@kras That proves you don't know ALL the theory or applying bad theory. Unless you have terrible logistical issues (which I do have), the first date should be back to your place, which is the MOST ideal and is preferred, even without a lockdown.
@MrBON You obviously don't know women- there are many guys in a private group taking girls back to their place. Even with my bad logistics, I get invited to their house. 

@Dovahkiin Definitely agree with everything you wrote... It really resonates. And yes, happiness isn't insight, however happiness IS an insight haha. I use the techniques outlined in The Mind Illuminated, which is a book heavily focused around Samatha, but it's more accurately a samatha-vipassina hybrid as it combines elements of both in an integrated way. Feels like a SD stage yellow meditation book, with streaks of turquoise. Highly recommend it if you feel more pull towards traditional meditation vs. kriya. I've done some kriya yoga, but it feels a bit too active for me. There's something about the stillness and potential boredom that arises with meditation that attracts me. I think eventually I'll give Kriya another shot once I've developed the skills with meditation I want. 

My strategy with consciousness work is using meditation to transform my mind and use contemplation/psychedelics for insights. I don't really regard meditation as an insight generator (though I have had many insights while meditating), but rather a tool that works directly on reprogramming my mind and emotions, as well as a tool for integrating the insights I've gotten from both dry contemplation and contemplation under the influence of psychedelics. 

Edit: To give credit where credit is due, @ardacigin is the one who initially brought The Mind Illuminated on my radar. He has a lot of really great posts talking about facets of meditation and its utility. 

That is exactly what mediation is: worming your way up Mt Everest. If it sounds needlessly slow and painful, that's because it is.

Great sex is all about your mind, not your body. The physical mechanics are the least important part of sex.
Never had this need.
Get her and yourself so turned on that you won't even be thinking about lube.

Crack pipe is very wasteful of chemical and inconsistent.
Electronic rig is way more efficient, potent, effortless, and discrete. Makes breaking-through a breeze.

You just need to learn to have better sex.
Good sex requires training, skill, and experience. There are many ways to make your sex a lot hotter and deeper. But people are too lazy and uncreative to do it.
Don't form your opinions on sex based off one or two girls you've done it with or some lame ONS. Jerking off is not nearly as emotionally satisfying as sex well-executed.
Sex, like awakening, comes in many degrees. Don't expect girls to just give you great sex on their own. You must lead them into great sex. Train them to have hot sex.

Haha
In practice what most women do is this:
They spend their teens and 20s sleeping around with the hottest, most high-value guys they can find. But since these guys are high value, they tend to be players who leverage their value and won't commit, or are abusive narcissistic assholes. So eventually by the time you hit your 30s you learn your lesson and lower your standards to guys who are less players, but also less attractive and you find some comfortable compromise position with such a guy and you two settle down.
Then you get divorced.
This is a tale as old as mankind itself. Nothing at all surprising about it. This is the game. The game is happening whether you know it or not, whether you want it or not.
The only way out of the game is not be alone and not have sex. If you're going to play the game, you're gonna suffer its inherent limitations. There is no free lunch in the relative world. Sex and relationships have a high cost. Which is why monks and yogis avoid them entirely.

I've had multiple ex-girlfriends, so be careful with your assumptions.
It's best if you didn't concern yourself with my personal life.

This is not true.
And stop framing this as "tricks" to get in a girls panties. Proper game is about becoming a legitimately more attractive and higher value guy. It is not fake. It is real. The confidence and humor developed through pickup is REAL. And it will be respected and appreciated.
Today I am genuinely much more attractive than I used to be. Because of the development work I did. And any woman who sleeps with me will benefit from that. It's not some trick I'm running on her.

Like I said, it all depends upon your standards. If you have low standards you can go develop a deep intimate relationship with a crack whore or a hunchback. But who are we kidding? We want the best we can get.
You don't need to go crazy with maximizing sexual value. But your mind IS maximizing it to some degree, whether you know it or not. Feelings of attraction ARE the maximization process at work. It is not a logical process, it is all handled subconsciously by your mind and all you know about it is the feelings of attraction and arousal.
When you feel aroused by another person, that's your mind telling you:
"ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! HIGH SEXUAL VALUE DETECTED! HIGH SEXUAL VALUE DETECTED! CAPITALIZE ON THIS IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT IGNORE!"
And your ego-mind says, "I love that person for who they really are. I'm so loving. This is true love."
It's all self-biased bullshit. A delicious hallucination.

A supermodel is a lot more than just a hot girl. She has fame, status, and millions of dollars.
Yeah, I could bang a hot nobody girl. But landing an actual supermodel is a very different matter. She's not gonna date a guy who's not at least a millionaire.
Celebrity dating is a whole nother league, son.
BTW, I once went on a date with the 75th top ranked Russian pro tennis star. She was buying BMWs with cash and she was smoking hot. Her body was incredible. But we didn't get along so I never got the chance to sleep with her. But I got real close. If our personalities were more aligned it would have happened.
So yeah, even a guy with my looks can attract hot girls. But it requires game. It ain't gonna happen "naturally".

Nah... women will always downplay their numbers because it increases your value.
Your friend who fucked 55 dudes will never tell that to her future husband.
So why are you rebuking me for the cock carousel? There it is.
I totally get that.
Men and women both struggle, just in asymmetrical ways. That's my whole point. Neither side has it easy.
I'm all for it. I promote conscious relationships. But I am also realistic about how survival works.
Statiatical surveys show that women consistently downplay their number of sexual partners, just as guys upplay theirs.
Don't take it personal. I didn't slut-shame anyone here. I merely said I won't blindly trust a woman's self-reported numbers. I'm not a fool. Women play games too. Your game is playing coy.
Haha! And how do I deal with the fact that I wasn't born with a foot-long cock and a perfectly muscular body that would allow me to be a world-class porn star?
You can raise your value but only so far. Genetics is a big factor.
You ain't ever gonna land Leonardo De Caprio. Just like I will never land a supermodel.
Tough titty.
But here's the silver lining: you can find someone near your level of sexual value.
You deal with it by loving who you are regardless of who you are.

Of course I understand that.
You are describing the female sexual agenda. I totally get it.
But men are under no obligation to cater to your agenda.
Well, that's beyond the scope of what most men are interested in learning. Most men want to buy advice for how to get more sex, not how to be nice to their girlfriend.
Again, you are expecting men to want to suit your female sexual agenda. But of course men have their own agenda. Why should men work towards your agenda when you don't care about fulfilling their agenda?
Men are merely doing to you what you are doing to them.
Notice your self-bias here.
Haha! And if women would freely open their legs for men when the man wanted it, then men would be much happier with no frustration or burden.
You are not understanding that women and men have conflicting agendas. You expect the man to align to your agenda while you will not do so for him. So here we are stuck in sex wars.
The nature of sexual relations is adversarial. This needs to be understood.
Yes, but you will never give your love to a man you don't find attractive.
Neither will a man.
You expect the man to bend over backwards for you. Which is selfish. But when you act selfish, why are you surprised when the man acts selfish too? He's merely mirroring your own selfishness.
Your desire to lock down a high quality man is selfish and that is your agenda. A man is not under any obligation to do that. Maybe he wants that. But maybe he doesn't. And there is noone to say which is right or wrong because this is a purely relative matter.
And what if he wants sex but you don't give it to him?
High quality women will attract strong men, which is what they want.
Where in the universe is it written that a man should have one woman. See? The universe doesn't revolve around your needs.
Then don't sleep with players. Sleep with some shy nerd who has zero game. There are millions of them around so you will have no problem finding one.
But you see, you don't want to sleep with such a man. You are not attracted to that. You are attracted precisely to strong men who are players who would sleep with lots of women. But you selfishly want to lock him down for yourself exclusively.
So you are creating your own problem.
Likewise for a man. A hot woman can easily be an awful human on the inside. The hottest women tend to be spoiled and emotionally fucked up.
You don't like asshole men, and we men don't like emotional nutcase women. So we're even. Dealing with a crazy emotional woman's drama is no walk in the park.
Of course. But you must have heard of hot women who were insane spoiled brats.
Let's not pretend that men are the only cheaters in the game. Women cheat too. Women use men too.
No, that's highly relative. Like I said, you are free to date whoever you want. Date a socially clueless and humorless man. Go date an incel. They got zero game. But they also have zero value.
But of course you will never be attracted to an Incel.
You see, you are trying to steal sexual value. What you really want is this: you want a super attractive high value man who will never leverage his value. Well, good luck. The more value a man has, the more he will leverage it. Likewise, the more value a woman has, the more she will leverage it. A hot women will not hesitate to leverage her value to get the best man she can. Don't act like only men do this leveraging. All hot women do it.
If a woman has enough value, she will be able to leverage it to get the man to be loyal to her. But if she has insufficient value, she won't. And this is what really pisses you off. Because you want to be able to lock down a man with higher value than you, and you see how easily that fails. But you still want it because you are greedy. You want value for free. This is otherwise known as stealing value. Your ego-mind wants to steal sexual value. Well, that doesn't work so well. So stop doing it.
I know plenty of players and PUAs who ended up settling for one woman. For most guys, pickup is a phase they go through. They sleep around with a handful of girls until they find one and settle down. Few guys want to be hardcore players for life. This is an exception, not the rule. It's also not very sustainable or even desirable. Dating multiple women gets exhausting and time-consuming.
But also, don't pretend like women don't go through a slutty phase. Women sleep around as much if not more than men, but you love to deny it.
No and no.
Sometimes people are just not compatible or properly aligned with each other. In fact this is more often the case than not.

Don't forget that guys with serious game are like 2% of the population.
So if you don't want a player, you can easily avoid them. As long as you can keep your legs closed for them
The thing about players is.... you want to open your legs for them real bad. That's what makes them a player.

It can still be difficult for them. Plenty of spiritually gifted people have harrowing journeys to awakening (like the many classic shaman stories). So don't get the idea that being spiritually gifted makes this process a walk in the park. You can be spiritually gifted and still have a lot of shadow material to work through.
But the biggest thing is, most people will never even attempt to awaken or know about awakening otherwise, unless they are lucky enough to stumble upon it.
A big secret to successful awakening is have the right motivation, curiosity, and desire for it. That in itself is a very rare thing which already requires a certain degree of spiritual attunement. If you motivation is strong, the rest is just a matter of time. If you motivation is weak, almost nothing can help you. So getting your motivation straight is crucial. Which is where psychedelics can be especially helpful. People would be a lot more motivated to awaken if they had a direct experience of God or Infinite Consciousness. It's very hard to build motivation off hearsay and fairytales. It's crucial to experience God for yourself so you know that it is more real than a brick wall. It's very hard to be motivated to pursue a thing for years which you doubt is real.

Yes, it's worth it.
It certianly won't get you awakening, but at least it will be a gateway to more serious spiritual pursuits in years to come.
If you want a chance at awakening via meditation you will have to do at least week-long retreats where you meditate nonstop all day long, every day. Month-long retreats would be more realistically necessary.

The mistake you're making is confusing psychedelics with makyo. Psychedelics are precisely NOT phenomenal distortions but pure insight, deeper than the insight of Zen meditation. The visual distortions that some psychedelics cause are to be completely ignored. The visual distortions arise with psychedelics precisely for the same reason they arise in meditation. They arise even more with psychedelics because they are like meditation x100. So you get 100 times stronger visual distortions but also 100 times deeper insight. Ignore the distortions and keep the insight, just as the Zen masters advise.
There is no mistake in the Zen advice, but the way you are applying it to psychedelics is precisely backwards.
You should dismiss makyo whether you're meditating or tripping balls. And don't forget, all of physical reality is makyo. So don't forget to dismiss that while you're at it
This can vary for different people.
In my view yoga is signficantly more powerful because it is a bio-chemical-mechanical change of the body-mind organism. Much moreso than meditation. Yoga leads to effortless meditation by a mechanical silencing of the mind.

No, it's not useless. But it just cannot compare to a powerful psychedelic.
It's the difference between a bow & arrow and a nuclear bomb.
But also appreciate this: if you don't have a nuclear bomb, a bow & arrow is still damn useful.

Like someone wants me to do something and I could just say “There is no doer-ship”
Or someone’s worried about something and I say “The future is imaginary”
Or someone insults me and I say “The boundary between self and other is imaginary, so you’re really just insulting yourself”
I would take the time to correctly explain these ideas to someone who was interested, but for people who aren’t, is there any harm in trolling them in this way?

Wv Golf 1.4 Fsi. A second-hand (or more like 4th hand). Manufactured in 2009 and works well. I had to replace a few things that were just worn out and change a water pump after leakage but haven't had any other issue. The car cost me 2600 British Pounds. 
If you don't know anything about cars, it is a good idea either to buy from an authorised reselling dealer or go with someone who knows more about this stuff to help you review the state of the car if buying from previous user. 
Things to keep in mind: 
diesel cars are being pushed out of the market in Europe & UK, I wouldn't buy one consider cost of fuel if you are going for bigger engine especially if you're gonna be driving in cities a lot (costs of fuels are skyrocketing across the world and are only gonna go up from now on)  consider how common that car is (spare parts & repairs cost)  consider utility - no point buying pickup if you're gonna be commuting. Unless you want an exceptional performance something with 1.4-1.6 engine volume should do the trick. Go for the best fuel consumption you can get while not completely sacrificing for performance (Golf, Polo etc). Also, I think 6th gear is a nice thing to have if you do a lot of long-distance travel but I don't know enough about cars to really be sure this makes that much difference  check if you'll have to pay emission tx where you live check the annual cost of car tax beforehand  check the annual cost of car insurance beforehand make sure the car you bought is not reported as stolen or previously crahsed  (authorised dealers will know this)  Generally second hand car purchase is probably a better idea if you are on a budget just make sure to buy from reliable seller. You can't usually go wrong with German cars, Toyota, Honda or Ford (ppl who know more about cars may disagree) The more complex the engine (e.g. turbo and that sort of stuff) the higher the likelihood of issues (from what I've been told) 

Slavery was popular just two lifetimes ago.

It doesn't have to be hard. Your mind is creating that. It could be fun and effortless. But this takes practice of putting yourself in the right state.

That's going to be a subjective and relative judgment call everyone will have to make for themselves.
I'm not saying she is a racist. I don't know. I'm just saying that most people judged her as a racist for that language she used, and I don't see that changing even if the dude threatened her.
People do over use the "racist" label these days. You need to be extra careful to notice whether your calling someone a racist isn't just your own projection. It probably is in 50% of cases or so.

I call BS on this.
Everyone craves to be close with others. They just have trauma which obscures intimacy or they lack the skills.
It is not true that introverts don't value intimacy and closeness to others. They value it a lot, they just prefer it with fewer people but deeper. Whereas extroverts prefer it more shallow with more people.
I am extremely introverted but I love intimacy and closeness with very select people. I don't like juggling a bunch of shallow friendships.

Nothing in life is achievable for everyone.
But if you want to get really good with girls, you can, and your height will not stop you.
There's no simple answer to this question. Obviously having natural social skills makes it easier. But you can develop your game a lot regardless of where you start.
Notice that your mind is hunting for excuses to justify your limiting beliefs.
Girls taller than me virtually do not exist.
And I personally don't find any girl over 5'11" attractive. I don't want to sleep with a fucking giraffe. Girls in the 5'6"-5'9" range are ideal for me. Short girls are also not a good fit for me because of the height difference. If you are a shorter guy, you can find tons of girls in the 5'0" to 5'5" range that I would rather avoid.
Stop making excuses and go build your game properly.
Height is not your problem. Your problem is your shitty mind full of victim excuses, your lack of skills/experience, and your lack of serious commitment to getting good. All which you can correct.