Joseph Maynor

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.

That's one of my favorite movies! There's a lot about ego revealed in that movie. And the contrast between lower-self and higher-self. And how to never quit. The difference between someone who is highly-developed and someone who is still a child inside.

This video has struck a deep-chord with me and has made me sensitive to what kind of adivice I give on here. We are all at different stages of the journey. I see this as a growth opportunity for me. The worst thing we can do as advice-givers is lead somebody away from what is good for them. Or perhaps to solidify some unfortunate belief through an idiosyncratic or hasty choice of words. But like Leo says, I believe in advice too, and I have benefitted by so many advice-givers in my life. But knowing that I come from a rather unusual perspective is humbling me in just spouting-off some hasty advice without considering the variety of perspectives in the audience reading. I'm not saying I treat things hasty over the norm on here, but I'm just more sensitive to the issue now. Isn't the first rule of doctors to cause no harm? That's a great standard that applies to personal development advice-givers too. It's a nice rule for all of us, since we all share opinions publically on here and are influencing many people with our words potentially. I want my words to help not hinder. Finally, I think it is healthy to examine our motives for giving advice. Just be mindful when you are giving advice and see what is there underneath you as you deliver your words to an audience of readers. This applies to me too of course. Try to see what is driving your behavior. Not what you think is there but what is actually there. The mind will hide the truth sometimes. Here's a cliche that will probably goose your ego a little bit -- those who do do those who can't do teach. I'm not saying this is true, but consider the source of who is giving you advice. Maybe the advice-giver is a 40 year-old sleeping in his mother's basement. It's a relevant issue to consider, that's all. And I'm not saying an unsuccessful person can't give good advice either. And I'm not saying every 40 year-old living in his mother's basement is a loser either. Maybe they are the smartest haha. Who knows. It's a case by case.

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.

All beliefs are existentially false, even the belief that there is no you. And even this sentence needs to eat itself.

@Lord Bwyra We gotta be careful not to cling too much to enlightenment. That's what I groked from your post. Do enlightenment, don't let it do you. I get this now. But I have a different life-purpose than Leo does. I think deep-diving enlightenment is part of Leo's life-purpose, so he's gonna go as far down that rabbit-hole as he can. I have a similar mentality, but I've applied it to different subject-areas in my life. The deep-diver mentality -- focusing on only few things in life but drilling down super-deep into them. The opposite mentality is the shallow-skimmer mentality -- the mile-wide but an inch-deep approach to things. Probably a middle-way between these two extremes is best. I need to find that balance in my life. Actually I have made progress on this this past year. The secret is to watch your need to know, your need to be right, your need to understand. Those will set you apart from enlightenment. Not to beat this drum too dogmatically though, I hold my beliefs lightly now. My focus is on what I want to create not on trying to be right. I realize the futility of trying to be right in most situations. It's an egoic desire and it doesn't give you any true peak-experiences in life. We need to keep our eye on the ball and keep our priorities straight. Proving that we're right doesn't do shit for us in most cases. And what you're really doing is trying to quiet that neurotic part of you that can't stand not-knowing, so it's an egoic insecurity that drives the know-it-all mentality. Know-it-alism is addicting like alcoholism. So, there's the issue. It's a tricky issue because the ego wants certainty, it wants things settled. But that is a huge limiting-belief that can place you way out into the weeds in life, and it can be a dream-killer to your life-purpose vision. Keep your eagle-eye on where that little hole is on the golf-course, you don't wanna be way out in the weeds before you get good-mind to course-correct. This advice is not directed towards anyone in particular and it applies to me as to everyone else. If you don't know very clearly where you want to go in life -- your desired final destination -- you’ll virtually guarantee that you’ll never get there. Videos on point to watch:

1. Read lists of goals. Short-range, mid-range, and long-range. Goals need to be: (1) Specific, crystal-clear. (2) Big and compelling. (3) Written down. (4) Reviewed on a daily basis. (5) Alligned with what you want. 2. Implement accountability check-off calendar system. 3. Use Solera Method. 4. Use Visualization. 5. Use Task Binder/ 5 Minute Rule. 6. Work in Pomodoros/ block-time. 7. Eat breakfast in am. 8. Implement budget and update annually. 9. Do gratitude exercise every day. 10. Do optimism exercise. 11. Practice positive-thinking. 12. Practice negative visualization. 13. Read mission-statement. 14. Practice reading Yang readings. (Works I have made for myself) 15. Practice reading Yin readings. (Works I have made for myself) 16. Practice 30 mins of meditation in am. 17. Exercise to and from work. 18. Maintain a healthy diet and supplementation. 19. Practice frugality. 20. Drink smoothie in am.

Sorry to hear that. Watch this great video. It will help you cope. Maybe do some self-love work too. You need to nurture yourself though this. Make sure you don't rip yourself apart. Start a little meditation practice daily. Maybe 20 mins per day to start. This will help your mind heal itself as you go through this.

It's cool that you gave him some age and a cool "tone" of a sage. Something in the way you created that effect is brilliant. The genius of art.

Here's mine: 1. My education. Deciding to major in Philosophy which I caught a lot of shit for. Writing my philosophy book (content stage is completed). But a lot more writing is needed. My labor of love. 2. Getting to the core of personal development. Deep-diving it to get at the sweetest fruit inside -- enlightenment. Doing personal development for 15 years. 3. Living a fearless, shameless life. Never compromising on this. I never cared what other people think about me, almost to a fault. My brutal honesty, punk-rocker mentality. I've mellowed with age though. 4. All the times when I told people to F-off or quit when it was the right thing to do. Smart quitting is one of the keys of life. Almost every major turning-point in my life, I chose the right thing -- following my intuition even when it caused me damage. 5. Starting my own business which I still nurture to this day. One of the best decisions I made was getting out of traditional offices. I don't work and play well with others. I treat everything I do as a little ritual, a little piece of art that I get to create. Working for myself has enabled me to really deep-dive into this creative lifestyle. Setting my own schedule, not feeling too reined-in.

And awareness too. Awareness is a bifurcation of non-dual reality. A conceptualization. Saying reality is a hallucination is a conceptualization too, a belief, and is therefore existentially false.

Yes and no. No and yes.