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@Batman Spot on!

Also to the OP, it really does sound like the kind of feminine shit tests that Deida talks about a lot. She wants to test your ability to remain unfazed in the face of her nonsense, she needs to know if she can trust and surrender to you. Next times she nags you about a hole in your sock just try not to feed into it at all, be unreactive and then knock her off her socks somehow, kiss her passionately, ravish her, whatever. She'll dig it and being in your masculine around a feminine women is sublime. Good luck.

Thanks for clarifying. Personally, I still would not get behind what you say. The kind of relationship I envision would be one that cannot be 'broken' because it is a non-thing. It would be one of saying yes continually, ever deeper. Unafraid of loosing it because both our fulfillment is independent of our being together and rather expressed through it. It baffles me how many restrictions people are willing to take in the name of a conventional relationship. 'I love you, but that means you cannot be this and this way ever again. If you are, I will take it amiss.'

Kudos for wanting to improve. Do you see how the envisioned ideal creates the un-ideal, your current situation? It is an expression of, a part of your current situation, can you grasp that in it's entirety? You will have to, because you need to start where you are at. I'd like to tell you a story about the conscious application of an ideal: Abdul rides his camel through the desert and comes along three fighting brothers. Their father had just passed and they are fighting over the inheritance. The will is clear: the oldest son should inherit half, the second a third and the youngest 1/9th. They are fighting because the 17 camels their father left cannot be divided this way. When they ask Abdul for help, he donates his camel to the fathers estate. The sons are happy for now the estate can be divided easily. The oldest gets 9, the second gets 6, and the youngest gets 2. Abdul takes his camel and rides along. See, Abdul's camel was the ideal, consciously applied. It solved a non-existent problem, and was itself never a tangible, real thing. It was easily let go of in the end.

Troubling advice. What about growing apart organically, being in different places, wanting different things in life? People tend to confuse the end of a relationship to be it's failure. You can have a great time, intimate and loving and then find your paths parting naturally. True love in relationships sets you both free.

Who says the end of desire is the end of growth? Only those who believe desire is the sole source of growth and development.

Yeah sure. My point is exactly the opposite. You build a way of dressing and expressing yourself around your concrete identity. Why can you choose between suit and casual but don't have the options women have or just wear a toga? Because you are not a woman and not a man living in ancient Rome. You are something specific and won't get around expressing that.

Do you walk around outside in a ballerina's dress for a six year old girl? If not that is because you are not a six year old girl. You dress to express what is true for you and if you are a young man living in a first world country in 2020 you will express that in the way you dress. You cannot escape that social context because as long as you participate in this world you will have to take some form. Try and dress in a way that is directly opposed to what is true about you in your experience and see how that feels. If you can't find anything- try the tutu As for the OP: break up with him ASAP. You say you are not allowed to leave the house unless to see him? You are not allowed to contact friends and family about him? Jesus, it boggles my mind to see what some women are willing to put up with. you should at least talk your relationship through in detail with someone you can trust. Don't let him isolate you and don't buy into his claim to be conscious- he clearly is not.

+1 Very good reply. It is okay and perhaps enhances your growth to develop friendships with people who are conscious but avoiding and judging those who are not conscious at it's core probably has to do with avoiding unconscious aspects of yourself.

How would awakening 'make' you anything? If it is about the truth, it must be true regardless of whether or not you are conscious of it. When you become truly conscious of something, you don't know it, or understand it, you are it. And then it is beyond comprehension, but not because it is so big, or vast, but because comprehension cannot contain that within which it is contained as a part. I know that I am generally ignorant of psychedelics, but from what I read in trip reports, it often seems like something comes into being through the psychedelic. It appears to be some change in state, in experience, that may well be mind-blowing, but still comprehensible and somewhat outside, removed from myself. Also psychedelic users often seem to be very unhinged and ungrounded. Perhaps I will cringe looking back at this post in a couple of years, but that is why many psychonauts on this forum I don't really resonate with.

You need to not-know a little harder. What do you understand about consciousness without form apart from hearsay? What do you know not-knowing to be? Why do you assume that those are the same? Not knowing is a state. Consciousness is not. Not-knowing is as close to your true nature as you can get short of directly experiencing it. In profound not-knowing the grip that concepts have over your basic experience is lightened and you experience common things anew and in a fresh way. That can make you feel like you are cut off from source, or being. And that is because you are. You are cut off from being and your true nature and once in a state of not-knowing you become aware of how that is always the case, even though you don't directly experience your true nature. Now, of course you are not really cut off, distant from or in any way different than your true nature or being. You are it, yet right now you are cut off from it. That does't make sense to the mind, but hey: who ever said the mind could grasp this?

Yeah, I understand your point. I made it seem like there is a contradiction between those two because you seemed to be overly focused on just managing your self-image. Ain't nothing wrong with wanting to look cute and it can produce many beneficial changes in self-esteem and self-confidence. I for one like being a relatively fit, cute guy who gets attention from girls. But when I started going to the gym (all gains long lost, thanks corona ) I noticed that I still could not attract, or even approach girls because fundamentally I believed, I was still unworthy. So what I am saying is that working on yourself has nothing to do with your self-image but with feeling good, and that is a big part of your life of course. Wanting to get over deep-rooted limiting assumptions has nothing to do with feeling good, but with what is actually true of you, and dropping all that is not. If successful at that, you will create possibilities for feeling good like you can not even imagine now. And for a quick little reality check, you seem like a cute girl with an attractive attitude. Even though my saying that only has the potential to make you feel better.

There is a bottom line assumption at work here. Something that you believe to be true about yourself, even though you may not recognize it as an assumption, because you live it as true. Now when you work on changing your self-and social-image, you already work from a point where that assumption of unworthiness is true. And so you argue and and manage this that you live to be true of you. Real transformation begins when you see that this assumption is non-essential to who and what you truly are. Once this is clearly seen, the belief can be dropped. So long as it remains to be a fundamental part of yourself, you will always have feelings of unworthiness in the background of your experience, no matter how much evidence to the contrary you create in your life.

You can only be ashamed of and regret actions that you have at least started to outgrow. So that is a positive, I guess. Personally, I find the idea of tough love appalling. Trying to fix others and all those quarrels are merely projections of avoided battles to be fought within.

@4201 You truly are onto something here. Perhaps you might be interested in the work of Peter Ralston. What you seem to have become conscious of is what he would call a bottom-line assumption. In becoming directly conscious of a bottom line assumption, something you hold to be true of yourself, you become conscious of it as it is: an assumption and thus non-essential to your being. Once seen for what it truly is you can drop it entirely even though it may take some time. It is fascinating to me how assumptions about your self create your reality. You will manipulate others, behaviour and your experience in such a way that they will seemingly confirm their truth. You don't just assume those things to be true, you subsequently live them as true. To see that creative force for what it is can feel like a big chunk of your 'self' falls away. Initially that can be a little upsetting or distressing but with time you will come to appreciate the liberation that really occurs. Ralston recommends a regular practice of contemplating to awaken the uncognized mind and become free of limiting assumptions as explained in 'The Book of not Knowing'.

I understand where you are coming from, but your question does not reflect how these things really work. Peace and happiness are not specific feelings, that is not in the realm of experience, arising and passing, but rather they are the foundational principles of experience. What is happiness but the fulfillment of perceiving clearly that there is no lack of anything at all. And what is peace but the utter acceptability of everything, as it is. This is not to say that there is no value in joining with your feelings and experiencing them more deeply, but don't confuse peace and happiness for something dependent on feeling or sensation.

What you are experiencing as progress while stretching is actually just a relaxation of your muscles. You can get much closer to your toes after holding that position for 5 min, yet that does not mean your tendons have lengthened. That actually takes about a year of daily, consistent stretching. Not to discourage you though, that relaxation is super important and beneficial in so many ways. Great progress btw, I would recommend also doing a mahamudra stretch, as it has been shown to be the most effective at also stretching your veins which is crucial for overall health and bodily longevity. Here's a video on mahamudra and it's benefits.

I did it a couple of years ago. I took the Camino de la costa though. From Irun to Santiago, and then chose to do the last part over the camino primitivo. You can look those up. There are many possible routes you can take. I did not want to go down the frances route because it supposedly is very crowded and also very commercial. Consider what you want to do and which route will suit your needs best. Learning spanish is not necessary, the path is equipped with plenty signs. It took me 5 weeks and some days. Did not take psychedelics. Perhaps it would be interesting, I would prefer to do it sober though. If you take psychedelics, I think it would be best not to walk that day but to find some nice place in nature to stay and be. I slept in albergues and sometimes hotels when no albergue was available. They are pretty cheap, 10EUR at most, many just take donations. Overall I think if you don't need too much luxury you can do with an average of 15-20 EUR per day. Having your backpack as lightweight as possible is advice you commonly hear, in my experience some extra weight won't kill you and it's good to be equipped for every occasion. Take light shoes though, not trecking or hiking boots. It really was a great experience. You won't regret it

@Keyhole I read your conversation again, there was some passive aggressiveness from her that I did not pick up on before. Yet it is clear to me that you started the impoliteness. I have seen this pattern in your responses on this forum before. You can be very rigorous and absolutist about the advice you give out and then get very defensive when you see it not taken well. Being right isn't worth anything and it is better to be helpful and wrong than to be right, don't you think? From what little information you get on this forum about a persons situation you cannot 'know' what advice they need. Perhaps keeping that in mind can help with detaching from one's own advice and how it is taken. I hope you don't feel I am coming from a place of judgement here, I am really trying to understand where that rigorousness comes from. Would love for you to elaborate. The shitshow had you both look poorly, unfortunately. I would expect two grown adults to be able not have things escalate that way, especially on this forum. Also, I am sorry your cat got dragged into this. It looks very healthy and I am sure you are a great owner. Always glad to be of help. David Deida has a chapter on this in the book I recommended. In essence, a masculine man will always feel himself instinctively gravitate towards feminine women as they have a way of refreshing his being and enlivening his spirit. Most men don't understand where this pull is coming from, and make sense of it through their sexuality. Especially underdeveloped and young men will have a hard time to appreciate a women beyond sexual attraction. A well-rounded, mature and grounded man however will be able to receive the refreshing feminine energy from many women for example in the form of looks, conversation, innocent touching and countless other ways, while keeping his sexuality exclusive for one. So, in essence, he should train himself to be able to appreciate and receive femininity without having to resort to his sexuality. While it is not that easy, it also is not that hard to do and rewarding in so many ways. @Keyhole While writing here I thought about my favourite cat song, that I am sure you will like in case you don't know it yet.

I am sometimes appalled by the advice I see here. Such little empathy and desire to understand someones situation and then projecting one's own bad experiences or convictions under the guise of 'tough love'. And of course, it is not cheating if there has been some agreement beforehand. As to my advice, I think it is very sweet of you to be so considerate of his situation and problem, however it is crucially important that you set clear boundaries, however you decide. Don't be wishy washy about this. Many men who settle early in life and don't go through a promiscuous phase will encounter the feeling of having missed out. Only you two can know how pressing this is for him. It is likely though that he will not gain whatever it is he is hoping for by having sex with other women. There are many other, non-sexual ways in which females and femininity can be appreciated. Perhaps he can compensate for his perceived lack in ways that won't put your relationship at risk. Have him read 'The way of the superior man'. Overall I think you would be asking much less of him by wanting him to abstain than he does now. It is fair to say no. You seem like a very understanding gf, I think you two will be able to find ways to work through this problem, growing in intimacy. If it is too important to him to let it go, I'd say let him go, unless your gut very strongly tells you otherwise. I hope you will gain the clarity you need.

@Arcangelo Cracked me up for real though. This is so far removed from my own experience, I literally cannot imagine having sex like that at all. I'm really curious, could you elaborate a little more?

While very valuable in navigating through life, intuition in the end won't cut it when it comes to becoming conscious of the truth. Intuition always leads toward something, and nothing can contain the truth, as it contains all. Sounds to me like you have developed some refined beliefs, leading you to doubt your experience which is rather ineffective compared to investigating it, which comes from openness and not-knowing, rather than preconceived fantasies. I would suggest dropping all ideas of how it feels like and how it will change things. Yes, there will be gradual changing after awakening as decades of feeding into the separate self and it's tensions and fears slowly come to an end, but those changes do not change what is true. If truth were dependent on how it is expressed, it would not be true right now, right? Is that recognition based on belief or authentic experience?

How much celery do you need to produce 16oz and how much do you pay for celery per month doing this every day?