Leo Gura

Yeah, well, life is a dream. So what? The power of the dream should not be underestimated. If you think awakened people can't get addictions I think you're kidding yourself. You still have to be vigilant against bad habits otherwise you will end up like Alan Watts, an awakened alcoholic who drinks himself to death. Awakening is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

God/Infinity is inescapably unknowable because it is inexhaustible and not fully comprehensible to a human mind. Yes Most of existence is not trying to understand anything. A rock is not trying to understand anything. A dog is not trying to understand anything. Even most humans are not seriously interested in understanding anything. So the desire to understand reality is quite a rare and precious thing. But when it does, it's God trying to understand itself.

It's possible to understand a lot of deep stuff. But even so a mystery remains.

Yup, sometimes you just gotta follow through on your commitment to go out even if you don't feel like it or you don't have any hope for results. Results can come randomly even on bad nights and lessons are learned even on bad or slow nights.

It focuses on timeless, fundamental principles which are not related to job markets.

Yup, that's my plan. Thanks!

I would tell you to be careful, or you might do something you will regret. But in the end if you have no problem throwing away your life, then there really is no problem. Because all problems assume that you care about keeping your life. Removing your desire to live is about the most serious thing you could do. You shouldn't take such things lightly. And frankly I don't even like you guys discussing it because in practice what will happen is people will hurt themselves very badly. Don't take your life or your health for granted. You could easily lose it any day.

I don't have direct experience about that. One is the absolute perspective the other is the human survival perspective. No matter how perfect and infinite reality is, if someone sticks an ice pick in your eye none of that will matter to you. Yes, there is a contradiction between truth vs you feeling comfortable. Mostly what you care about is feeling comfortable. This is just basic instinct and it's hard to change that.

Keep in mind that Tolle was at levels of suffering where he was on the brink of killing himself. That kind of suffering, in itself, will teach you many powerful lessons. But it's also quite dangerous to go that far. There's no guarantee you won't just kill yourself rather than awaken. So hoping to copy Tolle's path is likely to end in disaster. I would rather you guys don't go down that path. Which is why we're having this discussion. You have to really consider the cost paid to attain certain spiritual attainments. The suffering and risk to attain it might not be worth it. Or at least it's something you should seriously contemplate. Because the way most people frame it is like this: I will do some peaceful meditation and awaken like Tolle. But they leave out the insane suffering which was essential to his path. If you consider the Buddha's story, his suffering was also very intense. So you have to ask yourself, how much suffering am I willing to endure in order to reach the so-called end of suffering? And what if I endure all that suffering and never reach the end? There is probably some correlation between how deeply you suffer and how deeply you awaken, such that the really deep awakenings cost so much in suffering that very few people end up paying that price. And many people who end up paying the price but never awakening. Cause there's no guarantees that your suffering will turn out as well as Tolle or the Buddha. It could just turn into a typical hellish life and suicide.

Look, these are questions you should ask your doctor. Don't make us feel responsible if something bad happens to you from mixing drugs.

It is that. But the body/mind still has an instinctual aversion to it for obvious reasons. When it comes to death and suffering, your logic will be overwhelmed with instinct, and retraining those instincts requires enormous difficult practice. If you wish yourself to behave counter to all your deepest instincts then what you're talking about is years of hardcore jedi like training. And who knows how far you'll get with that?

Tate's crime is not webcamming, it's sex trafficking. It's like you're willfully ignorant of that. If all Tate did was webcamming no one would be raising a stink. You can do sex biz in legal ways and you can do it in illegal ways. And perhaps the worst thing he did was teach thousands of guys how do it in illegal ways.

Well, you want to maintain a generally positive outlook on life. But at the same time have a healthy respect for the suffering people go through.

Not bypassing suffering is fully in alignment with being more loving. I don't see a tradeoff here.

Good. Keep trying.

That level of suffering hardly registers if you consider that there are children in Africa who have legs blown off and parents killed by bombs. You cannot even imagine what that suffering entails. Some 600,000 people were killed in a war in Ethiopia just 2 years ago. Most people don't even know this war exists. My only point is: be careful with spiritual bypassing.

You don't need to measure the level of suffering. Just experience enough degrees of it to appreciate how utterly serious this issue is. Yes, of course it's relative. Which is why few people understand how deep it can go. Every day around the world millions of people go through horrific suffering which almost no one appreciates because to appreciate it would inflict a lot of suffering on you. You don't even wanna contemplate the suffering of others because it would cause you too much pain.

To be fortunate enough to be in a position where you are not constantly suffering is a blessing. Most people are so spoiled they don't even know. You could be in a trench in WW2 right now. The only reason you aren't is pure good luck. You can't even begin to imagine what suffering is possible.

Some of you guys here need to experience some deep suffering just to awaken you out of your illusions and fantasies of invincibility and strength. You are not as strong as you think you are. When life gets hard enough it will crush you. Too much spiritual bypassing going on here.

All this demonstrates is that you didn't actually experience serious loss. You got lucky. Consider a situation where you actually lose something serious and irreplaceable by your own doing.

If you base your understanding on such fantasical examples you will have a very distorted understanding of how suffering actually works. And, ironically, you will end up suffering a lot as you notice that your own life never matches your spiritual fantasies.

That's a very dangerous and serious game you're playing because by the logic your whole life is just a story. But you will not have enough wherewithal to treat someone like the loss of your house or your child as "just a story". It's not just your story, it's you're whole reason for existence. This assuming that losing a business wasn't caused by you. But what if your own behaviors and mindset keep causing you to lose your business? Almost any complex undertaking in life requires serious fore-thought, planning, and analysis of mistakes. If you don't analyze your mistakes you won't grow or improve. If your child gets run over by a car, you can't just go, "Abudance mindset!" You will naturally need to ask the question, "Was I a bad parent? Did my own negligence cause this? How can I prevent this in the future?" And that will come with serious suffering. You guys are not thinking deeply enough about these issues.

This may be technically true but it's way too reductionistic because most of your life is wrapped up in meaning you create. For example, if your business collapses you will not feel any physical pain, however the mental suffering can be immense as you have to face serious loss and you have to reflect on things you did which caused its collapse. You cannot just take the position that "oh, well, it's just a story in my mind". No, it's much more serious than that because the stories in your mind determine whether you live or die. There is much suffering to be had simply from reflecting on your on inadequecies. So what are you gonna do, not reflect on your own inadequcies and mistakes? You gonna ignore them in order to feel at peace? That's not gonna go so well. Imagine how you'd feel if you were pulling out of your driveway and accidentally ran over someone's child. Are you gonna sit down and silence your mind to meditate your way out of that? And what about all stuff in your life that you could lose? Are you just gonna act like nothing happened if your house burns down? If your child or dog is run over by a car? If your health is ruined by poison? If your spouse dumps you? If your best friend steals from you? There is endless suffering waiting for you behind every corner. You just aren't aware of it yet.

Both. Physical issues easily spill over into mental ones. But also I've suffered plenty just mentally, unrelated to health.

I am not 100% authentic either. It is difficult to share all my vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and mistakes publicly. What you see of me is often me at my best, not me at my worst. This is gonna be the case for any public figure. They will not show themselves to you at their lowest.