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The trap I've often fallen into is approaching life as a passive victim because I can just program my attitude towards unconditional happiness & acceptance. And negative motivation never worked for me either. So tell me if you could explain it well, how once can use emotional mastery to be a motivating and empowering force for deep transformation that extends into the material realm? Because if happiness is not something you have to work for, and there is no way to work towards it anyway, it is easy to become complacent, especially when taking responsibility for your life circumstances requires understanding complex, confusing situations and immense mental effort to overcome resistance. Like if I can just choose to be happy, why even get out of bed, why do anything? This is something I am honestly trying to figure out right now, how to reconcile purposeful, directed action, personal; development, material progress etc. with spiritual development, detachment, releasing ego, selflessness, not doing, just being, experiencing beingness.

Haven't been counting the days, but by now it has been at least 50, including my first ever 'no-fap September.' Went most of august without fapping too, but relapsed some time over 50 days ago when I found some forgotten porn on a data backup stick I forgot to delete. This is also the longest I've gone without ejaculation in the past 10 years actually. The 3 key factors which led to success this time around were I began by journaling almost every day to recall all of my past experiences with masturbation addiction, and desire for cutting out that habit completely. I fully internalized that ejaculation is not something I want to do, never in my best interest, always detrimental. In my posts I often reference how I learned to avoid alcohol since I feel like shit an hour after just one drink. It was so much harder to quit fapping since the detriments were far more subtle, but I learned to associate the feeling of living an overall shitty life as a regular wanker with the act of jerking it at all, even edging, and no it's something I avoid like liquor. I stopped fantasizing about sex altogether. This is the biggest difference and I believe it's why it's felt so effortless this time. Even when I was previously successful at going 10-40 days without jacking, I still ended up daydreaming about having sex, distracting myself with fantasies of making love with women, even sometimes shedding my anti-natalism and wanting nothing more than to fearlessly inseminate a fertile minx. It seems like this time I don't forget how psycho-spiritually draining to feels for me to cum, and also how addictive it is, and I don't take for granted that this activity which used to consume my life has been stamped out in a way that feels so effortless at the moment. I just seem to have completely lost interest in sexual activity, and in this respect, life has never been better, I have never been happier. Keep in mind though, not long after I started wanking at age 14 I was addicted to it going 3-7 times a day often times, could never moderate, only abstain some times. I also do kriya yogas, breathwork and mantra meditation somewhat regularly, alone and with a community, so this helps both with letting me experience my own energy, noticing & appreciating the transformations which occur as my body keeps recovering from years of over-stimulation, and also with circulating the sexual energy around the body so that it doesn't stagnate and fester, i.e. turning into a ferociously horny animal preoccupied with lust. Where do I go from here, to great heights presently unbeknownst to me. To quit fapping is just the necessary first steep to deep transformation of my entire life, since doing that constantly dampens my experience of life, and the brain fog keeps dissipating, showing me all of my gifts and flaws, strengths and weaknesses, self-deceptions and things avoided, or repressed. It brings everything to the surface, forcing me to deal with it, but along with this a new type of energy and optimism to work through any issue, no matter how fucked up it seems at first.

Yes, I don't label relationships. A moment of connection with someone, like a close intimate embrace, getting lost in each others' eyes, or smiling and laughing together is as real, deep and true as anything that ever was, or ever could be. I really don't care if anyone thinks they "have" a bf or husband, and won't delude myself into thinking I can have anyone all to myself physically, emotionally or otherwise. But I avoid doing is actually making a move, usually this line I don't cross is going for a kiss. Cause once that happens I feel like I've left the realm of just being fun and playful, plausibly deniable innocent flirting. And then I feel anxious trying to figure out what the relationship dynamics are, or what I'd want them to be, instead of just enjoying the experience of being with her, unlimited, undefined, expecting nothing of each other. It's not that I'm afraid, I just don't know want I want, because I have no relationship paradigm, and the possibilities, and people, are unlimited. I have no interest in having children, partaking in the institution of marriage, or even any sexual activity since my desire to continue long term no-fap/semen retention is far more important than relationships. So there is no end goal for me to pursue in intimacy really, except to commune with the feminine having more cuddling in my life I guess.

My skepticism of relationships started out as an ideology: At the end of 11th grade high school I learned about communism in history class, read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and also Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Being an outsider unaware of "hookup culture" it seemed dating was a process by which two people entered into an arrangement to be each others' exclusive sexual property. When girls rejected me, it was always because either they had a boyfriend or didn't see me as boyfriend material. I applied the ideas I learned in those books to relationships: Labeling monogamy as the "privatization paradigm" of sexuality, guys with girlfriends as unethically privatizing natural resources (girls) for their own exclusive enjoyment, and I sought to undermine the privatization paradigm and live in a society where everyone belongs to everyone else, no one would be obligated to have casual sex with another like in the book, but monogamy wouldn't exist, and there would be abundant, free flowing physical intimacy, everyone would feel loved, no one would be deprived of cuddling. Next year I read some of my first books on non-duality, don't remember which ones, but maybe The Tao of Pooh, and Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The concept of a middle path supplanted my ideology, since it transcended the black and white concept of relationship status and belonging. This was applying non-duality to dating, completely dissolving the single-taken dichotomy, and what I was left with feels like a conceptual black hole where I have no idea of what a girlfriend even is, because it doesn't even exist. I could never refer to anyone as mine in a possessive sense because I know that no one belongs to me, and any "relationship" is the actual process of relating and being together with someone while it is happening, not something I can "have," let alone have exclusively to myself. But after moving beyond seeing ones' self in terms of single and taken, there is a sense of being whole and complete as is, not missing anyone, not needing another person to belong to, not being romantically and sexually needy towards other people. Believing the 'privatization paradigm' was living with a false sense of incompleteness, and one that could not even be satisfied with relationships. Relationships work best between people who are already whole and complete, not from a desire to relieve neediness, but to see if you can be even better together. In Neil Strauss' latest book The Truth, which I often recommend for people in relationships, he confronts the reality that monogamy is not always natural, and you can't own people, going on all sorts of sexual adventures to find a paradigm that works, and ultimately finding none, he and his now wife freely choosing to be monogamous. So it is certainly possible to be with a partner exclusively, or have multiple partners, causal flings, and anything else you can imagine, since it's all relative. Like I said though, for me personally, I have no concept of what a relationship should be at all, the possibilities are so infinite I don't know where to start, and I know I am never entitled to have intimacy with anyone, and even if that happens, there is never a guarantee it would be exclusively us. Monogamy doesn't feel natural to me, but neither does non-monogamy, I don't know, I have no idea, and hardly any experience- my default mode has usually been alone. I never make any moves on women because there is no ultimate goal to pursue, I can't try to "make her mine" because that concept doesn't exist to me, and I don't want to use anyone as a means to an end, but to enjoy being with them in the moment. It can be deeply satisfying just talking to someone while looking into her eyes, beyond that I'm not quite sure what I'd want, except cuddling, that I always want. I made a separate thread about that

1. Believe that you have control over your emotions. If you can't even believe this yet, believe that it is at least possible for you to learn how to choose your own emotional states. This is actually the necessary first step to emotional self-mastery, to accept that it is something you have control over. Most people go through life being emotionally reactive, they just instinctively respond to stimuli in their environment, thinking there is an external world that supersedes their internal world. This is the biggest limiting belief there is, you underestimate how you can shape your perception of reality and develop psychological capabilities far beyond the levels of consciousness previously known to you. 2. Disengage emotion from perception. Realize that emotions are entirely subjective, and existentially meaningless. You were predisposed by biology, and programmed by society to feel happy when you accomplish things, win competitions, and receive approval, praise, sexual validation and a sense of belonging others. Consequentially you would naturally feel unpleasant emotions when you desire such things and do not get to experience them. Humans evolved this way so that you would be guided by your urges to survive, compete and procreate, really no different from any other species of animal. By realizing that's the whole point of having emotional reactions, that they are just shallow, rudimentary, primitive instincts designed to enslave you to the game of life, you can relinquish any sense of attachment you may have had to your emotional states. This is the hardest part of the transformation, because people think of their emotions as deep, meaningful, and real, denying the validity of your emotions seems like destroying your sense of self altogether, and perhaps this is the very means by which you stop being a victim of emotional reactiveness, and start being the author of your own emotional states. Since emotions are not grounded in any objective, external reality, they all come from within the psyche, why wouldn't you be able to just choose your own emotional states- if you want to be happy, then be happy for the sake of being happy. What is the point of clinging to the reactive model of emotionality- you don't need it at all. It's just an embodiment of the victim mentality which is keeping you depressed. Time to discard that old paradigm. 3. Differentiate between emotions, sensations and meanings. Be conscious of the pure sensations you experience in your body at any moment, without attaching any thoughts or emotions to them. Think about an emotion you have felt- any emotion. Now what is the emotion made up of? Sensations and thoughts. Sensations are visceral things you experience in your body, and thoughts are the language you use to describe it, the meanings you attach to the sensations. For example, just notice how your body felt when you had been sad, or angry, or scared. How was your breathing, muscle tension, posture, heart rate, etc. And what thoughts did you associate with these sensations, what stories did you tell yourself? Now you are beginning to see the big picture. By dissecting emotions into their components, you can manipulate those components as to eliminate unpleasant emotions, and create desired emotional states. Body and mind are not separate entities, but one integrated organism in a continuous feedback loop. You can be more conscious of what you do with your body, and of what narratives you tell yourself. By doing both of these you can actually affect the root sensations as well, and control the entire process of feeling emotions. 4. Hack into the emotional feedback loop. The most straightforward demonstration of this would be the relationship between facial expressions and emotions. Normally, facial expressions are simply external reflections of an animal's emotions, and their evolutionary purpose is to broadcast those emotions to communicate with other animals. But this is a feedback loop, and it works just as well the opposite way around. It's devilishly simple how you can just manipulate your own emotions by changing your facial expressions, you can make super wide smile, a deeply smug, evil grin, smile so hard your cheeks get sore, and keep smiling like that for 5 minutes. You will soon be overcome with very pleasant sensations, and start to actually feel ecstatic, blissful and overjoyed. Hacking into your emotional feedback loop, getting something from nothing, is really this simple. You can also listen to upbeat, fast paced music while clapping your hands to help get into state when doing this smile meditation. This is totally not normal, I'd even call it an abnormal psychology technique, but it absolutely works. Normal people are miserable, neurotic, emotionally reactive messes with very little self-awareness, drifting through life haphazardly, reacting to stimuli, deriving a sense of self worth from other people. Disregard all that nonsense, and create your own reality. And there are endless more techniques like this that allow you to just change what you do with your physical body in order to bring about desirable emotional states. Some are fairly simple like smiling, deep breathing, posture and body language control, music/sounds and aromatherapy. There are also next level techniques you can use to release emotional baggage, like through intense sound vibration (think chanting AUM so deeply you become the mantra) and deep tissue release, massaging whatever parts of your musculature you can reach, applying as much pressure as you can without injuring yourself, also kneading your back and upper legs on a lacrosse ball. I reiterate again, there is no separation between mind and body, treat it as one feedback loop. Emotional tension is physical tension and vice versa. You won't become happy just talking about your "feelings," nor by numbing them with drugs. You become happy by dissolving any sense of duality between your mind and body, the internal and external reality. It will seem very simple once you get it, because happiness is naturally the default state of being, since once you realize nothing actually matters, you can stop projecting meaning onto everything, no longer feel you need to do anything in life, and just experience the bliss of "beingness." 5. Step 5: Commandeer the emotional feedback loop as your source of self-sustaining internal happiness, permanently detaching your mood from any outside input. It can get to the point where your subjective emotional states become their own enclosed ecosystem, and absolutely nothing external to you can penetrate this bubble. This takes practice, and when you find yourself removed from your comfort zones, you are forced to get creative, and can reach profound levels of personal development much quicker than when just thinking about this as a concept. Facing situations that would have used to make you sad, scared or angry can force your emotional resolve to really kick into overdrive, and this builds a resilient foundation for achieving emotional mastery. The process I am trying to describe here is super-normal, the establishment might label as psychosis, a breaking from reality, emotional derangement. This is also necessarily a rejection of affective empathy, refusing to react emotionally to others by not opening yourself to instinctively feel what they are feeling. On the other hand it is the core of self-mastery, fully internalizing that you are the creator of your own reality, the fundamental kernel of true personal freedom. Though one potential thing to watch out for is that when you are happy, negative motivation will no longer work, so once this happens, all of your actions will have to be driven by love, not fear.

Maybe the SD references were too distracting. More concisely: Why do anything ever when there is no self? Is it possible to let go of ego without losing your will to live?

Indifference

It's the sensation, not the perception. When you eat like shit, you feel like shit.

Sexual transmutation, à la Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Creativity skyrockets when practicing sexual abstinence along with kriya yoga and other practices that circulate that energy throughout the mind-body, not letting it stagnate. The sexual energy is creative energy, normally procreation is the focus of the human animal, so when this pursuit is abandoned physically and psychologically, the libido force can be channeled into other avenues. Furthermore, the drive to create intensifies the longer you journey into no-fap territory. This is my experience, and countless other men and women who succeed at long term sexual abstinence feel similarly. http://www.sacred-texts.com/nth/tgr/tgr16.htm Another pertinent question, something I struggle with and I'm sure many of you do to, is figuring out how to better apply creativity. Anyone can be creative, but unless they use that creativity to actually create something outside their mind, that creativity will never see the light of day. Imagine you worked in the creative department at a company that makes anything, your job is to be the think tank, come up with ideas that can provide value where it is needed, solve overlooked problems, uplift people, change the world even- all you have to do is think of it, and the other departments will handle the rest of the process. It is much more challenging for a lone individual with little capital and expertise to create something of value, except if it's something you do on the computer and that's all you need to create, and that is the medium. Actualized.org for example. Have you also noticed that the most creative people tend to think very broadly instead of specializing? But the economy rewards specialization, people who excel above and beyond at a specific area are rewarded with the riches. The ways to maximize our own creativity, and human creativity as a whole would be to find ways of more readily actualizing our visions, as well as for creative people and specialist to team up and work together to carry out a common goal. I'm sure there exist organizations designed to bring together very skilled and very visionary people to do just this. I'd like to find out about such communities to see if I can get involved with them, as well as improve my skill sets so that I am better able to use my creativity.

It could be that higher consciousness people are less polarized into masculine and feminine behavior, becoming more a balance of both energies. In my own experience and many other accounts, this process of depolarization comes part and parcel with a sense of internal validation, developing deep inner peace, and especially learning to be non-reactive, since most expressions of masculinity and femininity are reactions to your environment. There is a sense of being whole and complete, no longer feeling needy for intimate companionship when you fully cultivate both your masculine and feminine. Men will always find women attractive, since for the straight male attractiveness is primarily physical, or at least it begins as being turned on by a female body, scent, sound of voice, fertility, neoteny etc. For straight women on the other hand, attraction tends to me more intangible, what initially attracts them to a man is not so much his body as his displays of masculine energy. So a man who is grounded, non-attached, un-reactive won't be very attractive in comparison to other more typical normal men. I'd even go as far to say that male self-actualization may even be at odds with being attractive to women. Always exceptions though, but even high conscious women are often drawn to brutish alpha-male-primitive machismo, and want someone who will lead and dominate over her and other men.

Both PUA and MGTOW are mentioned in the video about stage Orange. But as you mention though, some PUA material applies stage green material for personal development, and you have guys like Eben Pagan and RSD Tyler/Owen who have definitely evolved to Green despite still teaching pickup. There is a lot of overlap, especially in "inner game" concepts. And if I were to take a gander at how each stage approaches sexuality: Beige: Multiply Purple: Ooga Booga mating rituals Red: Fighting over mates, promiscuity, fuck and chuck, abusive relationships, sexual slavery, rape. Blue: Modesty, Chastity, Marriage and Traditional Monogamy Orange: Become very skilled at attraction, exploring sex and relationships, or disregard the whole mating game going your own way, or some of both at different times. Green: Be genuine with people, sex and relationships are whatever you want them to be, it's all relative, love is love, we are all one. Yellow: Finding ways to optimize the human sex drive and desire for intimate companionship, or transcend/transmute them into higher consciousness. Turquoise: Transcended sexuality altogether.

BTW I don't have any access to psychedelics, since I'm sure some might suggest a 5-meo-DMT trip to surrender to ego-death.

I've been been described by others on the forum as stage Red because of the myopic circle of (self) concern, that lacks the pragmatism of stage Orange, and most of the things Leo has said about Donald Trump hit very close to home. My perspective of self-excpetionalism came about as a reaction to depressive realism and facing my own incompetence. Basically it was the ultimate coping narrative and victim mentality: 'I never chose to be born, I have no say in my existence, I am a cause, not an effect, I am highly disadvantaged... but I still want it all, health, wealth, power, freedom, me me me, forget everyone else, take whatever you can from them if they will let you, you don't owe anyone anything, and you don't have to do anything except exist and enjoy life.' If I was stage Orange I might have started a business, made a successful youtube channel, or been an early adopter of cryptocurrency. Instead I leeched off family for as long as possible, gambled on stocks and lottery tickets, and would be fine getting into a relationship with a wealthy woman who is ok with being the sole financial provider. Stage Blue I imagine would be a normal careerperson content with working full time for 40 years. So I guess Orange is good at creating value, Blue conforms to an established value system, Red only leeches value. I am now becoming more aware that this is the mentality I've held onto for around 5 years, it's like all of my stage yellow knowledge is purely theoretical, I understand the concept of no self and it makes perfect sense to me, but at the same time, I am all ego, it's pretty evident just by how often I noticed myself using words like me, I and myself when writing. So ideally I want to evolve, but am scared to let go of this strong sense of self exceptionalism. I hope those who read this post can see how fundamental this is, rather than focus on me personally. This is coming up against the [imaginary] barrier between self and no-self. Leo was right, to learn something from books and videos is not at all the same as embodying it, I thought I had dissolved the ego, but that was the ego telling me that to distract me from how big the ego is, it's all encompassing, it's my very survival. I really need to learn more about SD since it could be very useful in this process. But I do clearly remember it being said that different aspects of the psyche can be at different stages. So it could very well be that some things are stuck at Red while most others have advanced far beyond. I was raised stage blue by stage blue religious parents, and though I've long since moved on to atheism, 'post-atheism,' ecocentrism and universal oneness, right now "we are one" is something I accept as a concept-in-truth, but can't get past what I see as the physical reality, which is being this body. So I'm primarily concerned with attending to the wants and needs of my mind-body, and from this perspective tend to view other things and people only in terms of their usefulness to me. Of course I understand logically that other people have subjective experiences as real to them as my own, and that others also have intrinsic worth, but nevertheless, I default to solipsism 99% of the time, unaware that I look at others mostly as NPCs.

@Serotoninluv Gender dysphoria and nonconformity is natural, and always existed, and what we see now with all the pronouns, genders and orientations people are inventing is the result of transcending binary gender stereotypes, yet still clinging to having an identity and ideology. This is a good reminder that using self-descriptions like masculine and feminine are misleading. Much like I've shed labels like MGTOW, incel, volcel, introvert, it is time to move beyond this kind of pigeonholing and be unlimited.

For a long time I've been trying to understand my atypical sexual expression and polarity, which seems quite unusual. Despite having always been super attracted to the feminine, I was often assumed to be homosexual based on my interests and lack thereof. And while I don't feel like a woman trapped in a man's body, the way I relate to men and women is often described as more like a female than a straight male would. Now I have no attachment to being masculine, willing to accept by true nature whatever it is. So here I'll list some of my experiences, in the hopes of getting a clearer picture of what is going on: I've never had any interest in watching sports or other competition. Instead I get deep emotional enjoyment from love dramas, I'd be bored out of my mind watching a football game, but found shows like The O.C. and Dawson's Creek deeply entertaining and satisfying. Likewise in real life, I am extremely averse to competition, and never felt the drive to achieve or accomplish anything in typical masculine fashion. My bliss is to be in the flow of life, experience the feminine, and enjoy sensual experiences. I don't ever seem capable of caring about anything beyond myself so much that I feel deeply driven and passionate about it. I see men at large as being the disposable gender, human doings only valued for their work, selflessly committing to being a utility. I never felt this way about myself, always considered myself equally valuable and worthy of comfort and protection as much as any female. I seek out sensually satisfying experiences through the 5 senses, and this is that gives me the most physical pleasure in life. Like eating food, smelling aromas, feeling textures, looking at women, listening to music. To me life isn't meaningful, it's sensual. I love to get swept up pop music with soft, sweet sensual feminine vocals. Often find myself listening to stuff like Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Vanessa Carlton and Mandy Moore songs from the early 2000s, which make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I never seem to fit in with other guys, never felt comfortable in groups of men, can't hardly relate to them. Talking to women is easy and relaxing for me, talking to men often feels brash and makes me uneasy. Also making eye contact with unfamiliar men is very uncomfortable, or even scary. I often find myself crossing the street to avoid walking directly towards another man on the sidewalk, especially if it's a large or aggressive looking man, it's like my body goes into fight/flight mode so I remove myself & just stay relaxed. But I have no problems making eye contact with women. In fact I very much enjoy looking deep into the pupils of an attractive female, which comes easily and natural to me when doing no-fap. The few male friends I have become close with seem to be more 'tame' than typical men, not the roughhousing, one-upping, prank-pulling, sports watching bro guys, they don't smell, are open to talking about their feelings, aren't egocentric, and don't judge me. I am very drawn to the sent of women, but repulsed by male scent. This alone makes me not want to be around other men much. My ideal experience of intimacy would be to just cuddle endlessly with a beautiful woman, embrace, touch and caress her all over, but not actually having any sexual acts with her that involve my own genitalia, just being in intimate contact without leading to orgasm and ejaculation. Sexual release feels like inferior low-consciousness pleasure, which leaves me feeling numb and depleted afterwards, and this activity is something I don't want to do anymore, whether alone or with women. I have never had sex before but was very addicted to masturbating for most of my teens and 20s. I mean an extreme addiction, fapping 5-10 times a day, often for many hours. This year I have finally broken that addiction, and it seems permanent. I can experience much more pleasurable vibrations from breathwork, meditation and other practices, and these leave me more awakened and energized afterward, the complete opposite of ejaculating. But despite overcoming and transmuting sexual urges, I still gravitate towards sensuality, and very drawn towards female bodies as objects of desire. There seems to be nothing more captivating to me in life than the wish to touch, or look at beautiful women, and it seems unavoidable that my focus is on pursuing that drive, or finding ways to cope without it. Just trying to figure out what is going on here with this unusual energy polarity and atypical gender expression, and how to deal with it. Nothing left to hide and no ego to protect.

Well that video confirmed what I've thought about how wealth only exists if there is poverty, you can only have freedom if others' or slaves. We are all living at other people's expense in some way or another, and who are you to say you deserve to escape wage slavery, while the people who prepare your food, fix your car, and make your clothes? The desire to escape is self-exceptionalism, you only care about your own experience, or feel you have enough value to offer that you can exist without being subjected to employment. But to be born is to be selfish, and even the most self-less minded people need to acquire money in modernity. As for me, I accept my own self-centeredness, whether or not I am by body in the metaphysical sense, the needs & wants of my own body take precedence above the needs & wants of others. What I find to be the hardest parts of becoming a master is isolating/developing things of value I can offer, assigning commensurate monetary value to my work or my time, and convincing others to receive what I have to give in exchange for receiving financial compensation. Put like that it sounds so simple, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.

It feels like this is discovering my true nature, having let go of any need to feel masculine or attractive to women. Used to be I was heavily concerned with being seen by others as masculine, and in fact I thought that my affinity towards the feminine and aversion to men was a manifestation of that. After all, it made sense that if I am supremely masculine, I would be totally enraptured by the female form, and powerfully drawn to feminine energy, and repelled by masculine energy, and averse to the sensory and energetic expressions of men. But what changed in my perception recently is to finally accept that this nature I exhibit is actually being feminine, and also to gain a better understanding of what masculinity actually entails, that I've never embodied it in the first place, and it's not something I want to aspire to at all. And these actually seem to go hand in hand: It appears that the male is biologically programmed to be the disposable gender, valued only for what they can do for others, particularly as a provider, protector, leader and entertainer. Men are the builders, the warriors, the beasts of burden, and the cannon fodder. And indeed it is masculine to sacrifice one's own well being, or entire life for a cause, or person, almost as is that is what normal men were born to do. Everything I've learned from MGTOW, PUA, evolutionary psychology, history, biology and even actualized.org supports this same conclusion, that men are born to be a disposable utility. I see committing to a "life purpose" as just an extension of this male disposability- while certainly women can have a strong sense life purpose, reading David Deida and listening to Leo's interviews with Tripp Advice has pointed out that purposefulness is fundamental to masculinity, that the essence of being a man is about giving, producing, generating external value. This is why men are willing to fight and die for causes they believe in, and my experience with masculinity in others as well as myself is that it's confrontational and aggressive. This is why (normal heterosexual) sex is about pleasuring and inseminating the woman, the man is just a tool, a human doing, giving a performance and sacrificing his seed to her womb. I am and have always been a very passionate person, and passion is charged sexual polarity. After re-reading the introduction to Way of The Superior Man, I understood more fully that my energy is unavoidably more feminine. If it was balanced, he suggests, then watching a football game and a romantic drama would be equally stimulating or dull to me. And this is just one example of ways in which my entire outlook on life is feminine. I understand that sexual orientation has nothing to do with energy polarity or gender expression, and I've always been deeply attracted to the female form and sensations of the feminine, it has nothing to do with me being a man, or caring about being a man, or being masculine, or being feminine. At the same time though, I don't see myself as being effeminate. The line isn't always clear, but I am not at all comfortable with being submissive in relationships or interactions to anyone. This is why I initially assumed I was balanced rather than feminine, since the feminine tends to be more yielding, submissive, surrendering. But to reconcile affinity for the feminine and aversion to effeminacy, my preference towards the feminine mode of life can be seen as a voluntary choice. I mentioned before how I avoid walking close to a big man on the sidewalk because it makes me uncomfortable or scared. Well I can just power through that fear, and what happens then is my body goes into fight instead of flight mode, I tense up, puff out my chest, take on an enraged, aggressive, menacing expression, and clench my fists without realizing it. This is allowing myself to embody masculine, it is a very powerful feeling, but I'd rather not experience things like this, in these situations and life in general, it is highly stressful. So I choose to make my life about enjoying the feminine, only embodying the masculine when certain situations trigger me and I am forced to do it or else be submissive. When it comes to relating to men, I know I can't compete, and I don't want to compete, so I avoid comparing myself to men, and am always on the defensive around other men, except if its like a close friend. When it comes to relating to women, I just want to back in their energies and enjoy them and being with them, not having to perform masculinity for them, not having a responsibility to lead, dominate, protect, entertain and provide for them. But I doubt that most women would be attracted to men who want to be one with the feminine rather than serve it.

Do most straight women actually enjoy cuddling with men? And I mean as a stand alone activity, not something done before or after sex, while talking about their feelings, or for any other purpose than the experience of enjoying the physical contact. Is cuddling for the sake of itself something women would find pleasurable and worthwhile, or a boring and pointless activity? I understand this is a very nuanced issue and I am open to changing my perspective beyond these preconceived notions. But from what I gather, the strong desire for physical contact is endemic to male sexuality, and women don't have this strong need for touch. For them, intimacy seems to be about their perception of a meaningful relationship and being emotionally interconnected with a person, and any physical bonding is only for this purpose rather than the feeling of having a warm body next to them, or inside them. Furthermore, if women did enjoy cuddling, I might assume they'd just cuddle with each other since there's no stigma against it, also women don't repel each other with their scent the way man smell does. Cuddling is an activity that doesn't involve much interplay between masculine and feminine polarities, mostly just lying there hugging and caressing each other. So if a man just wanted to cuddle a long time and not have sex he'd be seen as beta, submissive and effeminate. After all, women enjoy sex, and if I want to just lay around and cuddle, they will find someone else who will give them the D. Then again, sexual transmutation is a thing for women as well, and it's conceivable that there are some would enjoy an intimate relationship sans coitus. Reason I'm asking this is because I'm not looking to have sex, actually want to stay on the path of no-fap/semen retention for sexual transmutation, regardless if I could have it, but am open to experiencing more intimacy in my life. I feel like abstaining from ejaculation while also bonding with a woman physically and energetically would be the apex of sensuality. Women I'm acquaintances with seem to enjoy hugging me, some say I give really great hugs, so I wonder if that alone is enough of a basis for exploring more physical and other types of intimacy together. I understand though that just because someone enjoys long close hugs whenever we run into each other or say goodbye doesn't mean they'd want to spoon and snuggle with me for hours while we listen to chillout-trance music. I'm hesitant to ask anyone if they want to get together and just cuddle since it might feel creepy and weird to them, ruining any sense of connection we did have.

@Shin Why is men wanting to enjoy cuddling a feminine thing? Seems really counter intuitive, because as a straight male I am super attracted to women I find physically beautiful, and it seems like one of the greatest joys would be to indulge in prolonged intimate contact with them, to feel the sensation of their skin against mine, their scent, their breath, their heartbeat close... The only reason I could come up with is that masculinity is about being a disposable utility who provides external value, about doing, not just experiencing, so a masculine man would want to perform sexual acts and give her orgasms, while I'm more feminine because I want to gently embrace and caress her without needing to perform sexually or be dominant over her. I could definitely see how some women would see it as beta/effeminate if a guy just wants to cuddle instead of fucking her in the pussy. Its been about 2 months since I stopped fapping to porn, which was a severe addiction I did like 5+ times a day for the last 10 years, and no edging or ejaculating at all. This is truly my best mode life, and maintaining semen retention is a higher priority for me than physical intimacy. I know it's possible to have sex without ejaculating and have multiple intense full body orgasms, but I don't even want to go down any sex or masturbation path at all. The same sensations from 'tantric sex' practices I can generate just using breath and visualization without even an erection. I don't do this very often though since it's so fucking intense, and I can experience less extreme but still very pleasurable vibrations from breath meditations.

You will encounter them in stage green communities.

Bumping this thread again with a more specific question. Lets say I meet a woman at a 'stage green' activity like (real) yoga, sound healing, meditation class, and we seem to really enjoy embracing each other. How would I go about taking that relationship to a point where we could meet up outside the event, lay down and cuddle together for a few hours? This is absolutely not the reason I go to such things, but since I'm not very social, that happens to be usually the only place where I end up sharing intimate hugs. I have reservations about even asking, since lots of people hug, often hugging is encouraged, but even when a woman enjoys hugging me closely, that doesn't mean she'd want to hug for more than 10 seconds. From my logical male brain it makes sense to me that if you enjoy hugging someone closely for 10 seconds, of course you would enjoy stripping down to your underwear, lying in bed together and cuddling up for much longer. But I have come to understand that for women, physical contact is not as much a need as it is for men, they instead desire an intangible sense of emotional closeness, which for me is something I experience through physical closeness. There is also the fear of rejection obviously. Not the rejection itself, but let's say a woman used to enjoy long close hugs with me after yoga classes, then if I ask her to be my cuddle bunny outside of there, and she says no, it would feel very awkward hugging her again than had I never asked. I realize that a big part of this is also I am worried of being seen as shallow and using women, that if I ask someone to casually cuddle with me it shows that I care only about her body and not much else. @SgtPepper @Prabhaker Yes but why don't women just cuddle with each other then, since they don't need men for that activity. Cause women don't have the same intimacy taboo as men do, and their sexual orientations aren't set in stone either.

IMHO except if you're training to become a medic or engineer, school is a waste of time and money that doesn't prepare you for the real world at all anymore- but the same can be said for entry level wage slave jobs. You can learn any theoretical knowledge on your own with books, videos and internet, and learn skills hands-on starting your own projects, and gain hands on experience as a volunteer, apprentice or intern. If I were high school senior currently, I would get my school to set me up with internships at companies so I can learn applicable real world skills and make business connections. Then ask my parents to give me whatever money they would pay towards me going to college to use towards starting a business.

Now I never had a drinking problem myself (despite being susceptible to many other addictions), but awareness of how my body reacts after just one drink was enough for me to decide to be sober. I genuinely enjoyed the buzz I got from sipping on some beer, wine or whiskey, but compared to that, the memory of the discomfort I felt afterwards was much more powerful. Could be just my own sensitivity, but after drinking even a little, I get this dry feeling in my head, like I'm in a fog and my brain isn't all there, it's an uncomfortable feeling of being low consciousness, dampened experience of life, not my best self. I also experience insomnia the night after I drink. Normally I never have insomnia, I easily fall asleep if I go to be tired, fall right back asleep if I wake up throughout the night. So when I see they're serving drinks at an event, or my mom left a bottle of wine in the refrigerator, I remember what it feels like to lie in bed restless, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep, then waking up still tired and going through it again, then being lethargic all throughout the next day. And I resist the temptation to drink.

But if I wonder if there are more communities like the Trappist monks who make a unique homemade product and engage in commerce to support themselves.