BipolarGrowth

?? @SQAAD You and Leo are both the same “thing”, and it’s most certainly not you or Leo or any other fleeting appearance that is that thing.

Why don’t you tell us what/who you are, and then we can talk about if that exists or not. Hint: as soon as you express your current condition you’d call a self that exists, it ain’t no more.

Just make a lot of content, and do it for yourself even if the videos are also meant to help people. If you don’t enjoy the process, there’s no point. If you enjoy the process, the results will be better. You will stick with it for the long haul. Doing it for attention, subscribers, and money will likely result in less consistency long term than if you did it for the enrichment of your own life in less trivial ways.

@Jakuchu Self = No Self

@Jakuchu I know that the two are different. The point of there not being a you applies in both cases however.

@Jakuchu I see. The point is essentially the exact same thing whether you say a Buddha or Buddha/the Buddha. There’s no one to be a Buddha, the Buddha, or simply Buddha.

@Jakuchu ???

The Buddha said you are not a true disciple if you say I am enlightened or I am a Buddha as there is no I to be either of those things and both of those things are arbitrary appearances which in truth mean very little. Summarized from the Diamond Sutta.

People have shown, including myself at times, that these teachings can have rather disastrous consequences. If he chose to take it down, maybe it was truly the best course of action.

I got to hear a good portion of the video. I really took no issue with it at all. It was stuff I had known for two or three years already, much of that to be credited to Leo’s teachings. Experience can only experience direct experience. Pretty basic when you see it for what it is. I really don’t understand how there can be backlash to this unless it’s just a bunch of people who have not been doing the work, which is probably the case. I respect Leo’s creative freedom. I think it’s a bit atrocious that people are trying to take this liberty from him through continued persuasion tactics. I do hope that Leo gets the opportunity to teach some people, maybe on a one-on-one basis, about more of his deepest insights and realizations. I think this could be very rewarding for him at the right time with the right person/people.

@Forza21 well “touching your true nature” is definitely better than years of making money, but I wouldn’t settle for one moment. What we really want is for this to be readily accessible on a regular basis. As good as one moment of great clarity can be, it’s still just one moment.

It makes it far easier for me to fall asleep at times. I have some insomnia issues, and if I really need to get to bed, it’s one of the things I’ll do to increase the chance that it can happen.

It’s probably a good idea to spend some time thinking of ways to make money that will align more with your values and interests. I personally took about a year off from work. The most I did was at most 25 hours per week, but most of the time I was off work entirely for that year. I had a similar situation. I had created my own business, but it was in real estate investing rather than an online thing. The one good thing about that was that it did give me passive income that usually only took an hour or two of work per month to maintain. How I’m approaching this is to just continue scaling my real estate business but at a much slower pace than when I was more “stage orange”. I’ve realized that you really don’t need that much money to be happy and have your needs met if your spiritual practice has a moderate level of success. The main thing I really would like more money for would be to have a bit more to travel to different meditation retreats and do other spiritual questing type stuff you might call it. Even this is not really a big enough carrot to motivate me much. Taking that year off from work was hands down one of the best things I’ve ever done. It lead to some breakthroughs which completely changed my depression issues. Really the only problem that I have that comes from it is that now I find myself, maybe a couple times per week, having a feeling that I’m not doing enough similar to what you described. I think this is just inevitable societal programming playing itself out. It’s quite surprising to find yourself at states of satisfaction that are literally paralyzing if I’m to think from the perspective of myself even two years ago. I’m interested to see what other people suggest here as I am in a similar boat obviously. I have started working part time at some very basic jobs just as something to keep me a bit active and supplement my other income. I find that working more than 30 hours at a typical job is just unnecessary and unfulfilling. I’d rather just enjoy my life now and do spiritual practice at times where it feels most natural rather than trying to cram it in somewhere in a busy schedule.

Just “die” more often if you want to get over the fear. Obviously you know that it’s not a danger but something extremely positive. This is like being afraid of a non-poisonous spider with no fangs. It’s just mental resistance. In this case there happens to be a potentially large upside to facing that fear over and over until you are secure enough to fully surrender whereas with the spider there’s not much upside.

Substances can work very differently on people, especially things like THC or classical psychedelics. THC is quite different than psychedelics, so it’s no guarantee that just because THC was rough for you that psychedelics would also be rough. I’d say to stay away from THC if it’s not working well for you. Personally, I’ve had stronger trips from THC than 10 tabs of LSD, just shy of 6 grams of shrooms, ayahuasca in ceremony, and 160x salvia. Everyone’s brain is different. I’ve almost never had difficult experiences with THC in any form, but serotonergic psychedelics occasionally would give me some quite challenging experiences at certain points in trips although I’ve never had a trip that wasn’t positive all things considered on any substance. It sounds like you do have a high level of sensitivity to THC. Also keep in mind that the more psychedelics you use, the higher probability that the effects will change for you in the future even for the same substance at the same dose as before. Most of the time, this shows up as things becoming more intense rather than less intense unless you’ve built up a tolerance.

Sometimes I wonder if people forget that search engines exist. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9788528/

@Leo Gura the Buddhist path is not really that focused on God. I just don’t see why we’re making this a competition when different paths are different tools to achieve different things. You can do both without much issue as long as the one in question doesn’t get into this unhelpful attitude of competition. Your teachings can work in combination with Buddhist techniques, and Buddhist techniques can work in combination with your teachings. No need for an us vs. them mentality. A higher degree of mastery over suffering is in no way going to harm anyone’s aim to become God-Realized. If people become too attached to one system over another, this will certainly reduce the chance that any useful synergy will occur.

I don’t think we should take someone who failed at the Buddhist path as an expert on the effectiveness of the Buddhist path. It’s like going to someone who hates the taste of Asian cuisine to learn about the best dishes of that type of cuisine. Not an intelligent move.

Many, possibly most, Buddhist monks today likely do very little actual spiritual practice. Here’s a Bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) expressing his frustrations and disappointment with these pretenders. He essentially says it is more honorable and better for the world to be a plumber or electrician than it is to be a monk who does not have the express goal of realizing Nibbana in this lifetime. There are many westerners who will have a better chance of realizing Nibbana even as laypeople than this large portion of the Buddhist monks who are merely pretenders will and even, in some cases, have a better chance than those who are practicing monks. The rigid life of a monk may be less fruitful for many people as the restrictions can possibly backfire to create a life filled with resistance. Even to be a Bhikkhu who practices diligently can cause problems as Buddhism operates very similar to cliques in high school. You do not want to find yourself in an environment that constantly discounts other potentially valuable perspectives if you really want Truth. There are cultural and ideological wars going on within Buddhism to a high degree today, and the chance that most Buddhists will be open to other forms of spirituality outside of Buddhism is rather low also. I say all of this while being a strong advocate of Buddhist meditation techniques.

It has been scientifically proven that happiness can only occur within a nuclear family of overcompensatedly strong stage green values which oppose nuclear power as a solution to global warming thus making the probability of global warming increase while containing so much irony that the situation ironically become unironic and instead y.

All I can say is the the change of the profile pic makes sense to support the fact that life changing insight has occurred.

I don’t think that’s how these hotlines work. I called them at a low point a couple times, and the guy I talked to in the instance I have some memory of was quite helpful. As far as some advice goes, I’d like to remind you that you’ve already spent many years suffering through this world to learn how it works. Imagine killing yourself to only find yourself in a similar or even worse situation without those years of familiarity with the system of how things work. You can totally turn your life around. I say this as someone with three clinical diagnoses who has fixed his own serious depression issues.

Humanity suffers because it perceives what is as an issue. If there is no problem or issue, there is no suffering.

When I was a kid I would abuse animals at times because they wouldn’t give me the level of attention I wanted. It was actually because I loved the attention of the animal and the pet so much that I think my little kid brain was hurt that the animal did not want to reciprocate the love. There are all kinds of reasons why people do “insert fucked up thing here”. Overall, it’s usually because their life is lacking in key areas they need to feel satisfied and secure.

I think the ability for one to handle a shift in identity is more important than whether it is mostly fixed or fluctuating. A fluctuating identity is not necessarily an achievement. Too much attachment to a fixed identity will cause suffering. A lack of attachment to an identity which is fixed nonetheless will not cause many issues. When a change is needed, it can be done. With too strong attachment, people may stay stubborn in a pattern which is not working well for them. Attachment to a fluctuating identity as some sort of ideal may lead to a lack of consistency and poorer life results overall. For the most part, good things come with consistently applied effort toward a goal whether that goal is financial, spiritual, in sports, or anything else.