Joseph Maynor

What's great about Absolute-Infinity is that it is no-thingness. It's almost like the harder we try to grasp it, the more it dies a little. I don't know how you teach this to somebody. I just kind of naturally get it. But I've always been a very intuitive person too. I can see how psychedelics can give you some frame-works on absolute infinity, but whatever carry-over you lug with you conceptually from those experiences ain't no-thingness either. No-thingness is no-thingness. And that's what is beautiful about enlightenment -- holism without distinction. The Tao is that which cannot be named. This is the shot heard 'round the world -- if you think about it. The most profound sentence probably ever uttered by a hairless-ape. Oh damn! You mean I'm the whole thing instead of this fragmentary piece of shit? Yeah! Enjoy it. That's what I do. It's a sense of being grounded to the core, but then having that come full-circle into being flighty, un-moored, creative, charged. Both grounded and un-grounded at once. Living on your edge and killing it, but without any ego, resistance, or deviation from Divine-Will. To me this is what Karma Yoga gets at, and I can see how this is the only way to be outcome-independent in life. You know what you are doing is right, there ain't no question. Just keep moving forward and never quit on the dream. It's a no-brainer paradoxically. Counter-intuitively, LIFE IS SO EASY. But the Mind-Matrix pulls the rug-out from under that fact and we don't see it. I'm so grateful I see it now. There is nothing complicated about life. Just do what you're supposed to do at all times. That's it. And then the sneaky mind chimes in -- well, blah blah blah. No! damn it! No! That's it. Don't get seduced and derailed by the meddling monkey-mind. I am aware of my mind almost like it is a separate being now. I see through all the monkey-chatter bullshit like someone asking what he did to deserve to be tormented this way in life. Like, what the hell is this thing? -- while arms-lengthing the evil little-bugger as I'm executing my day. And it's almost always negative, not positive by default, notice that? What the hell's up with that, seriously? Is life really some kind of galactic-prank? I want my money back! We are already in a mild-Hell with this mind-saboteur in our lives. Why would anybody want to endure this torment of a life we live? Who would ask to be born? This question has always fascinated me. Who lives a life free of suffering? Anyone? [crickets.] Video on point to watch:

I prefer to be open. It has allowed me to synergize with all the people on here. If you put yourself out there, you always get growth. Covey's 6th habit is Synergy. Synergy is magical like enlightenment. It's kinda underrated even though it's one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Synergy can take your personal development and growth into the stratosphere! Synergy is 1+ 1 = 3 Check this out: https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-6.html "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" read by Covey himself. https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/The-7-Habits-of-Highly-Effective-People-Audiobook/B002V5HAL4

Do some visualizing about what you want your life to look like. Identify things that are really feeding that vision and things that are not. Then, you gotta do the emotional-labor of maximizing the behaviors that are working to get you the results you want and dropping all the rest. Get rid of all that stupid *shit* you are doing that is not advancing your life vision. So, you gotta do a little visualizing, you gotta do a little looking into your future. Maybe take half-a-day and go out to nature or a park to do this. Bring a yellow pad and a pen. Commiserate with the birds. Video on point to watch:

Yep. I've watched them all 3+ times. That's how I know this stuff so well. Watch these ones:

Yeah. You gotta watch out for the positive claims in non-duality because anything said in language is not the Truth. So, when people make positive claims about non-duality I always cringe a little. It sounds a little dirty to my ears. Because you can say you only take the beliefs as scaffolding, but the ego really does form a spiritual identity or spiritual ego that we gotta acknowledge and look into. I've been worried about this issue for a while. Sure, enlightenment is great at destroying beliefs, but it doesn't do much to advance beliefs. No beliefs follow from non-duality. That seems to be the doctrine, yet to be consistent even this claim would have to eat itself. I get solace and results from practicing the yin aspects of enlightenment in my life though, and they counterbalance my more masculine yang qualities. Even if enlightenment is flawed it would still be worth it to explore it because you look at reality more than you ever would otherwise.

I appreciate that statement and I appreciate enlightenment. Stick with enlightenment. It is magical. Enlightenment killed my religion though. Actually substitution is probably a better word. God is still God, but with just a different referent. But a lot of the functioning of God has stayed the same in my life. It's a trip. I don't talk to God or anything though. God is just non-dual Being. And the sense of Religious Intuition that I had is still there, it's just that I kicked away certain beliefs about it. But intuition is definitely strong in my life, the leading by the Muses. That's all exactly the same as when I was religious. The sense I have of being divinely-guided, of channeling the creativity of God, of being a faithful servant of God's Will. That intuition is all still there with me. I always have listened to that intuition and have followed it pretty accurately, even when I had to take some shit to do so, and even when I was an athiest before I became religious I had that same strong sense of guiding-intuition I was just more confused about what the hell it was. When you're an atheist you get blind-sided by spiritual intuitions and think you are going crazy or something, or you just bury them or ignore them, or maybe you listen to them, I guess it depends on the person. God is not a dude in the clouds, there I said it! Self-inquiry works haha. Not to be too blunt here or anything. Religions are just dual versions of non-dual Spirituality. Your video on Religions is on point with this. I can see where you had that insight because I had the same one. Spirituality fills the shoes of Religion. It's just a more realistic sense of God, that's all. Well, it's not a concept, that's the point -- God is a-conceptual. God doesn't really have 99 names. God has one name but 99 dualistic conceptions. So, yeah, religions are a step forward from atheism (you could argue the reverse too if that's your preference), but non-duality is the final stage of spirituality. Not to sound too dogmatic of course. This story is just what's resonating with me as I write this -- and what resonates with me generally when I think about these issues. The main point that I want to emphasize here is that not much really changed for me practically-speaking from the substitution of religion with non-dual spirituality. I used to be embarrassed to talk about spirituality and intuition stuff with people because I thought people would judge me, but what the hell, I have nothing to hide. I figure we don't talk about this stuff enough because we are scared to open up about it. I'd rather say, hey this shit really is happening to me, anybody else? [crickets haha.] People are scared to be judged, I get it. I don't care myself though. I have no shame about discussing my beliefs. This probably goes back to my philosophy training. But a lot of people are scared to discuss their beliefs, or at least hesitate to open-up voluntarily about them. That's an issue across the board I find -- a pandemic. We hide the most precious parts of ourselves from the world. Why? How can we learn if we do this?

You gotta watch this video. It is awesome and on point. This is it right here. What you are looking for from a big-picture point of view. Watch this one too if you wanna learn how to implement personal development theory. Routines are how you retrain that subconscious-mind. Get that elephant trained-up. This is how you do it. Routines. Watch this one too:

Paradoxically, this is where enlightenment is leading for me -- Personal Power (see video below). I'm embracing the illusion with more mindfulness. If I was interested in enlightenment though and I wanted to deep-dive it, I would go live in a cave for 5 years and explore the shit out of reality. My problem is that I have to work within Maya to get a lot of actions done. I've built up a machine that needs a lot of tending for better or for worse. But I love it. It's a labor of love. I'm transforming it into that. Deep-diving is the way to go. If you're like me, until you satisfy yourself that you have exhausted something, you'll keep cracking at it until you satisfy yourself. I've done that with math, music (playing jazz), studying law (on my own, I didn't go to law school), studying philosophy, studying personal development, mountain-biking, working on my writing style, doing deep-dives with reading all kinds of books, working on my business, etc. Everything I do I go deep. It's a personality trait I have for better or for worse. Sometimes it has hung me up though -- that kind of balls-to-the-wall, super-driven mentality. When I was in school I wanted to do every math problem in the book and I often did. I wanted to penetrate math to the core. And I loved it. I was so passionate about that when I was doing it. It was like a journey for me. I probably missed my calling as a mathematician, but I would have entered Philosophy through the Philosophy of Mathematics eventually anyway. Philosophy is my permanent passion along with Personal Development and writing. Those three have stuck around for years and years for me. The others have risen, peaked, and then dropped-away. It's important to see what sticks around and when you are young, it's harder to do that because you don't have the luxury of having 10-15 years to see what sticks. So, I'm so grateful that I know what I am passionate about. It has been empirically confirmed in my life. One of the benefits of being 39 years old. I may be getting old and that kind of sucks, but I know myself now in a nice way that I didn't 5 or 10 years ago. Life is getting easier and easier as I get older, although my productivity goes up and up. It's a weird paradox. Personal Development and your work Leo has definitely played a role in that. Self-Mastery really pays huge dividends after 10-15 years of personal development work.

Scaffolding understood correctly and applied in the right way is the only way to expedite enlightenment though. That's why you need a good teacher like yourself to explain this to people. It's a task. I appreciate what you do. Tough task. How do you change the way people are inclined to think about beliefs in a way that doesn't flow into philosophical terrain but rather into clinging differently, attaching differently. It's a tricky thing. I would be puzzled about how to teach this to someone because it has some philosophical overtones, but philosophy is a trap in the work too because the point is not to arrive at some kind of answer. It is to be the answer. And then to explain to people how to use this truth is a totally new area of thorny "education". Do you explain or show or do some combination? I don't know.

I also think it's good to have people think through the stuff for themselves too or else they just take the scaffolding and turn it into beliefs. So, it is tricky when you give people scaffolding and they don't know how to treat it. I can see how a master would be cautious about that because beliefs are the very thing that need to be put into question. I appreciate the scaffolding though. But it takes a certain kind of awareness to not turn the scaffolding into hundreds of new beliefs clung to for dear life -- which can set a person far away from non-dual being.

For what it's worth, this is what I do. I balance non-dual being with egoic-illusion depending on what kind of situation I'm in. Sometimes I need some ego, sometimes I need a little bit of dissolving into Being. Like a chef seasoning a dish, I add just the right mixture of illusion (ego) and Truth (no-ego) into each moment to advance my life-purpose agenda and to remain calm and peaceful regardless of circumstance. I hope this doesn't cheapen enlightenment, that's not my intention. Enlightenment is not only the existential truth, it's also a superb TOOL to be employed in a moment along with ego (which is also a superb tool), and it gives you a huge sense of being grounded and emotional-mastery. Ego is Yang, no-ego is Yin. The Tao is the proper harmonization of Yin and Yang in the moment. I don't know if this helps or confuses you. There's a practical side to enlightenment. Yes, it's the existential truth, but it's also a tool in the toolkit to be used when the situation calls for it. This is how it's all worked out for me. But as you can see from my posts I still appreciate existential Truth, but I'm not gonna sit around all day and do only that with my time. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I got lots of projects on my plate that need doing in the real world and I gotta be nose to the grindstone with this stuff or I ain't gonna get it all done. I work all the time, 7 days a week probably at least 10 hours a day on my business and life-purpose work. I wish I could explore more of the psychedelic stuff someday, and maybe I will. I had one really bad trip one time that scared the shit out of me. Fetal-position scared, ya feel me! No joke. So, I get it man -- "reality" can flip inside-out on psychedelics. For some reason I wanted to drive my car and I didn't even know where I wanted to go. If you're gonna trip, you might want to give your car keys to someone else. I was 5150 (so I designate here, not legally) for a while, and then I collapsed into the ground into a pool of colors, and I still don't know how it happened, but I ended up in my bed with the covers over me in a fetal position slowly coming down, shivering with fear. I think I promised myself like 1000 times that if I made it out alive I would never do this again. But of course . . . I did. I never had a trip that bad though, but that one scarred me. It made me realize that if you got any demons, insecurities, anxiety, depression, or any paranoia or anything like that, watch out with psychedelics. Baby step it. You don't wanna have a come to Jesus moment in the worst possible way. Having no footing in reality is what is really scary. You can't make heads or tails of things. It's existentially terrifying. Well, not always, but it was in that instance. Sometimes it's absolutely spectacular. But ya'll know about that. I don't really fool with drugs anymore. Sobriety is actually best for personal development work. Healthy, sober, strong is what I wanna be (need to be) in order to get my dream-life handled. So, that's what I am shooting for long-term. But I make no judgments about drugs. Again, it is us that acts unwisely, drugs are just tools like guns. Sometimes using the tool is useful sometimes it is unwise, it depends on the situation. The problem is that we make shit decisions like 90% of the time. That's our real problem. So, instead of blaming our own lack of self-control and discipline, we scapegoat drugs. That's just like us -- we blame everything and everyone but ourselves and we rationalize up-the-yin-yang! Ever notice how you and others rationalize things? It's nuts! Where the hell did that gene come from and how can we de-program that? Someone will get Bill Gates rich if they crack that problem. You want big money, there you go! It just fell in your lap. Get busy. Videos on point:

Do you have a daily practice to grow this kind of result in your life?

Great points. But to be fair to Leo -- and pardon me if I am wrong -- but I assume a big part of Leo's life-purpose is taking the deep-dive into enlightenment. Just a hunch, I don't know that for certain. Life-purpose is a very personal thing. I know how fond Leo is about enlightenment and the Truth. I would guess that he loves it, he's passionate about it. And good for him. That's a perfect element for his life-purpose if that's the case. If you're gonna chase anything, chase what lights you up on the inside, what you're passionate about. So, he's gonna take enlightenment further than I would for example, because my life-purpose is different, although there is an intersection -- in the Venn-Diagram sense -- between all of our life-purposes. But those areas of commonality change in size depending on who we are comparing from a life-purpose standpoint. (I happen to get my kicks from Philosophy and writing, but that's just me. ) Hey -- everybody loves ice-cream, but Ben and Jerry had a passion for it and took the deep-dive into ice-cream. I could go on and on. Wine anyone? There's another deep rabbit-hole. Some people could care less about wine. But some people dedicate their entire lives and careers to studying wine and pairing it with all the different kinds of foods, etc. It's a friggin' science in and of itself that could take a lifetime to master. I hope I didn't belabor this point. Sometimes I get carried away, and I am passionate about life-purpose right now (and I hope for forever because it's awesome). Now, on another issue. And I hope I don't come off as sounding too arrogant here -- but a lot of people don't seem to understand this so I will state it here. The point is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater regarding rational thinking, it's to understand what rational thinking is, what it isn't, and when and where it is useful to employ it in certain situations, and when rational thinking has no jurisdiction as it were. This is subtle, but it has helped me. In relative truth and for scaffolding work, rational thinking can be useful. For being non-dual reality, rational thinking *can* set you apart from enlightenment by 100 miles. So, it's not rational thinking that is bad, it is how we are clinging to it and interpreting it in certain situations that is stupid or bad. Let's use a better word, a nicer word -- unwise. Kinda like guns don't kill people, we do. Or concepts are not bad, it's how we cling to and interpret them that is bad in certain situations. Same kinda issue in all those scenarios -- It's us that is wrong! But due to denial, we don't like to acknowledge that, so we blame something else. It's how we are clinging sub-optimally per the situations that we are in that is bad. Ok, so I'm off my soapbox now. I just needed to interject this because I see it come up over and over again, and I'm not saying that you committed any of these "offenses" haha. I just responded to your post because I saw you raised the issue of rational thinking. See, now I get to stand around eating doughnuts and write everybody else a ticket like a traffic-cop too! Gives my ego a little boost, a little goose to the ole identity-complex.

There is no me. Reality just is. But even these claims have to eat themselves. Writing just happened, but even this claim has to eat itself. Reality is of a piece, but even this claim has to eat itself. Absolute Truth is a tricky bear. Yes, this too must devour itself. What did Leo say -- a cat unraveling a yarn which unravels the cat? I totally get that. But even this belief has to eat itself. All beliefs are existentially false. Yes this one too must dine on itself. Everything said in my prior post must eat itself too, like a snake swallowing its own tail. At best it can be relative truth or scaffolding. This claim doesn't have to eat itself since it is within the egoic illusion. I have dropped back down into the human illusion now where absolute Truth hides in plain view. Hey, if it's just us we can do whatever we want right? A bunch of hairless-monkeys creating some culture and a little beliefs. Why not? It's better than watching other monkeys play charades on TV. Ain't nothin' wrong with relative truth per se, unless it tries to ape its older brother, absolute Truth. Everything we believe is relative truth at best. That's what's special about enlightenment, the rules change -- the carpet is pulled out from under our little monkey feet, and we can't wrap our little primate-minds around it. We might exclaim --what the hell is happening to me? Well . . . . I would say there is no you, but you know the rejoinder -- this belief must chow-down on itself too. Lots of giving with one hand and taking away with the other hand happening here. Reality is counter-intuitive because it is non-dual.

Also any metaphysical conclusions we make are not non-dual awareness, they are made within the relative egoic human life, language, and theories -- in monkey-ville! So, trolls cannot exist in non-dual awareness because that's an egoic distinction. Whatever "trolls" could be in non-dual awareness is part-and-parcel of everything else that is real, and it is what is -- since reality is a-conceptual. So, what is real would be something like the visuals of a troll but not trolls, but even that individuation would be egoic because you are piecing-out an image from non-dual reality thereby adding a little monkey-augmentation to non-dual awareness, super-imposing a little monkey individuation belief on non-dual awareness. So, anything we say in language is within the relative egoic pragmatic truth, not absolute Truth. All beliefs are existentially false. This is a humbling insight. Of course we can say a lot of relative things about non-duality, but they are all true with a lower-case t not true with an upper-case T if that makes sense. So, again, we can say a lot of monkey-chatter about reality, but it ain't reality. Reality is something that just is without distinction, and even this sentence has to eat itself. This is why it is important to be the Truth not theorize about the Truth. If you wanna theorize about reality, you're gonna be engaging in theory-scaffolding (which can be useful training-wheels to guide novices or those learning about enlightenment) or truth with a lower-case t -- relative human truth, a biased monkey-mind perspective on reality (or theory of reality) not reality itself. For the purposes of my post here, you can consider a theory to be roughly a set of beliefs or proposed beliefs.

Real and not real is an egoic conceptual distinction, not part of non-dual awareness. What is is notwithstanding our thoughts about it. To answer one way or the other would be existentially false. All conceptual judgments about what is is a piece of reality trying to judge the entire thing. Like a Yelp review trying to judge Paris has no effect on Paris. Paris will survive long after Yelp will. But even this is merely egoic story. Be the Truth, that's it. Knowing the Truth by chin-wagging about it *can* lead to augmenting reality with storytelling (It depends on how the beliefs are clung to). Of course we need belief scaffolding about reality, but scaffolding is humble. Scaffolding would never claim to be the building it surrounds. No map is the territory, and this statement and judgment needs to eat itself too. All of these statements need to eat themselves existentially as they are all egoic distinctions overlaid on top of non-dual awareness.

Reality makes no distinctions. It just is. All distinctions are egoic. As soon as monkey-speak, illusion-city is already rearing-up. Just be with reality, sit within it, envelop within it, like a baby snuggling into a warm blanket freshly taken out of the drier. Once we start flapping our lips we lose something of that beauty, of that experience. And it's the experience that has true value, not our words, our silly squawking. Intellectuals should be humbled by enlightenment not emboldened by it. Just my take, my monkey-view to pile onto the rest. Do we really care about all these words? Does Paris give a shit about some tourist's Yelp review about it? See? Paris could care less. It just is. Reality laughs at our words. Actually, it aggrandizes us to even say it does that much. Reality is actually indifferent to our words.

Why the limiting-belief? Live a charged-life. Do what is emotionally-difficult. Not all of us are hiding under the cover of pseudonyms here. People are supposed to mingle not peck away like neurotic birds from behind a dead-screen. You got more interesting people per-capita here than in bars, yet most people don't think twice before going to those. You only life once. Mingle. Let's not be neurotic ants hiding in mom's basement. That's the antithesis of what we want to be. I'd like to meet all of you personally. If you came to San Francisco, I'd drop what I was doing to come meet you. But that's just me. It could change our lives. It would be stupid to waste that opportunity, and for what? To avoid going outside our little bubble for a couple of hours? You only live once. Meet everyone you can, especially anyone regularly on here. It's bound to do something positive for everyone involved. To me it would be more fun to shoot the shit with any of you than hear you preach. I'd learn more about you too having you off your pedestals, without the personas, the masks. And you'd see me without mine. We'd see a similar spark in each other's eyes, something that would work to dissolve our differences. And we would be so happy afterwards. Like visiting a foreign city that you've heard so much about in books for the first time.

@unknownworld Not to butt into this discussion but to me arguing about enlightenment or who's more enlightened than whom seems so wrong to me. It's like arguing over who's poo smells the worst objectively speaking. Maybe we need to put the toy away for a while, we have built too many fantasies around it. Wanting to be right and enlightenment go together like oil and water. Enlightenment work has tempered my need to be right not fed it, but that's just me.

@Danielle Cool. The day before yesterday I got a shot of excitement hit me like what used to happen when I was in my teens. That giddy-burst of excitement for reality and for the future that zaps you, you know what I'm talking about. It's a discrete, momentary, emotional zap or burst. I haven't had one of those hit me in years. I recall I used to have those quite frequently when I was younger. It was noteworthy when it happened. I was like, aw shit! I haven't felt one of these in years! It's a shame that we lose these little zaps of excitement as we age. Reality becomes too hum-drum, too settled-into, too made-at-home within. We lack those unsettled, half-naive bursts of novelty and anticipation that we had when we were much younger. And now I crave more of these zaps! I recall it was one of the best things about being young. Everyday was filled with dreams about the future -- big dreams, and the sky was wide-open as to what I could be or what I could do with my life. Like a blank-canvas patiently waiting, anticipating, expecting to be turned-into a masterpiece someday -- where my dreams were my reality and my reality was patiently-awaiting my dreams -- like a poor dog staring at the front-door panting, waiting for its owner to inevitably return. The raw joy and power of anticipation! I hadn't even realized I had lost this. But then I focused on what I have gained since that time and smiled. Oh, it's all so much of a journey, so much of a trip -- a story with the second-half still yet to be told. And the relation between the first-half and the second-half of the story will be interesting to see. This gives me anticipation to be elderly, to see the blunt, half-jagged strokes of my artwork exit the dream and fall into my lap like a tossed-toy. Perhaps at this time I will put this toy on my mantle-piece above my fireplace and stare at it sometimes with wrinkled-face -- blowing new life into the old dream by so doing. Like an aging-musician listening to his old hit song years later with new ears colliding with old-memories. At some point in the life-cycle of an artwork, the artist has to lay down the brush. It's always fascinating to know when and where the final strokes should be placed on the canvas. When is a work of art complete? That's a fascinating question every artist faces. I will get to see all of that in my own life in my elderly years and I look forward to it. Why didn't he put a little more paint up there in that corner where it is all bare! someone might ask. What was done will be what was done -- the artwork by this time will have become artifact, a toy to be placed on the mantle-piece now -- or a painting to be hung-up on the wall in my bedroom over my bed, over my buzzing-head.

Mathematics doesn't have a foundation in reality, but it has correlation with theories about reality. Or, more importantly, theories can be framed within the theories of Mathematics. But notice that any practical application of a mathematical idea is no longer the pure mathematical idea. It is now a new thought. A different thought. One way to think of Mathematics is it is the theoretical residue that remains after the mechanical-mind abstracts the content out of its mechanical theories, especially physical or scientific theories of external reality. When that content falls away, what is left is the abstract structures of Mathematics, the scaffolding of the probing-mind facing outwards on physical reality. But this is a story, don't cling to this as a truth. It's just an idea to goose the intuition a little bit. We call these intuition-pumps in Philosophy. Talking about Mathematics as one thing is a bullshitting exercise, but it can be useful as a training-wheels theory to get your gears-turning as you explore more on your own. At some point you gotta kick the training-wheels off though. Mathematics also comes from quantizing, individuating, drawing analogies to geometry, consideration of groups or sets in the abstract of what's actually in them, or the consideration of relations or functions between variables that can be represented in mathematical structures. But notice that X = YZ has a different meaning from F = MA, although F = MA is influenced on the pure mathematical form of X = YZ. F = MA is force is equal to mass times acceleration, a principle of Newtonian Physics. Remember this, Mathematics is more like a bush than a tree. Don't think of Mathematics as a single thing reducing-down to a foundation in logic or set theory, but as a loose connection of theories with a certain resemblance. Set theory or symbolic propositional logic is no more foundational than the theory of ratios or the theory of integral equations. Mathematics has no center or foundation. The expectation that Mathematics should have a center or a foundation is a theory that WE overlay on top of Mathematics. Each theory in Mathematics is of-a-piece and has a unique history of relation, influence, and interconnection with other "mathematical theories" or other concepts and metaphors (some existing outside of Mathematics). Think of Matrices. Do they exist in Nature? No, we made them up to solve certain problems. Each Mathematical theory or structure has a history behind it. If you really want to learn the Philosophy of Mathematics, learn about the History of Mathematics and new doors will open for you. The a-historical way that Mathematics is taught in schools where all the theories are bunched-together in a nifty, tidy book, is a convenience that textbook authors created, they made it up. Mathematics didn't come into being that way. Mathematics evolved in a more piece-meal, messy, creative, and exploratory way, one little step at a time, each step standing on the shoulders of prior work done in the field of Mathematics (and Mathematical Physics especially). Here's a great book to read which I read and loved every page. The Story of Mathematics by Lloyd Motz. (If you like this read his The Story of Physics too, it is excellent.) https://www.amazon.com/Story-Mathematics-Lloyd-Motz/dp/0380724588/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502931087&sr=1-2&keywords=the+story+of+physics+motz https://www.amazon.com/Story-Physics-Jefferson-Weaver-Paperback/dp/B010WF6JRA/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502931123&sr=1-4&keywords=the+story+of+physics+motz

We are afraid of being judged stupid or crazy by our peers. We are afraid that we might find out we are wrong and have to give up some of our cherished beliefs. We are trained not to discuss beliefs and it is culturally considered to be rude. We protect and respect each others' bad habit of denial.

I like to think of life-purpose like this -- imagine you have a line that has several wooden-beads strung along it. Now imagine that that line is slack and horizontal and the beads all have a lot of space in between them. What life-purpose does, if done right, is it raises one end of that line up so that all the beads fall together and become one giant, unified bead pointing-upward at the raised-end. Those beads are everything you need to be doing to live a big-life and even just a responsible life. You are going to be living here to do your life-purpose work, so money is a bead for you. Having a retirement is a bead for you. In order to contribute back to the world, you gotta wanna live here for 60-70-80 years in some degree of financial-security, at least to where those issues don't interfere with whatever the result is that you are aiming for in your life-purpose. One of the benefits of life-purpose is that by lifting-up one end of that line, it gets your whole-life together by carrying all the hum-drum aspects of living, like finances, up along with it. A rising-tide lifts all boats, all beads. So if you do it right, finances will be built into your life-purpose. It's a necessary element of living here to do your work. You don't wanna be struggling financially if you're gonna make an investment here on Earth to do your life-purpose work. So you gotta be strategic in how your entire-life, including your finances, are beads on that line. And when you get that passion and drive that comes from your life-purpose work, where your work finally becomes play, your whole-life comes together as you take massive loving action each day -- and all those beads slide-together and become one giant rising, consolidating, optimizing, getting-its-shit-together bead. Life-purpose is the juice, the turbo-charger you need to strategically get your whole-life handled if you do it right. Like taking the slack out of your line and creating your life into an optimized work of art, investing in your whole-life, so that you can shine for others, and to do that you must actually shine -- which means you need to be healthy, strong, happy, and coming from a place of true overflowing abundance. How can you contribute huge creative-value to the world without becoming a cornucopia of abundance yourself? You need to be so full you are overflowing with heart and gifts (your prolific works), giving true value and love to whatever it is that you are focusing on in the moment. Paradoxically, we help ourselves most by resolving to make our lives about contributing to others. It's a Way of embracing Maya while not embracing Maya. A little trick we use to make this illusory-life on Earth palatable to us if we choose to remain here, which most of us have decided to do. If we're gonna remain in Maya, let's do it from our higher-self rather than our lower-self. This is the meaningless-meaning, the purposeless-purpose. So, is life-purpose about you or others? To me this is a beautiful question. And because we are all one, what you're doing is channeling love into love. Love is becoming more fully-conscious of itself. To me that's what life-purpose is. Love directed inwards manifests outwards and love directed outwards manifests inwards. It becomes a rising-spiral in your life and in the world as a greater good. An upward-spiral of love within monkey-land. A reasonless-reason for toying with Maya and even working at all. A trick to navigate a trick as it were. An illusion within an illusion. A construct we use to make a happier, healthier dream (dream-life). Life-purpose is so deep. It's one of the golden-keys of life and I'm so grateful to Leo for making me realize the value of this magical and powerful motivation-supercharging tool. Leo's life-purpose caused my life-purpose vision to come into focus. His love begat my love. And my love will begat someone else's love as I now execute by life-purpose. It's a beautiful thing, like cascading dominoes building up to infinite-momentum. What better could we be doing within Maya? That's a deep question. Reality laughs at all our distinctions but we don't. The illusion kisses God on the cheek like the dutiful Son honoring its Father. Reality just is. Life-purpose and enlightenment really are two-sides of the same coin. Ok, not really, haha. Maybe I should pound my hairless-monkey fist on my desk to make this claim more True. You are the music-maker, and you are the dreamer of dreams. You are absolute-infinity. Manifest the juice from that. Creative contribution is happening all around you and within you. Become one with that creative-energy, that evolving elan-vital, so that all your beads rise and merge-together into something excellent, something that could be put on a pedestal, a truly-honed work of art, a conduit for the Good and the True. Video on point to watch:

If you can learn to love yourself fully you won't need love to come externally. Then you will not come off as clingy or insecure which repels people. You'll be interfacing with the world sourced in love, giving love. That's how you'll get love back is by overflowing with abundant love sourced inside of you. Shower the people you know with love. Give abundantly without any desire to be recompensed and you will get so much love back. And then the people around you will start to want to do kind things for you not because they feel like they owe you, but because they like you and want to nurture you, to care for you, to bond with you. When you tap into Divine Love everyone around you will know it. It will change your life. You'll be a source, not a sink; grounded from inside yourself, not insecure. Remember, respect is a form of love. One of the most priceless things you can do to show love is to show respect to someone, especially someone who is unaccustomed to being given much respect. Call a homeless man sir and see what response you get. Kindness and gentleness and patience and respect are what people really love to receive. Giving these to people from a place of abundance is one of the greatest joys in life. Not to mention what you get back in return.

You should look at some of Picasso's art from his weird African phase when you are tripping.