Leo Gura

Yeah, I think that would work because someone is there willing to invest their time into that person and guide them. Unfortunately many depressed people can't afford that kind of service or don't even know how to find it if it was offered for free. Or they would just stop practicing before they developed proficiency. I'm all for the do-it-yourself approach if you have what it takes to do it. Mindfulness is a SUPER powerful tool. Almost too good to be true. Hopefully more people start practicing.

I don't follow. Your writing is very cryptic.

Calm feelings will come and go. They are not ultimate Truth. Don't pay too much attention to them. If your goal is enlightenment, the goal is what's true, not feelings or ideas. Always bring your focus back to the inquiry: Who is feeling calm? Who is asking questions? Who is confused?

What are you worried will happen?

"Who's Zedd?" "Zedd's dead baby. Zedd's dead." Sorry, couldn't resist Great journal! Interested to see where this journey will lead you. Sounds like you've got a taste for truth now and there's no going back in the box.

I agree that the issue of cheating needs to be addressed in a video. As does sexting! I actually want to post a full, real-life sexting transcript on the forum Cause people will not believe some of this stuff if I just tell them about it.

Yeah, the problem with depression is that it's a giant self-fulfilling prophecy that robs you of the VERY mental resources you need to pull yourself out of it. So in practice, I would say if you got really bad depression, you need to find someone to help you who is willing to meet you at your level. One thing they taught us in life coach training is the following principle: If a person is at victim-level thinking and you give him a kick in the ass, he will only become a bigger victim. << they need a very gentle hand-holding approach. If a person is at fighter-level thinking and you give him a kick in the ass, he will mobilize and self-correct. So total victims need lots of support and encouragement. I think you could teach mindfulness-type practices to depressed people, but you'd have to do it in a very supportive environment. You can't just tell them something like: "You are causing all your own problems and it's all in your head." While that's technically true, they are too weak to do anything with it. Btw, I've tried motivating victims through tough-talk and brutal truth, and my results have been mixed. A lot of times they just get upset and freaked out because I failed to meet them at their level. Case-in-point my early video on depression called; Why Am I Depressed? Which gets a lot of downvotes even though it technically answers the question head-on. Another important thing I discovered about depression is that it is a super ambiguous word. Some people say they are depressed when their favorite video game didn't come out on time. Some people are depressed because their entire family was killed in a car crash. Some people are depressed because they eat a terrible diet for YEARS and never exercise Some people are depressed because they have been lying to their spouse about cheating on them. Some people are depressed because they only made $5 million dollars this year instead of $10 million. Some people are depressed because they read too much existentialist philosophy in college. Some people are depressed because they are addicted to alcohol. HUGE difference between all of the above! Yet we tend to call all these cases "depression" and generally try to solve them with the same remedy.

Right, so I would definitely tell that person that if there is pattern of guys cheating on you, then that's obviously being perpetuated by you because most women do NOT get cheated twice in a row. Take 100% responsibility even if it seems harsh. Merely changing guys without addressing the root cause will just create more of the same pattern of course. This is a very common issue with women who get abused. She gets abused, then finally builds up enough nerve to dump the guy. Then the next guy she attracts is EXACTLY the same type of guy who abuses her even more! My rule of thumb on this is: if there is even a thought about cheating in the air in your relationship, you already fucked up somewhere upstream. In the examples above the screw ups were: Lack of open lines of communication between partners Sexually repressed (too shy or squeamish to discuss sex or ask for sex to be changed) Poor sexual skills which leads to stale boring sex that gets old really fast Too lenient about lack of sex. If there is no sex for a whole month, that's a HUGE red flag already that needs to be quickly nipped in the bud.

In my mind it's pretty easy to spot the difference between real and fake spirituality. Fake spirituality builds up ideas and beliefs and rituals. Real spirituality crumbles your worldview and forces you to just BE, in silence. Real spirituality is very radical and open. I instantly feel the vibe from the person. Real spiritual teachers are so authentic it shocks you because you suddenly see the sharp contrast between them and everyone else who's playing the ego game. The person's demeanor speaks for itself. You can instantly tell by watching someone like Tolle or Sadhguru or Osho that they are not fucking around. They are congruently living in another universe.

I would suggest doing a lot more testing to discover the root of your health issues. Health issues are usually NOT an accident, especially at age 23. They are often the direct outgrowth of diet and lifestyle choices. So you gotta discover which of your lifestyle choices are screwing up your sleep and your brain and your energy levels. Things like supplements can be like band-aids on a broken leg. Your body might actually be sending you valuable signals that something is wrong and needs to be fixed rather than masked over. I'm a night owl myself and find it hard to go to bed early consistently. I actually saw a study that came out the other week which found a link between your genes and whether you are an early bird or a night owl. Now, I'm sure that doesn't mean you can't change. But there might also be some value in being honest with yourself about who you naturally are and go with the flow. Maybe. Even though I'm a night owl, I do find I'm much more productive if I wake up early.

Maybe the topic title would be: How To Deal With Cheating? That would certainly be popular. Not sure if my opinions on it would be too helpful though. I would basically say something harsh like: If they cheat, move on to another guy/gal and don't look back. In intimate relationships, once certain boundaries have been crossed, they can never be uncrossed. If there is a very strong desire to stay together and "work it out", I would suggest that that's actually an even bigger problem: neediness. A secure person with high self-esteem would not tolerate such serious boundary-breaking. What would be a legitimate reason for trying to work it out? Obviously the cheating happened because the relationship was flawed to begin with, no?

From an evolutionary perspective, think about this: how can one piece of reality sustain itself and replicate itself within the larger reality if it doesn't make a distinction between itself and another? How can it last or survive without giving itself preferential treatment at the cost of the environment? Not possible! Fundamentally ego is a distinction. It's the self/other distinction. As soon as a being says, "I am this and not that" at least some primitive form of ego arises. The mind has partitioned reality like the diskspace on your harddrive. In reality, the entire harddrive is one giant unified diskspace. But software can "partition" it by adding labels and calling one part Drive C, another part Drive E, another part Drive Y. But all of that is ultimately a mind game.

This thread is a great idea! Makes me want to create some kind of public database of the most profound quotes.

Awesome! I'm excited to see serious truth-seekers here

Pffffft.... ignorant doctors.... I recently added a book to my book list about how to naturally cure auto-immune diseases, especially hypothyroidism. It's written by an MD who's cured thousands of patients in her practice. Here are two additional great books: Stop The Thyroid Madness Root Cause: Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

Actualized.org << my biggest excuse from doing enlightenment work EVAR!

Interesting question. I don't see the connection really. You are not the body or the mind. What you really are cannot be killed, like seriously! No kidding! It's sort of like asking, "What if I become enlightened and decide to kill my dog?" Well, you could kill your dog. But that dog never really was you in the first place. If you think killing the body will kill the real you, then you're far from enlightenment. Your question is only a concern from the viewpoint of the ego, because it's very mistaken about what the truth is. From the viewpoint of truth, truth cannot be killed.

There are a lot of weird state-experiences that can happen during meditation. You could have life-like hallucinations of giant spiders crawling around you, or of Jesus coming to bless you, or the Buddha, or people's faces can start to warp and distort, or you may see bright lights, or images of demons, or total blackness, or an explosion of energy in your head, etc. All of that is called Makyo in the Zen tradition. Literally it means, "abode of the devil". It's all a distraction from truth. It makes you feel like you're making progress or gaining some deep spiritual insight when in fact you're identifying and getting lost in sensory phenomena. It's the devil playing tricks on you, testing to see if you're wise enough to distinguish between truth and illusion. The important thing to remember is that enlightenment is NOT a state! It is not an emotion. It is not a sensory experience. It is not a high. It is not some blissful light, or any other thing you can imagine. Everything you can perceive or imagine is guaranteed to NOT be enlightenment. Enlightenment is the Truth! It is what you are! You are it ALWAYS! You cannot ever not be it. You're IT right freaking now as you're reading this sentence. No special state is required. Truth is ALWAYS present. In fact, it's the ONLY thing that's present. It cannot EVER be lost. You already are enlightened! (You just don't know it.) The only problem is that your mind doesn't know what to do with this. The mind only knows how to conceptualize. The mind only knows illusion. It cannot know truth no matter how hard it tries because truth isn't something that's known, it is BEING itself, and it is not an object. Absolute Truth is indescribable and unimaginable. It has no shape. It is not even an "it". It transcends even existence and non-existence. Absolute Truth is ETERNAL -- it NEVER changes. Ever! Instead of trying to attain a grandiose meditative state (and I've been guilty of this myself A LOT), try relaxing your body and mind and focus on genuinely wondering, "Who am I really if I'm not the body?" or "What is true independent of all phenomena?" or "What is it that's aware of all of reality?" Hint: don't neglect the possibility that you may literally be nothing at all Ask yourself, "What is the only 'thing' that could be ETERNAL, untouchable, and indestructible?" Also make a distinction in your experience between meditation and self-inquiry. Lean more towards self-inquiry vs meditation if you wanna get enlightened faster.

You're not going to get enlightened through visualization practice or positive self-talk. But you could use it to stoke up intent and develop consistency of practice. INTENT << very important for enlightenment work. You have to WANT to know the truth. Not to be enlightened. But to REALLY know the truth of who/what you really are. Intent is a tricky thing to get right. It should be steady and cool, not spastic and neurotic. The people who get enlightened are like a bulldozer. They slowly roll their way through every obstacle without flinching because they are crystal clear about their priorities. The best set of priorities for this work is: TRUTH AT ANY COST! But of course all this wanting and intent has to be followed through on with many hours of daily self-inquiry work. And in the end, you will not make yourself enlightened. You will surrender to truth and enlightenment will undo you. A great (true) story I heard at a retreat I attended:

It's a good book. I wouldn't use it as a guide to getting enlightened (way too much woo-woo stuff in there), but it can certainly stoke up a passion for spiritual pursuits.

Make sure you look into the root cause of your hypothyroidism. Pills do not address the root cause, they only mollify symptoms. I've found that most modern doctors and endocrinologists are TERRIBLE at treating hypothyroidism. All they do is give you a pill to take for the rest of your life and shrug their shoulders when you ask them about actually curing it. But curing it is VERY doable. Many people have done it. I'm in the process of curing myself over the next year. Make sure you get tests for thyroid antibodies to see if you have Hashimoto's or Graves disease. Those diagnoses are very important for figuring out the cure. The top root causes of hypothyroidism are: Poor diet Gluten intolerance Dairy intolerance Leaky gut syndrome Candida or parasites in your gut Heavy metal toxicity Hormone imbalances: like xeno-estrogens from plastics Overstressed adrenal glands

Honestly, it's a real trade-off. I don't think you can do it all simultaneously. When I started my first business, I was working over 60+ hours per week for several years until things finally settled in. When I started Actualized.org, I had to abandon most of my social life and dating life. And that was 3 years ago and still continuing today! Just recently I started to dial back on the quantity of work I do and spend a little more time to myself. It will probably take me another year of work just to be able to get back into dating again. In the book, The One Thing, the authors speak about the myth of living a balanced life. Life balance doesn't mean you do everything evenly all the time. Balance is a dynamic, not a static state. In reality, what effective living looks like is you're slowly swinging your pendulum strategically between various areas of focus. You might spend 3 years working really hard on your career with single-minded focus, then once that's handled, you spend 2 years dating really hard, then once you get your girlfriend, you might put your focus on lots of meditation and traveling, etc. It's like spinning plates but you're doing it over the timeframe of months and years, not hours. It's also very important to be crystal clear about your top values and priorities in life. Most people are so vague and indecisive that they can't focus on any one thing and so they get mediocre results across the board. You have to do very strategic long-term life planning. You should have a 5 year plan for your life at least.

Good topic! A good rule of thumb I learned about women: If she's ever upset with you, for whatever logical reason << that's just girl-speak for: I need you to love me more! It's like owning a cat. You gotta lavish it with attention. Credit: David Deida In general, people don't invest into their relationships nearly enough. They assume they can just coast their way to success. In a relationship, if you two aren't growing together, you're dying, and it's only a matter of time before a catastrophic implosion from one side or the other.

And I just bought an expensive package of smoked salmon yesterday! Dammit! My favorite food!

I never said I was a vegetarian. I've dabbled with it, but never fully committed.