Leo Gura

You don't need to measure the level of suffering. Just experience enough degrees of it to appreciate how utterly serious this issue is. Yes, of course it's relative. Which is why few people understand how deep it can go. Every day around the world millions of people go through horrific suffering which almost no one appreciates because to appreciate it would inflict a lot of suffering on you. You don't even wanna contemplate the suffering of others because it would cause you too much pain.

To be fortunate enough to be in a position where you are not constantly suffering is a blessing. Most people are so spoiled they don't even know. You could be in a trench in WW2 right now. The only reason you aren't is pure good luck. You can't even begin to imagine what suffering is possible.

Some of you guys here need to experience some deep suffering just to awaken you out of your illusions and fantasies of invincibility and strength. You are not as strong as you think you are. When life gets hard enough it will crush you. Too much spiritual bypassing going on here.

All this demonstrates is that you didn't actually experience serious loss. You got lucky. Consider a situation where you actually lose something serious and irreplaceable by your own doing.

If you base your understanding on such fantasical examples you will have a very distorted understanding of how suffering actually works. And, ironically, you will end up suffering a lot as you notice that your own life never matches your spiritual fantasies.

That's a very dangerous and serious game you're playing because by the logic your whole life is just a story. But you will not have enough wherewithal to treat someone like the loss of your house or your child as "just a story". It's not just your story, it's you're whole reason for existence. This assuming that losing a business wasn't caused by you. But what if your own behaviors and mindset keep causing you to lose your business? Almost any complex undertaking in life requires serious fore-thought, planning, and analysis of mistakes. If you don't analyze your mistakes you won't grow or improve. If your child gets run over by a car, you can't just go, "Abudance mindset!" You will naturally need to ask the question, "Was I a bad parent? Did my own negligence cause this? How can I prevent this in the future?" And that will come with serious suffering. You guys are not thinking deeply enough about these issues.

This may be technically true but it's way too reductionistic because most of your life is wrapped up in meaning you create. For example, if your business collapses you will not feel any physical pain, however the mental suffering can be immense as you have to face serious loss and you have to reflect on things you did which caused its collapse. You cannot just take the position that "oh, well, it's just a story in my mind". No, it's much more serious than that because the stories in your mind determine whether you live or die. There is much suffering to be had simply from reflecting on your on inadequecies. So what are you gonna do, not reflect on your own inadequcies and mistakes? You gonna ignore them in order to feel at peace? That's not gonna go so well. Imagine how you'd feel if you were pulling out of your driveway and accidentally ran over someone's child. Are you gonna sit down and silence your mind to meditate your way out of that? And what about all stuff in your life that you could lose? Are you just gonna act like nothing happened if your house burns down? If your child or dog is run over by a car? If your health is ruined by poison? If your spouse dumps you? If your best friend steals from you? There is endless suffering waiting for you behind every corner. You just aren't aware of it yet.

Both. Physical issues easily spill over into mental ones. But also I've suffered plenty just mentally, unrelated to health.

I am not 100% authentic either. It is difficult to share all my vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and mistakes publicly. What you see of me is often me at my best, not me at my worst. This is gonna be the case for any public figure. They will not show themselves to you at their lowest.

Even that will be a sporadic thing. Sometimes you will look at a fork and not give a fuck. Most times in fact.

Often the hardest part of pickup is just motivating yourself to go out consistently and to approach consistently. On the one hand it's easy, on then other hand that can be very challenging, especially for a very introverted person with social anxiety and zero friends or support group. Many hard things in life are mechanically easy but emotionally very challenging.

I have said that I have reached high peaks of awakening. That says nothing about how I feel day to day. You guys need to be more careful jumping to conclusions. I have never claimed things such as: I never get bored, I never suffer, I never feel bad, I have perfected my behavior, I will never get addicted, etc. I have never claimed emotional mastery. All those things are very different from an Awakening experience. I suggest being careful with such assumptions about your spiritual teachers. I reserve the right to act human. In many ways I am simply a normal human. I struggle with things. I don't have all of life solved. And I suggest you don't place such expectations on yourself or others because it's not realistic. A human is a finite, limited thing. And I am not going to live the rest of my life acting perfectly just to satisfy some onlooker's fantastical superhuman spiritual image. Do you see how problematic that would get? If that was the standard I had to reach to make videos, then I wouldn't have ever made any videos. Remember what else I told you long ago: that I am not immune to self-deception. I feel like you guys often forget that. I do fool myself sometimes.

You have no idea what God is.

If you think this work will make you invincible, boy, you're in for a rude surprise. One of the things I'm doing now which I wish I'd done earlier is disabusing you guys of mythical and fantastical notions about Awakening. Actual Awakening is a lot less glamorous. Consider that you've been sold a lot of fairy tales.

Have you actually tested this? Or is this just your theory? In my experience I can still get addictions if I'm not careful and I do get bored. And I think this will be true for most people. We live in an era where digitial stimulation is so pervasive that it's really hard not to get addicted to it because you can't abstain from it entirely like you could in the past. Today, even a Zen master will have a smartphone. And it's really easy to get addicted to your phone.

They are very similar. Hard to say because I don't know you. It can be done safely without one. But if you don't trust yourself then use a trip stitter. I'd say the first few trips are not the real danger. The danger comes much later as you do many trips and start to get cocky and sloppy. A few trips is unlikely to mess that up. But again, there are no guarantees.

I still have fear around it. Not so much the death part but the suffering that comes before it and the loss of the stuff I've developed. In another sense I look forward to the freedom of not having to be human any more. After a certain point your human life runs its course and you want something new. Overcoming the fear of death is especially hard because it's one of those things that you will not know how you really feel until you're in the thick of it. It is easy to say you have transcended this suffering or that suffering, but suffering can get very large and you will feel differently once you're stuck in it. I have been suffering a lot lately and what that taught me is not to underestimate suffering. Frankly, I don't believe people who claim they have transcended suffering. It's easy to say that when you are in a good state, but your state can shift in ways which you cannot forsee, in very very bad ways. Frankly, it's hard for me to even imagine what it looks like to transcended all suffering. That's such a tall order. Really appreciate how serious suffering is. I notice spiritual people tend to downplay it and I think that misleads many students. You should not expect this work to lead to a trascendence of all suffering. That is not a realistic goal and you will probably end up disappointed. I suggest you guys be very careful about filling your mind with spiritual fantasies. There are too many myths and stories out there about some magic guru transcending everything, as if that will be you. I assure you that your life will be a lot less magical and a lot more of a pain in the ass, with periods of intense pain which you will not be able to manipulate your way out of.

Well, you just gotta teach yourself to move gently. Of course that's not a guarantee. But you can train yourself to trip gently. And then lock away any weapons or dangerous objects.

29 is not too late. But also, don't delay any longer.

You can create other new meanings, however psychedelics can undermine meaning across the board, so you should be careful. You might undermine stuff that you will regret. Obviously this is a very personal matter. But undermining of meaning can be a painful and dysfunctional thing if done too hastily. You don't want to lose your passion for life. If you strip away all of life's meaning you will end up depressed with nothing to live for. This becomes more of a risk if you do a lot of psychedelics. So keep an eye out for that and dial if back if you are starting to lose too much meaning.

It's hard to say because my desire for that waa already pretty low. Psychedelics have made me less motivated to do business and to work long hours. Psychedelics tend to undermine meaning, so things that you used to find meaningful are not as meaningful any more.

@shree No one can predict how you will react. Even from trip to trip your reactions could vary. Yes, there is a chance that 5-MeO will open things up in your mind and force you to confront difficult existential material, including depression. Any deep and serious trip can leave you depressed for a while because you are confronting life, death, love, etc.

Just a heads up. The SSL certificate for Actualized.org is set to expire at the end of today. I have been trying to renew it now for a week but there has been a technical difficulty with my hosting company which they have not yet resolved, despite efforts. So it's possible the certificate will expire tonight and the website will be harder to access or lose some functionality. I am working to fix this, hopefully by the end of today but it might take a few days longer. If the SSL expires your browser will give you a security warning screen before you can access the site. There's not really any security issue, it's just a standard warning that browsers give these days. We should have this fixed within a few days. Thanks for your patience.

@Francis777 I heard such theories before. You can find 20 wack doctors with 20 different magic theories, none of which are validated by science.

If you do 5-MeO carefully nothing will happen to you. 5-MeO passes within a few hours and you are back to normal. The only thing you gotta pay attention to is not physically injuring yourself while high.