Joseph Maynor

You guys and gals should watch the movie 'The Wicker Man' -- the original one. You'll see the real burning man. This is one of my favorite movies. The first time I saw this movie, it was a total shocker to me because I was exposed to it by a friend who was a film major in college. I had no idea. It's just so well done. A real film with a real message. I like how it crosses so many genres of film too. It's a good one. You know a movie is good when you call it a 'film' right? 'Movie' sounds like something for kids. This is a classic, inspired, awesome film. I wish they would stop ruining classics like this by remaking them. Here's a rule -- if you're gonna re-make a classic film, you gotta make it better than the original or don't do it at all. Like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man Celtic polytheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_polytheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid

If a dog bites you is the dog morally wrong? What is it about dogness that makes us pause here? If a rock falls down a mountain and kills you, is the rock morally wrong? If cancer cells kills you, are the cancer cells morally wrong? What if a spider bites you? Is it wrong? Or a cat? When we swat the cat afterwards is it because what it did was morally wrong? Says who? Does the cat have a say in the matter? Is it morally wrong to hug dogs if they don't like to be hugged a certain way? Does the dog decide this? What about the things that dogs hate that we do that we don't know about. Are those things morally wrong? Says who? Are they wrong even though the dog cannot formulate the statements for itself? In other words, can the dog have moral rights and duties that it doesn't "know" about? Does its fear and pain of being hugged and its reaction to being hugged count as "knowing" that a certain behavior is wrong? So, can it have moral rights that it is ignorant of? Says who? The dog? What is it that properly gets assigned moral rights and duties and why? Who decides? Does Being have moral rights and duties? Says who? On what basis? Where do moral rights and duties come from? What is their origin? If human beings didn't exist, would there be any moral rights and duties? Do human beings exist? Do video-game characters have moral rights and duties? Ok . . . I'll stop. Ok. One more. What if you know that petting a cat's hair the wrong way is not comfortable to a cat, and you go ahead and do that and the cat bites you? Is the cat's behavior morally excused? Says who? The cat? Video on point to watch:

I've found better success with four 15 minute sessions per day than the longer sessions. Sometimes I will meditate for 1 hour though if I feel like it. Just recently I did a 2 hour session for the first time. It was pretty cool. That's a long time!

I've gotten a lot out of Enlightenment Theory. The theory allows you to have a structure to hang your experiences on so you don't lose them. But the theory is not the be all end all. But people tend to pooh-pooh the theory too much too. My path has found a place for very substantial theory, at least up until my recent ego-death experience. Since then, theory is less important because I can just be Being and notice that everything else is not me, including the theory. It's almost like the Ego needs the theory to take it beyond the point of no return, but once you get the full ego-death experience, the theory kind of falls away like a set of training-wheels. I can make up many analogies now, whereas before I was stuck on certain words or ideas -- almost like the Ego was clinging to them as the Truth. And I think that's a necessary stage in Enlightenment. You gotta fake it 'till you make it in Enlightenment too it seems haha! I think there is a utility for a heavy theory stage. I was reviewing the theory everyday for a while. But once you realize that you are just Being, the theory becomes pretty obviously nothing more than a lens that you can use to hang your enlightenment around as you progress along your path. It's a roadmap almost. I really have no interest to review the theory right now. That could change though.

What does success mean when you are dying? The Ego does not want you to even explore this. The Ego will probably dismiss this as just another wacky point. But it goes to the heart of things. What is the difference between a bum on the street going through the process of death and a billionaire going through the process of death? The only way to experience this is to go through a true ego-death experience yourself and find out. It's scary, but it's very worth it. You'll see life differently afterwards. Since my ego-death experience, all my values have fallen to the ground, and now I'm looking around on the ground trying to pick up the broken pieces. I'm not sure what to do! The only thing that seems mandatory is Being. And I want the body to be healthy to minimize suffering caused by pain in the body. And I want the mind calm. Those seem to be the basics of what my new values are. I'll build up from there. I get so much more out of meditation now and love just Being. The Beatles should have wrote a song -- "All you need is Being." All you need is Being, da' da da da da! Doesn't rhyme as well haha. You need Being more than love. Human to human love is optional in fact. Being is true love; True love is Being.

I prefer Brahman rather than God. You are Brahman. You are also Atman. Atman is Being. Brahman is Being. So, Atman = Brahman. Being is a constant, it does not die. You are Being. The Ego is not Being. The Ego is an illusion masquerading as the Truth. Truth is the absolute truth. [t]ruth is relative truth. Relative truth is truth for human beings. Ego is the Devil. Video on point to watch:

(1) You can be a resistor in life or a super-conductor. Being a resistor means that all the neuroses and suffering of life burns through you -- your life includes a lot of optional suffering. Being a super-conductor lets you bypass this suffering. To be the super-conductor, you need Enlightenment work, even if just in the form of a daily meditation practice, that will help you although not completely. To get the best fix, you gotta do Enlightenment work. (2) You get to know the truth of what you are and what the world is, and what death is and is not. You'll get the maturest possible view of life and of yourself and of the world and of death and the afterlife. But this requires deep Enlightenment work and the shifts that result from that work. (3) You'll have a better idea how to spend your time in life. If you don't know what you are or what the world is, how can you really know what to do here? You can't, and that causes a lot of chasing and a lot of suffering. People don't know what the hell to do here, so they just wing it. But good living is counter-intuitive because Ego is an illusion. So, if you wanna live a good life, you gotta know a few things first about Enlightenment.

@Serotoninluv Keep going. Here's what I'll say. Don't over-intellectualize this. You are Being. Does that make sense? What is Being? Look at that. You are Being. That's what you are. This is not some kind of abstract statement. This is very specific.

It gives you a relief because you realize whatever you do here is really cheap, it doesn't matter. It's a freebie. It's a simulation. You're already dead. The Ego warps this though and makes it seem like what we are doing here is really serious and important. You are immortal. This place is just a movie. Karma is still an issue though, see. When you die, you wanna feel good, not like a piece of shit. Also, I'm not sure how Karma carries over into how Being feels in the post-death experiences. I got the sense that you don't want to carry any negative shit with you if possible. Best to be clean and positive. Be aware and be charitable. It's all part of your movie. Don't piss where you drink. You are Being. Being doesn't die.

Gimme the golden nugget of beginners strategies folks. I can already feel a surge of energy up and down my spine if I focus awareness there. It's kinda freaky.

Enlightenment is difficult because you need a lot of theory and then you need to know when to throw it all away, and you can't know how and when to do this in advance. I'd be skeptical that anyone could be deeply enlightened with under 1 year of intense study and practice. You need some curing like a good steak, and that takes time. Nobody eats a steak cut straight off the carcass. The meat needs careful curing first, which takes attention, time, and care. Enlightenment is like a little budding plant that has to be tended to and nurtured. Maybe after a couple of years you'll have yourself a little tree. But there are no guarantees.

I love poetry. It's like architecture made out of words. I'm scared of poetry though because I know if I open Pandora's Box and get into writing poetry, I may never come back. That might just be the end of Giuseppe. I try to make my prose beautiful though. But poetry, when done right, dwarfs prose in both beauty and structure. Poetry is the fine wine of writing. The delectable dessert. Writing without any training-wheels. That rare intersection between meaning and art; where architecture, play, and words organize themselves into paintings to be hung on the wall. I like the first poem you posted.

It's probably best that people get off the teet with expecting a Leo video every week. We're like a bunch of kittens huddled up to mama waiting to get a weekly fix. The only true fix is Being. Give Leo a break. Leo -- take a couple of weeks off dude. Go out into nature and so some solitary work alone. Go travel half-way around the world. That's what you wanna do anyway. It's for the best. Then come back and make a video. Maybe you want to slow down the pace of the videos. Less monkey-mind is very healing. Make a video when you feel like it not when you feel obligated to. Just a few words. Not even sure if these words are right for you, but I thought I would put them into the air anyway. I love ideas. People think ideas are helpful or harmful haha. Ideas are nothing. We create the significance of ideas. We hold back ideas stupidly. The survival instinct creates the polarities that we attach to ideas. But the survival instinct is part of the illusion. It's like realizing one day that all your money is really Monopoly money. Imagine the look on your face after realizing that. A look of being duped. You've already given plenty of resources for people to become fully enlightened. The only thing you can do at this point is broaden that work. But the essential work has been done. It's here. Eat up folks. It's all already here -- over 300 videos worth. We have millions of dollars in the bank and we're still chasing more money. Not too smart. How many of you have actually watched all of the videos that Leo has gone out of his way to create thus far? If you haven't done that, why the hell do you need a new video? Think about it. It's gluttonous. It's an addiction. It's greedy. Eat what's already on your plate before you go looking for more. There's plenty already there. We need to let Leo fly with his Muse rather than feel obligated to our self-survival addictions and stupidities. You can lead a horse to water, but if it doesn't stick it's mouth into the water to drink, there's not much a guru can do. What the hell does the guru do, lecture to the horse more? Think about it! The horse has to use the resources that are already at hand. There's plenty for everybody already here. Yet we're still looking for more. Just a perspective. Don't take it anything more than that. Maybe it's wrong or inapplicable or some other judgment that you can formulate. I'll leave that to you. While you're doing that, I'll be Being. Maybe I'll go look for a pint of ice-cream. It's Sunday night after all. Those ice-cream pints become single serving after 10 pm haha. I'll mindfully eat that, I promise! Mmmm! The illusion of ice-cream is incredible. Videos on point to watch:

That's funny. He's being the white-hole right now, and will be returning to Vegas just in time for dinner tonight.

You guys are worry warts. Video on point to watch:

Enlightenment is a process. You'll have different experiences, at different times, which will all change how you think and live dramatically. It's cool. It's very therapeutic. It cleans all the garbage out of you. But see, it also removes things that you like too. So, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes things are better left unsaid. That is a personal value that each person has to decide for his or herself. Some people are very drawn to truth and reality. That's definitely in line with enlightenment. If you want to get at what's really real, to see through all the illusions of life, perhaps you too would value enlightenment. Some people probably don't want to do this. It is a friggin' journey let me tell you. And, there's nothing like it in life, so far as I can tell. It's a unique journey, that's the best way to describe it. A journey out of the illusion, and then back into it. It hits the full-spectrum of emotions too, from the really high-ones to the really low-ones, and everything in-between. You are finding your true-nature basically. And yain't anything like you thought you were. It's actually rather magnificent, how Being hides in plain-sight. But, we get so caught up in the illusion of Ego to notice Being. But Being is always there. It's the one constant. And Being is you. Even when you die, Being survives. The way we think about death is so wrong, so incorrect.

I changed that one post that I did from "I saw God" to "I saw Brahman". See, there I was getting caught-up in how others have used the word 'God' on here. I'm not sure I want to continue using 'God' in this manner. I'm kind of skeptical of using the word 'God'. What I experienced was Being the white-hole, B-e-i-n-g, post-Ego-Death. Being stripped of the Ego. You gotta understand that Ego is both everything here on this Earth and you. It's not just some mental proclivity. It's all of it. All of it is Ego. All the Universe, all the life in it. It's one giant simulation. All of it except for Being. And Being is you. Being never changes. It survives psychological death I've determined. And you can do that here in Ego, in Maya. You can Be. That's you. Just that Being. Everything else is an illusion. Your body, all these people and things, the Earth, etc. That's why I said we are all surrounded neck-deep in Ego. You see this when the Ego dies off and you realize that you still exist -- but as Being and only as Being! It's friggin' weird man! The sense of being a body was gone. Imagine you turned into a galaxy! And there was a forward flow, as the Tao alludes to. The words "hyperspace" and "white-hole" both really resonate with me. I didn't really get a sense that I was all of this. I did get a sense that I was Being though. So, maybe this is a distinction without a difference. I guess I did get a sense of this because there was nothing other than what I was Being. I have no reason to postulate anything else. The Ego was still hanging on by a thread, so I'm sure I was still stuck in the Mind-Matrix enough to deceive me about this. During my experience, I had some emotions still, but maybe that was because the Ego hadn't fully died off, so I'm not sure if the emotions trace back to the Ego or if they exist after Ego-Death. I guess after we physically die we'll find out. The Ego was flickering in and out like a computer simulation losing power and losing its grip, like 90% gone. But I could still feel the claws tugging at me and seeing some visualizations traced to the Ego. Like a television slowly dying. I had this distinct sense that things would get better fast if I just kept pursuing Being. That it was up to me whether this was a good or bad turn of events for me. And I am only consciousness at this point -- no bodily or physical sensations at all. The sense of Earth was gone. I don't know where people think the word 'God' fits in this. But they likely have their reasons to use that term. I prefer not to divinize my theory. I'm not a big fan of the word 'God', and I will not say here that I experienced 'God' literally. What I experienced was Brahman. And I understood what Atman = Brahman means. It means that Being is probably immortal, and you are Being. So, whether your Being in the Ego-paradigm or Being outside of the illusion, you're still Being either way. So, the Ego-Death is actually an illusion. The reason you freak-out during bodily-death and Ego-Death s because you are clinging to that illusion. I saw very clearly that the Ego Consciousness Paradigm is an illusion. It's like a computer simulation. You can really see that when you go through the experience of psychological death. It's fascinating. The Ego and Earth and all of this is an illusion, Maya. It's like a giant computer-simulation basically. What exists is only Being. And you are it -- I think! I think! I'm still not sure that I am all of Brahman. That did not become clear to me on my trip. I didn't get to spend enough time in Absolute Infinity to assess that fully. But I definitely got the sense that my nature is Being. And I experienced the white-hole, I just didn't fully cognize that everything was me as others here on the forum have attested to. And there is still color and awareness. I didn't get the sense of space or time. It was just Being. Very simple Being. Almost like -- how the hell am I gonna do this! Imagine all your survival-values flipped in an instant. There's no more need to do, to strive. And then I was pulled back into the Ego Consciousness Paradigm. It's amazing how much I can remember. I'm glad I am codifying this like I am.

Curious If you don't know what this is, probably you don't know what this is. That's a good test. This is like the reasonable doubt rule in law. If there exists a reasonable doubt that you know what Ego-Death is -- then you gotta let it go, you don't know it. That's as clear as day right there. Those who have experienced Ego-Death know why. I found this online. It's pretty cool. http://www.theself.net/spirituality/to-become-everything-ego-death-important/ I like the hyperspace description. That's what I tried to describe as a tunnel of colors. I totally understand now what 'the void' means too. The void = hyperspace. It's a definite description, but the object that it refers to is not a thing. But the definite description still stands as valid somehow. You are Being it. All of it. The hyperspace, the void, the Tao, Brahman, Allah, Being. Video on point to watch:

Wow! You must see the world differently. The egoic world. Maya. You have a long shore-of-reference my old English teacher used to say. He was a smart guy.

@Zippie Meditation is the best thing you should do to get you started. Go through this video.

Enlightenment will take you far in the other direction from suicide. So, you are looking into the right stuff.

Try 20 minutes of do nothing meditation per day. Meditation leads to cleaning out all the junk in your mind.

@Nahm My last dream was definitely realistic. I don't recall it, but when I woke up this morning I had half-a mind to take notes about it. I decided not to, as I often do.

@SOUL Welcome back! The voice of reason has returned. I was having to carry that mantle while you were away haha -- like a small voice in the wilderness. Yes, to enjoy the trip. Damn straight. Being does not tell us how to live. Being is mute. Experience the whole kaleidoscope of life, even if half of it is a damn illusion. It's-all-worth-experiencing -- just don't cling to it in the wrong way. Don't expect something illusory to come at the end of the rainbow. But eat up the illusion consciously all you want. But know how to let it go, and know how to not get too attached. Sitting around being a monk is a cheapened life in my opinion -- a childish life, a lazy life. That's the irony. Let practice bust you out of a bad case of theory. You get out there are live a BIG LIFE! I'm starting to believe that this Monk stuff is just laziness and the comfort-mentality rearing up in a different set of clothes. Even if life is an illusion, it is still damn interesting -- to think this or something else is to cling to "erroneous" beliefs about it -- to be a dogmatist basically. Is that smart? Duddn't seem smart to me. Don't turn Enlightenment into a moral code. That's a huge trap right there. We all want to cling to moral judgments, don't we? It feeds our hunger to be right, to be honorable, to be one of the good Egos. We so easily become dogmatists -- enlightened people too. Monks are dogmatists too. Our need to know and need to believe are so strong -- even those who claim they are beyond these are right in the grip of them. Sometimes you have to see yourself from an outsider's perspective which is really hard. That's the benefit of feedback. The problem is that we ignore feedback to preserve our paradigms. I haven't see one person who is immune to this trap yet -- so this should be really eye-opening. We are half-blind to our own dogmatism. That's a really bad Egoic trap, maybe the worst one. Enlightenment doesn't tell you anything about how you OUGHT to live: That would be a thought, a belief -- and all thought-stories are illusory. Videos on point to watch:

@Ilya Separate the Mind from Being in anyway you can. This is what leads you to understand that the Mind is not you. Don't confuse the Mind with awareness. Awareness is not part of the Mind. Can you identify Mind-Matrix Objects? (Mind-Matrix Objects include thoughts, images, visualizations, beliefs, past, future, projections, concepts, ideas, notions, individuation, assessment, analysis, theories, definitions, associations, relationships, distinctions, and more.). Can you make a distinction between Mind-Matrix Objects and Being? Do you see that Being is real and Mind-Matrix Objects are illusory? Ask yourself this -- How is Being being augmented by Mind-Matrix Objects? People are sucked into their thought-stories instead of seeing what's going on in reality. When you turn the mind off, all illusions and delusions will disappear. Remove all the belief filters from Being.