Consilience

Self deception 101. Healthy egoism would be willing to feel your emotions without dissociation or the need to lash out. Hurting another person because you didnt get what you want is literally childish. Self love would recognize the anger as hurt, and the hurt as a valid human emotion to fully feel. Nothing about hurting a girl who hurt you is healthy or in alignment with self love. Stop bullshitting yourself and take responsibility. If you don’t, you’ll never become the man needed to be with a high quality woman.

Completely agree with this analysis. Techniques such as vipassana, do nothing, or self inquiry I have found to be more helpful for "awakening" but a shamatha practice has and continues to be great for integrating, unifying, harmonizing, and grounding these insights into lived experience.

This is such a misunderstanding... Lol. You’d probably learn a lot opening yourself up to the teachings of the Buddha. It’s actually a ridiculously pragmatic vision of life that involves an insane level of consciousness when one follows the 8 fold path, or at least the meditation part. Usually people don’t understand why these teachings are so powerful until they deeply suffer; we are all very fortunate to live in a time of so much comfort and ease - it gives a false perception of just how bad it can really get and the extend to which our lives and happiness are built on a fragile house of cards. The cessation of rebirth would be the equivalent of completely realizing death and birth are imaginary, using Leo language.

Desire is not the root of all suffering, that’s not really an accurate representation of the 2nd noble truth, at least as far as I understand them. Tanha is the root, which is more accurately defined as “craving” rather than “desire.” Desire can exist without craving. The root of craving could be traced back to attachment. And it’s not necessarily “all life” is suffering. More so that life necessarily involves suffering. But see the extent to which suffering pervades life is vastly underestimated and misunderstood, so even this truth has many, MANY, layers of increasing depth and nuance. From an intellectual pov, yes all of this seems quite simplistic and black and white. Not very useful or important.

The deeper Ive gone in meditation, the more Ive come to appreciate them. Their depth and significance are very subtle.

/thread Thank you sir, this is pretty much the perfect response.

Why would someone kill themselves if death is imaginary? You're creating, value, meaning, and "shoulds" where there are none. You can't derive an ought from an is. Philosophy 101 bruh.

Lmao. So happy I didnt follow the female advice in this thread and instead started learning and implementing the principles of pickup. Granted, Ive been very selective about what teachers to learn from. Id argue the pickup material I consume is much higher consciousness than most. I suspect the pickup the females here are bashing is the sleazier kind which is what is most common. Pickup done well is a spiritual practice. The vulnerability, authenticity, and fearlessness required to approach a stranger is amazing. When two strangers meet and there’s sexual chemistry involved, it’s truly just the universe sorting itself out; when the man can rest in complete surrender and ease within this sorting out process, that is a powerful man.

It is a bit of over complication however it was an invaluable investment to learn the system. All the complicated step involves is making subtle distinctions about the various dynamics of mind involved with constructing your experience during meditation so yes complicated, but well worth the investment to learn. I spent a year really devoted to the techniques in this book, it still is paying off today even though I dont strictly practice it anymore. Combing that system with Shinzen’s Unified Mindfulness system is like a perfect cocktail for awakening via meditation but start with TMI. Once you've really gotten a handle of TMI, stages 7-10 territory, reading Rob Burbea’s seeing that frees and working through Rob’s jhana retreat on dharma seed is also a great next step in addition to Shinzen’s stuff. Wishing you well on your journey. Thank you for putting in the work. ?

@Emerald Well we can agree to disagree. Ive had wonderful results doing calibrated cold approaches where sexual intent was established within the first few seconds. Wonderful in terms of the receptivity of the women involved. There are ways to be non-creepy, calibrated, and non-manipulative where both parties feel better at the end whether the exchange ends in a number exchange or not. So I find it interesting you think its boring if a guy approaches you with sexual intent; It sounds like this is your personal preference or the guys that have approached you havent done it well. Also there’s a very high percentage of successful relationships that start via online dating which is of course sexual from the beginning. Perhaps your advice would work for women but guaranteed it wont work for men. And let me reemphasize, if a man is sexually interested in a woman and is hiding those feelings behind friendship, this is about as incongruent with masculine energy as you can get. If a man is pretending to only be interested as friends, this is literally lying to the woman with a hidden agenda that they’ll somehow convince her to have sex with him if only he warms her up after enough time. Not only is this NOT how women operate in the real world, this is male manipulation at its finest. This is why Im suggesting friendship isnt an option. And so as a guy, I would warn women to screen out these types of men given that I know what the headspace of a guy willing to do that is because I used to be that guy. I 100% agree that women need time and space to develop feelings. A lot of time and space at times. However, to think this must happen within the context of a platonic relationship is just more space for manipulation and hidden agendas, mainly on the end of the guy. A high value male simply would assume the girl isnt interested and because they are high value, they’d just move on. All Im saying is be careful with this mindset. If you found the right guy, I doubt you’d need a couple of months pretending to be friends. Overall great list though. I would simply suggest continue to contemplate and consider this specific point. Or not.

As one deepens in their meditation practice, even a microdose can start facilitating ego death like states where oneness is undeniable. Don't underestimate the power and utility of a microdose, especially with bridging and integrating these profoundly altered psychedelic states with the mundane, sober state.

You "cope" with it through finishing the work. Become enlightened. Yeah this one is probably one of the most mind fucking episodes of Actualized.org and difficult to integrate. How does one finish the work? Hardcore meditation/ manual spiritual practice. Strong determination sitting is particularly powerful because it begins a total rewiring of the conscious mind's relationship with pain into God's relationship with pain, which is that pain is no problem, hence it's actuality, particularly the brutal examples in human history. A deep purification of mind is the only way to truly cope with what this episode points to.

I can see how this may apply to the majority of men who start the initial interactions with a sexual intent, but trust me when I say if a man doesn't establish a romantic intent with a woman they're interested in from the get go, there are two huge issues. 1) The likelihood of a woman placing you into the friendzone is exponentially higher. There are ways with slowly ramping up attraction without starting out as friends. A first date is going to have A LOT of opportunity for platonic development, it would be attraction suicide if a man came in to a first date raging with sexual intent, constantly trying to physically escalate, etc. While it is possible for a man to build the attraction of someone they've established platonic relationships with, the odds are VERY unlikely. 2) This is even more important - If a man is physically attracted to a woman and isn't honest about that attraction, this is extremely beta. Your strategy seems to be geared towards attracting a man. This issue is that men know within the first couple of minutes, for sure within the first interaction/hangout whether they're attracted to a woman. So if you, as a woman, are going after a man who you've established a platonic relationship with, either a) He's basically been lying about not having any attraction for you which is a huge red flag; you want a man who is HONEST, authentic, vulnerable, and un-apologetic about their attraction and sexuality. b) He wasn't very attracted to you in the first place, otherwise he wouldn't have let things play out as "friends." A man with a strong masculine presence won't accept the friendzone if he's attracted to a woman. If she's not into him sexually, s'all good, but friendship is not an option. To comprise into friendship would be dis-owning one's sexual interest and would be a direct lack of congruency. If that man is only in it for sex, possibly yes. But as a man who is high value, not dangerous, and not only interested in meaningless sex, a woman would be losing out with me if she followed this advice, and to her detriment. That may sound quite conceded, but it is what it is. "I am the prize" afterall. Besides, there are plenty of high value woman who would not only NOT have an issue with things starting out romantically, but would appreciate the fact that the man isn't going to hide their attraction. It's quite attractive for women for a man to not hide their intent. The masculine purser mode is more about chasing after goals, their life purpose. Feminine energy is more about the pursuit and creation of relationships, family, and all of that jazz. A man who is overly concerned with this type of pursuit I would argue is more in their feminine which is very unattractive. A woman will start dropping signs when she's ready to move into a formal relationship. A man should pursue of course, but I would vehemently disagree with the idea that 1) woman like men to chase them (every woman I've "chased" has either strung me along, or it's killed the polarity and therefore attraction. Many many many anecdotes confirm this is not just me) 2) it's a masculine role to chase/pursue after relationships. Just because a woman is doing the same amount or even a higher percentage of the pursuing does not mean she'll automatically question the man's interest. Giving a high quality man this amount of space is a recipe for letting him go, because for better or worse, there is an abundance of women out there who have no issues actively pursuing men who reciprocate that pursuit with facilitating dates, romance, and a love story. A high quality man living in an abundance of woman, looking for that high quality woman, will not be tripping out over the aloof woman. He'll be too busy living his life purpose and getting hit up by enthusiastic high quality women to keep up that level of effort. Or he'll move on and find a woman who's more enthusiastic.

Agreed. If a woman was "giving me space" to pursue 75% of the time I would just assume she wasn't interested and move on to a more enthusiastic woman. Mainly because every woman I've been involved with where the dynamic has shifted to this type of polarity, I've essentially pursued her out of my life. Not all pickup is like this. Real pickup is about teaching a man how to be vulnerable, authentic, and non-apologetic about their sexuality with a woman. There are ways to do it without playing games or being manipulative, and women respond very well to these types of approaches.

Horribly advice for a man to follow. Men be warned - if you’re doing 75% of the initiation, she’s going to lose attraction. I also disagree about not starting out on a romantic foot and only dating men in your social circle. So many counter examples of successful relationships starting out romantically AND being outside social circles. Other than those, pretty great list.

Ego = a deep perceptual entanglement of Mental images + Mental talk + Emotions + Uncognized/subconscious emotional positions (beliefs) + physical body sensations + physical sights as the body/face + physical sounds (voice) This is what vipassana meditation is all about, untangling this complex web is self referencing perception that gives rise to the sense of self. Or self inquiry, which is recognizing how each of these different forms cannot be that enduring, immutable self, as each and every one of these is constantly changing and is being witnessed by consciousness, and therefore not the whole in and of themselves.

This

This isnt how the story goes. It was only when he started taking care of the body did he finally awaken, the middle way.

Fucking beautiful insight man. Love it. Also... 10/10 profile picture.

This. @Javfly33 The most powerful thing you could do is just start grounding these ideas into direct experience via meditation. Of course that's my opinion, projection, but all these posts as of late have been incredibly conceptual, it seems. Can you sit with yourself for hours on end? Has the surface level of mind so fully seen the imaginative quality of reality's depths that it can rest in Being with complete ease, unity, harmony, tranquility, equanimity, and actually enjoy it? Because when you truly see the utter God like nature of reality, all of these non-dualistic, solipsistic ideas just evaporate as non-problems, they're seen to have never even been problems and one drops all ideas that there's anywhere to go, anything to do, and no problems to be had other than one's misunderstanding of the present moment. How do we know if we're misunderstanding the present moment? The degree to which we start suffering as we sit in silence, stillness, and meditation.

They may be all egoic projections, but of course this misses the point that ALL egoic perceptions originate from Absolute Truth, God is exactly what is appearing in any and all moments

There are different types of concentration. For example, there's khanikasamadhi which is distinct from the more generic, single pointed concentration most regard as "concentration." "In the early twentieth century, the Burmese master Mahasi Sayadaw realized that momentary concentration (khanikasamadhi) on whatever spontaneously comes or calls could be as powerful as sustained concentration on one thing. This insight allowed him to develop a distinctive way to do mindfulness practice. At the time, this method was referred to as “the Burmese method of satipatthana,” but nowadays, it is simply called “noting.” Noting is currently perhaps the most popular approach to mindfulness both in the East and the West. But when Mahasi first started teaching it, it generated considerable controversy. Some masters from Thailand and Sri Lanka claimed that “noting whatever arises” is indistinguishable from a scattered, wandering state of mind. Mahasi pointed out (and quite correctly in my opinion) that momentary concentration is key. To “note” an experience entails more than just labeling it. Whether you use labels or not, to note a sensory event implies that you attempt to tangibly taste a momentary state of high focus upon that sensory event. This skill is especially useful for staying deep during complex daily activities." - The Science of Enlightenment, Shinzen Young Concentration is attending to whatever one is attending to in a moment with recognition that attention is placed on that object. We're ALWAYS concentrating on something, however most people lack the clarity around where their attention is placed. An example of clarity could be you're able to pick apart the strands of a complex emotion. Rather than just feeling a general sense of "anxiety" perhaps we are able to break apart that emotion into it's aggregates of "Fear" + "Nervousness" + "Resistance to the fear and nervousness" = This feeling of "Anxiousness." Whereas concentration in this example would be just attending to the feeling of anxiousness. Another example would be meditating on the feeling of being a separate self. In addition to concentrating on the sense of "me" we might have the clarity to completely experience self referential mental imagery of the face/body, the physical sensations of the body, the emotional sensations of the body, and the subtle, background mental talk that reference this apparent self. In this sense, we're now starting to clearly see what the self is comprised of in real time rather than just following a generic instruction set of "meditate on the self." Sensory clarity is quite literally untangling our perceptive experience into is constituents such that we're able to experience them more completely and fully without other perceptive experiences interfering. Overtime, this leads to our perceptive field breaking apart into a spacious flow where we're able to detect the arising and passing of the different flavors of perception. This is also what psychedelics do when things get wavy, spacious and empty. We've chemically induced an incredibly heightened sense of sensory clarity through the amplification of perception and the dragging of attention into the present moment. Hope this provides some context.

Why do you want an OBE? What technique are you using? How long have your sessions been lately?

Thank you so much ? That’s the most heart felt compliment Ive received in a bit. Love the username btw. ?

@ardacigin Amazing man ? Would love to hear how a 3-4 hour SDS sit goes. And thank you for the guru viking link! The online retreats were much more powerful than I would have imagined. Somehow the shared intentionality of the fellow retreat goers transcends space.. lol. You can feel the collectivity of the group even over zoom. Also the most powerful part about onlines are that you’re fully integrated in your home environment, which translates REALLY well with integrating the retreat back into daily life. Ill send you some links for Shinzen’s retreats. Not sure how often he’ll be doing onlines now that the pandemic is more under control, but Ive heard him say he’ll keep doing them because they scale so well, are just as powerful as normal residentials, and allow people who don’t have as much money full access. Super stocked to hear about how your first retreat goes, whenever that may be! Thank you again for such a high quality post. Always love your Actualized forum content. ?