It's hard to find magic pills in life. Technology usually comes with trade-offs. The trade-off here is time and money.
It shows you what true meditation feels like. Without the machine the mind wanders around far too much and tends to stray from that narrow groove which is true meditation.
The machine experientially guides you into the groove and keeps you there. It is a state of total thoughtlessness. It's very tricky to stay in that state without the machine.
Really, in the future, all meditation will be done with a machine because it's too ineffective otherwise. This is why most meditators don't go far. They are unable to hit that groove even after years of practice. It takes talent to hit that groove. A talent most people lack and don't even know they lack. Most meditators don't even know what this groove is that I'm talking about. But a machine with the right training program and show it to you in 15 minutes.
It will probably take 50-100 years for cheap, powerful, yet user-friendly meditation machines to develop. Right now they don't exist.

No, you are merely stripped of fantasies and childish hangups. You become more authentic.
Yes, seeking ideals is a big trap in this work. Eventually you're gonna have to surrender all of your ideals for the Truth.
Ultimately this work is not about becoming a great person or even being happy. It's about discovering what is life and how it works. When you get to the rock bottom of it your perspective on life will change so dramatically that you will even cease to think you were ever born.
If happiness comes, it will be a byproduct of a deep understanding how life works.

Definitely
At this stage in your life it's very open-ended. This is a great thing because it presents so much opportunity. Yet it can be daunting and paralyzing because you don't know where to start. Lots of research is a much. Explore what's possible. Don't just copy me. There's so much more to expanding consciousness than what I demonstrate or teach.
There are a million ways to help expand consciousness. Find your niche. Think outside the box.

@StarStruck No book will help you.
FEEL what fear is.

Well, I'd probably call that a shadow.
It's common to have at least one color shadow. Common shadows are Green, Orange, or Blue. A shadow here would be one color which triggers you or you love to hate.
For example, if you can't stand religious people, that's a Blue shadow. If you can't stand greedy Wall Street types, that's an Orange shadow. If you can't stand hippies and SJWs, that's a Green shadow.

Creativity can be damaged in the following sense: if you feel creative urges yet you ignore them because of fear about practical matters like money, etc, and if you do that long enough, eventually you will lose your soul and turn into a zombie.
You must act on your creative passions. In a sensible and non-reckless way.
Why are you wasting a minute of your life doing anything which isn't your highest creative passion? Can you see how foolish and inefficient such action is? You are pissing millions of dollars of value down the drain this way. Your time should be your most precious commodity. Don't sell it to fools for pennies.

@arlin Be careful not to underestimate how miserable most people are.
If people here on a 3 on a scale of 0-10. Most people in life are at -20. But they don't even realize it because -20 is all they've ever known.
Happiness is totally relative.

That's the voice of God speaking to you, but you're refusing the call.
You're acting too small. You need a much bigger vision. You need a big life purpose, not this wallowing is personal problems bullshit.
God is telling you to make your life about something much bigger than you. But you're too scared so you just wallow around in your own smallness. You should be doing big things with your life. Why aren't you doing them? You could transform the whole world and yet you're just pissing your life away instead.
See my videos:
The Highest Hero's Journey How To Unleash Your Ambition And do my LP Course. It's all about this.
Of course you're depressed because you're not actualizing your full greatness. You could be a Christ or a Buddha. What are you waiting for??? Your spirituality is far too timid. Be more bold! Dare to touch people's hearts with your love.
The people around you are sheep. Don't look to sheep for inspiration. Look to lions. Become a lion.

Dude, if the depression continues I would seek out a therapist. This sounds to me like a lack of self-acceptance. Do you accept yourself as you are? Or do you feel like you need to change in order for you and others to like yourself? I have a sense you compare yourself to others a lot.
Again, don't worry about the hard thing. Taking care of your health and making new friends IS REALLY HARD. You will grow massively by building a healthy life style.
Rather than think, "What should I do to make me awesome", think, "How can I best take care of myself and my life." To get out of depression you need to show your self so much love you can't stand it. Motive is everything. Your actions should reflect self-love. They should not reflect the false idea that you aren't enough.

Nothing is ever wrong. But everything has consequences.
All attachment will bring suffering. Everything that goes up must come down.
But you can't really learn that lesson without living through it. So knock yourself out with romantic infatuation and see where it gets you.
You'd have to be exceptionally wise and spiritually gifted to transcend such things without touching them.

In practice this isn't good enough. There are many online universities already. But most of them are crap. Education involves a lot more than reading books or watching videos. There is a social engagement aspect to it which you cannot replicate online. And just the fact of showing up to a physical classroom is important for motivation.
You can't just sit behind a computer for 12 years watching videos and clicking buttons. This kind of education will produce an army of incel trolls.
Actualized.org works because it's supplemental. It already assumes you've go a solid base of education to build on top of. And even so, this work would be 10x more powerful in person. But I'm not about to run a physical university for thousands of people, so videos are good enough for the stuff I teach. But even so, most people who watch me are not serious students. They just watch videos randomly and get little results. You can't compare watching videos to a serious in-classroom education. Although of course the content of my videos is more powerful than any university curriculum. The videos are good for me because they allow me to reach a lot more people than I otherwise could. But the downside is my videos will only work on those people who are serious, self-motivated, and self-disciplined. Also the stuff I teach wouldn't be acceptable in any institutional setting, so online is good for that.
Online is a great learning platform, but only for those who are already serious about learning.
I could not be where I am today without the great in-classroom education I got as a teen.

Just keep in mind that few people are solidly Green. Many people who lean Green in theory still have huge gaps in their development in practice. They are missing healthy aspects of Blue & Orange, and might have developed Blue and Orange shadows. So in this sense there can be value in learning from quality healthy Blue & Orange sources. This can help round out one's development.
The danger is, if your Blue and Orange sources are impure or dysfunctional (which many of them are), you will tend to adopt their dysfunctions as your own.
If you listen to JP enough you will likely adopt his dysfunctions, confusions, and shadow. He is not a pure source of wisdom. But you can learn from impure sources. You just have to extra careful.
In fact the best way to learn from JP would be to study his impurity. But that is NOT how most people learn from JP.
Studying impurity is an excellent learning technique. Too bad so few people know how to do it. Studying impurity requires being able to discern God from the devil. Which few people know how to do. If you were able to discern God from the devil, you probably wouldn't need to listen to JP.

Self-transcendence is just the final step in Maslow's pyramid. One step above self-actualization.
Don't make self-actualization and self-transcendence at odds with one another. They work together.
In the end, to fully actualize yourself you must fully transcend yourself.
The first half of this journey you spend actualizing your human self.
The second half of this journey you spend actualizing your God Self.
#1 leads to #2. And then #2 undoes #1. It's hard to undo #1 until you do #1. Most people need a lot more work doing #1 before they can even entertain #2.

I try to let go of the fantasy of reaching this final state where my lofty habits are permanent and effortless.
Instead, I see myself as a goat that got stuck in a muddy ditch. Then the goat drags himself out of the ditch and keeps walking. But he slides back in the ditch many times again. And drags himself out.
This will always happen.
What actually changes is:
The goat becomes stronger and more efficient at dragging himself out of the ditch, so he can spend more time on the path The goat becomes confident that he will always drag himself back out, as is his experience. Therefore, he spends less time moping and doubting, each time he slides down.  
 
@Alex bAlex  I'm actually having a backlash right now, where the only difference habit-wise between me and a year ago would be that I don't smoke. All the meditation, exercising, scheduling, even brushing my teeth regularly is out the window.
But I don't worry. Because I know the process, and it will go quicker this time.

You are getting in your own way. Your own ideals of being a good learner is precisely the thing which is tripping you up here. You are not allowing yourself to fully immerse in the flow of learning because you're too busy trying to live up to the image in your mind of being a good learner. This imagine creates all sorts of artificial requirements like memorization and other formalities which you then resist.
Try learning in a less structured or rigid way. If you really enjoy learning, just do it. Learn in a joyful way without worrying about how that has to look. Perhaps memorization is not necessary at all. Perhaps finishing every book from cover to cover is not necessary either. Perhaps there are totally new ways to learn which you are not even allowing yourself to explore because you've got some rigid image in your mind of what learning has to look like. For example, maybe real learning might look like taking a vacation to another country and going to a bar for drinks with some new people you met, rather than sitting at home memorizing a book. Perhaps real learning is taking psychedelics in the middle of the jungle.
As you go deeper into self-actualization work you have to find ways of doing it which feel organic and natural to you. It can't be like following some check list of mechanical rules.
Telling yourself that "I must watch more self-help videos" will create resistance since its such a forced way of doing things.
You must learn to listen more to your feelings rather than to your shoulds & rules. Your feeling tell you what you need to do when. But this requires getting attuned to hearing their subtle cues. For example in your case now your feelings are telling you that your method of learn is too artificial and forced, which is why you're frustrated.
Imagine if I forced you to have sex every day and if you didn't have sex at the times I wanted you to, in the exact ways I wanted you to, I would give you a strong electric shock. This would quickly take all the joy out of sex. After a few months of this you'd start to hate the idea of sex.

Until you die

Connection is not a function of time. Connection can be built within 90 minutes if it's done right.
What takes most guys two weeks can be done by other guys in 90 minutes.

@pluto "i see so many repetitive questions on the forums and i have a surge of energy to set it right once and for all." 
> I had this exact same thought and hesitated to write something : in spite, I manifested it through you  !
Actually, these principles are the most powerful and simple you can use to transform your life ( provided you have strong intensity, faith and above all a: patience ). 
The teachings of Neville Goddard and Wayne Dyer are among the best on this . You will find a couple of small youtube channels commenting and explaining them in further length and in a more "modern" fashion/vocabulary. 

Nonduality is not a belief.
Bad trips on DMT are no different really than good trips. A bad trip is nothing more than the tripper getting scared of his own shadow. If you take too much DMT too fast you will scare yourself, of course.

Dude, don't be so hard on yourself.
If you feel lonely there's nothing wrong with finding some people to socialize with. In a sense that lonely feeling is telling you: "Hey dummy! You should socialize more!"
What's inauthentic is desiring to socialize with someone but then not doing it out of fear that they will reject you. The authentic thing would be to walk over and say, "Hey, I was looking for a new friend and I saw you. So here I am. Please don't reject me or I will have to hang myself in my mother's basement with her vacuum cleaner cord."
BE MORE VULNERABLE WITH STRANGERS!

Fear is always about the future.
You don't fear your past rape. You fear having to experience that again.
And even if you are afraid of your memories of that event, what you fear is re-living that experience (via your memories) in the future.
So even fear of a memory is fear of the future, not the past. Because fear is fundamentally resistance to future experience. If something has already been experienced, or is being currently experienced, it is not feared, since it's already here there is no need to fear it.
Don't believe me. Explore how fear actually works in your direct experience. Notice whether your fear is actually of the past, the present, or the future. This requires some good mindfulness skill.
Be careful not to turn this into speculation about how fear works. Do not speculate or guess! Actually look at what fear is doing in your direct experience. There's no room for guesswork here.
Is fear about the past or the future? Don't guess! Check what your fear is doing.

This is where it gets very problematic. The hive mind can be very ignorant and evil, and also easily manipulated by power hungry devils.
We have to be careful not to ruin people's careers over minor gaffs and bits of foolishness.
If he was a proper racist I would agree, kick him out of office. But I don't think that is the right reaction in this case.
It is important that we allow room for public servants and celebrities to grow and mature. I like when a public figure is able to admit his past mistakes and grow from them. This is necessary in a society where people are self-actualizing. Otherwise no one will admit their mistakes because they will be too scared to get rejected or mauled by the hive mind.
I think pubic figures should only be fired if they did something significantly bad and they refuse to accept responsiblity and grow from it.
We don't want a society where we tar and feather people for minor offenses.
For example, Trump deserves to be kicked out of office because he is unapologetic about anything he does and he refuses to correct his ways. I don't think Trudeau is in the same ballpark. I think this brown face scandal will make him a better person overall. He seems to regret his actions. These kind of scandals are actually helpful for the evolution of our culture as a consensus develops that blackface is hurtful and racist. Believe it or not, many people don't know that yet. People who did not grow up in the South aren't that familiar with blackface. For example, I never even heard that term until a few years ago.

That's technically correct, but also don't underestimate how much you CAN understand others perspectives if you are really willing to listen.
The problem is most people don't want to understand. Not that they can't.

I meant, it needs to be the most meaningful thing out of the things you could be working on.
Unless you are a billionaire, you don't have a choice in life. You will have to work to make money. The only question is, will you work on things you find most meaningful or not?
Even if you value deep relationships, you'll still have to work. Because work IS survival. You cannot be alive and avoid survival. The only question is, what will be the quality of your survival? Are you gonna be scamming old ladies out of their life savings, are you gonna be selling poison at McDonald's, or are you gonna do something meaningful for the world?
Up to you.
Don't be surprised if you hate your life when you sell poison at McDonald's for 8 hours every day. You should hate your life at that point because what you're doing is so stupid. That hate is a message that God is sending you. God is telling you, "Why you being so stupid when you could be doing something so much more amazing with your life?"
Living life in stupid ways leads to lots of suffering.

You're thinking about work all wrong.
Rather than seeing is as something you have to do, find a way to make it something you love to do.
In general, don't do things because you have to, do them because you want to.
This means being proactive about your work. It's not really work then, it's creativity. Don't you want to be creative? Why not? You are God after all! You created the whole universe and creation is a beautiful and exciting process.
You're disconnected from your creativity. That's your problem. Find a way to reconnect and this issue about work will dissolve. Then your problem will be that you work too hard!
Your work needs to be the most meaningful thing in the world to you.
You have yet to realize the significance of life purpose. You know it only as an intellectual abstraction, not a tangible burning passion.