There are just so intangible statements about life that almost every person might have, at least once in his lifetime, been strangled by one question which is: “What should I believe in?” Read more of this post
Living consciously is all about the elimination of FEAR.
Fear restricts us from truly going after what we want.
When you fear something, you resist it.
By resisting it, you avoid things you would normally attack and go after if fear wasn’t a factor. Fear is what keeps your evolution and growth as a conscious human being STAGNANT.
Fear of being broke, fear of rejection, fear of trying something new, fear of what others think, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of being alone, and fear of public speaking are a few common fears we all experience.
How many of these fears are holding you back?
As human beings, our main concern is SECURITY.
We are taught at a young age to not take unnecessary risks, not draw attention to ourselves in public and follow family traditions. We are taught not to talk to strangers, and keep an eye out for very suspicious people. Stay safe, don’t take ANY risks.
Well as you grow up in life, you might never realize that the only way to be OUTSTANDING at something is to STAND OUT from the rest.
This involves taking RISK.
The ones who take risks, are the ones who succeed. You cannot simply sit back in your secure little world and expect to get ahead. You should have the courage to meet strangers, speak out in public and draw attention to yourself if it is for a good cause.
By doing this you create OPPORTUNITIES for growth through new experiences, new people and new ideas that your secure old little self would never get to even scratch the surface of.
Too many of us have LIMITING BELIEFS about what we can or cannot do. Those are just illusions you have created for yourself. There is no such thing as a limiting belief if you don’t believe in limiting beliefs. Quite the concept to grasp if you aren’t experienced in the field of psychology.
Courageous people are still afraid, but they don’t let that fear paralyze them. Instead of letting fear attack their beliefs, THEY ATTACK THE FEAR and overcome their own limiting beliefs.
Eliminate Fear, Grow as a Conscious Human Being
Most people are too weak, and simply give into fear. It is hard when you have been conditioned your whole life to stay safe and stay out of harms way. While this makes sense when you are crossing the street, it doesn’t make any sense in your career and self-development.
If no one took risks, we would all be on the same page. We wouldn’t evolve either. You can’t get better if you don’t take risk. You stay the same, or even worse, you move backwards into a more self-conscious hole of security that doesn’t have room for opportunity to grow.
The courage to live consciously involves recognizing fear, learning about what fear is and how it affects you, then consciously working to eliminate it.
It is not an easy process, but it is certainly doable. If it was easy, there would be no fear in the world, and we would all be successful. That is not the case, because we value security over risk way too much as a society.
As an individual, you have the choice to take risk. It is your life, you get to do whatever the hell you want with it.
Don’t let anyone hold you back and don’t let any limiting beliefs hold you back. Once you can let go of all fear and worry, you create channels of opportunity to grow as a conscious human being.
Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
– John Wayne
A panic attack is a period of intense fear and worry that a person experiences with or with out an identified trigger that appears to come out of nowhere.
A panic attack usually does not last for more than 10 minutes.
People who have experienced a panic attack at some point in their lives have described it as the most terrifying and uncomfortable situation they have ever been in, especially if the person was having a panic attack in a public/social situation.
More times than not, panic attacks are mistaken for heart attacks and many people rush to the ER for medical attention. People usually are diagnosed with panic attacks when the doctors find absolutely nothing wrong with them. It takes a lot of time for most people to accept that what they experienced was “just” a panic attack because of how intense the feeling could be.
A panic attack can be seen as some kind of a “glitch” in our autonomic nervous system which is responsible to send a general “alarm” to our bodies to either “fight or flight” when we are in a dangerous situation. People who experience panic attacks may have an over sensitive or hyper-reactive autonomic nervous system.
TWO TYPES OF FEARS:
During a panic attack a person will experience two types of fears.
The primary fear is the initial and physical experience of pure panic; racing heart, interrupted breathing, sweating, etc.
SYMPTOMS THAT COMMONLY OCCUR DURING A PANIC ATTACK:
The secondary fear are the thoughts that follow these physical sensations a person experiences during a panic attack.
THE CYCLE:
Treating individuals who experience panic attacks and a variety of different anxiety disorders, I’ve come to learn that addressing the secondary fears (thoughts) first have been extremely helpful in decreasing the intensity of the attacks. Let’s take a look at some of the very common false beliefs and thoughts that most people have during panic attacks.
“I’m going to stop breathing”
“I’m going to pass out”
“I’m going crazy”
“I’m going to embarrass myself”
“I’m going to fall”
I’m going to have a heart attack”
“I’m going to die”
These thoughts and internal dialogue will only intensify your panic attack, so cut it out!
Not so easy right?
Well here are some facts about panic attacks that may help you negate these thoughts and help you kick panic attacks in the ass.
MYTH BUSTING!
Busted!
You will NOT suffocate because of a panic attack:
When distressed, your body tends to tighten the muscles, and that includes your neck and chest muscles which reduces the extent of your respiratory function. This does not mean there is anything wrong with your lungs or breathing at all. If you are not taking in enough oxygen, your brain will utilize it’s built in mechanism to force you to take deeper breaths or gasp. Yes, the feeling of suffocating IS NOT PLEASANT, but trust that you will not actually suffocate. There are no recorded deaths of suffocation during panic attacks 🙂
You will NOT faint because of a panic attack- Due to hyperventilation, (fast,fast breathing) during a panic attack, you may feel light headed which may give off the impression that you are going to faint. NO! Your blood circulation to your brain has slightly decreased. This is far from deadly. Allow the light-headed feelings to diminish, they will with time, along with slowed breathing.
Guess what!!? During a panic attack your heart is beating a little quicker; people usually faint when their hearts slow down.
So Much Panic!
You will NOT fall during a panic attack:
Sometimes you may feel as if your legs are too weak to hold your body which triggers the thoughts “I’m going to fall”, which then leads to “I’m going to embarrass myself or get hurt”.
Adrenaline is released during a panic attack which sometimes causes dilation in blood vessels in your legs. This feeling is JUST a feeling. Your legs are not actually weaker, they are just as strong as they were before the panic attack.
You will NOT go CRAZY during a panic attack:
A common reaction to rapid breathing is the sensation of feeling “not in reality”. Again, this is JUST a sensation. If you experience a feeling of disorientation or “dream like”, tell yourself that this is just a reaction to a change in your breathing. People do not go crazy from a panic attack. Mental illnesses are complex and usually progress slowly over time. There are no recorded “psychosis” due to a panic attack.
Stay Strong!
You will NOT have a heart attack during a panic attack- A healthy and strong heart can beat 200 beats per minute for as long as several weeks without a problem! Your heart can withstand a lot more than you think it can. There is a MAJOR difference between what your heart feels like during a panic attack and during a true heart attack.
THE DIFFERENCES:
During a panic attack your heart may pound and beat more rapidly and sometimes people complain of some pain. This pain quickly subsides.
During a true heart attack, there is much more consistent pain involved and intense pressure against the chest. This pain gets worse and worse.
EKG research indicates that during a panic attack, there are no abnormalities in the heart other than rapid beating. EKG tests indicates quite a few abnormalities in the heart during a heart attack.
APPLYING IT:
Now that you have learned a little more about the realities of panic attacks, try to replace your catastrophic thoughts with your knew FACTUAL knowledge. You are not going to die from a panic attack. Yes, they are scary, traumatic, and serve as interruptions in the lives of many, but don’t give them THAT much credit.
You may tell yourself, even after learning and knowing all of this, that during your next panic attack, that this one is different. you may tell yourself, “This time it’s really a heart attack.”
Well now you will know that that is one of the most common thoughts people have during panic attacks.
A last piece of advice- Embrace the symptoms. The more you try to avoid these symptoms, such as isolating yourself, constantly seeking medical attention, avoiding walking,talking and just being during a panic attack, the more you will reinforce your false beliefs that they are dangerous. You are stronger than a panic attack. Laugh at it. Millions of people experience panic attacks.
THERE ARE NO RECORDED DEATHS DUE TO PANIC ATTACKS!
You will NOT go CRAZY during a panic attack:
A common reaction to rapid breathing is the sensation of feeling “not in reality”.
Again, this is JUST a sensation. If you experience a feeling of disorientation or “dream like”, tell yourself that this is just a reaction to a change in your breathing. People do not go crazy from a panic attack. Mental illnesses are complex and usually progress slowly over time. There are no recorded “psychosis cases” due to a panic attack.
You will NOT have a heart attack during a panic attack- A healthy and strong heart can beat 200 beats per minute for as long as several weeks without a problem! Your heart can withstand a lot more than you think it can. There is a MAJOR difference between what your heart feels like during a panic attack and during a true heart attack.
ATHLETES WOULD BE DROPPING DEAD:
If our hearts could not sustain some rapid beating once in a while, don’t you think athletes would be dropping to the floor left and right?
You may tell yourself, even after learning and knowing all of this, that during your next panic attack, that this one is different. you may tell yourself, “This time it’s really a heart attack”. Well now you will know that that is one of the most common thoughts people have during panic attacks.
A last piece of advice- Embrace the symptoms. The more you try to avoid these symptoms, such as isolating yourself, constantly seeking medical attention, avoiding walking,talking and just being during a panic attack, the more you will reinforce your false beliefs that they are dangerous. You are stronger than a panic attack. Laugh at it. Millions of people experience panic attacks every day.
No One Dies From Panic Attacks!
THERE ARE NO RECORDED DEATHS DUE TO PANIC ATTACKS.
1. Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. Oh, and he was a confirmed and admitted stoner.
He published more than 600 scientific papersand articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan played a leading role in the American space program since its inception. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the 1950s, he briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter on the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperature of Venus (a massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (windblown dust) and the reddish haze of Titan (complex organic molecules).
Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.
Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named after him. He was also given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
2. Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.
In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his “interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism.” During his time there, he studied the Tibetan language and worked as a hashish smuggler, until “one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs.” He was forced to move to avoid capture by Interpol. He wandered through Southeast Asia viewing ruins, collected butterflies in Indonesia, and worked as an English teacher in Tokyo. He then went back to Berkeley to continue studying biology, which he called “his first love”
McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Instead of oo-koo-hé they found various forms of ayahuasca, or yagé, and gigantic psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition. In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he was the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with “Logos“: an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.The voice’s reputed revelations and his brother’s simultaneous peculiar experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his “Novelty Theory”.
Ideas/Theories:
Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He spoke of the “jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs” or “self-transforming machine elves” that one encounters in that state.
Although he avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being “trans-dimensional travel”; literally, enabling an individual to encounter what could be ancestors, or spirits of earth. He remained opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening.
Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and Alchemy. McKenna always regarded the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.
He also expressed admiration for the works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake “the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century”)and Vladimir Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.
“Stoned Ape” theory of human evolution
In his book Food of the Gods,McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans’ early ancestors Homo erectus to the species Homo sapiens mainly had to do with the addition of the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis in its diet – an event which according to his theory took place in about 100,000 BC (this is when he believed that the species diverged from the Homo genus). He based his theory on the main effects, or alleged effects, produced by the mushroom. One of the effects that comes about from the ingestion of low doses, which agrees with one of scientist Roland Fischer’s findings from the late 1960s-early 1970s, is it significantly improves the visual acuity of humans – so theoretically, of other human-like mammals too. According to McKenna, this effect would have definitely proven to be of evolutionary advantage to humans’ omnivorous hunter-gatherer ancestors that would have stumbled upon it “accidentally”; as it would make it easier for them to hunt.
In higher doses, McKenna claims, the mushroom acts as a sexual stimulator, which would make it even more beneficial evolutionarily, as it would result in more offspring. At even higher doses, the mushroom would have acted to “dissolve boundaries”, which would have promoted community-bonding and group sexual activities-that would result in a mixing of genes and therefore greater genetic diversity. Generally McKenna believed that the periodic ingestion of the mushroom would have acted to dissolve the ego in humans before it ever got the chance to grow in destructive proportions. In this context, he likened the ego to a cancerous tumor that can grow uncontrollable and become destructive to its host. In his own words:
Wherever and whenever the ego function began to form, it was akin to a cancerous tumor or a blockage in the energy of the psyche. The use of psychedelic plants in a context of shamanic initiation dissolved-as it dissolves today-the knotted structure of the ego into undifferentiated feeling, what Eastern philosophy calls the Tao.
—Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods
The mushroom, according to McKenna, had also given humans their first truly religious experiences (which, as he believed, were the basis for the foundation of all subsequent religions to date). Another factor that McKenna talked about was the mushroom’s potency to promote linguistic thinking. This would have promoted vocalisation, which in turn would have acted in cleansing the brain (based on a scientific theory that vibrations from speaking cause the precipitation of impurities from the brain to the cerebrospinal fluid), which would further mutate the brain. All these factors according to McKenna were the most important factors that promoted evolution towards the Homo sapiens species. After this transformation took place, the species would have begun moving out of Africa to populate the rest of the planet. Later on, this theory by McKenna was given the name “The ‘Stoned Ape’ Theory of Human Evolution”
3. Sir Richard Branson is an English business mogul, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies.
His first successful business venture was a magazine called Student at age 16. In 1970, he set up an audio record mail-order business. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores. Branson’s Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.
Branson is the 4th richest citizen of the United Kingdom and 254th richest person in the world, according to the Forbes 2011 list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of US $4.2 billion
in 2007 he smoked cannabis with his son Sam, a model, during a surfing holiday in Australia. “I went with my son on his gap year. We had some nights where we laughed our heads off for eight hours,” Branson said, adding, .”I don’t think smoking the occasional spliff is all that wrong. I’d rather my son did it in front of me than behind closed doors.” In the interview with Piers Morgan for GQmagazine, the entrepreneur also admitted trying cocaine and ecstasy.
Reportedly worth £5 billion, Branson says Rolling Stone Keith Richards was the “first person to teach me to roll a joint.” He said he had not tried the mythic super-strong “skunk” cannabis and insisted cannabis was okay “in moderation.” Branson is pro-hemp, and recently offered a cash prize for anyone who can come up with a carbon sequestering technology for his airline. Branson was among 100 prominent people who signed a public declaration in favor of the decriminalization of cannabis. They also included former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, and playwright Harold Pinter.
In 2001 Branson said that he would sell legalized cannabis in his Virgin stores but not tobacco because it is too dangerous. When asked about cannabis on a BBC2 interview he said: “I personally think it should be legalized. I think it’s wrong that 100,000 young people have criminal records every year for doing something which is no worse than their parents are doing every night—drinking alcohol.”
Branson recounts trying pot and LSD in his book, Losing My Virginity, but says he’s done drugs only “rarely.” In one instance, he took a joint so as not to appear ungrateful to the host who proffered it, and found out the next day that Dire Straits signed with another label.
4. Timothy Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. Both studies produced useful data, but Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were fired from the university.
Leary believed LSD showed therapeutic potential for use in psychiatry. He popularized catchphrases that promoted his philosophy, such as “turn on, tune in, drop out“, “set and setting”, and “think for yourself and question authority”. He also wrote and spoke frequently about transhumanist concepts involving space migration, intelligence increase and life extension (SMI²LE), and he developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology (1977).
During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested regularly and was held captive in 29 different prisons throughout the world. President Richard Nixon once described Leary as “the most dangerous man in America”.
Leary is often considered one of the most prominent figures during the counterculture of the 1960s, and since those times has remained incredibly influential on pop culture, literature, television, film; and especially music.
Timothy Leary’s ideas heavily influenced the work of Robert Anton Wilson. This influence went both ways and Leary admittedly took just as much from Wilson. Wilson’s book Prometheus Rising was an in depth, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary’s eight circuit model of consciousness. Although the theory originated in discussions between Leary and a Hindu holy man at Millbrook, Wilson was one of the most ardent proponents of it and introduced the theory to a mainstream audience in 1977’s bestselling Cosmic Trigger. In 1989, they appeared together on stage in a dialog entitled The Inner Frontierin Cleveland, Ohio hosted by the Association for Consciousness Exploration,(the same group that had hosted Leary’s first Cleveland appearance in 1979). Wilson and Leary conversed a great deal on philosophical, political and futurist matters and became close friends who remained in contact through Leary’s time in prison and up until his death. Wilson regarded Leary as a brilliant man and often is quoted as saying (paraphrase) “Leary had a great deal of ‘hilaritas’, the type of cheer and good humour by which it was said you could recognise a deity”.
Owsley Stanley, one of the pioneers of the era, would later write of him:
Leary was a fool. Drunk with “celebrity-hood” and his own ego, he became a media clown—and was arguably the single most damaging actor involved in the destruction of the evanescent social movement of the ’60s. Tim, with his very public exhortations to the kids to “tune in, turn on and drop out”, is the inspiration for all the current draconian US drug laws against psychedelics. He would not listen to any of us when we asked him to please cool it, he loved the limelight and relished his notoriety… I was not a fan of his.
Author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey remained a supporter and admirer of Leary throughout his career,
Leary can get a part of my mind that’s kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.
World religion scholar Huston Smith was turned on by Leary after the two were introduced to one another by Aldous Huxley in the early 1960s. The experience was interpreted as deeply religious by Smith, and is captured in detailed religious terms in Smith’s later work Cleansing of the Doors of Perception. This was Smith’s one and only entheogenic experience, at the end of which he asked Leary, to paraphrase, if Leary knew the power and danger of that with which he was conducting research. In Mother Jones Magazine, 1997, Smith commented:
First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart—descriptively indistinguishable—that’s not the last word. There is still a question about the truth of the disclosure.
The slogan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, signified a conceptual way of thinking wherein a person would turn on to their own way of thinking, tune in to themselves, and drop out of society. This constituted a concept of inward self reliance.
5.George Washington: Yeah, that’s right, the first recorded President of the United States. It is not known whether Washing smoked it or not, but he did cultivate the plant.
Washington’s diary reports that he separated males from females in his hemp garden, “rather too late.” Much speculation has ensued about whether or not Washington’s reason for sexing his plants was to make a more smokable product. One thing is for sure: hemp was grown in the US colonies as far back as Jamestown, with several colonies ordering their farmers to grow it. Thomas Paines’s pamphlet Common Sense lists hemp as the first requirement for revolution, writing that in the colonies “hemp flourishes almost to rankness.” Thomas Jefferson also grew hemp on his plantation and went to great lengths to smuggle hemp seeds out of China. Jared Eliot wrote, “I am informed by my worthy friend Benjamin Franklin, Esq., of Philadelphia, that they raise hemp upon their drained lands.
We know as much as anyone who has ever lived knows, yet we still don’t have an answer to what happens after we die.
Death is inevitable.
It is part of the cycle of life.
We are all temporary beings in a temporary state of existence. Everything that has ever lived, has died. There is no one life form that can live for ever, at least on this planet.
We like to think of ourselves as smart and intelligent beings, and we certainly are but the question still remains, what happens next?
Ego, defined as the conceptual identity we place on ourselves has driven many individuals to adapt thinking patterns and personal beliefs that mask the true essence of reality.
Without an ego we wouldn’t have any motivation for living a life. The problem arises when naive human beings create patterns of thinking that are full of negative intentions for the greater good of mankind. Egotistical individuals tend to crave power, and to get that power they will take any means necessary.
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