Xonas Pitfall

Recently, a discussion around a spiritual couple and their take on polyamory sparked a broader topic - the subtle (and not-so-subtle) self-deceptions that psychedelics can create. Whether it's illusions that surface only during a trip or ones that linger and distort your everyday thinking, the line between insight and delusion can blur fast. As I said in that blog post, at least for me, once I started practicing psychedelics, I was genuinely shocked by how much mixture and distortion my reality was getting from the drugs, and I had to pull myself out of it. I feel like in some communities, psychedelics are marketed as truth-revealers, or that only the wild, obvious delusions are insane, and they don’t follow you into real life. I had to battle through that, and still do to some extent. Even Leo said, "I have fooled myself in the past that a girl was my divine soulmate when she was not even close. And psychedelics made that illusion five times worse." That’s why I wanted to open this thread. If you’ve had experiences with psychedelic delusion, insight vs. illusion, or spiritual fantasy spirals, feel free to share them. The more honest we are about this, the better equipped we’ll be to use these tools responsibly!

This mindset is totally valid. But my only question is: why does that somehow mean women have a "dark" or "ugly" nature? How does this differ from guys? They might not value traits like masculinity, competence, or strength in a partner, so naturally, their version of "hypergamy" won’t be based on those qualities, simply because they don’t prioritize them in a potential woman. Aren’t guys just as "hypergamous" in their own way? Most men want the most beautiful, sweet, caring, kind, and feminine woman they can find. And if they eventually meet someone who feels like a better match, a lot of them will move "up", too. That’s literally why so many guys in the Red Pill sphere idolize the Leonardo DiCaprio lifestyle. That’s also why there’s a classic social cliché of a wife being left for a “younger” woman (the babysitter, a coworker, or someone new). Both men and women can be equally ruthless in choosing partners or even leaving relationships and marriages in pursuit of someone they perceive as "higher value" - it's not gendered, it's just part of human nature. Yes, you should value yourself and enter conversations feeling like you bring something to the table. But that’s just basic self-improvement and social dynamics 101. It’s not some deep insight into male or female "nature" - it's human nature. People who see themselves in a more positive light tend to feel more confident, more relaxed, and naturally more charismatic. That kind of energy draws others in, no matter your gender.

Absolutely, my point is that this mindset isn’t about gender - women aren’t fundamentally different from anyone else in this regard. Think about it: would you rather walk into a business deal confident they want you, or nervous and trying to prove yourself? In a job interview, would you believe you’re the perfect fit, or doubt your worth and seek their approval? At a networking event, do you show up as a magnetic presence or as someone hoping to be noticed? Which approach do you think gets better results - coming from a place of self-worth and confidence, or self-doubt and neediness? This isn’t some “dark secret red pill” myth exposing female nature, it’s simply a self-improvement strategy for building confidence and charisma. Believing in your own worth (I am the prize!) is a powerful way to make that happen. That's why it works for you.

No one’s saying you shouldn’t have confidence. If your mindset is something like “She’s amazing and I’m nothing,” then of course that’s going to hurt your chances. That kind of frame naturally works against you. I think you might be overcomplicating it in your head. Think about how most of your friendships formed - probably because you found the person interesting or cool, you were relaxed and friendly, you had some fun banter, and things just clicked. There weren’t power games. The more lighthearted, confident, and charismatic you are, the easier it becomes to build rapport and naturally vibe with someone. The "I'm the prize" mindset can be incredibly helpful for building a strong frame/confidence, and if it's working for you, absolutely keep it. Just be careful not to twist that into thinking women have some dark or manipulative nature for being drawn to confidence. You're human too - you probably enjoy being around people who carry themselves well. Ask yourself: when was the last time you were genuinely drawn to someone who acted like a doormat or was extremely insecure? Probably not often. It’s not about gender.

I’m not sure why so many guys in these circles take it to such an extreme, as if women have some dark or malicious nature just because they don’t respond to men they find unattractive. The same applies to men, too. We’re all drawn to what we find attractive - it's human nature. Attractive things naturally grab our attention and get acknowledged. It’s just how perception and desire work. There’s no need to polarize it or claim that one gender is more biased or more virtuous than the other. We're all working with the same underlying instincts.

Would you say this applies to men, too? I recall a study suggesting that men often experience feelings of disgust or irritation when viewing images of women they perceive as unattractive. [1] A study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that sexual arousal reduces men's disgust judgments of potential sexual partners, particularly those deemed less attractive. This suggests that, in a non-aroused state, men may have stronger negative reactions toward unattractive women. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02602/full

It’s actually kind of funny since many of the qualities often associated with God tend to align more with what we typically define as feminine traits - things like purity, love, absolute beauty, peace, selflessness, and the creative force (especially symbolized in the ability to give birth, which is unique to women). At the same time, I try to avoid rigid gender stereotypes, because God is often described through traits we associate with the masculine as well - power, omnipotence, all-knowing presence, structure, and order. Ultimately, it feels like both sets of qualities are just different facets of the same source. We’re all made in the image of God, we are God!

The filters in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can be thought of as analogous to our human biases - whether genetic, physical, or psychological. They shape how we process and interpret information. In this analogy, the material world as we experience it would be the final "render".

Ego wants what it can barely hold onto. Like a bird trying to swallow the biggest rat that can fit in its mouth hole until it chokes. Then bird blames the rat for nearly killing it. But bird refuses to swallow small rats. Bird looks for another rat it can barely swallow. The Rat is the Other! The Bird is the Self! The Swallow Operation is Love!

Honestly, I find these kinds of questions very silly, haha Humans are naturally selfish - we want the best we can get. When someone calls another person a "prize," they usually just mean that they see a lot of value in them. But value is subjective. What one person wants in a partner can be very different from what someone else wants. There are some gendered patterns, sure, but it's still highly individual. You can imagine a relationship where the guy is unemployed, plays World of Warcraft 18 hours a day, eats cereal for every meal, and has no real goals - but the girl is stunning, intelligent, skilled, and driven. Objectively, she would be considered the "prize" in that relationship. But maybe she genuinely loves his humor and charisma, so it works for them. Flip it - imagine a woman with no ambition, no direction, and a lot of baggage, and a man who's successful, emotionally stable, and has his life together. In that case, he might be seen as the "prize" by traditional standards, but maybe he struggles with emotional attachment, and she has a unique personality or emotional strength that helps him feel safe and supported, so the relationship works for them. High-value, attractive people are seen as the "prize". One common narrative I hear from men is the concept of "hypergamy" - that women are always looking to date someone above them in status. But men are just as selective - they just prioritize different traits. While women might value ambition, drive, confidence, or resources, men often seek femininity, softness, emotional vulnerability, beauty, agreeableness, purity, etc. Some guys end up thinking they're more valuable just because what they offer takes more "grind" or work to develop. But if you think those traits are inherently more valuable, then logically, you'd be attracted to highly masculine women, and most men aren't. So the whole argument falls apart. Men and women are playing completely different games when it comes to attraction and value. The irony is, a lot of men pursue these feminine traits but don’t genuinely respect them. They see value in women for those qualities, yet still place themselves above them, which creates a weird internal contradiction. If you chase those traits but don’t actually appreciate or respect them, you're dooming the relationship from day one. Thinking you're always the prize is dumb. That mindset kills any chance at a healthy relationship. You don’t want to be the one who settles, but you also don’t want to be the one someone else settled for. It’s a tough balance to find, but let’s be real - the ideal relationship is one where both people feel happy, lucky, and like they got the prize. Everything else is just ego talk to justify your lack of appreciation or care for the partner/opposite gender. That said, there is a time and place for the "I’m the prize" mindset. If someone’s coming from a place of low confidence, feeling unworthy, always pedestalizing men/women, or entering the dating world feeling defeated or intimidated, then flipping the script can be helpful. Believing you're the prize can give you the needed boost, optimism, and self-worth. Just be careful not to overdo it to the point where you stop appreciating the very traits you’re attracted to. If you lose that respect, the relationship is doomed.

Very interesting analysis. What do you guys think is the cause of this?

I love it!

I genuinely think play is one of the most underrated pillars of self-improvement – it's deeply tied to happiness. I wanted to create this thread for any fun personal tips or little hacks you guys might have. Let's play together!

Why do you think that is?

Power Plant... 😡

You don't escape thoughts, you just make them beautiful enough that you no longer want to!

RedTree!

One of the realizations I had after my trips was this: I used to think God was something out there - like some divine object I'd see or some presence that would reach out to me, or I’d somehow reach out to it. But that thinking is flawed. If God is truly omnipotent and omnipresent, then God has to be here, right now, always. So I started asking myself - what’s the one thing that has been with me through my entire life? It’s not my room or environment - those always change. It’s not my body - even my hands and skin have changed and aged. It’s not my personality - that evolves constantly. It’s not my thoughts - they come and go. The only thing that’s been constant is that sense of being. The “you-ness.” The awareness. The background observer that’s experienced every single moment of my life. And when you look closely, that presence has all the qualities we associate with God: always here, always aware, untouched by time. Not saying that other things aren't God, too. But the most direct, purest access to God is that.

It's pure awareness. It's hard to explain unless you've had a direct experience (usually on psychedelics). Imagine your entire current reality - everything you see, hear, feel, and think. Notice how all of it is contained within your perception? That container - the one that holds the present moment - is consciousness. It's awareness. It's absolute purity. It's nothingness. It's God. Think of it like this: if I wanted to build a container to hold a ball, what kind of container would it be? Probably round, maybe flexible, maybe firm enough to support the ball's weight. Now, imagine I want to hold water - I'd need a watertight vessel. For fire, maybe a lantern or a fireproof bowl. To hold sound, I’d need a space that could echo or absorb vibration. Now think bigger - what kind of container could hold anything? Not just one object, but infinite objects. Not just things, but time, space, experience, emotion - the entire reality you're perceiving right now. That container would have to be absolutely formless yet capable of taking any form. It would have to be infinitely adaptable, unbounded, and ever-present. That container - the one that is always there, holding your experience no matter what it is - is awareness. It's the ultimate observer. It's God. The most direct access to God is through your mind, through your perception. Strip away everything around you - your surroundings, your thoughts, even your sense of self. Just focus on the raw ability to perceive, to witness, to simply be aware. That silent observer behind it all - the one that's just there, holding every experience - that pure experiencer is God.

Tc! Tc! Tcch, tcch, tcch

Psst... psst... psst 🥛🧶🐈

I've noticed that speaking in a childlike, unfiltered, and cartoonish way often snaps me into a more playful mindset. Simple, silly expressions like “Yum!”, “Yay!”, “Wow!”, or “Hmm?” work wonders. Wordplay and puns also light up that playful spark. Adopting a cheeky, mischievous attitude adds to it, too. Letting your inner trickster out to play...

Maybe one day we’ll develop better systems that can punish greed, selfishness, and manipulation more immediately. But for now, someone can go their whole life being self-serving, narcissistic, and manipulative - and face little to no consequences. In fact, those traits can often lead to success. Narcissism isn’t “wrong” in a moral sense - in many environments, it’s the best survival strategy. If you're overly altruistic, selfless, or focused on fairness, you might actually suffer more. You can see this in nature: predatory, aggressive animals often dominate their ecosystems. They thrive by doing what works, not by following any concept of “morality.” This applies to human systems, too. Imagine a team-based online game. If one player finds a way to cheat - to aim better, move faster, gain an unfair edge - they’ll likely win more, have more fun, receive prizes, even become famous. If they die before the system collapses, they never feel the fallout of their actions. So in their lifetime, from a purely self-interested view, they "won." But if more players follow their example, eventually the game becomes broken. No one enjoys it anymore, and the entire system collapses. This is the flaw in many systems: corruption is often individually beneficial in the short term, and only becomes a collective problem when it scales. Until that tipping point, the incentive to act selfishly remains strong. That’s why corruption is... a feature, not a bug! You see this pattern everywhere today: from wealthy nations exploiting immigrant labor, corporations ignoring their environmental impact, to men resisting gender equality. When you're benefiting from an unequal system, fairness feels like a loss. Until the oppressed push back or the consequences begin to directly impact the oppressors, this pattern tends to continue unchecked. This isn’t really about moral “karma” - it’s just action and consequence. People overeat until they get sick, stay unproductive until they can’t pay rent, or rely on their parents while wasting time and numbing their brains with video games. It’s all the same principle: consequences always show up eventually. Sometimes they land on you directly, other times they ripple out and impact those around you. And sometimes, the effects are so long-term they only hit people you'll never meet in the future, which raises the question: why care at all? In many cases, people are just hoping they can get away with it. And sometimes, they do. Although I do think it's a worthwhile question to ask whether the psychology of such people is truly fulfilling and happy. I suppose one intuitively hopes their inner life is miserable, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case at all ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ Not sure what you guys think, but I am sometimes curious about that... 🤔

The human is born weak, tiny, and unsure - just a little baby! Baby feels hungry, so baby crawls around looking for food. Not much food out there, but baby loves stuff with lots of energy - high calorie, sugary goodness! Yum! Yum! Yum! The babies who loved that stuff survived better and passed on their hungry-for-sugar genes. Yay! Years go by... and now, humans make the infinite candy machine. And McDonald's! Baby is so happy! So many fries! So much ice cream! Baby eats and eats and eats! Baby is worshipping the candy machine leader! But uh-oh... baby gets pimples. Baby gets diabetes. Baby gets sick... and dies. Lots of babies eat junk food. Lots of babies get sick. Lots of babies die. Now babies get smart. They stop worshipping the candy machine. They find a new hero - the high-fiber, high-protein chicken god! Broccoli priest! Sweet potato warrior! Babies feel good again. Fewer babies die! But time passes... New babies are born. They forget what the old babies learned. They look at the candy machine again and think... "YUM! What were those other babies even talking about?!" And the babies eat. And the babies get pimples. And the babies get diabetes. And the babies die. And the loop begins again, and again, and again! To Infinity!