Joseph Maynor

That's why you can't BS your way too far on the Path. As you marinate on the Path more and more, The Ego is not so much out front with Spirituality as it is at the beginning of the Path.

Yep. You got it. I learned more about spirituality playing jazz than I did from any book or "teaching". That's what makes me so grounded without needing to cling to all kinds of Metaphysics and beliefs. My spirituality was discovered and cultivated long before I knew anything about Enlightenment Work. Music is also the universal language.

I would question the premise that you're gone "outside the Matrix" to begin with.

Once you realize that your Mind is there to serve your Ego, you can easily deal with the Mind and appreciate the Mind. It puts everything into context.

Honesty, I think listening to music all my life has made me more in touch with my emotions and not less. To me music is an avenue to spirituality. It has been my whole life.

I think everybody on the Path can cite some examples of fake Enlightenment that they themselves have fallen prey to.

I get it. I understand what you are trying to communicate.

What is self-actualization?

That's still a little bit too philosophical. You're still clinging to a view of reality that you're laying on top of being. You guys are all clinging to Metaphysics like religious people cling to needing a father figure.

That's what happens to the Ego-Mind, it gets minimized. But meditation shouldn't be a change or a forcing of what is there. Being is an allowing of reality to be what it is.

To me it is the #1 habit for beginners and advanced persons on the Path alike.

Explain consciousness? What would it mean to explain consciousness? What is consciousness? You see how you take these conceptual presumptions for granted?

Video on point to watch:

Why do you think one has to be "bothered" (using your word) just because they have a contrary view? One of the things I like about Leo is he doesn't insist that I believe his views at all. Honestly I think your clinging to truth keeps you from being -- but that's for really really smart people.

When you know what being is you can. I can commiserate with being anytime I want to by meditating.

I stopped drinking coffee basically. Today I had a small decaf coffee which seemed to have as much caffeine in it as a normal coffee. But I remembered that coffee is good for your liver when I drank it.

This is a potential issue. I'm not saying Leo's doing this, but I see this as a trap. When the Enlightenment videos first came out as we were doing personal development a few years ago, I never thought we would be getting into this truth business so much. It just sounds like more philosophy to me and a potential distraction. And then you gotta argue like hell just to convince yourself and others that you were right all along with every truth claim you've ever made.

I found out recently that your liver loves coffee! https://www.healthline.com/health-news/coffee-might-protect-your-liver https://www.webmd.com/hepatitis/coffee-help-liver#1

Being is not something that is understood. It's the Ego-Mind that wants to understand.

I have completely divorced being from metaphysics and philosophy. "God" and these kinds of philosophical musings are part of the Path, so I don't want to say I'm against them, but I realize that ain't the end-point of this work: more like the beginning parts of the Path. The end-point of this work are (1) finding being and (2) understanding how your Ego works. But be careful, being is not a crafty, clever theory, as much as Egos want that to be the case.

I went through a phase where I saw "God" as an experience too (read my writings when I thought I was first moving into Stage Coral in my Journals), but then I realized later on that being is not an experience. It's clinging to experience that leads one to "God". But being is not about any kind of clinging. Being is not about Metaphysics. That's a trap with a slippery-slope that can lead you into conceptland, and I don't know how a person stuck in this kind of mental-masturbation quicksand about Enlightenment and being can climb out of it. I should focus on how I climbed out of it in my future writings. I'm not even really sure how I did it. It's like a shift just happened. A lot of meditation preceded the shift away from "need to know" and reducing being to philosophy for me.

This is important. The Path is a process that has many ebbs and flows. I was obsessed with "God" too during part of the Path. To say this is the way everybody should think as a one-sized-fits-all solution ignores the fact that every Ego has to move in and out of things and is marching to its own drum. We're all talking about the Path but from where we are now -- ignoring the process aspect of the Path.

Exactly. Being is not philosophy.

I see no utility in clinging to the belief that "God" exists. However, I want to respect people on the Path that are still clinging to God or are yet to cling to God. My Ego's been there and done that. It was part of the Path for me too. But my Ego got out of that kind of clinging to Understanding, Truth, Reality, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy, and Religion.

i think this comes the more you realize that being is not conceptual and that being is actually accessed when you get away from concepts and get away from distractions.