Word count:11626
[Music] you happy holidays I'm excited to have my Christmas hat out once again I almost wish that I could wear this hat every single week but then I would be freaking people out in July or something like that maybe I should wear sometime for April Fool's but anyways in this episode I thought we would do some more work on self-inquiry how do you do self-inquiry this is a technique that I talk about a lot along with meditation and yoga and psychedelics and so forth this is one of the core spiritual techniques towards awakening yourself but even though the technique is simple it can be very tricky to do it properly so let's actually demonstrate it for you live right here and point out some of the traps and pitfalls and various ways that it can be done incorrectly it's very important that you understand with these meditative techniques whether you're doing mindfulness meditation or self inquiry or yoga that you need to be doing these techniques precisely and properly because otherwise you will waste decades doing these techniques and not seeing the full benefits that are promised to you and then what will happen is you'll get discouraged and you'll just start to think like well all this enlightenment stuff must just be fantasies and fairy tales because I'm not seeing it in my direct experience well that's because you're not doing the techniques correctly and it's sort of like you know if you were launching a rocket ship to the moon you would double-check triple-check quadruple-checked all of your parts of your rocket ship to make sure that they all function before you actually launch the thing because you have so much invested in it so much riding on the line well it's the same thing with your awakening you're gonna be doing this yoga or this self-inquiry or this meditation for the next five or ten years probably so you want to make sure you're doing it correctly so let's dig into it so what is self inquiry well basically we're trying to discover what we are physic and even beyond that metaphysically or existentially so the most important question that's driving us is what are you you what is that thing that we call you now the thing that makes self inquiry so devilishly tricky is that there's really to use that we're talking about here one is the you that you know and love from your very birth the one that you're very familiar with the one that everyone is familiar with that is the false you the false self and then there is the true self your ultimate existential nature your spiritual self the thing which is responsible for all of existence that thing you don't know what that is that is the true self or otherwise in Buddhism called the no self which is really just the same thing as the true self so self inquiry is about looking past the false self past the ego and discovering the true self how do you do that that's the trick so let me guide you through that here a little bit so first what we need to do is we need to establish a current frame of what you think you are so what I'd like you to do right now is to give me articulate for me is the most accurate description of what you think you are don't overthink this and I don't want to hear any fantasies from you or any wishful spiritual beliefs about how you are nothingness or how you are God or how you are some some lofty spiritual thing that you've heard me say or some other teachers say well that you've read in a book none of that instead I want you to actually now start to go inside of yourself and feel what do you really identify with actually so when I say you when I point my finger at you and I want you to go in there and find the most essential thing that is you that you think you are what is that here it's very important that you're brutally honest so if you believe that you are the face then that's what you believe you are is the face or if you believe that you're a body then that's what you believe you are if you believe that you're some sort of soul then that's what you believe you are so what is that you could pause this recording and try to figure that out right now again don't overthink it I'm not asking you for scientific theories about where you came from I'm not asking for biological descriptions of anything you need to actually go inside of yourself and ask yourself truly truly honestly like what am i identified with such that like if I put a gun to your head and I was about to pull the trigger what is the thing that you think is gonna die what is the thing that's gonna be lost the most precious thing that's going to be lost in that situation what is that is that really your body maybe maybe that's what you're identified with for many people that's what they're identified with and if that's you that's fine just admit that let's start there let's start in an honest place the problem is that you've listened to all these spiritual videos of spiritual gurus telling you all these fantastical things about the true self that you're you're so preoccupied with that fantasy that you're not being honest with yourself about what you are really identified with maybe it's a sensation in your chest like your heart maybe you feel like you're inside the skull back there between your eyes so first articulate that and be clear and notice that you're gonna struggle with this so you're gonna go inside you're gonna kind of try to look for what you think you are and maybe you have some vague idea and notice that your ideas are gonna be very vague you for example you might say the body but then of course like what part of the body specifically like try to be very specific about it and you'll notice that it's gonna be difficult for you because it's not quite right to say that like your your your hand because obviously you could lose your hand and you're not going to lose your sense of self just by losing a hand so that means that the hand wasn't really essentially what you are and in fact you think that you have the hand the hand is not you the hand is something you have it's something you're looking at you know you're looking at your hand so that already means that you're not really the hand you're the one looking at the hand and you can take this logic even further because if you say that you're the head you might say okay I'm the head or I'm my brain okay well are you really the brain or is the brain something you have or is the brain something you're looking at or something that you're experiencing and so what you're going to notice is that if you go through this exercise no matter what object you tend to purport and put forward as yourself whether it's a hand a foot your heart a feeling of sensation and image of your face of your head of your skull of your body of your soul or whatever that is always going to be some kind of object with properties concrete properties and that really you're not that but rather you're the thing that is aware of that and so the more you start to realize that the less you start to identify with any kind of physical attributes that you have and the more you're getting closer and closer to your true self but you're still not there yet so we still have some more work to do so the whole trick with discovering your true self is that the true self and all for you right now has no properties whatsoever and we conventionally socially are used to describing our world as the world of form the world of phenomena the world of objects so for us to say that a thing is real and that it exists it has to have some kind of concrete properties it has to be black or red or has to be big or small or it has to be fuzzy or sharp or tall or skinny or fat or it has to be an object or even it has to be something like an emotion you might say well an emotion is not an object but still even an emotion has a certain feel to it has certain characteristics to it it even has a certain location within physical space and in fact all the objects that we know tend to have a location within physical space and so now when we try to go looking for the true self we tend to assume that well there is going to be a physical object or something like an object that I'm gonna find inside of myself that is my true self sort of like if you were gonna look you know turn your eyes inwards and look inside your skull and maybe find some kind of object like a tennis ball and then you know like find it one day and like oh here it is the tennis ball that's what I actually am is this thing called a tennis ball and it's round it's got these properties to it and this is what trips us up when we're looking for the true self because the true self has no properties whatsoever it's pure awareness it's what you are is fundamentally just pure awareness or consciousness but it's difficult for you to find that because when you go looking for it you can't find it and that's right you can't find it in a certain sense because it's just empty so let's actually take this out of the realm of theory and actually take this into your direct experience right now so what I'd like you to do is to get comfortable relax yourself a little bit relax your body and relax your mind and just become conscious of the fact that you're sitting here and that your existing so crank up your awareness dial because we're gonna need that for these exercises so now you should be a little bit more conscious just be conscious of existence that you're existing right now now I want you to go inside of yourself and find your deepest sense of you don't overthink it just go and find inside yourself and find your most essential nature what is that try to find it and here I want you to go deeper than your body or any kind of bodily sensations so maybe you're feeling your heart right now or maybe you're kind of trying to like almost as though look inside of your skull because it feels like you're somewhere in the skull try to find that thing which owns your body and owns your brain and owns your mind and just put your awareness on that and ask your what is that now here's where the trick happens the ego-mind is very very tricky so what it will do especially when you're new to self-inquiry is that it will not allow you to really go to your true empty essential nature instead what it'll do is it'll sort of allow you to go there half way but what will happen is then slots will come up because to do this self-inquiry effectively you have to be able to do it with a silent mind without a bunch of monkey mind and theories and ideas and concepts and beliefs you have to actually feel into it with your awareness and so that thing whatever that thing is right now that you're pinpointing as your true self that thing right there that is actually the false self that's not the true self because your mind is coming up now with images and words and beliefs and concepts about what that thing is and all of those are the false self so let's be very explicit here because this is important your entire life story of who you thought you were from your birth up till today that is your false self if that's what you're identifying with your identification with your body is the false self that's the ego any thoughts you have of you as a biological creature or as a physical object those are all the ego so what does that leave you with nothing everything that you've ever thought about as being yourself since you were born up till today all of that has been the false self all of that has been ego and when I tell you to go deep inside of yourself and find your essence which you're probably gonna do is you're gonna start to feel more into your body and there's gonna be body sensations like in your chest you might feel your heart or you might feel inside of your skull a little bit or the back of your head and all of those feelings are also the false self you see so the reason that self inquiry is so sneaky is that you're we're trying to get you to go really deep inside and to find that emptiness within you but because your mind is not trained to put its awareness on pure emptiness and keep it there what it does instead is kind of veers off to the side and gets attached to some kind of phenomenal thing like a body sensation or an image in the mind or an idea or a word or a belief or a memory that you might have from childhood or a feeling or any of this and none of this is the true self this is all the EO this is what the false self is created out of these are like the building blocks the individual building blocks that are creating this illusion of the of the ego and so what we're trying to do is we're trying to penetrate through that brick wall to see what lies on the other side but as we're trying to do that the mind latches onto these various bricks that it gets stuck and it doesn't allow itself to go through so it's important for you to be very honest with yourself and to realize that you actually don't know what you true self is and that's a very good starting point you need to become conscious try to become conscious right now that all of the things that you have ever thought were you in your entire life including your personal biographical story all of your memories your beliefs about physics and science and chemistry and neuroscience and brains and molecules and whatever ideas like this you have that all of that was the false self none of that is really you so of course naturally you think well then what am i if I'm not any of those things well first of all a you're gonna think that's kind of crazy Leo that's crazy crazy talk what do you support even smoking well you gotta you gotta keep your skepticism in check here because we're trying to do this inquiry we're trying to be just open and we're trying to investigate I'm not trying to get you to believe anything I'm trying to show you a practice that you do and whatever you discover there's like a scientific experiment right the scientist doesn't really care what he discovers he just wants to discover whatever is true so that's kind of like the attitude you got to take care the problem though of course is that you're so used to identifying with your memories and your biographical story and your body sensations and your thoughts and it's self image in the image of your face you're so used to this that how do I convince you that all of that is not really you when you have spent your entire life thinking that's you and your entire environment and culture and your parents and your friends and your teachers have all been reinforcing that within you you see what we're really doing here is we're sort of trying to D brane Wash U D program you but you have been so thoroughly brainwashed and programmed from your very birth that you can see this very difficult to do so you have to kind of like start to suspect that yeah I've been I've been thoroughly brainwashed so thoroughly brainwashed that I can't even distinguish anymore between what's real and what's imaginary or what's possible and what's impossible so make sure you keep a radically open mind here as you're doing these exercises but well yeah so see the problem is that you you're identifying with all this stuff and what I'm trying to get you to do is to go beyond all that to the emptiness inside of you so let's try that right now again go inside and find your true self what is it that you believe you are in the most essential way not your body not your brain not any thoughts not any beliefs you have not any images of your face or the back of your head or of your body not even any feelings in your chest or in your skull so what you should be doing you should be kind of turning your awareness inwards like this inwards back into your eyes into your skull and and trying to get can you feel that sense of kind of like emptiness that's there you have this sense that you exist you have this sense of i am-ness that's there but you can't quite pinpoint it you can't quite put your finger on it you can't quite tell what it is and in fact it's difficult for you to even keep your mind on it because your mind veers off to various others tangible sensations in your body so as you're trying to kind of like look inside at that emptiness that's there you might get an image of what that emptiness looks like it might be like a fuzzy cloud you might picture as a fuzzy cloud or you might picture it as that the image of nothing or you might feel some sort of Impala empty sensations inside your skull or in your chest that's still the false self go beyond that to the actual emptiness that's there and now now that you're there keep your attention right there don't let your mind wander keep it right there and now wonder what is that what is that whatever that is that is your ultimate true self but the problem is you don't know what it is you're trying to look for it as though you're looking for a tennis ball somewhere inside of yourself like a physical object you're trying to look for it and you believe that you're gonna find it if like if only you look deep enough in there you'll find this object whatever it is and then you'll be able to say oh yeah that's what I am I'm this tennis ball looking thing or whatever resist that temptation stay with the emptiness don't succumb to the minds temptation to come up with some sort of conceptual or imaginary preview of what that true self is we don't want a metaphor here we're not looking for a preview we're not looking for a model or a theory we're not looking for an image of it we're not looking for a belief about it we're not looking for a word that explains it we're just trying to actually get in touch with the actuality of what we are that emptiness so just try to keep your attention right there in that emptiness and I know that is difficult especially if you haven't done much practice with meditation or with mindfulness or with yoga or with psychedelics or any other kind of spiritual techniques it's going to be very difficult for the average person to keep his mind or her mind that emptiness because the mind tends to wander and because these days you know we watched so much internet videos so much YouTube so much Facebook so much smartphone text messages and Instagram and all this sort of stuff we're so distracted we're multitasking all the time that we don't have the the focusing muscles that are necessary to really be effective at self inquiry and self inquiry is a rather advanced technique it's a technique that's not very effective for many newbies precisely because they lack the focusing ability and their mind is too noisy too many thoughts are coming up which are separating you from feeling into that emptiness so ultimately what is self inquiry self inquiry is you going into that emptiness like I've been showing you here so go back to it right now feel that whatever that is and then just sitting there and observing that with a silent mind as silent as you can get your mind to be now the trick though is that it's going to take you a long time of patiently quietly observing that emptiness whatever that is and for now I recommend that you just think of that emptiness just like a question mark it's a question mark you don't know what it is it's something but you don't know what it is so the purpose of self-inquiry is just to observe that question mark hour after hour after hour day after day after day for hundreds and thousands of hours if necessary until one day all of a sudden you have a massive epiphany and you realize oh that's what that thing is and that is awakening that is enlightenment when that happens but you must observe very patiently for a very long time with lots of focus before that breakthrough or epiphany will happen so really what you're doing is the following it says though you take an object like your finger and you're sitting here and you're just looking at this finger so try this just look at your finger and pretend as though you don't know what your finger really is it's just like an unknown object you're just kind of like looking at it and you're just wondering what is this finger what is it and you're just kind of like looking at it and looking at it and looking at it and you're not thinking about it you're not speculating you're not theorizing you're not doing philosophy you're not even doing science it's not like you're sitting here looking at this finger and thinking like well this finger is man of molecules and you know I think that this finger came about through evolution and I know that this finger has bones inside of it you know I could take an x-ray of it I could see the bones and I know there's like blood in this finger I know they're cells millions and billions of cells making up this finger none of that is the same as just observing the actuality of this finger as it is right here so try to just observe your finger without thinking about it that is exactly what you will be doing with self-inquiry except the object will change rather than your finger you're gonna be using that emptiness that is inside of you and you're gonna have to train your attention on it for many many hours with great focus and then spontaneously there will be an epiphany or an awakening spontaneously you will realize what that thing is this will not be a verbal answer so a common mistake that people make is they think that self inquiry will lead to an answer in some kind of verbal form that's false nor will it be a conceptual answer it will not be a model or a theory or philosophy or even a belief of any kind the answer will take some kind of new form and you have to just be open to whatever that form is you don't know what it is it's just gonna be your true nature but for that to happen you're just gonna have to train your awareness on it for a very very long time and the trick though is that the mind gets tired of holding its attention on the emptiness and it's gonna wander around and start to think and daydream and come up with theories and speculations and ideas it's gonna fears you're gonna come up worries are gonna come up ideas for the future problems from the past old memories are gonna come up your personal biography will come up scientific theories will come up stuff that I told you in videos advice that I've given you in the past all of that will come up psychedelic experiences that you might have had in the past memories of those those will come up and the whole trick with self inquiries they have to cut through all of that and just stay with the emptiness and as you do that minute after minute hour after hour you build this laser focus like concentration on that emptiness and that eventually there will be a breakthrough and you must trust that there will be a breakthrough otherwise you will never hold your attention there long enough in order to actually have the breakthrough and if your mind wanders you got to bring it back and train it back on the emptiness and of course what's gonna happen is your minds gonna get attached to various sensations and images in your mind it can be even difficult for you to maintain awareness on that emptiness for longer than 15 seconds without your mind having to conjure up some image of the emptiness and what you need to realize is that that image of the emptiness is not emptiness itself that's the false self a feeling in your chest is not emptiness it is the false self and so you need to go beyond that another way to frame it is like this go inside of you and find the thing inside of you which is the perceiver the thing which is aware of your body your emotions your thoughts your mental imagery and the entire world what is that thing whatever that thing is that is the true self but that thing is not your biological self you might say that thing is inside of your biological self its residing somewhere inside your skull maybe inside your chest you don't really know where is residing yet but it feels like it's inside of you that is your most essential nature that's what you really identify with ultimately if you get very honest with yourself you identify with being the perceiver the subject of all the objects isn't that what you think you are you're the subject you're the one who's hearing these words you're the one who's seeing my face you're the one who's feeling any kind of bodily sensations that are arising in you you're the one who's hearing internal dialogue from the monkey mind so what is that thing well that thing is pure subjectivity everything else that we've been talking about is an object colors sounds feelings thoughts ideas images theories concepts all of those are objects in your awareness but what is the subject of all those objects that's the true self but notice you don't know what it is you can feel it you have a kind of a sense an intuition that it's there obviously that's how you know that you exist the problem is that that feeling of emptiness has been fused with all sorts of bodily sensations and mental concepts and personal biography that you have and so those two things have been confused and so now that pure subjectivity and emptiness has been fused with your physical body and your personal story and all of your personal possessions and your personality so maybe you think you're a good person a bad person a fearful person a courageous person an arrogant person a tall person a skinny person a fat person or whatever kind of person you think you are all of that this is all objects that have been that have been intermingled with that pure subjectivity the emptiness and so now you have this this mixture and so what we're trying to do with self inquire is what we're trying to separate these two apart this is the true self this is the false self this is the thing that was born when your mother and father conceived you and then your mother gave birth to you this is the stuff that was born your physical body your personality your all of your attributes your genetics your brain all of that that's all form that arose with your biological birth but that was never the true you the true you was the emptiness or the space or the awareness the pure awareness within which all of that arose so when you were born what happened was you weren't really born you were always there that emptiness was always there but then the biological form of you as the human being was born and then that thing got fused with this thing and you've confused it ever since and you're in this state of confusion right now where these two things are are mixed like this so what we're doing with self inquiry is when you're in this mixed state we're trying to get you to just focus on this part the emptiness part and the longer you focus on it and you keep your attention there these two are gonna separate more and more and more and more and more until eventually when the epiphany of awakening happens you will become perfectly clear and aware of awareness itself the emptiness or the formlessness and at that moment these two will split apart like this and you will realize that all of this stuff the external world including your body and your feelings and emotions and thoughts and your personal biography all of this that you've been attached to you're gonna realize that none of that has been you what you were was this emptiness the whole time this is pure subjectivity these are objects here this is the subject the true self the problem though with with becoming aware of this subject is that the subject has no properties it's not big it's not small it's not colorful it's not non colorful it's not round it's not square it's not biological it's not physical it's not anything it's just pure subjectivity it is pure awareness so in a sense with self inquiry what I'm asking you to do in this practice is to put your awareness on your awareness so that's another good pointing technique so right now try that right now without overthinking this just follow this following instruction take your awareness first put your awareness on your hand notice what that feels like now take your awareness and put your awareness on an object behind your hand like the wall or the lamp something behind your hand put your awareness there now bring your awareness back to your hand and now finally put your awareness on awareness itself and keep it there until enlightenment happens don't let your mind wander that's it that is the of self-inquiry what makes it so difficult is that your mind will wander a lot a lot a lot which is why it's very helpful to have some kind of meditative practice or some sort of concentration practice in order to build your concentration abilities because you're going to need to be able to keep your attention and awareness on awareness itself what you are existentially is awareness but even though I tell you that and it seems like now you know the answer the real question is what is awareness and the only way you're going to answer that question is not by reading books or asking me for the answer I can't give you the answer you are the answer you have to go inside and actually see what awareness is the only way to find out what awareness is is by training your awareness upon awareness itself for a very long time until something pops an awareness will reveal itself to you and you have to resist the temptation of trying to objectify awareness because awareness is not an object like all the other things that you have come to know in life awareness is not like a tennis ball or a lamp or a table or a tree or a human or a hand or even an emotion or thought or even an image or anything it's not like any of those things it's a it's a soul thing so resist the temptation to objectify it resist the temptation of creating analogies and metaphors and images of this emptiness do not allow your mind to say something like well emptiness is sort of like this awareness is sort of like that it's kind of like this and oh it might look like that all of that is distraction avoid the temptation of speculating about where this awareness came from and how it could be and and how does it connect with science and history and all the other stuff that you've learned avoid that temptation that's also a distraction none of that will get you an answer to what awareness is science will not do it for you neuroscience whatever brain research you've studied none of that will explain awareness you must put your awareness upon awareness itself and what you will ultimately discover is that it's pure emptiness there is nothing there it's so empty that you can't even call it empty it's so nothing it's so void that to call it void is already too much it's so empty that you can't say that it exists or that it doesn't exist it's too empty for even those categorizations any quality that you ascribe to it it is not that's what makes us so tricky so you might wonder then Willy oh this seems impossible how am I ever gonna figure this out well that's the beauty of it you don't need to figure it out you just need to put your awareness on awareness itself and keep it there for a very long steady period of time and it will reveal itself to you automatically this is not something that you're gonna forcefully do through exertion of willpower other than that you will need to exert willpower to keep your aware unawareness itself so in that sense you can use your willpower to do that but you can't actually will the answer or the revelation to come to you that will happen spontaneously when it decides to happen how long will it take that's going to depend on every person individually we don't know could take hours could take months could take years could take decades but actually if you are very very focused it shouldn't take that long within a couple of years of this practice if you do it daily it should start to reveal itself to you but you must do this practice precisely and not just have your mind wandering around thinking and fantasizing and attaching itself to various sensations in the body if you do that it might take you five decades and you still won't figure it out because you're looking in the wrong place now here's a trick that a lot of spiritual practitioners don't really understand about this process so remember I said that when you start off before you do any spiritual practice you have a fusion of the formed world the objective world with the formless subjective true self they're fused together like this this is where you start when you're unenlightened like you are right now now you start to do spiritual practice and these two things start to separate more and more and more and here detachment happens your dis identifying with bodies with sensations with emotions with suffering with pain with all that your dis identifying with it and you're becoming more and more conscious of the true self the emptiness until finally you have a breakthrough on awakening a Satori and you realize finally the thing you've been looking for the whole time which is pure emptiness and in that moment it seems like you've escaped the material world and you've gone into the spiritual this is the spiritual realm let's say this is spirit this is physicality and at that point it seems like oh I'm none of this stuff it's sort of like I've exited the matrix and this can feel rather freeing it can feel liberating but it can also feel like now you're detached from all of this and actually what happens here is that when you do that your spiritual journey is not yet complete you have not reached full non-duality yet because actually what you've done notice you've created a new duality in a sense you were in non duality when you started because the non duality you were in was a non duality of the material world the only thing the average person knows the unawakened person is the material world because the spirit and the material is fused together the form in the formless are fused together like this so so tightly that that the spirit and the awareness isn't even registered only the physical world is registered the form is registered so as you break that now identification switches to the formlessness but as you do that actually you create a duality because now there's the formed and the formless there's the material the physical and the spiritual there's the false self and there's the true self there's the unenlightened state and the enlightened state but this is only half the journey the other very important epiphany that you must have and this will probably require a further enlightenment although it could also happen at the same time is now you to bring the formlessness back in together and fuse it with the form such that now what happens is that by bringing these two together what you realize is that there actually is no difference between form and formlessness between the material and the spiritual between the unawakened state and the awakened state and so now these things are fused back together but now after the student happens the reason it's different from the fusion that was there when you began that now you've permeated the material with the emptiness and the formlessness and the spirit such that now you realize that oh all of that form and materiality and physicality that I thought was just the physical world all of that was actually spirit you realize that there is no difference between the material and spiritual and when you realize that what you've done is you've brought spirits into and infused your entire experience with spirit and at that point you are literally like you feel yourself like you're inside of the mind of God whereas before you thought you were in the physical universe with physical objects now nothing has changed the colors des cités the objects they still look the same you can still see trees and tables and people you can still see your body and feel your body all of that but now you realize that all of that is just like a hallucination inside the mind of God you realize that all of that is spirit you realize the divinity of the physical world you realize that there is no distinction between the mundane and the divine and that is the ultimate aim of non-duality now you're truly in non-duality because you realize that there is no distinction and no boundary between anything and at this point you realize that nothingness and emptiness is not distinct and separate from form but that they are actually identical not only are they similar or have some kind of relationship but they're literally identical such that you can stand in this room right here and you can realize that this entire room is nothing the entire world that I've ever experienced is absolutely nothing it's as though it never even happened and yet here it is as though it's happening because there's no differ between happening and not happening but that's gonna take you a lot of work to really be able to to grasp at that's gonna require a lot of work so right now I recommend you don't worry too much about the second phase of this spiritual path which is the bringing of the emptiness back into the form don't worry about that yet for you at your stage when you're just trying to learn self inquiry your job right now is to try to separate the form from the formless and the way you do that is just by putting your attention on the formless and keeping it there for a very very long time I have an episode that I released earlier which I believe is called learning equals observation where I talk about how the most important component to learning anything is just pure observation and how a lot of people don't know that most people don't appreciate how much they could learn about anything whether it's a person an animal a plant a situation a system or themselves simply by sitting and observing it for a very long period of time without any thoughts or any theories or any philosophy or any science or anything just literally sitting and observing it like do you want to to learn for example about ants all you need to do is go outside your house find a little ant hill by the side of your house and sit there and look at the ants for a very long time but the mistake that people make is they think well if I'm going to be sitting there looking at the ants I must then start to theorize about the ants I must start to think and I'm a certain research and I must put together ideas about how the ants work in all of this that's the mistake instead what you got to do is just sit and look at the ants for like a hundred hours and then by the end of that you will walk away with so many insights about how ants live what they do you will actually learn to distinguish individual ants you will get so good you will get so perceptive so sensitive that you will literally be able to to like separate one ant from another ant because you will be that perceptive because that's the power of observation the problem those our minds are always so busy that we rarely apply this technique to anything in the world and that's why people fundamentally don't understand much of the world at all because they just love to think about the world they have all sorts of beliefs about the world and theories about the world and they will go and watch videos about how the world is and that is just ideas and more images but they never actually bothered to sit down and look at the thing that they're trying to understand like do you want to understand your child if you have a child don't ask the child questions don't read a book about children just watch your child playing in the sandbox watch your child eating watch your child playing with other friends watch your child learning at school or reading a book watch your child doing her homework watch your child opening a gift on Christmas just watch set aside your opinions and judgments and ideas about what's right what's wrong and what your child is doing that you don't like and just watch can you see how that's very difficult to do because our natural inclination is to want to interact with the system we're not good at just watching silently we want to express our opinions and we think that this we want to manipulate it and we want to control it and that's what every really good scientist or artist learns how to do is they become very good observers without injecting themselves into the equation you must become an objective impartial observer so we're taking this principle that learning equals observation and we're applying it to the most ultimate thing that you could observe which is the observation process itself see we're sort of going meta on this technique because you can observe ants you can observe people you can observe your child you can observe a car you can observe how the government works you can observe your own body but the ultimate thing to observe is observation itself what is doing the observation awareness observation is just another word for awareness or consciousness but what is observation what is awareness what is consciousness well you don't know because you haven't observed it you see so another way to frame what self inquiry is is that it is the observation of observation that's also what meditation is for me personally I think my biggest struggle when doing self inquiry is that my mind is actually so curious about what awareness and consciousness are that while I'm focusing on it while I'm trying to observe my observation the mind gets so eager that it actually starts coming up with all sorts of theories and speculations and answers it basically it's wondering too loudly it's wondering so loudly that it's actually interfering with the observation process it's sort of like imagine like we were trying to observe a beautiful object in the sky like a comet this majestic comet is flying through the sky we have this this telescope that we're looking through it at and you know the telescope is very stable and clear it needs to be stable and clear and focused in order to see this comet but we look at it we catch a glimpse of this comet the comet is so amazing in magnificent it takes our breath away we're so excited about we start to speculate and we start to spin around we start to jump and yell and holler and make noise and shake the the telescope and as we do this we lose sight of the comet so the whole trick with meditation and self inquiry and also with psychedelic experiences is that you need to kind of like calm yourself in the midst of the astonishment and the the wonder of looking at the process of looking so that you're not getting in your own way and that requires calming the mind down it's a really good analogy to think of it as calming the mind down to self-inquiry is like removing the clouds in the sky for a telescope you're not gonna see anything on a cloudy day through a telescope and you're not gonna get very far with self-inquiry when your mind is churning away speculating theorizing imagining bringing up various teachings and things you've read in books all of that is getting in the way so if you can have a practice that helps you to calm your mind down anything that helps you to do that is going to be great and really if you're beginning self inquiry then what I recommend is that you you have two practices to make self inquiry effective first you have sort of a pre self inquiry practice which is a form of meditation or yoga or concentration practice where you are training your concentration ability and you can just practice by holding out your finger and just staring at your finger for five minutes straight without wavering without thoughts that would be like your pre self inquiry practice and then as you're practicing that you can follow that up with the actual self inquiry which now the only difference is that you're you're changing the object from the finger to awareness itself there's another important thing that I forgot to mention when you're doing this of acquiring so I speak of it as though like I'm telling you to go inwards and you might wonder why am I telling you to go inwards well because for most people that's where you believe you live is inside of your body that's how it feels like it feels like you're you're well you're almost it almost feels like you're a ghost who is looking out at the world like this almost like you're a ghost inside of your skull this ghost if you keep looking at it long and long enough eventually you'll realize that it's just pure emptiness but notice an interesting thing that happens if you realize that the ghost is pure emptiness pure emptiness unlike other physical objects formed objects does not have a position in space or a location or a size and what that means is that even though it feels like you're inside the skull that you're this ghost inhabiting the body and looking out at the world like this that's really an illusion so the more you go inside and feel into that emptiness you will realize wait a minute this is a hole it is just pure emptiness there's nothing there and if that's what I am is just pure emptiness that emptiness does it have a shape a size a position in space no which literally then gets you to realize that there's no reason that the emptiness is just inside of my body or inside of the skull it's omnipresent it's literally everywhere and in fact the body and this entire room and the entire universe is occurring within the emptiness so when you begin self inquiry you tend to believe that you're gonna find some kind of object inside of you called the true self like a tennis ball but the more you look at that tennis ball you realize it wasn't a tennis ball at all it was just a vacuum and a vacuum is a type of object that doesn't have a position or a location and so what's gonna happen is that that sense of you being inside your head looking out at the world on this side of your face that sense will will die out and you will spill out into the external world as you've called it you will spill out into here so rather than finding some kind of point or object inside of you that is the perceiver which you're going to discover is that the perceiver is not a point and it's not an object that is bounded it's not small it's actually infinite in its dimensions it stretches forever in every direction and that's what you are and so awakening is realizing that you are larger than the entire universe that's what it feels like so it's okay if you are just beginning self inquiry if you think that the emptiness is inside of you and it might almost feel like you have to kind of go inside before you're able to kind of like focus on that emptiness but eventually what you should realize is that there's really not even a need to go inside because that emptiness is equally everywhere anywhere you look is that emptiness so it doesn't work like a camera conventionally we think of perception and awareness as though it's a camera and in a camera we have this sort of conical model of how perception works like there's a sensor in the back of the camera then there's a lens then there's the light that shines through in this sort of conical fashion right and it's like it hits the sensor so the analogy here is that what you are the true self is the sensor except the trick is that there actually is no thing like a sensor the sensor is omnipresent and distributed throughout all of space and it has no properties or qualities whatsoever that's what makes it so tricky to understand so when you first begin self-inquiry you think you're gonna find this sensor and that this sensor is some kind of like limited little object inside of you somewhere and then you realize oh [ __ ] the sensor is all of space the sensor is every dimension in every direction imagine if we built a camera some crazy new sci-fi camera that will be built a thousand years from now that will not have a flat sensor in the back but the camera works through a much more sophisticated technology which we can't even imagine yet or what we've done is we've actually taken the sensor we've made a three-dimensional and then we've expanded it infinitely in all directions to include the entire universe and then we took a snapshot I know that doesn't really make much physical sense precisely because it's trans physical it's metaphysical it's prior to physics so even though we couldn't really do that in the physical world that actually is how you are conscious of this room that you're sitting in right now this entire room is occurring within an empty vacuum which is your true self but don't think of this vacuum as empty space because it's actually prior to space if you're imagining space and you think that what I am is space or a vacuum that's not it that's the false self you are not that you are the thing in which the vacuum is occurring you are the thing in which space and time are occurring see it's twisted it'll mind [ __ ] you for sure make sure you understand that you're not gonna figure this out intellectually you're not gonna be able to sit there and kind of like go like this like a scientist and say oh well okay so I'm I'm I'm a vacuum but I'm even more of a vacuum than a vacuum I'm the I'm the thing that the vacuum is taking place in that's what I am no because that's not actually emptiness all of that stuff that you've been thinking and talking about that's all form all of your metaphors and analogies and models and scientific theories all of that is more form that's not emptiness you need to get yourself to actual emptiness actual not an image of the emptiness not an idea of the emptiness not a belief of the evidence but the actual emptiness and then of course what you'll discover is that emptiness is not what you thought it was emptiness is not in a black hole or an empty void the way that you imagine emptiness is none other than fullness emptiness is none other than all a form so emptiness is not some state that you put yourself in through a lot of meditation this moment right now that's happening right now is emptiness this body the sound of these words all of this is emptiness but for right now that's jumping the gun you don't need to realize that yet right now focus on separating the form from the formlessness then you will emerge the two back together so I hope that clears up self inquiry for you it really is that simple the trick is not to overcomplicate it the trick now of course is to actually do the practice all of these things that I've said here they're just ideas and words they will not awaken you at all you must now actually turn off this recording sit down in silence and do this practice and you must do it not only once you must do it day after day after day every day hour after hour after hour with great focus and concentration probably for a few years until something clicks in you and that of course explains why so few people are awakened because how many people are serious enough to actually sit down and do this day after day after day most people give up a week into it a month into it a year into it or they do it very sloppily or they do it for five minutes at a time here and there and that just does cut it you need to be much more serious about it now you might think well leo but how do I know this is actually gonna work how do I know I'm just gonna waste a bunch of years doing this and get no results what happens if I spend three years doing this and I never get my awakening it's gonna be just a waste of three years here's the good news no it won't it won't be a waste because this whole process is not just a binary on and off you're not enlightened or you are enlightened you've succeeded or you failed don't think of it this by narrowly it's um it's actually a lot better than that the more you spend putting your attention on your awareness and doing the self inquiry your your consciousness will grow and expand and expand and expand eventually then it'll hit a tipping point and there will be a massive awakening or an epiphany but even if you never get there you are still gonna benefit enormously from the expanding of your consciousness you will be more aware and more conscious in all of your activities in life in business in relationships with your emotions and that's very huge because what's gonna happen is you're gonna you're gonna create a separation from like we were saying the form and the formlessness even if you don't permanently detach the tube which is what we would call enlightenment eat if you get a little bit of separation that's still gonna help you enormously because this separation means the difference between being fully absorbed in your negative emotions and suffering and not it means that you're fully absorbed in your intimate relationships and your friendships and your career versus not it means the difference between clinging and attachment versus healthy detachment so when you get angry or depressed or sad or frustrated or jealous or aroused or excited or you get sort of you have a craving for food or craving for sex or something like this or someone dies in your family and there's great suffering and pain or you have chronic pain in your back the way I have been lately excruciating pain in your back or pain in your feet or in your legs or something like that in your stomach you're gonna be separated from it there's gonna be a little bit of space of detachment and the more detached you are the less you're going to suffer from it because you're gonna realize that that stuff is happening but it is not me and the thing that suffers is the attached me so actually another way to frame this and to explain what the false self is is as follows think of a time recently where you had a lot of suffering and pain could be physical or emotional and you had some strong negative emotions whether it's fear anger or literal physical pain try to think of a time like that maybe even right now you're having that and so now I ask yourself who is the one that's experiencing that pain and you're gonna say well me of course that me is the false self and that's a really good rule of thumb to remember if you can remember it whenever you're suffering or in deep pain is to always remember that the thing that's suffering is always the false self the true self doesn't suffer and so if you want the ultimate solution to life into all of life's problems and suffering is completely detach yourself from the material world and then you won't suffer but contrary to what many people think of like like well leo but if i'm if i detach myself from the world I'll detach myself from my relationships for my children for my spouse from my co-workers from the from the whole world I'll detach myself I'll be off in some sort of spiritual realm and I'll be just like a detached from reality I'll be an airhead I will not be able to feel emotions and beauty and joy anymore and love all of that will be gone you're telling me to detach myself from all the beauty of the world that's precisely wrong because remember there's gonna be a second turning first there's gonna be a detachment then there's gonna be a reintegration of full non-duality when you're full non-duality what you're gonna have is gonna have the best of both worlds you're gonna have all the full sensitivity of all the emotions that humans experience but you will also simultaneously be detached from them all and they will not cause you suffering and that right there is how you can live a good life and in fact it's not possible to really live a good life unless you have accomplished this detachment and then this reintegration so now you know what to do now you got to get to work self enquiry is a great technique that you can use if you still find that self inquiry is too direct if you find that you don't have enough focus to do self inquiry because you've got monkey mind that's not even letting you put your awareness on awareness itself then you need to do more preliminary practices like ordinary meditation watching the breath or I highly recommend Kriya yoga psychedelics can also be helpful for that to some extent but really you need a daily practice that will help you to calm down your mind whatever that is it might be listening to binaural beats that can be helpful it might be listening to some guided meditation track so you can find online I even have a meditation video from the past you can watch so you know whatever techniques you want to use do that but then come back to self-inquiry because meditation alone calming your mind alone is usually insufficient for an awakening because what needs to happen is not only does your mind to be calm you also need to train your awareness on awareness itself or on your true self and you have to wonder what am i what is consciousness what is awareness and that is what ultimately leads to the awakening yeah you can have it awakening just spontaneously randomly through loss of meditation as well it can't happen but often times it doesn't I know meditators who have meditated for 10 20 years and are still not awake in fact that's usually the case if you go to a Vipassana retreat you'll find people there who have been meditating for years and most of them are not going to be awake because even though there may be good meditators they haven't actually seriously inquired and wondered and trained their awareness on what they are the true self so there you go that's your strategy for awakening now you got to actually do it remember that talking about it and doing it are two very different things and moreover there's sort of a middle category you can just be talking about it or learning about it and that's really not gonna awaken you then you can be thinking about doing it you can be daydreaming and fantasizing about doing it that's also not gonna awaken you then you can actually sit down and start doing the practices and that's a good step but as you're sitting there you can still be spending a lot of time fantasizing about how you're gonna awaken that's also getting in the way that's not gonna get you either you have to actually do the practices and stop all the fantasies about awakening that will actually do it and you've got to very patient with us so just stick with it keep the faith remember that every day that's going by even if you're not awake or awakening you are moving closer and you are becoming more conscious and this is making you a better human being and you will see the benefits of it all throughout your life in every situation so it really is worth your time and effort to do this all right that's it I'm done here please click the like button for me and come check out actualize that org that's my website you'll find my blog with various exclusive insights that I don't share in the videos on youtube you will find a my book list my life purpose course new courses that I'll be introducing in the future hopefully and the forum where you can come and ask questions and get advice and find new resources there you go the last thing I'll say is you need to actually start to do these practices otherwise actualize that org will rot your mind and you will actually start to become depressed and sick from inside from the disparity between everything that you've been taught and that you know that you should be doing and then your actual life where you're not doing anything you're not implementing any of the work and so the more videos you watch the more action you have to take otherwise the gap is gonna grow too big and then it could really turn out nasty you can get depressed you can even get suicidal because you're gonna know so much about everything you can possibly accomplish and all the amazing life you can create for yourself but then you'll have none of it in the real world in the real world you're having a little weak pathetic little life so just bite the bullet and [ __ ] discipline yourself to do this work to actually get excited about following up and and implementing the theories that I talked about get excited about that and as you're doing that keep reminding yourself that this is the most worthwhile thing you can be doing life and it's gonna all pay off but especially when you first start for the first few years of meditation of yoga of self-inquiry of even basic personal development work you're just ramping up baby just ramping up so you're not gonna see massive benefits when you first start don't expect that the benefits will really start to snowball three years down the road five years down the road eight years down the road that's when it gets really amazing that's when you start to see the the revolutionary potential this can have on your life and the whole reason that most people don't do this work is because they're not able to get through those first few years where it's really a slog you have to overcome so many old habits and addictions and you have to keep yourself motivated even though you're not maybe getting all these mystical experiences that you've been hearing about you're not really feeling it yet that's the cost of entry big life changes require patience and a long time horizon and a strong vision where you can maintain your vision in your goal for a few years until it's actually actualized and the way you actualize something is through action obviously so you need to develop that capacity within you this is crucial if you do not develop the capacity to implement and to take action upon the things that you are learning there's no chance you might as well just stop learning period so the solution is just to bite the bullet yeah it'll be difficult at first it'll be a slog there will be days where it's it's like you really don't want to do it you're you just want to slack off you want to kind of like go do some some stupid low consciousness thing you want to go hang out with your friends or watch TV or whatever just do it just reminding yourself it's worth it it's worth it it's worth it it's worth it on one day finally when you have your major breakthrough an epiphany then you will realize how true it was these words that I gave you that is worth it happy holidays Merry Christmas and Happy New Year you