Leo Gura

The problem is that you're not actually grasping what you are. Because you identify with the high-consciousness experience, when the experience dies down, you're back in ego. The key is to carefully observe what the self is regardless of experience. Pay careful attention especially when "you" are dropping out of the state. What exactly is happening there? What are you independent of state? This is why psychedelics require self-inquiry work to be effective. Otherwise you're just riding a state. Because LSD is so visual, it's extra hard not to identify with states and phenomena. But what you are is beyond all experience, states, or phenomena. This is the danger of psychedelics. They can make you feel like you know when in fact you don't yet. So keep the inquiry going.

@Don_Avocado Good work, but you have no idea yet how deep the rabbit hole goes You haven't broken through yet. Haven't seen God yet Nothing can prepare you for 30mgs. P.S. You're losing the majority of your dose down your throat. If you want the full experience, there should be zero drip down your throat. To ensure that, don't tilt your head back, flip your head entirely upside down for 15 minutes. If you taste it down your throat, you're losing much of the dose. Keep at it. Absolute Infinity awaits!

@jennywise So you understand intellectually. Good. But you have no idea yet how deep the direct experience of it goes. There is no Jenny! So who's writing all these "I am this... I am that... I know X... I think Y... I want Z..."? There is no you reading this sentence. There is only the experience of a sentence. But no YOU! Take a close look. What are you if you're not Jenny?

@Nora You're not going to resolve the mind/body problem through language, reasoning, or logic from inside the materialist reductionist scientific paradigm. You can only resolve it by having a direct consciousness of the fact that all of reality is infinite consciousness. There is no body, there is no mind, and there is no world. All of those are thoughts. You have to work to become mindful of how this is so. It's not a matter of argument. It's a matter of awareness of what's actually happening when you say, "This is my body. This is my mind." When you say or think these things, you're not aware yet that these are just noises arise from nothingness.

This is not the right attitude. You ought to be doing the bulk of the heavy lifting yourself, not through drugs. Be careful how you interpret the things I say. I say many nuanced things which are very easy to misinterpret and get yourself lost. When I speak about psychedelics, I speak about them as a way to open minds, not as magic pills or ways to escape inner work.

You gotta understand that enlightenment is very serious business. It's not for the average guy looking for self-help. It requires a level of depth and commitment that most people aren't interested in. So don't expect someone like Tony Robbins to talk about it or understand it. If you want true happiness, you will never find it outside of enlightenment. It's not possible to be happy living in delusion. But you can certainly trick yourself into thinking you're happy, in the same way you can trick yourself into thinking that McDonalds is good food.

@electroBeam Until about 6 months ago, I meditated for no more than 60 mins per day, and I was seeing good results. The intent and focus you put into your 20 mins is way more important than sheer quantity of minutes. I said 10 hours per day in the very radical context of using meditation to fix all of life's problems. You guys need to listen more carefully. I notice a lot of sloppy listening, where you listen without any nuance and your ego runs away with it. Sloppy listeners are not cut out for spiritual pursuits.

@rush Well obviously. Do you want a soldier trained in a muddy obstacle course or a soldier trained in the Ritz Carlton?

@cetus56 Next time you sit down to meditate, fully welcome the RLS, envelop it with love, and meditate the entire time on enjoying it. Focus 100% on the sensation rather than ignoring it. If you're gonna suffer, at least try to enjoy it. I've met people who get their teeth drilled without painkillers and enjoy it. So it's definitely doable. An even more advanced thing to try: when the RSL is in full force, imagine that it will never ever end. Like you will live with it 24/7 for eternity. Don't let pain push you around. You're way stronger than it. It helps a lot if you can realize that you are not a physical being. But until you have that insight, do the best to fake it till you make it.

@Emerald Wilkins Next week's video should be: How To Walk Through Walls Just to give ya'll something to gossip about.

Don't forget that seeking out pleasure is even more neurotic than seeking out pain. The reason people train in the worst conditions is so that they can handle the entire spectrum of what life has to throw at you. If you always train in gentle ways, your spirituality will be quite fragile.

@Richard Alpert Oh, the arrogance.

Ya'll need to learn to fucking listen, Rali included. A) That entire video he's rebutting was NOT about enlightenment! It was about the side-effects of meditation! Nothing I said there had anything to do with enlightenment. B) I never claimed those side-effects have meaning or value. In fact, I said to stay calm and carry on. C) I never took any ontological position regarding those side-effects. Keep in mind that your mind constructs all of "physical" reality. So to say that a wall is "real" while a demon is not, is rather moot. D) Clearly none of you have very much meditation or altered consciousness experience. E) Watch out for all these projections you make about me. (A rookie spiritual aspirant mistake.) F) Another rookie mistake: nitpicking spiritual explanations to create a false sense of rivalry or contradiction. G) Just because you understand enlightenment logically, doesn't mean you have any experience with all the other aspects of spiritual realms. As a rule of thumb, when you think you have some angle on this stuff that I haven't thought of, think again. You underestimate the depth and diversity of what we're dealing with here too easily. The understandings I communicate to you is maybe 1% of what I actually understand. Some of the things I tell you, you won't understand until you spend years digging deeper and doing the practice, Rali included. There is more to this stuff than merely no-self. You guys are failing the open mindedness test. How am I supposed to talk about demons in the future when you pull out the pitch forks or jump ship at the first uttered syllable? May your mind materialize a big fat demon who bites you in your mind-constructed ass for your arrogance

@Shaz Mushrooms don't raise blood pressure in my experience. Although you could always manage to freak yourself out on any psychedelic.

You cannot effectively change that which you don't first accept.

@electroBeam Organizing a retreat takes a LOT of experience. Many things can go wrong. I wouldn't embark on that unless you've attended at least half a dozen retreats yourself and studied how they work. For example, if someone trips and breaks his leg at your retreat, they could sue you for a million dollars if you don't take proper precautions. So be careful.

I'd focus more on working more strategically vs working harder. If you really get clear about your priorities, you can work half as much with twice the satisfaction and twice the long-term results. I find that people who are gung-ho on productivity are usually frying very small fish in life, which ironically makes them ineffective and neurotic.

Just stay vigilant. A problem that deep isn't gonna be fixed with just a few videos.

@Joel3102 Don't worry, you can fall back asleep very easily, at any time. In fact, that's almost 99% the case unless you make SERIOUS efforts otherwise. You haven't swallowed any pill. You're gonna have to fight tooth and nail for YEARS to break down that ego to the point of no return.

Read your own question above. Cause apparently you don't know it yet. You THINK you know it. But you're not conscious that that's just another thought.

@Xpansion So in other words.... you can -- with lots of careful investigation and hard work -- one day discover that you're not your thoughts

Just start doing meditation & self-inquiry every day, and stop all this ego-drama. There's nothing to figure out. You don't exist and never have. Either you want to become conscious of this truth, or not. If you do, thinking about it will not help. You just need to sit down every day and look at the fact that you don't exist. Don't expect it to feel good at first. You've built your entire life around this illusion. Get comfortable with confusion. It's a good thing here.

@Joel3102 You can do both.

@Wormon Blatburm Egos get scared easily. But the reality is, I've never met anyone who's enlightened who said, "Fuck man! I wish I could go back asleep to how I was." Instead they say things like, "I wouldn't go back for $1 million dollars", or "For the first time in my life I realized I was never happy until now." One of the problems of doing enlightenment from the Western neo-adviata perspective is that it doesn't have any support structures. If you do enlightenment from the Eastern traditions like Buddhism, Yoga, or Tantra, you get a much more supportive framework for enlightenment. Enlightenment is a beautiful and loving thing when seen properly. For the average Western materialistic ego, yeah, it's depressing. Because Western materialism is so stupid. Enlightenment is for people who really LOVE reality. If you hate reality, and love fantasy, then you'll have a hard time with it. From my perspective, there's nothing more beautiful than ego death.

Top reasons for not getting results: 1) No life purpose, no vision 2) No sense of priority or clear values 3) Not building one habit at a time 4) Expecting too much too fast 5) Working on too shallow, too materialistic goals (like money, sex, fitness) 6) No ability to create a practical action plan from abstract concepts/goals