Search the Community

Co Author of CHANCE and CHOICE explains in a concise article the Gurdjieff idea of our multiplicity. The Problem of the Subtle Sybil Effect By: R.C.L. The underlying reason the big questions are so difficult to answer is ultimately personal ñ we are swamped in a plethora of identities, most of them false. These false personas were imposed upon us from the outside by society and from the inside by our own muddled thinking. For most of us there is no single unified self, no uniform field of continuous consciousness. Our "common sense" notion to the contrary, that we are one person with a singular identity, is based on a false assumption. In the words of psychologist Charles Tart, Ph.D.: We just assume that a given person is relatively consistent with himself, that he constitutes one person with various characteristics, traits, and so on. Thus you call yourself by one name, with the implication that you are indeed one person even though you have a range of moods and feelings. .... we actually have many quite discrete subpersonalities, each of which calls itself "I" when it happens to be activated by appropriate environmental stimuli, but we have no unity of personality at all except in the sense that all the various subpersonalities are associated with the same physical body and name. (1) As Professor Tart and many others have found, by the time we become adults our identity is disjointed, fragmented, perhaps even fractal, like a "Julia Set."(2) We have one series of identities and personalities inherited from our parents, fashioned to meet their expectations, or to rebel against them. There is another series of personalities acquired in the course of schooling, another while dating, another at work, another in a sport or hobby, etc. Close observation of yourself will reveal that you are different people at different times. There is precious little continuity between your different states of consciousness. When you are one person one moment, you have usually forgotten that you were a completely different person a few moments before, and will be yet another person later. You are consumed by the personality of the moment. The personalities are isolated from each other by barriers of unawareness. There are defenses or buffers between the many "I's". There is no underlying actor to play the part. No one who remembers and coordinates all of the roles. It's as if a series of different people - acquaintances, not friends - took turns inhabiting the same body. We are one person when we first wake up, another person to our children, another to our spouse, another to our boss, etc. One "I" may make a promise, but the next "I" will not remember to keep it, or will not want to keep it. We live in a chaotic world where an endless series of things happen to us that do not fit together, do not make sense. Many important things seem to be the result of chance or luck. There is no conscious being there to see the "big picture" so that it can all make sense. There is no center, no empty hub uniting the many spokes of the wheel, the many fragments of self. The conscious states alternate unconnected by inner silence. It is like hearing foreign words or sentences without any underlying comprehension. The underlying being who comprehends and integrates is unconscious. The actor is asleep. The play goes on mechanically, uncomprehendingly. For such a one the "scientists" are correct, man is a machine and enlightenment is impossible, or merely a delusion, another fleeting role. Since most everyone suffers from weakly-connected consciousness, this appears to be natural and normal. We only recognize it as a problem in its most extreme forms, where there is total and complete disconnection of the different parts of the self. These are the cases where the different people inhabiting the body are complete strangers to each other. This is the pathological disorder of multiple personalities made famous by the case of Sybil.(3) Sybil Dorsett was a woman with sixteen separate personalities. At first none of them knew or remembered any of the others. For instance, one personality named Victoria Antoinette Scharleau was a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive blond, and another named Mike Dorsett thought she was male, a builder and carpenter. With multiple personality disorders it is not uncommon for the shy personality to be shocked to wake up naked in bed with a man the sexy personality met the night before. One personality shifts with another and there is no recollection of the prior person. There is a complete discontinuity of consciousness. This kind of multiple personality disorder is often caused by extreme negative events as a child. In Sybil's case, she was tortured and sexually abused as a young girl. This caused her to break up, literally, because she could not bear the extreme abuse she was subjected to. Through years of therapy Sybil was able to confront the memories and eventually integrate the separate personalities into one. She became a whole person. INTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS Personality dissociation in its extreme form is obviously a problem which must be corrected. But the less severe manifestations - the "subtle Sybil" effect, wherein we are disconnected to a certain degree - is a problem unknown to most people. Psychology is just beginning to recognize this as a root problem which underlies many others.(4) Most people do not know they are shattered. They treat themselves and others as if they were one person, already fully integrated and whole. In fact, most people are just integrated enough to function in society. They are not solid enough to answer the big questions for themselves, to make sense of their lives, and know who they are and what they can do. If we stop to think about the discontinuity - the differences in our moods and personalities - we just assume it is natural and of no importance. For instance, who can constantly recall their dream selves, or who they were in deep sleep - unconsciousness? We accept the barriers between our waking and sleeping selves as natural, inevitable, just like the barriers between our left and right brains. We fail to recognize the significance of the basic discontinuity between waking and sleep. Even the lack of continuity in waking consciousness - which occurs to everyone in the course of a day, or even a few minutes - is accepted as natural. We are sad one minute, then the next we are happy, in the next reflective, in the next absorbed in music, in the next answering the phone. When we are with some people we have a submissive personality, with others a dominant persona comes out. Is there a conscious being underlying all of these different states of consciousness? Is there a center unifying the multiple personalities? For almost everyone the answer is no. Their consciousness is not fully integrated, and they do not even see this as a problem. How is the actor to awake? Recognition that "integration" of multiple selves is a problem is the critical first step in the solution. It is also the first step to answering the question of who you are. Only you can discover who you are, no one can do it for you. The discovery comes from observation of yourselves - all of them - and then integration into a conscious whole. This requires bridging the great divide between the waking self and the sleeping self. The corpus callosum dividing the left and right brains must be transformed from a wall into a highway. Then you can start to understand who you are, and begin to integrate all of the many snapshots of your life into a flowing movie. Until you attain this continuity, your true identity will elude you. The meaning of life will remain an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Your true desires, your real potential, will remain hidden between the intervals of your many selves. You will be incomplete, asleep. One reason most of us fail to notice the lack of continuity is that one or two personalities - and the states of consciousness that go with them - tend to dominate the other weaker personalities and their consciousness. They hide the gaps, cover up the problem. Frequently the dominant personalities are imposed upon us from the outside. The strong alien personalities - the dominant consciousness states - frequently overpower and sublimate the other parts of our self, the other states of consciousness we experience. The weaker states are then forced into subconsciousness or unconsciousness. They are forgotten, disassociated from the conscious identity. One or two of the many personalities act in place of our overall Self. We do not know the plethora of possible personalities, unified and integrated in one being. We do not experience a healthy variety of conscious states. As a result our potential is artificially limited. We experience only a small slice of life. We see the rest as if through a glass darkly. Consciousness of the other parts of our self eventually becomes forbidden. They are not even recognized when experienced. If they are consciously experienced, they are promptly forgotten. They become "altered" states of conscious, momentary lapses of character. This dissociation and imbalanced dominance of one personality and consciousness over all others - a kind of psychological cancer - frequently leads to illnesses, psychological complexes and neurosis. The underlying being aware of the many sides of self is asleep, relegated to the unconscious. The strong role has taken over the actor and prevents him from waking. For most people the dominant personality is not even their own. It is a false personality imposed on them from their parents, friends, job or society. The false personality is a muddled thinker, with no connection to the other innate capacities of the whole being. The false persona is not linked with the true Self, it is not naturally a part of the underlying being. It is instead linked to the cultural consensus, the mass hypnosis and pseudo-thinking. If the actor should awaken he would not play that role, he would not accept that thought. People dominated by false personalities are usually weak, with little energy or vitality. Usually, only personality which is in connection with a person's potential - their true inner Self - can vitalize and naturally make room for the whole Self. Only a real persona can accept and try to integrate "altered states". The false, unconnected personalities only block energy. They act as a negative mask to hide true potential, instead of expressing it. The recognition and dropping of such lifeless personalities is the first step in discovering who you really are. It is the first step in "waking up". As you wake up you begin a conscious journey to realization of your full potential. There are many ways to wake up, many procedures. You need to find a procedure which is good for you. In that way you can move beyond legal study into the actual "practice of the Law." With an effective method, and adequate teachers and counselors, you may be lucky enough to wake up. You may be able to tap your inner essence and develop a true personality. That is just the beginning, however, not the end. At first, there are many dangers. You can still be dominated by the first real aspect of your self that wakes up. The first strong fragment personality to awaken may try to block the awakening of the rest. Still, it is easier to awaken to the full dynamics of yourself from out of a true personality than a false one. The actor once stirred may awaken. Once awakened, the road to self actualization may be traveled. Another danger that remains after the journey has begun arises from cultural restraints and muddled thinking. This can cause you to awaken only certain socially-acceptable sides of yourself and repress the rest. You may be afraid of parts of yourself or be prejudiced against them. For instance, you may have been taught as a child that sex was bad and so refuse to awaken that part of your human nature. If the real and awakened personas don't know any better, the phony censor persona may continue to have real power. Objective, holistic thinking is the answer. It can counteract the censor, the cultural restraints and inherited beliefs. Once your real personas are taught to think straight, they will see through the muddled thinking inherited from the past. Unlike the false personalities, the real personalities have the power and courage to act on their thinking. They can transcend the hindrances of the past. Armed with true thinking, they can overcome the cultural censor, and liberate all parts of your human potential. THE CASE OF CHARLES T. TART v. NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS Professor Charles Tart is an American scientist and academic who has thought deeply about these topics. More importantly, he has taken action and tried hard to clarify and solidify his own consciousness, to take it out of what he refers to as the "cultural consensual trance" of so called normal consciousness. His careful scientific research has shown that what passes for normal or average consciousness is just one possible form of consciousness among many. He found that normal consciousness is actually quite limited, subject to many artificial constraints and disruptions. Professor Tart is one of the pioneering scientists in the new fields of altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, cultural consensus trance, multiple personalities, transpersonal psychology, being and the procedures or technology of "waking up". Born in 1937, the son of a musician, Charles Tart grew up as a Lutheran with deep religious convictions and intellectual interests. As a precocious teenager his eyes opened to science. A strong conflict then developed in his soul between the differing world views of science and religion. The resolution of this conflict has proven to be the driving force of his life. As a teenager looking at the hypocrisy he saw in religion, and the strength and elegance of science, he went head-strong into the modern scientific world. He became particularly fascinated with electronics, earning a first-class radio telephone license while still in high school. He also began to read widely in the field of psychic research or parapsychology. In this one field of science he found some kind of a link between his new found love for science and his earlier, deeper thirst for spirituality. In 1955 he was admitted to the premiere engineering school in the country, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then he ran into calculus and his enthusiasm for engineering began to flounder. At the same time his high school interest in parapsychology blossomed. He started a psychic research club at MIT and connected with the dynamic cultural life of Cambridge. He then had an opportunity to meet many of the leading psychics and parapsychologists of that time. When he discovered that you could actually make a living at psychology, he decided to change career tracks. His ideal was to try to apply the methods of science to the general field of religion. He wanted to use science to start separating out the superstitions and nonsense in religion from the core of important truth. That ideal fired him then and has remained as one of the main guiding principles of his life. His opportunity to change came from famed parapsychology scientist Dr. Rhine, who helped Charles transfer to Duke University in 1957 to major in psychology. In the parapsychology labs at Duke he met Judy Bamberger, the girl who would later become his wife. A few years later at age 22 in these same labs Charley became the "first American psychedelic guinea pig", taking mescaline for the sake of science. It all came about quite by accident. Dr. Ivo Kohler, a Professor from the University of Vienna, was one of the first scientists in the world to experiment with psychedelic drugs. He began experiments with mescaline in Vienna, Austria in the nineteen thirties. These experiments were unknown in the United States. Professor Kohler was visiting the Duke parapsychology laboratories and there started talking to a young graduate student named Charley Tart. Charley had read Aldous Huxley's book on taking mescaline, The Doors of Perception and was curious about Dr. Kohler's experiments. The Professor mentioned that although he had tested many subjects from all nations in Europe, he had never seen any experiments with an American. Professor Kohler was curious to see if an American would have any different psychological reactions than Europeans. Charley bravely volunteered to be the first American test subject. In 1959 psychedelic drugs were almost totally unheard of (these substances were not outlawed until the mid nineteen sixties) and the good Professor happened to be traveling with a large quantity of chemically pure mescaline sulfate. After some preparation Charley was given a large dose of the mescaline which he says tasted like vomit. He sat with Professor Kohler for two or three hours and nothing happened. The Professor was beginning to think that Americans were indeed quite different. They were ready to call it quits, but as one last try, Charley took still more of the drug. That put him over the edge and all at once his psychological resistance to the drug broke down. A few moments later he went directly into the peak of a psychedelic experience. His consciousness expanded tremendously and he had a deep and profound experience which totally changed his life. Professor Kohler found that Americans were just like Europeans. A small step for science, but a giant leap for Charley Tart. A few years later while a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Charles again had an opportunity to participate in one of the first scientific experiments with LSD and psilocybin. A private foundation began funding a series of experiments with psychedelic drugs. Naturally enough he volunteered for many of the tests. Again he had deep and profound experiences with artificially induced altered states of consciousness. The conflict in his soul between science and religion was bridged in these scientific experiments. This proved to be the guiding light for his later scientific work, where he became the unquestioned leader in the scientific exploration of spiritual experiences. Only years later did Professor Tart learn that he had the CIA to thank for all of the LSD he ingested in those experiments. In the early nineteen sixties the CIA had set up dummy foundations to secretly fund research into psychedelic drugs. They wanted to know if there was any military potential to these strange new psychological drugs. They found the drugs were powerful, and potentially dangerous, but the experience of God was found to have no military value. Although not all unwitting government guinea pigs were as fortunate as Charles Tart, he, at least, was eternally grateful to the CIA. In 1963 Charles Tart received his Ph.D. degree from Chapel Hill. His special interests then were research into personalities, dreams and hypnosis. Dr. Tart was virtually alone in these fields at the time. His work has pioneered what has since become known as the study of altered states of consciousness, consciousness other than the average consensus trance. By 1969 Charles Tart edited what was to became a landmark book in consciousness research Altered States of Consciousness. This was the first publication to bring together scientific research on dreaming, hypnosis, meditation, yoga, psychedelics and other expanded states of consciousness. He has since written many other books, including: Open Mind, Discriminating Mind (1989); Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential (1986); States of Consciousness (1975); Transpersonal Psychologies (1975) (1990). When not writing books and researching into these fields, Professor Tart has been a teacher of Psychology at the University of California in Davis for over thirty years. Tart transcends the narrow confines of academia and science, and uses the scientific methods and independent thinking to tackle the really big questions. In the process of formulating his own answers, he has gathered information which helps us realize that "discontinuity of consciousness" is the essential threshold problem. The problem must be addressed - we must "self remember" and wake up from out of the cultural consensual trance - before we can ever know ourselves and find the answers within. One of the basic procedures he employs is called "self remembering" or "self observation". It is a process where you impartially and dispassionately observe the false personalities in action. His quest for answers necessarily led him beyond the confines of academia and science into the martial arts, where he now holds a black belt in Aikido. It also led him into the world of esoteric spiritual philosophies and psychologies, exemplified by the work of the great Russian mystic and philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff.(5) It was Gurdjieff who first brought the "self remembrance" procedures to the West. Charles Tart discovered that there is a basic resistance in our culture to self observation. We tend to equate self observation with judgmental self criticism, with feelings of inadequacy, punishment, shame and guilt. To be effective, self remembrance procedures should be devoid of all judgments and criticism. It should be a neutral process of objective, detached observation. This requires tremendous commitment and honesty. In self observation you essentially try to observe yourself and your world, no matter what it is, good or bad, ugly or beautiful, happy or sad. You don't just observe yourself only when you happen to be doing something you like, or in order to support something you already believe in. You try to observe yourself in your world to see what really is. To convey the kind of commitment required to remember to observe yourself in all situations, Tart likes to quote a famous American spiritual leader of sorts, Patrick Henry: Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Tart found from his own experience and from working with hundreds of others, that if you aren't vigilant about yourself - with a commitment to knowing reality as it is - you build up fantasies. You forget yourself, like the actor asleep. You live instead in what he calls "consensus trance". You are lost in fantasies widely shared in the culture. Tart's research has shown that although everyone thinks they are normal, they are actually seriously cut off from the world around them. As a result people do a lot of stupid things. Observing the great difficulty of the self observation process, especially at first, Tart emphasizes the importance of personal training and group work to begin to use this procedure effectively. But once the skill is learned, Tart and others have found that it is a powerful tool to awaken the actor. With it you can begin to integrate the many roles - the many personalities - into a play where life has meaning. The actions of the moment then begin to make sense by relation to the overall drama. The actor begins to know herself, to know the myth of her life, the plot and potential destiny, and then to write her own script. Without such an awakening the actor meanders aimlessly through life. They keep repeating a few lines, a few roles, over and over, never realizing their full potential. Tart found that self observation can awaken us from consensus trance. It allows us to get a much wider idea of who we are, and to dare to fulfill potentials and dreams we never even knew we had. This is because the consensus trance into which we were hypnotized as a child significantly narrows our human potentials. We could be so many things, but society tries to fit people into preconceived molds. Our self-concept gets narrow, squeezed and tight. Tart likes to quote Gurdjieff's observation that a lot of people you see walking around in the street are dead. They have been so squeezed in terms of their inner psychological self, that it is all habit and conditioning, and the essence - the vitality - is dead. Tart was first exposed to Gurdjieff's ideas in 1966 and his ideas and spiritual practices of self observation have had a continuing influence on him ever since. Tart says that he still uses Gurdjieff's "trying to remember yourself in everyday life" as his principle spiritual practice today, even though he is no longer involved with Gurdjieff groups. In my interview with Charles Tart in late 1993, he described in some detail the process of how as young children we are entranced into the local cultural consensus in which we were born: When we are born each of us has the potential to be a human being which means thousands and thousands of things which could be developed. But each one of us is born into a particular culture, and a culture is a group of people who know about certain human potentials which they think are good and they cultivate them. They draw them out of people and reinforce them in people. So when a little baby looks at its mother and its starting to make sounds like "ma ma ma," people smile and encourage the baby. A given culture knows about other potentials which they consider animal or evil or something like that, and they actively discourage them. So if the same little baby looks at its mother and starts to go "shi shi shit", he doesn't get encouraged, and that kind of thing. Any particular culture is also ignorant of all sorts of human potentials and they don't draw them out of people simply by neglect. They have no idea its even possible. In order to survive you have to fit into your culture. The adults who only want a certain set of potentials developed keep pressing on you, drawing those out and discouraging the ones they don't like. In a very real sense, the "essence" of what we are when we are born, to use a Gurdjieff term, gets shaped and shaped and shaped and eventually evolves into what Gurdjieff called "false personality." That means as part of defending yourself against the pressure of adults you come to adopt their way of thinking. A baby can't really say, "Gee, I've been born into a weird tribe this time, here's how I'll have to act in order to get by, but I don't believe a word of it." The baby is pretty helpless, absolutely dependent upon the giants, the gods and goddesses, for its survival. So the baby and the child internalize these things, they start thinking like the culture expects people to think. To the extent they don't, they feel guilty about it and hide it. We develop what I call "consensus consciousness" to reflect the fact that our so-called ordinary state of consciousness, or "normal consciousness" (which is a culturally-relative term of course) means we have actually constructed the habits of our thinking and feeling and perceiving to reflect the consensus of what our culture thinks is important and good. It is an altered state of consciousness in the sense that it is not natural. Our ordinary state is not simply the way consciousness is, it's a semi arbitrary construction, so that you fit in as normal, bound by the rules of your particular group. When I talk about this in a neutral way, and want to use this information scientifically, I use the term "consensus consciousness." But when I want to emphasize the cost of this process, that there is a lot of important stuff left out, then I say "consensus trance." I am using "trance" in the negative sense of the word: a state of less animation, being controlled by others and what not. I also asked Professor Tart what methods he had found work best to allow people to overcome their natural resistances to self observation, and enable them to awaken from the consensus trance. His answer expounded upon the theme developed by Gurdjieff as "intentional suffering." There are lots of ways [around the resistance to self observation]. Most of them depend on suffering. When things are going well, you don't tend to question the structure you're locked into. When things start going badly, usually we blame somebody else: "Its those damn republicrats in Washington." But when you get a little more mature, people begin to realize that "maybe I bring something to my suffering, just maybe its not all the fault of the outside world, but that I contribute something to it." When people are ready to work with their suffering like that, when they are ready to look at it more closely and see how they are creating some of it, then you have an opening for people to learn things. The suffering can motivate people to observe themselves, to take mental snap shots of themselves, and try to figure out what is going on wrong, what internally is producing the suffering. In self observation you will undoubtedly see many habits, attitudes and other things about yourself that you do not like. From an attitude of intentional suffering and responsibility, these insights into your mental machinery provide you with the opportunity to change, to escape from your suffering. As Tart says, we create a lot of our suffering quite uselessly. Suffering motivates you to change, to escape from the mental conditioning and false thinking which keeps you entranced, keeps you in needless suffering. Suffering thus opens up the possibility of real change. Charles Tart also speaks of another major way of escape from the culture trance, the method of "altered states of consciousness". If you think of your ordinary state of consciousness This article is from http://www.lawsofwisdom.com/course-overview/opening-statement/the-problem-of-the-subtle-sybil-effect/

@Zigzag Idiot I can feel it in my heart too what would you think and feel about humans as an alien? a spiritually advanced alien who encounters planet earth and its inhabitants for the first time?

a vision: I am an alien, encountering earth and humans for the first time what the hell are these creatures doing? no judgement here, this concept is foreign to me. just observing, sheer curiosity. I accept all parts of reality. for me, there is no good and no bad, only Good. everything just IS. these humans seem deeply engulfed in self constructed prisons. actual prisons: money, work, survival, rat-race, confrontations, wars, debates. they all stem from mental prisons, which in time materialized and have now become actual barriers and threats to them strange way to live life they have. caught in small little constellations of something they call "family", where they effectively pass on all their barriers and beliefs to their offspring. all divided in small little bubbles. sometimes they gather in bigger bubbles. those bubbles fight and debate. but what do they actually know? in the most developed societies beliefs are based on something they call "science". in less developed ones, they foliow "truths" provided from something like "religion" they mistake the relative for the absolute they actually think money and value/worth is a thing their perception is limited and caught in survival and reproduction. sometimes this is clothed in wealth and something they call "career" their ability to love is limited to humans inside their little bubbles. the smaller the bubble, the more they love or are attached. the bigger the bubble, the more shallow becomes the love. it eventually turns into hate for distant and contradictory bubbles they fight over opinions and possession. what is actually possession? strange things they invent. interesting those humans. I see big potential, but little actualization of that. millions of seeds, almost no full grown trees.

I did People have to understand that 5-MeO breakthrough have very little in common with the persistent state of no-self, non-duality like Eckhart Tolle is in. It has more in common with temporary states you can get in with advanced Samatha/Vipassana concentration practice. As for my experience, DPT and 5-MeO feel much more solipsistic, alien and energetic than what persistent states of non-duality are like. Also, I'm not able to function on higher doses.

I love the analogy that humans in society are like cells in a body. I like how you used this analogy. A couple more: Each people are like neurotransmitters to each other. Similar to neurotransmitters in our brain. Some people are like dopamine, some like gaba, some like cortisol. The earth is one giant organism. An alien viewing the earth from outer space wold see one giant organism. People are like cells communicating with each other within the giant organism. Narcissists are like cancer cells. Roads are like microtubules, energy plants are like mitochondria and on and on. . . One giant organism.

10 min reflection: Yesterday was quite good my morning routine worked today, still I wasted a lot of time and I fell alseep very late around 2am approx. Normally I go to bed between 10pm and 11pm. Still I read for quite some time as well as got distracted by the internet. Programming and seeing myself as a programmer is important as well as seeing myself as a reader and as an early riser, it helps to think my into the mind of how such a person would think and act, yet doing this deliberately and consciously is the key thing to do. Otherwise, the body-mind identification is very odd, I am not sure how I could break that Leo said kriya yoga and psychedelics are good, I know Japanese meditators in a monastary squat under a waterfall for hours to meditate. Well..... going to the gym is a joke compared to that ? I tried psychdelics around 20-30 times or so, and I definitely did not went deep enough, I noticed where the main identification of the body took and takes place and I had a kriya experienes a half year later after that insightful trip. So, it was wonderful to break free of what seemed other or alien or me. Now I notice my brain and the same spot mainly feels like it makes me want to identifiy with it, I can't sit very well and I fear the pain unconsciously having a guide sometimes is great. It is like exposure therapy I know I struggle with certain things alone, I can inform myself and conquer it the fear of doing smth. Yet, in the end. Training my body helps me to disidentify with it, since I am using up energy and learn what it means to have a body, eating healthy is a bit more similar yet more with the inner workins of the body. The same goes for the mind when reading and learning new stuff. Yet, even when uniting, feeling, insight, thinking and "being", I can not reach yet a metaphysical stage, I am seriously questioning my technique at the moment if I am to invested in something that does not work. Over the weekend I will do different exercises within the UM System and will see if what I am saying has any truth to it here and if I can learn something new. I notice how difficult, yet at the sametime easy it is to build muscles if I do the right exercises, the same goes for meditation most likely. Yet, if I train everything ? I have to take care of everything and everything won't grow as fast a one thing or certain parts. I mean it does work, yet I can't tell where I made the mistake, was it really the amount of fat I was eating ? Or is it normal that it takes time to build muscles in a calorie deficiet ? When I listen to Culadasas book I feel like I am at stage 0 or so feeling tired after 45minutes, yet that could be the strong dulness he speaks about when not training for pure concentration at the beginning. Since, I normally don't get tired, yet sometimes it hits me. It's similar to loosing balance in a state where you are constantly balancing out and insert small amounts of concentration to each moment arising and passing, retroactively or actively. I struggle with rest and gone, from shinzens technique the rest is fine, so a lot of flow and the normal see hear feel thing, yet rest is more difficult to detect for me than gone currently.

This is my solo retreat report. I hope it will inspire you to do something like this yourself. Over a month ago I started my 4 week solo retreat. I was quite ready for this. I rented a tiny cabin with no electricity, no water. Spartan conditions, but it was extremely cheap and all I could afford. It was not easy. I quickly found myself in an ocean of suffering and bliss. These two would swap back and forth, varying in intensity and duration. It didn't take me long to realize that the greater the challenge I faced, the more profound the insight at the end and the stronger the bliss following it. This kept me going through the hellish phases. Just a day or two in, I realized that no meditation technique would do. I was not in charge. All I could do was be quiet and watch as life expressed itself through me by spontaneously contemplating the right questions, than inspecting the body, then forgetting all and surrendering completely, then other activities still. I think it was day 3 when the kundalini stuff started to happen. Good thing I heard about all this many times. If I didn't, I'd probably go crazy. In my meditations unspeakable stuff was happening in my body, visions more real than reality would come to mind and I had problems discerning what was true and what was false. Many times my body got so blocked up I thought I would die, only to be forced into an even deeper surrender. Nights were no relief either. Lucid dreams full of trials and challenges awaited me. Alien abductions and meeting gurus, sages and stuff like that. In short, it was a hell of a ride. Fortunately, after about 3 days this subsided. Deep contemplations started to take place uncovering old traumas, unmet desires and such. It was beautiful. On day 14 I had the biggest insight of the retreat. I was contemplating Consciousness itself, when I realized that it is no different from Love. Than I remembered the Hindu concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Consciusness-Love), looked closer, and sure enough, this Consciousness-Love was not different from Being either - meaning me. I bathed in this unbounded state for a couple of hours looking over a beautiful pond nearby. I came to the conclusion that I was done here, after 2 week out of 4. It has been 16 days since I came home now. A lot has changed, and nothing at all. I am clearer than ever about what I want, need and value. My life has a much deeper sense of purpose and authenticity. My contemplation skill just sky rocketed. I realized what contemplation is, and it is such a joy to do it even hours a day, as I now know that I can go all the way to the truth of anything I want to know. And since I believe, I make it happen. I have had issues with eating for a long time, even though my diet was good. A lot of shame and guilt always plagued this arena of my life. After a particularly bad meal on the retreat and a deep introspection afterwards, I asked desperately - "How the fuck do I solve this?". And the answer came - "Just ask.". I realized the ability to ask about any food and I will get an answer from inside - it tells me if I should or shouldn't eat. Quickly I realized this works for any question with yes and no. I can ask about anything and know if it is 'yes' or 'no', but it's not always easy to ask and follow the answer. This often takes balls and and losing a fat piece of ego is common here. Soooo... go do it. Spend time alone. Forget it all. Immerse yourself in yourself. You won't believe how much bullshit you are buying into. Thank you Leo, you were one of the ones who inspired me to do this!

True question. But did we go on the moon with Armstrong ? When GameBoy wasn't even existing. Seriously I don't buy it. But I understand his usefulness to appear' powerful in the cold War context. Makes sense to lie. I believe more in that' that alien on earth. And the fact that usa own massive weapons no one in the public know about.

Includes my first (brief) alien encounter on mushrooms:

Never, ever, ever do MDMA 2 days in a row. MDMA unlike other classical psychedelics, release most if not all serotonin in the brain after the first dose. Even a second dose is not wise but for self-actualization and therapeutic purposes half the initial dose 2 - 4 hours in is recommended and no more than once every 3 - 4 months or you could smoke a joint even wiser since it protects against neurological damage which MDMA could cause. Doing multiple dosage and 2 days in a row can really damage your brain. I suggest youtube a MDMA recovery smoothie and consume healthy herbs/spices especially neuro-protective ones and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables to replenish your system. Take it easy for a while, cannabis and CBD oil helps a lot with neurotoxicity if that is your thing. Personally i no longer mess with such a dangerous substance, i feel like over time it does more harm than good. Stick to natural psychedelics like mushrooms, ayahuasca, cannabis if anything. Nature knows best, whats found in nature is a direct expression of infinite intelligence manifest, thus would be highly unlikely to mess you up badly. What is created by man in a lab is most likely not in harmony with infinite intelligence thus much more likely to cause damage that may not be able to be repaired completely. Our bodies understand whats natural, anything artificial our bodies see as toxins and alien and try to get rid of it ASAP.

@Maya_0 it’s not a myth your interpreting it wrong the reason why liberation is said that you won’t be reborn is because you’ve seen through the duality of life and death and the IDEA of the death of the physical human being. They have yet to see the death of their own awareness. This is nirvana. Once they have reached this stage their enlightenemnt will carry over into their next life. They will live many A life times and never come out of their enlightened state. They could be an alien on a different planet and they would be born enlightened, the same happens here aswell. This is why some people are further than others in the journey overall to freedom. But they are still in their the form of an enlightened state, imagining themselves to have attained the great death. So they will actually remain unborn. Until they voluntarily decide to give it up and start the process over again. Enlightenment itself can never actually be attained because enlightenemnt is infinite. There are so many “forms” of enlightenment. Reaching nirvana is like starting over again but with the understanding of your true self. So you can actually achieve actual death and not the imagined death they are imagining for themselves. That’s why the religious text say freedom from bondage: end to reincarnation of life and death liberation: end of reincarnation of life and death they say the same thing and people get confused. They essentially are the same thing. One Is the imagination of it, then the person realises they are in safe hands to undergo the actual death. Unless the person is ballsy enough to undergo the straight death right away the point of enlightenment is for you to find out the absolute truth and then to actually actualise it without fear. Because what is there to fear when you are an imagination itself “an illusion” of a seperated self all you should get is the truth and then arrive right back in the same place you started to find a way to take the second part of the journey. Because realising the truth is different actualising the truth. It no longer becomes about focusing on self-awareness. But it becomes about a no mind state without focusing or having self - awareness at all. Enlightenment goes on in form for infinity. You will never reach the end because by definition you can not reach the end of infinity because it’s infinite. By this time if your not me ? you would have gained good meditative abilities. But yours truly has 50 minutes under his belt. So now I’ve made the second part even more complicated. By understanding enlightenment which was the point without doing any spiritual practices except 70,000 hours of contemplation. Which uses the mind lol and now I can’t use it so screwed you can reach enlightenment in duality becAuse it’s literally happening in front of you, you just have to look and observe direct reality itself with your own awareness because non duality IS DUALITY lol and duality is non-duality. They are identical. Which ever route you follow, both are form. Form is formless and formless is form. Both are partial truths, because the absolute truth is absolute. It’s the only thing that exists ? so you can’t really question it when everything and nothing are left out of the picture. There is no other option but to go for nirvana. You are stuck with no where to go, lol where can you go ? You are already inside absolute infinity because you are absolute infinity its literally an impossibility to doubt absolute truth and the truth about enlightenment. Literally you can’t miss it because you are all of it. Lol lol also you’ll know because there’s nothing else to do but sit in silence so you have to go and seek out a master, because the process starts again. But how do I actually do it after knowing the two options you have. Do or do not, there is no try.

@TrynaBeTurquoise Yes, I am curious about the alien as well LOL. It was always like he was operating on me. Then I noticed him by accident and he was like... "Shit, I slipped dimensions and he saw me... STOP the operation guys, we have to come back later!" Regarding the looks of it, I have no idea. Maybe the cultural images are like that because they really look like this As I said, maybe it was a figment of my imagination but then again... what would be the difference?

Awesome trip report, interesting visions and was curious as to finding out more detail about that alien you saw, lol. Why do so many people see these grey/black-eyed aliens? Is this a product of culture making this type of alien popular or did it originate from mystical experiences in the first place? I think the ladder but I want to find this out for myself. Sorry you didn't get the effects you were looking for in the re-dose later that day, but if you already consumed 3.5g earlier then your body has already built up such a tolerance to it that you would need to increase that dose exponentially to get the same effects, so re-dosing with another 3g would be a waste.

I've thought long about if I should even post this one as it was so strange and not even really a trip. But anyhow - here goes nothing. The tale of the whale began a week ago. After finishing my evening meditation I sat down in my room and just enjoyed the silence for a bit. The meditation was meh... but the after state was a dense silence. Then I journaled a bit. I jotted down some questions based on observations I made earlier this week: I was walking through the park on my way to work and just looked at the ducks. It was really interesting. Why do they do what they do? Why do they fight over food? Yes, they are programmed! They just play this program called survival without being aware of it. Very interesting. In this instance I also realized: Wait, I am doing the exact fucking thing! I am running my survival program! But who installed the program? Who is really running the show? Interesting question. This thought process came back up that evening and I just wrote down more questions... and it all came down to: Who am I? Not in a villy nilly way (in which I did one year of self inquiry) but in a very threatening way. It felt like I asked this question for first time for real. I proceeded to go to the bathroom and as I sat down to take a piss my complete identity just slipped away. It was complete silence and there was the urge to think but nothing came up. It was just a blank. There was still a body sitting there but it was not born, it had no parents and no image of itself. That was freaky to say the least until it went away again (one minute or so). --- Then, on Friday I was walking through town and again asked myself: "Who am I?". Then there was a voice in my head. The same one which talked to me multiple times during my trips. It said: "Ask a better question!". I answered: "Who is asking this question?". (This was totally spontaneous). However in that instance my mind flipped completely from the inside out. There was no "outside" there was only inside. This only lasted a couple seconds but was very radical. --- On Saturday I wanted to make my monthly trip. I weighed out 3.5g of mushrooms, made my tea. Sipped it. Laid down. The come up was slow. Then there was an insight: I had a vision of a bug of some sort which was trapped and tortured in some sort of device. It was really heart wrenching. I sent the bug love but there was no change. Then the insight hit: Love is what brought the bug there. Love is what made the device. And the torturer is acting out of Love. In that instance the device disappeared and the bug was set free. --- This was so deep but it still went on: Not only does "good" or "bad" not exist in the realm of Truth, there is a much much deeper level to it: For duality of any sort to exist, there first must be the possibility of distinction. HOWEVER, there is no distinction, there is only absolute... and THEREFORE good and bad do not exist! --- After that there was a vision of some heroin and coke addicts. I put my arms closer to my body because they were injecting themselves and I am afraid of needles. Then there was the insight: They are doing the exact same thing as you are. They are searching for the great white whale. They are searching for God! --- Another insight was: If you want to be enlightened you have to surrender the commentator. I notice this in myself especially. My mind has become much more quiet over the last months but there is still this voice which comments on everything. It's not even that malicious (that's what it tells me at least ) but it still puts everything into categories and narrates my life. This has to be surrendered as well. --- All this happened in the first two hours of the trip then something very, very strange happened. I've never had these auditory hallucinations before, it sounded alien, mechanical even. And then... don't call me crazy (or do, I don't care)... for one second... on the top right of me... an alien popped up. It was small-ish (1-2 feet), had a big head, was grey and had black eyes. This could absolutely be a figment of my imagination. I have no idea at all. But I can clearly remember it. This way or the other it was there. And what was even stranger, the trip stopped after that. It was basically the come up - no peak - come down. All in 4 hours max. This NEVER happened to me. I then proceeded to go on with my life and decided to re-dose later that evening. I did so at about 6pm with about 3g's... but yet again, there were only mild effects but no where near where 3g's have taken me in the past. It was barely noticeable, like 0.6g's maybe. This was quite disappointing as I had some big questions lined up. However the show must go on and the search for the great white whale continues. Thank you for reading!

If you are going to make a film with this music I want to play an alien.

@tsuki no tsuki is a finite form within your awareness. I’m talking about your very awareness itself. Which is also The limited form you are trying to break out of. This is your box of awareness that you want to break for freedom. This box of awareness is what will get reincarnated, not tsuki. Tsuki memories even of becoming enlightened will get stored in karma in between worlds inside this box. Because it’s stored in your box of awareness. But you don’t actually know what else from your previous life’s are stored in your box for you to make a judgment on what’s you will do after. Like let’s say your physical body died, you went to the nether world and you realised ohh I was just playing the part of tsuki, you might want to be a princess next instead of searching for enlightenment. It makes sense right ? Because if you had never stored information about enlightenment then you wouldn’t know to go for it in your next life or you may not even want to end it like you are currently doing now. This is what we can assume that karma is forward moving atleast because you realise the impermanance faster of consciousness and life itself. Anyways this box is ego, All of it and anything that can go inside of it. Until it reflects true reality and it shouldnt break and you won’t die until it does But yes it would be wrong for me to tell you that this is what you want. It is after all a choice. Also you have to remember that absolute infinity is absolutely infinite. There’s no garuntee that you will get rebirthed here, you might get reborn into a situation where you are an alien on a different planet and they don’t even have any records of enlightenment or beings reaching mahasamadhi. And you will have forgotten your memories. So you’ll essentially be a stage beige ego again. What the whole of reality is doing is increasing in consciousness to become self - aware, self - realised eventually. Even if you had siddhis on a different planet means nothing because it’s still form. So yeah it might not be for you, but this might be your chance to end it for a very long time. Like there are an infinite reincarnations possible, so much form that you could enjoy and never reach the end of. Just as a human it’s an option although if your enlightened, it wouldn’t be much of an experience rather than for the fun of it. Still it’s possible for your Box of awareness to give up its enlightened state and then suffer through it. ————————— lol dude I have family, it’s not like I’m immune the karma of this body ahah, what would they say if I’m just sleeping and I died. This is illusion but you know obviously I’m very attached to everything. I’m considering giving it a hard pass ?

Do I have to meditate with eyes closed? I'm asking myself all kinds of questions all the time. For example, why now I'm typing these words and then I'll see myself in another place? Why I can't see myself in both places or see that I'm both death and alive? Why we move from the past to the future and not otherwise? We think of time as a normal dimension and rarely question the nature of time. But time and MOTION is more alien than that.

SOLID YELLOW. She made the role of an "alien" learning how to be a human. The soundtrack gives me goosebumps. Listen on Spotify: Under The Skin (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) By Mica Levi Melodysheep (they make remix with scientific documentary clips, etc): Turquoise: I know if I put it into Turquoise or Blue (It's more Turquoise to me, if you compare it to modern "Gospel" songs which is basically pop/country-sounding with blue lyrics): They sound Turquoise to me: Coral: (I know, that's already a sort of joke, but when we build computer-brain interfaces this will be such a pun):

Thanks for the answer. By alien I meant to say that it feels as if there's some life force that makes us experience things in our temporal dimension and we're just vessels inhabited by it. I don't identify with the "force", that's what I did all my life thinking that we're the authors of our own fate. Now I think that the force is beyond our control and we're already stuck in space and time. Could this be God or infinite consciousness, I don't know. But "me" feels like a pixel on the screen and nothing more. It is called overthinking

Well first off - don't take anything i say as the Absolute Truth, because they are merely pointers. And it's OK to be skeptical - you should be. And i expect to be demonized whenever i talk about Truth because it's extremely radical. But for me i discovered through direct experience that Leo's claims are in fact correct. (Not just his but any awakened person and there were many before me) I hit the first of my non-dual states when doing self inquiry to figure out what the hell i was. And then bam - it happened. A non-dual state. Here consciousness is at a completely different level and the self consciousness that you thought was you collapses into universal consciousness. That's when you will know you're True self. It wlll be actual. But requires a non-dual state in which you are pure actuality. The alien might be something your mind is conceptualizing and identifying with...(for me it was the soul) but if while meditating you can identify with that alien you should be able to become conscious that this is in fact "an answer" that your mind has deposited into the slot which in Truth is awareness itself - or Absolute Truth itself. This can subsequently help you disidentify with the alien. In a sense you aren't wrong because the idea of an alien is still part of God!

Are you sure it is "you" imagining? I have this permanent alien feeling that me is not me, even though it feels like me. Isn't fear a human emotion? What if this "alien entity" has taken over our existence and we're just living its dream?

Thanks for posting! I don't know what Crysty is exactly but at least I know she isn't a solid being. She might be a spirit, an alien or she might be what some posters here called a tulpa. I don't have schizophrenia, although having said that I can recall not just my voice but my family members voices and the voices of other people as well as create voices. This I think comes from listening to music a lot and sometimes mentally listening to music. I got slapped around for poking at her. How do you think she'll react with me point blank asking if she's been extra promiscuous lately?? I've already replied this to a poster, but I'll repeat. She first imposes her form into my senses, I focus, she showers with me and cuddles with me in bed sometimes. That's as sexual as it gets.

The introduction page was getting too long. Here the text continues,,,,,, Our brain falls into patterns of cyclic neurotoxicity as a result of emotional repression of the fight/flight mechanism during early trauma, social stress, abandonment or deprivation of needs during in our infancy. Thus the neurotoxicity that is addressed by kundalini awakenings is the repressive mechanism built into our primary wiring (0-5 years development). This initial patterning becomes the template for ongoing emotional repression, and lack of neuron-recouperation, which interferes with the smooth running of our catecholamine "activating" neurons. (The Catecholamine metabolism proceeds from tyrosine, to DOPA, to dopamine to norepinephrine and then to epinephrine.) Van Winkle says that other neurotransitters and metabolites build up in the synapses and this impaired function further contributes to stress. As you can imagine this leads to very inefficient brain function, and often kundalini awakening is initiated during a particularly high “stress/stress relief” cycle. Or rather, since the neuro-repression is unraveling, life circumstances seem to come to a profound nexus and crescendo of inner-outer events hyper-affects us to bring the nervous system to an acute crisis. The repression is thus its own antithesis, in bringing about its dissolution through the polar nature of existence itself. When there is simply no energy left to keep the repression system in place, nature steps in to reset the entire organism through a kundalini awakening, thereby redeeming what might have been a lost childhood, and permitting healing from the slings and arrows of life. How did this pattern of emotional repression originate? A mother’s behavior must be attuned to the infant’s basic needs. Babies suppress fight/flight responses when their needs are so unmet that they go into a freeze response. The vegetative unmyelinated vagus controls basic metabolism and responds to stress by "immobilisation behaviours." Domesticated animals including humans are sub-natural when it comes to releasing the tension of both fight/flight and freeze. Also children are encouraged to "lie" by inhibiting the expression of fear, anger, sadness, and so the neurotic, dissociated false self that doesn't know what it feels is built. Kundalini awakenings constitute a mechanism for the ultimate release of this primal repression, allowing our brains to evolve and mature beyond the ongoing cycles of repression/neurotoxicity/detoxification. The ultimate terror for a newborn organism is to be undergoing postbirth separation anxiety without the genuine emotional support of a mother figure. The trauma would still occur if the mother is there but is emotionally absent, distracted, depressed, rejecting or unloving. I suspect that the panic button comes on full bore and simultaneously to protect the baby from its own panic, the numbing or freeze button would also come on. Thus it may not appear from the outside that the baby is in deep distress. From this initial setting of terror, the consequences of this brutal entrance into the world cascade throughout the life of the individual such as: learning disorders, lack of coordination, shyness, lack of direction, chronic loneliness, bodymind schism and the inability to know what one truly feels, lack of a sense of center and focus, inability to feel included, relationship difficulties, diet and digestive disturbance, addictions, self-destructive entropic lifestyle etc… Ultimately leading to physical, emotional and mental diseases of various sorts. Without a kundalini awakening that primary conditioning that we took on in our infancy still has a huge sway over our bodymind and lives. That is why kundalini can be so scary at times, because it is addressing our most fundamental and primitive structures…way below the domain of rational operation. While the nerves in the emotional limbic areas of the brain are being kindled by kundalini our emotions are unleashed, hence the crying, anger, fear, ecstasy, love, attraction, deja vu etc...that happen in the early stages of the peak. (See Action Matters) Permanent changes in consciousness occur via kundalini's impact on the nerves by the extra pruning of axions and changes in myelination patterns, and changes in the spectrum of neurotransmitters and firing patterns. But what I don't understand is how the kindling of the brain leads to detoxification of the synapses. For sure kundalini must cause a loss of excitatory glutamate receptors which might contribute to the experience of equanimity and peace, but also to apathy and depression. And once the catecholamine neurons are no longer on permanent alert and forcing the production of the neuroinhibitors: glycine, GABA, optiates and serotonin in an effort to subdue hyper-arousal, the entire brain should come out of its self-suppression and become more available to present moment consciousness. I suspect that it is the massive ongoing deluge of opiates and the other “relaxation” and pleasure chemicals of kundalini that allow the body to come out of its perpetual hyper-arousal. In this way the nervous system doesn’t need such extensive detoxification as it did during its radical-repressed condition…this leaves more energy and resources for higher states of consciousness and being. As the nervous system becomes more “efficient” and needs less resources to deal with damage control, we essentially incarnate to a greater degree and spiritually evolve. We show up! As the Spirit finally starts penetrating the “shield of closure” there is a sense of extra "Presence" that accompanies anyone going through an awakening. A Presence which thereafter is forever with us to a greater extent than prior to awakening—because we have become freed from the repressive mechanisms of our primary matrix. Some people interpret this new larger “Presence” as an alien entity, God or spirit of some form, and thus continue the infant denial of their own existence as spirit. The end result of a kundalini awakening is the significant reduction in body tension and body pain in general, coupled with the calming of emotions and reduction in reactivity. Having more Presence (contemporary available consciousness) we also have a greater sense of self-boundary so conditions of borderline personality, codependency and neurosis in general are reduced or eliminated. With the repression lifted we are both better able to defend ourselves, more trusting and less defensive, because we have the full power of the "unsuppressed" Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis at our disposal. All our defense mechanisms and aspects of embodiment should therefore be more responsive to ongoing development, and the individual is able to mature at a far greater speed…having as it were the “primal veil of sleep” lifted from ones being. From this Toxic Mind Theory we can see why humans are so good at denial of reality, and what we are sacrificing by keeping this closure from reality intact. Through our repression of truth, we avoid our own incarnation and so are condemned to spiritual loneliness and separation from the cosmic whole. Van Winkle says that the suppression of anger is more damaging than the trauma itself. For suppressing anger causes toxicosis in the brain which shows up as mood disorders, addictions, PTSD, all manner of depressions, codependency (loss of inner resources) and a host of other mental/emotional disorders. Since the inhibitory mechanisms of the brain are dysinhibited during a kundalini awakening, due to the increase in excitatory chemistry, this is the perfect time for undergoing assisted or self-administered primal therapy. The primal therapy of releasing repressed anger and grief is a simple and effective means of rectifying the toxicosis that is at the heart of most neurological disorders. Once the detoxification process has cleared neural pathways, recovery is virtually complete, restoring memory, intelligence and creativity and overcoming dysphoric symptoms. The native euphoria of the living organism is returned and unity with cosmos reestablished. There is still more left on this web page,,, http://biologyofkundalini.com/article.php@story=ToxicMindTheory.html

Ok then. Honestly I don't know what Crysty is 100%. Whether she is a spirit, a tulpa, an alien, my guardian angel, my split personality or something else I don't know. All I can say is "thank you for being with me, Crysty". Thanks to you, Crysty is now teasing me about having a daddy complex and being a perv lol. Please, have mercy! I'm crying! Can't breathe!?

@ethanb121 I have some experiece that might be of some use. I don't know much about the third eye except for my personal experience working with focus. I used to experiment with weed and meditation at the same time with surprising results. I would smoke and then focus on the pressure in my forehead. This pressure would intensify and/or transofrm and I would "follow" it and after about half an hour my perception changed quite considerably. All sorts of insights poured into my mind. My thoughts started to create complex structures that were comprehensible yet so alien. And when I say complex I mean "holy shit this changes everything I know" complex. It was quite something. It felt so nostalgic. Like returning home from a long journey. I was quite impressed. The interesting thing is that it was repeatable process. Every time I tried to do it it worked with varied intensity. I didn't pursuit it further because I had some personal things to take care of at the time. Now the way I did it was quite unintuitive. When I focused on the pressure I had to make sure not to try to direct it, manipulate it or try to intensify the pressure by any means by myself. This would disrupt the procces. I had to specifically pay attention to the pressure instead trying to get something out of it. This was really important. The only way I would get there was by letting go of the need to be there. This is quite paradoxical and hard to transcend but it seems it is the requirement. I tried to repeat the procces without the weed but with no results. Weed itself has many drawbacks and is hard to work with in any spiritual proccess. So take this story of mine more like an interesting anecdote than something you inspire yourself with. The built up pressure in your forehead can be really disruptive if not handled properly. If you have no experience with releseing it it can really hinder your ability to function in everyday life. And lastly I don't know if my experience has anything to do with the third eye there are just similarities with the region in question.