Leo Gura

There's no magic trick. Just keep hammering on the consistency until you build the habit. Until then it will be rough going. Keep your eye on the big picture of what you're working towards: you are gonna transform your whole life! One baby step at a time.

Don't forget to start the day off with a super-clean, preferably raw veggie or fruit meal. No wheat or corn or refined sugar crap. I do a healthy smoothie.

You're walking the path now (or crawling on it) so let that be okay. It takes a few years of consistent effort for the fruits to ripen. At your age -- basically all of the 20's -- you are in a struggle to find your identity and establish your financial independence. You are still just learning how the real world works and it's difficult and scary. Just keep in mind that this is a normal phase of human development. We all go through it. (Some of course better than others.) Focus on finding your life purpose. It will ground you and give you some solace. Keep building good habits, trusting that it will all pay off in the next 5 to 10 years.

The reality is that we need much more scientific studies done on these kinds of questions by enlightened scientists -- which unfortunately are lacking at this point in human history. The exact relationship between consciousness and the brain is not known. But it's clear that the standard scientific model which says that consciousness is simply a collection of neurons is woefully inadequate. Science has not been able to reconcile the ultimate question: what is the relationship between mind and matter?

I've tried it. It was good but didn't wake me up. But then again, I'm a stubborn egotistical bastard. The reality is that people can make you all sorts of spiritual promises. I've tried many different enlightenment methods that promised near-instant results or to save me years of time. And the reality is that people awaken differently. Sometimes a person can wake up in just 90 minutes or one weekend. But this is rare. If it was that easy, everyone would be freaking enlightened. And almost no one is. The reality is much more complex and messy. If you seek permanent non-dual awareness -- which is what I care about -- then you will NOT get it without massive work unless you happen to be extremely lucky. Having a single awakening experience don't mean shit. That's just the tip of the iceberg. When I speak about enlightenment my goal is not to just have some single experience. My goal is the total elimination of every last vestige of ego. And that takes some serious work. If you can get the job done in one weekend, go for it! Try whatever you think will work best.

God isn't so much the phenomena that you see. God refers to the ultimate SOURCE of this phenomena, which is sorta like Nothingness. The phenomena arise from the Nothingness and die back into it every moment. But this is all just ideas. Go discover what the words are pointing to.

That is SUPER common. Most people who have an enlightenment-like experience lose it after a few minutes, hours, or days. And then they spend years chase it. The ego illusion is VERY VERY VERY strong. In most cases it needs to be beaten down to a bloody-pulp. Hence the 1,000+ hours of brutal work. Some people are lucky and they get a full-blow enlightenment experience that shatters the whole ego. But this is very rare. What you experienced in those 5-6 seconds doesn't even sounds like an enlightenment experience. It's just a heightened state of awareness. That's cool. But you ain't seen nothing yet. All the coolest shit still lies ahead for you. A real enlightenment experience will blow your whole mind. But even then, you're very likely to lose it, requiring deeper work. Contrary to what most of us would like to believe, enlightenment is not a simple black & white state. It's a very nuanced and messy business with many facets and edge-cases. Hence why people are so confused about it and why so many misconceptions exist about it. Even enlightened masters disagree.

During the phase when I was coaching all my friends for free, one or two of them were serious enough to finally decide to pay me money after I told them that the free coaching was coming to an end. If you finish the coaching training program, you are ready to coach paid clients! You don't need to prove yourself. Of course your mind will tell you, "Oh no! I could never charge someone for this. I'm too inexperienced! I need another 2 years of practice." << But those are all bullshit excuses and limiting beliefs. You just gotta go for it. Have courage in yourself. No one else will until you do. Like I said before, coaching is the EASY part. It should be the least of your worries. The real trick is in getting people to hand you their hard-earned cash. << That takes some real business acumen to accomplish consistently. Time to start learning business and marketing.

The forum is mobile-friendly. You can use it just fine on your phone. At least for browsing.

Yes, I struggle with it a lot. My best advice is to BE MORE CREATIVE and be generous with your citing. Then you can't lose. It takes more effort to do it this way, but ultimately it's the right way.

So basically your job is to spread the cancer of humanity across the oceans, deserts, and outer space? (half joking) I sometimes wonder about this. How much good is there REALLY in empowering humanity? I mean, sure, let's say this forum helps 100,000 people to become more self-actualized, but then ultimately that leads to more human beings that populate the universe until it's overrun by humans like a swarm of self-actualizing locusts. Lol Do we really know what is good and what is bad in the grand scheme of things? /nihilistic-musings Your heart's in the right place man. I'm just playing devil's advocate.

If you cite him, then you can definitely use his concepts, like the 6 Needs. As far as actual tools he's developed, that might be a bit of playing with fire. Like I said at the end >> BE MORE CREATIVE! What use are you if all you do is parrot Tony Robbins and use all his tools? Be you! Develop your own style and ideas and tools. Go study other people besides Tony Robbins. Then you won't feel like you're encroaching on his turf and you'll be a lot more fulfilled. It's not actually fulfilling to parrot other people. Whenever I parrot someone else, I feel dirty. You gotta be yourself.

Human work performance actually plummets after working 3 to 4 weeks @ 60 hours per week. If you continue beyond that, your work will actually suffer for it and eventually you will burn out. Don't forget that many artists are neurotic as fuck. It's not a good idea to model your life after artists. Many of them are HIGHLY dysfunctional and miserable human beings.

The self-help industry is so incestuous that basically everyone rips off or references someone else. Most of Tony Robbins concepts are not his but "rip offs" from other teachers and authors. I do it to an extent too. I try to cite sources to be generous but it's hard to figure out where to draw the line because there are few truly original insights to be made about human psychology and whoever you cite probably wasn't the original source of the idea. You could cite Tony Robbins for the 6 Needs but they certainly aren't his. I remember reading an older self-help book which listed "his" 6 needs and upon realizing that I said, "Woah! So that's where he got it from. Straight up copy." I forget exactly which book that was. If you're gonna use someone's well-known concepts, like Tony Robbins, definitely give credit. It actually makes you look good. Otherwise you look like a dick. Eben Pagan is one of the best examples of a self-help guru who cites his sources VERY generously. And it makes him look awesome. A great quote I read once in a creativity book that applies to this situation went something like this: "If you're worried that your work is too similar to someone else's, then you're being too derivative and not creative enough."

Oddly enough, one of the BEST things you can do for the world is to rid yourself of ego. Once that's gone, you are in a much better position to see how to actually help the world. Without that, you may easily contribute to its ruin while thinking you are helping. It's really hard to change the masses without first changing yourself a lot. And ironically, after you change yourself a lot, you may not feel such a great need to change the masses. But if you want some more external solutions to the worlds problems, I think the following areas are important: Education reform Political reform, getting corporate lobbying out of politics Bringing up 3rd world countries Solving the Western vs Arab cultures conflict Moving the world away from stage Orange materialism to stage Green and Yellow Addressing pollution, waste, and global warming Teaching people about mindfulness, meditation, and enlightenment Teaching people about practical psychology and emotional awareness Changing the Standard American Diet Reforming the healthcare system All the above are doable and passionate people right now are working on them. But they need help.

Anything from the Greeks and Romans is usually good. But also check out Eastern material. The Buddha's Dhammapada is great. And there are many other examples from the East. Western philosophy from 1000 AD to 2000 AD is highly intellectual and pedantic. Very little of it deals with actually improving one's life. New Age type books from the last 50 years will probably be more fruitful for you. Like Carlos Castenada's work.

This is a problem of lack of authentic relating. The next time you relate to a human being, try to do it from a place of 100% genuineness. Only say exactly what you think and feel and not some polite bullshit. Then when you say "I'm sorry" it will be coming from an authentic sense of feeling sorry, and not just empty words, or even worse, lies. In general, try to clean up your language so that whenever you say some words, you really mean them. << That's a great self-improvement exercise. You could turn it into a 30 day challenge. It will grow you a lot. Re-watch my How You Lie video. It's addressing this very point. What you're basically doing right now with people is lying. And it makes you feel hollow inside.

True non-neediness is a MUCH deeper thing than you're thinking of it as. You're still thinking of non-neediness as a manipulation. Like, "Oh, if I am non-needy then I will be more attractive and gain some advantage or benefit in life." << But that is actually coming from a place of deep lack. True non-neediness is you are alive and 100% fulfilled simply by your very existence. It's a deep in-the-moment knowing that you need nothing external to satisfy you. You don't need social contact or women or money or anything. You just sit there and bask in being fully complete exactly as you already are. And you don't care about how this will affect anyone or anything. Will this get you laid -- just sitting there and being happy? No, probably not. But you don't care because you don't need to get laid because you are already complete. In fact, getting laid would be a distraction from enjoying the present moment. Non-neediness is not a tool to be used to get stuff. It is rather being in-touch with yourself to such an extraordinary degree that you need nothing more and you don't cling to having things go any particular way. It's a kind of flow with and surrender to reality. As you can see, it almost seems too idealistic and impractical. That's because it's a very advanced stage of development. You can only get there with years of work. And this is why non-neediness is so hard to fake. We could characterize the majority of your daily life at present as a desperate reaction to fill a need. That's what the ego does. It doesn't understand much else. It's always lacking something. Because fundamentally it lacks reality. To really be non-needy requires that you find existential Truth and reality.

There is no time constraint of course. You can get enlightened at any time and much sooner than 1000 hours. But I would rather give people a realistic expectation than a false hope. When you tell someone 1000 hours, they get a good idea of the seriousness of commitment required. Besides, that first enlightenment experience only just the beginning. All the follow-up work will exceed 1000 hours easily and I want people to be prepared for that. But for some folks enlightenment comes much sooner. Then again, for some folks it comes much later than 1000 hours.

Well, now you gotta deliver!

Yes, I want to cover guilt for sure.

Yes, that is planned.

Well... the truth is purpose is an illusion. There is no purpose to life. All purposes are artificial ego constructs. So if you keep churning through purposes, perhaps it's time to tackle the root issue: enlightenment & truth. After enlightenment, the need for purpose is gone. BEING is far superior to purpose. Until then, purpose is better than no purpose.

I am a lone-wolf kind of guy, so I don't do social circles. I consider it a form of torture. So I'm not the best person to teach you about it. Look to more extroverted teachers.

Interesting topic. I'll have to give it some thought.