Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[OBEler]

@Nick_98 @Nick_98 

Leo wrote in blog "Wrong State" following key insight:

"If you were in the right state you would need zero effort. And if you are in the wrong state no amount of effort will work. This is why you cannot think your way into Awakening. This is the #1 most important thing nondualists and spiritual gurus do not tell you. They keep wasting your time trying to get you to understand things you will never understand because you are in the wrong state. In this way these teachers waste decades of your life, getting you to chase your own tail in endless frustration, confusion, and disappointment. It’s not your fault. You are just in the wrong state. You are wasting years trying to do the impossible. Stop listening to gurus and figure out how to change your state. Spiritual effort is important but that effort needs to primarily go towards changing your state, otherwise it will not be effective."

 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

 

@Clarence 

@Leo Gura 

 

Edited July 3, 2025 by OBEler

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura Is daily meditating , reframing failures ,feeling uncomfortable emotions a part of your work?  By the way when you talked about fully feeling the suffering in the video - The counterintuitive nature of life I didn't understood back then but after years of suffering and being a failed optimist during emotional suffering I started accepting negative emotions since the last year which decreased my suffering even though it still there I fully embodied what was said in that video.

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

Is daily meditating , reframing failures ,feeling uncomfortable emotions a part of your work?

Yes

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura Is it better to be in the present moment at times of suffering or acceptance is better ? Do both align with your work ?

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

Is it better to be in the present moment at times of suffering or acceptance is better ?

What's better is becoming conscious of how your mind creates suffering.

Suffering is something your mind is doing. You can inquire into why and how your mind creates suffering.

Don't ask me how. Just observe and contemplate your suffering as you suffer. That is how.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Leo Gura

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura I have noticed that acceptance of negative emotions brings smile to my face while suffering. 

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

@Leo Gura I have noticed that acceptance of negative emotions brings smile to my face while suffering. 

That's good. But notice deeper why you are suffering at all.

[Rishabh R]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But notice deeper why you are suffering at all.

Because I am hurting myself by creating negative scenarios of the future and replaying old situations which hurted me. Thanks for guiding me.

[Guest Nilsi]

„An atheist starts by assuming that God is a silly idea held by dumb, indoctrinated, irrational people.“

Classic. Talk about strawmanning...

[Happy Lizard]

@Leo Gura I don’t have enough knowledge on this topic to put a strong argument for it, but what if reaching the truth for women is different form men? For example I heard a spiritual teacher say that a male sits in a cave and can reach enlightenment while a women connects deeply with the world and thats what her path to enlightenment is, which is very hard and requires much more freedom than sitting in cave. 

Edited July 3, 2025 by Happy Lizard

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, Happy Lizard said:

a male sits in a cave and can reach enlightenment while a women connects deeply with the world

That's just not going to fly.

Enlightenment IS connecting deeply with the world.

What New Age women mean by "connecting deeply with the world" is not truth, it's fantasy.

There can be feminine notions of truth, but it still has to be about Consciousness and Truth, not just doing yoga for sport.

The bottom line is that you have become conscious of what reality is. There's no special womanly way around that. You don't have to live in a cave, but you do have to do the work to deconstruct illusion.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Leo Gura

[Twentyfirst]

In the masculinity and truth post you forgot to mention what I would say is the biggest thing. Women can't seek truth when they have to carry a baby for 9 months, then hold onto and feed the baby for another 1 year. Then even when the baby can walk the mother still needs to be there for like 5 more years. Then they need to do that process for every child they have. They are also more expected than men to take care of elderly, nephews/nieces, aging parents

My truth journey would get so messed up with a curveball like this. New course "How to get enlightened as fuck while breastfeeding your newborn for only $995 just 3 payments the price of a stroller"

Women also lie so much when it comes to kids. Because they don't want to hurt the kids feelings they have to gaslight everything. Whenever I would get in trouble with the school or police my mom would be in denial of the evidence and be like "no that never happened you didn't do anything wrong you are perfect". I never understood that. Sometimes I would even say "no I did do it" and she would be like "noooo nothing happened". So I think women stretch the truth more with certain social groups than others like her lover or her kids she will lie until the end of time to keep those social ties in tact

Edited July 3, 2025 by Twentyfirst

[Terell Kirby]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The bottom line is that you have become conscious of what reality is.

No religions or New Age spiritual paths has this as an explicit aim. Which is fine- there are truths in religion and New Age but it helps to crest a hard distinction between those and Consciousness work (Actualized, Ralston)-two totally different things.

What helps me is separating spiritual work that is belief based (which most humans subscribe to) vs. direct consciousness/participatory/experiential based-which is grounded in metaphysics, epistemology, contemplation and deconstructing illusions, fantasies and biases. There are many tools and practices to do this-a lot covered in Leo’s content.

I also find the most religious and new age paths are more about feeling good in your body and emotions (healthy versions). Yet although it is healthy, it isn’t Truth — which transcends the need for good emotions, body and relationships. Survival can be healthy and unhealthy.. but it’s still survival. A big mistake or religions and new age is conflating what is good and healthy for survival with Truth.

Great video by Peter Ralston which summarizes this dynamic well:

 

Edited July 3, 2025 by Terell Kirby

[Daniel Balan]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's just not going to fly.

Enlightenment IS connecting deeply with the world.

What New Age women mean by "connecting deeply with the world" is not truth, it's fantasy.

There can be feminine notions of truth, but it still has to be about Consciousness and Truth, not just doing yoga for sport.

The bottom line is that you have become conscious of what reality is. There's no special womanly way around that. You don't have to live in a cave, but you do have to do the work to deconstruct illusion.

Do you think that this is the reason all religions across the world were patriarchal? That put men on a moral pedestal while objectifying women? Could this be the reason why religions treated women like shit while allowing men to be like the women's owner? 

[Daniel Balan]

Hi Leo! As I was contemplating today about solipsism and the notion that I am God, In the news I read that a famous soccer player died in a car crash in Spain. 
As far as solipsism goes and me being God, does it mean that I killed him with my imagination? Why have I imagined precisely that soccer player to be killed and why not another one? I just began to learn about solipsism and God and I have no clue how it works. So far I am very skeptical of this being the case. 

[max duewel]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's just not going to fly.

Enlightenment IS connecting deeply with the world.

What New Age women mean by "connecting deeply with the world" is not truth, it's fantasy.

There can be feminine notions of truth, but it still has to be about Consciousness and Truth, not just doing yoga for sport.

The bottom line is that you have become conscious of what reality is. There's no special womanly way around that. You don't have to live in a cave, but you do have to do the work to deconstruct illusion.

What about the feminine versions of spirituality when we were still living in small tribes? Being part of the great cycle of the Earth and Nature. Back then, women had Religious and Political prestige.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, max duewel said:

Being part of the great cycle of the Earth and Nature.

As if what? Awakening makes you not part of Earth and Nature?

This notion that Awakening is an escape from mundane reality is silly. Awakening is direct contact with reality. Everything we do in this work and with Truth is about deeper contact with reality. We are not trying to run away into a cave. That is a cartoon stereotype. The guy living in the cave is as much in reality as the girl raising 3 children. More even because he is not distracted by mindless automatic survival.

The only point of the cave is to focus you on reality. To minimize distraction and drama.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

Hi Leo! As I was contemplating today about solipsism and the notion that I am God, In the news I read that a famous soccer player died in a car crash in Spain. 
As far as solipsism goes and me being God, does it mean that I killed him with my imagination? Why have I imagined precisely that soccer player to be killed and why not another one? I just began to learn about solipsism and God and I have no clue how it works. So far I am very skeptical of this being the case. 

You understand how dreams work, yeah?

The dream is not directed by you per se, but you are imagining the whole thing.

The whole physical world is a dream.

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

In the masculinity and truth post you forgot to mention what I would say is the biggest thing. Women can't seek truth when they have to carry a baby for 9 months, then hold onto and feed the baby for another 1 year. Then even when the baby can walk the mother still needs to be there for like 5 more years.

Yeah, but I wanted to be fair. As a father of that child you also have to do a lot of work. So children are a distraction for men to. As a father you also can't just run away to cave.

Yes, the man can run away, but technically so can the mother.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Leo Gura

[Daniel Balan]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You understand how dreams work, yeah?

The dream is not directed by you per se, but you are imagining the whole thing.

The whole physical world is a dream.

Ok. I got this. But why do we all have the same dream all at once? When I dream at night, I dream a different dream than you. How is this possible that all beings dream the same dream? After all I was born in 2000, you were born in 1985, if I am God, how came you lived 15 years without me, the one who imagined all reality? I contemplated a lot in the last year about solipsism and about the notion that I am God and I couldn't validate it for myself that what you talk about is true. To me reality is as real as it gets, when I got injured at work I felt tremendous pain and it didn't felt like a dream at all. After years of contemplation, and listening to your videos nonstop, I concluded that I can't validate for myself that I am God or that I hallucinate all this. Quite the opposite. I got even more entrenched in the material paradigm and atheism. What I could validate through my own experience is that the reality as a phenomenon could be a hallucination, like a cloud of smoke that keeps reshaping itself and changing itself to infinity. That cloud of hallucination I would call God. But I, the evolved chimpanzee that writes this, is part of that cloud, not the cloud as a solipsistic entity. If I were to be the creator of that cloud I could shape and alter reality, but I can't! I am at the whims of that cloud, the cloud decides what happens to me and not the other way around. That's why I couldn't validate solipsism and the notion that I am God.