More Questions for Leo: 30 day blog video

[Sempiternity]

*note* I'm really asking Leo here and hope he has the time to answer. I'm not looking for every Joe blo's opinion from their beliefs. I'm not interested in opinions. If you really think you can answer these questions, from actual experience, and not coming from a place of feeding your Ego's importance, then yes please, I'd love to hear your wisdom. 

In the video, you talk abut it taking the will to give up literally everything, including the will to live, to become Enlightened / Awake. You have to 100% commit and surrender to dying. Not 99%, but 100% giving up your life totally and completely. The will to pull the trigger, but 1000 times worse, as your killing yourself over years or decades. Watching everything in your life, everything you love, all slowly die off piece by piece. Sounds like the worst misery. But, you're saying this is the only way to actually wake up. The Only way out of the suffering. The only way to ever actually feel true love for anything.

But here's the problem I have. I've already died. I've stopped breathing, turned grey, lips blue, and felt the numbness and darkness envelope me. Felt my life fade away into nothingness. I got to the very very edge of forever death. And in that moment, on that edge, I said 'No, no I will not go now! I will fight with my very last bit of will to not go over that edge. I had more will than I ever have in my life to stay alive. And I did. I met death and lived. 

But in this video, you say the only way I can become Enlightened, to become Awake, to ever stop all the suffering, to actually experience real Love, is to go to that exact same space on the edge and say "I surrender to death".

I...I, do not think I can do that. Knowing what it felt like to die, I don't think I can willfully do that to myself. 

Now here's my real fear, knowing that I can't willfully kill myself, I might spend the rest of my life knowing that this is the only thing there is to do with my life. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not sex, not women, not pleasure, not purpose, not companionship, not even love, or even the basic joy of being alive, absolutely nothing is going to satisfy me or bring me any kind of real happiness. Only being Awake / Enlightened / Truth / being God, will I ever experience peace. Knowing that this is possible, and never trying, will drive me mad. Always knowing its there and possible, but I'm too chicken to try, the rest of my life will be fucked. If I try and fail for decades, wasting my life, my life is fucked. If I can't summon the will to actually kill myself (which I know I can't do), then the rest of my life is fucked. I won't be able to forget this, or let it go of this, if I know that there is a chance that all the suffering can actually go away. I just don't know what to do, if I can't do what you're saying I have to do in this video. 

Sorry for all the reading to do, I tried to make this as succinct as possible. And thank you for any answers or insights. 

[Viking]

I dont have much personal experience, but he pointed that out in his video that his previous experiences helped him.

I think (my opinion, didnt experience anything, again) that you need to experience enlightenment/truth/god a few times to be able to surrender. i think mostly enlightenment doesnt come with a bang, but slowly. Leo experienced a lot of god states using psychedelics and ordinary glimpses, my guess would be the more you have them the easier it will be to surrender. maybe try psychedelics if you havent already.

aside from that, that is again my opinion, that fulfillment is not binary. you can have various levels of fulfillment. im sure you felt very fulfilled a lot of times in your life and didnt notice it, because we're usually not fulfilled when we think of some desire or "i want to be fulfilled". 

notice that enlightenment is the absence of unfulfillment, and not fulfillment. think about this sentence:

1 hour ago, Jed Vassallo said:

Nothing, absolutely nothing, not sex, not women, not pleasure, not purpose, not companionship, not even love, or even the basic joy of being alive, absolutely nothing is going to satisfy me or bring me any kind of real happiness. Only being Awake / Enlightened / Truth / being God, will I ever experience peace.

do you actually believe it? where did you get that belief? seems like a bunch of bullshit to me tbh. 

if you havent already maybe try a vipassana retreat and see maybe how fulfilled you can be.

[dharm4]

What are your attachments? Is it your career, family, other pleasures? 

Death is about letting these go. The ultimate surrender is physical death, but before that happens you can work on surrendering the rest.

I have not come close to physical death, but there is an interesting insight from Kevin Smith on the latest Joe Rogan Podcast. He recently had a serious heart attack.

Starts at: 2:58:00

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by dharm4

[tecladocasio]

2 hours ago, Jed Vassallo said:

Now here's my real fear, knowing that I can't willfully kill myself, I might spend the rest of my life knowing that this is the only thing there is to do with my life. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not sex, not women, not pleasure, not purpose, not companionship, not even love, or even the basic joy of being alive, absolutely nothing is going to satisfy me or bring me any kind of real happiness. Only being Awake / Enlightened / Truth / being God, will I ever experience peace. Knowing that this is possible, and never trying, will drive me mad. Always knowing its there and possible,

man , you are really complicating things , this will still be you ego , you are trying to ''reach'' enlightment to be happy , to feel peace , to feel joy . You are don't need to be enlightened , if you want go for it , but don't think that other things are less important , you maybe are missing the point , God is freedom , and that's what make all things possible . You don't know what really ''being awake'' is , you just fantasize about it , not different from a persom that fantasize abou a nice car . Remember what leo said , to become enlightened you got to surrender even the desire to be enlightened and that's the trick thing , and that's what will make you free . You need to be okay suffering for eternity , and in that moment the suffering ceases , and that's will ''personal will'' don't make you enlightened , it just happens ... Hope that helps , thanks man 

[Leo Gura]

@Jed Vassallo Yes, it's not an easy thing to do. Which is why so few folks are enlightened. You should figure, if something is so rare that 1 in a million people have it, there must be a catch. And that's the catch.

The good news is, there's nothing to fear about death. It's a marvelous thing. Your experiences of suffering were not death, they were life! Be careful not to project that onto enlightenment. Whatever suffering or fear you experienced, that was not enlightenment.

Your entire post is an expression of fear. That is perfectly normal, but start to notice that it's just fear. You fear pursuing enlightenment, and you fear not pursuing enlightenment. Yes, that's normal. That will need to be resolved with time. Be patient. Allow yourself time.

You are more powerful than you give yourself credit. The way out of your dilemma is to keep doing the practices and growing. As you grow, your fears will dissolve more and more, gradually. Do more trips and see that death is nothing to fear.

Just because right now you feel that you are not strong enough to surrender, doesn't mean it will always be that way. Right now you are weak, but a month from today you might become strong. You don't know how strong you are yet. So don't worry about it too much.

For now, just very practically, I would say: focus on your daily practices: yoga, meditation, self-inquiry. The beauty of yoga is that it will build up your strength and gradually dissolve your fears, so that surrender becomes easy.

[Sempiternity]

Thank you, Leo. That is wonderful advice  

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, brovakhiin said:

Could you elaborate on this

Yoga rewires your nervous system. So you don't have to willpower your way to enlightenment.