Markus

Cons of enlightenment? You'll no longer be the most special person on the planet. You can't reflect on how badass you are because you don't give a fuck about anything. Life will become extra ordinary. Duh it's not good for "you", because it'll erase you.

15 minutes meditating means 1425 minutes not meditating. The point of sitting down to meditate is it being a catalyst for bringing more mindfulness and awareness into the rest of your life. Start off easy, 15 is fine but you want to gradually get to 30 and 60. Yes, 60 is a whole other level compared to 15. When I started about two years ago and went from 20 to 60, I noticed quite a difference. Gradually you'll also become capable of immersing yourself in sensory experience in everyday activities, which is ultimately the point of meditating: stopping misuse of the mind and focusing on what's relevant to the situation.

Here's what you wanna bite the bullet on: 1. You don't have to be a good person. 2. Everybody is responsible for their own emotions. 3. Place happiness above everything else. Some further contemplation into these people-pleasing tendencies would be appropriate. As for happiness, it's always a choice between happiness and something else. As soon as you place that something above it, you create a condition, you create (the potential for) suffering. Because as long as that condition isn't met, you don't allow yourself to be happy. Unconditional happiness means you're happy regardless of what happens. If you get diagnosed with rectal cancer tomorrow, you're happy. If there's a nuclear war, you're happy. If everybody hates you, you're happy.

The longer you wait with telling him the truth, the more it's going to hurt him. So text him: "I have to confess to something. I have no romantic or sexual interest in you what so ever. I only gave you my number because I am afraid of rejecting people. Sorry for leading you on." Is he going to like this? Hell no. It's better than any alternative.

@Ramu Re-read the forum guidelines.

This is PROFOUND. Morality summed up in two paragraphs.

What degeneracy! America used to be about competition and exploitation! With this today's youth, it's going to hell in a handbasket.

Be brutally honest with yourself. If you don't wanna change, don't fucking change. If you do wanna change, do something else.

@Shin I'm life, I'm everything, nothing ultimately matters, the self is an illusion, all that good shit. Yes. But don't become the guy that sneaks that in into relative discussions. You know what I mean.

I was reading an age-old thread with a similar topic which didn't really pick up steam. But I think this topic is a fucking fun idea. After all, learning from failure is an useful tool. And if you manage to learn something from other people's failures - great. I'll use my own experiences as well as things I've observed or concluded. So, I'll start the list off with a few powerful tips on how to fail at life. 1. Never, ever meditate. Because if you do, you might start to see the world in a whole different light and realize the way you're living your life is retarded. So don't do it. After all, if you want to fuck up, it's easiest to do if you don't realize you're fucking up. 2. Don't develop any conscious habits. Habits are boring. You want to be free to do whatever you want. Doesn't that sound awesome? So from now on, give in to any impulse that arises. Want to eat potato chips? Watch porn? Do it. After all, you're doing what you want, and that's guaranteed to make you happy, isn't it? 3. Fall obsessively in love with the idea of one specific person. You want to spot this one person that's just the personification of perfection. Your soulmate. The only person who could ever make you happy. It's also great if they don't feel the same way. Because love is something you have to fight for. Befriend them and do everything you can to please them, but never tell them your true feelings. Engage in needy behavior to the point where they become absolutely and utterly disgusted with you and tell you they don't want to see you or talk to you any more. After they do that, confess that you've been in love with them the whole time. Express your love so strongly that they have no choice but to see how foolish they've been and that the love of their life has been right under the nose for all that time. 4. Don't exercise. Exercise is hard. Why would you do something that's hard? You'll feel miserable while doing it, and our goal is to be happy instead. The solution? Self-acceptance. Show yourself some love. If you want to lay on the couch binge-watching Game of Thrones and eating Oreo cookies, kindly treat yourself. 5. Always eat in front of the TV. Eating's great, so why not make it even greater by watching TV at the same time. Life is short. Live it to the fullest. Maximize pleasure. If you get up from the couch after 4 hours and feel stuffed and drowsy, get back on the couch and have a few drinks. They'll make you feel better, and lull you to sleep. 6. Never strategize. Don't write down any plans or goals. Those will limit your freedom by stripping you of the choice to do anything else. If something would really need to be done, it would get done. It's okay. 7. Entertain the hope it'll all work out in the end. You'll find your perfect girlfriend or boyfriend. You'll be healthy and beautiful. You'll be a millionaire. You'll be the most amazing person who ever lived and everyone will be jealous of you. One day. Life is long so take it easy. There's still time. You can start taking action next January. And now I'm expecting your contributions. I'm sure there's a lot more to being a failure and dying miserable & full of regret. What are your tips?

Could be two things here, probably both: lack of confidence and/or lack of social skills. For confidence it's important to be invested in your opinion of yourself more than that of other people. And in order to do that you need to uncover why you give a shit about what others think of you in the first place, and let it go. Shadow work or bottom-line contemplation is good for that. Also, immerse yourself in the sensory world. In social situations, focus on the sights and sounds of other people rather than your self-talk. It's a great tool that will instantly make you somewhat less needy. For social skills, there's several things. Eye contact, body language, storytelling, etc - some basic social habits. If you have those wrong, it can definitely increase the perception of you as weird. Personal development is generally considered weird as well, sure, but combine that with neediness and pure social skills and the weirdness grows exponentially. Poor social skills and lack of confidence can creep people out and disgust them. That's just a simple reality. I recommend reading "Models" by Mark Manson. It is a book on dealing with women but it does gloss over all the social stuff and basic social skills. It puts social confidence in perspective really nicely, I find. I imagine it would be a good blueprint for becoming more confident around people & developing social skills. You can delve more into the different topics covered in other materials.

I've seen some of his stuff. Self-proclaimed misanthrope who loves animals. That's the key issue here for me. He sees animals as innocent and humans as inherently evil, because unlike animals they have free will and understand the concept of morality. But humans don't have free will. I think it's safe to say he's not an emotionally healthy person. I imagine it's a pattern among vegans: anti-social people with a need to feel morally superior. That's not all vegans but a subsection of them.

Good for insomnia I imagine.

I'm awareness bruh. Awareness doesn't die because it was never born. Time is an illusion. Your question is all Maya. On the other hand, my life kinda sucks. I'm starting to see through my spiritual ego.

It's called a high concentration state for a reason It's all good. There's nothing wrong with you girl.

Leo will slap you in the face. But only if you let him haha. I don't and as result I have no results.

Cliff notes: fucking stop. Mahatma Gandhi called persuasion a subtle form of violence. Stop trying to convert people to your "religion". I have the urge too but question why you're really doing it. It's a distraction from actually practicing what you preach, you see. Leading by example is the best thing you can do. You can give your opinion on things if someone asks. You can help them out if they want help. If they want. You can't force someone to want something.

I have noticed I grow whenever I smoke weed. I mean I grow more stupid. It's fun.

Damn right I'm awesome. *reads post* Wait wh...fuck you. I guess introspection is appropriate. Dig deeper. Not just that you make specific judgments but what you feel when you make them. Why do they exist? I too notice that sort of a shift when I go into a social situation. There are some deep-rooted patterns that are more powerful than the "self-image bandage" you've created with self-help work. I personally like to bullshit myself about my self-esteem. As you think you have healthy self-esteem it might be useful to second-guess that. Don't bullshit yourself. It's stupid.

I think it's pretty obvious that a) pickup is much better for learning how to attract women b) a relationship is much better for learning how to have sex & sustain a relationship So what do you want? Answer that for yourself.

See a professional. Seriously. This is a very weird and specific issue that ordinary self-help people (read: the people on this forum) don't deal with.

It's rare as fuck.

My parents (or at least one) get mad when I tell them I think they're unhappy. And I'm like: "Duh."

I watched a video of his. He seems good. Who cares if you find something of his similar to Leo, shit is not that serious.

Love the "I'm right, you're wrong" post. It so persistently seems to be the case. Yet any digging deeper will reveal all my rational, thought-out, evidence-based decisions are just leaps of faith. All my motives are really in the unknown, built on assumptions I'm not aware of, but there's always a rationalization for why what I do is right and all others are lost and deluded. I'm lost and deluded, but at least I KNOW it, which makes me the shit. I'm aware of how I think I'm the shit because I think I know I'm lost and deluded, so that makes me the real shit. "Going meta" is another tool for the ego to enforce its grandiosity.