Radical Openmindedness

Right off the bat, I need to give you a warning. This is an advanced episode for very open
minded people and it's going to be extremely threatening to you, to most of you. But
nevertheless, let's begin.

I want you to think about the following analogy. Think about this: You are an adult and you
got mercury fillings in your teeth when you were younger. And now you've been living with
these mercury fillings for the last 30 or 40 years. And what you now discover, and what
they've discovered, is that mercury fillings actually leak mercury into your body and slowly
poison and toxify your body. So, you discover this. And now, you're in kind of a bind,
because now what you need to do is, you need to go to the dentist and you need to go
through an expensive, troublesome, very serious procedure where they have to go and rip
out all the fillings very carefully and delicately and expertly from your teeth to get out the
mercury, without getting the mercury leaking even more into your tissues. And this is a
scary procedure to go through. It's a big decision to make. And you've to get all these
toxins out of your teeth, put in ordinary fillings, ceramic fillings, and finally you can be
healthy and get rid of all the toxicity that's in your body. So, this is actually something that
happens to people nowadays, if you were unfortunate enough to get mercury fillings, this
is something that you might want to consider.

But the analogy here is that the same thing has actually happened with your mind, but you
don't really know it. And I'm going to make you aware of it right now. See, what's
happened is that just like mercury fillings, society, without you knowing it, as you were
growing up, has clogged up your mind with a bunch of beliefs, dogmas and theories about
how the world works, which are now severely limiting what's possible for you in your
personal development. It's limiting you in your career. It's limiting you in your relationships.
It's limiting you in what you think you can accomplish in life. And most importantly is, that
it's limiting you from doing the most advanced personal development work that's possible,
which is spiritual work, and what I call enlightenment work.

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Here's something you gotta really understand: The degree to which your mind is open, is
the degree to which you have true freedom in your life. And most people's minds are not
open. You don't even have a clue yet what true open mindedness really means.

And this is another example here, common theme that I'm outlining in much of my
material, of a counterintuitive move that needs to be made in personal development.
What's the counterintuitive move here? Well, what most people try to do, is they try to
know. They go through life acquiring knowing or knowledge and they try to become more
and more certain as they get older. The counterintuitive move, and if you really want to
advance far in your development, you have to make this move, is to let go of knowing and
to get into a true state of not-knowing, profound not-knowing. This is a very special state
that almost nobody talks about, that almost nobody knows about. And it's extremely
counterintuitive. You might wonder: "Well, Leo, why would I want to not know? Not-
knowing seems to be like a weak state. Knowing is the strong state." But I want to
convince you and open up your mind to the possibility that actually, not-knowing is an
extremely powerful state. And we're going to do that here with a really in-depth live
exercise.

The rare thing is to find people who truly don't know, because what happens is that people
think they know, but actually they don't know. And what happens is that they fool
themselves with a false certainty. Religious people do this. Rational people do this.
Scientifically minded people do this. Everybody, almost everybody does this. You need to
really work deep on yourself. You need to go in there and extract all the bullshit from your
mind. Just like those mercury fillings. Before you can truly get into a state of not-knowing.
A state of true not-knowing is extremely rare. And it's very difficult and also very
threatening and scary to stay in that state for some very profound reasons, which perhaps
I'll get into as we go on.

I had a really profound experience this summer where I really tapped into a state of true
not-knowing and there's a big difference between not knowing simply as a language game,
like paying lip service and just saying: "Oh yeah, I don't know. Oh yeah, I'm kind of
skeptical. Yeah, I leave some room open to my mind for some new possibility." That's fake
not-knowing. Then there's actual not-knowing. A state that you've probably never
experienced in your life. But you actually sit there and you really don't know things that

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most people think they know. For example, you don't know what reality is. You don't know
what existence is. You don't know how the world works. You don't know what life is. You
don't know what another person is. You question who you are. To such a profound level,
like what happened with me, that your sense of identity actually dissolves, and you could
have profound mystical transforming experiences, enlightenment experiences, when you
get into this deep state of not-knowing. It's a very powerful and very profound state.

So, you might wonder: Why do we want to open ourselves up? For one thing, this is very,
very helpful if you're trying to do any kind of enlightenment work. If you're doing any self
inquiry work. True not-knowing is extremely powerful. Also, with this radical open-
mindedness, it frees you up, frees up your mind from concepts, beliefs, and dogmas, that
really hold you back in life, hold you back from going out there and achieving your full
potential, finding your authentic self in life, pursuing your life purpose, and understanding
reality at very profound levels. And lastly, it really opens you up to some very advanced
work. And as I go on with actualize.org and I release more content, I'll be covering much
more advanced topics. And to even listen and even comprehend some of the topics I'll be
talking about, you're gonna need a radical degree of openmindedness.

So, what I wanna do here is I wanna take you through a guided visualization. It's gonna be
a bit long, it's gonna be maybe about 20 minutes long or so. So, what I want you to do is, I
want you to prepare yourself. Get involved here. Actually take this concept and this
material very seriously because it's very serious. This is a very, very important topic. It
seems kind of esoteric and abstract and philosophical. It's very practical. You're going to
start to see the benefits of this after you go through it.

So, go ahead and take a comfortable seat. Sit with your back up straight, put yourself into
a comfortable, relaxed position, and we're going to get going. And I want you to really get
into it and take the things I say seriously. They will have a transformative effect on your
mind if you do.

What I'd like you to do is to get, first of all, into the present moment.

And the way that you can do that is by getting in touch with the direct experiences that are
happening to you right now. Get in touch with what you're seeing. Get in touch with the

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feelings and sensations in your body, and with the sounds that you're hearing. Get very
present to what's going on in your body right now.

Take a nice deep breath in and as you exhale, relax your body and get even more into the
present moment and focus your attention on the sound of my voice.

Good, keep breathing at a relaxed pace and open your mind to some of these new
possibilities that I'm going to present to you.

The first thing I want you to do is to acknowledge to yourself that 99% of your knowledge
and all the things you think you know about life and how the world works and is structured,
is second-hand knowledge. This means, that this is knowledge that you did not directly
experience in any way and that you take completely on faith from other human beings
through word of mouth and what's called hearsay. In a court of law, we would call this
hearsay evidence.

What are some examples? Let me give you a list. And I want you to really acknowledge to
yourself, as I run down this list, that you take these things completely on faith.

First is that the earth is round. You actually have no direct experience of this. You take this
completely on faith.

That viruses cause diseases.

The Big Bang Theory.

That matter is composed of subatomic particles.

Evolution, that organisms evolve and species morph. This is something you take on
hearsay.

That the earth is 4 billion years old.

Whatever you might think that Jesus said, or the Buddha said, or Mohammed said, or any
other prophet or sage has said. All of this you don't know that they actually said. You don't

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actually know what these individuals said. You don't even know if it these individuals truly
existed. Acknowledge that to yourself right now.

Acknowledge to yourself that you don't know if you are your parents biological child unless
you've done DNA testing. You don't actually know this.

Acknowledge to yourself that you may not be related to your brother or sister. You don't
really know if you're related to them.

In fact, I had an interesting experience about a year ago. After 30 years my mom finally
told me, she called me up on the phone one day and she just said: "Oh, you know, by the
way your brother your brother is actually only your half brother." Blew my mind. It was kind
of a like a 'Luke, I am your father' type of moment. Completely blew my mind. I had no idea
that he wasn't my full brother.

Good. Keep present and we'll keep going. There's a lot of other stuff I want you to
acknowledge and to ponder.

Acknowledge that you picture reality using models, which you yourself actually know are
not correct. What do I mean by this? Here are some examples:

In chemistry, we think of molecules as the ball and stick models that we're shown. But this
is not what chemicals actually are. But you, when you actually think about chemicals, you
think of them as ball and stick models. This is a model of reality which is actually false.
And we know it's false. But nevertheless, this is how you view reality.

Here's another example. You think of atoms as orbiting tiny particles, even though you
probably know that atoms are not actually particles, they're probability fields. Yet you still
think of them as tiny little round particles.

Another example is planets. You think of planets as being perfectly round. When you think
of the Earth, or you think about the Moon, or you think about Mars, you think of them as
spheres. But in fact, a planet is not a sphere. It's elliptical, and even then, it's not a perfect
ellipse, because it's got mountains and it's got terrain. So when you think of it as a sphere,

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that's an approximation, a model that you have. But you know, if you look closely, that this
model is not accurate.

Here's another example. You think of time as absolute, even though we know better. We
know that time is relativistic. When you look out at the sunset, you think of the sun as
setting, and Orbiting the earth. You don't think of the earth as rotating. You think of the sun
as moving through the sky. You think that the sun is orbiting the earth, even though you
know this isn't true. Yet this shapes your worldview. This shapes how you actually see
reality.

When you sit in a chair and you're perfectly motionless, you actually believe, for a
moment, that your body is In perfect stillness and is motionless. But in fact, we know
better. We know that the body is attached to the planet and the planet is rotating at some
ridiculously high speed, thousands of miles per second. And that the solar system is
rotating, even faster in the galaxy. So your body, even though it seems motionless, and
you think you're sitting still, is actually moving at perhaps hundreds of thousands of miles
per second. Yet you actually sit there believing that you're motionless.

When an object falls to the floor, you think of the object as falling down, even though we
know that there is no such thing as up and down. The object is falling towards the center of
the Earth. It's not falling down, but you don't think of it that way. If we put you in a room
and we somehow positioned you upside down in that room, you would think that you're
upside down in a room. And you would want to become right side up. And this would be a
very real phenomenon for you. You'd really want to be up right side up. Even though you
know, if you're very careful, that there's no such thing as right side up or upside down.
These are just local coordinate conventions that we've adopted on Earth. In space there's
no such thing.

When you look out into the night sky and you marvel at the stars, you think the stars
actually exist. Like they're physical objects out right now in space somewhere. Even
though you know better, if you're very careful you know that it takes millions of years for
light to travel these vast distances between the Earth and the stars you're looking at. In
fact, it takes so long that most of those stars that you're looking at don't even exist

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anymore. They've exploded. There's nothing there. And yet you believe, when you're
looking up in the night sky, that there are actually stars out there.

Beyond which, you actually think that the stars are stars, when in fact, when you look at a
star, very likely what you're looking at is you're looking at a galaxy and not a star. You
think of it as a star, but actually it's a galaxy that contains millions or billions of other stars.
But you don't acknowledge this to yourself when you're looking at the night sky, even
though you know better.

So what I want you to acknowledge here is that you have a model of reality. Even if you
think it's very scientific and accurate and that this model is complete fiction, as these
examples show. Now, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to recall how many times people
have been wronged throughout history. If you're a student of history, there's a long track
record of ridiculous errors that humanity has made. There's a trend here. Here's some
basic examples:

The earth is flat. Just a few thousand years ago, most people believed that this was the
case.

That the Earth is at the center of the universe. 500 years ago, most people believed that
this is the case.

The witch trials that were held in Europe and in North America, just hundreds of years ago,
and how silly and misguided they look now, these witch trials.

That blacks are less intelligent than whites. How silly does that look now, when just two or
three hundred years ago, that was considered common knowledge.

Euclidean versus non Euclidean geometry. If you've studied this topic, then you know how
wrong scientists were about some principles in Euclidean geometry. And the discovery of
non Euclidean geometry.

Time as being absolute. Just 400 years ago, we actually believed that time was absolute.
Newton believed it. Now we know that's not the case.

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Just several hundred years ago, scientists actually believed that moving faster than 50
miles per hour would make the human body explode. This was during the railroad era.
When railroad trains were starting to go faster and faster, people were afraid to get on
those fast railroads. Because they didn't know if the human body could handle that kind of
velocity. Seems laughable now, but this was a real concern for scientists back then.

Just a couple hundred years ago, people believed that lifting over 500 pounds for a human
being is impossible. They believed that it was a biological limit of the human body that it
could not lift over 500 pounds, until that record was broken.

Just a hundred years ago, it was believed that communication through air, wireless
communication, is impossible. In fact, the inventor of wireless communication, the radio,
Marconi, he was nearly put into an insane asylum when he announced that he discovered
radio wave communication.

Just a hundred years ago, it was believed that flight was impossible.

Just 20 or 30 years ago, it was believed that computers would never be able to beat man
at playing chess.

Just 60 or 70 years ago, it was believed that the 4 minute mile was impossible.

And just 10 years ago, it was believed by many people that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction.

So, I want you to think about this is just a tiny list, the tip of the iceberg. I want you to really
acknowledge that humanity has made many blunders in its knowledge of how reality
works. And what truth is. This trend, I want you to use this trend to open your mind to the
possibility that there could still be other things right now that you hold as true, which are
actually false. That you could be very certain about something, but nevertheless it can be
false and you might never know about it. Open your mind to that possibility.

Good. Stay with me. Let's keep going. Stay in the present moment. I want you to
acknowledge now that the culture you grew up in has imprinted your mind with norms and
values and beliefs of which you are unconscious.

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Imagine, for example, if you were born in the Middle East. What kind of values and beliefs
would you have? How would you look at the world differently? How would your religious
views be different? How would your political views be different? How would your views
about women be different, or homosexuality, or drinking alcohol? Really imagine that.

And then imagine if you were born in an African tribe. If you grew up in an African tribe
with no technology, no modern schooling. If you live in a tribe of 50 people out in the
wilderness in a hut and you hunted gazelles and lions with spears and bows and arrows.
And you were married to your cousin. Imagine how different your values would be.
Imagine how different your knowledge of the world would be. How different your worldview
would be. If you were raised in an African tribe.

Now imagine that you were born in North Korea. And you've never been outside of North
Korea in your entire life. Imagine what you would believe about government. How your
views of history and philosophy would change and science and religion would be different.
Imagine how your worldview would be different. Imagine how radically different your
values and your lifestyle would be.

Now imagine if you were born 10.000 years ago in Aboriginal Australia. You were an
aborigine living in Australia, 10.000 years ago, before the advent of agriculture. Think
about what you would believe about reality. How would your worldview be different than it
is right now? How would your values be different? How would your political leanings be
different? How would your religion be different? What would you think life and the world
actually are, if you were an Aboriginal living in Australia 10, 000 years ago? How would
you relate differently to people?

And now imagine, and I'm just going to assume here that you're a Westerner and perhaps
you have Christian leanings. Now imagine if you're a Christian now, let's say, imagine what
it would be like to be a Christian in Europe, one thousand years ago. Think about how
radically different your beliefs and values would be, even though you're still a Christian,
and you're still, let's say, a white European if you are one now. How radically different it
would be, if you lived a thousand years ago, in Christian Europe, in the medieval times, in
the Middle Ages. Christianity one thousand years ago was completely different than
Christianity today. Completely different. Think about how differently you would approach

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your family. Politics. Abortion. Homosexuality. Your worldview. The Bible. Other religions.
All of these attitudes would be completely different one thousand years ago, even if you
were still a Christian.

Good. What I really want you to acknowledge right now, from pondering some of these
examples, is that the culture and society and time in which you grow up shapes your
values and worldview in profoundly radical ways and you are generally completely
unconscious of this influence in your life. You do not normally acknowledge it. But
acknowledge it now. And especially acknowledge that you have no say and no control
over this factor. What culture, what country you grew up in, what political system you're
growing up under. What family structure you're growing up under, what time in human
civilization you're alive in, these are all factors outside of your control. And yet they
profoundly influence what you believe and how you see the world. Your entire
understanding of life and reality is wedded to your culture.

Good. Now I want to take you through some other considerations. I'm going to pose some
questions to you, and I really want you to think deeply about these questions. Stay in the
present moment. And really open your mind to some of these possibilities.

Firstly, think about this. Is it likely that mainstream culture, society, and science might be
biased? Might they have a political bias? A financial bias? An ego bias? And just flat out
ignorance? Or groupthink bias? Is that likely? Answer to yourself in your own mind, yes or
no. And also consider the ramifications of your answer.

Next, consider the following. Have you ever clung to a position in an argument or a debate
Even after you realized that you were wrong. Think of a time in your life where this
happened to you.

Next, have you ever been completely certain about something, but later, you found out that
you were wrong? Like, you were really sure it was true, but then a few years later you
found out you were wrong. You were so certain it couldn't be wrong at all, but still, you
found out you were wrong. Think of a time when that happened in your life. You can
probably think of one.

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Next, Think about this. Is it likely that out of all the beliefs that you hold, some of them
might be wrong? Answer yes or no in your own mind.

Next, have you ever used logic to reason out a sound conclusion, only later to discover
that it was nevertheless wrong due to a false premise?

Next. Is it likely that other individuals, including yourself, might hold an egotistical self
agenda, which skews how you see and interpret the world? Is that likely? Yes or no? Have
you noticed before your own egotistical self agenda in dealing with people and in acquiring
knowledge?

Next, I want you to bring to mind someone you've known personally, who was completely
certain about something, but it was obvious to you that this person was wrong in their
belief. And now, can you see that you yourself might also easily fall into this exact same
trap?

Acknowledge to yourself next that no matter how certain you feel that you are about an
opinion or a belief that you hold, you could be in error. And think about the ramifications of
that.

Next, acknowledge that the mind has a tendency to deceive and to lie to itself. Are you
aware of this? Are you aware that you deceive yourself and that you lie to yourself?
Acknowledge that you do.

Also acknowledge to yourself that valid logic by itself proves nothing. Because a valid
conclusion requires valid premises. How often do you tout valid logic as justifying your
beliefs?

Are you acknowledging that your logic could be valid, but your premises could still be
invalid, therefore your conclusion is invalid?

And now we're going to go really deep, what all this is leading up to. I want you to
acknowledge that you can be mistaken about the most fundamental aspects of reality. You
can be mistaken about time, space, existence, cosmology, religion, God, and even who
you think you are as a identity. All these most fundamental things that we think we know

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about reality, that all these, and especially these, we can be wrong about. Open your mind
to that possibility. Like, really open your mind to that possibility.

Also acknowledge that there's no reason why the human intuition should be correct about
things like time, space, existence, cosmology, God, religion, or even your notion of self.
That our intuition could be completely wrong about these things, because our intuition
wasn't designed to understand these things. Acknowledge that as a real possibility.

Acknowledge that the biggest likelihood for self deception occurs when you ignore the
possibility of self deception occurring. Really think about this, the biggest likelihood for self
deception occurs when you ignore the possibility of Self deception occurring. Most people
ignore the possibility that they are deceiving themselves.

Also acknowledge that when you don't know something, you don't know that you don't
know it. That's a bit mind boggling, let me say it again. Really think this through. When you
don't know something you don't know that you don't know it. Which means that you can be
totally, absolutely certain that you know it, and still be wrong.

And lastly, for those of you who have done self inquiry work, or what I call enlightenment
work, if you try to look into the true nature of your own being and who you are, if you've
done that kind of work, then I want you to acknowledge right now that you haven't been
able to locate yourself, and that you don't actually know who or what you are as an entity
or as a being.

Good. So those are all the things I wanted you to ponder. What should have happened, as
you were entertaining all these possibilities, is that your mind should have been opening,
and a state of not knowing should have been dawning on you. And all your beliefs about
how the world is, and what is right and what is wrong, and what is God, and what is
religion, and what's right and what's not right, who's deluded, who's deceived, and so on
and so forth, all of these should have been shattered, because the fact is that you don't
know these things. Yet you go around pretending like you do and it doesn't matter whether
you're religious or spiritual or scientific or logical or philosophical or intellectual, it doesn't
matter. You do this, you deceive yourself with a false sense of certainty.

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So, what I want you to do here is I want you to really acknowledge the deep ramifications
of what we've gone through here. This is some very deep stuff we're talking about. We're
basically questioning and undermining your entire worldview and all of your beliefs about
life. What I'm saying here is not light stuff. I'm saying some heavy stuff here. I'm basically
trying to get you to agree with me, that you could be deeply mistaken about all of this, and
also, that you lie to yourself about the degree of certainty you have about this stuff.

What's true, what's really true if you're self honest, is that you're not really certain about
these things, but you pretend like you are. And the more uncertain you are, the more
you're gonna fight and defend your position, and the more you're gonna cling to your
dogmas.

Good. Welcome back. So, that's it. Those are some of the things I wanted you to think
about. Now, let me conclude by just saying some last words about what you should do
with some of these ideas, I've presented to you here. What do you do about this? How do
you actually use this radical openmindedness and how do you take it further? Because
we've just only showing you the tip of the iceberg here. The first thing I want you to do is I
want you to actually take time to deeply ponder all of these things that I told you. Rewatch
this episode over and over and over again and really think about each one of these points.
You could spend dozens of hours thinking about every single point I went through here
and you would not even get one percent of how deep some of these ideas are. You could
spend years thinking about all this stuff and it would be very valuable for you to do so. So,
start doing that. Think about it on your way to work in the car. Think about it when you're in
your shower. Instead of thinking about all the petty shit you usually think about. Really
ponder these points. Soak in the ramifications of some of these ideas.

Secondly, I want you to notice yourself trying to convince others of your beliefs and your
dogmas. Notice when you do it. Become conscious of this. Because you do do it. You do it
at work, you do it with your friends, you do it at the dinner table, you do it with politics, you
do it with religion, you do it with everything. Just notice that you do that.

I also want you to notice that being in a state of not-knowing or having no beliefs
whatsoever is empowering. It's very deeply empowering. It doesn't seem like it's going to
be empowering when you first start, but when you actually get there and you get a taste of

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true not-knowing, it's very empowering and very liberating, not having to replace your old
beliefs with any other beliefs. I want you to notice that true not-knowing is not another
belief, it's not another position. It's not another worldview. I'm not trying to get you to
become a nihilist here or to become a cynic or a chronic skeptic. Those are all, again,
positions and worldviews. Instead, what I'm asking you to do is to basically hold no beliefs,
and not try to fill that void with any new beliefs or perspectives. You're actually just sitting
there, totally open to any possibility. Without a preference for one possibility versus
another. Without trying to make it come out this way or that way. Without having it be any
way at all. You're basically completely grounded in the present moment.

And the last thing I want you to start doing is I want you to start wondering why you cling to
beliefs. Why do you cling to your beliefs so much? What's going on there? Why are you so
neurotic in the way that you defend your beliefs? Why are you so resistant to some of the
things that I've introduced to you? Why do you have emotional reactions when people
question your beliefs? Can you notice that it's neurotic and unhealthy, psychologically
unhealthy? There's something very deep going on there. I want you to just become curious
about that, like:"Hmm, what's going on there? Maybe I should investigate further and get to
the bottom of it at one point in my life."

Okay, good. I hope you've enjoyed this taste of radical openmindedness. Keep going with
it. What's going to happen is that your mind is going to expand and open, and then it's
going to close back down. And then you're going to have to push and push and push to
open it up again. And then again, it's going to close back down and you have to push
again to open it up. And this will be something that you have to keep working on over and
over and over and over again in your life to get to a state, where you can entertain some of
the most deep personal development work principles that I'm going to share with you in
the future. So, I hope you take this stuff seriously. This is not just idle philosophy, this will
have a profound transformational effect on your life.

And if you keep going with it, what it'll do is, it'll lead to complete freedom and liberation.
This is an amazing thing. Liberation and freedom of your mind. You're gonna jailbreak your
mind. You can experience profound, mystical states and you can discover the truth of your
own being, other people's being, and the nature of existence itself. This truth is not going

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to be another belief or another position. It's going to be something else totally, entirely
different.

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