Grant6

Approval seeking keeps you from being your authentic self. One thing I have been discovering about myself is that I am addicted to approval. I seek it out through other people because I expect it to fill a void inside of me. But I am realizing that no matter how much approval I get from others, it is never enough. And it not only keeps me from being happy and truly loving with myself, but it keeps me from creating genuine relationships with others. I have been becoming more aware of when I am engaged in approval seeking, and that awareness alone is very curative. But journaling has also helped a lot. I still have a lot more work to do on this, but I am making a lot of progress.

It's ok to be a noob. It's a part of the journey. Have you ever tried to learn something new or start a new habit, only to quit soon after beginning? It might have been because you were embarrassed or ridiculed for being a newbie. For being inexperienced, for being unknowledgeable, for making rookie mistakes. It probably hurt. But everyone was a newbie at one time in their life. Everyone had to learn to walk as a baby, but no one ever judges a baby for crawling first. There's a process, it's developmental. So never let others—or yourself, convince you that you can't be successful in something, just because you make mistakes, or aren't perfect at it from the start, or don't know the how-to. If it's your passion, if it's your vision, if it makes you happy, do it! And don't give up!

Thank you @Esilda

Growth is paradoxical; you have to love yourself as you are, but simultaneously change yourself. I had to reconcile this today. I had a humbling experience where I was forced to face my own shortcomings. And in that moment I did not love myself. I felt pathetic, and worthless... Until this thought came into my head: if I don't love myself now, as I am, flaws and all, I will never actually be happy—even when I do overcome my shortcomings. There will always be growth to do, so if I wait to love myself until I reach some destination, what I'm really doing is chasing my own tail—it's infinite. I will never reach that destination, and will forever feel empty inside. That's why I have to love myself now. Don't put conditions on your own self worth. After this, I found some affirmations that I said to myself that really helped. I have a lot to offer. I love who I am. I am a gift to the world.

I know intellectually that of course, every one is different, and has different values. But most average people are not interested in metaphysical/spiritual topics at all; in fact, many actively avoid metaphysical topics. But why isn't it more common? Sometimes I notice myself judging others who clearly don't care about this stuff, who aren't interested in growth at all, and just live very sedentary lives, only caring about basic human survival things (e.g., having a job, getting married, being successful, etc). Like we're existing!!! Why doesn't that blow people's minds?! When you really think about it, just being itself is so magical. But many don't care to understand more about this and just take the magic of existence for granted. Now of course, pursuing real spirituality can be dangerous as Leo talked about in his Dangers of Spirituality video. I mean this path can destabilize your mind, and depending how far you take it, lead to your own death. The death of your ego. So I get that's a big reason why, but it still annoys me that more people aren't more open-minded to this kind of thing, all the stuff Leo talks about. And then it actually annoys me that I am annoyed by that. So why is it that metaphysically curious people are so few and far between?

@Waken I'm so glad you mentioned that. That's so true, everyone's nature is different, and the most important thing is discovering what that is and being aligned with that.

@puporing Survival needs not being met, I imagine that's one of the biggest factors. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Someone deficient in belongingness and safety is probably not concerned about what consciousness is. And education is a good point too, as it's something a lot of people probably aren't even aware of, and don't have other people asking these questions or taking them seriously, because they are also crabs in the bucket.

@Gili Trawangan God's will. I need to take some more psychedelic trips so I can become directly conscious of this. Yeah, transcending the materialist paradigm is probably a huge factor that plays into it.

@Realms of Wonder Wow yeah that's so true, more leaders and visionaries and creatives are much needed. I'm glad you took that LSD and found Actualized.org!!

@The Lucid Dreamer Yes I have noticed that, people don't like to be alone, and rather do things in order to "fabricate a feeling of 'meaning'" like you said. You make a great point there. And I guess even with the spiritual path, there is still meaning making there. Because spirituality is meaningful to us (I'm assuming), but in the Absolute sense, even spirituality itself is something we place meaning on, and is not inherently meaningful. So I suppose I'm doing the same thing. The content is different (what is meaningful), but the structure is the same (meaning making). Yeah, I guess right now I'm just responding to myself but I'm not conscious of it lol.

@Swarnim Thanks for your answer. I didn't even realize the way I framed this question is already creating a separation between other people, and maybe subtly putting spiritual people on a pedestal over unspiritual people. But like you said there must be empathy. I guess that really is the answer. My takeaway is everyone is on a different place on the path, and instead of judging others who are not where you are, show empathy, and also realize that there are people much farther than you as well.

The way I used the FAQ was I watched it once I already began the course and had a questions/concern about one of the exercises, and that really helped me. It's best to use it when you have a pressing question at the forefront of your mind, then you go into watching the FAQ with that question. So in other words, I would start the course from the beginning and if any questions come up along the way, then watch the FAQ. I think this will get you that "fresh" start you are wanting. Or you could start from the Values section since you already went through the beginning theory videos. That's what I did my second time through.

This

Today I had my first trip ever on psychedelics. The only other drug I have experience with is weed, which I've done around 7 times in my life. Just for background I have been watching Leo's videos for over 6 years now and am very familiar with his teachings about Love, Truth, etc, you all know. I am 24 years old. Not sure what the norm is when organizing trip reports, but I split mine up into 3 sections: Pre-Trip - thoughts and feelings beforehand The Trip Itself - any in-the-moment things I wrote down Post-Trip - my thoughts and feelings afterwards I also tripped with my friend who is a little more experienced and he did 1.8mg. He is spiritual in the casual sense but does not have any kind of framework for understanding existential matters like I do from Leo's videos, nor is he very concerned with that kind of stuff. PRE-TRIP 6:57am Just looked at and contemplated my list of top 10 values. Felt good to ground myself in that, and I feel more energized and more excited to take the mushrooms because I feel like I have some direction that I want to go in now. Before I was feeling more anxious and fearful because my mind wasn't clear and felt foggy, just felt more prone to negative thoughts. Now that I grounded myself in my values, my mind feels much clearer and I feel more excited about taking the mushrooms. Still have a slight headache though. What's most meaningful to me in life? That will be my intention. 7:15am Also, what value can I provide to others? THE TRIP ITSELF < > = post trip elaboration 10:40am Ate mushrooms. 11:29am Heavy headed, still feel good, also sleepy but probably cause I still haven't eaten. (I didn't write time stamp for these) It's a placebo <idea from "The Universe Is A Dream," I saw how the mushrooms is just a placebo or in other words an excuse for us in the dream to get closer to God Realization. It's like we (God) had to convince ourselves that we need psychedelics in order to awaken because admitting we can awaken right now defeats the purpose of the dream, if that makes sense. It's hard to articulate.> I can't remember. But that in and of itself is evidence of God. Thats why it's a separate thing! I feel like I am channeling a higher consciousness now, like separate from myself. But the separateness is there because if I were to admit that I am that would be too great to handle. 12:20pm Everything makes sense. It's all Love. It's so simple. I feel like I can predict the future when I am on shrooms. I don't want to disrupt other people's dream. Everything is a distraction from ___ 2:24pm Earlier was a lot to integrate (hold in my mind), but I have some takeaways now. My "purpose" is to be more charismatic. I've been in my shell a lot, and it's important for me to be able to communicate more effectively with others, but a big piece of that is being more happy/joyful. I'm communicating with myself after all (when I talk to other people), and that gives me comfort My purpose as of now is to see more beauty (details of the dream) and help others discover more beauty around them and within themselves. Also something to work on is developing more charisma. Forgetting is a convenient way of perhaps dismissing Truth when it arises. God is very clever. No visualizations. I have no choice but to fall back into the dream. Fear of bursting other people's dream. POST-TRIP The Experience Itself: • Every time I write to myself, I feel like I'm channeling a higher being or something, but that being is ME! • Felt like seeing life from a birds eye view, then as I was coming down I felt like I was slipping back into the dream. • Felt like I was having trouble articulating what I was experiencing (writing notes/insights down), precisely because God didn't want to be seen. • Felt like solipsism, like I was the only thing that exists. I don't think it was God Realization, but a sort of introduction to it. • It's so hard to articulate what was happening! I wanted to tell my friend—"It's all a dream!! We're in a dream!!" but I kept it to myself because I knew he would think I'm crazy if I said it with such conviction, and would maybe be too piercing and actually terrify him? I didn't want to burst his dream. He took my silence like something was wrong, but then I assured him I am "feeling the shrooms," and am just internalizing it. --> for example, I struggled for the longest to even tell him, "It's all love," and, "It's a dream," and when I finally said it in a nice calm tone, what I noticed is I would be making eye contact with him but he would look away! Because it's like he knew it's true but didn't want to admit it/wake up to it. • I was concerned with being caught outside of the dream. --> for example, I felt like I had to sneak to my phone in the other room to write insights I was having, and when I began writing insights about how we're all in a dream, my friend came in the room and asked if I was ok! And I told him yes, but I knew he was going to check on me because it felt like he was subtly trying to keep me from being aware of the dream, like the crabs in the bucket analogy. • Life felt very deterministic. Like we don't actually have control over what we do, except I suppose we have the choice to awaken, which happens gradually as much as we can handle. Insights: *some of these I felt like I was conscious of, but it was like half-baked awareness and not complete consciousness/awareness. Or am I only saying that so that I can continue to have a reason to pursue more spirituality? Guess it doesn't really matter either way. • Life is so simple. • Life is so empty, but thats what makes it so beautiful!!! • We're all actors in a dream • God works in implicit ways • God communicates through humor/playfulness, and through beauty. Which is why I want to be more charismatic, so I can communicate to others more effectively. • God reveals itself in ways that we can handle, such as lyrics in music. It's like God is winking at us, nudging us to find him. • Life is just God exploring itself more and more. After Thoughts: • Human civilization is so fuckin complex. Thinking about how we all just want more Love, but our ways of getting it has been so all over the place. I know it's all Love, but I'm not directly conscious of that yet. • Ethics is very important to me when dealing with people • Challenge of life purpose I wrote (see more beauty and communicate it to others): showing others more beauty/love will inevitably result in some people rejecting me, and thats ok because rejection doesn't invalidate the love/beauty in any way. • Have no tempation to increase dosage. 1.5g was great. • Feel like my purpose is to guide people towards Love, towards beauty, to see what the dream is and gain appreciation of it. • I feel like another aspect of my purpose is to figure out how to communicate the dream more implicitly/cleverly to others, because we are so stubborn we don't want to wake up! But that's where so much beauty lies in life. Action Items for Dream Integration: • Self care. I need to give myself more love, just by doing things I enjoy. Keep it simple. • Self image. Read Psychocybernetics. Change my view of myself. For a minute I saw myself as a charismatic, charming guy and I felt really inspired. Felt like I broke out of my current self identity for a bit and it was liberating. • More personal development. I need to do more learning, and continue developing good habits in my life, basically work on more ego development, before I move on to more psychedelics. I got plenty to chew on from this experience for a while. Lastly, I am still a bit confused about what kind of mystical experience this was. I assume more clarity will come the more I trip, but my inner wisdom is telling me to focus on my personal development more, and maybe in like 4 months I can trip again with a new intention. Any feedback or tips on how I can improve moving forward is appreciated!

@Buba No permanent changes in my psyche. As far as mood, sometimes I do remind myself of the trip and it motivates me to keep going because now I have an experience of what I am working towards (it's not purely conceptual in my head), and also having a reference experience helps me wrap my head around Leo's more metaphysical topics, which is a nice feeling. But these are more circumstantial. I haven't experienced a permanent, prolonged mood change.

Life is messy. I wanted to believe the opposite—that life is straightforward. That would make life pretty easy. In the ultimate sense, you could make that argument. But in the world of relativity, it is messy as hell. Everything is so intertwined, life can feel like those really stubborn and annoying knots that you try to untangle, like a necklace or a pair of earbuds, and trying to untangle that shit really tests my patience. And I am a very patient person relatively speaking. Life tests my patience so much, because as I am getting more into personal development, these annoying stubborn knots are becoming more aware to me, my inner demons, and now that I am trying to actually untangle them—face them head on, instead of ignore them, it's hard. It's messy. It's complicated. As I am beginning to tackle this challenge, I notice myself getting frustrated simply because of the knots very existence. "Why is life so frustrating? I don't want to deal with this shit!" I would think. "Oh, because life isn't as straightforward as I thought. This shit is messy. And I have to deal with it." It's like your mother asking you to clean your room, and instead of cleaning it you pout and complain about why it isn't already clean in the first place, then proceed to refuse to clean your room. It's immaturity. I'm in the process of growing up. I'm being forced to embrace the mess that is my life. And that's ok. I suppose one way to look at it is, if life was clean what would the point of living even be? To just enjoy it I guess. But then there's no room for growth. The messiness of life is what breeds growth. If I care at all about growing myself, I need to embrace that life isn't easy. Take that challenge on. This perfectionistic attitude I have about life has to go. It's holding me back, and is counterproductive to the healthy lifestyle that I want to create. Time to take 100% responsibility for my life.

This is my first journal. I've been deeply inspired by Leo's most recent blog post to make this. He mentions how him explaining in his videos many of the biggest truths that he has realized has been like spoiling the movie for his viewers. Now in my personal life, I actually hate when people spoil movies or tv shows for me, so I think it's funny how I have been watching Leo's videos for over 6 years now and love being spoiled about the nature of reality, awakening/enlightenment/Truth, all that juicy, delicious stuff that no one else ever talks about. Anyways, what this made me painfully aware of is that I have been (to use the same metaphor that he uses) hearing Leo talk about Africa for over 6 years, and have done nothing more than look up photos and articles of Africa online, and read a few books about Africa. For the past 6 years, that is more than enough time to go to Africa, go on safaris, see animals, eat amazing food, meet incredible people, open myself to new perspectives, and do it all in real life. But I haven't. Now I consider myself a fairly wise person; of course, having "wasted" all that time perhaps I am not as wise as I think. But one thing for sure is that I do value Truth more than anyone in my personal life. I feel very lucky to have stumbled upon Actualized.org one day, my first video being "How To Master & Control Your Emotions". 7 years ago that was, it was a recommended video from YouTube, and I noticed something different about what I watched. There was something special about this video. The presentation of it, the content itself, how its articulated. I was hooked immediately. I bought the book list. I bought the life purpose course. I have read about 10 books so far, have gotten half way through the life purpose course, and have watched nearly all of Leo's videos. I am a pretty avid fan. I value all the wisdom and importance of what is being taught here, and yet I've been, as Leo puts it, sucking on his tit for all these years. I realize how attached I am to his videos, and even though Leo's tits taste really fuckin' good—I mean damn I could suck on those all day, and I'm straight as fuck—it's now time for me to start becoming independent, and beginning the process of ultimately transcending Actualized.org. I can't stop listening to Leo give me all the juicy and detailed spoilers of this movie—I have to start living out my movie, hence the name of this journal. So why am I writing this in the first place. I have no plan for this right now, I have no idea where it is going to go—it might not go anywhere, this may be the only thing I post. But I have been planning, and researching shit my whole life, and not taking action. Why? Because fear still has a strong hold on me (I am actually in the process of writing down my fears for the next seven days, the exercise from Leo's fear videos, and have already been getting some things down I was not aware of), and I am attached to things being perfect. The old me would never have wrote this and published it, because he would have been so anal about getting the wording right, making sure it was as authentic as possible, making sure it was understandable for people to read and follow along, fearing that others would judge him, fearing that he would be embarrassed, etc. That shit has kept me paralyzed for too long. So here I am, just doing it. No longer am I going to be held back by perfectionism, and fear. That's the goal anyway. I will be embodying courage in my life, and getting up in fears face, and throwing him off the fucking building, then jumping off the building myself... with a parachute of course. Not sure if that metaphor makes sense but you know what I'm getting at. I wrote something down in a recent journal I wrote (I have been keeping my own personal journal for a long time now), and I said, "you have a decision: you can either keep chasing emotional states and immediate gratification—or you can become a results-maker, and start delaying gratification. The latter will require you to be unhappy sometimes, to be frustrated, to feel rejected, to be confused, to be sad, lonely... but that is what it takes to get what you really want. So what, Grant, will you do?" And me making this first journal post is my sort of way of choosing the courageous path. I won't be perfect on it, of course not, but I can't keep fearing to start the path because I won't be perfect at it. That is not an excuse that I can use anymore. And so I am not aiming for perfection with this journal either, like I normally would. Rather, I am aiming to just document my path, the ups and downs, the plot twists, the character arcs, all that jazz. Except I know there's going to be no credit sequence at the end of it... just the movie itself, its own reward.

I feel like I am not the man that I could be. This mostly revolves around social facets of my life, including my socialization/communication skills, leadership skills, and just dealing with people in general. I am a bit of a people pleaser, and rarely get angry, which I see as mostly good, but is a problem when it is appropriate to be angry but I have trouble expressing it, leading to meekness and unattractiveness or not getting my needs communicated effectively. Often time I don't even know what my needs are. I want to work on this area of my life more by getting better at making friends, talking to strangers, becoming more charismatic, etc. Needless to say there's lots of fear and resistance there, but as Leo has talked about, one of the best ways to grow in this area is pick up, which brings me to my next point: How important is pick up to growing as a man? How necessary is it? I am currently in a great monogamous relationship, going on two years. I've had other sexual experiences with girls, having had sex with 8 girls in my life, and been in two long-term relationships (including the one I am in now). My gf and I are very compatible; she loves the sex, we have lots of fun together, we're very intimate, and I feel the same way. But I do fantasize sometimes about going out and flirting with other girls, having other intimate connections with girls, fucking other girls. I would never act on these fantasies without consent from my gf. I have brought up the idea of an open/polyamorous relationship with her but I quickly shut it down because it made her uncomfortable. This was around 6 months ago. I love her very much and really am happy with her, but simultaneously I have a desire to explore my sexual identity more, which is why I have been thinking a lot about a few things: 1. How much does your sexual identity have to do with becoming a stronger man? Can you be a virgin for example and still become a strong man? 2. I'm not sure how happy I can be in the long run with my current partner without exploring other girls. Even though I have a gf, I still will get a little nervous around attractive girls and will fantasize in the moment about fucking them in certain cases. I would never flirt with them or go there of course because I love and respect my gf, but on the other hand I would just love to act on that desire, whether I get rejected or not I don't really care. Holding in that desire is sort of what's concerning me. It feels like I am concealing my authenticity. --> I am aware that I could just be deceiving myself and pursuing more girls is just me being more selfish, which I want to avoid. --> On the other hand, this could be karma that I need to burn through, in which case I would want to pursue, as avoiding it would most likely lead to more problems down the road. ...and more complicated, if this is something I should address with myself, there's no way I am explaining it to my gf as I already have and it made her uncomfortable, and I know bringing it up again would leave a doubt in her mind that would never go away. In some ways I hate that I have this desire because I really make my gf happy and I sometimes worry about how she would handle getting her heart broken by me if that were to happen, because she is a bit psychologically fragile. In no way suicidal, but is just very prone to negative thinking and is not good at being alone by herself. So my current path is to just continue the relationship and wait to burn through this karma until/if we break up. Is that wise or is there a better decision I could make? Any advice or thoughts are appreciated.

@NoSelfSelf Wow, I never even thought about it that way: doing pick up without doing pick up. I always assumed pick up has to be about, well, pick up in the traditional sense of picking up women for sex. And I definitely have the issue where I am seeking approval of others by carefully filtering words and sentences that come out of my mouth, rather than just "expressing what's really going on inside of me in a calibrated way" like you said. Thanks so much for the great advice.

@Leo Gura Haha, challenge accepted

@aurum Yes exactly, so amazing to experience. The depth of this dream is so complex, I don't even know the half of it yet. But there's a reason for why it works the way it does. I can't wait to explore it more next time I do psychedelics.

@Matthew85

I didn't get to see the video, but I think things happen for a reason. Personally, while I acknowledge sadness in me that I won't be able to enjoy this most recent explanation of solipsism, I take this as sort of a wake up call because I just realized how dependent I am of your explanations of reality and, to be honest, I haven't been doing the work as much as I should and trusting myself and instead have been taking your work for granted. This is just another reminder that the map isn't the territory, and your conceptualization—no matter how good it is, will never be an actual 1:1 "experience" (if you can even call it that) or understanding of solipsism. I have to do the work to find Truth myself. A shame that there are immature folks who led to the video being taken down but also it's probably predictable that it happened and, knowing Leo, him making this decision was most likely not some impulse and keeping the video up may have done more harm than good.

I know this thread is super old, but just wanted to say hi as a fellow music therapy student! I'm really surprised but happy to find someone else interested in this field on the forum. Your story is really inspiring and congratulations on finding your LP! I wish you the best of luck on your journey through school and beyond. From reading your story and how you got to where you are now, you're on your way to becoming a fantastic music therapist