Forestluv

In the U.S., psychiatrists are generally focused on treating mental illness through medication. Psychologists, social workers and counselors are much broader and can help with a variety of life issues. They are generally not so quick to recommend medication and use a wide variety of methods like talk therapy, CBT, EMDR etc. Depression is not necessary to gain benefits. Years ago, I saw a counselor to discuss regular life issues and to explore my personality. I found it helpful in a limited context. I’m not sure how things are structured in your country. You mention you don’t have depression or anything. What are you currently experiencing that raised questions whether you should see a psychiatrist?

Part of spiritual work is facing our fears. Standard doses of psychedelics may involve experiences that are uncomfortable. If that seems scary and overwhelming to you, you can try low doses of psychedelics. If that is still too scary and overwhelming, then you are not ready to explore consciousness with psychedelics. If that is the case, try something else. There are other ways to explore consciousness.

@Firebirdz From a nondual perspective, the question doesn’t make sense since the question assumes duality (separate things such as a person, product, a sale, money etc). Yet nonduality vs. duality is also a duality that dissolves. It is like asking: “If that is ONE carton, how can it include a dozen eggs?”.

This is dependent on your current understanding of “me”. You are conflating personal and trans-personal concepts. At the personal level, this is a recipe for disaster and will cause an immense amount of needless suffering. Notice how immersed you are in this narrative. It is as if you are convinced a stick is a snake and being held hostage by it. Assuming it is a snake and insisting on speaking about how dangerous snakes are will keep you trapped. Yet letting go of the attachment and identification of being held hostage by a snake can be extremely difficult. It doesn’t seem like it should, but letting go of that delusional identity is letting go of one’s identity. It can be hard to say goodbye to the stick, stand up and walk off into a new uncertainty.

@Aakash ? ♥️

Requiring that symmetry is necessary to realize God is an egoic idea. Realizing God may or may not involve symmetry. It is not a requirement. It’s like saying running 30+ miles per week is a requirement to run a marathon. It’s pretty good advice for most people, yet certainty not a requirement. A low mileage plan with lots of cross training is often sufficient.

Go to the space before you were born. Where there are no thoughts, words, images, symbols etc. Whenever a thought, word, image, symbol etc. arise, let it go because that came after your birth. If direct experience arises in this space, don’t try to explain it with any thoughts, words, images, symbols etc. Because all that came after your birth. That’s it. Yet it ain’t easy. That is an Orange level of exploration. That is totally cool and legit. There are many logical and scientific explorations that are sooo fascinating. I love that stuff. Yet be mindful of conflating and thinking it’s an expansive realm that includes more advanced stages beyond logic and reason.

No. You keep employing mental faculties. That’s not it. Ime, that is the #1 deterrent and it can be extremely difficult to let go of.

@Enlightenment My deepest experiences with 5-meo have come while laying down or sitting. I suppose it was symmetrical. Yet I did have one deep experience on 25mg doing yoga, which I suppose is asymmetrical. @kieranperez The key word is *requiring*

You are unaware of how many distinctions are here. As I said, it’s not mental. All this stuff dissolves.

@krockerman If you don’t have issues with mental illness and don’t have a strong strong family history of mental illness, the risks are very very low, unless you start off with monster doses. As well, you seem to be in an either / or mentality when you say “I’m afraid of taking psychedelics”. What does this mean? If that means taking 1,000 ug of LSD, using psychedelics three times a day everyday or tripping in Grand Central Station N.Y. during rush hour - then I would be afraid as well. You can microdose or min-dose. You can dose one time or once every six months. Perhaps a mini-dose once every few months feels right for you. Or perhaps a mini-dose opens a door and you feel curious to explore more. Or maybe not. . . The mind loves to create problems that don’t exist. If you are curious, try a few micro or mini doses and see how it goes. The risk here is much lower than the risk of eating unwashed fruits and vegetables.

Pretty much, yea. Sometimes it is that simple. Other times it is more nuanced and deeper. For example, there are times I’m not sure and it’s not so simple as a clear correct diagnosis or a clear mis-diagnosis. Rather than trying to find one perfect clear view, I try to be open to clarifying my view. This involves being open to information and different perspectives, yet also experience and intuition. For example, when I traveled to Colombia I had a lot of ideas about what the country was like. When I got there, I spoke with locals regarding Colombian culture and personal safety. I realized many of my ideas weren’t quite right. That they were sorta right, but not quite. The locals helped me clarify my ideas. Yet I also had an intuitive sense if someone was speaking with me genuinely or if there was some agenda going on.

Ultimately, form is formless and formless is form. Ime, direct experience is key. It’s not something that I could figure out mentally. I was shown the deconstruction of all distinctions to Nothing and the re-construction of distinctions to Everything. You mentioned that you can’t use psychedelics and meditation isn’t deep enough. That is a limiting belief. These realizations can and have been revealed in people without psychedelics. Yet for many people, psychedelics will allow space for revelations. Ime, psychedelics revealed many facets of nonduality - many of which were whacky and destabilizing and I went through developmental stages that seemed to fluctuate between sane and insane. I had about 50 trips before clear revelations of null void and absolute infinity manifested. I didn’t trip a few times and realize the breadth and depth of this clearly. It was a long process. Without psychedelics, the clearest revelations came in a sensory deprivation tank (90 min.). Things kept dissolving until the only thing present was my heartbeat and “I” went to a place before “I” was born. It was sorta like consciousness was back in the womb. Everything after birth dissolved. There was no “me” because that “me” was created after I was born. There was no images or thoughts. No things like houses, horses, coffee, language, womb, fetus, birth, brain, people, no whatever. Everything that appeared after birth was dissolved and was absent in this mystical space of consciousness. An immense amount was deconstructed (all things constructed after birth). Pretty much all things we perceive as form dissolved. It was deeply profound, yet not quite the null void because there was a type of ineffable essence/presence One of the most important things I learned is that it’s not mental. Language, images, symbols and mentality all get deconstructed away and dissolve as the null void is approached. Another key for me was a genuine desire to explore this and a willingness to try new things and let go of whatever needed to be let go of.

@Joker_Theory Nonduality means not two. If there is a difference between a formless state and the formed state you currently perceive, that it is a duality. As well, nonduality vs duality is a duality that dissolves. Look around you and see that formless Nothing is formed Everything. "Form does not differ from Emptiness And Emptiness does not differ from Form. Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form." -- Heart Sutra

@kieranperez I remember this question being asked a couple times and Leo commenting on it. A google search with keywords - actualized.org , eeg machine and Leo - may help. I’e found google searchers to be more powerful than the forum search tool.

@Ampresus This sounds like “fight or flight” getting triggered in which a person perceives a potential threat to the well-being to oneself, friend and/or family member. The body responds into a fight or flight mode for survival. Nothing wrong with that, it can have practical value in some situations. Yet the mind can also perceive it’s environment from a distorted lens and misjudge actual risk. When fight or flight gets triggered, it can turn into a feedback loop through thought stories and mis-perception. This can amplify sensations and lead to excessive discomfort, worry and an OCD pattern of checking and looking for things in the the environment that it may perceive as an imminent threat. The mechanism can be hyper-sensitive, mis-calibrated and dialed up too high. If this arose in me, I would try to step out of the dynamic and ask if I am interpreting potential risk in the environment clearly and if my response is proportional to the risk. Context is super important. Ideally, I want to devote a certain percentage of my mindfulness to those risks and use the rest of my awareness to enjoy the event. I may only need to devote 5% of my mind to potential risk and have the other 95% enjoying the event. In other situations, I may need to devote 95% of my attention to deal with a dangerous situation. . . . The problem arises when I mis-diagnose a situation by under-estimating or over-estimating. I’ve been in low-risk situations where I excessively worried, thinking it was high risk. And I’ve been in high-risk situations, mindlessly wandering around unaware of risk. If excessive fight or flight continually arose - in spite of my cognitive understanding that it is irrational - there may be some type of underlying conditioning going on that I should introspect and deconstruct. It sounds like you feel a need to not only protect yourself, yet also family members. Perhaps re-access the situation to see if you are seeing it clearly. Is the environment really a risk to your safety? If so, to what degree? Is the safety of your family members dependent on you? If so, to what degree? . . . For example, if someone in a public fitness center was checking out my girlfriend with elevator eyes, I may find it inappropriate and annoying. If she was uncomfortable with it, I would want to be in tune with that and communicate with her. Yet it’s not really threatening in this context. We are in a public place. There is a very low risk of severe harm in this context. It’s not like a look of desire means he is going to stalk us the rest of the day and eventually drag us into a back alley where five of his friends are waiting to beat me up and abuse my girlfriend. . . Some guys give those kinda looks and vibes. However, if he approached us, physically grabbed one of us and said something to intimidate us - that would elevate the situation and intervention would be appropriate. . . As well, if I am traveling with someone and sense some personal risk to us, I may communicate with my partner without exaggerating the risk. For example, as we are planning the day in the hotel room I may say “Hmmm, it looks like we will be in highly concentrated tourist areas today. We won’t need our passports, so perhaps it’s best to leave them here in the hotel room”. Excessive worry can actually attract what I am worrying about. For example, if I am in a highly concentrated tourist area and there is a sign asking people to be mindful of their belongings to avoid theft, it may be wise to put my wallet in my front pocket and not to set my backpack down and walk away. If there is something of value in my backpack, like a train ticket, I may push it down to the very bottom of the pack. Then, I wouldn’t worry and I would enjoy the tourist attraction. If I am anxious, worrying and obsessively keep checking that I still have my wallet and everything is still in my backpack, that could attract attention to me and could actually increase my risk. And I am not attracting other things like appreciation, wonder and meeting new, interesting people. Law of attraction stuff.

@Kushu2000 All of the jhanas are absolute infinity, as is everything.

How are you defining “success”?

@Blake You describe it as if one “flips” back and forth between dual and nondual. Ime, its not quite like that.

@Elisabeth He specifically makes a distinction of “moral reasoning” and gives examples of high level moral reasoning of morality in academics. This would still be an Orange stage of development. A very deep level of Orange. One line of development is reasoning. Another line of development is embodiment. A person can have a high level of reasoning without embodiment. It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone restricted to rational morality wouldn’t act on it if they are still within a self-centered mode motivated to meet self needs. That moral reasoning could actually be used to manipulate and justify their own immoral acts. In terms of SD developing through Green into tier 2 is crucial for the embodiment of that reasoning and integration if various modes of being, such as intuition and empathy.

I think there is a balance between the journey and the destination. As well, between being grounded and flexible. For example, someone might have a goal of running their first marathon next year and breaking 4:00 hr. If they dumped that goal after two weeks of training and started creating and dumping new goals every other their week, it’s not so great. They are like a doll flopping around in the ocean with no direction.. Yet I also don’t want to become hyper-focused on the outcome or have it become my identity. For example, what if my body started accumulating fatigue and minor injuries and I was so obsessed with the goal that I pressed on and seriously injured myself and tumbled into a dynamic about how I can’t follow through on goals and what will people think of me. . . .Yet the underlying fundamental goal was to have a goal that would excite me in which I could get in great physical shape, make new friends in the running community and travel. With this awareness, if minor injuries surfaced I would likely think about doing cross training such as cycling and yoga - since the deeper goal is to get healthy and have friendships in healthy communities. How that is expressed my change over time.

@Marinus Every dynamic is different. This is just my impression: it sounds like you have interest in progressing forward at a certain pace that is not aligned with hers. She mentioned something about her ex playing mind games as a reason for her behavior. My concern is that she is projecting an unhealthy aspect of her previous relationship(s) onto you and your relationship. If a woman was distancing her self from me because her ex was a manipulative gaslighter, that would be a red flag and concern me, because it ime it goes much deeper. I’ve dated women in which her exes where living rent-free in our relationships and it got frustrating and tiresome to keep saying “well I’m not your ex Ted and I’m not lying to you right now to manipulate you like he did”. It was a very unhealthy dynamic for communication because my words and behavior went through a filter of manipulate exes and it cloudied our communication. This can go deep. For example, it is deeply hurtful to tell your lover that you love them and they don’t believe you because their ex used to say that manipulatively. I wouldn’t be too concerned about the hesitance to sex. Having sex early in a relationship can change the dynamics. It just depends on the person. I’ve dated women that I really liked and it felt best to take things slow and get to know each other better - to build a foundation first. I would be much more concerned about her seeing you through the lens of manipulative exes. This conditioning can run deep and she may not be emotionally available. I’ve been on both sides of it. I dated a narcissist and it took me a year of being single and working through things before I was ready to be in a healthy relationship again. With that said, none of us is 100% pure and healthy. We all have some type of issue going on. If I connected with someone in multiple areas, I wouldn’t bolt at the first sign of trouble. I’d be cautious and observant to the degree of the issue and how open we are about resolving it and moving on. Perhaps, after a few more dates she becomes comfortable with you, trust is built and the ex fades into the background. Or perhaps this dynamic persists and rears it’s head in multiple areas of the relationship. As well, her interest in an LDR may also be reflective that you are at a distance and there is safety and comfort in that, which wouldn’t be good. Generally when two people like each other, they want to get to know each other better. She doesn’t seem to be showing much interest. She could be saying “I’m not into texting, but how about we talk on the phone or Skype?” As a test, you could mention that texting doesn’t seem to be the best mode of communication and offer to talk via phone or Skype. If she is excited by that possibility, my concern would decrease and I’d give it a shot. If she is lukewarm to the idea and just goes through the motions, my concern would double and I would re-evaluate things. In this case, the odds of it working out long term would extremely low and I would shift a short term dating mindset or change direction and look for someone else.

I agree with the above listed possibilities as being likely and that they would be red flags. I think there is another possibility that she might just be oriented that way. I dated someone for a while in which we only texted a few times each week. At first, the low volume texting was somewhat bothersome (high volume texting would also be bothersome to me) - yet that was just our dynamics. Early on, I may have texted something like “how did your presentation go?” and not hear back for three days. We settled into something in which we didn’t share our daily activities via text and it worked ok. . . .I’ve also dated other women in which long response times was problematic. I would text asking if she would like to get together this weekend and not hear back for three days. In that context, it’s a concern for me. I’m siting around for days holding off on other plans and holding up other people with “maybe I can”, as I wait for her to respond. Not a very healthy dynamic.

Ver nice! Thank you for creating and sharing this for us ? I love explanations of awakening and nonduality in the context of the stories we create and tell.

This is dependent on your understanding of “you”. We could say that there is a personal “you”. From this perspective, it would appear that there is a you that is alone and may feel lonely. Yet there is also awareness that this personal “you” is illusory. Once this is revealed, there is a transcendent shift in perspective and energetics. It is difficult to understand if someone is still immersed in a personal story of “you”. Nondual answers such as “You and God are both everything and nothing”will seem confusing and irrational. Ime, direct experience is more powerful in transcendence than thought stories and concepts. Yet I’ve found concepts to be helpful as a sense of grounding during consciousness expansion. Without this grounding, direct nondual and mystical experience can be dismissed as “woo woo” or can be excessively destabilizing. . .. Yet the mind can often finds stability and comfort in thoughts / concepts and becomes contracted in thought stories all day without realizing it.