Joseph Maynor

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.

@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.

Math is only a tool amongst tools, not the essence of anything. This is a deep truth that took me a long time to fully grok.

When you meditate, don’t manipulate, just watch. By watching you will learn a lot about reality that you didn’t ever really notice before. Let the Mind do its thing, and watch it like a scientist sitting still and silent amongst a family of gorillas observing their behavior. Can you imagine that? That’s meditation — just watching what’s happening with full awareness. And you’ll get to the point where you are always doing this, even when you are not formally meditating. This is a major way your awareness is raised in this work. It’s called mindfulness. Meditation is very focused mindfulness.

Good start. Go meta on it now. Ask what is the thought rather than focusing on the thought-story of the thought, also known as the content of the thought. So ask: What is this thought? Why do I identify with this thought in the first place? Where is this thought coming from? Is it coming from inside me or outside me? How am I choosing to cling or not cling to this thought? Can I let thoughts like this go, or release them? What if your thoughts were not yours in the first place? Would that change how you react to thoughts that come up?

Dissolving blocks is where the sustainable work happens. I still have blocks that I am working on myself. But I have way fewer blocks than I used to. A block is an internal resistance, often a combination of limiting-beliefs, fear, and laziness.

Materialism is a belief. When does a pink blob become a brain? Do you see how the Mind is augmenting what is actually seen by pasting a conceptual rubric on top of reality?

A better way to think about Enlightenment is increased awareness. It’s a more realistic perspective on reality. Like the difference between the way a child versus an adult sees the world. Enlightenment takes the adult and moves them up another notch.

A daily meditation habit for 30 minutes a day. Be as mindful as you can: which is sort of like always meditating throughout your day. Realizing that judgments are not your judgments. Do Enlightenment work to come to understand this. Do Leo’s Life Purpose course to get at authenticity.

I like your excitement about doing this work. The best thing you can do right now is implement a daily meditation habit for 30 minutes each day. Meditation is kinda magical in that a lot of your neuroses will drop away over time, and the neuroses are what are really holding you back. Meditation slowly chips away at that problem for you.

As Leo says in one of his videos: Often it’s not knowledge that people lack, it’s the motivation to take the actions that they know they should be taking that people lack. Can you help them with that block?

Absolutely. Life Purpose is all about starting from your authentic self. In order to start from your authentic self, you gotta first discover your authentic self. Life Purpose is deep; you gotta know yourself.

I agree with you too Shin. I use the language/theory I do because I find it to be the best way to present and teach Raising Awareness/Enlightenment. See my reply to Nahm’s response. Nice answer though! We gotta be able to talk though; and to talk is to choose words. And therein lies the dualistic rub! So, each communicator must develop their own nomenclature to achieve the same shifts in awareness. This is where creativity, independence, and teaching intersect. It’s kinda cool once you become fully aware of this! It’s fascinating. There is no one right way to say things in teaching Enlightenment. This is immensely deep! I could nitpick the way every guru says things. But it’s irrelevant when you consider the purpose behind their words/theory. This work is all about raising awareness, not clinging to beliefs.

I agree Nahm. But to say anything at all we must become dualists. I use the theory I find least harmful and most comfortable and intuitive to me. That’s why I phrase things the way I do. I’ve thought this through. It’s a good issue for people to see though. Thanks for shining the light of awareness on it. D’yall get this issue? It’s a deep one. It’s important for y’all to grok the issue Nahm is raising here. I’ll do a post in my Journal outlining my key terms as well.