aurum

I think the actual sex is only part of it. For a lot of us guys, there is a big aspect of validation that can come into it. If you “successfully” pick up a lot of girls, you feel better about yourself. Because that is what is cool and shows you are a desirable man. I remember even back in middle school, it was the guys who were “good with girls” who were respected by other guys and seemed to have the most friends. If girls didn’t like you and didn’t want to hook up with you, then you were a loser and labeled as such. And then through high school and college that only escalated. I’m not saying that’s a healthy way of thinking. But it is a pattern I’ve observed.

Sounds like you and your parents had some additional conversations. Are these their words? Regardless, I think going to college will not be such a bad option. It will give you time to explore and develop yourself. You’ll have fun. And yes you’ll have debt, but if you’re smart you can minimize the damage. I would really consider this not “college” but four years to discover and start working on your LP. Whether it’s engineering or something else, I wouldn’t just think about it as a stepping stone to a job. Think bigger about the whole thing. You have time and you’re not gonna starve. So be strategic. You may not nail down every detail of your LP by the time you graduate, but you can make significant progress if you take it seriously. Your other plan about moving to Miami was dubious. Not saying you couldn’t pull it off, and it’s good that you’re willing to eat shit for your dreams. I lived in Miami for several years doing something similar. But it is a brutal path. College will be gentler.

In my experience, you don’t necessarily need any ritual to talk to the angels or any other guides. Just talk. You can literally just think a thought right now and they will hear you. Or you could speak out loud if you want. This is how the best channels I know do it. It’s just very normal and conversational. More important is learning to listen to them. If you still want a ritual, that’s fine. Rituals can be powerful tools for the mind. I’d create one that has personal significance for you. Something that makes you feel tuned in, relaxed and in a state of receptivity.

I've recommended Slow Sex by Diana Richardson many times. Totally shifted my perspective on sexuality and what the goal of it should be.

Traveling is good, but in my experience you will eventually hit diminishing returns in terms of growth. You’ll most likely want to settle some where and plant roots. The plus is that traveling can expose you to new experience to help you find out what your interests are. So if you feel you just lack experience, this is a good choice. The negative is that traveling won’t really let you commit to anything too deeply. And all the new options you are presented with can actually become overwhelming. So be aware of that.

Then I’d say go for it. I don’t know anything about the coffee business but I’m sure you can carve out some kind of niche.

Seems like a risky business. What is your reason, besides money, to open a coffee stand? Do you just love coffee?

A caveat to everything I’m about to say: my longest romantic relationship has only lasted a couple of years. So I could be talking out of my ass. But in my experience, these sort of novelty experiences don’t have staying power. It’s maybe a bit exciting for how ever long it’s exciting. Then it’s gone, and you’re onto the next novelty kick. Which is not to say you can’t do it. But I think that if you really want to keep things going, you need something deeper than a chocolate dick. What really seems to work is moving into higher consciousness forms of love. That’s a love that isn’t driven by novelty. You may want to research tantric love practices.

@Dumuzzi Interesting post, very thorough. We don’t talk much about deities / light beings on this forum. I suspect the discussion will only really kick up if Leo makes a video about it. But it’s definitely a topic I’m fascinated by. From the non-dual perspective, even higher dimensional light beings / deities are YOU. But from the world of relativity, they’re quite unique and intriguing. Especially if you grew up believing such beings did not exist.

Didn’t you say you went on a date with her? How did she not possibly know you were interested? Unless it wasn’t really a date. More like just friends hanging out. I am actually very pro just being friends with girls, but not knowing how to assert your needs can be problematic.

Oh yeah, this is relatable. I've taken a bunch of these bullshit, part time jobs to pay the bills. I remember I tried driving Uber once. Didn't last more than a couple of days. I can't even fathom how people do that full time for many years. The reality is this is how our economic system is set up. People don't participate in wage slavery for the fun of it, they do it because they have to. Those experiences gave me a lot more appreciation for everyday, "regular" working people. As well as more egalitarian, politically progressive policies. My advice would be to just slug it out as best you can. Yes, it's going to suck. Just put your head down, do your work the best you can, and then go home and focus on your passion projects.

I’ve also tried a bunch. I can’t really say which the best one, they all seem good to me. And of course every teacher says their breathwork practice is the best. I’d say find one that you’ll be consistent with and resonates with you. That’s likely the most important factor.

It happened to me at the very least. Not saying my life is perfectly peachy now, but it certainly was much more unstable and uncertain a few years ago when I decided to take a gamble as well. I’d say it’s only been in the last two years that I’ve really started to find some stability. The thing is, the unknown and chasing your dreams / LP go hand in hand. Anything that is just handed to you by society, and therefore is all planned out, is unlikely to be your LP. But there is a sense of feeling safety that can come with that. Your LP typically plays outside the lines. It doesn’t follow any set path. And so there’s a lot more unknown factor involved. And it can be a lot less financially rewarding upfront, which only adds to the instability.

Consider this constructive criticism. I could not take your videos seriously. There were obvious misinterpretations in them as well as an unfounded accusation about Leo doing this to sell his LP course. Even if you do have some points and Leo has said somethings that were less than wise, it’s hard to see when you’ve already made so many errors. If you want your criticism to be taken seriously by this community, then I’d suggest you do serious research. That doesn’t guarantee I or anyone else will still agree with you, but I’d think I’d at least be more open to what you had to say. I have plenty of my own criticisms of things Leo has said in the past.

@Terell Kirby Yellow is going to be tough to fine en masse. Green is more realistic. Keep moving up the spiral and you’ll naturally tend to attract people at the same level as yourself.

@goldpower123 All I know is that once I started drinking water consistently, I never went back. It’s been years since I drank anything else, outside of green smoothies / juicing. Water is magic.

@MDMD Of course, because you exist within a toxic, stage orange system. To succeed within that system requires being toxic stage orange to a certain degree. You don’t just get to buck the system. If everyone could just buck the system, they would. The reality is many people have no choice. That’s how the whole thing maintains itself. That said, you can pursue ideals higher up the spiral. But it may require you to play the stage Orange a bit. The challenge here is this: how do you reap the benefits of participating in the stage orange system without getting stuck in its toxic aspects? How do you not “sell out”? This is not an easy question with an easy answer. I’m still not sure I’ve found the balance myself. And undoubtably it will be different for each person. The key here seems to have a strong vision and to really know yourself. That will keep you grounded in your values as much as possible. Surround yourself with positive, higher consciousness influences.

Breathwork is the absolute fastest thing I know. Works every single time. In ~30 seconds you can be in a completely different state. Your situation is a good lesson for how real devilry takes place. It isn’t necessarily some outside dark forces that are attempting to get us. Devilry can be your parents, in their distorted love, trying to fill with you anti-vaccine conspiracies. So wrapped up in their own fear that they may end up hurting others.

The problem with this question is that it still frames survival as most important. And more specifically, human survival. This is of course normal as survival is part of our function. A climate poses a potential threat to that, which triggers us. But could we also ask better questions? Could we ask: are we in alignment with our highest values regarding our relationship to the earth? Could we ask: will we survive into a world worth living? Could we ask: does the earth and everything in it have inherent value? I’m not saying these are easy questions or I have the answers. But I feel by asking them, we get the mind going in a much different direction than pure survival mode. The goal of actualization work is to thrive, not simply get by.

There is probably some amount of “clean up” we can expect to do in our own lives if we want to attract a great relationship. At the same time, I sometimes feel like we place too much emphasis on this in the spiritual community. The reality is we are not supposed to be in relationships with perfect beings. They are supposed to have flaws, and part of being in a relationship is working that out. In fact, relationships are one of the primary tools that we can use to grow and heal. They challenge us and can help us find a sense of belonging. The world is going to be a very lonely place if everyone has unrealistic expectations for themselves and others. Many people want to cut and run at the first sign of any red flag. That could be a healthy expression of boundaries, but sometimes it’s an obsession with independence. Given that most of us on this forum have probably done a lot of work on ourselves, I think you’re likely in the clear.

That’s interesting. I feel I have this assumption that the more woke you go, the better it gets. Yes you have to surrender the ego, and that of course can be extremely challenging. But who wouldn’t want to go as woke as they can in one life time? At the same time, if God wanted to be woke, God could be woke. So sleep must have its purpose. The ego of course wants to win the prize of achieving the most wokeness and reach the end goal. In practice I think you are right. No one can ultimately force you to awaken or not awaken. So we will awaken to the degree that is right for us. If someone chooses to go more woke, that will be a choice they make.

Do you believe that "full wokeness" is even a worthy goal for most people in this lifetime? You've said that you do not believed you have achieved this, nor have I seen you mention any other spiritual master who has. Obviously any sense of a personal, egoic goal would be obliterated by then, but I think you get my point. Is this something you recommend for us to seek? I suspect most of us are struggling to even get to "1% wokeness".

It's not normal at all. It's only normal for PUAs trying to do cold approach, which is not how dating is typically done. If I'm remembering correctly, I've already given you my advice on this topic. You need to make friends and build a social circle. I understand that may not be an option given that it's lockdown, but you can't really be surprised then when girl after girl flakes on you. If you are intent on going through with the solo cold approach thing, I think it's foolish, but there are likely some things you can do to reduce flaking. 1) Make sure you are texting her right away as soon as you get her number. A simple "Hey it's StarStruck from X" is usually enough. She should text back, especially if she just gave you her number. Now when you text her for your date, she sees who you are and that she replied earlier to you. Some PUAs even send a picture so the girl remembers. I've never done that, but you can experiment. 2) If the date is more than a couple of days out, you can't just wait until that day to contact her. That's basically a guaranteed flake. Keep in contact with her during the week leading up to the date. And keep it light & fun, you're just keeping the connection alive. 3) Schedule dates earlier. Usually the sooner after you just got her number the better. The more days in between, more of the chance that you're getting dropped. 4) Another sneaky PUA move you can do is on the day of the date, you text her "hey I'm going to be like 30 minutes late, can we push until X time?". The reason being that this gives the girl a chance to flake on you and cancel if she was going to do so, without you wasting your whole day. 5) Make sure your dates are convenient and low commitment. As much as I might dislike our modern flakey dating culture, what I've found is that some girls will simply not go on a date with you because it's inconvenient and requires too much investment on her part. She has to drive, or go somewhere she's not familiar, or risk spending two hours on a dinner date that will suck. Ideally she is willing to make that kind of commitment, but good luck with that if you're doing cold approach. I've found it pretty rare unless you had an exceptionally good interaction or the girl just has nothing better to do. Usually you need some of both. 6) Make sure you're getting her on social, not just her phone number. And make sure your social media is good, with regular posts and / stories if you're using Instagram. That's a super easy way for you not to just be another random phone number in her mind, but an actual human being. She can go through all your posts, watch your stories, all with no extra investment or neediness on your part. The flip side of this is that if your social media sucks, then this will backfire. Maybe she thought you were cool during the five minutes on the street, but as soon as she see's your bathroom selfie picture with mirror stains, she's out. So get that going well. If you do all of this you'll definitely up your odds. You will still get many flakes, but just not as many.

@Don Wei It sounds like you’re experiencing the stress of leaping into the unknown. You’ve taken a gamble on your dreams and you don’t know if it’s going to work out or if there’s any light at the end of that tunnel. Things are chaotic, unstable. A grounding practice of meditation could certainly help. Find ways to be calm even within the chaos, so to speak. Get outside, laugh with friends, etc. Inevitably you’re going to want to create a more stable situation. But if that’s not in the cards at the moment, you can still do what you can to ground yourself.

Unfortunately I don’t think it’s that simple. Excess C02 is only a fraction of the damage being caused to the environment right now. It’s arguably not even the most significant, given that the earth could regulate excess C02 in other circumstances. But when you’ve got massive deforestation, soil quality degradation, key species die off, etc etc, excess C02 becomes even more problematic. And it’s not as simple as blaming corporations either. That would be nice. But corporations as just one piece of an extremely complex socio-political-economic system. You can’t just say “it’s the corporations” without the addressing the entire system. But of course addressing the entire system is far more challenging. In fact, it’s not even clear what the solution is at that point, which is quite scary. People talking about using technology like carbon capture machines or blotting out the sun, but do we really have any idea what the consequences of that will be? So far we have a very bad track record of understanding how our technology will affect an incredibly complex system like Earth. There are dangers to climate alarmism. But there’s also dangers to people rolling over and hitting the snooze button. We need to strike a balance. I agree with what @Girzo said, it’s extremely complicated. @Alysssa It is scary to see. Ultimately I feel it’s good that people experience a little bit of fear and frustration, it at least shows they are paying attention. The challenge for those of us who are aware is to eventually go beyond that fear. To be in fear is to still be in ego. You cannot ultimately create environmental harmony from fear, only love can do that.