Joseph Maynor

It's funny how deep this advice sounds to people who already have it, yet how shallow it sounds to someone seeking.

Yes. For 30 mins each day. In the morning. I like do nothing meditation. Vipassana meditation is also kinda cool, as you are focused on your breath. So, I switch between those two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa

I'm losing the everyday experience of the "self" in reality. Most of that has gone bye bye for me. I'm resting as Awareness most of the time, or being the Soul. I'm just being that which doesn't change. I don't really buy the 2 Level Theory of Truth that some Indian Philosophers seem to dogmatically accept as true. There is only one truth and it's the non-changing Now. Everything else is just erroneous belief about reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine

Read this and tell me if you feel the same about eating chicken after. A chicken can have a natural lifespan of up to 10 years, but the chickens we eat are killed after 1 to 3 months of life. We're eating them when they are young-adolescents basically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broiler "Most commercial broilers reach slaughter-weight between four and seven weeks of age, although slower growing breeds reach slaughter-weight at approximately 14 weeks of age." [Quoted from Wiki article "Broiler", linked above.]

Just because you're not the Ego doesn't mean traditional self-help is not a part of your reality, if it ever was. If it wasn't, then it wasn't. I notice that having traditional self-help in the background does help awareness a lot of times -- but obviously most traditional self-help is in error. It's predicated on the belief that we have control. Traditional self-help is irrelevant to me at this stage of my enlightenment, but whose to say it didn't get me here? I don't know, and that's why I'm reluctant to pooh-pooh traditional self-help. I'm glad I was exposed to it, but it doesn't really help me now. I have no idea how it might affect another person well or adversely. Putting my speculation hat on -- I think traditional self-help is useful for those stuck in the Egoic Paradigm before they go through their Awakening process.

Exactly. I think everyone should get that look behind the curtain in this work.

For me at this place in my growth I can answer yes. This is because what I'm trying to do is right now is focus more on just resting as awareness. So, I don't really care about anything other than this. I guess it depends on what a particular person on the path needs to get to a place where they can fully accept reality. So, there's no real objective answer to whether they are a trap. They are a tool. No tool is bad in itself. What is good or bad is the utility of that tool in a particular context where there is a particular problem.

Haha. Ahh!

I'm joking too -- but not really because what I said is true too haha. Now -- here's a test. What's the Absolute? Don't let me down Faceless. Think!

You know what God is to me? It's a word, or a sound if you don't get the visual component. That's what God is. Think about it! Right?

What do you mean by God?

OUR FAITH IN UNCHANGING WISDOM AKA CONCEPTUAL-KNOWLEDGE IS CAUSED BY A BELIEF THAT WE'RE CLINGING TO AND PROBABLY NOT FULLY CONSCIOUS OF YET The paradigm and project of knowledge aka conceptual-knowing is an attempt to gain unchanging wisdom. This is a paradigm and project -- and we can go Meta and examine it once we realize that. Knowledge is a habit, it's not a necessary condition for existence or a necessary element of reality. The assumption that conceptual-knowing can constitute unchanging wisdom is a BELIEF. This is a deep insight, grok it!

Is there a sense in which the agnostic regarding beliefs forces reality into that paradigm -- the agnostic paradigm -- thereby attempting to control reality? Is this a fault? And if so, in what sense? Roles are ideologies, are they not? This is a gnarly trap eh? How do we work with this skeptical paradigm to get it right? There's some good in it, we can all agree. --------------------- Is trying not to play any roles playing a role too, and thereby trying to control reality? This is kind of an interesting insight. --------------------- Video for some background theory if you need it:

On the one hand you are already Enlightened. Reality was never changed by a you, so speaking of you changing or doing anything is just a story, a belief laid up on top of reality. BUT you must spend the rest of your spiritual life detaching from Ego and beliefs. (Detaching in the sense of loosening identifications with thoughts, beliefs, paradigms.)

MBTI is very good. Use it as a tool. No test is perfect. MBTI is powerful and has a lot of research and theory behind it.

Every belief and role feels like a straight-jacket to reality that reality simply sloughs off after about 2 seconds. That's the trouble with beliefs, they purport to be independent of time and place -- or context-independent. But reality and truth are totally context-dependent. That's why beliefs have to be clung to loosely. Beliefs are an attempt to control reality in a sense. An attempt to define reality. An attempt to reduce the dynamic to the static, the changing to the changeless. You are that which is not definable. I think this is the first sentence of the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tsu knew this, which is pretty amazing. And we're still puzzled about it today. I guess there's some knowledge that doesn't accumulate with time. Why is that? That's a fascinating question, isn't it? Some knowledge seems to catch and some doesn't.

Totally! We think our ideas correspond to reality. We think reality closely corresponds to our thoughts about it. This is a deep prejudice we seem to be hardwired with. An inclination to err by assuming this metaphor is real. Not even seeing the underlying metaphor.

This video from Emerald propose an antidote to clinging to paradigms. She calls this kind of more flexible knowing "wisdom". Check it out. Test it out in reality too. See how paradigms and wisdom can merge in the flux and chaos of the moment.

@Deep You're making progress. The path is long. Keep walking it!

The longer I'm on the path the more it is pretty clear to be that there is no free will, but I could be wrong, as that's a belief too. Of course it's possible I'm just being brainwashed with all the Enlightenment theories too. There's truth and then there's theory -- and never the twain shall meet. All beliefs are theory and are suspect on that basis -- even the non-dual theories. Not knowing is more powerful than non-duality. Truth is more powerful than non-duality. And truth is simply reality. Reality doesn't need a belief. Does reality care about free will or no free will? Probably not. It's apples and oranges, and reality doesn't consider either one food haha. I'm enjoying playing this new role of the non-committed believer. Yeah! It's a role. Does that mean there is something wrong with it, something ideological? Is reality ideological, dogmatic, something in between, something heterogeneous -- an incalculable chaos perhaps? Reality yawns at all this, and moves on stoically unperturbed.

How do you explain the illusion of free will? That's what fascinates me. There is a definite illusion of feeling and thought that seems to suggest the free will conclusion. No free will resonates more with me than free will does. Free will seems more problematic. It's not that I need to prove no free will -- I can be doubtful of the free will paradigm. So, I am more agnostic about these issues pursuant to my attitude of skepticism and not knowing, but I lean more towards no free will. I'm inclined to think that Awareness or the Soul or Atman isn't the Ego and the free will concept kinda makes no sense without Ego. But I remain open to new evidence or possibilities. I prefer not to cling tightly to any paradigms, including the so called Enlightenment variants. All beliefs miss the bus of what reality is. Reality is only in the moment.

I agree with this. Or to sound less clingy and belief-oriented -- I should say that this resonates with me. It resonates very much with how I think about these matters too. The Ego is a belief and most likely false. Knowing how our ideas have ferreted out on many matters -- it wouldn't surprise me that our cultural beliefs are wrong. The Egoic Paradigm is simply a philosophy, a belief system, a cultural construction, not different from any other creation like Rock and Roll or Kung Pao Chicken. Is Kung Pao Chicken objectively better than Beef and Broccoli, well? Yeah! No. It's funny that we think like that with our other paradigms and don't even realize it. That's why Enlightenment is the eradication of ignorance -- the deepest eradication of ignorance.

I’ve been studying philosophy heavily lately, so I’ve been examining a lot of ideas that have converged to form our collective mentality regarding beliefs. And in the West, especially after Science got going, there’s been a real bent towards pragmatism, skepticism, and weighing of facts and arguments prior to belief, all of which is an advance in the collective mentality regarding belief in my opinion. And knowing that reduction of ignorance is the key to Enlightenment, it’s so important that we remove all vestiges of unsavory clinging from reality — to the extent reality does this for you. We all realize the benefits of this. We have a couple of cliches — awareness alone is curative and acceptance of reality alone is curative — that get at this. My point is that the theory of Ego encapsulates all of this wisdom, and then drills it down as a highly practical understanding which goes beyond the abstractions of thoughts. This allows us to have wise awareness, which miraculously cleans up reality for us, whether there’s a possibility of control, or whether we’re just watching a story play itself out.

Nothing changes. You most likely never had any control over reality to begin with. Reality just is itself. It is most likely not controlled by an egoic self. The egoic picture or story or belief of reality is very problematic and most likely false. But the best place to get to is the art and practice of not knowing or suspending belief. So, even the counter-weight paradigms, the enlightenment paradigms, are arms-lengthed. This leads you to be able to just focus on being the Soul or Awareness or Atman in the moment and not clinging to impermanent things. That's liberation right there! Atman don't need no knowledge.