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[Music] welcome to another actualized episode and in this one we're gonna be talking about the many facets of awakening otherwise known as enlightenment this is an advanced episode for serious students of non-duality I'm going to be telling you over 30 facets of awakening that I have personally verified and that I claim you can verify for yourself as well in your spiritual journey these are some of the deepest insights that a human being can have about the nature of reality in life these are absolute insights beyond the realm of science logic culture and human knowledge this is as deep as it gets and I'm gonna be giving you a whole list of these so you can check them off as you're doing this work but before we get into that let me just quickly remind you actualized gorg did just launch on patreon which was a platform for supporting independent creators many of you have contributed and I'm very grateful and thankful for that if you would like to contribute and support my work then you can go to patreon.com/scishow and make a small monthly contribution that helps me to improve the quality of my content and my work and to stay independent and to expand into new domains in the future all right so with that said let's get into it so one of the biggest misconceptions about enlightenment or awakening is that it's just a single realization you have it boom it's some binary switch that you flip from off to on and now you're awake you're in line that's it done and that's sort of the simplistic newbie notion of what Awakening is like well it's not really like that it's far more complicated than that there are facets to it there are facets and there are degrees and so that's what we'll be talking about most of the facets here you can be conscious of one of these facets but yet clueless about the others that's the interesting and tricky thing about this work so you always have to be careful just because you've glimpsed one of these things one of these facets doesn't mean that you understand everything there is to understand you might be missing something very important so sometimes we use the metaphor of thinking of awakening like this mountain or we think of spiritual work as a mountain that you're climbing and we say that well of course there's different paths up the mountain but all paths ultimately leave to the same peak and this is a nice cute little metaphor it seems like it should make sense but what I've found is that actually it's more useful to think of Awakening as a mountain range and not a single mountain which means that not only are there multiple pads up the same mountain but there's multiple mountains and some mountains are higher than other mountains and even though these different peaks share things in common they're still different and it does matter which Peaks you're climbing and which path you're taking and not all paths will take you up to the same peak so that's a little additional wrinkle to spiritual work so what is the value of this list that I'm about to give you why am i giving it to you so that you can systematically pursue and literally if you want you can use this as a checklist to track your progress in this work and the other great value here is that when you have this checklist it's harder for you to fool yourself so that you don't miss any of them because sometimes what happens is people climb one or two peaks and they think that they're done when actually there's ten more Peaks that they've missed that's what I tend to find so that's the value of this list so let's get right into it what are all these different facets well in no particular order I will be listing them to you of course you can experience them in different in different orders you're not gonna necessarily it's not gonna happen in the same order that I'm listening of course so the first one is what is Samadhi to know what Samadhi means or in other words to know what a mystical experience is or to enter a non dual state that's one of the first realization is usually that you have in this work is that you have your first samadhi experience your first mystical experience now of course some teachers and people say well Leo that's not enlightenment per se and all that that's fine but it's it's it's a critical step in this process understanding what Samadhi is what is Samadhi basically what it is is it's a state of consciousness in which the duality between subject and object has been erased where you realize that subject and object are one and that's your like first mystical experience and that's your clue that there's something deeper going on within reality then you fought under the material materialist paradigm and this is your first sort of glimpse into mysticism or spirituality where you realize like oh [ __ ] spirituality is not just beliefs and ideologies and crazy religious people believing hocus-pocus there's actually something serious and real here that I need to pursue further another facet a very important one is what I call the facet of no self Buddhists also call it this wearing you realize that there never was such a thing as a self and what do we mean by a self that human self that I'm pointing at right now that I'm pointing to you that thing that you think you are that you have believed you are the whole of your life this biological entity this creature this human this mammal that you think you are who is born and is living on this round rock that is orbiting the Sun all of this this this kind of personal story that you have of yourself so when you truly awaken you realize there never was such a self that this self was imaginary and that's a huge epiphany that gets us a little bit more to the center of what awakening really means and that's a very distinct insight that you can have you could have a mystical experience you could have a samadhi but still the insight that there never was a self doesn't hit you or if it does that it does see so all these facets that I'm going to be explaining here you can experience them individually or sometimes you can experience them in aggregate lumped in with other facets it all depends so you can have a Samadhi where you also realize that there never was a self or you can just have a Samadhi or later you can just have an insight into no self or anything that I'm going to be mentioning on this list the next of asset is the facet that I'm going to call I am capital I am all capital letters I am just simply that I am that you are that that is the deepest truth of what you are is that I am or we might call it the self with a capital S so you might wonder well doesn't this contradict to the previous insight where I supposedly realize that I am just imaginary no it's just two sides the same coin so when you realize no self wish you're realizing is that that human self that you thought was born the thing that we use your name to refer to so if I refer to you as John or if I refer to you as Mary and that's your given birth name that's who you think you are that identity you realize that that whole thing is a fiction and it never existed but then the next question arises of like well what what am i then if I'm not that then what am i and the answer is well you're not a human you're not even a thing you're not even a physical object you're just pure I am Nisour the self with a capital S the universal self and this is of course what various Hindu and Yogi traditions refer to as the the Atman the like the Royal self the God self the universal self the I am it's just an overwhelming feeling of I am when you have this insight it's like I am oh I realize that I am now when you're listening to me say this you might say well leo of course I am that's so obvious I am yeah I already know that everybody knows that no you don't know that you think you know that the problem is right now yes you think you are but you just think it there's a big difference between thinking that you are and realizing that your i am-ness itself and more specifically what you think you are right now is you think you are a human that's here I am that's not the true I am that's a false I am the true I am is without humaneness it's not limited to being a human or a creature or being physical or material or anything like that it's just literally pure i am-ness so of course it's here right now you am right now but you're not conscious of it the way you will be when you really awaken to it this can also feel like you become conscious that you are the entire universe so your identity expands from being a limited human self to being the whole universe literally you experience this awakening as though the entire universe is looking through your eyes and that that's what was always the case is that you have confused the universe in a sense has confused itself for being a human that's that facet the next facet is what I call omnipresence it's the realization that what you are pure I am this is completely omnipresent which means that it's not located it's not located behind the eyes between the ears in your skull in your head it's not in the brain it's not here it's not there it's not in your chest it's not in your heart it's not in your body it's completely omnipresent it's absolutely everywhere and simultaneously nowhere that's omnipresence that's you're realizing the omnipresence of God or the omnipresence of consciousness or the omnipresence of i am-ness your true self that can be a freaky realization because usually when we talk about objects or things we think of them as being located or centralized it's very counterintuitive and illogical for a thing to be omnipresent and yet that's exactly what you are and that's exactly what consciousness is it says it's an omnipresent field which is not located anywhere more than anywhere else it's everywhere and it's know where the next facet is the answer to the question of what is consciousness where you realize what consciousness is so right now you're conscious but you're not conscious of what consciousness is in fact you can conscious your whole life but you still aren't any closer to realizing what consciousness is but if you do this work long enough and you have a deep awakening you can get an answer to that question and what is consciousness well it's not a verbal answer all these verbal answers that I'm giving you they don't do justice to what we're really talking about this requires a direct experience this requires an awakening it requires a shift in your consciousness but for the first time in your life you realize the significance of what consciousness is and you realize that consciousness is absolutely everything there is nothing but consciousness there is nothing outside of consciousness and usually while you're realizing this there is sort of an ancillary facet here that you realize which is that there is no external physical reality there is only consciousness and there can be nothing outside of consciousness and even the idea that there ever could have been an external reality seems ludicrous at this point because you're so conscious you realize that there can't be anything but consciousness another facet is the answer the question of what is awakening we use this word awakening and many people talk about being woke this is sort of a becoming a popular term in pop culture like oh that guy's woke or he's woke she's world bla bla bla bla bla people who talk about being woke have no idea about what what awakening really is the only way to know what awakening is is to actually awaken and it's a distinct experience that you have you awaken literally what happens is that you awaken from the dream of life when you awaken truly you realize that your entire life has been just a dream exactly like a dream exactly like waking up from a nightmare exactly what it's like you awaken from that and you look upon yourself you look upon your body you look upon the room you're in and it's like looking at it for the first time you're truly awake for the first time in your life you're conscious of what everything is in a way that was totally impossible just a moment previously and you understand for the first time what that word awakening really means and the only way you can understand that is by doing it by actually awakening but what you'll be amazed to discover is that that word awakening is very accurate you're gonna be using that word I remember the first time that I awoke the first words that came to my mouth and to my mind is just that like oh my god I'm awake this is what it means to be awake like this is really awake and like it's so awake that it it's it's a level of woke mnestheus shatters all of physical reality it's it's miraculous it's magical it's it's incredible you would think it's impossible to be this conscious and yet here it is you're that conscious and you're finally awake for the first time in your life that's an amazing experience and that that's what we might call a classic enlightenment or Satori the next insight or facet is oneness or non duality where you really realize for the first time that everything is truly one before you've probably heard about Yogi's and sages and maybe myself talking about oneness how everything is one and all dualities collapse into one blah-blah-blah-blah-blah you've heard it a million times you've read it a bunch of times and books and so forth but you still don't understand what one this really means you might think one this is a metaphor and so forth but here you awaken to oneness and you realize like oh oh it's truly one it's absolutely one reality is one complete singular unit or thing with no boundaries in between anything all objects and things are completely connected in a unified field of consciousness that's what you realize and this has many ramifications and consequences that I've talked about in the past and I'll talk about more in the future but this is this is a radical realization of oneness when you realize this oneness you realize that you're you're literally one with everything with all beings with all objects plants trees animals stars universe's galaxies like all of it all of it is one and you realize how everything that you thought was separate isn't really separate the separation was imaginary the separation was a projection of your own mind you finally understand what non duality means and you have something to contrast it against with duality also now understand what duality means so there's a contrast now between the two as an ancillary facet or inside here you could you could also realize that there is no difference between anything that basically the difference between a cat and a dog is purely imaginary the difference is relative the difference exists if you think it exists the difference between a taco and a human only exists and is real as long as you believe it is as long as you imagine that it is that's a very freaky insight when you realize that all differences are totally relative so that comes with realizing oneness and non duality another powerful facet of awakening is the answer to the question of what is truth truth with a capital T I have an episode about that called what is truth where I explain it in more detail so I won't go into it too much here but basically you realize that truth is the only thing there is truth and consciousness are one truth is absolutely everything all perception and experience that you used to think was perception and experience all of that gets recontextualized as absolute truth and for the first time in your life you understand what truth really means not truth as a conceptual idea or a belief but truth with a capital T like that which is actually true what is that well you have to awaken to what is truth I can't tell you and words will never do it justice the next facet is what is the absolute to realize that see the only way it's possible to know what the absolute is is to awaken to the absolute ordinary people 99.999% of humans have no reference for the word absolute they could use that word but they don't actually know what an absolute is they only know relative things everything you know as an ordinary human being is relative stuff all truths that you know are relative truths but here you can awaken to something that's absolute what that means is that it's true in the ultimate sense it's true under all conditions that means it's true even if the entire universe is destroyed it's still true what might that be well you have to awaken to what is the absolute you can't know what otherwise another facet here is absolute infinity this is when you realize that consciousness is infinite and this is where you realize for the first time what infinity is infinity is not a number infinity is also not a a large-sized so when I say infinity you might think well that means that like maybe the universe goes infinitely far in all directions like up and down and left and right back and forward that's not what infinity means what I'm talking about infinity I mean actual infinity what is infinity you don't know but there's a distinct insight you can have into like Oh absolute infinity everything is absolute infinity you realize that everything that's happening it has ever happened is the manifestation of absolute infinity what's happening right now is absolute infinity but you're not conscious of that that's a very powerful insight life-transforming right there you realize that you can zoom in and out of consciousness forever it's completely endless there's no end to it another facet that's closely related to this one is the realization of absolute nothingness this is just the other side of the coin where you realize that what is all of this that's here right now it's absolutely nothing what is consciousness it's absolutely nothing what is I am this what am i what is my true nature what is everything made out of absolutely nothing that's what all this is absolutely nothing never nothing has ever happened you think things have happened but nothing has ever happened everything that has happened has just been nothing which is identical to infinity nothingness and infinity are identical and that's another thing you'll realize here maybe first you'll realize absolute infinity but not yet nothingness then at another occasion you can realize the facet of nothingness but not infinity and then on another occasion you can you can merge the two together and realize that oh nothingness and infinity are literally identical and then you have a more complete understanding the more complete awakening so this is closely related to the facet of answering the question of why is there something rather than nothing you can answer that question for yourself and you will answer it when you realize that everything is infinite infinity and everything is absolute nothingness and that the two are identical and when you realize that you'll realize that oh why is there something because something literally is nothing and the two can't be distinguished from each other because all distinctions are relative and in the absolute sense there are no distinctions which means that everything is totally one that's a powerful realization that basically explains to you the origin of all of reality I'm talking about these things as those if there are little insights that you have now these are a gargantuan insights when you're hit by one of these insights it floors you it knocks you to the ground like it it baffles you it leaves you speechless it leaves you reeling it leaves you crying it leaves you shocked and paralyzed and terrified of course your reactions to these insights will vary depending on how you feel what you're doing how developed you are and so forth the next insight or facet is the answer the question of what is God it's the direct encounter of God you realize that God actually exists and that God is real and you realize for the first time what the word God is pointing to everybody knows the word God even atheists and scientific people but 99.999% of people who use that word have no idea what it really refers to they think it refers to some idea some belief some imaginary being in the sky whatever but you've never actually become conscious of what God is until this moment when you become conscious you can also become conscious of what I call the Godhead or what people call the Godhead it's not just my word or you become conscious of the very very crux the very essence of God and then there is yet another facet here related to God which is where you become conscious that you are God and you might think that these two are the same like well Leo if I know that God exists and if I know what God is and I know the Godhead that means that I know that I'm God automatically no not necessarily you can have an encounter with God but still not realize that God is you that's a very important realization that many people miss when they're doing this work you are God literally that means that you are the creator of all of reality and the entire universe that means that you have all the properties that are traditionally given to God by the way I have a two-part series called what is God Part one and Part two that explains a lot more of this in depth if you're confused so I won't go into that here but but yeah you basically take back your full authority and your full power as God you stop denying that your God the way that most people do and you realize that you are God sitting here right now and that you have put yourself into this very position that you're in right now by willing into being because you have the power of infinite mind to imagine anything and we'll get to that as another facet in a moment so that's a very important realization to me you're not fully awake unless a you realize and have a direct experience of God and be you realize and acknowledge that you are God if you are denying that you're God you're not fully awake if you're denying that God exists you're also not fully awake that's a very very distinct insight and realization and it can take you multiple awakenings to reach that far you may not realize on your first awakening that you are God or what God is for that you have to go really deep the next facet is that self equals other and that other equals self which is the collapse of the boundary between yourself and other sentient beings or creatures or humans in this realization you realize that all others that you have thought as being real beings people creatures and so forth you realize that all of them are just partitions of your own consciousness that all others are imaginary including your parents and that actually and this is another sub facet here is that you realize that you as God are all alone that's one of the consequences of oneness one of the consequences of non-duality when all dualities collapse that very critical duality of you versus other beings also must collapse and at that point you are totally one totally alone and this can be an especially shocking and jarring epiphany because up to this point you might have had some mystical experiences and awakenings and maybe you even realize your God and all this and it feels wonderful and nice and all that but then to really come face to face with the the realization that there are no other beings but yourself this I don't know how it is for others but if you're like me this was one of the insights that perhaps was most difficult for me to swallow it's very shocking it almost feels like you're losing your mind and that you're going insane because you want to be able to be comforted by others you want to be able to like reach out to somebody and ask them like hey is what I just experienced real or am I fooling myself but the problem is that when you realize that there is no other and that other is just a projection of your own mind you realize you can't reach out to other because by reaching out to other you're just reaching out to yourself at this point you also realize that for example whenever you're talking to others you're always just talking to yourself when you're hating others you're just hating yourself when you're having sex with others you're just masturbating you're having sex with yourself it's impossible to have sex with somebody else you're always masturbating it's impossible to truly hate somebody else you're always only hating yourself it's impossible to harm somebody else you're always only harming yourself but for that you have to realize that yourself includes all others you see another facet is the answer the question of what is love when you become conscious for the first time of the love of God absolute love infinite love this is also a very emotional insight for people it's it's it's shocking it's utterly baffling because under the materialist paradigm the way science has taught us it's taught us that the universe is indifferent Nature doesn't care about you it's cold heartless and brutal and it doesn't feel emotions it's just some dumb brute physical object but here in your love awakening you awaken to the fact that consciousness is love love is not an emotion it's not some sappy romantic feeling it's not some wishful thinking some New Age philosophy love is the very substance of consciousness that everything is made out of and that's a shocking realization because you realize that all the evil and hatred and violence and murder and rape and incest and God knows whatever other horrific things you could imagine torture and war and genocide and racism and theft and corruption and all manner of evil that all of that is actually a manifestation of love and that can be very shocking awakening that you can deny and resist your mind and ego can resist it because you spent most of your life hating people judging people criticizing people fighting evil and then you realize that all of that was actually love that's a bitter pill to swallow for the ego a sub facet of this realization is the realization that truth and love are absolutely identical you could have that realization I remember when I realized that I was I was looking at my hand and I realized that my hand is literally MANET of love and I realized that truth and love are totally identical and it was such a beautiful insight it was like you might say the cherry on top of my my sundae of all these different awakenings that I've had to finally realize and to put the two together that truth and love are just two sides of the same coin and that they're absolutely identical that was an amazing amazing insight and I think that a lot of a lot of people missed this one even if they have other sorts of awakenings another facet that you can realize is that everything is absolutely imaginary or as I otherwise call it infinite mind when you realize that the only thing that's real is the mind mind with a capital M infinite mind that's what reality is when you see a car a tree a human a star a planet some clouds whatever you're doing all of that is just infinite mind it's the it's the work of a cosmic mind that is imagining all of this the entire universe is happening within the mind of God which is of course your own mind not some other mind but your own mind and this very moment that is here right now me talking this is just me hallucinating all of physical reality everything is imaginary your past your future other people your dog your memories of childhood the difference between a human and a taco the difference between a cat and a dog all of it is imaginary it is that way you imagined it to be but only as long as you're imagining it that way another way of saying is that reality is a dream or another way of saying is that realities of whose nation everything is a hallucination you're constantly hallucinating if you're not hallucinating you're dead life is hallucination and death is the end of hallucination in a sense we'll get to the death question here in a moment that's a separate facet but for now let's focus on everything is imaginary that's a very epic epiphany see you can have various kinds of awakenings but still not fully grasp that like literally absolutely everything that you think is real is completely imaginary including the physical wall the floor you're sitting on the earth the sky the air you think your breathing your brain your mind science religion society culture your parents DNA atoms molecules cells biology chemistry physics everything is absolutely imaginary that's quite a mindfuck quite difficult to accept that but a very crucial insight of course because this allows you to understand how all of reality gets created and what it really is the next facet is what I call self design the realization of self design and this is a really twisted strange loopy mind [ __ ] realization where you realize that you are creating yourself for example when I realize this I've realized this multiple times but the first time I realized that I realized that every hair right here on my arm that I see every single hair it was as though I planted each one on my arm when I was designing my own body using infinite mind see that's how God did it literally the kind of attention to detail that you know those though some of those old retired people that sit there and they build that that model sail ship inside of a bottle sort of thing you know very carefully they spend the year painstaking the little tweezers putting together like every little rope on that sail ship and every little plank of wood they put it in there they glue it all together and they paint every little you know screw a nail on this little model that they're building with such attention to detail and love in such precision and then you know finally they put up on their shelf and it's this beautiful creation well that same attention to detail you put into creating and designing the entire universe and of course your own body so what she realizes that the human body that's here was it didn't it didn't somehow evolved randomly through random selection and mutation all this is that you designed it with infinite intelligence you designed yourself and that's really shocking to realize and to accept because it seems so counterintuitive it seems impossible it seems like well how could I have designed myself but you did you just forgot that you did the next facet is when you become conscious of how you were born what your birth really is and here of course you realize that you weren't born at all you existed forever your birth as a human is totally imaginary and so you realize that that story that you've believed in your whole life that you were born like you were a a creature that crawled out of your mother's vagina that whole story you realize that that's just an imaginary story it didn't actually happen that way the way you were born is by imagining that you born that's how you were actually born and that's a that's very very jarring and shocking to accept that because you have to admit that all the all the stories of your birth were just stories they weren't actually real you've been alive forever there was never a time where you did not exist you existed for more than a trillion years imagine a trillion trillion trillion trillion years of a being just sitting there an empty space existing for trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years before there were there was even a universe before the Big Bang there was a being that was sitting there just hanging out in empty space well all of that is just less than 1% of how long you've actually existed you existed forever it's pretty shocking which leads us in the next facet which is the realization of eternity or no time or the absolute now you realize for the first time what now really means you realize that there is no past and there is no future because they're both imaginary they're both being imagined right now in the now everything that's happening is right now and the now is absolute and it's eternal you realize what the word eternal means eternal means completely outside of time it says though time never existed you realize that this moment right now is eternity this moment right now me talking here to you you sitting there listening to me this has been here and is here for eternity it's completely eternal this is not happening inside of time time is an illusion time is a projection of the human mind and the human mind is just a projection of God's infinite mind so even your body it seems like your body grows old and it dies no your body is actually totally eternal it exists forever outside of time which leads us to the next facet which is the realization and the answer to the question of what is death or in other words the realization of immortality because time is just a projection of your own mind it's just imaginary because there is no past and no future other than in one's imagination because everything is eternal the now is eternal now is what you are now is i am-ness you realize that what death is is death is purely imaginary there is no such thing as death death is impossible you are totally immortal and eternal as God as nothingness as infinity you exist as all things at all times it doesn't matter what form you exist in because you are all forms you incarnate as all beings you are looking through the eyes of all beings so yes you can kill this lio body sitting here but it won't matter I'll just respawn is something else you realize that God cannot die because God has nowhere to go if you were to kill God or destroy God where would God go God has already nowhere and nothing God is already at the place where God would be if you killed him so to speak and then you realize what is death death is just a story that I've been telling myself death is a story the ego creates it's always something you imagine there is no death in the now and then now is the only thing there is death is as humans conceived of it is always some future idea literally purely imaginary and you realize this on a visceral level to the point where you are fully immortal and at this point usually comes the next facet of realization here which is the realization of paradise or heaven or perfection you realize that reality is absolute perfection with the realization of immortality you have no more fear because nothing bad can happen to you you've literally transcended death and so as an immortal eternal being that you now realize that you are you're in paradise you're in heaven you realize that heaven is right here right now heaven is not some place you go to heaven is just the realization of eternity of absolute love heaven and hell you realize are not physical locations the only difference between heaven and hell is how much you're attached to your ego the more you're attached to ego the more you're in hell and when your ego is completely surrendered and you realize that you're no self that you're immortal you're in heaven and that doesn't depend on changing your physical location it only depends upon your state of consciousness how conscious are you of your own immortality if you become conscious that you're immortal right now you will automatically be in heaven which brings us to the next facet which usually comes and accompanies this realization I was talking about which is the realization of bliss or ecstasy people use this word ecstasy and bliss a lot but again this word rings hollow for most people for 99.99% because they they don't have a reference experience for what ecstasy really is ecstasy is not just extreme pleasure ecstasy is the realization of immortality and the realization that everything is heaven when you realize that it's so good it's infinitely good it's not just good it's good to the infinite degree it's so much goodness that you can't contain it your body can't hold it your entire body shakes and shudders in a cosmic orgasm of bliss it's perfection it's total peace it's absolute love that's truly ecstasy and very few humans have a reference experience for for that word ecstasy but you can reach that and then you'll know what the word ecstasy actually means you'll know what I'm talking about some of you actually know what I'm talking about many of you don't that's something to work on the next facet you can realize is what I call infant intelligence you realize that consciousness is infinitely intelligent you realize that the intelligence of human beings is just a tiny little infinitesimal part of infinite universal intelligence this intelligence is baked into the physical substratum of reality it's not just a matter of thinking intelligently or having a high IQ these are all woefully inadequate definitions of intelligence here for the first time you realize what intelligence really is everything is intelligence consciousness intelligence that share that tree that wall that house that human your own body everything that's happening is pure infinite intelligence intelligence you realize is not something your brain does it's not being able to pass some sort of fancy IQ test intelligence as being there's infinite intelligence in the cells that are making up my hand in my body and you realize that and for the first time you see how intelligent the design of the universe is you've never realized this before sure you've marveled at beautiful photographs of animals and galaxies and nebulas and sunsets and and this and sometimes maybe you look at your body and you say wow look my body is quite amazing it's ingenious look at how everything works together like my bones and my skin and my arteries my veins the heart pumping blood through my blood vessels and how it all works and how my hands they have these different textures and fingerprints that can be used to grasp a glass of water and all this and I can drink and I can eat and I can do all these amazing things and I can think and I can create art and all of this and I can design stuff in humans design stuff different phone gadgets computers and cars and electronics and all this but even if you understand all that you still don't understand how deeply intelligent all of this is it's not just intelligent it's infinitely intelligent you realize that all of this is the mind of God and that it is responsible for creating this well-oiled machine that is reality and for the first time you realize like oh my god it's so [ __ ] intelligent it's so perfect it's so ingenious how all these different systems work together you know males and females and relationships and communication and business and art and entertainment and sexuality and animals and the ecosystem and the environment and the solar system you know planets rotating around stars and there's asteroids and comets and all this it's it's functioning like a well-oiled machine and all the laws of nature everything that science studies the DNA in your cells and all of this is it all functions perfectly without a single hitch you might say oh but leo there's like genetic mutations isn't that a mistake how could you say reality is perfect when there's genetic mutations you don't understand the genetic mutations that's part of the intelligence it's so intelligent that your limited finite human mind can't grasp the intelligence of it you think you can design reality better than it is you can't you're just being a fool and you'll only realize that when you awaken to infinite intelligence another facet you can realize is absolute goodness goodness with a capital G you realize that there's nothing bad in the universe at all that badness is purely a projection of your own selfishness once the selfishness is gone only absolute goodness remains you realize that everything is absolutely good including everything you used to think was evil you might say well Leo isn't this the same insight as infinite love and here it's a little tricky it could be you certainly could realize absolute goodness and infinite love in one fell swoop but also I've had it where I've realized infinite love but I still didn't quite realize absolute goodness so there can also be a distinction a subtle distinction there which is why we call them facets fascists have ultimately the same thing another thing you can realize as a facet is the answer the question of what is will infinite will will with a capital W you can realize in this insight what you realize is that absolutely everything that's created that's happening right now is happening through the will of God through the will of this infinite mind which means that when God wills something because it's an infinite mind it's an infant intelligence what happens is that that thing instantly materializes instantly so my physical body as it's sitting here right now is the crystallization of the will of God right now if God wasn't willing this body to do what it's doing and to say what it's saying and to move the hands as it's moving them it wouldn't be happening this is the will of the entire universe reality is willed into existence it's not something that happens accidentally through some dumb brute force process some mechanical means it's actually a mechanical it's directly willed and then what you realize that your human will what we call human free will is just a tiny sliver of God's infinite will of the will of the universe and so the will that you use as a human to do your ordinary stuff like to go to the gym to lift weights to get some work done to answer an email to go to the grocery store this will that you use to meditate and so forth that's a tiny sliver of God's will so if we just expand that out to infinity then you realize that you can use that God can use that to create everything in fact that is what you're doing you're just not conscious of it yet you also can become conscious here of a sub facet which is unlimited power power with a capital P infinite will means infinite power with infinite will you can create absolutely anything and here you become conscious that there is no limit upon God God or infinite mind is totally unlimited which means that it can create absolutely anything it wants there's no limit to what it can create so whatever physical limits you think there exist if you think there exists logical limits to the universe to reality none of that is ultimately true all of that is relative truth ultimately God can do anything because if God is one what is there outside of God that would limit God nothing God even is the nothing so how can God be limited it can't other than by its own will so what God can do is God for example can create a human and can limit the human in fact a human is a limit so in this sense a human isn't all-powerful human doesn't have unlimited power because what a human is is God imagining itself in a limited form but the Godhead itself is pure unlimited power the next facet it is omniscience this is a very distinct one where you can literally become totally omniscient the mistake people make here is they think that omniscience means that you know everything like if you ask me what is the distance from the earth to Jupiter if I'm omniscient I should be able to tell you instantly right no that's not what our missions really means omniscience is much deeper than that omniscient happens at the level of being not at the level of conceptual knowledge so you can be totally omniscient at the level of being but still not know what your neighbor had for lunch this morning or this afternoon omniscience is is an incredible experience incredible shocking experience personally I experienced it much later in my later awakenings not in the early steps but it's possible another facet is the realization of divinity magic and mystery once you realize that consciousness is divine you don't know what the word divine is until you've deeply awoken you don't know what magic is until you've deeply awoken this human perception all these colors and sounds and feelings that we're experiencing right now that make up reality for us usually we just think of this as human experience but it's not just human experience this is literally divinity right now the light of consciousness that's shining forth and bringing all this into our awareness as a human this is divinity it glows with divinity when you awaken it's like you walk down the street and everything just glows at you that's sort of how it feels I would have to describe it and at the same time there's a deep and profound mystery to everything you look at everything and it seems so mysterious and the reason it seems so mysterious is because there's a sub facet here where you realize not knowing you realize that actually you don't know anything about being because being is prior to knowing and here there's also another sub facet where you realize that knowledge and being really they can collapse under non-duality and oneness they can collapse together and you realize that knowing is just literally another form of being and so God doesn't know itself per se because it's prior to knowledge God just is itself it's being speaking of which there to be other facet here of realizing what is being by being I'm just referring to everything that is everything is being but what is being well you have to awaken to that being we might say is the substance of reality but what is that substance what is the substance of reality that's something you can awaken to we might say it's being or we might say that it's consciousness consciousness is the substance of reality but what is consciousness what is the substance of consciousness well at this point you could you can't go any further because consciousness is actually nothing so here you need to realize that being literally is nothing or its distinction its differences and what are differences they're nothing so you're not gonna understand it just by me explaining it you have to actually become deeply conscious of this to get it but it's profound to get another fast that you can realize is that the universe is an infinite fractal you can zoom into it and zoom out of it forever and it's self-similar this is why we call it a fractal it's self-similar at at the macro and micro levels you could also realize the facet of what is perception I have an episode about that and what is perception which explains it human perception is recontextualized as being or truth another sub facet of this one is that you can realize that perception has infinite resolution consciousness has infinite resolution another facet you can realize is the answer to the question of what is life what is life what does it mean to be alive you can realize that the entire universe is alive it's not just your body that's alive but that chair or that table or that wall or that house is not alive all of it is alive as incredible as that might seem so this question that science is struggling to answer which is you know where did life come from it didn't come from anywhere because everything is alive it's just a question of what form does it take the mind of God is alive and then it can take different forms you can take the form of a concrete block of a brick of a house of a plane of a train of a human of a dog of a cat of a tree of whatever and then whether it moves or not breeds or not has blood or not that's these are distinctions relative distinctions that you make as a human the whole system is alive we might say another facet you can realize is what is the purpose or point of existence why does it all exist what is it all for why all this complexity why all this form why all this elaborate stuff white planets and stars are circling around each other and why the earth why plants and animals why humans why societies why war why politics why all why everything why anything why you can understand what the ultimate wha why is and the ultimate why is love it's all a manifestation of your love as God so there you go those are the facets that's the list there's some bonus ones I want to give you as well you can realize the facet that I will call channeling or communication with God you can actually communicate with God which is really nothing other than communicating with yourself but you're communicating with your higher infinite self you're communicating with infinite mind which usually humans are not tapped into in their ordinary consciousness as you're going about life so that's a that's a interesting breakthrough you can have you can actually get direct insights from God you can talk to God ask God questions God can hear you and answer you in profound ways so that's that's pretty cool they realize another bonus facet is healing you can realize that it's possible to actually heal yourself because of course you're connected to the will of God and everything is just an infinite mind so if you want you can heal yourself and you can heal others actually this can be useful and very beneficial to you and to others many mystics and sages in the past have claimed stories of miraculous healing and you will realize why that is you'll realize those were just stories and myths but that it's actually possible and you can you can actually go deeper into that and to realize how healing actually works that's pretty amazing another bonus facet or feature that you could realize is collective consciousness you can realize that consciousness is not just individual but that there's layers to consciousness it's like an onion there's many sort of a nested chain of various consciousnesses and hierarchies and you can realize and think of for example the human collective consciousness or the collective consciousness of a different species and you can tap into that it's pretty cool another facet that you can realize is a total extinction of perception the Buddhists talked about this advanced meditators talked about this how literally you can sit there in meditation for so long that the entire universe just disappears everything just goes blank personally I've not had that experience myself but I'm pretty sure that's possible given how many people report that another facet is that there's various kinds of paranormal phenomena that you can tap into as you do meditation practice and various other kinds of insights come to you you can develop various paranormal abilities there's like clairvoyance there's telepathy there's mmm past law tapping into your own past lives I guess channeling is also considered a paranormal activity sort of hyper intuition about the future this sort of stuff and finally you can tap into the facet of alien entities other entities which are non-human and you can tap into those and you can commune with them interact with them and gain insights from them rather controversial many people don't want to admit this kind of stuff they think it's woohoo New Age stuff but it's possible don't believe me discover for yourself actually do it go do it actually contact a [ __ ] alien and commune with it now of course understand that if you commune with an alien you're just communing with yourself an alien is just a a projection of your own mind it's just one more entity within the mind of God so you know just like a dog and a cat our projections of your own mind they're imaginary your parents are imaginary and so are aliens but they do have a relative reality in the same way that we say like well if I own a cat we can say I have a cat my cat exists okay well what does that really mean that's a relative distinction that we make and we say that yeah leo has a cat okay well likewise we can make a relative distinction that you met an alien and you communed with it okay so we can do that there's a higher truth though which is that in the absolute sense that alien in my cat there's just all figments of my own imagination but you know we live mostly in the relative domain so it can be useful to communicate with an alien maybe you'll get some good insights about how to how to overcome your erectile dysfunction or how to love people more or how to earn more money or whatever whatever aliens want to teach you alright so that's the list of course this is not a complete list I'm mostly talking about things that I've personally experienced now this bonus list that I just gave you a lot of these I have not experienced for example I have not tapped into past lives I have not met aliens I have not had a total extinction of my perception but it's it's it's very clear to me at this point that this stuff is possible given everything else that I've experienced most the other stuff that I told you I have directly personally verified not even once but multiple times but I'm always open to more like I said it's not a complete list there could be a lot more that I'm missing still although I think I've got I've got most of the important ones here so what you need to understand about this list is that all of these are distinct insights that you could have direct experiences things you can become conscious of you can either have these individually or in aggregate or in clumps like you can realize simultaneously oneness and maybe God and maybe what consciousness is you can get that all in one blast but also you can get it in three separate blasts where first you realize what God is then you realize what conscious is then you realize oneness or in whatever order the orders can all be different on top of that there's also degrees of depths so it's not just that you can realize that your god how deeply do you realize that your god and how deeply do you understand what God is there's lots of degrees of depth just to that one facet and generally that's true for all the different FASTA says there's degrees of depth to each individual facet so you can see that we are starting to sort of create like a table or a matrix here of different facets let's say going horizontally and then different depths of the facets going vertically and so at least we have this two-dimensional matrix maybe even more so you can see how quickly this gets very complicated and we can see how you know if we make this table or matrix we can take an individual teacher or guru or person and we can sort of check off which of these boxes they have become conscious of and you can see how most people are probably not gonna have a checkmark in every single box because it's a big table there's a lot to realize here in a lot of depth to each realization and so now we start to see the true complexity of spiritual work and why there's so much confusion and disagreement oftentimes between different teachers and teachings and traditions because actually they're not all the same I could shoot a whole video or on each one of these facets in fact I have shot long in-depth videos about what is love what is intelligence what is perception what is truth what is the absolute and what is consciousness and what is duality what is non duality blah blah blah blah blah I've shot many of those and I will do more in the future until I basically exhaust the whole list of these different facets in this work it's important to sort of stitch together these individual facets because sometimes like you could have one facet reveal to you today but then six months will pass until you get on there facet reveal to you and then another six months will pass you yet another one so you know as the time flows oftentimes there's months or even years in between different facets you can get one but then you kind of forget the other one you lose it so you have to come back and sort of stitch them together it's almost like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle sometimes you know you fit together ten different jigsaw pieces and you get a little piece of the image you see like oh that's a foot and then you assemble ten more over here and say oh that's an ear and then you assemble ten more over here it's like oh that's a tail but then even if you see that you still don't know what is the actual animal that you're gonna get at the very end so it's important to stitch it all together so that you can put them all together to say oh yeah so that's a foot that's a tail that's an ear that's a nose oh it's a cat oh that's what we're dealing with it we're dealing with a giant cosmic cat and that's sort of what you're doing each of these insights can be its own epic mindfuck it can leave you reeling for four weeks four months it can leave you in denial it can leave you resisting you can leave you depressed it can leave you with an exponential crisis while you're coping with it your ego is coping with it and struggling to integrate it it can leave you doubting yourself sometimes you can think you've lost your mind by realizing one of these insights for example you might get the insight that I'm God but then you know a few days past you start to question yourself and you say well am I really got or did I just lose my mind yeah - two days ago no you're really God it's just that is such a profound and shocking insight and it's so contradictory to what society around you has told you and taught you that you can sort of fall back into the beliefs of your society what your parents and your friends tell you you know you you tell your mom hey I'm God and she'll tell you no you're not and then who are you gonna believe well oftentimes you can get tricked by people outside of you have it have these experiences they can start telling you that you're crazy that you're losing your mind well actually they're the crazy ones now of course it's also possible that you are losing your mind you know it's possible to misinterpret these these insights and these facets and to some sort of arrange some sort of you know twisted distorted picture which isn't true to reality which is some sort of twisted amalgamation of your own egos projections and shadow that's also possible so it's it's it's dangerous you can definitely screw it up there's no guarantees here you always have to be careful about self-deception as I've warned you about in my self deception three-part series but just be aware that you might doubt yourself here which is why this list is so valuable because maybe I'm the only person in your life who's actually telling you that you're not losing your mind and that can be helpful to you and really the only people who can help you are those who have gone this deep but not just this deep but also this broad you see because what could happen is that you can go to your spiritual guru you could tell him hey I had the realization that I'm God and your spiritual guru until you know you're not God because let's say he was from the Buddhist tradition and in the Buddhist tradition they don't talk about God they prefer to call it nothingness or emptiness and so when you tell him I realized that I'm God he tells you no you're not God you're nothing and you haven't realized nothingness yet you don't realize yet that God and nothing just are actually one but he doesn't realize it either your guru cuz he hasn't had the insight that he's got but you as a student you don't know these subtle distinctions so you can get tricked by even gurus and teachers that are supposed to be helping you it's important they keep in mind that very few spiritual traditions and teachings teach you and explain in clear terms all of these different facets that I've laid out for you here many teachings are lopsided and tend to emphasize one facet over other facets they tend to elevate one facet over other facets you know some teachings will emphasize the God other teachings will emphasize the love other teachings will just emphasize nothingness or emptiness other teachings will emphasize infinity other teachings will emphasize who knows what and why is this because usually the people who create these teachings are not super well rounded mystics usually they excel in one or the other they have a preference for one or the other facet many times they haven't even realized half the facets so they only go with what they got the best they can do they're doing the best they can do but that's not always good enough oftentimes they don't know what they're missing see it's rare that a teacher realizes all of these facets and integrates them all together in a clear manner and then teaches them all very clearly and explicitly to you that's quite rare some people do it but it's rare because oftentimes people who awake they awaken through some dogmatic narrow path like they're a particular sect of Buddhists or they are particular adherent to some yogi path you know they follow some one particular yogi and that's all they know and they have not studied Buddhism they have not studied Christianity they have not studied Islam that's all they know so when they awakened through only one narrow dogmatic path that leads them to think that they're fully awake and that they've understood everything there is but really they haven't because they haven't studied all the teachings and they haven't gathered all the different facets and their tradition probably didn't teach them all the different facets and they probably weren't good enough at meditation and yoga and whatever else they were doing to gather all the facets independently by themselves to discover them very few people actually discover spirituality independently most people just dogmatically walk some sort of path they do some sort of narrow practice like meditation or prayer or contemplation or self inquiry and that's it but they don't realize that you know self inquiry it can awaken you but it can also limit your awakening as well so be careful assuming that your guru or teacher or teaching or the book you're reading is fully awake that it's not missing any facets because you know what even the best teachers I found that they often will not admit that they're missing a facet when you confront them about some aspect of their teaching that you think might be lopsided or lacking usually what you get from them is denial and ridicule and dismissal they will dismiss your questioning of their teachings and their lopsidedness they will dismiss it as your own ignorance so yes very easy for a guru or a teacher to do because they start to take it for granted that they have all already fully awoken there's nothing more for them to learn of course this is just like another form of uh of a sort of spiritual closed mindedness they're resting on their laurels you can go to a teacher and ask them about love and if that teacher has never experienced love he'll tell you that love is [ __ ] that love is just a human emotion and then it has nothing to do with awakening or you can go to a teacher and ask him about omniscience or about infinite intelligence and they'll tell you all forget about that just go and start stop the stuff thinking about that and just go ask the question Who am I see that's because maybe they haven't realized what infinite intelligence is and that doesn't mean they're not awake they can be awake but they can still not realize all the full nuances of the various facets that I've outlined for you here and this difference between the different depths and also between the different facets becomes very apparent on psychedelics which is one of the reasons that psychedelics are such a powerful tool because different psychedelics allow you to hit awakening from different angles and perspectives from different states of consciousness allows you to have different insights then you normally would be able to do this is very difficult to do if you're practicing only one narrow meditation technique or self inquiry technique or some yoga technique see it becomes like one dimensional it's almost like you're playing a piano but you've only been taught a few notes on one side of the keyboard so you're you're punching these notes here but you don't even know how to move across to the other notes that you're missing see but psychedelics especially if you're using a broad range of them different ones like LSD mushrooms DMT five amiyo DPT whatever you know MDMA they can all hit different facets and notes and then you can you can see the spectrum you can see the mountain range that is awakening a lot better that's one of their benefits and some psychedelics are better at hitting certain notes than others for example MDMA it's that love note really well five immuno DMT hits the god note really well and you know it varies it marries that's a that's a complex topic for another day so as you contemplate as you meditate as you self inquire as you do psychedelics as you do yoga whatever your practice is it can be hard to predict which facet you're going to stumble upon next it's somewhat random it depends a lot also on what your intentions are what do you want to know what are you genuinely curious about the most you might wonder like well leo let's say I think that I'm missing the facet of absolute love or I'm missing the facet of infinite intelligence how do i target that particular one and here it's a little bit hit or miss a bit of a trial and error situation I don't think there's a foolproof way but if there was one way I think the most important way would be through your intention what is it that you genuinely want to know what does your heart want to know about reality see why are you doing this work at all why are you questioning why are you pursuing this facet of love or why are you even interested in this facet of infinite intelligence you have to really want to know and for that it's it's helpful to have a question that you're latched onto as though your life depends on it like for example a question like what am i or a question like what is reality or a question like what is God or what is love or why does anything exists or what is consciousness or why am I even here what is the point of my life what is the purpose of my life these sorts of questions channel your mind via intention and will into some particular direction you see and it's not enough just to be pursuing one of these insights simply to check off a box you have to really want to know it like there was a time in my life where I really needed to to know what reality is and then I got that desire answered because I cared about it so much and then once that was answered then I was like okay I'm satisfied with that answer now I have it but I have a different answer now I want to know like what is God and then that desire is satisfied and then so I get that one and I say okay well now I understand God but I still don't fully understand like why is all of this here and then I'm questioning that one and then I get an insight into that one and then finally I'm like okay now I understand why it's all here and then I'm like well but I still don't quite understand what's the connection between love and truth I'm still murky on that and so I question that the next time and then I get an answer to that and I'm like okay now I understand now I realized that love and truth are actually two sides of one coin okay that's clear but then there's something else I'm confused about and so this is how it's worked for me and it probably I assume will work for you in a similar way questioning is very powerful in fact I have I have no less than four episodes for you to watch about questioning one called the power of asking questions another one called contemplation which teaches you how to contemplate another one called how to contemplate using a journal which teaches you contemplation using a journal and then I have another one an older one called the 64 most fascinating questions that a human being can ask which teaches you about various kinds of existential questions that might be interesting and meaningful for you that can spark your curiosity and get you motivated to do this work and to get these questions answered don't take questioning for granted really high-quality questioning is like the backbone of all self-actualization work and your questions don't have to always be existential there can also be more minor questions like questions like should I get married should I have children or so stuff like that you can ask questions like that as well and those can be answered so you might wonder Leo how do I realize all these facets what's the best way to get them all gotta catch them all personally I found psychedelics to be the best way if you're actually interested in hitting all of these facets psychedelics are a great tool because you can use different ones to target different facets you don't get stuck in some one-dimensional technique they allow you to contemplate and to set intentions at the beginning of each trip you can record your various insights and piece them together you can do multiple trips and connect all the dots and then it becomes like this journey of an ever-expanding panoramic big-picture view of what consciousness and what reality is what guy is now of course people here object and they say Oh leo but what about without psychedelics I don't want to do psychedelics is it possible to get all this stuff without psychedelics of course is possible but also it's very easy to miss some it would be wise to use all tools at your disposal but if you insist on only doing yoga or only doing self inquiry or only doing meditation okay that's an artificial limit that you've set upon yourself fine then work within those limits that you've set upon yourself try to do it that way see how far you can get you can probably get pretty far if you really want to and if you're serious about it and you're really curious and you want to check off all the facets you probably could through yoga or meditation or whatever but also at some point you got to wonder why are you limiting yourself if there are other ways really if you're serious about this work you should not be attached to the method you should be attached to understanding as a whole what you want to care about is just understanding about consciousnesses and then how you get there shouldn't matter to you whether you do through yoga or meditation or psychedelics who cares as long as it gets you there of course there are pros and cons to every approach I'm not saying psychedelics are necessarily the best approach I'm saying that they're particularly good at hitting a diversity of facets and showing you the broad range the mountain range of awakening yoga might be good for taking you down one very narrow specific facet for example or a cluster of facets now you might say but leo this contradicts what you're saying here with Buddhism or with Hinduism or with what my guru says because they don't talk about all these different facets in the same way that you do that's right so part of this contradiction can just be an apparent surface level contradiction in the sense that for example Buddhists might not talk about God but that doesn't mean they haven't had that insight although some of them might not have so it's a little bit tricky here I might be collector addicting what your guru says or maybe I'm just using different words and I'm just phrasing things differently and I'm just articulating these facets in a different way you see not only are there all these different facets and depths but we can also talk about them differently we can use different metaphors different words different language that very much depends on your tradition and your on on your inclinations and so forth but also I would just caution you don't take for granted that you're a guru or teacher knows everything that I'm talking about that they have checked off every box that's not guaranteed and that doesn't necessarily diminish the greatness of your guru for example your guru might be really really good in one or two facets or a cluster of facets but still be missing some other one see there can be trade-offs between depth and level of mastery versus breadth see so just keep that in mind after all how do you know which specific facets your guru has realized have you sat down with your guru and asked them to check off this entire matrix of facets of course not most gurus wouldn't allow you to do that anyways even if you asked they would hand wave you away and just tell you to do their technique they're not gonna sit there and argue with you about all these different facets and for you as a newbie how are you gonna know to discuss these facets with your guru you won't know you won't even know which questions to ask them you won't know whether they're giving you valid legitimate answers or not you won't know when they're dismissing your question because it's a bad question or because they're actually ignorant of the answer gurus could be sneaky this way a lot of times they'll ignore a good question and blame you for being ignorant or being too nosy or something like that when actually they're there they're hiding their own ignorance it's very difficult to know the degree of understanding that some guru has and most followers and never even occurs them to ask or to question what does their guru really understand few gurus tell you everything they understand so this means you have to take responsibility you have to be careful don't just make blanket assumptions about people don't assume that all awakenings are the same don't assume that all gurus are equally enlightened don't assume that all pads lead to the same destination in this work if awakening was simple and binary there wouldn't be so much disagreement between different schools and teachers and gurus how do we explain this disagreement clearly just these disagreements exist and they have existed throughout all of human history across all continents so this can't just be something I'm making up clearly there is a vast variety of spiritual teachings and techniques what are the chances at every single technique would hit and be equally effective at reaching every insight and every facet that there is very little chance they're all perfectly equal chances are that certain techniques hit certain facets better than others see certain teachings are deeper than others certain teachers or teachings are broader than others there really isn't one state or one insight that all awakened people reach that's a mistaken assumption which is why it's wise to play various gurus off one another you can do that you can actually spot contradictions between gurus this way you know take one great guru from the east take one great guru from the West then you know read their books and then take the sayings of this one and direct it at this guy and take the sayings of this guy and direct it at this guy and you'll see that there's going to be a conflict between the two and how do we explain this well I explained it that they have different depths and different facets that's how I explained it beware that partial realizations can be dangerous for example you could have partial awakening where you fail to realize love absolute love and then your teachings will lack love and that will be a problem Aurra a shame really to have a teaching of awakening without the love component or you can teach awakening but still deny God for example sam harris has some bit of awakening but not that deep not that broad he talks about no self he's done various kinds of buddhist meditation for years supposedly he's pretty good meditator and so forth but he doesn't know what god is he's not conscious of that he's in denial about god and so in this sense he's misleading his his students that's a great shame especially because he's God what is the point of being awake when you don't realize you're God that's not full awakening or for example you can have various other kinds of teachers who awaken in some way but their teaching is kind of nihilistic that's also limited and problematic in my opinion you can have a partial realization but then you can your ego can still hang on it can create fear and rejection of this realization that you've had and that can spin off in a sort of distorted direction or you could have some deep realization insight but then you can dismiss other valid teachings from different traditions and different paths for example some student comes to you practicing the path of love but you dismiss them and you tell them to stop because you tell them that love is [ __ ] and that it's not not right because your path was a path of like hardcore [ __ ] meditation or strong determination sitting and then you want the student to follow your path without realizing that your path isn't necessary than work for for her or for him see and you might dismiss some yogic technique because it doesn't fit in with your ideas of how to do self inquiry well some inquires just one way to do it yoga's another way to do it there's a lot of different ways to do yoga and many more spiritual techniques besides those to see so partial realizations lead to these various kinds of conflicts because yeah it's partial from a partial perspective you misunderstand other perspectives that's the whole problem with partial perspectives another objection that arises is but Leo if awakening has all these facets you talk about doesn't that contradict the most important point which is the oneness of truth the oneness of reality it's a good question and the answer is no it doesn't contradict because actually the distinction between oneness and many nough sits elf something that must collapse into a higher greater absolute oneness you see so many nests is not the opposite of oneness really have to realize they're the same thing which is why I call them facets the metaphor in my mind is out of a jewel or a diamond a diamond is one thing that has many facets that's exactly how it works or the classic you know Hindu metaphor of the elephant the five blind men and the elephant that's what we're talking about here the elephant is enlightenment or truth and each blind man is groping a different part so what's true is the elephant one thing or is the elephant a collection of things like a tail a foot an ear a tusk a trunk and whatever else it has on it it's both see my hand is one but it also is five fingers you might say that the fingers are different facets of my hand I can know each finger individually or I can know them all together collectively each way of knowing is important it's important to know them all collectively because it would be a problem if I deny like that I have a thumb let's say see I would be dysfunctional if I had to deny to myself that I have a thumb but also it would be a problem if all I knew is my thumb and I knew it really close and I knew all the intimate details and wrinkles of my thumb and all the scars that are on it but then I didn't use it holistically in sync with all the other fingers of my hand so that I could use it as an actual hand I would be too preoccupied with the thumb and then I'd be pushing stuff with my thumb all the time and the only way I'd be interacting with the world is with my thumb and I would ignore the other possibilities of my hand you see that's what's going on here so what I'm about what actualize or it is about is learning how to use the whole hand holistically but also taking interest in individual aspects as well right so we need to be able to zoom in and zoom out be sometimes specific and limited and sometimes holistic and very broad you might wonder how many facets are there in total is there an infinite number of them do they never end do we just keep finding new facets all the time honestly I don't know how many facets there are in a certain sense it depends on how you split them up what do you count as a facet that's relative so there's not someone absolute number of facets like there's thirty five facets and that's it or there's 52 facets no it depends on how you count them practically speaking I would say there's at least two dozen major facets that are important and crucial to your path to realize and if you don't get this two dozen facets your awakening is not going to be very complete in my opinion and then beyond that is sort of extra some of the facets are more important than other ones some of them are kind of tangential and not so important I mean in the end if you want you can consider literally every physical object in the universe to be a facet of God a facet of truth with a capital T every one of my fingers is a facet of the absolute in a sense but you know we don't want to get that granular we're more interested here in like major facets like do you understand absolute love do you understand what God is do you understand that you're God do you understand what nothingness is do you understand what infinity is do you understand what will with a capital W is do you understand with truth with a capital T is if you're missing some of those you're missing something important I would say but don't get hung up on counting them now a warning even if you get all of just checkboxes here that I'm talking about and you get all these 30-some facets that's still not the end of your work not even close you're still missing many other important domains of this work these facets don't guarantee you for example emotional mastery they don't guarantee that you're gonna transcend suffering they don't guarantee that you transcend your shadow you still got shadow work to do they don't guarantee personal development you got personal development to do they don't guarantee you relationship mastery you got that to do communication mastery you're missing that life purpose you're missing that changing your behaviors and bad habits that's not guaranteed just because you know all these 30-some facets doesn't mean that you have quit all your bad habits and addictions it doesn't mean that you've dropped all of your limiting beliefs and fallacious beliefs about reality you might still have some silly conspiracy theory in your mind you might still believe that your culture your Hindu culture is superior to other cultures you might still believe that psychedelics are evil or whatever see that's still possible you can still hold false beliefs even if you're awake how about spiral development spa the dynamics wise knowing these fastest doesn't guarantee that you are now maxed out on your cognitive moral interpersonal or political developmental lines it doesn't guarantee career development it doesn't guarantee technical skills there are technical skills you need to develop in life to be successful see so you got all that to work on and none of the insights that I talked about guarantees a permanent embodiment of that insight so just because you realize that you are God does not mean that now you live every single day as though you were God just because you realize that there's no such thing as evil doesn't now mean that you walk around every day never seeing evil anymore loving absolutely everything it doesn't guarantee that usually that will take a lot more work to be able to fully embody these profound insights that's really where the bulk of the work lies in this work not realizing the insight but then fully embodying it that's the really hard part so even though I've realized many of these insights again don't don't take me to be greater than I actually am for example I still struggle with the notion of death I would still say that I haven't conquered fully my fear of death even though I know the death is imaginary now you might say well but how could that be well because this it's a very big thing to embody it's hard to truly be so conscious all the time that you're immune to threats to your physical survival that that's hard to embody that will take you probably decades at work or some really profound awakening see it's hard to be loving all the time when people are being [ __ ] to you what can you say it's hard this is this is our work here see even though I know that everything is love that doesn't mean that I'm always in a lovey chipper mood and if someone does something nasty or evil to me or devilish you know people can still behave like jerks that doesn't mean that I won't get triggered sometimes I won't get angry I won't feel bad about it or whatever now of course in the bigger picture I can kind of come back and recenter myself and say okay yeah that guy's an [ __ ] I should probably love him and I can see the love kind of the twisted form of love that he's expressing towards me and how I'm judging him to be evil yeah okay I can I can kind of see this but you know in the heat of the moment it's not always that that easy and even with everything I said here there are still millions of minor insights that you can have for example you can realize everything above that I told you but still you can lack insight into things like how does science work what is science that takes a specific insight what is evolution what is art what is a relationship what is technology what is leadership what is pain what it's motivation what are thoughts what is fear what is anger what is happiness how do psychedelics work what is collective ego what is devilry how does society work what is society what is culture what is ideology and this list is basically endless you can question reality at this kind of granular level basically till you're dead till your body drops dead at least and there's a lot of value in answering these sorts of minor questions I mean these aren't really minor they're they're pretty major but they're minor relative to the bigger stuff I talked about above so just kind of start to see that there's there's a lot to this work probably start with the big stuff then you can move down the food chain to the smaller stuff depend on how curious you are you know many people probably burn out their curiosity will burn out after they get the major stuff and they probably won't even care about the minor stuff but personally I love I love questioning this minor stuff as well like for example I'm interested in questions about society and culture and politics and understanding leadership and technology and evolution and science and these traditionally many spiritual teachers would say oh all this is just nonsense but it's not nonsense in fact it's these more minor insights that are in a certain sense more practical and more useful to helping us to advance and to evolve society and making it better but of course those big ones are also very very important and life transforming so start with us focus on those as you pursue awakening be careful not to stop prematurely just keep in mind that it's probably deeper and richer than you ever imagined and ultimately what we really care about here is how deeply do you understand reality at the ultimate level how deeply do you understand it how conscious are you of it and that determines how well you're also able to embody it so when you're not able to embody it fully that probably means that you're not conscious of it fully and that you don't understand it fully my notion of understanding is a very deep and profound notion so there you go now you have your list now you have your work cut out for you go and see how much of this you can realize for yourself don't believe me for all you know I'm wrong for all you know I'm lying for all you know I'm deluded how would you know you don't know the only way you'll know if the things I'm telling you are true is by doing it and having these insights for yourself see how many of them you can validate and then you'll be able to know how right or how wrong I was there you go all right I'm done here please click that like button for me and now I got to tell you a bit of a about patreon go check out patreon at action at patreon.com slash actualized or click the link down below where you can do a little donation action and come check out actualize that org there you will find exclusive content stuff I post on my blog new insights new videos vlogs that I'm releasing on a weekly basis check out the forum check out a life purpose course check out the book list and I'll be doing more courses in the future so check back periodically because you never know really when tall release some new course or some new resource that could potentially change your whole life as far as the patreon thing goes I'm excited to see where it goes I'm grateful for your support but also I want to warn you that I want to leave open the possibility that in the future you know I do this kind of work but it's hard for me that the deeper I go in this existential work it's harder for me to to know what my future plans are like it's hard for me to know where I'll be in five years or ten years whether I'll even be doing this work whether I'll be passionate about it whether I'll outgrow it or I'll come up with some new better idea or whatever so I want to leave the possibility open that I might just like renounce life and become a monk and just disconnect from business disconnect from society disconnect from teaching disconnect from running a giant organization and this sort of stuff so right now I am somewhat committed to building actualized org and to growing it and to releasing a lot more content writing some books and so forth making some more courses so that's sort of my medium-term plan over the next few years maybe doing some tours and workshops and so forth I am excited about those possibilities but also I feel deep down that there is sort of a deeper calling for me all too and at some point I might have to take some time away from doing this work because it does take a lot of my time and mental energy to do all this activity and just like go deeper into myself retreat deeper into myself maybe do some month-long retreats or even year-long retreats where I don't talk to anybody where I don't produce any kind of work where I just work on embodying these various facets that I talked about here within myself with the ultimate aim of then coming back and then doing the work I've been doing but at a next level at a much deeper level so just keep in mind that that possibility is out there if I decide to do that for a long time like if I'm gonna take a year off or even more I might cancel the patreon entirely for example I don't know you know we'll see how it goes because part of the thing with the patreon donations now is that I sort of feel like well if you guys are donating to me that I kind of feel even more obligated to like release weekly content and make it good because you guys are supporting me and that's good it motivates me but also I don't want to be totally beholden to that in the end to me the most important thing is taking my own awakening as deep as possible because what I know is that the deeper I can awaken the more loving I can become the better I can embody it the more powerful I become as a as a human and ultimately as a leader and as a teacher and then the more I embody it the less I have to speak about it the less I have to be analytical with my teachings the more I can just walk down the street and influence people just with my presence and that's ultimately where this is probably going I'm just not sure exactly how all of that will play out so be flexible with me here let's just see where it goes and how this evolves because we're doing something new I'm sort of documenting my whole spiritual journey on video here along you I mean I'm like teaching you but at the same time I'm learning myself every single week so I'm not coming at you from some high position on a mountaintop really I'm sort of coming at it from from a lower place where you get to see me grow along with you in this journey and you know there's there's pros and cons to doing it that way so let's just see how it goes hopefully it's more relatable to you and you kind of see me struggling and suffering through this journey and then you can relate with that and then that inspires you and motivates you and makes this whole process look a little bit more human and down-to-earth for you and makes you feel like you can do it too like hey if he's struggling through it and he can do it then maybe so can I so stick to the stick around stay tuned and you'll see more of that to come you