outlandish

Yes, it's definitely not clear in my mind if the PM system is a net benefit or problem, and I very well could easily be in the minority for even questioning it. I wanted to bring it up because I think it warrants discussion, so thanks for engaging in it. On the one hand it can allow people to connect like you said, on the other hand it could be fertile ground for nonsense and confusion out of sight of the rest of the community. Also, to be clear, I didn't bring this up as an underhanded criticism of the screen-shotted interaction between Nahm and Soonhei. To me, all that illustrated was the potential for general missed opportunities via the PM system. This is not a reaction to their specific dialogue, we truly don't know the details of what happened there.

Soonhei's suicide has led me to do some serious thinking about my relationship with Leo's teachings and this forum. @Leo Gura is correct that when someone dies in the backcountry, or an airplane goes down, we don't cancel camping or ban flying. When this happens search & rescue and the airline industry conduct a rigorous post-mortem in order to make changes that reduce risk. Because of this approach, commercial flight has today become safer than driving. Following is my own post-mortem analysis, do with it what you will, apologies for the length. I've divided it up into 3 spheres: 1. Leo's Teaching Leo's teachings have helped stupendously more people than they have harmed. Just looking at suicide, it seems clear that he has literally saved many people's lives. This is a great achievement alone, let alone all of the people who he has helped along the way in less dire situations. However, I would be dishonest if I didn't voice concern over some of his language. I believe some of it can easily be misunderstood and lead a person like Soonhei down the wrong path. This is not meant as an attack, I truly intend this as sharing a perspective, hopefully in the most (tough-) loving way possible. I hope this can help fortify Leo's teachings, and this community's response to them. Disclaimers and warnings are a great idea, and will help. However the issue will remain that people will ignore them, think they don't apply to them, or skip them altogether. There can be the assumption that warnings are a fake covering-your-ass thing, put in place to meet legal requirements, or youtube guidelines etc. I think many of us are conditioned to ignore warnings to some degree. In my opinion, the true caution has to go right down to the core of the language in the teaching. To give a concrete example, Leo has said on more than one occasion that he has "literally died". Now, this is clearly not true in the normal medical sense of what people mean when they literally die. I would hope that even a confused person would see this, but it sets a tone. In my opinion, this is too dangerous a phrase. There needs to be a very, very strong line in the sand between ego-death/transcendence and literal medical death. Again, I want to stay positive here, Leo is an extremely talented speaker, and it's impossible to deliver 100s of hours of lectures without an occasional error. I wouldn't last 1hr tbh. This is intended to hopefully shine some light. 2. This Forum I value the diversity of respectful viewpoints and discussion on this forum. I also support mild censorship to ban and closing of terrible and unproductive threads, and aggressive or useless discussion to keep this forum from becoming a generic free-for-all. There are more than enough platforms for talking shit. As a mod, I wish we could have noticed Soonhei's warning signs and intervened. What if. Fuck. I would probably support disabling PMs on this forum. I'm not completely sure about this, but I think it warrants discussion. Perhaps we should have all discussion above board here. I'm concerned that this community is displaying signs of cult-like behaviour. I think we could all do with checking in on the level of pedestalization of Leo and his teachings. Question respectfully, without attack. Check in if what you heard in his video is authentic for you. Check your biases, try not to worship. If someone has a thoughtful criticism of something you have gained from Leo's teaching (or any teaching), observe if this triggers you. I believe that a slight leaning towards an unquestioning and cult-like behaviour in this community contributed to Soonhei's fanatical final act. 3. Personal I've been overly cavalier in not providing cautions on this forum, especially WRT psychedelics. I also regret not voicing and trying to discuss my concerns earlier. I'll be more forthcoming and hopefully loving in my responses and perspectives. I think we all need to adopt the voice of no-self-harm (and no other-harm!) in all of our interactions on here.

@SoonHei committed a spiritual and physical suicide, he jumped in a leap of faith into infinity. Trouble is he left behind his finite family and all those who love him. This community can't be held solely accountable for the choice of a man, a free agent. But also, we need to take a look at the conditions that helped foster his worldview such that he would come to make this choice. We're interconnected here in terms of thought, outlook, worldview, and the content of actualized.org certainly fed profoundly into his worldview. In that light, I can definitely see how he came to his conclusion. I don't think in 1000 years that I, or most of us would jump. But I can definitely see his line of thought, and how some of the content and ideas around here might lead someone to think this way. We're not in some kind of crisis of being inside a suicide cult, but if we don't deeply address this issue, it will be doomed to repeat here and there. We can't just write it off as collateral damage, or as statistically inevitable. His actions were deeply intertwined with some lines of thought and perspectives floated here.

This is a pretty important topic @SS10 it would be premature to shut it down already.

This needs to be made more explicit

Unless we don't remember the spiritual philosophies that lacked the guardrails against people terminating their lives, because those philosophies died out over time, being unpalatable. Whereas the ones with strong guardrails thrived and are remembered today.

Fuck fuck fuck. How did no one see this post and respond. OMG. I'm so sorry @SoonHei @Muhammad Jawad and all of @SoonHei's family. This is a terrible tragedy.

Let's stay on topic here people, this isn't a thread about Connor, or you.

Fuck. We need to take great steps as a community to inoculate against this kind of thing ever happening again. This is heartbreaking to imagine his young kids growing up without their dad. It's one thing to choose to take your own life, but we all live in a network of people who we love and love us back. Death is inevitable, there's no sense in rushing it.

I've noticed that I have more sweet cravings when I'm not getting enough protein in my diet. It's unintuitive, but you might find the same.

Zwitterionic! @The0Self I learned a new word today

Hah! Right below Amanita muscaria on the priority list for me.

Amanita muscaria should probably be near the bottom of most people's psychotropic bucket list. I haven't tried it personally @Carl-Richard.

I think you mean HCL not HLC. These are two different forms that 5-MeO-DMT comes in. Basically, Freebase is what you want if you're going to vape it, HCL (or fumarate or any of the other salts) are what you'll want if you're going to plug or snort it. Freebase is slightly more potent for the weight, because the molecule doesn't have the hydrochloride (or other) bit stuck to it. HCL will probably have a longer shelf life as it won't degrade as easily. They are the same drug, just in different forms, for different routes of administration.

I think Leo's right that it really varies by the person. I think it also varies a lot by the specific circumstances of the trip. It's very interconnected with what you've been eating lately, what you've been doing leading up to the trip, how your sleep has been, how you choose to react to various body energies, what you're doing when they come up, so on and so on... it's complex. For me personally, LSD and AL-LAD tend to have the least bodyload. I'd put DPT on the other end of the spectrum as having heavy bodyload, and I think this is a common reaction to it. The 2C-X series can have some bodyload, but I find it easy to work with. The tryptamines tend to have an edgier bodyload for me, more tension. Bodyload can be a powerful thing to work with - body energies that can be productive to address, pointing to something that you can work on, with a pot of gold at the end. For example, you might become hyper-aware of some tension or pain in your shoulders, and realize that it's something chronic, and the psychedelic is putting it under the magnifying lens. Then you are able to experiment with movement or postural changes that improve the issue. You can bring that back to earth and change it permanently. Another example is that you might start trembling, and then realize that it's related to some uneasiness you're feeling. You can investigate where this is coming from and address the causes of uneasiness. It might be something that's been semi- or sub- consciously been bothering you but it's never been elevated up enough to deal with it. Sometimes it is just a banal physical side-effect, but bodyload can also be a blessing so it's always worth taking a look at where it's coming from.