1) Yes, there is def a trade-off between no-mind and using the intellect for creative work. For the mind to do creative work it needs to light up and make connections.
2) But meditation is not necessarily supposed to nuke your whole mind forever. Ideally it trains you to turn your mind on and off based on what the situation calls for. The problem for most mentally creative people is they cannot shut it off and it causes lots of suffering at some point.
3) Paradoxically meditation can make you more creative. Some of my greatest burst of creativity comes a few days into a meditation retreat. My mind floods with creative ideas. Of course to make use of this creativity requires that I stop meditating because it does interfere with proper meditation.
4) Consider the possibility that creative intellectual work might itself be a sort of attachment that needs to be transcended at some point to reach the most advanced stages of spirituality. Of course this is not for most people. Maybe this is not for you. But it could be for very serious people.
- - - -
The bottom line is that you have to decide what you want out of life and even out of spiritual work. Do you want to be more creative? More productive? More happy? Better at relationships? Deeper connection to God? Ultimate understanding? Freedom from all suffering?
These can be very different goals requiring different methods. And no one can tell you what you should want. That's up to you. Nowhere is it written that you must aim for the highest spiritual stage. In fact, maybe the highest spiritual stage is not appropriate for you because you want something else out of life. Get really fucking clear what you want and then work toward that.

@Raine As a man you just gotta grow a thick skin and don't get wrapped up around the axle about stuff like this.
Some girls laugh at you? Who gives a flying fuck? You should laugh at them and laugh at yourself too.
It sounds like you are being too serious. Whatever insecurities you have, you must own them and learn to laugh at them, even using them as the butt of jokes. Make jokes about yourself being bald. "I'm too cool for hair. Hair is for losers.", etc. Learn to embrace your weaknesses and make light of them. Self-deprecating humor is very powerful not just for attracting girls but for making yourself feel good.
Honestly, I doubt those girls were even laughing AT you. Your mind is likely just interpreting situations that way because you are fundamentally insecure. It is not normal for girls to just laugh at an ugly guy. That like never happens. People don't laugh at ugly people, they laugh perhaps at some lame way that you're acting. Maybe you are overcompensating and they laugh at that.
No one has ever laughed at me for being bald. Never. And I've talked to like 5000+ girls. Sometimes girls will walk up to me and ask to rub my head for good luck. And I laugh. I don't take it personally.
You need to develop a sense of humor about yourself and about life. It sounds trivial but I'm telling you this is a huge part of not only getting good with girls but just overall personal happiness. Happy people laugh at themselves. Miserable people cannot laugh at themselves.
You want to develop a delusional level of self-confidence such that when people interact with you they walk away thinking: "Damn, that guy is so charming, carefree, humorous, and cool that maybe I should go bald like him. Maybe being bald just makes you cooler?"
Stop trying to hide your insecurities and weaknesses. Wear them on your sleeve. Talk about them. Laugh about them. Makes joke about them. Eventually you will stop worrying about it.

That's the kind of stuff we need.
An EEG machine basically does that. But still, meditating with an EEG involves plenty of work.
The thing is, when you're meditating rigorously it's exhausting work. It's not fun and relaxing. At least not until you get really good at it, then it can become effortless. But it doesn't start out effortless.
In the future we'll probably have some kind of brain surgery that just makes you great at effortless meditation without any practice. Until such time, teaching kids while they are young is probably the best way.

Girls don't understand a guy's needs so well. Often they don't even care about our needs. They dress up nice because it's helpful for attracting guys and boosting their own self-esteem -- and it's just baked into the culture.
Yes, you should understand a girl's needs more. This is very good.
But a girl's needs are actually much deeper than vibe. Vibe can often be a facade that doesn't really met her needs. But of course she doesn't have much else to evaluate you on but vibe when you first meet, so vibe is crucial early on.
That's not why they pick masculine guys. They pick masculine guys because the feminine needs the masculine and vice versa. It's not about abundance. High femininity requires high masculinity to ground it. And the kind of girls you're probably attracted to tend to be highly feminine. The feminine tries to optimize from its end and the masculine tries to optimize from its end.
Yes, broadcasting masculine vibe and energy is huge for attracting girls. That's like bait for the feminine. The feminine is always sniffing around for some genuine masculinity to wrap itself around.

Rarely a girl will just be sexually explicit and blunt with you.
For example, you might be talking to a girl and then she just says something out of the blue like: "So are you gonna fuck me real good?" or "I'm horny" or "I'm wet" or "I want to fuck". This is very rare, but it does happen and you should be ready to capitalize on that without flinching. I've lost a few girls in the past by flinching because it just takes you so by surprise because it's a rare thing for a girl to say. You have to not flinch and just play it cool. Don't get too eager but also lead directly for the close.
You can also adopt the girl frame by saying a line like: "Easy there... I'm not just a peace of meat. I need to romanced first. You have to promise to buy me chocolates ".
The "promise to buy me chocolates" line is a stroke of pickup genius! It's such a powerful frame control . If a girl is coming on to you, make her promise to buy you chocolates

A guy doesn't really need a girl to have a wicked sense of humor, just that she be fun, playful, and able to laugh at stuff.
People who are too serious are not attractive. You should be able to laugh at yourself and laugh at the absurdity of life.

I call BS on this.
Everyone craves to be close with others. They just have trauma which obscures intimacy or they lack the skills.
It is not true that introverts don't value intimacy and closeness to others. They value it a lot, they just prefer it with fewer people but deeper. Whereas extroverts prefer it more shallow with more people.
I am extremely introverted but I love intimacy and closeness with very select people. I don't like juggling a bunch of shallow friendships.

Women want men that can provide them a safe space. They want to feel contained by their man. Many women have developed their own ability for containment within themself. Most women can provide for themself and built their own masculine capacity in this day and age. That's the reason that more than ever, there is a want for more polarity between the 2 sexes. Women had to develop their masculinity in order to survive, but there is still this typical feminine desire to be contained by the masculine and let go of control.
This containment can be emotional, financial, social, or physical.
For men to be this for women, they have to be grounded, dominant, assertive, but also emotionally vulnerable, open, empathetic, listen, connect deeply to their soul. Men need to have developed both their masculine penetrative power. But also their femininity which is their capacity to feel and connect to the feeling of the woman in front of him.
He needs to be intelligent, ambitious, and willing to face the tension of daily life as well as the tension required to chase his own dreams. 
Women also like humor, playfulness, good sex, flirting, etc. They like a man who can take them on explorations and adventures. A man who supports her to explore her own femininity, as well as her own ambitions. Women want to feel like her man is supporting her in owning all of her, in being her strongest self, exploring her ambitions and going for her dreams. A woman and a man who are connected on all these levels form a strong duo. It can be beautiful.
The more developed a woman is, the less she will compromise on these things. 

Congrats!
The reality is that most one nights stands are pretty lame. The sex isn't good because it feels awkward with a stranger and it can be hard to relax and enjoy it. Plus condoms.
But the biggest problem is when you pull a girl you're not attracted to. The lesson for you here is: pull hotter girls who actually turn you on. And then have sex with her multiple times. Sex starts shallow and get deeper with time.
But also, next to proper jerking off, sex isn't actually as good in most cases. It's hard for a girl to please you better than you can please yourself. The best part isn't the sex itself, it's the human connection before and afterwards.
Sex is sorta overrated. The anticipation of it is better than the act itself.
Don't get bummed out. Find hotter girls and keep trying. You'll have some amazing experiences at some point. Also, some girls are way better at sex than others. Many girls aren't good at it.

What traditional morality is really pointing to is simply this: being God-like/selfless.
There is nothing "wrong" with being selfish, but selfishness is self-defeating and creates suffering for yourself and others. So the more selfish you are the more you will suffer. This is karma. It's just like pissing into the wind. Selflessness is pissing with the wind.
Traditional morality tries to codify selflessness with rules, and this of course is not true selflessness because true selflessness must come from consciousness, not rules, which is why some of the most "moral" people are actually the cause of great suffering. True selflessness cannot be aped, it must come from God-consciousness and a genuine surrender of your self. Traditional morality is an attempt to make people selfless by all possible means except the most important one: raising one's consciousness. This is why moral people are usually devils in practice.
The paradox of morality is that to be truly moral you have to realize that nothing is bad or wrong, since everything is relative. This is the discovery of Love.
It is not wrong to be an asshole. But being an asshole has consequences (karma). Which is why the wise strive to not be assholes in the same manner as they avoid sticking their tongue in electrical sockets.

Don't pussyfoot around. A man must be comfortable doing a direct approach.
When you hide your genuine intention and sexual desire for her, you're losing your attractiveness and power.
Stop inventing false reasons for talking to a girl you like. This is unbecoming of a real man. You should feel entitled to talk to any girl you like with no pretense or justification.
"If my dick likes you, I'm gonna talk to you." << That's the proper frame.

The more experience you get talking to girls, the more hot girls you sleep with, the less their looks will faze you. Eventually you become entitled to the hottest girls.

If you go deep into psychedelics they will undermine your rat race materialistic pursuits and goals, as those goals will start to seem irrelevant and meaningless -- which of course they are, but that's not what you wanna hear.
Psychedelics can strip your entire life of meaning, so watch out. But they also lead to Truth.

State of consciousness influences your behavior, subcommunication, confidence, authenticity, and verbals.

Consciousness and authenticity are highly attractive.
The greatest mystics attract people to them with their state of consciousness.

Most girls will not have sex with you without rapport.
Without rapport you will get lots of LMR.

Massive practice approaching with built up state, and listening to lots of in-field verbals. Study good in-field to have example of good verbals for you to emulate.

Going out and approaching consistently is like 80% of what pickup is. The rest is fine-tuning.
It can be a lot of fun if you're doing it with friends.
Solo tends to be really hard tough.

1) Then maybe raise your standards.
2) If you can find the girls outside the club, then why do you need the club? What is the problem?
3) Or you can just wait till you're inside the club to start approaching. Talking to girls on the street is often not logistically sound, which is why it's better to do it inside the club where the girls are actually standing around and not running off somewhere else.
4) When you approach you must take into account logistical soundness. It is pointless to approach a girl who is running off somewhere. You gotta approach in a way where you have a reasonable chance of hooking her and getting her to stop and talk to you. Don't just be a mindless approach machine. You must consider which logistical situations lead to success and which ones do not.
5) Although of course you can pick girls up off the street, so don't let that stop you. Usually the best thing is to wait till you're in the club to hit on girls, then once the night is dying down, you can hit on girls outside the club as they go home. It tends to be a waste of time hitting on girls outside the club as they walk into the club -- you are better off hitting on them in the club.

How about getting a car?
Day game in Paris should be amazing too.
You can often pull to the girl's place.
Paying for a motel or cheap hotel if you're pulling a girl is also doable and reasonable. See if you can find a cheap hotel in Paris that will let you book rooms late at night.
If you got a car, you can also fuck in your car. Get a car that has room to fuck.

Yes, a crucial distinction.
Awakening says nothing about how you will behave afterwards. And it will not automatically fix all your behavioral problems.

Actually the moral high ground is important in this case because now most of the civilized world and history itself will be against Russia for its barbarism.
Even if Putin wins Ukraine he will lose the long-term game of raising Russia's prestige and influence in the world -- which a great nation must have to be great. You cannot bully your way into greatness and love.
Putin's turning his back on the West is going to hold Russia back.

What you do in this situation is you talk to more girls.
A big part of dating/pickup is screening out girls who are not a good match for you. Just because she is hot doesn't mean it's a good match.
If a girl leaves you because you refuse her drink, that is not a girl you should be interested in sleeping with.
The lesson here for you is not about how to get such girls go stay. The lesson is to screen them out yourself.
YOU should be screening her, instead she screened you. This is your mistake. Learn to SCREEN girls.

Frame here would be: age doesn't even matter. Older girls want dick as much as if not more than younger ones.
A girl in her 40s still wants a man who will make her feel like a girl again. It's not about your age, it's about how girly you make her feel.

This is SOLID.
For more details see my video: How To Have Amazing Sex