Joseph Maynor

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Posts posted by Joseph Maynor

  1. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    Basically, what you're doing is realizing that what you believe you are is not what you really are.

    Beliefs about reality, or what I call conceptual-truth, is twisting reality into something that reality is not.

    And instead of questioning our beliefs, we assume reality tracks our beliefs.  Pretty big assumption huh?

    But when you start to look at these beliefs (and the cultural milieu in which these beliefs arose), you'll realize the error in this presumptive belief that reality tracks our beliefs, concepts, paradigms about it.  There seems to be this presumption that we can conceptually-know reality.  But is that true or just a lingering cultural fantasy?

    What if our beliefs about reality are very wrong?  What if reality is something that we're not used to thinking -- and even worse -- what if reality is something that cannot be grasped, captured, or encapsulated by thought at all!

    (1) Do beliefs about reality have anything to do with reality?  

    (2) What is the best way to get to know reality?

    (3) Is there a difference between knowing reality and being reality?

  2. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    4 hours ago, Dodo said:

    What remains when all judgement is gone?

    All is isness, all is this.

    The fullness of life awareness and bliss.

    Breathe deep, Peace!

    Experiencing peace

    Feeling like a child again

    No fear

    A sense of having arrived home -- self-realization

    No need to know or to do

    A feeling of oneness

    A feeling of acceptance

    A feeling that one must die in order to properly live

    Appreciating reality as a magical experience -- this is what comes off as love and bliss

  4. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    14 hours ago, snowleopard said:

    @Joseph Maynor  Agreed, seeking seems to play itself out. But as this locus of Awareness, aware of none other than itself as this ever-changing cosmos, does its dream ever end? It somehow feels like its creative imperative.

    I try not to have too many beliefs about things.  Just be reality.  Rest as awareness.  There is no need to believe.  There is no need to do anything.  You wanna get to the point where you're completely surrendered to not doing anything.  Yet reality still moves by magic.  Nothing changes after Enlightenment.  That's the thing.  You're already Enlightened, you're just programmed with erroneous beliefs about reality.  You think that you can know and that you can control and that you can do, etc.  That's all belief, or conceptual-truth as I choose to term it.  And there's this underlying belief that reality mirrors the structure of our beliefs, or at least corresponds with them.  But that's a pretty strong assumption on our part, isn't it?   That's pretty much most likely to be false, isn't it?  That just a pretty good-hunch based on our acquaintance with our huge library of fossilized-ideas cataloged in Philosophy.  Ideas seem to have lifespans, but Reality is not limited in this way.

  5. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    13 hours ago, snowleopard said:

    @egoless What about the final finding that there's no finality?

    You do get to a kind of a finality after you discover the unchanging aspect of Self.  That's where seeking further seems stupid.  And your past seeking seems stupid too!  Maybe egoless is fully self-realized now, we don't know.  In that case he doesn't have anything left to do really.  So, there is kind of a finality with Enlightenment.  There's a state where you get to where you've reduced ignorance so much that everything kind of inverts.  What looked valuable before now looks silly and pointless.  But reality is gonna do whatever it's gonna do regardless.  You're just that which is.  There's a finiteness in that, in the sense that you've come home, no more seeking needed, etc.  

  9. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    7 minutes ago, Nahm said:

    @IvanV21 There’s the everyday experience of  “self” in reality, then reality is realized to be illusion and “no self” is realized (you are all of the reality / illusion not just the person), then there’s what the no self is, which is the only Self that Is. This is the Self we all are in reality (actual reality, not the illusion/universe)

    So the term Self Actualization is used - as in, the actual self. It’s pretty fuckin awesome. Don’t tell anyone I said that though. 

    I'm losing the everyday experience of the "self" in reality.  Most of that has gone bye bye for me.  I'm resting as Awareness most of the time, or being the Soul.  I'm just being that which doesn't change.  I don't really buy the 2 Level Theory of Truth that some Indian Philosophers seem to dogmatically accept as true.  There is only one truth and it's the non-changing Now.  Everything else is just erroneous belief about reality.  

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_truths_doctrine

  10. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    Read this and tell me if you feel the same about eating chicken after.  A chicken can have a natural lifespan of up to 10 years, but the chickens we eat are killed after 1 to 3 months of life.  We're eating them when they are young-adolescents basically.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broiler

    "Most commercial broilers reach slaughter-weight between four and seven weeks of age, although slower growing breeds reach slaughter-weight at approximately 14 weeks of age."  [Quoted from Wiki article "Broiler", linked above.]

  11. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    Just because you're not the Ego doesn't mean traditional self-help is not a part of your reality, if it ever was.  If it wasn't, then it wasn't.  I notice that having traditional self-help in the background does help awareness a lot of times -- but obviously most traditional self-help is in error.  It's predicated on the belief that we have control.  Traditional self-help is irrelevant to me at this stage of my enlightenment, but whose to say it didn't get me here?  I don't know, and that's why I'm reluctant to pooh-pooh traditional self-help.  I'm glad I was exposed to it, but it doesn't really help me now.  I have no idea how it might affect another person well or adversely.  Putting my speculation hat on -- I think traditional self-help is useful for those stuck in the Egoic Paradigm before they go through their Awakening process.

  12. Posted

    2 minutes ago, PsiloPutty said:

    For me, they (ayahuasca and psilocybin) opened the curtain just enough to give me a astonishing peek at what reality is. If I never did another psychedelic again, I'd still have the memory of what I saw, felt and gained to motivate me to become a better iteration of myself. That said, I do find it beneficial to rinse and repeat every so often, as the insight can fade over time, just like any other experience or memory we have. They're a tool for me.

    Exactly.  I think everyone should get that look behind the curtain in this work.

  13. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    3 minutes ago, Neo said:

     

     

    Could they be a trap?

    For me at this place in my growth I can answer yes.  This is because what I'm trying to do is right now is focus more on just resting as awareness.  So, I don't really care about anything other than this.  I guess it depends on what a particular person on the path needs to get to a place where they can fully accept reality.  So, there's no real objective answer to whether they are a trap.  They are a tool.  No tool is bad in itself.  What is good or bad is the utility of that tool in a particular context where there is a particular problem.

  18. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    OUR FAITH IN UNCHANGING WISDOM AKA CONCEPTUAL-KNOWLEDGE IS CAUSED BY A BELIEF THAT WE'RE CLINGING TO AND PROBABLY NOT FULLY CONSCIOUS OF YET

    The paradigm and project of knowledge aka conceptual-knowing is an attempt to gain unchanging wisdom.  This is a paradigm and project -- and we can go Meta and examine it once we realize that.  Knowledge is a habit, it's not a necessary condition for existence or a necessary element of reality.  The assumption that conceptual-knowing can constitute unchanging wisdom is a BELIEF.  This is a deep insight, grok it!

  19. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    52 minutes ago, Staples said:

    Psych student here. Big 5 has more scientific reputability, MBTI is an easy sell because it's so simple. MBTI leaves no room for nuance because it is binary in nature.

    But they're both models for personality, one of the most complex things humans have attempted to study. No model is holistic enough yet, which is what I'm working on now.

    MBTI is very good.  Use it as a tool.  No test is perfect.  MBTI is powerful and has a lot of research and theory behind it.  

  20. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    32 minutes ago, Saumaya said:

    As far as the debate of free will vs determinism go...I'd say both are incorrect as two truths cannot exist. The world is getting created and destroyed at the same time. You don't have control...thats right..but to say that future is determined will also be wrong.

    Every belief and role feels like a straight-jacket to reality that reality simply sloughs off after about 2 seconds.  That's the trouble with beliefs, they purport to be independent of time and place -- or context-independent.  But reality and truth are totally context-dependent.  That's why beliefs have to be clung to loosely.  Beliefs are an attempt to control reality in a sense.  An attempt to define reality.  An attempt to reduce the dynamic to the static, the changing to the changeless.  You are that which is not definable.  I think this is the first sentence of the Tao Te Ching.  Lao Tsu knew this, which is pretty amazing.  And we're still puzzled about it today.  I guess there's some knowledge that doesn't accumulate with time.  Why is that?  That's a fascinating question, isn't it?  Some knowledge seems to catch and some doesn't.  

     

  21. Posted

    5 minutes ago, SOUL said:

    There really is no duality, only a mistaken perception of it by the mind......hehe.

    Totally!  We think our ideas correspond to reality.  We think reality closely corresponds to our thoughts about it.

    This is a deep prejudice we seem to be hardwired with.  An inclination to err by assuming this metaphor is real.  Not even seeing the underlying metaphor.  

  23. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    Is there a sense in which the agnostic regarding beliefs forces reality into that paradigm -- the agnostic paradigm -- thereby attempting to control reality?  Is this a fault?  And if so, in what sense?  Roles are ideologies, are they not?  

    This is a gnarly trap eh?  How do we work with this skeptical paradigm to get it right?  There's some good in it, we can all agree.

    ---------------------

    Is trying not to play any roles playing a role too, and thereby trying to control reality?  This is kind of an interesting insight.

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    Video for some background theory if you need it:

     

  25. Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor

    35 minutes ago, SOUL said:

    It really comes down to what is meant by "free" and "illusion", I think that is what creates the confusion.

    The longer I'm on the path the more it is pretty clear to be that there is no free will, but I could be wrong, as that's a belief too.  Of course it's possible I'm just being brainwashed with all the Enlightenment theories too.  There's truth and then there's theory -- and never the twain shall meet.  All beliefs are theory and are suspect on that basis -- even the non-dual theories.  Not knowing is more powerful than non-duality.  Truth is more powerful than non-duality.  And truth is simply reality.  Reality doesn't need a belief.  Does reality care about free will or no free will?  Probably not.  It's apples and oranges, and reality doesn't consider either one food haha.  I'm enjoying playing this new role of the non-committed believer.  Yeah!  It's a role.  Does that mean there is something wrong with it, something ideological?  Is reality ideological, dogmatic, something in between, something heterogeneous -- an incalculable chaos perhaps?  Reality yawns at all this, and moves on stoically unperturbed.