Lewis Anderson

Honesty is one of the most powerful traits a person can have. If you are honest to yourself and others you can be sure that no matter what happens, you are doing the right thing.When I talk about Honesty I don't just simply mean telling the truth to people when they ask a question. That's the basic level of honesty I'd like to think everyone has (unfortunately not the case). I don't mean just telling a story about what happened at the supermarket without exaggeration, that's telling tails or rather called making a story interesting.

I was reading a post in a group where great minds get together to discuss marketing tactics, mainly sales copy tailored around persuasion and reading people. The post was about intentionally "Play Dumb While Remaining Smart" to gain advantage over them in some way or another.Then I started to see how I do this in my own life, I must stress I don't do it intentionally to gain advantage over people, I believe its part of my personality and also my mannerisms and politeness.I see it like leaving £100,000 somewhere with a message saying "this money belongs to someone please don't take it" but giving people the opportunity to take it without anyone ever finding out it was them.It's my way of getting to know new people, you really get to learn a lot about people when they "know" (think) they can take advantage of you, talk to you how they please or they can clearly see a weakness in you.They naturally show there true selves no matter how hard they try to hide it or what image they try to hide behind they stumble and act up to my perceived weaknesses.There is this whole other intelligent silent Lewis reading and analysing, who not many people see. I'm there the whole time but some people can't seem to see past the Lewis on the outside.This "outside" Lewis, Usually comes across as someone who's slow, spineless, weak, never confrontational and extremely gullible. Never feared by anyone people become transparent and overconfident.The good thing is, most people are genuine, they are themselves at all times treat me as equal to them and even show a kinder heart towards me and others because of these traits I appear to have.Being someone who "doesn't know how to say NO" has massive advantages believe me.I would do things for someone and suddenly find myself with extra cash in my hand even though I never asked, and never done these things for the money in the first place. I love these people, there are not many of them and I open up to them, quickly building a good relationship and hopefully end up being good friends.But some other people are fooled into believing they hold some kind of "super power" over me when really they are victims of their own ego. Believing I am gullible is the one thing which trips people up the most, I see this gleam in their eye, like a light bulb switches on. They then ramble on about some random story which makes them out to be superior or look as if they are smart or cleaver.They intentionally create this image of who they want me to perceive them as and 100% of the time I am really seeing something completely different. A liar? A cheat? Depending on what they say, lost in a world where they think status is important. They speak about things they shouldn't in front of me, they let their guard down and are immediately open for attack. However, I'm not confrontational so I don't attack and make them look like the fool, I simply take it in and give more chances for them to understand who I am, I give them a chance to just be them self and show me who they really are.The people that don't, don't stay in my life for very long or I keep at a distance if they are a part of my life. The people that do start to understand me and show me their true self, I interact with and gradually open up too but I still seem to come across to them as that outside Lewis, they just stop taking advantage of it.The best people are the ones who I spoke of first, the ones which reward my kindness, never take advantage of it and treat me as an equal. I give them time in my thoughts and try to help them as much as I can, I try to make a good impact on their lives no matter how big or small.Now I know I spoke about myself a lot there but it was just an observation of myself I thought I would share.By the way there is a name for it and it was used as a war strategy by the Chinese or Japanese I can't remember. Read it if you have a few minutes, very interesting but I wouldn't recommend doing any of these strategy's intentionally for personal gain.36 StratagemsRead "Play Dumb While Remaining Smart"

Number 1 Damaging spiritual Meme Hello, Leo here with some more thoughts. This time it’s about spiritual memes I see on Facebook and other places on the internet. Most of them I see are really good and have a lesson to learn or leave you with something to think about. The best are the ones which leave you with something you can identify with in your own live and use it make self-improvements or to remember and practice when a situation in your life occurs. The reason I am writing this is because I see a lot of other types of memes stating very negative things which people should be doing? The worst thing about it is a lot of people like them and put on comments about how true they are and how they have done this in their own life. So what is the nature of these memes I am talking about? The number one damaging spiritual meme people seem to like and agree with across the world is avoiding negative people! I admit sometime it comes across in a “good way” so to speak. It gets put across as to not cut them out of your life but to spend less time with them. Here are few I can think off which mean the same thing but are said in different ways: “Avoid negative people, for they are the greatest destroyers of self-confidence and self-esteem. Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you.” “Don’t expect positive changes in life if you surround yourself with negative people” “I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all” “I am thankful for the negative people in my life. They have shown me exactly who I don’t want to be” “Don’t worry about those who talk behind your back, they are behind you for a reason” “People who create their own drama deserves their own karma” Can you see what I mean when you read them all together like this? I’ll explain each one and my reason for why I think they are no good. The first one I am going to leave until last and start off with the last, working my way up. “People who create their own drama deserves their own karma” – This is instantly putting yourself above another person and condemning someone to be a victim of Karma just because they are at a specific stage in their lives. The famous saying “Forgive them for they know not what they do” is thrown straight out the window for this meme. People are people and they don’t necessarily deserve any bad Karma for their actions. I also believe Karma to be a good thing, it’s a lesson for the person it’s happening to, not something for others to witness and get justice or revenge from. If Karma does play a role in our lives then it’s happening for a reason and that reason is to help the person it’s happening to, not to serve justice no matter how sever the Karma is. “Don’t worry about those who talk behind your back, they are behind you for a reason” This is food for your Ego, feeding you with things like, you’re in front of them, you are better than them, they are left behind because you’re that person who doesn’t talk behind other peoples back. First of all I doubt there are many people around in this world that does not talk behind someone else’s back, it’s something people do sometimes with bad intentions, just something to talk about or with good intentions. People like to make an observation about someone else’s behaviour which is not a bad thing and not necessarily a good thing either. However when someone is talking behind your back with bad intentions and speaking badly about you it only shows that the person is upset with you for some reason or another. What that person thinks about you does not make you who you are as a person. To get involved with it or even show an interest when you are told about someone talking behind your back is pointless. Try to just shrug it off, know who you are and don’t judge, condemn or criticise the person who say’s these things. A good answer if made aware of this would be “Is that so?” then continue on with your business as if it were a fly you just brushed off your arm. I will make the next few brief as I will cover them in more detail in the last one: “I am thankful for the negative people in my life. They have shown me exactly who I don’t want to be” – Are you truly thankful? Or does your ego just love this saying because you’re telling yourself you are better than negative people? Are you truly always a positive person regardless of the situation? This meme creates an “us and them” complex, you are the positive and they are the negative, we all know what happens when there is an “us and them” complex. Fights, hate, war and anything else negative you can think of. It’s kind of Ironic really as this statement is negative in itself. “I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all” – As you think this you are thinking about those people who think things about you, you have already given them space in your thoughts, who are you referring to when you share, comment of like this statement? Whoever it is you’re already thinking about them. For this statement to be true, paradoxically it would not exist. You care enough about what others think about you to declare you don’t think about them at all. Please feel free to correct me on this as I know what I am trying to say but I can’t quite get it out in the right words. So here we are the last two which mean the same thing really so Ill cover them both at the same time. “Avoid negative people, for they are the greatest destroyers of self-confidence and self-esteem. Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you.” – The key word in this is “Self” and it’s that word which we should be focusing on when reading a statement like this. Avoid negative people? Your parents? Your friends? Brothers, sisters? How do you avoid a co-worker? Well I am sure that it is only you who controls your thoughts feelings and emotions, you and you alone are the person responsible for destroying your self-confidence and self-esteem by allowing the negativity to effect you, why not simply swing whatever it is they are saying around to the positive alternative. Be the positive person in their life, the person they like to be around to help them remove negativity from their own lives. You can’t have a negative without a positive so be the positivity. Running and hiding from the dark wont brighten up the room, you have to turn the light on, you have to take on the responsibility for your own happiness. There will always be a perceived negative situation or person passing by in your life, running from it will not help in any way. Finally I get to the last one and hopefully there is a lesson to be learned from this one, I am going in flip mode! “Don’t expect positive changes in life if you surround yourself with negative people” – Surround yourself with negative people if you want to see positive changes in life! Ha-ha, bear with me and let me explain. If you truly are trying to improve your life with spiritual teachings then the best way to remove negativity from your life is to throw yourself in the deep end and practice it from there. What good is practicing to be positive if you’re only ever surrounded by positivity? Negative people and negative situations is the only time you can practice positivity, it’s the only time you can even define the difference. Seriously, surround yourself with negative people and practice remaining positive, people will soon lighten up around you, laugh with you and wonder what it was they was unhappy about in the first place. I’ve done this many times in my life an others have done it for me too at times where I get lost. To summarise this, for someone who is on a journey to improve their life with spiritual teachings these types of memes are damaging for their practice. Replace negative thoughts with positive ones, it’s not all about improving self and not others, your positivity is the catalyst that will bring the negative around you to a new understanding. You should be able to always find peace regardless of outside consequences. Its good practice being around people that are in a negative state, be transparent allow the negativity to flow straight through you and out the other side as positivity. Don’t allow it to consume you. Thanks for reading and or listening, peace out Leo Legacy.

What is enlightenment?Enlightenment can be described in many ways, essentially enlightenment is the process of transcending the conditioning of the human mind into a new understanding of the self, others and the universe. From the dark into the light, you could closely relate it to the phrase "enlighten me" or what I see as the opposite "kept in the dark".  When you don't know information which others know, your kept in the dark, when someone else knows information that you believe my be valuable to you, you ask them to enlighten you.The enlightenment I am referring to is the state of mind achieved after the spiritual process of awakening, to wake up from cultural conditioning and realise the essence of yourself.Its extremely hard to understand or even consider to be interesting let alone seeing how important it is for the human race to achieve. At first you would need to understand how damaging we are to ourselves, others and our planet. Then you would need to be shown the workings of our conditioning and how self destructive and pointless it is, how it serves us no purpose what so ever. Then lastly you would look into spiritual enlightenment and practice the teaching to experience that everlasting state of joy happiness and well-being.