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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm doing an enlightenment FAQ I'm going to answer and address some of the most common questions that people have about spiritual alignment and because there are so many questions this is going to be part one of a multiple part series this video is intended for folks who have watched my other videos introducing and talking about spiritual enlightenment so if you don't know what that is and you probably want to go watch those first because this is not going to make much sense to you but if you watch those initial videos and you've been following along then you've probably got a lot of questions about what spiritual alignment actually is and you have a bunch of objections and you're not quite clear about what the ramifications are of pursuing spiritual alignment in your life one of the real tricks about pursuing spiritual enlightenment is that it's it's hard to get serious about the journey until you kind of understand where it's going to take you and what it's going to mean for your life and this is difficult because your ego will concoct all sorts of stories about what spiritual alignment will mean and a lot of these stories are false and so what I thought would be really valuable is to go through in a no-nonsense way and just clearly address all the most common concerns all the most common concerns that I hear you people out there who learn about this stuff for the first time having all the common concerns that I've had when I first learned about this and even to this day as I'm still learning more and more I'm getting more and more my questions answered and what I find is that when you get these questions answered then you're able to go off and take this pursuit a little bit more seriously and also just kind of calms you down because a lot of the objections and fears that you have will be addressed here in some of these questions that I'm going to answer there's a lot of these questions this is a very nuanced subject right you have to be very careful about your mind jumping to conclusions about what the truth of no self means your mind will tend to want to jump to extreme conclusions and turn this Enlightenment thing into this black and white but it's not black and white it's a very big gray area and so we have to tread carefully and use subtlety and nuance and intelligent thinking and reasoning to think about this stuff all right so let's just go ahead and jump right into it so the first thing that people say after they hear the truth of no self is something along the lines of okay léo so I understand that there is no self I've watched your videos you've told me that there is no self I understand it now I accept it what's the big deal I'm there right I got it I got what you're saying and the fact is that you don't got it you got to understand that enlightenment is an experience of what we're talking about here so the truth of no self just saying it to you and you understanding it logically intellectually philosophically theoretically doesn't count for pretty much anything in this work so the big deal is that it's totally different just theorizing about spiritual enlightenment and this idea that you don't exist and actually living from that place right you got to share this that you can live from this place where you actually live realizing that you are not a real physical entity in reality you're merged with everyone else and everything else in reality so this is a huge profound deep shift in the way that you live your life so just because you understand what I told you in one of my videos that's not good enough that just that's just like an interesting little fact that you now can tell to your friends but the big deal here is that now you got to go and actually look for the perience personally gotta find it right it's almost like the difference between talking about being a millionaire we can talk about it all day long but unless you actually become a millionaire you're not going to experience what it's like to be a millionaire you can't use the money until you actually acquire it so it's kind of the same thing here we're just talking about being lightened which is not the same thing as actually being enlightened so this is a very very big difference that you have to understand all right because if you don't understand this and you're not going to undertake the journey to study this stuff deeper and then all you got is you got some mental masturbation going on you're just thinking about this stuff but you're not experiencing it you're not feeling it and we're not doing this journey so that we have some cool theories that we can tell our friends we're doing this because we want a real shift in the way that we live our lives we want a real shift in the way that we perceive life in our emotional well-being in our psychology in our relationships in every aspect of life we want a big shift so until you get that shift don't assume that you've got it the next question that some people have is well Leo if the truth of no self is so simple if the truth is literally that there is no self and that all that there is is these perceptions and reality then how come I can't see it shouldn't it just be obvious like you say if it's so obvious why can't I just understand it and see it like instantly why do I have to spend a thousand hours looking and searching well this is a really interesting question it turns out that your entire psyche has been constructed from the point where you were born and enculturated and raised by your family and grew up in this culture that your entire environment has shaped your psychology in such a way that your psychology is prevented from seeing it even though you can logically understand it and there is this very big difference between logically standing it and actually seeing it so why can't you see it well because for you to see it you would have to give up your notions of self you can't just say ok I understand now because what we're doing here is we're kind of undermining the whole paradigm of understanding the way that you traditionally understand subjects in life enlightenment is the antithesis of that and that's a very uh kind of counterintuitive and unorthodox way to look at life you've never looked at life this way before so what's required here is a drastic paradigm shift it's kind of like looking at an optical illusion and then seeing it flip right and in a sense it almost happens automatically like you can't force it and probably the problem here is that your psyche doesn't want to see this so in fact a lot of the things that you do in your life are actively designed without you knowing it they're actively designed to prevent the seeing of this truth so what this means is that we actually have to go in there and dig deep into your psychology we have to unwire a lot of preconceived notions and beliefs things you were taught from a very young age and when you're taught things at a very young age they tend to just sear into your mind without you questioning them right in the same way that a religion is indoctrinated into a child's mind if he's very young and then it's really hard to get that religion out it's just seared in there because the mind is very very receptive and sensitive and just absorbs everything like a sponge when it's young well in the same way what was fed to you when you were young is this idea that you exist in that you're this personal entity who's experiencing life so to undo that takes quite a lot of work it can take a staggering almost all inspiring amount of work to unwire all that stuff alright this is just how your brain and your mind tends to function so have to appreciate that to do this investigation properly the next question people that ask is okay leo so you're saying that there is no self so does this mean that we live in a matrix like the movie The Matrix and the answer is no we're not saying that you're living in a matrix think about it what did the movie The Matrix really tell us it said that we're living like in a computer simulation and that everything that we're experiencing all these sensations when you're looking at my face and I'm looking at the camera all this stuff that's happening well the matrix says that none of that is real that's just like a like data pumped into our mind by a computer and that you can somehow break out of this matrix and then go into reality in etc etc etc right well that's not what we're saying here in fact what we're saying is kind of the inverse of the matrix it's actually more freaky and more counterintuitive than the matrix what we're saying is that imagine that the movie the matrix what happened was that the matrix Excel itself was real but the person who is supposedly stuck inside the matrix that that's a fiction and what you do is to break out of the matrix you realize that you're not existing at all but the matrix itself exists so to speak right the external world exists it's that you as a personal entity don't exist much more counterintuitive and freaky much more interesting much more intellectually fascinating much more paradoxical than just breaking out of the matrix and it's not that we're saying that your physical body doesn't exist your physical body exists it's part of the phenomenal world what we're saying is that the thing that you think is controlling and looking at the physical body and sensing the physical body that that entity that you call you that that entity doesn't exist right so it's subtle it's it's very subtle point you have to start to go from the black and white to this gray subtlety the other question that a lot of people ask is okay Leo so then is what you're saying is that reality is just an illusion is that what you're saying and the answer to this is no we're not saying that reality is an illusion reality we're saying in fact is real it exists what you're seeing exists all the physical objects that are in your awareness those exist what we're saying is that there's not a you who's looking at those objects whose perceiving those objects so those objects are not the illusion what the illusion is is the you that you think is looking at those objects that does not make the objects unreal that makes you unreal right this is all about you it's not so much about the external world the next question that people have is Leo you talk about enlightenment as being something other than religion or philosophy how is this different than religion or philosophy isn't it the same and the answer is that it's very very different what religion is and philosophy is these are systems of thinking about reality they make certain factual claims about what reality is and how it works they give you certain explanations and justifications and it's basically a model of reality that's what a religion is that's what a philosophy is some of them seem better than others some of them seem more true than others some of them seem somewhat reasonable others seem very ludicrous and and far out there and crazy and it's very easy to confuse enlightenment as just another wacky crazy philosophy or religion but it's not it's really the antithesis of religion and philosophy and if you think that science is what is the antithesis of religion and philosophy well I got news for you it's actually not size is closer to religion and philosophy than it is to enlightenment so how can this be and what is enlightenment actually if it's not a religion or philosophy we'll see enlightenment is not a model it's not thinking about reality it's not theorizing it's not putting justifications out there it's not trying to make sense of reality it's simply being reality being one with reality itself without mental chatter the common thread between religion philosophy and science is that there's a lot of theory building and mental chatter all the time you notice it that whenever you're thinking about religion or philosophy or science you have to be thinking right and thinking is an active process so what's the opposite of thinking it's not thinking now when I say this it sounds a little bit simplistic and you're like well not thinking not thinking is not a good thing thinking is the way that we progress thinking is the way that we find truth well that's exactly the paradigm that we're questioning here what if thinking wasn't the proper way for finding truth and that thinking in fact was separating you from truth could that be possible you have to start to open your mind to that possibility once you do and you kind of distance yourself from thinking and you start to do a meditation you sort of do some of these guided enlightenment meditations that that I want to put out there I put a couple of outcome I probably put one out there so far I'm going to put out some more so what you're going to realize is that oh there's something extremely powerful about just being silent being totally silent and not thinking and that in fact stopping thinking is very very difficult the mind wants to rationalize the mind wants to build theories the mind wants to claim certain facts about reality and is very difficult to stop the mind when you do stop the mind something very powerful happens basically you become enlightened so it's a very very very different thing than just another religion or another philosophy now the trick is that you can certainly take enlightenment and turn it into a religion or turn it into a philosophy and that's something that I'm mmm that's why I'm picking my words very carefully when I do these enlightenment videos I have to be very careful about what I say because I could easily say something that will get people to think of this as a philosophy or a theory or a religion and what that does is that defeats the whole purpose right and this is the whole problem with the egos that the ego tends to want to theorize about everything he doesn't want to actually see what's actually there it wants to theorize about instead even within science the mind theorizes it can't just look at something objectively so the process of enlightenment is just the process of removing all the filters the beliefs the preconceived notions the theories that you have about reality so that you can actually melt into reality and when you finally melt into it then you become reality itself and that is something that either religion or philosophy nor science can offer you it's a very powerful life altering experience the next question is Leo isn't this nihilism isn't what you're really talking about nihilism and the answer is no it's not nihilism at all nihilism is a philosophical system and what nihilism says in a nutshell is something along the lines of life is pointless there is no importance attached to one thing over another thing so everything is basically neutral and everything is pointless so you might as well just not do anything in life there's nothing to believe about life that's what nihilism says well nihilism is not enlightenment because nihilism is a philosophy nihilism is a way of thinking about reality enlightenment is a way of not thinking about reality at all there are certain superficial parallels between but one of the key differences is that nihilism tends to lead to this dark bleak outlook on reality as though like reality is meaningless and purposelessness is in purposeless therefore you can you should be depressed and kind of sad because there's no point to living that's kind of the dark nihilism enlightenment is actually a light very positive realization because what you realize with enlightenment is that yes there is no point and there is no meaning to life but this is actually a very positive and great thing because the fact that there is no meaning to life itself has no meaning the problem with the nihilists that he attaches a dark meaning to the fact that there is no meaning the enlightened person he's not doing any mental masturbation it doesn't matter in his mind that there is no meaning because you're just reality reality just exists for its own sake and this is a very beautiful realization even though when you look at it from a distance it seems kind of scary and it seems dark it's actually not dark at all another question that people sometimes ask me is well Li do you keep selling saying that you know religion the philosophies that these are offering stories about reality but aren't you in this video and all the other enlightenment videos also giving us your story so how come your story is true while all the other ones are false it's like you're taking um you're taking some sort of authority or precedence over your own story and this is the extremely tricky aspect of enlightenment work is that everything that I'm communicating to you yes it's just a story it's just another belief for you right but you got to see that what I'm trying to communicate to you is not that you should accept my story but that you should go off for yourself and find what I'm trying to hint at with the story right we're using language and we're using thought to communicate this to you why because the only thing that you really understand and know how to work with is thought you're stuck in a mental prison of thought so for me to communicate this to you how can I do it I can only do it through going inside and using the flawed mental models that you are under we have to go inside your mental cage so think of it kind of like this imagine that you're stuck inside the matrix like in the movie The Matrix you're stuck inside the matrix and now I have to come and rescue you and I'm outside the matrix how do I rescue you if I'm outside and you're inside well I have to actually get inside the matrix and I have to use the falseness of the matrix to tell you about the fact that the matrix is false so that then you can break out but the danger is is that if I come inside the matrix and I tell you hey everything here is false you have to recognize that oh yes everything years false and everything he's saying and he himself is also false he's not real because he's just part of the matrix if I get outside the matrix then I can see what's actually real and so it's kind of analogous to that with what we're doing here right I'm using language and communication here because stories is what you understand the danger is that you will take what I'm saying as another belief system and you're going to turn into a philosophy or a theory and you're going to stay stuck in the matrix to break out what you need to do is you got to say okay what is he actually pointing to all these words they're just words there's no truth here in the words what's he actually pointing to what's he trying to communicate between the lines let me read between the lines and see and then go out go out and actually do the thing that he's hinting at and see what happens right so it takes intelligence and subtlety on your part to understand this communication if you want to be black and white and you want to be very simplistic what you're going to do is you're gonna say well Leo everything you're saying to me is just another story every story's just story so if what you're saying is that every story is false your own story is false and therefore nothing mad and so therefore I'm not going to do what you say and I'm just going to say stuck in my current paradigm but if you do that what that is is that that's you getting lost in your mental prison it's like you're a prisoner and I can't come tell you hey here's the key to breakout you look at the key and you look at you say this key this key can't possibly work this is a [ __ ] key and you throw it away when in fact it was the real key but because you didn't you didn't have the belief enough and kind of the wisdom enough to see that this key could break you free you don't actually try and use it and in not using it you don't break out so be very careful about this trap this is a very very common trap next question okay leo so if I become enlightened will this make me strong and powerful like I'm doing personal development to become really strong and powerful in my life will enlightenment help me become the strongest self and this is an interesting answer the answer is yes and the answer is no it's yes in the sense that what will happen is that you're going to be free of your mental prison you're going to be free of the thoughts that limit you and you're going to be free of the crippling emotions that sabotage you and this is the number one problem that people face in life no matter in what area whether relationships are business or money or health or anything is the emotional and mental blocks that they have so you're going to be free of those to a large degree and that will make you strong and powerful but the other answer here is that it's not going to make you strong and powerful why not well the person that asks this question will this make me strong and powerful that's an egoic question notice that you're asking about well will I be strong and powerful the question is why do you want to be strong and powerful and you also have to realize that the you that wants to be strong and powerful this you is an illusion it doesn't exist this is the matrix that we're talking about so there is no you to become strong and powerful you're not going to gain magical superpowers why because there's no you to control anything so it's not actually possible in reality for you to have any power or strength at all so in a sense what we're going to do is we're going to strip you of all the power and strength that you perceive that you currently have we're going to strip you of all of it and this is why it's going to be very emotionally difficult for you because you don't want to relinquish your strength and your power you want more of it not less of it but counter-intuitively what happens is that if we succeed and stripping you of all your strength in all your notions of power and you finally surrender to the fact that you have no strength and no power at all that becomes the greatest strength of all it sounds like paradox and it kind of is a paradox but this is just how it works this is just how it works so if you're going in this with this ego trip mentality of you know wanting more control over other people or whatever you're not going to get that you're not going to dominate the world through enlightenment but what you will get is you will get peace tranquility and an inner power not an outer power where you get to dominate other people but an inner power where you get to relinquish your sense of self so that in a sense you've conquered yourself and that's the greatest powerful all is the power to conquer yourself the next question is Leo what about freewill are you saying I don't have free will if so it's obvious that I do have free will well in fact what we are saying is that you do not have free will why do you not have free will because you do not exist there is no such entity as a you who can exert will on the material world this is the one of the most bitter peels that you have to swallow with enlightenment is this idea right here and I didn't want to accept it for a long time and I'm still very resistant to it but the more and more that I pursue this inquiry the more obvious it becomes that actually free will does not exist what exists is the illusion of free will and so a big part of the Enlightenment inquiry is breaking down this illusion of free will that you have because one of the biggest ways in which you prevent yourself from seeing the truth of no self is by telling yourself constantly that you're in control of your life and that you have control of your hands and your feet and your mouth and your thoughts and your eyes and everything else in your life that you have controlled this stuff but the fact is that you don't how can this be the case that you don't what you think that you do well because what the ego does and it's a master at this is that the ego claims control and responsibility for things that do not belong to it that's the whole game that the ego plays this is the whole deception is that your entire life you've been telling yourself in your head you've been building this a giant story that you are this entity that gets to control everything and look at everything and experience everything and what turns out to be the case is that this is just false it seems so obvious but it's exactly because it seems so obvious that you've never seen the truth before because it doesn't even occur to you to question the fact that you could not be in control that there is no one inside to be controlling this stuff this one is tricky this point is tricky I'll have other videos that go deeper into this idea of freewill I'm not going to really prove it to you here but basically what you do if you want to prove this to yourself is you can actually sit down in a meditative type state and you can start to look for evidence of whether in fact you are able to control your thoughts the question is who is controlling your thoughts is it you or is it something else and what you're going to discover if you sit down very carefully but this takes a lot of practice so don't think that you can discover this in one day this takes months and years of work you sit down in a meditative state very carefully you try to silence the monkey chatter and you look and you look for evidence of where the thoughts come from who's controlling thoughts and my controlling thoughts wait a minute what am I aren't I also a thought where did I come from if I'm a thought did the thought I create the thought I or did something else and what turns out to be the case that you can actually through first-hand experience come to an understanding of where thoughts come from and what turns out to be the case that they don't come from you because you don't exist but you're not going to fully appreciate this until you actually become enlightened the next question that people have is okay Leo so if all this is the case then what's the point of living you're telling me that there's no point to living then there's no purpose well the fact is that there is no point to living the desire to have a point or a purpose for living is an egoic desire and this is in fact something that creates a lot of problems and stress and emotional turmoil in your life within Lineman what you discover is that there is no point how could there even be sense to talk about a point to living a point from whose perspective there's no who to even have a perspective as to having a point or a purpose in life the fact is that reality exists life is flowing life is one continuous River and you're a part of that River so what's the point well it just exists existence doesn't need a point right what's the point of empty space there's no point it's just it's just there it's just existence the ego needs a sense of purpose because it makes it feel significant this is a problem this is a problem because whenever you feel insignificant then you have this ago ik emotional reaction so this actually creates a lot of distress and turmoil in your life the fact that life is meaningless and pointless don't turn that into an additional meaning of negativity like the nihilist does with true enlightenment what happens that you discover that life is meaningless and the fact that life is meaningless is also meaningless so it's really really deep profound meaninglessness it's so profound that the meaninglessness isn't negative anymore it becomes like a positive sometimes I get people asking me the following question okay Leo so then why don't I just kill myself right now this is a funny question first of all you have to recognize that this is a question that is an egoic reaction right so this is a you're like a knee-jerk reaction against some of the some truth that you heard so first of all recognize that second I'll recognize that what we're telling you is that there's no you to kill and there's no you to do the killing so when you say you're going to kill yourself what we're saying here is that there is no you to control the process of killing are you so it's like a double fallacy there is no you to kill yourself there is no self to kill the self is an illusion it doesn't exist it's almost as though I said let me go kill Santa Claus how do I kill Santa Claus he doesn't exist he's a fictional character you can't kill something that doesn't exist also the reason you want to kill yourself is because you're taking this idea of meaninglessness or selflessness and no self you're taking this as some some negative nihilistic problematic thing in life in fact it's not problematic at all it's a beautiful truth and this truth is going to set you free but the problem is that you're having an egoic reaction against the truth why because the ego the illusion of the ego doesn't want to dissolve the illusion wants to stay put and so therefore it's going to fight and so when you say that you want to go kill yourself in fact you don't want to go kill yourself what you're saying is that you're saying that that what I'm telling you is nonsense because if what I told you was true then everyone would kill themselves well in fact that turns out to not be the case that's just an emotional overreaction on your part the next question is okay leo so then on a practical level is doing business and having a family life is that then pointless too if there's no point to reality and the you know the tactical answer is that yes is pointless I mean what do you think is the point of a business or a family in the long run under your models of reality let's say you don't accept what I'm telling you under your model reality what's the point of a business or family you might come up with some point but if you really track it into the very long term you're going to see that there is no point because in the long run you're going to die under your model you're going to die and your business is going to eventually go bankrupt and it's going to fail even let's say if you think it's going to fail 500 years later okay 500 you're later it's going to fail and your family eventually going to die too eventually the human species will die eventually the whole planet will be incinerated by the Sun eventually the entire solar system will be destroyed eventually the entire galaxy will burn out or be sucked into a black hole eventually the entire universe will experience heat death and eventually perhaps the whole universe will collapse back into a singularity which was the the initial seed for the Big Bang so even under kind of traditional scientific models under your models of reality if you really think about it there is no point to business or family the point only makes sense as like a little trick that you play on yourself you tell yourself oh well I want to build a nice business or I want to go create a great family and I want to leave a good legacy but the fact is that you know no one in your family is going to remember you five hundred years from now just in the same way that you don't remember anyone from your past family that lived five hundred years ago and your business you know what's what's your business going to matter after you're dead it's not going to matter at all but even though we say all that I'm not saying that you should go quit your business and go murder your family or something like this right this is ridiculous the fact is that life has no point but this doesn't mean that you should now become depressed and not do anything in life in fact what this does is this frees you up to now do whatever you want it's like a playground right what's the point of being in a playground and having cool toys and a sandbox well if you got a sandbox you can build castles and you can have fun and you can experience the joy of building a castle you can also experience the you know the the pain of someone having coming in and breaking your castle down and destroying it because in the end no matter what castle you build in sandbox that castle will get destroyed life is just about being and experiencing there doesn't have to be a point stop trying to grasp and cling for some sense of purpose that's your ego doing that that's how it preserve itself that's a false way of living life that's a big lie so in reality with enlightenment you can still go out and work on a business you can still go out and have a family and all these things you do why because you enjoy them basically once you realize that life has no point and you're not depressed about it what that practically means for you is that now you're free to do whatever you want and you're basically going to go do the things you really want to do and you're not going to do the things you don't want to do you're not going to feel obligated you're going to feel to just go and do things that are pleasurable to you that are most meaningful to you even though you recognize that this meaning is kind of a made-up meaning so that's that point the next question is okay leo so then are you telling me that you want me to become some emotionless robot I'm going to come enlightened realize this truth of no self and I'm going to be you come this mo this robot who has no feelings for anybody well this is actually the opposite of what's going to happen if anything the emotionless robot is who you are right now you're not able to presently fully experience and appreciate your emotions because you're like a puppet controlled by your emotions your emotions tug and pull at you with enlightenment you're going to have emotions you can't stop emotions emotions are a real phenomena they're not going away emotions are not an illusion we're not saying that so you're not going to become some emotional zombie robot in fact you're going to be able to feel and experience emotions more richly because now you're going to be in the present moment now your monkey chatter is not going to be driving you crazy and it's not going to be having you living in the future in the past or in your imagination you can experience emotions for real so if you want the most emotionally rich life you should become enlightened the other question is ok leo so do you want me then to become a monk who goes off and meditates in a cave somewhere is that the kind of lifestyle you want me to live and the answer is no becoming a monk is a caricature of enlightenment not every line person is a monk and there's no reason why you have to become a monk if you don't want to become a monk enlightenment is an inner realization it's not a lifestyle and it's not any external behavior in the same sense that if I was telling you that I want you to learn mathematics go learn mathematics and what you tell me is you tell me Leo if I learn mathematics does that mean that I have to become some nerdy college professor of mathematics I don't want to become like my college calculus professor he's lame and of course the problem with that objection is that well just because you learn mathematics does not mean that you have to become a mathematics professor you can learn mathematics and still live whatever kind of lifestyle you want those are two totally different things how you choose your how you choose to live your life is separate from what you know and realize about life now some of you after you become enlightened and actually want to go out and become monks and that's great but you're not going to do it because it's a bad thing you can do it because you think that that's the most meaningful way to live life most of you if you become enlightened will not want to be monks you'll live a more normal ordinary type of life so you have to be afraid that this thing about being a monk and not wanting to be a monk this is like a little red herring that your ego throws out there to say that all wealth this enlightenment stuff is just so far out there so ridiculous it's a kind of lifestyle I would never want it's a terrible lifestyle I don't want to be a monk right but that's a red herring the next question but Leo isn't the ego or the self important to my survival you're telling me to get rid of my ego but I need my ego to survive in life so aren't you threatening me and threatening my survival here and the answer is that the ego in the self don't exist so part of the illusion here is that you think that your whole life you've been responsible for creating these great results in your life and earning wealth and achieving all these goals and getting to relationships and all this stuff and surviving fighting for yourself right well the bitter pill you have to swallow here is that there was no hue that whole time doing it so the ego is absolutely not a part of survival because the ego is not real so it's not important or survival at all and this is a this is a very counterintuitive notion to accept you don't want to accept this why not because when we accept this we basically undermine the entire ego structure and this is not something that it wants because the way that the ego maintains its power is by saying that it's necessary how does it say that it's necessary it says that oh I'm needed for your survival but what if what what if that was just a story in your mind what if it wasn't true well it turns out to be the case that it's not true but it's going to take you some time to to see this you're not going to see it immediately and in fact what you're going to realize later if you go far enough is that your ego and yourself threatens your survival how can this be well because you do a lot of stupid stuff in your life because of ego bar fights those start because of ego wars start because of ego violent crimes and theft and criminal activity those are all ego based those don't exist when you are enlightened you have no reason to do those things all those things are just a mechanism to protect yourself when you realize that there is no self to protect you don't need to engage in that activity anymore so actually your survival will be improved it's very counterintuitive this is very counterintuitive and kind of paradoxical notion but it turns out that actually if you want to get to the highest levels of living and thriving in life you have to abandon your cleanness to the need for survival right if you notice the most admirable high quality human beings in history who were they were they people who were clinging to their survival or were they people who were actually selfless and didn't even care about whether they survived or not right it was people who didn't care and counter totally they thrived now sure some of them died you know Gandhi was shot and Jesus was crucified and so on and so forth and Martin Luther King was assassinated so you know we have some bad examples but there are many people who who are kind of positive examples the next question is Leo but surely the ego isn't all bad surely there are good aspects to the ego right and again this is an interesting one because the ego doesn't exist when you ask this question you assume that the self exists and that somehow if we remove the self then not only do we remove the good parts I mean the bad parts but we also remove the bad of the good parts so it's like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater and the fact is that there is no baby and there's no bathwater that's what we're trying to tell you here so it's not like the ego has good qualities because it's an illusion it doesn't exist it's kind of like if I told you get rid of your notion of Santa Claus kill Santa Claus in your mind and what you said is you said but Leo if we get rid of Santa Claus then what happens to the Christmas gifts I want to keep the Christmas gifts does that mean that there are no more Christmas gifts under the tree come Christmas time I don't want to lose that of course that's silly right because Santa Claus wasn't responsible for the Christmas gifts in the first place so all the good stuff you have in your life that you think you're responsible for maybe your family maybe your relationship maybe your children maybe your business maybe your house maybe your car maybe whatever well I got some news for you and it's a bitter pill to swallow but that wasn't created by you you had absolutely nothing to do with it even though you told yourself the whole time that you did so if we remove the you all that good stuff will still stay so don't have to worry about that next objection below what will happen to my motivation levels if I become enlightened won't I become this list list useless slacker who just lays around on the couch does nothing all day well first of all there are plenty of people in fact probably most people in society who are exactly that very unmotivated I have many clients who have struggle with motivation a lot that I coach right there's a lot of unmotivated people out there and they're very very egotistical right so your motivation levels and enlightenment itself these these are connected in a subtle and complex way the fact is that you might become enlightened and you might lose certain motivations in your life but generally it doesn't make you a lazy slob what enlightenment does is it just clears away your neurotic sense of obligation to certain things in your life so for example maybe right now you're going to work and you're telling yourself that I'll have to go to work I have to build this business I have to be successful I have to earn all this money I have to prove to people that I'm someone I have to build a legacy and then with enlightenment what happens is that you discovered at all I don't need any of that to be happy and so you just drop that whole business now to you right now that might seem scary because you're thinking like oh well I don't want to drop that business but see that's because you still think the business is important to you when you truly genuine and see that the business is not that important and that you really don't enjoy doing it and that you'd rather not be doing it and that your authentic self doesn't really desire to be running a business then you can go off and do other stuff right this doesn't mean that you're not motivated anymore it just means that certain false motivations that are in place right now will disappear on the other hand if you really love this business and it's like a passion of yours and you think that this is really helping people and it's improving the world after enlightenment you might be even more motivated and you might be more empowered to work on this business because there's nothing wrong with running a business and you're still going to want to do things after enlightenment you know why because your motivation wasn't created by you in the first place why because you don't exist so right now when you tell yourself that you're responsible for creating your motivation levels well actually you're not because you're not real so your motivation levels are not coming from you they're coming from the body and the unconscious mind and so those motivation levels will still exist now they might shift but you know what your motivations might shift no matter what if you don't become enlightened next year your motivations might change anyways people quit their businesses all the time people leave relationships all the time people lose motivation all the time people gain new motivation all the time this stuff is just a phenomenon of life and it happens and it's really not up to you what you're going to be motivated by so stop clinging to that the next question is Leo doesn't enlightenment contradict self-actualization and self-help and it'll definitely seem that way at first when you start learning about this and especially if you've been watching a lot of my videos you'll see direct contradictions between stuff I've said in other videos and some of these more advanced videos but you got to understand that personal development is like a staircase with many steps and stages so that you're moving up as you're growing and developing what we're talking about here is some of the most advanced stages that you can get to write to get these high stages you need to work through the intermediate and lower stages so it's not that enlightenment makes everything else that I've been talking about pointless depending on at where you are in your life some of my other more basic more practical videos will be very helpful to you because remember you're stuck in the matrix if you're stuck in the matrix how does someone in the matrix survive well they eat inside the matrix they go to the work inside the matrix they have sex inside the matrix they get married inside the matrix then they die inside the matrix and everything they learn is in the matrix so they only know the matrix right so if I give you a matrix books inside the matrix it's actually going to be useful to you isn't that funny how if you're living in a fake world if I give you a fake objects in the fake world it's actually helpful to you so that's basically what's happening with the lower level videos for example if I give you some relationship advice or if I give you some advice about how to earn more money you might say well Leo isn't that kinda like fake advice well yes but what you're living is a fake life so fake advice for a fake life it in a sick way it kind of works right and also my hope ultimately is that by giving you this fake advice which get you some fake results in your life that eventually you're going to move up the staircase to the higher levels so that now you're in a place where you can actually really go off and do the deep advanced work become enlightened and then you can look back at all this and you say oh all of this was like a staircase that led me to here and every step in a sense had its value but also in a sense every step was kind of like ah not necessary afterwards right it's kind of like building scaffolding to erect a giant skyscraper and then you take the scaffolding off now the question is was the scaffolding useful or was a useless well in one sense you could say it was useless because you had to throw it all away eventually but on in another sense you say well but the scaffolding was actually very essential because without the scaffolding you couldn't build the whole skyscraper so that's what some of my more basic videos are like their scaffolding and the last question that I'm going to cover here is some people ask well Leo should I still keep doing self-help or should I stop doing self-help and this is a little tricky to answer because it really depends on where you are in your progression everyone's a different place it also depends on what you really mean by self-help personally I consider the things I'm talking about now in enlightenment as part of self-help so in a sense if you want to pursue enlightenment you should keep doing self-help also if you're at the lower stages of your personal development and you're having problems with money or relationships or your career or with whatever else you know very basic everyday problems then you actually need self-help because it'll help you to plug those holes so that you can move on to the higher so what I would suggest is that you continue doing self-help and if anything do more self-help now there's one warning here though is that if you've already done a lot of self-help in your life and you've already put into place many different aspects and you've plugged many holes and now you're reaching the higher levels now you might be getting to the point where traditional self-help might not be what you need so maybe you don't need to go read another Tony Robbins book maybe you don't need to go take another relationship seminar maybe you don't need to go read a hundred self-help books right after a while there's like diminishing returns and after a while what you really need is after you've built up a healthy ego you start with a weak ego you build up a healthy ego then what you do is you transcend and release the ego and this can seem a little counterintuitive to some people because some people think like well I spent all this time building up my ego and building up my life and now Leo you're telling me to throw it all away no or telling you is transcend it ascend to the higher stages right ascend there's going to be greater stuff ahead so don't cling to everything that's coming in in your life with self-help and what I would suggest for you is that stop doing the traditional self-help and move more into the kind of quote-unquote spiritual self-help move into that more go practice more meditation watch and study more of mine life and videos or other people's enlightenment videos if you want to read books go read some really high quality books on spiritual enlightenment specifically not just regular self-help hey maybe stop focusing so much on earning more money and having more sex and buying more material objects you don't need those anymore you've gone through that phase now it's time to ascend to the new phase so generally though I was looking to you doing it me I'm still on my journey towards enlightenment I'm not enlightened yet and I'm still doing loss of self-help because it's helpful to me why because I'm living in the matrix I realize it now that I'm living in the matrix but for the time being I'm still stuck in the matrix therefore I still need to eat inside the matrix I still need to go to work inside the matrix right alright so that's it for this part one I'll have other parts coming up in the future so stay tuned for those there's a lot more questions to answer hopefully this was helpful go ahead and post your comments down below click the like button for this video share this video with a friend who's interested in enlightenment and finally comment sign up to my newsletter right here it's a free newsletter at actualized org I release new free videos about enlightenment topics a lot of more a lot more of those to come but also like I said the more basic more practical personal development videos how do you fix your relationships how do you get more money how do you build a great career I'm still very excited about those more basic topics I think they're very important so if you're interested in any of that sign up there's some free bonuses there go sign up right now you