Joseph Maynor

Maslow in his old-age added a higher stage than self-actualization to his hierarchy of needs pyramid. He termed it Self-Transcendence. How does this notion compare and contrast with Enlightenment?

@Key Elements So I wonder if Maslow became enlightened too at the end of his life. Just throwing it out there. Probably.

@Tano I'm new too. I think you just hit the quote button. I don't know how to quote piece-meal yet Just whole-hog, if that makes sense.

@Tano Wow! I have finally found a like-mind on here. I figured I was a voice in the wilderness, the crazy uncle who feels sane! Nice to make your acquaintance Tano!

@Tano I agree with the jist of what you are saying here. Very wise. There is enlightenment, but not what most people think it is. It's very simple realization of emptiness, and attachment and releasing. A separation of theory from reality. Theory is something we might attach to or release. Theory does not *underlie* reality in any way. That's one of the erroneous premises that Indian Philosophers seem to habitually make. Reality does not contain a Kantian conceptual filter. That too is concept and can be attached to or released. See that? Does that make sense?

@Truth Yeah. If you wanna explain anger, look at the underlying pain or hurt. Always ask "What's the underlying hurt?"

Can you give me a brief overview? How does this relate to Leo's notion of enlightenment?

Maybe you are looking in the wrong place for what you want. Or maybe your idea of the end result is wrong. Consider those possibilities too. I find you to be very successful right now Emerald. You're doing exactly what you need to be doing with your life right now, heavy personal development work. And you're practicing contribution heavily too by contributing to others' growth, helping them along on their paths. Pretty awesome life.

Gimme some detail please, if applicable.

About a year. It started with meditation and culminated with my ego death last March. But I was meditating for about a year before my ego death. What precipitated it is I had watched all Leo's videos, including the one ones on Enlightenment. But more importantly I started to heavily contemplate the question "What am I?" But I was already advanced in personal development work and work in philosophy and psychology before I started meditating.

Does Turquoise give up systems thinking? Systems thinking is concept, a theoretical construct. If I had to peg myself here's how I'd do it: Orange: 20% Yellow: 60% Turquoise: 20%

Let's get down to some real issues! Take a shot at this advanced folks! Well, everybody take a shot at this, what the hell, it's all good. And if the ideas refer to different things, please explain that. Let's get everybody's fragment together and make a soup!

I know some of you spiritualists on here seem to think that positive thinking as a personal development practice is a fools errand. This actually surprises me, and I think that that's too bad. Care to elaborate and debate/discuss this with me? Let's do some hashing out here. Some getting to the bottom of this. I believe positive thinking is the holy grail after enlightenment. The final solution so to speak. The last move one can make in personal development. The hallmark of the true sage. Peace and positive thinking go together like ham and eggs. Please watch Leo's video on "Positive Thinking" first before responding to this question. It is a prequisite to this discussion. So if you haven't done that go do that first. Otherwise we're not gonna be focused in our discourse. We're gonna be talking past each other which is no good.

@Dizzy Ego Transcendence seems like loss of self image. You realize all there is is emptiness and attachment or releasing, nothing more. That's where I'm at the doorstep of right now. There is no life to improve. Why cling to that concept? That's a fiction. All that matters is awareness and choice of what to cling to and what to release. And what to do based on this of course. This journey has been pretty cool. Realizing what I am, which has paradoxically been mostly realizing what I am not. Releasing some bad default-positions, bad theories of self. This stuff is not airy-fairy to me. Reality doesn't lie. I'm a very practical and tough-minded dude. No woo woo. I'm a little leery about Dizzy's next stage which she terms "Enlightenment" though. That's a theory, a concept. Do you see that? You're clinging to that. You don't wanna be clinging. You wanna be empty and aware. No default-positions are needed. So to me Self-Transcendence in something like Dizzy's sense just is Enlightenment. Do don't need to cling to the theory of non-dualism even. You folks are idealistically clinging to ideas that are adding another layer of theory onto this very simple obervable fact about reality. You're rationalists, theoretical-idealists basically building up a snowball matrix which you then use to look at the world with new, wildly-distorted eyes. Googly-eyes, not sober eyes! You're clinging to thoughts that are supplementing and distorting what is real at bottom -- the counterintuitive simplicity of reality. Release those theories! Release your thought-stories about Enlightenment. I've heard so many! Paradoxically, in the case of Enlightenment, more thinking leads you further away from the goal rather than closer to it. It's like trying to solve a math problem with carrots and sticks instead of pencil and paper.

@Anna1 Lol. Consistency is a beast! I love it! Do as I say not as I do. And living inconsistently is violating ones integrity too. It's self-induced harm. A peeing in the pool of one's self esteem basically. Just thought I'd chime in and add that.

@Maxx Then why isn't the lower self part of that mix too then? Why throw the lower self away if there is no self. Seems like that goes against non-duality. The ego is there, why not accept it as part of the whole and learn to love the ego? I've kinda done that. I've harmonized with my ego. To me you non-dualists seem like dualists because you are trying to deny part of your self. You're beating yourself up big time with this war and rampage against the evil ego. The distinction between the lower self and the higher self is illusory. That's concept. Does that make sense? You guys cause yourselves a lot of neurosis with your theories paradoxically. Do you see that?

I'm not talking about 1 way, I'm talking 2 way communications. What is the communication like? Can you describe it for us? Do you hear a voice in your awareness, like an inner sound? What does God say to you? What does his voice sound like? Is it a male or a female voice? Or a neuter voice? Again, what does God say to you? Can you provide some examples?

Like. Let's say you are procrastinating doing your work because you are spending time on here. Well, there are two ways of looking at that. One way of looking at it is I have a fear of doing my work and that's what is contributing to my motivation to procrastinate doing it. The other way of looking at it is I'm on here instead of working because doing this is more important for me right now than working, and working can wait. Alright! Now, that's a totally different lens of looking at things, no? Well, why are we privileging the "fear explanation" as a kind of default-position when we self-explain why we are not doing some task which we had scheduled? Isn't that kind of fear-based thinking a paradigm, a choice we are making? Isn't it non-positive thinking too? Why are we doing that so much then? Think about it. We're beating ourselves up with our theory of fears and how fears and motivation relate. Are we a fly in that bottle too much? What if you have a radically different theory of fear? Like if you had never learned this stuff in the first place. Would you be better off? Would you self-sabotage less? The Positive Psychologists amongst us are not gonna like this idea! The fear theory is so entrenched, it is not? We run that theory all the time when we think about motivation, don't we? Like a computer executing a bit of code, we're programmed with it. It's a default-position that almost everybody has assumed is reasonable to accept. I just noticed this too. It popped into my head because I'm doing positive thinking work right now. I got Leo's Zen story ingrained in my mind lol. Watch Leo's "Positive Thinking" video to find out what I'm talking about there. It's unsettling some of my default-positions. Or at least putting some in high-relief that I've never noticed before. What is fear anyway? Maybe we have so many fears because we're looking for them all the time! It's a self-fulfilling prophesy effect! The law of attraction in action. That's just a hypothesis. Food for thought. I know you guys are probably like -- Get to work already Joe! I am working. Very much. I'm synergizing with you guys on here. I'm always working at something, it just might not be what is top priority for other reasons. That's a different issue. That's not laziness, and that's not fear. It's more like a conflict of priorities, a conflict between the internal priorities and the external priorities. A lack of synchronicity there. I'm starting to wonder whether I "have" any fears at all now. Damn! What does it mean to have a fear anyway? That seems kind of vague to me now, and I'm not sure what the hell it even refers to. With the exception of actual primal fears, what does the proposition "I have a fear" even refer to? Some suppressed entity in the murky "subconscious mind" (another fictional entity we made up)? These made-up fears are not out in the open though. Not like primal fears are. They're always hiding somewhere, notice that! It seems as though we took primal fears and then extrapolated-out a theory that added new types of fears to that set. Like fears in complex-space for all you Math nerds out there! (I was once one too .) Imaginary fears. I think we got imaginary fears folks! Am I right?

Can you explain this phenomenon?

I don't think Leo will ever get his version of enlightenment. He keeps looking for it though.

@Prabhaker That's awesome. What I like about you is you don't seem to get trapped by all the theory that others do pertaining to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not rocket science. I agree. Enlightenment is you changing your view of your self and your actions towards your thoughts. That's it.

@Nahm I can choose to focus on positive things and go after those. So you are a fan of law of attraction and positive thinking I assume? I am choosing to focus negatively. That's so true. And it's easy to not do it too. You just need mindfulness on that issue and a reminder process to keep you on track. You seem to believe in free choice and free will too, no? I do too. I don't think Leo does.

@Nahm Wow. You're very full of love. How did you get that way? And what is love? What is the source of love?

@Prabhaker Interesting. I'd love to see you and Leo debate this.

39 Leo since Summer 2014