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That is not at all the true representation of the most famous religions. GOD is totally transcendent and above being as we creatures are beings. But man is made in gods image, or a microcosm of the macrocosm as a more "spiritual" term. Christianity does not believe in a God that is the universe, "he" created the universe. But he did not use "material" outside of him self, but he didnt become the universe either. "He" is above mind, life, being, non being, intellect. You can't say what "he" is, but not can you neti neti him either. He is both and neither. It completely transcends all the notions of finite concepts that we want to label ultimate reality with. But as in Christianity, God incarnated as man in the form of Jesus, and how Jesus was is then attributed to GOD but infinitely more. Infinite love. Christianity is all above Love. The purpose is to feel and experience God's love. So God is not a being among other beings, no matter how supreme the being might be.

Many spiritual teachers such as Rupert Spira talk about being aware of being aware. Or being aware of Awareness itself. I have been meditating for years now. And my mind becomes really still. I feel that i am aware of awareness itself. But sometimes i even doubt that Awareness exists by itself. Maybe i am just aware of the absence of sounds.. I am definitely aware but not aware of something in particular. Leo has said in this video that there is not even Consciousness. There is only being. But on another video about Neti Neti he kinda has different positions... Does pure awareness/consciousness without objects exist? I have considered the possibility that only whatever we experience exist (sights, sounds etc) and maybe we don't need any awareness to be aware of these things. Also the problem is that you can never be aware of awareness because it is non-objective.

Rather than asking, "What am I?", consider asking, "What am I not?". Neti neti means "Not this, not that". It as an ancient process of Self-inquiry, where you gradually peel away the layers of the onion until you arrive at your ultimate nature. Is the essence of what you are your physical body? Is it your thoughts? Is it even the idea of "you" as a separate entity? Meditate, and find out for yourself. ?‍♀️

486. Summary: Satisfaction Meditation - How To Make Meditation Enjoyable! This episode gives you a practice you can use to apply the insights from The Root Solution To People Pleasing & Loneliness. (Summary is here.) It’s a very simple, but effective meditation technique that’s somewhat counter-intuitive. It helps answer… “But Leo, how do I practice becoming satisfied by myself? How do I embody not needing any kind of external validation? How do I apply the wisdom that chasing dopamine hits is a bad strategy for happiness?” The point of the Satisfaction Meditation is to take back control of your reward mechanism. Currently, your happiness usually depends on rewards from someone else (love, praise, attention, etc) or some external event (a promotion, lots of money, a hot date, no lineups at the DMV.) With the Satisfaction Meditation, we want to develop a practice of just sitting, being and not doing anything. Just basking in satisfaction. It’s the idea of just basking in the present moment and being deeply satisfied with it. That’s it. It’s literally that simple. There are two potential traps. First, you have to practice it. Second, your mind doesn't like feeling satisfied with “just existing and being, duuuude.” Your mind wants to do things and fantasize about stuff. It has ambitions, fears, problems that it wants to fixate on endlessly. All of that robs you of your natural joy. The Satisfaction Meditation Meditation starts at 3:22. It will take 10 minutes. Set aside all distractions and take a comfy seat. Sit with your eyes open. Relax your muscles. Now, you’re just going to sit there. Don’t try to manipulate or control anything in your experience. Don’t try to stop your thoughts or achieve a mystical experience. Just sit there and be fully satisfied. Allow yourself to be satisfied with the present. Keep gently nudging yourself to be satisfied with the Now, with just this moment. Notice if there's a positive, joyful feeling in your body. Maybe it’s a feeling of comfort. Enjoy the feeling, but don’t hinge your satisfaction on it. If you sit long enough you might start feeling uncomfortable and you still want to be fundamentally satisfied. That’s It! Think you can you do that? Normally your mind wants to fixate on the future or the past because that’s where your problems exist. You then lose touch with the beauty, calm and peace that’s present, in the moment, because it's not relevant to your survival plans. We usually take the present moment for granted. So, you might notice a subtle shift as you bring your awareness into the now. Proactively start to appreciate and enjoy your direct experience. Keep nudging yourself to feel satisfied with it. (The present is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present ??) Enjoyable Meditation?? The enjoyment from the Satisfaction Meditation doesn’t feel like ecstatic, dopamine-fuelled pleasure. It feels like relaxing into the moment. “Ahhh ?, it’s nice to just sit here and be peaceful. It’s nice not needing to chase an outcome or solve some problem. Ahhhhhh ⛱️.” So basically, you’re going to find satisfaction with being and existing. During this period of 10, 20 (or 60, 90 ?) minutes you’re just going to focus on being satisfied. If you practice this frequently you’ll notice a subtle shift. Before when you meditated you didn't really enjoy it, but now when you meditate you actually enjoy it! It’s not a chore, or a grind! The Satisfaction Meditation can create a positive feedback loop, because the satisfaction will start to build on itself. ⁍ Focusing on feeling satisfied in the present moment…helps you… ⁍ Realize you actually are satisfied…which creates a… ⁍ Feeling of satisfaction about being satisfied and your ability to recognize it. (“Wow! Leo’s weird meditation actually works!!”)…which causes an… ⁍ Increase in satisfaction that builds up that feeling even more…which helps with… ⁍ Focusing on feeling satisfied in the present moment… …So just continue to sit there, and become ever more deeply satisfied… -After that, it’s a matter of staying in the sweet spot of satisfaction for as long as you can. Try to keep your awareness there. -The Satisfaction Meditation shows you that being satisfied and happy is something you get to do right now. Happiness is not something you have to chase after! If you really practice it intensely, it can turn into deep joy, bliss and love. You can become so satisfied with just sitting in the present moment, not needing anything, that it brings tears to your eyes. -You can make this a formal sit down practice that you do everyday or a few times a week. Or, you can turn this into an entire week-long meditation retreat, where you’re just sitting, being satisfied and not doing anything else. The Sneaky Ego-Mind -Warning: your ego-mind will start to get sneaky… “Psssst…hey you…sitting there doing nothing…your to-do list ain’t getting any shorter…" “Wouldn't this moment be better if you had some drugs, or sex, or chocolate? Or friends? Or a mystical experience? Or a mystical, drug fuelled, sexperience with friends? Or at least a yummmy nummmy cookie…?” -You have to let go of those fantasies and just savour what’s right here in the present moment. Stop trying to chase for a better experience. Your mind is going to imagine all sorts of “better” scenarios. For now, focus on the present. You can spend the rest of your non-meditation time chasing goals and doing stuff. “But Leo, what if I can't be satisfied in the moment? That hottie ghosted me! I got a parking ticket! I have a project due tomorrow! I’ve got bills to pay, kids to feed, a hottie to resent and stalk on instagram. I needs me some enlightenment, pronto!” -Well, the challenge is to try. Your mind might resist and come up with excuses, at first. You have to notice that those are tricks of your mind. You have to just let those go. (ep: The Power of Letting Go) Let go of needing things to be different. Allow yourself to be satisfied with what's here right now. Focus on that satisfaction. Enjoy it. -This meditation is powerful because the whole point is to be happy right now. Other meditations are such a chore that they become difficult to practice consistently. They’re a frustrating means to some future happiness or enlightenment, which becomes counterproductive. Instead of dreading meditation, you’ll look forward to it because you get to just sit and be happy for 30-60 mins! It’s the same reason you sit down to play ?Ghost of Tsushima? isn’t it? Spirituality Is Not Supposed To Be A Grind -If you're just grinding through meditation, that's a signal you're doing it wrong. It’s hard to reach mystical states through meditation when you don't enjoy the process. It takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours of just sitting and being present in order to reach that. How do you plan on keeping that up if you don’t enjoy it? Reframe how you think about your meditation practice so that you can bask in the enjoyment. Whether it’s the Do Nothing technique or Neti Neti or just counting your breaths, enjoy the process. That’s crucial. -Making spirituality all about productivity and attaining some idealized future to avoid the present is a corruption of what spirituality is truly about. If your spiritual practice isn't aligned with joy and a satisfaction with existence, then there's something deeply askew. You could also broaden that lesson out to the entire process of self-actualization and personal development and even your career or life purpose as well. People Pleasing and Loneliness “But Leo, how does being satisfied with nothing connect to people pleasing and loneliness?” -People pleasing happens because you need others to fill you with love. You're not satisfied with things the way they are, so you do a lot of work to get praise and approval from others. It becomes an addiction. On top of that, you’re never fully satisfied even when you do get their validation. The afterglow of praise doesn’t last very long and it doesn't deeply fulfill you. If you're not fundamentally happy, you'll probably doubt or criticize their praise. “She didn’t really have a good time. She was just being polite.” “Okay, he complimented my hair, but what about my outfit? He probably just wants to get laid.” And so forth. -Loneliness happens when you imagine that the present moment could be improved by having more people around you, or people to talk to, be intimate with, share experiences with and so forth. It’s similar to people pleasing in that way. The solution is to ground yourself in being satisfied with existence, by strengthening your Satisfaction Muscle. That why you do the Satisfaction Meditation! You'll notice that you don’t feel lonely while you're doing the Satisfaction Meditation, because you're satisfied with existence itself. You don't need anyone else or anything more. You’re alone, but you're not lonely. Developing the deep capacity for satisfaction helps you to be non-needy and detached. It will augment the joy you do get from relationships. -This isn’t a license to become a recluse. This doesn’t mean you never socialize or be intimate with other people. That would be a mistake. You should cultivate relationships, just not while you’re meditating. Your Satisfaction Muscle -The Satisfaction Meditation will help you build your Satisfaction Muscle, which is your ability to appreciate and be happy with the moment just as it is. The effect of building your Satisfaction Muscle will spillover into other areas of your life. You will become happier, because you’ll be the source of happiness itself. It’s the kind of joy that most people overlook, because it's not a sharp peak in pleasure. It's not like a drug high or an orgasm. It's a very steady, even keeled contentment. It’s mild at first, but you can train it to levels of deep pleasure. The satisfaction can even turn into ecstatic levels of joy and bliss. Ultimately it can even turn into love. Why love? Because, you’ll start to fall in love with existence itself. That’s the rock bottom of this practice. Just a love of being conscious of being conscious of the eternal Now. With enough practice, you’ll start experiencing mystical states and even some satoris. Awakenings will happen as you sit there. You’ve stopped chasing them, but they’ll start happening because you've fully surrendered to the present moment. -As you build up your Satisfaction Muscle , you can go out into the world and apply the Satisfaction Meditation to everyday situations, like filing paperwork, grocery shopping, waiting in line at the DMV, etc. Usually you’d be irritated while sitting in traffic, but instead you can let go of your impatience and turn that into a Satisfaction Meditation. Also, when you go for a walk in the park, you can really be there and enjoy the beauty that’s all around you instead of being stuck in your head. Spirituality & Embracing The Now -Spirituality is the ability to cultivate your love for existence itself and be satisfied with whatever IS. It’s about developing an appreciation and satisfaction with the present that will carry over into every moment of your life. -Ordinarily we ignore the present moment as we go about surviving in the world. We get distracted trying to solve some problem or chase some goal, just to improve how existence feels. That can lead to anxiety and worry. Instead, practice being happy right now, for no good reason. Isn't that how you imagine you’d be if you were awakened? Think of it like this: If you can just sit and allow yourself to be content, do you even need enlightenment? Do you really need mystical experiences? What more do you want, but satisfaction? Why not short circuit all of that and go straight to the satisfaction? -You’re chasing these experiences because you believe they will satisfy you. What if you don't need to jump through all these hoops? The present moment is Absolute Truth. It’s God. Love. Spirit. Consciousness. Nirvana. Shunyata. Teotl. Fana. Shiva. The Groundless Ground. Mu. The Tao. The Force. It’s right here, right now. It’s just a matter of developing the ability to become conscious of it. The Trap of Chasing Enlightenment "But Leo, if I'm just sitting here satisfied and that’s the bulk of my meditation, will I ever reach enlightenment? Where's my awakening? I wanna be wise goddamn it!!” -No meditation can guarantee you will become enlightened. If you’ve been doing a lot of pushing during meditation for months and years, and you’re still not enlightened, maybe you need to try something new? Don’t fixate on achieving some mystical state or becoming enlightened while you meditate. If you have that attitude, even at the back of your mind, you're not doing it right. It’s important you let that attachment go. Just be satisfied with the present moment. You’re chasing some future fantasy, which is not what awakening is about. The anxiety of pushing for a result is sabotaging your ability to be present. -You might do this especially if you’ve attained crazy high peaks of consciousness through psychedelics. You can override that impatience by focusing on being satisfied with what is. Meditation is its own end, and in this case, meditation is about savouring satisfaction. ⦿ What you really want is to be more present. If you’re constantly trying to achieve a mystical experience, you’re distracted by anticipating some future result. That takes you out of the present moment. Worrying and anticipating are future oriented fantasies. It distracts you from your practice and becomes counter-productive. ⦿ Chasing becomes frustrating. With a chasing mindset, meditation can feel like a waste if you don’t “achieve enlightenment in 30 minutes.” You might even shame yourself, which creates a negative association to your meditation practice. The meditation becomes another means to an end, when it should be the end itself. If you're chasing some fantasy state with meditation, that ensures you're never going to be satisfied with most of your meditations. ⦿ Chasing happiness makes you unhappy. Unhappiness is imagining there’s something you should have, but don’t have, and that having it is the only way to become happy. This ensures you'll be unhappy until you get that thing, and even if you do get it you’ll only be happy for a moment. -True happiness is nothing more than being satisfied with exactly what is happening right here, right now, whatever that might be. That's the root of happiness. So, the counter-intuitive move here is to short circuit that whole process. To say, “why can't I be satisfied right now?” and then actually practice that. -Turn this into a quasi-challenge for yourself. How satisfied can I be with nothing special? How satisfied can I be with raw existence as it is, without needing to change anything? Satisfaction and Productivity The Satisfaction Meditation is harder than it sounds, because we often don't allow ourselves to be “happy for no reason.” “But Leo, being happy is going to rob me of my motivation! If I can be happy doing nothing, then why would I keep working on Wall Street or on my business or chasing millions of babes and dollars…?” One could argue that being satisfied is counterproductive to survival. Counterintuitively, that’s a good thing that you actually want. First, being happy makes you smarter, more resilient, more observant and more capable in a multitude of ways, which makes it easier to achieve goals. Happiness actually fuels success. It’s not the other way around. (Shawn Achor has a lot of good books and lectures about this subject. ) Second, if you’re honest, has any of that activity ever made you truly satisfied? No. It's just put you on an endless treadmill of chasing chasing chasing. If you keep that up you’re going to waste your whole life chasing stuff and never being satisfied. Dopamine tricks your mind into the fantasy that attaining some goal will complete you. It’s common to fixate on the chase and overestimate how fulfilling money, sex, and approval will be. It happens to everyone, even the most logical among us ?. -Focusing on satisfaction doesn’t mean you’re going to sit on your ass and do nothing for the rest of your life. You should develop a strong work ethic, a life purpose and meaningful relationships. You most likely need them to feel deeply satisfied with life. So don't be a slouch. You can do all those things, but that needs to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The cake is the Satisfaction Meditation and other practices that develop that muscle. A stronger Satisfaction Muscle will improve all those other domains of life. -Something fundamentally different needs to happen. So when are you going to wise up and realize that's not going to work? When you truly “get it” you’ll actually start practicing the Satisfaction Meditation consistently. Instant Gratification Culture -For most people, their Satisfaction Muscle is feeble because we live in a culture of instant gratification. It’s filled with social media, viral content, video games, loot boxes, tv & movies, fast food, porn and engineers in Silicon Valley using the most seductive bait to trigger those dopamine hits as fast and as frequently as possible. It’s a trick of your mind to think that chasing instant gratification and excitement is a wise and sustainable lifestyle. That’s what you realize after wasting years partying, drinking, masturbating, sexing people, taking drugs, having caviar in fancy cars. You end up crashing into dissatisfaction. -Those dopamine peaks never last no matter how enjoyable. That’s why you can finish one video game and still go searching for the next one, because no single video game has ever satisfied you. There's not enough money you can get on Wall Street or the casino to make those dopamine peaks sustainable. That’s why you need a root solution to the problem of unhappiness, otherwise you're always going to be unhappy. Two Different Reward Systems (Harvard trained physician Dr. K has an excellent explanation of dopamine at Healthy Gamer. Some of the following details about dopamine come from him.) -Dopamine chasing is ultimately unfulfilling because it has to do with wanting pleasure, not experiencing pleasure. When you do something rewarding the brain releases dopamine to reinforce that behavior by motivating you to want more of it. Dopamine does not cause the feeling or receiving of pleasure. Basically, wanting and enjoying happen in different parts of the brain. -Also, Dopamine isn’t “bad.” If you have too little dopamine you’ll be totally unmotivated. It just has to be properly balanced and not constantly chased as a lifestyle. -Your brain has two different reward circuits: the Dopamine Circuit and the Satisfaction Circuit. The Dopamine Circuit rewards you for sharp, positive changes in your survival situation, like stumbling on a hundred dollar bill, eating candy or playing a video game. It’s a very short lasting reward. When you get a dopamine spike you feel very happy for a few minutes, an hour, maybe even a day, then you drop back down to your default state. High Dopamine Activities: People pleasing. Partying. Winning the lottery. Watching TV. Eating a greasy cheeseburger. A promotion at work. Finding a new romantic partner. Taking drugs. Chris Evans musical tribute videos, etc. Because it triggers wanting instead of pleasure, you can get hit after hit and still feel compelled to chase more dopamine delivery systems (food, Netflix, video games, etc.) After all, if dopamine caused pleasure directly, you wouldn’t need to keep chasing more pleasure because you’d already be experiencing pleasure. The Satisfaction Circuit is rooted in the prefrontal cortex instead of dopamine spikes. The Prefrontal Cortex is the part of the brain that’s in charge of discipline, wisdom and all the qualities of the higher self. When you practice the Satisfaction Meditation, you’re strengthening the reward circuit of your Higher Self. (ep: Low vs High Quality Consciousness). It raises your baseline for happiness and consciousness. The Prefrontal Cortex also contains the pineal gland and/or third eye and receives dopamine through the mesocortical pathway. People with a strong Mesocortical Pathway have excellent willpower, vision, motivation and long term planning (among other positive qualities). One of the ways to develop that is through meditation. -No wonder most people are dissatisfied with life! Nobody taught them the difference between the dopamine circuit and satisfaction circuit. If you're not convinced of the benefits of strengthening the Satisfaction circuit, try spending the next 5 or 10 years desperately chasing those dopamine peaks. You'll realize it doesn't work. Some More Info on Dopamine • Dopamine release is about reinforcing a behavior through wanting. It’s a carrot on a stick. Trainers will hold up a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey and the donkey will keep chasing it forever and ever, never reaching the carrot. • Dopamine problems hurt your ability to delay gratification because it inhibits the part of the brain that’s involved in cost-benefit analysis. It makes instant gratification much more tempting, so you end up constantly making choices that are low reward for low effort. • Dopamine Exhaustion makes activities that promote your health and well-being a lot less enjoyable ?. Dopamine Tolerance eventually leads to Dopamine Exhaustion, where you have a vastly diminished ability to enjoy simple things. Reading a book or going for a walk becomes boring, because your body’s used to much higher amounts of dopamine than a book or walk provide. • If you do it long enough, you’ll end up creating a war between what you should do versus what you’re tempted to do to get that quick, easy dopamine hit. Thing is, you don’t actually want the donut or video game. It’s not as pleasurable as you imagine. Your dopamine is just throwing up false flares. • Dopamine chasing reinforces behaviors that aren’t even fun! You keep indulging in something even though it’s more numbing than enjoyable. (That’s a sign you really need a dopamine detox to reset your levels.) • It can take anywhere between three weeks to three months to go through a full dopamine detox. • Having said that, dopamine is necessary. You just need to regulate it properly. If you have too little you’ll be totally unmotivated, but you also shouldn't turn dopamine chasing into a lifestyle. • Most of us have gotten addicted to dopamine hits, even if we're not doing drugs. What’s worse, your brain builds a tolerance to dopamine, so the more hits you chase the bigger amount you need to get the same effect. Double Unhappiness If you don't cultivate your Satisfaction Muscle your mindset can get so bad that you’ll still be unhappy in beautiful, extraordinary situations. Maybe you’ve experienced that first hand. You’re sitting on a mountaintop with the love of your life, watching the sunset, admiring the scatter of twilight across the horizon. You’ve spent all day hiking up the mountain just to arrive at the perfect time and it's only going to last a few minutes. The weather is perfect, the location is perfect, the sunset is perfect, the person you’re with is perfect, but you're still not happy ?. You know the situation is perfect and that you should be happy, but you're not. That’s a double dose of unhappiness, because you’re unhappy, and you’re unhappy that you're unhappy. You may even start wondering, “If I can't be happy when the stars are aligned, what chance do I have of being happy at all, ever, period? What if nothing makes me happy? What if I’m doomed to be sad forever?” That’s when a lot of people get depressed or even suicidal. That’s because nothing can make you truly happy other than yourself. The only long term solution is to train your Satisfaction Muscle to the point where you're satisfied with existence itself. Stop Living Life By the Numbers Stop living your life for some arbitrary numerical metric, like dollars in your bank account, or cars in your garage, or the number on your bathroom scale, or even number of books you've read. That can get very dysfunctional. Numbers on a spreadsheet won't satisfy you in the ultimate scheme of things (even if you’re a mathematician!) Leo used to have a demanding, results obsessed mindset where he quantified everything. His attitude was to just grind through work, suck up any suffering and achieve the result. It was a very left-brained, unhealthy, dysfunctional, stage orange approach to life. It was toxic, unsustainable, and it didn’t lead to satisfaction. The Problems with Grinding 1) It’s based in being “not good enough.” “But Leo, I’ve got so many things to do and I’m already behind in life. I’ve got to become spiritual, confident, fearless, more loving, nicer to people who secretly irritate me, or just better all around. Do you know how hard it is to navigate reality when you’re not perfect, like those people on Instagram…” You have an idealized image that you feel you must live up to in order to be “good enough.” Problem is, if you feel bad about failing to live up to that, you’ll be too demoralized to take consistent, long-term action. 2) It’s unsustainable. You might be below your ideal target for years because it takes time to build skill. It’s unsustainable to spend all that time feeling demoralized and not enough. 3) It makes you cut corners in practice. When you don’t enjoy practicing, you can get sloppy. If you’re just grinding through, you’ll cut corners so you can get it over with and do something that you truly enjoy. 4) It stops you from entering a flow state. A flow state happens when you lose all sense of yourself in an activity. It becomes effortless, like you have the creative force of the universe backing up your actions. The thing is, flow comes from freeing yourself up, not from trying to finish things quickly. 5) Grinding changes “I want to” into “I have to.” If your practice is demoralizing, unsustainable, toxic and unenjoyable, it’ll feel like such a drag that you have to force yourself to do it. You might forget why you wanted to accomplish the goal in the first place. (Teal Swan has an excellent episode about this: “Have to…The Philosophy that Will Ruin Your Life”) 6) The most effective motivation “moves towards” something inspiring, not just “away from” something negative. Leo has an excellent episode about this: Positive vs Negative Motivation. It’s one of his best about life purpose and motivation. It’s based on the excellent book “The Path of Least Resistance” by Robert Fritz. Leo’s Reading Example When Leo first got into personal development 10 years ago, he wanted to develop himself as quickly as possible: “Let me achieve as much as I can, as fast as I can, to hell with how it feels!” Leo had a mountain of books to read. He figured if he could master speed reading he could read ten times as many books. So he got a speed reading book and started going through the exercises everyday. After a month of tedious grinding, his practice became so unpleasant it was actually counterproductive. He realized he would rather read at a normal, enjoyable pace than speed read through books, worrying about whether he understood or remembered the material correctly. His boredom, worry and attachment to the outcome of speed-reading was stopping him from entering a good flow of absorbing the book’s information. Nowadays, Leo reads pretty slowly but enjoys himself and focuses on absorbing the contents of the book. (Considering how long and dense his book list is he can’t be that slow at reading.) So, it doesn't matter how fast you read, because the point is not to read X number of books. The point is to enjoy yourself. If you end up reading half as many books, but enjoy them twice as much, it’s even more of a win. So, you can read a book in an enjoyable way, or in a grinding, unpleasant way. The better way is to enjoy the process so that you keep doing it without burning out. Enjoy your career or business. Enjoy your relationships and enjoy watching yourself grow mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Watching Actualized.org Episodes Another example of slowing down to be more effective is watching Actualized.org episodes. There’s at least two different ways to watch them: 1) You can binge a ton of episodes. “But Leo, I’ve stumbled upon this gold mine of information! I need to get through these big, meaty, complicated episodes as fast as possible. I’ll just binge watch 500 episodes with a pot of coffee, some modafinil, a stack of legal pads for notes, an even bigger stack of armodafinil, and that eyeball machine from A Clockwork Orange…then I’ll be wise!!” 2) Or you can slow down and enjoy the process. When you watch Leo’s videos, find a sustainable pace that you can enjoy, instead of binging so many they become a blur. Maybe you only watch one video a week instead of one a day. In the long run you’ll watch a lot more episodes if you enjoy the process. Also, if you take time to pause and contemplate what’s being said, you'll get more benefit by concentrating on fewer episodes in a deeper way. When you slow down and get into the rhythm of an activity, you enter a flow state and lose all sense of yourself. Whatever you're doing becomes effortless when you're in flow, because you’re not putting stressful demands and distracting expectations on yourself. Flow comes from trying to do things freely, instead of trying to do things well. Deeply Contemplate Happiness -You need to deeply contemplate happiness. If you can't clearly articulate what happiness is, how can you ever be happy? Happiness is not a belief or an ideology. It's not enough for you to just believe what Leo says about happiness. You have to actually derive, for yourself, what happiness is. -You figure it out through contemplation and direct experience. This will help you to distinguish between authentic happiness and dopamine peaks of pleasure. When you’re happy, notice what’s causing it. When you’re unhappy, also notice what’s causing it. Another way to frame the question is: What if there's a form of happiness that doesn’t create a downward shift into dissatisfaction after it ends? -If you do the Satisfaction Meditation enough, maybe you'll discover it’s pointing you towards authentic happiness, to a type of pleasure that doesn’t create suffering. Don’t mistake dopamine peaks for authentic happiness. They're not. Those dopamine peaks actually create suffering. This distinction is crucial. Life Purpose and Happiness -The happiness you get from your Life Purpose is different than the dopamine spikes of a video game. When you find your life purpose and align with it, it triggers a different reward mechanism, similar to the Satisfaction Meditation. Instead of dopamine swings, it leads to a deep contentment with life. Bliss and joy can be reached this way. “But Leo, the contentment from LP won’t be permanent either!” Of course it won't. But there’s a difference between getting attached to satisfaction and enjoying satisfaction while it’s here. This does not mean you cannot meditate on the feeling of satisfaction itself. In fact, doing so is how you escape suffering. eg: People misunderstand Buddhism’s non-attachment and impermanence as “life is suffering, nihilistic and empty” or “this is why Buddhists can’t have nice things.” However, the Buddhist notion of suffering and impermanence basically means that chasing material conditions and positive states is dissatisfying because it never lasts. So you’re guaranteed to suffer. clip: Lose Attachments to Gain Infinite Love (9 mins) -Appreciating bliss and satisfaction in the here and now is a far better way to live than chasing dopamine hits, which is what most people are doing. Think of it this way: In every moment you can either be satisfied or dissatisfied. Which will you be? Applying Insights: From Abstract to Concrete -You need to develop practical techniques for implementing all the high level, big picture, abstract ideas that Leo talks about. In this episode you got a very tangible practice. A lot of episodes don’t and won’t provide that. -You need to take ownership of your own personal development. You won’t build muscle by trying to get Leo to lift the weights for you. That goes for all self-help teachers, books, courses and insights. -To get the most value out of Actualized.org watch out for two traps: listening idly and not taking action. You can’t just listen distractedly as you cook or do laundry, unless you’re totally new to this content and have trouble focusing. You could start there, but to get results you need to focus. -No matter what level you’re at in your spiritual journey, you must take effective action to get results. You need to develop the ability to take any insight and ask: “How do I turn this abstract idea into something I can implement in my life?” “How can I practice this wisdom and embody it?” -For every profound insight you get, brainstorm different methods to apply it. See which ones work and which ones don’t. That’s where your results will come from!

Hello I couldn't see any existing references to Dr. K on the forum and wondered if it might be beneficial to bring this individual to members' attention as he tends to teach coaching and a range of meditation techniques. He produces content through his organisation Healthy Gamer, on Twitch and YouTube. Dr. Alok Kanojia as he's more formally known, was at one point playing too many videogames, so his father sent him to India where he spent seven years training to become a monk. However, he met a girl, fell in love and decided to come back to the US again. Upon returning, he completed his degree and went on to become a qualified psychiatrist at Harvard medical school. Rather than pursuing a traditional career, Alok founded Healthy Gamer. We might say that he wants to help his former self, the loser who played too many videogames. Dr. K combines experience from both his psychiatry and his spiritual training to provide coaching sessions to individuals, some of which are streamed publically and shared as videos. He recently mentioned both Neti Neti and Siddhis, which made me think about Actualized.org. I've not heard him mention Spiral Dynamics but he managed to hold a room containing both David Pakman and a passionate Trump supporter recently as a demonstration of the power of empathetic listening and understanding. Admittedly Pakman didn't speak much.

I cant get past feeling that "I" (whatever that is) is located within my body. I realize how I am not actually my body. But I sure as hell feel located within it. Help me understand why that's wrong.

I want to share an experience I had during self enquiry. I have done self enquiry many times and I have a discernment by now of what pure consciousness is, and how to remove what is not through neti-neti. So I was seeking with questions like, what is that is aware of my experience? What is left if i remove every objective element from my experience? What is the nature of the knowing with which I know my experience? As I asked the last question of one very similar I sort of came to a memory of my experience and saw as if my existence was so because of the existence of the things I was experiencing. Like if my experience go flipped from something inside experiencing out, to outside experiencing inside. It's like i went from living in a position seeing the outside world to being the outside. Like things outside where eyeballs and I was empty, I'm sure this is what is meant by "the universe is experiencing itself". It's like if I told you looking at a wall, what is the nature of the knowing which knows the wall? That is the wall, in terms of the awareness of course is empty but is the wall and everything you can see around you, anything can know. From there of course you see that you're nothing. What do you think? Is this a genuine insight? It kind of feels apparent to me now but i want to get some external opinion.

Contemplate your own death. Imagine what it feels like when your about to die. Feel the five sense. Perhaps you're in a coffin. Or about to get eaten by a shark. Accept and relax into it. Sit out in nature for at least 40 minutes. When the 40 minutes is up, stay aware for 5 minutes as you get up and walk away. Do this frequently. Watch Leo's Neti Neti method video Read some Peter Ralston books

You cant capture infinity and Reality and say oh it is this way but no that way, in the beginning NETI NETI is a great thing but one should see that even if Frank and Leo talks about differences, it is still A MIND who is doing the interpreting, like Frank, he is doing metaphysical claims all the time and he pisses at Leo for doing it too, lol it is unavoidable.. Infinity includes and transcends it all, it is impermanent/permanent, it is everything and nothing. In his stages with GOD / NOTHINGNESS / CESSATIONS etc, that is pure MIND who puts its "experiences" on top of others, making a claim that this "experience" is more important then another, YEAH for him perhaps, likewise LEO has another, i dont doubt the wokeness of any of them, they certainly are.

@Endangered-EGO Well, I fit somewhere in that spectrum myself potentially, but it's not as severe as catatonic schizophrenia. However, I did experience a haunting many decades ago, and currently have a paranormal situation in my life where I see a non physical friendly entity that comes and goes with me. The recent one isn't intense that it interferes with daily life, but the haunting in my childhood did, but I'm lucky to be alive. I could likely be mild schizophrenia also, as another trait of people with that is they struggle with metaphors but do well with literal meanings. All this considered, if I do psychedelics, I am definitely micro dosing first, integrating that experience for a while, and slowly build up, taking notes about any insights and give myself weeks to months to process the experiences. I also get what you mean with de-personalizaton/de-realization disorder. I did self inquiry, the neti neti method many years ago, and while I did get a glimpse of nothingness, it depersonalized me, and I had depression for about a month which I recovered for the most part. It seems to me that there are always risks doing psychedelics rashly, and also spiritual techniques rashly. You could keep going and list risks of different types and degrees in each part of life, but the common denominator of those risks is the ego, other egoes and ignorance, so it's always a good idea to research beforehand.

Letting go of distractions and desires, what is left? The sages did this, through the Neti neti process of Self-inquiry, like peeling an onion. After letting go of "this" and "that", the reality at the center of it all is Consciousness itself. Inquire into yourself and you will see.

@BipolarGrowth Alot of complicated buddhist dogma from the branch of the theravada, buddhism today is famous for everything the original never taught. They completely destroyed the notion of the Soul in buddhism and they are what is called MARA. Theravada aka " this is all thereism" The buddah never taught no soul doctrine. This is one interpretation of a teaching, the original buddhist teachings was exactly the same as Advaita Vedanta. Atman, anatman. Brahman. Godhead = Brahman. ANATTA= NOT "MY" SOUL. It is VIA NEGATIVA, NETI NETI. It is not a denial of the eternal. Tathāgata = arrived at the Absolute/Brahman. Accordingly to ancient pali, the nikayas. Theravada is a secretarian doctrine which is in no shape or form even close to the original teachings of Gotama.

Hi Leo Could you please do a 'glossary of terms' video covering the most significant terms and/or topics you've covered. For example, ego, singularity, non-duality, Goedel's Incompleteness Theory, Ox Herding, Neti-Neti, awareness, consciousness, etc. You get the idea. Also, I would really appreciate a video on 'Reality Transurfing' which I have been meaning to ask you to cover for years now. The most notable works on Transurfing were written by Vadim Zeland. I think it would interest you too. Thankyou. Much love Belinda (Brisbane, Australia)

468. What It Means To "Go Meta" House of cards has some great breaking of the 4th wall. Examples: Attracting females is not about what is explicitly stated, it doesn't matter what you say verbally when you're trying to attract a female. What matters is the implicit honest signals that are sent based on how strongly you're able to embody your masculine authenticity and the kind of confidence and humor and detachment from outcome that you're able to display. This is one of the craziest and unbelievable aspects of game when you learn to really game. It doesn't matter what you verbally say, it matters what you sub communicate and what you do. This is what most people don't understand about pickup. Even women say those cheesy pickup lines won't work on me it's just showing they're misunderstanding pickup. It matters how the guy shows up. If shows up and he's confident, he's cocky, he's humorous, he's lighthearted, he's detached, he's cool, he's suave, it doesn't matter if you know he's a player you'll still get attracted. It can be really effective to be meta about picking up a girl. The authentic opener. Admitting something bad and negative about yourself. You're able to have balls and own all things about yourself. And people admire that. Meta-lying. Lying about lying. Deception Self-deception series, very important. There's a meta component to deception. To execute a successful deception you also have to deceive about the fact that you're deceiving. To deceive yourself effectively you have to twice deceive yourself, meta-deceive yourself. By deceiving yourself that you deceived yourself. If you are in denial you'll also deny the fact that you're in denial. Criticizing others. The selfishness of others only bothers me because I myself am selfish. If I want others to stop being selfish I have to make the first and final move, which is to eliminate selfishness within me, and then it doesn't even matter that others eliminate selfishness within them because it no longer bothers me. That'd be Selfish with a capital S. Strange-loopy collapsing between selfishness and selflessness. Neti-neti method. Going meta on the entire world. I'm not this and not that. Keep going meta on everything until you're awake. The finger-pointing to the moon cited by zen masters. Going meta on the finger. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Every single logic itself requires a meta-logic to ground that logic in. And then a metalogic requires a meta-meta-logic to ground it in. That's because all logics are ultimately groundless. Because all of reality is ultimately groundless. So anytime you're dealing with a closed system, which is what a logic is, there's always some larger system that that closed system has to be couched within some larger frame. Any finite frame has another frame outside of it. Meta-philosophy. Philosophy about how to do philosophy. Meta-politics. If conventional politics is about dividing ourselves into tribes and trying to dominate the other one. Meta-politics is about raising the consciousness of everybody involved in the game to the point where they can recognize all these tribal dynamics. And the way in which our worldview and our belief systems are shaping our biases and then we're fighting over these different biases. How it's all just about brute survival, and that our survival agendas are arbitrary and that really we need to spiritualize our politics and make it about consciousness not about winning any particular one policy battle like abortion, civil rights, racism, gun control, etc. Really, politics is about raising the consciousness of mankind and getting everybody to love each other. Meta-science. The stuff of deconstructing the myth of science. How we can make science better? by questioning its foundations. Meta-business. How to create a more conscious business. How business is done as a whole. What are the externalities that businesses create? What kind of impact do businesses have on their environments and on their marketplaces. How do businesses shape the consciousness of mankind individually and collectively? How businesses are just functions of survival usually and then trying to look at business from this higher perspective. Meta-media. Media about media. Meta-relationship. There has to be you and her and then the larger holon of the two of you. Meta-spirituality. The study of all the different schools. Aligning all of those together and taking the best parts. Understanding what all of them are trying to do. Meta-work. Doing work by while you're doing your work finding ways to do your work better. Meta-sex. During sex, you want to be in the flow and moment. But meta-sex would be figuring out ways of how to please each other better and learning how to improve the quality of the sex and the intimacy and then that would be meta-sex. Meat of this episode: Many of our deepest problems can only be solved by going meta. Getting locked in battles on content while not seeing the structure. If you're gonna do something well you must bring the method of doing it, or process of doing it, itself under scrutiny. If you want to do language really well you have to observe your language and create a language about language. If not it's like looking at the moon through a telescope but never spending any time to inspect the telescope itself. If you're too attached to your method then you'll not be able to step outside to then improve the method. It's not that you don't want to look for corruptions where there are none. But that if you went and truly looked you'd be horrified. Going meta creates detachment, that's one of the superpowers of going meta. The whole logic behind spirituality or awakening is that you go meta, meta, meta, meta, meta, meta, and go so meta that eventually you identify with absolutely nothing, and then nothing can hurt you you become literally immortal. Your truest nature is infinite transcendence. That's what makes spirituality so confusing, your mind doesn't want a direct path towards emptiness and complete detachment. It wants to attach to stuff. Therefore it makes spirituality into this very complicated, controversial, difficult ordeal, simply because on its way to nothingness it wants to cling to absolutely everything that it can. You personally suffer when you can't sufficiently suffer and also important domains of life like science, politics, logic, religion, they also suffer when they aren't able to. Jail-breaking the mind requires that the mind go meta. The mind is always engaged in an active process of constructing reality, but the mind is not aware that it's doing so and needs to deny that it's doing so. If you don't deny it you realize that reality is a construction and therefore becomes illusory and therefore it loses its reality. Reality is really just a lack of consciousness of the fact that you're dreaming this whole thing up. The trick is to dream it up and then deny that you dreamt it, that's the whole game. That's the game humans play, always constructing reality to suit ourselves. The trick with science is that no amount of science can get you to realize that you're inside of a dream. Science is happening within a frame. Scientists think that it is this universal solvent. But it's just a picture, in a frame, hanging on a wall in a giant museum with a thousand other paintings. The same goes for rationality. Also just a single painting in a frame. If you get stuck in one single frame from your vantage frame it will seem as though that frame is all that there is. That's what a frame is. It seems total, but it's not total. That's the whole trick. To realize that it's not total, you have to be able to go meta. If you can't go meta or beyond something that thing ends up being the totality of your reality. But really you've just confined yourself to a kiddie pool and there's a giant ocean out there. And no amount of logic or debate will convince you that there's more outside your kiddie pool. The only thing that'll convince you that there's something more outside your kiddie pool is the intuition that there might be something more and then your personal effort to step outside the pool and go find something more. That'd be going meta. That's why scientists can be so dumb, and why highly rational people with high IQs can be so clueless about the nature of existence, and consciousness, and spirituality. Why is meta such a deep feature of reality? It's because reality is infinite. It has no limits. No outer boundary. Completely open-ended. There's always more, no matter how much you've seen, there's always an infinite amount more. Reality is one, reality is infinite, absolute infinity. But we humans we're finite creatures, and we create lots of finite closed systems via language, symbols, thought, and logic. We always try to grasp some little corner of reality, but every little piece of reality we grasp is not the whole thing by definition. But then we take our little finite closed systems and we wanna pretend as though they are the whole thing. But every finite closed system has a boundary around it. If it has a boundary around it that means there's an inside and there's outside. Infinity is that which has no inside and outside, inside and outside are the same, but within every finite closed system, there's always an inside and an outside. And this is where the problem happens. If you have a system that has an inside or an outside that means you could be inside it or outside it. So to go meta is to jump from inside to outside it. Then you can see it. If you're inside of it you can't fully see it. When you're inside of it it seems like it is the total thing. When you're outside of it you can see that oh this is just one part of something larger. Since reality is made out of holons you can infinitely jump outside one holon to another one and another one. And why's reality infinite and not finite? Simply because there can't exist anything outside of reality that would constrain it or put a boundary around it because anything that's outside of it by definition has to be inside of it. As it turns out truth exists, truth and reality are identical, and Truth is infinitely meta. Truth with a capital T is the whole of reality, everything that exists. And that Truth is infinite, it spans forever, it's endless. And this Truth is transcendental, it can't be captured with symbols, thoughts, logic, or any kind of closed systems or language. Any time you try to capture the Truth in a closed system you can capture a piece of it, but the piece is never the whole, therefore you can keep talking and talking and talking but you're never ever going to be able to reach the end of Truth. Truth always escapes symbolic and systemic encapsulation. (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem) So why do smart people not understand God? Because God is not a bearded man in the cloud. God is infinity. God is Truth. God is infinitely meta. To understand God your mind needs to become infinitely meta, literally detach from the whole of reality, every single one of your attachments. And you have to grasp it implicitly. You can't grasp God explicitly in a finite manner, because God is infinite. You can't make God finite. Scientists, rationalists, and other materialists make the mistake of asking for proof for God. But you're asking for a quantified, formalized, finite, explicit, symbolic proof, via language, or logic, or mathematics or whatever, but by definition that can't be God because that's finite. The problem is that you're not understanding what you're asking for. That it's impossible. And the impossible thing that you're asking for you're taking as evidence that God isn't real. It's like you're asking for a square circle. The more fear you have the lower you are stuck. So really just ask yourself what things am I clinging to? What are the payoffs you get by clinging to your ideology? The problem with spiritual growth is that it can't be forced upon you. You have to come to it yourself. Don't let Leo push you beyond where you're at. Maybe you have to go explore the lower stages. Burn through those attachments. And realize they're not as great as you think they are. Then you come back after those 10 or 20 years. When you see the frame of a situation and able to pop outside of the frame, when you do this there's a certain delight that fills your soul. The delight of meta-recognition. You recognize that the finger is pointing towards the moon, rather than just a finger that you look at. You discover that there's something implicit that's being suggested. And when you discover that implicit thing it gives you delight. Going meta has this slippery quality to it. Just like with a really good joke has a strong punchline, and you either get the punch line or you don't. And if you don't get the punchline, explaining the punchline to a person who didn't get it, is not the same thing as just getting it right of the bet. Next time you get that meta-recognition notice how it feels, and ask yourself why are you enjoying it? And then maybe it'll make you more and more interested and then it'll maybe one day lead to your awakening. With going meta you're in some way touching the implicit, touching the divine, discovering the divine within the universe. That's one of the charms of doing spiritual work. Going meta on the topic of going meta. The ultimate level of meta.

Weather there is (choice) or is not, is a duality. Contemplate; infinite will. Imo; you're stuck on neti-neti. Not realizing that it's only a polar response to you previously believing that there is, in fact, free will and choice. You're trying to prove that belief false. Which is unnecessary. Simply recognize the duality and don't choose sides. Remain in the center. Hope some of that helps.

You can do neti neti or noting during whole day but if you sit and do only that it is x10 effective

Yes i just mean to always blank out the mind is probably not the way to go, but concentration is ofcourse much important. But neti neti can be done during the whole day imo. But in order to do it properly we have to be present. But the word meditation is a bit misleading cause it can mean 1000 different things/techniques, like if a take a shit and count the holes in the ceiling it is a form of meditation etc ??? But the essence of meditation is i guess pretty much the same throughout

Neti-Neti Meditation is and old, simple and commonly powerful meditation technique and it suits meditators of any skill level. I would check that out! It's also more of self-inquiry type meditation so it can work as a great side-technique for your main meditation practice/(s) There is a nice little book about it by Andrew Doshim Halaw.

Put it perfectly in one sentence. @Mu_ Yes, However I never had an awakening during the contemplation, I had one shortly after the "where am I located"-contemplation when merging with the object during meditation. Maybe I could contemplate about every aspect of the self in a sequence, like, what is the me-story, where is me in the body, where is me in see/hear/feel/thoughts. But it's kind of a dead end. Neti-neti kind of has an effect on me though.

@SuicidalBug Whenever I have a new awakening I watch leo's video about the facettes of awakening/enlightenment, to be able to communicate it. From what you say, I can take a guess and ask: Is there a fluidity in awareness when it changes from see to feel, or from thought to see etc. Do you feel the expansion and contraction within objects of perception? Do you feel like everything you do happens effortlessly, and are you "anchored" in the present, that you feel like you might have bad memory of how you got there (even though you don't, don't worry). First thing is: Are you located in your head? Is what you see in front of you? Are sensations in the Body located under "you". Are the things you are hearing happening somewhere in the room. Are you hearing with your ears, seeing with your eyes? If not, that's good, that means you are emptying out the concepts and objects. I recommend the book neti neti meditation by andre halaw. If everything happens effortlessly, congratulations you have become "the witness", now that's a big liberation aspect of enlightenment. Just watch leos video if you want to communicate your experience.

No suggestions, its so damned complicated - the relationships I know only what is wrong (Leo is wrong) - neti-neti

Can confirm. That's literally what got me my first deep awakening. I think I even watched Leos Neti-Neti video back then

I did the Neti Neti method while on psychedelics and meditating. It was very powerful.

?? ????? ??????? (Nothingness):- ???????? :- so basically i came to realize this Nothingness by asking this question of who's the observer and by using neti-neti method to tap into it. As from this technique if I'm able to perceive or see or hear things that's not me so what am i nothing pure nothing. ?????? ??????? (Everything):- ???????? :- Basically i thought nothing is something and i tried to capture this but this so not how it was. Nothing is this entirely this not separate from me. And also i had this insight nothing is not different from something. Something = nothing and this is a tautology. (Something = nothing) = pure Being .

The Neti-Neti Methode is pretty cool I think but I haven't done it enough to say much about it.