The post reminded me of a clip from this podcast where Chris and Alex discuss the three most common traits of highly successful people, and prompted some interesting questions for me. The three traits were:
superiority complex massive insecurity impulse control i.e. Narcissists/Cluster B-type people who can sit on their hands.
It’s interesting to me that we have developed a framework for motivation based on the assumption that people need to run toward something they want while also running away from something they fear. How true is that? How much is that a generalization? Is it possible to find ‘motivation’ or discipline in other ways, or can we conceptualize it differently? How silly is the comparison between objective measures of ‘success’ when internally people value very different things, as they discuss what people optimize for?
Their discussion of the tennis player who was categorized at 10 years old as ‘highly likely to be successful’ based on 2 metrics was interesting. Do ultra-wealthy/successful people become that way because they are already broken early? Or do those traits develop as they move into higher and higher echelons of society/social circles where those traits are more normalized? Is there a correlation between the two? When you’re lower down on the economic ladder do you become more empathic as a survival function? i.e. Does low SES cause higher empathy or does higher empathy cause lower SES, does lower empathy cause higher SES, or does higher SES cause lower empathy?
Taking some of these questions into account and the answers we may develop, is it possible for someone who is ‘awake’, self-aware, and self-loving (In a genuine rather than pathological sense) to be motivated enough to push themselves up into these pathological spheres and work to remedy them? How likely are the chances of success in such an endeavor? How strong are the opportunities for self-deception? To me, it seems like a quantum leap in understanding human behavior would need to be made, with the development of psychological weapons equivalent to nuclear bombs to be deployed for there to even be a chance of ‘success’. OR very subtle, sneaky tools to push on high leverage points of systems, within systems within systems. Whether you’re working with a hippie starving artist who is too good for their own good or an eccentric billionaire who is too broken for everyone else's good.
 
 

I am going to begin by covering/reviewing each of the micro and macronutrients, what they are, what they do in the body, as well as some common sources for each. I'll go through them one by one, over time. After that, I might delve into stimulants (e.g. caffeine), antioxidants, heavy metals, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, artificial flavors, etc., and then describe various diets, food preparation techniques, bioavailability, glycaemic index (GI), glycaemic load (GL), cholesterols and other such concepts and areas of interest. First things first.
 
MACRONUTRIENTS:
Carbohydrates: Simple carbohydrates Monosaccharides (e.g. glucose, fructose) Disaccharides (e.g. sucrose, lactose) Complex carbohydrates Starches (e.g. corn, potatoes, grains) Fibers (e.g. cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin) Fiber Soluble fiber Insoluble fiber Proteins: Complete proteins Animal sources (e.g. meat, fish, poultry, dairy) Soy products Incomplete proteins Legumes (e.g. beans, lentils, peas) Grains (e.g. rice, wheat, oats) Nuts and seeds Complementary proteins Grains and legumes Nuts or seeds and legumes Fats: Saturated fats Animal fats (e.g. butter, lard) Tropical oils (e.g. coconut oil, palm oil) Unsaturated fats Monounsaturated fats (e.g. olive oil, avocados) Polyunsaturated fats (e.g. omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids found in fish, nuts, and seeds) Trans fats Naturally occurring trans fats (e.g. in dairy and meat products) Artificial trans fats (e.g. in many processed foods)  
 
MICRONUTRIENTS:
Vitamins Fat-soluble vitamins: Vitamin A Vitamin D Vitamin E Vitamin K Water-soluble vitamins: Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) Vitamin B3 (Niacin) Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic acid) Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) Vitamin B7 (Biotin) Vitamin B9 (Folate) Vitamin B12 (Cobalamin) Vitamin C Minerals Major minerals: Calcium Chloride Magnesium Phosphorus Potassium Sodium Sulfur Trace minerals: Chromium Copper Fluoride Iodine Iron Manganese Molybdenum Selenium Zinc Also, Water!

Perhaps we need to make it safer for each other to not know and stay curious.
Some time ago I created this practice for myself where I would practice saying 'I don't know' and 'Can you explain this in simpler terms, please?' when talking with people.
I taught myself to:
1) not justify my not-knowing;
2) refrain from obsessive nodding, especially when I don't understand;
3) be okay with people making assumptions as to my level of intelligence. I discovered that one of the reasons I was so scared of being openly curious was that I didn't want people to presume I was stupid.
Another practice I developed for myself is non-judgemental listening. If I'm honest, I never know why someone is saying what they are saying. Could there be a better time to master not-knowing? On such occasions, if it's appropriate, I purposefully choose to not-know, sit back and simply listen to how the Void responds on my part.
All in all, not-knowing is truth. One can either practice it or overlook it. In my experience, the more I consciously live truth's attributes, the more fun my experience gets. 

Since Reality contains both these infinities, well....
There is an infinity of differently large infinities, see Cantors set-theory.
That is really good news: Absolute Reality does not need to imagine all Lilas to go on infinitely. There can be choice. Not all crap has to be imagined.
And the opposite view of your existential worries: You will get to experience all beauty, love and adventure imaginable.
>It bothers me that God is so unconditionally selfless and has an infinite capacity to remember/forget aspects of itself.
>Do you deeply fear that all the consciousness work you do can simply be forgotten by God in an instant and suddenly God imagines itself to be a rat in some sewer after imagining alien consciousness?
>This is a deep existential crisis for me
That view is deeply dualistic, and cured by a change of perspective happening at Awakening: What you think you are (separate self) is an illusion (moving/arising in you), what you really are is Reality itself (which can not loose or gain anything), and It calls all the shots. It can never die or change. It also doesn't suffer, it has the Illusion of suffering moving in it. It never gains or looses anything. 
> Why do all this work when you simply can forget all of it as if it didn't even exist.
Because what you can gain is so good that it is beyond your wildest dreams. And you actually are It. And you will put the work into it, get to understand/experience it at some point, this life or one of the next.
It/You (with a capital Y) decides what gets manifested next:
What happens after death, or "You are the only game in town": Francis Lucille "How Is Consciousness Experienced After Death? (Meditation 1 of 24)"
> Has God put enough pointers in the imagination just so that it can find its way back? 
"Ignorance is a bad idea only from the vantage-point of ignorance."
 
But at the end: You need an Awakening of what you really are to fully understand that. But don't worry, the real You can never loose or gain anything. In reality it is all a big joke. And the joke is literally the illusion-separate-self you imagine yourself to be. One day you will laugh, and be fearlessness itself.
By knowing what you really are, ever have been, and never can not be. And by knowing and understanding the structure of the "you" having these fears.
Hint: What is the you that worries to loose its Awakenings or Enlightenment again? Illusion-arisings (feelings and thoughts) of a separate self moving in that which you really are. You can not fake this understanding, nor just think your way through it. You need an Awakening into what You are, and what Reality is. All of what I have written above is prelimary to that. 
And also a very true perspective: "Though the view should be as vast as the sky, keep your conduct as fine as barley flour". Why? Because in Lila Karma holds. It can bite back, it is still valid. Cause-effect. Reality is smart, way smarter than the small separate self. So if you think as separate self "Ah, its all a big joke, I do what I want, who cares", bad bad bad idea. If a separate self thinks that, that thinks cause-effect or Karma doesn't hold... It will suffer, and not get to liberation or even relative happiness, until you correct that specific ignorance. Either you have realized what you are, or you better don't fool yourself as separate self "nothing matters"-style.  Suffering, or something has to rout you back home.... Its either suffering or understanding.
Luckily, at the end, You are It, so you can not avoid going home.... and then, if You want, on another adventure again to express your love.
Selling water by the river, "the wave fearing to loose knowing to be river-water"-style
 
 
 
 

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, The Supreme Source:
"I am the teacher, pure and total consciousness, whence everything manifests. Pure and total consciousness is the supreme source, it has created the Buddhas of the three times, from it have arisen the beings of the three worlds and the whole animate and inanimate universe. [... ]
Pure and total consciousness has created everything and has not created anything. It has created everything because it has created its own nature, pure and total. It has not created anything because within it there exists no need to create. When my nature is not understood and the phenomena that manifest from me become the object of judgement, desire and attachment give rise to the creation of concrete vision that is impermanent and destined to vanish like a magical apparition, and one becomes like a blind man who does not know what is happening. [...I"
"As I transcend all affirmations and negations, I am beyond all phenomena. As no object exists that is not myself, I am beyond meditating on a view. As there is nothing to keep apart from myself, I am beyond a commitment to observe. As there is nothing to seek other than myself, I am beyond obtaining the capacity for spiritual action. As no place exists outside myself, I am beyond a level of realization to surpass. As I have never encountered obstacles, I am beyond [everything] as self-arising wisdom. As I am the ultimate unborn nature, I am beyond [everything] as the [true] subtle ultimate nature"
"I am called "the perfect condition" becauseeverything is contained in me. I am called "the source" because the teacher, teaching, and disciples arise from my three natures"
"I am the essence of all phenomena; nothing exists that is not my essence. The teachers of the three dimensions are my essence. The Buddhas of the three times are my essence. The Bodhisattvas are my essence. The four types of yogins are my essence. The three worlds, of desire, of form, and without form, too, are my manifestation. The five great elements are my essence. The six classes of beings are my essence. Everything inanimate is my essence. Everything that lives is my essence. All the habitats and the beings living therein are my essence. Nothing exists that is not my essence because I am the universal root: there is nothing that is not contained in me. The unborn, the wonder of birth, and the manifestation of energy are the three aspects of the three teachers: this is their condition."
"As the three times, past, present, and future, abide exclusively in me, all the Buddhas are in the same condition: this too is my essence. As I transcend the dualism of subject and object, like space I am allpervading, and I constitute the fundamental substance of all phenomena: my essence is pure and total consciousness. I, that am the source, abide in the single state, and in this same authentic condition the practitioners of the "four yogas"
"Realize my nature, the supreme source that is pure and total consciousness. Teach that all the phenomena of existence are only myself! If you transmit my teaching, all your disciples will realize my nature and will become this very nature.
"If my nature were to be compassionately displayed to the beings of the three worlds who have originated from me,....  Thus I, the supreme source, disclose my nature, displaying it to myself."
"Nothing other than this exists; none of the Buddhas have ever received a higher teaching than this from me, the source. Aside from this condition of equality beyond concepts, I myself, the supreme source whence everything arises, have absolutely nothing whatever to display to myself."
"Listen! As all of you are created by me, you beings of the three worlds are my children, equal to me, the supreme source. You are me, inseparable from me, so I manifest to you and through the five teachers of my natures I teach the single state of the five essences [of the elements]. I am the single state, I, the supreme source: you too are, you must become certain of this!"
"Listen, Sattvavajra! I will show you your own nature. You are me, the source. I am and have always been pure and total consciousness. What is pure and total consciousness?"
"Among all things existing in the animate and inanimate universe, there is not one single thing that has not been created by me, nor is there a cause that does not derive from me. Thus I am the essence of all, and nothing surpasses me. I am superior to the three dimensions, to the Buddhas of the three times, to the Vidyadharas, to the Bodhisattvas, to the beings of the three worlds, to the whole animate and inanimate universe, because I am the maker of all. Before there was any other teaching I, that am the source, pure and total consciousness, disclosed the teaching of pure and total
consciousness."
 
But I don't know if that comment still holds:
You are  asking "God-realization the way Leo teaches it". Since I have a hard time following what the latest definition of the God-Realization-Awakening of Leo is, I am not the authority on what fits his current definition of God Realization.
There seems to be sometimes an update on the Awakening to the the Timeless Unborn (Capital Letters). 
 
-stolen from @GLORY- :
"No they can be awake
Or maybe even Awake
But they are not AWAKE™"
 
I personally can't agree to claims to why there is no Final Awakening or Enlightenment in which
everything (including all appearances and thought/understanding-arisings) appears/is imagined in You, the small separate you is fully seen through, including seeing ANY feeling of any kind of Subjectivity/Individuality watching any kind of Infinity arising in you as more illusion. Just One Infinite (potentially sentient) Reality/You in which everything (n+1) appears/is being imagined/Mirage/Show, and Tat Tvam Asi. And of course that includes
imagining/manfesting all (just appearing/imagined) stories of Buddhism, (any spiritual system), your history, your past, your parents, n+1 (which means WHATEVER/Anything possible, or n+1). EVERYTHING is imagined as a big Illusion Show in the Real You (Capital Letters in case when talking about Absolute Reality). Or in other words: The ultimate Mindf*** (pardon my French). Or the ultimate joke. How could it be any different? Of course you can always have more Understandings/Insight on the appearing/relative arisings "stuff/realities/dimensions/Lilas". And since "It" is infinite, you can go on understanding these forever and ever and ever ... infinitely. As long as you have fun doing that, and don't suffer: Perfect. But I wonder how one does the "not suffering" part when one is sobre and then not stably resting in the above described Realization. 
[Warning: Karma still holds. "Although my view is higher than the sky, My respect for the cause and effect of actions is as fine as grains of flour."  Padmasambhava. So as long as a separate self thinks it can do what it wants since all is just imagined, the only outcome with mathematical precision can only be: suffering. With best regards from Maya, trying to guide you back home].
I have not seen one description from Leo of God Realization that is not covered by Full(!) Enlightenment into Reality/Your True Nature, fully understanding of what Reality is or what You are (please don't beat me ). That includes understanding that all and any manifestation arising in You/Reality is an empty, groundless, imagined(!) arising in you. Of course including the whole you, its history, n+1, EVERYTHING. And like I wrote above, if that is not the most tricky, twisted Illusion/Mindf***, I don't know what is. But the Magnificence and splendor of it ..... 
Maybe Leo can comment on that? What is the special thing about your definition of God Realization? I am honestly just respectfully asking, and it would be nice if the answer would a) be polite (not that my imagined self-worth suffers) and b) something with content, and not Glorys statement above in different wording + broomstick. Thanks a lot, and Namaste .
 
And for getting "there", among other books: "Pointing out the Great Way, Daniel Brown". And Psychedelics as a preview and along the path of course...
respectfully yours
Selling Water by the River
 

November 2022
•  Introducing Pure Philosophy
•  Democracy’s Deathbed
•  Actualized Quotes 014
•  Actualized Quotes 015
•  Attack on Truth
•  Breaking Points
•  The Danger of Using Weak Words
•  Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy
•  Actualized Quotes 016
•  Playing the Oldest Game in the World
•  Actualized Quotes 017
•  The Lost Art of Persuasion
•  The Evolution of Mammals
 
December 2022
•  Understanding the Milky Way
•  How Silicon Valley Rewired our Brains
•  Wily Coyote
•  The Importance of Police
•  Skyrim Killed My PC (It took an arrow to the knee)
•  Splice
•  Actualized Quotes 018
•  Supreme Court Corruption
•  The Sombrero Galaxy
•  Actualized Quotes 019
•  Killing Sparrows
•  Conservative on Software Updates
•  Understanding Shitcoins
•  Red Dwarfs
•  Beware of Celebrity Whores
•  The AI Revolution has Arrived
•  Conservative Socrates
•  Actualized Quotes 020
•  The Collapse of Sri Lanka
•  Actualized Quotes 021

That might be the same elsewhere but think of the long term possibilities. A cashier is unlikley to be promoted and change her income over lifetime. Junior dev can be promoted to more senior roles and exponentially have their salary increased over time. I don't know the first thing about IT development but I'm sure with more seniority the amount of stuff Chat GPT can do as well as human diminishes. It is good at the basic tasks but it has no mastery in anything, it is just an information platform. 
Turn yourself into an expert in the field and you will attract better opportunities. There is, of course, always the possibility that this is not the right thing for you and that you should be pursuing a different area of expertise altogether. 
If you hate Spain, why not try living elsewhere? Germany, UK, Austria, US - all offer plenty of opportunities to young people with ambitions. Moving countries is the easiest it's ever been and with EU Passport the Europe at least is your playground. 
UK (post Brexit) & USA will be a bit more difficult but you could get invited and transferred over by a company (if you ar good enough). If you are young, flexible and (I assume) unmarried without kids, then this is the perfect time to do it. You can always come back to Spain in 5-10 years with a pack of new experience - worked well for me and many others who did the same. 

Narcissist cant see that he is in wrong, because he has so much shame in him that he must resort to gaslighting,shaming,blaming,being a victim etc.

if I would know a rigorous answer to that, I would probably be one of the smartest person alive. This is one question a lot of people struggle with and the concept of an antirivalrous world is about. As I said before, debating about it won't be sufficient enough, because debating is structurally limited for this, and here is why:
 
Debating already assumes an already agreed upon goal/goalpost where we will try to move towards during our debate, unless this is not established, we will talk past each other and we won't settle/get anywhere. Debating is about using logic to get from A to B. Morals precedes logic and  sometimes if we have foundationally different morals, we won't be able to agree upon the goal/goalpost, therefore we won't even be able to begin our debate and won't be able to settle our disagreement(s) by debate Therefore the argument would be , that we need to have a common set of foundational morals that we can all use and agree upon  (religion) and just after that we can start talking about debating certain topics. Once that foundation is established, that will give a structure to our debates and we can then debate about how to move towards certain goals within that structure.
You might say "yeaah, but there never was a universal religion that everyone agreed upon, and we still managed to survive and to move society forward" - that would be a good point, however the next part of the argument would be , that even though in the past we somewhat managed to do that (because we weren't that depended on each other and in the  past we could use might to get what we want), in the 21st century where everything is interconnected and we are depended on each other, some of these disagreements (that are at foundational moral level) needs to be settled to be able to solve some of our global problems and to be able to not live in constant fear that the other party will use their might (justifiably from their perspective) to defend their morals.
The weakest part of this argument is obviously about the "how". How could we get to a universal religion without war and actual fights? The answer to that question is incredibly complicated and I am not educated enough to talk on that, however, first we have to agree that there is a strong need for it, and then we can talk about the "hows" (notice that here we have to agree on the goalpost to be able to have a debate about it and to be productive).

The most effective way is the one which is in line with your cognitive phenotype.
You will find yourself drawn towards certain teachers/teachings and less towards others. 
Both your nature and your individual conditioning will play part in that process.

Any teacher with the necessary amount if integrity and wisdom can lead you towards progress and realization.

Some high integrity teachers are imo:
- Angelo Di Lullo 
- A.H Almaas
- Adyashanti
- Leo Gura
- Frank Yang
- Peter Ralston

It also depends on what you want to achieve.
There are multiple realizations to be made and each will come with it's own set of conclusions.
Hardcore neo-adveita and no-self teachings will bring their different flavours than god-realization.

@LoneWonderer
 

I'm sure ER doctors on the frontline dealing with the slaughter of the pandemic of the unwaxed population who refused the vaccination in the middle of a cytokine storm, would give you a massive rubber glove high-five. 
Easy to quack from the comfort of one's home looking at some random data set the way these guys are doing. 
Playing Call of Duty is not the same as being on the front with a rifle in your hand and bullets flying over your head 

It can be surprising once you let go of identification. The veil of you that is left isn't lost. It becomes more sublime. Life is relaxed, creative, intelligent, and authentic because it is a purer expression of your essence. Your only regret is that you didn't realize it sooner.

I see this is enough clarification without getting into the nitty-gritty thank you! All I can say from personal experience, burning through karma, doing khanika-samadhi (style) meditation and psyches and weightlifting maybe long-distance run, dissolves a lot of karmic cravings, especially when you also exhaust them to some extend. 

Structure wise it also resolves the karmic rebirth cycles. (khanika-samadhi) There are schools arguing about this. All I can say is this definitely takes longer, and I like Yangs approach of using expansion and contraction and the auto-paradigm from Shinzen, it's not you and when you break it down further, it's also not the automatism of the body anymore. I can't get to these stretches physically lol, otherwise I'd have more evidence "empirical evidence". 
What about the expansion and contraction paradigm? What is your take on this? (From Sasaki Roshi & Shinzen's overtaking of it) as far as I understand (I legit have no time to dive into the technical depths of clarity), it leads to non-dual type of flow experiences and has a very psychdelic component to it even under the influence of psychdelics, it has an expansiveness paradigm to it, so nothing is reduced everything is expanded and the paradigm integrates, even the reductionistic perspective in that sense. 

Instead of soto-zen type sitting, beign aware and doing nothing, it's like an active form of the same paradim from my feeling and personal experience with both. Expansion and conctraction feels more percise, and karmic dissolving (although more risky...) than just soto-zen sitting. I like both very much! Although I prefer expansion and contraction (rarely anyone teaches this...)

From a more personal experience from the reductionistic compressions, there will be expansive flavours that show you the contraction and reduction of whatever is, has a total opposite to it. More like union type of experiences, moving fully into femininty especially feeling full. The opposite of Yang moving more into Yin nature... beauty, fullness, love. There is just more of it in that paradigm, yet it goes no further than non-duality in that sense. This is sort of the stopping point of the roshis roshis of the roshis... 

Also at integral there is an understanding that Vipassana and I received a tip, goes no further than causal = white light, archetypial sorts of understanding, and that the zen practices all deepend the understanding to non-duality. They get stuck on the emptiness idea. 


Thanks in advance for claritifcations! Also for the optimization point, this takes serious effort, time and work. Guess sticking around is the name of the game.

You might be right on the brain development thing. But you also gotta consider that we are talking about a time when lifespan was maybe 30-35 years. So yah, figuring out humans can eat meat and survive more effectively was a major evolutionary benefit.
I didn't really want to go into this but how do you know brain adaptation wasn't due to survival adaptability (learning to hunt, track, harvest and preserve animals, build tools, traps, observe behaviour) rather than a meat itself. Would certainly be a question for evolutionarily anthropologist.
Vegans might be prone to more psychological distress, maybe. The article you shared is based on a systematic review of cross sectional evidence. By design, cross sectional study cannot infer neither causality nor association, it is actually a pretty useless study where other evidence is available. 
Finally, how do you know that depression in vegans cannot be caused by extended empathy for the wellbeing of animals and the way most humans don't give a fuck about the cruelty of animal farming? I'd say vegans are depressed because they feel misunderstood and kinda facing an impossible task (we could talk about the epistemiology of stage green but this is not the time and place).
It is important we don't make haste conclusions where none can be made  because, again, cross sectional evidence is quite low at the hierarchy of evidence and the real answer is that we don't know why in that article, vegans showed more psychological distress. 
Btw hearing that you are mostly Mediterranean eater is a good news, somehow I thought you are a hard ass carnivore ?
Anyways, I'll leave this thread now. Not looking for a fight here just challenging your opinions as i think you are being a bit unfair with the vegans and maybe...a bit biased? ..but then we all are one way or another.
Take Care

He's not afraid to look egotistical. I think he doubles down on it on purpose. He sees "acting humble" as a façade. Is it egotistical for someone like Leo or Sadghuru to describe themselves as "awake" or "more conscious"? I don't think so. Such concepts and ideas are often used by the ego for self-grandiosity, but not always, and having the courage and authority to say those things as a matter of fact is not a bad practice IMO. It's also a test of true humbleness on your side to see if you are going to be put off by such statements and accuse them of lacking humility or realize that they genuinely do have more experience and knowledge to offer you. 

Admittedly, his post is very hyperbolic and exaggerated. For example, the part where he says "your whole life and everything out of your mouth has been a lie". Obviously, this isn't exactly true, but it's very eye-catching and dramatic. It would be a mistake to take this at face value since it's just hyperbole to catch your attention. He's just saying that to get his initial point across in a more emphatic way. That's it. 



 

@Someone here oh god nooo don't subscribe to the "soy kills your testosterone" nonsense dude, cmon we had this conversation ??Ok, no seriously you're totally safe eating soy products. 
Who says there is an epidemic? If so many men are borderline infertile why do we see a boom in population growth? 
You know what I think there is an epidemic of?
Lying shits on the internet who sell fake problems and selling fake solutions to this (which pretty much defines 3/4 of the influencers in the fitness industry preying on the insecurity and inexperience of guys who get most of their life exposure through their digital devices and are disconnected from reality ) 
The minds of young have been corrupted to such a degree that they are willing to give themselves cancer as long as they can get a six pack now and have an illusion of attractiveness and masulinity 
EDIT: btw nothing here is personal bruh, this is more of a rant of mine

of course a food can make you feel better temporarily but that could be down to numerous factors.
Eating a food that you like and that tastes good causes a release of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Sure you can translate this as "wave of masculinity" but that's probably just a natural response to something you enjoy. It makes you feel good. That's why we pursue the things we do because they make us feel good. 
Foods can have all sorts of secondary effects but it doesn't;t mean they cause permanent alterations (with the exceptions of some that do such as red meat possibly causing irreversible changes to the vascular system)_ 
Some herbs, like astragalus or Rhodiola can cause adrenals to release epinephrine short-term, which make you feel better, for a short time and then the levels get rebalanced and you are back on ground zero 
Coffee causes some dopamine release and blocks adenosine receptors - that makes you feel better. Doesn't mean it is making you stronger, just triggers some release of a few molecules for a short time. After couple hours, that feeling goes away. 
Some plants may cause a short-term vasodilation through nitric oxide buildup but it doesn't mean they somehow suddenly increase athletic performance by 30%
It's just all this mechanistic translation into long-term outcomes that I have issues with. 
the word "boosting" indicates that you can just take a shot of something like drinking a potion in MMORPG and just get +20% buff in a given biomarker. It doesn't work that way.
Androgenic hormones are tightly controlled by the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis. If you inject yourself with hormones, the natural production will go down to rebalance itself. If it gets too low, the pituitary will send a signal into your testicles to make more. This is happening thousands of times per day without your input. 
It's not a system you can affect as easily without taking synthetic hormones. Again, we are talking long-term, not short term variations. 
Sure, if you get deficient in these it may have negative effects. But what we mean is once you have healthy levels, taking more of any of these doesn't do anything. If your optimal testosterone levels are 650 nanograms per deciliter then this is where you will be most of the time and eating more oysters is not going to make you permanently go to 750. 
Whenever someone says "has been shown" ask them "where, can you show me?" 
 
I would discourage you from seeking superfoods - like the one thing that is the best , the greatest the most masculine & dick-hardening food and just focus on eating a variety of all sorts of foods. Making sure you are not hypocaloric is going to provide more benefit than macrodosing a single food nutrient. 
By the way, this is a bit off-topic but in the epidemiology, when long-term data is accounted for, omnivores, vegetarians and vegans have mostly the same levels of testosterone regardless of their diets. People who eat the most soy have the same levels as those who eat the most steak, on average, statistically speaking. Or if there are variations, they are tiny and statistically non-significant. 
But this reality is boring, so quacks will say stuff like "eat eggs to boost your hormones" because that's what insecure gym bros love and that's what sells. You can sell books, seminars and supplements by convincing people that what you say is true even if it isn't. 
 
The final topic I'll make is - always look out for the long-term effects of something that is claimed to cause rapid improvement. Heroine causes rapid dopamine increase but in the long term can give you dementia and cardiac arrest. 
Anything that rapidly changes the homeostatic balance of biological biomarkers is either toxic or a pharmaceutical grade stuff. 
I'll leave it at that 
 

They would naturally be left to age & die without forced reproduction each year. The colonies would shrink over the decades, farmlands reused for other purposes and the idea is that farmers remain farmers but are now subsidised to grow plants even with primary focus on organic produce....right now that's a pipe dream. 
Or you could go old school and deploy animals for agricultural purposes (e.g. land ploughing) and use them to help you create organic farms for crop planting. I don't think that's necessarily unethical. The animals naturally respond positively to "exercise" and movement compared to being locked in boxes and fattened up so they can be sold for steaks. 
I think there is even some research that cattle that is being kinda pushed to move more, have higher levels of serotonin in the body. But I don't know if that's true. If you see cattle in the wild where they have large pastures, they keep moving all the time, shitting & pissing all over the place and naturally contributing to redistribution of nutrients back to the soil. They still have young but not at the rate at which they have it on meat farms where they are being impregnated 

Any judgment toward thoughts is itself a thought  Just be aware that every thought, no matter how sincere, has the treacherous potential to be conscripted into the service of the ego. Even the thought that "I am no-self" or "I am enlightened" or "I am free from thoughts" is the ego pretending to be what it can never be.
Don't fight with your thoughts. It only empowers them by binding your attention to them. Allow them to arise, without resisting or identifying with them. Let them come and go like clouds in the sky.
Eventually you will learn to consistently remain present, with thoughts in the periphery of awareness. Some thought and feeling clouds are heavier than others. The energy of past experiences is trapped within them. You develop the capacity to sense those that are ready, and lean your awareness gently into them. The light of your being softens their boundaries, and eventually they release their rain back into yourself.
This is only an analogy, but I am trying to describe the inner process of unifying the mind. It is the gift of meditation, which conducts the disparate voices of the self, and teaches them to sing in harmony. Each thought blends into the seamless Hallelujah chorus of enlightenment. ?

McKenna's flagship quote explains it all: 
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”

A guy called Timothy Leary. Not the sole reason, but he exemplified the first wave of naive and idealistic Green, which was not strategic, not systems-aware enough to foresee the pushback from the mainstream.
 
 
 

Throw a lot of logic out of the window and just learn to be playful and fun. Fun conversations are rarely about the content of what you're saying, they're usually about the energy between you. The hardest people to have conversations with are people who have no energy, not the people who have nothing going on in life.
It's easier said than done. But the gist of it is getting out of your head, not thinking about the content of what you're saying too much, relaxing, and letting go of the logical flow of a conversation.
Learn to make stupidly lateral connections from what a person says, don't answer literally, intentionally misinterpret what they say etc. etc. 
For example if someone told you they were a cashier rather than just saying "oh thats nice, I bet you have interesting stories about shitty customers" you could say "i bet you must fucking hate people with a job like that" with a playful energy which well then coax out those stories in a more entertaining way

I was typing a joke before, that all of these words have such a british sarcastic tune to them, I am aghastly appalled at the bewilderment of this specimen, I just wanna see nature documentaries from national geographics with this kind of vocabulary. I love this level of hidden irony/sarcasm so much. It just leaves room for misinterpretation. I worked in London and gave my co-worker an impression of this, he told me it's to offensive and I had to stop I had to laugh so hard. 

Aghast is relatively easy.

Active Listening: a very important skill to develop in life (and some of the toughest ones)