Joseph Maynor

So true. This is what makes vacations great.

Absolutely. No World is one of the big areas of work in Enlightenment just as No Self. All there is is reality. If you can perceive reality instead of conceive it — you will take 100 steps towards Enlightenment. But there is no you and the object perceived. It’s stranger than that. Awareness of being just is reality. It’s the most obvious thing. If our cultural beliefs didn’t muddy this up, it would be the first profound observation of Science.

To me, the dark night of the soul means something specific. It’s the point where you first realize that the self is a lie, and your ego and shadow briefly unite like opposite poles of a magnet. The depression that follows that is you coming to terms for the first time of your now deceased self-image. It lasts a week max, and it feels like a death. You will go through the 7 stages of grief.

The idea of boddhisatva seems Egoic to me.

Don’t BS us. You think you’re smart, probably smarter than everyone else haha.

It depends on how dense your Ego is, and it’s in direct proportion to that. Oftentimes the densest Egos become Spiritual Egos, and they lose consciousness of being Egos. They think they are self-realized, but they’re actually not.

I think there’s a lot of confusion in personal development teachings that just make things more difficult than they have to be. I’ve heard the argument that it’s easier to break thru to enlightenment from a strong ego. I don’t know about that. That’s a cute story, but who knows, right?

I think you’re on to something here. People who don’t laugh enough take things too seriously, evidencing a dense Ego. Conversely, people who laugh too much are often using humor as an Ego defense-mechanism. So both extremes are probably dysfunctional — no humor and too much of it. The most self-realized person likely has drawn a natural mean between these two extremes.

It’s too dogmatic in tone and tenor in my opinion. That’s the main problem with it. One is left wondering what to make of it. But sometimes art has no point, especially 20th century art. The point is not to make a point. It’s like Baudrillard in Philosophy. Check out some of his writings. Some of that sh*t is really good — because the intent is to challenge paradigms. The Frank Zappa personalities among us basically. That attitude runs from Nietzche on through to today through the conduit of Postmodernism as we are led to term it. But we are too wise today to get hung up on things that tied up previous generations. Knowledge and intelligence do advance in the evolving culture we swim around in.

How can the world assess that if dude deletes his videos? See? You gotta have the balls to stand by your published work, all of it, as an artist. His insecurities got the best of him. That’s why artists have to be kinda ballsy and confident about their work, warts and all. As an artist, you gotta stick through to the end. He violated that. I wish him well though. But those videos were great. All of them were. I enjoyed them all and learned a lot. He was unfiltered, for better and for worse. But that’s his style, his personality. Don’t run away from your style as an artist — refine it as you go! It’s that style that makes you attractive in the first place. The trap he fell into was starting to doubt himself and his work. Put all the videos back up Rali. You’re a wise dude. Work on that insecurity problem you have. He’s young, so I get it. I stand here at age 40 with the wisdom gleaned from my youth readily at hand.

I think he took them down, though I’m not sure. I watched about 75% of them before he took them down. Dude was pretty wise and had an influence on me, quite profound of an influence actually. I missed the last 25% of his videos, his most recent videos, because I was watching them from oldest to newest. That sucks because I like to see how a guru changes on this path. He should put all of them back up. ALL. Don’t delete sh*t. If you wanna be an artist, you gotta live the consequences of your artwork for better or for worse. The public identifies with the art and makes it a part of them. Deleting art after the fact is not right because of that. I have a bugaboo with this. It’s a real problem that rarely becomes an issue because most artists don’t destroy their work after publication.

Thank god i’ve watched them all numerous times. Leo’s videos are all seared into my head — they’ve become a part of me. I noticed Rali’s vids are gone now too. Dude was pretty smart I don’t know why he deleted his work. Kinda lame. An artist never deletes his art after making it public. Once art is published, it belongs to the public.

SOUL — What do you think Leo was trying to communicate in the Dream Video, assuming you watched it? I’ll watch it again now and see if my ideas change about it.

You have a lot to say but then always clam up when we get to the crux of the issue. I asked if YOU see my concern. Now — why did you clam up and deflect there as you did? You need to develop the guts to stand by your positions to the end. If they die they die — if they live another day, then so be it too. But don’t run away when you sense danger of being deprived of your cherished notions. Assume your notions are probably wrong instead. You wanna be right though. But if you really wanna be right — you have to see that that never works! You always end the dispute before you realize that. The Ego never lets you get there! I’ve seen that pattern with you over and over again. You never let things get to that point. You never dive-deep enough to get there. You just end the discussion to preserve your Ego every time. But that is not helping you! That is keeping you stuck in a trap almost like a self-consistent bubble. And that bubble will be protected no matter what. Am I right?

Thats what I thought it was too. But Leo needed to make that clear. The way he presents it is as a literal truth about reality. There’s a huge difference there. Loosening up the materialist paradigm would make his thesis a counter-weight paradigm to the dominant materialist paradigm — with the express intent to deprogram both paradigms from being seen as true. But Leo never makes that clear in the video. In contrast, Leo has more of a tone of “let me tell you what’s true here — reality is a dream.” Ah — no dude — that’s just more dogma if taken that way. Do you see my concern?

Yeah. Caffeine is a tool like all drugs are. It’s US that misuse these tools, not a problem with the drugs themselves. What makes it scary is our culture treats it like an acceptable drug — like doing a few lines of coke throughout the day were perfectly culturally normal. But coke is so bad right? Wags finger. But Caffeine is a stimulant very much like Coke. It’s not as euphoric as Coke, but it’s a powerful drug nonetheless. Caffeine is kinda like nicotine in a way. Nicotene gives a similar kind of craving and then shitty withdrawals when you detox from it. So, what’s worse, a caffeine addiction or a booze addiction, or any other kind of substance abuse problem? Caffeine is just good for business, so it gets a pass. But that doesn’t change the reality that it’s a powerful drug and addictive as hell.

GETTING BACK THAT CHILDLIKE SPARK TO LIFE When you stop trying to control and just let reality play itself out with full acceptance and surrender -- that's what makes every moment seem to have that spark that it did when you were a child. You gotta stop forcing yourself to do anything though. That's the caveat. Just rest as awareness and let reality do whatever it wants to. Most of you don't have the luxury of doing this, but if you ever can, it's really great. Just let go. Just let go. Just rest as being, as awareness, as Brahman. No trying to control, no clinging to impermanent things. Just resting as awareness. Let go. This should feel kinda scary, but you gotta just keep on with it. What happens after you do this is so magical you'll be amazed. It all moves without you! How fascinating! Right? Everything is magical! Reality is much more than you, or the Ego. The Ego is just a belief-story about Reality that is very limited and false. Reality laughs at stories. Stories exist within reality. Reality is the big kahuna -- it's always there, we just choose to cling to false beliefs about it.

Being cannot be encapsulated under any concept. It’s best to just be reality instead of trying to conceptually know it. Reality is best known through being it not through conceptual description. When you can be reality, conceptualization about it loses all importance. Concepts about reality then become almost like counterfeit money. In contrast, right now you probably believe that concepts about reality are highly-important. But that’s part of our cultural predilection for the paradigm that conceptual-truth is an important kind of truth. Know reality by being it. Rest as awareness. It’s like the difference between doing something and reading about doing something. Reading about having sex is not the same as actually having sex. I hate to use that example, but it’s a poignant one and drives home my point I think very well. This is Valentine’s Day after all.

One time I detoxed off caffeine and I felt like I was detoxing off a serious drug addiction. I recall excruciating headaches and fatigue.

The belief that reality is a dream. That’s not reality at all. That’s an idea about reality. This is so basic. Am I wrong? I realize there is a strong desire to defend Leo’s thesis — but let’s not fool ourselves with our stories. We are monkey-minds, remember?

Everything you say and do is a reflection of you telling us who YOU are. That’s because all there is is you. There is no conflict, that’s an Egoic interpretation of reality. There is only reality. And reality is one. So any perception of conflict is an Egoic mis-interpretation of reality — a clinging to beliefs about reality. Do you see? Sorry to use you as a test case here, but this fell into my lap. This is a teachable moment for all of us. Are you really as much without Ego as you believe you are? How much have you actually transcended the Ego versus the extent to which you believe you have done so? Do you appreciate that the Ego might hide this truth from you? The Ego who believes it is without Ego is pretty sneaky indeed. So, I’ve shined a light on this issue here. We should all examine this issue within ourselves, including myself too of course. The Spiritual Ego is a huge trap in this work. It’s a well known but incredibly sneaky and hard to see blind-spot. It’s almost unconscious in its operation.

You shouldn’t continue to lie to yourself. We can see plainly that that’s not true from the record here. You have not transcended “conflict mode” as you allege. I’m gonna drop this now as the issue is resolved and therefore moot.

You appear to be blind to certain things about yourself and tend to project. Have you done any shadow work? You’re not saying anything about me — you’re telling us who you are. Who is in conflict mode as you allege? You and I are engaging in a side discussion that YOU prompted initially. I just held a mirror up to you, and that made you uncomfortable — and you dealt with that by turning attention to me in a quite desperate and funny way. Am I wrong? We have the record here to review.

You seem pretty certain. Almost as certain as I am that it’s false. Who’s right? See? This is where dogma is at issue. There’s a deeper lesson here.

Nice attempt to rationalize your way out of this — but no.