Leo Gura

Well, sex and intimacy are still meaningful to me. But the process of chasing after it is not.

Precisely because a devil is merely God in disguise! Really, there are no devils. A devil is just what we call it when God isn't aware that it's God. Also, devilry is inherently unstable and self-defeating. The suffering that devilry creates ultimately becomes so strong that the devil is forced to admit he is wrong. Either that or he doubles down and becomes an even bigger devil until finally physical death takes him. So now you see why death is such an important part of the divine plan of Love. Death is the safety valve which ensures that devils never ultimately prevail. A devil can only prevail in the short-term. God always prevails in the long-term: by killing you and freeing you of all your limits! Death is like the reboot button on your computer, for when it bugs out Could you imagine if devils lived forever? Now that would be a problem. Fortunately, all devils must die. Unfortunately, you are a devil. Fortunately, you are also God Say... that's a good book title The profoundly twisted irony is this: the devil only behaves like a devil in the first place because he can die! If the devil was immortal he would not act like a devil, he would act like God! If a devil should ever realize that he is actually immortal, he will stop acting like a devil and start acting like God. Ta-da!

To be more accurate, I just have a different kind of social life than most people consider a social life. My social life is through my work. For example you might ask if the Buddha or Gandhi had a social life. And the answer is, their social life was everything that revolved around their life's work. The same goes for me, except with the added wrinkle that we now live in the digital age, where the notion of "social" has expanded to include all of the activity happening through digital communication. If you include digital communication, my social life is quite significant. The very definition of "social life" is flexible and relative and changes across the ages. If you mean, do I go to the bar and drink beers with people, or attend dinner parties, or go bowling with friends? Definitely not. Such things are not interesting to me.

He's using a very loose definition, something along the lines of: anyone who's ever be in a non-symbolic state. But that's very short of what I'm talking about. I don't consider Jeffery Martin enlightened. Not even close. He's still thoroughly materialistic in his explanations of reality & consciousness. His research is good, but far short of where this rabbit hole ultimately goes. To me, escaping suffering has never been the goal. The goal has always been understanding reality. You are right, most people pursue spirituality rather selfishly & narrow-mindedly -- to escape pain or improve their life. The deepest sages I think pursue it for understanding & Truth, not to escape something negative. I generally agree. People are so different that they have different desires and needs. But also, not all roads lead to the same place, and there are many partial ways to go about spirituality. I don't get the sense that Shinzen actually knows what Truth is. I don't know. Answering this is problematic because I don't have access to anyone's mind but my own. Shinzen's techniques are good. Will they get you to the deepest levels of understanding? Probably not. But that's okay, they don't need to. A toolbox needs more than one tool in it. Use Shinzen's techniques, but also don't stop there. Explore other things like psychedelics. I doubt you'll find a technique more powerful than 5-MeO-DMT. But that doesn't mean you should only use 5-MeO-DMT. An army doesn't just use nuclear weapons. It has all sizes of weapons in its arsenal because a nuclear weapon is not always the right weapon for the job. It's hard to say. We don't have good science on this yet. Generally speaking good techniques to try are all the ones I've shared in the past: Meditation Self-inquiry Strong determination sitting Contemplation Psychedelics Vipassana retreats Solo retreats Yoga Dark room retreats Shamanic breathing Etc. These are well-worn methods that work for many people. And in the end, you gotta wonder, is there any other option? Those are the best techniques mankind has developed so far. So you might as well start tinkering around with them. With practice you should find whatever works best for you. There will be future video about the many facets of awakening. All of that is survival. You're still not appreciating what I mean by the notion of survival. It's a much deeper notion than most of you guys here yet realize. Rest, play, and showing affection is all part of survival. Without them a mammal would be dead. Animals don't meditate. You're projecting that onto them. They sit and do nothing sometimes. But I wouldn't call that meditation. Don't get me wrong, I still like Shinzen as a teacher. Nothing I say here is meant to attack or undermine the work of Shinzen or Ralston or whoever. I'm just adding some extra wrinkles to it. I don't know much about him. You'd have to ask him what he's become conscious of.

I don't have a social life. Never cared to have one. It does not interest me. I rarely watch movies these days. Hard to find good movies. Most of them are juvenile superhero crap. Occasionally Hollywood makes a good movie for adults. But that's like twice a year. The rest is popcorn spectacles & money machines, which I don't care for. Occasionally I'll play a video game. When a good one comes out. But again, that's quite rare. Maybe once a year. I don't care for most games. It needs to be something original and deep or artistic.

Certainly not all cities in Oregon. Rural parts of every state/country are basically Blue. NYC has some Green aspects but also a lot of Orange. Many of the top cities in the USA are Orange/Green hybrids, not fully Green. A fully Green city would be very hippy-ish. Something like Sedona AZ maybe. Technically no city has a single color. Each part of the city has its own color, so it's tricky because we're talking about loose averages.

That's the mindfuck of it: even the worst hell realm is still Absolute Love. The person just isn't aware of it in that moment. In a sense, it's a catch-22: the person is in the hell realm because their consciousness is in a limited state. That's what a hell realm is: a limited state of consciousness. A limited state is not wide enough to see the big picture. Seeing the big picture is necessary to understand that all states & realms are part of the flowering of Infinite Love. So from inside a hell realm it will seem like there is no love at all. But from outside the hell realm it is realized that that hell realm is indistinguishable from Love. If a person in the hell realm realized that it is Love, the hell realm would instantly transform into Paradise. But of course this is hard to do in practice because the hell realm so mesmerizes one's consciousness. It's like a bad dream. It's hard to break out when you're in it. But nor is it necessary to break out. What's more important is to realize that it isn't real. God's Love wouldn't be unlimited if it excluded hell realms. But the ego's POV is too limited to appreciate that. Luckily God has no such limitation. The duality or boundary between heaven & hell is itself made of Nothing/Love! Heaven is the realization that there is no difference between being in heaven or hell. The moment you realize the difference between the two is an imaginary duality, you will find yourself in Heaven. Heaven being an absolute -- has no opposite. Hell is the idea that there is a heaven separate from where you currently are -- and wishing to be there. The desire to be in heaven ironically produces hell because it is a denial and resistance of the present moment -- a denial of truth in favor of falsehood. So hell is falsehood or delusion. And Heaven is Truth. Neat, huh?

This video here shows her lack of political experience: Of course it's nice that's she's so open to changing her mind. But it also shows that she hasn't thought all her positions through. Don't get me wrong, I like her a lot. But success in politics requires more than being a spiritual guru. Spiritual gurus do not necessarily make the best politicians. Overall I'm thrilled that she's in the debates. She's helping elevate the political discourse which is what we badly need.

No. It's a loose hypothesis I have. I don't know for sure. There is no difference, but also there is. You are always in some state of consciousness. All states of consciousness are God, but you can only know that from certain states of consciousness. So your state of consciousness is absolutely important. You cannot be a donkey, for example. That is not an appropriate state of consciousness. If Daniel Ingram was a donkey, his enlightenment would disappear and no amount of Buddhism would help him.

@Aaron p Yes

LOL Way to keep an open mind, bro.

Hehe, if thought isn't now, when is it exactly? Thought is precisely now.

@Beginner Mind See my last vlog. The universe is structured in precisely such a way as to maximize Love. Every movement of every molecule and all the way up the chain of being is working towards this purpose. Including every pixel on this screen you're looking at and every character written on this forum. It's quite something to behold.

No! There is definitely a reason why reality is precisely how it is. To dismiss this as "mind" is to make one of the biggest mistakes possible: it is to never realize why you created reality. Rather a shame not to know that. You honestly believe reality is here without a why? All of this precise structure and complexity with no explanation?? Just randomness? Just experience? Ha! Don't be gullible.

@Anderz Yeah, but she's also quite naive and politically inexperienced.

Replace alcohol with psychdelics. The original cure for alcoholism via AA used LSD. Everyone forgot the LSD! Now it's all talk and no mysticism. The founder of AA used LSD to heal himself. P.S. Nothing wrong with AA. But understand that your problems go deeper than talk can fix.

In practice no. We usually use that word "enlightenment" quite sloppily to designate any degree of nondual realization. Often times the degree of it is minor and narrow. Many people who are conventionally called "enlightened" do not understand all of those 5 points I mentioned. And there are more points besides those 5. Binary designations are very misleading. You should always wonder: To what degree is this guy enlightened? What does he really understand? What specifically has he become conscious of? It's like if someone told you he's doctor. Okay, but that doesn't say much. What really matters is, How good of a doctor is he? Not all doctors are the same. You are the entire universe. What more do you want? Because there is nothing but Truth. Nothing else matters. How could God not care about itself when there is nothing but itself? They are not immersed in God-consciousness. They are immersed is mindless survival and selfishness, as are most humans. They are totally clueless about God even though of course they are God all along. But they don't know that, and that's what matters: knowing it.

The divine plan is Love. The trick is understanding what that means. You would require infinite intelligence and selflessness to understand the plan. The plan is so grand that the ego literally cannot understand it.

All why questions ultimately lead to the question of Why is reality precisely the way it is? And the answer to that is: Absolute Love. Feynman was going in the right direction, but he did not go far enough, deep enough, wide enough to understand the ultimate WHY.

Of course they are very present, because they got no higher mind. They are pre-ego. Enlightened humans are post-ego. It's not the same thing. Your cat may be very present and pure, but he is not conscious that he is God. Whereas as a human can be. It is not enough to just be present. One must realize that he is God. An imbecile can be very present. That doesn't equate to metaphysical insight. You can do a frontal lobotomy on a human and he will become very passive and mindless like a cow. But that isn't God-realization. The point of all this work is not be present, it's to understand what reality is. If you're not crystal clear about what reality is and why reality is, then you've got more work to do.

@Rodrigo SIlva Tolerance varies from person to person. Assuming normal tolerance, I would stay under 4g of mushrooms and under 300ug of LSD. Even those doses can be very intense and challenging on the psyche to integrate. If I do mushrooms or LSD, I keep it at 2g and 150ug. But I'm probably unusually sensitive. Many folks would probably need to double or triple that to experience what I experience.

Of course technically I don't. I can't crawl inside their heads. But one can still make educated deductions. When an enlightened person is not able to properly answer questions about the nature of Love or Truth, that's a red flag. If Love or Truth are denied, something in their understanding is missing. To me the highest teaching is very simple: You are God. Infinite Consciousness is the only thing that exists. Everything is imaginary. Everything is designed for the sake of Absolute Love. Truth & Love are totally identical. Any teaching which does not state the above in clear & explicit terms, I am suspicious of. There are further nuances, but that's the core of spirituality/awakening.

@Rodrigo SIlva You can do a lot of work with LSD and mushrooms even without 5-MeO. Don't underestimate them. When you want to transition to 5-MeO is all up to you. There is no rush. But be careful with high doses of LSD and mushrooms. They can get really hairy. I would stick to medium doses at most. It's very important that you don't spook yourself off with one bad trip. A lot of newbies get spooked off because their doses are too high and they are unable to deal with the truths which are shown them. So they end up sweeping the entire field of psychedelics away under the rug. It's a form of denial. The wisest course of action is to proceed slowly, moderately, carefully, patiently, yet persistently and methodicly. Tortoise wins the race in the end. Aim for 50 to 100 trips before you start to get the hang of psychedelics. Anything less than that is noob-land.

I agree.

I'm still telling you that brains are imaginary, as are neurotransmitters. The word "neurotransmitter" is being used here in a relative, imaginary sense. It's not the neurotransmitters I trust, but the Truth which they help to unveil. If you were stuck in jail cell inside a dream and I told you to use the key to unlock the door, the key is still imaginary. An imaginary door requires an imaginary key. It would be foolish to reply to me, "Haha, Leo! If this is all a dream like you said, why are you telling me to use this key? Why do you trust the key?" When inside The Matrix, we speak in the relative truths of The Matrix world. One of those relative truths is brains and neurotransmitters. Once you've taken the neurotransmitters you'll realize neurotransmitters and brains are imaginary. But only AFTER you take them!