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hey leo here for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about advanced tips for self inquiry [Music] you I wanted to shoot an episode specifically for people who are doing self inquiry but feel stuck and feel discouraged and might benefit from some tips and pointers that I could provide I have been doing something choir II for over three years with mixed results and so I know what it's like to be stuck I know what it's like to feel confused and frustrated and ready to tear your hair out in this process so if this is your first time hearing about self inquiry it is your first time hearing about enlightenment this episode will do very little for you the tips that I'm going to be providing here are for people who are already in the process of doing self inquiry on a regular basis if you're one of those people then this could help you a lot to stop chasing your tail because if you have the wrong conceptions or expectations about how this process works a you'll be very very frustrated with it and B you will waste years literally years needlessly chasing your own tail and before I give you my tips let me point out that I have a lot of other older episodes which introduce you to enlightenment if this is something you're new to so make sure you go watch those and make sure you go to my forum actualised org slash forum into the spirituality and meditation sub forum and there you will find at the top pinned Leo's practical guide to enlightenment that's a big long post that I wrote up with step-by-step instructions for how I do self inquiry and that also addresses a lot of the stuff so this episode here will just kind of add on top of that guide alright so here are my lessons this is stuff that I learned along the way through reading a bunch of books and also practicing this stuff myself and I'll be presenting them that in no particular order but we do need to start with something very fundamental which is the following tip when you sit down to do yourself inquiry every day as you probably should be doing by now I want you to really ask yourself what is it exactly that you think that you're gonna find what are you looking for exactly what form will the answer that you're seeking take it's important to think about this conceptually before you begin this process because a lot of the mistakes and the tail-chasing begins right here it's because you just tend to assume that well what I'm looking for is some sort of thing called enlightenment whatever the hell that is and that's probably like some kind of like mystical experience so let me go chasing and finding this mystical experience and if you have that expectation then you're gonna be sorely disappointed what you're actually looking for is you're literally looking for formlessness don't just say yes I know that you don't know that that's why you're struggling with this thing you're looking for formlessness now what the hell is formlessness well it's basically the exact opposite of anything that you've ever encountered in your life the only things you've encountered in your life are forms physical objects people emotions feelings ideas beliefs models scientific theories all these are forms you have to understand this this is critical to understand so take all of those lump them all together everything you've ever experienced in child life lump it all together and put it right here on this side right it's on this side what you're looking for when you're self inquiring is not that none of that that might seem obvious but really get this you have to get this and you have to get it repeatedly over and over again every time you sit down to self inquire you have to remind you because you're going to forget because your mind is addicted to focusing on forms that in fact is all of the mind can accesses forms so what you're being asked to do here is to do the impossible the impasse here is to attain formlessness on this side we've got formlessness what that is you don't really know you can't know it has no qualities so the thing you're looking for it's not big it's not special it's not bright it's not dark it's not small it's not skinny it's not thin it's not a positive emotion it's not an experience it's none of that so literally right now try to imagine something that has absolutely no qualities and already you've failed because by imagining it you gave it some kind of quality see so the point of me telling you this is just so you keep us in the back of your mind so that when you're sitting down your mind you're gonna notice your mind is clinging to stuff it's clinging to ideas it's clinging to sensations to feelings to some mystical state that you think you might be pursuing which will be in turned into enlightenment you have to keep reminding yourself that it's none of that stuff and just keep detaching detaching detaching detaching from every single quality you can until you somehow magically reach a state of formlessness and you just have to trust that as possible it is possible many people have done it but it's not possible if you keep clinging to formed to form things to formed ideas you're not gonna get there a good analogy that I like is its it says if I told you that you are gonna find a needle in a haystack and that's your job and so you're gonna spend a lot of time looking through this haystack for this needle but the needle in this case that you're looking for is that there is no needle it's this paradoxical twist this mindfuck if you will the needle doesn't really exist and yet you still have to look for it that's the paradox of this thing and so what you got a see because this thing that you're looking for it's a formless needle what's a formless needle it's nothing it's not there you can't find it really but you can't have the realization that oh the needle is no needle and that's why this stuff is so paradoxical and why Zen masters give you these mind twister colons which kind of screw with your mind and don't make any logical sense that's right because how do you find a needle which is no needle and the mistake would be to think that all well if it's no needle leo then I shouldn't even look that's a mistake if you don't look you're not gonna find the no needle and it is possible to find the no Neil the no needle is not the same thing as not looking not looking is what everybody else is doing and they're not enlightened another tip I have for you is to stop looking for the answer from other people don't ask me for the answer don't ask some guru for the answer don't go posting on the forums questions like well what is awareness or what is consciousness or what is God or what is the truth or what is the true self don't ask these questions because when you're asking that question you're assuming that someone can give you a verbal logical answer you need to conceptually really understand that there is no verbal answer to this question enlightenment is not a verbal answer when you're sitting down to do self inquiry you are not trying to get a logical or a verbal or even a a mental image answer those things are not enlightenment I know it's tempting to ask for the answer but you know what it's not like people are holding the answer back from you it's not like the gurus it's just some [ __ ] who's sitting up there on a pedestal and who's you know who has the answer and if only you would ask him enough times he would just give it to you if it was like that somebody would just write at a book and then I would tell you to go buy that book and that's it this whole process would be very simple it would be over there would be no challenge about it everyone in the world would be enlightened already no problem but that's not how it works so you have to understand the thing you're looking for is not a verbal answer so don't bother asking about it what is awareness what is consciousness what is God what is the true-self you don't know nor can you know until you become enlightened and the only way that will happen is if you sit down and you do this stuff inquiry for yourself no one can help you no book can help you no guru can help you nothing can help you but you sitting down and doing it and anything else that you try to do to try to get an answer from somebody a tip from somebody all of that you have to recognize that's a distraction while you're doing that you're not doing self inquiry and that's why you're not getting enlightened it's really that simple but it's tricky to actually execute on this principle in practice you have to notice yourself distracting with trying to get the verbal answers and then just stop yourself force yourself to stop and to turn inwards and to do this process there is no short cutting this process every shortcut you look for is just gonna make your journey longer and the quicker you can realize that the easier this will go for you I also want you to notice that all ideas and all perceptions that you have are not the thing you're looking for now this might sound like I'm saying the same thing like I said before but again in this work you have to just come back to the obvious things over and over and over again it's not enough just to hear them once you have to come back to it every single time because the problem is you hear it but you don't really get it so I want you to deeply grasp that this thing that we're talking about enlightenment it cannot be symbolized it cannot be captured as a mental image it cannot be scientifically modelled ever I'm not saying that no-one's done it yet and that maybe in the future it will happen I'm saying it's never going to ever happen not in a billion years that's what I'm saying now whether you believe me or trust me or not that's another story I'm just telling you the way that it is if you don't want to believe me fine you can go wish your own time trying to symbolize and conceptualize and rationalize enlightenment in the end you'll discover you can't do it and how do I know because I've spent many years trying to do it and once you discover it for yourself in the non symbolized on conceptualized form but in its actual form you will understand why it can't be symbolized but until then you won't understand why you're just have to trust me on that anything that you can imagine is not it that's a very important principle that can help you to cut through a lot of [ __ ] when you're sitting to self inquire that means every single idea or feeling or emotional state that you have that you think oh maybe this is it that's not it that really helps to cut through a lot of crap if you keep that principle in mind but it's also difficult because your mind is so addicted to all these ideas and things that you have in there that it doesn't want to let them go and see what the mind is trying to do is it just it incessantly tries to conceptualize and symbolize enlightenment but it doesn't really grasp that it can't do that it's not going to succeed so it just tries and tries and tries and tries and tries in Zen they have you do that over and over again for thousands of hours until finally your mind gives up its surrenders and it says [ __ ] I've completely failed it's impossible and then that's usually when the Enlightenment happens if you're still on this path but a lot of people quit long before then here's another tip for you this is a very important guiding principle of this process it's that nothing is hidden and a corollary of that is that nothing is elsewhere this is a principle it has served me very very well because one of the tricks to this process that you're gonna face is that you're gonna be tempted to look for enlightenment somewhere else as some hidden object out there behind the scenes somewhere you're gonna look for it as though you're looking for some magical animal like a you corne or some hidden dimension or some kind of alien or some some kind of thing of the mind or that it's somewhere else it's in it's in you seen another dimension out there it's in you know a fifth dimension of 6th dimension it's in outer space somewhere thinking about it like this that's not what it is nothing in his hidden nothing is elsewhere it means that right now if you just become conscious as much as you possibly can of the present moment just do it right now become conscious of this present moment right now exactly whatever you're experiencing that right there this right here this right here this is right now this is it this is what you're looking for it's not somewhere else and it's not something different than this this is enlightenment right here this is absolute infinity what you're looking at right now me my face my voice this happening right now all the thoughts in your head whatever feelings you're having this consciousness you have right now this is absolute infinity you're inside of absolute infinity absolute infinity is nothing other than what you're seeing every single second of every moment of your life you're in it is the problem you're too close to it is the problem it's not far away from you it's too close to you you see you're in so deep inside it that you don't see it for what it really is so rather than looking somewhere else out there behind the curtain the best approach is to actually become very present to this moment right now and not to go chasing some kind of mystical state or some kind of positive feeling enlightened is not a positive feeling it's what's happening right this second it's the very fabric of reality itself its existence existing itself right now right here this is it right here you need to remind yourself of this over and over and over again as you sit down it's not enough just to hear me say it once it's not enough for you to sit down and to do it once this should be the beginning about single one here sits is that you remind yourself that nothing is hidden nothing is elsewhere this right here right now is infinity your job is to just become conscious of that fact by just staying as present and as conscious of the the very fact of existence right now and just hone your mind on that without a lot of distracting thoughts and ideas that's the essence of this self inquiry process there are different angles you can come at it from they're different questions you can ask you can ask the question Who am I you can ask the question what am I you can ask the question what is reality you can ask the question what is existence or what is God you know all these questions but they ultimately all point and boil down to the same thing just you're kind of approaching it from different angles and I do recommend that you experiment with different questions some questions might resonate with you more than others some approaches will just be easier for you than other ones and sometimes you get tired you want to switch things up that's fine you don't need to stick with just one question but regardless of what your question is the process is basically just you becoming present to what is actually happening right now in this moment that's all that it is another tip that I have for TIA is that you are not the body and you are not the mind now this seems obvious by now if you've heard me talking about enlightenment or you've heard other people talking about enlightenment or you've read books about enlightenment this should be obvious by now and that's basically what enlightenment means so what is enlightenment enlightenment means that you that you that you've always thought you were the body and the mind maybe you think that what I am is this this body here in this mind in here that's talking right down to you that that's not actually me and that's not actually you that's what alignment means enlightenment means that this is an illusion that these constructs of ourselves that we have that these are just illusions and that reality as a whole is an illusion and really what this is right now with what's happening right here is just a dream reality is no different from a dream that you have when you go to sleep it's just a little bit more solid feeling but actually it's possible to see through that solidity until you realize that actually there's nothing solid about this moment right now at all you think this is solid is just a dream you're inside of a dream right now I'm speaking to you inside of a dream and it's possible to awaken from this dream that's what enlightenment is in a nutshell but even though you probably know that already I have to stress this point for you again and you need to stress it every single time you sit down and self inquire because what I'm saying here is so [ __ ] significant it's so significant that is very easily overlooked you are not the body and you are not the mind do you realize how [ __ ] significant that statement is now maybe you think I'm full of [ __ ] and then I'm deluded and that I'm wrong that's fine if you think that but one of us is right or wrong here either you are the mind in the body or you're not and if you are then basically reality works the way you think it works and then I'm wrong and everything that you believed is fine and that basically you've got all reality figured out but if what I'm saying happens to be true maybe just maybe if what I'm saying happens to be true then everything you've ever thought about life is dead wrong you see that this statement that you are not the body and you are not the mind is the most significant statement that could probably ever be told to a human being and yet when people sit down and do enlightenment work or when they are on the forums talking about enlightenment I see that they don't grass significance of what they're really pursuing you are pursuing the literal dis identification of yourself from your body and from your mind do you fathom how significant that is if it's true if it's possible now maybe it's untrue maybe it's impossible it may be I'm full of [ __ ] but your job here if you take me seriously if you take this work seriously is to prove yourself wrong and to prove me right which means you have to sit there for hours until you realize that you're not the body in the mind now the claim that I'm making is that it's possible for you to realize that and when you do you'll be shocked and it will be the most significant discovery you've ever made in your life and it will turn your completely around so what we're really talking about here is literal immortality literal immortality understand how significant that is understand also how big of a of a discovery and how big of an accomplishment that is that's no little thing so if it takes you a few years and a few thousand hours of grinding away of confusion of frustration of of pain of emotional labor to realize something like this is that worth it do you think are you willing to trade that for immortality I mean after all you can invest a couple thousand hours playing video games very easily many of you have or chasing girls or doing work a lot of people waste thousands of hours every single year working at some shitty lame job and they think that all that's a good investment of my time in my life energy but then when it comes enlightenment and they need to put in a couple thousand hours of work oh all of a sudden Oh leo no no work no I'm not supposed to work for these sorts of things these sort of things are just supposed to happen to me they're supposed to land on my lap there shouldn't be any seeking involved no work involved give me a [ __ ] break when you truly appreciate the significance of what you're doing here you start to take your yourself inquiry much more seriously and also your expectations change your motivations change when you grasp this is the most significant thing you could possibly do in your life then there's no longer a question about like well when will I become enlightened will I become enlightened this year or next year Leah what if it doesn't happen to me there's no such questions anymore because this is the most [ __ ] important thing you can do in your life that means you're gonna do it no matter what you're gonna do it if it takes you 50 years you're gonna do it it doesn't matter that kind of motivation and commitment to this path only comes when you realize the significance of what you're pursuing I see that way too many people pursue enlightenment as though it's just like oh it's just other goal it's like yeah it's pursuing enlightenment is sort of like me learning how to type or me finishing a big reading a big book or me learning a new piece of software you know it's like it's this you're comparing to this this Flint these flimsy goals you need to you need to really grasp the significance of what you're doing here and every time you sit down you to realize that I'm sitting here and I believe I really believe I really feel in the heart of my hearts I feel that I am the body and the mind if I'm not the body in the mind what could I possibly be it's insane to think that I could be anything else this is ludicrous you need to think that every time you sit down and then you need to realize and tell yourself that you're wrong I'm wrong for believing this I'm sitting here I'm believing a bunch of horseshit the society has sped me I'm believing utter delusions that I'm this body in the smut and I'm sitting here and I'm believing it like a sucker I am a total ignorant sucker like those stupid Mormons are those religious people those Scientologists or those those people who lived two three hundred years ago who were doing the witch trials I'm just as ignorant as those people even more ignorant because I'm sitting here and I've been told that I'm not the body in the mind and I'm suspecting that it's true and yet still I'm so ignorant I'm so [ __ ] ignorant that I can't shake this belief that's how every self inquiry session you sit down and do should run if you're using your thoughts during self inquiry this is what you should be using them for use them to question everything that you hold certain about reality and about you being a body and a mind the advanced stages of self inquiry is just you sitting there silently as silently as possible not saying anything to yourself in your mind you're just sitting there and you're just focusing on the present moment but before you get there it's helpful perhaps for a year or two in this process to use your thoughts because your thoughts are gonna be turning you know you got the monkey mind rolling around in there so since that thing is on you might as well use that monkey mind for something good and the one good thing you can use it for is to really start to question these things and so these conversations that I'm having with you this is sort of the conversations that I have inside my head when I'm doing self inquiry I sit there and I think like how [ __ ] stupid am I to believe that I'm the body and the mind I'm sitting you're not [ __ ] believing it I'm I'm just an idiot for believing this now of course you don't want to go overboard with that and turn this into into some neurotic you know guilt trip that you put on yourself but hey you know sometimes you got to do that sometimes if you sit there for 10 days in a long deep retreat setting and by the end of those 10 days you're still sitting there believing that you're the body in the mind I mean it's like god damn it how could I be so stupid you know sometimes that's what you got saying sometimes saying that to yourself really kind of wakes you up and like the why am I so stupid why do I believe it I'm the body of the mind and then your mind starts to kind of like open up a little bit more and that's what you're trying to do I don't tip I have for you is that the very crux of this enlightenment work is to challenge your very identity how do you know that you're you how can you trust your bodily feelings as a signifier of yourself so usually when you ask somebody how do you know you're you they said well I'm me of course I'm me cuz look I can feel myself I'm talking right now I'm moving my hands I'm feeling the thoughts inside my head and my emotion so I'm feeling stuff so that's what proves that I mean what could be more obvious but you got to look deeper than that a ski an even more fundamental question which is like how do you know that the feelings that are being felt right now by you which you claim are evidence for your existence that those ceilings actually are you how do you know that how do you know that you are made out of feelings that you may are made out of body sensations and that you are made out of thoughts thought thought ideas that you have in your head cuz that's what you're presently identified with but how do you know that those things are what you actually exist as you never questioned it you were just born and one day you just sort of woke up and you said yeah I am I am this body and these feelings and these thoughts and you never gave it a second thought again you just took it completely for granted here what I want you to do is I want you to really question that so actually pick a sensation in your body maybe like pinch yourself a little bit you know like pinch your arm or something and then ask yourself like that pinch is that me how do I know that's me I mean yeah I can feel some pain but that pain that's being felt how do I know that that's actually me after all when I look at a table I don't say that I am the table just because I see it so when I feel a pain equally following that analogy when I'm what I'm feeling this pain that doesn't necessarily prove that I am the pain when I'm feeling my foot that doesn't prove that I am the foot in the same way that when I see a bird doesn't prove I'm a bird so what criteria are you using to identify with things and even perhaps more fundamentally ask yourself the question how is it that identity comes about in the first place at all how is it that a thing becomes a thing who is determining identity does God have like a logbook and he says that well this this object here is clearly a bird and therefore it's a bird and that object over there is a tree so clearly it must be a tree and these are discrete objects the bird is separate from the tree do you think it works like that you think the universe or reality has this sort of list somewhere so who is determining these identities could it be that your own mind is concocting the identity on the fly mmm interesting and interesting possibility quite the mindfuck that would turn out to be so the tip here is to challenge your very identity every single time you sit down don't just think about what is reality and what is god those can be good to think about but you always have to go wait a minute what do I really think that I am and you have to be very honest about that and stop bullshitting yourself about all the theories that you've read you know people I get car tol a and maybe myself and other folks and things you've read in books have told you that all you are a spirit or you are nothingness or you are everything or your unity or you are God we told you all these things these are just ideas for you you have to drop all those ideas and you have to be very honest first and foremost about what is your present identification a lot of people don't even know this if you ask the average person what is your present identification they're gonna look at you stupid and you ask them are you the body they'll say yes I am the body and then you ask them so are you the arm they say well no I'm not quite the arm okay so you don't identify with it with being an arm you identify them with what with being a body but then is the arm part of the body yes it is but then why don't you identify with it well I don't know okay well so then maybe you're not the arm and you're not the body maybe identify with being something else like the heart or the mind okay so yeah maybe I'm more like the mind but then what is the mind which part of the mind exactly are you defying with are you identifying with an image of mental image of your body so if that mental image isn't present this I mean you don't want exist anymore when that image isn't present okay so that means you can't be the image because the image isn't always in your mind it's only in your mind sometimes yet you were supposed to exist all the time so then what really are you what are you identified with what do you believe you are don't just say oh yeah I'm just a human being I'm just a body that's not specific enough you need to really drill down on it because which we'll discover is that actually you don't have a clear sense of it and that's part of the problem part of the reason why you keep spinning your wheels in this mud of self-inquiry is because you're not being precise enough with yourself your mind is playing very loose it's it's fudging the numbers as you're doing this inquiry what it really helps is for you to to pick a specific concrete sensation or object in your present experience that you identify with like do you identify with in itch on your foot and then ask yourself am i that itch am i literally an itch is that what I am am i an itch and then you'll say no no I can't be an itch and then you can ask yourself okay what about like my hair do I identify with my hair am i literally my head is that what I am is that I'm a hair that's what I exist as as hair no that doesn't sound right either because like I could shave my head and then I don't have any hair and then then you're like me and then so what do you if I would then beanball I guess you can add that to see and then and then just keep that process going and eventually you'll you'll kind of distill it down to still it down and every that you think you might be you'll realize no it can't be it and this can't be it and that can't be it and so none of it is it so then what the hell am I what why do I even believe I exist if I can't find myself you need to go through that process be very careful not to fall into the trap of saying like oh yeah Lia okay yeah I know I'm not any of those things so let me just go straight to to discovering that I'm nothing no that doesn't work that doesn't work at all because while you're doing that intellectually actually deep down in your heart you're believing that you're the body or that you're the mind or that you're a thought or that you're your life story or that you're you're the image of your face in your mind you need to go through all those different facets systematically and eliminate those and you have to actually go through the process of elimination if you try to skip that because you want to shortcut the process you're gonna do the exact opposite it's gonna take you even longer because what you need to do is you need to actually expose your mind to the fact that you're all your identification czar false which means you have to go through it like a mathematical proof if you wanted to to be certain that a mathematical proof is wrong you would have to go through it point by point and actually isolate the exact errors in the proof it wouldn't be enough to just kind of give it a cursory overview and say oh yeah this is wrong or yeah I already know the answer I already know it's wrong so that's good enough for me no that doesn't work if you do that you're just gonna trick yourself and your old identification is gonna still stay there this is why I'm really stressing this point again the principle of this tip is challenge the core of your very identity every single time you sit down when you really do this not just intellectually but really you're really challenging your very identity when you sit down to self inquire you have to do it with such gravity that if you if you keep doing it you will literally cease to exist your very existence is on the line which is not you just sitting and philosophizing oh yeah maybe we're in the matrix maybe I'm not the body maybe something maybe this maybe that maybe I'm God no no no no it's like when you're sitting down to do this inquiry I want you to question the very floor you're sitting on with such conviction that when you question it enough there's a possibility that the [ __ ] floor can stop existing because you're gonna ask yourself the question wait a minute is there actually a floor under my feet and then you're gonna actually think about that and really try to connect with that floor and if you realize there is no [ __ ] floor that floor is gone you fall through same thing with your body I want you to sit down and ask yourself am I really my body with such seriousness that if it dawns on you that there is no such thing as a body your body literally disappears at that moment that's what we're talking about we're talking about taking this questioning to an existential level where the actual physical fabric of space and time and your body is all called into question so in a sense you're doing this inquiry but really you're doing physics you see that you're doing physics I mean more accurately you're doing metaphysics but the problem with calling in metaphysics is that we think of metaphysics as just some theory no no no no when you do metaphysics properly you're actually going below physics and you're actually dissolving the physical fabric of space-time I'm not [ __ ] with you this is this is outrageous [ __ ] I know it sounds outrageous it's outrageous what I'm saying is outrageous if anything I'm saying here is true it's it's absolutely outrageous I know I'm saying that I know it sounds insane but hey this is what [ __ ] enlightenment is about you got to do it seriously otherwise you're not really doing it it's not enough just to sit there to think about [ __ ] that's not gonna do it not at all don't try to pretend that you're nothing you've heard that you're nothing you've heard that enlightenment is the truth of nothingness but here's a very important tip for you the nothing that gurus talk about when they talk about the nothingness of God or the nothingness of enlightenment or the nothingness of the true self that is not the nothing of the regular English term nothing the regular English term nothing is not what we're talking about this is a special you might call it a technical term within the non-dual vocabulary it's called nothing but it's not that nothing you're thinking of not at all in fact if you ever happen to become conscious of this nothing with a capital n the nothing that is God it will feel to you like you were deceived by these gurus it's not gonna feel to you like nothing at all it's gonna feel to you like everything the exact opposite of what you thought it was is how it's gonna actually play out for you and that will be a rude awakening because you'll wonder why do they call it nothing they should have called it everything and then of course you'll realize yeah they did call it everything they also called it God and you'll realize why that term is appropriate but you can't possibly appreciate that now so this whole notion of you pretending like you're nothing it's not working it's actually hurting you just be honest about what you presently are attached to being and then start questioning that and then whatever materializes from that whatever the truth happens to be try to track that truth and let it permeate you rather than coming in here with a some concept of like I'm God I'm nothing these are just ideas they mean absolutely nothing and in fact they're they're really holding you back the next very important tip I have for you is focus on what is actual when you sit down to self inquire again this sounds very simple but I want you to try to do this right now you're sitting here right now listening to me I would like you to train your awareness right now train it on what I'm gonna call actuality actuality this isn't actual actual actual is right here try to make a conceptual distinction in your mind between actual and everything else ideas about the future about the past concept theories all this sort of stuff that's not actual actual right here actual get actual become conscious right now of actuality and you need to do this every single time that you sit down to self inquire remind yourself oh yeah I got to focus on what's actual nothing in here actual actual is out here actual is all this is salt actual what's happening here that's not actual this right here actual these hands as I'm feeling as I'm look this is actual actual see that focus on that that's what you're focusing on when your mind goes into fairytale land into concept land bring it back to actual actual is not an idea not a belief not a theory not a model not a speculation not an intuition not an emotion not a feeling not a state not a logical conclusion it's actual actual get that to sit a little bit right now to make sure you understand what actual means the next tip I have for you is the distinction between content versus existence itself so when you are lost and self inquiry and you're struggling you're just spinning your wheels the reason that's happening is because you're getting lost and attached to various content within reality content within reality is pretty much all forms we've already talked about this but let's talk about it now as content content is the stuff so if you think of reality as a giant screen like a TV screen on the TV screen you have all sorts of content you have an apple you have a person you have a tree you have a car you have a movie you have a girl crying you have a car getting blown up you have some drama you have some action you have all this stuff happening that's the content the pixels of the screen itself represent existence itself you see the pixels can take on any number of colors and they can represent infinite content a TV can display an infinite number of images and in this self-inquiry process the whole trick of it is is that when you're sitting out to do it you need to focus on the pixels of the screen rather than the content that's being displayed on the pixels and it's very easy to get confused between those two so right now try this just for a second I would like you to train your awareness move it off of the content of your consciousness and put it on existence itself the very fact that there is existence happening right now put your attention on that notice that the fat of existence itself is not any piece of content it's not an object it's not a tree it's not my face it's not my voice it's not a feeling in your body there is just the fact of existence itself try to put your attention on that for a moment and begin to wonder what the hell is that and you should notice that it's a it's a sort of slippery thing it's you can't really grasp but you can't really what is it you can't really put your mind around you put your arms around you can't really point to what existences and yet nevertheless there's just this overwhelming sense of existence there so try putting your attention on that rather than the content of your mind or the content of the external world around you and the more you do that within self inquiry the better off your self inquiry will be here's another tip that I have for you this helps to Center you when you're getting lost and in the midst of a flurry of activity mental activity within self inquiry remind yourself that enlightenment is the one and only one constant that is constant across every single moment of life to me this is a very helpful pointer and reminder which means that if I think that enlightenment is something less some emotional state or all yeah I have enlightened it's a state I have it I have it right here if I think that then this pointer helps me to realize no that can't be it because I didn't have just a moment ago if I have it now but I didn't have it a moment ago that means it's not a constant in Lineman doesn't change with time the thing you're looking for is eternal it's ever-present it's the only one thing which is invariable across all of time and all of space realize how [ __ ] significant this is as well what I am saying here in other words is that there is a thing we'll call it a thing for now but it's not really think there is a thing thing in quotes there exists a thing which is constant and which was there before the Big Bang it was there before you were born it was there when you were asleep tonight it will be there when you wake up tomorrow and it will be there when you're lying in a coma and it will be there after your body and your mind died that thing is what you're looking for the one constant across everything now that's pretty outrageous for me to claim that there is such a thing how could that be how could such a thing exist and if it is there then why is this so goddamn hard to find shouldn't it then be here why is it not here well maybe it is here maybe you're just not seeing it maybe here is exactly what we're talking about maybe it's not hidden maybe it's not elsewhere like I said before see so use this to ground your inquiry and to cut out all the [ __ ] any kind of Smith's tickle state you have that's not [ __ ] it because it comes and it goes it comes and it goes that means it's not enlightenment try this right now I would like you to try blinking your eyes open and close your eyes and notice that as you close your eyes everything in front of you all the perceptions that were there they all disappear all the objects any lights trees cars people cats animals coffee tables bookshelves computers smartphones anything that was there in your visual field it all disappears when you close your eyes which should tell you based on this principle that none of those objects can be the thing you're looking for so I want you to again rapidly try to close and open your eyes and as you do that I want you to pay attention to the fact that all these perceptions which are changing for you right now as you're blinking your eyes that these are all perceptions and every single perception always changes it comes and goes perceptions were not there before you were born that means what that means perceptions are not enlightenment ideas did not exist before you were born that means what ideas are not enlightenment your body did not exist before you were born what does that mean that means it's not enlightenment it's not you what you are is what existed before you were born now I know that sounds nonsensical but yeah that's the paradox of it that's just because you've identified yourself with something that is temporary and that's what this process is about is helping you to change that identification you are misidentified with being a body in a mind now try turning your head from left to right to left to right notice as you're turning your head like this objects are literally disappearing from your visual field and reappearing as that is happening I want you to ask yourself what's the one constant because all your perceptions are changing all the time they're not constant you don't have a single constant perception your perceptions of your body are not constant you might think they are but they're not your perceptions of your heart your mind your body everything all all your bones and all the organs you have everything you think that is truly deeply you all those perceptions change all the time when you're deep and sleep you don't feel any of those things and when you're turning your head like this all these objects are appearing and disappearing they're literally being created and destroyed as you turn your head so none of them can be you you are the one thing which is not created or destroyed that's what enlightenment is about finding that thing the next tip I have for you is this distinction between observation versus trying to figure it out I want you to make this distinction so when you're sitting down to do your inquiry if you're like me and you're very conceptually minded then you're gonna have a strong desire to sit there to figure out this puzzle of enlight how could it be and you ask yourself all these questions you try to model everything together well God is like this and like that and that means this and you're trying to figure it out that's not gonna work and I want you to understand that it will never ever ever work you're not going to figure it out and if there's an alternative that you could be doing which is observation the difference between observation figuring it out is that to figure something out you're sitting there and you're you're sort of modeling it whereas observation is you're just looking at the damn thing you're not figuring anything out about it so what I would suggest you do is to move your inquiry away from figuring it out more towards observation and this is something that will naturally happen as your self inquiry habit develops and progresses over the years the first year you do it there's gonna be a lot of you trying to figure it out the mind is just not gonna be able to stop he's gonna be trying to figure everything out over time yeah you'll figure some stuff out but you're not gonna get enlightenment so there's some use in doing the figuring out because you get some conceptual understandings of where you're going wrong maybe you figure out some aspect of your psychology that was helpful to you to figure out but um but really what's gonna happen naturally is you're gonna drop the figuri now you're gonna move towards observation where you just sit and just you observe what are you observing are you observing physical objects no are you observing your body no are you observing your mind no you're just observing existence itself or in other words awareness you're observing awareness it's awareness trained upon itself and then you just continue with this very patient observation this is a very important point that I don't want you to overlook which is that you need to start to trust in pure observation the power of pure observation is remarkable but it's difficult to convey this to a newbie who hasn't done a lot of observation because it's hard for the mind to grasp like how good observation change anything how good observation reveal anything monumental to me and the secret missing ingredient is just time and focus with a lot of focus and a lot of patience and enough time you need to trust that pure observation will produce huge for you but it will only happen slowly and gradually and you need to you need to be able to have that long-term perspective and to see that yeah it's gonna take a while but let me just keep observing I'm just gonna observe I'm just gonna be I'm not gonna go figuring stuff I'm not gonna go into monkey mind I'm not gonna go distract I'm just gonna sit and observe and I'm gonna trust that it's going to produce for me and eventually it will produce for you this is such an important point that I actually brought a little visual aid for you to show you how this really works here's the power of pure observation and here's why it requires so much patience what I have here is I have a rock and what I have here is I have a feather it's actually a real ostrich feather so here's how pure observation and self inquiry works it's like taking a rock and then eroding it into nothingness using a so here's me mimicking the process of self-inquiry ready like that until this rock is completely gone so now you can see why this is such a challenging process even though it's very simple there's nothing very complicated about this but you can see why so few people do it and succeed at it because it requires enormous patience an enormous foresight to just be able to sit there and just to observe and just observe and observe existence for so long that eventually everything your roads that's what's going on here I want you to try to get an intuitive grasp of what consciousness is versus thinking so there's thinking you can think about consciousness which is different from consciousness itself and it's really hard for me to communicate how to do this and the best thing I can tell you is just go take us some psychedelics and psychedelics will very quickly show you the difference between thinking and between consciousness but you can try to get a little bit of this little taste of consciousness by just doing the following right now I would like you to become conscious of the fact that you exist do it and notice a subtle difference a subtle shift that happened in you you were just sitting there doing your regular stuff and now all of a sudden you became a little bit conscious of hey yeah this is existence and there's just a very subtle very very faint shift in consciousness when you did that so it's like that you want to get an intuitive grasp or just how to go straight to consciousness it's hard to do because really consciousness has no it has no form and it's like you you can't talk about it really and you can't you can't really point to it so how do you tell a person to just go straight to raising your consciousness they don't know what to do they know how to raise their arm you know how to raise their tongue or raise their voice but they don't know how to raise their consciousness and that's because they don't have much experience with different degrees of conscious they're mostly in the same one degree of consciousness their whole life so that they don't really have anything to compare it to which is why psychedelics are so powerful because they will boost your conscience and you'll see they boost your conscience so quickly that just within a matter of thirty minutes you'll be able to see your consciousness kind of go hmm OOP and you believe wait a minute where did that come from how did my conscience just rise like that and then now falls back down how did that happen and if you do enough of those trips you start to get a sort of an intuitive grasp for just what consciousness is and you just could go straight to it and then just sort of like you can actually just sit there in corner and just tell yourself okay let me just elevate my consciousness right now and just it sort of starts to happen but that requires quite a bit of training or some tripping another tip that I'll have for you is make sure you challenge the naive realist paradigm I have an episode about the I think it's called a rant against naive realism naive realism basically is just your belief that there is a physical reality which is described by modern scientific physics and that there actually is a physical world there's a universe this universe came out of the Big Bang and there are physical objects that exist and so on and so forth all this is just not true but it feels true to you because you're buying into this paradigm so besides just questioning yourself what you really need to question you need a question physics itself the tip I have for you here is that stop thinking of reality as a physical system you are not inside of a physical system you are inside of a hallucination machine reality is not made of a bunch of particles or physical objects reality is made out of a collection of hallucinations what you're experiencing right now is a loosen ation literally I'm not being cute or poetic here I'm being literal everything you're seeing right now and everything you've ever seen is a hallucination and in fact there is nothing real within reality all it is is just it's a set of hallucinations dreams this is just a dream physics is a dream the brain is a dream your birth is a dream your entire life is a dream dream and hallucination are the exact same thing the tactical definition of hallucination is a perception without substance and that's exactly what you're experiencing right now that's what this is perception with no substance there's no substance to this right now whatsoever it's got exactly as much substance as last night's dream it just feels a little different part of this dream that you're in right now is that it's physical that's part of the dream doing physics that's doing physics in the dream believing you have a brain which renders your consciousness that is just part of the dream there is no brain there's just a dream of a brain there is no birth of you and your body and your mind there's just a dream of a birth of you your body and your mind see so start to replace this naive physicalist conception of reality with instead this notion of of just dreams and now you might wonder well Leo where are these dreams taking place and what I'm telling you is that they're not taking place anywhere literally nowhere they are not taking place in a brain they are just dreams that's what reality is is just dreams dreams without any infrastructure software without any Hardware hallucinations with no substance behind them there is no reality there is only illusion that's what you're going to discover in this inquiry let me give you some more quick tips one of them being that there is no way or process towards enlightenment there is no magic technique no technique actually we'll get you there techniques increase your odds but there is no one way or process to get to enlightenment enlightenment is an a process thing there is no process to get to it it's a discontinuous jump so just remember that as you're stressing out over which process to use remember also as a tip that enlightenment is totally outside of your rational mind you will not be able to grasp it rationally I'm sorry you're just not going to be able to do it what you need to do is you need to drop your expectations and demands for rationalism another tip for you to remember that's very important is that the actual moment of enlightenment is not up to you you cannot will it you cannot make it happen it actually is just a fortunate accident now it's a fortunate accident but you can still increase your odds of having this fortunate accident in the same way that if you wanted to get struck by lightning you can go up on a tall mountain with a big iron rod in the middle of a lightning storm and your chances of getting struck by lightning would be a lot higher than normal but it would still be a fortunate accident if you actually got struck there is nothing you could literally do to force the lightning to strike you it has to come to you but you can certainly increase the odds quite a bit that's why we're doing the self inquiry in the first place that's the equivalent of you standing up there on a mountain with a giant iron rod another tip I have for you is remember that no self is equivalent to the true self so sometimes you'll hear enlightenment teachers talking about the self doesn't exist don't exist the truth of no self the buddha discovered the truth of no self buddhism teaches the void the the fact that there is no self and then you hear other enlightenment teachers or gurus talking about the true self the only thing that exists is the self the self is the true self the Atman the Brahman you are it you are God the I am and you hear both these teaching and they seem like completely opposite how could one people set of people claim that enlightenment as this and another people say that its exact opposite how can this be this is crazy why can't they agree with each other actually they're in complete agreement they're talking about the exact same thing they're just different sides of the same coin you can look at enlightenment from these two perspectives you can look at it as nothing or as everything as no self as true self as you not existing as you being the only thing that does exist and both can be useful depending on the student you're working with if we have a student who is really attached to the idea of the true self then it helps to tell him the exact opposite it helps to tell him hey buddy you don't exist there is no such thing as a self that really [ __ ] with his notions of this true self because his notions of true self are just ideas he has no [ __ ] idea what the true self is conversely if someone keeps saying oh I don't exist I don't exist I don't exist you can tell this person but what about the true self notice that you are the only thing that does exist and then that person's ideas of no self get [ __ ] with see cuz in both cases the problems that students get attached to the ideas so we have different pointers oftentimes opposite pointers which are pointing to the same thing so don't get lost in the words don't get lost in the images you have to be able to read between the lines and to see what the teacher or the teaching is ultimately trying to get you to see also keep in mind as a pointer or as a tip that many valid paths exist towards enlightenment there is not one path and there's certainly not one best path it all depends on you where you're at life your situation your circumstances and all that sort of thing so follow your own path whatever feels the most appropriate to you realistically there's no way you can know which path will work the best for you you just have to go through it through trial and error and just see you'll notice after you try a path for a while whether it's um it's resonating with your personality or not and stop wasting your time criticizing other paths this is a complete distractions totally useless stop arguing about which path is the best path who's right who's wrong my guru is better than your guru this book is better than that book this teacher is wrong this teacher is right stop all that [ __ ] that is just complete nonsense complete nonsense follow your own path avoid all the traps and one of the biggest traps is all the distractions that you create for yourself another tip I have for you is be careful with mechanical meditation end or inquiry you start to develop this habit of meditation often times what it does it just becomes mechanical after a few years you're just sitting down you're doing it and actually the whole point of meditation is to make you more conscious but when you sit down and do it mechanically actually you're doing it mindlessly and so actually it's making you less conscious but because you call it meditation and you're actually sitting down in a formal posture and you look like you're meditating and you're calling it meditation then you make yourself think that oh yeah I'm actually raising my awareness no you're not the only time you're raising your awareness is actually when you're aware be aware right now that is what meditation is supposed to be about don't get lost in the and the outer garments of what meditating is it's not about the sitting it's not about any kind of technique if you distill meditation down to its very essence all it's trying to do is just to make you as aware as humanly possible try it right now with no techniques forget all techniques forget the word meditation just for the next five seconds be as aware as humanly possible go do it right now you got that that's all that meditation is pointing you towards keep doing that if you're doing that then you're meditating another tip I have for you is that long stretches of focus are required to make serious traction with this work if you are meditating or self inquiring for 30 to 60 minutes every day that's good that's a good baseline but that's not enough you need to be doing at least a couple of retreats per year where you sit down for 10 days straight 12 hours a days straight with no stopping at all self inquiring or meditating you really need that what you'll discover is that a 10-day retreat like that is worth much more than a year of one hour since much more because you're building momentum and then your your focus just it becomes like a laser beam and you're just you're breaking through all the mental obstacles your quieting down the mind and that's when big breakthroughs happen it's very unlikely that you'll just get a breakthrough on a 30-minute sit it's just not mean it can happen but it's not realistic and you know if you really want to increase your odds then start doing these retreats and in fact these retreats I would say are more important than your daily sits although ideally you should be doing both the daily sets and the retreats another tip I have for you is that terror and fear are a good sign if you're self inquiring and you start to notice your heart pounding really quickly like you're about to die don't stop that's enlightenment you're almost there the terror is a sign that you're getting there how do you work through this terror there's no there's no magic way you are gonna have to die there is no getting to enlightenment without the death of you hate to break it to if that's how it's gonna be so you don't have to just push push push against that barrier of terror until finally you just get it gather enough balls to break through it so it'll and you know after 10 or 20 of those you know terror-filled moments and then backing down and backing down you're just gonna get tired of backing down and say [ __ ] this I'm just gonna do it and you just do it and then you see that there was nothing really to be terrified about but it's gonna feel very real it's gonna feel like death it's gonna feel like a panic attack so be warned about that don't don't think you're doing anything wrong if you're feeling that very important tip for you that I have is that a flash experience is not enlightenment if it passes so if you have some sort of mystical breakthrough you have a kind of glimpse maybe you have someone this unifying moment that's great but then let's say the next day you wake up and it's gone what do you have you don't have it maybe you had it but you lost it which means you don't have it so it's nice I mean those breakthrough experiences are great nothing wrong there that means you're making progress but it ain't the end your job is to go until it never leaves you you're after something that's constant this thing enlightenment it survives death if what you've got doesn't survive death and if it doesn't survive a night's sleep and if it doesn't survive someone stepping on your toe or someone no you know spinning on your car then it ain't enlightenment enlightenment was there before you were born it'll be there after you die so go for umm go for the Big Cheese don't get fooled with an initial first glimpse oftentimes on this path people encounter a first glimpse then they close down their ego comes back and they think oh that's it I must have gotten it or even if they have some kind of permanent realization well that's it I've got it I've got it I'm enlightened no you have to realize that there are many degrees of this thing called enlightenment you probably can't even fathom the deepest degrees that are possible so to be safe what I tell people and what what I follow myself in my own life is that you don't know how deep the rabbit-hole goes you don't know how many degrees of depth there are to this thing called enlightenment so every single glimpse you get is great you can celebrate that you can be happy about that but always assume that it goes deeper and that you are not done with your work you keep doing the work you keep doing the work you keep doing the work until you have a breakthrough so big that your life is over you'll know when you have a breakthrough so big that life as you know it is over it's just [ __ ] over you're not there yet if you're there you're gonna stop watching me so don't worry you're not there yet you probably won't get there for your entire life so keep chipping away at it I'm telling you this thing goes much much deeper than you ever imagined even if you had a few glimpses that's still not as deep as it goes it goes [ __ ] deep it goes infinitely deep until you've hit that deepest infinity keep going don't stop I highly recommend as a tip that you train up your mindfulness abilities with the mindfulness with labeling technique that I talked about in my mindfulness meditation episode go check out that episode a very very powerful technique very powerful technique go do that technique for a while do that technique it'll really build up your mindfulness that will really help you with self inquiry I really want to warn you again about watching out for distractions on this path like a hawk what's gonna be happening is that the more progress you make the more distracted you will tend to want to become if the ego is very tricky and for every big breakthrough there's gonna be a flood of distractions and your ego will come up with a very clever sneaky distractions very good well justified distractions for why you should quit this process your job is to never allow yourself to get distracted for any significant length of time yeah you'll get distracted here and there you might lose a few days here you might lose a week there you might even lose a month but then you [ __ ] come back because you're watching for distractions like a hawk the idea is not that you can prevent every distraction the idea here is that you just commit to never letting a distraction knock you off the path permanently so you're always coming back always coming back always coming back even if you're falling off and you're failing and if you do that then eventually you'll succeed and eventually the distractions will die down but especially at the beginning there will be so many distractions you'll have so many urges that have urges for sex for food for moving to a new house for working on your business for finding a new career for family for having children for for for playing games I think it'll be infinite you'll have infinite distractions you need to see through those distractions as just part of the defense mechanism here of your psyche protecting you from getting towards enlightenment I've already mentioned that psychedelics are a very powerful tool I highly recommend that if you're serious about self inquiry that you do them at least a little bit just so that they can quickly show you what you're actually after once you see it a few times through psychedelics you don't even need to take them anymore then you can self inquire and you kind of know what you're shooting for until then you can waste years chasing your tail so just a couple of psychedelic sessions with mushrooms LSD or DMT or whatever can can help you there a lot although of course it's not necessary you don't need to do them so don't feel like I'm pushing them on you if you want to do it the old-school way go [ __ ] do it the old-school way do it the Buddhist way do it the Christian way do it whatever way you want to do it you certainly don't need to do psychedelics it's perfectly normal to feel stuck in this process to feel confused to feel very very frustrated get used to that it's gonna happen a lot this work requires enormous patience just like the feather in the rock remember and lastly the tip I have for you is just keep reminding yourself at the end of every session or maybe at the beginning of every session that you do is that this will be worth it you're after the big cheese here this is the answer to life this is the answer to what is reality to what is God to what is existence to why you were born to why you will die or maybe why you won't die this is the answer to everything this is it it will be more worth it than I could communicate to you if I had two hours to rave about how worth it it is it'll be more worth than that it is the single largest thing that could possibly be it is absolute infinity it is everything possible given to you all at once you will receive in return for this investment of time and effort and frustration and emotional labor you will receive the entirety of reality all at once but you're gonna have to put in the work before you get there and in a sense that's what will make this whole gift of infinity all the more sweeter because you had the vision you had the wisdom you had the foresight to go out there and to make it happen even though you didn't know if it was really gonna pan out even though it sounded way too good to be true even though it sounded absurd and ridiculous you and out you did it and you earned infinity through a true desire for truth a true leap of faith and then following up on a leap of faith with real challenging work the most challenging work that a human being can do and that's it those are my tips for yourself acquiring all right I'm out of here please remember to click that like button for me make sure you go to actualize or go look at my forum check out the practical guide to enlightenment that I have there you can ask questions there people can help you there if you have any kind of intelligent questions to ask check out my life purpose course check out my book list a lot of important books on my book less they can help you with this journey just to get a conceptual understanding of what we're talking about here with enlightenment and check out my blog as well and I'll be adding more resources in the future and the last thing I want to tell you is that there is no such thing as talking about enlightenment I don't like to talk about enlightenment because there's really nothing to talk about either you're gonna do this inquiry process or you're not if you're not doing it then you're just bullshitting which is the exact opposite of what enlightenment is about so if you're not doing it just stop wasting your time stop talking about it go play video games go pursue sex or money or whatever you want to do go just do basic personal development work if you want to do that and stop wasting your [ __ ] time with this bullshitting and mental masturbation and if you are doing it then continue to do it or begin doing it right now starting today or tomorrow and just keep doing it and stop talking about it so much you don't need to talk about it all the energy and time you're wasting talking about it on the forum when you don't have any legitimate questions to ask it's just waste it's just a distraction there's no point to it and there's no point just watching videos of gurus talking about and let there's no point and there's no point in just reading books and books and books about enlightenment enlightenment enlightenment is just it's completely pointless you're doing this inquiry seriously or you're not it's just that simple so I hope that you are doing it seriously and I look forward to bringing you more insights to come in future you