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Yes buy the thing is that Leo is this guy who lay a 2h video to explain you with a mean look how you're immature and he were more mature that everybody from middle school, it's the guy who do random instagram photos with a poker face or with an african mask, it's the guy who do topic about crocodiles and alien pizza, it's the guy who do a video with a kind "helllo" before cooking the most horrible recipe of soup possible (it's a anglo-saxon so i forgive him, i'm not going to ask him to have taste) etcetc. Imagine him in relationship with a Chinese gymnast, i can already see them in my imagination getting bored like dead rats 80% of the time between making love and "How you see it's rainy (with a chinese accent*)🤔 ", and then Leo who respond "Oh yeah that's true🤔" with a shy smile to pretend he doesn't give a fu** of a such useless sentance. While with my curvy basketball blayer, he's no going to have to cross dress his persona, she will tease him, do/say "stupidities", create dramas and he will just have to juggle all that. That's what he built inself on, "the mature who who correct the world, the other".

I think it has to do with lacking an understanding of the archetypal distinction between the Masculine and Feminine... and seeing the Feminine as antithetical to the Masculine as opposed to a necessary component of what makes an attractive and well adjusted man. The esoteric Masculine without the esoteric Feminine makes someone a "brain-in-a-jar". (aka a robotic hyper-nerd) The esoteric Feminine without the esoteric Masculine makes someone a "blob-on-the-ground." (aka a lazy couch-potato) And of course, neither of these polarizations into the Masculine and Feminine make a person attractive. So, there is a misconception that a man need to be only Masculine, and that the more Masculine a guy is that the more attractive he will be. But the Feminine is what enables us to have emotional intelligence, social acuity, connection to the body and instincts, etc. as all things of the body, emotions, and social connection are in the Feminine principle. And this is what makes a man come across as Masculine and attractive in the eyes of the world. But because there is a distinction between the cultural associations with Masculinity (which includes A LOT of archetypal Feminine qualities) AND the esoteric Masculine (which is pure raw Masculinity), so many men keep doubling down on pure Masculinity and becoming more and more socially maladjusted, nerdy, and weird because they have repressed their Feminine sides, which is what makes us more down to Earth and human. So, these guys who seek to be Masculine and to repress their Feminine sides become total "brain-in-a-jar" robotic hyper-nerds that come across as a bit disconnected, lofty, and alien. And of course, women don't like that. And these hyper-Masculine nerdy guys believe women don't like them because they're not Masculine enough, when the problem is that they're hyper-Masculine and not integrated with their Feminine side enough. And they keep doubling down on Masculine polarization and making themselves more and more nerdy and less and less socially and emotionally attuned. And then, what's the solution? Clearly they're not Masculine enough... so they keep trying to subtract the Feminine and add the Masculine. And that doesn't work. And then, what's the solution? Clearly they're not Masculine enough... so they keep trying to subtract the Feminine and add the Masculine. And that doesn't work. And then, what's the solution? Clearly they're not Masculine enough... so they keep trying to subtract the Feminine and add the Masculine. And that doesn't work. And then, what's the solution? Clearly they're not Masculine enough... so they keep trying to subtract the Feminine and add the Masculine. And that doesn't work. And then, what's the solution? Clearly they're not Masculine enough... so they keep trying to subtract the Feminine and add the Masculine. And that doesn't work. etc.

The biggest themes on the forum are probably Spiral Dynamics (a pretty obscure developmental theory), non-duality ("reality is One thing"), and systems thinking (thinking in a very abstract way — but don't ask too much about how; they will say you're over-intellectualizing and wasting your time 😃😃). These only partially overlap with Leo's main focus. Leo also has his own spin on spirituality (Alien Consciousness) which some pretend to understand but nobody actually understands. Then you have the classic conflation of personal solipsism ("my limited screen of sensory perception is the only thing that exist") with cosmic solipsism ("pre-sensory, trans-personal, unlimited consciousness is the only thing that exists", a.k.a objective idealism or non-duality). This never fails to make its appearance at least once every other thread in the spirituality section. Then you also have the conflation of epistemological nihilism ("I know nothing", or really just "I don't know how to use language" — the language game that cannot stop shooting itself in the foot) with non-duality. We surely talk a lot about ostensibly non-duality here. Then you have enlightened leftism ("leftism kinda good, conservatism kinda bad"), enlightened pickup ("women kinda this, women kinda that"), and enlightened personal development ("what does my horoscop- I mean Spiral Dynamics chart say about my life?"). As for my personal favorites of Leo's videos: 40 Signs That You Are Neurotic Understanding How Paradigms Work Understanding Absolute Infinity Spiritual Enlightenment - The Most SHOCKING Truth You'll Ever Hear How To Meditate - The No Bullshit Guide To Meditation

Hello serious psychonauts, Right now I plan a lifetime supply of malt (20-30 years range) for me. What would you recommend, what is realistic ? I need 30 mg malt plugged for a decent trip. I want to hold the option in my life to go deep (alien mind etc). Can you advice me about how much g would be good? I know it's a difficult question because our consumption pattern might be different but I just need some reference to think about. I know there are only a few on this forum to answer that question. I hope @Leo Gura as probably on of the most experienced one in terms of long-term usage can answer this question too. Thanks

I see, thanks for sharing. Psychedelics never helped me, it's always randoms experiences ; Sometimes very alien and interesting eheh, but random and impersonal still.

Part 3. Then I started having glimpses via the mushroom let's call the female alien the mushroom she was showing me that in 2098 where my fiance was and how when you die you somehow shrink down to size and at night she was allowed out in this bubble where she could fly anywhere anytime you would think by now I would have gone this is crazy must be in some delusion/psychosis but I was even more lost in it. So she would fly in this bubble and watch me at night but was invisible to me. She would fall asleep in this bubble next to me when I slept. I guess she could go through matter kind of like quantum phasing then she would have to return to this dome prison thing in 2098. Somehow I was looking through my fiance's eyes like I was in her mind I could see it from her POV flying through the clouds at night. It was to me as clear as day I don't know how the mushroom was projecting this image from her mind into mine. Nor do I know how she could travel to my timeline. Some sort of telepathic mind interface across time. The next thing I knew was I was talking to a trillion God heads through my computer I remember calling out to a few old friends and saying how's it going. Then there was the so-called devil whom I shouted profanities at and said you had better run and he ran and disappeared. There was also dumpster God's head and I said something along the lines of you blundering simpleton, fat ignoramus of a venal and greedy pillock of a man with such poverty of imagination and he goes hay I like this guy he is really cool. Later on, I actually had a glimpse of hell for a second and since I don't believe in that tripe I saw my little devil friend on a beautiful planet so pristine and he was the governor of the whole planet. I felt bad for what I said before we all know who the real devils are don't we humans? I was then glimpsing it through my fiance's mind/eyes and she goes who's that midget looking Oompa Loompa thing and I said that's the Devil nice little chap, isn't he. Don't ask me why it was a he. Anyway after I had addressed all the Godheads I started to get tired, fell asleep, and woke up on that bean bag. I tried to move and it was as though there was this weight upon me I tried to crawl to my bedroom it took me about 5 minutes then I could not climb onto my bed this actually happened I know I was feeling weak from not eating anything for a few days. I still to this day don't know what it was. It was like an invisible force was holding me down. I have never experienced this before. The mushroom said it was them to see if I was really God and that they exerted a force of a tonne on me some crap like that but I understand I was in a delusion later on and that but this was different. I finally was let on my bed and went back to sleep. When I woke up I sat back on the computer and I believe this was the 2nd day or 3rd I was really weak and still was not eating I got this message from the mushroom that the same guy I sent the pleiadian female to was in league with another alien race that was 1 billion years old. And was for some reason going to destroy the mushroom alien race which was only 30 million years old and they needed help I asked what can I do and the mushroom said to send out to the universe a telepathic message and I did. I Love old sci-fi series and movies.

I'm finally back to give some updates on my experience with psychedelics. I haven't done so lately because I didn't have enough time to write trip reports and I needed to focus on myself, not on sharing my experience. I also realized that sharing a report for every trip was too difficult. One reason is that a trip can look a lot like another one, especially when described in words. Another reason is that the insights I have in some trips I don't feel comfortable sharing, and it would distill the trips too much to omit them. So I will only share my experience when it feels right to do so. I still want to keep a psychedelic journal format and write down each trip I have, even if it's just making a note of the date and the substance. So here is the list of the last trips I had: Trip 18: 4-AcO-DMT 20 mg, 03.25.24 (insufflated) Trip 19: 4-AcO-DMT 30 mg, 04.04.24 (oral) Trip 20: 5-MeO-MiPT 15 mg, 06.19.24 Trip 21: 5-MeO-MALT 20 mg, 06.24.24 Trip 22: 5-MeO-MiPT 15 mg, 07.09.24 Notes written on the 30th of September 2024: To share my overall thoughts on the new psychedelics, I had extremely beautiful trips on 5-MeO-MiPT. I absolutely love this substance. It feels so right for me. I love the duration—which is longer than 5-MeO-DMT and 5-MeO-MALT, the visuals, the introspective state it brings me in (I had so many deep realizations on it) and the pure Love Consciousness it creates. It's mind-blowing. It made me realize that I AM LOVE. The words playing in my mind on this substance were not I Am God, but I Am Love. It was so deep and beautiful. It has helped me a lot to start loving myself too. I even had a taste of an Alien Form Of Love. My experiences on 4-AcO-DMT were not as good. The first trip was too light—because I didn't take the substance properly, I think - and the second one started out well but ended up badly as I read a message during the come down which I didn't understand like I would have fully sober. Reading a message was a mistake that won't happen again. But overall, I felt disappointed because I had wished 4-AcO-DMT would have been more similar to magic truffles than it actually was in my first trips. But I definitely have to try it again, in better circumstances, to make myself a proper opinion of it. I will also try the plugging method to experience its purest form. Notes of today: Here is the list of the psychedelics I've taken this month: Trip 23: 4-AcO-DMT 20 mg, 10.03.24 Trip 24: 4-AcO-DMT 15 mg, 10.16.24 Trip 25: 4-AcO-DMT 15 mg, 10.21.24 Trip 26: 5-MeO-MALT 17 mg, 10.28.24 Trip 27: 5-MeO-MALT 15 mg, 10.30.24 Trip 28: 5-MeO-MALT 20 mg, 10.31.24 4-AcO-DMT First thing worth noting: I absolutely love 4-AcO-DMT. It's not exactly the same as magic truffles, but it's similar enough to really enjoy it. Psilocybin has been one of my favorite psychedelics, and I'm really happy to now have this substance, which is far easier to ingest. I really love everything about it so far, but I still haven't tripped enough to have a full grasp of it. I consider writing a detailed trip report at some point. But some little notes I have about it so far is that: It is sedating It makes my nose itchy Tears fall down my eyes for no real reason I get pain in the heart area on higher dosages I get full body orgasms The visuals are very intense, especially on higher dosages There is a serious taste of weirdness in these trips, but that is what I love most, and that comes with very deep realizations. It also makes my mind very still at times, which is a greatly welcomed break from my daily non-stop thinking life. My last trip was weaker than expected, which I think comes from the fact that I didn't wait long enough between the trips. I plan to trip on 15 mg again just to test again that dosage. Then I will raise the dose. I learned that having trips at lower dosages contributes to understanding and going deeper within one substance. I tend to desire to take more in order to get more, but it is not necessarily how it works. Going lower helps build foundations. It is easier for me to accept that now that I have many more opportunities to trip than I had when I started this thread. I was living with my mother and my grandmother, which I was taking care of everyday. I'm extremely sad that she is gone, but I can now do the things I couldn't do before. I am more sad, but more free. 5-MeO-MALT I did the same, starting from lower, after a long break with it. It was especially good as I had terrible nausea on it for the first time ever (more about that here). I went even lower on the next trip, and then went back higher. It really helped me get more clarity on the substance, though it's not as mind-blowing as a full dose. I understand this substance a bit differently and better now and I'm ready to go deeper. First of all, it's completely different from 4-AcO-DMT. I had forgotten how different it was. I don't like it as much, but it is very direct and pure to grasp what consciousness is. For that kind of work, it is great, but I need many more trips on it. What's funny is that this psychedelic makes my all body vibrate, especially my arms and hands. I can literally see them tremble. When I stood up today to close the curtains, my arms were difficult to move, as if they were somewhat paralysed. It was weird, but not a big of a deal I think. When I am lying down, the vibrations are what's most impressive. I was listening to the music @Jodistrict shared here and it was so perfect. I felt extremely good in my body, as if the music was massaging my brain and giving me mind orgasms. One realization I had on today's trip was that one of the deepest forms of corruption one can fall into was not being true to oneself. To me, it can manifests as to not fully being who I am (it can be very subtle) in order to please others or to get approval. I've fallen into this trap quite a lot. I sacrifice my true self in order to protect my lower self, my ego. Doing that doesn't help me grow. It is something I am becoming more and more conscious of. I need to let my higher self come to the forefront. I am not chasing money, sex or fame in my daily life, but I am chasing love, recognition, and approval. It all comes from ego and corrupts me all as much. Trip Preparation And After Care This last month, I've been developing my own routine to start a trip. It is very simple. I basically wake up at 7:30 AM, put on some comfortable clothes, go to the bathroom, prepare the syringe, and add more pillow on my bed. Then I find a comfortable position, plug the substance (often around 8 AM), and sit still until the trip has completely started. On 4-AcO-DMT, I like to sit in front on my window during the come up. I look at the trees. It's a very beautiful view. I now start my trips with the curtains open and the light on, but I still like when it is completely dark at times. When the trip is over, I eat and drink a lot. I get extremely thirsty all day. Then I take care of my dogs and take some rest (30-60 minutes) before starting the day. I've been working a lot in the house lately. I'm far more productive now. I still don't know how to improve my after care routine. I feel like something is missing. Well-Being And Purpose I'm feeling much better in myself and in my life now that I have opportunities to trip weekly. Psychedelics, exploring and working towards understanding consciousness, is really a need for me. It is a purpose, and following through on this purpose makes me incredibly happy. It feels so good to finally be able to move forward. I feel much more grounded, present, and centered. The road towards full understanding is long, but my well-being has already considerably improved in just a month of tripping.

The alien crocodile mice waiting to shittest Leo next trip: 😈🙏👽🐊🐭

There is something that the ego hates and that if you realize it, the ego will begin to work against it. is that everything you know, your level of consciousness, even the level of consciousness of an interdimensional alien entity of unimaginable magnitude is exactly the same as the level of consciousness of a worm. There is no difference, it seems like it is more but it is not, the only level of consciousness is the total being, and it is the same, a proton is the same as an entire universe. Omniscience means know what you are. Without limits there is nothing else to know, anything is the same than another thing, there is not bigger or smaller, higher or lower, there is the illusion of knowing things or the realization that anything in comparison with infinity dissapear, then there is only one knowing: what you are, your nature, and it's the nature of everything.

Alien chanter, too new agey for you. What do you like about Non-Duality? Me personally: nothing 😁

Ooo, my, oh my, oh my - how fuuunky! Hmmm, perhaps you should upload this as a YouTube video, with hyper-detailed, multidimensional images and video...? You can’t possibly expect to comprehend the vast intricacies of extraterrestrial, transdimensional, and hyper-cosmic language with such a minuscule sample! Didn’t they properly educate you in the Leo Gura Institute of Alien Hyperintelligence on the nuances of this phenomenon? How am I expected to interrupt this on such a low database? Goshy!

“I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth." -Steven Hawking

This is a super fascinating topic to explore. First of all, I agree, all location is absolutely relative. This is the case with all objects that seem to be distinct and to have a distance from each other. This idea also stretches much further than relation between material objects. Here I wanna take the opportunity to explore the relation between the sense of identity and the sense of subjectivity, which is quite fascinating. This will sound obvious to some but I find its always to explore the fundamental questions of being conscious. Identity wants to locate itself in the symbolic realm in relation to other identities and the social structure. Example: Your name is a a concept that was imposed on you by your parents as a place to locate your identity (relative to other identities). Even if you choose a new name, you are still locating yourself in the symbolic social realm. Concepts like "man" "woman" "plumber" "muslim" "american" "human" "confident" etc. are all way to be distinct and distanced from other identities. This is the way identity aims to localize itself. So just like a pencil or a planet or a star doesn't have a location, neither does our sense of subjectivity. Identity is layered "on top of" subjectivity and provides a sense of location in relation to other identities and symbolic realms of language etc. This is why identity is in a sense important to navigate social reality. At the same time identity causes horrible problems when it is insisted on to relieve us from our subjectivity. In a sense, every object is alien to where it exists, nothing has its own "place". The same applies to us; whoever we think we are is alien to us. These relations between location and identity, subjectivity and space can be used to gain a ton of insight into all sorts of political and cultural situations too. For example, most ideologies appeal to the desire to "be located" in some way, appealing to (and creating) our desire to escape our subjectivity.

Okay, I understand fractals now. They're not "alien" to us. We're the fractals, density/synchronicity, a fractal matrix. Fractals encode, traverse & express memory in a system. Structural and cognitive complexity of neural life forms. Mechanic computational approaches are way too limited. Traversing, modifying, updating the whole needs recursion. And the natural emergent efficient form approaches that. Neural networks really are freaking astonishing, I must say.

If no one had any Experience, first this question would never be able to arise or be spoken of, second this forum, our words we use, the keyboard or phone, internet, none of it would exist. Only via free will has any of this happened, and free will happen via Experience, and Experience is the only thing You really have while Embodied, no Embodiment, no ability to Experience, no use in talking/discussing/bringing up Absolute, God or any of that.. Everything is Relative and/or Subjective, One person say Free Will does not exists, that is one possibility, another says it does, that is another possibility, one says Evil is all the exists, that is one Potential, another says Good is all that Exists, again another Potential, what determines any of this is Your Experience and ability to exert any Potential that can happen, whether it is a Cave Man creating Fire, or Leo's Alien Consciousness, its all Potential and Possibility, only we can navigate the entire spectrum of it, You can live without Free Will, You can Live with It, now what is Your Choice (again Free Will)!

Psychologist using a modified rorschach test asks: "What do you see?" "Nine, DUH!", "Oh, there's 6 too", "0 also", "One is curving around in solipsism" "8 definitely!", "3 symmetrically", "5 and 2", "4 & 7 with some practise" "Oh and definitely Alien Leo"

I don’t think the US will ever give up power to "enemies" willingly. Never. Only if there is a alien invasion, ww3, huge awakening and ego dismantling or something of that order.

Plot twist: Those are alien farts

I always wanted to go to Shambhala just for the experience as well as try Ketamine. I could not write a book on this experience over exaggeration nonetheless, it makes for a good but weird story hitherto. It is kind of logical in a non-logical way. What say you me I am you. This is the second part. This is not a verbatim account." but quite close to it. Then I laid down on this big bean bag that I had recently bought for my fiance and me when we played games on the X-box and the other consoles and I started getting another telepathic voice it was a female who said she went through my Facebook or hacked into it and liked my pictures of me and started being very explicit and sexual. I asked who she was, and she said she was a Pleiadian and wanted me bad. Then the next thing my fiance started talking to and getting jealous so we had a three-way telepathic conversation, This went on for about half an hour. All I had to do was say mushroom friends and as soon as I said that I was connected to the female one. I thought how the hell is my fiance being able to join in the conversation if she is in a bubble in 2098? She said it was due to that guy from 2098 and her tech and somehow they were able to bring her in or bridge the gap and amplify the signal and cross over into my time as well. I always wondered if I took a trip and let's say someone else took a psychedelic a year later and we both woke up and in an instance, it would seem like we took the trip at the same time even though it was a year apart no time to time. Anyway, she could join in hear it, and also speak. I also asked who this Pleiadian female was and the mushroom female said once they like you they are hard to get rid of. I told the Pleiadian female that I already had a fiance and I was already taken and so did my fiance who was arguing with her but she would not listen to either of us. It did not matter what I said and she said you are the real God I thought this was becoming monotonous. Then I got back on the computer and this other voice came into my head and he was pisst off saying I was coursing trouble and how he was also being contacted by aliens telepathically all day and how I was the real God and I was smarter than him what nonsense I said. So aliens were all coming to Earth to find the so-called real God which was me. Somehow this Pleiadian Locked our minds telepathically in sync with him and she was causing trouble not me. This went on for an hour, and then he started threatening me and I kept telling him we are all God and cares who is smarter and that he knows the truth. So It was like a loop I couldn't stop myself from saying his name every time I did we would link up. I asked my friend the mushroom female how do I stop this Pleiadian from causing this trouble and she said you will have to block the signal I said fine how? She said you going to have to wrap alfoil around your head I said you got to be kidding me I said would that not amplify the signal she said no. So I start wrapping alfoil around my head. At this point it was not working so I kept wrapping more alfoil and it still didn't work so I showed in my mind me exploding her and the ship and this freaked her out and also freaked out other alien ships. So I thought how do I get rid of this Pleiadian even the mushroom was trying to get rid of her but it was not working. So I started talking about this guy and you should check him out and she did and she started bothering him. This is the same person with whom she was causing trouble. Then I got a message from this guy who was in 2098 that he had got my fiance out of this bubble prison and that the mushroom would fly somehow to 2098 and bring her back to this timeline. I always instinctively felt that music has this numinous and/or coruscating quality—it almost has an ethos to it. U can not use quantum physics to explain consciousness because it is part of the dream. It's always good to discuss, debate, ideate, and develop fresh new perspectives. Multiple oneness. Always remember just because someone stumbles and loses their way does not mean they are lost forever.

@Leo Gura why you have bad taste in dreaming. I keep wondering. Is that faith or your deep taste it just too alien to me. You like to think of society order that I appreciate but why playing the same old game. You could use your only life to increase your taste for others things can't you dream it ?

Hmmm... I'm not too sure! I feel like with all of these "new" paradigms, they still point to the same thing: the Absolute, Truth, God, etc. Even new levels of consciousness, like Leo's Alien Intelligence, still fall under the same overarching "paradigm", if you could call it like that. They're just so radical that it's important to make a distinction. What I personally find fascinating is when we start deconstructing how reality is imagined even more. I'd be curious to see if someone ever experiments with twisting their hands, eye colors, environment, or other monk-like abilities like levitation, sorcery, healing powers, or paranormal phenomena. I'd love to see how the mind—or even a collective mind or trip experience—can slowly start impacting reality. Hopefully, this will become more mainstream once science shifts towards spirituality and the "nebulous stuff." There's probably so much more we could invent, practically and scientifically, if we studied these phenomena. In the words of The Great Tesla: “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” Here I could see so much potential! 💛😊🔅✨

Alien-truths

You do realise that just because it acts confident and knowledgeable, doesn't mean that it actually understands anything, right? It just regurgitates whatever it information it got from the content it was fed. This point of "maybe we shouldn't tell Ai about alien consciousness / metaphysics/psychedelics/etc., because it is not evolved enough" that many of you keep mentioning is so hilarious to me. You are acting as if it would need some advanced reasoning skills to grasp those topics. IT IS NOT GRASPING ANYTHING. It is a language model. It just copies words. Alien consciousness is not somehow more linguistically challenging for AI to talk about (the only argument you could make is that Leo just didn't talk about it enough for AI to have enough data to work with). IT IS NOT THINKING It just predicts what the next word in a sentence should be based on the data it has analysed so far. If anything, the greatest strength of AI is the vastness of information that it was fed. The amount of data that humans couldn't possibly study in their lifetime. This is what makes it so useful.

Well they kinda wouldn't need you anyway at that point. Its getting to that point. I'm sure if I asked it, it will still preface that direct experience is still king in its eyes. Someone should ask it about alien Consciousness next but I'm not sure if it's that evolved

Yes, that's the dynamic that feels secure and exciting to me in romantic contexts. I feel very loved and desired that way. I tend to do a version of this with friendships too. The people that I feel the most comfortable connecting with and gel the most with are the people who are on the same wavelength and who have a natural appreciation for my values and qualities on their own... prior to knowing that I exist. Because of my early social experiences of feeling misunderstood, alien, and devalued, I have a spidey-sense about who is going to value my qualities or devalue my qualities. And as much as I can, I avoid social contexts (platonic or romantic) that won't understand or recognize my value. This includes avoiding relationships with men that I feel are unlikely to perceive me as beautiful. And even back when I was in high school, I dressed in a way that would filter out the wrong ones for me and attract in the right ones for me. I used to dress in a relatively heavy goth style that I'd cobble together from thrift store finds. And it would repel a lot of people who thought I was weird, or a satanist, or a witch, etc.. But it would attract to me people who were more open minded and enjoyed my MO. So, because I was always feeling a bit like a fish out of water, there was this natural marketing knowledge that arose and a tendency to put myself out there as a beacon to draw in others who are on the same wavelength. And since high school, there is this niche marketing myself to a target audience that will appreciate me and repelling the wrong ones. And if a potential friend or lover doesn't feel like they're part of my "target audience" that will appreciate me, I will not feel very secure or excited connecting with them. And this strategy has worked pretty well for me romantically and platonically. The issue is that it can be a bit self-objectifying. But I know that this type of pattern also has come up for lots of my clients who have dealt with dynamics around shame, disconnection, abandonment, alienation, ostracisms, etc. People who generally have these needs met by family and friends, tend to feel less of a need to niche market themselves to a target audience as they already have a social fabric to connect in to. For those who have deficits in these areas, we have to do the leg work to find the ones that are cut from the same cloth.