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Compassion. Less construct-awareness and generally lower level of for example growth on the Spiral Dynamics spectrum equals more suffering. Beings less aware/consciousness generally suffer more. Way more. Because they are more hypotized by their constructs/world-views, and reject many more situations appearing in their mindstream than for example someone on 2nd-tier SD. That is why stable Awakening needs compassion towards them (because if one doesn't have it, one will suffer/get angry/whatever oneself, and bye bye nondual awakened states). That is btw not new-agey-talk, but a "hard" fact/reality. Nothing easier to kill ones nice off-the-pillow-awakened nondual state than getting annoyed. Took me a loooong time to get it. Wisdom (or Awakening) and compassion (openness,love,bliss) form a pair in Mahayana-Buddhism. Because they got this around 2 milleania ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva And even from a metaphysical perspective it makes sense: If True You is all of already (which it is), if one walks around disliking certain aspects of oneself ("others") because they "lack" development, one cuts nondualty in two, shutting off awakened nondual states.-Literally. It is not a sin of the acorn to be not yet an oak. And one more perspective: Consider the stupidity less-than-wise/smart-behaviour of the whole world as divine entertainment. True You is playing a trick on itself. Better be the one laughing in a compassionate way and not the one being annoyed. But that has also to be balanced with compassion in order to not become cynical or negative. Certain local VIPs that yours truly is very fond of seem to be truly getting this now. Chapeau! Selling Water while swimming in the River & humming along:

@puporing To me it has become obvious that the idea of heaven I once had, a place without shit, is some kind of a hedonistic trap. It just wears off after some time. Maybe you can enjoy it for a billion years, but someday questions arise like "What is it like to eat tasteless bread instead of kaviar and cake 24/7?", "I can't die so am I able to convince me about a story about death?" I know this is a very humanoid perspective - but see, the idea that shit is bad is also completely human. You eat nothing but shit your whole life, it just transforms into apples and beans after a year or some. It is not about being attracted to shit but realising that when you have no shit around you, everything is platin and saphirs, one day you will see the one as gold and the other as shit. Or not. But it's just a matter of how high the amplitude of your apparent mood changes get. You may enjoy bliss 24/7 for some time, but after a billion years you may see the greater joy in the challenge of tricking you into a perspective where it is not common, since literally nothing bad can really happen to you, it's all just fantasy. So I am not totally disagreeing with you. It's just that man always wants what is not. The grass on the other side of the river is always greener. And when guys like you come around and talk about heaven which is something that can be reached you may create spiritual fantasies for people who want to get rid of their shit without even knowing why it is there in the first place. Appreciate the shit! That's what I want to share, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Don't get identified/addicted to it but see the goldenness in it. The other way to express it is this: If there was something existentially important to reach, don't you think it would have been reached already? Since there is literally an infinite past. Of course, it's only NOW, but either it is like an alarm clock which starts and ends preprogrammed for you to be able to sleep and then awake at time or it is already done like jesus said on the cross. The idea that one has the responsibility to fullfill an existential need is grandiose, the idea that you could reach in time what is outside of it, to be required to arrange the relative to enter the absolute. What if there are no prerequisitions? If this is it - exactly as it is. How could it be another way than the way it is? There are no others who need your help in that sense. Helping is fine, no question. But it happens naturally, not beacause anything is fundamentally dependent on your help.

Love is not simply something to be felt. If you want to really grasp love you gotta cognize it, not feel it. Comprehend WHAT Love is. Bliss is not the same thing as cognizing Love. If you successfully cognize Love, you will go way beyond bliss, you will enter ecstacy.

Yes, but I feel that's bliss not Love. I also once felt that consciousness is identical to love as everything became pure white. I have but I can't get deeper. With solipsism, I contemplate it and pum direct Awakening. Then Solipsism has been just getting deeper, more nuanced and it's a progressive neverending Solipsistic unfolding. But Love is like... See, I really sat down and said what is probably what I'm most wrong about? And Love was the answer, that's why all of this. I realized my Love realizations are just skin deep and I cannot progress further. I'll find my way, it's just taking longer. I'll update you all when Love finally cracks for me

Warra baseline 24/7 state of bliss for you that is 😂😂😂

It's identical. If you havent shaken and rolled across the floor from the waves of Infinity, nothingness, and Consciousness - (Divine Bliss and Being itself) than guess what - you havent awoken to Love.. There's more to go. Buddhism was the most accurate when it comes to awakening. And to my knowledge a specific awakening to Love simply isn't there. It wasn't for me either- because Love is the whole thing and doesn't have to announce itself. If you aren't writhing on the floor than you aren't awake. It you are than you know Love and Being. Love is a kundalini awakening. My awakening was spawned purely from meditation just as a side note. I still have my doubts about forced awakenings. But that is why I align with Peter Ralston. The difference is I acknowledge that all of it is Love.

Man, I'm glad you posted this, because I'd really like to know too. I've felt insanely ecstatic bliss and pleasure while in deep states on psychedelics, but I'm not convinced I've ever truly experienced divine love. It seems to me from descriptions I've seen that it's one of those things where if you have to question whether you've felt it, then you haven't. If I were to guess on a way to increase the propensity for experiencing it, it'd be something like metta meditation while focusing attention on the heart energy center.

I am beggining to suspect how Yoga works, particularly pure physical Hatha Yoga. (Not talking about energy process such as kriyas, but merely what is called as 'Asanas'.) What is Yoga. Well, you have to do a lot to start understanding it. I have done some Asanas more than 1000 times. For example, I suspect Cat Stretch I´ve done it about 1200-1300 times. Maybe 1500 times. I´m not sure. So Is not like I´m talking from nothing. It seems exaggerated but understanding really what Yoga is does take some time. At first I believed the intention of Asanas was to clear and calm the mind in order for a higher perception or consciousness to happen, but that is a very basic understanding. After some time a whole new possibility opens up. Something much much much more profound of what you thought at the beggining Yoga was. When doing an Asana properly, the belief or feeling of individuality is dissolved (yeah, that goes for all of you solipsistic dudes out there). Why it dissolves is not because it does something to the brain. Is because physically and energetically you are putting your body in such a way that is completely in synchrony and symmetry with Reality. Is not that you unite yourself with Reality. Is that the body merges and dissolves right there. It was already 'dissolved' in the first place. You were already in Unity or 'One' with reality in the first place. But, the usual asymmetry of the human system, which in part is necessary for the process of survival (let´s remember, survival is about you vs me), makes it like you are not.. So it is created a sense of individuality through the life of a human. And most humans never break or dissolve this sense of individuality. Notice im saying 'sense'. Individuality is not a reality. Is not a fact. It is just a sense, a compression that is formed. But if you align the body and the whole system in such a way, this sense of individuality or separation gets completely seen through and dissolved. From holding Asanas a lot of information can enter you. Just like with a Psychedelic. For example, you can 'download' information in the sense that the whole Reality is just like a mirror. A Infinite Diamond Mirror. This is kind of impossible to explain, so let´s leave that as a motivator for people to start a Hatha Yoga practice. One day you will understand things that no book can transmit you. Neither I am because words are dual. Only through a direct experience of symmetry you can understand. This will not only make your life more profound, it will give you an understanding of non duality, unity, God, etc... that it will be very sticky. It won´t be just like a state of consciousness that you can lose. It is a certain information that makes all the pieces 'fit'. Is not intellectual information, is something else, is much more...real. More clear. Is like you get direct connection to the hard drive of infinity, and you download it into your mind. The Universe is symmetry, perfect balance. For you grasp it, you have to make yourself completely symmetric and balanced within you. Then all is accessible for you. Because you are it. I´ll meet you at the Bliss that we are.

I would like to share how I found Leo and my first Awakenings. All my life I had been searching Truth, compulsively and almost obsessively, that was my way of life. Nevertheless, I always felt lost despite deeply researching religion, science and philosophy. In the covid lockdown, an interesting video popped out in my feed: What is Truth? The definitive answer. So I watched it and one hour in I said: "Leo you are full of shit" closed the computer and left. But that video was eating me alive inside my mind, couldn't sleep properly and next morning I continued watching the episode. While I was listening to him I suddenly had my first epiphany in life, it was such a profound experience that it changed my life inside out, it felt like I literally broke a spell. From this mystical experience all the work that I had done in philosophy, religion and science, in the pursuit of truth, made sense for the first time. Like the raising sun now I could see clearly all around me. By that time I discovered Sri Anandamayi Ma and thanks to her I had my second epiphany. This one was so huge I blissed out non stop for months, I thought I solved life, but bliss slowly left. I was just so intense into this work that I don't know how I managed to keep my human life and get into university. So close I was to renounce the world and go for Truth full time or die in the attempt. In that regard my uncle, who is a renowned psychologist, and Leo's video on self help were instrumental. Thanks to Leo I also discovered Psychedelics which to this day I feel they are a gift from God. I feel so lucky to have been born after Leo because I know all that it would have taken me to discover for myself what he already shared with us. Deep down I know I would have made it, at least very far, but it just makes my path much easier. Leo genuinely has saved me years of trial and error. Maybe I would still be compulsively searching for the Truth with no results but frustration.

@Leo Gura What does God do exactly when it is not imagining things? Does he just floats in pure bliss?

Sadhguru answers this here brilliantly.. Time is basic, because there is Time first, space appears as an illusion, its only because you have Form and a Body that you perceive space, without those two things, then there is no space, and if You create a distance btwn what is You and Not You (Body/Mind) then time is not there either.. Fundamentally, there is no past or future, only Memory(past) and Imagination (future) all that really Exists is Present Moment NOW, previous Now's become memory immediately and future never has existed only in your mind via imagination!! All you can do is Accept Now as it is, Respond to Now as it is, because if You don't then the past/memory will rule You, if You do then Your Open to what may happen next...all of this is based on how well Your Bliss is established within You, that appears in the NOW.. As well Mind is past/future orientated, via the memory/imagination complex, and most everyone today is Mind Identified, but You are not the Mind or Body, so its an identification problem too..

This is my personal impression of the pros and cons of Sadhguru and his teachings. Pros: 1) Obviously, he has very high levels of consciousness. God realization?- I'm not sure, but he has definitely had some awakenings. 2) He seems to be great at the embodiment side of spirituality-- he has a conscious, loving aura and something about him just radiates consciousness. Also, the Isha Foundation, which he created, is one of the best organizations for increasing the consciousness of humanity that I know of. 3) Sadhguru is good at using parables or stories to point to spiritual truths. This makes it easier to understand what he is pointing to without him explicitly saying it. 4) He claims to live in constant bliss, so if that's what you're going for he might be good to learn from. Now the juicy bit... Cons: 1) Sadhguru is awful at conceptual things. He has no grasp of science whatsoever. Yes, he is a spiritual master and so you might think he "has no need" for science or something, but the truth is that it shows a smidge of closed-mindedness in him. 2) He clearly has a preference for Indian culture and Hinduism. It's obvious from his videos that he sees Indian culture as supreme and looks down on other cultures to a certain extent. 3) He may have killed his wife. 4) Sadhguru might take Hinduism literally. If you watch enough of his videos where he goes in depth on spiritual topics, he tends to bring up Hindu terminology a lot, such as Shakti, Krishna, Atman, Paratman, and some other words I'm forgetting. It's hard to tell whether he actually has construct awareness about Hinduism and isn't mistaking the map for the territory when it comes to these concepts. In his rare videos where he actually answers stuff like "what is the origin of reality," he tends to answer in terms of Hindu ideas of different deities, making it unclear whether he actually is conscious of the answer to some of these questions Interesting Questions to Contemplate 1) If Sadhguru is lacking in ability to explain things, should that cast doubt on his level of spiritual realization? Does enlightenment always come with the ability to explain it? (at least in some limited way) 2) Does high conciousness automatically make you not care about concepts (as is the case with Sadhguru) or is it an aspect of the person's personality? Anyways, hopefully you got something from this post. I'd like to hear your guys' thoughts on Sadhguru.

Some context: this took place around 3 weeks ago. Last summer I acquired 2g of high-purity synthetic NN-DMT, which to my bitter disappointment has not worked, despite trying very high doses via various methods like vaping on emesh/meth pipe and taking it orally with harmala extract. That's not out of the ordinary for me, as I'm also essentially unresponsive to other potent substances such as the 5-MeO series and DPT. I decided to give it one last shot with a ridiculous dose, and failing that, I'd simply wait and donate it to someone that could make better use of it. I took 200mg of harmala extract followed by 400mg DMT 30 minutes later. After that, I shaved, showered, and almost forgot I had taken anything. It was a nice day, so I decided to go to the rooftoop with some food and sunbathe for a bit. Once there, it didn't take long for things to go terribly wrong. By the time I finally decided I gotta get back I was already nearly passing out. Barely made it to my apartment, reality was collapsing all around. Not in a metaphysical sense, that's trivial for me these days. This was far more sinister and palpable, as if pure poison was coursing through my veins. Not sure what's the exact cause of this, perhaps harmala interaction with tyramines. I haven't watched my diet as it wasn't necessary in the past, but that was with lower doses. At home I'm feeling awful, grabbed a bucket to vomit, closed the blinds, applied cold gel, drank water. Couldn't puke, had a sharp pain all around the body, and a very strong feeling like I'm about to die. I take a pyrazolam pill in hopes it'll help. Slipping in and out of consciousness, sweating bullets, mostly paralyzed, lying drooling on the floor barely able to move like in the Wolf of Wall Street Quaaludes scene. Things get even worse. Trying not to fight it to ease the pain, doesn't work. Unknown amount of time passes, I have all sorts of thoughts, life flashing before my eyes. Should I call the ambulance? Or will this pass? Feeling totally on the brink of death, if not within an inch of my life then 2. A scene from a horror manga comes to mind, where a patient in surgery affirms he's going to make it, and there's a tiny ray of hope, but then the doctors say he's done for, which extinguishes the light. Some more time is spent in this state, gradually getting used to the pain, doesn't bother me so much, or maybe it was just so intense that I completely surrendered and stopped caring about dying. In parallel I contemplate why are creatures so attached to life to begin with. At some point there's an inflexion, and all the suffering turns into pure bliss and euphoria, like a tsunami washing over me. I look around my room, vision still blurred, in complete awe. Everything has come full-circle. I spend a good amount of time just enjoying all this in a trance of sorts. Worth mentioning that for the entire trip there was almost zero visuals. Another shift occurs, I'm so overwhelmed with joy that I start rolling around laughing like a complete maniac, hitting the floor with my hands. I get up and do this for probably another half an hour, an epileptic dance all around my apartment, sometimes I lay down, near the toilet, on the kitchen floor, it doesn't matter. Grabbing stuff, feeling its texture, smelling things. Dunno if neighbors can hear all this madness going on but I'm beyond caring. Everything's too good. Ridiculously good. I spend some time caressing my still wet hair, it's so silky soft. On the whole, not even MDMA can match the tactile enhancement I felt. I fall on my couch, a bit exhausted but still full of energy. The fabric is kind of rough, but I'm enjoying even that. I remember Leo's words - "The very fact that there even is an experience, even if it's that of pain, is amazing by itself". That's exactly it. I managed to beat it into my memory and beyond that, so that every time I feel like bitching about something, this wisdom comes up. "No sympathy for the devil. Buy the ticket, take the ride" describes this trip perfectly. That hellish agony must have been the price of admission. Some may call me a fool for being reckless, and rightly so, but that's alright. Whatever happens is for the best. I contemplate all sorts of random things, looking back at life experiences, how great it has played out. Partly due to random chance, the rest due to my own efforts. There's no ego death per se this time, but I recall all the previous ones I had, various aspects of them, which I attempt to formulate together. If there's no 'me', then there's nobody who judges or is selfish and biased, so every experience becomes good. All experience is my experience and all identity is my identity. Simultaneously everything and nothing. Of course all this is easier said than done. But I shall strive to become a receiver of consciousness more and more. The interpreter part, while still has its place, is second order. That way life can truly be lived to the fullest. Bunch of time has passed, I'm still admiring the tactile sensations. I put my leg between my coffee table clamps, which are a bit sharp, and press against them. Pain follows, but that's what I want in that instant. A contrast. That's what it's all about. I move my head to look through the corridor into the kitchen. It seems so far away. Damn it, everything really is perspective, isn't it? Distance, time, all 'objective' things one can think of. I take some time to marvel at physics. The gravity that lets me stay attached to this couch and this planet, the light that lets me see the world, the friction between my skin and this fabric... Then the anatomy. Eyes that receive light, ears that perceive sound waves, the momevent of legs and arms, how precisely I can even move individual fingers and flex their parts. The skin that protects the insides from all sorts of things. The blood cells, bacteria, various organs, how it's all interconnected and working seamlessly in the background. The brain of course, which completes the puzzle. And on a micro level, the DNA folding, it's like a whole goddamn universe down there. At this point I'm thirsty and have a bitterness in my mouth, but I don't allow myself to go quench that just yet. A bit later I finally get up, open the windows, feel the cool evening air. Some time is spent cleaning up the mess I made in the emergency state. Then I finally let myself into the fridge, drinking a sweet strawberry milk. Then I prepare something salty to counteract that. After that, water. Just good old H2O. This mundane stuff is so good. I begin to realize more and more that there's actually no difference between the 10D fractal Infinite Love God realms and this humble earthly existence. Just more perception. The trip ends. There's sure to be more ego backlashes and forgetfulness lying in wait. However a massive step has been taken up the infinite ladder of awakening. Every time more appreciation for existence, more peace, joy, love, compassion, and truth.

Yes, if they keep re-occouring and you can identify that this phenomenon is repeating, it also subtly changes the idea ( increases the degree or ratio of which you think you are the body, emotions, memories, things you have or abilities you poses versus you nor being any of that). Profound spiritual experiences will lubricate the rest of your path, but you can't rely on them or wait for them to happen. The closest thing what you can do instead is to contemplate the Truths in ancient scriptures that express trough contemporary enlightenment scholars or masters. For example, contemplate the meaning of eternity, that you are spaceless, timeless, how would it express, how would it feel like, understand that at some point in your lifetimes in the eternity, you are bound to have enlightenment. This life(s) only destination is the space less, timeless, eternal bliss which encompasses everything and nothing, and you are all of that acctually. There are other things to contemplate like if you can will to be blissful and feel blissfully you are acctually God itself or whatever.

All there is is YOU, everything in the end is Subjective Experience, but as a Human Being You can Experience this as "I am completely separate and individual" or "I am everything, I am a piece of Life, I am creation and creator"... Of course as a Human I can only perceive and understand and experience this as a Human, I can relate and empathize with other forms of life, but in my estimation Humans Suffer the most since we have the most capability Mentally and Emotionally, by that I mean our possibility in both areas are higher than other life forms, i think in their case when the baby cub or deer gets eaten by the larger predatory animal they don't suffer it, they feel pain but the suffering is not near what we has Humans have to deal with.. Yes, Human existence since day one has been more about Suffering, War, Strife, Loss, and such than anything else, that is the point of Spirituality and what it is here for, for us to realize we can rise about these things, work together as one unit as well as individuals and be more harmonious with each other and life itself, Suffering in this case will stop all of that, Suffering will not allow any of that to happen since most ppl get stuck in it with no way out, Peace and Bliss on the other hand are the way out, the stable foundation upon which one can stand upon and go further in Life than they thought they could... Just look at Leo's latest video, I watched some of it, he mentioned again that during his break he went thru allot of suffering, and it shows in this latest video where he talks about his mistakes and taking ppl for granted and so forth, he has recently mentioned his focus is on "Understanding Consciousness", I think that if he focused more on creating a stable base of finding Peace and Bliss first, this would be more productive, yes I can realize I made some mistakes and do so Blissfully rather than suffering it and having to take a year off to process it..,he seems now to be in a place of not really knowing what to do imo...

Umm from my research most meditators are more Happy and Stress free than non meditators, and in my experience most leaders in Eastern Spirituality are more happy and ecstatic lol.. The goal is to not those things, Bliss and Happiness are not the goals of Spirituality, they are by products of Being very Aware and Conscious, being Unaware/Unconscious leads to more suffering in my experience..

I would say Pain is necessary for most ppl that lack Clarity, which is a by product of being Highly Conscious, Pain in a physical, mental and emotional way, whether it is breaking a leg, losing a life partner, or realizing a belief you had is not true, that may cause pain, that should cause you to reflect and adjust the direction of Your life, that is why pain is there, but suffering is the repeated experience of pain without the thing that happend happen, it is living in the past and becoming Wounded by it, not Wise, being Wounded is Unconscious action, becoming Wise is Conscious action and leads You to more Clarity in life and how to make it more Empowering. Either You live compulsively, Unconsciously or by Accident which will more than likely lead to more Suffering or you live Consciously, with Clarity and live via Peacefulness and Bliss, that is our choice here as Human Beings, we have that choice to make for ourselves!!

So I'm, I'm going to be more careful in the future about about distinguishing between those things and also just about accommodating a more diverse value set in my audience cuz if you have thousands and millions of people watching, uh, you have a, you have the whole rainbow, the whole gamut of different value sets that people have. And in the past I would teach from like my own value set, of course, and it's difficult to see outside one's own value set. But that's what higher consciousness does for you. That's also what suffering will help you to see. That's also what interacting with other people and getting feedback from them, or like you know in your relationships you'll realize that your girlfriend has a different value set than you do, your husband has a different value set than you do, your children, your parents. And so a lot of what relationship dynamics and problems revolve around is just these differences in value sets and also not appreciating a different value set than yours and trying to push and project yours onto them. And of course, you can do that with your audience as well. I was wrong for assuming that everyone should be interested in my values. So in the future, I'm going to be making my teachings more, we might say, universal, kind of trying to accommodate or it's not like I'm going to be adopting other people's values so much, but it's like I'm going to be, I'm going to be um, underscoring that like, "This piece of advice is for this kind of value set," sort of thing. And also encouraging you to like be true to your value set because a lot of you guys who watch me can get sort of seduced by the charisma of all this and some of these cool advanced ideas, some of the truth in these ideas. You can kind of get seduced into that and then you can sort of like start to think that, "Well now I should be following Leo's value set." Now of course, this is all going to be implicit, you don't tell yourself that explicitly, but implicitly you're just going to be trying to like follow my value set without even knowing what's happening. But then five years later you'll realize that this isn't working for me, and the reason it's not working for you is because you should have been following your value set, which is probably different from my value set. And even within spirituality, see, there's different even value sets within spirituality. What do you want out of spirituality? Don't assume that what I want out of spirituality is the same thing as what you want. Maybe what you want is to transcend suffering. Maybe what you want is loving relationships with humans in your life, um, maybe what you want is bliss. That's not why I do spirituality, even though some of those things are are still good, um, from my point of view, but that's not where I'm coming from when I do this work. So that's something I'll be emphasizing more in the future. I was wrong in teaching in a confrontational, judgmental, heavy-handed and arrogant way. That kind of style, that's the kind of style I adopted when I first started, and um, and the more I do it, the more I see the limitations of it. I realize more and more that it's inappropriate to and bully people into self-actualizing. I was wrong for teaching for egoic reasons. I was wrong for getting egoic pleasure out of lording insights over my audience, and that just doesn't serve my audience and it corrupts my work. See, I started to reflect more and more on my work during this time off and really asking myself, "What are my true motives for doing this work? Why am I even doing it? Why am I putting out all this content? What am I getting out of it?" I'm not doing it so much for the money, so what am I getting out of it? And then when I dug deep into that, I, I noticed certain egoic pleasures that I get, um, and then what I realized is that that had a, it felt like it was corrupting my work and that it really wasn't serving you. And then I sort of start to ask myself like, "Should I be doing this for my pleasure?" To a certain extent, yes, cuz like if I don't enjoy doing the work, then why, why do the work at all? But on the, the other hand, if, if, if I'm just like serving myself in this endeavor and it's not serving the audience, it's at the cost of the audience, it's not helping you to awaken, it's not helping you to get a deeper understanding of of existence, if that's not happening, then that's an error in the style, something needs to change, and that will be changing going forward. I was wrong about what I'm going to call here "weak people." By weak people, I mean people in life who are struggling, um, maybe people with mental disorders, incels, people stuck in a like a deep victim complex, uh, just in general people who are suffering a lot in life. It's easy when you're successful, relatively successful, if you're in good health, which I'm not, but if you're in good health, um, and uh, you know, if you have, if you have some status in the world, if, if you're somewhat famous, if, uh, if you have a good financial situation, um, if you have a good emotional state of mind where you don't have a mental disorder or something like that, it can be very easy kind of like to turn a blind eye or to be dismissive to these kinds of people who suffer from these kinds of problems and who don't have these kinds of things in their life, and to not appreciate how difficult it is for them to create that, right? Because everybody starts at a different place in life, uh, for some people creating financial success and abundance for themselves, it's going to be a lot more difficult for others just based on where they were born, what kind of family they had, whether they were abused or not, and like in this work, the spiritual work, the psychological work, you know, if you've been abused, that's a very different mountain you have to climb than someone like me who wasn't. And so thanks to the suffering that I went through, like I made a connection, I made a connection with those kinds of people because I could, I could see, you know, I can see what it's like to be in a sort of an unresourceful, deficient state where it's difficult to help yourself, you feel helpless. If you have a serious health problem, you feel helpless because you don't know how to fix it, you try stuff and it doesn't work, it's kind of out of your control. Well, likewise, you know, if you're, if you're born in some awful third world country, it kind of feels like it's out of your control. Now that doesn't mean it's out of your control, there's still stuff you can do, of course, but still, that's very different than being born in a nice neighborhood in California. So I have more compassion for these kinds of people. And in the past I would kind of speak down to that, and that was wrong of me to do. I was also wrong in speaking bluntly without tact and sensitivity to people's feelings and values, feelings and values. And uh, and basically the reason I did that is because I was so focused on this notion of Truth, and I was prioritizing that above everything else. And again, there's certain benefits that come with that, but then there's downsides. And so now I'm more sensitive to the downsides. I was wrong in using too much profanity and crass and sensitive examples. As I mature, I look back at that and kind of cringe. I was wrong in my tone interacting with people sometimes. The tone that I would use would be too obnoxious, too harsh, too judgmental, too kind of like finger-wagging, which is wrong. It's just not effective, you see. And it's a trap, you know, doing this whole YouTube shtick is a trap in the sense that there's a pressure to want to perform. It's like a performance when I'm up here. It almost feels like a performance. It's not just like a normal conversation, you know? I put a little bit of like acting into it, a little bit of like emotion, a little bit of like charisma in order to make it entertaining. But, um, but you know that gets in the way of truth, of course. And, um, and then it kind of like it incentivizes almost like a creating of a subtle drama. And, and again, I mean the whole internet is full of this kind of drama, but then I started to notice, like, I mean it's, it's not like my content has very obvious drama in it, um, relative to what you find on the internet or on YouTube. But still, like again, um, some of these things that I'm talking about are very subtle points, and many people would just kind of dismiss it, overlook it, or say, "Oh, it's not a very big deal." But, um, but again, like the more advanced I get, the more conscious I get, it's like the very subtle stuff that starts to bug me about my work. I was wrong in using violent communication. I'll have an episode about violent communication coming soon that's going to be powerful. It's like a shift when I learned about this concept of violent communication, and then I looked at how I communicate. It's like I saw a lot of things that I wasn't seeing before. That distinction of violent communication is very powerful. In a nutshell, what it means is a sort of inflammatory style of communication, but I'll elaborate more upon that in the future. So in the future, you'll see me using less violent communication. And violent is not just in the word choices that there can be violence or inflammatory word choice, for example, using excessive profanity might be one example. Um, but then it's also about the tone, right? So it's a combination. It's the tone, it's the word choice, and it's also the intent, it's the intent and the motivation behind every sentence that is being said and every paragraph that those sentences add up to. And it's also the subtle judgments that are laden within that. So this is a very, very subtle topic. I was wrong in viewing people as fools and idiots. What happened over time is that as I was figuring out more of these deep aspects of reality, um, I started to develop a contempt for human intelligence because, frankly, there's a lot of stupid stuff that humans do in the social domain, in the political domain, in the business domain, on in the social media domain, even in the spiritual domain, maybe even especially in the spiritual domain, right? There's a lot of stupid stuff. But, but then if you start to tell yourself that over and over again in your own mind, you kind of start to program your own mind to look at mankind with this kind of contempt. And, um, and of course, that's because you start to look at people, you start to look down at people because they're not awakened, they're not construct aware, they don't know all of these sophisticated self-deception mechanisms that you now know. Um, but then this becomes its own kind of trap, you see? And so what I've been doing is I've been, um, I've been looking more at just very successful, talented, genius people in society across media that have their own kind of specialized, narrow intelligence. Like, they're really good. They have a sort of a genius at what they do, even though it has nothing to do with – they have no idea of what spirituality is, what awakening is, what construct awareness is. Like, they're not that sophisticated, but they're just interested in a different set of things, and they have a specialized intelligence in that set of things, you know? Like, you can look at someone like, for example, a Steven Wolfram, like a really brilliant scientist. He doesn't understand some of these spiritual topics we talk about, but you can recognize the genius, the intelligence, in that narrow specialized thing that he's doing. And then what's important is to recognize that kind of genius all across the board within society, you know? People have perspectives; everyone has a perspective. All these perspectives are basically limited; many of them are contained fantasies and nonsense and garbage, a bunch of noise. But there's signal in that noise. And so really, the more mature, the most mature way to go about this is to kind of recognize and appreciate this kind of narrow intelligence in everything people are doing. And, um, and valuing the uniqueness of these different perspectives and how they can contribute, right? How they can attribute to you, how you can make use of the signal in that noise? So you can take somebody that you disagree with, somebody that normally you would look down upon because they're not "woke" or whatever, and you can find that signal and look through the noise. That's tricky because usually what our mind does, our mind tends to focus on the noise, especially if there's more noise than signal in some perspective. We tend to focus on the noise. We demonize and judge based on the noise, ignoring the signal. But then, if you adopt that kind of attitude, you know, you can find something wrong about almost anybody, even any spiritual teacher, you know? You could take a spiritual teacher, you can find, say, Guru and criticize him about some little thing he did wrong, and then you can get hung up on that. And you can do that for every spiritual teacher, and you can do that for every scientist and every philosopher and every social media influencer. But at the end of the day, after you're doing all that, what do you get? You get a sort of cynicism and contempt and a sort of disgust with humanity as a whole, which is which is not very effective. It then becomes difficult to learn from these people, and fundamentally, it doesn't feel right. It doesn't sit right with you because what you want is you want to be out there experiencing and exploring all these different perspectives, and you want to be rather joyful about it rather than being moralistic and contracted in this kind of negative, judgmental mode. And so I was definitely falling into that trap, and of course, this is kind of the trap of arrogance, which, uh, I'm certainly very, very guilty of. I was wrong in speaking about and assuming levels of consciousness of other people and spiritual teachers. You know, part of the thing that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, like, one of the things I regret the most about my work is that I can see, um, like little exaggerations that I just sneak in in certain areas. It's like 90% of what I say is powerful stuff, but then, but then my ego sneaks in certain little exaggerations or jumps to certain little conclusions, make little assumptions, you know, going just a little bit overboard, a little bit beyond what would need to be said if I was being strictly careful, strictly truthful. And so as I'm trying to align my own mind more with truth, that kind of stuff is not acceptable to me anymore. And so I'm working through a process of trying to just make everything that I say as crisp and sharp and accurate, right? It's like it's a sort of a dedication to the accuracy of your speech. And so in that respect, you know, a lot of times people will ask me, "Well, Leo, what do you think about this spiritual teacher and that spiritual teacher? How enlightened is this person, and then how enlightened is that person?" And then, like, strictly speaking, I can't be inside the minds of any of these people, right? I can strictly speaking only speak about my consciousness. So I have to make a leap. I have to kind of jump to a sort of conclusion, make certain assumptions and certain sort of interpretations and predictions, right? It's not, it's not some sort of absolute knowledge of somebody else's level of consciousness or development. I have to go out a bit on a limb to talk about that stuff. So there's, there's multiple choices I have there. I can just be quiet, which is always the wise choice. The wisest choice is always just to, you know, if you're not sure, just be quiet. Um, but then, you know, there's a trap to want to speak about stuff that you're not quite sure about. And, um, and but see, it's not that simple, though, because most spiritual teachings don't actually consider the perspective of other spiritual teachers or people. What they do is they just present you a single perspective on spirituality from a certain teacher. Part of what actually Leo does is that we consider lots of different spiritual teachers. We name them, we consider their perspectives, read their books, and we compare all this kind of stuff. And we try to figure out, you know, like we use one spiritual teacher's teachings and perspective against another in the sense that we try to use one to compensate for the gaps in the other. And so you're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't in this situation. Because if you're learning from any kind of spiritual teacher, first of all, you have to decide which one to learn from, and there's different qualities of them. So how are you going to judge as a student? You have to judge somehow, and somehow have some kind of sorting process for who you're going to listen to because you can't listen to all of them equally. And then also, when you start comparing them, you're going to notice that there's important differences in the detail of what they teach, and often times contradictions. And they can teach exactly the opposite things - one guy will say meditation won't make you enlightened, another guy says he got enlightened through meditation. So what's true? And strictly speaking, you don't know who's right because you can't get inside their heads, but you still have to make certain evaluations here. So um, it's tricky, but I'm going to be more careful about just not leaping to judgments and conclusions about the levels of consciousness of others, even though, you know, again, it's like, man, I wish I could just not talk about it at all. But on the other hand, it has to be talked about because my own awakenings and understandings of consciousness and doing this work have led me to very important realizations about gaps in certain teachings and teachers. And I feel like that's important to discuss, even though when I discuss those things, it doesn't mean that I'm 100% certain that I know that teacher's level of consciousness. So keep that in mind. I was also wrong in giving out too many answers without helping to facilitate people in discovering their own answers. This is a huge sticking point for me, uh, going forward that like I have a tendency to want to give out all the answers. I've had this realization recently that, um, it's really limiting the power of these teachings because you're getting ideas in your mind, abstract ideas of things that should actually be experienced by you. So, really, I'm thinking about how to help facilitate people more into discovering their own answers rather than just giving you all the answers. That's more powerful. The trick is that it's difficult to do that through this medium of just a video or an audio that really requires a kind of Socratic method, going back and forth, which just can't be done through this medium. But I'm thinking about how to, like, structure the content more so that maybe I'm giving you more exercises, maybe asking you more questions. It's difficult because I don't like the idea of just making a video where I just ask you a question and give you an exercise, and then it's on you to go and do it. It's like, um, but, um, that's still something I'm working out. I'm going to be working out over the next year or two how to make subtle changes there to make that better. About my work, I was wrong in underestimating the intelligence and potential of my audience. I spent a lot of time thinking about my audience and getting inside their heads, their perspective, and it's difficult to do that because, of course, when you have an audience of a million, it's like you have every perspective out there, every value system, every level of intelligence. Frankly, some of my audience members are stupid, and some of them are brilliant, and everything in between. So, who do I tailor my content towards?

Life is about Possibility and Potential, as Human Beings we have the most capability in these areas of Possibility/Potential, one can be super Blissed out or Suffering immensely, that is the possibility, one can choose either or, or one can become one with nature and find out what is the natural occurence, Suffering or Bliss? Being Human decide what You want to feel and experience, don't live by accident, one day Blissed out, one Day Suffering, this is no good, it puts you on a zig zag trajectory, Suffering is Life defeating, disempowering for Us Humans, Bliss is Life Empowering, that is all, make the choice...

... and no imagined rodent has been hurt Enlightenment doesn't mean that one is always right when it comes to relative truth like the things you mention. It just meaning knowing what you truly are, and what Reality is. Answers to both is the same. And on top, having that accessible all the time means nothing else than being to switch off/cut-off any ignorant I-thought and I-feeling of being only this little body mind, which makes the states (1)-(4) available all the time. And this can be done (without lying to oneself) if the Awakened State is accessible anytime (1) Infinite boundlessness of the Visual Field (and any other perception/dimension) (2) its groundlessness, or mere-appearance (imagined) character "hovering" in Infinity (3) the eternal nature of this Infinite Reality/Consciousness is always known (4) there is no (zero!) separate-self I-thought/feeling still hypnotizing. Impersonal. Empty. Silent. Vast. Yet, giving rise to all appearances and thoughts. And if one chooses to, one can cut off these thoughts/feelings off in real-time. The magic word is real-time, Or high-speed cut-off of any thought/feeling arising that ignorantly believes in being only this body-mind. Speed & strength of awareness, before any thoughts starts hypnotizing oneself and are believed&elaborated. And that takes normally many years. But its worth it. The high-speed cutting of of (4) isn't always necessary, but that ability is what opens up the Awakened states described in (1-3). And if thoughts then rise again, simple mindfulness lets let flow in Infinite Being without believing them, if (1)-(3) are powerful enough. And: Being able to generate (1)-(3) with (4) induces so much bliss that the annoying separate-self arisings don't "grip", even if they are not cut off in realtime but just watched in mindfulness. Ego-wanting/avoiding only grips when one is not in a positive enough state already. One has a human, but one isn't one. True Being is Infinite Reality. That doesn't mean one does stupid things for to ones relative vehicle, like James hand-into-the-fire. Beings who know their True Nature are not brain dead. And that is having Absolute Truth always available. Or Enlightenment. It is not an idea, and there is zero doubt about it that this is final. Can't get more infinite than infinite, and there is and only can only be THAT. And any Alien, ET or way-out-spectacular-appearance-of-consciousness appears only in THAT. Nice to understand&see, but not really urgent in any way. There were enlightened Zen Masters who thought Japans Imperial Wars were great. So one can be totally wrong on relative stuff. But the Absolute stuff must be handled. Selling smiling little annoying Buddhist-rodents by the River

Interesting as a type 5 ennegram that would be your main attachment. I have you has a 584 tri-type the scholar https://wiki.personality-database.com/books/enneagram/page/458-the-scholar-archetype same as peterson and hawkins actually, all 3 are INTP 584 ennegrams Thats interesting to me, that if God said you dont need to think anymore, and every moment in your life will be pure peace bliss and perfection with divinity shining through, you wouldnt take that trade. Guess we all have different attachments. God speed broski

Well categorized! Pain and Pleasure are the basis of most of how we try to function in life, You eat things You like, not dislike, because there is pleasure associated with it, but we can go beyond this as Human Beings, its okay to enjoy something but not okay to make it life's mission and purpose... Bliss is beyond this pleasure/pain equation, its knowing what You are and what the Reality is, not via intellectual understanding, but experientially...

I've heard that the word "meditation" originally comes from "med-", which means to heal. Therefore, the way I think of meditation is as a healing process, generating positive states, controlling one's mind, etc; it is not about direct consciousness. That'd better be called contemplation, which is intending to discover what's true about anything, with no particular ritual or cosmology behind it. That's the distinction I like to use. At the risk of oversimplifying: Pain is at the root of suffering, although the latter can more easily be seen through and to some degree, transcended Pleasure and pain are part of the same dynamic Bliss could be regarded as freedom from the pleasure-pain dynamic, so it could be a "natural state," although it is rarely experienced Understanding can be interchangeably used with insight, breakthrough, enlightenment and consciousness, depending on how you hold each of them

Nothing hilarous about it. You get to set your own point. I set my point as understanding. I don't care about your bliss. If you care about it, good for you. But don't tell me what I care about. Eventually you will realize that all the bliss in the world still left gaps in your understanding.

@Water by the River It is possible to seek spiritual pleasure. And what I said is that I don't promote that. I don't regard you as seeking spiritual pleasure. Bliss could refer to pleasure, or maybe not. People use words in different ways.