Leo Gura

@asgard94 Certainly being rational is better than being dumb. But rationality has it's limits. As it turns out, these limits are quite serious and dangerous. Humanity may very well destroy itself from excess rationalism. And on a personal level, excess rationalism is ruining the quality of your life. So this is not just an abstract concern. The problem is that rational people don't usually see outside their paradigm and therefore don't see the damage that their paradigm causes themselves.

The idea is not to do away with science, but to simply acknowledge it's limitations and transcend into post-rational development. Science is useful, and it's here to stay, but it is not complete and will never be complete because it's very foundation is built upon false premises. To frame this a battle between science and spirituality is to miss the point. Epistemology and philosophy of science -- which very few rational people have seriously studied -- has clearly delineated the limitations of science as a discipline. No truth claims can be made about the existential or metaphysical nature of reality via science. Rigorous science itself acknowledges this. Science can only make approximate predictions about how reality functions. It can never say what reality actually is.

A lot of academics have gone big by writing best-selling books. Don't limit your ideas to only the cookie-cutter academic traditional business model. There is so much more you could do. Think outside the box and cross-pollinate between industries and marketplaces.

Identify your natural passions and then start doing research around those fields to see what opportunities are present in the marketplace. Start reading business books. Start subscribing to business magazines, blogs, or forums. Google is your best friend here. Start going to business conventions. Start networking. Start learning and training the necessary skill sets for your marketplace. Attend business seminars. Buy business & marketing related information products. Find a mentor, but not until you're clear about what you want to create. Take my life purpose course. It will save you YEARS of dead-ends and painful strategic mistakes.

Start by making a list of what you actually want out of life. Think big. You can't use techniques to lead you somewhere when you have no clue where you want to go exactly.

A lot depends on how enlightened the person is and how much self-mastery he's bothered to develop. Enlightenment alone yields little self-mastery. But lots of enlightenments + 1000s of hours of additional inner work = Jedi master

Sure, don't get stuck in theory-mode. That's a given. Useful to remind yourself of it over and over again. But it's also important to qualify what action means. Action doesn't just mean going out and doing stuff in the external world. It also means internal action. In fact, taking external action is another trap of personal developing. Just doing stuff in the external world is a HUGE trap that most successful Westerners fall into, including Tyler and guys who follow RSD. To get the biggest gains, you need to take massive INTERNAL action. Internal action includes things like: Contemplation Proper philosophical and strategic thinking Visualization Meditation Self-inquiry Shadow work Coaching/therapy Journaling Etc... Discussion and theory acquisition is important, just keep it in proper proportion.

You're somehow assuming in your question that the enlightened person would have to repress his emotions or hold himself back. This is a misunderstanding. A masterful enlightened person would: A) Fully feel into whatever emotion arose, be it anger or the desire for violence, B) Respond spontaneously and appropriately depending on the situation, without a set of rigid morals or SHOULDs. Enlightenment is really totally independent of violence. You could be enlightened and murder somebody if it felt appropriate to you. Of course in practice, it would almost never feel appropriate and you would be so emotionally unreactive that very few things would be able to provoke you into it.

Well, as Csikszentmihalyi says about flow, it's the state that's the sweet-spot between too easy and too challenging. Flow occurs when you have mastered the basic technical skills of your craft and then you're presented with a challenging situation that is roughly equal to your skills, not too easy, not too hard. Lethargy >> Grind >> Flow sounds about right. The human mind tends to overcompensate and swing it's pendulum. So from lethargy we would expect something like grind. With flow being a happy equilibrium that comes with more mastery.

Drop the SHOULDs, as they are false and neurotic. Neither you nor anyone else should do anything. But, yes, being conscious -- even more so than knowledge -- requires you take on much more responsibility. Which is why most people aren't very conscious. Comes with the territory. Just bite the bullet and go about your business without shoulding yourself.

I would just nip that in the bud by placing an strong emphasis on the limits of knowledge, discussions about epistemology, skepticism, and focus on meditation. Start that while they're young. And practice it every day yourself. Not an ideal solution. Lots of crap knowledge will still infect their minds, but that's almost unavoidable unless you live outside mainstream society. The focus has to be on instilling healthy values and a capacity for self-governance. Governing your children will make them mediocre. You have to show them the value of self-governance as a way of life.

Mostly retreats. The most I've meditated at home is like 4 hours. But I will be doing solo retreats soon.

You're welcome to keep living in a self-created ego-hell. But just know that heaven is right around the corner. The entry fee is that big fat ego.

Check out the work of Alfred Korzybski. He basically did just that and launched the field called General Semantics. His language addressed many deep flaws of other standard languages. Of course, it's not practical and no body seriously adopted it.

Working on a new course for this topic. It's gonna be powerful!

Mechanical, daily mediation isn't very effective for becoming enlightened. I've found that you really gotta hit it hard at least occasionally with marathon sessions. There's nothing quite like doing 7 days straight of non-stop concentration on a single question. You don't stop even when you sleep. You keep the concentration going even in your dreams. After a few days of that, it's like you're in another world. You will never get that kind of focus even with daily 120 minute sessions. Yes, focus is the key.

You're missing an important facet of enlightenment, which is the unconditional love facet. It's actually possible to have an enlightenment experience on love itself. I believe you've stuck a little too closely to Jed's version of enlightenment. His version is good, but it is not complete. It is missing important facets, which are NOT just new-age mumbo-jumbo. I suggest keeping your mind open and doing deeper research into the other facets of enlightenment besides the Truth part. The most advanced teachers, sages, and yogis are in agreement on the importance the love facet of enlightenment. I know it sounds sappy, but there's actually something very deep there. It doesn't negate the Truth facet, it rounds it out. You would be denying yourself if you neglected to explore this facet of life, along with the Truth facet. You're not going to be able to relate in a rich and proper way to human beings until you've deeply explored enlightened love.

It's funny how discussions about non-duality turn into yet another dick measuring contest, "No dude! My non-duality is more non-dual than your non-duality." Hehehe...

You're also welcome to hit yourself over the head with hammer. It's your life. Live it however you like.

If someone is a doormat, that's most often because they have low self-esteem -- i.e., a weak, wounded ego. If you didn't have an ego, you wouldn't care what anyone thought of you and you'd stop being a doormat.

If you're seriously getting on this journey towards enlightenment, you should expect the next 5 to 10 years of your mental life to be unstable and rocky. Lots of ups and lots of down. Lots of weird shit happening your head. Lots of doubt and confusion. Lots of frustration. Sometimes you're feel like you're going insane. It's all good. You're just breaking through all the ego's defense mechanisms. This is all spiritual purification and a sign of true growth. The more suffering, the more purification.

Physically it will not hurt you. But psychologically, of course, you could have a freak out or full mental breakdown -- at least in theory. I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you have some serious history of mental disorder. The ego's only way to defend itself is through trickery and deception. So it will lie, cheat, distract, criticize, get angry, and/or throw tamper tantrums, and stinkbombs of fear. What you succumbed to here is a mild stinkbomb of fear. The solution is ALWAYS to just push through and keep meditating until your period is over. Don't let little things like this faze you. A true Makyo would be something like hallucinating a totally life-like giant hairy spider crawling towards you to eat your head off.

You gotta make sure it's not mechanical though. You have to really wonder, "Why is this true? What is that true? Why is anything true? How do I know? Could I be wrong?" Basically taking an extreme skeptic's stance toward everything.

Yes, do nothing for 5000 hours, lol. When it will come, no one can say. It could happen right now, it could happen in 10 years. But when you sit down to meditate or self-inquire, your intent should be to become enlightened NOW! You will fail thousands of times. But it only takes once to succeed. This is not a mechanical process. Each time you sit down you have to genuinely be curious and come at the question from a place of wonder and wanting to know. You will of course fail at this too many times. You could even just sit there doing nothing and not even care about enlightenment with zero intent. And you could still get enlightened. Although probably it will take much longer. There are dozens of ways to get enlightened. Even opposite ways can work!

These are difficult choices to make for sure. But don't forget just how screwed up and neurotic your kid will be growing up under the "normal American lifestyle". He's gonna get addicted to crap food, crap entertainment, and crap knowledge. I don't think placing a lot of bans on things is the solution. That will only make him want it more. Instead, I would try to personally demonstrate through your own lifestyle how you prefer to live. Set the right example. Have a TV but don't watch it yourself. Have crap food around but don't eat it yourself. When he sees you avoiding all the crap, he will eventually start to wonder why and start to model you. You can't really force kids into personal development. They have to learn the evils of modern society through direct trial and error experience. I personally learned a lot from seeing my parents totally fuck up at life. I had very little bans on what I could do as a kid. But just seeing the disastrous results of their habits and lifestyle eventually made me fully bought into personal development. The important thing is not to set rules for your kids, but to teach them wisdom and strategic thinking skills. And let your kids take risks, fail, and hurt themselves. That's ultimately the best teacher. Suffering is a self-correction mechanism.