Joseph Maynor

I am at peace with life. I’m just sitting down to do my morning 30 minutes of do nothing meditation. Maybe I’ll do a little bit of mindfulness of the breath on the nostrils. Notice the breath and the heart and all the little bursts of energy in the body.

You must have some shit in the subconscious that you still need to clean out. You should be as peaceful and tranquil as a Japanese pond most of the time, just resting as awareness.

The only way you can become enlightened is through the door of illusion. Everybody must enter through that door. But at some point you gotta kick off the training wheels. And that will have no impact on reality. You never had any impact on reality. Reality is happening for you regardless of your beliefs about a false sense of knowing, doing, or controlling.

Live your whole life that way.

There is no you reasoning anything out. That is just part of the movie. The Mind is spinning a tale about reality. Fitting in the missing image where all there is is dots. That’s how storytelling works. That’s what the Ego does. Clinging to thoughts does not do anything! Reality is not controllable by the Ego’s clinging to various beliefs, including that it can know, do, and control. Those are just beliefs.

Total acceptance of not doing, and not knowing, not grasping to control. All of those are Egoic illusions. They are laid up on top of reality as if they make a difference to reality. They don’t.

Just let go and let reality do whatever it does. You have no control and you never had any. Don’t plan too much. Just sit back and watch.

This sounds Egoic to me. There is no you controlling anything.

I do nothing. Just let go and let whatever happens happen.

What is reality?

What is the Ego?

You get it intellectually, but do you feel like reality is like that.

But do you feel permanent or unchanging?

Reality doesn't need a point. A point would be a belief. Being just is. Any consideration of purpose would be a thought within awareness or being. See? There's no purpose to reality. Purpose is a belief or hope about reality. Reality doesn't need a belief. Beliefs and reality pass each other like two ships in the night.

@Saumaya Do you have a sense of being unchanging or permanent?

Curious

Foster is basically complaining that other Enlightened people are more enlightened than he is. And he’s trying to redefine Enlinghtenment to suit his own Egoic preference to life. His essay is probably the most elaborate rationalization I’ve ever seen. Sure dude — keep believing that. But the dudes you criticize are still more enlightened than you are. That’s what I kept saying as I read and then re-read the article. Pure rationalization of his own Egoic beliefs about reality. His problem is that he hasn’t found the unchanging Soul.

The materialist paradigm is just a conceptual projection upon reality as all paradigms are. It’s not a bad assumption for science to operate with loosely. But when you’re doing ultimate truth, it’s just a belief, and no belief is ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is the unchanging Self. So, instead of looking at paradigms to be true, we should appreciate the pragmatic use of models of reality. The deeper problem is our belief and faith in conceptual-truth — our belief that truth is captured by language. We can model reality with thought — and we can even model processes that happen with regularity. But the idea that we’re obtaining knowledge about reality — or truth in the strong sense — is a misperception. The only truth is right now — and it ain’t conceptual at all. Sure, I’m sensing thoughts in reality — but as sensations. All stories take one into fantasy land, model land, Maya. Now — models can be useful! But they ain’t true. Paradigms ain’t true. Thoughts ain’t true. So stop expecting paradigms to be true. That’s a wrong expectation to have of them. That’s your underlying faith and belief in the paradigm of conceptual-truth. Let Science do it’s thing without trying to fit it into the category of truth. That is a silly error that almost all of us are culturally programmed to do, even the scientists themselves! We are judging Science using the wrong metric. Pragmatically, Science is capturing — through models —patterns that come up over and over again. We need to take a pragmatic view of paradigms rather than looking for them to be true — tacitly accepting the conceptual-truth paradigm of truth is the error. That’s the linchpin belief that’s in error. One of them anyway. There’s at least one more of belief of this caliber that I’ve found. It’s the belief that reality and words share a relation to each other. The belief that our words are a window into the true nature of reality. That’s another deep paradigm that seems to go all the way back to when we learned about reality as babies by learning the names of objects. And we just kept going with that language-reality corroboration as a habit as we got older. It’s a habit — but it’s a habit that’s based on a belief. And that belief can be outed and examined. That’s what we do here! Enlightenment is the removal of ignorance, and ignorance is plainly about none other than the issue of beliefs. So, beliefs are our work. We are basically scientists that deal with beliefs. We examine them, take them apart, see relations among them, see differences among them, etc. We take a meta view of beliefs, paradigms, culture. This leads ultimately to removal of ignorance and therefore Moksha.

I want to travel to India. I want to travel to Japan.

What? The Neo-Advaitans like to argue about beliefs moreso than other do?

Sure. How could I disagree with this? There is a sense in which things are reasonable, but it's not hard and fast. All thought is not truth, but some thought is closer to it than others. That's what makes a wise person. Their imperfect thought points better at the truth than others' do. That's plain to see in experience. Philosophers aren't stupid. There are much worse ways to spend one's time than thinking about important issues in Spirituality.

Deep said: @Joseph Maynor @Shanmugam @SOUL Don't you guys get tired of intellectualizing? // My Reply: Questioning beliefs is what reduces ignorance which is what gets you Enlightened. It's odd that this needs to be pointed out. There's always someone who chimes in like clockwork at regular intervals on this Forum challenging thinking with more thinking! Seen that before haha? Do you see a paradox there? It's like -- dude if you were really against thinking you wouldn't be on here. Common sense right? Let's not have a double-standard. Pretending to be "anti-thinking" sounds good, but upon reflection it's quite silly and trite. And predictable to boot!

POINT AT ISSUE: "[T]hat story isn't an absolute truth, it's just yours so be at peace with it." MY COMMENT: Ok. Let's assume you're right. But then that you be your story, would it not! There seems to be an infinite regress problem with your position. I wanted to believe you, it sounds plausible at first glance. But them I'm like -- ah! there's a problem with that too. There is such a thing as empirical reality that can be appealed to. Reality is not unreal. Reality can be appealed to. It's not hidden from us. So, in that sense, the relativity thesis regarding belief is technically unsound. Reality is right there, simple, and not hiding. There is an objectivity to reality that is plain to the eye and the eye of the mind. So, not all beliefs are relative. Some beliefs are more sound and grounded better than others. Reality is not subjective. Our thoughts are subjective, puzzled, relativistic, confused -- but not reality! Reality is simple, readily observable, and never puzzled. So, no it's not just my story! That implies there's a me and a not me. Reality is one. That relativity paradigm gets used like a sword in this work -- and it shouldn't be, because it's false. Video on point to watch:

@Shanmugam I don't like the Levels of Reality idea. There are no levels of reality. That's a story. I don't want to have any stories like that about reality. Reality doesn't need a story! That's the whole point of Enlightenment is to dislodge all your stories about reality. Reality needs a story like a dog needs fleas!