Juan Cruz Giusto

“Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.” There are great degrees of anger, from rage to mild annoyance (the latter one is the most practical for you because you feel it almost every day). There is also hardwired anger, that comes from childhood traumas. This is one way to deal with and understand anger: Anger comes from lack of holistic understanding. If you understand a situation holistically and existentially, you cannot get angry at it. HOLISM IS KEY HERE! TO BE AT PEACE IN THE WORLD YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW IT REALLY WORKS. This holistic understanding will not come with enlightenment alone. You need to go and study this stuff! You create a virtual/illusory partition in reality called “you” and you start defending it and become attached to it. Thus, when you are in the real world, this partition collision with other partitions or reality at large. Therefore, you start feeling a sense of injustice and sense of violation. And from this comes the sense of anger that you have. If you take a look at reality holistically, there is something bigger than your private world going on and failure to understand that you function is larger mechanisms and systems, creates anger. Think about the different systems in which you feel angry at (relationships, marriage, economics, humanity, politics, terrorism, races, gender, war, etc.). You get angry because you try to view situations from your limited point of view instead of seeing the situation holistically. TO BE EFFECTIVE, YOU NEED HOLISTIC THINKING. When you really understand a situation and reality existentially at very deep levels, you stop shooting upon reality and yourself, you stop moralizing. When you see why reality functions as it does, it creates acceptance in you. Anger comes from a lack of understanding. When you understand the why of the situation, you anger cannot appear. UNDERSTANDING BRINGS ACCEPTANCE AND COMPASSION! EVIL ACTIONS COME FROM IGNORANCE (AND IGNORANCE IS REALLY DIFFICULT TO CORRECT BECAUSE YOU STRUGGLE TOO!). You can apply this principle with big stuff like rape or minor things like an annoying sound. If you erase the distinction between you and other, many of the things that disturbed you will not annoy you anymore, because they are literally you. When you realize this, love and acceptance will follow. If you take you rage away, you will become more effective. Anger is a poor quality motivation. They way to stop evil is acceptance! Technique: Every time you are angry, understand the other perspective and try to see the big picture. Ask yourself: What am I failing to understand? Dig until you hit acceptance.

@Martin123 so ego cannot know other but if you get enlightened, you know yourself and therefore you know what other really are.. If a person know it's true nature, he know the true nature of everything else

How to discover your area of mastery? What if you are under 25 and you don't really know what your life purpose is? Could you upload your new Me Sheet so we can see your progress of refining your values and so on? How much time should you aim to work at your Life Purpose in the first few years?

@Leo Gura in the exercise of "people don't exist", after enlightenment, why do you become so loving? Why would you like to help others if you are not really sure they exist?

Lol. I've just realized that this is from Ra!

Agree! The weird thing is that you are conscious or aware but you don't know who are you... Being conscious is the most intimate experience you have but still, don't know the real nature

@Donald lol. Tell that to Jung or Freud.. Thought is not new but you have so much shit inside you that you cannot even grasp it with your conscious mind. And many of the things that you do and think are nurtured by the unconscious mind.

Hey guys! I've been reading The Hero With a Thousand Faces and Campbell talks a lot about Jung psychology and how dreams express the unconscious.. I've been having really weird dreams and I would like to know if anyone recommends a good book on how to interpret these dreams.. What do you think about it?

@Donald so?

@Donald the subconscious tris to communicate with the conscious part of you via dreams but in a symbolic way.. Pretty interesting stuff! @Taavi thanks man!

The next level vision is becoming a Sage. You should be always asking how can you get the most out of life! Ask yourself “what is the best life possible for a human being?” This answer is available to everyone of us but no one taught us. The greatest human beings on earth were not entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes, political leaders, CEOs, engineers, nor academics, nor self-help teachers; THEY WERE SAGES AND MYSTICS. Great for us is who is getting the most juice out of life, not the status and money and stupid stuff. What does it mean to be a sage? They are people like Buddha, Christ, Heraclitus, Socrates, Marcos Aurelius, Confucius, Rumi, Yogananda, Ghandi, Ramana Maharshi, The Dalai Lama, Osho, Sadhguru, Ken Wilber, Peter Ralston and so on. It is not a matter of success or achievement; it is a quality of self-mastery (not a meditation master but a TRUE MASTER OF BEING HUMAN, A MASTER OF UNDERSTADING REALITY AND LIFE). These people can really enjoy life as it is. Key qualities of a sage: - Commitment to Truth - Commitment to Consciousness, Goodness and Love and embodiment of them effortlessly - Turn inwards to transform themselves - This is well beyond enlightenment Vision of The Modern Sage We are taking Eastern Nonduality and we are paring that with the Ancient Greek Philosopher and a bit of artist/scientist. It is the modern Renaissance Man. He had mastered consciousness, but he has also a deep conceptual understanding of life and reality too. It is a union of the left and right brain and you don’t want to do it in a way that you are living in a cave but you use your understanding of the world to solve real world problems. YOU ARE IN THE WORLD. You are highly creative and productive. What a Sage is not He is not a smart and cold intellectual or academic who lives in theory. A sage is not an ideological crusader. How to become a Sage? The vision is more important than the how. You will figure it out in the process. If you have a strong and juicy vision, the how will solve by itself. START WORKING ON DEEPENING THIS VISION! Set your top value as Truth and Understanding (Truth for Truth’s sake). A radical turning inwards is necessary; you will need to free yourself from materialism. Also, there has to be a purification of your body, mind, emotion and habits. As you turn inwards, you will develop a strong energy body. It means that you can take emotions that are coming and you alchemize it, you convert them into love and Truth. Also what is required is massive theoretical learning. Osho read 150,000 books! Sometimes people think that they should only meditate because reading books is bullshit but this is really misguided. There is much more understanding to be had beyond enlightenment. You will need to look for the juicy knowledge. Exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness is crucial for the sage (you can do this with psychedelics, special breathing or meditation techniques and so forth). Being creative is important for a sage; listening to that muse and living that out, benefiting the world (the Life Purpose Course). You will also need to develop unconditional love and compassion for the suffering of others. Also, to become a sage you will probably want to help others raise their awareness and that will definitely merge with your Life Purpose, one way or another. Be careful because there are tons of ways that awareness can be raised. WE NEED PEOPLE TO INFUSE THESE CAREERS, FIELDS AND BUSINESSES WITH CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS. This vision is not for everybody. Objections What about Life Purpose? Don’t take becoming a sage or enlightenment as stopping you from having a life purpose. That would be failing to embrace paradox. Enlightened people are the most alive human beings on earth and purpose drive people ever! The Life Purpose teaches you how to be creative and create a career; find that! You don’t want to be enlightened and working on 7/11. You want to be enlightened and creating stuff, self-expressing! Becoming a sage is a personal purpose, don’t confuse it with career purpose. All of this is an illusion? Why work on that? Don’t get this wrong. To master yourself you need to take this enterprise really fucking seriously. You have to be after understanding, not success. Since this is a difficult goal, you will need a longer term horizon (10 years +). What is the other alternative rather than becoming sage? You have no better alternative than becoming a sage!

You are on the path of self actualization and what you are encountering is confusion and it can manifest in any different ways: - Enlightenment vs Life Purpose - What I awareness. - What should I do with life - What is God?. - Free will vs self development - Which is the best meditation technique? - Leo contradicts himself in the videos and so on - Different perspectives. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Of course you are not going to understand because your default state is not-understanding and then you build it up. In self actualization the most important thing you are doing is developing understanding. You need to have a sense of direction of what you are doing and why to start inner or outer work. It all begins with understanding but understanding is a challenge and it is your work to reconcile a lot of stuff. THIS IS A LEARNING PROCESS! But this process entails confusion. Your job, if you want to create a great life, is to get comfortable navigating through confusion and sometimes it takes a while to reconcile the information and this reconciliation is a laborious and lengthy process (a lifetime process). Your mind loves certainty and order but this can become dysfunctional. Confusion arises when the mind tries to reconcile ideas but this is an emotionally challenging process. So the mind tries to close this gap as soon as possible by clinging to beliefs and create an illusory sense of clarity and security and this created mechanical behaviors. One characteristic of a self developed individual is to maintain paradoxes in their minds without the need to resolve them. What to do about it? You have to develop emotional tolerance for confusion.. You have to let go the need to know. Rather than running away from confusion, try to embrace it. This is a 5 step process: Notice that you are confused (this is more difficult than it sounds because it requires awareness). Find the confusion in your body and become very familiar with the feeling Label it: Locate the feeling and say “that is confusion” Face the confusion: Ask yourself what is really going on here. Why am I feeling this way? Should I get married? What should I do with my life? Which is my life purpose? Etc. Allow it: ask yourself “can I allow myself to be confused?” Enter a state of not knowing: Ask yourself “can I let go of my need to know?” You need to surrender your need to know. What leads to ignorance is ignoring the fact that you don't know stuff (ignorance is a false sense of certainty). Ignorance cannot survive in a state of not knowing. Ignorant people think they know everything. If you embrace confusion you will become more robust and grounded intellectually and it will put you in the best position possible for a revelation. We like to think that we are the ones who come up with the understanding and knowledge by pushing but all the deepest knowing and understanding come from revelation, not from the pushing. Curiosity is a good thing, but it is different from needing to know. What you really want is to be honest about the stuff you don't know, you acknowledge confusion and you let reconciliation happen organically. The best answers don't come from you, they come through you from something beyond you. If you take this approach, you will need more patience because this process is going to take longer. It might take months or even years so you will need to develop a high tolerance for confusion and uncertainty. Even though you don't know, you have to still move forward and take action regardless your confusion. You need to let your intuition function! By not embracing confusion, you close yourself to the most profound insights in life. Also, if you don't tolerate confusion you will not be able to dive deep in topics and research. If you keep insisting on your need to know you will fuck your life up! Open yourself up to learning and discovery for a lifetime and enlightenment is not the final step, it is just the beginning..

@Azrael lol.. That's great! I have to resolve some logistical issues before starting with psychedelics but in the meantime meditation and retreats will be. If you move to Canada and want to come to San Fran you are invited my friend!

@Azrael Cool! I'm 22 and I was kind of afraid to Travis psychedelics yet because I've read that the brain develops until 25. How did your goals change in your life after this experience?

@Azrael hey men! Congrats! Just to know, how old are you?

Hey guys! I want to share my first Life Purpose draft and ask you what you think. A brief background of myself: I'm 22 years old, I lived in Argentina until last January that I decided to go and study Entrepreneurship and Business in San Francisco. First, my area of mastery is business (starting and running one). I read a lot of books about the topic, so I have a basic knowledge of it. I think it is my medium also because I see it like an form of art really; it is a way to create sustainable enterprises and systems, a way to create and capture value so you can really make an impact on the world. I think I have my Area of Mastery pretty defined but I'm open to possibilities. Regarding the Impact part of my Life Purpose, I have some but the most important for me is the raising of people's awareness and knowledge about life and themselves in general. I see my friends, family and classmates that are lost in stupid stuff, don't read, don't meditate and really don't know where to go in life, how to be happy, how to be fulfilled and so on. I think that spreading Personal Development all over the world is key for the development of humanity and out technological evolution is way superior to our psychological and spiritual development, so I want to make my life purpose raise people consciousness by creating sustainable businesses. It is like Leo's business but I'm not the guy that wants to talk in front of a camera, I want to be the guy strategizing about how to make this mainstream, how to help people become better, achieve their life purpose. I dont want to be a content creator, that is not my art, my art is creating a sustainable business model that develops people. I want to change education in the whole world and I cannot believe how many concepts people really don't know (Mastery, Zone of Genius, Spiral Dynamics and so on) and they don't know them because they don't have realize the importance of this work! My first idea is to create a personal development academy in which we have courses about different topics and recommend videos, making it a platform like Team TreeHouse. I believe there is a gap between the information that is out there and the people that really don't know about it and it is a matter of making it more accessible and practical to people so they can get interested. So my first draft is kind of: "I create businesses that raises people's consciousness" or "I create business that helps humanity move forward". Any feedback is happily recieved

@Leo Gura Just to give you a heads up, I decided to watch the Life Purpose course again because definitely there are things that I didn't take into account or think deeply. I was trying to put the cart before the horse... The fact that you don't know what you dont know is so fucking annoying

@Leo Gura I'll just respond here to see what others think also and just point out my ego blind spots. I love the idea of thinking in systems and creating strategies. I see society kind of like a puzzle and you have to shape your solution in order to make it fit. I'm surrounded by people that want to make business just for the sake of it and in San Francisco that is a common thing (orange people everywhere). I dont want to say that I'm completely done with that stage, I'm not. I just think that businesses, startups, companies are just a great way to create massive value. For example, you can create a farm and sell organic stuff or you can create a sustainable business that produces value in mass scales and really impact the world around you big time. I dont want to create a business for the sake of making money, it is just because I believe that is a great tool to create sustainable impact on thw world. Thinking about it (or really making it clearer because this is stuff I think every day), probably my medium is business/startups but my area of mastery is strategizing or systemic/deep thinking and understanding (it will become clearer while I work). Regarding the purpose, I realize I have to be more concise. Probably make people realize the potential the have as a human being, or create a healthy model of reality, I have to dig deeper into it. Something with education and self development because I feel that our psychological development is far less developed that our technological one and it will create problems in the long term. I think this is the catalyzer for all change, the change from within.

Check out Osho's Dynamic Meditations and Bioenergetics! They are pretty cool! I'm taking a Dynamic Meditation Camp with Elliott Hulse next year so you might be interested

Money problems are not economic problems, there are first and foremost psychological problems (there are many ways that you can have problems with money). More cash will not solve the problem; the problem is in the mind. Money is very emotional. Your relationship with money is primarily shaped by your family’s relationship with money when you were growing up and you adopted most of your beliefs towards money in your childhood, largely unconsciously. External obstacles tend to be illusions and there are not the real problems. If you get the inner game right, you will get the outer stuff handled. Money is an entire domain of life and requires lots of work and know. Psychological aspects that create problems with money: - Fears - Emotional Spending: people spending their money irrationally - Emotional Saving: you are hyper vigilant - Limiting beliefs (ask where these beliefs came from): Notice how these beliefs are going to stop you from making money. Most of your beliefs are not true! o The economy is not good enough o Corporations are stealing all the money o I cannot make money in my field o Competition is too fierce o I cannot start a business because I don’t have enough capital o Money is hard to make o Money is evil o Business is anti-spiritual - Playing the victim: You make excuses because you are scared - Procrastination - Materialism: Thinking that money will lead to fulfillment and it will solve all your problems - Improperly earning money - Improperly prioritizing money: People often put money way too high in their value list - Improperly investing money - Lack of long term strategy - Lack of discipline and habits - Lack of knowledge and education - Avoiding and ignoring money What does heathy money psychology look like: You are fully aware of the trap of materialism and you understand that it doesn’t work at all; you will never be fulfilled by having money and none of your other problems in life will be solved by having money. You also identified the emotional triggers and hot bottoms you have with respect to money. Also, you are not ideological about money and you don’t hold money as good or as evil, you dropped many of your beliefs about money and you hold it as neutral. Also, you are aware of the money traps that were constructed by society (shopping, credit cards, mortgages, pyramid schemes, bad investments) and you are not tempted to get into these traps. You have an abundance mindset; you hold it as a win-win situation. You take a 100% responsibility for your money situation. You are also using and investing money strategically, mostly in yourself and you are taking a long term view. Lastly, you took the time to position yourself in life so money is a byproduct of your deepest passion. Instead of going crazy to make money, first turn inwards and start to observe your money habits and where is your income coming from, which are your motivations? Apply awareness to your problems and beliefs. After that, decide you are going to master this domain of your life. Then, you need to do the research about money. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS LIFE PURPOSE! If you take care of the foundations, the other part is going to resolve alone; avoid the trap of just going for cash, that is never going to work. You will need to be creative if you want to implement your life purpose, there is no easy solution! HEALTHY MONEY SITUATION = PROPER PSYCHOLOGY + LIFE PURPOSE

Culture = A Big Cult You have different cultures: gamer culture, biker culture, pickup culture, hippie culture, tattoo culture, American culture, scientific culture, corporate culture, drug culture, Christian culture, geek culture and sports culture (and there a much more of them). All cultures are fundamentally artificial, limited, arbitrary, biased, moralizing, egoic, inauthentic to individuals, neurotic and stifles consciousness. Culture is the collective ego and our individual ego is full of it. Culture is a construct and doesn’t really exist but influences you big time. The problem with culture is that it is the water and you are the fish, you cannot recognize that you are influenced by culture. You usually have a blindspot for your culture: you cannot recognize how it influences you and the limitations that it has on you. What is wrong with culture? All cultures al mechanical and everything that is mechanical prevents consciousness from growing. Culture is the context for everything you do How much your culture had influenced the following things in you: - How you dress - Your hair style - The entertainment and media you like - The food - Your attitude towards drugs, alcohol and prescription medicine - Your attitude towards work, business and career and how you think businesses have to be run - The technology you use or don’t use - Education - Your ideas about how kids should be raised - Ideas about family - Your views about sex, relationships and marriage - How reality is - Your ideas of science and what is valid or not - History (it completely depends on the country you learned it from) - Morality and ethics - Your values and ideals. What do you want for yourself. Your deepest desires and goals - How you should be supposed to look, the money you should have, the girlfriend you should have - Fears - Beliefs - Gender roles, ideals and how they should interact - Death - Language - Sports - Spirituality - Health - Hobbies You are in a cult and you don’t even know it. You feel that reality could not be any other way. What is the function of culture? You have a collective identity for purposes of survival and reproduction and culture helps achieve these goals. Culture is mostly concerned with survival and reproduction, outcompeting other rivaling cultures. Culture, even though it is a construction, if many people believe in it, it can gain a reality on its own. Modern man lives in a collective fantasy but nature doesn’t care about any of these things. Your first priorities are to fit into the social matrix: - To impress people - To earn money - To have sex with the right people - To play sports - To go to the gym and have the right hobbies - Etc. Culture pressures you to fit into the culture but you as a child had natural inclinations to dress how you wanted, or to speak how you wanted and so on. You need to realize that your raising of your consciousness is a solo activity. Consciousness cannot be raised as a group project. Your ability to self-actualize comes from the inner work that you do alone. If you try to rise consciousness as a group thing you will create a culture and the mechanics of it. Your goal as a part of your self-actualization journey is to become independent from all culture, not to denounce it. Culture is not evil and bad; you don’t want to react to it, just transcend it. What does this mean? When you are with people that are deeply engrained with cultural norms and beliefs, it doesn’t trigger you and you don’t need to tell them to stop or judge them, you are cool with it but you operate outside of culture. How do you do it? - Firstly, by awareness. Start noticing all the elements of culture that are ingrained in yourself. - Also, experience other cultures. - Cut any cultural feeds like comedy videos, movies, magazines, news, books. Basically, all the media. The media reinforces you values that you actually don’t really care - Be less social and be in solitude - Start to question everything - Embark on your own journey. Have a life purpose and something you want to create. When you are focus on creating something big you will not have time to engage in all the cultural nonsense. - Try psychedelics - Meditation - Be more with nature You should live free in reality without all the constrains that culture puts in you. You will have to find a balance but you need to cut a lot of culture out of your life.

Great observations guys! The influence we have from culture is very difficult to pinpoint since, for me at least, I cannot differenciate very well a cultural influence from an authentic behavior... I believe that with time, awareness and PD it is going to be clearer and clearer

@Leo Gura I'm kind of getting a weird pleasure in having my reality break apart. Thank you I guess

Most spiritual teachers were mentioned.. I would include Rupert Spira, Adyashanti, Matt Khan, Peter Russell, Benthino Massaro, Fred Davis.. For self development in general Ken Wilber, Eben Pagan, RSD Julien is having great content.. Read tons of books! You have so much self development information that is insane.

What are Projections? When your needs, your fears, your cravings, your agenda and your ego color and distort how you see people. It is when you superimpose your emotional baggage (your own shit that is happening with you) onto others and you interact with them without being aware that it is your shit, not theirs; also it says nothing about them and says EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU. Also, with projections you are making a lot of assumptions about the other person based on your needs. You start constructing fantasy images about the people you interact in life, you see them how they are for you, not for them. Projections are like believing that what you think of other people is 100% truth, even though you know a 5% of them max. Also, you try to assume and guess what the other person is thinking but again, it all based on your needs and insecurities. It also creates disagreements. Projections make you feel that you know the person, even though you went to a couple of lectures or watched 100s videos. Take into account that projections happen with everybody you meet: your parents, your friends, your girlfriend, mentors, teachers and so on. There are two kinds of projections: 1. The ones you make with your spouse, girlfriend, friends, boss and so on (basically the majority of your life) 2. The ones you make with teachers and mentors (this is especially dangerous since they have the information you need to actualize): The ego will try to kill the messenger. You need to be aware of all the projections you make with your mentors and teachers because you will be cutting your progress. Realize that you don’t know anything about your teachers, even though you read 10 books of his nor from watching 100s videos. Every story you tell yourself about other people are ALWAYS BIASED and IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, NOT ABOUT THEM. When you are relating to other people, 99% of the time you are actually relating to yourself. It takes a lot of spiritual purification and self-development work to get to the point in which you can relate to other human being as they simply are (it takes years of work). You need to become aware of the projections you are doing with every individual in your life. All the disagreements you have are about you, not them. When you realize this, you will start to see your relationships flower and will start to learn from people. The closer you are to the person; the more projections you make on them. If you want to see people for-themselves and not for-yourself, you need to discard every good or bad projections that you made, you need to drop all the assumptions. You need to relate to people as mysteries. You have to be conscious about your own agenda when you are relating to other people and start unrouting your projections. Any criticism or judgment you have, turn it back to you and recognize what does those things say about you. Some signs that tell you when you are projecting with teachers: - You have imaginary arguments - You start getting with your teacher’s personal life story. - When you criticize little things (what he said, the way he said it, his t-shirt, etc.) Start listening inclusively and with generosity. This means: Don’t just sit there and nitpick and find the flaws, but just sit there with assuming the burden of understanding to yourself. A good student always takes it upon himself to understand what the teacher is trying to saying, even if the teacher says something wrong or doesn’t make sense. You are responsible to make their teachings have sense (they know much more than you). YOU HAVE TO DISCOVER HOW TO FIT IN THE TEACHINGS INTO THE MODEL OF REALITY. Also be careful about all the assumptions you make (specially with the enlightenment stuff). The deeper the teaching, the more careful you have to be.