LittleMaslow

I've begun my "conscious game journey" recently and have a few useful tips and experiences to offer. This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, even though I've basically typed out a fuckin' novel at this point. These some points I was going to share in another thread about how to build a large social circle (and meet women) without drinking or partying but it got too long-winded and it's better-off as its own post. The idea kinda came from some of these videos I've been seeing on YouTube about what kinds of hobbies you should have to be a better version of yourself, but also includes some practical experiences you can have to build your social life, confidence and meet women. Before I get to that, for context, I'm 36, a musician (not wildly successful, but I'm experienced, ambitious and good at what I do, so I have confidence and competence in this arena) and got laid a fair bit in college and have had a few girlfriends. I took a long stint of abstinence (5 years) after a toxic relationship to unfuck myself and get more into my personal development and have more to offer myself, a partner and society at large. At this moment, I'm learning game with less of intention to have a ton of sex, but moreso to have greater confidence with women and people in general — and especially to have confidence with women I really jive with, am attracted to and am possibly compatible with, relationship-wise. My hookups in college were often with women I wouldn't go for nowadays, often took place when alcohol was making me more reckless and charismatic, weren't very meaningful and I was generally a socially anxious wreck and not able to express myself fully when sober. I could be seen as somewhat of a "natural" in the eyes of some, but my game honestly kind of sucked back in my university days, so I'm not some kind of hero. I just got lucky from time to time. A quick, short note before I begin: Develop Your Fashion Sense, like Leo recommends. Start learning about the "capsule wardrobe" (look it up). If you're over the age of 25, look into classic/timeless fashion so you'll always look good, no matter the decade. Make a moodboard of fashion styles you like. Make sure everything fits well, tuck in your fuckin shirt. Get a haircut and facial hairstyle that looks good on you — you'll find what works for you through experimenting and, for the sake of brevity, don't rock a goatee, they give most men a creep/redneck/uncool look. You don't want that. Okay, now getting to what I actually came here to say. First, one big thing I can recommend if you don't want to drink but still want to go out and be social is to take dance lessons for partner dance styles. Not only are they are babe-magnets, but a man who can dance and lead a partner on the dance floor gets girls. It's not weird to approach a woman and ask her to dance in that kind of situation, so you can ease your cold approach nerves a little bit. Learn a move or two at each lesson, go to the weekly dance lesson every week and you'll make some buddies. I just started learning country swing (I'm in the American West), but you could learn Latin, Ballroom dancing, East Coast Swing or any other kind of partner dance that's common in your region and there will be a crowd for it. In my limited experience, there are more women than men at these things, too. So you've already got baller status by going to dance night. You don't have to drink (it's probably better if you don't), you'll learn a skill that's attractive to women, you'll make friends and you can chat up any girl you dance with. Second, if you're not already in an aligned career, work at a coffee shop. Do this to practice your social skills with all kinds of people. The majority of your customers will most likely be women. Hot women, women with their lives together, women you'd want to date, women you most likely wouldn't meet at a club, women you probably wouldn't approach on the street. You'll work with cuties as well (but don't hook up with or date them unless you're quitting soon or you're fairly certain you two are compatible for as long as you need to make money at this job). You'll practice your social skills constantly, make friends, chat up the cuties who become your regulars, learn all kinds of interesting stuff that people are reading and learning about, etc. Don't work at a fuckin' Dunkin Donuts or a Starbucks, but a vibey community place where there are regulars. If you want to get a job there, become a regular there. Get to know the baristas and become somewhat friends with them. Don't flirt with the cutie baristas if you want to work there — just be cool and friendly — your time will come. Caveat: don't practice your cold approach here if you're still learning and you're still struggling with being socially calibrated in your interactions. I can't even recall the number of babes I met and interacted with by being a barista and how much that job got me out of my shell. It was a game changer. Your mileage may vary, but it's an option and doesn't require you to be drinking. Third — you knew this was coming if you've listened to Leo's "How To Get Laid" series — move to a big city if you haven't already done so. Do it alone, like I did, if you have to. I moved to New Orleans from a town of about 30,000 people when I was 26 and while the experience wasn't easy (I'd recommend you move to a more sane city like Austin, LA, Denver, Nashville or NYC), the experience grew me in countless ways. It can kind of suck at first, but if you move to a big city and work at a coffee shop for a little while, you'll be getting experience with women like wouldn't believe. Even a tourist town like a ski town would be good, you'll come into constant contact with new people. Fourth, as a bit of a substitute for moving to a big city if you can't do that right now for some reason, TRAVEL to big cities alone and practice your cold approach or just chatting up lots and lots of people. Find busy areas, talk to everyone. Get used to just talking to people and build up your mood with some positive interactions. Journal about what went well and what didn't go quite so well. I've been traveling to new cities recently because I'm living in a rural area and it's an insanely valuable experience with little-to-no negative consequences. At worst, you have an awkward interaction with a stranger and never see them again. On the flipside, you can start making new friends and acquaintances in a new city, keep in touch with them, meet up with them sometime down the line and even have a place to crash in this new city next time you want to visit. It opens up a lot of possibilities the more you do it. If you live east of the Mississippi River, you're never more than 3-4 hours from several cities with a population of over a million people, so this is a really helpful way to get started. If you don't have a lot of money, wait until the temperature is relatively warm, pack some pillows and some blankets and sleep in your car for a week to save on lodging expenses. Leo says you've got to be serious if you want to learn this stuff (I agree), so this option is a nice taste-test/experience builder for being serious and moving somewhere. If you think this would be good for you but hesitant to try it, don't be. You can do this and we're all rooting for you. You can take the first point I brought up (learn to dance) and apply this to all kinds of social activities and hobbies that women may attend. Tennis, foreign language clubs, co-ed volleyball, hiking clubs, art classes, sip and paint night, etc. For me, music-related activities are great. I like to volunteer for music festivals while I'm traveling (I've made a LOT of cool friends and connections doing this) and go to shows to meet people and talk to people and make friends. Just get on a local events calendar, find something that looks interesting and which may be attended by women and go to it. The "don't shit where you eat" rule applies here — don't go with the intent of getting laid (you've gotta employ a more indirect kind of game in these situations), just go to have fun by learning a new skill, meeting people and being social. It'll make you more fun and interesting and, therefore, more attractive to the opposite sex. You'll improve your confidence massively by doing this shit and if you're especially weak socially and the idea of approaching women scares the shit out of you, this is a really good place to start getting exposure therapy. Practice your cold approach and your game separately, when you're ready. It'll develop and prepare you for bigger and better things. So, these are a few things I've been learning. I know you shouldn't study "theory" too much when learning game, but these are some ideas to get you out socializing, learning and meeting people (some of whom will women). Pair this stuff with day/night game when you're ready and, boom, you'll be getting the kind of social experience you need and which will be the foundation for you getting good at game. I, personally, am just having fun meeting people, having new experience and being more at-ease/confident while talking to cuties. Granted, I've already got a lot of experience under my belt since I'm a little older and I'm still learning and have a ways to go, but these are the kinds of things I've done to expand myself. And you can take what I've said here, brainstorm on it, and come up with things that fit you and your lifestyle. You can fuckin do this.

I'm seeing a lot of people feeling angry, unseen and defeated after Sanders lost the DNC nomination. I can't help but feel similarly but I wonder how you can get a system made up of corrupt government, media and business to listen if you don't have billions of dollars behind you. The rape of our democratic process and looting of the federal coffers by banks and corporations that's gone on for more than 30 years is so blatant and insufferable that Americans can no longer tolerate it. How do you assert yourself and make your demands clear? I'm not advocating for violent revolution but at times I think that rioting and destruction is the only thing that will create change in this mess since asking nicely, protesting and whatever else doesn't seem to work against a coterie of big businesses and politicians seeking to unravel any social progress of the 20th century. You can't just "be conscious" towards unconscious people in power and expect them to change, they'll just continue with business as usual. So the question begs an answer: how do you get a government to listen to its citizens when they repeatedly ignore your concerns and leave you out in the cold? What do you do when protesting is met with violent opposition from the powers that be?

@Leo Gura could you close this thread? A couple of children are turning it into a flamewar and the conversation is pretty much over.

1. It's not a TON of money, but I'm not gonna go chuck $50 on something and not expect something sorta valuable or at least useful in return 2. Depends on the circumstance and what I'm spending this $50 on. I can eat for a month on $50 (seriously, I'd just eat lots of beans and cheap, nutritious vegetables), if a book costs $50 it had better be a damn good book like a coffee table photography book. I guess it just depends on what I'm spending it on. 3. I can afford a tank of gas, 2 weeks to a month's worth of groceries (for just myself), a good meal. Could also get a decent harmonica for under $50, so it really depends on what you're intending to do with your money. 4. I'd care less if I lost that amount of money, but I'd like $50 of anything I spend it on to bring some value to my life — even if it isn't a huge, life-changing kind of value 5. If I gave $50 to a homeless guy, I think it'd be a big gesture because they could in theory get a decent amount of food with that money if they didn't spend it on something dumb like cigs, booze or smack. If I had a good friend who's having trouble paying their rent because they're jobless due to coronavirus, I think it'd be a small amount to give away because a) they're my good friend and b) they're still gonna have to come up with a lot more money to pay the rest of their rent.

What does this discussion of intelligence in bloodlines and enlightenment have to do with the topic of this thread? Start a new thread if you're going to hijack the conversation and take it on a tangent.

Interesting idea, but how does the movement have any actual bargaining power in this situation? If elections will still go on without the movement and you end up whomever you get as president, why would The Establishment care if people don't vote so long as they get what they wanted out of the deal? I can't see how you'd have any actual power over The Establishment in this kind of a scenario. If you were talkin' massive work strikes and shutting down industries. Also, if the workers who keep society running (like transit workers, policemen, firemen, etc.) stopped going to work, that might also get The Establishment paying attention. I can't help but think movement has to effect their bottom line before they can have any actual power.

Along the lines of what another user was saying about using Wim Hof's breathing technique to possibly boost immunity, here's a discussion on hot/cold hydrotherapy as it was used in historical times and how it can possibly used as a potential immuno-booster for coronavirus.

I'm 100% all-for UBI. We are entering a time when AI will cause massive job loss in certain industries and we have to solve this problem or else we're going to end up getting more populist rage, shrinking of the middle class and suffering of the poor. That is to say, we're going to continue to drag out our current political problems and inequality. It's bad for our society and our economy to underutilize the human potential of our citizens by keeping them trapped in wage slavery and worn out from anxiety over money. And considering how ridiculously expensive it's getting to live in a U.S. city with any semblance of career opportunities, I'm all for the government helping pay my rent... especially when you consider that Wall Street and real estate developers have been fucking the American people out of affordable housing since 2008 while simultaneously adding no value to anyone's lives. Free money? A little bit less economic stress in my life? Count me in.

@clouffy this is my first time replying or being on the forum in a long while, so I'm sorry for not getting back to you. I went through Inner Engineering in June and I've only missed my Shambhavi practice once since I started it. The main benefits I've noticed so far are these: I have a lot more energy, my breathing has improved (I feel "cleaner" in my lungs and just overall feel like more oxygen is getting into my system), I feel less stressed out but when I do get stressed, I have a much easier time letting the emotion/state pass because I'm not particularly attached or involved with it. I'm also noticing how my depressive states have significantly lessened (although I still have a lot of unconscious material that's been messing with me in my dreams and I do shadow work to take care of it). I've started to get into new hobbies almost spontaneously — I started writing again, started making art and learning to draw — whereas, before I would research a topic or thing I wanted to learn without ever actually doing it because I would fear failure and wasting time on things I wasn't good at, but ironically I'd just waste time I could spend doing a new, productive activity with researching a new activity. It's been one of my bad habits. So, I guess Shambhavi may have, in a roundabout way, helped me see my negative patterns a lot better. I'm rekindling love for things that I had forgotten or started to hate (like music). I also started to cut out some of my last compulsive addictions, like coffee, after starting Shambhavi, but I attribute it to Sadhguru's advice and him stating that coffee stimulates your nervous system and "lowers you" over time because of that. I feel like Shambhavi, though it's not like a Big Bang of self-actualizing power, gives me the mental space to "be young again" and feel playful and less serious about things. All of this is just the start, though, I think Shambhavi is the longest-running habit I have up to this point and I like it so far and the results are cumulative but I don't notice them as huge leaps and bounds, but more as nice little steps forward. Every day I do Shambhavi, I've succeeded in getting just a little bit better. I like to pair Shambhavi with exercise shortly after I wake up, because then I've gotten the "hard stuff" for the day outta the way and I can then get on to work and other productive stuff. I might end up moving on to a longer Kriya practice, but for now I think Shambhavi + my daily bodyweight exercise routine is the perfect length for a health/mindfulness practice. In any case, I really like it. I don't have 2+ hours of time to dedicate to daily practices right now because I also have creative work that's time consuming, but Shambhavi is a short, daily practice that works well for my life right now and I'll probably always "keep it in rotation," since it's a perfect practice for travelers or folks who are squeezed for time. Your mileage may vary depending on where you're at in your life and what kind of changes you'd like to make, but it is a very simple, powerful tool that I imagine can be a lead up into deeper, more committed practices and, even on it's own, I recommend it!! Hope that review helps out!

I'm starting this journal as a way to let things out because I'm still trying to find my bearings and direction by trying things out and reporting on it, warts and all. I've been at an impasse for the last year or two and I think there is something in my subconscious telling me to just lay low, work on myself and wait for my path to appear. Like the title implies, I'm meandering at the moment but I believe that the process of journaling will leave me with a clearer sense of where I'm going in my life. I'll start off with a little biography and where I'm currently at. It might get a little TMI and depressing from here on out, but that's the whole point of a public journal so I'm not ashamed. I've led a rather dysfunctional existence throughout my 20's and I have been actively trying to make a comeback. I'm 31 years old, I grew up in a whitebread, isolated part of the Pacific Northwest, was raised Catholic and in a comfortable middle class household in a small city (under 50,000 people). I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after high school and so I've been rather aimless up to this point. I've been pursuing music as a career and I've been on a slow-moving path towards better health and mental clarity for the better part of three years. Some of my first big experiences towards seeing "something else" came the couple of times I did mushrooms and LSD in my early 20's. I saw the chains of my upbringing and beliefs falling away but I also wasn't really ready for those experiences so I became deluded and confused through some of those insights. I was hedonistic to a fault, used to smoke, drink, fap and watch porn, have casual sex with people I didn't want to date, spend too much time on the Internet/social media and neurotically pursued goals while not knowing what I *really* wanted. I went through periods of feeling behind in life, fucked by circumstance of growing up in a place far away from any culture or opportunities. I got myself deep into the victim mentality for too long. I've also had the habit of taking on too much at once out of excitement to counterbalance the feeling of being behind and, inevitably, this would lead me to burnout and stopping and starting lots of projects. In short, I've been trapped in various addictions, delusions and the "doing and having" cycle and having issues with follow-through in my life. A lot of this sounds kinda negative and since I'm trying to to paraphrase without boring the hell out of anyone reading this: my life hasn't been all sad, I've just become very aware of the negative patterns, bullshit thinking habits and have been actively correcting it. I needed a reboot. I've been on a "coming back to God" trip for several years and have put a lot of what I used to desire on hold as I realized the importance of taking better care of myself. I've done A LOT of things at this point: affirmations, exercise, EFT/tapping, cold showers, bioenergetics, counseling, meditation, hypnosis, nofap, journaling, solo retreat and other things I can't remember at the moment. While I've gotten some results up to now, I've more recently been trying to purge my unconscious hangups through shamanic breathing and have started a Kriya yoga practice. I'm mostly looking to commit to practices that I find sustainable, be more open about my thoughts and hangups and share experiences, memories, reflections, insights, music I'm listening to, art I like and maybe even career progress I'm making. I started this journal off-the-cuff tonight so I hadn't thought of a way to organize my entries but I'm sure that the process of writing will produce a form for all of this. It's all fair game and, as a final note, there will be blood!

I Finally Bought The Supplies I found a straightforward method for growing mushrooms at home and I'm excited to dive into this endeavor. I plan to initially have a couple grams and do a "normal" trip to ease myself back into psychedelics and eventually up the ante and take the heroic dose. Aaaan then, eventually I'd like to microdose to see how what effects that has on my general, baseline mood and consciousness. I'm looking to kick start a new chapter in my life and personal development through this and scrape out the residue of self loathing and depression that was so common in my 20's. I'm also gonna be going to an Inner Engineering event in Denver this weekend, I'm excited to learn learn the Shambhavi Mahamudra!

Inventory of Memory + Shadow Work I've been noticing a lot of my bad habits and feelings of angst in my life are usually directed at/caused by not taking much action in my life. I've had a trend my entire life for having this habit of planning everything and starting a project but never following through. I've noticed that I never enjoy following through on anything and often don't enjoy the fruits of my labor because I hate hard work and the longer-than-I-want process that everything takes. It's a deep-seated disposition that I think has a lot to do with America's culture of immediate gratification brainwashing. I've known about this tendency in myself for a while and have never really been able to fully get over it, despite getting better at overcoming obstacles and sticking things out. I grew up in a relatively well-off family — I never really witnessed my family struggling financially as a kid and we lived in a place where it was pretty easy to get by — and I think this has caused me an incredible amount of difficulty as I've gotten older, because, at the core of my being I don't want to grow because of the pain involved and I want to be lazy, especially when long-term goals are a pain in the ass. This has made moving to a big city a difficult process for me, especially because I had no social support systems in the places I moved to and have still never been able to cover all of my bills in full every month. I want to put my head in the sand and just ignore real life because I fucking hate it. Anyways, I didn't mean for this to turn into a victimhood rant, I'm learning a lot about myself as I go on with this process. I recently started dedicating time to writing out every single memory I can think of so I can do a "life review" and see which parts of my past are still creating sticking points for me. The idea is to create an as-close-to-chronological file of my life so I can look it over, let things percolate in my subconscious and have a more complete view of myself and release the sticking points. Add to this the fact that I'm going to soon be doing Inner Engineering soon (yay!) and growing mushrooms so I can start microdosing. I think this will be some pretty useful therapy for me. On paper, my life doesn't look nearly as messed up as that of most people, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that no matter how things look on the outside, they can still be deeply fucked up on the inside and that's how I've felt for a long time. I used to be in a cycle of shame over this and I think that this is having a big effect on why I'm not moving forward in life and, even though I have noticed "gains" in the quality of my mental experience of life lately, there's still more to work out. One big shift I'm feeling is how this focus on my inner problems is changing a lot of my external problems and desires. I'm noticing that lessening my grip on my external desires (especially need for appearances of success and need for approval) is helping me be happier in general, even if I still have spurts of anger, bitterness and dissatisfaction. All in all, I can feel my dysfunction lessening and my need for everything I used to think would make me happy dissolving. Well, anyways, I've gotta get back to doing this inventory of my memories.

@MaxV yeah, it sounds like you're on the right track and have nothing to worry about if you'd rather invest your energy in things you truly care about right now. And honestly, keeping it in your pants has its upsides since you don't have to worry about relationship drama or pregnancy scares.

@MaxV I think you've got the right mentality. If you don't want to go out and approach women or it feels unnatural/uninteresting to you, listen to that feeling. The only reason I could see why someone SHOULD approach is so you can work out the inner fear that might arise when you see a gal you really want to walk over and talk to. If you're fairly confident that you could walk up and start a conversation with someone you're interested in with no problem aside from maybe a couple butterflies in your stomach, I don't see why you'd need to force yourself to approach or have sex with women you're not interested in. You do you man!

I Need to Jailbreak My Mind I have been having motivation problems for the better part of this last year. I'm able to write and practice music and come up with things that I think sound cool, but I'm really struggling to have any desire to consolidate it all and write/release an album, which doesn't make sense because I have all the gear that I need to make a professional sounding album at home. I just feel like there's molten lava surging around in my subconscious and I need to release it somehow. I used to get it all out when I'd play or make music but it isn't happening with music anymore. I feel like I'm finally ready to start using psychedelics for personal growth issues and I believe that starting out on some mushrooms will really help me get over the initial hump that I need. For years, I never really did anything about anxiety and depression because I was young, sort of arrogant and ashamed of having mental issues, but now that I've taken the steps to improve myself, I really just don't like all the mental health management stuff I feel like I have to do. It gets tiring and has actually become a new facet of my neuroticism... I'm afraid to travel, go to a bar or expose myself to any of my old triggers and things that could potentially pull me down into old habits and I just want be free of this garbage belief systems and neuroticism. I'm hoping that the amount of research and groundwork I've laid out will help me once I start using psychedelics for therapeutic reasons. One of my first intentions when it comes to using psychedelics is to ask myself why I'm not moving forward in life and to dig up the first artifacts and clues as to how I got this way and what I need to start integrating in order to free myself and raise my baseline.

Strong Resistance to The Business Side of Music When I was around the age of 20, I had been playing music for about 4 years and decided that it's what I wanted to do with my life while I was tripping on LSD with a friend who I had a great musical connection with. I had fantasized about changing the world with our music... but first we had to actually write something incredible, move out of the Valley to a city that was actually relevant and get into the music scene. As you might have guessed, none of that happened and after a long period of delusion, I gave up on my friend and took on this dream by myself. I've moved out of the Valley (my hometown) to two different major US cities but It still hasn't happened. At this point, I've mostly lost motivation for the pursuit. I love to write songs, record and perform, but I hate the business side of it. I hate that the advent of social media has flooded the Internet with artists. I hate that you gotta build a fan base and everything yourself before a record label will pay attention to you or help you... because you don't need them at that point anyways and you've done all the hard work already. I'll just confess here and now what you're probably starting to read between the lines: I've gotten really fucking lazy. I'm tired, I'm worn out, I'm lonely. I used to be in neurotic pursuit of this dream, hiding away in my bedroom writing and practicing music, feeling insecure and never showing any of it to people because it never met my expectations or even held a candle to my favorite artists. Now that my music has started to get decent and I know that my strength lies in my creativity, I've stopped caring. I half-ass everything. The idea of actually finishing something doesn't scare me... it's the idea of having to fork out money to buy facebook ads, make videos and do all of this promotional shit by myself, without a team or any help and having to learn most of the skills myself. I just don't want to do it. I don't want to work a job anymore, either. I just want to do what I want, what I'm good at and get paid for it, but that isn't reality. I wasn't born to grind away at meaningless bullshit, even if it "makes me a better person." Doing shit you hate doesn't make you a better person, investing time into things that aren't your natural strengths doesn't make you a better person, it makes you less effective and robs you of your potential. I'm in a bad mood about this and have a toxic belief system towards work that I don't want to do, so I'm ranting a little bit. One of the biggest problems in my life for the last year or so is that I can't get over this lump in my ego. I sent myself down this road of personal development almost exclusively because my hatred for meaningless work and the toll on my mental health that the forced entrepreneurialism in the music industry has driven me crazy. I apologize to anyone reading this, I'm having yet another ego backlash after logging into an online music marketing course that I bought over a year ago. I can't bring myself to do the course. I understand the information, it makes sense, but I don't want to spend time and money performing the actions on top of trying to write, perform and record everything myself. I have no friends who are musicians and I'm flying solo for all of this. I also hate doing a shitty job on things or overburdening myself with work. I don't like being busy, I don't like feeling unrested. Most of all, I don't want to feel this way anymore and I just want all of this personal development work like meditation and everything else to relieve me of this suffering but it fucking takes forever to feel any benefits and I'm getting pissed off about it again. Everything seems to take too fucking long and I've lost my patience for life. Anyways, I apologize to anyone reading this, I have anger issues surrounding the circumstances of the career I've chosen because I'm tired of crawling along at a snail's pace in this career after spending the last decade of my life alone working my skills up to proficiency. I'm also suffering from a lack of self awareness right now and not seeing the next obvious step to take, so I'm just gonna post this and head out.

@JohnnyBravo Thanks for asking. I don't remember (fully) how I stopped watching porn since it was a while ago. I stopped regularly using porn around the time that I started seeing a girl who I was having sex with on a consistent basis. That alone helped a lot and, afterwards, I was less tempted to masturbate until we both moved and didn't live in the same city but kept a long-distance thing going. I had to notice a lot of my fucked up "peripheral porn habits" as well... which included wasting time surfing around instagram looking at girls I thought were attractive (I'm ashamed to admit that I did this but I guess owning up to this crap is part of the recovery process). I think the things that I've mentioned are particularly useful methods for dealing with urges and the process of suffocating the addiction. To fully quit something, you first have to say "you know what, fuck this habit and this lifestyle. I hate the person this has turned me into and I'll do anything I can to quit this nonsense." From there, finding positive habits to fill the space and cultivating your environment so it doesn't provoke you to engage in the unwanted habit would be the next things. So you could start exercising, reading, walking/running, meditating or some other activity that replaces the time you'd spend fapping and then using apps or browser extensions to block yourself from adult content or something like that. From there, either ween yourself off and only fap once a week (no porn, imagination only) or just don't fap at all. In my experience, quitting cold turkey and then having a random fap now and then with no porn or external stimulation like pictures (imagination only) isn't gonna kill you. I'm at a point now where every time I want to fap or start entertaining the idea, I notice and shine awareness on what I'm doing, how it's making me feel and especially how it makes me feel about myself and I just get bored and stop. I think I have a nofap "streak" going but I couldn't tell you how long it's been and I don't care at this point. I'm glad that I get bored every time I want to or start to masturbate. Anyways, I hope some of that helps. I used to browse through the NoFap subreddit and learned a lot of useful things about addiction there and to an extent I'm still on the NoFap journey, but breaking myself from masturbation in general and then being able to cut out the urges like a cancer was the most useful. I find that I built a momentum of love and respect for myself through quitting masturbating alongside with quitting alcohol and getting a better diet. Also, exercising everyday even for just a little while in the morning is HUGE for building up those natural, positive emotion chemicals. In general, it's been a holistic process of generally just cleaning up my life and letting go of the shit that was harming me. I'm still working on some things but I've mostly got a handle on a fair majority of it. I hope my words might be of some help to anyone reading!

Realizing The Need For More Shadow Work I got pretty into shadow work after I got into it about a year and a half ago. I was really existentially angry because I had just turned 30 and was going through a deep sense of feeling like I hadn't done shit with my life yet and, coupling that existential anger with a neurotic feeling that I had to get my life together in the span of a couple of months led me to have a lot of ego backlashes. My projections and judgments also got really bad with one of my roommates (who was an early 20's dude who was really rude to me, treated me like shit and had a really heavy victim mentality) but the experiences ended up being great opportunities for me to extract a lot of toxic, repressed feelings. After recently getting into shamanic breathing and doing sessions per week to do a big purge, I've started to notice that a lot of my darkness and shame has drastically reduced but that I still have a lot of judgmental thoughts popping up from time to time but that I'm also not super attached to them and am able to let them drift away. I'm not aiming for sainthood in my personal development and enlightenment work, but noticing that I still have these judgments makes me realize how important it is to stay vigilant when purifying yourself... the neuorticism, negative emotions and judgments might be significantly reduced and inner peace might be filling that space, but there's still a good chance that there's a couple turds that didn't get flushed.

I don't know if this question is against this forum's drug-sourcing policy (I think it's bordering on that), so please remove if this isn't cool to ask. I've seen Leo and another user state that 5-MeO is legal in Canada... does that mean you can buy it from special shops that have been given a license to sell it it or does that mean you can purchase it online from a Canada-based supplier? Only asking because I live somewhat close to the border and I'd make a trip (no pun intended) if I could get it over the counter, but this sounds like a pipe dream.

Starting to Love Life Again (... Maybe Even For The First Time) I've spent the majority of my life with some kind of depression with its roots in neuroticism. I've never really been comfortable with myself, especially in my teenage years and my twenties. I used to spend a lot of time being concerned about how cool I am, if I measure up to others, what what people think of me and It's a really limiting way to live. What's even more messed up is how much I've worn neuroticism like a badge of honor — I feel like there's a prideful attitude of "I'm messed up, suffering and it's awesome" in the kind of alternative music culture that I grew up in and I embraced that for too long. I'm probably oversimplifying this since there are musicians with serious emotional issues who use music to get that shit out, but I sense that a lot of people are just sorta bluffing and I've sensed for a long time that I was bluffing. But that doesn't mean that it hasn't taken a long time to see through the veil of these bullshit stories that I've been telling myself for about 16 years. Thank god for wisdom and the healing process. Last night I had a shamanic breathing experience that went really well. I've noticed these sessions get less emotionally painful as time goes on and I'm guessing it's probably because I've either cleared out a lot of the really big junk in my psyche or I'm waking up a sleeping giant and need to be prepared to face it. In any case, these sessions plus my kriya routine have been making me feel exponentially better and I'm sure the primary reason for that is because of consistency. I already had a pretty clean diet and exercise routine going when I started doing these two things, so some of those basic personal development hurdles were cleared when I started. Anyways, while I was doing shamanic breathing last night I was consolidating a lot of things I had been researching the past couple of days... namely psychedelics. I experimented with mushrooms and LSD when I was in the first part of my 20's but I did them in the completely wrong kind of way and had several bad trips resulting from immaturity and not knowing how to trip with a goal/intention in mind (although one particular LSD trip pushed me to take music seriously and make it my career pursuit, so I don't totally write off those experiences). I think my early psychedelic experiences caused some abrupt integration in my consciousness because it brought so many things I hated about myself, how I was raised and the world at large to the surface and I thought I suffered some kind of mild psychosis from them. But, despite these bad trips happening, I also realize how they forced me out of the unconsciousness I was living with and have contributed on this long, confusing, shooting-from-the-hip path to where I'm at right now, so there's no use in demonizing those experiences anymore. So, I've been researching how to grow mushrooms and how to find 5-meo and I'm starting to come up with a plan to see God either in the next month or in the next couple of months. I don't really want to reveal my exact ideas since I don't want to leave a digital paper trail, but it involves a trip out the desert and I'm kinda scared but my fears are mostly just related to money and how much it'll cost for me to do this, but every time these sensations come up, I'm learning to surrender to them and to see that there is nothing but Love waiting on the other side of this experience.

If you're thinking about doing it once a week, I'd say definitely go for it. Just work yourself up as far as the timer goes, listen to your body and see what it's telling you. Don't be afraid to question and push past the ego if you start hearing worries about the emotional pain, discomfort and little deaths it's experiencing. That's a sign you're getting to the root of something. Whenever I'm doing shamanic breathing I feel like my intuition is heightened and it's really pleasant to feel the consolidation of things I've been thinking about happening in real time. I did it almost every day for a week and didn't experience any negative side effects other than an irritable mood from ego backlash. I stopped using a timer when I did it, though, and just let myself breath until my body and sensations told me it was time to relax. On several occasions, I'd fall asleep and lose consciousness or I'd start having psychedelic experiences for a short period of time and whenever that happened, I'd just wake up again and keep going. I don't think I've gone much further than one hour, but I've certainly felt a lot of integration of past traumas in a relatively short period of time.

Ego Backlash Will Be The Death of Me Writing this tonight as I experience another backlash. I've been going hard on purification/purging the past couple of weeks and I've been having ego backlashes the whole time, usually after a particularly meditative or releasing experience. The backlashes come on especially after I do shamanic breathing — if I do it at night an hour or two before going to sleep, I tend to wake up in a shit mood. Today, I had a very energetic kriya practice, I started sweating while I was doing ocean breathing and om japas, which made most of the practice uncomfortable. I get pretty bad monkey mind while I'm doing kriya and I'm not so great at ignoring it because I'm still learning how to move the energy around in my body and perform the techniques correctly. I know it'll get better with time, but man, today I was generally kinda pissed off and irritated because of it. A lot of my old thoughts like "I'm not where I wanna fucking be in life" have turned to "I don't give a fuck about success, music or anything I used to enjoy anymore, I just don't want to fucking suffer anymore" followed by a steady dose of being upset that it feels like it's taking so long despite me only having done about a month's worth of consistent, strong development work. I've done a lot of work in the past (in my exploration phase), but never really developed strong practices or habits because I dabble a lot, get thrown off course by backlashes and trying to do too many new practices at once. That's a thing I really need to work on as far as personal development and enlightenment work goes... developing strong habits and consistency. I tend to get egotistical with this work, too, and get mad at myself for being "sensitive" and "hard case" and being the type of personal who's attracted to personal development because I'm so full of dysfunction, insecurity and repressed emotions. I used to constantly compare myself to my favorite musicians and artists and other people who are doing better than me in the material success world and developed a long-running story that goes something along the lines of "[Insert successful person] got famous and successful and never had to do any of this shit, so why the fuck did the gods decide I was I such a hard case that I have to fucking slog every day to get out of the life I hate in this shitty part of the world AND, on top of that, I can't even get my fucking shitty brain to leave me alone and let me be happy for a fucking week." All of this, is, of course, more of my ego's victim mentality rising up to the surface to torture me and try to get me to feel bad about myself. I've gotten better at simply watching the thoughts happen and am getting less triggered by the kinds of people and situations that used to get that story running, so I'm proud of myself for truly taking responsibility for these thoughts and watching them disappear. I do wish this would move out of my mind a little faster, but I suppose it's just going to happen at it's own pace and all I can do is facilitate the purification process by keeping my habits going.

Every person will give you different advice/perspective and this is mine: Own it. Be honest and authentic. There might be people who are disgusted by you because of your past and leave shitty youtube comments and call you a hypocrite — who cares? Conversely, there might be people who resonate with you and your past because they may be in a similar spot right now and are looking for guidance and a model for who they could become if they really commit to bettering themselves. Those are the kinds of people you might not be able to reach if you were to keep everything hush hush and those kinds of people are the ones who most need someone to turn to. Your responsibility, though, is to do your damnest to develop yourself so that your teachings are pure so that you aren't the blind leading the blind. Blessings

Inner Engineering Last night, after a couple weeks of debate and research, bit the bullet and enrolled in Sadhguru's Inner Enginnering online program and plan to attend an upcoming live seminar in Denver. I purchased the program mainly on the basis of reading other forum members saying that there is something special about the experience of the live event that one wouldn't get from a simple practice at home. I see this as a "kick start" to a deeper practice. Also, the fact that the Shambhavi Mahamudra practice is short, simple and effective if you do it everyday also intrigued me and, seeing as I plan to travel in the coming months, the brevity and potency is something I can see myself maintaining. Before I enrolled, I have already been practicing the "pre-initiation" kriya exercises from J.C. Stevens' book for about two weeks and have noticed myself feeling calmer (those preliminary pranayamas feel so, so good to the energy system in my body) and will continue to do them up until the event. I've taken Leo's advice on yoga and plan to not mix the techniques of different teachers so I might opt to cut the Om Japas from my routine and stick with alternate nostril breathing, ocean breath and talabya and pick up with JC Stevens kriya techniques after 48 days of Sadhguru's Shambhavi. I've been told by another user with a similar practice that it's okay to do this and I'll confirm it with the instructor at the event. Will report back at a later date!

Just remember that not everything you make will be "good" by your own standards, but everything you make will teach you something new and valuable, especially if you're trying to wrap your head around a new idea and put it into your songs. I go by a 10% rule, which is to say that 90% of what I make will be either okay, decent or total shit and the other 10% will be my best, truly inspired work. The more you create, incorporate new ideas from other sources and the more songs you finish, the better your 90% will be. And for networking, the best thing you can do is befriend and collaborate with people who are better than you and who are putting themselves out there and are getting opportunities. Be a good hang, easy to work with, good at what you do and people will probably want to work with you. Also be mindful of the "route" that you are taking. If you want to play in a band, meet people at shows in your town or in a nearby city where there's music happening and get good at playing your instrument and writing songs. If you want produce music on a laptop, reach out to people on Instagram and other social media platforms if you like their music and see if they're down to collaborate. These are just some ideas off the top of my head, see what works for you!