Joseph Maynor

You’re assuming that reality can be literally conceptualized instead of figurally so. All our theories are figurative. The Mind reinforces the belief that they should be literal. That doesn’t mean you dump theory — because that would mean you didn’t shake the trap because you are still buying into the true/ false paradigm regarding beliefs. What you gotta do is embrace the idea that language is metaphorical and never literal. You’ll still use language, but you’ll change the expectations you have around it. You’ll become less rigid with theory and become more creative with it. There’s a reason the more Enlightened a person is the less they argue over conceptual issues. That trap is fully seen through.

Beautifully said.

The belief that awareness is mental. The belief that thoughts are true and false. The belief that the Mind is you. The belief that knowing is conceptual knowing. The belief that doing is willful doing. The belief that language is literal rather than metaphorical. The belief that money-making is bad or evil. The belief that beliefs are real. The beliefs that emotions are yours. The belief that things, objects, and people exist. The belief that death exists. The belief that birth exists. The belief that you exist. The belief that the external world exists. The belief that the Mind exists. The belief that the Body exists. The belief that you have limiting beliefs. The belief that you have problems. The belief that you have a psychological block or resistance. The belief that you can’t do something. The belief that you are or are not a certain kind of person. The belief that something is not possible. The belief that a task is prohibitively hard and grindy to do. The belief that you suck at doing something. The belief that you will likely fail at something. The belief that you don’t deserve something that you want. The belief that you’re broken or defective compared to others. The belief that awareness is real. The belief that non-duality is true. The belief that any paradigm is true. The belief that any belief is true. The belief that you are awareness. The belief that you are nothing. The belief that you are everything.

One of the tricks of the Mind is to reinforce the belief that awareness is Mental. It’s not. This is a sneaky slight of hand that the Mind does. Meditation will help you overcome this trap.

If so, what does that do to the thought that all thoughts are useless?

Existence vs non-existence is a duality. Reality is non-dual. Do you appreciate the implications of this fully? Existence is a concept that the Mind is laying on top of reality. So is non-existence. So is the “existence vs. non-existence” opposition. Use concepts, but don’t become trapped in them. Don’t be the bug that is trapped by the spiderwebs. You wanna be the greasy bug that doesn’t get caught in those webs. That’s the next level for you. Notice that even the word “appearance” is a duality. It’s too snapshotish, too discrete, too individuated. You gotta grok the deeper issue here. Use theory, but don’t cling to it so hard. This is so hard to teach someone.

If you don’t have the goal, more than likely you won’t become one. But if you do have the goal, at least you’ll have a chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tired_Sounds_of_Stars_of_the_Lid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_of_the_Lid

@ZX_man Yeah? Even what I said here is just more thought. What is important is to have keen-awareness in the moment. Thoughts can cause increased awareness, that's why I use them. I calculate how I use thoughts to try to raise awareness. And the only reason I can do this is because I had to go through it myself. So, I can only target what I can see, which is limited. But we must work from where we are at. And we aim to get an insight every once in a while that causes us to go -- oh shit! Here we go again! You wanna put yourself in the situation where you are doing this work as much as possible. Then your awareness will increase as fast as possible. If people only took more advantage of this forum, we would have many enlightened people already. The problem is that people lack sticktuitiveness. They lack that long-term, deep-dive kind of work-ethic; that hardcore attitude. They are dabblerz. And dabblers don't become enlightened. Enlightenment is the end-stop of this work. It's the reward given to the person who does this work all the time, consistently, every day. If you dabble in Enlightenment you're just going to turn it into more belief. You need to transcend belief. How do you do that? I mean really do that not just think it's a sexy thing to consider. No, this stuff is lived. For some reason I really got sucked into this work and embraced it fully. I fell in love with it because I started seeing the results, and then those results began to add-up and cause a momentum all their own to pursue this work. I never have to try to do this work, I just do it naturally.

Beautiful description. I am the Watcher. I am in the illusion without being in the illusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_(Gas_album)

Paradoxes are all duality. Thoughts are better thought of as tools for increasing awareness rather than as truths or falsities. The biggest problem is that the Mind is addicted to taking thoughts to be true or false. That's the source of all paradoxes. Once you take the expectation of truth and falsity away from thoughts, paradox becomes kind of a non-issue. Then you can just use thoughts without trying to pigeon-hole them as true or false. Use thoughts the way a chef uses spices rather than the way a scientists uses thoughts. Once you take away the assumptions about how thoughts should be, you can just use them without trying to force them into the framework of true and false. So, there's a deeper issue being played-out here than paradox. Paradox is a symptom of this kind of pidgeon-holing by the Mind, which is a deeper problem. When you're convinced you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The key is to stop assuming you're a hammer, and then the nails dissolve for you -- and then you can get off the hamster-wheel on this block. Enlightenment works like that. Enlightenment sees through all the traps of the Mind -- it dissolves all the hamster-wheels so they can't trap and block you. Paradoxes don't exist! Don't turn them into limiting-beliefs. Use them as tools and don't cling so tightly to them. Don't look for thoughts to yield truth. That's a trap. This is liberating. You do thoughts, don't let thoughts do you. The Mind wants to imprison you with thoughts. It's like a chef becoming too anally beholden to his prior recipes rather than simply using those recipes as launch-pads for creating any number of dishes in the moment. See? This is a mindset-shift. This is where expecting thoughts to be true or false leads you => progress-less progress. Where is the below hamster actually getting to? Its progress is simply a figment of its own Mind, not real progress in reality. Our Minds do this to us too in many ways. The key is to notice the hamster-wheels set up by the Mind, and to have the awareness to be able to avoid them. Be a holistic creator, not a knower. Practice not-knowing. Clinging too hard to thoughts as truths is a trap, a distraction, and a source of suffering. Get out of the paradigm of expecting thoughts to be true or false. Sure, you can cling loosely to that paradigm, but beware of the limitations of it too. Just because the Mind wants to be a thought glutton doesn't mean that that is high-consciousness. You gotta make a discontinuous-jump to a new paradigm regarding the expectations of thoughts. This is a hard one because it goes against a deeply-ingrained idea that thoughts are true and false, and that conceptual truths are what we should be seeking without regard for pragmatic application. Practice trumps theory, not the other way around. The conceptual-clinger is not the wisest person. They are in a trap that they don't appreciate fully. The wisest person is much more flexible, non-clingy, and intuitive than that -- just like the great chef who adds the right ingredients in the moment without needing to conceptualize everything beforehand. Sure, the chef uses pre-meditated recipes as tools, but he doesn't cling to them unreasonably. He probably doesn't even use measuring spoons and cups unless the context requires doing so either -- he eyeballs everything and proceeds holistically; he realizes the limitations of conceptual information. The territory is not the map.

I may not be able to eat meat much longer. Thank you all for your contributions to this topic. It's kind of an awareness mindfuck, isn't it? How would we feel if we were raised by another organism so that it could eat our dead muscles and skin? See? We don't ever fully put ourselves in the perspectives of the animals we eat -- we just assume it is normal and natural to eat them, even though we do not need to. We do not need to eat animals to survive. What spawned this question is when I went home for Thanksgiving I interacted with pet cats, dogs, birds, and fish, and I realized that they are more similar to us than the Mind is inclined to think. Like us, each animal has a unique personality too. When we get our meat at the supermarket, we are shielded from all that. All that is there is the already processed meat. We're blinded from being fully aware of what we are doing when we eat meat. Imagine it was your arms and legs wrapped up in cellophane at the supermarket! If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander too, no? Why do we hold a double-standard here? I was going to eat some sardines for lunch today, and then I kept seeing the pet fish that I fed and interacted with during my recent trip home. I looked at the dead sardines in the can and I felt so sad. I couldn't eat them. They were alive fishies at some point just trying to survive and live like we are. It felt spiritually wrong to me in that moment to eat them. Fish are amazing animals if you ever get a chance to watch them in an aquarium or in a pond. They are graceful in the way they move, the way they navigate through the water. They're curious too. They have a certain kind of awareness, like us. BELOW: A fishie being of the species "salmon", just like we are of the species "human". Of course these are our labels not theirs. What if this being were your pet? Would you have the heart to kill it and eat it then? A group of fishie beings that we call "sardines". These small beings pack closely together for mutual security as they swim. What if these beings were your pets? Would you have the heart to kill them and eat them then?

@How to be wise If your beliefs about enlightenment are wrong, why would you insist on clinging to them?

Anything we say is dualistic because language is inherently dualistic. Anytime you advance a thought, that thought-story is a dualistic projection upon non-dual reality. All language in Enlightenment is metaphorical at best. Theory is tricky in Enlightenment — it’s both useful and useless at the same time.

Maybe enlightenment isn’t what you believe it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonn_Serrie Album cover:

There is a kind of a cultural add-on that accompanies professions. We all do this whether we realize it or not to a greater or lesser extent. A lawyer has a certain kind of worldview, as well as a teacher, a musician, or a medical doctor. We all see the world through the lens of our work -- and we all re-fashion reality through the lens of our work too. Become aware of this, this is some crazy shit! You got the wider culture and then you got the cultural add-on fashioned by your profession or your work.

If you had to keep animals that you ate as pets first for six months, then slaughter them and cook them yourself -- would you continue to eat meat?

What is a spiritual master? What are the traits or qualities of mastering spirituality? What is spirituality? What does it mean to be spiritual or to do spiritual things?

You can live in the illusion without living in the illusion. That’s a special way to live. It’s rare. Contrarily, most people are stuck in the Ego Paradigm and the External World Paradigm.

Eat some berries instead, even frozen berries are great. Berries are Nature’s candy. My favorite are frozen blueberries. For a chocolate fix, buy yourself some raw cocoa powder and mix some of that in with a smoothie sweetened with fruit — such as a banana. You don’t have to give up tasty sweets, you just have to find a more high-consciousness way to indulge in them. Dark chocolate with a high percentage of raw cocoa is another option. Another option is Greek yogurt with high-quality raw honey drizzled in with a few frozen berries sprinkled on top. I have this honey that is so raw it has a chunk of the bee-hive actually inside the jar! It’s pretty cool. Fresh raspberries are just as good as candy. A juicy orange is pretty sweet too and contains your entire day’s requirements for vitamin C. That’s pretty cool. It made me appreciate eating oranges more. Oranges are also full of fiber which is another benefit they offer.

Let’s get more pragmatic with the focus now. Start to notice real blocks that come up in your life. These are psychological blocks that keep you from doing the things that you know you need and want to be doing — but that you just aren’t doing. Write these tasks and projects down. Now, let’s deal with the blocks behind each of those. Treat each block like a medical doctor would by assessing it, diagnosing it, probing it, prescribing a cure for it, and finally taking actions to treat it. Part of the genius of this work is taking the theory and figuring out how to apply it very pragmatically to your real life’s problems. Every piece of theory you learn becomes a leverage-point that you can then use to dissolve a block hindering the full expression of your authentic self.

You got it! Raising awareness is all we’re doing in this work. Your life starts to naturally right itself as your awareness improves.