aurum

@charlie cho If she’s ignoring you, she’s not that interested. There may be situations where she will ignore you for other reasons, like wanting to see if you’ll come towards her. But those are in the minority.

I’m not talking about behaviors that are pro-social but just happen to be outside your comfort zone. If approaching a stranger or asking for a phone number is outside your comfort zone, I agree you need to learn that. I am talking about having been in the community for many years and witnessing many guys go through it. A lot of what goes down is manipulative and / or anti-social behavior. This guise of “we’re just learning to become more congruent” is often just a convenient excuse. That’s the theory at least. It doesn’t often happen that way. But I agree that more of a focus on inner game is necessary if the community is going to evolve. Its gotta eventually go stage Green. Of course by that point, it won’t even be pickup anymore. It will just be socially atuned, emotionally intelligent men being men. And they won’t have much interest in trying to pick up huge numbers of women.

Because many times they are being fake. And it’s not this evo-psych narrative that women just don’t want to be impregnated with inferior beta-male genes. No one wants to be manipulated or taken advantage of. It’s egotism and anti-social behavior.

Then go for it. Demonization of pickup is untenable as all demonization is untenable upon close enough inspection. Which includes even demonizing people who demonize. Pickup itself is a manifestation of a stage Orange society. As such, it has most of the flaws and benefits of stage Orange. You gain optionality and freedom of choice, but you can lose deep intimacy. You can gain novelty and faster gratification, but can lose commitment. But of course if you’re stage Orange, you don’t care that much about commitment or intimacy anyway. So PUA makes sense. And as much as I’d wish that society was higher up the spiral, I have to recognize that is my bias. And remember how much I appreciated that people were willing to meet me where I was at.

Because it’s not the phase of life they are in. Most guys here are young and feel like they lack options when it comes to dating. So their main concern is maximizing optionality. That’s also what PUA instructors tend to teach. Then they conflate optionality with abundance. I believe it’s also a product of our larger stage Orange society. Everything is about maximizing options and freedom of choice.

I think it’s even deeper than that. If you truly had a level of self-worth close to that high, it’s highly unlikely you’d be interested in doing pick up at all. Or at the very least, you’d be uninterested in the more ego-based parts of pickup, like cranking your lay count as high as possible to feel good about yourself. Most guys I see who are actually “in sexual abundance” with women are quite content to just be in a relationship with one woman. It’s actually scarcity that drives a “I need more” attitude and that you need four girls on rotation. In the same way that it’s sometimes someone with the MOST money that feels the most scarcity. Abundance does not equal optionality. A cutting down of options can actually signify abundance, because you feel that choice is enough. Which is not to say I’m against guys going through a PUA phase. I’ve been very critical of PUA lately, but any guys reading this should understand my bias is that I’ve already been there. I’ve done my 1,000+ approaches. If you haven’t done that, PUA might be temporarily valuable for you.

Rape exists, therefore it obviously is. Any of that stuff that you’re imagining isn’t for the greatest good is only your limited ego’s perspective. Which of course does not mean we should go around raping each other. Or that society cannot be made more loving / conscious. If we made the decision as a society not to rape anymore, that would also be the greatest good. Everything that happens is the greatest good.

There are no limitations on consciousness. But would that be in service to the greatest good? Probably not. Therefore it won’t happen.

If you’re saying that some women will withhold sex out of fear in order to get commitment, I would agree. That does happen. Both genders can play these fear-based power games.

??? People commit to each other before sex all the time. And it absolutely can be desirable to build a proper relationship. Only in pick up artist land is commitment a scary thing that needs to be withheld by the guy until he gets laid. And that’s because most PUAs are coming from a place where they felt like they were taken advantage of. They tried being “nice” up front, but that didn’t get them laid. So they overcompensate. I don’t read that what OP is requesting is that unreasonable. She’s not asking for a marriage proposal and three gold balloons. She just wants to know that this guy she is emotionally investing in isn’t going to flip and bounce on her.

@Flowerfaeiry Speaking from my own experience, I wouldn’t say sleeping on the second date would make me lose respect for her. But there is a possibility of rushing into things physically before both of you are ready. Especially when we have rules in our head about when sex “should” occur. I would let it be more intuitive than that. Listen to your body.

? OP wanted to make this a mega thread. Posting examples is generally what that’s all about. There are certainly risks to sharing conspiracy videos, which is what I was referring to in my previous post. This is epistemological off-roading. It is potentially dangerous, but there’s also lessons to be learned by studying conspiracies to see how they delude people.

This should about cover it: Conspiracy theories are one of the major problems I see in the new age community. It’s tempting to think that maybe just because you’ve discovered some truths outside the mainstream level of consciousness, that EVERY theory that isn’t mainstream must be true. In reality, not being a sheep and going epistemically off-roading is a big responsibility. If you’re not careful, you’ll just end up sucked into crazy conspiracy theories. And it seems many new age people fail at this.

@WonderSeeker I did a bootcamp with Todd. In hindsight, I’d say the bootcamp was really only valuable because I made it valuable. I did an absurd amount of approaches that weekend. But truthfully, I could have saved myself the 2.5k and done the same thing at home. Todd mostly just had us do our own thing without much attention. The thing that ultimately really helped me was not doing a bootcamp. It was having good wings / friends, and committing over the course of months / years to going out.

My sense is that you should flip this. You’re already assuming you will not find the right degree. Instead, I would commit myself fully to finding and obtaining your degree, EVEN IF it turns out not to be what you want to do. I would cross that bridge when you get there, not try to deal with it when you don’t even know if it’s going to happen. And if you split your focus between your plan A and plan B, realistically you will likely fail at plan A. So don’t hedge. Assume plan A is all you got, even if it’s not.

That was your mistake. The right move IMO would have been to walk with her and meet her friends. The chances she was going to come back to you were basically zero. No you did the right thing by moving on. She was not coming back. It happens to everyone. The attention moved off you and you were sort of the odd man out. It certainly makes it easier. The problem is, if you’re going our 3-5 nights a week, you’re going to seriously deteriorate your health and your wallet over the long term. And you’ll forget important details for integrating lessons from your night out. There’s a lot of value in learning to do pickup “cold”. That’s good because you’re taking action. But don’t dismiss the theory either. The ideal situation is a blend.

I’ll have to try that if you decide to share what it is. I have read those and believe Neale was tapping in. I suppose it’s just a gut “knowing” at the end of the day that will tell you what you’re channeling. And then you have to trust that. That’s the distinction I struggle with making. To me, it all sort of feels the same.

Of course, we have no idea if anything is actually true. We could literally “what if” any statement to death. Which is good for discovering Absolute Truth. But in the domain of the relative, we have to make assumptions and use our best judgment. I’m actually really curious about this. I’ve done channeling for other beings. Angels, spirit guides, etc. But I don’t know if I’ve actually channeled God in the way you talk about it. Or at least, I’m not sure how I would even be able to tell if it was God as the absolute vs a finite being. Or if there is a significant difference at all. Maybe all communication with God is always through another entity. At the same time, I’ve had teachers draw a distinction between channeling God and finite entities. So I suspect there must be a difference.

First Pfizer shot, basically nothing. Second shot, some unpleasant symptoms. Muscle weakness, headache, nausea, general fatigue. Lasted for about 18 hours.

You mean the guy sitting there? No of course not. The guy sitting there is Darryl Anka. He has never claimed to be Bashar, except as a past-life. Bashar is the name given to the alien he says he is channeling. That’s probably because you haven’t had experience with it. I have.

I think he could be channeling a highly spiritually evolved alien, yes. Do I know that for sure? No. But I think Bashar often speaks with wisdom, so I’m open to it. Channeling is real enough and many people have claimed to have channeled aliens.

I’d say it’s simple. The UFO community is not synonymous with the consciousness community. There are many distinctions. And as a stereotype, many people in the UFO are not conscious. They are conspiracy theorists. The fact that Bashar is “channeled” and speaks about spiritual insights would likely make no sense to them. That is not part of the standard worldview of your average UFO fan.

Lots of people know who he is. Not at a mainstream level of course, you can’t expect the mainstream to be open to this. But within the consciousness community he is well known.

My thinking is that everyone usually has a mix of both light and shadow motivations. For example, let’s say I start reading personal development books because I’m tired of not living up to my potential. I want to be the best version I can be, and from that place, be of service to others. I would consider this a “light” motivation, as it’s usually the motivation we are most conscious of and identified with. But, let’s say that I also start reading personal development books because deep down I don’t feel I’ll ever be good enough or measure up. And so personal development helps me cope with this pain by allowing me to feel like I’m always “improving”. This I would consider a “shadow” motivation, and it’s usually not in our conscious awareness. Only later may we recognize it. It’s this psychological fragmentation that can allow us to have these multiple motives all at the same time. Even motives that may seem contradictory. And our actions tend to be the result of this inner conflict. So in your case, you are speaking about envy in the spiritual community for essentially material success. We all have needs, but if we feel we cannot meet them, we may resort to coping mechanisms (like envy or judgment) to feel better about ourselves. This definitely does happen and is definitely a potential shadow motivation people in the spiritual community should be aware of. At the same time, does this mean the spiritual community is particularly toxic? I don’t think so. The reality is that the mind can use any teaching to justify anything it feels is in its best interests. This is not a problem unique to spiritual people. I could just as easily take a secular teaching and distort it just the same. Perhaps we could say those in the spiritual community should be held to a higher standard since we claim higher levels of awareness. And maybe for a spiritual master, I would agree. But I think this is mostly unfair to ask of your average seeker. Your average seeker, who hasn’t put in lots of work, is more or less at the same level of awareness as anyone else. So I think you make good points. There’s more we could go into here but this I feel is the most essential.

I would definitely not expect more than that. I don’t know how long you’ve been investing, but 20% ARR is not normal or likely sustainable unless you’re like Ray Dalio or you become one of these crypto millionaires. I think it may be realistic IF you move overseas and you’re not planning on having a family, have health insurance and can just live super basic. Either way, you’re probably going to want to do some kind of work. Human beings need purpose, that’s why Leo talks about finding your LP a lot.