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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video we're doing the enlightenment FAQ part two this is one part in a multiple part series where I am answering the most common questions that people have about spiritual enlightenment so this is part two of the series go ahead and watch part one of mine Lyman FAQ those will be some of the preliminary questions and this continues from that part and we're going to answer a lot of pretty basic and fundamental questions that are going to help you to get your mind wrapped around what spiritual I'm it actually is and disabuse you of some of the myths and caricatures and bad assumptions and fears that you might have about pursuing this for real in your own life so let's go ahead and get started one really important question is what are the benefits of enlightenment and it's not quite obvious at first blush what the benefits are because if you're gonna pursue in Lima you're gonna invest a lot of time and energy into it it seems like you would want to do it because there's some gain for you right what's the value to you well actually in my first enlightenment video the spiritual I'm an introduction video spiritual enlightenment intro that's what it's called there I talked about many of the benefits so I have a whole list of them there let me just briefly summarize what the benefits are the real benefits of enlightenment are that you break free of your mental prison that you stop being a slave to your thoughts into your emotions and that you really get a really deep meaningful tranquility in your life which is something you've been searching for your whole life without really realizing it and here you're gonna actually be able to experience this tranquility regardless of external circumstances so how cool would it be for you to stay calm and even keeled no matter what was happening in your life whether good stuff was happening to you or bad stuff whether you lost your job or whether you lost a family member or whether something didn't go the way that you wanted to go or whether you weren't making the money you wanted to make whether you didn't get accepted into college or whether you didn't get that dream career you wanted or whatever how cool would it be if you could keep your cool and stay tranquil and calm throughout that without getting all crazy agitator the way you do now without having these fits of drama without having these relationship problems without having these career problems without engaging in all this neurotic thinking and monkey chatter without getting swept up by your emotions without having fits of Rage without being frustrated and annoyed all the time without being lonely and sad without getting depressed how cool would that be well that's the primary reason I think that most people pursue enlightenment one of the other benefits is that you get a deeper understanding of reality and truth so if for you truth is a value and you really like understanding what the hell is going on here in this universe well understanding how your consciousness works is like the the key that unlocks at all so it's another really amazing benefit now it's important to understand here that it's not like you're going to be ecstatically happy now all the time in your life and it's not the case that if you're enlightened that you never have a you know a moment of sadness or a moment of loneliness or an emotion of frustration or anger annoyance you can have these emotions but your relationship to these emotions changes completely so that these emotions no longer become a source of suffering but they just become another experience not really any worse or any better than any other experience and so you can live your life really truly free without any kind of obligations another really cool benefit which I talked about my other video is that you get relief from your self-image problems and self-image problems are things like shyness lack of confidence low self-esteem worrying about how you look worrying about what people think of you trying to impress people trying to live up to certain people's expectations right that's a huge category of problems in almost every person's life so how cool would it be to just wipe all that away to make it completely irrelevant well you can do that by getting rid of the self next question so Leo does this mean that I'll have complete control of my emotions once I'm enlightened this is a very interesting question because again let's go back to the truth here that we're talking about which is the truth of no self there is no self there is no you so who is gonna have complete control over his or her emotions nobody so if you think this is going to give you control of your emotions then I got some bad news you have zero control over your emotions because you do not exist paradoxically encounter intuitively once you surrender yourself to this fact what happens is that you get complete peace and calm with your emotions and so what you get is you get kind of a pseudo control you get the appearance of control it's as though you have total control but in fact you have zero control very paradoxical but also very cool and fascinating how can this be well the biggest problem and the biggest reason that you need control over your emotions the reason that you want control over your emotions is because right now you're a slave to your emotions so once you free yourself and you realize that there is no you who's actually experiencing emotions and there is no you to control emotions what happens that you just become calm and cool with whatever emotion is happening it's not the case that with enlightenment you become emotionless you will have emotions there will be plenty of emotions in your life but your relationship to these emotions will change completely and so people looking at you from the outside will think that you have complete control over your emotions or if not complete then you know a lot more than the average person but in reality what's gonna be happening on the inside is that you're gonna realize that there is no me who's experiencing emotions and so therefore everything's cool no need to get my panties in a twist the way that other people do the reason that other people suffer commotion so much is because they believe that there's a them inside who's being threatened by the external world once that notion is removed then life flows very very smoothly next question but Leo what if I'm already happy in my life so you're telling me that I should pursue enlightened because it's gonna give me this peace and tranquility and happiness that I can't get otherwise but I've already have you have a good life I have a good family I got a good relationship I got it good career I've worked real hard on these things I've put them all together you know I'm happy with my my health and my fitness and all this stuff well another bill another bitter pill for you is that actually you're not happy what you're doing is you're lying to yourself and you're saying that you're happy but in fact you're not why is this happening how could this be the case well the first thing you got to realize is that even if you're happy right now in the moment maybe your career and your relationship and everything else in your life just has come together right now and in this moment and maybe for the next couple of months things are gonna be going great and you'll be happy but see your happiness is contingent upon external circumstance so if we remove your relationship if we give you a divorce and if we have you go to the doctor's office and get some bad health news and if we have you lose your job and if we have you lose some money in the stock market right and if we have you break your leg or whatever all of a sudden you're not going to be happy you're gonna be very very miserable and so your happiness is extremely contingent so you gotta be very careful here about saying that you're happy because actually whenever someone says this they're lying to themselves how could I know this I can know this for a fact because it's not possible to actually be truly happy without being enlightened so unless you're enlightened you can't be happy it's not possible it's just psychologically impossible why because there's a falsehood that you're living you're telling yourself that you exist when in fact you don't so happiness is not possible under this paradigm it's just not and that's actually reflected in your whole history of existence for your entire life from the point where you were born to the point where you're gonna die or from you know today to the point where you are living now you've never been able to have consistent true happiness what you've had is you had this rollercoaster ride right for this very reason is because external circumstances change all the time so when someone tells me that they're happy what that is in my mind is like imagine that someone has tripped and fallen off a cliff and he's falling to the ground to the jagged rocks down below and it's like a 5,000 foot drop and as he's falling he looks at me and he says look Leo I'm happy look flying it's fun it's fun to be flying through the air I'm so happy right now well yes you're happy right now if we take one snapshot but how happy are you gonna be five minutes later they're not going to be very happy so that's basically your current condition in life right now what you might do to yourself is you might trick your something you might say to yourself well Leo why don't I just keep putting more and more good things in place in my life until everything is perfectly in place why don't I go just earn lots of money and then basically everything will be figured out if I own up a hundred million dollars then it's like no one can touch me but see that's a that's a delusion even in that situation you're still not going to be happy because even if you have 100 million dollars and you can become quote-unquote untouchable by society you have all this power and you're able to do whatever you want in the end you're still gonna have to face disease and loneliness and uni and everyone dies you'd have to face death so in the end your life is gonna end in misery no matter how happy you think that you are right now so really you're not happy and even if you think that you're happy right now in the moment like your life right now is all put together I Got News for you even there you're lying to yourself because even if you say that you have a great relationship and a great career and great health that's not actually what's happening in your life on a minute-to-minute hour to hour basis what's happening even if you have all that stuff in place is that your mind is driving you nuts you're literally insane in your mind you're having insane thoughts you're you're sabotaging yourself you're getting angry at people inside you're getting jealous you're having fear even if you have everything put together even if you have a million a hundred million dollars you still have the fear of losing 100 million dollars you have the fear of losing your beautiful relationship or losing your kids or losing your health or losing your life or whatever else so it's not possible for you to be happy because you actually believe that if you lose these things you will be unhappy and so therefore it's not possible to be happy with that kind of paradigm in place so you have to get very aware of how the mind tricks you into a false sense of happiness so one of the ways that we do enlightenment work is we first start to realize that oh wait a minute wait a minute I'm lying to myself all the time about how well this paradigm this ago with paradigm is working for me the ego keeps telling me that it's working well and that I should continue using this paradigm but if I look really carefully I can actually see that this paradigm is rotten it's not working if I'm very honest next question should I stop pursuing my goals in career in my relationships with my health with my hobbies should I stop those things and this depends it depends on why you're pursuing these things so just because you are pursuing enlightenment or you become enlightened does not mean that you no longer have any relationships or that your health now doesn't matter or that you don't need to have any hobbies or that you don't need to go to work and have a decent career it doesn't mean these things again enlightenment is an inner knowing and a realization it's not any lifestyle per se and it's not any particular external situation so if you really authentically want a relationship be in a relationship and if you authentically want good health go get good health and if you you know want to live in a house and be able to pay your electricity bill then you should probably have a job and if you enjoy some particular hobby like you like playing basketball on the weekend or you like sailing or surfing or whatever you know those are probably fine hobbies the problem here though is that a lot of people have goals in their career in their relationships and their health and in their hobbies that our egoic goals what this means is that you're pursuing this goal because you think that this goal will make you truly happy and so you're like kind of like an addict you're a career addict your relationship addict you're a health and fitness junkie you're an addict with your hobbies and you think that that's gonna be your salvation so if you're pursuing goals for those reasons then those are the wrong reasons and those you should probably stop why because you're not going to really make you happy for one and two because they're an opportunity cost they're taking away time from your ability to find what will truly make you happy which is doing the inner mental development so everyone's gonna have to judge for themselves you know which goals are authentic and which are not authentic and this is a very tricky process you don't really know which goals in your life are authentic and which ones aren't you might tell yourself that going to the gym is an authentic goal of yours but you might discover that actually Oh upon loss of deep reflection the only reason I'm going to the gym is because I want my girlfriend to think that I'm hot and that's because I have this need for upholding my self-image that I'm this hot ripped dude and that authentically if I wasn't trying to uphold this self-image of being this hot rip dude then I probably don't need to go to the gym so much right that might be just one example there next question Leo isn't enlightenment dangerous the stuff you're telling us here isn't it dangerous couldn't it be kind of eroding the foundations of a happy healthy normal life well the only danger really is the current it go up paradigm that you're living under all the evils in the world where do you think they come from they don't come from enlightened people they come from selfish people they come from the egoic paradigm your paradigm and if you think that somehow you're above Vigo of paradigm but you're still living the go paradigm you're kidding yourself so if you think that you're not capable of crime and theft and rape and murder and genocide and bigotry and racism and getting angry at people and violence of different sorts and whatever else all you know all the things that you think are evil in life if you think that you're not capable of that well newsflash the only reason you think that is because right now you're sitting in a cushy position in life where you're not being threatened as soon as your ego is threatened sufficiently you will resort to all those evils all those evils you think that you wouldn't do well you would do them under the right circumstances why because fundamentally you believe that you exist and that you need to be protected and defended so how do we overcome this by removing the notion that you exist and that you need to be defended in fact there is nothing that needs defending this can be difficult to appreciate right and it can seem dangerous and threatening to be talking about this because what we're doing is we're kind of destroying a lot of your worldviews and a lot of traditional cultural assumptions and we're destroying a lot of beliefs in this inquiry it can seem like we're doing a negative process here by destroying stuff as though this destruction of mental concepts in your mind is somehow you know eroding the moral fabric of your being and it's gonna lead to some sort of nihilism or something like that or it's gonna make you antisocial or it's gonna turn you into a serial murderer or someone who's insane in fact know all of those bad things that's ego paradigm run amok that's who you presently are but you're just kind of masking it the Enlightenment paradigm this frees you up from all that this makes you the least dangerous to yourself and to everyone around you to society because when you have nothing to defend and protect you have no need to go out and hurt people and you have no need to to commit suicide or to do any of the other kind of stuff that you would consider you know dangerous people who are insane or like serial killers stuff like that these people have monkey chatter in their mind all the time this is the exact opposite of enlightenment enlightenment is the silencing of the monkey chatter when the monkey shredders silenced when you're perfectly calm and present and happy in the moment who are you gonna bother there's no one to bother what's the danger there is no more danger everything is perfectly fine you can easily discover this in meditation when you're meditating and you're very focused you can see that this is just a totally peaceful very innocuous innocent state it's not a dangerous state it's an innocent state what's telling you that it's dangerous is the ego why because this is how the ego defends itself this is a defense mechanism so watch out for that trap next question Leo isn't enlightenment only for radical people a certain very small segment of the population and the answer is no enlightenment is perhaps one of the most universal things that I've discovered that people ought to pursue right I can't come up here and say you must go get married or you must go get a job that will earn you six figures or you must go learn how to scuba dive right because those are all you know particular things that some people might like and some people might not like actually I feel very comfortable coming up here and saying you no matter who you are no matter what culture you live in no matter what your religion no matter what your scientific background matter if you're old or if you're young no matter how much money you make no matter what your family situation is you should become enlightened now why because this is one of the most fundamental truths of your existence is understanding your true nature what is your true nature your true nature is not what you've been told by Society your true nature is not this entity that you think that you are this body or this mind your true nature is actually nothingness that's your true nature but you need to go discover this and everyone can discover anyone with you no normal mental health can discover this with a normal brain can discover this and everyone should discover this because if everyone discovered this society would be treinta completely transformed this would be the biggest shift that human civilization has experienced in all of its history this would be more important than the invention of the atomic bomb or electricity or the computer or the internet or anything else that we've invented this would be more powerful because this would change your orientation and the whole world's orientation towards life this would give you the happiness and the peace that you really really want so this is not for radical people if you want to live to your full potential and if you want to be happy and peaceful and if you want to know the truth of your being on a profound level then this is for you this is not just for monks this is not just for some crazy hardcore self-help junkies like you might think I am this is a very desirable thing because one thing that you can find universally across all cultures all peoples is that they have monkey chatter in their mind and they drive themselves crazy with it and they have emotional neurotic problems and because of this they can't be happy and everyone basically wants to be happy the only reason you do anything in your life and the only reason anyone else does anything in their lives is because they believe it will make them happy of course the problem is that most of stuff you do and most of other people do are not going to make them happy but they don't realize it yet and they don't really want to admit this fact so because kind of happiness is the objective of life this is for everyone next question leo when I become a tree-hugging hippy slacker if I start going down this path of spirituality and enlightenment well you know I'm sensitive to that myself I don't really identify with hippy new-age thinking in fact I don't like that subculture I don't really see myself as a hippy or a tree hugger or whatever and I don't consider myself a slacker I'm like a productive person I actually want to go and achieve stuff in my life but this is a stereotype right this is a stereotype and in fact hippy tree huggers are not enlightened slackers are not enlightened if you actually go and meet a real enlightened person you'll see that they're not a tree-hugging hippy slacker these people are productive when they want to be these people are not just coming up with some new-age theories and singing Kumbaya and going to some you know retreat in the woods or going out hugging trees or saving the whales that's not what in line people generally do so this subculture even though it seems like it's all spiritual actually it's kind of like a false spirituality which is actually one of the things that I don't like about hippies is that I feel like they're in congruent they live their life in congruently so you know if a hippie was really living congruently they would become enlightened and then what would counter-intuitively happen is that they would drop a lot other hippy ways because hippies are kind of reacting against a certain element of society and so what this essence creates another element and this creates a philosophy and a mindset and belief systems in a worldview what we're talking about with enlightenment is wiping that whole thing clean wiping that slate off clean so that you don't have any of those you know cultural reactions and you don't have these beliefs and worldviews it's just calm peaceful neutral so don't worry about becoming a hippie slacker next question leo but I enjoy stuff like sex and alcohol and drugs and food and I enjoy going to work I don't want to give this up in fact I refuse to give this stuff this stuff up if the cost of becoming enlightened is to give all this stuff up then I don't want to become enlightened it doesn't make sense it's not worth it the answer to this objection is that none of these things in and of themselves is wrong or bad or evil or even anti spiritual or in any way incompatible with enlightenment again enlightenment is not a particular lifestyle it's an understanding and realization so after enlightenment you can still have sex in fact your sex will become amazing if you choose to have it you can still consume alcohol and in fact you could appreciate out the home or you could consume drugs and you will appreciate drugs more and you're less likely to get addicted to them you can eat great food and you will appreciate that food more than you've ever had why because you're able to stay focused in the moment and you're able to get rid of the monkey chatter you can go to work and perform amazingly at work again why because you no longer worry and doubt and have fear and need to protect your ego and need to look after yourself image and you need to think about money and all this kind of stuff you can just focus I'm doing great work and you could be more creative too in your work so none of these things need to be given up now maybe you will give some of this stuff up right now if you're a drug addict probably you'll give that up if you become enlightened if you're a glutton and you use food as a crutch and as a source of excitement and stimulation in your life well maybe you'll stop doing that after you become enlightened if right now you're a workaholic and the reason you're workaholic is because you feel like your life is pointless if you're not a workaholic well maybe you'll stop being a workaholic and right now if you're addicted to sex and you want sex all the time or love in a relationship because you feel like that completes you and you're basically again addicted to it well maybe you'll give that up to what enlightenment basically does is it unhooks you from needing these things so if you engage in these things in the future you're gonna do it consciously deliberately because you actually want it and you're gonna be able to appreciate it much more than you've ever had an ability to in the past so you don't really need to give these things up and in fact sex will continue I don't really recommend that you do alcohol and drugs those aren't really healthy but you're still gonna eat and you can go and eat good food I think you should still work and make a living in life because you know you need money and resources to to live in life so those things will still stay in place most likely in your life the next question is Balea what about specifically sex alcohol and drugs aren't these things bad aren't these things evil and what about for example making money isn't that bad too so if I become spiritual enlightened will I no longer be able to engage in these activities well the first question is why are you so attached to engaging in these activities right it's for egoic reasons and even if you think these things are evil you still probably have a hidden urge to do it you have to really hold yourself back and maybe you guilt yourself for having some sex or for doing some drugs when you shouldn't have or having a drink when you shouldn't have or you know swindling someone out of some money when you shouldn't have the fact is that none of these things again are bad in and of themselves there's nothing wrong with sex there's nothing evil about sex there's nothing even wrong with drugs per se there's nothing wrong with alcohol and there's nothing wrong with making money and in fact I'm gonna make a really blanket statement which is kind of outrageous there's nothing wrong with any action that you choose to do at all there's nothing wrong with any action the question is why are you doing it what's the motivation behind it it's always about the motivation when you get the motivation right when you remove the ego and you act selflessly without addiction or cleanness then you can engage in these things and they will be of value in your life and they won't have all the negative repercussions that these things generally have you can use drugs and alcohol in moderation and it'll be fine you could have amazing enlightened sex you can still make lots of money after being enlightened if you feel like that's something that's you know or thuing so don't don't worry about losing that stuff don't cling to it next question I've had an Enlightenment experience using drugs or meditation people use mushrooms or DMT or there's a bunch of other different types of hallucinogenic type drugs that can induce enlightenment like experiences and then also people go out and meditate at retreats and stuff like and do guided meditations and claimed to have enlightenment experiences so the question is Leo isn't that it isn't that what you're talking about this is the truth of no self right well enlightenment is kind of tricky because what happens when you get on this journey is that you start to have little think of it like the clouds on a very cloudy day and the Sun beams aren't breaking through the clouds but then all of a sudden the clouds just kind of open up and there's a little beam of light going right through the clouds that's kinda like a little moment of enlightenment but then quickly the clouds come back and close up and then the light beam goes away so one of the frustrating things on this journey is that you're gonna have like many brief tiny fleeting moments of no self maybe for five seconds here for one second there for a whole hour here maybe for a whole day but they're all going to escape you you're not going to be able to hold on to it what this is is this is a it's like an expansion of consciousness your consciousness kind of dilates like a lens on a camera right kind of zooms in and out well when the lens dilates up you get this all expansion and but then it closes back down and falls into its default state so what I'm really interested here is not in a temporary expansion of your consciousness I mean that's cool and if you can get that that's great but I'm more interested in a permanent removing of the clouds what I really mean when I say enlightenment is the clouds are completely gone and you've just got light shining all the time and you're not trying anymore you're not holding on to something you're not struggling to make it work you don't even have to meditate anymore you're permanently enlightened this is possible this is a real state thousands of people have achieved this state so it can be done any normal human being as far as we know can do it with enough work but it takes quite a bit of work in Maya Ridge video I said it takes about a thousand hours I should kind of like a ballpark you know a thousand hours of work maybe more maybe less so generally speaking a drug will never give you permanent enlightenment I don't really know of any people who have become permanently enlightened off of drugs the best the drug can do is give you a little brief a couple of hours of enlightenment light experience so it's not really helpful meditation meditation is more helpful meditation is very good I recommend you start doing a lot of meditation and if you're starting to experience more and more enlightenment like experiences with meditation that's great but don't just stop because you think you've made it you haven't made it yet so keep meditating until you get the real permanent deal and don't assume that just because you've had a little experience with drugs or a little experience of meditation that you know what enlightenment is gonna be like because I'm guessing it'll probably turn out very different than you expect in the end the next question Leah what about my friends and family after enlightenment what's gonna happen to them so the reason people ask this question is because friends and family are very important for many people a top value for many people is family and of course people worry about well if I become enlightened well I would just like abandon my family now well I abandoned my friends what's gonna happen there am I not gonna care about them anymore because I'm so detached from everything and the answer is that again it all depends a lot of people have very dysfunctional family than friends so if you're hanging around you know in a gang got a bunch of horrible friends and then you become enlightened yeah you'll probably abandon those friends because they weren't very healthy and now you guys don't have much in common but there's nothing again inherently wrong with family or with friends so if you've got a good family and your family brings you authentic joy and if you've got good friends and they bring you authentic joy then you'll probably keep them and in fact your relationships with them will improve because a lot of people have dysfunctional family and friends not because those people are dysfunctional but it's more because you have buttons that those people push and it's because your ego is involved in these relationships when you take the ego out of the relationships even if you have you know a dysfunctional family member or one dysfunctional friend it's not gonna bother you anymore you're gonna be able to have compassion for them and be kind to them you're not gonna need to be mean to them also if you're in some sort of relationship with someone one of the things an alignment will do is it'll make you independent of that relationship so if the relationship serves you you'll stay in the relationship if the relationship becomes toxic or it stops serving you you're not gonna have any hesitation walking away from that relationship now some needy people will latch on to this point and say well Leo this makes me some cold-hearted monster I don't want to become this way see actually right now the way that you're living is very unhealthy if you live this way this is what neediness does it produces a toxic attachment so the toxic attachments that you might have now those will be cut but that's something that you want that's a really good thing it's not a bad thing in general I think that your friends and your relationship will be significantly amplified and improved with enlightenment next question Leo what about love how does love plain to all this love is a really deep concept which I want to shoot a whole video on at some point when I uh when I'm ready to talk about it but the thing I'll say about love here is that what you call love right now is not true love you don't really have an experience of true love what you have is you have a go at glove and a lot of people hate to hear it put this way but this is true it's another bitter pill to swallow what you call love now whether it's Eve in your most sacred relationship or even with a relationship that you consider just like a blood bond like with your family with your children with your mother or father this is still a Goa Club you love those people but you only really love them on your terms and so what this usually means is that you try to change those people you try to manipulate those people in subtle ways to make sure that you're getting the love that you want it's a selfish love yes you love them but really the reason you love them is because it serves you in some sneaky underhanded way that you don't like to admit if you want real true love what you have to do is you have to break down the ego without the ego you can love everything as much as you right now love yourself imagine how kind you would be to your family your friends and your intimate partner and even people in general if you honestly believed that this body here is not separate from that body over there that there literally one in the same thing that they're all one thing this is the true meaning of the Golden Rule right you know the golden rule the golden rule says do unto others as you would do onto yourself well you can't do that when you actually believe that you are here and everyone else is separate in out there you can only truly live the golden rule when you actually believe that I'm here and I'm there and I'm there and I'm everywhere so I treat everything as though it's me and so I'm kind and compassionate and loving towards everything so that's what real love is almost no one knows this practically because of their unenlightened state so if you really care about true love well you should definitely want to become enlightened next question leo you're talking about all this stuff and I've just been doing regular personal development I've been following your regular videos and now this is all very confusing for me and this is creating a lot of doubts in me about my life and my goals and my ambitions and maybe even my relationships and maybe even in my business a lot of doubts now I used to be very confident and I was you know getting more and more confidence I was watching your videos and now it seems like you you've cut the legs out from under me well yeah in a sense that's exactly what we're doing here right because enlightenment is not about building up more of your ego is about cutting out the ego and this is gonna feel threatening it's gonna feel emotionally disturbing to you it's not going to be pleasant this is why so few people are enlightened is because this is not a pleasant process this is a scary process one of the things that your mind wants at all times is certainty and clarity certainty and clarity your mind hates being confused and uncertain it hates to doubt itself but you need to get comfortable with uncertainty because what enlightenment is in linemen is not ultimate certainty it's actually getting comfortable with ultimate uncertainty it's not about clinging to some truth it's actually about realizing that the truth is that there's nothing to cling to and that there is no truth the truth of no truth again very paradoxical and fascinating how this works so if you're doubting yourself good I want you to be doubting yourself stop trying to be certain all the time the problem with most people is that they're too certain and that they're too afraid of getting confused once in a while and that they're too afraid of questioning their own worldviews this is good stuff this is what an intelligent open-minded intellectually honest being does is purposefully put himself into situations where he doubts himself because he knows that this is healthy this is building him up not tearing him down next question leo isn't it better to hold off on this enlightenment journey until I'm older so like right now I'm in my 20s or in my 30s wouldn't it be better to just spend the first half of my life doing all this cool fun stuff putting my life together building a business having sex and going to relationships and all this stuff traveling the world and then when I'm like 50 or 60 or 70 when I'm retired then I can do this in live and stuff and the answer is no right you're procrastinating your ego is procrastinating why is it not better to put it off well because what do you want in your life do you want happiness or do you want suffering that's the fundamental question if you want happiness and peace then you want enlightenment soon or not later why would you put off a great thing we've talked about all these cool benefits that you get why would you want to put that off right the longer you put it off basically the more suffering you're gonna have in your life so it's like you're saying okay Leo wouldn't it be better to spend the next 20 years suffering and then only when I retire I'll finally be happy that's basically what you're saying the truth is that your life will be so much more rewarding and fulfilling and better if you become enlightened sooner rather than later in fact one of the things that many people report after becoming enlightened is that this is the most positive experience that's ever happened to them in their lives and that they're sad that it didn't happen earlier they wish that it happened earlier in their life you know some people become enlightened in their 40s and their 50s but then they have very bad experiences in their 20s and 30s because they're just emotionally all over the place there's monkey chatter going around right this goes back to the earlier question of are you truly happy and the answer is that you're not so don't put off true happiness for another ten years go get it now the next objection someone might say something like this alright Leo I've heard on enough of this nonsense [ __ ] all this nonsense I'm just gonna go and have my normal life I just want to live a normal life and you know what if you want to do that go ahead and do that I'm not here to really force you to do anything that you don't want to do and in fact no one can force you to become enlightened you're gonna have to work really really really hard at it one or two of my videos isn't gonna do it so if you really feel that way go off and do it but realize that the reality of what you're saying there is that you're closing your mind down you don't want to do a self honest inquiry you're being lazy you don't want to really put the work and effort into this process realize also that you're committing yourself to a life of suffering mental and emotional suffering realize also that your life is gonna end in a very bitter way no matter how successful you are in the end you're gonna die and you're gonna have diseases you're gonna have bad relationship all this I was gonna happen is going to disturb you a lot it's going to distribute a lot right so this thing that you call a normal life well normal is a very bad standard the normal life is really a crazy dysfunctional life even what you call a normal successful life that's still a very dysfunctional neurotic miserable life so if you're not buying into all this stuff and I think it's silly anything it's nonsense you think it's religion and mysticism and whatever and you think it's all hippy [ __ ] it can seem that way on the surface when you first start right what you're really saying when you say this is that you're at the lower stages of your development and that you haven't gone to the higher stages yet so maybe you need to go off and just you know do some stupid stuff in your life waste 10 20 years and get yourself to the point where psych finally you say oh okay this is not working let me now swing my pendulum towards the spiritual end and that might be a necessary step for you right so then you know go do that if you need to but hopefully you could have the wisdom to short-circuit all that nonsense save yourself a couple of decades and get to a good life not a normal life but a good life much sooner than you think is possible next question but Leo are you yourself not enlightened and if you're not how can you be talking about all this enlightenment stuff aren't you being a hypocrite how do you actually know what if you're wrong on this the answer is that I'm not enlightened right now but I've been on this journey now for mmm about two years really heavy for one year and the reason that I feel like I can talk about this stuff I don't feel fully qualified to like be your guru and tell you all the stuff about enlightenment because I still have a lot to learn right and for myself I'm very humble with myself about what I think I know about enlightenment even though it might sound like I'm up here and I'm being very confident and I'm telling you all this stuff as those you know set in stone in fact it's not set in stone there's stuff that I get wrong there's mistakes I can make there's revisions that I'm always making my mind there's a lot that I'm learning and this is gonna continue even after enlightenment because enlightenment is a long journey even after enlightenment there's still more to to discover about consciousness but the reason that I feel like I have some valuable information to give you here is because I've gone through the initial early stages the fight the resistance to this idea of enlightenment like said the journey is like this progression right this expansion of consciousness this growing this development now I'm still early enough in the process that I'm no master and there are many people out there that are you know much more enlightened than I am and know this stuff much better but I think one of the benefits that I can give to you is that actually I'm like a normal person that you can identify with right I'm not some hippie I'm not some spiritual guru I'm not some Indian yogi who you know meditates in the woods for 10 hours a day I'm not a Buddhist monk I'm not the Dalai Lama I'm not some religious leader and I'm not some Zen master and in a sense you might say well those people are you know more knowledgeable about this stuff yes but also you know those people bring their own perspective to it and that perspective is probably very incongruent with the way that you presently live your life you probably live a much more normal kind of social existence the kind of existence that I live and you probably resonate with the fact that someone is going through this journey and the fact is that I am like three steps ahead of you right so I can point you to the traps that are going to be there so I know for example a lot of these questions so a lot of these questions in FAQ that I'm answering these are all questions that I had to struggle through so when you're struggling through them I have to struggle through them too it's not like this was all easy for me and I just knew it all every one of these questions I struggled through and some of these I still struggle with so it's not like I'm here just making this stuff up what's really fascinating about personal development is that when you start growing and going up in this in this chain of you know this staircase ladder that you're going up and you're ascending to higher levels and you're transcending and releasing old levels is that once you move to the next level all the other levels suddenly make so much sense and it's so clear to you when you look backwards on your life and the lives of people around you who haven't advanced yet you know why they're stuck and so for me that's that's clear with with a lot of you who are just kind of starting this journey now if you're very advanced then maybe you want to go to some a very advanced teacher but if you're starting off and also you like the kind of uttering no-nonsense non-mystical non-religious somewhat of a logical and scientific approach to enlightenment that can be rare to find in teachers so that's personally kind of like my own bias my own perspective that I'm bringing to it so that might resonate with you more than it does then other teachers might resonate with you and ask for this objection that I might be wrong about this whole thing well you know an intelligent person has to always leave open the possibility that he might be wrong about any thing he says or anything he believes or anything he he advocates gives advice to other people on so I always leave the possibilities open that I could be wrong in any of my videos I don't like come out there and say it every time but I always leave that possibility open in my mind and I'm always revising my worldview right I'm always growing there's videos that I've shot six months ago a year ago that now in my mind like I've advanced so much further that it really in my mind I need to go and reshoot those videos one of the problems I have with YouTube is that they don't allow me to actually replace old videos I have to like reupload a whole new video and then you know that creates duplicate video so there's like I've kind of a problem there but if I could I would actually go back and reshoot many of my older videos so that they're now they're more accurate more true than they were six months ago even one month ago right so I'm growing all the time and the same is true with indictment videos so if you really want to kind of like stay on the cutting edge then keep watching the newer videos because they're becoming more and more accurate not perfectly accurate and yes I could be technically wrong about this enlightenment as I could be with any advice that I give you whenever I'm talking about an online meant topic and you know what the same is true for anyone that you listen to know no matter who you listen to whether it's a scientist a religious person the Dalai Lama or the Buddha himself or whatever they could always be wrong so that's just a fact of life and a fact of communication so we have to deal with that right I don't want you to just like believe me on blind faith here that's not what I'm asking you to do I'm asking you to use your own intelligence your own rational faculties to think about all this stuff very critically but also very self Ilana slate not just with monkey chatter and ego defenses and to start to piece it together yourself and actually go out and prove it to yourself this is not a belief system here this is not a philosophy this is something that you go out and you actually achieve you achieve it and that's how you know that it's real so if I do end up being wrong about this I'll be sure to tell you if that's the that's the best promise that I can make you on this point all right so that's all the questions for now I'm gonna have another part to this series with more FAQ questions coming up in the future so stay tuned for that but for now that's it all right I'm signing off go ahead post me your comments down below click the like button on this video please share the video with a friend and come sign up right here to the actualize network newsletter it's a free newsletter I release new videos on enlightenment and self actualization topics every single week there's some cool free exclusive goodies for signing up and I have more exclusive content that I'm gonna be rolling out some of my subscribers for my newsletter so go ahead and check that out if you really want to stay on track with your personal Velma you