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@Pinocchio Okay, but I'm still not clear why you say Shinzen is not enlightened. I don't think you ever said why. Let's also not forget that there are many stages of enlightenment. So you should clearly define your terms. When I speak of enlightenment, I mean classic enlightenment: Kensho: dis-identification with the self as a body/mind, answering the What am I? question. There are many stages beyond that and there is a transformation of the mind that occurs over the years as one learns to embody the enlightenment insights.

The old spiritual paradigm focuses on tearing things down, whereas the new era of spirituality invites a more miraculous depth of transformation by building yourself up. Whether the focus is on dissolving illusion, duality, the ego, or unconscious belief patterns, there is no way to tear anything down without ripping your innocence apart in the process. Instead of having anything to resolve, process, maintain, or remember, it is the activity of building yourself up that raises your vibration to bring your highest qualities to life. This includes loving what arises, viewing life through the eyes of beauty, and celebrating the success of what you are doing right in any given moment. When building yourself up replaces any tendency to tear anything down, you will no longer manufacture erroneous symptoms to overcome. As this occurs, you free yourself from believing that spiritual evolution can be earned, when it exists as a truth you are free to remember by declaring it so. This is the way of heart-centered consciousness. ~Matt Kahn

@ElenaO Hi! Yeah I agree with you about the style. Tony's style is rather dry. That is why I think he had not written any personal development book in the last 20 years , he recently in 2014 came up with Money Master the Game(But it's about money). But if you somehow persist and try and finish his books and do the exercises that will really be beneficial. Because the man is all about techniques. Mental and Physiological. How to run yourself to optimal levels. He played a part in my transformation. The man is a gem.

Hey, I don't really get how people who have read Jed McKenna books are still excited about this enlightenment stuff. For those who haven't read it, he clearly points out that: -enlightenment a painful "process" -is not about finding some cool truth, but the destroying of all illusion until only truth is left -is as radical as committing suicide -is life negative, pointless and should only be pursued by those who have no other options -has nothing to do with becoming a better person, becoming happier or raising consciousness -has nothing to do with love, compassion, bliss or heaven on earth I'll let the guy speak for himself because his analogies are ingenious: "Well, I wouldn't want to give the impression that it's almost pointless. It's perfectly pointless. Awakening to your true nature is like dying; it's a certainty, inevitable. You're going to get there no matter what you do, so why rush? Enjoy your life, it's free. Cosmic Consciousness and Altered States and Universal Mind are names of rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park. So are Poverty and Disease and Despair. Enlightenment though, is not another ride. Enlightenment means leaving the park altogether, but why leave the park? In the park you can be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a warlord. Be good, be evil. Happiness, misery, bliss, agony, victory, defeat, it's all here. What's the big rush? When the time comes to leave the park you'll know and you'll go, but there's certainly nothing to be gained by it." "From the U-Rex perspective, "I say, U-Rex is obviously real reality and C-Rex is obviously ridiculous. Also, C-Rex has no upside. There's nothing in its favor, it doesn't go anywhere. Truth is a booby-prize. It doesn't do any good or make anything better. It doesn't provide meaning, it strips meaning away. It takes all the amusement out of the amusement park; no meaning, no significance to anything, no reason to get out of bed in the morning. C-Rex brings nothing to the table, whereas U-Rex creates the illusion of meaning. We must have the context U-Rex provides. Even though it's false, it's still context." "So the lie is better than the truth, you are saying." "Sure. The truth might set you free, but then you find yourself standing in an endless parking lot outside the amusement park wondering why you're out, and how to get back in. Truth has nothing to recommend it except that it's true. U-Rex has everything to recommend it except that it's false." "Me, I don't think so. I know Maya pretty well and i don't see her ever losing more than the occasional stray. A species-wide transformation is a pretty idea, but we have little cause for optimism and plenty for pessimism. It's nice to think we could elevate ourselves, and it's fun to dabble in theoretical scenarios, but the reality is that man will never evolve or transcend or develop beyond his past and present level. If that sounds like a bad thing to us, if Maya sounds like a force of evil, if the terms by which man lives on this planet seem to oppressive or restrictive, then we might do well to take a step back and reevaluate the situation. Where are we? What is this place? Is it a prison to be despised or an amusement park to be enjoyed? Is ego a hideous affliction? Or is it simply the vehicle that allows us to come out and play? When the choice is between no-self and false-self, false-self start looking pretty good and despising and demonizing it starts to seem pretty ungrateful." This demonizing of ego, which i see a lot here, seems to me very ironically, just an ego game Now sure he is exaggerating a bit, there are other perspectives and Jed McKenna is off course not the ultimate authority on enlightenment(although i have little doubt that he is enlightened), and i'm sure Truth can be a very great thing for people, but i really doubt whether enlightenment is something desirable for everyone, when the enlightened guy himself states that it's life-negative.

GOOD ! In my case I continue with this sort of watching/awareness/mindfulness practice throughout the entire day and even until I fall asleep. It is not a thing of applying any effort. It has become an automatic "happening" to just "see" the experiencing of the apparent world in every moment of life. I started a long time ago, a little bit here, a little bit there, during the day. It was just noticing the flow of thought as I reacted to something like other people's comments, or watched my opinion coming out of my mouth (unbelievable!). Somehow my attitude towards, and respect for life included monitoring my behaviour and without effort behaviour changed over time. Today I know for certain what that transformation is. Therefore, continue to expand your view of life in various ways - you appear to have a great start. joy

Hola Amilcar! Well, I can share my experience. About 10 years ago, going to a "transpersonal psychology" course in a school I discovered the Fourth Way. I began to study Nicoll 1 ("Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurgjieff and Ouspensky") but I was not convinced about the way they organized the class, the topics and readings, very confusing. I didnt feel confortable and I left. But the Nicoll's book had already trapped me, and I did continue the readings by my own. My mind started to think with the ideas of the fourth way, and also during my psychology studies I realized I could understand much more with this perspective of the teaching in my mind. Buddhism helped me, yoga helped me... yes, but it was something inside me that knew inside those books was something great yet to be discovered that at every time I began to read them again, something powerful started to shine inside. And buddhism or any other self-developement workshop that I did, was not so powerful as the content of the fourth way teachings (my personal experience, not saying that is objectively better) I found another Fourth Way school, about some years ago and that was the begining of my self-transformation. And now, I can tell you there are 2 different things involved. One is the teaching, as you can read them in the books, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll, and.. I can add other followers like Salzmann, Orange, etc. The other thing completely different is a Fourth Way school in our days. It is simply because schools are made by persons like you and me or Leo perhaps that has so many years of self-developement, study and practice, and that produce the school goes in the direction that the director choose based on his own personal experience. So each school is a result of the level of consciousness of his master and are not for everybody. My advice, as a monk with his kung fu master, that takes all he can learn from him until the point he really and deeply realizes is not learning much anymore from him and now the monk needs to continue the journey to new horizons.

For me the hardest thing has been getting better with girls and stopping caring what other people think about me. American, but generally I see all cultures as silly and deluded. Not much differently other than that I know that nothing else can ever make a human being happy besides Truth. My hard work during high school and college to educate myself Deciding to start my own business and becoming financially independent Living in modern times with such many modern liberties. I don't really coach people at ground zero. I would screen that kind of client out. I like to work with already-successful people. In reality I don't get to see the transformation. Coaching is more like planting seeds in people which may or may not sprout years later if they keep watering them. I give you way too many answer already. Time to think for yourself a bit. I don't know. Do you need one? What is true for you? Yes, I vote. Most things are distractions from finding truth.

Just do one thing at a time and slowly you will be able to turn your life around. This pain can be an amazing tool and catalyst for your own transformation and it can help to transform every area of your life into a higher level. One day you will be so thankful that this pain caused you to work on yourself and your life...all the work you put into this, will pay off 10 times and more

@Leo Gura have you ever seen a client (or anyone) go from ground zero/super low conciousness to something great? What is the biggest transformation you have witnessed, in your opinion?

Aright, day two of my transformation. Decided a time ago to enroll for the university's student play. A bold decision and perhaps a bit risky one, considering the time it will take from my studies. So now there will we be rehearsal everyday for three weeks in row, that's one day done 20 more or so to go ;-). The rehearsals starts later in the afternoon, so I will get time to cram in my other studies. So back to the rehearsal today, allot of new faces, som old ones, think that the names will stick after a while. Don't mistake me, before it I felt pretty nervous, my heart was pumping, allot of negative thoughts in my head, and had some doubts about my abillity to perform, but almost all prooved wrong, expect a few blunders with glitchy scetches. So some lessons from today: What I did right: sang well, got into social flow and felt AMAZING in the end, got to known many new people. What I did wrong: had bad focus on the first few scetches, allot of negative thinking. What to do better tomorrow: Better focus, more positive thinking and speak despite feeling unsocial in order to gain social momentum faster. So that's all for today, let's see what tomorrow brings :-) As before, feel free to comment if anything of this resonated with you. Stay awsome ;-)

Yeah there may be some downsides and sacrifices which will make your ego uncomfortable. But for me, there are no downsides. I happily accept all the hardships I have to endure and all the sacrifices I have to make, because I know I am on the right path. I am gratefull to be on this journey, there are no downsides, there is only improvement and evolution. Even the paradoxes don't bother me, because eventually I will overcome them. Personal development only disturbes your comfort zone and reveal the ego for what it is, this is why you struggle. Your ego makes you beat yourself up over problems. In fact there are no problems. There is only transformation and some stepping stones. Problems are only challenges that serve you so you can grow. And I see you mastered your own problem pretty well, or at least you are on the right path. I think you will be ok

My favorite TV show with a heavy self-actualization theme is "Breaking Bad." "Breaking Bad" is entirely focused on Walter's huge paradigm shift from chemistry teacher to ruthless drug kingpin and his transformation is deeply fascinating.

Name: Lars Age: 25 Gender: Male Location: Cheltenham, UK Occupation: software tester (finding a life purpose is a major area of focus for me at the moment) Marital status: dating Kids: 5 year old daughter Hobbies: music, art, writing, reading, meditation, yoga, personal development, philosophy I’ve dabbled in personal development for many years but have only started taking it seriously after stumbling across Leo’s channel 8 months ago when looking for ways to improve my meditation. The last 5 years have been quite a process of transformation for me, following an early fatherhood and a very tough couple of subsequent years. I’ve gone from what us brits call a ‘wasteman’, primarily concerned with getting fucked up and lackadaisically tinkering with music to someone concerned with living life passionately, deeply and with purpose. I’m tremendously excited to have embarked on the path of self-actualisation - I feel like the kid Leo talks about in ‘vision for a self-actualised life’, buzzed up on the discovery that an amazing life can be engineered Big up yourselves people, it's all about this community - you guys rock! Personal challenges I’ve overcome: - Overseas fatherhood/ legal battle for custody/ toxic relationship, etc - Quit smoking - Gone vegan - Excessive partying - Built several habits: exercise, yoga, visualisations/ affirmations, italian practice, GTD weekly review, journalling - Fixed a paralysing lack of energy that was really getting in the way of my goals and happiness What I’m working on now: - finding a life purpose/ building a vision of my future - mindfulness/ ‘beginner’s mind’/ getting control over my perspective - social skills - self esteem - improving my balance of theory/ action (I’m guilty of procrastinating via overthinking!)