Vladimir

Hi everyone, I just posted this video to my YouTube channel, could you guys please give me some feedback? I'm still learning how to articulate things better and find my natural voice, so I know that part needs work, but what do you guys think of this idea of using metaphors/symbols to implement useful self development techniques into our lives? Would be great to hear any constructive criticism or feedback as I'm very new to this style of teaching. PS: Yes I am trying to promote my YouTube channel as well.

Been doing a lot of shadow work lately, going back in the past and seeing if I'm holding on to anything. Ended up uncovering a bunch of hurt from yesterday's sitting and realized I was still clinging to the past and carrying a lot of shit with me. I was actually shocked to discover just how much hurt and suffering I have created in the 34 years that I've been alive and became mindful of how it is still affecting me today. Though, looking at these 'dark' memories in a mindful way, allowed me to send unconditional love and compassion to my younger versions and people who were involved in these memories. The book about Ayahuasca I'm reading helped me with this difficult journey of digging into the past, "what is consciousness of consciosness? Ayahuasca replied: Love. She told him that love is the acceptance of all things as they are without reservation." I may be getting a little taste of unconditional love, as I sat with these memories, I noticed that they were not triggering me anymore after a while, I then started combining a lot of them together to try to increase the "level of negative intensity" to see if the combination would trigger me, though even the negative synergetic memories didn't seem to have the usual trigger response within me. What's helping me let go of these memories is letting go of the idea of perfectionism and always trying to compete to prove that I'm good enough. Very early in my childhood, I installed the idea in my mind that I'm not worthy, probably because of not much love from my parents, love wasn't even a word in our family and both of my parents are still alcoholics to this day. But whatever the reason, I have lived with this "virus" for a very long time and it's still isn't completely uninstalled from my "operating system". I've kinda known that past emotional traumas can cause all kinds of illnesses in the body, but I don't think I fully believed in it until I've read Joe Tafur's book, he finally solidified this understanding in my mind and cleared any doubts. He is the perfect person to write a book about this stuff because he's been on both sides of the fence, the Western medical system as well as working with Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicines and becoming a shaman, so this gave him a unique perspective to see the big picture and understand blind spots in the mainstream healthcare system. What's really adding a lot of power to the message are the "case studies of individuals from all walks of life who suffered from PTSD, Psoriasis, Anxiety, Depression, "Soul loss" etc., these people came to the Amazon because they have all been to countless doctors and practitioners who were unable to help them and could only offer "treating" the problem instead of addressing the root cause of it. I've always intuited that our healthcare system isn't really designed to truly heal people, but this book finally put all the pieces together for me and I'm already starting to get insights about my past and how I'm carrying emotional trauma and starting to heal myself during meditations, even before the actual Ayahuasca ceremony. I think being an empath is helping me work with these emotions as I'm very sensitive to my body and that's why I could feel all the past hurt, neglect and body and mind abuse in the forms of binge drinking every weekend, eating shit food, polluting the mind with toxic information etc. These things would really take a toll on me in the past, and a lot of times I tried getting better, by starting to exercise and try to quit drinking, though what I didn't realize back then is that the mind is probably 99% of the work and I wasn't doing any mindfulness work or meditations back then which was a huge missing dimension of the healing process. Though, being an empath is a doubled-edged sword, now that I'm developing love, compassion, joy, happiness and mindfulness in my life, I'm starting to really feel these qualities blooming, I'm also starting to laugh a lot more and overall feeling great, so I'm very excited about what's to come next.

When I finished yesterday's morning workout in the park, I meditated for about 15 minutes and then just laid down on the grass to rest and enjoy the sun and nature. I felt so amazing, my body blending in with the surroundings, the warmth of the sun, wind, earth. I felt like I was transported back to childhood in Russia, when I was resting in the sun at the beach on a 3 month school break, back then I felt overjoyed knowing I have so much time to enjoy without school, I felt happy. What I've noticed is I'm starting to feel happier everyday, I make myself laugh a lot more, I'm becoming more creative, I'm actually starting to feel joy again and seeing the beauty and magic in life. I've also finally recorded and uploaded new videos to my channel with the ideas that have been on my mind for a very long time and it feels like the burden has been lifted off my shoulders. Though these videos aren't as perfect as I envisioned them to be, I think this is a huge progress towards realizing my dream of becoming a personal development teacher, just like Leo. And the rewards are already starting to come my way, I have shared the video on "how to achieve emotional mastery" with a list of about 150 meetup members which I created for the local community and I got one very profound reply to the video where the lady talked about how she was able to connect and resonate with a lot of points that I was making in the video and that it brought her to tears while watching it. I feel like I have already contributed something significant to humanity just with those few videos, and it far outweighs any financial reward I've ever gotten from being in it just for the money. Even Clever Techie's thanks and praise never felt as rewarding as this woman's message, because I feel like this type of work is truly helping people become happier. What I've noticed is that my energy and emotions seem to fluctuate quiet a lot during the day, as I was trying to record the video on willpower yesterday night, I felt like I just couldn't talk in my natural way and felt like I was constricted in blocked around the chest and throat area. Though after meditating this morning, I started recording the video and it just kinda flowed and I was able to record it without much difficulty. I guess this flow will start happening more as I practice talking in front of the camera and start to organize these concepts and articulating them, I'm sure it's a skill that takes time to master, I think Leo mentioned it took him a long time to improve his speech. It seems like the pieces of the puzzle in my life are starting to all come together, this is the most difficult journey I've ever been on, though I'm starting to actually enjoy the challenges, my willpower is growing, my understanding growing as I'm sharing these insights on videos, the whole picture is becoming clearer, no wonder they say "the best way to learn is to teach".

The most frustrating thing about self development work is that we have the information about how to actualize, but I think what's lacking is the implementation part. How do we sort all this stuff out? How do we build the foundation / framework for successful implementation? How do we remember to apply new concepts during difficult situations? How do we get started? So I've taken out a couple of concepts from Leo's videos where he talked about becoming emotional superconductor and doing what's emotionally difficult, I also added some of my own ideas from experience of overcoming 20 years of living with social anxiety disorder, to create a plan on how to "Achieve Emotional Mastery". Using symbols and metaphors is going to help us get organized, sort the information, and "defragment" our mind hard drives so we can have fast and easy access to the information when we need it. But most importantly, we'll be able to pull this information from our minds very quickly, during any situation. I also just made a video, but it's only a part of what is in the DOC file I have attached, the DOC file has the full plan on how to implement this concept based on symbols and video game metaphor. You can apply it so anything basic or advanced such as emotional mastery, this framework can be used to initiate any positive process in your life. Here is the link to the video (but make sure to download the DOC file to see the whole process): Let me know what you guys think! How to Achieve Emotional Mastery.docx

@mathieu No problem amigo, I like how you put the eye inside the triangle, I use that too, it can remind us to be mindful / aware of these 3 concepts. @TJ Reeves Thank you brother

@Joseph Maynor @Sevi Very glad you guys found value in it! My whole approach to self development work and teaching will be focused on practical tools like these.

@Natasha Okay I'll try both, thank you.

@Natasha Thank you dear. I'm already on a very clean diet so I don't think that's the issue and I'm taking Tumeric which I think is the same as Curcumin? I haven't thought about vigorous work-outs causing inflammation, so I'll try to take it easy during my park work-outs. I'm also meditating a lot, doing yoga, getting good sleep, taking supplements, spending time in nature and recently started incorporating breathing techniques. I still feel like I have inflammation though because of all these symptoms, thanks for pointing out 95% statistic, I'll definitely watch this thing more closely from now on.

Told Ashley, the Ayahuasca shaman about negative symptoms of constriction, shortage of breath, anger, anxiety, tension, heaviness, stiffness and joint pain I have been experiencing and how a lot of these seem to come in synergy, all at once to amply the negative effect. She asked me how I wanted to feel after the acupuncture and drumming journey, I told her I wanted to feel more expansive, light, energetic and free from these nasty symptoms. She also explained how important it is to work with these Chinese herbs she has prescribed me and how along with the proper diet and preliminary ceremonies coming up by the end of August, is going to help me prepare for the retreat in Peru. She mentioned that Ayahuma is like the invisible Yoda master that's getting me prepared for the big battle ahead, it helps to recover from emotional shocks and release past trauma which is the medicine she was taking before her first Ayahuasca ceremony. Her first ceremony made her cry for three days straight, a lot of it coming in wails as she described it, because she was in a very dark emotional place back then. As I laid down on the table, she put a bunch of needles in me and then begain playing the drum, I could feel losing a sense of my body and getting into an energetic state of flow very quickly, similar to what I get at about 30 minutes of meditating. She asked me to release negative emotional spots of my body and to imagine throwing it into the fire and burning it, some of the heaviness and negativity seemed to flow away as I followed her instructions, I began to feel lighter and more expanded. Then she stopped playing the drums and asked me to think of the first memory where I first experienced negative sensations of anxiety and tension around my chest. I told her about an episode back in Atlanta when I just moved here, when I was in high school and was called on to go in front of the class and say something about a mathematical problem. I felt very embarrassed doing that and could feel anxiety and shame flowing through my body, which I guess was my first experience of a panic attack. From that point on, I thought something was seriously wrong with me, I told her that my social anxiety snowballed from that point on and started thinking like everyone is judging and criticizing me for my accent, so I couldn't speak with confidence anymore. She asked me what kind of guide I would call on to help that younger version of me and I told her I couldn't think of any, though I have been using Ganesha a lot in my life, who represents the remover of obstacles. After a while I told her, I guess it would be my mom who the younger version would ask for guidance and support in that moment, in the classroom, though I couldn't think anything that my mom would say to me at that point. We finally came to the conclusion that what I needed at that point was support, the situation made me feel very insecure because I was in a new country, with language I couldn't speak or understand, I was sensitive to other people's judgement, being a full-blown empath as I recently found out and cancer, all of which adds on to the sensitivity, on top of that my grandparents and aunt were not supportive and negative and my father basically betrayed me for lying to me by saying: "you'll be back to Russia in one year", but failed to keep his promise. She asked me what my young self would say to my father, and I told her: "you asshole, how could you do this to me? how could you betray me like that? you told me I was coming back to Russia in one year!" of course I sugar coated it otherwise there would be a lot more cursing in those phrases and they would sound much harsher in Russian. After the acupuncture / drumming journey / therapy session was over, we briefly talked about the experience, she told me "good job" for going through some of these difficult memories. I felt uplifted, light and energetic after the session which was the initial intent. We both agreed that I might still be holding anger towards my father even though I have let it go on the thought level. On the emotional and spiritual level I may still have a lot of these traumas and wounds, which have been accumulated for about two decades of me living here. Ahsley told me Ayahuasca is about healing those emotional wounds and traumas, and I told her it sounds like this is exactly what I need and that I feel blessed and greateful for having stumbled upon her on my birthday, which was the greatest gift from the Universe that I did not expect. I'm feeling calm, light, peaceful, clear headed and a bit joyful at the moment. I guess the positive vibrations also work in a synergistic way. I think there are great things coming my way and I'm feeling excited about the Ayahuasca healing journey as well as "We are One" project that I have been working on daily, life is starting to become a lot more interesting!

Can't seem to wake up this morning, the body is feeling heavy, stiff, feeling joint pain, all symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, breath is constricted, I wonder if inflammation can cause arthritis and muscle pain. Tried opening the jar with coconut oil in it and couldn't even do it because my wrist and fingers would start aching and I felt weak which made me think these symptoms are real and I'm not just making them up. I think all these negative symptoms I'm experiencing are connected, I think at the root of it all is a deep spiritual / emotional trauma causing all kinds of imbalances in the body, including inflammation, cortisol overload, anxiety etc, which I'm hoping to heal with Ayahuasca ceremonies, so I'm really looking forward to that, especially after reading Joe's book The Fellowship of the River, he has really opened up my mind and I now have no doubt about making the right decision about it. On the positive side, I have learned a rhythmic, smooth breathing technique yesterday and it seems to be helping me in getting grounded and getting more energy. I was mindful of the way I was breathing and kept it rhythmic during yesterday's Yoga practice, and was able to get into a very pleasant, energetic state that I wouldn't normally feel. It seems like this has been the missing component that I have neglected, maybe because it's too obvious and simple, but at the same time it's not easy to implement because of the way we have trained ourselves to breath habitiually for many years, though habitual doesn't mean natural. This has given me an idea to incorporate breath into the "emotional mastery triangle" of the video I'm working on, I think I'm finally going to record it today, because I finally think I have made it into the piece of artwork that I have initially envisioned.

Same here with the video games brother. I think we need to provide very good reasons for "doing what's difficult" because it drains our energy and willpower, both are limited supplies just like health and mana in a video game. When you're fighting monsters, they deal damage to you so your health goes down, you also use your skills which drain your mana to defeat them. What's the motivation behind doing what's difficult? You will gain at least these 3 things - more willpower, strength and resilience. Even though our willpower gets drained, it also expands the more we do it, so next time it replenishes we'll have more of it. Strength is like your armor, being thick-skinned despite obstacles and resilience being able to quickly recover after stressful situations (how fast health and mana regenerate in a video game). Knowing you'll be developing these 3 things is going to give you more motivation to go through what's difficult, but you also have to see the big picture, what's are the most treasured achievements for human beings? - Love, happiness, joy, peace, Enlightenment - these are all inner treasuries to be cultivated from within and that's what you're progressing towards when you exercise willpower, keep leveling up, start with lower levels, gain experience, basic skills and slay some low level monsters, eventually you'll level up and be able to face more difficult challenges hope this helps! Below are three symbols I use to memorize "willpower, strength and resilience" which you'll be gaining when going through difficult situations, think of this as an "Artifact" that you can quickly flash in your mind to remind yourself of these things. Blue orb is willpower, bear paw is strength, lotus flower is resilience.

This morning's one hour meditation was very challenging, but I kept applying my own techniques that I recently invented by working on "how to achieve emotional mastery" video and they seemed to work quiet well. I'm using video game as metaphor for foundation of successful self development work, and when it come to doing something that is emotionally difficult, it's important to remember that during the time we persevere through those moments, we also end up building willpower (mana to cast spells against monsters), resilience (regeneration of energy and willpower, how quickly you can we recover after stressful situations - after fighting monsters / facing difficult challenges in life) and strength (increases armor, strength is how "thick-skinned" you are). I think the "why" is very important during these difficult moments, we have to know why we're putting ourselves through torture, what's the reason? Why should I be sitting here meditating when I could just make myself a cup of coffee? Knowing we are cultivating traits like - willpower, strength, resilience and ultimately emotional mastery is going to help, but also knowing the reason why we're trying to cultivate all of those too, why are we trying to achieve emotional mastery? Inner happiness, love, joy, peace, enlightenment - those are the greatest achievements a human being can ever dream of, though I think it needs to be taken even further because a lot of people don't understand that all of these greatest achievements are found within, this one calls for another video - "Humanity's Greatest Treasures Are Found Within". I still need to figure out if I want to include the video game metaphor in the emotional mastery video, the more I contemplate about it, the closer resemblance I see with self development work in our lives. Level bosses are threshold guardians, spells are skills, mana is willpower, vitality is energy, monsters are challenges, experience is experience, levels of difficulty are difficulties of challenges we face, higher and lower level skills are levels of skill mastery and also how sophisticated those skills are, you may need to learn other lower level skills to be able to build the talent tree up to the higher level skill. Memory is one such high level skill that a lot of people take for granted, there are so many sub level skills to learn if one wants to develop "unlimited memory" - effective reading, creativity of visualizing, symbols, metaphors, connections, knowing how to look for key points, why/what/where/when/who questions, and a bunch of other techniques like rhyming, SEE method and pegging that I've learned from the Unlimited Memory book. Since we're still living in the dark ages of self development and an obsolete monster of a financial system, people don't get financially rewarded for overcoming difficult emotional obstacles in their lives, though gold is a symbol for enlightenment, so this also adds up with the metaphor, because the more we evolve ourselves and do what's emotionally difficult, the closer we get to the enlightenment.

Been working on the next video called "How to Achieve Emotional Mastery" which is what I'm trying to do in my own life right now, so I have been putting together some things that I want to talk about, though I still need to organize it all. I think it's important to add, in addition to "the most difficult moments are the greatest opportunities for inner growth" - but what exactly are we growing during these difficult moments? Strength, resilience, willpower are the three traits that come to mind right now. Knowing this will give us more motivation to persevere through those challenging, difficult situations, so I think I should include this point in the video. .....Spent most of today working on that video's content, it turned out to be way too long because I was trying to cramp other ideas into it. I will be cutting out a lot of fat out of it tomorrow and deciding how long to make the actual video, I think it's turning out to be a masterpiece though and I'm glad I've been patient for a while, allowing insights to gradually come in and doing more research on the subject. I feel like I have created some great unique ideas on this approach to self development and the usage of symbols and colors to memorize these things so that people can actually take action on the things they're learning. I've also developed a framework of how one could approach this work using a video game metaphor which aligns with hero's journey, leveling up, slaying monsters, gaining skills, experience, knowledge etc, though I'm not sure if I'm going to be including all of that in this Emotional Mastery video because it might drag on for much longer. I have underestimated just how powerful the title of the video is, there is so much to cover under "how to achieve emotional mastery", mastery itself is a huge topic, emotional mastery is even more complicated. What I've noticed is I'm getting frustrated as I'm writing and trying to organize all these pieces of information, but I catch myself feeling this way, and then try to continue working anyway. This is something I've never been able to do in the past and this proves that the emotional mastery approach I'm taking works.

Leo's video on setting proper expectations for success is what I really needed to hear at this point in my life, he always seems to make videos as if specifically targeted towards my life's journey. With a few recent setbacks where I was feeling really shitty, I started questioning if all these things I'm working on are really helping me become healthier. The video reminded me that I'm only about 2 months into serious, self-disciplined work, and that I'm expecting results way too fast. The spiritually emotional trauma, psychosomatic wounds, blockages and knots I have accumulated over two decades of living with social anxiety, anger, regret and depression aren't going to go away in two months, wake up! I'm noticing changes in the positive direction in my mind and body, my mood has improved, memory is starting to become sharp, focus, understanding and comprehension all improved while reading books. I'm become the master of dealing with any kind of negative emotions and physical body sensations which are mostly noticeable in the morning and after taking naps, but also while being outdoors around a lot of people and approaching women. I have adopted the principles Leo has been teaching about becoming emotional superconductor, do what's emotionally difficult and I'm completely independent of the opinions of other people. All these changes, especially when it comes to dealing with emotions, are all very emotionally challenging, and so I have to be ware of homeostasis and how the body might want to bring me back to my old self with all kinds of unpleasant sensations. As I contemplated I realized that the most difficult thing for me to do is to let go of the idea of a romantic, loving relationship, not in a sense that I should completely give up on it, but rather stop seeking it. As I go out and start approaching women for developing emotional mastery, I keep catching my ego defaulting to the old way of thinking and trying to only talk to women who could be potential dating and relationship material, and as a result I'm letting a lot of opportunities pass, that I could have taken to further develop emotionally. As for the setting realistic expectations, seeing myself dying at 60 years old, I realized that I don't have that much longer to live - only 26 years, this made me really think of what I want to do with the rest of this very short time that's remaining. I still have savings left from my online marketing days and income coming in from the YouTube channel and some of the left over sites I created a while back, which should sustain me for another 10 years by conservative estimates. This works out with the 3-5 years expectation of making money from the business as Leo mentioned, so that I can work full time on the new channel, which is my true passion called We are One which aligned with my own personal development work and contributing to the world, and I'm okay with it taking up to 5 years before I make any money from it. For now, I still have a lot of work to do before even thinking about what sorts of products I will be developing and how I'm going to make money from it in the future. I got a lot of healing to go through, many skills to develop like speaking, voice, teaching, memory, learning, understanding, writing and everything else that will make my messages more powerful. As far as finding that dream loving relationship, I think that by creating value and working on myself, I'm actually greatly increasing the chances of it happening, instead of neurotically chasing these relationships, hoping to get lucky. So that aspect too, aligns with the personal development work and life purpose. I'm going to be working on letting go of that "wanting to be in a loving relationship right now" mentality which has been programmed into my mind over many years. I need to follow my own advice and realize that "humanity's greatest treasures are found within."

I feel like I'm very sick on a spiritual and emotional level, I took a nap yesterday after yoga class, and woke up about an hour later feeling heavy, tense, stiff, sore and in pain. My throat also felt constricted and angry and I felt like I couldn't take full breaths and my brain just couldn't wake up for a long time and felt like I was in a daze. After sitting in front of the computer in that state, I just had to laugh and say "wow I haven't felt this shitty in a long time", despite all the healthy things I'm doing and being physically very healthy and fit, something is still very wrong with me on a deep level. Could it be that my body is revolting against all the sudden changes, or maybe it's the deep emotional pain coming out in this way? Or maybe like I just learned recently, the shamans have known for a long time: "if the emotional body is sick, the physical body can't get healthy". This is a quote I read from The Fellowship of the River about Aayahusca's healing powers, written by Joe Tafur, who I met at the aware project in San Diego. I started reading this book around 15 minutes after waking up from that nap, after all the unpleasant symptoms subsided for a bit. Joe is a doctor who went to the traditional medical school in UCSD, and ended up getting depressed, realizing the whole system isn't designed to really heal people, but rather cover up and alleviate their symptoms, and of course - profit. He described some of the similar symptoms I'm experiencing - not being able to take full breaths, being disconnected from the heart, being in his head a lot and feeling self critical and judgmental. He mentioned that 30% of all medical school students get depressed and 46% of all doctors eventually get burned out according to recent studies. He describes our medical system as a rat-race that completely neglects spiritual and emotional dimensions of human health, which are at the root cause problems of many illnesses today especially in the Western society. I immediately felt connected, inspired and motivated by his story, and was very glad I finally began reading his book, I want to finish reading it before preliminary Ayahuasca ceremony at the end of August. It's like these horrible symptoms after the nap was body's signals to pick up the book and start learning about the plant "the madre Ayahuasca, the spirit of nature", so I can begin building closer relationship and understanding with her. It's strange and fascinating how events how been aligned by the Universe - I first met Joe at the aware project about four months ago, which is an event to spread awareness about psychedelic's great healing powers where I shared a story about my first mushroom trip with an audience of about 100 people. Joe spoke shortly after me, he was very eloquent and articulate, and I remember feeling a bit envious in the way he was talking and wished I could talk like him. After his speech I bought his book and he signed it for me, I shelved the book and told myself I would read it soon, but I wouldn't pick it up until yesterday's nap which is about 4 months since I met Joe. I had an incident about 2 months ago, where I couldn't sleep and was feeling a lot of the symptoms similar to yesterday's afternoon, at which point I told myself, I'm going to sign up for an Ayahuasca ceremony, and that's what I did the next day. I also kept going to all kinds of meetup events about spirituality and shamanism, until eventually I stumbled upon Ashley who had a meeting on "Shamanic Drumming Journey" which turned out to be exactly on my birthday on July 12th. Ashley turned out to be Joe's ex-girlfriend, an Ayahuasca shaman herself, the "White Patch" and she also persuaded me against going to the Ayahuasca ceremony in Julian because I really didn't know those people are and the way they advertised it on their web site was shady. Instead, I decided to work with Ashley so she can prepare me for the ceremony with her shamanic drumming, acupuncture and Chinese herb medicine. Nihue Rao is the Ayahuasca healing center in Iquitos, Peru which was started by Joe and two of his other business partners. Ashley told me about a 10 day ceremony in Peru, and about all the experienced shamans who will be there, she told me she was going there herself to continue learning about the plant, this retreat turned out to be at Nihue Rao which Joe talks about in his book. I signed up for it even before she mentioned that Joe would be going there, and before I realized this is the same center that Joe talked about at his speech at the aware project. The point at which I found out it's all related is when Ashley told me - "I highly recommend a book, it's called Fellowship of the River, I've never read it myself because it was written by my ex, but I've heard nothing but good reviews from other people." She also told me Joe himself would be going to this upcoming retreat on October 22, so I felt like it was all a birthday gift from the Universe, and couldn't resist signing up for it right away. I feel like madre Ayahuasca has been calling me for a while and I finally listened, it's amazing how things align and start playing in our favor when we truly want something. "And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." ~The Alchemist

@Natasha I agree, but there are a lot of fish in the mall and I'm keeping emotional mastery as priority so as long as I'm approaching I feel like I'm leveling up, so sport fishing will do for now

Dreamed about outwitting and beating a giant last night which could symbolize overcoming giant obstacles in life, that fits perfectly well with the huge challenges I'm facing. I also dreamed of symbols and how a lot of the memorizing and learning techniques I've been working on have come together and I was finally able to make use of it all, this made me contemplate more on all these techniques about improving memory and learning and how all the pieces of the puzzle fit in. “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” ~DaVinci - is the quote that came into mind during last night's contemplation, things are really starting to connect and the more connections I make, the better understanding I get about the big picture and the more I'm able to organize concepts so they're easily accessed from the memory, it's like the hard drive is being defragmented - there it is a connection between a computer hard drive and the mind. It's amazing what miracles our minds are capable of if we only invest time in upgrading and optimizing them, I think movies like Limitless and Lucy are metaphors for what is possible if we learn to operate this super computer. Went out to the mall yesterday to approach women, not that many people were there during the weekday, so I think I'm only going to be going out on weekends from now on. Still ended up approaching 5 women total, which didn't result in any dates and only one them said she was single, I tried to get her on a date but she seemed pretty shy and I feel like I could have approached invitation to the date more gently, by chatting her up a little bit first. Since I'm doing these approaches from the priority of achieving "emotional mastery", it makes it so much easier to deal with rejection, because I feel grounded in being who I am, and I know the reason I'm doing this is for overcoming my fears instead of gaining something from the external environment. Though I still noticed ego trying to get in the way and caught myself thinking: "you gotta pick the ones that look like could be a good match for you, and the ones that look more friendly" - this prevented me from approaching more, but I was able to catch myself thinking this way which made me realize the ego won't let go of this situation so easily.

Had a drumming journey session with Ashley who is an acupuncturist and Ayahuasca shaman so she can start preparing me for the ceremony at the end of August and the 10 day retreat in Peru. She was asking me how I'm doing, what's new, what I want to work on and how I want to feel at the end of the session. It was difficult for me to point out what the number one priority is that I want to address, because it's not so clear anymore and I've been feeling so much better with all the healthy activities I'm implementing. What first popped up for me was that I still feel like my heart is covered up with a lot of walls of numbness and layers of anxiety and social conditioning of behaving in a way that is not my true, authentic self over the years that I've lived with depression and social anxiety. Also, my throat which is the most sensitive part for me when it comes to feelings, is where I still experience anger, contraction and sometimes difficulty expressing myself, though this one is getting much better now that I'm organizing my thoughts, reading out loud and journaling everyday. I also told her I'm still experiencing anxiety and worry and these feelings are originating as tingling and contracting sensations in certain areas of my body, and that I'm still worrying about finances, so I told her I want to get grounded and address the root cause of this anxiety. I then told her about not having enough confidence and trust in myself, so I want to learn how to trust myself, and regain confidence and power. So, I couldn't really pinpoint one thing to work on, it seems there are still a lot of things to work on, though all these sensations have subsided a lot, and the confidence aspect seems to not lack so much in "social confidence" because I'm able to approach attractive women with almost no anxiety, which seems to be a huge deal for any guy these days, though I now see it differently (back in the days were truly brave men, warriors who went into the battle with perfect courage), in today's society we seem to have a bunch of cowards, not men. This shows how radically toxic and ineffective the system is at producing healthy and happy human beings, and we are indeed living in the dark ages of self development. I'm super excited about my YouTube channel, which has already gained 31 subscribers out of only about 100 channel views, that's really impressive - a 30% subscriber ratio! I feel like people are really going to resonate and connect with the messages I'll be creating and the first video proves it, it's like the universe is telling me I'm on the right path and to continue working. I have quit my other successful YouTube channel Clever Techie and haven't made a single video in about 3 months time, though the channel keeps growing and is now getting about 100 subscribers per day, which is bringing a bit more of a much needed additional income. It's not easy to let that channel go and I still haven't completely let go of it, I'm thinking at some point I will start creating new videos for it and maybe eventually develop a product because I have a list of over 1,200 newsletter subscribers that I can market to, though my priorities have changed dramatically because of this rapid journey of self evolution and I'm really liking who I'm becoming. I feel like We are One channel is really going to take off if I keep making quality videos with the most powerful messages. Not only is this going to help other people, but it's helping me a lot on this journey - "the best way to learn is to teach" and "if you want to really help this world you have to teach how to live in it" ~Joseph Campbell.

Martial arts dance without music turned out to be a lot more challenging than I thought, so instead I just recorded myself doing QiGong exercise and shadow boxing. Recording a video of myself practicing and experimenting with all kinds of moves, wearing ninja like Thai pants, in the middle of the park with people around was definitely outside of my comfort zone and made me self conscious, and I kept looking around to see if anybody is watching, this made me realize I need to work on the "I'm completely independent of the good and the bad opinions of other people". I also got tired pretty quickly from all intense moves I was trying to do and .2g mushrooms didn't seem like enough to get me in a very high energy state that I've experienced when taking higher doses at music festivals. After I finished working out, I laid down on the grass and meditated for about 20 minutes which felt amazing and was feeling like I was being blended in with the grass and all the environment around as if being covered by a soft, warm, loving blanket of nature. When I got home I took out about 10 photos from the video QiGong work out and post it on Facebook and "share with us your arts" section at Actualized.org forum because I remembered what Leo said about humans wanting to share their art and us being social beings, so I thought why not share my art with other people, maybe it would inspire others to adopt some healthy habits and do things outside of their comfort zone? I ended up getting a bunch of likes and comments on Facebook, but I think it was pretty unhealthy for me because I kept relogging in just to see if I got any new likes and felt like a drug addict needing his fix. So this gave me another insight into just how addictive I still am to social media praise even though I haven't been using Facebook at all in a long time, it's like I was a heroine addict relapsing after a long time of sobriety. I also felt how strange it was that many of the people that liked my photos and commented, all of the sudden started becoming alive in my mind, and my old memories about them were being activated and some of the feelings associated with them, it's like I was resurrecting all those people which haven't been on my mind at all back from the dead. Started a contemplation sesssion around 7pm last night and had the most amazing insights. I realized a lot of our struggle these days is being able to make sense of all the information, it's like we are experiencing the great world war of information these days, and depending on which sources we plug ourselves into, will create that kind of reality. I started understanding why I've been struggling with some of the ideas for YouTube videos, as I dug deeper into what the actual challenge was, kept asking questions - what is it? where is the struggle? dig deeper...where exactly is the confusion? And eventually started realizing, the ideas I wanted to talk about are missing some of the pieces of the puzzle and then I was able to come up with the most amazing insights about how self development is connected to a character in a game being leveled up and how there is levels of progression of all the areas in life. For example, emotional mastery is a very high level skill, to gain this achievement, one must be able to use visualization, meditation and rehearsal effectively, which themselves all have their own levels of progression and lower skills underneath them. The hierarchy and boundaries from the Systems Thinking came to mind, because "the most complexities happen at system boundaries" and "you must take care of the low level systems in the hierarchy, the higher level systems serve all the lower levels". I also thought of ways to incorporate symbols so that people who are listening to the video will be able to immediately memorize the techniques and implement them into their lives. For emotional mastery, using a triangle symbol to memorize the 3 most important things - 1) become completely indepent of other's opinions, 2) become emotional superconductor 3) do what's emotionally difficult - ace life! Out of these three statements I also created 3 pictures - american flag as symbol of idependence for the first one, iron rod for the superconductor, and lotus flower for do what's emotionally difficult (the most difficult situations in life are the best opportunities for inner growth). Using the triangle symbol with a combination of creating symbols out ideas is I think one of the most powerful ways to memorize anything. Also, to take this symbol even further, I colored the triangle in black - indicating mastery (black belt of emotional mastery) and put the "all seeing eye" inside the triangle as a reminder that mediation and self awareness is extremely important when leveling up emotional ly. The gaming analogy of leveling up a character fits perfectly here too - you don't go out to perform as a stand up comedian when you have extreme social anxiety (you don't start nailing the final boss when you're a level 1 character). Also as you fight monsters, you may lose health (vitality/energy) and mana (willpower). Energy and willpower is a limited supply in us humans, so one must be aware of his/her energy level and also the amount of willpower, because chaning anything about ourselves is draining on both, especially when it comes to working on facing emotionally difficult situations and responding to them by differently. There are other great concepts from Systems Thinking like being aware of the feedback loops, both reinforcing and balancing (in the case of self development and mastery the balancing loop is homeostasis - our bodies have learned to survive in a specific way over many years) as we try to change old ways, the bodies will most likely revolt and try to bring ourselves back to the old self, so being mindful of that will be very useful.

Inspired by Leo's art video, thought I would capture my QiGong workout this morning

Note: this is targeted to men, but I think women can get the same benefits from this. I just thought guys really needed to hear this because it's so sad to see a lot of them approach dating in the most neurotic neediness way possible which pickup culture perpetuates. I just had this insight recently from Leo's wisdom on "do what's emotionally difficult - ace life!", "become an emotional super conductor" and "I'm completely independent of the good and bad opinions of other people". Here is what's going to make your whole agenda of dating attractive women a lot easier and make you grow like never before in the process: Your number one objective should be to achieve "emotional mastery" instead of getting laid, counting your dates or getting a girlfriend. When "emotional mastery" is truly your number one goal you will finally start seeing progress and understand what areas in life you're lacking, this will also lead to authentic confidence, expression of your true self, and of course "emotional mastery", you will also be in danger of creating a true, loving relationship that most people never find. Emotional mastery will also benefit your life in all areas, you can keep leveling up your mastery by seeing which situations trigger you/make you reactive. Are the cars on a freeway triggering you? - that's a great opportunity to work on non reacting, do certain people push your buttons? - time to explore the deep root cause of your negative self-image that makes you react, are the past memories make you so shameful that you feel like pinching yourself? - meditate and contemplate on these memories, see them clearly with your 5 senses, do shadow work. The great thing about this approach is you can start at a very low level, think of yourself as a low level character in a game who needs to gain experience before nailing the ultimate boss. Can you look people in the eyes while passing them by? Can you say hello to people? Find these low level situations that trigger you can start mastering them, then go to the next level. Approaching dating in this way will eventually make you really grow as a person, what I've noticed about pickup community, is even the most 'bad ass' pickupers (Tyler Durden of RSD) are the most neurotic people ever and will never achieve emotional mastery, they will always hide their undeveloped humanity behind a mask just like Darth Vader.

Inspired by Leo's latest video about art, I finally decided to make a video of myself dancing in martial arts type of style. I've been thinking about all the elements that could enhance the video like clothing, accessories, environment, music and of course most importantly dance moves. I know I can do some good moves when I get into the pumped up state but I've never tried recording them before so I'm not sure what it will look like. Though this doesn't matter that much, I truly enjoy practicing martial arts and dancing outdoors, so it's more about me enjoying the process of flowing with the music and feeling one with nature and all surrounding environment, I feel like I'm at a peak of my performance and feel very alive in those moments. This morning, I'm going to drive down Mission Beach, take a micro dose of mushrooms 0.2g, pick a gorgeous looking background and see what kind of video I can come up with, this is going to be just a trial run though, no music, since I'm still waiting for the outdoor speaker to come in. I'm going to be playing around with the wide angle lens and seeing what the best positioning would be for dance type of video and hopefully can get the lighting right. This morning, I was thinking about how I can incorporate symbols into my videos so that people would remember to actually take action on things I'm teaching them. I think what we're lacking these days is not information, but rather an efficient way of learning, organizing and storing that information inside of our minds. I think a "learning system upgrade" is necessary which should start with the foundation of how humans understand reality. At it's most basic are 5 senses, visual being the most important. Symbols, including shapes and colors is what makes up all our visual world, beyond that is the meaning we assign to these basics objects with language. Understanding what the basics symbols are like space, dot, circle, square, triangle, vertical line, horizontal line and learning what they have been associated with can give us a good understanding about the world around us. Since we're immersed in these symbols they can be like constant reminders on the important information we're learning so that we remember to take action. Square is a mental model of reality with limits and boundaries, circle is the source (the canvas), dot is the content within the source (paintings inside the canvas), triangle can be a symbol of body, mind and spirit and remind us to work on all three to have balance in our lives and make the three create a powerful synergistic effect which is what the triangle represents. Similarly colors - black is the color of mastery (martial arts belts), blue is the color of quality of consciousness, the heavens (people couldn't see the color blue until certain time in history, and now people are asleep, not realizing their are divine creators and how powerful their minds truly are). Yellow is the color of joy, happiness, willpower, personal power which we are all the positive feelings we can be reminded of when the sun is shining. White can be a color of purity and enlightment. Green is the color of nature - growth, renewal, transformation, change, creativity, variety, intelligence. Trees are constant reminders of not only the color green, but also "systems thinking" and how we are all connected with nature in a symbiotic relationship. Trees are also like vertical lines, reaching out to heavens which is a symbol for materialistic striving to reunite with the divine, and this is basically what Actualized.org work is all about - raising the quality of consciousness and getting closer to our divinity. So there is a lot of ideas to incorporate symbols, basic shapes and colors and I'm coming up with more and more ideas everyday, there is plenty of other more complex symbols that I'm learning about from the Signs and Symbols Source book and I'm beginning to feel like a mage who is starting to acquire ancient knowledge and power and then learning how to wield these spells and powers to create a new Universe.

This morning's yoga practice was challenging, especially in the beginning to middle part of the class. It was held at a new location, with a more spacious and better looking studio, though they were having plumbing issues and the toilet was out of order so they set up a portable, blue chemical toilet just outside, in the back of the studio. I went to that bathroom before settling in the yoga room on the mat and shortly after one of the students asked the instructor about the toilet issue because she wanted to go to the bathroom. The teacher explained what the situation is with plumbing and told her about that blue toilet outdoors, at which point the student looked displeased and seemed to have been hesitating going outdoors, at which point I made what seemed like a funny joke to me: "Going to that toilet was a lot easier for me, I didn't have to sit down" - nobody even gave a slight hint of laugh to this joke, I was the only male in that yoga class. Also, a lot of women seemed to have very grim looks on their faces which added more negativity to my bad joke. At this point I started wondering if some women may have a negative perception of guys like me going to a yoga class, because they may be thinking: "he is just here to try to pick up some women." - This is not the first time I catch myself thinking this way, but I'm slowly starting to understand that these thoughts are the result of cultural conditioning and the impact the "pickup" scene had on me which is still programmed into my mind. Leo's "I'm completely independent of the good and the bad opinions of other people" comes to mind here which also goes perfectly in line with "become an emotional superconductor" and "do what's emotionally difficult - ace life!". So if I really embodied these 3 principes which are the most important to me at this point, then I wouldn't worry about offending anybody or looking stupid by making a bad joke, and I wouldn't worry about what other women think I'm doing there. On the other hand, I would seek out emotionally difficult situations just like this one so I can learn how to grow from it "the most difficult moments are the best opportunities for inner growth". I actually became aware of how I got myself to the negative thought spiral during yoga practice, and realized how toxic and ridiculous those thoughts are, so I was able to let go more and enjoy the other half of the class instead of letting it drag me down, like I normally would have. Yoga also seems to intensify whatever emotions are lingering and are most prevalant, and I felt like the negativities I was experiencing at first were definitely intensified. At the end of the yoga class, I talked to the instructor who was right next to me, she had a triangle tattooed on her arm so I was curious about it because I'm studying symbols. She told me it's the most powerful shape and represents - body, mind and spirit and that all three come in synergy and balance represented by a triangle which makes it so powerful. I'm constantly looking for ways to use symbols as reminders of the way of life, to stay the course and continue on this self development journey. This experience made me realize that I still have some work to do when it comes to unlearning a lot of the programming induced by this culture on the relationship dynamic between men and women, and I'm going to use the triangle to memorize those three statements during challenging social situations - 1) completely independent of other's opinions 2) become emotional superconductor and 3) do what's emotionally difficult.

@aurum Brother....those things you mention are exactly what you don't want to do when it comes to dating, all of them lead to more neurotic behavior. Counting dates, how many girls you talk to, inner game? Emotional mastery is actually pretty easy to understand, it doesn't need any pickup jargon or "inner game", it all boils down to how reactive you are in the process of doing things that trigger you, this is very easy to track. I say this is where you start seeing progress because of how easy it is to track - how watch how reactive you are in the process and you're mindful of it, it goes perfectly well with meditation and awareness practice we are all doing. See there is no "succeed" or "fail" in this approach - this mentality again only leads to more suffering, you don't beat yourself up for screwing up or getting rejected because that's not what's its about to you anymore, it's about developing your inner strength and mastering emotions, instead of "succeeding with women", "getting laid", or "getting a girlfriend", I hope you can see the distinction here. I understand talking to women is a skill and I never said all your problems will suddenly vanish when you come from a place of "emotional mastery", where did you get the idea that I'm not going to be talking to women? Using this mindset makes approaching women effortless as I have tested yesterday, how many pickup artists can say that? They will never get rid of their irrational fears of approaching women because their "inner game" is a way to manipulate themselves into confidence instead of developing true authentic confidence which comes from mastering your emotions. Of course you need practice, but the way you talk to women and relate to people in general is going to come from a place of authenticity instead of neurotic pickup manipulation where you hide your true intentions and come up with sneaky ways to seduce, build attraction, dominate and all the other pickup crap. The choice is really - is your goal to become a more authentic human being or a fake pickup artist. Sure some pickup techniques can probably get you more dates and lays..., but it won't lead to true inner growth which is what's really important.

Had a dream last night like I had an out of body experience and was traveling through walls, I went through the next door neighbor's wall, he had a desk with some kind of craft work materials, and I was knocking it all down, making a mess and then wondering what he is going to think when he sees all of his stuff messed up. I also remember thinking to myself, let's find an apartment where people are having sex! So I kept searching but couldn't find any to my disappointment. I think this dream may be interpreted as me stepping out of my comfort zone and exploring new skills, places and people. The ability of traveling through walls can be seen as a metaphor for recent "super powers" that I'm gaining with meditation, emotional mastery, qigong practice and others, and me wanting to "see people have sex" as a metaphor for searching out new excitement in life, like approaching women that I started doing yesterday. One thing that I want to improve is organizing everything I'm working on and creating a more disciplinary approach to all the important things and priorities. So far I have allowed myself to be very flexible with schedule because there have been so many changes in my life and I didn't want to overwhelm myself, though now that I have built up the willpower muscles enough and feel like I can add on more daily habits, it's time to re-organize stuff and create a new daily schedule. Creating quality videos for this new YouTube channel is the biggest challenge right now, I have a lot of questions like what are the best videos to create, should I be creating videos that would benefit me the most or should I target them to benefit other people the most, or somehow both? I think I'll be creating a variety of videos just to get enough practice and get more subscribers and don't dwell so much on making them perfect. There are some nagging ideas that have been on my mind for a while, so I think create videos for taking care of those first is going to free my mind up more so I can focus on other things. Another thing I'm struggling with is organizing all the information, there is so much I have already accumulated in a bunch of journals, voice recordings and mostly in notes on the computer in Action Outline. I feel like creating a system for organizing all this content because it's a total mess right now and it takes me a while to search for and find insights and ideas to incorporate into videos, I wonder how Leo keeps track of all of his content and if he's developed a good system for this. This is a perfect example of "hierarchies" from Systems Thinking, how taking care of the lower level systems is going to benefit higher levels. By creating an optimized organizational system for storing content on the computer, I'll be able to take more effective notes and have easier access to all the information and insights, leading to more efficient learning and video making.