Leo Gura

@Rocky Not being compelled to argue or debate is a good sign of wisdom. Keep growing further. You don't need to surrender to others opinions. You just need to start inquiring into reality for yourself in a deeply, brutally self-honest manner.

@Jone You've got a killer, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here, so #1 thing is to make you don't squander it. You need a clear plan. You need to get clear with yourself what the hell you want to get out of the next year. I recommend starting it off with a 7 to 10 day solo retreat. Just sit there, detox from all the media addictions, and get in touch with what your highest self wants. Then after it's over, formulate your plan.

@The White Belt Modern generations of kids have definitely been spoiled rotten with video games, porn, food, internet, TV, and mobile phones. It's getting harder every year for people to get enlightened. The atmosphere is so toxic and seductive. What can you do but just try to bust through it? Expect it to be painful at first.

@Huz You could not begin to fathom how much contemplation Ralston has done. I would bet that most human beings are physiologically incapable of it. Human beings are not all the same. You have to know what your limits are and strategize accordingly. Which is one of the reasons no one can decide such things for you. Only you can know what you're capable of. Chasing after two rabbits, you might catch neither. I find it very difficult to do both simultaneously. Both require lots of energy and attention.

@How to be wise That is essentially self-inquiry / meditation. Start by noticing: "I will become enlightened" << that's a thought!

Ekhart Tolle sought till the brink of suicide. So that should give you a good idea of how much effort this process demands. I'm not here to be ideological. What I say, I say for pragmatic purposes, to guide people, anticipating common traps. The most dangerous idea they can get is that they will reach enlightenment by continuing their lazy, unconscious way of life, hoping to mirror Ekhart Tolle's 1 in a billion instant enlightenment. That is a totally invalid strategy. Not based on my ideology, but based on simple common sense pragmatics. Seeking tends to auto-correct. Non-seeking rarely does. As evidenced by 7 billion non-seeking, unenlightened people. This is not about Leo. This is simply about laying out the raw facts of the spiritual path and what it takes to get shit done. The overwhelming problem is that people fail to get it done. If 90% of people were getting it done, I wouldn't be writing so forcefully. The reality is that less than 1% will get it done. Don't worry about me, I will get it done. My cause isn't just to get myself enlightened. I have bigger plans. If you feel that's egotisical, well... that's your projection. I know my cause and what the universe wants me to do. I'm not gonna wait for my own enlightenment to help others. You have to understand that everything you know, absolutely everything, including physical space, is a mental construction. You have to appreciate how brutally significant this is. It means that the distinction you make between physical/non-physical, real/unreal is a construction! Which means -- when you realize this -- that you will physically die! Enlightenment is equivalent to physical death from the ego's point of view. Not just psychological death, but physical death. Because you will cease to exist as a physical object. Because you will realize that physical objects are illusions. This is why it's so difficult. Everything you think of as solid physical reality will unravel like a cheap sweater, and so will your physical body and brain. The body, the brain, the mind, you, other people, life, sentience, language, physics, chemistry, history, morality, mathematics -- all of these things are totally unreal. This is a very radical thing we're talking about. It's nothing short of annihilating reality. To complete this enlightenment processes fully means the body will remain, but you will be dead inside. Because there will no longer be an inside! The idea of "an inside" will die. It never existed in the first place. You merely assumed it. And as you should know by now, assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. Don't worry too much about it though, your death is the most beautiful thing that could possibly happen. P.S. Did you really think you could become immortal without dying? This enlightenment thing is good, but it's not THAT good. You gotta pay the ultimate price. Your head has to go on the chopping-block. Yes, it boosts self-inquiry enormously, as I have said many times. I use exactly the technique as I say in the video. Don't make it complicated. It's a very simple technique. You just have to discipline yourself to do it. And it's not even that difficult to start.

When I had my first glimpse, the sun was setting, god-rays where shooting through the clouds, and even a little deer ran through the grassy meadow.

@Yamazaki Good work! Some heavy lifting done there. All very positive stuff. Your future trips can now go deeper into Truth. This was you getting your cup emptied of bullshit. You've felt a tinge of ego-death, but it gets way deeper. After you work through some of your worst fears, the immense beauty of nonduality will shine through. Take some time off and your mind will be back to normal in no time. 5g is a pretty strong dose, and mushrooms are pretty twisted. You might want to consider future trips on small doses of LSD or AL-LAD or the like, which give you more opportunity to contemplate and make sense of nonduality without getting your whole world flipped inside out.

It is going slowly because I am focusing on exploring the depths of my consciousness.

It's one hell of a tricky dilemma. In theory, the best course of action is always going straight for Absolute Truth. You'll be glad you did. But in practice, you won't understand this until you're basking in Absolute Truth. This issue is THE ENTIRE challenge of spirituality and Truth. Hardly anyone can muster the vision to directly pursue it. Which mostly means, they never pursue it at all. Notice how strongly you're being seduced by Maya, just like everyone else. Maya is overwhelmingly powerful. It will not let you see God until you are ready to slit your wrists.

You're not thinking this through deeply enough.

@Edvard If you did the military thing for 6 years, could you never become a doctor, or a stockbroker, or a zookeeper? The root issue here is that you're looking for fulfillment, but the way you're going about it, it will never work. But you sincerely believe that it will. So you will probably waste decades of your life just to learn that. Which you could learn right now in 5 minutes. Think about it. How is fulfillment gotten in life?

@Edvard I am talking about a radically higher level of consciousness. Where death is a joke and the entire world is already perfect. You cannot imagine such a level of consciousness from your current level of consciousness because if you could, you'd already be there and what I say would be obvious and self-evident. What do you care about here? Do you want to live in your present level of consciousness, or do you want to experience something beyond? If you like your present level of consciousness, by all means, go do the military thing. It will be more of the same. But if you want something different, you have to start looking at things very differently. You don't need Actualized.org or self-improvement if you want to remain the same. It's a waste of time in that case. How do you plan to be happy, if you are so afraid of death and so worried about ISIS?

@tarek1945 Not so fast! You've only scratched 1mm into the surface. Are you conscious of what you are? What are you?

@Epiphany_Inspired Blah, blah, blah... Monkey mind, monkey mind, monkey mind... Sit down and discipline yourself. That needy ego has made you weak and soft and fearful. Stop feeding it. Now is where the mind needs to realize the limits of thinking, and just start taking action. You're not going to think your way out of this. When you're this weak, your creativity is lame.

Imagine for a moment if birds thoughts like you're thinking: "OMG! What if those ISIS people come kill us and barbecue our bodies to feed their kids!!! OMG! We have no nuclear weapons to defend ourselves. OMG!!! We need more nuclear weapons! OMG!!!" No, it's ridiculous. You only think that way when you're a scared pathetic little ego who doesn't understand life. Go outside your house and observe the birds. BTW, the USA is the #1 purveyor of destruction around the world. When you're scared and egotistical, you have a need to manipulate and destroy. $100 billion dollars of arms just sold to Saudi Arabia. The destruction is really just veiled greed. And it's been that way for thousands of years. Wars are about power and money-grabbing. Meantime, Costa Rica disbanded their entire military, choosing to invest their resources into social development and education.

What do you actually want your life to look like? Why do you hate those jobs? Get very clear and specific. No vague, bullshitty answers. Contemplate deeply here! P.S. Buying a house when you don't have your work situation handled is a terrible strategic move. If you can still back out of the house purchase, that might be wise. I always try to keep my financial commitments as low as possible, so I have room to change my life. If you lock yourself into a bunch of stuff: house, marriage, kids, expensive car, job, etc. You're gonna have very few options.

@electroBeam Of course all 10 values are not actively at the top of your mind 24/7.

@Rocky What you're talking about is sentience, not consciousness.

@Max_V Contemplate the source of the fear. Why is it there? What are you really afraid of? What are you hiding? Fears need to be made conscious and then faced. Facing a fear blindly isn't so good.

@Echoes It's not a nightmare. It's a work of high art if your mind is clear to see it. No, the Buddhists talk of other hell-realms. Way, way, way worse than Earth. You don't want to visit there. Humanity ain't so bad after all.

@bobbyward I'm actually a fan of Spira's. He's very good. The teachings just need to be properly understood and put into full context.

@vikisss1 No, flow state is another thing. You can be in flow state playing video games or watching TV. So it doesn't say much about your quality of consciousness. You can teach yourself to get into flow state doing pretty much anything. Flow state is nice, and it can be one clue to your LP, but it's not the only factor. You could be in flow state raping corpses.

@Shubh_5S I would recommend doing something like a solo journaling retreat. Isolate yourself for a week from all addictions and distractions and just sit there and be by yourself. Think things through. Get clear about what's going wrong in life and why you keep shooting yourself in the foot, and what you really want for yourself. Be kind to yourself but also try to kick your worst additions as soon as is reasonable. Your goal now should be to relax and stabilize. Find your grounding. You can use personal development to fix all those issues, but you have to do it in a grounded way, with patience and a long time horizon.

It's a paradox. It's dead serious, until ego death, after which point, it's all a joke. Seriousness is a function of ego. And yet one can still be serious without ego. Try laughing at your own death. Kinda hard, eh?