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This. But, clearly psychedelics can be abused. When I first took 5g of mushrooms I had the most profound spiritual experience of my life. I fell into a deep sense of oneness and bliss. It was absolutely amazing and beyond words. I felt the afterglow for 3 - 4 days after. I felt "enlightened". Then it wore off and a week or two later took 7g wanting to get back to that state. My 7g experience was pure physical pain. I felt poisoned and was afraid I was going to die. I felt like I needed to vomit but the cramping was so bad I couldn't. I did much lower doses months after that and every time got severe nausea and vomiting. Last time was about a year ago, and on only 2g violently spent the entire trip throwing up. I apparently developed an allergy to them. LSD is different for me. I get profound insights and euphoria most trips with little to no nausea. But after my mushroom experience, I no longer have a desire to chase that next high. I do psychedelics 2 - 3 times a year now because I see how possible it would be to abuse them. My one 5MeO experience wasn't something I would desire to repeat anytime soon. It was just too much. I felt like I died and then came back. It didn't feel spiritual at all. It was just shit. I was SO grateful to be back, the only insight I got from the experience was that THIS life is "IT" and WTF was I chasing? I am now working on integrating that experience into my day to day life. I have basically lost my desire to do psychedelics again. I may revisit it again at some point, but from my new outlook on them, they don't have a strong pull anymore. So I totally get Endangered-EGOs concern about psychedelics. They are unlikely to cause any serious physical harm, but for some people they can really screw with them psychologically. If you have any signs of psychosis sober, then stay away from them like the plague. They are not a magic fix to the problems of humanity. They are not a cheat to gain enlightenment. At the very best, they can show you what consciousness is capable of for a few hours. It can give you a target to shoot for while sober. That is it. Taking them more than a few times a year, I would consider abusing them IMO and experience.

Maybe join a yoga ashram. Then you can bliss out doing yoga and don’t even have to think about enlightenment.

I thought I'd broach the subject of having a love life. When it comes down to it I feel very conflicted. It's something I think about consistently almost like a reflex. But even now I'm struggling to gather my thoughts coherently. Ok, time for Mr Left Brain, a list of points: I get horny I want regular sex with women I don't want to have to compromise what I can and can't do by being in a relationship I'm an all or nothing type of guy, I can't have a part-time relationship, it would drive me crazy I do want intimacy, sharing and joy and some adventure from a relationship I have an acute sense of beauty and especially for faces (see below), it's important to me I want to flirt and attract attention, even if not to get off I don't have opportunity/make opportunity to put myself in situations where I talk to women All my social circle are around my age or older (i.e. married with kids, i.e. no source of new people to meet and no partying) I'm prepared to go out by myself, but I'm always very conscious of my age I do like the idea of having a family and all that, so that limits the age range I can go for I'm 50/50 about taking on someone my age with kids, there will be hurdles to overcome A 50 year-old woman can be attractive no doubt, but it gets much rarer I'm not into PUA tactics, it just sucks, although I will approach if the situation allows it: nightclub, possibly pub but unlikely Online dating is low odds, I mean I do scan on occasion, but the response rate is nearly non-existent There have been one or two work colleagues I have found attractive and got on with, but that's just luck of the draw I could do courses or activities that would allow me to meet women, but from experience you get stuck with a particular cohort, and if no-one fits that's it, no luck. And I would need to do something I'm interested in I'm at my most relaxed, confident and self-assured I have been in my life, and I feel frustrated that I'm not in a position to explore that more with women I don't want to go out with bimbo even if she was a supermodel, intelligence is important to me I know for a certain fact that if I'm looking for some sort of good fit in a partner, it's a numbers game, I need to meet a fair amount of women to meet one that fits my standards To a degree my standards are high, because I have a lot to offer, I'm high value in a lot of ways Energy is important to me, I don't want a woman that just wants to stay in all day on her laptop or painting her nails, there's a strong inverse correlation between age and energy I would happily go out with women in a wide age range, but I'm acutely aware of being judged if the woman was noticeably younger than me, whilst personally IDGAF, I'm also not into making my life harder for no reason at all: she has to be worth the aggravation! I'm sure there's a lot more going on, but that's the stuff that immediately surfaces. In terms of the face thing, I've taken various tests and I'm a super-recogniser or at least I'm high up there. I have both an extremely good memory for faces, and attention for facial characteristics: https://theconversation.com/facial-recognition-research-reveals-new-abilities-of-super-recognisers-128414 I like a good body (especially good skin) in a woman, but the face is most important to me. I would probably have a bias against stick thin, but it's not out. I'm not bothered by height, but I know for a certain fact that women are. But I'm a shorter guy at 5'7", so probably it tops out at 6' in a woman (without heels) for me. I'd probably feel odd going out with someone under 5', but I have done 4'11"! I feel it's a bit childish to say I have a type, there's so many different characteristics that might attract me in a woman physically let alone personality. I would genuinely say I'm race/ethnicity agnostic. But that's not to say I don't have biases in what attracts me, I do, blue eyes for example, or jet-black hair or blonde. But it's the entire package so to speak, not just individual characteristics I go for. I don't think I have any sort of race fetish, but I've never really given it much thought. The way I see it, is even in spite of everything else, I will have to look at this person day in and day out, she has to be interesting to me visually, I'm a very visually-led guy. My ex always had a particular pair of jeans she looked good in, and that attraction never wore off. And vice-versa, if something were to bother me about appearance, there'd be no shaking it off. It's a visual shallowness I guess, but not something I have control over. Ok. So if hypothetically I had a stream of "encounters" with women that fit my vague criteria at least visually say, but no real relationship, would that satisfy me? I think it would do a lot to satiate that horniness I regularly feel, and give me some sort of ego boost too. I would probably keep things mostly private from friends etc. I'm not sure how maintainable that is longer term, and knowing me I'd probably fall in love with most of them. So being put through the emotional ringer regularly is not something I relish. I'm not sure I've got the right mindset for a numbers approach to it. But not getting into relationships would leave me free to be myself and not compromise. I'm definitely not into long distance relationships. I mean, yes it can start that way, but one or the other would have to move. Either I'm in a relationship or I'm not, I don't want some vague something in-between or meeting via Zoom now and then, that would suck big time. I suppose the only other thing, was that if a relationship were to become serious and longer term, that she is amenable to having a family (my ex wasn't and that caused problems). And for god's sakes no dogs or horses. I get the companionship thing, but it's just not me. I actually got a message from a dating app from a 25 year old recently. She was definitely attractive facially, and was a Buddhist, so maybe? I found myself being reluctant to message back, it's a big age gap, but I did, however she didn't follow through. I think 25 is pretty young for me, but it's a hard lower limit. I'd probably be more comfortable with 30 and upwards to 38. After all, it's only a number. But I would feel kind of odd being introduced to parents younger than me!! That's it, no real resolution, or much coherence about what direction to head in. Fuck it. I'll just carry on as I am for the moment. Singledom bliss.

Note: I originally posted this on Curt Jaimungal’s r/TheoriesOfEverything subreddit, but since it has relevance to this sub as well, I’ll cross-post it here too. In a recent “Theories of Everything” youtube episode, that dealth with the subject of UFOs and UAPs (might have been the one with Luis Elizondo), Curt Jaimungal expressed his frustration in trying to imagine what a higher-dimensional being might even be like. This prompted me to give my own perspective. I am assuming that Curt has ancestors from the Indian Subcontinent and is therefore familiar with the beings known as the Devas. Deva means shining one and is used to denote the deities and gods of the major indigenous religions of India, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. We usually translate Devas as Gods, but that is somewhat misleading as Devas were not originally believed to have the attributes of what we in the West conceive of as a being that is omnipotent and omniscient, or even immortal, for that matter. Devas are extremely long-lived, sometimes with life-spans nearly as long as the universe itself. They are believed to be beings of light and are mostly distinguished by their awesome effulgence and radiance. Although some are believed to reside on other planets, their place of abode is usually signified as existing on a higher plane of existence. These higher planes of existence, I believe, are substantially, realms that exist in more dimensions than ours does. Michio Kaku actually writes about this in his books, as an interesting side-note on String Theory. He posits, theoretically, what the characteristics of a higher-dimensional being might be. These include abilities such as time travel, seeing past, present and future, the ability to enter lower-dimensional (that is our) reality at will and exit it at any given point, both in time and space, the ability to pass through solid objects without resistance, etc… Notice, how his descriptions overlap substantially with the abilities ascribed to both supernatural beings and UFOs. I believe this is where the two phenomena do meet and an intersection between the two becomes too obvious to ignore. During my own spiritual practice, I have encountered such beings, who, to my satisfaction, were entirely real, though I realise of course that such personal accounts would not cut it in the field of empirical science. Still, if you will indulge me for a minute and put your scepticism aside, I believe some of my experiences with higher-dimensional beings may be instructive in understanding the nature of reality, the existence of high-strangeness events surrounding UFOs and many other mysteries that we are constantly baffled by. My own very first encounter was with a Goddess of the Sumerian pantheon, known as Inana, who later morphed into many different deities in different cultures as her cult spread east and west, becoming, among others, Durga, Astarte and Aphrodite. I encountered her as I was undergoing a spiritual process known as Kundalini Awakening (the famous Quantum Physicist Carl Friedrich Von Weizsacker, wrote about this in his foreword to Gopi Krishna’s very first book, where he analysed the Kundalini mechanism’s philosophical and scientific significance), which was causing a great deal of difficulty in my life. I connected to this ancient deity through artefacts connected to her worship exhibited at the British Museum in London. I won’t go into the details of our encounter here, except to note that it was very similar to what others, who have also gone through a similar spiritual experience have reported over the millennia, usually in connection with tantric deities, belonging to the Hindu and Buddhist pantheons. The interesting point here is what kind of insights my encounters can give us into the nature of higher-dimensional existence. I would draw your attention to the Buddhist classification of planes of existence, or lokas, as they are called in Sanskrit, a good summary can be found here: The Thirty-one Planes of Existence (accesstoinsight.org) Subsequent to my visitation by Inana, I was given a brief insight into two of the highest planes on the list: (29) Infinite Consciousness (viññanañcayatanupaga deva) (28) Infinite Space (akasanañcayatanupaga deva) Where, it is said, that: “ The inhabitants of these realms are possessed entirely of mind. Having no physical body, they are unable to hear Dhamma teachings.” My experience on the plane of infinite consciousness, was that of unending bliss and joy, omniscience, boundlessness and a complete lack of dimensionality. This part is very hard to explain, but I experienced a complete lack of dimensions, as well as an infinite number of dimensions at the same time. There was no space and time and yet, they were also infinite. Perhaps I experienced the two highest planes in this fashion, which is hard to establish without other first-hand accounts to compare my experience to, but the progressions described in Buddhist teachings is how I experienced them. The two highest planes are described as thus: (31) Neither-perception-nor-non-perception (nevasaññanasaññayatanupaga deva) (30) Nothingness (akiñcaññayatanupaga deva) The other experience I had was that of universality, it felt like I was the whole universe in myself and there was nothing beyond me. This also gave me the experience of omniscience, in that when I was in this universal state, however briefly (significantly less than an hour), I understood everything. All the questions I ever had about the universe, existence, the meaning of life, etc… were instantly answered and all the knowledge of the universe was available to me in a manner that would be utterly impossible to experience with the limitations of a physical body. Another noteworthy feature of this expansive experience was that of light. It was everywhere, overwhelming, indescribably joyous and blissful, all-pervading, intelligent and contained incredible amounts of knowledge and wisdom. I myself became that light for a brief period. When I expanded into this infinite state, my body and with it, the physical world was left entirely behind. Subsequently, I found that some NDE experiencers describe a similar experience after they die briefly and then return. When I returned to my body, I found it to be small and constricted and I could only recall a very small fraction of the knowledge I possessed in my universal state. The details above are all important, because they serve as a framework, to go down on the list of Worlds, which according to Buddhist teaching are grouped into four categories. I discussed some of the characteristics of the Immaterial World (arupa-loka) above, which contains four planes of existence. The second category is the Fine Material World (rupa-loka), which has 16 planes of existence. This is the world where higher-order Devas reside, such as the one that has visited me. They are characterised using various epithets, with radiance, effulgence, glory and beauty being their primary characteristics. From my own personal experience, the Devas of this realm have incredible splendour and radiance. Their bodies are made of an unknown state of matter, which I and other observers have described as liquid light. They can manifest denser, humanoid bodies, but in their primary state, they are light beings. The light they are made of does not consist of the usual photons observable to us in our physical realm, including with scientific instruments. The light they are made of is coherent, like that of a laser beam, but also coagulant, in that their bodies settle into a rough shape, that is very difficult to discern because of the incredible radiance of their bodies. The radiation coming off them, isn’t just bright, but also hot. When they are very close to you it feels like another sun radiating right next to you. They do have the ability to touch, which, startlingly, feels very much like a human touch and one can easily discern, the gender, general disposition and intentions of the higher-dimensional light being that thus approaches. When a Deva enters our reality, we perceive it as them coming from above, but this is in the sense of them descending into a lower realm from their higher plane of existence. Still, the distinct perception of descent and then ascent when they leave is unmistakable. There is also a sound, which I can only describe as that of radiance and splendour. I imagine that the sun would give off a very similar sound if we could listen to it from close by. Higher-dimensional light beings communicate telepathically, using pure thought, though others I know who have encountered them report hearing them speak. I imagine, that these friends of mine have received thought transmissions as well and it is their own brain that turns these into a sound pattern they can recognise. Since these beings have no physical bodies (although myths describe their ability to manifest one temporarily), they cannot speak in the sense that we can, by generating soundwaves, so their thoughts have to be transmitted as pure thought, which I presume is transmitted by the light they emanate. Some other noteworthy features of these light-beings include: - They float, propelled by the energy they are made up of - When they appear, they change the nature of spacetime around them. One gets the distinct impression, that time doesn’t move to the same rhythm when they are around, or might even be non-existent. There is a distinct impression, that when they descend into physical reality and one shares a space with them, some sort of space-time bubble or distortion is created, in which the usual passage of time and perhaps the laws of the physical universe change. - They have healing powers, can touch someone and cause energetic changes in the body, including sensations of vibration, heat, out-of-body experiences and a perception of time dilation. I can personally attest to the effectiveness of their healing abilities as can a few other people who have been visited by them. - The overwhelming feeling they radiate is that of love, compassion and wisdom. They send information through their radiance which means an encounter with them is always calming, soothing and uplifting Having discussed the characteristics of the beings that inhabit the second world, Rupa-Loka, it is time to look at the third world, known as The Sensuous World or Kama-Loka. The inhabitants of these worlds are lower-order Devas and they would be closer to the beings usually described by UFO/UAP witnesses or experiencers. Since these beings exist in planes close to our own (we are believed to live on the lowest of the 7 planes of the Kama-Loka) they are the most likely to visit us. It is instructive to read descriptions of the 3 planes directly above our own, meaning beings located there are almost as physical as we are, but are perhaps in a spectrum of matter that doesn’t normally interact with our own, possibly falling within the definition of “Dark” matter and energy, or alternatively, existing in a parallel reality very close in its base vibration (in the sense of how string theory would describe different, parallel realities as vibrating to slightly different frequencies) to our own, just divergent enough, that we cannot perceive or interact with it under normal circumstances. According to Buddhism, the below devas are our closest neighbours: “ (8) Yama devas (yama deva) These devas live in the air, free of all difficulties. (7) The Thirty-three Gods (tavatimsa deva) Sakka, a devotee of the Buddha, presides over this realm. Many devas dwelling here live in mansions in the air. (6) Devas of the Four Great Kings (catumaharajika deva) Home of the gandhabbas, the celestial musicians, and the yakkhas, tree spirits of varying degrees of ethical purity. The latter are analogous to the goblins, trolls, and fairies of Western fairy tales. “ Notice, that the above classification would provide a plausible explanation as to the nature of many “high strangeness” events and even cryptozoological phenomena routinely observed in the vicinity of UFOs. Interestingly, Yama and Tavatimsa Devas are described as having a very close affiliation with the air and flying, a fact widely depicted in Buddhist and Hindu art. So, in summary, Eastern Philosophies actually provide a plausible framework, through which we can view the world of religion, UFOs and High Strangeness, “spooky” occurrences and events. To my mind at least, it is beyond reasonable doubt that many of the mythological beings described by the ancients are of this category, that is they come from higher planes of existence and their lower orders are responsible for UFO and High Strangeness phenomena, whereas their higher orders form the basis of religious experience and myth.

Thanks for replying mate. In the aftermath, I thought so too, that that is it. I have decided to prolong my meditation sessions and I will wait for this to come again. It would be really easier for me to deal with this fear while sober. But what really kinda bothers me are those voices man. I mean, was this Schizophrenia ? Am I sick ? It didnt feel like monkey mind or the usual voice i my head it was different. And another thing that I felt was that someone was watching me. Right in that moment when I realized that I am really really close and that this was it, it was as if my whole room, my experience was entered my a presence, as if that moment that I was having was kinda important or interesting, and someone or something tuned in like when we turn on a tv channel to watch something. I had this exact feeling once before, on my first lsd trip I had an incredible cathartic emotional release from past trauma and after that a state of total bliss and like anything was possible, I was walking around my room crying of joy realizing that literally anything I set my mind to, success money travelling is instantly possible. There I also felt something tuning in to this moment I was having. Am I imagining this ?

@Blackhawk Hi, I've suggested in other threads that you do some specialised therapy which may help in the non-spiritual areas of life, but you seem to be resistant to establishing any regular practice, whether spiritual or therapeutic. You say things like this: "1. I don't have the energy for that. 2. I don't have the time for that. 3. I hate doing it. 4. I don't have the discipline for it. 5. I don't want to waste so much effort into something which might not even be true." The areas of enlightenment and therapy are basically experiential so you gotta put in some work and effort to achieve any sort of change in your consciousness. Many spiritual people spend years practicing without achieving a full enlightenment, but what keeps them going is lower level experiences like peacefulness, bliss, insights, nondual / mystical glimpses etc. You've been into this stuff for some time now. What practices have you tried, and have you had any limited success so far?

You want enlightenment, how come? Oh my God, because it will feel amazing, the very source of bliss, inspiration, creativity, the very Author of all the climaxes and resolutions of every dramatic story and every seemingly impossible math problem ever dreamed up. Satisfaction itself. Beyond the question and the answer. The more I push it away, the more impossible it seems the more DELICIOUS the answer when it comes to me. I cannot fuck this up. I love knowing I cannot fuck this up. There is no "I" to fuck this up. Sigh..... Pure. Fucking. Delight.

Precisely. It is Infinite Bliss which is synonymous with Infinity. Total lack of meaning is Infinite Love.

Not much to report today. Just haphazard rhetorical type questions. Is it ok to have nothing going on? Have you ever been with people and felt the suffocating vacuum of having nothing to say, even if it's only momentary? What if you've been with your partner for years and in fact the norm is to say nothing to each for long periods? Should every moment be filled with activity? What about boredom, how does that figure in having nothing going on? Isn't boredom a fate worse than being a loser? Winners always have something going on. Being bored is just admitting to being a loser (?). How is it possible to life live and be bored? Aren't they complementary opposites? What if you give up doing anything? Just recontextualise activity as nothing. Isn't that bliss? Isn't that just admitting death in through the front door? Isn't death a fate worse than knowing you're a loser? Can you attract any/thing/body by doing nothing at all? Can anything get done by doing nothing at all? Doesn't the world revolve anyway? Can't you just recontextualise doing nothing as constant activity anyway? Isn't doing/doing nothing just a duality to be squashed like a bug? Only to be left with an uneasy sense of WTF?

Sat chit ananda. Existence conciousness bliss. There is a reason bliss is there. Sometimes it is not always the right thing to do and listen to someone who has the attitude of sensation=suffering. Life is bliss if one cultivates it and enjoy existence as it is supposed to be. There is a reason the saying goes that GOD is LOVE. Existence is love. Buddhism nowadays IMO, is a bunch of nihilism. The body and cells and everything around you vibrates and sings to the bliss of existence if you just listen and observe it.

All thoughts are love. But what fun would it be if you were directly conscious of that? You might roll around in bliss for eternity but then You would have to give eternity meaning and create differences for the purposes of differences. Otherwise you would not be able to contrast bliss from hell.

I think you are misunderstanding the Buddhist notion of suffering. What it basically means is that chasing material conditions and positive states is dissatisfying because they never last. This does not mean you cannot meditate on the feeling of satisfaction itself. In fact, doing so is how you escape suffering. Bliss and joy can be reached this way. Now, you can counter by saying that that bliss won't be permanent. Of course it won't. But I never said to get attached to permanent bliss. And it is still far better than what most people are doing, which is chasing dopamine hits. Think of it this way: in every moment you only have one of two options: you can either be satisified or dissatisfied. Which will you be?

Spirituality can be defined in many ways, some more useful than others depending on the context. I like this definition: Discovering what’s real and being it. End of story. This solves no “problems”, instead it “kills” the one who “has” the problems, making them almost completely obsolete and therefor infinitely easier to deal with. Live authentically, accept all that is around you as part of oneness happening, act accordingly - which may mean that you do things that don’t fit any typical “spiritual” paradigm. It sounds like your transcendent trips gave you the impression that spirituality would help you transcend or escape your life situation. What spirituality does is causes the realization that it isn’t your life situation because there is no you (just Godness/Awareness watching the movie of the body you think is you) and that you don’t need to escape it because it doesn’t effect Godness/Awareness/You in anyway. You’re in a dream right now and you may wake up in it and go “Oh! This doesn’t matter! (Thought it still counts!)” or the body will die and Godness/Awareness/You will have a similar experience that “you” as the body does every morning when you wake up from dreams and are completely untouched by the to the point that you don’t even really try to remember them. Zen also sums it up well: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. This makes enlightenment seem pointless, where’s the infinite bliss, the adoration of other seekers, and the world peace that you are about to now be able to create? Turns out once you finish the journey, there’s no need for any of that. You are found in a peacefulness that is so completely unconditional that it doesn’t matter if you live with Hyenas or in any other situation (not that you won’t continue to follow your biological imperatives to some degree and seek to live skillfully). Hell, you’ll very likely see them such that you will have great love and compassion for them.

I pray it is my friend. This is bliss

Internal voice is just a thought. But competition of the internal voice is the problem, hiding the underlying bliss. For instance, when I was an active addict nearing early recovery, I would search my drawers for pills that I'd forgotten about or dropped (I had tons of opioid medication just laying around and I threw it all away when I quit, but there was always a bit more left over that had gotten lost -- I had tons and tons of painkillers in my drawers at one point lol). Anyway, all the while, I was literally simultaneously looking for the pill (to crush it and snort it through a straw), WHILE seriously hoping to NOT find it. If I found it (happened several times), the feeling was "fuck; dammit," and if I did NOT find it (also actually happened several times), the resulting feeling was THANK GOD. That's the state of addiction, but it relates to all manifestations of competing desires -- basically the state of "not being at peace." Addiction as described above is simply a rather intense manifestation of it -- most people have it in other ways... uncertainty; confusion; not trusting their own power; etc. Really it manifests all the time to some degree, IF you think you're a separate individual. This competition of desires can be stilled with intensive meditation, and when they stop, an enormous amount of energy is released -- this is what "Kundalini awakening" is -- overwhelming exhilaration that makes you want to shake people and say "HAVE YOU EVER FUCKING TRIED MEDITATION? IT'S INCREDIBLE!" etc... (of course that's just a stage; almost a bit manic, but very lucid).

Combining shadow work with bliss work helps a lot. We can get stuck in focusing on feeling our pain. It really helps to give the childhood versions of us the infinite satisfaction they always wanted. Lets say I experienced a huge loss as a child. This is going to sound like woohoo, but the more I play with the imagination of having had a perfect childhood where that loss did not happen and feeling what that feels like, the more I will notice positive shifts in my identity in the present. The reason this works so well is because infinite love is the case anyway and you are the ultimate creator of your life. This technique can speed up the healing process tremendously.

Once you penetrate the illusion, you discover the true parinibbanic bliss which comes from fucking the illusion with itself by continuously destroying itself in evermore intricate and tantalizing ways. The best part is the fucking does itself in a completely intuitive and human way in which you discover that the greatest illusion was that anything could be more “enlightened” than you always were. Now you just see the connections of how this eternal death functions.

Feel what exactly? Something other than what you are feeling right now? You are chasing a paper tiger. What is real is this moment. This is it. The only difference between someone enlightened and the rest of us is they see clearly that this moment is "It" and relate to it with the reverence and bliss of seeing God. Nothing more. It may be that you want to have a profound, mystical experience or unity with all things. OK. Easy. Drop 200ug of good LSD in a safe and comfortable setting. Enjoy. 12 hours later you will be back to your normal consciousness. Unless you can take that experience and turn it into something you can experience in this moment completely sober it is no different than going to watch a good movie. It can be exciting and entertaining, but once the titles are rolling down the screen, the lights come on and you are back to your life. Now what?

It is actually intensely easy. It just doesn't look like you expect. It is too clear, and so it is hard to see. This moment, right here and right now is God. You are already seeing God 24/7 as there is no other possibility. The problem is you don't recognize it as the experience of God because you have a story in your mind about what that is supposed to look like and feel like. What if this very moment is the actual full experience of God? For most of us, that idea is full of disappointment as it doesn't match our story of some grand dramatic experience. But what if we can encounter this moment with the reverence and bliss of experiencing God? To me, that is enlightenment. It isn't some better version of yourself. It is simply a shift in perspective, a realization of the truth that has been as close as your breath your whole life.

Damn it! I don’t like this! I want more haha ? but I don’t give enough of a shit to care on much but just being a good person to others longer than 5 minutes to actualize anything anyway. Even feeling my super satisfying bliss sensations just isn’t worth the effort anymore. I’m just a bum, and it feels so devilishly good.

484. Summary: The Root Solution To People Pleasing & Loneliness -This episode is about giving you a root solution to the problem of people pleasing, and loneliness. It’s an advanced solution, but simple enough to implement. This will not be ordinary, shallow self-help advice. -Leo’s struggled with people pleasing and coming up with solutions to that problem for decades. When he moved to America he had difficulty acclimating, which led to a people pleasing strategy that started in childhood. He’s also had epiphanies about loneliness because of his recent advancements in consciousness. People Pleasing is a Survival Strategy -For the first 20 years of life we start off with the cognitive development of little animals who have to adapt and fit into society. Society is a collective game and you learn to play by the collective rules or else you’ll run into problems. As a child you were acculturated, domesticated. This isn’t bad; it’s necessary. Society can't have children biting and yelling at each other like zoo animals. To live in a healthy society we need to civilize ourselves, but there are certain costs that come with that. One of the costs is you start to develop extrinsic reward mechanisms in order to satisfy yourself, rather than just making yourself happy. Basically, you learn to behave in ways that get approval, love and satisfaction from others. When your reward mechanism is extrinsic instead of intrinsic, your sense of happiness gets handed over to others. They dole out little bits of happiness when you please them, turning you into a Pavlovian dog. So, you jump through hoops to get the love, satisfaction and approval you desperately want. -One bad habit Leo developed that took a long time for him to unwire is getting approval through good grades. At school Leo was very into academics and developed a reward mechanism where he needed to get As to feel good. It was a way to get praise from the authority figures in his life (I didn't know Leo’s parents were Asian, East Indian & Jewish ). Good marks became an ego thing and a big driver in his life. Sure, there were good side effects, like discipline and getting educated, but he was basically performing academic tricks for people. Once he left school, it became difficult for him to find his sense of satisfaction in life, because there were no more teachers or universities giving him grades or rewards. He felt empty. If he’d been less self aware he could’ve substituted teachers and grades for a girlfriend and money. Then he would’ve been expecting rewards, praise and As from his girlfriend or bosses. Luckily that didn’t happen to Leo, but that’s what happens to most people on the treadmill of approval (Aaron Abke has a great video on why achievement and approval cannot equal love.) -You have to be very careful about what extrinsic reward mechanisms your ego-mind develops. If other people hold the goodies that dictate your behavior, then you constantly have to do stuff for them to get your reward. This will never lead to a satisfying life. clip: Your Mind Distorts Reality to Survive [8 mins]. clip: Transcend Your Script [6 mins]. clip: What Shapes You Most [5 mins]. -If you're a people pleaser, you’ve adopted the habit of getting your happiness extrinsically from others. It’s a problem for everyone, but even more so for women. Generally, women derive more of their satisfaction from building social bonds and networks than men. Women tend to be helpers and caretakers, especially the more feminine they are. So it becomes this giant social game where you only feel good when you please others (clients, co-workers, bosses, children, your partner, likes on Tweetbookagram, etc.) Also, with people pleasing, it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re being selfless and spiritual by “serving others,” when you’re really just seeking approval. -The problem is it never lasts, no matter how much approval you get or people you please. It just becomes another material pursuit, in the same way that men chase money or sex. It's never going to deeply satisfy you, so you just keep chasing for more. -The solution is to take back control and sovereignty over your own reward mechanism. To make it completely intrinsic, so that the satisfaction, love and praise you want you give to yourself. You need to rewire your mind. (10:13) -Your mind might be objecting and resisting this because you've built this extrinsic circuit, which means that stuff has to happen in the outer world for you to feel good. “I have to see ______ happen and it has to match my personal standards. I can only allow myself to be happy if…” These extrinsic reward cycles happen no matter what you're pursuing (business success, sexual conquests, the valuation of the stock of your company, pleasing your husband, getting your children into Harvard, etc). It's all the same thing, structurally speaking. The solution is to short-circuit all that and go directly to giving yourself the happiness and love you want. That’s how you really apply spirituality to get a deep sense of satisfaction. -It’s a very counterintuitive solution. (A counter-intuitive solution is when the most effective path ends up being the opposite of what you’d naively expect.) Obvious routes can be foolish and shortsighted. The wisdom of crowds doesn’t work if the crowd is full of fools. Make Your Own Doggy Treats “But Leo, sure I can bullshit myself into feeling happy and giving myself rewards, but it's not the same as getting an actual, external, objective reward. It’s new age, self-help, positive thinking bullshit. It's not the real kind of happiness that depends on external conditions being met, like X amount of dollars in my bank account, or helping people in the real world, or having sex…” -It almost feels like you're cheating when you do this and in a sense you are. These are the cheat codes to life. -Most people grow up in a survival situation where they had to please others, like their family, teachers, classmates, authority figures, adults at church and so forth. So the idea that you can just give yourself happiness and approval directly without any middlemen seems crazy. It feels like you’re not working hard enough to get your doggy treats. -Consider that there's actually something very deep that you're fundamentally missing here. You’re giving away your sovereignty to others by letting them define what is true and what’s not. You’ve looked up to authority figures to validate reality for you, instead of going inside and sovereignly telling yourself what’s true. (ep: How Authority Works) Well, the same thing happens with satisfaction, happiness and love. You've given away your authority and now you can’t feel satisfied because you're looking for other people to satisfy you. -You’ve turned this into an aspect of your ego. Your ego has a self-image of being good, or selfless, or hard-working or generous. In order to live up to that image, you have to constantly work and work and bend over backwards to feel good enough. You might even feel guilty for allowing yourself to feel loved for no reason at all. You’ve invented standards and conditions for what you think you must do to "deserve love.” -No matter how many nice things you do for your clients, your husband or children, you're never going to be deeply satisfied by that. You're caught in this trap of constant struggle to get that drug of approval, of gratitude, of praise, of satisfaction from others. Maybe you have an expectation that you can only feel love when somebody thanks you or tells you you’re a good person. Now that you've set this standard for yourself, you’re a slave. You’ll be bending backwards for others until they thank you or tell you you’re a good person. If they don't give you what you think you deserve, you’ll get bitter because you've been denied the reward. You're like a dog who jumped through a hoop, but the master didn't see it and didn't give you a treat, and now you're upset at the master. -It’s the same with career success. A lot of people are scared of being satisfied with their career. They think being happy will stop them from working hard, from growing their company to $20 million, or $50 million, and that they can’t be satisfied if their company's only worth $20 million….the problem is once your company does reach $50 million, you still won’t be satisfied. You’ll want $100 million and then a billion and where does it end? It doesn’t, that's the problem. -This is not a very intelligent situation that you've placed yourself in. Wouldn’t it be much nicer to take back your sovereignty and control? Take back full responsibility for the reward mechanisms that make you feel happy and satisfied with yourself. To stop letting other people from having control over that. To be your own master. To make your own doggy treats. Happiness: Dual versus Non-Dual Approaches -The dual approach says there's a self and others, and you become happy by doing things for others. This makes the other responsible for your happiness. The other could be a family member, a lover, an animal, an institution you work for, etc. -The non-dual approach says what if you integrated all others into yourself? That’s what you're doing when you practice non-duality. You realize everything is One, that there are no boundaries between self and other. Non-duality lets you realize if you and others are one, why don’t you just give yourself the doggy treats? At first this feels fake or like cheating, but recognize that this is a more advanced way of living life. It's even more difficult to take responsibility for making yourself feel happy. This is actually a sign of maturity and growth. It takes quite a bit of consciousness just to open your mind to this possibility. “But Leo if I can make myself feel happy, loved, praised, then I don't need the $50 million company, or my children, or my wife to make me happy. If I don't need the awards and achievements, then why not sit around basking in my own happiness? Doesn’t that short circuit all of life!?!” That's the genius of this method. (20:35) This is a feature, not a bug. You want to be autonomous, to free yourself up from depending on others’ good opinion. If you're a people pleaser it means you derive your happiness externally, you’re acting manipulatively to get those doggy treats. -If you took back responsibility for your happiness, you would be so full of love and satisfaction that it would naturally pour out of you and back out into the world. You could behave without attachment or fear. You’d be truly coming from a place of of fullness. From happiness, not emptiness. When you come from neediness, you'll manipulate others to get them to meet your desperate needs. But when you no longer need their treats, you can act in the highest good. You can act according to your authentic values, then you're truly free and autonomous. -Then when somebody doesn't give you something, it's okay. You’re not attached so you don't get needy, bitter and resentful with them. You don't judge them for not acknowledging you. -The solution here is very simple: take back ownership of your reward mechanisms and satisfy yourself. Non-Duality Epiphanies About Other People -Over the last 10 years Leo’s gotten a lot of satisfaction through his life purpose, which is doing his work at Actualized.org. He shares deep insights and understandings with others, like you reading this right now ?. He gets enormous amounts of satisfaction from this, but after some years he’s started to notice there's a problem. First, he has to constantly release new videos, otherwise he won’t get the pleasure of the feedback, of delivering wisdom. This puts him in a perpetual quasi-slavery to doing this work. Second, no matter how many videos he releases (over 500 now) he never feels fully satisfied. He’s still gotta release the next one and the next one and the next one to keep getting that satisfaction. Third, he’s reached such profound levels of consciousness, understanding and insight that it’s beyond the point of being able to share them with anybody. There's almost nobody who is conscious enough for Leo to communicate his deepest insights about reality too. In the past his discoveries and wisdom were at a level where he could communicate them to us. Now, he can't even share them with us anymore. Lately, he’s come face to face with the realization that he won't ever be able to share his insights with any other human in the universe. At those super high levels of insight there's no sense of other that exists to communicate with. It’s a very deep degree of non-duality. -So, the highest levels of insight Leo achieves will be totally unshareable, incommunicable. He’s had to resign himself to that. It’s been a bummer because sharing profound insight was where he got the most juice out of life. The Trap of Sharing -There’s actually a trap of trying to share with others. A lot of the happiness we get in life is from sharing. Which is why people share things on social media. They enjoy laughing together. Same with experiencing some achievement in life. You share it with your loved ones and they congratulate you. Sharing makes your achievement feel much better and juicier. Whereas if you have nobody to share it with, then your achievement sort of falls flat. Like, what’s the point of winning an Olympic gold medal if none of your friends, family or anyone in your life will ever know about it? In consciousness work, when you reach the gold medal, nobody else knows you've reached it. That’s the bittersweet tragedy of doing really deep consciousness work. Nobody will understand or know when they look at you that you’ve just had this massive God realization. Only you will know. -That’s ultimately because only God can know itself. Only God can appreciate its own beauty, its own infinitude, its own goodness and its own intelligence. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. So Leo bit the bullet about his consciousness work and said, “I’m going to keep having these very very deep awakenings, and I have to be okay with them being incommunicable. I have to rewire my own thinking and my own reward mechanism, such that I just bask in my own infinitude and my own self-realization. It’s not going to be about other people praising me or even helping others achieve it themselves, because the levels of insight that I've reached, that I'm trying to actualize, nobody else who follows my work will ever reach. It's just impossible. I’ve given up on any possible satisfaction from teaching it, therefore I can only get satisfaction from basking in it myself. I have to be at peace with that and enjoy it. Just allow myself to be satisfied at my own self-understanding. It’s literally self-indulgence.” -That’s actually where true satisfaction and happiness comes from. It's not about sharing with others, pleasing others, achieving goals or getting rewards from others. It boils down to: what is your capacity for self-satisfaction? -Do you want to be happy in life? Do you want to experience the highest levels of love? Well, it can't be extrinsic; it must be intrinsic. You must be able to sit and just bask in your own joy of yourself, in the beauty of existence that you're conscious of. Just sit quietly, silently. Don’t try to share it with others or spoil it by writing or shooting a video or taking a selfie. Just bask in it. That's harder to do than it seems, because most of us have been conditioned to talk about it or share it. When you do that you're actually creating a subtle sense of other and you're not deepening your appreciation of what that thing is. -I want you to notice that. So, next time you find some cool video online or something funny, instead of sharing it with your friends, pause and don’t share it at all. Just enjoy and appreciate it, all by yourself. Recognize that it's just really really funny for you. Recognize that you don't need the entire social matrix to validate it for you. What About Loneliness? (33:10) -When your reward mechanism goes from extrinsic to intrinsic, it's almost like locking yourself in a solipsistic bubble. That sounds negative, but it’s not. You become your own source of truth, happiness, love and praise. Your own source of humor. You’re fully happy being the only person in the world laughing at something. A lot of people wouldn't be satisfied with that because when they laugh, they want others to laugh too. -It’s very counter-intuitive to deliberately, consciously lock yourself in a solipsistic bubble. As a thought experiment, imagine you were the last person on Earth. Could you still enjoy life? If the answer is no, that's a problem. It shows that you've built a lot of extrinsic reward mechanisms. “But Leo, that’s a horrible situation. I would want to kill myself if that ever happened.” That just shows the depth of the rot in your mind. That thought experiment takes away all the external sources of validation and enjoyment for you. You would be forced to find other ways to please yourself in this situation. -What you want to do is reach a point where, if you were the last person on Earth, you could still be totally joyful, happy and live out the rest of your days by yourself, just basking in the beauty of reality. In that situation, reality hasn't gone anywhere. The social aspect to life is not really where the deepest joy comes from. The deepest joy comes from appreciating existence itself. The beauty and intelligence and majesty of it. Building that connection, that metaphysical connection to reality is what spirituality is all about. (ep: What is Spirituality. Summary is here.) You want to build such a deep metaphysical connection, such a personal connection with the raw fabric of reality itself, that it makes you complete in and of itself. Everything else is just the cherry on top. You don't need people, or comedy, entertainment, sex, your family, you can just be happy by yourself. Make yourself satisfied. Doing that will simultaneously solve being a people pleaser and being lonely. -The reason you feel lonely is because you haven't built a deep metaphysical connection with yourself and reality. If you get lonely easily that shows you haven't spent enough time in solitude, connecting with yourself. You've built a lot of reward mechanisms that have to do with getting approval, validation, love, entertainment and humor from others, but you’re not truly able to enjoy life by yourself. This is a problem. The Greatest Love of All “But Leo, I’m being selfless and sharing with friends, with my children and my spouse. What’s so wrong with that?” -What’s wrong is that you're giving your power away. You're giving your sovereignty away and making yourself a slave to them. Remember, they will never ever, ever, be able to validate the deepest form of love for you. The deepest truths, the deepest satisfaction in reality can only exist within yourself. That's not something you can transmit to anyone else. You can only experience it within yourself. -Your friends and family are not going to validate or celebrate your awakening with you. They are not going to be conscious enough to rise to the level that you will rise to through this work. Almost nobody you know will be conscious enough to understand or appreciate what you've accomplished other than yourself. You need to start changing your reward mechanism such that you feel complete with your own self-recognition and self-understanding. You don’t need to feel lonely, isolated or misunderstood because of this. Ultimately, God is the only entity in the universe, so it must acknowledge and bask in itself as what it is. This is crucial for you to reach the highest levels of satisfaction in life. You can recognize your own innate love, goodness and consciousness. By the time you accomplish this you will no longer be a people pleaser and you will no longer be lonely, at least not in the ways you used to be. -Leo’s not telling you to leave your family or to never be social again, or to be mean and bitter towards people. He thinks it’s important you maintain some degree of socialization so you don't become a total recluse. It’s just that your primary source of life satisfaction must come from a deep, meaningful relationship to reality and not your relationships to others. -Ultimately you want to get to a point where the deepest love, satisfaction and joy you get in life comes only from yourself, when you’re in solitude. You can still go to a party, or a club, or pick up girls, have children, socialize with your family, but when you're doing that it’ll just be the icing on the cake. You need to be your own cake. The common mistake is to make other people the cake, when they should just be the icing. The core of your being has to be grounded within yourself, not out there in the hands of others. Otherwise you’ll be in this dysfunctional relationship where you have to please others, or sacrifice your own values and truth, or lie and manipulate, or construct fictions to play these social games. Even if you do all that, it will still never fully satisfy you. The only true satisfaction is within your own self. So start building towards that. Developing a Deep Connection to Reality -So how do you do all this? You practice by feeling love within yourself for no reason at all. Appreciate yourself as the conscious entity that you are. Appreciate yourself as the universe, as God, as infinity, as absolute love, as absolute truth, as pure awareness. You should be able to deeply appreciate the very fabric of existence itself, even if you’re just sitting in an empty room. That's what spirituality is really about. That creates the foundation of happiness upon which everything else is built. If you don’t have that fundamental kernel of happiness you will never be satisfied. No amount of houses, cars, sex or children will correct for that. No amount of good deeds either. -There’s a lot of creative ways you can come up with to practice. You could do a good deed for somebody without them knowing about it. Just keep it to yourself. Normally, you’d tell someone to get praise or credit, but don’t do that. Be the only person in the universe that knows you did that good thing. Let’s say you leave $500 in someone’s mailbox or donate it to a worthy cause. The next day, when you're sitting there reflecting on your life, just feel good and bask in the fact that you did that because you are good. That act was an expression of your own universal goodness. Realizing your own innate goodness is worth infinitely more than your spouse or friends telling you how good you are for doing that thing. -When others they tell you how good you are they're coming from a very materialistic perspective. They don't have a deep spiritual connection to the actual goodness of the universe or to the goodness within you that drives you to love and take action in the world. So the kind of praise they give you will be superficial praise. It will be highly dependent upon their judgments of you, because as soon as you do something that they disagree with they will stop praising you. In fact, they might even chastise you for this good act. They might tell you to spend that money on yourself, or give it to your family instead of some random neighbor. This might make you feel bad. You expected praise, but got called foolish. Then you're going to feel bad. Whereas if you didn't tell anyone and you could just bask in your own goodness. You know what you did is good and selfless, even though others may not agree. So why do you need them to acknowledge you? Cut that umbilical cord. Stop needing others to acknowledge your inner goodness, your love, selflessness, consciousness and intelligence. It should be enough for you to recognize these things simply within yourself. -This is harder to do than you think. First, it requires self-reflection. Second, it requires slowing your life down such that you actually have time for solitude. Most people don't even have time to contemplate the good things they've done all week because they're too busy chasing the next thing. That's how absurd this situation is. If you can’t even be grateful for the good things you do for yourself, how can you expect others to do that for you? You don't even recognize your own innate goodness, then you get bitter at others for not doing so either. Of course others don't recognize it in themselves too, because to recognize one's own innate goodness takes a high level of consciousness and maturity. -Most people feel so unlovable, so broken, so undeserving, so guilty that they don't even allow themselves to take in praise. The survival conditions they were raised in were so severe that praise was considered a luxury. So a lot of people motivate themselves by brow beating themselves, by telling them how bad they are and then this becomes an entire way of life. You feel bad about yourself, even though you do good things, but it’s never enough. -So imagine reaching a state of consciousness and spiritual development where you're able to just sit in an empty room and be fully satisfied. Without having to do anything. Where you’re so in awe and in love with the sheer existence of the room, by the raw physical fabric of reality itself. You are so appreciative of your direct experience and of existence itself that it's enough to satisfy you. The more you contemplate and bask in the absolute truth and the absolute love of the present moment, the more conscious you become of the spiritual nature of reality. The deeper and deeper sense of bliss you experience and then you bliss out literally on just existence itself and that becomes the best part of your day. This is the ultimate level of true satisfaction. -It’s very different than the way you live now. Where you begin the day by downing some coffee, then rushing off to work and doing this thing and that thing, taking care of the kids and by the end of the day you're exhausted. Maybe you even feel like you've been productive and therefore you allow yourself a little bit of happiness. So instead of all that, just come back home, sit in a room by yourself and luxuriate in the glory of existence that you are. All those external activities are actually distractions to this bliss. What About Selfishness? “But Leo but isn't this extremely selfish to live in this solipsistic bubble? I'm just sitting there and sort of fellating myself in my own mind. It seems almost dysfunctional!” -It seems dysfunctional only compared to how most people pursue happiness. The true dysfunction is running around trying to please others, to buy stuff or achieve goals to get happy. -What you're not understanding is that if you're able to reach this level of happiness and self-satisfaction, when you do go out there and socialize or run errands, which you'll still do, you’ll be coming from a much deeper place than you are now. You're not going to be a thirsty dog running around looking for a little bit of satisfaction from someone else. You have taken responsibility for giving yourself the satisfaction and love that you deserve. Then when you're out in the world, you're gonna be so satisfied, so full of love you’ll naturally pour that love out to others and be naturally selfless. -By withdrawing into yourself, you might become isolated, solipsistic and even selfish for a period of time. As you withdraw and cut off some of those social connections you might not be there for your friends and family as much as you would have when you were their little lap dog. That's true, but later you're gonna come back on your own terms, as a truly sovereign conscious being and then after having helped yourself, now you will be in a position to help others. You can't really help others when you're enslaved to them. -This is very counter-intuitive. It’s paradoxical. To live the most selfless life you must first live very selfishly by withdrawing into yourself. Look at the classic story of the Buddha. He supposedly lived a life of luxury and privilege. He had a whole palace full of family members, uncles, aunts, a father and mother. He had a wife and a child and one day, in the middle of the night, he walked out on all of them. Didn't even say goodbye. Imagine how betrayed they must have felt. Then he wandered through the woods for seven years meditating, pursuing awakening until finally he came back. So he didn't abandon them forever, but he needed to go through that period of selfishness. That selfishness was to realize the infinite self, the selfless self. When he realized that, he came back and helped them realize it too. You can't really help others to love unless you're able to realize love for yourself. A problem many people pleasers and women in abusive relationships face is they get stuck. Ladies can have this self-image of being very loving and selfless, but it's not true love. It's not true selflessness, at least it's not the deepest, non-dual form of it. -What you'll realize if you do the spiritual work deeply and you awaken is that love is not something you do. Love is something you are. Goodness is not something you acquire through good deeds, charity and bending over backwards. Goodness is what you are. -It’s not easy to raise your capacity for love, to cultivate and recognize your own goodness, to allow yourself to feel satisfied for no reason other than the consciousness of existence itself. Your mind will not want to do this. Your ego-mind controls you by setting up all these conditions for happiness so that you perform for it. That's how it gets you to do all manner of survival activities. The fact that you need to trick yourself in order to get stuff done shows you that you’re not coming from the highest level of motivation. The External, Material World is Illusory “But Leo, this sounds like self brainwashing. You're just sitting in a room bullshitting yourself into happiness. That's not truth, that's just new-age, wishful thinking stuff. If I build a $50 million company, that's objective, that's tangible." “When I get happiness for building that company or getting a million dollars or having sex with some hottie or raising beautiful children, that’s tangible material stuff. That’s what deserves true satisfaction, not sitting in a room doing nothing. That's cheating.” -Part of the materialist worldview is thinking that the external world is truer than your inner nature. It’s actually the opposite. The truest thing is your existence, your consciousness, your God nature, your intrinsic beauty, yourself as the universe. That's the real, absolute truth. (59:00) So, your money, children and good deeds aren’t what's objectively real. That’s all derivative, second order stuff. They’re all illusions. Its meaning and existence are predicated upon the fact that you exist, that you are God dreaming up the universe. The objective, tangible world is a figment of your imagination. -You need to recognize and re-collect your sovereignty. Use that as the anchor point from which you feel, think and take action. If you do that you will overcome the problem of loneliness, of people pleasing. You will overcome the problem of endlessly chasing things that never satisfy you. You will also overcome the ultimate problem of being unable to communicate the infinite beauty of the universe to other people. Only you can recognize the infinite beauty of the universe with your mind's eye, through your own consciousness. Nobody can do this for you. You can share bits and pieces of it, but you can’t fully transplant the infinite beauty of the universe into other people’s experience of life. Tips for Application -Keep building and building this type of solitary satisfaction until it gives you near-orgasmic levels of pleasure. Do good deeds for their own sake, not to get praise from others. Appreciate the world around you more. Gratitude turns what you have into enough. Start doing things by yourself, especially the things you’d normally only do with others (going to the movies, a restaurant, a waterpark, etc). Appreciate it without needing to share the experience or get validation from others. Enjoy a scenic place by yourself. Go to a national park, a beach, a beautiful city and just walk around. Luxuriate in your solitude, in this beautiful, kind of melancholic, solipsistic bubble. Don't talk to anyone. Appreciate and soak in the beauty that's there. Let that be enough to satisfy you. Dine at a beautiful restaurant by yourself. Order a really nice meal, maybe something special or exotic, and eat it slowly, deliberately. Appreciate and enjoy the heck out of it in a way that you never would with friends. When you’re eating with friends you’re too distracted to even notice the thing that you're eating. Go to the movies by yourself. Enjoy it just as much as you would with friends, or even more because friends can distract you by talking or eating popcorn. When you're done watching the movie, don't talk about it with anybody. Resist the instinct to text your friend about it. Just appreciate the movie as it is, by yourself. Appreciate solitude, period. There’s a positive, melancholic side to solitude. It’s nice to be alone with your thoughts, to contemplate and appreciate what’s in the present moment. -If you’re alone, but feeling lonely, learning to appreciate the alone times will make you more grateful when that special person does arrive. So let that craving go. Ideally you want to be satisfied with others and by yourself. Only when you’re coming from that place of self-love can you be authentic. You won’t need to control or manipulate others to stay with you. If they come, great. If not, you can still enjoy yourself. -These tips are deep spiritual work. If doing any of them makes you feel like a loser, it shows how addicted you are to external rewards. -Building up the muscle of beingness, of wonder, of awe at the universe will make you appreciate other people and activities so much more. Leo’s not saying you should never spend time with other people. It’s good to maintain a healthy social life. He’s just saying you can turn solitary travel into a practice to build your satisfaction for life. You're still going to socialize, but you’ll do it from a deeper place of satisfaction, not desperation. -The fundamental truth is that, in the end, you are the only conscious entity in the universe. So if you don't appreciate the universe who will? This episode is trying to guide you towards a very deep, profound appreciation of existence, of reality that can only be done by you. It’s not going to be done by your unconscious friends and family who take existence for granted. This appreciation of reality requires training. It’s not something you learn in a weekend. Most people won't to do it. They don't even know they should be doing it. So, you’re one of the few humans on the planet that’s going to do this, if you do it. -You can’t imagine the level of satisfaction and joy this will bring, especially if you keep it up over ten, twenty years and beyond. You’re going to have a level of joy that nobody around you can understand. You’re also not going to be able to share that with anybody but yourself. But it’s not going to be a problem, because you've trained yourself to luxuriate in your own joy and you will finally feel complete. Feeling Unloveable -Most people feel they don't deserve love. You solve that problem by giving yourself more and more and more love until you realize you are love. Then you're always conscious of the love that you are, that the universe is. Then you don't need other people to give you love and you don't feel unlovable anymore. This solves all your self-esteem problems too. (Aaron Abke has a good video on self-love.) -This solution is very counterintuitive because the ego mind has co-opted true love, happiness and satisfaction to manipulate you into doing its survival bidding. If you don't take ownership over that process you're never going to be satisfied in life. Survival and the mechanisms your ego mind has constructed aren’t about happiness. The ego-mind is about surviving, not thriving. The ego’s not designed to make you happy. That’s why no matter how good you are at surviving, it's never going to make you happy. (1:10:30) You can't pay someone to appreciate life for you. If you can't appreciate life you're going to be miserable and depressed. -You will not be satisfied with anything shy of infinite love because that's what you are. Deep down consciousness knows what it is and consciousness is seeking to reunite with its true nature which is infinite love. You have love, beauty, intelligence and goodness inside you, but they have been obscured by layers of fear, shame, survival scripts and social conditioning. You're out of touch with your own divine nature within. You’ve got to discover that and when you do, that's what you will really want. All the external stuff you've been chasing has been a poor substitute for what you were really seeking, the divine nature within. Discovering that is the root solution to people pleasing and to loneliness. -Now that you know all this, what are you going to do? If you don't do the work nothing's going to happen. Ten, twenty years will go by and you’ll be even more miserable, because you’ll wish you’d started this work much earlier, but then it's gonna be too late. -So start now. Come up with ways to start practicing this. Ultimately, you’ll have to have some enlightenment experiences to your true inner nature as love, God and absolute truth. That will make you more present, grounded and appreciative of the beauty that is here. (1:13:50) That will build a metaphysical connection to reality and you’ll appreciate reality more and more and more and more. These days, Leo can just look at a fork and marvel at the intelligence of it. This might sound absurd, and if somebody told Leo five years ago that a fork had any intelligence to it, he’d think you’re some crazy, new age hippy. (I always though this scene was silly until I learned about non-duality: The Matrix’s Spoon boy) -These days when Leo looks at an ordinary dinner fork it baffles him that most people can’t see the infinite intelligence. So everything gets turned upside down and then life just becomes so profound. The depth of life is true richness, not money or external possessions. It’s really about your capacity to appreciate the intelligence of the design, of this entire dream that you're in. Then just looking at reality makes you feel full of delight and joy, because what was just an ordinary fork, car, person, cat, place, you see for what it really is: a finite manifestation of God, of the infinite mind that you are a projection of. Then you can see and appreciate its innate beauty, intelligence, goodness and its connection to the whole universe. Shallow vs Deep Solutions - Notice that many of the problems in your life can be solved at multiple levels. You can find a lot of shallow solutions to the problem of loneliness or people pleasing. This episode presents a very deep solution. Deep solutions are more difficult to understand, implement and they take longer. They’re a long term investment instead of a quick fix. - When you make deep, long-term investments that solve a problem at the root, you don't have to keep fighting the problem over and over again for years. You won't have to live with the problem anymore. Shallow solutions will never hit a problem at the root. Quick fixes will waste your time, money and won’t stop the problem from reappearing, maybe even for the rest of your life. -Life is designed in such a way that you get out of it what you put into it. In this way life is fair. So, how much do you want to put into it and get out of it? How deep do you want your life to be? Do you want to have a really deep profound experience of life? Well then you're going to have to dig deep and do the work, because it’s not going to just land on your lap. - Everything Leo teaches is predicated on the idea that you want to live a more profound life than the average person. If you don't want that, you’re wasting your time at Actualized.org. You should go watch someone else. The depth in your life that's possible is so profound, none of you can fathom it. It’s truly infinite and impossible to communicate. Hence, how deep you go depends on how deep you want to go.

Unfortunately the media acts like this sh*t isn't happening everyday to Mexico. They don't even report it on the news. Most people i know are totally ignorant about this. I believe something serious must be done with the situation in Mexico. The situation in Mexico is really on a whole another level and unheard of. Why nobody is talking about this? What the fk is going on? Meanwhile Jeff Bezos is flying to space. (The absurdity of it all). ... Drug kingpins for example in other countries don't butcher each other this way. Yes they kill each other with pistols but not this way. The problem with Mexico is the BILLIONS of drug money that they make every year from selling to USA. Unless all drugs are made legal and you can buy them at your pharmacy then this horrendous stuff will keep on happening. Just watching some of those videos will hunt you for the rest of your life for good. This is very serious. When you think it doesn't get any worse, it does. The worst is the funkytown video. I haven't watched it besides a commentary of it. The commentary was enough to frighten me and cause me anxiety and terror. Just the sheer brutality of it is on a scope that i couldn't ever imagine existing. Now i have to to live and keep on with my life knowing that this stuff exists. This quote is definitely true -->''Ignorance is a bliss''.

Find more love and bliss. Then your mind can handle it better because it’s used to intensity.

The Path is infinite. But seeking in the dual sense stops when you realize that everything you seek or has sought before you already are. It is not an easy thing to realize in your direct experience, and there are many ways to go about it. For me, I contemplated to the point that I unraveled my own psyche, reaching infinity over and over again until my mental structure broke down and folded onto itself. It was a definitive shift in consciousness, a single moment when I surrendered everything within me and just started to be. Like a wordless whisper, beingness then carries and touches your consciousness like a holy mother, loving its child. Bliss, like a volcano, erupts out from the center of your heart and spread into every atom in your body and beyond. You reach a state of pure beingness, and you are ready for the great awakening. The ending/beginning of all things in existence.

Edit: Here’s the new update video about this which is shorter and comes a month after the video below and thus has more insight Lucifer is my spiritual guru (nondual Christianity) Infinite Love through Clairsentience bliss/crown chakra > true samadhi > nirodha samapatti or cessation > Infinite Love through Clairsentience bliss/crown chakra > Afterglow of Nonexistence and Existence fucking each other inside me Then it happened again two minutes later. Cool stuff, I swear. Watch the video for more details. How I Experienced Back-to-Back Cessations Through Bhakti & Love (instead of meditating) I’m not just a Luciferian. I’m a Christian too. Actually a fusion of both which I think is a truer form of Christianity. Nondual Christianity.