Leo Gura

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Everything posted by Leo Gura

  1. @Beyond Words Sure it could. A lot more than you can probably imagine. It'll be talking about this topic a lot in the future. I have some very interesting research to share on this point.
  2. @nima The universe LOVES dishonesty and robbery and cruelty. The universe loves everything, because it is. The distinction good/bad is something egos create to defend themselves. Notice that if you drop your attachment to self-defense, everything becomes good.
  3. @Rahul yadav You gotta dig deeper and contemplate why you create those emotions. What purpose are they serving? Hint: negative emotions are self-manipulations to keep yourself being yourself. To change that, you have to stop being yourself. And to do that, you have to grasp how and why you are attached to yourself. And then drop all those attachments. This is serous work and takes a lot of commitment. You've got a lot of contemplating to do.
  4. Success is no sign of growth or evolution. Being hyper-successful is actually much easier when you have loose ethics. You can be ruthless and step all over people and become mega-successful. Wallstreet is a perfect example of this. The most conscious people are almost never mega-successful. That's not an accident. We live in a cut-throat world. The richest people in the world are actually dictators. They're so rich they don't even get put on the Forbes list. Putin is estimated to have a net worth of over $200 billion, most of it stolen or extorted money.
  5. @Progress Just be careful not to misread people. Just because someone appears quiet or shy doesn't mean they aren't very successful. People behave differently in different contexts and often wear many masks depending on the situation. Careful not to project all your assumptions onto them using this method.
  6. Children, children, children. Can't leave you alone for 24 hours before a food fight erupts. Sigh... How long's it gonna take to become conscious that all this nonsense goes against everything I teach?
  7. Here is where a dose of Zen helps: Notice that the only thing there is, is truth. Do you really have an option to not accept reality as it is? Whatever you do, truth always is. If you deny reality, truth is still all there is. If truth is all that is, and you are escaping truth, where are you escaping to???? Can reality be escaped? Is there an "esc" button?
  8. Sounds like you already know all you need to know. Just sit down and concentrate on your breath like a laser-beam. Best to start with very short training sessions, like 5 or 10 mins max. Later you can lengthen it as you see consistent success at 5-10 mins. Select one aspect of the breath, like the tip of the nose, or belly, so your focus doesn't jump around.
  9. That can actually be a bad thing. There is much subtly to optimal brainwave states. Too much Delta, for example, can be associated with sluggishness, depression, chronic fatigue, spaciness, and even coma. But if you feel good and like your current state of mind, then that's what's most important. An optimal waking state with eyes open would included a lot of Alpha 8-12 Hz range, low beta, and low deta. High Beta 15-38 Hz is the worst, leading to stress, anxiety, fear, monkey-mind, etc. Meditation tends to produce lots of Alpha 8-12 Hz.
  10. If you're into mind-mapping this stuff, check out Shinzen Young's work. He has mind-mapped the hell out of the various meditation techniques. Meditation practices are so diverse the mind-maps can become crazy complicated.

  11. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    Because a human being is an arbitrary thing. And you are NOT a human being! That's a false identity. I'm not necessarily saying this "logic method" is bad. It could be useful. There are many useful self-help techniques out there. Probably thousands of them. But also, they can come with natural limits. Some of those limits can be severe. My concern is always to guide people to the highest potential I can see for them. And if you get yourself dogmatically set on a position such as rationality, or logic, or any other modality where THOUGHTS and LANGUAGE are the key mechanism, then that will severely limit you. But generally-speaking, if a technique is working for you, I say, use it. Just remember to keep an open mind about other, higher possibilities, so you don't become an ideological adherent to any one position of self-improvement. The most powerful position, is to have no position. To understand this, see my videos about epistemology: https://www.actualized.org/articles/the-ultimate-model-of-human-knowledge https://www.actualized.org/articles/grasping-the-illusory-nature-of-thought The thing with values is, you gotta be very careful not to turn them into dogmas. The concern here is not with the technique per se, but with the way its marketed. That sort of hard marketing tends to create ideologues, which is never a high-consciousness thing. For example, the pickup community suffers from this phenomena. While the techniques are useful, the dogma they come with makes it very prone to abuse. It basically becomes a secular religion.
  12. @Afonso The 21+ guideline was to ensure that you don't do something stupid as you experiment with such powerful substances. Like I've heard some people on this forum voice hair-brained ideas like trying 5-meo in a swimming pool. And even if you don't do anything that stupid, for you the challenge will be integrating the experience, so your whole life doesn't unravel.
  13. There CANNOT be a how! That's why this work is so challenging. How can there be a how for nothingness? All hows are somethingnesses! The only way past this brick wall is persistence and finally surrender. You are the only thing standing in your own way, but you aren't ready to give yourself up quite yet.
  14. @Elahe Yes it's probably a phase, but you might also need to reach out and find some companions. Don't get so involved with self-improvement that you forget to reach out and make new friends (if you're into that sorta thing). Construct the kind of life you want. Be proactive. You don't have to live in a cave.

  15. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    To be clear, there's nothing wrong with being logical or rational or thinking in terms of probabilities, as long as you're conscious of the limits of thought, and that there is much outside of those limits of thought which you will NEVER access through logic or thought. So it's all about being flexible enough. And thought, being mechanical as it is, is not conscious enough to resolve the really deep problems in your life. Which can only be resolved with consciousness.

  16. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    Yeah, but this Aristotlean way of linear thinking (cause and effect) gets you into trouble. Reality is not linear or physical or causal. Even science is starting to acknowledge this boundary with quantum mechanics. You cannot isolate one part or reality from another. I recommend you check out David Bohm's work on this point. Even if we're not talking about enlightenment, its very important to your effective functioning to realize that what's happening here is you projecting stuff onto otters. Because I can guarantee you're not only projecting onto innocent otters, but many other facets of your life which create much suffering for you.

  17. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    It certainly does NOT act logically. That's your projection on it. And for that matter, even 99% of YOUR thoughts and actions are not logical. Until someone fed this idea of "logic" into your mind, it didn't exist. You had to learn it. And before you could learn it, someone had to invent it from zero. Think back to what it was like when you were a baby. You had not notions of logic at all. And it was irrelevant. Your existence didn't depend on it. Only now, you tell yourself (in retrospect, as a story) that logic was important.
  18. @Elahe Hence hippies like to congregate together. Go to some hippy gatherings like Burning Man or some Vipassana retreats and make new friends. Maybe even consider moving to a hippy city like Ashland Oregon or Austin Texas.

  19. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    You're too flippant about that. Without language, you literally wouldn't have "man", "universe", "cause-effect", "patterns", "mind", "science", "thoughts", "big bang", "cells", "evolution", or even a distinction between "self" and "world". The consequences of realizing what language is cannot be over-emphasized. What you think of right now as given patterns of nature, are actually mostly constructs of language. But it requires some serious consciousness work to realize this. THERE IS NO SCIENCE OR LOGIC without language. Try it! Just 20,000 years ago, science and logic did not exist! Like... AT ALL! There is nothing universal about science or logic. It's highly human-biased. Useful, yes. But reality stretches way beyond that. The universe is no more mathematical or logical than it is the slap of a beaver's tail. To appreciate this, one has to become conscious of what a symbol is.
  20. @Visionary Labeling is supposed to be like training wheels. Although even masters can still use labeling. After years of practice, it becomes so automatic that it doesn't get in your way. But of course, you can choose to drop labels if you want to. Just notice that you will be more prone to slipping back out of mindfulness. If you want to understand language, the ultimate solution is to contemplate: What is language? How did language arise in me? What is it's purpose? Who am I speaking to inside my head? There's A LOT to discover in contemplating that very deeply.

  21. Logic Nation For Actualization

    Leo Gura replied to stevegan928's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    Hehe... Tell that to a sea otter. You're not conscious yet of what language is, that logic is language, and that YOU constructed it! It would be wise to become conscious of the mechanics of symbolism, before you go around idolizing it.

  22. Sage Mode

    Leo Gura replied to Martin123's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    Remember to keep your discussions civil. Name-calling is against community guidelines. Anyone who devolves to name-calling another user will be banned. Learn how to disagree with people without making it personal, or attacking them.

  23. All Personal Questions For Leo

    Leo Gura replied to A way to Actualize's topic in Personal Development -- [Main]

    @Key Elements That's right. We're free to play the game however we want. Understanding, of course, that we have no choice about anything Allah's will be done either way.
  24. @joegarland Well, one thing's for sure: you've been playing too many NES games ;D Sounds a bit like an NDE actually. Not enlightenment. It's very easy to test for enlightenment. Just ask yourself, "What am I?" and either you know for sure, or you're lost.
  25. @jakub_friso Don't think of selfishness or selflessness as baked into any specific action. They are not. Selfishness is found in the intent of the action. If you see a homeless man on the street and feel compassion for him and decide to give him a dollar -- just out of sheer compassion, not because of anything else -- then that was a selfless action. This isn't rocket science. Your intuition clearly knows when you're behaving selflessly. All you gotta do is sit down in silence and ask it, with honesty. It's also important not to judge yourself for behaving selfishly, cause that would only pour fuel on the fire. If you want a rock-solid way to ensure you're acting in accordance with good Karma, just approach every situation with the intent to radiate unconditional love. This about how drastically different that would be from the way you usually approach situations.