tsuki

@Nivsch As you were suffering when you were a child, you were creating yourself into the man that you are right now. Look at my profile picture. It represents your psyche. The innermost layer is the infant, the outermost layer, the shell is the present moment. You want to direct your attention and love inwards, because the child needs the parent, but you don't get to rewrite your past. This child is, and will be, with you forever and the best you can do is to understand the sources of your pain, avoid them, and develop compassion for others. You will be anxious and will have OCD and it isn't going anywhere. Ever. Your job is to manage it by being conscious of the fragile child that is there with you and doing the absolute best you can to give it everything it needs. This is true love that you can give to yourself and it is indistinguishable from plain old survival. Now go, love yourself and be all that you can. Don't bother with what you can't because there is only one you and you haven't yet found how much of a treasure you are.

Instead of thinking about models that deal with abstractions, I would suggest to notice the "real" deal in front of you, the person you are in a relationship with. This will give you highest success rate, regardless of any color combination. Make them happy in the best way you possibly can and trust that they will reciprocate. It does not get any simpler than that.

All children, especially masculine men, become independent sooner or later. It is painful for mothers because you were literally a part of her body for 9 months and she was supporting you for all of your life. She might have not grown out of this mindset at all. As painful as it is for her, this is none of your concern. She will fight for you to stay, and yet you have decided to pursue your dream. There is no other way. At some point, you may find a way in which she fits with your life and your relationship may rekindle. The nature of the mother-son relationship is such that you have no choice in loving her and she has no choice in loving you. She will wait until you reach out and you will want to and hate yourself for it at the same time (until you grow up). Now, you are a man. Do what you must.

It is not possible to grasp the absolute using language. Period. Not by any use of it, not by anyone, ever. There is no way of using language that would make distinctions for someone. All distinctions must be made for oneself, within one's own experience, relative to one's own path. Enlightenment is impossible to understand and nobody attains it. There is no such thing as a responsible use of language in regards to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not even in a different room from language. It's off the charts.

One could build a brand around combating slavery in third world countries and market his product to people that care.

I just had an epiphany. You fools have no more idea about the absolute than I do. Hahaha.

lol, being married to one woman is enough trouble. With a monogamous relationship, you have a relationship with your wife, and she has a relationship with you. When there are three people, there are also relationships between your wives that could fuck up their relationship with you. I imagine that having a polyamorous relationship stable is next to impossible if you don't isolate these people from each other.

If you feel like shit afterwards then to me, your boundaries are clear and all you have to do is to respect them. Reality is shit-testing your understanding of your wound and the willingness to heal it. Don't fuck it up by getting involved with a married woman if it makes you feel like shit.

@StarStruck You've got exactly zero interest in women, and all interest in sex. So stop moralizing and calling others devils. No more pickup for you, you're grounded.

https://bigfive-test.com/result/60fd3b5c70bbad0007136dbf

Excuse the sarcasm and irony (his name is literally Green), this is the rundown of what can happen to us.

Is going for women like this a pattern in your love life? This is not a sign of her being attracted to you. Why did you choose to pursue her? I think it's way simpler than you make it out to be. You put yourself out there, your genuine self, and see how people react. The ones that react positively are open. The ones that give you a cold shoulder - aren't. It's not like you can "win a person over", against their feelings - especially women, and especially women that are older than you are. From the story you presented, it seems like you decided that she is going to be yours. Women are not prizes - not unless they want to be, by showing you that they are open. Just a general remark on limitation: you are not going to experience the limitations of pickup, from within pickup. Its limitations will only become apparent if you find something else that works.

Most women just wanna live life and have fun. The goal-centric view that dissects life into categories such as truth an spirituality is of little concern to them. It is very masculine.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe women pick up on that and they are afraid to commit? Knowing yourself is not a matter of intellectually inventing a perfect self, but rather of reverse-engineering it from what feels good to you so that you can present yourself with integrity. How well do you fare on that front?

@Preety_India The problem with love in relationships is that we are only able to recognize love that we were given. Our primary love-givers were our parents. It would be all nice and dandy if they were perfect, but they aren't and we conflate lots of things that are actually hurtful. Still, real fulfillment in the domain of relationships comes from actual love, not its imitations. You may be genuinely convinced that the partner loves you, or that you love him, and yet - you may be hurting each other. So, the first step is to look within about what we think love is, how our parents loved us and see if it is really true love. As for the practical side of things, I learned that there are three components to relationships: commitment, intimacy and passion. Apart from personal sovereignty, commitment is the ground. It boils down to simultaneous decision of both lovers to provide whatever the other one needs from us, and the trust that the partner wants to provide for us. Acting on this decision is love. Then, there is intimacy, which is genuine interest in the truth of the other person, their needs, desires, history, habits, body, emotions, intellect, etc. The truth from their perspective. Acting on this interest is love. The third area is passion. This is the longing for closeness with the other, openness and hope for the shared future, and seeing the best in them. Building this feeling is love. Any action that diminish abovementioned areas is not love and should be dropped if the relationship is to be sustained.

The mistake seems to be a belief that you can create a relationship with any random person if you are developed enough. So, you take rejections as a sign of being flawed, or underdeveloped. The last thing you wanna do is to end up in a relationship where you want to pretend to be someone else, in order to sustain it. The women that reject you for not being compatible are giving you a favor. Keep looking until both of you are satisfied. There definitely is a person that is compatible with you out there. That being said, finding the compatible partner is the easiest part, it only goes uphill from there. Yet, I think it's worth it.

@Preety_India I think it's nice that you share your thoughts that exceed the usual whiny male mindset. I don't think it's necessary for you to defend them from people that want to argue. Too bad that we don't get to provide a similar taxonomy for kinds of partners that work. If they works we only get to experience one exemplar.

I've been contemplating limitation and finitude lately. I was observing the visual field, and the intellect, and noticing the limits of knowledge obtained via these senses. This has led me to question the limits of knowledge in general and unknowability popped up as a possibility. For some reason, I intuitively knew that it is either that everything that true is known, and therefore limitations are an abstraction that do not correspond with anything that exists, or there are things that are inherently unknowable. Quick google found this little gem that seems to prove my intuition logically. To be honest, I don't know which is the case and I feel pretty stuck atm. It seems that a single example of something that is unknowable would prove that unknowable things exist, and Godel's theorem is there to the rescue, but that would make reality so much more complicated and vast ?. I wonder what are the implications for the so-called Leo's omniscience trips, huh?

@Preety_India Relationships are about exchanging value. Commitment is when apart from having your needs, you are willing to fulfill the needs of your partner. The trick is that both parties have to understand this and simultaneously agree to act on this understanding. If either end stops needing, or giving, it breaks apart. Your categorization can be simplified using these two dimensions of needing and giving. Nevertheless, I think it is pretty accurate.

@WelcometoReality No, it was the context in which I asked the questions about limitation. I am still in the process of integrating this. I think that it was a step in the right direction. For the longest time I was unable to act intelligently in response to this disease, and I find the diagnosis to be a kind of relief. Before, I was feeling helpless and thinking that it was unknowable. Like I said, I am still integrating.

@Nahm I think that I understand where I got lost. I was asking questions about experience in general, which is a concept. This is where I got lost in abstractions and asking thoughts about thoughts. My original inquiry about particular kinds of experience felt good and and inspiring, while that road was confusing, maddening and painful. Glad that I got that one straightened out. This rabbit hole taught me to articulate something that I couldn't articulate properly for a long time. The highly capable intellect, by itself, is obviously neither helpful, nor does it equal intelligence. While it gives more capability to articulate the answers clearly, it also presents more opportunities to ask unhelpful questions. So, at best - it just gives more responsibility. Thank you all, especially @The0Self and @ZzzleepingBear .

Roses are red, The sky is blue, I don't know colors, But neither do you. (My best shot at poetry, since we've entered the arts department) Anyways, I'm still pondering the clue about not asking questions about things I have no experience of.

I feel that this is the missing puzzle. I will ponder this some more.

Thank you. This was helpful. I should close this thread to not spread more doubt in your pure hearts.

@ZzzleepingBear First, you are saying that what cannot be experienced is of no concern, and then you ASSUME that boundaries are apparent. In truth, you don't know whether they are in the domain od things that cannot be experienced, or are an illusion. That is unknowable.