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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I want to talk about the curse of being human I don't know if you thought about this but at the very end of your life if you're like most people like 99.9% of people then you are going to die with one regret one major major regret in your life and this is going to happen to virtually every human being on earth this one regret if you're even lucky enough to have a slow conscious death and that regret is the regret of having gone through life and not having smelled the roses not having stopped to smell the roses you know I went out today to run some errands during the day and I was running the errands I was so busy running the errands that I came back home I came back home and right now it's springtime the spring is just starting here in Las Vegas and it was really beautiful outside but I didn't see that beauty then I was listening to some audio tapes and just doing my self-help stuff and my mind got tuned to the fact that the present moment is beautiful my mind just got tuned to it and then I went out a second time to run a second errand had to drop a letter in the mailbox and this time I saw the beauty that I was missing the first time that I went outside the colors looked really crisp everything was bright the birds were singing it was gorgeous like a gorgeous beautiful day clear perfect clear sky all the colors were just sparkling the wind was blowing and as I was walking home I couldn't help but just stop near some trees giant pine tree and the Sun was shining through the needles of the pine tree and the wind was blowing and the birds were chirping and it was just the perfect temperature in the perfect day and it struck me then how much I don't connect with that on a daily level and I immediately saw that when I'm going to be on my deathbed if I'm lucky enough to be conscious then my biggest regret is going to be this is going to be letting life slip through my fingers and not seeing what was right there under my nose the whole time and that is what I call the grand illusion the grand illusion and the curse of being human I was working with a client recently and I was coaching her because she was having some relationship issues with her marriage things aren't going too smoothly there she's not sure what to do but one of her issues is that she really really feels like she needs a relationship to be happy she needs love you women are all about this you want love you want intimacy in your relationship you want that partner who really knows you deeply and there's nothing wrong with that per se but the problem here is that she wants it so bad she wants it so bad that she almost wants it at any cost and therefore is destroying the relationship and so we're talking about this we've spent weeks talking about this she's paid me thousands of dollars to talk about this and we're getting her deeper deeper understanding we're going deeper and deeper into why these patterns are playing out in her life and just the other day what we kind of came to is we came to this very deep fundamental truth and that is the truth of not needing anything to be happy in life and that to have a powerful relationship counter-intuitively paradoxically which you need is you need to be able to let go of the need to have a relationship in the first place and you can't fake it you have to actually be genuine in that it's not a manipulation it has to be a genuine attitude towards relationships that you have to see that you don't really need them that they don't have true value for you and when she started to realize this it was like she was having this aha moment and was really powerful and put a glow on my face but also the next question the very next question she asked me is she said below if you're telling me that this is how it is and that I don't really need this relationship or any relationship for that matter then why am i doing all this stuff why work why build a business why have this career that takes up so much time why start a family why even get married why do anything at all and that's exactly the question that I have for you is why are you doing these things and that's exactly the point is that they are not necessary for your happiness they are not but the problem is that you tell yourself that they are and that right there is the grand illusion the grand illusion quite simply is looking for happiness in the future this is what you do you look for happiness in the future all the time and this is how I know that you cannot be truly happy sometimes people post comments to be and say but leo i know this person is very happy my friends are happy my wife is happy my mom is happy I'm happy you're telling people that they're not happy how can you know if I'm happy or not you don't know well actually I do know because I understand how your psychology works and all our psychology is work in the same way on this point that it's not possible for you because you're living in the future all the time and this is how I know that this regret that I foresaw me having on my deathbed today when I was outside looking at the beautiful nature in the trees that this is how I know that it will be true for me and it will be true for you on your deathbed too is because your mind is creating this illusion of future happiness and so it means what this means is that you're not living in the present moment you can't appreciate what's right here under your nose right now and I got a really simple but shocking fact for you what's under your nose right now what's in front of your eyes right now whatever it is what's around you right now right this millisecond that's reality that's real everything else everything you believe about your future and your goals and your wishes and your desires and your worries and your frustrations and your fears whether it's about your relationship your business your life your family the economy the country the world that that is all the construction of the conceptualizing mind your mind is creating a conceptual future and you are living in that future and therefore you're living in this matrix Don Miguel Ruiz in his very popular little book called The Four Agreements has a really powerful section at the very beginning where he talks about how human beings are masters at domestication and he says we've domesticated a bunch of different animals from dogs two cats to cattle to birds but the greatest animal that we domesticated is we've domesticated the human animal we've domesticated ourselves and I got a really poignant taste of that today when I was outside because I could clearly see that I am living in a cage of my own construction my apartment where I'm living right now is a cage I mean in a sense it's a great place I love it and I get a lot of fulfillment from where I live but in a sense it also keeps me caged from like nature from reality from the bigger world from the open sky from the trees from the birds from the from the wind and there's something about that when you go and you travel or you go on a hike or you go somewhere scenic like a national park you get back in touch with like your humanity and that humanity is somehow very intimately tied with nature very interesting and then when you come back after you've like let's say you've been hiking for a few days then when you drive back you come back home and you're walking in your front door you know sense it can be kind of nice because you're you want those comforts of everyday life like a hot shower and some food and stuff but also you can see that as you're walking to that door and you're walking into your cage you're a caged animal and you've caged yourself without knowing it and even once you realize it you still keep yourself caged it's not like you leave that cage you say screw this I'm going to go live outdoors or something you don't do that most people don't do that in fact it's interesting because I remember hearing that they did some research I don't remember where this research came from but basically what they discovered about the human mind is that the human mind finds imagery of nature more appealing on a subconscious level than images of non natural things so for example what they'll do is they'll show up a landscape painting with rolling hills and some trees and stuff you know a natural scene and the human eye will just fixate on that and find it more appealing and pleasing it'll focus on it for a longer period of time then it will for example on some photograph of a city landscape you know an unnatural kind of environment and it's even I think gotten to the point where what you can do is you can get a little sketch something a little schematic not even a photorealistic painting but just a little schematic of a picturesque kind of a outdoor scene like literally you can just draw a couple of wavy lines for the hills and you can draw a little circle for the Sun and you can draw a little wavy line for the river and the human mind because we grew up in this natural environment for hundreds of thousands of years this is where we evolved that the human mind finds this pleasing whereas if you look at a grimy cityscape then you don't get that same effect and I think that I don't identify myself at all for example with New Age thinking or with with hippy mentality and philosophy but I think that one of the things that kind of that hippy Green Peace kind of you know segments of lifestyle and of society that one of the things that kind of they understand that the rest of us domesticated human animals don't understand and us kind of national scientific thinkers is that they kind of understand the power of the Nate young nature and they align themselves with with that whereas we domesticated humans were like off that's that's so silly that's so new-age and hippie and whoo and one thing that I notice a theme throughout my personal development is that as I'm moving towards more more consciousness and more and more kicking ass in my life like kicking ass in hardcore ways so like I'm no hippie like for me kicking ass means earning more money and getting better relationships and having more sex and improving my business you know concrete very tangible things that most people in society are looking for more money more health more passion in your life is kind of stuff that as I'm making that progression I'm also becoming softer more hippy like and it's kind of a little bit disturbing because I have these narrow negative stereotypes about hippies I'm like well I don't want to be a granola eating tree-hugging hippie that just doesn't kind of like fit with my understanding of my cell like my identity is is very different than that just the way that I perceive myself my self-image and I think that you know most people in society are are these kind of more rational people rather than these hippy people and I think that the hippie people have something to learn from the rational side I think that the rational side has a lot to learn from the hippy people too and one of these things is their kind of appreciation for nature and being in the moment so back to the grand illusion the grand illusion is working for happiness working for happiness cannot create happiness happiness is right now right here you don't really need to do thing to be happy you just need to be present the problem though is that you can't do this and the reason you can't do this is because of the voice the voice in your mind that always keeps spinning it keeps spinning and creating future scenarios scenarios of the future they could be great scenarios or they could be bad scenarios probably in your life it's a mixture of both but even if they're great scenarios and you become the best positive thinker in the world and all you think about it great scenarios of all your goals and all your future dreams and visions that's not going to do it because you're still in the rat race you're still in the grand illusion because while you're looking over there you're not seeing what's over here it's really just that stupidly simple which brings us to the question and the topic of enlightenment enlightenment is a very very simple thing I have some deep and complex sounding videos and theory that explains enlightenment and you can go watch those and I think that those are important but you can also explain enlightenment in a very very very simple way because enlightenment is extremely simple in fact it's so simple that it's just baffling Lee stupidly simple it's so simple that you don't even know what to do with this simplicity you need a bunch of methods and techniques for how to get to the simplicity because it is so simple your brain doesn't know how to do this and what enlightenment is is simply the undoing of this curse it's the undoing of the grand illusion that's all it is it's the silencing of the voice so that instead of living in the illusion of the future the future is not real the future is a concoction in your mind is living in your mind you bring your awareness out into reality and you live from reality itself you're like fully integrated into reality and you're constantly smelling the roses because if you're in the present moment there is nothing but to smell the roses and sometimes it's smelling the roses sometimes it's smelling a pile of [ __ ] but reality is both of those things see the grand illusion is that we need to perfect reality to suit us if we have a pile of [ __ ] we need to convert it into a bush of roses and so what the voice tells us is that okay let's construct the best imaginable environment for ourselves to be happy and through this process we domesticate ourselves by surrounding ourselves with the greatest creature comforts that we could find except we don't realize in doing this that that's not going to work that the point of life is to live in reality not in a fantasy and even though you can surround yourself with real cool technology technology is not a fantasy we have all these honest-to-god great inventions and luxuries such as air conditioning and electricity and toothbrushes and toilets all these things are really nice and they're real but the price we pay for creating these things is that we're always living in the future waiting for the next thing what's the next thing that's going to come along that's going to make my life a little bit more perfect and in so doing what we do is we focus on all the imperfections in our lives everything that needs to be improved and therefore we can't see what's already awesome right in front of us so you can understand enlightenment just very simply in this light with enlightenment on the one hand nothing really changes it's not like you have some baffling mind-blowing epiphany that all the sudden now creates a totally new environment and reality for you that's the caricature version of enlightenment what alignment actually is is something so simply stupid that if you ever experience it what some people report is they report laughter laughter after the moment of enlightenment why is that they laugh because it's so silly that they spent thousands of hours chasing this enlightenment they then don't even want to call it in enlightenment because that word makes the actual events too significant because in the end all that happens is that your voice goes silent and allows you to be in the present moment that's it that's all I'm it is just the allowing of your voice to focus off from the future to the present moment and of course for long period of time because you have moments in your day everyone does where you can be present but what enlightenment allows you to do is permanently this identifies to the point where you can really appreciate everything around you that you take for granted everything becomes beautiful the simplest things become beautiful even the ugly things become beautiful even the disturbing the uncomfortable the painful things become beautiful and so because of this on one hand nothing changes on the other hand everything changes everything changes because your perspective on everything changes and one really powerful saying that I've heard one yogi or guru saying is that perspective is everything perspective is everything it's everything not changing your environment but perspective on the environment that's what's truly important and this is really hard to believe because we grew up in a materialistic society and the whole fundamental assumption and basis of the society that we're living in the Western culture at least is about changing the environment and that environment is everything if only I got a better wife or a better husband or if only I didn't have problems with my dog or I didn't have problems with my kids or if only I was going to a better school or if only I had more money in my bank account or if only my career was this way or if only I got this promotion sooner or if only I was younger or if only I was less diseased or less sick if only I could live a little longer then that would make me happy but it turns out to be the case that this is a trap and that you can't win that game you can't win that game and one of the ways you can start to see that you can't win that game is because you've been playing this game your whole life and yet you're still looking for the next thing so the question is how long is it going to take for you how much hitting your head against the wall is it going to take to see that this game hasn't worked will not work and cannot possibly work and what is it going to take you to start to realize that perspective is everything in the words of a little-known speaker maybe this will ring some bells for you I have a dream I have a dream for you a vision for you of what your life can be like and my dream is that one day you break the chains of your voice that one day you silenced the voice for good that you dis identify with the voice that you master yourself that you discover the truth of no self and that you're able to take your mind off the future and bring it into reality into reality it's really that simple and I have a dream that you will die without regret because you will have been able to smell the roses at least for a little bit without death nipping at your heels just yet and because of this you will die with no regrets because you will know that you've been smelling the roses for as long as you could have until you die that's my vision for you that's my dream for you of what you can do if you pursue enlightenment and you take this seriously there's really just one catch with this and it's a real big problem it's a real big problem don't underestimate how big this problem is right here the question is do you have the balls and you have the wisdom to give up on yourself on your present way of being to become the no self because very very few people do very few people do before I let you go well I have your attention right now while you're in this contemplative mood I want you to do an exercise for me really simple exercise but a very powerful exercise that will show you because I want you to see what enlightenment could actually be like for you a lot of people get this idea of enlightenment as some sort of ethereal fancy state when in fact it's the most real state it's the state of being in reality so here's the exercise you're going to go and grab a book off your bookshelf try to find a book that's the most plain and ordinary that you can find hardbacks are nice take the dust jacket off and what I want you to do is I want you to now make sensory love to this book for five minutes find a quiet place where no one's going to think you're weird no one's going to judge you and what I want you to do is I want you to really focus on this book and see it and sense it and experience it as though you're experiencing it for the first time in your life I want you to look at every tiny little detail every texture on the book I want you to look at it from all the different sides to spin it around in your hands I want you to look at how the lettering is printed on it how uneven it is I want you to take a look at the corners and how sharp they might be take a look at the straight lines take a look at any blemishes that are there take a look at what the paper feels like press on it tap on it even even smell it and be completely engrossed in this process of observation and get out of your head don't think about the book don't analyze the book just experience it experience the raw data that is here this is pure reality and this right here is going to be an experience of true spirituality see people really get confused about spirituality and they think well spirituality that's like praying or going to church or meditation or scriptures or whatever no that's not spirituality at all that's [ __ ] real spirituality is what you're going to experience if you do this exercise and I want you to spend a good five minutes at least to doing it spirituality and enlightenment is the most real thing that there is it's not some afterlife some heaven it's right here and what you're going to notice in this experience after the fact don't notice this during but afterwards I want you to notice that your sense of self and identity melts away whenever you focus yourself completely on the senses and you're able to get completely out of your head stop thinking about yourself stop thinking about the future and just focus on these senses if you do this exercise then what I want you to do is I want you to tell yourself that is what enlightenment is like that is enlightenment the only difference is that with enlightenment you're able to be in this state of presence all the time imagine how beautiful life becomes if you're able to achieve that that kind of price it's not woo or spiritual at all it's really the most grounded that you can be as a human being because you're not in the future anymore so I really want you to do this exercise take it seriously and the last point that I want to make is that I'm not here to give you the kind of advice that I hear some people saying which is just be present be in the moment this advice doesn't work it can't work for you it's not possible for this advice to work for you because you need me here pushing you motivating you to go out there and do this exercise and when you do this exercise you're going to struggle many of you will struggle a lot it's going to depend on your level of mental development many of you will struggle to stay present you're going to stay present for very short periods of time and so it's pointless for me to just tell you to be present because it's going to sound nice and you're going to do it for five minutes but then afterwards you're not going to be able to do it and your life is going to go back into the grand illusion so instead the point here is to use this exercise and then tell yourself this is what I could have this is the vision this is the dream of where I could be if I seriously pursue enlightenment that's the point I've only discovered one way to get out of the grand illusion there's only one way and the only way is by discovering the truth of no self which means that you have to dissolve your ego so that the ego stops getting in the way so the voice is silent so that you can be fully present and fully in the moment this is important for you to do and to realize because this is what generates the desire and the wisdom necessary to go out there and actually do the work to get to this state in your life it takes work even though paradoxically you could be that that way right now there's really nothing to do but the problem is that because there is that voice inside your head and it won't shut up there's actually quite a lot to do so do this exercise right now all right this is Leo I'm signing off posting your comments down below click the like button share this video with a friend and come sign up to my newsletter my newsletters right here at actualized org is a free newsletter I release new videos every single week on self-actualization topics I want to help you to master your psychology so that in doing this you can become free to create the kind of life that you want and I'm guessing that you don't want a domesticated ordinary kind of life because you've been living this kind of life you've seen other people living this kind of life and you know that it's Hollow and you know that these regrets on your deathbed are coming and you don't want this and so fundamentally that's why we do personal development because we want to make the most of this short existence that we have and we want to be able to stop and smell the roses but to do this requires some work as simple as it is it requires potentially a lot of work depending at where you're at most people are really far behind so what we need to do is we need to work on your psychology introduce new concepts new ideas reframing the way you think showing you techniques getting you to take action and action is important you don't want to just be watching these videos but if you're watching these videos on a weekly basis and you're going out there taking baby steps you'll be shocked at how different your life will be in just a couple of years they start stacking up and eventually you start getting exponential results and that is one of the most rewarding investments of time and energy that you can make in your life is investing in your own growth so if you're interested in that and you're interested in no-bullshit personal development then sign up right now you