XYZ

Think bigger than just "helping poor people." Always thought it would be cool to donate to grassroots de-mining operations in areas devastated by bombing, where people regularly die or loose limbs to un-detonated munitions everywhere. Cause lots of these places in Asia and Africa receive no funding to clean it up.

Do you also find that you have an easier time connecting with people if you aren't actively trying to satisfy your own feeling of need, when you're just putting yourself out there, being open and vulnerable, present in the moment, and outcome independent? I also get very good vibes, and a sense of life satisfaction when I'm having good social interactions. But I also learned to enjoy being alone very much, and found that the more comfortable I am just by myself, more comfortable I am with other people as well. You would think it's opposite, and I used to use it as an excuse, like if I'm so happy alone as I say I am, why bother socializing. That though was just a sour grapes rationalization to distract from my discontent. Because I found that when I'm genuinely happy alone, see it as a choice, and get to enjoy plenty of quality alone time, I'm happier to socialize, and socializing is more fun , comes naturally and not like a chore. While it may be easy to make new friends, as @Nexeternity points out, lots of us are just shit-out-of-luck with sexual and romantic relationships. Some might tell you to fix yourself, man up, try harder, make more money, learn PUA, become a gym rat, dress better, yada yada yada, I say accept that you have a lack of intimacy, and stop chasing it, stop pining for the fantasy of a relationship. It may never happen, no matter what you do, and you will never have control over whether a woman will find you attractive, want to give you love and sex and kisses and cuddles. @MM1988 It's imperative especially for lonely men to re-contextualize this desire for intimacy. If you feel it's something you need, but don't get, and realistically there's a minuscule chance you could anytime soon, you are just suffering. You can completely re-frame your perception of your own libido, see sexual urges as something your body does naturally like breathing and pooping, and recognize that satiating these urges is not an authentic need, nor is that even really possible, even if you had the things you fantasized about, the reality would never match the fantasy, you would still be attached, still wanting more and more sex.... as naturally the body does, it want to do it's thing and procreate no matter what, and make you feel bad if you aren't. Repressing sexuality never works either, only awareness, acceptance, and detachment.

This is just a limiting belief, and very harmful. Saying you need to depend on other people accepting you as a prerequisite for happiness. From the perspective of someone socially successful it wouldn't seem that way I'm sure, it seems easy and natural, something you take for granted. But some people don't have families, aren't attractive and have limited opportunities to develop close friendships. Things like that require direct co-operation and approval from others, are least within your control. Learning to be happy alone, totally within one's agency to accomplish. The self-actualization pyramid is just a model of descriptive categories, you can reach higher levels of fulfillment without completing the lower ones. And indeed, feeling lonely is an imaginary problem, a small way of looking at the world where everything revolves around you. I'm all for authentic human connection if it develops naturally, but you do realize that the sense of love, connectedness, or belonging we feel is entirely subjective. This became apparent to me long ago, after times when I felt like I had a close group of friends or really bonded with a girl I liked, only to learn that they didn't see me that way at all. The feelings I had were just a real though, I genuinely felt connected. What if we could feel constantly connected to all of humanity, the earth, the universe, God, absolute infinity, to feel inseparable from oneness and unconditional love.

You don't need other people to be happy. It's not a belief, but something you would have to experience for yourself to realize. Can you accept the possibility that you will never find what kind of relationship you are looking for, or that your ideas of what would make you happy & fulfilled are just fantasies projected onto human nature? What I'm advocating is that you should absolutely learn to be happy alone, then if things do happen, you are coming from a place of abundance not looking for someone else to complete you, and if not, then there you are anyway, happy whether alone or not, not viewing women as things to be had, or relationships as entities.

@brugluiz Spirituality is about facing your death, but it's often used as an excuse to justify the fear of living life. @vela3 Not everyone lives in the USA though. If I ever consider suicide imminent due to lack of money or impending homelessness, I'll give them a call and see if they can get me a place to live and provisions. Not doing that just yet since whatever accomodations I get would likely be worse than this corner of my parents' living room, but it is nice to know that my country is so against suicide that you can ask for help and they will help you. Even if that results in a 72 hour psychiatric hold, that actually helps your disability benefits claims, so I heard. @Baotrader Noticed you're from Vietnam, have you though about running away and living in the jungle? https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/vietnam-jungle-men-incredible-story-ho-van-lang-boy-who-lived-wild-41-years-1569459

Not to say that suffering is bad, as I'm learning more and more that it is actually necessary for growth. But there has to be ways of growing through the suffering, to turn coping into thriving. There is no virtue in hardship if it prevents you from being able to challenge yourself beyond just coping with it. Always been nihilistic by nature, so the default meaning of life was attaining supreme comfort, it felt like the greatest thing to aspire to. But that too would not be ultimately satisfying. To live life on more profound levels though, a baseline of comfort seems to be necessary, like having the foundations of the self-actualization pyramid in place. The sweet spot would be to be neither distracted by unmet base needs, not distracted by luxury and indulgence. Another way is accepting the present moment and to stop desiring anything to happen. Yet still and all, in the material world we come up against objective limitations, outside our power to effect internal change. Can't fly by flapping our hands, walk through walls or alchemize money out of thin air no matter how much we believe it's possible.

Kinda like salty milk and old coins.

Fucking money. Seems like a lot of you are trying to help him but missing the point and seeing it as just an emotional, psychological problem. But sometimes, people are so far down into physical challenges and financial scarcity that emotional/spiritual development can't really help them improve, only cope. And if fear of death is overcome, and there is no foreseeable way out of constant biological suffering, suicide can look like an option. I obviously don't know the nuances of his situation, but I know my own suicidal thoughts would stop if I just was provided with a safe and comfortable place to live and quiet place to sleep. From that springboard I imagine it would be possible to self-actualize financially, but when dealing with chronic sleep deprivation all I can really do is suffer through existence. If the OP has a way to meet basic needs and reject the role of family provider thrust upon him, why kill himself? From my point of view people end their lives for the stupidest of reasons. The things that bother me most are what feels like blatantly obvious short-sightedness and inefficiency. On the microscale, people feeling depressed over things that can easily be changed by changing their mental perspectives, their diet, physical body practices, and emotional self-hacking. On the macro-scale, a capitalist world where productivity is higher than ever, but individual survival still depends upon somehow making money. On the personal level, the feeling that there is nothing I can do except tell depressed people 'you're full of shit, get over yourself,' decry the detriments of capitalism, and feel too burdened by my own suffering to help others escape theirs.

What does a masculine stage Green look like, for a society or in individual? This is something I'm trying to figure out right now. As many on the forum have pointed out, Green appears to manifest as the most feminine stage of development, and this creates issues like OP describes. Perhaps this is because of the tendency to jump into stage Green beliefs/lifestyles without fully integrating Orange, which tends to skew more masculine in contrast.

Occasionally when sleeping, and in particular I noticed when taking a mid-morning nap after waking up too soon and feeling very tired, I experience what I could only describe as a content-less dream with pure sensations. Feelings of endless flying, falling, or rotating have been more common, but what happened to day was an indescribable feeling of intense vibration. It started out as a feeling of being overpowered by an external source, then being completely at one with cosmic energy, and then feeling like any physical sense of "me' literally being erased. This all happened very fast, at least that's how I perceived it, only a 10 seconds maybe, and the final phase where I felt myself dissolving only lasted half a second before the ego got scared and woke up. But when I awoke I didn't feel frightened, quite the opposite, very peaceful, happy, and having a sense that I was now unafraid of experiencing life, or death, in a new kind of way not just theoretically. At the same time, I felt regret that I could not stay with the vibrations, that I threw away a rare opportunity, wished I could have surrendered to it, and intuited that the calming after effects would be greatly magnified if I did. I now recall something like this happening a few other times over the last several months, but had forgotten since I had nothing to compare it to, lacked conceptual references for what was happening. When this occurs again, can be more present for it and let myself surrender more. So far these have just been tiny glimpses into another realm. Does this sound similar to anyone else's experiences while dreaming, astral projecting, meditation or psychedelic trips?

Really helps me to see my own bullshit.

Developing and implementing real solutions to environmental problems, as opposed to activism and virtue signaling. If they can't do it on their own, then finding the right scientists & engineers that can devise them, getting philanthropists and businesses to bring them to life, and educating political bodies on their urgency & importance. I met a professional environmentalist in college once, and most of what he does is attend hearings, do research and write grant applications, pragmatic and not so glamorous stuff. Writing this out is for me as much as OP, since I myself used to be passionate about environmentalism, gave up/lost touch with it and backslid into self-centered "world is fucked, enjoy it while you can" mentality. Now I know what to do with the burning desire to "save what's left of the Earth" should it re-awaken in me and I have the means. Doesn't work.

Egoic Enlightenment This picture comes to awareness.

You are not wrong. If however, you could not have the people or relationships in your life that you desire, do you think you would learn to cultivate the same type of happiness alone?

I want to understand why people embalm and contain corpses as if they are objects of importance to be preserved, and so much importance is placed upon recovering the remains of dead soldiers and natural disaster casualties. Is it purely religious observance, or something more? What brought this to mind is the discovery of a Argentine submarine that sank a year ago, and seeing news stories where relatives of the deceased are demanding that their skeletons be brought up from the bottom of the ocean and shipped back to them. Similarly with the North Korean thaw, I didn't understand why Americans cared so much that dead body parts of soldiers who died 50+ year ago were being dug up and returned, they are dead, dead. After my father died, I declined to look at his body with my mother before they took it to the mortuary, and again before burial. There didn't seem to be any reason to, he was dead. I would not be looking at him, but a lifeless corpse, and it would have felt unsettling to deliberately look at his body once he was no longer there. Personally, I would want my remains to be cremated and returned to the earth, not sitting around in a box indefinitely.

I just stop at this, since I've never experienced relationship love, or the illusion of it other than one-sided in my own mind. By now though I am focused on developing 'cosmic' Love than searching for it in other people. It's easily to develop deep warm fuzzy feelings from a sexual place, which we often refer to as lover case love. It feels so real, true and pure when you experience it, but it's actually just your own projection onto the other person, and the feelings are not unique to her. Far from being able to directly define love and happiness, but I can say this. Genuine happiness is not conditional upon or made easier because of other people. And Love is not something restricted to certain people but not others. Love and happiness are so much more expansive than just human emotions you feel for other people, and basing them on specific relationships only limits your capacity to experience them fully.

I've accepted that for myself wholeheartedly and it's not something I think about anymore. This is a prime example of how what is someone else considers their biggest problem in life is for others not an issue at all. Can you accept that, yes, there is a possibility that you may never get married, or otherwise find a lifelong romantic partner. And learn to be absolutely okay with that? Alone Forever. That subjective interpretation shows that what bothers you is your own fear and worry projected on to the idea of perpetual bachelorhood, rather than the reality itself. You can be happy and fulfilled without ever finding "the one." Being without the intimacy we instinctually desire is something most men have to come to terms with sooner or later. Free yourself from the belief that you need a woman in your life to complete you, and likewise, eschew ideologies about avoiding relationships altogether.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ActualizedOrg/search?query=attract

@Leo Gura It is daunting both because there is so much freedom to choose, and a process I have to constantly figure out each step of the way. Inevitably though it seems that I must do this, as my escape fantasies and narratives I've built up around the importance of maintaining comfort are shattering, no excuses left not to at least try, and that is where this is all heading. Business adventures, or surviving in the capitalist world feels far removed from primitive survival in the wild. I'd have no idea what that would be like, probably a short and brutal existence where every waking moment is dedicated to seeking sustenance and maintaining defenses against predators, competitors and the elements. But nevertheless, everything you need to do would be right there, immediately known form instinct. There would be no studying, no choosing a purpose, no working hard at distant long term goals. Everything you need, you could go out and just take it, built it, fight for it, with your own two hands, or die trying. The last job I had stocking shelves was kind of like that, and some times there was a sense of real flow I felt completing the simple repetitive tasks. I was unsatisfied, feeling I had so much more potential to be tapped into, but my fault was I never developed skills or vision, just wishy washy daydreams, vague ideas, and a strong sense of entitlement. It took getting to rock-bottom in to start changing these attitudes, which I've only just begun. @Bluebird The ideal solution would integrate both optimizing the basic needs and tapping developing the higher self. I've seen enough threads here about this to fully realize that things like a developed sense of self, life purpose, vision and goals are not antithetical to the other things like oneness, non-attachment, love, and consciousness; duality is part of non-duality. I see more and more that everything is paradoxical in one way or another, and learning to be okay with this, proceed anyway.

Going to share 5 things which seem to be getting in the way of forming my life purpose so to receive feedback for myself and others to use as we continue the process. I feel like I have been the most indecisive person alive, creating a deep narrative that it's okay to just be a passive consumer, resigned to laziness, hedonism and obsession with comfort. At this point though I'm very aware of the necessity of LP, understood that it is the key to escaping the circling-the-drain lifestyle, and no longer resistant to it. Also aware of the LP course on this site, but know I'm not prepared to work through a 25 hr. program anytime soon, and want to address these issues first anyways. From what I understand so far, LP is purely an Ego phenomenon, created within the materialist perspective that you are an individual consciousness, and not something arrived at and sustained with non-dualism woo-woo justifications. I've fallen into the 'all is one, nothing is meaningful, there is no me to give it meaning' cop out before to avoid these questions, so for the sake of inquiry, will avoid taking that into consideration when discussing life purpose. Dualism is part on non-dualism, the material world is within the spiritual world, etc. etc. Well... the fact is that life does NOT have purpose. But you can set an artificial purpose for your life if you want to make things more interesting and less mediocre. As Hume famously said, "You can't derive an ought from an is." Which basically means, that there are no SHOULDS. Reality is however it is, and there are no shoulds for what you should do about it. All those shoulds are just artificial constraints. Just drop them all and do whatever the hell you want. Do whatever will make you most fulfilled. You don't need some deep metaphysical justification for this. (Leo wrote this 2.5 years ago re: LP questions). So here is my skepticism, doubts, fear, liming beliefs... Any insights, wisdom and personal experience with these matters is welcomes. 1. How the heck on Earth, out of the infinite possibilities of things and non-things to be passionate about, those known and unknown to us, do we choose one thing at the exclusion of others, AND stick with it to the point of superb mastery? What if you lose interest in it, or change your perspective based on her information and experiences? I would really like to know what this process feels like to whose who have done it. No idea what this is like, as my interest have always been vague and fleeting, and desires for impact seemed like just wishful thinking. 2. I feel a sense of futility and creative impotence, even if I managed to care about something enough to dedicate my life to it. For example, used to feel very passionate about protecting and preserving the natural environment, mitigating climate change, saving the rainforests, and stuff like that. But that passion was replaced with a sense that it's all pointless since everything it totally fucked beyond repair, and I as one individual can't do much of shit about it. Even if I still felt invigorated towards those goals, I'd be powerless to do much of anything except cheerleading and virtue signaling. A more specific impact goal, something that I could definitely feel passionate about, would be push for a ban on infant circumcision in the USA. It seems like a blatantly obvious form of child abuse regardless of scientific studies will say about it's effects. But a glance at the recent history of such attempts suggests that that is unlikely to happen, and nothing anyone can do about it except not circumcise their sons. Hence I doubt this could become a life purpose goal. 3. I lack a personal Identity. A person's sense of self is very fluid, changing form one moment to the next. No one stays the same for long, and to attempt to do so would be stubborn, closed-minded, batshit insane even. I never had a stable identity to begin with, and my interests, values, beliefs and attitudes are constantly in flux. If someone asks me who I am, I say I have no idea, or describe some personality traits which are just momentary reflections, and inconsistent. Here it seems like going in circles: need sense of self for life purpose, need life purpose for sense of self... or do I? 4. Severe lack of life experience. I'm going to be 30 next year, but it feels like I have less life experience than most 12 year olds, done much of nothing and been nowhere. Not going to dwell on this or self-deprecate for my past behavior, but in a nutshell, I grew up in a super boring, dry, sterile environment with overprotective parents who have be only basic provisions and very little freedom to explore and discover life. There was nothing to do any nowhere to go, didn't even have a computer until I was 18, mostly just daydreaming, listening to music, watching TV, procrastinating on homework and tagging along with my parents wherever they went, and occasionally socializing with parental supervision. My adult life has been 4 years of "wage-slavery," 3 years of college, and now 5 years of "NEET" life mostly spent alone. The assumption I'm comparing this to is that normal folks have had lots of friendships and relationships, traveled domestically and abroad, developed physical hobbies and talents, which gives them a developed sense of who they are as an ego. 5. Trying to meet basic needs takes up so much of my life. So much time and effort required just sleeping, preparing food, eating, brushing your teeth, wiping your ass, showering, doing laundry, stretching, self-massage and other bodywork, and my minimum 2 hours walking outside every day. If I somehow manage to get a job, it would be even less time. I also experience frequent sleep deprivation anyway due to occupying a noisy living room with no heating or a/c, and have no way of moving out unless I win the lottery, I make a new friend who lets me live in their spare bedroom, or I become homeless and then get accepted in a 'housing first' program. I know that if I had a healthy and comfortable environment to live in, I could normalize my sleep and wake up in the morning energized and ready to challenge myself, but at the same time, realize that I'm using lack of comfort and the chores of existence as an excuse for my laziness. Has anyone here managed to live a purpose-driven life even with a shitty home environment and lacking in material resources/physical comforts?

Is modafinil prescribed as an ADD treatment? Also, how is it affecting your quality/duration of sleep.

Haven't listened yet, thanks for the 'forewarning' that it will come up. A mantra I have is that my own health, safety and comfort is just as important as that of any female. And this has always been how I felt, putting myself in harms way to protect a women never felt natural. Then again, I was never typically masculine to begin with, and being the self-sacrificing protector, provider and leader might come part and parcel with strong masculine polarity. From my point of view chivalry is like a code-world for male disposability. I will expect women to pull their own weight, literally and figuratively. This resonates with what I read in Way of the Superior Man, and what you posted in my thread asking about femdom relationships. Despite other posters inevitably chiming in to point out that sexual polarity is relative and very fluid, I clearly observe that the essence of masculinity involves those qualities mentioned in the book, like being the leader and protector. I can feel this dynamic when I see couples out together, I see them man as like her personal bodyguard/attack dog, it manifests through is facial expressions and body language and the way they walk together. So I can understand that what I interpret as "male disposability" other men would feel as being their highest selves. It's also evident to me that my personality is unusually more feminine for a man, and even if I wanted to be masculine, I don't have any qualities that make women feel safe. I'm unwilling and unable to protect women from other people. Having feminine energy though allows me to become more balanced, which makes it easier to cope with being alone when my masculine-feminine can compliment itself. My goal is not to become more masculine, nor more feminine, but to better understand my sexual essence. Since mission/purpose is strongly associated with the masculine according to David Deida, and Leo said similarly in his interview with a dating coach once, I have a strong suspicion that my struggle to commit to any purpose is very related to my lack of masculine identity. I'd better listen to the rest of the video before revisiting the thread again.

I have 2 sensible theories: As a male I often experience primal instincts of fear and/or aggression whenever I'm walking in close proximity straight towards other men, like going down the sidewalk. Mentally I don't think I an in danger and I know nothing will happen, but my body goes into fight-or-flight mode when that happens. This is a psychological relic from more primitive times when making visual contact and coming within striking distance of unfamiliar men in the wild actually was a threat to your life, they were from another tribe and might try to kill you. Likewise, it makes sense that when some women are in certain situations that trigger primal imprints where their maternal ancestors were raped and assaulted in the wild, they will feel very threatened. As for myself. I'm aware that I'm very sensitive and likely on the autism spectrum (and lots of other autistic behaviors which seem dysfunctional in present day society served useful purposes in primitive survival mode. To deal with the sensitivity and stay out of panic mode, I find ways to trick myself, like leaving the sidewalk, closing my eyes or looking down, stopping and turning away or other things. Since I'm not actually afraid of other men, or afraid of looking like a pussy, I do whatever is available to stay relaxed. It's not just in my head, since if I do try to just normally walk past someone on a narrow walkway I end up flinching, trembling and stumbling. As for why women tend to feel threatened more than men, I would assume it is because they tend to identify with their emotional states more than men do, whereas men tend to separate their perceptions from their emotional reactions. Not all women of course, because lots of women don't get triggered like that, and many have higher consciousness beyond just emotional reaction to their environment. Secondly, in any environment, women may feel violated when they perceive sexual interest from a man they view as lower status than them. It might not be, but any gesture can be interpreted as subtle or not so subtle interest, and it's only creepy if she doesn't find him attractive. I learned of this idea from MGTOW videos but it seems to match reality. Women tending to be very group-oriented and status conscious would naturally be insulted when men who are "beneath her" show interest as is she'd actually reciprocate. It's very different for men in general, since men have gay guys and unattractive women hitting on them occasionally, even harassing or grabbing their ass, and just walk away, it's not that big a deal. Whereas the unconscious women would feel personally offended when someone undesirable approaches her, or she interprets it that way. Along the same lines, women could feel 'visually raped' if an unwanted man enjoys looking at her body for more than a few seconds. I guess I'd remind you that being looked at is harmless, and even if you feel uncomfortable around certain people, they aren't doing anything to harass you. If you are actually being harassed not just feeling like it, I ask them to stop or get help.

From either perspective (as the man or woman) and not strictly in a femdom sexual sense. Where the woman makes the first move, the decisions of what to do together and where the relationship is going, and she brings him into her life, rather than becoming part of his world. Have you ever experienced something like this, or wouldn't mind such an arrangement? I've been taught that the man is supposed to be the leader and stay dominant for a relationship to work, bearing the 'burden of performance' as one manospherian likes to say. But I have seen examples from people on this forum and elsewhere that it doesn't have to be that way, and as women become more successful than men, and more straight men are declining to pursue women due to radical left #metoo culture, this is something more women are going to be doing. No judgment here, and I'm not specifically looking to have something like this, just learning and being open-minded.

Straight to the point, I want to break out of my technological laziness spell and develop some actual skills I can use to manifest creative projects. Can anyone recommend a free open-source audio and video editing platform to use and online tutorials to learn from? Things that have served you well if you too perhaps had to get over the hump from passively using the internet to actually making things. Most of my laziness, in all areas of life, is sheer indecision and having so many options to choose from. Other is lack of starting resources, but this is something that can be done with just a computer and internet.