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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays I got my Santa hat out as usual at this time in the season but don't let this silly hat fool you because today we have a very foundational and very important topic a very serious topic which is the issue of marketing it's what I call the deep problem of marketing it's a marketing problem that no marketer talks about ever and it goes way way way beyond merely just marketing you might say to yourself well Leo what does marketing have to do with self-actualization and personal development and spirituality and consciousness I mean isn't marketing just for marketers and I'm not marketing anything so this topic is it important for me oh how wrong you are by the end of this episode your mind will be completely changed about that you see marketing isn't just for marketers and in fact most marketers don't even understand what they're doing when their marketing marketing isn't just about selling you things it's about shaping reality and culture it's about getting eyeballs it's about having influence within the entire web of belief of society and shaping that that's what marketing is really about and that's a very important topic when it comes to consciousness truth and understanding reality and your own personal self-actualization so this issue of marketing which we're going to go into it affects you very personally and individually but also it affects all of us collectively as a society because we're all in this together we're all in this collective web of beliefs that we call culture see people just assume that culture media society and science discover the truth and then they deliver it to you or to us but this is a very naive notion of how knowledge works knowledge does not work this way this is a complete taking for granted of the challenges of discovering truth and then the challenges of delivering and spreading truth throughout culture you see it's one thing to discover the truth for an individual that's hard enough it's a whole other beast of a problem to then get that truth to percolate through culture and translate to every corner of the world across millions and billions of people and to change their individual minds but then also to change the collective minds of all the institutions and cultures and subcultures and businesses and religions and schools and all of that which has been built up on the prior base of knowledge people just assume that if something is true and it's important then obviously I would have heard about it that's how they reason and so sometimes that presents a problem when I'm trying to present some deep information because in your mind it might seem like well Leo if this was really true if in light Moe's really true or if some other stuff you were saying was really true then wouldn't everybody be talking about it like scientists and academics and school teachers and in the news and all my friends and all my Coker's wouldn't they all be talking about it and of course the answer is no of course they wouldn't to assume that they would is to completely take this issue of knowledge for granted and it's to misunderstand this challenging deep problem of marketing reality is not just as simple as looking around collecting the facts and then just sharing the facts with everybody and then everybody agrees it doesn't work that way have you noticed that it might seem like it works that way when you're living in your little bubble but when you go outside your little bubble you see that reality is much more complicated and knowledge is much more complicated and people disagree about a great many things there's actually very little agreement between people about almost anything from scientists to religious people doesn't matter the religious people bicker back and forth between each other and so do the scientists and so do the religious people and the scientists against one another and so do the politicians and so do the schoolteachers and everybody else and I'm not even talking about yet different cultures when you start getting into different cultures that exist and I'm not even talking about yet different eras that humanity has been alive in so today 21st century but we know all sorts of crazy things that people believed and subscribe to just 100 years ago let alone 500 years ago or a 2,000 years ago see to take this naive view of the spreading of truth is to assume that reality is very easy to figure out and then ideas are very easy to spread when in fact this is exactly the opposite of what's true spreading the truth is always an uphill battle because minds and cultures are resistant to new ideas have you noticed this very resistant much more resistant than anybody really appreciates people think that all if an idea just has merit if it's good if it's backed up by evidence then everyone will accept it yeah good luck that's not how it works maybe that's how it works in the very very long term like if you're talking about centuries or millennia then maybe you could make that case but it certainly doesn't work that way in your lifetime spreading new ideas costs billions of dollars do you realize this changing culture is an enormous undertaking and if you really wanted to do it you would need to expend billions of dollars or have thousands or millions of people at your disposal as volunteers to work for you which is kind of like what religions do that's how they change culture although of course they also employ billions of dollars as well in many cases if we're talking about organized religion and information generally take centuries to spread through culture there have been discoveries that we have made within general relativity for example or quantum mechanics over over a hundred years ago and those ideas still haven't really percolated through mainstream culture that's something I'll talk about in the future when I talk about quantum mechanics in a separate episode see what people don't understand is that they unconsciously judge every teaching against the background of culture in which they grew up so culture and of course culture is marketed to you especially these days culture sets the backdrop against which you assess everything else so anything that I teach you anything you hear from some guru anything you read in a book what are you gonna do you are going to compare that to your background of culture and then based on that you're gonna criticize it judge it or dismiss it or decide to accept it and if it's something that really goes against your culture then you're probably gonna dismiss it and you're gonna be very skeptical about it and also you just might not resonate with that thing at all even if you might think it's true it just won't resonate with you because what resonates with you is the culture that you grew up in in the same way that the kind of food you like is largely shaped by the kind of culture you grew up in the kind of food you ate when you were a small child that's the kind of food you generally like as an adult with some exceptions here and there for adventurous people but see people generally what they assume is they assume that their culture is perfect it's likely oh we live in 21st century our culture what are you talking about our culture got us it's got its problems but as far as truth and reality goes I mean our culture is the best that there's ever been because we've got science these days and we've got universities and things and look we're able to do all this cool technological stuff we're building solar panels and electric cars and self-driving cars and Internet and all this we've got all this sort of stuff and so what's wrong with our culture aren't we living in a culture of truth no our culture is deeply deeply materialistic and see the problem with culture is that it's so widespread that you really have nothing to contrast it against so it's hard to even see how your culture can be wrong or untruthful because what are you comparing it to there's nothing else that you can compare it to now if you maybe start to go around the world and travel around a lot and really talk to people from different cultures than yours and you really try to get to the bottom of their beliefs and you see a lot of conflicts between their culture and your culture maybe then that starts to kind of shake you out of your little bubble but most people don't do that even when people travel mostly they just do touristy stuff so they don't really get exposed to different perspectives very much and also because modern marketing and modern business has gone global it's gone international which means that mainstream Western culture is now starting to infect every single culture all around the world and this is the culture of materialism and it's very hard to then introduce ideas to people who grew up in a culture of materialism and know nothing else and think of it as reality it's hard to then talk to them about ideas which contradict materialism because like you don't even have the possibility in your mind that there could be other alternatives to materialism materialism looks so solid and so real but of course it's not just an illusion that happens from being exposed to so much culture and today our culture is very materialistic I mean both metaphysically materialistic but also of course commercially materialistic and that's not an accident those things go together have you noticed that the healthiest knowledge the healthiest teachings and insights and wisdom doesn't percolate through culture and that when you find it it's usually in rare pockets you just don't see it advertised all across TV you see marketing isn't just about sales marketing marketing is about influence and eyeballs it's about exposing millions of people to certain kinds of paradigms assumptions and ideas and then those ideas they become reality they define what reality is reality is not just something that you find out there you're constructing it your culture is constructing it marketing and business are constructing it so the really important question is what kind of ideas is the majority of the human race being exposed to this is a very important issue and there is a war raging a silent war behind the scenes that most people are not aware of over determining what kind of information we feed to our children to adults to the general population at universities and everywhere else see because channels of information and eyeballs this is power and knowledge is never free it's never been free and it's not free currently people take knowledge so for granted and especially nowadays because we have the internet you can make the case that all well Leo knowledge is as free as it's ever been I mean what's not free about it you can just like go start a blog for free online go to wordpress.com or tumblr or something you can start your own blog and you can post any kind of crackpot ideas that you want to any kind of crazy conspiracy you can post whatever you want you basically have unlimited freedom of speech these days if you live in a first world country so what's the problem but you see it's not that simple and it's never been that simple because the issue isn't whether someone person can espouse some crackpot idea that's always been the case the question is how many people can you influence who will actually listen to you yeah I can go start a crackpot blog or you can or somebody else can but then without marketing no one is even gonna know about those ideas and conversely if someone has some deep truth or deep wisdom and they start they're a little tumblr blog no one's gonna know about it you're not gonna know about it you're gonna live your whole life and you're gonna die without ever having known about it the only things you know about are the things that are mass marketed to you see the only reason you're watching me the only reason you're listening to actualize that org is because I put a lot of effort into the marketing of this thing without the marketing there would be nothing you wouldn't know about this you see because the kind of stuff that I talk about nobody talks about in mainstream media nobody talks about it on Facebook nobody talks about it on TV have you noticed this this is not an accident and marketing actualized org has been very very challenging extremely challenging it's very challenging to market this stuff going all the way back to the Greeks and Romans 2,000 years ago to the time of Socrates knowledge was never free Socrates was put to death be of the knowledge the heretical knowledge that he was spreading within the Greek society within Athens see they put him to death because knowledge is power and the kind of knowledge that he was spreading well that was upsetting the status quo there's always the status quo who is in power and the status quo is always interested in maintaining its power and it will fight to the death for it and of course how his power maintained not just physically the most important power is not physical power it's not military power it's mind power its idea power it's the power of beliefs it's the power to create reality through concepts and then to tell everybody that that's reality and you didn't create anything see that's the beauty of the mind is that it can spin whatever kind of stories it wants and then it can just say oh that's not a story that's reality and most people will believe that so we can look at Socrates we can look at kings and dictators of the past and what did they do they very strongly controlled the flow of information they ban certain books they outlawed certain people from saying certain things it took us many many centuries to start to get freedoms such as freedom of speech that we enjoy today and still you know within limits and only within certain countries and that's a very recent development as far as human civilization goes and many areas in the world still don't enjoy those freedoms today so kings and dictators were very much about controlling the media controlling information and using propaganda and I mean you can see it even all the way to today today dictators and authoritarian rulers still do that they still try to control the media they still I do propaganda look at what's going on in Russia look at what's going on in North Korea not to mention first real countries where it also happens but we'll get into that a little bit later but also of course think of the church think of the Spanish Inquisition think of for how many centuries the church controlled the flow of information and ideas and beliefs think of how many wars were started over ideology think of the witch trials so knowledge has never been free and it's not free today because in the past although knowledge was largely controlled by the church or by the state today it's less so controlled by the state today is controlled by in another sense something even worse science academia and business modern business controls culture and controls what reality is for millions and billions of people around the world and the problem is that modern business is only really concerned about one thing maximizing profits it doesn't care about truth it doesn't care about consciousness it cares about maximizing its own profits and science and academia you might think oh well but they they are the ones who who really pursue truth even at the cost of profits no they don't modern science in academia is also very much corrupted by business and money science is very much biased towards researching those domains which have technological applicability technologies that can be sold that can be patented they can be marketed so this issue of marketing is not just about what kind of ads you see on TV although of course obviously it is about that it's about all these other ancillary domains we're where marketing is important market is important anywhere where you're trying to get a consensus of people to agree on anything see how do you do that by marketing those who have control and power they control access to eyeballs think of North Korea it's really illustrative to study what's going on in North Korea on the inside how the North Korean regime is controlling and brainwashing its citizens into basically maintaining that entire criminal enterprise that's what that is North Korea's is just like one giant mafia with tens of millions of hostages at stake and the kind of extraordinary lengths that they go into to indoctrinate and propaganda is their entire population he's really mind-blowing you should read some books about that I have a book list I mean I have a book on my book list that talks about that very very eye-opening and sobering but it isn't stopped with North Korea of course the kind of stuff that happens in North Korea actually happens in first world countries as well it's just happening a little bit more under the radar under the veil of freedom of speech under the veil of just mainstream news or just Facebook or just TV ads you see that's what makes the propaganda in first world countries even more dangerous than North Korea because in North Korea it's kind of obvious from the outside that the propaganda is very very strong but then you look at American culture for example and you say oh well look we don't have propaganda like that and yeah sure we don't have propaganda like that but we have a different version of propaganda it's more subtle it's a lot harder to notice it's a lot easier to think that oh we don't have any propaganda so our culture just is real ality think about education education is basically a propaganda program from start to finish grade 1 through grade 12 and even college by the time you go through that entire gauntlet you have been indoctrinated to think inside of a certain box according to a certain paradigm certain things and then anything that goes against that from then on you're gonna consider it as nonsense or insane or you're gonna think of it as just like a weird fringe non-mainstream stuff but you see there is a war waging right now in America for example over what kind of information is taught to grade schoolers to high schoolers and the healthiest and most conscious information is not even mentioned during 12 years of schooling not even mentioned a lot of times people get into actual eyes out or they start to listen to my stuff and they're like wow why didn't anybody teach me this in school it's not an accident they didn't just ignore it they didn't just like oops we forgot no no no there's there's an exertion of power going on and the people who have the power they are not interested in teaching you consciousness or truth for the most part because they themselves are unconscious so what they're interested in is they're interested in teaching you the sorts of things which lets them maintain the power and control over you and which lets them sell you a bunch of stuff both ideas and intangible goods so that you're caught up in the cycle of consumerism and then you're earning them money you see they program your mind with the things you need to be buying and pursuing and desiring and also fearing so that by the time they're done with you you are their little zombie robot you have no mind of your own but meanwhile you're thinking oh I really desire all this stuff no you don't you desire it because you've been programmed since birth with that kind of stuff through schooling and everything and so have your parents and your parents parents and there is a constant battle going on secretly within every single Society over what kinds of information our youth are gonna be indoctrinated with see right now with the trump administration in power the Conservatives are pushing their agenda through schools they're trying to actually change the entire school system and what's being taught in the school system right because the people in power want their ideology spread through education generally speaking and there's a lot more than I could go into about that but we need to move on see what rational and scientific people don't appreciate about this topic of marketing is they think that oh well rationality and science will just win out and all these things you're Lear so you're just talking about like silly cultural norms and things yeah those exist there's like dogmas and traditions and and old ideologies and stuff those exists but generally rationality will break through all that no who won't rationality is serving that science is serving that they are in bed with the enemy you have to understand that power is largely antithetical to truth reality and consciousness the people who are interested in power they're not interested in truth and conversely the people who have truth reality and consciousness they're not very interested in power because in truth everything is equal everything is one nothing is more important than anything else and what power is about is about saying oh this thing is more important I am more important my group is more port my nation is more important my city is more important and therefore I'm gonna fight for it and I'm gonna exert power over everybody else to get my agenda push through that's what the ego is all about the ego is power-hungry why because it doesn't know the truth because it's not conscious if it was conscious it would surrender all desire for power but since it's not conscious it doesn't know any better so to it all that life is about is acquiring more and more power and then using that power to fulfill shallow ego gratifications like buying stuff taking vacations I want you to really notice that nothing high consciousness is ever advertised for example on television or taught in schools or universities what is the agenda of science to advance itself it's not truth people think the agenda of science is truth no it's not the agenda of science is first and foremost to advance itself secondarily some truth but first to advance itself what is the agenda of business to enrich itself business doesn't care about truth at all it's to enrich itself and it's bad enough that science is corrupted by this agenda to advance itself but it's secondarily corrupted there's a second layer of corruption because business is then infiltrating science see because these days science is very much dependent on the kind of funding that it gets from business and the kind of funding against is the kind of stuff that business finds marketable and the kind of stuff that business finds marketable is the most low consciousness stuff that there is there's a lot of money and power to be made in catering to the unconscious instincts of mankind and this is the deep problem with modern marketing it's not just that modern marketing is selling you crap you don't need it is of course but it goes way deeper than that it's that it's it's literally to do that in the purposes of doing that it's infecting your mind with an artificial notion of what reality is it's carefully engineering all your values and desires and everything you're pursuing such that then you become like an infected host that then goes off and does what business wants you to do is which is play into this game and then you wonder why you're not satisfied why you're depressed why you're not passionate about life it's because you're in this system you're so deeply in the system you don't even know you're in this system modern marketing is concerned with maximizing sales it's concerned with pushing your emotional buttons to do that it promises easy answers towards that end because if I can promise you an easy answer you're gonna pull out your wallet and pay me modern science sian marketing scientifically engineers marketing to be irresistible so actually psychology and sociology and all these other fields are being carefully used and funded with billions of dollars every single year to carefully fine-tune and lab tests the best ways to propagandize you to fill your mind with all the wrong ideas about paddle of life so that you become a consumerist zombie see do you understand that companies are spending billions of dollars every year to do this and that is highly effective especially now in the internet era with computers every single ad is being split tested and micro tested and micro calibrated every single word of every single ad that you read online every word in there is carefully tested to make sure that every single word there triggers all your emotional buttons that gets you to pull out your wallet and buy stuff that is actually low consciousness stuff which is against your ultimate highest good as a human being modern marketing has no ethics and no high consciousness values no one within modern marketing asks the question is this truthful no one ever asked the question is this healthy no one ever asked the question is this elevating humanity or dragging us down into depravity because modern marketing is purely selfish all it really cares about is maximizing sales and towards that end anything goes and there's very little laws or regulations or ethical norms that are exerting pressure on anything other than that so of course it's a race to the bottom it's a race to see who can get the most sales by making the most empty promises and selling you the least conscious things that can possibly be sold to you damn the costs and perhaps what's worst of all about this is that nobody is talking about this it's like an open secret you've never heard anybody on TV talking about this no one in the news none of your favorite news anchors or political commentators none of your celebrity friends or business people you don't hear Bill Gates talking about this or Warren Buffett talking about this or Allen muskie talk you know nobody's talking about this because this is like the secret fuel that fuels our entire society all of business and it's just taken as well that's the only way it could work modern marketing is particularly damaging in the following areas the way that soda food alcohol and tobacco is advertised Pharmaceuticals oh man the amount of selfish and reckless marketing that goes on in the pharmaceutical industry is just like it it's shocking it's shocking the things they're able to get away with like they kill hundreds and thousands of people and they destroy millions of lives with pharmaceuticals like it's just so completely corrupt is so corrupt that doctors who are supposed to be looking out for your health are completely corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry to peddle their drugs to you for all the problems that that you have that could be fixed without using drugs and then people get addicted to these drugs there's all these side effects with these drugs they end up taking these drugs for years for their entire lifetime and they don't know any better because they just trust their doctors and the doctors well they're corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry and these pharmaceutical companies you know every single major pharmaceutical company has been fined by governments both in America and in Europe to the tune of billions of dollars many billions of dollars every single year this happens they lose lawsuits because of the kind of shady dishonest and unethical marketing that they do and that's just the tip of the ice like the actual criminal stuff let alone just the board the borderline gray area unethical stuff that they do which really isn't illegal but still completely shameful and it still is destroying the fabric of a reality and it's making human beings unconscious say these these these pharmaceuticals are literally [ __ ] with your brain chemistry to make you a zombie millions of people on antidepressants millions of people taking cholesterol medication and all sorts of other medication mood enhancers and and all this sort of stuff which is actually completely destroying your ability to be conscious into self actualize because they're sold on this idea of just take a pill on this pill will solve all your problems how about the advertising of gadgets and technology this area is also not immune from from low consciousness marketing a lot of gadgets that are pitched to you these days are completely unnecessary and people get obsessed with and there's this entire culture we have this entire subculture of like techno files people who are into the latest follow the latest iPod the latest gadget latest this the latest that entire websites that catered that just giving you gadget news like it's porn and then people get hooked on that and then you get hooked on that so much that it's like when you don't have your latest gadget with you or you're not able to get it for Christmas then you're depressed you're sad and then all your happiness goes into that it's like wow I'll be happier next year when when the next PlayStation comes out the next Xbox comes out when the next iPhone comes out that'll solve all my problems as if what about the marketing of all these financial products and gimmicks if you turn on CNN or any major TV news station what are the what are most of their ads gonna be it's gonna be financial gimmickry IRAs stock investments mutual funds retirement plans annuities life insurance all these sorts of stuff and this is just complete sleazebag marketing these firms are making billions and billions of dollars basically handling other people's money and in many cases just people out of their money and promising promising them basically uh dreams of becoming rich how about the marketing of various kinds of flimsy education programs a lot of online universities and things like data get marketed these days which are against the users best interest how about the marketing of kids food and toys this is a particularly pernicious problem because you've got kids that are three four five six years old they don't even know what it's like to grow up free of addiction they get addicted from the very very early stages these days with targeted laser targeted scientifically engineered marketing to corrupt their minds when it comes to the kind of food they eat the kind of toys they want to play with and then so by the time these kids enter school and then they become teenagers and early adults these people they can't focus they can't concentrate they are eating garbage food and all this has been programmed into their minds from the very early stages so it becomes extremely difficult to then unwire all that stuff how about the marketing that goes on of movies games and books this is also problematic notice the kind of movies games and books that are marketed the most it's the most lowbrow low quality stuff that you can imagine and how much of your time is is then focused on on this following your favorite movie the next Star Wars movie following your favorite game the next game in the franchise or the kind of book and the author just keeps pumping out books but what is this this isn't high consciousness stuff these aren't books that will transform your life these are books this is media it's gonna waste a bunch of your time and it's going to make you so addicted to this sugary nonsense that they're pitching you that then when I tell you to do something like go discipline yourself and meditate for 20 minutes you can't do it because how is 20 minutes of meditation going to compare with the next star movie well this latest one got pretty bad reviews so maybe they'll compare favorably but you get the idea see that's the problem society is is poisoning you with sugar metaphorically metaphorical sugar of course literal sugar in all your food that's happened for the last 50 years now and that's a big problem with obesity but um but it's also poisoning your brain with metaphorical sugar how about clickbait titles you see those all online how about the the mainstream news and I'm not criticizing the factual nature of the mainstream news what I'm just criticizing is the the business bias the pro-business bias that all news has it's pro-corporate all news is basically pro-corporate because they have to be because they are earning millions and billions of dollars every single year from all those financial companies and pharmaceutical companies and food companies and all this other [ __ ] that needs to be advertised through their channels so they have to be friendly to that they can't piss off their advertisers so they have to be pro corporate and of course that means that on the news you will never hear anybody talking about anything that I'm saying here never ever because what I'm saying here isn't gonna earn anybody money and they're in the business of earning money those news people they earn 10 million-dollar 20 million dollar a year salaries how do you think they can earn that kind of money only by participating in this program and they participate in this program without even knowing that they're doing it some of them no but many of them don't they themselves are brainwashed by their own [ __ ] you might think that I'm talking about some supreme reptilian overlords who sit in the government somewhere and who are masterminding all of this know if there are any kind of reptilian overlords they're just as unconscious as the people who they're [ __ ] over because people don't want to [ __ ] over other people all the unconscious people do that because they don't know any better and how about the marketing of religion it might seem like I'm just picking on science here I'm picking on business but you know religion is still marketed these days and religion is interesting because you don't usually see TV ads for it it's more like word-of-mouth and sort of like that but still that that's also a way of marketing you see marketing isn't just ads marketing is any way to influence anybody and getting eyeballs and then what you use those eyeballs for well you know that can vary you could use it to earn money you can use it to to pitch a religion you can use it to make a cult whatever whatever or you could use it to enlighten people you know you can use it for good or for evil notice that nobody talks about the real solutions to mankind's problems you don't hear people talking about the real solutions to government the real solutions to business the real solutions for personal happiness they're real solutions to health and love and spirituality and all this sort of stuff nobody talks about this on TV nobody's talked about this on Facebook nobody talks about this anywhere almost nowhere and then we wonder why we have all these problems because what business is pitching you what modern marketing is pitching you is um fake solutions to very real problems and these fake solutions they're designed not to work so that you can come back and get more when a pharmaceutical company is giving you a drug it's actually in their best interest that that drug doesn't cure you because what's better for them that they give you one pill and it cures you or that they give you pills for the rest of your life that never cure you hmm marketing is directly responsible for causing the following things obesity heart disease cancer mindless consumerism economic disparity the growing gap between the lower and upper class pollution and poison every form of addiction known to mankind from drugs to sex to gambling to everything else mind-numbing entertainment laziness the anti mastery mindset depression suicide anger Dogma tribalism disillusionment with life ignorance misinformation war even war and the reinforcing of the materialist paradigm it's in modern marketing the best interest to maintain the materialist paradigm because when all you think that reality is just a collection of bouncing atoms and molecules and nothing else then what is there to do but to sit back on your ass watch TV eat Cheetos go to the store shop for first stuff and then come back and do it all over again and then you know work your ass off and some corporation to then go buy yourself a house and to get some stock options and this sort of stuff and that becomes your whole life because the materials paradigm is gross by its very nature it doesn't recognize anything subtle it doesn't recognize creativity it doesn't recognize consciousness it doesn't recognize beauty and truth and love it doesn't recognize any of these things it recognizes the most base forms of human desire which is like the need for for sex for greasy food for easy stimulation and for shortcuts and quick solutions and get rich to keep quick schemes modern marketing sets the bar so low that when you do actually hear the truth the truth sounds like insanity because you're always judging anything you're hearing by what you've heard before and what have you heard before it's all the stuff you've heard from every single marketing channel that is popular so your judging truth against untruth and there's always a giant mountain of untruth with a little tiny grain of truth so that giant mountain easily outweighs the little tiny grain of truth if you are not vigilant about it and in a sense this is how it must be because society collectively must evolve up through the spiral dynamic stages what can be marketed successfully is very much limited by the audience's paradigm it's very much limited by the limits of human language and what can be communicated if a thing can't be communicated it's hard to market it it's also limited by the predominant needs and desires of the population so it creates this sort of vicious circle where unconscious people will only buy things that are unconsciously marketed to them but then because companies have to cater to that and market unconscious things that makes the people even more unconscious and then those unconscious people are themselves the ones who are running the marketing companies you might think that well leo I'm not a marketer so you're talking about marketing here but what can I do about it I mean I don't do marketing but you work for a company you see no matter what company you work for no matter what business that business can only survive because it's able to market so you need to take a look what kind of marketing is your business doing if you're working for McDonald's look at the marketing that McDonald's is doing that's the whole problem is that it's precisely because people are working just like zombies like cogs in a machine that they are actually just unconscious cogs in this larger unconscious machine called a corporation like McDonald's which markets and all the people in that company are contributing to the marketing effort of McDonald's and then ultimately what that is doing is literally poisoning human beings that's what you do if you work at McDonald's you literally poison human beings for a living does it matter if you're the CEO or you're their marketing guy or you're just one of the person who like cleans the floor at night at the McDonald's store does it matter doesn't matter if you're a programmer working for McDonald's you know working on their website you might think oh well I'm just a programmer I'm not part of this whole thing yes you are by the very fact that you're denying that you're a part of it that's precisely how you're a part of it that's how unconsciousness works nobody takes responsibility for anything the CEO doesn't take responsibility for the marketing even the marketing guy doesn't take responsibility for the marketing you know what he'll say he'll you say oh well leo if we don't do this marketing Burger King we'll do it jack-in-the-box will does somebody else will do it and so we have to compete we're forced to compete with them that's what they'll tell you and then of course the person who washes the floors or flips the burgers or cooks the fries he's gonna say well I'm just a lowly the little employee I don't have anything to do with marketing I don't have a say in that yeah but you're working for them you see you're doing their dirty work you are serving the poison you're cooking the poison that they are marketing and you'll say well beliya how am I supposed to survive in society yeah precisely that's the challenge it's not easy to go find conscious work most work is unconscious which feeds and does the dirty work of unconscious marketing the unconscious work leads to unconscious marketing and vice versa so it's this vicious cycle and to break out of that cycle takes consciousness takes vision takes am mission takes higher consciousness values takes a lot of work to work towards those takes moving through the spiral dynamic stages and this is not something that you can just rush I'm not saying there's a magic solution here to this society has to gradually evolve through these stages and we're in the process of that we can't just flick our fingers and tomorrow this problem is solved but here's what we can do here's where it gets practical you can take control of your own life you can stop using society as the gold standard against which you judge other paradigms and other ideas you can stop assuming that society will deliver truth and health to you you can stop sucking on society's tit and take ownership over the kind of media that you consume over the kind of businesses that you shop with and over the kind of companies that you're willing to work for and the kind of marketing that you're willing to do and that you're willing to support that's within your power and that's exactly what a conscious person will need to do most people don't exercise this power because they haven't really thought about it they don't know about it they're just ignorant of it they're unconscious high consciousness stuff is difficult to market no make no mistake about it and if you are in a position where you're trying to start your life purpose maybe you're trying to start a business you're an entrepreneur or maybe you're starting to go into the workforce you want to find a good career for yourself it's not easy to find a company that does high consciousness marketing that takes real strategy for you to work towards that and if you are your own business person you might say well Leo I'm struggling as it is to get my business going or my life purpose going and here you're telling me to do conscious marketing yeah it's much harder to succeed doing conscious marketing than doing unconscious marketing it's much easier to create a business which sells people poison then is to create a business which actually elevates people because the market is glutted with crap it's hard to convince people to buy good stuff when someone can go just by a triple Big Mac with a pound of bacon in it it's hard to convince them to buy your healthy salad but that's a bullet you've got to bite that's a bullet that we as a society have to bite if we want to evolve you know somewhere we have to draw the line we have to say no and although you cannot control what McDonald's does or anybody else's you can control what you do you can control the kind of stuff that you are willing to tolerate the kind of companies you're willing to work for kind of products you're gonna put out the kind of advertisements you're gonna put out are you gonna stoop the lowest common denominator try to appeal to people's most base and unhealthy needs and desires or are you gonna have a larger vision for the world that's difficult to do but it can be done people don't fathom how important marketing is for learning about higher consciousness things you see the best books and teachers you have no idea who they are or that they even exist because they're never talked about on TV or online or in the media or anywhere else the wisest masters the human beings who have fear doubt the most about reality they are completely unknown to you they are not big-name professors with PhDs who have a bunch of books that they've written and who've been on radio shows and all these kind of they're not like that they're not the neil degrasse tyson's of the world they're not the same Harris's of the world these people are marketing masters that's why they're known the only reason you know about these people or any people or any books is because somehow somebody mass-marketed it to you most likely or maybe you just accidentally stumbled upon it but that's very rare most of these wisest masters they will die without you even knowing that they existed and that's the real deep problem of marketing you see people just expect at all well if there was a really wise master he would just like be on TV spouting his stuff and I would certainly hear about it no you wouldn't of course he wouldn't stop assuming that stop taking this stuff for granted hmm the world is filled with incredible things that you will never see on TV the internet in books or in magazines and even if somebody writes a book about one of these incredible things how are you going to discover that book you're not I want you to see that the things that you know about are literally defined by the things you're being marketed by the kind of marketing channels that you open yourself up to you tend to take marketing that you're exposed to as the entire possibility space of what's out there of what's possible and that is an enormous distortion of the truth there's a whole world out there beyond mainstream marketing that most people have no clue about but what that requires that they get off their ass and do a little bit of work to actually go and investigate that rather than sitting at home and waiting for it to come to them don't wait for amazing books to come to you don't wait for amazing wise masters to come to you there's a reason that Yoda lives in a [ __ ] swamp on a planet somewhere far off in some corner of the galaxy that nobody knows about that was a very insightful depiction by George Lucas in Star Wars see that's where you put Yoda cuz that's where you find a wise Master Yoda's not found on the internet on the online forums keyed keyboard jockeying away he's not found on on the evening news that's not where you find Yoda what would responsible marketing look like it would look like marketing what elevates the user taking the users agenda as your number one priority rather than money is the thing you're selling going to truly honestly elevate the user and not through some backwards rationalization like the way that McDonald's will do it see cuz if I ask this question of the McDonald's CEO he'll say yeah but Leah we feed we fill a need in the market people need their Big Macs you know people are hungry they're starving they're driving to work they don't have a lot of time they need to feed their kids they need to drive into McDonald's and buy their Big Mac by their Chicken McNugget meals or whatever and that's a real service no that's not what I mean that's a [ __ ] backwards rationalization what I'm talking about is your product elevating the user how could you improve your product so that you could really be proud of the fact that you're elevating your users consciousness chicken nuggets and man Big Macs are not elevating a user's consciousness and you might say well leo but but how am I supposed to make McDonald's elevate users consciousness well maybe you can't maybe it needs to die or maybe you can be crafty and clever and figure out a way figure out a way to make healthier meals that taste good that are fast figure it out or leave that business responsible marketing takes on this challenge responsible marketing actually cares about improving people's lives responsible marketing cares about marketing health and dysfunction it doesn't want to a dict people it wants to actually offer them permanent solutions to their problems responsible marketing will try to market a solution which actually then obviates the need for itself so for example with actualized org my hope is that you listen to enough of my content that one day you actually outgrow the need to listen to any more personal development advice from anybody including myself so that then you're so wise that you realize hey all these answers he's talking about they're just inside of me I could turn inwards self reflect and contemplate teach myself to do that for myself and then I can derive all this for myself and much much much more and it'll be way more powerful than watching it on a video or listening to it through an audio but it might take you a while to get there I grow pretty quickly so I'll actually pay I'll bet good money that I will grow faster than you and that um it'll take a good long time before you actually outgrow actualize that work because we're gonna be talking about some really advanced stuff in the future stuff that'll take you years to to get to by yourself but I do ultimately hope that you get there um that's how you know that it's actually working it's not my job to to hook you in for life cuz I could keep talking about [ __ ] all the time for the rest of my life but that's not really not the point the point is for you to actually start to self actualize so you need a little bit of it to get going so wash it for a few years to get going these are like training wheels but then eventually you take off the training wheels and you spread your wings and you learn to fly by yourself so responsible marketing is possible it's more challenging but I recommend that you start thinking and strategizing towards those ends if you're not there yet if you don't know how to make it work yet okay that's fine but set it as a vision set it as a goal work towards it try to get there in five years and ten years here are the key takeaways from this episode this is the practical stuff firstly start to notice how marketing is unhealthy just how much of it around you there is and start to notice that marketing doesn't just pertain to TV ads but to a lot of other stuff that you normally don't consider as marketing start to notice also the few good examples of healthy marketing that exist and try to see what's the ratio what's the ratio of the healthy to unhealthy start to keep in track start looking at billboards look at what's advertised on Billboard's and ask yourself is that healthy is that elevating me or is that dragging humanity down right there and see what the ratio is gonna be it might be something like 5 to 100 or maybe 5 to a thousand also stop assuming that truth will trickle down to you from up above that society will spoon food feed you the truth it won't also and this point right here will completely change your whole life this 1 point go out of your way to find the unmarked attempts this is how you really advance yourself in life you don't sit back and wait for the gems to come to you you don't wait for me to tell them to you although for example in my book list I do provide a lot of those but you go out of your way to find the unmarked attempts the books the seminars the teachers the Yogi's the masters the retreat programs the workshops whatever you need find the people find the resources it's all out there you got to just go do some research get off your ass and find it because those people usually are not marketing masters and they're rarely going to reach you if they reach you it'll be by accident and then do your job in trying to spread those on marketed gems to your friends to people around you that you know the reward mouth that one point right there will change your whole life you will discover things that it will just blow your mind and you'll be like why isn't anybody talking about this well now you know why another takeaway is if you're the kind of person who cares about thinking about how to improve society and you like trying to make a good impact in the world and that's maybe part of your life purpose then understand that one of the biggest improvements we can make to society is reforming our marketing system it's a huge source of corruption and unconsciousness and this is something that nobody almost talks about is the need to reform a marketing system no one in government is talking about this no one in business is talking about this but that actually precisely proves my point see because nobody's talking about this is because it's not really marketed if government really wanted to it could invest billions of dollars all the money that we're wasting on building up a nuclear arsenal we could take some of that money some of those billions and invest it towards actually regulating marketing setting standards and ethics in place and also running public marketing campaigns which actually try to deliver high consciousness information to people because businesses are not gonna do it for the most part so government can play a very big role in that but actually these days with the Trump administration it's actually quite the opposite you know just just the sweet guy I heard some news where the the Trump administration has actually banned the CDC the Center for Disease Control which a federal arm which tax statistics for all the death rates all the disease rates and everything else it's the statistics arm of the US government they are banning it from using certain words like science-based and evidence-based and vulnerable and some of these other kinds of turn there's a list of like ten of these terms these are terms that are against the conservator agenda so they're actually banning the use of these words for the CDC see so just that shows you how deep this problem of marketing goes see they're playing that war they're playing that war of trying to get their ideology pushed through we're really what we need is we need the exact opposite of that we need government helping to sponsor open mindedness and consciousness and mindfulness and meditation and self-actualization these sorts of things could completely transform the face of society if they were funded just a little bit you know it doesn't need a hundred billion dollars just up even like a hundred million dollars would make a huge huge change in people's lives way way more consequential than any kind of military defense spending or any other any other kind of stuff that government waste this money on another take away is to stop doing low consciousness marketing if you're doing it if you are involved with marketing and you care to be a high consciousness human being those two things they don't go together you need to wake up and you need to find a way out of that find a way to elevate yourself and find a way to elevate other people you as a marketer are responsible for the kinds of ideas that you are putting into people's minds you are responsible for the kind of impact that you're making in the culture so if you are making a kind of impact in the culture which is turning people into a frenzy to buy a bunch of your [ __ ] that nobody really needs or that's unhealthy or that's dragging people down you are not only damaging those individuals with your food or with whatever you're selling them you're actually damaging the entire culture and not just those people but their children and their children's children and their children's children's children because they will get infected with all those mind viruses that you are spewing through your marketing and by the way you're not going to be a happy human being working for a corporation that does low consciousness marketing you're not no matter how rich you get you're not going to be happy in case you haven't noticed yet another takeaway here is that if you have wealth and if you have power or if you're going to have wealth and power in the future maybe you apply some of these concepts that I'm sharing with you and in 10 to 20 years you become a millionaire or a billionaire you start some new company that transforms the world some new face book some new Google some new Apple and you have power now it's your responsibility because you have wealth and power to use that to help to reform our marketing system rather than corrupting it so I hope you keep this in mind so in 1020 years if you want to repay me for this information you don't need to send me a check just make a commitment that you're going to reform the marketing system if you have power that's huge you're gonna have a huge influence and in many ways I'm critical of people like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates who have billions and billions of dollars and what do they do they go to Africa someplace and they do research for improving poverty there and improving diseases and I mean that's that's great you know that's very basic stuff and it needs to be done but also if you have hundreds of billions of dollars you've got nothing to do with them you don't know what to do reform a marketing system buy up these marketing channels and then use them to to feed information to people and especially here in America first of all countries feed people high consciousness information the more people we can get to know about these high consciousness things like meditation enlightenment self inquiry self actualization all this sorts of stuff then the more those people will take charge of their lives and then the more good they can do and then actually the quicker we can help other nations like in Africa and everywhere else to get their [ __ ] together you know it's hard to help other people get their [ __ ] together when we don't have our [ __ ] together and we certainly don't in this country and the last takeaway is that remember that conscious marketing is a challenge it's a real challenge and you as an entrepreneur or a business person or someone who's working on their life purpose or whatever are gonna be tempted to give up on that challenge cuz it's gonna be like well I like a sort of business doing high consciousness stuff but it's real difficult to market not a lot of money and/or I can target I can I can manufacture and sell poison to people and that will sell real great people love it I'll just make it bacon flavored poison and they'll love that [ __ ] and I'll become filthy rich see so you're gonna be tempted which way are you gonna go remember that this is a very counterintuitive move it might seem like by going this direction towards the high consciousness marketing it's like well but I'm sacrificing so much no you're not actually you sacrifice the most when you become a poison seller selling poison for a living is a terrible way to live it's not fulfilling or rewarding you want the most rewarding life possible you know what that is is figure out a way to elevate the most human beings in the greatest possible degree putting their interest first and then also support yourself in that you don't want to go broke doing that but you know support yourself doing that to a reasonable degree say of a reasonable standard of living and you will be the most happy human being on earth if you do that on the other hand if you go sell poison and you earn billions of dollars I guarantee you you're still gonna be miserable you're gonna you're gonna get so much less from life then if you would have chosen the high consciousness route and in fact you are gonna put a glass ceiling on your own growth because there's only so high you can grow while working a low consciousness job it's just not gonna work you're gonna be pursuing enlightenment on the one hand but then working selling poison to other people and that's gonna be a massive cognitive disconnect for you so what's gonna realistically happen is that if you're gonna be dead set on keeping your job and let's say you have to because you're you're not very financially independent so you're gonna have to have to keep your poison selling job you're gonna abandon this enlightenment thing after a while you're gonna you're gonna grow unconscious until you hit that glass ceiling after which point it's like damn if I actually become enlightened I'm gonna have to leave this job that's gonna be sort of like your decision point but because you can't leave this job you're gonna say oh well okay then I guess I can't get enlightened I can't become more conscious because your minds gonna sort of backwards rationalize it to justify why you have to keep this poison selling job because you know to quit a poison selling job that pays very well and then to go off and do something high consciousness that maybe doesn't pay as well that's a very scary transition to make for many people but that is the process of becoming more conscious to become more conscious you have to let go of all your unconscious behaviors and security blankets whatever those are whether that's your religion whether that's your science where that's your atheism your rationalism or your your nasty corporate job or your toxic relationship or whatever else that's where the rubber meets the road of this work it's all theory and fun and games and it's all interesting philosophy until you're you're facing a real world situation was like [ __ ] I got to quit my job now because of this I know too much and that's sort of what happened with me when I started my first business I started my first business and it was a pretty low consciousness marketing business so by no means am i above this but I distinctly remember when I was sitting there reading a book some sort of self-help book and my business was booming it was doing great I was earning six figures like never before and I was happy and then I read this book and I realize it hits me for the first time it hits me like [ __ ] I have to quit my entire business my entire business is wrong I will never be happy running this business even though it's making a bunch of money I have to quit it because I can clearly see that where I need to go this business will drag me down it'll be an anchor I can't actually go to how high I want to go while this thing is weighing me down and that was really scary but man am I glad that I that I followed through on the wrong on the right choice in that situation and that's what I encourage you to do alright that's it I'm done here please click that like button for me don't yet and come check out actualize that ergh that's my website I've got cool resources there for you especially check out my blog I'm posting a lot of content there also I'm gonna be posting exclusive videos to the blog so check those out some deep videos I check out the forum check out the life purpose course check out the book list speaking of gems that you can discover and just stick around for more episodes coming soon a lot of deep stuff coming soon just so you understand kind of where I'm coming from with this the way that I see my position with actualize that org is I'm not a speaker I'm not a life coach I'm not just some YouTube guy I'm really a researcher that's mostly what I do is I do research into weird stuff metaphysical stuff epistemic stuff personal development stuff spiritual stuff non-dual stuff psychedelic stuff whatever kind of stuff I'm willing to research whatever in order to find the best techniques the best ideas and then I want to synthesize those and bring them to you so I literally research hundreds of sources a very broad range of stuff stuff that you would think of first like has nothing to do with personal development but actually what you discover is that all of it comes together because personal development is not a narrow field personal development is life as a whole it's how do you live life how do you become a great human being how do you get the most happiness and to really understand that you need a holistic approach which is what actualized org is about and you need to research a lot of very diverse stuff and the more I research the more I discover how little I know and the more amazing techniques I find amazing books amazing resources that I all share with you in the future stuff that very few people discover because most people they're not really interested in research they're interested in just sort of like they've got their idea they've got there one technique that they want to share with you they're got they've got their system and they're really attached to their system and they're trying to teach you their system and they're not spending nearly enough time doing research because you know what research takes a lot of time and it doesn't always pay off immediate results but then sometimes you hit the mother lode and that's what really makes me excited I discover things every single week as I'm doing research that I'm just like super excited to want to share with you I discover so much stuff I don't have enough time and energy in the day to share all of it I have so many products I want to create as so many resource lists and so many blog posts that I want to make and and forum posts like there's so much stuff that I could share and talk about but I'm only one man and there's only so much I can do so quickly so it takes time for all this stuff to unfold really the stuff that you're seeing unfold now you might think all léo your contents getting deeper and more profound well really this is the kind of content that I was imagining myself making four years ago but it's just taking us time to build up to it it's also taken me time to build up my skills to this level where I can talk about it and so the stuff you're seeing now is like four years behind and the stuff that I know now I'm so excited about cuz I wish I'd just go share it with you immediately but you know sometimes it takes time to build up to it and that might take a few years for us to get to so make sure you stay tuned for all that really juicy stuff coming in the future you