Joseph Maynor

You're neurotic because you're not integrated right within reality. You're not grounded. You're not harmonized with reality. Enlightenment works on this.

The next stage is to realize that your belief that you are at the center of things is an illusion. But even that is a story. You as a body-mind-brain don't exist. But even that is a story. What exists is reality being aware of itself, and reality is everything moving as one giant flow without distinction. But even that is a story. And Reality being itself just is you. But even that is a story. You are not a thing but the non-dual reality being itself. But even that is a story. You are the atmosphere that is aware of all the clouds moving though it, yet you are not the clouds. But even that is a story. Reality is not conceptually capturable, it is idealism. It is what is -- stripped of our thought-stories about it. It is being that. Knowing it by being it. But even that is a story Everything you see around you is not physical. It's a non-dual substance. But even that's a story. Nothing is what is conscious of everything. It's just one being. But even that's a story. Nature is nothingness. And that's what you are. It has no properties, no features. It doesn't exist or not exist. But even that's a story. Fall into the godhead. This is the ultimate nature of reality. Where there are no distinctions and you are aware you are nothing, and that everything is you. Absolute Infinity is right in front of you. BUT . . . . Need I go on? Do you see by not-seeing what I am pointing/ not-pointing to? Enlightenment is an odd sort of reading between the lines. But, yes, even that is a little story, a little hairless-monkey fairy-tale we tell ourselves to feel like we know. To satisfy our need to know, our need for certainty. Our human/egoic urge for conceptual resolution, for understanding -- that succulent, tantalizing fruit we can't resist -- like Eve not minding God and wanting to feast on such forbidden-fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. After God found out about this little fruit-picking transgression, He said, get the hell outta here and don't come back! Don't be pickin' no fruit from my Tree of Knowledge. I told you explicitly not to do this. Jeez!

The feeling of giving back from a place of abundance without alterior motives is one of the purest, best feelings you can have in life. The joy of giving back. I imagine this is what parents or teachers must feel like at times too.

Where those have-to's have transformed into want-to's, and you pop-out of bed in the morning excited to start another day working on causing your dream-life to become a reality?

I decided to cross calendar tracking system off my personal list. Too cumbersome for me. This was where I was printing off a calendar sheet for particular tasks and checking off the box when I completed the task everyday. Just got too unwieldy for me. But don't let that deter you. You try all of them. What works for me probably is not what will work for you. This stuff is very idiosyncratic.

Nice tool. I'll work with it. Mindfulness of Energy Mindfulness of Willpower/ increases Threshold Guardians/ Emotional labor Gaining Experience/ Leveling-Up Resilience/ Strength/ Increases Perseverence

Nice work. You have a nice writing style. Very genuine voice and good tone.

It's a set of loosely-related but not foundationally unified theories about numbers, logic, sequences, series, sets, relations, geometry, and inqualities -- and corresponding numerous applications of these concepts. Mathematics is thoughts. Lots of thoughts. Thoughts that have nice application in the Physical Sciences, Engineering, and elsewhere.

Write out a list of all the things you dislike about yourself and other people. Write out a list of all the things you like about yourself and other people. This will get you started. It will get you digging. The ego is everything you identify as me. The shadow is everything that you identify as not-me. Me in the sense of -- I'm the kind of person statements. E.g., I'm a skater. I'm a tough guy. I'm a metal-head. I'm bad with women. Etc. The key to shadow work is to let in little repressed pieces of you from your shadow come back into consciousness so you can integrate more fully with your authentic self. Your quest to carve out a strong identity caused you to reject or repress certain parts of you. This is what shadow work fixes. It allows you to fill-out into your authentic self more. Emerald has 2 vids on shadow work that you gotta watch for background. Her YouTube channel is called The Diamond Net. Watch those two vids. They will solidify your conceptual understanding of shadow work.

These are in no particular order: (baby-step these in though or you will get overwhelmed and quit.) Purpose in mind/end in mind: You need a clear purpose in mind before work makes any sense. You should know every moment of your day what routine/task lives in that time-space. Once you know that, you can easily assess whether you're off track or not. If you don't know that, well, you see the problem? You can't go after something effectively unless you (1) define very clearly what it is you're going after and (2) know what it is that you should be working on at all times. Don't multi-task: When you start a task, which is usually a little project in itself, spend 15-20 minutes strategizing about it. The best way to do this is open a Word doc and try to break the project down into sub-tasks. Then order these tasks from first to-do to last to-do. Focus only on the task-at-hand: Now print out that list. Now, do each task in that list without multitasking. Cross-off each item after you do it. Block-time/ Pomodoro Method: Work in Pomodoros or block-time. This is critical. My effectiveness boomed when I started using the Pomodoro Method. It paces out your day right so you don't procrastinate or feel under the gun with your work. Google it. That's how I learned about it. The rules are simple. Daily-routines: Every ongoing task in your life needs to be implemented into a daily-routine. And each routine has a time when it is done. So this is what gives you that knowing of what it is that you should be doing at a particular time. Then you can know very clearly whether you are doing right or wrong conduct in a moment. Holding yourself accountable requires knowing what you should be doing in the moment. So critical. Momentum: Your day has different momentum feels to it. Make sure when you are doing a task that you are not shocking yourself. Pace yourself. Try to harmonize your work with your energy levels and time of day. Work with your body and energy levels not against them. Flow: Try to lose yourself in each task. Become one with the task and get into flow. You'll get a lot done effortlessly when you get into the zone and ride that wave. When you're in flow try to avoid interruptions. Interruptions are the enemy of flow. Close your door so you can work without interruptions. Turn your phone off and unplug the internet cable if you must. I do this.

Here's a good way to describe it. Say you want to find a girlfriend. Step-one is to write-down that goal and actually read it every day. Step-two is the implementation of that goal. You need a strategy for obtaining your goal. The best strategy is to break your implementation down into a daily or weekly-routine. In this case, let's do a weekly-routine. You are going to get a girlfriend by implementing a weekly-routine on Friday nights. Say you target a specific club to hunt for your potential girlfriend. If you have resistance or fear here, you're not just gonna walk in that club every Friday and talk to women. So, you baby-step yourself. Maybe the first Friday all you do is sit in the parking-lot of the club for 30 mins and then drive away. Maybe the second Friday, you get out of your car and just walk around outside the club for 30 mins and then leave. Maybe the third Friday you go inside the club for 30 minutes and then leave. See? You are baby-stepping your actions on a routine that will eventually lead you to getting a girlfriend -- over time. You are slowly building-up momentum and confidence to get you to your goal of obtaining a girlfriend. This strategy is called baby-stepping. It's a hugely effective strategy that you all should be using! One major reason why people fail (or worse, don't even try) is that they don't know how to strategically baby-step the implementation of their goals. A mountain is moved by a thousand baby-steps. Think of your goals this way instead of trying to move the mountain in one or two goes. Ain't gonna work like that. Not for big-goals which are often scary and intimidating. That's why achievement of big-goals is a rare and valuable thing. Most people don't do it, and more importantly, they don't know how to do it. They lack strategic-thinking. You wanna be like a general on the battlefield of your life, with one eye on your final-goal and at the same time with the other eye on the little tactical, strategic maneuvers that will add-up to your final victory over time. The trap that most people fall into is they want the girlfriend right now -- they want the quick-fix. That's a huge trap. That mentality often, but not always, leads to disaster.

No. Competition is good if it is in line with your life-purpose. What is bad is when people compete for stupid reasons that don't really benefit their lives or anyone else's life. If you wanna live a BIG, FULL life you're gonna be competing your whole life. Learn to love competing to achieve your goals. But also know when to turn that off though too. A lot of Type A people don't know how and when to shut that competitive mentality off. So, mindfulness and high-consciousness is key when strategizing when and where to compete for resources.

Vegas! Let's do it.

No. Practice both. They do different things. Meditation has nothing to do with Sedona. Sedona is a tool to bust though internal resistance: 1. Could I do X? 2. Would I do X if I could? 3. When will I do X? 4. Visualizing starting to do X. 5. Allow yourself to start to move. You will! This is the magic of Sedona. That resistance will give way and you'll start to flow automatically into action. Allow this to happen and ride the wave as long and as deeply as you can. This is called flow or being in the zone. When the wind is at your back exploit the heck out it. Bam bam bam, get it done.

Maybe these tips will help you. Don't feel bad, I struggled with this until very recently. Now I am excited to do my life-purpose actions everyday. That's your ticket-out. But it takes quite a lot of personal development work to achieve that. Start the process. Success doesn't happen by accident! 1. You have misplaced priorities. Get all your juices flowing in the right direction and get stoked to take the actions you wanna be taking by doing some life-purpose work, and work on getting excited to take actions that will REALLY MASSIVELY improve your life as your tasks and days open and close. Aim to turn your work into play. That's how you'll take massive action without it being grindy. The Holy Grail of life is when your life-purpose implementation work becomes fun. Your life will then take off like a rocket. 2. You have internal resistance. You need to dissolve that internal resistance. There are a lot of nice personal development tools for this. Anti-procrastination tools like 5-minute rule, strategizing your day, task-binder, visualizing starting tasks, Solera Method. Get your daily-routines wired. You're gonna suck at personal development until you have powerful daily-routines that work your actions you need to implement your dream-life and emotional-mastery. Study enlightenment. Do roles-work and shadow-work. Basically you've got a lot of limiting-beliefs and homeostasis going on in there that you gotta unclog and dislodge. And you can! But realize that emotional-mastery work has gotta be a side-goal that you need to be working on while you crystallize your forces and passion around your life-purpose work. 3. Create a powerful morning-routine where you meditate, read your mission-statement, eat a healthy breakfast, and visualize your day. I find that by visualizing your day in advance you're kind of buying-in or agreeing on what you are gonna do. The ego doesn't like to be put-upon, so if you let it know in advance what you plan to do, it tends to curl-up like a lazy dog and half-falls asleep for ya. 4. Eliminate time-wasting distractions. You gotta ruthlessly gut these from your life. They are killing your dream-life. And they are causing, in part, your misplaced priorities. Everything you do -- everything -- should be in service of your life-purpose or emotional-mastery work. Don't make your life harder than it needs to be. Focus only on the relevant task-at-hand. Cultivate focus. Without focus you can't get anything done and you aren't gonna see any massive results. Nothin's free. If you want a dream-life YOU gotta earn it, every single penny.

@Wouter You need some concrete action-plans. Start to take some baby-actions on a daily routine. Sounds like you are like me a little bit weighted on the thinking side of things. That can be a trap. Consistent daily actions directed at your purpose is key. I would lay the theory down for a while and focus on baby-stepping in some daily-routines that will let you explore around with these matters. Be an explorer. You don't need to nail-down the plan before you take action. In fact, that strategy might slow you down and cause limiting-beliefs to sprout and fester. Push past theory with practice for a while. Let theory catch up later. It will. Watch Leo's video on "Balancing theory and practice."

This is an enlightenment issue. What I mean is that people are clinging to identity and beliefs in a certain way. Studying more about enlightenment is what you want to do to get at the core of what is going on here.

Mindfulness of beliefs and Self-inquiry. Start to notice your beliefs and start to notice the stories they tell. Then start to notice how you cling to these beliefs as if they are true. You cling to these beliefs too tightly. Notice when you connect beliefs to an identity -- to a me. Become more mindful of your thoughts in general. Beliefs are a type of thought that you take to be true about you or the world or reality. I find enlightenment work to be, not entirely but a big chunk of it, becoming more mindful of beliefs that we cling to. We don't even realize all the thought-stories we cling to. And stories are fine, if there's a reason in a moment to cling to them and then release them. Our problem is that there are many beliefs/stories that we cling to all the time -- without sensitivity to utility or benefit in a moment. That's where we snare ourselves with beliefs. We are not mindful enough, in general, about how we treat thought in our lives, and we are not mindful about how we should treat thought in our lives. So we gotta investigate these issues in our lives. And that's one road to enlightenment. Thought is a tricky thing because it doesn't exist out in the world, so we are half-confused by thought. And we stunt our lives by limiting ourselves with our own thought-stories. We hold ourselves back -- It's a travesty what we do to our true life-potential based on our confusion about how to manage thought-stories in our lives. This is why doing personal development work is mandatory work if you wanna live to your fullest-potential in life. To do what makes you proudest in your heart-core -- to gift the fruit of your unique path to the world that only you could give, that only your path alone could rightly yield -- the soul-stamp of one individual. Bad beliefs stand in the way of this dream, your dream-life. So you gotta go on a journey to nip this problem in the bud so it doesn't railroad your dream-life.

Depends on where you want to go. All work is contingent on purpose. And purpose is not existentially groundable. In other words, Reality has no concern about how we choose to live and work. You gotta get clear about what your unique purpose is in your life, then your work becomes clear. You will then know what it is you need to do when you have an end in mind, YOUR UNIQUE end in mind -- that you worked hard to discover and half-dreamed up for yourself by doing life-purpose work. And this purpose ain't never gonna be the same for everybody. We're all unique little hair-roots searching for the Sun. Get to understand your little hair-root so that you can take care of it properly. So you can nurture and grow that little bugger into whatever you fancy, whatever your half-discovered, half-created life-purpose dictates. Bonsai tree? Huge redwood tree? It's all up to you. You are the music-maker, and you are the dreamer of your own dream-life. Don't give that away to ideology or cling too tightly to beliefs, unless that is what you should be doing pursuant to YOUR purpose in a moment. I only know my life and purpose. And you only know your life and purpose. This perspective might resonate with you, but it's only a story that resonates with you or not at the end of the day. Same with your story. We ain't truth-tellers so much as storytellers. But stories are highly useful scaffolding, depending on what your purpose is in a given moment. So work hinges on purpose and purpose ain't the same for everyone, and goals and situations change with passing moments. I notice your attitude is common with people too attached to the enlightenment stories. Stories aren't existentially true. Do the stories don't let the stories do you. Enlightenment ain't about belief so much as it is about being. But this is a story too. See? Reality just is. It duddn't have a word to say about how "you" or "I" should live or what we should determine our life-purpose to be. That would be bringing in "should statements" and trying to augment reality with these beliefs. That's a massive trap! A common trap I see. Need to know, need to find right answer, and need to be right -- is the underlying problem. This is where enlightenment is turned into ideology to satisfy these "needs". What you might investigate is a permanent solution to the underlying problem of clinging to those illusory "needs" in the first place.

This is a thought-story, so take it loosely and don't cling to it too tightly. Its just one person's overly crystallized perspective. But you asked for an answer, so I'll bite with that caveat. Ideally enlightenment would be deeply perfected in your life before implementation of your life-purpose work. In a perfect world. But do we live in a perfect world? Figuring-out what your life-purpose is has little to do with enlightenment. So work on that very hard now and maybe do enlightenment work soon, but at the right time for you. Enlightenment is what gives you the emotional-mastery to execute your life-purpose. But then there's a bunch of other personal development theory that you need to learn too to attain emotional-mastery when you're acting in the world, not just hiding from the world. We don't wanna be hiding from the world. That's a trap that you gotta watch out for. We want to be acting out into the world, penetrating the world with our seed. Mastering our harvest by mastering ourselves. Complete self-control and self-mastery are our only path to our true full-potential. And those require complete emotional-mastery to implement. But, see, hold this story loosely because someone else could totally disagree with everything I said here and have an equally "valid" story. We could literally do a round-robin of storytelling on this forum on just this question alone and never resolve or need to resolve anything.

Wow. This is a great question. You should get Seneca's "Moral Letters to Lucilius" which is available in audiobook read very well, on Audible.com. One of the first letters is something like -- how to manage your time and prevent distraction. It's awesome. If you can get this audiobook it will be totally, totally worth it for you. There's so much wisdom packed in there. It's basically the philosopher/Roman senator Seneca instructing a friend on life-philosophy issues. And the letters are written like little essays, so they were likely intended for a wider audience, not just for Lucilius.

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.