How Your Mind Distorts Reality – Needy vs Non-Needy Perception

hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I’m going to be talking about how your mind distorts reality and I’m going to tell you how to start developing accurate perception I want to start off by reading you a powerful quote quote the strength of man’s position in the world depends on the degree of adequacy of his perception of reality the less adequate it is the more disoriented and hence insecure he is and hence he is in need of idols to lean on and thus find security the more adequate it is the more he can stand on his own feet and have his center within himself and quote that’s from psychologist Erich Fromm this is a very foundational episode I’m going to introduce you to a very important distinction that’s going to serve you throughout the rest of your self-actualization journey and it’s going to be very eye-opening for you if you stick with me it’s really worth it to stick with me on this one the distinction that I’m going to introduce to you here is one that actually comes to us from Abraham Maslow who is sort of the father of self actualization he coined the concept and the distinction is this deficiency cognition versus being cognition we can also label it as deficiency perception versus being perception so we’re going to be using the words cognition and perception interchangeably throughout this talk so there’s two kinds the deficiency kind and the being kind now I’m going to go into some lengths and give you a lot of examples and a lot of nuanced compare and contrasting between these two so you get a real good idea but a shorthand way to talk about them is D cognition versus be cognition right D for deficiency B for being or D perception versus B perception so that’s just technical jargon that if you hear me using you understand what I mean so this concept comes to us from Abraham Maslow the question is though it’s kind of nerdy sounding why is it important how can we actually apply this in our own lives actually it’s very important because this is one of the hallmark characteristics of a self actualized human being one of the things that I want to do more of is I want to introduce you and explain the concept of self-actualization in more subtler shades and nuances because if I just take let’s say the average person on the street and ask him what is self-actualization he’ll give me a blank look he’ll have no idea now if I take someone who’s been watching my videos for the last two years and I asked him what is self-actualization it’s still going to be a problem because what you’re going to do is you’re going to tell me something like well self-actualization is some sort of like synonym for self-improvement it’s basically self-improvement becoming the best version of myself yadda yadda yadda is something like that right but this is a very uh you know a very simplistic kind of like the most basic definition of self-actualization that you can have self-actualization for Abraham Maslow and for myself when I say self-actualization to me it means a laundry list of about 20 things very specific concrete attributes of a human being that a self-actualized person has which contrast to the ordinary human being who doesn’t have these attributes it’s ways of looking at the world and interacting with the world and ways of being and ways of using your mind so the problem though is that you know self-actualization is this very abstract high-level concept and that can be very useful but also it can be very limiting because most people can’t wrap their mind around it because they don’t really know what the full definition of the word means and to them it’s just like an empty label so to press that issue we’re going to dress it in multiple episodes but we’re going to tackle it here in this episode by talking about one very important feature of self-actualized people and it is that they have being cognition or being perception as opposed to deficiency cognition or deficiency perception I’m going to be telling you a lot of quotes from Maslow and some other amazing writers in this episode so stay with me because these are very powerful very insightful quotes so here is how Abraham Maslow describes it very beautifully he says quote a self actualizing person is more able to perceive the world as if it were independent not only of him but also of human beings in general he can then more readily look upon nature as if it were there in itself and for itself and not simply as if it were a human playground put there for human purposes he can more easily refrain from projecting human purposes onto it and in a word he can see it is there in its own being rather than as something to be used or something to be afraid of or something to be reacted to in some other human way a section of cancer seen through a microscope if only we can forget that it is a cancer can be seen as a beautiful and intricate and awe inspiring organization a mosquito is a wondrous object if seen as an end in itself and quote so what is being cognition or being perception it’s the ability to look at things holistically as they actually are in a very attentive way without judging or classifying these things it’s an ego less self agenda list form of perception in Maslow’s words it’s unmotivated its impersonal its desireless its unselfish it’s not needing and it’s detached so this is your ability to perceive an object for itself and not the way that it is for you for itself meaning that your desires and fears and emotions and your self agenda doesn’t infect and get projected on to the object itself now this object could be a physical object like a tree or a car or a coffee table or it could be a living object could be an animal it could be a human being it could also be an institution like government or the Republican Party or the Church of latter-day saints or Mormons or a race of people african-americans or Asians or whites or whatever so you can start to see the potential ramifications of this right because how you perceive an object is very important because it dictates how you then react to that object now if you perceive an object as it is for itself you kind of get the most accurate representation of it as you can yet if you perceive an object as it is for you what you get is you get a tainted perception you get a perception which is got baked into it your own issues in life whatever they happen to be and you can have all sorts of different issues in life or other people could have all sorts of different issues in life and in fact what could happen if you’re not the one doing it you could be on the receiving end of this so other people could perceive you not as you are for yourself but as you are to them does that ring some bells has that ever happen to you people don’t take your words or your presentation or your message or your work just as it is they project their own issues onto it and onto you and when that happens to you that usually is not something that you like you think it’s unfair and you think it’s inaccurate and you think it creates problems well likewise when you do it so being cognition is the ability to avoid this kind of projection that the human mind tends to do you could say it’s the most accurate form of perception that’s possible for a human being it’s a passive and a receptive form of perception in the sense that you don’t add a lot of stuff to it and it’s also a benevolent form of perception which is something that Maslow is going to explain as I read one of his quotes let me read some more for Maslow because he’s got some brilliant descriptions of all this stuff he says quote self actualizing people take a non valuing nonjudging non-interfering non condemning attitude towards others a desire lessness and a choiceless awareness this understanding permits much clearer and more insightful perception and understanding of what is actually there and quote he also says quote concrete perceiving of the whole of the object implies also that it is seen with care the carrying my Newton as’ with which a mother will gaze upon her infant again and again or the lover at his beloved or the connoisseur at his paintings this will surely produce a more complete perception then the usual casual rubra sizing which passes for perception illegitimate Lea and code so you starting to see this difference it’s the difference between really looking at something and seeing it as it is versus what we normally call perception which is this kind of rubra sizing putting the perception into a conceptual framework so let’s now contrast and compare this being cognition with deficiency cognition D cognition what is this well this is ordinary perception when ordinary people talk about perception we like to say that it’s just like oh it’s just you know it’s perception is the fact it’s how reality is when I perceive something when I see a tree or a car or a person or a government organization I’m looking at it objectively I’m seeing the facts that’s how we tend to present it to ourselves but is that really what’s happening what Maslow would suggest is that this is a actually a partial and incomplete form of experience it’s an anxiety based and a deficiency motivated way of perceiving the world because it’s driven by the ego and by yourself agenda so the degree to which you have deficiencies that agree to which you need security or safety or emotional comfort or money or whatever your ego happens to need in life that’s the degree to which you’re going to evaluate the things you look at to see if they’re going to give that to you or if they are not see your mind is very brilliant at automatically and unconsciously for you filtering out what’s relevant and what’s not relevant so if we’re not careful and if we’re just going about perceiving the world in a deficiency motivated way what will happen is that we’re going to look at the world and we’re going to perceive all sorts of things happening in the world that aren’t really there but we perceive them that they’re there because of what these things mean for me for my ego and my self agenda does this thing make me happy or does it make me sad does it make me angry or does make me calm is this good for me or bad for me how’s this for my family how is this for my business how much money is this thing going to make me is it pretty is it beautiful or is it ugly all these judgments and evaluations that we project this is a more active form of perception than being perception because with being perception all you got to do is you got to sit back and let in whatever is there with deficiency cognition though what you’re doing is you’re you’re actively manipulating the perception but this happens so automatically by your mind that you don’t really notice that it’s happening this D perception this deficiency perception is also an through Panther eccentric an anthropocentric form of perception what this means is that it’s a way of looking at the world from the human species perspective like Maslow said as though the world was a playground and a tool for human beings this of course is not the case but we often forget this we tend to look at everything as though it’s made for human beings what can human beings do with it does it serve humanity and if it doesn’t well then we either ignore it or we destroy it or we discount it in some way this is very commonly seen in science where supposedly the scientists are supposed to be very objective thinkers and yet they take a very anthropocentric view on reality deficiency perception it also tends to be rigidly rational overly rational hyper left-brain thinking because it tends to be very abstract to be very good at deficiency cognition what you need to do is you need to abstract from the facts that are there to whatever concepts and models you want about reality so what’s your you’re abstracting from the concrete from the facts you’re abstracting some kind of inference or theory or a model or some sort of little handy mnemonic or a tool with which to manipulate these concrete facts but that’s very different than the concrete fats themselves but see what happens a lot of times is that we abstract but then we forget and we tell ourselves oh no we never abstracted in the first place we tell ourselves that our abstractions are perceptions when in fact that’s not the case also with Dean with with deficiency perception what tends to happen is that the person is not really able to hold paradox very well that’s that rigid rationalism which demands things to fit into a certain conceptual framework and into our rubrics of how reality ought to be also this kind of cognition D cognition tends to be dogmatic and ideological very interesting let me reduce some more for Maslow on this point he says quote in ordinary cognition the object is seen not so much per se but as a member of a class as an instance in a larger category this kind of perception I have described as quote rubra sizing and again would have to point out that this is not so much a full perception of all aspects of the object or the person being perceived as it is a kind of taxonomy a classifying a ticketing off and a putting away into one file cabinet or another to a far greater degree than we ordinarily realize cognition involves also placing on a continuum it involves a kind of automatic comparing or judging or evaluating it implies a higher than a less than a better than a taller than etc and quote he also goes on to say quote it is as if less developed people live in an Aristotelian world in which classes and concepts have sharp boundaries and are mutually exclusive and incompatible for example male-female selfish unselfish adult child kind cruel good bad a is a and everything else is not a that’s how it is in Aristotelian logic and never the twain shall meet but seen by a self actualizing person this is fact is this in fact is not that a and not a interpenetrate sorry it’s a fact that a and not a interpenetrate and r1 that any person is simultaneously good and bad male and female adult and child end quote he also goes on to say quote abstractions to the extent that they are useful are also false in a word to perceive an object abstractly means not to perceive some aspects of it it clearly implies selection of some attributes rejection of other attributes and creation or distortion of still others so that we create it we manufacture it he also says quote let us take for example the perception of a painting or a person in order to perceive them fully we must fight our tendency to classify to compare to evaluate to need and to use the moment that we say this man is for example a foreigner in that moment we have classified them and performed an abstracting act and to some extent curse elves off from the possibility of seeing him as a unique and whole human being and quote and he also says quote fully disinterested desireless objective and holistic perception of another human being becomes possible only when nothing is needed from him and quote and finally he says quote my studies of self actualizing people have found them simultaneously the ability to abstract without giving up concreteness and the ability to be concrete without giving up abstractness end quote so the key insight that I want you to get from this talk is that your own egoic deficiencies warp your perceptions try to realize just how significant this is what I’m telling you do you understand what I’m actually telling you are you hearing me I’m saying that your own egoic deficiencies your own neuroses warp your perception of reality what I’m telling you is that the very interface between you and reality is compromised by your lack of mental health and that the accuracy of your perceptions depend on your emotional maturity and your mental health and that this distortion that’s created this is not a small Distortion this is not something we can just say oh yeah yeah Leo I know there’s a little bit of distortion between what my ego wants and my self agenda and between what I actually see no what I’m saying is that it’s a highly significant Distortion it’s not a small Distortion we can sweep under the rug and say everything’s okay it’s a massive distortion which leads to many of the issues you have in your life so this is not just you know a philosophical considerations is not a theoretical consideration is a very practical consideration this explains many of the issues and recurring dysfunctional patterns that happen in your life that you just can’t eliminate and can’t stop and you don’t know why you can’t well you know why because your perception is so inaccurate of reality that you can’t even see that the problems you have in your life are being created by your perceptions and so what happens is that you go out there in the real world and you try to change things in your life you try to get a new job you try to change your girlfriend or you try to change your husband you try to change your kids you try to change the city you live in the country you live in you try to change how much money you have in your bank account you try to go to the gym and change how you look you change how you talk you change how you dress you change all this stuff and yet all the problems basically still remain for you that’s because the problems are largely a function of your flawed perception of your deficiency cognition and your inability to have being cognition so if you want to really self actualize you need to start to see the importance of this and to start developing being cognition you need to start to notice not just to hear from me intellectually and just to believe me but you need to actually experientially start to notice how your mind warps reality and how it rubra sizes reality by rubra sizing reality this is Maslow’s word what we mean is we just mean that your mind creates kind of a conceptual rubric or framework and then it tries to get reality to match your concepts of reality rather than just seeing what’s there in reality without any kind of rubric or judgments or evaluations or stipulations of your own it really is sobering to come to a point in your own psychological development where you look around you and you realize like you really grasp that you live in an augmented reality augmented reality is not some technological fantasy of the future where computers and virtual reality goggles will project onto ordinary reality some kind of computer images augmented reality is already here it’s what the human mind is a genius at doing this is what makes the human race such a powerful and also destructive force on this planet is that we are probably the only organism on this planet that lives in an augmented reality augmented by our concepts and our images and our fantasies and our desires augmented in such a way what we don’t realize that this augmentation is happening and yet at the same time our minds tell us that we are the only self-aware creatures on this planet and the mind it plays this little trick it says no but Leo what are you talking about human beings are the most self-aware creatures we know ourselves were awake so to speak it’s all the dumb animals that don’t really know what they’re doing human beings we know what we’re doing but the more you grow psychologically the more you discover just how big of a sham this narrative is society tends to feed that narrative to us even science tends to feed into this narrative that like human beings that are that you know the intellectual top of the food chain and the the intelligence chain on this planet and while you know human beings unquestionably have some remarkable mental abilities the problem is that we don’t acknowledge that the ego creates a kind of smog through which we can’t clearly see reality I love this concept ego smog from david bohm beautiful concept David Bohm is a quantum physicist well he was he’s no longer alive but he’s a really brilliant thinker and a very a great example of a scientist who’s both rational but also post rational and highly intuitive and was very very attuned to this problem that I’m speaking about here he was one of the scientists one of the few scientists who really got it who really saw the limits of the human mind and how it creates this ego smog which distorts your ability to see and to think and then from which all most of your human problems stem in fact what I want to do is I want to quote David Bohm here because he has a very insightful ways of wording this he says quote thought is always doing a great deal but it tends to say that it hasn’t done anything that it is just telling you the way things are but thought affects everything what thought takes to be perception what we ordinarily call perception is actually highly affected by thought thought can produce experiences without our being aware that they are being produced by thought it is this deceptive feature of thought that we have to watch out for this is the point I’m trying to make thought is affecting what you see in many subtle ways you may miss the fact that this is coming from flawed itself what is really missing is that we have to be able to see that flawed is actually participating in perception we are infusing our imagination our past and our knowledge into what we see and eventually it models up the brain from that going wrong it spreads and becomes a systemic fault that spreads into everything and quote that’s all various excerpts from the physicist David Bohm so what do we do about all this it seems like a pretty deep systemic problem and it is we’re only scratching the surface of how deep and how systemic this problem is this problem is like a bug you might say in the minds operating system the mind is blind to the minds own biases and this plays out in your life they’re practically creates a lot of your practical problems in life relationships business financial problems emotional problems inability to be satisfied and fulfilled with life depression stress anxiety nervousness all the many neuroses that you have they all ultimately stem from this but also it creates a lot of problems collectively for society war genocide governments abusing their citizens famines religious intolerance and so forth all of these problems are also ultimately stemming from this problem the systemic Fault in the way that the human mind works this is a deep study there’s a lot we could say about this but I don’t have that much time maybe I’ll cover it more in the future in other episodes because I really want to talk about the the social problems of all this because it really goes way beyond just your own personal development so what’s required here is practice we need you to get awareness over the fact that this is happening on a daily basis in your life and that you’re living your life from deficiency perception you’re perceiving life from your own deficiencies but this is hard to just believe and it doesn’t help you to just believe me you have to actually see it for yourself you have to develop awareness for your own projections how you project your own agenda and your own rubric onto reality onto people onto things onto situations in your life onto your business onto your your spouse onto your children this happens every day for you see to turn this around what needs to happen you just start looking at objects at people for themselves as they actually are and not how they are for you and to do that let me point out some important things for you the following list of things are all projections of your mind which do not actually exist in the external world and which are not a feature of reality itself firstly labels and names that we give to objects these are all projections also every category taxonomy and hierarchy that we impose upon reality is artificially constructed by the human mind it’s a projection it doesn’t actually exist in reality even more importantly meanings judgments values usefulness and purpose are all projections of your mind onto reality so whenever you look at a situation or an object or a person and you get a meaning from that or you judge that or you put a valuation on it like you say well that’s valuable or that’s not valuable or you say that’s useful to me or that’s not useful to me or you say that has a purpose or that has no purpose all of that activity is a projection of your mind and a part of deficiency cognition are you taking this in are you seeing the severity and the magnitude of what I’m talking about here this is so pervasive the tentacles of this issue go into every facet of your life this thing is like a cancer deficiency perception is like a cancer and it’s like a cancer that’s at a at a very you know advanced stage where it’s starting to infect every organ and every tissue in your body it’s not just localized into one little area think about how many meanings you assign to situations and people and objects in life how many judgements you make how many valuations you create how many things you evaluate based on its usefulness to you or not can you stomach the fact that all that stuff is a mental abstraction a projection of your mind and if these things don’t actually exist in the real world I’m talking about some heavy stuff here that means like when you’re when your parents get cancer and one of them dies whatever meaning you assigned to their death that’s a mental projection of your mind or when your child gets sick and you’re worried about your child because you really fear for their health or something like that or for their future your child let’s say gets into some you know dangerous situation again that’s a project of your mind or when you’re when you’re dating somebody and you’re trying to find you know that dream girlfriend or dream boyfriend or spouse that you want to marry and whatever feelings you have about this person whether positive or negative whatever evaluations you make of them however you see them fitting into your life that all of these things are actually not that person they’re all creations of your mind they’re part of the ego fog or the ego smog as David Bohm explained it also emotional triggers so this one’s really important to watch out for and this one’s very practical for you because any time that you get emotionally triggered by situation whether it’s someone yelling at you or someone calling you a bad name or someone even doing you harm or someone stealing some money from you or someone breaking your heart rejecting you annoying you frustrating you taking advantage of you abusing you physically or emotionally the emotional triggers you have from that are also all creations of your mind that’s huge can you see how huge that is those triggers are not in the situation or in the object they’re completely in your mind also and this one’s really huge see if you could follow me on this one it’s very advanced insight relationships between objects do not actually exist every relationship between one object and another object is a projection of the human mind in reality everything in the universe is infinitely related to every other thing in the universe the relationships are infinite the only question is which relationships does your mind focus on you see you actually try this out as an exercise sit down in a room by yourself and just look at any object and notice its relationship to you and then notice that that’s actually one out of an infinite number of billions and trillions of relationships that that exact object has with everything else in the universe and yet your mind D focuses all of those and just focuses on this one your relationship let’s say to the lamp or your relationship to your spouse but the reality is that your spouse is related to you as much as she or he is to to the moon to the Sun to the president the United States to the person you hate next-door like your neighbor to you know whatever’s going on on on Pluto who’s actually picking out the relationship who actually establishes that a relationship even exists the human mind it projects it it projects it as a function of self survival it’s part of your ego agenda for whatever reason is helpful for you to perceive this one relationship here and then not only do you perceive a relationship but then of course you add so much more to it you know what is the relationship how do you feel towards this person who is this person nice to you do they owe you do you owe them is their guilt going on is their shame as their embarrassment you know all this stuff all week we get so emotionally tied up with relationships and I don’t just mean with people I also mean with objects what’s your relationship to your car you do have a relationships your car if you’re like most people because you know if you walked out tomorrow and you saw that a tree had fallen on your car and crush it in half uh you would have an emotional reaction you wouldn’t just stand there and be like oh my car just got destroyed by that tree that’s not how you would actually react you would be like holy and you actually probably feel sad for your car or you’d feel pissed off that a piece of property that’s yours another relationship is that you own that piece of property another fiction of your mind but see that relationship is there as well so this whole web of relationships comes into your mind and now all the sudden you know you’re upset by this your car has been destroyed and now you’re reacting emotionally to all this and you really feel like you lost some value that was a thirty thousand dollar car it was brand-new I just bought it brought it home from the dealership last week and now it’s destroyed and my insurance company you know what are they gonna do they’re probably bastards not gonna pay me what it’s worth another relationship you have is your relationship to your insurance company and what do you feel about your insurance company how do you evaluate them what kind of judgments do you make about them what kind of meanings do you assign to that do you see how these tentacles reach very far in your life that’s in some ways what makes them so difficult to track is because they just it’s like a web write it just like a chain and it goes many many many levels deep and it’s all nested in each in itself which makes it very hard to untangle this giant mess in your mind which is why when you have some kind of psychological problem in your life like let’s say you’re depressed or you have low self-esteem you don’t like how you look you’re not confident with women or with men or you’re insecure with business or you’re insecure about your money situation all these things you think this is just like a little individual isolated problem but actually it’s not it’s a consequence of this web just giant web and relationship and beliefs and judgments that you project onto reality it’s really a a defect or a bug within the mental software that you’ve been spinning in your mind you see but it doesn’t feel that way because it takes so much work to become conscious of this it takes years of work to become conscious of this and lastly the thing that doesn’t exist is separations and boundaries objects themselves are creations of the mind this thing goes so deep that even you’re looking at a car and calling it a car and thinking of it as a physical object a car with four wheels and it’s colored red or whatever that itself is a separation or a mental boundary that your mind carves out of a completely unified phenomenal field which has no objects in it reality does not have any objects if you look upon reality ever in your life with complete lucidity and this is possible with complete lucidity and being cognition you will see that there is not a single boundary or object in reality but that’s going to take some work take a lot of work to see that that’s not something you can get to just from hearing me talk about this stuff the most important thing you gotta understand here is that everything I’m talking about is just mental noise to you even if you like it and you agree with it and you believe it and it sounds all very eye-opening it makes no difference because it’s just another piece of knowledge and your knowledge graph in your web of beliefs what really makes the difference is when you actually are able to change how you perceive and just getting another thought into your mind does not change how you perceive so how do you change how you perceive well in practice the situation is pretty bleak it’s very difficult to grasp what I’m telling you experientially and most people will not grasp it which is actually from the problem and the place from which virtually all of social problems stem the reason we have all these social problems social inequality wars and terrorism all these things is because it’s just so freakin hard to grasp but I’m telling you experientially if everyone on earth was able to grasp it all these problems would mostly be solved instantly but nevertheless you as an individual can do it if you really see the importance of it and you’re willing to allocate the time and energy that this topic deserves not just a casual you know listening to me talk for an hour that’s nothing that’s a drop in the bucket this requires practice and if you’re not willing to practice it’s not going to happen for you what’s going to happen you’re just going to listen to me you’re going to forget all this you’re going to fall back asleep next week and you’re just going to go on with deficiency perception perceiving reality through the go explore that you have and all the agenda that you have and not as reality actually is if you ever gazed upon reality as it actually is you’ll discover that there are no problems in reality every problem is a fabrication of your mind think about the most deepest problem you have that just bugs the hell out of you that you think is just completely insurmountable you have one of those most of us do whatever that is pick one for yourself right now and now try to imagine that thing is a complete fabrication of your mind and doesn’t exist at all you created it below how could that be that’s not possible not with my bromley you understand my problems a real problem like I got a real leo I got a real serious problem like my child is a drug addict how can you tell me that that’s a projection of my mind that’s a real problem uh yeah it’s um it’s tough to to convince someone who’s so unconsciously absorbed in their deficiency perception of reality that it’s even possible to perceive reality from a position of being perception and this is exactly what differentiates an ordinary human being from a self actualizing human being is that the self actualizing human being maybe not always maybe not fully not a heart set at the time but at least to a significant degree is able to look upon reality from outside themselves in an objective fashion outside of the smog of their ego so how do we actually practice this let’s say you’re really committed and you’re saying like leo okay you’ve convinced me I really want to change something here how do I change my perception how do I get this self actualized form of perception well here’s a little exercise for you that you can start to use to do this it’s real simple select an object or a person that you either hate or you love and then see it for itself as it actually is and not how it is for you see it independent of its value or its meaning or its purpose or is usefulness to you or to humanity look at the object as though God up in the clouds was looking at the object totally dispassionate in other words but not in a sort of like left-brain highly analytical way because that can be a trap to a lot of times scientists or rational people will convince themselves like well Leo I’m already doing this you don’t understand you know I’m a I’m very rashly – scientific minded personal truth is something that I’m a champion of yeah and uh and and so therefore you know I already am doing what you’re saying I already am perceiving from a being cognition perspective no you’re not not at all in fact your rationalism is a is a very big example of deficiency cognition it’s not a complete perception because your rationalism includes all the mental categories concepts knowledge frameworks in which you place the object that’s not what I’m talking about I’m talking about something very different something you probably haven’t ever done in your entire life maybe you did it when you were a child before mainstream society filled your mind with modern-day rational ways of thinking that’s what we’re taught right we’re not really taught religion nowadays we’re taught rationalism that is the new religion rationalism but it’s even more dangerous than old religion because old religion you could tell it was and you could tell that it was like it was religion and you can see that it contrasts to practical everyday logic but with modern scientific rationalism you can’t see that anymore so you pick an checked that you hate or that you love and you try to sit there and look at it in the present moment not even as an object because even calling it an object is already you rubra sizing it this takes some work when you first try it it’s going to seem weird it’s going to seem like what the hell am i doing you might be sitting there looking at a lamp for 30 minutes trying to see the layout as it is for itself and not how it is for you the fact that you see it as a lamp is how it is for you not for itself for itself it’s not a lamp for itself it doesn’t have any function for itself its purpose is not to light the room for itself it’s not even an object it’s not big it’s not small it’s not tall it’s not short it’s not beautiful it’s not ugly it’s not old it’s not you knew it’s not worth $10 or $100 or $1,000 or however much you paid for it it’s none of those things what is it actually so your job is to sit there and just to look at it until you can get to the point where you can be with it completely from a position of being conditioned and then contrast and compare that experience with the everyday experience you have a lamp which is deficiency cognition so one thing I don’t want you to do is I want you to trick yourself here into thinking like well Leo I already do being cognition all the time no you don’t all your ordinary perception that you have from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep nowadays unless you’ve done years or decades of meditation work or enlightenment work is all deficiency cognition so don’t fool yourself thinking that you’re somehow immune or exempt or above what I’m talking about here you’re not above it at all and act let’s do this little experiment right now as you’re watching me or if you’re listening to me on audio from right now until the end of this episode which will be other five or ten minutes I want you to practice this perceive me for myself not for yourself perceive me without any evaluations about whether I’m good for you or bad for you whether I’m right or wrong whether I’m beautiful or I’m ugly whether what I’m saying make sense or it doesn’t whether it’s logical or it’s illogical whether I’m Leo or not leo or whether even I’m a human being or I’m a mammal or I’m a physical object however you classify me throw all those away for a minute and just try to stay conscious for the next five minutes let’s say of what you’re getting for me the actual perception of me – your ego smog – all your rubrics whether positive or negative try that right now and try to stay conscious and I want you to notice if you forget as I’m talking and you fall back asleep so a couple more points I want to make here one is the connection of all this being cognition to enlightenment and mindfulness so the connection is very direct enlightenment basically is the dissolution of your ego so it is the removal of the ego smog if you’re wondering why I keep talking about enlightenment so much now you can start to see because it removes the ego smog which allows you to perceive reality in the most accurate way that’s humanly possible sounds rather important now doesn’t it same thing for meditation same thing for mindfulness work I talked a lot about these topics and I’ll be talking more and more about these topics in greater and greater depth in the future and I want you to stay with me on these topics because these topics are the ones that will transform the quality of your life the most if you are just open-minded enough to it and also if you take action on it and don’t just take it all as theory and beliefs so there’s a very direct connection between all this and enlightenment and enlightenment experience is pure being perception but you could increase your being perception without having an enlightening experience so you know enlightening seems pretty rare might take you a few years to get one so don’t think that all just you know until I’m enlightened then I’m not improving no you can work and improve your being perception just by improving your neuroses you know every neuroses that you identify and fix in your life every emotional dysfunction that you remove means that your deficiencies are reduced means that they have a less of a distorted effect on your perception of reality have you ever this is an interesting example have you ever interacted with a human being who is like a total victim like very pessimistic very negative everything you tell them they just tell you no that’s not going to work it’s not going to work for me I can’t do that no don’t do that that’s gonna lead to failure you ever try talking to these kinds of people maybe you have some of these in your family hell maybe you are one of those types people yourself and kind of struggling with that right what do you tell these people because you can see you can clearly see that this person is stuck in deficiency cognition everything they look at is tainted by their own you know dysfunctional filters and their own need for love like you ever had a needy girlfriend or boyfriend and at first it’s kind of cute but then it gets real old real fast when they get real needy with you and they start demanding love from you and they want compliments from you and everything you tell them just isn’t good enough all the love you give them they just they they can’t really take it because you know their whole perception of reality including the relationship you have with them and their perception of love is all being perceived through deficiency cognition and the more you try to change them or to help them the the worse it gets because even your attempts to change them they because they’re their deficiency is so great they perceive as you actually not loving them or you know trying to change them in some egotistical or narcissistic manner or you threatening them they take your attempts to change them or to help them or to give them like a self-help book or you tell them hey come watch one of these videos and they are threatened by that they get offended by that or they start to attack you for that they start to tell you no why are you listening to this New Age hippie nonsense you’re listening to this stupid bald Leo telling you all this you know filling your mind with crap next thing you know you’re gonna become some yogi in a in a cave somewhere it’s gonna be all his fault right you experienced that very common so yeah you know some people are really far gone with it but it’s a spectrum so it’s not like you’re either black or white you know you’re either perfect or or you’re neurotically dysfunctional most people are somewhere in between uh it varies quite a bit but the average person is quite a bit uh dysfunctional and deficient in their perception so that’s that point also let me talk briefly about the connection of this to rationalism so I have an episode that I recently released called why rationality is wrong it’s basically a critique of rationality and this episode here really should dovetail with that one that you can consider this one kinda like a sequel to that one because everything I talked about there the limits of rationality and the limits of thinking and the distinction between awareness and thought well that’s what I’m talking about here now just from different perspectives giving you more detail on it this is where rationalism really fails rationalism as a system fails to see its own systemic flaw which is its own blind sided nassif act that thoughts warp and distort perception what the rationalist tells himself or what his mind tells him rather is that the mind says hey look we’re thinking and our thinking is so good that we got it all down but actually what’s happening is that that thinking as David Bohm was saying that thinking is influencing the rationalist perceptions and tainting it to the point where what the rationalist is perceiving is actually a construction of his own rationalism and in this way he tricks and deceives himself into seeing things that are not actually out there but they’re actually just figments of him at of his imagination and one of the greatest figments of the rationalist imagination is that rationalism is the end-all be-all system of analyzing and arriving at truth when in fact it’s not not at all so that’s my point about rationalism let me wrap up now I hope you can see how powerful this is I’m I’m frankly at a loss of words to convey to you how I don’t know what I have to do to have to jump up and down to convey to you how how deeply significant this is for you to make a study of this you cannot self actualize without changing your cognition you can’t be self actualized and looking at the world from deficiency cognition which is basically another way of saying that you cannot self actualize while maintaining your ego which is another way of saying that you cannot self actualize without enlightenment ultimately how can you I mean you could improve your life without alignment sure you can improve your life you can earn more money and you can have better relationships and stuff so you can do improvement but you’re not really going to get to like the the part of life that’s really juicy and satisfying the self actualizing part so you have to make a choice and the choice for you is the following are you going to stay faithful to your self agenda or to reality what’s more important to you your self agenda or reality and these two things are at odds because you’re selfish Enda distorts reality so if your full loyalty goes to self agenda then reality will be distorted okay that’s guaranteed it’s kind of like a law of psychological physics you might say and just you know the flip side of that if you are totally loyal to reality then reality will distort your self agenda which are you less comfortable with the distortion of reality or the distortion of your self agenda do you realize that self agenda is the distortion of reality that’s what self agenda is you have to distort reality to create a partition within an unpartitioned reality for there to be space for an ego because there’s no actually ego the ego is a fiction that’s where all this is ultimately rooted in is that the ego is a fiction your self agenda is a total fiction to maintain it you have to distort reality because if you didn’t distort reality you would see that it’s a fiction and then it couldn’t exist and on the other hand if you’re going to pay all your allegiance to reality then you can’t do that and also maintain your current self agenda because your self agenda is a distortion of reality so if you’re going to straighten out reality and perceive it as it actually is eventually I mean you can you can do that for a while and still have yourself agenda but eventually if you get real serious about it what will happen is that you try to straighten out reality completely the self agenda is going to have to completely crumble so in a in a sense can you handle the truth do you want the truth or is what you want yourself agenda but then recognize that if what you want is your self agenda then you shouldn’t be too surprised when you have problems in your life because of the inaccurate perceptions of reality that you have do you see what the problem is with an inaccurate perception of reality it’s the same problem that a child has who believes in monsters that live under her bed right if she doesn’t care about reality in that situation and she’s just adamant that what she cares about is herself agenda which is you know her safety and her survival then she what she will do is she will insist that there’s a monster under her bed and she will insist on taking all sorts of measures to prevent the monster from attacking her and she will waste a lot of her energy and a lot of her life defending herself against monsters that to an outside observer we would just say hey I mean wouldn’t it be easier to just like straighten out your perception of reality like look under the bed and see that there are no monsters and then you don’t have to go through all these you know back backflips and all these mental gymnastics to protect yourself from things that don’t exist you know but the problem is that if you’re so unconscious that all you care about is yourself agenda then I can’t help you and nobody can help you and the really sad part is that you can’t even help yourself because you’ve basically committed to a life of inaccurate perception of reality and you better believe that will deeply affect many many many facets of your life and of course the most important thing to you which is the quality of your life the emotional quality of your life which is all you really care about is the emotional quality and fulfillment of your life that is the cost of your self agenda very paradoxically because the self agenda tells itself that the reason that it needs to protect itself is because it needs to defend and protect and ensure its own emotional well-being in the future but as with many things in life you know too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing and that’s the case with you so make your choice what’s it going to be all right this is Leo I’m signing off please click the like button for me post your comments down below I do read most of them share this episode with friend and lastly come check out actual eyes that run right here it’s my website I have some good resource resources for you there I have a newsletter that keeps you on track with new material that I release and I’m also going to be releasing more exclusive content just for my newsletter subscribers as bonuses so that’s coming in the future make sure you sign up and stay tuned for that the topics I talk about going forward are going to get deeper and deeper and deeper and what I want from you is I want you taking action on these things that I tell you because quite frankly what’s going to happen is I’m going to lose a lot of you a lot of you come in here you listen to my ideas and like all these are cool I like these and you know they’re helpful but then what happens is that you listen to more and more and more and then you can get to the point where it’s like leo is just going off the deep end you know he’s going to some crazy land with with this person development stuff you know this enlightenment stuff is just getting ridiculous and this nut it’s because you’re not actually taking action on the things I tell you take action do the little exercises I tell you your life will transform in ways you can’t even imagine yet and then as a bonus you’ll be able to listen to me in the future to more and more advanced stuff and then that’s when self-actualization work really gets exciting is when you kind of get past the newbie stuff and then you start to listen to all the really advanced stuff and you start to practice it and apply it it gets so exciting because you can see it working and you can see the potential of it you know where it’s going to take you 10 20 years from now and it can take you to some extraordinary places and you start to see that picture you really start to like feel it in your bones that it’s possible for you to transform your whole life that’s kind of where I’m at in my life and man it’s like it just gets better and better every month it just gets better and better and at the same time it’s still painful for me no every month is is still painful and painful sometimes I have really painful months because this work is brutal this work of clearing your ego smog it’s not easy business is hard business which is exactly why you need these kinds of resources so I’m here to help you to provide the resources that will take you all the way to what you can fully be what you can fully be is extraordinary it’s extraordinary but it takes commitment from you to want that to work towards that to make sacrifices especially sacrifices of your self agenda because you’re wise enough to see the greater good that will ultimately come to you you put that quote but if you do have that wisdom man you’re so lucky don’t squander it act on it embody it live it live the things I tell you live the things that resonate with you and that makes sense to you that you into it are true and valuable in the ultimate existential sense do that and your life will become something that you will have tears over tears of joy and beauty anyways sign up stay tuned and I’ll see you soon with more you


  1. How about being conscious of this distortion, and intentionally delusion yourself to some kind of benifit? Like beliveing that making money is easy and everybody wants to work with you, might not be true in reality but it sure affects the attitude and actions in a positive way

  2. Respect for that sobering knowledge bomb…i clicked on 1 of these episodes about a year ago and was sure i subscribed but not so, just lucky your material popped back up on the feed, thank you google for monitoring my activities, thank you Leo for top drawer material.

  3. Subscribe To my channel listen new wave 🌊 muzik a Artist from nothing to sum be the first to witness History

  4. One day I was in the beach and I was taking with friends about empathy and the difficulty of it. I asked my friends – Do you realise that don't matter how much info I give you about myself you guys will never know how is to be me as I never can sense how is to be you?
    Later I took this further asking: How would be to be that seagull? We are locked into perceiving the world as us humans. And even, what do we mean when we say "sense as a human? " we take the term human for granted as we take dog, cat, fish. This beings are more than a name and something perceived by us. What is a fish when it is not perceived by one of us?

  5. In one conversation about mind and how tricky it is a person said: I love mind, I am not against it, it protects me you know!
    Any Comments on that?

  6. Note on the scientist bias that they don't see in the being perspective.. did you not quite a quantum scientist who understood what your talking about I'm not a master of quantum but I did take the availabile course at school and studied the matter in similar fashion as the scientist you mentioned and several others have similar articals thinking in similar fashion … Experiments in quantum proof what you speak about but the info isnt feed in public education yet .. someday right … All because scientist as still confused by quantum lol BS it's like the cure to cancer it's an ego thing the solution and answers are upfront

  7. I agree with what you're saying here leo,
    I'd like to proceed with a counter argument though, the thoughts and emotions we have also create friction, which is needed to grow and progress as humans,
    With that said, we need to have a clear distinction between what and where we should focus our energy (thoughts and emotions) and where we shouldn't ,
    Great video in any case,

  8. "Every problem is a fabrication of your mind"
    Can't emphasize how true this is👌
    That laugh at 46-47 min, I can totally relate
    "It's tough to convince someone who is so unconsciously absorbed in their deceptive vision of reality,
    This is what differentiates ordinary human from an actualised being,
    Being able to look at reality outside of themselves"

    Hit the nail on the head👌🥰

  9. Pitted against "Perception" is our apprehension of our world by our senses. How we actually feel objects and constructs affects our senses. We place great store in how we feel about things and we seek sensual experiences as positive enlightenment in this way, we discern. It is albeit a vane quest, but it is what drives our passions and what gives dimension to our lives. Alas it is a selfish pursuit and can set men against men.

  10. 46.05 if you ever gaze of how reality is you realise that there are no problems. Every problem is a fragmant of your imagination

  11. The human body is orderly put together in a form that we can name and recognise as Human or Humanoid form.

  12. As a member of society I have to play a buoyancy role to dance in a way that honour the rules and laws of our organisation/Nation.

  13. When I chose to action it is not because I am told to; I use my own judgement and take responsibility for the actions that are my own decision.

  14. 32:29
    Loved how you broke it down right there
    Really an interest peaking style of speaking
    You had me on the edge of my seat, leaning in to hear what bomb you were about to drop on us
    Ah! 😻 so exciting

  15. Partially agree. The other part is, reality can be altered by intention and attention – the secret to individual/human progress.

  16. Leo reads it, he stands in front of a computer screen and reads? I do not claim he is not the author just he looks like reading his notes cause It sounds like listening an audio book.

  17. First, I want to thank you deeply Leo for this video and all the work you do…I am taking notes and doing the work.
    I want to come clean and say that I just ended a relationship where it was becoming an endless loop, where I felt low worth but discovered it was I that was messing up mainly. I googled the definition of needy on a inner hunch and thought I might share one or 2 traits. I was shocked to find I had every single behavior so I am a needy poster child! I know that I cannot possibly be in a relationship until I do this mf work and get rid of the toxic crap. I almost want to apologize to my last boyfriend but I think silence is best at this point…we both had dysfunction. Obviously a deficiency perception… I had no idea. I felt myself getting more and more emotional while inside the relationship, would do that push pull thing almost automatically…would lash out..its almost like I'm safest and sanest when I'm alone. I am me again not an over emotional crazy person. But what I saw in myself disturbs me…I want to really practice self actualization & don't mind being alone until I understand what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like and have a better idea of what true reality really is. Thank you. This means so much to me.

  18. I am unable to perceive objects as they are. I don't even know what that means and I am completely lost in this episode. That doesn't happen often. I started with this 4 days ago so practically I am not even beginning. At this moment this is too advanced

  19. Love doesn't exist then… My self agenda doesn't want enlightenment but thank your for the tools you're providing me with. Feeling is one of the things I most enjoy about life (wether good or bad emotions) so if enlightenment means to destroy love or sadness, there's so far I can go with this. But it is indeed helpful to get closer to that side of the spectrum and it makes a massive difference when experience strong emotions and problems between relationships with others.

  20. Hey Leo, hope you're reading this since it's been a video from a few years ago. From 15:00 on I started crying. Because as much as what you say fascinates me it also confuses me. I have spent a couple of days crying and feeling helpless. It's hard for me not to since you read and see so much about pollution and plastic (I'm a journalism student so it's hard for me not to follow media). And today in the supermarket I spent I dont know how long considering even buying food since everything is packed with plastics…Im so paralyzed that I cant think of a solution and also wondering why nobody does (moralizing I know) and it only results in pessimism and paranoia about not just my own life but also that of others. I know you will probably see me as being in a victim state, but I have watched quite some of your videos on different subjects and I have a hart time following your messages because I'm pretty much new to this…I'm at this point where I'm pretty much feel lost…not blaming you btw, I just wished I could understand and help solving certain problems and I dont know how…

  21. David Bhom was a great scientist but his research on thought was done with Krishnamurti and his ideas on it seem to very much be similar to his.. Great video

  22. Ok I'm with you , our conceptual projections and ego labeling of reality are dysfunctional , But , you can't live and interact with external world with no concepts about it and without experiences and expectations about what's going on around you , for example when you talk about the stealer in this video , so you can't find yourself exposed to theft or stealing and don't judge the situation as it's a bad and dangerous, and that's judgment or concept or though or belief …etc , it is what makes you react to the situation , the same way you need to label the thief as a threat in order to take the action and stop him , you can't just be aware of him while he is stealing you and be an observer of the situation , if you're like that so you are just like a baby who have nothing to know about life so he do nothing unless crying I think .
    Maybe we need to be aware of our projections on objects and don't let them control us unconsciously in a way which will make us see objects as how they really are and the same time have some concepts which make us able to deal and react with these objects.
    I'm talking here not to say that you're wrong but to get more understanding about this subject because there are paradoxes here and my ego start taking advantage of the situation .
    I hope you reply me .
    thank you so much

  23. So, I think it's very helpful to be aware that relationships are something of the human mind but that doesn't make them any less real.

  24. Would feel totally freeing to let go all perceptions. Back to a vision like a baby. That's the work we have to do.. do heal ourselves and the world. Peace to all.

  25. THIS IS FABULOUS! Bring on the deepness! These aren’t new ideas to me, but you set it out in a fresh way for my mind. Thank you!! I can’t thank you enough.

  26. see an object as though God is looking at it. Only, then i'll know how god perceives everything. It is making sense. God doesn't have an agenda, ego, needs, So it perceives everything as they are.

  27. Okay, so I guess my mind “distorted” getting hit. I guess my mind “distorted” losing everything. I guess my mind “distorted” that guy who ran over my foot in the grocery store. Garbage. What happens is reality. Period. This “perception” argument is ridiculous.

  28. Hello.
    Even though I will still to let my ego lead things in order to achieve what it wants, I find great value in the content of what you share and am grateful that you are achieving personal progress and came to such a masterful state to share it with ease.
    I, however then wonder, how it is I 'should' conduct myself in relationships with others. Because I found how great the importance of society and disassociating from others is rarely relatable.
    Well, thank you for the meticulous and comprehensible suggesting a. i. Butt kicking. 🙂
    Keep up the great work. Cheers!

  29. good video … a lot of this is connected to our imagined internal script. Its like we have a set of recordings and a play button. A situation arises we look within our list of scripts and say ah yes this is the script I use for this ..
    We press play and each time play is pressed we reinforce the scripts .. further ..
    We need to be aware of this auto script utility and learn to not press the play button. We need to see it for what it really is ..

  30. I accept the premises presented, but we still have to interface with existence. I get it: there are no bills, but they still must be paid because the mind (collective consciousness?) makes them "real".

    How is this reconciled if one becomes conscious of reality? Do we proceed with this in consciousness and play the game without attachments, and break the mind’s addiction to them?

    This type of consciousness can make people go insane. The mind will not want to let go.

  31. I have made changes in my life after watching Leo.
    Sometimes I feel guilty because I am not able to do everything I want. Not just yet.

  32. You said "the average person is a bit deficient in their perception" (they are not perfect or completely flawless, they are somewhere at the middle of the spectrum). Did you consider yourself this average person back in 2016 when you made this video? Minute 59:47. And how do you perceive yourself now, in 2019, from this point of view? Are you filters completely functional now or are they still a bit somggy?

    P.S: i just discovered this video 🙂

  33. Will i become empty of empathy, joy, happiness, care for other ppl, objects and beings if i become completely enghlightened, so fully engaged to B-cognition? Will i be empty of all those good things if my self-agenda, my ego is destroyed?

  34. My older brother taught me about his 'alien onlooker' perspective about 5 years ago and it changed a lot for me.. I often look at the world, or my world, as if I were an alien, arrived from another dimension, observing everything in 'my universe', knowing nothing of it, and being unaffected by it.. just observing..

    Just another useful method to begin seeing things from the 'being perspective'.

  35. A simple experiment to demonstrate to yourself the truth of what Leo is saying, is to observe your own visual blind spot. We all have the perception of an 'unobstructed' and 'complete' field of view when we look out into the world with our eyes. You see before you now a seamless image… yet, there is a blind spot in your vision that you don't notice. There is a hole in the back of your eye, where the optic nerve passes through the light receptors, where no light is taken in.. the brain simply receives no visual data in that location because of this.. yet, when the visual data from your eye reaches your brain, the brain uses imagery from memory to fill in the missing information, presenting you with a 'complete picture'…

    You can actually find this blind spot now… by simply drawing two dots a few inches apart on a piece of paper and holding it in front of yourself, focusing on one of the dots, and then moving the paper further or closer to your eye, until at a certain distance, the other dot will enter your 'blind spot' and it will 'disappear'. Now, the dot is still there.. but you just can see it.. This is always true for your field of vision, this blind spot is always there, yet you never notice it until you deliberately look for it.

  36. rigidly rational? Abstract theories are thesis only, they have to be confirmed in experiments.You have to categorise and structure, you cannot deal with each small flower or animal separately! We can analyse and draw conclusions, this is how our brains function. And yes, you have to select. In your leisure time, you can enjoy time with family (hopefully) without classifying them. This is obvious. It all depends when and where you abstract! It does not make all scientists to ego-maniacs.

  37. Shall we get rid of mathematics – since it is abstract, and a sign of "deficiency cognition"???

  38. We project our own agenda into reality? So what? We humans are programmed biologically to survive in this world, aren't we?

  39. Thus, my feelings for my child who is a drug addict (your example) are only projections? But there are fact also: my son has a drug problem. Then, what do you recommend to do in practice? How do I transfer this abstract of "no-needy perception" to my life? How do I stop to worry about my son?

  40. Pure perception (without emotional or rational influence on it) is not possible. We are not machines.

  41. Thanks Leo! but a liiiitle advise in a form of a question; why dont you be actualized on religion, not all religions as you described so please take more time actualizing everything about them and differentiate "from a practicing Muslim, it is not at all as you described and you can by your self in enough time and clear head find out more on this using unbiased resources" thanks again from a constant follower learnt a lot from you! .

  42. Brilliant and I plan to drop the over labeling and get to the point of satisfaction ! thank you!!!! Will stay the course! I found myself very into the videos and paused, now I want to get more involved and better.

  43. 28:44
    Jus leave your thoughts and focus on what’s infront of you like a animals
    Watch the “actuality “video

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