Joseph Maynor

Instead of giving you an ‘answer’ which means nothing, this is the sustainable answer that I wanna respond with. This came outta my Journal. HOW TO DO ENLIGHTENMENT WORK Self-observation and keen-mindfulness are the way to do it. Always be asking yourself, ‘what is literally here vs. what do I take to be real?’ You’ll start to see the discrepancy between those and thus the illusion of Thought and Experience will start to unravel like an ingenious magic trick — but an illusion nonetheless. Always ask yourself this: ‘What is real?’ Not what is reality, that’s too abstract. But ask rather, ‘what is real right here right now in this moment?’ And then look, don’t rely on Thought to tell you. You gotta have a very literal observation. Thought fills in a lot of gaps in that literal observation. Thought is what creates ‘out there’ when all there is is ‘in here’.

HOW TO DO ENLIGHTENMENT WORK Self-observation and keen-mindfulness are the way to do it. Always be asking yourself, ‘what is literally here vs. what do I take to be real?’ You’ll start to see the discrepancy between those and thus the illusion of Thought and Experience will start to unravel like an ingenious magic trick — but an illusion nonetheless. Always ask yourself this: ‘What is real?’ Not what is reality, that’s too abstract. But ask rather, ‘what is real right here right now in this moment?’ And then look, don’t rely on Thought to tell you. You gotta have a very literal observation. Thought fills in a lot of gaps in that literal observation. Thought is what creates ‘out there’ when all there is is ‘in here’.

Am I the only person who thinks the phrase ‘persistent non-dual Awareness’ is meaningless? Think about it. Forget about the 'persistent' modifier for a moment. What does ‘non-dual awareness’ mean? What does ‘dual awareness’ mean? Yet almost everybody now is parroting these exact same words as if they mean something about Enlightenment, which at the end of the day means they mean something about your Enlightenment.

Not to be rude, but this got caught in my ‘question more’ filter. How could you spot Enlightenment in someone else If you expressly claim not to be Enlightened yourself? That doesn’t make any sense. You would only know what Enlightenment is if you were Enlightened yourself. How would you know what to look for in your assessment of Martin’s Enlightenment without the requisite relation to your own Enlightenment? A guess is fine, but let’s identify it as such. The theory you quoted would only make sense if you derived it or generated it from your own experience. Enlightenment is not a theory or a conceptual test that can be applied externally like some kind of scientific diagnosis. The only thing you really know about Enlightenment is your own, and that has nothing to do with any hearsay theory. It would only be a ‘he’s like me’ kind of comparison that could be legit, right. You can only truly know Enlightenment from your own perspective of being Enlightened yourself. Enlightenment, unlike science, is unique in its resistance to being known through principles a.k.a. Thought. From the perspective of Enlightenment, Thought is an illusion and part of Maya.

I’m not saying this applies to Leo, it’s just a general statement: I take it that most people do not really want Enlightenment. That would mean they would have to give up Ego. Most people seem to prefer staying in the Spiritual Ego zone where they try to have it both ways — a little Enlightenment mixed with a little Ego.

Another great video on point to watch:

I'll let you argue about that.

This is a great video on point to watch:

The Egoic self is an illusion of Thought and Experience. The true Self is God Awareness.

The way I see it 'there is no me' means the Egoic self is an illusion of Maya, and illusion of Thought and Experience. 'Everything is me' means that the true Self is all that actually exists.

Good for you. I think everybody should do Leo's Life Purpose Course. I did it myself earlier this year. At least you'll have an idea of what your authentic career options are. What the Mind tells you you should go into and what your Authentic Self tells you you should go into can be worlds-apart. So, you gotta dig quite a bit to find your Life Purpose. And then there's a certain value in kinda knowing it with a sense of certainty too. It allows you to focus on other areas of your life because you kinda have that one handled. When you have no idea of what your Authentic Self is passionate about doing for career, that's a big handicap to have in life. And that's not to say that you'll end up doing that thing, but at least you'll have gone through the process which will build awareness. All this stuff adds up in your Personal Development, even if it's finding out that something didn't work out for you, there's still a takeaway because you'll still learn something. There's still new information about yourself on your platter so to speak that you didn't have before.

TEACHING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT CAN CAP YOU OUT AT STAGE TURQUOISE IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT WORK I decided not to be a Personal Development teacher as a career after all. It kinda caps your own Personal Development at Stage Turquoise (maximum) because you gotta be constantly swimming around in Maya like a sponge soaking it all in constantly. I get it. But that’s a system that one can avoid with a different career choice, and all careers have their pros and cons. The Personal Development teacher is stuck in a game of their own creation, as are all of us. The only way you can be Enlightened is to exit the game in a very profound way like a monk does almost. The Personal Development teacher has gotta make a living so his hand is forced to stir the pot in all this stuff, which causes him suffering no doubt because he knows what he’s involved with. There are few clean ways to make a living, even if you decide to go the do-gooder route. You couldn’t pay me enough money to sit around and bitch about Donald Trump because I know everything is me. The best I can do is detach from Donald Trump and never think about him. I wish him well, but Donald Trump is laughing all the way to the bank while I sit around whining about him, see. It’s just not a scenario that I want to find myself in. Being a teacher keeps you a kid on some level basically. Nobody ever really thinks about that. You’re dealing with kids, so you kinda have to be one to deal with them as a teacher. You can’t pull yourself out of Maya as a teacher because you’re buried up to your eyeballs in the worst part of it — namely, the people most attached to Ego, young people and people with problems coming to you for help. That’s basically the burden that the teacher bears; the teacher’s sacrifice. I’m so glad I learned this because I was setting myself up for a career as a Personal Development teacher. I’d almost rather be a freelance plumber than a Personal Development teacher at this point. The best thing would be not to have to work for money at all, frankly. The second best thing would be to have a job that doesn’t impede your own Personal Development. The problem with embedding yourself in Maya is that everything gets reversed. Everything flips topsy-turvy in Maya. Even the go-gooder gets lured by the Devil and ends up in Hell when he attaches to Maya. The only sustainable solution to the suffering caused by Maya is to consciously pull yourself out of all it, out of the whole game, out of all Thought and Experience. Then you can be at peace, see. Trying to save the world leads to a life of suffering because you’re a do-gooder in Maya. You’re willingly putting yourself into Maya trying to improve Maya. See the problem there? It’s deep. I’m just glad I figured this out before I did the same thing myself -- and I just recently figured this out too. Turquoise doesn’t figure this out. You gotta move into Stage Coral before you start to fully see the trap of being a Personal Development teacher (or otherwise savior of the world) and why it leads to a life of suffering even if your intention is to do good in the world or change the world in some way. The martyr sacrifices his own Personal Development to help others basically. And that’s just a trade-off that I do not want. I’ll still teach in my life, I can tell, but very informally and only as a hobby. That way I can get away from it easily when I become too attached. At the end of the day, you’re just talking to yourself as a teacher anyway -- literally -- which I keenly see now. If it doesn’t help your Personal Development to teach, then teaching is worthless to you. I think of the poor community college teacher teaching the same math class every year — what a pity that job is! If you’re gonna teach, at least teach in a way that directly goes to your own growth because you’re the only thing in existence. The best that teaching others can do is teach you. If you're not teaching yourself in your teaching, then that's a red flag. Heed it or don't heed it, but it's a red flag nonetheless. The reason why is that the only progress you can make in Personal Development is when you focus inward or when stuff gets focused inward in a way that grows you.

It’s best not to use spiritual words like ‘Devil’ outside of a strict non-dual context. Otherwise that’s gonna cause a lot of finger-pointing and suffering. The reality is that you create the Devil, no one else does. So, the Devil is never ‘out there’, he’s always ‘in here’. And that’s great because it means you have 100% control to do something to eradicate the Devil and that is not to surrender to Egoic distractions. God and the Devil cannot exist in the same room at the same time. If the Devil exists that’s because you’re creating him. You create the Devil when you forget who you are; namely, God, the true Self. The Devil can’t do sh*t to God when God knows who He is. That’s the true sustainable solution to Devilry.

Interesting.

THE DEVIL IS NEVER ‘OUT THERE’, HE’S ALWAYS ‘IN HERE’ — THE DEVIL CAN ONLY EXIST IF GOD FORGETS WHO GOD IS — WORDS LIKE ‘GOD’ AND ‘DEVIL’ SHOULD ONLY BE USED IN THE CONTEXT OF TRUE SPIRITUALITY A.K.A. STRICT NON-DUALITY The only Devil is the Lure into having your Awareness enmeshed within Thought and Experience a.k.a. Maya. The Devil is not ‘out there’ he’s ‘in here’. You gotta flip that finger that wants to point externally around 180 degrees. The Devil can only exist when you’re distracted outward in Thought and Experience rather than being focused inward at the true Self.

Not to be rude, but I don't think very many people can answer this question authentically. And when I mean authentically, I mean in a way that's actually convincing to you. Anybody can quote me a bit of theory, that's easy. What's hard is for you to tell me what it means to you in the sense of how you square it in your life.

How do you know you're right and not just living in Ego?

Here a couple of good videos on point to watch for this discussion.

But are they pointing to the same thing? If so, what?

What's the same end that they're pointing to? I'm trying to withhold my answer to probe all of yours. I'll reveal my take on it at some point in the discussion.

I changed 'me' to lowercase to not elude to any theory. I don't want to imply any theory.

You know what's funny is I pursued it because I thought I was pursuing my Life Purpose of being a Personal Development teacher. Now I don't even want to be a Personal Development teacher. It turned me into a monk basically. It took away my Life Purpose. It took away my desire to change the world with my teachings. I realize now that the only Personal Development that matters is very mundane work on my own life. And when I say mundane I actually mean mundane. Things like my basic life requirements, no frills. It made me realize that focus 'out there' is a distraction away from focus 'in here'. I'm still interested in Personal Development, but applying it to get the basics of my own life handled. It made me want to spend most of my time being keenly mindful. Because I realize now that the end of suffering comes from being keenly mindful all the time. Mindful that all there is is me. Suffering is caused only by forgetting that. The more mindfulness you have, the more illusions you can spot. The more illusions you can spot, the less suffering you'll have. So, it's really the practicing of mindfulness which is more important than changing the world with my teachings. But again, this is just swinging the pendulum from 'out there' to 'in here'.

The path has a worth to it even if it leaves you with nothing and none of your prior dreams intact. It's like a huge purge of stuff that you never would want to purge. The emptying of the cup. Video on point to watch:

The Tao Te Ching is the best work written on Enlightenment in my opinion. That was written God knows when in ancient China.

The best thing you can do for Enlightenment Work is self-observation. That's why the ancients could be Enlightened too. Enlightenment Work is not rocket science. It's quite the opposite actually. It's boring, mundane, keen-mindfulness work that the Ego doesn't want to do. And so people get into all kinds of distractions with Enlightenment Work. If you're not focusing inward, you're not doing Enlightenment Work. You wanna be questioning all your beliefs about reality and looking at reality as it is not as the Mind takes it to be. Enlightenment is for people who love Truth so much that they'll follow it off a cliff literally. That's what Enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not about science, it's about reality. And the ancients could see reality just as well as we can. You might say that Enlightenment is seeing through more B.S. than most people -- but on the deepest level. If you already have a good B.S. detector, you're gonna have an advantage in Enlightenment Work, because you're gonna need it -- and then some!