Leo Gura

@Mitch Business is best learned by getting your face in the mud. Try creating a business right now from scratch. If you set that as you main intent, the rest will take care of itself as your mind gets to work coming up with solutions to all the inevitable obstacles you'll face. Any education you need you can pick up along the way. Formal education tends to translate very poorly into actual business success.

@rush Working in a giant, heartless bureaucracy is likely to kill any passion you have. There's very little fulfillment to be had there. It's an inherently inhuman and unconscious system, by design. Passion isn't about climbing anything, passion is about desire to create something. "Climbing" is a dysfunctional value. Probably something you picked up from our dysfunctional culture. You don't really want to climb anything. You really just want to create whatever you're passionate about creating. So skip all the posturing and just go straight for creativity.

@Gavalanche 1) Definitely move out of SF, waste of money. 2) Fastest results would come from enrolling in a full immersion program. But that's only if you're very serious. Otherwise, you can still get pretty good results solo, but you'd have to really dedicate yourself and be a self-starter.

@Kserkkj He may be completely enlightened, but if all you do is follow his books, you're gonna misunderstand 90% of what this work is about. His books are ONE piece of the conceptual puzzle. They are not going to give you all the information you need, because they are not written as enlightenment manuals, but more as polemics and stories. Him ranting about stuff and being cheeky is of limited value to you understanding how to do deep consciousness work.

@Elzhi Yes, you're very far from understanding that life is dream. You're lost in your life story more than ever. What you're experiencing is an ego backlash just as you're taking the first step on a journey of 1,000,000 steps. Already the ego is recoiling and back-peddling. If you're gonna pursue enlightenment, do it gently, with self-compassion. Stop this self-hatred nonsense. Enlightenment has nothing to do with that. It doesn't really seem like you're mature enough yet to pursue enlightenment. You probably just need to do some basic personal development before you can successfully navigate enlightenment work. And if you're gonna pursue enlightenment, study the field more than just through McKenna's books. His perspective on enlightenment is quite limited and incomplete. You're gonna need a much deeper conceptual understanding of the field to navigate it successfully.

@Samuel Garcia Worry less about that, and more about whether the things coming out of their mouth are useful and ring true. Don't fall into the trap of making this about other people. Your main concern should be your own unconscious situation.

@MochaSlap Life purpose isn't an obligation, it's simply the strategic pursuit of your passion. If you have no passion and you just want to sit on your ass, then drop the pursuit of life purpose and sit on your ass. But don't forget, you still gotta eat in this world and pay the bills no matter how enlightened you are. If you like the idea of being enlightened and working at McDonald's, go for it!

@Psychonaut So what did you become conscious of??? Sounds like you just scared yourself to death with 50mg in darkness, but didn't glean much insight. Remember that this is not a macho contest. The measure of success is how much insight you get into the structure of reality.

@Vercingetorix Well, it seems quite clear that physics is a dead end for you. You're passion lies elsewhere from the sound of it. Now you're facing the central challenge with life purpose: you've sorta found your purpose, but you aren't clear about how you can turn it into a viable career yet, and for the sake of practicality, you're turning towards irrelevant stuff like programming to pay the bills. Your sole work here is to find out what changes you need to make in yourself so that you can pursue your life purpose. And be very mindful of all the excuses and fears that are causing you to desire irrelevant but "more practical" options. If you let practicality trump your ideals, then you will get what everyone else gets in life: a lame job that they secretly hate. And all this life purpose talk will end up as just idle talk. Now is the time to face your fears and think outside the box and research how to turn your LP into a viable career. This is why pursuing life purpose takes balls. It's not for the regular Joe. The regular Joe just wants the path of least resistance. And life purpose is a path of high resistance. High resistance comes from facing your inner demons and doubts. There are a 1000 ways to raise consciousness. Being a coach is just one of them. You're stuck because you aren't being creative enough. Your brain is being lazy, just equating raising consciousness with meditation and coaching because you have limited reference experiences and haven't done any deep research into this field. Try brainstorming 100 new, innovative ways to raise consciousness. What kind of art appeals most to you? How can you combine creating art with raising consciousness? There's a lot for you to chew on here. Sit down and really contemplate the vast possibilities.

@Juan Cruz Giusto That's a good start. A couple of pointers: It's very unlikely that you value business for the sake of business. So get to the rock bottom of why you're actually interested in business. If business itself becomes your life purpose, that could become a low-consciousness trap. It would be similar to making money your life purpose. Drill down on what "raising consciousness" actually means to you. That's a very generic term. You need to be more specific about which ways of raising consciousness you're most passionate about. If raising consciousness is the essence of your purpose, might there be better ways to do that than business? I dunno, but you should ask yourself that. Don't put the cart before the horse. Maybe the best way to raise consciousness is by destroying business? Are your loyalties to business or to consciousness? What emotional impact do you want to have on people? You don't need to answer here. These are just food for thought for you.

Keep in mind that a life coach is first and foremost self-employed (unless you work for a corporation). Which means you're an entrepreneur first, and a coach second. Which means you need to learn how business and marketing works. The number one reason most life coaches fail (and most of them fail miserably) is because they don't bother to learn business and marketing. You could become a financially independent life coach in less than a year if you understand how business and marketing really work. And you wouldn't need a PhD to do it. If business isn't your cup of tea, then consider other possibilities like working in a corporation or entering academia. But those are very different things. You gotta get very clear about what kind of position you're really after.

@ChimpBrain You're on the right track, but your thinking it still too small, and you lack deep research. Study the hell out of this field. There's so much potential here. But you're gonna have to do research. And remember to think BIG. Ask big questions like, "What does humanity need in this field?" Worm gardening? Is that really important? Or maybe humanity needs environmental education and awareness? Or an organization that promotes these concepts? Etc. Don't think of this issue as, "How can I make a living doing something Earth-friendly?" No! That's too selfish and small. Instead think of the issue as, "How can I transform how humanity relates to the Earth?" Now that would be you thinking in terms of providing VALUE to the world. And then it would only be a matter of research to discover what that WAY should be. Do research by reading dozens of books, studies, and magazines on this topic. Go to some seminars/conferences/expos. Go meet people who work in this industry. Find out where the opportunities are and why people are so unconscious when it comes the environment. Then you'll have tons of ideas for how to solve these real-world problems. A life purpose must be grounded in helping people overcome real-world challenges. That's what generates both IMPACT and MONEY. To create a career, you need to find a way to meaningfully impact others in practical ways. Then they will gladly pay you for it. What transformation do you want to see in terms of humans and environment? What change would be immensely valuable? Maybe it's saving the polar bears. Maybe it's getting people to stop littering. Maybe it's raising awareness about the threat of global warming. Maybe it's planting new rainforests. Maybe it's developing a new type of solar panel. Etc. Now find YOUR thing! The thing YOU'D really be passionate about.

That has been the prime issue for the last 5,000 years.

Look man, you're on the path. You're walking THE DEEPEST path possible for humans. Now, if you took up practicing piano, and you only practiced it for 1 hour a day for 2 years, and then came to me and said, "But Leo!!!! Why am I not as good a Mozart yet????? Why????? This is hopeless!!!" I think you know what I would tell you. To become as good as Mozart, you need 10,000 hours of practice. To become fully liberated, you will probably also need 10,000 hours of practice. Now, have some people managed to become liberated much faster? Sure. A handful of people -- out of 7 billion -- have been lucky enough to get that. But the majority must sink 10,000 hours into this. This is why I talk about more than just enlightenment. This is way beyond enlightenment. We're talking about self-mastery, and self-mastery is the deepest mastery path of all. It's the most difficult and the longest. But also the greatest. MASTERY is a CRITICAL concept to keep in mind in this work. If you don't understand how mastery works, you will fail. Go re-read the George Leonard's foundational book called Mastery. Or at least watch my video summary about it. The reason it seems like it's not happening, is because you're doing way too little consciousness work. Try meditating for 100 hours straight, and you'll see more growth in 1 week than you've probably seen in the last 2 years. There's a very good reason why monasteries exist. So you can do consciousness work 24/7 and hit your 10,000 hours quickly. Liberation itself is less important than firmly setting yourself on this path. Don't worry so much about the fruits of the path. Worry about how to devote yourself to the path. This is all of life right here. This is really your only job on Earth, so do it with dedication and a light heart.

@BeginnerActualizer Keep in mind that was written 2000 years ago, for hardcore practitioners. If you ever experience God, you'll see why Patanjali wrote what he wrote. No other pleasure compares. The problem is that most people these days aren't serious about discovering God. The entire culture has been pussified, pacified, and materialized. Asceticism and hardcore spirituality has been demonized by mainstream culture so that average folks can feel good about their piddling spiritual efforts. If you want to read yoga philosophy that's more embracing of sensual desire, check out Tantra Yoga. It was the next evolutionary step after Patanjali's classical yoga.

@Key Elements Tell that to Trump

@Tanuj Yes, I'll talk about it in the future.

@Key Elements Tell that to Jesus

@Thinh Yes. After enlightenment, it should become obvious to you that the most worthwhile life purpose is raising consciousness. It's the universal purpose. And it beats all others. If you ever experience God, you will instantly understand why religions exist and spread. You will want to share this experience with the whole world. But you won't really be able to. And that will break your heart.

@Anlib Generally speaking it is curative. But old habits run deep. You'll still have many bad habits after an initial enlightenment insight. Some may drop away, but many won't without additional work. Because enlightenment is BEYOND the mind. And stuff like being a crack addict is deeply embedded in mind habits. Enlightenment will NOT rewire your whole brain. That's much more difficult to accomplish and will require some serious work. In practice, an enlightened person would probably not be a crack addict, because that's so low consciousness. But they could easily be overweight for example, or be terrible in relationships, or struggle with money.

@ULFBERHT Your question is too broad. There are hundreds of methods for doing inner work, depending on your specific issues and goals. A couple of very basic universal methods might be: Meditation Visualization Journaling Therapy Life coaching Reading self-help books Contemplation Psychedelics Etc If you have my book list, check out the books in the Emotional Mastery category. They provide a lot of resources for doing deep inner work. Also check out some of my top books in the Consciousness category. This step alone should give you tons of ideas for how to start inner work. Remember, when you don't yet know how to formulate a specific challenge or question, and it feels like you don't know how to get started, that's simply because you haven't done enough RESEARCH! Go read 25 different self-help books. Then see if you still have this problem of not knowing how to begin. This path requires you do research. No one will spoon-feed you all the necessary information in one place (not even me).

I suggest you do some research into body energy and body work. There is A LOT going on physically in the body. Emotions are carried physically in the body and can create energetic blocks. Find a professional who is experienced in this field who can help you. There are many modalities of energy and body work: Reiki Hypnosis Deep tissue massage Certain kinds of body-based therapies Yoga Etc. Make sure that you're not just doing inner work in your head. The body and mind are one system. You need to do body work too if you want to really feel great and become fully developed.

Spiritual purification is much larger in scope than enlightenment proper. Enlightenment simply means you are conscious of what you are. You could be enlightened but still very under-developed in many other areas, or be a homeless crack addict. Yes, enlightenment means high consciousness, but there are many degrees of high consciousness. Like, just because you can play a tune on the piano doesn't mean you're at the level of Mozart. It takes A LOT of work to get to Mozart's level. If you become enlightened, making money shouldn't be too hard. It's a lot easier to learn how to make money.

@Taavi This work is inherently paradoxical. Nothing changes, and everything changes simultaneously. But enlightenment will certainly not change anything material. So if you're broke now, you'll still be broke after enlightenment. Even addictions may not change. If you're a chain smoker now, you probably will be after enlightenment unless you make efforts to change it. Enlightenment is utterly useless. It has no practical function. It just happens to be TRUE. After realizing this, your life must still go on. You still have to eat, shit, read, drive a car, go to work, relate to people, pay your taxes, avoid falling off cliffs, etc. But you will have a new perspective on life and your role in it. And emotionally, stuff should change quite a bit. Judging your life's quality is arbitrary, but that doesn't mean you want to live like a dog. You still have many preferences. You are not merely a passive observer of life. You are an active participant whether you like it or not. Every action you take has consequences (even if there is no "you" steering the ship).

That's right! This work is paradoxical. Believe it or not, it is possible in this case to demolish your house while building it too. And that's EXACTLY what you should be doing in this work. Remember that enlightenment really changes nothing. If your life is crappy before enlightenment, it will still be crappy afterwards.