flowboy

That's your shadow talking. I'm not anxious. I have a long track record of facing my fears head-on. I'm also very much a work in progress. I deal with ego backlashes, binges of unhealthy stuff, lapses in discipline, shame, self deception, and other challenges on a regular basis. I do my best to work through everything that comes up using the techniques I know and more importantly the support of friends, therapists, and coaches I trust, which produces learning, which I then am able to put back into my work helping others.

Funny because you started this topic making all kinds of claims, like sugar isn't bad and junk food won't harm you Insulin resistance is not a "detail". It's a major factor for most chronic disease, and a major gaping hole in your knowledge. I'm not a health expert either. That's @Michael569 I do however open myself to a lot of information from different sources, and don't make excuses for not knowing. You might consider doing the same.

She needs to be committed to her own journey of personal development, as do you, and the relationship needs to serve both of those journeys. If she's growing and learning, and you're out there growing and learning, then coming together to connect is not boring, it is a much needed balancing out. Also a relationship is something you should be constantly evolving. Read books about it. David Deida. John Gray. Having a relationship is definitely active, not passive.

@meadow lol you were at the rave I mentioned. Are there places to find peace at Fusion? I think what made a big difference in my trips is that I could just go sit on the beach and swim and not be swarmed by people.

My money is on escapism. Nothing wrong with some good old-fashioned escapism every once in a while. Everyone deserves an experience of peace. Don't elevate it into a spiritual, high-consciousness thing. Eventually you'll have to face what you're running from. Which is what?

Lol. "High consciousness people would surely think like me, because I'm the highest consciousness person I know!" Really? There's no chance they understand something that you don't, therefore they do something that seems counterintuitive to you?

Leave a toxic family system. Leave toxic friendships. Leave everyone..? That sounds like escapism. Wherever you go, there you are.

This is what people are trying to point to. You want to sleep with a taken woman if she takes the initiative, so you can point to her and say she's the cheating one. I don't judge you for it. In fact, I did this and that's how I got into a relationship. I allowed a girl to cheat on her boyfriend with me, and made her my girlfriend. Now that didn't help me sleep easy, because her boyfriend was a local criminal and known to own a gun / have a gang. But more importantly, I ended up with a woman I couldn't trust. She did lie and cheat in the end. A lot. You might think you'd get away with it if you just sleep with her, not get into a relationship. And you would... but you pay for it karmically. If you do that, next time you do have a girlfriend and she hangs out with a male friend, you won't sleep easy. You'd get paranoid and jealous and mess up the relationship. Afraid of the guy sleeping with your girl, because that's what you would do. See how that works? Now if you were to act with integrity, you would address it with her: "I feel like you're flirting with me, and I'm not comfortable with that because you're in a relationship. I might be open to it if you weren't, but you are, so we need to address this ambiguity."

Depression is the superlative case of repression. Repression = pushing away (emotional) pain. With each bit of pain that is repressed, a bit of your wholeness and sense of meaning and authentic desire goes with it. Therefore when there is too much to repress, you lose most of the sense of meaning and desire that is inherent to being an alive human. The way out of depression is to choose to feel more of what is repressed, thereby lifting the depression. Some depressed people are actually really angry, but unable to cope with that and process that fully, so hence they are depressed. Other common feelings are sadness, grief and hopelessness. The less you push these away, the more you will feel. The more you feel, the more emotional pain you feel, but also the less depressed you are. And after feeling the pain, bliss and insight follows. That's not to say that you can just make that decision from any situation. Repression is there for a reason. Are you currently in a condition to handle emotional pain? Is your life stable? Do you have the time, space and guidance needed? If not, then the first thing to do is to go get that. Set your life up in a way that makes it possible to process some repressed feelings in a safe way. If that means working a day less at your job, do that. If it means temporarily removing yourself from a toxic family system that doesn't accept and hold space for your feelings, cutting off contact and going to live on a friend's couch, do that. If it means getting a therapist, coach or mentor, do that. If it means reaching out to a friend even though it's hard, do that.

@Jannes Ever heard of insulin resistance? I recommend listening to some up-to-date health-related podcasts like Dru Purohit and Dr Rangan Chatterjee, also Aubrey Marcus Podcast. It's kind of hard to have this discussion if you are just not up to date on these things.

There's no reason to judge yourself for taking a remedy that you need. I'm only interested in solutions that work long-term without having to keep doing/taking them every day. All the rest has a place, immediate temporary relief can be crucial. Just don't make a band-aid your long term solution.

@something_else Depends on the vibe of the festival. It worked for me because I felt very safe there.

@UnbornTao A small subset of manipulation. Pottery is also manipulation.

I see what you're saying. BUT What if presenting a biased picture is the most compassionate, loving thing to do, because someone at a certain stage of development could never accept the non-biased version and would therefore miss the chance to benefit? Can't go all turquoise on someone in stage Orange. But you can seduce them into Green?

No good can come from living out of integrity.

Integrate your shadow.

Status is not the ultimate game. Status is just the ultimate game for getting laid. Getting laid is not the ultimate game. It's just a substitute for love. You can never get enough of something that almost works. Don't forget that celebrities are not happier than non-celebrities. Old guys who get a lot of pussy are usually deeply troubled.

Yes, I've heard guys from India are severely duped by their culture in the area of game. Though there are no cultures that I know of which don't come with unhelpful conditioning and lies in that area. Definitely don't try to learn from movies and TV, doing that hurt my success a lot. It's just a damn shame when there are no healthy rolemodels to show you how to be with women. What I would have given just to have some good example from my father or an older brother. Or even a helpful friend I could trust. I had none of that and I suffered a lot. There's no special sauce to how to ask someone out. Just embody leading energy. (my guess is that's where you have to go against the cultural grain, in my anecdotal experience Indian guys are conditioned to be quite meek and polite) "Let's go here. Let's do X together. I'll text you when and where" Resist the temptation to say "Would you like to" and make it into a question, don't make it into a question. No questions, just suggestions. "Let's ... dot." No question mark. I can't stress this enough. Lead by giving options. "We can either go eat X or we could go drink Y". You're still in the lead because you're the one giving the options. Start with leading in small steps. When you talk to someone on the street, get her to take a detour with you. Then get her to sit down with you, for example. Then say let's do X together. If she followed the other small leads, high chance she'll say yes. If you've communicated at some point that you find her attractive/cute, that's all that's needed. Embodying leading energy is the most important thing. Focus on that, forget the rest. Doing that can take you all the way over the finish line, without knowing any other game. Not doing that is a guarantee to not get laid. It's a fundamental principle: her feminine energy has to trust your masculine energy. Which means she will only want to be intimate with you if she's willing to follow your lead.

Hello!

Cry me a river. Then find something to devote yourself to, that fills you with so much meaning and passion that you forget about this entire tantrum. (because that's what this is. You're throwing a tantrum.) Maybe build a bridge over the river. Then help other people build that bridge for themselves too.

Depression is what you get if feelings are suppressed to the point where very little is left. Find what is behind that. Take the lid off. You might find grief, you might find sadness. You might find a lot of anger. Find, feel, and express. Learn how to feel and express feelings in a safe way without projecting on others. If you're not sure which energy is behind the depression, just try different ones until one clicks! See if you can embody some anger. Doesn't work? Try sadness. Or overwhelm. Et cetera. When you can show up and hold space for your feelings, you don't need the depression anymore.

@Rubywoo That guy could either... Just have a feminine essence. Which means that he would pair best with a woman who has a masculine essence (leading, career driven, etc), a polarity flipped relationship can be valid and good if it's authentic Be suffering from conditioning that's in the way of feeling his masculine essence. Perhaps he had an absent father, perhaps masculinity was suppressed in his upbringing some other way. No good rolemodels. He can work through that if that's the case, but no chance you're going to be there for him to see it through. He needs to go it on his own. How do you distinguish toxic guys from just masculine guys? Not by mental tricks or hacks or questions to ask, in my opinion. If you're attracted to toxic males, you didn't have a healthy masculine rolemodel. Your father failed to be there for you, or was toxic to you in some other way. This is what causes the imprint to be distorted, which then determines what your intuition is looking for. Choosing to really face this history by processing feelings from childhood will help here. We subconsciously look for people to relive the same pain with, until the original pain is felt. Best advice I have to give, is to find multiple healthy masculine friends, and spend a lot of time with them. Soak up that healthy masculine energy. Learn to feel the difference, not just mentally understand. Retrain your intuition. @Sine Anything to add?

You never thought of applying the advice to ask her out? If you're not doing that, then what the hell are you doing during your one approach a day conversations? Just ask her out. That part of the video makes sense, the advice part is fine. You don't need an instagram course. You (talking specifically to you now) need to figure out your bottleneck. You're talking to women. Good. Are they responding to your conversation attempts? I assume yes. Are those conversations leading to dates? If yes, good. If no, solve that part of the equation. Use this forum to get feedback on what you are actually saying and doing. If you are getting dates, but they don't turn into kissing/something sexual, solve that part of the equation. Get feedback on what you are actually saying and doing.

She's jealous and quite negative and toxic in how she expresses that. Tell her that she obviously can't handle being friends with you, since she's being so negative and unsupportive of you dating, and either she break up with her boyfriend and go on a date with you this week (assuming you're still interested in that), or that you can't be friends with someone being that unsupportive and negative. Basically date her or ditch her. Find a real female friend.

Got a quite similar experience. My most healing trips were at large festivals, roaming them on my own on 2 tabs, talking to tons of people, healing social shame and anxiety. @something_else I took half a tab at a rave once and had mixed feelings about it. The fast beat made me feel really restless and I got overwhelmed during the peak and had to sit down somewhere. I was decently social and able to find some connection with women, however I was also anxious, not socially but physically, and not very grounded. I think the combination of a bit more acid than I should have taken, the coffee I had before, and the fast beat, made it a bit uncomfortable. Haven't experimented with it enough to really conclude anything, but my suspicion is that it just feels better when the music is more psychedelic and other people are tripping too, rather than it being just me on acid and others on xtc and alcohol.