FlyingLotus

@Rubywoo Congrats!! That's amazing to have an awakening experience, at such a young age no less ?. Regarding your bf, what if the truly loving thing is to let him find a woman he's more compatible with? Someone who has similar stage blue/orange goals? You might want to watch this video. The more spiritual you are, the more awareness you need over how your ego will try to co-opt your own wisdom against you. The smarter you get, the smarter it gets. Grounding must go hand in hand with awakening ?

? I wish this would pop up whenever someone starts writing toxic, hateful stuff in the dating forum. It’s tough to figure out tone on the internet, but the following message is intended to be kind and helpful, with zero shaming towards people who fixate on dating issues they zero control over: You sound very lonely and heartbroken. There’s no shame in that. Everyone has emotional issues that need to be seen and soothed so they can feel safe. It sounds like you feel powerless and have low self-esteem because you’ve been betrayed in romance, or maybe had a hyper critical, neglectful mom and subconsciously believe all women will be like her. Maybe it’s easier to generalize your situation to “98% of men” because it’s less painful to think “love doesn’t exist for men” rather than “love doesn’t exist for me.” Problem is if you’re looking for soothing on a forum, it’s an ineffective strategy. Especially because people here have a mindset towards believing they can overcome their problems through learning and hard work. Until you address your emotional needs yourself, hearing the excellent advice of very patient folks like @Emerald, @flowboy and others will sound like, “Nobody understands me. Nobody loves me. Love doesn’t exist.” So you’ll be stuck. Have you considered talking to a professional who can address your emotional problems with maximum effectiveness? Someone you can relate to in real life? Or combining shadow work with psychedelics? With any tough situation you have three choices: Leave it. Change it. Accept it. It sounds like you haven’t picked a choice yet. Why not? If you had a magic wand and could get the forum to respond however you want, what would they say? Would they give you a foolproof action plan to get the life you want, or would they give you soothing and say, “Yes that sounds terrible. Society sucks. You’re the victim.” If you’d rather have emotional soothing instead of solutions, you need to address the real emotional problem that’s going on rather than swallowing toxic pill ideology. There’s no shame in having problems. You just need to address them properly to stop the suffering. Watch these videos. They sound like your situation. I’ve highlighted a certain part of the videos, but watch the whole thing. They’re great.

@Proserpina You have super beautiful eyes!!

Yeah, they could meditate together and finally prove to the world they're not mermen.

That sounds great! I've just dipped my toe in the ? waters. But, I have way more experience at every other aspect of personal development. Sounds like a great plan. It's amazing what emotions ? can bring up, especially after you do all that psychic archaeology on yourself.

I've been working my way through Dr.K's meditations. There are 26 modules. I have a bunch of different meditations I do depending on the situation. The Satisfaction meditation is good. The meditation from Leo's episode on Dealing with Strong Negative Emotion is super underrated and very effective if you get good at it.

I'm average. I mostly play RPGs so luckily my skills don't affect anyone but me. Dr.K's guide on meditation is way way, more extensive than any meditation stuff he does on his channel, but of course it's not free.

Hmm, that's possible. I definitely remember checking the list in summer 2020, Jan 2021 (I think) and June 2021. If the update was between Jan and June, maybe it just seemed new. I know there was one update in 2021 where he moved some new books from the front page into different categories and added reviews for them.

Dr. K's awesome. I've recommended his stuff to people and have referenced him here and there in different episode summaries. I bought his Guides to Meditation, Anxiety and Depression. Totally worth it. His channel is great too. I listen to Healthy Gamer while I'm gaming, so I can get healthier while I game. Very meta.

She's saying that she didn't imagine him to be that hot. Of course she's not gonna tell that outright, this is for the private messages sent an hour after seeing the pic Stop harassing pornstar guy. It’s not his fault he looks like a pornstar. No wonder the pornstars stopped posting their pictures here and moved over to OnlyFans ???.

Yeah, it's totally fine if both people are genuinely cool with it. Those celebrity roasts can be pretty funny. So is the "Between Two Ferns" show, because everyone's in on the joke.

Things like that absolutely 1000% do happen in Western Europe. You just don't notice it because you don't have to. Part of personal development is learning lessons the easy way. If you can’t empathize with the plight of others, life will teach you to empathize through massive amounts of heart shattering, soul crushing pain. The kind of pain that will swallow you whole and eat you alive. The suffering you dismiss is the suffering you will one day experience. The Universe is a mirror and Everything is One after all. I'd personally rather you learn things the easy way, through books and the internet and deep friendships, etc. Your Life Purpose is almost always related to your deepest pain. Suffering makes life more meaningful if you use it properly ??

Awww, thanks everyone Thanks @Preety_India for saying those things like I totally asked you to. Your cheque's in the mail. Oh wait, is this the forum or my inbox? Am I mixing them up again. I hate when I get them confu----

If you honestly don’t understand why categories are useful when trying to analyze problems and solve horrific situations, maybe you should read more books or learn about the world. There’s a reason why the scientific method has dependent, independent, controlled and extraneous variables. You sound young, sheltered and spoiled. You have the luxury of not caring about things like race, sex, getting attacked for kissing someone’s who’s the same sex, worrying about the cops shooting your 17 year old son for wearing a hoodie, worrying about your 90 year old Vietnamese grandma for getting beaten to death because of racial attacks, being passed over for a promotion because as a black woman you can’t be drinking buddies with the boss like the less qualified white guy who the boss automatically identifies with. It’s why rich people don’t see money. They have the luxury of not needing to track their money because they know it’ll never be a problem. That’s why you don’t need to care about categories like race, sex, income, age, etc. Those problems don’t affect you in real ways like less privileged people who have very difficult, tangible survival situations. The kind of survival situations that would make you cry for mommy. If you get triggered by strangers on forums having sober discussions about race, just imagine how triggering it is to actually BE a victim of racial attacks, homophobic violence or sexual assault. If you have no interest in relating to other people's pain don’t be surprised if others have zero interest in understanding you. The Universe is a mirror. What’s inside gets reflected back. Karma’s a bad bitch mistress. Thinking that “Karens are the victims we should be talking about” is an insult to Karens. Karens’ got better shit to worry about. I bet most of them are stronger that you're projecting and have bigger fish to fry. “Woman of color” is a quality. I’m a lot of things and I have a lot of qualities. Depending on context some of those qualities are relevant, some are not. Unique qualities don’t automatically make something good or bad. Value is relative. It’s interesting how you lumped being a woman and being non-white with insults like “libtard.” I love being a woman. I love being Chinese. (That’s not a knock on people who aren’t Chinese and people who aren’t women.) I don’t care that much that I’m hetero, but I recognize how lucky I am that there’s a lot of serious problems I’ll never have to worry about. Your situation is both fortunate and pathetic. I do mean pathetic in the dictionary sense of the word. “Arousing or deserving of scornful pity.” You’ve been so coddled by life that you have no real life reference points for true suffering. Your resilience muscles are weak. If your first thought about all the genuinely terrible, heartbreaking stuff that’s happening all over the world, that has been magnified by covid, is “waaaaaa categories. I’m so triggered,” you honestly need to leave your mom’s basement. This is genuine advice. Do some volunteer work. Get to know someone from a different race or socio economic background. The horrific images you see in newspapers are other people’s everyday lived reality. Educate yourself, for your own sake.

If you want to solve the problem of sexism, racism or social inequality you have to address those distinctions head on, without pretending they play no role in someone’s quality of life. White people and non-whites do not have the same amount of privilege. Same with men, women or trans people. Same with rich people or poor people. Same with heterosexuals and the LGBTQ community. I’m a woman of color, but I’m privileged as heck because I’m hard working and conscious enough to be aware of God and committed to my growth. I don’t feel guilty about my gifts; I embrace them. Instead of feeling guilty about privilege, people should use their gifts to contribute to the world. It’s better than nitpicking at the less privileged. I still wouldn’t do this if a girl was super skinny. What if she’s skinny because she has an eating disorder? I know in the PUA community “negging” girls and saying mean things about their looks, weight, race, etc is suggested as a flirtation tactic, but there are much better ways to flirt with girls. Women are sensitive about weight. Men are sensitive about height. I personally can’t think of any productive reasons to comment on either of those things unasked. Even if someone‘s lost a lot of weight, it’s better to say, “you look great” instead of “you look way skinnier.” It's not something you have to do, but it's a more socially skilled way of broaching the subject.

Parts Work helps clear up your trauma, psyche and emotional baggage so that you're ready for psychedelics to show you ultimate reality. Leo talks about it there ↑.

Ismael wrote a good post on Teal Swan's version of Parts Work. ? If you combine it with psychedelics to release emotions it's even more of a game changer. You don't necessarily have to do the work on psychedelics (although you can), but ? in general release a lot of old feelings that need to get out. There are also meditations you can do to help you connect to your various parts. I think some are included in the book.

If you DM me proof that you have the list, I can tell you which books have been added in the past year. I don't want to reveal the list on the forum.

Racism is wrong, whether it's white people doing to non whites, or black people doing to Asians and vice versa. Just because everyone's capable of racism doesn't make racism okay.

There’s a really useful thing in standup when you’re being heckled. Attack a heckler on their obnoxious behavior, not their weight, race, sex, religion or if they’re handicapped, etc. If you attack that stuff versus their behavior the audience will forget about the heckler and turn on you and not want to hear your jokes. This takes some well honed, ninja social skills to pull off, but it’s a great skill to develop. If you want to get good at handling verbal attacks, it’s useful to study comedians dealing with hecklers. Hannibal Burress is brilliant here. These are all comedy pros who could eviscerate any thing about the heckler, but they’re focusing on shitty behavior (except Bill Burr, but he manages to win back the crowd which is startling). With that girl you could just point out she’s being really rude. “Don’t you know it’s rude to call people too skinny? Do you like it when people do that to you? Why are you doing that?” Sometimes reflecting a bully’s behavior to herself is a good way to get her to stop. Tone is important too. Being matter of fact, or maybe joking depending on the situation, is better than being pissy or weak about it. It’s even better when everyone is agreeing with you that the bully’s out of line.

I said the term Karen is problematic. I didn't say it's not problematic. If you're dealing with a difficult person it's helpful to be specific about how they're difficult. A-hole or cu** isn't specific. There's a pattern of white people attacking minorities over really normal stuff, like seeing black people drinking coffee at Starbucks, or Asian-Americans getting beaten, harassed and yelled at because covid started in Wuhan, China. Just calling them jerks or abusers isn't helpful in diagnosing why this particular problem keeps happening. Those posts aren't directed at you, btw. They're for anyone reading or lurking ("Hello lurkers ?"). In general, it's a good test in self-bias to see what types of people you look at with compassion and nuance versus those you demonize or say, "they should just suck it up. Their problems don't count. It's just whining." If, and I mean if because it's not all people, it's easier to see Fat Shaming lady at church with compassion and nuance, but it's difficult to see black people being harassed by the cops with the same nuance, it's good to notice that. Everyone does it, but it's good to be aware of it. Leo actually has a great blog episode about this: How To Test For Self-Bias

The term Karen is problematic. I wish there was a better word for it. Ultimately everyone needs to just treat each other with respect. Of course, Karen isn’t nearly as bad as actual racial slurs. Also, white people are represented in a myriad of multifaceted ways, so it’s different than minorities who are just starting to get represented. If you meet a “Karen” you know not all white women are like that. Nice white ladies are awesome. Hollywood not letting minorities tell their own stories as three dimensional humans is not. When someone in a privileged position who has it way better says, “I have it bad too! What about meeeeeee?” It’s like going to a rally for Cancer Research and yelling, “what about AIDS????” AIDS is important, privileged people deserve compassion and love too, but depending on context it can sound really clueless. It’s like this brilliant skit: There are a lot of stage green social changes going on in society, and they’re not going away. If you have trouble getting triggered or even getting along with people who are different, it’s good to learn about other people’s life experience, especially if they're less privileged, for your own peace of mind.

I hadn't thought about this before, but I'm very comfortable with my emotions and relaxing into them without resistance. Being present with my different parts never felt super grindy, if anything they wouldn't stop talking . So if you're reading the book and feeling a lot of resistance, you should probably do a zoom session, or at least listen to some recordings of other people's zoom sessions. I'd learn the fundamentals of how IFS works first though. Yay! IFS is great. Earley's books are a lot more practical then Schwartz's, even though Schwartz originated IFS. I'd read both at the same time. Do the exercises at the end of the chapter of the main book, then use the workbook for exercises that apply to what you're working on. The examples of other people's IFS work can be very useful too.

Can't wait. Is that the title of your new romance novel, Leo?

There are therapists who do zoom sessions. https://personal-growth-programs.com/individual/ https://everettconsidine.com/witnessed-ifs-sessions/ Everett Considine has recorded IFS sessions you can listen to to get a sense of how sessions go. I think Derek Scott on youtube does zoom sessions too. Parts work is a big field, so I'm sure there are other therapists who do a version of it if you prefer to see someone in person. You can definitely do it solo. It's better to learn the fundamentals on your own so that if you do sessions you can squeeze more juice out of them. There's an IFS Workbook that has more detailed exercises that you can get along with various IFS books, like Self-Therapy and Freedom from Your Inner Critic.