Joseph Maynor

1. How to be wordy. Try speaking into a recorder for 30 minutes on your topic. Explore. Get out of the writing and into the speaking. Don’t censor yourself. This called free-writing. Turn that judging Mind off and just let the words come out on their own. Let the right brain roam free. 2. Learn how to summarize and how to outline. This is where you gotta turn the left brain off and use the right brain. Summarizing is using general language to convey the essence or jist of what’s being said. Imagine I told you to summarize this question you asked into a single paragraph. That’s the art of summarizing. And it is an art, nobody knows how to do this naturally. I distinctly recall that I got great at it when I went to paralegal school and had to summarize legal cases. Outlining is arranging the key points and examples into a kind of structure that reveals connections between the ideas.

Don’t listen to anyone. You just watch what resonates with you. I like him myself. He’s smart. I watched an interview with him and he comes off as smart, wise, witty, creative, etc. Asking the forum what they think about someone is like throwing a live chicken to a pack of wolves. What you need to do is trust YOUR intuition. Personally, I think he’s a good dude, from what I can tell. Probably not for everyone on their particular and unique position on the path, but no teacher can be this. We fall in and out of resonance with different teachers on our paths, don’t we? That’s how it should be. We are growing. If you told me to listen to Adyashanti and Eckhart Tolle a year ago — their teachings would have gone right past me. Now they are speaking right to me. So, different teachers come in and out of resonance with you as you progress along the path. I am happy that you are exploring teachers. That’s a good thing to do. See who you resonate with.

Start to dismantle the self-image aka Ego.

They’re both ultimately distractions. What matters to enlightenment is stopping getting wrapped up in clinging to thoughts and resting in awareness in the present moment. Enlightenment is not a nerdy thing at all.

Watch this video:

I'm just having fun applying the teachings. Like a dog enjoying a chew toy. Ah yeah! You were enlightened a minute ago, now you're trying to control me haha. What happened? You're trying to control reality. Trying to get me to become consistent with your self-agenda. Funny how the Ego works like that huh? You're trying to force your values on me. That's Ego.

Do Leo's Life Purpose Course. Find your Life Purpose. You'll have no time to do anything else. You gotta cut out the bullshit out of your life to do great things. Great things require that all your energy be placed wisely. You don't want to waste your life and energy focusing on stupid sh*t. Sorry to be so blunt about it. Videos on point to watch:

Actually, people are attracted to people who embody their shadow traits. It's kind of counter-intuitive like that. That's why you get the opposites-attract phenomenon. The goody-goody girl who is attracted to the piece of sh*t guy, right? That's an application of the principle. But the principle is more hinged on shadow than on that example, which most people know about. It's a broader law of self-integration that is going on. The shadow is always trying to be loved, accepted, and re-integrated into your reality. Loving those traits in another person is the shadow's attempt to get you to love them in yourself too. Two know-it-alls do not jive, they are too similar. The know-it-all needed the opposite personality. The humble, loving person haha. See? Video on point to watch:

What is it about Hippies that represent something you are repressing about yourself? There's some aspect of you that you are rejecting in that judgment. There's some aspect of hippyness in you that your Ego doesn't want to accept. This is notwithstanding the question over why you are associating my comment with Hippies. Where the hell is that connection in reality? It's all your mental associations, which you should be curious about examining. All your mental baggage. That's what you've been avoiding. Get to work!

You can't say it any better than this. This is what almost every advanced student in this work is not getting. They don't want to give up the Egoic life. They want to be spiritual egos, which is a very well-known, well-studied, and well-talked-about trap. But again, people are falling into this trap and not even conscious of it. That's because the Ego doesn't really want to die. Surprise! It will do various kinds of deception in order to to stay alive. We know this but don't really practice it. We are spiritual egos not enlightened people by any stretch of the word. Sometimes I wonder if the most enlightened people on here are the ones that almost never speak, never comment. They're here, but rarely post. They're the true Manta rays. I like to believe that anyway, whether it's true or not -- it sounds good to me. Maybe the most awake people are the ones who are the loudmouths, who knows. Maybe its a mixture of both, none and either, etc. Thought haha. Language haha. Certainty haha. Need to know haha. See? Reality doesn't follow our silly little mental assumptions. It's a gnarly trap to assume otherwise. It's idealism in the true sense of the word: theoretical-idealism -- living in a thought-dream, not reality. Almost all of use are not practicing right in this work, despite the back-slapping that our Ego likes to do. We are screwing it up, not really doing it, not ever going to really do it either. We don't want to surrender and give up the Ego. It hurts too much. So, let's not bullshit ourselves anymore please. No more fantasies about this work. Let's face facts. Most people will never transcend the Ego -- THEY DON'T REALLY WANT TO. What they want to do is be spiritual egos. That should be deeply investigated and made peace with if it's something that is functioning for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbj4nLOPN8o

I don't know why you guys need stories like these. Why can't you just take reality for what it is, without all these meta tales? You don't know why ego evolved. Why not just suspend beliefs like this. Why the need to know in this manner? That's a trap. It's that addiction to conceptual knowing that we all know so well by now. Regarding conceptual beliefs, it's best to practice not knowing, or loose clinging rather than collecting these thoughts like cans and cans of loose pennies. It's a lot to do for little reward in this work. It's a terrible trap, and even some of the most advanced people seem to miss this trap. It's too bad. Videos on point to watch:

No advice is appropriate for everybody. We are all at different levels and are speaking to different audiences. I target certain people in my works. Sometimes different audiences in different responses. The cockiness is mostly just part of the artistry, part of the rhetoric of it, the zap to the soul. It's style man, which is part of the artistry that you gotta accept. You are pretty strong in your posts too, and cocky often to boot yourself. So, let's not try to control reality too much here. Trust that others than yourself might know something important in this work. Stop needing to be the most enlightened person. That's a role you're playing and projecting. You're still clinging to that. When you stop clinging in that manner, then you have shown growth on this issue. I've been waiting for that for while with me and with you, two hotheads -- two self-proclaimed smarties. Sorry to be so blunt Leo, but anything less would be a disservice to us both. Know-it-all-ism is a huge trap in this work. Same with creating a thought-dream where you're always the most enlightened person in the room. Carrying that around with you is biting you in the ass. Do you see that? Videos on point to watch:

When you let go, paradoxically that’s where you’ll find the discipline. Accept reality in the present moment. Trying to control things is an illusion of the Mind. Let go and just trust what happens. Your biggest problem is getting in your own way -- like the sh*ttiest backseat driver. Realizing this and practicing it is the end of seeking and the start of true awakening. Just let go. Don't identify with thoughts and emotions anymore. Just don't. You keep talking about it, but you never do it. It takes a lot of surrender and acceptance of reality as it is to do it. The Ego hates this and would rather spiritually-bypass in this work through more seeking. You gotta have the balls to stop that! Just stop it. Now. Video on point to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbj4nLOPN8o

Notice that this reaction is totally Ego. You are worried about your self-image here. You are worried about the past. All concept, not truth. What happened happened. Reality is perfect. Stop assuming you are a separate sense of self and that reality needs to conform to some pattern set by the Mind.

If you can meditate for 30 minutes per day, you open all options for yourself down the line. Get that habit wired now. Meditation is opening the first door to Enlightenment. People that don't meditate daily are shortchanging themselves in this work.

Seek until you no longer need to seek. That's the best advice I've heard on point.

The more unplugged you can be from media the better. Stay away from the news and from politics.

It is a good one. That video exposed me to Enlightenment.

Accept the negative thoughts fully so that they release. Trying to repress, suppress, or avoid them is just gonna prolong your suffering. Don't expect reality to be comfortable. Just observe the emotions and thoughts, accept them fully, let them in fully, and then watch them dissolve.

Very nice. Here's a good one -- believing that you are the undogmatic one. That's still an attachment, an Egoic identification. Or, I am the enlightened one. That's another identification, another conceptualization. I am the wise one. I am the good one. I am the tolerant one. That's a good one. I am the openminded one. Haha. I could go on. I am the humble one. I am the egoless one. I am the example of the right way to be, to live, to do x, y, or z. And I have the right values, opinions, and theories. I have the right advice, the right worldview, the right outlook on life. I am right, I know, I am compassionate, I am helpful, I care, I am concerned. All half-truths at best. I am significant, calm, poised. I am spiritual. I am an athiest. I am a good citizen. I am honest. Woah, that's a deceptive one. I give back. I am a great contributor. I am a guru, selflessly helping others. I have great advice to share with people. I am, I am, I am. I am. Me, me, me. I, I, I. I, me, mine. It's all about me. I am selfless. It's all about helping others. I am the pure one. I am the do-gooder. I am the saintly one. All traps.

Any book in particular to recommend?

Stay away from politics. There are better things to spend your time on, like your life purpose. You can't control jack sh*t about politics, so it is useless to worry about it. News and politics are two of the worst distractions.