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[Music] I want to elaborate on this metaphor that's very helpful for orienting people in this work so if you're new to personal development and self-actualization then this is for you and that's the metaphor of the rat in the maze and this is sort of gonna put everything together in a big picture for you with what we're doing with actualized org and of course what that means is what you're doing in life you start life like a rat dropped into a maze think about that don't just don't just skip over it but really think about what that means to be a rat dropped in a maze you start life with zero understanding that means you have no idea who you are in this life no idea what reality is what this maze is why is here no idea what anything means no idea the value of anything no idea what's right or what's wrong no idea what to fear or what to desire no idea what traps and dangers exist no idea how your body works no idea how your mind works no idea how your emotions work or what they mean no idea how society works no idea who to trust no idea what death is no idea what to do no idea how to distinguish the truth from falsehood no idea who the good guys are are who the bad guys are no idea what's possible or what's impossible and you don't even have the idea that you are inside of a maze yet that's where you begin life think about that that's that's a sobering fact right there and that is your situation you've been scrambling through this maze for your entire life from the very beginning up to where you are right now and this whole time you've basically just been flying by the seat of your pants you've been winging it and mostly you didn't even have an idea that you were inside of a maze because very quickly you were bombarded with all sorts of programming from your family from your school from your friends from your culture from the media and and elsewhere that started to make you believe that the maze is more well understood than it really is and everybody around you started telling you that oh look it's this way here's how it is here's what the goals are here's what the values are here's what everything means here's what's right and wrong and all of that such that very quickly probably within within 10 years of your life you almost completely lost sight of the fundamental predicament that you are in that you were born into which is that you don't know and these deep profound existential questions about the very nature of the maze and why you're in it at all these were very quickly replaced and crowded out of your mind by all the programming that you received and then once you were programmed with that then you went off to the races and you started crawling through this maze like the rat that you are chasing after cheese convinced that what you want is cheese running from bit of cheese to bit of cheese to bit of cheese but of course the problem with every piece of cheese is that it only lasts you for so long you nibble on it and then before you know it it's gone and then your star again you another piece of cheese and so you keep running and so that's where you find yourself and in this process you've lost sight of the big picture and you've stopped asking the deep questions you've stopped caring about them because you've been so convinced by everyone around you by all the other rats running around you've been convinced that they know what's up because all of them are chasing cheese so you think that well hey this must be a game of chasing cheese that's what this thing must be and then that's what you start to do and this is such a big problem that you don't even know you don't even realize that there can be an alternative to chasing cheese and you forget about the big epistemic problems that you started life with namely who do you trust what do you do what should you be working towards in this life you've lost sight of this you've stopped asking these questions you've stopped caring about understanding but understanding is the key to unraveling this whole maze don't you see understanding is your fundamental problem whatever other problems you think you have in life they all boil down to a lack of understanding a lack of existential understanding and the tragic irony of that is when I use that word existential or metaphysical or epistemic people's eyes glaze over and they tune out and they think I'm talking about something that has nothing to do with their life the tragic irony here is that understanding would solve all of your little petty problems but you're so busy solving your petty little problems that you're too busy to care about developing deep understanding of what the hell is going on here that's the core problem and that problem stems from the fact that you've lost touch with your fundamental predicament with the situation that you're in you know much less about the maze than you ever thought you did and mankind as a whole and especially our culture as a whole knows far less about the maze than it likes to claim that it does because it's really tempting especially these days in the 21st century you know it was different 2,000 years ago because 2,000 years ago reality still seemed very mystical back then and it seemed very mysterious and there were so many unanswered questions that it's that it was it was obvious to everybody that there's so much stuff we don't know we've only seen the tip of the iceberg but today in the 21st century it's the exact opposite the illusion is almost total and society presents itself to you like it knows and understands and it's figured out all of reality except for a few minor details which the scientist will figure out in the next hundred years and then by then we'll wrap this whole thing up that's the idea that's the story you're presented with and nothing can be further from the truth so what do you do when you're in this situation what do you do when you're a rat dropped in the maze well you go back to the fundamentals and the first thing you do is you appreciate the depth of the problem which is something that most people have never paused for a minute to really ponder is the depth of this predicament most people just start running off after the cheese to really sit there and to ponder don't skip over this point ponder this for days for weeks you ponder this the depth of your predicament how little you really know to start to question all your motives and ideas about what reality is and what you should be doing within it and your place within it and what's possible and what's impossible to really start to understand that you don't know these things you've maybe only been led to believe certain things but you don't really know for yourself that's step number one and only by completing stuff number one by really comprehending the gravity of your situation then you can move on to step number two which is making a commitment to figuring this out and this is this is a a lifelong commitment you make this is a kassir ease coming and there's no frivolous commitment this is this is a commitment more serious than marriage this is a commitment Moore's more serious than having children it's the commitment to figure out what this maze is at a fundamental level not to get somebody's stories and opinions about it but to really figure it out such that you understand how the whole thing works and why it's here this is the point of life the point of life is to figure out the maze but you can't get to this point unless you first really understand the depth of your predicament which is why I'm stressing this point this maze that you're in it's vast and it's profoundly misleading far more misleading than you ever imagined or were ever led to believe it's a maze within a maze within a maze with animes and it's no ordinary dumb box of a maze this is a non-physical maze this throws people for a loop the maze is non-physical it's clever its intelligent it's deeply intelligent it's no dumb box it's no mechanical clockwork this maze is filled with incredible horrors and delights this maze is filled with dead ends shiny distractions and false exits just when you think you've solved the maze is actually when you've gone deeper into the maze it's counterintuitive it's paradoxical tends to work backwards it tends to have backfiring mechanisms where you do one thing where you think that's gonna get you to the end and it actually ends up singing you deeper to a deeper level of the maze and you don't know what the maze will hold that's a key point that's a key point it seems so obvious but that's precisely where people go wrong is they don't appreciate the fact that to admit and to really comprehend the fact that you don't know what's in this maze what lies around the corner and there are so many different corners in the maze so many different alleyways you can go down and you just don't know what's gonna be down one of these alleyways it could be a terrible horror or it could be the most miraculous magical thing that you could possibly conceive and you don't know unless you explore that particular alleyway but see people get trained by looking at all the other rats they follow only those alleyways that all the other rats are following that means that the majority of the maze 99% of the maze never gets explored by most rats most rats stick to the well-trodden thoroughfares and that gets you a false sense of thinking like well but leo I've kind of gone down various corridors and I kind of know what the maze is no you've only gone down those corridors which 99% of all the other dumb rats have gone down chasing cheese you've only gone down those corridors that have cheese and so therefore that gives you a completely distorted notion of what reality holds and what's possible and what's impossible this maze isn't just vast and deep it's literally infinite you're inside of an infinite maze with no beginning and no end that's why I say it's non-physical just to think that you are inside of a physical maze is already to trap yourself within a maze inside the maze because this notion of physicality and materiality this notion of a reality and to hold reality as something objective and tangible and real out there and that you know and that you understand that already it already is to trap yourself that's already to to limit your ability to explore this maze because once you lock yourself into that paradigm then that's the only part of the maze you can explore are those parts that appear physical to you and you also start to grossly underestimate how clever and intelligent and deceptive this maze can be because when you think of the maze is just being a dumb box with no cleverness behind it then you never expect that it could really deceive you and trick you why would you it's just a dumb box but when you start to suspect that the maze is alive its dynamic its evolving it's more fake and shifting it's a trickster when you start to suspect that when you start to suspect that the maze is your own mind then you start to take seriously the possibility of deceptions and illusions and self deceptions and all forms of trickery and then it becomes much more interesting then all sorts of new possibilities open up for you then you even start to consider the possibility that maybe physicality itself reality itself is just a little corner of this much vaster system but even though this maze is infinite it is possible to escape it it is possible to understand it and it is possible to master it so at this point you might be saying yourself Willy okay fine so tell me how do I solve this maze then you have all the answers and of course if only we're that easy I can't tell you how to solve your maze because the truth is is that you created your own maze and every rats maze is different so no one can tell you how to solve your maze because your maze is unique every rat has a unique maze every rat starts in a different part of this infinite maze and because this maze is non-physical because it's alive and dynamic and intelligent and involving the maze is not the same as it is from year to year and era to era the maze of a hundred years ago is not the maze of today it's not the maze of a thousand years ago is not the maze that your children will be running through the maze of someone born in India is not the same as the maze of someone born in Africa or America or China or Russia or Europe and anyways it's not about me giving you the answer to escaping the maze it's about the journey that's the beauty of this maze is that you've been put inside it to figure it out it's a puzzle I hope you like puzzles because that's what you've been born into if you don't like puzzles man you're gonna have you're gonna have some difficulty with life because life's a puzzle so you better start to develop a love for puzzles figuring [ __ ] out that's your job here and of course even though the maze is different for everybody there are still many commonalities between all the rats rats can be different but also rats all tend to be the same they tend to fall into the same predictable traps rats tend to be very very predictable creatures as you are and that's what actually eyes that helps you with to the extent that I can help you at all in navigate this maze is I can help you with pointing out the the various traps and pitfalls and all the ways in which you are predictable and that's what actualize other org is that's what all the videos are every single video is basically pointing out various traps of the maze that you're falling into and struggling with so I'm not gonna go into all the detail here because I just can't because that's what all the hundreds of other videos I have do is they go in-depth into one particular trap or another and there are hundreds of these traps there's not just a dozen there's hundreds hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and much nuance and detail to every trap you could spend years studying just one particular trap people make entire careers out of helping people navigate just one particular trap such as abusive relationships you know there are rats who will waste ten twenty thirty years of their life trapped in an abusive relationship that's one trap of this mates some other rat will spend 20 years watching television that's another trap in this maze some other rat will go join some ideological group some political party and spend 10 20 years doing that and that will be a trap for them and so there's there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these traps rats are dying every single day thousands of rats are getting killed by all these traps in this maze so your job is to be more clever to be smarter than the average rat otherwise you'll end up just like them and you know what the the brutal statistics are that less than one percent of rats ever solve this maze that means that 99% of rats die without understanding what the maze is or how it works or why they were here look around you double check this for yourself look at all the people you know in your life your family your friends your co-workers your teachers your mentors and all of them what are they these are people who are stuck inside the maze along with you and very few of them are working to solve the maze mostly what they're doing is they're just chasing fees because most of the rats got program very early in life just to chase cheese and that's all they know how to do and then of course they tricked themselves thinking that well but I Leah look how much cheese I've acquired in the maze aha look at me that must mean I've solved the maze cuz I got the most cheese no it doesn't it just means you're the biggest rat amazed that's all that means you become a big fat rat that is not the same thing as escaping the maze what does it mean to solve the maze you solve the maze when you discover who you are what reality is and what your place is within this reality what your purpose in it is when you discover why the whole thing exists and how and why people get lost in this maze what does it take to solve the maze there are some key principles these are the principles that you need to really think about and to master and a first month first and foremost is inquiry research an independent exploration that's what nave knew that's what maze navigation is all about it's about inquiry inquiry is about looking in different directions and exploring different alleyways to see what lies down that way and that's what research boils down to that's what exploration is and of course there's risks that come with every new alleyway that you go down and this maze has some dangerous traps in it some stuff some alleyways here in this maze they'll kill you so research is tricky the problem is that most people don't do any serious research in life they just stumble and bumble around just from like hitting walls like like a fly in a glass bottle just sort of bumping into walls here and there and there and here and you know there's there's no there's no sense of strategy or like intelligence about how they go doing research in life what research means is that you should be devouring books teachers workshops videos courses Google philosophy contemplation asking questions forums psychedelics all of these are different ways of doing research but almost nobody does this and if they do is just purely by accident they read some book accidentally they take a psychedelic once accidentally on a whim because their friend gave them something they don't even know what it is they just take it or they they watch a video accidentally randomly some random video about something and then they forget about it the next day they Google some search phrase and something comes up but then they forget about that and then it's just and maybe they ask a question if it's a week piddly little question and that question doesn't really change their life and so they they don't because they don't see the the fundamental predicament of their lack of understanding they don't bother to do any serious research or what they call research is actually a lot of people call research is just following all the other rats they think that's research they think just reading books and blindly listening to videos is is doing research that's not research what I mean by research is independent for yourself school that doesn't count as research everything you learn in school throw it out that ain't research none of that counts towards your research everything you learn in university if you have a PhD if you're a professor none of that counts that ain't research that's [ __ ] that's not solving the mace that's chasing cheese that's you being programmed and indoctrinated that's what that is that's the opposite of research by research I mean independent you do it by yourself for yourself for the purposes of escaping the maze that's the kind of research that almost nobody in life has ever seriously undertaken and that's it's a long-term effort that's not something you do for a week or for a month or for a year that's something you do for decades what I'm talking about here sounds very simple but people overlook the obvious that's how we stay trapped in the maze you might think you've read books and you've you've listened to teachers and you've watched the videos and you've taken a psychedelic and and you've asked some questions and you've done some contemplation no no not nearly deeply enough you've read the wrong books you've written to the wrong teachers you haven't independently verify the things that they've said you haven't found the truth of it in your own direct experience you haven't seriously asked any high-quality questions about life I'm I'm constantly baffled because I open myself to answering people's questions a lot I devote a significant chunk of my life's time to answering people's questions I answer hundreds of questions every single week I've answered thousands tens of thousands of questions in my short career of running actualized over the last five years I've answered literally tens of thousands maybe a hundred thousand questions and I'm shocked by how low-quality the questions I get are for every hundred questions I'll get one high quality question and 99 ridiculous petty myopic irrelevant questions there are teachers who will offer guidance to you for free rats who have escaped the maze who have all the answers who are just sitting around you can email them you could talk to them you can ask them comments and questions on forums and on YouTube and other places you could even ask to meet with them face-to-face and many of them will meet you because the irony is is that those rats who have escaped the maze they've done such a rare thing that the majority of rats don't acknowledge the significance of what these rats have accomplished the ones who escaped and so they don't even bother asking the ones who've escaped what do I need to know to escape what am I doing wrong they don't even bother they don't even bother to ask these questions just teaching yourself how to ask high-quality questions that one thing if you can spend the next year to train yourself how to ask high-quality questions that right there will transform the whole trajectory of your life contemplation I keep talking about contemplation but nobody listens to me nobody seriously contemplates the things that I say for every thousand people but people that watch one of my videos and hear me tell them to contemplate something that I say they don't actually do it Google you have a tool at your disposal Google that you can go into you can type stuff into and get answers to almost any literally any question that you have ever imagined in your entire life has already been asked and already in the Google database all you need to go is type into Google your question and you will get all sorts of responses now of course I'm not saying that the first response you get is going to be the right one when you're doing deep research you have to be able to go through many sources and know how to sort the the wheat from the chaff that's very important so part of the mistake that people make is they go start to do research and they just start to blindly believe whatever the first thing that they research that ain't real research that's [ __ ] real research and when you're using hundreds of sources studying hundreds of diverse perspectives keeping your mind open to all the different possibilities and then inter connecting all the dots over a long period of time that's that's what serious research looks like when you're asking powerful questions when you're googling away when you're reading 100 of books when you're reading the right books when you go out of your way to research what are the right books not just any books will do to escape the maze you need the right books you need the right teachers the right videos the right courses but the good news is is that if you were serious about search you would start to see everything aligned towards that end we live in a time where it's easier than ever to do research you can find cheap books free books get used books on Amazon it's like it's so easy these days I try to imagine how hard it would have been to to do this 500 years ago even 50 years ago and yet people just take it completely for granted what we're talking about to escape this maze is really the hero's journey go check out my video the greatest hero's journey that's that's all about this and there I give you some more details about that also my life purpose course is all about how to get serious about the hero's journey and understanding what that really means and how to get going on it but the problem see the problems that most people don't don't actually do a hero's journey in their life what one in a hundred maybe one in a thousand probably do a hero's journey in their life the rest don't the rest are just following all the other rats and that's a huge a huge point right there is stop following other rats you cannot escape this maze by following other rats you need to think for yourself that's one of the biggest traps that people fall into is they don't think for themselves they think they can just get on to some sort of technique some sort of cookie cutter solution that's going to solve this maze for them and then it turns out not to work and that's what legend basically is what is religion fundamentally it is when some rat escapes the maze and realizes how wonderful it is outside the maze that he comes back to all do the rats it says hey I can help you guys escape and so they all start to listen to him and start to blindly follow him and so whatever insights he had from his personal journey of escaping them with the maze he delivers those insights to the other rats and those rats just say uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh and they just blindly follow that and then a thousand years later they're still blindly following that without realizing that in a thousand years the maze has completely changed and morphed and evolved such that by following those principles you'll actually end up shooting yourself in the foot and getting yourself even deeper stuck in the maze and also of course what's not recognized is that every rat has a unique situation different geographic location different upbringing different genetics different personality different psychology different physical abilities and ailments different strengths and weaknesses different genders different proclivities different kinds of fears different kinds of trauma that they received as a baby rat growing up so all of these are huge factors which make it impossible to have a one-size-fits-all solution to get every rat to escape the maze this means that the number one thing you need to escape the maze is to think for yourself independently which almost no rats like to do they like to just get a already maze solution and by the way not just religion but if this isn't I'm not just picking on on theistic people same problem with any kind of other ideologies secular ideologies also will get you lost in the maze even psychotherapy even various kinds of self-help material secular self-help material and advice and psychological advice that you might get from some university professor for example how to live your life which might be just secular and it might sound like good advice but it'll it'll still not really work for you unless you think for yourself another important point for escaping the maze is going meta which means that you need to study the maze itself rather than how to get more cheese and it's where people get really trapped is they think that well leo so what you mean by research is you you want okay well yeah let me go but get some books and watch some videos and ask some questions and do some googling for how to get more cheese and then that's what's called research no that's not research that's you driving yourself deeper into the maze you need to start to ask the kind of questions which are not about the cheese but about the maze itself like what is the maze what's it doing here what's it made out of is it a physical maze or a non-physical maze how do I know who can I trust in the maze what kinds of research is legitimate what kinds of research will get me trapped deeper in the maze and what kinds of research will actually help me escape the maze you see so these are questions these are meta questions questions about questions questions about the maze itself the structure of the maze that's where Jean to study you just study the structure of the maze and why it's there and what it's doing in order to be able to overcome all the various tricks and traps it's super important that you study hundreds of diverse perspectives this is one of your key safeguards against getting trapped and stuck in some cul de sac in the maze which very many rats do and the reason that happens is because they didn't bother to study of diverse perspectives I study hundreds of perspectives not just ten not a few dozen hundreds hundreds of different books from hundreds of different disciplines hundreds of different teachers from all sorts of cultures traditions eras this is necessary because all of them will only provide you with a partial perspective nobody has the full perspective nobody will provide you with the full truth at best you will get a partial truth at best and sometimes you will get a complete delusion and deception and the only way you will be able to know what's delusion and deception is by cross-referencing all of these hundreds of diverse sources against one another and stepping back and looking and saying okay now I can see who's full of [ __ ] they're all that's the only that's the only way you're gonna prevent yourself from making catastrophic mistakes running into dead ends and also because there are so many different kinds of traps that exist that if you only study a few perspectives you will only understand a small handful of all the potential traps which will not be enough for you to avoid all the traps that exist and because every teacher who teaches you or every book or teaching or whatever every philosophy whatever it is they will only be able to present you with a small section like less than 10% of all the traps that exist and because you're a unique rat and the teacher who's teaching you is it's his own unique rat the traps that he worried about to escape the maze were different than the traps that you need to worry about and he can't anticipate all of your traps because you're different than him and because there are so many of them which is why you need to study all these different perspectives this means literally reading hundreds of books you need to read I would say to real succeed in this project you need to read at least 300 books like that's probably a bare minimum read at least 300 books and by that I don't mean fiction books and novels about vampires and Game of Thrones and [ __ ] no I mean like hardcore technical self-help psychology philosophy physics metaphysics spirituality non-duality psychedelics that sort of stuff the kind of books that you can't just skim through or speed-read use the kind of books you got to sit down read them cover to cover seriously slowly underlining highlighting really contemplating what's being talked about connecting dots I don't mean that the books you've read in school or in college count towards these 300 these 300 they count after college after you're done with college after you exit that indoctrination system and you're thinking just for yourself now independently you're doing independent research for the first time in your life now your counter starts it starts at zero so how many books have you read since then radical open-mindedness is absolutely central to be able to do this independent research you can you start to question the most obvious things you need to investigate your own mind yourself and your emotions you need solitude and free time to do this investigation which of course most rats don't have because they're so busy chasing after cheese you need to have intention and focus to escape Benes this is critical intention and focus intention is something I'll shoot a dedicated episode on in the future but you need to have a sense of what you're doing and why you're doing it why it's important to you that's intention and you to have focus that means you need to be clear in your own mind about what you're doing it you need to be decisive you also need to have a strong work ethic and discipline if you ever want to escape the maze you need to have some form of note-taking a commonplace book go see my episode about keeping a commonplace book because as you're doing all this research and you're reading all these 300 books and so forth and going to courses and watching videos and all this how are you putting all this guy how do you connecting all these dots just in your mind you're just gonna connect these dots in your mind no it's gonna escape your mind you can't keep all this information inside your mind so you need some sort of note-taking system some way to organize it all you also need vision and patience because this project will take a long time this is not a quick fix solution to anything this will take years this will take decades this is your entire life's work here is escaping this maze so yes it takes some time some decades this is not a problem you don't need to rush through it be patient with it have the long term vision of this is what you're doing this is what your life is about and actually start to enjoy the process this is not a chore this is exciting this is actually what life is it's exciting to be navigating this mades there's new stuff around the corner that's adventure excitement for you right there that's fun but it's a serious sort of fun you see it's not a it's not a sort of immature fun that you get from playing a video game where it's all very sugary you know in a video game all the systems have been designed to just reward you with pleasure at every turn such that you don't need any strong work ethic you don't need to really think about anything you don't need to sometimes grind through some phase of the game although sometimes some some games you do need to grind but um but generally games are very sugary but in life it's a more mature version of a game you see and you got to build it up it takes time and momentum to build it up to this point where you actually start to engage in the game of life in the same way that you get engaged in a video game see it's very easy to get engaged with a video game because that's how they're designed but life is designed for a more mature sort of palette and so it takes a few years of work maybe even a decade of work for you to really ramp yourself up and build up enough momentum to really start say oh yeah now you know I'm working on this every single day and it's exciting it's fun and there's new stuff happening in my life and I'm really exploring this maze the reason that many people never even really start to explore the maze is because they already feel so stuck and they don't have enough vision and patience to go through that initial process of building the momentum it's much easier for them to just plug into something quick like playing some online game where they get a sort of a simulation of escaping the maze but really it's happening inside of this virtual box environment and then they get absolutely no reward for it in fact when you beat a game it's the exact opposite of escaping the maze you feel terrible there's no there's no real reward at the end of that tunnel unlike with real life another important component to escaping the maze just practices that increase your awareness having these practices and doing them de leus is super important because you're not going to be able to escape the maze purely at your current level of awareness raising your awareness is central to escaping this maze but it's not the only component and this where people go wrong is they think that well since awareness is everything I'll just I'll just work on my awareness and ignore all the other stuff ignore all the research I'll just do my one meditation practice and that's gonna solve my whole life and of course it won't raising your awareness is a very important opponent but it's still one component and lastly what I'll tell you is you need heart and love and intuition you need to bring love and heart into your research into your life purpose into your work into this whole process of figuring out life you're doing it for love for the joy of it you love the maze and you're using your intuition more than just your logical brain to connect the dots because your intuition is much more intelligent than your logical mind your intuition is multi parallel and nonlinear whereas your logical mind is very narrow and very sequential and it's way too linear to figure this maze out because guess what you're inside of a nonlinear maze it's a non-euclidean maze it's a non Aristotelian maze it's a non Newtonian maze so you might wonder leo well what lies for me outside this maze and this is difficult to communicate this is part of the whole problem of escaping the maze is that what lies outside the maze is so remarkable so incredible so how astounding that it's impossible to communicate to anyone inside the maze and this makes it very difficult to explain to the rat why is worth his while to do all this work to escape the maze because the dumb rat needs a simple gross material vision that he can just latch on to like a piece of cheese see the rat understands cheese he knows its smell he knows its yellow color and so for him that's what has motivated his whole life is chasing these the cheesy objects but what lies outside the maze is something is something of a different of a different kind altogether it's not cheese and so it's difficult to explain what it really is and why it's worth pursuing really what lies outside the maze is unimaginable beauty the way life was meant to be lived the true life you don't know what true life really is so far as you're in the maze and you're chasing cheese and the more that you figure out of the maze the greater your life becomes until you reach levels of life that are so extraordinary and so remarkable that you have no words for it and it becomes impossible to explain it to anybody around you because any rat that you tell about it to it just goes over their head because all they understand is cheese they can't understand the value of anything but cheese because that's what they've been chasing their whole life so it's very much worth your a while to escape the maze but I can't quite explain to you why exactly that is that's why it takes a certain kind of intuition and a certain kind of faith that it will be worthwhile to escape the maze you don't know for sure but you couldn't do it because you've been dropped in this maze and you realize that hey I know nothing about it that means that I also don't know how amazing it could get I don't know how amazing life can get so I don't want to assume that it can only get so amazing when in fact you can get a million times more amazing right so I don't artificially limit myself so what I want to do is I just want to leave the question open as to how amazing it can be and I want to Harbor the intuition or the faith if you want to call it that that it can get really [ __ ] amazing I don't know for sure of course you can't know until you do it that's part of the beauty of the maze is that the more you figure out of it that the more you the more of the maze you figure out the more astounded you become at how amazing it is and just how more and more and more and more amazing it gets to the point where you reach a certain point where you say this is it's not possible anymore it's like it's beyond human levels of a happiness or joy or anything it's just it's it's beyond words and that's actually what makes it so amazing what something am a is something that's really amazing is it's it's literally beyond your ability to express that's true amazement and that you can definitely get by by solving this thing so I want you to start to live every day of your life as though you are figuring out this maze this is your highest strategic intent if you remember my episode about being a strategic [ __ ] I talked about strategic intent and how you need that to be a good strategist well here it is for your life is you ask yourself everyday what am i doing today and the answer is I'm figuring out life that's the overarching thing that I'm trying to do I'm trying to figure out life and how am I doing that by researching by studying by taking notes by contemplating by by putting pieces together by doing research by by going out there and taking all the steps that then my research entails you see research isn't just about sitting back and googling stuff and watching videos and taking notes research is also like when you research you will also come to these points where you you realize like oh that means that if this is true then I got to go out there and do this and then you have to go out there and do that take the action so this is also the research also comes with action steps so you take that action then that opens up a new domain of research so you do some more research that's as well if that's true then I got to do this and so then you got do that and sometimes takes you a year or two to figure that or two to complete that step and so you keep doing that and you kind of baby step your way further up and up the maze until you're all the way out so that's what you're doing every day you're not getting up to go to your boring lame nine-to-five job that that's not strategic intent it's a waste of life is what that is you're not waking up to go to school to to get an a on your test that's [ __ ] that's not figuring out life you're waking up every morning and you're thinking as you're brushing your teeth you're thinking okay what's the next thing I got to figure out about this maze to escape it that's what you're thinking and if you're going to work because you got to go to work to pay your bills I understand that there are realities within this maze you know the rats do need some cheese you can't eliminate all the cheese chasing because if you don't get enough cheese you're gonna start to death in the maze before you escape so you do need to nibble on some cheese here and there that's what your job is and your schooling and so forth so yeah you still need to do that but as you're like for example going to your job and maybe you have some sales job or you're just standing around most of the day waiting for customers to come to you so you can ring them up or something you're thinking you're making plans you're you're visualizing you're meditating you know whatever you're doing you're finding ways to make use of your time whatever time you've got to be figuring this [ __ ] out you're philosophizing you're contemplating whatever you're doing maybe you even have a book that you could pull out that you can read a little bit here and there underline and highlight while you're waiting for some customer to come by I see it becomes strategic because as long as you have the intent to solve the maze that becomes enough the secret is is that you don't actually need to know how to solve the maze this is a huge sticking point for people they think they're all leo but but I don't know how it seems like you have some answers but Leo you're being so vague here you're not telling me how to escape the maze so I don't know it sounds like a good idea it sounds nice but I don't know what next step to take you don't need to know it doesn't matter that's the beauty of it you don't need to know what you need is you need the intent you need the desire you need that that sense of purpose every day that's what you really need if you have that the Hou will fix itself that's what your research will reveal that's what your contemplations will reveal you have all the answers within you and and around you at your disposal you've got Google you've got forums you've got questions you got teachers you can talk to I mean you've got it all you've got all the resources you've got millions of books available on Amazon very cheaply so you've got it all the problem is you don't care the problem is you don't have a sense of seriousness and no sense of real strategic intent that's your bigger problem that's what I'm really worried about that's why we're talking about it this whole episode escaping the maze has never been easier but also in a certain sense it's never been harder because we have so much proliferation of information how do you sort the wheat from the chaff effectively that's tricky to do a lot of the information out there will get you stuck in a dead-end and you have to be especially careful to watch out for ideological solutions a lot of people a lot of rats sees wrasse get smart a smart rat who wants a lot of cheese in this maze what this rat will do is they'll say ah you know it's really a lot of work for me to be running around collecting all these individual bits of cheese that's real hard stuff I got a better idea let me come up with an ideological scheme that I can infect other rats with which will get those rats to run around for me collect the cheese and then bring it back to my lair to my cheesy rat lair where I would just swim in all this cheese and that's what all these people who peddle ideological solutions to you are whether they're religious ideological solutions or political ones or libertarian ones you know we've discussed all this stuff in my how ideology works episode and I have various episodes about culture my rant against culture in the future I'll be talking about cults and cult psychology that will be very illuminating for you guys and and so all of these are various kinds of ideological solutions but really all they're doing is they're just acquiring cheese for the big rats and you become their tool so be very careful about that when you're deeply stuck in the maze I want you to remember this because you'll come across this point you know because life is long and you'll have lots of ups and downs in this life moments where you think that you're breaking through the maze only to discover that oh man you're just inside of a of a smaller maze inside of a larger maze and just of all this work to do and sometimes you go down some corridor and you hit a dead end and that can be very demoralizing and you might feel down you might feel depressed you might even feel suicidal at certain points in your life you might feel very lost you might feel like leo I don't know what next step to take and that's where you need to cultivate hope trust the process trust your strategic intent trust your heart trust the overall mission that you're on trust that as long as you have the desire and the intent the solutions will present themselves to you not necessarily today or tomorrow but they will almost inevitably they will there are so many solutions floating around there are literally millions of solutions floating around and you don't need that many you only need a small handful of them you don't need all of them so there are way more solutions floating around than you'll ever need so what you need to do is need to cultivate hope in those times and fundamentally what your hope is grounded in is in your own capacity because you realize altom utley that this maze that you're in is really none other than yourself you are lost inside of yourself inside of your own mind you have architected this maze for your own amusement really and you're in it it doesn't always seem amusing to you but that is a more mature form of amusement see an immature form amusement is all sugar and positive positivity a mature form of amusement is one that also includes pain and suffering and depression and difficulty in and crisis and loneliness and and all sorts of stuff like this calamities of all kinds that's a more mature version of of entertainment so this is what you've designed for yourself and you're in this maze and since you've designed it for yourself you also have the capacity to escape it so don't doubt yourself keep the hope and remember that even during those darkest most bleak times you got the next day you know the next day you wake up and you just ask yourself again ok I'm back at it again how do I solve the maze and in fact last night when I was depressed or when I was miserable and when I was hopeless and I thought that I was lost forever well that was that was actually the thing that's gonna get me to take my whole quest even more seriously the next day that's what motivates you the suffering is there to motivate you to escape the maze it's not there to torture you it's actually a very important um mmm guidance system for you because otherwise without the suffering you would just completely gorge yourself on cheese and you wouldn't understand why there's something beyond the cheese right so the suffering that is there to show you that even if you get all the cheese that you want you're still gonna suffer and it's still not the same as having escaped the maze and for many rats what they do need to do for many years is they need to eat a bunch of cheese chase a bunch of cheese for a long time huh it took just to learn the lesson that hey chasing all this cheese still doesn't fundamentally change anything about my life I'm still trapped in this maze oh okay see and that comes usually from suffering that doesn't just come from eating lots of cheese that comes from gorging yourself on cheese to the point where you're disgusted with it to the point where you're crying from this glut of cheese that you've consumed and then the next day you wake up you're like okay that clearly doesn't work that's clearly a cul-de-sac in this maze let me now take the look for the light let me try to escape this for real so uh remember to keep the keep the faith keep the hope and keep working this maze don't give up all right that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me and come check out actualize that org where there are various kinds of resources to help you escape the maze like my blog the forum where you can ask questions that I often answer I especially try to answer the really good questions I'm often surprised that so few people ask me high-quality questions on the forum so mostly what I do on the forum is I just kind of dig around and and have fun and am sarcastic because the questions are ant I get asked are pretty ridiculous most the time but when someone comes with a really genuine question I actually like his spent time trying to answer it what else the life purpose course that's all about navigating the maze and I'm forgetting my book list yeah a hoss of books for you on the book list over 200 books of life-changing books there for you to read that's like 10 years worth of reading material right there for you so stick around with actual eyes that work as you're watching the various videos that I'm putting out there make sure you're putting them into a larger context the overarching big picture because sometimes I go into the weeds on some topic here and there and we need to do that that's important but also never lose sight of the big picture understand what actualize that or it is it's a collections of ideas to help you to solve this maze it's really a collection of maps of the maze but each map is partial because the maze is so vast it's so infinite that there can't be one map for the whole damn thing you've got little partial maps and different rats at different points need different maps and so that's why I'm putting out episodic content you know try to get you a little map for a particular problem that you might have and so you use that one or you put it in your back pocket for when you might need it next year or whatever and that's what this whole enterprise boils down to so put it all into the bigger picture context and stick around for more because there are still many important maps that I need to share with you in the future you