Leo Gura

@Wind If you're trying to start a business, you definitely want to cultivate a thirst for success and excellence or you won't have a chance in hell. There's nothing anti-spiritual about success, as long as you don't get addicted to it or neglect your spiritual practices. Look as how the Jews handle it! Success and spirituality all in one! Or the Amish, or the Arabs There are plenty of traditions where you can kick ass by day and be deeply spiritual by night. Try grounding your success in your spirituality. As in: when I succeed, I help raise the spirituality of all around me. I remember reading a book by a deeply spiritual guy who sold diamonds during the day. He was kicking ass at both.

London is a very expensive place to live. You might want to consider moving somewhere cheap, and cut all expenses as much as possible. You gotta get creative here! You're not gonna make it happen unless you really think outside the box. You're bootstrapping it. Do some research and think creatively about how to set yourself up and what exactly you need to make the life purpose feasible. Then reverse-engineer a strategy to get there.

@Alphard You can do whatever you want. But if you want fulfillment, you gotta do what creates true fulfillment. It's not an opinion. Ego is ego. You can't escape the karma that comes with egoic living. Feel free to try. Let us know how it works out for ya in 20 years. The arrogant one is you, thinking you can circumvent the laws of consciousness.

@DimmedBulb The mistake here is thinking of addictions as "things one does in the external world". That's not the essence of addiction. Addiction is a mental attitude. This attitude can apply to virtually anything. Additions are sorta like hatreds. Anything can be hated. Hatred is never inherent to the thing. It's in your mind. And a well-developed mind doesn't hate anything, even the things you'd normally think are impossible not to hate. You could use heroin without addiction. A well-developed mind should have no problem doing heroin and not getting addicted. I've even thought about trying it, just to see if I can, (not that I want to.)

@Martin123 Sounds like a killer niche opportunity for a budding young counselor. The quality of therapists and counselors is so low, you should be able to wipe the floor with them if you just apply yourself.

@MochaSlap Anywhere from 0% to 100%, depending on your particulars.

Fixed it just now. Refresh page and try again.

@Beyond Words Sounds like a cool experience. I have no idea if levitation is real. I simply implied in a cheeky way that I'm open to it.

@Vercingetorix Ekhart Tolle is an interesting example. After his first enlightenment he supposedly spent 2 YEARS full-time sitting on a park bench integrating it. For him, 2 years is equivalent to you doing 20 years of personal development work. And I bet Tolle still continues to work on himself. And just because 1 person in a billion has a deep breakthrough, doesn't mean that you will. And in point of fact we have no idea how deep his enlightenment or development really goes. It's not a good idea to use someone like Ekhart Tolle or Bill Gates as your benchmark, whether you're pursuing enlightenment or money. Hate to break it to ya, but you probably ain't Tolle or Gates.

The book list has just been updated! Enjoy!

@Raffaella Takes LOTS of practice. So get started! You need to practice active ALLOWING! When a negative emotion comes up, just recognize it and try to allow it fully, rather than resisting it the way you normally do. Yes, it ain't easy at first. After all, there's no one in control in that skull of yours. It's empty if you haven't noticed yet Nevertheless, it's still possible to open up and allow. You can even actively ENJOY the deepest suffering. Like your dog dies, and your heart is broken, and you ENJOY it! That's the ultimate goal, but it will take you awhile to get there. You do realize, right?, that you can ENJOY any suffering. You can do it instantly at any time simply by deciding to. The problem is, it's extremely counter-intuitive and you have limiting beliefs telling you its not right or not possible. There is no HOW. You just have want to enjoy it and remember to do it. Next time you feel terrible, simply ask yourself, "Can I allow myself to enjoy this?"

Of course, I'm not talking about Actualized.org. You can follow whoever you want. But if your goal is maximum human potential, you will NEVER get there without Enlightenment + Personal Development. Personal Development is being defined broadly here. I don't have a monopoly on personal development. And if your goal is to merely be productive, you can do that without enlightenment or personal development. Just look at Donald Trump. And that's basically who you'll become, a Donald Trump character.

That's not true. Of course Buddhism is not about mastering business or career or family. But it does address many of the other points on the list. And also, Buddhism is mostly designed for hardcore monks, who have no business, career, or family. If you want to remain part of society and live a "normal" house-holder lifestyle, you will have to master many other things. To fully cut the roots of Samsara, you're gonna have to do personal development beyond enlightenment. How can you cut the roots of Samsara, for example, when you aren't even conscious yet of what REAL relationship is, or what REAL communication is? Most of your emotional baggage, neurotic ticks, and bad habits will still be there after enlightenment. COMPLETE ENLIGHTENMENT is virtually unheard of. I've seen people who've had 1 or 2 enlightenment experiences. They're basically as clueless and unmasterful as the average person. They have a TON of emotional shit and their lives are unrefined. WAY shy of the end goal.

Well, you must not be doing your research too well, cause most of the deeply enlightened masters I've talked to or read clearly talk about about cultivation of the psyche far beyond enlightenment experiences. They don't call it "personal development" of course. That's a modern Western self-help phrase that they don't often use. Every major spiritual tradition, from Yoga, to Buddhism, to Zen, to Christianity, to Islam, all contain many aspects of personal cultivation. They are NOT direct paths to enlightenment. They encourage cultivation of compassion, right action, right diet, right speech, humility, right relationships, etc. In Zen they have a concept called "the Zen devil". Which is a person who's had a few enlightenment experiences and thinks he's arrived, when in fact he's just a little devil, using enlightenment egoically and lacks maturity. And just from a physiological perspective, there's no way in hell that having 1 enlightenment experience will rewire your entire brain to act masterfully. That takes decades of work. Like I said, if you want to be a Zen devil, no one is stopping you. When I speak about these things I am always assuming your goal is reaching your maximum human potential. If you don't care about that, then that's your prerogative. And in that case, you're welcome to sit on the couch all day and eat Doritos and watch football.

Yes, it tends to be byproduct, but the brain/mind is strong. It is full of old conditioning that takes decades of work to unwire. Firstly, most people's enlightenments are far from complete from what I understand. True masters are very rare, and if you ever meet one face to face, you will know their mastery, it's simply awesome to behold. That level you will never reach with just one or two enlightenment experiences. That takes decades of work. But even if one is highly enlightened, one could STILL hold all sorts of dogmas, psychological hang-ups, and cultural biases. Shinzen told me that his teacher in Japan was an enlightened "asshole". The Zen traditions seem to like the asshole aesthetic. Seems to be a cultural thing. He told a story of where one of the monks punched him in the nose in the monastry while they were training because it was cold in the zendo and Shinzen had the sniffles while they were all meditating together. The next day he got punched in the nose for making too much noise! So yeah... you could turn into that guy if you're not careful, lol.

@cetus56 Suffering is an illusion. YOU construct it! Actively construct it in EVERY case! This requires high levels of development and consciousness to see. What you're talking about isn't suffering but compassion. A properly enlightened person will have lots of capacity for compassion for the suffering of the ignorant. This is very different than suffering alongside them, which is not necessary.

Just to clarify, the title of the course has not yet been decided upon and the release date is still unknown, as I've been sidetracked with various kinds of research.

Of course, if you want to be an asshole, you're welcome to it. Nothing on this path is a SHOULD. It's all optional. Feel free to go murder puppies as a hobby if that floats your boat.

@Markus You've yet to experience infinite divine love. So much love you want to cry for the entire universe. So much love you would give your life for it without question. The ego cannot fathom such things.

Dude... I study this stuff for a living. What I'm telling you is cross-referenced from dozens of highly authoritative sources. You need to do more research before laying on the cheeky skepticism. The spiritual path is extremely well documented and understood, if you but do the research. Human beings have been doing this for over 4000 years.

@electroBeam There is plenty of occultism within Christianity too. Even the official church has departments that deal with paranormal phenomena like miracles, saints, stigmata, exorcisms, healings, etc. Doesn't mean all of it is true, but it's definitely not all fantasy either. Jesus likely had some strong paranormal abilities. Which allowed him to draw big crowds and ultimately pissed off the establishment. It would make sense that Jesus wasn't just your regular enlightened guy, but a bit more. And if you study Mohammad, there's another dude with some paranormal channeling abilities. There's a story of the Buddha stopping a raging elephant sent charging at him just by gently raising his hand to it. Just a story? Maybe... or maybe there's some truth to it. Certainly not outside the realm of possibility. So when you follow the breadcrumb trail, all the sudden the dots connect very easily. All of it can't just be wishful thinking and folktales. There's commonly a kernel of truth to many folktales. I recently learned that will-o-the-wisps are a real natural phenomena: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp Of course none of this is to say that you should go chasing will-o-the-wisps and distract yourself from what's most important: liberation and psychological maturity. Although some people are really drawn to the occult. My theory is that some people have naturally high paranormal sensitivity because of the structure of their brains, so they naturally get deep into the occult. And left brained people simply can't understand how anyone can believe in such nonsense. Well, it's cause their brains are different! The logical mind is very limited. Deep intuition is required for this stuff.

The reality is you need it. Enlightenment without personal development work produces enlightened assholes and rubes. Personal development without enlightenment produces polished egos who can never find fulfillment no matter what they achieve. This would be like the Tony Robbins effect (sorry, Tony, my projection ) After enlightenment you still need to master the following things: Relationships Socializing Science Business/career Family Health Bad habits & addictions Bad cultural conditioning like sexism or racism Embodiment of unconditional love Old childhood traumas Ethical behavior

@khalifa Yeah, it irked me too just as recently as a year ago. Without a few years of consciousness work, without some enlightenment experiences, it's really hard to overcome the Western materialist worldview. You actually believe physical reality exists! And you can't help it because you have no alternative reference points. To break out of that, even for just 30 minutes, is HUGE! A whole new world opens up.

@electroBeam That's why this stuff is not discussed in the open. Exceptionally wise people have been persecuted by commoners since the beginning of time. That's what ego's do. They judge and condemn anything that challenges their web of beliefs. So no surprise there. If we had this discussion we're having now 300 years ago, we would all be burned at the stake just for entertaining such witchcraft. That's why occultism existed for thousands of years in all cultures, especially Europe, where anything unorthodox was violently persecuted. It's illuminating to read for example about how the Catholic church created a demonization campaign against mushroom cults in Europe, calling them evil witches, doing the work of the devil, because psychedelic mushrooms are highly threatening to egos who want to hold power. It's so hidden because people are so closedminded they can't stand to know it. Are you kidding? Buddhism is full of witchcraft and sorcery. Look at the Dalai Lama. He has a personal oracle that he consults! Even the Buddha talked about paranormal abilities. It's almost impossible not to have paranormal abilities when you are able to attain high Jnana states of concentration. Most people have such shitty concentration they can't focus for 5 minutes. So their powers suck. It's not at all hard to develop these powers. Just requires training. And most people who become enlightened in the West these days still have very poor concentration abilities. They are not refined or masterful at all. They have one enlightenment experience and think they've mastered everything. But that's just another trap on the path. There's a good reason why ancient mystical traditions are very deep and very complex. They're not just making shit up. They're navigating a very wide and diverse range of nuanced spiritual landscapes. Way more than just enlightenment. Most Westerners don't fully appreciate this. Because Western culture thinks it knows everything.

@rush I want to say, "I wish you achieved that just to realize how miserable and depressing your life would feel." But I wouldn't want to wish that level of suffering on my worst enemy. You are gonna die, you realize that, right? And no amount of money or success will help you with that. Alternatively, the wiser amoungst us will realize we're immortal.