I Escaped a Cult - Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth Review

[zurew]

8 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

why even try to get the teacher to verify your position

I dont and others dont, but the point is that thats the expectation given that its taken to be true from the start that he is more qualified to make that judgement than literally anyone in the Universe.

8 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

If you have a realization that's different, then so it is, it's fine.

 

That would be the expectation from a leader who takes self-deception seriously, but thats not what happens here.

Given the epistemic issue of circular justification and the issue about self-deception, I would expect him either to again give an indepdent norm that everyone can use  or concede that he needs to qualify all his knowledge and stance on spirituality and lower his credence way the fuck down in what he takes to be true and especially in the premise that he is more developed than everyone else.

The conclusion isnt what you said there, the conclusion is that you are self deceived and not that you have simply a different take on spirituality.

Edited 5 hours ago by zurew

[Terell Kirby]

You have to take the forum way too seriously (unreasonably serious) to call it a cult. The most important aspects of the work doesn’t even involve humans to begin with, this is a highly individualistic path if you go deep with it .. 

Calling Actualized.org a cult is indeed silly. It signifies you’ve fallen into the trap of making the work about Leo and his fans- not about generating your own insights

Edited 5 hours ago by Terell Kirby

[Thought Art]

@zurew So he should kneel to you and your view of his understanding? Is that what you want?

[Thought Art]

@zurew What does Leo actually teach? Distill his entire video dialogue and the core tenants of actualized.org for us so we can be sure your cult accusations are solid. Let’s dismantle it right now. 

[Mellowmarsh]

14 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

Like God and Infinity?  Should Leo Back down on his views to appease someone else? It’s his “school and teachings”. 

That’s a great point.

The way I interpret Leo’s teachings is that all he seems to be doing with his generous free forum is advocating for each and everyone of us to be our own ( School - Teacher - Student ) just as he’s doing, but not do exactly as he’s doing or saying literally, but by adopting your own version, naturally, as only you understand it to be.
 

I don’t believe for one minute Leo himself believes he’s the only one on the entire planet who holds every single piece of the bigger jigsaw picture puzzle. Rather he already must know we each and every one of us are holding our own individual pieces of the same bigger picture and are here solely to try and piece all those pieces together, collectively.
 

 

 

[zurew]

1 minute ago, Thought Art said:

@zurew So he should kneel to you and your view of his understanding? Is that what you want?

Very good faith engagement right there and you dont come across at all as someone who is mindlessly sweeping for him and emotionally and defensively reacting to the points that are said.

[Thought Art]

@zurew Well, reflect on yourself too. If you think he is wrong how do you know?

I don’t know if Leo is right or wrong about everything. 
 

But, being God at the end of everything to me is rational. I think reality is intelligent. I’ve had trips and awakening which show this. But I’m a still learning and figuring it out. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Thought Art

[Mellowmarsh]

By saying all that I know is that I know nothing is exactly the same as saying the finite is identical to the Infinite.

 

Nuff said, no need to justify, apologise, or explain yourself to anyone, not even yourself.

This is blindly self-evident. Nothing more to add, or say, or do,  really. R.I.P
 

 

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Terell Kirby said:

Calling Actualized.org a cult is indeed silly. It signifies you’ve fallen into the trap of making the work about Leo and his fans- not about generating your own insights

Leo created that trap and Leo made the work about himself.

Its Leo who made it so that the "work" necessarily includes taking his words seriously, since his body of work is depedent on his subjective judgements about what is the highest awakening and what is the highest level understanding and there is no independent guiding process that is given to you that you can use to judge your progress other than his words and judgements.

There is always this implication that the actual work can be done and judged independent from his stance, but in practice thats literally never the case.

There is literally no option or scenario where you doing the work can lead you to the conclusion that he is wrong and that you are right, because that will automatically mean that you are self-deceived and that you need to do more.

--------

Also the implication of your statement is that there are literally no cults as long as the judgements and the behavior of the leader is ignored. Like even if the leader claims explicitly or implcitily  to be an authority on the subject, that still wont make it a cult, because you are free to ignore those claims and words about authority.When the Heaven's gate leader said that you need to unalive yourself to spawn on the spaceship, given your stance on this that wasnt cult like (as long as you didnt automatically take that claim to be true ), because he just simply descriptively outlined an action that you can use and try and test for yourself and you unaliving yourself there and then is just you doing the work and testing the waters for yourself and not necessarily taking his words on belief. (You unaliving yourself there and then is compatible with you being agnostic about the leader's words and just testing it for yourself).

Edited 3 hours ago by zurew

[Thought Art]

4 minutes ago, zurew said:

Leo created that trap and Leo made the work about himself.

 

False! You should say “I think…”

Leo’s work is not entirely unique. Lester Levonson, yoga, toasim, Ken Wilbur, etc Buddhism even, various religions, other thinkers, science, metaphysics, etc… 

His work is not something he just came up with on his own. 
 

Making it about HIM is stupid. You aren’t in a fucking religion. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Thought Art

[Wilhelm44]

16 minutes ago, zurew said:

I dont and others dont, but the point is that thats the expectation given that its taken to be true from the start that he is more qualified to make that judgement than literally anyone in the Universe.

That would be the expectation from a leader who takes self-deception seriously, but thats not what happens here.

Given the epistemic issue of circular justification and the issue about self-deception, I would expect him either to again give an indepdent norm that everyone can use  or concede that he needs to qualify all his knowledge and stance on spirituality and lower his credence way the fuck down in what he takes to be true and especially in the premise that he is more developed than everyone else.

The conclusion isnt what you said there, the conclusion is that you are self deceived and not that you have simply a different take on spirituality.

Yeah, but the original point is that you framed all these complaints in cultish terms.

The fact is that you are completely free to have whatever realizations you want and no one will stop you here. 

The style that the teacher uses in disagreements is a different story, and merits some discussion.

I'm sure Leo will respond if you stick to the actual complaints, without throwing the cult insinuations in right off the bat. 

 

 

[Mellowmarsh]

1 minute ago, zurew said:

Leo created that trap and Leo made the work about himself.

Listen only to the sound of silence. These words are just sound heard as words. The sound of silence.
 

No self is ever making this about a ‘your’ self or a ‘my’ self. Self is Selfless.

Nothing is making self happen and nothing is stopping self happen.

 

 

[zurew]

14 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

he style that the teacher uses in disagreements is a different story, and merits some discussion.

Its not about the styles, its about the unchallengeable starting premises that are taken to be true from the start and that shadows all interactions and all judgements going forward from there.

There is no amount style change that can fix that.

This is not about rhetoric, this is about the actual substance that is taken to be true by Leo.

Again his actions and judgements flows from the unchallengeable starting premises that he takes to be true.

Edited 5 hours ago by zurew

[Human Mint]

@zurewThere are infinite beings more intelligent than Leo, that's what Infinity means. That's it.

That's why his teachings are pristine, because they're hyper-meta.

Also be aware you create all of this noise so you don't realize it is you. You just haven't faced that yet.

36 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

I mean, there are world leading experts on math, taking a shit, sports science, finance… there are the best athletes in the world in their respective area. Name anyone else with Leo’s body of work and articulation and orientation towards doing what he does? I personally have never come across anyone else on earth like him.  If you know of anyone else alive doing what he does show me. But, he does not demand you give him authority. I can see that as a red flag. But, idk. 

I have the same appreciation. Leo is world-class at what he does. There could be a million like him, but there aren't. Or maybe there are, but what if it is a chinese dude that you will never know exists?

[Mellowmarsh]

“Stubborn as a mule” ~ Leo Gura

 

Greatest quote i evva hoid..lol 

 

A man outstanding in his field just like a c0w we shall not be moved. Who put the zero in c0w. From inside a c0w it’s hard to get a handle on what’s really going on. Lol

[Wilhelm44]

24 minutes ago, zurew said:

Its not about the styles, its about the unchallengeable starting premises that are taken to be true from the start and that shadows all interactions and all judgements going forward from there.

There is no amount style change that can fix that.

This is not about rhetoric, this is about the actual substance that is taken to be true by Leo.

Again his actions and judgements flows from the unchallengeable starting premises that he takes to be true.

What is it that you want from Leo tho ?

I mean imagine if you went and challenged Adyashanti for example. Do you really expect him to abandon his own realization and just go: "Yeah, I can see how you could be right."

Probably not going to happen, is it ?

[zurew]

9 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

What is it that you want from Leo tho ?

if it is truly just about the work, then I would not expect him to judge and demonize other leaders and other traditions and to waste time on that and I wouldnt expect him to consistently and continously claim to be the most developed person (especially when literally no one asks for it) and I would expect him either again to provide an indepdent process from him by which you can judge whether you are wrong or not and an indepedent process by which you can judge your level of understanding or If he cant do that, then I would expect him to be actually open to the possibility that he is wrong (not just claiming that he can be wrong, but actually seeing that he qualifies his satements and that he leaves room for others to be right and him being wrong) and I would expect him to qualify his statements and I would expect him to treat spiritual disagreements as something that potentially in principle both party can learn from (and not automatically think from the get-go in literally every single exchange that the other person is necessarily wrong or self-deceived from the fact that they disagree with him)

Edited 4 hours ago by zurew

[Wilhelm44]

29 minutes ago, zurew said:

if it is truly just about the work, then I would not expect him to judge and demonize other leaders and other traditions and to waste time on that and I wouldnt expect him to consistently and continously claim to be the most developed person (especially when literally no one asks for it) and I would expect him either again to provide an indepdent process from him by which you can judge whether you are wrong or not and an indepedent process by which you can judge your level of understanding or If he cant do that, then I would expect him to be actually open to the possibility that he is wrong (not just claiming that he can be wrong, but actually seeing that he qualifies his satements and that he leaves room for others to be right and him being wrong) and I would expect him to qualify his statements and I would expect him to treat spiritual disagreements as something that potentially in principle both party can learn from (and not automatically think from the get-go in literally every single exchange that the other person is necessarily wrong or self-deceived from the fact that they disagree with him)

I am curious, on what specific spiritual truth/realization issue, do you disagree with Leo the most on ?

Edited 4 hours ago by Wilhelm44

[zurew]

3 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

I am curious, on what specific spiritual truth issue, do you disagree with Leo ?

I dont have that kind of disagreement, I rather have issues with his completely firm credence on things given his epistemology. (this kind of criticism is applicable to everyone else btw who is dogmatic about something and isnt open to be wrong).

There is a lack of acknowledgement that he can be wrong and there is a lack of acknowledgement that he takes certain things necessarily dogmatically  true to even get spirituality on the ground and to start spiritual work.

This is btw another interesting thing -  you can watch him how he navigates disagreement with Buddhist or nondual people and how he will curiously claim that his teachings are different in a meaningful way and that are a bunch of meaningful differences and that those traditions are wrong about those details, but when it is convenient for him he will claim that those differences are just minutia and arent meaningful.

The significance of disagreeing on those details will curiously change depending on what is convenient for him in the given context.

 

Even if you take the dogma stack that Leo takes to be true for granted, you can still give him an internal critique that he doesnt have literally any subtantive response to and hence he should lower down his credence (even granting that his dogma stack is true) in his conclusions.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Leo does, intentionally or not, insert himself into the work by being the sole authority. Without an external metric (that isn't subjective) to measure against, he positions himself as the ultimate authority.

Because he operates largely outside an established tradition, and presents highly personal metaphysical conclusions, there is often no agreed-upon external standard by which to evaluate claims such as the nature of consciousness, God-realization, or the structure of reality.

Usually you get 'direct experience' touted as justifying radically different conclusions. But this can vary wildly depending on who reports it. You could argue that the work he does is inherently first person and experiential. That external validation is impossible with certain types of consciousness work. Direct experience being the metric to judge. 

I see the self sealing nature of this as: Leo reports and insight > Leo interprets the insight > Leo explains why critics don't understand the insight > Leo remains the primary authority on what is correct 

I think this is where it becomes mixed up. It creates a system where teaching a method and teaching ones personal metaphysics gets blended up. 

In fairness though, many spiritual teachers through history have done this. The different is they were embedded in wider foundations in solid traditions. Competing interpretations exist. Leo occupies a very large portion of his work because it is so individualised.

I don't think this really answers anything about cult or not. That's not my intention with this comment. But I do see where @zurew makes some solid points.