Vladimir

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.

@Natasha Можно будет как нибудь потренироваться

@Loreena Thank you dear

@Natasha Do you still speak Russian or Ukrainian? I tried to read some book in Russian recently and realized I need some practice, I don't have anybody to talk to in Russian anymore so it makes sense that I'm starting to lose it. Yeah I feel like those Siberian genes have kept me alive through some difficult times.

@Natasha I grew up in Novosibirsk, Siberia and moved here when I was 14 How about you?

Just got back from my trip to the mall and beach. I decided that I would start approaching women again because I need to add some more variety into my life and dating sounds like it will spice things up a lot more. This time, though, I'm approaching this not from the neurotic motivation of "trying to get a girlfriend" or "trying to get laid" but rather achieving emotional mastery. I also came up with a simple opener: "Excuse me (get attention and stop her), do you mind if I ask you a personal question? (she will say it's okay 99% of the time), are you single? (let the intentions be clear and if she's interested she will say - yes), the follow up question is - would you like to go on a quick date right now? Boom! Instant date, no need to come up with any bullshit pickup techniques, just as efficient and straightforward as it can be without wasting anybody's time. When I got to the mall and started walking around, I approached the first woman almost effortlessly, there was little to no anixety and I was shocked at how easy approaching women really is when you're coming from authentic place instead of being shady and hiding your true intentions. I ended up only approaching 3 women in this way total, because there weren't a lot of ones I was attracted to. The last one I approached said "yes" to my question if she's single, then I told her "well you look pretty" and walked away. After 5 seconds of walking I was like wait.....shit....oh no....she said - yes! Oh my god what an idiot! I didn't react quickly enough to her saying yes with my follow up question of going out on a date and assumed "yes" meant she has a boyfriend for some reason. When I came back to the spot where she was sitting to ask her out on a date she was already gone. Knowing that I mastered my emotions enough to approach women in this way feeling almost no anxiety, I was actually laughing at how funny the whole thing was, is giving me a lot of self confidence, I have overcome what I have always feared the most! My old mental models and limitations have been dissolved even more now and I'm becoming truly someone else that I scarcely recognize anymore. It's like all the self development things and healthy habits I've been working on have come together in synergistic way and created this new, advanced, leveled up version of Vladimir.

I've struggled with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem for 20 years of my life while living in the USA. I was only able to break out of the that hell hole loop recently with 5g of mushrooms. It's nearly impossible to break out of a rigid mental model of reality charged with specific emotions when you've lived in it for a long time, I've tried a lot of other things prior to mushroom trip. From Systems Thinking: "people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems."

How about happiness as your new life purpose? As far as career choice, Leo's got the life purpose course, so you can try that.

Dreamed of playing a 2 on 2 volleyball game for money with a guy who used to be my friend, the other team who we played against had a woman and a little kid, we ended up losing $1,000 and I'm the one who kept raising bets and it was all my money I lost. We were both not trying hard enough because we thought we could easily beat the woman and a little kid and we wanted a rematch and told ourselves we would try hard this time, though I don't think my friend was willing to bet so much money this time and I thought it was unfair. I have interpreted this dream as - not giving my absolute best when it comes to this self development work, even though I have changed so many things already and I'm putting in a lot of effort like I've never done before, I still slack off and could do better. I have been careful not to burn myself out though and not push too hard because I'm aware of the homeostasis balancing loop, as we try to change ourselves the body will try to get us back into the state that it has known for many years, which is best way it knows how to survive. I was woken up last night around 2:00am by people partying in the jacuzzi area of my apartment complex, I would usually feel infuriated by this because I really need my sleep to function well during the day and this would mess up my schedule if I allowed myself to sleep in longer. I did feel frustrated, but I tried to use the opportunity to practice acceptance and emotional mastery, being okay with whatever situation was going on. I think this was a huge challenge, but I was able to be okay with it, though not fully. They kept on talking and laughing very loudly and I just couldn't fall asleep so I ended up calling the security patrol who told me they would take care of the situation immediately, and after about 20 minutes they took care of it and it was quiet. I keep running into these emotional obstacles whether it's anger in my throat, sleepiness, lethargy, physical pain, anxiety and reactive behavior. Though I'm a lot more aware that these things are surfacing and I'm more able to tell myself: "the most difficult moments in our lives are the best opportunities for inner growth" - if people really embodied this one piece of wisdom, humanity would evolve at an unprecedented rate and we would eliminate most of the suffering. I'm still trying to live up to this wisdom and keep reminding myself of it during my difficult moments as they pop up and it's starting to work great. Of course it's very tough to tell myself "this is an opportunity to grow" when I feel like shit, it's the last thing I want to think, but I think my vipassana meditations have really helped me be "equnamous" with the sensations - to experience all sensations as they are, and so this has given me a lot of advantage when it comes to these difficult emotional experiences and situations in life.

@TeamBills Yeah this exact mentality is what creates much suffering

I second that, I think you're indeed on the brink of a breakthrough. I've been feeling random bouts of "emotional waves" which make me feel like I'm about to cry, thinking this may be some deeply repressed emotions that are getting ready to be released.

I don't think traveling the world and having "place experiences" is that much effective in making you grow. The fact that it's so popularized by the mainstream should also make you suspicious, people spend tons of money and time traveling around, but how do you actually grow from that? I think a much cheaper and more effective approach is to have more "people experiences", it's so much more rewarding to really connect with people on a human level and share each other's life stories. People also push your buttons, so you will know what you need to work on and how you're still behaving in neurotic, conditioned ways. There is so much you can learn from social interactions with pretty much anybody you talk to, and it's free of charge most of the time.

What do you mean "not having love?" True love is found within. I think the best way to go is to embody 2) and then you can have the best 1) and while you're working towards 2) you can also make 1) help you get there

Spend a few hours yesterday listening to all kinds of electronic music, so I could get a feel of what the best type of music would be to dance to for my upcoming dance series. The idea is to shoot these dance videos outdoors in the most beautiful scenery possible, and there are a lot of them here in San Diego. A lot of things have to be well thought of for these videos to gain any traction and stand out - 1) clothes/accessories 2) scenery 3) music 4) dance moves 5) video lighting. I already have clothes which I bought for music festivals and accessories too, the scenery are plenty around here, I think the best music to dance to would be Trap and Liquid Dubstep, I should have the dance moves, or at least that's what I think, and I'll be taking a micro dose of mushrooms to enhance the dance moves and give me more energy. As far as video lighting, I'll just have to position the camera right, in relation to the sun light and use the marking flags to stay within the shooting area which I ordered yesterday. I also bought what seems to be a really bad ass outdoor speaker and can't wait to try it out, it's going to take a little while to come in though because it wasn't part of the Amazon Prime deal. If everything is done as I'm planning and I put in the best effort into actual dance moves and choreography, I think I'll be able to attract more attention to my YouTube channel, while at the same time enjoying dancing outdoors to the music I love and the beautiful environment, this is one of my passions and I truly enjoy it. It will also show my audience that I'm about more than just intellectual side of things when it comes to self development. Physical component is a huge area of self development, the body needs to be taken care of, and these videos will show people that I actually walk the walk. What I'm thinking of doing, is becoming even more fit, so I can have more energy and stamina to dance longer and better. I still need to build a playlist of songs I really like and can show my best dance moves to, there are so many styles, songs and playlists on YouTube and I think my brain was getting overstimulated and is the reason I couldn't fall asleep for a while yesterday night. I ended up sitting up on my bed and quieting my mind by practicing concentration meditation. This has worked great and after about 10 minutes, I felt like I was nodding off, so I laid back down and shortly fell asleep. This morning, I'm still feeling a bit off than usual, I feel like I haven't gotten enough sleep, though I'm not allowing myself to go with the usual complaint like: "I haven't gotten enough sleep, so I'm going to take it easy today". Instead, I'm actually taking advantage of this challenge and seeing it as an opportunity to grow. This kind of mentality of seeing difficulties as great opportunities is really starting to shift things in my life and I'm seeing great improvement in my self discipline and willpower as a result.

@alyra I think it's best to move beyond attachment, including what we look like, though honestly this is a difficult one for me to let go. "The second noble truth tells us that the root of all suffering is attachment" ~Zen Buddhism

Develop emotional mastery, see every difficult situation that would trigger you as an opportunity to NOT react. All the negativity in our lives spawns from neurotic reactive behavior, so become less reactive. If some situations are too difficult, start by lowering the difficulty level, think of yourself as a character in a video game, you don't start nailing the final boss without acquiring a lot of experience and skills first You could start with your own memories of the past which trigger certain negative emotions and start leveling up from there, good luck!

By spending time meditating, you are already mastering yourself right? I would do contemplation because it really helps you understand the root source of all your problems.

Worked on creating first YouTube video yesterday, but just couldn't get the lighting right so it turned out pretty dark. I also didn't know how I was going to remember everything I wanted to talk about and thought of some ways of having a computer screen in the same location where the camera is, but realized this wouldn't work because even the slightest movement of the eyes of the camera lens immediately gives away that I'm looking somewhere else which looks awkward. So I decided to use my recently gained memory techniques of symbols and visualization to try to memorize most of the stuff I was going to talk about, it's around six pages worth of content and turned out to be a 30 minute speech. I used visualizing technique pretty effectively but still need some kind of method for memorizing the sequence of content because that would throw me off and I would get lost in the middle of talking because I didn't know where to go next. I need to work on not blinking so much while talking and I also think I could be more expressive with my mouth, opening the mouth more and smiling and just adding more variety of movement to the mouth and facial features so I don't look as statue-like. Work on becoming more animated, and more expressive with body language. The voice was a lot of struggle at first while I was practicing and was very difficult to just talk because it didn't feel natural. But when I started making the final video, I eased into it more and it became more easy flowing, though I still need to work on it a lot to get to the point where I like it and where it feels natural. I now want to make it a daily practice of talking in front of the camera and recording videos because this is the aspect of my life that I really want to master. This is my chosen life purpose because it will help me learn and teach myself by sharing insights and teaching people in this way, and I realize there still needs to be a lot of work done until the point where I get very comfortable talking and start making quality videos with great insights, though things are moving forward, I'm able to remember things to talk about, put together insights and deliver them in a clear, easy to understand way, which is a great start.

What I'm starting to realize with this work is that people don't spend nearly enough time, not only meditating, but doing other internal mind work like - contemplation, visualization, recall, integration. As I'm learning more about symbols and learning about reality, I've come to realize that a lot of the books, movies, children's stories, symbols, works of art and other creative human expressions are all designed to understand reality on some level. I'm also starting to see there are constants in our life on which the world around us is built and understood, eg: direction, elevation, expansion, change, intensity, force, speed, proximity etc. There are also countless constants that point to what's going on in the development of human's lives, the hero's journey, understanding the world around us and ourselves, the spirit etc. There are messages, symbols, embedded all around us, in the nature, movies, books if you have the wisdom to read between the lines. "He who drinks from my mouth will become like me, and I will become like him, and the hidden things will be revealed to him." ~Jesus. There are many levels of understanding just like there are many levels towards achieving mastery, a character being leveled up in a role playing game, becoming stronger, wiser, gaining new spells (mind abilities), acquiring experience (applying knowledge in practice) and leveling up (getting insights) so that he can go on to defeat more difficult monsters (inner demons) and finally the ultimate boss (self). Knowing which level of understanding I'm at gives me a good perspective on what I still need to work on and what traps to avoid, which is why Leo's video on spiral dynamics was invaluable, it will also help me relate ideas better to people because I'll know the different levels to target the messages to. I want to start working on breaking down the system we're living under, the current paradigm of individual survival, materialism and dominance and analyze what the leverage points are within this system in terms of delivering the most powerful information to people. This is going to help me gain more understanding about myself and test my own knowledge, in fact teaching is one of the best ways to learn, which is another reason I want to do it. By writing outlines for videos I'm preparing to shoot for YouTube, I've already gained more understanding and was able to explore "blind areas" that I wouldn't be able to uncover otherwise.

I'm starting to relate differently to all the "negative" things in my life like low energy, muscle soreness, joint paint, difficulty breathing, problems with expressing myself, chest tightness, throat tightness and soreness, solar plexus and stomach tension. Yes, I feel like I'm sick on a deep spiritual level, because I'm already living a life style that is consider super healthy by today's standards, yet the symptoms, even though diminished, still remain. Which is why I'm really hopeful for upcoming Ayahuasca ceremonies, I think I'm going to be able to go deep inside on the spiritual level and address and uncover something which is the root cause of a lot, if not all of these symptoms. At the same time, I'm starting to see all these things as if they have been set up and planned for me on purpose, so I can learn from them and develop and grow despite them. It's like these challenges are the training grounds to create the ultimate warrior of light and this is what I feel I'm starting to become now. I'm coming up with insights and reality about life so profound, that they are accelerating my growth everyday and I'm moving over these obstacles and gaining even more knowledge, experience and wisdom from them, instead of letting them drag me down and discourage me. I'm starting to feel like I have been born to do this, to experience a lot of suffering and then use these lessons to grow into someone great. The metaphor of a lotus flower, growing and rising above the muddy waters of a swamp is perfect. And the great thing about this, is I'm no longer trying to show off, compete, prove anything, persuade anybody or even become anybody great. "Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both." ~Horace Mann, this quote nails it for me, as I'm seeking the truth, the most profound wisdom, insights, and ideas are starting to flow naturally. I think this is the best place to really become your greatest version of self and where true, most beautiful creativity, imagination and art can spawn from.