Joseph Maynor

It was a cool shift to realize I was never born.

@Nahm I don’t even know now if I was born — and now you spring this on me!

I could only watch 1/3 but this dude seems like he understands what’s up.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water regarding the mind! We use the mind all the time. The non-dual contains the dual. It’s more subtle than you assume.

Here’s one: describe which part of a thought is real vs. which part is false.

Self-inquiry needs conceptual questions which then prompt the mind to feel out awareness, which then causes certain empirical insights to be attained. This causes awareness empiphanies. That’s the dynamic or at least a dynamic. Watch — 3 great vids from Leo: Could’ve been a Trilogy. You gotta build your inquiry muscles like anything else in life that’s worth something. These videos will get you started. It looks like philosophy at first, but it has different aims. You’ll see as you go through it.

Yes. The issue is control. If the routines are authentically made then that’s one thing. But if they are made with the mind, then that will lead to trouble. Routines are good for intermediate personal development but not necessarily for advanced. If you have transcended the ego — then you wanna dump conceptual routines and rules. Routines are a form of control that will backfire unless authentically created and clung to very loosely and tentatively.

You have no control. That’s the mind at work. All you are is being the field of perceptual awareness. You are a self aware field of awareness. The problem is that thoughts are making stuff up that looks and sounds real but is not.

The imagery of other people is you. Think about it. You are everything in your perceptual field. All the sounds you hear are you too. The mind is what adds a little though in there that says ‘that’s not me’.

Anything that is not a direct perception of reality in the present moment is an illusory distinction, relation, or augmentation of reality. Even thoughts are perceived, but what their symbolic nature is aping is false. For example, you may see lots of shapes and colors in your awareness. But only the mind individuates and labels shapes and colors from the whole. E.g., you may see a two dimensional photo — but only the mind says that’s so and so in the photo. So, thoughts are real as perceptibles, but what the symbols are relating to or pointing to is false. The imagery you are perceiving in a daydream is true imagery, but those images are not reality, they are aping reality. What the images are being interpreted as being is false. Like the photograph example above. So, you can think of it like this — thoughts are a false distinction, relation, connection that the mind augments perceivable reality with. The symbols exist, but what the mind takes them to symbolize is false. The mind likes to surrender to symbols rather than reality because it keeps the illusion of ego alive. It distracts you from being: which is threatening to the ego. The ego wants you to live in the mind not in being. In that way the mind can be a handmaiden for the ego.

This is great. I think the only way to be a true guru is to speak from direct experience. Any kind of extrapolating or speculating just hurts people because it is misleading them under a pretense of knowing. The true guru is modest and cautious and is genuinely concerned about others’ growth.

I’d have to say yes and no in response to this. The mind is used all the time in enlightenment work. You just need to know when it is appropriate and when it is not. We don’t wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater regarding conceptualization. There’s a taboo against theory in enlightenment floating around too to watch out for. There’s a time and place for almost everything!

Totally! That’s what I’m going through now. I’m gonna stop all reading too.

To me breathing is important when I’m meditating to kind of get my mind and body harmonized and re-integrated. When you meditate, you wanna be reconnecting with your body. Breathing is part and parcel of that. If you pay attention to this re-integration process — you can actually see it happening. It lasts a couple few seconds/minutes. The mind has sort of forgotten about the body and those bits of awareness need to be brought back into consciousness. Sometimes there are little sparks here too as this process happens — little jiggers of awareness bubbles, like carbonation zapping out.

I’m discovering the #1 distraction to being for me is reading, phone, internet. But reading is huge. We’re freaking addicted to reading! It is a distraction to being. Notice how you hide in reading. It’s so palpable once you start to build some awareness around this. Reading while living an enlightened life is like trying to quit weed while living in a cannabis dispensary. What we are trying to do is turn the mind off, turn awareness up, and let the authentic self do it’s authentic thing without interference. When you read, your mind is turned all the way up to 10. Reading, paradoxically, is a big problem: a huge trap.

In the sense that this just re-enforces the mind. I imagine some person living alone on a tropical island. Rising with the sun and falling with the sun. Silent lucidity amongst the crashing surf upon the beach rocks. Maybe this is the best formulation — avoid all non-essential meanings. Be a lean person not a glutton with meanings. Themes: Shutting down the mind. No overintellectualizing spirituality. No philosophizing. No mind. No reading. No studying.

You might be controlling yourself! That’s a trap. Stop trying to act enlightened and just let go. You might be like a quarantined dog that needs to run wild. Open the gate and let go. But be keenly aware as you do this. Don’t control, just be keenly aware.

I like it. To me it conjures up a flowering and maturity of a lot that happened in the 60’s and 70’s. That’s probably the exact reason you don’t like it! You don’t like hippies. That preference is the underlying issue and determinant of our differing tastes on this issue perhaps.

I find that the ego returns around people in general. I am the most enlightened when I am alone. The ego also returns in full force around any kind of temptations — be it food, entertainment, booze, judgments/moralizations, etc. The mind will riff off whatever it is fed. If you keep your feeding tube clean, then the mind has less to riff off. This is why it is important to watch your inputs in enlightenment work — not just for shit information, but for a much wider net than that. The mind will surrender to anything that keeps the illusion of ego alive given the opportunity. If you can stay away from those kinds of things, you can prevent a lot of egoic reactions from happening by controlling your inputs.

No because they aren’t aware of the ego or the distortions of the mind.

Wow! This is so true.

@vizual Conceptual meanings. Words.

The mind has to bite the dust.

I worked my ass off since I joined the forum 4 months ago. Probably more than most would. So, my results are abnormal. I almost treated this like a full-time job. It was worth it. Sometimes you gotta brute force it in life. The most useful thing I think I got from all this work is the organization and use of the theory without clinging to it in an inadvisable way. Used in the right way, the theory can expedite your enlightenment. Of course, you gotta organize and figure out a way to apply the theory -- derive the theory through self-inquiry and contemplation. But also watch all of Leo's videos with highlighter in hand. Take notes! Lots of notes. Organize those notes. Figure out how to apply those notes. Like that. That's how you do constructive work. It's like self-study. I've watched all of Leo's videos multiple times. There's a lot of juicy gold in those videos if you can figure out how to capture it and use it. Ten variables: Daily review/organization of theory/notes + meditation routine + a profound psychedelic experience + self-inquiry work (a little bit daily) + walking meditation + constant mindfulness of thoughts + watch 1 Leo video per day + forum participation + stay clean (stay away from all shit whether it be people, culture, food, negativity, temptations) + practicing “being perception”. I have a binder of theory that I made that I review 1/4 at a time 4 times daily. I also meditate 6 times daily for 10 minutes each. Practice "being perception" too: Watch: