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Facing political backlash over his decision to delay redrawing new voting precincts that contributed to long lines at the polls, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez signaled late Friday that he is willing to reconsider.
Gimenez, a Republican, said in a statement that he will bring the question to county commissioners for discussion on Feb. 19.
"This will provide members of the public and local political party representatives the opportunity to express any concerns they may have to the full Board," he wrote. "It is of utmost importance that every Miami-Dade County voter be confident about our electoral system."
The Miami-Dade Democratic Party had pounced at the news Thursday that Gimenez and his appointed elections supervisor, Penelope Townsley, had decided to postpone so-called "reprecincting" until 2015. On its website, Democrats asked supporters to contact the mayor urging him to change his mind.
Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, who heads the local party, said she phoned Gimenez on Friday.


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Cybertron isn't just the homeworld of the Transformers... it is a Transformer itself. It was the first Transformer. In War for Cybertron you get to explore the Civil War between the Autobots and the Decepticons as they blast their way across the planet. At GDC we were treated to a long demo of the game, and yes, it looks good.
The characters were given all-new designs, and some of them will in fact be made into toys. The game takes place before Optimus gains his "Prime" designation, and shows his early days of gaining the trust of the Autobots; we get to see just how he learned to be a leader on the battleground. On the flip side of things, the game explores how Megatron met Star Scream. "We also explore why Megatron keeps this guy, who is basically a back-stabber, around," we were told. This game is taking the Transformers lore back to basics, and filling in some serious holes.
Luckily the gameplay seems to back the story up. The action is fast, and the title of the game isn't trying to be clever; this is a war game. The battles are intense, and you're given the ability to transform at will. In one section we see Star Scream fly around a large room, shooting his adversaries, changing from his jet form back into robot form quickly and fluidly. It looks great, and the expected sound effects are there.
The game is co-op, with up to three players joining the fray. You choose from three characters every round, and players can jump in and out at will. The co-op will be online-only—no split-screen. The reason? The levels are large, the game uses Unreal Engine 3, and no one wanted to compromise on the graphical fidelity.
There are many small details that show we're on the Transformers home world. When you grab a turret you actually transform into the machine, creating a weapon that is part gun and part... you. When you pick up a weapon it's incorporated into your color scheme, so guns will look different depending on who is carrying them. The consoles attach directly to the chests of the characters when you open and close doors.
"The scale of the game comes from the world," we were told. Doors are much larger than they need to be. On our world these characters are huge, but on Cybertron they're dwarfed by their surroundings. You'll also explore areas beneath the surface of the planet. "This is a place where no one has been. So you get to explore it alongside the characters." You'll meet beings that may still be robotic, but they seem to have much more of a basis in biological design.
Over the course of the demo, we saw part of a boss fight with Omega Supreme, a character that towers above everyone else. We were assured that it is impossible to make a Transformers game without the incomparable voice of Peter Cullen as Optimus. The team focused on the gameplay first, and then layered in the Transformers.
Some games demo very well, and this may be one of them. Still, it looked and sounded great. The tiny details that make the world of the Transformers so endearing are all there. The transition from robot to vehicle was done well, and the game allows you to use both at any time. Good things happen when games aren't tied into a franchise; look at how well last year's X-Men Origins: Wolverine turned out by moving away from the film.
Transformers: War for Cybertron is coming to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC; we're told to look for some big announcements when it comes to multiplayer before E3.

subset: commoncrawl


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The project:
Construction of 2,400m long escape gallery to the Lugano road tunnel. The tunnel connects the northern districts of the city to the motorway exit Lugano Nord.
Executing company:
Hochtief Construction AG
Muttoni Bellinzona Co.
RL Pumpenanlagen GmbH (Tsurumi partner)
Commissioned by: Canton Ticino
The problem:
Drainage via open dewatering during tunnelling operations.
The solution:
Implementation of several KTZ and KTV series submersible pumps which can be operated in 24-hour snore mode due to their construction type.


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Au sujet de ce téléchargement
Benefits and Improvements
- Resolves an issue where "Recover or maintain your system" may not run on Windows 10
- Improves operational stability
Previous Benefits and Improvements
- Improves system performance
- Resolves the issue where VAIO Recovery Tool won't start on Windows 10
- Improves the appearance of solutions in Solution Centre
Configuration système requise
- Windows® 10 64-bit
- Windows® 8.1 64-bit
- Windows® 8 64-bit
Infos Fichier
File Name
- EP0000605041.exe
File Version
- 8.4.8.06246
File Size
- 83,246,328 byte
Release Date
- 29-09-2020
- Download the file to a temporary or download directory (Please note this directory for reference later).
- Go to the directory where the file was downloaded and double-click EP0000605041.exe.
- Follow the instructions displayed in the installation wizard.
- After installation is completed, please restart the computer.
To check if installation is successful:
- Go to C:\ProgramFiles\Sony\VAIO Care\Version.txt
- Version should indicate 8.4.8.06246.


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Although the 'Jordan' part of the brand name refers to legendary British speaker designer Ted Jordan, famous for his full-range metal-cone drive units, ALR Jordan is actually German. The company was in fact, originally founded by equally legendary speaker system designer Karl Heinz Fink.
This £800 per pair Entry XL is the top model of four stereo pairs that make up ALR Jordan's least costly Entry range. It's a d'Appolito two-way floorstander; a configuration that uses twin bass/mid drivers mounted above and below a solitary tweeter. Interestingly, said tweeter is slightly offset from the exact mid-point between the two bass/mid units.
However, since it's just 10cm taller than the Entry L, and has just one extra bass/mid driver, the £300 price premium of the XL over the L does seem rather steep.
The appearance is prosaic, with a rectangular box that in our case had an attractively sparkly charcoal grey front, and a less convincing beech vinyl woodprint elsewhere; but silver and black are also optional finishes.
The main drivers here have 165mm cast frames and 120mm Jordan-designed aluminium cones, while the tweeter has a 25mm soft fabric dome. A large port is set into the front panel below the driver array, and foam bungs are supplied to block these if desired.
A single terminal pair feeds a 24dB octave (acoustic) Linkwitz-Riley crossover network that uses low loss 'audiophile grade' capacitors and, unusually, an autotransformer (instead of resistors) to set relative treble level. Reversible spike/domes are supplied for floor coupling, locked by thumbwheels that have flats to allow proper spanner tightening.
However, there's no separate plinth to improve either the appearance or the stability.
Given the significant drive unit area, enclosure volume and port diameter, it's hardly surprising that the Entry XL is best suited to free space siting, well clear of walls. That said, the port output seems to pretty well controlled and the overall bass alignment is quite dry, so some closer-to-wall reinforcement might be appropriate under some circumstances. Frankly, those bungs are unlikely to be useful unless circumstances dictate that the speaker has to be sited hard up against a wall.
First impressions were very positive, the speaker delivering music with superior coherence, good transparency and a fair measure of dynamic life and expression. Timing is particularly deft here, and the Entry XL certainly manages to capture some of the agility and deftness associated with good-quality standmounts.
Speech is reproduced very well, albeit warm and with a measure of hollow coloration, while the presence is beautifully integrated, if laid back. The overall tonal balance is basically good, if lacking in bottom end weight and welly, while the top end is too strong and obvious, though acceptable enough because of its innate sweetness.
Imaging is good with fine focus and good depth, though air and spaciousness is somewhat limited, presumably because the acoustic centre is set below seated ear height.
Purely in terms of sound quality, the Entry XL is a good loudspeaker at a realistic price. But with speakers, the reviewer also has to take account of the presentation quality, and here the value rating is less impressive. Furthermore, it's difficult to see why one extra drive unit and 10cm of enclosure should end up costing more than half as much again as the Entry L.


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Teaching/Work Experience
I was a substitute teacher in Wisconsin, I taught 5th grade from 1997-2002 at Little Flower School. I also taught remedial teaching/Phy-ed for a few years. I am currently Little Flower's pre-school teacher.
I graduated from NDSU/Moorhead in 1985.
Family Members
Husband (Mike) and six children
Other Interests
Family life is our greatest accomplishment. I was a stay-at-home mother for many years. Mike and I live on a hobby farm and keep busy with all of our children.
Additional Information
I attended Little Flower School until 4th grade. It is wonderful to be back teaching at Little Flower. When I was in first grade I told my teacher that someday I wanted to be a teacher. Well, here I am! I love teaching at our Catholic School!
Contact Mrs. Swanson…
you will need to complete the math problem so we know you are a real person


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Evidence Grows for Existence of Cancer Stem Cells
Several independent studies have provided strong evidence for the existence of cancer stem cells in some brain tumors, and potentially in skin and colon cancers as well. Like their powerful, healthy counterparts, the putative cancer stem cells have the ability to endlessly self-renew and produce progeny that can develop into all the different types of cells within a tumor. Some may even be resistant to many standard cancer therapies, and could be the cause of cancer relapse. But whether they actually exist in solid tumors is a controversial notion. Three studies published today won't end the debate, but they do lend greater credence to the theory, and could provide support for new approaches to cancer treatment.
Cancer stem cells are controversial partly because the experiments suggesting their existence have yielded inconsistent results. Experts say that could be due to the methods used to study them. Today's studies take advantage of imaging techniques that let researchers trace the fate of a cell and its progeny within a single mouse. All three groups looked at models of skin, brain, and colon cancer, and each study yielded varying degrees of support for cancer stem cells. The results suggest that at least some solid tumors carry the powerful cells, which may require special attention during cancer treatment.
"Cancer stem cells might explain why certain tumors might come back after treatment," says Hugo Snippert, a cancer biologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and an author of one of the studies. "You can imagine if you get rid of the whole tumor except for one cancer stem cell, then the cancer stem cell fuels a new tumor, and you get back to original scenario," he says.
But it doesn't make sense to attack cancer stem cells alone, says Snippert. One of the mysteries of this cell type is its origin. Such cells could be deranged forms of normal stem cells in the body, or they could arise from other cell types that gain the stem-like abilities, which suggests that non-stem cells within a tumor could transform into the dangerous subtype. "If you follow and accept that line of argument," says Robert Weinberg, a cancer biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in today's studies, you then need to eliminate both the stem cells and non-stem cells in the tumors.
While two of the reports looked at early-stage, largely benign tumors, a third report from Luis Parada's group at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas studied deadly brain cancers called gliomas. They found that following chemotherapy, a subpopulation of cells with stem cell-like properties survived and seemed to instigate new tumor growth. They did this by producing a transient population of highly proliferative cells, which set up the hierarchy of cancerous cell types in a tumor.
If this subpopulation exists for a significant proportion of solid tumors, it will have a profound impact on how to treat and monitor cancers, says Parada. "If the cancer stem cell model is true, then assessing the efficacy of the therapy by tumor size or shrinkage would be less relevant, because what would really matter would be the effect of any therapy on the cancer stem cell population," he says.
While the cancer stem cell model may not be accepted as truth in all corners—even with these three studies—the possibility of the existence of such cells has prompted some groups to find ways to seek and destroy them. One such group is Boston-area Verastem, a company cofounded by Weinberg. Verastem is developing tools to specifically monitor them, and is designing drugs to selectively decrease cancer stem cell numbers. The company says several of its experimental models indicate that cancer stem cells resist standard treatments, but can be selectively destroyed by its three lead drug candidates.
Sean Morrison, a stem-cell biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who was not involved in today's studies, says the papers "offer varying degrees of support that in at least certain kinds of tumors, there really are subpopulations of tumor cells that are responsible for tumor growth. The important question for the field is what fraction of cancers fall into each: is it really only a minority of malignancies that follow the cancer stem cell model, or are there many malignancies that follow the model? Nobody knows."
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Stop Demonizing People
By Leo Gura - February 2, 2015 | 69 Comments
Why you are wrong for calling terrorists evil
Video Transcript
Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org, and in this video I want to talk about why you really need to stop demonizing others.
We are going to start off this video with an exercise. You're going to do the exercise now. I am then going to talk and at the end of the video, I am going to actually tell you how to use this exercise and get a lot of value out of it.
Here is the exercise. In a second, I'm going to pause the video. I will have a blank screen for you. You are going to pause the video and then you're going to do this.
Get a piece of paper. Then, write "The three people I despise most are…" at the top of the paper. You're going to write down 1, 2 and 3. Then, you're going write the names of the people who you despise the most in your life.
By despise, I mean you really don't like them. They gall you. Maybe you don't openly despise them. Maybe you secretly despise them and you don't really admit to yourself you despise this person. Maybe you tell yourself you're a person who doesn't think other people are despicable.
Maybe you like everybody. Well, I'm going to tell you that you should be really self-honest in this exercise. Really dig deep and see who the people out there in your life who really gall you are. You're going to pick three people.
Often, when I say this, people will pick the most obvious and evil examples of people, like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. That's people who they despise. I would say to stay away from those, for now. Instead, focus on people who you know a little bit more intimately.
These can be people who you know personally, from your family life, friends or colleagues at work. It might be your boss or a celebrity that you kind of follow but really despise, or someone on TV. Maybe it could be a person from history, just don't go with the really obvious examples.
I want you to be really accurate here. After you write down these three names, you're also going to write down one quality for each of these people, which is the despicable quality you really don't like about them. Each name – one quality!
That's the exercise. Go ahead and do it right now. Pull out a piece of paper. Pause the video now.
Alright, welcome back! If you've done the exercise, then good, put it on the side. You're going to pull it out at the end of this video and I'm going to tell you what to do with it. Now I'm going to talk about demonizing other people.
This is something that I see and find to be extremely ugly. It's people demonizing other people. This is something you see a lot more often than you think you would see it. You do this too, which is the relevance of this video to you.
It's not that other people do it. You do it. It's interesting. In 10th grade, I had one of the hardest classes that I ever took in my entire schooling career. It was AP European History. There, I had a teacher who was really a hard-assed and hard-nosed and who expected a lot from us.
We worked really hard throughout the entire year just preparing for the AP exam. I struggled in that class the most. I also learned the most in that class. One of the things I really learned in that class is my love for knowledge and philosophy.
That's what I developed there. At the end of the class, after we would finish with all the tests and stuff, we would get a little time to relax. We would just sit in a circle and the teacher would ask us questions, going around the circle of 30 students or so. We would answer one by one.
We would go around, asking different questions. In this way, we would get to know everybody a little bit better. He asked a very profound question, which I can remember to this day. He asked – "What's the ugliest thing you've ever seen?"
We went around the circle. When it got to me, I said – "Conformity." At that point, I kind of recognized the evils and dangers of conformity. When I think about that question now, I would have to say that the demonization of other people is even uglier than conformity.
To me, this is one of the ugliest things about human beings, society and the way human beings behave when they are in a group. Fundamentally, this happens because of closed mindedness and lack of self-honesty.
In this video, we are going to go in and talk about where the self-dishonesty is exactly. We're going to try and open your mind. Open mindedness might sound like an abstract and "woo—woo" concept, but I think that open mindedness is one of the most important things that people are missing.
This is preventing them from doing the higher levels of personal development work that they need to do. This is very important to you. Take this abstract notion and say – "Oh, this is actually important to my life. This actually affects the results I get in my life."
Why Do We Demonize?
People love to demonize people. The question is, why? Why do people love to demonize other people so much?
Before I answer that, let's give a little taste of what we mean by demonization and who demonizes who. It's very common to demonize dictators and bad leaders throughout history, politicians and such. Some examples would be Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, Barack Obama or whatever country you are living in.
You may not like the leaders there, or the opposition party. That's extremely common. Also common to demonize, and this is a little bit closer to home, are parents, siblings, spouses, girlfriends and boyfriends. It's very common to demonize the other person in this kind of relationship, especially when you aren't able to get along with them.
Another popular category is to demonize thinkers, philosophers and religious leaders. You could be demonizing the persons themselves, or you could be demonizing their ideas. You can demonize a whole school of thought. You can demonize an entire religion.
This is really common. If you're a student of history, you know this goes all the way back. Basically, all of history is kind of like an objectiveless demonization, as far as thinkers, philosophers, religions and ideas go.
Also, a little bit closer to home and me, is demonization that happens on the internet. This is super common. People demonize each other in YouTube comments, but that's just a specific case of the more general problem. People are demonizing each other through network forums or discussions that are happening online.
This is extremely common. What happens with demonization is that you fundamentally create this separation between you and the other person. Basically, when you're demonizing someone, you're making a judgment, pointing at that person and saying – "That person is evil!"
For a true demonization to happen, not only are you pointing your finger at that person and saying they're evil, but you're also denying the fact that this is a personal judgment of yours. When you really believe someone is evil and you don't even want to entertain the possibility that it's false, then that's what demonization is.
That's my definition of it. Here is a truth that I want to tell you. If you ever demonize anyone ever in your life and you find yourself doing this, then you're definitely in the wrong. You, not the other person, but you are in the wrong.
The evil is actually within you, and not that other person. That person might have done something despicable. I'm not saying anything about that. What's more important is that what you're doing is despicable.
You might say – "But, no! That person did something really despicable. That's what the argument is about." No, the problem is not the other person. The problem is you. You're the one doing the despicable thing.
What you're not recognizing there is that you are actually behaving like that person, if they are, in fact, despicable. What you do in these situations is very subtle. This is a very subtle thing that you do because you're acting to preserve your own ego.
Augmented Reality
The very fundamental problem with demonization is this. We have this reality that we live in. you might call it a physical reality. We live in this. This reality is very neutral, devoid of meaning and any kind of human additions that we make to it. However, what we do is that we go around and slap labels on things.
We slap labels on objects, people and situations. We do this even to ourselves. We're always slapping labels on things and we do this with thoughts – with thinking. We slap these labels on with thoughts, and what we are doing is that we're augmenting reality. We're going around and augmenting reality.
We're living in an augmented reality, which is happening in our minds. It's not happening in some computer science fiction, but in your mind. We're doing this. The problem is that you forget that you do this. You don't admit that you do this.
Then, you take these augmentations to be the reality itself. You take them very seriously. This creates a lot of problems for you down the road. Why does this create problems? You end up living in a fantasy of your own creation, without understanding that you're living in a fantasy.
You confuse this fantasy with the reality. This creates a lot of your emotional suffering in life. People who demonize other people, you might notice that these people aren't generally happy. It's not possible for them to be happy because they're living a falsehood.
This one particular person who they demonize is just one manifestation of how they approach life. In order to demonize someone successfully, you have to augment reality with your own labels. Then, you have to convince yourself that these labels are actually true when, in fact, they are not.
This can only happen when you're behaving unconsciously. You aren't really aware of what is going on. You aren't aware of the manipulation that is happening on the inside – you, manipulating yourself. It's you, lying to yourself.
You're kind of cheating yourself. This creates a really fundamental problem in the way that you interact with all of reality. You might think – "Oh, it doesn't really matter in this case. I think that Hitler is evil. What's wrong with that?"
Actually and like I said, this is just one symptom of the much deeper problem. The other thing is this. When you separate yourself from the other person you are demonizing, you aren't able to learn from that other person.
Usually, the reason you demonize someone in the first place is because you actually want to keep from looking at what is there in reality. It's like a corner of reality that you don't want to face.
This is what you say to yourself and others. You point that finger and say – "That person is evil." In so doing, you create this wall and basically say to yourself – "I don't have to really examine that person, their actions or that corner of reality."
You basically block it out, ignore it and say to yourself – "That's purely evil. There is nothing to be learned there. There is no reason in there. There are no valid arguments or points there. It's just pure evil."
You can see politicians doing this sometimes. It helps them to avoid from actually having an intelligent and rational argument about a particular situation. If someone wants to ram a policy issue down your throat, the best way to do it is to just say – "Oh, the other opposition party is totally evil. What I'm saying is just correct."
It avoids having a debate. It avoids from having to make nuanced distinctions. It basically relieves you of the burden of having to seriously consider some other position. Why do people do this? When you have to take into account corners of reality that you haven't taken into account before, it can be a strenuous and emotionally challenging thing to wrestle with in your mind.
Cognitive Dissonance
You have cognitive dissonance. In my own life, I personally love the feeling of cognitive dissonance. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the term when your model of reality comes into contact with actual facts in reality or some other model of it. The two are contradictory, and you can't figure out how the two can fit together.
In your mind, you suddenly start to question your own model of reality. When this happens, you usually become afraid, angry or feel hurt. This doesn't happen consciously. It happens subconsciously. You don't tell yourself you're angry because your model of reality isn't accurate in this case.
What happens is that you shut down. You turn your head the other way and you don't want to look. I've always loved the feeling of cognitive dissonance. One of the powers that I have is the ability to go in there, look at something and say – "This isn't in match with what I've got! That's cool! I like that!"
Then, I can go in and say to myself – "How can I retool my model of reality to match the facts a little bit better?" How can I retune my model so that it may fit with that model? Maybe I can throw my entire model out and take on the other model.
What I see is people not wanting to do this in general. I would say that 99% of people in society do not like this. They always stick their head in the sand, like an ostrich, when it comes to this cognitive dissonance. They are not learning from examples from other people.
This keeps them from honestly and really looking inside themselves. This keeps their ego alive. It keeps their ego going, and this creates more and more problems for them down the road. These problems are so subtle that you don't recognize these problems are stemming from this lack of open mindedness and demonization that you are doing.
By the way, let's make a distinction. It's different to demonize someone and to disagree with them. I'm not saying that you can't disagree with people. It's okay to say to someone they're wrong. Someone can be factually wrong.
Someone can say that when you drop an apple, gravity is going to pull it up instead of down. That would be factually wrong and we can disagree with them on that. That's fine. The difference is that when you demonize someone, you call that person evil and their ideas evil. Let's make that distinction clear.
Let's also make a distinction here. I want to draw a spectrum for you between different levels of judgment and acceptance.
Judgment And Acceptance
On the very far end of the spectrum, the spectrum that you don't want to be at, is demonization. This is when you do full on and proper demonization. That's when you're calling someone evil and you believe that they are actually evil in reality.
You can then move a little closer to the better side of the spectrum, somewhere towards the middle of it. This is what I call judgment and the judgment area. The previous was the demonization area. This is the judgment area.
In the judgment area, this is where you make everyday judgments. Most of us do this a hundred times a day. We might see a person and think they're ugly. We might read an idea in a book and say it's a stupid idea. We're making judgments there and that's also an augmentation.
They aren't as strong as demonization because when you're usually making a judgment, you kind of recognize that your judgment isn't set in stone. You kind of understand this. "Well, it's my opinion in this case. I don't like this idea. Maybe someone else does. I think that person is ugly. Maybe someone else thinks that person is beautiful."
You make these judgments and make no mistake; these judgments also create lots of problems in your life. I've got other videos that talk about that. You can see my judgment video on that. It's still much better.
Why is it much better? You're a little bit more open minded. Judgments change. You might say – "I've got this judgment here. Maybe I'll change that. Maybe, a couple of years later, I'll think that this belief or theory I read in a book might actually be true."
Your judgment is a little bit more flexible. Then, you move to the very end of this spectrum. When you do that, you come to acceptance. Acceptance is the accepting of reality, exactly as it is, without augmenting it with your labels in any way and without deluding yourself that these labels are real.
This is what you do, even when you judge stuff. When you judge stuff, you still tell yourself that the thing you're judging and this judgment is actually a part of reality. That's why you feel bad when you see something ugly or something in your life that you don't like.
You judge that you don't like it. You judge a certain situation as being bad for you. You resist it all of the time. The acceptance part of this spectrum is when you accept everything exactly as it is. As you can probably tell, very few people have the psychology that can allow them to do this.
This allows complete openness of mind. You have to be able to accept all of reality, not just the parts of reality that you like personally. That's really what's happening here when you're creating these separations between you and other people or things, through judgments and demonization.
Fundamentally, you're carving out aspects of reality that you really like. You're separating them and putting them against aspects of reality that you don't like. This is personal. You're just this one organism in the Universe. Just because you don't like a particular thing doesn't really say much about reality itself.
Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean that someone else has to agree with you on that. Just because you don't like something, or you think something is good, bad or evil, it doesn't make it actually so. This is a distinction that you have to draw in your mind.
It takes a lot of intellectual honesty and self—honesty to admit this. It already requires a lot of open mindedness to admit this. Many people don't want to go there. Let's take Hitler as an example.
You might say – "But Leo, what about someone like Hitler? Isn't this person truly evil? I understand that we sometimes go overboard. We judge people. I do it to. Sure, I'll admit that. Leo, you just have to admit that some people are just truly evil."
What I'm telling you in this video is no. I'm not going to admit that. In fact, what you need to do is come around and see that it's not the case at all. The people who you think are truly evil are not really that. That's a judgment you make.
That's a judgment you make based on certain beliefs and preference you have. Even your position in this world, as a life form and human being, already predisposes you to think that certain things are evil and certain things are not. You tend to automatically label as evil anything that threatens your life.
If you think about it more objectively, what does that have to do with reality itself? What does reality care? What does the Universe care about your life? It doesn't really care about it at all. Something that threatens your life on a social level, you will say that it's evil.
If it's on a personal level, you'll say you definitely don't want that in your life. You don't want to get killed. That would be a bad thing. You have to recognize that this is a subjective judgment. Even the most heinous crime you can imagine, like you would say Hitler is a heinous criminal, you still have to see the larger picture of it.
There Is No Good And Evil
In the big picture of it, in the ultimate and objective picture, actions are never good or evil. Actions are simply actions. They are exactly what they are without your addition of judgment on top of them. You can see that the addition of judgment happens in your mind.
You can actually sit down and notice the judgment happening. It's a story that's being told in your mind. It's a story! A lot of people get offended by this. "Hitler is evil! How can you say he isn't evil?" It takes a big and open mind to be able to reason about these things objectively.
One little clue that you can use, and you can use this as a rule of thumb as you go through life and develop yourself, is that in any situation where you get easily offended, that's weakness of mind on your part. That's a smallness of mind on your part.
That's not the situation's problem. That's not my problem. If you get offended, that's your problem. Getting offended means this. You're upset because the reality is something other than what you want it to be. You want to live in a fantasy, but then you come into contact with reality and reality is different than a fantasy.
You tell yourself Hitler is truly evil. No, Hitler is a part of reality. You want to deny that this part of reality exists and you want this part of reality to not exist. You want it to not have existed. It exists. It existed in the past.
You can say it shouldn't have existed. We can have a long debate about that. I would agree with you. I would probably say it's a good idea that it didn't exist. Nevertheless, it existed. It doesn't really matter what you think about reality. Reality could go the opposite to everything you want it to be like.
You can live a life where everything is against you. Everything is against you. Everything wrong happens to you. That wrongness is still happening from your point of view. In a larger point of view, there is no wrongness being done.
It's just life, living itself. Who are you to say how life is supposed to run? It's very arrogant of you to presume that you know the right way for life to run. Isn't it interesting that when you have ideas about how life should run, it's always about you?
It's always about you. It's always about how your life can be a little bit sweeter or a little bit richer, more secure, comfortable or nicer. How convenient of you, to expect that reality should form itself to what you desire and what feels nice to you. We have to get very real about this stuff.
When you're demonizing other people, what you're really doing is that you're blocking off parts of reality. This is a deep mistake, because reality is actually neutral. Your mind creates a separation because at the very bottom and root of it, you need to feel like an entity and like a self.
To feel more like a self, you construct enemies around you in the environment. You construct problems. You do this not only with people, but you do this with situations too. You construct these enemies, problems and challenges because you feel like there is something here that needs to be protected. This is what we call the ego or the self.
That's you, right now. We can point your finger at you. Go ahead and nod your head right now. That's you. That is what I'm talking about. That entity that you think is experiencing this life and that owns this life of yours, it feels like it needs to be protecting itself all of the time.
It needs to feel real. It needs to feel solid. You might say – "Leo, it feels solid already. Why would it need to feel solid?" This is another deep point that I'm going to cover in other videos, especially my spiritual enlightenment videos. Actually, it's very hollow at the center of it.
The Ego Is A Hollow Illusion
It's an illusion. It feels extremely real and solid, but it's actually a hollow illusion. To keep this hollow illusion from unraveling itself, more and more layers of ego get layered on top. These layers are extremely tricky and self-deceptive.
In practice, this means you go through your life creating separations so that you can feel like you're in a fight to survive life. You're in survival mode. When you're in survival mode, it makes the ego feel alive and real, even if it's a negative situation or you're scared, threatened or angry.
You might say – "But Leo, I don't want that in my life!" Actually, you do want that in your life on some level. This is because it creates a stronger sense of self. You feel alive when you do that. You feel significant. You feel like a somebody.
It builds up your story of self that you've been building up your entire life. What would happen if we removed that story entirely and shattered it to pieces? You don't want to consider that possibility. If you actually sit down and seriously consider that possibility, it's going to scare you shitless.
You don't know what life would be like without you. You don't imagine this is possible or desirable. You cling to your ego. You attach yourself to certain situations in life and you deny other situations in life. You demonize people. That's where the demonization comes from.
You create enemies. You point your finger at people and situations out in life and you make enemies of them. It actually allows you to create a partition this way, because of the evil you sense in people. If you think Hitler is evil, that's actually the evil within you.
Do you understand that? That's an evil within you because you're feeling it, right? It's in your mind. What you do to deny that is you point your finger at him and you externalize it. You project it to something out there and say – "Me, I'm here and Hitler's over there. There is a separation between us so what he is, isn't a part of me."
Actually, he is you. You're denying this and you aren't accepting this. You're not allowing this. This is intolerable because your world view doesn't allow for this possibility. Your world view is based on your entire ego.
Your world view is based around the idea that you are a separate entity from the rest of reality. This turns out to be a complete falsehood. You're living in falsehood all the time. At this point, you might wonder – "Well Leo, this is getting very deep and profound, but how does this connect to my everyday existence?"
Well, you're living this falsehood all the time. You're not accepting reality as it is. You can't even sit down right now and be happy in the moment. If I tell you to sit right now, close your eyes and just sit in silence for 10 minutes, you won't be able to do it.
You're not going to be happy. You're going to be frustrated and agitated. Why is it the case? The ego needs to be in motion all of the time. It's like a shark. If it's not swimming through water, it's going to suffocate and die. It needs to be swimming to oxygenize itself.
Motion needs to be created. Separation and enemies need to be created. Problems need to be created. Because of this, you can't just sit and be inside of reality, as it is. Reality is exactly the way it is right now, no matter what you think about it, what you like or don't like about it, whether it's favorable or not favorable to you and whether your life is in danger or not. It doesn't matter.
This doesn't matter on the grand scale of things, because that's reality. We live in a reality where life can be in danger. We live in a reality where you can die tomorrow. That's just reality. We live in a reality where there are murderers and rapists.
We live in a reality where there is charity being done and acts of kindness. We live in a reality where there is hatred. We live in a reality where we have acts of terrorism. We live in a reality where we have ignorance, bigotry and racism. We live in a reality where we have scientific enhancements.
We live in a reality where we have lies and falsehoods. We live in a reality where we have countries like the United States and the European Western countries, which are advanced. We live in a reality where we have undeveloped countries and countries that are kind of still stuck in the Dark Ages, like North Korea or certain countries in the Middle East and that part of the world.
We live in a reality where we have poverty, extreme richness and extreme abundance. We have all of these polar opposites and extremes within reality. That's just a part of reality. What you want to do is say that all this stuff on this side, all the poverty, murder, rape and genocide, is evil.
However, to say that, you are saying that it's a part of reality that you don't want. You're trying to live in a fantasy, and not the real reality. Because of this, you are unable to just literally sit and be happy. There is always something about reality you wish was otherwise.
Do you see that? That is very deep. It doesn't just apply to extreme situations like genocide, rape and murder. It applies to the things that are happening in your day—to—day existence. Tomorrow, you're going to wake up and things are going to be happening in your life that you wish they weren't there.
You wish you didn't get that email. You wish your boss didn't yell at you. You wish your wife was a little nicer to you. You wish your husband would kiss you in the morning or at night. You wish all these things. What you are doing there is living in a fantasy.
Because of this, you can't sit and be happy. There is always something you wish would come in and secure your happiness. Well, that's never going to happen. It's never going to happen! You have to start to understand that these enemies you're creating out of your husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, political figure or whoever and even impersonal situations in life like money problems, business bankruptcy and similar, are internal enemies that you are externalizing to prevent yourself from doing the real work on the inside.
This is why it's the ugliest thing. Ugly is a judgment. This is why this is the ugliest thing that I have seen. It's because people demonize and are close minded. It's because people judge that they keep themselves in an unconscious cycle.
They are never able to develop themselves above all of these problems. If you develop yourself long enough, what you recognize is that these problems were all created in your mind. These problems can dissolve. That's the positive message here.
It might sound like everything I'm saying is being depressing because I'm forcing you to accept a reality which seems negative to you. Actually, when you accept all of reality, you don't see it as accepting the negative aspects of reality. What you do is remove the distinction between good and evil entirely.
Contrary to what you think right now, when you remove that distinction, all of reality actually becomes sweet, even what you think right now is evil and despicable to you. You open yourself up to it and it actually isn't as despicable and sour tasting as you thought it was.
At that point, when you do that and move totally to acceptance, you might think – "Leo, I don't want to be totally in acceptance." Well, you don't want to be because you're unconscious right now. When you actually develop a little bit of consciousness, you realize you want to be in acceptance.
Why do I want to be in acceptance? I want to because I want to be happy, no matter what life is doing. I can't really control life. A lot of stuff in life happens outside of my control. What I can do is strengthen myself enough to literally be happy with whatever is going on.
To do that, I need an extreme openness of mind. I need to stop demonizing other people and situations. I need to take responsibility for the inner demons that I have, rather than projecting them all out to the world. What do you think terrorism is about?
Where do you think terrorism comes from? It comes from a demonization. Where do you think the other side is coming from? The American government, the European governments, the wars created there and all of this tension happening with terrorism – where do you think the other side is coming from?
That's also coming from the demonization. You might say – "Terrorists are really evil!" The people who are against the terrorists are also evil. Why are they also evil? They are projecting their demons out to the terrorists. They are not facing them on the inside.
This is a big problem. This is a big problem for you, personally and in your life, but your personal problems expand out and create all the social problems that we have. All the social problems that we have come from this demonization and closed mindedness that we are talking about here.
Back To The Exercise
In wrapping this up, let's go back to that exercise you did. This is what I want you to do now. I want you to take out that piece of paper with those three people who you despise. At the top of the paper, you had something written like "These are the three people who I despise the most".
I want you to cross that whole phrase out, right now. I want you to write "These are the people qualities that I will work to accept and integrate into my life". Then, your job is to work to integrate this into your worldview because, right now, your world view is disintegrated. Disintegrated!
This means that parts of reality are being denied. Start accepting those parts of reality that you have been denying, even if it doesn't feel pleasant to you right now to do it.
Wrap Up
This is Leo, I'm signing off. I'm going to give a credit to Evan Pagan to this exercise. That's where I got it from on one of his seminars. I believe he might have gotten it from Nathaniel Brandon who wrote Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, but I'm not quite sure on that one.
Go ahead and leave me your comments. It's kind of a controversial video. I would love to hear what you guys think. Click the like button, share this video, post it on Facebook or share it with a friend.
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Great video! Wow! Insightful and eye opening.
"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance"
– Albert Maysles, famous documentary filmaker
"Relax, everything's out of control"
– Adi Da Samraj
"Your needs will never be met"
– Adi Da Samraj
"Your objections to ANYTHING don't mean shit"
-Adi Da Samraj
is it safe to say this is part of a larger worldly concept of acceptance? otherwise understood as mindfulness or inner peace? it seems so intricately tied in i have a hard time distinguishing it from those principles.
great vid. looking forward to next week's!
to what degree are you starting to troll in order to get people to click on your videos?
So conformity, religious system what is truly a political system having the ablity to affect my life if don't conform, it is concern if a population believes there whole system should dominate as an eternal truth and all other ways of life should be meet with contempt, including a justification to end a life, yes I can have an open mind, look at there writting. Who would give up there freedom, culture, freedom to grow mentality and spiritual don't you just end up as a victim to pressure of the dominant there has to be a line drawn in the sand
That was difficult to listen to. At one point I even turned my face away from the screen. Somebody has a problem with denile (points finger at self). I think I'm going to need to watch that video again.
Thanks so much for taking the time to make the videos
thanks leo,
U r videos r helpful for me.I feel happy if u do a video abt love
Hi Leo, thank you for this very deep video.
I wanted to question you about a philosophical problem that I have, which I can't go over yet. I am sorry for the length of my comment, but I hope you will have the time to read it.
Let's get this straight, this problem is sollipsism, which i think is derived directly from the "cogito ergo sum". When I heard about this, I think I had a cognitive dissonance, but kind of a really bad one, this view of the world has shaken me so much that I have been litteraly paralyzed by just thinking about it for many many days. And as I said I can't get over it, meaning I can't proove it wrong in my mind, and I feel evil for it.
But when I found you on youtube (well at first I must admit I was searching how to make a girl squirt haha, a little bit of humour here ) and saw your video on spirituality vs religion, I think I finally saw the exact opposite world view.
And you see, what scares me the most is not reality to not be as I like, but the opposite, that the reality is as I like or as I imaginate it to be as a sollipsist would say. The movies like Matrix (but not as much as the other one like I will explain after), Vanilla sky or Requiem for a dream when the lady at the end thinks she is on the TV show but is actually just in a psychatric hospital are, to me, scary as shit.
Leaving in my own dream to me is the most horrible stuff that I can picture, even more horrible than living in a false reality created by the "evil genius with your brain in a jar".
So to me, it appears that to finally get over it, I need to "destroy" the ego, because in the end I feel like it is this separation from reality that I hate and that is the true problem.
I know it sounds stupid to end this like that but, have you got any advice/idea on that ?
I know you are preparing other videos on this very deep topic.
Thank you Leo.
Logical incongruence. That's what I perceive watching this video.
1. YOU consider (welcome back, Leo! ) demonizing others as an UGLY thing to do. You have an emotion that deforms your perception, ergo your thinking is implacably vitiated. You demonize demonizing.
2. Either we accept the whole reality, either we fight against it. So the acceptance you talk about, does not make a good home with the title of this video – "STOP demonizing people!"
3. Every disfunctional emotion (depression, anxiety, anger, frustration, envy), evey habit we fight against is getting worse. First, I'll make peace with the fact that I demonize others, than I'll think of the psychological implications that this habit has on me and make a change.
In conclusion, I have a homework for you: on a piece of paper, write "Stop demonizing others", then cross that line out and write "This is a habit of mine that I accept and fully integrate."
astute observation! demonizing is part of reality too!
You meditate every day, you study or work or both every day, you do yoga everyday, I don't really know all the things you do every day BUT:
All the things you teach, leads people to start doing stuff in their life to feel better, You help us find other mentors, coaches, gurus that helps us feel even better. This things takes up alot of time in our life, changes our relationships, you tell us things that make us view our friends familys in a different way. Right now I want to do things every day that would take 2-3 days to be able to complete. And all of them feels very important.
On top of this you tell us about kharma wich in a way tells us don't do things for yourself, so now I have to do all the things I wish just for the good for the world, and if I find myself saying: this will be great because this will make my life easier, funner, better, then I will have to do something else to not build on my ego (hmm). Few days later you tell us to just be totally unjudgemental and stop careing for anything at all because it is all reality and should be accepted.
Well I am really sorry to say but right now I just want to take a big joint of weed and smoke my head down so that I can apply all the things you coaches tell me. In a way there is nothing wrong whit weed but in a way it is and thats just how I see everything in life right now though there really is nothing wrong (strange right?)?
You have been helping me altoghether whit many coaches such as anthony robbins and many many others but right now I feel that you belive we normal people have unlimited time money and energy?
If you understand what I am talking about I would appriciate some kind of smart comment on how you want us to be the best of our selfs.
Alot of your teachings made us reach and get somewhere in life (Whatever succes means now that you spoke so much about appriciate nothing/ reality the same way whatever situation you are living in) but right now it feels like we make effort to find ourselves then you start teaching us to stop searching for ourselves and just accept everything. But then i wouldn't make the effort to meditate (wich I belive helps me) I wouldn't make the effort to workout I wouldn't make the effort to watch your videos etc. That would leave me to the street being a happy joyful man accepting reality? I am not sure if this mindset works for everybody or if it will make chaos in the world, whatever it is accept it and this is reality and thats totally okey. People who listen to selfhelp want to improve and I can't see them accepting reality as it is, then we wouldn't listen to you, there would be no point?
As you notice I really need some clearity right now (probably other people needs to), because I like what you and other coaches tecach us but at the same time it starts to confuse me making me doubt that this is some kind of advertisement to make people end up in the street or something (because of growing population or whatever).
Sorry for long email and how I type in english. This are the million dollar questions on earth today, and if you straighten these points up I belive people will start to love you for real !
Great regards /
Well, for me this is a very controversial topic you have shared to us. I just can't wonder if there is no such thing as evil and that you said it's only in our perceptions.
Let us say there is a person we know who was a direct victim of a certain cruel act of someone… woudn't it be indefferent and insensitive to say that the agrressor was not evil?
The truth is Leo even being indifferent is evil and so how much more the doer of the horrible deeds.
Indeffrence for me is when a person can no longer discern the two opposite sides of life… and that is the coward and the brave, the rich n the poor, the strong n the weak, the good and the bad, the honest and the liar, the negative and positive.. etc etc.
If a person just can't make good judgement on a certain thing or event. when will man ever use wisdom in critical decisions and guide him into a safe path ? !!
When you asked us who we tend to demonize the most I immediately thought of my coworkers and the customers we serve. I just started out as a server. This is my first job with such intense customer interactions. I've only been at it a few months.
When customers don't tip or otherwise make the interaction as miserable for me as possible, I feel personally attacked until I take a step back and realize that they aren't attacking me. They are attacking the role I'm playing as a server. And maybe even further, they aren't attacking at all, just seeking maximum self-gratification at anyone else's expense. They could be just trying to get something for free or it could be some sort of powerplay, where they just want to "feel" more powerful than me. I'm starting to feel how phony the customer/service worker interact is. I really have to just let the customer play their role and accept that it's there instead of feeling like I could change it by acting differently. I get from this video that most interactions are just as phony. The "ego" is just another role, and not even real
A question I have is how does "Acceptance" as you describe it here and Self-confidence coexist. At work I'm a pretty easy-going guy but people tell me that I let others walk all over me. I just accept other people's abuses without doing anything about it. I think to myself that others will be nice to me if I'm nice to them, but it often isn't the case. I'll just keep brushing it off and disassociating from them as much as I can stand. I wonder if I could ever be a nice guy who at the same time carries an aura of confidence where people respect him enough to not take advantage.
Right, in the end it is not about good or evil.
It is about knowing or not knowing.
Hi Leo . this is Sailab who has truly felt a difference in my life right after watching the first video of yours. I am not intending to challenge you and neither find myself capable to do it but what I had to get something clarified. I completely understand what u said and applying that to the our everyday life is not much difficult . But when we come to the terrorism , the crime part , I am not able to get it clear as to why and how should we do it ? Dont you think if criminals and terrorists watch ur video they might get even more encouraged so as to say the we are a reality and not evil and that people have to accept us? I understand that they have turned into terrorists due to demonizing others but I am not able to find a reason as to why not demonize them if we dont turn out to be what they have become due to its negativity.
What if I strongly disagree with a particular situation? Let's say a situation involving violence. Shouldn't I take action? I can't fit 'acceptance' in this contest. Help me understand. I'm confused. Thank you for your videos.
The right way is clearly distinct from error.
For example, if someone is threatening your life, your peace of mind is CLEARLY disturbed. In this instance, in order to maintain your right state of mind, i.e. peace, it becomes necessary to remove the threat by any means necessary, whether by extinguishing the threat or by separating yourself from it.
I may be powerless over another person's thoughts and behaviors (to a degree), but I am not powerless over my own. I can take possession of my own thoughts and behaviors.
I do not have to accept unacceptable behavior. The first time I may be a victim, but after repeated abuse, I am a willing participant.
Wow, very powerful and profound! Love this one and your other videos too! Thanks a lot! One practical question about this video is "without making judgement how could we make choices in daily life?" Could it be the case that out of survival instinc we construct ego and all the walls and illusions around it throughout our life?
it is what…it is.
hey leo you seem moved or something ..i cant say but very ..not seen this in your other videos…indulge me .
thanks it makes a difference.
Very interesting and deep topic, I love to do a backflip into this pool. Lol.
So in the case of hitler, sadam and other evil dictators we might try to see it in there point of view. Why did they do what they did. Did they feel a threat that they killed so many people. Maybe. Now we know no matter why they did what they did it was wrong. No matter what hitler felt the Jews did couldn't justify his brutal torture of so many. He could of just kicked them out of the country. In the case if john Wayne Gasy why did he kill so many men. Did he have issue with gay men? No matter what there reason was the evil doers had options and they choose the worst possible choice. My definition of evil is when someone decides to take action to hurt people when they have other options. Sometimes you have to steal or kill because you have very little option that are better.
I think we have to always form opinions on every thing we see. But when forming an opinion we have to see the other point of view. Put our self in others shoes. There is a line between good and evil. And having choices to do good or evil is the line.
Hey Leo,
I really enjoy many of your videos and I do like some of the concepts you put forth in this one but I think they have a limit. It is difficult for instance to accept rape as just part of reality when you're the one that's being raped. I do not think that it is fair for anyone to have an expectation that a rape victim just get okay with the reality of that happening to them. Similarly if you were a Jewish descent and have had relatives stolen from your family and killed. We cannot expect the victims of heinous crimes to not judge these things or their perpetrators as bad. Or for me to judge those things bad on their behalf.
While reality itself is neutral some actions are just bad and it is okay to label them and judge them so, and then use teaching and social mores to try to minimize their reoccurrence.
For us to be so abstract about it kind of sounds like the mental masturbation you sometimes mention.
On the whole, so happy to have discovered your work.
Thanks man,
You are really helping me. Seriously.
I'm so glad I found you.
how to create a successful life without no college
Leo, I found you on Youtube last week and I was really starting to enjoy your videos and wisdom on some psychological topics- but then you came up with this one. I must say, I'm really disheartened by your world view here. Human beings cannot "not Judge"! This is the only way we can determine right from wrong, good from bad, the people we choose to be close to, ETC. Should we let everyone out of prison? Shut down the police force? Dismantle the U.S. Military? Why not? I mean- we don't want to judge the people we're fighting against, right?… I don't except "some" realities, and neither should the world! We didn't except the Reality of "WW II"- so we changed it!! There's some things on this planet worth fighting against- Evil is one of them!!… You also said in the Vid that if we judge someone as evil, WE'RE really the EVIL ones!! Aren't YOU doing what YOU told us not to do??? I believe you've got a lot of good things to say about many topics- THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM!!! Stick with Psychology and stay away from Philosophy!… I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this and you don't want to chase us all away!
I feel like the ideas presented in this video are just a different explanation of the idea of the "ego" that Leo presents in many of his other videos and that many others have been talking about for hundreds of years. I think it might be difficult to understand if it's someone's first exposure to the "ego" concept, but I really enjoyed this interpretation. Thanks Leo!
I have always thought that people aren't inherently good or bad, everyone is a collection of "good" and "bad" actions. We tend to see ourselves as good people and others as bad, but we are all really a mix. Like Leo said, we are projecting, refusing to see our own faults that we point out in others.
Leo goes further making the argument that the actions themselves aren't good or bad either, but neutral. This may be where he lost a lot of people, but I've heard this idea explained before. I don't think "acceptance" means that we just let things that hurt people fly and turn a blind eye. I think it means that we don't have to be in a constant state of internal conflict and anxiety with the world and be at peace with the world as it is. The world will always be chaotic, but it doesn't mean we can't be happy.
Great video Leo. On this video you are talking about demonizing others. I have a simple solution that trying to use for my relationships. First of all there is not real reality what Leo said. We are making our reality real. Second, if we can take anybody the way they are we would need to demonize prople less.
Hi Leo,
thank you for this amazing video.
In my opinion EGO is our greatest enemy.
The media and politicians using our EGO-problems to create fear or hate to get more power and control over us.
We have to learn to control our EGO. I think meditation and realization is one of the ways to learn how to control this EGO-illusion. Do you know more ways?
Very good video Leo !
Not sure if you noticed, there was an excessive light on your face from the device behind.Could not see you well. Would be great if this can be addresses.
Great otherwise!
I enjoy all of your videos Leo, but I have to be honest, I didn't understand the whole video, I mean it is absolutely hard to accept terrorists, I know reality is neutral, but how can you accept such acts, it's very hard, I Love hearing new frech ideas but right now, at my state of cousciousness, I think it's hard for me to accept everything as it is, specially in the evil part or the jugement of what i believe is evil.
and just to add to my previous comment, I have a question: wouldn't this kind of acceptance cause nonchalance and where is this diffrent from criticising positively?
I don't know if this helps but acceptance, in the sense that Leo uses it, is simply the opposite of denial. I accept that there is terrorism in the world. It doesn't mean I accept it therefore I like it. I accept and I allow that what Hitler did is what he did. Non acceptance would be to deny what he did.
Acceptance, to my mind anyway, doesn't mean to say you can't work towards creating a world that is different. It doesn't lead to complacency. However if you fight against what is, your angry judgemental ego will get in the way and you will be no better than the original perpetrator. First accept and allow that what happened is what happened. Allow it to be. From there, transformation can occur.
There's an old and wise saying. "What you resist persists." Acceptance is merely non-resistance.
I think Ariana is correct in the way she sees evil. Don't let the ego get angry and react with anger to the evil, but instead try to understand why that person or person performed evil. Everyone with a Normal mind knows right from wrong. If some one does what we perceive as evil where somehow blinded by some powerful idea. We as the ones judging there actions need to understand with out anger what blinded them.
When America brought Africans to become slaves from Africa, those Americans where good Christians that knew in the bible jesus would never allow one human to enslave another human. Americans did it for greed of money, they wanted free labor and they justified there actions by bringing slaves from Africa. Possibly a few rich and powerful did it first and then in order for another farms to compete they also had to do it. I think everything must be broken down to its core with out getting angry at it. I am not saying don't judge it but understand it to it's root so when you pass judgement you know all the facts.
The facts speak the truth but can we ever have all the facts to pass judgement. Judging is demonising as Leo says. They are just opinions and opinions usually come from ego. They are not the universal truth but only the truth as we see it. I think this is just about being aware of how entitled we feel to judge. I think what Leo is saying, and I may be wrong and putting words into his mouth, is that demonising is resistance to what is.
There's a saying "the present is perfect". We may not "judge" it to be perfect but it can't actually be any other way than it actually is, in the now. Anything else is just denial of what is. And that causes us to demonise because, in doing so, it makes us feel better about ourselves. It protects our ego. Who are we to judge after all. "Let he who castes the first stone ……."
I totally get it. Living from it though is another matter. Particularly when my ego feels challenged
your eye contact with the viewer is amazing. i felt connected to you as you spoke. i will need to view this one again because part of me was concerned with how tired you look. i kept concentrating though, keeping in mind, that the subject is deep and i know you care .there is enough space for all of us. thank you Leo.
There would be no "terrorists" or "evil people" if they understood and made the effort we are trying to make to detach ourselves from what is not reality.
As someone who has influence over many people I need you to know this.
Demons are real and demons are evil.
They exist between this world and the next and have direct or indirect detrimental effects on our living construct depending on their level of influence.
To say that there is no such thing as real evil is to open yourself up to a spiritual invasion the likes of which we have never seen before.
The devil exists as a real entity.
Demons exist as a real entity.
Evil exists as a real entity.
Myth? No.
Evil is only allowed to persist when good men do nothing.
Thank you for sharing this, I feel the topic dose goes deeper. I have some confusion in my life. Although I understand your point rationally, for me it's still hard to stop judging others. Especially someone in my family, she loves me so much, and I feel guilty to judge her, I can see some of the qualities I hate are also a part of me, but I just became inpatient and upset when I am with her. She is my mom and got cancer, I want her to be happy, but most of the time I just want to run away from her. What can I do to be patient with her without losing myself?
Hey I watched the video alot of things I need to work on I just noticed that on the list one of the names is Anita Sarkeesian from FeministFrequency on youtube one of the most hated by all gamers
Hi Leo,
I'm confused. In another video you told me to cut toxic people from my life.
There are a few toxic people that I was about to cut, but now you tell me to integrate and accept them into my life? I find this contradictory.
Everything is a mirror of me, I create my own reality by my thoughts. Neutrality doesn't mean condoning behavior, but peace begins within me and if I change myself and become peaceful, I lead by example then if enough people change the world will eventually change through the 100th monkey syndrone.
I accept hard reality as it is, objectively, by trying to understand psychology behind people's motifs and actions. I understand the role that ego and fear play into one's decision to commit, for example, an act of severe violence. These people, undoubtedly, operate on a very shallow level of consciousness and who are neurologically stunted or undeveloped in particular areas of their brains. Their intellect, creativity, many praiseworthy skills and habits they might possess, etc. have no affect on how their psyche operates as far as their survival instinct, or their "lizard brain", goes. And all of us being subjects to that little part of our brain responsible for survival, add to it social conditioning, traumatic childhood experiences (we all carry our parents' pain), could make us dangerous to ourselves and others if we fail to identify, understand and to bring that stuff out from the subconscious into conscious. That said, do I condone those acts of violence while accepting its reality? Of course not. I simply see it as a sort of universal phenomena that is simply rooted in psychology of our human nature.
I find this video extremely useful and meaningful. I discovered while listening to this video that demonizing is something that I often do and I will try to change my behaviour towards people that I considered to be "evil".
However, I could not fully understand what you meant when you said that the evil that we see in others is in fact in ourselves. Somehow, I tend to disagree with that, that is my first reaction. Maybe you can explain again that part of the video.
Thank you, Leo.
Hi, Leo! I just found you on YouTube and found you interesting. But, I must say, after reading this transcript, I have to agree with many others, that I disagree strongly with you on this subject. There is Pure Evil in the world we live in, to not understand this or accept this truth is deceiving oneself. All the murdering that goes on, with adults, children, animal abuse, etc. That is nothing but Pure Evil. It is part of this crazy world we live in. But, I do believe that we must look deep within ourselves and be responsible for self. Like the Dalai Lama says…Do Not Let The Behavior of Others Destroy Your Inner Peace. We cannot change others nor should we want to or even try, we can only work on the self, and how we react to a situation. Being open minded is a good start to work on, and stop blaming others for one's unhappiness. I get that. But, when you say there isn't any evil persons in our world, do you watch the news? Isn't that reality? Or are we all delusional? And, it is just some made up story in our minds, while we are hearing the evil that has just been committed. It is real! And, there is nothing we can do about it, all we can do is (like the Buddha said) just be good and do good. Can't go wrong with that mantra. Namaste' my friend.
Julie, I think the problem nearly all of us have is wanting to condemn reality as a means of redressing it. What happens here, as Leo explains, is something else. By refusing to accept reality, we polarize around an idea that there is "good" (us and people like us) and "evil" (people who are not like us). In effect, we are an expression of the dualism that magnifies suffering instead of alleviating it. Whatever is, is. Our moral agency does not have to be a ego trip. It can be, instead, an enlargement of our concern so we are blindly acting out of the smaller self.
So Walt, what you are saying to Julie which is not a serial killer and child molestor is that she should not say serial killers and child molestors are evil? Maybe they are not evil but we can say mentally disturbed and doing evil acts? Why not draw a line and put all evil on one column and good on the other column? In making this list compare all the times of everyone to see what is evil and what is good and where we fall on the list. How can I teach my children right from wrong so they know if don't know my self.
This stuff is mind blowing. You are out of this world… I guess the point is not if evil exist or not but how to act independently from it accepting reality…
It was extremely hard to find 3 people that i despise. I got them finally, but those were people i really despised before, but now i do not despise them anymore.
I can sit and feel happy for 10 minutes, actually i'm spending second hour sitting and listening to your lectures and being happy.
What is enlightment? Is it realization that we are all part of the same reality, and there is no enclave of self in it? That does not mean there is not self. The self is there but its nothing exceptional compared to the reality.
Is enlightment look at the reality from the totally external point of view? Leaving your self in that reality as it is part of it? If yes, then i had Enligtment when i had a couple years – definetely before i was 10 and after 7. I was dead scared at that moment, and i pushed that realization away. Now i can see it without fear.
I'm not affraid of dying. Dying seems like a pleasant concept. Though i cannot kill myself even if i wanted to, survival instincts are kicking in if i try, and i cannot overcome them.
Still i have self, you, or whatever you call it. It is byproduct of reality. Denying it is ignorance. It still is immaterial, like a running computer programme, and it still needs a vesel to exist, like a computer programme needs computer to exist. Destroy a body and the self disappears, the same way when you destroy computer and the program stops running.
Maybe it should be discussed in some other thread, but this one has triggered those observations.
This video to me was very deep. What stuck out to me was acceptance of reality and severe judgement of people, places and things of which I am guilty. This video was helpful in pointing that out to myself. I strive to accept reality, but this took me to a deeper look at what it all really means.
When bullies, bully persons from young to older, how can you apply the experience of acceptance. The murders of Columbine, while your in the center of the moment. How do you apply acceptance.
These realities of fight or flight can be resolved; when the self thinks these actions even though perplexed; you overcome your fear by giving in to them.
philosophy is often true, but hard to swallow. when i take it very literally i get lost. Dont some depressed states of mind make a person feel like they dont exist? and that ego would be then lost on accepting that they cant separate themselves from what they perceive is really bad. Does this mean that depression is enlightenment in some cases? After being depressed we become more free in feeling nothing is stopping us from being able to go through life? i wonder how much is real then and how much negative perception I can eliminate by being conciencious of demonizing. i dont follow everything you mention but i think I can take away enough to improve.
Hahhaha man you're so full of shit, your theory is so very nice and sweet it makes me cry….. if your family would have been killed by Hitler I am 100% you would not come up with such bullshit. In theory life is so easy and rosy, but when you're directly affected, well things change, don't they?
Since i last wrote here, I got a general sense of why its better to not demonize people, as in my cousins words, dont let an event have that much power over you. Its wasted time and energy worrying about what the other person potentially could do to you. whether its a serious stalker or a violent or unstable family member. Unfortunately we have to deal with difficult people probably in our careers. Thanks for the advice, Leo!