Question for Leo

[Leo Gura]

19 hours ago, benny said:

You go as far as to say that certain ideas must be contemplated for a decade or more. Given the sheer magnitude of work it takes to develop big-picture understanding just from studying the theory, never mind embodying it, I don't see how it would be feasible to contemplate all the theory I study.

You won't deeply contemplate everything you study. You selectively contemplate those aspects of reality which seem important.

But in general, any time you learn or read something you should be contemplating it at least a little, if only for 10 or 60 minutes. Otherwise you'll just adopt a bunch of beliefs and act like a fool.

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Sometimes, it seems, certain ideas can be confirmed or disconfirmed simply by field-testing them. For example, pickup/dating/communication theory. I don't need to independently derive the conclusions or contemplate them to put them into practice and see they work.

Pickup/dating/communication certainly needs to be contemplated. I've spent 100s of hours contemplating that stuff and deriving important insights.

If you just mechanically follow some rules someone else has told you about, I guarantee your results will not be optimal and you will fall into delusion at some point. There is a lot of bad advice within pickup that you should not be following. How will you distinguish that without contemplation? Contemplation is also faster and easier and safer than field testing. You can contemplate a lot more stuff than you can field test. Field testing is just an extension of contemplation, really.

Contemplation >> Field testing >> More contemplation >> More field testing >> More contemplation

That is the cycle.

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I'm getting the impression that it's up to me to use my judgment to determine when contemplation is warranted.

Obviously, although basically everything is made better with contemplation. The question isn't whether you should contemplate a thing, but which things to prioritize contemplating.

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It also sounds like (and is readily apparent) that I will have to be picky about what I choose to embody vs simply understand at the conceptual/intellectual level.

Life is all about being picky and prioritizing your time and energy well.

Contemplate especially those things which are of highest significance to you, those things which you will spend a lot of time doing. Like life. Life is a good thing to contemplate because you'll be spending 80 years living it

[mmKay]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You won't deeply contemplate everything you study. You selectively contemplate those aspects of reality which seem important.

But in general, any time you learn or read something you should be contemplating it at least a little, if only for 10 or 60 minutes. Otherwise you'll just adopt a bunch of beliefs and act like a fool.

Pickup/dating/communication certainly needs to be contemplated. I've spent 100s of hours contemplating that stuff and deriving important insights.

If you just mechanically follow some rules someone else has told you about, I guarantee your results will not be optimal and you will fall into delusion at some point. There is a lot of bad advice within pickup that you should not be following. How will you distinguish that without contemplation? Contemplation is also faster and easier and safer than field testing. You can contemplate a lot more stuff than you can field test. Field testing is just an extension of contemplation, really.

Contemplation >> Field testing >> More contemplation >> More field testing >> More contemplation

That is the cycle.

Obviously, although basically everything is made better with contemplation. The question isn't whether you should contemplate a thing, but which things to prioritize contemplating.

Life is all about being picky and prioritizing your time and energy well.

Would you say that Contemplation is the very core of your life? 

It really gets me in the zone really easy, and really deep. I thought about turning it in an essential facet of my LP but it doesn't click completely at this point of my life. I feel I'm too young and have burned through too little karma to live the sage life. 

Maybe I'll manage to combine it with the impact of humor / playfulness  and vanlife travelling. 

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, mmKay said:

Would you say that Contemplation is the very core of your life?

It's probably so core that I don't even consider it core. It's just the air I breathe as I go about my day.

[benny]

@Leo Gura

 

Thanks boss.

[benny]

32 minutes ago, Jacob Morres said:

can you give me an example?

An example of when contemplation is warranted? That will depend on personal judgment and priorities, but one such example would be contemplating how the mechanism that brings us from our higher selves to our lower selves is feeling threatened. That's a deep insight worth contemplating.

 

Same with being picky about embodiment vs. logical understanding. That will depend on your priorities.

[knakoo]

On 28/12/2020 at 10:23 PM, Leo Gura said:

To me, conceptual understanding is not some dirty word. It's the bulk of my life's work.

Any true understanding is beyond concept no ? You said it yourself "Understanding is a much deeper thing than concepts. You can understand beyond concept or knowledge. Isn't this deeper understanding what you truly care about. So why do you say conceptual understanding is the bulk of your life's work?

Also isn't your passion for understanding a form of seeking ? If that's the case don't you think that it reinforces your sense of self, because you need a self to be in seeking mode. 

It seems to me that at some point on the spiritual path, there needs to be a shift from seeking to understand to simply being. Do you disagree ?

Are you at a point where you could do a 30-60 days vipassana meditation retreat (or solo retreat) and spend most of that time in the incredibly blissful state of being, with literally no thoughts appearing in your mind? If this would be somewhat difficult for you (it would be for me!), don't you think you could do with a little more being and a little less seeking to understand ? Would you not get all of the insights you care about simply by being, with downloads ?

I am asking these questions because I have myself a pretty curious mind, but I wonder if this not all just a distraction from simply being (like going on walks, meditation...). it seems that I can integrate the insights I get as a result of this curious mind, to help me on my path. Like sometimes I read something on this forum and get shivers as something clicks and I intuitively understand something. So it is apparently beneficial. But I wonder if my mind is not deceiving me with all of this curiosity. Maybe every time I have an impulse to understand or contemplate, I should simply observe and let go of the impulse.

@Forestluv and @Nahm (or anyone else!) I would love to have your take on this.

 

edit : Also you saying that Contemplation is "so core that I don't even consider it core. It's just the air I breathe as I go about my day." sounds like the seeking energy is always present in you, with little space for simply being.

Edited December 30, 2020 by knakoo

[benny]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You won't deeply contemplate everything you study. You selectively contemplate those aspects of reality which seem important.

But in general, any time you learn or read something you should be contemplating it at least a little, if only for 10 or 60 minutes. Otherwise you'll just adopt a bunch of beliefs and act like a fool.

Thanks Leo, this really helps. So if I were to read a book on relationships, and it was full of high-quality theory, you're telling me it wouldn't be enough to just go and put what I learn into practice? If I were to put it into practice and confirm it in direct experience, without contemplating it, would it still be a belief? If field-testing is an extension of contemplation, I can't see that being the case, but curious to get your thoughts. On that note, what is it exactly about holding mere beliefs that's so bad? Not doubting this, just curious. And by the way, before I posed the question, I contemplated this and arrived at my own answers  I'm also curious to hear what you have to say.

 

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Pickup/dating/communication certainly needs to be contemplated. I've spent 100s of hours contemplating that stuff and deriving important insights.

If you just mechanically follow some rules someone else has told you about, I guarantee your results will not be optimal and you will fall into delusion at some point. There is a lot of bad advice within pickup that you should not be following. How will you distinguish that without contemplation? Contemplation is also faster and easier and safer than field testing. You can contemplate a lot more stuff than you can field test. Field testing is just an extension of contemplation, really.

Contemplation >> Field testing >> More contemplation >> More field testing >> More contemplation

That is the cycle.

It sounds like you're saying that contemplation helps to separate the gold from the BS, in addition to deriving new learnings and insights. If we just take what we read on blind faith, without thinking it through and/or testing it in direct experience, our model of reality is unsubstantiated. This alone is bad enough, and it gets even worse when our model is predicated on unsubstantiated BS. Other than that, if anything, why does implementation without contemplation reduce the quality of my results? Again, I have my own answers, but I want to hear yours too.

 

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Contemplate especially those things which are of highest significance to you, those things which you will spend a lot of time doing. Like life. Life is a good thing to contemplate because you'll be spending 80 years living it

Thank you, senpai.

[Leo Gura]

50 minutes ago, knakoo said:

Any true understanding is beyond concept no ?

It encompasses concept and can go beyond it.

I don't like it when people denigrate concept as if it's some evil or dirty thing. Most of your life is lived thanks to concepts and you're not escaping that any time soon.

[Forestluv]

@knakoo I think you are spot on in one area, yet are limiting yourself.

In one realm of pure experience, knowledge and concepts don’t mean shit. You gotta leave that at the door for entry. An example would be engagement in kundalini yoga and moving energy, entering a state of no mind in meditation, or experiencing a concert. Imagine going to a concert and your friend won’t stop yapping about concepts of enjoying music. We’d probably ask them to shut up so we can actually experience and enjoy the concert. 

Yet just because conceptualization can be a distraction and barrier in one context, doesn’t mean it is in all contexts. Consider someone like Matsuo Basho. That dude was woke af and sat around for weeks in nature writing poems. That is a form of description through abstraction. Or someone like Alan Watts. He was highly conceptual. Concepts have a role in many areas of life.

Yet I would say for those seeking realizations / awakenings to use conceptualization and thinking sparingly. I have a tendency to overdo it - my default is probably 90% conceptualization and this can be a major distraction / barrier for how I would like to live life. A healthier balance would be about 50% conceptualization, yet this takes work and effort for me. 

[Ry4n]

9 hours ago, Forestluv said:

I have a tendency to overdo it - my default is probably 90% conceptualization and this can be a major distraction / barrier for how I would like to live life. A healthier balance would be about 50% conceptualization, yet this takes work and effort for me. 

I can resonate with that, I think a lot of people more serious about this find contemplation to be a literal default state for them, the very idea of sitting down to contemplate as if it's some structured chore-like activity to do sounds simply absurd! It isn't supposed to be something one "should" do, it  should be completely spontaneous in my opinion, with meditation being the antidote to overdoing it so one isn't lost in conceptualisation. 

[Nahm]

14 hours ago, knakoo said:

 

@Forestluv and @Nahm (or anyone else!)  I would love to have your take on this.

Go prior, so to speak.