Matteo

Hi @Ross. If you get anxious around girls, you may have a belief that says that something bad is going to happen to you if they rejects you. You may not think so, but your body behaves accordingly to that belief; you get the feeling of anxiety as if you are going to be in physical danger. Eventually, if you get rejected enough times and nothing bad happens to you, your body will register that and anxiety will be significantly diminished. Also, there might be a self-esteem issue. You may believe that your friends are winners and you are a looser compared to them. When you choose to believe that, you see yourself that way. Then, you behave like someone who sees himself as a looser, and girls probably don't like that. You are not a looser, unless you believe so. You are capable of interacting with girl and having success, if you don't let your beliefs limit you and consciously change the way you see yourself. If you measure yourself and other people by how successful with women they are, and you hold that discrimination too seriously and tightly, you are fighting yourself, because you don't allow yourself to make mistakes because they are too dangerous for your self image. You need those mistakes to learn how to interact in a respectful and enjoyable way. I used to be very focused on having success with women. As soon as I got some, I realized how much being good with women proves nothing. It only counts if you think "you have to be good with women", and it doesn't if you don't. You don't have interact with them, but you can do that if you want, if you enjoy it. Good luck!

@ADD You're welcome!

My mind wants Enlightenment to be completely theoretical, because if that was the case, it could grasp it. In the past, because of focusing too much on enlightenment theory, I ended up spending more time talking about Enlightenment to people who really don't care about it than meditating or doing self inquiry.

Hi @ADD. The more I grow, the less friends I have, the more is difficult to find people that I can relate with in a meaningful way. On the other hand, I discovered that I don't need to have many friends, even though I thought I did in the past. I had fear of having no friends at all and being alone, and because of that I was hanging out with people I didn't really want to hang out with. When I discovered that some of my relationships were fear-based, many of them fell away. I suggest you inquire into the relationship between your top values and your drive to socialize. Why are you socializing? What do you want from those people? Are you creating an environment around you that supports your growth?

Approximately 5 months ago, I was very drawn to his videos. I watched many of them. He is quite repetitive on purpose, and he recommends self inquiry and listening to his talks for achieving Self-realization. I'm not sure I got something out of his videos, even thought it felt appropriate listening to him when I did.

I found that many times, people don't ask me directly for a solution or a technique. Nevertheless, I have the impulse of giving them solutions that I think could work for them. The more I realize that I don't really know in what specific way people should help themselves, the less desire I have for giving them solutions. Then, I usually try to ask them the kind of questions they may not ask to themselves (without being too invasive), so that they can realize something on their own.

I'm not sure I can define myself as a minimalist, but for sure I notice myself loosing interest in acquiring more and more things with time, especially when it comes to solid material objects. I noticed that acquiring material objects hoping to optimize the activities I do and achieve more comfort doesn't actually satisfy me, because as soon as I got something I've already found something else to get, and it never ends. The more I notice this, the more I'm able to drop the desire to acquire something or to complicate things. I think that some acquisition of objects can be useful when it's not compulsive. The result of this process is that I'm less frustrated when the thought of acquiring something comes to me, because I already know that is a deceptive thought that will not hold the premise it carries with it.

Thank you all for your replies. I'm grateful for your support.

Hi everyone. I hesitated for a long time to write on this forum because I’m quite introverted and shy, and sometimes when I read comments here I feel very uncomfortable. I decided to write this despite of my fear because I have many questions and a lot of confusion in general about enlightenment and personal development, and also I thought that it’s a little bit silly to be afraid to write on a forum. Here is some context for my question: I’m 23 years old, and I’ve been researching personal development since I was 15, with the purpose of getting over my depression and be successful with girls and money, and with a background desire of finding a permanent solution for happiness. I did psychotherapy for two years, with unclear results. Then I stumbled upon Leo’s videos, and when I heard about enlightenment it was evident to me that I found what I was looking for. I tried to install a meditation habit without much success because of laziness, unrealistic expectations and lack of patience. The same goes for self inquiry, although I struggle less with that because my mind has something to do. I did low dosages of 1p-lsd four times in the last 5 months, with great results. The biggest insight I had with that is that I’m not the character I picture myself to be, because it vanished and I was still there. Of all the things I’ve come across in my life, the path of enlightenment is the only thing that really makes sense to me. I really enjoy to read, listen, watch videos and talk about it, but I’m recognizing more and more how much all of that is useless without doing the work that needs to be done. I’m trying to set up my life in a way that facilitates me to work towards enlightenment. That requires me to make many decisions that I seem to avoid and be doubtful about because of fear, confusion and a habitual feeling of hopelessness. I feel there are other obstacles, which are: having a hard time enjoying life in general being disconnected from my hearth. feelings like love are extremely rare in my experience not being able to recognize intuition, being stuck in the mind feeling threatened while interacting with people living with my parents in a small city in Italy. I suspect that the environment in which I live in is not beneficial to me at the moment not having a job, being scared of getting one feeling lost without a guide. I tend to put spiritual teachers on a pedestal, believing everything they’re saying without really understanding the message a tendency to trying to overcome frustration with spiritual practices with eating food, watching countless hours of non-duality videos and compulsive thinking Right now I’m in England on a vacation for 3 weeks, I thought it could be useful to change my environment and stay away from my family for more than one week, which I never did before. Two days ago I attended a Rupert Spira meeting which was quite enjoyable, even though I’m not sure if it was helpful for me. I’m on a waiting list for a 10 days Vipassana retreat in December, which I hope (if I can get in) will move something inside me. Here is my question: after reading this, do you have any advice on how to get myself unstuck? It seems to me that waiting for enlightenment to solve all my problems is not a good strategy, neither making decisions while being in a mental/emotional negative space, which I experience quite often. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I also want to thank @Leo Gura for the kind of work that he’s doing. I like your approach and I think I wouldn’t be able to accept the idea of enlightenment if it wasn’t for you. Also your videos helped me a lot in general with understanding life.