Joseph Maynor

The subconscious mind is a model about reality. It’s thought ‘about’ reality. Sometimes it helps to frame explanations in terms of mind, but we need to keep in mind that when we use these kinds of models we are speaking metaphorically. What reality is is not encapsulated by our labels and concepts. What our labels and concepts do is spin a tale ‘about’ reality. And that’s fine! I’m not knocking that — but we just gotta see what we’re doing so we don’t mistake the menu for the meal. The menu ain’t the meal right? It’s a model ‘about’ the meal. The menu doesn’t capture the meal. Put the menu in your mouth and you’ll quickly find that out! We don’t notice this so easily with thoughts ‘about’ reality versus reality itself, but it works entirety the same! There is no mind in reality. That’s mistaking the map for the territory. It’s convenient to talk that way — but it’s metaphorical. Language operates metaphorically. We don’t see the true depth of this. This is not you, this is everybody! We are programmed to take metaphors literally by default. That’s how conceptual-truth works. But it causes a lot of confusion too. Reality and conceptions of reality are two different things. It’s not always so easy to keep them separate, but you can! Through awareness you can. My ability to do this has skyrocketed over the past year. It might be the number one key to my growth — noticing the difference between reality and thought ‘about’ reality. It almost sounds trivial, but it’s the key to Awakening. What you’re gonna find is that all your beliefs ‘about’ reality have the same relationship to reality as a menu does to a meal. Most people can understand this conceptually and agree with me — but do they live it! Do they really grok the ramifications of it? Not really, right? It stays conceptual and superficial for them. Really, the guru’s job is just to prod people to become much less superficial about these issues. These issues are not just conceptual! A mature appreciation of these issues will shift your furniture around regarding what you think existence is — the fantasy will drop out of reality for ya.

How about you give us a piece of advice! That’s your final exam. Blow us away with what you’ve learned from your time on here. Let’s see a paragraph from you. Impress us. How have you grown on your personal development path from your time on here? You answering that will help you more than any ‘advice’ coming externally.

Life gets easier as you age because you can play the game of life without getting so emotionally affected by it. When you’re young you take everything so personally. When you get older you stop expecting things to be fair. You make them fair to you, without being emotionally affected by it. Sometimes you have to fight a little bit. That’s ok. You’ll watch yourself fight. That’s life. Fighting is a part of life — just don’t identify with it Egoically.

Sounds like you grew another notch. Good for you. You’ve put in the work. There’s no magic bullet to growth. It’s a cyclical thing.

You’re assuming Infinite means something like all knowing. Why are you assuming that’s how Leo is using the word? I’m not saying it’s bad necessarily, but you might be off on a lark very far away from ground-zero as to what Infinity is.

Here's a meta-question: What are you expecting knowledge to look like?

I’ve been done let go now for a while!

I agree. Enlightenment starts once you start questioning what the self is. You could go years and years through life without questioning what the self is. But once you start to dig into the question — what am I? Most people probably never sat down and asked — what am I? Not who am I, but what am I? This is a very specific question. And once you deal with this question seriously, at some point you’ll enter the Path. You’ll realize that what you currently think you are is a Cultural construct — it’s merely a set of beliefs ‘about’ reality. The ‘little you’ in the Dream just is a set of beliefs about reality!

It challenges thinking of matter as a substance. It also challenges the Materialist Paradigm. It shows us that our metaphorical ways of explaining things do not actually correspond to the way reality is.

Leo is using results in Quantum Mechanics primarily to challenge the Materialist Paradigm, right? So, keep that in mind. Maybe a lot of these issues are irrelevant and a distraction to the main point Leo is trying to make in the QM videos.

It’s funny, I look at stuff I wrote a month ago and it almost seems like a different person wrote it — sort of.

It would look like a movie to the second grader probably. A kind of adult attempt to entertain them. There might be awe there, but no understanding.

Here’s a good question to begin these kinds of discussions: What do we mean when we say that Awareness is Infinite? Otherwise we’re gonna get everything plus the kitchen sink brought into these kinds of debates. // Alternative formulation: What is Awareness? What do we mean when we say Awareness is infinite?

There really is no difference between the little you in the Dream and the little everything else in the Dream. It’s by backing out of the whole game, paradoxically, that you become kind to others. You don’t become kind to others by forcing the little you in the Dream to be kind to others. That’s Ego. You become kind by realizing you have no control over the Dream and then you accept everything happening in the Dream. You lose all Egoic interest in the Dream. The entire Dream becomes of a piece — a bit of illusion that contains no little you or little anything else in it.

If that’s my view and it works for me, why do you so hastily allege that it breaks-down and “says nothing”? If it’s worthless, why would I retain it and express it here as my view? I’m a smart guy, right? I majored in Philosophy in college. Surely I have something valuable to add here, at least to me. A better response from you might have been a request for an example, or a clarification, not an outright dismissal of my view.

After being exposed to teachings, put them down, and then become your own guru. There are pros and cons to teachers. Teachers are like training-wheels. You need to take the training-wheels off and become your own guru. That’s where you’re gonna get results. Otherwise, you’re gonna basically be clinging to the authority of the teacher’s theory. You need to make your own theory. Not cling to it, but make it.

How about this view? Truth and falsity is a dualistic model that has more or less application depending on the context, but in no way does reality adhere to being modeled in this binary manner through and through. That would be a form of theoretical idealism — of mistaking the map for the territory.

Ask yourself this — what is truth? What is falsity?

The only thing that I ask of Leo is that he put 100% of his heart into his work. I’m less concerned with what he says. If the heart is in the work, it is good! It’s like Louis Armstrong said about music — if it sounds good, it is good! If the heart is in the work, then it’s true from an artistic standpoint. That’s all I care about at this point. But I also realize Leo has more to worry about than just pleasing me.

There is no you and me. That would be dualism. It’s a little bit more wild than that. Non-duality makes no distinctions. Saying I create my reality is Egoic. You create your reality — how Egoic is that! I get mine and you get yours. Me me me, mine mine mine, yours yours yours. You see?

I never said I dropped all beliefs. Trying to drop all beliefs is Egoic. What you wanna do is see through the illusion of Ego, not drop all beliefs. You’ll still have all sorts of beliefs, they just don’t mean squat from the perspective of Awareness. The aim is not to try and control beliefs — it’s to stop neurotically attaching to beliefs. Let the Dream do whatever it wants to.

I’m glad you’re excited about this work. Welcome to the Personal Development Path!

How is experiencing one state gonna cause egoless to become more permanently awake?

I recall watching an interview with a guru who said that “Enlightenment is not for everyone.” He said only certain people are genuinely called to the Enlightenment Path. He didn’t mean that others can’t handle it. He meant something more like — it’s not the right path for them. It was an interesting perspective that stuck with me. I’m not taking a position on that either way.

This is why I say it’s dumb to be proud to be awake. That’s just how ‘your’ story played out. It couldn’t have happened otherwise. ‘You’ could have been a bum on the street too, and similarly have no control over the matter.