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Yes but when diaphragm lowers enough, it will cause an expansion of your abdomen. Chest breathing is essentially a fight or flight response. I guarantee that someone who is a chronic chest breather is going to experience a lot more stress than if they primarily breathed low.

What spiritual practice is that? The only thing that comes to mind for me is people purging on psychedelics. But most people are not taking psychedelics on a regular basis, nor do they necessarily purge every time.

@Leo Palhano They’re both more the powerful enough to give you what you need. What do you need to combine them for? All risk, no reward. If I was your shaman, I’d not be happy.

@Magnanimous I just ran a functional breathwork workshop last Friday. It’s not a simple question. There’s a lot more that goes into breathing than people realize. That workshop ran for ~3 hours and I still didn’t cover everything I wanted to. Long story short: breathe low, slow, and through the nose. Low in terms of location (abdomen / diaphragm), and slow in terms of breathes per minute. No mouth breathing unless you’re an athlete or doing Wim Hof. Keep it light as well. Your breathing should be gentle, almost imperceptible.

I can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me or trying to teach me something.

If she is actually a potential long term girlfriend, you’re probably better of being honest relatively sooner than later. Most couples talk about their dating history at some point. So if your answer is *crickets* then she’s probably going to wonder why you never told her. If this is a girl you’re seeing more casually, then I wouldn’t bother. Not relevant information that you should feel obligated to disclose unless you really want to.

I have not noticed that. She seems relatively healthy to me.

I have not seen the documentary so I don’t know what has or hasn’t been exposed. But from what I’ve seen from Teal’s videos, her work is deeply insightful and nuanced. She clearly has a high degree of consciousness. If she is indeed exploiting her followers / inner circle, that’s shitty and should be exposed. But it sounds like the documentary has blown things out of proportion. Trying to get the average person to understand Teal and her teaching’s is almost an impossible task.

It doesn’t sound to me like you’ve taken it too far. But even if you did, that doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake. Taking it too far is part of the healing process. That’s how you find your balance. As other users have said, changing yourself upsets previous relationship dynamics. Consider facing their disapproval as part of your assertiveness training. If you can’t be assertive when people aren’t happy about it, your assertiveness doesn’t mean much.

That would be a reduced, simplistic strawman of everything I just said. Please reread what I wrote if you’d like to understand my perspective. It’s not about blame / shame. But our society does sometimes villainize cheaters because we are biased. We don’t like cheating, therefore we get out the metaphorical tar and feathers when someone cheats. Healthy relationships are only possible when all parties take accountability for their actions. And this is not to say there aren’t situations where one party may be much more responsible than another. I’m speaking generally here, not about every specific incidence of cheating. Not exactly. I have the option to stick my head in a freezer right now until I get a brain freeze. Or to run out into the middle of traffic. Or break my cell phone. There are always options. The question is whether those options will meet needs. To your point, having romantic options may increase someone’s ability to act out. And perhaps in some cases the option also creates a need that didn’t exist before. But regardless, it’s still about needs. Always.

Sounds like you did fine. Yes, your truth was that you wanted to date her. And it sounds like your truth was also that you’re not interested in pressuring her into that. Authenticity can be complex and multi-faceted. In fact, I’d say that’s the most real form of it. If you’re getting that response very frequently, to me that says your approach may be coming off a bit too gamey. It’s a common response but it’s not that common.

In my experience, it’s usually not that simplistic. My father repeatedly cheated on my mother growing up. Therefore as a kid, I formed a pretty basic narrative of “dad=perpetuator and mom=victim”. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to continually add complexity to that narrative in order to get a fuller picture of what really happened. Of course this is just my personal situation. Other situations could be more cut and dry. But I feel that happens much less often then we think. In a relationship, it usually takes two. Both when things go well and when things go poorly. People often end up in relationship where one or both parties do not feel like their needs are being met. When that happens, cheating often follows. It becomes the short term path of least resistance / conflict to getting those needs met. Even though it can come back to bite you. This is not to excuse or deny the pain that cheating can cause. I still would not consider it a high consciousness activity since you are pretty seriously breaking internal and external integrity. But we have to understand why cheating occurs if we are to avoid it.

Beautiful, just subbed her channel. This is the kind of relationship and communication I’m looking for these days. I don’t know if I’m ready, but I know I’ve done significant work on myself and I’d like to give it my best.

@Raze The original tweet was inappropriate and cringy from my perspective. Perhaps the response went too far, but overall it was good to be called out.

@Jannes It sounds like you’re feeling very conflicted on a lot of issues. Including that you probably don’t like feeling conflicted. If you’re open to advice, I’d just keep taking baby steps. You’re already doing spirituality and doing the work. Even if you’re feeling unmotivated and slacking off, that too is also a part of this process. Meditation is good. Psychedelics are good. A psychologist is good. I trust that you have the inner guidance to know what you need next to continue healing.

I agree. Is that a contradiction to what I said? Eternity is not “in the future”. It is outside the paradigm of time itself.

@TheOneReborn A topic like this is so nuanced that often it’s difficult to pin down in words. And even when you do, it’s likely to be misinterpreted. In my experience, you’re not “getting rid of” the ego. If you actually did that, you would just be pure, formless consciousness. And that’s cool, but you can’t really live a 3D life like that. You need some sort of interface. An avatar. Even if it’s ultimately a creation of your own mind. The trick is to be fully conscious of this. This won’t “destroy” the avatar in a conventional sense as long as you keep creating it. But you can KNOW that you’re creating it. So really you’re the creator and the creation at once. It’s sort of like a merging happens. A merging of the God and Ego. Except that merging was always the case, you just weren’t awake to it.

@Barna The good news is you don’t have to just speculate. If you want to know whether consciousness actually is eternal and not just a feel good story, you can know that. Direct experience and contemplation is the key.

Is it? Laying aside questions of whether Trump actually is a billionaire and his inheritance, are those things still what defines being successful? What if I become president, but I do so by dividing the country, fear-mongering and bringing out the worst in people? Am I still successful? What if I become a billionaire, but I do so by laying waste to huge essential environmental ecosystems, exploiting my employees and selling products that keep people unhealthy? What if I own all the towers in NY, but I’m so busy managing all my towers that I don’t have the proper time to mediate, heal, contemplate and nourish my soul? Point being, I would argue your post implies a vary narrow, reductionistic metric of success. Which in this case is personal wealth accumulation / status. Those metrics might be factored in to a more holistic view of success, but certainly don’t tell the whole story. If personal wealth accumulation / status is the only metric of success you care about in this post, then that’s your choice. But I’d much prefer to broaden our definitions. That sounds like a cheap shot.

@Emrie Reducing measurable carbon emissions is already a reductionistic solution to a complex, holistic and systemic issue. Which is not to say we shouldn’t reduce them. It just means there is way more to take into account, including things we may never be able to measure or understand. People want to jump to simple solutions with a clear, definable goal and steps to take. But in this case, I think that instinct may be doing us more harm than good. Can we perhaps temporarily sit in the uncomfortable, scary space of not knowing how to solve ecological crisis? People want to take action, but action without proper orientation is often less than useful. It can actually be counterproductive. And I’m not convinced we are collectively well-oriented on this issue as of this moment.

@How to be wise How are we defining successful?

Thank you. Yes, that intuition you have is right. It doesn’t make sense because it isn’t true. You don’t have to give up your soul for a woman. There may be certain tradeoffs when it comes to consciously choosing a dating strategy, but we don’t have to get so focused on the tradeoffs that we miss the potential overlaps. I know this is the case because it’s my life. I am not a narcissistic, egomaniac. Far from it. But women find me attractive everywhere I go. It just continually happens. Not 100% of women of course, but more than enough. Part of the issue I feel is that guys lack sufficient role models in this area. They don’t see many guys who are emotionally healthy but also are generally attractive to women. Or they have a few experiences when they’re younger and extrapolate a whole world view out of it. Either way it doesn’t represent a full picture of reality. At bare minimum, it doesn’t account for my personal experience.

Do you think you’ve made a shadow out of some of these “toxic” qualities? From my perspective, this Lose/Lose situation of “I can only be attractive or emotionally healthy” does not exist. It is possible to achieve both. But it sounds like you feel it has to be one or the other, which of course will generate feelings of resistance towards both.

I would consider that the essence of Leo’s teachings is that you can answer these questions for yourself. In fact, not only can you answer these questions for yourself, you must. Because any answer Leo can give you will not ultimately satisfy you. You need your own experience and contemplations. Use Leo as a resource and potential guide, not as the holder of truth that then is passed on to you if you’re lucky enough.

Well there’s definitely a lot of personal preference involved in heading that route. I can’t tell what is right for you. Mixing and mastering and even production can often be outsourced at reasonable prices. And it will take years to deeply learn those skills. So personally that would be at the bottom of my list. Unless your music is heavily electronic driven, in which case production / mixing / mastering is obviously a bigger component.