Leo Gura

@ZenDog 3 month meditation retreats don't exist. Even 10 days is a challenge and quite expensive to arrange. A week-long retreat usually costs $1000-$1500. I'd hate to think was a 3 month retreat would cost. If you want something that long, you're looking at an apprenticeship program or residency, which is quite different from a retreat.

Yes, do BOTH! What I find is that those times when you're really focused and "efforting" don't usually result in a breakthrough, but they lay the groundwork which then lets the breakthrough happen when you're relaxed and doing nothing. If all you did was relax all the time, you'd probably never wake up. There's a reason why spirituality has a long tradition of hardcore asceticism and unbelievably masochistic practices. They seem to get the job done when nothing else will

@Hengame Watch out for your cheapness attitude. If you truly value something, you shouldn't hesitate to pay money for it. Demanding free spiritual teachings is basically saying that spiritual teachings are worthless. You're willing to pay $5 for a Cheeseburger, but unwilling to pay $5 for a spiritual teaching? Does that make sense? I've paid over $10,000 for spiritual teachings in the last year, and gladly so. I'm going to spend another $10,000 for spiritual teachings this year too. It is worth it to me because I value spirituality. Support those industries you wish to see flourish. If a guy like Rupert Spira doesn't deserve to get paid, I don't know who does! Just my thoughts on the matter.

There are several layers of reasons. Yes, modern society totally screws up your mind and your sense of perceptive. From the day you are born your parents only give you love if you act the way their egos like, and they deny love as soon as you act against their wishes. Which then trains you to seek love from outside yourself. But more fundamentally, you seek happiness through external strategies because the ego is terrified of looking inward. If the ego ever deeply looked inward, it would discover that it doesn't exist. So the ego's entire survival depends on the pursuit of external stimulation and denial of inner reality. The ego is like a shark that must keep swimming to oxygenate its gills, or it suffocates. << That's a pretty accurate description of human egos.

So how are you NOT responsible? It's a shitty situation that you lost that much money, but come one, a guy gives you stock tips and now hold him responsible for your financial success (or lack thereof)??? Can you see how lack of responsibility-taking was what created this problem in the first place? Now, if you came here with a story about how your wife was attacked by a burglar, you'd have a stronger case, but we would still tell you that you're responsible for it. Because you're always responsible for every situation you put yourself in life, no matter how subtle. Taking full, unconditional responsibility for your life is a very mature attitude. It takes a while for the immature ego to wrap itself around this one. The ego wants scapegoats because it's too scared and weak to take on the full weight of reality. It's just too much to admit that you're the cause of every negative emotional reaction you ever have.

@JevinR Why waste time? Lack of wisdom. Those who have wisdom go straight for the jugular. Everyone else piddles around in concept-land.

@Jay S You are BOTH a non-localized awareness and a localized center of perception. Awareness and perception are distinct things. You are BOTH a human being and NOT a human being. This shit is paradoxical. You're not going to resolve the foundation of existence with the rational mind. You've run up against the hard limits of language and thought. The distinction between existence and non-existence is itself illusory. To truly answer your question requires an enlightenment experience into the nature of your being and existence itself.

Be careful about imposing your own biases on who qualifies as being enlightened or not.

I don't think you guys give him enough credit. Does he have neurotic tendencies? Sure. Is he fully enlightened? Probably not. But if you listen to him closely he's clearly speaking from experience and has had some direct experiences of non-duality. Everything I heard him say is accurate. It may just come off as New-Agey at times, but that's actually because he's not dumbing it down. I was pleasantly shocked by his level of accuracy and ability to describe spirituality in a non-dogmatic way. All spiritual truths sound New-Agey when spoken of quickly, the way he does in those short public interview sound bites. If I had to describe enlightenment in a 3-minute CNN interview, I would sound like a New-Age kook. Considering that he was a heroin junkie sex addict, he's doing pretty good. I'm happy to see him popularizing yoga meditation.

You gotta keep in mind that any guru's words are just words. They are never meant to be taken for reality. If you keep that in mind, you won't have this kind of reaction. The map is not the territory. Especially in spiritual pursuits.

If enlightenment does anything, it makes you MUCH MORE attuned to emotions. It's a common misconception that enlightenment makes you emotionless. Just the opposite. You become so sensitive to emotions that they flow through you without resistance. The capacity for creativity also skyrockets. The thing you should really be asking yourself is: How is staying unenlightened affecting my songwriting ability?

@stephanie The problem is that you're stuck looking at this from the level of beliefs, which is a pretty limit and fallacious level. Ask yourself why your mind is unwilling to be open to radical possibilities about reality? Do you really feel that mainstream society has the nature of reality itself figured out?

I met a guy who was employed as a merchant sailor in the Northwest, Seattle area. Requires zero experience to start. Their union trains you. Pays very well for a manual labor job, good promotion opportunities, you get to travel the world, and you get 90 days off the ship several times per year. A great gig for those who are solitary. It's also nice in that is gives you an escape from the numerous distractions and enticements of modern American society. Make the ship your monastery as you save up dough. $50,000 - $70,000 per year salary is possible within just a few years of work. Most sailors blow it on booze and hookers in Thailand, but you can be smarter than that (I hope )

You're not gonna get enlightened through psychedelics. That desire itself is neurotic and escapist and immature.

Tell him that this guy gets laid: Check of some of his talks, they will give you hope:

Of course duration helps a lot. Most people aren't willing to invest 3hrs a day though, so I rarely speak of it. 20 minutes is hard enough to get out of people. I myself am doing at least 2 hrs daily nowadays with the intention to ramp it up even more. I find 4 hrs per day is the minimum I need to get a palpable feeling of growth towards enlightenment.

You should be good to go. All your really need is an open mind and get yourself off of any substance addictions like coffee, tobacco, soda, etc. Disconnect your mobile phone and laptop so you don't use them during the 10 days.

Select 1 lifestyle change that would make the biggest impact on your life or mood, and plan out a habit to enact it. Focus on that habit every day until it becomes like on auto-pilot. Rinse and repeat. You're so young, you don't need to rush. Focus on baby steps done consistently. Trust that the results will be exponential over a time frame of months and years.

It's definitely a POTENTIAL trap. But not one you necessarily need to fall into.

Why is future development bleak??? That's the issue right there. If you believe the future is bleak, you've screwed yourself into a corner.

Yes, definitely. The art of being a great teacher is being able to meet the student where he's at. I find that many of the most spiritually advanced sages are NOT able to do this. Because they cannot identify with what it's like to be stuck in low-consciousness, because they are like virtuosos. Or they have been enlightened so long they forget what it's like to be "normal". Which is why most average people cannot get any practical value out of sages. Their advice just goes in one ear and out the others. The sage appears untouchable. The sage appears to be an idealistic dreamer who's out of touch with "reality". A lot of my advice is frankly dumbed-down so that people find it relatable. If I just flat out stated things as they appear to me in my mind, most people would be like, "WTF are you smoking?" And this problem only gets worse as one develops. It doesn't get easier because the gap between you and your average student grows wider every year.

I've addressed this question in various videos: 1) http://www.actualized.org/articles/the-secret-curse-of-being-human 2) http://www.actualized.org/articles/the-happiness-spectrum And all the meditation/enlightenment-related videos are pointing the way to satisfaction with life.

Some good suggestions above. I would suggest that as a baseline, you sit down and ask yourself, "Are those statements actually TRUE?" Is it literally true that you are not good enough? Is it literally true that you can't do anything right? How can you be sure? What do those beliefs even mean in practice? What is reality and what is mental abstraction? What you'll discover if you just sit down and rationally examine those beliefs, is that they are gross over-generalizations and technically false. The reality is much less grandiose: there are some aspects of your life that you want to improve and have struggled with up to this point. Notice how much better and more realistic that sounds. That won't be enough to completely unwire your beliefs, because clearly your mind has supplied you with lots of evidence to back up them up. But at the very least you've stopped letting your mind get away with ridiculously sweeping statements unchallenged.

I didn't add 48 Laws Of Power to my book list for a good reason. It's NOT an emotionally mature attitude towards life, disregarding the power of higher consciousness values. Robert Greene is a good writer and thinker, but I wouldn't use that book as a manual for self-actualization. If anything, we have an over-abundance of that type of thinking in modern stage Orange Western society. Seek a higher standard.

He's a legit yogi. Great sense of humor.