Xonas Pitfall

Let's go!! 🎉🎉🎉🥳🎈 @Natasha Tori Maru is awesome!

Exactly. And it fits nicely into this thread too. The issue with defining yourself as “the highest value” or placing yourself somewhere at the top of a hierarchy is that it can become an incredibly convenient tool for the ego. Suddenly, all of your desires can be justified, no matter how idealistic they are, whether you have actually put in the work required to achieve them, or whether you are realistically capable of getting them at all. You can start believing that you simply should have these things, that you ultimately deserve them, and that your frustration at not having them is therefore justified. Take looksmaxxing, for example. Someone might place an extremely high emphasis on physical appearance and construct an entire ranking system around looks, deciding that looks are the #1 factor in dating. Once they have convinced themselves that they rank highly according to that system, they can then justify believing that they deserve someone “on their level or above,” even if their relationship skills are poor, their personality is incompatible with others, or their charisma and social skills are lacking. They have subjectively defined one dimension as the most important one, and then use that hierarchy to justify what they believe they deserve. The same thing can happen with pickup or charisma. If you convince yourself that you have developed into an exceptionally charismatic person, you might start believing that only the top percentage of women should be available to you, and that you therefore have every right to be dissatisfied when you do not get those outcomes. Your self-defined status becomes the justification for your expectations. You might define yourself as being so “high value” that you deserve multiple partners, and that they should all be happy and grateful simply to have been allowed to be with you. It can become even more complicated when you have actually dated someone for a few days, weeks, or months and then unconsciously turn that experience into your new standard. You might think, “I was able to get someone like that once, so that must be what I deserve.” But there may have been countless factors that made that particular relationship work, and there may also have been major incompatibilities between you and that person. The fact that something happened once does not necessarily mean that it represents your objective “level” or what you are entitled to have consistently. Then the ego can start building an idealized future around this. You begin constructing a kind of “build-a-bear” version of your future partner, where they need to be in the top percentage for looks, the top percentage according to your definition of spirituality, highly intelligent according to your standards, highly charismatic, and so on. And then you think you are justified in wanting all of this, and you are shocked when you do not get it, because you have defined a subjective hierarchy of what you are and where you rank within it. Not to mention that people will often overestimate where they actually rank in the first place. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting whatever you want in life. You are allowed to have extremely high standards and extremely ambitious desires. You can want whatever you want. But wanting something while refusing to confront the reality required to have it is often just wishful thinking. And in that sense, it can be almost the opposite of spirituality, because spirituality requires confronting the truth of yourself, your ego, your desires, and the reality surrounding them rather than selectively filtering reality to preserve the image you want to have of yourself.

“Denying” usually implies separating something from something else, or refusing to look into the truth of something. God, by contrast, could be defined as ultimate acceptance: the acceptance of all biases and non-biases, the acceptance of truth and falsehood, and the acceptance of all polarities that exist. But this is an acceptance that accounts for both sides. It is non-dual. There is nothing to separate from God in an absolute sense. When you’re speaking from a limited, relative point of view, you’re usually implying a human who doesn’t want to accept or integrate something and instead wants to filter reality, seeing it as only one thing. God would be integrative, unifying, and all-accepting; God integrates both sides rather than rejecting one side. The ego needs to filter reality and accept specific conditions and truths to survive. Spirituality is often defined as moving from the ego toward something more like God. You can be someone who denies the truth of your desire, or you can be someone who denies the illusion behind why you have that desire in the first place. It is very contextual, and it depends on the person, because you are dealing with the relativity of finite humans, finite egos, and finite selves. When you speak of God, spirituality, absolute truth, and so on, you are talking about something integrative. Acceptance does not necessarily mean accepting every belief, desire, or perception as true. It means accepting the truth of what is actually happening, including the possibility that your own perception, desire, or denial may itself be part of the illusion that needs to be understood and integrated. --- To make it less abstract: Someone who has a desire but denies the realities required to fulfill that desire is not “integrating,” “accepting,” or “fully owning” everything about that desire. The action is coming from the ego, where you are filtering the desire for your own benefit while turning a blind eye to the reality of what it would actually take to fulfill it because that reality is too painful to confront. A more spiritual approach would be to fully accept what your desire is, understand why you have it, determine whether you genuinely want to let it go or pursue it, and, if you choose to pursue it, take full responsibility for integrating everything that comes with it. Using Buddhism as an example, it depends heavily on the individual. You can have a Buddhist who genuinely integrates and lets go of desires because they recognize the desire as ultimately untruthful or unsatisfactory, so they no longer feel compelled by it. Or you can have a Buddhist who uses Buddhism to remain in denial of their own lack because they are unable to achieve what they desire, making Buddhism more of a coping mechanism or an escape. Denial of pain. Both can be true. It depends on the individual and what is actually happening internally. In one case, the person is seeing the truth, integrating it, and genuinely letting go. In the other, they are using a spiritual framework to avoid confronting something painful.

God is Everything. The "Truth" of being Everything is that you also are a schizophrenic cosplaying as every limited being, plunging yourself into realities of delusion and denial without end. When you say God is infinity, it literally means that: everything, everyone, everywhere, all at once. Limited and unlimited. There is no “limit” set upon God. If God couldn’t “accept” being delusional, that would also be the limit; hence, why limitation exists.

Oh, sorry, I didn’t see this. It’s completely fine to open up. I think the reason people reacted the way they did is that some of what you said came across as arrogant, even if that wasn’t your intention. Again, you can want whatever you want, but wanting something specific also comes with the consequences, responsibilities, effort, and potential loneliness that come with pursuing it. But if all you wanted to do was emotionally vent, that’s completely fine. Yes, it can be lonely, and it can be difficult to find a good match. Luckily, you only really need to find one unicorn, not thousands of them.

I’m not completely sure what you’re trying to express with this. To me, it comes across more as you getting your feelings out and processing what you’re going through, which is completely okay. You yourself defined the goal: the more “special” of a person you want, the more difficult it becomes. The same applies to any goal in life. You can desire to become a billionaire, but that comes with the responsibilities and consequences of being a billionaire. You can desire to become a spiritual guru in your 30s, but that comes with the responsibility of actually being a spiritual guru in your 30s. If you want a highly conscious woman in her mid-to-late 20s or early 30s, then you need to go out there and take responsibility for finding such a woman, maintaining a relationship with her, and being the kind of person she is also attracted to. If you truly want this, then the solution is to get out there, reach out to as many people as possible, put yourself in places where people like this are likely to be, and actually find that person. Then you keep fine-tuning your approach until something works. And if you find that nothing makes you happy, then you need to question whether the problem is your approach, attitude, mentality, surroundings, or simply where and how you are meeting and approaching people. Troubleshoot what isn’t working and adjust accordingly. I think the "feelings point" is ultimately not going to change much here. Either way, you’re looking for something very rare, a “unicorn.” And if that’s genuinely what you want, then you have to be willing to put in the amount of effort it takes to find something that rare. The more specific and uncommon the person you’re looking for is, the more effort, time, and persistence it will naturally take. You chose to want this and not “settle” for anything else, so what’s the issue? If you want to become a billionaire and you refuse to settle for anything less, then you have to be willing to work, think, and live in a way that is consistent with becoming a billionaire. And if you eventually realize that you don’t actually want the lifestyle, responsibilities, sacrifices, and consequences that come with it, then you don’t really want the goal itself. Wanting something without being willing to accept the downsides that come with it is just wishful thinking. Everyone wants an ideal life, but very few people are actually willing to put in the work. If anything, one of the core principles of spiritual work is accepting reality as it is, and accepting the truth as it is. The truth of having a desire is that it comes with frustration, uncertainty, and a significant amount of work. You have to actually go out and find someone like this, build and maintain a relationship with them, and become the kind of person they would also be genuinely attracted to.

Sorry to hear that. Definitely get a second opinion, and even a third or fourth if you need to. Don’t give up. If you need to travel and have the means to, seek treatment from specialists who have experience with it. Don’t give up.

@LordFall Hey, just one thing I’d highly recommend: sell the game first and build up an audience around the niche. You really need to validate the market. Unless this is more of an experimental passion project, in which case, keep it up! Good luck!

Assume everything is ultimately the same underlying reality, God/infinity. The ego ordinarily has limitations on what can be experienced or recognized. Yet the ego can apparently become substantially altered through awakening, meditation, psychedelics, contemplation, etc. Therefore, some apparently rigid limitation within the system can become malleable. So why couldn't other aspects of the apparent material structure also become malleable to some degree? If the answer is "the ego isn't in control," that doesn't seem to explain why the ego's constraints can change while material constraints cannot. That's the contradiction I'm asking to resolve. I’m not arguing that the ego can simply make God give someone a horse dick. I’m asking why there is supposedly such a hard boundary between what can become malleable at the level of ego and what can become malleable at the material level. If everything is ultimately the same substrate, God/infinity, then we already have an example of something that appears highly constrained and finite, namely the ego, becoming substantially more malleable through awakening, psychedelics, meditation, contemplation, etc. So the question is: what is the reason that this malleability can occur at the level of the ego but cannot extend, even partially, to the material level?

Maybe I’m missing something, but this is the contradiction I’m pointing out. Assumption: Everything is ultimately the same substrate (God). If the “ego” can exert some force of finitude that prevents us from accessing God right now, then, by the same logic, “material objects” exert a stubborn constraint that prevents reality from becoming more magically malleable. But if the ego can sometimes lose that control (due to whatever combination of chemical compounds, contemplation, yoga, meditation, focus) and “break free” of those constraints, then it seems like the same possibility should apply to the material level too. If the ego can be molded and changed after awakening, and usually is to some extent, what’s stopping the possibility of material things also being molded and changed to some extent? If everything is ultimately the same substrate, i.e., infinity, then I don’t see how the model can consistently explain why one kind of constraint could be overcome while the other is categorically impossible. Am I missing something here?

What’s stopping you from accessing alien consciousness right now? Just imagine it and so it shall be.

Awesome post! Thank you so much. I think, for me personally, this was what really did it. Bernardo has a course on this on YouTube. The essential idea is that if you take physicalism to its logical extreme, it ironically starts to resemble idealism. You keep reducing material objects into smaller and smaller components, and eventually into mathematical structures, equations, relationships, and abstractions. So you’re left with the question: how do you ultimately get a physicalist system if its fundamental description and "foundational substrate" consist of abstract entities and relationships? I think it’s a really masterful way of exposing that tension. Here’s the link to it:

No, my argument was to point out the correlation. If all is infinity, God, then all finite things have a looser grip on "reality" than infinity itself. So if the ego can get loosey-goosey and “succumb” to infinity, what’s stopping reality itself from getting more wonky, loosey-goosey, and more “stereotypically” magical? If the ego can break free from the chains of finitude, what’s stopping material things from being more malleable and loosey-goosey too? And we also see evidence of the ego changing and becoming more malleable as you awaken, because you realize the “fake illusion” of control and the boundaries you put on yourself. You can change your mind and bend it in more productive ways. Not fully, of course, but I feel like denying any magical possibility is just silly, especially given the framework you’re proposing.

It’s more that it just doesn’t follow a logical conclusion from any of the “system” or “logic” that is given in the forum/videos. Somehow, you’re saying that there are magical chemicals that can alter your entire perception of reality and selfhood, change your concept of who you are, and somehow expand your ego or let go of your ego so much that it becomes God, omnipotent and all-knowing. Alien intelligence, consciousness, experience. What’s it like to be all humans, all genders, all animals, murderers and the purest saints? Become the people you know, etc., etc. Yet, you cannot imagine any tiny bit of stereotypical magic in the future. It just doesn’t track. Just like an ego limits your mind and body, and you have compounds that let it loose. Why would it ever even be able to discover higher consciousness? There’s no reason why this might not be a potential discovery in the future of something “stereotypically” magical. I just don’t see a good argument for it, nor has one been provided. By this logic, you should never be able to awaken, ever. Why would the ego "allow" for it, or allow for any chemical to cause it? People aren’t trying to be wishful thinkers or “not surrendering to God.” People are questioning the logic and consistency of the system, hence the question.

This whole rhetoric is meaningless. Everyone wants someone who is “nice.” The issue is that, for either gender, “nice” by itself isn’t enough. No guy is having sex with a girl simply because she’s nice. No guy is going into a relationship with a girl simply because she’s nice. No guy is marrying or staying committed long-term to a girl just because she’s “nice.” People want a combination of things: someone they find hot, fun, sexy, attractive, intelligent, compatible, kind, reliable, safe, etc. Saying “girls don’t want nice guys” is basically equivalent to a girl saying, “Guys don’t want nice girls. They always cheat on them with hot girls.” It’s the same flawed framing. It’s like a "conventionally unattractive" girl saying, “Why don’t guys want sweet girls like me? They only want bimbos who are hot, bratty, materialistic, and bitchy.” Please don’t get caught up in these cringey “nice guy/nice girl” paradigms. They’re mostly meaningless. The only useful takeaway from the statement is that people generally aren’t going to enter or maintain a relationship with you simply because you’re sweet or nice. But that doesn’t mean you should become an asshole or a jerk. It simply means that being nice isn’t a substitute for attraction, compatibility, or everything else people look for in a partner. Most people want to be attracted to their partner and be treated well by them. That’s the ideal. Nobody is sitting there thinking, “Damn, I really want my partner to treat me like dogshit.” Niceness isn’t going to save a relationship if the two people are fundamentally incompatible in terms of values, sexuality, lifestyle, goals, personality, etc. It’s a good thing that people aren’t entering relationships simply because someone is “nice.” For a stable, long-term commitment, you ideally need compatibility across a lot of different areas.

Also, absolutely no pressure on this; I know Leo is busy with the book! But I think a lot of people would love to hear either an audio or written review, or just more thoughts on some of the newer Booklist books. I always find it really insightful to read, especially in case I missed something or hadn’t seen it from another POV, or if there are any crucial insights I overlooked Either way, thank you for making such awesome products, both on Booklist and with the clips!

When you say this, are you referring mostly to beauty, or is there more to it? What does “feminine energy inspires me and gives me energy” mean to you? I’d be really curious to hear what you mean by that. Thanks for the share!

Gotcha, I misunderstood then. In that case, I agree. I was thinking specifically of Tate’s teachings because a lot of his Real World courses were centered around teaching others his manipulation, exploitation, sex trafficking, Loverboy method techniques, etc. But if we’re just talking about red pill vs. black pill, then I’d probably agree.

5 was definitely one of the types I considered. But the way I understand the Enneagram is that the framework of each type’s mind is organized around its core fear and wound. Personally, I find myself reacting and behaving, both throughout my childhood and in my current adult life, in ways that align more closely with 9. 5 is probably somewhere in my tritype, though. I suppose both types can be quite withdrawn and similar behaviorally, especially more introverted 9s compared to 5s, so I can definitely see how the misconception could happen

Hard doubt on this LOL Both very bad

I’m a very private person, but I appreciate the offer 🤍

@Joseph Maynor I personally believe I’m an INFP, but I’ve been typed as INTP and ENTP by other “typists,” so it really depends on how objective I am about myself and how accurately I’ve communicated the relevant information to the typists. That said, I think MBTI and Socionics can be tricky to compare because the two systems aren’t completely 1:1. There are also some issues with how certain behaviors are interpreted through functions and information elements, so I’ve always found that part of typology difficult to pin down because it’s easy for definitions to become so broad or flexible that almost any behavior can be interpreted as evidence for a particular function. I think it’s more useful to stick with a consistent definition of each function that is specific enough to be functionally workable and actually distinguishable from the others. With Enneagram, though, I’m a bit more confident that I’m a 9w8, with sx/sp or sp/sx.

@Sugarcoat A better way to figure out your type would be to question what you dislike or cannot imagine yourself doing, as well as the thoughts and behaviors you seem to fall into on autopilot, even when nothing is forcing you to act that way. In Socionics, I believe this is partly why there is a function called PoLR, or the Point of Least Resistance. It refers to the information element that is particularly difficult or uncomfortable for a person to deal with. It can show up as a blind spot, an area where you have little confidence or interest, or something you instinctively try to avoid unless circumstances force you to engage with it. Looking at these kinds of patterns can sometimes tell you more about your type than simply reading descriptions and trying to find traits you relate to. In that sense, you can reverse-engineer your type. Instead of asking, “Which type sounds like me?” you can ask, “What consistently feels unnatural to me? What do I struggle to pay attention to? What do I do automatically, even when there is no external reason to do it?” This can help you identify recurring patterns in your cognition and behavior. It’s way too easy to read broad descriptions of different types and get lost in them, especially because you can probably relate to aspects of multiple types. Looking at your actual patterns, especially the things you consistently avoid, struggle with, or do automatically, can give you a more grounded starting point. And of course, as we’ve learned here, bias is huge too. We often subconsciously want to be one type rather than another, or project false identities onto these labels based on what we think they mean for how we’re perceived and what we’re capable of. Removing that bias as much as possible would be ideal. Every type has its own strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and limitations. I’ve seen, for example, intuitive logical types be the ones people especially like to identify with, or types that people associate with high charisma, intelligence, manipulation, or some kind of exceptional prowess. But people often overlook the less flattering aspects of those types, including the ways they can be clueless and "useless".

MBTI, Socionics, Enneagram, Jungian typology, Spiral Dynamics, etc. are amazing tools for self-reflection, but it’s important not to get stuck in these labels. It’s so easy to get caught up in them, and I’ve definitely seen many people do that. Use these systems to reflect on your values and behavioral traits, not to box yourself into a specific type, think you’re above a certain cognitive type, or assume you’re the “best type,” etc.

#Highest T-levels