How to be wise

Giving him what...?

Some people suffer a lot more than others. How can we know? Easy. People who suffer a lot usually will complain about suffering or how bad their lives are. Someone who doesn’t suffer a lot will just carry on with his life. If a rich businessman suffered a lot, you would see him trying to lessen his suffering by taking drugs, alcohol or other distractions. Yet many of those businessmen are clean and you don’t see them complain about anything. If somebody suffers so much, you will see the tiredness and frustration in there faces. When suffering accumulates to a certain amount, it tends to sap all of the person’s energy. And yet some people are smiling, look quite open and happy, they go everywhere, they never complain about life. How then can you say that everybody suffers the same? Common sense.

I wasn’t very convinced in the past that Obama was a stage yellow thinker until I saw this video: If more people in Congress were like him, lots of problems would be better managed today.

As I carry on doing consciousness work, I am having an almost constant fear that I am going to vanish. I’ve tried to ignore this fear for a few weeks now, but these days it is getting stronger and stronger. I worry that this will affect my practice. I’ve tried watching Leo’s 2C-B trip report to try and convince myself that death is the most beautiful thing ever, but it is not working anymore. How to deal with this fear?

I understand that when taking psychedelics, you can become conscious of many facets of the absolute, like God, Infinity, Love, intelligence, perception is being, and nature of time. But how much of that is possible for permanent awareness. Is it possible to become permanently conscious of any one of those facets? And I mean 24/7 awareness for the rest of your life. What is the highest thing that you can become conscious of permanently?

@Leo Gura Some spiritual teachers don’t like giving too much importance to kundalini:

There have been no podcasts released for the past two episodes? Why not? @Leo Gura can you fix this please?

@Nahm How would you know?

Really? Do you really think that a Buddhist master is living 24/7 in 5-MeO consciousness: If that were true, why are they talking about “no-self” so much. There’s far more profound aspects to awakening that they should be talking about.

@John Lula Leo has a channel in iTunes.

@Serotoninluv What I mean is, if somebody did conciousness work for fourty years to expand their consciousness, what is the most they could be conscious of permanently. How does that compare to a 5-MeO peak experience? Which one is higher?

@Ampresus Personal Development is easy: 1. Find a problem you are facing currently in your life. 2. Do research on how to solve it (Leo’s booklist). 3. Use the book and its exercises to solve it.

@Leo Gura Are you aware that the last two episodes are not in the podcasts?

The writer ‘Bernardo Kastrup’ says that between Idealism and Solipsism, the latter is just too sceptical. But isn’t that the more correct one? The more skeptical we are (the less beliefs we’re willing to entertain) the more correct the theory should be, right? What do you guys think about this.

@Superfluo Jesus, how can I read such a long thread! Please summarise the main points.

You can only forget a thought, never reality.

@Jed Vassallo How can you “forget” something? You can only forget a thought, never reality.

Is achieving Emotional Mastery going to automatically lead to Enlightenment? Or is it possible to achieve full Emotional Mastery without becoming Enlightened.

It’s tea, not thea.

@Jack River “Psychological time”. You remind me of Faceless. @Serotoninluv Security and comfort for the ego is different from bliss. Bliss is what you feel when your identity expand outside the body to include everything. It can also be called unconditional love. It feels very peaceful!

@DrewNows Lol you will know when an emotion is causing you suffering ?. Suffering is never necessary. In fact, when you are more joyful, you can think a lot better. Most self-help books do not teach this, rather they teach you how to ‘cope’ with negative emotions. My definition of emotional mastery is: feeling blissful 100% of the time, for the rest of your life. Sadhguru and Byron Katie report that they haven’t felt any negative emotion in more than 30 years! It’s fucking possible. But it takes a mixing of emotional mastery with enlightenment. Enlightenment is a must! No other way.

100% wrong. The more conscious you are, the more you feel blissful with life. This is so obvious! I can’t believe that you don’t know that yet. In Vedanta, they associate “The absolute” with three terms: Sat Chit Ananda, which means Truth, Consciousness, Bliss. Do more study please! Awakening clearly has a preference to bliss. Unconsciousness prefers terror.

You’re contradicting yourself. You say that you can have emotional mastery without enlightenment, then you say you can’t. Make up your mind dude.

Are you sure there aren’t easier ways of getting there. I’m doing The Work of Byron Katie, and my mind is becoming very still after just four months of practice. These days my whole body is just oozing with ecstasy. A lot of the time my mind is in ‘actuality’ rather than just wondering off into theoryland. Before I started The Work of Byron Katie, I did mindfulness meditation for three months, then Neti Neti for three months, then Kriya Yoga for four months. None of them worked for me quite as well. I suggest you stop thinking of The Work as just a means to ‘cure depression’ and think of it as a very strong technique for mastery of the mind.

It looks nice on paper, but the difficult question is how to live it in your everyday experience. It’s true that all suffering comes because of the distinction between self and other. When I say Emotional Mastery, I mean somebody who will never feel any negative emotion no matter how bad the situation gets. If somebody feels any negative emotion to begin with, it is not emotional mastery. A lot of enlightened teachers haven’t got that one down. They still sometimes have negative emotions when something bad happens to them.