Leo Gura

Any clips posted of the interviews will be deleted. They are nowhere near the final product and are not meant for release.

@electroBeam A) Not enough foundation work B) Too young C) Too low a dose D) Discounting the value of bad trips as part of the growth path E) You're probably failing to fully surrender

Sounds like you're applying the technique neurotically. Might be better for you to chill out and just meditate regularly, with love and kindness towards yourself. Meditation is not a dick-measuring contest. The most important part is that you're MEDITATING. Your posture is not that important. I meditate comfortably on my couch. If you have health problems, SDS might not work for you at all. Then again, consider that your ego might just be creating a backlash from all the neurotic self-discipline you've been forcing upon yourself (which is why you're pissed off). I suggest trying a different meditation technique and then returning to SDS after a few months to see how things have changed. Don't worry, you haven't lost anything. It's all consciousness training. And SDS is designed to be VERY hardcore.

Of course, that's the buying yourself 1,000,000 lottery tickets part. You buy a lottery ticket each time you sit down and question, question, question yourself.

It's random in the sense it's unpredictable. You will never know when it hits you. But just like playing the lottery -- which is random -- buying yourself 1,000,000 tickets can help you win very significantly. So from your perspective, there's no need to worry about odds. You can make the odds 100% if you want. But you still won't ever know when it hits you.

That's like asking, do mathematicians get diseases? There is no difference between any enlightened person and yourself.

Depends on how you define reality. I'm talking about what most people consider their reality, the ego-constructed dream state, the entire web of beliefs.

@Frogfucius Par for the course. Of course you will experience existential crises on this journey. Many of them. Many depths of them. Just keep going. And if it gets really bad, ease up on yourself, eat some ice cream, and watch some Donald Trump speeches Then come back to the work in a few days. Remember to temper your relentless drive for Truth with self-love and self-compassion. Be nice to yourself! Whipping yourself isn't God-like If you start seeing giant praying Mantis people creeping up on your from the ceiling, remember it's all cool. They're just praying Mantis people, nothing to see here folks... move along... just phenomena...

This: http://testkitplus.com/product/lsd-test-kit It tests for Indoles, which is what LSD and mushrooms are. LSD, DMT, and Mushrooms all have the same basic molecular structure. There is no way you're gonna confuse a mushroom with LSD because LSD comes as blotter and mushrooms look like dried mushrooms or tan powder. The most important thing when testing a powder is to test it against harmful chemicals like heroine, cocaine, DXM, meth, etc. *This info is provided for harm reduction purposes.

@Deep That's just reaching a point of being fed up beyond the pale. Enlightenment is WAY beyond that. It's more like getting fed up beyond the pale of ALL OF REALITY. It's like saying, "Fuck you reality! You are bullshit! I quit you forever!"

@RossE Firstly, it takes time and consistency. Doing neti-neti once a week, it will take you 50 years. Try doing 100 hours of neti-neti straight in a row. That's more like what you need to break through. And even then, that's just newbie work. Secondly, you're never going to find yourself. Even after 50 years of neti-neti. All you'll realize is that you ARE the thing you're failing to find: namely, NOTHING! There's nothing to find cause you don't exist. That's what's to be found! You have no attributes. You cannot be seen, hear, smelled, tasted, felt, or thought. What you are is the absence of all attributes. AKA, infinite nothingness, AKA God. It's right there! Look! There is nothing to find.

Philosophy, mathematics, nuclear physics, trans-personal psychology, linguistics/semantics/semoitics, comparative religion. Although you'll have to be very picky within those. Lots of anti-enlightenment dogma in each of those fields.

They are the exact same advice!

That's because ego twists this whole thing around. To become God is the humblest move possible. But from your egoic perspective it looks arrogant because it feels threatening to you that I am now somehow above you. But that's not how it feels to me. I AM YOU! So there's no superiority or separation. There is no one to whom I could be superior or inferior. Those ideas only make sense to egos.

@Mercy Chances are quite high that a Christian ego would coopt the experience and say, "See! I knew it all along! I was right, and they were wrong! Christianity is the one true faith!" But a truly openmineded Christian would say, "OMG! So much of what I believed and was told about religion is bullshit! But I understand why now and I don't hate anyone for it because the same forces of ignorance I see in others is present within me. All beliefs are wrong."

I've noticed a lot of aspiring life coaches here, which is cool. I remember the days, not so long ago, when I was in your shoes, struggling to enter this weird new field called life coaching. If you have any questions about the DO's and DON'Ts of coaching, ask away. I'm happy to share my lessons from the last few years of coaching clients. I've actually stopped coaching at this point to focus on shooting better videos and developing Actualized.org. One thing that I discovered about myself through this career journey is that my zone of genius is more about direct advice-giving and research than coaching and guiding. I enjoy coaching people, but I enjoy shooting videos more.

The problem with all religions/sects is that they are not 100% bad/useless. If that was the case, it would be very easy for people to reject them. The problem with all religions/sects is that they take techniques and methods which have legitimate psychological or spiritual value and mix it with a bunch of dogma. And no matter how good the benefits of the techniques may initially be, eventually the dogma catches up to you and limits your growth. But by then, it's usually too late. The dogma's got ya!

@Esoteric http://www.shinzen.org/Articles.htm Detailed Vipassana manuals available here, although Shinzen's approach is a bit different than mainstream Goenka Vipasanna retreats, which just have you do body-sweeping and focusing on the breath.

All par for the course. After deep insights often comes the Dark Night of Soul. The key is to not get unnerved by it, and continue your practices, continue applying mindfulness to the negative reactions. And remember not to throw your everyday life in the toilet or do anything rash while in this negative funk. Remember it will pass and deep levels of equanimity will follow. You can also ease up on yourself. Learn to trust your emotions, to read them, to be kind towards yourself, and to know when to take your foot of the pedal so you don't spin out. This doesn't have to be some mad dash for enlightenment. It's important to remember to stay grounded and mature throughout this whole process and to know give way to foolish reactions and delusions of grandeur.

@FeelFree It's way more twisted than that. You created yourself and the entirety of reality, but still don't know it. There's no one else here but you. It's ALL you!

Draw a distinction between 1) absolute truth, 2) relative truths, and 3) pure fabrications.

@Ramu Sounds about right. Keep digging deeper and deeper into that. There are MANY levels of depth to that insight, and your goal is to make it more or less a permanent feature of your life. Try to translate that insight into emotional reactions. So you're not reacting against reality so much.

@Happiness Practice surrender. A feminine trait that becomes very important in enlightenment work. In the end, enlightenment basically fucks you in the ass, and you need to be okay with that. Again psychedelics can be helpful here. They will teach you the meaning of surrender.

I used to have a girlfriend who was afraid to take a shit at my house because it wasn't lady-like. And while I appreciate that personally, it probably wasn't too comfortable for her, and certainly not authentic.