soos_mite_ah

I see masculinity and femininity as a way of defining duality. Like pull and push or external and internal. Sometimes the labels masculinity and femininity can aid in communication and give you an idea of what you need to integrate. Because masculinity and femininity are labels and because both women and men have their own combination of the energies that is authentic to them, I characterize masculinity and femininity as gender neutral. There are men who are naturally more feminine and forcing them to be masculine wouldn't be healthy. Same goes for women who are more masculine and forcing femininity on to them. That said, integration of both polarities can help us move into more balance and cause the polarities to manifest in a healthier way. That's the goal. It isn't to be the most masculine man or the most feminine woman especially if it isn't authentic to you. Again, the polarities are gender neutral. A good example of healthy integration is someone who is really masculine and consequently also carries on a lot of the toxic forms of masculinity. Integration of the feminine can help soften and balance out the toxicity and let that person's natural masculinity manifest in a more conscious way. It won't make that person suddenly lean more feminine if that wasn't authentic to them from the beginning. While we should do what feels authentic, sometimes if we are really off balance it can help going to the other end to see all that you need to integrate or to see if you are suppressing anything. From then you can explore and simply take what sticks and leave the rest. That's what I did when I was integrating my feminine energy. I swung more to the other end for the sake of exploration because I suppressed a lot of my femininity growing up due to internalized misogyny. There are somethings with traditional femininity that doesn't resonate with me such as makeup for example. But even though I don't resonate with wearing a ton of makeup I no longer judge other women who do wear it like I used to. I think it's rather silly now but when I was like 12-13, I thought women who wore a ton of makeup were fake, insecure, or doing it to get male attention but now I see that these women don't actually give af and are doing it to express themselves creatively. For me personally, wearing makeup would feel rather forced tbh so I don't push myself even though I've been trying to step into my feminine energy more. I still think that I lean more towards the masculine side even though I'm a woman. But I have a better idea of where my own polarities lie more since I went out and tried things from both ends.

Turning Competence into an Identity Part 7: Exploration I haaaate how I still have things I'm discovering about this. I don't like being reminded on how deep this problem goes lol. So I was thinking about somethings and I realized that my desire for competence interferes with me exploring my identity because I don't want to make mistakes and waste my time. I'd rather take some time to contemplate what I want and question myself and then take action rather than going out there, living life, and figuring things out as I go along. I think it's good that I try to think before acting so I don't do anything stupid impulsively but I think in some aspects it does hold me back. I don't like admitting that I don't know what I want in some instances. I know I've made posts in the past talking about how I feel unsure about my sexual orientation. And that felt shameful. It made me feel like mess, like I wasn't sure of myself. Of course not wanting to be a mess has a direct connection to me wanting to maintain my identity of competence. I know that exploring my sexuality is a very natural thing to do but I find myself resisting the whole trial and error process. It seems so time consuming and I want to fast forward to when I have the answers. This is also true when it comes to my career and life purpose. I retook the life purpose course and something stuck out to me in the FAQs because all of this is in my mind. Leo was talking perfectionism and not wanting to go down the wrong path in the journey. And he was talking about how we shouldn't be afraid of doing that because even if we have to course correct, we would still learn things along the way that will help us later on in the journey. I find myself having an existential crisis of sorts every other year about wtf I'm doing with my life and if I'm on the right direction. I'd say that I have a bias for contemplation over action which can result in stagnation at times because the time I use thinking I could use for going out there and exploring my interests. I think the reason for this bias and why I prefer thinking is because I have a desire for efficient action. But at the wrong time, the desire to be efficient is at the expense of letting myself explore which actually ends up being inefficient because half-assing exploration can yield in a lot of lost growth

Life Purpose Course To Do List I retook the life purpose course. I found that I have a pretty solid grasp of the concepts, my values, and my strengths. But there are something that I need to reexplore. The last time I took the course, I did it too fast therefore I didn't give myself enough time to contemplate and develop careful answers to the exercises. Even though the same could be said about defining my values and strengths in the hands on part of the course, I contemplated those things a lot after the course which is why they have a better foundation. My current purpose is to find my purpose. Here are somethings I need to do. I'm going to avoid going too much into detail with this because I don't want to leak the content in the course regarding the exercises I need to look into. Things to do/ contemplate Burn through superficial desires and experience life (travel, relationships, parties etc.) Explore my interests and find a way to connect them Find some role models and look into biographies Deal with fears and limiting beliefs Find your niche and medium Build good habits Wake up on time Build structure in life Exercise Networking / seminars Videos I need to come back to: 58 - Life Purpose Exercise #1 (16:34) 59 - Life Purpose Exercise #2 (11:00) 60 - Life Purpose Exercise #3 (11:00) 61 - Life Purpose Exercise #4 (9:00) 62 - Life Purpose Exercise #5 (25:29) 63 - Life Purpose Exercise #6 (17:45) 77 - Going From Abstract To Concrete (31:43) 83 - Finding Your Niche (34:08) 67 - Impact Statement (11:51) 69 - Bringing It All Together (9:56) 70 - The Me Sheet (11:00)

Feeling Unworthy of Connection I found an article that I found really useful. I'm posting it here so I don't lose it. https://www.psychalive.org/nobody-likes-me/

I think that has to do with how much you associate masculinity with men. Something that I have been trying to do in order to have a more integrative approach to masculine and feminine energies is to view the energies as gender neutral to peel back the social conditioning that assigns femininity and things associated with femininity to women and assigns masculinity and things associated with masculinity to men. I found that helps me step into my own authentic expression of the combination of both energies. Yeah I grew up in a similar way. Especially when it came to anger. Even when I tried to express it in a healthy way, I was always seen as bitchy and aggressive. I think for women, emotional repression is in a different context. Women are told to keep quiet and not create a fuss because expressing emotions means that you'll prove the stereotype of women being these hormonal, irrational drama queens correct. But then again, keeping quiet also comes with it's own stereotypes and baggage so you can't win. When it comes to anger, it's kind of like the quote of how men are allowed to react but women can only overreact. I agree. Upbringing and socialization is big. I'd say that it's a much bigger factor than biology since all men aren't inherently masculine psychologically and all women aren't inherently feminine (especially when you consider masculine and feminine energies as gender neutral). Hell, sometimes it can be flipped for some people. But it can be tricky to separate authentic expression and cultural conditioning since it is so prevalent from literally birth.

Accepting the Softest Parts of Myself: Thoughts on Vulnerability A few days ago I talked about my insecurities that I have with my physical appearance. Just writing all of that was really helpful in processing and releasing it. That night I had a thought that was along the lines of this: Isn't it an interesting coincidence that you have trouble accepting your stomach, the softest part of your body? And I have written many posts in this journal talking about how I'm trying to be gentle with myself, trying to accept my vulnerabilities, and trying to work through shame. While I have been doing all of that psychologically, there is a parallel that I observed with my stomach and how it reflects on my body image. I found that accepting my stomach was difficult over the years. It's particularly vulnerable. Physically, again it's softer. My arms and legs are thicker and I have been insecure about not being skinny there but I worked through it by appreciating how naturally rounded, yet toned and muscular it was. But with my stomach, I didn't have that type of redeeming quality. It just felt like a soft blob. It made me think along the lines of how you don't have to find strength in your softness and vulnerability to see the value of your softness and vulnerability. Psychologically there is a vulnerability because I found it difficult to find beauty in this "flaw" in order to embrace it. But that night, I thought, maybe I don't have to see my stomach as beautiful to embrace it and accept it. I then thought that this is a better way to deal with vulnerability and shame where we don't have to approve of something in order to accept it and be at peace with it. I also squished my stomach a little bit and thought about how nice it was to feel, how in a way it made me more cuddly and huggable. Likewise, vulnerability can make us more open to affection and connection from others. Additionally, focusing on how my stomach feels rather than what it looks like I feel helped. I think I can apply this to vulnerability as well where appreciating and feeling into the depth of an emotional experience, even painful and shameful experiences, can help fight off shame because you aren't as focused on how the experience looks from the outside and how that can reflect on your image in the eyes and judgement of others or yourself. And like an un-flat stomach we are compelled to hide our vulnerabilities and flaws in the fear that it isn't flattering, one is physical and the other is social/psychological. Like I know a large chunk of women don't have flat stomachs but everyone hides it and the media sure as hell doesn't represent bodies like that. (Also side note, fuck dressing in order to be flattering. There isn't anything wrong with that if it makes you feel that you can embrace your favorite features but limiting yourself to what society considers flattering in order to get closer to a certain standard of beauty at the cost of self expression and wearing what you want aint it.) Finally, when it comes to a large chunk of women not having flat stomachs, there is a biological reason for that. Most women have a little bit of fat on their stomachs because that extra padding is supposed to protect the uterus and helps with child bearing later in life. Our vulnerabilities also provide us protection psychologically by informing us what is and isn't ok for us to put up with. I also like to have this attitude where I try to view my negative emotions as warning emotions that point to what's going on in my psyche. The only reason why these emotions are given the value label of "bad" is because the ego doesn't like feeling them. Similarly, the only reason why I don't like my squishy stomach is because it doesn't serve my ego's desire to conform to beauty ideals since at the end of the day my ego wants to be desirable, even if it's only in my own eyes and even if no one else cares about what my stomach looks like. I think I have made progress when it comes to my body image as well as my relationship to being vulnerable. While I did know some of these things already, I found that observing the parallels between my stomach and my emotional vulnerabilities was interesting. I feel that seeing my stomach as a physical metaphor to my sense of softness and vulnerability brought me closer to accepting how I look. This comparison helped me view my stomach in a different light in this beautiful yet poetic way. To be honest, if I were to have the option of getting liposuction tomorrow, I can't say that I'd deny it because I still wish that I had a flat stomach. But I think this reflection helped me plant the seeds for more self love both for the way I look and the things I have experienced.

I beg to differ. Women are more allowed to express emotions compared to men. Men are often compelled to hide it more due to a stoic ideal, especially when it comes to sadness and vulnerability. Similarly, women are discouraged from being angry even in healthy and assertive ways. I do remember there being a study showing that men were just as or even more so emotional compared to women but they were less likely to express it. I can't find it at the moment but this article seems to summarize it pretty well. https://www.elitedaily.com/dating/guys-more-emotional-girls/1077730#:~:text=Women are emotional%2C true. But according to a,it comes to being presented with emotional stimuli. I also thought this was a good analysis

David Hoffman has a lot of videos about understanding boomers. I'd highly recommend checking it out.

I took a break from journaling and I have a lot to write about. But before I do that, I'm posting some videos that I liked and thought were insightful as it pertains to where I'm at with my growth.

Why do people in their late teens and early 20s get nostalgic about their childhoods specifically about the media prevalent during that time? This is a recurring pattern I see with a lot of people even if they had bad childhoods. Also does this pattern of nostalgia continue as you get older?

Nitpicking at my Appearance The last post was rather therapeutic so I'm going to delve into this a little more. Lately I noticed that I am nit picking at my appearance. It's super petty since the stuff that I'm picking at isn't noticeable to most people or hell even me unless I zoom in real close. These include: my uneven skin tone and acne marks: Still felt confident even when I had a ton of acne. Most of these marks can't be seen unless someone were to be waaaaaay tooo close to me and put a magnifying glass on my face, the small amount of chub I have in my upper thighs: Super minor, I feel little to no difference emotionally when my legs are slightly thicker or not how I could lose an inch off my arms: Super minor, I feel little to no difference emotionally when my arms are slightly thicker or not the tiny mistake I made when I last did my eyebrows: Literally not even noticeable And none of these really have a big impact on my self image. But I still find myself nitpicking. These things are so minor that I don't even see the worth in changing them because they won't change much. This is so much more psychological than physical. I think this is a reflection of my perfectionistic tendencies. Since I'm taking a break from I guess heavier and deeper forms of self help, I'm getting a backlash of sorts. Before I used to nitpick at my quality of consciousness and my development. Because I'm not focusing on those things as much, those nitpicking tendencies transferred over to my appearance. These come from the desire to present the most polished version of myself. And as much as I want to address this mechanism and get rid of it, that would again feed into the whole eliminating parts of yourself to be polished. Even though I'm taking a break from deeper forms of self help for the time being, I do notice flaws in my character that I can work on improving. And instead of doing that, I'm challenging myself to let those flaws just be. Because they aren't necessarily flaws, I just perceive them as such because of the way I want to come across and my survival interests. There is nothing wrong with that. I'm just trying the acceptance route more nowadays as opposed to the action oriented lets fix this right away route.

Plastic surgery I have been thinking about this topic for the last couple days idk why. I guess every now and then my vanity slips out lol. I know this isn't the most conscious or self development oriented topic but I just want to get it out of my system so I'm not in my head anymore. I have thought about getting plastic surgery many times in the past. I have been hesitant because of the costs, side effects, fears of something going wrong and ending up looking like a more messed up version of myself etc. Breast Reduction: I started thinking about getting a boob job when I fell asleep on the couch a couple years back. I fell asleep in a weird position and woke up to my boobs strangling me. That was scary and uncomfortable lmao. I also get back pain occasionally, I don't like having people stare at me or sexualize me, and I wish I could shop for clothes that I like without worrying whether or not I look like I'm going to sit on the black casting couch. Also I don't like the idea of spending $80 on a fucking bra. But also on the other hand I like the way my chest looks and how it looks in proportion to the rest of my body. Like even though they are big they aren't saggy. Most of the time I can get away with going braless. Again, I like the way they look, I just don't like how society treats me and my lack of clothing options. And that makes me think that maybe it isn't about needing to fix something for me, rather it's about other people. I can deal with the occasional back pain and avoid falling asleep on the couch if I'm going to be honest. Liposuction: If I were to get liposuction, it would just be for my stomach. No matter how well I eat or exercise, I always have a little pudge in that area. I've had it for as long as I can remember. It really effects my confidence and because it's the one thing that I'm insecure about, my mind likes to hyper focus on it. I think it takes up a lot of mental energy and this insecurity has resulted in me having a dysfunctional relationship with my body image if I were to point out a feature in my body. I always feel like I would be a 10 if I had a flat stomach. While I have mixed feeling about getting a boob job, I don't have the same with getting liposuction on my stomach. I don't like my stomach, never really did, don't know if I ever will. My only thing is the cost. I think it would be so much cheaper if I just accepted myself tbh. Lip filler: This is one of those things that crossed my mind as a joke. It's really petty. I love the way my lips look naturally from the front but from the side my top lip protrudes out a little more than my bottom lip and I just want it to be equal. It's super nit picky and I have a tendency to do that with my appearance even though I don't think about it much and it doesn't have an effect on my life or confidence. Wouldn't get this in a million years. This is my inner perfectionist talking lol. Plus needles and injections scare tf out of me. My other thing with plastic surgery is the permanence of it. I have experimented with appearance growing up and most of the time I just want to go back to my old features eventually. In high school I dyed my hair burgundy. It was cool for the first couple months and then I just wanted my black hair back. I liked my black hair before and how it contrasted with my skin, how shiny it looked but I always wondered what I'd look like with red hair and if that would look better. There was also a part of me that saw my black hair as plain. Similarly when I got hazel contacts a couple years back, it was cool for the first two weeks. Then I wanted to go back to my brown eyes because I felt like the lemur from Zoboomafoo. Like my black hair, I also had mixed feeling about my brown eyes and just wanted to experiment. I like how warm and expressive my brown eyes are and how it matches with my hair while standing out compared to the rest of my face. But again, there was a part of me that thought it was really plain and was curious about how I would look if I had different features. Both of these helped me move closer to self love as far as my appearances went because changing my features helped me appreciate the ones I already had. But it's easy to switch out contact lenses and to grow out your hair again. If I did something similar with plastic surgery and wanted to go back to the way I looked before, thing would be A LOT more complicated. On the other hand, I have made a change to my appearance and didn't feel like I wanted to go back. I switched from wearing glasses to wearing contacts. Growing up I didn't hate my glasses but I thought that I looked nicer without them. But I can't say I liked them either or saw any pros for wearing them besides simply not wanting to poke my eye out every morning. I always took my glasses off for pictures. When I switched to wearing contacts, I was surprised by how much mental space was freed up in my head and how confident I felt. My self image became so much more positive after wards. I think if I were to get work done, I probably wouldn't do the reduction because I have mixed feelings about. And I have noticed that when I have mixed feelings and I change my appearance, it's cool for a little bit and then I miss my original features. I would get the liposuction because I don't have mixed feelings about that aesthetically. But my thing is, will it be worth it or am I just being petty. Is this similar to how I feel about my lips because on one hand it's something minor. It's not like I'm trying to lose 30 lbs from this procedure (also I don't think using this as a short cut to weight loss is wise but I digress). But on the other hand it isn't like my lips because this does take a lot of mental energy for me. In the end of the day the main thing stopping me is thinking about how much cheaper and how much easier all of this would be if I just accepted myself fully. Also there the fact that I'm broke because lets be real I don't have a few thousand dollars just lying around.

Comparing Myself Against the Priorities of Other People I had a bit of a backlash in the last couple days. It was for an incredibly dumb reason. There is this person I went to college with who is an influencer and goes to law school. Her account came up on my Explore page and I couldn't resist the temptation to click on it. I went to her page and so many of the insecurities and the shame that I worked through came back up, I felt behind in my life. I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I felt like a failure. It was a mess. I kept thinking *when am I going to have my season of happiness? When am I going to be living my best life?* Next thing I knew I continued spiraling by looking at other people's accounts and comparing myself. After venting about this with a friend, I realized that I was comparing myself against the priorities of other people. The people I was comparing myself to all prioritized school and career above everything else. And don't get me wrong, I know many of these people and I know it comes from a healthy, purpose driven place rather than a place of insecurity and workaholism. But my top priority hasn't been school and career. And I made that decision early on because I knew it was the healthiest thing for me. As proud as I am of that because I know the strength and authenticity it took me to make that decision. But there was this feeling of being left behind because I chose a different path. There is a part of me that saw the trade off between prioritizing self development and prioritizing school and career. They were at odds in many times and sometimes I think that after i finish dealing with my issues, I will have a lot of lost time to make up for and I have to put this extra stress on myself. But then I was like, why am I doing this? Why do I feel this way? It's ridiculous. I'm judging myself on how far I'm on a path that I didn't even take, a path that I technically didn't want to take. I think the reason why I do this is because even though I did prioritize self development over school and career, the people around me always told me that the right decision was to prioritize school and career over everything. A lot of it came from a healthy place where it's like having a good career will give you a sense of contribution and purpose, it will keep you grounded, and it will ensure that you are financially independent which means you can live life on your own terms. But the problem is the implicit notion that came with it in the attitudes of the people who were giving me this message. Especially from my parents it was this sense of *nothing matters as long as you have your career, friends and relationships don't matter, you're basically throwing your life away if you make a boy your priority, don't waste your time on things that won't be beneficial for your college applications. In this stage of your life school has to be your highest priority* I get where they were coming from. They didn't want me to succumb to peer pressure. They didn't want me to get into a toxic or codependent dynamic with a boy and give up all my dreams to follow him. They didn't want me wasting my time on things that weren't going to benefit my future when I could do something else that better serves me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that prioritizing other things shouldn't seem like a death sentence. It shouldn't feel like not prioritizing school means you will have a bad life and that you will be wasting your potential. It's perfectly reasonable to prioritize other things depending on where you are at your life and what your needs are. I know people say life is short, but I honestly think life is long. Especially when you're young, you have time. You can do things at your own pace. You will eventually move into different phases of your life where you will prioritize different things. And that's ok, there is a season for everything. Like I noticed that when I compare myself I tend to get upset over not having things that I technically don't want in the first place. One time I caught myself feeling like a failure when I found out someone I knew was engaged. I don't even want to get married at my age. I guess another thing with me prioritizing self development is that when I do have milestones or when I do achieve a goal, it usually not something that I can show off. I'm not about to walk up to someone and start talking about how I made peace with this traumatic event that happened to me in childhood for example. And I think because of that, my achievements regarding self development can go unnoticed or uncelebrated, making me feel like I haven't done anything with my life. I know for me, if I were to prioritize school and career as my number one priority like the people I was comparing myself to, it probably wouldn't manifest in a healthy way. I shouldn't judge myself and my progress based on what I was told to prioritize. Sure if I judge myself school/ career wise, I'm not doing so great. But if I judge myself according to my own priority of self development, I'd say I made an amazing amount of progress and that I'm doing good for myself. And I think that's more important when it comes to understanding what will actually make you fulfilled.

Even if they are "just jokes" it's worth questioning why that person would find such a thing funny. You don't have to be blatantly racist to be racist. Was just about to say this. Situations like that are uncomfortable. You're not actually funny if you have to be prejudiced in order to be funny. Personally, when I see a friend making racist jokes or being racist, I let them know that I'm not ok with it and try to open a conversation. If the person gets defensive or they continue the behavior, they are disrespecting my boundaries so then I just move on or keep contact in the bare minimum. I don't want to validate this behavior by continuing to stick around.

@Etherial Cat Thank you

I feel that. One time I decided to buy this pack of cosmic brownies out of nostalgia (and because I was craving chocolate) and I was thinking of how when I was 7 or so my friends and I thought they were the shit. Like everyone would try to trade the rest of their snacks just to have an extra cosmic brownie. Then I tried to eat it again when I was 18 and I just didn't get the hype but it wasn't bad. Another time I tried to do the same with a twinkie and that was nasty. There are foods that I wonder how tf I ate when I was a kid. I guess as I started eating healthier and branched out to different foods not only my taste buds changed but so did the scope at which I compare foods to. That cosmic brownie doesn't taste like the best thing in the world when you have tried other brownies. I think that excitement in childhood comes from a lack of experience and not having anything to compare things to subconsciously or consciously. One thing I've been trying to do is see things with fresh eyes and let go of judgement/ comparison in order to be present and take in a moment for what it is. I mean I've seen plenty of people who don't experience those things still get childhood nostalgia in their late teens- early 20s. I think over the years technology has heightened this nostalgia since everything is more accessible. My dad and I found this channel where they have reruns of a bunch of shows from the 70s and 80s. My dad doesn't really get nostalgic over his childhood but he does get nostalgic over his 20s and 30s and watching those shows just brings those feelings more to the surface but in a better way. When it comes to technology and accessibility, I can't bring those things up without talking about the internet. Before you would have to go to your attic and search through old things or ask your parents about what things were like back then but now you can just search that stuff up. For me, if there is something in my childhood that I vaguely remember, I can just search it online. There are so many time I went on Instagram and saw a meme only for it to unlock a memory I forgot I had lmao. I feel that. I started watching a couple episodes of the Fairly Odd Parents a couple days ago. I think it can be a little bit of a backlash. I think moving into adulthood is a very big transition in a person's life because you have been a child all your life and then suddenly, you're not and you never will be. It's a weird experience and for the first few years even if you have adult responsibilities that you are taking care of well, there is a part that makes you feel like you're a kid cosplaying as an adult. That transition can breed all types of problems (imposter syndrome, anxiety of what to do with the rest of your life, depression because you don't have the childlike sense of wonder etc.) and resurface a lot of issues from you're childhood because you're old enough to know what is right and wrong but young enough to remember a lot of what happened growing up. No it's actually really common. I also have a theory about this and how it relates to pop culture. There is a saying that trends come back every 20 or so years. That could consist of anything from TV/ movie remakes to fashion. My theory is that the reason why trends come back about every 20 years is because a lot of young people get nostalgic over their early childhood (that's especially easy since most of us don't remember much and therefore have a very rosy picture of pop culture) and then they bring back trends. Those things become mainstream because youth culture has a huge influence over what's popular. Then there is a feed back loop where you look at the trends, you get nostalgic, you give into the trends, the trends become even more popular and more people get nostalgic. I don't think nostalgia is something you need to let go. Playing club penguin can be a nice break and escape lol. But I think it's still really important to be aware that you might be looking through rose toned glasses and that the past wasn't necessarily all that or else we risk making the same mistakes we did back then or we try to go back when it isn't viable anymore. I think when this is taken to the absolute extreme, you get a lot of conservative ideology and suddenly you're surrounded by a bunch of old people saying Make America Great Again because they want to go back to the 1980s. My dad and I were having a conversation about this. I think it has to do with how you perceive time as you get older. My dad is in his 60s and he was talking about how the last 10 years felt like it went by really quickly but I had a different experience. As someone in their early 20s, those same 10 years felt really long because it's literally 1/2 of my life whereas for my dad it's like 1/6. And plus you're growing, freshly experiencing so many things, and having your life circumstances change when you're young so you tend to grow and develop much more thus making that time feel longer. Like there is a huge difference in where you are in life compared to being 10 vs 20 than from 50 vs 60. This reminded me of something that happened when I was in school. I had a friend who was 17 and he was cringing at what he was like at 14 and my teacher overheard this and was cringing lol. My teacher was like "that was like 3 years a go it wasn't that long ago."

Been feeling lost lately but this made me feel a little more found.

From my experience, a lot of older people tend to be more explicitly racist than younger racist people. But I've met pleanty of people 25 and under who are racist. And it isnt just a small pocket of people. Don't know where you live lol. Progress is much MUCH slower than that. I'm sure people thought the same thing when segregation ended where they thought if the generation of old people died off we'd live in a progressive fantasy.

In addition to this being a critique on green, I also think this perception is a stage orange critique of turquoise. Things like "you are god" or "I'm god" sound delusional when you're at orange or you don't have any background knowledge of nonduality. It reminds orange people of blue, how faith based it was, and how it had this notion of divine rights/ being a prophet.

@Raphael The video emphasizes integration and developing a healthy ego because that is more aligned with oneness and authenticity than a weak ego. I highly recommend checking it out. Yeah an ego that is arrogant, insensitive or not confident is still ego. The video is talking about an unhealthy ego. To get over it, premature transcendence isn't going to help. Instead, you need to build a healthy and strong ego. And I feel that this video is talking about that instead of talking about transcending. A weak, undeveloped ego is the enemy. Mastery over the ego so it manifests healthily is not the enemy. I've had a similar experience in the last couple months. I think this is yet another one of those pieces of advice that can either be helpful or harmful given where you are in your journey.

Thoughts?

No that screams overcompensation and just shows how out of control and insecure you are. It's like those little chihuahuas that feel the need to bark and look aggressive because they are tiny and feel easily threatened therefore they need to assert dominance.

Both are awful. But if it came down to choosing my battle, I'd choose the unhealthy levels of detachment because it will force me to get over him quicker so I can move on and find someone worth my time. If a man is extremely desperate, worst case scenario I might have to get a restraining order or call the cops and then live in fear for a long time. Possessiveness and seeking dominance are also a factors that need to be considered and can be present whether a guy is clingy or unavailable. You can be extremely emotionally unavailable and see the other person as an object that you don't empathize with but you want to have for yourself. That can lead to a huge lack of empathy and psychotic behavior.

I mainly took that as the point that the ego comes up as a survival mechanism and it's not bad or evil for being that way and therefore shouldn't be demonized. I think I remember seeing another video (can't remember what it was) and it was describing the ego as the devil but it wasn't in a demonizing way rather it was on how the ego is like a fallen angel. It's like a guardian angel in the way that it helps you survive and thrive but eventually it falls from grace and become a hindrance when you move into higher qualities of consciousness. Like I'll use abuse as an example. Lets say there is a child who is hyper aware of the emotions people are experiencing around him and he had to develop that skill of reading between the lines because his parents never communicated things to him and punished him for not reading their mind or he needed to catch warning however subtle they may be in order to prepare for an anger outburst. This coping mechanism of being hyper sensitive and empathetic worked back then but when that boy grows up and is in a healthier environment, those same qualities turn into anxiety. I think the ego works in a similar way. I've been thinking about all of this for a minute and these are my thoughts on the subject: Yeah I agree with this. Waging a war with the ego causes more resistance. It also causes more disintegration which is at odds with oneness.

3/23/2021 Being In Progress Part 2 This part 2 is just me copying and pasting relevant journal entries from the previous post I did multiple journal posts on this but I thought I post one of them that summarizes my key takeaways that I intend on integrating. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And here it is: I feel like in this last month or so I worked through a lot of shame. Even though I still have problems in my life, I no longer beat myself up for some of them. I see this as an example of being more gentle with myself. I'm proud of myself for that. I deleted all of my social media a while ago and I think that really helped me mind my own business.