Good Vs Evil

[Socrates]

@Leo Gura Obviously the things i describe bellow are just my point of view. Firstly to give credit where credit's due all those videos bellow have great foundation and reasoning to be made and the basic statements of all of them are perfectly correct but unfortuantly the subjects were spread too thin and that means the message recieved varies too much from individual to individual. Also i understand the difficulty of this content especially in regards to context. You are giving advice and you have to present it in such a way that it would be digested by everyone wherever they are in their personal development/spiritual journey. These videos stand out because the advice is too far fetched which results in leaving grey areas behind.

Judgment - How You Ruin Your Own Happiness: This video is subtly black and white. The problem here is that the whole position of "reality is perfect accept it as it is" doesn't have any margin for change (or at least it is not stated). This is a common paradox of self-help as well. You are perfect, accept yourself as you are but you can be more perfect. Although in this video this was not adressed. I mean yeah rapists-thieves-terrorists are a part of reality but the next paradigm of accepting reality as it is, is to make something better which would be an ideal world without them. If you don't adress the existence of this paradigm i previously mentioned, you misguide people in an extremely passive position which is not ideal. If you check the comments you feel like the video didn't cover the fact that you need to judge to make desicions. Also the "words are just thoughts" position yes it is true but at the end of the day is not practical and it doesn't help anywhere. This also defeats the purpose of language because as good and evil are just thoughts so is every word in the dictionary but we still would use them to communicate. Also statements like "Rape and violence simply exist. Maybe one day they won't exist. But that doesn't change anything. Today they exist. So what? That's reality" are extremely misguiding. With that mindset you basically say that you can't do anything about reality to improve it which is at least irresponsible. What if MLK or Abraham Lincoln have held that positon? Fuck them they are blacks this is reality, fuck them they are slaves this is reality. This is just a continuation of this "perfect reality" idea. This statement would only be acceptable in an ideal world with no unjustice or at least a society of coexistance on the same level of the spiral dynamics scale. This is a deliberate act of detachment to the problems of reality which robs you of any responsibilities and these problems are let to be solved by others. This just promotes an egoic self-sentered mindset which is supposedly the enemy of our work here but still it creeps up to us. Lastly there was no mention on the objective good and bad which has nothing to do with ego.

 

Good Vs Evil - Why Evil Doesn't Actually Exist: This is probably the definition of armchair philosophy. It doesn't help practically anywhere. This follows the same paradigm of the judgment video. It follows the same pattern of detachment from responsiblity and word games like "words are just thoughts" which at the end of the day does not offer anything. It also follows the same position of "reality is perfect accept it as it is" and you also compare people to lions (?!?!). It makes more sense that humans are not a part of reality at all than that we are a part of reality no matter what we do. The problem here is the detachment from reality. The examples used in the video don't cover the wide range of good vs evil scenarios. Why not use more onesided examples like the Holocaust or slavery which the "good" side is more obvious. You deliberately choose examples where the "good" side is not obvious and this might mislead people. The problem with the buddhist thesis "reality is neutral" position is that if a new Hitler came into power the Monk wouldn't do anything. When you are passive you take the side of the winning side and that puts you in a bad position when the winners are the "bad" ones. If you still deny the good and evil you basically say "i will be enlightened, fuck the kids in africa*, this is reality at the end of the day, can't do anything about it". This position which is a pattern on all these videos pretty much drops your responsibility for all the "objectively" wrong doing in the world and conveniently allows you to continue your journey.

*replace kids in africa with any other real life worldwide issue.

PS

These videos all have great advanced ideas but are potentially dangerous in the world we live in. Even when you state that they require an open mind this doesn't help anywhere. In order to have those kind of ideas you need a whole society of self-actualizing people and at least green level on spiral dynamics. If i say i want to help the kids in Africa which want to satisfy their basic needs, is that ego? no it isn't. It is the good that has to be done IN ORDER to help the world reach green/self-actualizing as a whole and eventually (far down the road) adopt these ideas. Although these ideas are accurate there is too much room for error meaning that the risk to reward ratio is too high to confidently publicize them. You are just providing a tool for ignorance and lack of responsibility. This may not be your goal but still this needs some clarification.

 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Socrates

[Leo Gura]

@Socrates

The difficulty you're facing with this whole good vs evil topic is that you're still stuck at the level of believing in good and evil. As if these things were real. You call my explanations and Buddhist positions arm chair philosophy, but that's not the case at all. It's actually the opposite. Our positions are very pragmatic. The problem is that you're not taking them seriously. You don't yet have sufficient experience with them, or sufficiently high awareness, to feel the profound effect of walking through the world and seeing no good and no evil. What we're talking about here is not merely ignoring evil. We're talking about realizing that evil is something YOUR mind is constructing, and it's causing you suffering. You have to become conscious of this. ACTUALLY conscious of it, not hear me say it.  You have to see HOW your mind is creating it.

Your worries about Buddhists tolerating "evil" is still coming from the good vs evil paradigm, do you see? They don't tolerate evil, they don't do nothing about evil, rather they see that evil is unreal. Now, you might say, "But that means bad people will do bad things. What about the kids in Africa?!" Well, we're directly addressing that issue here. We're not ignoring it. The "evil" in Africa is the result of minds not being conscious of how they construct notions like good vs evil. The most important solution there is not to lock up criminals, but to make people more conscious. And that starts with yourself. Once you get your own mind sorted out, many other things get automatically fixed. And those things which require some external action, there's no problem. When you are fully conscious of how your mind works, helping the world in external ways will be easy and natural. Notice that your current paradigm of good vs evil is NOT helping kids in Africa. It's just riling your emotions up. Judgment is a very deep soft addiction which saps you of energy you could be using to help the world in a loving way. And being loving does not mean you cannot kill thieves, rapists, and war criminals. Notice a lion kills a gazelle without calling it evil. No problem.

Believe it or not, the reason all this sounds impractical is simply because it's an advance teaching which requires much consciousness to grasp. It's not an intellectual teaching the way you're currently holding it. You are actually the one who's making it into armchair philosophy. And I agree, if you hold it like that, it is just wishful thinking. But if you keep practicing consciousness work, and have some deep existential-level insights, you'll start to see just how practical this teaching was all along. Yeah, from an ordinary, mainstream level of consciousness is sounds like armchair philosophy. But try actually not judging people for 1 week and feel the profound difference it makes to your life. Or try to become directly conscious that all language is a construction. Oh man! Once you get a taste of that, it will totally change how you see life

[Revolutionary Think]

Leo in one of your videos you say that just because a person doesn't believe in good and evil it doesn't mean he'll automatically go out and do a bunch of terrible things because his or her mind isn't wired that way and that makes sense. Although I do worry that with this new paradigm even if a mind isn't wired to do "certain things" what if an incentive is there to do "certain things". Let's just say hypothetically speaking there is a poor person who is struggling to pay for food and someone comes along with a gun and a picture of a person and tells that poor person that if he or she shoots this other person they will get a million dollars and all their financial problems will be solved. With out a good and evil paradigm what kind of fail safe would there be against that type of behavior? 

I know you can say that with the good and evil paradigm it doesn't even work anyway and that's a valid point to make. Though I think with the good and evil paradigm it would be less likely for that poor person to do such a thing. If good and evil is really just an invention made in the human mind then what good is the justice system?

@Leo Gura I'm glad that you are also an advocate of education reform as well but, just imagine if you went to a school assembly and in front of a bunch of impressionable hormone raddled teenagers you talked about no such thing as good and evil. Then wouldn't all the bullies on the playground want to pick on all the kids that they perceive as weak and then the councilor wouldn't do anything or even join in the bullying because good and evil don't exist? I also think of the economic collapse as well. What's there to stop the super rich from scamming and cheating everyone else if good and evil are an illusion? 

Good and evil may just be illusions in the human mind that bring suffering to those that believe in it. I'm just worried that if this information gets in the hands of extremely narcissistic people they can use it as an excuse to ruin the world and other people's lives for their own benefit. Last time I checked the majority of the world is low consciousness not high consciousness. If you somehow introduced this new paradigm to the hordes of low consciousness people and they believed you them I'm afraid there would be nothing to stop low consciousness people in positions of high power to use all that power for their personal benefit ruin the planet and other people's lives just to satisfy their own greed and narcissism. What would stop the powerful from picking on the weak and taking everything they have from them? What would stop someone from making their lives easier at the expense of putting other people in abject misery, suffering, and depression? What would stop society from pure survival of the fittest mentality? 

[Leo Gura]

@Revolutionary Think You need to clearly distinguish here between what's reality, and what's agenda. The entire first half of your comment is concerned with agenda. In other words: how do we manipulate reality to function in ways that are favorable to humans at large. This is has nothing to do with reality or Truth. In fact, the situation you've set up is going to lead to the following: Let's invention bunch of bullshit which will allow us to manipulate reality into behaving the way we want. And so we do. We create inventions like morality, ethics, philosophy, justice, liberty, government, taxation, law, money, science, language, etc. All good stuff. But it has nothing to do with Truth, and is in fact the OPPOSITE of Truth. All this because you set up the whole issue in a way where you're asking how to manipulate ourselves away from reality.

Now you might say, "Ah, but Leo, isn't what's most important is to create a good life for human beings? So what's wrong with manipulation?"

But there's the rub. In manipulating reality, you broke the cardinal spiritual law. You've abandoned Truth. So now you have no compass. So now what's to stop you from constructing whatever the hell you want to manipulate reality to serve your ego? Well... nothing. And so what results in practice is a conceptually constructed playground of the ego. And to top it all off -- to secure this house of cards -- the final master stroke is to conveniently forget that you constructed the whole damn thing. "But Leo! I didn't construct it!!! This is just how reality is."

And now you're fucked. Now you've created all the evil in the world which you wanted to avoid with your manipulations. Now you have become the slave of your own entangled mind. And you don't even know it yet.

Notice how easily your manipulations backfire and produce the VERY thing you were using them to avoid.

What is keeping a dog from biting through your throat? By your logic, we need to teach all dogs a moral code, otherwise they might hurt somebody.

Yes, if your top priority is your self-agenda, then you will do all sorts of silly things to manipulate Truth. You will lie, cheat, steal, kill, and confabulate.

When you really dedicate yourself to Truth, the problem of morality and ethics is instantly solved.

Nothing wrong with having a justice system. So long as you understand it's a set of rules created by humans to preserve order. The rules are neither good nor bad, neither just nor unjust. They are rules. Like rules in a game of Monopoly.

What stops the powerful from abusing the weak? Nothing. Just thousands of years of war and the fruits of those wars which have resulted in relative peace. All the morals and rules you think are holding back the barbarians at the gates where actually settled years ago through bloody hand to hand combat. The Barbarians have already sacked Rome. Those rules are simply the current evolutionary point of the powerful. The powerful set the rules. But power is a tricky thing. Power isn't just military power. The "weak" are often more powerful than the powerful. Tens of millions of African Americans lobbying for civil liberties is more powerful than generations of Southern racism and segregation. Power is whatever prevails. And consciousness always prevails in the long term.

Consciousness is the key to everything. Because it is everything.

[Revolutionary Think]

So if we stripped all of those things that you mentioned... Will it eventually lead to an enlightened society or a jungle? I'm learning here but, it seems like it'll all come full circle eventually. Reminds me of the Tea Peter episode in Family Guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Peter. The episode where they get rid of the government and then everything goes haywire and then they make a government again. 

[Leo Gura]

@Revolutionary Think I have no idea. You're asking a question about social science.

But all of this is a distraction. See?

Seek out consciousness and Truth for yourself. Forget about trying to manipulate reality for now. You've been manipulating your whole life and look where it's gotten you.

The whole trick here is STOP focusing on agenda and manipulation. You're not going to solve your life problems through more manipulation. It's like you keep pouring gasoline on a small kitchen fire by telling yourself, "But we really need to put out this fire, it's so bad!"

And then you wonder, "Why is whole world on fire?"

Take your own psychology, multiply it by 7 billion, and now you see where the evil came from.

[Revolutionary Think]

Fair enough. Although does not manipulating mean not taking action and just letting life "happen to you"? I'm really concerned with what that actually means... Say I wanted to get a good job to afford a nice place would that already be an agenda and the way to manipulate the situation to fit into that agenda is to get some job skills at a local University to put that on a resume and give it to an employer to serve that agenda? 

Or would it be a better idea to do some inner work first to know why I want that nice place first? Let's say though while I was doing that inner work I was avoiding the more practical things like making money from a job because I wasn't concentrating on that and the quality of my life went down because I couldn't afford a good place and healthy food. This stuff isn't so black and white for me but, I'm hoping with the help of you and this community I can figure out much more and achieve true happiness in life instead of fake happiness (if that's even a thing). 

[Guest username]

@Revolutionary Think You aren't going to be able to completely abandon your self-agenda instantly. The self-agenda naturally falls away as you become more conscious. Focus on Truth. It's fine to still have goals in your life and have direction, but focus on Truth and allow your self to progressively become more attuned to it and learn to embody it. The more conscious you become, the more natural it will be for you to act in a way that embodies the Truth and the less your life will be dictated by illusion.

Consciousness is the key, pursue it and a lot of the relative issues you are having will resolve themselves. You're too concerned with issues in your relative life and asking questions of "How should I act if I was completely Enlightened right now?" as a means of helping you become more conscious. Rather, focus on your spiritual practice, mediation, contemplation, self-inquiry, etc.

I'm still not anywhere close to enlightened, but I'm light years ahead of where I started out. If I've learned one thing, it's that higher consciousness intuitions just won't make sense until you've done work to actually raise your consciousness rather than hypothesizing about how a high consciousness person should act from a place of unawareness. 

[Socrates]

@Leo Gura You clearly misunderstood my position here. When i use the "good vs evil" paradigm to prove a point it doesn't mean i embody it. We cannot communicate if i don't use "good vs evil" temporarily. We have overcome the "good vs evil" and "words are concstructs" paradigm, we are above it. This is probably a written language issue though. You don't know what i feel when i say evil if at all. Words by default are neutral so why didn't you set the baseline that there is no attachment to those words. What you have written shifts away from real life. It is all about my mind and its constructions which is like going backwards. The issue i mainly address is how "life is perfect as it is" detaches you from responsibility and action. You focus upon the labbels i use and i focus upon real life issues. Let's take the same hypothetical example with the new Hitler. It doesn't matter if the Buddhist see him as neutral or whatsoever, i practically would do the same, it matters if they are going to do anything to stop him or not. I don't focus on the label, i focus if the problem has been solved or not. Labeling it "evil" is an easy way to refute him for the masses. It is not addressed if they would do anything or not and obviously the new hitler is not the best example but you get the point. If the advanced paradigm of the Buddhists doesn't aid in the creation of a ideal world longterm but only serves itself by making them enlightened and fuck everyone else, is it that pragmatic and advanced?

Also in regards to judgment my points are really nuanced and reffering on the micro level. On the macro we agree how toxic judgment is but the micro is not addressed at all. I became aware recently that in order to make a desicion i need to judge stuff as good or bad and i suppose many other people do the same. Is this kind of judgment toxic? If yes, how am i still going to make accurate desicions without using judgment? If not why wasn't that adressed in the video? We are on completely different page here at least you addressed my points with one sentence but still that doesn't cut it.

 

[Leo Gura]

@Socrates I said what I said because I'm reading between the lines of what you're writing. The very fact that you're writing it and thinking in this way reveals a lot. You're underestimating how powerful these "mere words" and "mere paradigms" are for you. They shape your reality utterly. This is no mere philosophy. Your very life is wed to these worldviews, words, and paradigms. So watch out.

Your actions and emotions stem from your worldview. So saying the Buddhist worldview doesn't matter, what matters is their actions, is a big trap. Worldview matters way more than actions. Because it creations all actions.

Your reasoning here keeps taking many things for granted. You use concepts like "right/wrong", "good/evil", "creating an ideal world", "problems", etc.

The reason you're struggling here is because you're still looking at life from the perspective of how it can best serve you. So you're pursuing self-agenda, not Truth. Which is the root of all the "evil" you're trying to eradicate. In trying to eradicate it, you create it.

"How am I going to make accurate decisions" << Just as a thought exercise, imagine for a moment that you're NOT. Imagine that the Truth will kill you. And yet you pursue it happily any way, just because.

Also, just for a moment, imagine that the world is perfect exactly as it is.

So what now? What do you do in a perfect world?

Who says the world is imperfect? Could it be just your monkey mind? For whom is the world imperfect? For YOU? And what if there is no you? After all, try as you might, you are unable to find what you are.

[Socrates]

@Leo Gura You probably know what you are talking about reading between the lines but still this basically destroys Life Purpose. There is no need for Life Purpose in a perfect world, only for truth. I have great expections from my life purpose that's why i probably face so much resistance even on entertaining the idea of a perfect world. I can come from a perfect world position just to accept it and move on to improve it but step one just accept the world as it is, i cant wrap my head around it. Also even the idea that i am going to be in a state that everything is perfect and doesn't need any change brings me goosebumps. Even the fact that it doesn't make sense theoritically makes it scary. If it doesn't even make sense why am i supposed to chase it? Yeah too many questionmarks here. Oh by the way,  make an effort to stracture a foundational series like the really first videos and the blueprint just a little more concrete to help us guide through. I imagine them like the foundationals of self-actualization series that describe the most foundational concepts of the work we are doing, not just spread here and there but concrete and in stracture from video 1 to video x.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Socrates

[Guest username]

1 hour ago, Socrates said:

@Leo Gura You probably know what you are talking about reading between the lines but still this basically destroys Life Purpose. There is no need for Life Purpose in a perfect world, only for truth. I have great expections from my life purpose that's why i probably face so much resistance even on entertaining the idea of a perfect world.

Do you see the problem? Why do you need an imperfect world?  Look at the way you talk, your ego NEEDS to project all these problems on to reality to help sustain itself.  You're operating from deficiency perception rather than being perception, and you're not even conscious enough to see how completely unnecessary it is to view the world as intrinsically flawed to live life. Your ego needs to create this victim-scape where there are problems and the world is hostile and evil and you need to manipulate reality to serve some self-agenda.

Check out the following videos:

 

1 hour ago, Socrates said:

I can come from a perfect world position just to accept it and move on to improve it but step one just accept the world as it is, i cant wrap my head around it. 

This sentence doesn't make sense.

 

1 hour ago, Socrates said:

Also even the idea that i am going to be in a state that everything is perfect and doesn't need any change brings me goosebumps. Even the fact that it doesn't make sense theoritically makes it scary. If it doesn't even make sense why am i supposed to chase it? Yeah too many questionmarks here. 

What doesn't make sense? Are you referring to how Truth can't be grasped by the mind? Practice radical open-mindedness and start wondering what lies beyond your rational paradigm. It sounds like you're in paradigm lock and not willing to investigate things that are dramatically contrary to your worldview.

As the real Socrates would do, question everything. Don't just cling to your world-view and try to defend it because you're afraid of what's on the other side. Judging by your posts, it doesn't sound like you have a dedicated spiritual practice yet. That's a good place to start for acquiring understanding. These things simply won't make any sense unless you've done the work to gain the insights. It's not a matter of taking things on as belief. Sit down and inquire into the nature of reality and try to see things as they are.

We're using language here, but that's just window dressing. Try getting an intuitive grasp on the metaphysical and existential core of the work. Embodying Truth is more about intuitive wisdom than about rational constructs.

All of your world-views are influenced by your level of consciousness. Focus on the consciousness and many of the issues will resolve themselves. Nothing I said here would make sense to me a few months ago. That's why you must do the work.

Edited May 11, 2017 by username

[Socrates]

32 minutes ago, username said:

Do you see the problem? Why do you need an imperfect world?  Look at the way you talk, your ego NEEDS to project all these problems on to reality to help sustain itself.

I dont need an imperfect world. The world just is imperfect. Personally i would prefer a perfect one. 

32 minutes ago, username said:

You're operating from deficiency perception rather than being perception, and you're not even conscious enough to see how completely unnecessary it is to view the world as intrinsically flawed to live life.

This is somewhat completely irrelevant here. You assume that the problems of the world are self-centered around me. This is not the case, the problems have nothing to do with me.

Quote

Your ego needs to create this victim-scape where there are problems and the world is hostile and evil and you need to manipulate reality to serve some self-agenda.

Again you assume. This doesn't happen. There is no victim position neither did i complain about hostility. You simply fail to understand what i write.

32 minutes ago, username said:

This sentence doesn't make sense.

I can come from a perfect world position just to accept it and move on to improve it. It makes sense only if the second step is to do something about it. If i have only to accept it as it is and it ends there it doesnt make sense.

32 minutes ago, username said:

What doesn't make sense?

The world is perfect as it is.

32 minutes ago, username said:

Practice radical open-mindedness and start wondering what lies beyond your rational paradigm.

There are no ways to do that at least as far as i know. I understand at least that i have a rational paradigm.

36 minutes ago, username said:

Don't just cling to your world-view and try to defend it because you're afraid of what's on the other side.

Some things are absolute.

35 minutes ago, username said:

Judging by your posts, it doesn't sound like you have a dedicated spiritual practice yet

Only meditation.

Below this it doesn't make sense, elaborate.

 

 

[Guest username]

@Socrates Alright, let's start from your first position. 

2 minutes ago, Socrates said:

I dont need an imperfect world. The world just is imperfect. Personally i would prefer a perfect one.

 

Could you explain this?

[Socrates]

@username Kids in africa, mainstream materialism, educational system, terrorism, stracture of politics, global warming. These are some problems that come to mind. I dont need those problems to excist, they just do. 

[Guest username]

@Socrates What makes them problems?

[Socrates]

@username The fact that need to be solved.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Socrates

[Guest username]

@Socrates Why do they need to be solved?

[Socrates]

@username To avoid the destruction of the world. With that aside to improve life on earth for everyone and aid the human race on a good path.

[Guest username]

@Socrates Why does that need to happen?