- Difference between Deficiency and Being Perception: Leo Gura explores the concepts of deficiency cognition (D-Cognition) and being cognition (B-Cognition), coined by Abraham Maslow. The former refers to the perception of the world in terms of what can offer security, fulfillment of needs, or validation - which is dictated by personal deficiencies, biases, and ego, while the latter involves perceiving the world as it is, independent of personal needs or desires.
- Importance of Being Cognition: Being cognition is the ability to perceive things in their essence, rather than colored by personal goals or deficiencies. This leads to a more accurate and less biased understanding of reality. In contrast, seeing the world through deficiency cognition, filters and taints reality with our personal desires, needs or issues, leading to an incomplete and often self-centered perception of reality.
- Effects of Deficiency Perception: Deficiency perception is an active form of perception, as it manipulates our understanding of reality to fit our needs and desires. It views the world anthropocentrically, sees everything in terms of its usefulness or threat to humanity. This perception is prone to be rigidly rational but at the same time lacks the ability to understand paradoxes, often resulting in dogmatic and ideological views.
- Understanding Self-Actualization: Gura aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of self-actualization, which includes specific attributes beyond the conventional definition of self-improvement or becoming the best version of oneself. B-Cognition forms one of these important attributes, distinguishing a self-actualized person from others.
- Problems caused by Deficient Perception: Inaccurate perception due to deficiency cognition creates problems in our lives. In their quest for self-improvement, people often try to change external aspects of their lives like jobs, relationships, appearance etc. However, their problems persist because they stem largely from the deficiency cognition, which distorts their perception of reality.
- Concept of 'Ego Smog': Leo Gura introduces the concept of 'ego smog', proposed by quantum physicist David Bohm, which suggests that our ego creates a distorted view of realitylimiting our ability to see clearly and think objectively. This flawed perception leads to personal and societal problems.
- Impact of Our Projections: Gura explains that our projections, in the form of labels, judgments, values, meanings, and purposes, form a significant part of our perception of reality, and are solely constructions of the mind without an actual existence in the external world. These projections can lead to emotional distress, setting the stage for false beliefs, reactions, and relationships.
- Interconnectedness of Beliefs and Relationships: Gura discusses how our attitudes, beliefs, judgments infiltrate and influence our relationships and interactions in various aspects of our lives, sometimes creating problems or insecurities. Greater awareness and consciousness are required to perceive the world without these mental projections.
- Detriments of Rationalism: Gura argues that most of our perception is based on rationalism which can distort our view of reality. He encourages viewers to practice being cognition, and cautions against mistaking ordinary, deficiency-based perception as being perception.
- Improving Perception through Enlightenment and Mindfulness: Gura suggests enlightenment and mindfulness as ways to enhance cognition and perception. By working on emotional dysfunctions and being open-minded, individuals can cultivate accurate perception of reality.
- Influence of Deficiency Cognition on Relationships: Gura discusses that deficiency cognition can negatively influence relationships and distort the perception of love. Efforts to change or help someone with deficiency cognition can be perceived as threats and can lead to conflicts.
- Choice between Self-agenda and Reality: Gura emphasizes that self-actualization requires prioritizing reality over self-agenda. While choosing self-agenda distorts reality, choosing reality can lead to the crumbling of one's self-agenda. The ego, according to Gura, is a fiction that necessitates the distortion of reality to exist.
- Persistence for Personal Transformation: Gura discusses that personal transformation, although often challenging and painful, can lead to extraordinary experiences. This requires commitment, sacrifice, and altruism, combined with living in alignment with one's values.
- Anthropocentric Perception and Rationalism: Leo Gura explains that our minds automatically create an anthropocentric view of the world, interpreting everything from a human-centric perspective. This can lead to rigidly rational, left-brain thinking where facts are abstracted into models, theories or tools for manipulating reality. However, we often mistakenly perceive these abstractions as reality itself.
- Inability to Hold Paradox and Ideological Dogmatism: Deficiency cognition struggles with holding paradoxes within the rigid rationalism that it adopts. This type of thinking is marked by dogma and ideology, fitting things into a certain conceptual framework and rejecting or distorting aspects that don't align with it.
- Categorization and Continuum Perception: Cognition often involves categorizing objects or people, placing them on a continuum to compare, judge or evaluate them. This prevents us from perceiving them in their full complexity and uniqueness.
- Misperception of Abstract Concepts: Misunderstandings occur when objects or people are perceived abstractly. Abstractions, while useful, can also be misleading in that they require selective attention that ignores or distorts certain aspects of reality. Overidentification with such abstract labels can prevent full perception of the subject.
- Incorrect Perception and Emotional Maturity: Our egoic deficiencies and emotional immaturity warp our perception of reality, creating a major distortion that leads to many problems in our life. Many recurring issues and dysfunctional patterns stem from this inaccurate perception.
- Living in an Augmented Reality: Humans live in an augmented reality, shaped by our concepts, images, fantasies and desires. We often fail to realize that this mental augmentation is happening and mistakenly believe that we are the most self-aware creatures on the planet.
- Concept of "Ego Smog": Introduced by quantum physicist David Bohm, the concept of "ego smog" refers to the ways our ego distorts our ability to clearly see reality and think objectively. Our thought affects everything, including our perception, often in subtle ways unbeknownst to us.
- Deception of Thought: Our thoughts and past experiences infuse our perception without our awareness, leading to experiences that we erroneously attribute to reality itself. This deceptive process is systemic and affects everything we perceive.
- Interplay between Perception and Thought: The process of thought strongly influences our perception. Through this deceptive process, we infuse our perceptions with our thoughts, imagination and past events, often without realizing it. This intricate relationship between perception and thought can cause systemic faults that can influence our minds and our overall perception of reality.
- Solution to Misconception: It is important to recognize these deceptive influences of thought on our perception. Developing a better understanding of the interplay between thought and perception can lead to improved mental clarity and a more accurate perception of reality, thus overcoming systemic faults.
- Perception is a systemic problem in the human mind's operating system: Perception is described as a discrepancy in the human mind's operating system that causes a substantial portion of our life's problems, affecting relationships, business, financial situations, and emotional contentment. Various societal issues, such as warfare, bigotry, government abuses, famine, and religious intolerance, stem from this issue as well.
- Need for awareness and practice: Addressing this issue calls for regular practice and heightened awareness. We must acknowledge the frequency of our life's perception from a deficiency standpoint, projecting our requirements and agendas onto actuality.
- Projections of the mind: Labels, significances, judgments, values, usefulness, and purposes are all projections of our minds, which do not exist in the real world. These are components of 'deficiency cognition.'
- Influence of projections on everyday life: Our projections influence every aspect of our lives, with emotionally triggered responses being a key element. These triggers are built by our minds and do not exist within situations or objects.
- Relationships between objects are illusionary: All relationships between one object and another are projections by the human mind. Our mind concentrates on specific relationships while disregarding countless others. The mind assigns and perceives relationships to aid self-preservation.
- Spiders' web of relationships: A multitude of relationships exists, not only with people but also with objects. This web of relationships impacts emotional reactions and causes distress.
- Overcoming perception issues requires effort and consciousness: Understanding that individuals' perception of reality lacks lines or objects requires concerted effort and heightened consciousness. Simple acquisition of knowledge is insufficient; perceived reality needs to be transformed.
- Importance of lucid perception of reality : To prevent adding mental noise to the complex web of beliefs, one has to view reality with clear lucidity. Truly appreciating the intertwining relationships between objects brings clarity to the issue of deficient perception.
- Perception and social problems: Leo Gura explains that our societal problems stem from the difficulty in changing our perceptual habits. This includes issues like social inequality, wars, and terrorism. However, if individuals take the time and effort to truly understand their perceptions and work towards changing them, these systemic issues can be mitigated.
- Practicing being cognition: Leo outlines a practical exercise for shifting form deficiency cognition to being cognition. It involves observing an object or person that one feels strong emotions abouteither love or hateand attempting to see it objectively, devoid of personal value or meanings. This requires mental effort and is initially a challenging exercise.
- Rationalism and deficit cognition: Leo addresses the potential misconception that scientifically minded individuals are inherently practicing being cognition. He argues that the use of rational, analytical mindsets and mental frameworks is actually an example of deficiency cognition, as it involves categorizing and defining objects rather than truly seeing them as they are.
- Connecting being cognition to mindfulness and enlightenment: Leo links being cognition to mindfulness and enlightenment, asserting that the dissolution of the ego is essentially the removal of the 'ego smog' disrupting our perception of reality. Enlightenment, meditation, and improved mental health can all contribute to stronger being cognition and a more accurate perception of reality.
- Emotional dysfunction and perception: Emotional dysfunctions and neuroses can distort our perception of reality by introducing additional layers of deficit cognition. By identifying and addressing these emotional issues, individuals can reduce their perceptual distortions and improve their being cognition.
- The impacts of deficit cognition: Deficiency cognition can impact the quality of interpersonal relationships and hinder personal growth. Attempts to help or change people who are heavily influenced by deficiency cognition are often perceived negatively, as these individuals view the world through a distorted lens.
- Implications for personal transformation: Significant personal transformation is possible through the practice of being cognition and mindfulness. Developing an accurate perspective of reality can improve one's life quality, relationships, and happiness.
- Defensiveness toward self-help or new ideas: Leo notes that individuals, particularly those with a high level of deficiency cognition, may feel threatened or offended by self-help materials or suggestions to view materials challenging their current belief systems. Their responses can range from dismissing the ideas as nonsense, to actively attacking the person who suggested it.
- Spectrum of dysfunctionality in perception: Leo asserts that people exhibit varying levels of dysfunction and deficiency in their perceptions, with most people falling somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, rather than being at extreme ends. He suggests that the average person has a considerable level of dysfunction and deficiency in their perception.
- Connection between rationalism and perception: Leo argues that rationalism distorts perception because the thought processes involved in rationalism influence and taint one's perceptions. He claims that rationalists deceive themselves into thinking they are seeing an accurate reality, when in fact, they are merely perceiving a construction of their own rationalistic thinking.
- Choosing between self-agenda and reality: Leo challenges viewers to decide whether they will remain loyal to their self-agenda or to reality. He argues that these two things are inherently at odds, with self-agenda distorting reality and loyalty to reality distorting self-agenda. Concluding, the ego and self-agenda are fictions that require distorting reality, and prioritizing reality will lead to the crumbling of one's self-agenda.
- Impact of inaccurate perceptions on life: When people hold onto inaccurate perceptions of reality, it sets them up to waste energy and create problems that don't actually exist. Leo suggests that improving one's life requires a shift in perception, one which aligns more accurately with reality.
- Action required for transformation: Leo concludes by emphasizing the importance of taking action on the cognitive targets he discusses. He warns the audience that failing to implement the changes he recommends could lead to them falling behind as the subjects get deeper. He assures them that the journey of self-actualization, although challenging, ultimately leads to extraordinary transformation and satisfaction in life.