Joseph Maynor

On weekends I'm free. But on Mon thru Fri I have a schedule. This is my schedule for Mon thru Fri First 8 -- Devoted to making money Second 8 -- Devoted to the following: MEDITATION () WASH DISHES () LYON STEPS () CODING () WORK ON WRITING PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT BOOK () EXERCISE BIKE () DO PUSHUPS/ SITUPS () SHOWER () COLD SHOWER () BRUSH TEETH PM () EVENING STOMACH MEDICINE () MAKE TOMORROW’S SCHEDULE () PRINT AND SIGN AGREEMENT TO COMPLY WITH NEXT DAY'S DAILY ROUTINE/SCHEDULE () Third 8 -- Devoted to sleep

Yeah! Fill it in. That's you doing the work.

Humor has a way of getting people to trust and like you. It's really weird. A lot of humor is chasing pleasure, chasing dopamine.

It makes you feel like you're gonna have your suffering reduced in the future in some way. It's kind of a short-term delusion.

Did you write that? I assume those are your words. If so, good job! I think your intuition is pointed in the right direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gila_(album) Album Cover:

@Preetom Thanks. I will look at it myself and see if I can shed any insight on it as well.

Oh yeah. I've experienced them all my life. Playing jazz on a real bandstand in front of an audience is a very mystical experience. But just listening to music can be a very mystical experience.

Hey. If that story works for you, I’m happy. I’m not gonna debate you. Pick your poison and drink it. At the end of the day, the only relevant question is are you growing and improving, and only you can answer that. We’re all on a solo mission in Personal Development work. That’s why it’s called “personal” development work.

Who do you think is surrendering? See? That's the Egoic self thinking it's surrendering. You've egoically surrendered Ego. A lot of people don't see that trap. The illusion of Ego is part of Experience, it's not something to try to surrender. You don't want to identify with Ego, but that's a different thing than trying to surrender Ego.

Ok. I'll take your word for it.

The Illusion of Ego has free will or at least thinks it has free will. We live with the illusion of free will. So, it's only half of the story that there's no free will. There both is and is not free will. In fact, it's best to work both ends of the paradox between free will vs. no free will.

Yep. And the only relevant question is what's best for you to do with your life.

Because you don't really want to do that. Nobody wants to live that kind of a life. That's a shitty life. The key is to find that source for you that you can track that is a good life for you. Sure, you can live in a monastery if that's authentic to you. But the relevant question and the only relevant questions is, is that what's best for me? And only an individual can decide this for themselves. In other words, the answer comes only inside each person. And people who come up with a great answer for themselves are fortunate in life.

That's interesting. Yeah, what I'm saying is that you can be Enlightened without the theory. You can lose the theory. And that's a cool place to get to. You're not always trying to fit reality into a theory. In fact, people cause themselves a lot of suffering by trying to do that. You just let everything be the way that it is on the one hand, and watch Ego do its thing on the other hand keeping your ideal Vision in mind as a guide.

My vision is to run my life in a very authentic way where I'm creating all my authentic results that I want, and also to contribute back personal development information that I one day hope to get paid for.

Sure. People use Enlightenment and Non-duality to basically avoid going out into the world and turning ideas into results for themselves and for other people. It's can be a form of spiritual bypassing. It can be a way to remain in a comfort mentality in life.

Don't cling so much to your Vision that you start to beat yourself up. Let the lapses happen but always be aiming for better performance over time. Give Vision to Ego, but at the same time don't cling to Vision or to Ego.

On the one hand you are Enlightened, on the other hand the illusion of Ego persists. I find that it's best to work both ends of this paradox. This means that you feed Ego a noble vision on the one hand, but on the other hand you don't cling to Ego or Vision. And this is gonna flip out a lot of people out on here. Just as Life Purpose can be a distraction, so can Enlightenment. Enlightenment can be a distraction. Nobody talks about that. I've written one essay about it.

It takes a lot of systematic Personal Development Work over several years to even get a handle on what you want. But you do get to a point where you can put together a concrete Vision that you want to create for your own life and for others if you do your Personal Development Work systematically.

I find myself not having any interest to debate these kinds of issues anymore. I almost never argue now. What's crazy is that it's always the same questions, the same arguments, just different people. I swear to God, it's the same questions, the same answers, the same positions.

Hang in there. Depression is often temporary and a sunny day follows a cloudy day eventually.

Chess is a cool game. There's a reason it's survived as long as it has. I'm pretty good at Chess, but I get easily butthurt when I make a stupid move that I should have noticed was a stupid move. It's like, "How the f*ck could I have not seen that!" But, yeah, I play a little bit of Chess. I play like a game a week. Sometimes I'll play the computer, sometimes I'll play a friend. Ubuntu Linux has a pretty cool free Chess program that comes already installed with the OS.