Joseph Maynor

What do you feel you still need to learn?

It would be nice if we could stop our lives to do enlightenment work, but we can’t do that. You don’t have a choice anyway. You’re gonna do whatever you do and you just gotta accept it. The best thing you can do is maintain as much awareness on the situation as possible. My business has taken a toll during the last 6 months I’ve been doing enlightenment work real heavy. So, I know what you’re talking about. But I feel really happy too, happier than ever!

Once you figure out all of the ways that the mind colors reality you will see it. You will see it by learning what awareness is and over time your awareness will increase to where you can make a distinction between mind and not mind. And this distinction doesn’t have to be perfect because it has a practical use.

Trump's picture should be in the dictionary under Ego. I'm not judging him. He has an interesting life, and he chose it and worked hard for it. He is a fascinating case to study. We need to realize that one way to live is not necessarily better than another way to live. The people who cling strongly to judging Trump should have their pictures in the dictionary under Ego too. Is that paradoxical? Well . . . What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Think about it. From God's perspective Trump is just fine, and so are his critics, and so are the people who don't care about him.

Other people have nothing to do with you and you comparing yourself to other people cannot help you. It doesn't solve anything at all for you to compare your own life with other people. You should not be envying anybody else. You don't know what their lives are really like. What you're doing is projecting your life onto theirs, which is just a fantasy. And all you're doing is causing yourself unnecessary suffering and distraction. Watch this video: It's a great one. One of my favorites.

There is no quick fix. You need to develop a Mastery mindset with Personal Development. You're not gonna get an easy answer. You need to chunk this process down into a daily routine. I would watch all of Leo's videos first. You need a theoretical background to draw from in this work. You gotta start from where you are and pay your dues to get growth. It takes a lot of work. More than most people think. And you gotta be your own guru to do it. To do that effectively, you need lots of information. That's what Leo's videos give you. Any easy answer only works for someone who already has a deep shore of reference to understand it. There's no quick way to build a deep shore of reference either. It takes years, a lifetime. You need to figure out where you are in this process, get to work, and do work on a daily basis. What work is appropriate for you at this time depends on where you actually sit in this process. Watch:

Here's a question for you -- In which ways do you think you can still grow and mature in life? Can you foresee how you might think, feel, and value differently than you do now? Do this, give me some sentences.

@Jhonny Start by clarifying goals and working on your optimism. If you don’t have clear goals you’re not even in the game. Make a list of goals like this: things I want to accomplish in 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1 year from now. Watch this video: Another good one. Do the exercise at the end too.

@Brimstone Awesome! I love it!

Have you ever inquired into how much nothing actually says?

Here's a great video to watch if you haven't watched this one:

The answer to this question depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. You could question the existence/non-existence distinction if you want to. But to not go that far, and just for kicks, I would say this. What is sensed is real. But what the mind says about what is sensed is not real. So, you may see imagery that looks like a witch, but that doesn't mean that the belief "witches exist" is true. Of course you could question the real/non-real distinction too. The bottom line is that concepts are never true. Awareness just is. Awareness is mute. Anything said about Awareness using language is technically false. It's like trying to catch air with a net. That said, we can sort of speculate with language in a way that sort of gets at the truth but never very accurately so. We don't want to pooh pooh enlightenment "theory" work because it is useful. But it needs a huge caveat next to it, and it gets annoying to have to repeat this every time it needs repeating, but it must be done. The mind wants to take these ideas and turn them into ideology, which is a huge trap to watch out for (maybe the worst of all traps). You gotta maintain your independence in enlightenment practice and never get complacent with any ideology. Watch:

I was addressing why the illusion of ego exists in my answer. Yeah — you don’t wanna assume that the ego exists. The ego is illusory.

Status is a creature of the mind not of reality. It is a concept. From God’s perspective there is no status.

Are you sure this is a real problem and not one invented by the mind? The ego will try to sabotage in this way by undermining confidence. That’s why you need to get to a state of not knowing to remove that fodder for the ego to exploit. Not knowing knowing. Not doing doing.

Is an oak tree superior to a weed? (Not the drug, haha)

@Deep Sometimes what you’re seeking dissolves right before your eyes. The mind can help and it can hinder — the trick is to know when one or the other is happening, to have that keen awareness. There is no gap-closing to be had; there is no real problem. The problem is the mind, and the mind is false. I don’t know what Leo has to do with my posts — my aim in all my posts is authenticity. I don’t even know in advance what I’m gonna write, it just flows out.

Matter is not conscious. The only non-thing that’s conscious is awareness. Matter is a mere concept — not reality

This is a great question. This is speculative, but I’ll bite! The mind augmented reality because we have been conditioned to identify with the mind and body instead of identifying with awareness. The mind screwed us up basically. The mind is a double-edged sword. The problem with the mind is we don’t know how to use it constructively without a lot of awareness. Maybe this is caused by the fact that thoughts and other mental events are hard to see because the information is not laid out plainly before us like other sensations are. It could be that simple — the mind operated for a long-time virtually under the radar and unchecked, and it mucked-up the system.

The only requirement to becoming a great sage is to help others grow because you are growing yourself — you’re just a few miles ahead of them and can swing ‘round to help them facilitate their growth. It can be a true expression of love — evidence of the breaking down of the ego. And it’s by helping others and teaching others that the guru achieves his or her extraordinary growth. You ever hear the expression, “If you really want to learn something, then teach it to others?” That’s the dynamic at work, and it’s a win-win dynamic if it comes from an authentic place. It can manifest as an upward-spiral of synergistic energy; of love. Be careful of the mind or the ego telling you what a sage is though. That’s gonna be false. A sage is a label, a distinction, a classification, a duality. All we have is authentic Being and awareness. A sage is just a highly-evolved, benevolent force of Nature — Nature loving and investing in itself basically.

Counter-intuitively, the more the ego is broken-down the more you will love in an authentic way that might be outside of any preconceptions of love that you or anyone else has. We need to make sure we separate authentic love from mental conceptions of love. One is true and the other is false. Authentic love just authentically flows-out without being forced or being guided by any rules. Unfortunately, we have a lot of conceptions of what love is that the ego will try to wrap its claws around. But that’s just mind. Your authentic love will transcend mind, so be prepared for it to manifest in ways that you did not expect. You gotta just let go and let the authentic self unfold on its own terms — outside of the rules and expectations of the mind. You will discover your authentic love if you do this properly. Beware of the mind commenting on what love is or is not! That’s a trap when dealing with love. You don’t wanna get stuck on rules or preconceptions. Just be and observe. Don’t force or try to control anything. That’s just gonna re-enforce the ego and build a nasty ego-shadow in its wake. Let the unique fingerprint of your love come into being without any sort of attempt to control it. Just watch it, be aware of it, be mindful of it — don’t judge it or manipulate it. The ego and the mind are gonna hate this, which is why you gotta numb down the ego for true love to start to flower out in you.

You can’t take the language literally. You gotta see that he is using language to point you to look within your own experience. Take what he is saying and self inquire over how it relates to your experience. Don’t try to believe, that’s a trap at this level of discourse. He even says so at the beginning. This is a well done story about enlightenment. But belief and being are apples and oranges, so you need to be reading between the lines too. Awareness is not a concept. The void is you. It’s an Awareness that can become “self conscious.” You are a self aware field of no-thingness — empty awareness. Look inside! You’re not gonna get any deeper understanding with theory on this point. You gotta look inside and just be aware more. Mindfulness over thoughts — being able to deconstruct the illusions — takes you far in this work I’ve found. How does what he is saying describe you? That’s where you’re gonna get the cash-value of the theory he presents. Otherwise you’re stuck in ideology mode, which side-steps the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is: you are that void he is talking about. This is not mere trading in beliefs. It’s a way of pointing you to observe yourself deeper. You are something very different from what you have assumed you are. Learn this by careful observation, careful mindfulness, at this point. The theory is useful, no doubt; but you gotta do the observing part a lot too. Lots and lots of observing, lots and lots of mindfulness. That’s what I’ve been doing for a while now myself — and man it’s paying off!