Joseph Maynor

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.

Great book to give you some awareness about the US Economic System. Great for aspiring entrepreneurs to get a little primer on how US Capitalism works and where it comes from. Get to know the jungle before you jump into it. This little book is truly a well-written intro that also has all the relevant detail that you want too. Truly a gem of a book. Not political either. Just Economics.

It’s not a matter of choosing belief A or B, it’s realizing that this choice is just a low-consciousness cultural game. People don’t grok this fully while stuck in the Rationalist Paradigm. They keep looking for beliefs and paradigms to be true. They don’t realize what the concept of truth is. They’ve never contemplated that fully.

We live in the Information Age, we should understand the History of the Internet. This book doesn’t play around. It’s got all the details. Maybe too many details. This is a hard-nosed book, not some fluff-piece. So, be prepared to sift through a lot of fine details. But it’s worth it!

Yeah. My monkey chatter is pretty low now too. Great insight. I don’t even have bad dreams anymore. I used to have bad dreams on occasion. The only time I get bad monkey chatter is when I’m stressed by something acute happening in my life.

But all of this is seen through the lens of your awareness. So, only your awareness is really there. These two perspectives are identified by the Mind in your awareness. This is tricky. Do you see it! There are no objects, things, perceivers. There is only the One, and you are it. And the One is not two. This is what non-duality means. All language is entirely metaphorical and dualistic.

What is a fact? Contemplate that one. You’ll see that you’re not as solid about this as the Mind likes to think.

The idea that words are pointing to things is just another false belief, false paradigm. All beliefs are false. Don’t look for a rational proof of this either. It can only be confirmed by keen-awareness.

Yes. The Devil is the Ego. Hell is living within the Egoic Paradigm. Religion is just Spirituality expressed within the Egoic Paradigm. God is high-consciousness or keen-awareness. Heaven is the happiness and peace caused by being God.

I’m so glad I have a place to express these ideas. This is all shit that I see and I am so happy to be able to share these ideas with somebody else. I would be killed just a few hundred years ago for saying these things publically. When I visited Rome, I saw the spot where Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. It’s like right in the city too not some remote spot. They built a statue there and it’s in a public square. The thoughts that float through your head and the emotions you feel are surreal when you see the spot where he was burned in person. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

It’s only perfect when you reach the zenith. You gotta get to the zenith before you reach the zenith though. Raising awareness is the best strategy for reaching the zenith. But you gotta go all the way, you can’t let glass ceilings hinder you. To reach the zenith you gotta go where you've never gone before, you can’t sent up camp and habituate at one higher level and then coast like that’s it. But don’t turn this into a limiting-belief. Think of this like a goose as in someone giving you a good goose! As in — Take it up another notch dood! Don’t be complacent and comfortably assume you’ve arrived anywhere. That’s a trap in this work. We’ll call that the camper’s trap. We gottaa be climbers not campers.

Consciousness means awareness. High-consciousness mean high-awareness. Low-consciousness means low-awareness.

Meditation is training to do the mindfulness required to raise your awareness. Enlightenment is a word that refers to the process of raising awareness, especially in the higher-stages of awareness.

Are all three of these traditional paths to Enlightenment valid in your opinion?

How has this changed my life? I feel free, mobile, aware of the status of my possessions at all times. I spend very little time bogged down in junk and don’t waste a lot of my time shopping. I don’t get lost in books because I try not to have them around me, except for one or two that I am actively currently reading,

It doesn’t work like that. Awareness stays the same, but the content of awareness changes. I learned this from my ego death experience.

Or how about this belief: “Non-duality is true” You’re gonna see some surprises if you look under the hoods of both of these beliefs.

Every question is a desire for increased awareness or understanding.

Do you merely believe intellectually or do you actually live it?

I know this is a tough bullet to bite, but probably the only thing you can do is tell her how you feel. Try to do it in as non-confrontational way as possible.

The cracks in your heart from childhood and adolescence manifest in all kinds of ways in your life. You can heal from all this by doing personal development though. I wish I knew at 20 what I now know at 40. This might be the driver for why I am driven to help people with their personal development. Dealing with family is tricky. I’ve found that acceptance goes a long way. Keep the communication alive though. Estrangement is a terrible pain, especially with your mom. Try to avoid things coming to that. Stop trying to control people. Just be an inspiration to them by doing you well. There are lots of hidden reasons why things happen the way they do. And everybody has a set of reasons justifying their actions and beliefs.

@phoenix666 What is normal consciousness? That’s a limiting-belief too. All beliefs are false.

I’ve always been a minimalist and have only become more and more of one as time goes on. Being an Entrepreneur has really caused this to manifest in me more because I’ve developed a system fascilitating doing my Amazon order for the month. I have all my possessions lined up in my office and my house so I can quickly and readily see the status of each thing and what I need to order. I have every category of item noted in my budget too. If I don’t use it, it gets thrown away. I have a small amount of stuff on the shelves in my closet that I don’t currently use but I keep there for later use. But in general, I don’t keep stuff around me that I don’t actually currently use. My clothing wardrobe is also cleverly minimalistic. I had to build a wardrobe that has the minimal number of articles that I actually wear that can be combined in lots of ways for variety. If I don’t wear it regularly, it gets tossed or donated. My laundry is pretty easy because of this. I also got rid of all my books. I don’t keep books around after I read them. I give those away to people. The thing is with me — if I can throw it away or give it away, I will. I don’t wanna have a bunch of shit around me. I’ve always been like that. The stuff I do have around me I actively use. Also, I don’t like to keep a bunch of paperwork around me either. I have one inbox at work, and that’s where the papers go. If they are important enough to keep, I will scan them and put them in my DropBox in the correct folder. Then I’ll shred the hard copies. If they are not worth reviewing daily in my inbox or saving on DropBox, I’ll throw them away or shred them.