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There are people who have lost their all hopes and finding life meaningless. There are people who are ready to suicide or are on their death bed. Can they choose path of enlightenment ?

@SC GM Ain't nothing "reasonable" or "logical" about your life. 99% of everything you do is emotional. Including any considerations of suicide. The problem is that you don't have sufficient awareness yet of just how powerfully your emotions control you. You are like a puppet of your emotions. And you are never going to change that with logic. Logic is the backwards rationalization you make for your emotional prejudices.

After struggling today with my consciousness work, I felt disappointed in myself for not meeting my expectations. However, I was shocked at the compassion I had for myself. One year ago, I would have been toxically self-critical and would have identified as a failure. I was honestly shocked at how much better I handled this that I would have one year ago. I just realized, I've been following Actualized.org for over one year now. I had just been rejected by my first romantic love interest, and I was contemplating suicide back then. I noticed today was how this place really gives me hope. Knowing that I don't need to chase after unattainable materialistic goals to get the best life is probably what saved me from total and utter despair. Before Actualized.org, I had given up hope because I realized how ludicrous it was to aspire to certain things. I had done some deep introspection in High School and reasoned that the only way to truly get the most out of life would be to be God. I literally set that as my long term vision and planned on banking my whole life on transhumanism and the hope the science would master everything. I thought biological immortality and complete manipulation of reality would be the optimal situation. When I slowly became more aware of the inherent limitations of rationality, logic, and science, I entered deep depression and turned to pathetic hedonism as the best life strategy. I got into pick up, watched Leo's videos on how to attract women, and funny enough found that he was into the same philosophical/ intellectual topics that I was. I never even considered spirituality as a path to truth until I found that a person with a similar personality and history was serious about it. I didn't think it would lead anywhere but I gave it a shot. A year later. I've been doing this work consistently and I just have so much more hope. It's tough to believe at times that I actually can do something to create the best life for myself and my lack of talent, good looks, etc. isn't really an issue. By raising my consciousness, I feel so much more secure, as if God himself is embracing me and letting me know that no matter what happens, it will all be okay. You just have to wake up and see that is the case for yourself. I shed a literal tear of joy writing this.

The more intelligent you are, the more the idea will be coming again and again: Why go on living? For what? For this same rut? Only a very very mediocre person can go on living. Otherwise, one day or other, the idea arises: "What am I doing here? If this is the way life goes, I have lived for forty years repeating the same thing, I may live forty years more, repeating the same things again - then what? This is the beginning of intelligence, although not the end. And by committing suicide, nothing is changed. You will be born again, and the whole nonsense will start, from ABC. That is pointless. When you are thinking of suicide, that simply says you are thinking that this life that you have lived up to now is not worth living. But there are possibilities in it which you have not tried yet. I say to you: This life can become a great joy. It became a great joy to Krishna, it became a great ecstasy to Christ, it became a jubilation to Buddha. The life that you have lived is not the only alternative. It can be lived in a thousand and one ways - there are other ways to live it. You may have lived a life without love. Why not try love? You may have lived a life obsessed with money. Why not live a life unobsessed with money? You may have lived a life which hankers to possess. Now live a life which is not worried about possessing anything. You may have lived a life of respectability - you may have always been considering what people think about you, what their opinion is. There is a life to live without bothering what others are thinking about you; there is a life to live individually and rebelliously. There is a life to live which is of adventure and not of social conformity. There is a life of meditation, of God, of search, of going within. You may have lived an outside life, chasing this and chasing that. There can be another life of not chasing anything, but sitting silently, disappearing within your being. A life of interiority. And you will be surprised - the whole idea of suicide will disappear, and you will stumble upon a life which is eternal.

Suicide is the desperate and paradoxical attempt to fully live, to release and free oneself of all suffering/hopelessness/despair/pain. In that sense it's the ultimate lie. And obviously because there is no such thing as death

Because I don't see the point. Your second statement doesn't make sense to me - life contains suffering, death would end it, it would seem logical to commit suicide.

@Hanski I can totally relate. This happened after a couple years of daily meditation and just a few weeks after a strong dose of psilocybin. I've noticed that it was highly due to the fact that I stopped meditating, taking more breaks/shortening my sit times for each day after. I fell into an endless loop of all hopelessness, fear, depression, and a feeling that even suicide wouldn't even make a difference. As soon as I read more about this "Dark Night of the Soul" I became more aware. Check out "End Of Your World" By Adyashanti (about post awakening and how to deal with life) I found it very relatable and helpful. I see it as a process of 'ego confusion' as if the ego realized it's own emptiness/essenseless and it's kinda thinking twice about things. As soon as I picked up my meditation practice, micro-dosed every few days, took ashwagandha here and there, most if not all have cleared away! I am confident in saying that after this "hurdle" life will become clairvoyant and evermore magical! Keep your head up and be aware.

Enlightenment and dealing with it As far as I understood Jeffery Martin there are 2 ways people react to the permanent non symbolic experience or enlightenment...( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azYF3EFpZ4g). 1. There are those who feel free and at the peak of pleasant and 2. Those who feel desperate, fall into deep depression and maybe even commit suicide. I guess that is why Leo once said something like: If you want to get enlightened and then kill yourself, then fine. We can´t know in which category we´ll fall, or do we?

What happened in Jonestown was absolutely Christian, but not even a single person in the world has talked about the fact that it was a Christian phenomenon, that Christianity was its background, that Jim Jones was a reverend, that he was a Christian priest, and the people who followed him simply followed according to the Christian ideology. Of course, they went to the very logical end. Jesus says to his people: ”After death there will be judgment day, and I will be there to pick my people. And only those who are with me will be saved; all others will be thrown into the eternal darkness of hell.” Reverend Jim Jones was continually teaching the BIBLE, Christianity, and of course he was teaching that real life begins after death. And if he convinced those fools, one thousand fools, it is nothing to be surprised at: they were all Christians. The gospel was Christian, and if he convinced them to die with him ... why wait for the judgment day? And on the judgment day there is going to be so much of a crowd – poor Jim Jones, how is he going to find his one thousand followers? It will be really difficult. The best way is: Jim Jones dies and with him his followers die. And they will reach the gates of heaven with God and Jesus Christ and all the apostles shouting, ”Alleluia!” This is far better, quicker. Other Christians have waited for two thousand years but the judgment day has not come yet. And if you read Jesus, his disciples asking again and again, ”When will the judgment day come?” and he says, ”Soon.” The whole indication is that it is going to happen within your life. Now, twenty centuries have passed; it has not happened. Nobody asks the pope, ”What about the judgment day? Jesus was saying, ‘Soon.’ What do you mean by ‘soon’?” At least it should be explained how many centuries, how many generations .... ”Soon” cannot be extended that much. But Christian bishops and cardinals and priests are comparing Osho with Jim Jones. In churches, sermons were delivered and it was said that Rajneeshpuram was going to become a second Jonestown. Now, who is going to say to these fools that this was the only place which cannot become Jonestown? The whole rest of the world can become – because Osho was not interested in the afterlife, he was only interested in life here, now. You will be surprised to know that in Jonestown, lovemaking among the members of the sect was not allowed. Celibacy was enforced. There were hard strict rules: the people were not allowed to go outside the commune, no contact with outsiders was allowed. They were living in isolation, they were all ascetics. And it is because of this asceticism that they were ready to commit suicide. Now people are searching for the causes. Somebody thinks that he hypnotized people, somebody thinks something else—a thousand and one reasons are being found. The simple reason is, he diverted their eros—that's all. And eros can be diverted very easily….just like in christian monasteries, where monks don't suicide but practice of homosexuality is well known.

I've always struggled with my esteem, at one point my social anxiety was so bad that I couldn't even talk to my family and closest friends without experiencing physical symptoms. Recently I started appreciating myself and what I stand for and all of a sudden I woke up. I could see everyones insecurities, their intentions... It was extremely overwealming and I kinda freaked out. In any case, I drew a load of attention to myself and said a bunch of stuff that people couldn't comprehend and I guess my sanity is under question at the moment. I can no longer see auras at the moment and I don't think I would like to at the moment either. Although I've committed social suicide... my esteem is still quite high and I go through periods of not caring about judgement. However when I'm in my own corner I feel so energetic and act completely differently to the way I was before which only draws more suspicion. It sucks, I've formed such valuable friendships over the span of two years and now nobody really knows how to approach me. Everyone is walking on eggshells around me. I'm so glad I've realised my potential, but I kinda destroyed my place of belonging in the process. Tl;dr: How do you keep your inner child at bay and appear collected outwardly & how do you remain positive when your life begins to crumble around you.

battles are lost in the same spirit with which they are won. I cried last week. I do it a lot nowadays. What often happens is that something triggers a sad cry: for my friend's suicide, for my guilt, for life's vanity. But then, out of nowhere, I transition to a hysterical laugh-cry: for gratitude, for the love for everything, for being alive, for the big cosmic joke that is life. Strangely, I don't prefer one mode of crying over another. They're both beautiful and cathartic in their own ways. My man Walt Whitman once wrote that battles are lost in the same spirit with which they are won. I think I get what he means now.

Hello everyone, This gets a bit heavy but I didn't know where else to post this, I'll probably put it on reddit too. I'm an 18 year old male. Normally I should be excited for the life ahead and all its possibilities. My situation is a bit different. Very soon, I will take my own life. I know the response would be to man up and stop being a victim, which is all good and well when you actually have some control over your circumstances which I have not. Suicide in my case is not a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Let me explain. There are a million things not going right in my life right now. I'm severley depressed and have been for years now. Psychologists and therapists don't help at all. And no I'll never take drugs. I've seen how they changed my mothers personality and I'd rather die than live like that. And I'm not depressed bc of a brain imbalance, I'm depressed bc of the circumstances. However I'm convinced I could fix this if only my circumstances changed. I have extreme social anxiety and few friends. I have a binge eating disorder. My stomach hurts often because of overeating and then dieting/fasting. My dads an alcoholic who has no empathy at all for me. He also is in the beginning stages of Alzheimers (no one knows this; I recognized the symptoms but haven't told anyone). My mom is a wreck and emotionally unstable as well. I'm starting to develop an alcohol problem as well. However I'm convinced I can solve all of the above. My main reason is embarrasing and unsolvable. 4 years ago (when i was 14) I contracted a UTI. I had extreme pain during urination, had frequent urges and had extreme pain during ejaculation. So just go to the doctor and get it fixed, right? Well I did. I went to my GP maybe 12 times in the span of 2 years? He prescribed me all kinds of things (antibiotics, drugs, ...) but nothing helped. Then I went to two urologists. I did every test imaginable, from urine testing to checking inside my bladder with a camera. Again I took lots of different medications for months on end. Nothing helped. At this Point I started becoming extremely desperate. I could live with the urination pain but the worst part of all is the fact that ejaculating hurts so much. I'll never be able to have sex like this. At this point I also started looking into other doctors. I did homeopathy (a scam). Didn't help. I went to a psychologist and a psychiatrist. They told me I should learn to live with this. Fuck that. I went to a herb specialist. Didn't help. I went to a chiropractor. Didn't help. I took supplements that are supposed to kill the pain. Didn't help. I went to a hypnotherapist. Didn't help. I tried affirmations, visualizations, meditation. Didn't help. I'm now 18 and in my first year of college. During every class I have to leave the room with more than a hundred people several times just to go to the bathroom. It's extremely embarrasing. The pain is still there. Nothing. Fucking. Helps. All my friends are getting their lives started and are getting laid and while I'm happy for them, the realisation has now dawned on me that I will never experience this. If it weren't for this problem I would have been able to solve all the rest. I'm failing college as well because I just can't handle this anymore. I'm at my wits end. Therefore I have decided to kill myself the next time my parents are out of town for a night. I'm still researching on what the most painless method is, but aftre putting on some music I'll probably just fill the bathtub, get in and slit my wrists. I still don't know what the meaning of this existence is and why so many people have to suffer so much. I never chose to start this life, but I can choose to end it. I have come to the conclusion that God can't be good. Even if all this suffering is just ego, it's still very real for the people who live through it. Maybe there is an afterlife. I hope its better than this. I don't know why I wrote this or what kind of a response I should expect. Just why not i guess. To anyone reading this, I wish you all the best in life.

@renegade_bee If this is truly it, the end, if you've given up; then you're truly free. If you have the money, get on a plane, go to Asia, go to a monastery and they will take you, free of charge. If you don't have the money, walk. Go to a homeless shelter, get a little job, save a bit of money for a flight and fuck off somewhere. Piss yourself whenever you feel like it, fuck it, who cares? You did it a lot when you were a baby. Go get a load of shrooms, trip your nuts off. You're talking about becoming a corpse soon. Fuck your parents, fuck your comfort, fuck it all dude. Seriously. Try being free before suicide, and if then you still want to leave. you're free to check out. Don't even feel bad for being suicidal, you don't owe anybody anything.

@renegade_bee Don't do it. Hope you're still here and I'm really sorry you're going through all. But it's not worth it. When I was going through a similar phase, prayer was the only thing that helped me. Life is hard but you are only 18, you have your life ahead of you. If you are worried about getting laid, your life is more precious than any girl/boy/friend in the world. We don't live only for romance and sex, there is so much more to life than stuff that you see other people doing/enjoying. Stop comparing yourself to others because comparison is the biggest self-esteem demolisher. Everybody has their own problems and their own stories to tell. There are millions out there who suffer, at least just like you if not more. So you are not alone. You got to find your own 'sea of hope' where you will find your inner peace. Even in the worst circumstances, life is still worth living because you get this chance only once. Suicide can never be the ultimate option. Even suicide has a big drawback and that is the risk of failure associated with it. Many people end up handicapped or permanently disabled when their suicide attempts fail. So it's extremely dangerous. Try to heal yourself emotionally and spiritually first. Your problems may either go away one day or they may no longer be relevant from an existential perspective. May you find peace in your hour of trouble. Take care. (plz don't do it).

https://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml Famous People with Aspergers Syndrome Adam Young, multi-instrumentalist, producer and the founder of the electronic project Owl City. Adrian Lamo, American computer hacker Carl Soderholm, speaker in neuropsychiatric disorders Clay Marzo, American professional surfer Craig Nicholls, frontman of the Australian garage rock band, The Vines Daniel Tammet, British autistic savant, believed to have Asperger Syndrome Daryl Hannah, actress Dawn Prince-Hughes, PhD, primate anthropologist, ethologist, and author of Songs for the Gorilla Nation Gary Numan, British singer and songwriter Heather Kuzmich, fashion model and reality show contestant on America's Next Top Model James Durbin, finalist on the tenth season of American Idol Jerry Newport, American author and mathematical savant, basis of the film Mozart and the Whale John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye Judy Singer, Australian disability rights activist Liane Holliday Willey, author of Pretending to be Normal, Asperger Syndrome in the Family; Asperger syndrome advocate; education professor; and adult diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at age 35 Lizzy Clark, actress and campaigner Luke Jackson, author Michael Burry, US investment fund manager Nicky Reilly, failed suicide bomber from Britain Paddy Considine, actor Peter Howson, Scottish painter Phillipa "Pip" Brown (aka Ladyhawke), indie rock musician Raymond Thompson, New Zealand scriptwriter and TV producer Richard Borcherds, mathematician specializing in group theory and Lie algebras Satoshi Tajiri, creator and designer of Pokemon Tim Ellis, Australian magician and author Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author Travis Meeks, lead singer, guitarist and song writer for acoustic rock band Days of the New. Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economics Hmmmmm.....I'm seeing a lot of SUCCESSFUL people here. Oh wait.....there's more! People that most likely had Aspergers Syndrome! Abraham Lincoln,1809-1865, US Politician Alan Turing, 1912-1954, English mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German/American theoretical physicist Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922, Scottish/Canadian/American inventor of the telephone Anton Bruckner , 1824-1896, Austrian composer Bela Bartok, 1881-1945, Hungarian composer Benjamin Franklin,1706-1790, US polictician/writer Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, British logician Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008, World Chess Champion Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss psychoanalyst Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1868-1928, Scottish architect and designer Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, US poet Erik Satie, 1866-1925 - Composer Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, Czech writer Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playwright, writer of Pygmalion, critic and Socialist George Washington, 1732-1799, US Politician Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911, Czech/Austrian composer Marilyn Monroe, 1926-1962, US actress H P Lovecraft, 1890-1937, US writer Henry Cavendish, 1731-1810, English/French scientist, discovered the composition of air and water Henry Ford, 1863-1947, US industrialist Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, US writer Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, English mathematician and physicist Jane Austen, 1775-1817, English novelist, author of Pride and Prejudice Kaspar Hauser, c1812-1833, German foundling, portrayed in a film by Werner Herzog Ludwig II, 1845-1886, King of Bavaria Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Viennese/English logician and philosopher Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827, German/Viennese composer Mark Twain, 1835-1910, US humorist Michelangelo, 1475 1564 - Italian Renissance artist Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943, Serbian/American scientist, engineer, inventor of electric motors Oliver Heaviside, 1850-1925, English physicist Richard Strauss, 1864-1949, German composer Seth Engstrom, 1987-Present, Magician and World Champion Thomas Edison, 1847-1931, US inventor Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, US politician Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941, English Writer Wasily Kandinsky, 1866-1944, Russian/French painter

Here is a holistic answer. Book: Louise L. Hay - You can Heal your Life. Pg. 201 Problem: Suicide Probable Cause: Seeing Life Only in Black and White. Refusal to see another way out. New Thought Pattern (to meditate and focus on): I live in the totality of possibilities. There is always another way. I am safe.

@renegade_bee Don't think about suicide man. You gotta have the logic to know that you're only 18 and everything will change. When I was 20 I had severe manic depression. Dr's and pills never helped me, unfortunately. That all changed by age 22 and my life has just Gotten better and better ever since. I was where you are man. Please hear me - you are just getting started in this life. You don't know what the rest will look like. Just hang in there and keep trying things. I garuntee if you keep going and keep trying, you absolutely will find the cure for your UTI. You will. It could be only a month away. The right Dr often makes all the difference. If YOU DON'T GIVE UP, YOU WILL SEE THAT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WILL BE THE SWEET LIFE OF SOMEONE WHO SURPASSES EVERYONE'S WILDEST DREAMS BECAUSE WHEN OTHERS GAVE UP, YOU DIDN'T. DON'T GIVE UP.

I did for a long time in my life repeatedly eat very little. I was kind of in a war state against myself. This is a miserable way to live. It is basically an inconsequent way of suicide. The only way out is to find something you like about life. The thing is: If you would consider suicide then you basically find, life is worthless to you. So it wouldn't be of any harm to just stick around a little longer and try out a few things that could possible be fun. While you're doing that, you better brush your teeth. A full set of natural teeth is very valuable. If you live long enough, you might regret spending money for less perfect artificial teeth.

Hey there. My brother was recently diagnosed with obsessive compulsive personality disorder. He is around 27 years old and as far as I can remember he was always acting problematically. We have visited several psychiatrists with my family except him, because he does not think that he has a problem and so he blames and accuses us for making him miserable. He said once to my father "if you don't do what I want I will commit suicide". Every month or so he has anger explosions. He grabbed me and my father from the neck and once he threatened me with a knife. My mother has depression that is cause by him and my father is constantly worrying and gets angry. I am keeping him a distance. We are living in the same house by the way. And we may talk once every 3 or 4 months. His behavior is really toxic, he wants us to leave according to his expectations. He is constantly anxious and occupies himself with cleaning the house almost all day. He does not go out or have any friends. So, my question is how to deal with it, because I know deep down myself I am suffering. Thanks

Nowadays, the most sane person is the most liable to commit suicide! He is the one who will do great things though, because he realizes the ridiculousness of the fake reality that is lived by. Lots of enlightened dudes were some of the most hardcore people in history.

@Tanuj You could commit suicide without 5-meo. Many people do.

@Leo Gura If I try this substance and I cannot surrender is it possible that in fear or panic I commit suicide? Do you think that would be possible on 5-Me0? Do you recommend a trip sitter and did you have one?

4 hours? That is nothing. Do you know how hard South Korean students work on a daily basis? They literally have school from 7pm until 11pm including homework generally speaking and they work 6 days/week - not 5 days like in European countries. Which explains the high suicide rate in South Korea among teenagers, but you get the point. So don't tell me you cannot even work concentrated for more than 4 hours per day? For what; because your mind "tricked" you into believing in what some authority figure told you? I think you may fear hard work and you gotta set higher standards for yourself and put things into perspective here.

nah I find it imperative that we reconcile the social nature of humanity with our goals of self-actualization. it is like the wind eroding sharp edges. the form we take is the stone. eventually the wind brings us back to dust, but throughout that journey we have form, and the wind smooths the minor edges of the form, but does not destroy the form. Our natural behavior is to be social - in some, we do discard the social for pursuit of authenticity, but for most we hold the form of social interest. the wind flows around that form without disruption, and in fact for most of our life emboldens that form by removing the flaws which disrupt it - the anxieties and addictions that make us behave poorly. Perhaps the wind shifts where our existence rests, moving our form from one position to another. Some reach the form of monastery work, but most do not. this is all natural. we individually find various ways to pursue authenticity. as a group, we find stronger methods of that pursuit. but this does not mean we should all as a species discard our natural form in order to erase it so the wind flows without disruption. if this were what should happen, we would simply mass suicide. but the wind would not care if we did that, or if we held our most jagged form. mindfulness work is nothing more than allowing the wind to smooth the ruggedness of our form. ps. perhaps the better analogy is the formation of snowflakes. the wind puts us into form by chance, and that form builds upon itself until it crashes into the ground. Desert sands would show both these anologies actually - the wind forms a dune, and shapes it throughout its life. eventually the dune becomes one with the desert again.

In hopes of inspiring people trying to discover their life purpose, I wanted to share my story. This is the story of someone who went into college for the money. He tried, under pressure, to turn his major into a passion, instead of turning his passions into a career. My situation: I'm finishing up college at a computer science major. I went into the field because I thought there'd be a lot of money in it, and that from going to school, I'd get my ass kicked into high gear and be able to get a good job. I was into PC gaming, like a lot of other CS majors, and chose the career because of that. I didn't think about being a creator, or the huge impact I could have or anything like that. From at least 5 years back, I started really getting into anime and Japanese culture. I started studying the language 2 years ago, and I started to actually see the potential of what I can do with it. I enjoy reading and writing, and I enjoy a well translated manga or visual novel. I think that in a way, translation can be a form of art. A good translation of a translated manga can literally make or break the impact of the work. In this sense, as a translator, you're interpreting the original story and conveying it to an English (or whatever 2nd language) audience. It's a tireless and meticulous career, working on translation, but I also mastering the language will be viable long-term. I worry a bit for betting it all on mastering a language, but I don't believe that prose in Asian languages can be translated into English prose by AI in my lifetime. The written language is so contextual and requires a real brain to determine what's going on in context. Mastery: Whenever Leo talks about the mastery process and coming to enjoy the work itself, it just rung so true with my casual study of Japanese over the past 2 years. I started to actually enjoy looking up individual Japanese words just for the sake of knowing them well, and for the sake of mastery. The reason is fluency, but Japanese is something that I didn't angrily dread pouring hours of frustrating and dread into. I started to enjoy the process itself, and when I have the time, I would slow down to be more thorough studying. Through the law of attraction, I started to get more interested in the culture, in cooking, I started meeting people at college who are into Japanese culture, and I started to look for mentors. All the sort of things that you're supposed to do when you enjoy something and want to master it, I was beginning to do with Japanese before I knew anything about self-actualization. Struggles, details (you can skip to the next section, but it has some specific details on my thoughts about the different career/life purpose prospects: My main difficulty now are some conflicting ideas about how to use the language to become a creator, outside of doing translation. I trust in the mastery process to eventually take care of my needs years down the road, so that I can become so skilled that I can translate, because my literal purpose for living is Japanese, but I've discovered my values and strengths, and I'm reviewing them daily. My life purpose statement I previously made was about programming, because I didn't even consider that I could turn my main hobby, the study of this language, into a career. I thought it was too impractical, and that programming was the logical, safe choice to quickly get that $40-70k job as a coder, as I let my years spent on interests just die completely, in hopes of discovering passion for programming. Some other fundamental issues I have with Japanese - it is largely escapist fantasy. For any Redpill readers here, a lot of this content is pretty much "The Ultimate Blue Pill Fantasy." But I think that by focusing on the creative aspects on the medium, and by translating material that inspires people is ultimately a good thing. Movies and TV shows are also escapist fantasies, but not everyone takes the same thing out of a movie. From Leo, I learned that you can watch a movie with the goal of being inspired from it, like with Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a bit complicated, because I got into Japanese content through escapism, but I feel like studying the language and changing the mediums I consume (more visual novels now than anime) has reduced the dopamine spiking and raised my consciousness a bit. There's plenty of depraved Japanese content that gets associated with anime, and this parallels all the addicting software and social media that's out there with programming. There's pretty much no creative medium I enjoy that doesn't have cons to it. You can even use classical music and fine art as distractions from doing work. Some interesting aspects of Japanese - I find the mediums of manga and visual novels to be especially moving. They're not the same sort of quick, instant gratification experiences that you could get in video games. You'll often a dozen hours on a single story arc before any major climax happens in a visual novel. My highest emotional peaks and peak interests were hit when I was reading visual novels. I think that by spreading this medium to the West, gamers and people who enjoy anime will learn to enjoy the calmer, slower paced aspects of entertainment, and of life itself. Some issues I have with programming and technology: The impact that technology has had on our society, lowering our attention spans, lowering people's consciousness, and all these little quick apps, I feel have actually fucked over my generation in a lot of ways, and now people are dealing with heavy procrastination with all the free dopamine everywhere. Men don't have enough positive male figures in their life, and porn and entertainment is so easily accessible that technology leads to escapism. Of course, technology is a tool and this is a huge negative generalization of it. Mark Zuckerberg might've had a positive creative vision with Facebook and creating his company, and a lot of these companies might actually have great intentions. Being connected with tons of your friends online sounds great in theory, but the anxiety, the fake posts, the instant gratification and dopamine, the distraction element, the attention span and motivation reduction, and all these other side effects are just killers for me. Rather than working with social media or making some game apps, I would want to create some meaningful software, and to spread self-actualization ideals through the software, but I spent years trying to program and never came to really enjoy the process. I'm annoyed that I was so unconscious when building up all this resistance, and didn't understand how I could ever possibly come to WANT to program. I spent every day of my life for years comparing myself to others, thinking about the money, programming under pressure, all before I grasped these self-actualization fundamentals, that made me really believe that I could catch up to and even surpass these friends of mine who are going off to work at Google. Career counselors at my college told me "Not everyone can be like him, but you can still get a good job programming." I think now that if could even make some productivity-related software, it would be really beneficial for people, and it would convey things like discipline through usage and support of my software. I also think that programming will become really chaotic, and in order to gauge the marketplace, I have to really stay plugged in. I would end up being a problem solving sort of career rather than a creative one, at least for some years until I become good enough to gain career capital and creative control. My entry into a programming career could be be too rigid for too long before I can create anything that I feel is meaningful. They say programming is just problem solving, but I don't want to be some reactive problem solver for a company. The solution to this that I came up with was working with Startup companies, and focusing on the creative aspect of programming. I'm definitely capable of becoming an excellent programmer, I believe, but with my conflicting passion with Japanese, and my low consciousness resistance towards programming that I built up from coding under pressure for my classes, it's not right. 10 years down the road, I think programming could be the better option, and I think in the near future I'll start doing it as a side hobby, so I can enjoy it and burn through my resistance. 10 years from now, it could become a new life purpose, or be combined with Japanese once I've become a master and have some economic security. There are other aspects of my life like health, fitness, and relationships that I need to work on, and having two exhausting mental hobbies, Programming and Japanese, isn't going to work out if I want to achieve those goals. My Big Fuckups: (choosing what was possible as a career) I didn't TRULY consider using my years spent on hobbies AS my career. I didn't believe I could do it. I didn't pitch the idea to my parents, even though I knew that I have a good 3-4 years of financial saving saved up. How was I going to tell them that this language I study for fun could actually become a career? Until last summer, I didn't have the confidence to speak up to my mom much at all, until I found TheRedPill and read No More Mr. Nice Guy and started building up my confidence. With learning Japanese, I sometimes guilted myself for spending too much time on it, instead of on college and my career. (NEVER GUILT YOURSELF). I went through Leo's Life Purpose Course and partially preselected Programming as the medium, though I had 3 or 4 other big ideas based on other interests and skills. I had Japanese as an idea on that list, along with writing, but I thought my parents wouldn't allow it and I don't have the financial freedom right now. There are a lot of other psychological investments I've made with Japanese that my ego won't let go of. I have friends of over 10 years that share the same interests as me. Trying to cut my ties with Japanese is equivalent to mental suicide at this point. At the end of my semester in college, I started having so much fun with people of similar interests, and I suddenly felt like "holy shit, I belong with these people." and was doing a lot of meta-analysis of the experience. I felt really overly attached to these people, because I felt like I would have to give up Japanese and sever connections with them next semester to transition into a programming regimen and career. When the semester ended, I felt extremely awful, worse than when my best friend died. I didn't even know that I could ever feel that level of emotional despair. I spent years repressing my hobbies and avoiding people with similar interests, investing into shallow one-sided friendships. At this point, I truly understood the inherent bias of having friends with similar interests - they actually care. Yes, it's a biased, neurotic, cliquey sort of caring that Leo talks about, because they value you because of your shared interests, but this leads to a real tight friendship. It's hard to find people who will be as egalitarian as you try to be, and will appreciate your interests the way you appreciate theirs. Sever attachments from people who don't love and support you, because life is too short to maintain so many shallow friendships. Investment is probably why Leo chose to combine his Sage advice with Actualized.org, rather than leave and become a sage himself, because he's become really invested in helping us, and he'd be abandoning the life purpose he adopted. On the other end of my own ego investment, I have a ton of negative ego investments against programming. I projected all my pain and anxiety towards it, by feeling like it's taking away time from my hobbies, and is creating all of my anxiety and unhappiness. I'd overeat just to be able to program more and get past the pain. I exhibited pretty much every neurotic behavior in the book to many extremes, when it came to programming. I would talk shit behind people's back because they were successful at programming and I wasn't. I thought that since these guys didn't do anything besides programming, they "didn't have a life," because they didn't have other hobbies. In reality, these programmers who enjoy their work and understand the mastery process are actually the happiest people I've ever met. Understanding the mastery process and my own potential to master anything, I feel that my biggest regret was pouring so much negative emotion into something that I actually always wanted to become good at. I felt like I wasn't talented, that it didn't come natural, or that I would lose myself and my hobbies if I dedicated all my time to programming. I realized that these beliefs are something your mind has built, especially with things you've attempted over and over again before learning about self-actualization, and so even with newfound objective information on the hours it takes to master something, and a path to doing it, it will still feel like we sometimes inherently can't do it. tldr; Basically, I see the beauty in Japanese culture, spreading it, focusing on lower dopamine mediums in Japanese, using translation and the written word as a medium, and I've got some intrinsic motivation for mastering the language. Hour for hour, the money will probably come later with Japanese for me, and I might be working slave wages until I'm truly excellent. I'd rather master Japanese and translate, starting at slave wages, than go into programming for the money like everyone wants me to. I'd rather "waste my degree" and follow my bliss, because it lights my fire. I recognize my own bias towards people who share the same interests as me and the connection I feel with those people, and my bias towards anything Japanese. I enjoy plenty of things outside of Japanese, even moreso thanks to self-actualization, and I enjoy talking with people who don't share my interests at all, thanks to mindfulness. I'm utilizing this subjective and biased reality of mine in order to master Japanese. I can't realistically do both programming and Japanese to a high degree, and Leo explained this. The mind subconsciously homes in on ways to optimize learning and retention when you have a singular purpose. It's like a heat-seaking missile, as he says. You start finding the most optimal methods, and because your purpose is so important to you, you see the longterm payoff and invest in those better methods, because of the long-term payoff for the effort in advance. Your time becomes precious. Being married to your life purpose and being disciplined to it gives you the freedom to relent to it. I have to redo part of Leo's Life Purpose Course with Japanese in mind, as I work towards mastery. My recommendations for those seeking their life purpose: Look for what you've done the most in life, something where you feel like you've gone through steps of the mastery process, and have begun to enjoy. Truly forget the money. Get a part-time job or some financial security (refer to Maslow's Hierarchy and what Leo says about supporting yourself first, and then going on to be a creator). Don't go to college until you're ABSOLUTELY sure about what you want to do, and I recommend dedicating hundreds of hours on your own into working on your skill you plan to Master before majoring in that field in college, so that you don't fall into the traps of working for the money. See what other people are doing with your productive hobbies - look at the creators on YouTube. Look at the people who teach your hobby, if it's something like that. Ideally it should be a hobby that's somewhat productive. You can even combine 2 things you enjoy, like watching movies and writing reddit replies --> into doing some sort of meta-analysis of movies as a video career or something. I think that if you've taken one of your hobbies so far that you find yourself saying "I can't live without this," you may find that you have already selected your life purpose. Tap into that, and go all in and see how much energy you can summon into working towards that hobby every day. See how confident you feel when you imagine "I can just utilize this one main hobby of mine, increase the priority to the top, and I can let the other ones go." Also, as a general thing: Watch Leo's Foundational videos on YouTube. They helped give me a clear picture of self-actualization. Also, don't fall into the trap of settling for a shitty life purpose or career simply because of having the goal of Enlightenment and enjoying the Now. The whole point of Actualized.org is to become the best that you can be, not become some enlightened guy at 7-Eleven. The Maslow's Hierarchy video was also really helpful in this regard, since I was actually debating between mediocrity + enlightenment. Also, not to sound like a shill, but the Life Purpose Course helps a lot of things click together. I think I learned to some extent like 50-70% of the theory from Leo's videos. I think a key to taking the course is to do it when you feel you're financially stable, or if you're in high school or college. The confidence you get from having a more complete picture, though, is worth the $250. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, just like the food you eat, the house you live in, the books and video games and coffee mugs and crap you buy. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, especially for the long-term. You only get one life. I can finally proudly share this video from Alan Watts, because I feel that I'm living it now - And if you still want to convince me how easy it is to become a programmer, I'll check some resources you send to try and do it on the side, but my life purpose is to master Japanese and become a creator with it.