Leo's teachings might be sabotaging people

[trenton]

I want to discuss Leo's approach to discussing things like selfishness. I see how his framework around spirituality might ultimately hold people back by perpetuating their suffering. This isn't just a problem with Leo, but potentially other spiritual teachers as well.

Leo discusses selfishness frequently in his spiritual framework. It carries a negative connotation because it is closely related with how he describes evil or the devil. Although there may be some truth to the framework, the framework itself is still a problem which prevents people from ultimately letting of selfishness and ego. In fact framing selfishness as being closely related to evil can reinforce that which we are trying to transcend.

For example, if I recognize that I am selfish in any context, the idea of selfishness itself carries with it the connotation which in turn carries judgement which in turn is more ego and selfishness. Seeing selfishness or the devil in this way places you in a war with yourself which is ultimately counter to higher consciousness. You might think that reducing selfishness requires removing judgement of selfishness and evil, but if this attempt itself is coming from a place of needing to fix to avoid being selfish, then it implies a problem or undesirability which still implies judgement.

I'm having a hard time finding the right words to describe this situation. Although true that selfishness can keep someone stuck in lower levels of consciousness, the point of view that this is evil, devilry, or in some way undesirable, sets connotations associated with selfishness which in turn implies judgement which comes from a place of ego which therefore reinforces ego and maintains the illusion rather than dissolves it. Of course if these teachings involve people with mental illness or already terrible self esteem problems, then I imagine that the problem would be even worse for them despite their efforts to find any way possible to heal.

I think there needs to be a different framework for spirituality besides technically correct frameworks which themselves serve to maintain unconsciousness through implied judgements. Maybe this can be amended through Leo's other teachings which have implications of traps in other teachings. For example, in the episode about being wrong he points out that beating yourself up for being wrong is itself wrong. Similarly, he mentioned things like excessive guilt which is not a resourceful emotion and can hold you back from actualizing your highest self. I would suppose the implied teaching is that to see yourself as evil for being selfish is a trap which maintains unconsciousness, but I see selfishness and evil being closely related in his framework.

The reason I am discussing this is because I am writing a book about self-love and this paradox came up. So long as any form of spirituality comes from a place of fixing something that is wrong, then it ultimately withholds self-love by requiring being different. I am currently seeing spirituality as a process of discovery. It is as if having insights about external phenomenon is ultimately learning about myself. Perhaps it is because the mind tends to immediately contextualize information in terms of what it means for me. It is as if I change when look at things in a new way.

Of course none of this is a license to murder people just to be clear.

[Hojo]

 

The paradox is your demonizing of the word devil and selfishness. The negative connotations of words come from you. This is proving leos point you are the devil and you are making up negative connotations and then finding problems. If you just get rid of the negativity you are dreaming.

Spirituality dosent come from fixing anything. The problem is when you see God you feel like you must change. Like you are special and God is showing you that you are special. Everything you did up to meeting God was perfect and everything after is perfect. If you use it as an excuse to look for problems then you can but you don't have too and there is nothing to fix.

They definetly are messing with people tho as in his videos he pretends he's being a teacher and on the forum he's showing himself or a lesser mask.

But he says he's not tryna be a guru he's just telling us what he saw.

Edited Friday at 12:14 AM by Hojo

[Leo Gura]

It is important not to create a shadow out of selfishness.

Selfishness absolutely needs to exist, which is why it exists. Without selfishness you could not be alive.

Yes, turning selfishness into a "bad" is a trap.

Again, the point of awakening is to realize that nothing bad has ever existed, including of course selfishness, which is just what is meant by evil.

If you think selfishness is bad then that's equlivalent to saying that evil exists. Which of course is wrong.

But also notice the trick here: when someone behaves very selfishly towards you, you will not be able to stop yourself from calling it bad. So not demonizing selfishness is very, very advanced stuff. Most humans are nowhere close to that. Even spiritual humans will fail at it.

A better way to put it is that excessive selfishness is problematic and self-defeating while a healthy level of selfishness is appropriate and even necessary.

Edited Friday at 10:12 AM by Leo Gura

[AION]

Selfishness is on the spectrum of selfishness versus altruism. Both exist in its most extreme forms. As a human on your path of individuation you have to find wisdom (vis-dom: ability to see righteously) aka the middle of the two extremes which is not always exactly the middle but the way of the Tao aka the path of wisdom. It is important to read literature on this and not try to reinvent the wheel.

Edited Friday at 10:59 AM by AION

[Aaron p]

Typically you can't have massive power and massive safety simultaneously, not easily, especially with the most advanced teachings ITU. Plus someone needs to blaze the trail. This is particularly important as this particular trail happens to be the most amazing trail in existence. The key is baked into actualized brand -  advanced self improvement. This is high level shit. Very difficult to do what the Leo avatar has done. Cool accomplishment. 

Now that the trail has been blazed, we can work on increasing safety

[JosephKnecht]

13 hours ago, trenton said:

For example, if I recognize that I am selfish in any context, the idea of selfishness itself carries with it the connotation which in turn carries judgement which in turn is more ego and selfishness.

Who is the self?

Your work here is to enlarge your sense of self not only to encompass your body but everything. If your sense of self includes the neighbor, the starving kids around the world, all animate and inanimate matter, be as selfish as you want. 

13 hours ago, trenton said:

Leo discusses selfishness frequently in his spiritual framework. It carries a negative connotation because it is closely related with how he describes evil or the devil. Although there may be some truth to the framework, the framework itself is still a problem which prevents people from ultimately letting of selfishness and ego.

You are creating a framework out of spirituality. The goal of the work is not to put in a frame, but to burst through any frame. Creating a framed work is contra-productive to the aim. 

 

 

[Vibes]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

But also notice the trick here: when someone behaves very selfishly towards you, you will not be able to stop yourself from calling it bad. So not demonizing selfishness is very, very advanced stuff. Most humans are nowhere close to that.

And when you do demonize them, try to forgive your own selfishness, cause you're doubling down on the demonization if you hate yourself for it.

[Breakingthewall]

selfishness leads to suffering, that's why we call it "bad." The denser the selfishness, the further away from your true nature, the more attached to lies, and therefore the more chronic suffering maintained in the psyche.

detachment, altruism, alignment with the truth, is what we call "good." Saying that good and evil do not exist is like saying that pain does not exist. I crush the bones in your hand with a hammer but, tadah! pain does not exist!!! . Well....I don't know, what is the purpose of that? Confusion?

Edited Friday at 01:47 PM by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Vibes said:

And when you do demonize them, try to forgive your own selfishness, cause you're doubling down on the demonization if you hate yourself for it.

Sure, if someone tortures you for fun or lies to get you a life sentence to steal your money, that's not bad, it's just that he is a big son of a bitch who deserves a (good) shot in the head as soon as possible.

[Vibes]

8 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Sure, if someone tortures you for fun or lies to get you a life sentence to steal your money, that's not bad, it's just that he is a big son of a bitch who deserves a (good) shot in the head as soon as possible.

Why go to that extreme? Chances are your life is not going to be that bad. But also, even if it gets that bad, when you die you'll forgive everything and everyone and none of that would've mattered because it's all a theatrical play, and we are so intimate to each other that there's just love in the end. But you have to die first and stop caring for being a little ego. This is so beautiful, I'm remembering many things as I write this. Connection, intimacy to everything and everyone, all this hard suffering will be seen as beautiful in the end. God doing to God, in this theatrical piece pretending to be various actors.

[Breakingthewall]

30 minutes ago, Vibes said:

Why go to that extreme? Chances are your life is not going to be that bad. But also, even if it gets that bad, when you die you'll forgive everything and everyone and none of that would've mattered because it's all a theatrical play, and we are so intimate to each other that there's just love in the end. But you have to die first and stop caring for being a little ego. This is so beautiful, I'm remembering many things as I write this. Connection, intimacy to everything and everyone, all this hard suffering will be seen as beautiful in the end. God doing to God, in this theatrical piece pretending to be various actors.

Yeah , sure, peace, love, hippies and that, but anyway what I mean is what the definition of good and bad is, not those things about god stuff

Edited Friday at 02:43 PM by Breakingthewall

[gettoefl]

Bad is whatever wastes time; good is whatever saves time; god is the end of time and the resumption in consciousness of timelessness.

Me hurting you and you hurting me is bad; me helping you and you helping me is good.

To hurt is impossible. If you slap my face or I slap your face, we think the other can be hurt. The other cannot be hurt, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. We are but time wasting.

Good is for the other to point this out so that we come to our senses.

Good tell us that only two things happen in this world: acts of love (help) and asks for love (hurt).

Good saves time; bad wastes time.

To live this means you overcame time and you are here for the people who cross your path.

You turn the other cheek in any situation. You are unhurtable. You desire others see your power to understand they are no different and can come home too.

[Terell Kirby]

When Leo mentions selfishness- we can look at it from an Absolute and relative lens.

Relative selfishness is highly malleable and open to subject interpretation and context. Not everyone has the same definition of selfishness- what is seen as selfish for one human, can be seen as something entirely different for another. But generally speaking, inflicting suffering onto others to advance one’s personal survival agenda is generally considered selfish by the majority of humans-but again, not everyone holds the same value systems and interpretations of that value system.

Selfishness from an Absolute perspective has to do primarily with what we identify with, and how we go about protecting and defending that identity. It’s not only being biased towards our own self interest, but it’s also identifying with finite aspects of reality we take as true and certain, at the exclusion of identifying with the Whole. To identify, exclusively, with the human form and narrative is to be selfish, Absolutely speaking. And it’s not until you transcend your human-ness that you being to understand what true Selflessness is (with a capital S).

You be can Selfless from an Absolute perspective  and “others” can still judge you as selfish from their own personal subjective lens (you can even judge yourself). Just recognize that relative selfishness is not good or bad on any moral grounds- it just is (it can be healthy or unhealthy depending on your unique survival needs, genetics, upbringing, culture, etc).

Edited Friday at 09:00 PM by Terell Kirby

[ExploringReality]

Thank you Leo, your explanation really resonates with me. The understanding just clicked.

Your videos about "understanding survival" really ties in neatly with the concepts of evil, selfishness, identity and reality.

[trenton]

@Leo Gura I have three questions about your views on selfishness.

First of all, you mention that excessive selfishness is self-defeating and only works in the short term. However, there are extremely devilish psychopaths like my father and his gang who often get away with their crimes and harming others for their own gain. For some of them they completely get away with things like molesting children by preying on the child's shame and silence. Some of them go their entire lives without any consequences.

Therefore, when you say selfishness only works in the short term and ultimately fails because reality is fundamentally selfless, it starts to sound like a perversion of karma and the just world fallacy. What do you mean exactly when you say selfishness is short term and self-defeating if not that one day psychopaths will not be able to get away with horrific devilry? You probably mean something more nuanced than what I'm describing.

Furthermore, if I must be selfish in order to survive at all, then does that mean that my existence is self-defeating because survival is temporary game?

thirdly, I have a scenario I want you to consider. I want to see how you would apply your level of consciousness to this situation.

Suppose your psychopathic father took you with him to make a deal with his gang. When you arrived a group of men started offering your father money to have you spend the night with them in exchange for sexual favors. In this situation you are a child and these men are sexually exploiting other minors. When I was in this situation I was terrified of these men and I thought they were evil. I ended up staying silent.

How would you apply your level of consciousness if your father sold you to these sex traffickers in exchange for 600 dollars, allowing them to gang rape you?

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, trenton said:

How would you apply your level of consciousness if your father sold you to these sex traffickers in exchange for 600 dollars, allowing them to gang rape you?

You are speaking about a serious crime. Obviously that is not acceptable from a human POV.

You should care enough about yourself to protect yourself from crime and abuse.

Nothing I teach means that you don't take good care of yourself or tolerate abuse from others.

Edited Saturday at 03:14 PM by Leo Gura

[trenton]

32 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You are speaking about a serious crime. Obviously that is not acceptable from a human POV.

You should care enough about yourself to protect yourself from crime and abuse.

Nothing I teach means that you don't take good care of yourself or tolerate abuse from others.

@Leo Gura I think you might be making a mistake here.

Can you walk me through how a 12 year old is supposed to protect himself from his father and his gang of sexual predators armed with guns? I'm not saying you should tolerate this abuse from others. I'm saying that some people are powerless and are forced to endure these sorts of things like being born into slavery for instance or being an infant abandoned by your mother as you die in a dumpster for being a rape baby.

Perhaps you are referring to my silence which enabled this to continue. In my case it might sound shocking, but I loved my parents too much to turn them into the police. Sometimes I end up angry with myself for loving them which enabled several layers of complex manipulation. I find that I am able to forgive my father, but I am not able to forgive myself.

Is this the sort of behavior you are referring to? Is it my selfishness of not caring enough about the other children to ensure the gang was brought to justice? 

[Breakingthewall]

56 minutes ago, trenton said:

Some of them go their entire lives without any consequences

You can't get inside of their minds, People who act selfishly, evilly, narcissistic, psychopathicly, usually appear very cheerful and happy. If you look closely you begin to see addictions, if you look more closely, misery, loneliness and terror. Maybe they don't even realize it themselves, but at some point they open their eyes to the horror of the dead void that is their soul.

[trenton]

@Breakingthewall This still sounds like the idea that one day selfish and evil people will get what they deserve like the just world fallacy. My father used to preach to me about how evil people would one day get what was coming to them as he read the bible to me. I'm not convinced that these types of people are horrified at what they have become.

My understanding of karma is much more nuanced than the fancy dressed up way of saying selfish people will ultimately fail. I see karma as multi dimensional and not just as a moral calculus. I see it as multi generational with extremely complex consequences which cannot be clearly calculated. For example there can be karma from my family of criminals which created intergenerational trauma by creating a chaotic environment. Of course I ended up being hurt deeply without asking for any of this. Me being hurt without any fault of my own is a consequence of karma spanning across generations. It is not wrong or evil. Karma is impersonal even if it means innocent people get hurt because of it.

Here is how my father described karma. "I am a good, honest drug dealer. I don't mix my drugs with rat poison. My crack is so good that my customers constantly come back looking for more. I end up making even more money off of this. This is a sign sent from God that I am a good person and what goes around comes around. God is rewarding me with more money and customers for this crack. I don't really believe in the devil, but I do believed that evil people will get what's coming to them."

[gettoefl]

47 minutes ago, trenton said:

@Leo Gura I think you might be making a mistake here.

Can you walk me through how a 12 year old is supposed to protect himself from his father and his gang of sexual predators armed with guns? I'm not saying you should tolerate this abuse from others. I'm saying that some people are powerless and are forced to endure these sorts of things like being born into slavery for instance or being an infant abandoned by your mother as you die in a dumpster for being a rape baby.

Perhaps you are referring to my silence which enabled this to continue. In my case it might sound shocking, but I loved my parents too much to turn them into the police. Sometimes I end up angry with myself for loving them which enabled several layers of complex manipulation. I find that I am able to forgive my father, but I am not able to forgive myself.

Is this the sort of behavior you are referring to? Is it my selfishness of not caring enough about the other children to ensure the gang was brought to justice? 

Forgiveness means I forfeit all payment from you for misdeeds perpetrated.

However I may judge that others deserve payment for your atrocities since the world is not very forgiving.

And you may pose a danger to commit worse deeds.

In that case it's my job to step up and take you down.

Edited Saturday at 04:53 PM by gettoefl