Going through the spiral

[Raphael]

My sister's situation is similar to mine. She is 22 now and never had a relationship, at best she had a pseudo-relationship that only lasted one week.

I remember having a conversation with her one day, she was complaining that all guys are assholes who only want to fuck and that she was unable to find a partner... then she told me that a guy that would fit her would be someone like me... it reassured me lol.

[Raphael]

Perfect People

Back when I was at school, there was a girl that was so perfect that it felt surreal. This girl was the best student in the entire school, she was the best in everything: Maths, English, Physics and even in sport (she was maybe a bit behind in artistic fields, but I'm not sure because artistic fields aren't that much represented in the typical school system). And she was not only the best student, but she was also physically stunning, one of the best-looking girls in the entire school. It didn't look fake, it didn't look like she was overdoing things, it didn't look like she was putting that much effort into her physical appearance and she wasn't putting on makeup, but she was incredible. She felt natural, authentic, she felt feminine, not highly extroverted, not highly introverted, but she was an ambivert, a balance so perfect that it was indescribable. During one of the years of high school, she met a perfect boyfriend and this guy was incredible, he checked all the boxes. He was the second-best student of the entire school, he was highly intelligent, masculine, and good-looking. He had a strong masculine body with a large back that fitted the men's beauty standards without it looking fake. He looked incredible, natural, and authentic. At the end of high school, they both got accepted into some of the best universities on the planet. The girl chose to study socially oriented fields that would also include domains like politics and economics with the goal to work at the United Nations while the guy was more tech-oriented. I don't know if they are still together now, but my bet is that this is highly possible. When two perfect people meet, they already know that they are so perfect that it's almost impossible to find anyone better to be with, so they'll stick together. I also bet that both were already at stage Yellow around 16.

Two other people that I know that were close to perfection were a sister and a brother. And again, they were incredible: super good-looking, very good at school, healthy, artistic, kind, with a positive mindset, etc. They felt like healthy stage green individuals.

I'm extremely impressed when I see people like this, this is so inspirational. I wondered how can such incredible people exist and what I came with is simply: very healthy environment, very healthy parents, blessed with good genetics.

[Raphael]

My balanced brain is strange. Sometimes, I feel like a guy and sometimes I feel like a girl. Currently, I feel more like a girl.

[Raphael]

About Having an Intimate Relationship: About The Limitations of My Environment

So... I did some research and found out that there are around ~ 98000 girls in the age range that I'm looking for in my country and in these ~ 98000, 99% will be cut out for simple reasons:

• Most of the youth is either at stage Blue or Blue/Orange which is too low for me. My minimum standard is Orange/Green.
• Some of them are already in a relationship.
• I will only be attracted to a certain percentage of them physically speaking.
• I don't resonate with 99% of people and that was way before I discovered actualized.org. This is something that I experienced since I was maybe 3 or 4 years old.

With all these variables taken into consideration, it means that there is less than a ~1000 girls compatible with me in my country... lmfao. Yep, my environment is severely limited.

Nevertheless, I didn't lose all my hope, I still think that there is a possibility to find a high conscious partner where I live, but this is going to be tough. The possibility is razor-thin, yet exists. Also, I did found some healthy people at Orange/Green in the past but it was extremely rare.

I think that I might have a bias against my country because of how limited it is, but I need to stay open that a possibility still exists. I'm not shooting for a perfect partner, we all have imperfections and that's fine, but someone compatible with me would have to be overall healthy, self-sustainable, and very open-minded. If it's really not possible here, I might go for international dating or maybe just stay alone because solitude ain't that bad and I'm used to it anyway.

[Raphael]

About Toxic Masculinity

I want to share some thoughts about toxic masculinity as this is an issue that I have some familiarity with and caused me suffering even as a man.

I didn't have any healthy masculine examples around me while growing up. In fact, the masculine examples that I had were so bad that they caused me the see the feminine as being better than the masculine and to distrust the masculine. Even as a man, I had many times the feeling that overall men are stupider than women because they are less in touch with their emotions. As a kid, I couldn't understand the rage of the men around me and therefore would much better appreciate the company of women than the company of men.

The two worst examples that I have are an uncle and my dad. I'm going to start with this uncle because oh my god, this one was so toxic that it was insane.

When I was a kid, I had an aunt that would come home to help my mom with some stuff. After being done, me and my sister would usually go back with her and spend some time at her place... and this uncle would be there. This guy would sometimes give us a bit of money and some biscuits or chocolate, but aside from that, he was a total disaster. He was drinking and smoking and would often get drunk. I didn't personally saw it, but I know that he would sometimes come back home drunk and force his wife to have sexual intercourse with him (which is rape) and if she would refuse he would either verbally threaten her or beat her. I also know that his kids would witness the scene without being able to do anything. The abuses would not just be related to sex, but for anything that his wife would not do properly, would not give him, and even for his own mistakes. He was a farmer and would often have a stick with him that he would use to beat his animals and also sometimes his wife... just like another animal. He would throw rocks at her, insult her, get outraged at her. I remember as a kid hearing him shouting at her that he would kill her if she didn't do exactly what he needed. I would hear: "I'LL KILL YOU NEXT TIME! I'LL KILL YOU!.". And I think that he got close to killing her multiple times in the past. My mom told me a story that one day my dad went to his place and saw him beating his wife so much that she had to hide under a bed to avoid getting beaten. My dad tried to resonate with him and stated that he could kill her like this, and, apparently, it helped calm him down. His wife was basically his slave. He couldn't cook anything for himself, his wife had to do it for him. She had to cook everything and then serve him while he was watching TV, he couldn't even do such a basic thing as putting butter on his bread. One day, he didn't eat anything because his wife was absent because she was visiting her family. He needed her to put food in his hands. After some years of regularly going to their place as a kid, I personally got sick of seeing this guy. I decided to cut him off and stopped visiting them... and he would then complain about it. Interestingly, my sister would still go to their place and still visit them. I think that she felt obliged, also my sister has enormous compassion, way too much compassion for her own good... but I'll write about that in another post. I very rarely see this uncle now, however, I still see his wife quite often and I'm very impressed by how well she is doing. She lived an entire life of abuse, yet she is still one of the kindness women that I know. She is incredible. Let's move on to my dad.

When it comes to my dad, the situation wouldn't be toxic to the point where he would beat my mom (but I personally got a bit of that for reasons that I consider unjustified), but he was still very toxic. He made a lot of progress tough, but I still don't qualify him as a decent individual. His toxicity would show as being extremely brutal and aggressive verbally, it was psychological in 99% of cases. He would be full of hate, angry, and hypercritical of everything. He would apply extreme psychological pressure on my mom and me for the smallest mistake that we would do. However, when we would point out to him just a normal mistake of life like forgetting something or not explaining himself properly, he would explode in rage. He would give orders all the time, especially to my mom. He always needed my mom to do things for him, to obey him, and to do things fast. He often insulted and disrespected my mom. I remember getting back home one day after having spent some time in another country and I was shocked by my mom's state. She was emotionally numb, she was extremely afraid of him, she was making herself small. She was talking the minimum possible to avoid any verbal abuse. At that time, my sister told me that he went to the extreme with her, his insults and criticism were probably some of the most brutal that he said to her in his entire life. She told me that he said things like this: "YOU ARE A TOTAL PIECE OF SHIT! YOU ARE THE BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT THAT EXISTS ON THE PLANET AND THAT WILL EVER EXIST! THEY ARE NO BIGGER PIECE OF SHIT THAN YOU!". I often saw my mom overstressed, sad, and sometimes crying while growing up. It also had an impact on me, I was very afraid and disgust by this brutal animalistic man that I would call my dad. I didn't felt safe while growing up, I was always fearful, I would be very careful because I would be afraid of receiving an explosion of hate. My dad would hide his game pretty well outside, he would show himself as fun and charismatic. I remember being in a store with him as a kid and one man told me: "You're dad... He must be a great dad, a cool dad, he is very funny.". I just responded "Yes", not knowing what to say about this. When I was maybe 13 or 14, I remember being with him when he openly said to a saleswomen: "NEXT TIME I'LL PUT MY FINGERS IN YOUR ASS". He was married to my mom, I was a kid, he did this publicly without any shame, it completely disgusted me. Even if he would put this mask on while being outside, he would in reality be extremely afraid and careful of people. It was so bad that he would insist to keep all the curtains closed in the house and would criticize us if just an inch would not be covered because he was convinced that some people were watching us. He didn't like when me and my sister would play in the garden and he told us many times to not play in the garden because people would watch us. He was convinced that the neighbor was spying on us and trying to listen to our conversations and for that, he would take a huge stick and beat it on some tole to scare the neighbor and to be sure that he would go away. He was overly protective of me and my sister, he didn't allow us to just walk a bit in the street because he was convinced that someone would try to kill us. He wanted us to do everything exactly like him, this issue showed up multiple times when it comes to eating. He would be angry and criticize us if we would not eat exactly like him. If someone would dislike something that he liked, he would insult this person. My dad is also hyper racist especially against black people and Muslims, he is always obsessed with people's ethnicity. And also sexist, and homophobic. I heard him a certain number of time saying that we should kill some kind of people. The favorite sport of my dad is just insulting, I saw him my entire life insulting people all day long. It caused me a lot of issues while growing up and I think that I bugged many people at school. They didn't understand what was going on with me, they didn't understand how I was living, they didn't understand why I would be so emotionally numb, and would therefore react against me, dislike me, or hate me. But this is also the reason that got me into personal development and in a sense, I'm grateful for that and grateful that it led me to the discovery of actualized.org

Aside from these two examples, many other examples that I had weren't that much better. Many of my uncles would be alcoholics, some of them would not even work and their wives would do everything for them.

So... as a kid growing up with all this toxicity around me, I quickly realized and told myself: "Alright... these examples are the worst examples that can possibly exist. To do great in life, just do the complete opposite of what all these people are doing". And this is what I did, and what I'm currently doing. It doesn't mean that I did everything properly, I had many issues while growing up, and it was challenging to deal with them and I still have some of them. But overall, I must say that I'm very satisfied with where I got in life considering all this toxic background. I'm at a point where I feel 90% healthier than most people. Solitude helped me a lot in processing all that trauma and trying to understand things.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Raphael

[Raphael]

 

[Raphael]

My brain is so strange. I feel at the same time healthy and fucked up.

[Raphael]

About Toxic Masculinity: Causes and Consequences

Generally speaking, society has higher expectations of men. There's a bias where women are allowed to cry and be vulnerable because they are women and where men are expected to be strong and providing because they are men.

This bias is very strong within men and creates anxieties from a very young age. Society glorifies strong men which is the reason why men sometimes compete with each other and why men are generally more involved in competitive sports or other competitive activities: because they want to prove themselves to society. However, this obsession for being strong and performant backfires many times and creates the opposite result. It's quite similar to beauty standards for women: society praises women for their beauty and praises men for being emotionally strong. Society also praises men for their looks but much less than women.

The reason why society praises men for being emotionally strong is not just a cultural bias that can be easily changed, but a biological bias. Men are biologically stronger and more raw survival-oriented than women which is the reason why they are expected to be emotionally stronger because their bodies are better fit for survival. Also when faced with tough survival challenges, someone cannot allow himself to cry in difficult situations because otherwise, he will never go through it.

Things get toxic in two main cases:

• When men are faced with survival challenges that are so tough that it makes them dysfunctional.
• When the biological truth of men being better fit for survival gets so much amplified by gender bias to the point where men are ashamed to show vulnerabilities. This is especially an issue with men who don't fit the typical masculine norms.

For the survival case, it's not possible to easily get out of it, systems need to be improved to soften life challenges.

For the cultural bias, the healthy approach is simply to detach from these high expectations, recognize imperfections, and start to correct them. But the pressure of being this hypercompetent entrepreneurial type man is sometimes so high that a percentage of men aren't able to detach and becomes ashamed of themselves. This creates a strange situation where there is high cultural conditioning that expects men to be emotionally strong and competent where at the same time to be healthy an individual needs to express vulnerabilities. Some men are stuck in this paradox, they are so ashamed of their vulnerabilities and imperfections that it makes them more and more toxic. This situation creates a lot of internalized anger. Also, nobody likes anger, and anger is labeled as "bad" and this prevents men with strong emotional baggage to even try to search for solutions.

They are obviously other cases that create toxicity, for example: some men (and also women) push themselves as hard as they can to become strong, however, after a certain point, they don't become stronger but just emotionally dysfunctional. Even if life is easier than before since the age of information, the cultural conditioning of "being strong and don't show emotions" from centuries of rough survival is still present, however, it will naturally go away as societies evolve into Green.

I will not try to explore more cases here because they are too many of them, but in the end, things can get really twisted and complex.

[Raphael]

About Toxic Masculinity: How Bad Was/Is My Dad Really?

I noticed that I often time over-exaggerate things in order to fulfill my ego. So how bad was my dad really?

What's the worst thing that I saw? I saw him throwing a knife at my mom when I was a kid, but he missed her. That's the worst thing that I saw and the only time where it almost went physical. He never physically abused my mom. But even if he never physically abused her, he was still very violent through his behaviors. He was convinced that he wasn't violent, one day he told her: "You're lucky that you found a kind man because another man would break your face". The fact that he was not beating her was him being kind in his mind.

I saw a lot of psychological pressure while growing up, a lot of orders, a lot of criticism, a lot of insults, a lot of manipulations. I saw my mom being treated like shit or being treated like a maid many times in the past. She would feel a lot of pain in her body just through insults, criticism, and psychological pressure.

But also, if I'm honest, my dad made a lot of progress over the last ten years. Since he stopped working a year ago, he became more relaxed than before and it has been a while since he didn't explode in rage. However, even with all this progress, he is still sometimes very annoying and difficult to deal with. He is getting closer to a decent stage Blue individual, I hope he'll get there, but I have zero certainties.

[Raphael]

My bias is to be unbiased.

[Raphael]

I'm wondering if I didn't catch Covid. I felt unusual fatigue yesterday and currently feel a bit tired with a dry throat.

[Raphael]

Feeling of Being Bad / Being an Impostor

Hey everyone,

I have been living with a feeling of being bad, being an impostor, being inadequately perceived by people for almost my entire life.

This feeling intensified a bit recently when I got in touch with an old friend that I'm going to do business with. I have a lot of respect for this friend because he is a well-integrated stage Orange/Green person. I feel that I'm not at his level regarding technical skills, social skills, and life experiences. I feel like he got me right when he evaluated my competencies which means that I lack some knowledge in the field, but I also see that this friend perceives me as having all the capabilities to succeed and this is where I feel like an imposter.

I have been labeled as smart or as having a high potential since I was young. Some people told me that I was smart just by looking at my face without even knowing me, some people told me that I was a good person just by hearing me talking. However, if there is something that I don't feel that I am is precisely being smart because I always doubt myself enormously. If I search in my memories and go back to high school, I remember a teacher telling me that I was very serious regarding work (and she wasn't the only one). This didn't make sense to me because I rarely took school very seriously. What I would do after school is just go on my computer and play video games, I wouldn't do my homework that much regularly, but this teacher would still perceive me as being serious. I didn't have bad grades most of the time, I was actually a bit above average without putting in that much effort. I had a few periods where I would have terrible grades, but also moments where I would get incredible results by just pushing myself a bit more. I think I could have easily been one of the top students if I would have put the effort in, but I was too lazy to do it.

Regarding personal development, it's similar. Even if I have been following Leo's work and consuming other resources for a while now, I feel that I know nothing about personal development, less than 1%, and within this, I feel that I embody even less.

I feel fake, I feel like I'm hiding who I am. I feel being much less than how people perceive me and being much less than how I present myself. Some people told me in the past things like "You are doing great", but I always feel the complete opposite. I don't feel special, I'm not really proud of anything, I never accomplished anything that I consider significant.

Does anyone relate to this?

 

[Raphael]

A thing is what we consider it to be, except if we understand that it is not what it is.

[RendHeaven]

6 minutes ago, Raphael said:

A thing is what we consider it to be, except if we understand that it is not what it is.

Bingo

[Raphael]

About Toxic Masculinity: Some Resentment Towards My Mom

I noticed that I have a bit of resentment against my mom for marrying such a man like my dad. I always had difficulties understanding why she married him. She had a great life, she had friends, she had a healthy supporting family, she had a job, she was happy, she had freedom, everything in her life was perfect. She could have got a high-quality man because she is a quality woman... so why in the world marrying a racist sociopath?

I asked my mom in the past why she married him, she responded that she was in love and that she didn't realize how he was. I also asked a few times why she didn't quit him, she responded because she got me and my sister or that she doesn't know. I always found her answers disturbing. She could have quit my dad and get back to her job, her parents would have helped her in raising me and my sister, she would have got some help and she would have made it out, but she chose to stay with my dad. I saw her being talked down, I saw her overstressed, I saw her crying, I saw her sad, I saw her depressed, I saw her afraid, I saw her getting some physical threats (without physical actions), I saw her being pressured, I saw her being used as a scapegoat, I saw her becoming emotionally numb. It broke me down as a kid and I couldn't do anything excepting absorbing the toxicity. I would have preferred to grow up without a dad than a dad like him. I wouldn't have to go through all the emotional suffering, and trying to fix myself if I had a healthy dad.

The explanations that I came to so far after contemplating this issue many times are simply:

1. She is a very feminine woman and very feminine women are highly attracted to very masculine men (strong, dominant, confident), but many times these hypermasculine men are total assholes. My dad probably showed off as a hypermasculine, hyper charismatic, strong, and fun guy and she liked it, but that was just a facade and she didn't expect him to be so toxic.
2. Very feminine women have weak boundaries and will therefore care more about others than themselves. They often put more blame on themselves, feel like there's something wrong with them when it's not the case, and have a tendency to be people pleasers. Also, women are naturally more oriented towards others because nurturing is more in their biology where men are more oriented towards self-survival because men are naturally more wired towards raw survival.
3. She didn't have any bad experience with guys before and never even got catcalled. This point may be surprising, but the fact is that she grow up in France and was a young woman in the 70s and 80s helps to make sense. At that time in France, stage Blue was healthily integrated so people were overall more polite and decent. This is different in our time because of stage Orange's obsession with freedom which leads to stage Red being able to show itself more and take advantage. Many times simple decency doesn't exist anymore because stage Orange is so prevalent.
4. Fear. I wasn't born at that time, but my guess is that she was very afraid of this tall, muscular, and aggressive man. Because of that, she didn't want to take any action to quit and she got trapped by fear. She was probably afraid that something could happen to her physically if she decided to quit.

The overall feeling that I get when it comes to toxic relationships with either a toxic man or a toxic woman is that when some people "fall in love", basic logic doesn't exist anymore. They want to be in the relationship because they think that their love will make it work but doesn't in practice, and therefore the result is just damaged people.

Nah, this isn't a great idea to marry a racist sociopath or a great idea to be in a relationship with a dysfunctional, manipulative, woman just because of "love". Love will not magically cure the other person, but it is in this kind of situation that tough love needs to be applied to break the relationship. Basic common sense is important, yet so many times underrated.

[Raphael]

Many times, I feel like confidence is bullshit.

[RendHeaven]

23 minutes ago, Raphael said:

Many times, I feel like confidence is bullshit.

And yet, insecurity is likewise bullshit.

What remains...?

[Raphael]

12 hours ago, Raphael said:

Many times, I feel like confidence is bullshit.

I met dumb confident people and smart confident people. Confidence doesn't mean that someone will necessarily succeed. Confidence can be harmful when not properly calibrated, that's the case when someone isn't aligned with reality. Confidence is healthy when someone is aligned with reality and in touch with his abilities.

11 hours ago, RendHeaven said:

And yet, insecurity is likewise bullshit.

What remains...?

Authenticity?

[Raphael]

I currently feel quite down. I feel stress and overwhelmed, my sleep is becoming worst and worst everyday, I also have a big pimple in my ear which is painful and prevents me to hear properly. I just cried a bit.

[Raphael]

Relationships: Stupid Attracts Stupid/Average

So... I stereotyped guys a lot previously, it's now time to stereotype girls.

One thing that always baffled me especially when I was younger is that the stupidest guys always attracted the most girls. Often time, when looking at this, I was thinking "Tf is wrong with these girls? These guys are the stupidest guys that exist, they don't care about them, they don't care about anything. They just do dumb things all day, yet these girls like them.". However, I just want to make a distinction here: this only applies for average or below average women, not for conscious self-actualizing women. A conscious self-actualizing woman studies all this and understands when a man is not worth it.

From what I saw around me, there's definitely a bit of truth in the saying that many women are attracted to bad boys. These guys are emotionally stimulating and girls crave emotional stimulation. Also, some of these guys show strong masculine characteristics like confidence, dominance, taking initiative, etc. which appeals to girls who think that they'll get containment... but end up getting the complete opposite.

I witnessed multiple times in the past guys doing immoral things and seeing girls laughing or liking it. I currently have an episode in my head which goes back many years ago when I was in high school. I was in a class and was bored by it so I politely asked the teacher if I could go to the library to read, and he agreed. After the bell rungs, I got out of the library and met a girl that was in my class. This girl never cared about me and never even talked to me, but she was shocked when she saw me because I broke the rule in her mind (which wasn't really the case because the teacher gave me his approval). And then, after that, she started to like me. I was blown away by this. Yeah, many girls like dumb guys who break rules, but that's mostly average or below average girls or young girls who lack life experiences. It doesn't apply to conscious girls, the conscious girls in the school weren't attracted to these guys, but attracted to conscious guys.