EternalForest

@undeather That's fascinating and equally frightening

@ZenSwift Love the way you write!

Years ago I put a gig up online for someone to do a music related job for me. As they were doing it, they were very friendly and it really felt like we related to each other. We talked about a bunch of bands and shared taste in music. They gained my trust by doing this and I really felt like they were legitimate, so when they asked for early payment before the job was done, I didn't think twice and sent them the money. Afterwards, they promptly deactivated their phone number, never finished the job and I never heard from them again.

Blog exclusive video content has been quiet for a while now. Been checking every Sunday since early April (when the last one was posted). Lots of cool stuff shared, but nothing from Leo on the couch Please come back. The raw, unscripted videos you do are weirdly my favorite!

I think you're just using music obsessively. I set aside about an hour a day to either discover new music or just play a small selection of songs I really love from my sound system, Maybe even go outside and listen to music on the phone while taking a walk, looking at the sky and enjoying myself. Then every once in a while I'll schedule a little vacation day to myself to listen through an entire artist's discography, but at the end of that I feel like I just went through a spiritual experience. I also schedule days like this to watch full seasons of shows and movie marathons. Just don't overdo it and consume several hours of media a day obsessively. Pace yourself. Doesn't mean you can't listen to a few songs here and there or have some music in the background, but treat it like a dream. Dreaming is nice, but do you want to dream your life away?

Alright so I've just read your original post and haven't read any replies but when it comes to the Black Pill, let me give it to you straight, man. I used to have a lot of the same negative and defeatist sort of beliefs about women, until I realized one very important thing: Even if the Black Pill is true, it doesn't matter at all! It doesn't matter if there isn't a single woman in the entire world wants to have a relationship with you at the moment. Why? Because you need to live your own life. Do you. Forget about what women want and live your dreams. Pursue your passions. Live the life you've already dreamed of. Be the genuine person that you really want to be. Once you do this, you'll realize all this sulking and negativity was just a waste of your time. Every moment that you spend bitter about the fact you don't have a girlfriend is one moment that you could be spending pursuing your passions, helping others, building your company, creating your art, and ultimately changing the world. And you know what? Once you start living your best life, you'll eventually find the quality women that you have a lot in common with. You'll attract and gravitate towards the women that are perfect for you. If I were you? Forget that you ever found the Black Pill, get off the internet, and have some fun. Work hard. Play hard. Wish you the best!

I'm a huge fan of your work, and I can't thank you enough for all the value you've given me over the years. The book list and Spiral Dynamic series in particular have been invaluable. However, I must be honest and true to the thread about what I feel like is your biggest flaw: patronizing your students. Oftentimes while watching your videos it feels like you assume the person watching the video does nothing but play video games, watch porn and jack off all day (you insinuate your audience relishes in these activities nearly every video), and also assume they've never achieved anything close to your state of self actualization or enlightenment. This might be good for the new viewer to kind of "jolt them awake" so to speak but it causes a sort of dulling effect among your frequent students where they start to subconsciously feel like they'll never surpass or outgrow you. You've even teased about this a few times in recent videos, how "One day you might outgrow me" but it's always done with a little wink and an unspoken "but you have so much more to learn and I'm growing pretty fast, so you better keep watching". I just don't see any situation where someone watching your content for an extended period of time will ever advance beyond Actualized.org, and that's an issue because even though someone who watches all your videos is destined to be extremely developed and conscious, they'll never become as conscious as you. The best teachers create the best teachers, yet I don't see a strong enough push from Actualized.org to create leaders, especially spiritual teachers. This issue is present in the videos but especially in the forum. I value and appreciate the many insightful dialogues you and I have had, but again, I gotta be honest Leo...scrolling through your comment history, you come off as a total jerk sometimes. You don't sound at all like the wise man in your videos. I could bring up examples, but it's not any one example as much as it is your overall tone. A good chunk of the comments are helpful, but most of them are some variation on: "Wooosh you missed the point" "LOL this is total bullshit. Total pipe dream." "Hahaha just go out and talk to girls" "Bro, get off the computer and get back to work" "Dude, quit bitching." If I had never watched your Youtube videos and just read your comments, I'd think they were made by some punk kid trolling on his phone while waiting for the school bus. Bottom line: please treat your students with more respect.

I have long conversations of 2-4 hours with my friends on a regular basis, but in those situations you don't have to be very structured, you can take breaks while the other person is talking and you'll always have the other person to go off of. But to speak... By yourself, With no feedback, Focusing on the same topic, Making it engaging For multiple hours With little to no breaks On the regular? How does one do that? Seems like an incredibly powerful skill to have.

@Dodo Yes, and it's also because you have more awareness while falling asleep because of the slight discomfort of the hard floor. I also find it ironic that I had a typo (short story/story story) when talking about my writing, haha that's funny

Sleeping on the floor usually gives me one. My dreams also seem to be more vivid when I'm in the process of writing a short story, novel or screenplay.

We measure time in seconds, so to us, this second is the present moment. If we measure time in some other fashion, it would be different. Time flies when you're having fun. Waiting in line feels like an eternity. So are we moving through time, or is time moving through us, with our own notions of what each unit represents?

My favorite kind of meditation is just star gazing and cloud watching! It's magical ✨

3 ideas: I know it's the most mentioned but I'll mention it one more time...Joe Rogan! You guys would have amazing chemistry, Leo. Mark Passio - Probably one of the best people out there in terms of systems thinking and meta perspective Spirit Science - Discussing spirituality with him would be a blast. I'll watch whoever you end up doing a podcast with, however. Always a pleasure to see you speak with like minds.

@Origins Would you say being a filmmaker or showrunner isn't a "worthy" life purpose, then? Because from what it sounds like, experiencing the art they create is an "inferior option"? @Bodhitree I highly agree, great shows and movies are not the only material you should be consuming for self actualization but if you find value in great stories and want to study human perspectives, I still consider them important.

This is a bit of a response/discussion about this video uploaded back in 2014: (Leo may have changed this stance on this over the years though, sharing Love Death and Robots on his blog recently.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIUg7WjGKA Similar to the creative ideas and inspiration Leo mentions that you can get from movies, mindfully watching high quality TV series show the process of self actualization from start to finish! In a sense, watching these series mindfully and asking yourself quality questions along the way can be the ultimate lesson on how to self-actualize your own dreams and passions. Watching these characters constantly challenge themselves on the Hero's Journey despite all their grand challenges gives the viewer that same sense of passion and thirst for adventure, even if most viewers are not conscious of it. For those going through struggles in life, a self help book may not always resonate, but watching dynamic and complex characters transcend their loneliness, drug addiction and dark pasts can inspire them in ways that non-fiction just can't achieve. Beyond the empty platitudes of the average self-help book on those subjects, it's that emotional connection, and that deeper resonance and empathy that will help them the most. If you watched a character you love self-actualize and overcome their vices, you feel like you can do it too. It's inspiring. TV series can be some of the most powerful tools for self development! You can get enormous growth from quality live action dramas, comedies, anime, cartoons, anthologies, etc. BUT (and this is the big caveat), you must watch them mindfully. Laying on the couch for 4 hours mindlessly watching TV will not give you any benefits. However, watching shows consciously can give you as many valuable insights and wisdom as any self help book could give you (sometimes even more). And what's more, the emotional connection you have with these stories and characters will allow the lessons to resonate even deeper. Personally, when I finish a series that teaches me a valuable insight about purpose, love, humanity or some greater truth, the course of my life is always altered for the better. If you haven't checked it out, I highly encourage you to mindfully watch and journal your experience with the shows on the IMDB Top 250 TV list. It's a great place to start. The insights you'll get may surprise you, and you'll be entertained along the way https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/ All in all, not only can these series change your life and inspire you to achieve greatness (when watched mindfully, of course), I believe that creating these deep types of series is a truly worthwhile and healthy life purpose! Thanks for reading. I'd love to get all of your thoughts on this.

@sholomar Do you think its also possible that the people that don't have all those things may actually need the messages of an insightful movie or show the most?

@NOTintoxicated Good and evil are subjective. Also, I take it that photo you posted was aimed towards me, correct? If so, it's clear that you currently have no intentions of having a respectful discussion. All I can say is I hope that one day you find more compassion and have less hatred in your heart. I think reading Conversations with God would help you. @Leo Gura I apologize if it sounded like I was defending Rush, let me explain: Growing up, listening to Rush Limbaugh was a way for me to connect with my Dad and my Grandpa. We didn't have much in common otherwise, but we could always bond over sitting and listening to the radio. Growing up with more conservative values instilled in me, one thing my family and I could agree on was that the Democrats were ruining America, and we needed to get back to old American values, and the way things used to be. It probably also contributed to why I'm such a nostalgic person too. I no longer consider myself Conservative/Republican, instead more of a Centrist/Independent, and over the past couple years I was beginning to see the toxicity of his grievance politics, but when Rush Limbaugh died, it stirred a more emotional reaction in me. Because I had a lot of sentimental memories with family attached to his radio show. Listening to him so consistently for so many years, it felt as if a good friend or family member had died. So perhaps I wasn't seeing things very clearly. After making my initial posts, I took some time off and thought things through, as well as doing more research on a lot of the stuff that Rush had said in the past, and now I'm somewhat ashamed for sticking up for him the way that I did. So many of his views are downright shameful. I used the Obama comparison because he was Rush's main topic of criticism for nearly a decade and I knew he was a figure that is seen as more conscious here, but now I regret doing so. I still think Obama could have been more conscious, considering the drone strikes, but since Bush, Obama and now Biden is doing them as well (even though he is at least limiting them), it's unfair to call Obama out for it specifically when it was done by every President in the past two decades. However, the only thing I still believe is that people like Rush should be allowed to have their views, not matter how toxic you and I may believe them to be. From their perspective, many of our views could be toxic as well. Even though I know that being Progressive is inherently more conscious than Conservatism, I still believe they should be allowed to have their own shows and have their own speakers ( whether they should be on public radio is another story)/ But they're people too. I used to be one of them. Heck, it took until the US Capitol being breached for me to totally disavow Trump for similar reasons to Rush. I had so many positive memories bonding with my family over Trump and the Republican world, when there was so little else for us to bond over. But when I saw a President show so little empathy and take so little responsibility for a breach that by proxy led to the death of an innocent police officer, among several others, it finally broke the conditioning and made me realize who the man really was at heart. And even for it take that long for me to see him for who he truly was makes me feel ashamed I was duped for so long and not conscious enough to see it. But at least I finally did see it after all. I just wanted to make this one final post to apologize for any hostility and explain why I had the reaction that I did, and also to let you know that I did give thought to what you had said. All the best.

@DocWatts Marcus Aurelius is one of the most self actualized people to ever walk the Earth. If he is the benchmark for healthy Blue, you're just being unreasonable. Even someone like Joel Osteen is a more reasonable person to use as a reference. @Leo Gura Yes, Rush Limbaugh was toxic. Every Stage Red and Blue person is toxic in many ways, doesn't mean they don't have good qualities. You're supposed to celebrate someone's good qualities upon their death, not how much of a piece of shit they were... Also, how is sharing a different perspective gaslighting? I don't care if you don't like the guy. But I find it honestly sickening how a forum that's supposed to be pushing love and high consciousness can be so downright cruel about the death of a talk show host, nearly celebrating his death as if some evil dictator just died. Have some respect for the dead. How would you feel if Obama died and the forum members started saying stuff like "Wow, the world's a better place without him in it!". The man never hurt anyone. You can call him ignorant, but to act like he was some plague to the world? That's beyond fucked up. I honestly expected better from you all.

Your video is disrespectful in the wake of his passing. He was no saint, but still a very healthy example of Stage Blue. Perhaps one of the healthiest in mainstream Conservatism. I'd much rather have him lead the right than some of the people over at Fox News. Rush at his best: RIP

In Leo's latest video "What is wisdom?" he said that to truly understand wisdom you must contemplate it for yourself, so before watching the video I contemplated what wisdom was (using a journal) for 1 hour and I thought some of you might be interested in reading what I came up with. Being a journal, it's all stream of consciousness and a bit scattered but I think the core messages I kept coming back to again and again are worth exploring more, and after watching the What is Wisdom? video I'm sure it'll help, but I think this was a good start, and it'll be interesting to compare and contrast my initial contemplation here with the video. Before reading, I highly encourage you to contemplate what wisdom is for yourself as well! ___________________________________________________ What is wisdom? Wisdom is information that helps you through your life that's acquired through experience You can gain wisdom from both good and bad experiences Wisdom shows you how to apply knowledge Old people tend to be wiser because of more life experience Wisdom must be acquired internally (and physically) Wisdom is universal and can be applied to anyone Wisdom is timeless. It can help you throughout the course of your entire life Wisdom is consistent. Wise men and women tend to agree on the same core values Wisdom is simple and elegant Wisdom could help you in the moment but often the person getting the wisdom isn't wise enough to see it In a sense you have to have a certain level of wisdom already to recognize wisdom But at the same time, the deeper universal wisdom will always resonate Wisdom is not only knowing what to do, it's knowing what not to do and being able to forsee why. (Wisdom is foresight) Wisdom gives you a deep understanding of life beyond knowledge Wise men understand wisdom is not everything Wisdom is individual knowledge (yet something that someone else says can trigger the recognizing of the wisdom already within you) You can acquire wisdom by learning from experiences Wisdom allows lessons or insights that guide you through your life Wisdom can only be learned through Experience There is a difference between being learned and being wise Being wise is almost like the ability to differentiate between what information is important Wisdom is experience Can a young person be wise too? Yes, because wisdom is not about the amount of experiences or how many experiences you have knowledge of but instead your appreciation of those experiences and your ability to learn from those experiences Wisdom is the maturity of knowledge You could replace wisdom with experience for every statement here All wisdom is experience, but not all experiences are wisdom Wisdom is deeper than knowledge There is wisdom that the wise man or woman may miss or not appreciate because they're so caught up in gathering wisdom The deepest wisdom is often rare Common wisdom is often overlooked Life is not really about wisdom and trying to seek wisdom for wisdom's sake is honestly a pointless and foolish pursuit Wisdom is ultimately unimportant Passion is important Everything else is more important than seeking wisdom Wisdom cannot be seeked, period Wisdom must be internally known If you know you know Self help is ultimately pointless The true wiseman would never claim to be wise Wisdom is Truth Wisdom is Universal Truth Wisdom is Absolute Truth Wisdom is unspeakable Wisdom is ultimately knowable only to the wise man or woman Wisdom is the essence of life Wisdom is unerasable Wisdom is eternal Wisdom lets you see between the lines The man who believes he is the wisest is often the least wise Wisdom is infinite Wisdom is high consciousness To recognize wisdom is to be wise Wisdom is that Hidden Gem, that treasure that's only the wise can recognize You would be wise to acquire more wisdom yet only the wise man desires to do so Wisdom is a paradox Knowledge is fleeting, wisdom is forever Wisdom is fascinating Wisdom never dies There is wisdom in being unwise Be unwise so you may gain the wisdom of unknowing Forget it all Start again This is life's greatest wisdom Wis-dumb

I'd like to believe that everything is love, but over time I've found it hard to reconcile with my natural human feelings of dislike. Sadly, I can't love everything and everyone. There are some things I just don't like, and certain experiences that I don't enjoy. Certain foods taste bad to me, certain music just doesn't sound good, certain people I just don't get along with, etc. And although dislike is a natural thing that I don't think I should be afraid of or ashamed of, the act of disliking something seems to be at odds with the goal of believing everything is love, feeling oneness and seeing the beauty in everything. When I focus on the people, places and things I love, I feel spiritual inside, but when I focus on what I dislike, I feel hollow inside. Yet I shouldn't feel bad when I dislike something, since there are thousands of things I love, right? Should I try and make myself like everything? I feel like forcing it isn't the answer either. Not sure if I'm overthinking this, but when I dislike something, it bothers me on a spiritual level and I'm looking for any advice/insights on how to reconcile that.

@Vibroverse What you're describing is the "what", which I understand. It's the "how" and "why" I'm lost on. @Moksha I love this! (no pun intended, of course) @lmfao I'm struggling to reconcile what I've heard in Leo's videos and in all the general spiritual material I've come across, and the honest feelings of dislike I have. Sorry if what I wrote came off the wrong way, but this post is not about repressed anger or anything like that.

@mandyjw I took your suggestion and went outside today with no coat and took a walk in the snow, just to feel the intensity of it. I think it helped me understand what you typed a bit better. @tsuki Exactly, spiritual statements like that aren't true for me in my direct experience, so it's honestly difficult for me to relate to what you're saying.

@mandyjw Interesting video, but I don't think I understand how you chose everything that happens to you. Did you choose your parents? @Carl-Richard If you believe love doesn't exist, is that still love? Edit: Or rather, if you hate the idea of love, is that still love?

For the top 20% of independent young adults, it might make sense, but for a lot of kids its just too soon, and it just baffles me how there's such a stigma around living at home. That's only an issue if you literally don't have any ambitions in life and just willingly want to sponge off others for your entire life, but I don't think most kids who are viewed as "Deadbeats sponging off Mommy and Daddy" are really like this. I don't understand parents who kick their kids out at this age. It just seems really uncompassionate to me. Parents that do this, would you tell your children when they're 12 years old "If you're not out of the house in 6 years, you need to give Daddy $300 rent money or you're going to be on the street." No? Then why thrust it upon them out of the blue when they're 18? Why not work together to help them realize their life purpose, or at least help them find a job in the meantime instead of leaving them out on the street making it that much harder for them to actualize it? It seems like a heartless move, and the antithesis of what a good parent should do.