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[Music] have you ever wondered why is there something rather than nothing this is the ultimate question if you could answer this question and that's a big if you would have the answer to all of existence making this question rather important the problem is that philosophers and theologians and scientists have been asking this question for thousands of years and probably even long before that since humans first walked on the earth and could think and could formulate questions at all we probably started asking this question but the challenge is that we have thousands of years of philosophy recorded in the history books and so forth but no clear consensus as to what the answer is and in fact most of us today if you talk to a scientist or even a philosopher today or a theologian or just a normal guy off the street you ask him this question what's he going to tell you he's going to tell you it's impossible to know nobody knows and nobody could know and it's not worth your time to even think about it anymore because hey if it could be known we would know it by now right at least that's what most people assume well i'm here to break some amazing news to you it's actually possible to answer this question clearly precisely definitively once and for all not as a belief not as an ideology not as speculation not as theory but the actual answer but the trick as you might expect is that the answer is so profound that it's gonna stretch the capabilities of your mind to understand it so that's where we're gonna have to go kind of slow and kind of work through it here and then you're also gonna have to do some additional work on your own beyond just watching this recording to really understand what i'm talking about but i can guide you towards this answer i've derived at it myself not as a belief but as something you can become directly conscious of and it's it's a hell of an answer it's really worth understanding so how come there's something rather than nothing before i give you the answer we first need to appreciate the significance of this question see a lot of people they'll just ask these sorts of questions very willy-nilly without appreciating the gravity and significance and the the scope the enormity the profundity of the question and the accompanying answer so what's important when you're contemplating reality in general and there's lots of different aspects of reality that you could contemplate when you contemplate reality it's important that your mind gets what i call traction with the problem or with the question at hand because you can ask questions just kind of like flippantly without being serious about it and then you can ask questions in such a way where your mind is really on track with it so let's let's get your mind there right now so what i want you to do is i want you to take your awareness and your consciousness and to turn it inwards towards yourself because usually it's oriented outwards so take that consciousness inwards so kind of focus it inside your skull into your eyes into your head into your deepest sense of self do this along with me when you do that then i want you to just focus your consciousness on the fact that anything at all exists that you exist that this room that you're sitting in exists that this body here exists that noises and sounds exist that colors exist i mean this is clearly what is happening in your experience is that you have these things so just focus your consciousness on the fact that anything exists at all and just try to wonder it how amazing and mysterious that is it might help you to look at your hands it helps me when i'm doing this exercise to look at my hands and to just wonder how come these hands are here how come they exist how is it possible that anything exists at all are you doing this can you feel when you do this can you feel that sense of like wonder and awe and mystery at the fact that your hand exists right here how is that possible why is there a hand why is it not a tentacle why is it not some claw why is it not nothingness connect with that deep sense of wonder this is crucial this is what i mean by your mind gaining traction with the question and also your mind has to be open here so be careful about your mind quickly supplying you with some sort of pre-made narrative that you got from society or from your culture whether it's from religion or from science or from your parents or from some videos you watched on youtube or whatever see the mind will tend to come in and quickly the mind will want to dispel the mystery and the wonder it'll want to kind of plug that empty hole with some sort of narrative like it'll want to say something well this hand is here because my mom and my dad got together 30 years ago they had sex there was a sperm and egg they met that turned into a zygote that the cells multiplied then that turned into a little baby and then that grew up and then 30 years later here i am and here's the hand so you could explain it like that or your mind could explain it some other way such as like well there was the big bang the big bang was just like a bunch of molecules and they formed and then those molecules they were swirling around in gas clouds those those congealed into stars and then more gas clouds congealed into planets and then one of those was the earth and then billions of years of evolution passed and there was fish and then there was amphibians and there was lizards then they crawled up into land and then they turned into mammals and there were dinosaurs and then the dinosaurs were killed by some asteroid and then uh the mammals rose up and then there were primates and then those primates turned into chimpanzees and we were off shoot off those and then came humans and here i am you could explain it like that or if you're a religious person you could say well god created it all something like that some kind of story like that so you have to resist all those narratives you have to throw all those away and you have to kind of start from scratch and just start with what's actually here in your direct experience in your direct experience there is no evolution there is no big bang there is no uh god there is no what reptiles who who turned into humans there is no chimpanzees there's only this only what's here so let's just work with that so that opens up your mind now you're connected with the question now we can do this with our mind we can conceive of a universe in which there would be nothing at all so imagine reality that was completely nothing absolute nothing there was no planets no animals no plants no molecules no gas clouds nothing at all just total blank when we imagine this it makes us wonder because we think like well that seems to be what reality ought to be right because like where did all this stuff come from wouldn't it be simpler if reality was just absolutely nothing that would be so simple right then there would be nothing to wonder about and nothing to explain in a sense what we have to explain all all this weird complex ordered stuff if you haven't noticed reality is very very complex it's filled with very specific ordered things everything is ordered so intricately within reality have you noticed this that requires a sort of explanation why is the order that way not some other way why is this a hand not a claw or something we have to explain that but if it was absolutely nothing it would require no explanation and you would think like that would be the simplest solution as a scientist you might say that's real that's what reality really like ought to be is just pure absolute nothing that would be like the ultimate answer right because if that was what reality was then there wouldn't even be us to wonder about what reality is it would be so nothing there wouldn't even be one who is wondering about what it is and then in a certain sense that that very nicely ties all the loose ends together such that there aren't even loose ends because there's nothing so there's not even loose ends to tie up that's how elegant that solution is right but we have a problem even though that seems to be like the most efficient way for reality to be can you see how that sort of like a if we think of it as a scientist you know scientists like to think in terms of like uh maximization of energy efficiency uh it seems to create all of this to create planets and stars and all this you need so much energy where's this energy coming from why is why is this energy arising in the first place wouldn't it just be simpler to have nothing and if we had this nothing it would be perfectly symmetrical it would be perfectly even everywhere it would just be pure nothing forever we wouldn't need to answer quite tricky questions about time travel about space about the curvature of space about different dimensions about a bunch of different quarks and particles and strings and all this complex stuff like we would just simplify everything so much if it was absolutely nothing but of course the problem is is that it's not at least not in the way we can mentally think of it in the way we think of it it's something there's all this something that's going on so why this and not that but here's the trick how do you know how to distinguish between something and nothing how do you know that your mind's ability to make that distinction is itself something you can rely on something that's valid something that's objectively true and not merely something that's perspectival or relativistic uh-huh see that now we're getting to the rub what if the difference between something and nothing was actually relativistic something that you were projecting on to reality and not something fundamental to reality itself what if reality itself didn't know the difference between something and nothing and what if what if this current state that we're in that we call something is actually more energy efficient it's lower in energy than absolute nothing how could that be well consider if we have absolute nothing what would keep absolute nothing from spontaneously spawning into something what would prevent it nothing there is nothing preventing nothing from turning into something so while it seems that absolute nothing is the most energy efficient state it's perfectly symmetrical actually it's not symmetrical because to have absolute emptiness without any form without somethingness that you can see is an asymmetry it's a bias in a sense what you're doing is you're kind of saying that you know we're pushing reality to be just this way but not this way so see what would be pushing reality to be one way rather than another way that's the whole trick here is to start to understand this that there is nothing holding reality back from being any particular way so in a sense we could think of it like this if reality was absolute blank nothing since there's nothing stopping nothing from turning into something nothing becomes something but since there's no time yet because time is something and this is happening in nothing there's no time there's no space there's no nothing so because those are all some things space time these are some things so if there is nothing to begin with and then there's nothing holding back nothing it spawns into something generating everything that we know of and that this happens instantaneously it's not a process that happens through time or through space this happens instantaneously so much so that there's literally no distinction between nothing and something such that as i'm sitting here speaking to you right now and you are sitting there listening to me actually all of this that's been happening here in this recording and happening right now is literally nothing so nothing is precisely what exists but nothing is not as you've imagined some pure blankness nothing and something because they're indistinguishable because the distinction between them is relativistic and purely a projection of your mind actually they unify into a singularity such that this is nothing and so your entire life and the entire physical universe in a sense we could say never even happened it's nothing it's nowhere it's no win and it's know-how and that explains the whole universe it's a perfect symmetry you see because if it was purely something that would be an asymmetry if it was purely nothing that would also be an asymmetry if it was any particular way it would be an asymmetry and it would be some bias that we have to explain somehow we would have to come up with an explanation for well why would the universe be this way and not that way why that way and not this way well the answer is that it's always possible superimposed into each other into an infinite singularity so what everything is is just infinity but infinity is identical to nothing because something is nothing because if you take a circle of a certain diameter and you shrink this circle to zero diameter zero diameter circle so what happens can you imagine what happens if we take a circle and we start to shrink it shrink it shrink or drink it until it turns to zero diameter at that exact moment when the diameter becomes perfectly zero can you see how there's an inflection point where the circle in instantly inflates and becomes identical to a circle of infinite diameter so actually there's no difference between a circle of infinite diameter and zero diameter which is why zero and infinity are identical so yeah it's twisted it twists your mind the problem is that our mind is wired to think in dualities and one of the most fundamental dualities we have is that of nothing and something but the nature of reality is such that everything is non-dual and all dualities ultimately collapse have you wondered for example what the boundary is between nothing and something what is that boundary made out of so in reality let's say this is reality right here right we have something like this and then we can imagine nothing like maybe you imagine outside the universe there's nothing if we go to the edge of the universe there's nothing you might imagine but what would the boundary between the something of the universe and the nothing outside the universe what would that boundary made out of would that boundary be made out of something or nothing you see when you really think this through you realize there can't be a boundary because all boundaries themselves are nothing and that there's no difference between something and nothing and when that boundary collapses you could say that well that means the universe extends out forever there's no nothing out there but the converse is also true it means that the the nothingness extends forever so the universe could extend forever in that way the something that's extends forever let's say in that way from the center from the center it radiates outward but you could also say that the nothingness radiates inward from the outside see so what that means is that the nothingness that we're supposedly thinking the universe exists inside of isn't actually something that the universe came out of but something that the universe actually is so what i'm saying here is not merely that like some scientists say that the big bang came out of nothing and there are some reputable scientists who make these claims i think stephen hawking was one of them i read in one of his books where he talked about how you know it would be very elegant if the universe came out of nothing because that would sort of like neatly tie tie up all the questions but that's still not quite right what i'm saying here is not that the universe came from nothing what i'm saying is that the universe is nothing has always been nothing and will always be nothing because something and nothing are completely indistinguishable and that the only distinction we're making between the two is simply a function of our own mind projecting that out onto the world so what this means is is that everything that's happening right now in this moment i'm sitting here talking you're sitting there listening to me this all of this even though we've conventionally called this something actually it's it's nothing it's as though it's not even happening even though of course it feels as though it's happening so to really understand this you have to you have to think so fundamentally here so existentially here that you have to realize that when you were born as a child or at least you imagine you were um think back to how did your concepts of something in nothing originate where do those come from how did you learn to distinguish between something and nothing what if what if those concepts themselves are what is flawed in your worldview see in a sense your whole worldview hinges upon this these very fundamental distinctions you made as a little child to make sense of the world but who told you what nothing is and who told you what something is how did you define those terms huh think about this like really think about this get some traction on this with your mind what if everything you pointed to and called something and your parents did this for you you know your mom pointed a ball and she says that's something and then she points at a dog and she says that's something and then she points to something else and she says that's nothing like maybe she points at a at an empty space and says that's nothing and then your mind sort of creates this distinction between some things and nothings but what if when your mom pointed at a ball and told you that that's something and when your mom pointed at a dog and told you that's something what if she was wrong and you were wrong for believing her and actually that entire time she was pointing at nothing but you mistook that nothing for something can you sort of undo this this move that your mind made when you were a child go back undo that and now look at this room that you're sitting in i want you to look around it and i want you to realize that everything you see around you is precisely what nothing looks like this is the crucial mistake that every philosopher theologian and scientist has made for thousands of years it's such a simple yet such a profound mistake is that they assumed all of them assumed and you assumed that what nothing is is a blank black hole or void when i say nothing your mind thinks of some black hole but that's not nothing first of all that's something a black hole is something blackness is something a void is still something how would you even think of true nothing actual nothing actual nothing can't be thought of because if you think of it that's something see but anyways the mistake is that you're trying to imagine this nothing as something different than what is right here right now which you have called something that's the mistake and the resolution to this whole challenge is the is just the realization that this right here is nothing so look at your hands and realize that they're nothing look at my face look at my body hear my voice hear the sounds in your room maybe the air conditioning is blowing maybe some birds are chirping maybe sunlight is shining through the windows or maybe it's dark outside you're looking through the window you're seeing some tree or whatever some mods circling around a light whatever you're seeing all of that recognize it as nothing notice how your mind has been tricking you your entire life you've been calling all of this something this entire time when it was really nothing this is what nothing looks like this is actual nothing not some imaginary nothing actual nothing actual nothing has colors actual nothing talks actual nothing hears actual nothing is a bird flying through the air chirping actual nothing is pain in your leg that's been bothering you actual nothing is a toothache actual nothing is your partner rejecting you actual nothing is your parents abusing you when you were a child actual nothing is what you see on tv as you're flipping through every channel actual nothing is every book that you flip through and read that's actual nothing it's indistinguishable from something this is not really something you can think about and understand this is not something you can believe or take on as an ideology this is something you have to become directly conscious of there will be a there will be a shift a a significant shift in your current experience of reality when you realize that something in nothing are identical your jaw will drop if you really understand what i'm saying here this is a utterly radical realization this is not just something oh yeah there's some cool philosophy but let's let's move on to the next video no this this this this will stop your life dead in its tracks if you ever realize what i'm saying here i distinctly remember the first time when i became fully conscious that everything is nothing i was on a meditation retreat in hawaii in a cabin in the jungle i was sitting there late at night meditating and looking out um looking out the window and uh and i i yeah i just i distinctly remember the moment where i realized i looked out the window i saw the entire jungle as i was kind of like looking out um and i saw the room that i was in kind of like looking through the room through the window out into the jungle and i just realized that the entire thing was just nothing as though none of it had ever had ever happened that's what the zen masters call mu mu the realization of mu nothingness see you still might think that sort of a black void is a simpler more energy efficient state for reality to be in than this state right here that's actually not the case because something would have to just maintain that pure black void forever something would have to restrain it or hold it back and actually what reality is is it's purely unbiased and unrestricted unlimited consciousness so you're conscious right now that's what reality is made of the substance of reality is consciousness consciousness is nothing um and the trick to understand there is that if consciousness is allowed to be completely unlimited and unrestricted it can't just be purely formless because if it was purely formless that would be a negation of form which would actually be an asymmetry within consciousness so for consciousness to truly be unlimited it simultaneously has to limit itself and go from formless into form such that there is no distinction between form and formlessness such that the whole thing you can think of the entire universe as just a singularity made up of both formlessness and form all superimposed into each other at once completely unlimited which includes this present moment that you're sitting here and experiencing right now you think it's something you think it came from somewhere you think it's happening somewhere in during some time some place in space somehow through some method all of this is an illusion in fact the present moment and the entire universe and all of reality is nothing no win nowhere and no how and this is why science and the human mind and human intellect and rationality and logic struggle so much to answer metaphysical questions such as why is there something rather than nothing because the analytical mind only works based upon certain premises and certain assumptions and certain fundamental distinctions like the distinction between something in nothing the distinction between something existing and non-existing the distinction between something being logical and illogical all these distinctions but all of these are biases within consciousness reality can only exist precisely because it's perfectly symmetrical such that it cancels itself out there by tying up every loose end such that there's nothing left to explain because it's it's it's completely self-contained it's singular it's one it can have no boundary it's just an infinite singularity of everything superimposed on top of itself into a perfect unity a perfect symmetry and this is once you understand this you realize that this is the most energy efficient state and that this is the only state that reality could be in and this is the only way that anything could exist at all is if it's part of this singular uh unified super symmetry where everything perfectly cancels itself out such that we could say that none of it even exists are you getting this i have a demonstration for you to illustrate this point so here we have a glass and then we here we have a second glass so how many empty glasses am i holding up of course it's a trick question i'm holding up two empty glasses but how could they both be empty when this one seems full this one is obviously empty but can you see that the way that we define what full is is actually an incomplete definition because if you look at this glass yes it's we could say it's full but what does it really mean to say that this glass is full when we truly understand fullness fullness is such that it must include emptiness within it so obviously this full glass just because it has water in it can you see how it still has the empty glass inside of it it's like there you can sort of just picture it with your mind's eye so when we really say full we can sort of have two definitions of full we can have a relativistic definition of full which is full like this like the conventional sense of full which is opposite of empty this is sort of a duality or we can have a more holistic understanding and definition of the word full this would be fullness with a capital f this would be fullness as an absolute this is a fullness which includes and encompasses the emptiness within it as well see so when when you're able to see this glass as empty only then have you understood what fullness truly means because how can something be truly full if it excludes the empty you see how that duality must collapse it must go full circle likewise try to apply that to your present experience what i'm talking about here is not just some abstract philosophy or theory i'm talking about your direct experience i want you to look for the first time in your life at this present moment that's happening right now and to realize that it's completely empty you've been looking at it as though it was that full conventionally full glass and now what i'm asking you to do is i'm asking you to look at this glass i'm asking you to look at this present moment and to to realize a higher order of fullness of fullness which is so full that it goes full circle and it recognizes the emptiness that permeates through this entire experience and this glass so even though this glass looks like somethingness actually it's nothingness even though this glass looks like form actually it's also formless at the same time you see the problem is that the human mind is very biased towards survival it has to be otherwise it couldn't exist for your mind to be here thinking about this stuff it had to worry about survival its whole life otherwise it would be dead so your mind is very biased towards form to the exclusion of formlessness your mind benefits materially from form because all material benefit is of the formed variety money sex power pleasure these are all forms what good is formlessness to you formlessness is not pleasurable you can't use it to to buy a vacation you can't use it to have sex you can't use it to live in it like a nice luxury house what can you do with formlessness seems like nothing so you might wonder well what's the use then what's the point why should we care about formlessness exactly which is why most people don't care about formlessness but the cost you pay for thinking that way is now you're stuck in the domain of form and you're only understanding half of reality because form is only half of reality the other the other half is formlessness and even though i'm talking about them as though they're two things actually they're they're perfectly identical so it's not like there's a world of formlessness that you're missing out there no the world of formlessness is precisely the world of form it's right here but you're just missing that way of seeing reality you're only seeing form for its form but you're missing its formlessness and therefore in your mind you've created this sort of split where there's the world of form here and in the world of formlessness is some abstract philosophical thing that maybe you could reach after thousands of hours of enlightenment work and meditation and whatever else you think the world the foremost is somewhere else to reach it's precisely here you're not going to reach it elsewhere you're going to only find it here because it's identical where formlessness is hiding is directly under the form in the same way that with this glass where is the empty glass hiding why can't you see the empty glass precisely because it's inside the full glass it's obscured because it's identical to it right underneath it in a sense you're standing on top of the rug that you need to pull out from under yourself see it goes in a circle when you understand this everything is perfectly explained there are no more questions about the nature of reality because you realize it's nothing you realize that it didn't come from anywhere because nothing has always been nothing it's eternally nothing and it will always be nothing it can't come from somewhere else because there's nowhere to come from since it's singular it exists only in one place which is nowhere and it exists outside of time and there's not even a process or method by which it comes into existence because uh all processes and methods are again dualities that need to be collapsed and so in this way it's possible for you with direct consciousness to become perfectly aware of the origin and nature of all of reality and your own self and that's a pretty cool possibility see most people don't think this is possible but it is you're gonna have to work at it it's not gonna be enough for you just to listen to me here you're gonna have to really work at it to realize this one day but this is a good place to get you started and i think the most important thing i want to just have you take away here is just the fact that these sorts of questions of like why is there something rather than nothing these are not purely philosophical questions that are impractical and have no answers they seem that way which is why most people don't pursue them seriously and they never discover the amazing answers that can be arrived at if you pursue this stuff seriously how do you know that what i'm telling you is true not by believing me for all you know i could be lying i could be deluded i could be a cult leader whatever the only way you'll know if what i'm telling you is true is by actually doing these exercises and by becoming directly conscious of it for yourself and i hope one day you do your jaw will drop now you might wonder leo if all this is nothing what about other stuff you've talked about like consciousness and love and truth and god where are these things well all these things are identical nothing is consciousness nothing is truth nothing is love nothing is god and nothing is you all those things are identical it will probably take you multiple awakenings and profound realizations and epiphanies in order to connect all and equate all of those different terms together so maybe one time you have an awakening into the nature of this present moment as being nothing that's great but that still won't be the end of it then you'll need to have another awakening to realize that consciousness is nothing then you'll need to have another awakening to realize that love is identical to nothing then you need to have another realization to realize that god is identical to nothing and then maybe you need to have another realization to realize that you are identical to god and to love and to consciousness and to nothing and so the full awakening is when you when you equate all those terms together and then it becomes your living reality it's not just something that you're thinking about but it's something like literally i've had moments where i'm walking down the street for a stroll through the park looking at a tree as i'm walking by the tree i'm conscious that this tree is nothing it feels like like walking through a hologram almost when this happens it almost becomes as though all of reality becomes a hologram it has this hollow quality to it this is what the buddhists call emptiness reality is fundamentally empty it feels hollow so right now you might you know as a conventional human you might look at a wall a brick wall you might look at a car you might look at a tree you might look at you know you might tap something hard like a wood table you might tap a wood table and all of it feels so solid it feels so real but when you truly realize that it's all nothing it becomes like a like a wispy hologram like an immaterial virtual reality it's almost like you're walking through a virtual reality like a video game you know in a video game the walls aren't real but they still behave as though they are real walls a hologram seems real but actually it's it's sort of just empty it's just a pure illusion and so that's what we mean when we say reality is an illusion it's an illusion in the sense that yes there's all this stuff happening here there's all this experience but the nature of what experience is is just nothingness rendering the entire thing just like a hologram or a virtual reality but one that is not run inside of a computer so it's not the same as simulation theory and also spirit so the reason we call it spirituality is because when you become conscious and you awaken to the fact that everything is nothing you realize that every material thing that you used to think of as a physical object that science told you was a physical object all of that becomes recontextualized see my earlier episode called understanding recontextualization where i explain what that term means your entire experience becomes recontextualized such that you see all that physical material stuff as actually just being pure spirit or in other words mind mind with capital m so right now as i'm sitting here talking to you and you're sitting there listening to me all of this is happening inside your own mind the walls and roof of your house and the floor that you're sitting on and the earth that is supporting you is just a figment of your own mind but since there's nothing but your own mind and since the mind is infinite it's not a problem that it's all mind because there's no alternative to mind see so when you have an infinite illusion there's no way to distinguish the illusion from reality such that now you think it's real you're lost in the reality of your own illusion and since the illusion is total it's absolutely total there's no way to tell that it's an illusion other than through a massive instantaneous awakening in which you realize the entire thing and the entire thing gets recontextualized as the illusion that it is completely hollow and empty because it's nothing nowhere no when no how and that's reality in a nutshell all right i'm done here please click that like button for me and come check out actualize.org that's my website you will find my blog where i post exclusive videos and other resources links and other cool stuff that you'll get a kick out of if you enjoy my content you want to go deeper there you'll find the forum which i'm very active on and i answer lots of questions so if you have questions about this whole process you feel free to come ask questions on the forum the better the questions the more likely i am to answer them i've answered thousands of questions there so make use of that resource um you'll also find my book list where you can find books that explain some of this stuff so that you don't just hear it from me but you hear from other experts and masters and world-class teachers and um and check out my life purpose course if you want to figure out how to get your life on track in a more practical way just be beyond just the philosophy and the the metaphysical stuff that i like to talk about that's the life purpose course all right that's it i'm out of here the last thing i'll tell you is that be careful a lot of people will naysay you on metaphysical questions and they will tell you like oh you can't possibly know that oh that's a waste of time oh that's just philosophy oh it's just abstraction oh it's not practical beware of these people these might be your parents your teachers your friends your colleagues people in the comments section scientists doctors philosophers theologians it actually is possible to answer deep metaphysical questions and not only is it possible it's absolutely essential in order to find happiness and peace in life the reason that most people are dissatisfied in their lives is precisely because they take a highly utilitarian pragmatic survival oriented approach to life where the only things they value is that which is tangible material and immediately gives them some sort of pleasure or immediately give some sort of material tangible payoff that's mostly what people value and it's this sort of myopic short-sighted overly utilitarian approach to life which leads to great dissatisfaction because the truth is is that all this material stuff is actually a illusion you're never going to find satisfaction that way to find satisfaction you need to you need to ask deep penetrating metaphysical and epistemic questions and you need to work at it for years to penetrate through to the essence of what you are life is love is the universe is consciousness is this is how you master life and how you get satisfaction you don't get satisfaction from chasing material things but it takes a lot of wisdom and maturity and vision to be able to see that most people they need to spend a good 10 20 30 years of their life chasing material pleasures and by the way when i talk about material pleasures i include in that all of science see so see the scientists think that oh well we're not chasing material pleasures we're we're discovering deep truths of the universe no you're still chasing material pleasures of your own mind so when a physicist is sitting there you know working on some advanced astrophysics problem he's still chasing material pleasure the material pleasure of figuring out how some particles work or whatever that's still a material pleasure that's still a limited finite sort of knowledge and understanding there's used to it i'm not saying you shouldn't do that it can be useful but again just because something is useful doesn't mean at least a deep satisfaction it doesn't mean that it leads to any ultimate answers about the nature of reality so see most people are stuck chasing their tail in materialism and then they wonder why they're not satisfied with life because you're missing the very essence of life the spiritual essence of life and spirit is nothing so when are you going to realize that when are you going to realize that life is nothing and see contrary to this being some bleak depressing nihilistic problematic realization actually it's wonderful it's a huge relief to realize that life is nothing and that reality is nothing because it's a sense of completion it's a sense of relief it's a sudden there's it comes with a sense of surrender and acceptance uh and then what can really flow forth after that realization is love because love is nothing now you wonder leo how could love be nothing love is not nothing well that's the topic for another day i have discussed the nature of love in other episodes check out my episode what is love part one and what is love part two where i explain love in a lot more detail love is a very tricky and counter-intuitive and paradoxical thing it's not just a human emotion the way that most people think love has an existential component to it and love is very the very fabric of reality so the beauty of realizing that life is nothing you're not going to turn into some sort of frederick nietzsche uh nihilist and you're not gonna turn into some sort of you know uh sartre-esque uh existentialist who's always brooding and depressed and this sort of [ __ ] it's not going to be that those people didn't realize that life was nothing they were playing mind games to truly realize that life is nothing is a huge relief it's a spiritual epiphany this is a spiritual epiphany you're discovering god this is not some sort of bleak materialistic realization where you're sitting there doing some calculations on some napkin and then you realize one day like einstein or something and then you realize like oh reality is nothing and it's like oh that's so depressing i want to kill myself no no no you realize it's nothing but then you realize nothing is love and then you realize like oh my god infinity is nothing infinity is god and god is what i am and that blows your mind so much it blows your whole heart open and then you become a fountain of love because love is just infinity it's an endless creative outpouring of form which is always held within a larger meta unity that's true love and that's what reality is that's what god is that's what you are and then from this place you can live a great life you can be detached you can be easy going you can laugh you can be playful you can be light-hearted you don't need to be afraid anymore you don't need to be terrified of death you don't need to worry about bad stuff happening to you you don't need to be worried about enemies out there who are doing bad stuff to you because it's all nothing see all those problems are negated when you realize the nothingness the hollowness of life and of course because that goes full circle the emptiness which you think is just depression that depression lifts and it turns into just uh joy joy and bliss and that's the whole point of the spiritual path is to realize this nothingness and then to bask in it as bliss and love see it goes full circle you surrender chasing pleasures of the material realm in order to discover the higher pleasures the divine sublime pleasures of the spiritual realm which is just purely nothing and that's what bliss is bliss is just blissing out on nothingness so don't let people fool you into thinking that this is just philosophy that these are just beliefs so these are just an ideology no no no this is something that you make a living reality and this is not something you brainwash yourself with like in a cult where you just tell yourself oh yeah i'm feeling positive because i'm empty and nothing no no that's not it you actually have to realize it you have to awaken to it it has to be your living conscious reality that's possible to do but it takes work and if you want to know how to do that work then hey subscribe to the channel stick around and you'll get more um content for me which helps you to guide helps to guide you in that direction