Overcoming spirituality

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

Hi Leo, Hi everyone,
 
I have been consuming your stuff for some time by now. I was actually wondering whether it would be worth the time here to write a lengthy comment. I really do think that many of your non-esoteric teachings on your channel are quite valuable and courageously unconventional. And I also think that we should develop ourselves, and grow and refine our consciousnesses. That is good stuff, I appreciate it! From what I know I think that you are amongst the top league of Youtube high consciousness content providers. And I pull off my hat for that fact that you put it out for free. Props for doing that!  
 
But! With all due respect, Leo,  in what follows I do not intend to adulate you, since that would be rather boring and not provide for a good discussion. I would like to share my overall critique of your teachings. And since other people also find the way you teach as somewhat aggressive, I say „If you dish it out, you have to be able to take it.‟ ;-)
I myself like to be outright and outspoken, so to me it is not such a big problem.  
My critique is not all-encompassing. I did not watch every single of your videos. But a good chunk of it.  
 
Don’t let being as good as you are delude you into believing that you are infallible (you not rarely sound as of you believe yourself to be that). In every of your videos I have to more or less frown at several points due to the flawed reasoning that you display, or I notice points where you contradict yourself, even to things that you mentioned minutes ago in the same video (I could cite examples if you are interested, but they are not my main point here). Well, that is all okay, we all make mistakes and err from time to time. Yet I would not expect such mistakes of someone who thinks he is „god‟ (even the way you define that catchword)…
It also sometimes seems to me that you wish to maintain a kind of „aura of enlightenment‟. You address too little self-doubt in your videos. Because you have to. Since if you would admit your doubts or occasional mistakes your teachings would not be as well received anymore (more on that later). Overall I get the impression that you – thanks to all the personal development and study you have done – have grown a huge, even somewhat arrogant and overbearing, spiritual ego. I miss humility a bit. This calling-yourself-god stuff is probably the most ludicrous outgrowth of it.

From the way you speak I get the impression that you regard yourself as highly spiritually advanced, but that does not make you being exempt from ordinary manners. Straight away, I think it would be honest if you would just admit that you are just some guy, a human being of material form with quite some clever insights into life and the world, but whose spiritual pursuit is at odds with materialist science.  
As to that topic: What made me very curious, and what for the sake of transparency I think everyone of us needs to know, is why you did not react to this guy’s invitation to discuss with him, which you yourself wanted to do.
Were you afraid? Was that one of your egoic defense mechanisms, afraid of transparency?
 
Of course, materialist science is your natural enemy, that is why bringing it into disrepute is part of your agenda. Polemically imitating your manner I can just as well say that: „that is all it is… a spiritual ego that tries to defend its own spiritual deceptions.‟
I myself come from a Buddhist background, but was thankfully able to outgrow that stuff. That, to my experience, not many spiritual people seem capable or willing (I guess: most probably capable, but not willing) of performing. But why?
 
Since we are at the topic: Why don’t you have a look at Early Buddhism?
I see all your spirituality as a piecing-together and blending of old brahmanic teachings with new age hippy stuff, making it your own kind of cult. From what I have seen you are completely oblivious to Early Buddhism, which would wipe out your beliefs about non-dualism, god, nothingness as god..
 
Anyway, I know what it is like. I do meditate, I went on meditation retreats, I used to believe in reincarnation, enlightenment, karma, non-material realms – the whole gamut. I was married to the spirituality for many years. So… I kind of know my craft. But my „spiritual ego‟ was not able to defend itself against the rough honesty of existential, materialist nihilism. Are you afraid of that?
Now, I know you well enough, you will probably say that I am deluded and don’t see the full picture, and so on. And what I reply to that is that you are not honest enough to see through your own spiritual craving. You deliberately picked out a form of spirituality that suited you and now take any bias to reinforce it.
 
I know that one problem about giving up long-cherished beliefs is losing one’s face. It was quite embarrassing for me to reveal to my social environment at some point that I had renounced my faith in the teachings of the Buddha. Since before for years I had been talking to people a lot about Buddhist philosophy and occasionally even tried to encourage other people to look at Buddhist teachings and win them over and so on, then at some point you having to admit that I found out that I was wrong and misguided was not all-too pleasant.  
And it was emotionally inconvenient as well. Since Buddhist spirituality guided my world-view and gave me purpose and direction, and then I had to realize that I was naked in the cold...  
Let us face the facts: I guess that in your situation it would be far more unpleasant, since you have created a huge identity around being „the spiritual guy‟ („god‟, that is...) along with even a long-standing Youtube channel were you have been delivering that stuff to the whole planet for a decade. If then at some point you have to realize that you were completely mistaken, admitting that would get you into big trouble. What is more: that would feed the trolls for years to come. So in a sense you are imprisoned  by now. You have invested so much into it that you now have to stick to that stuff, since contradicting it by now would be a huge mess. If you ask me, I would nonetheless encourage you to take that step …but I know how the ego works. ;-)
 
And when I now say that, I would not be surprised if spiritual people will try to ridicule me or come up with some clever paradoxical spiritual nonsense, or be ultra-loving (to show my non-compassion) or whatever ...since I „do not understand the spiritual complexity and succumb to the ego mechanisms‟ yada yada yada… the usual thought-terminating clichés, those knockout arguments which you in turn reproach the opposite side (the materialists) for, but generously commit yourself, and which, if you were able to let go of them, would enable you to see through your fallacies.  
„You see? You guys have spiritual egos trying to defend themselves. That’s all it is.‟  
 
Frankly, if you ask me than you can go and buy yourself a scoop of ice cream for the great „insights‟ that you had while under the influence of hallucinogenics.
Of course you can always claim that there is stuff that is not accessible to the rational mind. For obvious reasons: claiming that is a survival strategy. The rational mind is the natural enemy to your ridiculous beliefs. So for those beliefs to be able to survive, they need to delude people into thinking that there was anything that is not accessible to the rational mind... "You see? The ego trying to defend itself" ^^
If you were honest and careful in your arguments than you would admit that all that probably shows is that the brain seems to be able to perform fancy stuff while under the influence of drugs. Apply Occam’s Razor, for a change. There is no need to get spiritual about it. But if you go about it with the preconceived notion of non-duality, enlightenment, emptiness, and all that stuff, than of course that is what you can experience with drugs, it is just a confirmation bias. That’s all.
Just the fact that you, admittedly, can hardly (if at all – which I doubt) gain access to this stuff by non-material ways, that is, by not resorting to a material substance, should show you that what you experience is induced by a material cause, and belongs to the material world only. You yourself once mentioned something along the lines of „trying to achieve these states without hallucinogenics‟ would be „a waste of time‟. But I know the way the cookie crumbles. Your egoic spiritual defense mechanisms will that and come up with fantasy.  
 
Why would I deny and fight against spirituality? Because I want to defend my materialist ego? Actually, I would love to live in a world that is mystical, spiritual and somehow endowed with meaning and direction, but I am honest and experienced enough to no longer fall for that lie. I don’t like to kid myself. I would like to see materialism proven wrong, but none of that spiritual stuff convinces me anymore. If your thinking is sharp enough, you notice the fallacies and trick of your mind quite easily.  
 
And why should scientists think differently than I do? What agenda should fuel their disenchantment of the world other than the quest for truth?
Capitalism, perhaps? Lol. Ego business? How come? In fact, by disenchanting the world science has inflicted on us humans what Freud appropriately has called „narcissistic injuries‟. Narcissistic injuries neither serve capitalism nor the ego. They were simply inevitable with the progress of science.
 
What spirituality (as a backlash, so to speak) has been trying to do is to re-enchant the world. But since science is so good, spirituality these days has to resort to especially tricky things and esoteric reasoning, that are often, say, of epistemological nature and cannot be downright falsified. So then if anyone tries to attack that spirituality, these attacks are suffocated and ridiculed, thereby using the same defense mechanisms that you are blaming the materialists for using them. You will, for instance, call materialists narrow-minded, or say that science has an ego is just trying to maintain itself by putting down spirituality. If you ask me, that is what you are doing. Science is just disenchanting the world with the gloves off.  
 
I am not in the least bit intimidated by your teachings, if that is what you think. What worse could the world get than what science has turned it into? To use one of your favourite phrases: „Stop bullshitting yourself!‟.
 
In addition to that, I don’t know if you have ever noticed Leo, but what I personally don’t like about the way you teach is that you blurt some of your theories, for instance your series about the mechanisms of survival, as if you have realized something of ingenious brilliance and crazy significance, while in fact most people with some common sense or decent education are able to understand and are half-aware of this stuff, anyway. When I watched that episode I was literally just bored of it, even anticipating correctly what was to come. But you proclaim that stuff as if you speak from some kind of higher plane of existence.
 
In your episode „Is gender a social construct‟ you ask something like: Where in the nature you find gender? And that nature does not now any such categories. Well, that is a good point. But then again, where in the nature you see your „spiral dynamics‟? Nature does not know such stuff. Would you mind applying that same constructivist skepticism to your own ideas (Spiral Dynamics, in this case), for a change? What I see is just growing complexity amongst society, resulting in people of more complex consciousness, sometimes even more refined consciousness, if you will. But to argue that we are developing along lines of spiral dynamics and categorizing people into stages of spiral dynamics is a coarse generalization. Why is it that some people can embody a range of many stages in one person? Because that same persons spirals through many levels of consciousness in one mind?
Anyway, I do miss skepticism of you applied to your own teachings. You like what you teach and don’t bother to apply some skepticism to it, unless it serves your purposes. I think that you are over-confident, especially about your esoteric stuff, and it does not seem to me that you apply double standards, guided by your likes and dislikes. You proclaim your stuff without a shimmer of doubt, as if you were infallible, which I guess is necessarily to convince oneself and others of it.
 
And you do not even shy away from defending your own carnal craving for an intimate relationship with the opposite sex that you mentioned in the episode about „Burning through karma‟ by simply redefining the ancient idea of karma to suit your purposes. Please look up the definition of karma as it is understood in Early Buddhism and recognize that you just like to gerrymander your spiritual ideas to your liking. Just as you like it. Because it serves your purposes. It is all ego business.
 
Again, I think you have some quite valuable and insightful stuff on your channel.
But I would like to encourage you to outgrow spirituality. And to stop deluding people.
 
Alright, this shall do for now. I could go into this stuff with more detail, but I would like to hear an initial comment on it first.
 
Best
Karl-Heinz

[Raptorsin7]

Wow very nice analysis 

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

Dayum, I wanted t retitle it, now the other one is the one I meant. Sorry!

[Raptorsin7]

6 minutes ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

Actually, I would love to live in a world that is mystical, spiritual and somehow endowed with meaning and direction, but I am honest and experienced enough to no longer fall for that lie. I don’t like to kid myself. I would like to see materialism proven wrong, but none of that spiritual stuff convinces me anymore. If your thinking is sharp enough, you notice the fallacies and trick of your mind quite easily.  

How are you certain that life is not mystical and magical?

And how can you be certain that materialism is true?

Isn't it possible there is some truth to that, but you are just not aware. Why are you so certain?

[Fearless_Bum]

Appreciated reading your analysis ?. 

I'm not for or against Leo and his teaching, just to put that clear.

But it seems to me like you may be abandoning a belief system, only to fill it with another one. 

If you're gonna drop this actualized.org stuff, then drop everything else, or at least be aware of it. 

But good luck to you buddy ❤.

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

3 hours ago, Fearless_Bum said:

But it seems to me like you may be abandoning a belief system, only to fill it with another one. 

If you're gonna drop this actualized.org stuff, then drop everything else, or at least be aware of it. 

But good luck to you buddy ❤.

Thank you! Dropping everything makes performance in everyday life somewhat awkward, doesn't it?
How does one even feed oneself if one doesn't hold the view that eating makes you replete?
 

3 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

How are you certain that life is not mystical and magical?

And how can you be certain that materialism is true?

Isn't it possible there is some truth to that, but you are just not aware. Why are you so certain?

Well, what can you be certain? What I believe depends on which credibility I assign to it.
And that depends on how well it fits with what I see, understand, experience and am able to reason.
I am not free of blind spots, but Leo isn't either, and I see too many flaws in his reasoning, and what is more:
I see a lot of confirmation bias and wishful thinking in his beliefs, neither of which I see all too much in materialist science (as for the latter - wishful thinking - I see none).
 

3 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Wow very nice analysis 

Thank you! Could have needed some more finish grind.

Actually I liked the other title ("Outgrowing spirituality") better, but anyway...

Edited January 24, 2022 by Karl-Heinz Mueller

[Preety_India]

It seems like you want validation for why you want to drop spirituality. 

Spirituality is not a one size fits all thing. It varies for every person. 

You make of spirituality what suits your own needs and your journey. 

Spirituality is like music. Pick yours. 

 

[Fearless_Bum]

@Karl-Heinz Mueller your stomach tells you when you're hungry, the thought that you need food is secondary.

[Preety_India]

@Carl-Richard curious to know your opinion on this topic.

 

[Raptorsin7]

@Karl-Heinz Mueller But just because Leo advocates against materialism it doesn't mean that it is in fact true.

Just don't close your mind to what's possible bevause of Leo's flaws as a teacher.

[Gianna]

21 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Just don't close your mind to what's possible bevause of Leo's flaws as a teacher.

Awe, yes! @Raptorsin7 so perfect. 

[Gili Trawangan]

What I hope for you is a direct experience so total and unmediated by thought/analysis that materialism crumbles forever... drugs are not needed for this.

I wish it not so that you can be right, or on "the right side of the argument", but so that you can be happy and at peace.

Good luck.

[Gianna]

9 hours ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

many spiritual people seem capable or willing (I guess: most probably capable, but not willing) of performing. But why?

Because of unresolved trauma. 
 

9 hours ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

Why would I deny and fight against spirituality? Because I want to defend my materialist ego? Actually, I would love to live in a world that is mystical, spiritual and somehow endowed with meaning and direction, but I am honest and experienced enough to no longer fall for that lie. I don’t like to kid myself. I would like to see materialism proven wrong, but none of that spiritual stuff convinces me anymore.

Both are a reality. And so we expand our minds to hold space for both. I like what @Raptorsin7 says, don’t close your mind.  Expand it! 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Gianna

[Leo Gura]

10 hours ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

Actually, I would love to live in a world that is mystical, spiritual and somehow endowed with meaning and direction, but I am honest and experienced enough to no longer fall for that lie. I don’t like to kid myself. I would like to see materialism proven wrong, but none of that spiritual stuff convinces me anymore.

Ahahahahahaha....

Nice try.

Sorry to tell ya, but you are simply full of shit

Hopefully one day you reach a level of consciousness where you can laugh at this with me.

Spiral Dynamics is of course a construction. I have pointed this out plenty of times. Constructions are useful, you just need be conscious of them as constructions.

You have years of development work to do before you start to understand the deeper aspects of my work, which right now are flying over your head. Critiques of my work are possible, but your critique is from below, not above. You are in no position to tell me what delusion is. You have not overcome spirituality, you haven't even found spirit yet.

As I keep saying, this is advanced shit. Yet you act too cool for school. That's not gonna fly if you wanna reach Truth.

Yes, I claim to speak from the highest plane of existence. I know, it's hard to believe. But, btw, that doesn't make me infallible. All the highest truths I talk about can be validated in your own direct experience.

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Ahahahahahaha....

Nice try.

Sorry to tell ya, but you are simply full of shit

Thank you, that complement I generously return in kind.

 

Quote

You have years of development work to do before you start to understand the deeper aspects of my work, which right now are flying over your head. Critiques of my work are possible, but your critique is from below, not above. You are in no position to tell me what delusion is. You have not overcome spirituality, you haven't even found spirit yet.

As I keep saying, this is advanced shit. Yet you act too cool for school. That's not gonna fly if you wanna reach Truth.

I was at "school" for quite some time...
Now I do my own "home schooling" occasionally, because I am not as prone to your corrupted education system anyone. ^^

And you would also profit from some home schooling, Leo..
Especially some home schooling in Early Buddhism...

And may I ask again, why did you not go to school with Rob?

PS: I created two threads by accident. I tried to retitle the first but then ended up creating a second one, as mentioned.
 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Karl-Heinz Mueller

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

Well I guess I can be happy that His Majesty has at least condescended to give a short but not all-too substantial reply to my indign comment,

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

you are simply full of shit

only to defile his own what I thought was supposed to be a "Zen temple"?

Anyway, I am still waiting for your reply to my questions above.

And I guess I should add to my advice..

Quote

And you would also profit from some home schooling, Leo..

Especially some home schooling in Early Buddhism...

..the caveat of yours:

"If you dare!"

Edited January 25, 2022 by Karl-Heinz Mueller

[Carl-Richard]

From the locked duplicate thread:

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

5 hours ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

12 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

19 hours ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

If you were honest and careful in your arguments than you would admit that all that probably shows is that the brain seems to be able to perform fancy stuff while under the influence of drugs. Apply Occam’s Razor, for a change.

If you were a true fan of the flawed Occam's razor, you would choose ontological idealism over ontological materialism and treat the brain as just qualia ;D

But having such a duality (as ironically opposed to non-duality) of mind and matter does not automatically prove all that other spiritual stuff.

Bruh. Idealism is non-dual (in the monistic sense which you're referring to). It says everything is mind. Materalism says everything is matter, but it has problems explaining how mind arises from matter (the "mind-body problem"), and it appeals to things like strong emergence, which goes something like "we believe that matter somehow produces a completely new substance called mind, but we don't exactly know how", which doesn't really convince anybody. Occam's Razor favors idealism over materialism mainly because of the assumptions of things like strong emergence.

 

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

Like I said, that is the best anti-materialist argument that I know of. But it doesn't altogether satisfy me. Explaining why would probably require another comment at least of the length as the one above.

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Karl-Heinz Mueller said:

Like I said, that is the best anti-materialist argument that I know of. But it doesn't altogether satisfy me. Explaining why would probably require another comment at least of the length as the one above.

Don't tease me like that . At least mention some of the concepts you had in mind.

[Karl-Heinz Mueller]

 

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Don't tease me like that . At least mention some of the concepts you had in mind.

I would need more time and research to articulate it properly, but I do tend to advocate some kind of neutral monism, which I somewhat sloppily tend to refer to as materialism. I believe that matter was first and mind came later. We have a good understanding that he have of physics, of the big bang, and the laws of nature, of biological evolution, and it seems credible to me that there is an objective nature. You may deny that if you like, and come up with epistomological skepticism, brain-in-a-vat argument, calling yourself god, and what have you.

But that is not all-too credible to me. If we accept that, then mental phenonema did not exist before biological life did not exist. So I guess that life forms and mental phenomena seem to be in some way able to be of the same nature, in a way that we have not yet been able to understand. Who am I to tell whether we well be able to understand that at some point? I’m just some philosophically inclined guy to whom that seems to me more likely than idealism.

4 hours ago, lxlichael said:

@Karl-Heinz Mueller May I ask, what are you trying to achieve with conversing here precisely? A noble goal perhaps?

For one thing, I felt like letting off the steam that has been accumulating whilst watching a good chunk of Leo’s videos. For another because I feel that people need to be more cautious about Leo as a teacher (which every good spiritual teacher would encourage his students to be). Especially with regards to spiritual teachers I think it never hurts to approach them with an appropriate amount of initial mistrust.

Leo promotes his stuff as if he knows it all, and does not seem to bother to show or encourage any kind of doubt of skepticism about his own stuff, as I mentioned, probably also for economic reasons, and probably also due to blind spots, which is understandable but doesn’t make it better.

So if he is not going to do that, someone also may do that job, and I currently felt inclined to do that. Leo wiping away my arguments in the way he did in his post here to me is another good indicator that he is not trustworthy as a spiritual teacher.

Whether that is noble depends on what you regard as noble.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Karl-Heinz Mueller