But Leo, You're So Privileged!

By Leo Gura - March 23, 2026

Yes, I am insanely privileged. Privileged to be raised by non-abusive parents. Privileged with no mental disorders. Privileged to live in America. Privileged to go to great schools. Privileged to live in peaceful neighborhoods. Privileged to not be raised in poverty. Privileged to be a white man. Privileged to not have been indoctrinated into any religion or any ideology. Privileged to not have trauma.

The more I study the 3rd world, the more aware I become of my privilege.

However, many people have that and never find Truth, never figure out Reality. 98% of people who become successful never convert that success into spiritual success. They get lost in the success. I could have kept chasing success, making tens of millions of dollars by now, sleeping with dozens of women, traveling the world on luxury vacations and posting the pictures on Instagram. Why didn’t I? Because I saw that that cannot produce happiness. That is a dead end. That doesn’t solve the existential problem of life.

If we gave everyone in the world $5 million dollars and a safe place to live, they would be no closer to finding their way out of Maya. They would continue down a path of corruption and materialism, as lost as they are now in privation.

Your attitude matters most of all. What you do with your time, energy, and money matters. Your values matter. Your understanding matters. Your epistemology matters. People continue to have the wrong priorities no matter how successful they get. Their understanding of reality is still backwards. Their ignorance is endless and insatiable. They are completely lost in mind — which no amount of wealth can fix. Their minds are corrupted beyond any amount of money to fix.

I strategically used my early privilege to earn enough money to buy my way out of the human rat race so that I can focus full time on Truth/God/understanding/Love/Consciousness. There was nothing accidental about this. It was a deliberate multi-decade plan, requiring self-discipline and emotional labor. Instead of doing fun luxury vacations I was doing painfully boring meditation retreats. Why doesn’t everyone who has the money do that? Because they don’t have the understanding and the priorities.

Anyone with over several million dollars should be doing hardcore meditation retreats, not shopping for luxury cars and watches. Anything else is stupid. No amount of money is going to fix your mind. You can’t buy a pure mind. Once your basic survival is handled, most of your labor should be going into purifying your mind. Materialism is worthless beyond your basic needs. The most important thing you can do for your happiness and development is say No to luxury. Live spartan and focus that free energy on inner work.

Fancy cars, fancy houses, fancy clothes, fancy jewelry, fancy vacations, fancy hobbies, fancy women — these are all the wrong priorities and will not produce happiness. Muster the intelligence to surrender all of that for higher consciousness. This will be one of the best decisions of your life.

True intelligence is trading material success for spiritual success. When you look at people who pursue luxury, notice how stupid they look.

So yes, I am privileged, but it’s also what I did with it. I can forgive impoverished people being lost. What I can’t forgive is rich people being lost. The whole point of wealth is to escape unconscious survival. I want you to work hard enough, long enough, to buy your way out of unconscious survival. That’s the point of hard work.

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