Juan Cruz Giusto

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” Margaret Mead There are two basic models you can use to think about people: 1- People are all the same (The Sameness Model) 2- People are all different (The Different Model) Most people hold the first model. Sadly, this creates problems for themselves. From this model, we look at people like they are wired like us and this is a false assumption. The Sameness Model It says “I’m a person. Here is like reality seems to me. Here is like happiness and sadness feels to me. Here is what angers feels like. And everyone must be the same way since we are all human beings.” All other people is wired as I am. Another assumption about the sameness model is that all people live in the same physical reality. So, this model thinks that if people are wired the same as I am and don’t act or behave the same way as me, it means that there is something wrong with other people and they are misbehaving. You are using yourself as the measure to compare others. When others misbehave regarding your standard, you call them crazy, lazy, criminals or even animals. The negative consequences of having this model is that it leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of people. It puts us in an adversarial relationship with foreigners (people who don’t behave like you). It also creates criticizing, debating, violence, frustration, judging and so on. The Difference Model In reality, people have different models of reality and the world! Recognize that each individual is genetically unique. People have different motivations, desires, abilities, fears, aspirations, levels of self-discipline and pain tolerance, emotions, moods, brain chemistry, spiritual entuned and so forth. People actually occupies different realities than you. Each one of us live in our own bubble and the intersections between them is what we call physical reality. What is the evidence for this? Researchers discovered that there are 5 aspects of human personality: · Extroversion · Agreeableness · Conscientiousness · Self-Efficacy · Neuroticism · Openness These personality aspects see and experience the world very different since your emotions filter and shape what you feel. You construct your reality since it’s mostly conceptual. Understand that there is no good or bad personality traits. The problem comes when we try to make people like us, without appreciating that we are different and that there are only different outlooks of reality. Each personality trait is good for different purposes and many of them are just programmed from childhood or just different biologies. Sexual orientations, drug addictions, sex addiction, criminals and so forth are programmed to do it for different causes; you need much more compassion. WE ARE WIRED DIFFERENTLY, THEREFORE WE ACT IN DIFFERENT WAYS! Why people experience spirituality differently? People experience spirituality and psychedelics differently because of our brain structure and chemical soups. There are hundreds of traditions and different aspects of spirituality. This also explains why some people are interested in spirituality and enlightenment and some people aren’t. Why should they be? Psychedelics will show you that there are a lot of ways that consciousness can be but they are not useful for survival or reproduction. Traps and Misunderstandings 1- All of my behavior is justified? If you are acting unconsciously, you are going to regret it yourself. People tend to behave the way they were programmed. Just behave in a caring and compassionate way. 2- My dreams are impossible? Don’t turn this into a reason not to grow. Many of your problems are just limiting beliefs. Just accept reality as it is! Then, what you do about it is up to you. As a community, we decide what we want and develop systems to foster that. Instead of condemning people, just be compassionate and act accordingly. Tips 1- Discover what your authentic self is and be it unapologetically. Discover your strengths and exploit them 2- Let people be themselves and appreciate the differences 3- Be open to radical new lifestyles and worldviews 4- Realize that you don’t know what is it like to be another person 5- Don’t condemn people. They might be victims of their circumstances. 6- Think twice when giving advice to people; you usually don’t see their point of view 7- Seek alternative worldviews 8- Be careful who you role model. You are assuming that you are the same as the other person but you are wired differently! Use them as inspiration but don’t forget about yourself. FOLLOW YOUR OWN AGENDA AND BE MORE AUTHENTIC. 9- Craft your lifestyle around your personality type! Craft the self-actualization journey to your own unique personality.

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Joseph Campbell The hero’s journey is as follows: The hero usually starts in his town, within his comfort zone. Then the Universe present to him a Call to Action but he refuses it because of homeostasis and people are lazy. Finally, he is forced to take the Call. He ventures out to unknown territories and this is when the adventure really begins. He will face the Threshold Guardian – the first obstacle in your journey. That test whether you are serious about it or not. The Hero overcomes this Guardian! If he does it, he will find a mentor to train him. With this new knowledge, he goes on beating up the other Guardians. The mentor is the hero himself, from a past generation. Finally, he has to defeat the Final Boss, which protects the Holy Grail. The first encounter with the Boss, will fail so then he comes back stronger than ever – this phase is called ‘Entering the Belly of the Whale”. This is where the hero has to now face himself and rethink his whole life and approach. After that, he can go defeat the dragon and obtain the Holy Grail. When he gets the Holy Grail, he realizes that the journey was not about the prize but who he became to obtain it. He surrenders the physical grail and embraces the real grail of who he has become – the new more powerful version of himself. Then he returns home to share the lessons that he learned, the problem is that the people in the town cannot understand his teachings. Then he becomes available as a mentor. This is the structure of human life! The real journey is not about the physical journey, but the spiritual one. Joseph Campbell took the root of this journey from Vedanta and the pursuit of enlightenment. The battle, the monster and the evil is you! You are in a journey to fight yourself. It is a battle between ego and Truth! Will you serve your life serving ego or pursuing the Truth? A Hero is someone who chooses Truth over ego. Evil is selfishness or ego. When you choose Truth, are you prepared for the consequences? You cannot have yourself and the Truth. If you want the Truth, you will have to give up on yourself and let it go. Villainy is everything you do to serve your self-agenda. The Holy Grail is the Truth or God or Enlightenment or Consciousness and its fundamentally intangible. There is nothing external to be fought in life! Everything is internal! For your whole life, you’ve refusing the Call but you weren’t clear that this wasn’t the case. The real heroes are the Yogis, Sages, Masters and Saints; not the rockstars or famous people. Why not everyone is a hero? It is precisely because you are letting go of yourself. The hardest thing you will do in life is to say no to yourself and say yes to Truth. In practice, accepting the Call to Adventure is extremely difficult because: - You need to be a romantic - You need to be a risk taker - You need to have faith - You need to shed intoxications of your culture - Peer-pressure, all pulling you back down into everyday mundane existence - It requires a vision Why do we admire heroes as a culture? The hero shows us our higher potential. They show us how our lives should be about. Our mission is to spiritually purify ourselves and tap into everything we’ve got. You are alive to become successful or to work, you are alive so that you can experience the Truth of Reality and what Life is; THAT IS THE HOLY GRAIL! Practical Takeaways - Society will not lead you to salvation - It’s much more good than you can imagine or expect - This is a process, don’t reinvent the will - What you really need to do is get to the point to accept the Call. Have a strong vision, otherwise you will not achieve it! - Realize that you were secretly craving all your life to give yourself to something bigger than you “The village has disappeared in the evening mist and the path is hard to follow. Walking through the pines, I return to my lonely hut.” Ryokan

Ken Wilber, Eben Pagan, Elon Musk, Da Vinci, many Greek Philosophers, many of the social entrepreneurs are between green and yellow, Einstein are some. Careful not to confuse spiritual development with the Spiral Dynamics model.. Their correlation is not tight.

@Steph1988 not because you are enlightened you will have your shit together. I love Osho and his books are deeply inspiring, but he definitely had some personal issues that he couldn't solve... Don't mistake spiritual development with psychological and personal development.. They are different and have a very loose correlation

“In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice, there is.” Yogi Berra Both extremes have their own set of problems” - Extreme Pragmatism: They live a shallow existence, tend to be very materialistic, selfish and chasing after experiences. They have no big picture understanding of life. They cannot tap into the power of spirituality. - Extreme Theorist: Armchair philosophy, mental masturbation, arguing and debating, criticism others, paralysis by analysis, fantasies and getting lost in concepts, ignoring that the map is not the territory and lack of real-world results. They also lack big picture understanding. They cannot tap into the power of spirituality neither because it is just not theory. In reality, practice and theory are interdependent and if you want to live a fulfilling life you need to balance them in a wise way. Your theory must be able to inform your practice and vice versa and you must be able to control the flow. You need to strategically shift the balance between these two in regards of your situation and your life conditions. You need some abilities to balance these extremes: 1- The ability to theorize in the abstract without concern of pragmatic issues: Sometimes, theory will not have a practical application in your immediate situation but in a couple of years you will find a practical application. If you are always concerned about personal value, you don’t give yourself the chance for something incredible to blossom in your theorizing. 2- The ability to see the practical consequences of your theorizing: When you theorize properly, you will need to ask what are the repercussions of that theory. If a theory is ruining your life, is not a good theory. Let your practice inform your theorizing to create more compelling theories. 3- The ability to be motivated to action by good theory: You need to abstract motivation from the theories you read so you can implement them right away. 4- The ability to create actual action plans based upon the theory that you’ve learnt: Create habits and action plans to accomplish your goals. 5- The ability to drop theorizing in a dime: Stop thinking about stuff and take action in the moment. If you are not able to do it, you are going to be a slave of your theorizing. START TAKING ACTION. 6- The ability to theorize one way but act in the opposite way: You need to hold the tension between your theories and your actions. Sometimes you need time for both to come together. Your theories change but you need to be practical. 7- The ability to see the big picture patterns that come about through your actions and practices: The best theorizing comes when you are in practice mode, and you observe patterns that can become insights and principles. Implement and test your principles. 8- The ability to see when you are stuck in theory or in action: You need the ability to cut bad action with good theory and bad theory with good action. 9- The ability to see the limitations of theory and practice: The limitations of theory is that you can get lost in concepts and lose touch of reality. The limits of action is that you are stuck in a mechanical way and don’t have different perspectives. It is the ability to shut your mind off and get centered in Being. 10- The ability to read between the lines of your thinking: You need to observe your thinking and hold it into consideration. Think about your thinking process. 11- The ability to move forward despite paradox, confusion and indecision: The greater danger is doing nothing. Pick one and go with it! The key here is observation! Be aware of these dynamics in your life. Learning self-actualization theory is necessary because you know what the right steps are. If you’ve been studying personal development for a couple of years and don’t have that many results, you should probably start taking massive action to start embodying those principles. If you are not sure about your Life Purpose, just take action for a year and think about your life purpose again.

Lol! Been there my man! Just pursue enlightenment and your life purpose. Goals are not inherently wrong but the problem comes when we attach our happiness to them and depend on them to feel happy. For practical purposes, just treat them as separate lines of development. Like Ishi said - and I'm paraphrasing: the whole man is called Zorba The Buddha, is whom he pursues and enjoy the material pleasures of life (have an amazing career, amazing dating life and what have you) and its grounded in his consciousness. The real sages lived amazing lives and made huge impacts in society. Osho owned 100 Rolle Royce, Ralston was the first westener to win the martial art championship, Buddha taught the Dharma for 60 years and Sadhguru is having a great impact in millions.

@BeginnerActualizer lol! @PetarKa thank you! This video really got the best out of me and I'm beginning my action taking mode right now!

1- how to be more genuine and real when connecting to others. Since the personal self is a conceptual one, how can any of this be real and genuine? You can say that you need to speak what you feel and think, but how do you know that these come from the "real" you?

“It’s hardest to see the ground directly beneath your feet.” Default Position: It’s a position that a person holds without knowing that is a position. It is also a “natural” position, requiring no burden of proof. An overlooked assumption or perspective that masquerades as reality. You take beliefs as a given, without any burden of proof. Examples · Atheism: They like to position themselves as having no position. They have a belief saying that there is no god. · Psychedelics: People assume that what they are seeing right now is Absolute Reality and with psychedelics you are just tripping. · Death: You believe that you will die. · Naïve Realism · Everything in the universe is rational · Reality is made out of discrete separate objects · Time is absolute · Energy is always conserved · You can’t get something from nothing · Occam’s Razor · Skepticism · Modern science is true because it works · Consciousness is in the brain · You are the body · Physical pain has to be pain and it’s bad · You have free will · Need to get married · Homosexuality is unnatural and unmanly · The educational system teaches truth · Enlightenment is an experience · Nihilism · Emotions are something that happens to us · Humanity is highly evolved · Society is healthy · Happiness comes from external conditions There are no givens and everything must be empirically investigated. How to face this? 1- Raise your awareness 2- Self-honesty 3- Objectivity: Develop the capacity to look at a situation without any biases nor preferences. Stop giving your beliefs special status!

@Treeves4u my pleasure man ?

Hey guys! I cannot find Master Map Of Success from Eben Pagan. I've been looking it for hours. If you can help me I would appreciate it!

Hey guys! First of all I would like to say that I loved Leo's blogpost talking about our understanding of hallucinations, mainstream society and psychedelics. I agree 100% since there is nothing really to say against it since we can prove this with just direct experience. But yes, I'm prone to add some of my insights and questions too. So here we go: We believe in a world made out of matter. We can define matter as "something that is outside the mind". But, did we ever experienced this phenomena? Ask every human being that existed, or even animals (supposing, obviously, that they can talk) and ask them if they have ever knew something other than mind - perceptions, sensations, thoughts and images. WE NEVER EVER EVER KNEW SOMETHING OUTSIDE OF MIND, and the worst thing is that we believe our mind is made out of something called matter, which we have 0 proof of it - and we never will. With our direct experience, and the direct experience of other, we can confidently say that there is nothing outside of mind - or consciousness or awareness - because we never encounter that! Second, the only thing we know about the "external world" is perception - say vision and sounds. For example, we dont know a chair, we know the perception of it. That is what Leo was trying to say, we never knew an outside world independent of us, we only knew perception. And we are not alone here, every living thing on earth just knows perception. Let's take a dog as an illustration. Even though they see a different scale of colors, the only thing that the dog knows about the outside world is, guess what?... YES, PERCEPTION! So, the perception of the chair is not the chair itself; saying that a chair has an independent reality on its own is illusory, because we cannot make that claim. BUT! Even though a mirage is not true as water, is true as being light. As such, perception is not truth as an object but is 100% truth as a perception. I cannot prove that the outside world exist, but I can 100% confirm that perception exists. The question that remains is: "What is the substance of percetion?" And the answer is awareness, but we will have to meditate a couple of years to prove this claim. When we meditate, we have faith that, by analyzing our experience deep enough, we will reach a point in which we will be able to understand or know something that was unknown to us until that moment. Where does perception appear and disappear? When I open my eyes, there is the perception of the lamp, but when I close it, where did it go? The question that remains for me regarding the nature of hallucinations is: Even though nothing is outside of the mind and doesnt have an independent reality whatsoever, if a psycho sees a tree but me and 100 people don't, what is really happening here. This was my rant, Thank you

@username loved it! It's the most honorable and meaningful way to live your life, and serve God

“Until you get into access concentration, you ain’t got squat”. This one practice will revolutionize everything you do in meditation. This is the heart of becoming a master in meditation. This will take you to the end of your meditation journey. Concentration: Select an object and focus on it like a laser beam, consistently repeatedly until your time is done. In meditation, you let your mind go and surrender, whereas in concentration your disciplining your mind to focus on one subject. This is important because the best results come when you enter access concentration. You need the ability to stabilize your mind. Without this focus you cannot meditate or self-inquire seriously. Your concentration is terrible because of videogames, texting, movies and so on. You need to develop this ability! How to develop concentration? Sit down with a timer for 5 minutes to start. Then select an object to focus on and exclude everything else. Become very clear on what the object of concentration is. You have to discipline yourself with the objective of hitting access concentration. How do you know you’ve hit access concentration? You will go into this flow state and you will feel that your attention has shifted. Start with a short duration like 5 minutes and increase it until you reach 1 hour. You can also do 2 minutes in the morning, 2 minutes on lunch and 2 minutes at night. Make sure you stay very consistent. Don’t increase your time if you are not consistent with your concentration during the period. You can smoothen out the object you are focusing on; it’s going to make access concentration easier to reach. STRESS QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! If you do 5 minutes of concentration before your meditation practice, you will notice that your meditation can become twice as better. Different objects you can select · Hand positions (thumb and finger) · Breath o Tip of your nose (specially your nostrils) o Your entire breath (conceptualize it in a single object) · Pick a physical object to look at o Candle flame o Orange/Apple · A mental image · Select a color · Mantra (a sound that you repeat to yourself that doesn’t have a meaning) · A sound o A metronome The key is selecting something and stick with it! Q&A - How can I focus if I don’t have free will? This question comes from a misunderstanding of what is not having free will. No free will means that there is no doer in life that is doing, but stuff still gets done! No free will doesn’t mean that you cannot make decisions, it means that there is no free will to make your decisions. There is no you making decisions. The universe is concentrating. - This sounds so try hard… Spirituality is one of the most rigorous practices you can find. For you to surrender, you will have to try very fucking hard. Concentration practices will create jhanas, but they are not enlightenment. Anyways, concentration is key to gaining insight!

“The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason”. Blaise Pascal Modern skepticism masquerades as skepticism when really is just dogmatism. Pyrrhonism was the name of the original skepticism. Leo finds Pyrrhonism the most accurate school of philosophy, epistemically speaking. It is named after Pyrrho. He traveled with Alexander the Great to India, and bumped into the gymnosophists (yogis) and from then, he learned very interesting insights about the nature of reality. They convinced Pyrrho that nothing is certain. What did Pyrrho teach? That the greatest aim of life is Eudemonia. This is a Greek term that means happiness or living the good life - careful, don’t confuse it with pleasure or success – for them is living a contemplative life and embodying the truth and living from Good. Philosophy is about what is true. Pyrrhonism says that nothing can be known for certain because you have two ways of accessing reality. The first one is the senses and the other one is reasoning. The problem is that they are not reliable and can trick us very easily. Therefore, we have to be honest and admit that we cannot know reality for sure. Neither perceptions nor reasoning tell us the ultimate truth. Moreover, he taught us that reasoning or proof is either, circular, or involves an infinite regress that is ultimately groundless. How do we usually know what is true? We claim something and then back it up with justifications and proofs and evidence, but if we really think about it this is groundless because for any evidence you provide, you will need more evidence to prove itself and so on. You cannot basically ground anything because you don’t any grounding proof. You cannot say something is true because with each statement, its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification. THEREFORE, PYRRHONISTS REFUSE TO TAKE ANY POSITIONS BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE GROUNDS FOR TAKING IT. THEY REFUSE TO TAKE SIDES. They will doubt anything beyond appearances because they cannot be ultimately proven. They also oppose that nothing can be known. The problem with the modern skeptic is that they doubt their own skepticism. You cannot know if nothing can be known. To make that sort of claim would be dogmatic. “Skepticism is an ability or mental attitude with opposes judgement in any way whatsoever, with the results that, we are brought to a state of mental suspense, and then to a state of quietude. Suspense is a state of mental rest in which we don’t deny or affirm anything. Quietude is a tranquil condition of the soul. The main basic principle of the skeptic system is that of opposing to every proposition, an opposite proposition for we believe that as a consequence o this, we end to seizing to dogmatize.” Pyrrhonists are continuing to talk about this topic of tranquility of mind. They are not skeptics just for the sake of it, they are skeptics to reach Eudemonia. They recognize that Eudemonia is happiness, and you achieve it by stopping taking positions about things we can never be certain. “When we say that the skeptic reframes from dogmatism, we say that we he does not ascent to anyone of the non-evident objects of scientific enquiry. The philosopher absents to nothing that is not evident. Our doubt does not concern the appearance of things but the account of the appearance. For example, honey appears to us to be sweet. This we confirm. But, whether is also sweet in its essence is for us a matter of doubt since this is not an appareance but a judgment.”. They accept that appearances are appearances, but they don’t claim anything. They differ appearances from judgments and conclusions. What is given to us to reality is appearance, and nothing more. We don’t know more. “Even in the active annunciating the skeptic formula, the skeptic still does not dogmatize, for whereas the dogmatizer poses the thing about which he is said to be dogmatizing, as actually existent, the skeptic does not posit I any absolute sense. We must grasp the fact that we make no positive assertion regarding absolute truth.” Pyrrhonism doesn’t claim that they are the ultimate school of philosophy. If they said that they are the right paradigm to see the world, they are becoming dogmatic. Instead, they are very careful, and say that even though they are skeptical, they hold their skepticism very loosely, which is why they don’t say that nothing could ever be known. “The man who claims that something is by nature good or bad, is being disquieted. When he is without the things he deemed good, he believes himself to be tormented by the things naturally bad, and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks good. Which then when he obtains these good things he keeps falling into more agitation of the mind because of his irrational claims, and he uses every endeavor to avoid losing the things which he deems to be good. On the other hand, the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad (the skeptic) that person neither escapes nor pursues anything eagerly and, as a consequence, is unperturbed.” Skeptics understood that the game of materialism is never going to bring true happiness. You will fight for the things you think will make you happy, and when you achieve them, you will still struggle to keep them and defend them forever. It is a never-ending cycle. YOU WILL NEVER WIN THE GAME OF MATERIALISM. “Does anything true really exist? It is impossible to decide the controversy because the man who says that something true exists will not be believed without proof of the opposing argument. And if he wishes to offer proof, he will be disbelieved if it is acknowledged that his proof is false. So, he has to declare that he has to declare that his proof is true, he becomes involved on circular reasoning. He will be requested to show proof of the proof. And then more proof of the proof and so on ad infinitum. It is impossible to know that something proof exists.” When you are presented with so paradigm, ask what is the proof. And then, what is the proof of the proof, and so on until you get to the very bottom. You will notice that it goes around in circles or just stop somewhere. At some point, you will get to a position in which you will have to accept something on faith. And that is what the pyrrhonists recognize. How to reconcile this with enlightenment? The skeptic truly, in his essence, doesn’t cling to anything, so they should be open to the possibility of Absolute Truth to exist. True skeptics should be open to the possibility that they are wrong. Pyrrhonism actually leads to non-duality. The problem with this school of thought is that they left out a 3rd possibility of knowing apart from reasoning and the senses. This third one is direct consciousness. It turns out that total quietude of mind – what the Pyrrhonists talked about – is Absolute Truth at its deepest level. False Skepticism It is not pyrrhonism. It is a weaponized ideology against spirituality, mysticism and new age concepts. When you usually see a skeptic today, they are just rational, scientific thinkers and naïve realists and they are militants against religion and spirituality. He is taking a very clear position but calls himself a skeptic. The problem with this type of skepticism is that is blind to itself. It is a skepticism pointed outwards only. The mind uses concepts and ideas to trap itself and become a tool of the ego. They think that science and rationality are not paradigms but accurate descriptions of reality. What does True Skepticism looks like? It recognizes the limits of rationality, logic and science. It questions all and doesn’t give nothing a special position. It questions every single assumption regarding how the world works. He questions itself and is self-reflective. It is brutally self-honest with itself. A true skeptic is interested in being open-minded and its final goal is happiness, not winning an argument. True skepticism is a compassionate and loving philosophy since they don’t take positions. It aims at tranquility of the mind. It leads to true spirituality. The components are: - Radical Open-mindedness - Perpetual Inquiry - It leads to Pragmatism: You get thrown back to your experiences and senses. You realize that ideology doesn’t get you to Eudemonia, and you can only get there by becoming one with your experiences and sensations. This leads to mindfulness and Enlightenment. - It creates an active vigilance against the mind’s trickery - It prevents paradigm lock - Holism: See everything as perspectives - You become a deep learner - A lucid state of robust equanimity When you embody pyrrhonism, you become much more humble. You need to realize that your preferences are not reality and are not absolute; this will lead you to ideological humility. Reasoning is useful when realizing its own limitations. You cannot be happy while being a dogmatist. You need to be open to evidence! The problem is not the content of the belief but the dogma itself. The problem right now is not religion, is science, technology and materialism! When you are disturbed, there is an ideological position there. Dangers of Understanding this Philosophy - Don’t turn skepticism into a dogma: Apply skepticism to your skepticism - Don’t use it to promote inaction, laziness or nihilism. Remember! Our goal is to achieve Happiness or Eudemonia! Not Knowing should foster deeper inquiry. WE ARE AFTER TRANQUILITY OF MIND! GO FOR THE BIG FISH! GO FOR THE ABSOLUTE! You will be living in a world of relativism, but you need to stop taking positions!

“Step with care and great tact, and remember that life’s a great balancing act”. Dr Seuss The story about the beautiful castle and the spoon with oil. Balance is fundamental for your development. You are taking information from multiple sources and giving advice to some people (family, friends, girlfriends, etc), but you need to understand how balance fits into the equation. The problem is that balance can’t be taught, it has to be lived. You cannot learn balance from reading books, you learn by living! YOU NEED TO FIND THE RIGHT BALANCE FOR YOU IN YOUR LIFE, AND THIS IS BEAUTIFUL! You cannot give the same advice to people and expect to work every time. Everyone is unique and lives in a specific situation. Balance is really difficult since you need to know when it is too much or too little. You need to be flexible enough to find a balance in your life. Examples Take into account that you need to find an equilibrium in your life and each of these different aspects of your life: · The balance between complacency/laziness vs being neurotically disciplined Some people are way too lazy and need some kick in the ass, while some are over achievers and need to chill out a little bit. · The balance between being gentle with yourself and others vs being hard with yourself and others You need to be flexible in regards of the context. It always depends on the situation. · The balance between right brain and left brain You need to balance logic and intuition. You need to be really good at using both and utilize them in different situations. · The balance between suppressing emotions vs expressing emotions Some people suppress way too much and some express way too much. It is something you need to decide depending your life situation, who you are and the exact moment. · The balance between rejecting theory altogether vs getting lost in theory Some academics are lost in theory or some people in business get lost in theory and just don’t take that much action. Other people don’t give a fuck about theory and just take action. · The balance between life purpose vs spirituality There needs to be a balance between business and spirituality and it’s your work to find out. You need to find your authentic values and motivations and discover your balance in a certain point in your life. · The balance between pursuing enlightenment vs spiritual development If you only do enlightenment you will be in problems and if you only do personal development you will be in problems too. Either extreme is wrong and sticking in the middle is probably a bad decision. Take into account your current situation! · The balance between working in yourself vs enjoying life · The balance between unconditional love vs being a doormat Loving unconditionally doesn’t mean that you don’t have to stand up for yourself sometimes. Also, some people are hyper assertive and turn into assholes. · The balance between being too stingy with your money vs being to wasteful · The balance between chasing money vs neglecting money Some people are striving form more money all their lives and some just neglect it saying that it is not important and life is about love and art. · The balance between being pragmatic and idealistic You need to maintain your values and ideals but at the same time, you have to be part of the real world and be practical. You need to get stuff done while doing business, and relationships, etc. · The balance between contemplating death vs becoming nihilistic You need to find a balance between the inherent meaninglessness of life and that life has a meaning and you can be passionate. · The balance between being scientific vs being materialistic · The balance between art vs marketing If you are an artistic type of person, you really value your art. The problem is that sometimes your art cannot be marketed and you won’t be able to impact people. It will take you a decade to sort out in your career. · The balance between rejecting culture vs studying culture and finding good things in it When you are starting, you need to reject many aspects of your culture but after a while, you don’t have to deny them. You need to develop a certain worldliness. · The balance between being brutally honest vs being weak and compassionate · The balance between relationships vs career · The balance between exploring psychedelics for growth vs using them for escape · The balance between quitting toxic relationships vs avoiding commitment Some people use stupid problems to cut off a relationship that was actually good just because they use the excuse of quitting toxic relationships. · The balance between being focused on one teaching vs being eclectic · The solution sometimes doesn’t mean that you have to be in the middle. In some occasions, you need to be fully on some side of the equation and sometimes on the other side. It is a dynamics equilibrium. A low consciousness mind goes to extremes and generalize. Complex advice is not black and white. It requires careful discernment. Balance applies to your business, government, your personal life and so on. Balance is not “everything in moderation”. In the end you are the ultimate decision maker about which advice is right for you and which is wrong for you in this specific time in your life. Even the most enlightened person can give you a personal advice that cannot be applied to your life right now. BALANCE IS NOT AN ACT YOU CAN OUTSOURCE. The key here is to keep moving forward, although you are confused. Balance is a dynamic form of equilibrium, not just the middle of two ways. Dynamic Balance looks like this: In the next 5 years you will be working in your business. When you get that handled, you will work in your love life. Then when you have that handled, you focus on spirituality. When you are working in spirituality you may quit your business but then you become enlightened and you get back into business or whatever. THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! Try to follow your motivations! These will change a lot in your life! FIND WHAT WORKS FOR YOU! Think of life as a mixing sound board with lots of knobs. Your life is like a giant mixing knobs. Balance is not about putting all the knobs to 0. It is about finding the right balance depending on the songs you are composing, depending on what you want out of your music. When you think about your life and the life of others like this, you become more tolerant and cosmopolitan and less ideological. Be careful about criticizing others’ people process. They may need to go through a different process than you in order to grow. Moreover, people are different so keep that in mind. THIS SHOULD MELT AWAY THE DESIRE TO BE IN

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.” Alan Moore People tend to live their life acting out roles that are obvious to anyone around them but opaque for themselves. You are playing the role and you are not conscious of it. Roles are the costumes and characters that you play that you somehow picked up in your childhood, teenager years and early adulthood and you confuse these costumes with your authentic personality. Imagine an alien that looks at the entire narrative of your life and can spot the roles that you are playing. Some of these roles can be personal, cultural or related to career and business, family, etc. Try to spot 3 roles that really sticks to you. Look for that “aha” moment! The List - The Perfectionist - The Rebel - The Alpha Male - Mr. Cool - The Winner - The Looser - The Haggler - The Player - The Nice Guy - The Victim - The Abused - The Winer - The Know-It-All - The Professional or Respectable Business Man - The Responsible One - The Dependable One - The Mysterious One - The Cynic - The Skeptic - The Social Light - The Attention Whore - The Show-Off - The Sergeant or Ruler Keeper - The Crusader - The Shy Guy - The Nerd - The Care Bear or Bleeding Heart - The Lazy One - The Virgin - The Tormented Artist - The Achiever - The Guru - The Free Spirit - The Team Player - The Addict - The Vegan - The Bohemian - The Environmentalist - The Rationalist - The Scientist - The Philosopher - The Libertarian - The Anarquist - The Intellectual - The Mastermind - The Grumpy Man - The Desperate Housewife - The Soccer Mom - The Lone Wolf - The Drama Queen - The Fuckup - The Prodigious Son - The Golden Boy - The Try Hard - The Gentleman - The Good Christian - The Sinner - The Celebrity - The Hero - The Villain - The Minority - The Misunderstood Genius - The Conspiracy Theorist - The Exemplary Father or The Opposite - The Critic - The Outcast - The Guardian of Truth - The Savior of Humanity - The Joker - The Slick Salesman - The Creative Genius - The Hippie - The Hipster - The Frat Boy - The Gym Boy - The Hotshot - The Airhead - The Alcoholic - The Clown - The Newager - The Idealist - The Rag to Riches Story - The Metrosexual - The Sparkly Gay - The Confused Homosexual - The Preacher - The Healer - The Fat Guy - The Patriot - The American - The Arab, Etc. It is a gut feeling that you have when you recognize which role you are playing. The question is: Who were you before you picked up your role? Visualize how were you before your role was adopted and remember how different life was before the role. What was it like when you were living without any roles? Can you pinpoint the moment when you started to adopt the role you play? Why do you need this role? Could you start to let it go? What would your life look like if you start to let it go? Who would you become? You need to start taking off your costumes, so your authentic personality can shine through. You were usually purer in kindergarten, try to anchor in that. The way you drop a role is to become aware of it and realize how artificial it is until you realize it is stupid.

Infrastructure: The basic physical and organizational structures ad facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. Are you building your infrastructure for a high consciousness life? Infrastructure is the practical structures that you need to build to live the kind of life that you want to live, the life that is aligned with your highest values. This doesn’t happen by accident but it’s something that you have to create and architect. And you have to be very deliberate about it. It means constructing your environment that is suitable for living your values and it makes it easy and automatic rather than a lot of effort and resistance. Most people end up sabotaging themselves by putting themselves in a wrong environment that doesn’t help their values grow and flower. Don’t get so spiritual that you forget the utilitarian part of life. Your quality of consciousness is very dependent to the environment that you are in, so design it carefully. MAKE IT EASY FOR YOURSELF. The big stuff is difficult because you ignore the small stuff! Infrastructure influences the quality of consciousness of population. What you should be doing is: - Figure out your top 10 values - Systematically think what processes/mechanisms/environment will make the following of the values easy and automatic. Leo’s Example · How does he capture all the insights that he has over the week and share them with people? He just doesn’t have a pen and paper around him to write them. He inundated his house and car with pens and post-it notes so he can record every insight that he has (he has an office computer). Also, when he is in the car, he tried different recorders that costed him several hundred dollars. You should ask what is your highest purpose in life, which are your highest values and then ask yourself how can you make your job easier? What kind of infrastructure can I build to help me do that? You need to bother with systematically building your infrastructure! You need to research laptops, softwares, etc. You have to bother about technical stuff too!!! 90% of Leo’s effort was applied in building infrastructure like learning about laptops, cameras, microphones, etc.! Not in meditation, studying and so on. This stuff is very technical but it is totally necessary. There is hard infrastructure but there is also soft infrastructure. This is the stuff that is non-material and non-tangible. The soft infrastructure is the most difficult to build up! - Speaking ability - Creative ability - Humor ability - The Right Relationships - Technical skills like language, business, marketing Once you have these skills you can now build and live your life purpose much more powerfully. One of the ways people struggle with life purpose: They know what it is, they have a nice and strong vision but they lack the technical skills to do it, they lack the strategic planning skills. YOU NEED TO DEVELOP TECHNICAL SKILLS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE PURPOSE! With an ambitious dream, you won’t know how to fulfill it but you can ask yourself what would I need to develop in order to do that? THE MOST POWERFUL INFRAESTRUCTURE IS NON-MATERIAL! The key of infrastructure is to free you from the busy work that you do in your life! You need to be careful of how you spend your time. YOU NEED TO LIVE OUT YOUR CORE VALUES! If you need a computer for example, buy a computer that is super-efficient so you avoid bottlenecks. To build infrastructure requires: - Time - Energy - Money This are one of the ways that material things can help you in your personal development! Ask yourself where is your time not optimal? Where am I working against my values? Where do I lack alignment with my purpose? What kind of infrastructure can I build to mitigate that? You need to be building your infrastructure week after week, month after month and year after year! This is a snowball effect! Imagine how powerful you will be in a couple of decades! How fulfilling it would be to live this kind of life? You need to develop the ability to dream big and at the same time think about the practical steps to build it! You need to balance idealism and pragmatism. Take care, however, that you need to find the right balance. Don’t get too hung up in the infrastructure that you forget about your life purpose. Also, careful about starting to identify with your infrastructure. You start thinking that your business is you and it is the thing that brings you happiness. Infrastructure takes time to build; it is something that you will do for the rest of your life.

“It is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possible have gone wrong”. If you wanna experience massive growth, you need to understand how paradigms works. A paradigm is a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind, including all the assumptions and ways of thinking and ways of interpretation. It is like a self-contained view of reality – like a lens. The trick with them is that they don’t feel that they are a lens, so you are usually not aware that you are using a lens. It just feels like reality. Science has been evolving in the history of humanity. Moreover, science, in practice, works very different from theory. In theory, we think that science is a very objective and empirical way of investigation which yields valid truths. Thomas Kuhn discovered that science is highly subject to dogmas, cultural biases and old frameworks. In reality, most scientists are very dogmatic, close-minded, traditional and cannot think outside the box. He discovered 4 main ways in which paradigms influence inquiry: - What is studied and researched - The type of questions that are asked at all - The exact structure and nature of the question - How results are interpreted The paradigm shapes what is allowed to be possible and what is imagined as possible. Also, it determines how your imagination is going to work and thinking about various possibilities – there are many of them that are impossible to grasp from a certain paradigm. That is why it is pretty rare to find big scientific revolutions like Newton, Galileo or Einstein. Paradigms have hidden assumptions inside of them and are considered as unquestionable. The notion of stuff being self-evident ends up being a backfiring mechanism. Paradigms are broken when we have lots of data that contradicts the existing one and it appears a new one that can substitute the old one. The joke here is that when we look back in retrospective, we think it was obvious. When you are in a paradigm, you are almost in a completely different reality. List of Paradigms - Platonic’s Form Paradigm - Teleology - Atheism vs Theism - Euclidian Geometry and Non-Euclidian Geometry - Newtonian Physics vs Einstein’s Relativity - Naïve Realist Paradigm - Rationalism vs Empiricism vs Idealism - Mathematics itself - Karma and Rebirth - Consciousness as Brain Activity - Quantum Mechanics - Logic and Rationality - Darwinism vs Intelligent Design - Capitalism vs Socialism - Pick-up - Success Oriented Self-Help vs Spiritual Based Self-Help - Freudian Psychology vs Gestalt Psychology - Entire Cultures like Islam or Buddhism - Religions - Eastern vs Western Medicine - Western History - Modern Academia - The University System - Astrology - Conspiracy Theory - Vegetarianism vs Paleo Diet (every diet) - Relativism - Spiral Dynamics - Touch Screen Mobile Devices - Building Your Career by Going to School and University Paradigm Lock It is when the mind gets stuck in a framework, until it is not able to break out because it is committed to the paradigm. They are so dangerous because once you are stuck in a paradigm, you are not open to study and experience new perspectives. Moreover, you are not open to acknowledge that you are inside of a paradigm and it is a limited and partial view of the world. You are not open to questioning the “self-evident” assumptions that your paradigm makes. To fully appreciate other perspectives, you need to realize that you are in a paradigm too. You need to step outside your bubble and dive into other bubbles and paradigms. The problem is that you cannot go from bubble to bubble using the same tools and communications. They are like self-contained. When people are not willing to experience other paradigms, they are in the trap of paradigm lock. When you are in a paradigm, you think that reality could not be other way than it is inside your bubble of beliefs and assumptions. Without trying new experiences that goes against your current paradigm, you get trapped and stuck in it. The real tragedy here is that they don’t even have the desire to try new things! THE MORE EXPERIENCES OF RADICAL PERSPECTIVES YOU EXPERIENCE IN LIFE, THE MORE OPEN YOUR MIND BECOMES. All bubbles have blindspots and all of them are limited in some way or another. The problem is that each bubble negates and excludes contradictory information in different ways: - Use labels like impossible, paradoxical, useless, foolish, naïve, criminal, dangerous, anti-social, weird, comical, ridiculous, a fantasy, too abstract, unimportant, a waste of time, devilish, demonic, a cult, evil, or offensive. Examples of Paradigm Lock - Christianity - Atheism - Many Philosophies - Naïve Realis - Scientific Materialism - Skepticism - Rationality and Formal Logic - Thought itself - Language - The Self - Reality The 1M Dollar question is how to break from all your paradigms? It is really difficult because of ego, pride, fear, humiliation, loneliness, homeostatic, disapproval, rejection, demonization and so on. The paradigms you need to break out of to develop yourself fully are: - Naïve Realism - Rationality and Logic - Atheism or Theism - Science - Persistent Objects as Existing - The Separate Self - Life and Death itself - Language - Thought - Western Psychology - Mainstream Culture - Consciousness as Brain Activity - Psychedelics as Chemicals - Fear as Something Real - Problems as Real - The Good and Evil Paradigm - The Time Paradigm - The Success Paradigm - Western Medicine - That Emotions Happens to You - Suffering and Pain as Given Things - Reality is Real To make these sorts of breaks, you need to have a quantum leap. You need to develop 2 skills: 1. Realize which paradigms you are in right now 2. Make discontinuous jumps from paradigm to paradigm a. From reason to awareness to discover Truth b. From Physical Reality to Non-Physical Reality c. Realize that emotions are something you are actually doing and creating d. Paranormal Phenomena are Real How to break paradigms: - Question assumptions very deeply - Meditation and Self Inquiry - Psychedelics - Reading and Research - Travelling and Experimenting Different Cultures - Philosophy

Self-Actualization Components 1. It all starts with a deep need for growth. You could just intuit that there is something more than how the common person lives their life. Also, you could have just come to self-actualization because of suffering. 2. Taking 100% Responsibility: You cannot play the victim role anymore. Suffering was created by you and that your life is a reflection of how you act, the desires you have and internal world. You can take these stuffs if you take ownership. 3. Discriminate reality from appearance: Finding truth and Truth. You need massive self-education and theory. You need to figure out how to develop the life that you want. You need to discover how emotion, reality, business, relationships, reality and your mind actually work. Most of these stuff is counterintuitive, that is why you need to study a LOT! 4. Epistemic and Metaphysical Questioning: You need to get existential and ask some deep questions. You will need to discover what is reality, life, love and so on. Moreover, you will need to study how you know and many of the traps of the mind. 5. A Glimpse of the Absolute: It is going to be the most mind-blowing and rewarding thing you’ve ever done. 6. Getting the Truth to Penetrate Trough your Everyday Experience: How you talk. Walk, work, and relate to people have to permeated with the absolute. 7. Growth: This is about rising the quality of your consciousness, because the absolute is consciousness. 8. Unconditional Love: The ability to have unconditional love with all people and in all situations, especially when they go against your personal agenda. 9. Self-Acceptance: This is unconditional love applied to yourself. You accept yourself without needing to create external circumstances. You will feel complete! You can only end this with being. 10. Detachment: You will be detaching yourself from all experience, all thoughts, all emotions and all actions. Many people misunderstand detachment as a no-feeling statement. But really, detachment is about feeling more fully and deeper than you currently feel. It means lots of empathy and lots of compassion, but in a detached way. The reason you cannot feel fully is because you are attached to stuff and experiences. 11. Being: The capacity to be vs having and doing. Currently, you are doing and acquiring stuff just to have certain emotions and experiences. If you let that go, you will be able to be. If you can just be, you will derive satisfaction and pleasure for just being at the present moment. This is the most beautiful and rewarding thing that there is. You want steady and consistent satisfaction derived from the being level. 12. Developing the capacity for observation: The way that you learn and understand is by objective and careful observation. You very carefully observe yourself too, how your mind and emotions work. You will watch out for all your deceptive mental tendencies and biases. You need to develop mindfulness, contemplation and self-inquiry. These are capacities that need to be developed for decades. 13. Undermining selfish impulses: Once you observe and become aware of selfish impulses, you will need to get rid of all your selfish desires. 14. Honesty: You will need massive self-honesty. 15. Surrendering Control and Giving up Manipulation: If you are really growing, you will realize that there is no one in control and this neurotic behavior is causing you stress and suffering. 16. Facing harsh truths: You will need to face your death, boredom, emptiness and not getting depressed about them. 17. Identify fear barriers that you have and characteristic defense mechanisms: This is the way we keep ourselves stuck in where we are. We also have fears about everything. You need to identify them and drop them. 18. Rising the Quality of your Motivations and Desires: Most of the things you are motivated by and desire are low-consciousness stuff that you’ve been programed by culture. You are currently motivated by money, sex, success, fame, popularity, approval, security and so on. Moreover, you are motivated to pursue this in a negative way. 19. Life Purpose and Becoming a Creator: Find your LP, discover what impact you want to have in this world with your career. If you don’t do this, you will just get a boring 9 to 5 job. 20. Reconcile evil, suffering and ignorance: A lot of people misunderstand these components. You need to understand where these things come from. Once you see these components in yourself, you will not criticize anyone, anymore. 21. Pursuing Big Picture Understanding: You need to understand reality in a holistic way. 22. Transition from your left brain to your right brain: Right brain is more holistic, integrated, spiritual and so on. You will not use logic to run your life, intuition will. 23. Create a Sober Lifestyle: We are currently living in an intoxicated and distracted lifestyle. It is very easy to lose yourself into movies, food, drugs, stimulants and so on. You will need to let go from all that stuff. You will: a. Become addiction-free b. Become distraction-free c. Become toxicity-free (food, water, information, people, etc) 24. Physical and Energy body: Eliminate all your body blockages. 25. Undoing Social Conditioning: Question and eliminate dogmas, paradigms and programming that society teaches you. 26. Non-Manipulative Relating: You will need to realize how much you are manipulating other people. Your relationships can only flourish when you stop manipulating. 27. You will become very Strategic, Proactive and Visionary: This growth will need serious work and won’t happen by accident. You will need to build your infrastructure!

The defining characteristic of a sage is his ability to get at the core of nature and reality. They do this by contemplation. The most important question that a sage can ask is “What is it?”. You replace the “it” with the object you want to inquire about. So, what is contemplation? From the dictionary, it is defined by “a state of mystical awareness”, “an act of considering with attention” or “the act of thinking deeply about something”. It is openly pondering a question that you are interested in with focus and without bias with the goal of inquiring into the nature of that thing. How do you contemplate” Sit down, set aside some time and select one question you are really curious about, define what that question is and sit there, openly pondering it from ground zero. Maintain that question steadily for at least 5 or 10 minutes straight. Be careful about your monkey mind. What could you contemplate about: 1. What is society? 2. What is life? 3. What is color? 4. What is sound? 5. What is love? 6. What is happiness? 7. What is anger? 8. What is desire? 9. What is suffering? 10. What is hatred? 11. What are emotions? 12. What is ignorance? 13. What is fear? 14. What is death? 15. What is meditation? 16. What is mind? 17. What is disagreement? 18. What is pain? 19. What is success? 20. What is failure? 21. What is a thought? 22. What is experience? 23. What is the number 0? 24. What am I? 25. What is duality? 26. What is non-duality? 27. What is Truth? 28. What is non-existence? 29. What is consciousness? 30. What is awareness? 31. What is God? 32. What is reality? 33. What is knowledge? 34. What is logic? 35. What is language? 36. What is science? 37. What is maths? 38. What is culture? 39. What is the devil? 40. What is government? 41. What is art? 42. What is free will? 43. What is selfishness? 44. What is karma? 45. What is creativity? 46. What is evolution? 47. What is relationship? 48. What is leadership? 49. What is power? 50. What is goodness? 51. What is evil? 52. What is philosophy? 53. What is spirituality? 54. What is personal development? 55. What is business? 56. What is the subconscious mind? 57. What is a guru? 58. What is masculinity? 59. What is fame? 60. What is sex? 61. What is birth? 62. What is the ego? 63. What is honesty? 64. What is communication? 65. What is objectivity? 66. What is wisdom? 67. What is rationality? 68. What is religion? 69. What are beliefs? 70. What is humor? 71. What is attraction? 72. What is purpose? 73. What is meaning? 74. What is life purpose? 75. What is understanding? 76. What is space? 77. What is time? 78. What is the past? 79. What is the future? 80. What is matter? 81. What is energy? 82. What is motivation? 83. What is writing/architecture/entertainment? 84. What is technology? 85. What is a computer? 86. What is economics? 87. What is pickup? 88. What is education? 89. What is good cuisine? 90. What is fun in a video game? 91. What is a good story telling? 92. What is drama? 93. What is intimacy? 94. What is neurosis? 95. What is health? 96. What is disease? 97. What is materialism? 98. What is another? 99. What is history? 100. What is a distinction? 101. What is learning? 102. What is dogma? 103. What is organization? 104. What is systems thinking? 105. What is design? 106. What is management? 107. What is lying? 108. What is a symbol? 109. What is psychology? 110. What is insight? 111. What is depression? 112. What is mysticism? 113. What is an object? 114. What is strategy? 115. What is enlightenment? 116. What is compassion? 117. What is a model? 118. What is value? 119. What is money? 120. What is stress? 121. What is mastery? 122. What is illusion? 123. What is a Zen devil? 124. What is a problem? 125. What is hurt? 126. What is nothingness? 127. What is infinity? 128. What is paradox? 129. What is work? 130. What is discipline? 131. What is freedom? 132. What is courage? 133. What is passion? 134. What is skepticism? 135. What is atheism? 136. What is prayer? 137. What is open-mindedness? 138. What is terrorism? 139. What is intuition? 140. What is beauty? 141. What is surprise? 142. What is information? In every domain of life, at every level, you can keep asking what all of it is. You can contemplate question about your life purpose and career, your particular medium, the wordings of your life purpose, your area of mastery. If you want to be successful in any domain, you need to understand the essence of what you are doing, the tools and distinctions you are using. There are different questions that you can ask that will make you see the subject in slightly different angles. - What is it? - And what is that? - What is its true nature? - You are going to come up with examples and you will need to discover the commonalities between them - How did it come into being? (probably need to read some history) - Why did it come into being? - What elements does it have? - What is its purpose? - What is its substance? - What is its significance and why it is important? - Examples are good to get into the essence of the matter - Keep asking and asking and going deeper into the nature There are some nuances: · Contemplation vs Meditation: When you meditate, you don’t have any goal or objective, you are just freeing your mind. Contemplation is an intellectual activity. When you become good, your contemplation is going to become a sort of meditation because your focus is really strong. · Contemplation vs Self Inquiry: Self inquiry is a very specific form of contemplation about the nature of who you are. · Contemplation vs Concentration: When you concentrate, you do it on something that doesn’t have an intellectual question behind it. · Notice that contemplation can be between a personal and an existential spectrum. o What do I want out of my life? o What do I want out of my relationship? o What is my deepest passion in life? o What is my life purpose? · You can have insights at the level of thought and the level of being: Some answers will go past the intellect and mind. You can breakthrough on the being level with: o What another is? o What love is? o What God is? o Etc. Most of existential questions are going to start with the intellectual level but with time you will get into the existential level. · Don’t confuse contemplation with thinking. You can go beyond thinking · Don’t confuse contemplation with speculating and theorizing about stuff. In contemplation, it is key to be open-minded, aware and honest with yourself. Be careful with your ego because it will distort your train of thought. · There are many levels of understanding of different subjects, so don’t get too hung up with your current answers. The answers that will come up in the first hundred hours of contemplation will be probably wrong or incomplete at best. Ignorance is the source of every problem! If you think you know what you will find, you are a fool. You cannot know the answer of something that you are going to research. That is the point of research! Your quality of your life is directly proportional to how clear you are in what the truth is in a particular situation and how aligned you are with it. You are not going to contemplate effectively if you are addicted to porn, or play videogames, and you eat garbage food and work 60 hours a week. You need to create a contemplative life.

@Nahm what a fucking badass! I want him for president

Hey fellow actualizers! Rupert uploaded this video yesterday and I thought it was really eye-opening for all of us that are trying to conciliate Life Purpose and the Enlightened Truths. Even though he is not specifically talking about life purpose (obviously), if you read between the lines (or hear between the words :D), you will realize that he is talking about it very very very clearly. He speaks about negative and positive motivation, relative and absolute truths (dont confuse them) and so on. I've been in a satsang with Rupert and all I can tell you is that this guy emanated a lot of peace and love in his teachings and his words. I hope you enjoy it and have a good weekend!

Naïve Realism (Materialism) is the actual conception that people have about reality. Our fundamental view is that we live in a 3D space, with objects in it, time progresses linearly and so forth. We think about the universe as a huge 3D box and there are a bunch of physical objects that obey mechanistic laws. There is also a very fundamental assumption: When we close our eyes or turn our back, the world is still there; when we go to sleep, the world is still there; when we die the world will be still there and it was there before we were born. If you sit down and question this belief system, you will find that it makes no sense on the common sense level, on the rational level, on the scientific and experiential level. In a direct experience, reality for you is a collection of sensations. Also, your reality is rendered by your brain; it is not physical. But we walk and live thinking that reality is 100% real and reliable. We live in a matrix of phenomena and sensations but they follow very consistent rules. Take into account that an animal like a dog will see a different version of reality. THE ONLY REALITY FOR YOU IS THE PHENOMENAN FIELD. YOU DIDN’T EXPERIENCE ANYTHING OTHER THAN PHENOMENAN FIELD. Anything more is a belief. We like to think that there is stuff behind the scenes, but what if there is no stuff behind the scenes. We treat reality as the “cosmic turtle myth”, the mind is playing games with you. If you look at your phenomenal field for long periods of times, you will realize that there is no stuff behind the scenes. The scene is the only thing there is. “The stuff behind the scene” is a concept. The materialistic paradigm cannot answer the mind/body problem (the most intimate experience of all). They cannot explain how can mind can arise out of matter and they cannot do it because the assumptions are incorrect. The paradox here is that when you develop enough awareness, you realize that the stud behind the scene is Nothing and it is there (it is not hidden). It is so difficult to let go this paradigm because the mind cannot grasp that appearance has no origin but itself. Appearance is existence! It needs nothing to arise. When you realize this, existence becomes mystical and unknown, not mechanistic. Reality itself is mystical and there will never be a mechanical explanation for it, because it’s Being! Mechanical explanations are useful to manipulate reality, but they cannot explain what is. The good news is that it is possible to have a direct experience of the magic of reality! Also, quantum mechanics debunk materialism! They say that reality is made of a fields (and they are infinite). You can prove that reality is mystical to yourself with psychedelics, meditation or self-inquiry. This is very practical because when you believe that reality is physical, you have materialistic values and behaviors. But when you realize that reality is consciousness, your values and priorities change. If you want to develop a great life, you need to ask this metaphysical questions. What Leo is saying is: Space, time, matter, energy are not real. These things had to be created by the mind and are all assumptions. YOU NEED TO UNDERMINE YOUR MATERIALISTIC PARADIGM. THE WHOLE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO ACCEPT WHAT IS TRUE, AND THE SAD PART IS THAT TRUTH IS SO FUCKING INCREADIBLE THAT YOU CANNOT ACCEPT IT.

Hi guys! I've been really trying to hone in my life purpose and I've been contemplating a lot about the topic, thinking deeply and trying to be the most honest possible. Before I knew Leo and his content, I was all about making money with some app or work for my father's business, bang a lot of chicks and travel the world. I really believed that this was going to bring me the happiness and fulfillment I craved. I read a while back that everything we do, we do it to be happy. The problem is we dont know what we dont know. Oh, the ignorance! After doing the Life Purpose Course, it was something like "Build systems to help society develop". It was a good first attempt. I've always been good at dealing with people and I can learn stuff pretty easily. I was always the one with the best grades and since I was a child, intelligence was a characteristic in my person. Anyways, I felt that my purpose was quite vague and I didn't feel that connected to it. What I knew is that I wanted to make something big, i wanted to create an organization, an empire, a kingdom with people that work with me to achieve this goal. As Steve Jobs said, "You can only connect the dots looking backwards", and it is 100% true. I knew that I was a very ambitious person, I wanted to do something, AND SOMETHING BIG! I moved to San Francisco just after finishing the Course. Here in the Bay Area, everyone is looking for that big home run, everyone is aiming to build a Facebook, a Snapchat, cash out and live "happily ever after". I must admit that it was difficult not to fall into this trap, but following your bliss is something that will pay in the long run. To recap, I knew I wanted to do something big and it was probably an organization that do something to help the world develop. Still vague. This year, I sat down and said: "Juan, you have to hone in this fucking life purpose, no matter what". That is what I did. After some thought I came with: "Build a business that makes people more conscious and developed". Hmmmm. Sounded good enough, but after posting it on the Forum and receiving some feedback, I realized that chasing business is not a good idea and could probably cause more harm than good in the long term. I had to sit down again and think. I realized I wasn't getting the life purpose components and I wasnt asking the right questions: - What is the impact you want to have in the world? - What do I love doing? - What area I want to become a master of? Difficult questions. Fucking difficult questions. This was a really long process. I really care about the environment, I care about poverty and I care about politics. But the real question is "which one are you willing to actually do something?" Which is the one that is the most important for you?". After contemplating the answer came up to me. It was education and human development. It became so obvious. This is the core reason we are having the problems we are having. We lack the understanding that is needed to be happy, to be productive, to have a functional world. I want people to study and learn the right things, the right methods, the right concepts. I want people to live out their fullest potential, to know how to deal with suffering, to get really passionate about wisdom. Great, I got my impact. Now... How the fuck can I be useful? How can I use my strengths to do it? I know I love learning and thinking. I always try to have a deep understanding about things. I love studying business, technology, science, politics, economics, physics and love how things start to click inside my head. I basically love wisdom and how to apply it. I love reading business books and see how can I apply them in my endeavors and so on. I'm a fan of Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory. I love complex problems like global warming, economics, humans in general, how they develop and so on. Okay, I got this part kind of handled. I want to make people more educated, wiser and developed. Now the how question. I love learning and thinking and designing solutions, and I wanted to build an organization. I'm left with 3 parts: - I wanted to make people wiser and developed - I wanted to build an organization - I love learning and thinking in integral terms After contemplating I thought it would lead to something like this: " Design holistic solutions that makes people more developed and wiser". I want to build the infrastructure for them so they can develop, be wiser, more efficient, more loving and more conscious. Imagine the possibilities!: - Courses made by me and other masteful instructors - Retreats in which people can meditate and get enlightened without any dogma. - Events - Change the education system so children can study this topics - Create an university for all of these topics! I think I'm closer to my life purpose. I just need to get started and let the dots connect themselves while I push forward. I really dont know what to do with my life if I dont do this. Personally, I see myself as someone very wise but knows how to take actions and change the world in a positive way. I see myself talking in events for ONU and talk about systemic problems. I definitely need to work on it but I think it is a good start and things will change as I take action. I hope I kind of inspire you and if you feel that I need some feedback, feel free to do it. Life purpose is a process, it is not a destination. You are in it right now, even if you dont realize it. You are here for a reason and the world needs you! And I need your help you change it!