electroBeam

@Leo Gura The more I look at history, and meditate, the more human society seems to be doing a full circle. First fortune tellers and witches and wizards use to be common belief among the people, then science came along and shitted all over them, then came the Sadghurus and the Leos who seem to be re-examining the stuff science shitted all over. The biggest concern with re-examining the mystical side of things is that there is a very fine line between legit mystics and kooks. Both of which there are plenty of abundance of. The main argument i get back from people when i tell them that psychic abilities are real is that they say; well why doesnt the world know about these people? why is it so hidden. And then i get the people who say; well why doesnt buddhism have any of this stuff. Both of which i have no idea of.

@Leo Gura What are the 'benefits' or 'advantages' to considering paranormal phenomenon, to put it orange stage-ish. Is it just for intellectual curiosity, or is there a deep practical basis for understanding and being aware of the paranormal illusions and reality. Reason why I ask is because a lot of spiritual teachers(especially Sadghuru) talk about it, but they don't directly highlight the importance to considering such phenomena.

Hi guys, I would just like to know what 'level' I'm up to on the spiritual path lol. I don't expect to be up very high, maybe only level 2 or 3 purely because I haven't taken enlightenment and spirituality very seriously at all until very very very recently. But I do want to make sure that I am on the right track, and I am not deluding myself, and also possibly what I should expect to see in the future. But right now, I'm going to present some stuff I've noticed, and whether or not the stuff I've noticed are legit sort of phenomena that you would expect on the enlightenment path, or whether they are just deep delusions that I'm falsely taking as effects from meditation. I am fairly certain that this sort of phenomena has come only recently: - I've noticed, in the sensory world, things are looking a lot sharper and maybe 'clearer'. Saturation of visuals seems to be amplified. Same goes with auditory and feelings. - Mind seems to actually be more hyperactive, but not sure if that's because ive noticed more about whats going on inside my head, or if more stuff is occuring. - (Weird and hard to describe) Nature looks more beautiful, and starting to enjoy nature, or the present moment more, it looks nicer - that feeling or phenomena where you seem to exit your skull, seems to be happening on a day to day basis. So I'm slightly out of my skull while at a lecture, or doing homework. A better way to describe it might be that awareness has grown larger. - In meditation, immersion seems to be increasing. What I mean is, the 'screen' between you and reality sometimes breaks, and reality flows like a stream all around awareness. Its like your eyes have become a 3D or 4D or a D > 2D camera. Which hasn't happened before. Are these findings just more delusions, or do they seem legit to you? Please be honest. Thanks.

Maybe I've just had a few bad experiences that tainted my view of it. I just found the alcohol made people rude/not really caring. Either way, OP my take on it is only go 2wice a month if you are like me and don't enjoy it as much. And only go to develop friendships you have and sex. If you want a relationship, you need to think in patterns rather than location. Try and develop your networking skills, and find chicks to date through connections. Its not as cold approached as clubbing, and because they are 'sober' and 'not letting loose' there's a chance that the sexual experience will be more thought out and fun.

@J. M. Wigglesworth At clubs, I find people in particular to be kinda rude and obnoxious. Like the girls in the clubs, half drunk, usually only go for the guys who act cocky and a-holeish or are rich and snobby, and have meaningless status, and also the girls there aren't really looking for a deep passionate relationship, they are just looking for some titilation. And when I'm at a club, if people want to get from 1 place to another, they don't say 'excuse me' they full on push you to the other side of the disco to get to the place they want. Then you have the Alpha male/Ape like fights that go on every night, started because 1 guy decided to pick up a chick that another guy liked.(I've been involved in 1, but I chose not to fight because I couldn't really afford to have a criminal record) Then you have drunk people spilling their beer all over your clothes, making the ground sticky And then finally you have the extremely loud music making you deaf. And a the end of the day, for punishment for having such a great night, you are rewarded with a hang over, ringing ears, and a feeling of hollowness for wasting your time in such an unsatisfactory environment. Honestly, is this the best environment for picking up a chick? I know plenty of people who are in a relationship with a girl they met at a shop or concert, rather than a club.

@Ry4n use osho's dynamic meditation shown by @Prabhaker but the thing that really makes me explode is that you need to almost suffocate yourself. You need to get to the point where you are about to suffocate, and you have to make your body and mind go as insane as possible(don't not think anything -> Do Nothing technique on sterioids)

Leo if you didn't make projections onto your audience, and other people, there's a good chance you wouldn't have a successful personal development business up and running right now. Nearly(if not all) videos you post have some form of blatant projection, and in fact its a core requirement for you to produce videos that are meaningful to your audience. For example, in your beginner's guide to meditation, you made a projection that your audience wouldn't have the ability to meditate for more than 20 minutes at a time, In your video about breaking down 'shoulds and shouldn'ts' you made a massive projection about your audience. You said something along the lines of "you guys make these shoulds hundreds of times per day". In your 'get shit done' video you made a massive projection about how your audience is "lazy" or along the lines of that and the list continues onto infinity..... In fact, you made some many ad hominems in your videos, that I began to subconsciously believe that projections were actually necessary to make effective PD content. How can you as an individual refer to your audience without making projections, sometimes projections are extremely useful especially if you are trying to persuade someone to do something. In fact, the next video you make, will probably be filled with heaps of projections again, whether its about how we are all deep down letting ourselves become spiritual egoists, or falely convincing ourselves that we don't have time for meditation when we actually do, or whatever video your making. Your latest video seems more like a mindless reaction to Rali's attack than a video you would normally release. <- and yes that is a projection, but not one I believe or disbelieve, just a sentence that helps illustrates the point of this post.

@Xpansion totally agree. Thanks for the kind words Xpansion! What's interesting is that nearly every response(not yours) is a projection about me, rather that a discussion about the point I was making. Which is pretty sneaky of 'their egos' considering that the comments made by them actually incorporate quite baseless projections, to try and prove to me that I'm making huge projections; which of course there's no indication of that in my post. I also see this in the non-dogma dogma here. There's a push for being non-dogmatic here, and to stop 'living in the realm of words', because that's closed minded, but what people here have to notice is that, that's just another belief. I guess the responses are just a reason to show that the point I was raising was in fact a valid point to consider. The ego is very sneaky, you need to take into consideration moral licensing which the community here is so drastically unaware of. I make this mistake a lot as well, telling myself that I'm not dogmatic, or I don't make projections, and feeling good about it, when in actuality I'm being the biggest hyppocrit on the planet. I think if we can get past the sort of actions illustrated beautifully by the comments of this post, we are on a pretty good track towards the truth.

Alan Watts is amazing! He provides a very sobering foundation to use when you are confronted with ego traps. While beliefs are beliefs, Alan Watt's videos are a great way to guide yourself when you are feeling lost. Osho is great to follow if you want to use and harness some great deep meditation techniques. His theories of life are pretty cool too, and generally I find Osho to be quite down to earth, compared to some other spiritual teachers who get lost in the 'third eye' and 'chakra' stuff. Eckhart Tolle is great at relating meditation and spirituality to the western culture. He talks a lot about the 'addiction of thought' and other common problems western society throws at us, and also how to overcome it. His talks act like a light house at night: puts light and awareness on the rocky traps of society. and obviously Shizen Young is good too

@Martin123 :D

All I said, was that I think projections are necessary in life, and that Leo's point that projections are 'bad' is not correct, and everyone turned what I was saying into 'hate speech' and 'a problem with me'... maybe Leo is right. and @Martin123 I'll argue with whoever I disagree with , there's no American hierarchial respect matrix in my non-American brain. @Tancrede Pouyat I'm just curious, what problem did I project?

@bazera he's telling us to stop projections, which is a non-sustainable move to make

So in the past, my dreams were to be extremely successful, i.e. make a super successful business, become super famous, and earn lots of money. And I've already put a lot of time and effort into this, by participating in many business pitching events, working with business to build solutions to mundane problems(just to fill up my resume with as much as I can because you know, SUCCESS). But after doing some serious meditation work, this dream and goal I'm working towards is slowly revealing itself as an ego trip, rather than a deep true intuitive urge. The more meditation I do, the less loud the voice of the ego becomes, and the more loud the voice of intuition becomes, and consequently I'm struggling to continue with my long held initiatives. I use to see the money driven, neurotic attitudes of the people I was pitching to as just 'apart of life', and the myopic hollow drives for my business partners as just 'being professional' But after meditation, these attitudes are slowly starting to make me sick, after seeing the power of the present moment, I am starting to feel really hollow by surrounding myself in these environments. How does someone, pursuing this sort of personal development, tolerate such egoic environments without feeling hollow and meaningless? When starting a business, it is almost certain that you will be surrounded by money driven individuals.

Imagine all of the people who have died on this planet, and just before they completely died they all said "OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!!! IT'S ABSOLUTELY INFINITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

@Leo Gura that might be an extreme case of Depersonalization disorder

@Leo Gura Alright thanks Leo, I'm fine with getting my ass wooped, as long as I don't develop any serious permanent mental disorders; I'm ok with depersonalization etc but not schizophrenia. I'll do Kundalini again tomorrow,

use distractions -> whenever you get a thought for example about killing your mother or running into a bus, distract yourself with another stimuli like looking at birds going past, or switching your attention to something else you did in the day. You can also start singing to your fav song. Switch to something positive -> Whenever a completely stupid thought comes up, try and think of the opposite. So if you are worried that you are going to get a disease from a guy who just breathed on you for example, IMMEDIATELY think of the opposite: tiny chance that will happen, I wont get germs etc. Meditation -> This one works the best for me, whenever an obsessive compulsive thought comes up, focus ALL of your attention to the sensory world(colours, sounds, etc) and just keep intensely focusing on it.

Is there anyone here who lives in Australia? If so please private message me! I'm planning on making a fully fledged meditation retreat, one purely involving deep self inquiry, without all of the buddhist, hindu, christian, islamic, etc dogma. I'm planning on making it a week, but if you can't come for the whole time that's ok. Depending on how many people I'm able to bring, I will release the date that we plan on embarking on the retreat, it will be around december to january. Again please PM me! I'm so excited for this hard core retreat, if you're interested reach out!

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that Leo was giving shit to someone who was only meditating for 20 mins a day, and it was suggested that the individual should meditate for 10 hours per day. To be honest, I kind of agree that 20 minutes of meditation per day doesn't really do anything. I have been meditating for a long while now(30 mins a day) and I haven't seen any benefits(if at all) or even any changes to my perspectives of life. And when you look at how people meditated back 2000 years ago, they spent literally all day meditating, and it still took them heaps of time to start seeing through their dogmatic bullshit. So is there any point of meditating if you are only going to do it for at most 1 hour per day? Or is that time spent meditating much more worth while spent in reading personal development books, or homework or something? It doesn't seem reasonable to spend 1 hour or 30 minutes of your day on meditation if the benefits obtained from it will only start to arise in like 40 years or something.

@Ry4n NSW sorry

@Xpansion Hi Xpansion, true Buddhist retreats are good, but the ones I have been on include sessions where you need to learn about what the buddha did, and like the 5 principles of life, etc. Really meditation can do that to people? Its just meditation? Its not dmt lol. Are you sure they were directly caused by meditation or was it the person's personality. @Leo Gura Yeah that's true, I must not have been clear enough, this was an informal hangout where I was going to do meditation with like minded people, kind of like camping with each other.

I thought it would be a great idea if all of us as a community post our answer's to Leo's worksheet he gave us for his latest video. From my experience, beliefs are so hidden, and deceptive in our minds that sometimes it can be hard to even acknowledge or identify them. Though if all of us post our answers to the worksheet, other people's answers might guide ourselves to look in areas of our mind that we might have totally forgotten, or areas that are so deceptive or hidden, that we wouldn't have even thought of otherwise. I didn't have enough time to finish mine(have a test tomorrow) but here are some of mine: Some of my pet theories are... - Donald trump is a good guy - Gravity is real - That thing is a helicopter - The belief that I believe everything - The belief that freedom is beautiful - I believe in space - I will be a successful business person in the future - I will get a high mark for my exams in 3 weeks Some things that I know FOR SURE are... - That’s a pen - I am a truthful person - Enlightenment is going to be the thing that makes me fulfilled and happy in life - I do not believe in gravity Some beliefs which would be ridiculous to question are... - Santa clause, tea pot monster, there’s an alien under my table are all real, my parent’s think that meditation is stupid - Sun isn’t going shine tomorrow - The world doesn’t exist - There is not an alien outside the front door - My parents are not from another planet - My homework is not fun - Some things that I believe but haven’t actually experienced are... - The earth is round - That mars looks the way that it does - Felix thinks im an idiot - That enlightenment will give me happiness - That success will make me happy - Some assumptions necessary for my worldview to make sense are... - Everything is made of matter - That I exist - Space exists - That the world is physical - Cells exist - atoms exist - there are stars outside of our solar system - fire is burnt from heat - Capitalism is the best system and better than communism - my parents' love is real - social justice warriors are evil people Some of my meta beliefs are - I am a rational person - That I am aware of all of my beliefs - That I am aware of what leo is saying about meta beliefs

@Leo Gura Meditation isn't the only way to dramatically improve your life in deeply meaningful ways.... or realizing enlightenment.

@Neo cya later maybe after years of purification, you will eventually stumble upon that dogmatic, prejudice belief holding you back from using this natural miraculous medicine. Or maybe not, maybe you will be stuck in the stone age forever. Whether its stone age, or eventually coming to your senses, I wish you well.