Alexandar Edwards

@Elisabeth Leo’s words have triggered me, and that’s something I must work on within myself. But the point I am making is not some defence of my opinions or morality, but a questioning of why “not caring about social issues” is stated as further development from green into yellow. I do not see this to be true, yellow itself is still concerned with sociological and natural issues but from a systemic rather than a moral point of view. Causing harm to others for an uneccesary reason IS a highly flawed form of thinking for one who understands social and ecological systems.

If you read what I’ve said, I have constantly commented several times that I advocate for non-harm without demonising those who cause it

No, all is one all the time no matter what, but those that have realized non-duality have a greater compassion for all of life because they understand its innocence and complete equality within every being. Yes I have often forgiven people who have done horrible things to me because I understand that they are innocent due to ignorance, due to their level of development. I must forgive almost everyone I interact with on a daily basis who continue to contribute to the suffering of others. To quote some guy who died on a cross: "Forgive them lord for they know not what they do."

@Leo Gura It seems to me like this is a subject you've not clearly considered brother, I remember seeing chicken in your fridge during the Hawaii retreat and I cannot comprehend how someone who truly understood the non-dual nature of existence would continue to contribute to unnecessary pain and suffering. Please help me understand if you think I'm wrong, if there's something I'm missing to move fully out of green and into yellow then I want to know what it is, but from what you've said it's like you're saying to evolve psychologically I must just give up acting out of truth, the truth that other beings feel pain and suffering. To me that seems like a massive backward step in psychological development. Every master I've heard speak has spoken about infinite compassion and love for all of life. I do not understand how you, the person who I first learned of non-duality from could tell me that is not something that is worth being concerned with? That we shouldn't all strive to better ourselves from low-consciousness acts of violence. You, Leo, the personal development teacher is telling me that compassion to others is just not a worthwhile emotion to feel, or a functional way for society to act? I just don't understand, there isn't a single sage who didn't care deeply about life, that's why we're here isn't it? Why you do your videos? Because you and I care deeply about life. It is beautiful, in every way. Why would you want to harm it? Why would that be in alignment with truth? Your own words: "You have to understand what neutrality really is, neutrality doesn't mean that you take the middle ground between all perspectives, so if you have one person in a debate arguing against slavery, and the other person arguing for slavery neutrality doesn't mean you go; 'oh yeah we'll just go for something in the middle'. That's not true neutrality, true neutrality is about being very careful to step outside of your own self-bias, your own self agenda, your own egoic agenda and looking at a situation and deciding what the real facts are. Based on an on unbias look." The real facts are that many living beings experience pain and suffering and have a preference to live their lives free from oppression, slavery, abuse and explotation. This is an unbias look from the poistion of the victim, it has nothing to do with my egoic self-agenda.

I know you think that I'm some kinda hippie who has joined a movement and identifies with it strongly and wants to preach about it. And on some level that is probably true and something I will overcome one day. But the issue I'm raising here is not with the moral validity of my own views, but a statement of truth which is self evident. Compassion for others is not something to just let go of because it's only an idea in my mind and constitutes something of my ego. Compassion for others IS part and parcel of absolute truth and the realization of the inherent oneness of all reality. If you are me and I am you then why the fuck would I cause harm to myself for no reason after realizing that truth?

But that still doesn't mean we should stop having compassion for others?! If anything it proves that we should have infinite compassion for others!

Just because a concept is just a concept it doesn't make it invalid, you said yourself that the peak of yellow is playing with concepts to preserve systems?!

Yes, morality is fabricated but it's fabricated out of realization of truth which is that other living beings have the capacity to suffer the same as oneself? @Leo Gura Okay but that person IS acting more egotistically than one who would NOT cause harm unnecessarily.

But it's not self-righteousness, I'm not moralizing! I'm just stating simple reasonable fact that I do not want to be harmed and therefore I do not want to harm others?!

@Leo Gura I understand that rights are a self agenda and a form of ego, I understand that morality is subjective. I'm not talking about "Making the world a better place" for the sake of some zealous self-righteous cause because I want to be a good person or I want people to think I'm great. I'm simply talking about not causing harm to others when it is not necessary. Causing harm to others for an unnecessary reason or simply for pleasure is absolutely the most selfish egotistical and evil thing that can be done by a person! It seems that by your logic I could just start raping children and murdering black people and say "Well why not? If I had compassion for others it would just be my ego trying to be self righteous!" I'm only talking about peace relative to my ego insofar as that I am experiencing the sensations of this body, I feel pain and I have the capacity to suffer and I can see that others also have those capacities so therefore I can see that I do not want pain and suffering inflicted upon me and it would be hypocritical of me to inflict pain and suffering upon others whilst claiming they should not do it to me.

@Leo Gura Thank you for your response brother, I assure you I have had several immensely deep awakening experiences through the use of psychedelics where I experienced full ego death and broke through the illusion of reality into absolute nothingness and absolute infinity. "From my perspective" upon reflection of these experiences this only gave me even deeper insight into the ultimate beauty of reality and the need to educate society and try to guide people towards principles of unity and compassion clear throughout green and yellow. To say that caring about social issues is something to let go of just doesn't make sense to me, it's almost nihilistic. If all is one and all is me then all those billions of beings being oppressed, human and animal alike are also me in some way or another and we should be fighting for basic rights of compassion for all living beings. This is a common theme among devout sages who have been known to live in solitude to limit their impact, their "footprint" on nature as you yourself said. These sages even sweep the floor to avoid killing insects as they walk, some only eat the fruits of plants to avoid uprooting whole organisms needlessly because life is a miracle, it is precious in every sense and should be treated with reverence. I understand the need to transcend morality to achieve a non-dual state and enlightened comprehension, but until I'm able to achieve that naturally through meditation and such, I don't see how it makes any sense at all to stop caring about other living beings and fighting for their rights. I don't see it as a survival issue, I don't NEED to be environmentally conscious and care for others to survive, in fact it would be easier not too, but then to me that WOULD be the ego? Putting ones own survival over the basic rights of other living beings? To me it seems more of an ego sacrifice to devote oneself to the liberation and protection of others through education and elevating the consciousness of society just as you are with actualized? (edit) I hear you saying to find my life purpose and have it be something of a higher-consciousness nature, and I feel like I've finally found it which is helping people realise that eating animals and their secretions is unnecessary, harmful to our health and causes immense pain and suffering on a gargantuan scale. Educating people through polite dialogue and factual scientific information, and now you're saying that this is something of a fools errand? I just don't see it, most yellow thinkers seem to be the ones concerned with preserving systems and nature like you have just said in your video about Yellow, but how could they be doing that if they just "Stopped caring about social issues" and accepted "society is just the way it is" and sat back and did nothing? Even though reality is an illusion, inside the illusion there still exist conscious beings who experience pain and suffering and deserve freedom and happiness. Surely the only reason anyone even seeks enlightenment is to know the truth and to have complete peace of mind... happiness in a sense? Surely it is of the highest levels of consciousness that we must strive to afford all that exist here in the illusion the right to live in peace, even if they don't have any chance of obtaining enlightenment, to them the dream feels real, when they are abused or suffer it feels real. Why else would life be evolving towards compassionate stages like green, yellow and turquoise if it wasn't in the steady realization that all here in the dream just want to be at peace? It is surely the highest goal? I don't see how you cannot see this, your entire life purpose with Actualized is helping others to reach their highest potential and speaking about enlightenment which is the pinnacle of inner peace?

@Joseph Maynor I didn't say I didn't understand what you said, I understood what you said perfectly, it just has very little bearing on the issues I have raised which are social issues. The statement I'm concerned with is when Leo says "SOCIETY is perfect at this moment of time" not REALITY. I understand the metaphysical notion behind what you're saying, that everything is inevitable and reality is just the way it is, but what you are speaking about is not what this topic is relating to which is a more specific area of social mechanics. Thank you for your input, but it's totally off-topic.

@Joseph Maynor I don't think you quite addressed what I'm saying at all, I'm not talking about existential truth and I have no idea how you got that from what I've written.

Good afternoon all First of all I'm a huge fan of Actualized and it has absolutely transformed my entire life over the past year or two. I love you Leo, you are my hero and I hope one day to shake you by the hand, hug you and thank you for everything you've put together here. Despite having watched most Actualized content, this is the first time I've ever instinctively disagreed with something Leo has said. This is more a direct response to only a few words said in the stage green video and I'm hoping Leo himself will reply offering me an explanation, but I'm open to comments from anyone. So I've just watched the stage green video and I'm going to watch yellow this evening. As someone who is potentially 50% green, 30% yellow, and 20% orange with some mixed blue and red in there, I've been swimming in green for several years now and feel like I understand it quite well, including its limitations and extremes. However there was a moment towards the end of Leo's video where he says "Stop caring about social issues so much" "They're important, but they're also not important at all" "Society is progressing at the rate that it needs to be progressing at, society is perfect for this exact moment of time" I fully understand the limitations of green and the need to think about problems systemically rather than preaching and feeling that "love and compassion" will solve all our problems. However these statements by Leo shocked me as they do not make logical sense at all. Yes society will naturally progress and evolve as time goes on, yes politics is often a system of trial and error, yes the economy is like an organism with its own evolution and growth, but none of that means we as individuals should not be concerned and actively taking part in social evolution? ALL past social revolutions and large scale psychological transformation was instigated and accelerated by people who had began to progress to a more developed stage and used their understanding to educate others. I have found myself recently getting involved with vegan/animal activism, I wont go into too much detail about this, but I take part in groups who go out into the public and educate people about the animal agriculture industry and the horrors that are inflicted upon billions of innocent sentient beings across the globe. We advocate for polite and rational dialogue and our conversations are usually very productive, seeing many people make the connection between the food they buy and the animals they claim to love. We present facts, statistics, show slaughterhouse footage and politely encourage them to accept the truth which is that it is not necessary for our health or survival to consume animal products. If they take what we are saying seriously, we present them with more information and they often make the change to a vegan diet, if not then we thank them for their time and they go about their day. We do this because we understand that systemically, the root cause of animal abuse and slaughter is the consumer. It's supply and demand; the consumer makes the choice to buy animal products and hands over their money to the corporations, keeping them in business and the killing continues. We do not condemn or demonize the consumers, the slaughterhouse workers or food corporations for their actions, they are just part of a system, but a system which is founded upon pain, suffering and unnecessary mass slaughter and the root of that system the consumer and their financial support. What I'm trying to say is that how on earth does social evolution occur if we as individuals not tackle the systemic issues ourselves? If no one spoke out for black people during times when white people enslaved them then how would we have ever stopped owning other humans? If no one had spoken out against smoking when its damaging effects were discovered then millions more people would be dying? If Gandhi had never spoken out against oppression and violence then India would never have evolved as its own independent nation and began to overcome their caste system. If no one "cared" about social issues we would have never evolved out of stage red! Even Sadhguru, Mooji, Rupert Spira and Eckhart Tolle all clearly care deeply about social issues and have devoted their entire lives to educating green/yellow psychology. A common theme is compassion for all regardless of their species, race or character. Sadhguru himself (who is clearly deeply turquoise) owns like a dozen high-consciousness businesses, do you think he would have established them and still be creating traditional yoga schools around the world if he just thought "Oh society is progressing at the rate it should be, it's perfect as it is!" and sat back and did nothing? I understand that these issues are clearly the Lesser Jihad and our priority should be inner growth, but I don't see why the two must be exclusive? If anything Leo himself has clearly stated that a high consciousness life purpose will only contribute to inner growth (the greater jihad). What's even more confusing is that Leo then goes on to say about how people have different levels of education, and implies that Green needs to stop demonizing other stages in order to relate to them and educate them. Which surely is "Caring about social issues"? He then even says that Yellow brings about an understanding of evil and you cannot fight evil with evil, only with "love and compassion" which is the thing he said minutes before as being unable to solve all our problems. To me it seems like evil/selfishness is the only real problem in the world and therefore love and compassion in some form or another IS the only thing that can solve all problems? Albeit in a systemic manner. I can only assume that many of the things Leo said here were badly phrased and I hope he can clarify that for me, it's unlike him to be so contradictory. Hope you're reading Leo and please let me know your thoughts. Much love Alexandar

@Flare That was really truly helpful, thank you so much, I do need to take a different perspective on my situation but it rarely feels like my thoughts are helping me with that. I really find the quote in the video helpful too "Death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem," I will be writing that on my whiteboard to quell any dark thoughts!