This suffering is from valuing materialism. You probably value the sky and smells in nature, sunrises, sunsets, stars, nice glass of water, a nap in the sun. If you focus more on what you like that you do have, instead of what other people tell you you should like, you'll end your suffering. There's nothing wrong with working a low pay dead end job "just to live", the park is free, sunsets are free,... Get 'ahead' when/if you can, but in the mean time, soak up what you have.

@Aciddhartha
I get what you’re saying because I’m in that same headspace. I also yearn for death sometimes, but what stops me is exactly what you’re describing — not knowing what’s on the other side. People talk about suicide like it’s a clean ‘escape,’ but when you’re honest about it, you realise it might be horrendous, messy, humiliating, even panic‑filled at the moment of dying. And then, if there is something after death, it could be infinite madness with no take‑backs.
So you end up in this bind: told to ‘appreciate the now’ while sitting in a mouldy bedroom, broke no matter how much you budget, watching the world burn in a trash bucket. You can’t wish your life away, but you can’t really live it either. It’s like being held between two walls — you see everything clearly, but there’s nowhere to move. Some days I feel like I’d need a lobotomy just to make the bind stop. I’m saying this not to be dramatic but because I think it’s the honest reality for people like us.

How old are you? Do you have close family members? 
From my understanding when people cross over to the other side because of suicide they experience their life review and if that person commits suicide , they will experience the pain of that decision from every person who knew them because you are always connected to all that it is and connected to other people even if it doesn’t feel like it. 
In your natural state which is pure spirit , suicide is always the wrong choice because you came to this life to learn lessons so that you can grow as spirit. 
you are more powerful than you think as a spirit, as pure concsousiness.
you might not resonate with that I said but I just wanted to say it. 

No, it doesn't mean that.
Pedophiles are attracted to much younger girls and they tend to be exclusively attracted to them, and the key difference is that they act on it.
Being attracted to a 16 year old's body is one thing, that is natural, but acting on it is different.
I would be attracted to an 18 year old but I'm not going to date one even if it's legal because it's inappropriate.

This is one of the hardest questions. I think it's possible, but not in the way people usually think. I just contemplated this a few days ago, as a what-if, if I would start earning money, what would I do.
A trap might be believing our own willpower is enough. Money can change your nervous system, it can make you risk-averse and starts bending your decisions toward protecting wealth instead of purpose. 
A way I developed that could work is to build external structures before you have the wealth:
Automate giving (do 40% off the top of any big inflow)
Create a 'pod' of people who can veto your financial decisions
Legally pre-commit that 90%+ goes back to commons when you die
It's not about being a 'good person' with money. It's about building the plumbing so the money can flow through you instead of pooling and poisoning you. The goal shifts from 'being wealthy' to 'being a useful conduit.' Otherwise, you end up contributing to the very inequality you probably wanted to solve, just by following the default logic of the system.
The might be other ways but, yeah... it's unusually hard. The system is designed to capture you.

@ZeldaStar There is much additional depth and insight, but if you're just casual about it then it can all seem the same.
It is hard to communicate the depth to you guys without it sounding repetitive. Depth is not about more new ideas, it is about deepening existing ideas.
To appreciate the depth of this issue you have to read all of MetaRationality.com

It much depends on your personality and level of ambition. Most people are not very ambitious nor creative so for them working a simple steady job is fine.
But for someone like me it is torture.
I cannot do it because I demand way more from my life than obeying a boss to do medicore work to make him rich while the world gets dumber and dumber.
It all depends on your values. Creative people require lots of autonomy and freedom to do their work. For non-creative people this is a non-issue. Some personality types can be happy working at the post office licking stamps. If I had to do that I would kill myself.

There's nothing wrong with working a job, however if you think you have the opportunity to make a lot of money in a short period of time, even tho the method of making that money is kinda BS (but not necessarilly unethical), then you should take it imo. With the advent of social media and our collective transition to post modernism, the whole sense of "realness" of ones work had basically dissipated. It's all clownery nowadays. This is the position I'm holding now, if I'm gonna see an easy opportunity I'm going to take it, and I think there are some out there. Just have to move fast to capitalize. I think people on this forum definitely deserve to get money ngl

youtube and social media is now where people spend time, but if. your blog is top tier people are going to read it anyways.
You need high level SEO and social media promotion.
Also, if you want to make money build a email list and nurture it.

For making money it is a bad way to go. It's worth it if you enjoy it or you have an existing audience.
You need a better way to build your audience, especially with AI search now. AI search has killed 50% of organic web traffic.

@LordFall Promote snippets from your blog on X, Threads, BlueSky, etc.
Create a funnel, with shallow content up front and deep content further in.
Try to offer people value. What is useful to them? What are their needs?

Because they have no actual understanding of intelligence. All they are doing is feeding it data, but they have run out of data already. There just is not enough data on Earth to make AI more intelligent than it currently is. And data is not real intelligence because is leeches off human intelligence.
To make AGI they would need to actually crack the issue of intelligence, which they are not even working on.
They are deluded by their own hype, greed, and lust for power. The whole thing is a gross juvenile rationalist farce.

All this assumes AI can do jobs.
Huge unwarranted aasumption with no basis in reality so far.
A chatbot is not a job.

The first car to drive itself across America was in 2001, in 2015 Musk promised FSD in 5 years, he's arguably not gotten closer in an appreciable way, Waymo is expanding it's market very gradually.
AI is not close to being a panacea. Self driving is simpler than robotics, it's 2 dimensional, the hype around these things is for investment, it's a con. AI will work it's way into production in all kinds of ways, the result on people will be determined by taxation. If corporations are taxed more, think utopia, better working conditions, free education, more creative and inventive careers, lower prices, space travel, cleaner environment. If corporations are continued to be given the advantage over individuals, think more mad max, wars, terrorism, genocide, more like Stahlins USSR.

The feeling of being centered inside your head is imagined. It is necessary to construct the sense that you are a human organism.
That sense gets unimagined in higher states, and at death it is lost entirely, freeing you to be Omnipresent.
If you felt Omnipresent, you couldn't form the human organism identity. You would feel surreal, dissociated, and not a solid entity. You would also lose sanity.
A big part of your sanity is that you imagine you are a biological organism with a singular identity. You don't mistake yourself with a goat. But this is actually false. You are a goat.

No!
It permananetly changes your understanding, and understanding is what matters most, more than any state or enlightenment.
Nothing matters but Understanding.
God-Realization is just Total Self-Understanding.
You can have all the enlightenments you want but you still won't understand.

Corporations will certainly try to replace everyone they can with AI but they will quickly learn that AI cannot do the jobs of the people replaced and they will be back to hiring people.
AI is a big illusion. It seems like it can replace a human by replacing some superficial amount of work, but that is not enough to really nail the job. People will soon get weary of AI slop because it is always sub-par to truly creative human work. No one wants to read a sub-par AI book when they could read an excellent human book for basically the same price. It all comes down to creative excellence. In every industry only the top 5% of the creative work is worth consuming, and AI does not rise to that 5% top. There will be more and more people looking to acoid the AI slop for that top 5% of creative content.
Imagine if an AI replaced me tomorrow. You would stop watching because you watch me because it is top 5% of philosophical content, not sub-par slop philosophy.
Your career plan should be to train yourself to be in the top 5% of creative content producers. That's how genuine success is made. There is always a market for that level of excellence because it is so rare and takes years to acheive. There is no quick magic pill to it, and AI is not the magic pill to excellence, it is a magic pill for sub-par mediocre average slop in endless minor variety.
Already AI art is becoming noise because it isn't valuable enough to warrant attention, and there is too much mid-tier content.

Just do it.
Stop asking how.
Stop thinking those thoughts. Do it and keep doing it until you stop thinking those thoughts.
I am not asking to stop all thinking. That is virtually impossible. I am just asking you to not indulge those thoughts by focusing on other things. This does not require some super Godly state.
You can't be hurt if you don't think hurtful thoughts. Catch yourself doing hurtful thoughts.
If you were out having fun all night you won't feel hurt if some girl refused to talk to you. You would brush it off and not even remember it. But you ruminate on it.
Obviously this will take lots of experience. You won't succeed in one weekend.
Your inner game is shit. It takes years of practice to build rock solid inner game. You go out each night and work on your inner game. Go out tomorrow and refuse to care how anyone reacts to you.

Stop doing it.
You have to realize you are doing the suffering. Stop creating the idea of rejection.
Do not allow your mind to think the thought, "I got rejected" and the like.
Your focus needs to be on having fun and enjoying yourself, not on any particular girl accepting you. You don't need their acceptance. That is not why you are socializing. You are socializing for the joy of socializing.
You didn't get rejected, you just met a person who wasn't a right match.

Personality is genetic. It doesn't change. What changes is your confusion about your personality.
Personality is not just MBTI, personality is more fundamental and unique.
MBTI is to personality as IQ is to intelligence.

It will never be forgotten.
 

It's easy to mitigate all those concerns by taking low doses.
Do 10-15mg plugged and you will get a feel for it without much risk.
You can also slowly dial in the dose by using a vape cart.

Not right.
You act like ejactulation is some undue stress on the body. This is not the case.
Your body is not so fragile that it needs to preserve a thimble-full of precious sperm as "energy". This is a load of bro-science nonsense.
Physical exercise uses way more energy than ejaculation. And physical exercise is definitely healthier than sitting in a chair all day. The human body deteriorates from non-use.

I personally feel the basic methods are massively underrated in this community cuz we kinda operate on the assumption that your some badass who can just cut all other methods and go for the enlightenment jugular. In reality this isint usually sustainable.
Loving others, talking with god (which could fall into the category of prayer loosely), meditation, awakening theory...will these get you enlightened? Hell no. But not having them as a foundation? You'll have a rocket with no launch pad or a poorly calibrated launch pad. 👎🏽

Not as regularly as I should, but yet.
I'm not sure. It's hard to know what is truly necessary without lots of experience and it will vary by individual.
If pranayama is producing good results then I would say not. But if pranayama doesn't feel like it is doing much for you, then you should add mahamudra to see if it boosts your results.
Test, test, test -- to find what works for you.