Joseph Maynor

Here's another great Ego Backlash story. I recall an interview I watched between Howard Stern and Slash, the guitarist for Guns N' Roses. Slash was talking about struggling with kicking alcohol. He has just finished an album (I think with Velvet Revolver) and saw a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table and got triggered back into drinking. And his lesson was, and I never forgot this, is he thought at the time that the J.D. was the perfect reward. It looked like the perfect reward. And I know this with my own struggles with alcohol addiction. Here's what you gotta watch out for, and Slash put it very well. Sometimes alcohol seems like the perfect reward. You go off and accomplish all this shit; well, the Ego gets to a certain point where it's looking for a reward or some down-time, see. And this is where it becomes very easy to get triggered into drinking because it feels like a reward in the moment. It feels like you earned the right to drink, which takes all your defenses down. So, it's using alcohol as a reward that you gotta de-program that circuity. I've done that too where I've quit drinking and somebody gives me a bottle of champagne for the holidays or something, and I'll put it away. But just having that in the house makes it easy to find any excuse to drink it. Something goes well for me, it becomes very tempting to pull that bottle of champagne and see it as the most natural reward. But see, it's the most deadly reward for me because I want to quit drinking alcohol 100%.

Nobody is forcing you to celebrate anything.

Bill Hicks was an original. What a great comic and great example of passion and work being aligned. I consider him to be a role model of mine although I'm probably one of the least funny people. I've listened to all of his albums. They're all great. This is a good one: These are all great albums: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_(Bill_Hicks_album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relentless_(Bill_Hicks_album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rant_in_E-Minor

The best revenge against a manipulative asshole is to work on your assertiveness skills. The trick is you gotta be both assertive and not an asshole about it at the same time. The truth melts those kinds of people. The problem is nobody has the balls to speak the truth around a manipulative asshole. Telling the truth is not a hostile act, yet they will act that way because that’s their weakness. You gotta be willing to deal with the consequences of being assertive and telling the truth, which requires a certain degree of personal development and courage. But once you buy into an assertive life, it just starts to happen automatically without you really having to think too much about it. You’ll just blurt things out because you’ve developed a policy of not lying. It’s easy to communicate when you’re always straightforward and not having to always manage being deceptive. And then you just let the chips fall where they may. One of the mistakes people make is they don’t learn how to be assertive much earlier in life. It’s your right to live a truthful life. Every time you decide to not be assertive, that’s on you not the other person. See, you gotta own that part of it.

Yes. Music has inspired/ triggered me to contemplate throughout my the course of my entire life. Thoughts trigger emotions but emotions can also trigger thoughts.

2018 is the year that it all came together for me. Theory turned into practice.

Number a page 1 through 10. Try to write down a regret for each number.

That's true. There are pros and cons to everything, but some cons are bigger than others.

That's funny, I've never seen you on here.

Write a list numbered 1-50. Now, list all the reasons you think and feel the way you do. Try to get as close to 50 as possible. Take a couple of days to complete this. Just get 50 things down, don’t be too much of a perfectionist about this. The key is to analyze what you write at the end of the process to try to come up with a project to help you. But before we can formulate a project, we gotta see a little bit under the hood.

I just recently re-watched all the theory videos in the Life Purpose Course. Leo's Life Purpose Course is like Ramadan, it should be re-visited once per year. Every year you're gonna gain more knowledge about yourself and your Vision and projects. Life Purpose is something that really benefits from being re-visited from time to time. But the Life Purpose that I developed in Leo's Course is still the same! Life Purpose though is something that you're gonna spend the rest of your life working on because you gotta implement all of it! So, revisiting Leo's Life Purpose Course has been really beneficial to me. You're gonna create yourself into more and more of the person who's gonna bring your Vision into reality.

Morning routine is so important. It's good that you realize that. Same reason why breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Morning routine sets up your entire day. I've gotten in the habit of drinking an Ensure first thing in the morning which gives me a great boost. The Ensure is like a snack, it's not breakfast. I cook a full breakfast for myself. The Ensure is like an initial shot of fuel into my system when I first wake up. And I only drink one per day right after I I wake up.

I have a very definite Vision I am working to transform into reality. That requires that I work the Paradox of Organization vs. Freedom very carefully. Stuff doesn’t just get done on its own, I gotta create it. And for me to do that, I gotta systematically put the work in or it ain’t gonna get done, see. To me just sitting around and not working on my Vision is a mistake because I can see how that will adversely affect the remainder of my life. It’s not hard work when you love it.

I'm curious to hear your ideas.

For some reason I feel like I always need 8. I think some of it is my diet is not as clean as it should be.

I brainstormed by Daily Routine/ Schedule today because I'm in the process of really getting it top notch. I just wanted you to see the work I did on my whiteboard. These aren't in any order because I'm just brainstorming here.

In a way Enlightenment does reduce suffering because it makes you more accepting of reality as it is instead of always assuming reality should cater to you. That's precisely the way that Enlightenment minimizes suffering. It's not personal between you and reality.

Maya is clinging to certain linear beliefs about reality

No but it still sucks that any sentient being should suffer. To the extent that I can do something to mitigate any suffering that I have control over, I usually try to do that. Otherwise, I don;t really worry about it because it's not something that's at issue for me in the moment.

Is a Kundalini awakening like a psychedelic experience for people who don't do psychedelics? That's what it kinda sounds like to me. I think I may have had one Kundalini experience come to think about it if we define it that way. There was a time this summer where I was having all these insights when I first started moving into Coral that wasn't preceded by psychedelics, but it was an awakening experience nonetheless. It's almost like I did a psychedelic but I didn't do a psychedelic. That's where I realized that you don't really need psychedelics to precede every awakening experience. If you're ramped-up to have an awakening experience, you'll have it psychedelics or no psychedelics.

A perfect human being is you transforming your own Vision into reality perfectly.

I'm not surprised that I haven't even bothered to chime in on this debate.

Biggest obstacle? Learning how to use my cerebral nature in ways that help me instead of hinder me. Challenging situation? Getting off the Enlightenment theory and all my pet theories. That's hard because when you have a strong need to know your ideas are like your babies. How did I overcome this adversity? I started to realize the limitations of theory. I realized and saw that theory is like an over-perfect matrix that doesn't really quite apply to reality. How does this affect my life? Now one of my projects in my Projects Binder is "get off theory" almost with the same tone as if theory is an addiction. Also, I don't let theory and conceptual issues distract me and limit me as much anymore. What's the key lesson learned? You gotta be really careful with beliefs and theories -- they have pros but they also have cons. It's tricky to figure out how to interpret theory and best use theory in your life. This is basically what Conceptual Understanding Work as a branch of Personal Development Work addresses.

I think it's Do Nothing Meditation. That's my go-to form of meditation. I don't really use any other form of meditation. Today I meditated for 2 hours straight which is kinda unusual for me.

You're not always gonna get things that you like served up to you in life. Sometimes you're gonna get served up some real challenges. Paradoxically, you both want to and don't want to take reality personally.