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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about the paradox of self trust how do you develop trust in yourself in this work while at the same time questioning many of the limiting aspects of yourself and your worldview there's a very interesting paradox at the heart of personal development which is that on the one hand all personal development advice tells you to question yourself question the things you believe and to really deeply doubt very fundamental aspects of your being and then on the other hand all personal development advice tells you to trust yourself completely so what should you do should you doubt yourself should you trust yourself how do we reconcile this this is very difficult it's a very challenging sort of Gordian knot for the newbie of personal development to unravel and even when you're getting to the intermediate phases of personal development it's still very tricky to grapple with this because really what you're doing with all personal development work is you're trying to understand okay what aspects of myself should I trust and what aspects of myself are deceptive and misleading and sort of counter-intuitively leading me down the wrong paths in life and finding that middle ground being able to discern between the two is what the bulk of the work is for that's why you're doing the work you see I want to help you to sort out some of the good from the bad here so one problem is that you're not doubting deeply enough you're not nearly doubting deeply enough some of the things you need to be doubting and then on the other hand the problem is is that you don't have faith in the things you have faith in those quote unquote right parts of you what I want to talk about is I want to give you some lists and some guidelines for how to understand the things that you should be doubting and the things you should be having faith in because what's very interesting is that what I see in newbies and I experienced this myself passing through the newbie stages of personal development is that the newbie falls into two extremes here one problem for the newbie is that he trusts very blindly and gullibly his own mind basically he doesn't recognize the self deceptive characteristics of the mind so the newbie tends to trust his beliefs his beliefs about people about the world about himself these beliefs could be very limiting or they could even be empowering beliefs but nevertheless he really trusts them he buys into them hook line and sinker and that creates a lot of problems for him down the road because every belief ends up being limiting even the positive ones so there's that aspect we're going to talk a lot more about that as a whole can of worms he also trusts his fears a lot he trusts his emotions the various emotional triggers and buttons that he has he trusts those when really he shouldn't be and of course he trusts his ego way too much way too much so this misplaced trust leads the new be completely astray in life and then on the other hand he doesn't trust enough this is the other extreme for the newbie he said he doesn't trust enough his intuition and what I'm going to call his higher self but see what is the right intuition what is the proper higher self these labels like ego or intuition or higher self they're very abstract labels so it's not really helpful for me to tell you these things just like this because in your mind it doesn't really resolve anything because you need like the fine-grained distinctions and details so that your mind can actually sort out what can be trusted and what can't be trusted in a sense this is sort of the same problem that a computer software runs into for example operating systems right they have to distinguish between what is a computer virus and what is legitimate useful software that you're installing on the machine and sometimes you have false positives like you've if you install a antivirus kind of checker program right like Norton security sound like that then one thing that will annoy you about that kind of software is that it hits you with false positives that means that it thinks oh this thing is bad it's a virus and actually you know that no this not a virus this is a good program that I want to install on my computer and then of course it also has the opposite problem is that it doesn't detect the viruses because if you got a new sneaky virus it comes into your machine and your security software is not up-to-date yet it doesn't catch that virus and the virus gets you well the same thing has sort of happened in your mind and this is tricky because the devil is in details the same sort of problem is faced by your your biological immune system right it has to distinguish between what are the good substances for your body to accept and then what are the bad foreign agents that it should reject and sometimes the body gets it wrong in fact there's a whole slew of diseases called autoimmune diseases or what happens is that your immune system attacks itself it sacks various organs in the body because it now for some reason believes that these organs in your body even though they're your own and somehow believes it's diluted itself into thinking that oh these are actually bad for and ages I need to kill them and it actually sends out like certain cells I go out and try to kill these parts of your body which of course leads to some disastrous results and likewise your immune system can go wrong the other way in the other extreme and it can let all sorts of foreign agents come into your body that will kill you because it doesn't defend you properly against the foreign agents right so it's very important for these systems very complex systems they have to they have to very carefully distinguish and the devil is in the details so for the newbie you know this creates neurosis because look at this for the newbie on the one hand he's trusting all these false beliefs and phears and his ego in his mind a lot so that creates a lot of neuroses but also he doesn't trust the higher self in him and the intuition his own innate creative capacities he doesn't really trust in those and then so of course yeah he becomes neurotic he becomes fearful in places in life where he shouldn't be fearful he becomes dysfunctional in those places where he should be functional right this is what neurosis is neurosis fundamentally is an inability to trust in yourself it's to always be kind of fighting with yourself grappling with yourself do you face that problem as a student of personal development is that like you're fighting yourself to be disciplined you're fighting yourself to get motivated you're fighting yourself to resist certain foods or certain temptations or you're telling yourself no I got to do this because this is what I have been told or this is what's right this is what should happen because you have these rules right that's classic neurosis so personal development work is supposed to help you to on why your that neuroses because hey you know living a neurotic life is not very pretty it's stressful it's dramatic it's just like needless drama in your life why do you want that you don't you want to get rid of it but how do you get rid of it is it real trick so you got to find out and you got to know what you should be doubting within your system of beliefs itself and what you should be trusting and a nun in a nutshell what you're doing with all personal development work is that you're discovering self-deceptions many many many very sneaky and very subtle self-deceptions that have been part of this system that we call you the mind and the body for years and decades and it's very hard to go in there in to isolate in to pinpoint what these viruses that are infecting your mind actually are but let me help you here so let me first give you a list of things that you should start to doubt about yourself and when I mean doubt I'm not talking about doubting other people or what other people say everything I'm talking about in this episode is all you right we're talking about self trust and self doubt not other trust and other doubt if you have problems with trusting other people or if you are like a constant skeptic and skeptical of everything people tell you including what I tell you that's another matter another matter and actually what you'll discover if you pay close attention what I'm telling you here in this episode is that your trust issues with other people and with other ideas and belief systems and so forth your skepticism that actually it's rooted in a deep distrust of yourself it's because you can't trust yourself that you have problems trusting others and it's because you doubt yourself that you doubt everything else in the external world so let's focus on you you as a self as an ego that's the first thing you should start to doubt is the ego and what the ego is is basically the entire structure of mind that you have this notion that you are an individual separate from life somehow separate from other people separate from the world separate from nature suffer from the environment that you are there and I am here and that you need to defend yourself this whole defense mechanism structure needs to start to be doubted the newbie never really doubts this very seriously the newbie doesn't look at his own self biases have you noticed that everything you believe and almost every idea you hold is biased towards yourself in an untruthful sort 'we have you noticed this so for example if you're driving on the road and someone cuts you off you get pissed off at the person who cut you off you might say well that makes sense he cut me off of course I'm gonna get pissed off okay but what's interesting is that if you cut somebody off you will not hold yourself to that same standard will you you will come up with a rationalization which will say something oh yeah but you know Leo I was in a hurry you know I wasn't hurting my child was sick so I am justified in cutting this person off that's a very innocent example hopefully if your student personal development you've been noticing these sorts of self biases and when I tell you the word self bias immediately in your mind a thousand examples should pop up of the ways in which you are untruthfully self biased it means you give yourself your ego preferential treatment for examples a lot of guys do this in relationships they'll say you know what I love open relationships I like seeing lots of girls okay so you like saying lots of girls that's fine but then what happens when your girl one of the girls you're seeing says hey you know what I want to see other guys too I like seeing lots of guys are you gonna be cool with that and now see the mind likes to play a lot of very sneaky games here so what the Maya could say is like oh yeah leo sure sure yeah I'll let her go see other guys I don't care because you know what I got other girls I'll just replace her with another girl but see that doesn't really address the issue does it what if all of your girls wanted to see other guys how would you feel then and what if you couldn't replace them how would you feel then would you still be cool with it and here you have to be very very honest because your mind gets very very sneaky right comes up with a lot of rationalizations so this is just a couple of examples of what I mean by looking at yourself biases right and then kind of holding yourself accountable for them and saying wait a minute why is this is there this double standard why do I have all these double standards why is my outrage that I feel towards other people filled with so many double standards and then when you start to notice that you see oh yeah it's all about me the whole game that I'm playing here with my ego is I'm trying to get more for me so of course all these double standards are here because it's just me it's all for me and then you know if the ego is really bad if the ego is totally out of control the Eagles say well leo so what so what what's wrong with an ego what's wrong with ego what what's wrong with it being all about me what's wrong with that ah it would take me hours to explain all the things wrong with that this is where you need to start to trust a little bit of your intuition just try to see what's wrong with that but let's move on because there's a lot of other points I want to talk about so there's this also you have to start to doubt yourself defense mechanisms so all these I've started I've already started to go into the self itself mechanisms that people have against their double standards so you have to start to question yourself defense mechanisms all the excuses you make for why you're special why you should be treated differently also you have to start to doubt all of your beliefs and ideologies so anything you believe and you hold it's like okay this is it this is the most certain thing that I know this cannot possibly be false that thing right there you need to doubt that I'll tell you that flat-out doubt the [ __ ] out of it throw it away that [ __ ] that most cherished belief you have whatever it is God science atheism you know your beliefs about men and women about sexuality about business about money about life about death whatever that's the thing you got a question and question it so deeply that you stop believing in it but of course what ego really wants to do that not very many that's the problem right because your immune system has actually now been corrupted by these beliefs and now because your immune system actually is composed of these beliefs it doesn't want to question some of the most deepest beliefs you hold because it's threatening to the whole structure of the ego right but this is a problem for you because your immune system once it's filled with these strong beliefs then it will use those to attack any possibility for growth and consciousness that you run across in your future because growth and consciousness is anti all beliefs it's anti ideological you see that's why every belief gets in the way now some beliefs are much worse than others but don't let your mind trick you into thinking like oh well yeah some beliefs are bad but some beliefs are good no uh it's not about good and bad it's really about whether you're a slave to your beliefs or you're actually free of your beliefs that's the issue the issue is not about true and false beliefs all beliefs are false I'll tell you that right now so that's not the issue the issue is are you actually practically free of your beliefs and ideologies do you actually hold them lightly or do you hold them tightly like a baby blanket that you need to protect yourself with that's the issue so start to doubt every single n of your beliefs also start to doubt your mind and all your thoughts your entire structure of the rational mind everything that is quote-unquote rational and logical sorted out all that all of it start to question rationality itself start to question logic itself start to question all your reasons for your beliefs so every belief you hold has a justification behind it's like well I believe the earth is round because X Y Z that's how it works right those XYZ are the justifications and those are the things you need to start to doubt why do you believe X Y Z well because of ABC and why do you believe ABC well because of D F G and why do you believe those well because of LMNOP or whatever you know right you have like a nested kind of hierarchy of justifications and need to trace all those down to the very bottom to see where they terminate doubt rationality itself doubt logic itself the out-science these are things that in general people do not doubt enough they are taken on faith and that turns out to be a very damaging thing because once you take all these things on faith your mind becomes closed to experiencing the deeper states of consciousness and awareness that are possible and you're basically locked in to your present normal mundane everyday state of consciousness which is a very very limited state you can't do very much in that state you need to get to higher states and you can't get there through logic and rationality and through science at least not as they're typically conceived so you have to start to question all those now I'm not saying you have to abandon that and become some kind of stupid [ __ ] fool who does completely irrational things I'm just saying start to question start to doubt apply the skepticism in the right places internally not externally so the biggest problem that self ordained skeptics commit is that they're skeptical of everything but focused outward their skepticism isn't focused inward enough on themselves if you want to be a skeptic that's great I love skepticism but the most skeptical thing you should be skeptical about is skepticism itself right your skepticism has to go so deep that even you start to doubt your own skepticism that's when you're being a proper skeptic otherwise what it is is just a tool for the ego to reject new ideas and new avenues for growth also don't think that I've left religion on touched here so while you're doubting science and logic and rationality at the same time doubt the [ __ ] out of religion every religious belief you have about God and what's right and what's good and what's evil and about the Bible and whatever in a few if you grew up a Hindu or a Jew or a Christian or a Buddhist it doesn't matter question all that because all that is holding you back from actually growing and discovering the higher states of consciousness that actually your religion is talking about also start to doubt your emotions so when you feel angry when you feel jealous when you feel defensive when you feel hurt when you feel fearful when you feel like you need to protect yourself when you feel judgmental when you feel violent and angry when you feel self-righteous all these sorts of emotions question all those emotions ask yourself what is this emotion is it actually true could it be a tool of the ego that is being used here to play games to manipulate myself and to manipulate others could that really be what's going on with these emotions the newbie doesn't really question these emotions he's actually just reacting to these emotions he's a slave to these emotions also question your quote unquote good emotions not just the bad emotions but also the good ones because actually this distinction between good emotions bad emotions you've made the wrong distinction there you don't really know what the good emotions are what the bad emotions are really the bad emotion is any emotion that you are a slave to and that you're on - so this could include emotions like happiness and excitement and love these can be very damaging emotions because it's very easy to use love to actually hurt people it's very easy to used love to manipulate people to delude yourself about what you're doing with this person in a relationship why you're with them very easy to delude yourself with love excitement can also be very diluting as an emotion you can't just blindly follow excitement wherever it leads you because it could lead you down some very terrible paths in life so you have to question your excitement to these things that you take for granted like oh I'm excited by this thing well yeah sure you might be excited by having sex with lots of people that might be very exciting to you but is that really growing you or you might be excited about earning lots of money in business and sure that's exciting but the question is is that really what you should be doing with your life or you might be excited to get into a relationship and get married settle down have a bunch of kids and the question is is that really the choice that's going to grow you the most or is that actually an escape so you have to question all those yeah emotions can be very self deceptive also you have to question and doubt your criticism of that people also known as projection have you noticed yet that almost every single criticism you make of other people whether it's teachers friends family coworkers bosses celebrities business people that you read about in the Wall Street Journal you know your enemies if you have any enemies if you judge me if you judge a book that you're reading if you judge a video that you're watching have you noticed that all this stuff is just a projection of your own ego it has nothing to do with me it has nothing to do with the person it has nothing to do with the celebrity or what kind of dickish thing you think your boss did to you whatever has nothing to do with that it's really all about you it's about your own insecurities and your own projections onto other people so you have to really start to question every single criticism that you have to the point where you've questioned your own criticism so much that you can't even make a critical move anymore it's like I want to criticize that guy but I'm too aware I can see that my criticism of him is actually a denial of something that I'm doing it's actually a projection oh I can't criticize him anymore right you want to get to that point also you want to doubt all your cultural preferences cultural indoctrination is huge in every single culture I don't care if you're a a Hindu or if you're Asian or if you're Japanese or if you're Middle Eastern if you're European or if you're American it doesn't matter you have thousands of cultural preferences and norms and beliefs that you have just kind of soaked up like a sponge from your culture and you've never doubted them you've never really questioned them and it's especially dangerous for people in Western culture because as a Western culture part of Western culture is sort of this kind of like individualistic anti cultural norm which says like oh yeah I'm kind of a typical American so you know I don't really buy into culture all that much but then you know Americans are instead of having the traditional cultures of like Eastern countries they have a culture of consumerism like the popular culture the music culture the videogame culture the drug culture the college culture the pickup culture the whatever culture so if you consider yourself a cultural if you could consider yourself kind of like a modern American or western minded type of person doesn't matter where you live you still have these very powerful cultural influences in you which are shaping the things that you're pursuing in life what you're doing what you're desiring what you're avoiding in life whether it's money sex marriage family all this kind of stuff largely you don't even know what your authentic desires are in life because the cultural influences are so strong and yet also so subtle and so taken for granted by you that they're never questioned yeah it's like you've been infected by the cultural virus and now that virus is running you and that's all stuff you got a question question very very deeply also you should question while you're at it any moralization or shoulds that you have I have entire episodes about this we're talking about the should statements and how you moralize to yourself and other people but basically all those statements you have such as like I should be fit and I should be rich and I shouldn't be sick and my kids should be good at school and my wife should be pretty and this should be this way and that should be that way and my husband should be loyal to me and all these shoulds that you have they all need to be questioned because they're holding you back you have shoot statements because fundamentally you're not making conscious choices in your life so you're dictating yourself with these rules but these rules are very limiting they're not robust enough they don't have enough requisite variety to navigate life successfully because we live in a very complex and nuanced world these days also you should question and doubt your motivations which are based on obligation or duty where are you motivated in life and you feel like well I have to do this because there's a sense of responsibility and duty whether it's coming from my culture or from my family or from the fact that I'm a husband or that I'm a wife or that I'm a father or that I'm a mother or that I'm a brother that I'm a sister or that I am a student or that I'm a for that I'm a boss or that I'm an employee or whatever question all that most of those are not authentic to you and they are creating neurotic forms of motivation in your life this is why so many people have motivation problems in life also you should deeply question when you beat yourself up a lot of people like to beat themselves up and be harsh with themselves talk harshly to themselves kind of discipline harshly to themselves because they think that that's the proper way to motivate yourself and that that will actually lead to improvements and growth it won't that leads to neuroses leads to unconsciousness leads to very screwed up behavioral patterns in your life leads to lack of groundedness and consistency in your action taking also does it make you feel very good when you beat yourself up it ruins your self-esteem or road your confidence and so forth so you got to question why you do that and why you feel like beating yourself up is preferable to actually accepting and loving yourself who'd a thunk that that would be a better option also you have to start to question your web of beliefs what I call the love beliefs or your entire model of reality so the things you think about reality which seem very certain like time-space the universe the Big Bang Theory and all this kind of stuff you know whatever your models of reality are whether you think God created reality or do you think reality came out of you know nothing or whatever you think all this is nonsense because it's not based on any direct experience you have it's just ideas you have likewise your ideas about men and women your ideas about business your ideas about what's right wrong in the world your ideas about terrorists your ideas about the government your ideas about politics all this kind of stuff your entire web of beliefs your entire model of reality he is largely fictional and you have to go in there and challenge and question every single one of them to see wait a minute is this belief I have is it grounded in actual direct experience or is it just something I heard from somewhere and that I liked I happen to like it so I just added it to my web of beliefs you have to do that that's a lot of work because you got a lot of unquestioned beliefs in your model reality and lastly the thing you got a really question is your identity your very existential nature who you think you are what are you as the most like metaphysical of questions what are you are you a human being sitting there listening to me is that what you are were you actually born are you a kid who grew up and then went through adolescence and then became an adult is that what you actually are your identification with your body and your mind is that actually what you are are you your models of reality are you the things you believe are you what your face looks like are you what your body can do are you the athlete are you the guy who can go to the gym and benchpress 300 pounds is that actually what you are or is that an identity that you've constructed and if it is just an identity that you've constructed then what are you underneath the construction if you deconstruct the entire identity what are you left with what is that you have to deeply deeply deeply question all those things so this is a list of the things that you should be doubting that most newbies take totally for granted and it takes so much open-mindedness just to even understand my instructions to you here because even though I told you all these things now you have to go spend years years years maybe decades questioning everything I told you by yourself you can't read it in a book I'm not telling you to go read the answers in a book because that won't happen it's not going to you have to actually sit down and dig in to yourself I can't tell you the answers it's not about having answers it's about exploring these in a sceptical manner without an agenda not trying to prove or to disprove anything but just trying to look at what the facts are of the situation where did all these beliefs come from where did your cultural notions and preferences come from are they authentically yours or have they just kind of snuck their way into your life now let me tell you some things that you should trust you should trust more your intuition and what I'm going to call your higher self your higher self is the thing that we can contrast with the ego the ego is worried about kind of defending itself acquiring more for it self aggrandizing itself making it feel itself feels secure special and protected the higher self is more about just being in the present moment being open being spontaneous being kind of playful and free the way that you were as a child that kind of pure innocent sources sense of self so you should obviously trust that more and that can be difficult for some people to even recognize themselves anymore because after twenty thirty years of life you've been so bombarded with with traumatic events and people screwing you over and various belief systems and indoctrination in your school and your college from your professors from your religious leaders from your politicians from your family from everybody from the books you've been reading from the TV shows you've been watching by popular culture you've been bombarded by all this so that now it's like my original self what is my original self I don't even know but also it's possible to kind of just you know move all that stuff apart move it all away and just kind of get a whole sneak peek a little maybe those old crack opens up through the facade through the web of beliefs and you can kind of look down deep through in there and then you can see oh that's what yeah I have a memory of what it was like to be my original self that thing you can trust in fact that thing right there might be uh the road map for you for how to get out of this mess that you're in now today as an adult so look at your child self as your child self try to remember one of the things that moved you what are the things that inspired you how did you behave how did you hold your body how did you speak how did you sit how did you smile how did you relate to other people now you got to be careful here because some kids they have dysfunctional childhoods right off the bat so maybe you're one of those unfortunate kids who was like beaten or molested or even something a lot less sinister than that maybe just some kids laugh at you at first grade you know when you went to first grade some kids laughed at you and because of that right off the bat when you were seven years old already you couldn't properly to relate to two boys and girls at school because you were afraid of them laughing at you so you know there will be aspects of your original self that I think you can find even if you've been victimized and traumatized as a kid but for some people it'll be a lot harder than for others right and you got to be careful this is where the you know careful distinguishing has to happen when you trust parts of yourself it's very dangerous because everything on this list of things that I'm telling you that you can trust also notice that it's very easy for the ego to to use that as an escape kind of got a back door so the ego will say like oh yeah when I was a kid you know I was shy as a kid I'm were being shy in first grade because I was shy in first grade that means that's my original self Leo told me that's my original self so that means just like a shy introverted child and I'm that way as an adult and that's how I'll be forever no that's not what leo is telling you not at all so you got to be very very careful here with everything that I'm telling you that you should trust you have to also be a little bit skeptical about me like uh is my ego just using that as a backdoor to actually get in there and manipulate it its way into my ax into my psyche see you should also trust the drive for truth there is a drive in you that wants to find truth with a capital T this is a very deep drive in you but this drive has probably been hijacked by your cultural upbringing so when I tell you to trust your truck you're driving truth you might say oh yeah leo that's already what I'm doing you know I'm religious and that's why I believe in God because I trust my drive for truth that's not what I'm saying or you might say but leo you know yeah that's you know I agree with you amen that's why I'm an atheist and why I'm materialists and why I'm very skeptical and scientific mind and very rational minded because I have this dry this passion for truth that's not what I mean either see both of those are actually backdoor manipulations of the ego what I mean is a drive for truth is like direct experience of reality it's a very sober thing truth as distinguished from beliefs truth with a capital T is not a belief it is not science it is not religion it is not what you would typically call spirituality what is it that well you'll only find out after many many years on the path towards truth of the capital T and a very self honest way very carefully moving away from all the egoic stuff that I talked about earlier moving away from all that clearing all that way that stuff that that debris out from your vision and then you might have a little sneak peek preview of what truth looks like if you do all that stuff successfully and that's that's a tall order to fill to do all that stuff's just like this cuz all this stuff in your way all this debris it's it's not just like dead static debris this debris is like alive it's highly animated and it wants to survive it will not release its grip on you unless you're very very persistent and your very self honest and very open-minded about this pursuit cuz like it clings to you right it sinks it's claws into you all this ago 'ok stop it's really alive it's life also what you should trust is love compassion and gratitude these drives in you you have these drives everyone does you have the drive for love unconditional love for compassion and for gratitude and these you can you can find solace in them you can find grounding them they can be like your anchor but also again it can be like a back door for the Eco especially for example love it's very easy to rationalize many of the egoic things that you do in your life as being loved but actually they're not love they're a distorted form of love like for example if you think of romantic love these are distorted forms of love and even the love that you have for example for your children this is a distorted form of love because it's a highly selective conditional form of love so for example when you go to school to look at your kids you know interacting in school and you see a classroom full of kids and you only love your kids that's not it's very easy to love your kids the ego loves to love its possessions that's what comprises the ego the ego loves to love your car and loves to love your business and loves to love your kids it loves to love your your spouse it loves to love that kind of stuff what's challenging for the ego to love is the world at large can you love the bum on the street can you love the other kids in the classroom can you love the person that your girlfriend or your boyfriend left you for that's real love that's unconditional love but that's her that's not what most people think about when I say love now that kind of love and all of its manifestations the unconditional manifestations of love those you can trust in so if you have a desire like you just see a poor homeless man sitting on the curb and you just have a desire because you see you feel compassion for him it's like man it's so hot it's a hundred degrees outside this guy is burning up in the Sun he's probably hasn't eaten enough in a week he looks dirty probably hasn't had a shower a month uh you know I want to give him 20 bucks that kind of drive that you can trust or the gratitude you might feel like maybe you're reading a book you're reading some amazing book that somebody wrote a hundred years ago the person is dead now but you could see from reading the book that this is this is a brilliant book and this person devoted a significant chunk of his life to writing this book and you're reading this book and you finished the book it's like wow that was an amazing book it really really touched me and then you feel this sort of sense of gratitude for the writer of this book like oh wow I get I'm really grateful that this person um went out of his way to contribute something like this to society that you can trust also what you can trust is silence silence and solitude when you sit down and you just sit on your couch late at night in the silence by yourself and you just shut up and you just ponder life that silence you can trust all the answers to life are really found in that silence but the question is how much of that silence do you actually experience on a regular basis if you're like most people very little because actually you spend most of your life drowning out that silence with noise music video games TV Internet YouTube magazines friends partying sex relationships children business whatever have you started to look into those behaviors and started to see their self deceptive nature how the point of all that noise is what to distract you from the silence which is one of the only things in life you can trust the silence another thing you can trust is your emotions now here you're going to say but Leo you just told us in the other list not to trust our emotions and now you're saying I can trust my emotions which is it exactly exactly that's why this issue is paradoxical and that's why it requires work that's why the devil is in the details your emotions are actually very accurate signals sent to you by the body and by the unconscious mind they're shockingly uncannily eerily accurate you can use them to diagnose exactly what's wrong with you physically and mentally they are very powerful signals and signposts but the problem is that most people are not taught how to read their emotions it takes years of work to be able to read your emotions and to be able to really trust in them but after you've been doing personal development for a few years you start to see as you develop more awareness over your emotions like oh this emotion is telling me this thing and that emotion there is telling me that thing and I can actually use them as very accurate compasses to guide me to where I ultimately want to be in life but that requires very carefully separating that out from being triggered by your emotions so for example what I'm telling you here I'm not telling you that when you feel angry and you want to yell at somebody because they cut you off in traffic that that right there would be you know only oh I'm just trusting my emotions you know my emotions told me to flip that guy off because he's a [ __ ] [ __ ] no that would be you succumbing to getting triggered by the emotions which is not the same thing as really trusting your deeper emotions right not the surface level annoyances in your life but like the deep emotions for example you have two deep desires emotional desires in yourself if you've noticed for connection with other people for experiencing nature for beauty for justice for contribution to the world for love for truth something like truth is not just a intellectual pursuit and something like contribution or love or justice after epitome you know at their peak these things are emotional in nature these are the emotions sort of speak of the higher self the drives the higher self and you have to get in touch with that and separate those out from the drives of the lower self and how do you do that by doubting a lot so in order to get to this list of all the stuff you can trust really the way you get there in practice is by doubting the [ __ ] out of everything and then whatever remains is simply all the stuff you can trust there's really a little possibility to just start with all these things that you can trust that's very challenging because how do you know what you can trust and what you can't trust only by going through a very radical and deep process of inquiry sorting the wheat from the chaff so to speak and then you can come up with a list of stuff to trust it's not really enough to just listen to my lesson and say okay I'm just going to trust all this stuff no because you're not going to have the fine-grained distinctions made that are necessary unless you go through the doubting process see so even though I'm kind of giving you a shortcut here there's a only so far that this truck can take you you do have to actually jump into the mud and get your hands dirty because this stuff is decided and learned in the same way that you learn to ride a bicycle you don't learn to ride a bicycle by listening to me tell you how to ride a bicycle you have to actually sit on the damn bicycle you have to go start to pedal fall down a few times scrape your knees you know take a few nasty spills and then you'll learn how to balance on the bicycle same thing here other things you can trust are your creative Muse have you noticed there's a muse inside of you it's really like a separate most ideas and inspirations come to you where you want to go out there you want to create stuff whether you want to create video games or movies you want to write novels you want to paint you want to change the world whatever you wanted these are all creative sort of activities and they're there sprach ting you buy and use this muse can be cultivated and listened to it's like a little voice inside of you it's a very faint voice but you can learn to listen to it that thing you can trust also what you can trust is awareness and direct experience awareness as distinguished from the mind or thinking thinking in general you cannot trust but awareness and direct experience you can trust direct conscious experience just to explain what that is is a whole hour long discussion can't really go into it here but if you're following along with me and you've heard some my other discussions previously about awareness then you know what I'm talking about and that you can trust awareness you can trust and also what you can trust is your natural powers as a human being as a human being you have natural defenses and capabilities that Nature has equipped you with to live survive and to thrive and these you can trust you can trust in your ability to walk you can trust in your ability to talk you can trust in your ability to uh to procure food and find water and shelter and to be confident in yourself to not be cripplingly afraid of other people right you can trust all these things because basically these are all abilities that all your ancestors needed to possess in order to survive if they didn't possess these abilities they would be dead and you wouldn't be here so in a very real sense these are natural abilities that are hard-coded into your DNA and those you can trust in so that concludes the list of stuff you can trust what does it mean to trust this stuff it means that you take guidance from these parts of you if you notice everything I discussed here they're almost like parts of yourself there are parts of yourself sort of like little voices you can almost think of it as like the devil on your shoulder the angel on your shoulder you know the devil whispers in your ear some stuff obviously you shouldn't trust it angel whisper some stuff into your ear you should trust that so that's kind of what it's like if you want to really um you know dumb it down it's kind of like that so yeah you listen to that angel on your ear your creative muse you listen to your awareness faculties you listen to your drives for passion for I mean for your drives for love for compassion for gratitude for beauty for uh for contribution right you listen to that pure original inner self the one you had as a child you listen to your intuition you listen to your higher emotions that's what it means and you trust in those in fact you trust your life to those things completely you surrender your logical mind to those things so that when it comes time to make decisions about who you're going to marry her what part of the country you're gonna move to or what kind of business you're going to start or whether you should go off live in the woods and become a Buddha or something like that you you don't listen to your logical mind you don't listen to your belief systems you don't listen to your cultural background you don't listen to any of that kind of stuff you listen to your inner muse your you know your inner emotions your inner intuition you listen to that instead and you just have the faith to follow through on that that's what it is that's really what religious faith is so this notion of religious faith you know a lot of people including myself take faith as kind of a dirty word we don't like that we're in rashly minded people don't really like the word faith because it could mean like all just kind of blind belief and stuff but that's not really what faith is what real faith is is making this distinction between the things you can't trust and the things you can trust and then fully with your whole heart buying into everything that you can trust because you have done the inner work and then just kind of surrender your entire life to it surrendering your logical mind to that which doesn't really involve blind faith or belief it's it's more of like an emotional surrender and that can be difficult for left brained thinkers to to accept swallow that because if you're really stuck in your mind you think that your mind is your best tool actually your mind is not your best tool you need to start to doubt your mind until you realize that your heart is your best tool and that the mind serves the heart so yeah so the key is to make this distinction between the ego and the higher self and like I said this requires getting in the mud getting your hands dirty simultaneously gonna have to doubt yourself a lot but also trust certain parts of yourself and I can't really tell you how to do that I wish I could I've given you my best attempt with this these two lists but you're gonna have to go in there and actually sort out what's what in your own mind that's like the growth curve here generally speaking the growth curve for developing self Trust will look something like this if you're a wounded Newton newbie like you're depressed or you have a severe victim type of mindset a very low self-esteem you if your start off there you need some basic trust in yourself because if you're a wounded new newbie the problem there the reason you're so wounded is because you have lost all sense of trust so once you develop some trust there then you move up and you're kind of like the normal newbie the non wounded newbie and this person needs to start to doubt doubt everything got all your believes doubt all your ideologies that all your models of the world doubt rationality science God religion culture doubt at all doubt yourself doubt your own doubt go through a few years of that process doubting everything very painful very emotionally taxing then you search get into intermediate territory and then intermediate territor the problem there is that now you get a little cocky because you've been doubting so much now you little cocky and you're like oh well I already know what's what because I've already spent a few years doubting but actually you haven't doubted deeply enough yet so as an intermediate now it gets even worse now you got a doubt even harder doubt the [ __ ] that you thought you could never doubt in your life doubt that until like there's nothing left and then you got into advance and then when you're at advanced what that looks like is actually you're like oh hey you know I've been doubting my whole life for five years and now hey all the sudden I can find that I can like trust myself a little bit wow that's wow what a relief I can actually trust my heart I have a heart I have emotions I have an intuition I have an inner muse what is all this stuff this is crazy this is like I've become a hippie look at all this New Age stuff but I like it I like it because it feels good it feels very natural it feels like I'm a kid again wow this is so cool that's when you start to become that integrated human being that's when your mind and your heart start to integrate ken wilber refers to this as the Centaur the stage of development called the centaur the reason he calls it adds kind of a cute a little metaphor is because supposedly the Centaur is you know half man half horse or half animal so he's got the he's got a logical mind he hasn't lost a logical mind and he's got also the animal part of him the bottom the bottom half the horse is the animal part and the center kind of fuses the two together so that now the heart and the mind the logical and the intuitive have come together and they function as one unit integrated that's a pretty cool place to get to but it takes work don't think you're going to get there just in one or two years you're probably looking at three five ten years of pretty deep inner work because when you start off as an undeveloped person who hasn't really done a lot of inner work then the bottom line is that you really can't trust yourself an undeveloped person his penalty is that he cannot trust himself in life because if he trusts himself he's going to get himself into trouble because he's not developed the more you develop yourself the more you can then trust yourself in the same way that if you have like a child you know if you have a mature child you can trust that child with the keys to the car you could even trust that child with a bottle of alcohol because you know the child is wise he's mature so even if you leave a bottle of alcohol at home and then you leave the child is there he's mature he's not stupid enough to go drink the whole thing but if you have a stupid child an undeveloped child then when you leave the house you better take the car keys all the whiskey in your file in your you know in your office cabinet and you better take all the guns and all the weapons in your closet you better take all that [ __ ] with you because if you leave him with all that uh something's really Bad's gonna go down you see that's the difference and it's like that with you right now chances are unless you've done a lot of work on yourself that you are that immature child that immature child is in you and he's creating a mess or she's creating a mess inside your mind and that's why your life reflects that see the first three years I find is the hardest part of this journey because the first three years of personal development you're starting to question and doubt so many parts of yourself and it feels confusing it feels like you your sense of direction it might feel like you're moving backwards it might feel like you're regressing like you're not just working on external success and you know you're going to be overwhelmed to the point of depression with self-doubt during these first three years of this journey maybe longer but man once you make it past like three the three or the five year mark and you've done all the work it starts to feel really good because now the payoff starts to come back to you start to see the results of all your work and it's like oh I can trust myself low back and I can let go of the reins a little bit and my life doesn't fall apart and I can be kind of spontaneous I don't have to be rigid anymore I don't have to be very harsh with myself I don't have to talk down to myself or criticize myself none of this stuff and my life just kind of flows it flows and that's ultimately what you're working towards right you want your life to flow you want your life to be effortless I talked about in a prior episode how you want your life to be effortless and some people have asked me Leo how do I make an effortless life shoot a video about how I can make my life effortless well haha everything I talk about is really geared towards helping you to make your life effortless to make it flow and man the ability to trust yourself is a big component of that the ultimate point you want to get to in your life is complete trust 100% trust in your emotions in your cognitions in your body sensations everything is just like you're just like a force of nature there's no more hesitation in you and even if there is hesitation you trust in that hesitation doesn't bother you you're fully integrated you're the center and then you're moving even beyond that your trance sending the sent or that's the ultimate point and this level of self Trust has to be earned you can't read it in a book you can't go buy it in the store you can't even learn it from me really what I'm doing is I'm outlining a path for you that you can choose to undertake hopefully you're wise enough to see the benefits that will come from that from being able to one day wake up in the morning and say well today I 100% trust myself wouldn't that be a powerful place to get to in your life alright that's it I'm wrapping up please click like button for me post your comments down below I do read them share this episode with friend and lastly come check out my newsletter right here at actualised org sign up to the newsletter to stay on track with this process that's what actualize that org is here for there's a lot of nuance to this there's a lot of other concepts I want to teach you that will be critical to your success on this journey so to make sure that that happens they don't fall off track and you don't forget that's what the newsletter will help you with and stay tuned for more in the future take action on any actionable steps that you hear in the episodes because that's what actually makes the stuff real in your life it's not enough to listen to me listening to me is important don't get me wrong you do have to listen to me you do have to conceptually understand the things I talked about and that in and of itself for many people is no small feat but that's really just the start that's the start you understand it now you got to go build it go build your life and as you're building your life stick with me watch me building my life watch me sharing with you some of the highest peaks that you can attain with your development get inspired by those and then just keep moving towards towards that every single day and within a few years you know it's not going to take you five years within just a couple of years you're going to see huge improvements you won't trust yourself a hundred percent but you don't need to even a 10% increase in your trust level will already be huge for you and you can see go go read the comments below in some of my videos you'll see people commenting like oh I've been following along and doing this stuff for a year or two my life is changing in radical ways that's what will happen to you there's no way that can't happen to you if you actually take action on the things I talked about the only problem is that you're very likely to forget and just to fall off track but that's easily fixed by signing up and staying tuned so I hope you do that and I'll see you soon with more you