Joseph Maynor

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.

You're an idealist not irrational.

Care to support your conclusory statement with reasons in support? Let me become your student.

Green is a good stage. Green people wanna feel good about the work they do. Green people wanna live with integrity and be real or be assertive as who they are. Look at punk rock culture. Green people wanna make a positive difference to the wider world. Green people tend to hate manipulative, crafty people who are always trying to weasel out something for themselves. Green is operating at a much more noble place than that, see. Green sees the foolishness of being fake and not respecting yourself and your own life first.

I was at Green the longest of all the stages. Say from like my Sophomore year in high school to like my early 30's. I started entering Yellow in my mid 30's.

Exactly what is consciousness? How many things in reality are conscious? Is Awareness conscious? Does every consciousness have an Awareness? Does it make sense to postulate more than one consciousness? Does it make sense to postulate more than one Awareness? Do different consciousnesses belong to the same Awareness? This is all good Contemplation Work for your Enlightenment Work.

You have to know exactly what it is that you want in your life and exactly how you want to contribute to the outside world. That puts everything else into context and resolves a lot of issues. Then there is no more wishy-washy. The only relevant question at that point is will you do what you promise to do. It becomes a question of, "Will you take your ideal vision and transform it into reality?" See, that's a very different kind of question. Notice it has nothing to do with theory at all.

When I was in Beijing China I saw a huge hole designed into a skyscraper for energy to move through.

That's a great video. I benefited by listening to it twice as I do with almost all Leo's videos. It's weird that as soon as you say anything about Buddhism all these people come out with their pitchforks. It's totally surprising but not surprising at the same time. People are clinging way too much to ideology in Enlightenment Work. See, people don't realize that teachings are only a guide for you to find the truth, not an ideology to wrap your life around. You might think of teachings as training wheels that come off at a certain point. Nobody rides a bike with training wheels on it forever, unless they have some other problems.

Yep. That's what makes it an illusion.

It's just a model for what we might call adult development. Not to say it can't include child development, but mostly Spiral Dynamics is about adult development.

Two practices that I would recommend for you are (1) daily meditation for 1 hour per day and (2) constant mindfulness in the sense that you're aware of all your sights, tastes, touches, smells, sounds, and thoughts. Start to watch yourself. I call this self-observation work.

The big shift happens when you realize that you are the God Awareness, that God Awareness is the true Self. This is the shift that led me from Turquoise into Coral. There's a paradox between Me and We that you gotta work both ends of. It's not enough to think in terms of We. We dissolves into Me ultimately. Everything is contained within my consciousness. Some people like to disown this consciousness and say It's not my consciousness, but I think that's an idealism. As the true Self, it's all my consciousness. But this is not the Egoic self saying this is my consciousness, you gotta make that crucial distinction. The true Self doesn't have anything to do with the Egoic self. There's a paradox between the true Self and Ego and you gotta work both ends of it.

Sort of. The Ego dies but doesn't disappear. The body dies but doesn't disappear. Other People die but don't disappear. So, what you're left with is the true Self plus the illusions of Ego, Body, and Other People. Again, we have another paradox. You both die and don't die with Enlightenment. You gotta work both ends of that paradox.

God Awareness! Nice Experience presents us with a variety of things. It's like Tony Robbins said Experience is like a wave, always shape-shifting and moving. God Awareness in contrast is always staying still, never moving, never changing never ceasing to exist. You can think of God Awareness as being aware of the wave but not identifying with the wave. God Awareness is not threatened by the wave.

I read the Power of Now. I don't understand why it's so popular frankly. It's a good book but there's a lot of good books.

I don't get the something rather than nothing thing. Give me the answer to why there's something rather than nothing if you think you have the answer to this.

Turquoise.

In moderation. Read the first page of this PDF. It's an essay called "Of Studies" by philosopher and essayist Francis Bacon http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/best/BaconJohnson.pdf

Yeah. That's a great movie. I might start doing movie reviews of certain movies that are instructive to personal development.

You have to look inward and trust your own inquiry. Otherwise you're gonna get 1000 different opinions. You gotta make it your journey. It's your journey to discover who you are.

@kieranperez Become mindful of the thoughts and visualizations that are preceding and causing your emotions. Trace the emotions to the thoughts and visualizations you are Experiencing. Also, stop identifying with these thoughts, visualizations, emotions as mine or me.

You need to be extra organized then. I’m gonna be writing an essay at some point about how to be insanely organized, which is the way I am. Yo, it’s a paradox, on the one hand you gotta be insanely organized, and on the other hand you gotta be loose and fluid. Striking the balance where you work both ends of that paradox isn’t easy, but that’s the task. You need to get to the point where you know exactly what you should be doing at any given moment of time.