Joseph Maynor

The Mind often has different expectations than reality delivers. This is the source of all resistance. When the Mind doesn’t get from reality what it wanted or was expecting, it delivers a rebuke in the form of a negative feeling and/or a negative visualization. Everything that is happening is outside the control of the Mind, but the Mind affirms otherwise. This is what causes all suffering in life. The Mind has a false belief of control over reality. When it gets its way it’s happy, when it doesn’t it's not. The Mind needs to become aware of this trap. That’s a big piece of Enlightenment work right there. The Mind is a phenomenon within reality, not the controller of reality. But, see, it thinks it is, until its awareness is sufficiently raised to see all the unnecessary suffering this false-belief causes. Then the Mind will release this limiting-belief and all that suffering drops out of your life.

Meditate for 1 hour per day for 30 days. Just be the watcher, don’t try to manipulate anything when you meditate. Just be aware of what is happening. Note what things are inner and outer sounds, thoughts, inner visualizations, outer touch, inner touch (aka feelings/emotions). Just watch all of it happen. Watch that Monkey-Mind do what it does.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Would you ever have had those awakening experiences if you never heard about Enlightenment though? Let the theory inspire you to do your own work; it’s a trap to cling to the theory like ideology. How can the guru help others without using words? The real danger is not communicating Enlightenment at all. Raising awareness must take people where they sit and inspire them to do the work. The guru must realize that low-consciousness people are swimming in theory. So she’s gotta meet them where they’re at and try to help them raise awareness about a block or trap they’re ensnared in. Otherwise the guru’s help will go in one ear and out the other. And that’s useless help. You gotta aim where the person’s real sticking-point is to be an effective guru.

Leo talks about this issue in the video. Just because the paradigm of Materialism is false doesn’t take away the patterns that the experiences have . In other words, the experiences still obey certain patterns. For example, if you don’t protect the brain, you will experience the appearances of living with brain damage. Even dreams have this kind of structure amongst the appearances as Leo mentions in the video. Even after you are awakened a bunch, you can’t just fly through walls now. But that doesn’t mean the paradigm of Materialism is true. No paradigm is ever true. That’s the deeper issue you gotta grok.

Why are you assuming Enlightement is a destination? It’s more like a process. It’s the result of having your awareness raised throughout your entire life.

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.