Leo Gura

@Sofiasspecial If a girl ever has sex with me, the chances that she will ever again experience that quality of sex with another man in her life is minimal. Most girls don't even understand how amazing sex can be when the guy knows what he's doing. I've made girls have deeper orgasms via text messages than their boyfriends or husbands could give them in person. It's not that I'm great. It's that most guys suck. And most girls suck too, and are defensive about it.

If you measure "advantage" only by your lay count, then definitely your lay count will drop by being less manipulative and less egotistical. But that's a pretty limited metric. There are much more important things to focus on in life than lay count. What a hardcore player gains in lay count a decent human being can gain elsewhere several times over.

@joegarland Nope, that's all I know about it.

Yap, yap, yap... As your monkey mind yaps away, enlightenment remains never to be found. I suggest you cut the crap and sit down and focus on the questions: "What am I?" "Who is aware?" "What is the evidence that I am a body or a mind?" All the myths, stories, personal problems, fears, doubts, etc -- just set those aside. They are largely irrelevant. What are you?! << That is the primary thing you should be concerned with if you're after enlightenment. And notice how you distract yourself from this with all sorts of stories and information-gathering expeditions. That's not an accident. The whole challenge in this journey is cutting through all the clever distractions your ego concocts, and going straight to the root.

You don't have to look too far back into your past when it comes to lying. You've already lied 20 times today and you'll lie 20 times tomorrow. Focus on fixing the source of that.

Make sure you don't get sucked back into the day-to-day grind. Use this time to change course in your life, or you will regret it latter. The life purpose course will serve you well. It was designed such for these kinds of situations. And I quit mechanical engineering myself in college. It's terribly dry. Muster the courage to follow your passion.

Well... the first thing to question is your assumption that you should have done anything differently. This is counter-intuitive, but the fact is you should have done exactly as you did, because that's exactly what happened. Going back and apply hindsight can be useful, but it's not strictly speaking true. Whatever happened, happened for a reason and couldn't have happened otherwise given your level of life experience. So first, you gotta accept what happened without telling yourself, "It should have been different." Then you can analyze the situation for possible lessons for the FUTURE. After acceptance, this can done objectively and impassionately. Personally, my rule for stock tips is simple: no one has good stock tips. The stock market has been proven to be unpredictable, and at best what you can get out of it long-term is a 10% return. If you expect anything more than a 10% annual return, you're kidding yourself and using stocks as a form of gambling. Now you learned this lesson the hard way. Sometimes that's how the deepest lessons are learned. Another general rule I have in life is that no one will give me free money. If anyone even mentions free money to me, I immediately dismiss him. It's a waste of my time to even hear him out. No one is out there working to make you rich. They are working to make themselves rich. Think about it from the stockbroker's perspective: Why the hell would he be interested in making you rich? He's interested in making himself rich. You're a stranger he's cold-calling. He has no emotional attachment to you whatsoever. You're completely disposable to him. Another general rule I follow: Don't listen to sales pitches. Cut the person off and hang up the phone immediately as soon as you know you're talking to a salesman. I don't take anything a salesman tells me seriously at all. It's all tainted by self-agenda.

@Brian Greendahl Wow! Awesome!

Consider that the Ah-ha moments aren't being made by me, but by your mind. So direct your hope at your subconscious mind

Reminds me of the Island of Doctor Moreau The challenges of reforming society in the workable way are extremely complex and nuanced. I very rarely see people -- even very intelligent and enlightened people -- who have enough understanding of systems-thinking to know how to change society in a practical way. If you're designing a stand-alone Utopia, that's not going to cut it. No one man can engineer something as complex as a society from the top down. You have to be much more clever and pragmatic about it. You have to understand how to work with egos on a mass-scale. Understanding the shit out of spiral dynamics is a good place to start. Without that psychological foundation, you will create a total disaster, like most people before you.

There's what's called a lower death drive and an upper death drive. The lower death drive is when the ego hates itself so much it wants to put itself out of its suffering through suicide. (Not so good) The upper death drive is when the ego is wise enough to realize that it's an illusion, and wants to end it's suffering through surrender to truth. (Very good).

That's certainly an option. An option that I'm currently executing.

@ZenDog 3 month meditation retreats don't exist. Even 10 days is a challenge and quite expensive to arrange. A week-long retreat usually costs $1000-$1500. I'd hate to think was a 3 month retreat would cost. If you want something that long, you're looking at an apprenticeship program or residency, which is quite different from a retreat.

Yes, do BOTH! What I find is that those times when you're really focused and "efforting" don't usually result in a breakthrough, but they lay the groundwork which then lets the breakthrough happen when you're relaxed and doing nothing. If all you did was relax all the time, you'd probably never wake up. There's a reason why spirituality has a long tradition of hardcore asceticism and unbelievably masochistic practices. They seem to get the job done when nothing else will

@Hengame Watch out for your cheapness attitude. If you truly value something, you shouldn't hesitate to pay money for it. Demanding free spiritual teachings is basically saying that spiritual teachings are worthless. You're willing to pay $5 for a Cheeseburger, but unwilling to pay $5 for a spiritual teaching? Does that make sense? I've paid over $10,000 for spiritual teachings in the last year, and gladly so. I'm going to spend another $10,000 for spiritual teachings this year too. It is worth it to me because I value spirituality. Support those industries you wish to see flourish. If a guy like Rupert Spira doesn't deserve to get paid, I don't know who does! Just my thoughts on the matter.

There are several layers of reasons. Yes, modern society totally screws up your mind and your sense of perceptive. From the day you are born your parents only give you love if you act the way their egos like, and they deny love as soon as you act against their wishes. Which then trains you to seek love from outside yourself. But more fundamentally, you seek happiness through external strategies because the ego is terrified of looking inward. If the ego ever deeply looked inward, it would discover that it doesn't exist. So the ego's entire survival depends on the pursuit of external stimulation and denial of inner reality. The ego is like a shark that must keep swimming to oxygenate its gills, or it suffocates. << That's a pretty accurate description of human egos.

So how are you NOT responsible? It's a shitty situation that you lost that much money, but come one, a guy gives you stock tips and now hold him responsible for your financial success (or lack thereof)??? Can you see how lack of responsibility-taking was what created this problem in the first place? Now, if you came here with a story about how your wife was attacked by a burglar, you'd have a stronger case, but we would still tell you that you're responsible for it. Because you're always responsible for every situation you put yourself in life, no matter how subtle. Taking full, unconditional responsibility for your life is a very mature attitude. It takes a while for the immature ego to wrap itself around this one. The ego wants scapegoats because it's too scared and weak to take on the full weight of reality. It's just too much to admit that you're the cause of every negative emotional reaction you ever have.

@JevinR Why waste time? Lack of wisdom. Those who have wisdom go straight for the jugular. Everyone else piddles around in concept-land.

@Jay S You are BOTH a non-localized awareness and a localized center of perception. Awareness and perception are distinct things. You are BOTH a human being and NOT a human being. This shit is paradoxical. You're not going to resolve the foundation of existence with the rational mind. You've run up against the hard limits of language and thought. The distinction between existence and non-existence is itself illusory. To truly answer your question requires an enlightenment experience into the nature of your being and existence itself.

Be careful about imposing your own biases on who qualifies as being enlightened or not.

I don't think you guys give him enough credit. Does he have neurotic tendencies? Sure. Is he fully enlightened? Probably not. But if you listen to him closely he's clearly speaking from experience and has had some direct experiences of non-duality. Everything I heard him say is accurate. It may just come off as New-Agey at times, but that's actually because he's not dumbing it down. I was pleasantly shocked by his level of accuracy and ability to describe spirituality in a non-dogmatic way. All spiritual truths sound New-Agey when spoken of quickly, the way he does in those short public interview sound bites. If I had to describe enlightenment in a 3-minute CNN interview, I would sound like a New-Age kook. Considering that he was a heroin junkie sex addict, he's doing pretty good. I'm happy to see him popularizing yoga meditation.

You gotta keep in mind that any guru's words are just words. They are never meant to be taken for reality. If you keep that in mind, you won't have this kind of reaction. The map is not the territory. Especially in spiritual pursuits.

If enlightenment does anything, it makes you MUCH MORE attuned to emotions. It's a common misconception that enlightenment makes you emotionless. Just the opposite. You become so sensitive to emotions that they flow through you without resistance. The capacity for creativity also skyrockets. The thing you should really be asking yourself is: How is staying unenlightened affecting my songwriting ability?

@stephanie The problem is that you're stuck looking at this from the level of beliefs, which is a pretty limit and fallacious level. Ask yourself why your mind is unwilling to be open to radical possibilities about reality? Do you really feel that mainstream society has the nature of reality itself figured out?

I met a guy who was employed as a merchant sailor in the Northwest, Seattle area. Requires zero experience to start. Their union trains you. Pays very well for a manual labor job, good promotion opportunities, you get to travel the world, and you get 90 days off the ship several times per year. A great gig for those who are solitary. It's also nice in that is gives you an escape from the numerous distractions and enticements of modern American society. Make the ship your monastery as you save up dough. $50,000 - $70,000 per year salary is possible within just a few years of work. Most sailors blow it on booze and hookers in Thailand, but you can be smarter than that (I hope )