Joseph Maynor

I read the article. I think I resonate more with the Radical Advaitans, as portrayed in the article. LET GO OF BEING HUMAN The Soul is not a human being. You can't have both! The Truth is not two, it's one. You hear some Enlightened people say -- oh I'm a human being. No no no! That's wrong! You're not a human being. You can't be a human being if you're Enlightened. All your "human stuff" is Ego. Reality does Ego stuff, but don't attach to it. People appear to be very confused about this. Emotions and thoughts are not yours. That's a belief. That's not reality. There is no Ego in reality. That's a made up metaphor that we've unfortunately taken to be the truth. But that theory ain't the truth about reality. It may be the truth about some fantasy, but not reality. This can be confirmed, if you watch reality as it is. There is no Egoic you in reality. This is dead literal! This language is not a story. It points to language that attempts to have an analogue in reality -- "the Egoic self". But it's this assumption that is false! Reality is not an analogue of language. Reality is not rational. What is rational is theory. Models are rational. Mind is rational. But it's a false assumption to think that reality is rational. That is a mistake that almost everybody makes! That goes way back in the history of Philosophy, both Eastern and Western.

I guess the relevant question here is what does a person need to become sustainably awake? That's probably what's at issue with all teachings that purport to be a self-sustaining curriculum, teaching, school, method, etc. Would the Enlightened Taoists agree with the Enlightened Advaitans or the Enlightened Zen Buddhists? These schools differ so much in teachings -- but are the ends really that different? The end seems to be the same, right? You are deprogrammed from culture -- beliefs -- in some sense in all three of those teachings. And in that you discover that reality was not what you thought it was. That's awakening. There's more than one path. But I think getting up under cultural beliefs is the common denominator in all of them. Shankara was right, Moksha (Enlightenment) is the result from the eradication of ignorance. And ignorance is either clinging to the wrong beliefs or failing to cling to the right ones (if any). But if you study the Taoists and Zen Buddhists they imply the same thing, just in a different way. If you study Taoism, you'll be amazed! I'm doing that now. Zhuang Zhou and Nagarjuna both thought that messing around with categories and forming beliefs from them about reality is a foolish quest -- that language and theory is a trap in this work. And that mentality informs the Zen Buddhists from its Chinese heritage. You can read Zhang Zhou here. His book is called the Zhangzi. I recommend it. After the Tao Te Ching, it's the classic Taoist text. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book) // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

Beliefs are thoughts taken to be true. This is why Western Philosophers came up with the concept of propositions, although that is a kind of secondary belief. The first statement that beliefs are thoughts taken to be true can point to real things in reality. Notice when you perceive a belief. It's always a thought taken to be true. You can see that empirically. Propositions are a secondary kind of theory that is intended to model certain aspects of a belief using another thought -- namely a proposition. So, beliefs are not propositions and propositions are not beliefs. Belief is a word, a vocalization, but it refers to things in reality, namely thought that is taken to be true. Now, what does it mean to take something to be true -- well, again, that's a secondary sort of consideration. You don't need any philosophy to understand that you have beliefs. And you don't need to know what beliefs are to understand that you hold beliefs. So, the safest way to define belief using language is as a pointer as follows -- beliefs are thoughts taken to be true. Notice how I'm avoiding defining it as beliefs are thoughts taken to be true about reality. That over-complicates it. We don't need that part! My intent in using the language is not to define beliefs, but to point out that they are real thoughts with a certain kind of feature; namely, that they're taken to be true, or held to be true in some manner in some context. So, we use language pragmatically and don't confuse the words with the real phenomena that we're using the words to point to. This is something I want to stress moving forward, this kind of pragmatic understanding of language and theories.

Just be without trying to control. Reality just happens. Acceptance is the only virtue. Love comes as a byproduct, it's not a virtue in itself. Trying to love is egoic. Trying to avoid thinking is egoic. Trying to do anything is egoic. Just accept reality as it is, and for what it does. Be that. It's amazing. That's the unchanging Self. Rest as awareness and open yourself up. Open up. The Ego wants to close off. You wanna open up, but don't try to do that. Just be aware of how the Ego works and stop trying to control. You will open up naturally as you walk the path.

You do not control anything.

There's no you that's writing anything. Reality is just playing itself out. It's clinging to beliefs about reality that makes it seem like there's a you controlling stuff. Writing is just an experience in reality. A happening. Everything is just happening, but you're taking it as a you doing certain things. That's a belief laid up on top of the happenings. And that belief or lack of it has no impact on the happenings! The happenings are independent of beliefs about the happenings.

You don't choose to believe.

There is no wanting to do. There is only what is.

Do some "do nothing" meditation for 30 minutes every morning.

We enjoy talking about Spirituality like a one might enjoy fishing, but that doesn't mean what we're doing is important. We don't have to judge it by any particular standard. You resonate with discussing these matters and find joy in it -- is there really more analysis needed? Nothing is more important or less important per se. You just want to accept reality as it is. And for you, reality involves discussing on this Forum. That's your movie man -- is it that bad? It could be much worse, right? You're lucky! Haha. There's nothing for you to do or say -- you just enjoy it! End of analysis. Enjoy life. People don't really know when to end an analysis, I often find. It's intuitive, I guess. Does there always have to be a reason for everything? Ya know?

A NOTE ON BELIEFS IN THIS WORK -- PSST! HINT -- YOU DON'T REALLY NEED THEM I try not to have too many beliefs about things. Just be reality. Rest as awareness. There is no need to believe. There is no need to do anything. You wanna get to the point where you're completely surrendered to not doing anything. Yet reality still moves by magic. Nothing changes after Enlightenment. That's the thing. You're already Enlightened, you're just programmed with erroneous beliefs about reality. You think that you can know and that you can control and that you can do, etc. That's all belief, or conceptual-truth as I choose to term it. And there's this underlying belief that reality mirrors the structure of our beliefs, or at least corresponds with them. But that's a pretty strong assumption on our part, isn't it? That's pretty much most likely to be false, isn't it? That just a pretty good-hunch based on our acquaintance with our huge library of fossilized-ideas cataloged in Philosophy. Ideas seem to have lifespans, but Reality is not limited in that way.

@egoless Why is conceptual-knowing about reality so important and valuable to us? What are we hoping to find?

Interesting. I like this. We choose to cling or not to cling to beliefs. We like to cling to one set of beliefs and then act all proud like we found something truly valuable. The stickiness of beliefs is incredible. Video on point to watch:

I don't believe there's such a thing. I haven't had a deja vu experience since I reached the age of reason, which was like age 15 or so.

People think Enlightened people are like Jesus or something. That's false. The point of Enlightenment is to free yourself from all ideologies. Reality is not like Jesus. Jesus is a story, a set of beliefs, a set of visualizations that we've been culturally programmed with. Jesus is a fantasy of the Mind. So, Enlightened people transcend value categories and aim to transcend them. Reality is what it is outside of the cubby-holes that the Mind desires to fit reality into. We think that the virtuous person is someone who tries to fit themselves into the virtue cubby-holes. That is a problematic paradigm though. It's unrealistic, in a word. It's all Egoic fantasy about trying to control reality to fit a thought about reality. And we don't realize that this is impossible. Most of us don't realize it. So -- no -- Enlightened people are not necessarily goodie-goodies. They're real. They're accepted their shadow traits and have re-integrated them. And they are conscious of their shadow traits. They understand how all of this works, how Ego works, etc.

What is you make your life purpose what you are doing already? Can you see a core in what you are doing already that you can make a life purpose out of? Reality is already doing exactly what it wants to do.

This is the kind of ideology that we're very accustomed to. This is Science, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion. This is the seeking for unchanging wisdom, or beliefs that are context-independent -- true across space and time.

What causes meaning problems is clinging to thoughts in ignorant ways. It's that simple. It's common-sense really. You don't even need a theory of the Ego to try and tell a story to explain that. We can use our more mundane and less sexy common-sense story. Bad ideas, bad outcome. Every culture in the world probably understands an equivalent story such as this.

It's 3 words. Or 3 sounds if you hear a vocalization of the words. A Kundalini awakening

One of the best knowledge materials I have found on Indian Philosophy. Very well written, and very well read. Get the audiobook! It's very good. https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Indian-Philosophy-Audiobook/B00GRATEMW

Yep. That's why seeking comes to an end. Once the unchanging Soul is located, there's no more seeking needed.

Awesome. Aristotle's Epistemology is based on Intuition too I just found out. Way cool!

Yep. Every individual has a unique Ego/Shadow fingerprint.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE EGO-SHADOW DYNAMIC -- AND HOW THE EGO PARTITIONS AND JUDGES REALITY The Shadow is the opposite of what you (the Ego) want to attach to. It's all the traits that are part of you but you don't like to look at. Oftentimes when we act from the Shadow we don't even see that we're doing anything wrong. And not all traits in the Shadow are negative. Shadow traits can be positive too. A good example of this is when the goodie-goodie gets stressed and then acts like an asshole -- and feels justified while doing it and not even realizing they are being an asshole in the moment. Right? The Ego doesn't want to think of itself as being an asshole, so the behavior will occur almost unconsciously. See how the Ego blots out bits of awareness? That's one of the worst things that the Ego does -- it creates blind-spots to reality. The Ego wants to repress bits of reality that it doesn't want to accept. Or the passive person who becomes a control-freak when stressed. Right? The Ego turns a blind-eye in these situations. There's not much awareness in the goodie-goodie control-freak in that moment, right? That's not a mistake. That's what the Ego does, it carves up reality into parts, but reality can't be divided like that. This is a problem with the Mind not reality. And it causes a lot of ignorance and suffering at the end of the day, the Ego does. That's how the Shadow comes out. You can't hide from yourself forever. The Shadow is always there waiting to be accepted, loved, and integrated into reality. The Shadow is you not accepting a part of reality. So, the Shadow always pushes to be re-integrated. This causes a lot of our suffering in life because the Ego never lets this happen. So, we get the attempt at reintegration, and then the Egoic shutdown every time. That causes suffering, but no growth. So, that's the hamster wheel-effect that the shadow-Ego oscillation causes. Or the preacher who goes and visits a brothel and then wipes it out of his mind quickly. He doesn't even see that he is doing anything wrong. The Ego won't allow it. Think of the Ego as like a fortress that only wants to allow certain traits in. The Ego wants to partition reality into good and not-good, me and not-me. The Shadow is all the parts of reality that the Ego doesn't like for whatever reason. He'll rationalize it away in some way and then bury it, right? The Ego will do everything it can to distance that part of undesired reality from acceptance. Everybody has Ego and everybody has Shadow. Frankly, I see a lot of people acting from their Shadow, and I think Shadow-Work would help a lot of people re-integrate their reality and dismantle the Ego from their psyche. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_repression These videos are good for Shadow-Work:

DON'T GET TOO CONCEPTUAL ABOUT REALITY -- REALITY IS VERY SIMPLE You might be getting a bit too theoretical; too clever by half; too much in the Mind; too beholden to beliefs. You are all that exists. But that doesn't mean that there is no movie. We all have movie. But movie, when beliefs are stripped of it, just becomes part of the pre-conceptual field of awareness that constitutes reality. So, there is a sense in which the dual is part of the non-dual, it's just illusory and not real -- it's just beliefs laid up on top of the pre-conceptual field of awareness. It's only by clinging to beliefs that we get movie, Maya. If you look at the pre-conceptual field of awareness, there's no 2 levels of reality. That's belief, Maya too, that 2 level theory of reality. Only beliefs cause puzzles, reality does not. Reality is very simple. Be very empirical and very honest and you might locate it. Reality has no paradoxes. Paradoxes are Maya.