Leo Gura

Awwww... Thanks a lot ya'll

@How to be wise Which is why most of society is not enlightened and never will be. Most enlightened people just sit around and do nothing. You don't see enlightened people in the military or police force or 99% of other basic jobs. If everyone got enlightened tomorrow, society would completely collapse, worse than a nuclear war. In practice, enlightened people depend on the rest of society functioning unconsciously, in the same way that the police depend on criminals committing crimes. Enlightenment does have a certain elitism to it. It cannot really work unless society is advanced enough to support it. Or unless you are totally off on your own living in a cave. But even then you need someone to bring you food. In practice what happens is that an enlightened person is so rare the he can survive off his followers and fans. And also, in practice, if you are conscious enough to not suffer, you will be resourceful enough not to place yourself into a job where you have to shoot people. Then again, you can still probably be an enlightened police officer if you really wanted. I don't see why that necessarily requires suffering. There's no real contradiction shooting a bank robber. You shoot him because he's breaking an important law. Your job in this case is to defend society against devils, which ultimately helps society to awaken.

@Space That is the million dollar question. There is no easy answer. Becoming financially comfortable whilst starting from scratch is very challenging, requiring creative thinking, strategy, focus, discipline, hard work, vision, and a bit of luck. In practice you will have to claw your way to the top using whatever means available. One very helpful piece of advice is to keep your living expenses as low as humanly possible. At least for the first 5 years of your LP, until you get established. Another possibility is to move to a very cheap part of the country, or even a 3rd world country as you develop your skills. Again, this is to keep your expenses as low as possible and buy yourself time to build skills. Another possibility is first build some more marketable skills which can help you pay the rent. For example it's possible to learn some programming skills, which tend to be well-paid. Another possibility is to work a relatively high-wage job for a year or two in order to save up a nest egg. There are some jobs which require zero experience and zero education but still pay well. Another possibility is to get a lower job but within your chosen field/industry. For example if you want to direct movies, rather than trying to get hired as a director (which is virtually impossible), try to get hired as an assistant to the director. Then you can prove yourself to the director and he might be willing to hire you in the future as a producer. Etc. Finally then you will become a director. Another possibility is to get a part-time job which allows you time to work on building your skills at home. Etc. You have to be very creative, opportunistic, and flexible when starting out. I spent 4 years building an entirely unrelated business to earn enough money to finally follow my LP. It was a huge detour and not at all easy or pleasant. But it was worth it.

@Annoynymous If it wasn't you could not be here asking this question.

Suffering IS a survival function. The only reason anything suffers is because it cares to survive. Suffering can be transcended through consciousness at the individual level, but at the collective level that's another story. Why are you framing it as "someone needs to be stopped"? You can act against devilry without being attached to it, and hence avoid suffering. I am not saying you need to fight anything internally. I can vote against Trump without hating him. I can be conscious that he is me, but that he must still not be allowed to hold power. I can support the existence of a police department without suffering simply by understanding that police is needed for a decent society. This just requires some understanding of how government works. You can work to build a decent government without becoming an ideological partisan zealot about it. In fact, anything that can be done with suffering and attachment can also be done without suffering or attachment. You seem to be conflating action and education with suffering.

@purerogue Precisely. When the rubber hits the road, you will run crying to government to save your ass from the devils who want to rape you. The people who take government for granted are the ones who already feel totally safe because government has provided them with that safety without them even being aware of it. That's how good government is. It's amazing! Like magic!

@How to be wise Well, practically, if you don't believe some people need to be stopped you cannot create a police force nor enforce any laws. So you can act too cool for school, but that's only because someone else has worked their ass off to create a police force so that you can sit comfortably it your room without getting your throat slit. Survival demands action of you. If you are okay with dying, fine. Then you will die. See ya in the next life. Do not take government for granted. Without a good government you would be a slave. And good government does not happen by accident. It requires intense battle and effort against devils who would wish to enslave you.

@ChoseyFrozey Psychedelics are the most effective method for facing death without totally dying. Start with a small dose and slowly work your way up. Any psychedelic can produce ego-death. You can't really prepare for it. It will just blindside you, you'll be dead before you realize what just happened. And then you will laugh as you realize death is a joke.

Get rid of the ego and see what remains

@How to be wise As I have told you before, you have bastardized spirituality into an absolutist position which denies relative reality and relative truths. This is pathological Zen devilry. You are shirking your responsibilty as a creator. Nothing needs to happen, but that doesn't mean we cannot decide to execute Hitler for being a vicious devil. We get to decide how we want life and society to unfold. If you want to sit back and do nothing, that's fine, but that is your choice. Do not act like you are not making a choice. By not making a choice you've made your choice. Whatever choice we make becomes God's will. Reality makes things happen through YOU! Not for you. If you choose to not prepare for winter, winter will come and you will starve to death. Reality will not magically feed you. Reality gave you enough smarts to not be so stupid as to ignore winter. You are exhibiting a dangerous level of naivete. Nonduality does NOT mean inaction or indifference. To escape personal suffering into some Nirvanic formless state and then to act like nothing else matters because you are free of suffering is perhaps the highest form of Zen devilry I have seen.

@clouffy Contemplation and observation. If something is true, it is happening in your experience and you can observe it happening. So all you really have to do is look at what is actually happening without adding your own stuff to it. The tricky part is that you add A LOT of your own stuff to it.

There is no formulaic answer. It's a delicate tight rope act. Following one's heart and intuition is a good rule of thumb. But that already assumes you've got a pure heart and good intuition, which not all people have. Mostly I keep myself safe by cross-referencing 100s of diverse sources and by understanding that my mind is self-deceptive.

There is some similarity but it is also not really a mystical or nondual experience at all. You are still deeply unconscious in a flow state. It is similar in the sense that the sense of I is gone and thoughts are gone. But awakening is much more radical. Flow state shows you how nice it feels to not have ego controlling your life. But it gives you no understanding of what reality, Self, or God is.

You are tricking yourself. All spiritual sayings require proper interpretation within the proper context. He is not necessarily saying what you think he is saying. No, almost the opposite. All that nonduality requires is to shut off the mind and sit in silence and concentrate for long periods of time. Concepts and thinking are the #1 obstacle. Sitting in silence and not thinking is not so easy if you are addicted to thinking (which everyone is).

Not just I understand it. Thousands of people do. But most mathematicians don't because they don't question metaphysics. Their entire pursuit is conceptual. Yes Mathematical skill has little to do with one's level of consciousness. If you don't care to know, then you will remain ignorant. Reality has no obligation to make itself known to lazy people. Yes, from your perspective I sound dangerous, deluded, and crazy. That is a relative truth.

It's too advanced for you. Move on to a more basic self-help video.

@Andreas These are tricky metaphysical questions which I don't want to waste my time explaining unless I sense that I am talking to a very openminded person who is going to be capable of thinking outside the box. These things cannot be argued at you. You must take responsibility to contemplate them on your own. If you want to understand what 2+2=4 means, start by contemplating: What is a number? What is equality? What is truth? These are questions which takes years to contemplate. The greatest mathematicians on the planet do not understand such things. It cannot be explained to you in a forum post. This is very serious stuff. Argument, proof, and reason count for virtually nothing here because all of those have been co-opted by ego. If you truly understood what a number is, or what truth is, it would collapse your entire reality.

If that is true, why did Sadhguru need 2 lifetimes of practice?

I did answer your questions but you are incapable of understanding what I am saying because you insist on maintaining your paradigm. What I am telling you is outside that paradigm. So this conversation cannot go any further. You are not appreciating how tricky the mind is. You cannot trust anything your mind says. It's all games and lies.

You can't understand that at your current stage of development and consciousness. At your stage of cognitive development you simply take objective reality for granted, as a given. But there actually isn't such a thing. Your MIND is constructing "physical" "reality". The reality you construct is precisely of the sort which allows you to survive as yourself. Everything you consider "real" is filtered through your ego to make sure it allows the illusion of a self to survive as the illusion that it is, without you realizing that it is an illusion. If you weren't doing this, you'd be dead and a physical world would not exist. 2+2=4 is a relative truth. It is true because you say it is and by how you situate it within your entire scheme of conceptual understanding. It is not an Absolute Truth.

This is why you cannot boil this work down to some stupid platitude like "be in the now". This work is much more complex and subtle than newbies imagine it to be. The ramifications of nondual awareness are enormous and they cannot be formalized. This is why post-awakening a lot of integration work is required. Your mind has to do work to figure out how to adopt Truth/Absolute to everyday life. And it is VERY EASY for your mind to distort the Truth and embody it incorrectly. Hitler could come to your house with a flamethrower and if you're naive, you might tell yourself something like, "Just be in the now" and that will be a huge mistake. It takes great intelligence to apply high spiritual teachings and principles. Newbies and fools will make terrible mistakes.

Mostly dangers of being too unfocused or too conceptual. Theory and practice must be delicately balanced. Few people know how to strike this balance. They mostly veer off too much in one direction or the other. If you like my work, being too conceptual will be one of your biggest obstacles. If you don't like my work, studying too little theory will be one of your greatest obstacles.

There is no right or wrong. It's all relative to survival. Hence there is conflict and disagreement, and it will always exist. Action is not achieved through total consensus. Power prevails. There are winners and losers. Don't blame this on self-actualization or transcendence. This is life. You cannot escape survival dynamics.

There are some dangers to that approach as well. There are dangers everywhere. But overall I am highly in favor of studying 100s of sources or you will become deluded. Then again, you will probably also become deluded if you study 100s of sources. It's hard to avoid delusion. Personally I study at least 100 sources and I know I would have been screwed by now if I hadn't.

Yes, of course. Haven't we stated this already? "Psychedelics don't work on stupid people." -- Terence McKenna Yeah, about the same.