Juan Cruz Giusto

I agree, life purpose + self realization is a good recipe for a fulfilling life! Check out Benthino Massaro, he has cool insights about how to combine these two topics. http://www.bentinhomassaro.com/read/from-traditional-spirituality-to-a-truly-free-existence

Watching Zeitgeist (a 3 part documental) I read a quote from Krishnamurti that relates to the 30 Ways Society Fucks You In the Ass and I wanted to share it

@Beam great! Thank you for the new info.... I've just watched Zeitgeist so many paradigms are breaking in my model of reality so it's really cool to see different points of view.. Thank you!

@Beam any resource that can enlighten me in some way? Imo they present really coherent facts and they actually present tons of solutions, even though they are long term focused.

Have you seen the Zeitgeist trilogy? If yes, what do you think about it?

Ask who is aware of all this, don't get involved in experiences. The mind cannot know consciousness, consciousness can only know itself so don't try to rationalize all this shit because you are gonna drive yourself xrazy. I've been there and its awful so I know how you are feeling.. All the thing you are experiencing are created by the mind so realize that and ask who is aware and meditate.. Hope that I helped ☺

basically, if you believe that you are a body-mind (not enlightened) you necessarily believe that you have free will.. Even Leo that claims that there is no free will still believes it, if not he would be enlightened.. To know things conceptually is not the same as experiencing them

The Self-Trust Paradox: Self Development tells you to question yourself, your beliefs and so, and on the other hand it tells you to trust yourself completely. So, what do you do? One problem is that you are not doubting deeply enough some of the things you need to be doubting and the other problem is that you are not trusting deeply enough some of the things you should have faith in. The problem with the newbie is that he trusts he own mind a lot and he doesn’t realize the self-deceptive characteristics of the mind; this creates neurosis. You should doubt (question): - You (your ego)/ The entire structure of your mind / The notion of a separate self - Your self-biases - Your defense mechanisms o Excuses - Beliefs and ideologies (you need to be free of your beliefs) - Your mind and thoughts (logic and rationality) - All the reasons/justifications of your beliefs (Why do you believe …?) - Your emotions: Good or Bad (Ask yourself why are you feeling …?) - Your criticism of other people (they are a reflection of yourself) - Cultural preferences - Moralizations and should’s - Your motivations (they are usually based on a sense of duty and obligation) - When you beat yourself up - Your web of beliefs and the model you have of reality - Your identity and your existential nature You should trust: - Your intuition and Higher Self: It is about being in the present moment, spontaneous, playful and free. Remember your child self and try to think what were the things that inspired you and moved you. - The Drive for Truth (direct experience of reality) - Love, compassion and gratitude - Silence and Solitude - Your deep emotions (yes, it is paradoxical). They are accurate signals about your inner being. o Connection with other people o Experiencing nature o Beauty o Justice o Contribution o Love o Truth - Your creative muse (ideas and inspirations) - Awareness and direct experience - Natural powers as a human being (to survive and thrive): Your self confidence When you have to make decisions about who you are gonna marry, where are you gonna live, which business are you going to start, you need to surrender your logical mind to these things and have faith in your intuition! If you doubt everything, the only things that remain are the things you can actually trust. You need to go to your doubting process to realize which things you can trust and have faith in. At first it will be a really hard emotional process but when you don’t have anything left to doubt you will start realizing that you have an intuition and a heart (you will need 5 years of deep inner work)

@Leo Gura which discoveries if you want to share?

There are things that you really want deep inside but you don’t realize yet. The problem with your goals and desires is that you don’t question why you pursue them. If you want to be a strategic thinker and your wants are incorrect, your whole strategy is wrong (you could be working towards something that is completely misguided). If you want to be a strategic thinker you need to really contemplate your desires and realize if they are really authentic. This list is the ultimate list for your personal development goals. The 10 Things 1- Existence to feel magical again the way it felt to you when you were first born: Now, you are taking reality for granted and you see it as boring and mundane. You don’t realize that you are alive in a world of magic. You cannot see reality with the eyes of a child. 2- You want thing to be completely effortless in your life: You want everything just to flow and happen naturally. 3- You want to be authentic: You want to act, speak and behave authentic and spontaneously. You want to be playful! You don’t want to be inside your head, you want to be in the present moment all the time, without worries. 4- You want a dispassionate mind: A mind that does not cling nor need anything, a detached mind. Realize that this doesn’t mean to be unemotional or logical, a dispassionate mind is the one that doesn’t cling or need anything. You want a mind that treats everything in reality as equal; a equanimous mind. You want to be unattached to any ideology, with no beliefs to defend and totally open-minded. 5- You want to be fully sober: You want to be fully conscious, aware and lucid. You want to be so conscious that everything for you is moving in slow motion (you need to do lots of meditation and self-inquiry). You want to look upon reality without having a single thought when looking at reality. 6- You want to be nobody: You don’t want to be x or y person; you want to have 0 identity. The goal of the game is to get rid of your identity. You want to be the way you were when you were a child. 7- You want Samadhi: Is a state in which you merge with the object that you are perceiving. Is a state where you become the object that you are perceiving. It need a lot of meditation and it feels much better than an orgasm. 8- You want Truth: You want Truth at all costs. You are actually pursuing survival, thriving and success. Deep down inside, you want a life committed to Truth. The Truth will cure you. 9- You want to be a benevolent force in the world: You just want to be a force of compassion, giving, contribution, good. You want to be coming from a place of contribution to society and humanity. How to be a force of benevolence? Find your LIFE PURPOSE! You should spend your time thinking about how you can be a benevolent force in the world. Your life should become a gift giving machine. 10- You want a simple natural lifestyle: Your current lifestyle is full of distractions and pollution (internet, TV, social media, smartphones, computers, partying, clubs, drugs, alcohol, shopping, buying, being busy, getting involved with relationships, workaholism). You should be eating healthier, being more in nature, doing less shit and just being. You should have a free and relaxed schedule. You don’t want: - Pleasure - Money - Success - Sex - Relationships - Reputation - Self-Actualization Will you be wise enough to realize this? People are so lost that they don’t even realize that they are lost.

Read The Book of Not Knowing! There is a part of shadow work and contemplation.. Regarding the contemplation, choose a topic and think about it for long periods of time.. You can do it while. Commuting, walking, etc

Hey guys! Doing some research I found a very interesting video I wanted to share with you. Here it goes!:

What's up people!? I started intermittent fasting some months ago and i would totally recommend it. Mornings are much more productive (you don't need to think about breakfast), i decrease my fat a lot and I'm gaining muscle and strength as well.. The technique consists in stop eating after dinner and skip breakfast going directly to lunch.. The idea is to be fasting 16 hours a day and eat 8. The only way to reduce fat is to be in calorie deficit and this technique is really useful.. If you want to know more just Google it or look for Greg O'Gallagher in YT.. Comment what you think and let's make an interesting discussion.

This are all extracts from Osho that I really like. Some people that are in this quest for enlightenment often forget to live too and enjoy the mundane and physical things. We think that the physical world is worse than the spiritual (awareness) and we should only focus on this path, but we have the opportunity to live, and to live as a whole! With this said, this is what my friend Osho thinks about: "If we want a whole man – and to me a whole man is the only holy man – then Zorba has to be absorbed into Buddha. They have to be accepted totally as one. And I don't see where the trouble is. In fact, Zorba plus Buddha will be a tremendous enrichment. "Buddha cannot laugh, cannot dance, cannot sing, cannot love. Now what kind of life will it be? Hollow! "Zorba can sing, dance, enjoy food, drink, love. He will have a life, but he will not know who he is. He will not know the meaning of existence. He will never come to experience the deathlessness of life, the eternity of his existence – that he has been here always, and will be always; only forms change. He will never enter into his own center. He will always remain in the cyclone, very busy, concerned with everything except himself. And the center of the cyclone is the most ecstatic experience, the ultimate experience of human consciousness. Beyond that there is nothing; you have arrived home. "But I don't see that there is any problem, there is no contradiction. You can arrive home, you can be at your center – what prevents you from laughing? In fact, you should be the only one who can really laugh, can become laughter; who can really love, can become love itself – where the lover disappears and only love remains; one who can dance and dance to such abandon that the dancer is completely gone, there is only dance. "This is my effort: To bring Zorba the Buddha into the world. "That will create a unity in you; your body and soul will have a unity. You will not have to fight against your nature, you can use it as a stepping stone. There is no need to fight, there is no need to repress. All psychological diseases are out of repression. All psychopathological people are just incurable unless they accept their nature totally, without any grudge. You have to use your natural energies to grow. It will bring man into a totality. "All religions have made you schizophrenic, split. They have created guilt in you by creating a split; it is their whole business. Only a guilty man will go to church, will go to the synagogue, will go to the temple; otherwise there is no need. If you are one, you would like to dance in the open air under the sun. That will be your real prayer. Nothing is said, nothing is asked, but you are showing your gratitude to existence. "Zorba the Buddha will not only destroy the split in man, it will destroy the split in society."

@Leo Gura Cannot wait for the course!!! When are you gonna release it?

“Great wisdom looks like stupidity” Personal development work is not the same; there is a spectrum with 3 main levels. Therefore, there are different techniques for the different levels. The 3 levels are: 1. Newbies: Is coming from a deep deficiency in his life. He has holes in himself that need to be filled with money, relationships, business, fitness, his mood, etc. And he really needs tangible results since he doesn’t like his life. He usually blames the external environment for his situation (he feels like a victim). He is looking for solutions in the external world (money, relationships, etc.); he doesn’t care about internal solutions. He is negatively motivated; he is not here for the great stuff (life purpose, contributing to society, expanding consciousness); he is coming from a place of pain and he only wants to remove this pain. He is not interested in changing his sense of self and identity. He is focused on Outer Growth, not Inner. He is not interested in Truth for its sake and doesn’t care about what reality is. If he is interested in Truth is because it serves his sense of identity. He takes his mind seriously and thinks that his thoughts matter (he didn’t make the distinction between thought and awareness). He is lost in theory and doesn’t try to experience the stuff Leo talks about. They need to understand that everything is grounded in direct experience. He resists taking action. (if you don’t take action after listening to an advanced piece of wisdom it will be counterproductive). The newbie is unaware of the ego and how deceptive it is. He is also unaware of his closed mindedness. He is not aware of his own social distortion. He doesn’t care and neglects spirituality. He is really impatient. They want free stuff and doesn’t want to buy courses, books or seminars. He has narrow focus (he only thinks about money and sex) and doesn’t care about philosophy, psychology, science, history, etc. He cannot go from the abstract to the concrete (he cannot create actual action steps to take the advice). He thinks in terms of black and white and tend to make the teaching about the teacher. He falls into the trap of simplicity: He thinks that advanced truths are really complicated when in reality they are quite simple. The newbie hasn’t experience the shock of how little he knows about reality. 2. Intermediate: A combination of the Newbie and the Advanced stages. 3. Advanced: It is radical open-mindedness and being grounded in reality. He rejects all social norms. He does a lot of practice and implementation (he takes massive action) and this action is inwardly directed (meditating, contemplating, doing shadow work, introspecting, doing self-inquiry); and this is literally working for thousands of hours sitting alone in your couch. He accepts and realize that all problems are internal and are created by them. There is a focus on Truth vs goals, he wants to know what reality is by direct experience. They focus on awareness since they recognize that thoughts will not create the growth they are looking for. They need to have a couple of years of meditation/self-inquiry under his belt. After 2 years of daily meditation practice you finally start to have some insights and epiphanies about the power of awareness vs thoughts. Advanced work includes self-inquiry and questioning of the ego. You need to question what you are, why you are motivated to do the things you do, why you create the emotions you have, etc. Also, the advanced student rejects success and the need to meet his needs. He is not here for success anymore; he realized that success is hollow. He recognized that success will never get him to where he wants to be in life. This doesn’t mean that he stopped going to work and became a monk. He still pursues relative degrees of success but he no longer clings to the newbie ideal that success is the ultimate goal. Perhaps he wants a girlfriend but he doesn’t care that much since he has bigger things in his life; he has different priorities. He made personal development a lifelong commitment; it is done for its own sake so he becomes quite patient; he looks 10 years down the road. The advance student makes serious study about personal development material (he studies philosophy, history, religion, science, spirituality, epistemology). He is aware that the deepest work is the most emotionally challenging work and he embraces the pain since he knows that the worst moments are the moments in which he grows the most. He recognizes that his web of beliefs is holding him back so he is able to question it. He is able to handle confusion and paradox. Advice for Newbies - It is okay to be a newbie. - If you are a newbie, focus on satisfying your deepest needs first. Pursue some success in your life and go have some sex. Burn through your desires. - Focus on installing habits o Meditation o Exercise o Healthy food o Contemplation o Visualization o Affirmation - Cut distractions off your life - Be careful with advanced topic, don’t focus on them too much. - Be much more open-minded - Realize that personal development is a very deep path and will take you all your life. - Get excited about the advanced work, YOU NEED BOTH. - Even though there are people who are really enlightened, they don’t know about business. YOU NEED EVERY TYPE OF ADVICE, from regular advice to advanced advice. - There is nothing wrong with pursuing enlightenment and learning to have great sex or handle a business. - Don’t confuse pursuing enlightenment with a complete abandonment of life. You have to be detached from sex, money, relationships but that doesn’t mean that you no longer enjoy them, it means that you enjoy them fully because you don’t need them! - You can become a millionaire, or a sex god but don’t get attached to it and don’t use it as an excuse to discover your true nature. GO AND ENJOY LIFE, BUT DO IT IN A CONSCIOUS WAY SO YOU CAN REALLY REALLY ENJOY IT. In a few years, if you don’t keep growing you will not understand nothing about what Leo is taking. DO THE HOMEWORK! You should be inspired by the possibilities!!! The deepest wisdom is incredibly joyful!!!

If you are aware enough, you will realize that you are actually not happy. The real reason you are not happy is because you don’t want to, even though it sounds really insane. People are actually pursuing conditional happiness. It means that you would only be happy if things go the way you want to; but this is very illogical. If you could be unconditionally happy, what would you decide? (really think about the question?). If you say yes, this would mean: - You wouldn’t need food, water, sex, shelter, family, have fun, friends, etc. - You would be happy no matter what (even if your family is murdered). What you have been doing all the time is putting rules and conditions to happiness (I will be happy when…). Your entire motivational system in life has been predicated upon achievement of things and goal, but if you could be happy with anything, why would you do the things you do. The problem is you don’t know what to do with yourself when you are actually happy. Instead of focusing on things that would bring you happiness, focus on happiness itself. You actually want fulfillment, not the goals you want to achieve! YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL IS HAPPINESS! The rule you say to yourself is: I will be happy when… Positive motivation and negative motivation are actually neurotic; you shouldn’t be happy when you get stuff done as you shouldn’t be sad when you don’t; you should be happy anyway. When you say you want conditional happiness (consciously or unconsciously), you are creating misery for yourself. Your suffering is really unnecessary and doesn’t help to change situations. You actually don’t need suffering to take action, you make it neurotic! You need to change your entire foundation of how you are motivated. Since you don’t have authentic motivation, you label yourself as a businessman or a healthy person so you take action in order to maintain your identity (you will sacrifice happiness to maintain your identity). You are not pursuing happiness; you are pursuing the things that you think that will need to happiness. If you want to be really happy, you need to let go some of these rules (but it is extremely difficult for you). You need to ask yourself: Why do I feel I need …. To be happy? It usually boils down to a feeling of deficiency inside of you in some way, like a hole that need to be filled and you actually believe that if you feel that hole you will feel complete. You need to understand that the holes that you feel cannot be completed with physical things or with any kind of achievement in the external world. If you look deep enough, you will realize that you are already complete and all holes are illusions, there are no holes in you. You don’t need anything to be happy. The question now is; why would I do things at all? You will realize that really it doesn’t matter what the experience is, you can learn to every experience and enjoy the magic in every experience, not matter what are you experiencing (from having sex to dying or being tortured). The fact that there is even an experience at all, it still a remarkable thing (the problem is that we were disconnected with the magic of experience itself). A test to discover your happiness level: If you lock yourself in a box forever, can you still be happy? Highly developed people don’t need shit to be happy; you don’t actually need anything to be happy. Notice that when you are detached (don’t need) something, it doesn’t mean you are never gonna experience it again, it means that you are not attached to it. YOU DON’T REALLY HOW EXTRAORDINARY IT FEELS SIMPLY TO BE CONSCIOUS! Detachment doesn’t make you depressed, or nihilistic; it frees you up to do whatever the fuck you want. Even when you are enjoying something but you are attached to it, you actually suffer. In order to say yes to unconditional happiness, everything in your life will have to be changed and refactored, you need to realize that you were just pretending to be happy. Right now you have some assumptions like: - I need money to be happy - I need sex to be happy - I need to have an impact in the world - Etc You need to contemplate about them and realize that these rules for happiness are backfiring you and you have forgotten that the point of life is not to do stuff or to be busy, the point is pure happiness. When you shed awareness to your neurotic motivations they will start to crumble and you will feel lost: trust that your motivation will come back to you and in a more authentic and divine way.

Hey guys! After watching Leo's video and since I'm a business student and read tons of business and entrepreneurship books I thought I could help you guys in something you need or to discuss some topics about it. Contact me if you feel to or just post it here and we can discuss it all together!

“What is a thought?” is one of the most important questions you can do. You are using thoughts everyday but you don’t know what they actually are. The nature of thought is illusory. The difference between knowing and not knowing what a thought is is the difference between living in a self-constructed mental prison in which you suffer all your negative emotions and living in a free and self-actualized life. You need a direct awareness of what a thought is, not just explanations. You cannot escape this problem by thinking. Thoughts are illusory but they are real, they are as real as your body. The problem with them is that they are chameleons; you attribute a certain importance and depth that is not real at all. Images are sneaky; even though they represent reality, you think that they are reality itself, mistaking the map with the territory. You are not aware of what thoughts and images really are. The photograph is not the thing depicted. The food photograph analogy. In books, you create the story with your mind from black and white symbols. Language is arbitrary sounds and you create meaning from that sounds. Language is made of symbols and what symbols are are representations of something, but not the thing itself. SYMBOLS ARE NOT REALITY ITSELF AND THEY ARE TOTALLY ARBITRARY; This makes you unconscious since thoughts are arbitrary symbols that acquire meaning over time. And what the human brain does is creating weird and crafty representations of reality that you start to believe are true when in fact are just thoughts. You can get depressed, happy or angry depending on the meaning you attribute to certain situations. Thoughts are arbitrary, thus meaning is an illusion (everything included). Recognize that breaking free from your mind requires that you become aware of what meaning is and its illusory nature. YOU NEED TO GAIN MINDFULNESS OVER YOUR THOUGHTS. If you can master this, you will be less reactive and less stressed by them. There cannot be any suffering without meaning; almost all of your suffering is caused by meaning, and meaning is illusory. A problem is a meaning! Flattening the Illusion: You need to make the distinction between what reality is and your interpretation of it (separate the map from the territory). The trick is to flatten the illusion with your thoughts. You need to develop enough mindfulness in order to not react to your thoughts. The key question is “What is this, literally?”. A thought is real as a sensation in your mind, not as the actual thing. If you don’t apply mindfulness you will be living in a reality constructed by thoughts and not reality as it really is. How to practice this? Commit to flatten 50 illusions in the next week and write it down. Describe the content and then what it really is.

@Toby Mostly theoretical but most of my teachers and mentors and serial and successful entrepreneurs (I'm studying in San Francisco)

@Emerald Wilkins My pleasure Keep me informed with your progress! I care!!!

@Elton Interview your customers and discover their problems and feelings! - The Lean Startup - Business Model Generation - Value Proposition Design - Running Lean These books are all you need! Hope it helps!

@Emerald Wilkins Hi! Regarding the traffic to your website, SEO (search engine optimization) is a good and cheap strategy. You should create a personal page if you dont have one (with wordpress is really cheap and simple). This way you can direct traffic from google searches. You can study that. The best advice I can give you is to define well your business plan. Dont see your YT channel as a YT channel only. You have a passion and you want to make it profitable in the long term. How you do that? Generating enough income so the business can maintain itself. You need to discover your unique strength, why your channel is different from Leo's and the houndreds that are out there. A good way to define your business is with The Business Model Canvas (http://www.alexandercowan.com/business-model-canvas-templates/). Also you need to study your customer. Define it as accurate as possible, know everything about them (problems, desires, routines, etc). After you do this interview 50 of them and ask them about their problems (the best would be in person but skype will do the work) . If you are not solving any problems to them you will not create traction or traffic. Also, starting thinking long term. How are you gonna make your business profitable? Courses, ads, sponsorship, etc? You need to study business and implementation. Even if you have a great product, if nobody wants it you will fail. Some books you can read are: - The Lean Startup - Business Model Generation - Value Proposition Design - Running Lean These 4 books are all you need if you want to start a business, they will help you a lot!

Hofstadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account this law.” How sad would it be that you were on track to get some important accomplishment and you quit just inches ahead of your final goal? Maybe the only thing standing in your way between you and the success you want in your life is actually just patience. You are on this journey of self-actualization and what happens a lot of times is that you feel you are not getting the results you deserve give what you are putting in. It’s important to remember that you need more patience. Whatever your goals are, just be patient! Don’t psyche yourself out when you don’t get the results you expect. The mind will always try to expect more than what is happening. “People overestimate what they can do in 1 year but underestimate what they can do in 10 years”. You need to start think more long term! Growth is exponential but you need to stick with it for a long period of time. Success is made up by thousands of small steps. Big accomplishments don’t happen in one giant victory; it is an accumulation of small victories that with time generate really big results. RESULTS DON’T COME LINEARLY. You need to stick with it until you get through the point of inflexion where giant results await you. At the beginning of every project, that is the longest phase and the most emotionally difficult part. The beginning is like 80% of the work (a couple of years) but once it takes off you are done. The amount of patience you need to have in a project should be proportional to the significance of that project to your life. If it’s really significant, it is worth the time. Napoleon Hill researched for 20 years before creating his book. Really important projects: - Meditation - Financial Independence and Business - Relationships and Dating - Enlightenment In meditation and enlightenment work, the first few years are really challenging; you are going to pas though some difficult times but after that only peace remains. This applies to everything in your life. How to implement this principle of patience - Be conscious of your self-talk in the first stages of your progress. Think long term! - Create more room in your life for strategizing! You need an hour block of time every week to strategize and think about your life long term. Connect the dots and work towards your ultimate vision. - Slow down your pace in your projects. The root is your impatience, expect that results will show in a longer time, be patient. Don’t rush the project. Accept that you will take twice as long to accomplish it. - Focus on walking the path, it will transform your life if YOU STAY ON IT! Nothing will ruin your results than self-sabotage! Remember that patience is not the same as waiting. You need to take action but be patient! Questions - One area of my life that I’m trying to go to fast is… - Why am I in such a rush? - If it took twice as long, would it still be worth it? - If I embrace the principle of patience I would… - How would my expectations change if I care deeply about long term results? - What exactly does a lazy pace look like for this project? - What exactly does an impatient pace look like for this project? - What exactly does a wise pace look like for this project?

@Light_Ray You cannot practice Non Duality since it's not a practice. Just try to be in the present moment as much as you can and create a meditation habit if you want. Try to clean your thoughts at least 10 times a day. Non Duality is not something that you do, is something you are (i guess, I'm not enlightened yet lol). Hope this was helpful! PS: Dont think too much about it, just feel the presence within you and that you are actually beyond thoughts, that you exist even though you are having no thoughts at all.