Major Discussion Of Actualized.org Teachings & The Future

[Tim R]

45 minutes ago, mp22 said:

People who want to kill themselves take your teachings to their logical conclusion.

This whole thing is meaningless. According to your videos, I will live this and other existences an infinite amount of time. In fact I have probably killed myself an infinite amount of times.  It does not matter if I kill myself or make a million dollars.  Eventually I will go back to being alone as God then get bored and start the whole thing again. It's all a dream.

Again if it's a dream why not kill myself? why not shoot my kids in the head (you've mentioned the latter as one potential albeit radical step)?  They're not real after all and neither am I.

So why can't I kill myself and say you told me to? who cares since this whole thing is an illusion?

You seem to act exactly as if it's not an illusion. As if you are actually talking to other people who exist. As if your business exists and you are worried about your reputation. 

I think you need to explain this contradiction.

@mp22 There is no contradiction at all. You simply haven't yet understood what "meaninglessness" actually is and how deep it really goes.

If you think that meaninglessness is a problem and that therefore now you should end your life, you haven't understood. 

What happens, when truly everything becomes meaningless? Well, obviously the fact that everything is meaningless becomes meaningless too. And in that way, meaninglessness flips inside out - the moment you realize what 100% meaninglessness is, man.. That's liberation. That's a true gift. And you say "thank god this is just an illusion!" But you see, the illusion is real. If you think that "illusion" is a bad word, you also don't understand what is meant by saying "the universe is an illusion".

Please be careful. Because it seems to me that you have adopted some of the things Leo or someone else said as a philosophy and then turned it into a prescription for what to do. But that's not how it works.

Be very, very careful with rationalizing ideas like meaninglessness or suicide. It can develop into some seriously nasty problems. 

[Shin]

47 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

People are really taking these teachings beyond where they’re meant to be taken off of probably a rather partial awakening process. 

They’re missing the Love, becoming enraptured in beauty. They’re missing sitting at a family gathering in a high consciousness state and thinking of all the amazing relative gifts you’ve been given. 
 

@mp22

YOUR LIFE STORY IS THE STORY OF GOD’S LIFE FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE. TREAT ABSOLUTE PERFECTION WITH ITS DUE APPRECIATION ? That’s my message to people worried about no meaning and everything. If you saw the scope, you’d see the meaning. Would it be some immutable Absolute meaning? No, but it sure is amazing. 

 

Sorry for the caps, but seriously guys. If you haven’t had the deep love/beauty/pure consciousness awakenings enough to transform nihilism of any sort, focus on trying to create that next. It is the foundation for a safe and accurate understanding and use of the teachings. Part of the teachings is an inherent dedication and love toward life. That’s really one of the requirements to try to attain as early as possible imo. 

Remember the first time you had those realizations and you came back to full ego mod.

You probably were reacting like crazy to it and find all the excuses in the world to not pursue, I know I did, and wouldn't be surprised if the next time I become conscious of it again and come back to full Shin ego.

It's hard to accept, and looks like nothing when you did I'm sure, but until then, not so easy

[BipolarGrowth]

3 minutes ago, Shin said:

Remember the first time you had those realizations and you came back to full ego mod.

You probably were reacting like crazy to it and find all the excuses in the world to not pursue, I know I did, and wouldn't be surprised if the next time I become conscious of it again and come back to full Shin ego.

It's hard to accept, and looks like nothing when you did I'm sure, but until then, not so easy

This is a good point though. I had already suffered enough to be fully comfortable with total annihilation. But still these insights, when framed properly, are good safety rails. 
 

I think an important thing is to stop talking about physical death as if it’s the same as psychedelic death. This is a big epistemic error imo which had the dangerous outcome we saw. We don’t know beyond all doubt what an afterlife will contain. The difference is in the psychedelic case you have a functioning body left behind in this specific dream once you come down from the trip. 
 

Physical death... ain’t nobody coming back. 

[EternalForest]

I'm a huge fan of your work, and I can't thank you enough for all the value you've given me over the years. The book list and Spiral Dynamic series in particular have been invaluable. However, I must be honest and true to the thread about what I feel like is your biggest flaw: patronizing your students. 

Oftentimes while watching your videos it feels like you assume the person watching the video does nothing but play video games, watch porn and jack off all day (you insinuate your audience relishes in these activities nearly every video), and also assume they've never achieved anything close to your state of self actualization or enlightenment. This might be good for the new viewer to kind of "jolt them awake" so to speak but it causes a sort of dulling effect among your frequent students where they start to subconsciously feel like they'll never surpass or outgrow you. You've even teased about this a few times in recent videos, how "One day you might outgrow me" but it's always done with a little wink and an unspoken "but you have so much more to learn and I'm growing pretty fast, so you better keep watching". I just don't see any situation where someone watching your content for an extended period of time will ever advance beyond Actualized.org, and that's an issue because even though someone who watches all your videos is destined to be extremely developed and conscious, they'll never become as conscious as you. The best teachers create the best teachers, yet I don't see a strong enough push from Actualized.org to create leaders, especially spiritual teachers.

This issue is present in the videos but especially in the forum.

I value and appreciate the many insightful dialogues you and I have had, but again, I gotta be honest Leo...scrolling through your comment history, you come off as a total jerk sometimes. You don't sound at all like the wise man in your videos. I could bring up examples, but it's not any one example as much as it is your overall tone. A good chunk of the comments are helpful, but most of them are some variation on:

"Wooosh you missed the point"

"LOL this is total bullshit. Total pipe dream."

"Hahaha just go out and talk to girls"

"Bro, get off the computer and get back to work"

"Dude, quit bitching."

If I had never watched your Youtube videos and just read your comments, I'd think they were made by some punk kid trolling on his phone while waiting for the school bus.

Bottom line: please treat your students with more respect.

Edited June 2, 2021 by EternalForest
The best teachers create the best teachers, not the best students.

[Dumuzzi]

Let me just say, as an infrequent contributor here, that I like the openness of this community and how critical voices are allowed, even highly offensive threads are usually just locked, rather than outright deleted, so people can make up their own minds on the issues.

Personally, I am not into pyschedelics, but perhaps they can act as useful accelerators in the awakening process. Since they're highly illegal where I live, it's unlikely I'll ever find out, unless I take a Shamanic trip to Peru or some other place where such experiences are legally available.

What I really disagree with is the Pick-Up artistry side of things, I'm sorry, but if your main concern is picking up chicks for casual sex, your priorities are completely off, this is so far away from any traditional view of what is required for spiritual development, that it isn't even in the same ballpark. I have a similar critique of the obsession regarding material wealth, this is again higly incompatible with traditional views on what consitutes an enlightened person. 

If that is the path you wish to walk, it is your choice, but don't think this is in any way compatible with becoming enlightened.

[outlandish]

Soonhei's suicide has led me to do some serious thinking about my relationship with Leo's teachings and this forum. @Leo Gura is correct that when someone dies in the backcountry, or an airplane goes down, we don't cancel camping or ban flying. When this happens search & rescue and the airline industry conduct a rigorous post-mortem in order to make changes that reduce risk. Because of this approach, commercial flight has today become safer than driving. Following is my own post-mortem analysis, do with it what you will, apologies for the length. I've divided it up into 3 spheres:

1. Leo's Teaching

Leo's teachings have helped stupendously more people than they have harmed. Just looking at suicide, it seems clear that he has literally saved many people's lives. This is a great achievement alone, let alone all of the people who he has helped along the way in less dire situations. However, I would be dishonest if I didn't voice concern over some of his language. I believe some of it can easily be misunderstood and lead a person like Soonhei down the wrong path. This is not meant as an attack, I truly intend this as sharing a perspective, hopefully in the most (tough-) loving way possible. I hope this can help fortify Leo's teachings, and this community's response to them.

Disclaimers and warnings are a great idea, and will help. However the issue will remain that people will ignore them, think they don't apply to them, or skip them altogether. There can be the assumption that warnings are a fake covering-your-ass thing, put in place to meet legal requirements, or youtube guidelines etc. I think many of us are conditioned to ignore warnings to some degree. In my opinion, the true caution has to go right down to the core of the language in the teaching. 

To give a concrete example, Leo has said on more than one occasion that he has "literally died". Now, this is clearly not true in the normal medical sense of what people mean when they literally die. I would hope that even a confused person would see this, but it sets a tone. In my opinion, this is too dangerous a phrase. There needs to be a very, very strong line in the sand between ego-death/transcendence and literal medical death.

Again, I want to stay positive here, Leo is an extremely talented speaker, and it's impossible to deliver 100s of hours of lectures without an occasional error. I wouldn't last 1hr tbh. This is intended to hopefully shine some light.

2. This Forum

I value the diversity of respectful viewpoints and discussion on this forum. I also support mild censorship to ban and closing of terrible and unproductive threads, and aggressive or useless discussion to keep this forum from becoming a generic free-for-all. There are more than enough platforms for talking shit.

As a mod, I wish we could have noticed Soonhei's warning signs and intervened. What if. Fuck.

I would probably support disabling PMs on this forum. I'm not completely sure about this, but I think it warrants discussion. Perhaps we should have all discussion above board here.

I'm concerned that this community is displaying signs of cult-like behaviour. I think we could all do with checking in on the level of pedestalization of Leo and his teachings. Question respectfully, without attack. Check in if what you heard in his video is authentic for you. Check your biases, try not to worship. If someone has a thoughtful criticism of something you have gained from Leo's teaching (or any teaching), observe if this triggers you. I believe that a slight leaning towards an unquestioning and cult-like behaviour in this community contributed to Soonhei's fanatical final act.

3. Personal

I've been overly cavalier in not providing cautions on this forum, especially WRT psychedelics. I also regret not voicing and trying to discuss my concerns earlier. I'll be more forthcoming and hopefully loving in my responses and perspectives. I think we all need to adopt the voice of no-self-harm (and no other-harm!) in all of our interactions on here.

[mandyjw]

43 minutes ago, outlandish said:

As a mod, I wish we could have noticed Soonhei's warning signs and intervened. What if. Fuck.

I would probably support disabling PMs on this forum. I'm not completely sure about this, but I think it warrants discussion. Perhaps we should have all discussion above board here.

While I want to first say that I appreciate your well thought out post, I have to express how strongly opposed to this "take away" from this incident I feel. Disallowing people to connect on a deeper, more honest and private manner like through PM yet at the same time encouraging them to let go of everything they know, is going in the exact opposite direction in preventing incidents like this. 

Nahm was such an incredible resource and an asset to this forum. He provided me and countless others with insight and guidance when we needed it most. He did the same for Soonhei, and for whatever reason everyone was so concerned about what happened and who would get blamed for it that he got thrown under the bus. Of COURSE he was the last person he messaged, he was the only one HERE who he knew that would really listen. Yet it's painted in the exact opposite light, and we've lost one of the most insightful dedicated members here. Now it's like everyone doesn't care and is wanting to write "Don't Eat ;)" on the tide pods/psychedelic/nondual pointers and wash their hands of any responsibility. 

Is it weird that anyone can edit PMs at any time without them being marked as edited. Yep. Should that have been discussed? Yep. 

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by mandyjw

[Shin]

1 hour ago, mandyjw said:

Nahm was such an incredible resource and an asset to this forum. and we've lost one of the most insightful dedicated members here.

What ?

[mandyjw]

18 minutes ago, Shin said:

What ?

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. 

[Raptorsin7]

@Shin Maybe Nahm is done posting here after the incidient

[outlandish]

18 hours ago, mandyjw said:

I have to express how strongly opposed to this "take away" from this incident I feel. Disallowing people to connect on a deeper, more honest and private manner like through PM yet at the same time encouraging them to let go of everything they know, is going in the exact opposite direction in preventing incidents like this. 

Yes, it's definitely not clear in my mind if the PM system is a net benefit or problem, and I very well could easily be in the minority for even questioning it. I wanted to bring it up because I think it warrants discussion, so thanks for engaging in it. On the one hand it can allow people to connect like you said, on the other hand it could be fertile ground for nonsense and confusion out of sight of the rest of the community. 

Also, to be clear, I didn't bring this up as an underhanded criticism of the screen-shotted interaction between Nahm and Soonhei. To me, all that illustrated was the potential for general missed opportunities via the PM system. This is not a reaction to their specific dialogue, we truly don't know the details of what happened there.

[mandyjw]

@outlandish ? 

 

 

[The0Self]

@outlandish Good points! However: I for one think getting rid of the PM system, or even altering it in any way, would be a virtually guaranteed net negative.

[Bodhitree]

I don’t post all that much, but I enjoy the intersection between psychedelics, enlightenment work, and finding emotional depth. It would be a shame if the forum lost that or it’s open character, so I hope you will keep those aspects intact. 

That said, clearer guidelines on suicide and being life-positive might be appropriate. The discussion of suicide is a significant part of spiritual growth, and shouldn’t be lightly disregarded. However, some basic points from a training on how to talk to suicidal people might be welcome. 

 

[snowyowl]

I'd like some more transparency around the mod-making process. I get that it's Leo's decision, and I also read somewhere that the mods have their own private forum. Do members apply somehow, or are they tapped on the shoulder one day and asked if they want to be a mod? 

I'm asking because I prefer openness around processes, not because I want to be a mod (I don't have time for one thing). Sorry if I've missed this in the forum info & guidance somewhere. 

[tsuki]

The overall vibe that I get from this place is of superiority. This is why I stuck around for so long. We are criticizing the ways in which the world is structured and giving high ideals of how to live life. Some people are inspired by this vision and feel energized to bring about positive change. Yet, others feel the weight of this responsibility and feel crushed, escaping from reality into delusion. There is A TON of people like this in here! 

I think that we need more examples of people truly living their lives and sharing it authentically, without treating this platform as another social media outlet with curated profiles. We need to show that success is not about being impeccably presentable. Successful people also struggle with "petty" things like, not being able to show up for your partner sometimes, having a messy home, or being an alcoholic. I also think that we need more awareness towards mental health, trauma, shadow work and psychotherapy.

It is true that psychedelics are stigmatized and judged wrongly and I get that Leo's mission is to straighten things up in this respect. But psychedelics are also powerful tools that will bring more harm than good in hands of people that would otherwise benefit from more conventional ways of treatment. They are often presented as a fix-it-all pill, which is exactly what people seeking help want to hear. If downsides of psychedelics are mentioned, they are wrapped up in macho language ripe with virtue signalling. We are not doing a good job articulating that self-actualization is the apex of the whole damn pyramid. Yes, it's shiny, but it also blinds you.

Look at the logo. The pyramid is sparkly and it also is black.

[Nahm]

@sda

Yes, thanks, just taking a little space, a breather so to speak. Quite a tragedy indeed. 

[IAmReallyImportant]

I guess database changes are not tracked on low-level side or can be reconstructed? If this wasn't considered already, this could be a possibility to restore the chat history.

[sethman]

On 5/21/2021 at 4:16 AM, Leo Gura said:

Also, guys, please... those of you who support my work, do not attack, harass, or aggressively defend me in public or on other channels, etc. Because people will just use that to further demonize and misunderstand what we do here. Be polite and not too aggressive. The way this PR game works it that the more you try to defend Actualized.org, the more people will call you a delusional cult member. So you have to be smart about the PR game here. This is not about truth anymore, this is all a PR game now. This is collective ego survival 101. So those who will be attacking and demonzing Actualized.org will not care about truth, they will care about validating their worldview. And in their worldview Actualized.org is, of course, very conveniently, a dangerous cult. That will always be the easiest, laziest angle of attack.

there much truth in it. Sprituality and truth is being and looking the universe as temple and everything in it as a family and yourself, so you could have a less reactive and non-against approach to anyone. Because Leo has no-egoic unhelathy survival agenda, if you defend and create an ego, people will perceive it as a threat and a dangerous place. we aren't doing anything here on actualized.org, we are doing only self actualization, as musician, footballer, athletes, models, etc are doing. nothing to brag and nothing different than any other ordinary humans do. you have to be loving, understanding, righteous to the universe and the human Generations. we are together for uplifting and enhancing humans potential, we aren't meant to boast, be prideful or we see ourselves as a champion of truth. 

warning ⚠ 

Don't submit and get yourself in to destructive pattern. our journey is filling our 50+ trillion cells with light and consciousness. that means a lot of work in front of us. 

[sethman]

this are some of the problem of actualized.org 

1. Spritual language error - not understaning the power of language. Spritual experience must be precisely and accurately must be expressed like science. language has effect on human well being and understanding. language are faculty of human cognitive mechanisms, so we can't neglect language, one example would be psycholinguistics science, accelerating human psychology and language. 

2. being unprofessional - talk with irreligious approach and unscientific manner. bad mannerism. such as you are devil, chrstian are devils, it's hard to smell your fart, etc.

3. negative Spritual and self actualization approach - everything proposed as a title video are from negative side.

4. preduice - assuming knowing everything, not bother to ask forum members their opinions, not facilities and giving chance for people ideas to express. lack of discussion. when some one confront the teaching, demeaning people, by saying such as be here to learn.

5. intuitive teaching - misunderstanding the power of mind, not understanding mind and intuition are one aspect of the same coin. an ability Lacks to have a perfect mind, poor articulatig with words. operating only from Conscience.
misusing Spritual techniques teachings, without perfectly understanding embodying it. 

6. non-dual mistake - wrong non-duality teaching and understanding. teaching that evil and good are from one source and they are one and same. proposing God doesn't bother about weather you do evil or not, forgetting to recall, God is also a collection of people too.

7. deconstructing mentality - instead of helping people to become better by updating or constructing people's reality with perfection, using a method of deconstructing which is destroying people reality.

8. using brand names for personal gain - using humans survival brand names for personal gain. such as you are God. not understanding this will affect humans cognitive comprehensions ability and survival issues. 

9. half enlightenment - unknowingly speaking half truth.

10. logical errors - making too far logical claims, if the things has said would be in practicality reality they are almost far from the practical truth, it is like 99.9999% percent far. 

11. Demonising science - not understanding science and consciousness can't coexist. conflating the two, pushing science to be part of the consciousness arena. if science want to study consciousness it becomes a field, consciousness will not override science, Science only deals with materiality. consciousness with Sprituality. not understanding science doesn't deals with consciousness. consciousness more inclined with Sprituality and religion. 

13. Negative attitude about survival - encouraging people to abolish their survival impulse. forgetting reality is infinitely god and everthing is God, and survival too. over emphasising self actualization as priority, for every human beings it is must, lack of understanding that everyone is actualizing by his own pace and capacity.

14. Being negatively critical about religions and cultures - not understanding Religions cultures serve as a prototype for once true experience happen in the beginning. Religion culture serve as a Spritual verification for once journey, weather one is going at the right path or not.

15. being irreligious - not being Displined, suggesting people he can deceived and Manipulate people if he want, but has no need. a true Spritual and religious person wouldn't say or think like that.

16. all videos he made is wrong in their message - all videos he has made are only high conscious, which is he has made a lot of effort, but ultimately everything he has proposed and said and teach is wrong.

 

there are a lot but I don't have time and energy to list them.