Bentinho Massaro & His Shadows - He could be in some serious shit this time.

[Shrek_Of_Justice]

Hi all,

I am not a regular here but I have invested many dozens of hours listening to both Leo's and Bentinho's work several years ago. Due to having been so invested in Bentinho's teachings in the past I felt like dropping in here too and sharing my thoughts. I just checked and my second last post here was 4 years ago posting one of Ben's videos.

On Ben

First of all, I see some replies here saying that somehow these girls are just doing it for the attention and gosh this is really disturbing me. Have you listened to their stories? They were consistently gaslighted for several years and put in a state of fear in a very subtle manipulative manner. It is totally unethical what has been done with them and to say something so heartless as that they are just doing it for the attention, well, then you are essentially doing the same thing Bentinho was doing to his followers. Gaslight them. Tell them it is all their own fault to make them doubt themselves. I do not think this is right at all.

I have seen the argument thrown around that they were responsible then, or that they were asking for it in a way, and this too is just so dehumanizing. If you someone getting beaten up do you just tell yourself that from a higher level they did this to themselves?! What do you even know about this higher level?! If these stupid spiritual ideas stop you from empathizing with the pain from another person then they are clearly destructive! So much for reaching a higher level of consciousness ehh…

As for my personal experiences, I started to feel like something was off with him after maybe a year of following him. By that time I had already internalized an entire library of his words due to following his work so obsessively and I started to notice inconsistencies that really shouldn't be there in a spiritual teacher. If he were just an ordinary guy, okay, but as a spiritual teacher I hold you to the highest standards of integrity.

I visited his birthday party and expected to feel a warm welcome atmosphere in a spiritual community of warm loving people but instead felt excluded in an elitist atmosphere. I did get to say hi to Ben in person though and then offered him LSD, my birthday gift to him. I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if an already (seemingly) conscious person took psychedelics. There's the story of Maharajji who took Ram Dass's LSD and it had no effects whatsoever so I figured it would be a good test. He declined the gift unfortunately. I also asked if I could take a puff of his cigar lol but he declined that too! Said it was "cigar etiquette". Yeah I just didn't want an entire thick cigar it would kill my throat. Anyhow I thought that was funny. Unlike the people from his inner circle who spoke out I never had anything deeply disturbing happen with him though, I just felt off about him consistently.

On Enlightenment

On a sidenote, I see so many of you talking about enlightenment as something to achieve. It confuses me. What is there to achieve? If you want to achieve it, you must not be enlightened already. And if you are not, then how do you even know what is there to achieve? How do you know there is something to achieve at all?

From what I understand enlightenment is when your human experience reaches peak potential and this is simply an organic unfolding over your lifetime. It is unrelated to effort or practice. Well, I don't know though. This is how I see it now. I see it as the blossoming of a flower. If given the right circumstances, a little seed will blossom into a beautiful flower. However, when the flower sprouts from the ground and starts to become aware that it is becoming a flower - and then pushing itself to achieve the state of being a flower - then it is probably going to succumb itself from the stress, thereby only reducing the chance of becoming a beautiful flower. It might still become a flower, but it will likely not be as beautiful one had it simply let it self flourish naturally. 

So then, the only reasonable thing is to let life unfold itself. Don't force it. When I studied Ben and Leo I tried to force enlightenment by practicing and practicing and practicing. Meditating and self-actualizing and all that stuff. It caused me nothing but pain. It was unnatural, it was not the time for me. All my many hours of dedication brought only pain and the feeling of not being good enough.

Hence, I want to share this, so that maybe someone reads this and realizes that it is okay to just live life as you feel pleased without the need for enlightenment, so you do not hurt yourself in an endless chase for a fantastical state of being that may or may not be nothing more than a chimera.

In fact, the thing that has helped me most with being at peace with myself is therapy. Therapy is the best. My obsessive search for enlightenment was really me looking for a way out of suffering without having to face my fears and process my traumas. It was very ineffective and achieved nothing but the realization I should stop forcing things upon myself. I am sharing this because I feel this is actually very common because we all have - more or less - the same issues. We all have pain and we all suffer and we all want to not suffer. The root of the pain is not being unenlightened, nor is it your ego or something esoteric like that, it is usually unresolved trauma in some form or another. If you are shot and the bullet is stuck in your stomach, then go to a hospital! Don't go to a guru! The guru cannot remove the pain because you need to heal the wound to do so!

Well, that is my takeaway from 2 years of intense spiritual seeking. I was seeking in all the wrong places for things I did not even want. But hey, still learning. Life is an endless journey. It's not like I'm happy now that I am not seeking anymore. I am still processing everything I experienced and trying to make sense of this utterly confusing existence in a way that hopefully could make me happy. We will see. 

 

Anyhow, that's it for now from me. I could rant on and on about these things for hours but I gotta sleep now. Cheers. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Shrek_Of_Justice said:

On a sidenote, I see so many of you talking about enlightenment as something to achieve. It confuses me. What is there to achieve? If you want to achieve it, you must not be enlightened already. And if you are not, then how do you even know what is there to achieve? How do you know there is something to achieve at all?

From what I understand enlightenment is when your human experience reaches peak potential and this is simply an organic unfolding over your lifetime.

Sorry buddy but you're very misunderstanding what awakening is.

There is such an occurrence as awakening and you have yet to achieve it.

Awakening is very much like orgasm. You've either had one or you haven't. You are not born already orgasmed.

[Yali]

@Leo Gura 

Quote

Awakening is very much like orgasm.

You can't have an orgasm 24/7. Likewise, you can't be awakened 24/7.

Awakening is a temporary state of consciousness. Typically drug-induced. 

do you agree? 

Edited March 1, 2022 by Yali

[Joel3102]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Sorry buddy but you're very misunderstanding what awakening is.

There is such an occurrence as awakening and you have yet to achieve it.

Awakening is very much like orgasm. You've either had one or you haven't. You are not born already orgasmed.

There are people who are enlightened in the traditional sense of the word, where it’s a permanent knowing of no self where you no longer identify with the limited self

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Joel3102 said:

There are people who are enlightened in the traditional sense of the word, where it’s a permanent knowing of no self where you no longer identify with the limited self

That is not awakening.

[Yali]

@Leo Gura

Are you permanently awake? 

[Joel3102]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That is not awakening.

What’s the point if it doesn’t stabilise into some kind of a (permanent - not literally, you know what I mean) shift in consciousness.

You can’t keep tripping on 5-Meo forever

[Leo Gura]

The point is that you're not awake.

[Dodo]

6 hours ago, Yali said:

@Leo Gura 

You can't have an orgasm 24/7. Likewise, you can't be awakened 24/7.

Awakening is a temporary state of consciousness. Typically drug-induced. 

do you agree? 

Brother I had an experience which definitely can point as being an awakening, of the most pure kind, no drugs no alcohol, no food, only water and spirit. Yea no fap either - preserved that sexual energy. 

Instead of sleep,I was getting energised by moving and being in a positive state of mind, then reality responded to my attitude. 

It was incredible how there were so many messages in everything around me, which led me to do something.  It was all rather confusing at first but I believe i was communicating with the spirit of love or the earth itself. 

Can confirm that this is most likely not the awakening Leo is talking about. But in that state I needed no sleep so it should qualify.

i was an agent for good, like a superhero (lol) in that state,which in the end got me in trouble with the forces of darkness, who managed to turn me off. Long story short and I am back to being regular ol sleepy and eating me. 

But maybe its how its supposed to happen anyway. 

[Migue Lonas]

10 hours ago, aurum said:

Yup.

For those who think I’m bullshitting:

https://www.inc.com/magazine/201610/most-confident-man-tony-robbins.html

''That message has drawn in business titans who pay him a staggering $1 million a year for personal coaching.''

That is according to your link.

So it is for a year, not for a session. It is in a way understandable because he targets the stage orange people. Naturally, they have the most money. The rich CEOs who pay him that, are most likely so rich, it doesn't really hurt them at all.

When it comes to spirituality tho, and especially someone like Ben who teaches advanced stuff, he attracts a very different kind of audience. I would say that the majority of them are not taking the money-making scheme seriously at all, compared to Tony's audience. Also, it is easy to charge a lot, when your business model helps people make more money. It is easy to charge 100k if your business/advice/help, helps them make 1M back.

10 hours ago, aurum said:

So now here’s the relevant question to this thread: Does that mean Tony Robbins is a grifty cult leader?

I’d say it depends on how we’re going to make the distinction of what a “cult” is or isn’t.

Now, when it comes to whether Tony is running a cult or not, I won't comment because I haven't researched him thoroughly enough. But a big part if not a major part of a cult consists of two things: 1. People giving away all their money. 2. They engage in sexual activities with the leader.

Surely there are some people stupid enough to use all their savings to go into his seminar but does he encourage it?

Also, I am not aware that he is exploiting people sexually.

[vizual]

@Migue Lonas Tony Robbins also was involved in several sex scandals of possible rape/manipulation/intimidation. I'm not sure how that played out as I try to avoid celebrity gossip as much as possible, but his name is definitely not clear.

Edited March 1, 2022 by vizual

[Shrek_Of_Justice]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sorry buddy but you're very misunderstanding what awakening is.

There is such an occurrence as awakening and you have yet to achieve it.

Awakening is very much like orgasm. You've either had one or you haven't. You are not born already orgasmed.

Hmm I see. 

Well then my description of enlightenment as being the peak human experience wasn't entirely off was it? Orgasm being the peak pleasure experience, enlightenment being peak human experience?

It is true that I have never experienced this. I came close once on a 5-MeO trip but I felt too much resistance in my body to let go into it.

That being said, I still find the attitude of looking for awakening as something to achieve to be off-putting. If we continue the analogy of it being akin an orgasm then imagine someone having sex just to have an orgasm to the extent that they disregard the value of the whole sexual experience. Then it will ruin both the sexual experience and the orgasm because the quality of the orgasm is determined by the entire sexual experience. 

This is how I view life now. Life itself is the sexual experience and enlightenment is the orgasm. However, if you are not in harmony with the basic life experience to begin with, the awakening will likely not be optimal. It may not even come. 

On the flip side, if you are aware of the awakening experience and are aiming to experience it but not out of a sense of need nor accompanied by a disregarding of your life as is, then it seems perfectly natural to me. It is just that my impression of spiritual communities attempting to experience awakenings that the seeking will negatively impact your life and thereby only be counterproductive.

Again though, this is what I did, this was my experience. I do hope to experience awakening at some point but I feel that the only way of going about that is to live authentically and presently until the time is right.

[Migue Lonas]

49 minutes ago, vizual said:

Tony Robbins also was involved in several sex scandals of possible rape/manipulation/intimidation. I'm not sure how that played out as I try to avoid celebrity gossip as much as possible, but his name is definitely not clear.

I see.

[Leo Gura]

Being like Tony Robbins is not a good thing. The dude is obsessively Orange. Like a carton caricature of Orange.

[Migue Lonas]

42 minutes ago, Shrek_Of_Justice said:

This is how I view life now. Life itself is the sexual experience and enlightenment is the orgasm. However, if you are not in harmony with the basic life experience to begin with, the awakening will likely not be optimal. It may not even come. 

44 minutes ago, Shrek_Of_Justice said:

Again though, this is what I did, this was my experience. I do hope to experience awakening at some point but I feel that the only way of going about that is to live authentically and presently until the time is right.

Obviously, no one here is encouraging to seek awakening if your basic survival is jeopardy. Likewise, if you have psychological mental issues, do not follow Leo's work. This is written everywhere.

But once you have all the basic stuff handled, it is silly to think that there is no need to seek at all. And from reading your writings, it seems like you know this yourself deep down as well, you are just not fully admitting it to yourself because you have been ''traumatized'' from seeking in the past, due to you being too immature to seek in the first place.

 

 

[SOUL]

There's so much spiritual negging that goes on...

[Shrek_Of_Justice]

4 hours ago, Migue Lonas said:

Obviously, no one here is encouraging to seek awakening if your basic survival is jeopardy. Likewise, if you have psychological mental issues, do not follow Leo's work. This is written everywhere.

But once you have all the basic stuff handled, it is silly to think that there is no need to seek at all.

I did not mean a situation as extreme as jeopardizing basic survival, I meant that it would disturb any of one's life functions, including self-esteem, relationships.

I don't think it is silly to think there is no need to seek once someone is happy with themselves. Unless, with 'basic stuff', you mean survival but not happiness. In fact, all the people that I know personally who have done any sort of seeking were not happy with themselves to begin with. I am not saying it is impossible, sure there may be some, but I have never seen them. 

4 hours ago, Migue Lonas said:

And from reading your writings, it seems like you know this yourself deep down as well, you are just not fully admitting it to yourself because you have been ''traumatized'' from seeking in the past, due to you being too immature to seek in the first place.

It is not accurate to say I was traumatized from the seeking. I was already traumatized for other reasons and sought a way out of it. I was seeking a way out of it, yes. Spirituality was what I hoped would alleviate it but that was not the case. I guess you could call that immaturity, sure.

[Shrek_Of_Justice]

21 minutes ago, SOUL said:

There's so much spiritual negging that goes on...

So much for "growth" and "enlightenment" ehh ?

[vladorion]

8 hours ago, Shrek_Of_Justice said:

Hmm I see. 

Well then my description of enlightenment as being the peak human experience wasn't entirely off was it? Orgasm being the peak pleasure experience, enlightenment being peak human experience?

It is true that I have never experienced this. I came close once on a 5-MeO trip but I felt too much resistance in my body to let go into it.

That being said, I still find the attitude of looking for awakening as something to achieve to be off-putting. If we continue the analogy of it being akin an orgasm then imagine someone having sex just to have an orgasm to the extent that they disregard the value of the whole sexual experience. Then it will ruin both the sexual experience and the orgasm because the quality of the orgasm is determined by the entire sexual experience. 

This is how I view life now. Life itself is the sexual experience and enlightenment is the orgasm. However, if you are not in harmony with the basic life experience to begin with, the awakening will likely not be optimal. It may not even come. 

On the flip side, if you are aware of the awakening experience and are aiming to experience it but not out of a sense of need nor accompanied by a disregarding of your life as is, then it seems perfectly natural to me. It is just that my impression of spiritual communities attempting to experience awakenings that the seeking will negatively impact your life and thereby only be counterproductive.

Again though, this is what I did, this was my experience. I do hope to experience awakening at some point but I feel that the only way of going about that is to live authentically and presently until the time is right.

It's not an experience. It's the essence of all experiences being revealed.

[aurum]

15 hours ago, Migue Lonas said:

'That message has drawn in business titans who pay him a staggering $1 million a year for personal coaching.''

That is according to your link.

So it is for a year, not for a session. It is in a way understandable because he targets the stage orange people. Naturally, they have the most money. The rich CEOs who pay him that, are most likely so rich, it doesn't really hurt them at all.

When it comes to spirituality tho, and especially someone like Ben who teaches advanced stuff, he attracts a very different kind of audience. I would say that the majority of them are not taking the money-making scheme seriously at all, compared to Tony's audience. Also, it is easy to charge a lot, when your business model helps people make more money. It is easy to charge 100k if your

Fair enough, it’s possible for that 1 mil you get more than one call a year. In which case the average price would be lower. I may have been too flippant in quoting that number.

My point was it’s a shit load of money. And that there are people out there who would pay it. Obviously Bentinho would have to go outside his normal audience member to achieve this.

15 hours ago, Migue Lonas said:

Now, when it comes to whether Tony is running a cult or not, I won't comment because I haven't researched him thoroughly enough. But a big part if not a major part of a cult consists of two things: 1. People giving away all their money. 2. They engage in sexual activities with the leader.

Surely there are some people stupid enough to use all their savings to go into his seminar but does he encourage it?

Also, I am not aware that he is exploiting people sexually.

Look at the larger picture.

My intention was to use Tony as an example to show how these dynamics are often far more complex than the snap judgments we make. It’s not to literally argue whether Tony is a cult leader.