kinesin

Perhaps the most appropriate thing would be for Leo to put out a video acknowledging the situation and addressing the important overlap between 'everything is illusion/dream' and a healthy acknowledgment that things are simultaneously real and actual.

@Tim R What is 'an authority' in your mind? Leo certainly presents himself as an authority - he makes declarative statements almost every time he posts. People post threads regularly asking for Leo's clarifications on certain issues, indicating that they consider his inputs to be authoritative. To be quite honest, when people suggest that there aren't people in this community who hang on Leo's every word, I feel that I'm being gaslit. I see it so often, it's plain as day.

Yeah, that thread is indeed quite a good example of it. I found one of his comments in there to be a particularly egregious demonstration of his lack of insight. Truly, Leo is living in a dream world and needs to wake up and realise he's speaking to actual, living people when he gives such poorly thought out teachings.

@Bojan V The context of those replies was a thread started by @CBDinfused asking about Leo's thoughts on what happens after we die. His comments were absolutely about physical death, don't even try to gaslight anyone by denying it.

@Tim R "Leo can't be held responsible for anything his followers/listeners do, it's 100% up to them." is a cop out. That may be legally true, but it isn't morally true. In truth if Leo wants to be a responsible 'teacher' to so many people, his approach will need to change fundamentally. He simply isn't careful enough, considering the number of people out there who mistake him for an enlightened holder of absolute truth. He's far too glib, he gives short superficial answers to questions which deserve far more care. Just a few days ago I saw him post this, which at the time I called out as irresponsible. It's a good example of the issue -

Here's the issue - There is a reason why responsible spiritual teachers purposefully withhold advanced teachings from students until they've demonstrated clear evidence of having reached preceding levels necessary to understand them. There is a reason why a responsible spiritual teacher has a close, in-person relationship with their students. Leo is not a responsible teacher. Leo is simply a guy like any of us, a regular person who is trying to navigate his way along the spiritual path. Why do we fall into the trap of believing that Leo is anything more than this? Because Leo has turned his personal spiritual journey into a brand, in order to make money. This public image, the youtube channel with many subscribers, the forum, all of it creates a public perception of 'Leo Gura' which is much larger and more significant than the man himself. The fact is, many of us here have long seen the warning signs of these dangers. Not only the most tragic examples such as Connor and Soonhei, but also the countless smaller examples we see nearly every day where a person comes to the forum experiencing mental distress only to be told by Leo, Nahm or others that their feelings and situation are nothing more than a dream. I find myself pointing out regularly that it is not helpful to simply state advanced teachings as if they are facts, without even acknowledging the mindset of the listener. Something needs to change. A personal spiritual journey isn't supposed to be public like this, it isn't supposed to be presented as if it were teachings from an enlightened master. Spirituality should not be reduced to the status of a brand. The fact that Leo Gura is generally thought to be a cult leader outside of this community is a major issue - those people are not entirely off-base, they're referring to something which Leo himself is fully aware of. Because he has a brand and a known public name, Leo's words carry more weight than they are worth, and that is a dangerous thing.

@Inliytened1 Like I said, I believe that phenomena are simultaneously illusory and completely real. A flower is a nonlocal part of a unified field of universal energy... but it's also a flower. My belief about the nature of enlightenment is a dream, I know that, but I also treat the subjective human experience as real and have no desire anymore to reduce all of my perceptions and actions to nothingness.

@Inliytened1 Based on what? Your own belief that an enlightened person is someone who has overcome the projections? That only makes sense from the Leo 'everything is just a dream' perspective. I don't share that view, I believe that phenomena are simultaneously illusory and completely real. I believe that enlightened people are ultimately very caring, balanced, serene individuals - Leo doesn't strike me as that at all.

If Leo is genuinely enlightened and Frank isn't, then I don't want to be enlightened. Just looking at the content of their characters, way of life, manners of being etc Frank is leagues above Leo. Call me biased, but I expect an enlightened person to have a smile on their face and their heart on their sleeve. Although Leo says things which sound enlightened, he always does so in such a way that contradicts the things he says, and demonstrates a *very* high level of ego, far higher than even the average person posting on these forums.

Very true. This kind of thing is unfortunately common, like for example children who grew up in abusive, violent households who believe wholeheartedly that every family is like that behind the scenes. Imo it's a form of defense mechanism where the person denies reality in order to preserve their own belief that they aren't missing out on anything.

Do your parents not love each other? How about your grandparents? Any uncles and aunts who love each other? My own parents have true love, they've had it for over 40 years. The fact that you don't believe it's possible indicates to me that you simply haven't witnessed it anywhere in your own life, and that failure to engage in love is the root of your issue for sure.

I'm not sure that Leo thinks anybody really, truly understands it other than himself.

@Valach If you're here posting on a forum such as this, that indicates to me that you're deeply interested in becoming a more aware, moral person. If you're going to be in a relationship with somebody, they'll have to be on that wavelength with you. It sounds to me that the girl you're describing has a lot of trauma, chaos and biases which she seems to have no desire to overcome. If you truly want to move beyond these behaviours, you can't be involved in them. Take physical attraction and trauma-bonding out of the picture and you'll find that where it counts, you have very little in common with her and the relationship is doomed to fail.

@F A B My suggestion to you is to play around with the polar extremes of your breath. Take the deepest breath you can, hold it in and observe the sensation of doing so. Separately, exhale as much air from your lungs as possible and observe the sensation of that too. Breathe fast, observe the sensation, breathe slow, observe the sensation. After you've done those, consider it the end of your practice, but then simply notice how your breathing feels once it returns to its normal rhythms. That may help.

I think to most normal people, the prospect of becoming enlightened isn't much different from the prospect of becoming an exorcist. They see it as a strange thing in the world which monks do, where you sit around smiling and maybe floating up into the air. The idea that they themselves could do it seems absurd. That said, this doesn't necessarily mean they're completely out of touch with the actual meaning underlying the term. Most people are aware for example that when a person directly faces the prospect of their own death, that it often results in a radical shift of perception toward 'living in the moment', being more compassionate and not getting so caught up in worldly affairs.

@Zion He was quite an archetypal green, I'd say.

booba

@tatsumaru Try not to think of it in terms of 'submissiveness' and 'assertiveness', those words are too strongly associated with human behaviours. As forces, the masculine is an outwardly expressing force, while the feminine is an inwardly recieving force. When you put your hands together in a praying gesture and then move them both to the left, your right hand is in the masculine position and your left is feminine. When you move your hands to the right, the left becomes masculine and the right feminine. I can't give an answer regarding Vajrayogini specifically because I'm not familiar with it.

That's wonderful to hear that her cancer is going away My own mother has incurable cancer, so I understand what you've been through. As to what actually happened there - I have a few thoughts, though no definitive answers. 1: cancer does indeed have a detectable smell, and it's possible that this is what you were noticing. 2: it's possible that you may have been experiencing a form of synesthesia called emotion-smell synesthesia, where your brain subjectively processed the knowledge of death in the house as a smell. By clearing the 'smell', you may have actually been clearing out an emotional spectre of death. 3: various ancient peoples believed in 'miasma theory', which was the idea that many illnesses are caused by 'bad air' which in many cases manifested as a smell, and many of the treatments people performed at the time resembled the actions you've been taking. 4: there is a phenomena which isn't currently well-understood by medical science although it is acknowledged, where intention and 'hope' does appear to play some role in cancer outcomes. It is possible that the things you did actually helped via some unknown mechanism.

@Swarnim Think of it this way - there is a force within the universe which is, as you say, 'solving everything'. This force perfects things, brings harmony, brings awareness, brings everything that is good and pure - this force is what is powering the positive spiritual development process of individuals and also that of the world as a whole. The fact that this force exists doesn't mean we can just sit back and let it do its work, though. This force manifests through us, through our intentions, words and actions. The force needs us, because we are the medium through which it functions. When you try to live compassionately among others, when you do what you can to beautify and make good the things which are around you, that is the force in action. Likewise, there is an opposing, negative force which is also pulling on our actions. OP is being torn between these forces.

I agree with you, it is always possible to provide insight to another person. The main issue is one of time and effort - there are many realizations where in order to properly communicate it to another person, you might have to physically and mentally guide them through a process which doesn't even have an upper time limit. It could take many decades or more. A good teacher understands that there are many ways to prompt realizations of insight in another person. Sometimes it is enough to simply give them a description of it, other times you can tell a story or a parable, or give practical directions for them to do which may at first seem unrelated to the question, but will regardless lead them to an understanding of it.

@StarStruck That wisdom is not 'your' wisdom, it doesn't belong to you. You didn't create it, your name isn't stamped on it, you simply were blessed to realize it. It is good that you are at least aware that this repulsion is a problem which you should be seeking to overcome. If you had unambiguous, pure love for your peers, what motivation would remain to withhold such wisdom from them? You and your peers are all one, infact, you're all in the same boat. To withhold beneficial perspectives you've gained out of a bitter desire to stop your peers from benefiting from them is analogous to a situation where your left and right legs start trying to trip each other up. Who succeeds in such a circumstance? Nobody. Wisdom isn't learned in the head, though, it's learned in the 'feet'. You have to physically live through a direct experience of something in order to realize wisdom of it, and it's likely that you'll have to experience the consequences of selfishly withholding insight from others before you come to understand the folly of it.

Leo doesn't want to acknowledge publicly that he has an individual conscious experience, because he's under the misunderstanding that awakening means permanently and irretrievably overcoming that perspective and he's trying to present himself as awakened by avoiding such questions. There is too much ego, too much bitterness, impatience and snark within him which simply wouldn't be there if he was actually retaining god-realization at all times. An enlightened person doesn't look like that - an enlightened person appears humble and good-natured, unfrustrated and willing to provide answers from an egoic perspective if that's what is required to help another attain insight. Many false proclaimers of enlightenment appear to suggest that they no longer have any ability to enter into an embodied egoic state - this is a lie, motivated by their own desire to convince themselves that it is true in order to retain their egoic status as 'enlightened'. In truth to 'forget' the ego state doesn't mean racking your brain trying to remember it and being unable, it simply means that state leaves the conscious perception. It's analagous to how before reading these next words, you had 'forgotten' about the image of a pink elephant. In truth you could have brought to mind a pink elephant at any time you wanted, you've seen the meme before and it's accessible within your mind, but it simply wasn't in your awareness until I mentioned it. This is the sense in which the egoic state becomes forgotten.

@RendHeaven It goes without saying that SD categories aren't absolute, but yellow/turquoise. Many of the sentiments seen throughout this forum remind me of things I used to read on a psychedelic discussion forums - genuine insight for sure, but lacking integration.

So many of the comments on this forum are just utter bullshit. Heartless, unempathetic spiritual platitudes which are delivered without any genuine effort to educate or elucidate. The ego is palpable in these comments, though they present themselves as the most highly enlightened - the total lack of effort or care contradicts all pretenses.