Understanding Default Positions
By Leo Gura - May 1, 2017 | 17 Comments
How the mind traps itself by taking unrecognized positions
Max says: Hey Leo, something is wrong with this episode on my podcast app.
When I clicked on it to listen, it plays the “The Highest Hero’s Journey.”
Kinda weird.. you should look to get that resolved asap.
Max
Ivo says: Leo, you are starting to enforce your view of the world, like you somehow know that you are right. Well you are not right (your view is not “the right one”), and you are not helping much that way. You helping some people and hurt others. But the second ones don’t count right?
I thing that your job must be to help people to THINK for themselves in order to learn how to think, and not to give them thought to think!
….No. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity… a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning, and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.
“And thus he has encountered his second enemy: Clarity!
That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. “It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will fumble with learning. He will rush when he should be patient, or he will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more.” from “The Teachings of Carlos Castaneda’s don Juan Matus”
Alex says: I don’t see how Leo is lacking in teaching people how to think though.
There are cases of this. Like how Leo has a questionnaire guide for changing paradigms under his video on that. Or how his video on true vs false skepticism has a view on how skepticism is another perspective and even the skepticism must be doubted. And even that itself, is another perspective. This video, default thinking itself teaches the thinking technique on noticing the default side of things, which reminds me of a cognitive bias called the statues quo bias.
Another idea is how in his video, “The Ultimate Model of Knowledge,” is how he explains how he is contradicting himself. When he says that everything should be a perspective, and that that itself is another perspective, that’s true. But it’s possible to fight an illusion with another illusion. And ive seen some videos emphasizing not to believe him because he’s Leo, but because you judge the information as right. Good possiblites on how good thinking can be.
I think the trap some people who emphasize thinking for yourself too much is how even if it’s true that how to think is more important than what to think, the what to think is still valuable. You can teach someone to think. You can teach them to be skeptical of the validity of information. You can teach them to decide well. But without the what of information, there won’t be much information to judge in the first place. The what of information does not need to be rigid, black and white, but it can provide a good inspiration and guide for people to think of their own ideas. Which I think is what the examples in his videos can potentially produce. New ideas can combine and be rearranged into more ideas.
I’ve always found it strange how some teachers seem to withhold their position on a topic and tell people to think for themselves. I mean, why? Telling your position does not mean we’ll not think for ourselves. It could mean that we could learn another perspective to add as another factor of thinking on which we can independently decide on our own. If everyone hid their positions so people could think for themselves, we would not benefit in being able to learn from others, identify what we disagree with and mix in our ideas.
Ivo says: The wold is an illusion. But we don’t have to blame the world but our logic. Not the arguments of our logic but the hole concept of logical thinking.
Try to imagine what is to shut down your logical part of the brain. The animals do not have it but still act logically. It might be very interesting to see their world. To understand without logic. To see the world, without the illusion.
You cannot understand that logically, but only if you actually do it you can get it. Close your eyes and try it now.
This will help some people, that are ready and actually stress others and push them back from the search. But the first are almost there, and the second have everything to loose.
Alex says: I’m going to agree with your second statement there. Not much more to say.
Sevi says: Hi Ivo,
If you claim that Leo is enforcing his point of view or he thinks he is right; either you are not familiar with his concept or this video caught your ego in a very sensitive point.
I would suggest you to contemplate on what point could have possibly triggered your ego, because our spiritual knowledge itself can easily be a part of our defense mechanism.
In your first post you offer to teach people how to think, then in the second one, you are somehow against logical thinking. Something is clearly not matching in your stand.
Ivo says: Thinking and logical thinking are not the same. That was what my first post was all about.
WingWizard says: Hey Leo,
What if meditating consistently is just literally popping up each and every experience I consider to be painful? I think I am getting better at handling all these traumatic memory pop ups and not getting triggered by them. I now understand what you meant by one not knowing how much muck is filled in the mind of an “average” person. Is my mind actually getting rid of all these painful memories and becoming “clean”? I absolutely know all this “muck” in my mind has retarded the growth of my life than what it could I have been. So is my mind really getting purer? And to what degree does this purification keep on going? And once the mind has become relatively purer from the past, does is get impure again? What’s your knowledge on this?
Wow. You have absolutely changed my life, Leo.
Maria says: But how can we have a 360 ” perspective or how can we see more when we feel blind?
How can we understand what is happening to us? In what position we are in relative to something ore someone?
Alon says: i lost you at about 12 minutes, taking drugs and assuming that the world they open is the real one, well, if so, why can’t i get my drugs there, in the drug world? why do i have to come to the not real world to get them? why can i not write that lemons are blue, as i see them on my psychedelic world? why do i have to write yellow, as in this not real world?
So, everything falls apart, this is how it is when talks are shallow. sorry, i appreciate you and what you do, usually, you give some people a sort of intellectual basis to better their lives.
You chose to be atheist, great, you think that you were on both sides of the fence, you mean the you were on the very shallow and imaginary side of the Christians understanding of the world, which is basically zero. Christianity was given by G. to the simple people to have something to believe in, just as Islam was given to barbarians to make some order in their lives.
So your position on atheism is based on no knowledge of the true happenings in this world, no deep research (you’re too young to actually have made that research) and yet, you lecture to people about deep thoughts.
Please do continue with your lectures, they benefit many, me also, you at least make us understand ourselves in ways we did not realize, good work, i applaud to you.
John Wellwood says: Default positions bears listening to many times. Thanks.
Philip says: Good point Leo in regards to what is real.
Physical reality is very solid, but I once died, (had a near death experience) and as a result I realized that physical reality is not so absolute.
This experience brought me two revelations.
The first, after leaving the body, I was still there, I was fully aware after the world and my body disappeared around.
And second, the world around me dispersed like a fading dream, like the parting of an illusion or fog.
Spirit is intellectually said to be timeless and space-less.
In my direct experience I would favor that postulation.
If spirit is timeless then it is in fact permanent.
On the other hand the material plane is subject to the limits of time and space.
Everything in the physical has a beginning and an end.
So what is in fact “real”?
Is the transient realm or the timeless realm real?
Logically speaking one could make the case that the material plane is unreal because it has no permanence.
My direct experience for what it is worth supports that.
Hey Leo,
I’m just trying to understand here. What you’re saying is that reality has always been there, but we make it into the illusion by believing that the nature of the magic trick must be reality and thus regarded as such in practice. For it to look convincing, we believe in the magic behind the trick without questioning the true nature of the magic trick. Am I in the ballpark?
Madina says: This one I’ll definitely watch again. Interesting hour I just spent. It makes me think more and more about what is actually going on around.
Leo, you talked about death here, but are you gonna have any specific videos where you’ll cover death as concept, and what you think of it?
Max Gron says: I’ve come back from my neurosis and I think I need to have a good hard look at how disgusting the unchanged reality is. It’s nothing but nasty talk and arguing, that’s a flaming good reason to kick myself from behind, pinch my eyelids with pegs, and change my current state. I’m getting some menace to hit me around here, it’s just not on, you shouldn’t hurt people. It physically hurts listening to people, I’m being ripped off by not having opportunities, why am I not the lucky one? It doesn’t seem like I’m proud of my default position.
Max Gron says: Why are you talking about belief? And yes atheists have beliefs, but an active belief in no God? Atheism is the disbelief in the the existence of a deity, it’s not a belief, it’s a disbelief, they’ll even say keep your weird religion to yourself, and that they’re not buying it. Atheists are denying religion for the sake of denying it, it’s an outright denial, for an atheist, in God we doubt, not the other way round, the position is just disbelief, religious people suffer from the delusion that most people’s disbelief isn’t just disbelief, just disbelief is exactly what it is. I don’t think reality is your imagination, nothing is pernicious, nothing is evil, there’s no contradiction, you either believe in evil or you don’t. Believing your beliefs in evil doesn’t work, you quell evil by seeing that all things are good, the evil is good, and that the best is good. It’s as simple as that, there’s no such thing as evil, therefore Leo’s crazy, he believes in evil, he believes in fantasy, rather than acknowledging his knowledge of truth, it’s not the truth, truth is just something in my head.