thenondualtankie

@JonasVE12 Wow, I loved your post.

And while studying full-time (I probably study around 30 hours a week). I've watched the first 3 (or so) videos of the LP course and you said if there's other things you need to focus on, do that first. In fact I stopped watching right before you said you'd do a visualisation to create a strong emotional desire to find out LP, because I got worried that it would waiver me from the path I should be on, i.e. fixing my dating and sex life. At the same time though... it's common wisdom that women are more attracted to guys that have a life purpose. I can definitely see how knowing my life purpose would ground me in my pursuit of women. Furthermore lately I've been very keen on massively improving my life. I want to be super duper ambitious in life. I consider myself a very creative person with a decent amount of inherent talent in me, and I just don't know how exactly I'm gonna express the creative energy that I have. But I really need to focus on pickup, because honestly going out takes a lot of time. I also have a pretty strong desire to achieve a high grade for my degree. There are other responsibilities that I have as well, e.g. I think I'm gonna start going to the gym very regularly now: Degree Gym Diet (Cooking, buying the right foods) My acting hobby, which may well end up being my LP anyways. Though I'm not at all clear on this, because my degree is mathematics (super unrelated to acting). So hopefully I've been able to clearly communicate both sides of the argument as to whether I should commit to the LP right now. Otherwise I'll just do it over the summer break lol.

I want to create music, I want to do acting, I want to get good at dancing, I want to write stories, I want to create political theory content (of which I consider myself quite knowledgeable), I want to create these shitposty video edits called YouTube Poop - I'm sure you've heard of them - which actually end up supercharging your video editing skills, or at least they get you started in video editing. On top of all this, I study mathematics at university, and I dream of vastly improving my mathematical ability, i.e. my mathematical creativity. So I think I can boil down the things I want to pursue most into the following list: Creating music. I keep getting the impulse to create music, which I'd do on the computer. But I'm starkly aware of how much hassle it takes to get decent at this. I just wish I could get my imagination transmitted onto the computer instantly. I also have the urge to do some rap freestyle, or write lyrics or poetry. I guess I could start that one right away. Acting - I think I have a natural talent for acting. It would be good to start off with a YouTube skit with a friend. I'm also trying to get involved in stage acting with the dramatic society of my university, but this is taking long to progress for various reasons. I also want to get good at dancing. Dancing is super fun and plus it'll be good for my nightgame trips too Mathematics. I think I'll get this part of my life sorted on my own for now. TL;DR: There are too many creative impulses in me and I don't know where to begin.

I hope you realise that this is just meant to be hilarious lmao.

Thinking back to that one part where Leo said he went to the mall and looked at hundreds of girls, training his ability to do a quick "Yes" or "No". Attracted or not attracted. Up or down. I've been trying to do this as well, but the issue is that there seems to be a TON of "maybe". Having that quick YES or NO is harder than it sounds, especially when you've had a years-long habit of suppressing what you're attracted to out of belief that you'll never get it. From what I can tell though, the YES comes from when you have that "wow" feeling from the girls beauty. My question is: what should I do if I'm not super looks oriented? I personally care more about personality than the average guy. I definitely care about looks, but I do notice myself get attracted to girls that don't necessarily look good, but I'm attracted to them sheerly from getting to know them. I'm sure this happens to a lot of you. Furthermore, shouldn't I be lowering my standards initially? Or should I literally just be only shooting for those "wow" girls? For context, and this may well totally invalidate my question lol, I haven't actually started approaching regularly yet. Just been obsessing over the idea of doing it instead

How am I supposed to keep a decent sleep schedule if I'm going out at night several times a week? I'm by far my most productive when I wake up early, lately I've been doing 8AM. But the other day I went to the club for the first time, managed to get home at like 4AM. Because of insomnia issues I've been having lately, it genuinely fucked up my productivity and sleep for the next 3 days. Any ways to manage sleep schedule when regularly doing nightlife? Or do I just deal with it?

The thing with pickup is that a lot of the times it's viewed as this low-consciousness endeavour. In many ways it is: chasing women is quite an animalistic thing to do in general. In particular, here is a list of things I find to be "low consciousness" about pickup, though there are definitely more things than this: The fact that there are "games" that we need to play in order to communicate sexual attraction to women. I don't know how true this is, but it is true to an extent: women prefer aggressive assholes to dudes that are purely nice (if they had to pick between those two extremes). The ego-boosting that often comes with getting a lay. You're using concepts to make yourself feel like you're the absolute shit. At the same time though, I would say there are many high-consciousness attributes of pickup in general and even the pickup community in general. What I say about the pickup community isn't really based on extensive familiarity with it though, moreso just a few pickup youtube channels I've seen: Facing social anxiety Being able to fully express who you are Learning to instantly connect with strangers Improvement of self-esteem - interestingly, maybe improvement of self-esteem and the "ego-boost" quality are two sides of the same coin, but one side is considered "high-consciousness" and the other low! I'm just baffled that pickup, considered to be low-consciousness by many, actually has many high-consciousness attributes. It's funny that a lot of pickup people on YouTube that I've seen basically say that the best part of pickup is the part where you're in a state of total self-expression. I've also heard this warning a lot that getting laid won't suddenly fix all your problems etc.

I am God, you are God. When you realise that you are God, you see the same God that I see when I realise that I am God. It's a shared reality. Is it possible to use the fact that we are both the same entity in order to communicate with each other instantly, even if we're miles away?

I'm currently on lesson 8 of the J.C. Stevens book. I'm looking for a partner who's on a similar level so we can discuss the practices: how well they're working, whether we're following the instructions correctly, and also a general discussion on our spiritual progress. DM me if you're looking for a yogic partner too

I guess what I want to get to the bottom of is: how can I use spirituality work to increase my attractiveness? In what ways does spirituality work actually affect your attractiveness? For example, if I get connected with God, does that literally turn on some magical metaphysical switch that gets people more attracted to me? Also by attractiveness I don't necessarily mean it to the opposite sex. I just mean it in the sense that, for example, Jesus was a very "attractive" person; i.e. I mean it in a much broader, almost "metaphysical" sense.

My grandfather has been on his death bed for a few months now, suffering from (I believe several) late stage cancer(s). And he's probably been waiting for me to visit for double that, since our annual visit was disrupted by COVID. I'm finally able to visit him now though. About a week before my flight, I gave them a video call and he basically told me he really really misses me. "We're waiting for you with four eyes open, four eyes!". This is a Turkish saying which means we're really looking forward to you being here. Funny thing is, he was only able to open one eye during the call. Now my grandfather is normally a stage blue right-winger (not saying as an insult - he was an avid supporter of Erdogan) who is easy to criticise you for minor things. I've heard that he shouted and my grandmother a lot back in the day. I also feel like he has a lot of pride; he's not the type of person that you can just openly talk about death and other difficult topics with. But this time I felt something different in him. I just landed in Turkey today and was greeted by my grandparents and aunt. I asked grandpa how he's doing, and he replied "Well, my dear grandson, it is what it is. I wake up and I to to sleep. I thank God for everything. As you can see, life just comes and goes." My dad told me that, when he visited a few weeks ago, my grandpa would keep telling him "Allah razı olsun." He would say this fucking constantly. It translates to "May Allah be accepting of you," and it's a way of showing deep gratitude towards someone. (He was thanking him for visiting in case you're lost.) I guess what I noticed is that on one hand he's in terrible pain and suffering, but on the other he has a newfound sense of peace in him, which I definitely didn't see just a year ago. I mean, maybe I'm making this up in my head to make this feel better about this whole situation, but I don't think so. Is this something quite normal that happens to people who are dying? Now what I want to figure out is how I should proceed. What I hope for is to give him a little more happiness and love. I also hope to be able to take wisdom from him. I was really struck by the way he talked about gratitude, and I want to figure out how I should proceed with talking about it with him. There are several problems though: He saw me grow up as a baby and a toddler. He knows and loves me more than I know and love him, especially because we've lived abroad for many years now. I've spent the majority of my time with him as a child. I want demonstrate some genuine love to him. His memory has deteriorated a ton. Apparently he keeps asking to sit up because he doesn't remember that his hip is broken. I noticed that we quickly moved to the other room after I said my first hello. I think he felt quite left out. I don't know how to talk to him or whether he'll be offended by the things I tell him. This is because he was stage blue. For example I thought maybe I could make that joke above, that he had only one eye open when he said that. I really doubt he wants me to pity him or feel bad for him. That would probably make him even more embarrassed about his situation than he already somewhat seems to be. The above bullet points aren't necessarily meant to be coherent. I guess I just wanted to list out some relevant information.

More generally, why doesn't consciousness work improve your ability to solve mathematical problems? After all, don't mathematical problems require a ton of intelligence, which is something we explore in this work?

@Mason Riggle Sure, you can call it "contemplation", but the contemplation you do while solving a mathematical problem is largely unaffected by your general level of consciousness (this is the "main dial" that psychedelics turn, according to Leo's terminology). You could say that your level of consciousness matters until it reaches a certain degree - good luck solving IMO problems while in deep sleep - but after that it's seemingly useless.

@JuliusCaesar I want to call bullshit on this statement. Psychedelics severely impair your logical intelligence. This is actually mostly why I thought of this question in the first place. How can psychedelics raise your awareness so much while inhibiting something like mathematical ingenuity?

@Preety_India Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

@Loba You say Einstein mixed mathematics with imagination. Concretely, what do you mean by this?

@ChrisZoZo I'd love to hear more about this. Should I just watch The Man Who Knew Infinity?

Is this megathread still active? What I'm wondering is: for the J.C. Stephens book, are you supposed to discard practices which you feel are not working? Are you allowed to invent minor edits to the suggested routines? For example, I'm currently at the Om Japa lesson, and the Talabya Kriya part of the routine has proven difficult for me. I can't get the suction effect with my tongue consistently and therefore the frenulum does not stretch as much as I want. So I thought I could do the tongue-stretching first, along with some other exercises presented in this video: https://youtu.be/MC-Cn9H6CQE (a few other stretches to help reach Kechari Mudra). The problem is that this would change the order of the suggested routine, but I feel it would be beneficial as I would get the most frustrating part of my routine out the way rather than slapped into the middle. Another question I had was: what if I just skipped out on the tongue stretching in the first place? Is Kechari Mudra actually worth all the hassle? Based on the stuff I've seen, it seems quite powerful though, so I think the answer to my own question here would be no, don't skip out on Kechari Mudra.

This is Nadi Sodhana. Ujjayi Pranayama is the one where you constrict your throat. I'm glad it's effective for you. I've also been feeling random cool breezes usually on my face during meditation / yoga.

What is the easiest way to face your fears? I understand that at some level, facing your fears involves literally experiencing that which you fear the most, but what are some ways we can make this a smooth process?

Most hardcore Marxist-Leninists are also... hardcore materialists. I'm curious to discuss in what ways spirituality and non-duality can help advance the communist movement in general. Is it worth trying to explain that dialectical materialism, the epistemological foundation of Marxism, is limited? What aspects of the work studied by Actualized.org should be applied to the Marxist movement? Therefore I'd like to know if there are any other communists, especially Marxist Leninists in this forum that have actually considered philosophies beyond materialism. Note to moderators: I am not trying to push my communist views here, just looking for a specific kind of person to have discussions with.

To act selfishly causes suffering. It is ultimately this suffering that leads to selflessness. How is this not God forcing us into being selfless?

Let's say I want to avoid the suffering of being crushed by a boulder. Then I believe there are two ways of going about doing that. Namely, complete acceptance or complete denial. If I completely accept the possibility of being crushed by a boulder, which comes with the possibility of death, injury etc, then this possibility will no longer make me suffer. At the same time, if I create a life where this possibility doesn't even exist, then I have avoided the suffering by avoiding the scenario altogether. The thought of being crushed by a boulder doesn't phase me, because I don't even remotely view it as a possibility. I call this scenario "complete denial". I've virtually completely avoided this "bad" scenario. From this perspective, suffering can only happen when you're between these two cases. That is, when you haven't completely avoided the boulders, but you haven't completely accepted them either. The reason I bring this up is because it's common spiritual wisdom to say that avoidance is what causes suffering. What I'm trying to argue here, however, is that if you can completely avoid something, then it will not cause you suffering. In my life, I believe I misinterpreted what it means to completely accept reality. I had a trip where I would neurotically conjure up and imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios happening to me. This had been happening for a few trips before, but this one it really got unleashed. I've been doing the same for all my trips since then. My mind justifies all this by saying "You need to accept all of reality! You need to constantly think about all the worst things that could happen to someone and act as if they're happening to you!" At the same time, in a sense I understand that this is the most direct path to happiness. Just accepting everything as a whole. So how do I reconcile these two things? Should I first create a life where I don't need to avoid the bad, and then accept everything? But is that really the acceptance of everything? I hope I made some sense here.

From what I gather, women prefer men who are more mature than them and I feel like this means older than them. I'm a 19 year old dude with zero sexual experience so I'm literally in the opposite end of the spectrum. If I have a night out then most women will be older than me. Even if it's an event hosted by my university most girls will be 1-2 years above my age. How should I deal with more mature / older women than myself? Should I just approach them the same as anyone else and therefore eventually build up that maturity? I just feel more awkward about approaching women older than me haha

@Leo Gura Holy shit I really need to think about how I apply your teachings to different things that you don't explicitly mention. I remember you making this point and agreeing with it blah blah but it never even registered for me to apply it to this example here.