hinawashi

I've been wondering whether someone can become enlightened or not is determined by fate, i.e. try as hard as you may you can never get your low-consciousness friends to reach the same state as you are. I've been feeling this way and I'm really confused right now. So does free will actually exist? Or does fate merely give us the choice to follow it or not?

My biggest challenge to personal development are: Always having to prove myself better than everybody else. It's a self-esteem issue that manifests in a lot of ways because I can't let go of my inferiority complex. Whenever I'm at school or work I have to show everyone that I'm good at doing thing they do but deep down inside I fear that they might see through this mask and at the same time I'm insanely jealous at people who are more successful than me. Dealing with unconscious people. This one is actually the main challenge I'm having right now. It feels like waking up from hell but now trying to get my point across to my friends and family now makes me look like a complete alien. Except for my dad who had become more aware through years of experiencing life, nobody else in my family knows what enlightenment really is. Same with my colleagues and friends, they just don't want to talk about it so I really don't want to bring up this topic lest they throw me out of their social circle. I'm bringing the self-esteem issue under control right now, so it's just a matter of time, but what I really want to know is how to talk to other people about my thoughts and feelings without appearing insane. I know that @Leo Gura mentioned the ego speaks in its own language but how to translate seems near impossible.

I honestly believe that today's education system isn't sustainable. Because if these fundamental issues are not addressed the whol system will fall apart eventually. What we're having right now is only the beginning of the end, but that's not like the doomsday because those who are supportive of self-improvement in schools will take over and a new era of education will begin. I might not be able to live long ehough to see that day though, but I have faith.

@Joel3102Personality plays a huge role too. Think extrovert VS introvert, so this high VS low consciousness metric isn't entirely reliable. If I were you I'd suggest distinguishing the two based on whether its' because they have no choice (low consciousness) or because they choose to get rid of distractions in life (high consicousness). @Prabhaker Being a hermit is a temporary way to get rid of distractions and I'd say it's pretty much a last resort if you can't live your everyday life without being distracted from self-awareness. The biggest trap that people fall into is thinking that aware equals abstaining from everything in your life.

Well it's really simple. When you're judging others you've already judging yourself. Suppose I say that everyone who wears green is retarded. That implies that if I wear green, then I must be retarded, regardless if I'm wearing green right now or not. Another wat to think about it is that judgment is an ego game. It does nothing but to feed your ego. Remember when Jesus said that whoever holds on to his own life will lose it and whoever lays down his life to follow Jesus will find true life? Yeah, that's ego death right there.

People can be drunk and selfish and needy, but that's not a reason to make you feel special. That's a huge pitfall. I can personally relate to this because in the past I always, and I really means ALWAYS wanted to make myself look better in everyone else's eyes or at least feel better about myself. However, I've became more aware of that today. The same thoughts pop up every now and then in my head whenever I see people like that around me, but instead of scoffing at them, I take pity on them. Because what if I lose my consciousness and end up like them? That must be a horrible thing to happen to me, right? That's the kind of shift in perspective that eventually arrives at compassion, and compassion is a very powerful thing.

I resonated with that video too. But I think 90% of the people who watched probably thought the society is bad and so is everything in it. It's not. Remember when Leo said that everything you sense is just a perception? It's your perception of the world that's gone chimp. Why? Because both humans and chimps live on the same planet! Humans eat food, chimps also eat food. Humans have sex and chimps also have sex. Humans chase after social status and chimps also chase after status. But what makes humans fundamentally different from chimps is that we can potentially see the world in a much more complex way than chimps, whereas chimps cannot see beyond their chimpery. Now in the 30 Ways Society Fucks You in the Ass video, Leo makes another interesting point, is that you can still enjoy whatever activity that you do, you just become more aware of the fact that there's a whole lot more to this world than the list oft things he mentioned. You don't have to abandon any of them, nor does enlightenment makes you lose interest in them. You just know there's more to this world than getting drunk and partying all night or watching your favorite football team on television while eating a whole bucket of ice cream. You still enjoy all that but just in a different way, like the cherry on top of the cake. Enlightenment should be the main part of your life and everything you enjoyed back then would be just a bonus to spice everything up. What really is unfortunate, however, is that the society is engineered so that people don't look into themselves. That's where the distractions comes in. But that's just the nature of the world, so don't complain why we don't live on the Moon if you really hate the amount of gravity on Earth. But since everything is just a perspective, all you have to do is to flip the switch. Easier said than done though.

This is how I see it. Selfless acts don't make you enlightened, it is merely an indicator of enlightenment. Suppose I put litmus into a solution and it turns red or blue, it doesn't mean the litmus paper made the solution adic or basic all of a sudden. The solution was already acidic or basic before the litmus was thrown in there. One of the underlying principles of enlightenment is that you don't put values into anything. A lot of people put values into stuffs and actions, including selfless acts. So let's say I put a lot of hours into community service and help the poor and whatnot, and I derive my value, or self-worth from that. That's not enlightenment, nor is it a tool to help you get there. Enlightenment comes first, then comes selflessness, because what enlightenment does is that it dissolves the self and once that happens everything you do will be selfless.

The same rule applies for happiness. If you ever catch yourself saying "if I do this or get that I'll be happy", drop the "if". Guess what, it just becomes "I'm happy", no matter what goes on in the external world. It sounds absolutely crazy at first but that's apparently the truth about happiness and success, because they're all concepts inside your head. So the rule of thumb is, what goes on in your head, stays in your head. @Prabhaker That's also why we see a lot of self-sabotage around us. People seem to just give up their chance of success for no reason, but actually they prefer to fail because they view success as beyond their control and in that way failure is more preferable, because they then see failure as being "in control". Again, nobody is really in control of anything, so just throw out the idea of conditional success and happiness out the window. True success and happiness are unconditional, the conditional ones are counterfeit.They don't have value and you shouldn't be chasing after counterfeits.

I'm gald you came to the right place to ask. External factors only affect your life when you turn your sight outwards, which is basically what our society wants us to do. What's even more scary is that once you fix your eyes on the outside world, it prevents you from looking inwards, and as crazy as it sounds, the important stuffs in life are all on the inside. Happiness, self-awareness, peace and joy are all inside stuffs. The beauty of all that is nothing from the outside world can take them away from you. Now let's talk about this whole barrier thing. You have to convince yourself that none of the external factors matter when it comes to self-improvement. Fear is just an illusion. Why? Because if you fear failure, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it's going to stop you from succeeding. If you think that success equates to attaining whatever goal you set, you're putting yourself in a trap. Personally I've thrown the idea of success out the window, because if there's a success there will be a corresponding failure, and it's better to just be myself and do my best instead of constantly fearing failure. That doesn't mean you shouldn't set goal in life. You see, goals provide us with direction. Without goals we'd be lost. The trick to identify where you fears are at is to see if your definition of a goal has an "if" statement in it. For example, "If I lose x pounds of weight I'll succeed in my diet" would be setting yourself up for failure. Change that to "I'm going to lose x pounds of wight", period. Drop the "if" and you'll see the difference.

I'm not sure if you heard the story, but it goes like this: A group of blind men are trying to figure out what an elephant is, so they each feel a different part of the elephant with their hands. But an argument breaks out afterwards because they every single one of them believe the part they touched is all of the elephant, which leads to comments like "the elephant is a pillar" and "the elephant is a wall" and "the elephant is a long, thin pipe" and so on and so forth. Here's how I interpret all this. Note the story is about blind men. Blind men can't really see beyond themselves. Their blindness is a barrier between them and whatever object they're trying to interact with, and in this case, the elephant. Now if one of them can let go of their part of the elephant and go around and feel all the other parts that he can reach, maybe he'll understand that the elephant is something much bigger than he initially imagined to be. Although his blindness prevents him from seeing the big picture, what he can potentially do is to acknowledge that the elephant is big beyond his ability to touch and feel, and the elephant is comprised of many parts that are vastly distinct from each other, and that the shape and size of each part only applies to that particular part and not all of the elephant. While this story sounds ludicrous to us who have seen elephants with our own eyes whether on National Geographics or at a zoo, but it actually illustrates what enlightenment is like (at least to me). I don't know why but even with my knowledge about what an elephant looks like and what it eats and what it does, I still don't know what an elephant really is. I can almost guarantee that if you ask somebody what an elephant is, the only way they can describe is what it looks like and what it does. Maybe someone will say an elephant is really big, and it has horns, and it can pull a cart, and it can roll up into a ball and chrage up a spin dash like Sonic the Hedgehog (OK I'm making that last bit up) but none of these statements has anything to do with the elephant itself. In fact, it's not possible to describe the elephant's being. So I think maybe we should just stop asking what enlightenment is, and just experience it. I felt "spiritually blind" but now I sort of accepted this blindness because it doesn't really stop me from touching and feeling different bits and pieces of enlightenment and self-awareness. What do you think?

Yes, right now I'm at the stage where I sort of opened my eyes and saw the elephant of life for the first time, and it's definitely much bigger than I imagined even though my mental image of it is still quite blurry. But that's the beauty of it, by seeing the big picture I don't have to get involved in arguments anymore. I feel a bit more at peace, and open-minded too. Here's the catch though, in order to see the whole elephant, you gotta let go of it. You have to let go of the part of the elephnat that you're holding on to, and distance yourself away from it, and only when you're far enough from it can you see all of it. That's why enlightenment was really tough for me in the beginning, because I had to let go of everything that I thought was right or "more correct", in order to open my eyes. Who knows where this journey will take me next?

I can't say that any one of us can actually say that we're at high consciousness. There's no high VS low, only higher VS lower. By saying there is a high and low you basically fall into the trap of black and white thinking. Plus, if there really exists a high and that would be the maximum point you can reach, which is obviously wrong when you know that self-actualization has no end to it. You can only say that a gamer is at a lower consciousness when you compare him/her with another gamer who's aware of what they're doing. I'm not saying that you're supposed to compare yourself with anyone else to measure your level of consciousness every time you're playing a video game; I just wanted to point out that all levels of consciousness are relative to each other, and there's not a universal point of reference to calibrate everything against, because the human psyche is complex beyond our comprehension.

What transformed me the most was actually the idea of exploring inwards instead of finding problems from the outside realm. It's a really big leap of faith for me, because that's not something that follow the logic of ego. Then again it isn't a magic bullet that just transformed me all of a sudden. Oh no, I had to be constantly aware of what I'm doing, which is quite challenging at first but now it's more or less just a habit.

That's typical low consciousness. Note that the game itself doesn't cause a lowering of the consciousness, because you're already in a state of low consciousness even before you started playing the game. That's why starving yourself doesn't make you lose weight; that's why abstaining from video games doesn't help with the addiction. People look for the root of the problem outside of themselves instead of within, and that's pretty much all there is to it in a nutshell.

Of course not. At least not for now. That's the conflict between me and my ego, though I hope for a peaceful solution.

@Revolutionary Think I understand your way of saying that knowledge is like "mind calories". I really like it. Whether it's a tool, energy or money in a bank account, knowledge essentially is something that has no will to it. It lies there until you pick it up and put it into action. It's the will that acts on the knowledge, not the other way around, which is why a lot of people like me are confused what all this knowledge is there for.

I choose not to be. My ego wants to be, though.

The way I see it, it's not really high VS low, but rather a gradient of everything in between. To think that consciousness is either high or low is basically in itself a low consciousness style of thinking, because the unconsciousness part of the mind only thinks in black and white. For example, in the 30 Ways Society Fucks You in the Ass video mentioned video games, so I'll just use games as an example. When you play games you kinda have to realize why you're playing those games. To someone who's unconscious they don't ever ask themselves this question; they just pick up the controllers and play. But if you say something like "I gotta beat the other team and get a higher score", OK, that's bit higher in the consciousness scale. But then you gotta ask yourself "why do I have win", then you see, your consciousness goes one step higher. So you might answer "I feel better when I win", so you ask "why do I have to feel better about myself", and so on and so forth. Note that throughout these questions, you never question yourself that video games are "wrong" or "bad", and then you realize that in fact you can have high levels of consciousness even when you do play video games. Why? Because there's no value in terms of consciousness in the games, whether it's violent or not, and that's precisely why Leo said that to have high consciousness you don't have to abstain from those activities which he call it "chimpery".

I agree with @Treeves4u. The comments section comprised of two types; A. those who think not having friends automatically making them intelligent, or B. Those who think intellectuals are using it as an excuse to feel superior. Oh and I forgot to mention C. Those who futilely try to prove the above two are wrong. But all three of them point to the same characteristic, is that they all try to prove themselves as better, or more correct, and that's pure ego. I honestly I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The regular intelligence is basically just knowledge. Knowledge is just a tool and nothing more. Imagine you have a chainsaw but you have no idea how to operate it properly, chances are, you'll end up hurting yourself. The emotional intelligence is along the lines of how to control the use of knowledge, and when and where you can apply knowledge to good use.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, everyone. It really helped, not in the way that I looked for validation but rather it's good to see that I'm definitely not alone in the dark. I always knew I was the "odd one out". The most striking thought that came to me, like how @abrakamowse said, it's more of this language of the ego that people speak around me, which I don't speak anymore. But it's not like I can't speak ego, it's just I choose not to. One thing I noticed that people who have low levels of consciousness often complain/blame, run away from problems, or just play the good old ostrich game and deny everything. So naturally I give some advice here and there, but then they pretend to understand but then immediately ignore me, or they think I'm "weird" (the dreaded word Leo uses a lot), and sometimes when I'm discussing this with my family they just seem to hijack my topic and blabber on and on about themselves. That's why it's been near impossible for me to communicate. As for loneliness, I can totally relate to @YaNanNallari. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but that's my choice. One analogy that I keep talking to myself (and my stuffed animals) is that of a rock rolling down a hill. We might say that the rock is free because there's nothing preventing it from rolling all the way down. However, we can also say that the rock isn't free at all, because the direction which the rock rolls is dictated by the laws of physics and gravity. If the rock is truly free then it can give gravity the middle finger and roll uphill all of a sudden. Imagine seeing that in real life, people would panic and think there's some sort of paranormal activity going on, and that's exactly the way they look at me now. While they don't see me as someone who's possessed by demons, but at least in a way that isn't agreeable. Going to the point raised by @Arkandeus, I agree that people will eventually be curious. I mean how can you NOT be curious if you see a rock rolling upfill against gravity? Scientists would be pulling their hairs out trying to figure out what happened, and that's why I haven't given up my hopes yet, because some day, someone will approach me and hopefully I'll be able to share my experiences with them in a meaningful manner.

Hi everyone, I'm Hina and I'm new here. I'm an immigrant from Japan. I've watched quite a few of Leo's videos, but I haven't found this forum so I just joined tonight to see how the community is like. Over the few years I've struggled with a crippling inferiority complex and I've read a lot of self-help books both from Japan and America, and gradually I became more and more self-aware even before I've seen any of Leo's videos. His videos simply confirmed that whatever I've been reading in the past are true. But here's the main problem. I try to share my experience with my friends and family and nobody understands what I'm talking about! It's like all of a sudden I'm talking in an alien language! This really makes me feel... alienated. Sometimes I had to resort to talking to my stuffed animals just to make it feel like I'm talking to an audience, or at least "someone" to reinforce what I've learned. It makes me feel really lonely and empty inside. On the plus side I did became self-aware and my inferiority complex is gone, at least for now, so I guess that's the amount of tax I pay for this level of awareness.