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What keeps a very advanced alien from merging with God? I mean once you hit a certain level of consciousness, it would be hard to keep your form, wouldn't it?

Let's say that the range of consciousness is infinite, and being human it is limited, being an ant too, and being an interdimensional alien whose mind encompasses a universe, it will also be limited. only the formless is limitless. So much compared to little is a difference, but when compared to infinity, both are nothing. So, whether an ant or a bacteria or a human or a crocodile, can be in a state of total openness to their true nature, regardless of the breadth that their consciousness encompasses, it encompasses the entirety of another dimension, the depth of what is. This is what matters since it is total, however the amplitude is always partial, that is, nothing compared to infinity

Nonsense. It is possible to have 1000x more consciousness than a typical human. A human's consciousness is like that of an ant from God's perspective. If you accessed Alien Consciousness you would be so amazed and terrified you would shit yourself. I still have shit stains on my carpet from it.

Wait until you experience Alien Illusion consciousness….

Leo Gura Ego Death & Reality vs. Dream [Part 2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YspFR9JAq3w Introduction to Part 2: The second part of the conversation with Leo Gura continues from where part one ended, exploring the nature of consciousness, and idealism, suggesting that individuals are expressions of God but have forgotten this truth. Curt Jaimungal's role and focus: Curt, a filmmaker with a background in mathematical physics, delves into theories of everything with a focus on the nexus between consciousness and theoretical physics. He shares his intent to examine these subjects with rigor and clarity. Interview dynamics and length: The interview is noted as the longest Curt has had, characterized by reflective pauses and moments of fervor that he chose to retain in the recording for their expressiveness. Recommendation for audience engagement: Curt encourages the audience to engage in deeper conversations on related subjects through the podcast's Discord and subreddit and thanks patrons and sponsors for their support. Sponsors' support for exploration: The support from sponsors like Algo, Brilliant, and Project Transcend is acknowledged, as it enables the podcast to delve into topics such as consciousness and various theories in theoretical physics. Curt's acknowledgments and reflections: He offers thanks to those who introduced him to Leo's content and reviewers who provided analysis of the previous interview, committing to better internalize and communicate Leo's teachings. Discussion approach and self-critique: Curt recognizes his own tendencies during the interviews, such as being overly contentious and neglecting to fully appreciate and convey Leo's points, pledging to improve future discussions by embracing Leo's terminology and ideas more openly. Balancing objections with openness: Curt admits his challenge in balancing skepticism with genuine truth-seeking, aiming to alter his approach by similarly considering what is right about Leo's perspective, not just potential flaws. Comments moderation policy: Curt explains his policy of engagement with audience comments, differentiating between critiques directed at himself versus ad hominem comments toward Leo, aiming to foster constructive discourse. Uniform oneness and fractal reality: The infinite field of consciousness must construct differences to manifest varied experiences, much like the Big Bang transitioning from oneness to a diverse universe. God's desire for exploration: Like a mathematician fascinated by the infinite intricacies of numbers, God explores its own finite aspects, desiring granularity over abstract infinity. Human vs. God imagination: Humans imagine within physical and societal constraints, but from the God perspective, there are no limits to manifesting entire universes or new experiences. Psychosis and societal norms: Those with unbounded imaginations, like individuals experiencing psychosis, often find difficulty adhering to the consensus reality and can face institutionalization or exclusion. Survival and maintaining humanness: The limited scope of human imagination is tethered to the necessity of maintaining a coherent human experience and aligns with societal survival mechanisms. The responsibility to explore: Despite the limitless imagination from the divine viewpoint, humans face the responsibility of staying grounded in consensus reality to function and survive. Imagining new realities: God's boundless imagination can envision anything, including new universes or continents, transcending the limitations of human conceptualization. Constrained human imagination: Humans are limited in what they can imagine, as losing grasp on consensus reality can lead to dysfunction and being labeled as psychotic or schizophrenic. Survival's grip on imagination: The attachment to survival constrains our ability to experience reality beyond the physical; fear of death roots us in this dream life, preventing exploration of infinite possibilities across universes. Disclaimer for at-risk individuals: Leo issues a warning that those with mental instability or contemplating suicide should be cautious with these concepts and anchor themselves in reality to handle survival basics. Life's value amidst non-duality: While reality is a dream and life may seem insignificant from an absolute point of view, Leo urges valuing life as a precious gift, maintaining good health, and not succumbing to harm based on philosophical explorations. Relative vs. absolute perspectives on life and death: Actions like suicide are neither fundamentally wrong nor right, fitting within infinite reality; the decision is relative, with Leo finding reasons such as terminal illness sometimes justifiable, but generally advocating for appreciating life's beauty. Interplay between evidence and definitions of God: Echoing Tyler Goldstein's sentiment, Leo suggests that a lack of evidence for God should inspire a transformation of the definition of God, emphasizing truth-seeking over god-seeking and staying open to surprises on the spiritual journey. Unknown specifics within infinity: Leo distinguishes between general omniscience, realizing the concept of infinity, and specific omniscience, which details exact knowledge of events or entities; he admits many individual aspects of existence remain mysterious even when aware of infinity. Illusions of objective reality: The consensus concept of objective reality is questioned as layers of shared imagination create illusionary objectivity, highlighting the challenge in distinguishing between vivid dreams and waking life cohesion. Differentiating degrees and kinds: Curt explores the question of when differences in degree between entities or phenomena translate into differences of a fundamentally different kind, a notion not fully appreciated in debates like pro-life vs. pro-choice or the analogy between dream states and waking life. Imagination and distinction: Leo addresses the question of difference and imagination, explaining that differences are relative and subject to how they're delineated by the mind, which can alter some boundaries, like the definition of when life begins, while others, like physical separations, are more fixed by universal laws or physics. Cohesion and consistency in reality: He elaborates on why reality feels solid and persistent, contrasting this with the fluidity of dreams. Cohesion and consistency are crucial for constructing a reality indistinguishable from a dream without glitches, which requires a consistent dreaming process. Hallucination and material reality: Psychedelics are discussed as tools that reveal the malleable nature of material reality, challenging materialist perspectives and forcing a reevaluation of the solidity of reality constructs, such as the brain or atoms. Literality of labels: Leo argues that labels like "real" and "unreal" are variable and that reality is an interplay of imagination where even constructs like Santa Claus can be real in the context of consciousness, highlighting the need for a worldview adjustment when we redefine terms. Academic attachment to model of reality: He critiques the academic and scientific tendency to rigidly anchor reality in concepts like materialism, which filter out experiences that don't fit within their paradigm, warning that this approach limits our understanding of an infinite reality. Dissolving physical limitations: Leo explains that through the expansion of consciousness and the use of psychedelics, even seemingly solid physical boundaries can begin to dissolve, similar to experiences in dreams, illustrating the influence of imagination on perception. Permanence of differences: By using the example of one's wife vs. Santa Claus, Leo contends that differences we perceive as permanent are actually variable, subject to change under different conditions, and that materialists err in assuming the fundamental permanence of such distinctions. Literal interpretation of scientific rigor: Scientists often believe in the rigorousness of their fields, like mathematics and logic, but Leo argues that the perceived concreteness is an illusion; even quantum mechanics involves metaphorical explanations. Limitation of the scientific mindset: A rigorous approach to reality creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where a scientist's expectation of strictness and precision shapes their perception, leading to a reality that reflects these biases, similar to a conspiracy theorist creating a paranoid worldview. Construct awareness: Leo emphasizes a developmental stage called "construct awareness," where individuals realize how their minds construct their perceived reality. Most scientists have not reached this stage, hindering their ability to transcend materialism and fully understand the infinite nature of reality. Ego's defense mechanisms: The mind-scientific or otherwise-constructs a limited reality and defends this model by denying or discrediting experiences that contradict it, creating a hermetically sealed worldview. Problems with logicism and paradoxes: Leo discusses historical attempts, such as Gottlob Frege's, to base all of mathematics on logic, which were undermined by paradoxes like Russell's Paradox. Such endeavors reveal the impossibility of fully capturing infinite truths within finite logical systems. Inadequacy of logical proofs: Proofs depend on the prior existence of truth. Leo criticizes the common assumption that every truth must be provable, suggesting instead the recognition of truths beyond provability and the limitations of reason. Limits of consistency and provability: Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which trades off between consistency and provability, underlines limitations. When discussing logic, Leo points out that accepting contradictions opens up infinite possibilities, which is more reflective of reality's true nature. Contradictions in logic as a pathway to infinity: Leo explains that contradictions allow for the recognition of infinite possibilities beyond what a finite logical system can accommodate, consistent with the infinite nature of reality. Limits of scientific models: Leo argues that scientific methods are useful within restrictions but fail to grasp the full complexity of reality, particularly in the realms of quantum mechanics where classical concepts don't apply. Ontological presuppositions in science: There is a dissonance where scientists claim to avoid ontological assumptions while implicitly operating within them, restricting the scope and limiting the understanding of relational reality versus objectivity. Scientism versus pure investigation: Leo differentiates between science entangled with ontological assumptions and the pure process of investigation free from metaphysical biases, suggesting that the former can hinder the discovery of deeper truths. Ontological assumptions in science: Scientists often unconsciously adopt a certain ontology and may be defensive and unaware of it, which can limit the scope and application of science. Materialist exploratory limitations: The process of debunking supernatural explanations (e.g., fairies, angels) through materialism and logic does not guarantee that this approach can be extended to the entire universe, as reality is infinite and science assumes a finite reality. Infinite versus finite methodologies: Since reality is infinite, using science-a finite method-to grasp all of reality is fundamentally flawed. Science is useful for understanding parts of reality but fails to address questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Identifying limits of scientific inquiry: It's challenging to predetermine which questions science can or cannot answer. This meta-scientific question reveals the testing limits of scientific methods, as fully exploring and applying science to the universe is near-impossible. Science's sneaky ontology: Science often denies inconsistencies within itself and covertly brings in ontological assumptions about separate, discrete objects that it cannot prove-e.g., one's body being distinct from another's. Construct-aware science: Science should become construct-aware, recognizing how it constructs nature in the process of scientific inquiry. Transforming science's foundational philosophy and epistemology can enable groundbreaking research. Confusing models with reality: Science may claim not to make ontological claims and only provides models for predictions. However, Leo asserts science does make ontological claims by denying areas where it is inconsistent, failing to grasp its own construction of reality. Merging East and West knowledge: The integration of Western and Eastern perspectives is key, as Western philosophy and mysticism contain ideas typically associated with Eastern thought, challenging the East versus West dichotomy in understanding reality. Leo's synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophies: Despite the perception that Eastern philosophy is more aligned with his ideas, Leo asserts that his teachings are not novel but are rooted in the wisdom of Western philosophers, Christian mystics, and Sufi and Jewish mystics, advocating for a unified view of wisdom across cultures. The importance of progress: Leo embraces the Western concept of evolution and progress but redefines its purpose as an evolution towards higher consciousness and love. He emphasizes that progress is intrinsic to human and societal development. Compatibility of Leo's ideas with Western values: While acknowledging the material benefits of Western civilization, Leo sees a need to reintegrate the spiritual elements back into Western society to create a balance between material and spiritual development. Reconciling notions of progress with spirituality: Leo explains that understanding evolution from a spiritual perspective gives deeper meaning to Western scientific advancements, suggesting an evolutionary purpose and a target for humanity. Perpetuation of evolution and scientific advancement: Leo expects that future societies will not abandon material advancements like science, politics, and capitalism but will evolve to include mystical understanding. Progress in cognitive and moral development: Highlighting the importance of models from developmental psychology, Leo points to evidence of societal progress in increasing construct awareness and meta-thinking, as well as in fortifying pluralism, reduced discrimination, and an expanding sense of global ethics. Eastern and Western conceptions of reality: Leo finds the Eastern notion of a protean, cyclic reality fashionable, but believes the Western concept of a linear, distinct reality with moral absolutes also holds value, implying the necessity to merge both perspectives for a comprehensive worldview. Retaining Western advancements: Leo asserts that advancements from the Western tradition need not be lost; instead, they should be woven with spiritual understanding, alluding to a harmonious evolution of both material and spiritual dimensions within society. Absolute vs. relative insights: Distinguishing between absolute truths about the nature of existence and relative perspectives on societal matters, Leo acknowledges that his views on the latter may evolve while his understanding of absolutes like God or infinity remain unchanged. Anti-fragile nature of humanity: Leo believes mankind is exceptionally resilient due to selfishness, which paradoxically prevents self-destruction and ensures survival despite causing harm through actions like environmental damage or warfare. Self-correcting mechanism: He views humanity as inherently capable of learning from mistakes, implying that as pain from issues like climate change is felt, society will mobilize and enact change, showing an upward trend in collective conscious awareness. Learning through suffering: Suffering is seen as a key driver of human growth, with Leo suggesting that while wisdom can enable learning without suffering, most of humanity needs painful experiences to evolve. Metaphysical necessity of pain: Though suffering is not deemed metaphysically necessary for AI, Leo views it as vital for human psychological development given current evolutionary constraints. Feasibility of mind uploading: Leo dismisses the materialist pursuit of mind uploading as naive, criticizing figures like Ray Kurzweil for misunderstanding consciousness. He likens the ego, which materialists attempt to upload, to an illusory concept akin to Santa Claus. Exploring consciousness beyond computers: Leo promotes spiritual practices like meditation and psychedelics over technological advancements, suggesting they offer deeper insights into consciousness than computational means. Future consciousness exploration: He envisions a transformative future where genetic understanding of consciousness might create mystic generations capable of evolving human awareness far beyond current limitations. Experiencing versus understanding consciousness: Leo differentiates between the experience of consciousness and the empirical study of its architecture, suggesting a blend of spiritual experience and material study is necessary to truly understand consciousness. Science and metaphysics evolution: Leo and Curt discuss the evolution and integration of scientific understanding and metaphysical insights, emphasizing a balance between scientific models and direct spiritual experiences. Distinction between science and psychic realms: Physical reality, like the motion of the moon, appears consistent and deterministic, whereas psychic phenomena resemble uncertain quantum states, producing only probabilistic intuitions that are not guaranteed. Denial of psychic phenomena by materialists: Psychic phenomena have been statistically validated, but materialist scientists deny them to preserve their paradigm. They require paradigm opening before accepting such evidence. Open-mindedness and extraordinary evidence: Extraordinary evidence necessitates an extraordinarily open mind. Materialists mistakenly believe closed-minded scrutiny suffices for understanding extraordinary claims, underestimating the role of mindset in acknowledging evidence. Materialistic standards conflict with non-materialistic phenomena: Materialism's rigid standards fail to accommodate non-materialistic domains like psychic phenomena, hindering recognition of existing evidence. Empirical verification of God through psychedelics: Using psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT can empirically reveal the existence of God. Materialists reject this method as hallucinatory, but scientific integrity requires practical application of the method before dismissing its validity. Consistency of psychedelic experiences: Leo states all psychedelics lead him to a state of infinite consciousness or love, with the type of psychedelic merely altering the "flavor" of the experience. Transformation through challenges: By directly confronting deep-seated fears like insanity, one gains empathy and a deeper appreciation for sanity and reality, despite potential loss of rationality or functionality. Limitations of language in expressing truth: Leo stresses the importance of experiencing states of consciousness beyond linguistic constructs to understand reality's transformative power, as language and concepts are insufficient in capturing profound realizations. Spiritual and intuitive inquiry: Curt clarifies his pursuit is not solely about building rational models but also involves intuition and judgment, recognizing that meaningful aspects of life transcend strict rationality. Critiques based on worldview differences: Some view Leo's insights as beyond Curt's rational model-focused approach, but Curt emphasizes his broader interest in truth and awakening beyond formal models. Models versus actuality: Leo cautions that a Theory of Everything is a concept, emphasizing the distinction between concepts and the true nature of being, advising truth seekers to focus on fundamental reality. Extraordinary open-mindedness as a prerequisite for insights: The acceptance of unusual phenomena like psychic experiences depends on an open-minded approach, contrasting with the skeptical framework that predetermines outcomes based on existing beliefs. Changeability of the mind: Despite its stubbornness, the human mind can change given sufficient experience, exemplified by Leo's shift from materialism to a belief in God following a profound experience. Experience vs. belief: Direct experience always trumps belief, and individuals will change long-held beliefs when confronted with undeniable evidence, yet the mind resists experiences that could challenge its current worldviews. Materialist perspectives and avoidance: The materialist mind may avoid experiences that challenge its skepticism, such as attending 'hippie-dippy' events associated with psychedelics, due to preconceived notions of what is unscientific or a waste of time. Michael Shermer's openness: Skeptic Michael Shermer surprisingly attends Deepak Chopra's meditation retreats despite apparent ideological differences, indicating an openness to experiences beyond his usual skepticism. Beliefs shaping reality: Leo clarifies that while reality is ultimately imaginary, believing alone doesn't materialize desires like wealth. Imagination is deeper than belief, and while both a chair and Santa Claus are imaginary, Santa is a weaker form of imagination under ego control, unlike the chair which is part of a universal imagination. The ego's control and definition of reality: The ego defines reality based on what it does not control, which is typically outside the individual's influence-what the ego perceives as objective reality. Ego perception and self-bias: The ego perceives reality selfishly, corrupting the understanding of good, love, and reality itself by defining them in terms that benefit it personally. Control, omnipotence, and belief in finitude: Omnipotence implies indistinction between the controller and the controlled, but believing oneself to be a finite form, like a human body, naturally limits control. Skepticism and worldview: Genuine skepticism involves questioning even one's skeptical worldview, recognizing that it often serves as a defense mechanism rooted in fear and not a path to ultimate truth. Fear and its impact on truth-seeking: Fear is antithetical to genuine truth-seeking as it often signifies a rejection of uncomfortable or challenging aspects of reality, whereas genuine pursuit of truth accepts reality no matter the cost. Science and its assumed path to truth: Leo challenges the assumption that science necessarily leads to truth, suggesting that scientists need to be willing to accept that science, as a methodology, could be a delusion if ultimate truth demands it. Leo's perspective on truth and selfishness: Leo discusses the connection between fear and truth, indicating that fear is an avoidance of one's infinite self, which is the truth. All fears are ultimately unfounded since they are based on imagined distinctions that do not exist in a state of infinite consciousness. Fear of losing self in the pursuit of truth: Leo and Curt explore the fear associated with pursuing truth, contemplating the implications of shedding all selfishness as potentially leading to self-destructive actions. This highlights the deep existential concern that without selfishness, one might act in ways that are contrary to personal survival and well-being. Dynamics of fear in relationship to awakening: Truth is equated with infinite love, and falsely perceiving differences in experiences as good or bad breeds fear. An awakened state is characterized by the absence of fear, as one recognizes all experiences as equal manifestations of the infinite self. Balance between love and survival: The conversation touches on the nature of reality as a game, where the avoidance of infinite love equates to a necessary survival mechanism. Leo sees this reluctance to face truth as a fundamental aspect of life and a way to maintain existence. Surrender to truth as equivalent to truth-seeking: Leo defines surrendering as the act of fully accepting reality as it is, which equates to seeking truth. Ego resists this surrender due to its perceived need for control and survival. Metaphor of Satan/Lucifer for ego: The figures of Satan and Lucifer are described as symbols for the ego's illusion of separatism and control-representing the ego's attempt to dominate its own realm contrary to the boundlessness of truth. Dichotomy between philosophical denial of free will and behavior: Atheists like Sam Harris may intellectually deny free will but still behave as if they exercise control, displaying cognitive dissonance. Leo discusses that despite philosophical beliefs, everyday reactions suggest an underlying expectation of control. Cognitive dissonance between belief and behavior: Leo illustrates how the ego creates complex ideologies that obscure the connection between worldview and suffering, culminating in cognitive dissonance where actions contradict proclaimed beliefs. Difficulty of separating concepts and being: Leo explains the challenge of using language that inherently suggests separateness, distinguishing between upper case "You" representing the all-encompassing self and lower case "you" denoting individual identity within the larger universal context. Science creating distinctions: Science relies on distinguishing between what's considered scientific and non-scientific (pseudoscience), upholding a dichotomy that defines science's boundaries. Reality inclusive of non-science: However, science's denial of non-scientific elements, like Santa Claus, is a denial of aspects of reality, as all things are part of reality – even those deemed non-scientific by its standards. Science of conceptual entities: The possibility of a valid scientific exploration of conceptual entities like unicorns exists, which differs from their physical existence, focusing instead on their conceptualization within reality. Encountering worldview contradictions: When faced with ideas that contradict one's worldview, the response may be to embrace contradictions or claim that these contradictions paradoxically support one's existing beliefs. Authority in determining truth: Seeking an external authority for truth is common, but non-duality suggests that truth must come from within as all distinctions, including authority, collapse, leaving only the self as the judge of truth. Self-authority as the ultimate truth: In non-duality, since God (the infinite self) has no outside, it has no external authority; thus, whatever God (the individual) deems true becomes its reality – showcasing the infinite power of self-authority. God's capacity for self-deception: Despite God's infinite authority, it can deceive itself indefinitely, conjuring its own reality based on its imaginations, which for the finite self (lowercase 'u') may be construed as delusions. Lowercase 'u' vs. uppercase 'U': There is a distinction between truth from the finite, individual self (lowercase 'u') and the infinite self (uppercase 'U' or God) with the latter being fully authoritative in its declarations of truth. Hermetically sealed worldviews: Individuals create closed-off systems of belief, mistaking them for the ultimate reality, while non-duality reveals the capacity to construct and deconstruct such systems. Love as the essence of reality: Addressing the nature of God and truth, Leo explains that the essence of reality is infinite love, challenging the constraints of isolationist and finite perspectives. Dynamic of surrender and spiritual growth: The journey towards infinite love involves continuously surrendering finite definitions of self, progressing to a state of peace where all perspectives, even conflicting ones, can be accepted without defense. Self-criticism as an indicator of care: The act of self-criticism implies an underlying sense of care and correct orientation, suggesting a person's conscientiousness despite potential over-seriousness in personal evaluation. Guilt and developmental stages: Guilt is recognized as evolutionarily necessary at lower levels of development to confront ego-driven actions, but higher spiritual realizations require self-acceptance and the cessation of self-judgment. Complexity of guilt dynamics: The spiritual journey involves a paradox where recognizing one's flaws calls for self-love and self-forgiveness, even in the face of egregious missteps, which challenges societal norms and traditional religious precepts. True integration of Christian teachings: Leo explains that fully embracing Christian teachings means loving oneself unconditionally despite one's flaws, yet not using this as justification for harmful actions. Social acceptance vs spiritual honesty: Expressing the philosophy of self-acceptance can be socially threatening, as it seems to offer a carte blanche for sin, which society construes as dangerous for collective thriving. Concept of sin and societal constructs: Leo discusses sin as a societal construct meant to facilitate legal and social order, suggesting that a deeper understanding and release of the concept may paradoxically lead to more virtuous behavior. Karmic consequences of labeling sin: The labeling of actions as 'sinful' sets up a karmic dynamic where one sees reality through a moralistic filter, creating cycles of guilt and self-recrimination. Self-forgiveness amidst serious mistakes: Leo emphasizes the importance of maintaining love for oneself even after serious errors, viewing this acceptance as a pathway toward spiritual growth and evolution. Upholding moral standards while embracing non-duality: Leo acknowledges the difficulty of reconciling the non-dualistic acceptance of all facets of oneself with societal norms that demand moral accountability and condemnation of wrongdoing. Challenging conventional views of divine encounters: Leo redefines typical responses to divine encounters, suggesting one need not apologize or feel sorry to God, as the assumption of sin and the accompanying guilt are unnecessary in the face of divine acceptance. Seeing all as divine, including Jesus and Hitler: Leo states that all beings are divine, including historical figures like Jesus and Hitler, noting that recognizing the divinity in oneself and in all is integral to spiritual awakening. Jungian shadow integration related to God-realization: He links the process of integrating one's shadow with the realization of God, suggesting embracing all aspects of oneself, even those labeled as evil or unwanted, is essential for true love and understanding. Asymptotic process of shadow integration: The full integration of one's shadow is described as an ongoing, asymptotic process that never quite reaches completeness but continuously evolves toward greater wholeness. Spiritual realization as a choice free from compulsion: Leo stresses that the pursuit of truth, awakening, or God should be a voluntary choice motivated by intrinsic desire and not out of obligation or forced reasoning. Personal integration of honesty for spiritual advance: Honesty is underscored as vital for spiritual advancement, with Leo recalling a personal experience where acknowledging his own deceptions was a prerequisite for further development. The foundational role of honesty: Honesty serves as a foundational principle for approaching truth and facilitates a clearer perception of reality, essential for both spiritual and personal growth. Lies, karma, and self-deception: Lies mix selfish intent with truth, and perpetuating them creates suffering and distortion of reality-this karmic dynamic is intrinsic to ego-based deception and is countered by honesty. Weaponization of ideals: Leo illustrates how partial truths can be twisted to fit one's worldview, like a vaping CEO dismissing studies for self-preservation. This self-deception involves first lying to oneself, then others, often unconsciously, and becomes the foundation for a distorted perception of reality. Consequences of deep lies: Living a life built on deep lies one cannot face has profound karmic repercussions, as it forces one to avoid the truth and hold a skewed view of concepts such as science, leading to an ongoing conflict with reality. Survival conflicts with truth: The ego's survival instinct can create a conflict of interest, leading to a denial of facts that threaten one's livelihood or deep-seated beliefs, often resulting in a twisted worldview that rationalizes personal agendas. Self-deception and devilry: The most insidious form of deception is the strategic intertwining of truth with lies, carried out by the ego to justify selfishness under the guise of partial truths, a process Leo defines as "devillery." Finite versus infinite: Leo discusses the sinfulness associated with finiteness, suggesting that conflating the part for the whole leads to problems, akin to the Gnostic view that materiality is sinful. Leo advises recognizing the holographic nature of reality, where each part reflects the whole, thus bridging the apparent gap between the finite and infinite. Holism versus fragmentation: Leo posits that ultimate truth lies in holistic perception, while fragmentation and focusing on parts as complete "wholes" results in falsehood, similar to how science might propose it can understand everything. Lies tied to finiteness: Curt Jaimungal questions the connection between lies (which he associates with finite aspects) and sin, proposing that finite elements and temporality may be intimately linked to what's considered sinful. Leo confirms this, explaining the concept of holography in consciousness, where every part, even something as small as a charger cable, carries infinity within it, challenging the notion that finiteness is inherently profane. Curt's approach to interviews: Curt recognizes the need to focus on what is right about a speaker's points and rephrase them in an agreeable way, rather than just pointing out contradictions. Literal mindedness and scientific attitude: Leo observes that scientifically minded individuals can be overly literal, expecting reality to follow simple binary logic like ones and zeros in a computer, but human minds function in a much looser way. Computational models of reality: In response to computational approaches to theorizing about reality, Leo points to chaos theory's proof that you can't predict systems like weather long-term because of the butterfly effect, supporting computational irreducibility as recognized by Wolfram. Models vs. reality and their limitations: Leo cautions about getting too lost in models to the point of ignoring the actual world. He states that models are crucial, but not infinite, and cannot predict everything or reach infinity. Map vs. territory concept: Leo discusses how models (maps) can become so detailed that people might forget to experience real life (the territory), warning against becoming too absorbed in models to the detriment of engaging with the actual world. Impact of isolation and shallowness of social interactions: Leo admits a preference for deeper engagements with reality over shallow social interactions, explaining why some mystics seek isolation. However, he doesn't advocate total disengagement and values connecting with all types of people. Flip side of isolation: Curt self-reflects on his personal antisocial tendencies, valuing deeper connections with family, and the impacts of projecting onto others, recognizing the potential to push oneself toward social engagements as a spiritual practice. Pressures and temptations for the wealthy: Curt speculates on the additional spiritual challenges faced by the wealthy, noting that material abundance can make spiritual focus more difficult, contradicting the common dismissal of the rich as merely materialistic. Handling ego and spiritual growth alongside everyday life: Both Curt and Leo discuss the challenge of maintaining spiritual growth and applying it in practical aspects like business, family, and politics, without retreating into monk-like isolation. Models, precision, and the trap of detail: Leo advises Curt to balance the big picture with the attention to detail, expressing concern that exclusive focus on conceptual work may hinder personal spiritual awakening. The 'better the model, the bigger the problem' view: Leo introduces the idea that highly refined models can become a hindrance rather than an aid in understanding reality, as they may draw attention away from direct experience and interaction with the world. Effects of fame on Leo Gura's social life: Leo reminisces about a time when he was more publicly recognized, noting a decrease in such occurrences as his content delved into niche subjects. Views on personal vices and habits: Leo discusses his perspective on watching porn and eating meat, explaining that he doesn't see such activities as detrimental to his spirituality and acknowledging the healthy push towards vegetarianism. Spirituality in unconventional spaces: Leo shares experiences of discussing spirituality in places like strip clubs, indicating that profound insights about the divine can emerge even in seemingly unlikely or non-traditional settings. Jailbreaking the mind: The process of spiritual growth and ego death can be likened to jailbreaking a phone, which carries inherent risks and may lead to detrimental outcomes if not done carefully. Fear of negative consequences: Curt expresses a concern that fully surrendering to what he perceives as God's will could result in harmful actions like suicide or harming others, revealing a profound fear of trusting himself and the world. Attachment and prioritization: Curt admits his attachment to his wife and life, suggesting that his reluctance to change or surrender these attachments indicates a prioritization of survival over spiritual truth. Facing physical death and the leap of faith: Leo insists that confronting physical death is essential for experiencing God, and true awakening requires accepting the risk of death and being willing to "jump" into infinite love. Rapid-fire questions and focus on Leo: Despite intentions to discuss more personal aspects of Leo, the conversation delves deeper into his spiritual ideas with rapid-fire questions on his perspective and experiences. Challenges in promoting a Theory of Everything: Leo offers advice to individuals like Steve Scully, who propose theories of everything but struggle to gain recognition, suggesting a long-term commitment to developing and sharing their theories instead of seeking instant validation. Information sorting and fringe theories: The challenge faced by individuals like Curt in deciding which theories to explore, amidst an abundance of both serious and crackpot ideas, is outlined, emphasizing the importance of careful discernment and the evolving ability to recognize valuable theories. Personal examples of fear and ego management: Curt shares his fears around engaging deeply with spiritual topics, including the concern of self-harm or harming others, as well as the difficulty of managing his ego post-psychedelic experience. Popularizing personal theories: Leo emphasizes that success and recognition in sharing theories require persistent self-promotion and providing value rather than relying on a single influential person to "put you on." He encourages creators to continuously work hard and explore multiple avenues, such as reaching out to various influencers, starting one's own channel, or offering unique value to potential collaborators. Persistence despite rejection: Leo advises those facing rejection not to be discouraged but to persist and increase their efforts in promoting their work, suggesting that the more effort one puts in, the more likely luck will favor them. Offering value for collaboration: When seeking opportunities for collaboration or promotion, Leo highlights the importance of offering something of value in return, whether through bringing subscribers, sending gifts, or other means that can appeal to the potential collaborator's interests. Evolution from indie filmmaking to TOE: Curt reflects on his transition from indie filmmaking, abbreviated as "if TOE," to working on theories of everything ("TOE"), seeing it as symbolic of his growing open-mindedness and readiness to embrace broader understandings. Staying still while recording videos: Leo shares that sitting during recordings helps maintain a still posture and avoids distractions like looking at oneself, which ensures a focused and engaged delivery to the camera. Challenges of non-linear thinking in public speaking: Leo discusses his biggest speaking challenge-maintaining structure in his speeches due to his highly nonlinear and intuitive mind that naturally explores various threads and tangents of thought. Perception of own influence and followers: Leo reveals that the amazement of having a large following fades over time as one gets accustomed to it; he also addresses the dangers of ego inflation from fan admiration and the necessity of balanced feedback. Viewing critics as trolls: Curt considers taking serious criticism as a means of improvement, while Leo suggests that some critics are indeed trolls and that it's necessary to differentiate between constructive criticism and non-helpful negativity. Using spirituality to avoid psychological issues: Spiritual bypassing is discussed as the misuse of spirituality to evade addressing personal problems, implying that genuine spiritual growth requires confronting one's shadow and working through psychological challenges. Questioning the necessity of suffering for spiritual growth: Leo questions the belief that suffering is necessary to attain spiritual heights, warning against self-fulfilling prophecies and encouraging a recognition that spiritual awakening can happen easily for some people. Reinforcement of perception: The way you perceive the world often reinforces itself – difficulties can become self-fulfilling prophecies based on one's mindset, advising caution against negative outlooks. Advice to younger generations: Leo emphasizes the practical value of imparting wisdom to youth so they can avoid repeating historical mistakes and navigate life more effectively, recognizing the importance of learning from elders and ancestral wisdom as crucial. Increasing disregard for wisdom: Discusses the modern cultural decline in the appreciation of wisdom, exacerbated by social media and other influences, making a case for why wisdom, even within academia, is crucial and should not be hastily discarded. Idealized views of spiritual figures: Misconceptions about Jesus and Buddha are likely due to the development of myths over time, with actual historical knowledge quite scant, suggesting that if details of their lives were known, they'd seem less deified and more human. Jesus's special consciousness: While everyone embodies divinity in some sense, Leo speculates that Jesus possibly had a uniquely high baseline consciousness with paranormal abilities, illustrated through variability in human traits such as height and cognition. Thumbnail selection process: Leo actively collects various images online and from stock photo sites, keeping them for future video topics. He occasionally modifies images in Photoshop, aligning with his aesthetic orientation and graphic design experience. Video preparation method: Leo combines both premeditated outline preparation and spontaneous expression during recordings. For technical subjects, he prepares outlines but prefers improv as it yields more organic insights, albeit with the risk of missing key points. Video recording technique: Videos are shot in a single take without edits, a skill developed over time akin to live public speaking. Leo uses a teleprompter-like setup with a two-way mirror for notes, enabling a natural flow. Opinion on UFOs and altered states for contact: Personal lack of experience with UFOs but believes in their existence due to the abundance of reports across time and cultures. Claims the difficulty of capturing fast-moving objects like UFOs on camera should not dismiss their existence. Open to the idea that altered states or specific methodologies like CE5 could potentially facilitate contact with extraterrestrial entities. Spiritual perfection and imperfection: Leo points out that even entities recognized as spiritually elevated, like Jesus or the Buddha, likely had imperfections, and their historical depictions are probably idealized, with actual videos likely showing them as less divine than portrayed. Jesus's unique abilities: Speculates that Jesus had extraordinary conscious and mystical abilities due to genetic makeup, possibly healing certain individuals which contributed to his supernatural reputation. Content creation and selection process: Describes an aesthetic approach to choosing thumbnails for videos, accumulating a collection of images for future use, and personally modifying them to fit video themes. Non-edited recordings: Leo recounts his practice of recording videos without cuts similar to live public speaking, which has improved his articulation over time. Acknowledging the existence of UFOs: Leo believes in the plausibility of UFOs, acknowledging the challenge in capturing them on camera, and suggests personal experiences strongly influence an individual's belief in such phenomena. Riffing vs. outlining for content delivery: Mentions a balance between pre-contemplation and casual delivery of content, with some topics requiring detailed preparation, while others benefit from impromptu speaking for authenticity. Critique of UFO skepticism: Challenges the idea that all UFO evidence is unconvincing or hoaxed, considering the technical difficulties of photographing fast-moving objects and the substantial anecdotal evidence suggesting their reality. Occam's Razor Misapplication: Leo considers the dismissal of UFOs as a misuse of Occam's Razor. He believes that given the vast number of stars and planets, the existence of aliens is highly probable, challenging the simplistic application of this principle by skeptics. Bayesian Reasoning Flaws: Leo criticizes Bayesian reasoning for being susceptible to subjective biases. It assumes starting probabilities that cannot be known and is affected by the reference class problem, making it unreliable for making conclusions about phenomena like UFOs. Probability Assessment Challenge: Discussing the issue of assigning probabilities to unique events, Leo notes the inherent difficulty in determining the chances of occurrences like UFO sightings and points out how personal experiences can drastically alter someone's perceived probability of such events. Intuition as Consciousness Access: Leo describes intuition as an aspect of consciousness that allows for logical leaps without a formal pattern. It's an irreducibly mysterious element he ties to infinite intelligence, and while he believes intuition can be developed, he refrains from recommending specific books on the topic. Role of Arts in Awakening: Leo sees beauty as fundamental to reality and ties art to participating in the creative process of God. He views art, including music, films, and his own work, as expressions of God's creative power and encourages people to treat every aspect of life, from business to cooking, as an art form for a fulfilling existence. Art and Psychedelics: Addressing the appreciation of art under the influence of psychedelics, Leo discusses the ability to perceive beauty in all forms, and the shift in perception that allows even the mundane to appear divine. He suggests that all music, including "left-brain" music, can be experienced as profound under psychedelics. Experiencing Psychedelic-Induced Psychosis: Leo talks about his states of madness during mushroom trips, describing them as humbling and developing empathy for those with mental illnesses. He emphasizes the importance of facing fears of insanity and learning from the experience. Sanity Appreciation: He reflects on the value of sanity, which is often taken for granted until lost. Leo stresses that losing sanity briefly aids in understanding its importance and appreciating the grounding and coherence it provides. Ontology and Epistemology Coupling: In the CTMU, ontology and epistemology are understood to be inseparably coupled, a contrast to their traditional separation. Chris Langan suggests that through truths like Gödel's incompleteness theorem, reality can't fully be explained by reason alone. Language and Non-Language: Leo warns about equating everything with language or reason, as he differentiates between human language and other forms of expression, which can include experiences beyond language. He invites those engaged in logical or conceptual work, like followers of the CTMU, to attain states of consciousness where language doesn't apply, enriching their understanding beyond linguistic constructs. Psychedelics vs. Traditional Enlightenment: Addressing the comparison between psychedelic experiences and traditional forms of enlightenment, Leo clarifies that the core truths of absolute reality are uniform and can be accessed through various means, whether psychedelics or meditation. He emphasizes that while his teachings do not exclusively advocate for psychedelics, they are an accessible tool for those not adept at or committed to profound meditative practices. Relativity of Spiritual Practice: Leo agrees with the premise that attempting to bring the absolute into the relative is somewhat delusional, given the illusory nature of separation. However, he portrays this process as a personal and deliberate choice of delusion for one's own sake – a conscious game rather than a genuine effort to convert others who, from a non-dual standpoint, don't exist separately. Possibility of Perfect Embodiment: Leo is open to the idea that it could be metaphysically possible to embody the absolute perfectly, but pragmatically, he sees this as incredibly challenging due to human limitations. He actively discourages imposing expectations of perfection on oneself or spiritual teachers, recognizing that finite physical and psychological factors inevitably influence one's actions and thoughts. Expectations in Spiritual Teaching: He warns against the trap of using any imperfection in spiritual teachers as evidence to discredit their insights, illustrating the futility and potential ego-serving nature of such critiques. Leo advises a balance between striving for alignment with spiritual truths and exercising compassion towards oneself and others in the face of inevitable human imperfections. Jesus in Modern Times: If Jesus returned to the current era, modern evangelicals might reject him as a communist for advocating to care for the poor. Evolution Beyond Atheism: There's a cognitive development trajectory from fundamentalist Christians, to atheists who question beliefs, to a deeper understanding of God, embodying true Christian values. Sly Answers of Spiritual Figures: Like a Zen master, Jesus avoided affirming or denying claims of being the Son of God, embodying humility and avoiding the egoic pitfalls of explicitly claiming divinity. Teacher-Student Dynamic: Teaching inherently suggests superiority, and some spiritual practitioners may refrain from teaching to avoid these implications and the shortcomings of language in conveying truth. Leo on The Ra Material: Leo finds the core teachings about infinity in The Ra Material aligned with his views, but remains skeptical of its more esoteric claims, such as the construction of the Egyptian pyramids being a manifestation of consciousness rather than built manually. Hypothetical Issue with Leo's Theory: A scenario where a daughter imagines a $100 bill on her desk based on her mother's assertion examines layers of imagination in perception. Leo suggests all parties, including the daughter, mother, and $100 bill, are imagined within imagined layers, challenging the notion of objective reality. Objective Reality and Consensus: The concept of objective reality may relate to multiple layers of mutual imagination. Leo emphasizes reaching an understanding of the absolute, where the distinction between the absolute and notions of objectivity collapses. Leo Gura's Social Manner: Although perceived as serious online, Leo claims to be relaxed and playful in social settings, not always discussing profound topics like God. Social interactions and relatability: In casual social interactions, Leo discusses everyday topics like cat videos instead of deep metaphysical concepts to relate to people on a familiar level, which he finds enjoyable and necessary. Recommendations on psychedelic use to family: Leo has indeed recommended strong psychedelics to his family but does not push them to partake; he respects their individual choices and recognizes his mother's resistance due to traditional views. First-person reality experience: Leo's first-person experience of reality remains visually consistent but has undergone a profound recontextualization; every aspect is now seen as absolute truth, God, and imagination, rather than just a human perception. Perceiving objections as ego defense: When engaging with others, Leo acknowledges valid disagreements and differences in perspective; however, he also recognizes when people's objections stem from ego defenses, though not all objections are seen this way. Navigating arrogance and ego: Leo admits to sometimes feeling arrogant or looking down on others with lower consciousness or wisdom levels; managing this involves cultivating compassion for others' ignorance and recognizing one's own spiritual ego. Approach to justice and punishment: Leo doesn't rule out the death penalty in extreme cases where rehabilitation fails and immediate threat prevention is necessary, but he supports efforts towards rehabilitation consistent with certain Scandinavian models. Distinction between disapproval and condescension: Leo advocates for making survival-based societal decisions, such as imprisonment, without becoming morally superior; he distinguishes between disapproving of someone's actions and condescendingly looking down upon them. Recognizing and overcoming condescension: While truthful judgments about lower levels of consciousness can occur, it's a matter of balance and evolving beyond tendencies to look down on others by empathizing with their circumstances and recognizing the truth in their actions. Admitting personal shortcomings: Leo openly admits to his own shortcomings, recognizing instances where he has unjustly looked down on others and hopes to grow beyond such behavior. Rehabilitation and human error: Leo favors investing in rehabilitation over harsh punishment, understanding human behavior can often be attributed to circumstances beyond one's control, advocating for humane approaches within the justice system. Improvement of mental models: When confronted by others' seemingly poor decisions, rather than assuming superiority, consider updating personal mental models to more empathetically understand their actions. Philosophy of universal goodness: Deepening understanding may lead to the realization that all actions are inherently good, progressing toward the view that everything is absolutely good. Personal standards and self-judgment: Differences in self-regulation are highlighted, with Leo permitting himself occasional "sins" without self-rebuke, trusting in natural outgrowing of such behaviors, while the interviewer maintains tighter self-restraint. Leo's upbringing advantages: A balanced family dysfunction in childhood fostered Leo's independent thinking and work ethic, with his parents not imposing any strict worldviews, aiding in his open-minded development. Cultural perspective from emigration: Moving from Russia to the USA as a child allowed Leo to experience cultural relativism firsthand, understanding American cultural norms as somewhat arbitrary compared to different background. Educational opportunities and challenges: Acknowledges a fortunate upbringing with quality education in Southern California, despite financial challenges, which taught him fiscal responsibility. Attachments to Actualized.org: Leo recognizes his work with Actualized.org as his significant attachment and contemplates the potential need to disengage for further spiritual advancement versus the possibility of expanding his teaching. Treating life purpose as a game: Leo suggests finding fulfillment through engaging in a personal 'art form' that aligns with spiritual development, blending creative endeavors with the pursuit of spirituality. Practicality and spiritual work: Leo admits being practical and grounded in material life benefitted his spiritual work, and it's uncertain whether to pursue a more public teaching role or personal retreat for spiritual advancement. Judging others: Leo still judges others at times, acknowledging it as a work in progress, striving to overcome this behavior as his understanding evolves. He emphasizes that truly comprehensive understanding inherently encompasses empathetic perspectives of universally "good" actions. Leo's perspective on playing life seriously: Leo compares engaging in life to playing a serious game like Dark Souls, advocating for approaching every aspect with intense focus and curiosity. Early involvement in Bioshock Infinite: His initial role in Bioshock Infinite during pre-production was minimal; he contributed to early concept discussions, including proposing the idea of a female companion in the game, inspired by Half-Life 2. Breaking into game design: Leo entered game design through modding, creating a popular mod for Oblivion which he then used as a portfolio to get hired at Irrational Games. Job interview challenges: Sharing his experience with job interviews, particularly one with Todd Howard from Bethesda, Leo reflects on his early lack of interview skills and excitement that hindered his performance. Project development dynamics: Discussing game design processes, Leo describes pre-production stages where a team collaboratively discusses game mechanics, critiques past projects, and ideates future directions around a conference table. Leo's self-acknowledged "vice": Arrogance is identified as Leo's vice, stemming from his quick dismissal of what he perceives as "bullshit" and occasionally looking down on others, citing a developed skill for quickly detecting falsehoods in various domains. Public recognition over time: Leo notes that public recognition has decreased since his content has become more niche and YouTube traffic has grown more competitive; he recalls past experiences of being recognized in public. Personal consumption habits: Leo addresses vices like porn, which he does not view negatively in relation to his spiritual practice, and eating meat, despite a desire to shift toward vegetarianism or veganism for health and ethical reasons. Influence of consumption habits on spirituality: He argues that habits like masturbation do not detract from his consciousness or spiritual practice, and highlights the importance of personal responsibility and genetics in potential addictions. Leo's dietary choices: Due to energy requirements and the physical sensation of cold, Leo's attempts at a vegetarian diet have been unsuccessful. He remains open to alternatives like lab-grown meat but feels technology is not yet advanced enough to adopt fully. Perspectives on the porn industry: Leo has conflicting views on porn; he acknowledges issues in the industry and suggests avoiding it as it might skew perceptions of people as interchangeable. However, he mentions a trend towards user-generated content that reflects genuine relationships, which he views more positively. Preferences for high-quality adult content: Leo considers himself a connoisseur of porn, preferring premium, artistically shot adult content that enhances aesthetic appreciation over typical low-quality material. Finding spirituality in unexpected places: He recounts discussing spirituality and enlightenment with strippers at a Vegas strip club, illustrating his belief that divine understanding can exist in unconventional settings. Leveraging unusual topics to connect with others: Leo finds discussing psychic phenomena and hallucinations to be effective conversation starters, especially with women who are generally open to these topics. Leo's daily routine variability: Health issues cause inconsistency in Leo's routine, leading to days filled with varying activities-including work, relaxation, or coping with poor health-depending on his physical state. Balancing hard work with self-compassion: While Leo has a natural drive to work, he has learned the importance of self-care and compassion, especially regarding health-related limitations. Attachment to work and spiritual depth: Leo acknowledges that his conceptual work and recording videos can hinder deeper spiritual practices, as they involve analytical thinking which needs to be put aside for profound personal development. Embracing intuition alongside rigor: He attributes much of his insight to an intuitive understanding that helps him quickly discern the essence of ideas without getting lost in details, suggesting a balance between holistic intuition and focused study. Leo's perspective on intellectual rigor: Leo debates the merits of intellectual rigor, cautioning that getting lost in the minutiae may prevent one from seeing the bigger picture and reaching the highest level of understanding. Trade-off between details and the big picture: Leo expresses a preference for the big picture rather than getting bogged down in technical details, arguing that you can miss fundamental truths by focusing too much on specificity. Allocating energy between theories and truth: Leo advises Curt to develop a method for managing time and mental resources, warning that an obsession with theories and models can hinder the path to awakening. Curt's dilemma between rigorous study and awakening: Curt expresses concern that his meticulous nature and focus on developing a Theory of Everything could impede personal spiritual growth, potentially perpetuating the intellectual journey without reaching absolute truth. Existential decision on channel focus: Curt considers removing his name from his channel's title to underscore its goal-oriented nature and his role in contributing to the quest for a Theory of Everything, reflecting on whether he'll be the one to achieve it or pass the baton to another. Awakening's impact on Curt's work: Leo conveys that achieving awakening would significantly empower Curt's work, providing a unique perspective valuable to the scientific community, and marking not an end but a renaissance for his personal endeavors. Negative feedback and personal transformation: Leo shares experiences of negative feedback from personal development, highlighting the resistance to change by family, friends, and the community. He stresses the significance of pursuing authenticity over maintaining a "happy" facade. Curt's serious demeanor in interviews: Curt explains his seriousness during podcasts as an effort to remain engaged and authentic, avoiding superficiality and inviting genuine, in-depth conversation. Seriousness in online content: Leo advises Curt to focus on authenticity in his videos rather than modifying content due to seeming overly serious, as it's important for genuine engagement. Spiritual figures claiming godliness: Leo addresses the question by saying that many spiritual figures do indeed identify with God, but often use subtler language to avoid misinterpretation and the perception of arrogance. The danger of proclaiming divinity: Claiming to be God can be life-threatening, and throughout history, individuals like Mansur Al-Halaj have been executed for such proclamations. The suppression of these truths is linked to survival, as they can undermine societal structures and beliefs. Difficulty in articulating profound insights: Leo notes that some of his deepest insights are challenging to communicate due to the limitations of language, and he encourages listeners to see the convergence in spiritual teachings toward the concept of oneness. Information manipulation strategies: Leo warns about individuals or groups who deliberately spread misleading information to confuse people and push selfish agendas, exemplified by Steve Bannon's strategy of "flooding the zone with bullshit." Leo's message of love: When addressing humanity, Leo would convey that reality is fundamentally love, questioning why existence would be anything but infinitely loving. Advice for growing influence: Leo suggests maintaining energy and passion, not allowing critical feedback to affect self-perception, avoiding burnout, and combining intellectual pursuit with spirituality for a significant impact. Blurring lines between concepts and being: In constructing a Theory of Everything, Leo cautions against confusing concepts with actuality, emphasizing the need to base theories on primary and absolute truths. Navigating strangeness and awe in reality: Leo reflects on life's beautiful strangeness and the need for a constant sense of wonder, recognizing reality's intrinsic mystery. Final word to Curt's audience: Leo advises TOE enthusiasts to discern between being and concept, emphasizing the primary nature of direct experience and actuality over secondary conceptual understanding. Experiencing the Alien Nature of Reality: Leo expresses wonder at ordinary objects like dinner forks, encouraging a perspective where everything is seen as alien-that is, seen for the first time without assuming familiarity or taking it for granted. Gratitude Towards Existence: Leo experiences intense gratitude for life, appreciating everyday experiences and even the chance to have the conversation he's having, acknowledging the feeling as undeservedly lucky. Appropriateness of the Term 'God': When directly confronting the concept of God, Leo argues that the most fitting response is one of profound awe, exclaiming "Oh my God" or "Oh my fucking God" to express the grandeur and profundity of the experience. Personal Invitation from Leo Gura: In a friendly offer, Leo invites the host to hang out with him for deeper conversation and connection, moving beyond the confines of an interview setting. Matthew Phillips and the Transcend App: Matthew Phillips shares the inspiration for creating Transcend, a platform designed to facilitate deep, meaningful communication, spurred by personal loss and the desire to preserve the essence of loved ones. Holistic Purpose of Transcend: The app aims to enable users to share important life stories and advice with a focus on intimacy and authenticity, without being driven by superficial engagement metrics commonly seen on other social platforms. We Transcend Initiative: Transcend introduces a program to donate app subscriptions to individuals facing end-of-life situations or terminal illnesses, allowing them to preserve their legacies and stories for loved ones. Helping to Preserve Memories for the Elderly: The app is typically used by caregivers who assist those with Alzheimer's or dementia, acting as a memory care tool to safeguard their narratives for future generations. Legacy as Elevation of the Human Condition: Concluding the section, Matthew Phillips articulates his belief in the power of legacy to improve the human experience, viewing it as a critical yet overlooked element of life. Mission of Transcend app: Transcend aims to empower everyone to capture and pass on their life story, with the belief that everyone's story matters and has the potential to make progress easier for future generations. Fulfilling a sacred obligation: The creator of Transcend feels that the app allows him to honor predecessors while also fulfilling a duty to future generations by preserving knowledge and wisdom. Early access to Transcend: The app is near its beta release, with invitations extended to users who sign up at projecttranscend.com, aiming to facilitate meaningful family connections and legacy preservation. Utilizing Transcend with family members: Curt Jaimungal expresses interest in using the app to capture and preserve interactions with his parents, highlighting its personal significance. Leo Gura as a content contributor: Transcend considers Leo Gura an ideal candidate to create engaging prompts for the app, providing value to users and enriching experiences. Creating meaningful conversation with prompt cards: Transcend plans to include "starter packs" with themed prompts meant to enhance conversations by raising thought-provoking questions, much like physical relationship cards currently used by some couples. Intrinsic reward system within Transcend: Instead of relying on likes or hearts, Transcend focuses on intrinsic rewards such as the satisfaction of creating permanent and meaningful content. Transcend differentiating from social media: The app avoids typical social media engagement metrics, promoting authenticity and purposefulness by facilitating content creation motivated by meaning rather than external validation. Ego management post-psychedelic experience: Leo is asked for suggestions on how to maintain the perspective of ego dissolution experienced during psychedelic use on a day-to-day basis without recurring use. Navigating spiritual growth amidst relationships: Leo is asked for advice on balancing profound spiritual experiences with maintaining connections to loved ones who may not be on the same spiritual journey. Dealing with the paradox of ego death: The paradox arises after an ego death experience, where one gains new wisdom but must manage the ego's return; Curt reflects on how to handle this dichotomy. Ferula

Leo Gura Infinite Consciousness, God Realization [PART 1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-w8k4smC74 Leo Gura's introduction: Leo Gura is the founder of Actualized.org, a psychonaut, mystic, and proponent of idealism, believing consciousness is fundamental. He views his audience as aspects of God who have forgotten their true nature, aligning somewhat with Rupert Spira, yet with distinct differences. Curt Jaimungal's introduction: Host of the podcast, Curt, is a filmmaker with a background in mathematical physics, interested in the connection between consciousness and fundamental laws. Need for repeated viewing: The episode encourages viewers to watch more than once for better understanding, especially due to initial skepticism towards Leo's certainty in his views. Humanizing skepticism: Leo displays humanizing skepticism around the four-hour mark, making his propositions more relatable and helping to untangle biases. Part two announcement: A follow-up part focused on Leo Gura's personal experiences is planned due to the extensive discussion only partially covered. Leo Gura's disclaimers: Leo issues disclaimers highlighting the potential psychological impact of exploring deep existential questions, especially for those with mental health concerns. He discourages turning his ideas into ideologies or cults. Alien intelligence analogy: Considering his radically different worldview, Leo asks to be treated as if he were an alien intelligence to bridge communication gaps between his and conventional worldviews. Open-mindedness and truth-seeking: He commends Curt for modeling radical open-mindedness, essential for understanding profound existential questions, showcasing Curt's intellectual approach. Truth's merciless nature and worldview development: Leo states that truth can be merciless, challenging casual speculative pursuits of reality. He contrasts his definitive answers with academic theoretical speculations, advocating for direct experience as the foundation for truth. Embodiment of philosophy: Leo questions whether adopting principles equates to embodying a philosophy. He emphasizes living according to ideals like truthfulness and intellectual honesty but suggests that this is only a surface-level understanding of embodying philosophy. Intellectual beliefs versus living reality: Differentiating between intellectually knowing something and living it, Leo explains minds can hold beliefs, such as atheism, while behaving contradictorily as if higher principles or entities exist. Self-deceptive nature of the mind: The mind is adept at constructing elaborate self-images and identities based on beliefs or perceived worldviews. These can often be misaligned with reality and actions, particularly in terms of professing certain spiritual or moral ideals while behaving contrary to them in practical life. Distinctions between identity and ideals: There's a common disconnect where individuals espouse virtues like selflessness and honesty, but actions reveal inherent selfishness. Leo highlights the importance of introspection and aligning one's behavior with their proclaimed values and beliefs. Hypocrisy in religious and scientific communities: Leo observes hypocrisy both within religious adherents, who may not mirror the selflessness of figures they idolize (e.g., Jesus), and scientists, who claim open-mindedness yet are resistant to non-traditional ideas or concepts they deem "woo-woo." Leo's "non-worldview" and God-realization: He insists that his teachings are not a worldview but a direct path to recognizing absolute truth 듮hat there's only one existent entity, infinite consciousness, which individuals are a part of; everyone is an aspect of God dreaming the entire universe into existence, equating daily life to hallucinations akin to nightly dreams. Technical definition of "hallucination": Leo provides a technical definition, framing it as perception without external input. This aligns with his view that the physical body and experiences are appearances with nothing behind them; reality and hallucination are not distinct, but a matter of persistence and consistency in one's perceptions. Critique of the concept of reality as an intersection of observers: He partly agrees with Chris Langan's ideas but emphasizes the human capacity to erase and redefine perceptual boundaries, asserting that all distinctions are imaginary and can be created or dissolved by the mind. Critique of Chris Langan's model of consciousness: Leo appreciates Langan's intellect but distinguishes between conceptual models and direct realization of God consciousness. He argues that Langan's work, while academically rigorous, is conceptual and cannot substitute for the experiential realization of being God. Reality's lack of constraints: Ultimately, Leo concludes that reality is boundless and unrestricted, leading to mind-shattering paradoxes beyond current conceptual and academic models. Arrogance and assumptions in defining paradoxes: He suggests that while models like Langan's might address the existence of paradoxes in the non-physical realm, there remain deeper layers to be understood, and the ultimate level of consciousness reveals a reality that is truly unconstrained and paradoxical. Dream analogy for awakening: The analogy comparing awakening and dreaming asserts that ordinary reality is akin to a dream, and so-called awakened individuals have realized this, transitioning to a higher state of consciousness. The persistence of people and the world after someone awakens is due to others still dreaming, not the analogy being flawed. Shared Dream Reality: Leo insists that the perception of a shared dream is a personal illusion. Since each person is God, the awakening of any individual causes their unique dream world and its inhabitants to cease within their perspective. Falsifiability of the dream state: The notion that reality is a dream-like experience cannot be falsified, according to Leo. He argues that the concept of falsifiability, a critical principle in scientific methodology, has a fundamental flaw when applied to absolute truth. Skeptical investigation of truth: Leo recounts his shift from extreme skepticism and atheism to deeper inquiry into the nature of knowledge, questioning even his skepticism and realizing that reality is limited to personal experiences. Science within the dream of consciousness: Leo expresses that science and its proofs are confined within the dream of consciousness, cease to exist upon death, and are illusions within the current experience bubble. Falsifiability and absolute reality: Leo critiques the reliance on falsifiability in science by stating that absolute truth encompasses all dreams, self-deception, and potential wrongs, making it unfalsifiable as it includes the concept of falsifiability itself. Infinity and levels of consciousness: Discussing infinite consciousness, Leo claims that there is an ultimate level of consciousness that infinitely expands in all directions, imagining all possibilities, which cannot be surpassed or invalidated by a higher state. Skepticism about skepticism: Leo encourages skeptics to doubt their skepticism, logic, and even the workings of their own minds, advocating for a deeper questioning that includes these meta-criticisms. Tautological nature of reality: The conversation converges on the idea that reality, at its pinnacle, is a tautology, simply existing as it is, similar to the logical truth that one equals one, without additional explanatory power. Introduction of Matthew Phillips and the Transcend app: Matthew Phillips describes Transcend as a mobile app allowing users to capture and preserve their personal stories for posterity, highlighting the importance of one's legacy and providing tools for deeper connections with loved ones. G漆el's influence on truth and provability: G漆el's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrates that truth transcends provability; not all truths can be proven within a formal system, highlighting the limits of proof in understanding absolute reality. Conception of infinite consciousness: Leo clarifies that one's finite conception of infinite consciousness is not truly infinite. True infinite consciousness encompasses all possible existences, leaving nothing external to it. Limitations of language regarding infinity: The discussion acknowledges linguistic shortcomings in conveying the concept of infinity, distinguishing between conceptual orders of infinity and the notion of absolute infinity. Georg Cantor's Absolute Infinity: Cantor's development of set theory and the idea of different orders of infinity lead to the recognition of an "absolute infinity," which he symbolized with omega and equated with God. Leo emphasizes that even this concept is limited compared to the true nature of absolute infinity. Absolute Infinity beyond all imaginations: Leo explains absolute infinity as extending infinitely beyond all human constructs like mathematics, physics, or film, encapsulating literally every possibility. Debating the bounds of consciousness: Leo challenges the idea of anything existing beyond consciousness, arguing for a state where consciousness is all-encompassing, thereby negating any notion of external entities or realms. Transcendence of consciousness: Leo posits that consciousness is transcendental, not limited by physical laws or logical constraints, and underlies the existence of everything. Infinite regress of skepticism: Leo demonstrates that skepticism itself is part of consciousness and cannot escape it, leading to an infinite regress of possible doubt. Recognition and limits of finite consciousness: Leo draws an analogy to a donkey's inability to recognize itself in a mirror to illustrate the difficulty in explaining consciousness to someone not at an infinitely conscious state. He suggests that finite beings invent hypothetical entities beyond consciousness out of scepticism, not realizing everything they imagine is contained within consciousness. Platonic hat argument: Leo uses a playful analogy, equating claims of an even higher state beyond consciousness to a conceptual one-upmanship that doesn't address the inherent nature of consciousness and truth. Infinite Regress of Self-Deception: Infinite regress of self-deception showcases that any claim of truth can be met with an infinite chain of counterclaims, illustrating that truth can't be fully captured by arguments or models. God-realization as Meta Awareness: Being God-realized means being aware of the infinite regress and acknowledging that every description of God is just a finite aspect of an incomprehensibly meta and endless reality. The Tautology of 'One Equals One': The self-evidency of tautologies, like "one equals one," underlines their unfalsifiability and hints at infinite truths that are beyond standard logical proofs like reductio ad absurdum. Relativity of Absurdity: The notion of what is considered absurd is relative and cannot form a stable basis for dismissing claims, as what may be seen as absurd in one context might be accepted in another. Unfalsifiability of Truth: Truth is inherently unfalsifiable; the most difficult propositions to falsify or prove wrong are precisely those that might actually be true, thereby confronting the limits of proof and falsifiability in epistemology. Impact of Social Media on Meaningful Living: Social media breeds disconnection and competition contradicting meaningful living principles such as being present, loving, non-judgmental, and time-conscious. Project Transcend's Approach to Legacy: Project Transcend enables users to document their legacy, emphasizing a private, data-controlled approach for sharing beliefs and life experiences with future generations, unlike standard social media. Endurance of Truth: Once aware of the truth, an individual remains unshakable in that knowledge. Yet, the acknowledgment of potential self-deception is crucial, as one must deeply investigate truth for oneself over years. Skepticism and Nested Self-Deception: The self-deception of skepticism is pivotal, where nested layers of deception obscure the truth even further, making self-awareness a critical part of epistemology. Distinction Between Nescience and Ignorance: Nescience simply means not knowing, devoid of the wilful choice implied by ignorance, but the true problem lies in holding false beliefs, underscoring the importance of properly engaging with epistemology before metaphysics. Imaginary Nature of Hierarchies: At an absolute level, hierarchies are seen to be imaginary, with consciousness realizing its oneness to the extent that all distinctions dissolve, leaving a formless unity. Substance of Reality: The true substance of reality is nothing, as all perceived substances are distinctions within consciousness instead of being something tangible like atoms or energy. Limitations of Language in Grasping Reality: Language, by nature, is dualistic and cannot capture the essence of reality, which requires understanding beyond spoken or conceptual distinction like that between a chicken and a coffee table. Nature of distinctions: Distinctions such as those between a chicken and a coffee table are imaginary constructs of the mind. Without them, all things would merge into a single entity, which would essentially be nothing, and this nothing is what Leo considers infinity. Language and its limitations: Language was not intended for philosophical undertakings and is rooted in practicality, much like classical Newtonian mechanics, which are useful despite their known inaccuracies in representing absolute reality. Length as a relative measure: Leo challenges the concept of length as an absolute measure, highlighting its dependence on relative points of reference and suggesting that, at a fundamental level, distinctions like length are imagined. Ontological relativity: Leo introduces the notion of ontological relativity, suggesting that the distinction between objects like a chicken and a coffee table only exists within our perception and that without this distinction, they would become indistinguishable, merging into a single entity which is effectively nothing. Instrumentalism and science: Differentiating between the notion of science as instrumentalism, which focuses on practical predictions and measurements, and his own view, which is that even the distinctions used in science are not truly conscious understandings but rather conceptual tools that ultimately fail to capture the essence of reality. Existence and consciousness: Discussing the relationship between existence, consciousness, and love, Leo implies that these concepts are entwined at a metaphysical level and are present in all things, overturning materialistic assumptions that limit love to emotional experiences of advanced organisms. Emergence of scientific acceptance: Leo admits that some ideas that once seemed radical, like panpsychism or integrated information theory, are gaining more acceptance within the scientific community, suggesting that truth will eventually become more widely recognized. Concept of love: Leo explores the metaphysical meaning of saying "you love bacon," connecting it to a phenomenological experience of tastes and textures that consciousness biases towards, comparing it to less desirable experiences like eating a cricket. Biased vs unbiased love: He proposes that at the level of God consciousness, all distinctions between experiences collapse, leading to an unbiased love for all experiences. This contrast is made against human consciousness, which has preferences and biases necessary for survival. Definition of metaphysical love: Leo offers a technical definition of metaphysical love as the realization of no difference between anything, equating this realization with falling in love with oneself and all reality infinitely. Symmetry of the universe: He theorizes that the universe is perfectly symmetrical and unbiased, questioning why it would prioritize anything, such as particular human actions, at a universal scale. Problems of discussing existence with language: Both Leo and the interviewer, named Curt, acknowledge the challenge of discussing reality with language, as it can degrade or complicate the understanding, referencing Wittgenstein's philosophy on talking about the ineffable. Role of life experiences in awakening: Leo asserts that every life event, good or bad, is necessary for one's realization as God듮his realization encompasses everything one encounters, including mundane or seemingly negative experiences. Precision in language and public dialogue: The conversation transitions into the limits of language and how precise communication is vital to prevent misconceptions and misinterpretations in discussions about complex concepts like love and consciousness. Child's Concept of Energy: Children can be conditioned to associate specific objects, such as ducks, with concepts such as energy through reinforced learning, similar to how society conditions individuals to have selective biases about what or who is appropriate to love. Challenging Cultural Notions of Love: Leo argues against the culturally ingrained biases that determine acceptable objects of love, advocating for a universal application of the term 'love' to everything, mirroring the interconnectedness found in physics where all phenomena are forms of energy. Language's Limitations and Rehabilitation: The limitation of language in conveying complex ideas is discussed, with suggestions of either dismantling language's structure or refining it for greater precision. Leo insists on rehabilitating corrupted words like 'love', 'truth', and 'God' to their purer, more profound meanings. Resistance to 'God' and 'Love' Labels: Leo observes resistance to using terms like 'God' and 'love' and interprets this as an avoidance of a deeper realization that everything is an embodiment of these concepts. He underscores the need to recognize arbitrary biases in love and stresses the importance of connecting these biases with the concept of absolute love. Finite Nature of Hate: Hate, seen as a reaction to aspects of reality, is argued to be finite in nature, contrasting with the infinitude of love. Leo differentiates between relative love, which can include hate, and absolute love, which fully encompasses hate, likening it to the totality of the yin-yang symbol. Free Will as a Duality: Leo addresses the concept of free will as being perceived in opposition to determinism, highlighting nature's tendency to incorporate both aspects of any duality. He distinguishes different answers to the existence of free will based on one's level of consciousness. Infinite Nature of God's Will: At the highest level of consciousness, God is described as an infinite mind with no external restrictions, implying that any limitations are self-imposed through imagination and self-deception. This leads to the notion that limits are illusory, and omnipotence is God's true state. Self-Deception in Limitation: The paradox of omnipotence is discussed, suggesting that God can only experience limitation through an illusory belief in finitude, such as imagining oneself to be a limited human instead of an unlimited entity. This self-deception is essential for God to experience anything less than omnipotence. Concept of Absolute Good: Everything in the universe, even actions that are typically seen as negative or evil, are manifestations of absolute good because they arise from a state of selflessness inherent in the totality of existence. Potential of Omniscience: Leo Gura opens up the possibility for oneself to attain a state of complete knowledge or omniscience, challenging the idea that it is impossible and encouraging an openness to the potential of becoming all-knowing. God Realization After Death: The concept discussed suggests that upon death, an individual's self dissolves into God, achieving unity with the omniscient being. This realization implies a reunification with the absolute essence of all that is. Theory of Everything (TOE) Definition: Gura contends that a true TOE must satisfactorily address not just physical phenomena but also answer the fundamental question of why anything exists at all, encompassing both the physical universe and existence with a capital "U." Exploring Belief Limitations: Gura indicates that a self-fulfilling belief in the impossibility of achieving omniscience during one's lifetime acts as a barrier to the realization of that potential, similar to how preconceived notions can obstruct the discovery of new knowledge like the existence of a platypus. Investment in Truth: Truth-seeking is presented as requiring active engagement and investment, akin to the dedication exemplified in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider to discover the Higgs boson, suggesting that deep truths and profound TOEs are discovered through committed effort, not passive contemplation. Sharing of God's Creativity: The reason for existence according to Leo is rooted in God's creativity, where God, as an infinitely loving and selfless being, creates all possibilities and shares that infinite beauty with finite forms that can later reunify with the infinite source. God's Nature of Love and Creativity: An intricate link is drawn between love, creativity, omnipotence, intelligence, and consciousness. The essence of God is depicted as endless creativity and the act of creating everything conceivable듯nderstood not as an action of love but as the fundamental state of love itself. Reflection of Love in Creation: Casting God's act of creation as an expression of its very nature, Gura suggests that the manifestation of infinite forms is an ultimate act of sharing and a reflection of love, defying anthropomorphized conceptions of God and embracing creativity as intrinsic to the essence of love. Multiverse and Anthropic Principle Critique: The multiverse theory and anthropic principle are critiqued as insufficient explanations for the fine-tuning of the universe's physical laws, with the assertion that the true explanation for existence lies in the creation of everything simultaneously. Creation and destruction dichotomy: Creation and destruction are intrinsically linked, exemplified in ecosystems where life and death support one another in a continuous cycle, refuting the naive dichotomy that creation is solely good and death is inherently bad. Finite Creation: All human-made creations are finite by necessity, delineated by excluding all other possibilities, forming a reality defined by limitations and distinctions. Memory and Consciousness: Just as working memory limits how many thoughts can be simultaneously held, finite creation and imagination are constrained, unable to encompass infinity without transitioning into nothingness or undefined potential. Superposition and Reality: In imagining all possible animals merged into one, a perfect superposition represents infinity or nothingness듯ndefined until distinctions are made, illustrating the paradoxical nature of creation as both defining and limiting reality. Paradoxes in Universal Concepts: Discussing set paradoxes and properties of imagined universes, highlighting issues of considering individual components versus a collective understanding and the elasticity of the concept of reality. Reality as Singular Existence: The exercise illustrates that reality must be a singular entity, as even the notion of separation among multiple realities would itself be part of one encompassing reality, eliminating the distinction between what's real and unreal. Material and Immaterial Boundaries: Challenges the distinction between reality and unreality, suggesting that boundaries are illusory and recognizing all as part of one reality leads to an infinite understanding of existence. Personal Growth and Variability in Psychedelic Experiences: Leo emphasizes his personal commitment to growth and understanding reality, recognizing individual differences in responses to psychedelic substances and their potential influence on consciousness expansion. Existence beyond concepts: Leo challenges the notion that edges of existence are within our reach, proposing that one could theoretically see everything in the universe simultaneously, thereby negating the possibility of unseen or non-existent aspects. Understanding existence: Leo contends that it's possible to fully understand what it means to exist beyond particular forms and that awakening means realizing non-existence as a concept, not a reality. Absolute existence: In Leo's view, existence is absolute, suggesting that concepts of non-existence and beyond infinity are merely thoughts within the infinite framework of consciousness. Qualia as absolute truth: Leo describes the profound nature of existence, inviting contemplation on the immediate experience of one's hands as an example of undeniable truth, untouched by constructs like time, space, or matter. Meditative exercise for realizing consciousness: Leo guides through an exercise aiming to illustrate the immediacy of consciousness and reality, emphasizing the importance of direct experience over intellectual pondering. Infinite consciousness and imagination: Leo discusses the elasticity of infinity, which by its nature, includes all things든ven concepts of what lies beyond it, and concludes that what seems like physical reality is ultimately based on an act of imagination. Donald Hoffman's Interface Theory: Leo critiques Donald Hoffman's Interface Theory, which suggests that human perception does not depict reality truthfully due to natural selection. He argues that Hoffman's theory is flawed because perception itself is the truest form of reality든verything perceived is absolutely real. Scientific Reductionism Criticized: Leo vehemently opposes scientific reductionism, the view that phenomena can be explained by reducing them to their constituent parts. He posits that being is fundamental and cannot be reduced to concepts, which biases scientific inquiry away from direct contact with reality. Qualia as Reality: Leo asserts that qualia, or personal experiences of phenomena, define reality. He disputes the idea of an independent world beyond experience and challenges scientific paradigms that differentiate between qualia and objective reality. Misconception of Representation: He highlights an epistemological issue in how science relies on symbols, which are not the things they represent. This leads to an endless chain of concepts never grasping the tangible essence they aim to describe. Existence of Concepts: Discussing the nature of concepts, Leo suggests that everything, including abstract notions like Santa Claus or quarks, exists at least as a concept but that doesn't infer their material existence. Substance and Concept: He differentiates between the substance of things (reality) and our concepts of them. He emphasizes that concepts, such as atoms or strings, developed after the tangible reality they attempt to describe, indicating a misinterpretation by science of the order of reality. Fallacy of Discovering Quarks: Leo challenges the notion that scientists discover particles like quarks, stating that they merely invent the concept to represent what they believe to be the foundational elements of reality. Qualia Realness Inquiry: Leo confronts materialistic views by asking for evidence of anything existing outside of qualia, thereby arguing that everyday experiences and sensations are as real as they are perceived. Tautology of Experience: He points out the tautology in questioning the reality of experience, indicating that asking for proof beyond personal experience is like requesting an experience that isn't an experience. Realness and Unreality Buttons: Utilizing an analogy of hypothetical buttons that trigger certain experiences or realizations, Leo illustrates the problem of distinguishing between perceptions of reality and unreality, emphasizing the subjective nature of experience. Neuromodulators and Transcendence: Leo discusses how future brain imaging and neurochemistry might interpret transcendent experiences, like God realization, as biological events, and questions the validity of such materialistic reductions. Confusion between concept and reality: Leo points out that while symbols and words, like 'duck,' help us conceptualize reality, they are not reality itself. He criticizes mathematician Max Tegmark's view that the universe is fundamentally mathematical, arguing that while mathematics can describe reality, it is not synonymous with being. Projection of belief onto reality: Leo suggests that people see reality through the lens of their beliefs, much like how a Christian might perceive Christ in everyday objects. He connects this to the idea that an individual's experience of reality, whether atheist, materialist, or spiritual, is unique and deeply influenced by their belief systems. Existence of God as a matter of perspective: Leo argues that for an atheist, God does not exist; however, this is simply what God듪r infinite consciousness들s imagining for that person. He suggests that one's belief about material reality is a temporary state and that experiences, like those induced by psychedelics, can shift these beliefs. Subjectivity and variety in beliefs: Gura discusses the diversity of sincere beliefs held by people throughout history and questions why intelligent individuals, such as Isaac Newton, believed in God. He attributes this not to a lack of intelligence but to the sincerity and depth of their personal reality. Finite conception of free will: Leo views the ego as a finite state of consciousness that believes it controls reality, a necessary illusion for survival. He differentiates 'will,' which exists in humans in limited form, from 'infinite will,' the latter of which he aligns with God and its materials manifestations. Challenge of future prediction: When discussing consciousness at the highest levels, Leo explains that the concepts of a predictable future and material reality dissolve, complicating notions of prediction and verification of truth. Limitations and possibilities of mystical abilities: Leo acknowledges his ongoing exploration of consciousness and considers the potential future development of abilities like clairvoyance, despite not currently claiming them. Trade-off between absolute consciousness and finite details: Gura describes a trade-off when accessing higher states of consciousness, where one gains a view of totality at the expense of losing sight of detailed aspects of the earthly domain. Acknowledgment of personal self-deception: Despite his insights into infinite consciousness, Leo admits to being susceptible to self-deception in the relative, material world and recognizes the need to update his beliefs when proven otherwise. Leo's skepticism and humility: While having strong convictions, Leo expresses skepticism about his worldview, showing a level of humility that humanizes his assertions about consciousness and God. Experience with Paranormal Healing: Leo sought non-traditional healing for his persistent stomach issues, consulting with healers and fortune tellers from a variety of backgrounds. Skepticism and Desperation: Despite his skepticism, health problems led Leo to consult various paranormal practitioners, revealing the impact of desperation on openness to alternative methods. Testing Paranormal Claims: Leo devised a strategy to test the reliability of different healers' insights by comparing their independent diagnoses of his health issue. Inconclusive Results and Self-deception: The conflicting diagnoses from paranormal healers led Leo to a deeper understanding of self-deception and reinforced his skepticism. Discrepancy in Paranormal Healing Experiences: Leo observed that different healers, despite their sincerity, provided dissimilar explanations for his condition, which did not lead to lasting relief. Personal Bubbles of Reality: Leo's worldviews suggest that individuals live within their own subjective reality bubbles, which may intersect but are not entirely aligned with those of others. Relativity of Delusion: Delusional experiences can be real for the person experiencing them, due to the flexible boundary between dreams and physical reality as seen through psychedelic experiences. Skepticism's Limitations: Leo discusses how excessive skepticism can block the acknowledgement of certain experiences or phenomena, such as the ability to read, and equates ultimate skepticism with the ability to doubt any aspect of reality. Denial of consciousness: Gura argues that atheists may be denying their own consciousness by rejecting or hating existence, equating atheism to a denial of oneself as God. Evil's relationship with existence and consciousness: Leo converses about the idea that evil is tied to acts against existence and consciousness, emphasizing that evil is a form of selfishness arising from a lack of consciousness. Understanding evil through consciousness: He asserts that a lower level of consciousness is associated with deriving pleasure from suffering, and uses examples from cruel behavior and political schadenfreude to illustrate different consciousness levels. Political consciousness and bias: Discussing political bias, Leo shares his observation that both sides of the political spectrum can exhibit tribalism, but notes a specific unwillingness by some to acknowledge any positive actions from opposing figures like Trump. Criticism of Sam Harris's 'Moral Landscape': Leo criticizes Harris's concept of objective morality and suggests that relative human concepts of good are tied to egoistic perspectives and can't define what is good for humanity as a whole. Sam Harris's level of awakening: Gura questions the depth of Sam Harris's understanding of no-self and awakening, indicating Harris lacks realization of higher states of consciousness and God-realization. Sam Harris's limited psychedelic experiences: Leo suggests that Harris has not deeply experimented with psychedelics and is restricted by materialistic and intellectual attachments. Ideological entrenchment limiting psychedelic insights: Gura explains how entrenched worldviews can prevent psychedelics from significantly expanding one's consciousness, requiring an open mind and dealing with psychological baggage for deeper realizations. Individual variability in psychedelic experiences: Psychedelic experiences differ greatly among people due to unique psychological baggage, trauma, and personal openness, which can influence the nature and intensity of their trips. Personal anecdote on psychedelic experience: Matthew shares his own encounter with psychedelics, which challenged his understanding of consciousness but not his atheism, and contrasts this with a friend who had no profound insights even at higher doses, highlighting the role of one's mindset and openness in determining the impact of psychedelics. Impact of philosophical curiosity: Leo emphasizes that an individual's interest in understanding existence profoundly influences their responses to psychedelics; those genuinely curious about metaphysical topics may have more significant revelations than those who are indifferent. Diverse responses to psychedelics: People react differently to the same doses of psychedelics due to varying physiological sensitivities. Leo notes personal sensitivity and how some individuals can handle larger doses without significant effects. Different aims with psychedelics: While some people are mainly interested in visual effects, Leo seeks insights and understanding, explaining that even low doses can lead him to experiences of infinite consciousness, sometimes with overwhelming bliss. Guidance for avoiding negative trip outcomes: Leo advises cautious dosing and respect for psychedelics. He criticizes the notion of "heroic doses," noting that overconfidence can lead to adverse effects, including egotistical rebound post-trip. Mental stability and personal history: Leo attributes his psychological resilience to a relatively positive upbringing, advising those with challenging pasts or mental health issues to be careful with psychedelics and to lay a foundational self-help groundwork first. Nuanced views on God realization and awakening: Leo distinguishes between accessing infinite truth and fully embodying it, admitting his own ongoing work in integrating the absolute with the relative and that spiritual teachers can have personal flaws despite deep insights. Insecurities and authenticity: Despite projecting wisdom, Leo acknowledges his own egoic tendencies and the complexities of living up to spiritual insights, indicating that genuine self-reflection and vulnerability are part of his journey. Self-improvement and accessing truth: Accessing infinite truth doesn't automatically resolve personal issues like addictions or conflicts; the mind's structure with its attachments, biases, and beliefs remains largely intact. Deconstruction of the mind continues even after accessing infinity. Attachment and life goals: Whether to eliminate attachment hinges on individual life goals. Removing attachments can increase one's capacity for love, as love is characterized by a lack of bias and attachment inherently introduces suffering. Impermanence and suffering: All attachments are temporary due to the principle of impermanence, which states that all forms in the universe cannot remain constant. Attachment to any form, tangible or conceptual, guarantees future loss and subsequent suffering. Attachment weighing happiness against suffering: While attachments may bring happiness, they also ensure future suffering when they end. This is likened to taking a loan of happiness that must be paid back with suffering when the attachment is lost. Thomas Campbell's astral perspective: Leo aligns with Campbell on the idea that consciousness and love are fundamental but disputes Campbell's view on the finite nature of reality and the idea that time and units of reality are fundamental. Learning from Campbell's dream analysis: Leo appreciates Campbell's insights on how recurring dreams can reveal unresolved traumas and psychic baggage and can be used for self-therapy to integrate these lessons and cease recurring dreams. Bernardo Kastrup's agreement and critique: Leo concurs with Kastrup's arguments against materialism but contends that Kastrup hasn't fully realized that he is God imagining all existence. Kastrup's rejection of solipsism and his concept of a dissociative boundary between consciousnesses are areas of discord. Understanding Infinity through division: Reality is viewed as capable of infinite division, with no foundational unit. Infinity allows for continuous fractal division, debunking the notion of a limit within reality such as the Planck length. Attachment to ideas and beliefs: Even being attached to seemingly positive ideas, like the concept of God, can lead to suffering due to the impermanent nature of all attachments and forms. Infinite probe of consciousness: Consciousness is not limited by conceptual structures like the Planck length; it has the potential to delve infinitely within or beyond, exploring realms beyond current scientific understanding. Divergence from Frank Yang: Leo is familiar with Frank Yang but has limited knowledge of his worldview. He acknowledges Yang's critique of psychedelics and preference for enlightenment through meditation, notably the Buddhist concept of cessation. Cessation and temporality: The state of cessation is described as the universe ceasing to exist, then rebooting드n atemporal state adjacent to our temporal reality. Leo views this abrupt transition akin to a computer restart, bridging eternity and the observable world. Equality of conscious states: Leo does not single out cessation as a superior state, considering all states of consciousness equal듡orm, formlessness, or cessation. Reintegrating form and formlessness: The spiritual path typically progresses from realizing no-self to formlessness, and eventually to recognizing form as nothingness. True non-duality emerges when all states, including the material, are seen as manifestations of the absolute. Dogmatism in non-dualist communities: Leo observes a tendency among early non-dualist students to recite beliefs about non-duality and infinity as truths, possibly fooling themselves about the extent of their awakening due to the radical nature of initial realizations. Spiritual defensiveness and compassion: Commenting on the spiritual community's defensive stance towards science, Leo admits his own past lack of compassion towards figures like Richard Dawkins, recognizing now that all opposition stems from ignorance. Awakening's selectivity and attachments: Leo stresses that awakening is radical and not suitable for everyone. He suggests not trying to force it upon unwilling individuals and emphasizes managing attachments responsibly rather than completely detaching. Persona adoption in spiritual communities: Leo notes an affected happiness among some followers in the spiritual community, potentially signifying inauthentic behavior. He admits to enhancing excitement in his videos for engagement but questions whether he should credit his audience with greater understanding of complex topics. Cessation visualization: Leo imagines cessation as a nonsequential reemergence of consciousness rather than a gradual return, accentuating the dissonance between atemporal and temporal states and their inexplicable coexistence. Conceptual non-duality vs. actual experiences of awakening: Leo differentiates between intellectually accepted ideas of non-duality and the actual expansive experiences of awakening, noting that each state of consciousness, including cessation, is equally an expression of the absolute. Perceived dogmatism in the pursuit of inner peace: Leo addresses apparent dogmatic repetition within non-dualist communities, recognizing it as potentially misleading and a form of self-deception. Authenticity and truth realizations: Despite noting superficiality in some spiritual practitioners, Leo champions true non-dual teachers for their authenticity, which he attributes to their pursuit of truth. Assumptions about the audience's intelligence: Leo sometimes underestimates his audience's intelligence, assuming they won't grasp complex ideas. He acknowledges this may not give them enough credit for their understanding. Steel manning vs. straw man arguments: While Leo tries to make debates humorous by considering absurd objections, he believes he could benefit from taking a more rigorous steel man approach to strengthen his arguments rather than ridiculing counterpoints. Precision in pursuit of truth: Emphasizes precision and stretching analogies to their limits as means to gain insight and understands truth, suggesting traditional media may underestimate the audience's capacity to grasp complex concepts. Free will and God's identity: Leo engages with a complex dialogue about free will and identity with God, discussing how finite minds grapple with infinite concepts, leading to paradoxes and the eventual realization that one is fully divine. Realization of God's nature: Leo's personal journey reflects a gradual realization from recognizing God as external, to questioning God's nature, to ultimately recognizing oneself as God, which comes with immense humility and selflessness. Understanding God as infinite love: The realization of God's true identity as an act of infinite love is described as transformative and life-changing, leading to the understanding of why everything exists as it does. Acceptance of ultimate reality: Leo shares the view that recognizing oneself as God results in the understanding that the physical universe would cease to exist from his perspective because all perspectives are ultimately imagined within one's own consciousness. Problem of solipsism in understanding unity: Solipsism is critiqued as not being radical enough; the ultimate truth is realizing a unique type of unity where one is not alone because of separateness but because everything merges into a singular consciousness. Finality of realizing ultimate truth: God realization is so intense that if fully accepted, it would mean the dissolution of the universe, highlighting the notion that true awareness can obliterate finite constructs. Discussion on finite perspectives: A conversation unfolds about the seeming paradox of other perspectives ending if one individual reaches the ultimate realization of God, leading to the idea that, at the highest level of understanding, no other separate perspectives actually exist. Convergence of Conscious Perspectives: As consciousness rises, distinctions between selves, objects, and concepts dissolve, leading to a convergence or "coning" effect where all become one. This realization of oneness is likened to the deepest physical and emotional fusion between beings, transcending individuality into eternal, undifferentiated unity. Definition of God Realization: Leo defines God realization as a state beyond simply experiencing nothingness or physical objects; it is conscious self-creation, where individuals are aware they are imaginatively composing all of reality, including their own bodies. This state transcends all limitations, constantly self-creates, and embodies infinite creativity, and is appropriately termed "God." Critique of Spiral Dynamics: Leo critiques the hierarchical nature of spiral dynamics, suggesting it fails to represent the highest states of consciousness where hierarchies become meaningless, and direct experience does not rely on ranked stages or development directions. Impermanence Paradox: Addressing the paradox of permanence in impermanence, Leo states that at basic levels of consciousness, impermanence is evident, but at the highest levels, one might view everything, including love, as eternally existing, eluding the notion of impermanence. Free Will as a Fragment of Divine Will: He argues free will is inherited from God's self-determined nature, allowing humans to create and influence their world in a finite manner, experiencing the divine act of creation to various degrees. God as Creator and Destroyer: Both creation and destruction are integral aspects of God, yet intuitively, God is more akin to a creator, even though destruction is necessary for new creation. Life's intention is framed as facilitating more life rather than death, with life perpetually supported by death in a never-ending cycle. Intentions and Perceived Good: Every action, even seemingly negative ones, is considered good, with figures like Hitler believing they were doing the greatest good from their perspective. Leo elaborates on how lower states of consciousness can corrupt the perception of what is good, while higher states embrace a purer, selfless understanding. Hate as Distorted Love: The concept of hate is discussed as a manifestation of insufficient love, with individuals expressing hate as a means to cope with their own lack of love and striving to eliminate what they perceive as evil, which ironically can create more evil. Audience Participation and App Introduction: Audience questions are anticipated and Matthew introduces the Transcend app, emphasizing the uniqueness in purpose compared to common social platforms, prioritizing privacy and meaningful interaction over superficial connectivity. Twisted nature of hate: Hate is a contorted form of love that stems from loving something else in opposition to the thing one hates, as was the case with Hitler hating Jews due to his intense love for the purity of Germany. Hatred as a response to insufficient love: People become hateful primarily because they were denied proper love, often leading them to reject love towards others out of a sense of deprivation or as a reactionary mechanism. Origins of evil and division: The original act of partitioning infinite love, which could be seen as the first form of evil, occurred when God divided itself to share love with others, making any finite form inherently less than everything. Removal of moral judgment and free will: In Leo's model, moral judgment is removed. Without free will, there's no basis for worst or evil since everything, even divisions, is part of absolute perfection as expressions of infinite love or perfection. Concept of Absolute Good: Gura suggests that everyone acts from a stance of absolute good; when fully awakened, one perceives everything and everyone as fundamentally good, challenging conventional definitions of good and evil. Logic's limitations in reaching the Absolute: Logic, being finite, cannot arrive at an absolute understanding; it's only applicable after directly experiencing the absolute, which is beyond logic's capabilities. Matthew Phillips and the Transcend app: Matthew Phillips introduces the Transcend app, inspired by his life experiences and near-death realization about the importance of legacy. The app is designed to document and pass on one's personal legacy and preserves users' privacy and data ownership with insight prompts to encourage meaningful entries. Origins of Transcend: The idea for the Transcend app was inspired by Leo Gura's approach to sharing wisdom through videos, contemplating how to document important life lessons. Documenting Personal Legacy: Transcend is designed as a private platform for individuals to document and pass on their personal experiences, beliefs, and wisdom, contrasting with the transient and public nature of traditional social media. Privacy and Data Ownership: A key feature of Transcend is its commitment to user privacy. It operates on a subscription model, ensuring users have full ownership of their data, with the app serving as a secure repository for a personal legacy. Transcend's User Experience: Users are guided to annotate their content, explaining its significance and setting permissions for who can access it. The app currently focuses on intuitive use but plans to evolve into immersive and interactive experiences. Intelligence and Personal Relevance of Content: Transcend differentiates itself by prioritizing the quality and personal relevance of content over traditional metadata used by other platforms, aiming to present memories and moments to the right person at the right time. Tools for Connection: The app includes prompts and tools designed to facilitate deeper connections and meaningful interactions between users and their loved ones, adapting to various situations and relationships. Furnunculus

I see a realm of purple blue and red light. I was moving my body but I couldnt see my body. When I moved my arms and legs I could see I was moving them cause it looked like a blanket and my legs and arms looked like they were under a blanket. I was walking around fazing in and out of this dimension. It was like rows of waving purple blue and red. And I went to another one right after it was like the background came into the foreground and reality was just 2 dimension. I lost all contact with my body and I was just watching. It was yellow and reality crystallized and then it looked like a mayan board game. I was doing things on the game but I have no idea what was happening. It felt like a video game that an ai was playing. And another was like reality was a 1 dimensional cube and it was purple. it was like an infinite string of rooms that just moved left to right. I saw an alien doctor and the alien doctor started a machine that felt like it was mind wiping me.

I like Bashar and Daryl Anka and some of his teachings. Don't know about the permission slips though what are we back in high school? And why would a so-called hybrid human-alien from another parallel Earth in the future need to teach the likes of Abraham- hicks?

In was drinking in the waters of Formscapes these days, combining with reading a book of Thomas S.Kuhn called ", Incommensurability in Science and reflecting in two concepts of Rudolf Steiner " Ahriman spirit" and "Luciferian spirit" the first is a tendency to materialism,physical explanations and the second is the sort of vibe you get in a hippie community where everything is spiritual and there is no grounding, is all about estatic and satisfaction of senses. The Christ or Christ-Consciouness is the balance way or the middle path where you can connect science and the ordinary life. For me is always a question of not going to extremes. Our nature have a sort of duality, one part connected with primitive animality and the other connected with cosmos,stars etc.. Infinity.. Some say that this duality is because we have Alien DNA, Annunakis,Nephilins gave us our physical body using the Apes from.this earth to geneticaly creating us as slaves for gold mining and our essence came from more advanced beings of ligth. So this would be the reason we have tendencies of colonialism,domination, slave others and war, and our angelic tendencies come from dimentions higher than our materiality. Well, unless one have direct exeperiences of this is useless to carry this stuff, but the questions still keep in my mind " Why there are very ancient abandoned mines around the world? Why Apes had suddenly a desire to dig for minerals like gold,copper,iron etc.. and how came they know how to combine this metals? There is some bit of truth in all this Gilgamesh Epic and old Myths? We think was ways of explaning natural phenomena. But what if this shit was actually historical descriptions? We are vla very strange kind of Ape anyway.

What It's Like To Smoke Salvia Divinorum https://www.actualized.org/insights/what-its-like-to-smoke-salvia Preparation and disclaimer for salvia use: With extensive personal experience in psychedelics, Leo tried a small dose of salvia divinorum, emphasizing the disorienting potency and danger of the substance. Salvia can completely replace one's sense of reality with another, triggering dangerous reactions without any recollection of taking a drug. Leo insists on the importance of a trip sitter and advises against use by inexperienced individuals or without supervision due to the potential for harm. Unique dissociative effects of salvia: Unlike other psychedelics that may result in ego death while retaining some biographical memory, salvia can disrupt the entire stream of consciousness, leading to a complete loss of identity and context. Leo's left side of the visual field and cognitive perception became consumed by what he describes as a "roiling infinity," an experience of pure infinite potential that was highly dissociative and unfamiliar when compared to other psychedelic experiences like 5-MeO-DMT 'God Mode'. Dangers of loss of self and reality: The visual and self-perception effects induced by salvia triggered a sense of panic and terror in Leo, who managed to remain relatively grounded thanks to an unaffected right side. This asymmetric impact on consciousness raised concerns about the potential for complete detachment from reality and the need for careful monitoring during the experience. Depth of psychedelic experiences: Salvia unveiled an even deeper layer of consciousness that traditional psychedelics hadn't reached, opening a new, alien and strange dimension that extends beyond the more predictable experiences of other substances. Multiple uses of salvia highlighted how each trip can uniquely affect consciousness in unpredictable ways. Ego loss and memory: Beyond the transformation of the concept of death, salvia experiences led to a deeper understanding of ego loss-challenging the idea of being selfless. A complete loss of self would mean not even knowing basic biographical information, a state that could potentially disorient even those who are spiritually advanced and are supposedly beyond ego. Misconceptions about mental health: Leo's trips deepened his empathy for mental health challenges. He discusses how easily the brain can tip into a state of disorder, debunking the dismissive attitudes towards mental illness and urging greater compassion and understanding. Complexity of consciousness work: Spiritual practice is misrepresented as a linear journey by many teachers. They often lack comprehension of the multi-dimensional aspects of the journey, which can include experiences misinterpreted as mental disorders. Salvia experiences reinforce the view that spiritual work has far more dimensions than commonly portrayed. Human dependency on a stable consciousness: The stability of consciousness is vital for everyday human function and survival. The difficulty in transcending this stability underscores both its necessity for living and the challenges of achieving spiritual awakening. The rigid nature of consciousness is both a constraint and a life-preserving mechanism. Reliance on Consistent Consciousness: Our survival deeply depends on a stable consciousness and a consistent sense of self and memory. Losing these can disconnect us from reality with dangerous consequences; it underlines the paradox of survival and awakening where one cannot simply forsake survival to achieve an awakened state. Approach to Psychedelic Experimentation: A cautious and respectful approach is highlighted for exploring psychedelics like salvia. Initial small doses are recommended to gauge sensitivity; a breakthrough dose could result in completely leaving material reality, which may be traumatic and lead to a rejection of future psychedelic use. Individual Sensitivity Variations: Sensitivity to psychedelics significantly varies across individuals, making it crucial to personalize dosages through trial and experience. Leo acknowledges being particularly sensitive, experiencing profound effects at lower doses than an average person. Potential Realities Induced by Salvia: Salvia can induce experiences that are completely detached from recognizable reality, transforming a person's sense of identity into inanimate or conceptual entities, such as becoming 'one' with a Ferris wheel, or entering chaotic and nonsensical dimensions. Caution and Respect for Psychedelics: Treating psychedelics with the same caution as handling dangerous tools is advised, given their potential to radically alter consciousness. Careful research and the use of a trip sitter are emphasized to mitigate the risks associated with psychedelic experiences. Recommendation Against Casual Use of Salvia: The intense and unpredictable nature of salvia is stressed, with a discouragement from its use for most people. It is suggested that salvia is more suited to highly experienced psychonauts and even then, only with the presence of a trip sitter and a high degree of caution. Crucio

Rethinking Human History https://www.actualized.org/insights/rethinking-human-history Three generational framework of humanity: At any point in human history, only three generations are contemporaneously alive: the youth, middle-aged, and the elderly. The youngest (0-25 years) are often uninformed or misinformed, heavily influenced by the middle-aged (25-55 years), who hold most societal control and experience, while the eldest generation (60+ years) contains individuals who, despite sometimes possessing significant influence, are generally seen as the outgoing generation whose role in society is diminishing. Epistemic implications of generational limits: The limited generational overlap has profound implications on our collective knowledge. No living person today has experienced life without modern amenities like electricity, leading to a generational disconnection that impacts our understanding of past human experiences. Consequently, this contributes to a history that is often simplified or whitewashed, failing to convey the struggle of survival in eras gone by. Impact of technology on historical understanding: Advancements in technology create a chasm between generations. For instance, the current generation cannot fully grasp a pre-internet era, similar to how we can't imagine life without cars or modern conveniences. This evolution can lead to a loss of historical understanding and appreciation, with modern life's complexities taken for granted due to the rapid changes in technology and society. Impact of environment on worldviews: Our worldview is heavily tied to our environment and survival within it. The historical context of our ancestors, defined by manual labor and simple tools, shaped their perspectives and lives significantly. Today's world, filled with advanced technology and global connectivity, leads to fundamentally different life experiences and worldviews. Generational relay of reality: Individuals are born into an existing narrative about reality, learning about life from previous generations. This relay of information shapes our sense of self and understanding of our place in time. If this narrative were absent, individuals would face existential crises due to uncertainties about existence and purpose. Bias in historical education: The history conveyed in educational systems is inherently biased, focusing on nationalistic narratives over a global understanding. Even with the things we are taught, the full breadth of human history is often left unexplored, leaving us with a skewed sense of the past that influences our current worldview and knowledge. Resistance to change in history: Throughout history, resistance to change has been a constant, with innovations often met with suspicion or outright opposition. Over time, radical ideas that were initially resisted became integral parts of society, illustrating the importance of reexamining resistance in the context of progressive change. Increased comfort and conformity: With technological advancements making life more convenient, there's a tendency to believe that our current understanding of society and reality has reached its peak. This comfort leads to conformity and impedes the exploration of alternate societal structures and ways of living that could be more adaptable to future changes. Science as a narrative: Science, though often considered as factual, serves the same narrative function as religion in providing stories to understand our existence. These narratives simplify the complexity of reality into understandable chunks, which are embraced and rarely questioned, much like religious texts. Limitations of historical perspective: Our limited access to the perspectives of past generations confines our worldview, preventing us from fully appreciating the breadth of human experience. The lack of interaction with generations long gone and the inability to dialogue with non-human entities means that mankind's perception of reality is constrained to the brief overlap between three living generations. Influence of upbringing on personal worldview: The environment in which we are raised and the historical context provided by our parents profoundly influence our belief system, morality, and sense of self. For example, ideas that seem alien in one era, such as the wrongness of slavery, could be considered absolute truths in another, just as today's concepts might be unthinkably radical in the distant past. Personal history as the foundation for understanding: Individuals are born into an unknown world and rely on their immediate predecessors to shape their conception of reality. Generations inherit and pass on their understanding of the world, and without this continuum, people might find themselves in an existential crisis due to lack of historical context. Educational bias and its relation to personal identity: The narratives we learn in school are heavily influenced by cultural and national bias, significantly affecting our worldview and identity. The limited scope of history taught reflects the selective priorities of each society, often neglecting the broader historical context that could offer a more diverse and realistic perspective. Fragility and bias of human culture and knowledge: Our collective knowledge and culture consist of stories from just three generations, subjectively shaped by each era's dominant forces. This narrative-driven understanding of history and reality reveals the precarious and biased nature of what we accept as truth. Historical gaps in religious understanding: Despite Christianity being a significant part of many people's lives, there is a general failure to recognize that human history extends far back beyond the last 2000 years of Christian teachings. This oversight ignores the fact that humans existed and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years without organized religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism, all of which are modern constructs in the grand timeline of humanity. Science as a constructed narrative: Just as religion provided stories for understanding the world, modern science similarly offers narratives that structure our reality-stories about atoms, molecules, cells, and galaxies-yet remains a constructed story. These scientific explanations are essentially contemporary myths that fill in the gaps in our understanding, much like the genealogies in religious texts, giving a false impression of continuity and comprehensive understanding. Temporal perspective and materialism: Materialism, the belief that only physical matter is real, is relatively new and does not reflect the diversity of philosophical perspectives throughout history. The limited generational span of human life means that we're unable to appreciate the depth of past philosophical thought, with materialism being a current "fad" rather than enduring truth, demonstrating that our grasp of reality is shaped by the fads and ideas prevalent in the short-lived generations we can interact with. Relativity of normalcy and implications on worldview: What is considered "normal" is entirely relative to the era and environment someone is born into. The lack of a true baseline for normalcy leads to a highly adaptable sense of reality that is easily molded by those in control of the narrative, as illustrated by the thought experiment of raising a child in isolation with manipulated information-it highlights the profound impact environment and narrative control have on an individual's perception of reality. Ignorance reinforced by generational transmission: The pervasive nature of ignorance can be attributed to the fact that a majority of what individuals know is passed down without questioning. This uninhibited transfer includes all aspects of knowledge, such as science, religion, culture, and societal norms, underlining the fact that control over this process is an illusion, with each generation simply perpetuating the programming received from previous ones stretching back millennia. No single origin of human knowledge: The vast chain of human evolution spans millions of years beyond the mythological Adam and Eve, implicating that our collected knowledge and existence began long before recorded history. The narrative of reality as we understand it is not the work of a single entity but an accumulation of generational transfer of beliefs and conjectures. Ubiquitous ignorance and unverified beliefs: Individuals, including experts, philosophers, and religious leaders, are engulfed in the same narratives and beliefs as everyone else. Consequently, they can't provide definitive answers about reality-they only believe they understand based on the inherited worldviews, which explains the defensive posture when their beliefs are questioned. Resistance to inquiry stems from fear: Those who discourage questioning often project their own insecurities and reliance on established systems for survival. For example, challenging a parent's employment ethics can threaten their livelihood and stability, illustrating how survival pressures enforce conformity and acceptance of the status quo. Worldview and epistemology beyond science: While scientific knowledge advances, it does not encompass the entirety of reality understanding. Worldview, ethics, morality, and even societal attractions and repulsions are subject to change and require critical examination beyond what traditional scientific inquiry addresses. Irrecoverable historical wisdom and invention: Countless ideas, insights, and inventions throughout history have been completely lost or suppressed due to lack of adoption, destruction, or obfuscation. Past thinkers potentially had profound knowledge that never survived through the ages, suggesting that modern humanity may not be at the peak of wisdom or knowledge. Cultural and societal indoctrination limits future visioning: The societal emphasis on fitting in and conforming squanders the potential for radical reimagining of future societies. By transcending past and present preconceptions, humans can brainstorm entirely new social structures that could redefine work, relationships, governance, and existence itself. Inherent bias in perceptions of history: Our understanding of ancient structures or historical figures is often clouded by modern biases and ideologies. For example, archaeologists may misinterpret the pyramids' purpose through a materialistic lens or Christians may misrepresent Jesus to align with contemporary political beliefs instead of historical contexts. Optimistic challenge to traditional education and conformity: Embracing flexibility and creativity in thinking about the future requires questioning deeply ingrained societal norms shaped by traditional education. By contemplating past human existence, we can prepare to construct envisioned futures unconstrained by current practices and beliefs. Deconstruction of societal norms: Beyond personal self-inquiry, Leo emphasizes the need to deconstruct and critically examine societal structures, political systems, and cultural norms. With the rapid advancement of technology, the environment, and consequently, survival strategies are changing, requiring a departure from traditional ideas and increased flexibility and adaptability in all aspects of society. The inevitable evolution of societal structures: Leo points out that societal progress often hinges upon the generational shift, with older, more traditional generations passing away and making room for new perspectives. He uses the example of resistance to universal healthcare in the U.S. to illustrate the conflict between ingrained habits and the need for change, challenging the tendency to cling to tradition and emphasizing the necessity of radical flexibility. Lack of overarching control in historical progression: Dispelling notions of a controlling elite, Leo argues that humanity's progression is marked by collective ignorance; no single group masters the direction of societal development. Even conspiracies cannot grasp the full trajectory of human evolution, which might lead to a future where humanity is vastly different from its current state. Thought experiment on temporal dislocation: Leo presents a thought experiment where Socrates is brought into modern New York City, then returned to ancient Athens, illustrating the dissonance between historical periods and the challenges of integrating radically different realities, thereby highlighting how past, present, and future may be unimaginably distinct and unrecognizable from each other's viewpoints. Dissendium

What It Means To Go Meta https://youtu.be/Egjw71k10Rc Explaining the Meta Concept: Leo introduces the concept of going meta as a recurring theme essential for deeply understanding life, science, religion, spirituality, and personal development. He recognizes that even though the term 'meta' is popularly used, its profound implications are often not fully grasped by those who should ideally understand it, including scientists and programmers. Dictionary Definition of Meta: The Merriam-Webster dictionary's definition of meta includes notions of self-awareness, self-reference, and transcending or being situated beyond. Leo highlights these aspects as deeply ingrained in the fabric of reality, with significance not fully acknowledged by science and philosophy. Image 1 Characteristics of Going Meta: Going meta involves stepping outside, zooming out, or transcending a situation, leading to self-awareness and reflection. This requires a conscious effort to observe oneself while engaged in an activity, like recognizing the use of language during communication, and unearthing a deeper understanding of otherwise mundane actions. Breaking the Fourth Wall Example: Leo uses cinema's fourth wall concept to describe meta, where characters become aware they're part of a fictional world and directly address the audience, illustrating self-awareness that transcends the movie's frame. Meta as Higher Level Abstraction: To illustrate going one level up in abstraction, Leo imagines a video game character like Super Mario gaining self-awareness and discussing his existence with the player. This example serves to demonstrate the transformative power of going meta, likening it to the discovery of a new dimension in reality. Misconceptions and Ignorance: Leo emphasizes that most people, including professionals in scientific fields, fail to realize the power of going meta. They remain confined to single dimensions of thought, which limits their ability to solve existential problems and understand the enigma of life. Examples of Going Meta in Art and Communication: He provides examples like René Magritte's painting "The Treachery of Images" and the concept of email and physical mail metadata. By highlighting how explicit and implicit information coexist, Leo suggests that unraveling reality's subtleties is key to mastering various domains. Image 2 Implicit Reality Elements: Leo notes the importance of recognizing the implicit elements in reality, which are often overshadowed by the explicit. The ability to read those elements is essential for mastering diverse disciplines like business, philosophy, and spirituality. Significance of Meta Understanding: Leo's introduction sets up the significance of the meta concept, laying the groundwork for discussing its applications in various fields and the limitations people face in comprehending and utilizing its potential for profound insights into reality. Cultural Bias in Science: There's an assumption in science that truth should be explicit; implicit knowledge is undervalued. This paradigm is challenged by Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the inherent limitations of explicit knowledge. Video Game Meta Elements: Elements like HUDs, score points, and cheat codes represent meta aspects within video games, offering players god-like abilities and reflecting on the nature of the game itself. Significance of Cheat Codes: Cheat codes in video games symbolize the power of meta knowledge, allowing characters to transcend the pre-programmed rules of their world with seemingly magical abilities. Computer Hacking as Meta Thinking: Black hat hackers engage in meta thinking by exploiting code loopholes, revealing a continual battle between maintaining software integrity and the hacker's ability to subvert it. Self-Referential Humor: Meta humor, or humor about humor, works by acknowledging a joke's failure, transforming the original, unfunny joke into a successful meta joke about the situation. Lucid Dreaming: Lucid dreaming, recognizing you're dreaming within a dream, allows individuals to consciously manipulate their dreams, showcasing meta-awareness as a form of power. Meta Learning: Learning how to learn—meta learning—enhances the ability to acquire knowledge by reflecting on the learning process itself, forming a key component of being an effective learner. Influence of Language: Language shapes thoughts and worldviews. Paying attention to language usage can reveal deep interconnections, influencing what is considered reality. Limitations of Language: Language simultaneously empowers and limits our understanding of the world through the distinctions and biases it introduces. Multiplicity of Linguistic Frameworks: Exploring various languages, including the possibility of alien languages, can significantly expand one's perception of reality. Meta Science: Traditional science operates without questioning its own assumptions or methods. Meta science involves a deep examination of science itself, its foundations, and its validity. Complexity of Reality in Science: Reality is infinitely complex, and scientists must transcend their own frameworks and embrace meta-level thinking to understand its endless layers. Meta Approaches in Political Debates: Rather than focusing on content-level disagreements, going meta in political debates entails recognizing underlying biases and ego-driven defenses, opening the door to higher-level understanding and resolution. Recognition of Biases in Debate: Acknowledging personal biases and the influence of upbringing on one's views allows for higher-level reflection within and beyond political discussions. Power of Going Meta in Debates: Acknowledging both your own and your opponent's biases and survival agendas during an argument can collapse the entire confrontational dynamic, illustrating how going meta can resolve what seem like irresolvable issues in political debates and beyond. Meta Moves in Wars and Relationships: Encourages questioning the fundamental causes of wars and interpersonal conflicts, advocating for meta-level solutions that transcend ingrained patterns of engagement in favor of higher-dimensional approaches to peace and harmony. Meta Perspective on Religion: Experiencing a shift from viewing one's inherited religion as the singular correct perspective to recognizing it as only one among many, realizing all are subject to similar biases and recognizing their own religious upbringing as an attachment. Creating and Stopping Fights with Meta Awareness: In the midst of an argument, becoming self-aware of one’s role in perpetuating the conflict. This meta awareness can halt the escalation and open the opportunity to engage at a more constructive level. Meta Chess as a Concept: Illustrates a variation of chess where each move allows a player to alter the rules of the game, introducing a meta-level strategy that impacts the progress and outcome in unforeseen ways. Meta in Art, Movies, and Meetings: Discusses various forms of meta in creative expression and organizational structures, such as art that critiques or changes art forms, movies and TV shows that self-reference, and meetings about improving meeting structures. Meta Analysis in Research: Describes a meta-analysis as a study that synthesizes the data from multiple studies on a topic, potentially providing more powerful insights than any individual study. Worldview Exploration and Meta Worldview: Urges exploring and understanding multiple worldviews without attachment, and introduces the concept of a meta worldview — a higher perspective on all worldviews that examines their relative truths. Rewards and Challenges of Going Meta: Emphasizes the significant benefits of adopting a meta perspective but acknowledges the emotional labor and difficulty in doing so due to our tendency to become attached to specific frames of reference. Meta Debate on Valid Arguments: Points out the circularity and groundlessness that can occur in debates on what constitutes a valid argument, highlighting the importance of examining the basis of the logics used in arguments. Meta in Various Domains: Provides examples of going meta in different domains like writing, gaming, forums, humor, and television, illustrating how the concept can be applied across diverse areas of human activity. Intrinsic effectiveness of pickup principles: When pickup principles are deeply internalized, they become honest signals of attractiveness, and they can still attract a woman even when you explicitly describe them during the pickup process. Confidence and authenticity in attraction: Attraction is not about tricks or deception. Women are attracted to men who are confident, authentic, and upfront about their intentions, even to the point of owning being a "player." Story of attracting a copywriter: Leo shares an anecdote about attracting a woman who worked as a copywriter for Tony Robbins, using honesty about his knowledge of pickup techniques and building a deep connection over shared interests in personal development and self-help. The meta approach in pickup: Leo describes how being meta by openly discussing his pickup techniques as he used them on the woman made her more attracted to him, because it displayed confidence, the ability to hold his frame, and a sense of humor. Logistical challenges and principles in pickup: Leo recounts a specific instance where he could have physically escalated the interaction with the woman but didn't due to his principle of not spending money, highlighting the practical logistics involved in pickup and the potential downside of sticking rigidly to personal rules. Implicit communication as key to attraction: The main takeaway is that verbal content is less important than the implicit, honest signals such as displaying masculine authenticity, confidence, humor, and detachment from the outcome. Meta authenticity and self-disclosure: Being open about uncertainties and negative aspects of oneself can be very effective because it sub-communicates honesty and confidence. Deception and self-deception: Deception often has a meta aspect; successful deceivers not only lie to others but also deny to themselves that they're lying, creating layers of self-deception. Selfishness and its meta recognition: Accusing someone else of selfishness often reveals the accuser's own selfishness. Resolving this involves recognizing the multi-layered nature of the accusation and one's own selfishness. Meta lying and the complexity of deception: Understanding and escaping self-deception and denial requires recognizing the multiple levels at which one can deceive oneself and deny the truth. The nature of selfishness and nirvana: Leo points out that one's aversion to selfishness in others is a reflection of selfishness within oneself. True selflessness or the path to nirvana requires internal eradication of selfishness, as it is the individual's own selfishness that bothers them, not others. Neti Neti method of self-inquiry: The method involves transcending identification with physicality through meta cognition, continuously negating all material identifications (such as "I am not the body" statements) until one achieves spiritual awakening. Zen analogy of the finger pointing to the moon: This classic Zen teaching demonstrates a meta understanding; it's not the finger but the moon that is the point of focus, symbolizing the need to look beyond the obvious or literal for true comprehension. Applicability of meta concepts across disciplines: Leo underscores the wide applicability of meta concepts. From metaphysics and meta-science to metapolitics and metalogic, each field can incorporate a meta perspective, which involves examining and transcending its foundational aspects. Infinite nature of logic and reality: Explaining that logic requires a meta level of examination, Leo says logicians have found that there's an infinite number of logical systems and each requires a meta logic for grounding, mirroring reality’s groundless nature. Meta philosophy: Leo describes meta philosophy as the pursuit of understanding how to conduct philosophy rather than adhering to a single philosophical school, stressing that all academic philosophical pursuits are ultimately relative and groundless. Meta politics: Different from conventional politics that focus on tribal disputes, metapolitics emphasizes raising collective consciousness, moving beyond bias, and fostering love and spiritual growth in societies. Meta science: This encompasses a deep and critical examination of scientific foundations, questioning and deconstructing empirical methods to improve their understanding and practice. Meta business: Goes beyond conventional profit-centric business practices to consider wider societal and environmental impacts, advocating for a more conscious and eco-friendly approach. Meta relationships: Focuses on uniting the individuals in a relationship and the relationship itself as a third entity, which allows for more mutual understanding and surrender to the collective good. Meta spirituality: This involves a broad and eclectic study of various spiritual traditions, seeking to understand their essence and align their best teachings, moving beyond disagreements among different schools of thought. Other Meta Concepts: Leo notes there are even more meta concepts like meta art, meta media, meta sex, and meta work, which are ways to improve functionality and quality through critical evaluation and continuous improvement. Importance of Going Meta: He emphasizes that going meta is crucial for solving complex problems as it requires moving to a higher level of understanding, thereby transcending content differences and scrutinizing the methods, which could otherwise be corrupted or suboptimal. Adoption of Meta Perspective: Adopting a meta approach helps identify personal biases and limitations, enabling individuals to move beyond these and achieve more profound insights. It requires detachment from solidly held beliefs and ideologies, often a challenging but necessary process for growth. Limitations in Scrutinizing Established Methods: Gura asserts that whether in spirituality, science, medicine, or other fields, there is widespread reluctance to critically examine established methods due to a fear of uncovering pervasive corruption. Attachment Leading to Bias: He explains how attachment, such as identifying with one's nationality or career, results in biased behaviors and suffering, and emphasizes the importance of detachment through the 'neti method' or 'meta moves' for personal transcendence. Conflict Arising from Reality Construction Denial: Gura discusses how the active denial of constructing one's reality causes defensiveness and conflict, as people struggle to maintain their constructed reality, which inherently indicates its fragility and artificiality. Science's Limitations within its Frame: He criticizes the limitation of science as it operates within its own frame and cannot recognize or address the larger, infinite context of existence. Rationale for Reality's Infinite Meta Nature: Leo elaborates that reality's infinite meta nature implies there are always additional layers beyond what is currently perceivable, leading to an ever-expanding understanding of existence. Challenges Faced by Rational and Scientific Minds: Gura points out that highly rational and scientific individuals often fail to grasp the deeper nature of existence due to their confinement within the finite frames of their disciplines. Accessing Absolute Truth: Absolute truth can only be accessed by stepping outside of every frame of reference and avoiding attachment to any particular framework. Each frame, whether it be religion, science, mathematics, or logic, is a temporary construct that can limit one's understanding. Frames as Mental Constructs: Every framework like religion, science, or logic is seen as an imaginary construct. To awaken fully, one must transcend each frame progressively, coming to the realization that the content doesn't matter since it's all incomplete. Life as the Final Frame to Transcend: The culmination of transcending frames is the realization that one's life itself is a frame to be moved beyond. Awakening happens when you let go of the attachment to life as you know it. Mind's Resistance to 'Going Meta': The human mind has defense mechanisms that resist the process of 'going meta' due to fear of the consequences—like the loss of one's current life and identity—that may come from fully embracing this perspective. Role of Fear in Sticking to Frames: The level of fear one has determines the frame they are stuck in. Lower levels of fear might keep someone within scientific or atheistic views, while higher levels of fear could trap someone in religious dogma. Intellectual and Real-World Payoffs of Frames: Frames offer payoffs—intellectual satisfaction, money, ego boosts, etc.—that make them appealing to cling to. Letting go of these payoffs can be difficult due to personal investments like relationships or careers. Incremental Growth and Personal Readiness: Spiritual growth and the process of going meta cannot be rushed; they depend on one's readiness and willingness to let go of attachments gradually. Gura uses the analogy of a student not ready to jump from fourth-grade math to calculus to emphasize that growth takes time. Recognizing and Planning for Detachment: It's important to be self-aware of one's current attachments and lay the groundwork for future growth, even if one is not ready to detach immediately. Planning ahead is essential for significant progress. Thrill of Meta Recognition: There is a unique delight and thrill in realizing something implicit in a given situation. This meta recognition, akin to understanding an inside joke, can lead to awakening and touching the divine. Combining Intellect with Spirituality: For those who enjoy intellectual challenges and complex topics, the process of going 'meta' in spirituality can offer a similar or even greater sense of whimsy and artistry, as hinted by the delight found in the works of Douglas Hofstadter. Whimsical Nature of Logic and Spiritual Work: Spiritual work provides an expansion of the whimsical and artistic experience found in exploring logical and scientific concepts, leading to clarity, beauty, and a profound appreciation of existence. Common Ground between Science and Spirituality: Leo suggests that serious scientists are fundamentally seeking the same awe and mystery in their work that spirituality offers, aiming to connect science with soul and spirit. Meta Perspective on Communication: During the talk, Leo points out the meta nature of using language to communicate concepts, and how his words trigger thoughts in the listener, showing a meta understanding of the communication process. Self-Realization and the Universe: Leo emphasizes that listeners, as part of the universe, are not separate from his message; they are the universe speaking to itself, using the medium of a video to become conscious of itself. Infinite Mind Concept: The notion of an 'infinite mind' is introduced as a mind that can go infinitely meta, becoming self-aware and able to contemplate any finite aspect of its existence. Building Core Concepts: Leo discusses the importance of building core concepts to make sense of reality and life, as opposed to adopting belief systems; these core concepts serve as a foundation for exploring various life domains. Critique of Educational System: He criticizes the educational system for not imparting core concepts needed for a deeper understanding of reality, recognizing the role of his videos in providing this knowledge. Making Sense of Life: Leo underscores that making sense of life is possible through personal effort and exploration and that his work lays out tools and direction for this journey toward significant growth and understanding. Aparecium

All Understanding Is Metaphoric https://www.actualized.org/insights/all-understanding-is-metaphoric Literalism as a cognitive trap: Literalism is a cognitive trap where individuals interpret myths and religious stories as factual events. This occurs at different stages of human development, notably within stage blue orthodoxy, where there is a lack of openness to the metaphorical and symbolic meanings of these narratives. Such literal beliefs are steadfast among Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and other religious groups, leading to defensiveness when these beliefs are challenged by empirical evidence. Defensive mechanisms of literalists: When faced with contradictions to their literal beliefs, such as scientific discoveries that refute aspects of their myths, literalists engage in mental gymnastics and denial to preserve their faith. This is exemplified by creationists who must defend every outdated and anachronistic element in the Bible, as admitting a single error can shake their entire belief system and their identity as adherents of their faith. Literalism in science: A similar pattern of literalism is observed in the scientific community (stage orange), where scientists dismiss religious myths as false but then fall into the trap of regarding their own empirical findings and mathematical models as literal truth. Influential figures like Sean Carroll and Max Tegmark can become overly invested in their theories, asserting that the universe is fundamentally mathematical, an attitude mirroring that of religious literalists. Science and the misconception of universality: The notion that mathematics is a universal language and that scientific understanding is independent of human cognition is challenged by Leo. He suggests that science and mathematics could be incomprehensible to other forms of intelligence, just as they might be to animals or an alien race. This calls into question the belief held by many scientists that their models are universally applicable and by extension, superior to religious understanding. Literalism's block to integral thinking: Literal interpretation closes off the mind to the potential exploration of metaphysical questions and broader understandings. Literalist thinking in religion and science hinders the development of more sophisticated, nuanced cognition that recognizes teachings as metaphoric and symbolic, not factual reports to be taken at face value. Carlos Castaneda's work and literal criticism: Criticisms of Carlos Castaneda's writings-assertions of plagiarism and lack of scientific validity-demonstrate a literalist mindset. This distracts from the profound wisdom contained within the texts, further emphasizing the importance of looking beyond literal imperfections to grasp the essential insights offered. Literalism in interpreting teachings and contradictions: Literalism creates difficulties when encountering contradictions within teachings, such as in religious texts. When teachings are interpreted metaphorically rather than literally, apparent contradictions become less problematic, as the focus shifts to the wisdom or insights being pointed to, rather than the literal content. Literalism restricts integration of diverse knowledge: By adopting a figurative viewpoint over a literal one, individuals can integrate diverse perspectives and teachings more effectively. Literalism leads to isolation within specific paradigms or ideologies, restricting cognitive development and the ability to embrace a more holistic and integral approach to understanding complex topics. Criticism based on literalism: Critics who condemn Carlos Castaneda's work for lack of scientific rigor miss the point-literal accuracy matters less than the wisdom gained from the teachings. Similar to misconceptions about religious texts, literal interpretation obscures the broader lessons and insights teachings aim to impart. Embracing the big picture: Focusing on the big picture allows for holistic understanding and growth. Being concerned with technical precision in teachings risks missing out on valuable insights. Acknowledging imperfection in teachings: Expecting flawlessness in teachings from any source is unrealistic. Teachings should act as guides leading to individual, experiential understanding rather than being accepted as infallible truths. Prioritizing holistic understanding over technical details: An excessive focus on details can lead to missing the essence of the lesson. Leo stresses the importance of pattern recognition and big-picture thinking over technical perfection. Intuition and abstract understanding: Profound insights often come intuitively and resist linear articulation, contrasting with the literalist expectation of concrete, systematic proof. These intuitive truths offer a different, valid form of knowing. Interpretation as an unavoidable aspect of cognition: Denying the interpretive nature of human understanding is a mistake; acknowledging it can reduce the risk of delusion. Leo argues that interpretations, rather than factual claims, shape our perceptions of reality. Dangers of failing to acknowledge interpretation: Misinterpreting scientific data or theoretical models as objective truths rather than interpretations can lead to misunderstanding and misuse, as demonstrated by figures like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Recognizing that many aspects of reality, including societal constructs, are interpretations informed by context can lead to a more nuanced worldview. Gender as a social construction: Gender is a socially and culturally constructed category, and resistance to non-traditional gender concepts often stems from the discomfort people feel when such long-standing constructions are challenged, potentially leading to a sense of chaos and societal destabilization. Western intellectual tradition against deconstruction: Western tradition, from philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, has focused on building up constructs and systems that form the basis of our legal and social order, making it resistant to the idea of deconstruction which exposes these constructs as mere fictions designed for survival. Societal dependence on fictions: Leo argues that society and culture are built on collective fictions like values, norms, laws, and customs, created out of necessity for survival and cohesion, despite being ultimately based on interpretative constructs that aren't "true" in a literal sense. Concept of nations as mental constructions: Nations and borders are highlighted as mental constructs that, while useful, are not inherently real. Recognizing them as such helps to fight for their preservation without over-attachment, allowing for a healthier, more open response to change. Attachment to constructs limits scientific progress: A literal belief in scientific theories impedes the advancement of science, as attachment to current paradigms prevents openness to new ideas and reevaluation. Embracing science metaphorically allows for a continual expansion of understanding. Literalism clashing with faith and historical context: The literal interpretation of religious texts or the actions of historical figures without considering cultural and historical context offers a limited and flawed perspective. Understanding the overarching messages and wisdom, rather than focusing on specific actions or statements, is encouraged for a more integrative view. Detachment from literalism for integral thinking: Moving away from literalism and embracing a more figurative, integral approach avoids the pitfalls of over-attachment to constructs and supports a more expansive and flexible understanding of teachings, beliefs, and concepts. Crucio

Chapter Dysfunctions of the 3rd-Tier Structure-Views, Violet Meta-Mind: "One can step deeply enough into thetimeless Now to step into another dimension altogether—just step right here, and push hard. It’s easy to get lost in those worlds, which are, at bottom, simply different dimensions and perspectives of one’s own (violet) consciousness (although, as noted, from another angle, they are all real, ontologically different realms because they are each genuinely co-enacted by a different perspective in consciousness). Given that this stage is the first great transition from “earthly” realms to “heavenly” realms (as a permanent structural enaction), getting lost in these “higher worlds” is indeed one of the most common dysfunctions of this level. The deeply transcendental, otherworldly, electrically visionary nature of consciousness at this altitude makes fixation to this side of the street an incredibly inviting and alluring venture. This is likely to couple with the dysfunction, discussed earlier, of standing in heaven and giving a blistering critique of life here on earth, with all the semiprophetic pomp and pomposity that comes with it. One of the things that often happens with these specific dysfunctions is that, after making some initial discovery of a timeless Now or pure Present (either in 3rd-tier structures or higher states), one can step into that Present and then step right through it into what seem to be endless, “deeper,” “higher” realms altogether, a kaleidoscopic cascade of universes upon universes that at one point seem to be nothing but a slight wiggle in this moment’s timeless Now, and then at the next explode into almost infinitely extending real realms that are all alive and invite exploration—with a sign on the door that says “Welcome to Heaven!” This is extremely common in high subtle and low causal states, but if it happens with structures, it tends to happen right here, with the violet meta-mind (due largely to its visionary nature). ... But this problem is simply the living result of the enactive nature of the real world and the fact that consciousness can co-create an almost endless number of universes, any number of which one can become fixated or semiaddicted to, with straightforwardly dysfunctional results." An alien or two belong to the package.

Ok, this one is just an exaggeration of something more subtle and nuanced that anyone can see in our everyday lifes. The tendency to rush,rush,rush, get out of my way!! Many times when there in no need of rush at all. This post will not stop people with their Fast Cars to be impatient with the people with their slow microcars. This behavior is for me is just a physical representation of the lack of respect for the diferences of life choices people have the rigth to have. the rigth to chosse your own pace. If I, for whatsoever reason was able to have a fast car, this is my life choice, so I need to be aware that the world will not and dont need to adapt to my speed, driver licences are supposed to be given to mature adults who know the world is diverse. Anyway, I using the road just as a metaphor here. This apply not only to the road but to respecting different levels of development among people, children, elders and all. For example ,there some sort of information that if is delivered for a child that is able to disrupt and even affect negatively the normal development of her normal cognitive growth. In our urge to rush we may forget that we share this planet with other peoples that are not able to follow up with our rushness, animals that have their own evolutionary rhythm. For the ones who watched the Tv Series Star Trek, may rememeber the "Prime Directive also known as "Starfleet General Order1"non-interference directive" is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. Its stated aim is to protect unprepared civilizations from the danger of starship crews introducing advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready. interfering is impossible in this interwoven universe we are participating, so the only way is to do it with care and consideration, with respect with those that are not to fast dealing with the fast change. No need to rush, we all know our destination, do we want to get there faster than others? Thougths?

These are mainly “victories” linked to difficulties suffered more than real goals. My long term goal is to duplicate my neuron count with experimental pharmaceuticals and become an alien consciousness. 🗿

Understanding The Liberal Mind https://youtu.be/0UJbHNhYl0U "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." - Mark Twain Understanding the Liberal Mind (Continued): Leo continues to delve into the emotional appeal of liberalism, highlighting the prevalence of love, empathy, and a desire to expand the sphere of concern. He notes that the size and inclusiveness of this sphere directly relate to one's capacity for empathy and forgiveness. However, he also acknowledges that despite the ideology's emphasis on broad concern, not all liberals embody the highest levels of empathy or universal love. Liberal Vision for the Future: Liberals envision a peaceful, globally united community with robust environmental protections and basic necessities accessible to all. They aspire to create a sensitive, non-oppressive global government. Yet, Leo cautions that these ideals may be premature for societies not ready for such changes, thus potentially facing backlash. Liberal Blind Spots and Challenges: Leo points out the liberal tendency to underestimate the functionality of existing systems, like capitalism and organized religion, and overestimate society's readiness for progressive ideas. Liberals may struggle with the practicalities of their ideologies in real-world applications, sometimes overlooking the importance of addressing basic survival needs. Incorporating Tradition in New Societies: He stresses the importance of factoring in traditional cultures when introducing development to societies that might not yet be ready for rapid progress. There's a challenge in understanding and integrating perspectives from less-developed or hostile worldviews into the liberal mindset. Addressing Ignorance and Complexity: Liberals often find difficulty in fully understanding the complexity and corruption within institutions like capitalism. They also advocate for gender fluidity and spiritual diversity, both areas that may clash with conservative views but are seen as ways to enrich individual and societal life. The Importance of Spirituality: Leo suggests that spirituality is crucial for individual development, offering a pathway for people to connect with the divine or higher states of consciousness. He recommends integrating elements from various spiritual traditions to create a more personalized and enriching spiritual experience. Acceptance and Exploration of Capitalism: While acknowledging the flaws of capitalism, Leo encourages the exploration of socialist, Marxist, and communist ideas to develop a fairer economic system. However, he remains critical of capitalism's exploitation and structural issues. Environmental Advocacy: Leo sees environmentalism as an urgent cause, advocating for immediate action against threats like climate change and deforestation. He envisions a society that tackles these environmental challenges collectively. Addressing Environmental Issues, Immigration, and Crime: Leo discusses the necessity of addressing climate change and other environmental issues, seeing immigration as a potential boon to culture and innovation. He also promotes a rehabilitative approach to crime, turning criminals into productive members of society. The Idealism of a Liberal Society: He envisions a society with reduced crime, a more robust workforce, fairness, and the elimination of various societal ills. Liberals value advancements in different fields, foster open-mindedness, and encourage the exploration of consciousness without societal constraints. Overcoming Closed-Mindedness: Leo reflects on the significance of love in opening one's mind and criticizes the stigmatization of liberalism in right-wing media. He calls for honest assessments of liberalism away from prejudiced distortions. Complexity and Fluctuation of Individualism and Collectivism: He addresses the variability of individualism and collectivism within political alignments, advocating for a flexible approach to finding solutions instead of rigid ideological adherence. Leo emphasizes the importance of recognizing the complexity of political problems and urges comprehensive study and understanding. Practical Execution and Groundwork of Ideas: Addressing the liberal difficulty with actualizing ideas, Leo notes the need for organized effort and concrete work, such as mobilizing political support, to effect governance and societal change. Understanding and Integration of Less-Developed Perspectives: The challenge for liberals to empathize and integrate less developed views, like those of racists or homophobes, is highlighted. He suggests a need for deeper comprehension of human psychology for successful integration and rehabilitation. Ignorance and Complex Institutions: Liberals' struggles to grasp mankind's ignorance and the intricate nature of institutions such as capitalism and corporations are pointed out. Leo critiques oversimplification and suggests a need for more nuanced analysis. Feminism and Gender Fluidity: Liberal perspectives on the importance of balancing femininity and masculinity, including gender fluidity and its significance for individuals and society, are mentioned. Religion and Spirituality: The shift from traditional religion to a more personal spirituality is advocated by liberals. Leo argues for a spirituality that helps individuals connect with the divine and expand their consciousness. Sexuality and Gay Rights: Acceptance of various forms of sexuality and support for gay rights are central to liberal ideology, aiming for a society comfortable with and educated about differing sexual orientations and identities. Alternative forms of sex: Speaking on the liberal openness toward diverse sexual practices, Leo suggests that public health infrastructure should support safe practices instead of relegating them to risky, unregulated areas. Capitalism critique: Leo expresses criticism of the exploitative aspects of capitalism and calls for a fairer economic system, open to ideas from socialism and communism where necessary. Environmentalism: He underscores the urgent need for action on environmental issues supported by scientific consensus. Immigration: The contribution of immigration to cultural diversity and innovation is highlighted, though Leo acknowledges the need for balanced policies. Punishment of criminals: A liberal shift involves moving the focus from retribution to rehabilitation of criminals, emphasizing their potential for reform and societal benefit. Understanding the Liberal Approach to Criminal Rehabilitation: Leo outlines the benefits of liberal criminal rehabilitation policies, such as those in Scandinavian countries, which aim to decrease crime and strengthen communities. Visualizing the Emotional Appeal of Liberalism: He encourages visualization exercises to comprehend the emotional appeal of liberalism, focusing on concepts like empathy, inclusivity, and the pursuit of societal improvement. Relating Liberalism to Spiritual and Personal Development: Liberalism is linked to the pursuit of personal and spiritual development, with openness and non-judgment aligned with divine love. Navigating Personal Expressions of Liberalism: Individuals are urged to explore how they embody liberal values in their lives and to understand the importance of expressing individuality across various personal choices. Distorting Liberalism in Right-Wing Media: The misrepresentation of liberalism in right-wing media is critiqued, and the complexity of liberal ideologies is emphasized, calling for a deeper, non-prejudiced understanding. Liberalism's Relation to Boomers: Age-based stereotypes, such as "Boomers" being conservative, are discussed as reflections of broader generational perspectives on liberalism. Acknowledging the Complexity of Liberalism: Leo notes that liberalism is multifaceted and complex, urging an effort to comprehend its true principles and goals beyond simplistic characterizations. Deep Importance of Politics: He emphasizes the depth of political study required, including fields like political science, sociology, and epistemology, urging engagement with substantive analytical resources rather than superficial political commentary. Quality Over Quantity in Information Consumption: A call for more quality-based media consumption habits is made, preferring in-depth political and sociological discussions over shallow online interactions. Healthy Media Consumption Habits: Viewers are advised to seek out intellectuals and content that provide nuanced perspectives on political issues rather than falling for monetized propaganda. Importance of Developmental Psychology in Politics: A grasp of how individual and collective psychology evolves is deemed essential to understanding politics, with resources like the "Conscious Politics" and "Nine Stages of Ego Development" series recommended. Myth of Individualism vs. Collectivism: The binary view of conservatives as individualists and liberals as collectivists is dispelled, illustrating that both ideologies have tendencies towards each at different stages. Love as the Core of Both Liberalism and Conservatism: Leo posits that both liberal and conservative ideologies are rooted in love—albeit expressed differently—and warns against positive and negative manifestations. Importance of Flexibility in Ideology: The importance of being adaptable and objectively adopting effective solutions from various perspectives without ideological rigidity is underlined. Political Problems are Perennial and Complex: The perpetual and intricate nature of political issues is discussed, along with encouragement for independent, deep contemplation of various sociopolitical systems. Engaging with Intellectual Content for Better Understanding: For a more intricate understanding of politics, Leo recommends studying historical, political, and ideological subjects in depth. Corruption is a Separate Issue: Leo stresses that corruption can infiltrate any political system, making it critical to identify and address it as a distinct issue. Personal Interest in Political Science and Sociology: He shares his passion for studying social dynamics, history, and politics, seeing them as practical applications of abstract principles and encouraging the audience to explore sociology for deeper insights. Liberal and Conservative Mindsets: The liberal mind has a larger capacity for empathy and love, while the conservative mind seeks to protect its tribe and interests. Neither is inherently better. Misinterpretation of Liberal Empathy: The increased empathy in liberals is not a value judgment against conservatives; it's a result of different conditions and not about being inherently nicer. Non-Judgmental Perspective: Leo advocates for a perspective that refrains from framing issues in terms of good and evil, which allows for a richer understanding of differing worldviews. Survival Conditions and Mindset: Liberals tend to be more relaxed and carefree, a result of favorable survival conditions such as robust welfare systems in places like Scandinavia, as opposed to harsher environments which may foster a more conservative mindset. Liberal vs. Conservative Organizational Styles: Liberals are less structured and more disorganized than conservatives, correlating with Myers-Briggs personality types where perceivers (P) are more liberal and judgers (J) are more conservative. Sensors lean conservative, while intuitives are more liberal. Authority and Hierarchy: Generally, liberals question authority and hierarchy more than conservatives, looking to challenge tradition and societal norms, whereas conservatives are more likely to support established structures to preserve their culture and society. Real Ideological Commitment vs. Power Grab: Political movements can betray their proclaimed ideological principles in the pursuit of power, as seen in unprincipled forms of conservatism like the MAGA movement or certain neoliberal and centrist Liberals. Corruption as Universal: Corruption is a pervasive force that affects all human minds regardless of political leanings, challenging the integrity of politicians due to the immense pressure and threats they face while in power. True Rebellion and the Liberal Mind: True rebelliousness involves making radical changes, like advocating for a socialist economy or constitutional amendments, which are typical of a liberal mindset. Critique of Current American Political Climate: Recent American politics have muddled the traditional meanings of liberal and conservative, with some conservatives appearing to challenge government authority when they are actually only opposing liberal government. Ideological Purity vs. Pursuit of Power: The loud proclamation of ideological purity often masks an underlying pursuit of power, where individuals and movements are willing to compromise their principles to maintain or gain power. Challenge to Maintain Integrity in Politics: Politicians face the difficult challenge of maintaining their principles under the pressure of threats and opposition from all sides, leading to widespread corruption which is not unique to any one political group. Historical Behavior of Liberal and Conservative Minds: Understanding what liberal and conservative truly means requires a historical perspective beyond American politics of the last ten years, recognizing that conservatism historically upholds and defends existing systems and structures. Liberal Mindset on Challenging the Status Quo: Liberals are inclined to question, deconstruct, and change culture, whereas conservatives prefer to preserve it. Liberals would redact outdated or offensive parts of cultural artifacts like the Christian Bible to align with modern values. Expression of Liberal Identity: Progressives, especially in university settings, often express their non-conformity through avant-garde fashion and personal styles. This is contrasted with figures like Jordan Peterson, whose traditional attire mirrors conservative values of preserving the status quo. Liberal's Role in Culture: Liberals consider themselves active participants in culture, responsible for innovating and shaping societal norms, arts, and values, rather than merely accepting them as they are. Liberal vs. Conservative Viewpoints: The liberal mind strives for progress by challenging established norms to create a more equitable and just society, while the conservative mind aims to maintain traditions, fearing innovation could lead to negative consequences. Conservatives' Perception of Social Justice Warriors: Conservatives are encouraged to reflect on the values of courage and justice embodying 'social justice warriors,' harmonizing with conservative values of bravery and a fair society despite potential excesses. Conservative Attachment to Culture and Resistance to Criticism: Conservatives may find it challenging to accept criticisms of the systems they value due to a deep attachment to their culture, society, and beliefs. Admitting limitations can be as difficult as a parent confronting their child's misdeeds. Liberal Tendencies Toward Femininity and Hierarchical Structures: Liberals advocate for a balance between feminine and masculine approaches, focusing on intelligence and diplomacy in leadership. This is seen as more effective in contemporary society than traditional 'macho' leadership. Handling Situations with Feminine Methods: Technological advancements have leveled the power difference between masculine and feminine traits, leading to many modern scenarios where a feminine approach, characterized by negotiation and understanding, is more beneficial than a traditionally masculine one. Liberals and Appropriate Use of Violence: Liberals generally believe that violence should only be used when absolutely necessary and appropriate, such as in self-defense or to stop greater harm. They are more prone to advocate for peaceful resolutions and diplomatic solutions. Conservative Approach to Violence: Conservatives may be more likely to support the use of force in conflict resolution, often equating strength with aggression and preemptive defensive actions, in contrast to the liberal emphasis on non-violence. Liberal Brain Characteristics: Scientific research indicates that liberal minds are more cognitively complex, tolerant of ambiguity, and flexible in thinking patterns. They are also more imaginative, creative, and artistically inclined. Enhanced Error Detection in Liberal Minds: Neurological studies have shown that liberals have an enhanced ability to detect errors and are more capable of self-reflection. This translates into a liberal focus on identifying and addressing problems within systems and institutions. Liberal Versus Conservative Focus: Liberals look towards the future with an emphasis on societal change and improvement, while conservatives often focus on tradition, seeking to preserve the past and glorify historical achievements. Liberalism in Urban Environments: Liberalism thrives in urban and metropolitan areas where diversity and multiculturalism are prevalent, which contributes to the liberal appreciation for and engagement with a wide variety of perspectives. Conservative Mindset Amidst Isolation: Conservative ideologies are more prevalent in less diverse, rural areas where there is less exposure to different cultural, racial, and social influences. A preference for simplicity and clear boundaries characterizes the conservative mindset. Metaphorical Comparison of Mindsets: The liberal mind is compared to a vibrant coral reef ecosystem thriving in diversity, while the conservative mind is likened to deep-sea creatures or desert plants that are more isolated and defensively adapted to harsh environments. Liberal Advocacy for Unity and Diversity: Liberals advocate for breaking down walls and barriers between people, emphasizing the drive towards unity and diversity within the human race. Vision of Global Oneness: Gura describes a future where humanity evolves into a single, intermixed ethnicity, suggesting an increasing trend towards global unity and acceptance beyond racial and ethnic division. Research Supporting Liberal Mind Features: Gura references upcoming posts on his blog where he will share links to studies supporting the attributes of the liberal mind, such as a higher tolerance for cognitive complexity and ambiguity. Interracial Couples and Aesthetic Advantages: Leo advocates for interracial relationships, suggesting they can enhance human attractiveness based on the concept of averaging out facial features across ethnicities. Critique of Ethnostates: He criticizes the far-right concept of creating ethnically homogeneous states, arguing it is impractical and likely to lead to increased conflict. Metaphysics and Unity vs. Division: Leo links the metaphysical understanding of reality, involving the cycles of unity and division, to the political discourse on unity and nationalism. Liberal Perspective on Global Unity: The liberal mind views the globe as a single community and favors treating humanity as one interconnected species, challenging the notion of "globalism" as a derogatory term used by conservatives. Globalization as Evolution: Embracing globalization, Leo predicts a future where humans work as a unified civilization and technology connects and supplies us globally; he insists resistance to this is futile and against evolutionary progress. Openness to Science and Rationality: Leo suggests liberals are often more open to scientific evidence and facts, though some conservatives may also value these, depending on regional and historical contexts. Relativism and Multiple Truths: The liberal mind is better at understanding and accepting that different perspectives and truths exist and are shaped by individual and societal contexts. Individualized Spirituality: Liberals tend to have a more personalized approach to spirituality, blending elements from various traditions, contrasting with conservative adherence to orthodoxy. Importance of Secular Humanism: Liberals value the separation of church and state and embody bohemian values, focusing on liberal arts, personal freedom, and novel experiences. Liberal Mind and Intoxicants: Leo Gura notes that the liberal mind is more open to intoxicants and mind-expanding drugs as tools for loosening the mind and gaining new experiences and perspectives, in contrast to conservative and orthodox religious views that typically oppose such substances. Minority of Highly Liberal Minds: He observes that highly liberal minds represent a small percentage of the population because most people are focused on basic survival and may not have the opportunity for higher education and exposure to diverse cultures, making it difficult for them to envision or support progressive ideas. Optimistic View of Humanity: The liberal mind generally has an optimistic view of human nature, believing in the potential for unity, peace, and coexistence, whereas the conservative mind is more realistic and pessimistic, often stressing the tribal and conflict-prone aspects of humanity. Equality and Self-expression: Liberals prioritize self-expression and the elimination of classes, casts, and hierarchies, aiming to give a voice to everyone, especially those who have been marginalized, in contrast to the conservative preference for tradition and established structures. Costs of Freedom: Liberals are more accepting of the costs of freedom, supporting the right to believe, act, and express oneself as one chooses, including matters of sexuality, even as this freedom can come with risks. Sensitivity to Injustice: The liberal mind is sensitive to injustices and abuses and is concerned with identifying problems within institutions and improving them, a stance that contrasts with the conservative tendency to focus on preserving established systems. Sexual Openness: Leo discusses how the liberal mind is more open and willing to experiment with sexuality, advocating for the rights of sex workers and accepting alternative sexual practices without shame or judgment. Unconcerned about Moral Decay: Liberals are unconcerned with traditional concerns of moral decay, viewing culture and morality as always evolving, whereas conservatives often worry about the preservation of traditional norms. Liberal Ideals and Vision: He describes the overarching liberal vision of making love not war, investing in economic improvement, abolishing boundaries and divisions, and working together peacefully. The aim is to uplift everyone to fulfill their potential and create a just, equitable, and global society. Realistic Perceptions of Liberalism: Finally, Leo points out that the liberal mind often doesn't see the practical survival struggles of the majority, leading to a gap in understanding between many progressive visions and the immediate concerns of less affluent populations. Meritocracy and Hierarchy: Liberals want to maintain a functional societal hierarchy but aim for a genuine meritocracy where people rise based on merit—hard work, good ideas, intelligence—rather than nepotism or tradition. Adapting to Modern Problems: Outdated systems struggle with modern issues; therefore, it's crucial to develop responsive structures that keep pace with rapid technological advances and societal evolution. Embracing Societal Evolution: Society is evolving, and resistance is counterproductive. Liberals encourage contribution to this growth in unique ways to engineer a better society or a Utopia. Long-Term Vision for Mankind: Despite current conflicts, humanity's trajectory is seen as positive, advancing technological potential and collaboration. This progress is hindered by our own resistance to change. Valuing Open-mindedness: Progress depends on openness and respect for diverse perspectives; war and conflict arise from a lack of understanding and empathy. Listing Liberal Values: Liberal values include progress, innovation, creativity, empathy, self-expression, respect for individuality, freedom, secularism, environmentalism, and love. Characteristics of the Liberal Personality: The liberal personality traits are eccentric, idealistic, open-minded, adventurous, tolerant, and creative, among other attributes favoring diversity and novelty. Imagining a Liberal-Driven Future: Envisioning a world focused on eliminating conflict and investing resources in education, healthcare, and technology for a more harmonious global society. Top Liberal Fears: Liberals fear environmental destruction, outdated systems, stagnation, authoritarianism, and the suppression of diversity and self-expression. Liberal Blind Spots: Liberals may underestimate the intelligence of existing systems like capitalism and organized religion and can be too idealistic, without addressing practical survival needs. Incorporating Less-Developed Perspectives: Liberal minds can struggle to align societies that are not yet ready for progressive changes, resulting in backlash and the failure to address pragmatic everyday needs. Inequality and World Government: Addressing global inequality is critical, and implementing a sensitive world government is seen as necessary for coordinated responses to global challenges while also preserving local autonomy. Challenge of Accelerating Social Change: Liberals often push for rapid social change, which can be counterproductive. Human and social development requires appropriate timing; too fast, and may lead to backlash or traumatization, similar to forcing advanced math on a child who isn't ready. Liberal Blind Spots: Liberals encounter difficulties grounding their idealistic goals in practical reality, acknowledging that some ideas are too impractical for implementation. Struggle with Practical Execution: The liberal mindset faces challenges in the nuts-and-bolts aspect of governance and social change, such as building organizations and engaging the public beyond conceptual discussion. Integrating Less-Developed Perspectives: Liberals struggle to empathize with and integrate less-developed perspectives such as bigotry or racism, which can lead to further alienation and conflict. Understanding Global Ignorance: There's a significant liberal challenge in comprehending the depth of global ignorance and backwardness, leading to oversimplified views of such issues. Dealing with Materialism and Capitalism: Liberals find it tough to integrate concepts like materialism and capitalism into their worldview without demonizing or dismissing them. Feminine and Masculine Integration: Liberals see value in integrating femininity into leadership and society, moving away from the outdated hyper-masculine approaches that can lead to aggression and conflict. Gender Fluidity Recognition: Liberals support the notion of gender as a fluid construct, advocating for allowing individuals to safely explore their gender identity. Shift from Religion to Spirituality: Liberals favor a personal and diverse approach to spirituality over the structured confines of traditional religion, encompassing diverse practices and experiences. Acceptance of Varied Sexuality: Liberals promote comfort with different forms of sexuality, and support legal structures for gay rights, such as marriage. Capitalism as a Transition Stage: Liberals view capitalism as an imperfect system that needs to be surpassed, advocating for exploring new economic models that address systemic exploitation and inequality. Critique of Capitalism: Capitalism, despite its advancements, does not guarantee economic fairness. Hard work does not always lead to wealth, as seen with disparities between average workers and wealthy Wall Street or crypto figures. There's a need to explore systems beyond capitalism with caution to avoid creating something worse. Environmental Concerns: Serious climatologists, scientists, and intellectuals express concern regarding human impact on the environment. Issues like pollution, overfishing, deforestation, and climate change demand environmentalist actions to avoid potentially irreversible consequences. Benefits of Environmental Protection: Treating environmental issues seriously, even if some fears are overstated, results in positive outcomes like cleaner ecosystems and new green jobs. Delaying addressing these issues would result in greater challenges to overcome later. Value of Immigration: Immigration augments diversity, innovation, and culture. Historically, great ideas emanate from bustling urban centers with diverse populations. Controlled, sustainable immigration adds to a nation's strength through a rich mixture of perspectives and skills. Criminal Rehabilitation: The liberal approach favors rehabilitating criminals over mere punishment. Drawing from examples in Scandinavian countries, this approach aims to transform offenders into contributing members of society, thus reducing crime and creating a more constructive environment. Visualizing Liberal Ideals: Visualization exercises help understand liberalism's emotional appeal. They involve imagining societies ruled by empathy, where authoritarian structures are dissolved, diversity is embraced, and individuals express themselves freely without oppression, resulting in a world of peace and collective evolution towards higher consciousness. Aspiration for a Progressive Society: Liberalism strives for a society that enables individuals to live their passions and purposes, believing that societal support and education can unleash human potential, innovation, and happiness. This includes envisaging advancements in technology, culture, and exploration while fostering an open-minded world that transcends human limitations. Liberal Expression through Clothing: Leo imagines a conservative society where individuals must wear a uniform for life, asking the audience to consider the implications for self-expression and individuality. Impact of Authoritarian Repression: He encourages the audience to think about the feeling of being repressed by authority, constrained by strict rules, and to consider the impact of a Quaker-like, regimented lifestyle if it were forced upon someone for a lifetime. Historical Support of Oppressive Systems: Leo provokes thought on the consequences of supporting oppressive systems like slavery, Nazism, or segregation simply because they were part of the status quo or tradition. Living under Theocracy: He asks the audience to imagine life under theocratic rule, such as in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or under the Taliban, where spirituality is constricted and the church is interwoven with state governance. Concept of God as Infinitely Liberal: Leo presents the idea that if God is imagined as an entity of infinite liberalism — open-minded, non-judgmental, and loving — then being closed-minded could result in missing out on experiencing God. Self-Reflection on Liberal Traits: He assigns homework to listeners asking them to identify where in their lives they may be liberal, including habits around food, sex, speech, and more, regardless of their political identity. Imagination Exercises to Understand Liberalism: Leo suggests exercises to visualize a society without repressive power structures or envision an advanced alien civilization that resolves differences through evolution and higher consciousness. Misrepresentation of Liberalism by Right-Wing Media: He points out that right-wing media has distorted the understanding of liberalism, advocating for a paradigm shift away from demonization toward a deeper, non-ideological understanding of liberalism. The Complexity and Seriousness of Politics: Leo emphasizes that truly understanding politics involves engaging with political science, sociology, and epistemology, and challenges listeners to consume more in-depth intellectual content. Role of Developmental Psychology in Political Understanding: He underscores the importance of developmental psychology in grasping both individual and collective psychologies, which is crucial for understanding political dynamics. Individualism vs. Collectivism Misconception: Leo addresses the false dichotomy that conservatives are individualists and liberals are collectivists, explaining how these traits oscillate based on stages of developmental psychology. Underlying Love in Conservative and Liberal Ideologies: He posits that both ideologies are based on love, albeit manifested differently due to distinct worldviews, survival conditions, and developmental stages. Flexibility and Intelligence Over Rigid Ideological Identification: Leo urges listeners to avoid rigid ideological identity and adopt flexible approaches, applying contextually appropriate solutions that vary between conservative and liberal principles. Perennial and Complex Nature of Political Problems: Recognizing the longstanding, complex nature of political issues, he encourages deep, independent thought to navigate political systems and ideologies. Finding Intelligent Liberal Articulations and Avoiding Propagandists: Leo advises seeking intelligent liberal discussions and avoiding propagandist commentators who prioritize monetization over deep understanding. Personal Interest in Political Science and History: Leo expresses his fascination with studying social dynamics, history, and politics, seeing these studies as opportunities to apply abstract principles in understanding human social dynamics. Colloportus

Understanding The Conservative Mind https://youtu.be/L2i4hUPjUO4 "Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." - The Devil's Dictionary Understanding The Conservative Mind: Leo provides an introduction to his two-part series with the initial focus on understanding the conservative mind. The series aims to provide a deep, genuine understanding of both conservativism and liberalism from a non-partisan and non-judgmental viewpoint, aimed primarily at those who may not fully grasp the opposing ideology. Non-Partisan and Epistemological Approach: Leo emphasizes that his discussion on political ideologies is not about advocating for any particular stance but about gaining a genuine epistemological understanding of both conservative and liberal worldviews. He clarifies that political ideologies are emotionally held and should be understood as such. Broad Definitions: The terms conservative and liberal are used broadly here. 'Conservative' includes anyone right of center, while 'Liberal' includes anyone left of center. This encompasses a wide range of political persuasions within each camp, acknowledging ideological diversity and avoiding country-specific or narrow definitions. Historical and Global Context of Political Ideologies: Leo highlights the necessity of considering political ideologies beyond a narrow, modern, or American lens. He points out that conservativism and liberalism have existed for thousands of years, evolving over time, and must be understood in a broader historical and global context. Modern Misconceptions of Conservatism: Addressing recent developments within American conservativism, Leo criticizes the MAGA movement, suggesting it provides a distorted and unintelligent view of traditional conservative values, and he expresses empathy for genuine conservatives who may feel misrepresented. Genuine Inquiry into Political Ideologies: Leo challenges his audience to truly want to understand why people find conservativism, and in the next video liberalism, appealing. He cautions against simplistic and dismissive explanations, stressing that deep understanding requires moving beyond ideological bias and groupthink. Image 1 Image 2 Characteristics of the Conservative Mindset: Leo delves into the qualities of the conservative mindset, noting increased sensitivity to fear and threat, as well as a tendency to grow up in harsher environments or to benefit from the status quo. He suggests that these factors lead to brain structural differences and societal views that significantly shape conservative perspectives. Conservatism beyond Narrow Political Positions: The conservative mind is explained as reacting to a broader set of survival conditions and attitudes that have shaped its worldview over many centuries, rather than just current policy debates. This long-standing outlook is what contributes to its distinct views on societal structure and order. Purpose of Two-Part Series: Leo presents this video as the first part in a series intended to explore the foundations of political ideologies in an even-handed and comprehensive manner. He indicates that the second part will address liberalism and the importance of understanding both political views for a well-rounded political discourse. Resource Limitations: Despite wealthier nations, limited opportunities and resources persist globally. This leads conservative minds in privileged positions to defend status quo that benefits them, and their survival interest biases them toward maintaining existing systems. Correlation with Personality Traits: The conservative mindset generally aligns with conscientiousness and closeness, two of the Big Five personality traits. The former measures a preference for dutifulness and rule-following, while openness versus closeness reflects the degree of openness to new ideas. Seriousness and Practicality: Conservatives often take life seriously and follow a pragmatic approach. This is reflective of growing up or living in harsh environments where strict adherence to rules and principles is essential for survival. Need for Order, Consistency, and Stability: A conservative mind finds comfort and peace in orderliness and routine. This desire for structure influences their daily lives and perspectives and can manifest in various institutions, from the family to the military. Impact of Freedom and Structure: Leo Gura asserts that while liberals may idealize a life free from structure, prolonged periods without order can result in psychological issues. He advocates for a balance between freedom and structured order, which is central to genuine conservatism. Historical Example: Tsar Nicholas I is highlighted as a conservative figure who exemplified a strong need for order and routine, especially in military matters. His comfort in micromanagement and strict scheduling demonstrates the conservative inclination towards structure. Personal Reflection on Chaos vs. Order: Individuals are encouraged to examine their tolerance for chaos versus order, acknowledging that an organized environment can positively impact perceptions and feelings. Cleaning and organizing are small steps seen as part of the conservative path to a successful life. Process of Building a Successful Life: Leo describes a step-by-step, disciplined approach to improving one's life, starting from cleaning one's room and gradually tackling bigger challenges such as financial discipline, leading potentially to substantial personal and financial success. Safety Orientation of the Conservative Mind: The conservative mind prioritizes safety and security over the excitement of adventures, displaying a lower tolerance for risk and unpredictability as compared to the liberal mind that seeks adventure. Conservative Preference for Routine and Familiarity: Leo illustrates the conservative tendency towards preferring routine and known experiences over exploration and change, such as eating the same food or visiting the same places regularly. Conservative Emphasis on Confidence and Certainty: The conservative mindset values confidence, certainty, and convention, preferring to hold firm beliefs and having a closed mindset that is resistant to questioning or doubt. Value of Discipline and Consistency in Conservatism: The conservative approach to life, work, and art projects emphasizes the importance of discipline, strictness, and following through on plans, contrasting with a liberal perspective that may seek more novelty and lack persistence. Conservatism's Connection to Identity and Tradition: Leo explains that conservatives find satisfaction in fitting into pre-existing societal structures like family, heritage, and culture, and feel joy in maintaining these traditions rather than inventing new ones. Anxiety Regarding Uncertainty in Conservative Thought: The conservative mindset experiences discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity, showing preference for stability and predictability. Limited Circle of Compassion in the Conservative Mind: According to Leo, conservatives have a smaller sphere of compassion, focusing empathy primarily on their in-group, seeing threats in the out-group, and generally adopting a less expansive view of empathy relative to liberals. Conservative View on Character Building and Self-Reliance: The conservative worldview stresses the notion that hardship and self-reliance build character, and opposes the idea of handouts or relying on others' empathy as a means to succeed in life. Military Analogy for Conservative Discipline: Leo uses the military as an example of conservative principles in action, highlighting the necessity for self-reliance, discipline, and a small sphere of concern in high-stakes environments where survival and order are crucial. Conservative approach to unconditional love: The conservative mind prioritizes survival and holds that love should be limited and conditional, in contrast to the unconditional love often associated with spiritual teachings. Gura explains that unconditional love can conflict with survival, making it a less feasible choice in the realm of politics and survival-oriented situations. Spectrum of conservatism and liberalism: Gura emphasizes that conservatism and liberalism exist on a spectrum, where even the most progressive individuals have limitations in their acceptance and openness. He illustrates this by suggesting that even when considered from a progressive viewpoint, certain ideas, like Nazism as a form of love, are rejected, indicating conservative resistance at a certain threshold of liberalism. Moralism and self-righteousness in conservatism: The conservative mind leans towards moral absolutism and judgment. Adhering to a strict moral code leads to a sense of self-righteousness among conservatives, often manifesting in critical judgments of those who do not follow their moral standards. Preference for clear moral guidelines: Conservatives favor well-defined moral codes that simplify decision-making. They view the world more in terms of black and white rather than moral gray areas, preferring the comfort and certainty of clear distinctions over the complexities of moral relativism. Conservative metaphysics, epistemology, and morality: Conservatives hold a view of reality and knowledge as fixed and absolute. Their moral perspective is rooted in objective duality, drawing strict distinctions between concepts such as good and evil, or man and God, thus shaping their perspective on social issues such as the transgender debate. Conservative fear of blurring societal norms: There are concerns in conservative thinking about the potentially dangerous outcomes of blurring established normative boundaries, fearing that this could lead to societal confusion and chaos. This mindset heavily influences their stance on topics like gender and sexuality. Belief in fixed human nature and resistance to change: Gura points to the conservative belief that human nature is unchanging and rigid, leading to skepticism about human-made innovations like genetic engineering or man-machine interfaces and the potentially serious risks they pose. Conservatism and risk assessment: The conservative approach emphasizes the dangers of the unknown and advocates caution, especially in fields like genetic engineering and technological augmentation, advocating for a conservative stance to mitigate potential threats and maintain safety. Conservative View of Natural Order: Conservatives view the natural order and moral laws as not just societal constructions, but as intrinsic or god-given aspects of human life that should not be altered haphazardly. They prioritize duty to adhere to these principles as essential to maintaining a good and healthy society. Conservative Understanding of Rules and Traditions: The conservative mindset emphasizes the importance of following established rules and traditions, equating change or deviation with the potential degradation of society and a disrespect of what has been proven to work over time. Resistance to Change in the Conservative View: In the view of conservatives, novel innovations (like "ostrich meat pizza") are seen as risky and often unnecessary when traditional approaches (such as "classic pepperoni pizza") are already successful. They value tried-and-tested methods over experimentation, fearing the outcome of change could be worse than the status quo. Moral Framework in Conservative Ideology: Conservatives typically believe in a clear moral framework, often religious in nature, and consider the preservation and enforcement of this framework as the basis of societal welfare and personal conduct. Those outside their defined moral tribe are judged as bad by default. Dynamics of Conservatism in Religion and State: Conservative thought often involves a blend of religious orthodoxy with state governance, endorsing the idea of religious values shaping laws and public life. They see separation from these values as a potential path to a morally corrupt society. Conservative Views on National Identity and Patriotism: Loyalty to one's country and preserving national symbols and values are of high importance to conservatives. They view challenges to national identity as a threat to society's survival, and regard the questioning of the status quo akin to betrayal or disloyalty. Fear of Moral Decay in Conservatism: Conservatives harbor deep concern for social decadence and justifications for maintaining order through external structures like rules and traditions. They believe this is essential to prevent societal collapse and moral degeneration. Perception of People's Nature in Conservative Thought: The conservative mindset upholds the belief that most people are followers who need strict external guidelines to behave morally, like clear condemnation and enforcement against actions such as rape, to supplement internal moral compasses. Conservative Response to Societal Changes: The conservative paradigm involves apprehension towards changes that could disrupt traditional structures and norms, such as increases in non-heteronormative lifestyles or the loss of clear behavioral constraints that enforce societal order. Conservative Concerns over Homosexuality: Conservatives worry that increased acceptance of homosexuality could lead to disease spread, family breakdown, and population sustainability issues. They advocate for preemptive enforcement of heterosexual norms to avoid what they perceive as significant societal problems. Trade-offs of Political Standpoints: Leo highlights that both liberal and conservative positions on issues like gay marriage, sex, and abortion involve trade-offs, where neither side presents an absolute solution. Extremes in either direction can cause societal issues. Conservative Views on Technology and Social Order: The conservative mind often fears new technology for potentially disrupting established social orders. For conservatives, the risks of new technology like genetic engineering or social media are as concerning as its benefits, warranting a protective stance. In-group Conformity and Authority in Conservatism: Conservatives value fitting in with their group, showing respect for authority, and favoring a more authoritarian and patriarchal system. They often see their culture as superior and feel uncomfortable with foreign cultures, focusing on preserving ethnic identity. Masculine vs. Feminine Compassion in Conservatism: The conservative mindset typically practices "tough love" with an emphasis on masculine compassion. It prefers discipline and order for raising children over permissive approaches, believing these prevent moral ambiguity and lead to better outcomes. Conservative Disdain for Weakness and Preference for Harsh Justice: Conservatives generally disdain weakness and prefer harsher forms of justice. They support strict rule enforcement, believing leniency and mercy can lead to societal collapse. Conservative Attitudes Toward Violence and War: The conservative mind is more inclined to use violence, seeing it as a necessary part of survival and maintaining order. It is less sentimental about war and views it as justified in the name of morality or suppressing chaos. Conservative Outlook on the World and Survival: The conservative worldview sees the world as dangerous and values obedience, self-reliance, and discipline. It prefers preserving the status quo and the existing social order and shows caution toward innovation. Tradition and Gradualism in Conservative Philosophy: Tradition represents collective wisdom to conservatives, and they view social harmony as crucial. They are suspicious of utopian promises and prefer gradual change to revolutionary upheaval. Realism and Pessimism in the Conservative Mindset: Conservatives are realistic about human nature's brutality, adopting a more protective stance, which includes a strong focus on military defense, distrust of ambitious social engineering, and the stability of existing social structures. Conservative vs. Liberal Perspectives on Diplomacy and Defense: Conservatives believe in strong actions, like pre-emptive invasion, to prevent being overpowered, whereas liberals often advocate for diplomacy and disarmament, trusting that non-aggression will maintain peace. Conservative View on Free Speech: Traditionally, conservatives may restrict free speech to prevent societal chaos, as seen in conservative-led countries. They view unlimited free speech as potentially leading to civil unrest or undermining authority and stability. The Conservative Stance on Authoritarian Control: Authoritarian rulers, often viewed as conservative, restrict freedoms to maintain power and prevent factional conflict, as historically seen in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Conservative thought values unity and order, even if enforced through repression. Misconceptions about Conservative Support for Freedom: American conservatives may claim to support freedom, but traditionally, conservatism is skeptical of unfettered freedom due to its potential to cause chaos and deplete cultural or societal structures. Conservative Philosophy on Self-Interest and Workplace Hierarchy: The conservative mindset perceives individuals as inherently self-interested, hence justifying a hierarchical workplace model with authoritarian leadership, mirroring their belief in the necessity of strong parental figures for discipline. Conservative Preference for Caution in High-Stakes Situations: Conservatism promotes a cautious, risk-averse approach in critical situations, such as surgeries or child protection, where the consequences of error are severe, contrasting with a more liberal approach in low-stakes contexts. View of the Conservative Mind on Strength and Discipline: The conservative worldview respects strength, discipline, order, and traditional gender roles, viewing any deviation, especially in sexual behavior, as potentially harmful and requiring control through guilt and shaming. Conservative Mind's Fear of the Inner and Outer World: Conservatives fear both external dangers and the inner landscape of radical thoughts, shying away from introspection that might reveal contradictions or cognitive dissonance, indicative of the mindset's lower cognitive complexity and discomfort with ambiguity. Conservative Thought and Cognitive Complexity: The conservative mind tends toward ordered and rigid thinking, struggles with multi-perspectivalism, and maintains a disregard for the abstract, fearing uncertainty and requiring mental closure more than their liberal counterparts. Conservative views on substance use and societal norms: The conservative mind associates lax attitudes towards intoxicants with societal issues such as rape and fatal accidents. They believe that in certain cultures, strict norms like not permitting women to wear revealing clothes are protective rather than oppressive. Artistic and aesthetic conservatism: The conservative preference leans towards traditional, representational, and less abstract art and music. Abstract forms may cause discomfort as they lack a single, definitive interpretation, which contradicts the conservative desire for clarity and concreteness. Status quo appreciation: Conservatives tend to value and defend the current societal systems, such as social hierarchies and class structures. There's a belief that social strata and inequities are justified by the natural hierarchy among humans according to their abilities and values. Conservative view on societal inequalities: The conservative mindset accepts societal inequalities as inherent, believing that some people naturally surpass others in generating value and leading effectively. They defend keeping certain groups in positions of power or worth while others are deemed fit for lesser roles. Conservative fear of external threats: There is a pronounced fear of dangers from outside the tribe, including foreign cultures and influences, leading to xenophobia and a preference for protecting one's in-group resources. Conservative resistance to diversity: The conservative mind sees diversity as potentially confusing and chaotic, resulting in general discomfort with multiculturalism and a tendency to view immigrants and foreign influences negatively. Control through punishment and rewards: Conservatives advocate for clear consequences for behavior, believing in strict law enforcement and punishment for transgressors to maintain societal order, contrasting liberal empathy for minor offenses. Nostalgia for tradition and national glory: Conservatives have a strong emotional attachment to their homeland and traditional values, often longing for a return to perceived better times when societal norms were unchallenged. Fiscal conservatism: The conservative principle of fiscal responsibility emphasizes the government's duty not to burden future generations with debt. Characteristics of conservative values and personality: Core conservative values include family, tradition, order, obedience, loyalty, discipline, and security. Personality-wise, conservatives are described as persistent, stable, hardworking, and less open to new experiences. Conservative worldview shaped by harsh conditions: Growing up in adverse conditions can engender a conservative worldview focused on survival, defense against threats, and a pessimistic view of human nature that values preemptive actions against potential dangers. Glorification of toughness and authority: Conservatives idealize symbols of strength such as violence, guns, sports, the military, and authoritarian figures, seeing them as necessary for survival and societal order. Conservative approach to arms races: Faced with an arms race, conservatives tend to prefer demonstrating strength and dominance to ensure security, opposing disarmament in favor of a show of power as a deterrent. Conservative and Liberal Solutions to Conflict: The conservative approach to international conflict, such as during the Cold War, is to outpace the opposition through military and technological superiority. This contrasts with the liberal approach that emphasizes empathy and diplomacy, which conservatives may view as too weak in the face of opposing groups like 'cavemen', who only respect force. Conservatism in the Scientific Community: Scientists often exhibit a conservative temperament, not in the political sense but in their careful and meticulous approach to their work. This conservatism upholds the integrity of scientific methods and institutions but can also inhibit groundbreaking discoveries due to its focus on detail over a more ambitious, holistic understanding of reality. Conservative Fears: The conservative mindset is influenced by fears of disorder, change, sin, loss of power and control, foreigners, alien cultures, loss of objective reality, and other elements that disrupt the perceived social order. These fears shape conservative thoughts and actions, leading to a preference for stability and tradition. Conservative Blind Spots: Conservatives may overestimate the dangers of change and underestimate the risks of the status quo, lacking empathy for those oppressed by the current systems. Their narrow circle of empathy can lead to a failure to recognize disadvantages until personally affected. Excessive conformity to man-made constructions and blind obedience to authoritarian figures are also key conservative weaknesses. Struggles of the Conservative Worldview: The conservative mind has difficulty grappling with conceptually fluid, abstract, and paradoxical ideas. It prefers clear, rigid distinctions and may resist emotional openness and spontaneity. Such a mindset can become overly attached to a singular survival strategy, potentially restricting its ability to adapt to societal changes. Conservative Perspective on Social and Cultural Topics: Embodying a conservative perspective, views on feminism, transgenderism, and other societal issues are often interpreted as potential threats to the stability of traditional social structures, such as the family unit and gender roles. The conservative mindset values maintaining established norms and roles, fearing the impact of altering these fundamental societal pillars. Conservative perspective on transgenderism: The conservative viewpoint is troubled by transgenderism due to its potential to blur traditional gender norms, creating confusion, especially among young people. This perspective values tradition, certainty, and stable identities over the perceived chaos of limitless freedom and self-invention. Conservative critique of atheism and secularism: From the conservative standpoint, atheism leads to secularism, which prompts materialistic lifestyles lacking transcendental meaning. Secularism is seen to degrade society's moral standards, leading to a preoccupation with money, sex, and technology instead of higher purposes. Conservative view on socialism and Marxism: Conservatives see socialism and Marxism as fundamentally flawed due to human nature's hierarchical tendencies. They argue that these systems ignore the reality that some individuals create more value than others and hence deserve more rewards. Attempts at implementing socialism are deemed utopian and have historically required authoritarian measures that ultimately failed to produce their intended egalitarian outcomes. Conservative perspective on immigration: Conservatism regards unrestricted immigration as a threat to the stability of developed nations, potentially overwhelming infrastructures and diluting national culture and identity. Conservatives emphasize the importance of protecting cultural homogeneity for social cohesion and international competitiveness. Conservative take on criminal punishment: The conservative ethos advocates for harsh punishments for criminals to maintain societal order and prevent chaos. Any leniency is viewed as undermining the legal system's authority and potentially leading to more crime. Conservative stance on environmentalism: Prioritizing economic stability and human welfare, conservatives argue against stringent environmental regulations that could cause economic downturns and increase human suffering. They assert that human innovation will deal with environmental challenges without risking immediate material well-being. Personal conservatism: Leo reflects on his personal life, citing instances of his own conservative approach regarding discipline in education, fitness, relationships, saving money, and spiritual pursuits. He believes these disciplined, conservative choices set up the foundation for his future success and financial independence. Conservative Approach to Consciousness Exploration: Leo describes his conservative approach to exploring consciousness and warns against underestimating its complexity. He advocates for taking a cautious and serious stance, aiming to overshoot rather than undershoot understanding to avoid self-deception. Conservative Emotional Attachments: Leo experiences deep nostalgia when visiting his hometown, reminiscent of conservative values that treasure family, culture, and national pride. He suggests this feeling of nostalgia is frequent for conservatives and influences their attitudes towards preserving heritage. Conservatism in Work and Psychedelics: Leo identifies his conservative treatment of actualized.org and psychedelics as areas where he is cautious. He approaches psychedelics with gravitas and continuous learning, contrasting with those who treat such experiences frivolously. Visualization Exercises for Conservative Appeal: A series of quick exercises designed to help viewers recognize the emotional appeal of conservatism, including challenges faced during upbringing, pride in one’s tribe achievements, the negative consequences of revolutions, and the importance of discipline and seriousness in raising children. Contemplating Personal Conservatism: Leo invites viewers to reflect on aspects of their lives where they are conservative, acknowledging that everyone has areas where they prefer tried and true methods over innovation, exhibit practicality over idealism, and hold pessimistic views on human nature. Acknowledgment of Intelligent Conservatism: Leo distinguishes between "dumb" conservative strawmen and intelligent formulations of conservative thought. He encourages seeking out and listening to robust conservative articulations to understand and appreciate the perspective. Series Recommendations for Deeper Political Understanding: Leo recommends his video series on conscious politics, spiral dynamics, ego development, and democracy versus authoritarianism. These resources integrate spirituality, philosophy, and psychology with social and political issues for a holistic understanding. Anticipation of Understanding the Liberal Mind: Mentioning the upcoming second part of the series, Leo hints at discussing the liberal mind, emphasizing the importance of understanding both conservative and liberal perspectives for a comprehensive view of politics. Confundo

An Intro To Serious Philosophy - Top Advice For Philosophers https://youtu.be/InmNW96qcUk There is only one serious philosophical question, which is: What is Consciousness? And that is because, Consciousness is all there is. Introduction to the episode: Leo shares that this video will offer invaluable advice on how to engage with philosophy seriously. He intends to provide a lifetime of tips to help save years of effort for aspiring philosophers. Philosophical background: Leo describes his personal journey in philosophy, starting in his mid-teens through university and onwards, highlighting a self-taught approach that led to a deep understanding and a successful career. Meta philosophy: Leo introduces the concept of meta philosophy, reflecting on the methods and processes of doing philosophy correctly, including questioning the correctness of philosophical practices. Philosophy as a quest for absolute truth: He boldly claims that he used philosophy to achieve an absolute understanding of reality, a claim contrary to traditional academic views of philosophy as endless debate. Personal story and introduction to philosophy: Leo recounts his childhood experiences discussing existential topics with his family, sparking his deep curiosity about stars, evolution, technology, and the nature of existence. Animal consciousness and human arrogance: Questions about animal consciousness led Leo to ponder human biases and the level of understanding animals might possess compared to humans. Levels of consciousness: Reflecting on the varying degrees of consciousness in animals, Leo considers the limitations of a mouse or an ant's awareness of reality and extrapolates this to question how much humans truly understand. Leo Gura's inquisitive nature: From a young age, Leo was fascinated by deep existential topics, engaging in spirited family discussions on philosophical and existential questions during road trips. Passion for existential dialogue: He discovered his passion for life was ignited by these profound conversations, more so than any other activity, a realization that guided him towards his life's purpose of seeking understanding. Debates on religion and God: In high school, Leo's dialogues with a devoutly religious friend led him to contemplate the nature and existence of God, sparking an interest in epistemology and the foundational aspect of how we know what we know. Early philosophical explorations: His first philosophical book was an encyclopedia of philosophy, leading him to ponder various philosophical schools and their conflicting views. He aimed not just to know philosophy but to understand the truth about reality itself. Contemplating reality and belief systems: Leo spent many late nights contemplating reality's nature, which led him to realize that all belief systems, including science and religion, are ultimately groundless and circularly justified. Skepticism and the quest for understanding: Resonating most with skepticism, or pyrrhonism, he questioned the very possibility of knowing anything about reality, leading to an exceedingly skeptical and uncertain standpoint. Challenges in philosophy: The challenge of writing a philosophy book and the realization of the inherent limitations within his system led to a struggle to create something positively constructive about reality. Insights into academic philosophy: University study and research into becoming a professional philosopher revealed the limitations and bureaucracy of the academic system, which he saw as corrupt and not conducive to the pursuit of true philosophy. Rejection of academia and transition to video game design: Leo chose integrity over compromise, rejecting a career in academia for independent pursuit of philosophy and transitioning to video game design, seeking a creative path without external influence. Achieving Financial Independence: Leo Gura focused on building a business to secure financial autonomy, enabling him to pursue his interests without financial constraints. Self-Education and Personal Development: Upon gaining financial independence, Leo immersed himself in self-education, reading non-fiction and exploring personal development. Neglected Aspects of Personal Life: Leo admits that his intense focus on understanding reality led him to overlook relationships and dating until his mid-20s. Introduction to Pickup and Practical Philosophy: While improving his dating life, Leo was introduced to philosophical concepts through Owen Cook's teachings, which reignited his passion for philosophy and influenced the foundation of Actualized.org. The 'Most Dangerous Book' and Enlightenment: A forum post led Leo to read 'Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing' by Jed McKenna, which impacted him profoundly, teaching him about enlightenment and reshaping his view of reality. Link Between Early Contemplation and Enlightenment: The concept of enlightenment resonated with Leo's past deep contemplations on epistemology and the groundless nature of beliefs. Diverse Developments in Gura’s Life: After becoming a life coach and delving into meditation, Leo launched Actualized.org while researching philosophy, personal development, psychology, and observing interconnections among these domains. Enlightenment and Experiences Beyond Conventional Reality: During a vipassana retreat, Leo had a sober enlightenment experience that revealed a new dimension to reality. Psychedelics further expanded his understanding of existence. Claim of Achieving Omniscience: Through extensive practice in various disciplines, Leo claims to have reached a complete and absolute understanding of existence, which he calls 'omniscience.' Critique of Western Philosophy and Universities: After achieving 'omniscience,' Leo perceives traditional Western philosophy and academia as deeply flawed and incapable of leading to the true aim of philosophy. Leo’s Philosophical Journey as a Blueprint for Aspiring Philosophers: Sharing his journey, Leo aims to provide insights for those interested in philosophy to see if his path resonates with them. The Innate Drive for Philosophy: Leo emphasizes that philosophy should be pursued out of an insatiable curiosity and a love for pure understanding for its sake. Philosophy’s Fundamental Role and Value: He considers philosophy to be the root of all knowledge, more fundamental than science, and essential for deeply questioning reality beyond what is commonly accepted. The Meaning and Depth of Philosophy: For Leo, the depth one finds through philosophical inquiry is the most meaningful aspect of life, distinguishing profound thinkers from those occupied with superficial pursuits. The Essence of Philosophy: The core of philosophy is relentless questioning, which enables the discovery of profound truths about reality. It's a process of inquiry that can lead to legitimate answers, rather than just speculation or ideology. Human Advantage in Questioning: Humans uniquely possess the ability to question reality deeply, a trait that separates us from other species like mice, which likely do not possess this function. This capability is not merely linguistic but can lead to substantive understanding. Questioning as a Superpower: Asking questions is a superpower most people underutilize. Philosophers, by contrast, master the art of deliberate and deep questioning, which can lead to transformative insights and understanding. Artful Questioning: Leo encourages viewing questioning as an art form to be cultivated, rather than a tool invoked only for pragmatic or self-serving purposes like acquiring sex or wealth. Sample Philosophical Questions: Leo lists various intriguing and diverse philosophical questions to stimulate curiosity and encourage personal inquiry into fundamental existential topics. Philosophy's Suitability: Philosophy is appropriate for those who possess an insatiable curiosity about fundamental existential questions and find joy in seeking pure understanding and engaging in profound discussions. Fields of Philosophy: Philosophy includes diverse areas such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and morality, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of science, logic and mathematics, religion, philosophy of mind, psychology, sociology, history, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy of language. Philosophy Requires Work and Genuine Insights: Effective philosophy is distinguished from mere speculation through genuine observation and insights. It requires an open and unbiased mind, free from preconceived notions and cultural programming. Questioning vs. Assumptions: Philosophy is about questioning the nature of reality rigorously, rather than clinging to speculations or beliefs. To do philosophy effectively, one must be willing to question every cultural and ideological assumption. Open-mindedness in Philosophy: Philosophers must be radically open-minded and free from biases and cultural programming to observe and understand reality accurately. Confronting even deeply held beliefs such as the shape of the Earth is necessary to safeguard against self-deception. The Complexity of Fundamental Questions: Fundamental questions on topics like nature, light, and life which appear simple are deeply complex upon closer examination. Understanding such questions demands extensive contemplation and recognition of their intricate nature. The Effort in Philosophical Practice: Philosophy requires the same dedication and practice as mastering any other skill, such as sports or arts. A philosopher must spend thousands of hours deeply questioning and contemplating to develop a genuine understanding. Philosophy and Self-Deception: Many fall into the trap of convincing themselves they are great philosophers without the necessary practice. To avoid this, one must recognize and address self-deception mechanisms like confirmation bias and projection. Developing Philosophical Skills: Effective questioning and thinking skills are not innate; they must be developed. Observation and contemplation, utilising thought experiments, and exploring diverse perspectives contribute to building these essential philosophical skills. Philosophy as Improvement of Thinking: Philosophy aims to improve the quality of one's general thinking across various domains of life, differentiating from specialized thinking in fields like mathematics or engineering. Philosophical Work and Observation: Accomplishing philosophical work involves a balance of contemplation and neutral observation of both external reality and the workings of the mind, leading to deeper understanding and insights. Philosophy and Exploration of Perspectives: By exploring various perspectives and viewpoints beyond one's own, the philosopher gains a broader understanding and avoids creating an echo chamber of reinforcing self-beliefs. Questioning as a Philosophical Method: Questioning all assumptions and conducting thought experiments are essential practices for philosophers. It is through powerful questions that one delves deeper into understanding reality. Integrity and Self-Reflection in Philosophy: Philosophers must rigorously practice self-reflection to observe and correct their thought processes. Philosophy entails going meta to recognize and rule out biases and ensure honest pursuit of truth. Philosophy Is Not Mere Speculation: True philosophy extends beyond mere armchair speculation and strives for concrete verification and understanding, distinguishing it from casual guessing, which does not contribute to a genuine quest for truth. Real Philosophy vs. Armchair Speculation: Real philosophy involves an active pursuit of truth, such as a flat-earther willing to spend substantial money to personally verify the Earth's shape. This contrasts with those who merely reinforce existing biases without seeking genuine answers. Intellectual Integrity and Truth: The hallmark of a serious philosopher is a deeply honest desire for truth, including the willingness to surrender personally held ideas and admit being wrong, which most people resist due to preference for comfort over truth. Distinguishing Inquiry from Rationalization: True philosophical inquiry involves active questioning to grasp truths, as opposed to rationalization, where one concocts stories to confirm pre-existing beliefs rather than engage in genuine seeking. Avoiding Debating and Critiquing as Philosophy: Debating, critiquing, and debunking others' philosophies are not true philosophy because they focus on arguing and rationalizing rather than generating new insights and deep personal observation. History of Philosophy vs. Genuine Inquiry: Academic philosophy focused on the scholarship of deciphering ancient texts and interpreting past philosophers does not equate to the genuine inquiry required for understanding fundamental questions. The Pitfalls of Technicalities in Philosophy: Getting bogged down in technicalities can cause a philosopher to miss the larger picture. Philosophy is about grasping the big picture of existential reality, not just minor technical details. Avoiding Personality Cults in Philosophy: True philosophy is not about admiration for philosophers or their credentials but about the ideas themselves and how deeply one understands the fundamental aspects of reality, self, and consciousness. Philosophy and Theoretical Escapism: Using philosophy as a means of escaping practical life challenges is misguided. A grounded philosopher engages with reality, applying philosophical insights to business, relationships, and personal challenges. Synthesizing Theory and Practice: Deep theoretical work in philosophy should be balanced with ample practice, allowing practical experiences to inform and ground one's philosophical work, ensuring it does not become disconnected from reality. Philosophy Embodiment: Genuine philosophy transforms an individual deeply, affecting their emotional system, interactions, self-perception, capacity to love, and overall wellbeing, beyond just theoretical understanding. Philosophy's Impact on Personal Change: Philosophical inquiry can lead to personal behavior changes as it challenges existing beliefs and habits, making it uncomfortable for many who prefer philosophy as a conceptual rather than transformative tool. Responsibility and Consequences in Philosophy: Engaging in serious philosophy often leads to taking greater responsibility for one's actions and making significant life changes, such as altering diet due to ethical realizations or leaving a job for moral reasons. Philosophy's Threat to Comfort and Status Quo: The profound insights gained from serious philosophy can be so disruptive that they may lead individuals to question their sanity, as it threatens established lifestyles, careers, and personal relationships. Philosophy versus Political Activism and Power Games: Philosophy should not be about achieving political goals or engaging in power dynamics but rather about the pursuit of pure understanding, without concern for consequences or gaining power. Bias Towards Truth in Philosophy: Leo advocates for a philosophy that is ruthlessly committed to truth, even if it means facing daunting truths that could lead to outcomes like insanity, for the sake of genuine understanding. Pure Philosophy Defined: Pure philosophy is unconcerned with historical figures or ideologies, focusing solely on the merit of ideas to understand reality. It requires an infinite open-mindedness and willingness to challenge every assumption, no matter the potential radical consequences. Core Questions of Pure Philosophy: The fundamental questions of pure philosophy question the very possibility of existence, understanding what existence means, the origins of the self, the nature of consciousness, and what constitutes a well-lived life. Complete Understanding as a Philosophical End Point: Leo claims that with correct practice, philosophy can lead to a complete understanding of oneself and reality, answering every existential question precisely as it exists. Philosophy Is Radical and Dangerous: In pure philosophy, the pursuit of understanding is prioritized above all else, including societal norms and personal biases. It acknowledges the dangerous nature of this pursuit but continues unflinchingly for the truth. Importance of Overcoming Self-Deception in Philosophy: Recognizing and transcending personal biases is fundamental in pure philosophy for accurately understanding reality, making self-deception a continual area of focus for the philosopher. Avoiding Narrow Specialization in Philosophy: Leo Gura cautions against getting trapped in the minutiae of philosophy at the expense of missing out on the big, core questions that define the field. He urges philosophers to balance their specific interests with an overarching focus on the fundamental questions of philosophy. Techniques for Serious Philosophers: He outlines several critical techniques for philosophers: sitting in solitude and contemplating deeply, improving the ability to ask powerful questions, emphasizing simplicity and clarity to cut through confusion and jargon, and demonstrating the ability to communicate complex concepts simply. Radical Skepticism and Study: Leo advocates for radical skepticism—questioning everything, including one's own ideas and skepticism itself. He also suggests studying a broad range of philosophies to gain an overview of the intellectual landscape. Open-mindedness and Questioning Science: Emphasizes the necessity for radical open-mindedness and the importance of questioning scientific assumptions as if they were religious claims, underscoring that serious philosophers should never accept scientific models or ideas at face value. Use of Psychedelics: He makes a bold claim that without psychedelics, one cannot understand the true nature of reality, asserting that it is essential for philosophers to engage in psychedelic experiences. Keeping a Commonplace Book and Meditation: Advises keeping a commonplace book for notes and quotes, writing down major insights, and engaging in serious meditation practice for inward focus and understanding the mind. Psychology, Sociology, and Language Mastery: Stresses the importance of psychology and sociology for understanding the mind's biases and cultural programming, as well as mastering language and articulation to precisely communicate philosophical ideas. Engaging with High-Quality Minds and Intellectual Dialogue: Leo recommends engaging in existential conversations and philosophical dialogues with high-quality minds rather than getting involved in ideological debates, which can stifle philosophical growth. Engagement with Intellectuals: Leo recommends avoiding online debates in favor of seeking personal interactions with like-minded people who have an interest in profound existential topics, especially at universities or spiritual circles; using offline, Skype, or in-person meetings for deeper conversations. Writing Philosophy: Writing out thoughts and ideas on paper is advised as it helps organize and clarify one's philosophical ideas, making self-deception less likely. Public Speaking and Teaching Philosophy: Starting a blog or YouTube channel and joining public speaking groups like Toastmasters can refine and simplify one's philosophical ideas. Teaching philosophy can significantly enhance one's own understanding. Balancing Philosophy with Practical Life: Leo insists not to use philosophy as an escape from practical life responsibilities such as jobs and relationships. Developing practical skills alongside philosophical thought is essential. Avoiding Dogma in Philosophy: True philosophy should not be used to defend any particular dogma or ideology; instead, it should pursue truth and be willing to dispense with any pet theories. Simplicity and Clarity in Philosophy: Keeping philosophical concepts simple and clear is vital. If one cannot explain their ideas simply to a child, they likely do not fully understand the concepts themselves. Centrality of Consciousness: Consciousness is a fundamental concept in philosophy, and understanding it is key to not getting lost in less important philosophical considerations. A direct experience of consciousness is crucial. Cultivating Open-mindedness: Being open-minded is crucial in philosophy, as it allows for a wider range of exploration and understanding. Enjoying the Philosophical Process: Embrace the journey of philosophy; it's not about rushing to an end but about enjoying the process of inquiry and contemplation. Embodying Philosophy: Philosophy should not be purely academic; it should be lived out and reflected in one's daily actions and decisions. Beware of Self-deception: Self-deception is a significant obstacle in philosophy; being aware of one's own biases is essential for honest inquiry. Philosophical Practical Insights: While philosophy often deals with abstract existential questions, it can also offer practical insights that can improve aspects of one's life such as making money, enhancing self-esteem, or fostering happiness. Be an Original Thinker: Encourages philosophers to think independently, using ideas from ancient philosophers without becoming attached to their schools of thought. Prioritize Contemplation Over Reading: Contemplation is viewed as more beneficial than extensive reading, being a more powerful tool for philosophical insight. Avoid Attachment to Single Philosophies: Warns against the entrapment of any one school of philosophy, such as Buddhism, as this can lead to groupthink and dogmatic adherence. Philosophy Should Be Simple and Pure: Emphasizes the need for focusing on pure ideas and insights rather than getting lost in the complex language of dense technical philosophy. Integration of Disciplines for Holistic Understanding: Suggests an omniscient grasp of reality can be achieved by integrating diverse disciplines, including philosophy, science, religion, mysticism, spirituality, self-help, psychology, and sociology. Use Wikipedia for Philosophical Summaries: Wikipedia is recommended for quickly grasping the key ideas of philosophers without the need to delve into their dense writings. Study Self-Help Alongside Philosophy: Leo advises combining self-help with philosophy to make it more personal, practical, and impacting on one's life. Avoid Over-specialization: Stresses the importance of studying the big picture across various fields and philosophies to create an integrated understanding, rather than siloing into over-specialization. Philosophies Worth Studying: Lists skepticism, pyrrhonism, idealism, relativism, political philosophy, Eastern philosophies, Zen, Buddhism, Hindu philosophies like Vedanta, and Zogchen as philosophies worth one's time. Philosophies and Philosophers Worth Studying: Leo acknowledges the value in studying fields such as mysticism, non-duality, meditation techniques, monism, solipsism, and yoga. Philosophers he regards highly include Heraclitus, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Plotinus, Sextus Empiricus, Hegel, German idealists post-Hegel (excluding Kant), George Berkeley, Berkeley's namesake, Thomas Nagel, Paul Feyerabend, Willard Van Orman Quine, Spinoza, William James, Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber, and Peter Ralston. Overrated Philosophers: Leo criticizes philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, post-modernists like Derrida, logical positivists, Wittgenstein, Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Machiavelli, Sartre, Camus, American pragmatists like Peirce, Ayn Rand, Richard Rorty, Confucius, Husserl, and Rousseau. He advises against spending much time studying these philosophers, suggesting Wikipedia summaries as sufficient. Combination of Philosophies Closest to Truth: Leo lists idealism, panpsychism, pantheism, monism, non-duality, Zen Buddhism, Vedanta, radical skepticism, Pyrrhonism, holism, relativism, Hindu idealism, solipsism, subjectivism, and phenomenology as elements that, when combined, point closest to absolute truth. Actualized.org as a Philosophy: Leo considers his work on Actualized.org, developed with the intention of creating an advanced, sophisticated, and accurate philosophy, as superior to the entire canon of Western philosophy. He invites people to compare his work to traditional philosophical giants. Philosophy as Mental Masturbation: Leo addresses the criticism of philosophy as merely mental masturbation, contending that when practiced properly, it is practical, transformative, and can improve various areas of life such as money-making, relationships, emotional mastery, happiness, and communication. Ultimate Aim of Philosophy: He asserts that the highest goal of philosophy is omniscience, existential understanding, and absolute truth, considering it the most valuable pursuit for a human. Philosophy, he adds, can be used to avoid cultural programming and lead to eventual understanding, love, and breaking free from social constructs. Cultivation of Mind and Intellect: Leo expresses immense joy from cultivating his intellect, which brings greater satisfaction than physical pleasures or monetary gains. He emphasizes the beauty of intellect and the potential depth of cultivation. Philosophies Deemed Incorrect: He categorizes philosophies such as dualism, atheism, behaviorism, and materialism, among others, as fundamentally incorrect. Advice Against Academic Philosophy: Leo recommends against pursuing a career as an academic philosopher within the university system, which he believes does not align with the pursuit of truth. However, he acknowledges that it is possible to have a successful philosophical career outside of academia. Opportunities in Philosophy: Opportunities for a career in philosophy exist for those who are endeavoring enough, although it's recognized as being competitive. Age and Philosophy: Leo Gura believes there's no age limit to start doing philosophy, suggesting starting young is beneficial, while older age lends a different importance to philosophical questions as material pursuits diminish. Downsides of Doing Philosophy: Risks of philosophy include turning it into an echo chamber, becoming ideologically deluded, or neglecting practical life aspects like relationships and survival needs. Starting with Philosophy: To start with philosophy, study diverse philosophies in summary, decide on questions of interest, engage in independent contemplation, observe mental processes, and be honest about biases and deceptions. Transforming Power of Philosophy: Philosophy must be transformative, leading to a deep understanding that goes beyond being human and towards transcending death. Recommended Resources: Leo directs listeners to "How to Discover What's True," his science deconstruction series, and an upcoming episode on 'bootstrapping' to further understand serious philosophical work. Exploration on Actualized.org: Actualized.org offers resources for philosophers, including a blog with philosophical insights, book reviews, a life purpose course, and upcoming profound courses. Philosophical Depth at Actualized.org: Leo claims Actualized.org is currently the deepest source of philosophy available and urges individuals to actively engage with the content there to realize its profound impact. Future Philosophical Endeavors: Leo plans to publish a significant philosophical book and a new course introducing 'Awakening to alien intelligence', promising to offer insights beyond traditional spiritual teachings. Crucio

The 9 Stages Of Ego Development - Part 3 https://youtu.be/pGItuEai8vo Suzanne Cook-Greuter's Research: Leo credits Suzanne Cook-Greuter for her comprehensive 90-page research paper on ego development, which forms the basis of his discussion. He emphasizes that while he integrates her research, his presentation includes his own interpretations and commentary relevant to self-actualization. Image 1 Importance of Pace in Development: Progressing through the ego development stages should not be rushed; it's important to fully experience and understand each stage before moving on to higher levels. Skipping stages can lead to frustration and the inability to sustain higher levels of development. Application of the Ego Development Model: Understanding the stages of ego development is a practical tool for evaluating the character and level of development of people in various contexts, such as business partnerships, family dynamics, and personal relationships. This insight can inform strategies for interaction and whether to maintain or cut ties with certain individuals based on their development stage. Teaching and Stage Relevancy: Leo acknowledges that most of his teachings are aimed at the final two stages of ego development, which may be too advanced for those who are currently at the conformist, expert, or achiever stages. He suggests that individuals may need to return to his teachings after they have solidified their understanding of the earlier stages. Risks of Prematurely Seeking Enlightenment: Leo warns against pursuing higher levels of spiritual awakening, like enlightenment, without having achieved personal success in basic survival and life needs. He recommends fully experiencing the achiever stage before seeking to transcend it. Stage 9: Construct Aware: This stage involves recognizing the mind’s role in constructing one's reality, questioning the ego's distortions, and the acknowledgment of linguistic filters. It leads to complex existential questions and an understanding of the limitations of rational thought. Magician Stage as Leaders and Guides: People at this stage often become mentors, consultants, or coaches who work to guide others, feeling comfortable with their knowledge limitations and embracing vulnerability. They take on roles that catalyze transformation, fully expressing themselves and recognizing the value of self-correction. Centaur Analogy for Construct Aware Stage: The construct aware stage is likened to a 'centaur' or 'vision logic', where individuals balance primal needs with higher existential and spiritual desires. Dealing with Chaos and Interconnectedness: At this stage, chaos is seen not just negatively, but as a natural part of life's rhythm. People learn to flow with it and recognize the interconnectedness of all things. Transitioning to the Unitive Stage: Those who reach the unitive stage witness life without the need for rational explanation, experiencing a sense of completeness, and perceiving mundane things as profound. Unitive Stage Realizations: Individuals at this stage feel fulfilled without needing external validation or achievements. They recognize the paradox of life's meaninglessness yet engage passionately with life, find value in all life forms, and guide others towards vertical development. Shift in Leo Gura's Teaching Style: Leo discusses his evolving approach to teaching—aiming to be more compassionate and understanding, reflecting his own progression towards the unitive stage of ego development. Tapping into Universal Intelligence at Unitive Stage: Leo suggests that at the unitive stage, direct insight and wisdom from universal intelligence become more accessible, with a focus on wisdom over IQ or specialized knowledge. Valuing Direct Experience and Empathy for Ignorance: Individuals at advanced stages of ego development place emphasis on direct experience and display deep empathy for others' ignorance, understanding its origins in limited perspective. Release of Control and Gender Integration: Individuals become less concerned with controlling life and achieve a profound sense of peace with their masculine and feminine aspects, resolving internal gender conflicts. Advanced Understanding of Human Behavior: At higher stages, a comprehensive understanding of human behavior emerges, recognizing suffering, conflict, and violence as manifestations of the unconscious ego mind. Ultimate Realizations and Cosmic Perspective: Enlightenment and awakenings become more profound, aligning with an understanding that judgement is ignorance and birth and death are imaginary concepts. These realizations contribute to a sense of tranquility and equanimity. Continued Introspection and Growth: Even after reaching the unitive stage, the journey of self-discovery continues. Leo emphasizes the ongoing nature of this work and the importance of self-reliance in personal growth. He advises against relying solely on his teachings for personal evolution, advocating for self-teaching and exploration beyond the unitive stage. Responsibility for Personal Growth: Individuals should use high-level advice as guidelines but must find their own path to growth, harmonizing advice with individual life situations. Existence of Stages Beyond Unitive: Leo hints at the possibility of stages beyond the unitive stage, which are less recognized due to their rarity but signify even more profound levels of human evolution and understanding. Assessing Resources and Teachers by Developmental Stages: Books, videos, courses, and teachers can be evaluated according to which stage of ego development they correspond to. This allows individuals to find resources and mentors that are appropriate for their current stage or slightly beyond it. Encouragement to Aim Higher: Leo advises those at the achiever stage to maintain a high vision for the future and to lay the groundwork for advanced metaphysical understanding while handling basic needs and goals. Introduction to Construct Aware Stage: This stage, inhabited by 0.5% of the U.S. population, involves realizing that reality is constructed by the mind and deeply intertwined with material reality, challenging the notion of separate objective reality. Existential Paradoxes and Inner Conflict: At the Construct Aware stage, individuals grapple with existential paradoxes and recognize the role of the mind, language, and ego in interpreting and constructing reality. Shift in Life Focus: Existential issues and the meaning of existence take precedence over material concerns, leading to pervasive uncertainty and questioning of previously held truths. Awareness of Reality as a Construction: People at this stage see their worldview as an unconscious amalgamation of cultural inputs rather than consciously chosen. They realize that all aspects of perceived reality, including political and scientific beliefs, are influenced by the subconscious. Deconstructing Meanings and Judgments: At this stage, individuals question their judgments and meanings attached to things, recognizing biases in their worldview shaped by the ego for its own survival. Understanding the Limitations of Symbolic Abstraction: The Construct Aware stage brings recognition of the limitations and biases inherent in concepts like time, purpose, and even tangible objects, when viewed through the lens of language and the human mind. Map vs. Territory: There is a deep appreciation for the difference between symbols and actual reality, recognizing that perspectives are biased, geocentric, and human-centric. Language as a Deep Technology: Individuals realize the significant role of language in shaping reality and communication, recognizing both its limitations and its potential to simplify or complexify our perceptions of the world. Navigating the Limitations of Language: The challenges of using language without being restricted by it become apparent, and individuals at the Construct Aware stage become more adept at circumventing the pitfalls language may introduce. Realizing the Impact of Language on Knowledge: Concepts and knowledge acquisition are seen as arbitrary and crucially dependent on language, leading to a more careful and conscious approach to understanding and knowing. Awareness of Duality: The understanding that all concepts rely on opposites - such as good vs. evil, or human vs. non-human - becomes evident, heightening sensitivity to the dual nature of language and conceptualization. Taking Responsibility for Mental Constructs: Individuals at this stage become accountable for their own creation of concepts and categories, marking a shift from unconsciously adopting cultural definitions to consciously forming their mental landscape. Exploring Beyond Human Mind Limitations: There's a realization that one can transcend the human mind and question fundamental constructs like human identity, opening up new territories beyond what was previously dismissed as pseudoscience or 'airy-fairy' ideas. Breakdown of the Objective Material World Belief: The belief in a permanent, objective material world begins to dissolve, blurring the distinctions between mind, body, self, and the external reality. Deconstructing Notion of a Permanent Self: The self is recognized as a dynamic collection of beliefs and concepts, constantly evolving rather than being a fixed entity, bustling with every new experience and interaction. Continuous Self-Change: Awareness grows that personal identity is in constant flux; every experience subtly shifts one's sense of self, challenging the notion of a static, unchanging personal identity. Cross-Paradigmatic Integration: There's an ability to appreciate and integrate diverse worldviews and religious beliefs without judgment, leading to an intellectually unified perspective of existence. Global Historical Perspective: Moving into a higher altitude of consciousness, construct-aware individuals gain a global view of meaning-making and take responsibility for the subjective meanings they assign to their experiences and the world. Shift from Inherent to Projected Meaning: Realization dawns that meaning is not inherent in external events or situations but is instead a projection of one's mind, leading to more deliberate and conscious meaning-making. Understanding of Map-Making and Self-STORY Deconstruction: Individuals become cognizant of their need to create mental maps and narratives with a permanent self at the center and learn to deconstruct and challenge such identifications. Awareness of Self-Deception: Even though the ego still leads to self-deception, a heightened awareness enables individuals to catch, correct, and learn from their distortions rather than being totally consumed by them. Understanding the Constructive Nature of Personal Identity: Acknowledgment arises that self-identity is maintained by continuous thoughts about oneself, skewing reality to ensure survival of this constructed self. Non-Physical Conception of Birth and Death: A profound realization surfaces that birth and death are not purely physical processes but mental activities linked to the ongoing construction of personal identity through thought. Deconstruction of Self: Individuals at this stage start to see the possibility of deconstructing the self, leading to self-annihilation. There is fear and uncertainty about what lies beyond this, but an understanding that 'self' is a subjective construct that must ultimately dissolve. Meta Cognitive Stage: The stage involves deeply questioning one's own thought processes, which can be seen as a final attempt by the ego to create comprehensive maps and models of reality, despite the impossibility of fully capturing the infinite nature of reality. Addiction to Models and Theories: There is an acknowledgment of the fascination with creating complex models and meta-models, which, while intellectually stimulating and practically useful, ultimately oversimplify reality and are not the territory itself. Conflict Between Helping People and Pursuing Truth: There's a realization that the utility of models in helping others does not equate to the discovery of absolute truth, highlighting the ego's subtle manipulation of reality for higher purposes. The Struggle of Advanced Development: Recognizing the absurdity of using models to fully grasp reality, individuals become aware of the difficulties in going beyond the human mind due to a lack of role models and examples to follow. Redefining Knowing: At this stage, there's a shift towards examining alternative ways of knowing beyond rationality, language, and science, questioning the quantifiable constraints placed by human constructs like science. Awareness of Ego's Influence: Individuals become acutely aware of the ego's distortions on perception, filtering reality through biased lenses and essentially questioning the possibility of objective experience. Dilemmas of Ego Transcendence: The more one attempts to transcend the ego and quiet the mind, the stronger the ego can become, illustrating the paradoxical nature of detaching from reality. Awareness of Thought's Limitations: There is a growing suspicion of thought and recognition that all cognitive processes are dualistic and constructed, fundamentally separate from the non-dual reality. Challenges of Experiencing Reality Without Filters: The realization of the importance of experiencing reality without linguistic filters emerges, but the practical challenge of achieving this denotes the difficulty in transcending ingrained cognitive mechanisms. Interconnectedness of Dualities: The recognition that dualities like good and evil or life and death are inseparable parts of the same whole undermines the simple-minded approach of lower stages seeking to increase good and eliminate bad. Judgment as a Source of Unhappiness: An increased awareness of how the habitual judgment of experiences creates suffering and unhappiness leads to the contemplation of non-judgmental awareness. Awareness of Judgment: Realizing the habitual nature of judging can be frustrating, as it leads to suffering; despite this awareness, it takes years to fully let go of this habit. Compassion and Human Complexity Understanding: Individuals develop a deeper compassion for themselves and others and attain a nuanced perception of human nature and interactions. Navigating Meaning and Meaninglessness: Caught between the extremes of considering life either completely meaningless or unquestioningly meaningful, individuals work to balance and integrate these perspectives. Emotional and Rational Pattern Recognition: There is recognition of how emotions and rational thoughts manipulate one’s perception, and the challenge becomes to integrate and mindfully manage both. Conscious Observation of Ego: A heightened self-awareness allows individuals to observe their ego in action, such as during disagreements or impulsive behaviors, leading to opportunities for growth. Integration of Multiple Modalities: The integration of feelings, intuition, rational thinking, and transpersonal experiences enhances one's flexibility in responding to various life situations. Seeking Mystical Experiences: Individuals develop a craving for mystical states and temporary freedom from ego control, often facilitated by meditation, psychedelics, or other practices. Leadership Roles in Construct Aware Stage: People tend to assume roles as catalysts or transformers within organizations or society, often working independently or creating novel structures to contribute meaningfully. Openness and Humility: Embracing uncertainty, these individuals show comfort with not knowing and exhibit humility regarding the limits of knowledge without the need for defense or pretense. Expression of Authenticity: Language and communication become more complex, vivid, and authentic, with attempts to let go of conscious structuring and embracing spontaneous expression. Trans-Rational Insight: Access to knowledge from non-rational sources such as intuition, bodily states, and dreams increases, playing a more significant role than logic. Self-Deception as Learning Opportunity: Recognizing personal self-deception turns into a chance for growth and helps understand the ego traps others may fall into. Balance Between Animalistic and Spiritual Desires: The Centaur metaphor indicates a balance between primal needs and higher desires, integrating existential and spiritual concerns with basic survival needs. Perception of Chaos: There is an understanding of the rhythmic chaos in life, which individuals learn to navigate like surfing waves, embracing life's unpredictability. Cumulative Interconnectedness and Profound Experiences: Recognition of interconnectedness across all subjects deepens, leading to profound insights and setting up for the transition to the unitive stage. Witnessing the Present Moment and Absolute Truth: The unitive stage allows individuals to apprehend absolute truth through direct consciousness, a transformative experience beyond rational explanation. Openness to All Experiences: At this advanced stage, individuals are receptive to the full spectrum of life’s experiences, valuing each without judgment, and finding value in every moment of being. Transformation of Reality Perception: Reality becomes imbued with magic and wonder, as even the most mundane objects are seen as miraculous, shifting the perspective from ordinary to mystical. Profound Appreciation of the Mundane: A fork, once seen as an ordinary object, can evoke tears due to its perceived miraculous existence. Those at lower ego stages might not appreciate the intrinsic value and complexity of such simple things, missing the cosmic perspective that one gains at higher stages. Cosmic Perspective as Organizing Principle: At higher stages of ego development, individuals view themselves and others as part of humanity's evolutionary journey. They effortlessly shift among different perspectives and states of awareness. Comfort with Mystical Experiences: Mystical and unitive experiences become familiar and comfortable, rather than alien or scary. The peaks of awareness from earlier stages now serve as a stable foundation for ongoing mystical experiences. Presence and Groundedness in the Present: With a shift to higher stages, living fully in the present becomes the norm, and individuals experience a unity with nature and the universe, feeling embedded rather than separate from their surroundings. Deep Security in Identity: The unitive stage offers deep fulfillment and a sense of self-completion that doesn't rely on external factors like fame, money, or relationships, based on realizing one's identity as infinite and complete. Simultaneous Perception of Concrete and Eternal: Unitive individuals can perceive both the temporality and eternal symbolism of entities, seeing all stages of ego development as interconnected and necessary to the whole. Acceptance of Lower Stages: This stage brings a profound acceptance of those at lower levels of consciousness, fostering deep peace and relinquishing the need to control or judge others, allowing for grace and humility. Simplicity Beyond Complexity: After developing complex models of understanding, those at the unitive stage often transcend and simplify their worldviews, fostering a zen-like mentality and approach to life. Contemplation of Life Purpose: Despite recognizing the ultimate insignificance of personal achievements in the vast universe, individuals at this stage still engage passionately with life, embracing a controlled, conscious approach to their endeavors. Shift in Perspective on Life's 'Game': Life is seen as a controlled folly—a conscious game that one engages in while recognizing its ultimate emptiness, which paradoxically frees one from the despair of attachment. Critiques of 'Impractical' Higher Stages: Those at lower stages often criticize the unitive stage as impractical, failing to see the value in existential or non-materialistic perspectives that prioritize spirit over survival. Holistic Approach to Teaching and Life: People at the unitive stage foster global justice and creativity, acting as catalysts in society, and valuing all life forms equally, transcending biases like age, gender, and species. Evolution of Leo's Teaching Style: Leo acknowledges his previous authoritative teaching style and shares his intention to teach in a more accepting, compassionate, and holistic manner as he moves further into the unitive stage. Bliss in Being: Individuals at the unitive stage find profound joy and contentment in simply existing and being aware, experiencing a non-attachment to outcomes and consistent insights into reality's interconnectedness. Mind as the Only Existence: Everything is Mind (with a capital M); there never existed a material world. Mind is synonymous with consciousness and is infinite. All perceived reality, including the table, chair, and fire hydrant, is consciousness. Direct Consciousness of God: The unitive stage brings a direct experience of God, absent in lower stages where God is considered separate and other. This stage allows for the realization that the universe and the individual are both manifestations of God. Self as Creator: Individuals realize that they are the creators of their reality, which is profound and life-altering. Lower stages may view this as absurd or narcissistic, but it's not about superiority; it's about awakening to one's true nature as God. Taking Responsibility for Being God: Recognizing oneself as God entails taking full responsibility for one's life. Those who aren't aware they are God create their suffering—understanding oneself as God fosters a responsibility to lead a more divine existence. Consciousness of God Not a Belief: This realization is not based on beliefs, ideologies, or speculation. It's an actual direct consciousness that transcends mere faith or philosophy. Mundane Becomes Supernatural: At the unitive stage, the mundane is viewed as supernatural. There's an appreciation of the fundamental mystery and intelligence of all creation, realizing that nothing can be known in absolute terms, only experienced or embodied. Distinction and Construction: At this stage, distinctions, such as between a taco and a kangaroo, are understood to be mental constructs that have no ultimate difference. These distinctions are seen as important for human growth but not reflective of an ultimate separation. Tolerance, Compassion, and Affiliation: Individuals feel a deep affiliation with all forms of life, tolerating and embracing the essence of others, respecting their intrinsic nature without the need for change. Wisdom vs. Specialized Knowledge: There's a recognition that wisdom and high IQ or specialized technical knowledge are not the same. The unitive stage values wisdom and consciousness over IQ scores or technical expertise. Channeling Universal Intelligence: People in the unitive stage can channel insights and wisdom directly from a universal source. This telepathic communication with the universal intelligence is seen as a deep personal connection with the infinite. Interconnectedness With All Beings: Belief in the interconnectedness of all life forms is a cornerstone of the unitive stage, leading to the notion that there's no essential distinction between oneself and any other being. Embracing Diversity of Existence: There's an appreciation for the myriad ways of being, realizing that all are valid and beautiful. This includes an understanding of the necessity of ignorance until one is ready to grow and change. Conflict as a Lack of Perspective: The unitive stage holds that all conflict arises from a lack of perspective and understanding. Compassion stems from recognizing one's former ignorance and appreciating others' developmental stages. Insights and Profundity: At this stage, an individual can express profound wisdom with ease, often surprising even themselves. This profundity is seen as an attribute of the universe rather than the individual, as they are aligned with universal intelligence. Realizing Personal Growth Achievement: Looking back on personal development, an individual can reflect on their past ignorance and appreciate the multi-decade journey, understanding the value in overcoming life's toughest moments. Empathy for Others' Ignorance: Realizing one's own ignorance fosters deep empathy for others who are stuck in their ignorance, though it doesn't necessitate tolerating harmful or delusional behaviors and ideologies. Moderation and Quality Control: In maintaining a valuable community, there is a distinction between accepting individuals and allowing destructive behaviors to proliferate, necessitating moderation to preserve quality and integrity. Spontaneity and Simplicity in Wisdom: In unity stages, individuals experience straightforward simplicity, which becomes a vital aspect of their wisdom and the transcendence of the ego. Mental Space Expansion: The mind becomes jail-broken, free of mental fetters, defense mechanisms, and manipulations. This vast mental freedom allows for exploring reality from an unhindered perspective. Mindful Present-Moment Awareness: A non-evaluative approach to the present moment allows for experiencing reality without the need for manipulation, interpretation, or control from the ego. Integration of Masculine and Feminine Sides: Unity stage brings about an internal peace by integrating previously unacknowledged aspects of self, leading to personal harmony and bridging gender conflicts. Conflict Realization: At this level, individuals understand that most conflict is self-created and arises from unconscious selfishness. Bridging Contrasts and Dualities: The unitive person reconciles different contrasts and dualities, merging concrete/practical, theoretical/philosophical, and more, thereby fostering holistic understanding. Cosmocentric Perspective: Adopting a cosmocentric view, individuals see themselves as integral participants in cosmic evolution, where holistic identification transcends the merely global perspective. Dissolution of Evil and Enemies: Recognizing that "evil" is a projection of ego biases, people at this stage shed such notions, understanding that supposed enemies and evil are manifestations of self-bias. Imaginary Nature of Reality: The realization that all aspects of reality, material and physical alike, are imaginary—life becomes viewed impersonally and not taken seriously or personally. Tapping into True Happiness: Accessing states of equanimity, tranquility, and absolute love leads to an understanding of true happiness and satisfaction. Enlightenment at the Unitive Stage: At this stage, enlightenment and awakenings occur more frequently and are realized without entanglement in ego-driven interpretations. Aloneness and Oneness Realization: Understanding emerges that self and others are identical; oneness includes all multiplicities of existence, transcending and adding inclusivity to the concept of solitude. Compassion for Human Behavior: With the deconstruction of the ego, individuals deeply understand the roots of human conflict, suffering, and behavior, stemming from unchecked selfishness and ego. Profound Silence and Inexpressibility: Reaching a point where the profundity of the universe is recognized as beyond the scope of language or even rational explanation. Self-Sufficiency in Problem-Solving: Leo emphasizes the importance of viewers finding their own solutions to problems rather than seeking specific guidance. The growth process requires individuals to figure things out independently. Role of High-Level Advice: Leo's role is to provide high-level pointers and advice, aiming to open minds and prevent significant missteps in life. Implementation of this advice into the nitty-gritty of day-to-day existence is the viewer's responsibility. Creativity in Application: The advice given by Leo is intentionally general and abstract, so viewers must creatively adapt it to fit their unique personalities, strengths, desires, and life circumstances. Existential Questions Beyond the Unitive Stage: Leo acknowledges the existence of stages beyond the unitive stage. These stages are highly transhuman and mystical, explored through advanced techniques like psychedelics and meditation. Challenges of Scientific Modeling of Advanced Stages: Scientific models like Suzanne Cook-Greuter's have limited data on the most advanced stages of human development due to their rarity. Understanding these stages requires studying exceptionally developed humans. Aspirations for Future Understanding: Leo admits his current understanding of stages beyond the unitive stage is limited but anticipates gaining more insight over the next two decades, acknowledging that humanity is still grappling with these concepts. Ongoing Journey and Self-Work: The understanding of human evolution is dynamic, and Leo encourages viewers to continuously work on themselves using models like the nine stages as a roadmap. Actualized.org as a Resource: Leo mentions his website, Actualized.org, which provides numerous tools like a blog, a book list, a life purpose course, and a forum designed to support individuals moving into post-conventional stages of development. Preparation of Content Referring to the Nine-Stage Model: Leo plans to create content that breaks down each stage of development and provides actionable steps and insights into potential traps, further than what was covered in the introduction. Focus of Actualized.org: The primary objective of Leo's teachings is to move individuals into post-conventional stages and beyond—to become construct aware, then unitive, and possibly beyond that in the future. Connection to Infinite Intelligence: Leo's teachings aim to open individuals to deeper existential questions and the development of a high-bandwidth connection with infinite intelligence, promoting a transition beyond merely mental understanding. Psychedelics as Learning Tools: Psychedelics are highlighted as a potent tool for nonlinear, organic, infinitely intelligent learning that transcends conventional teaching methods. Ultimate Self-Teaching: Leo's ultimate goal is to guide viewers to a point where they can teach themselves through direct connection with the universe, lessening their need for external guidance including his own teachings. Aparecium

Still hasn't become an alien on camera.

Reading A Poetic Description Of God-Consciousness https://youtu.be/K8AXWd6DFzU?si=uMSzeeZWF53E2LNK "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." - Edgar Allen Poe WARNING The last 25% of this video contains information that can be dangerous to people who are mentally unstable or suicidal. If you struggle with suicidal ideation or maintaining your sanity, I recommend you don't watch the last 25%. Do not use psychedelics unsupervised if you are in this condition. It's early dawn in the desert. The sky is starting to glow with light but the sun is still yet to rise. You're standing there, looking at an ordinary desert bush. You're struck by its geometric beauty, the mathematical precision of its fractally–arranged leaves. You feel an impulse to reach out. You run your fingers through its little green leaves. They feel spikey and alive. Returning your hand back towards your body, you notice a tiny insect, smaller than ant. It crawls over the wrinkles in your skin like an astronaut struggling across Martian terrain. You bring it close to your face. The intelligence of its movement transfixes you. Every swivel of its microscopic legs, of its antennae – precise, machine–like, yet so alive. You think, “My God, it's ALIVE!” For the first time in your life you recognize LIFE. Of course you've seen life in motion countless times before, but never like this. Somehow you've always taken life for granted. But now you SEE. LIFE. The intelligence of it awes you. As you move your finger towards the bug, you can tell, it's afraid. You recognize the intelligence in its fear, perfectly designed to keep it alive. You are conscious that you recognize the bug, but the bug doesn't recognize you. It's just going about its day, surviving, avoiding danger, looking for food – oblivious that some entity of higher consciousness is observing it, like God looking down from the clouds. Your attention shifts away from your hand as something flits through the corner of your vision. A hummingbird darts from bush to bush with the precision of an industrial robot. It hovers right up next to your bush. You stand perfectly still. Looking at it, the whole world seems to slow to a crawl. You can see the exquisite flap of its little bio–mechanical propellers. LIFE. You marvel at its profound intelligence and immaculate beauty. This little bird is perfection incarnate. You can resolve every green and pink iridescent feather on its body, arranged like tiny dragon scales. They shimmer in the subtle light of the desert dawn. The hummingbird's beauty strikes you with childlike delight. Your mind floods with memories of your fascination with hummingbirds as a child. Looking at it hover, you recognize the consciousness in it, but it doesn't recognize the consciousness in you. You think to yourself, “It's God, lost in a hummingbird dream.” You smile. You look closer at its scale–like feathers. Within a single feather you see fine branching lines, delicate hairs, and splotches of iridescent pigment. One particular splotch resembles a nebula in outer space. A pink and green cloud of luminous gas 50 light–years across, made of particles from ancient dead stars. A star graveyard now turned a nursery for stars yet to be born. Zooming in deeper you see pin–point sparkles of light, like household dust glittering in a ray of sunlight through a windowsill. Explosions from a 500–year war between two ancient alien civilizations. When heavily damaged their ships' wrap reactors explode in a tiny supernova – creating a microscopic golden sparkle in the void of outer space. These two civilizations have been at war over a political dispute for 500 years and now the battle has come to its peak. The nebula glitters with a thousand sparkles, like someone blew a pinch of gold dust into the air. Each sparkle, ten thousand lives extinguished. Zooming out you suddenly become aware that all of this is happening on a TV screen – an epic space opera playing out for someone's entertainment. But the actors don't know they're actors. To them, this galactic war is as real as real gets. A remote appears in your hand. You flip the channel. The scene changes from a galactic battle to a game show where the host is a giraffe and all the contestants are giant mice. You flip the channel again. The scene changes to a small alien girl blowing out a birthday cake. You hold your finger down on the remote and the channels start flipping faster and faster, at the speed of a hummingbird's wings. The channels are endless. They contain the media of every civilization that has ever existed. Within a minute you flip through 100 million channels. Getting the idea, you lift your finger from the remote. It stops on what looks like an HD nature documentary. You see a slow–motion macro shot of a hummingbird flapping its wings. The camera zooms out and you see yourself standing next to it in the desert, admiring its beauty. Looking down at the remote you see some colored knobs. Turning a silver knob slowly morphs the hummingbird into a dragonfly. You turn the knob half–way and get something that is 50% hummingbird, 50% dragonfly. You crank it back and forth in amazement, watching the eerily–fluid transformation on the screen. Turning an orange knob slowly turns your human self on the screen into an elephant. You crank the knob all the way to the right and the man on the screen becomes 100% elephant. But suddenly you see a strange grey appendage blocking your view of the screen. Your nose! It's turned into a long, hairy, grey animated elephant trunk. Nothing else about your body has changed, just your nose. At first you are startled. This thing seems to have a mind of its own, swaying back and back with a playful, undulating animation. But then you calm down, sense into it, and realize you have control. A big grin grows across your face as you take a deep long breath through your new nose. You feel an itch on your shoulder so you scratch it, with your nose. It works beautifully! “How did I ever manage without one of these?”, you say to yourself with amusement. Looking down at the remote you notice the biggest knob of all. It's white. “I wonder what this one does?” You crank it with your nose. As you do, you feel yourself becoming ever more conscious. All the sudden you can feel the circuitry in the television as if it was an extension of your body. Every pixel becomes like a taste bud on your tongue. A 4K display has over 8 million pixels, each one now consciously accessible to your mind. Cranking the white knob even more you become so conscious you can start to predict which pixel will light up with which color value in the next frame. Turning the white knob even more you become so conscious your mind gains direct access to the channels database. In your mind's eye you have instantaneous thumbnail access to every channel and piece of media that has ever been produced in the universe. What do you want to watch? It's hard to choose. You're not used to having this much much information in your mind in parallel. It's hard to navigate such a sprawling network of information. Your thoughts begin to influence the process. Your mind floods with old memories of cinema you watched in your youth. You don't know why but the movie Aliens starts to dominate your mind. The more your mind focuses on that thought, the more real it becomes. Soon the entire room and TV fade out of existence and your reality smoothly transitions into that of the Alien queen laying eggs in her nest. The TV is gone, your elephant nose is gone – you are now the Alien queen. Slime is dripping down your black, spidery body and mouth. Acid is coursing through your veins. Eggs are squeezing out of your…. whatever. Ellen Ripley is torching your eggs with a flamethrower and it's making your blood boil. You think to yourself, “Of course, I'm the Alien queen. The Alien queen is my own consciousness as much as anything else, no better or worse, no weirder. It's all my Mind.” You look down at your alien hand and notice the TV remote still there. You will yourself to press a random key with a long, grotesque claw. Instantly the whole scene turns into a cartoon. The film Aliens has become a cartoon version of itself and you are still the Alien queen, but now your reality is two–dimensional and much more colorful. You look down again at your hand for the remote, but it's gone, disappeared just like the TV. You think to yourself, “Of course, 2D is no more or less real than 3D. Cartoon reality is just another facet of my consciousness. I am no less real as a 2D Aliens cartoon than I am as a 3D human being.” On the one hand experiencing yourself as a grotesque alien straight out of a nightmare strikes you as disturbing, but only mildly so because you're so conscious you understand what's going on. You're so conscious you don't need a TV remote to change channels. In your mind's eye you press the pause button on an imaginary remote and the current scene freezes mid–frame. Now you can focus on accessing the channel database to find what you really want to watch. You see that in the database channels are arranged by category. Scanning mentally through five thousands categories you stumble upon SEX. Your mind is fixated. A memory of your ex–girlfriend comes to mind, and suddenly, there she is. A stunning young woman laying naked in your bed, squirming and itching for sex. You crank up the white dial in your mind's eye some more, becoming even more conscious. You look at your girlfriend. She's begging you to fuck her. Looking at her squirm in slow motion you realize that once you fuck her you will impregnate her and spawn a million future generations of humans. It doesn't matter whether you impregnate her or somebody else does, in the end it's all the same since all such differences are imaginary. You're too conscious to really be interested in the act of sex now, but the profundity of it makes you wonder. You are captivated by the platonic aspect of her beauty, just as you were with the hummingbird. But this is more personal, more interactive. You slowly run your hands over the curves of her smooth, naked body. As you do, her body turns to sand – a fine sand that seeps down over the bed sheets like the sand in an hourglass. Her squirming body disintegrates into vast pools of sand. Her feminine curves become the curves of an endless ocean of dunes stretching out to the horizon in every direction. You find yourself standing in the middle of a vast dune – a dune made from your girlfriend's essence. Each grain of sand is a dream she once dreamt, a memory she once had, an emotion she once felt. Grains of sand made from her joy, her excitement, her sadness, her anger, her frustration, her loneliness, her light, her darkness, her fear, her love, her disgust, her surprise, her orgasms. Grains of sand made from her highest aspirations and her deepest nightmares – all animated with the energy of her soul. The dune is silent, but for the murmur of a soft breeze. You kneel down and run your fingers through the sand, your hand like a tongue tasting the emotion locked in every grain. A symphony of a thousand subtle yet distinct emotions washes over you. Somehow it all computes in the vastness of your mind. It's like you raked your tongue through the depths of her turbulent psyche. Your eyes well up and a tear rolls down your face. A loud crack of thunder, like a gunshot, startles you from above, and the sky begins to pour with heavy rain. The sound of rain soothes your soul. The landscape – or, really, your mindscape – feels enchanted, exactly as you want it to be. Raindrops hit your face in slow motion. Each droplet, a unique bubble universe unto itself, filled with trillions of inhabitants all oblivious as to why their universe came crashing to an end. You think to yourself, “So this is how a universe ends.” Each droplet is filled with the collective consciousness of all the sentient entities inhabiting it. As a droplet hits your face it transfers the collective wisdom of a thousand ancient civilizations directly into your mind. Their memories, their struggles, their dreams, their insights – all integrate smoothly into your psyche. You stand there, showered by an immense cosmic intelligence. It feels like bathing in divine light. Its sentience and beauty sends waves of bliss radiating through your body. You look up at a towering stack of fluffy white clouds in the distant sky. Somehow you just know the clouds are made of whipped cream. Reaching your hand up towards the clouds you scoop at them with your finger and secure a sizable dollop. The cream is thick and rich, like frosting. You bring it to your mouth and suck. It doesn't just taste sweet and milky, it tastes like a fusion of every desert you can ever remember having: cheesecake, ice cream, cupcakes, cookies, crème brulee, cotton candy, éclairs, tiramisu, panacotta, macaroon, marzipan, cookie dough, apple pie, fruit tart, and waffles. This is your mindscape, and in your mindscape things taste however you want them to taste. Mmmmmmmmm…. Waffles….. Your mind lingers. You can barely remember the last time you allowed yourself to indulge in waffles. You think to yourself, “Why don't I treat myself more?” You look down at your feet. The sand is in the process of transforming into a grid of waffle. Waffles stretches out to the horizon in all directions. Now you stand in the middle of vast, gently rolling waffle dunes. You feel the spongy, grid–like texture under your bare feet. Far in the distance, from high in the sky, pours a solitary stream of rich maple syrup. The syrup folds over itself. It floods valleys of waffle in a rich viscous amber, glossy like nail polish. Now it starts to snow, but the air isn't cold. You hold out your hand to catch a few specks of white as they fall. These aren't snowflakes, this is powdered sugar! With a big grin you stick your tongue out into the air. A large desert mouse hops along the ground, licking at a pool of maple syrup, oblivious to your presence. As your gaze fixates on it, your thoughts take hold of it. Your thought of a kangaroo morphs the mouse into a kangaroo without skipping a beat. Your thought of a bird causes the kangaroo to sprouts the wings of an eagle and a pillar of wind lifts it soaring into the clouds. Suddenly a darkness looms over you – a vast shadow, moving from on high. A colossal fork and knife come down from the sky just in front of you. The silver slices through the landscape as prongs poke. The clouds part and you look up to see the God–like face of your six year old self wielding the silverware. Your six year old self has a huge grin across his face as he forks a syrupy hill of waffle and raises it toward his mouth. Your six year old self's face morphs into that of your father when he was 6 years old. Then your mother when she was six years old. Then your brother when he was six years old. Morphing faster and faster, flipping like a Rolodex, the face goes through thousands, then millions of iterations… the faces of every six year old child who has ever eaten waffles. Looking down at your feet you see an insect – some kind of beetle – lying there on the ground. It's dead but still colorful. You kneel down to pick it up. Its husk lays motionless in your hand. Inspecting it as though under a magnifying glass, you marvel at its beauty. Even in death you see the beauty of life. Especially in death. But what makes it all the more beautiful is your awareness that this creature is your own mind. How sad that this little creature is alive no more. Suddenly you get an impossible idea. “Could it work?”, you say to yourself. You turn your gaze inward, to the white dial on the remote in your mind's eye. You crank it up. Your consciousness expands, interconnecting ever deeper with itself. Your visual field grows crystalline, as though all the air was sucked out of the atmosphere. Everything becomes sharp and bright – and eerily still. You focus intensely on the beetle. Your consciousness penetrates through its desiccated remains. Its body is your mind, and right now your mind demands a miracle. You channel your will into the beetle, filling it with your spirit and love. Then… nothing. Time slows to a crawl, reality seems to freeze in stasis. A few more moments of nothing, and then… the beetle's legs twitch to life. Your eyes grow wide. It starts to crawl over you. You blow into your hand and the beetle morphs into a luminous green moth that flits erratically up into the sky. You smile in disbelief at the miracle of your mind. Standing there in the waffle dunes, you look down at your hands. Images start to run through your mind of animals you took fascination with as a child: monkeys, reptiles, birds, big wild cats, mollusks. As the images flip through your mind, the shape of your hands flips to match. Your hands morph into the hands of an ape, the claws of a dinosaur, the paws of a lion, the tentacles of an octopus. Puzzled and amused, you wonder to yourself, “What happening to me? What am I?” Then it dawns on you: “Of course, I'm God. I am consciousness. I am imagining myself. I am whatever I conceive myself to be because there is nothing outside my endless Mind.” Everything around you disappears: the landscape, the waffles, the rivers of syrup, the sky. Now it's just you, floating in a bathtub in the middle of empty space. Music starts to fill the silence of the void. A melody. It's fast, cheery, and delicate. Delightfully fast. Deliciously delicate. Ethereal. Like something from a fairytale. It's the sound of a piano but you're conscious that there is no piano. What are pianos but a figment of your imagination? “Where is it all coming from?”, you wonder. “And who's playing?” There is no instrument and no one is playing. There are no sound waves traveling to your ears. You have no ears. You're too conscious for ears. The chords are playing directly in your mind. The rest is fantasy. You understand that musical instruments and the people who play them have always just been figments of your mind, a backstory you invented to provide some kind of ground for the irreducible mystery of sound. Your own mind is the pianist and the composer. You've eliminated the imaginary middleman. The notes arrange themselves playfully and intelligently in your mind like children frolicking on a playground. The speed and immediacy of it wows you. Direct. Absolutely direct. Impossibly direct. You play each note flawlessly, with the precision of a maestro. Each note oscillating and imprinting itself in the Mind of God. You smile in delight at the recognition of the splendor of your own mind. You look down at your body. You are naked. All sense of scale is lost. You aren't small, you aren't large – you are undefined – which makes you Cosmic. Your body is the only yardstick there is. Your body is the Universe. You see your body made of liquid consciousness. It shimmers and ripples along with the thoughts in your mind. Your skin flows with organic, translucent, morphing shapes, as though cast by a projector. Ornate shapes – vaguely resembling something tribal, something paisley, something floral – shimmer across your naked body. Each pattern imbued with a divine intelligence impossible to articulate, gracefully animating, dancing, meandering across your skin. You recognize yourself as looking directly at the body of God. A body made of pure consciousness. It still looks human but it is no longer human, recontextualized as cosmic and divine. You see entire universes contained inside of you. Or whatever else you may imagine. An infinite diversity of animals and creatures seem to bubble up just underneath your skin, like particles struggling to emerge out of a roiling quantum foam. The pure potential of your mind is precipitating in front of your eyes in real time. God's body is made out of whatever you imagine. It looks human but shines with a brilliant, crystalline consciousness. Your body is Mind, and Mind is all you are. Absolute Mind. Absolute Truth. You recognize your consciousness as singular and sovereign. Nothing exists outside your Mind. Universal Mind. A mind limited by nothing but its own imagination and self–definition. At long last God has awoken to itself. The Universe is awake, looking through your eyes at itself. Perfect, Divine, Eternal, Immortal, Absolute, Sublime. You turn your gaze directly inwards, directly behind and inside your eyes – right into the core of what you used to consider your skull – wondering what is there, what you truly are. You gaze into the very heart of yourself, your purest essence. A radiant singularity sits there. Shining with crystal clear consciousness. Glowing with sentience and intelligence. Eternally awake. Pure Infinity. Pure Consciousness. The Godhead. This singularity in you is endless. The deeper you gaze into yourself the deeper it goes, with no bottom, no ground. You struggle to find something within you to define yourself as – some concrete form, some verbal articulation, some image. But you cannot be defined because you are Unlimited. That which is Unlimited cannot have a definition because any definition would be a limit. Your essence is literally undefined, like the result of an impossible arithmetical operation on a calculator. Puzzled and dumbstruck, you try to find a beginning to yourself. You ask, “But where did I come from?”, only to realize that that which is Unlimited cannot have a beginning or an end. You are too conscious to be fooled into believing in any beginnings or ends. As you grasp at any part of yourself and try to trace its origin through a chain of linear causation back into the past, it fails. Your consciousness has transcended the notion of linear causation. You realize all past is but a figment of your imagination. Every part of you stands on its own and also reaches infinitely far back into the imaginary past via an endless chain of imaginary causes that never terminates but circles back around in a cosmic strange loop. All beginnings and ends are imaginary, self–imposed limitations held within an Unlimited Mind. A Mind with no beginning or end. A Mind that has existed for Eternity. You are God, and God is both uncaused, self–caused, and infinitely caused. God is that which caused itself into being. God is that which created itself. The recognition of your own Eternity takes your breath away. It could not be more profound. Eternity. You exist, absolute and forever as Truth itself. It couldn't be any other way. It couldn't be any more obvious. It's so perfectly clear yet utterly unbelievable. It's laughably obvious now that science and history are figments of your Mind. Brains, chemistry, evolution, physics, time – all fictions spun by the Mind to construct the illusion of a mind–independent reality. Now you see reality for exactly what it's always been: an Absolute Illusion. An illusion perfectly designed to allow you to forget for a second that you are God. The illusion is perfect, stretching forever in any direction you look, painting a backstory behind every corner you peak around, every hole you stick your head into, every object you sniff – much like the rendering engine of a video game. You're still dreaming, but now you know it. Now your dream is Absolute. You watch as your God–mind effortlessly weaves together figments of consciousness into the tapestry you used to call a human self. Everything and everyone is your imagination, emanating from the bottomless singularity at the center of your imaginary skull. Your mind pulls whole chunks of consciousness from the formless singularity like a magician pulling rabbits out of his hat. Specific and highly detailed memories of your childhood, your entire mother, your entire father, your beloved pet cat, historical events like WW2 – all figments of consciousness pulled out of a hat and flawlessly woven together to construct the illusion of a human life. The Earth, the physical universe, humanity itself is finally seen for what it truly is, just figments in a dream. Jesus, The Buddha, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, gurus and masters, all those years you spent meditating and doing yoga, activating your chakras, reading books, chasing enlightenment – just figments within God's Mind. Finally you reach the question of death. What is death? You smile and laugh as you realize that death is just something you're imagining. You are now too conscious to die. An Infinite Mind cannot die because it'd have to imagine its own non–existence. An Infinite Mind has nowhere to go, being already in all times and places. As your consciousness grows even deeper the difference between things starts to collapses. All difference is seen to be imaginary. Forms merge into each other, losing their distinctness in the brilliant light of pure consciousness. All boundaries bleed together. You feel like an alien super–intelligence cutting through an existential fog of war. The veil of ignorance is lifted. It feels like awakening from a lifetime of heavy amnesia. Everything within reality that could be known becomes transparent to you. Now you remember who you are. The entire illusion of life is unraveled. As you grow even more conscious, your visual field starts to develop into a singularity. Your visual field merges with your auditory field and your tactile field until there is no more difference between sight, sound, and touch. Growing even more conscious, the last vestiges of difference collapse. Consciousness frees itself of all self–imposed limits and biases, accelerating asymptotically towards pure Oneness. You release the heavy burden of existing by way of concrete and finite forms. From this point, should you dare to take one final step, you will enter pure INFINITY, where all form is lost, as no difference exists between anything – where all things exist as a soup of pure metaphysical potential. All things become identical. Every possible object, every possible form lives there. But it's Nothing. Now you must confront existence as pure abstraction. Your truest identity, your highest nature is finally revealed. What are you? Nothing the human mind can imagine. A metaphysical singularity of pure consciousness extending forever in all directions and all dimensions, absolutely sovereign, unconstrained by any sense of other. Every difference annihilates into a bottomless ocean of Infinite Love. Absolute Unity. Absolute Symmetry. Complete, Perfect, Eternal, Formless, Endless. The Alpha and the Omega. Identity itself. You have become ONE. You have become LOVE. You have reached the end–game of reality. You are INFINITY. You radiate as a void of infinite potential. Complete in your knowledge of yourself. Amortentia

State Of Consciousness Is Everything https://youtu.be/2u5M6tDc5TE State is EVERYTHING Core Pillar of Understanding Consciousness: Leo Gura discusses the central idea of his teachings—that state of consciousness is everything. He insists nothing exists outside of states of consciousness, including all physical objects and experiences, which he asserts are figments within different states of consciousness. Reality as States of Consciousness: The materialistic notion that consciousness is a byproduct of physical objects is challenged. Leo argues that reality consists solely of consciousness, which takes on various states. This view substantially diverges from traditional materialistic paradigms. Infinite Nature of Consciousness: Leo rejects the categorization of states of consciousness, arguing that there are an infinite number of states, which can flow and change fluidly rather than switching on and off like binary states. Introduction to Figments of Consciousness: States of consciousness are made up of 'figments'. Instead of viewing reality as composed of atoms or as a simulation, Leo puts forth the idea that reality is comprised of figments held within consciousness, comparable to elements within a dream. Physical Objects as Figments: Using the example of a Snickers candy bar, Gura argues that objects we perceive in reality are not reducible to atoms or molecular structures but exist wholesomely as figments within consciousness. Consciousness as Absolute and Ungrounded: Leo conveys that consciousness does not require grounding in a physical nervous system, body, neural network, computer simulation, or universe. Instead, consciousness is presented as pure and absolute, containing all experiences within it, including the material universe. Consciousness as the Fabric of Reality: Leo Gura explains that both our idea of the physical universe and the physical universe itself are figments of consciousness. The room you're in and everything within it, including complex entities like Albert Einstein, are not built bottom-up from atoms but are woven figments of consciousness. Inclusivity of the Figment Concept: Various items, concepts, and experiences, ranging from physical objects like gasoline and braces to abstract ideas like Bitcoin and even historical figures like Albert Einstein, are all figments of consciousness. Non-materialistic View of Consciousness: Leo criticizes the materialistic paradigm of reality being constructed from the bottom up, advocating instead that consciousness creates reality in a top-down manner, holding figments within without the necessity for foundational material elements. Complexity and Interconnection in Consciousness: The complexity and interconnection of figments are underscored by the ability of consciousness to infinitely nest and weave together these figments, creating complex constructs like a human being or an entire city. Fundamentality of Figments in Consciousness: Emphasizing the radical shift required to understand consciousness, Leo argues that no figment is more fundamental than another, with reality capable of creating anything, from a mosquito bite to the concept of capitalism, directly as figments of consciousness. Limitlessness of Figment Creation: Consciousness has no boundaries in creating figments, which includes breaking down or magnifying into infinite sub-figments, akin to an endless fractal zoom, demonstrating the concept of infinite consciousness. Direct Experience of Consciousness: Leo encourages direct observation to understand that everything, from used condoms to entire cities and emotions, are figments of consciousness. This approach does not rely on belief systems or scientific verification, but rather direct conscious realization. Relativity of the building blocks of reality: Leo Gura underlines that from the perspective of consciousness, no single 'building block' of reality is more fundamental or plausible than another. An electron and an abstract entity like a pina colada or a joke are all considered equal in complexity as figments of consciousness. Misunderstanding of complexity in figments: He argues that the human notion that some things are more 'natural' for reality to create is a misconception. Complexities of an electron and a pina colada are identical, as both can be infinitely zoomed into and analyzed. This illustrates that from reality's perspective, everything is equally plausible to create. Consciousness as the fundamental fabric: Leo reiterates that attempts to find a non-figment substrate of reality are misguided, since any posited substrate, whether an electron, a string, or the notion of a computer simulation, is ultimately another figment of consciousness. Life as a tapestry of figments: Leo invites the audience to consider their entire lives, including memories, birth, death, and even times of unconsciousness, as a single figment of consciousness woven from strands of smaller figments. Material objects as figments: He emphasizes the exercise of grasping that all material objects, demonstrated through the example of a smartphone, are not made up of matter but are entire pieces of consciousness which are holistic and qualitative. Understanding the infinite nature of figments: Consciousness is described as infinite and scale-invariant, not limited to any specific shape, size, or complexity. The scale is a concept created by comparing various figments within consciousness. The fallacy of seeking concrete reality: Leo challenges the idea that at a fundamental level, reality is concrete or discrete, emphasizing that concreteness itself is a figment of consciousness, and reality could be abstract, vague, or unspecified. Consciousness as irreducible: He demarcates that consciousness cannot be reduced further since it is the ultimate constituent of all figments. Consciousness is defined broadly as infinity, encompassing all possible figments and is equivalent to pure emptiness. Reality as woven figments for sanity: To maintain a coherent sense of sanity, reality is intricately woven together by consciousness using figments from the top down, revealing the challenge of understanding consciousness while retaining sanity. Sanity as a barrier to understanding consciousness: Leo proposes that trying to understand consciousness might require one to risk their 'sanity', given the radical shift in perspective needed to grasp the true nature of consciousness and reality. Reconciliation of Dreamlike and Material Reality: Leo questions why reality feels so solid, contemplating why walls feel tangible if they are figments of consciousness. He suggests that realizing the dreamlike nature of reality might feel like insanity, as it threatens our understanding of physicality and sanity. Sanity and Material Reality: Leo intimates that sanity is intertwined with physical reality; to experience non-physical reality, one might feel insane. The more non-physical reality is perceived, the less physical it seems, challenging our definition of sanity. Fear of Losing Physical Reality: He highlights the fear and confusion that would result from losing a sense of physical reality. The potential to walk through walls or for hands to pass through people might impress upon someone that they're going insane, disrupting their ability to lead a normal life. Survival within the Dream: Leo plays with the idea that our survival and daily functioning depend on the coherence and stability of the dreamlike state into which we are born. Anything that shakes the foundation of this dream creates fear because it threatens our perceived ability to survive. Quest for Normalcy Amidst Unraveling Reality: When faced with inconsistencies in what we perceive as material reality, humans seek to re-establish their baseline state of consciousness. They seek medical help and reassurance to revert back to their previous state, highlighting society's dependence on a coherent, shared sense of reality. Material Reality as a Coherent Dream: The solidity and consistency of material reality are attributed to a coherent collection of figments of consciousness. When this coherence unravels, it induces a sense of insanity and the impulse to restore the original 'dream'. Everything as figments within consciousness: Leo insists that experiences and objects like walls, brains, and even material reality are not outside consciousness but are absolute figments within it. This perspective challenges the traditional view of reality as material and separate from the mind. Understanding Consciousness through Awakening: To truly understand consciousness, Leo suggests that one must awaken to the interconnectedness and fluidity of all figments, unraveling them like yarn in a sweater. This shift allows for the realization that reality is infinitely continuous and made of the same 'yarn' or substance. Mind vs. Material: He distinguishes mind from material, noting that the mind is holistic and top-down, with the capacity for intelligence and sentience. In contrast, the material is limited to its smallest parts and works bottom-up, precluding intelligence. Features of Mind: Mind has distinct capabilities such as creativity, remembrance, forgetfulness, lacks a substrate or ground due to its infinite nature, and possesses will. This sets it apart from material systems, which require a substrate and cannot exhibit will or consciousness. Mind and Matter: The relationship between mind and matter is such that mind can create the illusion of matter, but matter cannot generate mind. Matter, as perceived in reality, is a dumbed-down version of mind designed to appear finite. Material Systems as Infinite: Leo Gura asserts that, upon close examination, finite material systems are actually infinite systems "dumbed down" from the top-down to give the illusion of being limited and finite. Infinite Field of Consciousness: Consciousness can be thought of as an infinite field of infinitely divisible and communicative 'voxels' or pixels that coordinate intelligently from the top-down. This field lacks any smallest resolution unit, shape, or boundary, making every 'voxel' boundlessly dynamic. Concept of voxels: To better illustrate consciousness, Gura uses the term 'voxels' instead of pixels as they can exist in more than three dimensions, are unbounded, and represent an infinitely subdividable field of consciousness. Intelligence in Consciousness: Intelligence is defined as the ability of these infinitely subdivided and coordinated subdivisions of consciousness to communicate and manifest as our physical reality, such as a human hand. Remembrance and Forgetfulness in Consciousness: Consciousness can selectively remember or forget aspects of itself, a capacity material systems cannot emulate. Adjusting the level of remembrance and forgetfulness is akin to the process of awakening. Limits of Conceptual Thinking: Conceptual thinking, modeling, and logic are insufficient to replace or replicate direct states of consciousness. They are constrained within the frame of the current state of consciousness. Hyper Thinking: A higher state of consciousness allows for hyper thinking, which provides a multidimensional and higher bandwidth intelligence that can think and interconnect complex ideas, similar to a highly evolved alien intelligence. Such hyper thinking transcends normal human cognitive abilities. Communication Limitations: Current human discourse and language lack the bandwidth to adequately convey or articulate experiences and concepts from higher states of consciousness. Accessing Higher Intelligence: Gura explains that it is possible for individuals to experience and access the intelligence of a highly evolved, superintelligent entity, which he refers to as hyper thinking. This hyper-intelligent state allows for profoundly advanced cognitive processes beyond the scope of our regular state of consciousness. Hyper Thinking: Leo Gura introduces the concept of "hyper thinking," which transcends normal human thought by combining rationality, logic, mysticism, intuition, and spirituality. This advanced form of thinking helps cut through the constraints of ordinary thought, providing access to deeper spiritual truths that are not reachable through traditional meditation alone. Limitations of Traditional Mindfulness: Gura critiques certain practices like Zen Buddhism which emphasize silencing the mind, suggesting that while these can lead to awakenings, they fall short of achieving the level of understanding possible through hyper thinking. Memory and State of Consciousness: He illustrates the limitations of memory and understanding within our current state of consciousness by comparing it to an HD image reduced to a tiny and simplistic black-and-white version, indicating that profound insights from higher states lose much of their transformative potential when viewed from lower states. Expanding Consciousness Bandwidth: Leo emphasizes the goal of spiritual work is to expand the bandwidth and memory of our consciousness, which is necessary to retain and utilize insights from higher states of consciousness. Parameters Defined by Consciousness: Gura explains that every state of consciousness sets the parameters for what we can think, feel, and perceive as logical or possible. To transcend these limitations, one must expand their state of consciousness. Possibilities in Higher States of Consciousness: He urges us to recognize radically new states of consciousness which are beyond our imaginations and suggests that at the highest states, there are no limitations, leading to "god mode" where nothing is impossible. Changing Consciousness States: The most crucial change one can implement is altering their state of consciousness, both in temporary peaks and permanent baseline changes. While peak experiences offer profound insights, changing the baseline state is essential for lasting transformation. Science and Consciousness: Leo asserts that science, birth, death, skepticism, and even rationality occur within certain states of consciousness, indicating that these elements are relative and not indicative of higher truths. Equivalence of States of Consciousness: He proclaims all states of consciousness have their value and warns that higher states may not be conducive for those wishing to maintain their sanity and engage with human life. Accessing Higher States of Consciousness: Most misunderstandings about spirituality, religion, and reality stem from the inability to access high mystical states of consciousness through traditional intellectual efforts. Misinterpretation of Religious Teachings: Gura laments that society and culture tend to degrade religious teachings due to translating them from higher states of consciousness down to lower levels, making them difficult to grasp fully within an ordinary state of awareness. State of Consciousness and Understanding: Leo highlights the difficulty many people have in making sense of spiritual concepts without accessing higher states of consciousness. They remain confused and lost, hindered by ideologies and models that would collapse if higher states were accessed. Defense Mechanisms Against Higher Consciousness: Gura notes that people have defense mechanisms preventing them from accessing higher states of consciousness, which could lead to the collapse of their current belief systems and the sensation of losing their minds. Importance of Changing Baseline Consciousness: Emphasizes the importance of changing one's baseline state of consciousness, despite the fear, difficulty, and potential danger involved. This change is rare, marking society's ignorance and signifying we're living in a 'dark age'. Isolation in Higher States of Consciousness: Explores the loneliness of reaching higher states of consciousness due to a lack of understanding and connection with others, also noting that at the very highest levels, it feels like there's no one else to validate or share the insights with. Methods to Change State of Consciousness: Lists various methods to change states of consciousness, emphasizing the necessity of deep concentration, prolonged practice, and intensity for significant shifts. Techniques include meditation, yoga, chanting, deep breathing, psychedelics, and extreme experiences. Challenges in Raising Baseline Consciousness: Mentions the challenge of permanently raising one's baseline state of consciousness compared to accessing peak states, stating that raising the baseline requires intensive work. Capabilities from Higher States of Consciousness: Explains that mystics and enlightened individuals may display paranormal abilities due to being in higher states of consciousness, which seem impossible from lower states. Varied States and Awakening: Discusses how each being inhabits a unique state of consciousness, with God being all states but only self-aware from higher or awakened states. Enlightenment can be temporary or permanent with varying degrees. Discrepancies in Spiritual Teachings: Attributes disagreements between spiritual teachings to differences in states of consciousness accessed by their proponents. Challenges the notion that mystical teachings are irrational, suggesting that disbelief indicates lower states of consciousness. Infinite and Unbounded Consciousness: States that consciousness is infinite, unbounded, and the foundation of all realities. It has no origin as concepts of 'where' and 'coming from' are within consciousness, making it eternal and always present. Nature of God in Consciousness: God is not just a figment of consciousness but rather is consciousness itself, encompassing all possible figments and existing at a meta level. Human Identity as a Figment: The biographical, biological self that one identifies with is a figment of consciousness, one of many that we, as manifestations of godly consciousness, dream up. Leo's Evolving Understanding: Despite understanding consciousness at a very high level, Leo acknowledges that his grasp on the nuances, mechanics, and details of consciousness continues to evolve. Challenge in Articulating Consciousness: Leo distinguishes accessing higher states of consciousness from the challenge of articulating, modeling, and explaining them to others. Struggle with Embodiment: Even with his experience of high levels of consciousness, Leo admits that he struggles with embodying these insights in daily life, indicating years of work remain. Awareness of Self-Deception: Leo is highly self-aware regarding the potential for self-deception and stresses the importance of constant self-scrutiny. Responsibility and Teaching Limitations: Leo conveys the responsibility he feels in teaching about consciousness, as well as acknowledging the limitations and biases inherent in his teachings. Imperfection and Growth: He urges listeners to take responsibility for their personal spiritual journey and not to see him or anyone as infallible, emphasizing continuous personal growth and learning. Spirituality as Personal Responsibility: Leo encourages listeners to embrace spirituality as a deeply personal endeavor that cannot be outsourced and to actively engage in their spiritual growth rather than passively accepting teachings. Dissendium

Leo's Worst Bad Trips - Psychedelics Gone Wrong https://youtu.be/U9qBUJLgPzw Introduction to Bad Trips: Leo introduces the topic of bad trips, describing them as inevitable experiences for those who frequently use psychedelics, notwithstanding their challenging nature and the valuable lessons they can ultimately provide. Bad Trip Gradation: He reflects on the varying degrees of bad trips he's encountered, noting that while some were highly traumatic, others simply presented difficulty. First Significant Bad Mushroom Trip: Leo recounts his initial adverse reaction to a mushroom dose increase from 2 to 4 grams, discussing his unpreparedness and immediate regret as the intensity surpassed his comfort level. Learning from Trip Resistance: The experience taught him the significance of dose awareness, the importance of being mentally and emotionally prepared, and the dangers of entering a psychedelic experience with reluctance or a preconceived agenda. Mushroom Trip as a Foundational Experience: The trip was pivotal in shaping Leo's respect for psychedelics, teaching him to approach these substances with the utmost caution and a proper mindset geared towards growth rather than achieving egotistical milestones. Intuition in Planning the Next Trip: Leo highlights the importance of listening to intuition to determine the timing of the next psychedelic trip. It might suggest waiting for several months or tripping the very next day for further insights. Being fluid and adaptable is crucial for psychonauts. Lessons from Resisting a Trip: Leo admits that his first bad trip with mushrooms was instrumental in preventing many future bad trips by teaching him a valuable lesson about non-resistance and the instructive nature of suffering. First Experience with 5-MeO-DMT: Describing his initial encounter with 5-MeO-DMT, Leo details the rapid onset of panic as his trip unfolded unexpectedly fast. His nervous reaction, with a rapid heartbeat, served as a lesson on the psychedelic's power. The Power of Psychedelic Manifestation: Leo discusses how psychedelics demonstrate that reality is a manifestation of one's imagination; thoughts can materialize in the material world while tripping, underscoring the need to maintain a positive mindset. Learning to Navigate Psychedelic States: Leo reflects on the early stages of his psychonaut journey, acknowledging that he had yet to learn how to 'surf atop the waves of consciousness' that psychedelics generate, leading to bad trips. Dealing with the Urge to Return to Sobriety: Leo shares his desire to return to a sober state during his first 5-MeO-DMT trip, emphasizing that such resistance can spiral into a negative experience. Overcoming Initial Negativity to Pursue Further Exploration: Despite a negative first impression, Leo persisted in exploring 5-MeO-DMT, recognizing that one bad trip shouldn't define the substance's potential for insight. Ego's Defense Mechanisms in Psychedelic Experiences: He touches on how the ego may erect barriers against psychedelics due to their profound impact, interpreting feelings of fear or dissatisfaction as mere defense mechanisms. Building Preparedness and Appreciation Over Time: Leo compares the acclimatization to psychedelics with developing an acquired taste for foreign cuisine, suggesting multiple exposures help prepare and adjust expectations. High Dose Experience and Discovering God: A powerful 5-MeO-DMT experience causes an overwhelming sense of consciousness and a physical reaction in Leo's nervous system, leading to a year-long integration period and the profound realization of God's existence. Trauma and Its Crucial Role in Personal Development: Despite experiencing what he calls traumatic trips, Leo views them as essential to growth. The intense realization and subsequent integration period significantly reshaped his approach to psychedelics and life. Unexpected Reactions on Familiar Substances: He notes unusual and occasionally sinister reactions to psychedelics, attributing them to possible external factors like medications or supplements, or perhaps even psychological fluctuations. Manipulating Environment as a Bad Trip Mitigation Strategy: Leo suggests changing one's surroundings, such as moving to a different room, as a practical method to shift mood and potentially alleviate sinister feelings during a psychedelic experience. Shifting Attention to Combat Bad Trips: Leo likens the shifting of attention during a bad trip to calming a crying baby. By changing the environment or engaging in different activities like going outside, one can attempt to distract oneself from a negative thought spiral. However, this technique may not always be effective due to adults having more complex thought patterns than babies. Acceptance When Manipulation Fails: If attempts to shift one's mood during a bad trip don't work, Leo recommends accepting the experience and toughing it out. Over-manipulation can lead to increased resistance, so it might be necessary to let go and experience the trip fully, even if it's negative. Intensity of 4-AcO-DMT: Leo describes an unexpectedly powerful experience with a small dose of 4-AcO-DMT, which he took to test the substance. The trip provided him with difficult-to-integrate insights on the imaginary nature of reality. This taught him that user reports might not always accurately describe a substance's effects, leading to a more cautious approach to tripping. Learning from Negative Experiences: Past bad trips taught Leo that difficult psychedelic experiences can be weathered, offering confidence during future challenges. Each bad trip contributes to a reservoir of experience that can help navigate future psychedelic journeys. Individual Variability in Psychedelic Experiences: Leo reflects on how other people's descriptions of a substance can be misleading and that psychedelics often have a more serious and existential impact on him than others report, prompting him to approach all new substances as potentially potent. Strong Warning Against 5-MeO-DPT: Leo recounts his worst psychedelic experience with 5-MeO-DPT, a research chemical that felt toxic and disorienting, with physical and neurological discomfort. He advises against using this substance, emphasizing the unpredictable and negative effects it had on his system. Leo's Sensitivity to DMT: Leo expresses that even minimal amounts of DMT launch him into an overwhelming state of 'infinite consciousness' that is terrifying due to its profundity. Challenges of Vaping DMT: Vaping DMT poses difficulties as the technique is imprecise; the amount of DMT that ends up being consumed can vary widely due to vapor condensation on the pipe, depth of inhalation, and how long the vapor is held in the lungs. Intensity of Vaped DMT: Leo describes the experience of vaping DMT as being hit with an intense and immediate surge of consciousness, with no gradual onset to allow for adaptation or control. Overdosing on DMT: An overdose of DMT can result in overwhelmingly powerful love that is so intense it can paradoxically lead to thoughts of suicide due to the desire to escape. Integration After Heavy DMT Use: Leo discusses the need for careful integration post-DMT use. The intense and complex insights gained require significant time to be fully comprehended and incorporated into one's life. Vaping Technique Caution: Due to the potency of DMT and the challenges associated with its ingestion, especially with vaping, Leo emphasizes extreme caution and a very respectful approach towards its use. Pre-Trip Anxiety: Leo sees a certain level of pre-trip anxiety as a positive sign of respect towards the power of psychedelics and the potential they have to impact one's consciousness. Sacred Reverence of Psychedelics: Comparing the approach towards psychedelics with the devotion to religious idols, Leo underscores the importance of treating these substances with reverence and caution to ensure responsible usage. Experience with Salvia: Leo touches upon a deeply challenging experience with Salvia, which he considers a dangerous deliriant due to its markedly alienating effects. Salvia's Powerfully Alien Effects: During a threshold dose of Salvia, Leo experienced profound effects such as one half of his visual field expanding into infinity while the other remained normal. This bizarre experience was attributed to the substance affecting one brain hemisphere more than the other, demonstrating Salvia's potent and alien nature. Deep No-Self Experience on Salvia: Salvia induced an extreme state of no-self for Leo, erasing all memories and understanding of being human. It led to a loss of identity and connection to normal concepts, like family and living on Earth, which he found deeply disconcerting and alienating. Loss of Biographical Memory from Salvia: The Salvia trip caused Leo to forget biographical details such as childhood memories, stripping away his humanity to the point that even the concept of having a brother became incomprehensible. He stresses the intense, terrifying potential of the substance. Physical Setting Becomes Unrecognizable: While on Salvia, familiar surroundings such as the room he was in felt completely foreign. He couldn't recall it was part of his own house, illustrating the profound disorientation and reality distortion caused by the drug. Handling Frequent Tripping and Its Consequences: Leo encountered difficulties, such as losing touch with reality, when using 5-MeO-DMT daily over a month. He advises against frequent tripping, emphasizing the need for integration time between trips and a responsible approach to consumption. Dealing with Bad Trips: Leo advises people to try and improve their emotional state during a trip, but also to accept difficult trips if they occur. Self-reassurance can help manage fear and panic during intense experiences. Importance of Physical Control During Trips: Losing control of physical actions is a red flag signaling the need to lower dosage or change substances. Leo warns of the dangers of being physically irresponsible under the influence, including causing harm to oneself or others. Community Engagement and Sharing: Leo enjoys reading trip reports on the Actualized.org forum and encourages others to share their experiences. He believes community stories can be enlightening and stresses the importance of responsible use to avoid the destructive possibilities of negligent psychedelic use. Ferula

Relative vs Absolute Truth https://youtu.be/Vr69GZikub0 "The truth is not the truth." - Rudy Giuliani Distinction Between Relative and Absolute Truth: Leo emphasizes the importance of understanding the distinction between relative and absolute truth. Failure to do so leads to conflations and traps that he addresses later in the episode. This episode aims to open the listener's mind to the possibility that absolute truth exists and that one can personally access it. Cultural Influences on Belief in Absolute Truth: He notes that the prevalence of relativism and materialism in the 21st-century culture casts doubt on the existence and accessibility of absolute truth. Most people believe that if absolute truth exists, it's beyond human reach due to our limited perceptions and the vast unknown beyond our senses. Opening the Mind to Absolute Truth: Leo challenges listeners to honestly assess their beliefs about absolute truth and consider whether they are truly open to its existence and their ability to access it. He urges an openness to the radical possibility that one can know reality as a whole, absolutely and without error, under all circumstances. Nature of Relative Truth: Leo discusses the nature of relative truth, pointing out that most human "truths" are relative—it is situated within a context and relies on comparisons. He uses everyday examples like the color of the sky and velocity to illustrate relativity, showing how context, perspective, and frames of reference influence what people consider to be true. Einstein's Relativity and Human Perception: Highlighting Einstein’s theories on relativity, Leo explains that there's no such thing as absolute velocity, emphasizing that even seemingly still objects are moving at high speeds relative to other cosmic bodies. He suggests that human perception is commonly based within an Earth-bound frame, obscuring broader relativistic realities. Understanding Large and Small as Relative Concepts: Leo elaborates on how scale, like being large or small, is a relative concept dependent on comparison. He explains that without comparison, one cannot say for certain if the universe or anything else is objectively big or small. Reality, as one unified whole, cannot be measured or described by those terms when not compared to something else. Invitation to Explore Absolute Truth: Leo acknowledges potential skepticism and invites listeners to be open to exploring absolute truth. He differentiates between the intellectual understanding of these concepts and truly opening ones mind to them. He also explains that absolute truth, unlike relative truth, which requires validation, is self-evident because its existence is non-dual and doesn't require external verification. Conceptual Scale and Relativity: Leo discusses the idea that concepts like 'big' and 'small' are relative and cannot be ascribed to objects like mice or elephants without a point of reference. When compared to each other, scale becomes apparent, but if isolated, a mouse and an elephant are of the same scale—scale itself does not exist besides as a relative concept. Constructing Units of Measurement: Measurement units are human-made divisions that allow comparison, exemplified by inches on a yardstick. These divisions let us quantify and compare heights, lengths, and velocities, but their truth is contingent on consensus and methodologies in measuring, interpreting, and the language used. Relative Nature of Velocity: Velocity's relativity is linked to its formula—distance over time—with distance and time being relative concepts themselves. Distance depends on artificial subdivisions, such as yardstick inches, and time, as Einstein cleverly defined, is what a clock measures—another subdivision and relative concept. Truth and Its Dependence on Agreed Framework: The acceptance of any measurement or scientific truth depends on a universally agreed framework of units and interpretations. Any change in this framework can alter the perceived truth, revealing the fragility and relativity of these 'truths'. Time and Relative Truth: While delving deeper into the nature of time is reserved for another discussion, Leo acknowledges the complexity of defining time and points out the artfulness of Einstein's definition, which circumvents metaphysical inquiry by focusing on time as a quantifiable measure without addressing its essence. Foundational Issue in Science: A fundamental issue in scientific methodology is the reliance on measuring differences within predefined units without understanding the intrinsic nature of those units—scientists can measure and compare but cannot explain what a meter, joule, or atom fundamentally is. Reality in Parts and Whole in Science: Science's approach to truth involves dividing reality and comparing those divisions, but this only yields relative truths. Cultural truths, moral norms, and societal rules are derived from the comparison of divided parts of reality and also fall into the category of relative truth. Contrast between Relative and Absolute Truth: Absolute truth exists as a non-dual concept, inherently different from and preceding the subdivisions of relative truth. It is singular and incomparable. Understanding absolute truth entails acknowledging a domain where conventional questions and comparisons are inadequate because they transform an absolute into a relative. Inevitable Mind's Conversion from Absolute to Relative: People convert absolute truth into relative by asking dualistic questions that originate from a misunderstanding of non-dual truth. Leo encourages openness to an absolute domain of truth that operates differently and where such relative questions and assumptions are not applicable. Direct Access and Non-duality of Absolute Truth: Leo invites listeners to consider that there is no veil of perception between humans and absolute truth. By suggesting that appearances and experiences themselves are aspects of absolute truth, he challenges the paradigm that perceives a separation and encourages direct access to absolute truth. Practice vs Speculation: Leo urges active engagement in opening one's mind to absolute truth, differentiating it from passive contemplation or armchair philosophy. He asserts that only through action can a genuine shift occur. Dealing with Skepticism: He anticipates skepticism about absolute truth being a hallucination or self-deception, stressing that skeptics have not genuinely considered the possibility of absolute truth. Absolute Truth as Singular and Indubitable: Leo posits that the idea of something being so true that it's incapable of error or delusion is central to understanding absolute truth. He challenges listeners to genuinely contemplate if they accept this radical idea. Closed Mindset Conundrum: Leo addresses the closed-mindedness that prevents acceptance of absolute truth, suggesting that it's an impediment to deeper understanding. He criticizes the scientific skepticism that outright dismisses the possibility of absolute truth without thorough exploration. Epistemological Challenge: He explores the paradox of knowing something is absolutely true, challenging the traditional demand for external validation, which doesn't apply to the non-dual domain of absolute truth. Non-dual Domain and Validation: Leo emphasizes that in the non-dual domain, the search for external validation is moot, as the truth is self-validating due to its singular nature. Self-Validation of Existence: He invites viewers to become aware of their existence as an example of absolute truth, which does not need external validation because it confirms itself through the act of its existence. Existence as Sovereignty: Leo highlights personal existence as the manifestation of absolute truth, underlining the sovereignty of individual existence and consciousness in determining what is true. Depth of Self-Deception and Receptiveness to Truth: He suggests that the real deception lies in doubting absolute truth and not in the fallacious confirmation of its existence. Leo encourages listeners to be open to the possibility that reality is truth itself, not an illusion. Piercing Through the Veils of Deception: Leo Gura challenges listeners to open their minds to the idea that they, personally, can pierce through every single veil of deception to reach the rock-bottom truth of reality. He proposes that this can be achieved without fallibility as absolute truth excludes doubt, error, delusion, or misunderstandings typically found in relative truth. Singular Validation of Absolute Truth: Leo explains that absolute truth cannot be validated by anyone other than oneself, much like one's own existence. No external authority, whether scientist, parent, or spiritual guru, can affirm one's existence; it is a direct, unmediated knowing. Existence as Validation: He emphasizes that existence itself operates as the validation of its own reality. This self-recognition is what makes reality possible; without it, existence cannot be known. Reality's existence is an example of absolute truth because it is self-validating and needs no external reference point. The Natural Absurdity of Proving Existence: Leo outlines the circular logic and absurdity in attempting to prove existence through any process or experiment, as any such method already assumes the existence it seeks to validate. Existent Nature of Absolute Truth: He discusses the oneness of reality, which is the essence of absolute truth. This oneness means there are not multiple kinds of truth within the absolute domain—only absolute truth. The Illusion of the Relative Domain: Leo posits that the relative domain operates under the illusion of dichotomies like absolute versus relative truth, which is not present in the absolute domain. Here, he stresses that all storytelling and interpretation by the mind are part of the absolute, but misconstrued due to a lack of consciousness. The Existential Responsibility of Accepting Absolute Truth: He discusses the profound existential responsibility that comes with recognizing one's sovereignty as a creator of reality. Leo explains that the fear of this responsibility can lead to an avoidance of accepting that one's imagination can shape what is perceived as truth. Rejecting Self-Deception: Leo debates the idea of self-deception and insists that direct consciousness of the absolute truth cannot be a product of self-deception. He also confronts the materialist misconception that experiences attributed to absolute truth might be mere illusions or brain-generated phenomena. Absolute Truth Manifested: The session closes with a compelling call to acknowledge that reality as it stands is the manifest form of absolute truth. Leo invites listeners to embrace the radical possibility that there are no hidden layers to reality and to understand that reality is precisely what it appears to be. Constructing Reality with Belief: Leo discusses how belief systems shape reality. He uses the example of identity, explaining that if society reinforced the idea of being an alien instead of human during growth, a person would believe that. The belief in being human has been ingrained in us through constant social reinforcement and imagination. Experiencing and Dismissing Absolute Truth: Leo warns about the risk of dismissing encounters with absolute truth as hallucinations or trips, following intense experiences like meditation or psychedelics. After the high of such experiences wears off, there's a tendency to rationalize them as mere illusions, preventing deeper understanding. Claiming Sovereignty over Reality: Leo emphasizes the importance of embracing one's authority and responsibility to construct reality. Actualizing absolute truth entails understanding that validating one's experience and existence depends solely on oneself, not on external affirmation. Potential for Delusion: He acknowledges the risk of delusion when one misinterprets their understanding of absolute truth, which could lead to harmful behavior. Leo counters this by arguing that delusional and destructive behaviors exist even within the current materialistic paradigm. Absolute Truth is Beyond Thought and Imagination: Leo elucidates the paradox of absolute truth: it's neither the thoughts nor the imaginations about it, yet everything one thinks and imagines is also part of it. This complex paradox is hard for the mind to interpret because bringing the absolute into the relative domain, such as through language, is inherently flawed. Differentiating Concepts of Absolute Truth: Leo differentiates 'absolute' as a concept (lowercase a) from the 'Absolute' (uppercase A), which is beyond verbal expression. The latter signifies the ineffable reality, while the former is merely our understanding or idea of it. Cognition Levels and Pre-Trans Fallacy: He explains the cognitive stages: pre-rational, rational (including scientific understanding), and trans-rational stages of understanding absolute truth. He warns against the pre-trans fallacy, where the trans-rational is misinterpreted as pre-rational dogma. Conceptual Truth vs. Being Truth: Leo makes a clear distinction between relative, conceptual truth (lego castle) built from language, logic, or thought, and absolute, being truth (lego blocks). Absolute truth exists as the foundation, while relative truths are secondary, constructed forms. Importance of Validating Individual Experience: Rather than seeking external validation, Leo stresses that people must determine the truth for themselves. He advises listeners to base their beliefs on personal experiences of being and existence. Human Validation of Absolute Truth: Leo Gura explains that absolute truth, which predates human existence, cannot be validated by any human construct. This is fundamental common sense, but is often overlooked because people hesitate to deeply consider its implications. Qualia as Substratum of Reality: Leo elaborates that the building blocks of reality are not atoms but qualia, such as colors, sounds, feelings, emotions, tastes, smells, and thoughts. These sense perceptions form the substratum of reality, contrasting with scientific conventions which suggest that reality is composed of atoms. Relative Truth and Fiction: Using Sherlock Holmes as a metaphor, Leo illustrates that while the character's universe contains facts that seem true relative to the author's narrative, they don't make the fictional elements real. Similarly, science operates within our experienced reality, making factual statements based on observation, which works relatively but doesn't address the actual reality of what's studied. Absolute Truth in Fiction: Despite the relative truths within fictional narratives like Sherlock Holmes, the act of imagining and creating the story, and the physical book it's written on, is rooted in absolute truth as it exists within consciousness. Intertwining of Absolute and Relative: Leo asserts that absolute and relative truths are not in opposition but deeply intertwined, manifesting as a cohesive whole. He emphasizes that understanding both simultaneously is challenging due to their complete overlapping. Common Conflations Between Absolute and Relative: Leo identifies common misconceptions that occur when lessons from absolute or relative domains are mistakenly applied to the other. For example, acknowledging that "nothing is good or bad" from an absolute perspective doesn't justify stealing in the relative perspective of societal norms. Misuse of Absolute Truths by the Ego: He warns that the ego often distorts absolute truths for survival purposes upon glimpsing the absolute, leading to practical or moral errors in the relative domain. Relative Domain Challenges: Leo reflects on the problem of conflation where someone might misinterpret the statement "reality is a hallucination" to believe they can physically walk through walls, not recognizing that hallucination itself is a facet of the relative domain. Survival and the Relative Domain: He discusses the necessity of understanding and addressing relative truths for survival purposes, like the need to earn money and maintain physical health, even if one recognizes the existence of absolute truth. Monetary Considerations in Spiritual Teachings: Leo explains that he charges for teachings to fulfill basic survival needs like food and shelter, which cannot be obtained through the concept of enlightenment but require tangible currency. Misinterpretation of Spiritual Teachings and Religion: There's a clear distinction between the absolute truth Leo discusses and religious dogma. Merely using words like 'God' or 'Absolute' does not endorse any specific religion or belief system; misunderstandings arise when these concepts are misconstrued to validate pre-existing beliefs. Misuse of Absolute Truth in Personal Justification: Leo discusses the dangers of applying absolute truth to justify unethical behaviors. For example, dismissing cheating as a 'social construct' or harmful actions by claiming an inflated sense of love. This conflates absolute and relative truths and is often rationalized by the ego. Relative Truth and Physical Health: Leo explains that dismissing the reality of the human brain because it's 'imaginary' from an absolute perspective could lead to disregarding one's health. Drinking poisonous substances like mercury still leads to concrete health consequences in the relative domain. The Problem with Elevating Every Concept to Love: Leo mentions the folly of justifying unhealthy behaviors, like overeating junk food, with the statement that everything, including junk food, is love. This is a misapplication of absolute truth which ignores practical health implications in the relative domain. Misunderstanding No Path to Awakening: Newbies might wrongly interpret the statement "there is no path to awakening" as an excuse to avoid practices like meditation or self-inquiry, potentially thwarting any chance of actual awakening. Absolute Truth and Relative Suffering: While at the absolute level, suffering is not a concern, Leo emphasizes that in the relative domain, relieving suffering is vital as it can have direct repercussions on oneself and others. Neo-Advaita Teacher's Inability to Meet Students' Needs: He critiques teachers who overly dismiss the relative domain as they fail to provide practical, relative advice to students who are not operating from the same level of consciousness. Understanding 'Death is Imaginary' Misinterpretations: Some might misinterpret the absolute notion that 'death is imaginary' as an invitation to end their lives, not recognizing the need to maintain survival and experiences in the relative domain. Awakening Does Not Exempt Illness: Leo acknowledges that even an enlightened person can get sick or suffer genetic disorders, as the nature of 'God' or 'Absolute' includes both health and disease. Realizing one's divinity doesn't miraculously cure illnesses but entails accepting and dealing with them pragmatically. Past and Birth from Relative Perspective: Leo Gura clarifies that although from an absolute perspective birth is imaginary, he discusses his past and family from a relative, culturally co-imagined consensus for practical purposes. Conflations and Misunderstandings of Absolute and Relative Truth: Newcomers to absolute truth and even awakened teachers could fall into conflating absolute and relative perspectives, leading to misunderstandings and unhealthy dismissals of the relative domain which can impact survival and communication. Applying Absolute Truth in Survival Contexts: Leo warns against using absolute truth to justify personal gain, as the ego manipulates both absolutism and relativism for its own ends. Relative truth, while not ultimately true, is essential for survival and everyday life, and is treated as absolute by most people who are not aware of the actual absolute truth. Relative Importance of Survival: Survival in the relative domain is critical, and regardless of one's level of enlightenment, the finite human form requires attention to physical needs such as food, water, and health. Leo warns against the dismissal of relative truths, which are vital for day-to-day living. Absolute Truth and Practicality: Leo notes the ultimate problem with absolute truth is its enormity, making it impractical for daily use in survival, where humans must construct smaller, manageable truths to manipulate their immediate realities. Absolute vs. Relative Truth in Life Satisfaction: Leo suggests that a smaller, localized existence might lead to dissatisfaction, prompting the search for a more expansive life that inches closer to an understanding of absolute truth. Enlightenment and Maslow's Hierarchy: From the absolute perspective, basic human needs and desires are irrelevant, but from the relative perspective, they are significant obstacles to awakening. Leo advises satisfying these needs first, making it easier to transcend them later. Significance of Accessing Absolute Truth: Encountering absolute truth recontextualizes one's life, eliminates fear and suffering, and acts as the ultimate source of true happiness, answering life's critical questions and offering unparalleled beauty. Role of External Validation: Leo encourages using a variety of spiritual resources to corroborate and gain confidence in the concepts presented, emphasizing the significance of personal experience in actualizing spiritual teachings. Actualized.org as a Modern Religion: Leo describes Actualized.org as a modern, sophisticated approach to religion with minimal corruption, aiming to aid individuals on their spiritual journey through various resources and courses. Independence and Critical Thinking: He urges his audience to think independently and not to blindly follow spiritual teachers, stressing the importance of personally verifying and experiencing teachings to realize their truth. Flagrate