Leo Gura

Stuff like that shows us that we don't have as much control over ourselves as we like to pretend we have.

I've experienced this kind of thing too. It's a cool phenomenon. In one word: awareness. With sufficient awareness things just fall away. One day you really SEE that what you're doing is shooting yourself in the foot and so you stop doing it. Little effort is required. But this usually comes only after a long period of struggle. I like to think of the body/brain as a complex self-regulating system, and when it decides its had enough of something, it stops desiring it neurotically for good.

Yup, slow and stead wins the race. Be the grounded tortoise, not the neurotic rabbit

If you had to decide between: A great exclusive relationship A great polyamorous relationship Which would you choose?

There is such a thing as a core personality that you have. It's what makes you feel most at ease and comes most naturally to you, without struggle. It's was remains after you remove all the ego blocks, limiting beliefs, childhood traumas, external moral standards, social norms, etc. But this is NOT what most personality tests test. And the most important thing that these tests don't tell you is that you are NOT your personality!!! WTF? You'd think that would be an important little caveat to mention! Here's how I see it: Entry-level personal development: trying to improve your personality or change it entirely because you wish it were different and better. Ironically, this gives you a weak and shallow personality. Advanced level personal development: fully accepting your personality and dis-identifying from it. Ironically, this gives you the strongest, most attractive, and satisfying personalty. What I find deliciously paradoxical about this whole thing is that you have a strong personality that cannot be changed, and yet almost everything about how you think and live can be changed to such an extent that people close to you will not even be able to recognize you any more. Humans are both rigid and malleable at the same time. I guess sorta like a car whose chassis you cannot change.

Best gains at the gym come from heavy-weight compound exercises which include: Squats Deadlifts Benchpress Rows Overhead Shoulder Lifts Start with very low weights (even an empty 45 pound bar) and then every week add a little bit more and a little bit more. I got a lot of value out of the 5x5 Strong Lifts routine. You can find it online. It's quite popular. I don't do this nowadays though because my passion for weightlifting has passed.

I think polyamory is not for most people, even if you take away all the cultural brainwashing about traditional marriage. Most people just want to find that one right person and make it work. But, if that's not you, then that's cool too. You're just in the minority.

There is an important difference. Firstly, let's make sure we're on the same page as to what contemplation means. Contemplation in the context of enlightenment work is equivalent to self-inquiry. Don't let the word contemplation fool you. It does NOT mean: sit there and think about stuff. << That is NOT contemplation, and that will not get you enlightened. Contemplation really means: directly experience your true nature right now! Focus deeply on only question: Who am I? or What am I? And probe it experientially for 30 to 60 minutes like a laser beam, never wavering. Meditation is sitting down and literally doing nothing. Letting go of all control and letting your monkey mind run as you observe it. There is no goal in meditation. You just sit and accept reality exactly as it is, no matter what is happening. Meditation is helpful for enlightenment work, but it's not as direct as self-inquiry/contemplation.

If your goal is a direct path to enlightenment, then more self-inquiry would be better. I alternate between both. My meditation and self-inquiry have sort of merged. I do at least 1 hour per day. But lately I've been doing 2-3 hours per day when I have time. A good schedule might be: 1 hour of self-inquiry and 1 hour of meditation per day, never missing a day.

My situation was rather unique. I'd been an amateur and professional web developer for nearly 15 years. So it made sense to do it myself. And I knew I wanted a lot of custom features. Of course that takes a lot of time away from doing other stuff. Then again, when you're just starting off, it's not like you have a full roster of clients. For most people, just throwing up a Wordpress blog is the way to get a good-looking website up fast and cheap. I would say, focus on your core competency -- coaching. Not on technical things. Tech is not your Zone of Genius and can become a quagmire very quickly, distracting you from you real work.

Depends on your body type. For some guys putting on size is really hard (like me for example) because we're naturally lean. You have to accept that to some degree. Don't expect to compare with the bulky body-frame guys. For me to bulk up, I need to eat HUGE quantities of food. To the point where I'm so full it makes me feel sick. Whey protein shakes helps a lot, but they are very unhealthy in my opinion. Lots of artificial chemicals and many people (like myself) are allergic to whey protein without realizing it. I fucked up my health by chugging down 3 whey protein shakes per day for several years. It made me bulkier, but I had really bad acne and other issues. So be careful with that. Try to stick with natural whole foods in large quantities. Most guys bulk up and gain fat at the same time. Then they cut the fat with cardio months later.

Firstly, 99% of people are not doing enlightenment work, so for them self-improvement is all there is, and it's FAR better than doing nothing. Secondly, the term no-self is a bit misleading. What it really means is, "The self you think of yourself as being is false. But there is a True Self which awaits discovery." You as a personality or a human being is a fiction. But you as Absolute Nothingness or pure awareness is REAL! It's the only real thing! So self-actualization is still valid if you just understand which self is being talked about. When you start to get into enlightenment work, you're basically doing a deconstruction of the false self in order the allow the True Self to shine << that's what the deepest self-actualization work is. It's like washing your car by removing dirt rather than painting over the dirt. So in my mind, there is no paradox. The paradox is only on the surface, at the level of language. Life still goes on and there are many practical steps you can take to improve how you flow with life.

Reminds me of a book I was given as a gift called The Ethical Slut

The notion of death itself is largely a confusion of the mind. Death is technically speaking a belief. It's a projection into the future. A fantasy. Imagine for a minute that you stopped believing in death. That death was just an old fairy-tale they tell to children. << That would a more appropriate attitude towards death than what most of us think. It has to be this way just from a practical point of view. What significance could enlightenment have if the enlightened person was still afraid of death? Not much. Such a person would still be a nervous wreck and acting from ego. And the only way to not be afraid of death is to realize that it is a fantasy. You can't macho your way out of death. That's not what enlightenment masters do. They completely see through it instead.

Sounds like you got an insight. Those are great. They can happen during meditation and enlightenment work. They are like rational clarifications of some aspect of life. For example, you might have an insight that shakes loose some troublesome aspect of your life like, "Oh... I was being so silly worrying about losing my job. I know that in the end things will work out just fine." or "Oh.... The real reason I've been pissed off at my Dad for the last 10 years is because of X. How silly of me." etc. But these are not Satori. Satori is a full-on enlightenment moment. That shit will blow your mind when it happens. It's not a rational knowing. It's like becoming God for a while.

The rational mind will spin its wheels thinking about this stuff and not really get anywhere. It's sort of like space, but space is something, not nothingness. Nothingness is an Absolute. Another way to describe it that has been helpful for me is as pure presence or knowing. This nothingness is like pure awareness. It has no shape or form, yet it is aware of itself and the entire world. It is the thing that allows awareness of anything in the first place. Because for something to exist, it has to first enter awareness. Nothingness is the same as infinity. Like two sides of the same coin. Both are non-localizable, formless, and ever-present. Imagine if you were nothing. You would also be everything simultaneously. There is no "I" to be inside anything. Everything occurs inside of the true "I". The true self is like an infinitely large empty container within which all material reality happens and gets noticed. But all the above are just ideas. Adopting them will only get you stuck.

Confusion and frustration is just par for the course. That IS the course basically. So just accept it, don't try to resist it or change it, and keep plowing ahead.

In the context of what you're reading, contemplation is a deliberate logical thinking process. Intuition is a gut feeling. Contemplation you can actually sit down to do. Intuition you don't. It just sorta comes to you out of the blue.

Wow, it's cool to see that kind of openness. Most girls like to lock guys down for keeps. Interesting.

That's a tough one. Some girls and guys get paranoid about their partner talking to the opposite sex because they are insecure and get jealousy too easily. If you two have a strong relationship, I don't think there's much to worry about. But if your relationship is shaky, then, yeah, there's a danger there. It also depends on the partner's natural personality type, Some partners are naturally very outgoing and socialable so they hug and play cheeky with everyone.

Three points come to mind for me about this topic: 1) Very important to realize that forgiveness is not done for THEM, but for YOU! It should come from an awareness that holding a grudge is hurting YOU. 2) Therapist Brad Blanton talks about this. His says telling folks to forgive isn't that effective. Instead what he suggests is a full disclosure of ALL the lies and hidden agendas between you and the person, until all the emotions have been fully communicated. Then forgiveness can really happen. At least that's one approach. It's got more practical meat on it than just deciding to forgive someone because that can just be a logical thought which doesn't count for much. I know that I would get more relief and true forgiveness if I, for example, had a real brutally honest 4 hour conversation with my Dad or Mom about all the accumulated baggage between us. But it's so emotionally scary we don't even want to touch that, cause people would be crying and egos would get crushed. Takes a lot of balls to do in practice. But if you have a strong grudge that's gnawing at you (I don't in this case) then it might be worth the hassle. 3) It's very helpful to realize that people SHOULDN'T act any differently than they actually did or actually do. Byron Katie talks about this a lot. If someone has mistreated you, the problem is not that they mistreated you. The problem is that you have a rule inside your head that says, "But they SHOULDN'T have mistreated me! That's not fair!" And as soon as that happens what you don't realize is that you're living in a fantasyland now where people shouldn't mistreat people. Ego has put you out of alignment with truth. Actually, in the real world, people DO mistreat people! That's called life. That's called living aligned with truth. How do we know people are SUPPOSED to mistreat people? Because they do! << This can be a HUGE paradigm shift to realize. It's a powerful kind of surrender to a truth you've been secretly resisting for years. Not easy though if you've developed a strong victim complex around being mistreated.

Yeah, that's a good point. A lot of people go down some dark road when cheated on. Like demonizing the opposite sex.

The question itself is coming from within the Matrix of ego, so it's somewhat misguided. Because from the perspective of no ego, there is no seeking for benefits or value. In fact benefit and value are illusions. The enlightened state is already full and complete. It doesn't need any benefits really. How do you fill a cup that's always full? This is a paradigm shift. Enlightened people still date, and do science, etc. It's more like the reasons behind the doing would change. "Life has no meaning" is not a belief. At least not when McKenna says it. It's technically true because meaning is a projection of the mind. What he don't emphasize is that you don't need meaning. Meaning is a shallow substitute for BEING. Being is much more satisfying than meaning because being is true and meaning is false. The search for meaning is the ego chasing its own tail in confusion, always frustrated because meaning can't ever be really found. Enlightened people live not much differently than ordinary people. Just imagine an ordinary person who is very grateful and at peace with whatever is happening and very in the present moment, and not acting all neurotic. << that's what enlightened life looks like. The externals of enlightened life are totally ordinary: you still brush your teeth in the morning, you still shop for food, you still have sex, you still raise the children, you still go to work, you still file your taxes every year, you still go to the dentist, etc. Or maybe you choose to become a monk in a cave. But that's mostly a stereotype.

There's many different ways to teach or explain enlightenment. A lot of it has to do with how one learned about it himself, one's personal journey. And also one's cultural upbringing, which you can't really escape even with enlightenment. This is also why religions and mystical traditions are so different. The Buddha was very clinical in his descriptions while other prophets were more poetic and flowery. There is also a choice as to which aspects of enlightenment to highlight and which to downplay. Some people like to emphasize the Divine Love part. Some like the Absolute Truth part. Some like the God part. Some like the no-self part. Some like the freedom from suffering part. Etc.

Lol