Snader

I don't know how deep this issue goes with you and how much you've already worked with it, but first I would recommend 2 great books, if you haven't already read them: 1) The Six Pillars of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden. It's a great book to fix the core issues of the low self-esteem you seem to have. It was a killer for me to bring on the confidence and trust in myself I needed, when I was in a process of leaving from a long term relationship. 2) After reading that, I would read Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics. For me it was crucial to fuel my new life after I broke up and started to heal and rise from the ashes and started a new kind of life. Like I said, I don't know about you, maybe the problems with you stems from deeper, and to get a handle of that might need a bit different methods than reading a book or two.

It's great to be honest with yourself! There's no shame in withdrawing to sharpen your sword, especially when your success very well depends on the sharpness of your sword. You made the right call, and if you didn't, you'll learn something crucial, which will make it the right call

Sounds great! World will need more quality spiritual practice teachers as there will be even more demand in the decades to come. I don't know where you're at, but I assume you still have long way to fully embody that goal of yours. I would start cutting that into pieces. I would start thinking about; what skills (social, psychological, spiritual) do I need to pull this off? What are the basic fundamental elements of a good meditation teacher? In which aspects of life I still need to work on and develop further? What about the logistical and financial side? Maybe I need to do more research? After that I would start making a plan on how to acquire those skills and meet the requirements on every aspect. Being a respected meditation teacher is an ambitious goal (still definitely attainable), so to get the requirements in place, it might take quite a lot work. Getting some aspect on point might take years or decades of practice. That's why I would think about the requirements and start coming up with smaller visions and goals, or just one goal at a time. Think about a goal, a job or a way of living which also requires some of those skills, but in a smaller scale. Maybe something more conventional, but which would still be aligned with your values. Start pursuing that goal, and you will learn a lot and get closer to becoming fully ready to fulfill that beautiful vision, while having a sense of purpose all the time.

Basically more you go into Tier 2, more unconventional your job in society will be. Most profit seeking institutions and organizations have systems which will not tolerate Yellow thinking, and those systems are mostly created and maintained by Tier 1 people of course. But there are some more conventional professions where you can find people with more or less Yellow traits. Examples could be like a holistic doctor or a good non-biased consultant. Although those too are pretty rare.

That's a great point! For many people this forum is probably only a source of information and diverse perspectives. You can learn hell of a lot by only observing people's behavior here, or you can use the search function and look for an answer to a problem you're dealing with. I'm sure many people use this forum that way. Some of us just tend to need the social aspect more, which unfortunately often leads to misuse of the forum, which will cause issues, such as those which are discussed here.

Didn't really want to post more than my condolences on this thread but couldn't help myself. For what I know this might be the right call for you. I've seen how much you spend time on this forum and even though it's really appreciated and boosts the agenda of this forum, I find it's ridiculous, as there is so much other things you could put your time and energy into. From the big picture perspective I think your creative input would be most efficiently utilized on other domains such as improving science and maybe working on your new ways of teaching in the future. What you are trying to do with science as an example, will have much bigger and more positive impact on the society and mankind at large in the long run, than answering people's questions, although that's useful too. So you spending more time on that would be a blessing. Anyway, if you ever make the choice of withdrawing from the forum, I think it would be a huge mistake to close the forum completely, if there is a possibility to keep it up running with moderate effort. You've already gathered a superb team of moderators, whom I think would have nothing against taking more responsibility on the forum for the sake of keeping it healthy and clean. I think this community will be really efficient for 10s of years to come (of course if moderated really strictly) as this is one of a kind, so it would be a crime to take it down, saying from perspective of someone who finds shitloads of value from it. Of course you do what you want to do and you have no obligations whatsoever to even make a decision that would elevate consciousness or be most beneficial to mankind or whatever. You are completely free to do what you want, and I think you also personally intend to give more room to your personal desires in the future, which is amazing. And with personal desires I don't directly mean ego. I said nothing you don't already know, but just wanted to show my concern for your possible intention. I also know you don't really care about gratitude and you're more like trying to avoid getting flattered by it, but I find it tremendously admirable how patient and tolerant you are with people here, and reading your replies on this thread astounded me once again. You nerves are made of titan and that's something that really inspires me. I work with difficult customers almost daily and I thought I'm really patient, but by observing the feedback, challenging, criticism you face and the same questions like day after day, etc. I can say I would've packed my things and left the fuck out of here a long time ago if I were you AND I'M NOT BLAMING ANYBODY PERSONALLY, I'M GUILTY OF THAT TOO! Also the selfless and unbiased way you present facts and bring on your agendas and motivations is truly a clear embodiment of Integrity while it oozes compassion while being brutal and cold at the same time. I love it.

I am so sorry for your loss. A horrific consequence of misunderstanding spiritual work has happened and there is a lot to be learned from this. My prayers go to the little ones and the rest of the family.

When you awaken and you try to go check your attachments.

When I was 6 years old I had an experience at dentist where the dentist's partner held me on the chair by force while the dentist removed a teeth out of my mouse. I cried and begged them to let me go but they wouldn't. That caused me to suffer from a serious dentophobia for a long time. I avoided dentist by all cost and when I really had to go fix something I was given nitrous oxide as well. I avoided dentist till adult age until one of my tooth got infected and I had to go treat it. At that point I decided to bite the fucking bullet and go there like a motherfucking bad ass. I took total beast mode and went there as calm as zen and told them to do what's needed. I kinda wanted to try counter-intuitiveness in action. That experience was a game changer. It didn't yet cure my phobia completely, but by doing that I decided I could as well start the process of fixing my teeth completely and after that start a yearly habit of going to dentist. So I did that and after 1,5 years and several operations my mouth was clean and totally functional, and man that felt good. During that process I got rid of the phobia completely and it's close to a pleasant experience for me to go to a dentist nowadays, knowing that it's all for my health. It felt -- and actually still feels -- weird afterwards how something could have been so horrific and trigger fear in me like nothing else, which now has no component of fear whatsoever. What I would suggest is to accept the situation as it is and understand that it's all for your health and you are in hands of professionals who want the best for you. It feels bad now, but afterwards it feels amazing. Try letting that thought motivate you. I asked my dentist and he said that none of what they use nowadays contain dangerous heavy metals, and haven't for years. Although I live in a fancy Scandinavian country where the regulations must be top-notch, but if I recall correctly, he was being pretty global about it.

You might be too weak to follow your ideals or too lazy to roll your sleeves up (which could also be the symptom of the first point), and for that you use girls as a distraction. I've personally had some romances which I've ended as I've become conscious of the subtle and sneaky self-deceptions working on me through intimate relationships. After introspective contemplation and rising up from the ashes, I've found that it's been the lack of meaning and purpose in my life that has caused all that. No question about that, it's crystal clear to me now. And I don't mean every relationship is a distraction by any means, not at all. They can be uplifting and beautiful, but in my case it was about regressing to more toxic SD Orange type of relationships. Another perspective would be that you are just searching for oneness and union, and the most familiar source to you might be women. This also assumes that you might be suffering from lack of direction in life. You as a man and a divine creature look for unity, and when your in a big need of it, you may end up looking for that in women and relationships. Your higher self can tap into that sense or feeling of unity through many different ways, but your lower self might only know one.

I do a combo of sauna and swimming in an ice cold water once a week during winter time and I've noticed nothing but positive benefits both mentally and physically. Though I don't dip my head in the water too often. I've heard it's not wise to do so but haven't done any research on it.

Too much consciousness ?

I bet ya. That was a crime...

Must feel better than hearing Don Beck voting for Trump

You don't know the lottery numbers because you wanted yourself not to know the numbers. If you wanted to know the numbers you would know them. It's that simple. Sounds weird, but you can get directly conscious of that and when you do, all you can do is laugh. And then you laugh even more because you just realized that you wanted yourself to know that fact about the lottery numbers and burst into laughter for that, and so on... everything that happens makes sense, you see you designed it all. You designed yourself to be right there where you are right now reading this comment.

Try using your personality traits into your advantage more and more by doing more things where INTP's strengths shine. Chances are that you might develop a taste for those traits that you think are the cause of your loneliness. It's good to remember that you have abilities that other people wish they had and by cultivating those abilities properly great things will happen. It's of course important to contemplate that feeling of loneliness, to get to the root of it. Maybe it's not about friends, maybe it's something else. If it really is the lack of friends that's making you sad, then you simply need to push yourself more into social situations and make new friends, like universe said, start doing things that other like-minded people who are willing to socialize do. Anyway, it sounds like that loneliness is moving you towards more honest and authentic lifestyle. So trust the process, it might all be part of the plan.

Thanks! that was helpful. I will check some of those apps. I quickly checked the Anki app he talked about in the beginning of the video and I think I might be able to use that with my routine to come.

Hey all! So, I'm interested in starting a consistent habit of learning English vocabulary for the sake of being able to fluently read English books with more unconventional vocabulary and expressing myself more diversely, and would like to hear some ideas for effective learning. I know I could learn a lot and fast if I invested like an hour into learning every day, but I don't have time and interest to do so. I'm aiming far ahead by looking for a method with 5-15 min investment per day and let consistency do its magic. About 2 years ago I tried some methods such as: Tried underscoring words from books and writing the words on a post it note 1 word per note with the translation on the other side. Did classic memorization by flipping the notes, flipping 5 words a day for 5 minutes. Did that Mon-Fri and on Sat I put all 25 words on the table and flipped them until I got em all right. Sunday would go by arranging new notes for the next week. I did that for like 200-300 words until I decided to take all the old notes and pull out words randomly, which took me to the realization that I don't remember shit. I remembered less than 50% of the words, which isn't effective enough. And I didn't feel I really remembered them, I had to dig them from the deep end of my memory, they didn't come out naturally like I would've wanted to. This method just seemed to be too dull and ineffective. I feel like I need to titillate my brain more with the word by approaching this with a whole different strategy to learn the words properly. Tried some phone applications. They were nice, because I could do the work while taking my morning shit and they also had pronunciation feature with every word, which shortened my learning curve nicely. There was just one big error with every app I tried. In example they give you a round with 20 words where you need to fill in the letters to complete the word. The unfortunate part is that I already knew like 80% of the words asked so again I wasted so much time speed typing most of the words. So again, not effective enough. Tried Vocabulary.com. I don't remember why I quit that, it must have been a bit stiff or something... (see the irony with my amazing memory). Tried checking dictionary every time an unknown word appeared while reading a book or watching a video or whatever. This method is shit, interrupts my attention too much. So any suggestions are warmly welcome. I'm sure there is some killer methods out there that I'm just dismissing. I'm willing to try all kind of methods until I find one that suits my stupid ass brain The point is to keep it quick and simple per day, maybe can work for it a little extra on one day a week or something like that, but consistency is the thing I'm after here.

Can't do that. If I kept my attention on spotting words I can't directly translate, my reading speed would slow down A LOT and I couldn't get into flow. Normally if there is an unknown word in the middle of a sentence -- especially a word I've read before somewhere -- the context is usually strong enough for me to understand what was being said. And if I didn't, then my mind would alert and I'd need to check the translation right away. It's exactly the frequency of this checking process I want to minimize by learning more vocabulary -- when it comes to reading books.

The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston was a game changer for a 21 year old me who was into basic self-help and was becoming more and more curious about spirituality. Ralston is a lot like Leo, he goes straight into business and awakens the curiosity of his students/readers to make them go deeper by themselves through contemplation and direct experience. Just what I needed at the time.

@SamC Will definitely check those out. Thanks!

Maybe if that's something you really want and you can see yourself doing that for the next 10 years at least. Investigate how necessary the degree really is. A motivated person can create A LOT in 4 years and after all it's the value you provide that define your market value, but I also understand a degree gives benefits when competing and hustling in crowded market. And sure as hell it gives security, but if that security is needed, are you really ready to put in the shit load of work?

I don't think so.

Well, at that age you don't even need to think about psychedelics yet. As you are already wise enough to see for yourself, they would most likely be dangerous to you. Keep educating yourself and contemplating life and when you are 20 years old you will already be wiser than 99,9% of people. They might have some wisdom behind those words. It's important to keep both sides of the coin in your mind. Drugs might not be the way, especially for you. You keep up your progressive attitude and you will become a superstar without any drugs Also, even society is a great creation and it helps us a lot, keep being careful with its conditioning. You will experience lot's of it and it will test you from many different angles. Keep thinking for yourself and educating yourself with non-ideological information sources such as Actualized.org.

It's amazing you are willing to work on that! There are ways to enhance that ability but for what I've noticed when dealing with people, it is very personal. Maybe a good life coach could help you with that. There are also some really important concepts about life that help you to make sense of this weird puzzle we call life. That's what Leo does, he teaches those concepts and shows how they all play together. So watching his videos certainly helps too. This is probably not practical for you, but for the pic picture; I've personally found psychedelics to be a killer with staying on track. Psychedelics have opened my mind a lot to some crazy amazing possibilities, and when life keeps testing me -- in example pulling me back to old non-productive habits -- I can quickly sense some deep wisdom on why I'm doing what I'm doing and also inspiration towards what I want to become. It's useful especially if you have a higher vision and are a bit hesitant about it because of social conditioning or whatever. I'm writing this assuming you haven't done psychedelics. I'm also not advocating or saying you should start. Maybe you never should or maybe it's still to come for you in the future. And if/when you will, make sure you've educated yourself enough. Leo also has great videos about doing them responsibly. Anyway, no matter how you improve yourself, you will always backslide. Just make sure you always get back up and work for the next backslide! Everyone backslides and your power is measured by your capability to get up and beat the shit out of life again and again and again.