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[Music] you one of the mind-boggling consequences of non-duality and becoming very conscious is that all criticism becomes untenable all criticism is delusion and here I want to explore why that is the case this is in fact the case and it's one of those consequences of non-duality that most people don't understand when they just hear about non-duality being spoken of by a cart Ola or somebody else like that this is one of those additional wrinkles that you discover as you go deeper down the rabbit hole see criticism is one of the mines greatest traps the mind uses criticism as a red herring to distract from turning inwards and self-reflection criticism is very convenient at orienting the mind outwardly externalizing whatever problems exist on the inside to the outside and getting the mind to deny responsibility and looking at the world holistically see because to to do an effective criticism you have to trick your own self into believing that the thing you're criticizing is separate from yourself and distinct from you and therefore you are then justified to criticize it because it's not you but the only way you can do that is by not being conscious of the fact that everything is one so what criticism does is actually criticism actively prevents people from noticing that everything is one because if you notice that everything is one and you're conscious of that 24/7 what are you gonna criticize yourself you would constantly be walking around criticizing yourself and of course that's a giant waste of time and also you would notice very quickly just how unsatisfying that is as an attitude towards life it's a very ungrateful and unhappy way to be I mean how happy are you criticizing people all the time or criticizing yourself all the time that's the very definition of neuroses so that's the trap but to really wrap your mind around this to really understand this at a deep level well that takes some work that takes some contemplation of this topic see criticism requires judgment and I've talked about judgment in the past and how problematic judgment is I have an episode called how to stop judging where I talk about this I also have a few episodes about morality and the problems with moralization and should statements where we also touched upon this topic but I really specifically want to talk about criticism because see the mind loves to be slippery here and to not connect all the dots so the mind might say oh yeah well criticism is one thing and judgment is another thing and moralization is a third thing and that all these are different things in fact they're all very closely connected but see the problem with criticism is the same problem you have with judgment and with moralization it's that judgment is a rejection of reality it assumes that people or situations have an alternative choice that they could have come out otherwise and in fact they don't they couldn't reality as it presently is before you in the present moment could not be otherwise this is a key thing you got to become conscious of and the mind doesn't want to become conscious of this because the mind is very imaginative and so it can go inside it get start to imagine all sorts of alternative scenarios like well that person could have been nicer and this situation could have been better and that that thing there could have turned out put more positively like that but the fact is that what we have right now in the present moment is what we've got and if you're a believer in science then you know that science tells you that everything happens according to physical laws and all of it has been stemming from the very origin of the Big Bang from the very beginning of time from 14 billion years ago all of that has been like one concert one symphony one one giant movement of the universe moving up to this present point right now every single word that I'm speaking started there so in a sense it's all caused from there and here we are and it cannot be otherwise and for you to wish that it could be something else well is that something that your own mind is projecting perhaps upon reality maybe you were wishing that I would say a different word here or there or do something this way or that way or maybe not me but somebody else but these are games that your mind is playing with you because you're caught and lost in your imagination as you become more conscious you become more aware that oh yeah this is all just the doing of my imagination and it's a really unsatisfying way to live but see the mind hates to accept this because this requires extreme maturity and consciousness because then you have to accept all the evil of the world and that's of course something your mind hates to accept because your minds entire job is to help you to manipulate the world to get all of your personal needs met all your survival and thriving needs and the best way to do that is to get you to to point your finger at all this other evil stuff out there and the thing that you call evil is really just that which gets in the way of your agenda take a look that's really what you mean by evil when you say the word evil of course most people don't know that so of course criticism is a really tricky habit to break and in fact it's more just a habit it's an addiction especially in Western culture as a society we have developed this addiction to criticism you see it all over the news you see it in politics you see it on YouTube you see it wherever you look everyone's criticizing everybody else everyone's pointing fingers because it's so easy to point fingers it's much harder to turn inwards self-reflect and take ownership of all the stuff you don't like about life and to stop complaining and moaning but see most people they don't want that they don't want to take responsibility they don't want to turn inwards and self reflect they are working hard at a dead-end nine-to-five job which is mind-numbing and grueling so when they get home after eight hours of work another two hours of commute you know that's ten hours of the day they get home they're dead tired they want to just crash on the couch turn on the TV look at some news look at the latest politics and it criticize away along with all the commentators there who have made careers multi-million dollar careers out of criticizing that's basically with you get paid for is just constant criticism and then and so this this person who's sitting on the couch tunes in what that resonates with that and then gets a little bit of Glee a little bit of pleasure guilty sort of low consciousness pleasure from from criticizing whoever is the easiest person to criticize at that time in the news that's how this little game works it's a real addiction just like junk food is an addiction Internet is an addiction whatever else is an addiction so is this except this is one of those subtle addictions which is much harder to break because when you're in a group of people who are always constantly criticizing then you get caught up in that mentality and you don't know any other way to live or any other way to interact with the world but you're missing out on a lot so here's some examples of where criticism is untenable or how it is untenable rather and of course here you might immediately objected you might say but Leo who are you to say that criticism is untenable because after all you're criticizing people all the time throughout your episodes I've heard you criticize Trump I've heard you criticize certain teachers certain Nando traditions certain people the way they understand things certain pickup artists certain this or than that you're criticizing people all the time so aren't you being a hypocrite well of course as I become more conscious I become more and more conscious of the limiting ways in which I habitually emote speak act and think and so one thing you should be seeing within me if I'm actually truly growing is a change in attitude about a great many things and this is one of those things so yes it's true for example that I like to criticize Trump I have in the past and I still have a sense continue to do so today but the important thing is is that you have to understand that criticism can come from two different places the first place is the conventional place this is the place of just criticizing unconsciously just criticizing because you honestly believe that some person is a fool or is evil or something like that and the second place is the more conscious way to criticize which is you criticize but at the same time you understand that your own very criticism defeats itself that your own very criticism is untenable which is what I'm advocating for in this episode so for example with Trump he's very easy to criticize everybody loves to criticize him how could you not he does look like a fool he says foolish things he lies almost constantly he has ridiculous positions he's very unconscious and I'm not saying that as a criticism of him I'm saying that it's just tough act that's just how he is regardless of whether you like it or hate it but it's so easy to criticize on that forgetting that Trump is the way he is because he can't be otherwise literally he can't that's who he is that's who he must be given his genetics his education his upbringing his life experience all the people he surrounds himself with and all of that that's what that creates he is a product of our very culture of our materialistic stage orange culture so that's what you get when you take American culture and you sort of take it to its pinnacle and you exaggerate it to the extreme you get something like Trump but of course most people don't like to really think about the depth of that they just like to criticize Trump for being Trump and of course I do too and it's kind of a guilty pleasure but also I understand at a deeper level why he has to be the way he is and I can't really blame him for being the way he is because he's just a product of our culture a product of our time and of course you might say all about leo but I mean doesn't he have a choice it sounds like you're being very defeatist tanned fatalistic here saying that all he can't be otherwise I mean after all tomorrow can he decide to like stop tweeting or to not tweet the sort of racist thing he was going to tweet and in one sense he can but in another sense he can't see because for him to stop doing that kind of low conscious stuff that he does he would have to actually experience a shift in consciousness he'd have to become more aware he'd have to become much more self reflective and the whole tragedy of it is that when you have a deeply unconscious person he's incapable of self reflection it's painful the ego doesn't want to admit its own faults and mistakes and and look inwards Lee and it doesn't want to be honest with itself and honest with other people it doesn't want that it wants to defend itself and to push through his agenda which is what you see within Trump and of course as you become more aware of your own ego doing that within you you start to then empathize with you that same mechanism working within someone like Trump so on the one hand I can criticize him on the other hand I can also see why he must be the way he is and I can also see tendencies within him for example that exist within me that exist within humanity at large but uh but most people when they criticize them they don't really see that they don't see those lessons they're just criticizing him out of a sort of guilty pleasure by externalizing all their problems and that just becomes more of the same stuff so all your criticisms of Trump are ultimately untenable whatever they are even if you think Trump will lead us into nuclear apocalypse which maybe he will and that's a very legitimate criticism is that he's actually perhaps one of the greatest dangers to America itself is him but also you have to understand that that's still an untenable criticism because yeah of course of course every single system which is a complicated system its greatest threat is itself from the inside not from the outside it's not terrorists who are the greatest threat to America it's America that's the greatest threat to America it's American culture that will ultimately be the undoing of America if America gets undone but of course who wants to really think about those deep truths people don't like that people like to think about simplistic truths and they like to think that oh well Trump could be different if he just wise up a little bit if if he listened to his advisors a little bit more if he did this and he did that and then everything would go nicely yeah if if if and if my aunt had a dick she would be my uncle but she doesn't this is true not just a trump this is true of everything that you might criticize all the low consciousness stuff within society all this stuff that pisses you off all the evil stuff you name it corporate greed people getting addicted to things people scamming each other people doing violence to each other all these mass shootings that we have terrorism all this sort of stuff you like to criticize this stuff we do as a culture but while we're criticizing we're not really thinking about how we ourselves are part of the very same problem that is contributing to the - this cycle see for example like corporate greed you might like to rail against corporate greed and sometimes I get in that kind of mood you like to rail against corporations like maybe pharmaceutical companies many of these pharmaceutical companies they're earning billions and billions of dollars feeding the medical industry with false information false studies that they're skewing and paying for so that their drugs can be justified to have a legitimate use and then those are are sold by doctors and hundreds of people thousands of people get killed every year from this get injured get diseases don't get cures that they otherwise could have get gotten cures for you know children have problems and all this because of this stuff and you might say well this is a very evil system and let me go out there and criticize these evil corporations for being so greedy and doing all this yes but that's such a superficial level of understanding of what's really going on and it's separating you from this entire cycle see what people don't understand though is that they're part of this whole cycle because you're part of this whole industry you contribute to it you might think oh well I'm just one of the ordinary citizens who are getting screwed over by these greedy corporations but is that really true have you ever worked for one of these big greedy corporations many of you probably have and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to work for the pharmaceutical company itself and be its CEO or its marketing guy you could be the person who's just a secretary or the guy who washes the floors the janitor and you're still contributing to that entire cycle and even if you say oh well I don't do that I work for some other company I work for some web development company oh yeah but your web development company exists to serve clients and some of those clients are some of these big greedy corporations like pharmaceutical companies you see so you're very paycheck comes from this entire cycle and you might say well Lea I don't even do that I'm completely unrelated - any of that well do you have a 401k do you invest in the stock market maybe the S&P 500 what is that where is your money going your money is going to fund these greedy corporations and actually these greedy corporations are precisely so greedy because they're working so hard to try to give you a return on investment on your 401 K money that's ultimately what they're doing so they're screwing all these good citizens over to get you a little bit extra five cents dividend per share on your stock see so we're all part of this system we're in this together and of course the whole key to non-duality to becoming more conscious that you start to see more and more how you're not isolated from anything you develop this holistic understanding and you realize that every piece of reality's interconnect with everything else so to criticize one thing of course it's hypocrisy what do you think is going on here when you're Curtis I mean reality is one thing whatever you take your finger and point it with - you're pointing at that thing with the thing which is reality so you're using reality to point at reality it's all one self-involved circle-jerk that's what reality is it's a strange loop so for this very reason all criticism becomes ultimately untenable criticism I mean terrorism is another thing that people love to criticize but terrorism this is this is this is such a hypocrisy to criticize because the West loves to criticize terrorism as if terrorism is some faraway third world radical Islamic problem and people like sam harris for example love to criticize Islam for those reasons but this is a deep not a deep well rather it's it's a shallow it's a shallow understanding of the problem it's an understanding of the problem which takes you out of the equation very conveniently of course but see the true causes of terrorism are not some radical Islamic guy who sits in a cave somewhere far far away it's actually the very policies and culture of developed first world countries as these countries rise in power and in status they then use their power and their status to manipulate the entire world to manipulate geopolitics to stage all sorts of fake Wars to do what to make the business environment the global business environment favorable to the giant corporations who are in charge of the country and so as this is happening all around the world there's a deep inequality that develops between the third world countries and the first world countries and this gap gets wider and wider and wider because the first world countries use all the third world countries basically as wage slaves to work for them and to do all their dirty business and then we go and we try to manipulate them to get the best of their resources we destabilize governments all around the world the US has been doing that for the last 60 years in South America in Africa Middle East almost anywhere that they can of course it makes sense because the u.s. is trying to make the environment as favorable for self as possible that's what egos do both individually and collectively so of course the u.s. is doing that and of course what do you get when you do enough of that when you do a lot of that eventually you piss people off you develop enemies because of the deep inequality that's being created and then of course you get stuff like terrorism now is that the only factor for terrorism know there's many complicated factors but it's certainly one of the most significant factors and it's one of the factors that actually implicates ourselves and of course we don't want to hear that what we want to do instead is we want to point our fingers and just say oh well it's just those backwards Islamic radicals and all their backwards cultures and all those silly beliefs it's just that if they just became more scientifically minded all this would be solved so in other words they need to become exactly like us so that we can get along with them because the way that they are now doesn't fit our agenda for our stage orange desire to go out there and to make them the world a suitable host for our McDonald's and KFC s and all the chains and all the big businesses in big oil and Big Pharma and all this other stuff but see nobody talks about this because that's too much responsibility that's too painful that would actually require that we have to self-reflect as a country we'd have to re-evaluate our culture and our materialistic paradigm we have to think about all this stuff we'd have to actually show some compassion for other cultures for other ways of life we'd have to actually show some compassion for the backwardness of some cultures and have to actually think about that and not just want to get in there and exploit those backwards cultures which are perhaps not as scientifically developed as us yet but maybe we'll be in a couple hundred years but they're not there yet but we're gonna exploit them to earn some money so we have to really evaluate all that as a country as a culture and of course who really wants to do that that's painful that's boring that's long you don't see anybody on TV none of the political pundits or news anchors talking about this sort of stuff no it's just like they hate us for our freedom and so we need to fight them or otherwise you're gonna kill us it's just you know overly simplified like that so criticising terrorism well who are you really criticizing are you seeing the interconnectedness of all these issues and how they all directly relate to yourself and if you're criticizing politics and the government like a lot of people like to do well what's your role in that what's your responsibility do you realize that the government is just made up of citizens and that those citizens are you people like you and the reasons the government functions so poorly is because people like you are lazy and they just sit on their couch and they just do nothing and they're just whine and complain and criticize all the time but they don't get involved they don't actually try to go out there and bother to learn what the problems are and what the possible solutions are do you see that your to the very thing that you're criticizing in fact your criticism is contributing to the problem because the more you criticize the more other people around you start to criticize the more everybody gets into this criticism circle-jerk and then nothing productive gets done because criticism is not designed to be productive it's designed to be anti productive that's its point the point of criticism is to maintain yourself the ego to maintain homeostasis both as an individual but also collectively as a society while we're criticizing everybody else guess what we're not doing we're not looking deeply in words and fixing our own true problems and so nothing really gets fixed how about science I like to criticize science and sometimes I get criticism for being critical of science and people say Oh Leo why you gotta criticize science so much I mean isn't science good and aren't you going overboard with your criticism of science but you see when I criticize science I understand the deeper structures of science I've studied the philosophy of science for a very long time and actually when I criticized science I do it from a position of love it's because I love science and I want science to be pure and non dogmatic and the thing I criticized science for is all its dogmas and all its paradigms and in all the ways in which it's being myopic because I understand that science modern science goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans 2,000 years perhaps even longer where the materialist paradigm first came about the Greek atomists Democritus he posited the idea of the Worlds made of atoms and from there we sort of just ran with it and that still continues to this day and I understand how tricky my own mind is and therefore how tricky everybody else's mind is and how tricky the minds of the scientists are and I know from my own experience how dogmatic they are because of how dogmatic I get to be and all the fault traps that I fall into and I've fallen into for many years in my own life that I've had to work through say so I can empathize with that and I know the history of science and all the paradigm shifts that science a struggle through for the last 2,000 years and all the bickering back and forth and all the pseudoscience that went on and all the struggles with that and I know that modern science can't be other than what it is you see it has to be the way that it is and it'll continue to evolve and people will continue to be bureaucratic and they'll continue to be dogmatic and closed-minded because that's just the nature of science because the nature of size is that it tries to be rigorous that's part of its Pro and part of its con sort of like an antivirus system you know a very strong antivirus system on your computer is great until you want to install some software and then it Flags your good software as a virus and then it screws up your whole system because of these like false positives well science has the exact same problem it's precisely because science tries to be so rigorous and so objective that it excludes things like spirituality non-duality and paranormal stuff and psychedelic stuff and a bunch of other stuff that's the point of science the mistake is to then think that all of science has the truth the science doesn't have the truth science is this very little walled in garden which has very very strict rules and boundaries for what can get inside of it so a lot of good stuff doesn't get inside of it not for hundreds of years until those rules change and those rules will only change with a lot of back-and-forth bickering and debating and ultimately people dying those people who didn't believe in those rules will have to ultimately prevail over those who did and those who did have to ultimately die and new generations of scientists have to be born that's how science works it's a cultural bureaucratic process so anyways my point is that hi I understand that I'm not just criticizing science just to criticize sighs I understand that it's a very it's a very deep thing and on the one hand I criticize science but on their hand I also understand that all my criticism of science is untenable because science can't help being how it is so what am I really criticizing and how about non-duality talk about the mother of all useless debates how much debate and criticism have we had within religious traditions mystical traditions and non dual schools and teachers and teachings and students for the last 2,000 years sometimes I think that if we took every single person who argues and criticizes and debates about non duality and we put them into giant hamster wheels so that rather than spending all that energy criticizing they will just run in this hamster wheel and we plug that into the into the national power grid we would be able to fuel the entire world just from the energy which has exerted on debating non duality and the deep irony there is as supposedly if you're truly becoming more and more non dual and more conscious which is what the Hun who allottee is about then you should becoming more and more conscious that all your criticisms of non dual teachings and teachers and schools is all a giant waste of time and then it's a red herring from being conscious and of course that's precisely why people who pursue non-duality criticize so much precisely because it is an obstacle and a distraction away from doing the actual work that's not a bug that's a feature that's a feature of most mainstream spirituality is that it distracts you from actual spirituality see the devil is very clever he's gonna use the very thing that's supposed to set you free to enslave you and that's exactly how most people approach spirituality but of course to be really non-dual is to understand that non duality and duality are both the same and not different at all and that you really have no valid criticisms of anyone even if people are believing in stupid things if even if they're believing and untrue things you realize it can't be otherwise they have to believe in those things given the state of our culture the state of our society the development of people at large and all the misinformation that's out there and the trickery of the mind most people even if you give them all the right information they're still gonna manage to trick themselves just because that's the nature of the mind and a truly non-dual person understands that doesn't get upset by that but accepts that accepts reality as it is now as he imagines it should be in some ideal ik fantasy scenario so of course I could go on and on with these examples but I think you get the point and of course a lot of objections come up at this point people could say things like but Leo you know it sounds like what you're arguing here for is just a relativism and like we should just tolerate Nazis now according to your philosophy that old criticism is untenable because if it's all untenable then there's no reason to criticize the Nazis or murderers or anybody else and of course that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that you're still free to act however you want to act what I'm just questioning is your self-righteous self justifications so if the Nazis roll their tanks into town and you don't agree with the Nazis you can still have standards you could still disagree with them you can still have preferences for what kind of lifestyle you want within a society you want to live in you can go fight those Nazis I'm not saying you can't do any of that I'm saying that your criticisms of it you're self-righteous criticisms that that's just untenable beliya does that mean that everything is predestined now because it sounds like you're saying that people don't have a choice in the matter and things will just turn out the way they're gonna turn out no what I'm saying is at the present moment is exactly how it is and it can't be changed what will happen in the future well of course that's changeable we don't know what that's gonna be so in that sense everything is not predestined and it does matter what you think and what you do that's precisely what's going to determine the future and it's possible to change the future without criticism see which leads to the next objection where people ask well leo but isn't criticism leading to improvement aren't I actually doing something good by sitting on my couch and criticizing those terrorists or those Nazis or those politicians or whatever and what I would say as a counterpoint to that is that actually what leads to improvement is not criticism but self-reflection and that here is a very counterintuitive move that you have to make which is that you have to avoid the trap of thinking that your criticism is actually beneficial to the world in some cases it might seem like it is but in most cases actually it probably has the exact opposite effect of what you think a good example this is sam harris sam harris loves to criticize Islam for some of its radical and superstitious elements and he loves to criticize religion in general distinguishing it from science and from rationality but of course as we understand all these distinctions will eventually collapse they're all untenable and what you see practically with him is that you know he argues a lot back and forth with people but um but but his criticism ultimately has come to this point where it's supposed to be coming from a place of like yeah I want to criticize religion so that it improves itself but is it really improving itself or is it actually having the exact opposite effect I mean sam Harris gets so many death threats he can't even tell people which city he lives in anymore because he's afraid for his own life and for his own family and I can I can sympathize with that I can understand that but when he gets to that point you have to also under like well maybe there's a better way to interact with the people or the ideologies that you disagree with then this kind of sharp biting criticism because well is it having the kind of effect that you want it to have what I would suggest is that if we really want to improve the world it's not gonna come from more people sitting on their ass criticizing other people it's gonna come from people taking radical ownership of their own lives and really self reflecting and then helping other people to self reflect and then ultimately that will lead to to more improvement then you will get by criticizing people here and there now of course you will object and say here well Leah aren't you now criticizing Sam Harris so you just said yourself that all criticism untenable and now here you are criticizing Sam Harris so you yourself are guilty of the very thing the very hypocrisy that you're speaking out against yes of course that's the larger point that's the thing that the finger is pointing to the finger is pointing to the moon what I'm trying to point you towards is that there's a possibility to sort of rise above the fray to not get caught up in the mudslinging contests that we see where people criticize each other and then another set of people criticize those people who criticize the other people and there's another layer of people who criticize those people for criticizing those people for criticizing some other people and so everybody's criticizing everybody else you see this doesn't work out too well so when you become conscious that your mind says oh how do I exit the entire thing is that possible can I just get out of this entire game I don't want to be involved involved in this mudslinging contest at all and what would that look like that would look like recognizing that all criticism is untenable and just dropping it it even means that you have to recognize that your own criticism of all the criticism is also itself untenable of course and if you think that leads to a paradox in a contradiction of course it does of course because reality is non-dual it's a strange loop and therefore it must be contradictory at the very rock bottom so you might say well leo so that means then that you're saying it is okay to criticize other people because at first it sounded like you were saying it's not okay to criticize other people that's low consciousness and now you're saying that that itself that criticism is also untenable therefore now you're saying it is okay to criticize other people so which is it am I allowed to criticize people of course you are you can criticize people of course that's the paradox of it that's the freedom of reality that's what you're noticing here reality is infinitely free it gives you all these degrees of freedom to do whatever you want and the question is what are you going to do with it yes I have to contradict myself because the paradox of criticism is that all criticism is untenable and also all criticism is tenable so I'm not here saying that now you need to go out there and become a critic of the critics that's just more criticism it's the same problem is trying to stop violence by being more violent you're not going to stop violence by out violence in everybody else who's violent that doesn't work in the same thing with criticism when you actually understand this paradox that all criticism is both untenable but also tenable what tends to happen is a profound silencing of the mind it's like this Zen moment that you have you understand the game and what it's about and when you see the game from a sort of meta perspective then you stand above it and that makes a lot of difference so while it might sound like I'm just being a postmodernist here and saying well it's criticism is bad on the one hand but it's good on the other hand it's untenable on the one hand it's tenable on the other hand it seems like I'm just mentally masturbating back and forth and that none of this has any practical use ah it does have a very big practical use because there's a big difference between people who understand what I'm talking about here and those who don't let's call the first person person a who doesn't understand and the second person person B who does understand person a is what I would call righteously critical he's critical and he actually believes in his criticism and he's actually disturbed by the thing which he is railing against so if he's railing his Trump he's actually disturbed by Trump if he's railing as terrorism he's actually disturbed by terrorism person a person B is more conscious than that he sees the game he's at the metal level he's above it a little bit so can he still be critical yes but when he's critical he's pragmatically critical which means he uses criticism as a strategic tool when necessary in moderation he doesn't use that as an escape for his ego and very importantly he's not disturbed by the thing he's criticizing so he might criticize Trump but also he sees that the the devil's advocate opposite perspective of why Trump must be Trump and can't be any other way and he's not too disturbed by Trump and he sees terrorists and he might be critical of terrorists as well because he doesn't like violence for example but he also understands that those terrorists don't really have an option given their background where they grew up the culture they were in the poverty they were in the kind of conditions they were in and the kind of injustice is that were done to them of course they must turn out to be exactly the way that they are he understands that at a deep level so he's not disturbed by it the way that person a is so now there's a list of differences between person a and person B person a and this I'm the reason I'm outlining it like this is because people often will rebut me and try to say oh alia but all this stuff is just kind of wishy-washy mental masturbation with no practical real-world consequences no this has huge real-world cons winces and here I'm trying to draw those out for you so person a practically will be much more critical overall just in terms of volume if you measure the volume of person eight criticism versus person B's criticism person A's will be a hundred times larger which makes a big deal person a also takes his criticism very seriously much more so than person B because of this he suffers more he's more angry and he's never at peace he lashes out more he's much more likely to do evil person a is because when you really believe in your own criticism then you have much more justification to yell name call view other people as being subhuman you're much more likely to threaten violence to actually commit violence to commit murder to do all the sorts of nasty stuff that we generally don't like much more likely to do that stuff then person B cuz person B is above it he doesn't take it so seriously person a also lacks compassion and the deeper understanding that I've been talking about person a doesn't see the non-duality person a doesn't see how everything interconnects in reality he doesn't see the sort of the holistic big picture and of course he doesn't have compassion because he's put up a barrier between himself and the thing he's criticizing so he can't really have compassion for that other person because he can't step into the other person's shoes a person who is truly critical of terrorists or of Donald Trump or anybody else he literally cannot put himself into that person's shoes and experiencing actually himself being Donald Trump or being a terrorist because there's this division that was created of course this division is completely phony in fact if you took that person who hates terrorists and you put him in the exact same situations as a terrorist was in from birth he himself would become a terrorist and if you took that person who's very critical of Trump and you put him into the exact same situation and shoes that Trump was in his entire life he would be precisely Trump person a is also unproductive he wastes a lot of time complaining with all his criticism rather than self reflecting person a also can't appreciate the full rich diversity of reality because the whole point of criticism is to deny diversity see reality is so infinitely diverse that it actually threatens your very sense of survival and existence because infinite diversity comes at the cost of things having to constantly be coming in and out of existence constantly but the ego hates that so the ego wants to lock a reality down confine it to a little fixed position or a little box and that's why the ego is so critical is because it doesn't want change but reality is always changing it's always flowing it's always flexible person a took a position against that whereas person B is actually aligning himself with that aspect of reality he's flowing with it he's appreciating the full diversity of everything even when that diversity threatens himself when it threatens his ego he says well screw my ego then I much more prefer to be conscious of the full diversity even if it threatens my very life whereas person a does the exact opposite of that and ultimately person a ends up being ungrateful and disconnected from the beauty of life disappointed by life whereas person B is able to see the beauty in everything he's connected to everything even all the evil stuff that he doesn't like he still sees the beauty in it so for him it's a win-win whereas for person a reality's a lose-lose because there's always something new to criticize the ego never gets to a point where it's completely satisfied with everything now you might still say but Leo so am I now never allowed to criticize is that you're advocating sounds like it and the answer is no the problem is not so much in the criticism it's in how conscious are you when you're actually criticizing and are you seeing the bigger point here which is that when you're criticizing how good do you actually feel is that actually how you want to live your life that's the bigger point the bigger point is that you can rise above this mudslinging contest you know there's a the old funny adage that says that when you get dirty with a pig down in the mud watch out because both of you will get dirty and the pig is gonna enjoy it so for you it's a lose-lose when you wrestle with a pig in the mud so you have to realize that getting involved with a pig wrestling contest that is up that is a situation you want to steer clear from you want to stay away as far from that as you can rather than getting involved in that and it's very hard because of course the pig will throw them out at you and when the pig gets you with a little bit of mud you're gonna want to throw some mud back at him but you have to question yourself do I actually feel good throwing mud is that how I want to actually live do I want to become a pig myself do I want to go that low or do I want to rise above that it has a counterintuitive move to rise above that when you got some mud in your face from somebody flinging it at you but Leo isn't some criticism legitimate you see the ego pulls this very sneaky move it likes to create this artificial distinction between legitimate and illegitimate criticism and like I said surely yeah some criticism is illegitimate you're right but some criticism is just too important some is really legitimate like it's really important to talk about Islam it's really important to talk about the postmodernist like Jordan Peterson likes to rant against the postmodernists as though they're gonna bring the whole world to its knees and you know what maybe they will I don't know but nevertheless its criticism and you gotta wonder is building a career around being a critic of the world or some group the best way to live your life is that really how you want to do it and then look there are many people in the in the world who have built multi-million dollar careers from constant credit that's all they do it's just constant criticism these are the news anchors the TV political pundits the conservative radio show hosts and and folks like that in certain academics do this and certain intellectuals and authors and writers and speakers do this and it's it's kind of sad because on the one hand I can see how yeah they're contributing to reality and they have to do that and in a sense I can't fault them for it someone has to play that role if Jordan Peterson's not gonna play it someone's gonna play it that's the diversity of reality so I can't really fault him for it on the other hand there's a higher level and the surest way to keep yourself from reaching the higher level is by letting your ego play this little trick on you ah but our our criticism is very important and it's very legitimate if we don't criticize the whole world is gonna collapse that's that little trick the mind is very tricky see this whole notion of legitimate versus illegitimate this is just a tool of the ego the ego creates these labels which it then attaches to things which then make it feel like oh it's really got a strong good position that it can't let go of what I would suggest to you is just let it go anyways even if you think the whole world's gonna collapse just let it go if the functioning of the whole world hinges on you being a a virulent critic then the whole world's not worth very much you gotta think you got to think that there's something deeper driving the world than your criticism that's not what's gonna make humanity pull through is your criticism that's not gonna do it in fact if anything that's gonna contribute to the very thing you're trying to prevent because that's precisely how low consciousness tends to work he tends to backfire the very thing you're trying to prevent is the thing you're actually gonna cause it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sort of very ironic and poetically delicious way but Leo aren't you yourself a critic here aren't you highly critical of people or at least you have been in all your prior episodes so what hypocrisy from you hearing you deliver this message I recognise that I've been highly critical of certain people and ideas and traditions and schools and things in the past and I probably will be to some extent in the future but also what you should see in me if I'm truly growing is you should see my attitudes in my positions about things change and one of the things I've been recently made aware of through just states of higher consciousness mystical experience and so forth is that that way of speaking and thinking and acting is just not gonna cut it to get to where I ultimately want to go see what I realize is that there's a glass ceiling if I want to maintain my prior attitudes if I want to be a critic the way I've I've tended to be then there's only so high I can go in my consciousness and so I have to choose do I want to go to the ultimate levels of consciousness then I have to give up all this criticising or I could keep it criticising but then I'm gonna cap my as far as I can go and for me I would rather go to the very top than to maintain my critical attitudes so what you're gonna see over the next couple of years is you're gonna see a sort of softening in my stance you're gonna see me sort of rising above the the mudslinging contest and not participating in it because actually what I realized is that I'm not happy or fulfilled when I'm involved with this mudslinging contest I would much rather spend that time just being conscious of being here's a nice little metaphor I have for you imagine the pack of hyenas like you've seen on the Discovery Channel out on the African savannah and they've just found some corpse of a dead animal and they're chewing and gnawing this thing to bits and pieces and it's a big pack of hyenas and there's a bunch of them and they're all fighting with each other trying to get the best parts ripping pieces of meat off the bone and then ripping it out of each other's mouths and clawing at each other and fighting for for status who's gonna be the top hyena so that's one scenario and now imagine the other scenario of a manta ray this giant blue majestic manta ray gently flapping its wings and gliding through the Pacific Ocean deep in the waters very cool and nonchalant cool as a cucumber so here's the question for you which do you want to be for the rest of your life do you want to be a hyena or do you want to be a manta ray the choice is yours the hyenas they're the critics this is all the people you see on TV in the books and the magazines in the news on YouTube these people who criticize other people who criticize other people for criticizing other people and criticize other people for criticizing other people for criticizing other people it doesn't stop the hyenas nature is that it criticizes no matter what it'll find a way to criticize anything the manta ray he's above all that he doesn't care the manta ray has gone meta I don't know about you but recently I've had a shift where I've decided that I don't want to be a hyena anymore I want to be a manta ray that's how I want to live and so for that to happen some changes will be happening and if you want to be a manta ray I'll show you how to do that in a minute but before we get there one quick other point that I want to make about this metaphor is that notice that the manta ray doesn't demonize the hyenas the manta ray doesn't think the hyenas are bad the manta ray doesn't go around criticizing the hyenas behind their back the manta ray is cool as a cucumber no matter what he doesn't care what the hyenas do he keeps being a manta ray that's what it means to be a manta ray the hyenas are all in it together and they're all doing and copying each other the manta ray is off on his own so what this means for our topic is that if you want to be a manta ray that means you have to give up criticizing hyenas you can't be a manta ray while criticizing hyenas that makes you a hyena not a manta ray make sure you don't forget that that's a tricky little thing so if you want to become a manta ray how to do it well I'll give you six questions for helping you to reframe all criticism so whatever you get into a situation where you are starting to act like a hyena and you're noticing it here are some questions you can ask yourself to flip it around number one how is this situation a red herring number two what am i failing to accept here about reality number three is this productive he is my being a hyena productive number four how can I be more constructive with my energy in time number five is this making me feel happy being a hyena and number six what positive lesson can I learn from this thing which I am tempted to criticize so for example if you are tempted to criticize Trump or a terrorist or a Nazi or some hyena or somebody else you ask yourself what can I learn from those hyenas see that's what the Mantaray does he doesn't criticize them he learns from them he says ah those hyenas I might not like particularly what they're doing but I'll learn a positive lesson from that rather than just sit on my ass and criticize them so those are some handy questions and lastly what I suggest to really make this embodied and actualized in your life is that you take on my 30 day no criticism challenge which I will be doing myself starting today and the way you do that is you take a rubber band or a wrist band like this you put it around your wrist and you make a commitment to not be critical of anyone over the next thirty days and to be mindful of that and anytime that you catch yourself because you will catch yourself if you have this wristband it'll help you to catch yourself just getting into the mode of being a hyena and then you recognize oh wait a minute I want to be a manta ray not a hyena and maybe you ask some of these questions of yourself like is being a hyena actually gonna make me happy is it gonna be productive is it gonna be all red herring from turning inwards and doing consciousness work and then you drop it you drop your criticism and you keep that up for 30 days straight keep this wristband on your wrist the whole time don't take it off every time your eye catches it you remind yourself what this whole challenge is about you remind yourself of this image of the hyena versus the manta ray and you just ask yourself which one do I want to be and then you visualize yourself being a manta ray and you visualize yourself for the rest of your life living that way versus living as a hyena and then you use that to inspire you and you pay attention to how you start to feel and how much better you start to feel over these 30 days and that's it so you will see me wearing this wristband for a while now for about a month and maybe I'll give you an update in the future about how that goes for me so I'm doing it I encourage you to do as well just as one final warning the one trap you have to avoid here is that you want to make sure you don't turn everything I'm saying here as a weapon against other people so if you see other people criticizing other people for example maybe you're on the forum and you sue too you see two people in an argument with each other criticizing each other back and forth over some issue and then you're really tempted to jump in there say all guys but Leo said no more criticizing stop criticizing you're being bad for criticizing and notice what just happened you turned into a hyena you got tricked by the situation so be very careful about that turn inwards always turn inwards don't use any of these ideas against other people use it against your own ego and that's the end here all right please make sure you click that like button for me come check out actualized org take a look at my blog I'm posting a lot of new stuff there check out the forum we have lively discussions there also the forum will really test your hyena or manta ray nature check out my life purpose course check out the book list a lot of important books for you so our meeting there and lastly just stick with me for more content in the future I will be returning to more practical topics it might sound like lately I've been going very abstract and deep and metaphysical and that that's gonna be the future of actualized org no that's not the case there will still be very many practical topics I want to shoot practical topics about how to shop for healthy food how to do all sorts of stuff like this which is just very practical but what you're gonna see is that actually when I returned to these more practical topics all the abstract and metaphysical stuff that I talked about previously you'll see how it's actually deepened my ability to understand and to talk about the practical stuff and that's the connection that I want you to be making the practical and the theoretical or the abstract these are not separate things these all inform each other and to really have a profound understanding of the practical topics it helps to have the existential stuff really nailed and understood because when you're doing practical stuff but you don't have the existential stuff nailed all the practical stuff is mostly gonna be a waste of your time you're gonna be running around doing a bunch of stuff you're gonna be busy but your busyness is not gonna be grounded anything truthful you want to ground your practicality in truth in the actually most important things in life the higher consciousness stuff which is why I love to sort of oscillate back and forth covering topics between the existential and metaphysical versus the practical and we'll be doing more of that in the future and you will see that when I talk about practical stuff in the future I will get to like the really core the essence of it my ability to talk about the practical stuff will have skyrocketed I can feel that in me it's just I haven't really been actualizing it in terms of talking about on episodes but over the last year I've been doing so much existential work on myself but also I can see that man there's so much practical stuff that all of this will ultimately fuel so what I'm really doing is I'm investing into the existential to build my foundation so that when I talk about practical stuff in the future is gonna be like both practical but also like deeply deeply significant you want to have both and that's what you're gonna see for me going forward so make sure you stick around for that you