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[Music] developing introspection life's most important skill here's the number one technique for increasing your intelligence wisdom and for escaping all the mechanisms of self-deception and delusion which are common to the human mind which i've discussed at length in the past in my videos and that is feeling inward or introspection introspection we could also call it self-reflection consciousness self-awareness observation in the past i've used all of these words in various different contexts they can have slightly different meanings but for the purpose of this discussion here they're all going to be synonymous i like the word introspection i like the word self-reflection even more uh consciousness of course is a great word but most people are confused about what consciousness is consciousness tends to have a lot of like ambiguity around it and various sorts of metaphysical implications that are tricky for people to understand awareness of course is a great word it's redundant to say self-awareness because all awareness is self-awareness and we've talked about observation in the past i've talked about how learning equals observation i have a whole episode titled that a lot of times i'm sure you must have wondered this throughout all this work that we've done together by now people ask me leo but how can i tell what's true because you're sharing all these different ideas and different theories and models and i've been reading all these books and i've been listening to all these different youtube channels and gurus talking about this and that and science and religion and spirituality and rationality all these different fields tell me different things they contradict one another even within science there are contradictions even within spirituality in the new age there are contradictions and teachers and gurus disagree so leo how is it how is there any hope at all to find out what's true if i can't rely on my culture to tell me what's true if i can't rely on my school teachers to tell me what's true if i can't rely on my parents and my family if i can't rely on my friends if i can't rely on my on my professors in college if i can't even rely on science and logic leo how is it possible to know what's true have you thought about that wonder that it's good to reach this point this sort of point of of deep doubt uh it's a doubt so deep that you wonder maybe it's not even possible you start to lose hope you start to become nihilistic about everything but it is possible and that possibility is your ability to feel inwards and to introspect you have that capacity this capacity is greatly atrophied and underutilized in our society this capacity is generally not taught in mainstream circles it's not taught in school it's not taught in university it's not taught by most religions in fact most of society is geared towards getting you not to feel inwards and feeling inwards has been much demonized and pooh-poohed to many scientists and academics t or skeptics or rationalists this idea that you can feel inwards and discover the truth this this idea seems laughable to them as though like well this is just subjective those are just your subjective feelings man leo they're just feelings you can't trust your emotions you'd be stupid to do that and yet what are you trusting when you buy into that very argument you're trusting your logical mind why are you trusting that you see feeling inwards here is a very robust concept and we're going to go into a lot of detail here to just to show you how robust it is because when i just say feel inwards uh it's not just a matter of thinking about something and it's not just a matter of feeling some emotion and reacting emotionally about something the way that most people would think it's much more robust and profound than that so introspection is the ability to truthfully observe the dynamics of your own psychology and mind and truthfully there is a very key word truthful observation it takes practice developing this skill and it is a skill of introspection or feeling inwards in a truthful impartial unbiased accurate faithful manner because of course as we've discussed in the past your mind is always playing tricks on you and so how do you overcome those tricks well by developing this skill this skill is a meta ability it's the ability to observe all the other functions of the mind impartially from a sort of a a distance an elevated perspective a meta position such that you're not getting enmeshed and entangled in the everyday functions of the mind for most people this introspection skill on a scale of one to a hundred is developed to maybe a three or a five even in psychologists professionals who you would think are good at this and philosophers academic philosophers professional philosophers this skill is very underdeveloped maybe it's a 10 for those people 10 out of 100 and this of course is a huge problem from this problem stems all basically all other human individual and social problems so let's start to show you just how sprawling this skill of introspection is and just how much there is here to introspect about so when you're going to be doing this introspection you're going to be very importantly noticing your emotional states and their causes you need to be able to distinguish and to feel fear anger sadness loneliness frustration desire hurt craving happiness you need to notice when you are when you are afraid you need to be able to notice when you are angry you need to be able to notice when you are jealous or envious you need to be able to notice when you're in a certain type of mood a good one or a bad one just this category of of of feeling your emotional states and introspecting as to their causes what is causing these states it's not just a matter of oh yeah i'm angry it's also why am i angry what is causing this anger and a lot of times it's not somebody else it's really how you're thinking about the situation it's your belief system it's the meanings you're attaching to things it's things that you're denying right there's always a deeper hidden layer a sort of a subconscious layer that you need to get at which is the true cause of many of the emotions that you feel so a lot of the emotions you feel you can't just trust them blindly and then act on them you need to go underneath them and to figure out what's actually sourcing these emotions why are you having them consistently and so there's there's a lot just to work on here with emotions most people have terrible emotional intelligence they're not able to distinguish between these very different kinds of emotions they're not able to tell when they're afraid and when they're angry they're just acting out their fear or they're acting out their anger they're not able to feel inside and to see how their thought patterns for example are being subtly shaped by the anger inside of them or the fear inside of them see and these can be very subtle you might say well leo yeah i know what i'm afraid i know when i'm angry that's easy no you don't sure there are very gross instances of fear and anger which are obvious to most people when you're terrified in a panic when you know some burglar is breaking into your house or when somebody has really got you pissed off and you're flying off the handle sure you know that but even in those cases you're you're more so controlled by that fear and by that anger you're enmeshed in it more so than you're able to actually be aware of of it but fear and anger usually these are subtle things that subtly shape your everyday life you feel fear dozens of times a day you feel anger many times per day but usually you're not aware of it you're not aware of how it's shaping you where that anger and fear is coming from jealousy and envy for example these can be very subtle emotions they don't broadcast themselves within your consciousness as just like oh yeah i'm jealous of that that lady there i'm jealous of that guy there for for his success or how many subscribers he has or how much money he makes or how good he looks or whatever these are usually very subtle and so it's a skill to be able to feel to feel into this stuff and it is like feeling you're feeling into it but it's not like you're reacting based on these feelings i'm not saying that you need to be some emotional mess and now a slave to your emotions uh i mean it's difficult to describe because it's sort of slippery and vague and our society has conditioned us to think that the most real things in the world the most important aspects of life are those which are tangible material quantifiable and easily explained without any kind of vagueness or fuzziness to them they are logical they are razor sharp they're scientific and this whole notion of feeling into your feelings or just feeling into your own body and into your own mind this seems like some sort of sorcery or woo stuff and it seems like it's not objective enough to be able to sort of rely on it because you might wonder well how do i know that i'm feeling into things properly that's right it's a skill it's a skill similar to surfing or skateboarding it's a skill similar to a golf swing where you can't quantify the perfect golf swing you can't write an equation for it you can't write a scientific manual on the perfect golf swing i mean you can try but actually by doing that what that does is that puts you into your head and that will ruin your golf swing if you have all those equations and formulas and quantifiable procedures and steps methodically that you go through when you're doing your golf swing see that's actually gonna make your golf swing unnatural so it's something you have to practice over years and you have to develop a feel for and then you can get really good at it such that you can rely on it you can even bet your life on it and it becomes more accurate and more reliable than any kind of scientific formula or piece of logic or any quantifiable thing and that's what life is like life is like surfing you gotta get a feel for it and the best people that are able to live life most excellently are those who are doing it by feel not through some sort of pure logic or some sort of formulaic way it's uh it's a sort of a soft fuzzy way of going about life but that's just that's just life and um and it makes it makes this the problems that it makes this skill difficult to teach because i can't just give you a one two three step formula that you follow for doing perfect introspection and of course it can't be that way because if there was this sort of formula then you see uh any kind of formula like that is very easy to to defeat similar to how in war or in a chess match or war on the battlefield you know uh you can't have a one two three step linear procedure for how to win every battle or every war or every chess match it's dynamic it's fluid you have to adapt to the situation and one of the most important aspects of it is that it's not formulaic see because if you have a formula and i know your formula as your opponent i can then beat your formula uh so you can't live life in this sort of formulaic way you have to be able to adapt and you have to be very creative and this is actually what makes life interesting and not boring this is what makes you different than a robot you're a conscious robot we might say but you have to take control of this consciousness you have to be able to feel into yourself you have to be able to also notice your thoughts beyond your emotional states you have to notice your thoughts and how your thoughts work why do you think the thoughts that you think like you just had a thought right now you had a thought why did you have that thought where'd it come from what sourced that thought what motivated it some deep need or craving that you had some emotion that you had some egotistical impulse or bias that you had which is driving your thinking you also need to see and notice the interplay between your thoughts and your emotions how the two feed into each other in a strange loop sort of fashion where thoughts can create emotions and emotions can create thoughts you need to be able to also notice your rationalizations justifications and excuses the mind the ego mind is a brilliant rationalizer and justifier of almost anything the ego mind can literally justify and rationalize anything it wants no matter how heinous how biased how selfish how devilish how evil how false it is the ego mind can make it look true can make it seem justified and valid you need to be able to notice that within yourself when your mind is doing that to you the only solution to that the only counter measure is to be able to feel into it and through it to see through the sham of it to see how your own mind is rationalizing and you can actually watch it rationalize maybe you're in an argument with somebody and then your mind starts to rationalize about why you're right and you got to be able to see through the illusion of that and just see oh to notice that oh yeah that's there it goes again my mind is going again now it's rationalizing look how i'm rationalizing about that person and how they're wrong and how i'm right and all of this and i'm building a whole story around it and i'm making excuses and i'm justifying why i hurt them because in the past they hurt me and that now makes it seem justified see most people aren't capable of this because they haven't trained this muscle this is the introspection muscle this skill that we're talking about you need to also be able to notice your judgments your demonizations of others and when you're blaming and scapegoating others this is huge this just this alone you can spend the next 10 years of your life just working on noticing how much you judge all the ways in which you judge the gross and the subtle the ways in which you demonize and blame others you also need to notice how you play victim there's lots of ways that you play victim in different areas of your life i have episodes in the past specifically about victim mentality victim thinking how to stop being a victim part one part two go check those out those are some old classic episodes of mine um and i'll probably be talking about it more in the future but our mind loves to play victim especially for example within relationships you're in an intimate relationship and you get in a fight with your spouse or your partner or whatever girlfriend boyfriend and [Music] of course the name of the game in that becomes who can claim the victim status first that's what happens in arguments have you noticed that whenever you're in argument with somebody or maybe a family member both sides try to say that the other side victimized them it's like no you did that to me and she'll say no you did that to me or some other thing and then we'll try to out victim each other and the one who can out victim the other wins the argument in a sense that's the game that's being played but see most people engage in that game without being able to be aware of the fact that they're engaging in that game whereas now when you're aware of it you start to notice you can actually feel how your mind is subtly trying to play up your victim status to raise yourself on this pedestal of victimhood so that then you are justified in making certain demands because see if you can put yourself on a very high victim pedestal now you're owed something now the person has to be nice to you now they have to apologize to you now they have to give you a gift now they have to kiss you now they have to give you sex now they have to give you money whatever it is they give you love or attention and that's why you play victim see you got to be able to see the sneakiness of these dynamics that are going on inside your mind this takes introspection skill you have to notice when you're whining and complaining there my mind goes again whining and complaining about this about that about not getting enough sex about having a bad boss about not having a good job about the economy being bad about how the political system is unfair capitalism oh capitalism is so is so bad i can't start a business because all the elites are are keeping me down then they got their boot on my neck and all of this and it's impossible to be successful and this this sort of stuff whining about how you can't meditate complaining about how difficult it is because of the country you were born in because of the illnesses that you have because of how little money you have because how shitty your parents were to you and don't get me wrong some of those are legitimate hurdles to overcome i'm not trying to minimize those i get it some of you have it a lot worse than others for some of you it's a lot harder to self-actualize and to meditate and to do consciousness work or to earn money than it is for others we don't all start on the same playing field not at all there's enormous differences in our starting positions we all have different handicaps and limits that we're dealing with but whining and complaining about them this is this is not going to help you and yet you keep doing it why are you doing it what's the payoff for whining and complaining see you have to be able to feel inwards to notice what the payoff is and that might take you a couple of years of feeling inwards and struggling to figure out because see when you feel inwards it all feels so vague and fuzzy at first you're not sure what to make how to make sense of it it's confusing you don't understand you might grasp for something but then it's wrong you might make wrong conclusions as you're trying to do this but that's but that's how you learn to surf for example you get on that surfboard and the first time you get on it you're going to spill pretty badly you're going to wipe out uh because you do something stupid you you don't have that muscle memory built up for how to balance and how to navigate the waves and read read the water and all this sort of stuff and yeah you're gonna take some nasty spills the first time few times that you do it but then slowly you're gonna build a sense of balance that's exactly what it's like only here it's much more difficult because you're you're playing this game against your own mind your own mind you're trying to basically out smart your own mind in this process because your mind has all these very intelligent sophisticated survival mechanisms that are hardwired into you these very psychological patterns and defense mechanisms which are designed to keep you alive and now you're starting to introspect into those but these these mechanisms are so sophisticated and sneaky because they have to be in order to keep you alive and so now you're trying to infuse consciousness into those and that is difficult to do takes time takes effort it's a tricky at first you might also discover stuff there that you don't quite like that's right because that's necessitated by survival see your survival again check out my two-part series understanding survival part one part two very important your survival is not just this dumb brute physical activity that the body is doing like it's sending you a signal when you're hungry when you're thirsty when you're horny when you feel unsafe of course we all recognize that the body sends us these signals when you're in pain that's the body signal to tell you that hey something's wrong you know why are you sticking a knife into your finger or something and then the pain gets you to stop doing that so this is kind of gross obvious stuff but but the body is is so sophisticated and the mind is so this is the software that is running this very sophisticated body is is so elaborate it's so counter intuitive because it has to be because your survival isn't just those basic things for a human survival is much more complex than just getting some food and some water and some sex and avoiding getting cut and burned and things like this survival involves all sorts of sneaky abstract social games that we play politics getting approval getting love and all these sorts of factors these are these are critical to survival yes most yet most people don't think of these as survival and the kind of belief systems and ideologies that we adopt this is also all crucial to our survival we usually don't think of them that way we usually just think of beliefs and ideas oh it's just some beliefs and just some ideas no your entire survival hinges upon it the kind of beliefs and ideas that you hold and how deeply you cling to them you also need to start noticing when you make excuses for not taking responsibility notice how you avoid both personal responsibility and also collective responsibility in fact one of the sneaky mechanisms that your mind uses to avoid collective responsibility and a lot of right wingers and conservatives and libertarians are guilty of this as i've talked about in the past is that they will actually use the mantle of personal responsibility to shirk collective responsibility so in cases like systemic racism or inequalities and injustices within society a conservative or libertarian will say oh well they just need to take more personal responsibility no you actually need to take more collective responsibility collective responsibility doesn't negate and is not mutually exclusive with personal responsibility both are important because we are both individuals and we are also part of a collective and both of these dynamics are are interpenetrating all the time within our lives none of us are really individuals we're always interacting with others whether it's online or in our family or in our intimate relationships or at work in business it's all collective type stuff so there's a lot of collective responsibilities there and of course we don't like to take responsibility the mind doesn't like to take on responsibility either personal or collective why not well that's something you should introspect about notice and feel when you are actually shirking responsibility either personal or collective when you don't want it and then try to ask yourself why don't i want it in this case for example i've i've faced group situations in the past maybe you have as well like in school or at work there is like a little group project let's say at school your teacher gets five of you together you splits the class into groups of five and gives each of you a school project and you need to work on it together class project that you work on together over the next week all five of you have you ever been in that situation what happens one of the first things in that situation that arises is the question of who's going to be the leader in that group it's not going to be just a perfect democracy someone's going to arise as the leader and to stand up and say okay guys i'm taking responsibility for this project i'm going to spearhead it and so forth this takes responsibility and uh it takes a certain gumption and leadership and a certain confidence in that situation you can actually feel into it and there's there's that lingering moment before somebody steps up and and takes the lead there's that moment of like well who's going to take the lead am i going to take the lead is he going to take the lead is she going to take the lead it's like well i don't want to take the lead or maybe i do want to take the lead but i feel bad about i feel guilty because i don't want to be some arrogant [ __ ] who dominates others but on the other hand it seems like those other people aren't willing to take the lead that means i have to step up but if i step up that means i have to do more work and i don't want to do more work see all these subtle dynamics you can feel those playing inside rattling inside of your skull when you're facing this kind of situation hopefully you can relate to that in some way see leading people is a huge responsibility it means you have to act better yourself you have to set the right example for others you have to hold yourself to a high standard because you know others will hold you to a high standard see and you can you can further introspect and wonder to yourself in that situation why am i resistant to take this leadership position why don't i want the responsibility what am i avoiding likewise if you're a conservative and you deny things like systemic racism you can ask yourself why am i avoiding collective responsibility here why am i just offloading this and trying to excuse it and rationalize it away saying oh those black people or whatever they're not taking enough personal responsibility well is that really the case or maybe i'm not taking enough collective responsibility by trying to blame them for not taking personal what if they are taking personal responsibility but the collective situation is so rigged or unjust that actually we need to take more collective responsibility what if that's the case that means i'd have to maybe reevaluate my worldview because see my world usage blames them for it so why don't i want to take collective responsibility what am i trying to avoid there you also need to notice when you're introspecting when you're thinking negatively or having limiting beliefs this is huge huge huge huge i could do a whole course on just the topic of eliminating identifying and eliminating negative uh and limiting beliefs this is one of the biggest things that holds you back from expanding yourself into new areas in life for example maybe you struggled with attracting women as a guy and you might want to go out there and get a girlfriend or something but you have all these negative limiting beliefs like oh well i'm not attractive enough my dick is not big enough i don't make enough money i'm not emotionally confident enough i'm not funny enough women are just [ __ ] and [ __ ] and they won't want to sleep with me all the good ones are already taken if i attract a woman she'll probably be broken and one of the dysfunctional and ugly ones and science tells me that unless i'm super good looking i'll never be able to get a cute girl and all these other excuses and limiting beliefs you know when i got into pickup years ago i don't really do it anymore um but years ago when i went through that phase a huge part of of my learning how to get better with women was tackling just a slew dozens and dozens of these sorts of limiting beliefs that i had and it's very difficult to tackle these limiting beliefs because when you hold them they don't feel like just limiting beliefs they feel like truth like reality they feel scientific they feel like facts that can't be questioned and that to question these would be some sort of exercise in self-delusion when actually it's these beliefs that are self-delusion but see you got to be able to feel into your belief systems and and look inside and see make the connections to see you know why am i holding this where does belief come from is this really true might have i just been cherry-picking evidence to prop up this belief but really uh my my my experiences and my and my evidence is very flaky and shallow so literally that's what i did i would sit down and i would for example i would have a limiting belief like i would say i'm too old to attract the kind of woman that i want like i should have started this years ago like oh yeah like when i got into pickup i was already i was like 27 when i got into pickup which of course in in retrospect is so young um but i was thinking like oh most guys who do pick up they're like in their early 20s i'm already in my late 20s and i already suck and i i'm already like behind the curve and i'm too old like it's not going to work and all this sort of stuff and like by the time i learn it i'm going to be in my 30s it's like oh my god it's impossible i had to actually sit down i had to i remember i would sit down with a sheet of paper and uh and i would just write out that um all the reasons that i am not too old to learn pickup and i would sit there and i write and i would write page after page and i would force myself to write it and then rewrite it and rewrite it and tell myself just literally drill into my mind that i'm not too old i mean it sounds ridiculous in retrospect uh but that's exactly how our limiting beliefs are they they're ridiculous but when we believe them they might as well just be rock solid reality from our point of view see but you need to be able to feel into that to spot them to notice them to start to question them you need to be able to notice your self biases and your double standards the standards you set for yourself are usually very different than the standards you set for others you're very quick to criticize others but then when you yourself make those same mistakes or violate those certain rules and boundaries you don't criticize yourself these are double standards that you set your whole mind is built upon these sorts of double standards these double standards even exist within academia within science for example scientists will criticize religious people for believing in authority or making appeals to authority such as like well a religious person will say well god exists because the bible says so and the scientists will say but that's just a book you're appealing to authority okay fine that's a that's that's that's a reasonable criticism to make of religion but then do you apply that same standard to yourself to science because see when i when i when i start to question science and i start to question the foundations of science to you as a scientist what are you going to do you're going to resort to appeals to authority as well you're going to say well but but physics says this and einstein said that and newton said this and and my college professor said that okay but what is that that's just appeals to authority most of what science is is just appeals to authority but see you because you are not good at feeling inwards you're not going to admit that you're going to make excuses you're going to say oh well but but this is different you know leo how can you how dare you compare believing in the bible as the same thing as believing in a physics textbook or believing al albert einstein or or believing my college professor these are not the same thing at all these are legitimate legitimate appeals to authority you see but these are double standards that you set and you're unable to recognize that because you're so externally focused that you're not able to feel into it to feel these double standards one of the most important things i did when i was young and got into epistemology and got into really thinking about the nature of science religion and reality and how human knowledge works is that i was quite good at feeling inwards during various arguments and debates i had with religious people because i was a scientific materialistic atheist at that time and i would argue with religious friends and and others uh who were like fundamentalist christians and so forth and i could clearly see that the way they were behaving was not intellectually into integris uh they were using various kinds of double standards and they were being biased in their arguments i could clearly see that in them but then i started noticing that when i was parroting scientific beliefs and ideas to them to counter their arguments that i too was at a meta on a meta level also engaging in this kind of uh lack of intellectual integrity i was just parroting science at them and i was using various kinds of double standards and that the arguments i was using against them i wasn't fully applying to my own self and i could feel that and i could see the wrongness of that and that was the only thing that was really able to allow me to go beyond science otherwise i would have just been lost in materialism for the rest of my life right that is what opened that was the crack that opened the door to skepticism of science and materialism for me and that got me to question not just religion but got me to question everything including physical reality like everything because i saw how the arguments made by scientific materialists themselves were were deeply circular in their logic and had gaps in them that doesn't mean that the religious fundamentalists are correct they are even more diluted than the scientists materialists and atheists and skeptics uh but i could even see the the flaws and the gaps within skepticism itself and that is the key it's that ability to feel inwards into introspect that was the key that allowed me to to to ultimately jailbreak my own mind but you see most scientists aren't able to do this religious people of course aren't able to do this as well skeptics rationalists atheists are not able to do this and yet they poo poo this idea of feeling inwards yet this is the one thing that will save you you need to be able to notice when you hold a belief and that a belief is a belief and to be able to distinguish a belief from reality and from experience for example most people do not have enough introspection skill to notice and to admit to themselves that the planet mars is a belief are you getting this you scientists you materialist you skeptics and atheists and rationalists are you getting the significance of this the planet mars is a belief the continent of antarctica is a belief are you seeing this the only don't argue with me this is not a logical debate we're trying to have for you to see that you need to be able to introspect the only way you can understand what i'm saying the significance of what i'm saying is to introspect and to feel inwards and to notice what is a belief see most scientific and materialist people they think that belief is just like some sort of myth to believe in god or some flying spaghetti monster or to believe in unicorns or to believe in angels that's belief mars is not a belief antarctica is not a belief but look in your experience what is the difference between santa claus and mars in your experience forget what other people are telling you look in your experience feel inwards to feel and to notice to observe with your direct consciousness that the planet mars for you is a belief see this is not a point to argue it's it's something that you look and see for yourself another thing you should notice when you're introspecting is when you're being dishonest and when you're lying of course when you're lying to others it's important to see that but even more important than that is when you're lying to yourself most people don't have enough introspection skill to notice when they are being dishonest with themselves and usually when you lie to others you have to lie to yourself first how do you know when you're being dishonest you feel it you can feel the dishonesty it has a certain dirty quality to it you don't even want to look at it that takes skill that takes practice to notice when you're being dishonest when you're lying to yourself the only way you're going to be able to do it is by practicing it you're going to fail many times of course at noticing it but then over years you'll get better at it also you should notice why you lie what is sourcing or motivating your lies and your dishonesty that is very fruitful to notice because that would be how you would undo the lying in the dishonesty by working on the root sources and causes of that you should also notice your grudges bitterness and trauma any kind of trauma that you hold trauma can sit very very deep of course we know from classic psychology how trauma severe trauma can be even repressed uh for years and decades like if your father mother abused you or molested you that could have resulted in trauma that you might have buried very very deep inside of your psyche but there's there's more minor forms of trauma it doesn't have to be so so obvious uh there's there's a lot of minor trauma that you could have had when you were bullied in school or your mom didn't love you enough or your dad was too stern or he beat you one time or said something cruel to you or whatever that hurt you created trauma for you there's lots of different kinds of traumas you can you can incur throughout life and not just in childhood but also in early adulthood even even as a full-on adult you can incur trauma and then you got to be able to notice this trauma and and then deal with it notice when when you're denying this trauma when you're trying to avoid it and hide it avoid facing it you have to notice grudges and bitterness that results from this trauma you see usually the trauma doesn't show up as trauma it just shows up as a grudge or a bitterness or sort of passive aggressive attitude or some sort of anger that comes up unexplainably in various situations and you don't know why and it's only by feeling into that and feeling through the grudges and the bitterness and the anger that you might get to the actual deep trauma and hurt that is there as a wound that is sourcing that that takes introspection you should also notice when you are attracted to and repelled by things and what kind of things attract you and repel you most people don't know most people go through life live through life without a clear explicit understanding of their own attractions and repulsions well how are you going to navigate life this way your whole life is basically dictated by this by your attractions and your repulsions notice your preferences and your deepest needs most people don't know their own deepest needs they're confused about it you might think you need money but actually that's not what you really need what you probably really need is love or friendship or better health or more free time or more time with your children or whatever but you won't understand that until you do some deep introspection on the surface these needs of yours might manifest as i need sex i need a beautiful girlfriend i need a trophy wife i need a husband who will support me i need a boyfriend who will never leave me and will love me unconditionally see these sorts of these might be your external needs this is what's driving much of your behavior but then when you start to really search those and feel into them you will feel through them into something deeper which is is more fundamental and usually these kinds of surface level needs you won't be able to ever satisfy them completely which is why you'll always be dissatisfied end up chasing your tail for the rest of your life without proper introspection you need to be able to notice when you are attached to a thing whether it's a physical thing or an idea a belief an ideology a worldview a perspective feel your attachment if the attachment feels like a like a sort of a like you're you're gripping onto it and you just you don't want to let it go and when you feel that about an idea or a belief that might spark the next sort of epiphany for you which is like hey isn't this wrong isn't there something wrong with the sort of attachment to this idea or to this belief after all if this idea or belief was true if it was truly good why would i be so attached to it might this attachment be a compensation over compensation for something else maybe the reason i've attached this belief is because actually i'm afraid that it's not true maybe the reason i'm attached to this ideology or to this idea is because i really need it because i'm insecure about some aspect of myself you see but that requires a deep introspection otherwise you're just going to be on the surface acting out your attachment you might be attached to some ideology like red pill ideology or in-cell ideology or some sort of nationalist ideology or even like uh some sort of social justice warrior left-wing you know socialist ideology and but but there's something deeper that causes you to be attached to some sort of deeper fear or insecurity about yourself and you might wonder leo but how do i know that attachment is wrong how do i distinguish what's right and what's wrong you feel inwards you see you can actually feel inwards and you can feel that attachment is wrong now of course this is a relative sort of wrong it's not really wrong you can be attached to whatever you want there's nothing ultimately wrong in the world but in a relative sense it's wrong because it's untrue it's predicated upon some sort of illusion or delusion or falsehood and how do you verify that you don't trust me you don't believe me you go inside and you feel it and that's what transforms you you should also notice when you're introspecting when you're unwilling to let a thing go you should notice when you are arguing how you get emotionally triggered in that argument and wonder why that is see this is sort of where i started my whole journey into epistemology is i would have these arguments with my religious friends in high school and i would get triggered emotionally in these arguments and i thought that i had a strong very strong scientific materialistic skeptical position atheistic position that i was arguing from i thought it was true uh so to me when i started to feel inwards i i it it puzzled me huh you know i'm having these arguments with these religious that's how i thought of them religious fundamentalist fools who are trying to you know peddle their stupid christian ideas to me i'm arguing with them i know my arguments are are on firm ground i know that what they're trying to pitch to me is delusion and yet i feel there's something missing here why do i get emotionally triggered in these arguments what is that about could that be because on some even deeper subconscious level i'm unsure about my own positions i have certain doubts there are certain inconsistencies which i am hiding from my own self and sure enough that's exactly what there was but i had to really go deep inwards see most people they don't do that when they're arguing most people when they're arguing that argument is just uh it's just all externalized you know they're just spouting their ideas they're not actually questioning their own positions they're not feeling into their own biases and attachments they're not looking into the underlying fears that might be sourcing this argument because if you were really in possession of the truth you wouldn't argue about it there would be no argument and there would be no insecurity and there would be no emotional reactivity and triggering and you wouldn't feel dirty or bad about it but see when you feel into something and you feel it it's kind of dirty you feel it's it's limiting you feel it's uh it just feel i don't know how to describe it it just it doesn't feel right that's that's a little clue that your higher self ascending to you that hey maybe you're fooling yourself here you need to be able to introspect and notice when your ego uses logic and selfish ways people love to use logic without any ounce of introspection they just spout logic without any recognition of the possibility that the logic they're using has been co-opted by their ego and infested at its root with self-biases and self-deception how do you know the ego hasn't corrupted your entire logical system the way you find out is by introspecting watching yourself using your logic and wondering what's really going on there what is sourcing this logic how can you trust this logic and if you do that i guarantee you that you will notice that your logic is utterly corrupt and infested with self-bias there's nothing objective or scientific about the way that the human mind uses logic in thinking about the reality and making sense of reality it's utterly selfish and it's utterly untruthful you need to be able to notice and admit when you truly don't know a thing but you're pretending like you do this is a huge one you should immediately recognize this within yourself times when you are acting like you know a thing when really you don't know it how do you know when you know a thing and when you don't again you feel inwards you don't ask a scientist you don't go read and consult the bible to tell you whether you really know a thing you don't talk to some guru or ask him a question like hey do i really know god do i really know am i really awake no no no that doesn't work if you're asking a guru if you're really awake or if you really know god then you're not awake and you don't know god i have people coming to me like this all the time asking me leo here's what i think love is is this really what it is tell me is this what love is is this what god is is this what enlightenment is but if you're asking that question it already tells me you don't know you're just pretending like you do you're hoping that you know you're guessing you're grabbing at straws you're speculating you're convinced trying to convince yourself that you know something that you really don't know it would it would be a lot better if you introspected and realized i don't know i don't know what love is i don't know what god is i don't know if there even is a god i don't know if anything leo says is true this would be a much more honest place for you to start with rather than pretending like you know all these things you see you've watched all this material that i've supplied to you all these answers that i've given you now you've you've you've programmed your mind with all these beliefs and ideas now you're just parroting actualized ideas and concepts but the truth is you don't know these things probably 95 of things i say you don't know yet you pretend like you do religious people if religious people were really honest it would be so easy for them to realize that religion is a self-deception all you have to do is you have to go inside any religious person whether you're a muslim jew christian hindu whatever whoever you worship or follow just if it's very simple just go inside it and truly truly genuinely with with full honesty ask yourself do i really know what god is do i really know what the truth is do i really know what awakening is and the answer will be no you don't you don't know and that's what's true for you and that's the best place to be is there rather than pretending but see these religious people are so hooked on pretending like they know they can't admit a religious a religious person can't admit even such a simple thing as did jesus exist if you're a christian right now i want you to pause like if you are really serious about truth if you want to stop playing all the [ __ ] games and you just you really want to get to the truth of religion like do you want to just be a christian in name only or do you want to actually get to the truth if you really want to get to the truth go inside of yourself right now and ask yourself do i really know if jesus even existed and the obvious answer is no you don't know that's the obvious that's the only possible answer that you can have you have no idea whether jesus actually existed and yet if this exercise was offered to 95 of christians they would not do this simple exercise why because they're so wrapped up in needing it to be true because if you admit that you don't even know whether jesus is actually real if you admit that that's it that's the end of your religion so there's no way the mind can allow that but what you should be able to do as a if you're if you're really interested in truth as if you're a christian or a muslim whatever you should be able to go inside and you should be able to feel with enough introspection you should be able to feel your own defensiveness and denial of even wanting to do this exercise see your mind immediately is going to go into this kind of overdrive mode to lash out at me at what i'm saying because you're gonna have to demonize the messenger here in order to get away with this and you have to come up with some sort of rationalizations or excuses for why the very simple exercise that i'm proposing to you here is isn't right but deep down in your mind if you do the exercise you'll know it's right so the only way you can deny it is by all sorts of distractions excuses rationalizations and other sorts of defense mechanisms and when you're when your mind is employing these defense mechanisms deep down the subconscious level you know it and you can feel it but in order to feel it you have to be willing to go inside to feel rather than lashing out and externalizing and and projecting all of your [ __ ] onto me you see try it try feeling into it and i mean this doesn't just apply to christians or muslims or whatever if you're a scientist uh you can you can do a similar exercise go inside and ask yourself do you really know that antarctica exists do it do it right now the only possible valid answer is no you don't know you don't know you're going to sit there and pretend like you do here come all the excuses for why antarctica is not just a belief and how it must exist blah blah blah blah blah because of this because of that because of this because this other thing but the reality is that you don't know whether antarctica exists that's just that's just the fact there's no other possible answer unless maybe you've been there but how many have you been antarctica you say well leo i could go there you believe you could go there which is different from actually going there and the only way to notice that difference is by feeling inwards see can you feel that your conviction that you could go to antarctica that that is a belief no different than uh a muslim's belief in allah ah leo but they're not different they're told i mean they're not the same they're totally different yeah now you got to notice that that is your mind spinning up rationalizations and excuses as a defense mechanism it takes practice i know i know it's hard at first it's hard to believe these things at first but uh but that's the power of this this this skill very powerful skill you need to be able to notice when you're manipulating another person or a situation this is huge oh my god manipulation the topic look every i got i'm giving you this list of these different things that you can notice different domains of things you can notice this list is probably of 50 items long uh i could shoot a video maybe i could create a course on an entire on every on every bullet point i could probably create 50 courses on all these 50 domains that's how deep each one of these domains is this domain of manipulation noticing how and when you manipulate and why you manipulate other people in situations this is oh my god [ __ ] this this will take you a decade just to understand the significance of what i'm saying a decade of work just to understand the significance of what i'm saying not even to master it just to understand the significance of what i'm saying you can feel when you are manipulating versus when you are just authentically expressing yourself or relating with another person or situation to be able to notice yourself manipulating it is a is huge hugely important most people can't do this you need to notice your motives and intentions and oftentimes your surface level motives have ulterior motives they're sort of like the false [ __ ] motives that you present out there for others and for your own ego self these are the excuse motives and then there's the real true underlying ulterior motives for the things that you do you need to be able to notice those by feeling into them you need to be able to notice when you're not being authentic in order to please somebody else this is huge how much of your life have you wasted pleasing others parents authority figures teachers co-workers bosses lovers and partners many of you women suffer from this you uh because you're trying to fit in you're trying to be loving and supportive of your man or whatever or you're trying to fit in some community or some organization or some group you sacrifice your own authenticity in order to please them to make them feel happy because it makes you feel happy when others are happy you don't want to rock the boat you don't want to be too self-imposing on others but you got to be able to feel into the fact that you're not being authentic when you're doing that and that's going to cost you that's going to come back to bite you you're going to be suffering with that for the rest of your life notice when you are giving your power away you need to be able to notice your insecurities and the overcompensations that you've created for your insecurities are you insecure about your hair your teeth your skin your height your breast size your dick size other aspects of your personality or your physical appearance your giant nose or whatever and then how do you how do you cope with that how does that feel how does it feel to be insecure about your hair or about your teeth or about your weight or whatever and then what do you do to compensate how do you think how do you feel how do you protect yourself how do you shield yourself and block yourself off do you not look in the mirror do you create some sort of ideology about how oh because i'm short the tall people those are there they got it so easy these tall people and they're their [ __ ] and their jerks and all this because you know i'm short and i have to deal with that my whole life do you create an ideology like that do you now believe that you're unlovable do you now believe that you're low value and that you'll never find a mate and you'll die alone and miserable see noticing your insecurities is huge because usually we don't want to admit our own insecurities to ourselves because we're so busy overcompensating for them we develop entire worldviews and belief systems to compensate for our own insecurities you might build an entire job or career around some insecurity of yours you might build an entire life purpose like you might become a christian missionary that flies off and tries to proselytize you know uh poor underdeveloped you know brown folk in some you know some on some island nation in in micronesia or whatever to your christian philosophy but deep down the the whole root that is sourcing this activity and this life purpose that you think is so great of this missionary work is actually that deep down you're insecure and you have no idea what god is and you don't even really have a full confidence in your own religious belief system so you spend the next 20 years of your life proselytizing others just to avoid looking inwards at these insecurities it's an overcompensation it's a giant a giant overcompensation overcompensations can be very minor or they can be they can be epic you need to be able to notice when you're in denial that's huge because when you're in denial by definition you're in denial that you're in denial so it's really hard to notice when you're in denial because you're going to deny it and no one else is going to convince you that you're in denial only you can notice by feeling inwards when you're in denial denial has a certain feeling to it you can feel for it you can get good at noticing it notice when you're irked or annoyed by constructive feedback when you're threatened by constructive feedback a big one for many people notice when you're learning something new that actual moment when you've learned something new to notice that that's a huge event in and of itself most people learn things but they're not aware of the things they're learning they're not aware of the exact moment when they learn something you can only really truly appreciate that when you introspect notice how you react to failure notice your habits and addictions that's a big one there are gross addictions they're also subtle addictions i have a whole episode that i shot in the past a couple years back called subtle addictions many addictions that you probably don't even think of as addictions start noticing those and also notice further what is sourcing your addictions notice the following notice the tone of your self-talk when you are talking to yourself in that internal monologue voice what tone does that voice take for a lot of people it's very harsh and negative if you use that kind of tone of voice to talk to your boss you'd get fired the same day and you yet you've been using that tone to talk to yourself for the last 20 years of your life and now you wonder why you hate yourself why you're in conflict with yourself why you're miserable all the time well maybe it's just the tone of your voice and you haven't been even noticing that the tone of your internal monologues notice your hidden assumptions in every situation you go into there's hidden assumptions you go to buy a house you're going to have hidden assumptions about how the house works and how the sales process is you get into a new relationship there's going to be a host of assumptions hidden assumptions that you hold about that other person and yourself in relationship with them you go to start a new business there's going to be a bunch of hidden assumptions naive ignorant assumptions that you hold about how business works and how this thing is going to work out and of course it usually won't work out that way it's extremely helpful to be able to notice those assumptions before you dive head first into that situation notice with your job in your career conflicts of interest notice how just the fact that you have a certain career or job or business and you need that job or business to pay your bills to feed your family and your kids and to just support yourself how that in and of itself skews your entire worldview you see if you're working for the pharmaceutical industry you're probably going to believe that the pharmaceutical industry is doing something good for mankind and you're not going to see the evils of the pharmaceutical industry because it doesn't serve you to see the evils because your paycheck depends upon you not seeing it see if if your job is working for the catholic church you're not going to see the sexual abuses of the catholic church your mind is going to ignore those because your job depends upon you not seeing them if you work for the oil and gas industry you're not going to see how oil and gas is destroying the environment notice when you sell out or are tempted to sell out and swayed by money like maybe your heart is set upon becoming an artist but then you see this business opportunity over here if you just rearrange your art a little bit you can sell out and you can earn a lot of money but you're going to be some serving some sort rather than serving your artistic ideas you're going to be serving some sort of you know corporate agenda selling some sort of stupid product or whatever it's probably bad for people but hey your art is going to be sold widely and you're going to get a lot of money so that's what you're gonna go for right you gotta be able to feel when you're when you're selling out or being swayed by money notice when you're being invasive and avoidant there are many things in your life that you simply avoid you don't want to even think about them you don't even want to imagine them maybe you don't want to imagine your dog being sick of old age maybe you don't want to imagine your mother or parents being in a nursing home or getting cancer you just avoid those thoughts usually because they might be pointing to something true and you don't want to think about that it's too it's the truth can be too brutal sometimes so we avoid it and evade it you can feel that avoiding sensation if you get good with a skill notice when you're being arrogant obnoxious and disrespectful just just that right there is huge just notice when you're being arrogant in an argument or in discussion with somebody notice yourself being flippant or dismissive when somebody presents you with an idea or a proposal you can feel that flippantness or that dismissiveness when you don't even give some idea the light of day you don't even take a person seriously probably because you're trying to avoid something that they're telling you notice when you are being unjust or unfair to others this is a huge one of course the ego is really good at masking this because it doesn't serve your direct agenda to notice when you're being unfair and unjust uh but this is noticing when you violate the golden rule you know the golden rule means or it says that do unto others as you would like have done unto you but why do so many people violate the golden rule i mean most people would agree about the golden rule in theory in general in principle but then when it actually comes to practice they violate the golden rule all the time people treat others how they would hate to be treated themselves why does this happen so frequently throughout society throughout human history everywhere it happens in your family and your relationship it happens everywhere why does it happen because people don't introspect enough to notice when they themselves are violating the golden rule when they're being unjust and unfair this actually takes takes work to do that notice when you violate your own principles and standards when you break integrity with yourself like you tell yourself i'm gonna go to the gym tomorrow and then you don't do it or you have some sort of standard like i people should show up on time but then you yourself fail to show up on time violating your own principles and standards but then you normally you would excuse it away or you would avoid it or ignore it or evade it or deny it but here you can turn inwards and you can feel it notice it notice what effect that has on your psyche when you break integrity with yourself and violate your own standards and principles notice when you lack intellectual integrity notice when your mind is being weasley in arguments sometimes you can actually catch your mind just weaseling its way out of an argument you you already know that you're wrong and yet still your mind is trying to weasel its way out and save face rather than to admit that you're wrong you can feel for that and notice it notice your own defense mechanisms i'm going to have a whole episode just on defense mechanisms in the future there's a lot to say about that notice when you project and when you externalize this is huge projection i'm gonna have a whole episode about projection as well notice your shadow i'm gonna have a whole episode about the shadow as well i know i've been promising the shadow work episode for years but believe it or not it is coming um notice when you aren't feeling good that's just so simple it's so simple and yet nobody really does it you would think well leo i know when i don't feel good do you really no you don't to truly have enough discernment and awareness of when you don't feel good not just when it's something very terrible but in subtle ways you cannot feel good and there's different ways of not feeling good and they mean different things and the way to to figure that out is to to build this introspection skill a lot of times people will not feel good but they will continue to do that activity or behavior or keep themselves in that situation where they don't feel good for years for decades people can be over stressed and overworked for example for years and decades and keep doing it and simply because they they've so detached their brain from their body that they just sort of dissociate themselves from that and yet they just keep you know they keep pushing forward they keep like being this good soldier pushing themselves forward even though they don't feel good in this job in this career in this relationships in this relationship or with the food that they're eating the most people when they eat some bad food they don't even they're so numb and they lack so they have so little introspection ability that they don't even draw the connection between the nasty food they just ate and how bad they feel a few hours later that takes practice that takes years of practice that could even save your life people could have chest pains for example and not even go to the doctor or not even change their diet or not even change their exercise regimen um and then that heart and then that that pain will lead to a heart attack and the reason it gets so out of hand is because that person simply isn't even just feeling into the fact that they're not feeling good in their heart or some other part of the body isn't feeling good sometimes it can take you months just to notice that you're not feeling good in some part of your body and that that's a serious problem and it requires some some addressing you can then ask the question of well why doesn't this part of my body feel good and of course that might lead you down to some things that you've been avoiding or denying like maybe it's because the [ __ ] you've been eating or because of the way that you've been overworking it at the gym for example you know a lot of guys they go to the gym these gym rat types these uh you know jim bros and uh you know they they work themselves to death and they pull muscles and tear ligaments and all this sort of stuff when if they were just introspecting a little bit more they would be able to notice when some part of their body isn't feeling good when you're pushing too much weight you got to feel to feel that and got to be able to stop before it gets out of hand notice when you're stressed and overworked notice when you're tired and you need to take a nap it took me years of introspection just to get that part down just to notice when i feel tired and then to allow myself to take a nap rather than just denying it because in the past what would happen is i would feel tired but i would feel guilty about taking a nap in the middle of the day or something and i would try to try to you know push myself forward just kind of pull my way through the problem uh and after years of doing this is it's it's unhealthy it's bad for my health it's unsustainable uh and so i've had to come around and rethink that strategy that coping mechanism and i've had to notice that hey you know i am not being aware enough of when i'm actually tired and i'm not honoring that feeling of tiredness because if i was if i was truly loving with myself when i feel tired i would allow myself a break i would allow myself to take a nap and not feel guilty about it and now i do that and life goes a lot better remove a lot of suffering that way also improves the quality of my work too notice your gut feelings and intuitions a lot of times when you're trying to make some important decision you have intuitions and gut feelings but you're so unskillful and feeling into that that you're trying to use your logical rational mind to make the decision and that usually makes for a worse decision notice when you're being closed-minded and stubborn this is huge closed-mindedness is actually something you can feel it's critical for you to be able to feel when you're closed-minded go check out my episode called how open-mindedness works i have multiple actually episodes about open-mindedness go look for those for more on that or actually take you through some exercises for feeling your own closed-mindedness notice and acknowledge when you're wrong a lot of times you're wrong but you don't want to apologize you're too proud to apologize notice that feel it notice when you try to cover up mistakes notice when you feel guilty notice when you feel shame and embarrassment notice also when you feel love and spiritual connection so it might seem like i'm telling you to notice all this negative stuff about yourself but it's not just the negative stuff you also want to notice the positive stuff like when you truly feel genuine love or a genuine spiritual connection or an artistic connection an aesthetic connection to reality you're inspired by something you're enthusiastic you're motivated notice that notice what is causing that and then do more of that i mean this isn't rocket science it's so simple you want to have a good life just notice what makes you feel love motivation inspiration joy and spiritual connection and just do more of that and do less of the opposite and there you go there's your formula for how to create a great life but that assumes you know how to feel into this stuff you have to be able to distinguish between false dirty sorts of pleasures and satisfactions versus high quality spiritual pleasures and satisfactions a dirty pleasure is you know gorging yourself at a buffet on some greasy food that's a dirty satisfaction it feels good for a while then it feels terrible and there's price to pay for it and it's ultimately never that fulfilling and then you have much higher qualities of of happiness and joy which is the more of the love and spiritual connection sort and you got to notice the difference between those two and what kind of activities and behaviors lead to one versus the other of course you have to notice the contradictions and inconsistencies of your own worldview notice the circularity and question begging of your own worldview this is huge for many of you rationalists and scientists and skeptics and so forth you might say leo what contradictions what inconsistencies what circularity well how do you know that science is true because science tells us that science is true okay how's that different from the bible telling a christian that the bible is true see basic circularity but you can only notice that if you like genuinely want to look inwards with objectivity you skeptics have you noticed as a skeptic that you're skeptical about all sorts of things but you're not skeptical about your own skepticism basic contradiction and inconsistency you rationalist and logical people have you noticed how do you know that logic itself is valid and consistent how do you know that logic is not circular what are you using to justify your logic further logic can you see how that's circular you're begging the question there i mean all it takes is a little bit of introspection but you're not able to do it so you're stuck in your logic notice when you're fantasizing you gotta distinguish between direct experience versus fantasy a lot of these new age type of people love to fantasize about stuff because they're blurring the boundary between fantasy and reality and of course there is no firm boundary between the two because reality fantasy are ultimately just different forms of consciousness but still it's important to be able to distinguish these things on a practical relative level notice when you're in an unresourceful state in a bad mood such that you don't act or make decisions from that state notice your own privileges if you were born in a wealthy part of the country if you were born white if you were born tall if you were born with good health and good genetics if you were born to good parents who didn't abuse you if you went to good schools if you were fortunate not to be born into poverty if you were born into a decent country like america or western europe somewhere in a decent democracy although not so much in america anymore um you know notice these privileges people take this stuff for granted notice your perspective is a perspective rather than reality that's a big one notice your interpretations you have to be able to notice and distinguish between what you call reality versus your interpretation of a situation a lot of the things that people call facts and reality and objective science or whatever it's actually not that it's an interpretation you gotta be able to notice how your mind is interpreting the situation and to recognize that that's that's not the situation itself there's a difference between the situation and your interpretation of it notice you're being peer pressured when you're conforming and also notice social conditioning in you you have to be able to notice where your beliefs came from like maybe i just believe in christianity because my parents were christians oh yeah that's exactly what it is if you actually go inwards and you feel inwards you'll realize that that's exactly the only reason you're religious is because your parents were it's just it's pure social conditioning pure conformity but you're going to deny that notice that you're going to deny that double notice that you're going to deny that you're going to deny that you're going to deny that it's a double denial triple denial notice all those layers you have to go meta to notice all the because your mind is always building up extra layers of of deception so you have to be able to go one level beyond whatever deception your mind concocts notice when you're being rebellious just for the sake of being rebellious i know that i had a lot of that problem when i was younger uh i would love to be just you know challenge authority just for the sake of challenging authority even even if i even if it's wrong like even if it's the wrong position i would just take the position just because it was rebellious or iconoclastic and i noticed you know through introspection i noticed that i noticed that it felt wrong it felt wrong just to rebel for the sake of rebellion and so i stopped doing that for the most part notice your impact on others and your ecosystem notice the collateral damage and externalities that your actions and even just your very living creates most people ignore that notice the games and roles that you play in the very mask various masks that you wear notice when you're being pretentious and fake notice when you're posturing notice when you're constructing reality on the fly using words categories and concepts we talked about this in the nine stages of ego development part three where we talked about the construct aware stage a lot of it has to do with noticing how language is shaping your whole construction and understanding of reality in your sense-making process notice your mind constructing self-serving narratives notice when you're suffering notice different kinds of suffering nose notice what causes suffering notice your exaggerations and strawmans of other people's perspectives notice when you aren't actually understanding another person's point of view this is huge you can actually feel in whenever you're dealing with another person's point of view when their point of view is radically different from yours you can actually feel inwards and you can notice you can ask yourself am i truly understanding their perspective and your heart will tell you no you're not notice various generalizations and stereotypes that you subscribe to and make notice your own internal divisions and conflicts notice how your mind creates problems catch your mind in the act of creating a problem and then you solve that problem and then your mind creates a new problem notice that problems are not found out in the world problems are something your mind creates notice when a new problem arises and then when it disappears and then in general notice when you're being selfish notice your own corruptions notice when you're being a devil notice how you're contributing to global evil so there you go just a small list of things for you to notice you can spend the next 50 years of your life try to notice all these things and you still won't master it all so i hope you can start to see the power of and significance of this simple skill of building introspection and why i tell you without much exaggeration this is perhaps the most important skill that you can develop as a human is the skill of introspection now you can see how that can be so true because it touches on so many domains there's almost no aspect of your life that doesn't affect so let's spend a little bit of time here now talking about applications of this stuff i already sprinkled in little bits and pieces of the application as i was giving you the list but here's some more for example if you're a professor or an academic start feeling in to the various kinds of inner workings of your mind which are propping up your academic intellectual efforts feel into that feel into the game that you're playing when you're engaging in academia when you're writing your research paper feel what's actually going to feel how your profession is shaping the way that your mind is working this is will what will determine whether you're going to be a hack academic or professor or a really brilliant visionary one whether you're able to feel into that if you're a medical doctor same thing feel into how the bureaucracy and the social conditioning of your profession shape the way that you practice medicine feel how you're corrupted by the money and incentives that these pharmaceutical companies are offering you you know when the pharmaceutical rep comes over once a month and brings you a free lunch to your secretary and takes you out for golf and all those sort of feel into how that's corrupting your profession that's the point of why he's doing that he's trying to corrupt you feel that feel how you're not able to explain the various cases and patients that come in you're not able to you're not able to explain all of the diseases and ailments that they suffer from because your your profession has just taught you to categorize things into a couple of you know patients into a couple of narrow categories materialistic categories and you're not dealing with the more subtle aspects of health that they come to you for you just ignore those feel that see this will make the difference between being a hacked doctor and being a life-saving doctor an extraordinary doctor if you're an atheist or a scientific materialist i've already given you a little hints here and there and practices but feel your attachment for example to atheism there is an attachment there if you go inside and you feel into into into your atheist positions first of all you can feel and notice that it's just a belief it's not truth at all you have no idea whether god exists or doesn't exist feel that you you're pretending feel yourself making arguments and excuses and rationalizations about that feel yourself being attached to that position how resistant you are for example to an idea that there is a god or that there is angels or other things like this just feel that inside of yourself this will transform everything for you if you're able to do that feel yourself making excuses about that feel yourself going to hyper rational mode just to argue with me and to deny what i'm saying if you're a muslim feel into the fact that the only reason you're a muslim is because your parents were and you were indoctrinated into it that's the only reason there's no other reason that people are muslims the only reason people become muslims is because they're indoctrinated into it that's the only reason and i'm not picking on muslims here i mean this applies for to christians and and jews and so forth but just feel that feel go back into your mind into the past and actually trace through the steps of indoctrination that resulted in you now holding these firm muslim beliefs feel your attachment to allah feel your attachment to muhammad feel your attachment to the quran feel that it's deeply biased there's nothing objective about it you're not equally attached to the torah you're not equally attached to some buddhist scripture or sutra why not there's no good reason why not it's just just indoctrination it's just your personal bias notice that that's your bias if you're a psychologist or a therapist and you're practicing with a client again feel into feel into the sort of social conditioning and indoctrination that you received as a psychologist or therapist in school and university in your training programs that got you to categorize people into various you know little pigeon holes and how really if you're honest with yourself you have no deep understanding of human psychology even if you think you're a good psychologist just admit to yourself feel inwards that you you don't really understand human psychology very well at all you don't even understand your own psychology very well feel that feel how much of a hypocrite you are here you are serving as a therapist for all these clients who are dysfunctional and messed up and that when you go when you go home you are perhaps even more dysfunctional than some of these clients of yours and yet you're sitting there pretending like you're some you know some great psychologist and that you understand the human psyche no you don't if you truly understood the human psyche you wouldn't be as dysfunctional as you are if you're a conservative feel your attachment to your conservative positions and ideology feel your closed-mindedness you are close-minded i guarantee you just feel it don't believe me just feel it feel your close-mindedness feel your inability to take social responsibility feel the rationalizations and excuses and denials that you create feel the double standards that you use when arguing with liberals if you're a liberal same thing feel about how emotionally triggered you get when you're dealing with some conservative who you think is stupid or backwards feel the arrogance in you feel the fact that you don't actually truly understand the conservatives position you've never really looked at the and you don't want to look you avoid looking at the conservative position or point of view as a liberal because you think you're above it notice the kind of rationalizations and double standards that you use for your liberal policy positions and political maneuvers and i'm not saying that the conservative and liberal are are both doing the same thing they're not they're not symmetrical but uh that doesn't excuse the liberal the liberal is more developed than the conservative mind but that doesn't excuse the liberal from many of these problems that i've been outlining here as a liberal you have a lot of introspection to do as a progressive if you're progressive and you're thinking well yeah the liberals do but not progressives i use the term liberal very loosely i i use it to include progressive as well but if you think you're different from a liberal by being a progressive well i'm telling you as well as a progressive you you've also got a lot of introspection to do you're not nearly as clever as you think you are if you're a conspiracy theorist a flat earther or something like this feel into that feel how attached you are to your conspiracy theories fear feel that you actually don't know but that you're posturing and pretending to know you don't really know if there is a slat you don't really know if there's aliens out there you don't really know if there's pedophiles controlling the world you don't know any of this stuff it's just complete complete fabrication of your [ __ ] mind if you're honest if you want to be honest you can actually feel that and cut it out if you're a soldier in the military feel how the military indoctrinates you into holding certain principles and beliefs feel how you justify to yourself your own participation in the uh killing of others and the training to kill others how you justify it how you rationalize it how you glorify it how you demonize enemies and bad guys how you create a purpose out of this how you cast yourself as the good guy feel that as a wife in an abusive relationship feel how you are giving your power away how you're being a doormat how you're being a people pleaser you're just pleasing this abusive guy because you whatever whatever stories excuses you tell yourself feel how you create a victim roll out of this for yourself feel the excuses you make about how oh i can't leave him if i leave him it's going to be bad and how am i going to pay the bills and who's going to take care of the kids and all that feel that feel the fear feel the insecurity that's that's keeping you in this toxic abusive relationship feel the attachment the neediness for sex or for love or for approval if you're an incel feel the toxicity of your ideology feel the misogyny that's in your heart it's there i guarantee it feel all the limiting beliefs that that are there about how you're never going to get a girl and how uh girls are just [ __ ] and they're they're only interested in chads and you're not good enough and all this and that you're hopeless and that you're too ugly and all they care about is the size of your dick and all this notice all that notice how you're playing victim notice how you're creating this ideology notice how you're not taking action if you're a pickup guy and you're into pickup notice how manipulative you are with women and notice how you excuse your manipulations for sex notice how you don't treat women according to the golden rule in the way that you would like to be treated you don't i guarantee it notice how you lie notice how dishonest you are in your interactions with women in order to get sex notice why you do it notice how it makes you feel notice how you lie about it with you and your friends notice the ideology you've created around it if you're a businessman or a boss or a salesperson notice how you swindle and exploit customers notice how you manipulate them notice how you do manipulative marketing notice how that makes you feel inside notice the kind of excuses you create in order to screw other business people out of the money it's like well yeah i got to screw him out of money because if i don't screw him out of money he's going to screw me out of money notice how you exploit your employees and how you justify it to yourself if you're participating participating in a debate any debate whether you're in it or you're observing it notice your attachment to various positions in the debate you're not actually trying to be truthful in the debate you're attached you're arguing for a position or you're rooting for some position you're trying to score points notice that notice it feels wrong it's out of integrity with the truth if you're participating on some online forum or you're writing a comment on youtube or elsewhere on my forum notice notice when you're just talking [ __ ] notice when you're just uh keyboard jockeying when you don't know what you're talking about notice when you're acting out notice when you're posturing and pretending to know more than you really do know those are a few of areas of application for you just to get your mind jogging so to start to wrap this up how do you avoid self-deception you know i talk about self-deception being this huge giant problem see my three-part series on self-deception called self-deception part one part two part three check those out those are some of the most important episodes i've published so if you've watched that and you understand the severity of the problem self-deception how do you break out of it well it's very simple through years of introspection to the point where you are intimately familiar with all the tricks of your own mind how do you make good decisions in life through introspection by getting so good at knowing yourself so deeply and developing and honing your intuition and listening to your heart how do you discover what's true through introspection with a genuine radically self-honest inward search searching your own experience with crazy high integrity and objectivity and impartiality cutting through all of the deceptions you don't look for truth in a book you don't get it from a guru you don't learn it from a video you get it by radically self-honestly looking inwards that's the only way you'll get truth how do you become an authentic person how do you stop being fake by studying all your posturing insecurities and all your inauthenticities all of the compensating mechanisms that your mind uses all of the reasons that you're inauthentic all of your fears that need to be faced in that situation how do you become a good human being in general through introspection by studying deeply your own devilry and selfishness you see reality is a dream it is this is a dream when a dream hello wake up you can wake up at any time you want uh if you are serious enough about it so reality is a dream and if you can't step back and observe this dream you're going to be entranced by the dream in this illusion lost in the illusion the illusion will run you and that's what's been happening for most of your life and to most people in your life if you don't develop an intimate familiarity with the trickeries of your own psychology in mind you will forever be self-deceived that's just the bottom line there is no cure or substitute for a lack of introspective ability or self-awareness nothing will ever compensate this ability you cannot outsource it you cannot buy it you cannot shortcut your way to it you cannot fake it money won't do it sex won't compensate for it success won't compensate for it fame won't compensate for it so stop looking to authority figures and external sources to tell you what is true if you really care about the truth commit to a search of your inner experience this is very counter-intuitive because it doesn't seem like experience subjective experience is something you can trust it doesn't seem reliable enough that you would be able to find truth in it you want something outside of yourself to be the anchor of truth for you you want a scientist or a textbook or a bible or a guru to ground and anchor the truth for you but what you don't realize is that scientist that textbook that bible that guru these are all just what aspects of your own mind of your own consciousness of your own subjective experience so how can they possibly ground the truth when there's only subjective experience and nothing else you see the problem how can you ever ground yourself in anything objective that doesn't work what you have to realize is that actually there's a deeply counterintuitive move here that needs to be done is that you need to go deeper into your subject you need to go so deep into your subjectivity that you come out the other end of it and it's recontextualized as actually something that's not subjective at all but that it's absolute and what you realize there is that turning inwards is the only reliable anchor that you have it's more reliable than any external source and that really what you've been doing your entire life is you've been externalizing and avoiding responsibility for truth itself you've been trying to place truth somewhere outside of yourself when really it is the center of what you are and who you are it's at the center of you it always has been but you've been too scared and too avoidant of that if you want to understand this problem on an even deeper level go check out my episode called how authority works where i explain to you how you externalize all authority and that really there's only one authority entire universe which is you and there can't possibly be any authority but you because your subjective consciousness is all that exists you are all that exists but anyways that's getting 2d for this episode here i want to issue a few warnings here before i conclude warning number one is that introspection is not speculation and it's not rationalization does not belief so don't fool yourself into thinking that you're doing introspection when you actually aren't if you're sitting there and rationalizing your worldview that is not introspection if you're sitting there and you're speculating about things aimlessly and just grasping at straws with your mind that is not true introspection and if you're just believing in stuff that i'm telling you or that somebody else told you that is also not introspection introspection it can involve questioning it can involve contemplation but ultimately at its at its root it's a it's a very almost passive quiet ability it's observation you sit and you patiently observe your mind at work without judging it without emotionally reacting to it without trying to manipulate it without trying to change it you just observe very patiently for more on that go go see my episode called learning equals observation where i talk about more about how observation is done uh another warning here is that uh memorizing and parroting actualized.org concepts is not the same thing as introspection ability just because you've watched a hundred of my videos and you can parrot many of the things that i say that does not mean that your introspection skill has improved at all so beware of that trap also beware of the following is that introspection only works in tandem with a genuine intention for truth and a commitment to intellectual integrity that is key you need to be able to and this is part of introspection when you're introspecting you need to be able to feel when you are being aligned with a genuine intention towards truth and a commitment towards integrity rather than some sort of defending of a position or reinforcing of a of a bias of yours or just acting out something that you want or something that you personally need like money or sex or whatever else right so when you introspect you have to place everything else as being tertiary compared to your getting to the truth of the matter so when you're questioning yourself you know am i being honest am i lying to myself am i rationalizing am i am i blaming somebody am i scapegoating some whatever any of this stuff on the list i talked about if you're trying to ascertain that the first thing you got to do is you got to ground yourself in a genuine intention for the truth what does that mean that means you have to actually want the truth at all costs so go into yourself right now and feel it feel you can feel when you want the truth or when you don't you can feel when you're aligned with when you have an intention to reach an accurate perception of something versus where when you're just you know you're just doing something else that's crucial so i have a new value for you that you can adopt in your life the value that you can adopt is truthful accurate clear introspection that can be a value that you set for yourself write that in your common place book in your journal whatever and that can be a value that you honor for the rest of your life truthful accurate clear introspection genuine introspection not just a validation of your pre-existing beliefs and ideas and opinions no no that's not genuine introspection genuine introspection means that when you introspect if this thing that you're introspecting violates all of your beliefs and all of your ideas and all of your desires and all of your cravings and needs and personal wants you're going to go with the answer rather than all of your other crap see that's what you use to cut through self-deception because ultimately the engine of self-deception is your own cravings and needs and wants and biases and all that if you care about those more than you care about truthful accurate clear introspection you will never get the truth can you see why because you're always sidetracked by some personal thing you have some personal grudge or grievance or craving or desire or some need to mean to manipulate yourself or somebody else you have to let go of that of all that another warning for you is that introspection comes at a cost there's a reason that most people don't introspect what do you think that reason is because when you do introspect the i'd say the biggest reason is is that um it's the emotional labor that comes with discovering all of the self-deceptions and lies and all the ugliness within yourself it's too much to bear for most people the amount of lying and dishonesty and self-deception in your worldview is so outrageously high that it would make you vomit physically vomit you would feel physically ill if you ever became conscious of all of it at once it might knock you to the floor if you did so usually what you have to do is have to get pick away at it for years bit by bit by bit because it's too much to handle at all and so even when you're picking away at it still you're going to be bombarded with ugly truths about yourself and about society in the world that you're not going to want to admit you're going to want to be in denial about emotional labor will come with that there's going to be struggle and difficulty it's going to be confusing as you're introspecting at first it's going to be difficult like i said you're learning to surf and you're just sort of trying to balance yourself and you're not quite sure how you take some nasty spills you do some wipeouts you you maybe start to doubt yourself you start to tell yourself something negative like oh this is not going to work at all this is you know not worth it anymore and so on and so you'll quit you won't develop the skill also another huge reason why introspection isn't done and the cost of it is that uh the more you introspect the more responsibility you're going to take for your life the more you're going to realize how little responsibility you took for your emotions your relationships your communication your actions and behaviors your responsibility to others to society to mankind to life to the universe to god it's too much responsibility for most people to handle they don't want this much responsibility this responsibility makes your life harder introspection makes your life harder it's a lot harder to live life when you are conscious of the consequences of your selfish thoughts beliefs behaviors biases rationalizations emotional outbursts and reactions because once you see all that once you see how big of a devil you are you're sort of now basically obligated to be better to be a better person and it's not easy to be a good person it's not easy to surrender the devil that you have been most of your life that's hard that makes your life hard business will be harder relationships will be harder [Music] politics will be harder when you're dumb and you're ignorant things seem simple and easy because you have no idea of the the true consequences of your beliefs and actions and behaviors everything will become harder being good is hard being bad is easy being bad is the path of least resistance being god-like this takes serious work this takes a lifetime of work so why do it you might ask you might say well leo if it's so hard why should i do it why don't i take the easy path well like i've said in the past uh you know life is counterintuitive and sometimes the easy life is actually the hard life and the hard life is actually the easy life now another important point here that you need to remember as you undertake this journey and this pursuit of a lifetime of building introspection skill is that it will take you years to develop significant introspection skill you're not going to accomplish this in a few months this is a commitment that you make for the rest of your life to pursue this you'll be pursuing this for decades also understand that this is a subtle skill that nobody in society is going to really push you to develop no one's going to force you to develop it no one's going to ask you hey how's your introspection skill going today are you keeping up with your commitment no one will care in fact they will try to do the opposite they will try to distract you and to get you to do everything but introspect society does not teach introspection it does not value introspection uh and this is such a soft and abstract fuzzy skill that see you can't easily externalize it you're not gonna get a bunch of praise for it people aren't going to see the fact that oh oh you're this amazing you got this amazing level 100 introspection skill oh wow you're you're so cool man let me follow you on instagram let me pay you some money no you're not going to get any external rewards for this in fact the more introspective you become the more of a nuisance other people will perceive you to be because now you've got some powerful introspection ability you'll be able to shine that light of introspection not only inwards but also outwards at them and at other situations and people and of course you're gonna be able to cut through [ __ ] because you've cut through your own [ __ ] using this skill you've cut through your own self-deception and because you come you've become intimately familiar with your own self-deceptions you of course very clearly see the self-deception in others and that's exactly what they don't want because they're playing the game of deceiving themselves and deceiving you but now you can see through all that so that makes you a bit of a nuisance and yet on the other hand this is one of the most important skills in life that you can develop because it lets you cut through all the [ __ ] but the cost of that is that you're gonna have to practice this every single day for the rest of your life and if you don't nobody will care and nobody will hold you accountable so the only one who could hold yourself accountable for developing this skill is you nobody else i am maybe the one of the few other people on this planet who will try to hold you accountable once in a while if you keep watching my videos to keep working on this skill but otherwise virtually nobody will so it's all on you is what i'm trying to say and that's what it means to grow up that's what it means to be an adult is to take that responsibility right your mom is not going to remind you to keep doing this the tv commercials are not going to remind you to keep doing this youtubers other youtubers are not going to remind you to keep doing this and even i might forget to remind you about this you know i'm not going to remember in every single episode to remind you it's not practical it's your job to do that so i recommend that right now and for the rest of your life you make this commitment to adopt this introspective attitude from here on out to work on it to commit to honing your introspective skill to level 100 and just again if you're wondering is this really something that i should do leo i don't know i don't know you make it sound kind of hard why why should i do this why should i invest all this time energy well here's how we figure that out close your eyes right now and go inside of yourself right now and i want you to ask yourself i want you to ask your deepest self and your deepest intuitions and your heart i want you to ask yourself if i spend the next 20 years of my life committed to developing this introspective skill as leo has laid it out here over the last two hours and i become good at penetrating all these different domains with my own with the light of my own inner awareness if i become good at that is that something that's going to be worthwhile is that going to pay me dividends is that a wise thing to do close your eyes feel into a feel for the feeling of it and that feeling is your answer don't look for a logical answer that feeling is your answer follow that feeling that's what makes you fully human all right that's it i'm done here please click that like button for me and come check out actualize.org that is my website you will find my blog the forum the life purpose course the book list i'll have more courses coming out in the future make sure you stay tuned for those so that when i release those you'll be aware of them you can support me at actualize oh sorry at patreon.com actualized if you like this work and you want me to keep releasing more and in the future i'll be using some of that funding and money to do some advertising and to promote this content more to others so if you want to help spread this this life-changing material then you can do that a little bit help me out with with patreon that helps and i appreciate that thank you guys for supporting me uh because there's a trade-off there's a trade-off between the depth of content that i like to deliver and then the popularity of the content every 10 minutes that my videos are longer is me losing like 10 of my potential audience clicks views profits and so on and the last thing i'll tell you is that no matter how much i teach you it will mean nothing unless you develop this solid introspection skill actualize.org as good as it might sound is not going to compensate for your lack of introspection abilities only you can live your life only you can feel into the truth of situations and things and things that i said or others have said you have to follow your heart use your heart as a compass to show you where to go and the more you practice that you have the better you get at it until eventually the entire universe will be moving through your heart and guiding your entire decision-making process in your life from the large decisions to the small this is something that takes time takes years to develop this it takes courage to to do it you're gonna make some mistakes as you try but man i don't know i don't know anything that's really as worthwhile so hopefully you can feel that as well and stay tuned with me for more you