Whitney Edwards

We have literally over 250 traps to cover. So, I'm going to be breezing through some of these. I want to give you a big picture overview, so I'm not going to be delving into each point too much here. We're going to be going quickly. And also, keep in mind that I have episodes already on many of these points, multi-series episodes I have already on some of these points. All right, so here we go, the master list of traps. First is, and this is we're going to start with some of the biggest ones here, very general ones, is chasing money, sex, power, fame, status, approval, luxury, pleasure, and intoxicated states. I mean, that right there is like 80% of all the traps that humans fall into. Next is trying to get the easy life. Next is thinking you can get value for nothing. This is fool's gold right here. Within investing, within dating, within business, people try to get value for nothing, trying to leech value rather than being a massive value provider. And of course, this ends up hurting you in the end. Next is avoiding work and procrastination. Procrastination gets worse and worse the more you do it, like a Chinese finger trap. Next is avoiding responsibility, and one of the best ways we do that is by blaming others. That's a trap. Next is ignoring problems and letting them fester, sweeping problems under the rug, and then, closely related to that, is the next one, which is addressing problems but only at the surface and not at the root, such that your problems keep recurring over and over again for years, for the rest of your life, rather than just investing the time and energy to solving it permanently. I've talked about that in the past; it was actually one of my first videos that I ever recorded was on that topic. Next is being indecisive and avoiding making decisions and then getting stuck without direction, rudderless. I have an episode about how to become more decisive. Next is the trap of scientific materialism, logical positivism, reductionism, rationalism, and scientism. Of course, I've covered that topic a lot so I won't delve much deeper into it here. But we should also mention here closely related is atheism, the trap of atheism, and the trap there is the dismissing of religion as superstition and fantasy. Of course, that leads us to the next step which is religion itself. Religion is one of the biggest traps there is. So how can it be the case that atheism is a trap and religion is also a trap? Well, of course, the atheists are right; there is a lot of nonsense within religion, but not all of it is nonsense. I want to do an episode just about atheism; I don't think I've ever discussed it deeply enough at this point. I mean, it's, I would think I have, but I don't think I have a specific episode on atheism yet. Long overdue. Next is consuming too much media: television, video games, news, and then of course, closely related and deserves its own mention and special category of social media and all the kind of rabbit holes you can go down with the conspiracy theories, various kinds of ideologies, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all this kind of stuff. The overconsumption of this to the point where it drains hundreds and thousands of hours of your life that you should be investing in building yourself and developing skills. I think a lot of young people are falling into this trap right now; they're just spending way too much time on TikTok, way too much time on Instagram. It's spoiling their mood, but also they're spending a lot of time playing video games, thousands of hours of online video games and so on, instead of really spending the first decade or two of their lives, the most important decade or two just laying their foundation. The next trap is junk food and processed food. The next one is outsourcing crucial functions to others. So there are certain things that you should outsource and delegate to others, and in fact, it's a trap if you don't do that, trying to do everything yourself rather than specializing, delegating, and outsourcing is itself a problem. And I suffer from that problem because I tend to want to do everything myself because I subscribe to that adage that if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself. But of course, that makes you very limited in what you're able to do. So you have to learn how to delegate and work with others to accomplish larger goals. But there are certain things you should never outsource, for example, outsourcing your inner problems to a therapist. Now there's nothing wrong with going to a therapist; in fact, I recommend it for everybody if you can afford it. They're pretty expensive, but the problem here is what I see is that a lot of times people are going to a therapist, but then they're not actually doing all the self actualization work that we talk about here on this channel. They're not really getting involved in that; they're just going to a therapist in a sort of like, "I'm just going to go to the therapist once a week, and they're going to solve all my problems." It just, it's not going to work this way. Therapists can help you, but really, this is, you know, when we're talking about therapeutic type stuff, we're talking about the mastery of your own mind. This is self-mastery we're talking about ultimately. And no one, this is not something you should be outsourcing to anybody. This is stuff you've got to, this is like your main job in life is doing this. So if you're not doing that, this is the trap of outsourcing that I'm talking about. Or for example, outsourcing your marketing for your business to somebody. Now, of course, if you just have some sort of low-level marketing stuff like you need somebody to post some stuff for you on Twitter or whatever, of course, you can outsource that. But I mean, like your marketing strategy, see marketing is the heart of your business. That's not something you should be outsourcing; that's something that you got to take charge of, you got to be a master in because that is what determines whether your business will succeed or fail. It's mostly your marketing strategy, see that's why they pay you the big bucks if you're the owner of the business, if you're the founder of the business, if you're the CEO. That's your job is to take care of that, not to expect somebody else to do it for you.

This is a transcript of Leo's latest video.. I copied it from Agrande's post in the high consciousness section. I thought having a copy of this will be useful for referencing in the future. This is a very practical episode. Here, I want to present you with a powerful conceptual lens to help you navigate all of life, and that lens is traps. Think of life as a dungeon full of booby traps, and your job is to use intelligence, wisdom, consciousness, intuition, and experience to foresee and avoid all of these traps. Traps are not so much set by evil people, although sometimes they are, but the most important traps are the traps of your own mind. Of course, the psychological traps, and really, you're learning to navigate the trickeries of your own mind and the mind at large, which is what the universe is. Mind or consciousness, as we've discussed many times before, is a very tricky thing. A general theme of our work here has been seeing how reality is all about illusion, deception, and of course, illusions create traps. And intelligence is your ability to see through those traps. But what is a trap really? A trap isn't just something that's bad; it's not just a mistake. A trap is something that's bad but seems good. Traps are enticing; a trap presents you with some large gain and value only to cost you greatly in the end. Think of how a mousetrap works. You get that juicy piece of cheese for the rat, but what's the cost? Instant death. So, it's that alluring quality of these traps which got me thinking about this whole theme and starting to look at reality through this kind of lens. This is a powerful, practical lens that I want to share with you. A trap can be thought of also as a kind of illusion. Like, think, for example, of a mirage in the desert. That's a trap or something that seems true but is actually false. So, there's these kinds of intellectual traps that we can fall into. For example, this is a kind of a silly one that you can try out on a child (won't really work on an adult), but something like, what weighs more, a ton of gold or a ton of feathers? See, if you're not careful, you'll fall into that intellectual trap. A child might also. You should notice that animals, children, the immature, the inexperienced, and the desperate are the easiest to trap. Speaking of children, I read a story a while back, a few months ago, about a girl in Florida. She was with her family at the beach, digging around in the sand, building sand castles, digging holes and stuff like that, as children do. And she dug a hole so big she crawled into it, and then, of course, it collapsed. She got trapped under the sand; nobody could hear her screams, and she was found there, buried alive. The perfect illustration of how you can entrap yourself. And that's really going to be our focus here, is how your own mind traps you. But just think about that, just imagine being that child, digging this hole, having fun in the sand, and then this whole thing just collapses on you. But see, she wasn't thinking that far enough ahead about the consequences of her actions. And this, of course, turns out to be how most traps work. There's another story, I forget where it's from, Africa someplace where they have monkeys. They have these monkeys in the forest, small monkeys. And then the way that hunters trap them is that they'll get a bottle with a narrow neck, they'll take a small little nut, coat it in honey, put it in the bottle, and then they'll throw this bottle out into the forest. The monkeys come by, they want the nut, they reach in there with their little paws, grab the nut through the bottleneck, but then their fist is clenched, they can't let go of the nut, and then they're stuck to that bottle. And then the hunter comes by and clubs them over the head. Traps can also be thought of as fantasies that you have, fantasies you've constructed in your mind which puts you out of touch with reality, which leads us into this whole separate side issue of fantasy, which I want to have a whole episode on in the future. It's really a pretty advanced topic of how your mind uses fantasy to avoid reality and to create all sorts of problems for itself. Also, traps work by subverting assumptions. I have a whole episode called "Assumption is the Mother of all Fuckups" where we discuss about the trickeries of assumptions and how they get you into trouble. Well, of course, those come into play here as well. So, we're connecting a lot of threads in this episode, you'll see a lot of connections with prior episodes that I've done, I'll be pointing those out to you as we go. A trap is often painting yourself into a corner with short-term thinking. I wouldn't worry so much about others trapping you, and I would urge you to focus more on how you trap yourself. And, of course, you trap yourself not just as an individual but also collectively. So, we're going to take a look at traps of individuals but also collective traps. How do you trap yourself as a society, as an organization, as a tribe? That's also a common problem. And one of the greatest meta traps is not seeing yourself as your own greatest enemy, of course, which is what you are. You know, trying to externalize the enemy out there somewhere. So, we're going to be interconnecting a lot of these themes here, and I'm going to be giving you many examples, hundreds of examples literally, of traps that I've come up with, that I've discovered, and to help get your mind jogging to understand what's really being talked about here, the depth of this lens and how much it can do for you, how powerful it is. And then also, I'm going to, afterwards, share with you a list of ways to avoid falling into these traps, like what are the principles for avoiding traps in general. So, every domain in life that you go into will have traps, that's one of the general principles. And throughout your life, you'll be entering new domains periodically. Every few years, you'll be entering into something new. You'll be entering a relationship, you'll be entering a new business, you'll be entering a marriage, you'll be having children, and each of those domains come, of course, with its own traps. And there are newbie traps, intermediate level traps, then very advanced traps. So, you could break it down that way as well, make those kinds of distinctions. But wouldn't it be wise from this point forward, you know, up until this point in your life, you've probably been going into various new domains not very consciously and not explicitly looking and thinking of them in terms of traps. Wouldn't it be more intelligent, though, to study and contemplate the common traps in every new domain that you enter before you enter it? From now on, that alone right there can save you a lot of trouble. Here are some of the top domains to consider in terms of traps: business, employment, and career; investing and managing your money; dating, relationships, sex, and marriage; family, raising children; education, schooling, and university; academia, science, philosophy, epistemology; spirituality and religion; politics; creativity in doing your art; health, healthcare, medicine, and nutrition; martial arts or sports; marketing, advertising, and sales; buying a house; socializing, learning the whole social world and how to socialize, how to relate with others; the pursuit of happiness; the traps of each spiral stage of development; the domain of emotions; psychedelics, drugs, and intoxicants; geographic domains when you're traveling around the world. Each country you travel to has its own traps. This brings me to Florida. You know, it seems like every year, I read news stories every month I read news stories about a crocodile grabbing somebody, some old granny walking down the street near the pond gets snatched up by a crocodile, dragged under. I watched a video on TikTok or Instagram recently where some old man was walking his little lap dog near the pond and a crocodile jumps out, grabs the little dog, swallows it, and then retreats back into the water. And the old man, he jumps into the pond, grabs this crocodile or alligator, whatever it was, and is just prying its jaws open to get his dog out. I don't know what happened after that. But the reason I bring up this Florida crocodile thing is because to me, crocodiles are a great allegory, a sort of a symbolism of traps. When I think about traps, I think about crocodiles. To me, that's like nature's trap, is the crocodile. And to me, crocodile represents also truth and reality. Because see, a lot of, again, one of the ways you fall into traps is by avoiding truth, as humans characteristically love to do. And so, what ends up happening is you avoid enough truth, eventually, reality comes to bite you. And so, the way I visualize that in my mind is with crocodiles. Crocodile, to me, represents truth, reality. And then, your head is filled with fantasy, naive foolish fantasies. You're just kind of like traipsing along near the pond, you know, innocently minding your own business, skipping along. And then, a crocodile snatches you. That's truth. That's reality. Reality is harsh, that's how it is. It doesn't play games with you, it doesn't compromise, you can't negotiate with it. Once your head is in a crocodile's jaws, you can't negotiate your way out of that, you can't fuck your way out of that, all of your human bullshit flies out the window. That's what I love about this crocodile metaphor so much because it cuts through all the human bullshit in the social domain. Humans love to bullshit so much. But then, when you're in nature, when you're facing a powerful animal, when you're facing the forces of nature that you can't negotiate with, that's when you really see the truth of who you are. Bestselling books could be written about the traps in each of these domains. For example, you could have a million-dollar book titled "The Traps of Spirituality," "The Traps of Academia," "The Traps of Politics," "The Traps of Business," "The Traps of Investing," "The Traps of Dating," "The Traps of Mainstream and Alternative Medicine." These are all million dollar best-selling book ideas right here. And also extremely practical. Think about it, if you saw one of these books on the bookshelf, you would instantly snatch it up. So, if you want a great book title or a video title, just "Traps of [blank]," and then fill in the blank with whatever thing you're interested in. But, of course, to be able to write an effective book on any of these topics, you would need to have deep experience with each of these topics, which can take years and decades to acquire and at great cost as well. So, I've spent the last years patiently compiling a list of over 250 traps on this topic. I've been wanting to shoot this episode for two years now, and finally, here we go. Let's jump into it.

I've lately been thinking about the pre mortem technique and how it could be implemented before any important life decision. Any examples if you found it successful.

Porn is nothing but addiction.

This sounds a bit unnecessarily stretched and complicated.

My exact words. Yes.

Three insights came up during my meditative practice. First one : God is love consciousness.. We are love. If you know you are love, you'll stop looking for love, you won't need to. You'll know you're love. Live in love. That's ultimate maturity. Second one : Divine intelligence is love. It cannot be otherwise. It simply isn't anything else. Morality is just a trap, a very bad one, that actually keeps us away from the fabric of Love. There is no divine love, only love, pure love and our souls feel it. Third one : We live our whole lives in self deception. We are self deception. We are clowns and we live in idiocy. We don't receive the gift of love because we don't want to ever get rid of this empty facade of a life we live. We pretend to know everything but reality and divine intelligence is simply beyond our grasp. If you truly begin to connect with your divine nature by recognizing love, then you'll experience love consciousness in glimpses, you'll realize that divine intelligence was always here for you in the here and now, you simply never saw it.

I ordered Awaken the Giant Within. Thanks.

I only need 1 perfect book on productivity. I have tried so many but many of these books are just endless stories about the author and their struggles rather giving practical suggestions on how to get shit done. I just recently bought The Atomic Habits bestseller by James Clear and still it's the same thing. I don't find it helpful. Which book has helped you the most. I'm looking to order a book right now.

@integration journey I'm thinking about awaken the giant within. I have heard a shit ton about Tony Robbins. Would that be a good idea

@integration journey I think I have deep work. How is the other one?

My lifelong goal will be to improve my mental and spiritual stamina.

I might come up with insights occasionally. I just want to continue my insight work. And I'll post these insights on the main forum perhaps just once each month, I don't plan to post too much about it because it kinda gets repetitive then.. Now I plan to post mostly once a month in the spirituality section. Rest of my time or rest of my year will be spent in exploring different spiritual themes and techniques.

It's not the human emotion love. It's the love of the Universal mind. The love of the universal oneness. Leo explains that love in this video clip to help you understand better.

Thank you.

@gettoefl yes love.

The soul is the agency of divine intelligence. The soul is the conduit of love consciousness.

Three insights came up during my meditative practice. First one : God is love consciousness.. We are love. If you know you are love, you'll stop looking for love, you won't need to. You'll know you're love. Live in love. That's ultimate maturity. Second one : Divine intelligence is love. It cannot be otherwise. It simply isn't anything else. Morality is just a trap, a very bad one, that actually keeps us away from the fabric of Love. There is no divine love, only love, pure love and our souls feel it. Third one : We live our whole lives in self deception. We are self deception. We are clowns and we live in idiocy. We don't receive the gift of love because we don't want to ever get rid of this empty facade of a life we live. We pretend to know everything but reality and divine intelligence is simply beyond our grasp. If you truly begin to connect with your divine nature by recognizing love, then you'll experience love consciousness in glimpses, you'll realize that divine intelligence was always here for you in the here and now, you simply never saw it.

we live in self deception

God is love consciousness

divine intelligence is love

god is love consciousness

Internal work comes first.

Truth

What if you fall in a trap and then growing through and outgrowing that trap, you begin to realize your true nature or you are directed greatly in a completely different direction that makes you work harder on your goals or a profound realization about relative reality that shakes you up and makes you do things you never imagined before and now there's a transformative quality to the trap, it's no longer something negative but an adventure in the long schema of things, a milestone to step on to a new plane? Curious to know what you think about this? I cannot come up with a discreet example yet I have had instances where I felt regret as well as blessed in the same situation that felt like a trap. Curious to know your take on such things.