Leo Gura

Mostly just me.

@Sharpadox That's sorta the wrong question. Don't make it about other people. Make it about your passion. When you select your greatest passion, that IS going to result in you helping society the most. You can't help society by becoming a mediocre psychologist, or whatever else. You gotta LOVE it! If you love concept art, go with concept art. And find a way to OWN that domain. I don't mean own it as in: "be successful at it". I mean own it as in: "make it express your deepest values." Don't just think inside the box. Invent your career, so it fits you, and only you. Then you have no competition. To do this, you gotta get extremely clear about what's important to you in life, and what exactly you want out of life.

7 values is fine to start with. Remember, you'll be tweaking and evolving all this over time as you go out into the real world and take action. Don't worry, you'll find another 3 values with time. Most people have too many values. The less, actually, the better, as you can tighten your focus even more.

@DizIzMikey There's a new Practical Guide To Enlightenment: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/7360-leos-practical-guide-to-enlightenment/ So you got no more excuses

Dude, just sit your ass down and do the self-observation work. You're wasting your time with all this thinking about post-enlightenment. Welcome back

@Visionary You've been misunderstanding whatever you've been reading. No serious teaching tells you to drop the desire for enlightenment before you've completed it. You drop it only AT AN ADVANCED STAGE, once you've attained many breakthroughs. You're not capable of being in a state of being! That's why enlightenment is necessary. You guys are way too worried about spiritual seeking. You should be much more worried about your lack of seeking. 99% of you aren't seeking nearly hard enough. Not even close! Your efforts are so weak you got more odds of getting hit by lightening than getting deeply enlightened. The reason I say things like, "Enlightenment takes 10,000 hours" is so you understand the depth of the work and effort involved. Most people undershoot rather than overshoot. If you're using very direct methods like self-observation or mindfulness meditation, seeking is a non-issue. You can seek that way for your whole life and it will yield fruit. The problem of seeking only arises when you're seeking in totally wrong areas. Like if you think that joining your local church study group will get you enlightened. That would be a problem. Or if you think merely reading self-help books will make you enlightened. That would lead to the seeking trap. You can seek that way for 100 years and not get anywhere. But self-observation will not lead to a seeking trap, because it is the heart of the work. It is a fact that you don't know what you are yet, so you must invest time looking. The looking will not magically happen for you. If you build a deep conceptual understanding of enlightenment, you will be able to navigate all the traps. And to do that, I recommend studying a lot of diverse teachings. If you only study one teaching, I can pretty much bet that you'll fall into one trap or another. If you study 50 different nonduality teachings, you'll see all the traps and potential Zen devilries. Of course studying alone will not make you enlightened. It's only the prelude to the core work. And if you're tired of studying and what to dig deep into the core work, discipline yourself to sit down and execute the process outlined in this guide. It's extremely direct. No bullshit. In fact, the problem is, it's so direct you will come up with every excuse imaginable to avoid doing it. The first 6 months are a bitch.

Your strategy is rather shallow and short-sighted. Why not find your life purpose and study that?

Don't forget that the Truth is ALWAYS the Truth. It's ALWAYS present! It has nowhere to hide. It's there right now, as you brush your teeth, eat your breakfast, sit on the toilet, look at your smart phone, or browse this forum.

Working on a video about the nature of infinity. Found this while doing research: This is existence in a nutshell. Now go contemplate until you experience it!

@Reality Yes, so many people misunderstand that point and then rail against "spiritual seeking". I call this the trap of burning your ship before using it to cross the ocean.

A well-rounded enlightenment -- one coupled with personal development -- should lead to high motivation levels and above-average relationships. It can be tricky to gauge because many of our motivations and relationships are inauthentic and will naturally fall away post-enlightenment. But they should be replaced with higher-quality ones if one does this work properly.

Good stuff. There's nothing more amazing than discovering that reality is unreal.

@WorthyBird Enlightenment is way beyond issues of fitness. Once you realize you never existed in the first, you'll stop worrying about surviving. That said, enlightenment doesn't have to reduce fitness. In fact, you'll be even more capable of effective survival. The only difference is, you won't be attached to it. Detachment from outcome tends to increase performance. Ego creates a lot of self-interference. Often backfiring and reducing fitness. The whole problem with selfishness is that is ends up backfiring in the long run.

"What good fortune, for those in power, that people do not think." -- Adolf Hitler

@Neo Careful with assuming that a gazelle uses labels for danger, run, mother, milk. And don't forget how big of a pain in the ass it was learning all these labels as a kid. Back then, none of it made any sense. Most of your reality had to be contructed out of thin air.

@Samuel Garcia How can your heart beat even though you clearly aren't controlling it? This is a non-issue. Maybe you aren't constant. People are just telling you things they've discovered about reality. Maybe you could be variable. Maybe you're a hairy rainbow walrus. But if you look deeper, you'll discover that is not the case. Why? You'll only know when you get there. The present moment is literally you. But what exactly is presence? If you knew what it was, you'd already be enlightened. Nonduality means you are everything and nothing. The ultimate paradox. You are the sensations, but they are not all that you are. The essence of you is Shiva: void. Sensations are Shakti. Reality is the union and dance of Shiva Shakti. Shakti needs Shiva like paint needs a blank canvas. Your mission in self-observation work is to locate Shiva. This is hard to do because you've become addicted to seeing Shakti. Shakti is easy to see because its colorful. Shiva is colorless, so much harder to find. Keep looking. The mind cannot ever grasp this! The only way for mind to access Shiva is if mind surrenders. If you are strong-minded, this may take a while. It would be much easier if you were weak-minded.

@Extreme Z7 That's basically how the process unfolds. Yes, it can be infuriating. Like trying to nail Jello to a wall. It just refuses to cooperate. The secret is to not get discouraged or distracted. Stay with it and you'll experience a lot of growth fairly quickly, even without enlightenment. Many illusions will fall away as you keep at it. It can be helpful to keep a journal to write all the illusions out of your system. Although self-observation isn't a theoretical process, it can be very helpful to purge as much theory as possible to thinking it through and dumping it on paper or even to a listening partner. After much of the theory has been purged, true self-observation can begin.

It takes time to build up the momentum. It really helps to have at least one glimpse of the divine nature of reality. Psychedelics can be a gateway to that glimpse. People who break through on a psychedelic (assuming a non-party atmosphere) will then tend to become interested in spiritual development. After my 5-meo experience, my desire is unshakable. The truth is more amazing than a 1000 orgasms. Deep suffering can also create desire for liberation, fueling self-inquiry. Doing a week-long meditation or consciousness retreat can also create deep desire. Visiting an ashram and basking in it's incredible high-consciousness energy can also create deep desire. Contemplating your own death and how much of your life you've wasted can also create deep desire. "I don't know" is a great answer. Make sure you really mean it though. Do you REALLY not know? Or are you just saying that when in fact if I put a gun up to your head and tell you I'm gonna pull the trigger you're gonna start to beg me not to because you actually know that you're that body/brain? I bet you'd know real quick in that case. Which means you don't really not-know. To REALLY not-know what you are means that you ACTUALLY don't know! Which means that if I told you that you might be a chocolate covered donut, you'd seriously consider it. To ACTUALLY not know what you are means that you can't say for sure whether you're a coffee table or a human being. The reality of what you really are is much weirder than identifying with a coffee table. Becoming a coffee table is easy by comparison. At least a coffee table is an object.

If you are being constructive, non-hostile, intellectually charitable, and seeking to REALLY understand the diversity of perspectives out there -- rather than pushing your perspective -- then we have no problem. That is totally allowed. Even though the difference between the word "debate" and "dialogue" may seem trivial, in actuality they are totally different things. If you ever hear a true dialogue between two minds trying to work constructively, it's totally different than a debate. For an example of that, see the dialogues between David Bohm and Krishnamurti. That is true dialogue. They are not working against each other. Whereas the kind of stuff you see all over the internet or TV, that's mindless egoic debating.

@Motus Debate does not serve an educational or consciousness-raising purpose. It serves an ideological, egoic purpose. Debate is about winning, not about actually understanding the other perspective. If you observe yourself very carefully as you're debating, you will feel this. Your very desire to have a debate is already the problem. A debate has nothing to do with discovering truth. The truth is never uncovered in a debate. All debate does is drive people deeper into their webs of belief, creating distraction from doing the inner work. There is no need to convince anyone of your version of nonduality. Whatever your favorite method of nonduality is, just pursue it. Preaching it would be an ego-trap. What I do is a form of teaching. I teach because that is my purpose. I generally do not debate. Sometimes I "rant", but even that is tongue-in-cheek and mostly done for entertainment purposes. If I do a rant, I usually understand the other perspective. I am not in ideological opposition to it. If your purpose is also to teach -- great! -- then do that without debating anyone. You are not teaching through debate, you're just making people ideological. Debate also quickly devolves into ad hominem attacks, name-calling, trolling, and simply creates a virulent toxic atmosphere. The level of consciousness of people who like to debate is usually so low that they aren't able to engage in true open dialogue. They don't care about understanding or fairness, they only care how to defend their position at any cost. Of course, that's exactly how ego functions. What better way for ego to maintain itself than to engage in a debate about how other people's spiritual paths are wrong? Notice that when you go to a spiritual retreat, ashram, or Zen monastery, the atmosphere is never one of: "Hey guys, let's debate these teachings and poke holes in everything. Wouldn't it be beneficial to debunk some of this stuff?" If you did that, you would get kicked out. Not because the teacher is afraid that you will somehow dethrone him or undermine the truth of his teaching, but because you're behaving unconsciously and infecting others with that unconsciousness, defeating the entire purpose of that gathering. If you make your approach one of quietly seeking to understand every perspective, you will come out 100x stronger than if you make your approach one of loudly undermining all perspectives you disagree with. To be clear: engaging in thoughtful, constructive, open dialogue is NOT debate. And it is allowed here.

Seems to work well for many people. I've personally never done a Goenka-style retreat.

No, strong intention is very necessary. Don't make the mistake of burning your ship before you cross the ocean. Spiritual desire is great thing. Not all desire is egoic. If that was the case, we'd all be screwed.

One thing that might help you guys is to consider the possiblity that not everyone has the same brain type as you. Some people are naturally more intuitive than rational. They tend to be drawn to more mystical ways. If you're a highly rational and pragmatic person, well, that's just one way. Other people might be wired very different from you. Which means they literally access a different realm of experience than you. You may never have seen a demon, and maybe never will, but someone else might have. And so there is a huge disconnect. Don't expect people to translate all of their understandings and experiences into your rationalist paradigm. That would be a rather lazy attitude. Accept the responsiblity for understanding rather than putting the burden of "proof" on others. No one owes you understanding. It's your job to grapple with the mysteries of reality.

@Rimbaud Of course that isn't complete enlightenment or mastery. As I keep on telling people, but people keep refusing to listen. This here is kensho, or a first glimpse.

@Neo I have in the past covered the issue of losing motivation after stopping moralization. Deeper sources of motivation must be found. Of course ego has a lot of unhealthy motivations that need to be purified. That's a big chunk of this work.