Leo Gura

Puts stuff into words is part of the larger process of realizing it can't be put into words. Sometimes you gotta try the impossible to learn that it is impossible. And sometimes the impossible becomes possible too.

@EmptyInside Sounds like you just need to go out and meet some spiritual people. It's not so hard. Spiritual communities exist everywhere.

Lol It does not warrant a serious response. You might as well go quoting Shakespeare to mules.

That's right, you lack a reference experience for what the label "Absolute Love" is pointing to. That is okay. I only discovered this reference experience a few years ago at around age 31. It cannot be gotten in your current state of consciousness. You need a radical change in state. Psychedelics are your best bet. Next time you trip, set your intention to realize what Absolute Love is. At the beginning of your trip tell yourself, "Okay, now show me Absolute Love! What is Love? I am ready to know." If you set a firm intention and you really want to know, it will be shown to you. Mushrooms, LSD, DMT, 5-MeO, 2C-B, MDMA, etc can all show you this love. But you may have to purify yourself first before it is shown to you. You must be ready to surrender the ego to see it, since it is totally selfless. If you really want to know, it will be shown to you. No doubt about it. It's not a matter of random luck. So keep your intention strong. Put your heart into it. It sounds to me that you're close to realizing it. A few more deep trips might do the trick.

No, it can definitely be expressed with words -- but -- those words will ring hollow to anyone who hasn't had the direct realization. Words only have meaning to you when they have a corresponding reference experience. The word "apple" means nothing to you unless you've tasted an actual apple first. Then the word becomes useful. So it's like I'm talking about apples to you but you've never even seen an apple. So to you the word is empty. It CAN be understood as a concept, but the concept of it is not the thing itself. I have explained the purpose of ego and life many times in my videos as a concept. But what good does it do you? Not much, because you need to discover the truth of what I say for yourself. Then my words will have some significance to you. Yes, it can be answered verbally, but it's weak compared to the non-verbal realization. Here's your verbal answer: What is the purpose of ego? Survival What is the purpose of life? To experience yourself as God Why does anything exist at all? Absolute Infinity Remember that words are pointers. Pointers to direct experiences. So you must discover what the pointers are pointing to.

It's not that Orange or even Red can't feel love or empathy. They can. The issue is the level of sophistication these emotions, the level of self-awareness, their depth, and their extent. For example, Red and Orange will feel love, but that love will be very limited -- their circle of concern does not extend very far. It only applies to their family, close friends, and their nation. And even so, selfishness will limit that love even within family. Red and Orange will also treat love as "merely an emotion". Their love will not have an existential aspect. Their love will not be universal. They will not understand how deep love goes or the power of love. They will deny that love is an Absolute or a property of the universe. They will value money and sex over love. They will mistake love with sexual desire or material possession. They will be so stuck in their left-brain that they will think that logic is superior to love. Their hearts will be closed. They will not have a "Teotlized heart". Whereas a Green person will understand the importance of love more. The Green person has some opening of the heart. But Green still does not comprehend love as an Absolute. Green still does not understand what love is. Green's love is still not fully universal. Green loves to hate Blue & Orange. Whereas at Turquoise love becomes an Absolute -- finally, it becomes totally universal. Finally the constant judgment and criticism and hatred are purified in the light of consciousness. Love is no longer something you do, it's something you ARE. Now you have a Teotlized heart which embraces all of Creation. At this point, your love is so great you are incapable of seeing evil, enemies, or wrongdoing. All sense of "other" starts to disappear. Everywhere you look you only see your Self, you only see Goodness, you only see Love. Your love becomes not about having or receiving but about giving. You love while simultaneously being detached from the objects of your love. Your capacity to love increases exponentially and the depth of your love goes through the roof. Your love becomes unconstrained by ego. This is not just about feeling an emotion. This is about changing your entire attitude towards and understanding of reality. As you understand reality deeper (at higher Spiral stages) your emotions will change. How you see the world affects what your emotions are doing because emotions reflect your needs and values. As you move up the Spiral your needs and values change. Practicing unconditional love is a great way to develop emotionally no matter what stage of the Spiral you're at. You can always love a lot more, a lot deeper. So when it doubt, love more! This one approach can transform your whole life. Emotional development is probably the most important of all developmental lines. Because emotions dictate your whole life. Emotions are more powerful than cognition. Which is why all advertising, marketing, and politics is played at the level of emotion. To get someone to do something you must trigger them emotionally. Logic is cheap.

Suffering is a real thing (as real as anything else is). The point is that it's possible to become so conscious that you stop doing it. Think of suffering like biting your nails. It is real when you're doing it. But you can also stop doing it. The point of consciousness work is to become aware of how and why you're doing dysfunctional unconscious stuff, like getting angry, or judging, or overeating, or suffering. We are making unconscious habits conscious, thereby giving us freedom from doing them automatically.

@Andreas Just thinking about it will not be enough. You need to hit a new state of consciousness. Meditation, yoga, or psychedelics are needed. The answer is experiential, not verbal or rational. When you really discover why it all exists, it blows your whole heart open. It takes your breath away. It is a religious conversion experience. It is not even in the same ballpark as a verbal answer.

There is far more to this work than one enlightenment. Neo-Adavaita is dangerously oversimplified. You are never going to master consciousness through something like Neo-advaita. To master consciousness will take you tens of thousands of hours. Not just 1000. Some of you guys keep not understanding this.

@Serotoninluv Great points! @playdoh Most people are more advanced cognitively than emotionally. Cognitive development tends to be a lot easier than emotional development. Reading books and watching videos is not enough to develop emotionally.

Which is why I say it's an advanced thing requiring 1000s of hours of practice. Then I get criticized that, "Leo, enlightement doesn't take thousands of hours."

A brain happens within consciousness. Consciousness does not happen in a brain. You are stuck in the materialist paradigm and it will totally block you from enlightenment unless you completely deconstruct it and drop it like a fairytale.

Psychedelics would put her out of business, so she's right to fear them I would take psychedelics over the best gurus, and a therapist is nowhere near the level of a good guru. With that said, therapy is still useful. But it won't work for you if you're short on cash. Effective therapy requires lots of sessions and will be very costly. Session per session psychedelics will grow you 10x to 100x faster than therapy. Talking about psychological matters is nowhere as effective as direct spiritual consciousness. Talk therapy is notoriously slow.

@Seed There are ways to dig it out. For example, shamanic breathing can heal traumas received at the moment of birth, or even before you were born! I bet psychedelics could dredge it up too.

@How to be wise What we commonly call "pain" is not elemental. It is a compound thing which includes several components: 1) a raw sensation, 2) an automatic bodily recoil reaction, 3) a conceptual activity of interpretation, assignment of meaning, and judgment, and 4) an emotional reaction. So what Ramana is referring to is #3 & #4, which are of course conceptual activity which can be stopped. The raw sensation is still there. But once you eliminate #3 & #4, this thing we call pain starts to feel and look very different from pain. The sting of pain is not in the raw sensation but in our conceptual interpretation and emotional reaction to it. So there's no contradiction between what Ramana says and what I am saying. He's just stating it a bit simplistically and starkly so that you realize the important lesson: your mind plays a huge part in how you experience pain. Have you ever had an experience of pain so intense you start to enjoy it? If you get really curious about pain as it is happening, the sting of it lessens. In that moment you are experiencing it purely as #1, a raw sensation. Also notice that most pain is not physical but emotional in nature. When someone breaks your heart, or when you feel sad or lonely, none of that is physical pain. It's conceptually driven. And even if you break your leg, at least half your pain will come from the story you tell yourself about it, "OH MY GOD! Why did this happen to me? When will I be able to walk again? What if my boss fires me? How much is this gonna cost me to fix? How could I have been so foolish? Why can't it just stop?" etc.

Yes, videos are in the works. It's just taken me some time to integrate my retreat experiences and figure out how to live life from a higher altitude. I have to change how I do my work. So I'm sorting that out.

@Inliytened1 "The physical world" is a conceptual abstraction. But the raw sensations of stuff we commonly call chairs, tables, trees, dogs, cars, etc. is what I call Being/Truth. When the physical world is stripped of all concept and interpretation what remains is Absolute Being. At that point the world stops being "physical" and it becomes divine and eternal. Yes, we are saying the same thing.

Always try the direct route first. Sit down and simply ask yourself, "What is my trauma?" If your intention is genuine and honest, and you are open, your mind should supply you the answers. If that fails, do it while on a psychedelic and you will almost surely receive your answers. Just be careful what you wish for. The whole problem with heavily traumatic people is that they are not genuine, honest, or open. They have no intention of facing their trauma. They don't want know the truth because it is too painful. They actively avoid talking or thinking about it. So in such cases therapy or psychedelics are very useful. But even so, if there is no intention at all to honestly introspect, nothing will help. The person has to want to grow. Your mind usually gives you what you ask of it. Most people don't ask much so they don't get much. All the answers to your life challenges lie within you. But you must dig them out.

@Scholar Different personality types, different brain types, different facets to awakening. Awakening will be filtered through the mind and personality no matter how awake you get. Some people are more sentimental and emotional while other people are more autistic, cool, and dispassionate. One awakened person could emphasize Nothingness in his teaching. Another awakened person could emphasize Love in his teaching. Etc. Which is why an integral approach is so good. You can get the best of all the teachings and teachers.

Another way to phrase it is: put your attention on attention itself. What is pure attention devoid of all content? Try doing that for a bit and see how it feels. Notice it's really hard to keep your attention there. The attention veers off within seconds onto some form. This kind of meditation requires serious concentration ability which most people do not have in today's media-saturated culture. You need to be able to concentrate so hard you could burn a hole through brick wall with your focus. This is the key to accessing the deepest levels of spirituality.

What he's saying has value, especially for newbie and intermediate students. But at the same time, suffering IS a conceptual activity and it can be transcended or stopped. It is something you are doing and you can stop doing it. This does mean that you stop feeling, just the opposite, you must feel it fully, with total consciousness. That total consciousness is what allows you to experience the suffering as self-constructed activity, at which point it becomes conscious and it ceases to be suffering. This requires very high levels of consciousness which even most awakened people in the West do not have. But the most advanced practitioners develop it. Which is how monks can do self-immolation. So the deconstruction of suffering is not merely marketing. It's just unattainable for most people because this requires super-human levels of consciousness which only the most hardcore practitioners will attain. The paradox is, by trying to end suffering you end up creating suffering. So that's not a good attitude in this work. Trying to always be in a positive state is not going to work well. If you really want to end suffering you must completely stop caring what state you're in, even if you're getting tortured, you have to be okay with that state. It's REALLY hard to be that conscious. But it can be done. Just don't go chasing it.

I have not vaped it. Because after I snorted 30mg the trip was so intense it felt traumatizing and physically harmful. So I'm not eager to go any more intense than that. The intensity I get from plugging is so powerful I don't need any more intensity. And if I did, I could always up the plugged dose. Properly vaporizing a dose can also be challenging. Vaporizing HCl can be tricky as it burns. It also smells gross and I'm not sure if it's healthy for the lungs. You must understand that people have their own partial perspectives. Martin has some good ideas, but they are partial. He has never plugged 5-MeO. My 5-MeO experiences are different from what Martin describes in his books. People react to these substances in unique ways. I am not against vaping. I've just resonated with the plugging. Sometimes you find something that's so good it is perfect, requiring nothing more. That's where I'm at with plugged 5-MeO. To me, it is perfect. It is just absolutely perfect. Try various methods and see which you like most. Don't turn this into an ideological battle.

Falsehood does not exist. There is only truth. What you call falsehood is an idea which exists in your mind. You're confused about what it is. You're confusing ideas for reality, which makes falsehood seem like it exists when actually it does not. I dare you to take your finger and point to one false thing in the world. Notice, it cannot be done. Anything you point to, is true. If it isn't true, it isn't a thing so you cannot point to it. If you point to a picture of a unicorn thinking that's false, you're wrong. It's true. It's just a drawing of a unicorn. That's what it IS. That's its truth. The mistake is imagining further that this unicorn is supposed to exist as something other than the drawing that it is. See? You get lost in your imagination. That's the whole problem here. Falsehood seems to exist only when your imagination is active. You must imagine falsehood. But even imagination is true. You just need to be aware that it is imagination and not the physical world. People conflate those two very easily because it helps us survive. Falsehood is like a magic trick. It's a clever illusion. An impossibility that appears to be possible when you're not looking at it closely enough.

That's merely a few hairs on the Ox's tail. You can't imagine how deep the bliss goes.

It's important to stay conscious that all "other" is really yourself. Even if the other is harsh. Otherwise you're in duality. So I would practice integrating that experience in a way where you're not separating yourself from whoever/whatever that thing was. Then maybe next time it won't feel so "other" or foreign. If plugged DMT works similar to plugged 5-MeO, it will be an amazing ROA. My best guess is that plugging DMT is better than vaporizing it. Most people vaporize simply because they have not been shown a better way. And because most DMT is sold as freebase. I'll try out both methods and let you guys know my results.