Consilience

100%

This guy. ??

Biggest piece of advice I could give is immediately schedule your next retreat after completing the first. Doesn't have to be with the same organization, teacher, or even lineage. Maybe do a Zen Sesshin next, for example. Just a silent meditation retreat of some kind. I'd highly recommend doing at least 1 retreat per year. If you're 22 now and did this until 32, your entire life would be radically transformed by 32. And you'd still have an entire lifetime to live.

By recognizing you’re already aligned with the will of God. There is no individual will to align with God’s - that would imply you’re somehow going against the intelligence of the Universe. You are not. The idea that you could exert a will in contrast with the will of the whole is a position steeped in illusion, fantasy, and projection. What we can do, however, is recognize that this ‘Will of God’ is already and has always and will always be what is happening at deeper and deeper levels. All of these stories about personal will are not needed to behave, move, speak, and act in the world. Letting go does not mean surrender the ego’s will, or somehow killing the ego until “there’s nothing left.” There’s already nothing there. Letting go means recognizing the underlying reality that you can’t do anything, there was never a choice in the matter. All blame, guilt, shame, frustration, envy, jealousy, pride, arrogance, etc is based on this false premise of “personal will.” So letting go simply means recognizing there is nothing to change because the will of God is already manifesting perfectly, completely, and wholly. Even in the grips of delusion and sense of objectified consciousness, even that is God’s will. Practically, walking meditation while placing attention on the fact that you aren’t doing the moving is a powerful way to begin seeing this clearly. Or speaking while recognizing the words are flowing without your having to think of the words beforehand, they simply flow, you don’t control anything. The sharper our attention can pierce into the subtly of experience, the more deeply we see all desire and intention to act is driven out of a spontaneous emergence of perceptive experience, leaving 0 room to exert control or manipulation. Yet when entranced by the illusion of control or manipulation, or even the idea that you could stop controlling or manipulating, all you do is control and manipulate.

Randomness implies that reality could have been anything other than what it is right now. This is a misunderstanding of reality. Reality can only ever be what it is. There is no such thing as randomness, or cause and effect. Yet here we are. F.I.S.H. Ta-daaa.

Hello - I guess because of how much Actualized.org content I consume and just my own contemplation and introspection, I've come to see with crystal clarity just how un-holistic and stage Orange our medical establishment is. As such, I feel like I have this bias and automatic skepticism towards how doctors handle treating certain illnesses. I was recently diagnosed with H Pylori; I'd been having pretty bad stomach issues for awhile, it felt like ulcers and pretty much constant pain after eating. The pain started subsiding about 2 weeks ago but has still lingered around. After having gone to see a general physician, they had me do a stool test as well as a blood work to see if we could determine what was wrong. Turns out I tested positive for H Pylori. The docotor's treatment is basically 2 weeks of heavy antibiotics, a proton pump inhibitor to manage acid reflex and then retesting at the end of that cycle. The thing is, I'm worried about that... It feels like the treatment is the equivalent of taking a grenade to my gut and hoping for the best. There is 0 doubt that this kind of treatment would also wipe out 'good' bacteria. For anyone who is well versed in nutrition and health, is following this treatment option really a good idea? Or would the unintentional damage caused from the antibiotics NOT be worth it? I mean it seriously feels like such a bullshit treatment option, wildly un-holistic. Like this is seriously the best we have..? We're just going to go in and fuck shit up and hope for the best.

Intentionally spreading your suffering to others is not an act of self love. Fully acknowledging, feeling, accepting, processing and letting go of the pain another caused you would be. Creating a boundary and enforcing that boundary would be an act of self love. Forgiving another would also be an act of self love. Propagating suffering is not. It’s actually incredibly simple, deceptively simple. Hence why the ego loves to over think this, bullshit itself, and justify these types of immature, hurtful responses.

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.