Joseph Maynor

Yep, when you’re awake Enlightenment is a no-brainer. It’s just awareness combined with experience.

There’s something to be said for getting away from culture and media. I like what asceticism does in moderation. People take it too far though, like everything else that gets reduced to meanings. The Mind loves to cling to meanings. The problem is — all meanings are false!

Congrats. I love that you're excited about your work. I'm excited to be doing life purpose work finally. There's only kind of dive, and that's a deep-dive.

I'm an army of one baby! Let's dust this one off:

You have to both listen to the Mind and not listen to the Mind. Watch:

Do a website block on every website you have a problem with. Also turn the screen color to Greyscale. I did all this to my phone.

Passion fuels success. The stuff about Life Purpose in this video is great:

It can use useful as a preliminary to Meditation. But it's not Meditation. Meditation is more conscious than daydreaming. Although, there are a lot of daydreams that I'm sure fall into the realm of Meditation, but they're not all strictly Meditation. Meditation is more intentional, more disciplined than daydreaming. Although, let's not downgrade daydreaming either. Daydreaming is awesome -- I did it a lot in my Teens and 20's. You wanna nurture that part of yourself that is authentic, that is coming up with original and authentic ideas, visualizations, and plans. That part of you was there since you were a kid. You wanna find that again. There's an intuition there that you can tap into. Intuition is important in personal development. Video to Watch:

@Hero in progress Great idea. What is truth? Does truth apply to meanings or thoughts? If so, what justifies that application? Culture is the only way we get ideas. What is Truth? Let's contemplate that. Is it meaning, thought, language? What are meanings, thought, and language though?

This is so true. Enlightenment included. You gotta live it. You gotta wanna become a master of it.

You might look into doing some Life Purpose work.

Great illustration of how to overcome the False-choice Trap. Instead of either-or, do both.

Are you passionate about improving your life and future? What kind of vision do you have for your future? Vision is what fuels passion.

You gotta be aware everytime the pattern emerges not just once. It doesn’t dissolve after one noticing.

PILLARS OF ENLIGHTENMENT (REALITY EXPLORING REALITY FULLY) 1. Daily Meditation Habit (Microscope on the Mind) 2. Non-Dual Theory (Scaffolding to orient the Mind to favor awareness over the Ego) 3. Psychedelics (Exploring inner-being) 4. Self-Inquiry (Realizing no-Self fully) 5. External World-Inquiry (Realizing no-World fully) 6. Cosmopolitanism/ World Travel (Exploring outer-being, world cultures through travel, learning other tongues) 7. Education (Exploring world ideas and history leading to reliable knowledge and wisdom) 8. Cultivation of the Authentic-Self (Maslow's Pyramid, Life Purpose, Self-Actualization, Self-Transcendence) 9. Spirituality (Reconnecting to being the Watcher and purifying away illusions) 10. Cultivation of the Body (Nurture and fortify the Body, it's your constant companion) 11. Exploration of Art (Exploring non-linguistic ideas and patterns of ideas, exploring linguistic arts like poetry and fiction) 12. Life Practice (Perfecting your strengths in a way that makes you feel good/proud, eradicating weaknesses if authentically desired) 13. Being Good (Being a source of love and inspiration to others rather than not doing this, assisting others) 14. Authentic Relationships (Where you realize and perfect the idea that we are all One)

This video is right up your alley:

@Source_Mystic Do you see that this belief is false: "I understand the nature of thought as an approximation and not a perfect facsimile of reality." What is the nature of thought? What is an approximation of reality? What is a facsimile of reality? What is I understand? What is I? There's a lot of stuff to contemplate here. Can you see how the Mind is hiding behind this linguistic facade, propping it up with a house of cards? But it seems so true huh -- so real! Until you look a little deeper -- a little more carefully. All meaning is false.

The Mind often has different expectations than reality delivers. This is the source of all resistance. When the Mind doesn’t get from reality what it wanted or was expecting, it delivers a rebuke in the form of a negative feeling and/or a negative visualization. Everything that is happening is outside the control of the Mind, but the Mind affirms otherwise. This is what causes all suffering in life. The Mind has a false belief of control over reality. When it gets its way it’s happy, when it doesn’t it's not. The Mind needs to become aware of this trap. That’s a big piece of Enlightenment work right there. The Mind is a phenomenon within reality, not the controller of reality. But, see, it thinks it is, until its awareness is sufficiently raised to see all the unnecessary suffering this false-belief causes. Then the Mind will release this limiting-belief and all that suffering drops out of your life.

Meditate for 1 hour per day for 30 days. Just be the watcher, don’t try to manipulate anything when you meditate. Just be aware of what is happening. Note what things are inner and outer sounds, thoughts, inner visualizations, outer touch, inner touch (aka feelings/emotions). Just watch all of it happen. Watch that Monkey-Mind do what it does.

https://www.amazon.com/Websters-Bolander-Madeline-Semmelmeyer-1987-06-23/dp/B01NH07WJG/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1512079864&sr=1-3&keywords=grammar+guide+bolander This book will give you great awareness regarding language. You’ll never read the same again. This is the only grammar book that resonates with me. People don’t really know how to write grammar books well, but this one is written well. It is readable, yet has all the details you want too.

Lately I’ve been realizing more and more how deep and extensive culture is. Even things that we think are immune to culture like Science or Knowledge or the True/false Paradigm are really just extensions of culture. Is it necessary for us to purify ourselves of this culture? If so, how do we go about doing so? Thought Experiment: Imagine you got to live out the rest of your days on an isolated island with no human contact, where you were trained to provide for yourself with the resources thereon. How important to you would Science, Knowledge, or the True/ false Paradigm be? This is in service of raising awareness, obviously even awakened people are gonna value the useful cultural achievements from a pragmatic point of view. But I don’t think people realize how extensively culture is trapping them from becoming more awake. How can you raise this kind of awareness? Psychedelics, world travel, contemplation, studying the history of world ideas are useful in raising this kind of awareness, but are they enough, and what more can we do?

Take as many of the tests as you can and compare the results. That’s all you can do. This is still better than not doing this. You’re bound to learn something of value about yourself that you were not fully conscious of. Do every free online credible diagnostic test. Why not? This is an excellent use of your personal development time. Do all the free tests on Authentichappiness.com too. You gotta register first, but it’s easy. This is real work that will get you real awareness, not just empty talk about vague concepts. This is some of the highest-quality work you can be doing in personal development: increasing awareness of your authentic-self. I’m a big fan of credible diagnostic tests. I wanna take as many as I can, including career assessment tests.

There is no you that uses the Ego. That’s a thought-story, and all thought-stories are false. What is the Ego? Does the Ego exist? If it doesn’t exist, what are we talking about when we use the language “the Ego”? All nice stuff to contemplate. Don’t take anything for granted in this work. You think you found the right answer — but you’re gonna find out sooner or later that you don’t have it because there is no conceptual right-answer. It’s all technically wrong.