Joseph Maynor

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.

Traveling to China taught me a lot about energy. The way they design their architecture is so in harmony with everything. Harmony is what you feel in China. They're tapping into a harmony that is lost on us in the West. In Beijing not only do you have harmony but you have the grand. You have huge architecture. It's like things in Beijing were designed for giants. The Forbidden City is a case in point. Tienanmen Square is another example of this huge, grand, wide open architecture. Also, you can see the Great Wall in Beijing. There's fantastic museums in Beijing. It's one of the few cities that I would like to visit again. If you're interested in Yin and Yang, the Masculine and the Feminine, I would highly recommend that you visit China. The whole culture and architecture and everything just radiates that. I would like to visit Xian as well. Xian is one of the ancient capitals of China. And it's cheap to go to China! It was not expensive at all for me comparatively speaking, and I stayed in Beijing for a little over 2 weeks. Expedia.com is pretty cool if you haven't discovered that yet. You can find out how much a trip is gonna cost and then save up for it. I think my Beijing trip cost me about $3,000 when it was all said and done. And that included everything from the flight to hotel to food to entertainment, etc. That's not bad for a 14 day life changing trip! Your money goes a long way in China. As long as you don't get ripped off or scammed. You should watch some videos before you go to Beijing about common hustles and scams. Try not to take any taxis or tut tuts, they'll rip you off, and they'll be pushy about getting you to use their service. The subway system is really good and logically organized, take the time to figure it out in advance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway

How so?

If you want success -- show up and you'll be ahead of 85% of people. Show up on time and you'll be ahead of 90% of people. Show up on time with a plan and you'll be ahead of 95% of people. Show up on time with a plan and put it into action and you'll be ahead of 100% of people.