Shodburrito

@Leo Gura Of course I’m selfish I’m literally designed and constrained by my environment and biology to be so! If I’m not to some degree I’m going to suffer? I’m sorry I don’t like to suffer? It’s impossible for me not to dislike it. I’m just making the point that the truth really makes no difference to my life. Yea it might be cool to understand it, but at the end of the day it’s not going to drastically change how I live my life. Sure I can be more compassionate, and open to helping others, but Understanding these concepts don’t stop me from getting sick, or having to pay my bills so I don’t go homeless or starve, getting bored, suffering mentally, or a plethora of things that suck. That’s great and all that god creates everything out of love. But if I am stuck in a universe where I am doomed forever to exist as being with limitations and the ability to suffer, the truth of god isn’t really going to change anything. I’m sorry that offends you but you aren’t immune to this either. You’re here stuck like the rest of us, and who knows maybe you’ll end up in a shitty existence for eternity. You don’t know and can’t. If you say you do you’re just assuming. I’m not whining either I’m just challenging the practicality of teaching truth. I’m actually a fairly happy person who went through a very traumatic childhood full of abuse. I had to work through that for years to get where I’m at. But even though I generally enjoy my life I can still point out that this still is nowhere near as good as it could be, and I am designed to want certain things and not others. Understanding truth isn’t drastically going to change anyones lifestyles because at the end of the day we are still capable of suffering and we will avoid it.

@Leo Gura If this is the Truth, what is the value in it for me, or for most other humans? Think about it. I could be living in a reality where I could be doomed to live in eternal suffering for eternity. If everything exists, a reality where when I die I am tortured by a malevolent deity (not infinite God), forever exists. There also could be one in which the opposite is true, and obviously there is an infinite number of possibilities. Heck, there is a reality where I never die. How are spirituality and love going to help me if I could be living in a reality, that God created, where I may go life after life suffering and the only way is to have biases forever? When I die I may not experience infinite love. I may go to Valhalla for all I know lol. This legitimately could be the universe I find myself in and I am not able to escape it. Why even care about ultimate truth, love, or conscious evolution when I may be doomed to an existence forever that contains suffering? After all, if God is everything, this reality is just one of many that God is, and he can't change that...

@Leo Gura Do you mean love? How would you also know what the highest good is considering you don't have access to unlimited intelligence? I'm very open-minded and trying to understand this. If you mean love then I can understand where you are coming from but hear me out. From an infinite intelligence perspective, I understand why God would have no biases for one thing or another because it is everything. So if one would go by that logic, by saying that is why God created everything because it loves everything and has no biases towards what exists and what it is, then I can understand, BUT I am not experiencing infinite consciousness. I am experiencing a very limited slice of what one could possibly experience. I am hardwired to experience certain things with a negative bias towards them such as physical pain. If I put my hand on a hot stove accidentally, no matter how much meditation on love and acceptance I have done I WILL automatically, without thinking about it pull my hand away from that burner. I can't help myself, there are too many things biologically and psychologically that cause me suffering that I really have no control over no matter how much I wish I could just love them. Even if I let go of my bias toward survival and maintaining a finite identity, if someone starts torturing me I am going to naturally scream and writhe in pain, and try to stop that pain from occurring. Now here is my point. If one is infinitely conscious, love and having no biases is great. But as soon as God gives up his sovereignty to be in a limited form like my body, unconditional love, and unbiasedness go out the window. I am PROGRAMMED to seek out and be biased toward pleasurable experiences and against pain. How is it practical at all to be unbiased and try to love unconditionally when there are experiences I am driven to seek out and avoid with virtually no control over? And on top of that even if God creates everything, why not stay infinitely conscious? Why would he incarnate in a limited form like me?

I've been seeing a lot of videos recently about the war in Ukraine. It seems that Biden is sending long-range missiles to Ukraine. I know this video is very right-wing leaning, but I just thought it was an interesting update to the war. I think that supporting Ukraine is the only option. We can't let policies like appeasement happen again. We saw what great stuff that led to in World War 2. Hitler didn't stop at Austria. Putin won't stop either. But now in an age of nuclear war escalating a proxy war is very risky but what other option do we have?

This reality is about teaching you lessons. It is about developing yourself. If you hate it this much maybe question very deeply why. Question everything about this life for 10s or 100s of hours. Then maybe you will find the answer you are looking for.

No, you are not perceived as lesser, but you may be only by people with a spiritual ego trying to appear better than you. Most of the people on this forum just preach what others say and have these half-baked ideas in their brains that they haven't fully fleshed out yet. They spew all these ideas but really have trouble answering any questions when someone starts poking a stick at them. If you're confused by their answers don't feel like you're dumb because you're not. Most people type low-effort responses that they don't really understand anyway. I encourage you and everyone else to think for yourself. When you have a question about life. Spend hours thinking about it and then questioning the supposed answers your mind comes up with. Don't immediately go online, or on here, or to your spiritual teacher, to find an answer. I really only recommend doing so when you actually need to spice up your spiritual life to provide an opposing fresh perspective to help you grow more. Also who cares about what other people think about what you say? You just need to get over your fear that some people won't like what you have to say. Much love

@StarStruck You have trauma from a child/teen that has not been reconciled with and integrated into your life First of all, you need to take more accountability of your life instead of praying to a deity that it will change it for you. I understand that you were a kid but relying on a god or others is doing nothing but making you a slave to them. Second of all you need to learn why you feel negative emotions on a deep philosophical level. Clearly you have not emotionally developed deeply. You probably have no idea about why you feel angry/sad/anxious. You need to do research on this and self-inquire about why you are attached to certain outcomes in life and why you get upset when they don't occur or don't go how you wanted them to. If you did understand the deep intricacies of emotions then you would understand how to not let them control your life. Finally, the whole reason why you cringe at the word god is that you are subconsciously projecting deep-rooted anger from not getting what you wanted from this "god" as a kid and still are attached to that anger. You need to learn to let it go.

This is such a low-quality post with broadly interpretable definitions but I'll try my best. If you define effort as some force you can apply to an external reality to change that reality then yes effort clearly changes things. Try sitting on a couch and see if that pays your bills or cooks you dinner. If it does, then you will have proved your theory that effort is indeed an illusion

Hi everyone, What would be a good video/videos of Leo to show to some of my friends who are stuck in stage orange? I want to help spread more openmindedness and alternative ideas to help them spiritually evolve while not being overly radical and scaring them off. Thanks!

@VictorB02 I honestly have a different opinion and experience compared to what you're experiencing. A few months ago I would've agreed with what you are saying; that it is natural to jerk off and release, and that were just biologically horny creatures. I had tried stopping jerking off many times before recently and I had always relapsed due to either being too horny and it messing with my attention or sleepless nights from too much energy. But, I just always felt like a slave to my desires. I understand that jerking off isn't an unhealthy habit in moderation but I just couldn't help compare myself to a helpless addict unable to give up his need for a dopamine hit. It angered me that I couldn't give up this one thing and that I just always seemed to be helplessly addicted to running off and stroking my dick for some short-term pleasure. I've always dreamed of myself becoming someone who has mastered my emotions, desires, and ways in which I reacted to life experiences. I really viewed jerking off as this part of my life which I had no control over and which I was just a slave to. When I finally committed myself and accepted that there would be times that I couldn't sleep because of this, and that I would feel too energetic at times, I have finally been able to break my addiction to this thing. Tomorrow morning will be my longest streak of nofap since I started way back when I hit puberty. I know the ego likes control and you could say that this is just me trying to "beat my nofap streak" as some goal, but to me I really don't see it that way. I view this as finally being able to let go of something which I feel I have needed to function normally for the past 7-8 years of my life. Ironically now that I am breaking this long-term addiction I have never been more mentally clear and stable in life, more on track to what I deem as "my purpose", healthier and more fit than ever, and many other things as well. I see nofap as a clear marker in my self-development journey in life that I have been able to work on myself and my emotions enough to break this habit that I have NEVER been able to break, compared to any of the other many attempts in my life. On a side note, personally, I do believe that jerking off does lead to an addiction to it. (Although it may not be a very bad one). There is something called P.A.W.S. in psychology which stands for post-acute-withdrawl-symptoms. Many long-term drug addicts to hard drugs sometimes take several years for their brains to rewire back to a "non-addicted" functioning state once they go cold turkey. I do believe that the strong urges that people report after weeks and months of nofap is still just the brain rewiring. If you have been jerking off for years it may take some time to reset to normal for your mind. Additionally, people who report "nofap" being too difficult, don't realize how sexualized our culture is compared to previous generations, The average male is bombarded on a daily basis with soft-core porn like instagram and tik-tok girls in sexualized outfits all the time. I have taken a serious break from social media for the last month and have found it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to do nofap and I have found myself much less horny. I have also put the increased energy I have felt into other creative projects and hobbies and have found my mind rarely thinking about sex and jerking off much less. Anyways I just think it is what is best for oneself, and if you do not think you can give up this thing right now in your life do not feel guilty because only when you are ready will you be able to. Much love

All the inner work we do as well as practical self-help and goals that are pursued are manifestations of what one believes is "best" for themselves. As people get older they develop new desires and perspectives on life which replace old ones. Let me give an obvious example of what I am trying to state: A person making $60,000 a year quits and gets a new job making $100,000 a year because of the increased quality of life they believe they will have because of the new, higher-paying job. They made that decision because they thought it was better. Now let's take this concept and apply it to self-help: A person buys a new fancy self-help book that just came out and reads it. He found practical advice in the book and now changes his perspective and habits because of it. In this example, the person not only bought the book and read it, but also attempted to change their perspective and habits because simply put they believed that doing these things was better. What I am trying to get at is a very simple concept yet I don't see people state it this way. Everyone does anything at all because they think doing so is better; meaning their experience of their existence will improve. This includes wanting anything, pursuing a physical goal, changing one's perspective, believing something, learning something, loving something, or literally doing anything at all. Here is what I am getting at. If our lives are all about improving our experience of existence, should we not orient ourselves toward pursuing what is best? The question then becomes: What is best? A lot of people would start with having infinite power so we will grant that. Then they would probably create a bunch of money, fame, sex, a good family, whatever. But this is obviously just a limitation because why exist as a slave to these things, needing them to be happy? What if you could be happy without these things, wouldn't you fear losing them? So now imagine an existence always feeling the same way as those things would make you feel. But again don't limit yourself, now create the best pleasure and bliss forever, that never ends and can never be taken from you. Wait a second... now what's the point of doing anything at all? Everything that I could experience, perhaps a sunset, tv, nature, music, it all becomes arbitrary. These things would no longer be of value to me because I have removed myself from the limitations of needing them to improve my experience of life. Would there even exist a concept of "something better" because anything I could experience, even physical torture, I could choose to enjoy infinitely? What then would be the point of doing anything? To me, the answer seems that there wouldn't be. Only... if of course you could be satisfied. Think about it, if I could create the best thing I could imagine, why could I not just imagine something better? Then create that, then imagine something better, and so on for infinity. So paradoxically, would I be infinitely bored or satisfied forever? But what does this have to do with us? Obviously, I do not have infinite power right now. But yet, I am still trying to improve my existence and chase after whatever I think is "better". In an infinitely imaginative scenario, does that not entail giving up all my wants and just loving that which I am experiencing right now? Because by definition, wanting a different experience than now limits my enjoyment of existence to that experience. But this requires me to be able to love everything infinitely in the first place. If I am being honest it is very difficult to just sit down and love doing nothing for even an hour... but I can't imagine this for a week, a year, or for eternity. I don't feel like I have the capability of loving everything, unless that means me meditating in a cave for 20 years. What if meditating in a cave and detaching from all my desires isn't actually the route to infinite love? How would I know? But what if I'm fooling myself and that isn't possible for me in this life? Shouldn't I be more realistic with my goals and pursue things that seem achievable? What do you think is best?

@Ramanujan Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have been contemplating for the last several months about identity and what I am. As most humans do, before this year, I had a concrete identity about things that I thought I could know about myself. I believed I was a human, a physical being, separate from others, something, not everything, and not nothing, etc. After watching some of Leo's videos and personally thinking about this stuff for myself I question and doubt the whole notion of being able to know what I am entirely. I hear a lot of new age spiritual "gurus" talk about how there is no boundary between self and other and in fact, everything is "one". I realize now how my mind has been fooling me into thinking the notion of "separateness" is a concrete fact. I realize now how the concept of a boundary between any objects that I conceptualize in my mind is not necessarily a real thing that exists other than the fact that I am imagining it. So I tried shifting my identity into believing that maybe I am everything that exists and not some finite being. However, then I started questioning the notion of "nothing". How could I ever conceptualize nothing, because whatever I imagine to be nothing, is something. If I imagine nothing to be darkness, then the black that I accompany with that darkness is something. I realized that I could never conceive of a true nothing because then that is a something. But consider what I just said about the notion of "everything". If there are no boundaries between things then what I conceive to be "nothing" must be included in my definition of everything. So then I shifted my identity to be nothing and everything. But hold on. How can I even know what I am in the first place? I mean what does it even mean to be me? How would I ever know that I am everything rather than just a body? Or vice versa. How would I know I am a body rather than everything? What would prove to me that I am anything at all? Some of you may argue that I must be everything because my notion of a boundary between self and other is illusory. But how would I know that? See, recently, I was just assuming this whole time that the boundary between self and other was something totally imaginary. But what if there exists a real boundary that separates me and something else? Or what if it is merely imaginary? How would I prove to myself either scenario? How can I know anything about what I am at all? Because the moment I try to define myself as something, anything, or nothing, I could just be fooling myself into assuming that I am any of those things. Additionally, how would I know when I have proved to myself that I have experienced evidence of what I am? I could define anything as evidence of what I am but I don't seem to have a way to verify if that evidence has any bearing on who I am or if it is imaginary. I would love to have a friendly discussion to anyone who would like to respond. I am very open-minded and would love for new perspectives on this subject.