FlyingLotus

Awww, thanks so much Preety ?

I don't mean to sound biased, but maybe this should get pinned because it will be buried in a few days since this isn't the type of thread you post in lots, like the spiral dynamics examples threads.

You're welcome. I guess Law of Attraction was really working for you, eh!!

You're all very welcome! I had an audiobook I needed to listen to, so I just did the Table of Contents at the same time. Sorta like chopping vegetables while listening to a podcast. Thanks Leo, though not as much lifting as you put into your videos, even your unaired videos. #ReleaseTheLeoCuts #ReleaseTheHotWitchCut #MenCanBeWitchesToo Which one were you looking for? The ? video's on Youtube, not the blog . You know, the one about staying hydrated .

Check out: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/69070-actualizedorg-blog-table-of-contents/

Blog Quotes Misc Quotes Epictetus On Ignorance The Biggest Question—Douglas Axe Applied Metaphysics Reference Frames The Trap Of Not Seeking Albert Einstein Gets It Gödel On Materialism Exodus 3:13-14 Materialism Truth & Silence Serendipitous Quote On Solitude Dune Quote Who's On First? God Is Porn The Journey On Devilry Profound Proverbs Profound Proverbs #001 Profound Proverbs #002 Profound Proverbs #003 Profound Proverbs #004 Profound Proverbs #005 Profound Proverbs #006 Profound Proverbs #007 Profound Proverbs #008 Profound Proverbs #009 Profound Proverbs #010 Profound Proverbs #011 Profound Proverbs #012 Profound Quotes Profound Quotes #001 Profound Quotes #002 Profound Quotes #003 Profound Quotes #004 Profound Quotes #005 Profound Quotes #006 Profound Quotes #007 Profound Quotes #008 Profound Quotes #009 Profound Quotes #010 Profound Quotes #011 Profound Quotes #012 Profound Quotes #013 Profound Quotes #014 Profound Quotes #015 Profound Quotes #016 Profound Quotes #017 Profound Quotes #018 Profound Yoda <(-_-)> Profound Yoda #001 Profound Yoda #002 Profound Yoda #003 Profound Yoda #004 Profound Yoda #005 Profound Yoda #006 Profound Yoda #007 Profound Yoda #008 Profound Yoda #009 Profound Yoda #010 Get Cocky, Don't Profound Batman ? ? ? Profound Batman #001 Profound Batman #002 Profound Batman #003 Profound Batman #004 Profound Batman #005 Profound Batman #006 Profound Batman #007 Profound Batman #008

Leo’s Blog Videos Society & Politics • Jan 10, 2018: Life Lessons From "Life Below Zero" (note) • Sep 6, 2018: Inside The Mind Of Trump • Jan 23, 2019: My Political Awakening ? • Oct 7, 2019: The Big Picture Of Global Politics • Oct 23, 2019: Why The Media Is Corrupt • Aug 21, 2019: Rethinking Human History • Apr 17, 2020: Why Bernie Sanders Lost (note) • Jul 8, 2020: Deconstructing Property Rights • Nov 26, 2020: Conscious Capitalism BS Epistemology • Dec 9, 2017: Understanding Better Than Academics • Dec 21, 2017: Changing Perspectives Destroys Reality (note) • Sept 4, 2018: All Understanding Is Metaphoric • Sept 16, 2018: Metaphysics vs Epistemology • Oct 3, 2018: All Understanding Is Metaphoric - Part 2 • Oct 22, 2018: Skepticism & Nonduality • Jun 27, 2019: Sense Organs Are Imaginary • Aug 15, 2019: How To Test For Self-Bias • Aug 19, 2019: Why Are My Videos So Long? • Aug 23, 2019: My Critique Of Zizek's Critique Of Buddhism • Feb 25, 2021: Learning From Partially False Perspectives • Mar 21, 2021: Why Debates Don't Work • Apr 21, 2021: Sherlock Holmes' Brain Enlightenment • Nov 29, 2017: Absolute Infinity Demo • Jun 11, 2019: Total Omniscience Awakening • Jun 21, 2019: DPT: The Other God Molecule • Jul 11, 2019: Tapping Into Collective Consciousness • Jul 17, 2019: Infinite Love Awakening • Dec 15, 2019: Ego-Collapse Awakening • Dec 17, 2019: Miracle Awakening • Feb 5, 2020: Explaining God For Dummies • Feb 29, 2020: What It's Like To Smoke Salvia Divinorum (note) ? Life Purpose • Sep 10, 2018: Why Get Rich Quick Schemes Don't Work • Oct 8, 2018: How I Started My First Business • Jul 22, 2020: Requisite Variety & Creative Laziness • Feb 28, 2021: Guerilla Business Advice Yoga • Mar 6, 2018: Don't Half-Ass Yoga (note) • Mar 6, 2018: Sitting Posture For Yoga & Meditation Leo’s Health & Life • Jul 7, 2019: Do I Doubt Myself? • Jul 21, 2020: My Health Situation • Feb 5, 2021: Back From 2 Month Break, Updates • Mar 17, 2021: 14 Day Water Fast • Apr 9, 2021: Water Fast Ends, Carnivore Diet Begins Retreats • May 7, 2017: Solo Retreat Videos & Insights • Apr 26, 2018: Hawaii Retreat Intro • Feb 25, 2018: Hawaii Solo Retreat Feb 2018 Videos • May 1, 2018: Hawaii Late Night Insights • Apr 22, 2018: Mindfucked In Hawaii • May 31, 2018: May 2018 Solo Retreat - Part 1 • Jun 4, 2018: May 2018 Solo Retreat - Part 2 • Jun 8, 2018: May 2018 Solo Retreat - Part 3

Actualized.org & Leo News Sept 2014: Book List Launched June 2015: Life Purpose Course Launched June 2017: Clarification: Systems Thinking ? Feb 2018: Off To Hawaii! ? Feb 2018: Hawaii Retreat - Feb 2018 - Pictures! Aug 2018: Correction: Hofstadter On Analogies & Thinking Mar 2019: Leaving On 30-Day Solo Retreat Mar 2019: Back From Retreat June 2019: Integrating Profound Awakening Aug 2019: Additional Video: How To Test For Self-Bias Oct 2019: Actualized Launches On Patreon Jan 2020: Taking a Break ? Jan 2020: New Logo July 2020: Additional Video: Deconstructing Property Rights Oct 2020: Actualized.org Now Available On Spotify! Dec 2020: Taking A Break Feb 2021: Update: Back From 2 Month Break April 2021: Update: Where Is The Promised Integrity Episode? ? April 2021: Launch Of New Actualized Channel Conferences Apr 2017: Don't Miss The Psychedelic Conference! July 2017: Talks From The Psychedelics Conference ? July 2017: Legal 5-MeO-DMT In Europe! Oct 2017: San Diego Enlightenment Intensive Apr 2018: Exploring Psychedelics Conference 2018 June 2018: Esalen Institute Workshops Apr 2021: The Institute For Complex Systems Science

Gaming Stage Orange Corrupting Video Games (note) ? Finding Your Niche Antichamber: The Game Of Mindfuckery Spiral Dynamics Super Mario Edition ? The Strange Loop Game The Joy Of Creation—300+ hours ? Stage Green/Turquoise Video Game Disco Elysium Breaking Out Of Wage Slavery—Stardew Valley ? Funzies Realizing What Is God Dog Trips Balls On Wild Mushrooms What It's Like To Awaken True Love George Carlin On Advertising Bullshit Mystical Cat So Are You Chinese Or Japanese? ? Lost For Words Enlightenment Retreat Fail Psychonaut Lemurs? Simpsons Trip Report Dumbo Gets Trippy The Trump Presidency in a Nutshell Using The Mind To Silence The Mind—King of the Hill Recontexualized Porn Meme Self-Inquiry Futurama's Bender Encounters God On Your Deathbed, Total Consciousness—Caddyshack Meta Argument Music What The World Needs Now (note) The Windmills Of Your Mind (note) Lost - Sunlounger Chill Remix Music - With You It's Not Going To Stop, Till You Wise Up (note) Zen Master's Diary Leo's Music Playlist Open Your Eyes

Images of Infinity Samadhi Full Movie (70 mins) A Taste Of Absolute Infinity ? Infinite Life ? A Taste Of Infinity ? What Does Nothingness Look Like? ? The Mind Of God (note) Zooming Into God The Fractal Of Life Infinite Consciousness GIF ? How Big Is Infinity? Scale Of The Universe 4000 Exo-Planets Found Accessing Infinite Consciousness Strange Loops Strange Loop Cosmology ? Wicked Strange Loop ? More Strange Loops! Strange Loop Meme Strange-Loopy Rollercoasters Killer Strange Loop

Cults — Case Studies (Trump and MAGA posts are in the main table of contents) Osho Documentaries Inside The Moonies Cult Inside The R. Kelly Sex Cult Inside The Alex Jones Cult (note) Inside The Cult Of Scientology Neoclassical Economics Is A Cult The Cult Of Capitalism The Cult Of Andrew Cohen MLM Cults An Islamic Feminist Creationist Cult Unicult The Church Of The AR-15 New Age Cults The Neo-Nazi Bible ? Creativity & Art The Pineal Gland Artist (note) Philosopher's Lamp Myers-Briggs On Pinterest A Galaxy In A Rock Aliens Confirmed Whirling Your Way To Enlightenment ? Mind-Bending Gears The Mindblowing Cubli Creating The Never-Ending Bloom—Windmills Build Your Skillz ? Creativity On Stilts 6 Fingered James Cameron On Life Purpose James Cameron On Ecological Awareness ? "I Cannot Self-Terminate” (post refers to this ?) (note) Must-Watch Video For All Victims ? Yugen ? The Magic Of Consciousness Psychedelic Visions

Blog: Table of Contents 2021: (pg 1 - 8) January 2021 • The Museum Of Alien Life ? • Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences • Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure & Pain • 4D Toys • Tripping On Xenon Gas • The Depth Of Russian Corruption • Spying The Devil Fish February 2021 • Epistemic Madness • American Psychosis • Society's Deepest Systemic Problems (note) ? • The War On Sensemaking • Plastics Cause Brain Damage (note) • The Infinite Game — Simon Sinek • A Tier 2 Conversation ? ? March 2021 • Street Epistemology—YT channel • Kambo Self-Application (note) • Epistemic Madness Continues • The Essence of Surrendering Ego • The Insane Benefits Of Fasting • The World's Most Toxic Fish April 2021 • Killer Mike On Oneness May 2021 • The Hollowness Of Materialism • High Status Communication • Sapolsky Explains Depression • How Is Sufism Related To Islam? • Christian Mysticism • Zakaria On Post-Pandemic Politics ? • Got My Covid Vaccine ? June 2021 • Microchip Vaccine Conspiracy Theory Origin ? • Now THIS Is Survival! ? • Understanding War (note) • Bootcamp For Pro-Life Foot Soldiers (note) • Creating Intelligence ? • Libertarian Madman • Got My Covid Vaccine - Part 2 ? • Your Banana Sucks (note) July 2021 • Ketamine Klinic (note) • Building A World Out Of Mushrooms • Ignorance Of Infinity ? • What Is Schizophrenia? • Sapolsky On Chaos & Emergence ? ? • How MAGA Infiltrated The Capitol ? • Covid Vaccines More Effective Than You Think • Interpretive Nonsense ? • Political Asymmetry Proven In One Image ?

Blog: Table of Contents 2020: (pg 8 - 18) January 2020 • Survival In A Nutshell (note) • US Assassinates Top Iranian Leader ? • Understanding Africa's Underdevelopment • TurboTax Devilry ? • What Corruption Looks Like ? • Is Gender Real? ? • "Flood The Zone With Shit”—Steve Bannon ? • Please Let Me Rob You, I'm Woke ? ? • Register To Vote 2020 ? • Are You A Light Worker? (note) February 2020 • Lula - Visionary Leadership (note) • How Religion Goes Corrupt • Through The Looking Glass ? • Anand's Twitter (note) • What The Hell Is Socialism? ? • Global Mind (note) • Spiral Dynamics Essence ? • Tribe Meets White Man For First Time (note) March 2020 • The Billionaire Election • Boost Your Immune System Now ? • Social Distancing (note) • Shit Is Getting Real April 2020 • Right Wing Watch ? • Timothy Leary (note) • Everything Gained (note) • Covid Love ? • How Worldviews Are Made May & June 2020 • The Dao Of Love (note) • Feral Kitten Love (note) July 2020 • House Of Saddam (note) ? • Homeless Guy Spits Some Truth • What Is Nationalism? ? • Narcissists vs Sociopaths vs Psychopaths • Soft White Underbelly • Jon Stewart Explains Devilry In 30 Secs • Deconstructing Denial Of Systemic Racism • The Denial Of Ambiguity ? ? • Legal MDMA Therapy Almost Here! (note) • YouTube Premium Is Great! ? (note) • Inside The Mind Of A Hardcore Drug Addict August 2020 • Understanding The Alt-Right ? ? • The History Of Socialism In America • Systemic Racism In Two Quotes (note) • Beware Of The Toxic Life Purpose ? • The Evolution Of Samurai Castles (note) • Does It Spark Joy? ? • Chinese Foot Binding • The Amazing Lyrebird September 2020 • Bird Understands Water Displacement • FPS Russia Shares Prison Stories • MAGA & Fascism • Kauai's Hindu Monastery • The Function Of Fascism • Conscious vs Unconscious Sense-Making ? October 2020 • Non-Euclidean Perspective • When You Leave The Simulation • Ex-QAnnon Believer Breaks His Silence • Why Are Smart People Do Dumb? (note) • Don't Get Fooled Into Bernie-Or-Bust • Lessons From 100 Years Of Russian Politics • The Entanglement Problem of Science ? • Susskind On The Hard Questions Of Physics (note) • Neural Network Machine Learning (note) November 2020 • Go Vote! • The Difficulties Of Academia • The Origins Of Precision (note) • Alex Jones On God ? December 2020 • What Is Life? • The Stupidity Of Brilliant Scientists ? • Mindblowing Mastery ⌚

Blog: Table of Contents 2019: (pg 18 - 31) January 2019 • Aztec Nonduality • Capitalist Devilry ? February 2019 • Entrainment Demo (note) • Textbook Example Of Devilry ? ? • Bernie 2020 (note) • Solo Retreat Notes April 2019 • Quintessence: The 5th Element ? • Fat Leo ? • Spiral Dynamics Case Study ? ? • Ayn Rand's Stage Orange Witchdoctory ? ? May 2019 • Scientists Find Hallucinogen Shaman Pouch • Elite Universities Are A Scam ? • Denver Decriminalizes Mushrooms (note) • Thoughts On Unconditional Love ? June 2019 • Study Survival In Animals • Catch Me If You Can • Bernie Sanders Visionary (note) • Dissecting The Psychedelic Experience ? • Understanding Flatland • Who Are The Machine Elves? ? • Who Really Rules The World? • 3 Kinds Of Socialism ? • Mapping Consciousness With High Dose LSD ? • Reverse-Engineering UFO Spacecraft (note) ? • The Power Of Imaginary Boundaries ? July 2019 • New York Post UFO Series ? ? • The Wise Patriot (note) • Vice's Liberal vs Conservative Panels ? • How Government Really Works ? • The 9 Stages Of Ego Development ? ? • The Highest Purpose ? • How Nazis Win Elections ? ? • Political Spiral Stages ? • Green New Deal Town Hall August 2019 • The Most Corrupt Countries In The World ? • Life In Venezuela ? ? • Knock Down The House • The Wise Patriot, Round Two ? ? • Health Insurance Devilry ? • Trust The Force (refers to this video) (note) • Why Plutocracy Doesn't Work • The War On Government • The Amazing Cornel West (note) • The Fyre Festival Fiasco • Harrison Ford On Nature • Introducing Slavoj Zizek • Liberia: Land Of True Freedom (note) ? • Psilocybin & Personality Change (note) • Microdosing Research September 2019 • Infinite Intelligence Communication #001 ? • Theranos Devilry • Enron Devilry • This Is Love (note) • This Work Is Not About Belief ? • Projection Projecting Projection (politics) ? ? • Fundamentally Misunderstanding Religion ? October 2019 • Buddhism StackExchange • What Is Neo-Liberalism? ? • What Is Fascism? (note) • What Real Leadership Looks Like (note) • Wolf PAC Anti-Corruption Speech (note) • Spirituality & Politics • Internal Workings Of CNN ? • Chemical Corruption ? November 2019 • I Always Look Orange (note) • Inside The Psyche Of Stage Red ? ? • Preachers Justifying Private Jets (note) • Amazon's Corporate Devilry • The Complexity Of Life (note) • Manufacturing Consent ? • Former Users Describe Heroin High (note) • Exposing Neo-Liberal Devilry ? ? December 2019 • Cornel West & Mehdi Hasan Interview • Misunderstanding Love ? ☮️ • The Dirty Secrets Of Capitalism (note) • Zizek On Our Current Political Situation • Racial Unity • Amazing Resonance Experiment • See Salamander Grow From Single Cell • Love, Death, and Robots ?

Blog: Table of Contents 2018: (pg 31 - 45) January 2018 • How To Spot A Sociopath (note) • Modern Humans Are 350,000 Years Old! (note) • Hallucinogenic Fish February 2018 • Noam Chomsky, Exposer Of Self-Bias ? • The Dangers Of Trumpism ? March 2018 • Dark Room Retreats & 5-MeO-DMT ? • Breaking Convention YT Channel (psychedelics) ? • The Origins Of Mind—Thomas Ray (psychedelics) • How To Find Psychics & Healers ? • Everest: Beyond The Limit • A Society Built On Psychedelics—Bwiti Tribe ? April 2018 • Essence Of Meditation By David Hawkins • Narcissistic Personality Disorder (note) June 2018 • The God Debate ? • Holy Shit (note) • Fake Moon Landing? • Stage Blue Pandering ? ? • The Jesus Of Siberia • Random Insight #001—Fear, Hate & Bias ? • Cannabis Legalization? (note) • Wendover Productions (refers to this YT channel) • A Growing Earth? ? July 2018 • Ken Wilber Explains Integral Spirituality • How Capitalism Corrupts Science ? • Hunter Maats Against Rationalism (refers to this interview) (note) • Merchants Of Doubt ? • The Supreme Purpose Of Life—Ancient Greek Mysticism August 2018 • Ken Wilber On Spiral Politics • Piaget's Child Conservation Experiments ? • The Apeiron Centre’s Study of Infinity • Sikhism • Catholic Collective Ego ? • Astronaut Enlightenment ? September 2018 • The Amazing Atheist (note) • Anekantavada--Relativism & Ancient India ? • An Atheist's Personal Experiences Of God ? • What's Wrong With Jordan Peterson? ? ? • The Great Vernon Howard • Your Brain On LSD • Silly Stage Blue Morality ? • Salvia Trip Report • Politics & Ego ? ? • Got Asbestos? (note) • How Dogma Gets Made ? October 2018 • Psychedelic Receptors ? • Orange Fraud—Trump ? ? • Hate or Love?—KKK ? ? • Shugendo-7th Century Japanese Spirituality • The Dunning-Kruger Effect • Nootropics Forum • Remember To Vote 2018 November 2018 • Understanding Psychosis • Understanding Fascism (note) • Spiral Dynamics Chart ? • The Ideological Mind • How To Plug Psychedelics ? • Zen Master Yamada Mumon December 2018 • A Spiral View Of Terrorism ? • Monism ? • Conscious Capitalism (note) ? • Stage Green Epitome ? • Weird Life Purpose = Win!

Blog: Table of Contents 2017: (pg 45 - 58) January 2017 • Philosophy Used To Be Easier ? • The Scandal Of Modern Education (note) • Using Dreams For Growth (note) • The School Of Life (note) • The Universe As A Membrane ? • Why Religion Persists ? • The I'm-Right, You're-Wrong Game ? • What Is A Meta-Source? ? • Psychedelic Wishlist • Designing a Conscious Robot ? • Backfiring Mechanisms ? • Drunk On Mushrooms ? • Hidden In Plain Sight ? • God Goes Full-Circle ? February 2017 • The Origin Of Worship ? • What Real Balance Looks Like ? • Truth In Folklore ? • Anal-Haq (note) • Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience ? • The Despicable War On Drugs ? • Must-Watch Video For All Victims ? • A Description Of Enlightenment ? • Alexander Shulgin Documentary - Psychedelics Chemist (note) March 2017 • What's The Best Time To Meditate? ? • Imagining The 10th Dimension • Relax Your Neurotic Face! (note) • Rethinking Hallucination ? April 2017 • Understanding Karma ? • Honest Dishonesty (note) • Going Full-Autodidact ? • Tarantino Nails Life Purpose (note) • The One-School Approach To Spirituality ? May 2017 • Into The Wild ? • Solo Retreat Supplies Checklist ? • How Do You Know You're You? ? • Why So Serious? (note) • 5MeO-Always On An Empty Stomach ? • Nothing Is Ever Obvious ? • Educate Yourself About Enlightenment ? • Why You're An Addict ? • No Trip Sitters ? June 2017 • The Ultimate Simulation ? • Just Scaffolding ? • Yoga FTW! ? July 2017 • The Best Mix For Enlightenment—Concentration & Contemplation ? • Everything Is Understandable (note) • Understanding The Common Mob ? • More Serious Than You Ever Imagined (note) • Weirdness Is Relative (note) • The Banach-Tarski Paradox—How Infinity Works • All In A Day's Work • Infinite Expansion (note) • The Best Place For Quotes Is… (note) • Trump & Spiral Dynamics ? ? August 2017 • The Infinite Chameleon ? • Applied Systems Thinking ? • Hitting Rock Bottom (note) • Infinite Water Wiggly ? • Ego Droplets (note) • Nothing I Say Can Be Trusted ? • Are You A Brain Slave? • Why You Should Never Do Salvia Alone ? • Learning = Behavior Change, Clarification ? • I Am Not A Master ? • Everything Is Infinitely Interconnected (note) • The Antidote For Pre-Trip Anxiety ? ? September 2017 • Rupert Sheldrake's Banned TED Talk • Before You Were Born (note) • The Mathematics Of Devilry ? • Gestalt Cube (note) • Grahman Hancock's Banned TED Talk • Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson (note) • Understanding Away Anger ? October 2017 • Embarrassing Stupidity Is Good ? • What's Really In Your Ecstasy? • The Top Dangers Of Using Psychedelics ? ? • Bittersweet Actualization (note) • Taking Existence For Granted ? • It's Not All About Enlightenment ? November 2017 • Derrida & Nonduality ? • Looking Up Words In Wikipedia ? • How To Research Psychedelics ? ? • Advice For Visionaries ? • 5-MeO-DMT Girlfriend Success (note) • The Joke's On You ? • Storyland ? • Corrupting The Youth (note) • Mainstream Conversations About God ? December 2017 • Things I've Been Wrong About ? • Are You A Mystic? ? • Venn Diagram Of Knowledge ? • Deep Life Lessons From Bitcoin ? • Japanese Cats Say "Nyan"

@Preety_India I'm flattered you asked, lol. @Byun Sean Good list! Do you have trouble integrating Stage Orange because you feel guilty about being ambitious, or taking up space? I know as women (especially Asian women) we're told to always be nice and never think about yourself. Guys are raised to believe the opposite, that winning cures everything. I don't feel much guilt about healthy Stage Orange, which helps with integrating it. The way I see it, if people get mad at me for healthy Stage Orange behavior, it's a sign they're not a good fit. I personally don't feel any guilt or remorse going for Stage Orange stuff, even if it upsets people, to be honest. Of course, I make sure I'm doing it in a healthy way and not hurting other people. It feels good to have abundance, to feel empowered, to feel effective in the world. I also think of the quote by Bertrand Russell, "The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.” If you're Stage Green and above, you have a moral obligation to integrate Stage Orange and use that vitality to help people, because the lower stages ain't gonna do it. Also, I think people generally feel guilty about their gifts, like beauty, wealth, math skills, high IQ, athleticism, white privilege even. The way I see it, God gives you gifts so that you can help others. So if you feel guilt about your gifts, you're slapping God in the face basically. Guilt about having gifts is dumb; however, guilt about misusing one's gifts to hurt others selfishly is appropriate and should be heeded.

(Something to keep in mind, this video came out in April 2015. In Leo's blog on Dec 2017 he wrote: “I was wrong about some of my earliest characterizations of enlightenment as the ultimate fix for unhappiness and all your psychological neuroses. That is a half-truth. In reality, enlightenment, strictly-speaking, will not fix all your neuroses. Although it is usually a big leap in the right direction.”) ? 199. Summary: Enlightenment FAQ - Part 2 This is the second part to Enlightenment FAQ - Part 1. Summary is here. 1) “What are the benefits of enlightenment?” -Breaking free from your mental prison. You stop being a slave to your thoughts and to your emotions and you get a deep, meaningful tranquility in your life, which is something you’ve been searching for your whole life without realizing it. You can experience tranquility, regardless of external circumstances (breakups, getting fired, losing loved ones, poverty, rejection, etc.) How cool would it be if you could keep your cool throughout that without getting crazy agitated? -A deeper understanding of reality and truth. Understanding how your consciousness works is the key that unlocks it all. -You’ll still have moments of sadness, loneliness, frustration, anger and annoyance. However, your relationship to these emotions changes completely. These upsetting emotions no longer become a source of suffering. They just become another experience, not really any worse or any better that any other experience. That’s freedom. -Relief from your self-image problems, like shyness, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, worrying about how you look, trying to live up to certain people’s expectations. You get rid of that by getting rid of the self. -There’s a whole video that answers this question. (ep: Benefits Of Enlightenment.) Summary is here. 2) ”Does this mean I’ll have complete control over my emotions once I’m enlightened?” -The truth here is there’s no self. There is no you. So, who’s going to have complete control over his or her emotions? Nobody. If you think that's going to happen, here's some bad news: you have zero control over your emotions because you do not exist. Paradoxically and counter-intuitively, once you surrender yourself to this fact, you get complete peace and calm with your emotions. You get pseudo-control, you get the appearance of control. It’s as though you have total control but, in fact, you have zero control. -The biggest reason you need control is you’re a slave to your emotions. Once you realize that there is no “you” who’s experiencing emotions and no “you” to control emotions, you get calm and cool with whatever emotion is happening. -Enlightenment doesn’t make you emotionless. There will be plenty of emotions, but your relationship to them will change completely. So, you will appear to have complete control over your emotions or a lot more control than the average person. -The reason other people suffer from emotions is because they believe there’s a “them” inside who’s being threatened by the external world. Once that notion is removed, life flows very, very smoothly. 3) “Why pursue enlightenment? What if I’m already happy in my life?” -Well, another bitter pill for you to swallow is, you’re not actually happy. You’re lying to yourself and saying you’re happy, but you’re not. -Currently, your happiness is contingent upon external circumstances. So, even if you’re happy right now, in this moment — maybe your career, relationship and fitness are going great. If we remove any of that, you’re going to be very, very miserable. So, your happiness is extremely contingent. You got to be very careful about saying that you’re “happy.” -It’s not possible to be truly happy without being enlightened. So, unless you’re enlightened, you can’t be happy. It’s psychologically impossible. Why? Because there's a falsehood that you’re living. You’re telling yourself you exist when, in fact, you don’t. -That’s reflected in your entire life. You’ve never been able to have consistent, true happiness. What you’ve had is this rollercoaster ride, because external circumstances change all the time. -Well, you’re happy right now, if we take one snapshot, but how happy are you going to be five minutes later? You’re not going to be very happy. That’s basically your current condition in life. 4) “But, Leo, why don’t I just earn millions of dollars and wait until everything is perfect? Won’t that sort everything out?” -That’s a delusion. Even if you get so much money and power that you’re “untouchable,” you’re still going to face disease, loneliness and death. In the end, your life is going to end in misery, no matter how happy you think you are right now. So, really, you’re not happy. -Even if you have a great relationship, career and great health, on a minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour basis, your mind is driving you nuts. You’re having insane thoughts. You’re sabotaging yourself, you’re getting angry, you’re jealous, you’re fearful. -It’s not possible for you to be happy because you actually believe if you lose these things you will be unhappy. You have a false paradigm in place. You must get aware of how your mind tricks you into a false sense of happiness. -Part of enlightenment work is to realize you’re lying to yourself all the time about how well this egoic paradigm is working for you. The ego keeps telling you it’s working and you should continue using this paradigm. If you look carefully, you can see this paradigm is rotten. It’s not working, if you’re very honest. 5) “Should I stop pursuing goals in my career, relationships, fitness and health and with my hobbies?” -Becoming enlightened doesn’t mean you no longer have any relationships, or hobbies, or an exercise routine. Enlightenment is an inner knowing and a realization, it’s not any lifestyle per se and it’s not any particular external situation. If you really, authentically want a relationship, be in a relationship. If you authentically want good health, go get good health. If you want to live in your house and be able to pay your electricity bill, then you should probably have a job. If you enjoy some particular hobby, like playing basketball on the weekend, or you like sailing or surfing or whatever, those are probably fine hobbies. -The problem is that a lot of people have egoic goals. You’re pursuing these goals because you think they will make you truly happy. So you’re like an addict. You’re a career addict, a relationship addict, a health & fitness addict, and you think that that’s going to be your salvation. Those are the wrong reasons, so you should probably stop. Why? Because they are not going to make you happy and they are an opportunity cost. They are taking time away from your ability to do inner mental development and find what would truly make you happy. -Everyone will have to judge for themselves which goals are authentic and which are not. This is a very tricky process. You don’t really know! eg: You might tell yourself that going to the gym is an authentic goal of yours, but you might discover the only reason you’re going is to uphold a self-image as a hot ripped dude. Authentically, if you weren’t trying to uphold that self-image you probably wouldn’t need to go to the gym as much. 6) “Isn’t enlightenment dangerous? Couldn’t it be eroding the foundations of a happy, healthy, normal life?” -The only danger, really, is the current egoic paradigm that you’re living under. All the evils in the world don’t come from enlightened people, they come from selfish people. If you think you can be above the egoic paradigm while still living from the egoic paradigm, you’re kidding yourself. If you think you’re not capable of evil (crime, theft, rape, murder, genocide, bigotry, racism, getting angry at people, and violence of all sorts), it’s only because you’re sitting in a cushy position in life where you’re not being threatened. -You would commit all those evils under the right circumstances. As soon as your ego is threatened sufficiently, you will resort to all those evils. Why? Because, fundamentally, you think you exist and that you need to be protected and defended. How do we overcome this? By removing the notion that you exist. In fact, there’s nothing that needs defending. -This can seem dangerous and threatening to talk about because it goes against a lot of your worldviews and cultural assumptions. It can seem like a negative process. Destroying the mental concepts in your mind can feel like you’re eroding the moral fabric of your being, that it’ll lead to nihilism, insanity or make you anti-social. (clip: Nihilism and Confusion [9 mins]. ep: Nihilism) In fact, all those bad things are just the ego paradigm run amok. That’s who you presently are, but you’re just masking it. The enlightenment paradigm frees you up from all that. This makes you the least dangerous person to yourself, to society and to everyone around you. When you have nothing to defend and protect, you have no need to go out and hurt people, or commit suicide or do anything dangerous. -Insane people, criminals and serial killers have monkey chatter in their mind all the time. This is the exact opposite of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the silencing of the monkey chatter. When you’re perfectly calm, present and happy in the moment, who are you going to bother? What’s the danger? You can easily discover this in meditation. When you’re meditating and very focused, you’re in a totally peaceful, innocent, innocuous state. It’s the ego that tells you this is dangerous. It’s how the ego defends itself. This is a defense mechanism. Watch out for that trap. 7) Is Enlightenment really for everyone? Isn’t it only for a very small segment of the population? -No! Enlightenment is one of the most universal things that people ought to pursue. Things like marriage, kids, a six-figure income, scuba-diving, marmite, cheese and mayo on fries, a Chris Evans film festival, are all particular things that some people might like and some might not. If you want to live to your full potential, if you want to be happy and peaceful, if you want to experience the truth of your being on a profound level, then this is for you. This is not just for monks or hard-core self-help junkies. -Leo feels very comfortable saying: You should become enlightened. No matter who you are, no matter what culture, location, religion, scientific background, age, income, family situation you come from. Why? Because this is one of the most fundamental truths of your existence — understanding your true nature. Your true nature is not what you’ve been told by society. It’s not this entity, this body or this mind. Your true nature is, actually, nothingness, but you need to discover this. Anyone with normal mental health can discover this. If everyone discovered this, society would be completely transformed. It would be the biggest shift that human civilization could experience, bigger than anything we have invented. -This would be more powerful because it would change the whole world’s orientation towards life. This would give you the happiness and peace that you really, really want. So, this is not for radical people. -One thing you can find universally, across all cultures and peoples, is that they have monkey chatter and drive themselves crazy with it. They have emotional, neurotic problems and can’t be happy. Because happiness is the objective of life, this is for everyone. The only reason you do anything, that anyone does anything, is they believe it will make them happy. The problem is that most people do things that will not make them happy, but they don’t realize it yet and they don’t want to admit this fact. 8) ”Won’t spirituality make me a tree-hugging, hippie slacker? How do I stay on the right track and avoid bongo drumming, singing Kumbaya and smelling like patchouli oil?” -This is a stereotype. In fact, hippie tree-huggers are not enlightened. Slackers are not enlightened. Leo’s doesn’t identify as a hippie, New Age thinker. He doesn’t like that sub-culture. He’s not a slacker. He’s very productive and wants to achieve stuff in his life. If you actually go and meet a real, enlightened person, you’ll see that they are not a tree-hugging hippie slacker. These people are productive when they want to be. This hippie sub-culture seems spiritual, but it’s actually a false spirituality. They live their lives incongruently. It’s one of the things Leo doesn’t like about hippies. -If a hippie was really living congruently, they would become enlightened and then counter-intuitively, they would drop a lot of their hippie ways. Hippies are reacting against a certain element of society, and this creates another element, a philosophy, a mind-set, belief systems, and a world-view. Enlightenment is about wiping that slate clean, emptying yourself of those cultural reactions and world-views. It’s just a calm, peaceful neutral. So, don’t worry about becoming a hippie slacker. 9) “I enjoy my vices (sex, alcohol, drugs, food). Sometimes I like to combine them in unique and interesting ways. I also enjoy my career. If I have to give that up why would I want to become enlightened?” -Enlightenment is not a particular lifestyle. It’s an understanding, a realization. Vices aren’t in and of themselves wrong, bad, evil, or even anti-spiritual. They’re not compatible with enlightenment. In fact your sex will become more amazing after enlightenment, if you choose to have it. You’ll appreciate alcohol, drugs and food more. You’re also less likely to get addicted to them. Why? Because you’re able to stay focused and in the moment, and you’re able to get rid of the monkey-chatter. You can perform amazingly well at work, because you no longer worry, doubt or have to protect your ego. You won’t need to look after your self image or be fearful about money. You could just focus on doing great work and be more creative too. So, none of these things need to be given up. -Enlightenment unhooks you from needing these things. So, if you do these things you’ll do it consciously, deliberately, because you want to. Your capacity to appreciate it will be much more expanded than it ever was in the past. Right now, you’re a drug addict. You’re probably going to give up addictions if you become enlightened because you’ll feel less pain all around. -So, you don’t really need to give up sex, good food, money or a great career. Although, Leo doesn’t recommend alcohol and non-psychedelic drugs because they aren’t healthy. 10) “My vices are immoral (sex, alcohol and drugs). Isn’t making money bad and evil too? If I become spiritually enlightened will I have to stop these activities? -Why are you so attached to engaging in these activities? It’s probably for egoic reasons. Even if you think these things are evil, you still probably have a hidden urge to do them. Maybe you guilt yourself for having sex, drugs, or cheating people out of money. The fact is that none of these vices are bad in and of themselves. In fact, this is a really blanket, outrageous statement, but…there’s nothing wrong with any action that you choose to do at all. The question is: why are you doing it? What’s the motivation behind it? It’s always about the motivation. -When you get the motivation right, when you remove the ego and act selflessly, without addiction and clinginess, then you can engage in these things and they will be of value in your life. They won’t have all the negative repercussions that these things generally have. -You can use drugs and alcohol in moderation after enlightenment. You can have amazing, enlightened sex and lots of money if you feel that’s something worth doing. So, don’t worry about losing that stuff, you just won’t cling to it. 11) ”I’ve already had an enlightenment experience using drugs or meditation. Isn’t that enough (mushrooms, DMT, meditation retreats, etc)? That’s the truth of no-self, right?” -Enlightenment is tricky. When you start on this journey you get little moments of enlightenment. Like on a very cloudy day, and the sun starts beaming. All of a sudden, the clouds open up and there’s little beam of light breaking through. But then, quickly, the clouds come back and close up and the light beam goes away. You’ll have mini, brief, tiny moments of no-self, maybe for five seconds here, for a whole hour here, maybe for a whole day, but you’re not going to be able to hold on to them. It’s frustrating. -This is like an expansion of consciousness. Your consciousness dilates like the lens on a camera, it zooms in and out. When the lens dilates up, you get this expansion, but then it closes back down and falls into its default state. So, what I’m really interested in here is not in a temporary expansion of your consciousness. I’m more interested in the permanent removing of the clouds. What I really mean when I say “enlightenment” is: the clouds are completely gone and you’ve just got light shinning all the time. You’re not trying, or holding on or struggling to make it work. You don’t even have to meditate anymore. You’re permanently enlightened. This is possible. This is a real state. Thousands of people have achieved this state, so it can be done. Any normal human being, as far as we know, can do it with enough work, but it takes quite a bit of work. A thousand hours of work is a ballpark figure. -Generally speaking, a drug will never give you permanent enlightenment. I don’t really know of any people who have become permanently enlightened off drugs. It can only give you a couple hours of enlightenment-like experience. -Meditation is more helpful. I recommend you start doing a lot of meditation. If you’re starting to experience enlightenment-like experiences with meditation, that’s great — but don’t just stop because you think you’ve “made it.” You haven’t made it yet. Keep meditating until you get the real, permanent deal. -Don’t assume that because you’ve had a little experience with drugs, you know what enlightenment will be like. In the end, enlightenment will probably turn out very different than you expect it to. 12) “What about my friends and family? Will I stop caring about them after enlightenment because I’m so detached from everything?” -It depends. A lot of people have very dysfunctional families and friends. So, if you’re hanging around in a gang or some horrible friends and you become enlightened, you’ll probably abandon those friends. They weren’t very healthy and now you don’t have much in common. -There’s nothing inherently wrong with family or with friends. If you have a good family and friends who bring you authentic joy, you’ll probably keep them. In fact, your relationships with them will improve. -You keep dysfunctional relationships because you have buttons that those people push. Your ego is involved in those relationships. When you take the ego out, it’s not going to bother you anymore. You’ll be capable of having compassion for them. You won’t need to be mean to them. -Also, if you’re in a romantic relationship with someone, enlightenment will make you independent of that relationship. So, if the relationship serves you, you will stay. If the relationship stops serving you, or becomes toxic, won’t have any hesitation walking away. That is what neediness does — it produces a toxic attachment. Having healthy boundaries doesn’t make you a monster or a bitch. -Living with toxic attachments is very unhealthy. Cutting them out is a good thing, not a bad thing. In general, your friendships and relationships with the right people will be significantly amplified and improved with enlightenment. 13) “How does love play into all this?” -What you call love right now, is not true love. It’s egoic love. That’s another bitter pill to swallow. You don’t really have an experience of true love. What you call love now, even in your most sacred relationships, is still egoic love. You love those people, but only on your terms. It’s a selfish love that serves you in some sneaky, underhanded way that you don’t like to admit. You try to change them, manipulate them in subtle ways, to make sure you’re getting the love you want. -If you want real, true love, all you have to do is break down the ego. Without the ego, you can love everything as much as you, right now, love yourself. Imagine how kind you would be to your family, friends, partner, and even people in general if you honestly believed that your body was not separate from their body. That you and them are literally one and the same. That’s the true meaning of the Golden rule. The Golden rule says: do onto others as you would do onto yourself. You can’t do that when you actually believe that you are here and everyone is separate and out there. If you really care about true love, you should definitely want to become enlightened. -You can only live the Golden rule when you truly believe there’s no separation between you and everything. So, you’re kind, compassionate, and loving towards everything. You’re here, there and everywhere, so you treat everything as though it’s you, which enlightenment shows to be true. That’s what real love is. Almost no one knows this practically because of their unenlightened state. 14) “Doing regular personal development has filled me with doubt. It’s created a lot of confusion about my life, my ambitions, my relationships and my business.” -In a sense, that’s exactly what we’re doing here. Because enlightenment is not about building up more of your ego, it’s about cutting out the ego. And this is going to feel scary, threatening and emotionally disturbing. It’s not going to be pleasant. That’s why so few people are enlightened. -Your mind wants clarity and certainty at all times. Your mind hates being confused and doubting itself. You need to get comfortable with uncertainty, because enlightenment is not ultimate certainty. It’s actually getting comfortable with ultimate uncertainty. It’s about realizing that there’s nothing to cling to and that there is no truth. The truth of no truth. Again, very paradoxical and fascinating how this works. -The problem with most people is that they are too certain and too afraid of getting confused once in a while. They’re also too afraid of questioning their world-view. If you’re doubting yourself, good. Stop trying to be certain all the time. This is what an intelligent, open-minded, intellectually honest human beings do- purposefully put themselves into situations where they doubts themselves. This is healthy, this is building you up, not tearing you down. 15) “Isn’t it better to hold off on this enlightenment until I’m older (50s, 60s) or retired? Isn’t it better to spend the first half of my life partying, running a business and traveling the world?” -No! Your ego’s procrastinating! The longer you put it off, the more suffering you will have in your life. Why would you delay happiness? You’re asking, “wouldn’t it be better to spend the next twenty years suffering and then finally be happy when I retire?” -In fact, many people who become enlightened report that it’s the most positive experience they’ve ever had. They wish they’d had it earlier in their life. -Some people become enlightened in their forties and their fifties, but then they have very bad experiences in their twenties and thirties, because they are just emotionally all over the place. There’s monkey chatter going around. This goes back to the earlier question of: Are you truly happy? The answer is that you’re not. -Realize that you’re closing your mind down. You don’t want to do a self-honest inquiry. You don’t really want to put the effort into this process. -Realize that your life is going to end in a very bitter way no matter how successful you are. You're going to die, you're going to have disease, and you're going to have bad relationships. All this stuff is going to disturb you a lot. -What you’re really saying is you’re at the lower stages of your development and you haven’t gone to the higher stages yet. -Normal is a very bad standard. The normal life is really a crazy, dysfunctional life. It might be necessary for you to do some stupid stuff, waste ten, twenty years, and suffer. Hopefully, you have the wisdom to short-circuit all that nonsense. 16) “But, Leo, what if you’re wrong? Are you enlightened? And if you’re not, how can you be talking about enlightenment? Aren’t you being a hypocrite?” -Leo isn’t enlightened, but he feels he can offer valuable information. He’s gone through the initial, early stages: the fight, the resistance to this idea of enlightenment. (This video came out more than 6 years ago). Enlightenment is a long journey. Leo can point out the traps. A lot of these questions in the FAQ are issues he had to struggle through. -Leo’s a normal person you can identify with, not some hippie or spiritual guru or Indian yogi who meditates in the woods for ten hours a day, everyday. He’s not a Buddhist monk, or the Dalai Lama. Those people might be more knowledgeable about this stuff, but those monks live very differently than you. Their lifestyle is probably very incongruent with the way you live your life. You probably live a much more normal social existence. -With personal development, once you move to the next level all the other levels suddenly make so much more sense. It’s so clear when you look backwards on your life and the lives of people around you who haven’t advanced yet, why they’re stuck. -If you’re very advanced, then maybe you want to go to some very advanced teacher. If you’re starting off and you like a very no-nonsense, non-mystical, non-religious, somewhat logical and scientific approach to enlightenment, that’s Leo. That’s his bias and perspective he’s bringing to you, which can be rare to find in a teacher. -As for the objection that he might be wrong: an intelligent person always has to leave room for the possibility that he might be wrong. Smart people are always revising their worldview and growing. Also, the same is true with everyone that you listen to. Whether it’s a scientist, a religious person, the Dalai Lama or the Buddha himself — they could always be wrong. That’s just a fact of life and a fact of communication. Even after enlightenment there’s still more to discover about consciousness. -Don’t believe this on blind faith. Verify it for yourself. Use your intelligence, your rational faculties, think critically but also self-honestly. Not with monkey chatter and ego defenses. Prove it to yourself. That’s how you know what’s real, through direct experience (clip: Validate Absolute Truth For Yourself [10 mins]).

(@TimStr and @JuanCruzGiusto wrote summaries for this video. It’s an important one, so I combined both of them here. Enjoy!!) 250. Summary: The Benefits Of Enlightenment What is Enlightenment? The realization of one’s actual physical and metaphysical nature. Most people confuse physical experiences with Who You Really Are. If you unwire the belief of who you are, you are Enlightened. Enlightenment fixes this mistake in one’s map of reality. It’s a state of union with all of reality. Enlightenment can take years to attain. Who You Really Are is an omnipresent empty field of pure awareness that exists outside of the dimensions of space and time and has no physical or metaphysical qualities. One of Leo’s blog videos demonstrates this really well. It’s only 10 mins long. Absolute Infinity Demo Benefits of Enlightenment Massive reductions of your levels of suffering on the macro and micro scale: Large scale: suffering because of catastrophes like the death of family members, illness, existential fear. Small scale: the small discomforts, like itching, disagreements with other people, "stuff that just comes with life.” Suffering is not part of life, but only part of the delusion of associating with your body and mind. Freedom from worry, fear and anxiety: Think about how much energy you spend in these states. Freedom from the fear of death: EVERYONE FEARS DEATH. Everything in life is motivated by a fear of death. If one realizes that one is neither the body nor the mind, death as a concept no longer makes a sense. It's just another belief. Permanent end to overthinking: Think about how much time you waste thinking about stupid stuff. After Enlightenment, you only think when it is necessary. You will be able to enjoy the present moment fully. Immunity to heavy emotions: You will still feel emotions but not in a deep and incredibly painful way. You are simply ok with them. End of addicted and compulsive behaviors: No more hard or emotional behaviors (self-sabotage, relationship issues). End of worrying about what other people think of you, or how you look or act. Permanent end to (neurotic) striving in life: Most of your drives are neurotic. Worrying about having more love, more money, power, status, etc. No more spending time neurotically on how to acquire external stuff to fulfill the inner void. Eliminate loneliness and neediness: These are complete illusions of your mind. Loneliness is caused by the illusion of ever being separate. These things only have power over the ego. Eliminate all neuroses (emotional psychic patterns): Neuroses are a state of "not being ok with the reality as it is.” Enlightenment just makes one become reality. Eliminate a lot of stress: How much time you are stressed by your family, health, wealth, etc? That will be significantly reduced. Imagine doing all the things you do but without stress and without any concern. Less need for sleep & more physical energy: Thought processes consume tons of energy → they rob us of energy. Your body is actually burning calories to feed these processes. All your energy after Enlightenment will be directed to enjoying life or pursuing your actual passions. Removes mental stress and releases energy. Foundational to real self actualization work: You haven’t even started self-actualization until you start asking yourself Who You Really Are. Until you discover who you really are your ability to do personal development is very very limited. Most of your progress is really shallow and superfluous. You cannot comprehend advanced self-development until you have some enlightenment experiences. Enlightenment is actually the beginning of a whole journey that you stay on for the rest of your life. IT FREES YOU UP IN ALL THE AREAS OF YOUR LIFE SINCE THE ONLY THING THAT WAS IN YOUR WAY WAS YOUR LIMITING IDENTITY. It opens you up to change your life in whatever way you want and imagine: You can change your personality in whatever way you want. You can do whatever you want with your career, your relationships. Your biggest obstacle is your identity and what you accomplish will be determined by who you think you are. Helps you deal with disasters: With enlightenment you know how to deal with them and stay unaffected. Suffering by chronic pain. Loved ones dying. A big problem to your health or business. Enlightenment puts you in touch with your body. You will revel in your physical vitality. Longer life and better health. Your mental environment will be much healthier, which affects the mind-body connection. Deep unconditional self-acceptance and self-love: That not possible unless you unwire your ego. Imagine how powerful your life can be if you live from a position of deep, unconditional self-love and self-acceptance. Enables true unconditional love of reality: What you think is love is not love at all. You are not capable of true love as long as you believe you are a separate individual living in a body. If you become enlightened you can love all reality unconditionally, not just the parts that please your ego. Once restrictions by the ego are released, love just pours out of you. Powerful and authentic relationships: You now think you have authentic relationships with people and the answer is no (friendships, love relationships, family, children, customers, bosses, etc.) If you want to take your relationships to a whole new level of depth and beauty and health, become enlightened. You need to realize Who You Really Are and then realize who the other person really is, existentially. That lets you have an authentic relationship that is not based on neediness, manipulation or self-agenda. Your ego is preventing that from being possible. Immunity to midlife crises: Existential crisis: wondering about what the point is of all of life, of being, of all this. The only reason this is happening is because the ego senses it’s own falsehood and fakeness. All this need for "making sense” of life is just caused by the ego not wanting to become obsolete. Deepest possible understanding of reality, truth and existence: Truth is not accessible through knowledge, science or philosophy. Truth and the meaning of life is only accessible through direct experience. Death without regrets: On their deathbed, most people wish they had spent more time connected to reality itself. They realize that "doing" was a huge mistake, they should have been "being" more. Being in nature more, enjoying more, living authentically to one's own values. Healthier attitude to the world, society and humanity: No more dysfunctional relationships between the world and people. 21st century: crisis, because the ego has done a lot of damage. You can turn that around by changing yourself. This makes it much easier to be honest and ethical with others, which improves the world. What’s the best way of changing the world for the better: getting Enlightened!! It’s the best gift to the world. If everybody did that, the world would be fine. Life can become satisfying like when you were a child: A feeling of being in the zone all the time. Being free of concerns and flowing with life effortlessly. Unconditional happiness. THE ABILITY TO BE SO PRESENT THAT YOU ARE IN THE ZONE 24/7 IS THE ONLY WAY TO BE HAPPY AND HAVE PEACE OF MIND. What's the catch? There's gotta be a cost... The cost is you and your entire way of life! You need to give up your identity, your ego, yourself. You also have to give up the parts of yourself you love, especially these parts. You have to give up the idea that you are a physical human body and a localized consciousness. What Enlightenment will reveal is: You have no identity. Life is meaningless. Everything you believe and know about the world is wrong. There is no good and bad, all judgements are fictions. There is no value in anything. There is no self and no ego being improved by all this work. You have zero control over life, because there is no “you” to have control. This is an absolute surrender. There really are no benefits to Enlightenment. To ask what the benefits are is the problem Catch 22 problem: Thinking about the benefits of Enlightenment only feeds the ego. “You” will not be benefitted by Enlightenment, but Who You Really Are will be benefitted by Enlightenment. To trick the ego into killing itself, you have to tell it what’s in it for him/her. The ego is not literally killed. It never existed in the first place. Like how finding out Santa isn’t real doesn’t kill Christmas or make your presents disappear. Benefits are pseudo-benefits to convince the ego. My life will be extraordinary, but it won't be my life any more, but that won't be a problem any more. What is Enlightenment like: The paradox of enlightenment is that even though it has some negative aspects (life is meaningless, there is no one to be benefited, etc), it’s the most meaningful pursuit ever. YOUR LIFE ONLY REALLY BEGINS AFTER YOU GIVE YOURSELF UP. LIFE BEGINS AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT. Your life now is a hollow dream, a portion of life. You don’t even comprehend what true life entails. Not a single enlightened person regretted becoming enlightened. Imagine that you are actually living in hell and that by waking up you will wakeup in heaven. With enlightenment you will be in heaven and you will never want to come back. The gates of hell are protected by the ego and all this "me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, whats in it for me” talk. The ego is at home in hell. It thinks there’s nothing beyond hell. This is a tragedy. You can't even comprehend the true power, joy, majesty and beauty of life! Master life strategy: My entire life should be about Enlightenment! It’s the ultimate strategic intent. Materialism is a lie. The quality of your life does not improve with success! Stupidity is the default mode! I have to be wise enough! If there is wisdom in you you will realize that you should be pursuing enlightenment.

Good advice @Moksha ? This reminds me of a David Mamet monologue ?.

Hey @Leo Gura, In your blog post "Things I’ve been wrong about” you said, “I was wrong about the metaphysics of the law of attraction. I no longer believe the law of attraction merely works through brute mechanical means.” Can you elaborate on this, please? Also, are you more likely to experience synchronicities or “good luck” the higher your consciousness is, or the more aligned you are with love? If so, why?

Now I wish I'd spent way more time editing v2!

(Surprised this one hasn’t been done yet. Great episode for countering self sabotage and building a strong life foundation. Links and details on examples come from me, unless they offend you then they came from google ) 388. Summary: Understanding Ego Backlash “Leaps forward are often preceded by desperate regressive steps backward” — Don Beck & Chris Cowan -Along the self-actualization journey you will experience many ego backlashes. Be prepared for them! The human mind is like a harmonic oscillator in physics. A harmonic oscillator is a simple spring where you pull the spring, let it go and it swings back and forth along an equilibrium, seeking homeostasis. Homeostasis is the tendency to resist change in order to maintain a stable, relatively constant internal environment. -The ego-mind is like a harmonic oscillator because restoring forces work on you to get you back to equilibrium, to keep you how you’ve always been. Ego backlash is a big part of that restoring force, that homeostatic drive in you. -So what is ego backlash? Anytime you make a significant change to the complex system that is you, expect a counter force that will pull you back towards homeostasis (aka: equilibrium.) eg: If you’ve been fat your whole life, but you’re trying to get skinny, expect a counter force to come in and pull you back towards being fat. Same goes for any positive change you’re trying to make. Where the Ego Comes From -The mind or ego-mind contains all the behaviors, patterns and survival strategies that you've accumulated since birth. It’s filled with all sorts of meanings and symbols that you’ve created about life. All of that gets hardwired into a giant, complex, non-linear network. That network is responsible for maintaining its own survival. (clip: Struggle to Survive Limits Growth [4 mins]) If your ego-mind, this network, didn't have a survival drive it would dissolve and you would die. So you’ve picked up and built a lot of survival scripts from childhood (clip: What Shapes You Most—Suffering and Love [5 min]). -The behaviors and strategies you learned in childhood were necessary, because whatever situation you were born into created survival challenges. You had to learn coping strategies to be loved by your family and get them to meet your biological needs (food, shelter, safety). eg: Maybe your mom was hyper critical, so you became a perfectionist. Maybe your brother was a bully, so you became quiet to avoid his wrath. Maybe your sister was the golden child, so you became the rebel to get some semblance of attention. (clip: Survival Scripts [6 min]) -You developed more survival strategies once you started socializing in school and earning a living in adulthood. So, even if you have physical survival handled you still care about survival in the social domain. Being liked, approved of, admired, getting a great partner, having successful kids and an admirable circle of friends. This is all deeply wired into your ego-mind. -The ego does two things: avoids suffering and pursues pleasure. That's your whole life in a nutshell. (What is Ego [13 min]). Spirituality tries to transcend survival drives. It asks, what does reality look like when you’re not preoccupied with survival? Ego is very safety and survival oriented. -You’ve confused your survival patterns and coping strategies with who you really are. You’ve become attached and formed an identity out of them. Now you think that's all life has to offer. Your worldview is actually quite arbitrary. You could have ended up with a very different worldview if your survival conditions were different. Recognizing that helps you detach from your worldview and stop treating it as this special, one true thing. Notice how you spend your life defending your worldview and your ego when it’s really just rationalizations. It’s illusions and fantasies held together by string. It’s not how reality actually is. (ep: Survival Shapes) That’s how the ego is born. You think that’s who you really are, this thing that needs to survive. -All complex systems have inertia to them, a homeostatic drive. It tries to maintain its current state, its equilibrium. If a system changes too much it will cease to exist. So, any outside force that can rearrange the system is always perceived as a mortal threat. Whether that change is harmful or helpful. eg: If you have a lego raft and you disassemble it to make a yacht, the raft no longer exists. Even if you use all the same pieces, the lego raft is significantly different than the lego yacht. -That’s why self actualization is so difficult. Your ego is the lego raft that wants to stay a raft. It doesn’t want to transform into a beautiful yacht because that requires getting disassembled. Most people don't appreciate that significant change equals death—the death of the old you. What is Ego Backlash? -Ego backlash is a primal, emotional force that drives you back to your old, unhealthy, dysfunctional ways, back to homeostasis. It’s demoralizing. It’s a giant step backward after a giant step forward. Because ego is fixated on survival, ego backlash is like an overprotective mother or father. It’s intention is to protect, even though the impact on the child can be damaging. It’s a very subconscious force. Ego backlash doesn't announce itself. You just experience the blunt impact of it. eg: You might get a craving for some some cheesecake, cheeseburgers, or cheese in a can, or porn, or a sadness that makes you want to go back to your ex even though she was a total jerk. You wonder, “Does self-help even work? Is this as good as it gets ?Can I really make significant changes in my life...?” -The answer is: of course you can, but it's going to take a lot more work than you probably realized. “Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.” —Alexis Carrel -The ego creates all sorts of clever structures to avoid suffering and to maximize pleasure. Your whole life has been built upon that. It’s structures are built upon older structures, like how modern Rome is built on many layers of ancient Roman ruins. That’s how your ego-mind and psyche are constructed. To get the most meaningful change you need to do some psychic archaeology on yourself. You need to excavate those skeletons that are responsible for why you feel so incomplete, so broken, so dissatisfied with life and so fundamentally inauthentic. (That’s why you’re so anxious about getting love and approval.) -Notice that most self help doesn’t go far enough. It just slaps some superficial change onto an unstable foundation. Unfortunately, you can’t fix deep foundational problems with a surface-level approach. That’s like trying to fix a tree by spray painting the leaves instead of nourishing the roots. That’s why people become self-help junkies. If the ego can distract you with a bunch of fancy theory, you’ll never get to the real work of applying the lessons and dismantling your ego. eg: What if you took a hard, honest look at your career and found out it violates your highest values? To grow spiritually you’d have to get a new job, but that will affect every area of your life. You need that job to pay the bills, to support your wife and kids. Losing that job might cost you your family. You have to stare all these consequences in the face. -Your ability to get significant, impactful change is proportional to how much you can tolerate deconstructing your foundation. Transforming your foundation comes with pain, the type of pain your ego’s been avoiding your whole life. That's why few people undertake a conscious, deliberate effort to transform their life. It’s way too threatening and painful to the ego. Any attempt sets off a scramble back to homeostasis, to that unsatisfying status quo. What Triggers an Ego Backlash? (26:20) -An ego backlash can get triggered in many ways. This list is not exhaustive at all. -A deep breakthrough, because the ego mind knows that if it keeps going in that direction it’ll die. So you’ll start wanting to avoid any spiritual work (meditation, self-inquiry, psychedelics, etc), maybe even for a long time. eg: Leo will spend ten days meditating non-stop. Then his ego will compel him to watch tv, play video games, or eat unhealthy food, which he usually doesn’t do. -After installing new healthy habits. Changing your work habits, developing a strong work ethic, waking up early, changing your diet, a no-fap challenge and so forth. -Trying to install too many habits at once. -Changing too quickly. If you do it too fast the ego backlash can be so strong it’s counterproductive. You could freak yourself out. You may even get disillusioned with personal development and avoid it for years. Select a pace of growth or deconstruction that will stretch but not scare you off the path. -Small changes can also provoke smaller sized ego backlash. Pursuing enlightenment will provoke much bigger ego backlash because it offers the most transformative power. -After enlightenment experiences, glimpses of non-duality, psychedelic trips, solo retreats, Vipassana retreats, after lots of self-inquiry. -Listening to binaural beats. They’re meditative and play different sound frequencies in each ear. Listening to them a lot can cause emotional upheaval from old memories resurfacing. After processing that, an ego backlash can happen. How to Prepare for an Ego Backlash? Prepare for them now so when you’re in the thick of it you can weather it wisely. 1) Don’t Make Any Drastic Life Decisions During an Ego Backlash! This is very important. It can be very dangerous. You could easily make some kind of foolish, rash decision (leaving your family, divorcing your spouse, quitting your job, suicidal ideation, etc.) Don't make any major life decisions when you're feeling very negative, crippled by fear, anger, sadness, or feeling very disempowered or mired in victim mentality. 2) Develop Mindfulness Skills Have those mindfulness muscles ready when you need them. You’ll especially need them in the heat of the moment when you want to throw all this theory out the window. Develop a daily meditation habit, do consciousness raising retreats, research and consider using psychedelics in a responsible, grounded way. 3) Expect That Ego Backlash Happens It will accompany any significant change in your life. It's going to bring fear, suffering, and a slew of emotion. It’s totally normal to experience this, so you’re not weak or abnormal. 4) Reframe Ego Backlash in a Positive Way It’s a sign of growth, so don’t get discouraged! It's precisely when you're backsliding that you have the most opportunity to learn and grow, but it’s also the toughest, most painful time to stay mindful. Whenever you feel like you’re regressing, remember, you’re actually being purified. You’re growing right now as you are suffering through this mindfully. That’s a really important reframe. When you’re feeling down, remember that your best states usually come after your worst states. You can rise to a new level, a new breakthrough if you just suffer through this mindfully, with compassion. By the next week or next day you can end up feeling pretty good! Remember, you can still try again next week, next month, next year, and this time you'll be wiser. 5) Be Compassionate and Self-loving Instead of Perfectionistic It's very powerful to apply self-love. Console yourself. Take good care of yourself. How would you treat a loved one who was going through an ego backlash? “But Leo, why am I so pathetic? Why can't I get my shit together? I deserve to feel guilty for splurging on food, porn, television!!” Don’t fall into the temptation of guilting, judging and condemning yourself. That just doubles your misery. When you're doing that, that's precisely when you're not learning. That’s the opposite of suffering mindfully. Nobody can suffer through a full ego backlash with perfect mindfulness, so don't be a perfectionist. If you expect perfection you'll fall short of that standard. That will just make you more depressed. Love Yourself. 6) Understand and Appreciate the Power of Homeostasis It’s keeping you alive, so don’t judge it. Understand your mind as a harmonic oscillator. It’s not evil or bad for pulling you back. Your ego is just very safety and survival oriented. eg: When you have a terrible psychedelic trip, one that scares the hell out of you, your mind will bring you back to normal within a week. That’s the helpful side of homeostasis. If it was that easy to shift your mind you could easily slip into total madness and stay stuck. 7) Setup Your Expectations for Growth Properly Growth is not a win-only journey, or a straight line that's constantly moving upwards (ep: Setting Proper Expectations.) Self-actualization is a series of ups and downs with occasional big spikes. After a big spike downward that’s usually when you get your biggest spike upward. Stop expecting quick fixes and one-time solutions. There’s almost never one thing that resolves all your issues. The ego likes to trick you into overestimating your own development, especially when you start seeing a little progress. You expect peak experiences to lock in and become your new permanent state when that’s not how it works. 8) Compassionately & Honestly Assess How Much Change You Can Handle Figuring out that balance is tricky, because the mind will use that as an excuse to not change. “I can't handle another meditation retreat. I can't handle more psychedelics.” It becomes a psychological cat and mouse game with your own mind about how much change you can truly tolerate without a complete regression. Self-inquiry is important for knowing where you’re at (ep: How To Do Self-Inquiry.) Figure out the right pace of growth through trial and error. Sometimes you just need to go through these “big change, then backslide” episodes three or four times to learn where your tipping points are. 9) Notice How Sneaky Your Ego Is This helps you head it off at the pass. You’re lost in the maze of your own mind. Life is so challenging because of all the tricks you play on yourself. You’re not sure how to distinguish your genuine motivations from the devilry of your ego. (ep: Life is a Maze. ep: Higher & Lower Quality Consciousness.) Notice your self-deception, your unhealthy survival strategies, your selfishness, how you evade responsibility, how you project onto others and the world (ep: What is the Devil.) Fortunately you have around 80 years to live, so you’ll have many opportunities to sort through all this stuff. You don’t have to fix everything right away. 10) Understand the Difference Between States and Stages of Growth It's much easier to attain a high state than it is to attain a high stage of development. A state is a peak experience. A stage takes years of work to build, just like learning an instrument or public speaking. As a newb you could get lucky and have a peak meditative state that even reaches zen master levels, but you're not going to be at the zen master’s stage of development. For that you’d need a decade of practice. It’s important to make that distinction so you don’t get seduced by those high peak states. People will do a retreat or some psychedelics and feel on top of the world. They assume that peak state will be their default state forevermore. It's never like that. Usually after a high state you drop back down into ego backlash. What To Do During an Ego Backlash 1) Label it explicitly. That helps you get some distance and objectivity. Call it out as an ego backlash. “That's the ego backlash Leo was talking about! There it is!” This helps you not get totally sucked in and absorbed. 2) Observe it as mindfully as possible. Apply your mindfulness muscles to those moments of sadness, depression and fear. Hopefully you’ve already built up those skills by then. As the ego contracts, the more mindfulness you have the more easily you can observe the ego without getting sucked in and lashing out from it. 3) Suffer though it mindfully, with compassion and self love. Mindful, compassionate suffering will purify you and that’s when you’ll make your greatest progress. It’s very counterintuitive. This is the pain of growth, so don’t feel discouraged. This too shall pass. Don’t guilt, judge or condemn yourself. That’s an ego trick to stop you from learning. Remember, you can get back on the horse again, but this time smarter and with more experience. (clip: Failure Generates Success [9 mins]) 4. Maintain your positive habits even if you don't feel like it. You probably won't want to meditate or observe your diet. You’ll probably want to push people away. Try not to do that. eg: Leo didn’t want to shoot this episode about ego backlash. He was procrastinating, resisting, then he went through the usual motions and by the time the camera was on it felt like any other day. 5. Try rewatching Leo’s episode on Ego Backlash. You can reflect on the lessons, which may help centre you through these challenging moments. The Collective Ego Backlash (42:50) -Individually we have egos and collectively complex systems also behave as though they have egos and survival drives. (ep: Collective Ego) -Ego backlash occurs within corporations, governments, political parties, social movements of various kinds, and so forth. There’s a parallel between the collective level and the individual level. World War II was an ego backlash of the German people against the harsh Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. It created a festering wound which ultimately allowed Hitler to come to power. The American South during the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) experienced a collective ego backlash against the abolition of slavery. The KuKluxKlan murdered black people in the 1000s during this time. Also, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (this action later cost him enough votes to lose the presidency.) Jim Crow laws were also a collective ego backlash against the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and other strides made by African Americans after the Civil War. -Oftentimes one stage will react strongly against another stage above it. They’ll try to dominate and demonize it. The crackdown on psychedelics after the hippie revolution in America (late 60s to early 70s.) Psychedelics were outlawed, all scientific research on them was basically banned for decades. These laws were passed by the Nixon administration. The war on drugs was declared and it’s still going on. Gamergate was a collective ego backlash against feminism, multiculturalism and various stage green spiral dynamics forces. (That backlash has filtered to other areas of geek culture, especially with youtube clickbait being so lucrative, although it’s arguably not as bad as Gamergate was.) If feminists from stage green try to demonize stage orange masculinity too much stage orange masculinity will come back and try to defend itself through an ego backlash. (Two balanced takes on representation in Star Wars and The Last Jedi. Vausch calls out leftist circles.) The Alt-Right movement and the Tea Party was born after the election of Barack Obama. It’s a stage blue/orange collective ego backlash against green. The election of Trump was a collective ego backlash against Obama (demo of Obama’s 2012 win.) That's not the only factor, but it’s a very interesting factor. Trump's rise to popularity within politics started with the birtherism thing which was really a direct attack on Obama. -All complex systems have these harmonic oscillators. For a corporation or political party to sustain itself as it is, it has to resist death. It does that by defending itself at all costs, even when it’s dysfunctional or pathological. -Right now the Republican party in America is self-destructing. Since 2016 we've been witnessing this. Some of them see it, but many of them don't because they are part of the system. So of course the system doesn't see that it is sabotaging itself. You Are the Republican Party! (48:06) -That's exactly what's happening in your life, with you. You have the intention to clean up your diet, to meditate, to self-inquire, to follow through on your dreams, but then you sabotage yourself. -You’re not conscious enough to really see how you're damaging yourself. You have different parts in your mind that are fragmented and fighting each other. You have the higher self, the lower self, survival scripts, competing coping mechanisms and more. -This is similar to how Europe needed to experience the horror of war in order to ultimately pacify and unify. Europe is quite unified right now, but that's only because there have been hundreds of wars throughout European history over the last couple thousands of years. A war is raging in your mind. All this needs to get reconciled for you create foundational, significant change in your life.

The most recent list of Summaries & Episodes is here ? Leo's Blog: Table of Contents ? ▶️ Blog Videos, Summaries & Interviews ▶️ ? Actualized.org on Psychedelics ? (has all resources on psychedelics) Leo’s "20 Dream Killers" article. There’s an Actualized.org Textbook. It was assembled by @Cepzeu and others. Summaries in the Textbook (v2) will say: (book pg XXX). You can also check out Leo’s Personal Development Blueprint. It covers over 100 concepts in personal development. Actualized.org Youtube Episodes: The first 200 episodes have transcripts in the video section of Actualized.org If you want to contribute to this thread, select one of the episodes that still needs a summary and post it here Episodes: 1 - 249 Episodes: 250 - 506

Thanks @Hulk ...or should I say Norton, or Ruffalo, or Ferrigno?