SeaMonster

If you think this life is the will of God (sort of in the Islamic "Inshallah" sense), you are probably nowhere close to being a spiritual seeker anyway; you're probably not going to get there in this lifetime (too many stages to hop through.)

Read with an open mind, and if you come across material that makes you uncomfortable or you resist it, come back to it until that goes away.

They are not looking for the "true nature of a man" (which is like saying "soul" or another ill-defined reification.) They are looking for certain markers of masculinity, and while it would be preferable to them that the guy is good and masculine, they will take bad and masculine over non-masculine.

Honestly -- this is all very theological, and is completely irrelevant to spiritual realization. I think the Buddhists (Buddhist Rats (tm LG 2023)) are essentially right and you focus on the Eightfold Path and drop the theological bullshit because it adds little of value to you.

That would be nice, but I usually have to remind her, because she's very busy and her personality is such that she sometimes neglects self-care.

It's not a bad map, but just so that we're not confused, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive boxes. One can "live" self-esteem by doing things in the other boxes (e.g. doing exercise.) In other words, I take a very behaviorist outlook on a lot of this stuff: self-esteem is how you act/behave, not necessarily some freestanding feeling or thought we have about ourselves. I wouldn't reify self-esteem or wisdom or anything in the Psycho category -- it's more of a Forrest Gump thing (stupid is as stupid does.)

If you're building an identity as a unique t-shirt designer that's fine -- we're just saying it's not an essential part of game to go to cartoon character lengths. If one does do that, you have to question the attention-seeking.

I don't have a problem with it as far as my parents. I get my mom to meditate sometimes for her own benefit/relaxation but I don't expect them to care about spirituality beyond that -- it's just not going to happen and I've accepted it. No, if you were enlightened it wouldn't appear as anything ordinary to YOU, but you would also be aware where you are in comparison to others, and present yourself in whatever way was necessary to help them awaken.

Don't worry about comparing yourself to where others are. Believe me, when you're enlightened all that bullshit goes away anyway, and at worst you are frustrated at others' pace to catch up with you. But you had excellent insights earlier in the thread, probably some of the most advanced of anyone here. Run with those and drop the forum bullshit.

Yeah, certainly it's part of the game and you have to at least have the courage to do it. Honestly, some parts of Mystery Method never sat right with me -- I found them gratuitious. E.g. the storytelling DHVs sometimes seemed more like trying to get attention/narcissistic supply in the way that HE did it, and also the peacocking was just way over the top for the same reason. They weren't essential implementations of game, it was just his personal pathology, I think, and were rightly mocked by the wider culture. Like, it can all be much more subtle, you never needed to turn yourself into a cartoon character.

Yeah, it's kinda ass-backwards. If you have serious flaws in your "Inner Game" (which is really another way of saying self-worth or self-esteem or being grounded, etc.) then that is going to trip you up no matter how many approaches you do; that is going to be your limiting factor at all stages of meeting/being with women. And guess what -- if we examine the historical record, that is what guys like even Mystery were prone to.

One of the weakest aspects of Pick-Up for me (and I followed the development of the entire movement, from the early 2000s on) is that they never really focused on Inner Game. They always talked a good game about Inner Game, but any coverage of it was always ridiculously insufficient and superficial. But to me, Inner Game is about 90% of game.

This isn't actually true. You don't need to become a COMPLETE ASSHOLE. You just need to be an "asshole" when it's called for/appropriate. Nice guys sometimes see the world in black and white; you have to travel the Middle Way, like Buddha.

Presumably because no matter how many successes you have, if your failures are critical enough you will go down. Now, I don't know whether he is right or wrong, and whether China's failures are critical enough, but successes don't matter in such circumstances. The Soviet Union had all kinds of successes up until the moment it collapsed as well. It's rare that EVERYTHING goes wrong for a power before it collapses.

The difference is, you can at least potentially experience a nondual state for yourself. You can't experience the truths of fundamentalist Christianity for yourself, at least nothing beyond your FEELINGS under some circumstances. Which is why nondual teachers are just there to point you to your own experience, not offer some pseudo-philosophy or religion. If they do the second, they are basically gigantic gaping assholes.

Leo doesn't teach any levels of awakening. He teaches a pseudo-philosophy informed by psychedelic experiences. You can call it awakening and you can call a cat a dog, but it doesn't mean it is what most people mean by awakening (which is nondual realization, from partial to complete.) The Spiral Dynamics/Integral Theory is basically what you THINK of yourself. If you call yourself Coral, who is objectively going to tell you you're wrong? So it's correlated with your own personal level of self-delusion. Anything where conceptual self-evaluation is called for is fraught with self-deception (unlike a stable nondual stage of consciousness, which is at least experiential and direct.) So you can see yourself any way you want; you can think you're below average on a narcissism test when you're a raging narcissist, etc. That's what SD tests for: your own levels of delusion and grandiosity.

Sounds an awful lot like perseverance/tenacity, but then Leo loves to redefine words and use his own peculiar private lexicon. (I guess if he uses words that actually have the correct dictionary meanings, he'll feel like the world is fucking him in the ass or something )

When people say cold approaching, what they actually mean by it is relative to their own ability to read a woman's interest at the subtlest level of behavior. If you lack the ability to read a woman's interest, it is ALWAYS cold approach. If you don't it's never COLD, it's warm to various degrees -- but it still is an approach, not app game, or social circle game or trying to weasel your way in by being a "friend" game.

You have to learn not to give a shit. There are lots of fish in the sea - this is true. The problem is when men pedestalize a specific woman, what they call "oneitis" in pickup. Like, "oooh, she is my perfect type physically" or whatever. Fuck that bullshit, there is a multitude of women you can potentially be with.

LOL. That's one of those things guys find out about and think they've discovered a shortcut. Yes, you still need game, otherwise your "perfect type" will eat you up and spit you out.

It's simple realism and knowing your limitations. You're not going to be DaVinci without his IQ and God-Given talent. You may be able to get the equivalent of multiple college degrees in whatever fields you're interested in, but that is not the same as being a DaVinci level polymath (or Goethe or even Ben Franklin.)

Being "nice" circumstantially isn't the same as being a "nice guy." You have to be "nice" conditionally; in other words, AS REWARD for a woman's good behavior. The second good behavior stops, you have to stop being "nice." Guys being "nice" when women behave badly is the death of a relationship. She has to be reminded that she is REPLACEABLE in subtle ways.

"A nice guy" -- a guy with low self-worth. Typically pedestalizes/idealizes women (this is something women hate even more than mild forms of abuse, which can at least be emotionally engaging for them.) A "nice guy" doesn't have options, therefore his sexual strategy is to "be nice" and of course women easily ascertain this. The reason "women like assholes" is because they perceive that the assholes have OPTIONS, and there is nothing that excites women more than being with a guy other women want to be with. Literally, the #1 textbook attraction switch for women is PRESELECTION.

Therapy is what you make of it, even if the therapist is mediocre. The problem with self-help is that everyone has blindspots. Short of certain psychedelics that can give you insight into them, therapy is the next best thing. That's what you want to be looking for. It's "not knowing what you don't know" that is the real problem. Most people just project that shit and don't even want to deal with it. They are in their own mental-emotional bubble and are coping in unhealthy ways. This is reflected in their shitty personal habits, which are rationalized to the hilt. If you are really bent on self-help, my suggestion would be to ruthlessly eliminate all negative habits (porn, video games, alcohol, etc.) and adopt good ones in their place. The name of the game is BRAIN PLASTICITY.

Unless you have a 150+ IQ, don't bother. You'll be a jack of all trades rather than a true polymath.