I've found that before true changes can be made, we have to first accept ourselves where we are in life and for who we currently are. With compassion and understanding. Castigating ourselves only moves us further away from our goals of change. Allow yourself the freedom to be your whole imperfect, fallible, self.

One love

I've been thinking this a lot and I believe this is a virus that plagues the consumerist societies. You are never enough. Our economies with constant loan taking are built upon the illusion of constant growth, where in reality we just need to squeeze harder to get our share of the cake, without the actual cake getting bigger.

The nastiest part of this is that it separates us from each other. Diabolos in Greek means "the one who casts apart". This is what is happening.

When we see someone who seems to get along at least according to their social media status, we begin to doubt ourselves. This system must not be that bad. That builds up shame. The areas where you can be truly honest about how you feel and make space for others to express themselves honestly get increasingly narrow. Even if you had time in theory, your heart is so full of stress and your mind is preoccupied by the constant little distractions of our technological achievements that you don't think about how other people fare. Your mind is simply elsewhere. And so is everyone else's mind.

We have to stop this pandemic. It's feeding on us and stealing our souls.

The consumerist society is a hungry ghost, huge belly with needle thin throat. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.

What it does, it makes us lonely. We seek refuge in entertainment and consumption, because that keeps the wheels of economy spinning.

But there is an escape. The stop button. Cross your legs and close your eyes, take a walk in the nature, invite your friends to spend time at your place. If it doesn't add to the GDP, it's the correct choice.

The päin here is, that it would be so much easier, if there were other people to resonate with and ampmify your energy. I believe there will be. The first ones need to remain strong and prepare the space for the weaker ones. When we eventually find and support each other, there will be no more questions "am I good enough?". You see the answer around you, in the other people who support you and who you support. That is the direction we must be headed and that is the direction we are headed if we hear the call the Great Spirit.

Great wisdom Tomtegubbe.

This has certainly been something that has consumed my attention to a detrimental degree. It didn't start to happen until after college when I began getting certain kinds of compliments that made me feel that I should be "doing better." It's something that was a favortie target for my depression and it became a neurotic focus, even when I didn't want to care anymore and didn't feel like the drive really even represented me.

Don't fall for the societal guise. We're all works in progress, and we're all beautiful and good the way we are. We just have to see it in ourselves. DMT has been very patient in showing me, because lord knows, that's not always something I listen to.

One love

Curious, a friend of mine mentioned to me yesterday that he'd been reading something which happened to say this same thing. Some group of first peoples has the name "wetiko" for this phenomenon. Like a mind-virus of wanting more, regardless of the cost and a loss of empathy. It would be good to find out what this book was called, or maybe it was an article somewhere. Probably I'll put that discussion in its own thread should it arise further.

A recent touch with the Molecule helped me see this a little more. It wasn't much, but I was panicking... about my job, feeling a strong need to be somewhere working, am I making my father proud, why can't I escape this Siren's song. (I had music playing, while peaceful, felt like a trap of some kind) At some point I awkwardly turned off the music, and said "you did this to yourself, you're ok..." and I was. I let out an enormous sigh of relief, and I felt a tremendous weight lift off of me. The rest of my strange comedown from the ethereal became serene.

I can't help but feel like my "insights" aren't useful to anyone but myself. I have seen much in my journeys, but even I find it hard to pull any meaning from them yet.



For something that is supposed to connect us all, I feel that it has only driven us apart. Speaking of social media specifically. I get weird looks when I tell people I deleted my Facebook account about a decade ago now. I saw it for the monster it was, and what it was doing to my mental state. Constantly comparing myself to others' meticulously curated life experiences was slowly turning me into a beast of burden.

I can't help but continue to say thank you all for the continued conversations and dissemination of wisdom provided on this forum. The thoughts and ideas often presented here are things that I feel, but not something I couldn't have articulated on my own in such a precise way.

"You will grow to be something tenacious and exalted; you are mighty, you are gracious, you are lauded." ~ Aesop Rock

The sooner we surrender ourselves to the experience the more we can traverse the space and glean from it.



Some insights, particularly from vaped DMT, won't necessarily be articulated in a normalized form of rationale that may be readily available. It's something sometimes best stated poetically or abstractly. Sometimes you may not find the best way to articulate it. It's just with you and in you.

Also you don't know who it may help until you share it



Our unawareness of our cognitive biases makes social media that much more nefarious. You're also stepping into some spaces that can help you see through the societal veils that taint our perspectives. I get the same response when I tell people my only more of social media interaction is with this forum.

One love