What Is Karma?

By Leo Gura - January 26, 2015 | 96 Comments

Why your life is a living hell

Video Transcript

Show Full Transcript Minimize Transcript

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org, and in this video I want to talk about what is karma.

“You harm yourself, as dust thrown against the wind comes back to the thrower.” – Buddha

That is one of my favorite quotes from the Buddha. This quote gives us a really good hint and clue as to what karma actually is. Karma is a concept that comes to us from the East. It’s really popular in the Buddhist, Indian and Yogi traditions. This dates back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in the East.

Karma itself is a Sanskrit word. I’m going to tell you what it means in a second. Before I do that, there is something I notice. I notice that here in the West, people who use this concept don’t really understand the subtlety of it. They use it in a really ham handed kind of way.

I want to put the nuance of subtlety back into the concept of karma. In the West, the way we think of karma and the way we use it looks something like this. We think of it as a universal of justice. For example, someone goes and robs a bank.

This is an act we consider evil. The police come and don’t catch him and he gets away with it. What we tend to think is that karma will get him in the end. By that, we mean that at some point later in his life, the laws of justice will eventually even themselves out naturally because something bad will happen to that person.

Somehow, he deserves it now. He’s going to get some other punishment for it. Maybe five years later, someone will steal a car from him. Maybe five years later, something bad will happen in some other aspect of his life, and we will say – “Ha, ha! Karma got you because you did something evil in your past.”

This is really not how karma works. This is kind of a cartoon character version of how karma works. I want to give you the more accurate and nuanced way in which karma works. This is going to apply directly to your life, so it’s not just about bank robbers and murderers.

This is going to apply to everything that’s happening to you right now. It’s going to explain a lot about why you suffer in life and why you aren’t getting the results you want in life. This is worth understanding.

Basically and as the Buddha was saying, every action that you take in life has a certain consequence to it. Bad actions have natural bad consequences. These bad consequences don’t have to come from the outside. The worst of them come from the inside.

Karma Is Action

The word karma itself is a Sanskrit word. It’s an ancient word. What does it actually mean? Karma actually means action. Karma equals action. If you take away only one thing from this video, let it be this. Karma equals action.

When you think about this, you might wonder – “Action? What does this have to do with justice and equality that we take karma to mean?” Think about it like this. Your actions and everybody else’s actions in life, including the actions of governments, societies and organizations, animals and also the natural actions of life, universe flowing, the actions of gravity and all the other natural forces that we have, are all potentially actions.

Every action has a consequence to it. It’s basically the law of cause and effect. Every effect has a cause. Life itself is just this giant interplay of actions. We can take the moment you’re born and stretch it out to the point of when you’re going to die and everything in between we can consider being a series of actions.

Basically, these series of actions go like this. One leads to the next. The actions you took earlier on will lead to some eventual consequences down the road as just a natural consequence of the way life works.

Recognizing this and specifically applying it to your life basically means that if you take good actions, you will get good consequences. If you take bad or evil actions, you will get bad or evil consequences. All of this seems fairly straightforward, but what most people don’t understand is what good and bad actually mean here.

It’s very different than you might think. I’m going to get to that in a second. The other thing people tend to think about the law of karma is that this is some sort of supernatural law. There is some sort of an old man with a beard, sitting up in the clouds, and keeping tabs on everybody or keeping an account of who did how much good and bad stuff, and then trying to even it out for everybody.

That’s really not the way I think this law is supposed to work. This law is a natural law. This law is a psychological law. What really gets interesting is the psychology of it. It’s so profound in the way it explains how human psychology works.

It’s also a spiritual law. The spiritual part of it is really understood when you start to understand what the Eastern sages mean by good and bad. Here is what it means, and it isn’t what we tend to think here in the West at all.

Good Means Selfless, Bad Means Selfish

Good means selfless. These are actions that don’t come from your ego, but from your spiritual nature. Bad means selfish, and you can also say that this is evil. Evil is not an objective thing out there.

There isn’t a devil that is sitting out there and going to turn you into something evil. Evil is actually something very mundane and simple. This is where it applies directly to your life. All of this applies directly to your life.

Evil is doing things from your ego, from your identity or from yourself. This one concept here goes so deep that I want to shoot a lot more videos on it. It’s going to be necessary, especially if you’re interested in spiritual enlightenment work, which I will be shooting a video on soon.

This means selfish acts. What do we mean by selfish acts? This is such an interesting concept to unravel. Of course, we mean the most selfish acts. When we think of selfish, the most common example that comes to mind is this.

You’re going to Thanksgiving dinner. You’re sitting there and you take all the best food for yourself. You don’t give it to anybody else and you don’t share any of the food. The other people are left hungry at the table. Clearly, that’s very dick like and selfish.

We also think a selfish act might be taking some candy from a baby. That would be clearly selfish, evil and wrong. That leads to bad consequences. What are the bad consequences here?

It’s interesting because we tend to think that the worst consequences come from punishment from the outside. For example, if you steal candy from a baby, the baby is going to cry. If you steal candy from a baby, other people will think badly of you. If you take all the food at the Thanksgiving dinner, some people might get mad and start a fight with you.

Those would be bad external consequences. If you take an action like robbing a bank, then going to jail would clearly be a really bad consequence. Actually, the law of karma isn’t concerned with that.

The law of karma is more concerned about what’s going on up in your mind. This is really the most damaging part of the whole thing. You might think that the worst thing that could happen after robbing a bank is to be sent to jail, but no.

As the Buddha was saying, what happens is that the dust comes back into your face after you throw it. This means that immediately and as soon as you take the bad and selfish action, you will already suffer the consequence, even if you don’t get caught, nobody sees you or the baby doesn’t start crying. It already damages you on the inside.

How does this happen? More importantly, you have to understand how damaging this damage is on the inside. You tend to think and say – “Oh well, a little white lie here, a little bit of getting angry at someone here, or doing a little bit of something here isn’t going to cause too much damage to me on the inside, as long as I can avoid the external consequences.”

Actually, no! What we’re talking about here and what the Easterners were talking about is carrying through of the cycle of selfishness that your entire life basically is. When your actions come from yourself, promoting yourself, defending yourself or fighting on behalf of yourself, they are all selfish actions.

What we mean by it is this. You! When I’m pointing my finger at you right now, that’s what I mean by selfish. I don’t just mean taking candy from a baby. I mean any actions which defend, promote or aggrandize you, the self and the identity. I don’t mean just some part of you, but all of you.

Whatever your name is, you can say your name in your mind right now. That’s what we mean by you. Any action which promotes or defends that is a selfish action. It’s an evil action. This is a difficult pill for many of us to swallow, especially if you carry the ramifications of this through your entire life.

If you do, you will discover this. “Oh my god, my entire life has been about me! It’s been very selfish and self-absorbed.” There are a lot of examples I want to give you here because it’s not just black and white. “Oh Leo, but I never robbed a bank. I never murdered somebody. I never took candy from a baby. I never did anything bad at the Thanksgiving Day table.”

See, those are really easy black and white examples. It’s easy to point at some person and say he did something clearly wrong. There is a much more subtle element to evil that lurks in your life and you’re doing it every single day.

What you have to realize is that you already committed many evil acts just today. Karma is getting you because of this. The way karma gets you is something like this. Let’s say this bank robber robs a bank and gets away with it. He goes to some tropical island. He’s living on the island now and just chilling there.

You might say he got away with it. Maybe karma will get him five years later by something going wrong with him. No, karma already got him. This is a selfish person. The act originated from selfishness. It’s not like the person just did something evil and that was an isolated example.

Actually, this selfish nature is causing this person to do evil acts. Why is his nature selfish? This is because he is unconscious and he doesn’t really understand what he is doing with his actions in life. As you get more conscious, you unwittingly realize that you commit more evil.

Evil is promotion and defending of yourself. In this case, because this person was imagining how great his life could become if he robbed a bank and had millions of dollars, he did this evil act to promote himself. He secured himself at the cost of others.

That is an evil action. That’s a very clear evil action, just from a societal standpoint because we have laws against that stuff. There are also a lot of evil actions we take that we don’t have laws against. Nevertheless, it gets you.

With this person you might say he got away with it. He’s sitting on the beach and sipping Pina Coladas. His life is great. Actually, that’s not the case at all. The kind of person who went out and robbed a bank isn’t like an isolated example. This person is coming up with these actions because he’s screwed up on the inside.

He’s unconscious on the inside, and so you have a chain of this. This is what we mean by karma. It’s this perpetuating chain of selfishness. The punishment is not jail, someone yelling at you or a fine that you get. The punishment is suffering.

The punishment is the emotional suffering and stresses this person experiences in their life. Even though he got away from this bank, he’s always going to be afraid now, in the back of his mind. He’s always going to be looking over his shoulder.

“Are they going to catch me tomorrow?” Maybe they won’t, but he’s going to suffer for that. He’s also going to probably feel some remorse or guilt. He is probably going to feel out of integrity with himself because he isn’t following his own principles.

He knows that robbing a bank isn’t right. He did it anyway because he knew it would make him feel good. However, he didn’t calculate the suffering that would come after the fact. Of course, you could say he could suppress that stuff. What if he isn’t going to feel guilty about it?

That’s true. You can suppress that stuff. Still, it seeps out, right? You can’t suppress it forever and in the ways that it’s going to come back and get you. The way that it gets you is this. Just because he did something so obviously selfish here, it’s going to create a habit of selfish behavior.

Even though he says he is never going to rob a bank, that’s fine. However, the selfishness is still going to be within him. The problem is that he isn’t recognizing that he is doing selfish stuff. He isn’t admitting it to himself, and so this is where a lot of the harm comes from.

Now he has all of this money. He might go and something else that is selfish. He might be selfish in his relationship with his girlfriend. That relationship might go sour because of that. He might have a string of bad relationships throughout his whole life because he’s being selfish there and not recognizing it.

Maybe he goes and does something else that is selfish. Maybe he goes partying with his friends and then they have a fight because they are unable to agree on something. He has a fight with his friends, his whole life is very turbulent and there is a lot of suffering because he isn’t able to get along with his friends, his girlfriend or potential wife or other aspects of his life.

He now feels he needs pleasure from this money he’s got. What if the money runs out? How is he going to feel then? The selfishness keeps perpetuating itself. In the end, you have to apply conscious awareness if you want to stop this cycle in order to see that what you are doing is selfish.

This is not easy to do. It’s easier to do in black and white cases, but it’s hard to do in more subtle cases. This brings us to the point of you. We’ve been talking about this extreme example, but what about you right now?

You Commit Evil And Selfish Acts All The Time

The fact is that you commit evil and selfish actions all the time.

An example of this would be the way you get jealous towards people. Maybe it isn’t even something that you verbalize. Maybe it’s just something in your mind, like a thought that you have. The thought itself can be an evil action.

You don’t have to actually go and do something evil. Maybe you’re a little bit jealous and resentful at work because one of your coworkers is better than you at some of the tasks there. He is likely to receive the next promotion.

Maybe you find out that one of your coworkers earns a little bit more than you, and so you get mad and jealous about that. Maybe you get upset on someone cutting you off on your drive to work. Maybe you get mad at your girlfriend, wife or husband.

Maybe you criticize people all the time. You maybe don’t even say it, but you just criticize people in your head. You see someone who looks funny and you judge them and criticize them. You see someone doing something stupid and you judge them and criticize them.

Maybe you manipulate people in subtle ways. In your relationship with your friends, maybe you try to manipulate them and play little power games. You try to be the one who is best in your circle of friends. Maybe you do this with your girlfriend or boyfriend.

You try to manipulate them in very subtle ways that you won’t even admit to yourself as manipulation. However, you do. You do this manipulation. Why are you doing this? You’re doing this because, in the end and at the very core of it, you’re afraid and you need to protect yourself.

Remember we’re talking about you, the identity of you and your ego. The you feels like it needs to live life protecting itself all of the time. This has been the case for you from the moment you were born and up to right now. It will likely be the case until you die.

You will be living this self-survival mode all of the time. It’s always about self-protection and self-aggrandizement. How do I make myself more money so that I can feel more comfortable and secure? How do I find myself that husband or wife who can make me feel a little bit more secure?

How do I get that house or car that is going to make me feel a little bit more secure? How do I get that better career promotion or improvement in my business so that I can feel a little better and more secure about myself? How can I improve the way I look, dress, how my teeth look and how my hair looks? How can I improve all of that so that I’m a little bit more secure?

It’s always about making yourself a little bit more secure. That’s why when anything comes into your life that threatens this security, you get afraid, angry, manipulative, critical and all of these negative things. These negative things start to come out and you suffer because of that.

This is a very deep truth and it’s something I’m going to cover in my spiritual enlightenment video. At the very center of this karma stuff, the problem is that there is this identity that thinks it needs to be protected. There is the you.

Fundamentally, this identity is false. It’s really an illusion. It’s created out of thoughts and concepts. It’s not a part of actual and physical reality. Because of this, your entire life is basically this big drama of trying to protect an illusion, which always feels insecure because it’s hollow at the center of it.

There is nothing solid there. It’s completely hollow. Because of this, you have your perpetual cycle of suffering in life. The one thing we tend to think about life is this. “Well, life is pretty hard. Life is challenging, difficult and full of negative emotions. Life is full of drama, pain and this is just how life is.”

What’s interesting is that it’s not actually true. Life is that way for 99.9% of people because they are behaving selfishly all the time and karma is always nipping at their heels. That’s why that is. The punishment for karma is suffering on the inside, and not external punishments. Those can be bad as well.

Karma’s Punishment Is Internal

It’s the inner punishment you get. For example, when you get a little bit jealous of that coworker of yours, what is the internal punishment? The coworker might not ever find out that you got jealous of him. However, the internal punishment is that your mood is soured.

Now you feel passive—aggressive towards him. Because you’re thinking of how angry you are at him while you’re driving, you will maybe cut somebody off. You come home and you snap at your wife or husband, or you snap at your kids.

Maybe you perform worse at work because, instead of focusing on your work and what you’re doing, you are thinking about this colleague of yours who is doing better and getting better paid than you. You’re jealous of it. It undermines you.

You’re trying to protect yourself, it’s all about me—me—me. “Why isn’t it me who is at that nice position that employee has? Why isn’t it me, why is it him?” Because of this, you are so focused on yourself that your whole life becomes a cycle of being focused on yourself.

You might think this. “Leo, what’s wrong with focusing on me? This is how I survive. Life is kind of a dog—eat—dog world. I’ve got to survive, don’t I?” The problem is that you don’t have to actually put so much attention to your survival.

When you put so much attention and effort into your survival, you become blind and unconscious in a way that this survival cycle is actually damaging your life. It damages your life. It makes you unable to have a peaceful, calm and happy life.

You aren’t able to be happy because you’re always looking over your shoulder. You’re always afraid of what’s going to happen to you. You’re always afraid that this hollow illusion you’re defending is somehow going to be found out by somebody else.

You are afraid of this. You’re protecting yourself and putting more and more layers over this illusion so that it feels a little bit more real. However, that’s a battle you’re never going to be able to win.

Not only are the bad actions you’re doing and bad thoughts that you’re having contributing to this cycle, but even some of the stuff you think is good. It’s pretty obvious that when you get angry at somebody, it’s probably hurting you psychologically and on the inside. This goes for when you try to manipulate people or criticize them.

This goes even for good stuff. For example, have you ever contributed to charity? Have you ever given a couple of dollars to a bum on the street? The reason you did that isn’t because you were honestly doing a selfless act.

Instead, you were masking this selfishness in a veneer of selflessness. What does that actually mean? You go and do some charity because it makes you feel good or because it gives you a good reputation. You give that bum some money on the side of the street because, if you didn’t give it to him, you would feel awkward on the inside.

You are once again protecting that self – that you. You don’t want to feel awkward or you don’t want to be a person who doesn’t give to charity. You don’t like those associations. What do you do? You give it to charity, but you give it kind of reluctantly.

You don’t really give it selflessly. You actually give it selfishly. In your mind, you’re telling yourself you’re doing good. You say things like this – “Oh, I’m doing good! Look at me, look at how good I am!” Even if you don’t tell anyone and you just give someone a dollar on the street, you’re still telling yourself on the inside that you are a good human being.

You’re building up this ego of yours. You’re building it up. Make no mistake that when you do that, you’re going to suffer for it. Because of this ego, you have to carry it around with you wherever you go, every interaction you’re in or when you go into your marriage.

That ego is going to be there. Guess what? It’s going to be that inflated ego that you got when you gave that person a dollar on the street and you were feeling good about yourself for it and patting yourself on the back.

That creates more problems and it creates this cycle of karma. There you have it. The real punishment for all of this is basically hell. In the West, we have a Christian notion of hell. Hell is somewhere out there, in another life.

Punishment Is Living Hell

Actually, that notion is not what hell literally means. Where did that notion of hell come from? It came from the actual hell, which is here, for you. You have the hell. You’re living in hell right now – a hell on Earth.

That’s what your life is. It’s a life where you’re actually unable to have true happiness and a peace of mind. You don’t have true peace of mind because you’re always stressed and anxious all of the time.

You’re always secretly angry or bitter at someone, trying to manipulate some circumstance. Wherever it is in your life, you’re always trying to do that. Your whole life is that. This concept goes very deep and it’s very subtle, because you don’t like hearing this stuff.

You don’t like admitting this stuff. The only way it’s actually effective is when it’s not admitted. It takes a lot of mindfulness work and a lot of, what I call, enlightenment work. It also takes stuff like meditation to suddenly see how you subtly manipulate everything around you, in order to promote and protect yourself.

This is what we call evil selfish action. On the other hand, if you want to know what selfless action is, it is action without thought. That’s what true spirituality is. It’s action without thought. Why is it action without thought?

Contrary to what we think in the West here, thought is a problem because your thoughts create the notion of you. They create the identity, the false identity. It’s constructed out of thoughts. The only way to get rid of that is to get rid of the thoughts.

When you silence the thoughts, you can still have practical everyday thoughts. If you need to go buy some gas or figure out how to get to the grocery store, those are okay. Here, we are talking about thoughts about you.

These are the self-absorbed thoughts that permeate and predominate your entire existence. For example, just today, how many times did you think negatively of yourself, what someone is going to do to you or how something is going to threaten or harm you? Just today, how many times has that thought entered your mind?

If you’re self-honest, it’s probably a dozen times at least. It’s more likely about 50 or a hundred times. You have to become more and more mindful of this because your punishment is hell. Make no mistake about it. You are living in a hell right now.

What’s bad about it is that you don’t even recognize this. Many of you don’t even recognize that this hell is here for you right now, and you’re living in it. You’re always afraid that hell is going to be somewhere out there for you.

No, hell is right now for you. You’re unable to be happy. The opposite side of that coin and the other punishment you get is that because you’re in hell all of the time, you aren’t able to experience paradise and heaven. What is paradise and heaven?

Again, that’s not something up in the clouds somewhere after you die. It can be here for you right now. Heaven is the state of being spiritual, the state of having no thoughts and the state of selflessness.

When you get rid of the sense of self that you have, when you unravel that whole thing, which is basically what all enlightenment work is leading towards, you discover you can actually have true happiness, right here and right now, regardless of external circumstances. You can also have paradise for yourself right here.

You can have true peace of mind because you aren’t caught up in this karmic cycle. That’s what the Buddha is really talking about. That’s what the Eastern Yogis talk about with karma. You perpetuate your own hell and suffering here on Earth. 99.99% of people do this.

If you want to turn this around, you simply have to just become aware of what is really going on here and how this karma is working. It can always work in your favor. If you start to dissolve the self and start to behave from a selfless place, you get this positive karma building up. Then, you can experience paradise.

It’s really that simple. You have to see how nuanced this is. You have to see how deep this rabbit hole goes. We can talk about this for hours and all the subtle ways in which you manipulate yourself to perpetuate your negative karma cycle.

That’s it for now and for here. I will cover more in other videos.

Wrap Up

This is Leo, I’m signing off. Go ahead and post me your comments. I would love to hear what you think. Click the like button to like this video. Share the video on Facebook or with a friend. Finally, come and sign up to my newsletter on Actualized.org, it’s a free newsletter.

I release new videos every single week. I also have a lot of cool stuff for my subscribers for signing up, such as bonuses and similar. The reason I want you to sign up is because I’m delivering new videos about how to master yourself and your own psychology, and how to understand yourself at really deep levels.

If you want a really fulfilling life, you have to do this work. This is not just going to happen spontaneously for you. I’ve also discovered it’s difficult to do this work. It’s not just enough to hear it once or twice. You have to keep on track with it.

Part of the mission of Actualized.org is not only to introduce these concepts to you, which I’m doing in these videos, but to also have these videos guide you and keep you on track when you get off track. You get unconscious for a couple of weeks, days months or years. Something then clicks in you and you realize you have to go back on track. If you have nothing holding you on track, then you can often wonder off.

If you watch these videos every single week, they will help you to stay on track. Go ahead and sign up, it’s free.

Tip Jar
Tip Jar
Like this video?
Leave a tip
Kevin says:

Greetings Leo,

I really enjoyed this video on Karma. A lot of what you had to say really struck home with my thinking. But I have a few questions:

Q- How does one live, exist, and function effectively within a society that is totally obsessed, and totally caught up in the idea of “self”. Are you not at risk of being branded an outcast, not a team player, and not “like everyone else”. And is that type of functional living hell, almost worst than the internal hell you spoke of?

Q- If you don’t respond to, or defend against “selfish” acts directed at you, are you not setting yourself up for still more of the same in the future? For example, how does one respond to a deadly “selfish” terrorist action?

Q- If I am not selfish enough to love myself, how could I ever give that love to someone else. You cannot give what you don’t have. And in that selfish act of giving myself love, why am I doomed to suffer?

Q- Couldn’t the very act of breathing be considered a “selfish” act in the context of what you have described?

I would very much love to give you a “LIKE” on your website, but since I don’t have a Facebook, Twitter, or Google account, nor do I desire one, its a bit problematic to respond to your videos.

I love how you make me THINK.


Leo Gura says:

1) Yes, it will be very challenging. Why do you think yogis and monks retire into the woods and mountains? To escape the evils of society. But this is not really a problem. You will just limit your social exposure. There’s no true discomfort in this. You want society right now only as a crutch to feed your selfishness.

2) Without thinking about yourself, you are free to respond to situations however suitable. No problems here. If terrorism needs stopping, you can stop it without self-righteous mental-masturbation.

3) You can’t love yourself because the self isn’t real in the first place! So it’s a moot point. Suffering comes from trying to defend an illusion.

4) No! No act it-self is selfish at all. Action is neutral. Selfishness is literally thinking about yourself as you act. When a rock falls on your head, that’s not the rock doing a selfish action. If a terrorist kills someone without thinking of himself, that would not be selfish. But that’s not how terrorists work. Terrorists are completely self-absorbed, but this self-absorption is masked in veil of “fighting for the good of the oppressed.”

Kevin says:

Greetings Again Leo,

Your 1st response leaves me just a bit more confused:

You say: “You want society right now only as a crutch to feed your selfishness.”
Response: But I must live in society to survive today, and further, that is where my family, friends, and loved ones also live. Somehow, I don’t see this as a crutch. Or am I being too much with myself here?

Thanks for listening


Kevin says:

Greetings Again Leo,

Your 2nd response leaves me just a bit more confused:

Response: I may be wrong here, but in this society, aren’t people who “just respond” to situations w/o self-righteous recrimination, what we have come to describe as “pathological”, and most who act this way consistently are justifiably institutionalized?

Thanks for listening


Kevin says:

your website is restricting my responses???

Leo Gura says:

1) Yes, your friends and family are all things you use selfishly to keep yourself distracted and things you cling to. But you tell yourself love them and such. In fact, though, it’s a very selfish love. You love them only on your terms. You manipulate them all the time to suit yourself. And this creates much suffering for you.

2) No. Fair and proper responses can only come from a state of selflessness. When your self gets involved, everything turns into manipulation and your kindness is very limited.

Nathan says:

Whenever I think about the “ego” and selfishness I equate it to “separateness” and equate selflessness to “togetherness” or “connection.” I feel like enjoying yourself and your life is not the “ego” unless in separates you from other people or on a larger scale, if it separates you from “God” or the “Universal Consciousness.” If that enjoyment brings you closer to others and/or God, even better.

Kevin made a comment questioning how it would be possible to live in a selfish society without becoming selfish. I don’t feel like everyone is purely selfish. People are at all different stages in their consciousness and it’s possible to find others to connect with on some level. Also, “society” is not a person or people but a set of ideas. The people living in a society give society’s values legitimacy, but many others oppose them. You just have to be a radical lol.

It reminded me of this concept that was often repeated in church as I grew up, “to be in the world, but not of the world.” Even though I am not a Christian anymore I think it applies in a similar way, explained more in the book of John Ch. 17 in the Bible.

JoAnne says:

Beautiful, Leo

Nice dharma translation (karma).

Do you know Adyashanti?
And Ajahn Brahm?
I think you would like them.


lucinda says:

this was a real awaking video, thank you for the understanding about Karma..

Jonathan says:

Such an Interesting topic. I couldn’t think of any karma moments. But I will Discover what they are

Yvan says:

Hello Leo !

I am grateful for this video of yours.
It is so salutary ; your video touches on all the most mysterious subjects which I have been secretly seeking more and more satisfying thoughts and answers : hell/paradise understood figuratively, and how the law of karma (quit similar to the famous law of attraction) operates. I believe you are quite right when you affirm that a figurative hell and paradise do exist. However, a true God and a true devil are too, and they themselves make use of these natural laws, as I think you know.

Leo, it is true that we live in a world which incessantly persuades us that living selfishly is the sure way to live happily, and I thank you to prove that such is not the case, that it even is a mere illusion just as the simple idea we form of our Self.

Finally, in my judgement, I think you can believe quite proud of your profound video, which is so remarkable that it is worthy to keep it for the generations that will follow us, as it also concern all these ideas regarding fate.
Incidentally, Leo, do you think that working out (bodybuilding) is an activity that actually enhances our Self ? And what do you generally think of such feelings as ambition (especially in career) and boldness (especially in social and love life) ? Do you think they also proceed from a feeling of selfishness that seeks an augmentation ?

Thank you for your answers, and good continuation !


Leslie says:

Hi Leo,
This post was very refreshing,insightful and a very new view on karma for me. I can see how having this perspective and putting it into practice can and will ease a person’s suffering as well as further ones own conscious behavior to a more enlightened one. However, I too, like Kevin, am wondering about truly “evil” behavior like murder and/or terrorist acts. Obviously a person/s who are sociopaths or psychopaths would fall into a whole other category, so if they have no conscious to begin with do they even suffer and how would karma effect them? Also, I am thinking that to love one’s self unconditionally would not be a selfish act, but would be one of selflessness because then, you would not need nor seek others approval. Which in turn would leave out a lot of negative behavior like you were talking about, i.e. jealousy or anger towards another if one didn’t need nor care what others had nor thought about them. Would love to hear your perspective. And look forward to the next articles to follow.


Maria says:

finily I get to peace this puzzle together.. Thanks I’m always thinking about this and how it might work or not work.. And now I can see the whole picture… Wow amazing.. And thanks for all the help you do! Very intrigue

Destiny says:

Hi Leo,

Great video. The notions of heaven and hell, not as Christian concepts, but as you discuss here, were on my mind tonight because I was reading up on Maslow and self actualization (as per your recommendation). He refers to self actualization as heaven, which just delighted me when I read it. It’s extraordinary how these two perspectives connect to each other. So much of what Maslow makes clear in his work is effectively karma, as you define it her, certainly the ego-based judgments of others (individual or even on a larger scale). The language is different but the message is similar. Thanks for helping me make that connection. I don’t know if what I’m saying makes much sense, but I really appreciate your videos. This one is particularly awesome. Looking forward to the enlightenment one(s).

All the best,

Leo Gura says:

Good to see folks reading Maslow

EVA says:

After seeing your video about karma, I went to the kitchen. I wanted to eat chocolate.

I asked to myself if this was a selfish act: What do I wanted the chocolate for? This chocolate was not fare trade, so I did not know if there was suffering involved om the recollection of cocoa. It probably had… The chocolate was not a good thing to eat for my body. I took the chocolate close to me. I did drink some water to satisfy the feeling that I needed something and I did some berathing.

And I did know the answer: yes. For me, right now, eating chocolate would be an act of selfish.
Taking good care of me is not a selfish act, because love for oneself is a selfless act. A very important selfless act. But I know that now, for me, eating this chocolate is not an act of love for myself. It would be just not listening what I really want, and letting my ego govern my actions.

So now I can look at the chocolate, but I know I am not going to eat it. The ego is fine with it. I think what I needed was not chocolate but just some deep breathings…

Thanks for the video

Leo Gura says:

Oh, no, no, no, no, no!

The selfish act was not the eating of chocolate. The selfish act was asking yourself, “What do *I* want the chocolate for?”

See how sneaky YOU are! You used a talk about selflessness to solidify the ego, meanwhile telling yourself you are selfless.

Selfish acts all have one thing in common, they have an I-thought at the center of them. Arguing with yourself or trying to control yourself is selfish.

Read your comment above and count how many times you said, “I”, “me”, or “myself”. The whole comment was about YOU! You just told a story about how you went through chocolate hell!

If you just ate the chocolate without thinking about YOU, that would have been truly selfless

Wilson says:

so you’re saying that if there was a will to eat the chocolate, but not “pre-thoughted” in terms os self/ego (like eating it because it would give some sort of confort) then it would be selfless to eat it?
what if instead of eating chocolate it would be smoking a cigarrete?

Ashray says:

So if I think while picking up a chocolate ” I want to eat some chocolate” that would be selfish because of ‘I’ i.e ego, then what would i think to make it selfless?

“I want some water” , ” Need some water” first is selfish and other is selfless. Right? Even though it was about me but without the ego.

james milne says:

On the post about chocolate, if i thought my body needs fuel i will give it chocolate to feed it, would that be a right thought.?

Hanna says:

Thank you Leo!

Your videos are absolutely great and I am happy having discovered your website! Your videos, your way of explanation, your compassion and positive attitude – all this is a great support for practising concoiusness! You also speak very clearly, it is so easy to follow! (English is not my mother tongue).
Do you have or plan any video about taming the mind/thoughts/monkey mind?
Best for you and please keep charing you knowledge!
Greeting from Estonia!

Leo Gura says:

Yes, many videos to come about taming the monkey mind.

Kathy Germany says:

YAY! I’m so excited! ‘taming the monkey mind’ -haha-

You really catched ‘ME’ red-handed again with this video! Wow… thx!
It touched me so much that tears fell again…

Q: Would you like to make a vid about the ability to cry? I just ask because some of us know that their parents say ‘stop crying it’s useless!’
– But would nature give us the ability if this was true? Maybe it’s not essential to put a whole video – maybe it’s just to solve stress? But I also cry when sth is really beautiful… You know what I mean?

‘self-righteous mental-masturbation’ that’s so cool -haha-

Joyce says:

Thank You

anne newman says:

Is the need to express oneself and to pursue things one loves (e.g. artistic pursuits) egotistical??
For example if I genuinely love playing piano and something happens and I can no longer do it won’t I suffer and be in living hell???
Another example is if you could no longer teach self help and couldn’t communicate with people anymore for some reason (and you know life can throw anything at a person disease, accidents, etc) and all you could do is sit on a park bench and watch the world go by wouldn’t you live in hell???


Leo Gura says:

Some passions can be egotistical, others not. It all depends how you approach it. For many people, their passions are just a way to escape reality, which is selfish.

If I could no longer teach self help, my “self” would be frustrated, but that’s to the extent that I use my work as an escape. Until the self is seen as illusion, sitting on a park bench will feel like hell, but afterwards, it wouldn’t. Only your ego has a problem with sitting on a park bench. There’s no problem there in reality.

Until you come to grips with sitting on a park bench, you will not be able to be happy anywhere or under any circumstances in life. Even the best ones will leave you frustrated in the end. This is why we mediate. The goal of mediation is to see that the self you think is real, actually isn’t.

tracy steurer says:

1)When you say “escaping from reality” do you mean not facing or allowing yourself to feel the pain inside yourself but doing everything to avoid it.

2)Also are you saying the only way to see that the “self” is an illusion is to allow and fully feel the pain that comes from being deficient and never good enough??


Marlene H says:

So thankful I found you on ‘YouTube’ and connected to get your emails. This Karma video is so profound!! Loved the way you explained it. I fell into the Western idea of Karma. You gave me a lot to think about. Even if we try to do good, be helpful to others we live in an ‘I, Me’ world. It seems we have to to protect yourself from all the negative outside forces by being this way. Your video made me think how can I change this internal attitude we have for what we feel is just survival.

We are taught to love yourself first so you can love others but this falls right into this ‘me’ living. My first problem I see to try to change is I’m making changes to improve my health by dieting and have been taught to think about everything you eat, why you are eating. It’s all about living in a ‘me’ world to lose weight. True, I can admit wanting to lose weight is for health but also for self-image reasons…I want to look good and am selfish for my attitude but it’s not to impress someone else but doing it for me. There it is again that ‘ME” You said, ‘If you just ate the chocolate without thinking about YOU, that would have been truly selfless’ How do you change your thinking about food in the hope to lose weight, be healthy and be selfless without thinking in the ‘me’ kind of world??

Thanks again, You are amazing!!

tank says:

how to create a successful life with no college

Kathy Germany says:

=D You tried this in another vid, I remember that question! haha

Impossible to put all the possibilities here for you!
And this is the point
– it’s YOUR life so YOU have to DO YOUR own (home) work of searching creativly the answeres to YOUR questions!
No one wants nor could do the work for you! You have to actualize yourself and with these videos here you have soooooo much useful content!!!

Ask yourself: what does success mean for you? What are your talents? and so on and so forth…
Success will not fall in front of your feet if you just stand still and ask this “how bla without bla” question! You have to move forward… every day a little step forward… Get in action!

Stephen says:

totally agreed! Self inflicted suffering! The temptation is too great sometimes, can’t control ourselves. We are humans, we make mistakes…forgive ourselves!

This is truly deeply powerful concept I wish I knew earlier

I wouldn’t be so suffering from the mistakes

asaiah Powers says:

say leo if thinking sbout yourself is selfish what about critical thinking?like something material like physics or you know any subjects?

Miguel Duran says:

Thank you for the video, I couldn’t get out of my mind activities like eating healthy, doing exercise, getting actualized being selfish acts.

Kim says:

Really enjoyed this one! Thank you for always provoking my thoughts.

Dennis says:

I have passive income and do not work. I spend my time at the gym, reading, and viewing self help/motivational videos. This is my fun, which generates joy and tranquility in my life.

For a few days I have dealt with fear. At first I could not understand what I feared. Today, through the use of visualization, meditation, and prayer, I came to the understanding I WAS afraid of losing my happy and tranquil life. I was afraid of the continuing erosion of my passive income, do to the cost of living.

My mind is now in equilibrium and the fear has vanished. Through the use of meditation and visualization I understood the path to freedom, which is, “LEAD ME O GOD AND YOU O FATE, TO WHATEVER PLACE YOU HAVE ASSIGNED TO ME.”

Carolina says:

thank you for sharing the info about karma Leo.

But I’m confused….

Selfish acts are evil, whatever promotes or or grows yourself is evil so… Going to university, buying a house, taking care of your body,m charity and giving to make you happy, all that is evil

Going thru life without thinking about yourself,j ust being a leaf carried by the wind is good because is selfless

Then I don’t want to be good D: it’s the first time one of your videos confuse me so deeply.

Thank you for sharing your ideas thou

Leo Gura says:

Of course YOU don’t want to be good. You are evil!

The evil doesn’t exist in those activities themselves. The evil is in how you relate to them: selfishly

Victor says:

Hey Leo !

How do I do personal development without thinking about myself ?

In the last few months, I’ve been very interested in self-growth. I’ve been working on my diet, my relationships, my physical body, the way I relate to my music…

I really did it in order to feel good, to be more confident and enjoy life…
but have I been doing it all wrong ?

This video confused me, a little, for the first time… Can I get some help ?


Vero says:

If he’s a sociopath, he will feel no guilt, so if he gets away with robbing a bank, and doesn’t go to jail, he will face no karma.

Leo Gura says:

No, his life will still be a living hell. Do you know sociopaths? You think they have happy lives?

Kathy Germany says:

So interesting that you point the sociopath! I am aware since just few weeks that I know one! He doesn’t feel guilt because he is not aware AT ALL!!!! He is his own slave! The one I know ensnarles himself deeper and deeper into lies – more and more loosing contact to that great energy, that breath of life that animates/ vivifys us.. this energy that MAKES us breath… (we swim in our mums belly after birth we are up to breathing.. wow )

As Leo correctly teaches: it’s more likely to conscious move towards sth we want (conscious acting) than unconscious reacting with the motivation of fear, not realising this motion is the try to avoid sth… Do you understand the difference? And it is possible, that you fall into your own trap THINKING that you do act! But in fact you just react… =D Haha a rhyme!

haha In Germany we had this animated character “Pumuckl” and he always said: oh, it’s a rhyme and rhymes are good!

kevin says:

Good point Vero, and exactly what I was thinking;

When a Terrorist commits a heinous act, he is not thinking of himself, he is thinking about his God, and how he is serving him. And in accordance with your definition, his action is therefore neutral? I’m not feeling this Leo, please dig into your selfish side and give me some light here…smile.

Thanks for listening

kevin says:


You say:”You can’t love yourself because the self isn’t real in the first place! So it’s a moot point. Suffering comes from trying to defend an illusion.”

Response: Sorry, but I’m not feeling this one either. So my love for myself and for others is only an illusion? Geez, if so, I thereby choose to die thus afflicted. For me, the alternative would truly be a living hell.

Thank for listening.

Kathy Germany says:

Greetings Kevin,
the ”insights and profound journeys” how you write are

Mind itself can resolve it’s own maladies. Putting heads together, discussing a topic is psycho-social work and can help but the true resolving is personal contribution/ internal labor. I know I can’t resolve others maladies nevertheless we all have to own up to the fact that we share a lot of same and similar confusions and questions… It’s left to ones own resources.

It’s a piece by piece journey where we have to keep one’s eyes peeled for oneself just to approximate unselfishlessness – an amount of ego is probably a condition of being human and 100percent altruism is impossible within our Life-form. None of us is there yet therefore Ramona’s post is right at the point: what people say/share CAN create differences and there are differences in the level of mania/ obsession and suffering and pleasance and especially serenity.

Leo Gura says:

Any notions of God that a terrorist has are selfish notions. He is confusing a story about God for his own egotism. As do you, BTW, if you believe in a God of whatever sort. Those are all egotistical beliefs to keep you feeling more secure about your sense of identity.

Yes, YOU aren’t feeling it. Because you lack consciousness and you are stuck in a cycle of evil so deep you can’t even entertain an alternative. Such is state of sleep most people are in.

If you stick around and keep watching my newest videos though, you will start to wake up and see that you can move out of your living hell and into a real-life heaven. It will require the destruction of many of your most cherished beliefs about life though. That is the cost of true happiness.

Keep your mind open.

kevin says:

Greetings Again Leo,

Sorry, but I’m not feeling your last missive and answer either, if this is truly the case with this thinking philosophy, and this separation of you brand of selfishness is a prerequisite, then I choose to live in the ignorance and bliss of love, in my own brand of this “living hell”…at least its warm here…..smile.

Keeping your mind “open” in this case, can lead to all kinds of “rouge” ideas trying to get into the door. And I’m sorry but that is just not my style, and in my book..not a good thing, so in this case……I’ll close the book. We agree to disagree.


Kathy Germany says:

Hello Kevin!
Please allow me to join…
Did you consider that you might not FEEL this because YOU are not the terrorist? Did you consider finding an example out of your OWN life? Do you want to understand Karma for YOUR life or do you want to understand a terrorist?! …ehm… Seems impossible to me… Do you just want to philosophize about possibilities?

I watched the video for ME to understand MY Karma in MY life because I am not living a totally fullfilled life yet. Do you, Kevin?
An hour before I watched this video I did something unconscious and very unfair to my roomie. I rolled my eyes at her giving her the feeling that she did sth stupid. Why should I do so and what did I do exactly?
I share it with you guys to emphasize how trivial/ common/ everyday the situations are! And think of how often at a day you do such things and link this up to the metaphore of “karmic bank account”… At this point I do not wonder that I suffer in life… =P

I had the bucket where I collect paper for recycling at the door already to bring it to the container next time I leave the flat. I just dump it out and carry the bucket back home.
I the moment I came out of my room I saw her cord up the “yellow sack” for plastic waste where she had put the paper in – so she was going to put a yellow sack in the paper ton (world wouldn’t have gone down
I saw her, said “noooo”, face palmed, rolled eyes and explained with a bugged voice.
While rolling my eyes I did not feel good, after my reaction I did not feel good as well she neither – obviously I am not in paradise but rather in a hell of angry ego living. She’s from China, just 3 years in Germany and she wanted to be a good roomie and I treated her like this?!?

After seeing the video I felt so ashamed!

Presently I am not happy with my life and I have to do my homework getting more self-confidence and train to be my own best friend and partner. My unconscious inner voice is rude to me and so my unconscious ego-mind transferred it to the outside to someone else so my ego fooled itself giving the illusion I could feel better and higher if I push someone down…. buh… It’s such a perfidous trick because goofing others just leads to self-destruction!

I awaked to this, wiped my tears due to this injury I caused and I went to her and said how sorry I feel for my rude unfair reaction and thanked her for helping in household… That felt good and now I feel freed of my “guilt” which is a pure energy sucking feeling.. Direct Karma resolution, that little one doesn’t count on my karmic bank-account
Knowing that she is aware of my ability to mindfulness I did not destroy our relation and so we can move on towards true friendship. That gives us both comfort at home!!! For me emotional comfort is part of paradise.

Kevin, your last post from 5:57am… You can relax. No one wants to take something away from you. Quite the contrary!

ThX for reading!

kevin says:

Greetings Kathy,

Wow…..truly interesting reading! And how can I ever thank you for your kind and unselfish personal psychiatric evaluation of my current state of mind, to include all the mental ills from which I now needlessly suffer. I am so glad to know that “I” am not “The Terrorist”. You’ll never know such a weight you have lifted from my shoulders, what a truly selfless act on your part….bless your heart!.

And wonders never cease, I see you have also graciously taken upon yourself to go about resolving the maladies of other responders as well. You are truly a noteworthy individual indeed. And I anxiously await your next insight and profound journey into the psycho-socials of others. And now, thanks to your prophetic words, I can finally truly relax……..

Can’t thank you enough.


Kathy Germany says:

It’s not easy to discuss this topic!!!

All these questions here are on one hand comprehensible on the other it’s nearly inescapable that they lead into a trap of confusion.

We – as here and now manifested creatures named humans – discuss – with our through the ages changing tongue – an intangible topic…

There are spheres of understanding beyond our terminated restricted words!

And this topic is hard when you try to put every single aspect you think of (e.g. s.o. who plays piano, s.o. who eats chocolate, s.o. who robbs a bank…) of this big cause and effect principle into words you can understand easily in a way that you FEEL it unconfused like ”the penny has dropped”.

The trap is that you think it is necessary to understand every single aspect with words for your logical brain… But for me it seems not necessary even more it seems to be a KOAN! if you try so!

It is so much deeper than being in fight with a piece of chocolate

The chocolate exists in this world! So it’s no drama to eat chocolate! Your body is formed that you won’t die! In fact your body is created that it REACTS with this piece of chocolate! Don’t fight with yourself about that!
Are you overweight – don’t eat it if you want to loose weight! If you can’t resist YET ok, eat it, don’t punish yourself, try again what your heart is saying to you (I want to loose weight, have a healty body). Same if you say: I want to have a healthy acid-base balance.

Follow babystepping what is necessary to have a good acid-base balance! Your whole digestive system – every single second – wants to be in balance and it can absorb a piece of chocolate easily if you honestly want to eat it. The more your logical ego-brain makes a story out of it, a drama, the more it becomes a Karma reaction.

None of us – living right now here manifested – can with our words say what it FEELS LIKE to be stuck in Samsara, the circle of suffering.

This is all just paraphrases for the logical brain to get glimpses of the possibilities what comes next after death – what happens with this ENERGY when the manifested body stops LIVING changing into a corpse…

Be “open” to ask questions that truely bring the “you” forward in your here and now life…

The terrorist, the bank robber etc. will be stuck in Samsara and here and now they are acting without awareness of beauty, freedom, fearlessness… They just act trying to avoid sth… not moving towards their individual unique potential….

OR this exactly IS their potential in this world of dualism… black and white, night and day, evil and good… …was and always will be…

Cause and effect work even if our brain doesn’t understand… calm down and you will feel and sth will lead…

Lorraine says:

Hi Leo,
I was brought to your website by googling “How to quit caring about what others think.” I liked what you said, so I watched some more video’s, and fell upon this one on Karma, which I also like. But now I am confused…How can I not care about what people think, and be unselfish? How can I be working towards peak performance, and not be selfish? It seems contradictory??

Ramona says:

Why create a video about this if not for being an ego-maniac? So did Jesus, so did Buddha, so did Zarathustra, Shopenhaeur, Nietzsche, so does Tony Robbins, Wyne Dyer, Leo Gura, so does everyone who finds something and wants to share with the world. Why this desire to share with others? Because you think that what you are saying can make a difference. Ego-maniacs.

Leo Gura says:

Jesus and Buddha were not egomaniacs. As for the others on the list, yes they are. And as for Leo, his end is coming soon.

Ramona says:

Leo’s end means the end of actualized.org?

Leo Gura says:

Don’t know.

Kentavious says:

That would be a shame! I’m just getting started watching your vids.

kevin says:

Greetings Again Kathy,

I anxiously waited,….and you didn’t disappoint! Your new insight and profound discoveries on this journey are even more remarkable to behold this time around. You’ve truly outdone yourself on this monumental reply and piece.

Again, I just cannot wait to see your next piece of work! Regretfully however, I must refrain from replying or answering your next missive. With all this I have learned from you,…quite understandably, I’m becoming much to psychologically and mentally overwhelmed!

I hope you’ll understand.

But thanks again


Asaiah Powers says:

Hello Leo,when you or someone else is saying “my ego is doing this or that impulsive thing” isnt that absovling responseability and making a projection,or mental masturbation?-to exuse from growing?

Baby Bird says:

I think Leo is cool. I don’t care what he teaches. I even do not care if I am egoistic now or what other people think of my comment. Leo are you ok? Why your end is coming soon? In what sense. So it’s not you who answers the questions? Leo likes to confuse people. This is the funny part of Leo. Look how many people are too concerned how to behave like a perfect human being and even really care about what other people think of them or their theories.
If I want chocolate I eat it.
Or do I have to phone Leo first? Leo ehh I ehh no I do not mean I (because that sounds so egoistic), ehh my stomach (holy shit MY is also egoistic), ehh we (me and all the people I am connected with) need some chocolate, is it ok that I open the bar for everybody? Or do I have to ask my neighbour? And is it ok that I eat the first bit or do I have to share it with everybody?

I think Leo is laughing, almost crying, that he can confuse so many people at a time. Why does everybody wants to be so like an enlightened one? I think he is eating chips and chocolate reading his comments with a big smile. He is a genius and I guess he has a big sense of black humor too.

And what’s wrong about stealing candy from a baby if there is no separation? Animals have no ego did you see how they react on food in a group? I never saw ducks saying to eachother ‘oh I am sorry you can take that piece of old bread I wait for the next one’.

Piece and Love to everybody

amy says:

you need to Grow up!!!!

Alicia says:

You need to be quiet!!

Kentavious says:

Hi Leo
I came across your videos quite by accident on YouTube, and as often happens, it was coincidentally at a time when I most needed clarity on some things.
I have always questioned reality and pondered the thought of my position within it ever since I was very young but of course I’ve also spent a lifetime going down dead end roads and sifting through false information in my quest.
I have just recently in the past few years begun to understand the value in observing ego. The more I study this subject, the more I realize how it is the root cause of every horrible act ever perpetrated by man on this earth. But I must also admit there have been many advances in technology that have made life much easier but were driven to success by egomaniacs. So maybe there is some residual benefit, although I see the corporate world these days and I realize through their ideology they have created a built in ego system for the whole company. It’s only concern is for “itself”. I think we all have felt the effects of this economically along with the wasting of resources and also pollution. This may possibly be seen as the “physical” effects of karma.
I think it’s important to note that although karma affects us more “internally” than “externally” it still has an inadvertent effect on the physical world in a big way.
By the way man I gotta say how much I appreciate the videos you do (that I’ve seen so far). They are concise and to the point and the viewer get’s the feeling of just listening to a “regular” person instead of some persona. I suppose that’s like saying “You walk the walk”! LOL!!
Anyway I’ve sent a link to your site to all my depressed, self absorbed friends!
Thanx again! — Kentavious

Mark Liddell says:

Hey Kentavious

Just reading through some of the comments on this video – yours stood out to me because I’ve been in a place of being unsure and looking for answers myself.

One of the best things I’ve found (it’s helped me with ego and egos around me) is to learn the art of meditation. Im only at the beginning stages, but mindfulness helps calm “me” down and take away the noise.

It’s were I find happiness independent of anyone or anything.

So good to hear people sharing Leo’s message.

Take care,


Kentavious says:

Hi Mark,
Thanx for the input. To say I’ve soul searched is a bit of an understatement but in the later years of my life I am finally making “some” progress. The same with meditation. I never fully understood “how” to meditate. A lot of well intentioned people tried to explain it to me but I was never able to make the “noise” stop, so eventually I just gave up. But now that I have a better understanding of just what I’m seeking to do by meditating there have been noticeable results in my demeanor.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still all messed up but at least now I “know” it! LOL!!

Saling says:

hi Leo,
God Bless you and your Family of all your effort and time to teach people on how to know thereselves.i like listen to you because i could tell how dedicated your time and effort to make your dream come true.your very very friking amazing human being on earth.keep it up the great job.you change the way i think in my Life and i hope and pray that the way you creat this site is changing others life to be a better person and help others.


Mark Liddell says:

Hi Leo

Outstanding video again. Thanks so much for being one of the major influences of the spiritual revolution going on this planet – I know you need not motivation but just wanted to show gratitude.

I’m really looking forward to the enlightenment video’s.

There is a purpose to me writing this comment – anyone reading this – please start sharing these video’s. It would be great to start waking up the world.

I feel so very grateful to be part of such a big movement, as an individual and being part of the connected universe.

Mark7 Adelaide Australia.

saranya kumarasamy says:

It is a powerful video no doubt about it.but another video you have said cut the negative relationships whoever it might be,in that case it is cent percent” YOU” criteria. So my question is do we have to adjust with these negative people or we have to cut them down.?

saranya kumarasamy says:

One more clarification i needed is
A person killing a mosquito and confused whether it is darma and second person killing a mosquito and not being confused by his act. According to you who is having held up by karma and why?

Rizzi Devera says:

Thank you very much.you have enlightened me.i am here to learn

Latifa says:

Hi Leo , as always a great video, but I do have a question concerning the selfless acts, how can you stop thoughts , I mean they come automatically, like the example of giving money to bum on the street, how can you turn that into a selfless act.

kumar shubham says:

1….your vocabullary is itself a chocolaty part of your video…..

2…..you’r the best to be met….. even virtually

dennis says:

nice video, congratulations i have a question, is the compassion a selfless feeling?

Pete says:

Hello Leo,

So i thought a bit further about selfishness and being selflessness. And there is a point where I don’t come to a good solution. To be really selfess you ultimately have to die, because even harvesting some food is a selfish act in the end. Your blueprints (wich I read with great interest) tell us that your live purpose is whatever you feel and want it to be, but in your enlightment and also this video you are telling us it all becomes pointless. So what is the point of living this live at all?

Puzzled, astonished and thankful for your information,

Ali says:

Good day,
I really enjoy your videos , and i have question.

Q . Isn’t Karma another word for conscious?
The other thing i want to say is “moderation is the best in everything”

Thank you

amir says:

hi Leo
thank you for your great videos. as a master of civil engineer i found maths&amp hysics as a true science in the world that are proven truly in every place and situation in the world and i have drawn some rules and principles out of it like karma before i saw your great video.
Newton’s Third Law:”For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
SO as an agnostic and vegetarian person i extract my principles of life by the science and conscious,both never ever deceive you.
thanks again , and sorry for my poor english.

kumar shubham says:


tim says:

the other day I put some loose change in the guide dogs container 2 or 3 dollars I then proceded to buy 2 pieces of fruit the tag said $1.50 each I was only charged $2 was this karma or was the price tag wrong or did the person make a mistake ?

Also years I set up automatic deduction to guide dogs from a credit card until bills started to to get out of hand I rang up guide dogs after looking at my bills and income I don’t remember the exact words used but it was along the lines of can you go without food for a few days and keep giving to them to the point where I pushed to get angry and abusive before they agreed to stop the deductions

I would realy like a reply if you could to both of these to the email supplied

Jon McGill says:

Leo, I paraphrase, but the message of karma philosophy was something like “if you can become selfless, then you will have paradise”… well, isn’t it selfishness in the first place that propels us toward paradise and away from hell? What is paradise but self happiness… I’m also curious if you have ever read Ayn Rand’s book titled, “The Virtue of Selfishness”, and how do you reconcile these philosophies with the Eastern Buddhist philosophies… or is there no reconciliation between them?

Leo Gura says:

Selfishness may propel a lost soul towards Heaven, but it won’t let you enter the door (so to speak). So yes! You have to start with selfishness because that’s all you’ve got at first. But then once you get far enough along, you have to start to see how the selfishness is the ENTIRE reason why you’re stuck in hell. If you could drop the selfishness right now, you’d enter Heaven instantly. No journey necessary. But alas, that’s not likely to happen cause your selfishness is too strong and clever to allow that.

Enlightenment is the journey to nowhere. You get there and you see that you’re exactly at the point you started years ago. Nothing has changed, except everything is different!

As for Rand, she’s completely oblivious to these issues of higher consciousness. She’s a dogmatist. Her mind was fixed and closed. The question is not whether selfishness has virtue. The question is, What is the self? Does it actually exist? What if it doesn’t? Rand assumed it did. Not surprising given she was an egomaniac lost in the sand castles she build with her egotistical mind.

That said, a strong ego is better than a broken ego in reaching enlightenment. Only a healthy ego can start to see the illusion of the ego. A broken ego is so lost that it’s nearly hopeless until it gets stronger. Which is why using psychotherapy or life coaching to fix your neurotic issues would be a good idea before attempting enlightenment.

Breaking out of the Matrix is a tricky business because you have to do it from inside the Matrix! And the sick punchline is: there’s no YOU at all who’s doing it! That belief IS the entire Matrix! Hahaha… funny and sad at the same time. And despite knowing all that, you’re still stuck. I’m still stuck. Here I am, knowing I’m not me! Knowing is not good enough. Knowing is inside the Matrix!

Jon McGill says:

But how does one know when one’s neurotic issues are fixed? By the way, lately, I have been thinking alot about your video on breakups and I find myself agreeing very strongly with what you said about looking back on a breakup and seeing it as the best thing that could have happened to you… afterall, relationships can make you complacent and comfortable and I certainly wasn’t trying to become a better person in the 20 years of my marriage… I have been seeing a therapist, but it would be better to get more regular feedback and objective coaching, as I think therapists tend to lump you in with all the crazy patients they have altogether… (quite a tangent…) but, back to selfishness, I like Ayn Rand’s view of selfishness as a virture when contrasted with the socially expected virtue of self sacrifice which I think doesn’t get questioned enough… I see that you did question that in this video, bravo for that.

Leo Gura says:

You don’t get them all fixed. You just wanna address the most crippling ones and simultaneously be doing enlightenment work.

Get a life coach if what you’re looking for is going from average to extraordinary. Therapists are mostly focused on fixing dysfunctions.

The selfishness I’m talking about here is very different than what we socially refer to “selfishness”. When I talk about selfishness, I mean: the very fact that you think of yourself as a self at all is the problem! You are actually NOT a self!

So the things we’re talking about here are very advanced, and will be very threatening to your way of life.

Jon McGill says:

Yes, I got the gist of what you mean by denying the existence of self… it is quite an paradigmatic shift from other ways of thinking… I am definitely intrigued by it. By the way, your denial of self in this way not only goes against Randian selfishness but also against bleeding heart liberal self-sacrifice… since there cannot be self sacrifice either, with your premises of self.

Leo Gura says:

It goes against all thinking of any kind.

anne newman says:

I don’t agree that mindfulness meditation and spirituality cannot help those who are very neurotic and in enormous emotional pain. There are many people who have turned to meditation and spirituality only because they were in enormous emotional pain and would never have found these paths if they didn’t have so much suffering.
Also people who suffer from severe panic/anxiety disorder are now very often being treated using mindfulness meditation. Many psychiatrists are now using mindfulness to treat their patients so I can’t really agree with you that you need a healthy ego to be able to gain from mindfulness and meditation.

Eckart Tolle talks a lot about this and often says that a lot of people that have turned to spirituality have done so only because they have had enormous suffering and that’s why enormous suffering can be a good thing. In fact Eckart Tolle himself had his great realisation about his true nature when he was on the verge of committing suicide because he could no longer stand the enormous suffering he was going through at the time. So in fact in the case of Eckart Tolle it was only because he was in unbearable crippling emotional pain that allowed him to have his life changing deep realisation.
I could say that you want people to believe that people with deep neuroses cannot gain much from mindfulness meditation because you still want to sell your other non-spiritual coaching videos but I don’t believe that because I think you are coming from a very genuine place with all your spiritual videos and I think you’re making a really great contribution to people’s well-being with these videos. I think there is a real hunger out there amongst people to know more about spirituality which religion can’t give them because of all the nonsense that comes along with religion but I do have to disagree with you on this one point that you have to have a healthy ego to pursue this path.

Leo Gura says:

They certainly can! In fact I think mindfulness is one of the most powerful ways for neurotics to heal and advance very quickly! So don’t get me wrong. But the problem is a practical one: a highly dysfunctional person will be very very resistant to mindfulness practice. They are in such bad psychological shape that they can’t sustain it.

So if one can overpower that resistance, by all means do it!

tim says:

I asked a question on the 7th of may and still haven’t received a reply other than receiving emails about other peoples comments

monica says:

I’m enjoying your videos since a couple of days,
I wander how you explain the relation between fear (often not even perceived) and anger in what you call the self perpetuating circle of “negative” actions
Thank you

AMORIO says:

Hey, Leo.

I’m a student in the advanced levels in the american language centre.

Besides all valuable knowledge I have gotten from this video, I learn here more useful vocabulary especially through the comments done for you.

This video raise my awareness to many unconscious behaviors, we feel that some people are suffering, we feel that they have something to tell, they want to complain about something.
As you say they had throw the dust against the wind and it comes to their faces. They have done bad thinsg so they suffer a lot inside because they believe in the hell and the heaven.
They try to discuss their mistakes to see if there something they could do to alleviate.

Sure as you say the real suffering is inside.

thanks beautiful Leo.

Barbara Fairbanks says:

Hello Amorio – I enjoyed reading your comment, and did so several times. Its beauty and simplicity expresses in a very poetic way, the summation of Leo’s video. Thank you!


Woody says:

We are all selfish. Our motives are what differs each other. “Bad” and “good” acts don’t exist. ex: One does a bad act for material gains. Creates bad karma in the meantime. Another does a selfish act that creates Karma also. If the one who does good doen’t do good act consistently they will have the same negative consequences when they dont act out of goodness thus bad Karma as the same as the one who does bad acts. Get my jist?

David says:

The best tool i find to experience ultimate reality directly is vipassana meditation by Goanka. in my understanding of it, its prety simple: morality (calming the mind), mastering the mind and wisdom. nothing more.

I see a lot of similitude in what you r saying and it just make me curius about it.
Maybe you can share what you think the mind (thought, images, concept, etc) is literaly, physicaly.

Thanks you for your time David

Lucy says:


I am so scared now! I am in hell…. how do I get out? Is this possible?

Ragnar says:

Of course it is possible – Enlightenment and spirituality will take you to paradise !

David says:

I know u are waiting for Leo but i think meditation always give fruits.
There’s a lot of way to meditate but anapana( obseving natural breth in and out) is a god point to start. Buddha him self used anapana.
I whish u peace of the mind. i meditate since 4 years and it truly work.

Just my humble opinion.
May u find peace of mind.

Jimmy Feiling says:

In your opinion couldnt almsgiving or forms of pure generosity be on some level a form of manipulation?

patricia says:

So My husband cheated. Is he suffering Karma? Or am I suffering Karma?

Leave a Comment
What color are lemons?*