Joseph Maynor

@Zephyr I agreee with you 100%. What do you think about predestination?

@PetarKa No. There is a voice you can hear if you are listening. Watch Leo's video "How to harness your intuition". The Tao speaks in a still, small voice. This is the voice of God -- your intuition. Now I realize that religious people have confused intuition with concepts and ideologies. But I digress.

Awareness is a muscle and has to be worked out every day. Most people have weak awareness muscles. A few have strong ones. Awareness is a physical activity, a practice. You gotta approach awareness like weight-lifting. If you don't do it, it creates a lot of self-delusion which leads you to feeling awful, making crap choices, and taking bad actions. Increasing awareness turns this downward spiral into an upward spiral in due time. There is no other possible outcome in the long run. But you gotta be patient.

@gogoladze1929 The problem is is that there is no you. Wu wei is the only sustainable solution to obstacles. Embracing the Tao. Just watching reality move. And raising awareness. Will power is non-sustainable because it is an egoist concept. There is no you to control. So control is an egoic illusion too. There is no you, no willpower, and no control. What you are is outside of space and time. Reality arises out of you, and any sense of identity you may have is a thought mistakenly construed as an aspect of reality.

@Loreena Early age? Maybe. If I didn't screw up and experiment so much earlier in life I don't think I would be as wise now. People too focused in life run the risk of being raised in a monastery or bubble and never make the mistakes that are necessary for full and deep wisdom later on in life. Youth is meant to be exploratory, egoic, and damaging. Otherwise what context do you really have to grow away from? So yeah, be careful with sheltering yourself too much when you are young. Make a bunch of mistakes when you are young so you can get at the truth as you age. Then you grow into something truly wise. Someone who's been there, seen that, done that, and overcome that. You'll dwarf all the sheltered kids in wisdom by a mile.

@gogoladze1929 This advice is more for the newbie to intermediate personal development person. Advanced advice runs on a different paradigm entirely. Without enlightenment experience, advanced advice falls on deaf ears. You appear to be advanced from your comment. In that case, yeah what I said might seem to apply only to the kiddies. But you gotta start somewhere. What I posted is how I did it in my beginner/intermediate stage. Enlightenment work, or advanced personal development, puts you in a totally different paradigmatic bubble. But it takes a few years to become advanced. People need personal development training-wheels in the meantime. That's what I posted. A hack, as I like to call it. A temporary fix. So, yeah, it's not permanently sustainable. But it gets you moving. Enlightenment reveals that all obstacles are illusory. Willpower is also illusory and therefore moot.

Consider this: Tao is the merging of yin and yang. It is the harmony that emerges from this union and is deeply creative. It is the absolute expression of love. Tao guides thr wise moment by moment. The foolish are lost and can't see clearly. (Exerpted from the Tao Box by Priya Hemenway) How do these ideas compare with Zen or Advaitan concepts?

@kieranperez Watch every video Leo did with enlightenment or enlightened in the title. And watch the Neti Neti video. There's like 10 videos you gotta watch. And do the exercises as Leo guides you in the videos. This will give you some solid context. Also watch Leo's video on Contemplation. That one is right up your alley.

Visualize starting the project. Create a list of 10 things that you will gain by starting the project and completing it. This will increase your optimism regarding the task. Contemplate the suffering you are causing yourself by not doing it. Contemplate how you have overestimated the size of the fear or pain that is standing in your way of you beginning the project. Break down the task into small bite sized pieces. Strategize and write the steps down on index cards and lay these cards down into a sequence or straight line. Throw each card away as you complete each sub-task. Don't beat yourself up, calm your self down and give yourself some love before starting the task. Get into a flow state as quickly as possible regarding the task so your whole being just does it mindlessly. Do some affirmations like "I'm always taking action". "I'm always taking action". Utilize the 5 minute rule. If you have a project that is causing you resistance, spend 5 minutes on it everyday. That will get you over the hump of the resistance. Once you get over that hump, flow with it and just ride that wave. The task will take care of itself. Use a timer! 5 full minutes, don't cheat -- everyday. Often what blocks willpower is initial resistance to get started. That's the secret to willpower, getting over that initial hump. That's what I've tried to give you some tools to use for here. It works for me.

Leo. Emerald. And then a bunch of study into Philosophy. I try to stay away from too many "gurus". Leo is excellent and so are Emerald's videos. I think those materials are probably enough for a primer by any one guru. At some point you gotta become your own guru. No shepard following. That's for Stage Blue or Stage Orange folks. I don't know how Leo or Enerald feel about being labeled gurus either. Both are fiercely independent thinkers, which is what you wanna become too. I do want to read Osho. He seems like a wise, original cat right up my alley. I don't want to get caught up in too much of the non-dual religion, cultish aspects. That's a trap that many people miss. No following, only leading remember that. You gotta become your own authority, the only real authority.

No. Liberation is transcending the ego through awareness. There is no you avoiding anything. That's an illusion. Ego exists inside awareness and it's only by increasing awareness that one can see the ego for the illusion that it is, and then our subconscious mind is forced to re-wire itself.

@Leo Gura I agree with this sentiment 100%. Be your own guru first and foremost. Never give up that spot for someone else to fill. That is intellectual dependency. Be eclectic in your studies. You may have favorites, but no allegiances. This is where I think religions have their origin point as human systems. The function is thought-in-a-box, prepackaged thought systems.

@AleksM I'm almost done with my third time through all Leo's videos. Now I get everything. Repetition is what's important. On and the one that have written transcripts, I read those too. Every video before right after the enlightenment contains a written transcript of the videos.

@Martin123 Thank you. But I no longer need love. I don't think love is the natural state either like a lot of others do. Love is egoic. Even self love is egoic. What you want is acceptance not love per se.

I'm going to print this out. Good practical work. Thanks for sharing this.

If we are nothingness there is no time applicable to that, or space. Space and time are part of the illusion of identity. We are the source of what ultimately makes the concept of time meaningful. Time comes out of nothingness and dissolves back into it.

Watch all of Leo's videos with subconscious in the title (there are 3 or 4). The video on self image. The video on how to stop backsliding. Leo taught me all I need to know about the subconscious mind.

Stoicism -- Seneca. Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus is probably the best of the three, in my opinion. Buddhism -- The Four Noble Truths. Chan/Zen. Nagarjuna. Theravada. Mahayana. The Heart Sutra. The Dhammapada. Hinduism -- Advaita Vedanta. Maharshi. Shankara. Openness to eclecticism unlike most other "religions". Taoism/ Neo-Taoism -- Tao Te Ching. Chuang Tsu. Mohism -- The Mozi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi Confucianism/ Neo-Confucianism -- The Analects. The Mencius. The Zunxi by Xun Kuang . The The concept of Li. The concept of Qi (or "chi" as we usually call it). Zhu Xi. Wang yangming. "Instructions for Practical Living" by Wang Yangming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Xi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Yangming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(Confucianism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(Neo-Confucianism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi The theory of Yin/Yang -- This goes back to the I Ching, way before Tao Tsu (Ying/Yang really isn't mentioned in the Tao Te Ching). Chinese Folk Religion (Until you travel to China and Taiwan you will not be able to appreciate this fully). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_folk_religion Pyrrho. Aristotle's concept of Eudaimonia. Ralpf Waldo Emerson -- advanced an individualist transcendental vision. Thoreau -- You haven't really read a book until you read Walden. The Beat Poets -- Took the ideas of Emerson and Thoreau and lived them. Transformed world culture. The invention of hipster mindset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation Wittgenstein -- Read Ray Monk's book The Duty of Genius. His life is worth study. Unitarian Universalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism John Dewey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey William James https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James

@Shanmugam Epistemology is just the theory of knowledge. It's a sub-subject within Philosophy.

Happiness is the reciprocal of ego. The lower the ego is the higher happiness is. The higher the ego is the lower happiness is.

@Loreena Where even though you lack ego you're not a zombie, weirdo, or a renunciate either. Some of the enlightened people I see on the Internet (not here) seem to be autistics that have fooled themselves. And I'm not against enlightenment either. I'm on the path myself.

@Shanmugam Ok. You and I are in different realities then. That's ok. I'm not assuming my perspective is the absolute perspective. But I don't think I was unclear either. That's a deep stretch. Let's not fool ourselves.

I hear some people believing this. Or saying things along these lines. Please expound for me.

I think you make great points. It's like -- don't get so wise that your brain liquefies and leaks out of your skull. You heard that? You gotta understand Epistemology. Even Indian Philosophy is rich in Epistemology. Leo has done some great videos on the subject. People aren't grounded in Epistemology, and then they are out-to-sea in a way. Un-moored. Get into Philosophy. Watch this video. Another beautiful video on point

@WelcometoReality Haha. Now, you may be the one asking the philosophical question here. He was pretty clear in his post what he means. And furthermore its in his head, and not communicable to you directly.