Joseph Maynor

Nah. You need it. Enlightenment is a necessary element for self-transcendence and self-actualization, Maslow's highest stages. Enlightenment is about reality. It's not just some hacky happiness theory. You become happy when you get clarity about reality. You'll realize all your problems are in your own head, and you'll be flummoxed to witness all these formerly cancerous obstacles drop away and release like dead leaves from a fall tree.

I see it without psychedelics. Not trying to brag by any means. Here's the paradox -- it's both the most complicated and least complicated thing ever✌? You gotta experience what all this poetry is pointing you to. The infinite field of oneness. The conceptionless present field of awareness. Be it. You gotta be it. Turn the conceptual mind off and be it. The finite and the infinite are one. Start to see how you and God are both distinct and the same. Another paradox. But again you gotta be this, the theory is just pointing you to be the Truth. Even seeing the truth is too conceptual. You are the Truth. Nothing is hidden.

What is preventing you from doing X? What is preventing you from getting new paying clients? What is preventing you from finding that BIG life purpose? What is preventing you from getting that hot girlfriend? Why is this question -- What is preventing you from doing X ?-- so powerful

I'm pretty sure the lower 4 chakras are the ones I need to work on most. I'd like to start with root and work up to heart.

What about this one -- believing that you have limiting beliefs at all. You have no limiting beliefs unless you believe that you have limiting beliefs. You're not gonna get this until you work on spiritual enlightenment, but it is a little taste of why enlightenment is important in personal development. Thought doesn't limit reality.

@sleeperstakes What is your cause and purpose in your life? What is the trajectory of your life?

I've watched Leo's video on Law of Attraction as well. I am very practical minded and follow procedures or rules very well. Can somebody give me a procedure for practicing law of attraction? Like, let's assume I am going to be sitting down with pen in hand for 20 minutes per day to do law of attraction work, what would you advise me to do? I'm excited to hear your responses! I want to start integrating in this practice because it "sounds good" although time will tell for me whether it works or not. I'm willing to give it a college try.

I find that the Blueprint contains a lot of the Yang principles that complement the more Yin principles of Enlightenment. The Tao is a harmonizing of Yang and Yin -- of fucking the world and accepting the world. There's a proper balance there for personal development. Focusing on enlightenment too much is like having too much Yin. Don't forget about Yang. Living a big life, going out there and taking massive action to change the world, is Yang. The Blueprint reflects a lot of Yang. Early Leo was a lot more Yang. You need to harmonize Yin and Yang to become one with the Tao. We are both God and Man, ego-less and ego. Don't try to deny the latter to the exclusion of the former. Embrace this paradox and work both sides of it. That's the biggest picture of personal development. The wisest perspective. I see a danger of people spiritually bypassing in Yin and not going out there and living a big life and changing the world. That takes big balls and massive action, it takes Yang. Our lives should be sacrificed to Highlighting artworks of Maya, yes, but let's be that firework that is spectacular not the firework that hides in the Self. No hiding and taking the easy road, the in your head road! We owe it to give ourselves to the world and work our asses off every day to be all we can be. This ain't no inward psychedelic trip, this is outward raw action and raw results. Live out, out, out. That's the correction of Yang to Yin. Harmonize both and you will be truly great. Heroes do not live in their heads, they have the courage and energy and action to manifest in the world. Manifest! Get out of the excuse of being introverted, that's an insidious limiting belief and trap. Do or not do, there is no try. Heroes do. Heroes don't spiritually bypass. Always do what's emotionally most difficult to do. Balancing the unicycle over terrain is balancing Yin and Yang as well as awareness enables us to. And realizing that reality transcends Yin and Yang, but is also approximated by their harmonization. The harmonization of will and no will, self and no self, knowing and not knowing, action and non-action, selfishness and selflessness, theory and practice, mind and body, ego and no ego, the existential and the practical. That beautiful dynamic balance that the true master of personal development proves to us on the unicycle. Wow! -- such amazing skill, how did he get so good, we wonder? By daily practice of true dynamic balancing, that's how. Yin and yang: that succulent admixture of both at the right place and the right time -- like a masterful chef intuitively sprinkling-in just the right actions to manifest a great dish. A glorious showcasing of Maya. He brings the sculpture out of the marble as it were. Don't overlook Yang! True art is your outward results. Your life should be that artwork. Your only job is to manifest you, all of you, in this world, a highlighting of a beautiful object in Maya, to hold and to keep forever. True Immortality. All your inner-work is secondary and petty compared to this commitment. This outward-focused commitment to excellence, contribution, and selflessness. Watch this video on point: Some great ideas about Yin and Yang by Emerald. Another mandatory video on point: Excellent video about Yang.

Haha. Baby step it. Spend 5 mins per day working on the binder to start. The surefire way of beating procrastination is to touch everything that you want to be working on everyday for 5 minutes. Procrastination is an irrational fear that gains a foothold when we put things off, when we resist touching them. I call this fear irrational because the fear snowballs as we resist getting started. Then when we bust through that fear we realize how we have greatly over-estimated how hard the task was to do. Procrastination can be avoided by preventing this fear from developing in the first place.

Anything to do with being self-employed. Create your own job. Find a way to be an abundance of value in a manner that makes wallets crack. It's that simple. Sit behind a computer, talk on the phone, make some artifact or provide some service that pays you some sustainable dividends. Try to find a skill that you can commit to master your whole life.

Stage Yellow is all about systems thinking. Stage Yellow is also enlightened, I don't see how they could not be. Some ideas that I have collated about systems that might interest you: 1. Systems are all about balance and harmony. 2. Systems respond to outside forces in complex ways. 3. There are no absolute truths for Stage Yellow. All there is is a bunch of partial perspectives. And every perspective is partial. 4. Almost everything can be thought of as a system. Almost all problems are systemic problems. 5. Belief in your beliefs is dogma and it's what is holding back every stage below Stage Yellow. 6. Stage Yellow is ecological in their thinking. 7. Systems work in counter-intuitive ways. They don't work in overly simplistic ways. 8. When there's a larger system at work that we don't understand, this is a cause of failure and problems. 9. Stage Yellow realizes that life is paradoxical. 10. Stage Yellow sees the world as perspectives and in shades of grey and sees the world as systems to solve the problems that they care about. 11. Systems resist you trying to change them. 12. The dogmatic person, every stage under Stage Yellow, pulls out the pitchfork when somebody offends them or attacks their worldview. This is an adversarial relationship with reality and life. Instead of getting defensive, look over what was said and see if there is something there or a way to expand your model or growth to cover the new facts. Stage Yellow has a robust model of the world. And Stage Yellow always assumes that they could be wrong and is open-minded. 13. The ego is a system. 14. If you feel that your perspective of the world is the Truth, you are not at Stage Yellow. 15. Stage Yellow sees the world from the perspective of interconnected systems. These systems interact with each other in interesting and counter-intuitive ways. The subconscious mind is also a system. To change a system you have to understand it first to avoid traps. 16. Think of systems as organisms and meta-organisms. 17. You are a conflicted system maintaining homeostasis. By raising awareness, the web of beliefs starts to restructure itself naturally. 18. When you get angry, stop and look at the big picture. Your point of view is not the dominant point of view. So what you judge as evil is not what evil is. There are no divisions. Your partition gets encroached upon because it's part of a larger system where encroachment happens. 19. Systems thinking requires that you start to step outside your self-centered view of the world. You have to be conscious enough to step outside of your own value system and genuinely care about other beings besides yourself and your tribe. 20. Systems are non-linear. This means that they are unpredictable and chaotic. 21. Stage Yellow gives up rationalism and absolute truth. 22. You're a distributed system not a centralized system. 23. Set realistic, pragmatic expectations regarding making change in your life. Expect that your subconscious mind and body systems will play tricks on you to resist the change to maintain homeostasis. 24. Think of everything as a system. 25. Problems are systemic and not personal. Poorly designed systems are creating the problems.

Curious

YES. Do it. It's a great capsule outline of personal development. I'm a fan. And I like the videos Leo did for the blueprint.

Yes, look into enlightenment. Leo has great videos on enlightenment. Enlightenment is the major key to personal development; although not the only key. There are many, many other little niggly keys to uproot and find in personal development than enlightenment.

You gotta create your new daily routines from your ideas. And take consistent action, to see improved results. But the key takeaway is you have to turn ideas into daily routines or you just wind-up dreaming instead of accomplishing. Everything needs to become a daily routine in personal development eventually to yield sustainable results. Try to implement a couple new habits and baby step them in as new daily routines.

@Loreena Here's one I was using for a while. I kind of outgrew it, but I used it for years. It's called Swipes If you like to do lists, this one is for you. It is great because you can organize your tasks in a way that allows you to swipe them off lists, and even into other lists as you need to. Highly recommended. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swipes-to-do-task-list-plan-achieve-goals/id657882159?mt=8

It feeds the ego and is just one more addiction and source of pain. I also imagine it would get annoying to be recognized in public. Happiness comes from being, from within, not from being "well known" by strangers. However, if your life purpose is to change the world, then fame would be a necessary element in that perhaps. So, in that case it might be good. Good and bad regarding fame depend very heavily on context and on motives for being famous. It could very well be a great thing for the right person in the right context to be famous.

@Girzo The School of Athens. I actually saw this in Rome. It's in the Vatican, the same place where the Sistine Chapel is located -- Not the same room, a different room. My life purpose is to write a philosophy book. It looks like a painting on canvass but actually it's not. It's actually a wall fresco. And it's huge. It's in a series of rooms that have these same kinds of frescoes, one after the other, with different content and subject matter. I think they're called the Raphael Rooms. He painted all of the frescos, or most of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Rooms

I am always taking action.

Read this, preferably several translations. At least 4 different translations. There is a lot of wisdom here if you really want to be a sage. Probably the most important thing to read for the advanced personal development student. The super-advanced personal development student. I'll share a little story here that I heard. Lao Tsu was on the run trying to get into India and he was stopped by the border guards on the China side, and they said -- Lao, our friend, please, leave us with something to keep from you as you are leaving us. So, Lao Tsu, puzzled by this, scribbled down the Tao Te Ching to expedite his passage out of China. So, that's what the Tao Te Ching is. Lao Tsu being forced to craft the infinite in a minute. But even then -- it is incredible! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching The modern way of writing Lao Tsu is Laozi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi Leo. This is where advanced personal development starts. Watch.

It happens to everybody. I had one too that lasted a few days to a week after my first enlightenment re-shuffling. Your sense of who you are is changing, so it is kind of like a death. That's why it is so painful. You are grieving a part of you that is dying. But that part of you was never real, it was only beliefs. So, you will go through an existential crisis, and a lot of weird psychological stuff when this first happens to you. I think I went through the 7 stages of grief. And then I was so angry that I lived a lie for so long. And I was also relieved. And sad, grieving, etc. Then I went through a Zen Devil phase for a couple of weeks afterward, so watch out for that!

@How to be wise Having a large ego is better than having a small ego for ego-transcendence work. This is counter-intuitive. It's almost like the best way to live is to have a large ego but be able to see through it so well that you almost always mitigate unreasonable conduct. Paradoxically you need a large ego to be successful, but that doesn't mean that you have to act on it. That's the key point! Awareness alone is curative. Use the ego to attain your higher virtues and outer-worldy (Yang) ends, but at the same time deepen your connection to Truth such that it pervades your entire experience -- so your prolific results are karmically sound. You do want to fuck the world, but you want to do it nicely. And that puts you on the horns of the paradox -- you both need ego and need to transcend ego to be truly successful in life. A proper balance between Yin (No ego) and Yang (Ego) is needed to harmonize with the Tao. Non-duality includes duality. The Absolute is the perspectiveless perspective. Watch. I learned a lot from the below video on the issue of what Ego-Transcendence really is. "A strong ego can ride above the wave, and actually ride the wave of life. A weak ego gets crushed under the wave of life." Also watch Also watch Also watch. This is a good intro to what Yang is.

Can you see this? Any reason would presuppose a perspective is the absolute perspective, which is impossible because reality is not dictated to by thought in any way. Now here's a more advanced question, should this conclusion be held loosely or is it more or less certain, existentially speaking?

@Loreena People who are too against concepts, theories, beliefs, and Philosophy are being dogmatic in their own right. They run the risk of being Stage Blue beings. The true skeptic holds all beliefs loosely and focuses on Eudaimonia. Yes, even non-dual beliefs. Some people don't grasp this yet. Enlightenment is not the main-course, it's an element in a larger system -- the system of your developing awareness and improved actions. So, even non-duality comes full circle back to duality and ego. We transcend the ego mentally but not bodily. And that's as it should be. That's reality. Enlightenment is the perspective that makes self-actualization possible. It's the secret-password for true happiness. But the result, the main-course as it were -- is YOUR improved little egoic life, is it not? That's what we're really doing with all this stuff if we take the rose-colored glasses off and take a sober look at things. I think people really miss the big picture with all this personal development stuff. They get stuck on various ledges up the mountain-side and set up camp and never get to the very tip-top -- which is where you can get a 365 degree view of everything. Enlightenment is an element of personal development, not the other way around! This is one of the most recent epiphanies I've had. So non-duality really does include duality. Thus, conceptual thinking is necessary and good. It just has to be INTERPRETED the right way by a human monkey-mind and held loosely. Guns don't kill people. And neither do concepts. Neither does Philosophy. It's US that is the problem, not concepts, not Philosophy. The problem is in the rigidity that we want to hold concepts, theories, and beliefs. And that's a different issue! A lot of people miss this critical distinction. There is a larger system at work folks -- that system is your improved actual life, not some fantasy enlightened "thought-story" life you might dream about. Even Eckhart Tolle puts his pants on one leg at a time every morning.