NatureB

I am currently planning a big move for next year. Here is my plan: Visit cities in my country and a few outside like Brazil and India, then make a decision. I plan on visiting a new city for 2-3 days every 2-3 weeks since that is what I can get a way with at my job. Conversely I may quit my job and blitz different cities, then decide. Don't decide without having visited the place. And stop pondering those dumb questions. They are just your worries, and realistically you won't answer them by thinking but by doing.

OP, how are you doing on this? I am in a similar boat, thinking about becoming a meditaiton coach. I am going to apply the advice that another user gave for finding a mentor and studying under them.

Not sure. Currently readin Who Rules The World? By Noam Chomsky. It seems like US military hegemony causes a ton of destruction and subjugation of less developed countries, but I can't say what the world would look like without US hegemony. And Noam hasn't said thus far.

Agreed.

If it's true that Trump believes in freedom, it is more true of Biden. It isn't like Biden is dying to steal your freedoms. Trump can make things seem black and white, but it simply is not true. Taking protestors into an unmarked van, which happened under Trump, doesn't exactly scream freedom to me. Trump gives big corps the freedom to pollute. They should not have this freedom. Freedom for freedom's sake can be toxic OP.

What belief would you have to have in order to get the result you are getting? We get the results our subconscious lets us get. It is possible that you have some nefarious belief sneaking up on you such as "work should not be hard." The belief can be realistic or not.

I feel the same. I used playing guitar as a way to get attention. Like you, I am also doing therapy plus tons of meditation. I've been thinking similarly about it in that I feel I have changed and become a different person. I don't feel very connected to music as much so I put it down for now. Not selling my guitar but just not playing it like I was. It's okay and natural for inauthentic pursuits to fall away on the healing/spiritual path. Don't feel bad about it. What are you thinking of doing instead? Or will you relax into the unknowingness for now?

@peqkno Wow that is amazing. @Mada_ Cleaning up your relationships with each of your parents will do wonders for anyone. That should be the foundation, in my opinion. This is because your relationship with your parents, especially your opposite sex parent, will taint your relationships today with your current partner. I recommend The Truth by Neil Strauss as well to get a good example of what this looks like. Plus the book is hilarious. Leo has some awesome books on his reading list which I will not name. But they are helping me personally. And if you are on instagram I recommend the page the.holistic.psychologist Good luck!

Malcolm X was the reddest of the red, to the point that other street criminals nicknamed him "Satan." What helped him move into blue was going to prison and being inspired to broaden his education by another well-spoken and educated inmate. Then he found Islam and became very religious. Education is important. Opportunity is important. Law and Order (in the healthiest sense of that term) is important. Red needs to see the limits of itself to want to go to blue.

About 2 years ago at UNLV a 72 year old man got his degree. Colonel Sanders started KFC at age 67. But I think along the same lines as you at times. I am 24 and I feel like my life is already wasted haha. Obviously it is not, and yours is not either.

TL;DR

Next time trust your gut feelings.

MDMA taught me that I need to lighten up on people. It also showed me that I was suppressing my desire for women very strongly. Of course it will be different for you if you decide to do some. But I feel like a new person I feel great. There were other realizations as well but I don't want to enumerate them here. I am surprised The Truth didn't shake you as hard as it did me. I was floored seeing Neil bare his heart. It was inspiring. If you still own it, there are a ton of book recommendations in the back. Those might help.

I have had the same thing with women. It was coming from guilt like you said and from erroneous beliefs such as "they need ME to make them happy, I am the only person who can make them happy." What would your beliefs look like on this?

Yeah you need to do shadow work and inner child work, in my opinion. Thestarguitarist knows what he is talking about. As I understand it, we all repeat the patterns that we learned in childhood. For you this is the pattern of being betrayed. Who role modeled this pattern for you? That question might bring some clarity for you. If you want a faithful guy so much, you better hurry up and clean up these patterns. You won't even be attracted to a good guy until you do, because a good guy won't fit into your patterns. Healthy patterns - healthy partner. I strongly suggest getting a therapist trained in CBT.

This subforum needs a "Best Of" thread. Will someone please start one? @Leo Gura??

The most USEFUL definition of self-love I have heard is "the lack of self-hate." Let go of all the reasons you hate yourself and what is left? The same thing that has always been buzzing under the surface, self-love. I agree with you OP. My story real quick: I did pickup for two years and simply could not get it to work. I had no idea why I couldn't do it despite having above average social skills and being perceived as "cool" by most people. To figure out what was holding me back I got heavily into meditation. My plan was to heal whatever emotional roadblocks I had so I could get back out there and be even better, date more women and have lots of sex. Fulfill all of my teenage desires and then some. In the process of sifting through my emotional 'baggage' I have discovered what was holding me back (guilt, trauma, etc.) But MORE IMPORTANTLY I have started to love myself, and love the process of working on myself. I don't want to get back into pickup any more. It was so fucking meaningless. I'd rather travel the world and meditate and read tbh. Something meaningful, which pickup was not. It always made me feel hollow. I am sharing this story to say that I have experienced something similar to you OP and I have come to a similar conclusion. Self-love is better than fucking a lot of girls. But you can still have both. I plan on banging a ton more girls while coming from a place of self-love. Just self-love comes first.

If I can add my direct experience here: Do as a few of us have said and get a therapist. My therapist is doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensetization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with me and I am starting to feel amazing. And the better I feel, the easier time I have interacting with women. More and more I have been noticing girls looking at me and giving me signs of interest. Take at least 6 months off (imo) to heal yourself. Work on your trauma. Especially your family trauma, and especially especially your relationship with your mother. Because all of this weighs you down and makes you needy, submissive, etc. Your negative attributes are exacerbated by your trauma. We all have trauma, some deeper than others. Based on the fact that you are an incel at 31, I'd guess you have more than most. Not saying this to put you down, but to highlight the fact that there is some work you need to do. And I am giving you this advice because I have taken it myself. I started April 1 this year working on one thing per day as it pertains to relationships and dating, using meditation as my tool. Later I added therapy. MDMA has helped recently as well. My transformation in the last 6 months is nothing short of that, a transformation of who I am at a fundamental level. Read The Truth by Neil Strauss. This book will break you in the best way, and inspire you to heal. Because what you really want is to be healed. And what the girl really wants is for you to be healed! P.S. listen to Leo's advice. It's gold.

Failure of marriages, magic dissipating, etc. cannot simply be attributed to bad sex alone, nor to intensity dying down due to orgasm. There are a ton of factors that go into that one. I can agree that there is some dying down in the intensity of relationships after orgasm though. We've all experienced it, or most of us. I recommend Red Queen by Matt Ridley. Men are supposed to have sex with as many women as they can to have as many children as they can, and women have the strategy of getting a stable guy for support but having the child of the alpha male. And for an optimistic view of relationships and a primer for working on your shadow as it affects your relationships, I highly, highly recommend The Truth by Neil Strauss. Will blow your mind.

A few ideas of mine that I haven't really thought through completely but which still sound good to me: No interest fees above a certain percent, say 12% for loans and such, and absolutely no hidden fees. It is too easy to get trapped in a cycle of debt, and it is too hard to get out of it. On my first car loan I was paying 26%. I don't want anyone else to have to go through that. UBI would be amazing. I follow Andrew Yang on this one. UBI would make society more creative and more resilient. For example, in the midst of a global health pandemic when 60% of gig jobs are gone. This would also help single mothers who really get fucked by our current system. We can do a sliding scale for the salary of CEOs. Depending on how large the corporation is, the CEO could receive up to 20x - 50x the lowest paid employee. Right now CEOs average 300x the average employee I believe. It is not compassionate to pay janitors and low-skilled workers such an extremely low wage, and we need to address it. A principle here is that everybody only prospers when the collective prospers. I like your idea of fair taxation. Politicians are very skilled at selling the majority of Americans that taxes are a bad thing. I love public services like roads, firefighters, police. Imagine society without these basic things and it becomes clear why we need taxes. One off the wall idea would be that we all have a chip of some sort implanted in us, or on our phone like a virtual ID card. This would be amazing. Im agine never losing your wallet because it never leaves you. Or imagine having a global passport upon birth. You can go anywhere. George Harrison and his friends made an "Earth passport" in the 60s and I like that idea.

Hi everyone, I am happy to share some good news with you all! Thanks to work done by Van Jones' non-profit Reform and probably many others, California has passed legislation which would reform their criminal justice system. Specifically, this bill caps parole and probation at 1-2 years. Prior to this bill people could have been and often were on for much longer, sometimes for 20+ years! The claimed benefits of this legislation are on Reform's Instagram and include saving California $2.1B over the next five years, getting 33% of people out of the system (100,000 people) and helping families get back together. Think about what that $2.1B reinvested into the people of California would look like! Drug addiction treatment programs, education, jobs, etc. What gets me excited about this the most is that this is progress!

Go first. Donate to what you believe in, or volunteer. I like what Rick doblin is doing with MAPS. They are very close to legalizing mdma for ptsd treatment. That is another area where progress is coming. I've donated money to Andrew Yang. His political views are very well informed and he seems to have the grassroots support to eventually make change, moreso than Bernie imo. He gives me hope. Is there anything like that for you?

That's some dope dancing. Reminds me of MJ + PSY + Mortal Kombat.

This guy has the endorsement of Andrew Yang, another man I consider YELLOW.

I just got back from a meditation retreat, and my current job at a juice bar doesn't feel authentic to me. It never did, but I needed something to do for money so I started working here. I am ready to move on. I have $12K in my savings. I can also get $6K on a new credit card that has 0% APR for 15-18 months in case I need it, but I don't think I will. My plan is to quit my job at the end of September, travel the states for 2-3 months and move to a new city in January. It will most likely be Denver or somewhere in California, but the east coast also calls me. I also plan to spend these months until January doing inner child work, since that seems to be THE point of most leverage in shadow work. I believe this will put me more in touch with my authentic self. My bills each month are $1,200. With traveling I will probably spend $1800 per month. That would leave me with a little over $6K in January to survive on in a new city where i will get a new job. Why do I want to move? Vegas revolves around the strip. Take away the strip and there is nothing to keep anyone here, imo. I know that this move will help me learn about myself and become more grounded and worldly, which is essential if you want to have a positive impact on the world. I want to see if I can survive without family around, and I want to see the parts of me that come out when I don't see my family often. What do you guys think of my plan?