mr_engineer

Masculinity, fundamentally, is about giving. That's why Life-Purpose is core to masculinity. It is about actively giving and sharing your gift with the world. Culturally, masculinity is about achievement. Which is a problematic thing to believe, for yourself and for others. It gives rise to an immature dick-measuring contest which, broadly speaking, is the materialistic rat-race. It leads nowhere, there is no end to it.

Please don't. I say some offensive shit here. I would much rather you laugh it off and move on.

The question at hand here is - what is it that women think a 'wholesome life' is? Vs. what do women think is 'weird'? If you're playing a numbers game, these become important questions. What would this 'wound' be?

The dream is not separate from reality, it is a part of reality. So, the pain is also a part of reality. It is real. The God-self You experienced it in reality through the other body. And, as a conscious, empathetic human, you were able to access God-consciousness and you were able to actually feel that pain. This interpretation of it as 'bioelectrical signals' - this is your attachment to your materialist-paradigm coloring your interpretation of the experience of pain. It's the idea of 'bioelectrical signals' that's the illusion in your mind. The pain is an experience. Therefore, it is real! If you see yourself as Consciousness, you are the experiencer of something. And, all of life is an experience that you are experiencing. The experiencer is prior to everything. So, as the experiencer, reality is what you experience. And, because pain is an experience, from the point of view of Consciousness, it would be 'real'. P.S. I understand the importance of this 'bioelectrical signals' analogy. The point of it is to show how thin the line between 'material reality' and 'dream reality' is, to someone who's very attached to the materialistic worldview. It would make sense to such an individual. Having said that, it has its own limitations and I wouldn't hold on too tightly to it. This I agree with.👍

@Leo Gura, I'm going to tell you my issue with you taking this stance publicly. This could open the door wide open for zen-devilry, i.e. narcissism disguised as 'enlightenment'. People can weaponize this idea to justify not being empathetic towards others who are suffering. At least, that's what I think, this is my humble, inexperienced opinion. Am I right or wrong? If I'm wrong, please correct me. Thanks.

It's because we have desires and unburned karma. Those require us to impose certain limitations on the world outside. But, because we are God and what's 'outside' is what's 'inside', the limitations also get imposed internally. It's because they're unconscious of what God is. If they were conscious of what God is and if what they believed were actually true, i.e. if God really were separate from yourself and themselves, they would, in fact, laugh, call you silly and go about their day. You can't be serious. Ask someone who's been stranded in a desert for a couple of days how much they 'loved their suffering'. Consciously, we are moving away from pain and towards pleasure. Unconsciously, when we move towards more suffering, it seems like we love our suffering. We really don't, it sucks. No, it's not 'keeping us from boredom'. We chase pleasure, consciously, because we think that that's the answer. When it turns out to not be the answer, we surrender to the suffering. Then, we realize that the ego that was running from it was an illusion and that the suffering was caused by the perception of separation. Then, we become free from it.

The immediate experience you're having in your present moment - that's 'reality'. (I'm ignoring the upper-case and lower-case letters right now, for argument's sake). If you want my opinion of it, there you go. Others may not agree, though. Here's my question to you. It's a very simple question (spoken like Arnab lol). If you stub your toe and you feel pain in there as a result of it, is that pain 'real' or 'imaginary', according to you? I think that no matter how enlightened you are, if you stub your toe, you will feel pain. We have a reflex in our eye that closes the eye when a fly comes near it. Are you saying that this reflex goes away once you become enlightened, because you realize that 'your body is an illusion, the fly is an illusion, so we don't have to protect the body anymore'?!

Couple of questions. When you say 'everything is an illusion', in the 'everything', are you only including finite forms? Or, are you also including Infinity/The Formless? Let us assume, for a second, that survival is real. That the ego is real and that survival is a real concern. Would trauma/suffering/pain still be an illusion, if this assumption were true? Or, would it have to be real?

My original question was - what's the point of invalidating someone's pain/trauma? If you're not even going to tell someone that their pain is an illusion, what's the point of this insight to begin with? To 'see for yourself' that their pain is an illusion for you?! I mean, it already is! And it doesn't take a genius to see that, just some narcissism. Let's not talk about other people's pain for a second. Let's talk about our own. Say, you have a health-problem that's causing you pain. What is the point being made here? Is it that the health-problem is an illusion, or the pain is an illusion? If you say that the health-problem is an illusion, that would make sense. Because the definition of a 'problem' would be biased. But, I seriously doubt that the pain that's being felt is an illusion.

No, I'm not. He made a statement, I'm asking a question. They're not the same!

Sir Isaac Newton answered this question in the 1500s.

He is Ranveer Singh, an Indian actor. He is notorious for his unconventional wardrobe-choices. His social confidence is on another level, which is why he can carry anything. We can safely call him the Russell Brand of India.

It's not the print on the shirt that determines whether you look masculine or not. It's your body-type, the fitting of the shirt and how well you carry it that determines whether you look masculine.

What if some of them get screwed cuz you had to pause operations? What if they don't forgive you for doing so? Lay-offs are a part of the problem here. And many couldn't have. Time tends to be a huge factor when it comes to a lot of companies' USP/competitive edge. All of the high-efficiency businesses go to shit, the moment efficiency goes out of demand! Market-conditions get changed forever when something this big strikes. Which is why it takes creativity to 'resume' after the pandemic. You have to start afresh, honestly. Those who had real skills before the pandemic would be fine, those who were resting on their laurels are in deep shit.

Let's say, you're working a 9-5 and you're dreaming of starting your own business. You go, you talk to your parents about it and they say 'If this doesn't work, you'll end up homeless'. How much does the thought of ending up homeless scare you? Do you see yourself as being able to survive that, as an entrepreneur? UItimately, as an entrepreneur, making money boils down to your ability to create value, your creativity. Do you believe that you will be able to use your abilities to survive that situation? Or, are you an employee who thinks that your degree is very important, someone who rests on their laurels? By the same token, how do you invest money? Do you get a monthly paycheck, that you save over time and invest into index-funds/mutual funds? Or, do you come up with creative ideas that you work on, and invest money into those? You create your own assets? What percentage of your finances depend on what you've earned in the past, vs what you make from passion-projects? If you believe that you can survive being homeless, that you have the potential to become a rags-to-riches story, then, you can save your business from bankruptcy, no matter how many crises hit your business. You have the type of personality that can save their business from bankruptcy and who can protect their employees' jobs no matter how tough the economy gets/how tough the conditions get. Then you are mentally fit to be an entrepreneur long-term.

Watch the movie 'AIR'. It's about how NIKE designed the 'Air Jordan' and how they signed Michael Jordan on for it as a celebrity-star promoting it. It will give you a lot of insight on this topic.

Go to the gym, or join a dance-class, or play cricket/football/badminton/tennis regularly. Or get into painting/graphic design/animation. You need to explore what's out there, so that you can make informed decisions when it comes to your career. Especially if you're not passionate about what you're studying, you really should do this. If outright starting a side-hustle is too much of a stretch for you, this would be where I'd start. Because when you say you're not studying/going to class cuz you don't feel like it, what you really need is a side-hustle to transition into. And this is how you figure out what that side-hustle will be.

In that case, you need artistic/sporting/fitness endeavors outside of studying in which you do something that you enjoy. Don't make it consumption-oriented. (And yes, video-games are consumption-oriented, not artistic/sporting. They don't count). You do that, you will come across career-opportunities that interest you more. Then you can work 12 hours a day, cuz you want to. Not because you're a wage-slave.

How passionate are you about it?

@Someone here What do you study?

Have you done it in the past? If yes, why did you stop?

No, that's way too tough. Just start by working a shitty job 12 hours/day without complaining about how hard your life is. It's not technically 'unsafe', it's just hard. If you can do this, you can do anything.

It's less comfortable, it's less pleasurable. But, when you do that, what you're doing is you're not chasing immediate pleasure/comfort like a boy, you're 'manning up' to your life-situation, you're facing reality and you're doing something about it, you're not passive to it. You're being less of an emotionally reactive actor and you're being more of a rational and logical actor, you're being more stoic and centered in a potentially chaotic/unstable situation. This is step 1 to becoming a leader, essentially. It's the #1 quality you need to be a leader.

You need to reclaim your male aggression. If you're not being aggressive, your life probably isn't going well. You're probably procrastinating on important tasks. So, what you have to do is to make a to-do list and get it all done. And when you reap the rewards of it, recognize that these are the results of your efforts. That's 'taking responsibility'. Not having some 'accountability partner' berate you for where you are in life and tell you that it's your fault. Then, you can challenge yourself to take on bigger and bigger challenges.

First of all, if you believe that 'height is everything', it doesn't serve you. You will fail if you believe that. Secondly, its not true. Just having physical strength can compensate for it. And, if you want a hot woman, you should be physically fit. Otherwise, you won't be able to beat the competition. You've done it once, you can do it again. You just have to be genuinely motivated, you can't fake it. I don't know why you lost motivation on your health-journey. Because there are literally zero downsides to caring about your health. So, you must find out why you lost motivation and deal with that reason, get that motivation back.