Leo Gura

@Afonso Sounds like your body energy is twisted up. I would suggest doing some daily practice where you consciously relax your hands and arms and get acclimated to that "empty" feeling of being fully relaxed. Open up your body and try to attain perfect symmetry. It will feel uncomfortable at first, but over time, you should adjust to it. Focus your mindfulness on muscle tension in your body. There's probably a lot of it there that will take some work to notice. Also, try to contemplate the root source of this behavior. WHY are you doing it? What role it is serving? How are you using it to avoiding facing some kind of emotion?

@Toshko There are animals that need saving in Central and South America too.

Good question. I would say there has to be at least a kernel of passion from the start. Don't expect it to be the kind of full-blown passion you'd get if you were already a master in the field with a long track record of success and fame, but the idea of making creative output in your chosen field should excite you a lot right now. Your mind should be swimming in possibilities. There should be an exciting vision possible now, even if you're unsure how to make it real. Think of a young aspiring movie director who has no clue how to make movies yet, but he's already eager about planning out movie ideas. That's what it should feel like when you've found it. A snowball effect will definitely happen as mastery is developed, but you cannot just select any random field and then expect to become passionate about it through mere mastery of technique. If that were the case, life purpose and passion would be irrelevant. Think of it like getting married. Your strategy with marriage would NOT be to select any random girl on the sidewalk and marry her, and hope things turn out well. Your strategy would be to find the RIGHT girl, the one with whom you share values, interests, personality traits. and dreams -- in other words, there's a certain chemistry. You're not gonna get that with every girl.

@Treeves4u Good! You're definitely on the right track. This is what it looks and sounds like when you are starting on your life purpose for real. There's passion behind your words. One thing I would question you on is the part of your vision where you implant artificial intelligence into brains. Now... there's nothing wrong with that per se, but for you specifically, why did you select that of all things? The reason I ask is that you wanna be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Make sure you are first clear on the impact you're passionate about having BEFORE you decide upon the method for making said impact. This ensures you don't confuses means with ends. If what you really care about is raising consciousness in people, then make THAT your top aim, and then whether it's gonna be via implants or some totally different method, that part you leave open to discovery and research. Because what if there's a better way than implants that you haven't considered yet? You wanna be open to it, right? At least you would if your top passion with consciousness rather than implants. But if your top passion is implants, then go for that. So that there is just a little refinement and food for thought. Try to really get to the rock bottom of how your passion for consciousness, being a sage, and medicine are connected (if at all).

@Evilwave Heddy Clearly your current job is a dead end and your intuition is telling you to pursue learning. But you're afraid because you have no immediate idea of how learning might lead to something productive or lucrative down the line. THIS is where life purpose work is done. THIS is where the rubber meets the road. If you can't muster the courage and creativity to pursue your intuitions, you've already failed. Now you can appreciate why most people have crappy jobs and zero life purpose. Because they do what you're about to do: repress the muse and settle for practicality. It's not important to know how your passions and intuitions will lead to ultimate success. You will NEVER know that! What's important is to muster the courage to listen and follow your muse with diligence. And your muse is clearly telling you: GO FUCKING LEARN!

@username That approach can work, but you wanna be sure it's truly a relevant skill. Otherwise you might waste 4 years learning that skill, only to realize: "Oh, I'm not gonna use it." And by that point it will be too late. You're gonna have to pay the bills somehow, and so you'll likely get stuck with something MUCH less than your life purpose, out of necessity. It's much better if you can nail down your life purpose now and save years of blind trial and error. Although if you can't, some kind of action is better than no action at all.

@Afonso Now ask yourself, how can some people sit still like that for 5 days straight? That's 5 x 24 hrs = ~120 hrs straight. No food, no water, no peeing, no sleeping, no moving.

Higher consciousness goes WAY beyond flow state. It's more like being high on psychedelics 24/7. "Reality" itself changes.

@Mrkvn8 Why do you want it to decrease? You should be asking me how to increase it. The more shit you purge from your system, the better. Learn to enjoy the purification aspect.

While I appreciate the praise, please don't make this about idolizing me. Thread closed.

@habibi87 Don't forget to love all the evil you encounter every day. Fastest way to cultivate true love.

@Aamir King It's definitely possible to burn out, even if you're doing the greatest thing in the world. Life purpose is best achieved with a steady consistent pace, rather than at break-neck pace. Consistency is the key! You gotta pace yourself like for a double-marathon, not a sprint. If you're working more than 40 hours per week, you're probably doing it wrong. And you will be LESS productive in the end. Create downtime to meditate, introspect, read, listen to music, hang with friends, cook, go outdoors, relax, etc. Creativity is maximized when you are relaxed, not frenzied and overwhelmed with work. Download and read this PDF presentation about productivity: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html

@Mr Lenny Who? You??? Ask, who is this "I" that's supposed to be aware of awareness. Is there such an "I" at all? Try to point to it. Surely if the "I" is real, it should be easy to point to without restoring to a bunch of vague rationalizations.

@Epiphany_Inspired You can be a sage whether you're a man or a woman. There are examples of women sages/mystics, although of course much less prominent than men, but that's mostly due to bad culture discouraging women from getting involved in anything serious. I can't speak to what it's like to do enlightenment work in a "feminine way". There probably are some more feminine ways. Feel free to seek them out. Become your own kind of sage. Not a cookie-cutter sage.

@Aamir King Probably both

@Aamir King It's normal. Energy is being redirected in your body. The brain must optimize itself to sustain higher degrees of coherence and consciousness. Like I said before, don't be too surprised if one day you have to howl like a wolf. Energy has a mind of its own. Let it do its thing as long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else.

You do understand that most of the founders of Zen were great sages, right? Zen was founded by Japanese monks who dedicated DECADES of their lives, often risking their lives, traveling by ship to China and even India to study 1000s of original Chan and Buddhist scriptures, copying them, debating them, reconciling them, collecting them to bring back to Japan to transform Japanese spirituality. This was a massive sagely undertaking without which Zen would not exist. Monasteries are very complex social machines that need to be well-managed. Land, funding, and permissions must be acquired by appealing to emperors and sponsors. But how would you know any of this if all you're interested in is sitting on a cushion in meditation? How would you understand these nuances without STUDYING them? Maybe picking up a few books would be helpful? "No, Leo... all I'm interested in is enlightenment! And books are just more beliefs and illusion." This notion that meditation or consciousness work eliminates the need for reading, thinking, knowledge, training, therapy or traditional self-help, career development, business, science, medicine, proper diet, etc. is very simplistic. Don't forget: After enlightenment, the fucking laundry! Not Oreo's and cartoons. And don't forget, before enlightenment, still... the fucking laundry!

Awesome! I'm in awe of their brevity. Perfect for Youtube audiences

In the next few days the book list will be updated with 24 life-changing new books. Wanted to give you guys a heads-up as the price of the book list will be bumped up by a small amount after the update. Remember, anyone who's purchased the list (no matter when) will get free future updates. I'm committed to continuing improving the list, sharing with you the best gems that I keep finding. This update includes a lot of books about: Psychedelics and spirituality Paranormal phenomena (yes, it's real!) Metaphysics Theory of science Quantum mechanics Meditation Enlightenment A few of the new books are rare finds, and ABSOLUTELY life-transforming. This year I read more mind-blowing books than ever. Many of these are advanced books that require radical openmindedness to complete. So be ready to have all your models of reality torn to pieces.

I find claims of something new under the sun pretty rare. There's a long history of politics as showmanship, so it's not like Trump is that much of a surprise. And if we've learned anything from spiritual development, after big positive change a big ego backlash is the norm. Complex mechanical systems maintain homeostasis.

@Harvey Well, if it makes you feel any better, I struggle to explain enlightenment in my 1st language too. Enlightenment is a tricky thing to communicate clearly in any language. But practice makes perfect. If it's really that important to you, grab a dictionary and start building up your vocabulary.

@Beyond Words Nonduality means everything is infinitely interrelated. It's not like consciousness is one thing, reality is another thing, meditation is a third thing, and enlightenment is a fourth thing. IT'S ALL ONE INFINITE THING! The distinctions you make between things constitute reality. And all these distinctions are arbitrary. It's like you're partitioning an infinite-sized hard drive. How many partitions does an infinite-sized hard drive have? And of course scientific method is a part of S. Otherwise it couldn't exist S includes everything possible.

@Toshko Don't get too hung up on "helping people". The point isn't to help people but to be passionate about having some sort of creative output -- whatever that may be for you. If it's creating fun video games, that fine. But you gotta be REALLY passionate about that. If it's healing people as a doctor, that's fine, but you gotta be REALLY passionate about that. Given that you're so young, go do some traveling. It's not like you need to travel for 4 years. You can do some traveling and go to university too, if you want. Be creatively flexible. If Asia and Africa aren't realistic for you right now, then maybe travel somewhere closer and cheaper. Just to scratch that travel itch. As you do that, you may receive your next clue.

@Cammy Your inner muse is telling you to travel. That sounds like exactly what you should do. As you do that, keep your ears to the ground for your next clue.

@Callum Milner You may need to develop another marketable skill besides acting in order to help finance your acting career. Some life purposes require building up capital. Sometimes the route isn't directly A > B. Sometimes you gotta jump through hoops while keeping your eye on the prize. For example, rather than being a waiter, maybe you could learn some programming or graphic designs skills to finance yourself through college or during those periods where you don't have acting gigs. Remember, you are allowed to be strategic in pursuing your purpose. Just don't get lost in the side-gigs. And especially if you're young, you might need to spend a few years building up capital to open some doors.