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[Music] understanding survival part one this is going to be to maybe a three part miniseries on survival and this topic here is going to be utterly foundational utterly foundational to any kind of personal development work that you ever do in your life and to any kind of spiritual work that you ever do this is the essence this is the root of all behavior change in humans because all human behavior ultimately is rooted in survival and by the time we're done with this miniseries this will change how you understand your entire life and how you see the lives of everybody around you let me give credit here - Peter Ralston who's been a pioneer in this domain and really instrumental in helping me to understand the extent and the importance of survival in any kind of behavior change also let me read a quote to you from Peter who's been ski now this is a different Peter not to be confused with Ralston and he's got a great quote that goes right along with our theme here of survival Peter Spence Key says quote man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and this being so he has no will and very little control of himself if any at all what we have to study therefore is not psychology but mechanics and quote I love that and that's exactly what we're gonna be discussing over the next two episodes is a lot of mechanics showing you just how mechanical you are this word mechanical is a really good word because it describes why people behave the way they behave they behave very much like chimps or like animals or like robots and even though I can tell you that and you can agree with me the depth of it and the extent of it has not dawned on you yet until we really go through these explorations and I'm gonna give you some homework assignments that are gonna help you to just start to discover just how mechanical you are in your life and of course mechanical is the opposite of conscious so if all personal development and spirituality is about becoming more conscious and it is then your greatest enemy is mechanical miss so what we need to do is we need to really study your own our own mechanical mnestheus of humans so let's even take one further step backward and really start somewhere very fundamental which is I want to take a look at survival as a metaphysical thing not just as a physical activity see the problem is that modern science does not have a good handle on survival and its importance in human affairs yeah you know as amazing as that sounds it's true because the this topic you know modern science thinks of survival maybe in evolutionary terms as a biological process of course all organisms and life needs to survive obviously but but there's something very very deep going on here which is much more profound than just biological survival or physical existence and this is the metaphysical level so let's ask some metaphysical questions here such as what is survival why do survival why struggle at all why do anything at all in life why move at all why doesn't organism just sit still for his whole life why is it struggle why defend anything at all because survival of course involves a lot of defending of stuff and what is being defended why be one way versus another way because that's a lot of what survival boils down to is ways of surviving which means you're choosing between one way versus another also why seek any kind of change at all why manipulate anything at all because of course survival involves a lot of manipulation and what are we manipulating towards and perhaps most fundamentally why even live why not just lay down and die what's wrong with that and according to whom is survival important and who chooses what should survive and what shouldn't why survive some things but not others I'm gonna be using survive in this weird way as a verb sometimes why survive some things and not others which just means why have certain things persist and not others is survival and a rational activity or is it irrational and finally is there anything which is not survival what is the opposite of survival so those are some interesting deep questions that I encourage you to contemplate on your own really think about them and we'll be answering some of them indirectly as we're going down here and covering all the material that I want to cover but let's let's begin at the very beginning I want to tell you the story of how survival came into existence so imagine if you will that in the beginning in the universe there was absolutely nothing total emptiness or formlessness then all the sudden a form appeared the very first form it was a thing it was something distinct and specific and in this case let's just imagine for sake of argument it was just a cloud of particles like a gas cloud out in in the middle of nowhere in this emptiness so this gas cloud was like the first object and there it was but then of course you know the environment started moving around there were other objects in the environment there was a wind and radiation and the pull of gravity and black holes other things and so off key of course all those are objects themselves but we're just looking at this cloud so this cloud now that it's interacting with all these other objects you see they pull and tug and and warp and morph this this form which is the cloud until it becomes something totally different than it originally was like let's say the cloud had a certain shape like it was a circular shape perfect sphere and then you know by it by getting pulled by gravity and wind and stuff it just after a certain point it completely dissipated and you could no longer tell that it was a cloud anymore and so in a certain sense we could say the cloud died now of course the cloud wasn't really alive it was just a shape just a form and it didn't really care about whether it was alive or dead and in fact so this cloud you know see it didn't have a sense of self and it didn't have any desire to survive because it literally didn't care what happened to it more than that it didn't even know that it was a cloud see we as humans we look at it and we project onto it that oh it's a cloud it's a it's a form but you have to think more fundamentally if there's no human to say that it's a cloud does the cloud even know that it's a cloud obviously not and so of course then it can't say that it should survive now imagine what happened a little bit later in the future after this cloud died is that some new form came into being for the very first time and this form was different than all the other objects this form had a desire to persist it had a sense of itself it could recognize its own form separate itself out from the environment and then try to maintain that form through manipulation and so this shape this form lived significantly longer than all the other ones because it could manipulate like if wind blew at it could fly off to the side if gravity pulled on it it could maybe adjust itself and change yourself to maintain its shape and these of course became more successful and they lived longer but eventually they also died because there's only so much that you can manipulate your environment until the game of manipulation is over and eventually you disintegrate that's that's life and death for you in a nutshell now notice a couple of very key things here that many people overlook even though there's the obvious is that a form does not have to care about persisting and that in fact there's nothing rational or logical about caring to persist as any particular form nobody tells you you have to persist and also notice that for a form to persist at all it must be able to distinguish itself and tell to itself what is it that is being persisted so it has to crucially draw a distinction the most fundamental distinction the distinction between self and other I am the form and everything else is my environment its other to me it's the world other forms or the environment is whole and so what I have to do to maintain my sense of self is to now manipulate either myself or the environment and usually both in order to make sure that that that distinction between self and other is maintained because as soon as that distinction is lost what happens to me now since a form any form is a part of the entire universe it is never in full control of its destiny because just by the very definition that we created this distinction between self and other there is another which is distinct from myself which can hurt me or which can have a control over me by definition I can't control that other thing out there because it's not me I define myself as that which I can control and manipulate at least directly and then maybe I can indirectly manipulate other forces but see so that the predicament that all life puts itself in is that it now has to play this game of defending itself against these external forces and the reason has to do that is because all forms are temporary and because reality is constantly changing and that that's a very important point about reality is that it's constantly changing no part of it is ever frozen or static for very long and if any form totally changes nothing of it basically remains because the form is what that thing was that thing whatever it is this object that you're imagining it doesn't have any existence to it other than the form that is so if we change that form too much literally that change becomes its death so what's being survived is the form so fundamentally survival is about maintaining a static arrangement of form or you could say matter or energy whatever you want to call it a static arrangement within a sea of change and survival is about maintaining order and so disorder is an enemy of all living organisms and disorder is your enemy as a human being and in fact one of the most dangerous things for an organism is freedom people don't really understand the significance of what freedom is they think freedom is a great thing and they want to maximize freedom but this is utterly impossible you as an organism just by the fact that you're alive are committed to restricting freedom because if you were totally free you would scatter into a million pieces you would disintegrate and you'd be dead so literally freedom is impossible for human beings limitation intelligent limitation is what life is all about so these calls for unlimited freedom this is just complete nonsense simplistic thinking freedom is what you're terrified of the most and so the irony is is that those people who call for maximum freedom actually they themselves are putting a lot of limitations on themselves and on life and other people and on a society in order to maintain themselves so there's a deep hypocrisy there but never mind that's for another day so so basically survival boils down to not changing so in a certain sense just by being alive you're committing yourself to not changing you're committing to freezing certain aspects of reality and then what aspect of reality you wish to keep frozen well that of course depends on how you define yourself what kind of form you think you are survival requires a distinction between self and other this distinction is not given to you from the outside as an absolute so you might think like well yeah I don't really know what's so profound about what you're saying here because you know yeah there are objects in the world and of course they can get destroyed and they can manipulate the environment they can live so what's the big deal huh you're assuming objects there ain't no such thing as objects is what I'm trying to get you to understand an object is something that you project onto the world it doesn't exist as an absolute so that cloud it didn't really exist until you said it was a cloud that's what's so profound about this and of course you the form that comes into being you get to say what you are because the universe doesn't tell you what you are the universe doesn't define your identity you're free to define you at any however you want so you might say well Lea but what about a baby like a baby is born and there it is it's a baby it's a human I mean what do you want there it is isn't that just like a biological physical fact and what I'm telling you is no it's not see what you're doing there is you're looking at that baby and you're saying a baby that is something that you've constructed and projected onto it precisely because that's what you did when you were a baby in order to be able to survive to the point where now you could call that thing a baby you see this is not just a physical issue this is a metaphysical issue because nowhere in the universe is it written that that thing is a baby you see when you come into existence you have no sense of distinction between yourself and the world you don't know what you are because you haven't defined yourself now people think that well but but Lea what definition could there be other than that I'm a baby and that I'm a human and then I grew up and became an adult how else could have I defined myself well actually there are many other ways you could have defined yourself and it's not just a matter of defining yourself physically as a human or not it's a for humans there's there's a lot more complexity to how we define ourselves than just physically your physical definition is just a tiny tip of the iceberg of your self definition and really in this series we're going to be much more interested in the other ways in which you define yourself beyond your physical definitions although of course your physical definitions are all constructed by you you constructed your physical definition and you have actually separated yourself from you environment such that you now think that's real and that's physical when in fact that's purely mental and conceptual so you created this conceptual distinction self and other or self and world are created in a single slice in a single step so what we ultimately have at the biggest picture is we have an infinite field of consciousness that's what reality is an infinite field of consciousness and then within that by creating this distinction between self and other you create a virtual partition it's not an actual partition you didn't actually divide consciousness into it's a virtual partition I use this concept of virtual partitions because I like it from from creating hard drive partitions you know if you're formatted a hard drive you create multiple partitions on there and it's just a single hard drive but then you can subdivide it into as many parts as you want that's exactly what's happening within the universe that's how objects are coming into being through virtual partitions and then their death is the elimination of the virtual partition and if you eliminate all the virtual partitions all you're left with is the oneness of the original hard drive so imagine it in infinite ha imagine an infinite hard drive with an infinite number of virtual partitions of which you yourself are one and so you came into existence when one of these virtual partitions was created and that's when you looked at yourself and you said oh I am this and whatever you thought this was is what you became so what survival is at the biggest picture level is it's the maintaining of virtual partition within infinite consciousness that's what you're doing here in the world that's life you're maintaining this partition now notice about this partition it's not a simple line that you draw like this between you and the environment and notice when you draw one line you're creating two parts see you draw one line one division creating two parts self and other but this line when a human draws this line is very complicated it's not a simple vertical line it's a squiggly complicated messy chaotic line this line is unique for every human being and this line is what is being survived so to speak and if this line changes too much you either become a new human being that would be growth or you actually die so the distinction between self and other is what's creating the survival Drive but conversely this is a two-way street the imperative to survive as a form is what creates the distinction between self and other so these two are working simultaneously sort of a chicken and egg problem which came first they both feed into each other so here's a key insight for you one of many about survival that I'll be underscoring this is the first one what's being survived is not a physical object the way that people imagine the way that science imagines the way the materials paradigm imagines rather what's being survived as a conceptual boundary a fantasy that's why I call it a virtual partition to distinguish it from an actual partition so you are a virtual being in a certain sense that doesn't mean you're living in a computer simulation it just means that your sense of self is a virtual thing and that survival is largely especially for humans a conceptual activity not merely a physical activity so from now on when I say the word survival I want you to radically broaden your understanding of that word it doesn't just mean getting food and sex and shelter the way that people imagine it means something much deeper and broader than that it means surviving as a conceptual self as a distinction from your environment which is not necessarily just food and shelter and water there's a lot more that goes into that especially for humans because we're very complex creatures and we'll be breaking that down into more detail as we go on here see I want you to consider the possibility that without a sense of self or you you might cut off your own leg and eat it for breakfast because you wouldn't know that it's inappropriate to eat your own leg because you might not consider your leg a part of who you are and therefore it's appropriate for you to now eat it in order to feed yourself see now that sounds kind of silly you might say well you know that that that doesn't happen in real life but don't take for granted that your leg is is essential to your identity in a certain situation you might cut off your leg in order to escape and to live see maybe you might even in a certain situation cut off your leg knee dydt in order to survive but regardless it's not clear at all that your leg is a part of you see people assume that science gives us physical objects and identities but the thing they overlook is that science cannot actually identify anything because identification is not an objective scientific fact it's not a given it's something that you create so even for a scientist to go out into the field and to identify some creature a monkey or even a physical object like a rock see the scientist has to project that onto the world because otherwise he wouldn't be able to distinguish a rock from from a tree from a monkey he's doing that but of course he's not conscious that he's doing that he's assuming that what he's doing is actually part of the physical world when it's not and in fact physical world is a distinction he's made himself and has projected onto this infinite field of consciousness so it's quite tricky don't assume that science tells you what things are or gives you identities because it doesn't because identity is totally subjective and in a sense arbitrary I also want you to consider that there's nothing rational logical or objective about survival in fact just the opposite survival is a highly irrational subjective activity survival doesn't care about reason or logic survival co-opts reason and logic in order to survive because you see when you put yourself in this very life and death predicament of maintaining your sense of self that's the most fundamental value that you have nothing matters to you but being able to live because nothing else can matter unless you your life is maintained you see so for the organism the organism can't really care about logic or rationality or truth or objectivity because it's committed to the irrational activity of maintaining itself given any means possible you see only later after that if it is able to maintain itself successfully only then can it sit back sipping pina colada on the beach and think about some philosophical notion of truth or rationality or logic see only if it's safe can it do that not when it's under threat just the notion that you should survive is already predicated upon falsehood and illusion because see to get yourself to buy into this whole game of trying to survive and you know survival takes a lot of energy and effort it's exhausting if you haven't noticed so you have to trick yourself into believing that it's important because if you didn't think the survival is important well you wouldn't try to survive and therefore you wouldn't probably be here thinking about survival you have to believe that survival is the most important thing you have to be terrified to death of it which is literally what death is to you why are so scared of death and why you avoid death at every possible turn because to you this is not a game you've managed to trick yourself into thinking that this is serious this is important and so of course you never question the obvious you never questioned whether actually maybe dying is totally fine and there's no problem and that maybe survival wasn't important at all and that maybe survival was totally irrational and the rational choice would be just to lay down and die see you can't even consider that possibility you'll say olio but that's so unreasonable that's that's crazy talk you're just talking crazy now this is dangerous exactly see you don't even want to open your mind to these possibilities because they're so threatening to you because you don't care about truth or rationality or fairness or equality you don't care about any of this [ __ ] what you care about is your own ass surviving see and that itself is falsehood and highly irrational so your sense of self of course co-op's rationality and so really the way that you use rationality is whatever serves your survival is what you call rational that's really how you define survival because it doesn't make sense for you to have a notion of rationality in which your survival could be a low value priority that wouldn't be rational to you of course not because you've hijacked rationality to survive because otherwise why do you even care about rationality you don't you only care about rationality because you've made an identity out of it that uh for you rationals out there but I don't want to aggress too much on that so the key point here is that how you define yourself determines what must survive anything that's part of your identity or self-concept automatically becomes important and must be survived threat and danger are not real objective things threatened danger are relative to however you define yourself so for example let's say that for for you and I if we're not rabid zealous Christians if you take a Bible and you throw it into the fireplace I wouldn't react I wouldn't really care you probably would neither but if we take a like a serious hardcore zealous Christian who really believes in the Bible grew up with the Bible considers it a holy book maybe has a Bible that his grandfather passed down to him over the ages and it's important to him he's underlined it and he has important passages in there that help him with his life and all this see to him you take that Bible and you throw it in the fireplace you know that's gonna be a serious threat and danger to him and he's gonna react very emotionally get very upset might even cry might even you know become violent and murderous for you doing this why what's the difference the only difference is that he's created an identity out of that Bible see he's attached to it it's important to him why is it important to him precisely because it's wedded to his sense of survival it helps him to survive now here's the mistake that people make is they think butBut Leo how does a Bible a Bible is just full of of philosophy and silly superstitious ideas how can that help with survival he's deluded actually it's you who's deluded what you don't understand is that what's being survived by this Christian is not his physical body it's his identification with being a Christian it's that Christian self-image that is the thing that's the most important that is what we call it the ego as we what we call the sense of self with the lowercase s see and you have one of those as well it's just a question of what is that for you so for you throwing a Christian Bible into a fireplace probably would would not upset you but there probably is something of yours that I could throw in the fireplace that would upset you very much maybe your baby you see now you say alia but my baby that's my biological offspring and that's very important everybody knows that babies are important you don't throw babies in the fireplace that's ridiculous of course I get upset no no not of course not of course you will only get upset if you hold this baby to be part of your survival and that's not the case you know some mothers will dispose of their babies because they don't want them see so it's all about how you define what you are if you define yourself as being a father or a good mother then of course you need to protect that self-image and so of course you can't let your baby get hurt if in your mind you're telling us of all this baby is my baby and my baby is more important than all the other babies in the world is that really rational of course not there's no reason that your baby is more important than all the other babies it's complete hogwash you made it up you made it up now you say all do but but I'm related to my baby my baby has my genes all human beings are related to each other we're all basically brothers and sisters if you look at our genetic code we're so similarly related that there's really no reason why you should care more for your baby surviving then for some other baby surviving it doesn't matter you're just totally selfish and you're completely blind here on selfishness and you're completely in denial about your own selfishness precisely because you're engaged in survival blind survival so see I want you to see that threat and danger are not absolute things it depends on what you need to survive so what is a threat in a danger to one person or one nation will actually be a boon to another and will actually promote the survival amount of the of another you know to a very scientifically minded nation science that's that's great that's not a threat it's not a danger but when you have a fee RC science becomes a great threat and danger see that's the relativity of survival survival is extremely relative and people don't understand that people because they're so selfish and so blindly selfish they just assume that well if it's good for me it's good for everybody and if it's bad for me it's bad for everybody again no not at all it depends on what you are how you define yourself to be and all of us define ourselves in very different ways of course there's also a lot of commonalities also another fundamental point about survival want you to understand is that for a thing to be it has to be a particular way a very very particular way for a thing to be one way is for it not to be some other way so for example let's take table salt for table salt to be table salt it cannot be pepper sugar earth metal plastic wood gold and a million other things because as soon as salt becomes pepper it's as though the salt was killed and pepper was born see so what I want you to really understand about this is to be an object to be a particular thing there's a zero-sum game going on here because you can only exist as you if you're not existing as something that's not you see the two are being defined at the same time and so to be one particular way you're necessarily excluding actually an infinite number of other ways that you could have been and that's very important to understand so for example when you were born to be born a billion other sperm had to die because only one sperm could have fertilized that egg and that was you you got very lucky you won the lottery see but all those other sperms had to die now of course you're completely oblivious to this and you don't care at all but from the point of view of all those other billion sperms they they all lost the game and they all died all right so you have to under I really appreciate this delicate trade-off that happens and one of the most amazing things that blows my mind about reality is that even though reality itself as a whole is absolute infinity it's totally infinite and it has no limitations whatsoever there are still zero-sum dynamics within this infinity there are real trade-offs there is competition over limited resources life is impossible therefore without death forms must feast off other forms and this is extremely fundamental to reality and the reason this must happen is because there's only one reality and so it can't leech energy from anywhere but from itself see so it's all about how do you partition this one hard drive we only have one hard drive now it's an infinite hard drive but when we create these partitions we necessarily make choices about what is and what is not allowed to exist within the world of form see there's trade-offs depending on how you draw that partition line and what I like to say here's a little joke kind of example is that a squirrel does not know that it is an oak murdering machine but that's exactly what a squirrel is see the squirrel lives his whole life completely oblivious to the fact that it's murdered thousands of acorns which were supposed to turn into mature oak trees so in a sense it's it's a it's an oak baby killing machine but the squirrel doesn't know or care about any of this and the squirrel needs to behave this way in order to be a squirrel otherwise it couldn't exist see and if all those acorns turned into mature oak trees all the squirrels would be dead because there would be nothing for them to eat see so notice that trade-off because what I want to tell you is that you are just like that squirrel you've been running around your whole life engaged in survival activities extremely selfish and devilish ones wrecking havoc on your environment without a single thought about what's really going on and what is what you're really doing so think about how you are just like that squirrel now let's a shift from sort of the lofty big-picture metaphysics of survival into the nitty-gritty down-to-earth because you're probably wondering well leo but how is this useful for my own self improvement of course notice that's already a survival question you see the very project of improving yourself fixing problems that you have is already thoroughly permeated by survival you see you see the problem here how are you going to transcend yourself when all of your thinking and all of your desiring is all about preserving yourself all you really care about is preserving yourself and yet to develop and to grow yourself you need to let go of yourself and transcend yourself you see how you're getting in your own way just to be able to change a behavior of yours a part of you has to die because to change your behavior means that some old behavior you had now has to not exist anymore but of course that old behavior because it's a part of your psyche and your mind and your brain it's fighting to maintain a solvent to survive which is why it's so hard for you to kick bad habits why you keep backsliding why you keep not getting results you see because actually you're very conflicted about this whole jekt of changing yourself because on the one hand you tell yourself that you want to change yourself you want to be a better person you want to be happier in all this but on the other hand you don't want to change you want to stay exactly as you were so really what you what you want is you want the results of the change without having to change yourself and that is the entire problem with traditional self-help and why most self-help doesn't really produce significant results in people's lives is because what they're doing is they're trying to change themselves without actually changing themselves and so the only way that you will actually be able to truly get massive results in your life is that actually if you're willing to bite the bullet and to actually change who you are identity level change which involves facing your death which of course nobody wants to do because the thing you're fighting your whole life is death you see so to liberate yourself and to get to the highest levels of human potential you need to do the most counterintuitive thing possible which is to face your own death and to go straight into it straight into the abyss the belly of the whale which is exactly what nobody wants to do so of course it's no accident that almost nobody in society is very highly developed because it's so counterintuitive and it ago goes against almost all your instincts because your instincts are there to help you to be selfish and to survive anyways let's get into the nitty-gritty your life is completely dominated by survival I want you to notice this every little thing that you do is what I'm talking about so let me give you a long list of examples to help you to become aware of this reading a book wiping your ass taking a shower drinking coffee going to the grocery store going to school watching makeup videos on YouTube for you ladies taking your vitamins and nootropics in the morning scratching an itch on your face what is all of this stuff but survival why would you do any of this stuff other than that is served your survival you wouldn't in fact what I want you to realize is that you do nothing in your life which doesn't somehow serve your survival now the deeper question is what exactly is it that you're surviving yes of course your physical body but I mean more than that because your your survival activities go way beyond your physical body you might wonder well Leo you said reading a book the first thing you said is reading a book how is reading a book survival well why do you read a book take a look at it you read a book because you think you're gonna find some good information there some important technique that's gonna change your life maybe help you to develop a better career learn some new skill that helps you to survive why do you need that career to survive now you wanna say oh Leo but uh but you know I like to read non-fiction books science fiction and so forth I mean sorry yeah I like to read fiction books like like science fiction so in that case how is that survival that's just entertainment but but what is entertainment but survival entertainment is crucial to your ability to survive and also a lot of people who read fiction books they develop a whole identity around it so for example let's say you like science fiction books you enjoy them they give you pleasure they relax your mind from a hard day's work so maybe you spent the whole week working and now you get to the weekend he just want to chill chill out and grab your favorite sci-fi book and just kind of read it on the couch and enjoy yourself that's survival see because if we made you work non-stop every single day without giving you some break or some rest or some entertaining activities like your favorite sci-fi books then eventually you get depressed and frustrated you might even kill yourself because you need that outlet to recharge your batteries to refresh yourself to recharge your spirit you see survival is happening on many levels simultaneously it's happening on the physical level it's happening on the mental level the emotional level it's happening at the spiritual level all of it simultaneously you have various levels of needs that are simultaneously being satisfied and of course sometimes they get into conflict with one another but even more importantly think of someone who really loves sci-fi they've actually developed a whole identity around it see they probably have like actually developed a connection with their sci-fi books such as if we take their whole bookshelf of sci-fi books and throw it in the fire they're gonna be very upset about it because they have an emotional attachment to it because those books have maybe help them to to figure out parts of their life or get through difficult challenging times through a bad breakup or something those books you know they're attached to them or they have various kinds of fantasies about sci-fi or whatever and then these books help to feed those fantasies so what's being survived in this case is not merely the human body or brain it's it's that whole identity that you create it's all the software like if you think of yourself as a sci-fi fan there you go or maybe you're reading these sci-fi books because you plan to become a sci-fi author yourself and so to you it's actually it's like a career thing as well and so that's a part of core that's that's also survival so all of this is survival I want you to notice that survival is very detailed like the devil it's all in the details it's not that you're just doing stuff vaguely to survive no no you're doing extremely specific things to survive and you're not just doing it like once or twice throughout the day I'm saying that like within a five-minute span of your day you do at least a hundred different survival activities and each one of those who can break those down it's like little chunks such that every two seconds you're doing some new survival thing that's helping you to reach larger survival goals so it's very nested right you have like well very large survival goals that might take you years to accomplish like you might have a goal to buy a house for which you have a career for which you study books for which right now you know you're you're reading a particular book and so all those kind of are like a chain of survival activities which are ultimately get you to your house that you want now of course most of the stuff that you're doing most of your survival strategies like as I call them are completely unconscious to you you don't really know what you're doing because you're just behaving like a robot but nevertheless they're still there so let's continue with this list getting annoyed by a noise that's survival because if you get too much noise in your ear might hurt your ears or just might annoy you enough that drought will drive you crazy see so what you're doing there but when you're getting annoyed by noise is actually you're preventing yourself from going crazy because it's that annoyance that then gets you to shut off the noise or put on some headphones go in the other room yell at your family members to keep the noise now whatever see so that annoyance is your survival strategy to then manipulate the environment to turn off the noise or you could manipulate yourself to tune out the noise that could also work see there's many different survival strategies in fact millions and trillions and trillions upon trillions of different survival strategies so I'm just giving you a little list here tiny tiny lists fiddling with your thermostat to get the temperature just right in your room that's survival getting comfortable in your seat speaking of which I should do that right now that's survival checking the clock checking your smartphone wearing socks watching TV calling your mother shopping for designer clothes wearing a Rolex buying a yacht now I've specifically included some of these luxury items on this list because sometimes people get in there in their skull that survival is only meeting your basic necessities and they might say bolio but how buying a yacht this is not survival come on don't be silly nobody really needs a yacht now this is a very important point so listen closely a lot of poor people and by poor people I mean people under a million dollars in net worth they don't understand how survival works for rich people because they think you're still under the illusion that if you get enough money then survival will be taken care of and you'll be happy this is of course a complete pipe dream it doesn't work this way here's how it really works because what you're really surviving is not some physical body but your own self concept and self image and ego it doesn't really matter how much money you have because there's no end to how much your ego can need or want so here's how it really works so when you're poor like if you're only earning $20,000 a year then for you buying a loaf of bread might be a struggle sometimes you're just paying your electricity bill and you're like it's a matter of kind of like survival need and life and death to pay your electricity bill because you don't want to be a home without the lights on you see and so you for you it's like it's very important you take it very seriously to pay your electric bill every month and then when you think about some millionaires let's say a guy with a hundred million dollars he wants to buy himself a yacht you say well that's very frivolous but to him buying that yacht is as important as to you getting your electricity bill paid you see that because he's playing the survival game at a very different level than you are when you're poor for him he's already got his basic needs all met he's already got five different houses all around the world and he's got a bunch of fancy clothes and all this and he's got a bunch of fancy cars and so none of that is a challenge for him he's surviving the image of himself on his physical body the image of himself and for this guy 100 million dollars his image is that he needs to have a yacht like all his friends do because if he doesn't have a yacht then he's lesser than his friends and they're gonna laugh behind his back and think that he's poor all this sorts of stuff right so for him it's it's just as important as for you a loaf of bread is see going further down the list how about shopping for panties at Victoria's Secret you would think well panties these these one lingerie panties are they really that important does it really matter hell yeah it matters for the woman it matters because these panties are packaging one of her most important assets survival survival wise you see so if she can present herself in a nice way to a guy with these panties gets him to fall in love with her guess gets him really attracted to her then he might marry her and he might be a good lover and a good provider and they'll have children a whole life together so it's not just about her getting resources from the guy it can also be about love and romance and all of this good stuff all of that is survival all of it see now when she goes into the store to buy the panties to impress the guy is she conscious of all of this is that wishes she see is she thinking twenty years down the road about how all these panties will help me to lock this guy in and then he'll marry me and then and then we'll have a bunch of money and baby see like no she's not thinking about it like that this is all completely subconscious completely subconscious nevertheless it's happening and in fact and here's another very important point is that we we don't we delude ourselves with false rationalizations about our survival strategies so in this case with these panties she might say oh but Lea I'm just buying these panties for me it's not really for the guy I'm not a 1 anything I'm just buying them to look sexy for myself yeah you can tell yourself that but there's there's actually what's going on under the surface that you got to look at you see survival especially human survival is a very devious sneaky underhanded sort of thing it's not honest because honesty doesn't help you to survive very well dishonesty manipulation subterfuge double meanings and ulterior motives and purposes this is what helps you to survive in the competitive marketplace in the dog-eat-dog world that we're in but of course see the problem is is that you also have an idea of yourself as being a good honest person so how do you balance out the ideas self-image of you being a good honest person on the one hand on the other hand you need to manipulate and scheme and engaged all sorts of subterfuge and manipulation to give yourself a survival advantage well what you do is you brainwash yourself into thinking that all of the subsurf you should lie in the inflation that you do that all of that is totally normal and actually good it's good it's logical it's reasonable and it's actually not dishonest this is the game that's being played and you and your mind are right in the middle of it your thoughts and your emotions are right in the middle of it this is what you're engaged in all day long lying manipulating scheming trying to find every advantage possible to get whatever you think you need and it doesn't matter what it is it could be food it could be sex it could be a house it could be just a self-image maybe you just want to be a a good noble Christian woman that's gonna be the thing that you're gonna be surviving and if that's your self-image then you're gonna be doing all the good noble womanly Christian stuff that that person needs to do to be that way and anything which disrupts that will be very threatening to you because it's literally threatening your life as that thing that you think you are going on with the list masturbation sex of course these are all survival activities giving gifts at Christmas smiling on a stranger and being polite what do you think that's all about purely survival caring about what people think of you it's all survival worrying about your physical appearance cheating stealing arguing debating all survival activities calling people names defending your culture or your religion this is an automatic robotic survival activity driving an electric car or being a vegan or being a spiritual person or giving to charity these are good examples because a lot of times people think that well if I'm giving to charity or Leo if I'm being a vegan then that's not about my survival in fact it's the opposite I'm being I'm being generous and I'm being selfless by being a vegan Leo because you know I'm not I'm not killing animals the way all those other people are yeah that's called pure selfish survival for you because you have a self-image of being this this noble vegan who's saving animals see and just me telling you that your veganism is a survival activity already starts to upset you makes you trigger at an emotional and defensive and all the sudden your mind now search to know Lea what are you talking to no I'm actually helping your daughter Stanley oh you're deluded leo are you a vegan aw see you're eating all look here look how many animals you've killed see see what your mind is doing to defend yourself yeah it's a very tricky very tricky this is why this work is so difficult because all of the most important truths that need to be told to you and taught to you you resist because all of them are completely threatening to the way that you live your whole life into yourself and so you actively resist this waking up process this growing up process taking your dog for a walk it's a survival activity logging into your online bank account checking your email installing software on your computer dreaming up some new business ideas doodling in your notebook in class when you're bored what does that do that entertains you from all the boredom that boredom would kill you if you let it last long enough cracking a joke getting a tattoo listening to music you know the tattoo thing is very interesting because people who are really into tattoos they just keep getting them and getting them and getting them you know some of those people it's a whole identity thing for them the whole tattoo subculture is is you know is its own very unique kind of identity that you create with these tattoos and it becomes sort of like your life maybe you've met some of these people see are they conscious of why they're doing it no of course not they're just behaving like robots now of course this doesn't mean that getting a tattoo is good or bad make sure that you don't misunderstand me here all these things that I'm talking about I'm not judging any of them I'm not telling you that you should stop doing any of these things we're just pointing out why you're doing them we just want to notice why we do stuff we just want to wash ourselves behaving like robots and chimps so that we can become more conscious we're not interested in changing anything yet we just want to observe listening to music is survival getting high on weed going to a fancy dinner party socializing with your friends taking out the trash caring about your family and children lots of big one that's huge as a huge part of your survival and most people do not want to admit that all of their family activities and children and all the thoughts and emotions that are related to that has anything to do with survival but of course it does which is why it's so problematic for you there's so much tension there getting at an attending church is survival being a Christian being a Muslim being a Hindu being a Jew any kind of religious identity that you have is all purely robotic survival that you're doing Golf is survival saving pennies at the gas station survival buying anything at all this survival being depressed is survival and now we get to the really important in huge categories all judgments of any kind whatsoever are a survival activity you only do them because you have an ego to defend if you didn't have a self to defend you wouldn't judge anything all meaning whatsoever that you have created and you did create all of it is a survival activity if you didn't have a sense of self that needed to survive nothing would have any meaning whatsoever meaning is a survival tool your mind generates meaning in order for you to know which things to pursue and which things to avoid depending on how they fit with your survival agenda you see meanings are how you know whether something is going to be beneficial to your survival or not those things which are not beneficial or are irrelevant to you are meaningless and those things which are beneficial and serve your survival the most those are very meaningful for you and of course all of that is completely relative depending on how you've defined yourself all thinking is survival activity justifying rationalizing creating stories and narratives all beliefs all logic and reason complaining thinking up ideas fantasizing imagination philosophy any theories you have scientific thinking this is all survival activity why else would you be doing it all speech is survival activity and then we come to perhaps the most important and trickiest category of all which is all emotions I'm talking about fear anger sadness happiness excitement arousal embarrassment disgust frustration boredom jealousy desire craving suffering pain all of these are how you survive how you manipulate yourself to survive these are the internal levers that you are pulling to manipulate yourself into relationship with the environment such that you could survive and without this mechanism you'd be dead very fast so it's a very complicated messy nest of tangled cords through this whole domain of emotions and it governs and runs your entire life all feelings of discomfort are about survival are you feeling comfortable in your chair right now I no I'm not what is that feeling of discomfort on your ass when you're sitting on a chair it's a it's a signal that helps you to move your ass and get yourself more comfortable because otherwise you would make might damage your ass my damage your body something like that also to conclude this list politics religion science business war celebrity and fame status money and resource distribution fairness justice ethics and morality all of this is about survival see so there's a lot here and we're still just scratching the surface all of this is survival activity and you are engaged in all of it all the time every second of your life but you're not conscious of why you're doing these things you're just doing these things because you don't even know any other way to live survival has completely dominated and taken over your life survival has co-opted your entire emotional system your belief system your worldview and your reason such that you can't think straight you can't feel straight you can't see reality straight because all of that had to be co-opted corrupted and distorted in order for you to be able to be you because if you saw reality as it actually is you couldn't be you you'd be dead so in a nutshell you are a survival robot and you are just now starting to see the tip of the iceberg of how much of a robot you are and you have no idea how to change yourself or what to do about this that's okay we'll help you as we keep going for now don't worry about changing it or stopping it rather worry more about becoming aware of it your ability to change all these things is directly dependent upon your ability to be aware of it and there's a lot of it to be aware of here you could spend the next five years studying all the stuff that I just listed and you still wouldn't be totally aware of all the stuff that's going on with that low within within your life which is survival here's a really important key insight for you take a note on this survival is deeply intelligent stop thinking of survival as a dumb mechanical process it isn't survival is subtle nonlinear and full of sleight of hand trickery and deception survival knows no shame it will go to any cost and any length in order to win survival is extremely elaborate and elaborate and sophisticated the sophistication of survival when you start to really study it and to see it in action is just jaw-dropping how sophisticated it is especially within humans extremely sophisticated survival strategies humans invent in order to maintain themselves within the environments that they find themselves in and here's what people understand is that there are so many different environments in which humans live and I'm not just talking about mountains and deserts and tropical islands I'm talking about social environments because humans primarily in order to survive we need to survive in a social environment even more so than physical one so humans invent very elaborate social survival strategies and then they they they work their whole lives to maintain those without having a clue of why they did it or what they're doing and because they don't have a clue of why they did it or what they're doing they're not free to change it and in fact what they do is they dig in their heels like a stubborn ass and they refuse to budge and this is where the problem of closed mindedness comes in is that people are so closed-minded because they don't want to change because they found their little niche in life whatever it is whatever your niche is whether you're a a corporate lawyer working for Exxon Mobil or you're an assistant to the president in I today --tz-- or you're some anchor on Fox News or you're some smear merchant conspiracy theorists YouTube or who puts out videos or you run a tabloid magazine or you're some corporate CEO of Google or Apple or whatever you found your little niche and now you're defending that little niche and you don't want to change you don't want to know anything beyond that little niche because that little niche is that perfect fit between you and your environment that you're trying to maintain desperately and this is what closes you up and prevents you from really being free in life because you're so attached to your survival strategy in fact your survival strategies are literally baked into your physical brain the neurons baked into it from from birth from childhood and many of your survival strategies are extremely dysfunctional but they were baked into your into your brain and into your mind so early in your life because of the tough situations and environments that you were in maybe you were an abusive household maybe her parents were alcoholics maybe it was a tough neighborhood you grew up in some some ghetto or in the hood somewhere and you have to be tough to you know just to survive or maybe you had to steal when you were younger because there just wasn't money in the family or maybe you came from a poor country where you had to do some some shady stuff to get by maybe have to live and yet to manipulate maybe you have to extort me you have to bribe maybe even have to kill people maybe you have to kill animals yeah all that survival that's how humans survive there's nothing just or fair about it it's just raw selfishness and most survival strategies are unconscious you don't even know that it's a strategy you don't just sit down one day as a child and come up with a strategy I'm gonna lie to - every new boyfriend that I have you don't do that it's not like that it's like no you're growing up this environment where lying your family is just constant between your mother and your father then you just pick up on it and just gets ingrained into how you think life can only be lived is that way through lying all the time and you notice that your mother's always lying to your father and so forth and then you just pick that up and then you keep doing that with all the boyfriends that you get yeah that's your survival strategy and survival strategies when they're unconscious the problem you might think well Leo survival is great because it keeps me alive not necessarily because when you take your selfishness in your survival just hog-wild no-holds-barred it actually tends to circle back around backfire on itself and actually caused you a lot of misery suffering and can even end in depression and suicide and all sorts of terrible things addictions of various kinds see because to really be good at life you need to do survival in a conscious manner most people are doing survival in an unconscious manner it's not that I'm saying that survival is a terrible thing be careful not the judge survival here I'm not judging it I'm just trying to make you more aware of just what you're doing we're just observing here that's all we're not judging anything no here's a really important point what's being survived is the mind or the psyche when we're talking about humans that's really where most of our work here has to happen and this is a very specific thing your psyche it has unique psychic needs attractions and aversions think of the psyche like a ghost which has taken over the machine that is your body this ghost is inside of you pulling various levers every lever that it pulls is to maintain itself that's the ghosts game and if it doesn't pull the right combination of levers of the ghost will die and that's what you want right now when I'm talking to you I'm pointing to you you're that ghost you that thing that you think you are that thing you think was born that human that's sitting there right now listening to this that's the ghost I'm talking about inside your skull that ghosts that you believe that you are of course there's no real ghosts there there's nothing there but you believe you are that ghost you have an image of yourself and so forth and so me just telling you that you don't exist it's not gonna change anything for you you still believe you exist this ghost you believe you're important you believe you're the most important thing and so you're your entire life is just a game of maintaining that ghost this ghost of course not only has to look out for physical dangers obviously but this ghost must look out for psychic dangers as well like for example contradictions within its own worldview that's a serious threat to this ghosts worldview is a very important thing for this ghost other things that the ghost must look out for these psychic dangers are it must maintain a positive self narrative it must think that it's the hero it must think that it's the good guy because if the ghost ever starts to think of itself as a devil or the bad guy that's gonna be very painful and problematic for the ghost it's gonna have to change its ways can't maintain itself that way so the ghost needs to maintain a positive self-image the ghost must justify all of its actions to itself towards that end so that it appears to be an angel to itself which is of course very self-serving because what you're doing is you're taking all your selfishness and you're calling that goodness you're taking all of your dowry and you're calling that goodness also the ghost must feel right and good and certain and not confused which is why it needs beliefs in order to eliminate uncertainty and confusion so of course this ghost adopts a bunch of beliefs and clings to them incorporates all these beliefs into itself so that literally the body of the ghost is made up of beliefs and worldviews which is precisely why people are so closed-minded to changing them this ghost must make sense of the world must explain the world to itself in a cohesive manner otherwise it might go insane and it won't be able to manipulate the world effectively if its models of the world aren't very good at the same time this ghost has so many flawed models of the world that it's really put itself in a serious bind because on the one hand its models are so ineffective and so dysfunctional and obviously untrue on the other hand it's attached to its models so it can't give up its models cuz if I I value of my own my my models my scientific models my Christian Islamic models whatever models I got if I give up all those then I'll be dead as this ghost because my body is made up of these things that's the ghost in the machine see so this is why people get stuck with very dysfunctional worldviews you would think like well if they're dysfunctional then they they hinder survival and therefore it would be very easy leo to just shed them no you couldn't be more wrong because well you're under estimating is the extent to which your identity is fused with your models and belief systems such that you would rather operate for the rest of your life on a dysfunctional and untrue model of the world which actually harms you physically or mentally rather than admit that your model the world is wrong and to change it that for you would be the greater evil or at least for most people this ghost must also look out and preempt external threats these threats can be physical but also not physical psychological and it must keep itself motivated too so that it can survive some more another day I want you to especially notice your survival at the micro level this is where really you're gonna grow from this conversation I want you to monitor every tiny thing that you do all day long sometimes even minute by minute and check how it relates to your survival so you're blowing your nose one minute look at that how does that relate to your survival how is that helping you to survive you're scratching your ass the next minute how about that you're fueling up your car well that's survival you're driving to the store that's survival you're texting a friend that's survival notice all those little things even within that one incident where you're sending your friend a text message notice which letters you're typing in and notice how every letter every word that you're typing into that message every thought about what you're supposed to say in this message is all survival that's how granular I want you to get with this right we got to get really granular so you really see it happening in your life this is not theory this is not a philosophy of mine this is something you're doing all the time if you've been listening to me and having various kinds of objections notice that what is that that's yours ghost surviving maybe it's disagreeing with some of the stuff I'm saying or maybe you're agreeing that's also survival if you're saying oh yes yes leo what you're saying is so true this is so well this is so good for me oh my god I love all this survival you're a self-help junkie so all my videos are helping you to survive as a self-help junkie that's what you're doing especially notice the specific survival demands of your ghost your particular ghost has certain specific things that it needs not just common I'm just talking about common survival things like yes your ghost needs water and food and sex and friendship and a job and money and sleep that's all obvious you know all that anyways I want you to notice what's unique to your self-image and your ego to your ghost here are some examples maybe you have a person that needs to wake up at a certain time in the morning or otherwise you start feeling guilty what's that about those are the needs of your ghost maybe you need to wake up at 8 a.m. and there you go that's what you need that's how you're surviving and what are you surviving you're surviving a very specific particular way that you are so what I want you to notice here is that unlike the way that we conventionally think is that that we are some way and then we do stuff that is sort of what we do like we think of ourselves as a physical object then we do stuff and that sort of just like maintains the physical object change that model rather think of yourself as literally being the things that you're doing such that if you stop doing them you'll stop being them and you might stop being at all if you stop doing everything all at once see so to be the way that you are you have to wake up at a certain time in the day see it's extremely granular but there's a lot of these granular things which all add up to creating the unique thing that you are the unique personality and psyche and human that you are so this is what we're trying to dissect and to deconstruct and to analyze here to observe or for example maybe you need a certain type of breakfast and if you don't get your breakfast you get cranky what's that about see your ghost has developed a taste for a certain type of breakfast and if you get the wrong idea of breakfast you're gonna be upset and what is getting upset all about that's a way that you manipulate yourself and your environment to deliver to you that breakfast that you want so if some server brings you the wrong meal at breakfast you get angry at him and then you you scold him and then he'll by doing that he then brings you the right breakfast and then you're happy see see what you're doing but youyou don't of course know that you're doing any of this you're just acting impulsively or for example you need to drive a certain type of sports car in order for you to feel masculine and if you have the wrong type of car you'll feel emasculated and that will be very painful and problematic for you because you've developed this image of being this this macho masculine guy and that hinges upon you having the right sports car and then God forbid someone scratches your sports car your your masculinity takes a ding see how this works your sense of self is not only your physical body and any ideas and worldviews that you have it's also the things the physical objects that you get attached to as well and the non physical objects you might get attached to some idea like that you're an American or that you're a German and then and then you have to defend that or maybe you know you have some some organization that you're part of then you're gonna defend that organization it becomes an extension of yourself another example might be that maybe you need to listen to some specific type of music to help you relax and if you get the wrong type of music like some heavy metal music that you don't like that's gonna ruin your relaxation what's that about see you're your ghost has certain music that it likes and certain music that hates but are you aware of that maybe you need to do your meditation every morning or you feel guilty what's that about because your ghost has some spiritual image of yourself as some yogi or some meditator some self-actualize err and I've I've programmed you through these videos to meditate every day and so now see you've got that mind virus inside of you and you say Oh leo but it's good meditation is good yeah but how many of you meditate really unconsciously and robotically and then feel guilty about not doing it when you miss a day but Leo you said I have to meditate every single day see it's very tricky it's very tricky as you're growing through this whole process you're developing and you're becoming more conscious it's not like you can perfect yourself in a single day you're really kind of like crawling out of a very very deep hole inch by inch by inch by inch so it'll take you decades to really perfect yourself so you know it's like a bootstrapping process where bootstrapping ourselves in this work and so don't expect to be able to solve all of this and in a day or a month or even a year this is heavy stuff your life's work here right so be patient yeah there's a lot of deception and delusion within you that we just can't address it all at once we got it like bite away at it piece by piece by piece maybe you need to get a text message from your lover from your girlfriend from your boyfriend from your spouse in order to feel happy and if you don't get that text message you feel upset or fearful or whatever oh my god what happened to them why aren't they texting me see your your ghost has those needs or maybe you are a troll and so you need to post your daily troll comment on some YouTube video or on some online forum otherwise you can't survive as a troll you see to be a troll you have to do troll things if you stop doing troll things you literally will die as a troll the troll and you will die so you feel compelled to do it or maybe you need to judge so-and-so today and that's how your ghost becomes judgmental and stays judgemental or maybe you need to worry today or maybe you need to procrastinate today or maybe you need to play five hours of video games today or maybe you need to watch three hours of YouTube today because that's how you survive you might think well Lea but three hours of YouTube this is hurting my survival it's hurting the survival of some imaginary self that you have maybe you imagine yourself to be this very productive person so yes it's it's hurting you becoming that but it's maintaining you as the lazy person which is what you are right now this lazy person how do you think you stay a lazy person by doing lazy things see so what are all these activities accomplishing they are letting you be you try not doing one of these things and watch your ghost react and [ __ ] and moan and come with excuses and suffer and go through pain and torture that's what it's like try going one day without wiping your ass see how you feel you won't feel like yourself just with that little tiny change you won't feel like yourself anymore I'm not saying you have to do that or live this way I'm just I'm just saying by notice that by changing these things literally we're affecting who you think you are and how you actually are at a metaphysical level that's very important to get so I want you to become very clear about what it is that you are busy surviving what is that ghost pay extra careful attention to your thoughts and your emotions because these are the trickiest and the most significant and the most devious ways in which you survive I want you to notice that they have been completely hijacked to serve survival such that you can't think straight anymore literally you can't think straight every thought you have is a thought about survival even all your lofty thoughts about self-improvement enlightenment still they're all serving the ego survival everything you think and feel I want you to notice has an ulterior motive behind it one that you're usually not conscious of you think and feel to manipulate and survive within the environment you find yourself in so like if you're if you're working some busy corporate job the thoughts and feelings that you have have to be of a certain type in order to maintain working there you have to tell yourself certain things a certain story a certain narrative in order to allow yourself to work there otherwise you couldn't work there you'd quit or you wouldn't fit in with how your other fellow employees thought like you can't work on Wall Street while at the same time believing or seeing rather how damaging Wall Street is to American society for example you can you have to [ __ ] yourself into thinking that what you're doing on Wall Street is somehow beneficial to mankind or I don't know what kind of stories themselves but they have to do that if they ignore their own feelings you have to manipulate everyday in order to maintain that whole house of cards called Wall Street and you do that all the time at your work and in school and everywhere else in your relationship with your family on and on and on here's a key insight for you all your emotional ups and downs are survival in action all of your drama you know that daily drama you go through the highs and the lows it's all survival so if you want relief from that you need to become a master of understanding survival Oh it's important to distinguish here between being a master of survival versus a master of understanding survive these are two totally different things notice that I'm not telling you here that what you need to do is become more efficient at your survival no you need to become much more conscious of your survival that's very different you know because like the people who work on Wall Street they're extremely efficient at their survival they're extremely efficient bullshitters liars dissemblers manipulators exploiters you name it frauds con artists and some of them are good people but uh you know they're extremely effective at that so by being extremely effective at survival that's actually the problem part of the problem here is that you're so obsessed with survival and you're so effective at it that has completely obscured your ability to recognize anything else to live your life in any way and so here's the fundamental problem of survival and while we're talking about it is that survival is suffering the reason you suffer and the reason you can't be fulfilled or satisfied in life no matter how hard you try no matter how many yachts you buy or how many amazing people you have sex with you can't be fulfilled because it's all survival and so you keep trying and trying and trying you just spin your wheels for decades and you don't know why it's not working that's because you're stuck in survival and survival is not designed to make you fulfill their happy survival is designed to keep you in constant motion and to keep you surviving until you're dead until you stall out the clock the purpose of survival is for you to stall out the clock yeah this is heavy stuff but also life-changing stuff you know a lot to swallow so maybe you'll have to take it piece by piece in conclusion let me just say that survival understanding survival is absolutely foundational to any kind of self-improvement or spirituality and this is something that will require years of study and self observation on your part so let me help you to begin to do that with this following homework assignment study carefully over the next week the unique demands the unique demands of your ghosts what does it want what does it hate who is it trying to be what is it trying to avoid what threatens it who does it want to be contemplate all that at the same time observe yourself surviving for one week try to observe at the most micro level that you can but also notice macro survival strategies that you might have make a profile make sort of a list in your commonplace book or in your journal of all of your survival strategies that you can articulate sometimes it's a little you know requires some study to be able to articulate these to notice them so start noticing them especially pay attention to your emotions your thoughts and your reactions and also profile try to articulate your philosophy and worldview what is your ghosts worldview what kind of intellectual positions and beliefs is your ghost attached to that must be maintained and survived at all costs whether it's your nationalism your patriotism your socialism your desire for feminism or anti feminism or whatever it is materialism science rationality some religion that you have spiritual philosophy you have make a list of that and try to notice how you're reinforcing that as well you're reinforcing your worldview by the types of books you read the types of movies you watch the type of people you have conversations with the types of YouTube videos you look at the types of channels you're subscribed to you the type of comments you leave under my videos see start to interconnect all this stuff connect the micro with the macro and vice-versa also let me warn you just as a as a trap here be careful to distinguish between observing survival versus doing survival so what I'm asking you here is not to change your survival yet I'm not asking you to improve your survival or to judge your survival I'm asking you to observe it impartially scientifically so to speak this whole conversation is not about enhancing your survival because that would just be more the same that's already what you've been doing your whole life that's what every conversation you've ever had with anybody has been about we're trying to do something kind of counterintuitive here something that you might not even think has any value because you see that the whole notion of value is already co-opted by your survival agenda we're trying to sort of undo the whole game of survival to see if there is maybe a different way to live your life one that is not centered around survival so much now of course as you should expect your ego will object and I'll say all billy-oh that's dangerous because you're undermining it my survival yes from your point of view it'll look dangerous that's why it's counterintuitive that's why I said long ago that this work is counterintuitive in paradoxical and you need to be able to be forward-thinking enough to see how you know blind survival no-holds-barred is maybe gonna backfire in your life and will not get you the satisfaction that you think it will we'll be talking about that and a lot more that I have to say about survival in part two so make sure you stick around for that that's it for this part please click that like button for me and come check out actualize that org that's my website you'll find my blog you'll find the forum the life purpose course the book list speaking of which I just updated with 25 new books that's free for anybody who's already purchased it and if you purchase it now then you'll get that update automatically I have some very powerful new books there so make sure you go check those out and the final thing I want to say to you is this there is a possibility of life outside of survival but just what that is is difficult for most people to imagine because they're so stuck in survival so we will be talking about that in part two but for now I just want you to ponder the following question over the next week what in my life is not survival because by doing the homework assignment I just gave you you're going to find a million survival activities but can you find something in your life that's not survival that's tricky but try to look for it and I'll help you to to get clear on it in part two you