Kamo

@Crazcass Yes, Leo deliberately left out psychedelics because they are the primary tool for changing your state of consciousness. Following along with his videos you can see clearly that some of his deepest insights require a state change of consciousness to be accessed to realize things like that. These insights come from the use of psychedelics. If you have used them before you will immediately understand that they work and why they are the primary tool used. Your simply not going to be able to change your state of consciousness to the higher degrees necessary through the traditional methods. Psychedelics completely change everything about your perception of reality, especially 5MeO DMT in my opinion. Your basically directly altering the very mechanism of your mind manifesting reality. Its still necessary to keep the basic practices like Meditation and Contemplation because your going to have to be psychologically grounded enough to handle the psychedelic experiences because they can be quite intense. You then have to be able to contemplate what the trips have shown you. I also agree with SgtPepper-Systematic use of psychedelics is the primary approach necessary. Leo simply would not be where he is at with out them.

Yeah, These terms all mean the same thing, Leo mentions that in his videos.

@DreamScapeLeo mentioned in the past he currently is writing an outline for a book. So stay tuned for that. Wont be out anytime soon though

Yes, of course you can. Because your personality is flexible and you can change it with practice. Personalities can also changed based on your environment. You can become conscious of how you change it, and observe your behavior around different people.

@PurpleTree Awesome, let me know your thoughts when your done.

I can relate to what your saying, been doing self help for at least 8 years myself and It truly is highly dependent upon attitude. Also there are 2 fundamental concepts in your mind that your working with. There's the conceptualization of your current experience, and the "outcome" perception. In other words the conception that you think your trying to "Get to" or experience. Basically your seeking a change in the "Quality" of your life. You want your quality to feel more pleasant. You want to "feel" better than you do, Content, Happiness. Maybe even as a child. If you had a good childhood you remember the quality felt better, more vibrant, secure, worry free. If you had not had a good childhood then still your seeking to feel the vibrancy of life, the energy, security, worry, stress free mentality, feel loved and respected by others. So your doing self help to achieve that. Establishing an understanding of what your really after needs to come first, which it seems like you get that but stay mindful that remains as an idea until you actualize it so your chasing more thoughts. Understanding your limiting beliefs about yourself such as too traumatized, or your too fucked up are also thoughts. Your aware of your victim mentality so you know thats exactly all that is. You know this. Its just your thoughts that accompany how your feeling about it make you believe it more. You know how the emotions and the thoughts create these cycles that reinforce itself and create more of the same. Observe this process and begin to disagree with it. Just cancel it out. This is not denial it is seeing it for what it is, Its an "unwanted intrusive thought" and you can see its falsehood. You have to shift your attitude you have to your own thoughts, You want to relate to your thoughts a different way. Mainly the "Unwanted intrusive thoughts" These are the thoughts with the quality of the ones you mentioned in your last paragraph, the ones that dont feel productive, useful, helpful, encouraging. The kind that cause your disturbance and stress. This can be done by practicing a way to relate to your thoughts, it will help you break the habit you have towards them. You do want to have goals and intentions of fulfilling your life purpose, keeping on track with doing things that do bring you joy will impact how you feel, it is only your thoughts that get in the way of this. A practice is as follows that you run on your awareness of your thinking. When intrusive thoughts arise you can remember this acronym: (R.J.A.F.L.) Recognize-Observe yourself experience such thoughts. Notice the quality of them. They are clear and obvious to you that they are not pleasant. Just thoughts-Label as just thought or intrusive thought. Youll get better at distinguishing the quality of each thought as you practice observation and recognition. Accept and Allow-Let the thoughts be in your mind with out resisting them, but dont take them serious, Dont let your mind go down a rabbit hole of exploring the thoughts. Float and Feel-Observe the distinction between thinking and awareness, stay with awareness as the thoughts pass. Your noticing the thoughts are there but your mindful of yourself as experiencing the thoughts and know they are only temporary thoughts let yourself feel them till they pass. Let time Pass-Let the thoughts pass and go back to what you were doing before the thoughts arose. Such as staying on your goals and passions. Youll have to recycle this process as many times as it takes till the thoughts loose their hold over you. Practice deep breathing during this helps as well. This process is a way for you to begin relating differently to your mind and helps to establish more balance in your emotions that keep you from getting dragged down by the unwanted thoughts. This WILL take TIME so you gotta be patient and consistent with it as your learning to relate to the content of your mind in a different way. This has been the most practical and direct advice ive come across in my 8 years of doing this kind of work and I hope it helps you in the same way as it has helped me. I got it from a book called "Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts" and I been able to apply it to my experience of life with direct beneficial results. Nothing is a cure all or immediate fix but something like this seems to be just enough of a shift to be practically helpful.

Yes! theres a book called "Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts". ground breaking for understanding this!

@PurpleTree Yeah it sucks, its weird this kind of thing even happens. But the more you study it and read books about thoughts, it becomes easier to deal with.

@The0Self @Tristan12 Yeah i experienced this at 23 as well. I intuited its the age where most people are naturally evolved enough to facilitate deeper insight into reality/self. But it takes many more years to understand the sights that are experienced at such a young age.

This comment is gold right here, So make sure you assign some wisdom to those words lol.

Its intangible. So because how our finite minds works theres a self referential aspect to it that is our sense of self. So its gonna try to identify. Its that there is our knowing of our own existence. Self Aware-Knowing or Awareness. Its the very essence of what we are, we cant really refer to it easily because its like we're trying to call out the interface with reality. But that would imply 2 things. Its just the awareness. Bring it back a notch to before you identify. I think you got it tho, You have experienced a degree of awakening. Total Awakening is when you understand all of yourself perfectly.

100% would agree with this! Its just like "Here I Am" to "Here..AM" to just "AM!" Which we call "Pure Awareness"

This clicked something for me, Thank You! Alot of confusion dropped away immediately. Feels like a koan was answered. lol

Its not Linear like that. Its a spectrum or scale as mentioned. You can "skip" from any state to any state. Eckhart Tolle "skipped" From Apathy straight to Enlightenment from a single ultimate surrender. This also happened to move him into Stage Turquois. However this model is different from Spiral Dynamics Stages. You can not skip a stage and states are not linear like that. These Models of how Enlightenment works are only models.. A state of consciousness can be experienced at any stage. We know this through psychedelic use. Hawkins is referring to the states not the stages. There are certain characteristics with in a state that remain more persistent in a stage. Which is generally why there is confusion in understanding the relation between the models. As for leveling up, its not linear like that, so it doesn't exactly apply in that way. When you frame it like that, the ego will immediately begin getting in your way. However I understand in what manner your trying to refer to when you say "leveling up. "Level" here, Is used to refer to a position on the scale which consist of specific characteristics and quality, it is used to identify a persons state of consciousness, and refers to the quality of life that is present with in that state of consciousness. Your not leveling up or down. Your just experiencing different qualities of experience. For the context of this dialog, Its more accurate to say "point" because now when we say "point" of consciousness it removes the linearity idea, Now your able to understand what your actually trying to d, which is experience the characteristics of certain "points" of consciousness that correlates to the level you want to experience. You then make an assumption that you can level up to the "point" or experience you want, because you assume the experience you have is down. So the only reason you think you need to level up is to experience a better level than the one your at. But Because consciousness doesnt work like that your gonna be playing a tricky mental game with yourself. So focus on bettering the quality of your life through self actualization work and forget about leveling up, then check back in on the scale to gauge your progress. This will reduce the egoic payoff you imagine.

Yeah I know what your talking about. What it sounds like your doing is living in a perspective of a perspective of yourself. Your understanding of emotion and human connection leads you to believe how people sense each others feelings, because you have noticed it in the past. So due to this, you feel uncomfortable because your anticipation of making them feel uncomfortable is uncomfortable. Your anticipating someone elses feelings before hand which is adding resistance to your own emotions. Then you become worried about them sensing this off you. This anticipatory fear is a thought the mind gets stuck on then sustains it, because what you resist, persist, this creates the uncomfortable emotions you feel and want to prevent others from sensing. There is basically a counterintuition going on, which is your desire to not make them feel uncomfortable around you, this is counterintuitively doing the opposite in your mind. Then fear of a self fulfilling prophecy (them sensing you/feeling uncomfortable) arises adding to your own resistance. So becoming aware of that entire process in your direct experience gives you some "letting go" over it reducing the amount the thought is stuck, loosening up how it feels. The less attention you give the thoughts the less momentum it will have over your emotions. Mindfulness and self introspection during these moments will help you cope with this, and allow your mind to resolve it naturally. You have good emotional intelligence and empathy so its not a bad thing this occurs, its just you want to try to accurately interpret what's really going on.

These are only thoughts, and are illusory, Leo has a video on thoughts. "Grasping the illusory nature of thoughts." The harmful thoughts dont mean anything and generally point to the opposite of how you believe you are, which is why they bother you, your trying to avoid them which gives them the energy. Just know everyone at one time or another in their life experiences similar thoughts. Theres a book that may help you, Its called "Overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts." Theres a small section specifically about harm and self harm. Then later the book teaches you further how to understand and get over them.

Because theres something else that happens there. Its very challenging to put it into words. Because its almost more of a qualia if anything. But deeper than a sensation.

I agree thats basically what I was saying too, people consider perception as something outside or separate from their self.

"I amness" would be prior to perception, its perception that allows you to recognize this. They are pretty much merged as a Perspective. We would call this Experience

Whoa, thats different, theres quiet a distinction there. It almost like illusory or kind of a "floaty" kind of observation to it. Thats way different than trying to talk about it. I understand.

It actually doesnt take any more than that. Understanding is the upward path of Consciousness. In other words the upward path is the path of understanding. Understanding as a path of Consciousness.

@Leo Gura Is my answer close at all? lol

I would agree with Judy here. The purpose of your perspective is simply to exist as a perspective. Then second order things are able to come online such as thinking and sensing where the ability to form meaning and reason also come online. Which all function with in the perspective to give the perspective a sense of direction. Understanding is a second order function. Your perspective comes first, and has the capacity to form understanding. You could call spiritualty the process of understanding "Being" Which really is the search to understand your Self. So "understanding" when it is fully comprehended, may just be the condensed word of Self Realization . Like when you understand something your really just realizing parts of your Self. Because everything is the Self, "Being" You can only Understand that which is within being. That which is Being is the Self or God.

This is simply false.. Not sure of the exact time frame but The United States military force has so many members that as late as 2013 there was a reduction of forces, allowing member to discharge early. Some restrictions were also applied to eligibility to join to prevent such a wide range of potential candidates. Since then there has been no trouble with recruitment and many highschool kids still desire to join. There is also a wide variety a prerequisite requirements to join disqualifying many people.

Get this book, "Overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts" It is a CBT based guide. I assume most of your issues are stemming from your thoughts and this book does a really great job at helping you understand these things and what you can do about it, in case you want to avoid the whole medical field and therapist approach.