TheAlchemist

Consider if it's useful to view it in such a black/white way. You seem to only see dickheads/fuckboys and nice guys. If you want to figure it out, you can look into the nuances more. Why do you think women are attracted to the dickhead? Maybe they are not attracted to being treated like shit and abused, maybe they are attracted to some small element of the dickheads personality, such as their confidence and assertiveness. And the spineless nice guy has none of that so of course there is no attraction. You can be confident and assertive while being a nice and kind person, that's just an incredibly rare combination to have because almost nobody is doing the work to become that. So it is not so black and white. A common progression: Spineless niceguy --> manipulative pickup master --> authentic integrated man The authentic integrated man integrates the assertiveness and confidence of the asshole with the tenderness of the nice guy and drops the mask, because that's what he is when he is authentic. And that authenticity is what attracts.

We can make the observation that there are people with "penises" and people with "vaginas" and people with something in between. We can make the observation that we have people who produce a large amount of small reproductive cells (sperm) and people who produce small amounts of larger reproductive cells (egg cells). We can observe that we have people with a more submissive and some people with a more dominant sexual nature. In the west we have given these observations the meaning that there are 2 distinct genders, and these two genders have certain tendencies and should behave in a certain way. We have many cultures where the model is not the same, some cultures have 3 genders or a mixed genders for example. Nowhere inherent in biology is it somehow coded that there is only a woman and a man. That is something we literally imagined up. Those are social contructs, those are models and generalizations that we have built out of the observations we have made. But the map is not the territory. We can simply just imagine up a new model if we want to, we can give a totally new meaning to these observations if we want to. We can even totally abolish the term gender if we find that it is not relevant or useful anymore. That is the power of culture, the issues arise when we take the model and our generalizations to be some natural law, something that cannot be reinterpreted or reimagined. When somebody says they are transgender or non-binary or something and you feel uncomfortable with that, it's simply because it goes against your model of reality that you have been programmed into. At the absolute, all these distinctions are probably just a joke. But even at the "relative" level I think the relevance of gender can be questioned.

@Elevated If we want to view game from the lens of spiral dynamics, I think looking at the values behind doing game is most important. Are you creating me win/you lose, me win/ you win or me win/you win/society win situations? Natural game can happen at any level, many guys who are living from stage red values are very natural, they don't even think about game. Natural game is just getting so good at the process of attraction that it becomes a part of you and it's no longer a conscious process. Attraction is a process so would there really be a stage green/yellow/orange/blue version of attraction? The same basic principles and progression applies (in general), what changes is the values behind the action.

Some skillful nerd should draw a system diagram for this. Maybe getting laid/attraction could be modelled at different stages of the process in a helpful way. Stuff like: Is she in logic mode? Yes --> use this skill, do this or learn how to do this to create fun. No --> next step Is eye contact being made? Yes/No Are slight touches being shared? Yes/No Is she smiling/laughing? Yes/No Is she leaning away or towards you or is she neutral? a) Leaning away? --> give her space. b) Leaning towards? --> escalate Neutral? --> spike emotions and ping her responsiveness with touch or flirting until a or b. Pre-approach checklist: Do you smell nice? Yes/No Are you dressed appropriately? Yes/No Do you have a unique perspective to share? Yes/No Do you believe you can make this woman's life better? Yes/No Identify sticking points, create suitable fun processes for training them and for testing your progress then re-evaluate.

Interesting ? Brexit was also a rural phenomenon

People often feel shit after fapping because they have internalized shame related to it. It might be completely unconscious, it can even manifest as physical symptoms if it is really powerful. This is especially common if you had a religious upbringing, or anyone told you fapping is somehow disgraceful. You start believing it deep down, then you find the nofap communities online that say you are ruining your brain and depleting your life force etc. which will just feed the shame further. This internalized shame of big groups of people often gets projected onto those teachings. People get very attracted to it because it validates their internal repression and denial of sexuality resulting from the internalized shame. So much of it is about the framing, the narrative you tell yourself about it. If you tell yourself "oh I'm being a cooming loser just expelling my life force and ruining my brain when I cum", of course you will feel depleted and like total crap. You start repressing and denying your sexual urges, thinking they are "evil" or something, which will just hurt you even more. But you might just as well frame it like "I am having an orgasm as the universe itself celebrating the beauty of it all and expanding my consciousness further using this deep state of bliss". How would you feel after that? It might be something totally different for you, but having talked to hundreds of people in the nofap community I realized that for most people, the shame is the real issue, not the fapping itself. Work with the shame, and suddenly the desire to fap compulsively starts disappearing, because it is not needed as a coping mechanism for all the shame. Just shifting the frame around fapping can also make the negative effects disappear quite quickly and you might realize that you were the one creating all that suffering all along.

Only a true conservative would try to make laws and rules out of chaos. Kind of like acknowledging that yes, chaos is necessary, but we must tame the beast and "civilize" it by bringing more rules, concepts and order to it.

This made me appreciate the power of art. These albums can take you on an experiential journey of total deconstruction of the sense of self. Here is the collection in one piece.

Catalogue of businesses/projects I have tried so far from age 18 to 23: Many of these have failed, but some have succeeded, so feel free to ask me about any of these if you are interested: 2015: Affiliate marketing blog 2016 - 2017: Repairing iPhones and reselling them 2019: Porn addiction coaching 2020: TikTok social experiments 2020: Matched betting 2020: Print on Demand t-shirt business 2020: Digital photocopying service for elderly people 2020: Smart tool/product lending service (crossed out = idea scrapped)

"Do not go gentle into that good night" is a poem by Dylan Thomas that has helped me a lot over the years. It has given me fuel to keep going in times of deep desperation and it has given me courage to be more bold and take bigger risks in the things that really matter to me. I decided to start this journal after having gone through a few weeks of massive ego backlash/self sabotage. Before I go into that I will do a short recap of some relevant things: 16-year old me: Extremely social anxious, very skinny, completely lost with women, deeply addicted to porn, feeling of no control in my life, feeling isolated, lonely, my best friend turned against me, completely lost in life, no idea of my purpose, raised by evangelical Christian parents, deep feelings of shame Now I am 22 years old, what has happened since? I first got into self-improvement, started doing surface level stuff taking cold showers, lifting weights, eating better, facing my fears, pickup, comfort zone challenges, public speaking, university, studying myself and my tendencies. I also travelled on my own a lot which rapidly grew me as a person, I hitchhiked around Europe on my own and backpacked in Asia. In the past few years I got into more inner work. Emotional release techniques, meditation, psychedelics, inner child work and figuring out my purpose. I realized that I dont want to be a wage slave which led to starting a business and learning how to make money online a few months back. Now I'm gonna write about the past few months and the ego backlash I'm going through atm. June 2019 I intentionally didn't take a job for the summer break from university so I could focus on learning how to make money online for the next 4 months. I got into a course be Sam Ovens which was recommended to me by a friend who is making lots of money online. I didn't want to just make money but do something meaningful so I figure the perfect niche for me was Porn addiction recovery. I had struggled with it myself for years and I felt like I had a lot of knowledge of that market and how to help people. At this point I had been free from porn for about 4 months and with only a few slip ups in the past year. So I believed I had a grip on it. I started the business full of fear, I registered the company, made a website and started reaching out to potential clients. New habits: Started daily meditation with the Waking Up app, daily affirmations and daily gratefulness practice. July 2019 Kept moving forward with the business. Meditation starting to bring some results. A mushroom trip that shook things up. I realized I can only find answers inside me, not outside me. Did social comfort zone challenges in public almost daily. August 2019 Kept going with the client outreach, got a free client to test things on. Pretty much smooth sailing Present - Backlash I decided I will be honest with my journal so here goes: University started again. For the past week I have struggled with complete ego backlash. I skipped some daily meditations that I had been doing for almost three months every day. I have been skipping the gym, skipping meals, procrastinating for days on end and isolating myself from other people. Heres the most difficult part: I also have had a complete relapse to porn. This has effectively destroyed a lot of my dreams of making the online business work. I cannot be authentic in teaching others how to quit porn if I am still struggling with it myself. So I have to put that whole project on hold for now. I feel like a part of me is trying to tear down every single thing I made progress in over the summer. This past summer I experienced more rapid progress than ever before in my life and the self sabotage is also stronger than ever before. Now I am kind of lost and in a rut. I know things go up and down in this world of duality, but it still doesn't make the down part easier. Now it's time for awareness and some intense self-reflection. What part of me is it that doesn't want me to succeed? How can I give it some love and attention without it having to tear down my life to get it? I will be reflecting on these questions and getting back to this journal when I have something. Peace

Update - October 12 2020 Woah what a year it has been.. A lot has happened since the last update. Actually, everything has changed.... 1. Quitting the porn addiction coaching business The business I started a year ago ended up being very little about the external and very much about the internal. I hit a brick wall. I self-sabotaged the shit out of myself and basically forced the business to fail. This forced me to go inward and face the things that were stopping me and all of my own internal dysfunction and bullshit. 2. Facing my own demons, deep inner work I was faced with having to radically change my view on things if I wanted to move forward. I was forced to go deep inside, way deeper than the surface level "porn addiction". I was forced to learn about real self-love and eventually I realized there was no way out except radical self-acceptance. I basically had to bring the beast of "porn addiction" to the surface to examine it, analyze it and finally integrate it. I did shadow work, journaled, talked to my inner child, talked to my shadow, meditated, took psychedelics and eventually I realized that there was something deeper going on here, porn was not the problem. I stopped being ashamed of watching porn and ta daa! it stopped running my life! I stopped binging on it excessively and I stopped feeling like shit about my sexuality. Who would have thought? For 3 years I was "fighting" the porn addiction, when all I had to do was to love and accept myself for it not to be a problem anymore! So simple, yet so difficult to embody when you have tied your identity around fighting this "evil" thing that you have imagined...... So basically, I left the porn addiction niche because it was so toxic with religion induced shaming and such deep rooted beliefs about being a bad person for fapping etc.. I cannot support people denying and trying to suppress their sexuality, and I don't have the expertise to make these fundamental root level identity shifts in reality for people. That is the only way out of that mess of toxic shame......... From September 2019 to August 2020 I focused mostly on myself, because I knew that if I don't go deep within I will just self-sabotage even more. 3. New business - Truth: The "universe" cheers on for courage Throughout the summer I was thinking about my life purpose and I was figuring out what to really do with my life etc. Something was not right though.. I was feeling very lethargic, very unenergetic, no passion and no desire for challenge. I just expected that when I figure out my life purpose, then I will be passionate and have tons of energy. But that didn't seem to give me any energy for now... So one day I met one of my friends/mentors, and he said something that stuck with me. He told me it's better to get you hands dirty and do something, that way you will gain momentum and you will learn much more about yourself than infinitely analyzing about stuff... So an opportunity presented itself. Two of my friends who are great business people asked me to join them in starting a new business. I decided to stop analyzing my life and start living it and said yes, even though I didn't feel ready at all... It has been a wild ride already these past few months. Things have happened that I never though would be possible. I have put myself in highly uncomfortable situation, high pressure situations, but they don't beat me down in the same way they did before. There is now a deeper level to rely upon, all the self acceptance stuff is there. My self-worth is no longer tied to this external thing, and that feels liberating. Incredible things have happened, doors have opened for us in places that we never knew they existed. I have felt that fiery passion inside me light up again and I am feeling very inspired at the moment. I know this feeling is passing, but it's great to at least have it back in the catalogue after over a year of apathy. This is what it's about, I need a balance between immersion and analysis. If I am too much in the analysis side of things, I fall into apathy, if I'm too much on the side of immersion, I self-destruct. But now I feel like I can handle way more immersion than before. A year of meditation and all that shadow work and psychedelic reflection has allowed it. I see that in a phase of "analysis" the benefits of meditation and shadow work are not that clear, but they become crystal clear in a state of "immersion". They build resilience, the storms don't whoop your ass so bad anymore. I am starting to trust myself that I will be able to thrive under massive pressure. When I have to pitch at an event, or I am put on the spot I often find myself having a calm, internal smile. Knowing that I am enough no matter what happens, there is always meditation and the present moment to rely upon.. The present moment always cradles us, we just have to remember it's there... I don't know what will happen with this endeavor, but I trust it is the right path because I trust my intuition more now. It might not make logically sense for me to go into this, but I feel it is a necessary step for me. I need to learn the art of business, that is an essential life skill that I can build further curiosities onto. See you now, future me

I found this very interesting and I didn't see it posted here before. What do you think? Source: https://www.themasculineman.com/compatibility-matrix/

@K Ghoul That's a good idea! Using CO2 emissions as an indicator as to how nations embody environmental values in their actions is really good because it is data that is available for all the countries I will research. I think I will focus on a ton of countries and see if development in environmental values is reflected in the environmental policy of the country and its CO2 emissions. Maybe the way to solve all these environmental issues is to aid countries and individuals in their development towards greater holism through the stages, so it would be really meaningful to also attach this to the developmental theories. This opens up a lot of interesting paths to take this type of research. Really excited about this now! Thanks a ton for the idea

Excellent insight into the Blue worldview from Pastor Sempa

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh with over 1 million bike rickshaws. These hard working drivers make about 5$/day. I visited this country a couple of years ago and the people there are some of the most genuine and friendly I have ever met.

The issue is not police brutality, that is just a very surface level symptom of many deep and systemic issues. The black population has gotten left behind in education, work and they are stuck in poverty. Poverty keeps communities stuck in a cycle of crime and the struggle has many people in these communities resort to drugs as a coping mechanism. Drug addiction and the war against drugs plays a key role, because these people get arrested for nonviolent drug offenses and are sent to jails and prisons, which basically force you to become a violent criminal by having to join a gang etc. Rates of violent crime are significantly higher in blacks and that can cause a bias when police are interacting with them. The police are also concerned with their own survival as much as anyone else and they are subject to unconscious stereotyping, (although deliberate racism definitely seems to exist within the police). This is just one example of the probably dozens of systemic issues in the U.S that this is just a symptom of. Some possible systemic issues that this is a symptom of: A prison system that doesn't aim to rehabilitate and profits from keeping people in. War on drugs which gets people into cycle of crime Lack of oversight on police forces, minimal training of police Large amounts of guns in the general population, which causes police to have a highly sensitive trigger finger Lack of public preschool which would even out the playing field for education. It is not helpful in any way or for anyone to say that the ONLY cause of this problem is systemic racism or police brutality. We need to accurately diagnose the issue if we want to solve it. Outrage can actually make things worse by focusing on the wrong problem, although the emotional reaction people are having is totally understandable..

@Zigzag Idiot That's very interesting. It seems to be true that the sense of being a separate self only stays alive because we believe in the reality of the "negative" emotions. Fear tends to be retractive/restrictive and Love seems to be expansive. So the only way we hold "ourselves" together is by believing the fear which is necessary for the illusion to exist. By letting go of the insistence on fear being real we are released into the base state of infinite Love. Let me know if this sounds right from the course perspective, I'm a new student

@The observer My intuition based on some spiritual experiences is more on the side of love being the fundamental thing, that's why I spoke to you because you have a different view, my aim was to not be confrontational in any way but I guess I didn't succeed in that. I just felt like you were being completely dismissed by everyone so my aim was to point out that your view could also be right and bring some kind of balance between the two sides here.

@The observer I do see what you're saying and I think it is entirely possible. Honestly we have no idea, just arguing at the level of words is never going to result in anything. Only experience can tell us the reality of it and if what you said is your experience, who are we to dispute your direct experience? I am open to the possibility of what you are saying to be true, but I also think it would be fair for you to entertain the possibility that there is a deeper level of understanding. But of course it's your choice. I wish you all the best on your journey!

A very fun video about the road to stage yellow with art and music typical to each stage

The insistence on the reality of fear and suffering is precisely what keeps it alive. We must hold on to the reality of it or otherwise it dies. And of course the fear is like an entity of itself, it is afraid of losing it's identity. A month ago I experienced something I would say is a miracle. I was extremely deep in anger and suffering in my apartment almost breaking stuff because I was so intensely furious. But then, suddenly I realized (thanks to A Course in Miracles <3) . That anger was only there because I insisted on it being real. I insisted on holding on to it and I could feel something in my mind being threatened when I started questioning the reality of the anger. I kept questioning and suddenly all the anger just instantaneously disappeared like it was never there and I started laughing and I was suddenly completely filled with absolute joy, peace and love. I just wanted to share this beautiful experience here. For me, fear always feels like a closing down, fear requires resistance and fighting to keep it alive, to keep it real. Love is expansive, it requires only letting go of the illusions. It seems to be more like the base state of everything.

A very important distinction to make here would be between "states" and "stages". You can access the highest states at any stage of development, you will just end up interpreting the states through the framework of that stage. Stages are permanent and states are temporary. If a highly egotistical stage orange person experiences God consciousness, he could very well interpret that as him (and only him) being the messiah and the second coming of Christ. All stages will have their own ways of interpreting temporary peak states. Credits to Ken Wilber

Any ideas on how to plug psilocybin? As far as I understand, it is broken down to psilocin by stomach acids, and that is the molecule that is actually active. So maybe if we make an extract and mix it with lemon juice to activate the psilocin, we could create a psilocin liquid, which could be plugged. What do you think?

@lacsativ Wow this is amazing. Thank you