Leo Gura

@spicy_pickles There can be no relationship without: A) Open lines of communication B) Boundaries He can be as neurotic as he wants, but you must be able to establish open, honest, safe channels of communication with him and have him understand your boundaries if there is to be any hope between you to. If he is unable to communicate or unwilling to respect basic boundaries, treating you with respect, then the relationship is already dead and there is no saving it. Sit down with him and bring up this meta-issue. If he cannot grasp it and agree that these two elements are critical to your relationship, then it's time to end it. This is not an issue about him changing or growing, it's an issue about whether there can exist a relationship at all. As for your own development, you need to sit down and get very clear and precise with yourself about what your boundaries are. What are you willing to compromise on? What is non-negotiable? Yes, the reason guys abuse you is because you aren't strong enough in enforcing boundaries, and they smell it. It's very easy to smell. Once he's smelled it, he will not respect you, treating you like a doormat for his ego.

@PetarKa Awesome! I'll cover Kurt Godel and Alfred Tarkski's discoveries in some future episode.

@Pristinemn That's what happens when you take on truth as belief. The fact is, in your direct experience you feel and act like you have free will. The only reason you say you don't have free will is because you're parroting some words you heard someone else say. So you didn't actually have any true insight into the matter, you're just pretending like you have. And of course, by pretending, you've now shot yourself in the foot. A pretend insight != a real insight You assume that power and free will are necessary "to do what I want to do, to be disciplined, to change, to achieve anything, to increase my baseline of happiness, etc." -- but this is a false assumption. EVERYTHING that's ever happened to you was done without free will. So there's no problem. You can climb Mt Everest will no free will. You can win an Olympic medal with no free will. You can decide to shoot yourself in the head with no free will. Rather than adopting new beliefs which clearly are not true in your experience, be honest about whatever you most feel is true in your direct experience. Which means, go back to thinking you have free will, because that's what's actually true for you. You act like you have it, so stop lying to yourself about that. Self-honesty is the first step to eventually reaching Truth. Stop bullshitting yourself. You believe you're a self! You believe you were born and you will die. Start by accepting that! For you, "no-self" is just a fantasy idea. Something you read in a book. If you read a book that told you you were a kangaroo, you'd be here lamenting, "Oh no!!!!! Woe is me! I'm a kangaroo. How am I supposed to live with myself now? Please help, I'm having an existential kangaroo crisis. How am I supposed to hold on to a job if I'm a kangaroo???" Bottom line, stop trying to act enlightened if you ain't actually enlightened. The path to enlightenment is quicker when you admit to yourself that you're an egotistical bastard and you're damn proud of it, and you know nothing else.

Yes, of course. Which is why masterful sages sit in silence and don't say anything at all. The only reason they talk is because you cannot understand silence. All words you utter are false. All opinions you hold are nonsense. Reality just is. The ultimate aim is no-mind. Sadhguru once said that some scientists once hooked him up to a brainwave machine to measure his meditation brainwaves. The machine showed nothing. He is clinically brain dead. When he sits, it's literally no-mind. If you could stop your mind, your journey would be over. You would have arrived in paradise.

A) Because it's ingrained in our language. All language is inherently dualistic, so it can't really be avoided without talking like a robot. B) Because you still think of yourself as a you. It does little good speaking to person stuck in duality from a nondual perspective. Whenever I speak, I like to speak as though I'm speaking directly to you, from your perspective. C) Because you do exist, as The One True Self. Existence vs non-existence is yet another duality. So anything we say on this subject is always wrong. If you say you exist, you're wrong. If you say you don't exist, you're wrong. If you say you both exist and don't exist, you're wrong. If you say you neither exist nor don't exist, you're wrong. And of course, you're also right

@momo Why play a video game? You know before you start playing it that you're gonna eventually stop playing it. Why have sex? You know before you start that you will stop. Why go on a vacation? You know before you start that you will come back home at the end. Everything you've ever done in your life has been pointless. You just weren't conscious of it. Pointlessness doesn't stop you from living. It just robs you of a certain kind of fantasy about life. It makes you aware of your mortality and the fleeting nature of reality.

@SFRL You are always zero steps off from enlightenment. It's right here, right now! That's the problem. It is so close, it's too close and obvious for the mind to grasp. The mind is always 1 step removed, but enlightenment demands 0 steps removed, so you're stuck not able to see it, even though it's right here in this very word. Enlightenment is NOT a state. Every step you make towards enlightenment is already 1 step too much, which is why you're not finding it. Enlightenment is that which is true under all conditions, all states, all situations, all times. Enlightenment was present before you were born, it's present right now, and it will be present after the entire universe ends. It's the one thing that doesn't change: Nothing. You cannot reach Nothing through any thing, technique, state, or process. Nothing is always here. You either grasp it, or you don't.

@username A big part of this path is teaching yourself new ways to relate to ordinary life again. To struggle through the reconciliation of that is half the work. Not caring about things may be a genuine purification, or a trap. You'll have to fumble around with that until it becomes clear to you which is which. Now maybe you can start to understand why people have been turning and living as monks and ascetics for thousands of years. First you become conscious, then you ask, "Okay, what do I really want out of life?" Until you're deeply conscious, asking what you want out of life is sketchy business. Your wants are corrupted through and through by ego and culture. You're not deeply conscious yet, you're just starting to taste it, so of course the transition will be rocky, and your answer to that question will not yet be rock solid. You gotta learn how to chew gum and walk at the same time. You gotta learn how to pursue enlightenment but still function effectively within everyday life. It's not easy. It feels schizophrenic at times. Or you choose to become a full-time monk.

Yes The Truth is not a one-dimensional thing. There are many degrees to realizing it. It's best to think of it as a spectrum of consciousness, or a jewel with many facets.

And if your friends jumped off a bridge, you would join them? Have you noticed yet that most of your friends aren't masterful people? So why are you seeking to be like them? You stay competitive by working smarter, not longer. Long-term consistency is far more important to your success than working long hours. If you worked for 30 hours per week for 30 years, you would out-master 99% of people in your field, including those who are working 70 hours per week. Because they cannot sustain that over 30 years. They will burn out. You can crunch for short periods of time when the situation really hinges on it. But that shouldn't be your main strategy. That's what you do when you're backed into a corner. No, work and personal dev are separate things. I was talking about 40 hours of work max. Studies have been done long ago (by factory owners) which show that 40 hours per week is the most productive schedule. Over 40 hours starts to become counter-productive. This stuff is counter-intuitive. By trying to get more, you actually end up with less.

That's right. You cannot imagine Absolute Infinity. Just keep self-inquiring. Obviously whatever you're been doing has been working. So keep working it without getting too cocky or clingy about it. God is terrifying. It's the death of you. The Devil is scared to death of God.

@egoless It's a tiny glimpse. Careful though, about chasing mystical states. That can be a big distraction. Your present experience -- regardless of state -- is already nondual. The most important thing is to realize that, so that you are conscious of nonduality 24/7, regardless of state. The Absolute is the Absolute always. It's true right now. It's was true during meditation. It's true after meditation. It's true while you're on the toilet. It's true when you're angry. It's true when you're happy. It's true when you're miserable.

All Eastern forms of yoga were designed for enlightenment. That's is the whole point of yoga. Of course it works if you work it. Yoga is a very complex and technical subject which I am not qualified to teach. If you want to learn it, learn it from a yogi.

@unknownworld I got nothing against smoking it. I just find snorting it powerful enough already. I never come back from a 5-MeO snort thinking to myself: "You know... that was just too weak. I could have used a stronger dose." A lot of trip reports I read from people who smoke it show that they come back not knowing what the hell happened, and their consciousness basically remains the same. Understanding what you're experiencing is very important. It's the most important part of the trip IMO. If you really understand it, you will be able to "see it" during regular life.

They never went away. It's just that some topics don't warrant them. And lately I've been covering more abstract/philosophical topics.

This is why I say 1% theory to 99% practice. When you get this ratio out of whack, you get lost in the labyrinths of the mind. Watch my video about Balancing Theory vs Practicing. That's a super important video that most people rarely grasp. Watch it several times. It's very profound -- not to toot my own horn, it's just a very deep topic. Pay extra-attention to where I say that you must learn how to use theory to break out of bad practice, and practice to break out of bad theory. A flexible, conscious mind should be able to do that. It requires some contemplation about the limits of mind, and then some training. It's not easy to do. Even as I say this, and even though I've shot that video, I still struggle with doing it in practice. The mind is extremely self-deceptive. No one is immune to the Devil's trickery. I notice my mind deceiving me all the time. It requires constant vigilance and work. Most people are forever lost in the infinite labyrinths of the mind. And the only thing what will save them, is death. You're like a computer stuck in an infinite loop. So be happy death is possible In fact that's what enlightenment is: death. That's really the only hope you've got of escaping the labyrinth. That's why you're in the labyrinth to begin with. No labyrinth = no you. You ARE the labyrinth!

@rush Because the mind is addicted to concepts and unconsciousness. Why? Because our culture is deeply corrupt from head to toe. People are born and just assume we're living is some great, sophisticated, enlightened age. When in fact we're living in the Dark Ages. Humanity will look back on the 21st century the same way we look back on Nazi Germany or the Mongols. You've been raised to be a Mongol amidst a horde of Mongols. So of course it's hard to be anything else. You're going against the current. This isn't evil. It's just the current state of humanity. We must go through this phase to ultimately reach the enlightened age thousands of years from now. Future generations will take enlightenment for granted as it gets handed to them on a silver platter via some magic pill. You cannot. We aren't there yet.

@PetarKa Yes, of course! Which is why you can't think your way to enlightenment. Thinking about enlightenment/truth isn't it, it's just more thinking. Thinking about awareness is not the same as being aware. This is the key trap of mind: it thinks that it can think itself out of thinking into awareness, but that's just more thinking! What's required is to realize this trap, and drop thinking (at least for a while). Thinking is just one mode of approaching life, and then there's an infinite number of other modes. There is a discontinuous jump between map and territory. An insight -- an ah-ha! moment -- is required here.

@OnceMore Good. Now sit down and answer this question: What do I want?

I don't consider 15-20ug of LSD a low-dose trip. That's a micro-dose. There is a big difference between, say, 20ug of LSD, 100ug of LSD, 200ug of LSD, 30mg of 5-MeO snorted, and finally 20mg of 5-MeO smoked. Each one of those is like a whole order of magnitude larger than the previous. I'm not scared of doing 100ug of LSD. 200ug is a bit scary but still alright. But 30mg of 5-MeO snorted is a frightening thing when you understand ahead of time what's coming. 150-200ug of AL-LAD is prefect for me for doing serious consciousness. If 5-MeO could last for 6 hours, it would be much better for consciousness work. But the problem is, it only lasts 30 mins.

@unknownworld It will overwhelm the mind regardless. The point of understanding it is so that you integrate the insight and have it change your everyday consciousness. Just having a big trip and not understanding what happened will leave you no better off than before after you come back. No, I haven't smoked it. Snorting has been powerful as fuck enough for me. I barely want to snort it ever again. It's ridiculously powerful. If a regular person smoked it, I can see them getting nothing out of it. Because it would be overkill. It's much more effective to slowly peel back the onion, from my experiences with tripping.

How many hours are you "working" in total per week? That's the key number you should be looking at. If you're working more than 40 hours per week, you're over-working, so don't expect it to be sustainable. Studying 8 hours per day for 6 days is a lot of studying. What the hell are you studying so much?

9,678.5 (if you include drawfs)

@Pure Imagination It has nothing to do with odds or luck. You're thinking about this totally the wrong way. Don't confuse statistical averages across society with one individual's spiritual path. If you want to, you can have 100% chance of being enlightened. People are unenlightened not because they can't, but because they don't have any desire to be.