Hi Leo and forum members,
Firstly I want to appreciate you, Leo, for coming out and apologizing for your behaviour in the past few years. It is great that you are doing some much needed self reflection. 

I left the forum a little less than a year ago because I started to see the faults in what you were doing. Your ego was getting bigger and bigger as you accumulated more psychedelic experiences. You had no relationship with your audience. You were wrapped up in your mind. To be frank, you did not have a relationship with reality either. (And I think you had a brief moment where you believed being arrogant was good for you? What was that about? lol, Not giving authority to others in spiritual matters is quite a different thing than being arrogant. Arrogance means giving authority to your limited experiences and thoughts. You have to be humble in order to see truth.)

And I felt there was a disconnect between what you said and what you were actually doing. It felt like you didn't practice what you preached. You told people how to be productive and have a clear mind but you yourself didn't show any evidence of being productive, or any of the things you preached. And you were doing basically "what came to your mind" and it came across as, and it probably was the case, that you didn't have any awareness of your thoughts or mind. TBH it felt like your own life was unwholistic and in shambles and you were lecturing others on how to live a wholesome life. 

I want to share a little bit about me. I started watching your videos even before 2016. So I've been following you for more than 7+ years. I've watched almost all your videos (except the last 2 or 3) and many of them multiple times. I have taken notes, bought the book list and the Life Purpose course too. I use to come to the forum as well for some time regularly to read what was posted. I have a binder full of video summaries and notes on your videos. So I've been seriously following your work for a long time. And I would like to tell you and everyone else too, that yes, there were many things you said which opened my mind but ultimately it did not really improve my life. Yes, I did pick up some fancy ideas about how the world works, but I was still lazy, sad, conditioned, neurotic, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain as always. 

After I stopped listening to you, after some time I revisited J Krishnamurti. And he helped me to see reality and understand my mind way more than your videos. Believe it or not my life came on track after listening to him. To share something personal, I failed first year of university and was asked to discontinue studies in 2019 and I didn't do anything except work a minimum wage job till late 2022. And TBH a large part of that has to do with listening to you. After listening to JK my life actually got better and I started improving in my personal life and in my "spiritual" understanding as well.

Right now I think your understanding of reality, ego, and mind is very superficial. You don't understand the mind, your ego at all, only at a superficial level. What you have is mere words, nothing real. If you did you wouldn't be where you're at and doing the things you do.

As a friend, I think you need to RE-EXAMINE reality without the baggage of the past, your memories and past psychedelic experiences. Take a fresh look, an unbiased look at what is happening. Look at the ego, the mind, and your thoughts with a fresh look. I highly recommend seriously and sincerely listening to J Krishnamurti's talks on YouTube to use him as a mirror to self reflect (he also has a podcast, but the full talks are better to start with). 

And I would recommend to not be in a hurry to express everything in words to make a video. Don't verbalize what you saw, make conclusions out of it and make it into a video. That might be harming you more than you think. 

Lastly I only say this as a friend to another friend. 

Hey guys! I'm gonna upload all the video summaries I have at the moment and will be uploading more of them as I watch them! Needless to say that is a summaries made by me and not transcripts nor Leo's summaries. Probably you will find some of my comments and ideas in them; I enjoy feedback of any type so feel free to comment

Hey guys!, I got this new insight about observation which I would like to share and I think will really help anybody trying to become aware. 
So it started out when I was trying to be aware but every time I did so it would break my flow. Flow as in I would be doing an activity, say cleaning the garden, and I would be in FLOW and then I would remember, "OH I need to be aware!" and then my flow would break. You see, the whole point of being aware is WATCHING not controlling so I was confused b/c I wasn't able to be self-aware when I was in FLOW, I was trying to control awareness.
THEN, after a while, it just hit me that the problem is that thought has divided the world into fragments and when we generally say "be aware", we mean observe the fragmented self, the part of the world which you call "you," (usually your thoughts and the area located between the forehead and behind the eyes). BUT, see  this idea of self false. You have divided the world into fragments and claim one fragment to be you, but this isn't the case. YOU ARE all the fragments. Flow is the flow of attention and hence is not a distraction, and there are not distraction, just the movement of attention thought can't control. You are not the experiencer, the observer, or the thinker. The observed is the observer. This is pretty easy to see intellectually also and I kinda knew that (n u shld too if u r into spirituality).
So the 'self which is in flow', and the 'self not in flow' are same. Once you see this you realize you are choicelessly aware no matter what you do. That's because no matter what state you are in, that state is you.
The problem is when we, new spiritual seekers, try to be self-aware we try to maintain a continuous attention on our fragmented idea of the self. But once you see that you are everything it will become much easier to observe yourself. Generally we think being in the 'flow' is being getting lost in activity and hence not being aware but it's actually the opposite; true meditation is always being in flow. Of course to actualize this you need to viscerally experience this, but intellectual understanding should help.

I'll try to be as succinct as possible time but this post needs to be long, so bear with me.
I was introduced to the idea of a thought-less state of mind by my grade 4 drama teacher who challenged us to sit for a certain period of time and not think.  Of course I failed at that time. But the desire to reach such a state lingered on. I got into spirituality, so to speak, about 5 years ago to solve very basic, day-to-day problems. As time went on I got more and more into it and wanted to have complete control over my mind and part of that included to experience thought-less state off mind. 
Long story short, I finally achieved thoughtlessness about 1.5 or 2 years ago. I won't go into the details but I will say the way to do it is to let go and just observe your thoughts and they will eventually go away. Also, seeing the limitations of thought and focusing on external objects like sounds helps in the beginning but you won't need them after a while; you would just be able to do it immediately. I started with Sandeep Maheshwari's Sound of Silence meditation but didn't need it afterwards. Also, Initially it can also be very depressing and empty experience.
Anyway, for the past 1.5 years I practiced it whenever I got the chance. I didn't really have any desire to think. I just wanted to experience being or directly experience reality. So on average, I would sit alone with eyes closed and have 20 to 45 min. of silence (no words or images in the mind), 3 to 4 times a day and throughout the day I would have very low frequency of thoughts and certainly no thinking (chain of thoughts). They would appear and then just vanish. I think my experience with this is a little different from what I expected and heard people talk about, so it might sound strange to you. 
 
What my experience was like: 
Pros:
Happiness Relaxation Better Body Awareness (helped cured my nasal congestion which drugs and steroids could not cure) No stress Clarity of perception (less confusion) Intense emotions when seeing something beautiful like a movie or a poem Cons:
Forgetfulness, I use to have a strong memory but this practice for some reason really crippled it.   Difficulty getting back to thinking (it's like changing gears) Difficulty doing math and other academic subjects Hard time expressing myself Hard time planning for the future as you're so engrossed in the moment Meaninglessness  (really both a pro and a con)  which leads to laziness, and dispassion but not in a depressing way  
So without wasting time here are some insights I gained:
Thought-less State = Increased awareness/ observation
Thought-less State = Relaxation and peace of mind and happiness and love
Thought-less State = Increased difference between mind, body, and you
Thought-less State ≠ Infinite intelligence
Thought-less State ≠ Understanding
Thought-less State ≠ Solution to practical problems 
Thought-less State ≠ End Goal
And
Thinking = Solution to practical problems
Thinking = Learning from experiences 
Thinking = Understanding
 
A few months back I was watching a podcast where some athletes were talking about achieving no-mind while performing their sport and how it will improve their sporting careers, though they think actual no-mind is not possible, they want to get as close to it as possible. It may work for athletes who don't really need to use their mind in their craft but if you're a uni. student you should not aspire to it too much. A math question won't solve itself if you just stare at it and you won't get any insight into the question by just sitting there staring. You need to actually use thinking. Thinking is a very important tool, it's there for a reason. It is probably one thing that separates us form other living things. 
Thoughtlessness is useful for observations ,but to put those observations to good use you need thinking. 
I was inspired by Sadhguru's stories, one of which is when Vivekananda holds a book in his hand and after about half an hour know every page of the book by heart without even opening it. He is always talking about how he does stuff without mind and thinking. Also, other stories of his and many other teachers who talk about this state. 
I think it is a trap to think thoughtless state of mind is a solution to all your problems and an end goal. I don't think this state is any special and most people probably have experienced it before and are just not aware of it. But I didn't experience any new forms of perception or have any ground breaking insights or infinite intelligence or see ghosts or energy or break the boundaries of my sensations or read people's minds or become another object like people claim...
Doing it too much made it hard for me to think properly. It is as difficult to go from excessive non-thinking to thinking. Non- thinking is like an addiction, same as thinking. It also had a negative impact on my memory. This ultimately had a very bad impact on my university life. 
So in the end, I would like to request people who have experienced this state of mind to share their experience below. 
Also I would like to know, from people who have actually experienced this state, whether to continue with this or not since it is affecting my uni. life or if I am even doing it right?