JonasVE12

Actively grounding your energy in your body while interacting is simply the best way to alleviate nervous energy and create a relaxed and comfortable bubble. When you strike up a conversation, imagine your energy moving down from your head to your legs and then into the ground under your feet. As if you are a tree and you pull down the energy into your roots. The feeling of being uncomfortable and nervous is the contraction of energy within your energetic system, and if you actively relax your muscles in your throat, heart and legs, you start to feel less nervous because then you allow the energy to flow through you more unobstructed. Negative emotions always manifest as energetic contractions, and these can be observed in the tension in your muscles. If you actively relax your muscles, you feel the energy flow smoothening and your mind becomes peaceful in turn. Then if you are in this space of relaxation, the other person will be too. The other person might also have contractions though. It's very common. Especially relax the pelvis and region around heart & throat when confronting fear and nervousness around connecting with strangers. Welcome feelings of courage, appreciation and acceptance in this proces of relaxation. Really allow yourself to let go of tension in muscles and opening the heart by welcoming these polarising positive feelings.

How great of you stepping over that fear and posting your channel here. Good luck!

It can be powerful. Most important is not to just say it, but feel the vibration/energy of self-love through your heart when you say it. It will make all the difference. And not escaping the emotion of self-doubt as well, but rather allowing it and welcoming it. Then letting it go and then doing the heart centered affirmations. Feeling any tension around the heart and surrendering to that when doing so. Literally feel the region around your heart opening and filling with light. Welcoming all feelings/sensations/thoughts related to self-doubt as well and slowly asking yourself to let go and welcome more self-love. Making this a habit can be very powerful in raising your vibrational state. Each day releasing small % of self-doubt and replacing it with self-love has a cummulative effect over time until the sensations/feelings of insecurity are completely surrendered and let go of. It will be worth it.

Maybe the question/framing does not fit your situation perfectly. I think the vision itself does not feel off? Maybe it's you. Maybe you feel hollow, and you try to fill in that gap through creating a powerful vision that you idealize? Then if the drive/motivation lacks pursuing the vision, of course it is more about the end goal, rather than the proces which is what is most important. You can bring in a lot of nuance, but I think the most important thing to understand is that you might want to explore your emotional development and emotional honesty first and if you see there are some things that need work, you might want to prioritize that before you create a grand and powerful vision that you end up idealizing. The vision will come by itself if you get more in touch with your heart. It's all about connection to feeling that will make you excited and motivated. You want to live from your turn-on and natural motivation. If you have the feeling of being 'stuck', there is emotional work to be done. Everyone has their authentic inspiration and motivation that moves them forward from when they were a child. Then we supress en repress emotions and we get into fear, apathy, shame and things seem to feel hollow here. There's a lot of desire in this emotional state. Also a lot of resistance to experiences and positive emotions. You can start doing things in the now that you feel inspired to do from your emotional centers and then see the contrast of true enjoyment and the hollowness of empty pursuits. And if you feel like that inspired energy gets blocked, ask yourself why. Do you feel blocked doing the things you truly want to do or would enjoy to do?

Well, good job of finishing reading that book that quickly. Maybe you can read it another 1-5 times and combine it with books such as Sedona Method and study some of the work of Lester levenson. They are all about getting in touch with your emotions, releasing them and transforming them to higher emotions on the emotional scale you've read about in the book. If you don't know exactly what to do right now, it is because you are a bit stuck on intellectualising the proces, I think. The release happens when you move your consciousness to the gut-brain, into feeling, instead of the mind. Before the actual release, there needs a lot of revealing to take place where you really feel your emotions such as anger. And accepting the feeling that you feel angry and not push it down. Don't feel afraid as well to feel angry, but actually let it be there and ask yourself if you can welcome it. Put your laptop or phone aside for a couple of hours and just sit down by yourself. Can you actually start to relax and feel into your emotions? Not thinking about your emotions, but feeling the vibrations inside. Can you welcome them and start to open yourself up to them? Can you let these emotions flow through you without you trying to get rid of them or judging them? That is what revealing is about. Not intellectually understanding the emotions and analysing them, but opening your heart to them and letting them in. Then you can start to release them by letting them go. It's simple. If you really let yourself feel the emotions and allowed them to be there, you already start to release them because acceptance has a stronger force fundementally. Then you can start asking yourself if you can start letting go more by asking yourself if you can let go more of anger. Start to allow yourself to feel emotions higher on the emotional scale such as pride, courage, acceptance, peace, love and start to let go of your resistance to them as well. Let go of negative feelings and stop resisting the welcoming of positive feelings. If you notice any numbness and apathy to this proces, or thinking, there should be way more attention on the revealing proces. Also note that when your mind is so identified to the actual release, and not reveal, then let go of that because in order to release something, it needs to be revealed to you. It can take weeks for certain people to actually start to connect to their feelings deeply because they might have repressed it for decades. Anger is actually a powerful and forceful emotion that has a lot of potential to get you out of lower emotions such as apathy and fear if you can feel it and welcome it. Then you can actually use it to generate pride, courage and acceptance. Such as when allowing yourself to feel angry for feeling fear and shame when having to do public speaking, you can feel pride that let's you take action. Then that pride can become courage and acceptance when confronting the fear of public speaking. But I don't know how all of this can apply to your situation as you are not very specific in what your emotions are related to, and what thoughts etc are connected to it.

@2neurotic4u You are on the right track man. Keep letting go and surrendering & you'll find that true allignment within yourself. Good luck!

Your energy is definitely very open and extroverted, also flowing very smoothly through you, as in you express yourself authentically on how you feel in the moment, which is all very good. Maybe also consider the following. You are not more spiritual than other people. We're al connected to the same consciousness. Yet the quality of our individual consciousness is different, and attunement to truth and love are different for everyone. A lot of people have undergone conditioning that blocked them off from their heart which blocks off a lot of empathy as well. Therefore some people can't notice your intention easily. It's like energetic dissonance between 2 people, which can happen. My advice would be to learn more about energy attunement between you and people & environments, and learn how to calibrate your energy to that of theirs. If your souls unique expression does not match the vibration of someone else, that is perfectly fine. You won't notice that at first though when you haven't developed yourself enough in this area. You'll want to get to a place where you instantly can feel the other persons energy and calibrate to them. You can calibrate your energy to almost anyone at anytime. You'll need a lot of practice connecting with many different people. At a certain point, you can read someone's emotions by just glancing at them without even talking to them. Maybe you walk down the park, you can look around and notice how everyone is feeling inside. If you get there, and have let go of resistance, you can effortlessly connect with them. Then you'll learn to spot people with a closed heart and so you can avoid them.

Exactly that It's nice that you are noticing contrast and it will certainly build on itself in terms of your capacity to be aware of your motives for what you are doing in your life. What is often forgotten is that when one achieves mastery or has become competent in a certain area, automatically, some dynamics exists within that context such as validation, recognition, helping humanity, financial abundance, etc, but these are not precursors for flow, presence and happiness, although they can help and add value, the engaging in this area can still be driven out of lack and not from your authentic emotional centers, which is difficult to address if you are constantly looking externally. For that reason, you can observe a lot of succesful people that still feel empty inside because they keep chasing those states compusilvely out of compensation for shame. The notion of mastery and developing a certain life skill is definitely imprinted into the collective conciousness as a standard but as many things in society, it's not a one size fits all. It works for some people in a certain context, yet for people with a more complicated psychology, where the nuance of their internal world may be out of awareness, it can make it so that they blindly act on these collective patterns, distracting them and keeping their supressed emotions out of sight. Never get told that you have a video game addiction and that you have to quit it. Parents always say that. "Get off your playstation, You need to study! You have exams coming up. Think of your future! Not your stupid video games!". The way society strucutres our individual experience is through linear time progression that prioritises the acquisition of knowledge and skills. 'You be a good boy and go on the route of mastery so you can help to maintaim balance in our economic system.' Yes, there are survival obligations, but if video games bring you in a flow where you experience so much enjoyment, go for it to the maximum of your ability without forgetting survival. Lose yourself in video gaming. Have fun, explore your imagination and creativity. They can learn you a lot too about yourself when you look at the type of gameplay you are attracted to. At times, you can even see how you try to achieve an emotional state inside the game that you are wishing to embody in yourself as well. I used to play non stop video games from when I was 12 until 17. Each day I would wake up and play video games with my friends. I remember it so fluently. Those times were amazing. I grew out of it and had to find new meaning though (which I couldn't for long because of shame), which is a natural proces which happens to many people in other areas as well. Such as with MMA-fighters that once found so much flow & fullfillment in training and competing at one time in their life, and then when they become older, they find their flow and fullfillment in coaching and training young fighters. These coaches wake up everyday giving back, spreading love through teaching & coaching which ultimately fullfills them to a very high degree. You never become a good fighter if the motivation is external, like validation or happiness. They do it because they love the art & like competing. All the rest is just the icing on the cake. For those people, the journey is really about now. Yes, there are goals that are in the future. But they are not the primary focus and they don't place it on a pedestal for reaching happiness/relief from toxic shame. They are fundamentally at peace with themselves and they are driven from higher emotional centers that shameful people don't yet embody. People in this situation need to really attune themselves to an emotional releasing, embodiment and integration practice so they can climb higher on the emotional scale. Yes, the present moment is always filtered from the lense of toxic shame which drives that super achievement attachment style which is perfecionistic in nature as well as experiencing guilt & shame as a permanent emotional state. The present moment is fundamentally never enough here. You have to be on top of everything. You have to be perfect. You have to work hard. You have to be smart. You need discipline & work ethic. All projections of internal supressed emotions. What about letting go of everything and just playing video games all day long? Why not? What are you so afraid of not achieving/getting? What emotions are there found in a future ideal for you? What are you after so badly? What is not here now. Yes, 'Flow', But what is it charachterised by for you personally? Flow is typically accompanied by the true allignment of your present experience with your soul. A true authentically inspired emotional investment in to your exploration of now. What emotions block your experience of these emotions right now. What do you want to experience? The important thing to know is that supressed shame will supress your creative energy and your turn-on for life in general. If you are so occupied and identified with your toxic shame, all you have in mind is escaping it. There is not much room for true presence here. So therefore you dissociate from yourself when you associate with a false self which is shame based. All your life becomes the acting out. If you can get rid of the shame, doors open that were hidden from you from the point you identified with it until you released it. If you release your supressed emotions and conditioning, you become much more childlike in a sense. Like getting back in touch with that childlike innocence and curiosity. Try to do some visualisation. If you were completely free from what is holding you back now. If all of your internal resistances would go away.. Who would you be? What would you do? If you would be completely embodied with self-love, acceptance, courage and joy... What would you do? In this true space of freedom, where does your attention gravitate towards? It does not gravitate towards these goals you previously installed in your mind, right? They all were a means to embody higher emotional states. But if you embody them now... If there wouldn't be a voice in your mind telling you to do X and Y or distracting you with logistical considerations... Maybe you'd be playing video games? Or maybe something else? Maybe video games for you is 60% authentic and effortless, yet maybe also missing out? Maybe if you'd be completely free, you'd also do other things that are even more exciting? Yes First and foremost, the most important thing is this: You're not meant to do anything, but being here. Surrendering and flowing. Life is all about now. Fuck society. The only real struggle is the occupation of survival & financial considerations. You basically have to entangle your flow & present experience with something that earns money. But that's the whole quest of finding your true LP. It becomes infinitely more effortless to earn money when you are following your true authentic LP which comes from higher emotional embodiment. As you say, if you can look inward and get in touch with your emotions, lots of clarity will arise on its own. I think this will be the most important thing for you and that is a deep explorative dive into your emotions. Psychoanalysis is good, but not neccessary. You can do psychoanalysis on yourself, but It can be difficult to make sense of your own emotions if you are not connected to them which you are. Maybe read books like 'healing the shame that binds you by John Bradshaw' as well. Very helpful. And also, a lot of the ADHD issue will resolve by itself. But it's certainly useful to use neuralplasticity & physical purification as well to connect to yourself on all levels and maximize cognitive potential.

@28 cm unbuffed Oh yeah, and if you understand the technique, but you want more guidance on how it can apply to your specific situation/emotions/thoughts/beliefs, you can certaintly PM me.

@28 cm unbuffed I would read the book if you want to learn more about it. I would love to explain it, but it is easier for you to grasp if you can form a more nuanced intellectual framework around the actual proces, and then you can attune your consciousness to it better by following your intuition that the understanding of the framework provides. It is a very popular book, yet 98% of people reading it don't have the consciousness to apply these things correctly and so they don't benefit from it. I initially didn't want to read the book because the sentence 'letting go' felt so simplistic and cliche that I couldn't believe how my complicated problems could simply disappear by 'letting go', lol. So powerful. Good luck and hope you get something out of it! Imagine you don't have to do any practices soon because you simply let go.... As simple as that. The sentence 'just let go' also regularly gets thrown around here as advice, but not being much useful because it does not allow the reader to understand what it implies if the intellectual framework is not provided with the answer. It lacks nuance and so people don't consider 'letting go' too much because it seems cliche.

You should read the book 'Psycho-Cybernetics'. It is written by a cosmetic surgeon who reported that after so many years of doing cosmetic surgery on patients, rarely would it be effective in satisfying their expectations. People would still feel ugly, or they would find something else to project their sense of unworthiness onto. But yeah, I guess it would be better than being apathethic about the issue. Maybe even in the end, he can see that it had nothing to do with his appearance after all.

My pleasure, my friend! I've read the topic you inserted in your post. I wonder how much supression/repression is going on in your psyche. You can do years and years of deep spiritual / self development work, but not really get anywhere if the work does not involve deep explorative emotional releasing, embodiment & integration work. In the end, the solution is simple, yet not easy. It's a subtle proces of attuning your inner compass to that which needs your attention to be released, to whatever resistance is under the surface in your subconscious. That inner compass needs to lead your consciousness to a place where you become aware of your resistances, which are feelings, and gradually surrender and release them day by day for weeks. The thoughts don't need your attention. The feelings do. I won't go into it further here because there is a better alternative and that is reading this book: "Letting go - david hawkins". The proces of letting go and surrendering ultimately leads to a permanent emotional release in your energetic and emotional system which will set you free forever. The context of your life and experience does not matter. How you got this way does not matter. Your traumas are not unique and don't matter. What matters is now and your inner compass. Becoming free of your resistances is not complicated. It's simple and the tools are already present. It's so simple that your mind might even come up with excuses because of the fear of letting go itself. It all wants to stay in darkness. Therefore the resistance to the simplicity of the art of surrender & letting go. "I don't believe such a simplistic thing can work..." - That's more fear to surrender to. You'll be suprised after you really got deep into surrender & letting go that when you shift, you didn't even notice because it just goes away from your consciousness, but you will feel more free & a lot lighter. The proces is nuanced and needs some attention though. Both making time for a release practice and releasing in the moment. Emotional blockages are the worst when trying to go all out in working towards your LP. And just life in general. As you experience, they hold you back in all sorts of ways. Self-sabotage, escapism, and all sorts of protection mechanisms. The proces is like peeling an orange. Keep surrendering & releasing bit by bit, layer by layer, resistance by resistance, and then boom, something shifted.

@28 cm unbuffed It's difficult, yes. Being conditioned into a certain path from the outside pressure of society is like being a kid that wants to go out with his friends to play, but needs to sit inside for 5 hours to learn mathematics. It's always gonna feel like an inner conflict. When you are so attuned to your own intuition, of course it feels like you are selling your soul and missing out because you feel there is a potential inside of you that you can't yet connect to because of the structure of society and how survival obligations are tangled up in it. Mechanics of society are just so unnatural to our individual instincts and tendencies that inner conflict is unavoidable. Some individuals learn to escape it and find their own path or don't escape it fully, but find themselves in it. I think that's the only real thing you can do. Finding peace with the current struggle and distraction and survival obligitations, but at the same time attuning yourself to possibilities, creativity, life purpose, practical solutions and focusing on those things like a laser so in the end you can transition to being fully alligned with yourself. In the end, you should strive to things being effortlessly 90%. People that run a business they love doing also have to put up with doing things that are related to the business, yet not fully what they love doing such as dealing with difficult clients, criticism, administration, BTW stuff, logistics. They will be less present with that, thus the other 10%. At the same time when you are on your way / transitioning to that 90% effortlessness, for the purpose of survival and doing the 'necessary stuff', find ways to fulfill these needs that does not feel like a chore doing it. It's a lot easier when you actually fulfill some lower values of yours doing these activities for the sake of survival. Such as when you have social anxiety and feel lonely for example, it's a lot more fun when you find a job where you constantly talk to people. That way, you mix up some personal development in it as well. You can even find enjoyment in it. I used to have very bad social anxiety and worked a job in door-to-door sales which I loved doing because it forced me to grow, get out of my comfort zone and relate to people. Therefore the effortless ratio was not 10% effortless, but rather 60% effortless because I enjoyed it, but not completely as I felt I was nowhere near my potential. The context of the job allowed me to partially be authentic, yet the job itself wasn't fully me. It was a lot more survival than that authentic inspiration. I didn't care for the job itself and the product I was selling. I didn't care how much products I sold, yet I was able to find enjoyment in relating to people and seeing people react increasingly positive to me after I did it for a bit. I learned to enjoy the 'neccessary stuff' when mixing it up with things that I value such as connection & personal development. Maybe you can try to connect this neccessary stuff with something that you enjoy/value. If you like being outdoors and doing adventurous things, maybe become a sports camp monitor for teenagers. "Yet, this life is what it is and we sometimes have to do things that we hate, just out of pure survival. " What you said above, I can relate to very much, yet I think the framing is a bit off. Being creative & finding practical opportunities can rebalance this effortless ratio significantly until you actually don't hate it anymore but look forward to going to work. Although it is still survival and not fully driven by your authentic inspiration, it can still be enjoyable. This is the most important. If you can find peace and presence in what you are doing, you stabilize yourself, and you can find much more freedom to transition to things that are even more in allignment. We all want this LP and passion right now so we can be free of now. The whole journey becomes about that place in our mind that represents that freedom you are chasing after through ourLP. The LP is important, if you are passionate about it, but it should not be a means to become free of now. Maybe if you filfill it, you can drive in your Lambo and get the freedom to travel the world, and those are worthy things to pursue, but in the end, a lot of freedom & fullfillment is found doing things that are authentic in the present despite the unrealised potential in that moment. Such as finding a job that is 60% in allignment. A lot of lifes treasures is found in how present you can be with what you are doing and how much personal value and enjoyment you get out of that which is happening now. The other 40%, you can grow to when you find that LP. At the same time, finding catalysts for your life purpose helps a lot too. Such as for me, releasing shame & gaining social freedom was the key factor. Sometimes there are hidden blocks between you and your LP that need to be discovered and worked around. Logistical issues as well. Just realise that there's things that will always be more difficult and unnatural for you to do. Even when you are fully in allignment in your life, there's always tasks that will demand your attention that you'll rather not do. Embracing the struggle & realising that distraction in those areas are part of the journey helps. Also when working on your actual LP, some things are harder, yes. Just keep progressing to that golden 90% effortlessness ratio. See the bigger picture of your life and how you can rebalance. Even make radical decisions and changes if you have to. I'm curious what your LP is and what you are currently working on.

It all matters until it doesn't. If you would go out into the world and everyone would love you, think you are amazing, and when you would feel powerful and alive, you'll come back home, look in the mirror and you'll fucking love your face. It's not really your face and appearance, it's your sense of powerlessness and weakness that gets projected onto it. We all need our reasons for why we can't. It's all self-deceptive projection and confirmation bias. Post a pic of your face here, for real. Do it. Start releasing this shame here and now by posting that pic. What emotion comes up thinking of posting a picture here? Go out in the world and find ways to become powerful. From what I sense from you is that you are scared of women, so go become powerful and grow courage to approach. Stop the bullshit excuses such as 'I'm ugly' and do it. Find other ways to feel powerful as well. Go learn self-defense. Hit the gym.

Get some heavy kettlebells - 20kg, 24kg, 28kg and workout every other day. Check 'Lebe stark' on youtube or 'denis vasilev'. Make sure to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and aim for a total of 800 cal per meal. Be disciplined and don't skip meals/workouts. Make it a habit. 2400 cal is a great starting point at your weight. Eat a healthy and balanced diet, and make sure to eat enough protein. It's not rocket science. Just eat healthy, enough calories, enough protein, work out heavy and rest. If you don't have time or energy to think about food and cooking, try meal prepping for dinner and try a high cal healthy smoothie for lunch. Get a high quality vegan protein powder as well.

That's true and I definitely don't deny that as I experience it myself, but I find the context around what you are trying to focus on in the bigger picture to be much more important. I can get in flow and hyperfocus at times when I'm attuned to the things I love doing in the present moment. For example, I can be so present and focused on doing Jiu jitsu, but then, when reading books or watching video's about Jiu jitsu Techniques, I find myself to be very distracted. It's because mostly I love doing it instead of reading & watching video's about it. They are both related to a field that is authentic to me, yet they are both different ways of engaging in it. I think authenticity is relevant in micro like ways and also macro. Some things are natural to you, some things aren't. When you have a goal in mind, sometimes it's neccessary to do things that are not natural to you, like reading books maybe, but you put up with it because you value what it represents in the future. But as life is experienced only in the present, things that are not congruent with who you are feel forced and more difficult to do, so focus is harder. It's only natural. also, if you created the habit of zoning out because you were pushed into things that weren't natural for you your whole life, of course your brain wiring adapts and the habit of dissociation forms into your brain structure just like smoking often becomes a long term habit that's difficult to break out of. And there might also be neurochemical and systemic health imbalances inside your body that make it simply harder to focus. ADHD can be looked at from many perspectives and every person is different as well. The problem is that the diagnosis says nothing really about the cause, yet when you get the diagnosis, you identify your lack of focus with having ADHD (a weird genetic neurochemical imbalance, so it seems), closing your mind to more obvious causes and solutions.

It's easy to deceive onself when one misinterprets the interconnectedness of aspects of direct experience. if one does not see the bigger picture, certain aspects are left unintegrated. Thus allowing the misunderstanding of the relationship between ADHD, your inability to focus and inability to find fullfillment in life. Do you remember when you were a child, when you had the freedom to follow your authentic self? Things were light, playful and there was passion for whetever that interested you in the present moment. Could you be present with whatever you enjoyed doing? With following your intuition and authentic inspiration? I have ADHD, I have been diagnosed recently. I had wasted years and years of time and energy pursuing things that I didn't care for, just so I could get back to that flow. To get these emotions back of freedom & joyful expression. To pursue whatever I wanted without pressure from inside/outside. The explorations were never about 'now', they were always an escape from 'now' - to becoming free of what is now . Why wasn't I free now? Where was I running from? For me, all these explorations and ideas I wasted so much time with was the acting out of my hidden toxic shame that was twisted around my personality and had me in it's power for all those years from when I was 13 or so. It was all avoidance and distraction. When I attuned myself to self-help, my toxic shame became so happy. It offered me the perfect distraction possibility so I would not be aware of it for many more years. The notion of mastery & life-purpose was so beautiful. So I distracted myself with them for so long so I could set myself free. Also the outside pressure of society and parents played a big role. You 'have' to do something that garuantees survival and if you can even find flow (as it is marketed in books), then of course you are on your way and attach some hope to it. It's self-deception. But of course you can't focus because it is not you...It's not authentic... It's all escape & conditioning. Supressed emotions steering your life in the wrong direction very unconsciously. Thoughts come up 'It's all ADHD', again, another attempt at avoidance driven by my toxic shame so it can remain in darkness (in my situation). What I would have done if I didn't have to do anything and was free was going out with friends, exploring activities that I loved doing and enjoying presence... I didn't even know what I loved doing anymore because I was so distracted with running away from my fears and trying to gain that freedom. You start to dissociate from yourself. And so you dissociate from what is now too (distraction, zoning out). Because fundementally, you have dissociated from yourself. while in reality, it is all here waiting to be released and integrated. You have to become aware of it first, and that is the difficult part. When you can live life from this internal freedom to do whatever you want to do, this inspiration and joy comes naturally. Of course in that free space, you can find your life-purpose, but it comes when you are ready and psychologically free from the things holding you back now. The exploration and route to mastery would then not be as painful as it is to you now. It is a sign that you really need to look at yourself deeply and become conscious of the big picture of your life. Do you spend all your time in your mind? How much are you driven from your emotional centers? What is the contrast? Why is it so in your direct experience? All worthy questions to ask yourself. I recommend getting sessions with a good psychoanalyst. I don't deny the existance of ADHD, and how it might influence your perception and processing of information, but your lack of focus and inability to find fulfillment is not primarly driven by that. If you have a hyperfocus, it seems logical to conclude that your internal and external world also has much (most) to do with it, no? I have cognitive issues too where conceptual reasoning doesn't come natural to me, and when I have to, I easily become distracted and brain fogged, and a part of me intuitively senses that I can improve on that with purification of my body & mind, but also I realise that I'm oriented elsewhere and I follow that as it is most authentic. Give up the search for meaning deeply and really stop looking in the future for some weeks until you have found some clarity. Really accept it in your core. Maybe go walk outside for some weeks. No meditations per se, but just being with yourself and becoming honest.

Amazing book.

When you awaken, there is some time neccessary to integrate and transcend further aspects of egoic attachments. Identification to concepts for example such as meaning/no meaning. In time, it will al become clear and you'll find peace in the duality. It takes some time man. Best thing to do is to abide in silence in meditation and surrender concepts. Be glad there is no inherent meaning in life, otherwise it would be very strict and there would not be so much room for creative freedom. Best to do is to find your authentic self and create your own meaning. Just for the sake of Love.

I'll tell you something about a friend of mine. My friend is quite passive when it would come to engaging in things that are traditionally masculine. He is more laid-back, relaxed, artistic, feeling & letting things come to him. He does not have a real drive to engage in actitivies that require the engagement into masculine energy. Yet, he told me that in his imagination, he had thought about becoming a police officer, which requires you to be engaged in masculine energy. On the street, if he sees a beautiful woman, he is attracted. Yet he is too passive to go up to her and talk to her. If I ask him about it, he just says that it is not who he is. I see an identifcation to a story of his personality. Though, there is a dissonance between his desire and action. He does not recognize this. I would say that he is not fully embodied and lacks integration of certain qualities he instinctually desires. If he is attracted, why not go up to her? He physically and subconsciously desires that, but is identified to a story that it is not who he is, so he should not step up and learn to integrate this. A desire is often instinctual, like attraction. Not acting upon that desire is often conditioning. I know he has a very passive family with very low masculine energy. He was never encouraged to try masculine activities, to be purposeful or intentful, not allowing him to explore these avenues. The gravitating towards traditionally masculine activities in his mind could mean that he misses those qualities and would like to explore, yet lack the masculine capacities to really try, so it is only imagination. There is no real force moving him in the direction of trying because he is identified to his current personality story. He does not have the insight & intuition that might lead him to try exploring and possibly expand & integrate. Every male has a balance of masculine/feminine that is very much genetic, yet there is also conditioning at play. There is a lot of opportunity to expand & integrate. If you can integrate your both energies, you can become very dynamic sexually and learn to enjoy a more masculine/dominant role as well. But first, there needs to be a shift in your internal energy first, and then there is more dynamic range in polarisation potential in a sexual setting. If you feel more powerful and ability to penetrate the world, that energy manifests into your sexuality. It means you can learn to enjoy a more penetrative mode. But that does not mean you need to prefer it. This lack of masculine energy in his personality is very much related to his upbringing. It is partly natural and authentic. Though, there is a potential and desire for masculine integration as partly, this was repressed through weak masculine mirroring in childhood. This desire now surfaces through his imagination and instinctual desires. Maybe if you can observe for yourself where you instinctually desire to be masculine, you can try to step into that tension and learn to be embodied within it. Such as going up to a woman to talk to her when you are attracted. You don't have to abandon your more feminine outlets, but you can step up aspects of yourself that are related to more masculine energy and integrate them into your personality. Enjoyment is not what should lead you. A good vision might be better, like trying to expand yourself. When you learn to face tension with women & going up to her, of course this will feel unnatural and not enjoyable at first. If you feel more comfortable doing that, there might be room for enjoyment. But don't feel like you should do anything & change if you don't want. Feel what is in allignment and go from there. And if it really feels unnatural, try to find a partner who is compatibel.

I think it's good to remind yourself that your personality is not static and permanent. Rather look at it as something that is very dynamic and expands given a certain input of experience. It seems that your values are things you wish to claim that you currently lack. Almost opposites of your current personality traits. You described yourself as the following: "loner, quiet, passive, irritable, numb, unemotional, neurotic", and seem to want to allign your personality more to other traits such as confidence, feeling and purpose. I think what @kinesin said is very relevant. How can you engage in activities that stimulate the growth and expansion of your personality, so you can adopt more of your values as personality traits and claim them in your being? I think the proces for you starts when you can identify exactly where you lack confidence. You can do that by observing fear & limitations. Where do they manifest? Where do you hold back? After that, you can slowly step into the tension required to gain that confidence. If you feal physically intimated often on the street by people, you can learn to step into tension in martial arts for example. If you are socially anxious, you can expand in this area as well as gently step into tension to gradually expand your comfortzone and adopt social freedom. (This actual practical proces deserves a new topic in itself because there is a lot of nuance involved in it.) As a result, you break through a lot of personal barriers that currently keep you from living in allignment with other values as well. Let's say you become more confident, automatically, you become more emotionally expressive and feel more emotions, as it is not repressed by shame, fear and apathy anymore. You start living more in allignment with yourself and become more authentic if you aren't ruled by fear, which in turn allows you to shift your attention from this state of lack to a more expansive mindset of free creative expression and creation. You might find your life purpose in this state of being. The key is developing awarenss and forming a long term vision in which you confront these parts of yourself so you can grow out of them. Reading books, spirituality and doing other self-help activities are fine, but remind yourself that working on the level of the intellect does not by itself bring out a real emotional change. You really want to come face to face with yourself and get into a space that challenges you. Start living on your edge, instead of your bedroom/basement. That's where real expansion happens.

body dysmorphic disorder is really a symptom. It's not actually about your appearance that your sense of being flawed comes from. It's projected shame. You have lost connection to that feeling inside you. What happened? What is your life story? It's mostly a systemic issue that goes very deep into the history of your conditioning. I remember myself taking 100 selfies everyday some years ago. I was trying to affirm I'm not ugly. I even went to a plastic surgeon for getting a nose job. Didn't do it eventually. BDB is a perfect example of self-deceptive projection. It's not actually about an objective parameter like your appearance in this case. Of course your appearance bothers you, because of the shame, the emotion, that is burried inside your energetic system. Imagine that you would feel complete self-acceptance, love, power- inside yourself. And imagine if it would all be reflected back at you by your external world. Imagine that the world would validate you, helping you realise you are loved, whole and powerful. Would you hate your appearance then? In fact, can you lay down, put your hands on your heart and become aware/feel your pain? Feeling the emotions in your body that let you hate your appearance? Can you feel them and become aware of them? Can you welcome them? If you can, could you let some of them go? If not, can you let them be there? If yes, can you then let some of them go after you have allowed them to be there? Really feel into the body and the emotions/vibrations. Notice that tension and vibration, let go & surrender. Can you then welcome feelings of self-love? Feelings of power? Maybe you can open your heart a bit? I understand that you are looking for an approach that releases this feelings permanently and that sets you free long-term. It's a proces. Will you allow yourself to be vulerable and share your full story? Only then we can see under the surface, allowing us to see clarity in this systemic issue. Then there might be clarity about what the best path would be for you to walk to set you free. I feel confident about myself right now. In fact, I like my appearance. Maybe you might be able to enjoy yours too in some time? Maybe you might even be able to look in the mirror and feel a sense of self-love and power. In fact, I'm confident that you would be able to do that in the end.

This kind of thinking is counterproductive and supresses people's authenticity. Telling/hinting people to persue awakening and stop desiring what they authentically desire is not promotive of growth. It's like telling a child to be happy without the love of his parents, telling him the desire should be surrendered, while realizing everything is perfect. Awakening is not a solution for every situation for every person. The desire is not what makes you suffer, That is not what it is about, it's secundary. It's the fact that the desire is not fulfilled, that makes you suffer. Even after awakening, you don't transcend your authentic personality which prefers a certain life story. You are the creator. You should be free in creating what you want in reason. Just like if there would be a technical limitation between you and the creation of Actualized.org, the desire to work around that limitation leads you on a practical and integrative path in which you work around that human problem and advance on your path to persue your authentic life goals. If there is an emotional blockage of shame that supresses your carefree authentic expression, it's experienced as a limitation which removes you from your authentic self. Ok, you see through the suffering of that limitation and see the nature of it, but you don't simply let it go by having that inner knowing. You might dissociate from it by trying to become present. And you could call that 'liberation', but is that really what life should be about? Trying to become present so you don't have to be aware of your limitations? It's not a quick-fix fun comfortable state he is after. OP is not looking for a 'state', rather, he is looking for a more authentic way of being, a release of conditioning, and emotional embodiment. A more natural truthful way of being. An escape from those limitations he has inside himself. Childhood deconditioning. Social opportunities, fun, pleasure, feeling alive and unrestrictive.

You shouldn't see it as a state to achieve. Rather a practice of release (shame, fear and apathy) that leads to full embodiment and natural paremanent letting go. I've written some pointers in this thread. You may find it helpful. they surely apply well to your situation. The basic idea is that you want to observe the relationship between tension and groundedness/connection to your body. Observe those tension provoking situations and slowly step into them until they become natural. Relax your body in the proces and open your heart in those situations. Feel your heart chakra and practice opening and relaxing it. Relax your pelvis and the back of your legs as well. Feel like a tree drawing lightning into the ground. Ground your energy into the earth. Feel one with the ground under you. Relax your whole body. Eventually, you'll feel energy moving more smoothly through your body and the mind relaxes naturally. That self conscious feeling is an energy blockage that draws your energy up your head, thus the analysing and self consciousness. It's mostly conditioned shame. Release that by connecting with the body and the energy moves more unobstructed through you, making room for that authentic light to shine through you, welcoming new found levels of confidence and carefreeness that previously were hidden from you. If you become ungrounded saying 'hi', relax into that tension If you become ungrounded singing out loud on the street and people stare at you, relax into that If you become ungrounded doing weird moves on the street and people stare, relax into that Do crazy social freedom exercises and relax into that tension. Do very stupid embarassing things but relax into it, and you'll feel no embaressment what so ever. Walk on the street barefoot, and ask strangers if they saw someone passing who carried shoes. Tell them that someone just stole yours. Relax into that. The key is this: Confront tension all the time and never stop doing it. Do it for months. Let facing tension become a part of your life. And so it becomes natural and you will be grounded and relaxed in any situation. Everytime face higher levels of tension. There becomes a moment where everything shifts. Your body adapts permanently. Emotions that have been there hidden for so long just release beautifully.

My only critique of this place would be targetted towards the spirituality/enlightenment part of this work. Let's not forget Actualized.org is much bigger than that. There's so much right with this place. The level of integrity in this place is good for the most part, but on the side of enligtenment and spirituality, there are some blind spots that don't get attention. People ask questions that are relevant to themself. So they shouldn't be bombarded with absolute idealistic truths that are nearly not nuanced and integrative enough for them to understand at that point. And the answers themself contain much hidden falsehood. For example, disowning the ego and looking at it as 'illusion'. Relative is as true as absolute. So only looking at something from the absolute perspective gives not enough credit to the validity of relativity. And what happens is that people that don't see the big picture and nuance, dissociate from that relative meaning because apparantly it's all falsehood from the absolute perspective. It is not falsehood. This dualities like 'true/false', 'Illusion/real' should be banned from this place. Or they should be placed inside more nuanced and integrative contexts that give much more meaning to the person that is asking the question. I've been dissociated from my existance when I started this work with actualized.org. I used to had these heated arguments with my father, and I used to tell him he is all imagining that anger he had going on there and that he should not be angry. Even when my girlfriend was emotional about her dad that died, I told her to forget it because it's all in her mind and imagination. That's because my understanding wasn't nuanced enough to see the validity of ego and relativity. And that's what happens when you put infinity as a state on a pedestal. For example in psychedelic trips like Leo's 30 day 5 MEO retreat, saying that he experienced much higher levels of consciousness because he was in temporary ego dissolution. If you trust Leo, and him saying such things, it opens your mind to the possibility that ego disolution is indeed higher consciousness. I see it so often here that people ask these questions like 'How to become happy, socially free, get rid of emotional issues' and they get answered with too much enlightenment absolute BS that don't meet the person where is at, rather they help him dissociate more from what they need to look at more deeply, and that's their ego. Question: 'I'm homeless, live on the street and I'm almost freezing to death' Answer: 'Temperature is imagination. Drop your beliefs. All is here now. Everything is perfect.'