Joseph Maynor

I always have been addicted to Personal Development. My childhood set me up to be addicted to Personal Development. Not because I wanted to be Tony Robbins. I never wanted to be this super rich person. But what I wanted to do is solve my own problems in my own life which were very big problems. But that kinda teed my personality up to always be trying to improve myself. I think there's something to the Paradox of Personal Development and No Personal Development, and how you have to work both ends of this paradox. On the one hand we do want to be doing Personal Development Work in our lives, but on the other hand we want to let the issue/ concept of Personal Development go and just focus on other things in life too. Personal Development is just one issue among a multitude of issues that you're focused on every day. Don't cling to Personal Development Work like a child clinging to a baby-blanket. But at the same time, you do want to be working hard on your Personal Development Work every day.

Whether the body exists within consciousness or not, the body exists on some level. You can call that whatever you want. You can say that it's an illusory level if you want to. But if I come up to you with a baseball bat and threaten you, you telling me your body doesn't exist ain't gonna carry any water for you. We wanna be smart but not so smart that we're not smart.

I think the first thing for you to understand is that this is normal. We all have this. This is not unique to you. A lot of Personal Development is straightening out that idiotic part of ourselves that seems to be marching to its own drum. That's our starting condition. We have these conflicted natures. On the one hand our Minds are very wise, and on the other hand our Minds seem to be driving us in counter-productive directions. This is the ultimate problem that Personal Development solves. The problem is how do I accept myself and correct myself in the optimal way? Notice there's an "and" in there not an "or -- it's accept and correct. You need both. It's not accept or correct!

Why is there a body?

Sleep has to be prioritized over every other project in your life. And you have to enforce that.

I appreciate your opinion. It helped me see the stupid shit I was doing. But then I'm 41 years old, I doubt you're as old as me. That matters. When I was young I thought I had all the time in the world.

Go to a nursing home and then come talk to me about all the stupid shit you're doing in your life. All the little problems that we think we have. Go to a nursing home and see where you're gonna be -- maybe not exactly but not too un-exactly either.

Gimme your life observations or whatever you think is relevant to say.

Good stuff. I think the process side of Personal Development is kinda overshadowed by the psychology side. But the process side is just as important as the psychology side. It's just harder to teach the process side because it's less sexy than emphasizing the psychology side.

Give me a brief one paragraph proposal for my Leo should teach the method you propose.

Consider yourself lucky. Remember what it was like before you knew how to see Ego and to see that Ego is only part of Experience and not the whole thing. Other people are suffering more than you are. I tell that to myself all the time. I always remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to see what Ego is and to know how to let it go when that's the right thing in the moment. People get so worn-down and worn-out looking when they don't know how to balance Ego with No Ego properly. That's a kind of stressful life that you're never gonna have to live. You look at some of these peoples' bodies and faces and you can see the toll of the suffering they live with. The reason people let their health go to sh*t is because they're suffering.

Love is more general. I love my Life Purpose Vision for example. Compassion is more about being concerned with well-being of another person. Another thing that's weird about it is I can say, I love x, where x is anything. But compassion requires another two words -- I gotta I have compassion for x. So compassion unlike love seems to require these words "have" and "for". So and so has compassion for X, where X is usually a sentient being, right. However I can say I love porno or something totally out there too. I can say I love death. Can I say I have compassion for death? That sounds kinda odd. Probably not so much, right. Compassion seems to connote a feeling or orientation you have towards one or more sentient beings. Love is not so restricted in use as compassion is.

I’m starting to be able to do this. It requires a transformation regarding what kinds of expectations you place on language. Most people think of language as giving us conceptual truths, and they look for conceptual truths. These are linear statements — it’s this way or that way and never both. When you move away from the issue of Truth and become more pragmatic, you stop expecting language to give you conceptual truth so much. What happened to me is instead of using language to create and believe in conceptual truths, I use language now to make sure I’m seeing all sides of things when I’m trying to balance my life, make decisions, do planning, etc. I tend to think in terms of paradoxes but I don’t interpret the paradoxes to be conceptual truths, just useful heuristics that keep me from being stuck in belief or ideology one way or the other. Paradoxes allow me to utilize the pros of concepts but avoid clinging to beliefs or other cons of concepts.

I wanna make a point and I don’t want it to come off as pretentious. This is not directed to anyone in particular. Have you ever considered that there might be more than one right answer to doing personal development work? Why does there need to be this ‘my answer is the answer’? I notice that tone. Look, whatever works for you is best. It’s not what is the right answer, it’s what is my right answer. Not only do we wanna have my right answer but we wanna universalize that as the right answer, which if you think about it is pretty pretentious at worst and irrelevant at best. Each person has to find their own answer and their own path. I don’t even assume that my path is like anybody else’s path. That’s totally irrelevant to me. What I’m concerned about are my problems and solutions to my problems. And I’m not like everybody else, nor do I want to be. So, for me, personal development work is gonna be a very custom thing. To the extent that others can be influenced by my work, great. But the assumption of my teaching (to the extent that I am a teacher) is always getting you to find your own path rather than dictating a path to you. This work is all about thinking for yourself.

I was in the summer of 2015 when I spent two weeks in Rome! Lucky you. I'm sure there are pros and cons to living in Rome. Lots of pros though. I love how you can go anywhere in Italy using the train system. As sophisticated as California is, we don't have such a train system here. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The food alone makes Rome to die for, and then you have all the history on top of that. I'm sure when you live there though that you start to take it all for granted. I still remember the first time I saw the Pantheon, that was pretty cool and surreal. You just walk up on it from the street. The Pantheon was built in 126 AD. It's amazing to see it in real life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome This was painted in 1836

Not quite! Happiness is created. Happiness is an ongoing project. Not caring is a pipe-dream. Everybody cares a lot. Even people who think they lack an Ego still care.

Acceptance is allowing reality to be whatever it is and seeing that your own Egoic desire for reality to be one way or another is irrelevant from realty's point of view. The same person dies, yet you can take two different Egos (persons) who would have two very different reactions about it. A stranger would have a very different reaction to the person's death than a daughter of the person would. Yet, from reality's point of view, the death of the person just is what it is. When you can see how your own Ego boos and hoorays reality, and how arbitrary that is, you can learn to just let reality be whatever it is and accept whatever that is, even if you feel the sting of Egoically wanting things to be otherwise.

I don’t think you need an either-or, you can do both. I feel like this has kinda become my mantra haha. It’s not “this or that” it’s “this and that”.

Yeah I do. I wanna prioritize that project and make that change in my life. I've already been kinda doing it.

What do you normally do there? you already probably have something that you routinely or semi-routinely do during that time.

The Mind is skewed a bit from being in your best interest. We have to correct for that. This is why we have The Paradox of The Mind Being Our Greatest Friend and Our Greatest Enemy.

There should be a license to be a boss or a manager too. There should be a license to be a landlord.

You've become a zealot. Just kidding.

What you’re talking about is the Spiritual Ego. Most Spiritual Egos don’t see that they’re Spiritual Egos. True Enlightenment is not about clinging to being Enlightened. That’s the irony. The people who talk about Enlightenment, usually, are people that are trapped in the theory of Enlightenment. These people are ideologues regarding Enlightenment. They look a certain way, they talk a certain way. It’s similar to punk rock. You got all these people who are trying to be individuals, yet they end up looking the same, talking the same, listening to the same music. Ideology is sneaky like that. I watch debates on the Forum that are pages long where people are lost in the minutia of non-dual theory basically. When I see this, what it looks like from my perspective is these people are lost in fantasy-land instead of actually working to improve their lives and the world. And basically they’re Spiritual Egos. The Ego is now wearing the mohawk, using the ‘right buzzwords’, looking a certain way, adhering to certain norms about what ‘true Enlightenment’ is. I think you’re on the right track in your intuition. True Enlightenment is when you can let go of clinging to truth.

To me, it bugs me that they’re both ‘isms’. Enlightenment is not about ‘isms’. These theories are used to bring about Enlightenment, but they have huge cons if clung to in the wrong way. Knowing how to use the raft to cross the river but then leaving the raft behind after crossing is so important in Enlightenment Work. So many people wanna drag the raft around with them after the river has been crossed.