Leo not being careful with teachings?

[OneHandClap]

Just now, johnlocke18 said:

@OneHandClap Well I feel like you get understand me then. The thing is me saying something can help, even though it isn’t going to stop him. If that person that committed suicide would’ve seen someone questioning Leo, it may have helped him reconsider. 

Well, let's put it this way. I believe you are speaking up about a valid issue, and I find that admirable. But I believe Leo's own reflection will have to come from himself in time. I do wish he would back off the promotion of psychedelics, but at this point I don't see it occurring. This has to be a personal decision. Thank you for speaking up, in any event. 

[johnlocke18]

@OneHandClap Saying this ain’t productive is silly when I’m coming right to where people are following him closely and can help them think twice. Telling me to go to one where people agree with me is what would be unproductive. 

[OneHandClap]

Just now, johnlocke18 said:

@OneHandClap Saying this ain’t productive is silly when I’m coming right to where people are following him closely and can help them think twice. Telling me to go to one where people agree with me is what would be unproductive. 

What I meant is, if you believe this strongly, you can always post on other platforms to tell people about what you think. Posting here, in the heart of the forum where regular viewers often go, will probably be met with the most resistance. I agree with you, but only because I already believe in the methods of not using psychedelics for excessive contemplation. Others do not. 

[johnlocke18]

@OneHandClap Like I said, it’s not jus tha our changing his mind. Even if he once again deflects, it might help someone think twice about doing something that would mess up their life jus the because Leo thinks they should do it. 

[johnlocke18]

 

@OneHandClap Okay this is another problem. You’re saying this is just what I believe. It’s not. My friend went homeless and he’s factually influenced a suicide. And other people have come out saying he’s ruined their life. It’s a problem and all he does is smart off about it. 

[johnlocke18]

@OneHandClap It’s not just my belief or opinion. This stuff has actually happened. I’m not accusing you but people do this as subtle gas lighting so they can say the person questioning Leo is deluded. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by johnlocke18

[OneHandClap]

1 minute ago, johnlocke18 said:

 

@OneHandClap Okay this is another problem. You’re saying this is just what I believe. It’s not. My friend went homeless and he’s factually influenced a suicide. And other people have come out saying he’s ruined their life. It’s a problem and all he does is smart off about it. 

I apologize if my use of belief offended you. A belief doesn't mean there's not evidence behind it; it just means it's what you consider true from your POV. We can both agree that is true. Others believe there is no problem with any of it (I am not saying I believe that). I am sorry about your friend. 

I'm just pointing out that this is akin to going to a political rally and standing in the middle, shouting about how bad that political party is. You would have better results speaking to those who are not firmly committed yet. Again, I sympathize and do wish Leo would look more closely at his teachings about psychedelics and radical deconstruction of the human mind. I am not here to buy into teachings blindly, merely to talk about consciousness work. 

[johnlocke18]

@Adrian325 I was talking about problems Leo has factually caused. You came here making assumptions so I made them back. Then you sized me up and gave me your resume and then called me egoic when I gave you mine and started talking about how I don’t know the unknown. You’re being a hypocrite when I play a game that you’re the one trying to play. I think you’re just painting others with you own insecurities. You’re the scared child here and I think people have called you that when you brag about screwing up your life. 

[OneHandClap]

2 minutes ago, johnlocke18 said:

@Adrian325 I was talking about problems Leo has factually caused. You came here making assumptions so I made them back. Then you sized me up and gave me your resume and then called me egoic when I gave you mine and started talking about how I don’t know the unknown. You’re being a hypocrite when I play a game that you’re the one trying to play. I think you’re just painting others with you own insecurities. You’re the scared child here and I think people have called you that when you brag about screwing up your life. 

I'll leave you to your crusade, then.  

[johnlocke18]

@OneHandClap It didn’t offend me. I’m trying not to let you make it out that’s it’s just my opinion when these I’m saying things that have factually cause problems. It’s not like shouting in the middle of a political rally because it’s not just my views. He really influenced a suicide and really influenced my friend to go homeless. That’s not just my opinion. 

[Byun Sean]

2 hours ago, johnlocke18 said:

@Byun Sean When did I say I haven’t? In my opinion we can’t know it’s the truth and it’s just your guys and Leo’s belief that it is. You guys need to learn to stay on subject and making assumptions is one of the many things that makes this look like a cult.  It is corrupt though because of the things I mentioned this whole thread that have factually happened. 

I'm not making any assumptions. 

I myself have not taken 5 meo so I cannot say I definitively know what it does.

 I'm just poppin the question of how would you know if you haven't tried.

Leo is not a cult leader. He's just a guy on youtube sharing his personal development ideas and practices. I mean come one he gives away

like 99 percent of his content away for free. He could easily make way more money off of this stuff.

It's your job to do research from many different sources other than Leo and test what he says carefully in your own direct experience to make sure

you aren't taking stuff on blind faith.

No one is at fault for your epistemic errors.

He also gives many disclaimers in his videos of the dangers of misusing psyches and misinterpreting the teachings. He says it so many times. 

It's just foolish to shut down a potentially useful personal development technique over a few niche cases where people misused the teachings

and did something dangerous.

There will always be mistakes with everything no matter how many precautions you set and disclaimers you say. We

never want these cases to happen and we try are best but there is always a tradeoff in every technology.

 

I mean why don't we just ban cars too because people get into car accidents due to bad driving. People who believe in cars are evil. 

And why don't we just make it illegal to go swimming in the ocean at beaches because some people will swim out too far and die by shark attacks or 

drown.

 

See the difference between those cases I just listed and psyches is that you don't know what psyches are or how they work and so it scares you.

The mind is threatened by anything it can't make total sense of. 

So you won't ever open your mind to the possibility that psychedelics may or may not be a useful personal development tool and instead label it 

as a mind destroying evil drug.

Again I've never used psyches. I don't have too. Your not being open minded or neutral here. You are trying to take sides between what to believe 

but these are just your own imaginations. You won't really know until you do some quality unbiased research and try some psyches for yourself 

with an open mind with all the safe precautions to see what it really does for you in your direct experience.

 

Not what you've heard from someone else. Not a belief system or ideology. But your personal unbiased experience. 

 

 

[kinesin]

6 hours ago, OneHandClap said:

I'm not saying you don't have a point. I'm just saying... what is the real end result? I don't think he is going to change. I have accepted that. There are a million forums online to discuss spirituality and consciousness, and this one's "fixation" is psychedelic use. So, again, we come back to the question... what will you do about it? Are you going to put up billboards saying Leo Gura is bad? This just doesn't feel productive. He is not receptive to mandates about what he should do, and if he hasn't expressed remorse now, I doubt he will in the future. 

Try to look beyond this individual poster and their criticisms, and consider them as a single point of a larger pattern manifesting.  There are a lot of people with criticisms of Leo around these days - infact the majority of the time his name is brought up anywhere outside of this forum or his youtube comments, these criticisms are discussed.  Google his name and on the very first page you'll find posts arguing that he's a scammer, that this is a cult etc.  In my estimation, all of this criticism is due to the fact that Leo has been sloppy and unthinking with his 'teachings'.  If he were more careful not to lead people toward mental breaks, if he was more aware of his own ego, these issues wouldn't have arisen.  In my view 'truth' means that which is actually in real accordance with what is good and pure, with what actually works and leads to positive outcomes.  Leo's approach is producing chaotic ripples of criticism and negative outcomes precisely because his position isn't based in truth.  Perhaps some elements of the nondual philosophy are true... but his personal manner of behaviour, his lack of care or consideration etc are not truthful at all.

I agree with you, Leo won't change, he's simply too stubborn and ego-entrenched.  These criticisms aren't going away though, so I foresee this community going down the path of many 'cults' where they have to become progressively more insular and closed-off to outside comments, and eventually the only people allowed in are the dedicated true-believers.

[Blackhawk]

Just now, kinesin said:

In my view 'truth' means that which is actually in real accordance with what is good and pure, with what actually works and leads to positive outcomes. 

Ummmm....

You might want to rethink that one.

[kinesin]

@Blackhawk  You'd be better off rethinking it yourself, because that's the most accurate and useful interpretation of truth there is.

[Nahm]

On 7/11/2021 at 6:54 PM, kinesin said:

SoonHei DMed a moderator outlining what he planned to do

 

I don’t think you are spreading misinformation knowingly, on purpose. But that statement has no truth whatsoever. I received & replied to like three jumbled sentences, and his message was edited & greatly expanded with much detail, after I replied. That edit was seen some ten days later.  I get how it looks, totally. But that’s true nonetheless. Consider, right now today, anyone could log into a user’s account, your account, Leo’s account, my account, and post private messages which were edited. Not you, not a user, someone who is not even a user on this forum. And consider, that is permissible. There is literally nothing you could do about it no matter how false it was or what impression it gave.  Also consider, I offered several times to meet with his sister and or wife and received no reply. I offered to meet with him without any charge more than once prior to the event, in response to topics like loa, dreamboard. In one way I kinda do not desire to bring this up, as it feels a lot like it looks like speaking ill of the dead, but the editing of the message, if he did it, could be indicative of a happy joyful facade covering much pain. As a dad, maturity & willingness to express and ask for help come to mind. I don’t mean to imply a correlation of ‘childishness’ whatsoever, but it’s very common for kids and adults to express after the fact, and to spin it on mom and dad, or another, in a very similar hindsight manor. You’ve likely experienced this yourself to some degree in your life. 

“You'd be better off rethinking it yourself, because that's the most accurate and useful interpretation of truth there is”

Listen to & employ your own solid advice. 

“Getting there’, the truth of the situation, would require your Monday morning quarterbacking  transmute into actually ‘getting out there’ and helping people. Actually. Like face to face, like ‘real’ folks in the ‘real’ world do. If & when, you’d learn how lifetimes of resentment get aimed at and dumped right on you, (transference) which is in large part why people don’t bother, and just talk talk talk. (Just because one can’t possibly be too clear, that is not a ‘Leo comment’, but a humanity comment). 

You might also (and might very well not) consider compassion. Imagine people desperately looking for answers, which you are well experienced & equipped to help them realize, but they talk about you, and do not even respond to offers to talk with you, at any time zone, at any time, of your free time, which you like everyone else have virtually none of. 

[kinesin]

27 minutes ago, Nahm said:

I don’t think you are spreading misinformation knowingly, on purpose. But that statement has no truth whatsoever. I received & replied to like three jumbled sentences, and his message was edited & greatly expanded with much detail, after I replied. That edit was seen some ten days later.

Of course, hindsight is 20-20, but I would say this is far from 'jumbled' and infact shows clearly that he was entertaining dangerous concepts.  Of course at that point, there was no protocol for dealing with users who express such leanings so it can be forgiven that it wasn't dealt with appropriately.

I've seen you make reference to these 'edited comments' a few times and I wonder, do you have any evidence to suggest that any meaningful edits were actually made to these comments, and not simply cleaning up spelling errors and such?  The insinuation I get from your claim is that any reference to contemplating suicide was added in much later, so you couldn't have been expected to notice any warning signs.  It seems to me however that the entirety of this comment relates to the question of "if I die, will I respawn?" which is something Leo has clumsily claimed to be true before.

[Nahm]

@kinesin

Yes it does. You are not seeing the message I received. You are doing the same thing again in posting that, and saying and or insinuating that it is. You can refute this, that’s up to you. I’m just sharing what transpired. 

I’m not saying that is the message I received and hindsight is 20/20. I am saying that is not the message I received, and people often say one thing, not giving any context of what they’re experiencing, and then after the fact express intensely, with you now ‘in the story’, as the focal point. That has a potential ring of talking poorly about him, but that is not what I’m saying or the sentiment. Keep in mind, I am the other end of a pm, not a family member, not someone who ever even saw or talked with him. And again, I offered to talk face to face with everyone involved. Still do. 

If you can put yourself in the shoes for a second, what evidence could there really be? When I saw it, I pm’d Leo telling him exactly what transpired. That pm didn’t make the headlines. It’s not nearly as intriguing, the truth rarely is in matters like this.  I can not reverse an edit to print or screenshot a message any more than you could. I did also email a user here as well, as I was talking it through trying to wrap my head around where his head might have been. Ultimately I can not know. Also, keep in mind, there was a public post / thread, which seemed quite literal as well. I didn’t see that thread until long after receiving the message. 

Also, I don’t think it’s as black & white as to say I couldn’t have or shouldn’t have noticed some warning sign(s). Honestly I also feel like I could, or more so, should have. That’s on me and I’m still eatin it. Yet, the addition of approx 80% of the text to the message leaves me generally wishing I had the unedited version to compare, to see with some black & white exactly what I might have missed. And yet, among all of this, there aren’t even any separate selves, and expecting all-grey to be any black & white just in my opinion, brings us all back to self-realization and it’s potential for this place at large. 

Also, what I say is never ‘on you’ because you participate in this forum, anymore than what Leo says is ‘on me’. 

Also, I’m being a bit ‘personal’ toward you, more so in the prior comment, and I apologize for that. 

[kinesin]

14 minutes ago, Nahm said:

When I saw it, I pm’d Leo telling him exactly what transpired. That pm didn’t make the headlines. It’s not nearly as intriguing, the truth rarely is in matters like this.

There was no 'headlines', the screenshot I posted was simply a screenshot which was shared in the thread announcing SoonHei's death.  If you want to show another side of the story by sharing the PM you sent to Leo for example or giving more information about how the comments looked to you when you first recieved and responded to them, nobody would stop you from doing it.

I should clarify, I'm not trying to put any undue responsibility on you.  Infact I almost feel pulled into such a polar position as if by the magnetic effect of the position you yourself are expressing.  You defend, so I observe myself stepping forward to poke.  There's nothing personal about it, it's a systematic interaction.

Edited July 18, 2021 by kinesin

[Nahm]

@kinesin

I can certainly appreciate that, but really to what end. There’s nothing to defend, I’m just sharing what transpired at my end because I saw your comment. 

[kinesin]

13 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@kinesin

I can certainly appreciate that, but really to what end. There’s nothing to defend, I’m just sharing what transpired at my end because I saw your comment. 

There are no ends, only processes.  In my view some elements of Leo's clumsy delivery of these teachings has opened the door to chaos, of which SoonHei's death is one manifestation and these ongoing discussions are more manifesations.  I think really the only thing that'll free the community from this issue is if Leo goes through a series of experiences which shape him into a more open, empathetic and considerate person who is less of a target for being accused of acting like a cult leader, and less susceptible to being interpreted in dangerous ways.