Joseph Maynor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonn_Serrie Album cover:

There is a kind of a cultural add-on that accompanies professions. We all do this whether we realize it or not to a greater or lesser extent. A lawyer has a certain kind of worldview, as well as a teacher, a musician, or a medical doctor. We all see the world through the lens of our work -- and we all re-fashion reality through the lens of our work too. Become aware of this, this is some crazy shit! You got the wider culture and then you got the cultural add-on fashioned by your profession or your work.

If you had to keep animals that you ate as pets first for six months, then slaughter them and cook them yourself -- would you continue to eat meat?

What is a spiritual master? What are the traits or qualities of mastering spirituality? What is spirituality? What does it mean to be spiritual or to do spiritual things?

You can live in the illusion without living in the illusion. That’s a special way to live. It’s rare. Contrarily, most people are stuck in the Ego Paradigm and the External World Paradigm.

Eat some berries instead, even frozen berries are great. Berries are Nature’s candy. My favorite are frozen blueberries. For a chocolate fix, buy yourself some raw cocoa powder and mix some of that in with a smoothie sweetened with fruit — such as a banana. You don’t have to give up tasty sweets, you just have to find a more high-consciousness way to indulge in them. Dark chocolate with a high percentage of raw cocoa is another option. Another option is Greek yogurt with high-quality raw honey drizzled in with a few frozen berries sprinkled on top. I have this honey that is so raw it has a chunk of the bee-hive actually inside the jar! It’s pretty cool. Fresh raspberries are just as good as candy. A juicy orange is pretty sweet too and contains your entire day’s requirements for vitamin C. That’s pretty cool. It made me appreciate eating oranges more. Oranges are also full of fiber which is another benefit they offer.

Let’s get more pragmatic with the focus now. Start to notice real blocks that come up in your life. These are psychological blocks that keep you from doing the things that you know you need and want to be doing — but that you just aren’t doing. Write these tasks and projects down. Now, let’s deal with the blocks behind each of those. Treat each block like a medical doctor would by assessing it, diagnosing it, probing it, prescribing a cure for it, and finally taking actions to treat it. Part of the genius of this work is taking the theory and figuring out how to apply it very pragmatically to your real life’s problems. Every piece of theory you learn becomes a leverage-point that you can then use to dissolve a block hindering the full expression of your authentic self.

You got it! Raising awareness is all we’re doing in this work. Your life starts to naturally right itself as your awareness improves.

Math is only a tool amongst tools, not the essence of anything. This is a deep truth that took me a long time to fully grok.

When you meditate, don’t manipulate, just watch. By watching you will learn a lot about reality that you didn’t ever really notice before. Let the Mind do its thing, and watch it like a scientist sitting still and silent amongst a family of gorillas observing their behavior. Can you imagine that? That’s meditation — just watching what’s happening with full awareness. And you’ll get to the point where you are always doing this, even when you are not formally meditating. This is a major way your awareness is raised in this work. It’s called mindfulness. Meditation is very focused mindfulness.

Good start. Go meta on it now. Ask what is the thought rather than focusing on the thought-story of the thought, also known as the content of the thought. So ask: What is this thought? Why do I identify with this thought in the first place? Where is this thought coming from? Is it coming from inside me or outside me? How am I choosing to cling or not cling to this thought? Can I let thoughts like this go, or release them? What if your thoughts were not yours in the first place? Would that change how you react to thoughts that come up?

Dissolving blocks is where the sustainable work happens. I still have blocks that I am working on myself. But I have way fewer blocks than I used to. A block is an internal resistance, often a combination of limiting-beliefs, fear, and laziness.

Materialism is a belief. When does a pink blob become a brain? Do you see how the Mind is augmenting what is actually seen by pasting a conceptual rubric on top of reality?

A better way to think about Enlightenment is increased awareness. It’s a more realistic perspective on reality. Like the difference between the way a child versus an adult sees the world. Enlightenment takes the adult and moves them up another notch.

A daily meditation habit for 30 minutes a day. Be as mindful as you can: which is sort of like always meditating throughout your day. Realizing that judgments are not your judgments. Do Enlightenment work to come to understand this. Do Leo’s Life Purpose course to get at authenticity.

I like your excitement about doing this work. The best thing you can do right now is implement a daily meditation habit for 30 minutes each day. Meditation is kinda magical in that a lot of your neuroses will drop away over time, and the neuroses are what are really holding you back. Meditation slowly chips away at that problem for you.

As Leo says in one of his videos: Often it’s not knowledge that people lack, it’s the motivation to take the actions that they know they should be taking that people lack. Can you help them with that block?

Absolutely. Life Purpose is all about starting from your authentic self. In order to start from your authentic self, you gotta first discover your authentic self. Life Purpose is deep; you gotta know yourself.

I agree with you too Shin. I use the language/theory I do because I find it to be the best way to present and teach Raising Awareness/Enlightenment. See my reply to Nahm’s response. Nice answer though! We gotta be able to talk though; and to talk is to choose words. And therein lies the dualistic rub! So, each communicator must develop their own nomenclature to achieve the same shifts in awareness. This is where creativity, independence, and teaching intersect. It’s kinda cool once you become fully aware of this! It’s fascinating. There is no one right way to say things in teaching Enlightenment. This is immensely deep! I could nitpick the way every guru says things. But it’s irrelevant when you consider the purpose behind their words/theory. This work is all about raising awareness, not clinging to beliefs.

I agree Nahm. But to say anything at all we must become dualists. I use the theory I find least harmful and most comfortable and intuitive to me. That’s why I phrase things the way I do. I’ve thought this through. It’s a good issue for people to see though. Thanks for shining the light of awareness on it. D’yall get this issue? It’s a deep one. It’s important for y’all to grok the issue Nahm is raising here. I’ll do a post in my Journal outlining my key terms as well.

@Ether Actually thoughts do exist as thoughts, it’s just that what they say about reality is not true per se. That doesn’t mean thought-stories are useless — theory is used as a tool to build knowledge and awareness. The issues raised by theory in Enlightenment are subtle. Maybe Leo needs to do a video on this issue because a lot of people seem to oversimplify and hand-wave the role of theory in the project of raising awareness. Theory is damn important in this work! I think people get trapped into thinking otherwise, and they only limit themselves unfortunately.

Thank you Leo for cutting my learning curve with this stuff and exposing me to your work. May the rest of this year and next year return some value to you — as you have given so much value to us. Being a millionaire is probably still available for you if you keep doing what you’ve been doing. You deserve that. More than anything, you prove to all of us that this content does work and it is legit because you lived it and applied it yourself. You’re a great role model for me and many others. PS — You should write a personal development book for newbies and intermediates. People could buy that book with your life purpose course and be set on a good track with this work. You’d be helping people and making good money too.

What is Science? You should contemplate that before you ask whether something is or is not a Science. You should first have clarity of the category of Science, no?

@Nadosa How’s your daily meditation habit? Describe.

@30secs That too would be technically false and metaphorical at best. Anything said cannot be it. The Mind is only pasting stories on top of what is and nothing more. I know this is tricky, but you gotta grok this deeply. Otherwise you’re gonna fall into the trap of interpreting thought-stories as reality. The Mind is very sneaky with this trap. This is why we say reality is Idealism in order to drive home this point. The One cannot be fragmented. By its very nature the Mind fragments; it cannot function any other way. In conclusion: Reality can’t be rationally grasped. Soul is a concept that the Mind pastes on top of reality. Technically, there is no soul. Reality is non-dual — it has no pieces or finite properties. All such pieces and finite properties are birthed by the Mind and are technically false.