Joseph Maynor

When I ask: What is reality? Am I expecting you to give me a set of words in response? Should I put them in a bag and carry them around with me? What makes your words relevant or valuable to me? What am I asking for when I ask this question? Does that intention align with the "somewhat arbitrary" set of words that is given to me by a particular responder? What is this 'What is X?' game that we are playing, where X is a word? What's really going on in this word-association game? Here's a famous example from Plato: Knowledge is true, justified, belief. Is that a strange-loop? Contemplate it! What is really going on in this "definition"? Video on point to watch:

What’s your daily meditation habit like?

What if everything you just gave me here I regarded as just black and white markings?

It's good. I enjoyed it. I feel like the Now never changes. That's really the most important insight in Metaphysics. The Now does not change.

This is exactly what Leo's Life Purpose Course was designed to guide you through. Get that as soon as you can and start working it.

The only way to get a real answer to this question is to do Leo's Life Purpose Course. Invest in that now. It will be worth it to you.

You seem to have a high value for education, how come you aren't honoring that? OR maybe you don't really authentically value education, but the Shadow realizes that you should value it, so you are judging yourself for not doing something that you feel you should be doing.

Watch this video:

This only works if you have self control and emotional mastery.

No. I never understood it enough to be able to practice it. That is probably due to me not to the teaching though. I need to learn about it deeper at some point.

Logical understanding is not the only kind of understanding. I used a paradox recently: It is possible to be dispassionately passionate. That looks like a logical contradiction on the surface, but it actually makes sense.

When you’re always meditating, not just during the sits.

This is the only claim in Leo’s new video that I find troubling. It seems a little too cute. Let’s discuss. What is this “includes” metaphor. Non-duality is not a container. If we are talking on the level of thoughts — that’s not it. We gotta look at what the idea of non-duality is pointing to and not get trapped up in the thoughts. Great video by the way. Dualities are created by thoughts. No thoughts, no dualities. If we don’t take thought stories as real, dualities do not exist. That’s my take on non-duality. Non-duality is reality before thoughts individuate it. Yes reality includes thoughts, but what the thoughts say are a fantasy-augmentation to reality. Therefore duality is not part of non-duality — they sit at cross-purposes actually.

When you're going through something just remind yourself that it's temporary and in a couple of hours you will be feeling better looking back upon it proud that you knew that too at the time. The Mind is like a baby that needs to be cared for dearly so that it rests most of the time. But it will still act up and will need to be extended some patience with the knowledge that soon it will be asleep again.

I intend to make use of the New Year as a natural new chapter for me. It's almost like I'm behaving that way now -- trying to crunch before the year-end final exam.

Cut out all the bullshit from your life and you will be an ascetic. No fluff. Stay lean and hard. Relish testing your strength too by going with less sometimes. Be very anal about what you eat and how you supplement and how you account for your stuff and spend your money. Basically, the more aware you become, the more you will naturally become an ascetic. But, you won't be an ideological ascetic. You'll still eat ice cream or drink on occasion, etc. Your asceticism is not ideological, it’s habitual. And the habit is caused by just making better decisions overall in your life. So, my advice to you is figure out which pillars in personal development you want to work on, identify some goals, break those down into budding habits, get the routines wired. When you do this for a while, you will naturally become healthier, and thus a habitual -- although non-ideological -- ascetic. So, don't try to become an ideological ascetic. That puts the cart before the horse, and it's a trap.

Simply do nothing. Just be the Watcher, the observer.

You can't always get rid of thoughts! A good example of this is when you have a song stuck in your head. The Higher-Mind might want to get rid of the song to get some peace, but the Lower-Mind stubbornly disagrees. Even if the Lower-Mind releases temporarily, it always ignores the Higher-Mind's request and starts the song back up very quickly. See? It's like something with a mind of its own is operating and you're just watching.

Wow. I can tell you that the Universe is conscious. Do some Psychedelics and you will see that.

Wow! I'm gonna do that exercise too. Thanks for this.

Watch Leo's video in the Dreamkillers Series titled "#4 Setting Small Goals". Log into his website and you should have this in your folder. I can't link it here unfortunately. But it is highly on point with your question. The Mind is subjecting you to a limiting-belief. It's a trap. Leo describes it well in the video.

This is great. Exploiting vagueness. The Guru must be clear though, that's why being one is hard.

Watch this video -- it's highly relevant to this discussion. I know you folks are busy, but you gotta make the time to watch this video. This video is so on point!

Curious. Let’s discuss.

I think the upshot of this is I should have never taken this issue so seriously. It implies that a meaning has the property of truth. I should have just realized that what is said is just what is said. It is something to say laid up on top of reality. And that's all meanings can be. There's no -- Wait! -- That's not a true meaning! Truth is not a property of meaning, although the Mind likes to encourage that belief. This explains my resistance or block, which raised this issue.