Joseph Maynor

Who is assigning these numbers to people?

The more intelligent/wiser you are the more you suffer because the more you see the illusion for what it is. Once you see the illusion for what it is, you don’t really wanna have any part of it. That creates a certain kind of suffering because you can’t just ‘be normal’. I’ve seen through the illusion of culture my whole life — it started when I was a kid. I was always a loner off by myself as a kid. I’ve always felt like an outcast. And even when I have had friends, none of my friends were ever on my level thinking-wise. It was like me tolerating them. The best friends I ever had were people that drew me out of my shell, and where we didn’t compete with each other. People who can bring my humor out are great for me to be around. And these are usually laid back, fun loving types. Ditto for girlfriends. It’s a disaster for me to have a girlfriend where I gotta be the one drawing her out of her shell. My best girlfriend was the one I had in college who just wanted to do fun things all the time. And she didn’t really care squat about my philosophical ideas. We got along great and she was always pushing me out of my shell. And I did it too because she was always wanting to do something fun. She would drag me out of my apartment literally. She’d say, ‘we’re doing this today’ — and I’d be like ‘ok.’ And after we broke up, all I did was sit in my apartment alone, and I was totally content with that too.

If you’re not Enlightened yourself, how would you be able to assess whether someone else is Enlightened? I’m not trying to be a d*ck here by the way, this is a legitimate Epistemological issue.

Nobody has ever accused me of having overly-simplistic thinking. Could it be that you just disagree with me? Why does there have to be some kind of ‘defect’ in my thinking? Maybe the only defect in my thinking is that you don’t agree with it. We should be less quick to find a reason why someone is wrong when we disagree with them. That becomes just as dismissive in another way. A better question would have been — Joseph, can you please tell me more about why you think that way? And then I would have been able to elaborate accordingly. But there’s no desire to even inquire further when you dismiss someone’s thinking as wrong. I don’t just say things for no reason. Everything I say has a deep rationale behind it, at least on my end. And I’m also careful to mean exactly what I say when I do say something. I’m not the kind of person who just pops off at the mouth and says something without thinking deeply about it first. Everything I say comes from years and years of deep contemplation. Dig a little deeper with me when you wanna get dismissive, I think you’ll be surprised at how deeply I do think through what I say. And even if you wind up disagreeing with me, you’ll appreciate how my mind works and why I see things the way I do. You’ll see, ‘that dude has his reasons for why he said that just that particular way.’ Anyway I’m not gonna say anything more about this to avoid a pointless argument.

That’s my point. It’s not that I’m trying to be cynical, but working for money does add a layer of inauthenticity to anyone’s life. Maybe ‘whore’ is too strong of a word, you could debate that. I know there’s degrees to it. But also, if you get in good with a company, you can get taken care of quite well. When you start your own business, you’re gonna find out really fast what uncompensated time really means. At least an employee knows that they’re getting paid for every minute of time they’re working. There are days where I work my ass off and make next to nothing. And then you have all the administrative sh*t you have to do yourself when you have a business. When you work at a company, the company takes care of the administrative stuff for you. All you do is your little 9-6 and you’re taken care of. Plus you get weekends totally off. And you get paid for holidays and stuff like that. So, the issue is a lot more nuanced than has been addressed. A lot of businesses fail too. Sometimes I’ve gone through really challenging periods or what I call ‘dry periods’ where I’m doing a bunch of marketing and not getting many bites. And that takes a lot of time too — marketing for new business. When you work at a company you don’t have to market the business. That’s somebody else’s job. So, there are pros and cons to all this stuff. The only relevant question though is, ‘what’s best for me now and in the future?’

He also has to market and sell his life purpose course and his book list too. YouTube markets his videos for him, which is nice. That’s a sales and marketing job basically. Selling and marketing personal development products and services on the Internet. At least he’s selling and marketing his own stuff which is better than selling and marketing someone else’s products or services.

That’s just semantics. I’m self-employed. I run my own business. I set my own hours. I have my own office. Nobody gets to tell me what to do. I’m far from being a wage slave, if you wanna call it that. I think that’s a distinction without a difference though. At the end of the day, if you’re in the game of working for money, you’re in it. The Ego wants to say — oh I’m better than that guy over there. But no dude, you’re in it too.

Good for you. Not everybody makes a lot of money being self-employed though. Some people make less than they would as an employee. I can’t tell you how much of my time I don’t get compensated for that at least I would be paid for if I were working as an employee somewhere. It also sucks not knowing how much money I’m gonna make per month. Some months I make a lot, some months I don’t make squat. It’s very hard for me to forecast anything financial. At least when you’re an employee you have a solid sense of what your monthly income will be from month to month.

So how is that any better than doing that as an employee somewhere?

Have you ever been self-employed? I assume you’re speaking from your own actual experience.

I agree with this sort of. Once someone reveals the secret to a magic trick to you, the next time you see that same magic trick performed — what are you gonna be focused on?

Many people don’t know what it feels like not to have to work for money at all, so they don’t see the compromising that all working for money entails. My intention was to convey that point, but it’s easily confused as a cynicism about earning money. Am I a cynic about earning money? I would say yes and no. It’s required — so it doesn’t really make sense to be against working for money. Would I work for money if I didn’t have to?— absolutely not. So see, it’s a little bit nuanced, a little bit complicated.

You’re entitled to your opinion as am I. We might have a point of disagreement here, which is fine by me. It’s an honest comment on my part.

Thoughts are illusions. They’re real in the sense of being illusions, but there’s nothing behind the scenes with thoughts. Because of this, I consider thoughts to be sensations.

Today I had a storm of negative thoughts and I just focused on their emptiness and illusoryness.

Anybody who works for money is a wage slave. You’re whoring yourself out of some level when you work for money period. Even if you think you’re a do-gooder, you’re still working for dollars at the end of the day just like everybody else is.

Nice blog videos Leo! I'll watch those now. I started the one on Trump and I'm already taking notes and sh*t. There's some good stuff to write on about the comparison and contrast between Stage Red/Stage Orange and Stage Coral.

Hehe. I lived it. Even better.

THE LIMITATIONS OF STAGE TURQUOISE Turquoise is still too attached to Thought and Experience a.k.a Maya. They're distracting themselves literally. It's like a kid getting lost in his fantasies. Turquoise loves the sound of their own voice and loves to talk and teach. But see, all this is just an Egoic distraction away from maintaining God Awareness and seeing through the literal illusion of Maya a.k.a. Thought and Experience. In order for God to be God he cannot be swimming around in Hell a.k.a. Maya a.k.a. Samsara. God does not swim around in Hell, see. I like to put it like this, 'God and the Devil can't exist in the same room at the same time.' If you are God and you're allowing the Devil and Hell into your life, it's only by lack of keen-Awareness that you can continue to do that. It's a lack of taking responsibility from an Awareness perspective that leads God to the Devil or to Hell. Living in Maya is not the way to live. Freedom a.k.a. Moksha is the exist of Awareness from Maya a.k.a. Thought and Experience. Turquoise half-detaches from Maya, that's the problem. Turquoise doesn't realize that Maya is a literal illusion and remains bought-into Maya a.k.a. Thought and Experience significantly.

I find it weird that you are deflecting all these questions externally. The extent of the questions. It's almost like you don't want to take any responsibility for thinking for yourself. You're not gonna find the right answer for your life to that degree externally. You need to focus inward. It's your life, why would you think others can give you the answer? Here's a good exercise, take out a piece of paper and draft an answer to all your questions and then post those answers. Then ask us to look at that and provide comments. That would give you the most bang for your buck in terms of useful feedback from us.

You can talk about reality. Just make sure it’s grounded in your own experience. The problem with theory is people start to parrot the theory as if the theory can replace self-observation as a source of truth. I encourage you to talk about reality. What you wanna do though is ground your talk about reality in your own self-observation work.

Tell us your answer then. It's easy to just deny without proposing any alternatives.

That's Maya. In Maya, the Preacher becomes the Devil and the Devil becomes the Preacher. I think I recall that dude leaving comments under the YouTube videos. Here's the kicker -- The person who wrote that took the time to write that. That's what's sad. Think about it. PS it's weird to me to see someone with a lot of ideas but with sophomoric writing skills.

Seeing is not a conceptual distinction. Keep that in mind.