Joseph Maynor

Ok folks. This is long and rambly -- so you don't want to listen to all of it. Just listen to these two passages: 1. Hinduism and Buddhism: 00'10'25' to 1'45'50'. 2. The Six Orthodox Indian Philosophy Schools: 5'26'20' to 6'19'25'. 3. The Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana: 6'33'55' to 6'57'32' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_vedanta

Oh yeah. People can become enlightened here if they do the work. Lots of different perspectives here, people willing to help, etc. Spoon-feeding haha.

Why believe there's a rabbit-hole to go down? Are you guys trying to burn out the Mind? You don't need to do that. You don't need to try to kill the mind or kill the Ego. That won't work and it only causes pointless suffering and no real progress. You're just confusing yourselves. And you're basking in that confusion, not realizing that that's a manufactured state, and not reality. "Reality is simple, clear, and unitary. There's nothing mysterious about it. Enlightenment is the most simple perception" -- Adyashanti Video on point to watch:

Haha. I'll give it a crack. That's funny though. I disrupted my stillness to answer this.

Me too. The only two famous ones that resonate with me so far are Adyashanti and Ekhardt Tolle. All the others that I've explored don't quite rise to that level.

Do both. Both are powerful. You want to have results from both to work with.

Ok boys. Time to collect yourselves. You don't want to parade your ignorance.

Maybe Leo's best non-Enlightenment Video:

Emerald did a great video addressing this issue:

Here's another video to watch. This video had a profound impact on my thinking about how to regard beliefs in this work.

Watch this video:

It means that conceptual-truth is not existential-truth. The map is not the territory. The meal is not the menu. It is a belief. You're right. It's counter-weight theory. I can cling to it loosely. I prefer to do this, however: suspend belief.

ENLIGHTENED PEOPLE DO NOT LACK EGO -- THIS IS A REALLY RAMPANT MYTH Enlightened people do not lack ego. That's a deep myth. So many of us do not yet grok this. Enlightened people are subject to the same egoic taunts, they just don't attach to them as much. They're more conscious of them, whereas a lot of people are not even aware of the Ego. Enlightened people have discovered a space between themselves and thoughts: a space that can be widened through work and meditation. The ego might be illusory if it's not attached to. In other words, you may perceive ego that's not in fact there. If my behavior is categorizable by you as egoic, and I'm not attaching to egoic thoughts -- then I'm not acting egoically since I'm not attaching to what's happening. It's just what's happening. This is kind of a puzzling issue. In other words -- someone may act egoically and yet be detached from ego.

Leo explains it so well.

"The leader is the proxy-visionary for those who lack vision" -- Leo Gura

This is a really good technique. I'll share how I incorporate these ideas in my Journal when I am ready. I'm still experimenting with it.

DON'T DUMP YOUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE SO FAST IN THIS WORK There's an intellectual component to consciousness too. There's experiential awareness and then there's cognitive awareness. And actually both of these are happening simultaneously. Being conscious means that you have a huge shore of reference, that you are as studied as much as you are aware of the present moment experientially. We don't talk about this much and nobody ever seems to explain this right. They just want to focus on experiential awareness. Well, a baby has experiential awareness, but that doesn't make the baby very aware, if that makes sense. What the baby is missing is cognitive awareness. You need both to be conscious -- experiential awareness and cognitive awareness. And cognitive awareness uses concepts, thoughts, the Mind. AN INSIGHT ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT -- LOOSEN THAT GRIP ON BELIEFS ABOUT REALITY The point of Enlightenment is to get you to detach from conceptual beliefs about reality, including the attachments of the Ego. You can use beliefs in the moment as needed, but err on the side of avoiding thinking that truth is to be found via belief. Ground yourself in Existential Truth, surrender to reality fully, and be what is fully, without clinging to any beliefs. You want to live with an empty cup of beliefs not a full cup of beliefs. Do not let the Mind fool you that conceptual truth is Existential Truth. Being emotionally affected by conceptual contradiction implies the Rationalist Paradigm is being accepted implicitly. The conclusion is not that I conceptually know -- it's that I conceptually don't know! Just be in the Now and stop trying to conceptually know. Conceptual Truth is not the filet-mignon of Truth as the Mind thinks it is -- it's actually observation in the moment that is. One of the worst traps of the Ego/Mind causes us to believe is that conceptual truth is Existential Truth. This is our worst trap! BREAKING THROUGH TO AWAKENING Enlightenment/ Enlightenment work isn't what you think it is. That's the reason why it's so confusing to teach and to learn. And that's why you have to keep banging your head against the wall until one day -- ah snap, you'll get it -- all of it -- not intellectually, you'll have an epiphany. And at that time the search will be over. The work won't be done, but the search will be over. And after that time you may call yourself Enlightened if you wish. You’ll realize the ridiculousness of all teachings after that point, so why not. As long as you don’t attach strongly to that, it’s fine. Enlightenment is the loosening of conceptual beliefs -- all conceptual beliefs. Beliefs will still arise as part of what's here in the moment, but that doesn't mean that you need to identify with them. And with that, conceptual beliefs become much less important. One of the tricks of the Mind is to reinforce the belief that conceptual belief is SO IMPORTANT. It's like -- crawl into this Matrix, it's so real! That conniving little Mind. But once you see through this fully, you'll have an epiphany that is impossible to reverse. And it's got nothing to do with psychedelics. You can't unexplode a grenade. That's what the shift is like. It's one of those oh! Damn! That's what it is. It's a shift that happens to you, an epiphany. It's not a conceptual understanding, but a shift in perspective to use a word. It's not a paradigm-shift, as that involves shifting beliefs. This shift is not a shift in beliefs. It's like an anti-paradigm shift, to use a phrase. And you can't force it, it just happens when it happens. It takes a lot of work to convince the Mind that beliefs are not the truth. So, you do need to do a lot of work in Enlightenment. Whatever it takes to get the big crack for you. Beliefs are not good or bad. They are simply here in awareness. The issue is how beliefs are attached to -- how the Mind is trying to connect that belief to you and to reality. That mental relation is the problem. You can still have beliefs. Don't repress your beliefs. Just don't make them YOUR beliefs. This is hard to communicate in language. You gotta see what I’m pointing to. You're still clinging WAY too much and too hard to belief. That's what you got to fix. You're attaching to all those concepts that the Voice is raising. That's what you're gonna stop doing when you get the big crack. Enlightenment theory is counter-weight theory. You're not supposed to believe the counter-weight theory. It's there to loosen up all your beliefs so that the Mind can finally come to see that no beliefs touch Truth. You wanna have the shift that comes from that. And only the Mind can make that shift, you can't consciously make it.

THOUGHTS, BELIEFS, CONCEPTUAL-TRUTH WILL LOSE THEIR ALLURE TO YOU THE MORE ENLIGHTENED YOU BECOME It's hard to realize the limitations of beliefs without exploring that domain thoroughly. I studied all that stuff too. But the point you wanna get to is where you don't cling to beliefs at all. Sure, beliefs are going to come into the Mind, but they will not have the importance to you as they do now. The reason they are so important to you is because the Mind needs to realize that all beliefs are inherently false. That takes a lot of exploration to come to that epiphany. Due to our deep Western Philosophy, we do need a lot of COUNTER-education to become Enlightened, especially if you're a thinking-type of person who clings readily to thoughts with a strong faith in the paradigm of conceptual-truth. What you should be focusing on is existential-truth. The Ego is doing everything it can to keep you from doing that. Why? Because that's the death-knell for the Ego; namely, the day you start privileging existential-truth over conceptual-truth. It's like this. A young man is really attracted to females right? He wants sex and all that. An older man is less driven by sex and less attracted to females. It's like that with thought. Right now you are the young man with thoughts. Thoughts look so luscious to you, right? But you will reach a point that even the most amazing thoughts can move past you and you will not even take notice of them. The thoughts will lose their allure for you, their spell over you. You will see through the mirage of thoughts, beliefs, and conceptual-truth as you become more and more Enlightened.

Watch this video:

You and Emerald have the same MBTI type. She's one of my favorite teachers. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvW2U2-szAK2lBzUYOw0DwA

That's a tough call between that one and this one:

We can argue about the pros and cons of thinking, that’s not what I want to talk about here. Enlightenment requires acceptance of the void, of stillness, of emptiness, and a detachment from all thoughts and emotions. How you gonna do that if you’re always filling that void with addictions, distractions, rationalizations, fantasizing, bullshit, video-games, THINKING, entertainment? See — many of you don’t yet have the patience for Enlightenment. You wanna be spiritual egos instead. And until you start to wean yourself off the crap-information intake and become more ascetic, your growth will only be in theory — but you’ll hit a glass-ceiling in practice. That’s called spiritual ego formation, and it’s a trap in this work. We need to move beyond that phase. That should be our goal this year to finally do that. Anyone on board? How much do you really want Enlightenment? Well, you’re gonna find out. Or is what you want to do is bask in the idea, labels, feelings, and image of Enlightenment — but never do the real work. See? You gotta see this trap. The Ego doesn’t wanna see this trap. You will argue and fight with me instead of acknowledging this — that’s the Ego in self-protection mode. We gotta stop letting the Mind bullshit us with its rationalizations and avoidance of being. But you gotta take some action here and correct this. Stop waiting for it to auto-correct through awareness alone. That could just as easily be turned into an excuse. Accept some responsibility here. Get off the drugs, THE PSYCHEDELICS, the addictions, the distractions, the over-thinking, the entertainment, all that shit — and just be ok with being still in the void, in emptiness, accepting that which you are constantly running away from. Can you make it a goal to do that this year? It’s gonna be harder than you think it’ll be. “Sobriety fuck*n sucks” — Ozzy Osborne. You’re damn right it does! It’s hard to be stone-sober all the time. It takes hard work to get there! We know that. Facing the void head-on all the time is fuck*n death to the Ego. If you wanna think — this is the principle you should be thinking about. Right? Haha. The Ego would not allow it easily. And why should it! See how these traps form now? The Ego is sneaky. You gotta realize that and keep reminding yourself of that ALL the time. That takes Enlightened awareness. Bite the bullet and do this work. I’ll be very proud of you if you do. I’m in this too — don’t think I’m not in this. This is an US not a YOU movement. We’ll do this together this year. Enough pussyfooting around — let’s do the real work for a change. Set day one for March 1st. Put it into your calendars. Starting March 1st we’re gonna start becoming more ascetic with the goal of ridding that sh*t from our lives by the end of the year. Pace yourself — it will take the entire 9 months to do this. And you’ll have the rest of this month to plan for it. I’m on board. I’ll lead it. I’ll post updates in my Journal as we move through the year too. 2018 is gonna be the year. We’re gonna create something to really be proud of.

@StephenK If you meditate you’ll locate it.

“I’m just as influenced by what I hate as by what I like” — Frank Zappa