tsuki

Going towards pleasure and avoiding pain is not the strategy that I'm advising. There is no guarantee of outcome, ever. Being comfortable with uncertainty is a huge step. The mere fact that this advice makes you sick to your stomach does not mean that it is good for you in the long run. There is also no guarantee that you will feel shitty after masturbating, or feel good after abstinence. Whatever feels good right now, is the point, the truth. The point is the connection to your feelings in itself. There are feelings that are easy and there also ones that are difficult. The point is to understand and appreciate all of them. Each and every single one of them conveys important message. Naming the feeling is the first step. The second step is to understand why you feel this way. The third step is to act in harmony with this feeling, satisfy the need that it communicates. The most overlooked step is the why. Why may be shallow, like I ate bad food yesterday, or it may be deep, going back 10 years into some seemingly unrelated event. Realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you feeling this way. This is the raw truth. You are vulnerable, naked, because you see this truth. Vulnerability is good! It has nothing to do with feeling needy. You are "needy" only if you look at yourself through the eyes of your circus trainer. The child needs care after it went through something difficult. Give care to your child until it is satisfied.

Even though it would be true, you would get accused of name-calling and voters would have a hard time seeing the difference between the two of you. This is why politics is so difficult - highly conscious people are not drawn to it because they will have to behave like animals. Catch 22. If there was any catch that could allow for wise people to compete with devils on their own terms, then there would be a chance. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is one.

I mean, I'm trying to watch the debate, but it's so cringeworthy that I don't think I will be able to finish it. I don't know how Biden does this, I would just throw something at him.

It's not that easily quantifiable, but I'd say 60% of my waking life. It's my number though, so it will most definitely be different for you.

This saying is prevalent here because measuring life through success is a very crude way thinking, indicating certain carelessness. It is important to define success well before you will try to achieve it. Without care, we are prone to thinking in crude terms, measuring success through money, the amount of women you've slept with, clients, or followers on Instagram. At some level, it is fine to do it this way, but ultimately you will have to ask yourself what it means to be successful to you. That inevitably leads to deeper questions about you, specifically which lead to understanding of happiness. Success at that point is obsolete, because you know that you can only be happy by being you and choose a path that is well-tailored to your specific talents and dispositions. Successful musicians are successful because they are expressing themselves, not merely because of the fruits of their work. Still, if you are convinced that money, women, or status will make you happier, then there is no way around it. It is the reality to you, but be prepared at some point to re-evaluate your choices after you've grown into something more expansive.

@Tim R I would like to invite you to consider the possibility that you are not yellow, not in the SD sense at least. The leap between Orange and Green is enormous and the leap between Green and Yellow even more so. Apart from basic appearance, Green and Turquoise are very dissimilar. As dissimilar as Orange is from Yellow. Leo is a heavy thinker and he over-emphasizes systemic thinking in Yellow. Orange is capable of learning systemic thinking when it hears that it is beneficial to do so. Yellow is about integration, looking deep within you and understanding yourself as a system. Understanding has a different meaning to Yellow than to Orange. To understand is to feel, not to explain. System is not a machine. This is what is learned (embodied) as you go through green. Green is the (feeling) foundation for Yellow. When you go through green, you become disillusioned with thinking more and more, and sort of depart from yourself because you can see that you are the root cause of all of your problems. Green moralizes so much because it sees its own flaws and tries to communicate that. Blaming others, being a social justice warrior, is a distraction. The real work begins with healing until the shadow aspects of you are integrated. Then, you emerge as a new entity that does not reject itself and sees all the way down, to the base, what you are made of. Again: Yellow is not a thinker. Yellow is integral, integrated, in-dividual, whole, one, accepted. Yellow is devoid of self-hatred that Green possesses and does not reject thinking. It has solved the conflict.

Writing a response to this paragraph has been unusually difficult for me. This bisexual part of me indeed does want to be seen and accepted for what it is. It is in conflict with my masculine self that tries to shoo-shoo it back to conformity, but it does not feel right to do so. It is scary to come out to your friends and family, but it needs to be recognized that people that are close to you in proximity, aren't necessarily close to you emotionally. The fact that we feel threatened by saying the truth about ourselves indicates that people may not receive it well. Not every part of me is meant for every person in my social circle. Still, it is understandable that my bisexual self wants to be free and I empathize with you and myself in this regard. Pidgeonholing hurts when there is no right box for us. I'm also very easily aroused. It gets on my wife's nerves pretty often. When she first learned that I'm bisexual, she was pissed because now she also has to watch out for men lol. Summer is especially difficult for me with all of the skirts and shorts. I sometimes even catch myself looking away from the road when I'm driving. I wonder if some woman would take my car accident as her badge of beauty. When it comes to men, I noticed that there is a pattern to them. I like men in their early twenties in sportswear, aloof or even lost, with this rebellious vibe to them. Muscular ass helps. Unfortunately, a lot of people can't even wrap their heads around homosexuality. Not in a healthy way at least. I suspect that there are a lot of convert gay or bisexual people that can't even admit it to themselves, not to mention to their friends and family. Of course, this non-heterosexual part gets pissed for being ignored and they take it out on others, ridiculing them. Rejection of alternative sexual orientations is a definite sign of emotional weakness and should be approached as childishness. There is no need to have an adult conversion with a child about things it ridicules. I'm also into kinky stuff, frequently watch BDSM porn and tried some of that with my wife. It was getting out of hand, unfortunately, because my dominant self tends to be emotionally volatile and it was slipping out of the bedroom. I need to grow up before we get back to it.

Even though it's not Japanese, Avatar: the last airbender conveys a lot of wisdom.

I feel like I'm going through a very deep transformation right now. This is nothing like anything I have ever experienced. I feel good about myself, about who I am. Not about my accomplishments - it's about my essence. About my uniqueness. My productivity at work this week has plummeted and I can't get myself to make progress with my current projects, but I know that I need this time to myself. This is the time when I'm looking deeply into who I am, into what I understand myself to be. I feel that my psychological makeup is changing. It feels like a new identity is condensing, but even though I'm semi-conscious of it, I'm not rejecting it. I don't blame myself for "having" an ego anymore. There is this multiplicity of me and I can see it. It is as if it was somewhere out there, as something other than me - and yet - it is very dear, close to my heart. From one point of view, I feel compassion for this struggling creature, as if it was separate, but when I feel this, I feel good, as if someone empathized with me. I really like the analogy of being in a relationship with myself. Very unusual. I could say that this is the proper transition from green to yellow. I exhausted the relishing in the relativity and accepted the survival side of things. The systemic part of yellow is emphasized so much, but I don't think that this is the proper characteristic. I was pretty well versed in systemic thinking as green, but what I did not fully get was, simply put, myself. I was at odds with "having" an ego, it felt like a curse of not being able to live my life they way I wanted haha. The proper characteristic of Yellow is integral. Integral means: unified, in-dividual. Even though this inner structure has its facets, they all serve specific purposes and balance each other in strife for permanence. I accept even the lowest aspects of myself and treat them with care. They are, after all, my most precious children. I will never be as close to any child as I am to my heart. And still, I understand that this structure is conceptual. There is nothing in here I can point my finger towards and say: "AHA! Got you!". I am interpreting my behaviors as they appear and act as if there was a person/s here. My interior does not like being called "illusory" for it implies that it is not important. It is important to me. Ha!

Such a good material on the unique aspects of video games as an art medium.

It's pretty old so my understanding is different now. If you have any questions you can PM me.

@Member I did

It all depends on the general direction that you want your life to go towards. If you want to dive deeper into spirituality, then it's better to focus on awareness. If you just want to run and enjoy yourself, the by all means do so. I don't think that it's possible to dive 100% into one direction. There will be times when you do one thing and times when you do the other. This distinction that some things are more spiritual than other is not accurate. I consider running a spiritual practice where I develop my connection to my body.

I was always seeing a clear pattern of construction-deconstruction, so I find this hypothesis about lack of specimen to create society somewhat unlikely. Deconstruction starts at Green/Pluralist.

@Bestversionofme There is a book on Leo's booklist about similarities between humans and other primates. If I remember correctly, it says that dry humping among males is not necessarily sexual, but an expression of dominance. For example, homosexual intercourse is common in jails even though inmates consider themselves to be straight. It's about showing who's the boss.

@Bestversionofme First of all, I admire your sincerity and openness to your sexuality. You spent a lot of effort into exploring it and it does not seem like you are hiding it from yourself. That's good. It seems though that you are afraid of being perceived as gay. I don't have any experience with people of your skin complexion, but I imagine that it would be a problem if you came out to your friends and family. I believe that it's important to keep things this important to yourself, if making them public would be threatening to you. The threat is the issue here - not because they are somehow "shameful", or "wrong". If someone is to feel ashamed, it's the people that would ostracize you for whatever reason - being it your sexuality, skin color, or kinks that you enjoy. I took notice that you are afraid of being hypersexual. What does that mean to you? That your sexual drive is too strong? I would be concerned about it only if you feel that you are using sex to distract yourself from something that keeps happening in your life, like unpleasant feelings or thoughts that haunt you. Feeling into that situation and expressing your anger for having your boundaries broken could release some of suppressed emotions that may still be stored in your body. Other than that - I wouldn't be too concerned about that when it comes to sexuality. Orientation is not a disease that can be "rubbed on" to you by someone else. I'm also bisexual and have never had any contact with another man, but it is not a concern for me. It was much more of a shock to my wife when I learned about it during my LSD trip haha. The "family friend" situation may actually be related to some of your kinks. I have a feeling that you may be trying to re-enact this situation in your fantasies - either by having control over someone weaker, or giving control away for some reason. I am not a psychologist though, so I may be wrong - I think that it would be beneficial if you talked to one. Again - not because your kinks are wrong, but because your sexuality is unclear to you. It is really about you deciding what you like and playing with it.

To "know yourself" does not mean that you have a vast body of knowledge, a list, or a taxonomy. An athlete does not know how to run because he has studied books about running, but because he runs well. You want to know how to run yourself and the only way to learn that is by doing it. There is no instruction manual for you because you are totally unique, but thankfully - you have been equipped with a compass called "feelings". The things that feel good, are true to you and tell you important things about you. Keep feeling good and you will find yourself. In my particular case, it was a combination of contemplation, learning through youtube, books and this forum. I'm in my 5th year of psychotherapy and psychedelics helped as well. I can't stress enough how psychotherapy has helped me. Probably would have taken twice as long without it. IQ is something unrelated to self-knowledge. Sometimes it is even an obstacle because it comes with a lot of arrogance, trying to think things through and find "solutions" to "problems". This area is mostly about feelings, about your connection to your body, strong intent to heal and tons and tons of curiosity. If you want to appear as a smart person, self-exploration will not give you any results in this domain. It will give you happiness though. Yes, you are right. I got carried away here. The trainer's purpose is to get you through the day, perform your routine and function on a day-to-day basis. The problem is that it does not look past the surface, past appearances. The child appears broken and insufficient to the trainer because the child lives at the depths of your psyche and it takes conscious attention to understand it. The trainer is not capable of doing that. When you will truly understand the child, then you will see it as something that's been through so much that you will want to hug it and cry for it. Your job as an ego is to fulfill your needs. Transcendence is easier from the place of abundance.

I'm not reading other fibers of this thread, but I don't think that this advice is conflicting to a large extent . When you were a child, your mental capacity was not enough so that you could understand yourself. You were just developing and you needed your parents to regulate your emotions, to tell you that you are okay when you were frustrated, to help you get up on your feet when you fell, to encourage you to take on a challenge when you were overwhelmed. This "rejected child" that seeks attention from others is a set of coping behaviors that you developed when your parents didn't take good care of you. This aspect of you is actually no longer needed because now, as a grown man, you can be good to yourself. This is why the advice is not conflicting at all - by all means do spend some time in solitude, but for the sake of being nice to yourself! Get back up on your feet, find the things that make you feel good about being you. Learn what makes you tick, what you need to hear to feel happy. This is the rejected child that wants love from another person. Feelings cannot be silenced, put aside, because they communicate genuine needs that you have. Fulfill those needs by being good to yourself. Judging yourself for not having sex with women is the circus trainer at work, that tries to evict the rejected child. The child will not be evicted because it is your heart. You don't want to evict your heart, trust me. Starting an intimate relationship with unmet needs is a recipe for disaster. It is not just two times more difficult than being alone because there are two children with unmet needs. These two children also start fighting for power over the other person, release their circus trainers upon each other and things get unbelievably nasty real quick. The way you relate to this girl (and to yourself) is already very nasty, but I don't blame you. I know how it's like to be this way and why it happens. That being said, sex is still a need so it will have to be addressed. Porn addiction is difficult because it's hard to draw a line between something you truly need and are addicted to, but it can be managed. All of the aspects other than "the rejected child" are the by-product of Circus trainer's working. Circus trainer is there because you believed that there is something inherently wrong with you. Circus trainer belongs in a cage, not you. You are not an animal. Connect to your feelings and actively silence the trainer. It will take some time to attain clarity, but it can be done. I've done it. It is tempting to use the circus trainer's power to train him. Don't give into that temptation. He is still a part of you so be gentle, but firm. Working on yourself for the sake of change, being something else because this thing right here is unbearable, is not the right approach. Change must be merely a mean to meet the goal, which is happiness. Realize the you are not happy right now. You are not happy because you are confused. There is nothing inherently wrong with you, nobody simply taught you how to take good care of yourself. This needs to change, not you. You are a wonderful person and you deserve the best life you can possibly imagine, so start acting like it! Your parents were not serious enough about you to teach you any of this. Realize how difficult it is to have no roots. How difficult it was to be left alone with no instructions, with no help. This will be painful, but it will also, at some point, help you feel how amazing you are to have gone through all of this on your own. Go back to this rejected child and make it feel accepted. I'm very glad to hear that! This is genuine progress! Your energy is not consumed by unmet needs - you were given your energy to fulfill them! Your energy is dissipated by the circus trainer hurting yourself.

Your avatar looks pretty busy for something that depicts "nothing" .

@Tim R I sympathize with you. Seeing people that are dear to us stuck in hell is painful to experience. It gets easier when you realize that this place still exists as a part of you and decide to welcome it as integral to your existence.

@tatsumaru No human that has gone through the work of exploring their depths and discovered the exquisite joy of being truly unique would take another person's life for mere entertainment, or gratification. Taking another's life to validate your own existence is the polar opposite of truly understanding your own uniqueness. The true self is always enough. Psychopathy is a mental disorder for a reason (other than the whims of the scientific community). Severe early childhood trauma can leave you unable to reach down to your depths because of the amount of pain that you have to process. Especially if you deliberately killed your emotional sensitivity and you took that pain out on every single person in your life that dared to love you. Especially if you grew up in an environment where violence was normalized, or even encouraged. Especially if ignoring the social norms was a badge of honor, wit, or group identity. Especially if you told yourself for the whole life that seeking help is a sign of weakness. Going through all of these statements in reverse order and actually feeling them just to get to the bottom where you were abused and feeling that abuse to process it is too much to ask from any human. This is why society contains these sorts of people in jails. Serial killers are not authentic. They are who they are because it is impossible for them to acknowledge themselves.

So for example, if I don't see systemic racism it doesn't exist? "You" is a very malleable world that can encompass a single mind, a group, whole society, or the world. It all depends on the extent of responsibility that you decide to take.

Mine was: I am absolutely nothing and I spend my life trying to shove things into this bottomless pit.

I don't think that looking for ideal (like-minded, etc) people is the right approach to relationships so I was never too interested in developing a strategy for "acquiring" them. There is so much depth to humans that trying to deliberately find one that is similar to you seems absurd to me. Yet, similar people exist and are attracted to each other, huh? I think that a much better strategy would be to develop your own fluidity and go through life with variety of people. This way, shared experiences are what makes you similar, even if structure remains different. So, my strategy is simply to stick to it until it gets better.

I don't think that it does. Psychological makeup of a person changes (even rapidly like here), but consciousness remains. Well, maybe it does to some degree. It helps me to answer the question: who is the one that gets enlightened? Lets imagine that one of her personalities became a monk and started meditating like crazy. Would this personality become enlightened? Would each of her personalities become enlightened? Or would the monk become aware of his illusory nature and consciousness became aware of itself?