Joseph Maynor

There's a huge problem with being paradigm-locked in the rationalist paradigm trying to understand the Absolute. Make sure you kick away the theory and just be the Absolute, be God. Enlightenment is about being the Truth, not understanding the truth. There is no right theory of enlightenment, they're all stories. You can't communicate being, you gotta be being. Be the higher self and God simultaneously. Like 2 sides of the same coin -- reality has no distinctions. Talking about enlightenment is like engaging in metaphorical dancing – it mindlessly amuses itself at cross-purposes to the Truth. God laughs at our beliefs masquerading as the Truth. Similar to quietly and nervously chuckling at a naive child enthusiastically communicating some half-baked insight. It don't work like that kid, we snort internally. The lesson I get from Leo's video "Understanding Absolute Infinity Volume 1" is the stupidity of trying to conceptualize the Absolute. Really, all that video does is give massive reasons why not to try and do this. That was my ultimate takeaway. I had to watch that video like 4 or 5 times to get that. Reality is arational. The rational mind will never conceptualize reality. It's overconfidence to the insane degree. It's like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Concepts and enlightenment don't like each other at all. But then all concepts are part of reality too, so enlightenment does, in part, have a conceptual component, a paradoxical result. Saying it doesn't would pooh-pooh the importance of theory in enlightenment, which is like ignoring the purple elephant sitting on your couch. How many enlightened people never studied any enlightenment theory? [crickets] Note: The distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual is also a dichotomy, a story. The theory canoe bridges the stream, but must be left on the opposite shore once the stream is safely crossed. Utilize the theory, but take great care not to cling to it too tightly or to identify with it too much. That's the key. Dynamic balance is the key. I like stories too, but learn to see through them for what they really are -- and that's what enlightenment is really all about! Enlightenment doesn't mean judging theory or tossing theory. It means becoming higher-conscious about what theory is existentially. Theory is not bad, what is bad is the way that we cling to and interpret theory. The true sage accumulates a vast amount of theory and knowledge, and he applies this wisdom in his life and embodies it. But he also knows theory's limitations and its true nature, and he knows how to dynamically cling to and release theory like a masterful unicyclist confidently navigating an uneven and uncertain path. So, the dichotomy of theory being good or bad is really low-conscious and stupid. It's conceptual, do you see that? It's a brain-fart of the rationalist paradigm. Here's the bottom line: Use and believe in theory freely, but don't become addicted to it and don't cling too tightly to it. Even this "advice" is a story. See? God laughs at this like an embarrassed parent witnessing their child make a huge spectacle. Video on point:

Heck yeah. They're all good. Here's a good early one. The Charged Life. And then -- Be Prolific.

There's a dynamic balance between knowing and not-knowing that you must find in your life. A dynamic balance between theory and practice. It's all about having that right balance in the moment. The harmonization of the Tao, the synergy and harmonization of Yin and Yang. Where reasonable judgment and practicality merge. Too much theory and you become a nut. Too little theory and you become a brute. Watch all of these if you want to learn about the big -picture standpoint in personal development regarding knowing versus not knowing. A lot of people never get to this level of awareness, they remain controlled by their beliefs and ideologies. The ego is very, very sneaky! You gotta get to the point where you know how to treat beliefs in your life basically. It's both complex and very simple paradoxically, and that's because once you see reality for what it is, the problem dissolves. You will feel like 100 pounds were lifted from your shoulders. Right idea, right time, right result, right feeling, right insight. Balance that unicycle! Show us what that thang can do. Pop a wheelie! Get to the point where you can pop a wheelie. Right practice is key. Right daily-routines.

I think stage yellow is the first high-consciousness or enlightened stage. Yellow sees the paradox of reality, which comes from non-dual consciousness. Yellow is not stuck in the rationalist paradigm and sees everything as inter-connected systemically. Yellow has very high-awareness and is also very comfortable with facing reality head on. That's what causes systems thinking. Yellow is interested in finding sustainable, systemic solutions to the problems that they care about. Personal development and self-help theory is a stage yellow system. You're rigging-in little permanent solution modules (routines) to address certain pin-pointed underlying problems in the distributed system which is you. But what separates yellow from orange is yellow acts with selfless rather than egoic motives. Yellow keeps stage green's dream of helping to advance humanity, contributing to humanity, to the greater good, in some way. Yellow is a higher-consciousness stage orange basically. Now you can kind of see where stage turquoise is born out of. Yellow becoming more collectivist is one arrow of change. The solo-flier becomes a synergizer.

Don't prejudge so much. Follow your intuition and stop trying to control the future on this. You don't know what lies ahead. It's like trying to grow up faster than Nature intends. Let it unfold naturally. There is nothing existentially bad about success or fame. It all depends on whether it's authentic to you or not.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

@How to be wise I don't think so. What hinders enlightenment is closed mindedness and lack of awareness, not high self esteem.

You need to fight bad illusion with good illusion so concepts are necessary for enlightenment theory and practice. Don't fool yourself. The key is that you have to know when to get out of the theory and set yourself free so you can transcend YOUR ego, which is where the rubber meets the road with enlightenment, not further study. Has anybody become enlightened without concepts? I don't think so. Having a lot of theory will expedite your enlightenment, assuming the theory is good theory. What would otherwise take 50 years may take 5 weeks. So, theory is important. What is important is to not cling to it tightly. You gotta learn how to hold theory and beliefs loosely. That's the ENTIRE problem. It's not theory, it's how we hold the theory that is wrong. We wanna cling too hard to theory. Like a baby clawing for its comforting blanket.