My thoughts of Leo and actualize.org. What do you think?

[Aware Wolf]

8 hours ago, Mandy said:

When you know what you don't want it makes it very clear to you what you do want. So in that sense there are no bad teachers, as a whole, bad teachers serve as good teachers because they are making it very clear to you what does not resonate as long as you are willing to move in the direction of what does resonate. I'm not saying that to gaslight, excuse or dismiss any behaviors, just to point out that essentially, everything is already working out for you. 

 

Hopefully, people are no worse for a bad teacher, and can move on, older and wiser. It's like that bulletin board saying about wisdom. Something like Wisdom is making good choices. You develop wisdom by making bad choices. 

However, sometimes people's lives are wrecked by spiritual teachers. Like my only very partial list of Charles Manson, Marshall Applewhite, David Koresh, Keith Raniere, Osho, Sogyal Rinpoche, Swami Muktanananda.  I could put in many, many others. Here's one, Thomas Rich / Osel  Tendzin. Chogyam Trungpa's successor. Sleeping with students, rape, all without disclosing he had AIDS. Some students contracted AIDS from Rich. In high control type of environments, if you don't resonate with the teaching -- the blame is on YOU. If you don't agree with the teaching or behavior, it's your EGO that is at fault. You need to look at yourself. In Raniere's NXIVM language, you are at cause. Who are you to question the guru / leader? Are you awakened? I think not! /s

I wouldn't call the damage these people left in their wake as "working out for them." 

[Baller]

OK, so I'm new here, and I've signed up to trash Leo and chew gum...and I'm all out of gum. 😉

 

But seriously, my own opinion, for what it's worth is that Leo isn't particularly enlightened at all, and I don't see why so many people believe otherwise.

 

My criteria for a person being enlightened is not the ability to give hour-long lectures about spirituality and enlightenment but observable behavior.  Does the person project like crazy?  Does he have good self-awareness? Leo fails miserably in this department, which suggests a very stubborn ego and unwillingness to integrate his shadow.

 

You are not enlightened just because you took a powerful psychedelic and are a sufficiently smart guy who can give pseudo-philosophical lectures.  All that's needed for that is ...taking psychedelics and a certain IQ/verbal ability.

 

Leo doesn't really understand the mechanics of his psychology.  He uses psychedelic insights as a way to concoct theories to prop up his wounded ego, without much concern about the effect his reckless opining has on his followers.  In other words, buyer beware.  Leo is about Leo.  He lacks empathy as is the case with narcissists.

 

People need to stop being impressed by blah-blah and only look at the person's behavior and whether they actually understand themselves -- because if they don't, God help you.  They will deflect blame onto others and be fairly irresponsible -- as is the case with Leo.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Baller
error (start = stop)

[Aware Wolf]

7 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I'm going to make a general comment here.  Sometimes it ain't right to burst someone's bubble.  If someone is attached to some kind of ideology whether religious or spiritual or some kind of life philosophy that they think is all that -- It's like, let them have that.  Again it comes down to right speech.  But once somebody starts trying to get philosophical and starts to argue about truth, that's where you don't get to make up all the rules anymore.  You choose to enter into that debate, and that's where you're going to pay the price of being criticized.  I'm perfectly fine with letting people believe whatever they want.  But once they start wanting to claim that it's truth and enter into that kind of debate, then that's where I become Socrates and will challenge someone just like I do to myself.  I've been trained to do it both in law and in philosophy.  But it's not like I'm walking around bursting people's bubbles just to do that.  I realize that all of us have comforting beliefs and ideologies that we cherish that may not have any reason to support them and I'm cool with allowing that.   But I'm not going to let someone try to enter into philosophy and be dogmatic about it because I value philosophy and once you go there I go there too.  This is where I think Leo Gura errs because he wants to enter into philosophy and talk about truth.  Well, there you have it!  If you love truth, you're gonna say, let's debate that like philosophers.  But he doesn't want to do that, so that's the rub.  He wants to use philosophy without the dialectic/discourse/debate that comes with philosophy if that makes sense.  It's like, no, as soon as you go there you can no longer be a dogmatist.  If you want to be immune from debate don't claim it's truth, just say it's what you believe and you're not interested in debating.  Dogmatists are not well received in philosophy. 

 

I like this post. I feel the same way. 

There's a lot of bullshit out there and I don't feel it's my call or responsibility to call it all out. If someone is a spiritual medium or says they are channeling an ancient enlightened being -- I don't buy it. But they are up front with it. People who attend the teachings know what they are getting. A cargo cult is a cargo cult. That's fine.

 

It's only when they try to tell me it's THE TRUTH (copyright by them) or their guru is a living enlightened Buddha or God Man, that I might choose to enter the fray. I feel somehow it's my karma that I run into these people, often at a center, or they join my table at a Vegan cafe and want to tell me how they've found the Truth and how what I'm doing will never work. LOL. I think I'm probably one of the worst people someone can evanglize a guru to. Sometimes I meekly demure, a guru isn't really my cup of tea if they seem nice. 

But sometimes when they claim Bhagavan (insert guru here) gave a good satsang talk and they had a warm glow in your heart and they felt Truth, Bliss, and Oneness -- it's not evidence he's a Buddha or a Ramana. Every True Believer of every religion has these feelings where they believe they're with God and in Truth. So did the Manson girls and the Heaven's Gaters -- and how did that turn out? It's just a good satsang talk, or maybe not even objectively that. No offense, but feelings are just feelings. It's evidence on par as a teen's claim that they know Korean Pop is the bestest evah because K-Pop makes their panties moist!

I don't expect to change people. They didn't ask me. Beliefs are resistant to change. I hope I may plant a seed. Also if there's other present, it presents another point of view. 

 

I try to be just as hard on myself. How do I know that what I believe is true, is true? Spiritual experiences are often by our concept of them. I believe you can't say you know they are true because you had the same experiences as X or what some book says, holy or otherwise,  or what some drug says. All concepts. One might have been primed. We can interpret our experiences retroactively. Experiences are memories and memories are fallible and malleable. Leo does this. So does the Arahant, Daniel Ingram. They think it's evidence their experiences are valid and show they are God or an Arahant -- but does it? 

There's a good Mark Twain quote that it's hard to convince a man of a truth when his paycheck depends on him believing something else. 

[Baller]

Leo is just a bad guru, period.  But a lot of responsibility also goes to his followers, who are lazy sheep who need to be spoonfed.  There are a million books out there by venerated teachers that in aggregate can give a seeker direction and some perspective and discernment.  But they are just mentally lazy people who don't want to read and instead passively get brainwashed and accept all kinds of mental frames and beliefs without questioning them. 

 

Leo throws everything and the kitchen sink at them before their heads are literally filled with shit.

[WhiteOwl]

@Cupcake Im Nothingness.. Im infinity.. Im Leo.. ok ok.. 

 

I was mostly a silent watcher on the other forum. Just dropping in to check the replies of a few users i resonated with, or to be outraged by the posts of Leo. I have 10 comments in total (peelingthelayers, if you really want to know). 

So pretty much brand new guy. I like it a lot more here 😚

[Faith]

Hey, @Robed Mystic I was just honestly wondering 🤔 what do you think about the fact that you can be banned from being a moderator on Actualized just for being here?

 

Or are you not worried about that, because he already knows you're here?

 

What motivated you to come here? You missed me, didn't you, lololol, just kidding. 😂

 

Anyways, I ask in the most respectful way, thank you.

 

 

[Faith]

8 minutes ago, WhiteOwl said:

So pretty much brand new guy. I like it a lot more here 😚

It's hard to keep track as the forum grows who I've welcomed to the forum? ...but, I think you got by me?

 

Soooooo

 

 

 

[WhiteOwl]

@Faith Im not sure if you did either, someone did. But thank you! 🤗

[Faith]

@WhiteOwl Your welcome😁

[Baller]

33 minutes ago, WhiteOwl said:

 Im Nothingness.. Im infinity.. Im Leo.. ok ok.. 

 

LOL. Yeah, Leo is a textbook example of what happens when someone with narcissistic personality disorder drops powerful psychedelics.  

 

All is God/God is All becomes I am God/All is Me.

[Baller]

7 minutes ago, DMT Elf said:

Which Leo tells everyone to do anyway

 

Leo sends mixed messages constantly -- he is one huge performative contradiction.  He basically bludgeons the naive and lazy into mental submission by abusing their innocence and trust.  So I totally disagree with this idea that what a teacher says and not his actions are what matters -- words are cheap.

 

I mean, unless one's idea of learning is getting so mentally messed up (like has happened with many people on the forum) that you learn a bitter lesson in thinking for yourself and doing your own research.  So he is teaching many people a bitter lesson at best, and in some cases committing negligent homicide.

[Faith]

4 hours ago, Baller said:

OK, so I'm new here, and I've signed up to trash Leo and chew gum...and I'm all out of gum. 😉

 

😂 Well, you're certainly in the right thread.

 

Welcome to the forum!

[Baller]

1 hour ago, Faith said:

 

😂 Well, you're certainly in the right thread.

 

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks! 😄

[Ges]

@Joseph Maynor The Mystic dude is clearly delusional. It looks like religious delusions, so I think it is part ideology and part mental illness. I think he should probably check with a therapist, or at least stay away from these topics until he recovers and gains a little bit of perspective, clarity, and detachment. Practices like meditation and contemplation are always good and he should probably stick with them more instead of mindlessly consuming and recycling other people's ideas.

Like, for God's sake, he came here just to proselytize to us after many of us had fled from his brainwashing there, what does that tell you? I just hope he isn't proselytizing that way in real life because that would probably be pretty problematic for him.

[Forza21]

3 hours ago, Ges said:

@Joseph Maynor The Mystic dude is clearly delusional. It looks like religious delusions, so I think it is part ideology and part mental illness. I think he should probably check with a therapist, or at least stay away from these topics until he recovers and gains a little bit of perspective, clarity, and detachment. Practices like meditation and contemplation are always good and he should probably stick with them more instead of mindlessly consuming and recycling other people's ideas.

Like, for God's sake, he came here just to proselytize to us after many of us had fled from his brainwashing there, what does that tell you? I just hope he isn't proselytizing that way in real life because that would probably be pretty problematic for him.

<knock knock>
<random stranger> who's there?
<Dave> do you want to talk about how you are God, and dreaming me right now? 😄

I have nothing to him, but shoving awakening down the throat, even if people don't want it here, it's werid, to say at least. 🙂

 

 

[Ges]

@Joseph Maynor What can I say except that I hope you're right?

On a different note, I can't thank you enough for all the insights you share on your channels, man. I'd already watched the stage Emerald video and been watching "Unpacking The Issue of Epistemology" when you posted the reply. I thought it was kind of on point with the discussion as I think Leo is very similar to Spinoza.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Ges

[Aware Wolf]

1 hour ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I don't get this about Leo Gura's new video on "How to Avoid Being Scammed."  He said in this video "gullible" is not in any dictionary. 

It's in my dictionary.  I have a Merriam-Westers Dictionary (2004) (one of those smaller hand-sized versions).  It defines "gullible" as "easily duped or cheated." 

I don't understand why Leo would say "gullible" is not in any dictionary.  That raises a red flag and I'm just not sure what to make of this statement from Leo.  

Source:  See (finding timestamp)

 

 

Leo is correct. 

 

I looked in the Oxford English Dictionary and it's NOT there, and "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world."

 

 

This is from  Urban dictionary. 

 

gullible - Urban Dictionary

https://www.urbandictionary.com › define › term=gulli...

Being gullible is nothing more than trusting someone who should not be trusted. ; The only word that is not in the dictionary. Go look. ; 

 

Perhaps @Mandy could help us here as she loves words

As I understand it, the word was removed to make room for new words like twerking and cheugy. In a post Truth world, gullibility doesn't mean anything anymore. It's like Charlie Manson said about crazy, used to be crazy used to mean something. Now a days everyone is crazy. 

 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Aware Wolf
adding

[Aware Wolf]

@Joseph Maynor Online dictionaries may still carry outdated words because they're not faced with the same limitations as physical in-print dictionaries. But they're not the official source and guideline for language as the print sources are. 

[Aware Wolf]

39 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

 

There is no one right dictionary.  The purpose of any dictionary is to elucidate how words are used.  

 

For Descriptive purposes, yes. For Prescriptive purposes, as a guide to language, No. 

 

Words like "mobile phone" have gone the way of the dodo. Just say "mobile' or "phone" or ("talk stick" or "blower" if you want to be hip)

"Bosom" is another old word that got yeeted out. 

"Broad" for female. Unless you're on the Actualized forum it's unlikely to go over well. 
"Phat" -- remember this from the 90s ?? 

 

Hope this helps. 

Edited April 9, 2022 by Aware Wolf

[Aware Wolf]