Snader

My advice to you is to slow down with the enlightenment process and focus on becoming independent and building a solid financial foundation. It's great you've experienced with psychedelics and that you are interested in spirituality, but there are also real requirements that need to be met if you want to function in society healthy and free way. Enlightenment doesn't pay your bills. You can -- and you should -- still keep doing your consciousness work, but try to see your life as a project and strategically make your personal development a part of your mundane life. Make it work as a snowball effect while you build your independence capital. I know it's easier said than done but metaviewing your situation I feel that would be a key to your life. I'm talking from my own perspective. I made my way to a versatile good salary job with creative capital while doing consciousness work, and now I can grow with good balance, without worrying financial stuff. Enlightenment and psychedelics are not going anywhere. No need to rush the process.

You are not a weird one, no one here is, we only have different perspectives. As an answer coming from deep down, I say no, I wouldn't choose a constant high state life over a slightly painful one, even though my ego would love it. I know you won't understand that and that's okay. I wouldn't be able to explain it to you. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But that's exactly the level of difference in perspectives we are dealing with here. If your body reacts to it, does it mean that you react to it? Are you serious? Where did you come to the conclusion that he did it to show off? You are clearly being self-biased there. That story is from The Book of Not Knowing and you really think that he talks about a surgical operation he just wanted to grind through in a book titled like that? You think there was nothing deeper to that, something like doing self experimentation on himself? Naah man maybe I'm just a naive hippie thinking so, maybe it was just to show off how bad ass he is. He should've taken anesthesia, what a fool... Maybe the book is just about him telling about his day to day life. Ralston would definitely make a good blogger.

It's no bad thing to becoming emotionally attached, as long as you have a safe haven to get back to if thing go south. So in other words working on yourself and having a life purpose or something that grounds you and something you build things -- such as relationships -- upon is crucial. That way the relationship will also be healthier and both of you be happier.

@Gesundheit I'm sorry about your grandma, that really sounds horrible. I hope you don't get offended by me referring to that, but I think that the shit your grandma went through and the emotional pain that you and her loved ones suffered affect your judgment so that you can't be open-minded enough to consider the possibility of pain to be something else that it was for you and your loved ones. Can you be open-minded to agree that this self-bias could be the case? I'm not to say that I know any better, I might be totally deluded and it could really be the case that pain is pain that's it. But In my life pain, sorrow and unhappiness has changed it's meaning and function so radically that few years back I wouldn't have believed is even possible. It wouldn't have made sense back then. As an example I now have a weird unknown skin condition which I've been fighting against for over 6 months now trying so many different methods and different medical specialists with no results. It causes me physical and mental pain every day and makes my life harder. I had the same condition 6 years ago for about 9 months and back then it made me really depressed and I kept blaming life and everything, I screamed and cried and I was really desperate. Today I suffer from same symptoms but I can say that I'm really happy and enjoying life anyway and the pain is really different than it was back then, even though I can say with pretty good accuracy that the nature and amount of the pain is exactly the same. Of course, if the pain became let's say 10 times more painful, I would most likely not handle it, but my point is to tell you that I myself -- because of other people's examples and my own experience -- believe that it is possible to transcend even physical pain, but is so rare that it seems impossible. I remember reading from some of Peter Ralston's books how he realized pain to be just a feeling. Well, I don't blindly believe him, but that coming from a mouth of ''enlightened master'' again makes me open-minded to possibilities.

Why business per se?

Body awareness is crucial. Bringing awareness to your breathing and keeping the front of your body loose and relaxed is better than any drug.

It's funny you call other people's advises naive, when all you have to give to this topic is your notions of dangers of hippies philosophizing, which is a solid point with truth in it, but irrelevant to the question asked. You can't give anyone a practical step by step guide on how to embody infinite love or how to be happy per se. The best you can do is point one to right direction, which is raising one's consciousness, which is what all those ''naive and philosophical'' advises are for.

You sound like you think philosophizing is a bad thing. If you do real philosophy you know the difference between philosophy and practice well enough. You know how to use philosophy as a tool and not turn it into an ideology.

Haha just recalling how it's been with myself and trying to put it in the frames of wisdom. Of course I tend to avoid pain and discomfort as much as anybody else. I know the shit waves can sometimes hit really hard and when they do it's hard to avoid falling to victim mindset. Remember, ultimately I am your dad

You have videos where you talk about how easy it is to deceive yourself to misuse some of the principles you talk about, but I think it would be handy to have a video with lots of simple practical examples.

That's what spiritual practices and growing your consciousness is about. You don't have to take it to the extreme. Practice it. Next time you drop and break the coffee pan while making coffee in the morning, accept it and smile while picking up the shards from the floor.

You run away from facing something personal and then you ask others what that might have been about. Next time dive into the experience. Let the feeling eat you alive if necessary.

I think you won't know until you experience it.

It's that yearning for ''stable thing'' that makes you wanna blow up the universe. You find your stable thing when you start embracing the ''lower'' moments as well.

Don't ask others. Ask yourself.

I don't know about happiness but I simply enjoy the experience of being alive and experiencing duality with all its beautiful nuances. If you could not have that then what would you have?

I think you can't find the answer to your question by asking, and if you did, it would be false.

Choose the subject you like the most and try to master it and become the best in it by learning the shit out of it. There is the challenge you seek for. Remember how privleged and lucky you are to be able to choose what to study.

What do you guys think If we found out a planet with life which has more advanced and developed technology than we have, would those "people" living there be more or less conscious than we are? ?

I intuitively feel that mastering seduction doesn't only make you good with girls, but it changes you as a human being. Going through those steps and living life that way will definitely move you up the spiral. I really resonate with how this guy talks about human development from perspective of dating, sex and relationships. Why I think that as a man getting good with girls is one of -- if not the best -- way to develop yourself is because that area touches so many other areas of one's life and it opens doors (sometimes forces you through them) to improve yourself in other areas of life too, and it's nicely put into understandable form just like this guy has done with his 6 step model. This video shows the bigger picture of pick up in my opinion.

I want to share an experience I had last week to show people how small simple acts of kindness can have so strong inner impact. On Tuesday we had a surprising snow storm here in the city I live in and plow trucks went crazy blocking parked cars on the road sides with the snow. In the evening when I came home from work, as I turned to my well maintained residence car park, I saw a lady shoveling snow away from the sides of her parked car on the side of the road. I had quite a rough day at work so I first decided to ignore her, but she was there without any hat or gloves and it was freezing cold so I couldn't help but go offering her help. Right when I got there and took the shovel I noticed how much of show there was. There was too much to move with just a shovel so I told her that she needs to let it be and hope that city's maintenance will do something about it in the days to come. So she agreed and we both left home. Only the fact that I tried to help her made me feel so much better. When I got inside I still felt bad for her, so I thought -- because she was a foreigner -- she probably don't know how to appeal to the city about the situation, so I went back out, I took a picture of the car, came back in and made the appeal. That made me feel even better, even though I was sure that the appeal is most likely useless, as the city doesn't usually respond to that kind of single complains especially when the snow storm was so surprising and there were lots of people whining and lots of work to do. Well, about 4 hours later I heard a big vehicle outside, I looked out the window and YES, a huge tractor with a huge scoop came just for that one particular car. Man, that felt good. Next day I had really good vibes thanks to that and when I came home I saw that she had moved the car. That AGAIN made me feel good. Two days forward when I had pretty much forgotten the whole thing, I saw the lady walking on the street on my way to a store and she told me how amazed she was that the snow was moved from around her car so quickly and she thanked me once again for trying to help her with the shovel anyway. I just smiled and told her how lucky she was Those events made my week soo good and it was all just because of a small single act that was done out of pure kindness!

In the short term I guess trying to focus more on things you enjoy could keep your mind away from those negative thoughts till the dark cloud goes away. In the long term I think clearing all the bad blood between you and your family is essential. What comes to family issues: I had quite hard youth too and I moved away from my family as soon as I could and I despised them for a long time. I kept arguing and having disagreements with them about everything for a long time and I avoided them as much as I could until I started to become conscious of how that affects me psychologically. Now we've talked stuff out a lot and understand our perspectives better. I still don't be in contact with them much (for a conscious reason) but when I do -- like in the Christmas and other occasions -- I really enjoy the time with them. That's only because we have really accepted the fact that I'm really not ''one of them'' and there is no resistance or ''bad blood'' around that fact. That gave me the emotional salvation from the family issues. I would also suggest meeting new people or just talking to people irl, friends or strangers. I also have those moments when I feel down and I tend to withdraw deep into my own peace and silence but then a presence of a friend or whoever can turn it all the way around. Relationships can really be fickle but if you could add a pinch of optimism and positivity into the way you look at them, you can learn to get the most and best out of them even in the darkest times.

Undeveloped men are brutally rude and they don't care about your feelings. That's typical SD stage red behavior you've had to bear and I really understand how it has affected you and your prejudice towards pick up. The super ''masculine'' -- mostly SD stage red/orange ideology -- around pick up is the thing that makes it so toxic. Anyway pick up can be done with much more conscious and manly manner, which I think is the main objective here on this forum when talking about pick up. And it doesn't necessarily mean that all the problems are within men. Women can also grow a thicker skin and improve their tolerance against those kind of men by understanding and practice. Those kind of men are not yet gone from western culture for some time.

I'd like to share my view on this topic before Leo closes this thread About the ''whether women should have sex before or after some dating'' part: To be honest, women always want something from men if they are to take things any further; it could be sex, long term relationship, intimacy and bonding, a friend, experience, money, social status, security, etc... you name it. It could also be a mix of many. If you see it's more right from one particular perspective, you're being biased. What is the thing women want is a combination of their beliefs, values and personality which are linked to ones consciousness development. But that's only the logical part. About the effect of emotional hype when let's say trying to get her in bed: Yeah for some women who tend to be more masculine it is harder to let go of the principles and norms of what they want, but I've experienced so many times that on the right state of mind under the right emotional stimulus woman's notions of who they think they are and who they want to sleep with can disappear like a fart in the wind. That's also why alcohol makes women more spontaneous as it paralyzes the part of the brain that evaluates things from rational perspective. I would say that in general as a woman it is very easy to speculate this matter behind a screen when not being affected by the emotions. When I studied there was a girl few years older than me in the party circles who's looks I found perfect but I decided not to move on because all the male traffic around her. I never really even spoke to her. One night at a club she just randomly came to me and asked me to leave the club with her. She wasn't into one night stands AT ALL -- even bit against them. To her one night stands were ''too awkward''. But she found me too attractive at the moment to give a shit. We ended up dating for almost 2 years.

"What you jesters laughing at huh?! Come pay my bills then if your so much better!" Tell them these regards from me next time you meet them so they can have even more fun Thanks for the report! It was a pleasure to read it.