Joseph Maynor

Haha. Baby step it. Spend 5 mins per day working on the binder to start. The surefire way of beating procrastination is to touch everything that you want to be working on everyday for 5 minutes. Procrastination is an irrational fear that gains a foothold when we put things off, when we resist touching them. I call this fear irrational because the fear snowballs as we resist getting started. Then when we bust through that fear we realize how we have greatly over-estimated how hard the task was to do. Procrastination can be avoided by preventing this fear from developing in the first place.

Anything to do with being self-employed. Create your own job. Find a way to be an abundance of value in a manner that makes wallets crack. It's that simple. Sit behind a computer, talk on the phone, make some artifact or provide some service that pays you some sustainable dividends. Try to find a skill that you can commit to master your whole life.

Stage Yellow is all about systems thinking. Stage Yellow is also enlightened, I don't see how they could not be. Some ideas that I have collated about systems that might interest you: 1. Systems are all about balance and harmony. 2. Systems respond to outside forces in complex ways. 3. There are no absolute truths for Stage Yellow. All there is is a bunch of partial perspectives. And every perspective is partial. 4. Almost everything can be thought of as a system. Almost all problems are systemic problems. 5. Belief in your beliefs is dogma and it's what is holding back every stage below Stage Yellow. 6. Stage Yellow is ecological in their thinking. 7. Systems work in counter-intuitive ways. They don't work in overly simplistic ways. 8. When there's a larger system at work that we don't understand, this is a cause of failure and problems. 9. Stage Yellow realizes that life is paradoxical. 10. Stage Yellow sees the world as perspectives and in shades of grey and sees the world as systems to solve the problems that they care about. 11. Systems resist you trying to change them. 12. The dogmatic person, every stage under Stage Yellow, pulls out the pitchfork when somebody offends them or attacks their worldview. This is an adversarial relationship with reality and life. Instead of getting defensive, look over what was said and see if there is something there or a way to expand your model or growth to cover the new facts. Stage Yellow has a robust model of the world. And Stage Yellow always assumes that they could be wrong and is open-minded. 13. The ego is a system. 14. If you feel that your perspective of the world is the Truth, you are not at Stage Yellow. 15. Stage Yellow sees the world from the perspective of interconnected systems. These systems interact with each other in interesting and counter-intuitive ways. The subconscious mind is also a system. To change a system you have to understand it first to avoid traps. 16. Think of systems as organisms and meta-organisms. 17. You are a conflicted system maintaining homeostasis. By raising awareness, the web of beliefs starts to restructure itself naturally. 18. When you get angry, stop and look at the big picture. Your point of view is not the dominant point of view. So what you judge as evil is not what evil is. There are no divisions. Your partition gets encroached upon because it's part of a larger system where encroachment happens. 19. Systems thinking requires that you start to step outside your self-centered view of the world. You have to be conscious enough to step outside of your own value system and genuinely care about other beings besides yourself and your tribe. 20. Systems are non-linear. This means that they are unpredictable and chaotic. 21. Stage Yellow gives up rationalism and absolute truth. 22. You're a distributed system not a centralized system. 23. Set realistic, pragmatic expectations regarding making change in your life. Expect that your subconscious mind and body systems will play tricks on you to resist the change to maintain homeostasis. 24. Think of everything as a system. 25. Problems are systemic and not personal. Poorly designed systems are creating the problems.

Curious

YES. Do it. It's a great capsule outline of personal development. I'm a fan. And I like the videos Leo did for the blueprint.

Yes, look into enlightenment. Leo has great videos on enlightenment. Enlightenment is the major key to personal development; although not the only key. There are many, many other little niggly keys to uproot and find in personal development than enlightenment.

You gotta create your new daily routines from your ideas. And take consistent action, to see improved results. But the key takeaway is you have to turn ideas into daily routines or you just wind-up dreaming instead of accomplishing. Everything needs to become a daily routine in personal development eventually to yield sustainable results. Try to implement a couple new habits and baby step them in as new daily routines.

@Loreena Here's one I was using for a while. I kind of outgrew it, but I used it for years. It's called Swipes If you like to do lists, this one is for you. It is great because you can organize your tasks in a way that allows you to swipe them off lists, and even into other lists as you need to. Highly recommended. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swipes-to-do-task-list-plan-achieve-goals/id657882159?mt=8

It feeds the ego and is just one more addiction and source of pain. I also imagine it would get annoying to be recognized in public. Happiness comes from being, from within, not from being "well known" by strangers. However, if your life purpose is to change the world, then fame would be a necessary element in that perhaps. So, in that case it might be good. Good and bad regarding fame depend very heavily on context and on motives for being famous. It could very well be a great thing for the right person in the right context to be famous.

@Girzo The School of Athens. I actually saw this in Rome. It's in the Vatican, the same place where the Sistine Chapel is located -- Not the same room, a different room. My life purpose is to write a philosophy book. It looks like a painting on canvass but actually it's not. It's actually a wall fresco. And it's huge. It's in a series of rooms that have these same kinds of frescoes, one after the other, with different content and subject matter. I think they're called the Raphael Rooms. He painted all of the frescos, or most of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Rooms

I am always taking action.

Read this, preferably several translations. At least 4 different translations. There is a lot of wisdom here if you really want to be a sage. Probably the most important thing to read for the advanced personal development student. The super-advanced personal development student. I'll share a little story here that I heard. Lao Tsu was on the run trying to get into India and he was stopped by the border guards on the China side, and they said -- Lao, our friend, please, leave us with something to keep from you as you are leaving us. So, Lao Tsu, puzzled by this, scribbled down the Tao Te Ching to expedite his passage out of China. So, that's what the Tao Te Ching is. Lao Tsu being forced to craft the infinite in a minute. But even then -- it is incredible! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching The modern way of writing Lao Tsu is Laozi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi Leo. This is where advanced personal development starts. Watch.

It happens to everybody. I had one too that lasted a few days to a week after my first enlightenment re-shuffling. Your sense of who you are is changing, so it is kind of like a death. That's why it is so painful. You are grieving a part of you that is dying. But that part of you was never real, it was only beliefs. So, you will go through an existential crisis, and a lot of weird psychological stuff when this first happens to you. I think I went through the 7 stages of grief. And then I was so angry that I lived a lie for so long. And I was also relieved. And sad, grieving, etc. Then I went through a Zen Devil phase for a couple of weeks afterward, so watch out for that!

@How to be wise Having a large ego is better than having a small ego for ego-transcendence work. This is counter-intuitive. It's almost like the best way to live is to have a large ego but be able to see through it so well that you almost always mitigate unreasonable conduct. Paradoxically you need a large ego to be successful, but that doesn't mean that you have to act on it. That's the key point! Awareness alone is curative. Use the ego to attain your higher virtues and outer-worldy (Yang) ends, but at the same time deepen your connection to Truth such that it pervades your entire experience -- so your prolific results are karmically sound. You do want to fuck the world, but you want to do it nicely. And that puts you on the horns of the paradox -- you both need ego and need to transcend ego to be truly successful in life. A proper balance between Yin (No ego) and Yang (Ego) is needed to harmonize with the Tao. Non-duality includes duality. The Absolute is the perspectiveless perspective. Watch. I learned a lot from the below video on the issue of what Ego-Transcendence really is. "A strong ego can ride above the wave, and actually ride the wave of life. A weak ego gets crushed under the wave of life." Also watch Also watch Also watch. This is a good intro to what Yang is.

Can you see this? Any reason would presuppose a perspective is the absolute perspective, which is impossible because reality is not dictated to by thought in any way. Now here's a more advanced question, should this conclusion be held loosely or is it more or less certain, existentially speaking?

@Loreena People who are too against concepts, theories, beliefs, and Philosophy are being dogmatic in their own right. They run the risk of being Stage Blue beings. The true skeptic holds all beliefs loosely and focuses on Eudaimonia. Yes, even non-dual beliefs. Some people don't grasp this yet. Enlightenment is not the main-course, it's an element in a larger system -- the system of your developing awareness and improved actions. So, even non-duality comes full circle back to duality and ego. We transcend the ego mentally but not bodily. And that's as it should be. That's reality. Enlightenment is the perspective that makes self-actualization possible. It's the secret-password for true happiness. But the result, the main-course as it were -- is YOUR improved little egoic life, is it not? That's what we're really doing with all this stuff if we take the rose-colored glasses off and take a sober look at things. I think people really miss the big picture with all this personal development stuff. They get stuck on various ledges up the mountain-side and set up camp and never get to the very tip-top -- which is where you can get a 365 degree view of everything. Enlightenment is an element of personal development, not the other way around! This is one of the most recent epiphanies I've had. So non-duality really does include duality. Thus, conceptual thinking is necessary and good. It just has to be INTERPRETED the right way by a human monkey-mind and held loosely. Guns don't kill people. And neither do concepts. Neither does Philosophy. It's US that is the problem, not concepts, not Philosophy. The problem is in the rigidity that we want to hold concepts, theories, and beliefs. And that's a different issue! A lot of people miss this critical distinction. There is a larger system at work folks -- that system is your improved actual life, not some fantasy enlightened "thought-story" life you might dream about. Even Eckhart Tolle puts his pants on one leg at a time every morning.

@How to be wise I don't think so. What hinders enlightenment is closed mindedness and lack of awareness, not high self esteem.

FILL IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE FOR WHAT I HAVE BOLDED AND POST IT 3 Step Formula to Be Ruthlessly Effective at Anything Find one tactic that works extremely well and then you’re going to exploit it. 1. Select your domain. Find and set a deliberate and clear intention for what it is you want to be ruthlessly effective at: Being the best, most effective freelance paralegal. This is my mission and what I’ve set out to do for myself. 2. Notice one exceptionally effective high-yield technique that generates tangible results. You’ve proven it to yourself. Daily marketing: Cold-calling and mailing brochures. Provide a good service to get repeat business. 3. Set up a daily habit to use this technique every single day without exception, and make a 100% commitment to use this technique no matter what.

Check this one out guys and gals. I hunted-down and bagged a good one! https://www.the1thing.com/time-management/the-pomodoro-method-of-time-blocking/ http://caps.ucsd.edu/Downloads/tx_forms/koch/pomodoro_handouts/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf

You need to fight bad illusion with good illusion so concepts are necessary for enlightenment theory and practice. Don't fool yourself. The key is that you have to know when to get out of the theory and set yourself free so you can transcend YOUR ego, which is where the rubber meets the road with enlightenment, not further study. Has anybody become enlightened without concepts? I don't think so. Having a lot of theory will expedite your enlightenment, assuming the theory is good theory. What would otherwise take 50 years may take 5 weeks. So, theory is important. What is important is to not cling to it tightly. You gotta learn how to hold theory and beliefs loosely. That's the ENTIRE problem. It's not theory, it's how we hold the theory that is wrong. We wanna cling too hard to theory. Like a baby clawing for its comforting blanket.

Regular Life 1. Egoic self. The small Self. Self-Transcendence 2. The Higher self. Still egoic but tries to act selflessly using awareness. Enlightenment 3. Brahman. Self-aware reality without distinction.

This is one thing that the epicureans did that was cool. They understood the importance of friendship and other social aspects of life Watch this video for some context of what I am talking about. Another awesome video to watch on point. I love this one a lot. Epicureans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

Like an immune system ridding the body of disease? Does that explain need to grow in life? Why did we become unpure to begin with? Leo said reality needed to explore itself, and that's where the finite perspectives came from.

No. Meditation is the gateway to Being. The nap-time for the monkey-mind. The crystal-gaze of the Self upon the barren portals of experience. The surveying of a sliver of God's potential.