RendHeaven

In the case of relationships, a woman feeling safe is actually a rather complex thing (from a man's perspective). It's not merely a matter of not raping her (that's the bare minimum lol). Moreso, it's about always being attuned to her needs, and being a man of integrity who consistently, without fail, shows up to meet those needs. THIS IS HARD. REALLY HARD. A lot of times, her needs will conflict with your own needs. And in that case, what do you do? Who's needs get sacrificed? If you go with yourself, she feels unloved (and thereby unsafe). But if you go with her at the cost of yourself, she gets this weird feeling that she's a burden (again, doesn't feel safe). It's literally a lose-lose situation UNLESS you're self-developed to the point where you don't even really have relationship needs. This allows you to show up for your girl like a king through every storm. Yeah, that's rare. A more realistic layman's version of a healthy relationship is; both parties have (conflicting) needs, but they're wise enough to talk it out and sacrifice for each other, mutually. Hah, I'm presenting this option as the "more common" alternative to being damn-near enlightened and having no needs, but maybe this is even more rare! In your own life, when the lesser side of you seeks comfort through personal gain, how often does your higher self step up and take the wheel successfully? To be mature and discuss your intimate issues with your partner in an effective way, you have to be in your "higher self" in the middle of your own ego-tantrum. Now, how many men do you know who can do this? Tl;dr from the perspective of a woman, if you're screening men for whether or not they are emotional champions that'll have your back to the grave... yeah, that's gonna be rare. Especially if you want them to be hot haha.

You'll never really know. And you gotta make peace with that. You can't micromanage every aspect of your partner's life story. But I suppose you can begin by asking him vaguely about his sexual history with women: If he refuses to elaborate, that's actually a green flag. Means he doesn't view sexual encounters as trophies, and respects the privacy of his past partners. If he starts nonchalantly talking about the sex he's had, that's more leaning towards a red flag. This could surprise you because one might expect the rapists to be silent and the good people to talk about sex like it's no big deal. I find it to be the opposite. But again at the end of the day you really can't know. So forget about the past, here's what actually matters: if he consistently makes you feel safe (you know what this means), he passes. the moment you feel unsafe, bring this to his attention with clarity. if he shows understanding and change, he passes. if he makes you feel unsafe multiple times, as long as he shows consistent understanding and change after talking it out, he passes. if he makes you feel unsafe multiple times, but he shows no understanding or change no matter how many times you address it, or just a general unwillingness to talk heart-to-heart, that's a clear-cut failure. Part ways with him, he's not good for you. The more you grow your own sense of self-love, the less tolerance you'll have for selfish men. You gotta be willing & able to confront & drop attractive men in a flash if he shows a clear disrespect for your boundaries. This forces you to stand up for yourself which could be tough. It takes work. This also reduces your options tenfold, but you can make up for that by putting yourself out there ten times more. It won't be easy, but this is the real solution.

Yikes. You're actually spot-on, but this comment still has 0 tact. Being right isn't always worth the emphasis, Leo. In this case I would've emphasized understanding for the woman's plight before leveraging a "duh" sentiment (if at all).

Good self awareness

lol so many stories... When you're immortal, you are not human, and human affairs cease to make sense.

Oh for sure, my future-dream-unicorn-yoga-saint-witch-GF definitely has a weakness for getting skewered by cocky bastards while I'm over here practicing affection and sweetness LOL. Tough. ?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I appreciate this bro. You're pretty chill I will say though - I personally respect Leo's stance more. In my life, "go with the flow" and "acceptance" has become one of the greatest self-lies that've held me back from experiencing, knowing, and loving more and more of reality. Although the way to the top, so to speak, is always through surrender - I've found that it has to be an ACTIVE surrender, which takes focus, work, and a level of discomfort/endurance. "Embracing the present moment" without this kind of sacrifice or intention ends with me spinning in ego-charades thinking I know what love is. When it hits us deeply that, "shit, I really don't know ... [what love is]," then Leo's insistence that there are greater levels of self-understanding seems wise. Of course there is always the idiocy of the seeker who thinks he's going to "get" somewhere when he already is what he's looking for. However, there is equally the idiocy of the human who believes himself to be spiritually finalized/disengaged. You're right: How awake you are has no bearing on your value or how deserving of love you are. Nothing matters, but - If it really turns out that you are in fact Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent... perhaps you owe it to yourself to rediscover that. Hope this makes sense...

lol, been there. with this mindset, you're destined to lose her

clearly the best role model ????

Nice deflection. It's abundantly clear in your tone that you feel righteous enough to decree "truths," even if you haven't said the exact words "I am awake." And you're so obviously bothered by being called arrogant. Perhaps because it's true?

you know what i'll be perfectly honest, I listened to this 5 minutes ago and I'm guilty of imagining myself eyefucking my dreamgirl in a dark room ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ now what that says about me... up to interpretation LOL Felt good though. Maybe daydreaming is not a bad thing :]

try music for music's sake nothing about these sounds say anything about you or other people...

Well said. One of the big traps I see in my spiritual friends is when they make maps about the depth of their not-knowing. This is obviously a fabrication, because they're still dealing with maps. But to them it feels like they're engaging in not-knowing, because that's what their map says. A map about not-knowing which claims to not be a map. What a perfect tool for a spiritual ego! I've tried encouraging them to burn the map, but they can't see how that's different than what they currently have - "map, no map, same thing! it's all one!" - they say as they continue to feel as though they've understood. My strong opinion is that, when you ACTUALLY understand. You humble yourself, and you're truly left with nothing. This manifests in your behavior as silence and acceptance. Because you understand, viscerally, personally, and immediately the profundity and ineffability of Infinity drowning out everything else you've ever known. There isn't even room to "communicate" "with other people," this all falls apart into true union. People who happily mix and match nonduality with their relative experience OBVIOUSLY don't "get it." You can just sense it in their haphazard delivery. They have no respect for the raging storm of true not-knowing. They would shit their pants if they actually (in direct experience) left the shelter of their maps. This is a large part of why I personally don't engage in nondual/spiritual rhetoric. I've been to those peaks of consciousness, so to speak, and it shut me the hell up. In the NOW I am not aligned with those peaks, so it's totally out of integrity for me to even pretend to know anything about them. When I return to those peaks, I will once again be stunned into silence. Basically, no matter where I find myself, there is no room for me to communicate any kind of map on The Truth while maintaining inner balance, because either I do not know, OR, I do know, but my life has vanished. This is not to say that spiritual rhetoric should never occur. There is definitely value in propagating the possibility of enlightenment as a beacon of Hope. However, if you are in the position of spreading enlightenment, you have to be REAL fucking careful about how you use your words, because 99.9% of even the most spiritually advanced people usurp words to primarily feel good about their current existential condition moreso than to be truly benevolent.

respect

Sorry for caring about him in a way that nobody else dares to. I'll try to be more uninvolved next time!

You don't actually know this. The two are more interconnected than you may think. Even when you have an earth-shattering tier-2 insight that you want to spread for selfless reasons, you quickly realize that nobody cares or listens to you unless you show up as a dependable leader with strong, healthy tier 1 values on lock. Being a dependable leader from the perspective of others is mostly a matter of optics. But more importantly, from your own perspective it's a matter of being able to do what you say you're going to do. There's no escaping orange in our modern day, even from higher tiers (other than by suppression and turning it into a shadow). If we all had a healthy drive + ability to commit to a goal and generate results, this wouldn't even be a discussion. We would forget orange and fly off to yellow and beyond. Unfortunately, a lot of us fall apart in the face of so much responsibility. Even with tier 2 cognition many of us struggle with basic influence and personal accountability. Spiritual pursuits especially act as such a convenient bypass. And trust me, I know better than anyone how arbitrary responsibility, influence, and accountability are in an ultimate sense. It's all a charade. But nevertheless the soul is drawn toward certain dreams, and insofar as you want to honor that affinity, responsibility, influence, and accountability become real. As they say... "You can't help others before you help yourself," "Don't put the cart before the horse."

LOL that's rich. But they still want to selfishly survive. Tough.

Maybe. But I resonated with it. I've been on the rim of heaven, looking down upon the earth so to speak. So complete and happy that it almost felt unfair. Ultimately, I didn't want it. Perhaps for karmic or egoic reasons, each awakening only rejuvenates my desire to live out this dream more fully, with more challenge and grit. That I once was floating around blissfully almost makes me want to puke. From certain spiritual perspectives perhaps that is regression: but in my eyes it is progress. tldr; I don't think growth, challenge, and a bootstrap mentality is restricted to orange. A true tier-2 will value conflict-resolution within the dream more than stage orange ever could.

This is called lack of responsibility. You write: "I'd rather venture to the woods and build my own cabin FROM SCRATCH" and yet you haven't. You say you have plenty of business ideas, and there are plenty of ways to enact them consciously, and yet you haven't. Leo himself has multiple episodes on how to do this; this entire Actualized.org website is a living example of it; and yet you chose to whine. If you're really not lazy, then go make it happen.

Nah you're really just lazy.

Wow. We missed you!

Fuck

It's better to polarize. The people who love you will actually love you. When you try to appeal to everyone, that's when you're truly alone.

Beautiful. Come back to your own writing here if you ever have a relapse in thought. It might horrify you to find how sticky our addictive behaviors are. I've sworn video games off for life, but about once a week I entertain "what if..."

It's possible, but your desire to avoid/bypass pain and suffering is just more selfishness lol. As everyone has been saying already, you simply must feel the hurt. No way around it. Paradoxically, this is the most blissful way forward. Running away or putting up walls will double the pain.