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@winterknight "I could say that there is a little self; I could say that there isn't. I could say that there appears to be but in reality there isn't. In the end, words just can't express truth that well. I think that's the key point. That all the concepts are themselves within the realm of illusion. All the concepts -- and thus all names -- and thus all objects." This is classic framing of nonduality in advaita isn't it? I'm not a expert on any traditions. And for a period of time this framing of truth aligned with my understanding and awakening at that point, however something shifted and if one could say more emerged/was realized however I really do get why it seems absurd from the stand point of what your saying. Concepts, illusions, objects in the perception of Self, is actually not encompassing the recognition that so called object, illusion, ego, self, perception, creation, matter, thoughts, feelings are themselves Self/God/Infinity. There is no such thing as not Self. There is no such thing as illusion in the most used and accepted definitions of the word. If Self is all, Illusion is included and it really shifts the life experience. This is not to say this shift/understanding is real awakening, or more encompassing since Self is always Self, its just less rejection of Self maybe, but even that sounds funny.

Nonduality includes duality within it. Therein lies the full circle. See image of ying-yang.

What makes it an illusion? Could it be the pursuit of the reward of contentment/happiness? Could it be looking to thought, as in the idea/concept/theory/abstraction of “nonduality” and conforming to it? Is this a process of self clinging to itself by looking for an answer/escape in “nonduality”(thought content). ?

@SoonHei If by enlightened being you mean someone who has no identification with the body and mind, who is free from suffering, who's free of the fear of death. Who has zero personal agenda. Who's in a constant state of infinity or zero. Whom you could literally call a god.?! Who's presence could literally make you fall down on your knees and cry?! I'd say not single being is here like this. If by enlightened you mean someone who understands nonduality intelectually and has had an experience of oneness. Then i'd say every smart guy with some psychedelics is enlightened

Heh, yes, a captive audience would be useful. I actually have tried a little Youtube, but even there it seems like attracting an audience is quite difficult. Spirituality -- heck, nonduality alone -- is a huge marketplace with 10,000 vendors all screaming at the top of their lungs. Maybe I've just given up too soon... I dunno. There's a few different ways of answering this question. One way is the argument that we have some very vague sense that "I slept." That's your memory of deep sleep. Another is the metaphysical way of approaching this question. The argument is that the brain cannot generate consciousness (because consciousness is not a process that "matter" alone can account for), so consciousness is an eternal substance all its own. If that is so, then consciousness is never not there. And if that's the case, then the only way to explain the deep sleep state is as the consciousness OF a "purely dark mental object." A third is the direct experience way. Upon realization, it becomes quite clear that consciousness can never not be. So therefore it must persist in deep sleep. But the truth is that these are just intellectual positions. They don't matter all that much.

Well, it's really no more or less a state of nonduality than naming objects and having thoughts. Nonduality is seeing that these are the same -- seeing for yourself, directly in your own experience.

While I'm a fan of luck and magic (atleast leaving it open as a possibility), I was not at all eluding to it. Totally put in consideration about "economic factors" (how much could this make, is there a market, how much capital will it take to get started, how long will I have to pursue this till I can expect a return and not back out before then, etc...etc...). I was pointing to two things. One, pointing to self limiting beliefs in regards to your endeavors in my last post. Like its not possible to run a 4 min mile, no one can scale a mountain without a rope, the limiting belief that one could become a healer, or a money maker through some endeavors, nonduality isn't real, god isn't real, magic isn't real, energetic distance healing isn't real. The other pointing is something more subtle to though, which maybe is the basis of your confusion. Many spiritual traditions call it seeing without ego or with buddha eyes, or seeing like a kid again. Its a open hearted, vulnerable, innocence, in your approach to something such as in your case maybe a business. It asks the same questions about how to do this venture effectively, asking the questions about what it needs to succeed, but with a softness and a acknowledgement that it doesn't have all the answers, not to get to caught up in unnecessary stress, accepts the possible failure, remembers to keep it fun...... Its present and able to adjust on the fly, willing to hear information from anyone and take it in and give a moment. It isn't brute forcing. I hope that points better to the "thingy" of my paragraph.

35+ Subfields Of Self-Help Success/Productivity/Goal Setting (stage orange, most appealing to most people, most people discover it through that) Law of attraction (visualization, affirmations techniques, confidence you need to achieve your own goals) Time Management Career and Life Purpose Creativity Business and Entrepreneurship (generic advice or specialized advised) - a lot of people enter here Marketing and Sales Leadership and Management Money Management Dating and Attraction - how to meet people and connect with new people , a lot of people enter here Relationship - how to develop long-term relationships - different from the previous one Love - how to be a more loving human being - distinct from relationships, dating and sexuality. You can use love in all areas. Family and Marriage Sexuality, Masculinity and Femininity - how to please your partner, what it means to be a man/women, how they think, how to own our masculinity, understanding the other sex thinks and feels Health/Fitness/Nutrition/Alternative Medicine - becomes more important as we age, can save your entire life, orange people take this for granted Body-Awareness and disciplines like Bio Energetics - becoming more conscious and aware of your body and the mind-body connection, how to leverage the mind-body connection to heal yourself Self-esteem and confidence - really important for most people, most people have terrible self-esteem, they have self-image issues, they lack confidence, they are shy, meek ( quiet, gentle, and easily imposed on; submissive."she brought her meek little husband along"), they don't know how to set boundaries, they turn into dormats, they get abused by others in relationships, they don't know how to assert themselves, they don't know how to be decisive, they don't like their physical appearance, they have some sort of trauma from the past because they were ridiculed or bullied in school Emotions - emotional mastery - all about the quality of your life, we are not though how to recognize our own emotions, how to deal with our emotions, we don't even know how to be aware of our own emotions and label our emotions properly - most people don't even know how to label fear,anger, jealousy, depression and anxiety. If some emotions are holding you back you have to study this sub-field. Developing your emotional intelligence will be life-transforming. Shadow work - closely related to the previous one. working with repressed aspects of your psyche and of your ego. Addiction and Recovery Trauma recovery - people who have been abused/molested. who have various kind of trauma, some sort of disease...chances are that you repressed and it's making you depressed, ruining your emotions, it might even wreck your ability to keep a career or be in a relationship. You need someone to help you with this. Mental disorders - bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD, depression, ADHD - requires specialized knowledge. Be willing to do the research to find experts who have knowledge that you need. Personality Types - MBTI, Enneagram. Even after you get enlightened you will still have a personality and you want to understand it. NLP and Hypnosis. - ways to program your own mind. Religion Spirituality - meditation and mindfullness, nonDuality, yoga, Psychadelics New Age/Paranormal/Psychic abilities (astral projection, chakras, OBEs, clairvoyance, near death experiences, auras, healing, channeling, (stage orange people stay far away from new age and spirituality because they view it just as some sort of delusion or some new form of religion, the materialist culture denies all this stuff, which is why it will require extra work from you to research into these sub-fields) Shamanism and Occult - make sure you get in order first the basics - emotions, career...before you jump into this stuff Healing - psychical, emotional, spiritual... Psychology Trans-personal Psychology (stage torquise) - incorporating spirituality into psychology Lifestyle design technical how to books Fields that I hesitate to call self-help but are still important. Politics and government Phylosophy, methaphysics, epistemology Social Psychology , cognitive psychology, antropology History and Science Biographies There is a lot of stuff, don't go around just reading about this, you want to be strategic about what you're reading. keep it to things that you can you can take action on, stuff that engages you Fields for newbies: Success/Productivity/Goal Setting Self-esteem and confidence (if you have a problem here ,it will carry into your career, relationships, into your feeling about yourself...) Emotional Mastery (because emotions run your entire life) Relationships Spirituality (possibility of completely changing your life and where you find your deepest growth), payoff is huge but the downfall is that it takes time homework: pick 3 sub-fields that you don't have a lot of experience in, and commit to purchasing 3 books for each of the sub-fields. Most people live their lives for 30 years with the same problem without realizing the answer is sitting there in a book that's how learning is, it's not obvious until it becomes obvious, it's always obvious after the fact. In the book there are more details to understand a topic in depth.

Hi @Leo Gura, I've been watching your videos for years now and I have been reading everything that you are posting on this forum yet I have never participated. Today, I made the decision to change that. I'd like to ask for guidance if that is okay. I have asked you for advice two years ago. That was in the comment section under this video: Back then I was not into nonduality at all and I did not understand the importance of raising my consciousness. I thought my life purpose is to make video games so the concepts that you shared in that video did not resonate with me and confused me. So I asked you for advice on how to deal with that because I knew that you used to be a professional game designer. You said: You also told me to take the life purpose course…which was the last thing I wanted to hear. Obviously, I was not very happy with your reply. So I kept working on my game projects. But I never stopped watching your videos, although I was close to stopping due to the new vision for Actualized.org which did not resonate with me back then. The habit of watching your videos every Sunday was too strong and that's the only thing that made me keep watching them, even though I did not understand what the hell you were talking about. Eventually, I started doing my own research, started becoming more open-minded, bought your booklist and started reading the books listed in the consciousness section, started learning from many other teachers, started having my first psychedelic experiences, started doing the techniques, and one day I finally realized: "Oh my god, this is the most important thing that one could do." I had some profound experiences and glimpses with and without psychedelics. It took me two years to understand the importance of your advice. I finally broadened my horizons and took your life purpose course. (I sold my PS4 to afford it.) Today, I know that I want to become a modern mystic. What could be more important than that? What could be more important than reaching the ultimate levels of consciousness? For me, there is nothing else. But the thing is this: The dream must go on. It was really a painful thing to realize. To realize that I can't keep focusing on this. To realize that I have to go back. Go back where? To the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in order to fill some holes… I realized that I had worked my way up way too fast thanks to your work and the comfort that comes with living at home with my parents (I'm 19-years-old and a "college student". There is no such thing as college in Germany but I guess it's the equivalent to it). I know that I need to go back down and build a proper foundation. I know that because otherwise, it would not be very strategic. The freedom I have now will not stay for I will not be a student forever and I have no intention of staying with my parents forever either. I learned the importance of having an ultimate outcome from this video: My ultimate outcome is to have a simple but independent lifestyle that gives me the ability to focus on what really matters. And what really matters is raising your consciousness. But no one pays you for sitting in darkness, meditating for months or years to wake up from the dream. So I realized that I need to get to a good place within the dream first before I can continue to try to wake up from it. In other words, I learned the importance of financial freedom. I firmly believe that financial freedom is an important fundament to implement in your life. I have always admired your lifestyle Leo and my goal is to design a similar lifestyle for myself. I really loved the first videos in your LP course. It's more personal than your usual videos. I liked your stories and I could see a lot of similarities between you and me. In one normal Actualized.org video - I do not remember which one it was - you mentioned that you were able to quit your 9 - 5 after five months of starting your internet marketing business. Internet marketing is what I'm getting into lately. I'd like to create a passive income as it is described in this video: One of your replies on this forum was this: I have actually saved that paragraph in my OneNote so it can serve as an inspiration and as a reminder. My teenage years were not completely wasted. I started writing when I was 7. I thought I'm gonna become a novelist. I started making video games when I was 12. I thought I'm gonna become a game designer and eventually become a game director/writer. Then an internship revealed to me that this 9 - 5 thing is not for me and that I need to do my own thing. So at 14, I started getting into digital art. Particularly 3D-Art. I decided I'd have my own game company in order to keep my creative freedom and control. Doing all these things allowed me to learn about work ethic, creating websites, content, project management, team management, being a producer and creator instead of being a consumer, and a lot of other things. So I kept going in that direction until this whole nonduality thing happened. I outgrew a lot of my old interests or skipped many things that I need to go back to and properly implement it in my life. That's when I realized that the video game company is the wrong battle to fight. This is a really powerful question from the strategic motherfucker video which helped me a lot: My teenage years were about exploration. I want to make my early twenties about financial freedom. And my thirties about hardcore nonduality. It's similar to how Om Swami did it. Or how you did it. I am willing to work 18 hours a day, every day even if it's not what I love doing. I'd rather do that for a few years and get my financial freedom instead of a 9 - 5 for 50 years and never get to focus on reaching the highest levels of consciousness that a human being can reach. I want to master the human experience holistically. Not in a "I just want enlightenment and nothing else matters" way. Yes, it's the most important thing to master but there is still health, relationships, and money. Lately, I have been working on my mindset when it comes to money. I have never really cared about money. I care about Truth, art, beauty, consciousness, mastery & excellence. So I had to learn to look at money from a different perspective and the books on your booklist regarding money and the book "The Millionaire Fastlane" helped a lot with that. It taught me that things that I care about are not profitable. You too said that a life purpose is usually not profitable and that passive income can enable one to follow one's life purpose. As I have already mentioned I've been learning about internet marketing and all the different possibilities that exist out there. I'm learning about copywriting, marketing, sales and I'm reading books like "Dotcom Secrets". It's not easy to study this unconscious stuff once you have gone beyond that and found something deeper. I know that what I'm getting into is completely against everything you taught us in this Video: But anything else would not be very strategic. My question to you Leo is this: What have you been doing? You mentioned your internet marketing business often but never went into detail about it. Did you promote other people's products through affiliate marketing? That's how it sounds like in the very first Actualized.org video where you talked about creating all the backlinks. Did you use ClickBank? ClickFunnels? On Gamasutra, you also talked about having employees and customer services. Did you sell physical products? E-Commerce? Dropshipping? Did you work for other businesses? I know it sounds like I'm just trying to find the most lucrative, fastest, and easiest way to make as much money as possible. But that's not it. I'm willing to work hard. But I'm a little bit lost and scared of committing 100% before I have a proper understanding of what I'm getting myself into. And I do not want to commit only 99%. I know what worked for you almost a decade ago would probably not work today. The internet has changed. Besides that, you are not interested in this kind of stuff anymore. That's totally understandable. I don't expect you to go into much detail about your "internet marketing days". I'm not asking you to become my mentor, hold my hand, and lead me to my financial freedom. I will have to walk this path alone. But you as someone who has already been through this, and has already achieved financial freedom, and has designed an awesome lifestyle, do you think you can give advice and point out pitfalls to look out for and avoid? The reason why I went into so much detail and told you about my background is because I really wanted you to understand my situation and where I'm coming from so that you can look at this from my perspective and hopefully give advice accordingly. And maybe because of fear as well… It's the fear of spending money unwisely. I have not much and I don't want to lose everything on Facebook ads or invest in the wrong projects or courses. If you choose to give me advice again, I will not repeat the same mistake. This time I will listen more carefully. If you read all of this: Thank you! If you choose to ignore this: Thank you, anyway. Your work has already impacted me in amazing ways and I'm grateful for that. I hope to contribute to this forum from now on and add value. PS: One last thing...don't you think it's funny that you quit working on BioShock Infinite and at Irrational Games only to become irrational and discover Infinity later on? I think that's awesome. Great events are often foreshadowed.

Stop reading about nonduality. Come to a place of no experience/no time. The knowledge we accumulate very easily gets projected as an experience. The best thing I ever did was “ignore” information about what is beyond the known.

All of these ideas are within absolute infinity. Within enlightenment. None of it is "IT" and all of it is "IT". We can't pull out anything from everything. One trap I see at intermediate / advanced stages is believing the spiritual concepts are true. Buddhism, nonduality, advaita, Ramana Maharshi, Shamanism - all of it. People can get so immersed and deep into one area and not recognize that they have not transcended higher. They are unaware that there is a higher level. It happens at all stages of development. I see it with myself, buddhist, advaita masters, in this thread etc. . . The higher you go, the more subtle it gets. That's why psychedelics are so powerful at the higher consciousness stages.

Use these terms in Google search, you will find related sites: spiritual enlightenment, spiritual awakening, self -realization, nonduality

@How to be wise Was thinking of you today...wondering if this is a helpful line of logic...surely you’re aware everyone has been talking about God for as long as there have been people on earth, but no one has evidence, not a single photo, etc. Most everyone has some fear of death, but of course, also, not one person has any evidence, nothing. The experience of love is pretty common, but no one has a picture of it, or evidence of where it comes from, etc. Do you see, or does it at least make sense from a logical standpoint, that death, God, Love, and The Truth are all the same thing? In the sense, nonduality (You), that it is the infinite you, literally playing, and this person/experience is you (infinite) limiting yourself to have this appearingly finite (person/earth/life story) experience? Is that helpful at all (with the fear of “death”)? @Solace Exactly ??❤️ @Jack River Same thing bruh.??

A lot of activity from me tonight, but I may have just hit on something. I see validity in what I'm saying and also ways it could be a misunderstanding, so bear with me. Looking forward to replies. Attachment is, as I have seen it, generally viewed as this big bad boy in experience. Desires, they should come and go, they hurt or they don't. No matter, we have an internal river of tranquility that stems from Being and Self. We should remain detached. Attachment to something else only exists if there is some separate thing to be attached to. "Ourselves" in nonduality is all. I am all. My true self is all. My ego is an instantiation of a deeper Self. All is an experience of the Self that I am living. Many things are arbitrary (my ego just went "ugh dude wtf that hurts" lol), but ultimately it is all Self that is experience. There is nothing but Self, me / you / my homework is all Self in the nondual sense of the word. This is how I understand it all currently. How, then, is there anything to be attached to? And from where does the command come to detach one's Self? If I am "attached" to another experience or ego, would I not just be attached to part of Self, and therefore drawing on Self for happiness, as is the goal? Of course, I may be attached to an experience in a way that is acutely unhealthy for this biology (e.g. fighting all the time with a friend, struggling with addiction, etc) or toxic to my ego... but basically, why do some people demonize attachement when it seems to be a part of experiencing the Self? I could see possible explanations being that the goal is to detach ego from pure, unconceptualized experience rather than what I just said, or maybe that detachment is about having absolutely no need for any other parts of Self other than your own instantiation of it (which I still wouldn't understand at that point).

@gilded_honour Sorry I don't know the answer to your question but this reminded me of one time when I tried to talk about nonduality with my dad and he just blanked out. I mean he fell asleep in like 15sec and started snoring :D:D:D funny how for some people's mind is resisting so much that even if you utter anything close to truth it will shut off The answer to your question is probably going to be some metaphysical, spiritual, celestial dimensionless type of answer I heard that just by getting exposed to surtain things like a guru or sacred places can deside that you'll get awakened in next life. So there are a lot of things, like a million things that influence this thing. What is the most mind boggling thing to me is how some sages can reincarnate into the next life being fully confident that they'll get enlighten. Like they fix something inside to make that happen. As I said... This is some meta spiritual stuff

Ah, I think I'm on this same page. Just confused as to why anyone claims to know anything, then, even with respect to enlightenment? Just a note: She does seem largely dualistic and parts of Atlas Shrugged make it clear she didn't really understand philosophies like Advaita Vedanta and erroneously assumed that they are 100% illogical and baseless. You may have read some of her nonfiction - so have I. However, I am not as quick to completely debase her, especially in terms of how to create an economy and behaivoral expectations of individuals (or distinct experiences of the one Self, in terms of nonduality). Basically, her systems thinking is interesting to me. I should note that I am not supporting the unhinged capitalism so many people (incorrectly) think Rand raves about. It would be interesting to talk to you and others who so strongly rebuke her about the actual plots of her novels and their implications, bad and good. Also, Rand died of heart failure. Not suicide. So.... weird that Osho claimed suicide.

a slightly different metaphysics than idealism, Spinoza proposed that there was a singular substance which exhibited both the qualities of consciousness and the qualities of matter. It's called neutral monism, and seems to me to be another way of philosophically interpreting the experience of nonduality, besides idealism.

That is the core lesson of mysticism: reality is irreducibly mystical. You cannot know the Absolute because knowledge is a 2nd order process. Being is prior to knowing. You can BE the Absolute rather than knowing it. Or you can know that it is unknowable. Which is what Osho is describing. Nonduality means that knowing must collapse into being. Which is why the ultimate Truth cannot be spoke, thought, or symbolized. All symbols are too indirect. You must directly become the being of which all symbols are made. Language and thought must be entirely transcended. The Truth is beyond thought, imagination, or even your mind. Ayn Rand was of course an arrogant, egoistical, dualistic, stage Orange fool. The hallmark of the ego-mind is that it thinks it can know everything through linear reason. And in this it is deluded beyond hope.

Anyone have suggestions for contemplative meditation questions? Things that are both in support of nonduality and things that seem threatening to it (the latter of which I don't expect any answers to haha). Thinking stuff along the lines of "What is a thought?" "What is your self?" Thanks in advance

No self, not Self / nonduality (a guess). Some remarkable afterglows. Always loved him. Would love to talk with him for a bit.

You'd be surprised who you can meet. I met a guy in a dragon ball z FB fan group that had ideas I only learned when I got into nonduality. Hes only heard of nonduality when I mentioned it but a lot of his ideas are getting close to those levels of contemplation. Amazing what you can achieve on your 'own'

^^ this I have similar problem too. Here all the spiritual ppl are either ppl into yoga (most havent heard about nonduality) or the haru krishna/some indian devotee ppl. Those are the worst since they wont even allow discussion and only see their word as the Truth. I wonder if it would be a good idea to attempt to make nondual groups to attract people

@Aaron p Google nonduality, nonduality coaches, etc.

@Aaron p Not sure about Ireland but there are tons of nondual groups in London I'm sure. What you're looking for is nonduality. Or maybe some kind of meditative yoga center. Not Hatha yoga but serious Indian meditative yoga like Kundalini yoga, Kriya yoga, etc. In Vegas we have a pretty good Indian yoga center. But that will vary a lot city to city. Usually you have to travel to find good nondual teachers. Isn't Rupert Spira in the UK? That might be your best bet. I've traveled to far away places to seek out the best teachers. It is worth it. In the old days folks would fly to India. Also Sadhguru has yoga initiations in London I'm sure. Maybe even Ireland.

That's a good question. I imagine my talks will be in the vein of Actualized.org videos. With some new helpful in-person group exercises which would be focused on raising general consciousness & self awareness. This would be useful for all people across the board, basically delving you into consciousness work. I don't think we'd directly work on life purpose, but consciousness work will help with all your goals, from career to relationships to spirituality. We would probably be exploring topics like emotional mastery, fear, judgment, confidence, self-esteem, self-deception, spirituality, meditation techniques, body awareness, nonduality, shadow work, motivation, getting unstuck, etc.