julienw

@Purple Man Hmm, interesting points! He definitely has a high falutin flavor to him. Hard to parse what the hell he means sometimes haha...

@Jannes Try this in a blender. 1 cup of whole grain oats, 1-2 cups of whole milk (or if you need vegan--soy or almond milk), 1 dollop of peanut butter, 1 diced banana, and a splat of honey. That should do the trick, heavy metal-free. And it's probably way cheaper than the snake-oil protein powders.

Leo, been a big fan since Sept. 2016. I've had some nice things and some not so nice things to say over the years. For the latter, I do apologize. I think you're a good dude and love your content. My question for this post relates to a general feeling I have from following you for so long, which is that every video you release I feel like is better than the last one. While I do watch them every week and always feel like I am getting great takeaways each time, I have this idea in my head that your earlier videos (from 1 month before, 1 year, 2 years, etc.) don't have the same impact as your newest videos. For this reason, I avoid re-watching old videos of yours. Therefore I could use some encouragement to go back and re-visit older ones, even recent "older" ones. There are always nuggets of wisdom and moments that resonate deeply with me in every video, so I don't know why I have this nagging hesitation when it comes to re-watching previous episodes. It's not a matter of time or boredom because I enjoy the long-form structure of your content and don't have a problem taking a few days to get through each of your episodes when they come out. I do think that as we get farther back to like 1-2+ years old, your consciousness and emphases have developed so much since then that I am not so much inclined to check those out again, but am open to it if you think it's valuable or if there are any specific series you'd recommend. Thanks a lot! PS Am a big fan of the little bits of humor you inject throughout the videos. I find myself cracking up more and more with your videos for some reason. Like in the last one, you were addressing some misuses of not-knowing and giving examples of like sitting around doing cocaine and wasting your life away watching Tik Tok videos. I was really cracking up then man haha. Cheers.

@axiom Nice! I definitely want to pick up one of his books after listening to this episode. By the way, do you know if there is a way to embed the video into my post instead of just including the link?

YouTube Link Check it out! Kind of dovetails nicely with Leo's work.

So in a recent video Leo was talking about the idea of our body cells constantly dying and replacing themselves such that if we consider ourselves as identified with the body, than I am not who I was a minute ago, and definitely not who I was a week ago or many years ago. This was interesting to hear, but there is somewhat of a snag in that logic if you look at pure neuroscience. We are always hearing about the neural pathways in our brains, and our brains and neurons as being the prime biological entity that we ought to be identified with. And of course we have heard a lot from Leo on the topic of brains. The one little snag is this: neurons themselves are the "quintessential 'post-mitotic' cell." This means that a fully differentiated neuron does not divide or rebirth itself over the course of the rest of one's lifetime, unlike all other somatic cells in the body (as far as I know). Therefore, this is a logical/biological counterpoint to the notion that, because our cells are constantly dying and recycling themselves, we are not who we were in the past. If our neurons are an exemption to this biological phenomenon and are actually one of the only cell types that do not re-generate themselves, and only die in old age or neurological disease which coincides with the fading of our "selves" or personality, then what does that mean for the argument that we are not our bodies, especially since neurons are the main biological/neurological entity that scientists tend to identify human ego's with? Cheers, Julien

Leo, I've been wondering about this for a while. I've watched tens of hours of your content, and I know your stance on science and what it purports to know/show about the world. My issue with it is the same as that which you raise about the majority of humanity: ignorance. Do you actually know any scientists? Do you regularly interact with people in academia and other researchers? Do you actually read scientific papers regularly? You talk about science and scientists like they are this one thing--trying to define all of reality based on the one little corner of it that they study. The thing is, having been academia-adjacent for 4+ years now, I know and have met plenty of scientists and researchers and have not interacted with a single one who has made this claim. They are self-aware enough that what they study is just one small component of everything else, and they don't pretend that it explains the whole universe. Yes, just like most humans, many are driven by the pull towards success and reputation, publishing as many high-impact papers as possible, etc. So some of the studies are sort of "hacked" or structured in such a way so as to output the desired result. I'm not arguing that people who practice science are superior to or above all of the pitfalls of ego. My main issue is who exactly are you talking about when you make these claims that scientists claim to know how reality works? Every one that I know is just like everyone else. They're driven to succeed in their field but they also have lives outside of science--hobbies, family, etc. For many it's just a job. Just do the work and go home for the day and enjoy their lives. And when you talk to them, they don't say "well, my study on the epigenetics of stress and local water quality explains the entire universe;" or "my study of a model of the development of the early human brain means that all of reality is material." I've never seen it. Many are implicitly materialists, rationalists, and atheists. Certainly. But I've also spoken to researchers who study the effects of DMT in an academic setting, and I can assure you that they have differing worldviews than other scientists. Even high-level mathematicians and physicists, while some may claim to know the fundamental nature of reality, many are just really into math and studying very specific things like as you know, quarks and electron spin and quantum phenomena and all this other stuff. So if you ask them: what is reality made of, they will just say "dude, I have no idea. And neither does the entire field of physics or math. Yes, we have this model and it's very cool and it ATTEMPTS to try to explain what's going on, but it's just not complete." So they're mostly just a bunch of nerds who get a kick out of what they study, and sometimes they make cool findings. Why do you have so much beef about that? And I will concede, much of science is just a self-propelling money-making scheme. Just look at Big Pharma. So yeah, I think as a whole it's just as corrupt as government or religion or anything else that humans make an institution out of. I just don't think you actually care to listen to what the majority of scientists actually have to say, or know well anyone who is "on-the-ground," so I don't see where you get the authority or credibility to speak on the matter. And ultimately I think at the bottom of it, my issue lies with the fact that you fail to point out the other side of the coin: what science does well. What it does for the world, for humanity. Discoveries are real. New inventions are real. I know you know this. I know you're into this. Why don't you ever say like "Yes, vaccines are so cool! We figured it out" or like electric cars, or fucking e-cigarettes, or computers, or a literal shoe. All these things came from human ingenuity, and they make life better. What will change the average person's everyday life are these things, not the 0.000001% chance that they experience God-consciousness for 3 minutes. Or how about for instance, simply acknowledging that science and things like quantum physics are fundamentally based around uncertainty and unknowing. Schrodinger's cat, wave-particle duality, these basic things that you learn in college physics where the claim is actually "We don't know," not "it is this." Or how most scientists, before they say anything, will preface it with: "This is just a model, not the real thing." I don't know man, I just feel like you're leaving a lot to be said, and cherry-picking ideas to criticize based on broad generalizations. So much like you say (and I agree), "scientists don't have the authority to speak on the topic of the fundamental nature of reality," I don't feel that you have the authority to speak on science as a whole. In fact I just heard a well-reputed mathematician/computer scientists/physicist state: "Yes, all of our instruments are merely extensions of the human sensory experience." Implying that it is as limited as the senses. Scientists do not argue that the limits of human sensation are the limits of the universe. Idiots argue that, but not scientists.

@Rilles @Salvijus Thanks for being so understanding guys. More understanding than that sick fuck Leo could ever be. Righteous bastard. If you'd like you can just view this as a case study in projection, self-bias, and blame. The difference being that I don't lie to my 1 million followers every week. See, more of the same. It's a never-ending loop of recursion just like everything else on this bloody forum.

Leo is a cocky bastard who's devised an un-disproveable system of language, who never admits he's wrong and never apologizes for anything. A sex addict, success-chaser who loves to boast to his 1M+ followers every week. Prove me wrong. I will accept being banned if that is the determination.

@Salvijus Damn. You're right. I'm being a fucking sick troll. Is there a way to delete this post and also my profile. I seem to be having some sort of episode where I can't leave this forum alone. Please remove me for my own and your sakes. I am embarrassed and I regret this, and I'm wasting all your time and energy.

Video Link Well worth listening to. Don't pigeonhole yourself and listen to only Leo.

@OneHandClap Sweet man, thank you. I appreciate it. It was nice not to be totally shut down by some extreme solipsism or whatever they will self-identify it as. And will do.

@Nahm You're right. I have no idea. It just depends when I answer that question. One hour I might say the opposite of the last hour. I'm a mf'ing walking contradiction. Partly truth, partly fiction.

@Carl-Richard Alright, that was pretty funny haha.

@Nahm Well then I'm emotionally discordant as fuck my friend. You can say that again.

Who in the fuck cares whether you call it an assumption or a probabilistic guess or whatever. Why do any of you care if someone else believes the sun rising tomorrow is an assumption or not? So you can convince them that you are right? That you know what's reaaally going on here? Oh fuck off. What a semantic circlejerk, waste of time. I promise you that the second before your heart stops beating for the rest of time, you will be just as scared shitless as the other person regardless of what you think about the sun rising.

@OneHandClap Well said, finally someone I can have an actual conversation with on here.

Hey there Leo, Thanks for the great content; always a mind-fuck. I am watching the recent Paradox episode and a question came up for me. At one point you begin to dissect the whole neuroscience paradox regarding chemicals in the brain generating our collective and daily hallucination of reality, therefore rendering the psychedelic experience essentially no different than our normal, everyday hallucination. I totally agree with that. My only question is: why doesn't it stop there? Sure, tripping is a hallucination // sober reality is a hallucination. But what if hallucination is just a mechanism of biological evolution that enabled creatures to survive, and the buck stops there. So I guess my point is, can't we reconcile it all by just saying that yes, everything is a hallucination--including neuroscience, including psychedelics, including the brain...BUT also, when you die that's the end of it and there isn't this infinite self that's immortal and all of reality is just infinite consciousness and Love. I still can see the infinite recursion of mind creating brain and vice versa, but I guess I'm stuck on a biological metaphysics that sees the body as the fundamental unit that allows our experience to be possible, and without it, there would be no experience. (Then of course, maybe no experience does not mean non-existence, but I can say that I do not know that space at all; however if it is "The Unknown," then I'm not sure how to experience a non-experienceable thing). So I will append this by giving my awakening credentials: literally zero. I've done plenty of psychedelics, and had some glorious experiences for sure, but I cannot say that I had a single awakening experience through all of that. Therefore, I fully accept that the real truth may simply be too radical for my limited consciousness to see, grasp, or understand. My second question is more a technical one. I posted it on the video but I'm not sure it's as direct a line to you. The question is this: when you are meditating and trying to allow nothing to happen, they say that what you're after is not an experience (kind of like above, i.e. death). But then I find myself trying to not have an experience, which is an experience. What to do to get around this recursion problem? Cheers, Julien

@Leo GuraRelative to your mid-to-late 20s, and after all of your self work, what proportion of your day do you spend in a state of peace and contentment as opposed to neuroticism, obsession, planning and doing, chasing the next thing, guilt and resentment, etc.? I guess if thoughts were a pendulum of negative to positive, how has your pendulum shifted over the last ten years? How about things like TV and the Internet? Are those less enjoyable or enticing than before, because the benefit they give you is far less than the bliss you can experience by just being, or do you spend only a small proportion of your time in those types of elevated states?

**Check Out Attached Article** Albeit there's some nuance lacking in my title, but still, I think it's worth considering that there is and has been conversation in the field of neuroscience and academia at large that connects with what you've been sharing about reality and our construction of it, and that the entire field of science is not just a bunch of dumb materialists who believe and disseminate the idea that reality is objective and our brains just detect it. And I'm sure this still doesn't go far enough or even come close to your communications on Actualized, and that this article and the overall field is highly limited and biased against the deepest truths about Absolute truth, but my two cents are that it may be worth staying up to date on what "science" is actually saying, and giving it a little bit more credit. I'm also not denying that science has its corruptions, biases, and limitations. I do agree with that sentiment completely, but I also think it's a little bit misleading to characterize all of science and everyone in it as this monolithic thing with only one highly specific and narrow ideology and narrative about what reality is, what the brain/is does, who we are, etc. etc. "Rather than being a passive registration of an external objective reality, perception emerges as a process of active construction—a controlled hallucination, as it has come to be known." I've attached a PDF of this article since the URL requires payment. scientificamerican0919-40-compressed.pdf **I checked out the author of the article's organization--Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science--and I'm sorry to report that that is indeed the family associated with Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin, and the ongoing opioid epidemic, so that's an unfortunate coincidence.

Hello folks, Highly recommend this channel for some insights on psychedelics and other drugs, neurobiology, and even a whole host of other topics related to science, directly from researchers who study these fields. They're mostly long-form podcast-style interviews, but there are also shorter, more to-the-point clips. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_dJ5ThfEhj39zkEPQbNdPg Hope you enjoy, Julien

@Toby Sorry dude(tte). I just didn't perceive it as a very personal response, that's all. No hate, and hey I could just be overthinking it haha, don't take it personally

I hear you Toby. I didn't mean to make you feel underappreciated. But it is true that recommending a book versus giving practical advice are two very different things. It takes a couple of days to receive the book, and many more to actually read and implement the practices discussed therein. That also assumes that the person researched the book and bought it. Words of advice that espouse feeling however take only a couple of seconds for their effectiveness to take root. Somebody who is in such pain as the OP described needs more specificity and immediacy of advice then "check out this book." Again, I'm sorry to come off as accusatory and attacking your suggestions, as I do see the value in them as well as relatedness to what I'm saying. But I am just offering my 2 cents.

Hi Zoey, I'm very sorry to hear that you're going through this; it sounds like torture! I'm surprised that nobody yet suggested what I will, and that everybody simply wrote your suffering off as some unremembered, unconscious trauma that occurred while you were an infant...of course that could play a role, and while it may be an important step in identifying some of the sources and how they are still relevant today, clearly in your day-to-day life simply associating your current suffering with some past trauma will not alleviate it for you. I just don't see how this could be received as practicable and workable advice. (Not trying to throw shade on the previous posters, it's just that their advice seems a little bit unuseful for you). I mean it certainly doesn't seem like it's resonating strongly with you, which I completely understand. Anyway, what I would strongly recommend is 1) start working with a therapist, and 2) start or continue your mindfulness practice, with an especially concentrated focus on self-compassion. It sounds like you're really beating yourself up over this, and judging and blaming yourself for your disconnectedness. I promise you: it is not your fault!! A trained professional psychologist will help you to see this and many many other important factors that are going on that neither I nor anyone on a forum could point out for you. And just remember, pay attention to these feeling as they arise, and notice that you can at least a little bit release some of the disconnectness just by noticing it. This might free you up a bit to reconnect with your family in the moment, and hopefully will help you to forgive yourself. Best of luck, Julien

@Nahm Gotcha Nahm, thanks very much for the detailed response. I'm 22 myself and currently working my first real job out of college. One question I have is how to bring your life outside of meditation into your (mindfulness) practice, i.e. your personal interests (for me that would also be music and reading), career things, life things (relationships, fitness, etc.). In other words, I find myself often approaching these things in a judgmental, ambitious and materially-driven way, and that scares me away from them in some deeper sense because I feel like they actually hinder me from achieving the more significant and important things, like present-moment awareness, self-compassion, expansion of consciousness, etc., however I simultaneously know that these other areas of my life can themselves be sources of development in the deeper sense if I allow them to be. The difficulty for me has been allowing them to be that to me, and so I continue to find myself obligating and forcing myself to pursue these interests in a way that feels driven, compulsive, and self-blaming, that limitless (or so it feels) "I am not enough"-ness, or "I'm just not trying hard enough"-ness that subtly yet powerfully pervades almost all aspects of my life and thinking. So I guess what I'm asking is, how to involve myself in so-called "material" pursuits in a way that's not material at all, but rather reinforces my deeper, heartfelt spiritual practice that albeit I will say seems to ever so slightly begin to permeate my daily life outside of the few minutes a day I spend meditating. Perhaps a more sincere approach to my meditation practice, continuing to listen and learn from those who have walked the path...I'm not sure exactly, so would love to hear your thoughts. And if you'd like for me to clarify I would love to.