A couple of trips won’t. You don’t know what you’re missing out on lol.
I kinda agree with this, actually.
Do you reject the concept of personal agency? Do you believe in responsibility for your actions?
I think “can trigger” is more accurate. Psychedelics, and even marijuana, can trigger an underlying disorder, but I don’t think they can cause it. The average age of onset for schizophrenia is 17-21 for males, which happens to be when males are most likely to be screwing around with drugs. So correlation, not causation.
It’s not known, as far as I know, whether a psychotic disorder triggered by hallucinogenics might have stayed dormant forever if the drug hadn’t been taken. But I don’t study this stuff at any depth, so maybe all of it is known and no one told me.
I suppose it will be interesting to see what happens to the incidence of psychotic disorders with the increasing legalization of weed.
I find this incredibly stressful. I really like having a fixed self.
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You don’t have to reject these. All you have to do is reject the idea of free will. Like The Godfather. Everyone has but one destiny.
Ah. A pre-determinist. You should join a Presbyterian church (or other calvinist denomination). The “frozen chosen” lol.
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No, an ex-girlfriend made me watch too many Japanese cartoons. I don’t really give a shit lol. Just fucking around.
Wanna see cartoon secular religious woo woo shit? Watch this:
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SEL is pretty good for how little dialogue there is.
As far as psychedelics causing disorders, my friend has a permanent condition after a pretty severe trip on shrooms. He constantly sees tracers and colors and if he smokes weed he’ll trip like he took shrooms. I forget what his condition is called.
I, allegedly, took twice as much as he did of the same stuff but didn’t have nearly as intense of an experience as him with no side effects after it wore off. Whether or not he was predisposed to adverse conditions or just got unlucky I don’t think strong psychedelics are for everyone.
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My dash hasn’t lit up in over 2 months so I can’t see how fast I’m going in the morning or at night. After a particularly frustrating day yesterday, mostly due to work and finding out my clinical placement for school, I decided to chant “Hare Krishna” as I got on the highway.
Before I even got to the end of the on ramp, my dash lit up.
Woo woo
So I haven’t sifted through the whole thread yet but I will at some point. Although I haven’t done it in a while I found meditation to be really helpful. Finally tried it out using the headspace app (which is excellent but a tad pricey). The 5 or 6 months I did it (usually 10/15 minutes morning and night if possible) are some of the best I have felt as far as in control of thoughts and emotions.
Apparently I got sick of that shit and stopped. Way better to be crazy I guess.
Nuts how “difficult” it is for a while just to sit with your thoughts even with a guided meditation
Hey, @The_Myth, I’ve been meaning for a couple of weeks to post to you about a book I’m reading, which goes into empirical research around body work (yoga, martial arts, massage, etc) for trauma victims. Although trauma-focused, which I don’t think you are, I think it might offer you the evidence you need to talk about your experiences working with it that goes beyond “my new friends swear by it and I know people seem to feel better after sessions.” Then you can defeat @dt79 and your other nay-saying adversaries in this thread.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
In The Body Keeps the Score , he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring - specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neuro feedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy - and a way to reclaim lives.
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I welcome it as long as we take this fight to the astral plane!
Prior to that, I’ve been meaning to tell everyone to get a cat.
I ordered that book about a year ago, I think Pete Walker mentioned it in one of his books on CPTSD, and it has sat on my shelf since. I’m off on vacation, will take it with me.
Many of my issues are trauma based. Not that my childhood sucked, but that I am hypersensitive. Alternately termed HSP, an Empath, or suffer from SSD (Severe Selflove Disorder), depending on who you want to believe, lol.
I’m a delicate flower.
Guess I need to come clean in this thread as well as my own - I quit Kundalini Teacher Training and it is all @dt79’s fault.
And, I thank him for it.
I realize the western version of eastern spirituality is polluted, always have, but the conversation here made me take a closer look at what I had gotten myself into. When I went to White Tantra in Manhattan and was surrounded by westerners wearing white head to toe, while the charlatan Yogi Bhajan, long dead, was broadcast on a big screen leading chanting for eight hours, I had flashbacks to the Apple 1984 commercial, and I broke.
Seven months into a ten month training that cost $4K and I walked.
Of course, I am not one to go quietly, so I engaged in a minor bit of scorched earth policy.
My KYTT had a private group on FB and within a day, I was excommunicated from that group. The teacher, Mahan Rishi stopped responding to me, and I was immediately persona non grata. Of course, I get it - have to isolate the group from non believers.
After seven months of being a a part of a container supporting each other, I was no longer one of them, so I was out.
Just confirmed that I had made the right decision.
I don’t think it’s any secret that I suffer from anxiety and depression. But, as soon as I quit, it all seemed to lighten up. I guess I was just working too hard at being spiritual and shit. I guess I was just tired of every body saying publicly how awesome that practice was, while privately they were saying they felt abused and were beat up.
Of course, after I quit, two others quit as well.
There are two versions of Kundalini. One is Kundalini as taught by Yogi Bhajan, and that is a brand that was developed by Yogi Bhajan and is run by 3HO. They are really the only ones that teach Kundalini as a style of yoga rather than as an aspect of yoga practices, and it’s a bit of a sham.
Kundalini itself is mentioned in many other yogic texts, such as the Upanishads and Patanjali’s Sutras. It literally means a coil, like a coil of hair, or the coil of a serpent, and it refers to the idea that there is an energy at the base of your spine that can be awakened during yogic practices, such as pranayama. Paramahansa Yogananda discusses it in his book Autobiography of a Yogi
Anyway, there is a lot of cool stuff in Kundalini as taught by Yogi Bhajan, but he was a charlatan more concerned with protecting his brand than bringing enlightenment to the masses. I learned a lot of cool stuff, but the main thing I learned was to avoid the cult of personality. I already knew that, but didn’t trust my Ajna chakra (intuition), which was telling me, in a loud voice, “THIS IS BOOSHIT!”
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There ya go!
Theres a nugget of self knowledge that you can hold on to.
You remind me a lot of a good friend/mentor. When he does something, he does it to the Nth degree, and has some interesting elements of perfectionism tucked into his modus operandi, driven by a desire to help and be of service to others.
Wow, a lot of good insight there. Or maybe I’m just a lot more obvious than I think.
A colleague of mine called me an authentic learner, which means self taught I think. It also means I am a seeker, which could be negative, but I took it as positive. I’m not seeking money or fame, just peace.
Thanks! I appreciate this.
That’s me. I’m an empath/HSP/SSD sufferer. My first response is to say yes. It’s taken me a long time to learn to say no.
I often come off as an asshole, as you well know, but my intent is to be helpful.
What was happening there?
The KYTT is ten months, one weekend a month. Saturdays were from 8-6, Sundays 4:30 AM until 5:30 PM. Three of the weekends included a Friday, from 6-9 PM.
A typical weekend started with a public yoga class at eight.
Kundalini as taught by Yogi Bhajan is physically challenging in its own special way. Class starts with tuning in (chanting Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo three times, followed by the Mangala Charan mantra, which is Ad guray nameh, jugad guray nameh, sat guray nameh, siri guru dev nameh, three times). Then a few warm ups, followed by a kriya - a series of postures that are active, not static. Stretch pose is a popular one. Lay on your back, raise your legs, raise your head, hold your hands at your side, and do breath of fire for three minutes.
Anyway, about 75 minutes of that stuff, then long deep relaxation (shivassana) for five minutes or so followed by meditation. Meditation is typically in easy pose with a mudra and a mantra. The mudra can be as simple as connecting your thumb and index finger (gyan mudra) or as complicated as holding your hands interlocked over your head while chanting the mantra. Mediation was typically seven minutes, but could be as long as eleven minutes in a yoga class.
There were twenty five of us in the KYTT class, plus another fifteen to twenty of the public, so we were usually on half mats - crammed into a small space with a single bathroom. Twenty four of the class were women, I was the only dude. Most of the public were women as well. It was a smallish studio.
After the public yoga class, we would do another hour or two of yoga, then sit on our mats during satsang/instruction, where we took notes and had conversation. sometimes there would be a circle, what I would call an airing of the grievances. All very emotional shit after the physicality of yoga.
About 1:30, we would have lunch. Mahan Rishi expected us to all eat together and to eat vegan. We ate on the floor in silence until he rang the bell, and then we could use the bathroom and talk.
More yoga at 2:30 for ninety minutes or so, then some more instruction. We would often split into groups and practice teaching, so more yoga. All in all, about four hours of physical yoga on Saturday.
Sunday was Aquarian Sadhana, a 2 1/2 hour practice, open to the public. It starts with sitting in easy pose and listening to Japji, a Sikh poem recited in Gurumukh for 23 minutes. That is followed by an hour kriya (yoga postures), then sitting and chanting different mantras for another hour.
At seven on Sunday, we would take an hour break before a public yoga class at eight (ninety minutes). Then, more instruction and practice until 5:30.
Again, vegan lunch together in silence.
A lot of Kundalini is Sikh Dharma as interpreted by Yogi Bhajan - yogic hygiene, wearing white, not cutting your hair, wearing a turban. Most of it is not recognizable to Sikhs - it is it’s own special type of weirdness.
Part of the Sikh Dharma is seva - service to others. We were expected to do an hour of charitable work every week. I thought that was cool actually, but we were required to serve part of our seva cleaning the studio, which really didn’t feel like charity since the owner was collecting $4K from each of the twenty five students for tuition.
As you can imagine, many students were competing to see who was more spiritual, professing the benefits of the practice and how much it had changed their lives - at least in class.
Outside of class, there was a lot of whispering under their breath about how Mahan Rishi was an asshole, the owner was a bitch, and they couldn’t wait to go home and eat a cheeseburger.
The owner of the studio, we’ll call her TB, organized everything, from collecting tuition to arranging teaching schedules, and apparently, she only got paid for the use of the studio. An email went out asking for donations since she had not been able to pay herself a salary in the two years since she had opened the studio.
In the meantime, TB had collected money for a student that was experiencing financial difficulties, but then refused to turn the money over to the student, insisting she use it for classes at her studio.
Then, they started pushing Aquarian Sadhana for forty days at 4:30AM in April and when students couldn’t make it (4:30-7 for forty days), the owner’s hench woman, a heavy set, older, LGBTQ lawyer sent out the email coercing students to show up and to contribute.
Oh, and lunch - expected to stay, but no way to heat up a meal, but they offered a catered meal (kickback) for $17.50 each day, $35 for the weekend, that turned out to be a bowl of soup and a salad. I brought peanut butter and jelly with chips, hey, it’s vegan bitches.
For me, the White Tantra tipped it. Eight hours in Manhattan with dead Yogi Bhajan chanting “I am you. You are me” in a loop while we sat on yoga mats in a defunct Universalist church, face to face, staring into each other’s eyes, our hands intertwined over our head while “sevadores,” really Nazi guards, kept us in our rows and coerced us to “keep up and be kept up.”
Surprised I lasted as long as I did.
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That has a couple of pretty screwed up elements of seizing control of people to it. A good streak of defiance and unmanageability can come in handy sometimes.
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A little bit of research and independent thinking would have saved me four grand, but in the ultimate scheme of things, I learned a good lesson.
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