WonderSeeker

At least in Sweden you guys have multiple parties on the left. In America the 2-party system fucks us every 4 years with a choice between lesser evils.

As long as it's authentic to you, nothing anyone says matters. I used to go back and forth about family, but now I've decided I really do want to have one. For me it's a 10-year plan, when I am about 38 I'll settle somewhere temperate with a lovely female. Awakening will happen along the way and during this whole process. I don't see awakening or career as needing to be in place of living a well-rounded life. Rather, it drenches family life with so much more meaning and consciousness. Imagine being an awakened parent — I think that's cool as fuck.

Hot girls. Stay around too long, get burned. Mind-blowing sex, spirit-draining everything else.

English. But I'm learning Chinese currently. From my experience in Asia they appreciate it when you go out of your way to learn their native language. Eh, those so-called 'bad manners' come from the older generations there (40s and up). The youth in China have moved on from some of those things your friends described. Like with any new country/culture, you gotta weigh the pros and cons. Where I'm going quality foods (produce and spices) are cheap, rent is cheap (and nice as fuck), and the people are open and laid back. Although most of China is relatively stage blue/orange, the city I'm moving to has arguably the largest contingents of stage green and relaxed orange. So yeah, there are good reasons to be excited. Also, China is the only major country on the planet that's reversing its own environmental impacts; even though yes, its pollution levels are still high, they have been decreasing over the years, and will continue to do so. When I get there and settled I'll update the forum on what it's really like~

28, prime time I don't think it's an accident that I've heard so many men into self development say these are the years where it all pays off

Nice thread @Miguel1 and co. Reading through it has been insightful and I definitely relate to it, having done insane amounts of inner work causing me to redefine how I relate to others. Honestly, and this is more on the external support factors as @LordFall discussed, a big reason I moved to Asia (soon China) is because it pays well in my industry (money not an issue for the flow of dating) and there is FAR MORE femininity here than in North America at the moment. The best girl I ever dated was from Mongolia when I was there in 2022. Even though it was a short relationship — due to me having to move back to the states — we connected deeply VERY fast because I felt so good with her I was able to be simultaneously highly masculine/dominant and feminine in smart, calibrated ways. For example, sexually, taking the lead was a ton of fun and very smooth. Afterwords we would sit there in bed and start talking about deep things. At one point she even was like "ooooh that's DEEEP," but we kept talking about that topic anyways. Then later I said, "Wanna see me cry? There's this song that has a lot of meaning for me and it makes me cry every time." She of course enthusiastically said she wanted to see me cry. So, I did. She went crazy for me after that. The day I left she blew up my phone, sad to see me go. We wrote letters after. So, this is proof that these deeper connections are out there. I don't have much experience outside of her, because the rest of the woman I've ever dated came from fucked up backgrounds. I agree with you @Miguel1 in the sense that trauma healing and the desire to genuinely connect is more important than high spiral development; what matters more is healthy spiral development. A girl acn be say orange/green like my example, but also healthy because she isn't clinging to it if that makes sense. Nothing is holding her back from connection and openness. I'm going with my gut because personally I think the west is cooked in terms of dating. I am so turned off by 95% of the women in western countries; that's not a put-down against them, it's just a preferential line in the sand I've drawn because hardened, masculine women are basically men with tits and long hair. I am massively confident about moving to China to find such women to open up with. I have the same desire as you, and I think they are out there when you look in the right places.

My people. Was it worth it?

I think this so-called 'trolling' went in the other direction. But I agree, life has to be lived before it can be transcended. Even Peter Ralston admitted to this in his interview with Leo. I don't even necessarily buy everything Leo says. It depends on where you're coming from and your particular situation. I think our uniqueness has to be factored into how we structure our awakening journeys a lot more than we let on to. I don't understand you original comment @Hojo. If you can articulate yourself better, I'm open to taking you seriously. @Asayake I was thinking the same thing.

It's important to learn from celebrieties in the sense that whatever you admire in them is something you can amplify in your own life. I think having role models is healthy especially at younger ages like 20s and 30s. You should be proud of what you've done in your time away. It's like you completed a growth cycle that came to a close with you 360ing back to your native geography. Maybe. How would you define it? Here's to new chapters to come 🥂

This is so true it's not funny. Some of the best sex I ever had I didn't penetrate. Not once. We just kissed and wrestled naked, and I kept whispering all sorts of things into her ear that even the best comedian on earth couldn't come up with. It has to come from pure inspiration for life, and genuine interest in who's sitting across from you. I think seduction has a 360 spiral to it, where: 1) the simpiest level is telling her how attracted you are and that you'd do anything for her 2) in this level you're more sublte and cooler, more nuder the radar, but still egoically looking out for number one 3) here, you go back to worshipping her, but from a refined place of joy and celebration for her and life, side-by-side I've only had 1 such affair, It lasted 2 weeks, It was better than any multi-year relation I've ever had.

So untrue. I did door-to-door sales. People in said business are persuasive. Now you tell me, the next time a pest control salesman knocks on your grandma's door, is he telling her the truth?

I'm 28. I am deeply conscious of my life-story, going back to when I was about 6 years old. I'm an INFP, I have imaginative overexcitibility, and I'm good at weaving meaning together. There are a high number of events in my life that in the moment, or in retrospect due to the trajectory they sent me on, carry deep visual and emotional significance for me. As a result, I attribute a lot of meaning to these things and often review them in my mind. They are what made me who I am now, and new things and events still are sending me on new paths to hit my dreams and desires. I sometimes wonder: Does anyone else feel the same way? I find in general, people don't share deep things about themselves, in favor of social manipulations to make themselves look cool, or, wierdly, to keep playing small in life. So I don't know what it's like for others. Either way, there's a nuance to this way of being. I think you have to consciously choose to love your life-story; and, YOU must be the one that loads it with meaning (especially AFTER some awakenings when you learn your life is inherently meaningless). See, for almost my entire life I never understood celebrity worship. I found it to the most respulsive thing ever; because what is it, but loving another's life story while ignoring yours. "Wouldn't you rather ongoingly create something more beautiful out of the one life you have?" That's what I thought, even in my early teens. When I was about 14, I was at a scary low in my life. I got bullied at school daily, received dog-shit grades at school, and had no purpose, or even hobbies. At taht early age, I knew something have to change (imagine having a half-quarter life crisis). Instead of looking to celebrities, I found my first ever self-help videos, by a Lebanese dating coach of all people, and got to work. After sone time, I got a girlfriend, started getting A's in school, and became a talented athlete. Then all of that fell apart and new life events, which I'm very fond of that bring me on the verge of tears, unfolded to save me from chasing success forever. I started using psychoactive substances and spending more time with new friends, which led me into college post-modernism. I recall specific missions I set for myself that felt enlivening and made life this great adventure. Then things began to feel dull and drab. I began deep psychedelic research; and, that's when I found Leo. He broke my paradigms about life and I binged every video he ever made over a span of 6 months in 2020.I remember Covid hitting and escaping to the mountains in Upstate NY. Without telling my parents I left home and slept in my car deep in the forest. I was so scared of the cops or some crazy person finding me I barely slept loger than an hour. Also, my underdeveloped brain was trying to swallow the latest video I'd listened to by Leo about "you not existing as a self," and trying to use my hyper-logical brain to understand it. That plus Covid all made me depressed and lost at the time (and yet I'm so in love with that story and the pivot it represented -- me dipping my toes into something scary at the time, but something that seemed important nonetheless). The above 3 paragraphs are little snippits from certain chapters of my life. They all feel so real and significant. I think part of what makes life beautiful is falling in love with your imaginary past. It's so unique to you. And in your world, YOU are the celebrity. Not Bieber, not Taylor Swift, not Obama. Who cares, your story is so unique, and it's all yours. Cheers~

Indeed, giving oneself problems. But also subtle shifts that lead to order-of-magnitude changes. Lucky shifts that, if they didn't happen, I wouldn't even be sitting here with the knowledge that I caused them from a higher perspective. It's so utterly trippy... - if I didn't shatter my hand through a glass door - if I didn't talk to the young professor and contact his old professor who helped me study in Asia - if I didn't break up with my first gf (good Lord...) - if I wasn't lightly (sometimes not-so lightly) traumatized by my family growing up - if I didn't fail at all the businesses I tried to start in America in my mid-20s I would have never gotten into awakening work. I would have been too comfortable to get into awakening work; instead, I would have coasted through life, only lightly depressed. I would have never known what was missing and would have been too cozy to bother looking.

I mean yeah, nobody will ever understand you in your full uniqueness. Then you added the Awakening cherry on the You-sundae for good measure. It sounds like you're at the stage where you're at least becoming more comfortable with this fact, which is key.

The main goal of life can be summed up as follows. First, some context. Lately I've been seriously wondering: What is the specific reason that I exist in this particular way, as this particular self, in this particular realm? In other words, Why Am I? And, if I can possibly know, What is my ultimate calling based on my genetics, experiences, and upbringing in this short existence as a human? I took 60ug of LSD. I didn't think that would be a particularly powerful trip. Usually I top out at 200ug. But, the usual come-up took effect and before I knew it the insights came rushing in. I was shocked that this museum dose was getting me somewhere! At around the 2 hour mark, deep escastic feelings from my root to my heart arose. Waves of energy took my being over. They flooded me so deeply I surrendered. I layed there on my bed as my imagination started converging directly with reality. Then, the big insight. What is the meaning of life really? It is: Make yourself into the best apparatus for awakening you possibly can. Wherever that insight came from, I thank it for being so deliberate in it's wording. By apparatus, it meant to treat your body and mind in such ways that make awakening easier and more probable to happen at any time or place. It's basically another way of saying 'self-actualize,' but for the sole purpose of awakening deeper and deeper to Truth, Beauty, and Consciousness. Physically, it means maintaining baseline fitness and health standards (nutritionally, socially, physiologically, etc). Mentally, it means cleaning up your epistemic diet ever so steadily over time (screen-time, content quality, introspection and targeted ideological skepticism, etc). Spirituality, it's about seeking with the right principles in mind, and using better methodologies and tools as you discover them (meditation, yoga, psychedelics, etc). Really all of this is no different than what I already knew. BUT, what was different was the resolve, recognition, and understanding I was left with. As a little cherry on top, I had a second insight that was almost equally as big. I had a DEEEP direct experience of construct-awareness, where I saw my whole narrative past before me — from birth to now — and how, the whole thing was like a video game that me as God created for myself to run. I could see how EVERY little thing that 'I did' or that 'happened to me' was intentionally and ingeniously 'put there' or 'made to happen' by my higher Self or God. Then, ON TOP OF THAT, I then saw how I was playing this game with myself where I was imagining myself as a higher Self mapping out my life, and that my ability or inability to evolve my consciousness was due to the fact that my higher Self was protecting me or pushing me to evolve at a rate that best suited me. (Note: This does not mean if you are having trouble evolving that you can be lazy, or if you are grinding and it hurts, you cannot take a break. This is tricky stuff.) What I didn't get, however, and what I suspect will come later, is the 'why' of awakening. Not the why of Life. But the why of Awakening. (Two very different things.) I wanted to know what my personal consciousness was about and how it fits into the life I'm living and building. But, that's for another day. AMA, or if something does not jibe with how you've experienced awakening, let me know what that is. I'm open and curious to other experiences and perspectives. Awakening: Make yourself into the best apparatus for more awakening.