Emerald

No. Even when a woman is pregnant only small dots of clear yellowish colored colostrum come out. And the first few days, when the baby is newborn, they only drink the small amounts of colostrum every few hours (around the clock) because their stomach is so small that it can only candle a half an ounce of fluid. So, the colostrum is packed with tons of extra nutrients to meet their needs. But after a few days to a week the actual milk comes in. Then it lasts for as long as the baby nurses on a supply and demand basis. So, the more the baby nurses, the more milk is produced. The less the baby nurses, the less milk is produced. Then, it takes about two weeks after weening for milk production to stop completely. Source: Over five years of daily nursing between both of my children. So, I'm a professional human moo cow.

A big first step is to sell or give away all your games and systems. Think about how difficult it would be for a heroine addict to quit, if they had heroine in their house readily available to them. It's too much to expect from your will-power muscles to refrain if relapsing is so convenient. You're automatically set up for failure. So, remove all the games and systems from your home to set yourself up for success.

The type of racism that you're talking about comes in the form of judgement. So, racist judgments are just as difficult to let go of as any other tendency toward judgment. Awareness and consciousness work can help, as well as extreme self-honesty. But judgments are subtle and can be difficult to get rid of, because we don't want to see ourselves as bad people. So, it's our natural tendency to try to look at ourselves through rose-colored glasses. But overall, it's much more productive to see racism as a system than as certain actions or judgments. So, if you really want to help solve the problem of racism then you can ask yourself, do my judgments and actions preserve, add to, or do nothing to (and thus preserve) the system that disenfranchises people of color? Or am I taking actions that actively dismantle that system? I think people who are well-intentioned who see racism as something someone does or doesn't do or thinks or doesn't think, can lead to a false contentment with the situation that the racist system sets up. It's like "Well, I'm not racist, so that's all I can really do. But shame on those evil racists." Or there's an over-simplification of understanding relative to the system which produces sentiments like, "There are people that hate white people too, therefore racism is an equal playing field where BAD people of both sides hate on one another... but not us GOOD people. We're awesome. (pats their own back)" But these are fundamental misunderstandings of how that system works... as the power structures are uneven in the favor of white people. So, it would be like if white people are armed with rifles and people of color are armed with sling-shots. Certainly, there are probably people of color who are using their sling shots against white people because there's bound to be people on both sides who hate each other. And of course this isn't a good thing. And certainly, a lot of people on both sides would never even consider using their weapons. But to see the playing field as equal just because there are BAD racist people on both sides in contrast to the GOOD non-racist people who don't use their weapons, is just a major oversight relative to the power structures that be. Turning it into a good people versus bad people issue misses the point and blots out the deeper truths of the situation. So sure, it hurts to be a white person who gets shot with a sling shot. But it's devastating to be a person of color who gets shot with a rifle. So, racism isn't so much about hurt feelings but about power structures that effect people's lives every day. But as you said, the tendency toward judgment can be difficult to let go of, plus it's easy for a person to lie to themselves about. But more-so, if the concern stems past the ego and wanting to be free of the label "racist" and being able to feel better about yourself because you feel free of that label, then you'll want to examine the system of racism carefully and dismantle it wherever you can. Because it doesn't really matter that much within the grand scheme of the racist system, if you as an individual thinks this or that. And it doesn't matter if you can think of yourself as a GOOD person. That's just an ego concern. What matters is this: Is the system of racism, which causes so many issues for people of color and society at large, actively being dismantled?

Caressing the breasts lightly feels about as good as caressing the inner thighs or the side of the waist. When done properly, it can give the receiver goosebumps and increase arousal. That should give you a feel for how it feels if you're familiar with the sensation on yourself. The female nipple isn't as sensitive as the male nipple because the nerve endings are more spread out. I remember as a child, the sensation was much more intense, but as I went through puberty and I developed breasts the sensation faded to something much less intense. I think it's because the sensitivity wouldn't be very good for nursing... even though the pressure from nursing isn't directly on the nipple but on the areola. But it's still relatively sensitive compared to other part of the body. The whole breast is definitely an erogenous zone. So, light caresses feel really good in every erogenous zone. However, IMO squeezing the breasts either feels neutral and boring or it hurts if the breasts happen to be sensitive, as often happens during the period and especially during pregnancy. Plus, it's sometimes pretty awkward and can feel too blunt and jarring to the romantic moment. Generally speaking, it's a good idea to build up gradually and consistently and not do anything that could knock her out of the mood. So, my recommendation is to steer clear of squeezing them. However, you can look up erotic massage and there are probably techniques for caressing the breasts using more pressure. But those usually require larger sweeping motions that are specifically designed to be worked into a full body massage.

@Lynnel You're welcome and thank you! Misogyny and other gender-related issues are very complex issues that seem very simple on the surface level. So, most people treat them as such and cannot figure out how to untangle themselves from issues on the individual level or untangle humanity from negative patterns on the macro level. So, there's a lot of pain and frustration. But the surface level phenomena are really just symptoms or reactionary symptoms that stems from the deeper issue of the imbalance between Yin and Yang in our current level of awareness as humans. Best of luck in liberating yourself from all that weighs you down.

I think that you over-thought the situation a bit and had too many preconceived notions from pick up. First off, if a girl says hi to you, it doesn't necessarily mean that she's hitting on you. So, there's a bit of jumping the gun there. But if we assume that she is interested in you, then we can look at how your knowledge of pick-up has clouded your interaction. First off, when someone says hi to you, it comes off as rude to intentionally ignore them. An appropriate response is to say hello back, just like you would with any other person. You seem to have this notion that women are consciously sizing up men for their confidence levels. But most of that happens on an unconscious and intuitive level. If you stopped to talk to her for a moment, this would not have come off as desperate. It would just be normal. She wouldn't be in her mind like, "he stopped to talk, how desperate." Given that we assume that she's interested in you, she probably had a curiosity about you. So, she's not going to be in scrutiny-mode. She just wants your attention and whatever excitement that might bring. As long as you come off as normal in your conversation and don't seem abnormal by saying inappropriate or immature things, then you're probably not going to garner any judgment. Also, it seems like you're sizing up her "game", so to speak. But you have to understand that women generally don't approach men and are discouraged from doing so. So, if we see a guy that we like, we don't have too many tools to rely upon that we can get a guy's attention that doesn't get read as desperate or slutty. So, women are often overlooked by men they're interested in, and instead get approached by men we're not interested in. So, if she was interested in you, then she's probably just a bit more outgoing and iconoclastic but doesn't have fancy methods for getting guy's attention. She may not even know that it is often read as desperate if she's young and fairly inexperienced in dating and a firm believer in equality. So, her knowledge of "game" and your paradigm is either limited or non-existent. The number one thing that you have to realize is that, from a woman's perspective, they generally feel just as uncomfortable if not more uncomfortable to express interest and attraction to a guy. It never feels like a sure thing. And women also have a fear of rejection. So, it isn't as though women feel comfortable in those situations, while men are uncomfortable. The discomfort is mutual.

It's a difficult issue to navigate because there are a lot of different factors coming together to create that feeling. I'll tell you my experiences with hatred of the feminine and females to give you an idea of what may be occurring with you. But this will be long because it's complex. As a child of ten, despite being female, I suddenly became very misogynistic for a variety of reasons that I can now point to looking back (issues with family members, mean girls at school, being patronized and coddled by older kids and adults, society subtly deeming femininity as lesser than masculinity in many ways, being excluded from conversations and social groups because of my gender, extreme identification with my dad, etc.). I dis-identified myself with femaleness and decided instead that I was more like a guy. I saw femaleness as inferior so I decided that I was some exception to the rule, which was always how I coped with being born female. And in doing so, I became identified with maleness to a certain degree for about a year but many identifications still linger on unconsciously. So, I sought to separate myself from femaleness (and thus weakness by my perception) by showing how capable, pain-tolerant, and stoic I could be. So, at summer camp that year, I would have girls with sharp nails rake their nails down my arm until I nearly bled, just to show that I could stand the pain without flinching or reacting. And I would do other various shows of strength to distance myself from the fact that I was female. Then, when I went into middle school, I decided to put that stage behind me and be okay with girls and be okay with being a girl. I think it was because everyone was going through puberty and I could no longer compete with boys strength-wise and that I cared about having a somewhat feminine appearance because I was a pre-teen/teenager and concerned with being attractive. But my misogyny was deep, so it stayed there unconsciously and I brought it all the way through my teen years. To be perceived as feminine felt like a real slight to me, with the exception of being seen as feminine in the attractiveness sense of the word. That was the only feminine trait that I wanted. I wanted to be a guy on the inside but a girl on the outside. But the more subtle form that it took was in the form of resistance to values and strengths that are feminine. I had learned that masculine oriented values are good and that feminine oriented values are boring, trite, or negative. So, I got little excitement from emotional intelligence, love, and compassion. I was all about willpower, intellect, and success-mindedness. On the positive side, I developed a really strong will-power and learned a lot and I brought myself through college on scholarships and my own dime. I also became independent young. I haven't lived with either of my parents since I was 16. But I neglected and repressed my feminine side and didn't develop that part of my personality... which is the majority of my authentic personality. So, if I am 25% masculine and 75% feminine, I was repressing 3/4 or nearly 3/4 of my most natural traits. Then, when I was 19, I had a strange dream. I dreamt that I was in this cubicle of a furniture store where the set-up was like a psychologists office. I was sitting in a chair in the middle of the cubicle, when suddenly a beautiful woman showed up in the opening of the cubicle. She was tall and curvy and looked Native American by ancestry. She wore a bun and a tight fitted red business dress with high heals. And in seeing her, I was immediately enamored with her. I was in a complete stupor with attraction to this woman. She approached the back of my chair and looked down at me, and I tilted my head to look back at her still entranced by her presence. Then she asked me in a silvery voice, "Are you ready?" Without question, I said "Yes." Then there was a second pause as she exhaled. Then, on her inhale she breathed in a breath that was louder than a vacuum cleaner and her breath transformed her into an an old hag... and I don't mean an old lady. I mean if a person could be 1000 years old and walking around kind of old hag. Her eye sockets were empty. Her skin was super thin and stretched gray across her skeleton. And as she breathed, the black void of her mouth got wider and wider until it encompassed me completely and she swallowed me whole. I floated in a void for some amount of time until I was deposited in my childhood kitchen where I began looking through the cabinets. Then, a little less than a year later, I had my experiences of ego-transcendence and many of my repressed traits and emotions came flowing back into my conscious mind. And I was surprised at how much femininity that I had repressed away. In fact, the whole experience was a very feminine experience somehow, and that was the only word I could use to describe it. Prior to that, I was of the notion that masculinity and femininity were just social constructs. This was the first time that I realized that I was dealing with feminine repression. Looking back, I now relate that dream back to my feelings about my femininity and the beautiful woman was the beauty aspect of femininity that I liked and wanted to embody but the old hag was the repressed feminine (the parts of myself that I hated and locked away in the dungeon of my shadow), containing all of the feminine potentials that I had or could develop but was too afraid to. So, my psyche used my love of feminine beauty to lure me into a trap where the repressed feminine could swallow me and bring me into its world. This is why I believe society is so obsessed with feminine beauty. It's the only part of femininity that we really like as a society, so we become obsessed with it because it is our only highly celebrated outlet for feminine expression... at least from an American perspective. But we all crave the feminine aspects of ourselves. Men have then too... just generally in lesser degree. And men are punished extra for expressing femininity. So, if a person desperately wants to know the feminine but hates the feminine, hatred obsession and sexual obsession will likely result. And the sexual aspect of the obsession will fuel the hatred aspect of the obsession and vice versa. Unconsciously, here are the steps: 1. I desperately need to re-integrate the feminine (unconsciously) 2. Sex is the only acceptable outlet for becoming one with the feminine (or embodying feminine beauty in the case of straight women) 3. So, I need to have sex with women to connect with the feminine 4. So, if women reject me, it echoes my own internal split where I severed myself off from my feminine side. And the shadow form of femininity that bubbles beneath the surface (the hag) is cruel and sews resentment that is projected out onto women. The repressed feminine causes a lot of internal issues that deal with the self worth. So, my guess would be that you have to work toward integrating your feminine aspects and other aspects that you've disowned because you learned that they were negative or lesser. But I would also comfort you and tell you that your sense that women hold all the sexual cards is an illusion. Women aren't having to approach and deal with lots of rejection. And you will be able to find someone as a woman. And you don't have to worry about coming off as a creep. So, from that perspective, it's easier. But women also have to deal a lot having their worth only reduced only to their sexuality, youth, and attractiveness, which really feels awful.... like you're some kind of commodity. And it's more common to experience sexual abuses. Women can always find someone, but women tend to only like one guy who may not be interested in them in a serious way which hurts worse when the guy pays no interest because those kinds of feelings only come around every now and again. Women are not guaranteed an orgasm during sex and some women don't orgasm at all. Women are also more likely to get STDs from a man than a man is to get STDs from a woman due to the way the anatomy is. Women are also the ones that have to deal with pregnancy, and usually the greater portion of child rearing. A woman who bases any amount of her worth on her sexual attractiveness will deal with a very difficult transition as she grows older and no longer fits the archetype of the hot young thing. Women are judged very harshly for displaying their sexuality. Most women are either average looking to below average, so it isn't like these women are getting all kinds of privileges. So, I know what I wrote is a big hodge podge but I hope that some of it is helpful to you. But the main takeaway is to try to reintegrate the repressed feminine traits and try to find the positive side of them. Edit: Also, relative to the "feminazi" phenomenon, this kind of combativeness springs up because there's also a feeling of powerlessness that stems from the internal split and repression of the feminine. So, it's likely that you have such a strong reaction to feminazis because they mirror your own internal state to you. I really see feminazi-types and meninist kind of guys as essentially dealing with the same issue of feminine repression, just in different ways. But both ways are ultimately ineffective because both look at surface level phenomena and lash out at the other side using shaming and other tactics. Instead, these types of people should shift their paradigm from a tribalistic sort of "punish the enemy" perspective to a "What makes this whole thing tick, anyway?" kind of perspective. It gets very deep and very interesting, if you look at it deeply. The masculine/feminine system is like the mother of all systems in the field of duality. It's such a complex and multi-faceted topic that it becomes like solving a gigantic riddle to get to the bottom of it. But getting that kind of "big picture" perspective will help you remain non-judgmental and to gain insight into your own issue relative to the bigger issue.

I'm not talking about extreme invites. I'm talking about like a smile or a few seconds of eye contact. Something that could easily just be the woman being nice and pleasant. I'm not talking about a come-hither kind of look of anything that definitively shows interest. But for me personally, I don't really like to be cold approached at all beyond feeling slightly flattered by it. So, if I don't want a guy to approach and I suspect that he's going to, I will avoid eye contact and try to look pre-occupied with something else. Most times, it feels a lot like being approached by a sales-person trying to sell me a product. Like a person at a perfume counter that you just kind of walk by them and think "Gosh... don't notice me." But there have occasionally been times where I thought a guy was attractive that I wanted to spark up a conversation with, and the eye contact method sometimes works. But overall on the personal level, if I haven't known the guy for a little while and already have budding feelings, there's very little chance that I'll be able to conjure up enough attraction to them to compel me to go out with that person.

It seems like you jumped the gun psychologically on expecting things to get physical on the first date. She might have agreed to go out with you to see what you're about and to get to know you. But jumping ahead and asking if she wants you to kiss her or assuming that a date failed (and displaying this with your body language and words) because nothing physical happened, is just going to make her feel awkward and is going to make you look socially unaware. Chances are that she didn't just want a quickie with you. A girl can get a "quickie" from just about anyone and anytime. There's no scarcity there, so women don't really tend to hunt for it. It's less common that a woman is just looking to hook-up, unless they're out having a wild night. If she agreed to go on a date with you and she got dressed up, it's probably because she had a curiosity about you as an individual and might have thought you were a good guy for a potential relationship. So, if a date is already awkward and not going well, don't try to make things go physical. It will only make the situation even less comfortable. It's just going to come off as rude and may feel objectifying. And there's a certain defensiveness in the statement about having to tell the girl that it's a date. So, she probably thought that you were messing with her mind. That's probably why she left.

I never saw a person deal with the threat of aggression in more of an elegant way than my school-mate Davey did when we were eleven. We were on the bus and there was the belligerent kid threatening him and trying to goad him into a fight. And Davey just simply looked him in the eye and calmly said, "I don't mind being in a fight, but I only fight if someone hits me first. If you want to fight, go ahead and take the first punch. I'll let you do it." And he showed that kid his cheek. The kid didn't do anything. He eventually just sat back down, and I could tell that he felt stupid. So, there's no need to meet aggression with aggression. Davey came out of that situation looking like a total bad-ass, and it's always left a big impression on me.

You can cope with it on the surface level by creating rules for yourself that you (and others) must meet in order to consider yourself worthy of admiration. So, you can arbitrarily pick a human trait such as "high work ethic" or "friendliness" or "creativity" or any other trait, and arbitrarily decide that that's the most important trait to embody. Ideally, you want to choose one that you have a natural talent for. Then, you want to pour a lot of effort into becoming better and better at that thing until you're the most proficient person that you know relative to that trait. And every time that you achieve something relative to that trait, you can allow yourself to feel good by confirming your superiority to others relative to that trait. This will allow you to feel good about yourself for a short period of time. But then the good feeling of self-admiration will fade. So, you have to seek out more opportunities to prove your (fill in the blank arbitrarily chosen aptitude) to yourself. Underneath everything, you'll still feel a baseline sense of inferiority. So, you'll have to constantly reaffirm your superiority to yourself to safeguard against it. But if done with a high degree of rigor and with enough ability to believe your own lies, you will be convinced that you have a high sense of self esteem and that you are happy. But you will always feel like an island because your sense of self-worth stems from comparison to others. But it will do in a pinch. It's at least slightly better than feeling a constant sense of inferiority to others with no ability for relief from that sense of inferiority. So, it's an effective coping mechanism. But it's better to just let go of the entire illusion, lest you spend your entire life chasing a carrot that you can never catch. This coping mechanism requires tons of energy.

Judgment serves a function if it means judging between healthy and unhealthy or functional and dysfunctional. Perhaps his opinion is that psychedelics are unhealthy to the seeker's search or that they are a distraction and he thinks that there are better practices. It doesn't mean he judges people who do them as bad or that he doesn't love them. It just means that he thinks that psychedelics are not conducive to seeking, which is a normal judgment based in functionality, even if there are divergent opinions on the matter. The enlightened person is still able to judge. But they are more likely to judge based on functionality as opposed to labeling reality as good or bad in any inherent sense.

What beliefs did you adopt 15 years ago? Sometimes the most innocuous seeming beliefs can create so much repression that all kinds of nastiness grows in the unconscious mind. I recommend doing consciousness work slow or you may end up biting off more than you can chew, like I did eight years ago. It caused me a major dark night of the soul and it was hard for me to pick myself up out of it. Sometimes, if you open up to things all at once, all the monsters that have been growing in your subconscious can all escape and overwhelm your conscious mind. The best way to deal with them is through understanding and awareness. But it will take a while to process and reintegrate. Just try to keep in non-judgment mode in order to reintegrate them.

I've only been capable of true self-love when I transcended the ego. Otherwise, there have been times where I felt good about myself and there have been times where I have felt bad about myself. But it was never love, because it was always conditioned upon my meeting certain standards. The way to love yourself it to allow yourself to be exactly as you are without any negative or positive judgments of SHOULD or SHOULD NOT. But this is difficult to do because we're in the habit of functioning in the opposite way. To love yourself means to love everything unconditionally in reality (including the self): good, bad, and ugly. It's a complete equalization of love toward all things in reality, because it's a realization of God and reality and love as the one thing that everything boils down to... including the self. So, you can't love yourself if you think reality needs to be any other way than exactly as it is. And this is difficult with all the turmoil. But only then can you see reality as perfect and recognize yourself as part and whole to that perfection. This is the only way to truly love yourself. But if you want to like yourself and admire yourself, all you have to do is to do things that you consider admirable. So, set goals to achieve and become very hard working and count your victories. But this is only a coping mechanism to deal with a lack of self-love. It's only us drawing a line in the sand and making a rule that we can only celebrate if we cross the line. Deep down there will always be a sense of un-fulfillment because no action can ever make you any more lovable than you already are. And there's nothing you can do to make you unlovable either. Because your very nature is love at its core. So, in order to love yourself, you must recognize your true nature which is love.

It depends. Sometimes it can be your intuition leading you toward your center and away from distraction. Other times, it can be a psychological avoidance mechanism that makes you unconsciously recede from life due to various fears and negative emotions that you don't want to face. However, your emotions should be able to guide you to where you need to go, in so far as they're not obstructed by unconscious distortions. And no one can tell you if your intuitions are right or not, other than you. It's not meant for everyone to recede from life and become hermits, but it is right for some people. I tend to think of life in this way. If I only have one life to live as this particular person and will only be around for another 50 years or so, is it really wise for me to recede from life simply to live the truth of what I am which is always infinite? So, I have an eternity to be what I actually am, but only one lifetime to live the illusion of the person called Emerald. So, I think it's wiser to play the game of life and not recede from it. But for some, the answer may be different. But my caution is to refrain from using spirituality to justify an unhealthy avoidance mechanism that makes you recede from life and be at war with reality as it is.

It won't allow me to post the video here for some reason. But Shinzen Young has a video regarding the experience of pleasure and discomfort relative to suffering/purification and frustration/fulfillment. It's titled "Purifications and Fulfillment: Four Formulas - Shinzen Young". You can look it up on Youtube.

Exploitation means to victimize someone for your own gain. So, slavery is an example of exploitation as is human trafficking. Hiring child laborers or paying poverty wages are also examples of exploitation. What you're referring to is not exploitation but admiration. It's okay to be inspired by other people, but you must also bring your own stuff to the table.

Your body type will determine the proportion of your belly to the rest of your body. If you are naturally apple-shaped, you always will be. There is no way to target weight loss to a particular area of the body. The best thing that you can do is try to strengthen your entire body, and you will look and feel better. But there is no way to actually lose belly-fat without losing weight all over the body... except liposuction.

Gossip provides the social function of determining in-groups and out-groups. So, it's a way to confirm to one's self and one's peers that "we're the ingroup" and "they're the outgroup". And it has an empowering feeling about it as it's part of our lower nature to be concerned about status and hierarchy. However, if a person is over the 'in-group' and 'out-group' mentality, it will allow them to think about other things that are more interesting and satisfying. So, it isn't stupid, per say. It's an evolutionary trait for socialization. But it's the nature of the beast that makes us suffer when we have no control over it. So, constantly talking about others is a sign that a person's 'inner beast' is out of control and that they're not a very good 'beast tamer.' So, it does speak to their character, reliability, and trustworthiness... but not necessarily their intelligence.

I understand your feelings, and I have many of them too. As a teenager, I was a nervous wreck because my awareness of suffering was becoming more and more apparent. And I was also very afraid of death in a very pre-occupied way. But when I had my experiences of ego transcendence at age 20, I no longer had fear of death and everything was beautiful and perfect: good, bad, and ugly. I even loved the things that I disliked. So, from the ultimate perspective, we're living in a literal heaven. But through the lens of the ego, we always interpret it as hell. So, the best thing to do is to continue becoming more and more aware and eventually you'll be at a point where you'll realize the heavenliness of reality. But until then, the increase of awareness will only make this place look more hellish. It gets darker before it gets light. Until then, just continue to practice compassion to reduce the suffering of others... and that includes compassion with yourself.

To be honest, it sounds like you're a Feminist but don't want the ridicule or self-image associated with it. But I would say that seeing this issue as simple or straight-forward in any way would be an oversimplification that would just lead to the demonization of men, who are just as innocent as anyone else in the equation despite being in a more privileged position relative to many issues. This imbalance itself doesn't stem from issues of gender as many people think. It's a much more global and non-gendered phenomenon that centers around how aware of and how much we value Yin and Yang. And currently Yin/feminine values, such as care for the Earth and all living creatures, intuition, stillness, valuing reality over ideas, non-hierarchical thinking, etc are not being recognized or valued as much as their Yang counterparts. So, I see issues of Feminism as being far more extensive than just being about man/woman issues, even thought this is one of the many negative effects of this Yin/Yang imbalance.

I'm just saying that what you said is ironic, because it contradicts itself. You made a post that's criticizing men, saying that men are always the ones criticizing women. Women definitely do it too, in different ways. However, I would certainly agree that there are a lot of misogynistic viewpoints in the world... and on this forum due to a number of men in the dating/relationship section equating their value with female attraction and feeling like the preferences of women are real indicators of their personal worth. So, they lash out at women because they feel like they are in a position of lesser power than us. But this is the result of multi-facetted social conditioning that's part of the sickness of our society. But I definitely identify myself as a Feminist with a capital FEM! It's really clear to me that the world has an imbalance that values the masculine principle (Yang) at the expense of the feminine principle (Yin). So, a Feminist in my eyes is someone who desires to fix this imbalance by valuing the feminine principle (in all its depth and breadth) as equal to the masculine principle, and desires the political, economic, and social equality of men and women. So, understand that I didn't accuse you of being a Feminist at all. I accused you of posting something that's a bit hypocritical and untrue. But to give a bit more of my thoughts on misogyny and why it's such a pervasive issue... Everyone unconsciously represses their feminine side due to early social conditioning from living in a Yang-oriented society, especially boys who are expected to be only masculine. Most men are conditioned to vehemently attack and repress any sign of femininity in themselves from early childhood, so that they don't lessen their social value and get called a pussy or (fill-in-the-blank feminine insult). This is especially true for men who are pre-millennial. But even millennial men have had to deal with this social pattern. It's pretty difficult to escape. So, we end up with a lot of boys who grow into men who are very sexually obsessed with women because sex is the only outlet they can allow themselves for connection to the feminine. All other outlets to be in touch with the feminine are too painful and taboo. But the same guys who are obsessed with female sexuality usually also have very negative feelings toward women because that's how they feel about their own feminine side. Sometimes, this can even brandish itself as domestic violence in extreme cases. So, that's why you see a disproportionate amount of woman-hate. Men (and women in lesser degree) have been conditioned to hate their inner woman. So, women get the brunt of negative stereotyping and the brunt of obsessional focus all at once because they are the projection screen for all that inner turmoil. Then, as a reaction to the misogyny which is quite constant in subtle ways and sometimes very apparent ways, women become jaded and develop reactionary misandry. So, you'll see that women tend to pigeon-hole men as well and have incredibly negative ideas about them. And it can get just as vicious as the misogynistic insults. Everyone has deep wounds about this issue so any amount of salt is going to hurt tremendously.

Your irony is showing.

My husband quit smoking back when he was 30, and used that insight as a tool to help himself quit. He hasn't smoked in nearly a decade. But every once in a great while, if he ever gets a craving, he'll run himself through that mindset. "I'm allowed to smoke if I want to." Then he goes through all the steps mentally of what smoking would entail and how it would create the habit again. So, he's been able to quit without going back.

Willpower is your friend in many situations, but not in seeking enlightenment. Using willpower as a tool to seek truth, is equivalent to pulling on a plant to try to get it to grow faster. You'll just end up uprooting it. All you have to do is let the plant grow in the mysterious way that it grows and watch with curiosity and presence. So, seriousness will hinder any attempt to open because seriousness, by its nature, is a closing and stiffening. All you need to do is put the plant in the right conditions while removing the wrong conditions and the plant will grow on its own. All you can ever do is facilitate your growth. You cannot will yourself to grow. The growth happens magically and spontaneously when you relinquish control and put your plant in the right conditions. But you have to take the time and energy to put the plant in the right conditions. That's as far as willpower goes in the entire conversation.