Awake teacher Says Philosophy is a Waste of Life

[SQAAD]

Is philosophy a waste of life?

 

Key arguement is: you can forever keep trying to solve problems inside your mind.

Edited March 8 by SQAAD

[Leo Gura]

This is a trap.

The problem with this overly simplistic take is that you cannot stop thinking. Life will force you to think, and if you don't train how to think properly you will end up thinking improperly and fall into self-deception.

Improper thinking is the default. No one is born a great thinker.

If you follow that guy's advice you will end up an enlightened anti-vax, Jews-run-the-world, election-was-stolen, Trump voter.

Also what this guy misses is that thinking is an art that can connect you to the beauty and intelligence of God. Thinking can be a spiritual activity in itself and it generates valid and useful insight.

I agree that reading philosophy books is largely a waste of time. Real philosophy is done in your mind.

Edited March 8 by Leo Gura

[manuel bon]

@Leo Gura what do you think of Eckhart Tolle's teachings?

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, manuel bon said:

@Leo Gura what do you think of Eckhart Tolle's teachings?

I'm mostly fine with it. A bit simple for my taste.

The problem is it never made me passionate to do the work or even read his books fully. It's like spiritual oatmeal when I could be eating a juicy bacon burger with special sauce.

Edited March 8 by Leo Gura

[ExploringReality]

@Leo Gura

Tolle is great after an intense LSD trip, his teachings of Absolute Now is very grounding but one can go further. 

He is a cold drink of metaphysical water along the wayless way.

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura What about reading books like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and What the Buddha taught by Walpola Rahula ? Is reading them a waste of time ? But they have helped me.

By the way I am struggling to remain in the present moment which is sabotaging my tranquility. Could you give advice to me of how to stay present even though thinking is important ?

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Rishabh R said:

@Leo Gura What about reading books like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and What the Buddha taught by Walpola Rahula ? Is reading them a waste of time ? But they have helped me.

Anything can work depending on where you are in life. Reading Playboy could help. It all depends.

1 minute ago, Rishabh R said:

By the way I am struggling to remain in the present moment which is sabotaging my tranquility. Could you give advice to me of how to stay present even though thinking is important ?

Just go watch Tolle for that advice.

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura  Right now I listened to one of his YouTube videos and he said that to be present we must be aware of surroundings rather than interpreting them.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

@Leo Gura  Right now I listened to one of his YouTube videos and he said that to be present we must be aware of surroundings rather than interpreting them.

You are basically asking how to meditate.

Practice meditation. There are many various techniques.

Edited March 8 by Leo Gura

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura Ok. Did you mean it for being present or for meditation ? As per meditation I am already meditating since, 5 years. 

[Leo Gura]

48 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

being present or meditation ?

What's the difference?

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura No difference. Thanks.

[Hojo]

@Rishabh RIt seems there are 2 modes you can be in, you can push yourself against the screen of life and live in the frontal cortex region of your brain or you can 'fall' back into the darkness and that is of thought and ego. Like keep energy where your third eye is and dont look back. Anytime you see that something( a thought) is dragging you back from the screen you are stopping meditation.

Edited March 8 by Hojo

[Rishabh R]

@Hojo Thanks. It's great advice.

[SQAAD]

@Leo Gura

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This is a trap.

The problem with this overly simplistic take is that you cannot stop thinking. Life will force you to think, and if you don't train how to think properly you will end up thinking improperly and fall into self-deception.

Improper thinking is the default. No one is born a great thinker.

If you follow that guy's advice you will end up an enlightened anti-vax, Jews-run-the-world, election-was-stolen, Trump voter.

Also what this guy misses is that thinking is an art that can connect you to the beauty and intelligence of God. Thinking can be a spiritual activity in itself and it generates valid and useful insight.

I agree that reading philosophy books is largely a waste of time. Real philosophy is done in your mind.

You are constantly thinking about stuff, over and over again, religiously, obssessively..

Isn't this also a trap and useless after some time?

The guy in the video seems very chill and enjoying his life.

You seem kinda stressed many times.

 

Edited March 8 by SQAAD

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, SQAAD said:

Isn't this also a trap and useless after some time?

Could become a trap.

Far from useless.

Yes, if you totally stop thinking you can be at peace. But peace is not the only game in town.

Edited March 8 by Leo Gura

[ExploringReality]

@Leo Gura 

Humans seek pleasure, satisfaction and cravings while avoiding suffering and pain. This is samsara.

Why do humans avoid Truth? It's a question of getting lost in a maze or pursuing understanding of the maze and transcending the maze. 

What are your guts on jed McKenna? He really puts a sword through the neck of fantasies.

[Carl-Richard]

On 8.3.2025 at 6:56 PM, SQAAD said:

Isn't this also a trap and useless after some time?

What does "could this become a trap?" even mean? Could it be bad? Anything can be bad. It depends on how it's done.

The biggest trap that has probably ever existed is "it's either this or that, no in-between", or being unaware of things like scale and context. If you spend 99.9% of your time thinking and nothing else, of course that is bad, of course that will be a waste of time. The question should be about what you think about, how much you think, and when you think.

Edited March 12 by Carl-Richard

[CoolDreamThanks]

On 08/03/2025 at 9:29 AM, Leo Gura said:

This is a trap.

The problem with this overly simplistic take is that you cannot stop thinking. Life will force you to think, and if you don't train how to think properly you will end up thinking improperly and fall into self-deception.

Improper thinking is the default. No one is born a great thinker.

If you follow that guy's advice you will end up an enlightened anti-vax, Jews-run-the-world, election-was-stolen, Trump voter.

Also what this guy misses is that thinking is an art that can connect you to the beauty and intelligence of God. Thinking can be a spiritual activity in itself and it generates valid and useful insight.

I agree that reading philosophy books is largely a waste of time. Real philosophy is done in your mind.

Thinking that concepts can connect you to the beauty of God is a deep trap of the egoic mind. God is beyond all concepts, and that is also where enlightenment is. It's a beauty to behold the lengths to which the ego goes to avoid being in Silence because it knows that if it truly understands its own inadequacy, it will soon disappear into the nothingness from which it came. And Leo does not want to disappear - he still gets a lot of juice from the concept of Leo, the wise one, the conceptual identity of the amazing intellectual teacher of metaphysics. Who is Leo without his pride in his metaphysics? Nothing. 

Back to God -- when you try to conceptualize God, you are trying to put something abstract, perfect, and infinite into symbols (words and thoughts) that are limited, specific, and just overall imperfect. As a result, you end up with a lot of inaccuracies, as most of Leo's content about God and the metaphysics of life is. But he will never admit that a lot of his teachings are inaccurate because his whole identity is built upon him being right in his metaphysical understanding. If he truly understood - if he clearly saw that he was wrong - that would be a huge hit to his ego, and he would do anything to protect himself against that. 

If you are truly enlightened and live from Silence, you don't become an anti-vax Trump voter -- you now operate from a place of intuitive knowing -- and from that place, you know that nothing here is real and nothing matters -- why worry who runs the world or what effect vaccines have --- it's all a meaningless dream of your own creation. In fact, being identified with a conceptual identity is what creates physical ailments -- that's why Leo is so ridden with diseases and finds no cure - because the disease is himself as Leo -- Leo has to disappear for the disease to go away. Silence is what heals. Medicine of the dream only provides temporary relief from symptoms, which eventually come back anyway. 

He is stuck in the dream trying to figure out why the dream characters act the way they do; he judges them and calls them stupid, thus cementing himself as a conceptual entity. Who is the stupid one - Donald Trump or a dreamer of the dream who judges the characters he himself is dreaming? Haha. Leo knows intellectually that this is a dream but makes it real to himself psychologically by judging it, going deep into politics, and so on, as though any of this actually matters. Imagine how foolish it is to be dreaming a dream at night and to be so engrossed in politics and other unreal things created by your dreaming mind that you have no actual connection to your divine nature, which is pure Silence. 

See how this type of thinking is a level higher than anything Leo ever writes?

Not that it matters what a non-existant dream entity called Leo does and thinks, but it's helpful to see the traps the mind gets you into. 
 

[Leo Gura]

57 minutes ago, CoolDreamThanks said:

Thinking that concepts can connect you to the beauty of God is a deep trap of the egoic mind.

No. You don't comprehend the depth of this. You think you understand, but there is more you do no yet understand. And I will not bother explaining it to you because your mind is clearly closed. Have your way. Enjoy your enlightenment.

Consciousness is beyond anything you presently comprehend.

Edited March 12 by Leo Gura