Ayham

Alright, it has been a while since I have posted here, and I have wanted to delete my account at some point. I want to go briefly over my life right now since I am now 19. I finished high school, got into AI and robots engineering, social skills went up the roof and I became extremely confident as opposed to how I used to be, I excelled academically and became one of the top students, I made high quality connections with professors and company owners, I got in many leadership positions, I won first place in technical competitions, and I was also was continuing my self-actualization stuff. That was my freshman year which ended. But past 2 months, I have only been depressed, due to 3 main reasons. 1. My relative, someone who highly influenced me, and was closer to me than my father, is dying out of cancer. That has been immensely painful. 2. Even though I am building a good infrastructure, I still don't have a source of income, and my family depends on me as my father is not here, and the financial situation has been getting worse and I am highly responsible to fix it but I just... don't know what to do. 3. I loved a girl in uni. 6 months ago, we started getting close and everything went well, but she is kind of really stage blue and doesn't want relationships, I confessed to her by programming a website with a game and a long message and she was crying out of happiness, and we continued "friendship" that felt like more, she would get jealous if I talk to other girls and tell me how I am the first person she fears losing, etc. And guess what? 2 months ago, after 6 months of closeness like that, some guy was trying to get close to her and calling her cute. I really panicked and just needed reassurance, as we didn't have an official label, but I kept getting more and more panicking and at some point she felt scared and like I was trying to control her, and she started distancing more and more and I kept chasing like an idiot, until at this point she literally acts like she doesn't know me and wants me gone, even though she used to be the one who cried if she thinks she might lose me. I know I acted needy but come on. To be honest, the third reason has hurt me the most, I really loved her from the depths of my heart, we were each other's first close connection like that, and I just didn't want to lose her, and I did. She wants nothing to do with me anymore, and probably replaced me with that guy. I know I pressured her but I just did it out of fear, I didn't "hurt her" in any way. Yes she was part stage blue but really smart and developed in other ways and we had similar values in life. Now the person she is with me (when I talk to her, which I don't) is... so mean and cold that I don't know her anymore. I don't want her anymore as I don't want a girl who replaced me like that, but I am still deeply hurt. I watched Leo's fake spirituality video and I really resonated with it, been years since I last watched Leo and this really went deep. The problem is, yes I seek to value Truth and genuine spirituality, but I can't get my basic needs of affection and love met. I am heavily traumatized from war and family issues which leads me to strong fear of abandonment and attachment issues, and a high need for love. My culture here in Iraq doesn't really help to meet what I need as love, and even though since I am now popular and have a high status in my uni, I know I can get with a lot of girls but I just... can't trust or love again after what happened. I don't just want casual love. I want deep intimacy, strong connection, quality moments, loyalty, expression, and vulnerability. I know I am supposed to love myself first, and yes I am working on that, I improve, but no amount of loving myself at my current state will help. I know it is the root solution, but part of me needs to at least experience this external love I am talking about to realize it won't fulfill me, it is a human need after all. What I experienced with that girl was limited as she was careful to not let it grow into a relationship to not clash with her family values. I just want to feel loved and valued for once. I am so love starved that a few days ago my grandpa told me "I love you", and I teared up. So, I think to be able to deal with the other issues, I need to take care of the need for love thing, how do I deal with this in your opinion? Especially in my culture where dating is very hard and finding suitable people is even harder. I would also appreciate @Emerald and @Leo Gura input too.

Hey Leo... Been a while since I posted here, my life has been unbelievably sky rocketing, like literally unbelievable things happened. Thanks everyone and I wish you all the best. I request the deletion of my account as it has too much private info that will get me into trouble, and my name mentioned too many times, along with many info that anyone who knows me could add up it's me. This is important and urgent. I will probably make another account.

It is not about that, it is about the info here, I will be more careful in the future. @Leo Gura

@Leo Gura Well, how does the end goal of kriya differ from normal meditation in your opinion?

can confirm

woah this forum... been a while

Hi from Iraq, I don't know about Latin America but it is red af here, but I would say more blue depending on the place. Some areas and settings are very red, some are very blue, and some are very orange, a green area is nonexistent for example. BTW, in Iraq, lawyers are jobless (and also everyone lol) because most of the time, the "law" gets implemented by clans, like, your last name is your clan, each clan has a head chief or something, people use their clans to get back at people and stuff, either through taking money from people or sometimes it evolves into a gun fight. But actually Iraq is developing a lot recently, like in the last few years, it is becoming much more orange, these stuff are getting rare, I just hope nothing happens in Iraq because we are just getting ourselves together lol (since the tensions in the middle east are fire right now).

Me too

The book called kundalini exposed has a well written section on how to ground yourself when things get intense like this. It includes stuff like weightlifting, cardio, stretching, eating meat, etc.

@Panteranegra Very well, and do you recommend a specific online resource?

I highly recommend Daniel Schmachtenberger (however his name is spelled) booklist, it is available on his website and I find it higher quality than Leo's but the books are quite dense and yes they are worth internalizing, if you spend 4 years on his list of around 40 books (quality over quantity reading, not less time reading, but more reflection and deep reading) you will be all set for an awesome foundation. https://civilizationemerging.com/resources/books/

Thank you for your very detailed answer, I read it multiple times and understood it well. My questions are: I have no option for initiation, I live in a part of the world that does not provide that option, what would you recommend from your knowledge? and what techniques does your routine consist of? Practicing from books have lead me to a lot of confusion due to the differences between various others, and I keep jumping around rather than sticking to something.

@Panteranegra I would like to know how transformative it is and what your practice is like.

I convinced him to take an albert camus approach for now.

What do I do? he talks about how it is his freedom and he knows this is better for him and he has endured years, that is sound logically. but man.. he is one of my best friends since 5 years, he comes from a very abusive and controlling family that is ruining his life. I am very emotionally intelligent and good at communicating emotions, understanding and listening to people, which is why I am usually the "therapist friend" and why he told me. He has been suicidal ever since I knew him, I have tried all the advice in the book. Should I tell his father? Even though his father is one of the main reasons for his misery, extremely manipulative and controlling. If I let him do it, I would feel guilty my whole life. If I try to stop him... I am not sure how that will work. I love him very dearly.

Thank you for all your answers, I am trying all of those, from referring him to a suicide helpline to being understanding and motivating him and other stuff. Yet he really seems like he doesn't want help, his mindset is like "I have the freedom to not live my life and thats okay" Fuck. I will update you guys if something happens, apparently he has a planned date that is near to do it but refuses to tell me when.

I'm from Iraq, and yes it is proposed but not agreed upon yet.

I just read an old post of yours talking about how you want like minded friends. I met @toasty7718 here, he dmed me a year go after seeing I am 16 as well, and we are great self-actualization friends, we joke around a lot and have fun and also have positive influence and share resources and talk cool stuff. Purely online though as we live on different sides of the world lol. Wanna be friends?

Aside from the thread topic, I am indeed happy to have found another 17 years old here in addition to @toasty7718. Now regarding the actual topic, you are right to feel a bit late, it is human nature after all, we tend to look at the more negative parts in ourselves and look at the positives in others, you may look at people who started when they are 7 and think "oh man... I am so late". One key skill we aim to develop as people looking to master our own minds and "self-actualize" is to be aware of thoughts that you actually deep down now are wrong and harmful, but they keep playing games on you, deep down you know you are not late, deep down you know you can still do stuff well, so just let go of these thoughts, consider that you winning means facing this perfectionist self of yours. Think of the ideal person in your situation, would they sit and be like "but oh man... I am so late"? of course not. Think of someone world class, most of the time they did not even aim to be world class, but rather they were so in love with what they were doing that they focused on doing it. For me I have two areas to master: AI engineering Writing My actual zone of genius would be finding answers and understanding the world through all sorts of fields from spirituality to philosophy to history to religions to sociology to physics to anything, the impact I want to make is to create a revolution in thinking, creating some sort of stage yellow society that has the capability of switching lenses between worldviews, to teach and inspire people, and writing is something I am passionate about and puts me in flow, AI is fascinating for me and its very relevant. Both of these I am not really an expert in yet, but I try to look at 10 years, I have a plan to become world class in both. And keep in mind, in this distracted modern world, most people aren't doing serious hard deep work or training, it is much easier to become world class, the standard is lower. We need to develop the ability to actually work deeply and hard, one or two hours a day, for 10 years, you would be scary good at whatever field you choose. Find a way to constantly train your charisma. And plus, you could even begin at 20 and you are not too late, we have a lot of resources these days, you can shortcut the process of mastery by finding masters in your field and directly learning from them, whether in person or books or online, this is a fascinating age we live in for this very reason. You got this, your worrying shows you have ambition and that's a good marker of success, just don't let your perfectionism stand in the way, it is a demon you will have to beat, I will have to beat it as well.

Good input, the forum used to be much better years ago though.

my reading process: as i read, i casually underline and write ideas on the margins of the book I have a note for each book in my Zettelkasten in obsidian.md I rephrase the underlined stuff in my own words in the note for the book Then I make atomic notes, which are basically mini essays on each idea in the book Leo's booklist is great, but I prefer Daniel Burger list https://civilizationemerging.com/resources/books/

I just read the blog post about the Athenians thing and how it relates to Palestine and Israel, and.... it is BASED. Okay maybe I shouldn't use gen Z terms, but yeah it is high quality, I love when Leo gets into more factual topics (history for example, or any sort of "hard" field), and less abstract stuff, not because I don't like the abstract stuff, but because they are sort of repetitive at this point.

Title. I realized my name here can cause me problems. Make it into.... uh.... "Achilles", if not available just add some numbers.

I mean yeah but not on actualized, but sure good analysis It is just for "in case"

Guys, is electrical engineering good? In regards to my machine learning interests, I think it is unrelated but it can develop good skills that are helpful. I may not be able to get into computer engineering, which was my goal.