Leo and Spiritual Debates

[zurew]

1 hour ago, SeaMonster said:

To have success, one must understand the human condition:

1) Many people are lazy/complacent.

2) Many people are scared to leave their comfort zone.

3) Some are both. 

The people most likely to become spiritual seekers are those who are in great suffering.

Focus on those before you worry about cultural change - that's ego talk.  Make your goals realistic and achievable.

Cultural change can be achieved, but it really matter who is the target group. When we are talking about having conversations and debates we are trying to target people who are open minded enough to have those, but not yet convinced that certain practices can be powerful also not yet convinced what is spirituality really about and not yet convinced what are the limits of materialism and science.

We aren't talking about general lazy people who most likely won't do shit, and have a million other problems to focus on before any spiritual work. We are talking about a target group, where people are open minded enough, and developed enough to deconstruct their worldview and open enough to have conversations about politics, education, and science and about other important topics too.

Also we aren't just talk about Leo's spiritual practices and ideas, he has a well rounded work which targets philosophy, science, spirituality, politics, education, economics, sexuality etcetc. He has golden ideas in each of those categories and those could be spread and those could be tested.

In my opinion, Leo should represent and spread his own work if he really wants a culture change, otherwise just as what Scholar said, people will consciously or unconsciously misrepresent and misinterpret his work, and all his work will be even more demonized. And people will be left with his mischaracterized work, without Leo defending and explaining his own work.

If you want to target general, normal people, then yes, you are right that the approach should be different.

Edited May 11, 2022 by zurew

[Scholar]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

2:41:52 Max sums up what exactly what I feel about Greg.

I reached the point and I am 99% sure that MrGirl said that specifically because he knew it would sting the guy, especially the way he phrased it. I've been realizing lately that MrGirl has almost zero genuine compassion for others, which is ironic because he is basically exactly what he accuses Dr. K to be.

 

You also get to see the trauma Destiny has experienced, because of thet trip he had. It deconstructed certain aspects of his reality, and due to the nature of his ego, it terrified him to such a degree that he was unable to actually fully go through with that deconstruction. When he talks about "You just experienced something crazy and it needs to settle down and become coherent", he basically thinks that psychedelics put you in a kind of irrational state because of some radical change in experience, and that after a while a person comes down, and reality as it actually is comes back, reconstructing itself, so that in the end the experience can be framed as a phenomena or event within that structure. And that structure is the true structure of reality.

 

But of course, that structure is just a hallucination, and Destiny's experience confronted him with that. And now he deluded himself back into having atleast enough certainty over this structure so that he can live life comfortably thinking he is in control.

 

What is so astounding to me is that none of the materialists talk about how none of this even makes sense from the scientific perspective. If the brain hallucinates consciousness, then everything a person knows, or thinks to know, or perceives, is merely a hallucination of the brain, including the concept of the brain, aswell as any perceived object within consciousness. This means everything that can be identified, including the self-concept, the world-concept, epistemic concepts, metaphysical concepts, and so forth. It's a self-defeater, and yet cognitive dissonance makes them completely blind to that.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Scholar

[zurew]

32 minutes ago, Scholar said:

He basically thinks that psychedelics put you in a kind of irrational state because of some radical change in experience, and that after a while a person comes down, and reality as it actually is comes back, reconstructing itself, so that in the end the experience can be framed as a phenomena or event within that structure. And that structure is the true structure of reality.

I don't think deep down Destiny thinks that. He may say that but in some of his videos he was open minded enough after his strong mushroom trips to really question his reality. I think he even said it himself, the he thought it looked much more real than normal reality, and also he said that it was the most interesting and most terrifying experience of his life and that he don't regret anything about having a larger dose of shrooms. Also he pretty much weakened his stance on being absolute certain about materialism. Now on the surface level he act like a materialist but deep down his certainty in worldview has been destroyed years ago (when he had is shroom trip).

 

Who do you think Leo should have a convo or debate with? Destiny or Mrgirl or someone else?

Edited May 11, 2022 by zurew

[Scholar]

56 minutes ago, zurew said:

I don't think deep down Destiny thinks that. He may say that but in some of his videos he was open minded enough after his strong mushroom trips to really question his reality. I think he even said it himself, the he thought it looked much more real than normal reality, and also he said that it was the most interesting and most terrifying experience of his life and that he don't regret anything about having a larger dose of shrooms. Also he pretty much weakened his stance on being absolute certain about materialism. Now on the surface level he act like a materialist but deep down his certainty in worldview has been destroyed years ago (when he had is shroom trip).

 

Who do you think Leo should have a convo or debate with? Destiny or Mrgirl or someone else?

I think Destiny is falling back into his ego as time goes on, I don't even think he had a full breakthrough, he was resisting the experience and got stuck in a loop basically. But either way as time goes on he seems to return to a more standard view, where deep down he feels grounded in reality again, and the stance that he does not truly know is more intellectual at this point.

 

I don't know if Leo should debate anyone, I wanted to have a conversation about the merits of these conversations in general. If you ask me personally I would be more interested in a conversation between Destiny and Leo but I feel like I already know how it would end. Destiny would get bored because from his POV Leo is just making claims that he can't verify, he would assume Leo is ideological, and if he got confronted about materialism he would kind of misunderstand the depth of the problem, and say he is only holding the position because it works, but he is not interested in "Truth" and doesn't even know if such a thing exists.

[zurew]

3 minutes ago, Scholar said:

I think Destiny is falling back into his ego as time goes on, I don't even think he had a full breakthrough, he was resisting the experience and got stuck in a loop basically. But either way as time goes on he seems to return to a more standard view, where deep down he feels grounded in reality again, and the stance that he does not truly know is more intellectual at this point.

I  agree with this.

4 minutes ago, Scholar said:

I don't know if Leo should debate anyone, I wanted to have a conversation about the merits of these conversations in general. If you ask me personally I would be more interested in a conversation between Destiny and Leo but I feel like I already know how it would end. Destiny would get bored because from his POV Leo is just making claims that he can't verify, he would assume Leo is ideological, and if he got confronted about materialism he would kind of misunderstand the depth of the problem, and say he is only holding the position because it works, but he is not interested in "Truth" and doesn't even know if such a thing exists.

Yeah. Maybe he should have convos with people who is similar to Curt Jaimungal , but i don't know how many people are out there who is similar to Curt.

The other podcast Leo was on was with the charisma on command guy - Charlie. That was good too, but it wasn't as good as the TOE one.

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Scholar said:

I reached the point and I am 99% sure that MrGirl said that specifically because he knew it would sting the guy, especially the way he phrased it. I've been realizing lately that MrGirl has almost zero genuine compassion for others, which is ironic because he is basically exactly what he accuses Dr. K to be.

I didn't feel that, maybe because I was busy agreeing with him. I've listened to their previous talks, and I cringe every time. There are particularly two points that they get stuck on constantly because Greg doesn't know what to say: 

1. "Porn is drugs, psychedelics are not."
2. "I'm not religious, guys!"

Here is my solution:

1. Psychedelics are "atypical drugs". They do not work like other "hedonic drugs" (cocaine, heroin etc.). The experience is emotionally complex and unpredictable, the mechanism of action is vastly different (the weirdness of the 5HT2A receptor and just the serotonin system in general), the anti-addictive effect, the extremely fast tolerance build-up; it's nothing like these other drugs. In that sense, porn is arguably more similar to these drugs than psychedelics are.

2. "Spiritual" or "religious" is just semantics, and both are inaccurate. Greg is talking about "the mystical experience" and how it impacts your relationship to things like environmentalism, feelings of meaning, the desire to be "pure" (abstaining from porn etc.). Like Mr. Girl and Destiny are saying, you can arrive at these things through other means, but Greg is talking about a particular way that you arrive at them, namely through an intrinsically motivated, post-rational, being/feeling/intuition-oriented approach, i.e. mysticism, and this approach is important.

 

3 hours ago, Scholar said:

You also get to see the trauma Destiny has experienced, because of thet trip he had. It deconstructed certain aspects of his reality, and due to the nature of his ego, it terrified him to such a degree that he was unable to actually fully go through with that deconstruction. When he talks about "You just experienced something crazy and it needs to settle down and become coherent", he basically thinks that psychedelics put you in a kind of irrational state because of some radical change in experience, and that after a while a person comes down, and reality as it actually is comes back, reconstructing itself, so that in the end the experience can be framed as a phenomena or event within that structure. And that structure is the true structure of reality.

But of course, that structure is just a hallucination, and Destiny's experience confronted him with that. And now he deluded himself back into having atleast enough certainty over this structure so that he can live life comfortably thinking he is in control.

You could just tell that Destiny was having flashback when Greg started saying "but you don't exist!" 

[Leo Gura]

Public debating is a specific skillset which I haven't developed and aren't interested in developing. My time is better spent doing serious work. If my work isn't serious I can't respect myself. And being a debate clown on YT, I would rather just quit and never speak about spirituality to anyone.

You have to understand, once you fully awaken, teaching spirituality is totally pointless. There is no one to save or help.

[Roy]

The man himself already said it^ but yeah. It's nice having his videos and work standing on it's own. Not everybody has to participate in the culture circus.

The world is going to chug along regardless.

[zurew]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Public debating is a specific skillset which I haven't developed and aren't interested in developing. My time is better spent doing serious work. If my work isn't serious I can't respect myself. And being a debate clown on YT, I would rather just quit and never speak about spirituality to anyone.

You have to understand, once you fully awaken, teaching spirituality is totally pointless. There is no one to save or help.

Do you plan to go on a podcast in the future, or you lost your interest to talk with other creators?

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, zurew said:

Do you plan to go on a podcast in the future, or you lost your interest to talk with other creators?

I may do it on rare occassion but my work is fundamentally not about that.

My work is generating new insight. Not arguing with people.

[SeaMonster]

5 hours ago, zurew said:

Cultural change can be achieved, but it really matter who is the target group. When we are talking about having conversations and debates we are trying to target people who are open minded enough to have those, but not yet convinced that certain practices can be powerful also not yet convinced what is spirituality really about and not yet convinced what are the limits of materialism and science.

You miss the point, I think.  "Openminded" doesn't mean anything in this context.  People aren't motivated because they are openminded.  You have to answer a fundamental question: what is the motivation for people to become spiritual seekers/practicioners?

The most common motivation is suffering that is not easy alleviated by common societal practices.  Mental illness, existential angst, etc.

Another motivation is that people want the benefits of a better life - yes, MATERIAL BENEFITS.  They want a better state of mind that will get them love and money, to be crass.

Most people could give a rat's ass about the philosophical dimensions of this issue if it doesn't directly address the above.  That's the bottom line.

And if they get these things, they DEFINITELY couldn't care less about the philosophical dimensions.

Edited May 11, 2022 by SeaMonster

[zurew]

26 minutes ago, SeaMonster said:

The most common motivation is suffering that is not easy alleviated by common societal practices.  Mental illness, existential angst, etc.

Another motivation is that people want the benefits of a better life - yes, MATERIAL BENEFITS.  They want a better state of mind that will get them love and money, to be crass.

I don't do spirituality for neither of these. I do it to gain insight.

28 minutes ago, SeaMonster said:

Most people could give a rat's ass about the philosophical dimensions of this issue if it doesn't directly address the above.  That's the bottom line.

And if they get these things, they DEFINITELY couldn't care less about the philosophical dimensions.

Thats true, but you can't really change culture by targeting a very large group like all of society at the same time. Specifical targeting is much better imo. Like helping stage orange people to climb up to stage green through various kind of tools. Thats not the bottomline what you mentioned, the bottomline is, that everyone is slightly different than others, people have different capabalities, motivations, interests, values, cognitive development, stage development, maturity, morality, personality etc. The more variables one take into account, when want to target a group of people, the more effective that targeting can get.

But at the end of the day, no matter what levels we are talking about, we make other people interested by talking to them, having conversations with them and giving them enough reasons and by that they may or may not get interested in what we are talking about.

 

But it doesn't really matter, cause Leo won't debate anyone, so continuing our debate about this won't achieve much.

[Hafiz]

Where the hell is that podcast with charisma on command or whatever pickup dude you talked to. Haven’t seen or heard about it.

[zurew]

4 hours ago, Hafiz said:

Where the hell is that podcast with charisma on command or whatever pickup dude you talked to. Haven’t seen or heard about it.

 

 

[BuddhistLover]

@Leo Gura And that's why we love you, because your videos are sublimely the most creative thing ever. Your just about bringing that low-stress creativity. Your videos are so good and well researched that I might have to give up my nightly songwriting session to watch them. 

 

and ps, I realized that you said that other people's opinions don't matter, but the reality is to every human, the only that matters to them is other people's opinions of them. That's actually the only thing we humans care about. Everyone adores what other people think of them, they get off to it. They are in love with other people's opinions of them. Now that's new insight Mr. Gura. So don't please don't go off and brainstorm that I'm not your biggest fan, because that would be the exact opposite of the truth, you know that I love you, and the only reason why I'm pursuing a high paying job, a relationship and a career playing songs is because of you. They are in total love and obsession with what other humans think of them. 

[Scholar]

12 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I didn't feel that, maybe because I was busy agreeing with him. I've listened to their previous talks, and I cringe every time. There are particularly two points that they get stuck on constantly because Greg doesn't know what to say: 

1. "Porn is drugs, psychedelics are not."
2. "I'm not religious, guys!"

Here is my solution:

1. Psychedelics are "atypical drugs". They do not work like other "hedonic drugs" (cocaine, heroin etc.). The experience is emotionally complex and unpredictable, the mechanism of action is vastly different (the weirdness of the 5HT2A receptor and just the serotonin system in general), the anti-addictive effect, the extremely fast tolerance build-up; it's nothing like these other drugs. In that sense, porn is arguably more similar to these drugs than psychedelics are.

2. "Spiritual" or "religious" is just semantics, and both are inaccurate. Greg is talking about "the mystical experience" and how it impacts your relationship to things like environmentalism, feelings of meaning, the desire to be "pure" (abstaining from porn etc.). Like Mr. Girl and Destiny are saying, you can arrive at these things through other means, but Greg is talking about a particular way that you arrive at them, namely through an intrinsically motivated, post-rational, being/feeling/intuition-oriented approach, i.e. mysticism, and this approach is important.

Sure I agree Greg is not really a good debater, nor is he a rigorous thinker. I think he tries to rationlize positions he holds because he intuits them due to the experiences he had, and he does not seem to be very adept at that. That to me is obvious, I am mostly interested in how MrGirl and Destiny are arguing, because they are more rigid thinkers and better debaters. I don't expect anything from the Greg guy I think he is just a random dude who had mystical experiences and feels he has a calling to make people connect to that aswell. Alot of his intuitions are correct imo, he just lacks the intellectual framework and sophistication to defend them in a meaningful way, or even point out the flaws in MrGirl's and Destiny's thinking.

There were alot of points where Destiny and MrGirl almost intentionally misinterpreted what he was saying, one thing that comes to mind is the thing about math, where Greg said there is a lot of intuition involved. This is absolutely true, infact intuition is pretty much what gives rise to any novel thought in the first place, whether or not these intuitons are restricted to logic is another matter, but this is precisely one of the reasons why scientific breakthroughs in math, physics and pretty much every other area come from highly intuitive people. You intuit new solutions and perspectives before you truly establish a way to make them logically coherent. You don't just stumble upon Special Relativity by following some step by step logical process, you discovered it by have a creative insight, an intuition, which then your mind can make coherent through various systems of thinking. But even logical thought pretty much runs on intuition, as every thought that comes to you has to kind of be intuited to be logical before it manifests and then is actually tested to be logical by mind. That's how we train people to be logical thinkers, we ingrain it in their intuition, until their intuition gives rise to mostly thoughts of these categories.

 

You can think about this as a perfect representation of a Orange vs Green dispute. If you notice, Greg basically sees the limitation of Stage Orange, but he lacks the intellectual understanding to express that in a way that connect to Stage Orange. And of course MrGirl and Destiny perfectly demonstrate the limitations of Orange. They both were kind of demanding from Greg to have him logically proof to them that "Scientism" (which actually refers to Stage Orange not merely science) is limited. And of course, that's not how you will ever transcend Orange, that's precisely how you get stuck in Orange, and how you fail to see the limitations of Orange.

Greg would basically have to explain to them why their value system is the issue here, but of course you won't be able to logically pin that down, which is what their value system demands. They reject anything that sounds irrational, which manifests in MrGirl as his constant attempt to put Greg into a box. He says "This sounds like what religious people say", and by that virtue his mind has already determined that whatever Greg is saying, he will reject this. That's his value system playing it's part perfectly. And MrGirl is aware enough of it to know that this is not even in his control, it's not even rational, he just says "Well that's how it makes me feel", and the question to why that is the case is his value system, which he thinks is just arbitrary so of course he has created himself a neat little bubble where he never has to change anything about his core beliefs. They are ultimately validated, because nothing is valid, therefore everything is valid.

The Truth is, if Stage Orange was truly rational, it would not behave the way it does, and MrGirl and Destiny would not behave the way they do. They behave the way they do because they have specific values, which Greg was trying to communicate, and these values will motivate certain actions, they will motivate the ideologies they find appealling, and so forth. And that is the true limitation. A Stage Orange person technically knows the solution to Climate Change, and all sorts of Social Ill's, but that's not the core issue here. The core issue is that they will never care enough to change themselves fundamentally, which is what is required to actually solve these problems.

That's why a transcendence of the value system is required. And trust me, if I told this precise thing to Destiny and MrGirl, they would either not understand the depth of this problem (Destiny would pretend he understands this and proceed to say he agrees with it, which isn't actually true), or would ask for it to be "proven" to them. So, a typical Stage Orange reaction.

 

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Public debating is a specific skillset which I haven't developed and aren't interested in developing. My time is better spent doing serious work. If my work isn't serious I can't respect myself. And being a debate clown on YT, I would rather just quit and never speak about spirituality to anyone.

You have to understand, once you fully awaken, teaching spirituality is totally pointless. There is no one to save or help.

Sure this is why I wasn't really expecting you to be doing this, but someone will, and I think it might be benefitial to have someone do it who actually is able to communicate these ideas properly, or point out the flaws in materialism atleast. I would say to some degree that will probably be necessary at some point either way, if our goal is to have people evolve up the spiral.

My thinking was more about whether or not we should have these conversations in general, and whether they will be positive. If as a community we say "No this is just a waste of time", then it will be the case that others will take over this task and maybe do it in a less effective manner, delaying progress.

I know that teaching spirituality is totally pointless in the grand scheme of things, but I am assuming you are interested in partaking in human existence, and enjoy doing so, otherwise I don't think you would even be here.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Scholar

[Brivido]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You have to understand, once you fully awaken, teaching spirituality is totally pointless. There is no one to save or help.

This was one of the hardest pills to swallow for me, since, like yours, my life purpose is about sharing Wisdom and Truth. Nothing needs to be made right, because nothing was ever wrong. But then I realized that I still have to play a game, so why not play the game of sharing Wisdom and Truth with "others"?

[Leo Gura]

22 minutes ago, Brivido said:

so why not play the game of sharing Wisdom and Truth with "others"?

As long as you can stomach it.

[Mafortu]

Yeah I watched the whole thing yesterday, it was PAINFUL.

Glink did such a piss-poor job to persuade Max into trying psychedelics', I was cringing the whole way through. Can't expect much from a person that believes being gay is a choice and that accepts jesus as his lord and savior. 

I want Max to try mushrooms, but he is just too scared of something going terribly wrong, which is understandable.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Mafortu

[zurew]

52 minutes ago, Mafortu said:

I want Max to try mushrooms, but he is just too scared of something going terribly wrong, which is understandable.

Yeah, it could trigger some of his deep traumas from his childhood. He is expressing himself very bluntly, but he seems very sensitive.

Edited May 12, 2022 by zurew