- Overview of Actualized.org: Actualized.org is a comprehensive personal development system conceptualized by Leo Gura. The 65 core principles highlighted by Leo are derived from his life experiences, study, research, personal bias, and teaching. He states that these principles are key to living a fulfilling life.
- Role of Ideology and Dogma: Leo advises against ideology and dogma as they limit the scope of our understanding of reality. Instead, he encourages open exploration and continuous learning.
- Big-picture Thinking versus Technical Knowledge: Leo stresses the importance of big-picture thinking over technical knowledge to live a good life because it gives a holistic understanding of reality. While technical knowledge is important, it limits a person's field of view if not complemented with a broader perspective.
- Personal Biases: Leo acknowledges his personal biases and experiences shape his teachings, adding a stylistic component. Importantly, Leo encourages viewers not to blindly follow his teachings, but to question, explore, and decide what resonates with them.
- Validity of Principles: While some principles may ring true for most people, Leo emphasizes their validity must be determined by individual perspectives and experiences. Implementing these principles might take years and their full embodiment could require deeper exploration and understanding.
- Understanding of Core Principles: These principles are derived from Leo's life experiences, including his dealing with personal challenges, wide research, teaching, meditation, business experience, working with clients, interactions with friends, and deep experiences with psychedelics.
- Apply without Fanaticism: Leo explains that it's important to apply these principles without turning them into an ideology or rigid system. Implementations should be intelligent, mindful, and context-sensitive to avoid blind acceptance.
- Commitment to Personal Growth: Leo emphasizes that understanding and implementing these principles require long-term commitment and continuous effort. His intention is to help people maintain motivation, inspiration, and commitment to personal growth that leads to a fulfilling life.
- Direct experience is king: This principle highlights that the only real thing is direct, personal experience. Everything else is merely imagination or conjecture. Grounding oneself in the present direct experience cuts through societal, cultural, and personal illusions and falsities.
- Self-experimentation: Directly tied to the 'Direct experience is king' principle, self-experimentation encourages trying out different techniques and solutions to discover what resonates and works best for personal development. It promotes a problem-solving approach centered on trying various self-experimentations rather than relying solely on external advice.
- Radical open-mindedness: This principle entails being open to exploring every perspective and idea, regardless of initial perceptions. It encourages the exploration of counterintuitive and seemingly ridiculous truths, promoting the exploration of every 'nook and cranny' of reality to avoid missing out on potential discoveries, insights, and truths.
- Do not judge things you haven't experienced personally: It is essential to avoid making judgments on things, people, or experiences that one has not personally encountered or understood. Quick judgments without personal experience often result in self-deception and limited understanding.
- Question Everything: This principle advocates for questioning all aspects of life, including personal beliefs, societal norms, and assumptions. Questioning leads to a deeper understanding of reality and avoids blind acceptance of information or beliefs.
- Care about philosophical and metaphysical matters: To find depth and meaning in life, it's essential to have a curiosity about philosophical and metaphysical matters. While these matters might seem abstract and less practical, they provide profound insights leading to personal growth and understanding.
- Genuine intent for truth: Being genuinely interested in seeking the ultimate truth, no matter the cost, is a crucial principle. This may involve making significant sacrifices or changes in life. Without this intent, a person is likely to fall into falsehood and delusion and get sucked into material pursuits.
- Understanding every point of view: It's vital to develop a passion for understanding various perspectives. By stepping into other people's shoes and viewing the world from their perspective, a person can gain a deeper understanding of life.
- Integral thinking: This entails recognizing that every point of view contains some element of truth. It involves integrating various perspectives to create a comprehensive understanding of life, making it the opposite of dogmatic ideologies.
- Inner game determines quality of life: All problems and suffering are essentially self-created and self-inflicted. The quality of one's life boils down to their own psychology and not external circumstances.
- Lifelong learning and self-education: Taking ownership and being proactive about learning is crucial for personal development. This process must continue beyond formal education and includes reading hundreds of books and attending seminars and workshops.
- Investment in self-education: Recognizing the importance of investing time and money in learning, including spending on books, courses, and in-person seminars and workshops, is also crucial. There's a significant difference between attending a workshop or seminar in person and watching it online.
- Lifelong Learning: Leo Gura stresses the importance of continuous self-education. He suggests developing a system to organize notes and information acquired from reading and research.
- Observation: He views observation as a crucial tool for learning about yourself and the world, advocating for continuous and patient observation of one's own behaviors, emotions, and thinking processes.
- Meditation: Advocating for meditation, Leo sees it as a means of comprehensive self-observation and a technique for gaining insights about oneself. He views this as a lifelong practice, starting from a few minutes a day and increasing to an hour.
- Understanding the Ego: Leo emphasizes that the ego or sense of self is the root of all problems and suffering, and encourages viewers to understand this aspect of themselves to minimize person and collective issues.
- Self-Deception: Related to understanding the ego, Leo addresses self-deception as a major obstacle to understanding reality. He stresses the significance of being conscious of self-deceptions and their effect on perception and interaction with the world.
- Self-Bias: Lastly, Leo highlights the importance of recognizing self-bias, a skewed perspective that serves one's own survival and benefits. He suggests being aware of self-bias to avoid distorting perceptions and to access the truth necessary for a good life.
- Direct Experience is King: Grounding oneself in the present direct experience, cuts through societal and cultural conditionings as well as individual thoughts and beliefs.
- Self-experimentation Principle: True work and discovery are achieved through self-experimentation. Trying different methods reads books, seeking advice, engaging in therapy, enables us to find what resonates within us.
- Principle of Radical Open-mindedness: Exploring every perspective and idea, regardless of initial disbelief, helps avoid limiting oneself from potential discoveries. Being open-minded doesn't imply believed everything, but being willing to explore different viewpoints.
- Fear, Judgment, Evil, Anger, and Suffering Are Delusions Principle: Recognizing that negative experiences like fear, judgment, evil, anger, and suffering are based on delusions and falsehood can help eradicate these experiences. Discovering the truth can eliminate these experiences, contributing to a good life.
- Avoid Demonization Principle: A principle related to delusions is the fact that demonizing others or considering them as evil is a self-deception mechanism of the mind.
- Reality is Perfect Principle: The principle underlines that if something seems wrong in the world, it's our perspective and not reality that is flawed. This principle can be utilized to promote self-growth.
- Four Perspectives on Life's Purpose: Raising consciousness, boosting the capacity to love, appreciating life's beauty, and surrendering the ego to love everything has been offered as the four diverse perspectives of life's purpose.
- Living a Proactive and Passionate Life Principle: Not just performing daily routines, but actually feeling alive and proactive forms an essential part of a good life.
- Building a Metaphysical Connection to Reality Principle: Realization of being the entire universe and not just an object within it results from developing a metaphysical connection to reality.
- Counterintuitive Paradigm: Reality, as per this principle, is counterintuitive, functioning opposite to what we might expect.
- Understanding Counterintuitiveness in Reality: Reality often operates in a way that is counter to what we anticipate, which is known as counterintuitiveness. For instance, attracting a person of interest, running a successful business, or pursuing happiness all require unexpected techniques. It is suggested to try doing the opposite of what most people do, as most people get mediocre results. However, this principle should be intelligently applied as it doesn't work with every situation.
- The Concept of Non-duality: Non-duality refers to an ultimate truth that all boundaries, categories, and distinctions collapse into one unity. This understanding is helpful in seeing through the constructs of the mind and realizing absolute truths.
- The Unattainability of Absolute Truth Through Traditional Means: Absolute truth does exist, but it can't be thought, imagined, communicated, or proven as it is unlimited. This understanding prevents wastage of time in attempting to express absolute truth via limited means, and instead advocates for experiencing it through observation and mystical experiences.
- Reality as a Mindscape: The perception of reality is not physical but an imagination within a mindscape. This understanding helps to see reality as a subjective experience, which is significant for living a fulfilled life.
- Life as a Dream: The understanding of life as a dream aids dis-identification from attachments, reduces seriousness about life circumstances, and opens up the possibility for awakening from this 'dream' in order to realize the good life.
- Reality as Infinity and the Existence of God: Reality is infinite and God, not the conventional interpretation but as a signification of infinity, exists. This realization sets the stage for accepting full responsibility of life and compels an understanding of the profundity of existence.
- Oneness of God and Devil: Non-duality captures the unity of all including the traditionally opposed concepts of God and Devil. This understanding helps to overcome the disturbance caused by the perception of evil.
- Understand the concept of the devil, selfishness, evil, and deception: Understanding these aspects is crucial for understanding the nature of reality itself, including the deceptive nature of reality or Maya. These elements are part of the whole existence, not to be ignored but to be embraced and understood, which is integral for personal growth.
- All identity is relative and fluid: Every identity we create for ourselves, such as perceived roles or statuses, is merely a product of our mind, not an absolute truth. Its worth noting that these identifiers are changeable, providing the potential for growth and the ability to identify with the ultimate reality.
- Most people are deluded and asleep : A large majority of the population lacks the understanding of the deep philosophies discussed in these teachings. This principle highlights the importance of conscious and self-driven exploration of these principles without relying heavily on societal validation or guidance.
- Society is still in the dark ages: Despite advancements, society is still very much in the early stages of understanding spirituality, philosophy, science, among other areas. This principle, like the one before, warns against the excessive infusion of societal norms and advises critical thinking.
- Development and Awakening: Both these aspects are essential for personal growth and enlightenment. One needs to awaken from the societal conditioning and also develop the skills to live within the existing societal structures.
- Discover who you are and what you want: It is crucial to invest time and energy in understanding oneself and one's desires. This self-exploration aids in making decisions and channeling energy more productively.
- Strive for authenticity: Being authentic in all aspects of life, including speech, behavior, career choice, and relationships, is a critical element for leading a satisfying and happy life. Confronting and overcoming societal conditioning and fears are essential steps to express your true self.
- Understand the impact of fear and societal conditioning on authenticity: Fear and societal conditioning heavily influence our ability to be authentic. Understanding and confronting these factors can guide one towards a path of higher self-realization and genuine self-expression.
- Develop a Life Purpose: Leo emphasizes the importance of developing a life purpose and aligning it with personal values. A clear life purpose gives direction and facilitates problem-solving, creativity, and resourcefulness.
- Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life: Placing full responsibility for one's life on oneself prevents victim mentality and fosters self-esteem, avoiding feelings of alienation, misery, and frustration.
- Be a Leader and a Creator: Leo promotes leading oneself and others, being proactive and decisive as well as embracing creativity to contribute value to the world.
- Question Trust in Reason: Reason is often influenced by personal biases and agendas, making it unreliable. High-quality life insights are considered 'transrational', or beyond reason.
- Embrace Confusion and Not-Knowing: Being comfortable with confusion and lack of knowledge is important in personal development, standing in contrast to the delusion of having 'figured everything out'.
- Emotional Mastery: Leo encourages understanding and mastering emotions, not through suppression or over-expression, but by observing and experiencing them more deeply. He warns against confusing emotional mastery with emotional outbursts.
- Dominance of emotions over reasoning: Emotions are the primary motivators, affecting behavior more than reasoning. Reason is often used to rationalize emotional preferences and decisions. Living a fulfilling life will require detailed observation and understanding of emotions.
- Integrating the masculine and feminine: No matter your natural inclinations or gender, understanding and integrating both aspects is essential. This assures well-rounded development and prevents potential relationship difficulties linked to a lack of understanding and acceptance of the opposite aspect.
- Avoidance of manipulation: Frequent, unintentional manipulation is a common trait of ego-driven actions. Reducing manipulation as much as possible will improve life quality.
- The relativity of everything except the Absolute: All conventional understandings, experiences, and truth claims are known and defined only in relation to something else, except for the Absolute Truth. Science, politics, moral standards, etc., are all relative and depend on the human mind.
- Importance of context over facts: The situational background, or context, of facts influences their meaning and implication, making it more important than the facts themselves.
- Learning from diverse sources: Studying and learning from various perspectives and disciplines prevent getting stuck within a single paradigm, allowing a comprehensive understanding of life and human development.
- Satisfying basic needs for higher pursuits: Addressing and satisfying basic needs, such as safety, food, shelter, and relationships, allow the pursuit and understanding of higher, metaphysical concepts.
- Mastering survival and livelihood skills: Essential survival and money management skills are a prerequisite for being able to explore the grander questions. The way to develop these skills, regardless of economic conditions, is to work on your mindset and psychological game.
- Spending your early years mastering a domain: Spending your teens and twenties to figure out what you truly enjoy and becoming a master in that field is crucial to finding something that resonates with you and avoiding dissatisfaction in the future.
- Mastering a skill: Leo Gura emphasizes mastering at least one skill as a key principle for living a good life. This leads to stability, enjoyment, and the ability to provide significant value to others. Starting early is essential, but it's never too late to start.
- Avoiding distraction: Many elements such as TV, social media, and even family or material pursuits can deviate individuals from their focus. Recognizing these distractions and staying dedicated to one's work and improvement is imperative.
- Systems thinking: Learning to recognize and understand the interconnectedness of various factors in life is crucial. This provides a broader, more comprehensive perspective to problem-solving instead of viewing issues one-dimensionally.
- Good citizenship: Leo underscores the importance of being aware of the ecological footprint one leaves and how actions affect the larger collective. This involves understanding the broad impacts of daily life, including consuming practices, political participation, and environmental awareness.
- Developing strategy: Being patient and strategic in achieving goals can't be overlooked. This involves setting short-term and long-term targets and layering multiple stepping stones to reach them.
- True happiness and enlightenment: Leo attests that genuine happiness is attainable only through enlightenment. While the level of happiness can be increased to an extent, overall happiness is anchored in enlightenment. Furthermore, no material possessions, not even those not typically considered material like relationships or knowledge, can provide lasting happiness.
- Self-sufficient happiness: The ability to be happy alone, without reliance on external factors or distractions, is a vital principle. This doesn't imply a life of solitude but emphasizes the importance of finding contentment independent of external influences.
- Happiness comes from within: Happiness isn't found in temporary boosts of excitement or distraction but requires inner work. Spending time alone and cultivating inner peace can lead to genuine happiness.
- Maintain a simple, minimalistic lifestyle: A cluttered life filled with social obligations and unnecessary possessions can distract from personal development and self-improvement. Lifestyle minimalism can make room for practices like meditation and self-improvement activities.
- Implementing practice and exercises: Knowledge of theory alone will not yield results. A vast majority of personal development outcomes are due to actual practice, exercise, and technique implementation. Some of the most effective techniques include psychedelics, meditation, yoga, journaling, contemplation, visualization, and solo retreats.
- Avoid turning teachings into ideologies: The teachings of Actualized.org should not be turned into ideologies, dogmas, or rigid systems. Remaining flexible, intelligent, and mindful while implementing teachings is important to avoid limiting perspectives. Understanding that all teachings, including those from Actualized.org, have limitations and biases helps maintain an open perspective.
- Living a meaningful life requires continuous effort: Life is complex, deep, and challenging, requiring a commitment to continuous learning, exploration, and active participation. Seeking the truth and self-improving requires effort and time and should not be rushed. Actualized.orgs purpose is to aid in this process by providing motivation, inspiration, techniques, and insights.
- Reminder of commitments: Remembering the commitment made towards personal growth and development is crucial as it's easy to forget or fall back into old habits. Regular reminders, like continued engagement with Actualized.org content, can strengthen the resolve to stay on the path of personal development.
- Valuing teachings and information: The valuable teachings and information provided should not be taken for granted, as applying them can change an individual's life significantly. Making a commitment to change and actively working towards it every day can result in a powerful and fulfilling life.