Joseph Maynor

@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.

Instead of meditating once per day, meditate 4 or 5 times per day, spaced out, at 15 mins each. No pun intended on 'spaced out'.

What is clear to an enlightened person is gonna sound vague to a newbie. So, some of this is necessary. Vagueness is often a function of how long or short a person's shore of reference is. To a child, even traditional self-help concepts will sound vague. To an enlightened person, certain vague sounding words or sentences will be clear.

Freedom from identification with the Mind and emotions. Direct perception of reality without all the mental filters. A feeling of total liberation.

San Francisco

"What am I?" is better. A who is a perspective. A what is a thing -- or no-thing. This is what Neti-Neti gets at. Not this, not that. What am I? Am I this feeling that I am a thing? No, because there are moments of Being where that feeling is absent. Am I this wacky, conceptual Mind? Well no, because there are moments where I experience no monkey-mind or thinking. If Being exists without something, then that something is not me. Stuff that can fall away and leave me be is not me. Get into a state of flow and watch all your distinctions vanish. Notice that you become uncentered too in a flow state -- your boundaries about where you start and end disapear (causing a feeling of expansion, a feeling of one-ness with everything). This is because you have arms-lengthed the Mind-Matrix. Most of the time the Mind-Matrix has you by the balls (or ovaries for women reading this). But get into a state of flow and just observe from that place. It will change your life as it did mine. Notice how much the Mind-Matrix interferes in Being when you settle-out of the natural state of flow -- where you start to want to look at reality as a duality instead of its natural non-duality. Flow gets you pointed in the right direction to see how much the Mind-Matrix rubricizes reality and augments reality. Instead of realizing these are overlays on top of Being, we believe they are Being itself. The Ego uses the Mind-Matrix to paste the illusion of duality over non-duality. When you are in a flow state ask -- what am I? Where am I? What is real? How does the Mind influence what is real by adding in beliefs to Being? How does the Mind carve up Being in arbitrary, human ways? Also ask, Is Being physical? What is physicality? You'll see that the Mind overlays physicality on top of Being. Start to look at reality as it is, not as the Mind is telling you that it is.

When you take the mental filters off, then you can freely know and act. The Mind is a great tool, and it should be used as such. The problem is that the Ego promotes conceptual knowledge too highly, to the point where we forget what it's like to know in more natural ways -- like when you are in a state of flow: knowing without knowing and doing without doing. In flow you know without knowing and do without doing, You can also express it like this which reveals the illusory mental dualities: not-knowing knowing; not-doing doing.

Do you feel expanded at all? When you discover Being, it's like all your boundaries float away from you and you expand out to everything and nothing at once. You'll feel it. It's not a casual moment. It's an oh shit! this is what it is! moment that you need. You're rooting around in the right pasture though. Keep exploring.

Maybe you are overthinking too much in advance here. Steve Jobs didn't know he was gonna build the IPhone at the infancy of his career. The Ego is sabotaging you with all this Mind-Matrix stuff. Just put something together and start moving forward. Let the path give up insights as you traverse it. Don't get so hung up on paralysis by analysis. Be an explorer.

When the ego melts away there is still true intuition. (True intuition as distinct from egoic intuition). True Intuition can be channeled. True Intuition is not linked 100% to the ego. You never get rid of the ego entirely either. What you want to do is have one foot inside the illusion and one foot outside of it if that makes sense. Too much Yin turns you into a lazy slug. "Spiritual purification is the entire process of purifying your identity of your cravings, of your fears, of your deepest held beliefs and worldviews, and your sense of self-importance, your life story. Dropping all of that. Purifying all that away. Burning it away. So what you're left with is an empty vessel. And then you become a vehicle of the intuitive voice inside of you. You become a vehicle for the Muses." -- Leo

Keep doing self-help regardless. But you gotta do it, nobody can do your push-ups for you. Go to the shrink too, why not?

Meeting people is fine. But remember Personal Development has to be done by you. Nobody can do your push-ups for you. You can do this stuff without meeting others. It's probably best not to meet others personally. Just watch the videos, read some books, do the work and exercises, and participate on here. Ask all your questions on here. Many people are too afraid to fully participate on here. If you don't ask, you don't get feedback. That's what really slows you down. Your best knowledge is going to be epiphanies not theory anyway. You need to experience those shifts that come from exposure and hard work over a period of time. Personal Development is a life-long pursuit. I wouldn't even call it a marathon. Marathons are too short. I've been doing personal development work heavily for 4 or 5 years now. I've been doing it longer, but I want to be conservative. There's a difference between dabbling in personal development and doing heavy personal development work. You need to be doing heavy personal development work to get sustainable change, results, and success. Dabbling here or there might pique your interest, but it's not going to engage you in the way you need to be engaged to make sustainable changes in your life. The results you want in life have to be caused by your actions. So, you need to become the person that loves to take those actions. It's really that simple from a big-picture strategy standpoint. But you can think about this all day long, and dream about it, but that's not enough -- you gotta wake up every morning hungry to create it, that's the crucial difference. All the theory is supposed to lead you to becoming hungry to take the actions necessary to cause your dream life to become a reality. Video on point to watch:

They go together. You want your life purpose to be natural, to flow out of you. But you also have to construct your life purpose and commit to it everyday. Life purpose will flow out of the authentic you that you are discovering with your enlightenment work. Listen to your intuition. Try to find out what your top values are. Try to go inside and listen to that intuitive voice inside of you that knows a lot about what you could do with this life. Not everybody needs to become a monk. You can be enlightened and be a normal person. Leo is biased towards being a yogi, and that's fine, but realize that. You are not Leo. Don't try to copy him in all respects. You need to find you and then do you. Not all enlightened people need to sit in a cave and meditate all day. You can be enlightened and run a business like me or Leo or anyone else. You just gotta find yourself and hone your life around what you find. You don't really know yourself well yet, that's your biggest problem. Enlightenment helps you clear away some of the debris from getting clearer about who you are. But don't get so addicted to enlightenment work that you ignore life purpose work and the more traditional self-help work. There are three legs to the Personal Development stool -- (1) enlightenment work, (2) life purpose work, (3) traditional self-help work. You gotta cultivate all three of these areas to get your life together and moving forward. A sturdy foundation for your life rests on the cultivation of all three of these areas. Videos on point to watch:

I started realizing more and more that the Mind-Matrix, Monkey Mind, and Ego are not part of me as I once thought they were. The Mind makes you think it is you. It hunkers down front and center in your Being, imposing itself by setting up rabbit-holes everywhere, causing what we call "Monkey Mind", setting up the Ego Paradigm, and tricking you into thinking "the voice" is you. I discovered this doing "Do Nothing" meditation when I saw that there are times that thoughts disappear, yet I still exist, so I am not the Mind. The Mind is not me. The Mind is more like an intruder. You gotta be mindful of how the Mind augments Being. Be mindful of these augmentations and how they are attached to or clung to. Video on point to watch:

A lot of people ground their need to know and need to believe in Enlightenment, which turns it into another dogma. Spirituality is best when it is free from all that clinging. You wanna be unmoored spiritually, not trying to set an anchor. That will make you miserable and defeat your purpose.

Science is concerned primarily with testable theories, which puts it squarely within the arms of the Mind-Matrix. This is not bad, it's just pragmatic. The Mind-Matrix evolved to be pragmatic. Problems can arise when the Mind-Matrix tries to solve non-pragmatic problems.

I used to sit for hours and hours solving math problems. I loved it. I almost majored in math.

I don't talk about it with anybody. Only on here.

I am making a lot of progress in Enlightenment. I am living as Being more and more. Being in the sense of being mindful of reality and the variety of mental augmentations. Being able to separate the two. I feel totally liberated and happy. I'm also doing heavy personal development work, but I've been chasing the rabbit-hole of Enlightenment too. Awareness alone is curative. Let the shifts happen. It's amazing.

Any hypothesis is a thought, not Being. You gotta find Being stripped of all thought. Can you locate that? Find that. Hint -- you can find this when you meditate. Notice that there are times where reality sticks around even when all thoughts go away. Being is not dependent on thoughts at all.