Roy

This might be taken the wrong way, but I think it makes most sense to stick with someone of your own gender. At least in my experience. Men and woman seem to have a different psychology that fundamentally makes it a little more difficult to "cross the aisle" lets say when communicating, especially deeper vulnerable issues. Men will be able to relate to another mans struggles better then (most) women can, and vice versa. This isn't to say you can't find someone of the opposite gender that is a good match. It's just about relatability. Which in my opinion is the #1 thing when finding a therapist, coach, etc. Find someone you resonate with and is relatable to your experiences and worldview to a degree, then you'll be more accepting for when they challenge you and breakdown any bullshit or obstacles about yourself that you are blind to.

You ARE that good looking guy

It's because it's more punishing for a woman to break out of the social matrix and not follow norms. They will be scorned heavily by other females. Whereas males crossing over social boundaries are seen as mavericks, unique individuals, explorers, etc, and loners at worst. It's a funny coincidence you bring this up, I was actually thinking about this deeply this morning. Specifically about the video game community. Where in this day and age the technology is so common and encouraged because of the pandemic but still massively male dominated. There is really no reason it should be such a one sided domain but it is, because women who play games are considered really weird for playing games and not socializing in a traditional way.

I think this is one of those things that seems like it's really mystical and fascinating, but should already be an obvious intuition we'd have. I mean, if someone gets a freaking HEART transplant I would expect that to change them and their personalities a bit. That's a momentous experience.

I would have figured Tai Lopez was dead by now, killed by cartel in some jungle after being drowned in a cocaine/hooker binge like John McAfee. Guess not. What amazes me about him is his persistence. He has basically got infinite money to go live on some island somewhere and retire and just chill until he dies, but he just keeps concocting one new scam after another lol. Like when do these people ever get bored and hang it up? It's like they are just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's not even about money or power anymore.

@hoodrow trillson "If I have winter tires, the government can track me in the snow."

If telling people who are spreading deadly misinformation to go fuck themselves is "extremism", then yes, consider me a terrorist. Maybe take a moment to reflect on how warped and broken your rhetoric might be if you think that is "dehumanizing". I'm sure there are tons of people who have actually been dehumanized that would appreciate the gesture. If you thought this was a forum that would tolerate anti-vax positions, you are mistaken.

No, the cat is out of the bag. Things will never be quite as they were before. They will probably get closer to how it was before, but it will never be the same. Lots of different countries, provinces/states, and probably cities will all have varying degrees of lockdowns yes. It's a tool that will need to be used unless we want the virus to run completely rampant and overwhelm healthcare infrastructure. Though I'm sure lockdowns will be less common as better vaccinations and other medicines come out, not to mention their growing unpopularity. I'm sure some will. Many will get better at dealing with it over time, and they won't need be overwhelmed if people are responsible and governments actually commit to certain plans and protocols instead of the mass confusion and incompetence we see now. Well it says 4.82 million have died already now but the number is probably in the 6-8 million range or even higher when you consider most of humanity is actually in third world countries that can't report accurate data + bad healthcare infrastructure. So I'd estimate another 2-3 million die per year, for the next few years. Things will get better it will just take some time. In the meantime tell every anti-vaxxer you come across to go fuck themselves for making this pandemic worse and longer than it has to be.

Yes it is unfortunate in some of the ways people are behaving, but you can't really control them, and it's not worth the cost of trying to. So best not to waste energy on it. If they want to learn the hard way and put themselves and others in close relation at increased risk, that's on them. They will be the ones facing the worst of the consequences. If people want to remain ignorant and stupid in face of so much evidence, there is nothing we can do to change that. Just accept it. It should have been obvious from how contagious it is that it was never going anywhere. We are going to have to learn to live with Covid for our lifetimes most likely, and hope that with enough measures it's potency is reduced to more of that like an actual seasonal flu. Improve your health, get vaccinated, follow basic protocols, and just continue living your life.

What? Of course you can. Nobody gives a shit at college. Unless it's a super tight knit quiet house party, you can practically waltz into anywhere you want and you'll hardily ever be questioned.

I won't go into any details, but it was absolutely the worst year of my life in almost every capacity you listed. The only reason I'm still here (alive) is because I know next year can't possibly be worse than this one was so I might as well see how it's going to get better hahaha.

I wonder if Cenk is aware of the irony that TYT is also one of the most biased and delusion filled outlets you could consume in this day and age? They are a pretty prime example of toxic Green. - Cenk has openly denied the Armenian holocaust, as well as apologized for Islamist Terrorism. - Hasan has become a fulltime grifter for annoying online activist lefties. - Ana well, you can just see the righteousness and anger spewing out of her face. The only thing holding it back from exploding is the 4 pounds of makeup she wears every day. But yea it isn't even worth talking about. I don't even know why I am to be honest.

@4201 Fair enough, you are further along than me so I can't help you . I don't understand or grasp non-duality very well, it's like physics and advanced math from high school to me, which I didn't grade well in to say the least.

Well it's hard to say that you "know" if it's good or bad, since that is wildly different for everyone and whatever intentions, desires, goals, or agenda they have. Is it fair to say that is where some of your uncertainty is coming from, because you're worried about how you are acting in comparison to others? Regardless you'll still have to circle back and contemplate your own vision or intentions. Once you have those more or less clear (doesn't have to be perfect), you can contrast what you "think" those feelings are telling you vs what that deeper self (intuition) is telling you. If they seem out of sync in an obvious way then maybe you've got to question that feeling some more, like where it's coming from. Think of feelings more or less as "nudges" to keep you from getting too off track from your deeper self. Have you ever noticed that when you fuck up something in life in a big way that you feel like you got way off track ?

My wisdom to you as a stranger is to consider taking on the principle of never to move backwards trying to get back together with an ex. You only really grow when you move on and learn from your mistakes. It ended with her, and it ended for a reason.

Do you start that cold first thing from your faucet and hop in? I can do cold showers and they seem to help with my skin a lot, but I feel completely uninterested and uncompelled to do them if it's freezing right off the bat. I start semi-warm and lower the temp every 20 seconds until I get to cold cold.

The fear is not only unreasonable, it's preposterous paranoia. It's not just legit millions of people who have been vaccinated, it's billions. Almost half of humanity has been vaccinated. What more of a sample size would one need? They are safe, please get your vaccines people. If they weren't safe we would know about it.

While you can find good things here or there, the structure of a forum like reddit is garbage at it's core. Anything with an upvoting/downvoting system is going to cause people to skew their behavior and conversations because they are constantly seeking validation. You can't reliably pursue any insightful discourse if it runs counter to the broad narrative or doesn't cater to the meta-narrative.

I'm actually dumbstruck and amazed that THIS is the hill so many people are choosing to die on.

So it seems you had a bad personal experience with your roommates, and they sound like unreasonable morons. But we gotta be careful not to extrapolate personal experiences with 1-2 people, onto broad groups of people or organizations. I know it's difficult, but it's important to be tempered emotionally so we don't take any positions that are misinformed or potentially harmful.

It's not that they are absolute things that exist in contrast to each other. Good and evil are literally summoned from nothingness through the purely biased filter of the perspective of the ego. Imagine being a Greek solider despoiling the city of Troy, raping multiple women, slaughtering opposing men, and throwing their children from the walls. Everything you are doing is good from your POV. It's great for you, you are serving your Gods, you are getting the spoils of war from your labor. They are heretics, and you are justice. Everyone does what they do exactly because they think it is good (for them). And anything in opposition to that is "evil". However there is a catch, because it seems there is some kind of what I'll call "lightness" baked into the universe. Where is one moves from ignorance > awareness there is a trend of things being harmed less and less. That doesn't invalidate good and evil being imaginary. What do you know, the universe is paradoxical!

Consider the collective trauma of tens of millions of your people dying to slaughter and starvation, and you can begin to appreciate the psyche of these cultures and regimes. It's no wonder they both developed corrupt authoritative political systems. It wasn't an accident, it was necessity. It's not just something that can be evolved out of so quickly either, even with economic prosperity (Russia is actually a poor country btw). WW2 and the Communist Revolutions shouldn't even be considered "history" yet. They happened still within a lifetime ago. My grandparents were both children in Germany when it was getting occupied towards the end of the war. My Opa told me he used to swim in rain-filled bomb craters with body parts floating beside him when he was 5 years old. And his father died serving in the Luftwaffe, probably bombing the same Russians we are talking about here. There are probably people active on this forum that lived through Mao Zedong's China. Human beings and the way they organize themselves is a complicated ordeal that can't be reduced to GDP or Military spending. Do not make the mistake of confusing power, influence, and wealth, for development and secularization. It's a naïve assumption that they ought to be correlated. Consider the radical possibility that maybe a lot of Chinese people actually like living in a dictatorship.

I haven't tried it but as far as online gurus and self development guys go Clark seems like one of the more genuine and helpful ones that's least likely to scam his clients. I guess the question is how much are you willing to pay. Keep in mind a lot of these informational products online are way way overpriced. So make sure to ask yourself, how truly important is that information to you, and do you think you could piece together the same information by researching it yourself?

If you are in it (the relationship phase) you should naturally be talking every day by now. Just simple stuff like asking how each others day went, not huge phone conversations but enough to show that you are there and you care. Easing back a bit on trying to "woo" her and impress her all the time. Start to show some emotional availability. If she wants to complain about something - listen, if she asks for advice on something - give it. You need to demonstrate you aren't just keeping her around for the fun dates or sex, but her as a person and whatever struggles she has too. The problem is most guys want to skip attraction and jump right into a relationship, which comes off very needy. So the key right now is not to panic, ease into it. Let her come to you and when she does, give her subtle examples to show that you can be her rock. To your second question about maintaining a long term relationship - Don't worry about that right now at all. The thing is you won't know until you are a few months in with her what kind of partner she actually is. It's usually around the 6-8+ month mark after their guard is down in the relationship when you really get to know someone. Then you get a sense of their true qualities and tendencies (the good and the bad) and what kind of potential there is for something long term. This process of learning is accelerated greatly if you live together.

Yes! This! You are on the right track to make progress here. Keep asking questions, deconstruct and burn as much as you can away, and what should be leftover is your authentic desires. From there is where you can start building again and taking action.