Joseph Maynor

The hard part about Enlightenment is to realize you're already Enlightened.

Make a list of pros and cons about staying in and leaving the relationship. Count the pros and count the cons and add them up. Look at the two numbers. Then, disregard the analysis and follow your heart. But this will get you huge awareness list by making the list. And awareness is what will give you the sense of knowing what to do. It will get you off the fence one way or the other.

Sounds like you went through at least that first stage where you realize the Self-Image isn't you. Part of you seems to die because you've been assuming all your life that the Self-Image is you, right? It's a deep experience at the early stage of the Enlightenment journey. I had my Dark Night of the Soul after that experience. That's when my Shadow collapsed into my Ego, as my Ego had lost footing because I had been studying Enlightenment for a while beforehand. About a week later, I was balanced out again, but with much ego-loss. Yeah, that was quite the experience. I call it my Ego Death experience, and it happened March of last year -- almost 1 year ago now! There's much more after that though. You gotta find the unchanging Soul and be it. It's that simple. But the actual path there ain't simple though for some reason -- it's full of twists and turns. But in hindsight, it looks very simple. Like -- what the hell was I doing all that time searching! Searching for nothing haha. Pun intended! I haven't vetted these readings very carefully, but they might be useful to some people on the path: https://lonerwolf.com/ego-death/ https://fractalenlightenment.com/28187/spirituality/7-signs-you-may-be-experiencing-a-dark-night-of-the-soul

Thanks for posting this. I'm listening now. I need to explore Osho.

Yep. Keep writing man. Write more on here. Open yourself up and just let stuff flow out more. You gotta trust it too. I think a lot of people judge what comes out, and that's a huge mistake. You gotta see what's there first. Don't let your insecurities sabotage your authentic content! It's important to see what comes out. Let it come out and just focus on capturing it, and then perhaps organizing it and presenting it. You can always make it more ordered and less chaotic; that's one of the great uses of writing -- one of the reasons why writing is such a great tool and technology.

ABOUT MY WRITING -- I'M NOT THE ORIGINATOR OF MY IDEAS -- I'M JUST THE PRESENTER OF THEM I don't know what I think until I write and and let it magically flow out. And it does just flow out -- that's what's amazing about writing. Just tidy it up after it's birthed out for you. Organize what Nature has delivered to you and present it well. That's the job of the writer. Paradoxically, when you try to write, that's when you suck at it. To be a great writer, just learn to organize, tidy-up, and present what the Soul releases through you. That's when you can focus on writing style. You don't need to think anything anymore, that just comes out on its own. Your job is just to present it through the art of writing as structured, easy to comprehend, and beautiful. I find that as a writer, all I do is organize and communicate the wisdom that seems to flow through me constantly. A lot of what fascinates me is the art of writing -- the art of revising my sentences and making them understandable and beautiful at the same time. There are some useful principles of good writing, and to put those into practice is really fun for me. But all I do is present through the cultural technology of writing, the content that is constantly flowing through me. I'm not generating any of the content. It's not like I'm sitting here and just thinking this stuff up. I'm just tidying up the material to make it presentable to others. I'm just a communicator really. That's the sense in which I'm an artist: I'm a presenter, using the artistry of writing as a medium.

It makes you normal paradoxically. That's an interesting result, huh? It might be due to the lack of neurosis. The Mind is relaxed, not agitated all the time.

Keep walking the path. It's a process. You gotta deprogram a lot of cultural stuff from your psyche.

That's Egoic too though. Reality is one, so to think you are talking to another is delusion. Just rest as awareness and get beyond the beliefs of reality. They're tripping you up. Reality is magical, not material. Be the unchanging Soul and just let reality play itself out -- and try not to cling to beliefs about reality. Just watch the beliefs float by but don't cling to them. Reality doesn't change after Enlightenment. You don't change after Enlightenment. Your relationships don't have to change after Enlightenment. Enlightenment is simply realizing that our beliefs about reality are not reality. And experiencing the profound crack that this causes. Pay attention to unconditioned reality for a while. This is the reality that's there before concepts are attached to about it. Just focus on that for a while. See what that is. See how thoughts lie on top of that.

Make sure you're not confusing being the unchanging Soul with Egoic authenticity. That could be a trap for you. I'm not sure. If you're trying to be authentic -- that's Ego.

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?

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

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.

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.

It's funny how deep this advice sounds to people who already have it, yet how shallow it sounds to someone seeking.

Yes. For 30 mins each day. In the morning. I like do nothing meditation. Vipassana meditation is also kinda cool, as you are focused on your breath. So, I switch between those two.

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

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

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.]

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.

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

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.

Haha. Ahh!

I'm joking too -- but not really because what I said is true too haha. Now -- here's a test. What's the Absolute? Don't let me down Faceless. Think!