Joseph Maynor

I’ve been contemplating in this way very authentically lately. I’m also realizing that the Mind does not like paradoxes. Mine keeps trying to discredit them by calling them having your cake and eating it too, or labeling them as a kind of pseudo-issue or a vacuous, illusory claim. However, is that really the case? It seems as though certain paradoxes really do tell us something profound, contrary to the Mind’s bias against paradoxes.

Let me put a nail in this coffin. You guys have been gossiping about this for too long and missing the issue. The issue is -- THINK FOR YOURSELF! YOU GOTTA BE YOUR OWN GURU EVENTUALLY IN THIS WORK!

It is the Ego’s last gasp. The elightened master represses his ego until his shadow gets so dense that he unconsciously re-integrates it by losing his humility. Of course the enlightened master is not aware he is doing this. The Mind will rationalize the behavior to him.

How do you know for sure Jesus was enlightened? What does it mean to be enlightened? What is Jesus?

No, the heart of all suffering is the Mind putting false expectations on reality.

In a way it is. Religion is a step in the right direction towards enlightenment. I went through atheism, theism, to finally enlightenment. Religion puts you in touch with the mind of the cosmos. The problem with it is that it is too ideological, just as Science is as well. I’ve read the Bible and the Qur'an. I enjoyed both, especially when I believed in the theology that I had constructed.

I've studied Leo and Emerald and Myself, that makes three. I've studied Classical Indian and Classical Chinese Philosophy though. Oh yeah -- and I've read the essay "Who Am I" by Ramana Masarshi, which really influenced me. But I have absolutely zero interest in studying under any additional gurus. Here's a couple of Emerald's videos:

Did you get this concept of nothingness from your 5-Meo-DMT trip? What exactly is so utterly-radical? What do you mean that reality is so empty that it doesn’t include consciousness? What is consciousness?

This is very speculative.

The addiction to being and feeling right is a trap! A real nasty one. I’ve been trapped by it myself. The Ego is a tricky bastard. It is hard to always see this trap because the Ego filters it out. So people can get caught up in this trap without even being able to be aware of it. That’s the danger of having a shadow, and we all have one too.

Wow. This is a nice insight and set up for a nice discussion. The paradox you gotta balance in life is being the ego and no-ego at the same time. It’s a little bit tricky to see how you can do both of these at once, but you can. Looking at things from the perspective of no-ego represses ego, which is a denial of reality and creates a shadow to the ego to boot. And that shadow acts incognito of awareness, which is what makes it such a trap. If you can learn how to be the ego and no-ego at once, and to cling loosely to that paradox, and to be able to release it at anytime as well — you’ll approach my present state of consciousness.

Once you find yourself you still have the issue of how to deal with beliefs. So, Enlightenment must deal with beliefs as well as the Authentic-Self. This is kind of where Philosophy and Enlightenment need to have a baby. You might call this Epistemology, although I don’t like that word very much. It’s too loaded of a term.

Yes. But the biggest block to mindfulness is the Ego, and that is built by culture. So, it’s culture and not knowing how to get up under culture that blocks mindfulness. Culture includes ideas too.

Lately I’ve been really aware of the fact that this is such lip service and denial of reality. Everyone has an Ego, even Enlightened people. I think there’s a bullshit false narrative that “Enlightened people” no longer have an Ego or that they have transcended the Ego. Them’s just words and beliefs, and a denial of reality to boot! Video to watch for some background:

Greece — Athens Italy — Rome Turkey — Istanbul China — Beijing Taiwan — Taipei

Not right now because of the holidays. It will start to pick up for me in the next couple of days. I’m a freelancer.

Only when I’m so burned that the break takes me. I’ve been working like 12 hour days now for days and days on end. I’m doing a shitload of Life Purpose work, and I got a bunch of shit to read and write about too.

Solo international travel for 2 weeks to a very different country is an Enlightenment tool. You will have so many insights and realizations when you do this. It’s so healthy that I try to do this twice a year.

I think his top strength is in working on his own personal development.

The solution is to both be an ego and not be an ego, and to be as aware of reality as possible in the moment. We can use culture as a way to make our awareness stronger, which is one reason why Enlightenment is difficult — because you need to be exposed to culture to see up underneath all culture. This is why we have the paradox that Enlightenment is both extremely challenging and extremely simple at the same time.

This is gonna sound very nerdy, but I work on my Personal Development for fun. I can do that for hours and hours and hours, days and days on end without getting tired. It’s like effortless effort — Wu Wei.

Oh yeah. I’ve come to the conclusion that many times people with the hugest egos are the ones trying to claim they have the smallest egos. This is a way to hide their own shadow traits from conscious awareness. Their ego has clung to the trait of no-Ego, but it’s not really reality for them, they’ve just repressed the truth from conscious awareness by pretending the opposite. But when you watch their behavior, in contrast to their talk, they reek of massive ego.

The paradox with Enlightenment is you have to both seek and not seek at the same time. This balance confuses the hell out of the Mind, which wants a singular, rational kind of answer.

Our chin-wagging is like the cry of a neurotic bird in the forest amusing and comforting itself.

Reality could give a shit about your thoughts. Right?