Joseph Maynor

Realize that all your beliefs about reality are false and illusory. Start to inquire into each and every belief you have about what is real. This will lead you to realize that the egoic self and the external world are both illusory. The body-mind is illusory. All of this is thought-story. Though-story is never real. Reality contains thought stories just like a bookstore contains fiction books. But nobody would ever confuse the fiction books for the non-fiction books. The mind has you so hooked into its matrix of thoughts. Enlightenment is finding a loose string and then pulling the old, frayed linen apart by the seams. What you're left with is everything exactly the way it was before, but without the warped paradigm overlaying the Truth. The ego wants you to think that warped paradigm is the true paradigm. That's our problem -- egoic self-deception.

Start to study enlightenment.

You are both and neither and even this sentence has to eat itself.

@Dodo This is so true. Everybody wants to have the last word to win. Need to be right. Need to solve the problem. Need to make the last intelligent point. Need to be the one to put the issue to bed. See? That makes me right. Now my ego gets to feel good for 5 minutes too.

Here's another great video on point. Watch.

@Ramu But even that is a concept. The true skeptic drops even that conception. Or he holds it loosely if he does hold it, not like a fact but more like a useful rule of thumb. This is tricky to do because we want to know, to have a definitive fact, to settle the issue, to be right. But that's another part of the illusion right there. Another piece of the problem.

Not necessarily. If SOUL is a true skeptic, then his claim is not dogmatic but extremely openminded.

Here you go. Leo explains it here: https://www.actualized.org/insights/just-scaffolding

@Anna1 It's so great that we can communicate effectively on here. Language is so ambiguous and it takes a great tight-rope walker to keep meaning in check. There is so much room for projection and argumentation in communication via writing.

@SOUL That only resonates with the monkey-mind perspective.

@Natasha You are the awareness of experience. And the increasing consciousness. You as a process of increasing awareness.

@Natasha When I see the limits of existence when I meditate I smile and think. Wow, it's just this easy! This is all there is? Cool! Nothing to worry about. We all exist in a small, plain, white room -- even if we don't realize it. The space of the soul.

@Anna1 You need to burn-out need to know. That takes as long as it needs to take for each person. Paradoxically, it is by knowing a lot that you come to the conclusion of the limits of knowing. Otherwise you're just a dogmatist, because it is not first-person knowledge for you.

Here's the thing. You need a huge amount of theory to become enlightened. This is the taboo truth that a lot of people do not want to admit. And you know what, let's stop bullshitting ourselves about this. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the end of this stupid denial. Why the hell are we perpetuating some anti-theory perspective on enlightenment? Enlightenment can be explained in a pamphlet. I've seen it done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnana_yoga Hare Krishna dancers in Florence. I saw this when I was there. Changed my life. Florence. You're crazy not to go there at least once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence

Go for it. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. I live in San Francisco so I've seen everything.