Joseph Maynor

I'm interested in this too.

Reality is Existential Truth. It can also be a word that is loosely associated with several thought-stories that you have been exposed to. We might call these thought-stories about Reality. Existential Truth is what is sensed in the present moment. So, thoughts as things sensed in the present moment are Existentially True. But the insides of thoughts — their thought-stories — are not Existentially True.

Reality is not deceptive. If you just watch reality there is nothing deceptive. It is only beliefs that deceive. It is thought-stories that deceive. I’m not talking about any concept of reality here either, I’m talking about what is sensed in the present moment. Even the notion of deception is a thought-story. Existential Truth is not deceptive. That’s why you wanna be watching that in the present moment. What’s deceptive is our clinging tightly to beliefs. Our ideas get in the way of our plain view of reality. It’s kinda sad huh? Yeah.

The Mind is a concept. What you need to start to do is to realize that all thoughts are just sensations. And inside of those sensations is a fiction, what we call a thought-story. Now, thoughts as sensations are part of reality, part of Existential Truth, but the insides of the thoughts are not Existentially True. What we have a bad habit of doing, because we’ve been conditioned to do this from the time we were babies, is to create an Ego out of beliefs instead of just watching reality and being aware of reality. Beliefs are simply the insides — or mental content — of certain thoughts. This “Ego of beliefs” we create is a model and can never capture reality. And we know this — but for some reason we have a hard time practicing it. When you watch those thoughts as sensations, you will develop the awareness of what is happening, and so you’ll cling to beliefs less tightly. And the less tightly you cling to beliefs, the more open you become to just seeing reality as it is. Also you’ll become less judgmental because that results from clinging tightly to beliefs. We spent the first part of our life learning beliefs and creating a strong Ego. Now we must empty our cup of beliefs so we can see the Truth without any idea filters.

I think most people would agree that a life where you have the basics of food, shelter, security, access to healthcare is superior to a life where you don’t have these basics. Now, beyond this, it’s up to the individual how they fashion their life. What you wanna do is live your authentic values and strengths at that point. But the problem is you gotta do the personal development work to locate the Authentic-Self and figure out those authentic values and strengths. You need to learn how to increase awareness. This removes a lot of unnessesary suffering from your life and promotes your success as a by-product. Now, is this life better than choosing to live as a bum on the street? Well, probably right? It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t be.

How does any of this relate to Stage Coral? I wanna see who has something insightful to say about that.

Being addicted to having your mind fucked can be a trap too. That could cause you to cling to beliefs to achieve said mindfucking. Better to just watch the Truth. I’m not really addicted to having my mind fucked. I’m more interested in acceptance of reality.

The Mind can’t wrap itself around reality because reality is always in flux and changing. It’s like a 2-dimensional model trying to capture a 3-dimensional one. Ain’t gonna work. The Mind can only deal with 2-dimensional models. Now, reality isn’t really a model, so it can’t be subsumed by the Mind. The Mind likes to pretend reality can be captured under concepts, but this is never gonna work, ever. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use beliefs. It just means that our expectations regarding beliefs and our paradigm regarding their function and use is wrong. Beliefs are not good or bad — it’s how they are clung to that’s good or bad in the present moment.

The point is that all your garbage beliefs need to be cleaned out so you can have a sense of the Authentic-Self. Once you have a sense of the Authentic-Self, you can use awareness of reality to basically keep the Mind from manipulating your beliefs and emotions. The fox won’t chase its tail so much. ? And your life will become more aligned with your authentic values and strengths.

I know when you consider tactile sensations, visual sensations can appear to be 3-dimensional. But is that really true? Are visual sensations actually flat and not 3-dimensional?

I’m realizing that to say anything at all is not the Truth. And that applies to this matter. We wanna be making beliefs less rigid. Why does there need to be a theoretical answer here anyway? We’re trying to conceptualize what is. How foolish is that? But we’re addicted to it. The Mind keeps egging us on and convincing us that this is possible. Even I fell into this trap by asking this question.

I think every true counselor first and foremost is counseling themselves. Helping others is a byproduct of that. Just like every jazz musician is playing for themselves. So, you gotta see where your drive to do this work is coming from. That’s why Life Purpose work is so important. Counseling others can come from a less pure place, so you’ll wanna take a look at that issue within yourself. You should do Leo’s Life Purpose Course.

First of all, let’s organize things a bit. Law of Attraction is a word that is associated with a number of loosely similar concepts that you have been exposed to. Now, the question is, where do these concepts live in Enlightenment theory, such that they serve some kind of useful aim to you. Well, recently I had an insight that might fit this bill. I realized that there’s a Law of Attraction like effect with tightly held beliefs. When you cling tightly to an Ego of beliefs, or a system of beliefs, judgments will happen as a result. And those judgments will effect actions and also corroborate the beliefs. So, there’s where the fox is chasing its own tail. Do you see it? That’s why loosening up beliefs is so critical in this work. Strong beliefs, judgments, and Ego all feed off and reinforce each other.

Did you watch the video “How to Change the World?” A picture paints a thousand words.

Damn, this wiki article on INTP is pretty good: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTP

You are always doing something, think about it. All of us are hard workers at doing whatever it is that we’re doing. The only thing Enlightenment does is remove all your garbage ideas that are inclining you to do things that are not honoring your authentic values and strengths. So, once you clean that garbage out of your head, and once you start to develop a taste for simply looking at reality, your actions will auto-correct on their own. It’s important that you understand — you are not doing anything! All you’re doing is becoming more aware of reality. That’s it.

I think the problem with success is it goes to your head. Anyone who gets some can tell you that. And you start to cling to a persona that you are different or wiser or somehow more worth listening to than other people. It’s exciting to the Ego to feel this way, but once you become conscious of this mechanism, you will become disgusted by it. I know I have a knack for this kind of work, but I never want that to go to my head, and I never want to feel like I’m protecting some kind of false persona that always needs to be right or come out on top. It’s something to watch out for. And the Ego is sneaky with this. Popularity seems to confirm this difference between you and me. But that only gets in the way of my growth in this work. Instead of growing at that point, I really start to hit a glass ceiling. I had to bust through that recently by realizing my Ego had become too invested in this work. Strange how that happens. And those of us planning a career around this work need to always be very mindful that this trap is lurking there ready to suck you in.

Blues

Yay! I love. Love love love.

Damn this sounds innocent to me: Maybe that’s good, haha. Crystals can be good.

Curious.

It’s fascinating from a linguistics standpoint even to dabble in other languages. It puts your own language in high-relief. It’s kind of like being able to see your own culture better by traveling. I have much more of a perspective on English from dabbling in other languages. Without this kind of contrast, you don’t really see the difference between language and thought. You also don’t see what language is until you travel through other languages — just like you don’t really see what culture is until you travel through other cultures. I recommend the Pimsleur Conversational audios. They are affordable and good for doing this kind of work.

I was where you were. Look at this question I asked last year in July: Look at this one! This was like my very first question on the Forum. I liked Emerald’s answer at the time.

This is a very good question and I can see that you are struggling with the Authentic-Self and how to honor that. The answer is that you need to keep doing Enlightenment work so you don’t attach the Authentic-Self to Ego. That was a trap I fell into as well. So, you are making progress on this path it seems. The thing you need to start to really get into is to contemplate — What is the Ego? What is the Authentic-Self? How do I empty my cup of beliefs so I can honor the Authentic-Self? So, you’ve made a lot of progress, but you need to make some more inroads in Enlightenment to get the answer you are looking for.

Everything kind of depends on where you are in your own personal journey in this work. I’ve fallen in and out of every practice. Right now I’m big into meditation and psychedelics. But there were other times where I get really into the theory. So, I just let my authentic-self tell me what to do, and I follow that. Think of all these practices like tools in a toolbox. Let the authentic-self tell you what fix it wants at any given time, and that will govern what tool you use. The fix my authentic-self wants right now is to be the watcher, the observer of reality. So, that makes the tools of meditation and psychedelics very useful for that kind of work.