Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura, you said in one of your videos that psychedelics will be your most-used tool, as it's way more powerful than other methods.

Have you changed your mind based on the toll that it had on your body?

I did my first psychedelics 3 days ago, and I'm convinced that other methods, like meditation, are of little help for me. And also I have traveled in order to do it and won't be able to do it for a few months. How am I going to continue to have realizations if I limit myself to doing it sparingly?

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Leo Gura, you said in one of your videos that psychedelics will be your most-used tool, as it's way more powerful than other methods.

It was my most used tool.

But every tool has its limits.

Quote

Have you changed your mind based on the toll that it had on your body?

I have not changed my mind in terms of their power to access higher onsciousness. But the costs of it add up and eventually can become too great. It depends on individual and how far you go.

Quote

I did my first psychedelics 3 days ago, and I'm convinced that other methods, like meditation, are of little help for me. And also I have traveled in order to do it and won't be able to do it for a few months. How am I going to continue to have realizations if I limit myself to doing it sparingly?

Well, as someone new, you need more trips more often. Balance must be found.

Keep in mind that I did like over 500 trips, so our situations are not alike.

Edited Monday at 12:10 AM by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, Davino said:

I have come to the conclusion that the only solid value social media provides is to actually connect with your friends and relatives.

This is not true. If only it were so clean cut.

There is a lot of valuable information and sources to be found through social media. But you have to wade through a lot of addictive and immature shit to find it.

It's like you are an antelope drinking at an oasis in the desert, but the oasis is full of crocs.

Edited Monday at 12:13 AM by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It was my most used tool.

But every tool has its limits.

So, basically, you are done with it and satisfied with what you have realized by using it?

Or has it affected you in a way that you can realize more things without using it?

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Nemra said:

So, basically, you are done with it and satisfied with what you have realized by using it?

I am not satisfied. There is much more insight and consciousness left there. But for me the cost became too high.

9 minutes ago, Nemra said:

Or has it affected you in a way that you can realize more things without using it?

I will certainly pursue higher consciousness without it.

[Nemra]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I will certainly pursue higher consciousness without it.

Is that even possible?

What if you never go beyond a certain limit without it?

Well, I don't understand what it means to do 500 trips. Perhaps those trips did change you in a way that you can easily pursue higher consciousness without using it.

[Terell Kirby]

Love this from the blog .. this tops some of the Actualized videos on the grounds of articulating the complex topic of conceptually understanding Consciousness & spirituality.

Wish I found it sooner, yet God's timing is always perfect 

Edited Monday at 01:03 AM by Terell Kirby

[bazera]

@Leo Gura

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I will certainly pursue higher consciousness without it.

But didn't you say that psychedelics are the most effective tool? 

What are the other tools that you plan to use to access higher consciousness without psychedelics?

Are you planning to return to practices like meditation or yoga?

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, bazera said:

@Leo Gura

But didn't you say that psychedelics are the most effective tool? 

I told you, the costs!

16 minutes ago, bazera said:

What are the other tools that you plan to use to access higher consciousness without psychedelics?

Are you planning to return to practices like meditation or yoga?

Long meditation retreats are really the only other powerful tool. They are just so demanding and inconvenient. But eventually you just got no other choice.

Edited Monday at 06:11 AM by Leo Gura

[Davino]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This is not true. If only it were so clean cut.

It is a generalization but after reflection "actual" socialization is the initial seed and meaning for social media, not what is being done with its use now. Truly it has evolved into many new ways of value giving but which are cumbersome to personalize and extract solid value from, with the trap of addiction and time sink in the process of doing so.

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There is a lot of valuable information and sources to be found through social media. But you have to wade through a lot of addictive and immature shit to find it.

Yes it is so, although the practical sound to noise ratio of media use gravitates heavy towards low consciousness, even with a curated algorythm. There isn't that much higher maturity and consciousness content that the algorythm can give you for one hour straight, but surely there is and it provides value.

There's just a toll to your mind when using social media, particularly visualization and chemical bombarding of the brain; it corrupts the mind in subtle but noticeable ways over time.

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Davino said:

that the algorythm can give you for one hour straight

That's why should search vs using the algorithm passively.

[OBEler]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I have scars on my body from some of my trips. Like that kiwi.

Sorry to ask so much but it's still unclear. You can prevent getting scars again through a very good preparation or a trip sitter. To hurt yourself during trips can be prevented. That cannot be the reason.

Also you said you get hangover effects but thats normal and you recover from that quickly. If you do every two weeks or a month the hangover effects should be neglectable. Furthermore hangover effects are more likely to be stronger as a beginner.

About the joy in sober life: Yes you can experience higher joy on psychedelics but the joy on sober life stays and is not reduced. For example before psychedelics watching a movie was quite entertaining but nothing profound. During psychedelics it gets extremely enjoyable. After psychedelics it gets quite entertaining again like before but nothing more.

So what's the biggest reason for you to really stop psychedelics although you got so much out of it and would be probably in the future. Is it something more concrete like having fear of tinnitus getting stronger ?

Edited Monday at 12:03 PM by OBEler

[Davino]

40 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's why should search vs using the algorithm passively.

Yeah true

I would also expect the information to be of higher quality by default and with a good flow: like good books have been doing for centuries; given the current technological landscape it's an achievable expectation. However, it's not the case so we'll have to adapt and find our way to gold.

[Ash55]

Social media indeed serve trash to people, but also it is an infrastructure that helped tons of businesses, insane amount of educational content is on YouTube people that seek education are getting so much amazing content too, in one hand if you served people  (in the context of food businesses)  no sugar and no white floor no body will buy the food, I think its a systemic problem and a cultural one people are actively seeking juiced food and the biggest social media binge, I have seen people here they would deliberately never eat food that is healthy at all  (they also binge on Facebook trash reels for hours)  I make only healthy food most of the time, once I made rice and I make it with olive oil and someone I knew he refused to eat because I didn't use low quality vegetable oil that has no taste LOL the rice taste was not perfect but  it was good, that was crazy to me to see that unfathomable, olive oil costed 5 times as much as vegetable oil So we can blame social media of corruption all day long and the fast food Industry but all these businesses are doing serving people what they want to be served lol





 African geography related video:

 

[Xonas Pitfall]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I told you, the costs!

@Leo Gura Do you think you would have continued using psychedelics if there were no health issues? Do you believe psychedelics contributed to your health problems, and if so, in what way?

I think an episode or even a short blog post reflecting on your personal examples of harm could be valuable for anyone getting into this space. It could also include insights on when you feel you should have stopped or taken a more cautious approach. Thank you so much, Leo! <3

Also, what are the updates on conversations with Destiny or Peter Boghossian? Cheers 

[Terell Kirby]

Attempting to understand Leo’s position on elites and the value they add compared to the plebs or proletariat. Reason I’m doing this because I find myself getting slightly emotionally triggered through my assumptions that he is being too favorable and/or charitable to those in power. Yet I intuited I was missing something, and had a hunch that Leo’s arguments are less to do with the corruption of elites and more to do with the limitations of populist worldview (on the left and the right). It was only right to take it to Claude AI for an objective, non partisan perspective:

Question to Claude: There tends to be this assertion from left wing and right wing populist that elites are the problem. Being objectively detailed, what are all the points of limitation in this perspective or worldview-taking in account evolution of political systems, holons, growth and dominator hierarchy and levels of cognitive development in humans? No need to ask questions in your response, looking for response to be as non partisan as possible.

Response from Claude: 

The populist framing of "elites" as the primary problem faces several limitations:

Oversimplification of Social Structures
- Reduces complex social systems to binary categories (elites vs. people)
- Ignores the graduated nature of social power across different domains
- Fails to distinguish between functional hierarchies (expertise/competence) and dominator hierarchies (coercion/exploitation)

Definitional Ambiguity
- "Elite" is often loosely defined, shifting to include different groups depending on rhetorical needs
- Conflates distinct forms of influence: economic, cultural, political, technological
- Neglects how individuals can be simultaneously privileged in some contexts and disadvantaged in others

Developmental Considerations
- Overlooks how societies evolve through stages requiring different organizational structures
- Modern complex problems require specialized knowledge and coordination mechanisms
- Simple hierarchical structures often cannot address transnational, multi-domain challenges

Historical Context
- Many historical attempts to eliminate elite structures resulted in new elite formations
- Power vacuums typically lead to emergence of alternative hierarchies, sometimes more problematic than those replaced
- Does not account for evolutionary psychology and tendency toward status hierarchies in human groups

Functional Necessity
- Complex societies require coordination mechanisms across specializations
- Some forms of elite knowledge/expertise are necessary for functioning systems (medicine, engineering, etc.)
- Blanket anti-elite sentiment can undermine valuable institutional knowledge and system stability

Cognitive Development
- Different developmental stages perceive hierarchies differently (from concrete to systems thinking)
- More cognitively complex views recognize both the value of functional hierarchies and dangers of unchecked power
- Anti-elite narratives often appeal to earlier developmental stages of cognition that prefer simpler causal explanations

Constructive Alternatives
- Reform approaches focusing on accountability, transparency, and mobility may address legitimate concerns more effectively than wholesale rejection
- Differentiated analysis of which hierarchical structures are functional vs. exploitative is more useful than categorical rejection
- Evolving toward more distributed forms of power while maintaining coordination capabilities

[Leo Gura]

28 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Attempting to understand Leo’s position on elites and the value they add compared to the plebs or proletariat.

It's purely a function of skill and ability.

Elites have skills, abilities, and intelligence which plebs do not have.

You must shatter this liberal myth that humans are equal. Humans are totally unequal in their abilities and intelligence.

The average human is simply incapable of buidling anything of significance. This isn't personal or moral, it's a question of how useful you are, how well you can build.

How much survival value are you able to generate for others? If you cannot generate survival value you are basically worthless and nobody cares what your excuses are. That's how society works.

This is what lefties refuse to understand because they are too busy moralizing about equality.

Edited Monday at 04:20 PM by Leo Gura

[Vynce]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you cannot generate survival value you are basically worthless and nobody cares what your excuses are. That's how society works.

How do you explain the tremendous success of "worthless" economies like cinema, gaming, fiction writing, youtube ect? All these are fundamentally built upon art and creativity and not plain survival value, so you would deem them worthless? Whats your missing connection here?

[Leo Gura]

42 minutes ago, Vynce said:

How do you explain the tremendous success of "worthless" economies like cinema, gaming, fiction writing, youtube ect? All these are fundamentally built upon art and creativity and not plain survival value, so you would deem them worthless? Whats your missing connection here?

They are not worthless.

You need a much broader and deeper notion of survival value.

When I speak of survival I am talking about a very sophisticated thing, not merely food and shelter.

Entertainment is all about survival value.

By definition, if someone is willing to pay for a thing, it is not worthless to him.

Edited Monday at 09:15 PM by Leo Gura

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura As per my life I am not able to generate survival value such as getting a girlfriend but I am doing good in my career. I have watched your -- How to get laid series multiple times , read other dating book also. As per your advice I have approached 100 girls in my campus. I have noticed that when I approach girls they become insecure while afterwards they start dating someone else. Girls think of me as inferior in dating. I have hatred , resentment against them and also revengeful thoughts against those girls.

Maybe my desire to get a girl who has never been in a relationship is impossible and I am suffering due to it. By the way I am trying to accept my suffering. 😁

I sometimes feel that it's good that I don't have a girlfriend in University because multiple suicides happened in my college in regard to relationships. Boys threaten each other, beat up each other when they see other boy talking to their girlfriend.

By the way I have also got threats years ago.

Here, some girls smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.

Am I worthy or worthless . Haha.