Leo Gura

@Franko Well... you tell us. Why is personal dev important to you? What are you working towards? Maybe it's best to just slack off?

@AlwaysBeNice I can see where you're coming from. Your intentions are good, and that can work as a technique. But it also can easily turn into a distraction. So "watch out" is my only point. Many potential traps on this path.

Yes Spells of extreme low consciousness like that can happen after peaks of extreme high consciousness. The mind and body behaves like a natural oscillator. Best solution is to maintain mindfulness ESPECIALLY after a major breakthrough or nondual experience. The important thing is to not never doing anything unconscious, but to maintain mindfulness of while you do it. Ex: if you're gonna pig out on a jumbo bag of potato chips, do it mindfully.

@Wes Thoughts You have to be smart here. Of course 2 solid months of personal development or consciousness work would be a huge boost. If you did it seriously, you might even get a glimpse or two of nonduality. But then what? You go back to working at McDonald's in your half-enlightened state with hardly enough money to pay your next bill? Going for broke is a bad idea. You don't want to paint yourself into a corner. It would be smarter to figure out a more sustainable solution. For example, many Zen monasteries charge a low initiation fee for living with them for a whole year. So if did that, you could buy yourself a whole year of practice. Or you could hatch a plan to save up more money so you have more time later and you don't go broke. If you are SERIOUS about pursuing enlightenment full-time, there are plenty of ways to do it. Society does have avenues created specifically for such people. That's what monks and yogis do. There are entire communities designed for that, and they don't require you to be a millionaire. But they do take serious commitment. So the most important first step is to clearly decide how serious you are and what you really want to do for the next few years. If you have no good career prospects, pursuing enlightenment full-time for a few years might be a really good option. But it must be done seriously.

Be careful with idol worship. Look yourself in the face instead. Kill the Buddha and all that jazz.

@Telepresent Yes, of course, all justifications, reasons, and paradigms are circular. That is their entire function! It's a game. Try not justifying anything for a week. See how that goes.

@Wes Thoughts It's a good idea, but if you only have a few month's worth of savings, that won't be enough. If cash is tight, you need to look for a spiritual community that provides food and lodgings in exchange for some work. Plenty of them around, including Zen monasteries, yogic ashrams, Hare Krishna's etc. But beware, when joining a community, they will indoctrinate you. You'll be dealing with a lot of dogma. Choose your ashram very carefully. Don't get sucked into a cult.

@zenjen As with any business, if you want to earn money doing it, you need to master business and marketing. The writing of content is the easy part. Breaking into blogging is much harder than most people assume. You'll need to have a very solid marketing strategy in place. You're gonna need to take a bunch of online marketing courses to have a realistic chance of success. There are even courses available for how to do blogging. Be sure to watch my video: The Psychology Of Small Business Success.

@MM1988 That's precisely right. But not nearly sufficient.

@Cesar Alba You still aren't grasping the existential significance of this. Ego is you! No ego, no you.

@Max_V You need to draw a sharp distinction between beliefs and direct experience. Sit down and make of list of things you know from direct experience vs beliefs you hold from hearsay. For example: Beliefs: Earth is round DNA Evolution Dinosaurs Big Bang Antarctica World War 2 Molecules etc. Direct experience: I have hands I had a cat I like sushi Water washes clothes Fire burns Salt makes me thirsty Snow is cold Pee is yellow And then realize, 99.9% of what you consider "reality" is literally just words you heard. Stop treating this issue as merely a philosophic consideration, but as what's the case. Your entire reality is a house of cards. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Don't think about this. Actually do it!

Pretty good for just 2g.

@Ariel Have you not been to school? Why is it so hard to take notes on a video? Notes can be very detailed or very short, and anything in between. You just need to tone down the volume of your note taking. This isn't history class. You don't need copious notes on my videos.

Iboga should ONLY be done in a clinical setting, with a doctor. It's a very serious thing.

@Ariel That's what the underlining is for. If you properly underline a book, you can re-read all the juicy parts in 10 mins. Some rare books are worth studying in much more depth. But those kind of books are very rare. I'm talking about your average self-help book.

You can. Go grab a plastic straw and bend it all you like. Or grab a wrench and bend a steel pipe.

Yes, way too much. Underline as you read and then maybe do a 1-2 page executive summary at the end with top lessons learned.

Actualize: ACT-YOU-lize Business: BUSY-ness Culture: CULT-your Mind your ABC's P.S. Self: super-elf Mind your self.

@phoenix666 It's a healthy mixture of both. They certainly know they're suffering to various degrees, which is why they engage in all that activity, to drown out the suffering temporary. It's a never-ending cycle of suffering and stimulation. But there are also deeper layers of suffering of which they are as yet unaware. They rationalize it away by saying, "But this is just how life is. You can't be happy all the time." They attribute their own self-created suffering to the cruelty and harshness of reality itself. Which isn't true, but they don't know that. They also have no idea about the awesomeness they're missing out on. If only they knew, they'd realize just how sub-par their lives are. If you've been homeless your whole life, you will have no idea how great it is to live in a home or what you've been missing. People generally only know what culture serves up to them on a silver platter.

@Pure Imagination Family is the hardest. Because there is such a long history of baggage, and they refuse to see or acknowledge any growth you make because they just wanna see the old you.

@electroBeam A natural part of the spiritual purification process. Keep applying mindfulness to your ups and downs. Notice their impermanence. You're clearly still clinging to moods and states. That needs to be transcended eventually. Instead of chasing bliss, pursue reality -- that which is actual. Stay the course. You're doing fine. The ego will create mood swings to buck you off like a cowboy at a rodeo.

@phoenix666 All just smoke and mirrors. There is no happiness in materialism. It's fundamentally impossible. There is no such thing as a happy Devil. Of course the Devil will make it appear like he's happy, but that's just more of his lies. All that "happiness" is a house of cards which will implode sooner or later.

You have to remind yourself of your vision, and that these low consciousness people are actually deeply suffering inside. They are just so unconscious they don't know it, and they don't tell you about it. You don't see it because it's hidden beneath a thin veneer of petty materialism and success. Whenever you see a successful person, remind yourself, they are no more evolved than a heroin addict. They just have more money, and perhaps some better technical or social skills. As they age, these fools will suffer enormously. Eventually, on their deathbed they will realize they wasted their ENTIRE life. You, on the other hand, will die the most profound death imaginable, if you keep up with this work. The effort is proportional to the rewards. You have no idea yet how epic the rewards will be if you stick with this path.

@zunnyman Well, the fact is, 1 hour per day is just a bare minimum. You gotta do some retreats or psychedelics to get some really serious depth. It takes years of practice for it to start infecting your everyday life. You should also start practicing mindfulness outside of formal sitting. Walking meditation is a good way to start.

I tell people different things, depending on context and what they need to hear. Both are true. You can eliminate pain through consciousness, you can eliminate pain through physical means. You need to use good judgement as to when to apply which. You wouldn't want to use consciousness to suppress the pain of an infection, for example. That pain is there to keep you alive, like the "Check Engine" light in your car.