Identity

@Spiritual_Seeker Thank you, that means a lot to me I'm simultaneously working on a workshop to help students to create a vision for their life. Decided to apply some of the principles I'm putting together to the massage business. This is what I came up with: I want to have a massage business by the beginning of September that is up and running. A fully functioning business with everything in place that is necessary for it to run smoothly. A nice website, a nice room with towels and oils and music, social media, well-rounded packages with pricing and everything. A growing client base with happy customers that promote me through word of mouth. Nice flyers I can hand out at any time I want. Contacts with other businesses that refer clients to me and help me to promote and grow. I also want to feel comfortable and confident in the business. Handling clients with ease. Talking about my business to others without any resistance, do it proudly. Feeling like I am really contributing to the health and mind state of my customers. Being pleased through the fact that they are pleased.

Oke sick, I guess you have a better idea what you are getting yourself into than me ?

@GreenWoods daym, a 1 year meditation retreat... Do you have any experience with shorter retreats? Do you have solid daily practices in place?

I promised to post some progression, so here it is: I have talked with a woman who also gives massage’s in my city a few times. She doesn’t use her room full time. We have a verbal agreement on me sub-renting her room and using her massage table for 1 full day and one evening in the week. Next week we will sign the contract. This is a big and crucial step. I have taken more massage lessons. I have read more about massage and watched some video’s online. I have talked to people about my plans. Pretty much everyone around me knows my plan. I think this is also an important step, because part of what was holding me back is fears about what others would think, my image and stuff. That is no longer an obstacle. Also, it helps to push me forward, because people are asking questions about it, giving me information and tips, etc. I have made a schedule for everything I have to do and when I will do it: 10- 16 June: - Keep taking the massage lessons from my course - Keep practicing on people, read more about it, get comfortable with it, keep spreading the word, etc. - Decide on what I want on my website: First look at other similar websites and the components they have on there. Then think about what I want to have on mine; what kind vibe do I want to give off? What do I want to tell about my background? What specific massages and pricing will be displayed? Etc. Also, contact my friend at the end of the week, when I have some more concrete idea’s, for putting it all together. - Get in touch with the KvK to start my own business. I will call them tomorrow to get advice on the best structure etc. (I have some other stuff that makes it more complicated than just this business). 17-23 June: - Keep taking the massage lessons from my course - Keep practicing on people, read more about it, get comfortable with it, keep spreading the word, etc. - Sign the contract for the sub-renting - Continue with the website and make it more concrete. Make pictures I need, specific texts, all this. Depending on the contact with my friend, build the site. - Hopefully make the business side complete during this week. 24-30 June: - Keep taking the massage lessons from my course, this week are the final lessons. - Keep practicing on people, read more about it, get comfortable with it, keep spreading the word, etc. - Talk to the other massage therapist at the beginning of the week and plan in the extra lessons with him (most likely already for the 29th and 30th of June). - Hopefully finish the website this week. At this point I am done with the massage course and should have a solid idea of how I am going to market myself, what my pricing will be etc. The month of July will be focussed on marketing and getting clients. I won’t make a specific week-to-week planning just yet, as it things are getting to uncertain at this point. However, what I definitely want to do: - Make a lot of flyers at the beginning of the month. Start handing them out. Not just to people on the street, but also going door-to-door. - Call up nearby hotels and other potential businesses with which I can collaborate. - Set up an Instagram and facebook page (will be easy after I have the content for my website). - Look at potentially getting involved with deal sites where I will provide a cheaper deal on for the first month for example or something like that. - Talk to a friend who does google search optimization; maybe he can help me to become more visible. - Make appointments with friends for massages for the start of August so I can practice with them, get comfortable with it etc. Do this for free and ask them to post reviews.

Had this idea whilst tripping yesterday. So the idea is that the masculine and feminine overlap. So if you deny the feminine as a male you are denying part of yourself, because a part of you is when you are together with the feminine. So as a male not having a relationship with females you are missing part of yourself. Like in this picture on the right from the cover of Earthgang feat. Arin Ray's song "Stuck". Two people being stuck together, melted together.

@Zigzag Idiot Hahaha nice, love the way god is being adressed here. Especially this rant ?

@Nahm I’m sorry, I didnt understand a word of that.

I just had this thought. If self-deception is the only real thing that's holding you back from realizing you are god, isn't all you really need a true desire to awaken? I know that I've noticed many times that my desire wasn't true and deep enough, when it really comes down to it I'm just not willing to give myself up.

Oke, in a way this is very comforting. It's all in my own hands. My own sneaky hands.

I know this has been said many times in different ways, but I just grasped this at a much deeper level and felt like sharing it. the mind is secondary, it arises within consciousness. It makes no sense to explain your way into enlightenment, because all your explanations are part of it. Its like text on a screen, you can write a whole book if you want, but the text wil always be an appearance on the screen. its just that you are so focussed on the text that you cant see its appearing on a screen. better ask yourself; where are these thoughts happening? I know it goes deeper and this is all still dual and stuff, but yeah, maybe it helps someone to stop overthinking, including myself.

@Joseph ICU Thanks! Yeah, actually letting girls come close is suprisingly hard, I notice myself pushing them away quite often. May the growth be with us indeed ??

I am now at a point in my life where I am satisfied with my dating life. It has been quite the journey and I’m certain there are many steps ahead. I want to take the time to gather my thoughts here in this post, to look back at how far I have come and see the lessons I have learned. Hopefully, someone else gets something out of it as well ?. Stage orange limbo phase; being with girls whilst growing up Being with girls didn’t come easy for me. I remember some boys at school were just naturally flowing with girls. Accepting them into their life without any resistance. For me this wasn’t te case. I was stuck in my head way too much, unconsciously pushing them away. It wasn’t the case that I had no options at all or had struggles with being attractive. I was always one of the popular kids, getting along with everyone. All the way from lower school to high school there were actually quite a few girls that liked me and expressed that. However, those were not the girls that I liked. I remember always feeling a lot of pressure from people around me, always worrying about what they were thinking. How would this effect other people’s opinion of me? Will people still like me if I do this? I felt this pressure very strongly when it came to girls. Not only would I worry about the girl liking me, or whether she would reject me, but also would I worry about what it would do for me socially if I expressed my desires for a girl. I have liked a few different girls over those years, but had a hard time even admitting that to myself. I would rather suppress my feelings and go on with life without dealing with it. Due to this dynamic, I didn’t have any relationships during my middle- and high-school time. Neither did I have any experience getting physical with a girl. The first girl I kissed was at 17. At that point, I guess the pressure of not having kissed a girl started to outweigh the pressure of trying to kiss . Short after that, I had a one-night stand during a vacation with friends. The label of being a virgin disappeared. But that was it. Other than that, I was still in the same boat as I was before. Stage orange starting phase; time for change I think I was 19 when I realized I had to do something. At this point I was going to university, where I had surrounded myself with a large group of guy friends, no girls in sight. At this point being with a girl seemed so far out of my reality, it almost seemed like it wasn’t even a possibility for me. Together with a good friend of mine who was in a similar position, I decided to start taking action towards getting better with girls. I watched a bunch of pick-up videos, mostly from RSD. First it was a lot of theorization, but pretty soon I started to take action. I remember the first day we really made a serious effort, oh man. Me and two friends cleared our whole schedule for an afternoon to go hit on girls in the city. We started just giving girls a compliment, just to get used to approaching. The fucking anxiety attack that gave haha, it must have taken me 5 attempts just to gather the courage to do that. Anyways, what I mostly did during this phase is going out to bars with a few friends and just talk to as many girls as I could. We would go on this rampage of just approaching girl after girl. Before going out I would watch some video’s, and afterwards me and my friends would have these hours-long analysis sessions, talking about all the interactions we had, what went well and wrong, etc. A lot was learned here. It didn’t take long for me to see the first fruits of my efforts. I started to kiss some girls, and even had went home with a girl. A whole new world of possibilities opened up to me. Stage orange middle phase; ballin’ After maybe half a year to a year of starting phase, things started to flow easier and easier. It had become second nature to go up to girls and talk to them. Results were flying in left and right. Me and my friends felt like we were owning the bars we went into. Hyping each other up, wing-manning, scheming. The video’s and analysis had been replaced with dancing, kissing and one-night stands. I felt really confident at this point, I had quite some mastery in the field, or so I thought… Stage orange ending phase; darker times After maybe a year of this, the high came down. I started to see the darker side of what I was doing. First and foremost, the whole pick-up act I had learned started to feel increasingly inauthentic. I was constantly trying to appear “valuable”, consciously controlling everything, from the things I was saying to body language. I also could no longer deny the impact I was having on the girls I was with. Rationalizing manipulating girls into things they didn’t truly want. I definitely had sex with a few girls who didn’t feel good about it the next day. Even was with some girls who had boyfriends. I started to see more clearly how me and my friends were shoving all these things under the rug, and denying responsibility for it. Although I was getting results, they started to become less satisfying. The sex I had with one-night-stands wasn’t great first of all. I also wasn’t able to keep girls around. I was only comfortable in the night-club scene, barely had any normal dates or interactions with girls outside of that. I was getting sick of all this. Stage green limbo phase; turning inwards Because I didn’t like how things were going anymore, I started to go out less. I was looking for ways to change the dynamics that were going on. Maybe I should start getting into ‘day-game’? Maybe I just have to be more authentic? Maybe I should go out with other people? I was in a phase of confusion and uncertainty. At this point I also started to get in touch with my feelings more. Seeing how I was suppressing feelings of fear and insecurity, especially about sexuality. I was starting to see how I was lying with all my extravagant behavior to both myself and the people around me. How I needed alcohol as well to make all my shenanigans work. My results radically declined. This period took around half a year. In that half a year I literally only kissed a girl once, that’s it. I went out a few times on my own as well. I felt like I needed to face this issue alone, head on. One night in particular I remember. I had been talking to this girl I thought was very cute for maybe an hour or so. She was into me, but I was just so scared to escalate with her physically. I was no longer suppressing my fears, but neither could I push through them. After a while she simply lost interest. I went home feeling so sad, laid in bed crying, feeling like I would never get out of this rut. I was in this transition period, I let go of a lot of the inauthenticity and manipulation, more in touch with my feelings and desires, but lacking the self-esteem, self-love, self-acceptance and all this to be naturally more attractive. Also, my feelings often paralyzed me, making even interactions that were going well with girls end up nowhere. During this period, I worked a lot on myself. Besides personal development stuff like meditation, reading, fitness, and those types of things, I did a lot of shrooms. The shrooms helped me to introspect so well. They helped me to see all the things that were going on, all the things that I was suppressing. Also, they helped me to build my self-esteem and self-love. Some trips I would be hugging myself for long times, or look into the mirror, acknowledging my own beauty. Stage green starting phase; getting comfortable around girls The turning point for me happened at a yoga retreat. My yoga instructrice invited me to go with her to a yoga retreat in Ukraine (I’m from the Netherlands). I went there with little expectation of getting girls, mostly to work on myself. I went out to dinner with her a few times that week and started to open up about my dating situation. When I told her I hadn’t had sex for over half a year she was shocked. All this time I didn’t even cross my mind that it would be possible to sleep with her. Not only is she a lot older than me, she is also in a relationship. Little did I know she was in an open relationship. She went with me to my hotel room to “talk about my situation more”. I knew damn well where this was headed. When we came back to my room, I was very nervous and scared. I told her I had to go to the bathroom and was so shaky that I peed half in my pants, literally. It was the first time I was being myself authentically and vulnerable when having sex. I was scared to escalate and shaky and all this, but she was very cool about it and made me feel comfortable. This experience was worth more to me than all those one-night stands I had had before. This happened around 4 months ago. Since then I have been meeting up with her every few weeks. This had made me so much more comfortable with myself and my sexuality. At this moment I am seeing three other girls as well, meeting up casually. The whole way I interact with girls has changed. There is no need to play valuable or to manipulate. I am very honest and open about my intentions and desires. I meet girls at all kinds of places now, through university, on the street, in the train, whatever. I go on dates, just hang out with girls, and although I still get nervous at times, its very different. Way more under the motto of Zan Perrion; “A man that adores women is adored by women”. (Highly recommend his book The alabaster girl). So that is where I am at now. Here are some things I see for myself in the near future: - Becoming more and more comfortable being around girls and with my sexuality. - Having more female energy in my life in general, not only sexual relationships but also friends etc. I have been around guys to long, time to restore the balance. - Getting into more committed relationship(s). Although all of this is very nice, I still haven’t had a relationship with a girl for a longer period of time. This is something I do desire and will grow me a lot, when the time is right. Main lessons: - First of all, it is possible to radically change your relationship with women if you put in the effort. It is definitely a journey, but don’t hold yourself back with limiting beliefs. Even though it might seem impossible from where you are standing now, start chipping away at it and your reality will slowly start to transform. - Mastery in dating goes very much like George Lennard describes in his book mastery. Even though you are putting in effort consistently, you have long plateaus where it seems like there is little growth. Then, out of nowhere, you make a spurt upwards, sometimes preceded with a decline. Acknowledge this dynamic, keep it in mind, especially during the hard times. - Progressing in dating is all about inner growth. Don’t fool yourself and others with all kinds of tricks and gimmicks. Face the real reasons why you are not successful with girls. Face your fears. - Being truly comfortable with your sexuality is a massive component of successful dating. If you are not comfortable with your sexuality it is something that will keep you from attracting women all the time. It might not be obvious, but under the surface it will always be there. How can you expect a girl to be receptive of you when you hit on her, when really, deep down, you don’t want what you are asking for? It’s like going to a car dealership to buy a car, asking about all the features and negotiating and all this, whilst in the back of your mind you know you don’t have the money. It’s ridiculous really. - Girls are awesome

@SFRL Thank you ?

What a mindfuck Yeah, I was wondering, for me this whole journey is very bittersweet. Is that the way it stays, or does the bitterness disappear? Or do both the bitterness and sweetness disappear?

In the latest video (min16-18) Leo says reality is an infinite field of consiousness. You create your self by carving out a part of this consciousness and calling it yourself. At least, thats how I understood it. This confuses me. It feels like “my perceptual field” is limited not only in a conceptual way, but also in a fysical way. I can only look from my eyes right? There is a limit to how far I can look, feel, think, etc. I understand that the fact that I call this “my” field of perception is ego. But, if I stop believing its “mine” it doesn’t mean I can now somehow see things that I couldnt before, right? Wouldnt these limitations still be in place? the mindfuck probably goes a lot deeper, eh?

@Leo Gura Thank you. I really appreciate the time you take to answer questions. Thanking you is really crucial to my survival. Just like pointing this out is needed to preserve my self-image. Just as pointing this out. I will stop now.

@Leo Gura But if you are enlightened, totally seen through the illusion of self, enlightened gurus such as Sadguru, Peter Ralston, Eckard Tole, etc. You still aren’t aware of everything in the universe right? Like you dont know stuff like symply the order of a deck of cards laying on the table. Isnt it more like you realize that you are part of the whole, but still remain the part? Like a page within the book is part of the book, yet doesnt hold all the information of the book? Im still assuming there is a you to begin with, right? im confused lol.

The impact weed has on me has radically changed. A few years ago I would smoke a bunch with friends and it would be just chill, fun and games. Now, after doing spiritual practices for a while, a few hits of a joint can send me on a crazy trip. Last week I literally took 3 puffs by myself, had me laying on the floor for 4 hours lol.

@Flatworld Crusades Thank you! @Good-boy Ive already got the life purpose course sir. I will stop being a pussy though and start taking radical action. I will post progression here soon.

I'm watching the latest video now. Imagine Actualized.org becomes a religion and people literally believe we are god giving itself a colonoscopy. A physical man looking into his own anus. That shit would be hilarious hahaha The eyeball on the colonoscopy machine, hahaha, Leo man, you're killing me.

Plenty of orange, blue and even red to go around in Amsterdam. Not to say there isn't green and yellow.

@Wyatt Thanks for your reply, those are some valuable tips! I've found some people who run their own massage business and am meeting up with them to ask how they did it. Also, I've got some friends who can help me with making a website, get more views, etc. Definitely going to give more people massages and ask for their feedback, that's for sure the next step indeed. The youtube videos is a good tip as well, don't know why I didn't think about that, but that's an easy free way to learn! Luckily I don't need it to support myself financially with this for some time, and even then it will only be a partial income stream I think.

I think Leo is very much aware of this dynamic. He even talks about this danger in some video’s. His whole stick is direct experience and combatting ideology. Not to say it won’t happen that it becomes one, but there is only so much one can do.

Thats what I was thinking

@Leo Gura In some video's, including the last, you mention that it is possible that once you start to deeply realize God, that you can start to align yourself with "Its" will. This to me seems contradictory to "everything being perfect". Seems to me that there is a difference between what God wants, and what the ego or devil, or whatever, wants. Is that not falling into the trap of chasing goodness instead of realizing Goodness? Also, I'm confused about this whole free will thing. This question has been on my mind for quite a while now. I concluded for myself that there is no free will. There is no self, therefore there is no free will, it's just a movie being played on a screen. However, you say that "you are a splinter of God's will". This really confuses the fuck out of me.. So there is a self that is separate or something? This statement really throws a hole in the whole mental model I've been constructing here lol. Could you explain your views on this please?