What Is Spirituality - A No-Bullshit Intro To Spirituality

• Understanding Spirituality: In this section, Leo Gura from Actualized.org begins by acknowledging his previous bias against the word spirituality, discarding it as something irrational and not deserving of serious study. However, through his personal development journey, he came to understand and appreciate what spirituality truly embodies.
• Spirituality vs. Metaphysics: He proposes that spirituality and metaphysics are in fact synonymous and identical in nature. Gura defines metaphysics, and by extension spirituality, as an investigation into the fundamental nature of existence - an exploration that treads deeper than surface-level scientific investigations.
• Metaphysics Misconception: He addresses a common notion among scientifically-minded individuals who tend to dismiss metaphysics as abstract, unprovable speculations. Gura counters this perspective on the basis that such a dismissal without actual inquiry is in itself unscientific and nonempirical.
• Better Understanding of Metaphysics and Spiritualty: Gura encourages viewers to understand that spirituality is about developing a deep metaphysical connection with reality, stating that this involves an elevated consciousness – an experience of awe and wonder – about the profundity and beauty of existence. He gives concrete examples, such as watching a beautiful sunset, observing stars, examining a cell through a microscope, and appreciating intricate physics formulas or exquisite art.
• Eliminating Negative Connotations: Gura takes a moment to differentiate spirituality from religion, emphasizing that although the two terms often get interchanged, they are not the same, and that spirituality does not encompass the delusions and falsehood found within religious practices.
• Atheism and Spirituality: Being an atheist himself at one point, Gura admits to his aversion towards spirituality. However, he realized that being atheistic or scientifically-minded should not prevent one from connecting deeply with the phenomenon of existence and experiencing the awe that comes with it.
• Spirituality – Not Just Emotions and Feelings: Gura underlines that spirituality goes beyond feelings and emotions, and involves discovering the beauty and wonder in all aspects of reality. He encourages viewers to personally explore spirituality to fully comprehend and appreciate its depth.
• Spirituality and Emotional Connection: In this part of the video, Leo Gura explains that people can feel a deep, metaphysical connection to reality through various experiences like playing a immersive video game, watching an epic film, marveling at space exploration progress, or working in a field like science, where the pursuit of understanding connects an individual with a profound sense of reality. However, this connection is often dismissed or underestimated, especially by strategic individuals who perceive such feelings as mere emotions unrelated to objective truth.
• Amplifying the Connection: Gura also adds that these emotional connections only represent a tiny portion of spirituality, and that true spirituality involves amplifying this connection so that it's being felt continuously. This requires not relying on specific external stimuli or events but developing a perpetual consciousness of the profundity of existence, which is often neglected in everyday life due to distractions or mundane routines.
• Spirituality vs Rationality: Gura further addresses the dismissive attitudes of rationalists and scientifically-minded individuals who insist on hard facts and consider feelings and the sense of wonder as unimportant to the understanding of reality. But he argues that their lives are primarily governed by feelings, including their pursuit of science and rationality. Spirituality is about removing current beliefs and fantasies about reality and becoming more conscious of the true nature of existence, leading to a sense of profundity and awe.
• The Essence of Spirituality: Lastly, Leo asserts that spirituality isn't about adopting fantastical ideas, but it's about deconstructing existing beliefs and misconceptions about reality until the raw truth remains. This inquiry and discovery process can lead to profound insights and a deeper connection to reality, making one realize the significance and beauty of existence beyond their ordinary perceptions. Gura argues that genuine philosophical inquiry and spirituality are pretty much identical concepts aimed at exploring the nature of existence.
• Understanding Spirituality and Metaphysics: Leo explains that the aim of philosophy is the search for absolute truth and the understanding of reality, the essence and substance of everything, and the concepts of time and space. Leo emphasizes that this isn't about just harboring beliefs but about questioning and removing current beliefs to get closer to the truth. Several great philosophers, many of them idealists, have undertaken this quest and have arrived at the absolute truth.
• Misconceptions about Accessing Truth: Many, including well-known philosophers like Kant, believe that absolute truth isn't directly accessible but can only be reached through formulas, models, or other symbolic representations. Leo counters this view by claiming that the truth is directly accessible through serious effort and spiritual practice.
• Defining Spirituality: Spirituality is described as developing a metaphysical connection with reality, seeking the absolute truth independently of all belief systems. It's about having a personal union with the truth, "having sex with reality." Committing one's life to seeking absolute truth is seen as the ultimate spiritual act.
• Alternative Definitions for Spirituality: Leo provides several alternative definitions for spirituality. It's about developing a metaphysical connection with reality, seeking answers about the nature of existence, truth-seeking with a capital 'T', and experiencing a personal union with the truth.
• Analogy of Spirituality with sexual experience: To help listeners better understand the concept of experiencing the truth, Leo draws an analogy between spirituality and sexual experience. Just as one cannot fully understand an orgasm without experiencing it, one cannot comprehend spirituality without personal exploration and experience.
• Challenges in conveying spirituality: Leo acknowledges the challenges in conveying the depth of spiritual experiences. These challenges arise from the fact that unlike universally understood experiences like a sexual orgasm, spiritual experiences often require personal effort and are not experienced by all. As a result, explaining the profound nature of these experiences can be difficult.
• Exploration of New Experiences in Spirituality: Spirituality is also defined as the expansion of consciousness beyond ordinary levels. This expanded consciousness allows for a new domain of experiences, analogous to sexual pleasure. Despite its complexity and the difficulty in communication, pursuing spirituality allows for mind-expanding insights into the nature of reality.
• Understanding Spirituality and Consciousness: Spirituality is about raising your consciousness and realizing that reality is a mind, instead of a physical system. By eliminating materialistic beliefs, it becomes clear that reality is a mental construction, opening up the possibility of experiencing non-physical phenomena and enabling reality to become more fluid and flexible.
• The Role of the Mind in Reality Construction: Materialistic and scientific perspectives often view reality as a demystified, non-mystical entity. However, spirituality offers a different paradigm, recognizing the mind’s role in constructing physical reality. This spiritual paradigm acknowledges the mystical nature of existence and challenges the limitations imposed by believing in a purely physical reality.
• Escaping the Matrix through Spirituality: Spirituality equates to escaping the 'Matrix', waking up from the idea of life as it's commonly perceived. It offers a path to aligning one's life with the truth and consciousness, which means bringing the truth into everyday life, embodying it, and aligning habits and behaviours to it.
• Dissolving the Ego and Expanding the Circle of Concern: Spirituality involves dissolving the ego or one's separate sense of self, which includes the notion of being a physical biological organism. It challenges the conceptual creation of your identity and encourages the expansion of your circle of concern. This means expanding the sense of identity until it becomes completely Universal, leading to a higher level of compassion and love, extending beyond oneself to others and to the entire universe.
• Expanding Circle of Concern and Connection: Leo discusses the concept of expanding one's circle of concern from oneself, to immediate family and friends, and eventually to all human beings, living creatures and sentient beings throughout the universe. This expansion represents an individual's connection and care for all existence.
• Physical Connection: The concept of connectivity is not merely ideological, according to Leo, but a tangible aspect of consciousness. This universal interconnectedness is a physical reality one can articulate when the false notion of individual separateness is removed.
• Altered States of Consciousness as Spirituality: Leo views spirituality as the exploration and attainment of altered states of consciousness. This contrasting from just beliefs and ideas as he argues that understanding through new states of consciousness, hence direct experience, is essential to spiritual engagement.
• Science and Spirituality: Spirituality is deemed as non-symbolic science by Leo. With science defined as the pursuit of understanding of reality, spirituality is seen as an evolving aspect of science, a non-symbolic way of investigating reality, not through symbols, thoughts, or models, but through a direct interface with reality.
• Differentiation of Spirituality and Religion: Leo emphasizes the difference between spirituality and religion. Religion is viewed unfavorably as it turns direct experiences of consciousness into a belief system. Spirituality, unlike religion, promotes critical practices for firsthand experiences rather than adherence to dogmas and blind faith.
• Rationality and Spirituality: Spirituality is outlined as a stage beyond rational and scientific thinking—transrational, translogical, and trans-scientific. Leo argues that a spiritual person's understanding of science and use of logic will be enhanced rather than diminished, as spirituality builds upon these aspects and transcends to realms beyond their reach.
• Proof of Existence and Spirituality: Leo challenges viewers to prove that existence is possible without appealing to direct conscious experience, therefore arguing the value of consciousness within the realms of spirituality.
• Spirituality and facing death: Leo Gura makes the point that spirituality requires confronting the concept of one's own death—not just physically, but conceptually. Rather than seeking to preserve physical life, a spiritual perspective involves recognizing the transient or illusory nature of one's own existence and identity, suggesting that the true self is not the physical body but a mental construct.
• Spirituality is not about achieving materialistic goals or proselytism: According to Gura, it is a misinterpretation of spirituality to view it as a means for achieving material ends or converting others to one's own belief system. Spirituality, he asserts, is about inward exploration and understanding the existential nature of reality.
• Difficulty of proving spirituality and the absolute truth: Gura argues that spirituality is not about proving anything, especially because the concept of proof is inapplicable to the realm of absolute truth. More expansive than proof, truth—in Gura's view— can't be proven because proof is by definition indirect, whereas truth is direct and includes proof within its domain.
• Spirituality is not an elaborate theory, a subjective experience, or a chemical brain state: Leo denies the idea that spirituality is a theoretical construct, a subjective experience, or simply a chemical reaction in the brain. He emphasizes that when one probes deep into existence, the conventional notion that thought and experience occur inside the brain becomes a realized conceptual construction.
• Variety of spiritual paths: Gura recognizes different forms of spirituality such as nature mysticism, shamanism, tribal spirituality, orthodox religions, meditative states, visualizations, psychedelics, and non-duality. He acknowledges that some forms can be problematic and recommends non-duality and enlightenment as the purest form of spirituality.
• Societal evolution of spirituality: Leo discusses the evolution of spirituality along the lines of the Spiral Dynamics model. Spiritual expressions may vary across stages, starting from the tribal and shamanistic spirituality at the purple stage, progressing through different variations at subsequent stages—red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and turquoise—with each stage representing a different societal structure or world-view, culminating with high-level metaphysical connections at the turquoise stage.
• Different stages of spirituality: Spirituality encompasses various stage of development, such as the blue stage (tribal, nationalistic), the orange stage (secular, scientific, rationalist), and the green stage (New Age teachings, neo-shamanism). These stages are followed by the yellow stage (visionary scientists open to metaphysics and idealism), and finally turquoise (fully developed non-dual sages and yogis).
• Significance of reading and spiritual texts: Spiritual books can amplify understanding of spirituality and offer insight into potential traps. They are a critical resource that can even facilitate mystical experiences as one reads. It's essential to understand that spirituality isn't monolithic and can't be boiled down to one method or practice.
• Suffering as a method of spiritual work: Despite its unpleasant nature, suffering can be seen as a powerful catalyst for spiritual development. Personal suffering can aid in introspection and further understanding of spiritual concepts.
• Scientific-minded individuals may overlook spiritual experiences: Leo recounts how as a teenager engaged in philosophical inquiry, he experienced a metaphysical connection to reality. However, he didn't associate these experiences with spirituality at the time, as he conflated religious dogma with spirituality.
• Skepticism and questioning existing beliefs: Being a skeptic doesn't mean utterly dismissing spirituality. Leo encourages skeptics to remain open-minded and allow room to experience spirituality. Sincere personal inquiry and self-doubt are essential components of spirituality. Skepticism should be turned inward to examine and question personal beliefs to unravel the nature of reality.
• Importance of independent exploration: The practice of spirituality can be highly individual, requiring personal investigation and practice. Many different methods, including reading spiritual texts, meditation, breath techniques, and even suffering can help a person build a deep metaphysical connection to reality.
• The role of psychedelics: Psychedelics can serve as an entry point to understanding spirituality. They can induce mystical experiences that may lead an individual to pursue a deeper interest in spirituality. However, proper interpretation of these experiences and ongoing spiritual work are essential for true spiritual development.
• Importance of continuous spiritual education: Developing a deep understanding of spirituality requires extensive reading, research and practice. There are complexities involved with mystical teachings and spiritual work, thus the necessity of continued education in spirituality.
• Institutional limitations in exploring metaphysics: The academic world, as represented by universities, provides limited space for studying metaphysics due to groupthink and bureaucracy. Professors often prioritize what wiil benefit their ego and careers, leading to a narrow understanding of reality.
• Offering of resources on Actualized.org: Actualized.org, run by Leo Gura, offers comprehensive resources on metaphysics to encourage individuals to develop a deeper understanding of reality, themselves, and various subjects. Leo's independence allows him to prioritize the quest for truth. The resources he offers can potentially surpass the understanding of top scientists.
• Misunderstanding of Spirituality: Leo Gura underscores the common misunderstanding of spirituality, noting that many people do not grasp the intricacy and complexity of spiritual truths. He compares this to the broad and multifaceted discipline of mathematics.
• The Absolute Truth: Gura advances the argument that the Absolute Truth - the origin and profound secret of all existence - is an enormous, infinite concept. He points out the difficulty of capturing this absolute truth through symbols, language or other direct forms of communication. This issue often leads to the corruption or misunderstanding of spirituality.
• Importance of Consciousness Exploration: Gura underscores the significance of exploring consciousness in terms of understanding spirituality. He suggests that consciousness exhibits many facets and complexities, and it necessitates rigorous, individual exploration and comprehension.
• Significance of the Truth: Gura goes on to emphasize the absolute enormity and life-transforming power of the Truth. Such a profound and grand concept cannot be simplified or taken casually, which then often leads to self-deception and misunderstanding.
• Teaching of the Truth and its Difficulties: Gura discusses the challenges in teaching the truth because of its complexity. He asserts that the communication of truth in any finite or symbolic way tends to dilute or misinterpret its actual essence. This ultimately leads to misunderstanding or corruption, observed in the multiple spiritual traditions and interpretations around the world.
• Underestimation and the Problem of Existence: Gura explores the issue stemming from the underestimation of the magnitude of the Absolute Truth. Because of this, the finite existence of human beings often clashes with the infinite nature of the Truth, creating an existential issue.
• Individual Determination and Philosophy: Gura asserts that a strong personal determination, a philosophical approach and the interest in complex inquiry about reality contribute to following the truest and purest spiritual path.
• Misleading Simplification and Overarching Complexity: He emphasizes that the simplification of spiritual work leads to misunderstanding, and underscores the need for understanding the various complexities, subtleties, and nuances of spiritual practices.
• Complexity of Spiritual Terrain and Personal Differences: Spirituality is dismissed due to oversimplification and misunderstanding. Spirituality is deeply personal, and everyone has their unique obstacles and experiences. Genetic differences, varying levels of neurotransmitters, upbringing, and culture make people effectuate spirituality distinctively. Nature of birth, potential for self-discipline, and natural inclination also influence one's course of spirituality.
• Customization of Spiritual Teachings: Given the personal nature of spirituality, teachings need to be custom-tailored to individuals. People can rationalize and misconstrue doctrines due to their mental complexity. Our culture and science are still underdeveloped, posing further difficulties. Future evolutions will lead to broader understanding.
• Impact of Laziness and Lack of Vision on Spirituality: Inherent human laziness and deficiency of perspective prevent people from performing independent investigation, excluding them from truth. To actualize spirituality, disciplined, persistent, and time-consuming personal practice is required.
• Overwhelming Goodness of the Truth: The truth is exceptionally beautiful and may seem unattainable due to its overwhelming goodness. Feeling unworthy, individuals may resist the truth. Part of spiritual work is enhancing self-esteem and self-worth to be able to embrace the supreme goodness.
• Impact of Ego on Accepting Goodness: Ego hinders the acceptance of goodness beyond a certain level. It compels individuals to revert back to their negative state. One must strengthen themselves to handle the infinite goodness of the truth.
• Metaphor of Lightbulb: The metaphor of a lightbulb illustrates the process of spiritual growth. Initially, individuals bring small lightbulbs (representing their current state) to the vast energy of spirituality, but they cannot handle the power and burst. Over time, they bring larger lightbulbs, symbolizing personal growth and increased capacity to handle the divine power of spirituality.
• Importance and Utility of Spirituality: Spirituality is fundamentally about being in touch with the absolute truth. The disconnection from this truth is the root cause of most human suffering and dysfunction, whether physical/mental illnesses (including obesity, heart disease, cancer, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, anger) or societal problems (such as crime, violence, corruption). These issues stem from seeking artificial substitutes for the pleasure and fulfillment that connection with the truth provides. Spirituality allows individuals to transcend the destructive patterns and practices that perpetuate suffering in their lives. Additionally, spirituality promotes genuine happiness, peace of mind, and the elimination of suffering- making it a practical pursuit in life.
• Overcoming the Fear of Truth: The prospect of acknowledging the ultimate truth is perceived as threatening by many individuals. Conceivably likened to a shadow fearing light, people who are essentially a conceptual fabrication fear coming face to face with the truth, as it signifies the end of their false ego. The fear surrounding truth contributes to the confusion and misunderstanding.
• Spiral Connection with Truth: Human beings strive towards unity, which is in alignment with the way all of reality operates. This alignment with the process of unity and truth can lead to positive outcomes in life: universal love, compassion, true morality, peak human performance, ecological awareness, and the ability to experience the magic and wonder of life. Such alignment, however, needs continuous effort, dedication and spiritual practice.
• Progressing towards Truth: A person progressively opens up to the infinite goodness, beauty, power, intelligence, creativity, wisdom, compassion, omnipresence, and omniscience through various spiritual practices. However, the process is akin to gradually increasing the strength of a light bulb to handle infinite energy. Spirituality is about constant self-improvement and introspection. This constant cycle of self-work and realization fortifies the person to fully embrace and merge into the infinite essence of existence and truth.
• Alignment with Evolution and Truth: Aligning oneself with the evolutionary trend towards union and truth, instead of fragmentation, yields positive outcomes.
• Spirituality and Morality: Authentically moral behavior, universal love, and compassion can only be achieved through high consciousness, which is facilitated by spirituality.
• Peak Human Performance and Spirituality: Peak performance in various fields requires high consciousness, which is enhanced by spiritual practices.
• Universal Love and Compassion: Spiritual practice can give rise to universal love and compassion.
• Cultivation of Authenticity: Authenticity can be nurtured through spiritual practice, allowing one to express their true self, unencumbered by societal expectations or judgments.
• Connection with Childhood Wonder: Spiritual practices can help adults reconnect with the sense of wonder, beauty, and freshness experienced in childhood.
• Spirituality and Functionality: Spiritual practice offers a path towards overcoming human dysfunction and societal problems, from personal emotional struggles to societal corruption and violence.
• Investment in Spirituality: Investing one’s energy in spiritual practice rather than in materialistic distractions can lead to a more fulfilled and enriched life.
• Open-Mindedness and Skepticism: Welcoming skepticism but using it to question one's own beliefs and assumptions is crucial for gaining deep insights from spiritual practices.
• Spirituality Test: Leo introduces a spirituality test consisting of questions to gauge one’s interest in various aspects of life and consciousness, helping individuals to understand their inclination towards spirituality.
• Use of Psychedelics: Psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms can be used as a gateway for individuals to have their first mystical experiences and to start understanding the depth of spirituality.
• Practical Reading and Engagement: Deep understanding of spiritual concepts requires extensive reading, research, and practice. It should be self-driven and independent of outside influence.
• University's Lack of Seriousness for Metaphysics: Universities often undermine metaphysics due to groupthink and bureaucracy, while Leo’s channel provides a comprehensive explanation of metaphysics to skeptics and scientifically-minded individuals.
• Overall Commitment to Spirituality: Spirituality is a lifelong commitment that calls for constant self-inquiry, research, practice, and understanding. It's not just about accepting teachings, but about having personal mystical experiences to truly comprehend the different facets of consciousness, existence, and truth.
• Fundamental Importance of Practice in Spirituality: Without hard, sincere practice, there is no scope for true spirituality. Some proponents may claim that one is already enlightened and there's no need for exercises, but deep realization requires active engagement. Perspectives may differ but genuine enlightenment cannot come without practice.
• Need for Comprehensive Study: Beyond doing rehearsals, it's crucial to educate oneself about spirituality. This involves not only watching videos but doing serious research and extensive reading. Apprehending these obscure spiritual teachings mandates careful examination and delving into a substantial number of books on the topic.
• Role of Institutions & Limitations: Institutions like universities are generally not conducive to the pursuit of absolute truth. They are highly specialized, insular, and driven by ego-survival and bureaucratic structures that hinder true exploration of reality. Even professors and academics, while knowledgeable, have limited understanding of the larger metaphysical and existential truths.
• Limitations of Materialism & Rationalism: These specialists are not merely limited by institutional norms, they are also beholden to limiting ideologies of materialism and rationalism. These worldviews inhibit a more profound understanding of metaphysics as they inherently deny or belittle the value of the latter.
• Actualized.org as a Bridge: Leo Gura’s channel, Actualized.org, can bridge spirituality and the analytical scientific realm. The platform dwells deep into topics from a scientifically, rationally, atheistically, and skeptically minded perspective, hence, offering a unique blend of scientific reasoning and spiritual intuition.
• The Promise of a Deeper Understanding of Reality: By engaging earnestly with the content on Actualized.org, one can develop a holistic understanding of reality, deeper than what’s provided in universities. This does not indicate superiority in specialized knowledge, but superiority in understanding the mind, paradigms, and science as a whole.
• Implications of Pursuing Truth within an Institution: Bringing this knowledge into a university environment isn't recommended. Universities have little tolerance for mysticism or spirituality. Pursuing truth is a deeply personal endeavor that requires one to break free from bureaucracies and vested interests.
• Independence—A Key to Truth Seeking: Being an independent truth-seeker is essential. Dependence on advertisers, bureaucracy, or money interests can compromise the pursuit of truth. Many consign themselves to wage slavery and lose the luxury of time to pursue truth, hence independence serves as the foundation for deep spiritual work.
• The Value at Stake: Engaging seriously with this vast body of work can lead to significantly deep and profound understanding. Failing to recognize this can lead to missing a significant opportunity for understanding our existence. The commitment to this endeavor can be deeply transformative and is worth the serious pursuit.