- The aim of conscious politics: The main focus of conscious politics is the maximization of consciousness, love, and truth, which should guide all political actions and policies. This distinguishes it from traditional politics, which often centers on selfish interests.
- The concept of love in politics: In the context of politics, love refers to a compassionate concern for all living beings, appreciating their inherent value beyond our personal or utilitarian advantage. This requires the transformational experiences of cosmic love often discussed by spiritual mystics, encompassing love beyond personal and familial relationships to a universal scale.
- Mysticism and politics: These realms of "higher love" need to be accessed and embodied for a better understanding and practice of conscious politics. Figures like Buddha, Christ, Rumi and many other mystics speak of this cosmic love.
- Critique of religious understandings of love: Certain religious groups often miss the expansive understanding of love, focusing their care primarily on their immediate families or tribes. Their politicization of love often excludes certain racial, ethnic or religious groups.
- Economics versus consciousness: While many politicians prioritize economic improvement, conscious politics emphasizes the maximization of love and consciousness. The argument is that ultimately all political action is motivated by love, but its influence can vary depending on how expansive or restricted this love is.
- Love and political opponents: People engaged in conscious politics should refrain from demonizing their opponents, and should instead empathize with their ignorance and limited understanding due to their lack of experiences of universal love.
- The Universe as a love fractal: The entire universe is understood as a giant love fractal, with love manifesting in different ways including in harmful actions like war and ethnic cleansing. This understanding helps politically conscious individuals overcome hatred and demonization.
- The fear-based nature of current politics: Current politics is mostly fear-based because of a scarcity mentality and fear of the 'other' such as immigrants, different races and ethnicities. Conscious politics offers a love-based approach with an abundance mentality that believes in the possibility of elevating everyone on the planet.
- The boundlessness of love and consciousness: Love and consciousness are infinite resources that are invaluable in conscious politics. Emphasizing inner development, love inspires vision, rallies people, and encourages bold feats like landing someone on the moon or combating slavery.
- Love as a guiding principle in conscious politics: Leo Gura emphasizes that love is the underlying force that motivates people and informs political actions, such as caring for the environment or ensuring quality education. He argues that people desire love in all aspects of their lives but may become entangled in a constrained type of love, leading to exploitation and selfish behavior. He proposes that a shift towards globally inclusive forms of love is crucial for advancing conscious politics.
- The use of fear in politics: Gura criticizes the widespread use of fear in politics to motivate people, arguing that both right-wing and left-wing politicians exploit people's fears for their own ends. This fear-based approach results in paranoia and suboptimal solutions, hindering the realization of conscious politics which should be love-based.
- The importance of a global and universal circle of concern: Another principle of conscious politics is the concept of a universal circle of concern that extends beyond personal, tribal, ethnic, or corporate interests to include all beings. This universal perspective, Gura suggests, enables individuals to care about the oppression of all beings, recognizing them as part of a universal self.
- Awareness of developmental psychology and the recognition of diverse needs: Conscious politics takes into account that people are at different levels of development and have unique needs. Rather than attempting to homogenize everyone, it aims to build bridges, facilitate mutual understanding among individuals with different ideologies, and meet varying needs by fairly distributing resources. This approach is essential for aiding people's progression along Maslow's hierarchy of needs, enabling individuals to contribute to society's evolution.
- The integration of inner work and outer work in conscious politics: This type of politics requires deep personal development and consciousness work as well as action within society. As individuals expand their sense of self, they develop a sense of life purpose grounded in psychological maturity and mystical insight, which then guides their contributions to society. Gura emphasizes that inner work enables improved outer work, and vice versa.
- The self-awareness and meta perspective of conscious politics: This approach to politics encourages individuals to recognize biases, deceptions, survival instincts, ego issues, and collective ego. Gura encourages standing outside one's own perspective to objectively assess the limitations and flaws in both conservative and liberal perspectives.
- Acknowledgment of "devilry" as a necessary part of life: Conscious politics also involves an awareness of "devilry" - the flawed and damaging behaviors/actions individuals or groups may engage in. However, rather than demonizing these aspects, Gura suggests recognizing them as part of life and seeking to understand and address their underlying causes.
- Cleaning Up Corruption and Devilry: Conscious politics involves recognizing that past survival strategies involving corruption and selfish behaviors are outdated, and society must now work towards cleaning up such behaviors to build a better world, using both individual and collective efforts.
- Building Infrastructure: Infrastructure improvements, addressing poverty and healthcare issues, and providing job opportunities are viewed as essential first steps in allowing individuals to self-actualize, offering basic material needs to be met before individuals can focus on meeting higher immaterial needs.
- Non-Reactive, Non-Judgmental: A key tenet of conscious politics is it being non-reactive, non-judgmental, and non-demonizing. It requires individuals to take radical responsibility for themselves and society and avoids turning politics into an identity battle.
- Sanctity of Universal Identity: Conscious politics recognizes that all identities are limited, and one's true identity is universal and inclusive. It does not focus on personal gains but on the prosperity of society as a whole. It involves making personal sacrifices, particularly by the wealthy, for a more equal and just society.
- Appreciate Positive Functions of Government: Conscious politics appreciates the positive functions of government and understands the collective wisdom within governmental systems. It values continued additions to the foundations laid by previous generations rather than attempting to tear them down.
- Recognition of Material Needs: Understanding and addressing material needs are crucial starting points in conscious politics before focusing on immaterial needs. Policy provisions should help citizens meet their basic needs to then focus on self-actualization.
- Non-Self-Dealing, Sacrifices: Conscious politics involves refraining from self-dealing and making personal compromises or sacrifices. For the wealthy, this could mean acknowledging the unfair advantages they have benefitted from and accepting the need to pay more taxes to help society prosper.
- Bold, Assertive Actions: Conscious politics encourages bold, assertive actions in fighting unconsciousness and promoting consciousness. Instances of such actions can be seen in the movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
- Proactive and Forward-Thinking: Conscious politics advocates for proactive, forward-thinking measures over simply defending the status quo. It aims to bring continuous improvements in raising consciousness and love and discourages feelings of hopelessness.
- Conscious Politics and Society's Evolution: Conscious politics is seen as an inevitable part of society's evolution. It requires individuals to deepen their understanding of issues and principles and apply them in their lives. It focuses more on structures and principles rather than the content of beliefs.
- Importance of Radical Change in Conscious Politics: Leo Gura explains conscious politics requires embracing radical change if it leads to more love, consciousness, and truth. This isn't about being moderate or neutral, but about breaking down preconceived notions and challenging the status quo.
- Using Scientific and Empirical Approaches: Leo highlights the need for a scientific, empirical approach to policy changes, such as testing the effects of tax cuts or weapons bans over a set period of time and analyzing the results objectively. By using data and evidence to inform policy decisions, both liberals and conservatives can unite on viable solutions.
- Political Education: Conscious politics, Gura asserts, should also focus on education, disseminating information on history, psychology, societal complexities, and more. He suggests that the government could provide free educational resources like courses on entrepreneurship or personal growth.
- A Deep Understanding of Social Problems: Leo argues that conscious politics should aim to address complex social problems at their roots, rather than applying simplistic solutions. He criticizes ineffective policies like building a wall for immigration, stating that the real solutions lie in addressing the causative factors such as poverty and political instability in immigrants' home countries.
- Avoiding Unintended Consequences: Gura notes that conscious politics should also be wary of backfiring mechanisms and the counter-intuitive nature of policy and regulation. He suggests forming panels of experts to predict the potential negative outcomes and backfires of proposed policies before they are implemented.
- Balancing Viewpoints: According to Leo, conscious politics recognizes the validity of both left and right perspectives even while avoiding false equivalency. It strives for a delicate balance between aspects of society such as freedom and limitation, individual and collective concerns, and capitalism and socialism, which needs to be continuously adjusted in line with societal changes.
- Focus on Root Issues and Sustainable Solutions: Gura insists that conscious politics prioritizes root issues, systemic changes, and sustainable solutions over trivial culture wars. Instead of glorifying ideology, it promotes the idea of constant improvement and evolution to fit the changing environment.
- Conscious Politics - Policy Over Personality: Conscious politics importance policy proposals more than personality and identity of candidates. It pushes for focus on sustainable policy innovation rather than being personalities-centric.
- Multicultural Open-Mindedness in Conscious Politics: In conscious politics, practitioners encourage an open-mindedness towards other perspectives, extending their reach to understand and study points of view different from their own. This involves being actively curious and avoiding conformism.
- Critical Thinking over Ideology: Conscious politics discourages ideologies and cults, instead it emphasizes critical thinking and encourages independent, well-informed decisions based on facts and observations.
- Economic Responsibility in Conscious Politics: Conscious politicians are economically responsible, mindful of overspending and promote balance in budgeting while also focusing on happiness, health, development, and consciousness rather than just economic growth.
- Addressing Wealth Inequality, Environmental Issues, and Government Transparency: Conscious politics pays attention to the society's balance by taking serious actions to reduce wealth inequality and environmental issues. It pushes for increased transparency and accountability within the government to prevent corruption and maintain the government's service quality.
- Proactive Infrastructure Building: Conscious politics emphasizes on the importance of building the right infrastructure, knowing that welfare state and providing the means for people's self-improvement is fundamental.
- Intellectual Honesty & Non-militaristic Nature: Conscious politics promotes intellectual honesty and humility. Politicians should be able to admit when their policies fail and demonstrate a willingness to modify them. It encourages peace by prioritizing the avoidance of unnecessary wars while being ready to defend when attacked.
- Non-exploitative Actions and Pragmatism: Conscious politics prioritizes non-exploitative actions, allowing defensive actions but not initiating attacks for exploitation purposes. It balances spirituality with realistic and pragmatic actions, addressing basic needs before focusing on higher-level development.
- Uniting People and Valuing Expertise: In an attempt to avoid division, conscious politics fosters unity among people, and values expertise and experience in leadership. It has a long time horizon, considering the impacts on future generations when making decisions.
- Bold, Fearless, and Visionary Leadership: Conscious politics requires bold, fearless, and visionary leadership. Leaders should have a proactive attitude, tackle issues head-on, and lead by example. Visionaries like Martin Luther King and Gandhi serve as apt role models.
- Conscious Politics Validators & Critics Considerations: High level of consciousness is valued in both the practitioners and critics of conscious politics. Conscious politicians are supposed to be biased towards consciousness and love.
- Neo-Conservatism and Conscious Politics: Leo Gura highlights that conscious politics is about advancement, envisioning a forward-thinking future, rather than simply maintaining the status quo, which he associates with neo-conservatism. He adds that respected figures including Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi faced opposition and were labelled as radicals for their views, yet they strove for societal change.
- Time Frame for Conscious Politics: Despite conscious politics seeming idealistic and far-fetched, Gura posits that societal change can happen quickly, with the advancements of conscious politics likely to occur over the next 10 to 100 years. He emphasizes the importance of developing the correct theoretical foundation for government and societal evolution.
- Incremental Advancements: Gura asserts that conscious politics is an incremental process and that small, continuous improvements in consciousness and societal development should be the ultimate goal, rather than aiming for perfection. He believes that mistakes made in the past pave the way for better societal structures in the future.
- Progress Despite Appearances: Gura points out that progress is often not linear, but ebbs and flows. Despite setbacks, he believes society is generally moving in a positive direction, citing improvements in gay rights and racial inequality in America over the last 30 years as evidence.
- Role of Conscious Politics in Government Evolution: Emphasizing on the necessity of conscious politics, Gura explains that it will happen regardless of individual acceptance and resistance. According to him, humanity's evolution will lead to more complex and evolving governments and conscious policies, making it vital to align with this progression.
- Importance of Individual Understanding: Gura clearly states that the birth of conscious politics begins with individuals. He urges for a deeper understanding and embodiment of the principles discussed in his series. He accepts the resistance and denial these concepts may face due to ignorance.
- Implementing Conscious Politics: In the following installment, Gura intends to provide specific policy proposals that show how the principles of conscious politics can be translated into the real world, improving the lives and consciousness of the majority of people.