Leo Gura

And I have a strong feeling that if I asked almost every Buddhist to explain God to me, they could not. That's a moment worthy of self-reflection.

Lol This is YOUR framing. You are defining those words in your own quirky way. Nothing about "spirituality" means that you must transcend suffering. You are right that that is not a focus of my work. At least as this time. Maybe in the future I will focus on that more, but right now I'm just not interested in that. No. This is a highly misleading frame which will cause problems for you down the road. In your mind, disconnect spirituality from suffering. You can be spiritual with suffering, you can be spiritual without suffering. You can be mystical without suffering, you can mystical with suffering. BTW, I can pretty much bet you that any spiritual teach you know, if I hit him in the head with a hammer, he will suffer. Don't kid yourself. I don't think I know of a single person on this planet who has transcended suffering. Maybe a few exist, but they are so rare that it's highly unlikely you'll ever reach that. To me this is a silly goal. You're gonna be chasing something you'll never truly attain, and ironically you'll create enormous suffering for yourself in the process. Properly speaking, spirituality is the pursuit of God. Any suffering along that way is just a sideshow. It is irrelevant when it comes to connecting with God. What you really want isn't to end suffering, it's to connect with God. Generally speaking, as a byproduct of connecting to God, you will suffer less and experience more joy.

I'm not sure about that. If I shoot you in the foot, I wouldn't call your suffering in this case a misunderstanding of anything. You understand it all right, but that doesn't remove the suffering. Removing suffering requires retraining your nervous system. Period. There are many spiritual paths and practices which no doubt will bestow benefits to you. Various kinds of benefits, from better sex to more money to less suffering, etc. I'm not telling you that my way is the only way. To understand the stuff I am talking about you will have to work out a lot of your karmic crap. I consider Vipassana to be a form of reductionism. There are benefits to that, but ultimately it's gonna be limited. You will not get the big picture understanding of God. You cannot understand God through any kind of reduction. Which is why these Vipassana monkeys can't speak about God very well, and will even dare to deny that God exists. God doesn't really exist for them because they have spent 20 years reducing Consciousness down into component parts. This doesn't generate high-level comprehension. Depends on what your goals are. Again, there will no doubt be benefits to his path. Will you understand God the way I do? No. If you add psychedelics, that changes things significantly. 10 days of non-stop concentration in total silence, without any other humans, is about as powerful a practice as there can be. Although you still will never be as conscious that way as through a psychedelic. But you can do both. A Ralston workshop works in a different way. It gets you thinking about reality in new ways. This is handy. But it doesn't replace a solo meditation retreat. Ideally you'd do all the above and optimize it to suit your tastes and needs.

For me I can only speak for myself. Because I barely stand to be here as it is I got some bad news for ya: ego death will not actually free up your consciousness to reach the highest levels. Ego isn't the only issue here, and far from the most important factor. Your human life places the most severe limits on Consciousness. Even if you removed 100% of the ego, as a human your consciousness will still be very low. Egoless humans are not that conscious. The point of physical death is that it eliminates the restrictions of being human. You can't be as conscious as an alien when you're stuck in a human meat suit.

How did it acquire total understanding in the first place? Consciousness has to explore itself to achieve it. Consciousness is like a computer program that has to execute in order to see what the program does. So here you are, executing.

The lights completely turn on.

This is 100% wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. Experience is Absolute Truth. Reality is an illusion, but not in the way Hoffman says. The illusion is the notion of any kind of physical objective substrate beyond your experience, and the notion of others or science. You cannot unravel the illusion of reality with science. Because science is the illusion!

He says plenty of insightful and wise things. You just have to filter his right-wing biases out.

Ah, yes... the left famously created the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, the Ukraine War, WW2, and WW1.

Very good!

It's not just that Ralston has autism or whatever, he's a freak of nature. Woe onto whoever assumes some commonality with Ralston on a genetic level. As far as you're concerned, you may as well consider him a reptilian. He's not your average human. So his experience of reality could be drastically different than yours. There is plenty of stuff which he says which does not align with my experience of reality, God, and Consciousness. And it's not just that he's right and I'm wrong. I've exhaustively re-verified these points.

1) There is no guarantee those dogmatic practices will get you any ultimate understanding. 2) Manual practices are still useful and important. I don't agree with such a distinction/framing. I consider what I do and teach to be the highest form of spirituality, the very heart of it. Any spiritual practice which doesn't result in a deep understanding of what Consciousness is, is criminally negligent. And people need to be made aware of this. It does no one any good if you get tricked into doing 40 years of Buddhist practice, only to finally be told: "Ah, well, but it was not designed to produce and understanding of Consciousness." If your spiritual practice doesn't produce consciousness into the nature of God, then it's a bad practice, regardless of how much is frees you of suffering or any other perks. The yoga rabbit hole is deep. However, all I said is that doing dogmatic practice offers you no guarantees of understanding. If you want to gamble on it, that's up to you. My fundamental problem with such spirituality is that it's based on blind adherence to a set of practices for decades without any idea what the result will be and what gaps you will end up with in your understanding. It's equivalent to stumbling upon a map and deciding to devote your whole life to following it, because you believe it will bring you to the promise land. But in fact you have no way of knowing where that map will take you. It might take you to stupid land. I have never taken his martial arts workshops. His consciousness workshops are a combo of theory and a bunch of class exercises with partners. Each workshop lasts about 1 week. They are very good. I don't know. I'd have to think about that. I like Vernon Howard. I like David Hawkins. And others. Although that doesn't mean I agree with everything they teach. My claim is that the entire purpose of Consciousness is self-understanding. There is no other game in town. Everything else is just entertainment until you die. Yes, eventually Consciousness's understanding of itself becomes so high that it reaches Omniscience and physical existence itself becomes unnecessary. The downside of the understanding path is that there is no guarantee that you will become free of suffering and full of bliss. In fact, without training for those things I pretty much guarantee you won't get them.

Death doesn't have a special status. Death is not a state of light-off as you imagine. That's something you're currently dreaming. Death is actually the freeing of Consciousness from having to be bound to any particular form. Consciousness under anesthesia is not highly intelligent at all.

They don't really focus on understanding anything, just dogmatic practice. Who knows where that will take you? It's a huge gamble.

Very good!

You can become conscious of what death is, what consciousness was pre-birth, and what consciousness will be post-death. This is the very heart of Awakening. Physical incarnation is a limitation on Consciousness. When I die, I will be more conscious and intelligent than I ever was here with you. The fact that people do not understand this, is absurd.

Ralston's teachings are some of the best on the planet. He's one of the few teachers I seriously respect. However I feel like he withholds way too much. And there's many topics he doesn't cover. I found a lot of gaps in his teachings. No. I don't consider what I am talking about to be "stories". And understanding is not a relative matter. You can have absolute understanding into the nature of Consciousness and God. That's the whole point. It's not merely relative, subjective human stuff like science or religion. I would emphasize psychedelics, profoundly questioning all metaphysical matters for yourself from scratch, and a focus on the What is Consciousness? One of my gripes with Buddhism is that it makes people focus on the wrong thing: calming the monkey mind, escaping suffering, and realizing no-self. To me these are all the wrong goals. The proper goal should be pure understanding of metaphysics and Consciousness.

It's hard to love another when you don't even love yourself.

That's not ideal but you can def pull to a girl's place or a car or motel. Don't let this stop your from approaching and gaming. The game experience is more important than the sex.

We now have robust systems in place to catch duplicate accounts. Anyone caught trying to open a duplicate account will automatically have ALL their accounts banned. No exceptions, no second chances. This forum only allows one account per user. This forum is cracking down hard on all serial exploiters, manipulators, immature people, and mentally and emotionally unhinged people. From now on you only have ONE chance at being on this forum, so watch what you do and watch what you post. If I see you posting immature nonsense or misbehaving, I will not hesitate to ban you and you will NEVER get a second chance. All second chances are over! I am cracking down on anyone who wants to be in proximity or communication with me. If you want to have the privilege and luxury to be near me, to associated with me, to receive advice from me, or to communicate with me, you better be on your best behavior around me. That's the new policy. This forum will no longer be a safe haven for immature or emotionally unhinged people. Anyone not mature enough to communicate or socialize in a mentally-stable and integrous manner will simply not get to participate around me. If you cannot control your emotions, you're out. If you behave in an egotistical and dogmatic manner, you're out. If you attack other members of this community, you're out. If you try to manipulate this forum, you're out. This forum is going to be much more exclusive and elitist going forward. The elitism will be based on maturity and wisdom. I've come to the realization that I need to be much more protective of drains on my time and my mental resources. I will not be dealing with any clown behavior any more from my audience. For too long I have been far too lax and democratic, letting people exploit my time and mental energy without limit. That is now over. I will no longer be helping or associating with anyone who is not mature enough to rise to the level of my teachings and philosophy. My work is very advanced and I want to build a community of people who rise to its level. Immature people have not only been wasting my time and mental energy, the have also been wasting the time and energy of mature and serious self-actualizers. This community must become a place of where serious people want to be, people who are actually doing work on themselves. I realize now that my mistake from the beginning was trying to appeal to everyone with this community when really it should always have been a place only for serious and mature people because they are the ones for whom I do my work. Those are the kind of people I want to associate with. That's what would make this community valuable. If you want to associate around me, you better be a mature, honest, decent human being who can control him/her self. That's the new standard. Many of you here clear that bar. It's just an immature minority who keeps taking advantage. The infrastructure of this forum is being upgraded to block anyone who doesn't rise to this new standard. All the loopholes are being closed. Thank you to those who have stuck around and behaved in a mature manner from the outset. From now on I will be making this space for you -- for us. This will be a rare online space where the wise, mature, and serious hang out. If you notice any member of this community behaving in a chronically immature way, please report them to me (via PM) for review. I will periodically be reviewing the performance of every member here and making decisions about who to keep around and who to ban. Evaluations will be made holistically, not based on any one post. I will be looking at your overall level of maturity, mental stability, emotional stability, character, and ability to think in an unbiased Tier 2 fashion. A handful of worst offenders have already been perma-banned. You should treat this forum as a place where you have an opportunity to make friends with me. And you only get one chance at that. If you screw it up you will not get another. In fact, I will ban all your IPs from ever being able to access Actualized.org and any future courses or teachings that I release. Do not treat this forum as just some disposable, anonymous thing. In fact, in the future we may transition to photo ID verification for all members and remove anonymity. So post as though your first and last legal name is attached to your words. If you wouldn't want your real name attached to your post, then it isn't worthy to be posted here. If my name is attached to this forum, so should yours. You don't get to come here and do anonymous verbal diarrhea with zero repercussions. Thanks again to those who have been on good behavior from the beginning and never needed such warnings and reminders. I will also be making an effort to improve my communication with you to rise to the level of maturity, wisdom, and respect that you deserve. I want to make myself a resource for serious and mature students. I will be working towards that over the next year and beyond. I want to help fewer people, but more serious people. So ultimately that's all this is about. I have been thinking long and hard about the role I want to play as a teacher. And the more I think about it, the more serious I want to be. The days of clowning around are coming to an end. It was fun while it lasted but I am outgrowing that soon. I definitely have not been as mature as I need to be, but that will be changing in the future.

Teachers are old and obese in many cases. Many of them could have died. You are not thinking systemically enough about how this virus works. Teachers are not gonna want to teach if you treat them like slaves. Hospitals were overflowing with patients, beyond capacity. That was one of the top reasons for lockdowns -- to limit virus spread to the point of overflowing hospitals and burning out doctors. The education and healthcare system can easily be overwhelmed if you don't manage it properly. And the simple fact is that something like 33% of Americans are obese. So that's just the nature of the beast. It does no good to say, "Well, that teacher or doctor only died because she was obese, so that doesn't count", when nearly half your population is like that. If Americans were healthy then we would have more wiggle room to operate. But that ain't the case.

Yes, individual posts. I think that was a responsible policy by Facebook to prevent the spread of potential poison. I have no problem with Facebook disallowing certain dangerous posts for public safety until more information becomes available. Certain hot viral topics can be moderated in such ways.

Very good. Keep at it and keep us posted on your progress.

Not entirely sure, but I've reached levels of Consciousness so high that all form melts away and I enter into pure formless Omniscience.

Then you really misunderstood those videos.