Joseph Maynor

Correct me if I'm wrong, but many Muslims believe in Predestination. Thus, it's not a given that this belief is false. Many smart people believe in Predestination. Furthermore, any consideration of a future is a thought in the Now. How can you be so certain about a thought about a thought? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination

I have no comment because I don't know enough about it.

I recently went back to Meditation after not doing it for about 4 months. I would follow your authentic-self. Sometimes you need a change of routine. I know I did. Don't try to force anything. Just be the Watcher and watch it. The Mind will then auto-correct the issue for you after a while.

Yes, but make sure it’s not one of those hydras that grows back a head after you cut it off. The slaying has to be a sustainable slaying to be a true slaying.

You’re definitely suffering from ego-backlash. What will be great is when you can watch all that happen and realize that you are creating all of it. What you need to do is release the I-Thought — where nothing that is happening means anything about separate sense of self. Clinging to the I-Thought is what causes deep suffering because you believe — I am suffering — which is false. So, work on releasing that I-Thought. Nothing happening means anything about you, it’s just occurrences in Nature. When you become fully aware of these negative emotions and see them for what they are, the Mind will release them.

What is it about your life that is so difficult that you need to do all this personal development to overcome it? There must be something driving your motivation to pursue this path.

I don’t really agree with Derrida, so I have my own method of contemplation. 1. Use the Socratic Method. So, we’ll take your question: Can you give me a tip on how to deconstruct concepts? Here’s an application of the Socratic Method: What is a question? What is you? What is me? What is a concept? What does it mean to deconstruct concepts? I have basically targeted all the major concepts you have taken for granted to even ask this question. 2. Contemplation has 3 uses: (a) Define all of those Socratic questions in your own words. Better yet write a short paragraph defining each of them in your own words. Do not write what you think you should write, but rather write what you already believe. (b) Contemplation can show you the limitations of conception. Notice how different what we say and think about reality is from simply watching reality. For each of your Socratic answers above, can you see how those meanings differ from awareness of reality in the moment? (c) Contemplation can give us principles that we can use to help us maintain keen-awareness. For each of your Socratic answers above, can you mine any golden nugget principles that might help you maintain keen-awareness as you go through your day?

The way I do it is as follows: I do it pretty close to after I wake up in the morning. I lay in my bed. I put my blindfold on — I have one of those dark eye covers. I set my IPhone timer for 1 hour. And all I do is become the Watcher and notice all the mental sensations (we might call these thoughts) and physical sensations in my body for an hour. That’s it.

Philosophy gave me a great background for this work.

Thanks for this. I want to do a week long solo retreat. I see things very much like you do now. It’s focus inwards that matters most.

I think I fell into this trap. But the lesson here is that Enlightenment is not knowing, it is being. Enlightenment is acceptance of reality and not making anything that happens be about a separate sense of self. It’s also re-integration of the Shadow. It’s also about developing the ability to cause sustainable keen-awareness in your life. That’s the essence of Enlightenment. Knowing is just a very tiny part of this overall project.

This is an interesting insight I am having.

To me the Ego is just The I-thought. And then a bunch of beliefs get attributed to this I-thought. Once you loosen that I-thought, you’ll start to see reality for what it is. But that bad habit of the I-thought haunts you for the rest of your life. The only way to mitigate its effect is to develop and sustainably maintain keen-awareness. The only thing that can loosen the I-thought is the Mind itself. This is why you need both contemplation and awareness to do this work. The psychedelics and meditation work on the raising awareness component. The contemplation component has a few different functions. One is to find out what beliefs you are clinging to subconsciously. Two is to show you the limitations of conception. And three is to build a reliable set of reminders (knowledge) to make your keen-awareness sustainable rather than it being a yo-yo kind of thing.

I think the major driver of being addicted to Personal Development is not wanting to accept parts of yourself — rejecting parts of yourself. But those parts of yourself never die — they’re still there, miserable and aching to be loved and accepted. This is what creates the intrinsic motivation for self-improvement. It takes a strong person to have the balls to honor the authentic self in childhood and adolescence. There are so many forces that make forging a persona attractive. But that leads to you not loving parts of yourself. But those parts of yourself never die, they just lie misearable underground. And this partial self-loathing makes you unconsciously seek reconciliation. It’s like an internal backfiring mechanism. This also explains why chasing happens. Chasing happens when you are still unwilling to accept those parts of yourself, but you are driven to extinguish the suffering caused by not doing so — you keep beating around the bush instead of accepting the bush. And then after a long time of doing this, you realize you’re still miserable. This is why shadow-work is so important. You gotta find out very clearly what parts of yourself and reality you don’t want to accept. Once you determine that very definitively, then you’ll have the ah-ha moment that can cause you to start to work on accepting reality instead of trying to erase bits of reality from view. This is where chasing ends. Once the Mind knows very definitively the cause of this suffering, it won’t stand for it, and that’s where you’ll get your release. But the Mind is very forgetful, so you need to develop a routine of reminding the Mind. That’s where your theory and knowledge can be put to work.

The Mind is not gonna like this, but looking for consistency can be a trap. You are trying to fit reality into nice, tidy boxes whereas reality is multi-faceted.

I appreciate your concern for kids. I wish I had a life coach as a kid — I would have had a much tighter life in terms of having my shit together much earlier.

Reality is to be observed not conceived of. If you observe reality, you can be as curious as you want. But as you observe, you will note insights. But those insights need to be clung to loosely and tentatively. Don’t try to control reality. Just try to see it more accurately. If you can do this, you can free yourself from many traps, which are satisfying in the moment but unfulfilling long-term.

Sometimes beliefs can cause paranormal beliefs. Like beliefs about who the voice is can actually cause a whole host of beliefs. You might convince yourself that you are conversing with a tree — but what’s really happening is the beliefs you hold are creating these sounds. This is an insight I had recently that I will write about in my journal. Our beliefs create the voice. It’s a cause and effect kind of thing. You don’t realize how much of your experience is CAUSED by the expectations placed on beliefs — on thoughts that are clung to.

It’s an ambiguous word — it’s used to refer to many ideas. But consciousness can mean keen-awareness. This is awareness where you notice much more about reality than you did before. You might also call this high-consciousness. This happens when awareness is increased from work done on the path to Enlightenment.

Oh yes. The Ego hates meditation. It doesn’t want to be observed so keenly.

That’s the danger. That’s why you gotta release videos at a certain point. Watch them one last time and that’s it.

Yeah. You can get a state of very deep mindfulness and awareness when you are pushing yourself and in flow.

Contemplation is getting at what you actually believe too. This is why I like to often ask for definitions to be put in your own words. I'm trying to get you to actually find out what's in the subconscious mind. Sentence completion exercises also get at this. For example: My top 5 greatest fears are . . . .

To me he has a certain look that gives him that guru look. That makes him sort of naturally interesting. He looks like an alien. He's so weird looking he must be wise eh? That's what I think is happening subconsciously with people and why he is as popular as he is. And his personality is strange too.