I see a chronic problem on this sub-forum, which is young males who complain about lack of success with women and failing to take responsibility for their situation.
The #1 rule of all growth and personal development is taking 100% responsibility for your situation. I know how hard that can be when you're struggling with women/sex. It feels very much like life is treating you unfairly and that it's the women's fault. Let me tell you right now: this is a total ILLUSION! It's not the women. It's not society. It's not post-modernists. It's not the Marxists. It's not the feminists. It's YOU!
This is not me blaming you. This is simply how all personal development works. Whatever problem you have in life you must begin by getting honest with yourself how you created it. Sometimes this is difficult to accept. It's much easier to blame someone else, or even blame yourself (for being too ugly or too short or too introverted). I am not suggesting you blame yourself. Rather, take ownership of the fact that you are the creator of your life. Whatever is missing in your life, you can correct, but only if you stop blaming yourself and others.
Be very mindful of how your ego-mind creates narratives which justify your sense of lack, brokenness, or inability to attract women. All of these narratives, justification, rationalizations, logic, "facts", scientific studies, proofs, etc are sneakily fabricated by your own mind! Your own mind is the enemy! Watch it like a hawk. Your mind will try to come up with reasons and excuses for why your life is unfair and how success with women is impossible. This is all horseshit! Do not believe your own mind here. Your mind is clouded by fear, insecurity, and neediness. That is totally normal and understandable, but you cannot resolve your problems from such a place. From such a place your problems will get worse as you start to blame the world and solidify your victim worldview with cherry-picked evidence, "science", and "logic". Be extra suspicious of "logic" and "science" here. There is nothing logical or scientific about your victim attitude or lack of success with women. It's purely about meeting the survival needs of your ego. Sex is a very powerful survival need which will drive your mind towards all manner of mental gymnastics to ensure that you get it, or at least feel better for not getting it.
There's good news and bad news. The good news is: Your looks are NOT the problem! The bad news is: your personality, attitude, and mindset are terrible! The good news is, it's possible to change that. The bad news is, it won't be easy and you will resist it like the devil that you are.
So what's the solution? Take ownership of your problem and commit to resolving it. For this you need faith and confidence in your ability to self-actualize. You must have enough hope and vision to see yourself get much better with attracting women. This is NOT a pipe dream or fuzzy thinking. The reality is that any man can become 100x better at attracting women if he really takes ownership of the matter. Yes, it takes serious work. But it's also highly worth it. Imagine that within 3 years you're able to attract pretty women and feel confident about yourself when it comes to dating. Isn't that worth the effort? It sure is. This is not a fantasy. I've done it, many men have done it, and so can you! Your looks are NOT the bottleneck, your mindset is.
So what do you do after you've established this vision? You must do lots of research to educate yourself about how dating actually work (not how you think it works). Find videos, find books, buy online courses, hire a coach, take a bootcamp, take a workshop, etc. There are literally hundreds of excellent resources available online these days. Most of them are legit, not scams. Study them hard and then get into the field. Start talking to women. Start approaching women. Start flirting with women. Start being much more social.
If you struggle attracting women I can tell you right now what your top problems are. It's not lack of money, looks, muscles, car, height, or dick size. Remember, attraction and dating is EXTREMELY counter-intuitive. It's works exactly the opposite of how you initially think.
Your top problems are:
You live in your mancave and never go out! You must go out into social spaces where real women hang out. You spend WAY too much time online, indoors You spend WAY too much time on Youtube, Netflix, and playing video games You work too much You are never around cute single women You never start conversations with strangers You have terrible body language due to lack of experience You are not comfortable doing small-talk and being emotional and random in conversations You are far too logical You approach zero women on a regular basis You are terrified of approaching a women who you find attractive, talking yourself out of every approach You have terrible eye contact, you don't smile, and you don't project your voice properly You are crippled by fear and tongue-tied You are unable to start and sustain an interesting conversation with a human being You are disconnected from your body, your heart, your feelings, your emotions You have terrible self-image issues. You hate yourself, you hate how you look, you judge yourself way too harshly. You judge yourself just as harshly as you judge women. You have a bad sense of dress style and you don't groom yourself well You have no experience with physically touching women in a non-creepy way. You don't know how to rapidly physically escalate on a women without creeping her out. You don't know how women think or what they truly value in a man You don't know how to flirt and be authentic You are trying to be masculine in all the wrong ways -- fake masculinity You are needy, needy, needy You are terribly inexperienced You have no sense of passion or purpose in life, which robs you of confidence and masculine vitality Your attitude sucks: you whine, complain, bitch, moan, blame, and are so negative You think you understand life, reality, and how attraction works -- you don't! So work on fixing all of that before you go blaming women. All of the above can be deliberately worked on and fixed.
You need to learn how to be a real man. Being a real man has nothing to do with big muscles, big dick, or a fast car. A real man is grounded on the INSIDE. It's ALL about inner game! You need to cultivate that confidence. It doesn't come naturally. You must build it!
80% of getting good with women is just actually being much more social. You need to deliberately re-structure your life so that you're automatically being more social. So that you're going out every weekend. So that you're bumping into new people constantly. So that you're making new friends all the time. This kind of re-structuring is very doable. You just have to be willing to change your lifestyle.
And stop watching or listening to any of the following:
Jordan Peterson, MGTOW, RedPill, Incel material/forums/reddit All of that is cancer of the mind. It's reinforcing your victim mindset and robbing you of your ability to change yourself.
I've been where you are. I know it's tough. But hang in there, hold your vision, have hope, get to work, and things will dramatically improve for you. You will become a new person by the end of this journey and you will be so proud of yourself. You will become a real man, not some whiny JP fanboy.
The #1 thing a real man does is take 100% responsibility for all his problems. A real man NEVER blames anyone, and certainly not women or feminism. A real man is a feminist. A real man fearlessly works on himself.
So start right there! Start by fixing that.

@kieranperez You are not fucked up, you are Love! Love is your soul's truest nature and highest desire. All you need to do when you've feeling down is love more. Love yourself. Love the universe. Love until it kills you.
24 is nothin'! You are a baby yet. Your whole life is ahead of you. You are right where you need to be.
Replace your doubts with love and your soul will be happy.

Because society makes it easy, herding you into it like a sheep.
Now you are on your own.
You can actually learn much faster and deeper as an adult. But no one will motivate you. It's all on you.
In fact, since you are now trying to move beyond the center of gravity of your culture, they will actively drag you down and discourage you from trying.
So it's all on you twice over.
Plus you gotta pay your bills, so it's all on you thrice over.

@Lynnel It's tricky for sure. It's not merely a matter of belief. Belief is not what creates your body, for example, but your body IS a hallucination. So this process of creation is not as easy a beleiving whatever the hell you want and it appears.
But if you are tripping on psychedelics they open your mind up so much that you can literally imagine a devil and see it materialize before your eyes. But this is not just belief. It's the machinery of Universal Mind which spawns physical reality. You cannot access this machinery easily in ordinary states of human conscious. Because your sense of reality must be maintained to maintain your human life. Your mind works very hard to create a solid sense of "reality" otherwise the game of human life would be up.
Fear is pervasive due to the ego's survival function and your belief in death. Growing up is all about learning to master your fear and negative thinking.

For the same reason people don't permanently die from a few samadhis during meditation.
Your body/mind is not so fragile because its job is to survive at all costs. You are a survival machine which protects you against your own stupidities. The body cannot actually trust the ego to keep it alive, which is why it tortments the ego with pain, suffering, and desire. That's the body making sure the ego doesn't do something stupid that gets both of them killed.

Firstly, you CAN heal your body. Healing is an entire discipline. You can increase the heal rate of cancer through shear mind power. This has been proven by clinical science long ago. There exist clinics which teach how to heal cancer with mind power. And of course it works. Not 100%, but you'd be surprised how effective it can be.
There also exist millions of psychic healers who can help heal you. The shit Jesus did is not merely a myth! An exceptionally conscious mystic will have psychic superpowers that you can hardly believe. Of course it's not 100% perfect. Don't try to formalize it. You can't formalize psychic abilities within a materialist paradigm because they are immaterial and superconscious.
Secondly, since you are God, and you can create anything out of thin air, you created this human life where you get to experience limitation. You created limitation for yourself. You just forgot. So until you wake up you will be puzzled. After you wake up you will understand that you did this to yourself precisely because you have infinite power.
Thirdly, by becoming more conscious your ability to create using your mind will increase significantly. You will not get 100% freedom because for that you'd have to stop being human. To be human is to have certain limits. But right now you are nowhere near the limits of what the human mind/body can do.
Do not underestimate the power of the mind. The entire universe is mind-stuff. You just don't know how to access it. Humans are a very crude and underdeveloped species. And you are a very crude and underdeveloped human. So there's your answer.

Yeah, that's why self-employment is so hard and most people just cannot do it. Because it takes serious vision and self-discipline to be able to lead yourself. Most people are sheep who suck on the tit of society. They need a boss just to tell them when to wake up, otherwise they would become vegetables.
The self-determined life is not the easy life. The easy life is working at Starbucks for 40 years and then retiring without a single dream or deep thought about life.
You need to have a serous over-arching vision and purpose to your life if you're gonna go it alone. You need to be a fuckin boss on yourself.

I don't really know what that means.
Stick to the core principles of course. Flashy game is bad game. The best game is chill, friendly, and so natural it doesn't look like game at all.
Seek to be totally natural, congruent, authentic, and humble. Natural, chill, and authentic works like magic.
When you boil game down to its essence you'll discover it's just you being you to the hilt. But it takes A LOT of experience to reach that point.

Leading up to this: Woke up late, procrastinated on my Kriya yoga. Smoked some weed instead with the intent of reaching higher states of consciousness to potentially find some happiness. I ended up distracting myself. Smoked some more (more than intended) and went out for a run, ended up running 3km at 10 pm with low stamina due to the weed. Made myself comfortable at a bench waiting for a bus home, put on some binaural beats, meditated on the third eye for 20 minutes with pleasant results, then went on to listen to Leo's guided meditation with even more pleasant results. The bus arrived, meditated on the bus. When I arrived at the home station I went on to sit on the nearest bench immersed in a contemplative mood sitting silently in the lukewarm dark, observing the road in front of me.
The contemplation (Paraphrased biased to writing down the juice):
Because I got more aware due to the meditation, I could clearly see the content of every thought, this initiated a metaphysical contemplation about my belief that thoughts are the obstacles to truth.
What am I?
It feels as though all experience is separate from "me". I must be the observer! But what is the observer? The observer is just observing a bunch of thoughts, The thoughts represented me as an observer by describing trough the content of these thoughts a comprehensive picture with the purpose of identifying the observer with the thoughts represented! But then I was able to go meta on all of that and be able to observe the thoughts coming up.
So, what am I?
The observer kept observing the thoughts coming up, and no matter how hard the thoughts seemed to try to deceive, "I" could clearly distinguish them as being thoughts, "but if the observer isn't a thought, then what is it?" This question was another thought that was seen as a thought; the thoughts thought wouldn't take me to where they were pointing to! This process started to reveal more and more of a web of thoughts, almost like an expansion, a formless expansion, it was as though the observer "zoomed out" on the web of beliefs, but in this case, the observer was "(?)" so there were just more thoughts appearing. Then it hit me:
Could it be that I AM the boundary between "me" and the world?
This felt groundbreaking. Could it be that my sense of self is (me) is the very incarnation of the separation of truth? Im not separate from the ultimate duality, I AM the duality! If I were to eliminate this duality, I would literally die and become my hand! This possibility stood without validation, I didn't woke, but this felt so true, it shook my soul!
A good analogy describing this: Think of an actor in a movie, but this movie is all-encompassing for the actor, like the matrix or the Truman show. The actor in the movie would never be able to know that he is inside a movie because all he got is the movie; he has built his web of beliefs on the unquestioned assumption that what he believes about reality is reality, and of course not a movie. He has based his paradigm on what he has seen, and all he has seen is actually the contents of the movie, but he assumes that the movie is actual reality, even worse, he assumes that his assumption about the movie is the actual reality. The actor is built on his fundamental assumption that what he thinks about reality is what reality actually is. If somebody would come up to this guy and say that he is in a movie, you'd have to kill him to make him admit otherwise.  
For it to be a movie, it must be based on a fundamental duality that the movie is not reality, otherwise, it wouldn't be a movie, it would be a reality show.
For me to stay separate from reality (which I think I am), I have to be built on the assumption that I am not reality! And Im achieving this feat by being in constant identification & agreement with certain thoughts that constantly run in the back of my mind. Im actively, masterfully mistaking thoughts (which I have used reality to create) for being reality itself, and so im in this way constantly drawing a boundary between thoughts and reality and voila, thoughts have now completely disidentified with reality. I am the boundary, I am an identification with thoughts, that's all I am, a lie.
Eventually, I gave in to the urge to wander home.
 
Key takeaways:
This has cleared up a lot of bullshit regarding my enlightenment goals. I will die! I will die, and I won't acquire anything. But the thought of merging with the other side of the bubble is something that will keep me cutting through all the bullshit unless I just forget about that thought or dilute myself. But this contemplation session has definitely refined the expectation & goals. Thoughts = the complete opposite of consciousness. This is a good clue. Every thought is built upon the intent of suppressing consciousness of the true self, and the thoughts do so in masterful ways. I can much more clearly see how consciousness leads to enlightenment. Don't believe that by thinking about truth in a more comprehensive manner such as this post, that you are now closer to the truth, no, you're just closer to feeling certain, which is not the truth. Truth is actually in the opposite direction, to access the truth you need to eliminate all thought! Stop thinking goddammit! Its gonna be a long journey.

Of course not. Rather you generate a loving vision of your future. You imagine your highest future and feel that feeling. Then you go build it.
You can't escape McDonalds by feeling shitty. You escape McDonalds by feeling inspiring about what you will create next.
Use positive feeling as your launch fuel. Negative feeling is the devil sucking out your soul.

It requires LOTS of mindfulness practice.
Consider taking a 10 day Vipasanna retreat. That will open your eyes to the power of body awareness in a way that you cannot presently imagine.
You could spend the next 10 years just sitting on a couch and feeling your body. And you'd still not feel everything there is to feel there. The body is a very complex and subtle organic technology. It's more intelligent than any Western science can imagine. Every cell in your body has its own innate intelligence.

@Sauvik That perspective is extremely partial and cherry-picked to support the narrative you. Society rewards tons of "alpha" men. You can find thousands of examples which will blow your narrative out of the water.
The meta problem here is that your ego is just spinning whatever kind of narratives suits it. There is no truth in such mental activities. This is not deep understanding of reality, life, gender, or society. It's ego games.
Your mind is constantly interpreting the world in such a way that you see precisely what most serves your ego and reinforces your existing worldview, no matter how fictitious it happens to be. Notice this. And go meta. Stop playing the game at that low level.

The whole question is predicated upon gross generalizations.
Remember, the quality of your questions determines the quality of your answers and your life.

@Zeus You're not going insane.
Talk freely to them. Ask them deep questions and write down their answers. They can help you navigate life. Help you to be more conscious.

From Kim's POV it does not even matter if Trump is truthworthy. Even if Trump is the nicest guy in the world, in 2-6 years he will be out of office and Kim will have to deal with a new US administration which will want to overthrown him if an overthrow is easily possible without killing millions of people. So Kim's incentive is to be able to kill millions of people in order to survive.
The North Koreans are not stupid. They are very selfish. So the last thing they'll do is undermine their own survival odds.
Kim handing over his nukes is like Trump handing over his taxes. Lol. Trump says he doesn't mind handing over his taxes, but he never will. It's just a ploy.

Yes, it's possible.
But realize that in the ultimate sense you and them are one.
Whoever you are talking to in life, whether aliens, angles, or humans, you're really just talking to yourself.
But also keep in mind that it is possible to get wisdom and guidance from "others". If the wisdom rings true, might as well follow it. Just be careful taking the words of "others" on blind faith. You need to validate the wisdom in your direct experience, as with any teacher or teaching. Your personal experience is the ultimate authority.
Also, don't get too dependent on "others". Stand on your own two legs.

Intuition is your HIGHEST feeling. It is the voice of your soul/spirit.
And don't discount feelings either! Feelings are faithful indicators of how things really are for you. Listen to your feelings more, not less. The problem is that you repress and judge your feelings too much. This is what gets you into trouble.
Feel your feelings without reacting to them or overthinking them. Just feel for the sake of feeling, not as a means to some end.

There is one thing which is impossible: for God not to be God.
Or, put another way: it is impossible for everything not to be as it is.
Another way to frame it is: possible/impossible is a duality which collapses into unity at the level of the Absolute. So actually it's impossible to distinguish between possible/impossible. Until you do. Until you don't.

Yes, just think of consciousness at the "stuff" of reality. So replace trillions and trillions of atoms with one field of consciousness. This field is like an LCD screen which can display any image: dog, tree, human, alien, etc. The screen is unlimited in what it can display. God is that entire screen and also all the images it displays. Image and screen are one. Right now you are one image. After this image dies, a new image will appear. And so on forever. So nothing actually dies, it just changes images.

I will talk more about that soon.
But in a nutshell, your work is be a Creator, embody the Goodness, Love, and Wisdom of God in your life. To truly be God is to live a God-like life. It's not enough to realize God and then go back to working at Starbucks. Your vision of your life must match that which a God would create. Would a God sit around while the Earth was raped and pillaged by devils? Guess again.
Of course you don't have to. But if you fully understood your power, you probably wouldn't squander your life as you now do.
See, right now you are not a conscious creator. But God is a conscious creator. You must take ownership of your creative capacity. Which is a distinct thing from enlightenment.
As the saying goes: You work towards "A more perfect union"
Today conscious creators are more needed than ever before in human history. Or civilization will collapse.

@arlin Reality is unlimited, so it is all things. It both is and is not self-conscious. Some parts of reality are self-conscious while others are not. A dog is not self-conscious but a Zen master is. The dog does not know it is God, a Zen master does.
The substance of reality is CONSCIOUSNESS, but be careful, as this does not automatically mean that all parts of reality are conscious of themselves. CONSCIOUSNESS is not the same a self-consciousness. Consciousness/God is so powerful it can imagine itself to be a dog, thus forgetting that it is actually God. When that dog dies it will realize that is was God the whole time, merely pretending to be a dog.
At the highest level, God is fully aware of itself as God. But as its various incarnations it can be deluded and unaware. Just as you right now are unaware that you God. You are conscious but not fully Self-conscious. You are playing the role of a dumb human Until you wake up.
Wakey wakey

Honestly, it's a real trade-off. I don't think you can do it all simultaneously. When I started my first business, I was working over 60+ hours per week for several years until things finally settled in. When I started Actualized.org, I had to abandon most of my social life and dating life. And that was 3 years ago and still continuing today! Just recently I started to dial back on the quantity of work I do and spend a little more time to myself. It will probably take me another year of work just to be able to get back into dating again.
In the book, The One Thing, the authors speak about the myth of living a balanced life. Life balance doesn't mean you do everything evenly all the time. Balance is a dynamic, not a static state. In reality, what effective living looks like is you're slowly swinging your pendulum strategically between various areas of focus. You might spend 3 years working really hard on your career with single-minded focus, then once that's handled, you spend 2 years dating really hard, then once you get your girlfriend, you might put your focus on lots of meditation and traveling, etc.
It's like spinning plates but you're doing it over the timeframe of months and years, not hours.
It's also very important to be crystal clear about your top values and priorities in life. Most people are so vague and indecisive that they can't focus on any one thing and so they get mediocre results across the board. You have to do very strategic long-term life planning. You should have a 5 year plan for your life at least.

@kamill Videos and courses will be much better than books for this purpose.
Better yet, consider hiring a dating coach or taking a bootcamp. Getting good a dating is extremely hands-on. You cannot learn it as a theory. None of the theory translates into real life. You need massive field experience.
50 parts experience to 1 part theory. Otherwise no results.
For cold approach to work you need to be doing 100s of approaches each month. At least until you develop some skill. Then you can ease up.

@whatishappeningtome There's a time to learn and a time to execute on those learnings.

That is a goal when you're on a retreat with the intention of breaking through into deep states of samadhi.
But outside of that life must go on, and in fact you will need advanced types of thinking to act effectively in the world and help the world to awaken.
Be careful not to denigrate the mind. The mind is an important tool. Acting mindlessly will result in foolishness.
The trick is not to identify with your thinking and the conclusions of your thinking. Most people think about stuff and then they turn the end result of that into an identity.