Joseph Maynor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gabriel_(1980_album)

I want you to forget about the theory or what is kosher to say, and I want you to just center on you. And after that I want you to write in your own words a response to the following: Enlightenment is . . . . DO NOT consider what other people will say about what you wrote. Just let the heart move your pen and be a conduit for what comes out of your being. Channel it for me. Then we’ll take a look at what is there.

It's crazy how the Mind comes up with all these rules for spirituality. It does that generally with culture too.

Totally. When I eat now I really take my time and enjoy every bite. Eating is one of life's greatest pleasures. It is communing with the Body-Mind. I love feeling how the foods and supplements I take affect the Body-Mind. Fueling is enjoying to both the Body and the Mind.

Here's mine: (1) Enlightenment -- Be an explorer in the fullest sense of the word. This is what we are here to do. This is a life where you are supposed to be expanding. Do not waste your potential, do not waste this life. Discover your authentic-self fully through a life-long, multi-faceted process of reality exploring reality fully. The practical result of Enlightenment is liberation from all culture. (2) PILLARS OF ENLIGHTENMENT (REALITY EXPLORING REALITY FULLY): 1. Daily Meditation Habit (Microscope on the Mind) 2. Non-Dual Theory (Scaffolding to orient the Mind to favor awareness over the Ego) 3. Psychedelics (Exploring inner-being) 4. Self-Inquiry (Realizing no-Self fully) 5. External World-Inquiry (Realizing no-World fully) 6. Cosmopolitanism/ World Travel (Exploring outer-being, world cultures through travel, learning other languages) 7. Education (Exploring world ideas, culture, and history leading to reliable knowledge and wisdom) 8. Cultivation of the Authentic-Self (Maslow's Pyramid, Life Purpose (including Career), Self-Actualization, Self-Transcendence) 9. Spirituality (Reconnecting to being the Watcher and purifying away illusions) 10. Cultivation of the Body (Nurture and fortify the Body, it's your constant companion) 11. Exploration of Art (Exploring non-linguistic ideas and patterns of ideas, exploring linguistic arts like poetry and fiction) 12. Life Practice (Perfecting your strengths in a way that makes you feel good/proud, eradicating weaknesses if authentically desired) 13. Being Good (Being a source of love and inspiration to others rather than not doing this, assisting others) 14. Authentic Relationships (Where you realize and perfect the idea that we are all One) (3) A META-VISION OF A DREAM-LIFE Experiencing the feelings you want to be feeling, making the money you want to be making, having the kinds of relationships you want to be having, feeling free, productive, like you are contributing to the world, healthy, respected, admired even by your peers. Being able to own your own home, save for retirement, and travel when you want to, to explore all of the nooks and crannies of experience this life has, both inner and outer. Sampling the best that recreation has to offer in life, including sampling nice food and spoiling yourself on occasion. Having a career that actually is an expression of you that you can be proud of and look back on your life's work-product with a proud smile on your face. To be able to deal honestly with other people so you can live guilt free and free from having any kind of bad reputation or ill repute. Having passion for your life and being excited by your life. Jumping out of bed in the morning because you're doing exactly what you want to be doing and you're on fire about it. You're jacked up; not on drugs, but by your work. Your work has become an extension of your strengths -- and you get paid very well or at least fairly for what you do. That's the kind of life you want to live. It's called a "charged life," as Leo says. To design your life to be able to genuinely say that you did it "my way" -- you didn't just slug around and sleepwalk through this cornucopia of a life we've been given. That would be sad, right? Think about it. That's like traveling to Paris but staying in your hotel room the entire time. No! You explored every inch of reality, both the inner and the outer, and every space in-between. You were the explorer in life! -- reality getting to know itself fully. That's a nice meta-vision.

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.