Leo Gura

Stress damages the body is many subtle and gross ways and certainly might play a part in weakening the immune system and allowing stuff like cancer to thrive. But terrible diet is probably an even greater factor.

The human mind has an upper limit on happiness. You gotta stretch that ceiling just like stretching a muscle. If you're mindful you'll be able to see how your mind creates suffering to even-out the excess happiness you're starting to feel. The mind will concoct problems and anxieties out of the blue for no good reason simply to balance you out. After a nice meditation high usually comes a meditation low. And it goes like this in cycles, up and down, up and down -- for years.

As I posted in the Philosophy sub-forum when a similar question was asked... Enlightenment is definitely made possible by deactivating regions of the brain. This has been demonstrated by neuroscience. The error, though, made by rationalists is thinking that this demonstrates that enlightenment is unreal. Just the opposite! Actually, what it demonstrates is that a region of the brain must be actively firing in order for a sense of self to exist. Which means that the sense of self is just mind-activity. Which means it's false. Which is exactly what enlightenment demonstrates. So these studies support enlightenment rather than refute it. The key that you're missing is that enlightenment is NOT mind activity. It is not a sense experience or a thought! Imagine that! It is literally absolutely Nothing, for which a brain is not required. The brain has hardware and software in it that keeps you locked in a cage. Drugs and meditation can break this cage. Sometimes I speak of jailbreaking the mind. And that's literally what you're doing when you do enlightenment work. You're hacking the bios and stopping those sub-routines that create a sense of self, space, time, and everyday life. You're hacking the Matrix. Consider this: when the brain is totally destroyed, what remains? Certainly no notions of the self you presently believe you are. And yet if the true you is not that conceptual self, then it is unaffected! This is such a radical possibility most rational people neglect it. But if you are already literally Nothing, then destruction of the brain cannot destroy you. The brain is actually the only thing that's obscuring this reality by projecting a false self-image. The brain is like a projector while the true self is like the room in which the projector exists. Eventually the projector will break. Except you were not the actor the projector had projected on the screen. You were the room the whole time and didn't know it! Now that's quite the mind fuck.

Yes, that is certainly one valid path. It does work for some people. The problem with modern western notions of God is that people have no clue what "God" actually refers to. They think of God as bearded man in the clouds. And that of course is a delusion. And it will totally screw up your attempts at enlightenment. The problem is made even worse in that when people think about God, they think about "him" dogmatically and reverently. They don't actually question their beliefs. They don't see "God" as a belief, and are again totally lost in stories and illusions. All of this makes God a HUGE obstacle for most modern people. You have to be willing to throw God under the bus in this process. So long as you believe there is a God out there somewhere, that belief will become the biggest obstacle to you ever realizing what God is. Enlightenment is closer to atheism than it is to modern religion or faith. Because God is actually Nothing. God is not an object. And God is not separate from you. The reason people like to think about God is because they've been indoctrinated with the idea of God. So if you could drop the idea of God, you'd be much closer to God than anyone who worships God zealously. There's a very good reason why in Buddhism they have the classic quote: "When you meet the Buddha, kill him." Worshiping the Buddha (or God) is retarding your search for truth.

If you can just sit down and become what you actually are (infinite empty awareness) then by all means do that. In reality what you'll discover is that you can't do that. There are layers upon layers of misguided beliefs and ideas that will get in your way. The self-inquiry process helps clear those misconceptions away gradually over time. You basically keep querying for a direct experience of your True Self every time you genuinely wonder, "Who/what am I?" And the mind generates all sorts of wrong and deluded answers, you throw those away and query again and again and again until finally the mind runs out of ideas, surrenders, and the True Self is revealed. Especially when you first start this process (the first 12 months) it helps to question various aspects of your beliefs about self and who you really believe you are. Without this foundation of doubt, you won't get very far because the mind is too certain that it already knows everything. And the mind is also very murky and vague about what it believes your are. Even the false beliefs are vague. It helps to clarify even your false beliefs so that you can understand why they are false.

To convince yourself of that would be a gross lie. Why on Earth are you trying to get back into the system? Escaping the system should be your goal. The system will only make you sick, depraved, and depressed. You should be more worried about how to convince yourself to release your clinginess to all systems.

From lots of stuff that I've read my researching my own health issues, it seems that if your PMS is excessively bad, it's not normal. It's due to improper diet or toxins, which then create all kinds of imbalances in the body. A lot of women report that various supplements help.

@Hellsgunz100 My videos are mostly meant to play on people's emotions and persuade them into action. A video like that is not meant to say that watching TV or getting married is wrong. It's meant to slap one in the face and say, "Hey, stupid, you're doing these dumb things without even realizing it." And mostly what I tell people these days isn't even to stop. It's simply to be mindful of when it happens. Like with the pickup video, most people interpreted it as me saying, "Don't do pickup" when in fact that's not what I said at all. And also, to be honest, I am still growing and learning so my older videos do not incorporate the deeper spiritual wisdom which I've acquired in the last year and still continue to acquire. 3 years for now, everything I say will be much more refined and more nuanced and far deeper than what I currently say. The problem is, that then people will criticize me for being too airy-fairy, too idealistic, too unrelatable, too spiritual.

@Toasty Read some of the stories in this thread: Ordinary folks are slowly transforming themselves.

I found mindfulness meditation, focused specifically on internal phenomena like feelings and thoughts, to be the fastest and most direct way to increased EQ. But there are many other ways as well. This vid explains mindfulness meditation: http://www.actualized.org/articles/mindfulness-meditation

I'm always frustrated by how little I know.

Living alone in a cabin in the woods. Fear, complacency, and ego. I tend to be a lone-wolf and not waste my time on shallow relationships. I dunno. I'm not a fan of it. I keep a lid on fantastical metaphysical beliefs. Yes, my rational mind didn't like talk of prayer or God or spirit, etc. I'm actually growing into the lingo now. It's all just labels in the end for various experiences, or lack there of. Definitely! Imagine your typical day. Mine would probably be 10x less exciting for you. Seems like some kind of enlightenment cult. Not sure. They sure like to spam everyplace. No Combover? How 20th century. Enlightenment wouldn't make me senile. Yes, I would still know of my own website. Who said I don't exercise? Worry about more important things. Not as much as I'd like because I don't have the time. I felt a special connection to Vegas, that's why I moved here. I also like Austin, TX. Ask an elephant what he does for protein.

You know... ya'll could fill in the Birthday field in your profiles and then it would be really easy to tell how old everyone was.

@Hellsgunz100 The egoic mind has a very important purpose: self-survival and reproduction. In a twisted way, you have been locked in the Matrix for your own benefit. Like a child is locked in a play-pen.

It's like ice cream. Try a bunch of different flavors and then buy the one you like most.

@Naviy Hence why we tell you that enlightenment is not an experience. There may be something beyond experience which you've yet to discover. Keep your mind open. Never underestimate the mind's vast potential for self-deception. Any conclusion you reach could easily be wrong because there is ultimately no arbiter of truth but yourself.

@Emerald Wilkins Ask yourself: Who is telling me that they are separate? The monkey mind? And the monkey mind can be trusted because...?

@dice It's only a problem if you take any of your beliefs or theories about ethics as actually true.

@tryingforfreedom I don't deny that anything really exists. I am merely pointing out that what you are is not the body/mind -- which is a verifiable fact. In the same way that when you see a rope lying on the ground at night and think it's a snake but then you realize it's just a rope after you turn the lights on. You laugh and say to yourself, "How silly I was to be afraid of a rope." The fear was definitely real. But you were afraid of a rope! And your entire life was based around the belief that ropes are dangerous snakes. Suffering is real. It's just also unnecessary because it's based on a misinterpretation of facts. With enlightenment work our goal is to straighten out the facts so that we stop acting based on faulty intel. We know the shitstorm that can happen when you believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction when it actually doesn't. The chaos in Iraq is certainly real. But it also could have been easily avoided with better intel and more self-honesty.

What there are are degrees of the mind's recognition and alignment with Truth. Truth itself doesn't fluctuate, but "your" awareness of it does. And yes, that awareness can increase sometimes like a light switch and sometimes like a dimmer switch. Awakening experiences themselves are lightening quick and tend to be mindblowing. But there is also a gradual raising of awareness that happens throughout all the consciousness work that you do over the years.

@TruthSeeker You're conflating the human body with the self. The human body exists. And you can of course kill it. And I'm sure @jjer94 would be sad to see his Mom's body go. But this is all moot because what his Mom really is is not the human body, but the eternal empty awareness within which her body is occurring. That eternal empty awareness you cannot kill. Moreover, his Mom and you are the exactly same awareness! Both of you are Nothing. What you're doing is akin to an insane person threatening to destroy jjer94's Mom's car, believing that in doing so he would actually kill the Mom. In reality you're not threatening Mom in any way at all when you threaten her car. Yes, the car could be destroyed, but so what? You're just confused about who she really is because you're confused about who you really are. And, btw, it's not in good taste to threaten people's mother's bodies.

@Emerald Wilkins That's on the right track. But also wonder, Are they really separate fields of awareness? Who says that sight is fundamentally different or separate from sound? You do? And you trust yourself why? Notice that the distinction between sight and sound is conceptual. One could eliminate this distinction. Only the mind says they are separate. Not only that, but you could even eliminate the concept of "sight" and the concept of "sound" and the concept of "sensation". Leaving you with.... You tell me. What happens when all concepts, labels, and distinctions are jettisoned?

"Never tell me the odds." -- Han Solo Be more like him. If you turn self-inquiry into an odds thing, your odds drop to zero.

Odds are high that if you keep asking such silly questions you will not be in that 10%

@Flare Making a study of success is a definite must in this life. Like with everything, don't go overboard and only chase success. But for some people and where they're at in life, they just want some basic advice about success in career and biz. Not every video is meant to lead to Buddha-hood.