Leo's stage blue video is good.

[lmfao]

Leo I love the video you made today man. I think you nailed down the essence of stage blue and how it typically manifests. 

Watching your video made me anxious lol because it triggered bad memories I had with stage blue thinking, since I'm an atheist living with a Muslim Pakistani family in Britain. I've had a lot of experience with the type of thinking you talked about in the video. I've visited Pakistan many times to meet my family as a child and I've interacted with Muslim communities a lot. I had to regularly go to a madrasa since when I was a young child to just a few years ago when I was 14.

I feel hateful towards religious fundamentalists because of the psychological and social damage they can do to you. I will probably have future problems because of the messed up social conditioning stage blue upbringing gives you. 

I'm finding it hard to release this hatred I feel towards stage blue and towards the people who exhibit it. Whenever "shit gets real" and personal for you it becomes a lot harder to remain present and mindful, but I've started to realise a little that my  hatred is the result of my ego not being able to just let go. But I shall try to let go. 

Even if I release hatred of stage blue people, they sure as hell ain't gonna be the type of people I usually hang out with. I'm very a politically incorrect person with dark humour who finds many of societies institutions to be a joke. Whenever I see a situation my natural inclination is to not moralise. Very different from self people who get offended and emotional over the most petty things. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by lmfao

[Leo Gura]

@lmfao Yeah, it's tough not to judge the lower stages. You really gotta grow into deep Yellow and Turquoise in order to be able to look upon Blue and the other stages without animosity. At Turquoise there is a deep realization that everything within reality is necessary and perfect. When you realize that, you see that every person is precisely where they must be. It makes no sense any longer to blame or criticize people for their ignorance because they know not what they do and they cannot help themselves.

The only way to attain peace for yourself is to totally drop all judgment of people and reality. And this can only happen by becoming conscious of the truth of nonduality. You have to realize that self/other are literally identical.

If you accomplish that, you will be left with unconditional love for all. You will see the world the way God sees it: perfect as it is.

One of the biggest obstacles to enlightenment is giving up all your judgments, demonizations, and criticisms of reality.

Imagine being unable to judge anyone or anything ever again. Such a notion scares most people. Unconditional love is very radical. The ego cannot stand it. It's too dangerous from the ego's perspective.

[Recursoinominado]

@Leo Gura I find it accurate. It's a hard trip to not judge anyone and see it as perfect no matter how shitty some types of behaviors looks like. I feel trapped in a loop of: 

- This behavior is reprehensible

- Shit, i just made a judgment, i suck.

- Oh shit, i must not judge myself either.

*Trapped in a spiral of guilt and shame*

I find that it's often harder to have empathy toward myself than to others. Maybe it's because we often see others behaviors only partially and we can see every single egotistical thought of ours (even the darker and more secret ones) and all of our mistakes. 

One must have to feel, experience unconditional love and actually see the perfection of all, otherwise, you are going to try to imitate a saint behaviour from the standpoint of the ego, always serving its interests, no matter how "holy" your behavior looks like on the outside and even to yourself (the subconscious drive to self-preservation always wins until you SEE the oneness of all). Idon't know  how to escape this trap without having such experience. Intellectualize is not enough. 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Recursoinominado

[Leo Gura]

@Recursoinominado That's right. You cannot get to unconditional acceptance through intellectualization or belief. You need to start having some nondual experiences, mystical experiences. Psychedelics or yoga/meditation is the way.

But practicing active non-judgment is also very helpful.

[Leo Gura]

@Joseph Maynor I never said Turquoise doesn't act.

At the deepest levels of nonduality all action is pointless. You could just shoot yourself and it would be okay. It's all perfect. Teaching is pointless of course. But in practice you will probably just carry on with life, for shits and giggles, and probably teach.

The world cannot be improved in any way at all. It is an Absolute singularity, and everything is already contained within it for eternity. But this is not something that can be explained, and it certainly sits outside of Spiral Dynamics so I don't even talk about it. You will only discover this for yourself, at the very deepest levels of nondual consciousness. At which point, you will no longer need me or anyone else to guide you.

[Leo Gura]

@Joseph Maynor You speak of things you've yet to realize.

Finger pointing to the moon.

[carlos flores]

@Leo Gura One question that popped up during the video was if past civilizations and empires evolved into a stage like orange and green, but were later taken over by a lower stage. For example, the ancient greeks were very accepting of homosexuality and other practices that were considered very taboo by other civilizations. Even the romans were accepting of this behavior. However, when these empires collapse it seems like life when backwards and all progress just stopped. Have lower stage civilizations taken over higher stages in the past?

[Rilles]

@Joseph Maynor Isnt any opinion about the world a thought-story? Its neither perfect not terrible... its...

Edited June 18, 2018 by Rilles

[DoubleYou]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The world cannot be improved in any way at all. It is an Absolute singularity, and everything is already contained within it for eternity.

And paradoxically, all improvement comes forth from the knowing that there's nothing to improve. 

That's the joke. Spiritual teachers aren't teaching you anything. They're not pointing you to things that need improvement. They're just showing you what's true. There's no effort in that. No need to persuade. Simply a one to one translation of reality as they experience it.

And it turns out, that which is True, is always evolving. So in the simple act of sharing Truth, things start 'improving' automatically. Or evolving.
That's how something that is already perfect can continuously 'improve' itself. But it's never better or worse.

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, carlos flores said:

@Leo Gura One question that popped up during the video was if past civilizations and empires evolved into a stage like orange and green, but were later taken over by a lower stage. For example, the ancient greeks were very accepting of homosexuality and other practices that were considered very taboo by other civilizations. Even the romans were accepting of this behavior. However, when these empires collapse it seems like life when backwards and all progress just stopped. Have lower stage civilizations taken over higher stages in the past?

It's a tricky topic. It's hard to judge from our vantage point who was more advanced, Rome/Greece vs the Christian empire. The Middle Ages were not as dark as is popularly assumed.

Don't forget, up to 45% of the Roman population were slaves. It's difficult for us to imagine just how barbaric and cruel life was in these ancient civilizations. Sure, homosexuality might have been accepted, but you could also be thrown into a pit of lions for some random reason, or your wife raped on the side of a bridge crossing.

If a Roman city was sacked, all the men were slaughtered and all the women and children sold into slavery.

Christianity did bring about a certain degree of moral order.

[lmfao]

@Joseph Maynor I've heard you use the term "thought-story" a lot. What does that term mean to you? Right now we are on a forum and we communicate with each other in words, and words are essentially the fruit of thought. So isn't everything we say a thought-story? 

[carlos flores]

@Leo Gura Thank you for the response. I loved your video because it really helped me understand things better, especially with understanding my own country. In Mexico, people tend to be very traditionalist, religious and nationalist. Today I read that 40,000 mexicans traveled to russia to attend the Germany vs Mexico soccer game compared to 4,000 germans (even though Germany it's about 3-4 hours away from Russia). Many in the media talked about it like a good thing, but in my mind I saw it as a very blue stage type of thinking. Traveling all that way and spending so much money felt like a very nationalist and patriotic thing a blue stage person would do. Maybe I could be exaggerating, but that was my first reaction.

[WaterfallMachine]

@Joseph Maynor Can you define what you mean by perfection? I have a feeling two of you are disagreeing because you have very different definitions of the same word.

[WaterfallMachine]

5 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Which word?  I don’t think I used ‘perfection’.

But you've commented on Leo's idea of perfection, suggesting some unsaid beliefs onto what it means. I can't ask Leo for his definition because I require personal experience for that, but maybe I can ask you.

[WaterfallMachine]

1 hour ago, Joseph Maynor said:

The idea that the world is perfect is a thought-story.  It’s bullshit.  Don’t cling to that belief.  Yoi’re still clinging way too much to beliefs.  You haven’t transcended beliefs yet. 

This one. I'd like to learn from you your thoughts.

Edited June 18, 2018 by WaterfallMachine

[SoothedByRain]

@Leo Gura I have been looking forward to you diving deeper into the model of Spiral Dynamics. You delivered sir  I'm excited to ascend into the more complex comprehending stages as the weeks go by. I appreciate your work.

Have a good day dude.

[tsuki]

55 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Here’s what Turquoise would say:

‘Guys, I put together a model of Stage Blue from my perspective.  I want to see if it helps you.  See if it resonates with you and get back to me on it, because I wanna hear your perspective on it too.’

@Joseph Maynor You are underestimating the fact that Leo is making a living through his videos.
Most people will not recognize value in a perspective unless it is presented as true and backed up by authority.
You have to tailor your message to your audience if they are supposed to digest it. Sometimes they need to digest it, just to see that it's junk food.
This is how self-development is done up to a certain point. Leo has repeatedly said that his videos are a solid island of shit in a sea of shit.

There is no way to gauge other people's stage externally like you're trying to do. Nor there is a need to.

[tsuki]

22 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

What is absolutism regarding belief?  You’re assuming the way you think about something is the ‘one right way’, and that’s the way that I should think about the same matter too.  But, see, you and I have two totally different systems of Conceptual Understanding.  You lack full appreciation of the issue of Perspective, of perspectival pluralism.  Don’t feel bad, I was there too.

@Joseph Maynor The fact that my sentences end in a full stop does not mean that my thinking is absolute.
I am simply conveying my perspective and giving you the benefit of assuming that you can see that I'm being honest to my experience.
I never claim that reality is any different from how you (Joseph) perceive it. I am communicating my perception of it.
Establishing that something is only my perspective every time I try to say something is silly. Equally silly is trying to convince others of being turquoise, or any other color for that matter, as it is nobody else's business.

Have you noticed your absolutism about my absolutism in your response? I'm not saying as a riposte, but to point out how language works.

[Colin]

@JL

23 minutes ago, JL said:

As if the weekly videos weren't enjoyable enough

BEARD, YES

lol

[p1xelmonk]

lol didn't know maynor was so full of himself