Joseph Maynor

In meditation being can be found.

Ego is your interest in reality. No Ego is being. Both of these are laid on top of each other in a person.

I like this a lot. That’s a big part of it. Life Purpose is marrying (1) your Passion with (2) Contribution to something greater than yourself. Your Passion is work that you like to do. You can think of work as either being in line with your Passion or not. So you want work that’s in line with your Passion that helps others and finally that (3) you can make a Career out of.

The holy-grail is your own understanding of life and personal development.

You can love yourself. You have to love and care for yourself. You are a best friend to yourself in the first instance before any other relationship.

The mind is the the guy who’s in the crow’s nest in the ship of Ego. The mind ultimately serves your Ego by bringing all possibilities and potential problems into Awareness that might conflict with the interests of your Ego. The mind is a tool of the Ego.

Why are you trying to explain consciousness to begin with?

Enlightenment Work functions very practically in my life. It's like the counter-balance of my Ego -- the pressure-release valve for my Ego. No Ego, like Ego gets summoned depending on the context. If reality is really rubbing my Ego the wrong way, I might surrender into being and use the lens of No Ego for a while. You need No Ego -- paradoxically, it's what allows Ego to develop into a Healthy Ego or what I call an Enlightened Ego.

That's a great metaphor. The Ego has to discover No Ego. That's the Path of Enlightenment. So, the Path is designed for Egos.

You'll develop an inner sense for this. I never know in advance when I will meditate. I just do it when it feels right to do it. Similar to how one might eat upon feeling hungry. Some days I'll meditate for 30 mins. Some days I'll meditate for 2 or 3 hours, it just depends. And I never try to force meditation either. I just surrender to it for as long as it needs to be. It's like eating, you don't really force yourself to eat, you just stop eating when you're full -- it's an automatic sensor. Meditation has that too.

That's why I used the word approximate. I'm drawing my comparison not his. I'm trying to point to being. I don't follow Adyashanti, I just used one of his metaphors to point to being.

Yeah, in a sense I think so. When you surrender to being you do also discover what the lens of No Ego points to. But that's a very specific case. In most cases Meditation and Self-Inquiry function very differently. I still Meditate but I don't really do Self-Inquiry anymore. Self-Inquiry became moot for me a while ago. When you discover "being nothingness" you don't really need to cling to the question 'what am I?' anymore. And also 'what am I?' is an unnecessarily Egoic question because it's designed to point an Ego to No Ego. You don't ask 'what am I?' after discovering being. It's the Ego seeker that asks 'what am I?'

This is a great question. Kudos for thinking of it. Being is not a knowing or a doing. No Ego, or as Adyashanti approximates it as "resting as Awareness", is a being. Being is a surrender to nothingness. This is No Ego which you might discover when you meditate.

That's ok. most of what I read now is research I do online. I sort of transcended "need to know" which is the impetus of a lot of reading. I still read but only when it's relevant to some actual problem that has arisen in my life. I do a lot of Web Research on issues I care about -- practical issues in my life.

Yes. We might summarize that as the Paradox of Lying and No Lying -- and that you gotta work both sides of this. Egos do lie strategically, all of us do, even if it is just white lies or omissions or biased representations. Assertiveness is a habit, but just because you practice assertiveness doesn't mean you never lie. The Ego is lying a lot all the time. But you can reduce deliberate factual lying or explicit denials of direct questions with a misleading intent. People differ on how straightforward they are. You can put this on a spectrum of straightforward vs. not straightforward. Some people function on need to know basis and ARE masters of not being straightforward -- as if being straightforward is some kind of a willingness to be hurt or something. Other people become masters of being straightforward.

Lack of personal development work in my opinion. Another thing I noticed that some people do which is a no no is they lie. I used to lie when I was younger and then I quit it. Some people though make a habit of lying and keep that up. That is a crappy way to go through life. And people who see that automatically reduce your credibility when they realize you are not forthright. One of the best things I ever did was just be forthright all the time. Sometimes this backfires on you, but it's so much easier to never lie than to be trading in lies all the time. It's assertiveness basically. In Personal Development this is the topic of Assertiveness. I wrote on this and it's a real thing and has to be practiced. You have to learn how to be assertive. Some people have this trait more naturally than others, but it can be learned through training and education.

Sometimes the way people react to you says more about them than you. They are hurting so they lash out. They are bored so they bitch and complain. They are unhappy so they project a shitty attitude onto the world and others. You can develop a thicker skin where you don’t get triggered by these people. And you can develop an empathy where you see their hurting is caused by their unhappiness and suffering which then manifests as anger or some other shitty attitude or behavior.

This is a profound insight indeed. Love is a verb too. It requires a giving, a doing, an extension of one’s self into the service of another. And then one has to have a mature capacity to receive love, which is not exactly as simple as it sounds. You might believe you are unworthy of love, which can muck up you being able to receive love the right way. You might find another‘s attempts at loving you annoying, manipulative, or stifling. Love is “I want you to have the best” — it’s “I want to give the best experience I know about to you”. Love is working to give experience to another. It’s an abundance. Love can only come from a sacrifice of you for them. The experience is not for you, you’re giving your best to them. It’s that giving to another, that sacrifice that make love so satisfying. Think about this — learning how to play a musical instrument is great. But what if you could teach some young kid how to play your instrument — and better yet, give them all the tips and tricks that you’ve picked up after many years of struggling to learn. It’s like a parent being consumed with giving the best to their child. That’s a very deep kind of sharing.

One of the beautiful moments of my life was when I was learning how to play jazz around that time 2010-2011. Those guys taught me initially. I was just a dude who showed up with a trumpet every jam session, and then they all started to teach me stuff. The bass player with the long hair was the guy I met with who had the chart for "All Blues" on his table when I arrived at his house for a lesson. The other trumpet player is very good as you can see. They tolerated me initially haha. But I eventually got very good. Jazz is weird because it requires an equal amount of left-brain and right-brain to play. Your creativity can let loose, but it's gotta make sense with everything else that's happening from a kind of logical level too.

I can play 'All Blues' but not Flamenco Sketches yet. What's cool about all blues is it's in 6/8 time -- basically 3/4 time or what we call a Jazz Waltz. Most jazz tunes are in 4/4 time so it was hard for me to learn how to improvise over 3/4 time to get the right feel. That was the tune I learned when I graduated from like intermediate to advanced. In fact, my first teacher had the chart for 'All Blues' sitting on the table when I came to my first meeting/lesson with him. I used to play with some of these guys: You can actually see me in the front left playing trumpet in the dark jacket and khaki pants: the tune is "Freddie Freeloader"

Which performing art do you practice? I was an amateur jazz musician (trumpet) for about 10 years myself. I played many jam sessions and other gigs.

Being is definitely in California haha.

Being is not a state. Doing psychedelics can help you find being, but being is always there and always accessible -- even when you're sober. You might need to meditate to shrink the Ego down to fully appreciate being -- but you can appreciate being at any time. Thinking being corresponds to a psychedelic state can lead a person to chase like you're describing.

It's ok. But you should be able to meditate without falling asleep. Can you meditate for 2 hours straight without falling asleep?

You know what, this experience is valid. This is me when I was like 25 years old. For somebody in their 20's this is life. I lived it. I don't try to change people in their 20's anymore. It's a unique stage of life. It's a valid stage of life and a special stage of life that has certain characteristics. Things will change for you in your 30's and 40's. I'm 41, for what that's worth.