Joseph Maynor

I do, I'll check it out. I have picky taste though.

THE ROLE AND FUNCTION OF NON-DUALITY IN ENLIGHTENMENT THEORY Non-duality is a pointer to Enlightenment, not a set of beliefs or a paradigm to be clung to. What Non-duality is trying to do is get you to transcend the 'Paradigm of Need to Know BE-ing Or Not Need to Know BE-ing'. Enlightenment is surrendering to BE-ing in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations; and it's also a transcendence of all paradigms, including but not limited to the 'Paradigm of Self Or No Self'.

ARE BABIES ENLIGHTENED? Maybe! But they lose it as soon as they start clinging to the Paradigm of Self. Enlightenment is surrendering to BE-ing in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations; and it's also a transcendence of all paradigms, including but not limited to the 'Paradigm of Self Or No Self'. Babies haven't even been programmed with paradigms, so they've transcended all paradigms because they haven't learned them yet. At a certain point though, the babies will start clinging to the Paradigm of Self and start getting triggered by things in their experience that are not aligned with what their wants. That's definitely game over for Enlightenment. The Paradigm of Self, which creates a Self, causes the baby to identify with the Ego in their experience, and they start to take things personally and get offended by certain things in experience, etc.

Personal Development Independence Contribution Peace of Mind Knowledge Self-Expression Kindness Equality Health Travel Health has been moving up for me since I did Leo's Life Purpose Course though. I may need to do another Values Assessment to move Health up much higher on my list.

Are we the junkies? Maybe the junkie is the person making a 4 hour YouTube video. Eh? Projection is a b*tch. Hehe I watched the first 30 minutes of the video last night. It seems to be a good video. I'll have to watch it in chunks. Good job Leo. A little long for one sitting though. I think 2 hours is max for one sitting for me.

The point of life is to be a conduit for the Ego of the Universe -- to let the Universe act and speak through you.

We're distracted as sh*t -- like 80-90% distracted from addressing our genuine concerns in life. I've recently become keenly aware of this and now I can't unsee it.

Only do that if that's your authentic Life Calling. You're not gonna run away from responsibilities. There's no primrose path in life.

Nothing's free.

WORLD-CLASS ARTISTRY IN YOUR CHOSEN ARTISTIC MEDIUM IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS HAVING GREAT CONTENT Don't take this personally, use it to better your craft. Every writer has to tighten their product. I know my earlier writing was wordy as sh*t, especially my writing from like 2 years ago. When I go back and read that it's like Oy! -- see. You gotta always be looking for ways to become a better writer even if you're doing videos. Think of your video as a transcript. Imagine reading a wordy transcript! That will put you in the right frame of mind to improve your videos. Nobody is doing the best they can do right now. Every artist is growing, improving, developing, and creating their artform over time. There are little details in my writing now that would've never emerged as issues for me two years ago. Issues like comma placement in certain contexts. And I've found that to become a better writer I gotta go back and study English Grammar, which I'm doing. This is because to become a master at applying Punctuation Theory you gotta understand English Grammar at a deeper level than most people realize. Hone that craft! You're an artist, you gotta embrace developing. And the better artist you become the better product results. And killer product is key for Life Purpose. Didn't Leo call this Purple Cows? You want each and every writing or video you put out to be a Purple Cow. Now, you're gonna have to work up to that, but that's a good mindset to think about it. Always be asking yourself from an artist's standpoint, how can I improve this? I'm still unhappy with my writing because I've read so much great writing in my life -- I realize that my writing is still very amateurish in light of that standard. I think Leo also said you don't wanna be an amateur you wanna be World-Class in life. Well, if you wanna be World-Class in life, you gotta be making the best videos that anyone is making -- or at least striving to do that. So, don't just focus on great content -- focus also on the artistry of making videos, writing essays, etc. There's a deep artistry that you wanna be cultivating and mastering with your work. Great content is needed and is extremely important, but that don't do squat for your artistry as a video maker or essay writer or what have you. Spend just as much time investing on becoming a better video-making craftsman or craftswoman as you do finding great content to discuss in the videos. Great content alone does not make for a great video. Great content alone does not make for great writing. I would experiment with changing up everything with your videos or writing or what have you. Blow it all up and let the pieces come back together again. Lose all your cliches that you're clinging to with the videos and create replacement ones. That means the background, the intro music, the clothes, the appearance, the speaking style, the mannerisms, you name it. It's nice to have a style, but you want your style to evolve too. Don't be the guy or gal blowing a few notes on the trumpet in the park thinking he or she's a jazz musician. That dude or dudette would learn his or her limitations really fast if they were to show up to a real jazz jam session. They would get humbled fast. A jazz musician spends four hours a day practicing, and he or she has a system for practicing that they had to develop themselves. Are you working 4 hours per day perfecting your artistry as a video maker or writer? If you wanna be the best, you gotta actually be the best. And there's a lot of people working hard out there -- they're gonna outwork you and leave you in the dust. And I walk my talk -- I try to write for at least 4 to 5 hours per day, and my artistry as a writer has improved immensely as a result. What you work on is what you improve. I learned a lot about artistry from learning how to play jazz and what goes into actually being able to play jazz well. Only the fabulous few make it. Even dedication alone is not enough in itself to become a jazz musician. It's working on the right things with your time -- you can spend 10 hours per day working on something and still suck if you're not working in a smart way. Intuition will only take you so far too. You need structure to come out of you that swirls around and encapsulates the intuition. That's what artistry is. Embrace the artistry of making videos or whatever your artistic medium is. Content is great, but you gotta really love your medium to be great at in that medium. I love writing; I love the way it looks, I love the way it feels to write, and I love the final product. I love everything about writing, and I wanna make it as good as it can get it -- for me, not for anybody else. Your videos, writing, or whatever your artistic medium is, should be the same for you. Or you're potentially in the wrong artistic medium, and you might wanna look at that. You're never gonna become World-Class at something that you're half-hearted about. Everybody else in your medium who's whole-hearted about it -- they're eventually gonna run-circles around you.

Just my two cents on this, 1.5 hours for a video is plenty long. Any longer than that and it becomes too much of commitment to watch the video. I would shoot for 1 hour videos -- no more no less. Few people are gonna watch a 4 hour video. That's too much of a time commitment to ask of people. Just break that sh*t down into 1 hour topics. I know from watching a lot of Leo's videos that 1.5 hours is about right for the more advanced topics. After 1.5 hours, I start to get annoyed at time, and I start looking for ways the video could have been edited down. A lot of length is caused by poor pre-planning, which is the cause of the unnecessary verbosity. This happens in writing too. You need to be concise, not too wordy, and that comes from diligent pre-planning and organization. Be careful about just winging it with the videos, that's like expecting your freewriting to be great writing. No, your freewriting has to be edited down, it has to be refined, revised. If you're gonna ask people to invest 2 hours of their Sunday to watch your video, there better be something good in there. Otherwise stick to making 1 hour videos. Nobody really gives a sh*t about wasting 1 hour at worst. But when you're investing, 2, 3, 4 hours of time watching a video -- you're looking to get something carefully composed and organized, none of this 'winging it' sh*t -- the verbosity just pisses you off -- because you realize that the video could have been either made shorter or broken down in a better way. Nobody wants to hear you ramble on. You gotta be sensitive to that. You're way more interested in your rambling than other people are. So, you gotta keeps your points clear and your discourse tight. This applies to writing and to videos. Excessive verbosity in writing and in videos is often caused by not doing enough pre-planning or not doing enough revising, or both. Excessive verbosity is fine when you're freewriting, but it has to be tightened up and cleaned up in your final product, the work you release. This is one reason I prefer writing to videos is that writing can be revised much easier than videos can. What I would do if I were shooting videos is maybe do a practice run before you shoot the video and record that too. Then make an outline of the practice run and use that outline to tighten up your final work.

Just lay there and rest as awareness. Nice all the stuff that's happening, but don't neurotically try to notice. Just BE. It's a very healthy practice for Enlightenment.

I like to listen to audio rather than reading. So, audiobooks, YouTube , audio courses, etc. are best for me. I still read, but not nearly as much as I used to. I listen to a lot of audio instead. I listen to a lot of my own freewriting materials, which were recorded on cassette tapes. I listen to a lot of YouTube and read a lot of Wikipedia and other Internet sources. But I've already paid my dues reading so much in my 20's and 30's. I have Audible with a ton of audiobooks on it, but I don't even use that right now because it's kinda at cross-purposes to my Life Purpose. I actually created and developed my own Course of Study that I'm executing on a little bit everyday. I talk about creating and developing your own Course of Study in my Journal Vol. 3.

SOME MUSINGS ON ENLIGHTENMENT Enlightenment causes a tremendous decrease in suffering by dis-engaging with the Mind. Now, when things happen to me, even bad things, I just naturally figure out what I'm gonna do about it, I don't get wrapped up in the Egoic thoughts that the Mind kicks up. It's that increased Awareness that makes Enlightenment amazing. It's a letting go of being pushed around by the Mind. When you no longer have an emotional dog in the fight, you can just watch yourself take the next logical decision that advances your Life Purpose. Basically, you kinda become so energetically strong that nothing can even effect you, even physical death. You'll watch your experience go through the dying process and watch the mind kick up all kinds of emotions. But all that is just more experience. You are the Awareness of all that experience. Enlightenment gives you huge immunity from suffering. You just let the Universe BE and surrender to that in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations. You just let things happen however the Universe wants them to happen, and you're ok with whatever that experience is. There's no need to take anything personally in life at all. Of course, you'll still watch yourself take things personally. But your Awareness is so keen post-Enlightenment that you'll usually quickly let that go in the moment. You might watch yourself surrender to Ego, and if that happens, surrender to BE-ing that. BE-ing is not about control. BE-ing is not about judging or placing any kinds of expectations at all on experience. Enlightenment causes huge emotional mastery. This is because there is no Self there anymore that's identifying with the Mind or with emotions. Everything is simply allowed to BE in the moment as it is.

'Oh Yes' by Charles Bukowski there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late.

Point noted. 'Need to Know BE-ing' is irrelevant to BE-ing. Whatever use Tier-One Metaphysics otherwise has, it don't got squat to do with BE-ing the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations.

A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING WORK IS MANDATORY FOR ENLIGHTENMENT Conceptual Understanding helps Enlightenment. If it didn't, we would all become Enlightened without examining our conceptual systems first. No, Enlightenment requires an awareness of Conceptual Understanding so you can see the difference between thought and awareness keenly. One must understand what paradigms they're clinging to in order to transcend them all for Enlightenment. Even the Enlightenment-seeking guy or gal who goes off to live in a cave still requires Enlightenment tutelage from somebody or some source, and this constitutes the Conceptual Understanding that's needed in order to make a person ripe for BE-ing in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations.

ON SELF-INQUIRY AS AN ENLIGHTENMENT PRACTICE Once you've transcended the 'Paradigm of Self', Self-Inquiry as an Enlightenment practice becomes moot. BE-ing just is what it is. What Self-Inquiry as an Enlightenment practice is designed to do is put the 'Paradigm of Self' into high-relief in awareness so it can be transcended. Now, this doesn't mean that contemplation becomes moot post-Enlightenment, don't fall into the trap of thinking that. Enlightenment doesn't change anything about BE-ing other than raising awareness of what's always gone down. And actually, what you need for Enlightenment is to transcend the 'Paradigm of Self or No Self'. And this can only happen when you can BE in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations. So, you gotta transcend all paradigms for Enlightenment. 'Need to Know' BE-ing has nothing to do with BE-ing. I just wanted to point out that Enlightenment is much more than transcending the 'Paradigm of Self', that's just the starting point.

The only sustainble way to solve the problem of 'self-sabotaging thoughts' is to transcend the 'Paradigm of Self'. This is part of Enlightenment work.

Mooji and Adyashanti are exceptions. Those guys get it. And maybe Eckhart Tolle too, but I'm slightly less certain about him. But those three get it. The reason I'm slightly unsure of Tolle, is I get the feeling that he's clinging to some ideas about BE-ing. As I said before, he might benefit from psychedelics. If I'm wrong, please forgive me. But I feel like I need to be honest and express my intuition fully. But those are my top three Enlightenment Gurus. Eckhart Tolle should do 200 mics of LSD.

Set it as a long term goal and start to chip away at it slowly.

For Enlightenment, you wanna just accept BE-ing in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations. So, just let judgment happen, don't try to judge or not judge. The idea that there's a you that's judging is clinging to the 'Paradigm of Self'. What if judgments were just part of what's here? Could you surrender to BE-ing in such a way that you'd be ok with whatever happens? Don't try not to judge. Raise your awareness instead. I know this is counter-intuitive because we wanna do something for Enlightenment, right. But Enlightenment is only BE-ing in the moment without pre-judgments or pre-expectations. You're surrendering to BE-ing without pre-judgments, that's doesn't mean that you don't judge. Judgments will be part of your experience when you surrender to BE-ing -- they just won't be 'your' judgments anymore. And that hinges on the degree that you can transcend the 'Paradigm of Self or No Self' -- the only way you can do that is to locate and embody BE-ing.

MANAGING OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATIONS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL TO HAVE FOR CAREER — AND YOU’RE NOT BORN WITH THIS SKILL, IT’S AN AWARENESS YOU’LL AMASS OVER TIME THROUGH THE 'SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS' Just keep people in the loop. If the work-product is gonna be late, tell people straight-up it’s gonna be a day or two late. Don’t leave people hanging. That way people can go do something else with their day and not be looking for the work-product. Managing expectations poorly causes a lot of needless consternation. I learned this the hard way in my career. It’s a tough one to learn. It’s hard to be sensitive to breaching other people’s expectations until you’re on the receiving end of a breach of expectations yourself. Then you have awareness of how it made you feel and you can be sensitive to that happening to others. And I get it, when you’re stressed to try to get a project done, it’s not always on the top of your mind to worry about managing other people’s expectations. But you can piss people off inadvertently very easily, when a simple heads-up note can put out that fire when it’s small. I’ve poisoned the well at prior jobs by mismanaging expectations. It wasn’t what I was concerned with. But now I realize it’s the most important thing to be concerned with. It’s a systems issue. Nobody is gonna be happy missing a meal, but it makes it much more palatable to know why you’re missing a meal and when you can expect the next meal. If you leave someone waiting at a table drumming their fork and knife staring at an empty plate, that just pisses them off. It’s basically shitting where you eat. Proactive communication is the best way to avoid the undesired outcome of causing breach of expectations in people who are expecting something from you at a certain time. You do this too often with the people you work with and you can really poison the well at work. It can turn into a really nasty breach of trust kind of issue. I know this firsthand from experience.