Joseph Maynor

I didn't get deep enlightenment until I had that ego-death experience on psychedelics. After that, my enlightenment entered a new level, So instead of gradual and instantaneous, enlightenment is more like a stair-step ascent with a series of plateaus that are transcended one after the other. And you are on one of those plateaus now. If you grow, you will make a discontinuous leap to the next plateau up -- the next stair-step up, assuming there is one. After all, awareness requires exploration and knowledge as well as observation. The more inner and outer exploration you do, the more you feed that growth engine which might deepen your enlightenment and pop it up a notch or two from where you're at. Travel and experiencing different cultures, peoples, folkways, lands, art, letters, and ideas is food for enlightenment too, not just inner work. The inner-outer distinction is illusory, so we wanna be mystics of the world not mystics hiding away under a rock. Hiding away from external reality is a trap. You wanna engage with reality fully.

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 were given. That would be sad, right? Think about it. It'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 betwixt and between. You were the explorer! -- reality getting to know itself fully. That's a nice meta-vision. Watch:

Nah. Strong AI is impossible. But AI will continue to develop and continue to mimic human thinking. There are things about being Human that cannot be designed. It's like asking a bat to explain its sonar hearing to you. It can't.

I would get the degree. Education is important and you will beat yourself up the rest of your life if you don't get that degree. That's important. The degree is a capstone to your education, at least symbolically. I am proud of my degree, and sometimes I have nightmares of failing out of school, etc. Then I wake up and realize that I have a degree and smile. It's is wild what the Ego does when the Body sleeps.

I look at the news, but it's a dirty habit that I want to break. I figure if it is important enough, I'll find out about it anyway, so I don't need to bathe in it directly. I let other people do that for me, and then they come tell me about it. Get a web browser blocker like "Blocksite" to block those sites from your computer. It works. Just don't turn it off. Even if you turn it off, it's still a reminder that clues in your awareness to the issue. Over time, you can wean yourself off the News. It's a distraction.

The only sure way to know is to see if anyone has actually done it. And how much theory did they have? That's a question too, because it's not just meditation -- there's a lot of theory in enlightenment work too. Imagine someone having no access to theory and just meditating attaining enlightenment? Again, the only sure way to know is to see if anyone has actually done it. Otherwise we're just speculating.

Makes sense because you are in the field of education and that is your forte. It's a trap that your profession is probably inclined towards: Need to know. And then there is the need to prove that you know. Especially to your fellow know-it-all colleagues. It's normal. The knowledge professions are prone to certain traps. Every profession has its traps. In the legal profession it's not knowledge per se that is of value, it's needing to prove that you are competent and that you won't be treated like a chump. So, in the legal profession, there is a lot of ego traps around these issues like various macro and micro-aggressions, rudeness, posturing, poker-faced sneakiness, gossipy backbiting. In law, nobody gives a shit what you know unless it can be translated into money or utility somehow. Knowing for the sake of knowing is not valued in law, so we don't have the same kind of know-it-allism that academics have. It's all about how you translate your knowledge into cash that is of value in law. Law is a business, and the only academics are not lawyers, they work in universities. It's interesting how your profession frames you. It's inevitable. If you study enlightenment, the world looks like enlightenment. If you study law, you see the world through the lens of law. If you study medicine, I'm sure you see life differently, etc.

I prefer listening at .75 speed. It gives my brain time to get everything said.

It's something that you wanna get wired into a routine. It's hard to be your best when your sleep is screwed up. If happiness is what we want, sleep is probably the most important element in that. Maybe nutrition before that, but not too many things.

1. Create lists of goals Goals need to be: (1) Specific, crystal-clear. (2) Big and compelling. (3) Written down. (4) Reviewed on a daily basis. (5) Alligned with what you want. 2. Implement calendar tracking system. 3. Use Solera Method. 4. Use Visualization. 5. Use Task Binder/ 5 Minute Rule. 6. Work in Pomodoros/ block-time. 7. Eat breakfast in am. 8. Implement budget and update annually. 9. Do gratitude exercise every day. 10. Do optimism exercise. 11. Practice positive-thinking. 12. Practice negative visualization. 13. Practice reading mission-statement. 14. Practice reading Yang readings. 15. Practice reading Yin readings. 16. Practice meditation, yoga, and Chakras meditation at work. 17. Practice 30 mins of meditation in am. 18. Exercise (walk) to and from work. 19. Maintain a healthy diet and supplementation. 20. Practice frugality. 21. Drink smoothie in am. 22. Create and read list of relevant adversity.

You get sucked up into the absolute for a while.

Enlightenment work is the best strategy for minimizing limiting beliefs in your life.

Personal Development Mega-Strategies: Enlightenment Life Purpose () () ()

Enlightenment and Life Purpose. Next would be codifying your Big Vision in writing and updating it on a daily basis. Finally, you need to understand some implementation strategies like building daily routines, building willpower muscle, time-blocking your workday, and achieving peak-performance on a plateau.

In what ways are you different from other people?

I was fortunate to recently just start doing LIfe Purpose work myself. I feel like I am out of the newbie stage with Enlightenment work where I’m not having to do as much explicit work there anymore. All I do with Enlightenment these days is maintain keen awareness as much as I can. Enlightenment is about groking the full manifestation of No Self and No World not just conceptually, but actually. That’s what the work of Enlightenment does. It purifies you of false beliefs so you can discover your authentic self. Then you gotta go back into the world and still make a living. That’s where Life Purpose then becomes at issue. Of course, most people didn’t have the good fortune of proceeding this linearly as I have through Enlightenment work first and then on to Life Purpose work, so you do both simultaneously. I thought I understood Life Purpose before, but it was an illusory, superficial understanding. Without doing Leo’s course, I didn’t fully understand what Life Purpose is or the pragmatic work involved to manifest it. Life Purpose work is designing a custom career for yourself. Way cool! I’m on board.

You gonna turn it into a cash-flow engine too? Life Purpose is about career. If you are focused on your own PD that maybe a trap. What value are you gonna provide to the world to get wallets to open for you? Life ain’t free. Do you have a passion to give massive value about PD to someone capable of paying you money? Is that really your passion!

Don’t get hung up on these issues. Find your Life Purpose and then how much you work will take care of itself.

It’s the best strategy for a satisfying Life Purpose — creative contribution to a wider cause other than yourself. Building good Karma does pay off in life, and chasing these kinds of experiences, while Egoic, is still the best way to make a living and also feel less dirty while doing it. Nobody wants to suffer in this life through bad Karma — it sucks and it is soul-destroying, as we all know. You’ll never feel fully pure making a living though, because everybody doing so is compromising their Karma while doing so to a greater or lesser extent. But if you can meet your financial needs while minimizing this shitty effect, it makes strategic sense to do so. I had this epiphany recently that even very noble people are still sowing bad Karma due to the fact that making money is inherently a grasping, a withholding, or taking activity where value is denied someone, often in ways that contradict the do-gooder’s original intent. Business is nasty, but you can minimize the nastiness — but we all need to earn our livings, don’t we. It is unfair to society and others to leach off of their wealth like lousy parasites. So there you have it, we are in a deep conundrum with business. We want to stand like noble men, not snot-nosed boys in this chosen, created life. We gotta compromise very carefully through this minefield, which we have the capacity to do — by mindfully implementing Life Purpose strategies in our lives.

You use the theory, don’t let the theory use you. Stop clinging to theory in unwholesome ways. Take a concept you like from the theory and figure out how to turn it into a budding daily-routine in your life to get some pragmatic dividends. Otherwise you’re just surrendering to the Mind, which leaves you satisfied and frustrated in equal measure.

Enlightenment and Life Purpose. Next would be codifying your Big Vision in writing and updating it on a daily basis. Finally, you need to understand some implementation strategies like building daily routines, building willpower muscle, time-blocking your workday, and achieving peak-performance on a plateau.

Thanks for this video Leo. If I had built one of these earlier in my life it would’ve made a huge difference. Organization is half the battle. I am implementing this great advice and will build my own book on One Note as I do your Life Purpose Course, which I plan to do before the end of this year. Good stuff. Your work helps a lot of people. I am so excited to do your Life Purpose Course finally! I’m surprised I waited so long to do it, but now is truly the right time for me to do LP work, so I can’t whine about that. It’s nice to do things at the right time in personal development. I think the biggest trap with LP is thinking you already got it handled. Maybe you should shoot a video on that issue. LP is just as important as Enlightenment, and just as tricky — full of sabotaging Ego traps. Also, LP may be harder than Enlightenment work because it requires that you get off your lazy ass and actually do something excellent with your life — something scary and out of your comfort-zone — something worthy with your time that also brings home the bacon. Isn’t that what we all want? — that kind of deep satisfaction and connection with reality? That is so important; just as important as Enlightenment work is.

Freelance paralegal.

Absolutely yes.

BIG VISION Here's one, although you can think of visualization as being a part of Life Purpose work too: Practicing Visualization in Writing Daily for a 20 minutes (I do 25 minutes daily which is one Pomodoro). NOTE: When you do your visualization session, do it in writing in MS Word or Microsoft One Note. Hell, use One Note, this will get you on track with your Commonplace Book, as Leo talks about. But you want to start to crystalize all your goals and visions into writing. The more you codify your goals and visions, the more they will become your reality. You wanna be thinking about it all the time, and you want it to be real for you. Writing works to do this for you by objectifying thoughts. Use it, it's Mankind's most profound technology so far -- writing. If you don't have your life's vision in writing, just watch how fast the Mind will forget or forget the details! Don't fall into this trap. Your vision needs to be clear, detailed, and inspiring to cause the ambition you need to get your shit together by a stroke of magic almost. The authentic self needs a map; it needs to fashion a very pragmatic map of what it wants in this life -- or else, yer gonna get something else, and God doesn't play dice, as Einstein said. Don't crapshoot your life, program it in like a C++ program instead. Construct a very clear and definite picture of where you see yourself 5 minutes from now, 5 hours from now, 5 days from now, 5 weeks from now, 5 months from now, 5 years from now, 5 decades from now. This takes work, break it down into a habit and do it a little bit everyday. These are your navigation charts. Go ahead and modify this at will. (NOTE: Don't use this writing like a noose. You do it, don't let it do you. You wanna have lots of sentences, but be flexible with them too. The Mind doesn't control reality, although it likes to think it does -- so be realistic with your rules, but use them abundantly. That's a paradox you gotta swallow.) Think about this: if you don't know where you are going in detail, how the fuck you gonna get there? You're not! So, you need a tool, a map for your life that is for real and in writing, not just some weak notion in the mind. Your Big Vision needs to be as serious as the US Constitution, more serious actually. Create it and treat it as such. Only you can show your life the proper respect. Are you? This Big Vision practice is just as important as Meditation. Ideas are where all architecture starts, and you are the architect of your life. Vision is what creates motivational drive in you: then you will take actions needed to make those ideas real. I am proud of kind of discovering this in my life -- well, at least the part that it should be kept in writing and that it should ultimately be worked into a very large bulleted narrative. Create your own life in writing and then there is no question about what you should be doing now, which makes all your actions easy, because you are doing what you authentically need to be doing, and the Mind knows that, which allows the Ego to get bypassed by a realization of -- Oh! I'm hurting myself! by doing otherwise. See -- you can't knowingly hurt yourself in if you are highly-aware in the moment, which is the Awareness Principle or Law of Awareness, however you want to term it. The only way that you hurt yourself is by not having clear awareness of what you should be doing and what that takes. All those mundane details need to be there in writing, or they will not be honored. Period. The Ego will give you a lot of resistance to doing this Big Vision work, just a heads up. But if you can implement this Big Vision practice, loosely not neurotically (ease into this like stepping into a cool pool or you'll quit fast), it will be impossible for you to fail in life because you'll be 10 steps ahead of yourself, and most other people too. You can't approach life without a plan, although the Ego makes this seem natural and even preferable. This is a guaranteed way to be deeply unsatisfied with life, and you will show many signs of this -- it will eat at you from the inside-out. You will feel like life is a burden and you will have this deep sense of failing to live up to your fullest potential, or even a fraction of that. Not a good way to look at your life in the rear-view mirror when you are on your deathbed. I wanna feel like I took a shot, even if it was just a piece of the shot I felt obligated to take with my life to do it justice. Otherwise, I will feel like a loser measured up against my own authentic values, which is not a good way to feel -- it's the worst way to feel. It's how I feel right now, although a lot of progress has been made in the last couple-few years as I've done personal development work on my own life. Start your Big Vision with your most pragmatic goals. Just type those in first. Then type in all your other goals. This is the foundation for your Big Vision. Then start to build around these and add in details from your Life Purpose work. WARNING: The Ego is gonna tell you this is a BIG waste of time. But the truth is -- this is the very best use you could make of your time! There is no greater use of your time except possibly taking action, although taking action without a clear objective can be running around like a chicken with its head cut off too -- which is the problem with action -- it has to be focused action to be high-quality action. That qualification is mandatory. So, strategy (vision) is slightly more important than action is in a sense, although you do need both. (Big Vision is a strategy, although not all strategies are Big Visions.) The clearer and more authentic your Big Vision is, the more the actions will take care of themselves, almost by magic. Your blocks will begin to melt and you'll just work without any problems. It's so paradoxical because the Ego leads you to believe that you need to beat yourself up to act and that you are a failure for not acting. Actually the problem is that your awareness is weak -- you want to get to the point where the Mind becomes your friend and actually guides reality to authentic outcomes in the moment for you. In conclusion -- so far we have 3 Mega-strategies to help us improve our lives: Enlightenment, Life Purpose, Big Vision. What else can you come up with along these lines? Videos on point: