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hey this is Leo for actualised how to work and in this episode we're gonna take a look at the question of being a spiritual seeker is this good or is this bad I see a lot of confusion about this topic of spiritual seeking a lot of people out there are falling into one of two traps with spiritual seeking that's what I want to take a look at here and I also want to give you three rules for how to do spiritual seeking properly so you don't get lost so the problem here goes like this for example I've talked to people who know about spirituality and they know about enlightenment but they say something to me like this well yes Leo I know about these things but I don't want to like turn into one of those spiritual seeker types you know they the stereotype the spiritual seeker I don't want to be one of those sheep that goes around searching for something so desperately and that's their argument also what I see is that even enlightened people people who are already very enlightened what they tend to do is they tend to dismiss their own journey and then they tend to dissuade people from becoming spiritual seekers now actually you have two people two types of in line people some which want you to become a seeker and others that tell you no you shouldn't become a seeker and they tell you stuff like well you shouldn't become a seeker because enlightenment basically you start seeking something and then you go full circle and you realize that what you were seeking was there the whole time so in a sense you've gone full circle and you haven't really accomplished anything so just call off the search right from the start save yourself the trouble there's that line of thinking then there's other types of people that say something like well enlightenment is easy leo like I watched some of your other videos that talked about how difficult enlightenment is and how it takes a thousand hours to get enlightened it's like no none of that enlightenment is very easy all you got to do is you've got to be present got to be in the that's all it really is don't make it too complicated so there's that line of reasoning then some people tell you that you're already enlightened they say that everyone's already lightened as they are all you got to do is just realize it so then there's that line of thinking then there's even some some teachers that say that there's no such thing as enlightenment enlightenment is just an illusion even talking about it's already creating this fantasy in one's mind that then one tries to pursue which is the exact opposite of what enlightenment should be about so you have all these different lines of reasoning and maybe you've run across this in comments under my videos people leave me comments like this all the time or maybe you even read it in books from people that you kind of respect like serious authors or supposedly in line people so what do we do with these lines of reasoning well look it's very simple for me in my mind it's a very pragmatic matter like I don't like to beat around the bush I like to just be very pragmatic about this thing the fact is that you're not enlightened until you're enlightened and in a sense yes enlightenment is easy but in a sense also enlightenment is very very challenging in fact I just got back from a workshop where I did over 70 hours straight of intense intense intense enlightenment contemplation this was so grueling it's like it was unbelievable one of the hardest things I've done in my life is like a a military boot camp style of a workshop this was not one of your little cozy relaxation retreats towards the end of the workshop I would literally became physically ill they felt like I had food poisoning not because I had food poisoning and not because I was just tired but simply because I was working so hard on it's just like burning through my mind trying to exhaust my rational mind to break through to enlightenment and I didn't break through but it was a very eye-opening experience and just goes to show that this can be a very hardcore path for those I want to make it hard or so what do we make of this okay so here's what I think about this if you don't seek practically speaking if you do not become a seeker you will not become enlightened also if we take a look at people throughout history and modern masters who are very enlightened what you will see is that they were strong seekers themselves they did not pussyfoot around and they didn't mind being labeled a seeker and they didn't mind going in circles in fact most of their paths were very circular and very windy it wasn't a straight road that's how it tends to be and the reason that is is because enlightenment is basically the hero's journey and the hero's journey is often circular in fact some of the most beautiful hero's journeys are circular but just because a journey is circular note that that doesn't make it invalid this is where some of these people I think have faulty reasoning about this is that they think that well just because I went in a circle you know how I could have just eliminated that circle but that's not true that's just not true in fact if we take a look at some examples of hero's journeys we see that the power of the journey is in the fact that is circular there's something beautiful about that there's something very true about that that's how life works it tends to work in circles you can notice if you study math or science or physics that a lot of phenomenon in nature is circular there's a lot of periodic and cyclical sine wave type functions that happen all throughout nature from the way that a spring moves to the way that a planet orbits a star to the way that a star orbits a black hole and so forth have you ever read the book called The Alchemist it's a really popular book recommend that you read it it's on my book list and The Alchemist adjusted like this beautiful story of a young shepherds boy in in Spain that has to go through this journey through northern Africa and he has all these trials and tribulations and then finally he ends up going to Egypt to see the pyramids because he's looking for his treasure and he's not even sure what the treasure is but he just has this calling to go to Egypt to find his treasure at the pyramids and so he goes through this long journey and then in the end and it has this beautiful beautiful resolution at the very end that I don't want to spoil but basically what he discovers is this boy discovers that oh my treasure was at home waiting for me the whole time and now you read that you might think well so was the whole journey pointless and of course no the journey wasn't pointless the journey was the thing that was necessary for him to realize like oh now I can come back home and I can finally understand that it was there the whole time and there's something very poetic about that it's beautiful that's how some of the best hero's journeys tend to work personally in my own life as an example of this you know I got very interested in philosophy and seeking truth when I was even still in high school and so for about four years at the end of high school all the way through college I got really interested in philosophy as for reading books on epistemology that's the theory of knowledge and I started studying that because I thought that well I have a treasure to find there I need to find like what is the ultimate theory of life what is the truth in life and I felt like philosophy and epistemology could could show me the way and so what I did and I I went through a whole philosophy training program at University read lots of books was really serious about it spent a lot of time thinking about on my own taking notes and this kind of stuff and then finally what I realized is like Oh philosophy is just models and theories and beliefs and that none of these can get me what I was ultimately searching for in a sense I kind of discovered that philosophy was mental masturbation and the ego doing its thing to trying to understand things that really can't understand and that was when I said to myself okay well I'm kind of done with philosophy now in fact I wanted to become a philosophy professor but when I realize this I'm like well I can't really be a philosophy professor anymore because I realized the emptiness of philosophy now you might listen to now you might think well so Leo you wasted four years of your life going through this thing just to realize that philosophy was was all for nothing and of course the answer is no I went in a circle and I came back but I kind of came back to where I originally started but now with a deeper realization a new perspective and that's exactly how the hero's journey works the hero he leaves home he leaves home he goes into the unknown into uncharted territory he goes through trials and tribulations and he experiences difficulties and it all seems so important and so serious for him at the time and he goes through all that and in the end what does he get he's after treasure metaphorically speaking but really he doesn't get treasure the treasure is just a metaphor for what he really gets which he gets insight he gets perspective and in the end the hero he has to come back home he doesn't stay on the journey forever and the journey doesn't take him to some magical new land where he now lives know he comes back home but when he comes back home he comes back home with a new perspective on life and then what he does he shares that perspective with all the people that were there the whole time and in a sense he goes full circle but now when he's back home even though it looks like his circumstances haven't really changed much they've changed in a sense completely because now his perspective on life and his perspective on those circumstances has changed but to get that shift in perspective he had to go through the journey you can't just assume that you can't go through the cycle and that's where I think that a lot of even enlightened masters will make a mistake when they tell seekers to stop seeking because in practice what I find is if you tell a secret to stop seeking what they do is it just say okay I should just stop seeking and just fall back into my normal everyday life and when they do that basically they get nowhere and they don't get enlightened and they don't get that new perspective that they need sometimes in life you have to go through a lot of [ __ ] and a lot of stuff that seems like dead ends like tangents but in fact they're not those are all necessary those are all part of your journey and one of the things that I discovered lately in talking to more and more enlightened people and just comparing different perspectives and comparing different paths that different people have taken to become enlightened it just becomes apparent that enlightenment is a very personal journey we all have our own inner demons and bullshit's that we have to deal with and for some people that just means that they start somewhere they go for five or ten years off on a tangent some dead end it looks like and then they hit a dead end and then finally they say ah I was wrong all these ten years and that's enough to finally put them back on track and then they finally get somewhere where they really need to get to right and now it's very easy to say well so those 10 years were all wasted and lost but not really if you needed those 10 years of going down a dead-end to finally have your emotions click or your mind realize something like oh [ __ ] I was wrong this whole time there's like all I've been deluded or I've been misguided or whatever then that's just your path that's what you need don't dismiss that realize also that life itself is a circle your life where do you start in life you start in life basically dead you start nowhere you started as nothing have you realized this you start in life as nothing before you're born you're literally nothing then you're born and you're alive and then you realize that you're conscious and then you grow up and then you mature and then you go through all the trials and tribulations of life and then you become old and then you deal with with that and then you have diseases and you overcome those or you don't and eventually no matter how good or healthy you are you die and you returned back to nothing so you start at nothing and you return back to nothing and that's how life is the circle of life so this is something that you just have to accept if you're gonna live life and you're gonna live it well right is that we have these circles and in a sense they're meaningless and pointless circles but also that's just kind of like a life it's like a play it's just like a ballet it's life for the sake of life not for the sake of anything else and if you really start to contemplate this you realize well how else could it be why would we want it to be any other way this is in fact a good thing imagine if you will Luke Skywalker imagine if you took Luke Skywalker's journey he is the prototypical hero's journey and he goes and he does what he develops new skills and he meets new people and he meets new friends and he makes new enemies and he has mentors and training and he has battles and fights and this happens on and on and on in the Star Wars universe and he goes through three episodes of this and then finally he has the confrontation with Vader and the Emperor so what if someone just comes in and says well why have Luke go through all those steps and all those battles and all those trials and tribulations why not just have him go straight from Tatooine and fly in an x-wing straight to Vader and just confront Vader right off the bat that would be the direct path everything else is extraneous and unnecessary but of course that's to not understand the hero's journey Luke couldn't have done that he needed insights and realization and skills and techniques he needed to meet four friends and he needed to make new enemies he needed to go through all that in order to finally build himself up to face Vader he couldn't face Vader straight off the bat he would have lost the battle he needs to himself he probably wouldn't have even had the courage and the knowledge of facing Vader simply by not even realizing that Vader was his father and that he needed to be faced so these kind of realizations that oh I got to face this problem in my life it's like oh I've been afraid of this my whole my whole life and now I finally realized that it was fear that was holding me back and now I need to confront my fear or maybe it's like you've had this obstacle that you've been hitting your head against the wall on for for a decade and finally you realize like oh [ __ ] you know I'm fed up with this and I'm gonna actually make a significant structural change to my life to overcome this obstacle forever kind of that that getting fed up with hitting your head against the wall kind of feeling so all of those kinds of things these are things I need to develop it's like your mind needs to work through that [ __ ] and on the path of enlightenment your mind's got to work through a lot of personal [ __ ] that you have in your life and what I realized lately is that our paths are very unique and different and just because one enlightened person did it this way or some other light person did it that way and then they tell you hey do it my way or do it this way and you don't need all the other stuff that's not necessarily going to work for you might have worked for them but it might not work for you because you're a different individual you have different problems you have different neuroses that you have to deal with you have different types of fears you have different life trauma that you went through as a kid and you're carrying around all this baggage and one way or another you have to shed this baggage how are you gonna do it well through spiritual seeking you're gonna conquer your own inner demons let me give you three rules though for how to become a spiritual seeker and not get lost because it's true that a lot of spiritual seekers do get lost and there is something about this idea that hey you know you don't really want to make an identity out of becoming a spiritual seeker so here are three rules to make this work for you number one realize that on this journey it will be a cycle that ends back where you started so if you think you're gonna go somewhere and do something and then live in some magical land that's not how it's gonna go how it's gonna go is that you have your life and you're gonna go and you're gonna meet new people and teachers and read books and this and that and maybe even travel to another country and live in an ashram or whatever and then you're gonna come back home and you're gonna realize like okay I'm enlightened now and I have to come back home kind of thing so just set up that expectation right from the very beginning so you're not under this illusion that oh there's some treasure out there somewhere else that I have to find no the treasure is already inside you you just need to get in touch with it enlightenment is an inner realization it's a shift in perspective and this is not to be confused with changing the circumstances of your life just because you go live in an ashram somewhere or you start meditating in a cave or you move to another country and you think that that is gonna like be the thing no that's just a change in circumstances the thing is when it really clicks in your mind so just realize that you are gonna go in a full circle the second rule that I have for you is seek techniques don't seek beliefs so many people get lost here what they think the spiritual path is it's like oh I'm gonna go and talk to this guru over there I'm gonna go meditate with this guy over here and I'm gonna read that book over there and I'm gonna suck up all this information I'm gonna start believing and I'm gonna build up a whole model in my mind about it and basically what's gonna happen is that you're gonna become dogmatic don't fall into that trap very dangerous enlightenment is about finding the truth for yourself independent completely independent of what other people say or whether schools say or what Buddhism says or what Christianity says or what Judaism says or any other school says you're not gonna find it in any book and you're not gonna find it from the words of any teacher you have to find it yourself it's an inner journey that's where the journey comes in but most people what they think the journey is I think it's that it's a journey of reading and processing information and figuring this out with their logical mind and while there's some use in that that's not ultimately going to get you there and in fact you can really get you trapped and it can really damage your life this is where people start to get caught up in cults and you know weird religious practices and New Age hippie thinking and just all sorts of crazy and stupid stuff really good spiritual teachers and this is something I learned from Russell Scott who's enlightened master and he's been teaching people about this stuff for 30 or 40 years so he's got a lot of experience with this but he says really good spiritual teachers they teach techniques and not beliefs and not dogma so that's a really good mark or a litmus test for finding quality spiritual teachers does your spiritual teacher actually give you the techniques you need to figure it out for yourself and in fact try to withhold the answers really good spiritual teachers they withhold the answers you ask them questions and what they do is they actually deflect your questions whether they remain silent or they look at you and they give you a kind of a stare or a weird look or a cheeky smile something like that to get you to realize like hey I can't give you the answer you have to find it for yourself but that's what the human mind wants is that our mind wants easy ready-made answers but that's a huge trap in this work so don't fall into that one and the third rule is and this is something that I think is very important that even a lot of enlightened masters don't do is you have to compare and contrast perspectives different perspectives within spirituality so your trial is a broad spectrum there's a broad spectrum of traditions you've got Christianity you've got Judaism you've got Buddhism you've got yoga you've got Sufi ISM you've got Islam you've got all this stuff and these are major religions but each of these major religions also has a a hardcore mystical core so the major religious stuff that's mostly [ __ ] then you've got the the hardcore mystical esoteric nugget within each one of those traditions which actually has some good techniques and truths in there but even that is very dogmatic stuff and even that is just only a partial facet of the thing that you're actually looking for so what I find very important that almost nobody does is you have to go and investigate each one of these really take a look at all the different schools all the different techniques out there without getting hooked on any single one of them this is very difficult to do for most people because their mind is looking for ready-made answers like I said before and they just find one thing and they just kind of like fall in love with it and then they just think like oh this is my this is my path and this is the only path and they just commit themselves to this path and they might even become enlightened by committing themselves to one path but the problem is is that in their enlightenment is going to be lacking it's gonna be partial because they don't see that this is just one path out of many paths and that in fact no one path really gets you everything you need to investigate multiple paths and kind of piece it all together like a giant jigsaw puzzle that's personally what I'm doing in my life and this is very difficult to do because when you start doing this there's gonna be a lot of pressure socially from the outside for you not to do this for example you go to sin and if you learn Zen and then you say hey you know you've got you know guys you know Zen is great but let's go compare how Zen works with how yoga works or how Christianity works or some other spiritual practice works the Zen people will look at you like you're like you're betraying them right they're not going to want to do that they don't want to do this comparing and contrasting likewise it doesn't matter where you start almost I mean I wouldn't say all but many many spiritual traditions will not want to do this comparing and contrasting because that that disturbs their their dogma they don't want to do that they have preconceived beliefs about how their path is the right path how it's the only path how it's the best possible path and they don't want to hear anything else because they've already been hooked by this stuff so you need to be careful about not getting hooked by it I found that even teachers who are very enlightened who are dogma free so to speak it's very difficult to just sit down with them and to get them to start comparing and contrasting one tradition with another tradition and I think that that's the real true mark of a of a really high-quality spiritual teacher is that they have studied multiple perspectives and in a sense on the graves model I have a an episode that talks about the graves model they're yellow which means that they're not buying into any one absolute truth but they're kind of piecing together partial truths and partial perspectives and that's what you need to be here when you're on this path is you need to be yellow instead of being blue blue is the really dogmatic you don't want that I found that it's really difficult even with very open-minded teachers to get them to start comparing and contrasting they just have like an inclination to not want to do that stuff in a sense is because it can slow you down because just by comparing contrasting different perspectives that you're not gonna become enlightened that way but what I've what I think is at least what I'm going on in my own life is that if I do compare and contrast all these other perspectives I'm gonna have a much richer enlightenment even though it's gonna take me longer it's their level I involve a lot more work and a lot more mental strain to put all these pieces together it's a very complex jigsaw puzzle that you're putting together because you have to sort through a lot of [ __ ] but when you do put it all together I think what you're gonna have is gonna have a much richer and in the end and you're gonna get what you really wanted you're gonna get a more complete understanding a fuller picture and it's going to be well worth it and you're gonna avoid all the dogma that people usually get trapped in all right those are my three rules so don't shy away from being a spiritual seeker just make sure that you avoid many of the traps along the way I'm signing off go ahead and post your comments down below please click the like button share this video with a friend and come sign up to actualize I don't check out the website I got a free newsletter they're some exclusive videos Booklist course about how to find your life purpose you might be interested in that but the reason you want to stay onboard is because I really want to help you to develop a really deep rich understanding of life when you have this when you have the psychological understanding not just theoretically but very practically which good it finds that you're going to be able to create the kind of fulfillment in life that virtually nobody in life has even people that are super successful do not understand these concepts and do not get this fulfillment and I can guarantee you that unless you study this material and you integrate and learn all this stuff you're not going to have a satisfying life I want to help you to have a really satisfying life for real not [ 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