Nic

@Jack River I believe for my part, it's more a fear of not being the ideal self that I imagine I should be right now, than not becoming the person I'd like to be in the future as I know I'm always growing. Holding on to that imaginary projections of me, comparing it to what I Am right now, is what my mind is up to at the moment. Next month it's going to be something else, sad but true. But I see your point! Thanks

@bejapuskas The most generous people I know of, are blue... And they give genuinely...

@Nahm I hope I don't need to wait to be turquoise to go and help some Alzheimer patient or do some grocery shopping for elderly. A lot of people sacrifice their time to help others and they are far from being turquoise, still in the blue for example.

@Leo Gura I feel you Leo and you are most probably right, but I'm actually afraid of doing your course as I don't see me starting my life again with 40... I'm going to do it at some point probably! What is when you think that you already have found your LP ? And that would be, playing the guitar... And I honestly still suck after 6 years into it,... so yeah it just takes time... but I want to give people a good time listening to what I play, make them forget about their worries and even heal some with sounds and poetry. I love music that much... My actual occupation gives me a lot of free time and even though I don't like my job like use to, it gives me the opportunity to do my passion and to enjoy life with the financial security that comes with it.

Self-Deception part 1/2/3 “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman “Self deception covers it’s own track” Daniel Goleman Your mind is inherently self-deceptive. René Descartes’s saying “I think therefore I Am” means that the fact that I’m doubting means that there has to be someone who is doubting. He came to the conclusion that it was not possible to live in a matrix or that some evil demons had the power over the human’s mind, as the demon in question would still have someone to deceive. The one thing that almost no philosopher takes seriously is that the mind is inherently a self-deception machine. The whole point of self deception is that you don’t take it seriously, otherwise it wouldn’t be a successful self-deception. Your own mind is the evil demon, the self-deception is utterly total. All there is to this game called life is self-deception within self-deception within self-deception… We don’t need science-fiction scenarios like Descartes or that the world could be a simulation, the mind has complete power over you. The number one biggest mistake in life is to believe that your own mind can be trusted. That is epistemology, how do you know that what you know is reliable. The mind will take every opportunity to deceive you. Your mind wants to construct a reality without you being aware that you construct it. You are your own conspiracy theory. The mind can construct an unbreakable illusion that goes all the way to the existential level. When you think you are controlling it, it is actually the one that is controlling you. You don’t need to worry about other people trick you but the only way that they can trick you is because you trick yourself. Ask yourself: Can I trust my own mind? Am I deceiving myself? And listen carefully for the answer. The whole problem is that the process is circular. How did something come out of nothing? How is creation possible at all? Things can come into being only through one mechanism, deception! How does God (reality) create the world? Through self-deception. Why would God need to deceive itself? God creates infinite forms through deception, . God or reality deceives itself. This one thing can take on many forms only by tricking itself into thinking that it’s limited and finite, rather than infinite. Deception becomes the mechanism of creation. Reality must deceive itself to come into existence. This is how you and the universe came into existence. You whole body and mind is made out of self-deception. At least that’s what you get if you stop thinking that reality is objective. The greatest self-deceptions are believing that you are real, important and must survive. Descartes doubted everything but he couldn’t doubt the Self. The minds needs self-deception for creation, on top of that is build the entire web of lies that is, the rest of your life. Consider that lies are actually much more useful than truth in many situation as the mind likes to flip everything on its head. People lie to get what they want. As long as you are alive, all your attention goes to staying alive. What if there is something beyond living and staying alive. But the mind’s job is not to keep the body alive the way people think, but to keep the idea of “you” alive. People think that the idea of you resides in the body, but the idea of is more fundamental than your body, all kind of things can happen to it, and this is the reason why people mutilate themselves for spiritual reasons, as the body is just another idea, the idea of you. The “you” is not a body, it is a conglomeration of conceptual ideas. Becoming a martyr is not a selfless act, it’s completely selfish, they have some idea of them where martyr-ship plays into, how they will live in the memories of there followers and fans, and live on in the afterlife is more important than staying physically alive. So surviving is not about the body, it’s about surviving the idea of you. Self-deception is not only about enlightenment… Most of things you love in life are self-deceptions: money, wealth, ownership, security, laws & right, religion, history, movies, porn, time, language, confidence, fame, power, what’s good and bad, meaning and purpose, ideologies, science, family, corporations, nations, equality, rank status, culture, video games… -Ownership: a piece of paper saying that you own your house or your dog is just ridiculous -Security: The more power you think you acquire, the more insecure you become. The most insecure people are dictators. This is why they have the biggest arsenal to begin with. -Human rights: There is nothing holding this laws but human consensus, an invention to make yourself more secure -Movies, novels, porn are all virtual simulations -Family: You have convinced yourself that there is a special connection between people based on some genetic similarity. You got to treat them in a special way, rather than the way that you treat other human beings. There is no more connection between you and your mother than between you and a coffee table as it is all one thing. There is nothing special about your family, that is just an illusion that the mind creates because it is an important component of you staying alive. -Nations & corporations: Are both completely fabricated identities, the border of the country is an imaginary line. -Equality, fairness: Reality is what it is, you want equality for your pragmatic agenda, so you get a better life for yourself Even the sources of knowledge are also serving the pragmatic survival agenda. Are corrupted by self-deception: Logic, reason, science and mathematics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, history, economics, business, personal development, religion, spirituality and non-duality. The process of talking about self-deceptions is itself riddled in self-deceptions. You actually don’t want the truth, you want to be wrapped up in the illusion, knowledge itself is part of the self-deception. There are 2 types of knowledge: Conventional knowledge what you get from school and university. That is not too dangerous for the mind… And then there is self-knowledge, the meta knowledge, about the mechanism of how knowledge works, epistemology. The mind is careful to withhold all meta-knowledge from you, the mechanism of knowledge itself. Society is an entire self-deception. What are the evidence that self-deception is real? -You have double standards, you criticize others but not yourself for example, for cutting people off in traffic, you don’t insult yourself when you do it -Have you also noticed that people believe a lot of crazy stuff in the world, they are all crazy, or self deceived but you. You notice that in others but not in yourself. Don’t try to fix others, worry about yourself, as you focus outward you are not focussing inward and therefore the mind accomplish its objective of distracting you. -The way humans treat evil. Evil is just selfishness. To be alive is to be evil. You deny it and pretend to be that good upstanding moral person. Everybody is just as evil as you are but you just want to push your own agenda. The only reason why you think nazis are evil is because they are threatening your agenda. There is nothing wrong with all this, but this is what it is to be alive. Most of human history is about one group of people ruling over another group of people. A generation later we think we are better than they were as if we were immune to the self-deception of the previous generation. And if we don’t run into the previous self-deception, we run into a new one even deeper, thinking we are finally at the top and have reached perfection, we figured reality out, we know the truth. The question is, can you see your own self-deceptions? By judging others, you are falling into the trap of self-deception. Reason itself is the chief tool of self-deception. Reasons are used to justified your self-agenda. The reason why rationalists like to argue about people who are faith-based is precisely because they are ignorant of the faith that they ground their reason in. Reason itself is based on faith. This is a problem of conflict of interests, self-bias and lack of honesty. Reason will only make this worse. You can’t think your way out of this problem. It’s a slow process. Your entire mind/body will revolt against the truth, against self-reflecting and noticing it’s own self-deceptions. Every time you try to change yourself, you fall back. The mind is helping you to maintain your self. Every one has their own pace, with their own problem. You have to turn inwards to find and face your inner demons. The mind hates this process a lot. Everybody denies that he is the devil, that is the nature of the mind. You can jailbreak your own mind. But the mind knows all its own attempt to jailbreak itself and it can easily stop those. It’s like to play chess with yourself. But it is possible as the final leap will come from outside of your mind, that would be enlightenment, that is not going to come from you. But even after enlightenment the mind will still be there. In a nutshell, the mind is trying to prevent self-reflection because everything is an illusion. You are God deceiving itself into thinking that it’s not God but that it’s you, a finite being. Why would God Trick himself? Because he can. The solution to self-deception is self-reflections, it means questioning everything you hold as certain, about yourself and the world. What all personal growth boils down to is going from a place of maximum self-deception to a place of minimum self-deception, the more you do that, the less suffering you’ll have in your life. By believing that you are a separate entity you have the ability to experience and to discover how beautiful and amazing reality is. Self-Deception part 2 - 60+ Self-Deception Mechanisms “Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself” Ludwig Wittgenstein “Thought is always saying that thought didn’t do it” David Bohm Recap: The mind is a self-deceptive engine because without illusion nothing can exist, reality must be dreamed into being. This dream needs to be sustained it is so through self-deception. It is not in the mind’s interest to look inside at the machinery constructing the dream. The dream is maintained through a lack of self-awareness and self-reflection. You can have the idea to jailbreak the mind and to see what reality is like, outside of the dream. To be alive is to be selfish. It’s convenient to deceive yourself before you actually deceive other people, once you deceived yourself, that let’s you get away with a lot of selfish stuff. Would you think a coucou bird would survive by not kicking the other eggs of the nest of another bird if it has some sense morality? Human beings are social creatures, we live in large groups, we need a sense of morality, but nevertheless, we don’t want to be too honest with each other and ourselves and so we are some of the most deceptive creatures that exist. We need to be deceiving and at the same doing as if nothing is going on. What better way to this by deceiving yourself in the process. Think of how sneaky you can be when you don’t even know that you are being sneaky. It’s a work of genius, it’s mind-blowing! The deception goes like this: You think you know things that you really do not know. Everytime you have a firm position on anything, you open yourself up to self-deception. Here a a list of the different mechanism: -Thinking that you got reality figured out -Believing that reality is an objective thing, that facts exits independently from interpretation -Assuming that self-deception is not a significant factor in your life, underestimating it -Thinking that you can dismiss and avoid metaphysics -Conceptualization, confusing the map for the territory, distinguish between a concept and direct experience, separate your thoughts from sensory perceptions. -Language and labeling, by putting names and labels, we believe that we know more about an object than we really do. Science and academics love to use complicated language. Labels contain a large number of connections and meanings of other concepts. That is forming networks in your mind of meanings and that creates all sorts of aberrance in your mind that are difficult to escape. -Beliefs and hearsay, science is a highly beliefs based system, big bang etc, believing that this is not a belief, is a belief as well. Did you actually check the facts for yourself? Contemplation, meditation, this is raw experience. 99% of what you hold to be true is just beliefs. -Judging the correctness of your worldview based on how cohesive it feels, but how do you differentiate one world view from another? You will pick the one that you grew up in, the closest to your personal preference, that will feel cohesive. -The unwillingness to admit that “you don’t know”. We have always good explanations for everything but you don’t actually know much. Not knowing implies that we are stupid or that there is something wrong with us. -Childhood imprinting and indoctrination, the mind will believe whatever its environment leads it to believe, especially religious or atheist & metaphysical beliefs. -The need for contrast in order for the human mind to grasp something, the mind requires contrast to be conscious of things. By traveling you get the contrast of the different cultures. You take oxygen for granted because there is no contrast. If you don’t have any contrast to reality, then whatever you are experiencing seems like reality -Assumptions, we make assumptions without being conscious that they are assumptions and build a web of beliefs around it. -Self evidence or “a priori” truths, truth that or so obvious that they don’t need further investigations, like 1+1=2, but you are absolutely clueless. -Emotions (what puts you into motions), the mind doesn’t manipulate you through logic and reasons but through emotions, and they one of the hardest thing to master. If your mind wanted to trick you, hide something from you, it would hide it behind a wall of fear, like the fear of death. The mind uses fear, anger, boredom to make you avoid self-reflection and they are extremely effective. Did you notice that reason and logic doesn’t help much when you are afraid of snakes or heights. Emotions are the minds primary way of controlling you. All notions of truth, morality, kindness, love fly out the window when you are angry, depressed and fearful. -Not being conscious of your own ego reactions. Science doesn’t like to admit the entire influence of psychology and emotions upon the entire reasoning process, that would mean the entire process is corrupt, they’d like to believe that reason is the primary process, but it is the secondary process. Psychology, emotions and ego are the primary process. The mind hides all this to fulfill its agenda -Projection is demonizing other people through denying that the problem comes from you. Look how evil and selfish terrorists are… you’d better look at yourself. -Distractions (episode The ego’s favorite defense mechanism) -Crusading, morality, atheist, science… distracting from self-reflection -Addictions drugs, porn, food etc, are obvious but it’s more subtle when your addiction is overthinking, daydreaming, judging & criticizing, resenting people for their success… -Believing that science has or will figure it all out -Having pet theories, scientific like evolution or the big bang, even in politics or religion, you want them to be true. People give their theory a special treatment. -Confirmation bias, cherrypicking evidence, narrative making. The minds tends to assume a thing and then cherrypick the confirming kind of evidences to bolster this narrative -Underestimating paradigms, not being able to recognize that you are trap inside a paradigm -Taking basic things for granted, like existence, life, money, matter, energy, space, time, government…. we don’t question them very deeply. -Question begging, reasoning in a circle, it’s posing a question, answering it and assuming the thing you’re trying to investigate. Obvious with religious people, but it’s also a big problem in philosophy and science. Try to question a scientific person if the brain is actually real. They would say how can it not be real? We just open a skull and see there is a brain. But to open a skull and to see that there is a brain is not a proof, that is begging the question. Those neurons, as you are looking at them, where are they located? Are the neurons located in another brain? In the universe… how do you know there is a universe? Because that’s in your brain, in your mind. It is circular logic. You construct an entire reality from question begging. -Judgement, criticism name calling -Close-mindedness -New Age bias, a particular form of closed-mindedness -Dismissing the occult, mystical and paranormal phenomena -Blaming, scapegoating, demonizing -Playing victim -Arguing and debating -False skepticism and debunking -Human species bias, taking the human perspective as though it were universal and the only one. Even maths, physics and science are a human specific way of understanding reality. There is no such thing as universal knowledge. There is also no such thing as peace on earth, even if everybody would get enlightened. When we build another city we don’t care of how much insects and animals are killed in the process, life is inherently destructive. To have life you have to have death, evil and selfishness -Dismissing all of this by saying it’s just philosophy -Pleading that nobody knows the truth so that you can continue your life as it was. -Cultural preferences. Ask yourself is your culture really the best one? Why do I think it’s the best one, could that be completely arbitrary, could I be imprinted? Cultures are collective egos Knowing about self-deception doesn’t make you immune to it, it’s like walking in a minefield, you can’t avoid them all. Watch yourself as it is happening Self-Deception Part 3 “Enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.” Lucretius “It’s a trap!” Admiral Ackbar, The Return of the Jedi List goes on: -Ignoring one’s own conflict of interest which includes the following subtopics: a) double standards; Science never proved that there is such a thing as an external world, do most scientists except to even question it? No because it’s part of the dogma of the scientific paradigm. So they are very harsh on the new age people, but the rationalist or the scientist don’t have conclusive proof that the universe is rational, do you have any proof that the Self exists, why do they believe in a Self? It’s just taken for granted and then a double standards is applied. To the mind it’s just reality. Same problem applies to spiritual groups. The loyalty of the person that belongs to one particular traditions or school, the school will come first, that’s the new ego that’s being defended. There is no objective comparison of which technic for enlightenment are actually the best. b) self-justification and excuse making; c) backward rationalization, confabulation; When the is rationalizing, it can rationalize anything it wants, like a good attorney defending a rapist or a corrupt politician d) wanting or needing a thing to be true; -Unwilling to make self-investigation; If you do research you got to be open to the fact that your mind could be change -Assuming rigid dualistic categories or distinctions. Science vs religion, bad vs good, matter vs energy, light being a particle or a wave and so on. -Being over logical and rational, it doesn’t help for not being fooled by your own mind at all. -Thinking bias, taking thinking as the best way to understand reality -Analysis bias, like braking matter, fragmentation, looking what composes matter and thinking that you understand reality that way. Emergent phenomenon is the fact that, arranging some pieces together doesn’t produce the whole, phenomenon that the sum of the whole is greater than its individual parts. -Impossibility bias; assuming that your intuition about what is possible or impossible is right, but the future always surprises us. Give a phone to a man of the middle age… -Mistaking truth with provability; The domain of things that are true is much larger than the domain of things that are provable. -Expecting the truth to be thrust upon you and proven to you overwhelmingly against your own resistance, no, you have to meet the truth half way -Assuming that reality is simple, intuitive and obvious -Black and white thinking. After hearing about self-deception you might think that everything what is going on with you, is a self deception, that would be just more self-deception! No, the whole point of self deception is that is subtle, not like black and white, not everything is self deception, you have genuine motivations, desires and values within you, you have to investigate what is true or self-deceptive. Otherwise you convince yourself to complete inaction. Jailbreaking the mind requires nuances. -Paradox bias, avoiding paradox, avoiding the weird or strange facets of reality. -Taking your knowledge as obvious. A lot of people had to die hundreds of years ago for us now being able to take our knowledge as obvious -Mindfuck bias, not expecting a reversal and in a trend, underestimating the possibility of mindfucks, reality is not linear -Pragmatic bias, to only care about things that obviously seem useful. Saying “if it’s not useful why shall we care about it?” The stuff that is useful to you is the stuff that directly serves your ego. Some stuff can be not useful but nevertheless true. What if life is more than success or technology, don’t confuse these with truth. It’s not because something is successful doesn’t mean it’s true. A lot of technology are build based on Newtonian mechanics, but we know it’s technically wrong, still, it is useful. -Underestimating the influence of business, marketing and culture in influencing your worldview, beliefs and desires -Authority and credentials, trusting in experts and authorities in science but also in interpreting reality -Morality bias, people who are very attached to their moral, comparing to and then dismissing wisdom because of your own moral standards, morality doesn’t come first -Political ramification bias, same as the morality bias but with political ideology -Historical meta-narratives, believing that the history of human beings is like we were taught in school. Human used to be quiet conscious before the age of agriculture, they were not savages, they made some profound discoveries just using their consciousness, they had good knowledge of plant and animal life, how to manipulate stones, constructing monuments. We ,might still be living in dark ages only technologize. -Tribalism; racism, nationalism, political infighting, partisanship, spiritual groups -Groupthink, when you surrender your mind to a group of people. -Assuming that everyone has the same brain chemistry, that everyone has the same access to reality, that reality is the same for every one -Preoccupation for the self-deceptions of other people, worry about your own self-deceptions, fix yourself, don’t point your finger at others, use other’s self-deceptions to recognize that you have probably the same self-deceptions. -Talking and knowing versus embodying a wisdom -Thinking when you are at the end of the journey, believing you have the upper hand on a situation, that is useably when the situation has the upper hand on you. -Being arrogant, feel it as it happens, recognize how this arrogance hold you from enjoying life To see a mechanism within you, doesn’t mean that you can just drop it, it’s a work in progress.

How can you become a genuine giver? Does enlightenment make you a generous person? How much does it help you on your way to become more conscious? How can a person avoid getting more selfish by investing so much time on himself during a consciousness work ? How does consciousness work change one's selfishness in that matter? How can you measure your consciousness with your level of wanting or resisting to sacrifice your time, wealth and energy to the people in need? What do you do personally sacrifice and how much resistance do you experience? How does this topic relate to spiral dynamics? I think that one is quiet urgent Leo! Thanks

We are talking mind over matter here! I invite you doing here a mega thread on the Placebo or Nocebo effect, explain your experience and solution for avoiding getting sick & healing with the mind. Did you have the experience and discovered for yourself that the mind controlled the body? How did it happen? For me, more than a decade ago, with the start of Youtube, I used to be into conspiracy theories, got caught in the dream, digging for evil and answers for all the evil on the planet. My immune system got very low, so I got sick, I had flue symptoms for weeks, I notice that every time I watch one of these documentaries, I got sick the next day for a week. Then I recovered quiet fully, then I watch a negative documentary again and got sick again... I couldn't not got to work for 2 month or longer, I couldn't not even go to an appointment to see my boss who was pissed off not seeing me at work for so long! It was impossible not to make the link between the two. This is when I had my epiphany! I had the physical proof. It went a bit like this: "OMG if I'm able to create myself a living hell out of negative thoughts (which was a depression really) which leads me to sickness, I can also reverse that and create myself a living paradise of health! What If I'm starting to look for positive information?" That is one of my most important moment of my life! That is were my journey into spirituality and self-help started. Today I'm so thankful to have had that depression! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience on the subject!

No,no exaggeration! You probably haven't found the Love yet. You are having a no-self experience without the love. For this you have to get rid of all fears. Watch the love video again or read the summary. Enjoy it anyway and good luck!

A big thank you Leo for that one. I've requested it I guess 2.5 years ago. It was well worth the wait! Probably as important as your "most shocking truth you'll ever hear" video. Yes, the people concentrate on the no-self and think that they already know what love is... To me, love is easier to get you to no-self than the other way around. Practice it every day, like going to the gym, you'll get instant results! By expending love outwardly, the fear based inner dialogue vanishes and you become the infinite. What is Love ? “Real love is to love them that hate you.” Mahatma Gandhi “Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion and I have forgotten all differences between others and myself” Milarepa What you think love is, is what you got from your culture, if you are a scientist or atheist, love is a romantic or sentimental emotion. But love is more fundamental than maths and physics. The universe is a giant mind, it has capacity to love. Love is a universal property. Just like intelligence, love is a facet of the absolute. Truth, consciousness and love are the three components of the trinity of the absolute, in hindouisme Sat Chit Ananda. It is really one thing, but you can discover them individually or collectively. Enlightenment is having the insight of no-self, but not only, you have to feel infinite love too. Of course you can have those emotions that are love based but what is love on the metaphysical level? Truth is love. Why is truth not neutral? Consciousness, intelligence and love are not accidental by-products of the evolutionary process. They are qualities of the univers. You are not in the universe, you are the universe. Love is infinite and unlimited. but the ego is in the way. Love is absolute acceptance of everything, it is to love all reality without exceptions, not being able to imagine what evil is, considering it as an impossibility. You don’t know what evil is anymore, you love everything so much, there is no more room left for evil to exist, because you have love the evil to death, you are conscience of the beauty of creation. It is the surrender of the self, the dissolution of all boundaries. The beauty of dissolving into infinity is greatest peace and bliss that you can imagine. Death is love, God is love. God meaning the univers or reality. A good way to think about life, is to take life as a love simulator, where the goal is to be the most loving humain being possible, becoming conscious of the beauty of creation. This is the most difficult thing to do. But why is there so much bad stuff going on in that simulation? Because the goal of the simulation is to love everything, even the bad stuff, like a computer game where there are obstacles in the way, you got to be at ease with them. That is the most difficult thing to do because the obstacles are actually to get completely over yourself, surrender yourself, die to the truth and then you can die happy and peacefully. Love cannot be purchase, their is no magic pill solution, you have to develop your capacity to love but also to the hard stuff. Most people love to love the easy stuff, like food family, people who love them etc… what about the rest? That what fulfills you.. Here is an exercice to open the heart chakra: Imagine something you love and magnify, expend out that feeling onto all of reality. Transmute that narrow love into universal love for all of existence for the privilege of being able to be here conscious and alive. Expend it out of your chest, like your are a fountain of love. Love means practice, you need to trigger it on command, you are a creator of love, don’t wait to get it from external sources. The true test of your love is the ability to love evil and all the stuff that is against you, so that your love is unconditional. To love is to be not judgmental. The universe loves itself unconditionally, you got to align with that love. Spirituality is the art of love. It is a set of practices and concept which helps you to increase your capacity to love with the ultimate aim to get to an infinite capacity to love. That is true spirituality! Loving stuff that serves the ego’s agenda is what most people experience as what love is. The ego only knows how to love conditionally. The ego is always afraid of dissolving the bounderies of the separation it has created towards the infinite. You or your ego feels confortable being small and finite. The opposite of love is: egotism, narcissism, fear, hate, judgment, unconsciousness, violence, intolerance, manipulation, tribalism, exploitation, ignorance, close-mindedness and division. You can’t love if you are preoccupied with food, status, sex, survival, success ideology, politics, money, addiction, drugs, religions or logic. Nobody wants to give up his ideology because we think we are right. That is what is in the way of being all loving. The religious people loves to hate the atheists and vice versa, white people loves to hate the black people and vices versa, christians-muslim, republicans-democrats and so on. What is hate? In a sense hate is not the opposite of love, as love is actually everything. How to account for hate and evil then? It is simply excessive love of the self, the ego. Hate is a form of love. Love can have different aspect like water, the solid form would be hate, the liquid form the egoic love, and gaseous form would be the unconditional, divine love. You love your family conditionally which means you love them because they serve you in certain ways. Every evil person acts out of love. Hitler acted out of love towards his ego. Hitler’s ego and Germany’s national ego which created this division between them and the world. Like a total narcissist. Because the ego is so fragmented, it is not able to love itself fully. A person who hates is incapable of loving himself, he denies and suppressed other parts of himself and then projects those out to the outside world. By rejecting the truth of unity in existence, a racist has to reject and demonize the people outside, and unconsciously, he also hates himself. What part of yourself do you deny or suppress, what part of your body of your personality don’t you like? We need to rise above the survival game of outcompeting the other, and being willing to die if necessary. The ego or the devil flips everything around. The ego or the devil convinces himself that by hating others, that he is actually doing good. And the devil has infiltrated all major religions, so that a lot religious people think that to hate others, non believers or else, is good and that to love their tribe is the point of religion. Closed minded, opinionated, judgmental, superficial, addicted, needy, ideological, success oriented, arrogant, and fearful people cannot love. Love in spiral dynamics: Stage purple: tribal form of love, they love their tribe would fight for defending their tribe Stage red: A twisted, a narcissistic form of love, which takes the form of violence, conquest, dictatorship, punishment, vengeance, power, which is not the opposite of love Stage blue: The orthodox & religious state. Love your country, ethnicity, community, a love to hate evil and evil doers, following rules, law and order, idol worship, the man in the sky, a love for one religion, not all religions Stage orange: Love of rationality, science, IQ, analysis, materialism, liberty, individuality, achievement and success, fun, money, sex, fame, libertarians… Stage green: Love for all people, animals, races, cultures, femininity, environment, community, social justice, willingness to sacrifice for the community. Green sees the importance of loving oneself Stage yellow: diversity of knowledge and system thinking, open mindedness Stage turquoise: Love all beings, the entire ecosystem, you understand that you are God, you have the power of true unconditional love, you are able to love suffering, ignorance, evil, unconditional love, you love ego, illusion and Maya, you’ve experienced the truth and you love that global community. To move from one stage to another: -Do the exercice to open the heart chakra, visualise your self being more loving, fill yourself with love as you would do with a mindful relaxation exercice, feel more love. -Suffering, strong determination sitting, solo meditation retreats, psychedelics including bad trips, facing your fears, every fear you have is roadblock towards you being infinitely loving, and the ultimate fear being the fear of death. -Practice acceptance, non judgment and surrendering, being more kind, giving, caring and vulnerable, especially being vulnerable will help tremendously, build unconditional self-love, love your body entirely, feel love in difficult times like when someone hurt you, study role models like Gandhi, Christ, Zen masters and many others. Being more loving doesn’t mean everything will go your way or that you will even stay alive, yes you can get hurt (Gandhi was beaten down). Allow yourself to cry. When some people have a dense level of love, which means that they hate, they are going to hate you for your love. Your love becomes a threat to them! A lot of loving leaders got murdered that way. As an orthodox, you don’t want to admit that love and evil, God and the devil are actually the same thing. Your orthodox religion is corrupted by the devil. You were told not to worship idols, that the kingdom of heaven is within, to love your neighbor as yourself… what do think that means? Make sure when you love, you never do it because you have to or because you should. You have to genuinely love reality, you don’t fake that. Be careful with the “fake it until you make it” approach, as long you have a sens of ego, you are not able to love unconditionally, the ego is by definition a division. The ego wants to build a protective castle and in doing so, you separate yourself from the world. You have to surrender all ideologies, beliefs, religion and beliefs in God, that is the cost. You can burn the candle from both end: -Pursue awakening on hand (self-enquirery, yoga, meditation, contemplation) -Practice to be more loving -Practice to have a real smile vs a fake one. Practice make yourself feel the joy and happiness. -Practice compassion. -Total acceptance for the ignorance of mankind. Evil is always created by ignorance. -Understanding that hatred is a form of love A common person use 5% of their love. You want to transform the quality of your life? Tap into love! You can’t really do it because you are too weak, narcissist, scared, selfish, left brained, wrapped up in ideologies, opinions, judgments, fighting for social justice, as that race, for that religions, you have ennemies. To be a powerful leader, you got to be a powerful lover, otherwise you become a tyrant and hated. Love requires the greatest courage, it is something you have to work for. There needs to be a commitment to transform yourself as a more loving person. Loving people have a great sense of purpose in their life, they don’t get abused and have strong boundaries so that they don’t let the egotism of others drag them down. To be loving you need to be up-lifting. Your homework assignment: Look at how and why your love is conditional, look how you cherrypick. Make a list of your fears that are holding you back to be more loving with this person, with that situation, political matter… Why aren’t you able to love more? What are you afraid of? Is it the fear of what others think of you? When you see how much conditional your love is, you will start to see opportunities to turn that around.

The Self Mastery Program http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/self_mastery.htm The first 4 courses are free, try it out!!! This got me out of depression… easily! Can’t recommend it enough. I’m so thankful I went through depression, it allowed me to learn so many amazing things and this is a very pragmatic approach to spirituality. in one phrase: This course teaches you to stop giving reasons for not expressing the feeling of love and therefor increases your happiness and awareness level to the max! So I must give credit to my spiritual master, Gary van Warmerdam and his program that I found to be excellent and helped me to master my emotions… I made it nearly 10 years ago. It is based on the toltecs (ancient Mexican tribe) spirituality, so his spiritual master is Don Miguel Ruiz author of the 4 Agreements best seller book. I found him better than Don Miguel Ruiz, but I only have been reading his books, I didn’t have a course from him. Gary did. Here are the reasons I deeply recommend this mp3, $200, one year course. that you split in two halves. The first 4 courses are free trial, 5 to 14 cost $100, When you are done, if you really like it, you can choose to pay an extra $100 and you will get the courses 14 to 26, which is not a must, but you will want it You should work 2 weeks on each exercice, exemption is made on course one to two, only one week there. If you can’t resist, and you go quicker than this, this is your ego that don’t want you to succeed, setting the bar too high and you will fail at mastering your emotions. Sorry no magic button here, you still have to do the work and the work is a one year wicked mind game you are playing without no-one noticing it or needing to know what your are doing. What? Why paying? Well if you want to master your emotions, it is the way to go, no joke! Paying is not a bad thing, especially if the information is actually worth billions… or how much do you think your happiness is worth? There is also a ton of free stuff from him downloadable as podcast through iTunes (called “happiness through self awareness”), but it will be the theory, not the practice exercices. I advise you to do the free stuff first, not to believe me blindly! find it here too: http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/insights.htm This is what makes the difference, the exercices, the doing, not the knowing! What you get from this course: A spiritual course from a former nuclear power plant engineer, very structured mind that want to solve problems, crushing the ego in an effective way. Exactly what a so called grounded and rational person would need! It helps you to release the ground too! But no science,..., spirituality, like Leo I would say not Sam Harris style, that I actually find dangerous and very very little religious stuff talk here. -fact is, you will never get rid of the voice in your head. This course offers you the possibility to be able to watch what happens in your thinking process, watching several ridiculous characters in your head having a dialogue and that you are constantly acting out without noticing it. watching your thoughts becomes a habit and you will then be able to anticipate more and more the reactions of your monkey mind just by doing some given exercise until the next exercice. At the end you are able to do “all” the tasks together, if you do 3 or 4 it is already excellent. It's like learning a new sport or art. I really had like the matrix effect where everything, the unconscious mind process, slows down and you can anticipate what thought is coming next and your automatic reactions… which gives you the opportunity to change the final reaction. What I miss with that course is what I found in Leo’s video! I find Leo’s enlightenment videos one of the best thing I’ve ever found on the internet, The no-self concept,. You will also find it in this course but not explained like Leo's breaking ball style. It is a progressive process, a journey into getting to know the monkey mind by heart and controlling it at the end. You can then choose in a millisecond if you want to express empathy or gratitude, love or joy, anything but anger and envy, jealousy and so on… I understood everybody’s reaction a lot better too, which makes you feel a lot cleverer than everybody else, a nice and big trick from the ego, which I fell into… I had a lot of awakening moments, I found my one and only purpose in life too, expressing love, this is for me what it all comes down to, expressing love for no reason at all, for love being the most irrational thing ever and because it just feels amazing doing it! Does it work? Big time! if you do the work, it will work! It helped me a lot and still do. I can help a lot of friends having a hard time handling their ego too. I made the mistake to think that the work was finished after the one year course… ego came back with a vengeance… I learned out of it that the work is never finished… So enjoy happiness, if you have any questions, go ahead and ask me!

That just made my day! I'm so glad I did this review, that you enjoyed it as much as I did. I still take it as reference point in my life everyday. Hope other reviews will come! Take care and thank you for sharing your experience!

@aurum Unfortunately I haven't got the time to rewatch the last 20 videos, but thanks!

Hello everyone, has anyone done summaries lately and is generous enough to share them! I much prefer to read summaries then watching videos over and over again, especially in places where I don't have access to internet which I find myself a lot. I'm not at talented at doing them myself, I'm having a hard time to keep it short and simple. Leo's latest work is excellent, it's so good to have it in written form on my phone to read anywhere, I miss the brilliant summaries from Juan Cruz Giusto he used to post here! I believe the last one he posted was "Understanding Meaning, Purpose and Value"... Any summary up from that video will be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance! Nic

I hear sometimes atheists say "I wish I had faith". Where is the line between faith and dogma? Can you have one without the other? How does faith and enlightenment relate to each other? My own biggest struggles on this path is stability/regularity/endurance/discipline. I couldn't follow Lego instructions when I was a child, always getting off tracks... I'm learning the guitar without a teacher, so nobody corrects my mistakes, I hated school and today my unconsciousness always takes out of the mindful path... At one point I forget that I shouldn't start negotiating with my mind... and I stop my healthy or mindful habit for a while, then I go back into it. What I've learned is not to beat myself up for my mistakes, I forgive myself for even believing that I should be somewhere else on the path. But I have a hard time of being strict and following rules even when "I'm my own master". Some part of me likes to "fuck it up". In other words, it's hard for me to stay on the right diet and change some points of my lifestyle. At the moment that I do the "mistakes", being strict with sports, eating habits or mindfulness means consciously & unconsciously for me to make a sacrifice that I deserve to get a reward for the good work that I did until now. At this moment being aware is not an option, I'm just being aware that I'm getting off track and "fuck it, I Am enjoying my life or what?!" I changed a hell lot in my lifestyle since 10 years of practice so I'm still happy with me.... but... I'm far from perfect.

Yes, you are probably right, I have had a psychopath (stalker) around me and I don't want to spend my time with this person nor talk to her or what so ever. I just ignore her. Still my heart is full of good feelings when I think about her and I truly hope she is fine. She definitely needs help, but it is not going to come from me as it could have the opposite effect and as you mentioned, my time is limited. But to love someone doesn't mean for me that you have to spend time, take care or sleep with them. It means that you are aware of what you feel inside and what you want to project onto others and the world around you. I use to hate 99,999% of politicians, was considering them as my enemies... it lead me simply to depression 10 years ago and to spread fear, righteousness and hatred around me. Now I just let them be and I don't mind them at all and I wish them well. Politicians still do the same shit as before though. Destruction, death and chaos is a part of the universe. So I don't love politicians but I let them be without applying dogmatic judgments on and about them. This leaves space for love to grow for every being, object I encounter or situation I find my self into. I found out that love is my natural state of being but my mind wants to talk me out of it... for very good reasons hehe... funny joker... you can't negotiate with your mind, this is the game of all games that only one can lose if he plays it. In that way, 50 % if not more of life altogether could be considered as your enemy, your ego, your neighbor, your working colleagues, your boss, your spouse, traffic, pollution, politicians, conspiracy, TV, money, foreigners, part of the human nature, death, sickness, negative emotions, unfairness , if you live in the middle of the jungle, then it's nature altogether and so on. I changed my perspective, I chose to embrace it all once and for all because my mind drove me crazy to the point I got depressed. I even came to love and be thankful for my depression as it gave me the opportunity to discover a lot about my self, self help, meditation, enlightenment and so on... And made me to the happy bunny that I Am today!

You are your own worst enemy. But you can change perspective which can make space between thoughts for love to grow. You are the only one feeling the vibes of your emotions. Having reasons not to express love is literally punishing yourself. Love doesn't need reasons to be express as love is everything but logical and is not a finite energy. To find peace of mind is to love unconditionally. "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." We are able to choose our emotional states. As soon as my mind labels someone as my enemy, I feel fear inside of me. This feedback tells me that there is nothing wrong with them but only with me. Whatever happens, the world just is and I have to deal with that. I feel very thankful for all the challenges my so called enemies gave me to work on. Thank to them I could grow, learn acceptance and forgiveness, make me realize that my expectations are simple dreams, that I'm responsible for putting faith in false beliefs and my emotional state and finally be at ease with what is.

My best advice to your question is to go to see a real master. He will make you notice when you are ready and to not listen to any advice here and even my own. I'm 37, been working 10 years on me, I don't feel ready to do one on one paid session. My goals of wanting to help others with words and advices changed into inspire and heal others with music, so I've trained very hard to learn the guitar to become a street musician, I feel very close to go out alone on the street for the first time and continue travel the world this way. But it doesn't mean that you are not ready, this is completely subjective. But I believe that if you have doubts, it probably isn't the right time. When I was 22, I had already been living in 5 countries and moved to many places and I thought I've seen it all. Oh boy was I wrong... Now I have the decency to not believe in these kind of thoughts anymore. I think that you will not find many older adults that want to take advices from a 22 years old man even if you could help them. Maybe you could help the younger one... that could be an idea. My recommendation is to work at least another 5 years... Experience life, gain experience, travel the world, get out of your comfort zone and never leave your goal in sight, stay focus on the goal. You will help people on the way if that's what you want, you will meet enough people who need your help. Work for charity. Take care

Self worth is based in duality problems, we all have a negative image of our self and a positive image of our self, battling constantly in our heads. When self worth is low, the negative one wins over the positive one and vice versa. The trick is to notice and to recognize that you are not an image, this images wether they make you feel good or bad are just images, and you are not an image, you just have been putting your faith in beliefs, as Leo would say, you took the map for the territory. You are not a description of yourself. You are what you are, nothing more, nothing less. You are not a thought. Same as when people think good or bad about you. You are not a thought. Detach from the thinking process. Don't identify with it. Enjoy the freedom of being!

I try to: -Transform the supposedly negative into supposedly positive things -Always see the glass half full and change perspective on things -Love unconditionally -Be self disciplined -Be grateful for what I have and what I don't have, including immaterial things but also internal organs and health -Stay healthy, undo the rough unhealthy wild lifestyle of my youth -Master my emotions -Get out of my comfort zone -Be kind to anyone including myself -Live passionately -Inspire others -Not believe that Am right

A woman that became a friend of mine healed me with spirits, it's called trance healing, which you can learn in different schools. Never heard about it before, I was just open to it. After the session which was basically meditating in front of each other, she was just calling spirits and doesn't need to know what your problems are as it's the spirit world that heals, not her, I had 3 times the feeling that spirits entered my body, I could not control my body and my breath anymore, asthmatic breathing, (not being asthmatic myself), big cramps everywhere but with the feeling of being high and reminded me of MDMA which I tried a few time 17 years ago (I was completely clear by the way) each trip lasted 2 hours and it did feel ok, I was not afraid one second. That healed me of my problems which were foot and neck pain. Between the 2nd and the 3rd time it happened, in a month time, I had 2 enlightenment experiences for 2 hours each, in 2 consecutive day, not knowing what happened to me. I didn't really know what enlightenment was so I tried to understand what happened and I got into Leo's videos. I changed my diet very easily as well. On the 3rd time it happened, I felt the spirit literally coming into my pair of jeans like a cold wind coming from underneath. To cut the story short, in addition to the symptoms I already had in the past, my nose was running like mad. After this I ran into a lot of people that dealt with spirits... I leave this world where it is, I'm not looking for it, nor Am I looking for enlightenment. It will find me if it needs me. Does it exist...? Oh yeah! It's a life changing experience, because you see things differently! "Feeling is understanding" as Wim Hof says !

Thank you for your good work Juan, I was waiting for that one!!! Very hard to find balance for me! This will be of great help!

Thank you Juan, you are the man!