Joseph Maynor

The person in the coma is inside your consciousness either as a Thought or an Experience or both. Is there more than one mind in your consciousness? Think about it.

Love is all part of the illusion of Maya. I think the highest form of love is compassion which comes from seeing the self in the other. When you can see the self in the other, that enables compassion. When you see the other as different than you, that’s what enables lack of compassion. You would never want lack of compassion to be directed towards your self. So lack of compassion is caused by an ‘othering’ of reality — there’s a ‘not me’ quality to lack of compassion.

Truth has to overpower amusement. I'm not saying you're falling into this trap, and I'm not talking about you in what I say that follows here, this is a general statement: I do see a certain kind of Enlightened person sometimes who seems to flutter around amusing themselves in Ego thinking that's what being Enlightened is. Enlightenment is about the death of Maya -- so it's Truth that's really the only value in Enlightenment work. Enlightenment a.k.a. Truth-seeking is 100% B.S. detector work at the highest level, no more and no less. A lot of people become half-Enlightened because they don't value Truth enough, thus they stay ensnared in Maya by choice or by omission. I was one of those people too, so I get it. Nobody wants the literal death of Maya.

Yeah but you don’t wanna endulge in Ego. Do it if you want to, but it’s not helpful in this work.

You buy into the number stuff? I’m a little surprised.

Yeah but quantifying Enlightenment is particularly deceptive. I think Leo is kinda taking it seriously not just in jest. So, I thought it was helpful to put a pin through that balloon right away even if I’m seen as a less fun guy in so doing. Enlightenment requires that Truth be valued higher than all else, even desire for fun.

All the number stuff is total B.S. All there is is you. You’re talking to yourself assigning yourself numbers. The LOC numbering system is uber self-deceptive. I’m surprised you even buy into that frankly. All there is is you and you’re all alone talking to yourself. What number is that? See. That number stuff is an Egoic distraction. When Thought and Experience become dead to you, what number do we give that? See. It’s ridiculous.

Sort of. Remember the person is 20 years old though. I found most of the posts a little too blunt. It’s good to be encouraging too. I always think back to what I wanted to hear at 20. Remember, 20 is quite young. Just my take. When you’re 20 you need encouragement from people. When you’re 30 you maybe should be given a little tough medicine because you should know better by then. When you’re 40 you can actually appreciate bluntness from people. I did get a sense of lack of compassion in the tone of some of the posts here. That’s an issue for us not for the OP. If the 20 year old you (recall back) were coming on here asking for help, what would you wanna hear?

Meditation is amazing when done daily for months on end. 1 hour of do nothing meditation per day is what I do. I like to do it in the morning if possible. And then do my exercise routine and cook some breakfast. I'll eat a snack before I meditate (a couple of raw carrots usually, just enough to take the edge off hunger when I wake up). Meditation does a lot of very beneficial things for you on the Path. I'm a fan. I wanna meditate for the rest of my life. It makes you feel good and it builds your keen mindfulness. Video on point to watch:

Meditation is the best thing you can do as a daily spiritual practice. Then exercise (cardio and resistance), adequate sleep, and excellent diet. Those are the big four.

There is a downside to being a public figure even if you’re trying to do good. Like I said, working for money sucks anyway you slice it. You think you’re doing this great thing by becoming a famous self-help teacher, but really you’re putting your peace of mind in the meat-grinder.

I’m 20 years older than you are. Keep coming on the Forum. It’s a long road. But you can learn on here. The bottom line is you’re always learning your whole life. Being on the Forum can accelerate your growth though because you’re gonna see things that you’ll never see as quickly on your own. This is the place to hang out if you’re someone who has a passion to learn and a passion to self-observe. There are people on here that can save you time! If I came on here when I was 20 how great that would’ve been! There are people on here at all levels of growth from the very beginner to the insanely advanced. Not to sound too dorky, but what you wanna do is become part of the conversation and tap into learning from everyone on here. That's what I did basically. And now I'm one of the insanely advanced people on here. But I've been working on Personal Development since I was 20 years old -- so I've been doing self-improvement work for 20 years now. I've been doing Personal Development work since I was 10 but I don't wanna sound cocky. I had a childhood that required me attach to self-improvement very early for a few different reasons. By problem was I had to be my own teacher pretty much for a lot of that time. But I worked hard on my own, majored in Philosophy, etc. And the few teachers that I've learned from I milked dry. You gotta be a tenacious motherf*cker to become great at Personal Development. There's gotta be some suffering in your life to drive you. Think about it, if your life is fine, what use is Personal Development to you? So, I think people who become masters at Personal Development had some kind of suffering in their life's background driving them forward with this work.

The only relevant question is: What am I doing?

The Devil is lures into Maya a.k.a. lures into Thought and Experience. The Devil wants you to forget your true Self and get embedded in illusory Thought and Experience.

The book would have two words on only one page. The words would be 'Focus inward.'

What's odd is you would think this video would be one of the least controversial.

You don't want to face the literal death of reality. No one wants to. But with death comes new life.

I think one of the worst things we do is believe our own Thoughts. We cling to them. And that keeps us embedded in Maya, in Ego. An illusion of our own making. A prison of our own design. 'Thoughts are sticky', someone said that I recall. Whoever said that was a smart dude. Hell just is believing in your own Thoughts.

Working for Trump has gotta be insanely frustrating. I feel for anybody who is doing that or has done that.

Get a Rick Steves guide if you're going to Europe. Get a Pimsleur Conversational Language Course if you're traveling to place where English is minimal. Do as much Internet research as you can before your trip on things you wanna do or might wanna do. Kinda assume that you're not gonna be able to have Internet access where you're going. That will get you keenly prepared. Read up about the place you're going. Review the information you'll need to know about history, art, culture, and architecture to appreciate where you're going.

Try having ‘no paradigms’ for real. This is the same issue as the so called ‘relativist’ that I called B.S. on before. The real relativist is a myth, and so is not having any paradigms. If you had no paradigms, you would be at a very low level of functioning. I don’t even think it would be possible. These things are myths taken as real possibilities. Non-duality is not just a paradigm. First of all, you’re gonna go through several awakenings on the path. Each one of those awakenings can cause paradigm-shifts. But non-duality is much more than Thought. It’s realization accompanied by Thought. But the realization can be seen directly without Thought. The Thought is just a post-hoc story that’s more or less useful to maintain keen Awareness. Thought is useful to be able to get you to see — but seeing has nothing to do with Thought. Imagine you wanna see out a window way up above. Thought would be the ladder you use to raise your body up to the level of the window so you can see out of it. And then maybe after you see, you create Thought to remind yourself of what you saw when you looked out that window. Non-duality is about seeing much more than it is about Thought. Thought is just a tool not an end in Enlightenment Work. The end is the seeing. Those are your awakenings. Thought is a reminder of your awakenings basically. You have an awakening, a seeing, first and then you wanna spin a thought-story about it so you can preserve it. Non-duality is not merely a paradigm, that’s way oversimplified. Non-duality is more about keen mindfulness than anything if you wanna set it as one thing. It’s literal and careful mindfulness — a looking without Thought filters — a seeing what’s literally, actually there. Non-duality is about being very passionate about honoring and valuing literal Truth, no matter how painful the Truth is.

I wouldn’t say Trump is a moron. I think the words immature, crafty, and insanely competitive fit better. It’s not an intelligence problem, it’s an immaturity problem. To me, a moron is a dummy. I don’t think Trump is a dummy. Trump will do anything to win, including stooping lower than everyone else. For Trump, winning is the only end. That’s how I see it. Win at all costs mentality with no scruples, but then also being highly manipulative about trying to spin things to his advantage rhetorically so his reputation doesn’t get tanked by his tactics. Trump is highly socially manipulative. Talk about being entangled in Maya. His dad must have told him he was no good and wouldn’t amount to sh*t in life. What Trump does is try to sell winning — he makes you feel like you are part of winning by being on his side. He’s smart enough to know that works. He’s very conniving in that he wins at all costs while also getting people on his side to boot. That’s no dummy. That’s a very manipulative, competitive personality. A dummy would not be able to pull off what Trump does. He seems like a moron on the surface sometimes, I agree, but I think it’s more of a win at all costs and immaturity issue at a deeper level. Trump is also a master salesman of himself. I watched that during the campaign. He’s great with rhetoric and humor barbs too. He’s a character who knows how to schmooze and get people on his side. But he also creates a lot of enemies because of his take no prisoners style.

Haha. You caught it. I missed it.

Nice. I resonate with what you say here.