Joseph Maynor

During my first Dark Night of the Soul I went pretty nutty. This is when I first discovered that the Egoic self is an illusion. My second Dark Night of the Soul was when I discovered that I'm all alone in reality.

WHEN DOES MEDITATION START WORKING? Right away. The best thing I ever did was start meditating about 2 or 3 ago years now. Meditation is the best daily habit for Enlightenment and Personal Development in general. The big four are meditation, diet, sleep, and exercise. Once I started meditating, right away I realized this is something I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. Meditation makes you feel good and also lets you to do keen self-observation. So it kills two birds with one stone. It's like exercise in that sense, right -- exercise builds strength but also gives you an increased feeling of well-being post-workout as well.

Ego is not moral or immoral, it's just illusory. Ego is a distraction away from maintaining God Awareness. The problem with Ego is that it leads to suffering because your Awareness is caught up in it. That's what Samsara a.k.a. Hell is. Samsara is your Awareness getting lost in Ego a.k.a. Thought and Experience.

Stage Orange. Same with Ayn Rand.

God does not create Ego. Ego is created by a misinterpretation (ignorance/ Avidya) of Thought and Experience. Ego is God losing himself in Thought and Experience. And the Devil is the lure, right, the seductor into Thought and Experience. When you realize that everything is inside your Consciousness and that there's nothing behind the scenes, Thought and Experience can be seen through as the literal illusions that they are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidya_(Hinduism)

Watch them all multiple times although at some level this can be a distraction. You do need the theory. It depends on where you are in your Personal Development. I've learned so much from Leo's videos. And I've watched them all multiple times. As you grow, the videos will resonate in different ways too. There's a lot of great content in those videos.

That's kinda what Yellow is. Just like Red, Yellow is interested in solving problems and making things happen. Yellow is like a cerebral, more conscious Red.

But Enlightenment is paradign shattering as well. I still recall my first Dark Night of the Soul and how brutal that was.

Yes and no. That’s why it’s tricky. It’s not one or the other. Yes in the sense that it can get you focused inwards. No in the sense that it can cause you to become massively addicted and distracted. People who think weed is not addictive have really sold us a goose egg for whatever motivation they have to do so. Weed is incredibly addictive and can lead to all kinds of distractions as well. But there are some amazing things about weed that can can help you with Personal Development Work. Weed makes you very introspective. I call weed the Philosopher’s Drug. You can do self-inquiry like a champ on weed. I’m ready to stop smoking weed 100% now, but I’ve gotten the full benefit from weed. Quitting is a very personal choice. It’s not like weed is either all good or all bad, it depends on the context of who you’re talking about. And then even in that specific life you’re talking about, weed has its pros and cons. Weed can also get you very distracted into art in various forms from playing video games to playing a musical instrument to just sitting around watching TV even. Weed draws you into Thought and Experience a.k.a. Maya and therefore can function as a tool of the Devil.

Oy oy oy oy oy! People think creativity is such a valuable thing. You’re gonna have a real shocker when you realize that creativity and Ego are bosom buddies.

LOC (Level of Consciousness) numbers is what happens when the Ego gets a hold of Enlightenment. But it’s kinda ingenious too because now you have a way to sell your numbers to others as a way to make money off of Enlightenment. It’s a pyramid scheme kind of thing. It’s actually sad that Enlightenment has been targeted by such a system. This is why making money off of Enlightenment can easily lead to doing evil for lack of a better word.

ON COURAGE Courage comes from letting go of Ego paradoxically. Courage just is being 100% honest all time. Courage is no bullsh*t. When you realize Maya can't hurt you, all fear is lost. The more you need courage is the more you're attached to Ego. The most courageous thing you can do is not lie. When you realize Ego is illusory and can't hurt you, you're not gonna cow-tow to it.

Great answer. The idea that the true Self has a linear control over Thought and Experience is the bad assumption. There is a certain tangential, non-linear sense in which keen Awareness has an effect on the illusion, but it’s not specific or linear at all. That’s why the illusion is the illusion and why the true Self is outside the illusion.

Ego is a problem because it’s an illusion that leads to suffering. Reality doesn’t contain Ego. Ego is a forgetting of the true Self. Ego should be fully seen through and not identified with. That doesn’t mean you try to fight Ego with Ego though. The way to fight Ego is to see through the illusion of Ego very keenly through self-observation and keen-mindfulness work. The way to solve the problem of Ego is to fully realize the true Self.

But that one doesn’t have the annoying meme font that everyone seems to use.

Make a keep log where you record your go to sleep time and wake up time for 30 days. Don’t start time when you go to bed but rather when you go to sleep.

Meditation is primarily a means to an end of mindfulness work. If you get too attached to the feelings of meditation but you’re not doing the mindfulness work while you’re meditating then that could be a problem. If you are doing the mindfulness work when you meditate, then I would say there are much worse addictions to have — like virtually all addictions.

Instead of giving you an ‘answer’ which means nothing, this is the sustainable answer that I wanna respond with. This came outta my Journal. HOW TO DO ENLIGHTENMENT WORK Self-observation and keen-mindfulness are the way to do it. Always be asking yourself, ‘what is literally here vs. what do I take to be real?’ You’ll start to see the discrepancy between those and thus the illusion of Thought and Experience will start to unravel like an ingenious magic trick — but an illusion nonetheless. Always ask yourself this: ‘What is real?’ Not what is reality, that’s too abstract. But ask rather, ‘what is real right here right now in this moment?’ And then look, don’t rely on Thought to tell you. You gotta have a very literal observation. Thought fills in a lot of gaps in that literal observation. Thought is what creates ‘out there’ when all there is is ‘in here’.

HOW TO DO ENLIGHTENMENT WORK Self-observation and keen-mindfulness are the way to do it. Always be asking yourself, ‘what is literally here vs. what do I take to be real?’ You’ll start to see the discrepancy between those and thus the illusion of Thought and Experience will start to unravel like an ingenious magic trick — but an illusion nonetheless. Always ask yourself this: ‘What is real?’ Not what is reality, that’s too abstract. But ask rather, ‘what is real right here right now in this moment?’ And then look, don’t rely on Thought to tell you. You gotta have a very literal observation. Thought fills in a lot of gaps in that literal observation. Thought is what creates ‘out there’ when all there is is ‘in here’.

Am I the only person who thinks the phrase ‘persistent non-dual Awareness’ is meaningless? Think about it. Forget about the 'persistent' modifier for a moment. What does ‘non-dual awareness’ mean? What does ‘dual awareness’ mean? Yet almost everybody now is parroting these exact same words as if they mean something about Enlightenment, which at the end of the day means they mean something about your Enlightenment.

Not to be rude, but this got caught in my ‘question more’ filter. How could you spot Enlightenment in someone else If you expressly claim not to be Enlightened yourself? That doesn’t make any sense. You would only know what Enlightenment is if you were Enlightened yourself. How would you know what to look for in your assessment of Martin’s Enlightenment without the requisite relation to your own Enlightenment? A guess is fine, but let’s identify it as such. The theory you quoted would only make sense if you derived it or generated it from your own experience. Enlightenment is not a theory or a conceptual test that can be applied externally like some kind of scientific diagnosis. The only thing you really know about Enlightenment is your own, and that has nothing to do with any hearsay theory. It would only be a ‘he’s like me’ kind of comparison that could be legit, right. You can only truly know Enlightenment from your own perspective of being Enlightened yourself. Enlightenment, unlike science, is unique in its resistance to being known through principles a.k.a. Thought. From the perspective of Enlightenment, Thought is an illusion and part of Maya.

I’m not saying this applies to Leo, it’s just a general statement: I take it that most people do not really want Enlightenment. That would mean they would have to give up Ego. Most people seem to prefer staying in the Spiritual Ego zone where they try to have it both ways — a little Enlightenment mixed with a little Ego.

Another great video on point to watch:

I'm willing to bet good money that 99.99% of us are low-consciousness meat eaters. We permit the Ego to continue to hide the ball on this issue. We don't want to become fully aware of this issue because it's really ugly, and subconsciously we know that. And our Karmas are getting blasted for it too. It's a really sneaky problem that most of us are not fully conscious of. Let's each resolve to fix that, maybe not here, but for yourself moving forward. Let's raise the issue to the light of awareness. TEST: Let's say you had to keep every animal you ate as a pet for 3 months before you could eat it, and you had to kill each one, clean it, cook it, and eat it yourself. With that level of awareness, would you still continue to choose to eat the dead muscles of those animals? What the hell are we doing? Think about it. We lack awareness on this subject big-time. I'm not a vegetarian, I'm just raising the issue. And you can't use a gun for the killings either because that's too chicken-shit easy -- it can be done at a distance which obscures awareness. You gotta use another method to kill the animals.

I'll let you argue about that.