Leo Gura

@JJR Acceptance is the most effective position from which to make a conscious change. The problem is that people mistake acceptance and understanding with inaction or putting up with crap. Just the opposite. Acceptance involves accepting that you might have a tough action to make, like leaving the person who you loved but who cheated on you. So real acceptance looks like this: You accept that someone cheated on you. You understand why it happened to the point where you stop blaming them. You consciously let go of the anger. You accept responsibility for the situation. You query your highest self of what the best course of action is going forward. You decide to break off the relationship. You break it off and move on with constructing the kind of life you want. You grow your consciousness as a result of this whole situation. You ALWAYS accept things as they are, because they cannot be otherwise. That's the definition of truth. But then you are free to act however you deem most conscious.

As sure as gravity, what goes up will come down. And when you're more aware, the fall hurts harder A lot of awakeness is heaven, a little bit of awakeness is a bitch.

You will not know until you experience it for yourself. You cannot even begin to imagine what reality actually is at the deepest level. Nothing I say can even give you a faint idea of it. It's utterly unspeakable. Infinity can certainly be attained. Many people have glimpsed it, including my humble self. It is possible to awaken from life. You cannot understand what this means yet because you've never truly awoken.

Intention matters a lot. Set the right intention, meditate on it, and start taking baby steps. Nothing grand gets accomplished overnight in this work. It's like steering an oil tanker. You gotta see the big picture and have appropriate expectations.

Nothing like a psychedelic trip to re-fill one's sails If you haven't ever tasted existential Truth, it's really hard to be motivated towards it. Once you have tasted it, all your priorities become clear. Because nothing tastes as sweet. I gave a former girlfriend 1g of mushrooms. Turned her whole understanding of reality around. Wouldn't have been even remotely possible otherwise for her. And that was only like 1% of 1% of what consciousness is capable of.

@Wormon Blatburm To an abusive, alcoholic family a healthy loving family sounds like Utopia. To a 3rd world country, a 1st world country sounds like Utopia. To a neurotic person, an enlightened person sounds like Utopia. Just go read some of the comments people leave under my 40 Signs That You Are Neurotic video. They say things like: "According to your description, Leo, me and all my friends are neurotic, and everyone is neurotic." No, not everyone. Everything in your bubble != everything. Be careful judging what's possible based on what you've presently got. That turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course there can be healthy society. Society based on values like: consciousness, openmindedness, tolerance, love, community, benevolence, education, freedom, equality, sustainability, truth, peace, spirituality, and holism. When you experience a community that really embodies these values, it's an amazing thing. It's nothing like modern 1st world countries. Most people simply don't know what healthy society is, because they've never experienced it, and don't even have an idea that it's possible and that it has been executed on small scales.

@Wormon Blatburm It may be, or it may not. Life is full of randomness too.

@StarfoxEpiphany Could be. Just ask yourself with self-honesty what the deal was. Your psyche knows.

@StarfoxEpiphany That's not necessarily homeostasis. That's more like shit hitting the fan. Homeostasis would be like: "I was advancing on all fronts but then all of the sudden I got depressed and watched 8 hours of TV while eating 2 gallons of ice cream." Shit does just happen sometimes and it's not always your psyche's fault.

No, move forward and keep pondering your values over the next few months. They will evolve and get refined. This is a gradual process.

Only Zen Devils write in caps lock

Ironically, to be happy in the present moment takes decades of work. Those who claim otherwise, are incapable of it, or have already put in their decades of work and conveniently forget to mention it. If you can be happy right now, do it and live happily ever after. But you probably can't, can you? Sooner or later (probably very soon) someone's gonna piss in your soup, and you're gonna come crying. At which point we tell you to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Or keep lying to yourself that everything is okay.

Increasing the quality of your consciousness is a very general prime directive of life, which is independent of one's career. You might say it the point of your incarnation. I like to make a distinction between this prime directive and career life purpose. You can grow your consciousness in any circumstance, in any career. Becoming a sage is by no means everyone's path. It's not something you should or must do, it's a vision I threw out there for ya, if you are so inclined.

Good stuff. I think he's generally right. Especially the part about preparation to get satori. Just popping a pill isn't likely to give you profound existential insight. I feel that I get extremely deep existential insights on psychedelics because I've spent much of my life caring about metaphysical questions. Whereas most people haven't. Psychedelics tend to amplify one's intent and one's natural questions. So if the deepest question one has is how to get laid, then that's all one's probably gonna get. What astounds me the most is the degrees of depth of satori possible. It's beyond all words. And it might be the case that some enlightened masters have gone far beyond even the highest states of the most powerful psychedelics. Beyond 10 tabs of LSD or 30mg of 5-meo. Which to me is just jaw-dropping. The problem is that such degrees of insight are so paradoxical, so beyond our everyday world that they cannot ever be communicated to anyone. So 99.999999% of people pursuing enlightenment will never know about them. I can hardly believe myself what I have seen. And I've seen it! How can I possibly communicate that to another? I can barely communicate it to myself. The beautiful thing is that these substances can open you up like a motherfucker. Then you are really prepared to put in the long hours and go deep. Of course it's possible to abuse it.

Good, that's a start. Try relaxing and surrendering more next time. Open up the physical body and un-clench everything. Your physical body is carrying a lot of resistance in it. The body carries many repressed emotions. A big aspect of this work is becoming much more aware of your physical body, learning to listen to it, learning to care for it, and learning to relax it. All part of spiritual purification. An enlightened master's body is very different than a regular person's body. Because he's purified it so much.

@Gavalanche Interpreting is the problem. What you really want to be shooting for is a non-interpreted, non-symbolic, "raw" experience of phenomena. This is called mindfulness. You see exactly what is, and nothing more. The problem is that you've got many layers of interpretation running which create illusions such as objects, others, selves, dangers, good and bad, emotions, etc. Practice more and more to see only what is literally there. And notice how much shit you make up and project onto what is there. This is very hard to achieve without many hours of practice. The illusion created by symbolic projection is overwhelming. You are trapped inside an augmented reality. I highly recommend you do a week-long meditation retreat, otherwise you'll never know how deeply augmented your perception is.

Self-inquiry dissolves illusory concepts about reality and gets one ever-closer to an unmediated, non-conceptual experience of reality. If you're very attached to your illusory reality -- the entire social Matrix, for example -- you may not like the feeling of deconstructing it. You may experience emotional upheavals. You may overreact to certain revelations. You may misinterpret certain revelations. You may misuse certain revelations by being a dick to others. Etc. Healing or therapy occurs as you shed illusory notions about reality. Self-inquiry will raise your awareness A LOT. That's generally a very good thing, but like anything, it can be twisted and abused by the ego.

- Up to you. As slow as it takes for you to stay conscious of what's happening. - End it at wherever you think you are. This will be revealing. If you end it at your eyeball, then that tells you you think you're behind the eyeball. If you end it at your chest, then that tells you you are identified with the heart feeling area. I usually draw it to my eyeball, only to realize, there is no eyeball!

@Martin123 Yes, there can be damage, which is why I'm trying to make my videos more nuanced and careful. This work really requires great nuance to minimize all sorts of collateral damage. But even as I do that, there will still be many people who miss the nuances in what is said. I see people missing very obvious warnings that I give about all sorts of topics, from enlightenment to psychedelics. It just cannot be helped at some level, because this is core of what growth is about. Growth is difficult because people don't even know how to listen or properly interpret what is taught. They like to project or jump to radical conclusions. And of course I'm always learning how to teach better. But even given all that, the effect of such teaching is overwhelmingly positive. My philosophy is that business-as-usual is the most dangerous strategy. Not taking any kind of action is the most dangerous action. The world needs to be told to grow up, and then all of us must shoulder the burden of the growing pains that result.

@Martin123 Don't be so sure about that. Ekhart Tolle or Byron Katie are great examples of people who had DEEP emotional issues and what worked best for them was enlightenment. Of course that doesn't mean it will work for everyone. I generally agree that people with weak or wounded egos will not be able to attain enlightenment simply because they haven't learned to function in the everyday world. Which is why I teach far more than enlightenment. Most of the world is not ready for enlightenment. They have to work up to it. Of course, this shouldn't stop anyone who seriously wants to pursue enlightenment. It certainly can be done by people with deep emotional issues. This is a very personal decision. And one has to be very strategic about deciding which aspects of growth to pursue when. Improperly planning out your development can lead to quick failure. Which is why personal coaching can be so helpful. It customizes personal development to the individual's needs. One of the huge limitations of shooting self-help videos is that I cannot customize a video to everyone's needs. I have to aim at an average.

There are landmines everywhere in this work. If one teaches: "Only pursue enlightenment, drop everything else." Many people will get lost, because many people are not ready for that. If one teaches: "Heal yourself. Then pursue enlightenment." Many people will get lost, because most people will get distracted and never put in the necessary focus to attain enlightenment. If one teaches: "You are already enlightened." Many people will get lost, because they will not do any work. If one teaches: "You are not enlightened. Go pursue enlightenment." Many people will get lost in seeking. No teaching is fool-proof. And the most advanced teachings especially so. All personal development work is filled with traps. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. If there were, it probably would have been found by now and there wouldn't be as much diversity as we find within the fields of personal and spiritual development. When one ignores this context, it leads to even more traps, because then one can take anyone who misuses a teaching as evidence of the teaching's failure. This is how nonduality wars get started. I see one person misuse your teaching and then condemn your teaching for it. When in fact, it's virtually impossible not to misuse these teachings, because the nature of the thing being taught is so tricky. So there needs to be latitude in your assessment of teachings, otherwise you will become an ideologue. And that is just one more landmine in this work. Try to see this whole issue from a holistic, meta-perspective: there are billions of unconscious people in the world, and most of them are not going to successfully navigate any teaching. So expect some casualties, delusion, failure, and collateral damage as people strive to become conscious. How else could it be? The only solution to unconsciousness is consciousness. All teachings and techniques are ultimately mechanical. It's the student that really has to do the heavy lifting. He must supply the consciousness.

@Colin Yes, and not just psilocybin but also MDMA, Ibogaine, LSD, DMT, and 5-meo have all been clinically tested a lot and have been demonstrably shown to have enormous therapeutic benefits. The drug war has created an undue stigma around psychedelics, but society is coming around. In 50 to 100 years, these substances will be mainstream treatments for everything from PTSD to depression to anxiety to alcohol and heroin addiction. It's regular folks -- those who are not pursuing enlightenment -- that need psychedelics the most. Ironically they are the ones who reject psychedelics the most.

@Colin That's generally right, although I'd say he's under-emphasizing: Psychedelic's therapeutic potential The importance of the awake-up call and the openmindedness which results. The biggest problem people have with consciousness work is that they are closedminded to it, cannot fathom how deep it goes, and are not motivated to invest 1000s of hours practice just to get a tiny taste of the possibilities. Is it possible to use psychedelics egotistically, just for fun, which leads to no growth? Sure. Is it possible to use psychedelics consciously, for massive real growth and healing? Sure. The key, as with most things, is finding the right balance. And it also doesn't have to be either/or. It's possible to use psychedelics and do manual consciousness work together. In the same way that its possible to use a hammer and a screw driver when building a house. Given that psychedelics are powerful tools -- like chainsaws -- they can be easily abused by unconscious people. But in the right hands, a chainsaw is a great thing. It's interesting that when a powerful consciousness-raising tool is discovered, people bash it for being too powerful. This is understandable since the ego will use any excuse to sabotage any pathways that lead to its dissolution. There is a trap in abusing psychedelics. There is a trap in poo-pooing psychedelics. Yes, there is a danger to people misusing psychedelics, but there might be a bigger danger in people remaining entirely asleep. This planet may well destroy itself in the next 100 years if people remain as unconscious as they are. So we should be very careful about making judgments of which path is more dangerous. Danger abounds. And nothing is more dangerous than a business-as-usual attitude.

@zoli1964 There is no difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment, or anything else. This is not possible to understand until you have a deep enlightenment experience. So don't worry about it.