WonderSeeker

Bump. This is a solid thread y'all, give it some life

Dear self-actualizers, I'm curious what self-actualization tools you've found the most useful to achieving your life goals. Of all the... self-help subfields philosophies techniques & methods ...you've tried out, which ones have made the greatest, longest-lasting impact on your life so far for you personally? ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── What to post: 1) State your age and how long you've been self-actualizing. 2) Name your top 1-3 techniques and how/why they impacted you. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── I'm 28 and I've been self-actualizing for 6+ years. Below are the two things helped me the most. 1) Psychedelics / Meditation / Reading Spiritual Books LSD changed my life forever. It helped me (along with Leo's videos) deconstruct and break free from academic/industry science over a 5-year period. It helped me to see my life as a divine adventure I am co-creating alongside the rest of the Universe/God. It helped me confirm that I am creating my own Reality, from the physical to the soul - All of it. Meditation changed my life forever too. It made me realize that all I gotta do to be happy is sit on my bed or a couch and do nothing. In 2020-2021, I meditated every day without missing a day for 428 days straight. That spiritual campaign jumpstarted a lifelong quest of mysticism and I do not regret it in the slightest. It made me face demons so scary I don't really have a lot left to fear in life. It provided a soothing counter-balance to the inner-hustler within me that wants to just take the world by storm; it provided the ying to my yang. And so much more; the benefits are innumerable. (P.S. Binural beats like Holosync are PHENOMENAL if your life is currently busy like mine. And yet, even with the best technology nothing beats sitting there and doing nothing, distraction-free.) Reading spiritual books in conjunction with psychedelics and meditation was like — paradigmatically-speaking — replacing a beater-car with a Lamborghini. Spirituality is this crazy battle where you use your own mind to put itself in this place so something more refined takes over: soul/Spirit/God. Well, reading spiritual text got me closer to that elevated place by giving me licks of the God lolipop which only was enhanced with psychedelics and meditation. They all blended together, over and over, until my reality became a living-breathing expression of the universe instead of egoic human will fighting the world over attention and resources. It replaced my a to b understanding of the world with something closer to ∞ so that I was no longer as stuck inside the box. My favorites are books by Ken Wilber and Peter Ralston. Daniel Ingram's Core Teachings Of The Buddha book was phenomenal as well. 2) Trauma Psychology / Letting-go Guided Meditations / Somatic Healing I almost put this one at #1. Because honestly, I had a traumatic childhood that screwed me up for years. My mind was so messed up for a while that there were periods when I thought I'd die (2008, 2017, 2024), and I was shocked that I didn't. I'm a highly sensitive person by my nature (HSP), so growing up there were a lot of things that got to me and made me feel like I didn't belong to my family, to my society, to humanity. Over the past 5 years (and ESPECIALLY the past year), I've made unbelievable progress on my sense of esteem, belonging, and identity. I no longer root my worth in things or processes, but instead on Being. Spiritual work didn't actually get me there, it gave me the theoretical foundation. Shaking trauma out of my tissue using somatic guided meditations and the David Hawkin's Letting Go roadmap (via Julien Blanc's mentoring) is what made all the difference. I began the program 1 year ago and still use the lifetime access lessons to this day almost daily. It's unlockled so many layers of authenticity I didn't know I had in me. Because this has had such a tremendous benefit on me, I eventually want to work with the likes of Jordan Thornton or Teal Swan to clear the remaining residue. They hit things from different angles, and without sufficient trauma healing, I believe myself and most of us included won't be able to go far with spirituality / psychdelics alone. Trauma distorts spiritual insight more than I thought; if it did for me, then it will for you too. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── I'm curious to see what you share. Make it juicy!

This is probably niche for this forum. But in 2 months I'll be moving to Chengdu 成都 Is there anybody on the forum who has lived in China before or is currently living in China? For those who haven't heard, living abroad is a great opportunity if you're: young, open-minded, want to flip the bird to corporate, tired of watching your country deteriorate, ready to get your pre-programmed cultural paradigms shattered without trying, eager to live somewhere that's on the rise, and already 30 years into the future. For me I've been living and teaching English in Korea for the past year. It's been an epic experience, but after doing 50+ hours of deep research, I decided on moving to China. After another 20 hours of militant outreaech, I landed a job there. The best part is, this move is allowing me to: make 2x my Korean salary starting out, live in an apartment that would easily cost $3,000/month in the US, but only $415 in China, have the opportunity to learn the 2nd most spoken language in the world straight from the source, experience more exotic dating opportunities (it's so fascinating experiencing how sexually and relationally different things are out here). After doing lots of reasearch and experiencing things firsthand, I found that the US distorts reality when it comes to east Asia. It over-glorifies Korea and Japan (naturally because they are 2 of its major far-east vassel states) and straight up demonizes China, acting like its a communist hell-hole. Based on firsthand, Korea is highly uncultured and materialistic. I mean, there is a culture, but it is 100% trends and K-nonsense. I haven't been to China yet, but I've personally watched over a dozen videos of creators essentially saying, "yeah, it's not perfect like any place, but overall it has world-class convenience, it feels extremely safe, and the west's portrayal of it is total propaganda." Again this is probably a niche post for this forum. I've been in my own bubble of researching and making this my life, because I've had the best time living exotic lifestyles in my 20s. I've had the good fortune of spending over a month in Mongolia and Alaska, almost a full year in South Korea, and multiple years in several US states. All before age 30. Nevertheless I'm putting this out there to see if any of you know about this opportunity. Cheers!

Yeah, Thailand seems too crowded and touristy. Good on you.

Could be worse. Typhoon Bovi is set to hit landfall in China by Saturday night!

Grats! I'm about to wrap up my first year doing TEFL. Top 5 best decisions I ever made in my life. May I ask why Cambodia? I'm curious what upsides you saw there. And how do you plan to live your life on time off?

When you come to Korea, take a train to Daegu. I'll grab ya a meal and we can check out the local scenery. Heard it's a nice place. Lot of Silk Road history

Circumcision Some parents can't even tell you why they did it if you asked them ¯\(ツ)/¯

What skills are you building over time? For me, it's practicing Mandarin / Pinyin. I do 2 hours a day minimum. 3-6 hours a day on weekends. Watching Chinese movies, TV, handriting, etc. Planning to take it deep (HSK 4 and beyond) as long as I'm living in China. P.S. If you are a world traveller, then learn to love learning languages! Language study felt like such a chore in high school. But as an adult having been exposed to French, Mongolian, and Korean (and soon Chinese) in countries that speak these as native languages, I've found they open up to you so many opportunities when you learn thier languages. You become an object of total fascination which in my experience has been great for career and dating.

Good shit

I did content creation for a year. Hated it the crap out of it. Even when I figured out how to go viral and made posts that my friends saw (without me needing to tell them), it still wasn't worth it. Soul draining work. Made negative profit and burned-out massively. Working off a computer for more than 2 hours a day makes me wanna commit unspeakable crimes. I lose my mind. However I am happy that it taught me some basic business skills and how to write for appeal, which are skills I will have for life (there's something in every endeavor). Cannot argue with that. But ever since changing my career to teaching I've never been happier and more fulfilled. My life is being lived at a more adventurous scale than most, even with a f*cked money situation. But that's about to change too. Life is a maze as some say~

Getting surprised by life. Imagining 10 different ways a scenario can play out and having it always go different than you expected. I enjoy this aspect of reality so much. The counter-intuitive nature of life. Even better is when something goes unexpectedly in a "bad" way. Every time this happens I act like it's a good thing in practice. Next I breathe into the anxious emotions to let go of how I actually feel about it. Then again I act like "perfect, everything is going according to plan." Then LITERALLY every time without there EVER being an exception, the universe folds like origami to turn that initial negative into a gigantic positive. It's so cool.....

You won't believe me but I went through something VERY similar 3 years ago. Psychopath that I lived with for 2 months (don't have time to explain why, just unfortunate circumstances). The longer we live together, the more tea spills. She has an arrest warrant in Minnesota. She has slept with several 100s of guys. She got her fillopian tubes tied because she wants guys to bust loads in her. She's autistic so in her mind sex is just oxytocin (pure survival thinking) and if she doesn't get enough she gets super depressed. She's clinically diagnosed with a dozen mental disorders. She has a sandwich bag that looks like lucky charms (actually meds) and eats like 20 different shaped pills and chases it with bottle after bottle of wine. Can't get a job. Stays home all day and gets money from her dead granny's estate to survive. All kinds of crazy stuff. Again, too much to write out. Eventually I get the police to take her as she says "I wanna die" on a couple of occasions. She gets put (back) into the psych ward and acts like we're cool one moment, then goes nuts the next accusing me of all these things and threatening court. I eventually block her and change my apartment locks. For a while I didn't date a whole lot. Brother, you will date again. You just need time to focus on yourself and take care of your psyche. Give it time. I'd read LOA, get your mind into positive thoughts. If you really think this gave you trauma or triggered earlier C-PTSD from childhood, read Pete Walker's "Complex PTSD." He has a great 13-step 'how to diffuse the panic response' protocol to calm your nerves in the moment. Plus how to take steps toward healing long term. Maybe your life needed a shakeup and this is bringing your awareness to who you are attracting. You can change this brother. You'll find someone good. You just need time,self-love, and a new strategy. Peace

Strangest thing I've read on this forum in a minute.

Depends on what you want to know. "What do I want to know?" "What's something that bothers me and how can I get to the bottom of it?" "What do I want out of life?" People are gonna flood this thread with what they think is best. But I'd start with you. What do you want to know personally?

Cool man, thanks for sharing. Being content with who you are but still actively striving is such a delicious paradox once you embrace it. In recent years I've learned to be content more. People say "You're too young to relax, hustle harder!" But nah, I'm happier this way and actually making way more money than before. My consciousness is stabalizing better and I'm learning how to cycle my emotions when uphevals occur. But sometime soon there will be a kick to go hard for more consciousness, health, love, etc See, I always thought it was a misconception too. I still think kids are at an advantage for learning 2 languages from say age three, but to start in your 20s/30s isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some people have said put in 10 hours a day and bam you are at intermediate Chinese within a year. Mathematically, 3 hours a day for 3-4 years to achieve the same result. Not bad

Integrity. It's such a beautiful practice. It's the highest form of taking care of reality. Making sure things are as they should be. But this 'should be' is devoid of ego. Which is hard in practice. Still worth it.

Imagine switching brains for a day to see what it would feel like. Man you must have gotten lucky finding Actualized because there's too much brain in these forums!

Ah, you must be a fan of Andrew Henderson. He raves about KL constantly. Maybe our tastes are different because without even going there I'd expect Shanghai to be too much like NY/LA (high-speed energy). Way too big and fast. Hangzhou is right nearby. Excellent tea culture and scenery. I haven't been to either yet but am considering living in Hangzhou. This guy was ahead of his time. Videos are useful and entertaining even a decade later.

This is it. When I think back to my best seductions, all I did was act like a retard and drop off-hand compliments like sprinkles on a cake. Things escalated so naturally... If it's a date or a social circle meetup, you just do things that you're passionate about and share them with everyone there. I believe @integral posted about this the other day. From there you go on little quests. Man with a plan type shit But @jacknine119 you got this! Start small. Step 1 is make a solid female friend. Don't assess hotness, just make a friend. ...And don't try to fuck her (like my stupid ass has done before). Sometimes you can, but the goal is momentum, not the first one that validates you. As you go you'll buld that social proof and get with one you truly like. I'm moving to a new country soon. I've been studying the language and I plan to meet women and show them what I've been up to. Playfully, of course! Having fun with it. Will probably post about it after a year or so

Part of it was a friend told me I never let my space get even 1% messy. He said "Come on, throw some clothes on the floor, leave a notebook or two open." Over time I learned to 'tolerate it'. Then I had a girl move in with me for a couple months. After that I started a business. Both made me realize "I just don't have time for this petty, small stuff. Why bother." And not even from an apathetic standpoint. Just in a realistic, human sort of way. People are beautifully messy and so am I. Trying to keep my messiness crammed behind a paradigm of contraction is exhausting and energetically wasteful. But @integral a question for you is why do these kinds of people bother you? Have you ever considered keeping everything tidy, even beautiful to a tee? I don't know you but I'm assuming maybe not. I agree with this from the perspective of being a highly sensitive person (HSP). My brain is wired to at least have SOME level of order in my environment. The main thing for me these days isn't so much things being exactly where they need to as having clean air, water, floors, etc. Right now in Korea we get a lot of fine dust and sometimes high AQI levels, so I use an air purifier to keep things pure. Yes, this is a little different from the aestheticism perspective but it ties in in the sense that clean environment leads to clean mind. Being actionably aggressive about it isn't necessarily wrong; it's only a problem if you get emotionally triggered by things being out of place or a little dirty.

I used to be this way. Scolded many old roommates for not keeping up with cleaning. After a while I learned to let go of needing things to look 'perfect'. You can easily waste loads of precious consciousness on myopic bullshit if you're not careful.

I'm just asking what you like about nature man. Give us the tea I typed out a detailed response about how I engage with nature and how it brings me joy.

How so

@Schizophonia good thread idea. Every couple years I move cities. Ever since getting a university degree in geology, I've made a ritual of exploring all the local river beds and mountains in the city I lived in. I've done this in New York, Arizona, Virginia, Utah, and now Korea. Even Alaska and Mongolia a bit. I take a notebook and a compass, and try to make sense of the environment from scratch. It's so fun! Will share photos soon Also, learning Mandarin. Just starting but know about a dozen expressions. It's a fulfilling project.