Joseph Maynor

Do you merely believe intellectually or do you actually live it?

I know this is a tough bullet to bite, but probably the only thing you can do is tell her how you feel. Try to do it in as non-confrontational way as possible.

The cracks in your heart from childhood and adolescence manifest in all kinds of ways in your life. You can heal from all this by doing personal development though. I wish I knew at 20 what I now know at 40. This might be the driver for why I am driven to help people with their personal development. Dealing with family is tricky. I’ve found that acceptance goes a long way. Keep the communication alive though. Estrangement is a terrible pain, especially with your mom. Try to avoid things coming to that. Stop trying to control people. Just be an inspiration to them by doing you well. There are lots of hidden reasons why things happen the way they do. And everybody has a set of reasons justifying their actions and beliefs.

@phoenix666 What is normal consciousness? That’s a limiting-belief too. All beliefs are false.

I’ve always been a minimalist and have only become more and more of one as time goes on. Being an Entrepreneur has really caused this to manifest in me more because I’ve developed a system fascilitating doing my Amazon order for the month. I have all my possessions lined up in my office and my house so I can quickly and readily see the status of each thing and what I need to order. I have every category of item noted in my budget too. If I don’t use it, it gets thrown away. I have a small amount of stuff on the shelves in my closet that I don’t currently use but I keep there for later use. But in general, I don’t keep stuff around me that I don’t actually currently use. My clothing wardrobe is also cleverly minimalistic. I had to build a wardrobe that has the minimal number of articles that I actually wear that can be combined in lots of ways for variety. If I don’t wear it regularly, it gets tossed or donated. My laundry is pretty easy because of this. I also got rid of all my books. I don’t keep books around after I read them. I give those away to people. The thing is with me — if I can throw it away or give it away, I will. I don’t wanna have a bunch of shit around me. I’ve always been like that. The stuff I do have around me I actively use. Also, I don’t like to keep a bunch of paperwork around me either. I have one inbox at work, and that’s where the papers go. If they are important enough to keep, I will scan them and put them in my DropBox in the correct folder. Then I’ll shred the hard copies. If they are not worth reviewing daily in my inbox or saving on DropBox, I’ll throw them away or shred them.

Would you ever have had those awakening experiences if you never heard about Enlightenment though? Let the theory inspire you to do your own work; it’s a trap to cling to the theory like ideology. How can the guru help others without using words? The real danger is not communicating Enlightenment at all. Raising awareness must take people where they sit and inspire them to do the work. The guru must realize that low-consciousness people are swimming in theory. So she’s gotta meet them where they’re at and try to help them raise awareness about a block or trap they’re ensnared in. Otherwise the guru’s help will go in one ear and out the other. And that’s useless help. You gotta aim where the person’s real sticking-point is to be an effective guru.

Leo talks about this issue in the video. Just because the paradigm of Materialism is false doesn’t take away the patterns that the experiences have . In other words, the experiences still obey certain patterns. For example, if you don’t protect the brain, you will experience the appearances of living with brain damage. Even dreams have this kind of structure amongst the appearances as Leo mentions in the video. Even after you are awakened a bunch, you can’t just fly through walls now. But that doesn’t mean the paradigm of Materialism is true. No paradigm is ever true. That’s the deeper issue you gotta grok.

Why are you assuming Enlightement is a destination? It’s more like a process. It’s the result of having your awareness raised throughout your entire life.

You’re assuming that reality can be literally conceptualized instead of figurally so. All our theories are figurative. The Mind reinforces the belief that they should be literal. That doesn’t mean you dump theory — because that would mean you didn’t shake the trap because you are still buying into the true/ false paradigm regarding beliefs. What you gotta do is embrace the idea that language is metaphorical and never literal. You’ll still use language, but you’ll change the expectations you have around it. You’ll become less rigid with theory and become more creative with it. There’s a reason the more Enlightened a person is the less they argue over conceptual issues. That trap is fully seen through.

Beautifully said.

The belief that awareness is mental. The belief that thoughts are true and false. The belief that the Mind is you. The belief that knowing is conceptual knowing. The belief that doing is willful doing. The belief that language is literal rather than metaphorical. The belief that money-making is bad or evil. The belief that beliefs are real. The beliefs that emotions are yours. The belief that things, objects, and people exist. The belief that death exists. The belief that birth exists. The belief that you exist. The belief that the external world exists. The belief that the Mind exists. The belief that the Body exists. The belief that you have limiting beliefs. The belief that you have problems. The belief that you have a psychological block or resistance. The belief that you can’t do something. The belief that you are or are not a certain kind of person. The belief that something is not possible. The belief that a task is prohibitively hard and grindy to do. The belief that you suck at doing something. The belief that you will likely fail at something. The belief that you don’t deserve something that you want. The belief that you’re broken or defective compared to others. The belief that awareness is real. The belief that non-duality is true. The belief that any paradigm is true. The belief that any belief is true. The belief that you are awareness. The belief that you are nothing. The belief that you are everything.

One of the tricks of the Mind is to reinforce the belief that awareness is Mental. It’s not. This is a sneaky slight of hand that the Mind does. Meditation will help you overcome this trap.

If so, what does that do to the thought that all thoughts are useless?

Existence vs non-existence is a duality. Reality is non-dual. Do you appreciate the implications of this fully? Existence is a concept that the Mind is laying on top of reality. So is non-existence. So is the “existence vs. non-existence” opposition. Use concepts, but don’t become trapped in them. Don’t be the bug that is trapped by the spiderwebs. You wanna be the greasy bug that doesn’t get caught in those webs. That’s the next level for you. Notice that even the word “appearance” is a duality. It’s too snapshotish, too discrete, too individuated. You gotta grok the deeper issue here. Use theory, but don’t cling to it so hard. This is so hard to teach someone.

If you don’t have the goal, more than likely you won’t become one. But if you do have the goal, at least you’ll have a chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tired_Sounds_of_Stars_of_the_Lid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_of_the_Lid

@ZX_man Yeah? Even what I said here is just more thought. What is important is to have keen-awareness in the moment. Thoughts can cause increased awareness, that's why I use them. I calculate how I use thoughts to try to raise awareness. And the only reason I can do this is because I had to go through it myself. So, I can only target what I can see, which is limited. But we must work from where we are at. And we aim to get an insight every once in a while that causes us to go -- oh shit! Here we go again! You wanna put yourself in the situation where you are doing this work as much as possible. Then your awareness will increase as fast as possible. If people only took more advantage of this forum, we would have many enlightened people already. The problem is that people lack sticktuitiveness. They lack that long-term, deep-dive kind of work-ethic; that hardcore attitude. They are dabblerz. And dabblers don't become enlightened. Enlightenment is the end-stop of this work. It's the reward given to the person who does this work all the time, consistently, every day. If you dabble in Enlightenment you're just going to turn it into more belief. You need to transcend belief. How do you do that? I mean really do that not just think it's a sexy thing to consider. No, this stuff is lived. For some reason I really got sucked into this work and embraced it fully. I fell in love with it because I started seeing the results, and then those results began to add-up and cause a momentum all their own to pursue this work. I never have to try to do this work, I just do it naturally.

Beautiful description. I am the Watcher. I am in the illusion without being in the illusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_(Gas_album)

Paradoxes are all duality. Thoughts are better thought of as tools for increasing awareness rather than as truths or falsities. The biggest problem is that the Mind is addicted to taking thoughts to be true or false. That's the source of all paradoxes. Once you take the expectation of truth and falsity away from thoughts, paradox becomes kind of a non-issue. Then you can just use thoughts without trying to pigeon-hole them as true or false. Use thoughts the way a chef uses spices rather than the way a scientists uses thoughts. Once you take away the assumptions about how thoughts should be, you can just use them without trying to force them into the framework of true and false. So, there's a deeper issue being played-out here than paradox. Paradox is a symptom of this kind of pidgeon-holing by the Mind, which is a deeper problem. When you're convinced you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The key is to stop assuming you're a hammer, and then the nails dissolve for you -- and then you can get off the hamster-wheel on this block. Enlightenment works like that. Enlightenment sees through all the traps of the Mind -- it dissolves all the hamster-wheels so they can't trap and block you. Paradoxes don't exist! Don't turn them into limiting-beliefs. Use them as tools and don't cling so tightly to them. Don't look for thoughts to yield truth. That's a trap. This is liberating. You do thoughts, don't let thoughts do you. The Mind wants to imprison you with thoughts. It's like a chef becoming too anally beholden to his prior recipes rather than simply using those recipes as launch-pads for creating any number of dishes in the moment. See? This is a mindset-shift. This is where expecting thoughts to be true or false leads you => progress-less progress. Where is the below hamster actually getting to? Its progress is simply a figment of its own Mind, not real progress in reality. Our Minds do this to us too in many ways. The key is to notice the hamster-wheels set up by the Mind, and to have the awareness to be able to avoid them. Be a holistic creator, not a knower. Practice not-knowing. Clinging too hard to thoughts as truths is a trap, a distraction, and a source of suffering. Get out of the paradigm of expecting thoughts to be true or false. Sure, you can cling loosely to that paradigm, but beware of the limitations of it too. Just because the Mind wants to be a thought glutton doesn't mean that that is high-consciousness. You gotta make a discontinuous-jump to a new paradigm regarding the expectations of thoughts. This is a hard one because it goes against a deeply-ingrained idea that thoughts are true and false, and that conceptual truths are what we should be seeking without regard for pragmatic application. Practice trumps theory, not the other way around. The conceptual-clinger is not the wisest person. They are in a trap that they don't appreciate fully. The wisest person is much more flexible, non-clingy, and intuitive than that -- just like the great chef who adds the right ingredients in the moment without needing to conceptualize everything beforehand. Sure, the chef uses pre-meditated recipes as tools, but he doesn't cling to them unreasonably. He probably doesn't even use measuring spoons and cups unless the context requires doing so either -- he eyeballs everything and proceeds holistically; he realizes the limitations of conceptual information. The territory is not the map.

I may not be able to eat meat much longer. Thank you all for your contributions to this topic. It's kind of an awareness mindfuck, isn't it? How would we feel if we were raised by another organism so that it could eat our dead muscles and skin? See? We don't ever fully put ourselves in the perspectives of the animals we eat -- we just assume it is normal and natural to eat them, even though we do not need to. We do not need to eat animals to survive. What spawned this question is when I went home for Thanksgiving I interacted with pet cats, dogs, birds, and fish, and I realized that they are more similar to us than the Mind is inclined to think. Like us, each animal has a unique personality too. When we get our meat at the supermarket, we are shielded from all that. All that is there is the already processed meat. We're blinded from being fully aware of what we are doing when we eat meat. Imagine it was your arms and legs wrapped up in cellophane at the supermarket! If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander too, no? Why do we hold a double-standard here? I was going to eat some sardines for lunch today, and then I kept seeing the pet fish that I fed and interacted with during my recent trip home. I looked at the dead sardines in the can and I felt so sad. I couldn't eat them. They were alive fishies at some point just trying to survive and live like we are. It felt spiritually wrong to me in that moment to eat them. Fish are amazing animals if you ever get a chance to watch them in an aquarium or in a pond. They are graceful in the way they move, the way they navigate through the water. They're curious too. They have a certain kind of awareness, like us. BELOW: A fishie being of the species "salmon", just like we are of the species "human". Of course these are our labels not theirs. What if this being were your pet? Would you have the heart to kill it and eat it then? A group of fishie beings that we call "sardines". These small beings pack closely together for mutual security as they swim. What if these beings were your pets? Would you have the heart to kill them and eat them then?

@How to be wise If your beliefs about enlightenment are wrong, why would you insist on clinging to them?

Anything we say is dualistic because language is inherently dualistic. Anytime you advance a thought, that thought-story is a dualistic projection upon non-dual reality. All language in Enlightenment is metaphorical at best. Theory is tricky in Enlightenment — it’s both useful and useless at the same time.

Maybe enlightenment isn’t what you believe it is.