Joseph Maynor

I don't think this is possible. You need a lot of theory-scaffolding to shape your thoughts, actions, and attitudes in specific circumstances. All theory is existentially false, but you need a lot of theory to form you into a way of being in the moment where you cling and don't cling in exactly the right way at exactly the right time. That dynamic balance needs a lot of theory-scaffolding and experience to perfect. It ain't easy to learn how to treat beliefs more realistically. The answer is more subtle than saying all beliefs are existentially false. Yeah ... and? That's only half the story. You need to be shaped to take right action, have right attitude towards beliefs, in specific moments, with highest consciousness, towards real goals. That requires a lot of molding, usually by a combination of theory-scaffolding and experience. Existentially speaking all theory is story so use it don't let it limit you. You are infinite. Stay that way by not clinging too hard at the wrong time to beliefs. Some contexts warrant clinging, but dump the raft once the river is crossed. Don't keep beliefs hanging around past their relevancy in certain moments. You will stunt and handicap your life by carrying that raft on your back instead of putting it down after you cross the river. Learn how to use tools at the right place and time, and when to cling and when not to cling. You can't learn that by reading a book. That requires embodying theory-scaffolding and using your experience to perfect your being in a higher-consciousness way in specific, actual moments. That doesn't just happen with one enlightenment experience. Enlightenment is a life-long practice. Don't lose sight of your life-purpose goals though and spiritually bypass in enlightenment. That's an unfortunate trap. You do enlightenment, don't let enlightenment do you. Remember, you are infinite. Just realize this fully and act accordingly in specific moments. Enlightenment is not an end, it's the true beginning.

Well, if we define Metaphysics as the investigation of being, then it is squarely-relevant to enlightenment. The problem is anything you say will be a story existentially speaking. If it has import concerning "being being" which is what is relevant to enlightenment, it will only serve as scaffolding to help you act, think, and be better (including how you "be" regarding clinging to and interpreting beliefs in specific moments). Investigate theory all you want, just don't cling to any ideology about enlightenment too-rigidly. Don't be too mechanical or ideological across-the-board, only if a specific moment calls for this. The territory laughs at the pretense of the map. The map is acting way beyond it's pay-grade! And it duddn't even realize this! That's our problem. Let the mystical-spark of being have the last-word over thought-story or belief staking their claim over your infinite-nature. Don't let thought turn you into something that is finite and thus not infinite. This all hinges ultimately on how "you" cling to and interpret thought in specific moments. Get this wrong, and you're gonna self-sabotage in life to a greater or lesser-extent. Get this right and you'll have emotional-mastery and freedom. Then you can do whatever you have mind to do without inner-obstacles resisting. Your actions and your will can finally both unify and dissolve into nothingness.

Enlightenment should make your behavior less antisocial, as a general rule. But if someone is a nut, enlightenment or no enlightenment, anything is possible. The reason your behavior becomes less antisocial is because you are more mindful and aware of reality and the consequences of your actions and the actions of others. Practical morality still has pull after enlightenment. These issues take a little groking to get the big picture right -- without it actually being a picture or theory. You don't want to be too mechanical, but you do need to learn how to balance practical morality without clinging to rules. This is subtle and takes a little experience to get right. Be mindful of how you cling to beliefs and mindful of how you interpret beliefs. Not being too mechanical with this, but not being nihilistic, is a delicate balance you need to use to guide your thoughts, behaviors, and actions in the moment -- without clinging to an irrelevant raft once a river is crossed. We struggle with how to interpret thoughts basically, and what to make of them. But the truly enlightened person doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater regarding thought and knowledge. He or she just sees the situation (is the situation actually) in the highest-consciousness way. The magician knows all the plots and ploys of the magic-tricks. But he also makes illusion his bread and butter, as do we. What interests us are enjoying the magic-tricks, not a lame account of how fake they are. We want to be titillated and entertained. That's the spice of life, and there's nothing existentially bad with spices of life. Enlightened people are not allergic to the spices of life. He or she, again, just sees the situation (is the situation actually) in the highest-consciousness way.

Watch these two videos:

Depends on where you are in your personal development. I gain more from participating on the Forum than by reading more books. I've read hundreds of books (maybe thousands but I'm not trying to brag just trying to be accurate) all my life and I have learned more here in 2 months than I would have learned from reading many more books. Sometimes the human-touch is what is missing from books. Books don't tailor to your concerns like a forum does. So, it really does depend on where you are in your personal development. Right now I gain more from seeing what is actually believed in by real people and receiving tailored-feedback from real people than by reading more of what is crystallized for posterity in books. But you need both. Most people haven't lived their life in the books quite like I have. I spent damn-near all of my twenties and all except the last year of my thirties entrenched within the four-corners of books. So for me, I'm getting huge gains from participating on here. Reading more books for me ain't gonna do much. I don't think I would have ever learned about enlightenment as fast as I have had I not participated on this forum as much as I have (and having received the feedback I have received). And enlightenment is one major, if not the major, key to personal development. And that has allowed me to expand my personal philosophy in a way that I would have never thought possible from reading more books. Books train you to be a conceptual mind-dweller, so watch out. Real life is not in the books. There's good and bad in everything. What's appropriate or inappropriate depends on a specific person and their specific set of circumstances.

I like how you creatively formulated personal development tools into a PRACTICAL system that people can apply to their lives. This is a quality personal development tool that people can use to improve their lives. I will apply these ideas and see how they jive with my personal development systems. I look forward to experimenting with the rhythmic-breathing technique.

Everything you said here is just story. Enlightenment stories are stories too. A lot of people seem to be falling into the trap of clinging ideologically to enlightenment stories. Be careful! All beliefs should be held loosely, even enlightenment beliefs. This is a difficult thing to realize, and I just recently had this epiphany which really opened my eyes as to what enlightenment really is. Enlightenment is not ideology. Saying the ego is illusory is a thought-story and therefore not part of reality. Reality, untouched by our conceptual-fantasy-weaving (insofar as we can see reality) is unmarred and unaffected by our need to know and need to believe. Enlightenment is knowing how to arms-length the mind, the mind-matrix, and beliefs. This is what enlightenment is -- seeing everything as it is and being everything as it is. Not trying to pidgen-hole reality into a new ideology. Reality laughs at this very human activity -- this "need" to cling too-tightly to beliefs. Once you see things as they are, all your perplexities fall away and you can focus on your life-purpose without getting hung-up on a plethora of stupid issues that will stunt your growth and stunt your life if you don't learn what is important to focus on and what is not important to focus on in a situation. You'll be living a self-handicapped life, a diminished life. Enlightenment grounds you so you can actually do what it is that you know you should be doing in a situation. Enlightenment gives you both emotional-mastery and Truth. Don't pooh-pooh the former in preference to the latter. Video on point to watch: (I'm not saying Emerald agrees with anything that I wrote above by the way. This video made an impact on me.)

@Moreira If that's what really resonates with you strongly, then include that in your life-purpose. But be careful that you are not just trying to hide from people. Maybe your deeper problem is to stop being annoyed at people, being afraid of people, or having social-anxiety. Once you get rid of that deeper, underlying problem, maybe a weekend trip to the woods might do instead of wanting to live in Nature. See? You gotta get very clear about what your motives are, and these can be subconscious motives. Why do you want to live in Nature? Write out a list. Now, for each of those items, see if it is genuine intuitive reason why you want to do it, or see if you are trying to run from something else. Actually do this little exercise. See how genuine this idea really is, or if it is just a way to avoid underlying problems. For the longest time I would hide-out in Nature myself to escape my problems and social-anxieties. I realized what I was doing after a while and put a stop to it. I would go to the woods every day and work on my philosophy book for years. I turned this into a life-style. And I realize now it was good in some ways and bad in others. The bad was that it enabled me to hide from my problems when I needed to face them head-on to cure them permanently. The good was that I did all the freewriting for the content-stage for my book writing process. So, the bottom-line is -- if you don't solve your underlying problems permanently, then they will stick around and fester in your life, and they cause you to make decisions that you probably wouldn't make if you had solved those issues instead of running from them or trying to sweep them under the rug. That is the error you should be mindful of avoiding. Don't move to Nature to run from something. Deal with that emotional-mastery issue instead if it applies to you. Maybe do some freewriting about life-purpose and what that could be for you. Just write 3 pages non-stop on the computer under the heading: What Could My Life Purpose Be? Write fast, don't worry about grammatical mistakes, and just write what comes to mind. (Or maybe record this as a voicememo on your Smart Phone if you don't like writing.) What you are doing is a little core-dump of your mind. There is genius in there you just need to tip your head, pour it out, and then take a look at what is there on the table with the probing rational-mind afterwards. This might steer your rational-mind into formulating into language some elements or key consistencies of your life-purpose that you might refine further later on. Discover your life-purpose by spreading you out on a canvas and see where some of the points converge into lines, planes, and figures. A faint-structure might emerge. A little budding-dream might reveal itself, a little hair-root searching for the Sun. (The second clause of the last sentence is half-borrowed lovingly from Gerry Spence, "How to Argue and Win Every Time.") Watch these two videos:

The key is not to philosophize about these in the abstract per se (although it could be conceptually illuminating) but to find ways to apply these ideas at the right place and time in your life to optimize your being, thinking, and actions in a specific, concrete moment. (You wanna be working on your personal philosophy story too, so don't take this rigidly as never conceptualize, everything said in language comes off as too rigid so keep that in mind, it's the nature of making discrete statements.) Instead of being stuck in the mind-matrix, get out of it and realize that ideas are not necessities but options in a moment. You're managing a distributed-system (You) that is trying to optimize its being, thinking, and acting in the moment. Thoughts are tools and considerations that may or may not become relevant depending on what you're trying to do in a particular moment. You should be trying to accomplish tasks (including building up your conceptual thought-stories) that converge on your life-purpose goals. Keep the end in mind. One thing about conceptual analysis is we privilege it too much without knowing why it is useful or for what purpose we are doing it. The way out of this trap is to always have a purpose in mind. Always know what it is that you should be doing at all times, and then everything you do will serve that end. And this will right the relation of cart and horse between your life and conceptual analysis. We are stuck in the paradigm that comes from Mathematics where we are looking for a conceptual principle that we can then go out and solve a bunch of pragmatic problems with. But Reality ain't Mathematics. True Dynamic-Balance, the Tao, laughs at the simple-mindedness of Mathematics. A lot of people are stuck in this trap. It's how Science operates too. We look for a conceptual principle that we can then use to solve a bunch of practical problems with. Personal Development, because it includes all of Reality, cannot work this way. Reality includes everything and doesn't subsume itself under any map. Reality is by necessary the territory, not any map, although many maps may be more or less useful depending on the actual, concrete task-at-hand in the present moment. So, you gotta change your perspective about how conceptual analysis should be used in your life. This takes some investigation, open-mindedness, and experience.

Don't cling too tightly to any story. Reality don't have nothing to do with stories. Learn how to dynamically balance the stories in your life to actualize your life-purpose. Don't cling too much to any story, including the enlightenment story. You do stories, don't let stories do you. You want to completely see the mind-matrix for what it is (and what it is not) and perfect your being, thoughts, and actions in the present moment. A mistake I see a lot more and more is people spiritually-bypassing in enlightenment stories. You get out there and do your life-purpose work! Don't let your ego hang you up with need to know. Act out into the world and get outside of the mind-matrix. Accomplishing a big life is scary work, and the ego would much rather prefer the comfort of dwelling in idea-land within enlightenment stories all day. So take heed of this trap. A lot of very smart people fall into this trap. Life is not to be lived in the head, in books, in stories. That's a way to hide from life. It's a comfort trap. The ego will work its ass off to convince you to choose comfort, and you'll rationalize why that path is good, which is the deadly combination, the trap of all traps. The story that there is no free will is just a story. You need to decide how to use this story in the moment, along with other stories in the moment to maintain emotional mastery and focus on your life-purpose. So, see, use the stories and hold them loosely to dynamically balance your actions in the moment. That's the big-picture. You ain't stuck in the mind-matrix sipping tea when you do this work. You're going out there, outside of your head and comfort-zone and you're killing it everyday taking massive action to implement your life-purpose.

You have a lot of beliefs you hold without even realizing it that you need to discover, examine, and then realize that those beliefs -- although practically-speaking may be considered true or false -- are all existentially false. The point of self-inquiry is to try to be reality stripped of all augmentation of these many beliefs, the content of which are all thought-stories. So you wanna be reality without thought-story to do enlightenment work. That's why Self-inquiry is essential. You gotta look at all your beliefs about yourself and the world. What's happening is that your reality is augmented by a lot of beliefs. Those beliefs need to be rooted-out one by one. And then you gotta change how you "be" or "are" in light of that belief removal. So, this ain't no mere intellectual tea and crumpets exercise. This is getting clearer about what is, and then being that.

You know what I'm realizing is that the people who think they are nice are often assholes and the people who think they are assholes are often nice. Trying to be less nice is what creates the asshole because the person over-does it. You gotta have huge emotional awareness and be emotionally grounded to try to be less nice without turning into a dick. Dicks lack empathy and are selfish or otherwise are compensating for some sense of inferiority they are running from. Niceness is good when it is genuine. Be sweet. You don't have to play the role of the tough-guy all the time. You will just come off as a callous prick to others. You'll build that reputation inadvertently. Most people want the opposite reputation. So this is tricky. The ego will act from the shadow creating effects in your life that that you really don't want. You will shit where you eat basically. No good.

This is a very pessimistic way to look at things. You might want to reconsider this. There is gold on this forum if you have eyes to see it. You have to be looking first though not dismissing in a hand-waving, dismissive judgment. Personal development is first and foremost a willingness to learn theory and apply it.

5% Leo! Thanks for the support. That's pretty harsh. Maybe that's just your opinion. That's a pretty bold claim. I guess 95% of us are wasting our breath on here. I didn't realize we were being judged so harshly. Oy! There's something to learn from every situation.

@carlos flores Tell her that you love her.

Think for yourself. Be very, very strong in your will to figure things out for yourself. Don't trust anyone. Test everything for yourself. You gotta do the work. You'll do it all your life. Set the habit now. Assume everyone has an agenda -- their perspective. You are the only authority, remember that.

There's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that I don't remember verbatim but I'll paraphrase it like this -- every person has something that they know that you do not know and that they could teach you if you were open to listening to them.

Interesting. There is no one right path to enlightenment. I see it as simply as unhinging from beliefs at the existential level, and a way of living a more virtuous and self-less life. I think each person can be guided by theory, but has to kick-off the theory training-wheels at a certain point and just observe within themselves how this stuff really works. That is critical. That's when you'll get the answer you're really looking for, not by clinging to beliefs or ideology like your life (ego) depends on it (I'm not saying you do this, it's just said generally). Clinging too much to beliefs is at cross-purposes to enlightenment. You gotta make your own enlightenment custom to your own life. An enlightenment that works for you, that gives you emotional mastery, that grounds you, that leads to the happy, truthful, beautiful, abundant life that the world needs from you. An enlightenment that enables you to live your life-purpose and contribute back to the world, so you can live a comfortable, financially-independent life, and so you can contribute back to the world in a Big way as your life-purpose becomes a reality. Enlightenment is a side-dish, not the entire meal. If you want to specialize in the side-dish, fine. But you would be a specialist then. Personal development is the bigger picture: How do we shape you up so you can go out there and do something on-purpose with your life. Enlightenment is the tool to helping you accomplish this. Yeah, it's the existential truth, but that truth don't take any action. You gotta rise to the occasion, dust the ego off a little bit, and go out there and take massive action to effectuate change. I realize my view might be unorthodox, but that doesn't matter to me. I figured it out for myself. I trust my own intuition after listening ad-nauseum to everybody else opine and opine about these issues. I'm still open to feedback and try not to cling too tightly to any beliefs, including these that I have stated here. What good are these beliefs? How do they advance my ball to be doing my life-purpose actions in the moment? See, that's the real issue. I can't emphasize this point more. We gotta keep our wandering eye-balls on the big-prize. The big-prize is your life improving so much that it's almost sickening. The paradox of growth? Maybe. Hell, do it for kicks if for nothing else. Just easy on the belief-clinging. That's the source of 99% of our problems in personal development. The cowboy doesn't marry his horse.

Your paradigm. The only one that truly matters. It's a bit counter-intuitive. All truth is internal not external, personal not impersonal. Physics, or any conceptual body of knowledge for that matter, only matters to the extent that it matters to you. To the extent that you can take those insights and weave them into your ever-evolving worldview, that's what matters. Much of what we learn dies away. It's what we keep that is important. And that always comes back to your paradigm. That toolkit of concepts, heuristics, and expectations that you carry around with you and actually work with on a daily basis. What's in there? How can you improve it? How can exposure to Leo's ideas help you to improve that toolkit? Conversely, how can that bum on the street that tried to hustle money off you help you improve that toolkit? See, it's all you optimizing your knowledge grab-bag, your toolkit. It's all about your paradigm and taking responsibility for improving it, for honing it. It's all about what does this information do for you that is the relevant issue. Always. And then when you get a broad paradigm built, you might be so abundant that you condescend to advise others, because you've likely made every mistake in the book by that point and want to reduce suffering of others. This is, in part, what makes person want to be a philosopher or teacher or guru or whatever you want to call it. Mastery of that knowledge grab-bag and seeing that worldview for what it is. Nice! I got away with using a sentence fragment there.

You know what is a better question -- does he think he is enlightened. Not whether he would say so publically, but how does he feel about it in his own heart-mind? If he is satisfied with the answer, then the issue is moot. There is no objectivity in reality. Objectivity is still egoic. Enlightenment is a highly personal thing I find. Highly personal. You can half-objectify enlightenment, but at the end of the day the shoe has to fit the wearer. And that's what makes a great shoe. There is no objectively right shoe. There's room for variance built into enlightenment. A monkey's perspective is not the perspectiveless perspective. So, create and optimize your own enlightenment. You are toying with Maya either way. Don't believe the hype. There ain't no right answer. That's what is so paradoxical about enlightenment. Enlightenment is no-thing. You see all these books about enlightenment. And then you go -- yep, no-thing. When you have that realization it will hit you in a comical sort of way. You will still want to cling to the theory though, naturally. The ego wants to cling to theory. But just go -- yep, no-thing! That's hard to do. The ego has a need to know, need for certainty, and need for conceptual clarification. When you see that about the ego you can't unsee it. And you'll release all the judging and trying to cubby-hole enlightenment. I've heard the word "spiritual ego" before, and it may or may not apply to what I have said here. I'll let you decide if it does or not. All perspectives are existentially relative and dwarfed by the Absolute, the perspectiveless perspective, which laughs at all of our little distinctions. Good, bad, right, wrong, true, false. All ego. All illusory, myopic beliefs at the existential level. Now, in monkey-ville all of these distinctions have practical import, but monkey-ville ain't true reality, not even close. Even so-called enlightened monkeys still half-reside in monkey-ville, within our bodies, beliefs, and cultures.

Because it takes a life-time to mature. I am 39 years old and would you believe that in the last year alone I have grown so much. You will see that you will learn and grow your whole life-long. You will gain some knowledge, then gain some perspective. And this little engine will work itself your entire life. I feel like I am the same person I was when I was 20, but I just have a lot more knowledge and experience. You ever wonder why a lot of older people look so grounded and happy? That's knowledge and experience. I look back to how neurotic I was when I was 20 and younger. I am much less neurotic now. Don't worry about it. You are likely heads above your peers. Don't let that go to your head though.

@Shin I remember making the same observation myself about 5 years ago. When you read written text you will see that you are really reading aloud the words in your mind. So, it's the vocalizations that are more primary than the written marks. This even applies to mathematics. 2+2=4 is sounded-out. This is a major insight. You might read some Derrida. Derrida was an interesting and often misunderstood philosopher who was interested in these issues. This is a cutting edge issue, not much explored. Even Derrida was too focused on oppositions, which both helped him and screwed-him-up in equal measure. But he's worth reading. You'll clarify your own view when you see why his view is wrong.

You can discuss and debate, but hold your positions loosely and don't have your identity tied-up with your views or arguments. You shouldn't be getting worked-up in a discussion. That's really the test. And always assume that the other person could be right. Try and learn something about why they believe the opposite from you. That's fascinating. That's human variance going on there. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle anyway -- in some ethereal space betwixt and between your two positions. Humility really is a virtue, but don't be afraid to argue. For one thing, it's damn fun and funny sometimes too. It's better than watching flies fornicate or watching television even. It's probably better than half the internet stuff we do on a daily basis. You can learn something in every situation. And every person has something they can teach you. Your true takeaway is what is key -- not some misplaced egoic desire to win or to be right. Any run-of-the-mill enlightened person knows the foolishness of being a know-it-all. That's a big-trap that a lot of very smart people fall into. They wanna be right. But thats' illusion-city goin' on there!

@Loreena I don't know. My guess is it's the result of a lot of spirituality work.

That might be a good reason to back off the spirituality stuff for a while. Give it a breather. Too much of a good thing sometimes turns into a bad thing.