Joseph Maynor

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You’re embodying No Ego more and more.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Every Ego wishes to be God. Strategically that’s in the interest of every Ego.

I saw it, but I decided to use the less flattering interpretation to make a point.

It doesn’t click right away. Also it depends on what you’re looking for. At different stages of the Path the object of attention varies.

It’s intersting. These models all have their limitations and pros and cons in different contexts. That said — I like to think of the mind as the best friend of the Ego — the guy who’s looking out for the Ego. Ego is the you that has preferences of reality. The mind is the warner, foreseer, and planner for the Ego.

I used to read a bunch but now I almost never read.

The mind is an agent of your Ego.

Make sure your work is aligned with your Passion. That’s a key principle in Life Purpose Work.

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.