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Hey, this is Leo, for actualised.org. And in this episode, I'm going to rant against morality All right, I get to be a little self righteous in this one. So I'm excited. Let's get started. Basically, what I want to show you is that your model of morality, your morals of what you think is right and wrong, good and Evil, is actually having the opposite effect that you want it to have. And it's severely stunting your growth and psychological well being. And it's keeping you from being fulfilled and is keeping you from reaching your full potential. That's my message in a nutshell. But now there's a lot of details that we need to go into to explain why this is because this is a very counterintuitive thing. Most people cannot wrap their mind around what I'm about to say. This episode is very, very foundational. This is not just philosophy here, this is going to be very practical. I'm going to show you with this episode and the upcoming episode in the future, I'm going to show you how much of your life is being damaged in a very practical, very concrete way. And how this is slowing you down and creating a lot of the problems that you have in your life. Problems like guilt, shame, blame, victim mentality, righteousness, anger, and all this kind of stuff. So let's begin at the beginning. a developmental psychologist by the name of Lawrence Kohlberg did some research in the 1950s on morality. And what he discovered by interviewing lots of different subjects is he discovered there's basically stages kind of preset stages of morality through which a human psyche evolves and develops. Basically, there are three stages. So the first stage is preconventional. Morality, the second stage is conventional morality. And then his third final stage was post conventional. What are these in a nutshell, basically, you begin at the preconventional stage. And that's the most basic, most crude form of morality. And what that is, is a sort of stick and carrot version of morality, which means that you act to not do wrong so that you don't get punished. That's kind of the very, very basic level, the next level of evolution up from that, and this is still preconventional is the carrot, rather than the stick, which means that you do good, so that you can get rewards, whether it's approval from others, or patting yourself on the back this kind of stuff. Right? So both of these, the carrot and the stick comprise preconventional morality. So that's kind of where you start, then you evolve. And not everyone evolves past this, a lot of people stay stuck there forever, right. But if you keep growing your psyche, and keep developing, and you keep maturing, then you evolve to the next stage, which is conventional morality. And what this is, is basically conformist, authoritative forms of morality. So conformity means that the reason that you do something that you're supposed to do, the reason you do good is because if you didn't, then you would not be conforming, and therefore you would arouse the disapproval of others around you. So you're trying to conform. And then you can grow and evolve a little bit higher than that still staying in the conventional stage. And you get into the authoritative forms of morality, which means that the reason that you do something or don't do something is because some higher authority told you what's right, and what's wrong. So this higher authority might be the Bible might be the Pope might be the US Constitution, or your parents or whoever. Right. And then if you evolve past this stage, now we're getting out of conventional and we're going into post conventional, in post conventional, what you have is you have social contract theory. And what this is, this comes to us basically from the European enlightenment, which by the way, has nothing to do with actual enlightenment that I talked about. In other episodes, European enlightenment was just like a philosophical movement in the 17 and 1800s. But what that is, is it arose this idea of rows of social contract, which basically means that if you're a member of a community, the reason that you want to act moral and ethical is because, you know, we're all in this together. We're all in the same boat, so to speak. And even just by being born and being part of whatever nation, you're part of, that nation is based upon social contract, which basically means that, you know, we've kind of come together and we've mutually agreed, whether in an explicit way, or an implicit way, we have agreed to work together and to not work against each other. And so because of this, we want to do good and we don't want to harm others. And our morals are grounded in that. Okay. And then if you evolve a little bit past social contract, then you get to Kohlberg 's highest stage, which is principle based morality. And what this means is, you act based on internal principles. So all the external rewards and all the external rules, you've internalized them in a sense, where you are acting on your own conscience. And on your own sense, your intuition of what's right and what's wrong. And you no longer need to appeal to any authorities, or to any conventions, or to any kind of social contracts. And that's it, at least for Kohlberg. Now, what's interesting to me is that Kohlberg left out the most important stage of morality, the highest stage, which is what I call transcendent morality, and transcendent morality ever talked about in the second half of this episode. But just in a nutshell, what it is, is basically it's a consciousness of ultimate truth, and ultimate reality. And when you become fully conscious or enlightened, then you break down the boundary between self and other. And literally what happens is that everything becomes you, everything becomes the self. And there is a complete and utter utter surrender of you to reality, the larger force of reality, or, as some might want to call it, God or whatever you want to call it, nature, reality existence, you basically surrender to this higher power, and you act now, compassionately towards everyone, and everything, because you literally perceive the entire world as your body. It's a very radical thing. And more than that, than just that you recognize that all of existence is basically a giant ball of love, of unconditional love. And what you do is you surrender your ego, to such an extent that everything is unconditionally loved by you. Even the good, I mean, especially the good, but even the evil, even the bad stuff, even the stuff that looks ugly, or looks vile, or looks immoral, you even start to love that. Because you see it as a unity. There are no divisions. It's one giant unity. And so you surrender to that, and you approach all of reality with unconditional love. And that's transcendent, transcendent morality, is what that is. So we'll circle back to that in a little bit. But let's talk about traditional or conventional morality first. So this is all the stuff that is not transcendent morality. Now, there's a lot of problems with traditional morality, which I want to talk about. Traditional morality is where 99.99999% of people live, very few people ever live to get to transcendent morality. So the problem with traditional morality, though, is that it's actually very damaging. It promotes unconscious obedience to rules or authority figures, or even to your own intuitions about what's right and what's wrong. The problem here is that it's done in an unconscious way. It's done in a dogmatic way. You're following a certain set of rules. And what happens when you do this is that it leads to moralization. moralization, and this moralization can happen in very gross, obvious ways. Or it can happen in extremely subtle ways. And what moralism is, is it's a rigid set of do's and don'ts. And it's a sort of judgmental attitude towards reality, where you're dissecting, you're cutting and dicing up reality, which is one unified whole, in truth. You're, you're fragmenting reality. And then you're saying, well, these things on this side, these things are good things. And those things on that side, those things are evil things. And maybe you carve out some space in the middle for some neutral things. But basically, that's kind of your spectrum. And what happens is that you start to see the world in a very black and white sort of way. And anything that's on this side, the evil side, you judge it, and you move away from it and you deny it within yourself. And so your reality becomes fragmented. And from this comes moralism. Now you might say, well, Leo, you know, moralism has nothing to do with me, because it sounds like you're talking about like religious morality, but I'm not religious, I'm secular, or I'm an atheist. So Leo, this doesn't apply to me, right? Be very careful about that kind of defense, because you're dismissing something very deep and important here. Actually, what I'm talking about applies to you, even if you're an atheist, even if you're secular. Even if you're scientifically minded or rationally minded, and you don't believe in religion at all. It still applies to you, because you moralize. Nonetheless, unless you've done a whole lot of self development work, you moralize a lot. Whether you're religious or not. That's what I mean by very subtle forms of moralizing. And I'll give you some examples as we go on here. But let's give you some examples of the obvious sources of moralization. So obviously, all the religious sources so this is actually one of the reasons that atheists and rational people try to stay away from religion is because there's so much moralism within religion. So Christianity, Catholicism. I know Catholicism is a form of Christianity, but Catholicism is in a specially moralistic form of Christianity. So it bears being called out on its own. Also, Islam Islam is extremely moralistic in the way that it's practiced in the Middle East. Even Buddhism, Buddha's me isn't even supposed to be a religion. Nevertheless, Buddhism tends to veer towards moralism when it's practiced by people. Judaism is moralistic as well. So basically, all the major religions are moralistic. Also, there's like these ideologies, ideologies here in the West, in the United States, like conservativism, political conservativism, or cultural conservativism. People like Jerry Falwell, and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson, you know, these talk show hosts, or, you know, conservative figures basically in the public. So they do a lot of moralizing. And a lot of their ideas and ideologies are based upon kind of moralization. or certain moral authority that they have over their constituents are their followers, or in contrast to the people that they criticize. But it's not just conservativism it also happens in liberalism, too. So liberals, and hippies and green people, you know, environmentalist people, they also moralize, just on different grounds in a different way. But they still moralize, you know, when someone tells you that you shouldn't eat meat. Because of this, this, this and this, and, you know, you shouldn't pollute the water and you're, you know, you're bad for polluting the water and, and you know, those evil corporations on Wall Street and how much money they make and how they neglect the poor and the the destitute and the crippled. You know, that's also moralization. So it happens on both sides of political aisles. And here now we're getting into probably something that's more practical for you. Because most of you guys that watch me aren't too like fundamentalist religious, I assume. But. But the secular forms of moralism. Examples of this include all the moralism that goes on in your family. So when you were growing up, and whatever family you're in, right now, you know, if you're older, you're probably still seeing your folks once in a while, or your siblings. But there's a whole slew like a little, a little system of morality within your family that got enforced from the very beginning when you were born, and probably still gets enforced today. And that probably creates a lot of tension for you and your life. And many of those rules laid down by your parents, you're still either acting to align with those in your life as an adult, or you're acting and rebelling against them as an adult. So either way, it's affecting you. Also, in your intimate relationships, moralism becomes a huge potential problem. Because let's say you're married or you're in a long term relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend, okay? What's going to happen there is again, because that's also like the new family that you're starting. You're starting your own family, basically. And there now you're going to be the one who sets various rules. And of course, your partner is going to have different notions than you about the kind of rules that should be set. And so there's going to be an argument they're going on a kind of a debate back and forth. That's going to stretch over the course. For years and decades between you two about what the rules should be, and who's disobeying the rules and who's being unfair, and who's being at fault, and who's guilty, and who's innocent, right. So that whole discussion and that whole argument will go on with you too. And that can lead to a lot of frustration could lead to a lot of divorce, a lot of divorces happen because of the moralizing that goes on between couples and relationships. Also, there's a certain moralization that happens with cultural etiquette. You know, cultural etiquette is stuff like, you know, should I bow? Should I say, thank you? Should I say please, should I hold the door open? Should I not cut off some guy in traffic? Or should he not cut me off? This kind of stuff, you know, just kind of like little rules that aren't very religious. They're not very charged. But still, you can see how you know, if you hold a belief such as like, nobody is supposed to ever cut me off in traffic. And somebody does, then that's going to make you angry. And you're going to suffer on account of that, because of your moralism there. And then, of course, the most important form of moralism is probably the one that goes on inside yourself. moralism that you created for yourself. So the rules you have set for yourself, outside of all these areas I've talked about, but you as a human being as you were growing up, and as you were a teenager, you made certain decisions about what should and what should not occur in life, what's right, and what's wrong, what's fair and what's not fair. And these rules as you've made them, you've applied them to others in order to judge others. And then of course, you by necessity, your mind has to apply them to itself too. Because you know, if you judge someone for being evil, because he ripped somebody off and stole some money from them, if you then five years later, go and try to rip somebody off, then your mind will say, Oh, then that means I'm evil, because I judge that other person's being evil. Right? And so now you have this to contend with. So those are some examples of where moralism occurs in our lives. But let's discuss now, what the problem is with moralism because it's not obvious. You might say, well, Leah, you know, moralism is a good thing, because we have rules. If we didn't have rules, then it would just be chaos and anarchy. Is that what you're advocating? Before I address some of those objections, which I will, let's talk about the problems with moralism. The problem here is not religion. Make sure you don't make that mistake. It's not a religious problem. This is a much broader problem than just religion. The problem is mechanical illness. The problem is setting down a simplified black and white rule for how life should be, and then expecting life to go according to that rule. And then also expecting yourself to Now originally behave in in a mechanical unconscious way, according to that rule. What I said is very profound. It takes a bit of thinking to unpack all that, right. What do I mean by mechanical illness and unconsciousness and all these kinds of terms? What I mean is that to actually be moral and good. You need to do it from a place of consciousness of awareness in the present moment, you have to be aware of the situation. And from that comes the greatest good. But when you just have a brute force rule, that you have been following your whole life and have a whole set of these rules, and you believe that the rules constitute morality, then what happens is that you are just blindly following bureaucratic rules. And a lot of times these rules are so simplistic that they don't actually fit real life situations. And also, you can apply these rules in a mechanical nature in a mechanical manner, to the point where you apply the rule and you actually end up using the rule to act immorally. That's the problem with rules. That's the problem with dogma. That's the problem with beliefs. This goes way beyond just doing good or doing bad. This goes very, very deep to the very root of what you think reality is and how reality is structured. Your whole model of reality is tied in with your model of morality. The rules you make are actually made out of fear. We're now the stuff I'm gonna be talking about right now is going to be largely unconscious stuff, stuff that you probably haven't become aware of yet. But keep in mind that everything I'm talking about is something you can look at, investigate and see for yourself, I'm not just giving you some theory of mine about morality, I'm telling you what you will find, if you just take it upon yourself to empirically investigate how some of these things work in your day to day life. This is not theory, it's not philosophy. Don't confuse it with that. The rules, what I'm claiming is that the rules that you set for what's right and what's wrong, are actually mana fear. They're driven by your ego. You have an insecure, neurotic ego, that acts defensively to protect itself, and to protect its model of the world and a reality and of life. And your identity, your personal identity, who you actually believe you are, this needs to be defended, right? Because your identity, what it is, is it's a, it's a partial, partial, incomplete picture of what you actually are in this world. Right? What you've done is you fragmented a unified reality, you fragmented it, and then you said, This is me, this is how I have to be. And everything else is not me. So by creating a strong, you strong identity, a strong ego, that necessarily means that now you have to be on the defensive, to protect this little pocket or corner, partition of reality, from the rest of reality, from encroaching on it, right, it's almost as though you've cut a hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nationalists, you cut a hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And now you've cut it like a mile deep to the very bottom of the ocean floor. If you cut it, though, what happens you have to have like walls, very, very strong walls, like reinforced with, with tons of concrete and steel, to keep this thing from collapsing in on itself, because that's the natural tendency, right? Because the entire force of all the water on Earth, basically, of all the oceans on Earth is crashing in the sides of that hole that you've tried to cut out. So you're going to need to work really, really hard to cut out that hole. And if there's ever a leak, you're going to be always on the defensive, you know, plugging every little hole that you find within that concrete structure that supports the space that you've carved out of the ocean. That's basically what's going on with you, with your ego. So this kind of ego now, because it's very rigid, it's not flexible. And it's unwilling to really investigate what the ego is, and what reality is, because if it did, it would realize that this hole is completely artificial and unnecessary, right? The reality is, is that you're the entire ocean, you don't need to carve out a hole in the ocean, you are the whole ocean. But most people aren't aware of this takes a lot of work to become aware of that. So what they do now is they use morality as a tool of the ego, to erect barriers, to reinforce his identity. And this starts with you very, very young. So when you were just a baby, when you were one year old, already, your parents were using morality to manipulate you to get you to do what they believed was right and wrong. So from your very birth, you've basically been imprinted and indoctrinated with a set of what's right and what's wrong. And this went like straight, straight into the very core of the operating system of your mind. So deep in there that you cannot even fathom how foundational that was, to the way you relate to the life now, the way you relate to people to life to yourself to situations in the world. All of that has been skewed and distorted from the very beginning of your birth by the manipulations that have happened to you, by your parents, right? So when your parents said, Oh, don't do that. Oh, good girl. Bad boy. This kind of stuff, right? You shouldn't eat candy. And you know, you should be good at church. And you know, you shouldn't look at pornography. And you know, you shouldn't touch alcohol, and you shouldn't watch so much TV and you should do your homework, and you should do this and should do that. That's moralization. Right, and notice that this is where it starts completely irreligious so it's not religious. It's a religious right. These kinds of things like don't eat candy, don't watch too much TV. These are just rules. laid down by your parents because, you know, you're being a little brat, and they want to control you so that you don't get on their nerves. It's just a very simple thing like that. And then it starts that it continues through your entire childhood into your teenage years, when you become a teenager, you start to rebel against all that stuff, you start to kind of form an identity of your own. But still, largely, even if you rebelled against some values, largely, you're still on board with the majority of the values that your parents taught you what you think is right and wrong. And for you, those things are now a part of reality, you don't see as just an opinion that stealing is wrong, you think that that's actually true, it's true that stealing is wrong, it's true, that murder is wrong. That's how your mind thinks of it. The reason it thinks of it that way is because it was imprinted into your mind at a time when you had no rational capacities whatsoever. So it's really deep in there. It's really deep in there. Now, you might say, well, Leo, what's wrong with you know, having some rules? You know, isn't it? Isn't it good that my parents told me not to eat too much candy? Yeah, maybe you know, some of these rules can be useful. I'm not saying they aren't. But notice, what they fundamentally are, is that there are manipulations made by egos to get the outcomes they want. So yeah, of course, these rules are very effective. In certain contexts, the problem happens that when you grow up, and you have a lot of these rules, and what starts to happen is that your rules start to conflict and contradict. And the force of that ocean crashing in the size of this identity hole that you've created inside the ocean, it starts to become painful, it creates suffering, and it starts to ultimately crack and starts to leak through there. And it becomes a full time job sometimes to keep this structure from collapsing. So the other problem with this is that a lot of these rules are external rules. So they build within you a sense of extrinsic motivation. So it's like, don't do this, otherwise, you're gonna get spanked. Or otherwise, you're gonna go to hell. And the problem with that is that you're now you're motivated. Now, after a couple of decades of this kind of talk. Now, your mind becomes motivated by native neurotic motivation. You don't do things because you actually love them. Or because you inherently care about doing them? You do them? Because you have to. You do them, because you should you do them because it's a law of God, or a law of society or something like that. And what's the problem there? Well, the problem there is that if you're doing something, because you should notice that that necessarily implies that you actually want to do something opposite to that. So if you should not have sex, and you're struggling with that, that means you actually want to have sex. And if you should not eat candy, that means there's actually a force within you a force within your mind that wants to eat candy. So what's happening here is that you're fragmenting yourself, you're creating this integrity, you're out of integrity with yourself, because there's a complicated slew of forces within you, that motivates the average human being. There's good forces and bad forces, there's evil ones, there's noble ones, there's petty ones, there's generous ones, they're selfish ones, all sorts. You have all sorts of ideas floating through your mind, you know, sometimes you have an idea that you want to kill somebody. Now, you probably don't want to follow through on that, and you probably won't, but you still have the idea. Now, the problem happens is that when you try to deny that you have the idea that you want to kill someone, that's when you get into neurosis, because what you're doing is you're actually creating a shadow. So see, the ego, not only is the ego a problem, but it gets worse, it gets a lot worse, the ego has a shadow, the shadow of the ego is all the stuff that you deny about yourself. But that's actually inherent in your identity. So stuff like I want to have sex. If you're a religious person, you probably have a shadow of your ego. Your ego believes that sex is wrong, or it's somehow it's dirty. But then the shadow part of that is that actually you want to have sex. And actually because you deny yourself sex, you actually want it even more. So it's kind of like the opposite side. Out of the coin, if you create one rule, or if you create one judgment, or if you say something is good, that necessarily means that the opposite of that is bad. See, people tend to think like, well, but it's good to say the things are good. Because that allows me then to not do the bad things. Now, the problem is, is that when you say something is good, that necessarily means you're gonna do bad things, or you're gonna repress bad things, right? You have to repress them. There has to be a denial of reality here. And that's the real tragedy of all this is that moralization leads to a denial of reality. And when you deny reality, and you try to fight against reality, you always lose. Always, you always lose. It's just a matter of time. And that's a big problem. A big practical problem in your life. Another interesting tidbit here is that the moralist, the person who acts very moral, they derive a secret pleasure out of doing so. And again, it's an egoic pleasure. It's kind of like one of those dirty little ego with pleasures. And that's the pleasure of feeling self righteous. So when you condemn a terrorist, or when you condemn Nazis, or when you can condemn a pedophile, you know, these are very easy things to condemn. And you might think, like, well, I'm being noble, you know, I'm fighting against the Nazis and I'm fighting against the communists. I'm fighting against the, the heathens, and I'm fighting against the infidels and stuff. But, but see what you're actually doing there is your ego is kind of like gloating. It's, it's basking in its own eagerness. And then of course, what that does is that just exacerbates all the problems that come with ego. But this is a subtle thing. It's a subtle thing, because the ego says that this kind of gloating is actually good. It justifies it by saying, well, but you know, I do good in my life and look at those Nazis and look at those terrorists, you know, look at what they do. Look at me compared to them how much better I am, see the egos whole game is to aggrandized itself to feel powerful, and to feel alive. Because the fundamental problem of the ego is that the ego is an illusion. So it has to fight all the time to create a sense of reality. If it stops fighting, then it literally dies. So that's what's going on there to very deep level, all the stuff I'm talking about is extremely advanced stuff. I mean, it'll take you years, maybe decades, to put all this stuff into practice to actually see how it all works in your life. It's all very, very subconscious, like buried deep in your mind. All this stuff I'm telling you is is is stuff you're not supposed to know about yourself. Right? It's the egos job to prevent you from ever hearing what I'm saying right now. So let's get back to the point of the problem of morality or the problem of moralizing. Rather, the other problem with moralizing is that it leads to hypocrisy. So of course, and this is a you know, very interesting phenomenon that you get to see with televangelists, preachers and certain conservative politicians or radio show hosts is, you know, they're very moralistic, and they tell you know, you shouldn't do this, and you shouldn't do that. And you shouldn't have sex and you shouldn't drink and you you should be religious and pious and, and generous and selfless. And then we discovered that this preacher has been caught with a hooker doing cocaine, you know, and having gay sex, this kind of thing. And that's not an accident. That is actually hastened by his moralism. It's hastened by it, because someone was a preacher and really preaches against something and calls something evil, that person is denying that aspect of reality and that aspect of himself kind of interesting. So, one problem here is that leads to hypocrisy and hypocrisy is a painful condition to be in. It also backfires. So moralism backfires on you, and whatever vices you have become intractable after you've moralized to other people. So you know, if I'm greedy, and I publicly announced how bad and evil greed is, then what's likely to happen is that now I have to hide my own vise of greed. And when I hide it, that means I can't observe it, I can't be conscious of it. That means I can't actually work through it and outgrow it, and integrate it as I do self actualization work. And so what's going to happen is that decades will pass and that greed will just kind of rot and fester, and it'll get worse and worse and worse, rather than better. Also, what happens with moralism is a lot of guilt, shame, hatred and judgment happen. So if you're looking for a cure to your guilt, or to your shame or to your hatred of other people or yourself you know, I have a lot of episodes to talk about the dangers of judgment and why judgment is something you should think about letting go of. Here's the key drop your moralism. Drop your moralism if you moralize, you will, by necessity, feel guilty, shameful, angry and judgmental. You cannot avoid that. And by moralizing here, I don't just mean stop preaching to other people. You might say, well, Leah, you know, I don't moralize to people. I don't really go around and preach to people you know about the evils of sex. That's a very gross example. Now I'm talking about very subtle things, subtle ways in which you moralize, like when you're telling yourself, you shouldn't eat that doughnut at work. Or when you tell yourself, you shouldn't be so lazy, with your schoolwork. Or when you tell yourself, you know, you have to go to the gym. You have to go to the gym, you can't miss a single day at the gym. Or when you tell yourself, you know, my girlfriend, my girlfriend, she shouldn't be talking to other guys. She shouldn't that's not right. Or, you know, you might say you know that my friend, you know, my friend has been disrespectful, disrespectful to his parents, he shouldn't be so disrespectful to his parents, he should be more loyal, and more generous to his parents. And you know, those politicians, you know, the politicians, they should be more honest, they shouldn't be so greedy. All of that is moralism. And you do it, you do a lot of it, you do a fucking ton of it. in ways you can't even imagine yet how subtle This is. You do it externally. You also do it internally, you do it to yourself. Every day you wake up, I challenge you, from the moment you wake up, your first thought when you wake up is probably a moralization. You probably already telling yourself, oh, man, I should have gotten up 10 minutes earlier. Oh, man, you know, I should have done my homework yesterday. Or, you know, oh, man, you know, that person should have done something for me and he didn't do it. All that is moralizing. And the problem with is that you're going to feel guilty. But also you're gonna have low self esteem, because you're gonna be out of integrity, which necessarily leads to low self esteem. Also, it leads to self hatred. Right, because there are facets of yourself that you don't accept, also, at least a self sabotage. If you wonder why you have difficulty motivating yourself to do stuff, or why you do something, but then you kind of do the opposite of it the next day, like you go to the gym, but then you pick out or you eat healthy, and then you pick out or you do a lot of work, and then you get lazy if you have all these kind of motivation problems. Here's a really big reason why. And you're not going to fix them until you drop your moralizing. Also, if you have anxiety, anxiety, general fear. What do you think that comes from that comes from moralizing. Also, if you have stress, you feel overwhelmed all the time that also comes from moralizing. So a lot of very painful stuff comes from moralizing. moralizing basically is a perfect recipe for disastrous suffering in your life. And then of course, all this leads to the victim mentality if you feel like a victim you moralize a lot. You moralize a lot. What's interesting about moralizing not only can it be kind of like it can take two forms basically. So one form is the kind of form where you're the self righteous moralizer And you tell yours you tell basically other people what not to do. So you say you know you tell that person who's having too much sex don't do don't have so much sex Look at me I'm I'm the perfect example of someone who doesn't have too much sex and you you shouldn't drink so much. I'm the perfect example of someone who doesn't drink so this kind of ego it aggrandizing itself. The victim mentality ego kind of does the opposite. It kind of uses this moralizing guess itself so it tells itself something like Oh, I should not have so much sex oh you know I shouldn't be such a such a lazy person. You know, I shouldn't be so careless in my relationship you know, I should be more loving. You know, I I should be a better at work. I shouldn't make mistakes at work. I should get better grades at school. And on and on and on. It goes Both of these forms are moralization, even though they're kind of opposite on the surface. And then of course, you know, if you've ever wondered why human history is filled with all sorts of math horrors, like the Holocaust, and the Spanish Inquisition, and terrorism, and you know, like, suppression of minorities, racism, slavery, exploitation, colonialism, eradication of the Native American populations of the United States. Why is that? moralism largely because of moralism. Because when you mechanically follow rules, what happens is disaster, inevitably leads to disaster, because you're judging evil. And when you judge evil, you unnecessarily demonize the other person or situation, and then when you demonize them, you no longer can treat them humanely, which means you cannot be moral to them, see, judgment and moralization radicalizes, you and when it radicalized as many people under a common ideology that leads to the greatest horrors of human history. So actually, morality is directly responsible for the greatest horrors and evils of mankind. And the reason all of this happens is because you deny and reject reality, that's your Achilles heel, here. And this is the grave sin that you commit against reality is that you deny and reject it. This is what happens when you fragment a unified whole. Shit starts to hit the fan very quickly. And it leads to a very messy situation. Brad Blanton psychologist writes a lot about this. And I liked the way he puts it, he says that the opposite of moralism is integrity. When you are whole, what you've done is you've owned the light parts of you and the dark parts. The ego in the shadow have been unified, and integrated. And then you are free to act naturally, spontaneously, without guilt or shame. Your actions are not good or bad. You yourself are not a good or bad person, that itself is an identity, that's an ego thing, to consider yourself a good or a bad person. You're none of those in reality, what you do is you transcend the entire paradigm of good and bad. And you start to see that this is a childish, immature game that you play. And that it's time to put the game to an end. And when you do that, you become an emotionally mature adult. And then true morality comes effortlessly to you. Pretty cool. So let's discuss true morality, or what I call transcendent morality. For people who have been moralizing themselves, their whole lives, this is a very counterintuitive notion. It's a very unorthodox and a very threatening notion. Because it's extremely radical. It's almost the exact opposite of everything you think morality is. And by the way, what's really fascinating about this, the whole irony of this is that all religious morality, old traditional morality, is based and derived from transcendent morality. So everything that Jesus taught that the Buddha taught that Muhammad taught, that Moses or Abraham taught, all these things, you know, the rules that they set down, these rules were sort of designed for the unconscious masses. But, you know, these, these rules were set down very early in history. And these leaders who set these rules down, they actually had access to some degrees of transcendent morality, which I'm going to discuss here in a second. What that is, but they had access to that. See, and what they did is they history didn't go far enough, yet. They didn't have the luxury of seeing the horrors that unconscious masses would produce with mechanical rules, right? They didn't have the wisdom of history. We have it now. So which is why I would say that someone like Moses or Abraham or Muhammad or the Buddha or Jesus if they lived in modern times, and They would denounce every single rule and law that has been attributed to them if they saw the horrors that it would produce. So, here's what these sages and saints actually tapped into. And you can tap into this to transcendent morality is really cool thing. Transcendent morality, what it is, is it's, it's just a pure consciousness of what is true of reality. So it's not morality at all, there is no morality, it's just being fully open to reality. existentially, if you ever open yourself fully to reality, if you become the ocean, rather than the hole in the ocean, what will happen is that the universe, you'll see, the universe is totally free, totally free. What there is in the universe is not a set of rules and laws, these are human contrivances. These are egoic inventions designed to manipulate people. What there really is, is there just is what is there is being, that's all there is, all of reality consists of being. And of course, also the source of being, which is nothingness. But that's another discussion for another time. So we'll just say that all there is as being right being is basically you might call that experience, raw, direct experience as you perceive it. Let's call that being for now, it's a bit simplistic, but let's just call that being. So that's what there really is. And this being is completely neutral, it's so utterly neutral, and lawless, that you can't even call it neutral, to call it neutral, would already be putting a charge on it. Right? The universe is totally free. So the universe does whatever it wants to do. And every actor in the universe is basically doing whatever they want to do. And there are no rules as to what is good, or what is evil. And in fact, these categories of good and evil do not exist, these are conceptual creations of the ego, you actually had to create good and evil, you had to create this, when you were a small child, this concept had to enter into your mind. You created it, largely unconsciously, because you didn't know what the hell you were doing. And it was useful to you at the time. So you created it because it served a certain utility for you. Right, but the problem with fictions is the same problem as with lies, you know, lies always come back to haunt you. And so do fictions, and so do all your mental creations. And the problem is, is that you've fragmented, like I said, this unity when you realize this, and you take efforts to stop doing that, and then you actually become one with the unity of the universe as it is, then what you realize is that there are no shoulds at all, at all, like really at all. What is, is what should be Let me repeat that. What is, is exactly what should be, or what should be, is exactly what is. Now this is the most bitter pill, one of the most bitter pills I'm ever going to ask you to swallow. But it's also so fucking powerful. If you grasp this, and you understand what I'm saying here. This is actually a concept that I got from Byron, Katie, very, very foundational concept. My next episode is going to be about this, I'll tell you more about this, and how your shoulds how the should statements that you create your life, you know, I should do this, I should do that that person shouldn't do this. These are all should statements, right? Normally, what happens is that we say, well, you know, people shouldn't steal money from other people. People shouldn't be feeds. And then but what, what reality tells us is that people actually are thieves. And also we tell us as well, people shouldn't be Nazis. You know, Nazis shouldn't exist, and, you know, pedophiles and rapists shouldn't exist. And, you know, Republicans shouldn't exist and Democrats shouldn't exist. And you know, children shouldn't eat candy that shouldn't exist, and people shouldn't have too much sex that shouldn't exist, and people shouldn't be so materialistic that shouldn't exist. People should be more spiritual, so more spirituality should exist. So you have all these fucking fantasies about what should and shouldn't exist. Do you see the problem is that what you think should or shouldn't exist has no fucking bearing on reality. Reality is, what is it's what exists and what you feel should have exist or shouldn't exist, is your own fucking problem. So all that needs to happen is you need to drop your fantasies about what reality should be like. And then there are no more problems. And I mean this in all of its ramifications in a very broad, very radical sense. So I literally mean that there should be rape and murder, and there should be pedophiles, and there should be Nazis and there should be communists, and there should be terrorists. And there should be all of this. Why? Because they exist. When they stop existing, and they might, we might reach a point in 10,000 years, where these things no longer exists. If that happens, then that's what should be at that time. Not now, at that time, when it happens, but right now, if we have murderers, and rapists and pedophiles and terrorists, that's what should be. It's only the egos arrogance, that has the goal, to say of reality. No, you know what, you know, you know, wait a minute, let's stop all of the fucking functioning of the whole universe. Because I am offended by a pedophile. That's the that's the egos arrogance, right. So to get to transcendent morality, what has to happen is you have to let go surrender to what's actually real, not to what you want, not to what you think would be best for you or your loved ones or humanity. But for what's actually real. You it's very simple, but it's also very radical. Right? You just have to come to this realization at some point where you notice that Holy fuck, reality is exactly how it should be. And when you can grasp that, that's when moralizing stops, and transcendent morality begins. But that's a difficult place to get to. Because one of the things you have to recognize, to get to this place is that you can't judge anyone anymore. If you ever accept and grasp what I'm telling you, and it's not just something you accept or believe, is something you have to grasp, you have to see that this is real, that is true. You cannot believe this, you have to see it to believe it. It's unbelievable. But if you actually see it and grasp it, what you'll discover is that shit, you can't judge anyone anymore. You can't ever point your finger at anyone anymore. Ever, no matter how evil you might want them to be. You cannot look at a terrorist and call him evil anymore. You can't. It's just like, it's, it's, it's preposterous at that point. Right? Because clearly you're looking at terrorists. I mean, he's real. He's right there, he's chopping someone's head off. So you're looking at it. So I mean, it's fucking real. So your only option is to deny that you're either going to accept that are you going to deny that now if you deny it, you have to work a lot, you're gonna have to bend over backwards to deny that you're gonna have to do all sorts of mental gymnastics and rationalizations and theories and cosmologies and religious scriptures that have to be brought in and justifications and this and that, the whole thing is gonna have you built up. And what you're doing is you're just, you're digging a hole in the middle of a fucking ocean. And the water's just going to come and crash and collapse that thing. Because you're fighting against reality. Your girl also have to admit that there's no free will you understand this? There is no free will. You got to admit that. Because if reality is exactly as it should be, reality is one, one unified flow. There's no, there's no possibility of any other possibility of reality. Do you see this? It's not like, oh, well, you know, we could live in a reality where there were no terrorists. No, we couldn't. There's only one reality. What you're talking about is a fantasy, not a reality. Or you could say, well, I can imagine a reality where I woke up yesterday, on time instead of 10 minutes late. No, that's a fucking fantasy. That's a fantasy. The reality is that you woke up 10 minutes late. And that's exactly what is and that's exactly what should have been. Why? Because it happened. And there's no alternate universes here. There's no Altar. The possibilities, what reality is, in this exact moment is all that he could ever have been. There is no other possibilities. That's what total surrender of the Ego means. The whole purpose of fighting to protect your ego is to maintain a sense of limited control and freewill over reality, you see this, that's the whole function of the illusion of the ego is that you could say, Ah, but if I, you know, if I just was a little bit more motivated, if I were a little bit harder, I, you know, I'd have a little bit more money in my bank account, or I would have woken up on time or, you know, if I was just a little bit more religious than maybe I wouldn't have had sex with that guy at the bar last night. The ego fights for control over something, it has zero control over. And that's where most of your suffering comes from. That's why you're stressed. That's why you're guilty. That's why you're suffering. That's why you're a victim. Is a very counterintuitive thing. Because when people hear about this, they say, well, Leo, so you're telling me to just be a victim of life. It's like anything goes now anything goes and just like, What, I can't do anything, you're telling me? How can I even do personal development now. You can still do everything. But whatever you do, whatever it is, whether you do it or don't, it's how it should have been. Right? And you're not really doing it. The whole universe is doing it. It's doing you you're not doing it. When you realize that what will happen is that you'll have true compassion for people. Not just people but animals, everything, everything. Because what happens when you melt the ego into reality, everything becomes unified, is that there's just universal all and appreciation for reality as it is, you love reality so much that you see that what life is is just reality loving itself. This is called universal or divine love. This is what the religious scriptures talk about as God's divine love this is it. This is it. God is the universe. If you don't like the label God and your scientifically minded person, call it fucking nature. Call it universe call it quarks call it atoms, it doesn't matter what you call it. What you're experiencing right now is it? Not some bearded man and clouds kind of deal. That's a fantasy. What's happening right now, as I'm speaking to you, this is reality. You're in it right now. You're conscious? This is it? Now the question is, are you going to love it? Are you gonna hate it? Are you going to resist it? Are you going to flow with it and surrender to it? Are you going to be reality working with itself? Or are you going to be the whole reality struggling against itself? See, you might think that by giving up the notion of free will, that this constrains you and takes away all your freedom. Actually the exact opposite. Right now you're constrained, you're constrained by this fruitless struggle for control over something you have no control over. That's a recipe for hell. And there's no freedom in that. What I'm speaking about here is a complete paradigm shift a radical freedom, totally radical freedom because there are no more rules. That means anything goes anything you can go until your neighbor if you want to anything fucking goes. And that's so radical. That if you've been moralizing your whole life, this is like poison to you this total poison, you're probably calling me a devil right now. That's interesting, because you know, mystics the people who have transcendent realities are called mystics or saints or sages, these people throughout history, they have been demonized and burned at the cross or at the stake, or stoned to death or exiled out of town. Why? Because of this. Why do you think Jesus was nailed to fucking cross? Why was Muhammad's tribe fighting with all the nearby neighboring tribes who tried to kill them? Because of this, because of this. What religious morality is is an aping of transcendent morality, it's an aping. So when you're acting Moral, you're acting. True morality is no morality. Now that's radical, that think about how much responsibility that takes so much fucking responsibility, you have to be conscious every second of your life. In that case, because you have total freedom to do whatever you want, you can go murder your children, there is no buddy stopping you. And the desire to have somebody or some thing Stop you is what an unconscious undeveloped immature ego needs. See the immature ego reasons like this, it says, Well, if there's no rules, stopping people from murdering each other, then we're gonna go all murder each other. And there's going to be anarchy. Yes, if you assume that everyone is deeply unconscious, and are totally selfish bastards, then yes, that will happen. So for unconscious people, they need mechanical rules. In the same way that a herd of cattle needs to be corralled by cowboys. And by fences and posts and barbed wire. There might be usefulness to that, if you're very, very unconscious. But if you're watching my content, then probably you're a bit more conscious than the average person. And also probably you're interested in developing your consciousness a little bit more. And maybe you even want to get to this transcendent morality stage, maybe you actually want to tap into some of the higher wisdom that sages and saints have taught throughout human history. Maybe you want to tap into that maybe you care about self actualizing. If you care about reality and truth, in which case, you're going to be raising your consciousness, and which case you're gonna be taking full responsibility for your life anyways. And for the conscious person, they don't need a rule. I don't need a rule not to kill my children. Oh, or I don't even need a rule not to kill someone who's stolen from me. I don't need a rule for that. In fact, it's, it's funny, you know, sometimes people will leave me comment and be like, well, you know, but what's going to happen without rules Leo. And you know, you're talking about you know, dropping the ego and, and becoming this kind of ascetic living this aesthetic minimalistic lifestyle, you know, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen to society, you know, what's gonna happen to people doing evil stuff, and you know, all these rules are gonna get broken. I'll just be very honest with you. Since I was like, even before a teenager, I had no morality. And I have no morality now. I have nothing that I hold as sacred. There is no belief or rule that I hold as sacred. And in that time, you know, from being a young teenager through my 20s and now into my 30s. I'm not saying this is like some kind of self righteous tooting my own horn, but I'm just saying that I'm more moral and ethical than almost anyone that I'll meet. And I have no fucking morality. Okay, if you go into my mind, there are no, I mean, I do moralize to myself. But I mean, like, I don't have strict rules for like, I shouldn't murder somebody, or I shouldn't steal somebody or shouldn't rape somebody, or I shouldn't rip somebody off. Or I shouldn't lie to somebody. I don't have those kinds of rules. I mean, I still moralize to myself. I have a bunch of shoulds statements. I'm working on those right? I'm working on that stuff. I'm kind of eating my own dog food here. I'm taking my own advice. All the advice I'm telling you here I'm using myself. But I don't have rules for like he's very severe things that I can't I don't know, I don't have the 10 commandments in my mind. Nor do I need it. I don't need it. It's so much more freeing to be without it. And I never have the temptation to rape somebody or to murder somebody this this never comes to me. Not only that, at this point, you know, I don't even get angry at people like I don't even get angry at people like something very radical would have like very severe would have to happen for me to really get angry at somebody. Whereas you know, the average person gets angry on on the drop of a fucking dime. You know, I see people I drive with friends or other people sometimes in traffic, and I see them get pissed off at fucking traffic at traffic. So, so yeah, this whole notion that you need morality and a firm set of rules to tell you to live some way and you know, to keep keep evil at bay, this is this is preposterous. This is what an immature, childish mind needs. Now, you might wonder why then Leo, is this stuff not more widespread? What you're talking about why is it not, you know, being shouted from the rooftops? Why isn't everyone following this kind of transcendent morality? The reason is, because this requires massive development of consciousness, you need to see reality for what it is. This is not a belief systems, it's not a another set of rules. There's not a dogma, you don't just take what I told you and say, okay, so Leo told me now that I shouldn't do this, and I shouldn't do, don't turn into another set of rules. This takes massive self actualization work years of a decades of it will take decades to really embody this. So that's why it's not very widespread. It's also incredibly threatening to the ego. credibly threatening, it's incredibly counterintuitive. It requires a full commitment to truth and reality versus your own self agenda, a full commitment which is, by the way, true religion. That's what true religion is, is this. But of course, like most things in society, what is true, and what actually we have are almost the opposite. Right? So religious people are the exact opposite of truly religious. And another reason it's not more widespread is because it's not politically viable. Could you imagine someone in a, in a public political position coming out with this kind of view, they would get crucified. Three to 500 years ago, if I serve what I'm saying, Now, I would have been burned at the stake, like literally, right. So it's only by virtue of the fact that we're living in a 21st century that that's even possible. That's, if I said this, even 50 years ago, I probably would have been called communist and fucking put in jail. And all my videos would be taken down. And like, it would just be the end of it, right? The end of it. So you got to realize that our society is not as advanced as you think it is. So don't expect the things that I tell you some of the deepest things I tell you, they will not be reflected in mainstream society. In fact, it'll be the opposite, the things I tell you will be the exact opposite of what you see promoted in mainstream society. Because this shit is scary. This shit is very threatening. Now, let me just tackle a couple of final objections. And then we'll wrap this up. So one very common objection is something like but Leo, you know, you've opened Pandora's box here. What is going to guarantee that people do not commit evil under this system that you're advocating? And the answer is nothing. Nothing will guarantee it. But also recognize that nothing guarantees that people don't commit evil anyways. And in fact, the more that you moralize and preach, the more you embolden evil, this thing you call evil, because the way to destroy evil is not by fighting it. But by integrating it. A great quote that I love is love your sins to death. That's what's truly religious is to love your sins to death, not to demonize your sins and to reject them. Because the more you reject them, the more sinful you will be when you love them to death. Eventually, you reach the point where there are no more since there's only love. So, again, very counterintuitively, in sort of paradoxically, integrating evil. Integrating your shadow is the best strategy to minimize evil if that's what your main concern is here. But also, more fundamentally recognize that the thing you call evil this thing is just it doesn't exist. It's an ego judgment. It's pure arrogance to call something evil is pure fucking arrogance, arrogance and delusion, there is no such thing. Your mind creates it as a mental label. What evil is the existential reality of evil is a thought that's what literally evil is a thought. In your mind, not out in the real world. And then another objection, you might have some like polio, but you know, wouldn't you get upset if I wait until your whole family when you get upset by that? Seems like you're being very hypocritical here? And the answer is interesting, the answer is both yes and no. So of course, you know, if you come and do harm to me, or to someone I care about, or to my business, shall we get, of course, on some level, I'm gonna get upset by that. Because you're kind of harming myself agenda. And, of course, my ego doesn't want to be harmed. I'm not saying I, you know, I'm perfect here. Don't take it that way. Don't take this, what I'm saying don't take this as another moralization, don't frame it that way. This is, this has nothing to do with with moralization. So yeah, of course, I would be distraught to a certain extent, but also, and this, this here now is going to be a true measure of my emotional maturity and development. My self actualization is the degree to which I won't get distraught when you are me? Because and I don't know, you know, I haven't put this to the test. If someone killed my whole family, I don't know how I feel about it. But I think I can. I'm at the point now, trying to be accurate. I'm at the point now where yes, I would be distressed. And of course, I would have negative emotions and stuff. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't be at the point where I would be like demonizing that person. Right? I would see this as a function of the entire motion of the universe. And so the mature attitude would be, because it is, that's how it shouldn't be. Now, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be happy about it. But I don't think I would be like, Oh, that person is evil. And you know, he shouldn't have done that and all that stuff. I'd like to think that I would be that way. And if I can't be that way, right now, because you know, I'm not perfect. I'm far from perfect. I will get to that point. I don't know how long will take me, maybe it'll take me a couple of years, maybe five years, maybe 10 years. But within 10 years, I could probably get to that point, and I will find still alive. Just all I need is just time to develop myself. Because every, every week, every month, I'm growing by leaps and bounds by taking my own advice. You think this should I talk about? It's just for you know, it's mostly for me. It's not for you, I'm, I'm doing this out of selfish motive. So, so yeah, that's actually a very good litmus test, to see how developed you are is, you know, when someone really does harm to you, how accepting of it are you? How loving of it are you? That's a really good test. Really tough test, right? It really means that you've grown yourself if you can pass such a test. So in conclusion, my claim here is that traditional morality is based on neurosis and that it does more harm to us and good. So you've come to the point hopefully in your life, that you are ready to let go. And you're ready to become fully conscious. And you're ready to open your mind to some radical new counterintuitive, paradoxical seeming possibilities. And you recognize that what has gotten you here will not get you there. What has gotten you to your level of success now is not going to be the same paradigm that will take you to the self actualized life, you need to change paradigms. And a lot of times changing paradigms is scary, because it feels like you're taking a step backwards. And yeah, you know, for a few months for a year, maybe even it'll feel like a step backwards. But then you'll see that it was a smart decision. The self actualized person is at the same time, the most moral and the least moral. Now, that's a paradox for you to ponder. Think about how truly weak your morality is. If you need a rule, or an external authority, or God or the Bible, or some social contract or even a principle, a logical reasonable principle like a Conte and fucking principle, if you need something like that, to be moral, how weak is your morality, really? Ask yourself that. The true source of morality is reality. It's unconditional love for absolutely everything, with no exceptions. And no arrogance from yourself. All right, I'm signing off. Go ahead, please click like button for me on this. Post your comments down below if you'd like to read them, especially on controversial topics like this. Share it with a friend please. And lastly, come check out actualized. Org right here. This is my website and my newsletter, signup newsletter. It's free. I'm going to have some goodies and exclusive stuff for my newsletter subscribers coming up soon. keeps you on track with the self actualization journey. What's gonna come next week, I think is I'm going to release a episode that's going to fall be a follow up to this one, which is going to specifically talk about how to take what I talked about here, because here it was kind of, I was pretty abstract and kind of lofty, you know, to be me the very big picture, I'm going to talk about how your should statements, how your practical moralizing is creating guilt, shame and self hatred. And that's going to be very practical episode was going to take everything we talked about here and kind of be a part two to that. And it's going to show you how to implement it. And this one change right here could be a significant significant change to the quality of your life. This is such a huge such a foundational such an important topic, and I haven't really covered it before. So make sure you stay tuned. All right. I'll see you soon with more