I like being a higher achiever. And I often worked more than 40 hrs per week. But it has to be carefully balanced out against the higher things in life. It shouldn't become a lifestyle nor its own end. You can do it for short bursts when something important needs to be completed.

Ego is more than a thought, since thoughts come and go all the time, but your sense of self is pretty constant and much more stable than any one thought or belief.
Ego is actually a state of consciousness. Consciousness imagines itself to be a "someone". A human. A living creature. A thing that is conscious . A thing that has experiences. We might call this the egoic or materialistic state of consciousness. Changing that state of consciousness is necessary for the illusion of ego to dissolve.
It is as if you were a child playing a game of cowboys and Indians, and you are imagining yourself as a cowboy. Is the cowboy real? It's a role that's being played, a mask being worn. You feel like a cowboy because you keep imagining that you are one. Until you stop imagining it. Ego is not a thing, it's an imaginary role you've adopted.
For example, you might imagine yourself to be a woman. But right now you're imagining yourself to be a man. Except you tell yourself that you actually ARE a man, whereas being a woman would be imaginary to you. But both are imaginary. What is a man? A man is not a physical object. A man is a role you've adopted.

Not much.
Vegas has cheap rents and you can get into all clubs for free on Sun-Thurs. Now they charge $10 for parking, used to be free. Buying drinks is not needed at all.
Your only expenses are rent and parking.
Living on the Strip is pricey and not needed. A small Strip condo would cost $2k/month. Off the Strip you can find decent apartments for $1000/mo
If you want to go clubbing on Fri and Saturday -- the hottest days -- that will cost you $40/night.

Women are capable of it. But they have little interest in it.
The situation is so bad that I have simply given up on trying to explain attraction to women. It's a pointless effort. I know precisely what attracts them and I simply will embody it. No explanations or discussions.
Women are generally not truthful about what they are attracted to because what they tell themselves is one thing, and what they actually respond to is another.
Women create romanticized versions of attraction which suit their fantasies.
To understand what women are actually attracted to requires attracting lots of women. Attraction is ridiculously counter-intuitive and brutal.

I have no interest in debating female attraction with females.
Female attraction is something a man should learn through direct experience and then keep his mouth shut.

If you were Black, they would’ve called the police on you.

I never said he was awesome per se.
Girls get attracted to narcissistic and sociopathic men who know how to push their emotional buttons and have balls.
As a human being, John is bottom of the barrel. But from the perspective of attracting girls, this is a positive.
I'm not telling you to be like John. I'm telling you to be a good person but adopt some the excitement and charm of a scumbag narcissist.
Bottom line: stop being boring. Girls hate boring. Girls would rather sleep with a murder than a boring dude.

It's harder, but practice more improv.
Asking women questions upon open is terrible. You quickly lose her with your interrogation. Instead, either make funny assumptions about her or talk about yourself. My fave way to open is just telling her about my day or where I traveled recently. Travel stories are the best.
Stop the questions. Make statements. Learn to carry the entire conversation. You should be able to talk for 5 minutes without needing any input from her.

Does a rock have an ego?
Why should a human?
When you realize there is no difference between you and rock, you got it.
The idea that a human should have a self is the dumbest unquestioned idea of all time. It's just so dumb when you think about it. Why would anything have a self?
Obviously nothing has a self.

Don't blame it all on trauma.
Even healthy women are attracted to signals of strength and barbarism. It's a deeply wired thing.
Barbarism can literally make a girl wet. This is not just trauma.

A wise man once said: men are like dogs, women are like cats.
Cats don't like to be chased while dogs do.

The bottom line is: if she isn't horny for you, you've done something wrong somewhere earlier in the process.

Because most guys are so lame. When she finally meets an awesome guy who knows how to stimulate her emotions it will be a no-brainer.
Most guys don't even know how to fuck a girl properly.
When it comes to women, most guys are as interesting as a DMV application.

You don't need dick extension surgery if you are hung like Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights.
Anyone doing professional sports is exceptionally genetically gifted. Such people are in the top 1% of the bell curve. If they weren't they would not even have a chance to compete. Merely the cost of entry into that arena is having top 1% genetics. This is true of all sports. Which is why all competitive sports are stupid. All you're doing is comparing genetic lottery numbers while telling yourself how good you are. You are only that good because you had the foundation to be that good. You didn't create the foundation, God gave it to you.
This is true of all the world's greatest mystics. The dirty secret is that they didn't do it, they were given it. And Bashar is no exception to this. The idea that some technique will replace the right foundation is one of the greatest scams in human history. Foundation will always trump technique and effort.

A good book is self-validating.
If you need some authority figure to tell you that Mastery is a powerful book, you got some serious problems with your head.
Stop seeking popular stuff. Popular stuff is designed for morons. Which is why it became popular. Because most people are morons.

The perfect strange loop: going to SeaWorld to see caged up animals makes you passionate about wanting to save them

When you meet God's IQ, you'll change your mind.
And good news, God is you!

Think of it like this: anyone can go to the gym and put on muscle. Everyone's body can naturally create testosterone -- even women! But you will never naturally achieve this look:

Your body cannot produce that much natural testosterone. And to tell newbies that it can is utterly irresponsible and misleading.
No gym technique will give you that look. The only way to get that look is to inject testosterone.
If you insist on going "all natural" -- fine. But you will not be as conscious as one who takes psychedelics. Not even close.
You are like a woman thinking you can be Ronnie Coleman while drinking your soy as long as you hit the gym hard enough. No!
Shinzen Young did 40 years of professional meditation. I can be more conscious than him in 15 minutes. That is the reality of how this works. You can make all the rationalizations you want, but the brute reality remains.

@30secs No, because the point of religion is to distract you from Truth. That's it's function. That's the function of all ideologies.
All the major religions are already built upon enlightenment. They are the distractions unenlightened people created to avoid becoming enlightened.
The only paradigm shift that can happen is you deciding to throw all ideologies away, sitting down, and discovering Truth. Everything else is a distraction.

The more I’m doing work to embody my greatest actualized self, the less I can bear others I’m related to, my family, and the drama that’s going on.
They have such poor emotional control, and their lives, as well as the lives of others around me for whom I’m not related to, is all about survival, angry drama and gossip.
There are pigs rolling around in mud, and then there are the eagles soaring high.
I no longer take their advice about careers or of anything, it’s all lowest common denominator survival oriented advice and not at all about how to self actualize.
Just looking for some solidarity.

And, is this what life is about? Surviving by an 9-5 job that makes you dream of the weekends and retirement? Getting married to someone you argue with, then having children for which are resentful of you despite you having thrown thousands of dollars at them in expensive gadgetry? Because that’s the life my relative and family are living. The Western materialist existence is a soulless existence.

You are EVERYTHING, which means you are every asshole and rapist who ever lived. Get used to it. Stop judging reality, since you are it.
Accept that you are EVERYTHING.
Spirituality is not about becoming a good person or attaining a good future. It is about accepting EVERYTHING. Absolutely. All the ugliest shit you must accept. There is no other way to get peace.

@Podie45 What this situation is showing you is that you haven't found your niche in life yet.
Finding your niche is a journey and an ordeal. Don't give up and don't settle for a dead end job. You can get a wage job to hold you over but your eyes must be towards finding your niche, where the work you do fits your values and your talents.
You have to think outside the box. I knew a guy who was a nature hiking guide in Wyoming or Montana. He lived a simple life in mountains and in the summers he would give hiking and canoo tours to tourists.
Find your niche. It doesn't have to be in the city.
I knew another guy who quit Wall Street to travel around the country doing Japanese swordfighting and Zen meditation. He lived and slept out of his van. He made money as a roving massage therapist.

Obviously yes. Nothing I say goes against that.
The point is to make yourself so attractive that she is begging to have sex with you.
BUT, this does not mean you don't lead her proactively into it. Leading is still very important.
You're not going to logically persuade a girl to have sex with you anyways.
But sometimes she can be hesitant. You gotta make her comfortable.
Lead, lead, lead. Then if she says No, you of course back off.
Most weak guys give up way too soon. So for such guys it is good advice to burn every set to the ground. Make her tell you NO! Push it to see what you can get away with. This does not mean forcing yourself on her, but be persistent. This is not really necessary in normal dating situations, but if you are hitting the bars and clubs and doing cold approach and SNLs, then you gotta get good at dealing with all the BS obstacles and logistics. If you are doing casual dating from your social circle then such things are not necessary. But in a place like Vegas you gotta burn every set to the ground and push the envelope.