was smoking weed instead of facing my daily emptiness, after the trip I lost that necessity of smoking, not saying anything bad about weed, it’s an awesome tool when used properly, like psychedelics.
How deep the rabbit hole goes: I have the feeling that I could’ve gone waaay waaaaay deeper, I know infinity has no depth but man, I wonder what this can do to me and my body if I do it often, like once per month, I’ve been preparing myself for this trip for over a year, I’ve snorted twice but didn’t breakthrough now I am very excited for what's to come.
Theory DOES NOT DO justice: It’s crazy the amount of books I’ve read about 5meo, psychedelics, spirituality, psychology, personal development, science, and nothing, nothing, nothing I've read would prepare me for that, I had so much theory but 0 experience, I realize the trap now, all the theory if not applied is just mental masturbation, this was such a big thing for me, and I see the trap in religion too, how many people had experience 2% of this energy, this god, and created a whole spiritual ego, also given that 98% of those people have not experienced this oneness and claim the whole righteousness of religion just because of EGO, it's just crazy, my feeling right after the trip was to create a 5meo group haha but then I remembered that religion is this cult hahaah uhhhh so easy to join one of those groups, I'm not gonna go into the religion topic but all I can say is I feel them, I have much more compassion for religious people now, and I see how science is too limited to explain or even prove such thing, so in the religion vs science game, religion for sure embraces much much more of the mysterious, the unexplained unknown that is God. Many paths that end in the same place, many ways to reach the same goal, the trip brought me lots of understanding of how religion works and how people go so far because of it.
Oneness: One thing is to say I’m one with all, we are all one, we are all connected and bla bla bla, another thing is to experience and really feel that interconectedness, I have this feeling now, whenever I look at someone, their suffering is my suffering, their happiness is my happiness, I AM them, they are a part of me, and this makes me feel an overload of compassion that I did not have before, we are all in the same roller coaster, all in this dream, every person with their difficulties, ours egos might be fighting but deep inside we are all gods experiencing itself subjectively in different bodies, also because I'm more aware of the role my ego plays I have a different perspective of my relation with people, when someone is being mean or evil, they are just showing me a little bit of what they are going through, what's going on within them, it's never about me like my ego likes to think. 
BIG BIG BIG joke: Until a couple days ago whenever my mind started fearing something or worrying I would burst laughing, it was kind of spontaneous and involuntary, god laughing through me about how small and insignificant my problems are close to HIM, I would just laugh out of sudden, super weird. It’s fucking crazy, it gave me a sense of “fuck everything” but in a good way, not in the I don’t care about anything, but in the sense of hurry up, live life, let go of fearing and enjoy life however you want, there is no right or wrong way to do so, a sense of freedom, so much freedom, extreme freedom, radical freedom, terrifying freedom, I realized that we are so encapsulated in our little lives, in our egos, in our little bubbles because in the end what we fear is THAT freedom, we don’t know what to do with so much freedom that we create barriers unconsciously not to experience all of it, we allow ourselves sometimes to feel it a little bit but the amount of freedom 5 meo showed me is extremely scary. Wow I also cry when I try to go back to the experience, I'm very sensitive now, also my meditation is much deeper, I sit for meditation and POW I'm right there into the void, swimming in the black hole, what enabled me to meditate even in the sauna, my body burns there for 20 or 30 minutes and my mind is far far away... very interesting.
Relaxation: The biggest thing I've learned in the trip, the more I surrender to life (the same way I surrendered to the trip, where I had to let go of everything for the “substance” to work on me) it's just exactly the same with life, the more we relax and trust the universe (or god whatever you wanna call it) the more the energy of universe runs freely within us, and all the suffering we experience is a resistance for that energy, we want to do it our way, our ego wants it in its way, it’s that old saying, we get what we need out of life, not what we want, BUT every time (even if we consider our experiences as a bad) the universe is working to give us the best of the best, in order for us to grow and evolve, not as a person (ego) but as a group, as consciousness, as a whole, like Ram Dass says, the suffering comes from our attachment to what we think life should be, if we just relaxed life would be much much easier, I also thought about a video that he says we create THICK DRAMA out of nothing, I laughed hard, of how much drama I (the ego) is capable of creating, I SO understand that now, how rare that we exist, how beautiful life is, how magical everything can be if we just let go of everything we think we know and opened ourselves up to what the universe has to offer, but our ego wants to know everything, wants to pretend it knows, wants to find a logic, wants to find the right way to live life, wants to make sense of the unkown, wants to live like one has everything figured out hahaha we literally know NOTHING.
State of Not Knowing: “Unaccustomed as we are to not knowing, we don’t understand the freedom that awaits us when we experience life beyond our beliefs.” Quote from The book of not knowing, Peter Ralston, that’s what enlightenment is, insanity, accepting uncertainty, so hard for the ego but liberating for the soul.
Wow, I thought I could not write but man I could spend hours talking about IT, I’m super happy and feel lucky AF to have had this experienced, I can’t believe we found a toad that enables us to experience such thing, a TOAD, haha of course a toad, it's like a cartoon, we are living the fucking dream, I see all differently now, the sky is just a big screen we watch different channels every day, a dog barked in the neighbor’s house right after the trip, and the fucking dog was literally inside my head, I was creating the dog barking, the dog and everything around me, how fantastic and fascinating creatures we human beings are.
PS: I’m deeply deeply deeply thankful for you Leo, I met so many amazing people here, actualizers are my faaaavorite 
Thank you if you made it to the end..  
Till next time
Miss Nobody
"Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"
fucking Truman show..

@pierce_the_heavens Causation, logic, thinking, reason, reasons.....are like a field in the sense that electromagnetism is a field. This field can be transcended. 

There are no guarantees, but Stan Grof has been teaching similar techniques for many years, with thousands of people participating. If it really damaged your brain, I'm pretty sure he would stop teaching it and people would have sued him long ago.
The only way to know is to try it gradually for yourself. You will feel if it is hurting you or healing you. Just don't ask the question from a fear-based ego-mind perspective.
I don't feel any damage from it. But you guys are all reporting unqiue experiences, so I can't guarantee your health.
This is stuff that requires a willingness to experiment in a careful manner.
What's nice about this techique is that you can make it as gradual as you like and stop at any time, unlike with psychedelics.

If anyone is curious about how this technique works, I recommend reading this paper by Bernardo Kastrup: http://jcn.cognethic.org/jcnv4i3_Kastrup.pdf
Here's the most relevant part (under "Cerebral Hypoxia"):
"Fainting or near-fainting caused by restrictions of oxygen supply to the brain is known to induce liberating feelings of self-transcendence. For instance, the potentially fatal ‘choking game’ played by teenagers worldwide (Macnab 2009) is an attempt to induce such feelings through partial strangulation (Neal 2008, 310–315). The psychotherapeutic technique of holotropic breathwork (Rhinewine & Williams 2007), as well as more traditional yogic breathing practices, use hyperventilation to achieve similar effects: by increasing blood alkalinity levels, they interfere with normal oxygen uptake in the brain and ultimately lead to what is described as an expansion of ordinary awareness (Taylor 1994). Even straightforward hyperventilation outside a therapeutic context can lead to self-transcending experiences, such as described in this anecdotal—though representative—report:
One of us stood against a tree and breathed deeply for a while and then took a very deep breath. Another pushed down hard on his ribcage ... This rendered the subject immediately unconscious ... When I tried it, I didn’t think it would work, but then suddenly I was in a meadow which glowed in yellow and red, everything was extremely beautiful and funny. This seemed to last for ages. I must say that I have never felt such bliss ever again. (Retz 2007)"
And this is from Kastrup's book "Dreamed Up Reality" (p. 37):
«The main causal element in the efficacy of Holotropic Breathwork seems to be the intensified breathing, or voluntary hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is known to raise the alkalinity level of the blood and cause constriction of blood vessels in the brain. This, naturally, perturbs ordinary brain function and is a reason why lightheadedness and fainting are sometimes observed in association with hyperventilation. Interestingly, in an article published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, it has been suggested that, through a process related to psychological dissociation, Holotropic Breathwork may reduce the efficacy of certain brain filters, «resulting in disinhibition of previously avoided or suppressed internal stimuli.[27]»

I'll let the video speak for itself, very interesting though. 

I would like to make a correction. I found out yesterday that my scale was weighing the 5-MeO-DMT wrong. An effective rectal dose isn't 10mg, but more like 20mg. 20mg gives me a pretty deep trip. 24mg is Absolute Infinity for me.
Also I learned that 5-MeO-DMT is apparently legal to purchase in Canada. Hooray for Canada!
There is also an analogue called 5-MeO-MET which is supposed to be very similar to 5-MeO-DMT, although I have not verified this yet myself. There is also 5-MeO-DALT, which I know even less about, but might be an interesting alternative.
My current experience says that 5-MeO-DMT is hands down the best psychedelic for nonduality work. It just blows everything else out of the water. If you can access it, it's really the only one you need. Its clarity is unrivaled. Other psychedelics can be profound and interesting, but 5-MeO-DMT is pure awakening. I have experienced levels of awakening on it so deep that I seriously doubt most enlightenment teachers have accessed such levels of awakening. At these levels, you just become God itself to the point where you cannot even understand how you ever believed you were a human being or that you were even born into the 21th century.
I awoken so deep on it I forgot I was born. I forgot there was a past or future.
Rectal method is by far the best way to take 5-MeO-DMT. And the sad part is, almost nobody knows about it.

It has been 2 years since I was "done" as Jed Mckenna would call it. I would like to share some observations I have noticed. I know it is hard to believe someone is really done and you are at a leisure to believe whatever you want. This post  would be worth it if it could help anyone. So here are the observations:
These effects have remained permanent
1)The mind mostly stays generally empty or a distance is established between awareness and mind. There is no more identification with the mind.
2)The Body feels very light 
3)The memories feels like only a heap of perceptions belonging to no one as there is no self left
4)The sense of self has expanded from being in the body to being everywhere
5)There is a natural flow to life. No more obstruction.
6) Continuously have to consciously pretend when I am talking to people. Consciously pretending generally goes on autopilot
7)The feeling of no self is like completely nothing being everything
8)Everything feels very ordinary and magical at the same time
9)Permanent death awarness
10)As the ego is not the self anymore, it is more adaptable and changeable
11)The questions have completely disappeared. There is no more seeking 
12)Nothing is taken seriously. Life becomes a play
13)The only think I Know is I AM. Nothing is known other than this. Every other question can be negated as they are just based on assumptions
14)Total acceptance of the present moment. No more resistance
15) Free will seems to exist but belongs to nobody
16) Feels like Infinite Nothingness is all there is
17) Every moment feels fresh and new
18) SENSE of space and time are gone

Go deeper. Try 20-25 mg smoked. If you think you were close to death, then you have no idea.
You can fall right in the core of reality, right in the core of being. Beyond life and death. 5-MeO is very dose-dependant. Effects not only increase in intensity, they actually change very significantly and I think that's probably infinitely so.

Makes you wonder then, what makes him a Zen master if he isn't conscious of that already?

Hey guys. Hope you're all good. After my awakening and permanent self-realization in May, 2017 my spiritual interest died down a lot. My participation on this forum went down, my spiritual practices came to an end and my whole journey imploded. This happened because I found the answers and tranquillity I looked for when I started. The answer that awakening and permanent self-realization gives you is the vanishing of the question you posed in the beginning of your journey. Your whole conceptual world comes to an end (mostly) and you live, think and talk mostly spontaneously and not pre-mediated. That's quite nice.
In the beginning of this new phase I had to adjust my entire life to this situation, so I needed quite a bit of time for that. A lot of new experiences and perspectives opened up to me and I took my time to investigate those. Right now it's the end of 2017 and I am still stable in non-dual awareness and mostly not contracted in my body. I also start to deepen my self-realization and push it towards "God Awareness" to go on with my journey. So I figure it's time to let you in on the techniques I researched and developed shortly before I woke up and that helped me to wake up permanently.
+++ Enter Azrael's Awakening Anchor #1 | How To Solve Emotional Suffering +++
I'm a big proponent of meditation. It's a great practice and the basis of everything we do. If you cannot sit with yourself and enjoy it, how can you ever understand your self? However, as we meditate and go on with our journey it gets clear that regular meditation is too slow and mild of a practice to give us the transformation that we want. That's why we have to develop accelerators on top of this basis.
The process I'll describe in a second is such a accelerator. It was developed by myself in January - February of 2017 and is based on a few other practices I know. It's main purpose is to solve emotional suffering and contraction of energy in your body. One of the big reasons you are not enlightened and always go back to sleep after a temporary awakening is that your body and mind are full of contractions that keep your ego in place. It is the energetic anchor in the nervous system that makes your ego, persona and body feel quite real and connected. It also makes your suffering feel quite real.
The method was tested on myself, @Huz and a friend of mine. I used it maybe 5-10 times in a span of 3 weeks to get rid of a lot of emotional suffering and contraction in my body. I did it with @Huz and he did it on himself as well and it died down most of his social anxiety almost instantly. My other friend cured most of his anger and had weeks of temporary awakening experiences after we did the technique once.
In my opinion the technique works best when you do it on someone else. The shift that happens seems to be deeper and its good to have someone to lead the process. However, it is possible to do it on yourself and still have a lot of changes happening. I am thinking right now to give away 3 free skype sessions for you guys to do this process - led by me. If you are interested, let me know in the comments. Also, I'm thinking to make a product out of this and help people with this process over a couple of weeks + consultation (also via a series of skype sessions). So if you'd be interested in that, let me know as well.
+++ The Technique: An Interview With Your Inner Children +++
The process is rooted in the observation that all of the egoic and unintegrated roles that your ego plays arise from an contraction of your basic emotions
fear / sadness anger / rage happiness / inspiration love Every role that you play takes the raw energy of a subset of these emotions, contracts them in your body / mind and lets a thought story arise out of this contraction to express the energy. The problem is that these roles -> thought stories -> contracted emotions -> raw contraction of energy are anchored in your body / mind (aka nervous system) and get triggered all throughout your day. Because you have a lot these contracted roles and one role can trigger another role, you live in the illusion of a conceptual world of suffering.
if you were to experience a subset of these 4 basic emotions in their uncontracted normal form, you wouldn't suffer. You would only have an intense, emotional experience. That's why it sometimes feels good to be in anger / rage or to melt in fear / sadness. Although other times, it seems like it destroys you (-> contraction).
Based on this conceptualized observation, we need to find a way to unravel these contractions to let them out of your system. One very direct way to do this is to give a subconscious, uncontrolled emotion a conscious voice to express its situation and to understand its position.
+++ The Technique's Technicalities +++
The actual technique works in the following way (if you do it on yourself).
Sit down comfortably on a chair / cushion. Repeat the following steps for every basic emotion {fear / sadness, anger / rage,  happiness / inspiration, love} Close your eyes and visualize a moment in your life in which you experienced the current emotion very strongly. Let your whole body sink into the emotion. Let it arise where it typically arises in your body. Think the thoughts it triggers when it comes up. In other words: Let the damn thing come on. Interview the emotion. That means ask the emotion a question and then answer the question from the standpoint of the emotion. Your questions should aim to "get to know" the emotion, its purpose, goal, its relationships with people, other emotions, yourself and the work that it does for you. Find a way with the current emotion to work better together with it in the future. That means work out a solution so that it can flow freely and you can live with it uncontracted and free. Open your eyes, stretch, think about what the emotion said and how you can live with that and go on with the next one. When you start working with this technique you will have to "play" the emotion's role. That means that you ask a question and you have to answer it from the perspective of the emotion. After doing this for 2-3 minutes, the emotion will come on so strongly that it'll take over and it will feel very real. I had numerous psychedelic-like experiences doing this technique. You might also experience big shifts in consciousness / awareness + a big opening of your body.
+++ An Interviewer's Template For Each Emotion +++
To make the process even simpler, I'll share with you a template that I developed over time that works quite well. Use this in this order for every emotion you interview and add follow-up / deepening questions for your own usecase:
Question: Who are you? Possible Answer: I am fear. Question: How do you feel? Possible Answer: I feel quite ... Question: Where are you located in my body when you arise? Possible Answer: I typically arise in your ... Question: How and when do you arise? Possible Answer: I come up when ... Question: When was the first time you can remember that you came up? Possible Answer: When you were ... years old, I came up while you were ... Question: What is your job and main goal? Possible Answer: My job is to protect you from ... Question: Do you sometimes work together with other emotions? If yes, with which and how? Possible Answer: Yeah, I sometimes work together with ... Question: Do you have enemies? If so, which ones and why? Possible Answer: Yeah, I hate ...          [...]
Question: What could we do to live more integrated together in the future? Possible Answer: You'd have to ... I hope you get the idea. Your main goal here is to fully understand and characterize every basic emotion and through that integrate it. It's very important when you do the interview, that you speak as "I the interviewer" and "I the emotion" so that you fully identify with your current position. It'll be strange at first, an then it'll be awesome and deep. Trust me.
+++ Further Notes +++
So that's the basic technique. When you do it with someone else over a series of times there are more elements to it. But this is the main bullet that you need to do it with yourself. if you do it formally as I described it, close your eyes throughout the interview of each emotion an then open your eyes at the end of each interview and contemplate what just happened and what to with it. Then get out of your current state (as good as it might feel) and hop on to the next emotion.
Explore how they work together, where they come from, how they contract and how they are triggered. Get the most accurate characterisation of each emotion on the intellectual, emotional and energetic level that you can get. Especially the first few times you do it, get deep and take your time. You'll notice a big release of tension in each sitting and after it which will be permanent.
When you notice throughout the day that you feel contracted, you can also make a mini-interview and just ask yourself "Fear, are you that? Rage is it you? ..." and ask what is happening and why it is happening. That'll in most cases end your contraction pretty fast and bring you an even deeper understanding of your emotions.
--
Try it! Let me know how it works for you and ask any questions that you have. Are you interested in a one-on-one skype session with me leading this? Maybe I'll throw 3 free sessions out there, if you guys are interested and it works for you. Are you interested in me making a product out of this, where we'd have multiple skype sessions with consultations + this technique over a period of time to integrate your emotions completely? Let me know. I will think about that.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to make more of these Azrael's Awakening Anchors to share what helped me to wake up. Peace out and be good to yourself.
Cheers,
Az

This is the first topic I have started. I am hoping for any insight from the more experienced.
 
I have had a handful of experiences with mushrooms. All pretty great for introspection and change.
 
My first LSD experience was 12-4-2016. It caused me to make massive changes in my life. I don't know if I would say those changes are producing results that are pleasurable or satisfying yet. My next LSD trip was on a date. I consider this one to be mostly a waste because it was filled with talk, walk, a concert, food and lots of other distractions. I had a couple other weak trips.
 
My most recent one was last Thursday while alone. I ingested one tab on an empty stomach. I worried that it would force me to deal with childhood trauma or current problems. Would I run down the street naked or cry all night?
 
One of the first insights was seeing a conglomeration of all my problems. I saw my body from 20 feet away. The problems were nearby. They floated up and were small enough to fit in my armpit. I retreated into a room and took the memories and problems out of what looked like a box of photos. I lovingly enjoyed them. Then I started talking kindly to myself in an audible voice. Does this experience insulate me from "bad trips" in the future or is this how it starts for everyone who eventually has a "bad trip?"
 
As in my earlier trips I had a strong desire to isolate myself from any senses. I covered up the LEDs in my room. I wore earplugs and filled some goggles with black fabric. I got in bed and was able to not smell or taste. The tactile isolation worked pretty well as my back started to ache a little after 4 hours of lying still in the same position. I wouldn't even consider a trip without sensory deprivation. I made a new kit of even more effective tools for sensory deprivation. I don't want any stimulating music or vibrant still or moving pictures. I don't get any visuals. Anyone else?
 
I had a vision of where the particular infinity I was part of originated. All infinities are enveloped or encapsulated by something I called "The Whole." I missed being there because I felt like so much more in The Whole. I had the vision that I am now only a part of one infinity. That infinity is so small. I immediately realized death is not an escape from infinity and a ticket back to the whole. If you die and are turned to slime or ash you still exist. You are just a more complex part of infinity because your parts are affecting and being affected by increasingly numerous parts of infinity. We survive death unchanged. As infinity advances, you travel away from The Whole. You become fractionated, diluted, iterated, distinct, individuated, specific, differentiated, and ordered as infinity goes on. Paradoxically, this makes you bigger and more vibrant.
 
Wherever you are at in infinity or The Whole, You don't exist, and yet, your influence is immeasurable. Infinity is the "place" where meaning is possible.  It is simply "expression."
 
Within The Whole, there is no feminine or masculine. When infinity is unleashed from the Whole, feminity is instantly present. She then creates the masculine. Together, Yin & Yang build and animate infinity until it is eventually consolidated into The Whole.
 
The concept of a universe is silly. I don't even like the word anymore because it is smaller than a single photon escaping from a laser scanner beam when you scan something and it flashes from under the product you were scanning. What I experienced reminded me of when Leo said it isn't Biology or Chemistry or Physics. It isn't quantum theory or strings. I guess that makes me an immaterialist.
 
The meaning of life is meaninglessness.
 
There is no reuniting with loved ones. I wasn't disturbed by this. Could be because I knew (without being cognizant of it) that I was already them and they are me.
 
Physically, I was uncoordinated and drunk-ish. I recorded myself for 8 hours, which I played back yesterday. I found I remembered most of my audio entries. I sounded dumb and dingy.  Days later, I feel a bit off, cognitively.  Less stress, less body tension, and MUCH less need to be stimulated by media or pleasure.
Well, that's it. Glad I got the opportunity to put it in front of an experienced audience!

@zunnyman
This is what I was thinking too. I have done multiple week solo retreats with a couple trips mixed in, in cities and alone in the deep woods. So, I’m excited for you, forgive me for being ‘advicy’........Eat as clean as possible starting now, you’ll get deeper in the trips and med’s. (You may already eat ‘clean’ idk) Also, from now till then, be letting every thought go. When the “realness” of your life’s ongoings happen, take that little moment first, right away, and let the reactions and thoughts go (you may already be here ) Empty the cup out and those 2 weeks can fill it and change everything. Everything! (I don’t mean to imply you or your life need changing, - I am not referring to your life, I mean everything... literally)
My advice, and I really hope you do this, is to write or type (print it though!) a few pages out ( before the 2 weeks starts) about how you see things in terms of yourself, your family, friends, coworkers perhaps....the ‘world’ stuff; economics, society, history, science, neurology, biology, whatever reality is, whatever God is, whatever else you think of in terms of your views and perspectives. 
In that 2 weeks, you’re going to go through some serious change in your understanding of all those things. It’s likely (if you’ve done your research and play it smart trip wise) that you will be in a state where you can not imagine ever needing to write any of it down. The insight / epiphanies / revelations will have an obviousness to them that is currently unimaginable. Again, there will be a strong being-ness of “I see it now, how could I ever possibly forget”. THAT, is essentially the message I’m trying to communicate. “It’s so amazing, how could I ever not see this?”. 
But we get back to our ‘lives’, and we start thinking about our stuff to do, and it can fade a little.  All part of the process / path, all is well. It can fade a little, and it can even slip just far enough away for us to struggle sometimes to grasp.
 
But there’s a hell of a trail of breadcrumbs available, if you lay them. For example, if after those 2 weeks, you were to look at your first posts on actualized, or maybe stories or poems you wrote, or anything like that, you will instantly become aware of and realize  REAL-IZE the difference in your consciousness. It may be a way of circumventing the “forgetting & remembering, forgetting & remembering” process the majority of us seekers go through - I assume....I did at least...and I see it as a theme on the forum. I suggest it could expedite your expansion, saving you months years, or even decades.
After the 2 weeks, look at what you wrote about your world - your life, and all of your worldly views. I bet you have never laughed so hard or felt such a release in your life as when you read what you wrote. It will bring the ‘trip’ right back to you - the insights, etc. 
 
You could be a clear ‘before & after’ on actualized.org. That could potentially help millions of people to come, in a most unique, precise and significant way. You could write all that I suggested in a post, and then after your trips / retreat, write your perspective on all the same things. I think doing that is perhaps the fastest possible growth you could gift to yourself. You will Real-I’ve it more, and so many people will see not only is it possible, they will get to read how & why. 
Godspeed and enjoy every minute of it you lucky sob!!!! ?

Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme. It's the beginning of the evolution of money.
I have been using Bitcoin since 2013. I haven't held onto any long term, but I do have a small amount now.
The real disruptor is the Blockchain technology. Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency that started the entire movement. It is the first application that used Blockchain. Cryptocurrencies is what money is evolving into. Money has always evolved throughout history. I think Bitcoin will be more of a store of value like digital gold. There will be some other cryptocurrencies that will be used as everyday currency in the future. It could take over 20 years for that to happen or maybe not even in our lifetime.
But at this moment there is a massive opportunity for people to become wealthy from cryptocurrencies. It's about doing your research to invest in the right ones. Like any space, there are a lot of scam altcoins. Most of the altcoins are scams so stay away from them. Do your research and stick with the main ones to start with.
This is a complicated topic and there is way too much information to cover in one post.
Check out theses articles to learn more:
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-bitcoin/
I recommend looking into: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin to start. Take the time to actually do research and learn about it. Don't just listen to what other people say about it or what the media says about it. Honestly the media dishes out crap information. You can dismiss what's happening as a "bubble/scam" if you want. You will probably regret it 10 to 20 years from now.

@Samurai Y It's a nice-sounding theory, until you realize how many unconscious and horrible mothers there are.
In a sense, loving your own child is the easiest thing in the world. It's directly part of your self-agenda.
Try loving something which is against your self-agenda. That's the real test of your love.
But of course, millions of parents grow from the process of having kids. It's a good step in the right direction, but usually not enough.
Notice that many animal mothers will fight to the death to defend their babies. That isn't the same as high consciousness.

@Antonius  Observing thoughts is completely necessary. Not just thoughts, mindfulness is all inclusive. You should train to be able to be mindful of every single movement in the stream of consciousness. But it takes a long time to go deeper and deeper. It took about 12 years for me to make it a 24/7 thing. As you keep doing it, you will be able to watch even the subtlest sensations, mood changes etc.
But it sounds like you are on the right track. Very rarely these questions are being asked in this forum. Just make sure you don't distract yourself by thinking about things like paranormal, esp etc. It is fun but a completely useless distraction when it comes to spiritual progress.
Also, mindfulness is really not a doing, even though we use the words like doing, practice etc. When you are mindful, you take place of the witness instead of identifying yourself with the doer. When each thought or emotion arises and passes away, there is a constant realization that those thoughts, emotions and sensations are not you. This is essentially same as self-inquiry. Self-inquiry and mindfulness are just different words used to point out essentially the same thing.
When you get thoughts like "Am I missing on a lot of growth if I don't observe my thoughts and any tips to do this more effectively?", recognize it as another thought, give space for it to arise and pass away. Recognize that it is just another thought but not really about who you are. In other words, it is the same as inquiring "who is missing something?".. Recognize that the 'I' which claims to be missing something is just an appearance created by that thought. When I say recognize, I am talking about just a 'noticing', recognizing for what it is without verbalizing it, without thinking and analyzing it.