Joseph Maynor

You're going to be doing personal development work for the rest of your life. It's a marathon not a race. Don't expect huge results fast or cheaply. But if you commit to doing this work and fall in love with it, your life will improve dramatically over the long-term. Set some goals and visualize the hard work that you're gonna do to implement them. It's gonna take emotional-labor. This is not some pop-a-pill and problem solved stuff. You are after value that is rare and valuable in life. Value must be fought for, it never falls in your lap or comes easily, not sustainably. So, take baby-steps and don't overwhelm yourself. Approach this like learning how to play the guitar. It will take years of daily practice to get really good at playing the guitar. But remember the work of art here is you, your dream-life! How exciting is that? Visualize what you will get from doing this work in the long term. Let that inspire and motivate you today. Get on the path to become a personal development junkie. Set proper expectations now to avoid later frustrations which could cause you to quit. You wanna avoid quitting at all costs. So take baby-steps. Pre-algebra must happen before calculus can happen and it takes a couple of years of study and hard work to bridge the gap between those two textbooks. Same thing applies to Personal Development work. You are at the pre-algebra stage now. Do where you are really well. That's the best you can do. Your bright future lies ahead.

The best Self-inquiry is to do do-nothing meditation for 1 hour per day and just look. The heavily contemplative self-Inquiry stuff is important too, it's not an either/or it's a both. But Just meditate and look. Inquire by looking. This is huge. Just meditate and be aware. At the right time, just naturally inquire -- What is the mind? Where are these thoughts coming from? Why is the mind flapping around? What is causing that effect? Etc. Dont be too neurotic about Self-Inquiry. This would be like looking at yourself in the mirror with your nose pressed-up against it for hours. Take a more leisurely, harmonious approach. You are looking and seeing what you are. Don't rush this. It's a lifelong process. Enlightenment is a gradual transformation.

Enlightenment is about realizing that all beliefs are existentially false by being the result of that not merely conceiving the result of that. Don't worry about experiences. Work with the root. This is why Self-Inquiry is so important. Experiences are the result of doing this work, not what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not a far-out state. Enlightenment is being reality all the time. See -- our realities are augmented by our thought-stories which introduce a lot of fantasy into our "reality". Enlightenment is being reality, but also seeing through the added-on fantasies very acutely, like the magician sees through the illusion of all his magic-tricks. You don't need drugs for enlightened being. People do drugs to explore the shit out of being, to *research being* by *being it*. Enlightenment research is done by BE-ing. But all you need is sober being to be enlightened. Everything else is just higher *research*. Just like you really only need a JD or Juris Doctor degree to practice law but if you had a deeper interest in law you could get the LLM degree with is the Master of Laws degree. But that degree is optional. All you really need to practice law is the JD. Same distinction can be made in enlightenment. All I want is the JD for now. Others on here are pursuing the LLM Degree. Some people on here are still in Undergrad, ya know! It's a mix. You gotta understand that Leo is *researching* the shit out of enlightenment at the Ph.D. level. You need to get to the Bachelor's Degree first. Don't think Enlightenment is a single thing or state or destination. It's an evolution, a life-long transformation. You just need to get on the path in the best way from where you are right now.

If you don't attach to an identity, just have fun playing the roles. Nothing is you anyway. None of those emotions are yours. I guess it's an empirical question to see how acting screws with your egoic-self. I get it. Maybe it causes your personality to get screwed up or maybe it causes some neurosis or depression. But maybe those are just neurotic limiting-beliefs! Assume that and get in there and tinker and just find out. Screw what anybody says without actually having done this, it's all made-up or hearsay. It has no real value to you. It's just talk without any foundation. What value does that give to you really? Nada. Your ego is looking to cling to some kind of unfounded belief when what you really need to do is go find out by actually doing it. Or, maybe talk to someone who is very analogous to your situation who has *actually done it* and whose opinion has been established by you as highly-credible. Don't solidify some limiting-belief based-off what you hear said casually. Not when it comes to your career. It's too important, especially if you already noticed you have a passion for it. Your ego is looking for a way to sabotage you with limiting-beliefs, remember that. You considering pushing your comfort-zone spooks the ego. This is why most people never get out of second-gear in life. The lower-self wants physical and emotional comfort, and it will try to murder all your higher-self's aspirations. An enlightened person realizes that everything we do is role-playing anyway. That's all we do is play roles. All day long. We play the roles of our little egoic, earth-bound selves. What do we do or think about that is not role-playing? I can't think of anything. I see the growth-potential in acting as a profession and I see how it could go with an enlightened life not against it. After all, what the hell is genuineness anyway? It's ego. The higher-self, the virtuous-self is ego. Reality just is. People take Maya so seriously. Play around with it a bit! Let's transform our verse into song! We need to lighten-up in our Maya lives. Purpose is great, being good and imitating Jesus is great, but man, sometimes I think we just need to relish the illusion and realize it ain't all that serious. We make it serious. Acting is right in line with this realization. Just don't compromise your values too much. Obviously everybody has to compromise a little from time to time. If our higher-selves ran this place, we would all be hoping for death because the spice-of-life would be conspicuously AWOL. Just maintain the proper dynamic-balance between Yin and Yang to harmonize with the Tao and you'll do great no matter what you do. This is how some people practice their spirituality. Much less cerebral than we do. I saw this when I was in Florence. Sing -- Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama. Rama Rama, Hare Hare. The Hare Krishna Mantra is like a baby calling for its father, but in this case the Father is God and we are the baby. It is a re-union with God. How does this "singing and dancing" role-playing compare to our "staring at our PCs" role-playing? It's a distinction without a difference. But even that belief must eat itself. Reality just is.

Notice when you meditate there are moments when the mind disappears. Really take note of that WITH YOUR BEING not with your conceptual mind. Really start to see that the mind is not you. See and feel and be that very profoundly. Start to be able to distance yourself from the mind like a bird-watcher watching a bird through binoculars. Don't try to force anything. Just be aware of things. Let the monkey-mind chatter away in your ear like an ornery little brother that you will eventually learn to half-ignore. It's like yeah yeah yeah, what? So sorry, I wasn't listening. Haha. It really becomes like that. It's not that you kill the mind it's just that you change the way that you relate to it. Like instead of kicking somebody's ass you just learn how to ignore them. But don't take any of these stories literally, they're just intuition-pumps for you to chew-on before you do your Self-Inquiry work and take a look for real by being the Truth. What is the mind? How does the ego want to cling to the mind? Am I the mind? What is the difference between the mind and awareness? What is the difference between thoughts and the mind? What is the difference between beliefs and thoughts? What are thoughts? What are sounds? Do sounds occur in space and time? Etc. See? All fascinating Self-Inquiry questions to explore. Here's some more: What is the ego? Am I my body and/or brain? Do I have an identity? Does that identity have stable properties? What is this identity? What are these properties? Do I have a stable personality? Could I completely change my personality? What is stopping me from completely changing my personality? What is holding me back in life from doing what my higher-self knows is the right thing to do? Are these obstacles fixed or can they be removed? What are these obstacles really and what are they made of? What is a limiting-belief? How does a limiting-belief gain its traction? How do thoughts limit me? What is permitting thoughts to limit me? How can I unhook limiting-beliefs from me? What is asking these questions? What is aware of all of this? Is that awareness something inside me or outside me? What is a conceptual distinction? How does a conceptual distinction relate to awareness? How does a theory relate to the subject matter or the result that the theory pertains to? Can the ego be destroyed? Do I die when the body and brain die? Does awareness die when the body and brain die? Does the mind die when the body and brain die? What is the relation between awareness and the mind, the relation between awareness and the body, and the relation between awareness and the brain? What is the relation between awareness and you? What is a relation? What is a question? What am I? And so on and on. Fall in love with Self-Inquiry if you wanna make progress with enlightenment. In enlightenment, theory is just scaffolding, pointers to do the Self-Inquiry work. Enlightenment is not a theory. Enlightenment is transformation. The ego wants beliefs and theories, but that's not what you want. You want transformation. Clinging too much to the theory-scaffolding is a huge trap. All beliefs and all theories are existentially false, But only use this as a guide. Don't even cling to this as a belief. The way you look at thoughts will dramatically change from the way you look at them now with enlightenment. If you're stuck in the Rationalist Paradigm, you're not gonna get this. It's just gonna sound wrong to you. Watch all the videos I attached below. Separate yourself from the Mind-Matrix. It will still be there, but your awareness of the Truth will change how you attach to things at the being level (I'm not talking about attachment to beliefs or thoughts here). Remember, this is about being differently not about thinking differently. This should change how you BE, how you are. You are looking for a being-transformation not a belief-transformation. These words are just scaffolding to get you to be differently. And that's why you just need to get in there, open up the hood, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, and tinker-around inside your being. That's what Self-Inquiry is all about. Everything else is just pre-algebra compared to Self-Inquiry. This is so hard to explain too because we operate on the "knowing = belief" paradigm. Here we need to change that paradigm to the "knowing = being" paradigm for enlightenment work. You gotta literally jump from one paradigm to another one here, from one bubble to another bubble. And there's no easy, primrose path to do this. You gotta grab your druthers and make that discontinuous flyin'-leap from one paradigm to the next one! How many people can actually do this? How many people will do this? Videos on point to watch:

Watch Emerald's great video on point.

If you're asking us I'm already suspicious. You should know yourself deeply, am I right? What is your life-purpose? Give us a succinct statement of it. Have it come out of your soul-portal. Life-purpose has nothing to do with anybody else. What is your calling? What is yours and yours alone to hone and deliver to the world? What are you willing to work your ass off to do in this life? Leo is irrelevant to that. Life-purpose isn't some Luke-warm thing. It's your life's PASSION. It's gotta be. That's what will give you the motivation to get your whole life handled and then some. Don't rush this.

Lao Tsu, more modernly written Laozi

@Mr Memposito This video shows why it's important to do your research before criticizing someone publically like this. Sand carelessly thrown in the wind comes back to the thrower's eye. If you don't have something nice to say about someone . . . make sure you say it very well! Haha. Don't quote me.

Sounds like you are ready to do some real personal development work. Congrats! This is where you're gonna see the results that all the theory is promising. This is where your life is gonna start to improve dramatically if you deep-dive and become a personal development junkie and start to implement the below modules. Get passionate about the potential of this to your life. 1. Be a creator in your life/ you are the music-maker and you are the dreamer of dreams. Become the artist where you are the art-work. Not painting, not drawing, not music, not poetry -- but YOU, all of you, your life, your contribution! Turn you into beautiful art. And focus primarily on that as an artist. This is your #1 priority in life, don't lose sight of this ball. 2. Do some enlightenment work to transcend all your limiting-beliefs. Leo calls these dream-killers. You can listen to his dream-killer videos if you log onto his website, there are 21 of them and they are excellent. They are in the audio-downloads section. Enlightenment work also dramatically reduces your fears, anxieties, neuroses, etc. and makes you much more emotionally-grounded. 3. Do some life-purpose work to turn your "have tos" into "want tos". When your dream is alligned with your work, the work becomes something you enjoy doing and thus becomes easy. Try to align your life-purpose with contribution to maximize the motivation super-charging effect that life-purpose gives you. Deep-down we all yearn deeply to make a great contribution with our lives and our works. It's in your heart of hearts to contribute something to the world. 4. Tame your elephant/ program the sub-conscious mind. The conscious mind is like a rider on top of an elephant which has a mind of its own. We can call the elephant the subconscious-mind. You need to get the ornery elephant on the same page as the rider by practing meditation, visualizations, affirmations, and by baby-stepping daily-routines into your schedule that implement your goals. 5. Be a great field-general in your life/ be a great strategist. Clarify your goals. Read your mission-statement every morning. Clarify your action-plans to achieve these goals. Break-down the work into stuff that can be fitted into a daily-routine and done daily. The way you build a giant, beautiful cathedral is by taking consistent action on it every day, one brick at a time. 6. Dump all your distractions and addictions. They are robbing you of focus, energy, and heart, which you need to be concentrated like a laser-beam on your compelling life-purpose which is your cause in life, that which you are willing to bleed and to die for. Baby-step removing this *shit* from your life so you don't get overwhelmed. Clean it out slowly but steadily.

Watch Leo's videos on What's the worst that can happen and the one on doing Pre-mortem analysis.

This is why I like to meet people in person. Great article. When I meet someone in person I can sense pretty quickly what they are about. Lack of empathy is a red-flag, although be careful with rushing to judgment. Another red-flag is feeling like the person is trying to manipulate you or control you. Motive is key. Why is the person involved in spirituality in the first place and why are they teaching it?

The idea of ego-transcendence is you just want to observe the ego for what it is. There's no need to destroy the ego or pick it apart. Awareness alone is curative.

There is no substance. There can be no grounding. It is itself. Grasp this with your being not just with the intellect.

Enlightenment is deconstructing what you know about yourself and what you know about reality. It's about getting out of the delusion of the mind. Thought-stories are abstractions laid on top of reality. The Self is omnipresent which means it's everywhere. Reality is what is happening right now, it's not impacted by any belief, concept, or theory. Start to inquire into each and every belief you have about what is real. Do this, don't try to bypass it with some easy answer. You need to see the truth not understand it conceptually. You can only see the truth by unraveling your beliefs about reality. You'll realize all your beliefs about reality are false and illusory. But that is not a conceptual understanding alone. It should shake-up the core of what you believe you are. If this isn't happening, your Self-Inquiry is proceeding in too shallow of a manner. Go on the journey. Grab the bull by the horns and dig into Self-Inquiry. You live in an augmented reality -- augmented by your concepts, images, fantasies, and desires. Enlightenment is like deconstructing a magic-trick. Once you understand the trick, you can't be tricked by it anymore.

Just meditate for 1 hour every morning. Start there. Baby steps. Meditation gives the most cash-value as a spiritual practice. You're like me, you like to deep-dive. But deep-dive meditation for now. Set aside all the other stuff for later. Put it on ice for now. Focus your energies on strategies that give the most for the least amount of effort and leverage those first. Meditation is one of those strategies. And believe me -- meditation will change your life enormously. But you gotta commit to doing meditation for 1 hour every morning and skip no days. If you skip days, you're not gonna get the results. It's gotta be every single morning to work its magic. Daily meditation has changed my life.

It's a lens or tool, so it's not gonna cover everything. But what it is going to do is make you mindful of your actual takeaways from your learning. A lot of what we talk about we gain no real traction or use from. So this lens just increases your mindfulness of when you are wasting your time in la la land with theory spinning your wheels not really getting much real value from the material. Use it with your personal development theory for sure though. You'll blast off! All personal development theory should trickle-down into practice. Otherwise it's just nice-sounding inspirational words. But personal development theory when applied, comes to life like a genie out of a lamp offering you any wish you want.

Yes. There was a 4 year period when I did virtually that when I wrote the content for my philosophy book. We are all at different stages in our personal development. Hiding away can be good. I know because I did it myself. I'm in a much more pragmatic stage in my life right now. But today I stand on the shoulders of that time where I hid away and consolidated my knowledge, values, and purpose together with my heart and will. When you're young you gotta explore. Take time to explore. When you get older the mission becomes more of settling-in. But good settling-in is predicated on great exploring. I explored so much between 25 - 35. After about 35 my attitude was forced to become much more pragmatic. I am now 39, so I've spent 4 years within this more pragmatic paradigm. And that's a helluva shift to make let me tell you. Especially if you explored like I did. Almost a 180-degree value reversal between those stages. One of the reasons I started watching Leo 4 years ago was because I was struggling to make this shift. In Indian Philosophy this is called making the transition from the Student Stage of life to the Householder Stage of life. Making this transition was such a bear for me to do. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do. And I'm still not optimized like I should be. I work on that everyday. But recently I have made huge progress by deep-diving personal development again and by applying some of the theory. Life-purpose is huge as a strategy -- it herds all your cats for you.

If we choose to remain here there are certain rules about this place. Why not exploit these rules to do it our way while at the same time maximizing the good out of the experience? That seems like the best strategy for us to follow if we choose to remain here. And we have all chosen to remain here. It's worth it to live well not badly. But we gotta be a little strategic to make it happen. The default-life is a shit life. A life of comfort, body breaking-down due to poor health, suffering, no real fulfillment, no peak-experiences, no excitement or creative-juices flowing, no hope, no real growth, no exploration, no true creative gifts to offer the world or lasting legacy. So heed this decision-point. It's real. Life is your oyster. You want to do this. Live a charged-life not a comfortable life, a life where you're living on your edge, fully-engaged, where you are excited to get out of bed in the morning to go work on your Muse. Where your work becomes more like play than a grind because you are growing yourself in every way by doing it. Personal development work makes this possible! But you gotta work the strategies. None of these nice results will just fall into your lap. Let's dis-abuse ourselves of that silly fantasy right now. You gotta go out there and obtain these results through hard-work, which cannot be bypassed.

I'm going to do the 30-day challenge starting tomorrow. I'm so glad Leo made this video. This is the right medicine for me right now -- looking at things from a more pragmatic lens. After all, how much do you actually recall from everything you were taught in school? Almost nada. Of course the journey was worth a lot. But what concepts do you apply today from all that schooling? Is it 20, 10, 5, 2, 1%? You can actually determine this by being mindful. Maybe keep a journal and write down every instance where you actually used some information that you learned about in school. You know what -- in spirit of this new video I'm gonna do this not just pose a great idea. I'll add this to my 30 day challenge. I have a tendency to go -- I came up with a great idea folks -- and then I never take the next step of deep-diving that idea to get at any cash-value inside of it. See? I am a huge mental-masturbator. Not to undervalue that entirely either. Every context has its own unique set of conditions and proper response. Sometimes mental-masturbation is good -- like when you're brainstorming. And there's cash-value there because that's when you're receiving creative insights. And you're then gonna use the sober-mind to organize that crazy, disjointed content to bring the sculpture out of the stone as it were. The madman becomes the architect on a dime. This is one of the secrets to great artistry -- knowing when and where to shift the hats between madman and architect. Now, how can you apply what I just said to writing your posts on here folks! Milk this little madman/architect dichotomy for its cash-value next time you sit down to create. Push the theory through practice and be mindful of the application/ utility or lack thereof. This is fascinating! Maybe it doesn't do shit for you, well but see you learned that! If you took no action you learned squat -- zero takeaway. And we do this all the time! It's our default, lower-self position. And that is true mental-masturbation. It's on our radars now to be avoided. Our personal development theories need to be deliberately and strategicallly milked by us, without getting too neurotic about this of course. We all possess a glorious, unopened toolkit. Let's open it up and actually use the tools inside of it instead of just looking at then through the packaging. I'm excited!

Now you get to feel right. That's what everyone else is doing too -- trying to feel right. The ego is all around us. We all got a bit of it in us. Look closely. You don't have any evidence that anyone left, you just made that up. Let's be careful about not elevating ourselves on a high-horse without good cause. We all suffer from ego. We should be compassionate not accusatory towards each other. None of gets to be the righteous one. That tack rubs me the wrong way because it is disingenuous. I also don't think Leo gets to be the arbiter of who is enlightened or not. That's a little bit pretentious assuming his *judgment* was not made tongue in cheek. Humility is a nice virtue to cultivate especially with enlightenment. The last thing you want to have is your ego wrapped up in enlightenment. That would be a really bad problem. Like trying to diet while eating chocolate-covered bacon.

The answer is that non-dual reality laughs at troll and real. Troll and real are ego. Reality ain't ego. Reality is a-conceptual. But even these beliefs need to eat themselves. Sorry. I think the lesson here is we gotta stop asking stupid conceptual questions about enlightenment. I'm not addressing this to anybody here. It's just an observation. And it used to be directed at me, so that's how I really learned it. I could be wrong. And I make no claim to know Leo's intention for the question. To even think that there is an answer or even a question is egoic. Reality just is and it is One. Non-dualism is just that -- not two. In non-dualism the question isn't how thin we should slice the baloney, it's where we should lock away the knife. I think it's really healthy to assume that we are all wrong about enlightenment. If nothing else, it prevents tainting the beautiful thing that non-dual reality is. Being humble about conceptualizing enlightenment is a good practice. I assume I am wrong in everything I say here. And it doesn't matter at all. What matters is BE-ing non-dual reality. So long as I can do that, I could care less what is said about it by me or by anyone else. It's all just like birds squawking in the background while I am sitting here trying to enjoy a nice steak dinner. Like that. I'd rather be reality than be right any day.

If that conclusion works for you, I have no reason to convince you otherwise. You seem to really want to believe in conceptual claims, as do most of us. Your argument doesn't fly with me though. Enlightenment is really good at telling you what you are not, but it doesn't do much to tell you -- conceptually -- what you are, or anything else for that matter. And Neti-Neti certainly does not prove-up all the positive claims that are made about enlightenment. Most of the claims about enlightenment are simply scaffolding, designed to guide you and to be kicked-away at the right time. A big problem I see is that people want to treat the scaffolding like beliefs. This is a huge trap. All beliefs are existentially false. The problem is that nobody wants to remain silent to be the Truth, they want to cling to knowing the Truth conceptually. I hope you see this trap. I do, and I'm not claiming that I don't fall into it either. But I am mindful of it. Thought-stories are not the Truth, they're egoic fantasies. But you've heard this many times before, I'm sure. And if you've not been sold on this by now, I assume it doesn't work for you. And that's fine. I don't assume my role is to twist your arm into my way of thinking about the issue. That would be really arrogant of me. There is more than one way to skin a cat. What enlightenment does tell you positively it shows you, and what you conceptualize from what it shows you it ain't. Boy I hope this makes sense. It is really hard to talk about enlightenment or to write about it I am finding. This is why I like the idea that enlightenment is about BE-ing the Truth. It gets at what I see as the most accurate pointer to enlightenment. Just BE non-dual reality. That's it! Reality is the non-dual whole. As soon as you say anything about it you poo in the beautiful pool so to speak. Let the pool stay crystal clear and just enjoy it without modification. It doesn't need to be anything other than what it is, anything more than what it is. But our monkey-minds hunger for conceptual truth about non-dual reality like a heavy-person might pine for a doughnut. We have a powerful craving to know. We lick our chops to know like a dog with a bottom-less pit stomach eats until it barfs. We're addicted to conceptual knowing. For what it's worth, and I'm not assuming I am right and everybody else is wrong -- clinging to conceptual beliefs about non-dual reality can set you 100 miles apart from enlightenment. Enlightenment is pre-linguistic, a-linguistic, a-conceptual. Just BE what is. I don't know, maybe I am on the wrong track, but it feels so right to me. This is how I practice enlightenment. This doesn't moot conceptual thinking as to other matters, it just moots beliefs trying to capture non-dual reality. Enlightenment is like going through the gateless-gate. (I stole this last sentence from one of Leo's videos haha. It's good.) I'm at this point with my enlightenment where beliefs about enlightenment don't really count for much. The stories are fun to read and get me thinking about enlightenment, but BE-ing reality is where the rubber-meets-the-road for enlightenment to me. But I never would have arrived at this destination without a lot of scaffolding to guide me here. The journey is worth as much as the destination in enlightenment. But I have found that at some point you have to kick away the theory training-wheels and just be the damn Truth. It's so trivial it almost seems like a joke. This is why the journey to get here is so important. The ego will not drop need to believe until it sees the Truth and understands the futility of trying to conceptualize enlightenment, so you gotta go on the journey to see with your entire being why this is True. You gotta feel it in the marrow of your bones -- like damn! this is never gonna work! It's an epiphany that I think Self-Inquiry, in part, is trying to lead you to. But I am still open to talking about and thinking about all these issues. I don't wanna be a dogmatist myself. Beliefs don't count for much from an existential standpoint. But this statement must eat itself. Now you know why I say the statement must eat itself -- all thought-stories stand at cross-purposes to non-dual being. Like the difference between drawing a cat and petting a real cat. The real cat might tentatively sniff at your nifty drawing, but it would probably show no interest in it otherwise.

If you put it into language or a vocalization it is no longer existentially True. Non-dual reality doesn't tell us there is no self. That is the monkey-mind putting that claim together. Monkey-see, monkey conclude. Reality doesn't give a shit about monkey conclusions. But even these claims must eat themselves. No-self is a distinction and all distinctions are existentially false. But of course, this claim needs to eat itself too. This is Absolute Truth we're "talking about" here, see the problem? Talking about. Even no-thingness is a distinction. Reality just is. Existential knowing is BE-ing, not conceiving.

@Lord Bwyra I agree with you. We are trying to squeeze 3-dimensional reality into a 2-dimensional space with our language, writing, speaking, judgments sometimes. This is useful to solve practical problems in the world, but can fail us when we talk about truth, knowledge, reasonable judgments, etc. Because everything is so context-dependent it is hard to set forth too many context-independent claims. This is one reason I try to cling less to dogma now. But for every case where you determine that clinging is unwise, you can find an example of where it is wise. I get it, let's not bullshit ourselves. We need to cling to knowing. But it's subtle. More subtle than most people have the attention to delve into. So, when I communicate, I run the risk of contradicting myself, and I don't deny that. At the end of the day, all I can say is I have been benefited by my work and by theory, but I am also very aware of the dangers of context-independent judgments -- or claims that are made across- the board. But then again, sometimes those might apply in particular contexts. And for personal development purposes this is actually a key paradigm to start to warm up to -- this dynamic-balancing paradigm -- but don't cling too hard to it like it is "the answer". Just explore it. It kinda puts judgment into context, but even this ignores situations where judgment is the context! In an intellectual treatise, judgment is the context, so it is hand-waving to say, put your judging into context in that scenario. Ah, it gets tricky. And it should be tricky! Life is tricky. Beware of people who try to give you non-nuanced answers. But sometimes those apply too! My point is kinda between the lines here, as it must be. Writing in a small space sort of leads to making dichotomous statements. There's a disconnect between what I can say and how I actually treat this stuff in my life. I wish I could bottle how I actually dynamically-balance theory with practice in my life, but language cannot capture this. But I agree with you, and my theory of truth reflects these issues. It's a complicated issue. But we cannot say that there is no truth out of one side of our mouths, while espousing truths out of the other side. That issue stinks, and it must be dealt with. I agree. I have some ideas about how to do that, but I would have to divulge my theory of truth here to do it. This is why I am writing my Philosophy book, to deal with this issue and many more. It is bullshit to say not-knowing is a virtue across-the board. It is also bullshit to say knowing across the board is good. Things are much more 3-dimensional and nuanced than this kind of 2-dimensional, overly-trite stipulation. I get it. This is why I became a philosopher and why writing a philosophy book is the meat of my life-purpose to attempt to come to an answer -- paradoxically -- to this issue and to many more issues. And here I am warning about the dangers of clinging of need to know! Telling people to dump their need to know is bad advice and sometimes it's good advice, it depends on the context and situation. Here's the paradox. You wanna cling to knowing and cling to not-knowing at the right place and the right time depending on what you are doing. See? But what does this advice do for us? What's the cash-value of telling somebody this? It doesn't yield any of the luscious context-independent claims that we yearn for. Like Socrates expecting a definition of Justice in a couple of sentences. I hope I am making some sense here and communicating somewhat what I am attempting to communicate. Damn these words! I feel like Monet being reduced to pencil and paper when I write sometimes. Like a jazz trumpet player being reduced to playing a kazoo. But I still get in there and give it a go because reading, writing, and discourse has helped me so much. I have faith in it from a high-level standpoint, although it's a love-hate relationship, as it should be! This video doesn't get at the judgment issues so much, but kinda sets up what I am getting at with balancing. It's pointing in a nice direction that dove-tails with what I am saying. Although, there are more statements I make in my theory of truth that I do not state here. And that theory is expansive and nuanced. I would have told Socrates that the answer he is looking for is a treatise not a couple of sentences. Justice is a treatise not a convenience-store 2 sentence cliche. A voluminous treatise. I dream of telling this to Socrates -- dude, the problem is your overly-trite expectation of what the answer should look like.