Joseph Maynor

I posted a video in my Journal of Peterson discussing Jung and it quickly digressed into ideological BS, so I had to remove it. The intro was like a ruse to assert some kind of conservative talk radio BS. The intro about Jung was good. He had me fooled for about 2 seconds. Beware of false prophets! I agree with Leo on Peterson. I get a bad vibe. I have no problem with conservative arguments by the way, and it might be an insult to conservatives to call Peterson one. To me conservative talk radio is comedy anyway. The problem with it is people get swept up by the ideology and become closed off. But liberal radio functions the same too. My policy is to steer clear of all News and Infotainment. Are you guys and gals doing that? It’s great let me tell you! That’s the bad part of culture. Leo needs to do another video on the bad parts of culture. Not all culture is healthy or wholesome. And you have to control your informational intake actively — it doesn’t happen by default!

I agree about Peterson. I haven’t looked into Harris yet. I feel like Plato against the sophists here. I guess the payday is too tempting for these people. You would think love of truth would hold supreme, but not for everybody! Money is the great corrupter.

I don't think two people share the same definition of Ego. I say no, but I have my own definition of Ego. Ego is the false sense of identification, controlling, doing, or conceptual-knowing between unchanging Awareness and the changing Dream. In my sense, Ego is a total illusion. So, it cannot ever be good. Awakening just means becoming conscious of the illusion of Ego, and getting the actual shifts in consciousness that follow that change in belief.

Check out Gigi Young https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo_fdaL6nGtL3fjyP8NsNaw

Writing. I see myself as wanting to be more of a writer than a one on one coach per se. I realize that becoming a freelance writer is what I should transition my career to. Then, at least I'll be working in the right field.

Pretty good. Almost always at peace. Sometimes I get worried, but it's pretty mild.

Is that what your life purpose is? What's your tentative life purpose statement so far?

Doing one video a week is pretty light for Leo, eh? He does a good job on the videos, I'll give him that. And he also moderates on here. I have to work a friggin' full time job though, plus do all this spirituality sh*t on the side! That's a lot of work! It's alright, the pressure is causing me to grow. I have to be organized and have a great schedule.

I don't get paid to teach anybody. Not yet. I have to work a real job. I basically have a joint career.

Think of yourself as a self-sustaining system. What are the substances addicted to doing to keep that system stable? What would be missing without the substances addicted to? What kind of adjustment would have to be made to the system to adjust for the change? Brainstorm in this way a little bit. You'll start to come up with useful ideas.

Awesome. Cooking is one of the most philosophical arts. Especially Chinese cooking. It’s like applied Taoism. All ingredients must be brought to a harmony and balance — where each ingredient also stands proudly and discernibly on its own. When I went to China, the food there definitely embodied this kind of philosophy. Every ingredient must stand out but also blend into a perfect harmony with all other ingredients — like a perfect Confucian society.

You don’t want to get stuck in what I call the la la land stage of Enlightenment forever.

Can you fall in love with the process and get started right away? 1. What is the process? Develop it. 2. How can I fall in love with this process? Can I get competitive with it? Can I turn it into a personal improvement thing? 3. Get started right away. Do not let this turn into a last minute crisis.

If you are prone to thinking, embrace it. Stop trying to deny part of who you are. That’s causing you a lot of suffering. People that advocate against no thinking have good intentions but they are not quite right in their attitude regarding thinking. It’s Egoic thinking that’s the problem, not non-Egoic thinking. What is causing your suffering is you think you can control reality. Think of it more like thoughts are happening, I don’t need to identify them as mine. Let the thoughts be. Your job is not to fight them. That’s like banging your head against a brick wall. Let reality be and just accept all of it. Be the Awareness not the junk floating through it. Be the atmosphere not the clouds. The atmosphere doesn’t care if there are too many clouds! That’s how you wanna be.

This is one reason I am leery of mixing God with spirituality. God just confuses everybody. Reality doesn’t need God. God is our projection on reality. It’s Egoic. We want reality to be how we want to think of it. God is a big distraction. It’s something we made up.

Maybe I responded prematurely.

Yeah. That's fine as long as you plan for it.

It's really good. It's like Buddhism explained through a contemporary Western mind. One of the best things I read so far. Some of it gets a little wacky, but the good bits are really good. It's like any book, there are high-points and low-points. You gotta be a good cherry-picker. Some sections of the book are spot-on though. You guys and gals can read it for free! See link below. Skim the sh*t out of it! Invest 2 hours in skimming it. Note the juicy passages. This will teach you how to read critically. You gotta become kind of a hunter when you read books. You're not sitting there reading a novel. You're looking for strategies, explanations, theories, tools, stuff to put to put to use. Learn how to skim and to skip the BS that plagues all books. You're hunting for the gold-nuggets out of everything you read. http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0Gurdjieff/Psychology_Mans_Possiblle_Evolution.pdf

They give you permanent insights because they increase mindfulness and decrease Ego.

Live by a custom-designed schedule.

You gotta create your own meaning. That’s what Leo’s Life Purpose Course is perfectly designed to help you with. I did the course myself, so I can vouch for it. Meaning is something that takes work — it’s not gonna come find you, you gotta go hunt for it!

Why not add Leo’s voice to the chorus of voices you listen to? Why do you assume there has to be a single right perspective on these matters that you want to cling to? None of these ideas are pre-conceptual reality. You can’t be harmed or helped in essence by any of these ideas because all unchanging Awareness cares about is awareness in the present moment. Why are you getting defensive at all in a serious way? That’s a sign of Ego. You’re clinging to conceptual-truth about reality while being unchanging Awareness. See the absurdity in that? All conceptual-truth is a map to the territory of BE-ing. Have fun with the diverging ideas and your ideosyncratic preferences thereof. Reality laughs at the conceptual-truth project that aims to encircle and capture it. All arrows point to BE-ing.

What do you think the distinction between being and consciousness is? Why do you think you need to draw such a distinction? How do these ideas link up to your actual experience in the present moment?

What’s your exercise routine like? You sound like you need to increase your horizontal momentum as I call it.

Great story. What's great is when you need no more God period. Reality does not need to be divinized. That's an idea put on top of reality. Reality just is what it is. To me reality is enough. I don't need anything more than Awareness. I don't need a Pantheistic story on top of Awareness. It's illusory and superfluous. God is a very problematic label. I don't think Spirituality is served by clinging to the concept of God. These are just my ideas, I welcome alternative views, I'm not here to shove my views down other people's throat. I could be wrong too, right? But my intuition is not very warm to the idea of God. Quite the contrary. It looks like a red herring to me, an unfortunate distraction. Acceptance of pre-conceptual reality is what you wanna BE in the moment. What that is is beyond conception, including our silly labels like God. Compared to reality, all our ideas are like a young child irreverently drawing on a wall with a crayon.