Scholar

Some of the things that I have done in the past few years that helped me: realizing that everyone is impermanent and will die, what people think of you is therefore irrelevant Slowly challenging yourself to be more and more confronting Somehow realizing that you care about your own life more than about the opinions others have Ego deconstruction work in general, meaning meditation, contemplation, expanding your consumption of stage orange content This will be a long term project, expect it to take a months and even a few years unless you would be focusing a lot on this particular issue. I have been working on this on the side as it is not really a priority of mine. One thing that will help is having something that you care about a lot and that you would put infront of the opinion of others. For me veganism was great for this because it kind of forces you to argue it. When you think about the animals and what they go through, and sitting around people who eat meat who then dare to criticize you for being vegan, that will give you a lot of opportunity to confront them while having the suffering of the animals in the back of your mind. Standing up for someone else who is exploited to me was much easier than standing up for myself, and that way you can eventually learn to stand up for yourself. For me consumption of stage orange/confrontational stuff was really important. You want to integrate these aspects of stage orange even if you have to consume low consciousness stuff. Two things in particular helped me: Listening to Destiny, here is his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC554eY5jNUfDq3yDOJYirOQ He does not give a shit what people think of him so there is much to learn from him in this regard. He has some very admirable traits but also some low consciousness stuff that will probably be obvious to you so not much of a problem. Watching these from time to time: https://www.youtube.com/user/VitalyzdTv/ Vitaly is someone who pranks people and it's rather low consciousness, but it gets the job done. He is very good at being playful with how he interacts with people so there is a lot to learn in that regard from him. You can start framing confrontations more like playful interactions instead of ego powerplays. If these don't work out for you find some other stuff that is going to work for you. Maybe even watch some stage orange movies and try to embrace and put yourself into the shoes of some of the more confrontational characters.

Criticizing china in this way is very similar to criticizing a developing child for it's lack of attention or it's inability to be disciplined, or even for it's lack of intelligence. Every country in which freedom is valued had to go through the aspects you are describing as problematic in china. Was the gain of freedom you and all of us are celebrating now worth the slavery and suffering of the generations which lived through robber-baron capitalism and the like? In 100 years noone will bat an eye whether china cared about the health of it's citizen 100 years ago. In 100 years people will celebrate the freedoms and riches they have gained from the exploitation of previous generations. Don't forget that China has been around for thousands of years, they intend to stay around for much longer.

@Synchronicity I will try to stay away from that for now, I want to keep this away from the path others have already created. I don't want there to be expectations. @Serotoninluv I will see if these aspects will manifest themselves, but I don't have desire to seek anything specific. I want it to naturally flow, the more expectations I will have towards what is to come, the less authentic the seeking and exploring will be to me. To me what's more valuable are questions, rather than answers. A question that will resonate with me will do so much more than explaining to me what there will happening in the future. I tried to listen to Leo's 30 Aspects of enlightenment, but I found myself to resist it because it is like telling me about the ending of a movie. What if knowing the ending of the movie will make me change the movie itself? What if telling me the ending of the movie will make me stop watching the movie? @MAYA EL I don't know, I don't even know if I can tell anyone about Redness. I have noticed that my experience in general is "brighter" than it has been before. It is difficult to explain, but previously a lot of my experience had an underlying darkness in the quite literal sense. The space in which visual things are imagined seems to be brighter than it previously was. I did not notice it but before it was quite dark compared to now. The space I am talking about is the space in which you close your eyes and see vague imagined things, that strang space between the visual space and the "beyond" space. I have also noticed that when I think about the path of others my mind seems to have a much easier time putting oneself into that experience and what it entailed. I am rather introverted and for example hate doing things like dancing. Previously I could not even imagine what it would be like to have fun dancing, now my mind is able to imagine it in a way which would be wonderful. A way in which I would let go of all worries and just start dancing, the imagination involves joy, previously it would only involve fear. When I was visiting a hotel I realized that it wasn't at all so distant to actually create a hotel oneself. I got a sense in which it is a very human, grounded thing to create a business, to go through all the experiences and have that kind of ambition. It doesn't feel "official" anymore, if that makes sense? Authority seems to be dissolving, everything in society is basically just human beings trying to figure it out and doing what they can. Society and what it entails seems more personal and less like a cold construction. It feels more like a tree house than anything else. As far as my art goes I have noticed that I can connect far better to the essence of visuals. Despite being a visual artist I was rather visually uncreative previously, as I did not use the power of visualization to the extend which I have discovered to do now. Visualization is an aspect that one has very little control of. For example, if I want to visualize a crocodile and close my eyes, I cannot control what picture will pop into my mind. Infact the harder I try the less likely it will be that I see anything. If I let go and just let it happen, if I loosen up into the visualization process, I can experience quite vivid pictures, to a degree that it almost seems to resemble a kind of cheapish photographic memory, without being able to choose what memory will be retrieved. It is a little like I had access to the same process that is there when dreaming, I am very happy about that, and I am sure it's a skill that needs to be developed. In general I have experienced more carelessness, greater open-mindedness and much less ego attachment to everything. It actually is quite surprising to me, it does not really feel deserved. I seems like I did not do enough hard work to have "attained" what I have attained. There is a sense of slow creeping of lightness that is somehow being upheld. A previously very delicate process during meditation which could easily have been disturbed seems to be effortless now, like something happening in the background. I don't worry about it at all. There is a sense of the cold ground upon which I stood fading and I can see the colorful depth beneath. I would say all of this is very contrary to my expectations, which is why I do not care anymore to construct new expectations. I don't want to hear about the enlightenment process anymore, I don't care about what is going to happen. The sense of childhood mystery, in which the world was unexplained and needed to be explored, is coming back into my experience.

I find myself getting more and more alienated from a lot of the spiritual concepts that I have been ingrained with in the past few years. The more I do this work, the less I find these concepts to be truthful and attractive. For example, these concepts do not make sense to me anymore: Mind Consciousness Imagination Meditation Subjectivity Enlightenment Increasing Consciousness Unconditional Love "In silence you will find Truth" Strong determination sitting Liberation Ego Truth Absolute A lot of the language Leo is using does not resonate with me anymore, and I actually loved it not that long ago. Actually I find that a lot of spiritual talking to me is kind of weirdly delusional. It feels pretentious, it feels sheepish. It feels so uncreative and stale. When I listen to Alan Watts for example I feel like there is this playfulness which lacks in a lot of other teachings. I have a desire to explore celebration, activity, swimming, whirling, playing (in the metaphysical sense, not hobbies). I would love to see some Viking ceremonies, or some Shamanic dances. An embrace of fluidity and playfulness. I want magicalness, I want wonder and awe. There is a sense of fairytale-ness. I think I want Groundlessness. I want movement that is motionless, not motionless movement. I want Joke, Play instead of Truth, Absolute. Maybe all this feels like restriction and I find myself to embrace freedom. Instead of "Sit down and meditate" I see results in "Listen to music and contemplate until contemplation falls apart". Results in Flow rather than Stillness. Expanding into Being, giving being Presence instead of observation, seeing truth, etc. There is this sense of ridiculousness coming, a Trickster who laughs at the seriousness of Zen Monks, who laughs at the concepts of Leo, who laughs at itself. I don't know how else to describe it, it does not seem egoic, it does not seem attached or survivalistic. Rather it feels the opposite of that. It's like it cannot denie magic, and thus it cannot take any of this too seriously. It also has a sense of Love and Acceptance. It seeks active compassion, it seeks art and creativity. Previously when I looked at "enlightenment" I saw darkness, I saw stillness, I saw detachment. "Nothingness". Now it looks colorful, it looks impossible, it looks like a fairy-tale. It feels tumultuous, waves of endless color and feeling crashing against each other. It feels like a huge orchestra of magic, it feels like taking you by the hand and swirling you around. It is laughing, it is crying, it is alive. It looks at Leo's castle of non-duality and wants to swoop it away with a tsunami of creativity and playfulness. This is the path that I see, and I think Leo's talk of Love has helped me see it more clearly. But I feel like Leo got there in a different way, the path he took does not seem to be the path that seems attractive to me, but I think the change in direction he has taen is what I really like. But the foundation upon which his castle is build feels serious, and despite him putting the cream of Love and passion on top of it now, the foundation seems to still remain, if that makes sense? I will obviously still find use in all of the content Leo produces, but I don't know if I can be a "follower" anymore, in the sense that I don't know if I don't want to create my own path, using Leo's videos as an addition instead of a main diet. I don't want any diet that comes from someone else anymore. I want to create my own diet. I want to explore myself even if I am not utterly successful. This very attitude of being so serious about this pathway seem unattractive to me. It seems to suck the joy and curiousity out of this path. I want to feel fairytale-ness, magic, compassion, playfulness not "industrial grade enlightenment practice". Does anyone know what I mean? To me it feels like there is a very ingrained bias of a certain way of looking at all this that is very present in the general culture of spiritualism. This bias seems to become more and more apparent to me, and I start seeing it everywhere. I want to explore a different perspective, or rather what I have explored does not seem entirely compatible with this current bias.

A great example of how simpler egoic consciousness mechanisms create and spawn more complex egoic consciousness mechanisms. The same dynamic can be observed in humans - human civilizations. I find this example of ants very good because it simplifies it and removes it from the context in which we are involved. Antness is within colonyness, but colonyness is also within antness. It is also amazing to realize that to the ant, humans are utterly irrelevant. To the ant, human beings do not even exist. To the ant all there is is antness. The ants world is the ant. This is true for most of mankind, too. Human sees the world through humanness, everything to in the world is viewed as it's relationship to humanness. The human is as blind as the ant, because the human is only human, and the ant is only ant. We walk the same planet, yet both ant and human live in radically different worlds. There is ant-world and there is human-world, despite them being the same world. To the human, the bed infested with bed-bugs is "problem", it is "get rid of", "kill", "disgusting". To the bed-bugs it is "food", "shelter", "life", "home". To the ant the humans foot stepping on it's home is "disaster", "catastrophy", "death", "suffering". To the human it is "hiking", "exploring nature", "beauty", "exercises", "fresh air". For the human to see the world of the ant, the human must create a relationship to the ant and to the world of the ant. The relationship is the only way for the human to see. Understanding is inherently a process of relationship, of connection. In the political context this is very important, it teaches us that we can only make people care about a matter if it is in relationship to themselves. Only through the relationship, only through the connection, can there even be the beginning of understanding. In other words, to transform society into caring about love, we must create a connection to love, a relationship to love. We must create an environment which allows for the expansion of identity, for the expansion of desire. The ego's purpose is to contract when in danger and expand in peace. When Christ gave love to his followers, they for the first time were filled with true love. True love allowed them to share their love, because only when one is filled with love one can give it to the other, the presence of love means the inevitable expansion of love. There is wisdom in Ego that is utterly magical, none of this would be happening in the absence of ego.

Play with it. Use it as fuel for your creativity. Be with it and let it express itself in a way that is healthy. It is a wonderful feeling and it can do wonderful things, you just have to come to get closer to it, to recognize it and give it attention. Have it be part of a creative outlet. If you were a write for example, you could write a story about an influential and powerful person, become to know that person. See the feeling as something to play and interact with instead of something that is taking possession over you. If a dog has to much energy you play with him so that he can get rid of the energy. If you do not, he will find a way to let the energy manifest in other ways. He might use it to chew on your couch. You don't want your urges to do the same to you.

Get this: You love suffering to such an uncomprehensible degree, that you are willing to forget about True Love just so that Suffering can exist. You Love it so much that you are willing to forget your Love for it so that Suffering can exist as pure Suffering. This is how much you Love Suffering. It is beyond comprehension.

Know that you already love yourself so radically and fully that you have accepted to endure the suffering you are currently enduring. You love yourself so much that you are willing to fully embrace all suffering. This is what you are already doing, this is what you have been doing your entire life, it is what all beings have been doing. You Love suffering so much that you have fully accept it, that you are willing to experience it from the most unconscious state, in a state in which suffering is true suffering. You already are accepting of that to the fullest possible degree, you are already fully embracing it. This suffering is the most pure form of Love there is. It is full an utter acceptance. All Isness is full and utter acceptance. There cannot be non-acceptance. Non-acceptance is one aspect of Full Acceptance. You are so accepting of reality that you are willing to experience non-acceptance itself. This is already the case, what you are experiencing right now is the Full Acceptance of Isness. There cannot be any greater form of acceptance. True and radical acceptance is to let Isness be fully itself, letting it be non-accepting. It is so accepting that it accepts the avoidance of suffering, so accepting that it accepts the acceptance of suffering and so accepting that it once more embraces the avoidance of suffering. All of this is already fully accepted, this is the nature of Isness. Isness itself is true and full acceptance, it is True and Absolute Love. Only true eternal suffering is the full acceptance and love of true eternal suffering. Only true Redness is the full acceptance and love of true Redness. The Isness of all of existence already is the full acceptance and love of all of existence. This includes every state of consciousness, the Isness of all states is the acceptance of all states. All there is happening here is the celebration of these different, infinite aspects of realness. This suffering is the celebration of suffering. How else would you celebrate Creation? How else would you celebrate it but by creating it?

Yes, when I use the word "magical" it is usually referring to that. It's where contemplation just fails and there is a "recognition" of the impossibility and irreducability of Isness, but my mind does try to put it into frameworks, I don't really resist that. It's not really this huge mind blowing experience though, it's more like a subtle shifting that has been going on for the past few months. It is hard to put into words, I feel like most of the things aren't really being communicated when I try to explain them.

The experience of the enlightened is filled with love, meaning and joy because there is no construct which keeps the mind from letting these fascets of existence flow into the experience. On the way of the deconstruction of the ego, meaning is lost, namely the experience of meaning ceases to be generated. This is of course because the ego is constructed in a way so as to not find it's own deconstruction meaningful. If it was, it would not be stable. But, once ego is dissolved to a certain extend or even completely, meaning will flow back in an amount that is not limited, creating the illusion or delusion of "enlightenment being meaningful". This is how one could look at it, and it is useful because it keeps us from falling into the typical nihilism, the "everything is meaningless" illusion which actually is just as "untrue" as the "everything is meaningful" illusion. Both don't see meaning as itself, both still conflate and mix different experiences together. But we also must recognize that this mixture of different experiences is actually magical. It is wonderful in a way, because it is what allows us to say "It is wonderful". It is the magic of delusion, or understanding. It gives life an interconnectedness which should be impossible, because it creates "1=2". In that way, it created from 1 and 2 a new Isness, the Isness of "1=2". Notice how "1=2" is neither 1, nor 2. But it is still there. @Serotoninluv It is strange because I have not been meditating as much recently, it seems to however flow very naturally. It kind of motivates me to go back into some longer sessions of meditation. I am not quite sure if this is ego-deconstruction or something else. Recently I have been very accepting of my egoic desires and much less judgemental. For example, I viewed my animal rights desires as unconscious not that long ago, I would say to myself "Someone who was more developed than me would let go of the struggling against the suffering of others, someone who was more conscious was free himself of this suffering", but in a way I have done the opposite. I have accepted myself at where I am, if right now I feel a strong urge to be the unconscious vegan who is angry about animal suffering, than that's what I will accept and follow. I think Leo's explanations of Love have helped me with this, he is right that the "Loving"/"Jesus" path is more appealing and to me seemingly more natural than the Zen buddhist path. But in a weird way I now want to explore the more silent path again to see what I can discover with my new perspective.

Yes, but the existential crisis is tied to how you look at the experience of meaning. This sort of crisis happens when there is a loss of the experience of meaning, suddenly actions seem "bland" because previously the experience of meaning was correlated to these other experiences. This is not necessary, and more importantly it's not a true loss of meaning. You still attribute the negative feeling of meaninglessness (which is not the negation of meaning, but it's own form of meaning) to other experiences. "Oh but why does anything exist?" The question is absurd. "Whyness" is it's own fascet of Isness. "Whyness" is an experience, so to speak. You are again confusing one experience and attempting to seek it in other experiences. It's like looking for sound in the color red. You will not find sound in the color red. In the color red you will only every find redness. Isness just is, "Whyness" and "Meaning" exists within Isness. The irony is that once the ego construct is dissolve, meaning will be created and generated with no limitations. Right now meaning is only created when there is an experience which serves the egos survival. When ego is gone, meaning will be generated with no limitations, because there is no reason not to. This then is confused by meditators to mean that "enlightenment" is meaningful. "Oh look how wonderful it is, this is the most meaningful experience there could possibly be!". But the experience itself is not meaning, only the experience of meaning which accompanies it is meaningful. This confusion even for the most experience meditators is to me astounding, because it implies a deeper unconsciousness of Isness, despite the ego-construct being dissolved.

I don't know why so many experienced meditators fail to see this simple truth. I can only repeat it over and over: Nothing is meaningful but meaning itself. From your framework it would probably be best put as: Meaning is an experience like every other experience there is. Meaning is like pain. Meaning is like color. Meaning is like sound. Meaning is like thought. Meaning is it's own experience. It is either there or it is not. It either is or it is not. To ask "What is the meaning of existence" is literally the same as asking "What is the color of existence?", "What is the sound of existence?", "What is the pain of existence?", "What is the X of existence?". The question is void. It is confusion. There is no color of existence. Rather, there is color in existence. You got rid of the exprience of meaning, that's all. There is no realization of anything, you simply changed your experience. Meaning is as real as anything else could be. It is as much Isness as all else in existence. We just need to recognize it for what it is and stop conflating it with other aspects of realness, or with Isness as a whole.

It is not hideous. Suffering is suffering, not anything else. Maybe hideousness is suffering, but not the other way around. You can find redness, too. Did the Buddha ever say "Life is redness?". Life is everything.

I guess in the end that's all there is to do. I feel like that is also part of the magic, how all of this works. It's so weird if you think about it. Anyways thanks for the time Leo! I think I got to understand a few things better.

So the usage of the word is more of part of your Self-actualization journey?

I agree, but I feel like Devilry has things attached to it as much as Maya has. Devirly has a moralistic component, and Maya has a illusiory component.

I understand, but this is not about the framework. It's not about the categories. Framing it into the larger unity is not quite what I am trying to communicate. What I mean is this: God greatest act of Love and Consciousness was to completely immerse and accept all Unconsciousness, in such a radical way that it became Unconsciousness. The greatest form of Consciousness, the Highest Wisdom, being the Isness of all of Maya. The Unconsciousness, including all aspects of Isness, being the truest and purest Form of Love. So Loving that it loves all Frameworks, that it loves how you put Selfishness and Consciousness opposed to each other. So Conscious that Unconsciousness IS that consciousness. Full Circle, the highest form of Consciousness Literally makes you end up BEING the unconscious Devil. And that Circle relativizes all of Being. To say there is lower or higher consciousness would be like to say one could be further along on the pathway of a Circle. It would all be defined from the point of starting, but the end point would always be the point of starting.

Yes, but do you also think that blind selfishness and deception are utterly pure and the highest form of Consciousness and being? In a way I am asking you to abandon the framing of "Higher and Lower Consciousness".

But beauty is not in contradiction to suffering. Beauty and suffering are two aspects of Isness. If we were to frame it like this: God creates World. In World there is Suffering. Suffering creates world which avoids suffering. In a way the nature of suffering is to avoid itself, one might say in Gods eye it is the ultimate tool of avoidance. A magical fascets that seeks to reduce itself. That in itself is utterly magical and impossible, and one might say God created it this way with Wisdom. In World, just the presence of suffering will be the avoiding of suffering. In a way, one might say the celebration of suffering, the true acceptance of suffering, is to avoid suffering. That is the magic, and that is why you would frame it Devilry, why you would oppose it to Beauty, despite there being able to be beauty among suffering and the other way around. What I am trying to point to is that this is all within Worldness, God accepts all of Worldness. So the closer we get to Godness, if we were to frame it as a duality, would we not more and more come to see the utter Wisdom in all aspects of Isness, including suffering? Would we really call it devilry? Could we infact call it anything at all? Would we not end up creating "Unconsciousness" out of pure love? Would there not be so much love that we would once more be Worldness? To put it in a poetic way, would we not once more fall in Love with Creation and fully Immerse into it, reigniting the "dream"? Loving Murdering so much that it is not framed as "unconscious" or a lesser form of Love, but so Loving that the Being of the Murdering would just be by itself, "Unconsciousness" being utterly pure and perfect. The Full Circle being that Unconsciousness is the greatest and Deepest State of Consciousness there could possibly be? Or in other words, recognizing that the Isness of all Isness is equal? I see it differently. There is no "yours", there is no "you" and "me" other than being different aspects of Isness. Possession and identity are Isness, not the other way around. "I am God" is inherently Isness, but it is as much Isness as anything else. Isness does not belong to anyone, Isness is, and not even that. There is noone to allow anything, there is just Is. The way you just framed it is a very particular way of it Being. Framing it as observing, consciousness, subjectivity. To make it clearer for you, I will not just stand there, I will beat the shit out of the person. That's simply what would happen.

What does that matter? Everything I will do will be Maya, saying "It is all maya and illusion" is Maya, beating the crap out of him is Maya. There is no difference. I will not do anything, there will however be "beating the crap out of him".

That is contradictory to what I see.

But that is only one aspect of the dream. Why only focus on the suffering part? And yes, of course I, as a human, as an ego, will care about the rape. That's what it's all about. Wouldn't a higher perspective celebrate all aspects of Maya? Isn't the suffering itself the celebration of suffering? How better to appreciate suffering than by creating suffering? Saying we call it devilry because of suffering is like saying "Suffering is suffering, that's why we call the ego devilry.". Like, "But I don't want suffering to be suffering!", but that in itself is suffering! That's all suffering is about. Suffering is not anything but suffering. It's like suffering is suicidal.

Is the ego not only from the ego's perspective illusion, lying and devilry? Isn't illusion, lying and devilry = Truth, as much as anything else can be Truth? Devilry gives it such a negative vibe. Why not call it dreamery? A dream is amazing. Calling it devilry and illusion seems so human.

I have recently discovered that what I viewed meditation to be has changed in a subtle but signficant way. Prior to this change, I viewed meditation as "Focusing", "Paying attention", "Letting go", "Inspecting" or "Being mindful". Basically it was something you would do, sitting down or otherwise, as some sort of exercise. The way I look at it now is that there is no focusing, there is only Being with Reality. For instance, instead of "Being mindful of the stars", one would instead "Be with the stars". Even though this seems like a language game, in practice I found that it is not at all. The visualization of to be with or to be among has much more to do with dissolving into reality than "being mindful of". The "being with" seems to naturally dissolve the subject - experience divide. Another interesting aspect is that it seems to involve love, it seems to involve connection. It is not about "Seeing or observing accurately", but rather about connecting to existence, connecting to the "substance" of realness. To be with reality like to be with a loved one, this "framing" makes it very easy for my mind to just go right into it, effortlessly. When there is suffering, be with it as if it was lonely. Try to fill it with your presence. Connect with it, be with it. Don't look at it, be with it. This also recontextualized choice for me. I now much more clearly see that I can choose between being with Love or being with Pleasure. It's not about the question of "Do I want to experience pleasure or love?" but rather, "Do I want to be with pleasure or love?". Once can go towards one or the other. It is not about possession, it is not about "experiencing" them, it is about stepping into these aspects of realness, of being with these aspects. You are not an observer, but instead you are like a substanceless sphere which can swim through Realness or Maya. That through which you swim is that which you "experience". There is really no experiencing, there is only the swimming through. The swimming through is the Realness. There is no divide between the swimming and that through which is being swam. Meditation is like deeper swimming. In essence, instead of observing, start connecting. That is all that needs to be done. Connect with Isness. You can start with a pencil, visualizes "connecting", "being with", "sharing love" and the mind will naturally do what it needs to do.

https://cronometer.com/ See if you get everything you need from the things you eat. I would get rid of the milk, whey, yoghurt and cheese. Chicken, fish and beef is also not healthy if you would consume it every day. Best to replace it with sources that are environmentally friendly, ethical and healthier. You can replace fish with mussels, for example. The beef and chicken can be replaced with insect substitudes.