Joseph Maynor

There's some truth to this. I don't really know anything about David Goggins, but I know he's a personal development teacher on some level. Yeah, I agree that adversity is what forces you to grow. The adversity of dealing with the death of a parent for example builds huge compassion, character, and gratitude (not gratitude for their death but gratitude for your life). Just going through that process changes you. It's hard to stay the same after you go through something like that. Take your dad for example. Someday you'll watch your dad get sick and die and maybe even be his caregiver in his final months of life. This process is so against your Ego that you're gonna get a crack, you'll break, and that's where you'll get growth. You'll see life differently. The way to stay a child in life is to remain sheltered against growth-causing adversity. My dad came back from the Vietnam War (and he was wounded in the war) and did very well in his career in civilian life after the war because he knew what hell was like in his early 20's, and when he came back to the States, he didn't take anything for granted. So, there is something to this idea that adversity builds character, it's what makes you an adult, it's what makes you not sweat the small stuff that people get caught up in. This is my whole point about the example of walking into a nursing home. I've been going to a nursing home everyday now for a month, and let me tell you, it's changed my life. When you see some elderly woman who can't even barely move just laying there like a lump of flesh on her bed clutching a doll probably given to her for comfort and you measure your life up against her life, you're gonna find out really fast what it means to be ungrateful. It's gonna be real to you. You'll look at your life differently. I've met some of the old people in this nursing home and they are just regular people kinda waiting to die. That's you and that's me in that nursing home, see -- maybe not today, but none of us get out of this life alive. Yet we have so many petty complaints with our lives. We don't even know what true complaints are. And this might come across as kinda arrogant the way I say it, but it is striking. This is why people don't like to go to nursing homes. The Ego wants to stay alive and the worst thing that could ever happen to your Ego is to face your own death or the death of somebody you love like a parent. That goes against every fiber of the way that your Ego wants the world to run. And the thing is that the world is not gonna change for your Ego, your Ego will be forced to absorb this kind of existential blow. And that's what causes growth. That's what forces you to change. You're forced to change due to the trauma that you're living through.

That's the story of most of my life so far. Try to make money when you could care less about working for money. I always wanted to be a philosopher. The last thing I wanted to do in my life is work for money. Other people seem to do that with such relish that I could never understand. This reminds me of a story. When I was going to college at UCLA there was a huge Borders bookstore in our college community, and I would spend a lot of time there. I would spend hours looking at the books. A lot of my college friends would swing by there -- it was a cool place to hang out, and there was an outdoor balcony that overhung the street, etc. So, I loved Borders, everything about it. Then I decided to apply for a job there. And I will spare you all the details and just say that that ultimately ruined my whole concept of going to that store. Sometimes when you turn a hobby into money you gotta think about that. If I'm gonna be a personal development teacher at some point, which I'm planning on doing, I'm sure my feelings about personal development won't be the same after that. Right now, I'm not getting paid to do any of this stuff, and it's all coming from the heart. But once you take this pure thing and you monetize that into a job or career, the danger is you change something about the way that you feel about something that you would do for free. I didn't need to work at Borders, I was fine just going there and hanging out -- I didn't need the money. I thought that because I loved the store so much that working there would take that to the next level. That didn't happen, quite the opposite in fact. That greed to try to make a job out of that pure situation ruined it for me. But at the same time, I do want to make a career out of Personal Development, so I'll have to navigate those waters very carefully. The last thing I wanna do is ruin my natural passion for Personal Development by trying to make a buck. That would be sad.

You need mind, heart, intuition, and courage.

You’re not always deluded, that’s the first thing. What you want to be able to do is remove delusions that are causing you unnecessary suffering in the moment. There’s a way you can spot and then see through delusions as they happen. You can hit the eject button to your mind and just watch the mind from a position of awareness. One thing to realize is most of the time the mind is trying to help your Ego. So, for example, take worrying and all the other ruminating you do. That's your mind trying to help your Ego. The mind's heart is in the right place, but it's reactions are often unduly emotional and distracting. But you can see how the mind wants the best for your Ego. So, what I do is I realize that and I let the mind do its thing. Sometimes I even thank the mind for motivating me to get on something that I was not prioritizing right.

Yeah it’s permanent. Enlightenment Work has a path to it, but once you get to a certain attainment, it becomes permanent. And that attainment has nothing to do with theory. It’s something that the theory helps bring about in you. Paradoxically, people stuck in Enlightenment theory are not quite there. The pendulum needs to swing into theory and then out of theory with Enlightenment Work. It’s when the pendulum swings out of theory and you see that your Enlightenment remains without the theory that you start to be able to get what Enlightenment really is and how Non-Egoic Personal Development mediates and complements Egoic Personal Development.

Sounds like a great goal for Leo.

You are free to use any words you like and to object to any words you like. At the end of the day it's best to realize the buffoon uttering the words and realizing that this person isn't gonna change. I read somewhere that Nietzsche said that you have to account for stupidity in your worldview. Stage Green could really learn from that -- you have to account for stupidity in your worldview. Turquoise learns how to fix this by realizing that reality is a Network of Perspectives all at different stages of development. If a buffoon uses a terrible word, are we still arguing about language or is the problem a lot deeper? You can learn to give people the freedom to be stupid and to accept that. That's basically what Turquoise is all about. That doesn't mean that you take abuse from anybody though. It just means that you understand and accept and account and allow for stupidity in your worldview.

What does it mean to "be Enlightened"?

The best way to develop good habits is first to develop a compelling Vision for your life. This Vision is where you want your life to be ideally in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, etc. A Vision is something that you know you want. It's like someone says to you, "If you climb this mountain you can have the basket of gold bars at the top." All of your good habits should fit this metaphor. Your good habits are like the price you need to pay to get those bars of gold, however you define them. When your habits are aligned with your Vision that way, it's a lot easier to be motivated to do them. If you knew you were running every morning for 30 minutes per day so that one day you will be able to reach that basket of gold bars, that would change your relationship to the habit of running every morning! That's what aligning your good habits with your Vision does for you. Vision is something that you develop by doing Big Picture Life Purpose Work. Leo's Life Purpose Course (linked below) is a great way to get started on that.

I must say, I loved Beijing when I was there. I loved the Chinese people. I loved the food and the architecture and the long history. When you go to China you're seeing a culture that's been evolving for 5,000 years. China is one of the major sources of "philosophical civilization" in the world along with Europe and India. If you look at the three most important divisions in Philosophy it's Western Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy, and Indian Philosophy.

Merry Christmas to the Forum old and new members alike!

Merry Christmas to all of you!

I like to think of it as The Paradox of Control and No Control and that you gotta work both ends of this paradox. The belief that one lacks control is the problem. What you are cannot be straight-jacketed by a belief like no control.

Chinese Culture is very different from Western Culture. From being in China, I got the sense that I would be a very different person had I grown up in China. I definitely would married with a family.

Evil is always relative to the point of view of one or more Egos.

I like the idea of having a million dollars.

How many realities are there actually?

It's not one or the other -- it's one and the other. It's order and chaos.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

I think the biggest difference is China has a lot of customs and rules about relationships and about history and family that we don't have in the West. I've been to China and Taiwan. China has a lot of customs and culture regarding relationships that we don't have in the West. In the West every person stands alone and every person is equal, at least in theory. The West is more Individualistic and China is more Collectivist. In China everybody knows what the rules are and follows the same rules. In the West, there's no real enforceable cultural rules. Each family has it's own set of rules. I felt like when I was in China that I was part of a collective system where everything worked together in harmony. I don't feel like that in the West. In the West it's more like individuals all agreeing to tolerate each other and make deals with each other. China is much more like everybody knows their place and does that place very well. Even the guy sweeping the street is doing such a fantastic job. In China it's all about doing the small things well. And then just the massive amount of people in China too is very different from the West. In China there's so many people that it's pretty easy to start taking other people for granted, like strangers. In the West there's much fewer people so each person thinks he's a God basically and he doesn't have to deal with so many people and crowds of people.

It is the law of attraction in a sense because what enables change is you being fixated on making the change. You ever notice that anything that you really want to do, you'll just do it? So, it's taking your detailed plan for career change and tee-ing that up as the thing you're always thinking about and that you really want to do. Strategically, that's what Life Purpose Work is helping people do.

In the first instance it's important to narrow the issues here so we can get clear what we're talking about. We're talking about career development, big picture life purpose work, and career change. Now, all the other personal development issues and skills are obviously relevant to this, but it's important to draw a fence around our problem. Regarding career work, you can look at it through two different lenses. The first lens is, "What kind of box do I need to put myself in to get what I want?" The other way of looking at things is this way -- "I want to make money doing what I am already doing, how do I steer my mouth up to the chute of where the money is coming from?" So, really, the first person is trying to fit into society's boxes. And that's great for certain people, God bless them. But then you have these renegade people, and I'm one of them. 4 out of the 5 of my strengths are Wisdom and and the 5th one is Courage. There is no conventional job for me. I really had to accept that. There is no stock job for me. So, here's what I decided to do. I decided to get paid for what I already actually do, see. So, that's my Vision. My project is to get paid doing what I already actually do which is teach personal development and write about personal development and help people with personal development. So, from where I'm standing, what's the relevance of "How do I do it?" Ok. it's very simple. I need to figure out how to get paid for the kind of work that I'm already doing. This is a research issue, see. This is not rocket science. There's nothing mystical about this. There's nothing vague about this. This is a problem-solving issue that has a clear starting-point and a clear ending-point. But of course look at all the personal development work I had to do to get to where I'm at. But if you're like -- I wanna be a therapist. Everybody is a therapist! You don't need a license to be a therapist. There are people that hang a shingle and promise all kinds of things that don't have a psychology degree. Hell, even Leo is a therapist on some level. The downside is you're not going to be able to take the easy, conventional path, you're gonna have to create your own path with a machete. And if that's the case for you, forget about taking the easy road to being a therapist. You're not gonna have that easy, conventional road. You're gonna have to create your own road to your own therapy and solicit your own clients. You're gonna have to move your ass to make this stuff happen in a very on-point, systematic way. I shit you not there's a psychic in my neighborhood that has her own business and she drives a Mercedes that looks like it costs a pretty penny. If you think about it, a psychic is basically a therapist. The first question is, do you have the balls to make it happen? And then question number two is, do you have a detailed plan to make it happen? Nobody can stop you to do something that you really want to do, you'll find a way. The key is teeing-up career development, big picture life purpose work, and career change as something that you really want to do.

Beware of the "How am I to do it?" fear.

Why do you see depth and wisdom of saying reality is nothingness?