Joseph Maynor

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.

There really is not a subconscious mind. That's just a useful term for novices to understand that their conscious mind is not themselves. Or they are not their conscious mind, the inverse is also true. All reality flows through emptiness. You are emptiness. Therefore, you are all reality. This seems totally sound to me.

Ok. Let me take a stab at this. If you're nothingness and all creation comes out of nothingness, then everything created came out of you. Simple eh? Look at awareness. Reality is populating awareness. Reality comes out of awareness.

@Nahm Awesome! I gotta keep an open mind as I plunge inside! I'm gonna start doing this heavily in like 30 days. Between now and then I'm played my the role of the seeker.

@Loreena Seneca and Epictetus are awesome. Get the "Discourses" by Epictetus. It'll change your life!

Me: Spinoza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza Heidegger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger Schopenhauer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer Santayana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana Bergson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson Dewey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey

I can appreciate this. You seem like you've made some huge progress. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater regarding thought though. Now that you see thought for what it is, you don't have to be scared that it will mislead you anymore. You can play with thought like an architect plays with building materials. And then you can revel in your cathedrals without believing that they are living beings. I see a lot of fear of thought on this forum. The truly enlightened person should be able to do philosophy mindful of its purpose and limitations. This is where Stage Blue (or Green) becomes Stage Turquoise. Turquoise is not dogmatic nor scared of thought. Blue is scared of thought and tries to banish it from discourse. Green has a tendency to be dogmatic too, stuck on relativism, which is a paradigm in itself. They will deny this, but they tend to practice it and gravitate towards it. Thought is not evil, it just needs to be caveated properly. Just like lions are not evil, they just need to be caveated properly. So, watch out for your own paradigms. I notice that a lot of Advaita/ Zen folks have a bad paradigm regarding thought. Awareness and contemplation over this issue would serve some of you more "religious" folks. Religious thinking has no place in Turquoise consciousness. Be mindful of your own substandard paradigms too. You can always improve something. Just when you think you got it all figured out, think again. Reality speaks in shades of grey. Being against thought is just as bad as being an armchair-philosopher. And any of these "views" always sits at cross-purposes to reality anyway. Reality includes thought. Let's acknowledge that fully and not bury our heads in the sand like blind religious folks over this issue. Thought is not bad. It's our interpretation of thought that is bad. There's a key difference there! Being a thinker, even a theorist, or a philosopher, is necessary if you really want to have the highest awareness possible. But there are a lot of over-thinkers that never become enlightened, so I get that, and that justifies your fear against thought. However, I think a lot of people miss the issue I am trying to communicate here, and I'm going out of my way to spell it out carefully here, and here it is: Don't get paradigm-locked against thinking, theorizing, or philosophizing. Learn how to use these items in your own life when they are appropriate. That's the wiser paradigm. I humbly speak from my own perspective and from what resonates with me only. I'm not putting this out there like it's an objective truth for everybody. But I felt like this perspective needs to be communicated to expose a very nasty trap. It's a common trap, but a lot of folks appear to be blind to it. Blindness to the trap itself is the worst kind of trap. It's like walking blind without a cane; and additionally, not even being aware of one's own blindness! // I like this part of your post. I took the liberty of re-organizing it below. Print it out folks. I didn't tweak your language (but you should always double space after periods, it will improve your writing dramatically): How to become enlightened FAST Your(ego), your sense of self will not survive this process. You are reality. Don't seek too much information, seek massive transformation. To destroy the ego you have to be in the being state, and if you want results with enlightenment fast, you have to have a serious intent to raise your consciousness. You have to be this awareness continuously to get rid of all thoughts. This means that it's harder to become enlightened by being aware just when you’re doing your traditional meditation practice for up to 60 minutes or 3 hours or even 5 hours. Reality is so fucking simple you will NEVER understand it with thought. Understanding awareness with the mind is like lighting up the sun with a cigarette lighter. After I got enlightened I became aware how the body just moves automatically without me thinking anything (hearing mental sounds). I was like shit, I have a lot of work to do to undo all of that programming. So I was starting to do more and more personal development and consciousness work simultaneously. Enlightenment changed nothing. Enlightenment just made me more aware of the functioning of existence, how everything is happening without effort inside me. At that point your mind and ego die, because you surrender to effortlessness and ego and mind is all about effort. So after you become enlightened everything you could accomplish is effortless. You really don't need any thought anymore to function and succeed in life. So... that means you don't have to go to meditate in a cave for 30 years. You can do your life purpose and enlightenment simultaneously. Yes it's hard but if you apply everything I am talking about here you will be enlightened extremely fast. You have to become increasingly aware moment to moment and maintain that intention for a few months. To not pay attention to the content of awareness but to awareness. And after that you will arrive in utopia, you will want to go back but you'll recognize that you can't. You have embodied that which is permanent. The mind surrendered to consciousness. Ask yourself how conductive you are. If you want to be enlightened fast, you need to drop all resistance and drop arising resistances for extended periods of time with awareness, by observation, without being judgmental, attached, not building any meaning when thoughts arise, not labeling anything as good or bad for your own gain (because when you do you start constructing meaning and that is illusion), not gossiping not comparing yourself with others, not creating a sense of linearity, being aware that your're not what you sense as yourself, existence cannot be perceived with senses it's only through consciousness. Have a serious intent at the start, like your life depends on it. As you become more and more conscious this seriousness will vanish and all that will be left is playfulness. You will start playing with all of the content of awareness and not seriously indulge in it by assigning it meaning, thinking of it good or bad. You will be detached, and after a while that detachment will become automatic, a part of you. This intent must be present for long periods of time, uninterruptedly.

Here's my current ones: 1. Awareness alone is curative. 2. The ego and it's self-deception is the only obstacle. 3. Obstacles are egoic illusions and don't exist in reality. 4. Ego causes all suffering. How is my identity producing the suffering I am experiencing right now? 5. Happiness is the reciprocal of ego. 6. Always do what's emotionally difficult. 7. The better the model the bigger the problem. 8. Trust in your own innate creative capacities. 9. Flatten all thoughts. 10. The identity is not a real entity. It is an illusion. 11. Enlightenment is the only sustainable strategy that removes personal development obstacles. 12. Strengthen your awareness muscle by observing all day. 13. The ego thrives on control. Let go of control. 14. Your actions are dictated 95% by the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can be re-trained by using repetition. Like a dog. 15. You are a conflicted system maintaining homeostasis. By raising awareness the web of beliefs starts to restructure itself naturally. 16. The conscious mind should be mostly concerned with training the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind does all the heavy lifting to change your life. 17. 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. 18. Strengthen your visualization muscle by visualizing the results of your goals all day, as needed. 19. Don't underestimate or discount the power that making one little change has to transform your life. You tend to overwhelm yourself. Little changes snowball into big changes. 20. Strengthen your strategizing muscle by being mindful of strategic intent all day, as needed.

@Natasha I agree. I think some people do hold this kind of belief though. I've seen it and heard it here and elsewhere. And even if this is in the paradigm of thought, it might still be fruitful to try to put it into words. At the worst, it will be fun. At best we might discover something. I'm hoping somebody who believes this will give it a shot.

I would slow down. Do one pillar per week or every 2 weeks. Take your time with the sentence completion items. Make sure to record yourself or write down your responses. I recorded myself on my phone. That gave me very intuitive responses because I didn't have to worry about writing the responses down. That sentence completion material will give you a lot of fodder to strategize the rest of your personal development. With sentence completion, what you are doing is peering into your subconscious mind to take a look at beliefs that are running in the background for you that you may not even be conscious of, so you don't want to rush that process. You are gaining awareness of your subconscious beliefs basically, uncovering them. Once you gain fuller awareness of these beliefs, you can then figure out how to unwire some of the limiting beliefs from your psyche. You can target certain beliefs and work to unwire them. You can do this with re-programming your subconscious mind and with enlightenment work.