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[Music] what does it mean to love this will be one of my most important episodes that i've ever released and it's going to be very practical too now i've spent a lot of time contemplating the nature of love what is love how does love work and i've talked about some of that in great detail some of the like the deep metaphysics of love i've talked about that in a two-part series what is love part one and part two go check that out if you miss those and what i find is that there's nothing more valuable really to contemplate than the nature of love because that's what consciousness and reality are personally i reached a point in my own understanding and contemplations where i was installing these door stoppers you know these springy door stoppers i was installing these doing some upgrades in my bathrooms and uh i became so conscious of the metaphysics of love that when i flicked this thing and just heard it oscillating that i became aware that even the oscillation of this spring is love now that's love at the highest possible metaphysical levels and i don't expect you to get that right here right now and in fact we're not even going to be talking about that in this episode um we're going to be focusing more on the human domain the relative domain of how to actually love others around us this is going to be much more useful for you but just as an aside i do hope one day in this work if you really go deep with me in this work and you actualize your full potential of awakening and contemplations on love you will one day become conscious that this is love but we're moving on past that and even though i have understood love and realized that at the highest possible metaphysical levels i still struggle to embody it at the day-to-day level at the human level at the relative level what i call the relative level and and so i still need to do a lot of work there and so as i've been doing that work and thinking about how do i do that work right before you can do it you have to ask yourself how do i even begin doing it uh that's what led me to the realizations and insights that i'll be sharing with you in this episode so i continue to contemplate the relative levels of love and the question here is you know we we'd like to say i love you a lot or we like to say i love blank i love this i love that this person or this thing whatever you're applying it to i love pizza right or you probably tell your family members i love you or you tell your spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend i love you but you say it as a platitude you say it flippantly you say it mindlessly you don't actually know what that means or what it entails and that's a big problem because if you're not clear on what i love you means and how to actually practice it then how can you love now love is is interesting because a lot of times people can get the idea that love is just this frivolous thing that it's not something deep or profound that you know it's just a human emotion or it's just something you know extra like you know it's the icing on top of the cake and that love isn't fundamental but just from science and psychology we know that babies baby monkeys baby rats and even of course baby humans they die from lack of love you would think you could raise a baby monkey or a baby rat or maybe even a baby human without love just as long as you give it the food and the shelter just that the basic stuff right that an organism needs to survive and that you'll grow up fine right dead wrong dead wrong even if these organisms end up surviving physically to maturity which a lot of them actually won't they'll die but even if some of them do what the research shows is that they are completely psychologically dysfunctional just ruined and destroyed and incapable of being rehabilitated that's how bad it is so i was thinking about this and of course you know deep down i understand why they need that love but um uh i was thinking about it like what i mean there is like why they need it as a consciousness right see if you're if you're at the material sort of biological level you might say like well why does a monkey baby monkey need love why does baby rat need love but you're thinking about it wrong the way you got to think about it is like this baby monkey or this baby rat think of it as a consciousness right it's not an organism it's a consciousness why does this consciousness need love like metaphysically why does it need it contemplate that and when you awaken to what love is actually have some enlightenment on this point then you'll start to realize why it needs it and the reason that is because consciousness is love that is its nature and also just think about it then from the sort of biological perspective is like you have this little baby consciousness within this larger consciousness which is what we're going to call the universe but you have this little baby consciousness monkey a rat or a human whatever it is just think of how vulnerable that consciousness is to what the larger system can do to it all the ways it can be abused and misused and traumatized but anyways i was thinking about this and i was asking myself if we're just comparing the difference between a baby monkey that receives love and one that doesn't and is completely dysfunctional or even dies as a as a result of not getting it what is the difference like what is what is what are the adult monkeys doing to make sure that the baby monkey receives all the love it needs to be healthy and fully functional like what are the steps is it like feeding the monkey is it grooming the baby monkey is it coddling the baby monkey is it hugging it is it kissing it is it scratching it is it biting it what's it doing so that the baby monkey feels the love see this is sort of the granular level you have to take it down to and we're going to take it down to this granular level with humans of course not with monkeys so the question then becomes how do humans receive love and what does that look like and the problem is that too often love is treated as this vague abstraction or just a vague feeling some romantic feeling and uh we don't think about like the deeper aspects of it so here's a list sort of a master list that i've assembled of how do you actually love a person practically what do you do here it is you'll want to take notes on this this list right here write this down because and keep coming back to it because this list will change your whole life that's how powerful this list is really i should be charging you thousands of dollars for this list but i'm giving it to you for free why would i do that well maybe one day you'll understand so here's the list number one attention and awareness giving it and in this case i'm going to be using the word it or other to refer to like we're coming at it from the point of view as let's say you and i are the parents and it or other in this case is the baby or the thing that we're trying to love the object of our love so how do we show love to this object is the question and look it can be a it can be a human it could be an animal it could be a even a physical object of course a physical object won't need many of these but mostly we're going to talk about humans so uh you give it your attention and awareness and your time that's just fundamental imagine if you are trying to love an object or a creature or a being and you are not even giving it your attention can love even happen without awareness and attention think about that think about how important just attention and awareness is the next point is physical contact touching holding hugging cuddling and even more fundamental than all of those is proximity physical proximity just that alone can bring forth feelings of love and think about if you don't offer physical proximity just sitting next to or being next to or even being in the same space as the thing you're trying to love think about how it's gonna feel the next point is connection and it's actually a much deeper point because this really goes to the core of what love is love is connection but for now think of it as you're trying to create a connection with this thing whatever it is you're trying to connect with this person and there's different levels of connection different kinds of connection there's physical connection there's emotional connection there's intellectual connection that's possible and then there's spiritual connection which would be the highest form of connection but really you're not picking one out of these four you're going to be trying to do all of them and in fact if you want to love something if you really love something then you're going to be trying to connect with it with in every possible way in every possible dimension that's available to you so these four and maybe others that i have even overlooked here i don't know you know you want to always keep your mind open to more more ways of forming connections but at least these four so of course that's why physical contact and proximity is so important that's the physical connection that's being created there but then of course the physical although that's very important um by no means is it the most important the next point is taking good care of it if you love a thing you want to take good care of it right a lot of these should just be intuitively obvious to you as i mentioned them you probably haven't really thought about this before but as i mentioned them it should be like oh yeah of course that's so obvious um and to take care of a thing then you got to care about its needs helping to meet its needs helping it to survive because if you love a thing then what that implies is that you want it to survive you want it to exist think about it like in this sort of like profound way if you love a thing you actually what you love is you love its existence first and foremost you recognize the beauty and value of its existence and you want it to keep existing and you want to help it to exist if its existence is endangered pretty profound huh now of course there's a problem here in that this is going to create an attachment and it's going to create a bias because you're attached to this thing existing this way it's a finite object you're attached to helping it exist and to survive but then what about the other objects so we're definitely talking about a biased kind of love here right because what you're doing the difference between the sort of like metaphysical platonic existential forms of love godly forms of love um at the universal sort of level the universal love the difference between that and loving a object or a particular person or being is that you're sort of focusing and channeling that love towards a specific form within consciousness now there's problems and limitations with that but we're not going to be worried about that because the context of this whole episode is that we're talking about how to love specifically how to love the people in your life just recognize that there's limitations to that whole paradigm eventually you're going to want to go so deep in your love that you're going to even have to transcend the attachment to needing to help people to survive and you have to even let that go to reach an even deeper level of love but that's a little too advanced for us here we don't want to get off track so continuing on that same theme of helping to meet its needs is sheltering it from excessive suffering fear and trauma that would destroy or [ __ ] it that's really the function of parenting the parent is there to protect this vulnerable child from suffering fear and trauma not 100 percent of it you don't want to remove all the suffering in your child's life you don't want to have your child never experience fear but you don't want it to reach such levels that it's going to traumatize that child and [ __ ] that child for the rest of its life so that the child will not be able to get over the suffering and fear so as a parent and this is really a good sort of model of how you get these insights about love is look at you know what loving parents do look at what a loving mother or father how they take care of their children and what you see is that uh they're not overly protective but the most extreme forms of suffering they're sort of like gauging how much suffering and fear and challenge of life can this little consciousness handle and if it's beyond that then we're going to protect against that but we're not going to protect against every you know little little bump and scratch because that would that would actually make this little consciousness too weak because consciousness needs some some tension and some some difficulty in order to grow and toughen up and develop a thick skin and then be able to survive on its own and if you love a thing you don't want it to be dependent on you for the rest of its life you want it to become stronger and ultimately independent of you and even if you really love a thing you want it to surpass you in your own development you wanted to reach levels of consciousness and growth that even you yourself have not been able to yet actualize uh the next aspect here is having its back defending it being loyal to it and you can tell when someone is loyal to you and has your back and when someone isn't you can tell when your friend has your back and then some of your friends that are a bit more sketchy that you wouldn't trust so readily why not it's because you realize that they actually don't have your back you can't rely on them the next point is taking on its agenda as your own this is a huge mistake that we make when we try to love others is that we try to impose our agenda on them confusing our agenda for its agenda this is a classic mistake that parents make you know the child might have its own agenda of like well i want to grow up and be an artist and the parents are like no you're going to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer that's the parent's agenda they're not listening to the child's agenda they're not taking on the child's agenda as their own the next sub-point of this point is making its agenda an extension of yours or even we can even broaden that out even further is making it the other that you're trying to love making it an extension of you how would you treat your child if you were treating it as you would treat yourself literally when you're loving a thing or a being you're taking your finite sense of self or identity and you're expanding it to incorporate and include that object this is difficult to do it's scary to do this because it makes you vulnerable because like let's say you're this macho man you're very strong you're rich you're emotionally healthy and um you've got great defense mechanisms and you've got security guards and you're living in a in a castle with walls and security systems like you're perfectly secure you have all your needs met but then you have this vulnerable child and this child goes off into the world and you can't have security around her all the time you can't be there to protect her all the time when she's with her friends and partying doing this or that and if you've actually extended your sense of identity to include her as part of it then she is you and if something happens to her something happens to you if she gets hurt you get hurt but see you can't extend your castle walls to incorporate her otherwise you're going to lock her in your castle but then you're going to stifle her development you see so there's a there's a great assumption of vulnerability when you love some other truly because now you're you're tied in with with its survival its survival becomes your survival its pain becomes your pain and for a lot of people especially for a lot of men this is very difficult to do because we as men like we try to build ourselves up to be kind of invulnerable we are ourselves up and first of all that doesn't really work so well because you're never really invulnerable all your armor is just sort of a house of cards that can easily collapse but we do that anyways we put ourselves in a good position but then but then see you have to you have to go beyond that you can't just stay inside your castle all the time you have to you have to learn to extend your love to others around you who are much more vulnerable than you not as intelligent as you not as rich as you not as strong as you see maybe you're this like six foot five 300 pound like gorilla looking macho dude who can defend himself and knows you know he's a black belt jujitsu and all this sorts of stuff right but then you have a daughter who's 5 foot and she doesn't know jiu jitsu how does she defend herself and now she's a part of you see that's going to be very threatening to you because you've built up this whole identity of being this macho jiu jitsu guy who can beat everybody up and so this is actually going to create a problem with you being able to love your daughter unless you let go of this sort of armoring identity that you've created for yourself because the people you're going to be loving they're not going to be as strong and armored as you and if you're not comfortable with that you're simply not going to be able to actually make them extensions of you of course the next point is treating others as well as you would like to treat yourself this is the golden rule the next point is being happy when it succeeds as though its success is your success celebrating the ones you love success actually being happy and you can practice this like with your friends and family members like when they have a big payday when something's going great in their life and they tell you about it are you genuinely happy for them if you aren't if you're just kind of like meh whatever that's cool but like whatever if you're like that then what does that tell you about your level of love for these people see if you were treating these people as an extension of yourself equal to yourself you would feel as happy for them when they succeed as you would feel for yourself when you succeed think of how happy you feel when you get a huge raise at work or you get a big refund check from the irs or something like that you feel great but when your friends tell you about that or your family members tell you about that do you feel the same way probably not so you gotta actually learn to start to become happy for others in fact what you might notice is actually something very ugly is that when some of your friends or family members tell you something that's going great for them you might actually feel resentful deep down you might you might actually feel like why did they get that and i didn't get that and see the reason you feel that is look they got that but i didn't get that you see what that's implying is that there's actually a division in your mind between them and you you hold them as not you because if you held them literally as you you would be as happy for them as you are for yourself notice that that's a good little litmus test right there and personally i'm not the best at that one um uh i definitely need to practice feeling happier for others when they are succeeding because a lot of times i'm so focused on my own success and my own work and my life purpose and so forth that i just become like almost oblivious to the success of others and i notice how that disconnects me and doesn't make me as loving as i could be the next point is wanting for it what it wants for itself this is really part of that point about taking on its agenda as your own but i like framing it in this way of wanting for it what it wants for itself so what are the highest things that you want for yourself see if i love you then i should want those things for you too and a lot of times again people get confused here because they project the highest things that like here's the mistake that would happen here is that i know the highest things that i want for myself and so i just assume that that's the stuff that you want for yourself too but that's not always the case because we have different agendas different needs and so forth all right so i have to set aside my own highest things that i want for myself and i have to find out the highest things you want for yourself and then champion those when you get them and it might be very different than what i want for myself like maybe what you want for yourself is you want to become a great lawyer and maybe for me like becoming a great lawyer that's like not something that i respect even i don't really even respect lawyers that much personally but if that's what you want for yourself and that's what you need see the mistake here is for me to try to convince you that no that's that's wrong but if i truly loved you then i would want that for you because you want it for yourself the next point is sacrificing for it on its behalf working on its behalf if you truly love someone you're willing to sacrifice for them and work on their behalf and this is actually a point that a lot of guys especially i noticed a lot of guys like in the pickup community or in the red red pill or in cell communities black pill communities all this kind of stuff um um this sort of like toxic masculinity uh a lot of it like there's there's a sort of like attitude of like well women women should work for themselves and i shouldn't have to work for the woman and buy her stuff and do give her gifts and do all this kind of stuff you know she should do it all for herself and it's just kind of like attitude of cheapness basically and i've suffered from this in the past so i'm speaking as an ex-addict to this cut attitude i've gotten over it to a good degree maybe i have some more work to do but but basically the key shift that i realized is that like yeah of course you don't want a woman to use you for your money right um you don't want that but if you really actually fall in love with a woman uh what you should want to do is actually work on her behalf this is not about you you know just her needing money from you it's not really about that um you should be willing to sacrifice for your woman and and if she loves you she'll be willing to sacrifice for you too and not necessarily in the same ways right because men and women are different there's an asymmetry between the masculine the feminine so men will sacrifice for women in their unique way and what in the way that women need and then women will sacrifice for men in their unique way and in the way that men need that's ideally how it would work of course now that doesn't it doesn't doesn't always work that way there's a lot of dysfunctions that can happen there and of course it's all it's possible to be in a relationship where you know we both seem to love each other but that i'm sacrificing for you but then you're not sacrificing for me i'm willing to work for you but you're not willing to work for me and then of course that becomes abusive and exploitative the next point is supporting it nurturing it and encouraging it encouragement is big if you love someone you're going to encourage them to be their best and not in the not because you need them to be better for you but just because you're encouraging their self-exploration their self-expression and their self-actualization notice that subtle difference because a lot of times parents will think well but i'm encouraging my child to get good grades and to go to law school and this sort of stuff but it's like yeah but those are your issues those are your priorities that is that what the child really wants right so your encouragement has to be aligned with what the child really wants so really the encouragement here is again self-exploration self-expression self-actualization if the child isn't interested in getting good grades then you're not really encouraging it by telling it to get good grades if the child's not interested in going to law school you're not encouraging it by telling it to go to law school encouragement here would mean okay child what do you want what do you really what are you passionate about okay let me encourage your passions that would be true encouragement that's self-exploration self-actualization self-expression and even beyond encouraging think of it as cheerleading you're cheerleading the other on in their own goals you're supporting them in their passions and their vision the next point is super important and it's really like a profound metaphysical point i've actually talked about in a previous episode where i talked about um how authority works another previous episode where i talked about um the infinite gods awakening that i had but anyways the next point is respecting its sovereignty this is this is just so fundamental basically if you don't respect another consciousness of sovereignty then you can't love it what do i mean by sovereignty basically you treat it as a sovereign consciousness on the same on the same footing as you not above you and not below you it's equally sovereign to you and this is this is really difficult for a lot of parents and in a lot of relationships this is a real problem because we tend to hold our sovereignty like as the most important we put our own sovereignty on a pedestal and then we try to subsume the sovereignty of every other person that we interact with underneath our sovereignty and this leads to all sorts of problems so practically what it means to respect someone's sovereignty is to not manipulate that person not try to control them not try to dominate them not try to exploit them not try to hold yourself as above them or more important than them in any fundamental sense for example an authoritarian boss or politician will actually get the idea in their mind that they are at a higher position of authority and that somehow you know because i'm the boss or ceo of this corporation that like my sovereignty should reign supreme over this whole organization and all the people that are underneath me this is actually bad leadership good leadership conscious leadership which i'm gonna have a whole episode on soon conscious leadership stay tuned for that's gonna be huge um eye-opening episode uh but conscious leadership's conscious leadership demands that you recognize the sovereignty of everybody else that you're leading and that you're not above them and by recognizing other sovereignty that's what stops you from trying to manipulate control dominate or exploit them i have a deeper discussion of this in my episode called um um infinite gods awakening go go check that one out i talk about this point about sovereignty the next point is total acceptance of it as it is an absence of judgment if you love a thing you accept it as it is you don't need it to be different you don't need it to change because if you needed to change what you're really loving is not the thing itself you're loving some other fantasy that you created about some other thing which isn't really the thing that you're trying to love you see this if you really love your child you accept it as it is not as how you want it to be not judging it and this is what makes love so difficult is because we usually need it to be some other way for us not as it really is therefore we don't really see it as it is our need for a thing to fit our own agenda and survival needs is so great that oftentimes we don't even see what's in front of us we see what we want to see we see what we want it to be not what it really is a lot of their parents if they're bad parents they don't even see their children as they are they only see them as the fantasies and ideals that they've imagined in their minds of what a good child should be and that's what makes being a good parent so difficult is that you need to surrender those fantasies in order to make a connection with the actual child you see because otherwise you know we're talking about this theme of love is making connection right you're forming a deep connection well how can you form a connection to some object when it's reality isn't sufficient for you therefore you construct a fantasy of some alternative version of that object and what you're really connecting with is that object what you're loving is not this thing you're loving that thing which you're then pretending is the real thing you're falling in love with a fantasy you see and this leads to the point of valuing the thing or the person for its own sake not for what you need for its own sake which leads to the next point which is appreciation if you love a thing or a person you appreciate them as they are that's what it really means to love something is to appreciate its consciousness like if you say you love pepperoni pizza what that means is you actually appreciate it how it tastes that's what you're appreciating that's why you love it if you love psychedelics why do you love them it's because you're appreciating them when you're experiencing them likewise if you love your cat or your dog that that's why you love them that's a that's a that's a chunk of consciousness that you appreciate you appreciate its existence for its own sake otherwise you don't really love it and the next point which takes this appreciation even deeper is that when you really love a thing and you form a deep connection with it you are conscious you're seeing its intrinsic beauty now this brings us to a deeper topic of beauty which really is an existential topic that could have its own episode what is beauty um in a nutshell basically beauty is infinite all of consciousness is beautiful but you have to be aware of that and most people aren't aware of that because we're biased and selfish and needy but in your own life you can find things that are beautiful that's a bias of yours because everything is equally beautiful but you find one specific thing you can see its beauty you can see the intrinsic beauty of a thing whether you're looking at a piece of art or a man or a woman or you know whatever a child you can see its beauty and the more conscious you are and the more you focus on and really look at it you can see more and more there's infinite beauty in every object basically but you have to connect with it to really to get the like to suck the beauty out of it and to appreciate that and so the more you love an object the more you're willing to do that see like most people can't see the infinite beauty in a piece of dog turd on the sidewalk but they can see the beauty of a of a great painting by van gogh or something like that now there's equal beauty in both but some things for us humans because we're so finite and selfish and biased some things for us it's easier to see the beauty of but also you can go to a museum like one person can go to a museum walk by a van gogh painting and um and just kind of like walk through it but you know walk through the room look at kind of go oh that's kind of interesting then just keep walking right but like it's so shallow such a shallow connection was formed there between that person it's his consciousness and the van gogh painting but someone who's like an art connoisseur and really a lover of van gogh he'll you know he'll travel around the country halfway around the country just to see that painting and he'll spend the next hour just looking at it like really close you know get up close to that van gogh just like look at it and really appreciate every brush stroke and see the genius of it and the use of color and this and that and like maybe you can even bring you to tears if if you're really into that sort of thing now this you can extend this example to basically anything you can do this with human beings you can take one human being and you can just treat this human being very casually and flippantly transactionally then you don't really love that human being you don't have a deep connection with it but like if you really love someone you can like you can you can look at their face for hours you can see the beauty and every freckle on their face that would be forming a much deeper connection the next point is not needing anything from this other not making this other a tool to satisfy your own needs we've sort of touched on this already the next point is respecting the other's point of view the one that you're loving wanting to understand its point of view this is what really makes loving humans and maybe even animals just different from loving objects with loving a physical object like a painting it doesn't really have a point of view but every human you're going to be loving is going to have their own point of view and a lot of times their point of view is very different from your point of view so this creates a challenge because if you're not good at being able to jump between different points of view you're basically going to be incapable of loving people and you know how big i am on point of view i'm always talking about the perspectival nature of reality and you know in in epistemology all the epistemology we've talked about in the past we're talking about looking at different perspectives different perspectives on spirituality different perspectives on the world you know this sort of stuff we talked about this different paradigms so uh you really need to get to a point where you're very flexible with different points of view and for this you have to be extremely open-minded so it's actually impossible to love deeply when you're not open-minded because you're not able to be epistemically flexible enough to take on others points of view and therefore you can't really understand that other and if you really love an other you want to understand it and not just as like a specimen on a dissecting table like you're dissecting a frog to understand the frog there can be value in that you can try to understand people that way but that's not that's not nearly enough you got to understand their subjective experience their consciousness that's what you're really trying to connect with you're not trying to connect with their physical body so much as their mind and their consciousness and their spirit you might say so if you really love someone you take the time to get the note to know them deeply and a lot of times that's what that's what bad parents don't do bad parents oftentimes just simply skip the step of really getting to know their children like what do their children really like what do they dislike what are they passionate about what are they disgusted about what are they frustrated what are their deepest fears what are their greatest dreams and aspirations and see it's scary to really get to know someone's point of view deeply because first of all it's going to conflict with your point of view which is going to make you start to question your point because most people hold their point of view as absolute truth and reality the way reality is if the deeper you you get to know somebody else's point of view it's going to start to like make you question your point of view because maybe then you're going to be wondering like well but they're just so different from mine how do i know mine is right who's right so there's that obstacle but then also you might come to to realize that their point of view is so different from your point of view that actually you two are like incompatible or you just like you might struggle to understand their point of view it might be so like alien and different that you just might not understand their point of view and that takes a lot of mental work which you know most people just skip over a lot of times you just want to like bludgeon someone to death with your point of view so that they stop speaking from their point of view you want to like do a sort of a frame battle where you out frame them out paradigm them and you want like your paradigm to reign supreme to be sovereign right but this is a sort of a subtle form of domination that you're doing it's an epistemic domination and therefore that connection you're not able to form that genuine connection so an important component of loving someone is not forcing your agenda or point of view on them respecting their point of view which comes from recognizing that all of us have different experiences and even pers different personality types different ways of processing information even different neurology and neurochemistry and genetics which make our experience of life very different from each other now sometimes there's a lot of similarity but a lot of times quite different too so validating another one's point of view that means you love them next is listening and caring about their interests even just like look something as simple as just listening to them a lot of people are just bad listeners if you want to like just improve the quality of your romantic relationships or your family relationships just sit and listen without interrupting without being impatient that means you have to make time for it and you got to pay attention to it like a lot of times you might be listening on the phone your mom is talking to you telling you some story and you're listening to her with one ear and then here you're at the computer doing something else right so you're you're half there you're not fully present you're not really listening caring about their interests and sharing similar interests realistically this is what makes bonding and connection happen between humans because if you have no interests in common then why are you even relating to this person most likely there's no point in there being even a relationship here you're just doing out of some sort of sense of obligation which is honestly a problem with a lot of family relationships a lot of times with family we just kind of feel obligated to love them but we we have like no interest in common and then we're just kind of like trying to fake it but see the trick with love is that love is an honest signal you can't really fake love i mean you can try but it's not going to feel like love and both of you are going to know it it's going to be very obvious so sometimes you have to let go of relationships where a genuine connection isn't forming because like the points of you are too different the value systems are too different the interests are too different where common ground isn't found see doing something out of a sense of obligation is not sufficient for love if you think you can just hold a family together just out of obligation your children and spouse they'll know it they'll know that you're doing it as a as some sort of like chore or ideal that you've set you know for yourself but you're not really like your heart's not in it see your heart has to be in it otherwise you don't love it the next point is a sense of togetherness and company if you love the other then you'll want that and collaboration collaborating together working together on something if you love someone you're willing to collaborate with them the next point is being there when the other feels down or hopeless being there for them in their lowest time because see it's easy to be there for somebody in their you know peak states of happiness and excitement when your girlfriend or boyfriend when they get a giant raise and everything's going great yeah it's easy to be there for them um that's not a real test of your love the real test of your love is when they are hitting rock bottom when they are you know uh wasted drunk depressed lost their job got a cancer diagnosis or lost a bunch of money in the stock market or are suicidal or found out they have some sort of disease or mental disorder being there for them then when they are ready to kill themselves and to give up on life being there for them then that's the real test of your love because if you really love them you would want to be there for them in their lowest right because like think about it what is it what does it say about you when you want to distance yourself and disconnect from someone when they're at their lowest would you do that to yourself would you do that to someone you really cared about no you'd want to be there because they need you the most in that in that moment the next point is helping the other not to feel lonely the next point is validating its feelings this is a huge one this is what allows for that emotional connection see we talked about the physical connection there can be an intellectual connection if you have common intellectual interests there can be a spiritual connection which really we won't even get into here that's that's a whole topic and of itself but but the emotional connection this is what we're going to talk about right now um you need to be able to empathize you need to be to be able to ask you know here's a magic word for you guys the magic word when you're dealing with women in relationships is how are you feeling and really for you parents with kids this is also the magic phrase memorize just memorize this phrase and ask it a lot how are you feeling how are you feeling this is the magic phrase and then you ask that and then they tell you and then you gotta listen so it's important that you actually care about how they're feeling because see if you're like oh well how are you feeling and to you it's just an annoyance how they're feeling like you don't really care then you don't really love them you see because if you love them you would care how they feel because their feelings would be your feelings their pain would be your pain their happiness would be you'd want to know because you care about how you feel don't you right so of course if you if you if they're an extension of you you should care how they feel so you you should ask them how they feel then listen to how they feel then validate to them how they feel because a lot of times what happens is especially with those guys is that we hear a girl telling us how she feels and they're like oh you're just being crazy or whatever that like what you're feeling isn't important you kind of dismiss and minimize how the person is feeling it's like oh that that's some sort of silly feeling in this case you're invalidating the feelings so it's very counterintuitive you have to you have to validate the feelings even if there's sort of like crazy feelings that you think she shouldn't be feeling you got to validate those um and i mean the same thing like with your children like a lot of the problem with feelings is that feeling time a lot of times feelings are just irrational they make no sense and it can seem like why is this person feeling this way about this situation like i don't feel that way so why are they feeling that way it's a silly way to feel like they're depressed about something that they shouldn't be depressed about but again see what you're doing here is you're you're sort of like enforcing your point of view and your agenda and your survival onto them uh the thing with emotions is that they're irrational a lot of times and nonsensical no sometimes they have legitimate messages they're communicating but a lot of times they don't a lot of times they're just kind of like nonsense and you got to put up with that [ __ ] because you know what when you're feeling bad a lot of times think about it when you're feeling bad a lot of times you're feeling bad for kind of stupid irrational reasons but you still have to like cope with that somehow you can't just dismiss that as unimportant even though maybe it's based on some sort of silly logic or whatever so to build an emotional connection you gotta do that and then you gotta actually share emotions have emotions together share emotions you know one of the most powerful ways to create a feeling of love like very practically is cry together if you ever cry together with somebody that's like whoa that's huge that creates so much love because you're sharing that emotion but of course it doesn't have to just be that empathizing with the person of course is huge again its pain is your pain its suffering is your suffering and caring about its suffering for its own sake a lot of times the trap here is that we care about the suffering of someone close to us because we just want to quickly help them to fix the suffering so that we're not suffering because of their suffering but that's not really caring about their suffering for its own sake you see that's just because the suffering is annoying you you just want to do something to kind of like stop it real quick but like really to suffer with them and to to care about their suffering for its own sake the next point is meeting the other where they're at this is a huge one especially when you're dealing with people who are less conscious and less developed than you are you gotta meet people where they're at like if you're an adult talking to a small child that's five years old you gotta meet the child where he's at right you gotta talk to the child in the way the child understands not the way you would talk to an adult that's meeting the child where it's at but then the same thing happens it has to happen even with like your grown-up friends and even your spouse and whoever else a lot of times you might be more developed than them you might understand something deeper than them and then you're having a conversation with them and then you you're coming from such a high position that it doesn't connect you're speaking things to them it's not connecting right like if i was speaking to a drug addict i'd have to kind of like lower myself to the drug addicts level and talk to him on that level like i couldn't be telling the drug addict like oh you know just oh it's okay just tough it out and just quit and uh cold turkey is gonna be easy you know and then start talking about metaphysics and god and love and stuff like that doesn't that that's not at the level that the drug addict is at and a lot i think a lot of parents struggle with this when you're trying to teach something to a child the child doesn't understand usually they're not at the level of understanding the thing you're trying to teach them personally i struggle with this in teaching you guys because a lot of things i get sort of frustrated um in that i'm trying to teach something high and a lot of people i'm trying to teach it to are not not nearly at that level so there's a disconnect and i kind of expect you to get it but really what i should be doing is lowering myself to your level and kind of meeting you where you're at sometimes i succeed in that sometimes i fail in that something i definitely have to work on the next point is understanding and forgiveness understanding especially when they make mistakes forgiving them for making mistakes not holding grudges not demonizing and moralizing to the one you love because if you loved somebody you wouldn't demonize them you wouldn't moralize them and you would be understanding of their mistakes and you would forgive them which brings us to the next point which is being patient with this other the more you love someone the more patient you're willing to be with them that can be a good little litmus test when you're impatient with somebody that's that's a little red flag tell you you don't really love them the next point is huge i've also talked about this in my in my last episode about the infinite gods awakening this point is this is one of the most powerful things you can do for somebody is seeing the god and seeing the good in them even when they don't seeing their goodness underneath their selfishness and pettiness and devilry when you can look at a devil and see the god within that is one of the highest forms of love and that is in fact how you transform and heal the devil into an angel is by seeing the goodness in them even when they don't see it when the other person is hating themselves you can look past that when the other person is just behaving despicably you can look past that not get triggered by it see as just a facade look past that into the godhead behind their eyes that's powerful that's very advanced if you're able to do that that could be a whole episode on its own right there um the next point is recognition of its uniqueness so this one you're loving do you recognize its uniqueness because this one you're loving is is unique in the whole universe there's not two like it there's only one of these people there's only one of your children only one of your spouses you're not gonna find another girl like this another guy like this are you recognizing its uniqueness or are you trying to diminish this uniqueness and try to make it like everybody else or fit some fantasy of yours that would diminish its uniqueness see honoring its uniqueness see if i'm honoring your uniqueness as a conscious entity that you are you're going to feel very respected and loved just from that alone and this is where parents fail children a lot is that the parents they just don't honor the uniqueness of their children enough uniqueness and how they want to dress uniqueness in how they uh you know what hobbies they're partaking in uniqueness and their passions uniqueness and their strengths and weaknesses like as a parent you have to be very sensitive to the uniqueness of your child and not just treat them as a generic child because not all children are the same also like if you're a guy and you really want to get into a girl's heart like if you want to rapidly develop love with a girl um one of the best ways to do that is to communicate to the girl her uniqueness girl like this will this will this will make a girl fall in love with you when you're giving her a compliment compliment her on her uniqueness not on stuff that makes her the same as other girls that's huge she'll really appreciate that that will that will really set you apart from all the other guys um so you can you can train yourself when you're complimenting people to compliment them on their uniqueness and that's not just true for guys picking up girls this is true like even like if you're a boss and you have employees and you want to have a like a great workplace culture as as the boss it's not that hard to do like ask yourself what's one unique thing that i appreciate about each one of my employees and like actually know the name of the employee and then in your mind ask yourself what's unique about what's the unique like gift or talent or skill or value that they bring to our organization um that i can appreciate and compliment them on forever in the future like maybe this guy is like really has really great sense of taste and this employee of mine is like really punctual always on time and this employee of mine is like really attention to detail oriented like great at that and this employee is unique because of the way she dresses always in an amazing you know sense of dress and then you communicate that to them and they're gonna think you're the best boss the next point is generosity and kindness the next point is verbal approval and praise compliments this is especially true for those people who have the love language of words of affirmation they need a lot of verbal approval and praise the next point is keeping your promises don't make promises you can't keep the next point is peace maintaining peace lack of conflict nothing kills love more than conflict with this other yelling screaming and of course if it gets down to physical confrontation then you're done that's it you you've crossed the red the ultimate red line um you can't uncross that line but even assuming you never get to actual physical conflict just even just verbal conflict is already gonna kill your love so trying to maintain peace between you and the one you love that is itself a sign of your love if you really love someone you're gonna you're gonna kind of like bend over backwards to try to make peace with them even when they come to to butt heads with you you're gonna turn away right it's almost like imagine like one of those really like noble martial artists who like like maybe a jujitsu master or something who's so good that if you try to like if some idiot comes to try to like fight him in a bar he's not even going to engage in the fight right the idiot might like run at him and try to like hit him over the head with a beer bottle and this jiu jitsu man what's he gonna do is he gonna like beat him up no he's just gonna like move out of the way just dodge and kind of like deflect right because he wants to maintain peace because he doesn't need to like prove how good he is how tough he is that's a sign of love the next point is telling the truth not lying this is huge and and people don't really understand the significance of this because this has like profound this goes really deep profound metaphysical significance um the connection between truth and love i mean but like just practically if you love somebody you're gonna be telling them the truth now that doesn't mean that sometimes you don't maybe i mean sometimes like it's complicated because sometimes you gotta tell a white lie um but like in the moment but fundamentally your relationship has to be based on truth fundamentally and as soon as you lose that basically all possibility for love is going to be lost you can't build love on lies on a foundation of lies and deception because there's there's actually a deep connection between love and truth which i've talked about elsewhere i won't get into that here the next point is safety and trust if you love someone then you're trying to build safety and trust with them you want them to be able to trust you not in a way where you then exploit them but like where you're maintaining that trust in perpetuity that means you're never cashing in on the trust it's like oh yeah i'm going to get her to trust me for the next over the next year and then i'm gonna i'm gonna use that against like no that's not love true love is you wanna you wanna main trip maintain that trust and you don't wanna break that trust you're willing to sacrifice yourself in order to maintain that trust so that the other can rely on you this is what parents ultimately need to offer their children their their children fundamentally they're so vulnerable the child needs someone in the world to trust out of the 8 billion people on the planet the child needs at least one or two people that they can just trust without any doubt and when the child doesn't have that one or two people that they can trust no matter what then that's a that's going to be a very dysfunctional adult once that child grows up because fundamentally what the child was taught is that they can't trust anyone the next point is and this is a huge one seeing the others realness warts and shadow truly as the other is we we've touched on this point uh before but like let's underscore this what do i mean by seeing its realness if you love a thing you want to see it as it is not in some improved way in the future and this again connects love and truth because love actually is truth love has to be a recognition appreciation of the realness of existence when you're looking at an object you have to love it exactly as it is otherwise you're not actually loving it and you're actually not seeing the truth you're actually the truth in this case you're actually in a position of rejection of truth you're looking at an object you don't like how it looks it's kind of ugly to you or whatever you want to be different that means you're not really seeing what's there and you're going into fantasy you're trying to modify it but that's not what's in front of you right seeing it as it truly is the next point is a deep appreciation of its of this finite portion of consciousness as it really is right so this this takes it even deeper now you're actually when you're when you're looking at this thing you're seeing it as a portion of consciousness your own consciousness and that's a finite portion of it and then you're appreciating that consciousness for what it is like out of the infinite consciousness that there is this specific form has the form it has it's finite it has limitations and you're loving it as the finite form that it is you recognize that it can't be infinite it's finite and you're loving it in that capacity as a finite thing that takes it really deep and then a final point here which is really tricky is accepting its selfishness in other words if you love a thing if you love a consciousness a finite consciousness that's what we're talking about you're loving a finite consciousness another human if you're living unfinite consciousness you have to accept that this finite consciousness is going to be selfish and not to want to change that because you see when people are being selfish we tend to want to change that we don't like that and so one of the sort of meta mistakes that you can make here a meta trap in this in this work is like you write down this whole list of all these things about how to love right and then you're like okay good leo i'm gonna practice this i'm gonna get really good at this and then i'm gonna maybe even share this list with my with my family and so forth and with my spouse and my girlfriend boyfriend whatever with my colleagues at work and then we're all gonna love each other and then what you do is that when you're loving them but then they're acting selfish towards you they're not loving you back then you get angry at them and want to change them and you no longer love them because they're being selfish dicks but that's the real test of your love the real test of your love is not your ability to love someone when they're being loving towards you and being selfless towards you the real ability to love the real test of your ability to love is how much can you love those people who are very unconscious and very selfish because that's real that's true about them and for you to love them you have to love them as that not your fantasy of how they are when they are enlightened it's like yeah it's easy to love everybody when they're enlightened you see the highest form of selflessness is the ability to not be disturbed and to fully accept selfishness and that takes us full circle so that's the list that's a powerful list i hope you recognize the power of this list um but we can really simplify this whole list this whole what was all this list about really this list was really only about one concept it was about love equals selflessness that's all we're talking about here this is just a list of ways to be selfless towards another because that's what love is love is selflessness so the more selfless you are the more loving you're going to be and this also tells you why love is so [ __ ] hard why is it so hard to love people um why why do parents struggle loving their kids why do kids grow up with abusive parents who don't love them why do many children grow up and they don't even know what love is um why do spouses fight and why do we have divorces and why do we have problems at work between co-workers and bosses and employees why do we have family conflicts and so forth because all of these things for them to work would have to be uh coming from a place of love and truth and selflessness but we're all so goddamn selfish and full of lies and self-deception and untruth how can we love look how simple it is it's so simple it's geniusly simple love is very simple but it's very very difficult to actually implement and embody and that is the whole work of being alive as a human here is learning how to love by becoming more selfless and spirituality develops this capacity to love by making you more godlike because what is god god is infinite selflessness god is love so really what i've been describing here is the ideal form of love the ideal form of love is what a totally benevolent selfless all-powerful omniscient being would do in relation to you if you want to know how to love just ask what would an all-powerful omniscient totally selfless being how would how would it treat another how would it treat you that's it it's that simple now what breaks love the following i'll give you a quick list we're going to go quick here because running out of time violence abuse hate anger judgment criticism fear lying exploitation cheating stealing neglect not making time for not listening control domination manipulation demonization moralization blame disrespect ridicule breaking promises projection gaslighting not caring about the other suffering punishment especially punishing for making mistakes revenge closed-mindedness trying to change the other to fit a fantasy fantasy some kind of fantasy and ultimately selfishness if selflessness makes love if selflessness is love selfishness breaks love makes sense right it only makes sense now how can you know the things i'm saying are true well let's do a quick visualization here just to get you to feel i mean you should have already intuited if you're intuitive you should already know if you're wise you should already know the things i've said are dead on but let's just make double sure um so don't do this visualization if you're driving but if you're not driving then go ahead and if you're sitting there and you're not doing anything important close your eyes we're going to go through a quick visualization here so i'd like you to imagine that you were just born and you're a small child this little consciousness that came into this larger universe that is conscious you're vulnerable you're fragile and even more importantly you have no idea what's going on you don't know anything you don't know what's right what's wrong what's safe what's dangerous like you're you're in a state of complete ignorance and now really become that little innocent consciousness very fragile and vulnerable imagine yourself in that consciousness's point of view and now i'm going to do some things to you here and you just for yourself notice how you feel i'm going to criticize you i'm going to judge you i'm going to be angry towards you i'm going to yell at you i'm going to lie to you i'm going to exploit you and cheat you i'm going to steal from you i'm going to neglect you i'm not going to make time for you i'm not going to listen to you i'm going to control you and dominate you i'm going to manipulate you i'm going to demonize you and moralize to you i'm going to blame you i'm going to disrespect you i'm going to ridicule you i'm going to make promises that i'll break to you i'm going to project upon you and gaslight you i'm not going to care about your suffering i'm going to punish you i'm going to take revenge on you i'm going to try to change you i'm going to hate you i'm going to abuse you i'm going to do violence to you how love do you feel on a scale of 0 to 10 if i do those things to you keep your eyes closed we're still visualizing now shake your mind free of that and let's do one more visualization again imagine you're a little innocent consciousness that was just born you know nothing you're in a state of ignorance you come into the world you don't know what's going on and now let's try this how does this make you feel i'm going to shower you with attention and my awareness i'm going to give you a lot of my time i'm going to be in physical proximity to you i'm going to touch you hold you cuddle you i'm going to try to connect with you physically emotionally intellectually spiritually i'm going to take good care of you i'm going to care about your needs i'm going to help you to meet your needs i'm going to help you to survive i'm going to shelter you from excessive suffering fear and trauma i'm going to have your back i'm going to defend you and be loyal to you i'm going to take on your agenda as my own i'm going to make you an extension of me i'm going to treat you as well as i would treat myself i'm going to be happy for you when you succeed i'm going to want for you what you most want for yourself i'm going to sacrifice for you and work on your behalf i'm going to support you nurture you and encourage you i'm going to cheerlead you i'm going to encourage your self-exploration self-expression and self-actualization i'm going to respect your your sovereignty as a consciousness i'm not going to try to manipulate you control you dominate your or exploit you i'm going to totally accept you and never judge you i'm going to value you for your sake and appreciate you and see your intrinsic beauty i'm not going to need anything from you and i'm not going to make you a tool to satisfy my own needs i'm going to respect your point of view wanting to understand your point of view wanting to understand you your uniqueness taking the time to deeply get to know you i'm not going to force my agenda or point of view on you i'm going to listen to you and care about your interests and share similar interests with you i'm going to develop togetherness with you and collaborate with you i'm going to be there for you when you're down and hopeless i'm going to be there for you when you're lonely i'm going to validate your feelings sharing your emotions with you empathizing with you your pain is going to be my pain i'm going to meet you where you're at at your developmental level i'm going to forgive you for your mistakes i'm going to be patient with you i'm going to see the good in you even when you don't see the good in yourself i'm going to be generous and kind i'm going to give you verbal approval and praise i'm going to compliment you on your uniqueness i'm going to keep my promises to you i'm going to keep my peace with you avoid conflict with you i'm going to tell the truth to you you're going to be able to fully trust me and i'm never going to cash in on that trust i'm going to see your realness warts and shadow and all as you truly are i'm going to deeply appreciate the finite portion of consciousness that you are and i'm going to accept your selfishness whenever you have the urge to be selfish now ask yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 how love do you feel open your eyes now on the actualized forum i asked what made you feel loved as a child specifically i asked this as a bit of an assignment i want to give you that assignment here as well in case you missed this on the forum and even if you did it on the forum you should still really do this assignment so here's your assignment you're going to get a piece of paper or a notebook really multiple pieces of paper and you're going to brainstorm you're going to ask yourself the question what made you feel loved as a child and this basically is anywhere from age 0 to age 20. so consider your mom your dad your siblings your friends and the actions they did and try to get really specific make a detailed list here what made you feel loved so you can you can find specific things activities that you did with these people or specific phrases they told you or the way you guys hung out together whatever write those down and then sort of do an analysis of those items and pull out actual general principles of what that means about how to love someone so for example you might say well what made me feel loved when i was a kid was when my mother would read to me at bedtime or what really made me feel loved is when my dad would bring me gifts or what really made me feel loved is when my my dad would tell you i love you or um when we would go on a road trip together stuff like that right so you write all those down those are like the specific details and then you you look at those and you do an analysis of those and say okay well when my mother was reading to me before bedtime uh what what is that really like what was actually what was what was the love there right it was it really in the reading of the book is that really what the love was about what was oh it's like oh well it's because she was there for me and giving me attention maybe that's what it was or it's because she was reading to me because i was sick and i needed that i was feeling that that's what it was it was the support right or it's because she was reading to me something that i was interested in and so it's like an intellectual connection that we were forming it's like i was interested in dinosaurs and she was reading to me about dinosaurs even though she didn't care about dinosaurs and that was the i felt love from that right so do that kind of analysis and that should generate your list of like you should generate basically the same list that i gave you again this is a way to validate that or maybe you'll come up with more stuff to add to the list i'm not saying my list was complete although it's pretty comprehensive also you should as contrast to that which will help you is make a list of the things that made you feel unloved in your family when you were growing up and for many of you maybe this will be even larger list um this also helps right so then you realize that to feel loved is just the inverse of being unloved so for example if you say well i felt very unloved because my dad would yell at me and beat me with a belt and my mom would never be home and she would be neglectful well okay so now now you know what you need to do to feel loved or if you're raising a child how to how to make him feel loved is you gotta not be physically violent number one and number two not be neglectful like that now for some of you this will be a difficult assignment because honestly a lot of kids didn't receive much love at all when they were growing up if you did consider yourself super lucky and only thanks to that you're not some dysfunctional [ __ ] psychopath um or have some kind of mental disorder but um and you know that that's that's that's really tough um of course you can heal that stuff but it's going to take a lot of work to heal and you might wonder well like leo i never i've never even felt love i don't even know what that is i don't even know how to make a list of it well i'm very sorry that your childhood was so limited and crippled um there's definitely things you can do to to feel love and to reconnect with your love uh but still just do this exercise uh if only if you just make a giant list of all the things that made you feel unloved just invert those and you'll get the stuff that would have made you feel loved that you missed out on and i mean what happened to you is what happened to you can't really change that but you can certainly turn yourself into a loving person you can you can sort of jiu jitsu this problem and say well because i've experienced how bad it is to have grown up unloved i'm never going to do that to my children or i'm never going to subject my spouse or my girlfriend or my boyfriend to that same kind of treatment you can flip it around so you can actually turn unlove into a motivation to love so there you go so looking back up at this whole list that i gave you of what it means to love another uh how do you stack up that's my question to you consider your past relationships intimate ones work relationships family relationships how do you stack up how good are you at loving others probably not so good see i i gave you a sort of impossible list here i gave you the ideal form of love and uh this ideal form of love would require that you're completely selfless you'd have to be godlike to love to this degree and you're very selfish and you're very finite so how can you love to this degree see by the way have you ever wondered why relationships like i'm talking about intimate relationships are so hard especially intimate relationships but i mean all relationships are hard but especially intimate relationships are why here's here's the key because you are entering this relationship in a selfish manner to use the other as a vehicle to satisfy your own needs that's the preconditions upon which the relationship is entered into at all by you and probably the other two they're doing the same thing from their point of view you're doing this rather than meeting them as they are so you're not really relating to them as they are you're relating to your fantasy of them of who you need them to be to satisfy all of your deficiencies so you you then play this game of trying to mold the actual them into the fantasy of them that you need them to be for you to feel good and this is the predicate for the entire relationship and when they fail to live up to your fantasy you get upset with them which creates conflict and fighting and ultimately uh it breaks up credit to peter ralston for this insight this is a brilliant insight into the nature of relationships and why they fail i learned that from him but it's very apropos here and um when you understand that that changes your whole understanding of what it means to create a relationship especially an intimate relationship this brings us into the topic of conscious relationship which i haven't even talked about yet i've been promising an episode on it and this one isn't it this is just the tip of the iceberg of that i'll have an episode in the future just about conscious relationships and what that is like what's amazing is when you realize that most human beings have no [ __ ] idea how to create uh a genuine relationship with another human being this is completely out of most people's awareness and it's not taught anywhere it's not taught in school it's not in university it's like it's not taught anywhere for the most part and yet we're relating with all these people most of our our lives and then we wonder why it fails and why it's so difficult well this is why so i'll have a separate episode about that so anyways back to love love is the hardest thing that you're ever going to do love will test every fiber of your being love cannot be faked your capacity to love is an honest signal a selfish person is incapable of love an fyi for you ladies who keeps struggling and struggling to find a man who will love you and you're wondering why realize this a self-absorbed man is incapable of love if you want love from your relationships genuine love not some sort of fakery you need to be in a relationship with a person who's relatively highly developed we're talking about developmental psychology here people who are low in their developmental psychology in their moral development and their spiritual development or their cognitive development or their in their emotional development uh these people are incapable of loving you and yet you keep dating these people so so the advice here is stop dating materialistic on spiritual selfish selfish men now that's easier said than done because then the problem becomes well leah where do i find these spiritual selfless non-materialistic men and yeah that's a problem i mean it's also hard to find such women too humans are not very well developed generally speaking and even the ones who pretend to be spiritual are not very developed either a lot of that sort of like spiritual spiritual people are a lot of times just kind of front fronting you know and i'm guilty of that myself i've played that game um so yeah just because someone like gives off the air of spirituality does not mean that they're not actually um you know selfish underneath that like selfishness is so profound that um you know just doing a little bit of yoga or something it's not gonna it's not gonna solve that problem some yoga some kombucha and some new age seminars are not gonna solve that problem a little bit of meditation here and there's not gonna solve that problem this is a very deep problem this is an existential level problem so uh the bottom line is if you want love in your relationships like date people who are more developed and then where do you find these people well yeah it's hard the more developed someone is the rarer that person is the harder it is to find such people i don't really have a good solution for you there other than just go meet more people the more people you meet the more chances you have of meeting one of them who's going to be developed and also compatible with you and of course compatibility also has to be there just because the person is spiritually developed does not mean that they're compatible with you that's a separate issue that needs to be looked at i'm not going to go into that here um and then you can go and try to like look for people you know try to be in communities or places where more developed people like to hang out um that that might help if you're like at a bar or a nightclub you're not going to find the most developed people there which which is a shame because there's a lot of good people looking people at bars and nightclubs but unfortunately they're not very spiritually or cognitively or emotionally developed which is why they're there to begin with so anyways and in case you haven't figured out the above list that i gave you um this is how to raise the perfect child i have an older episode that i did that's called how to raise rockstar children which goes into a lot of like my ideas about the psychology of raising good children um but in a certain sense this episode here is actually like even more fundamental because fundamentally what children need is is just love that that's the most important thing if you're gonna if you want the 80 20 rule on how to raise children it's not a bunch of fancy parenting techniques it's simply love eighty percent of your results are just gonna come from love love your children and how do you do that well you do all the [ __ ] that i said above and you don't do all the stuff that i said breaks love and that would be it now of course that's again easier said than done i'm not saying that would be easy that's probably one of the hardest things you'll do in life is try to live up to that list as a parent but also the list i gave you above is how to have the perfect marriage and another interesting bonus you get with this list is all the stuff of course that i said above applies for how to love yourself self self-love go back through that whole list and rather than hearing me talking about loving some other like you were imagining loving a child of yours or a parent of yours or a spouse of yours or a boyfriend or girlfriend of yours rather than imagining that like this will be kind of a mind [ __ ] and real eye opener for you go through watch this whole episode again and listen to me talking as though i'm talking when i say other or it i'm actually talking about you you'll be shocked at how bad you are at even loving yourself you would think well but leo we're all so selfish so i we should all be good at loving ourselves right wrong wrong you judge yourself all the time you criticize yourself all the time you beat yourself up you moralize to yourself you do all the [ __ ] um you get angry at yourself you get you do all the [ __ ] on that breaking love list you do all that to yourself and you forget to do all the stuff all the positive stuff on the how to love list so start by practicing that on yourself and then you can extend it out to others once you feel the benefit of it now when it comes to love this is as they say this is a candle you got to burn from both ends what do i mean by this i mean that there's really i see there's two aspects to learning to love to mastering love one aspect is accessing absolute love through awakening and god realization which i've talked about a lot in the past contemplating the actual metaphysics and the existential dynamics of love contemplation of biases and difference how i said that love love is indifference uh basically you need you need to shift your state of conscience to experience god's love realize that god is love realize that you're loved existentially find the source of infinite love within you within your consciousness realize that consciousness is love realize that love is equivalent to absolute truth all that stuff you can do that with maybe yoga or meditation but realistically you're going to need something more powerful like psychedelics to do that so that's like where the psychedelics come in that's burning the candle from one end and then from the other end what you got to do is practice what i talked about in this episode this is the more practical side this is the human domain of love practice love in the finite human domain with your relationships practice actually loving specific objects in the world objects and people when i say object i include people in that as well i mean object in a very general sense right so both both are necessary because you can get good at like taking a psychedelic and accessing love existentially but then when you come back down from that you might even understand what it is and so forth but like you're going to be very poor at implementing love in your day-to-day relationships on the other hand the other that would be a mistake uh on the other hand the other mistake would be that you you practice all the stuff in your day-to-day life of loving people and you think well good that's just gonna that's gonna lead me to the ultimate love and the answer is that it won't it won't it's not going to be enough you're not going to reach infinite love existential love you're not going to understand what love really is if all you do is you're just a good parent and a good friend and a good spouse those are great and your life might start to actually go so well and feel so good if you get really good at doing that that you might feel like okay well i got it there's nothing more to understand about love and no you don't understand how profound love is because i want you to get to the point where you realize that this thing is love for you to realize that this thing is love this this requires accessing absolute love but also just because you realize that this thing is love does not mean you're a loving person in your romantic relationships so burn the candle from both ends think of how valuable the list that i gave you up above is this episode is giving you one of the ultimate master keys to success in life and just to make it explicit what i'm telling you is become a good lover if you want a good life become a good lover not in some cheap sappy way in a solid authentic truthful way love must be grounded in truth this requires serious work this is going to take you decades this will take you a couple of decades at least to get good at being a good lover it's really difficult this is one of the most [ __ ] difficult things you'll ever do but then again what else is there to do in life you have something better to do why are you here what if from now on you started to look at life as just a training ground for becoming a good lover what if that's all life is what if there's nothing more to life than that what if you stop thinking of life as some sort of biological process that's happening on some material planet circling around a material star in some material big bang universe that just happened by some fluke luck and you don't know why you're here and what you're doing and it's all just meaningless and it's just evolution what if you threw away that stupid paradigm and your new paradigm was that you are a consciousness inside of a training ground that you've constructed for yourself and put yourself in to become a good lover and that that's really what life and reality is about how's that for a paradigm shift how's that for breaking you out of your nihilism and your meaninglessness and your cynicism and your rationalism and your confusion about what to do in life what's the point of life this is the point of life love is the point of life it's not complicated it's so obvious once you once you see it it's so obvious the list that i gave you above can be applied to your intimate partner to your family to your friends to your coworkers to employees to your clients to your customers to the way that you do business to strangers on the street to men to women to animals to the planet to collectives to yourself so there's a lot of areas of application here don't just think of it as romantic love for example or parenting although of course those are probably the two most obvious ways so let's let's kind of like wrap this up by by really getting fundamental here what is love love equals connection say this with me love equals connection love equals connection think of it as two droplets of water two droplets of consciousness coming close enough together that they start to merge together into one droplet slowly you know like they form a little connection and a little connection grows and grows and then eventually becomes one so love is about reestablishing a connection between two disjointed disconnected lost parts of consciousness that then find each other and reconnect with each other merging into a unity at the ultimate extreme if you love a thing you should want to deepen your connection with it this applies to people but also to things i talk a lot about how people tend to be shallow and live life in a shallow way well look here's a connection between that and love is that really when you're living life on the surface in a shallow way in a materialistic way what you're actually doing is you're not deeply connecting with reality and that's all spirituality is people who are spiritual and motivated by spiritual pursuits they want a deep connection with reality because you recognize the significance and miracle of what life and reality are that you don't want a shallow form of it you want a deep experience of life so then the question becomes and like how do i live my life and if you're well i want to live a deep life because i recognize the sacredness of life i want to live a deep life where i'm deeply connected to reality and to myself and to others and then the question is simply okay well what creates that how do i deepen my connection what are the things that deepen my connection and what are the things that sever that connection and then it just becomes a matter of let me just discipline myself to do the things that deepen the connection and let me let go of all the things that are obstacles impediments that are severing the connection and keeping me disconnected see figuring out life is not so hard i'm giving you the ultimate the ultimate plan for how to live the best life you could live right and you're going to use spirituality to deepen that connection um but not just that you're also gonna you're also just gonna do all the mundane things you're gonna do that with love too even the job that you get the career you have that's going to be about deepening your connection with reality so that you can love reality more and you know what the good news is reality is infinitely deep so you can go as deep as you want there's no limit the limit actually is your willingness to go how deep do you want to go how deep of a connection do you want to have and what kind of things do you want to connect with how wide do you want your connection to be do you want to connect with the entire universe do you want to connect with every living being in the universe or do you want to be very picky and only connect with a few little things here and there then how deep do you want those connections to be that's all up to you you have to decide that for yourself so here's a magic question for you for the rest of your life you can always ask how can i connect deeper with this thing whatever thing you're trying to connect to that you like let's say it starts off with you just liking it you have a you have a liking for something it's not love yet let's say um how do you how do i connect deeper with like let's say let's say you like dinosaurs okay let's start there you like dinosaurs let's say you like astronomy let's say you like history reading history let's say you like politics let's say you like sex let's say you like men or women let's say you like children let's say you like computers let's say you like languages you can only ask ask the question about that is like how can i connect deeper with that thing that i like and this question automatically generates a whole trajectory for your life it generates a whole potential life purpose for you it opens up the the blueprint for how you're going to create a meaningful life the problem though is that it's going to take work for you to develop this deep connection that takes effort that takes investment you have to build this deep connection over years and decades this is not a shallow pursuit here developing this connection and don't expect this deep profound awesome connection to just be there for you from the very beginning at the beginning it starts as something weak and piddly like oh i just like dinosaurs i just like reading some history i just like some some casual why not one night stan sex it starts that way you gotta then say okay how do i deepen it like most people have no idea how deep sex can go no idea they stay on the surface level of sex it's it's tragic really how much potential is lost the connection is right there there's an infinite connection that you can create with almost any object in reality in the universe but you're not capitalizing on that you're not building it you're not investing it go see some of my episodes about investment you need to invest in building these connections this is what the majority of your lifetime should be devoted to is deepening your connection to the things that you're interested in the things you love whether it's your family your children or whatever history dinosaurs whatever you know if you like dinosaurs and you ask the question how can i connect deeper with this thing at first it might be like okay well let me go buy some more dinosaur books you can read about dinosaurs um then it can be like well maybe i should go to university and actually study paleontology and then you say well why not why am i why is there something better i should do well i love dinosaurs okay well then enroll in university go study paleontology study geology maybe it starts there usually before you get to paleontology you have to study geology um and then and then maybe maybe you realize one day it's like well [ __ ] what this means for me for me to connect with the dinosaurs like i have to actually go out in the field and dig up some [ __ ] dinosaurs find a new dinosaur and then that becomes your life purpose and then you start to love your life but you see to get to the point where you actually go out and dig up dinosaurs for a living get paid for it and so forth this is not something you do in a weekend this this takes cultivation this takes long-term investment i have an episode called um why valuable things require investment over time go watch that episode because this is exactly what i'm talking about here we're connecting that with love and i'm gonna have another episode in the future that i'm already that i already planned about more the more talk needs to be more needs to be said about investing because you guys are so bad at investing in yourselves um a lot more to say about that but anyways so like um yeah it like for you to become like a dinosaur hunter as your life purpose or whatever um this is gonna take a decade of development but again do you have something better to do you have something more that you love if there's something more you love than that then go do that the problem is that people are not developing these connections and therefore they are not loving their lives and therefore they're not yeah they're miserable and also they can't generate much value for the world too because when you're miserable you're not passionate how can you generate value for the world you can't work really hard you're not at your best love is what puts you at your best when you're in love when you're loving that's when you're at your best whatever you love it doesn't matter what it is consciously work to connect deeper with it lack of love is equal to disconnection separation division and partiality romantic love is the desire to unite and a feeling of union and connection between two separate parts of consciousness romantically you want to be in union but also there's a balance there you want to maintain your autonomy and you want to survive as an individual self so that's why romance is so tricky because on the one hand you want to merge together on the one on the other hand you want to maintain autonomy and balancing that is quite difficult good luck with that think of love as care for some part of reality which isn't part of your separate self yet and then as you love it you bring it into the fold of yourself and and through this process here you're it seems like you're bringing it in but actually what's happening is that it's like you're bringing it closer to you and then you have to bring yourself closer to it so actually you're expanding the envelope of your identity and self to encompass that thing like we talked about at the beginning and that expands yourself so love expands you love forces you to grow love forces you to confront all of the obstacles that are preventing you from loving deeper love is you can think of love as the fuel for personal development why are you doing personal development what are you developing towards why are you expanding yourself why are you growing what does it mean to grow as a human for what purpose to make more money to have more sex no it's to develop and expand your capacity to love that's what growth is think of love as equivalent to care for other care beyond yourself to care for another genuinely you have to expand yourself and the smaller and more limited the self is that you start off with the more needy it is the harder it's going to be for you to care for others because you're going to be too needy you're going to need others to care for you but it can still be done no matter you know no matter where you are you can still you can always grow and be more loving it's all a matter of degree think of love as seeing the beauty of some part of reality love as acceptance and seeing a thing's inherent perfection interfacing with its beauty if you love to study dinosaurs you see the beauty in the dinosaurs if you love to study us astronomy it's because you see beauty in the night sky if you love sex it's because you see beauty in the sex if you love computer gadgets and you want to be a you know a tech geek or whatever then you love technology you see the beauty in the technology it's going to be different for all sorts of people that's one of the amazing things about love is that it's infinitely diverse it expresses itself in uh an endless variety of finite ways like this think of love as the opposite of rejection hate criticism judgment needing something to be different manipulation domination and bias to accept reality as it is to see the inherent beauty of reality or any part of reality a part or the whole is love think about it like this if you lacked all bias why wouldn't you extend the care that you have for yourself to everyone else can you see that it's biased that's preventing you from doing that for more on bias and what i mean by that and how profound that concept is go check out my episodes one called self bias the other one called understanding bias bias is core to my teachings and core to understanding the ultimate structure of reality and core to understanding love ultimately god is love because god is acting on behalf of the good of all of existence that's the highest good and the reason god is acting that way is because it's completely selfless that's what infinite selflessness would do it would act to ensure um the highest good for the totality and you are god god is not something other than you you are god you're just dreaming you're stuck in a finite dream so really what reality is is god as it's expanding its sense of self and connecting with love little finite biased pieces of love it's actually awakening to the fact that it's infinite love and so the more you're loving the more you're loving eventually you realize oh my god that's just what i am i'm just love and of course that was the whole motivation so i'm i'm literally explaining to you the entire engine that runs reality it's an expansion of love it's a it's a fractal of love consciousness is realizing its own love for itself by healing and unifying disconnected parts of itself to then culminate in the ultimate unification which is infinity god love self with a capital s and that's that that's reality nutshell now here's an important point don't beat yourself up for failing to love to this degree of perfection that i've outlined here i've outlined perfection here it's actually impossible for a finite self such as yourself to love to this degree you'd have to be completely selfless which would jeopardize your survival as a finite self it could kill you so that's the existential bind and trade-off here the more selfless you are the more it could kill you because you stop caring about being a specific way being a finite human self so the point here is not to become perfectly loving you're never really going to live up to that in practice on the material human level on this planet uh really the point of this talk is to just inch you towards higher love become a little bit more loving than you've been yesterday last week last month last year that's it that's all you're doing and as you do that your life becomes better you start to feel happier things go better for you there's less conflict less agitation less fear less anxiety and so on and um but don't moralize yourself like oh well leo says i should be this loving and i'm not and so now i'm depressed like no that's gonna again apply this to yourself first and foremost if god was looking at you what god would see in you is that you're really [ __ ] selfish needy and fearful and god perfectly understands that you're not capable of that level of love but god also sees the potential in you because god knows you're god even though you don't know that yet god god god sees the potential in you of growing and gradually expanding your sense of self bit by bit by bit practicing love a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more accessing some awakenings and um and making progress like an inchworm like a caterpillar inching along towards love uh and and god is patient with you and doesn't need you to be otherwise god is accepting of your selfishness and your neediness and your limitation and so there's no rush there's no judgment you're not going to hell love at your own pace love genuinely don't try to fake your love don't try to love something that you don't really love like the love has to come from a consciousness a sort of recognition of the beauty of the thing that you're interfacing with not because you have to because you want to and if you don't want to then don't do it stay where you are you can stay your entire life at your current level of love not raise your capacity one bit and god loves you all the same and there's no problem at all the question though is are you going to be satisfied with that at the end of your life or are you going to wish that you pushed yourself a little bit to level a bit more as you satisfy your own needs life becomes more and more about helping others satisfy their needs until eventually you reach a point where you have no needs at all you're completely selfless and then your life just becomes about service to other again this is an ideal realistically you're probably never going to reach this point but it's an ideal to shoot for it kind of tells you what the trajectory of life should be now one final trap here that i want to point out for you especially you ladies but some men as well uh nothing i said in this episode is a license or justification or me telling you to stay with your abuser if you're in a relationship where somebody is abusing you whether it's a parent or a spouse girlfriend boyfriend co-worker or boss you might take it to mean that you have to stay in that situation and work through it and suffer the abuse not at all that's not what i'm telling you at all in fact for people who think that my advice is exactly the opposite in this case what it means for you to learn to love first you have to start by loving yourself is to love yourself you have to respect yourself respect your own sovereignty respect your own values and um what that means is set boundaries learn to say no and leave this abusive situation once you've left the situation i'm not saying you got to hate the person who's abusing you you don't need to hate them but leave leave get yourself into a safe peaceful environment where you're not being harassed abused um bullied around and then from that place you can keep doing your work and you can even love your abuser from that place where you're not with the abuser anymore you see the mistake people make is they say well i'm just going to love my abuser and stay no you leave you never talk to them again and then you can love them at a distance in your mind you you can you can still have compassion and empathy and sympathy for the abuser because the only reason they're an abuser because they were abused um like that's that's all fine but that doesn't mean you stay all right so just avoid that trap otherwise it's going to get real bad and it's it's not going to make you more loving loving this you know narcissistic abuser who just keeps taking and taking and taking this is not going to this is not going to help you to actualize your full potential as god all right i'm done here a few final points here um before i go the life purpose course i hope you realize this my life purpose course is over 25 hours of practical advice and material brand new material that i don't cover on my normal channel in the free videos that really what it's about you could think of it as it's like a blueprint of how to develop a career that you love i could have called it not the life purpose course but the how to fall in love with your life course i could have called it that so if you like this idea that i was talking about you know the dinosaurs and so forth the life purpose course fits right into there it shows you how to practically do that now in the course i don't talk about love so much directly explicitly the way i do here but basically that course is showing you how to find your top values find your strengths and how to align your whole life with that and then follow through on that so check that out and the final point i want to make here is that um it's important that you guys understand and are patient with me um and don't expect me to be perfectly loving towards you so love like i said i mean this is a lifelong project right i'm going to be learning how to be a better lover for the rest of my life and i still there's a lot of work i still got to do on myself at the practical level and i'm still exploring the metaphysical dimensions of love as well there's still more insights i need there so um you might say well leo you talk about all this love stuff but then but then sometimes you're being a dick or an [ __ ] to me or like you're neglecting me or you're not following all this stuff you said so you're a hypocrite yeah the the leo that you know is a finite form of consciousness right so as a finite form of consciousness i'm not going to live up to all these standards i'm i'm giving you sort of like the pure i'm giving i i've taken the purest insights direct from god given it to you that doesn't mean i can live up to all of it this is like a an ideal blueprint that i'm going to be working for decades towards so be patient with me i know i got a lot of work to do and i'm not always loving um i don't always come off as the most loving guy and you'll understand when you actually try to implement this list if you really try you'll understand how difficult it is and actually it's through trying and failing and failing and failing and falling into various traps and self-deceptions and seeing your own selfishness very deeply and suffering through it all you'll going through breakups and all this stuff like you'll realize how deficient you are at love you'll realize how self you'll you'll be disgusted with your own selfishness that's why most people don't do this right and it's by going through that process that eventually you'll you'll develop a compassion for the selfishness of others such that you will not place demands on others to be selfless for you because you realize that that's a completely selfish demand to place on another is to ask them to be as selfless as god towards you to be perfectly selfless towards you that's the most selfish demand you could make of someone you see and you'll recognize that and then you'll understand why people are not more loving and you'll forgive them for that because you'll know firsthand how difficult it was for you and you'll be so aware of all your personal deficiencies in this area and then you'll stop judging others i hope one day you get there until then stay tuned for more you