Carl-Richard

Then we should just shut down this forum then

You'd be surprised . Well, it used to be mindfulness meditation, "do nothing", and what I call crying meditation. Sometimes mantra meditation. Nowadays I just sit.

Sitting.

It's not that you're wrong, it's that you're being closeminded. The problem is that people take your advice and still end up with the same problems. Then what to do? More practice, yes, but I see it happening over and over again where people ask the same questions and get the same answer: "you have to distinguish between the relative and the absolute". Are you saying this answer is counterproductive? All I've done is give a formalized summary of that answer which people can use as a tool to identify where they're stuck. How they can solve that problem is of course more about actual spiritual practice (like I mentioned in the final paragraph). In that sense, it's more like a diagnostic tool than a final cure. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to have more tools in your toolbelt.

The "easy" way: take psychedelics, study epistemology. The hard way: develop deep knowledge about one field and general knowledge about extremely many fields.

39:04-40:40 Reminds me of one time I talked about the difference between a Yellow approach to environmental issues like veganism vs. a Green approach, namely by taking a stategic, large-scale, "cold-hearted", statistical approach with the right values in mind, instead of merely changing your personal consumer habits as a compassionate emotional response to visceral images of things like animal suffering or social injustice. That way it cuts through the traps of confusing real solutions with adopting an identity.

Then again, they're only separate in a relative sense, not in an absolute sense, hence the confusion . Strange-loopy stuff.

To find something that aligns with both #1 and #2 in a good way requires a higher spiritual drive that must nevertheless be cultivated. This is what is called passion, love, desire for truth. It's an integrative force that pulls everything upwards in unison, but it fades if you let the two aspects get out of balance. It's a non-linear, interactive, transactional process. Work on finding the balance.

There are generally two ways of interpreting "doing what you want": 1. Being a slave to your impulses. 2. Working towards the goal you want. The former obviously doesn't require much long-term commitment, and it's a central part of your life, so it shouldn't be neglected, but it could negatively impact your goals. Goals require long-term commitment and sacrifices. Without a goal, your life will follow a path of degeneration instead of a path of growth. However, you can't really achieve your goals by completely ignoring your impulses. That will turn you into a hollow shell of a human being. It's about finding the correct balance between the two. There is an interesting dynamic called "the rock-bottom theory" which says that if you just follow your impulses like a slave without tending to anything else in your life, sooner or later you'll hit such a low point that you'll either end up dead or completely change your life around. So in context to the two points I've listed, this theory posits that sooner or later, #2 will naturally emerge out of #1, but it's obviously a dangerous strategy. Some people only learn it the hard way. For example, it's one of the only ways to get out of life-long drug addiction. You realize that it's either #2 or you lose everything. I believe that this dynamic can work in different degrees (you don't necessarily have to become homeless to get the point). In other words, keep "doing what you want" (#1) until you learn first-hand why you need some #2 in your life. Two good examples of this theory is Steve-O and Brandon Novak (from Jackass). I really recommend this first video:

Keep doing that then.

If they had the chance to decide, how do you know what they would choose?

Do you really have any other choice? For me it was that or death.

How do you know that they would make that same conclusion? This is not a one-way street.

The way the lyrics were written reminds me of Yellow : Talk, it's only talk Arguments, agreements, advice, answers, Articulate announcements It's only talk Talk, it's only talk Babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker Brouhaha, boulder dash, ballyhoo It's only talk Back talk Talk talk talk, it's only talk Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat, Conversation, contradiction, criticism It's only talk Cheap talk Talk, talk, it's only talk Debates, discussions These are words with a D this time Dialogue, duologue, diatribe, Dissention, declamation Double talk, double talk Talk, talk, it's all talk Too much talk Small talk Talk that trash Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, enfadulations It's all talk Elephant talk, elephant talk, elephant talk

Red: advent of agriculture and complex division of labour lead to increased availability of resources, questioning of collectivist tribal values, population growth and areal expansion, conflict between tribes, and the first empires started to form.

Never said that. All I'm going to say is that N'N-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT might exist in the brain. Compare the structure of melatonin (sleep hormone) and 5-MeO-DMT and try to tell me that atleast 5-Meo doesn't exist in the brain: But why do you want to try 5-Meo? The problem with trying to "naturally" increase the production of specifically one substance, out of a plethora of related substances, without ingesting specifically that substance, is that your body doesn't work like that. You can't just turn your body into an on-demand chemical delivery system without doing some serious "unnatural" alterations to your bodily functions. Taking a precursor to substituted tryptamines like 5-HTP together with an MAOI, as suggested by the Erowid article, will mainly lead to an increase in serotonin (and other serotonin-like substances), which is obviously not going to just produce the effects of 5-MeO-DMT. Any effect from the tiny amount of 5-Meo that will be produced will just drown in the noise anyway. The only way to get the pure effect is to actually take the substance.

You'll spare them death but you'll also spare them life. Anti-natalism is ironically enough survival-based thinking: fear, contraction > exploration, expansion. It frames life as a harmful place as opposed to an innately beautiful cosmos of infinite creativity.

Do you want to produce more 5-MeO-DMT naturally or do you want to experience non-duality?

You're being incoherent.

It's not much more than a crazy idea if you ask me.

My theory is that you fear letting go of your attachments, and you have to build up trust in yourself in order to let them go.

I believe the only solution is to build up a lot of self-trust and self-love. I think I'm working on it though

Realize who you truly are.

I've had many dips into the source while meditating, but I'll go a step further and only mention the times I've awoken suddenly in the middle of the day without consciously meditating: I sat on an airplane while listening intensely to Martin Ball's song "The Fractal of Being". The plane was about to land, the song was coming to an end and I was completely one with the music, until the lyrics said "Surrender to the flow", which was when a deep sense of warmth started emanating from my chest, and a sudden flash of terror and the realization of "oh fuck I think I'm going to die!" filled my center of attention. I opened my eyes and started to reach for my water bottle, and then most amazing thing happened: my hand moved completely of its own accord. There was no "me" moving it. I looked out the window at the beautiful landscape as the plane touched down and felt a deep sense of nostalgia while thinking "This is it". It was Me. It has always been me. It's what I've been all the time. It was the feeling of my living room when I was 3 years old. I was about to start crying as I was melting into the love and beauty of everything, but then we had to get up and leave the plane. I looked around as we were about to leave and I could see all the faces sitting in the rows behind me all at the same time. It was like everybody was all sitting together and I could feel all of them. Everything in my visual field was in crisp, crystal clear focus. I walked off the plane while feeling lighter than a feather, and I looked around, caught the eye of a toddler sitting in a stroller who looked at me with a confused stare. After that, the feeling of terror started to creep up again and I had to grasp onto my mind to keep myself from disappearing into it all. Infact, 5 years later, that is still what I'm doing. Almost one year ago, I sat in a lecture. I was extremely well-rested, peak-energy levels, very calm in the body and mind. I had slept well, worked out two days in a row, it was the first day of true spring weather, and there was a full-moon. I had eaten just the perfect amount of food, the perfect type of food, my stomach was in the most perfect condition, I had abstained from all sexual activity for 5 days, my body was super flexible from stretching out 30 minutes everyday for 5 months, and I was sitting completely still with an upright posture while just listening to the teacher. I had recently experimented with provoking emotional releases during meditation, and I had become very aware of how I was creating tensions in my body. Somehow during the lecture, I became aware of how I was tensing up in the stomach in order to focus on what the teacher was saying, and I had the insight that if I just relax, let go of the tension and sit back, maybe I'll feel better. That is what I did. It felt great. Then not long after that, I got the sense that the lecture was suddenly slowing down, the teacher was talking very slowly and my sense of time and perception of what the teacher was saying gradually started to change. Then the familiar feeling of terror from my past awakenings of "oh shit I'm going to die!" arrived in full force, and I had no idea how to stop it. I tried manually tensing my stomach, clenching my fist, moving my feet, but then the insight that "you're still creating all of this, this is still all You" just cut through that illusion like it was nothing. I was on the verge of a panic attack until the lecture finally ended and I walked out (more like levitated out) while talking to my friends, all while trying to keep a straight face without revealing how I was about to freak the fuck out. I went to the toilet, somehow managed to ground myself, and went back to talk with some of my friends while looking outside the window at the beautiful spring weather. The rest of the summer was spent finding new interesting ways to clench my stomach in order to keep myself from disappearing. So as you can see, the common thread through all of my awakenings is a cycle of opening up, freaking out, and closing back down again. Infact now, just as we speak, despite not having meditated since march last year, I've entered a perpetual tug-of-war between staying grounded in dualistic perception and suddenly merging back into nondual perception. This happens often many times a day where I'll have a mini-freak-out of "oh shit I'm dying" and clenching up whatever muscle I choose to ground myself with. This weird form of neurosis can sometimes impair my performance, like during my last written exam, where I will be completely immersed in my writing but get interrupted by the realization that time, space and myself is about to fly out the window and never come back unless I scream and shout for it to come back. It's not that bad during the winter when the energy levels are comparatively low, but I'm a little bit concerned about how this spring will turn out. Other than that, my life has never been better