Joseph Maynor

Let's get down to some real issues! Take a shot at this advanced folks! Well, everybody take a shot at this, what the hell, it's all good. And if the ideas refer to different things, please explain that. Let's get everybody's fragment together and make a soup!

I know some of you spiritualists on here seem to think that positive thinking as a personal development practice is a fools errand. This actually surprises me, and I think that that's too bad. Care to elaborate and debate/discuss this with me? Let's do some hashing out here. Some getting to the bottom of this. I believe positive thinking is the holy grail after enlightenment. The final solution so to speak. The last move one can make in personal development. The hallmark of the true sage. Peace and positive thinking go together like ham and eggs. Please watch Leo's video on "Positive Thinking" first before responding to this question. It is a prequisite to this discussion. So if you haven't done that go do that first. Otherwise we're not gonna be focused in our discourse. We're gonna be talking past each other which is no good.

@Dizzy Ego Transcendence seems like loss of self image. You realize all there is is emptiness and attachment or releasing, nothing more. That's where I'm at the doorstep of right now. There is no life to improve. Why cling to that concept? That's a fiction. All that matters is awareness and choice of what to cling to and what to release. And what to do based on this of course. This journey has been pretty cool. Realizing what I am, which has paradoxically been mostly realizing what I am not. Releasing some bad default-positions, bad theories of self. This stuff is not airy-fairy to me. Reality doesn't lie. I'm a very practical and tough-minded dude. No woo woo. I'm a little leery about Dizzy's next stage which she terms "Enlightenment" though. That's a theory, a concept. Do you see that? You're clinging to that. You don't wanna be clinging. You wanna be empty and aware. No default-positions are needed. So to me Self-Transcendence in something like Dizzy's sense just is Enlightenment. Do don't need to cling to the theory of non-dualism even. You folks are idealistically clinging to ideas that are adding another layer of theory onto this very simple obervable fact about reality. You're rationalists, theoretical-idealists basically building up a snowball matrix which you then use to look at the world with new, wildly-distorted eyes. Googly-eyes, not sober eyes! You're clinging to thoughts that are supplementing and distorting what is real at bottom -- the counterintuitive simplicity of reality. Release those theories! Release your thought-stories about Enlightenment. I've heard so many! Paradoxically, in the case of Enlightenment, more thinking leads you further away from the goal rather than closer to it. It's like trying to solve a math problem with carrots and sticks instead of pencil and paper.

@Anna1 Lol. Consistency is a beast! I love it! Do as I say not as I do. And living inconsistently is violating ones integrity too. It's self-induced harm. A peeing in the pool of one's self esteem basically. Just thought I'd chime in and add that.

@Maxx Then why isn't the lower self part of that mix too then? Why throw the lower self away if there is no self. Seems like that goes against non-duality. The ego is there, why not accept it as part of the whole and learn to love the ego? I've kinda done that. I've harmonized with my ego. To me you non-dualists seem like dualists because you are trying to deny part of your self. You're beating yourself up big time with this war and rampage against the evil ego. The distinction between the lower self and the higher self is illusory. That's concept. Does that make sense? You guys cause yourselves a lot of neurosis with your theories paradoxically. Do you see that?

I'm not talking about 1 way, I'm talking 2 way communications. What is the communication like? Can you describe it for us? Do you hear a voice in your awareness, like an inner sound? What does God say to you? What does his voice sound like? Is it a male or a female voice? Or a neuter voice? Again, what does God say to you? Can you provide some examples?

Like. Let's say you are procrastinating doing your work because you are spending time on here. Well, there are two ways of looking at that. One way of looking at it is I have a fear of doing my work and that's what is contributing to my motivation to procrastinate doing it. The other way of looking at it is I'm on here instead of working because doing this is more important for me right now than working, and working can wait. Alright! Now, that's a totally different lens of looking at things, no? Well, why are we privileging the "fear explanation" as a kind of default-position when we self-explain why we are not doing some task which we had scheduled? Isn't that kind of fear-based thinking a paradigm, a choice we are making? Isn't it non-positive thinking too? Why are we doing that so much then? Think about it. We're beating ourselves up with our theory of fears and how fears and motivation relate. Are we a fly in that bottle too much? What if you have a radically different theory of fear? Like if you had never learned this stuff in the first place. Would you be better off? Would you self-sabotage less? The Positive Psychologists amongst us are not gonna like this idea! The fear theory is so entrenched, it is not? We run that theory all the time when we think about motivation, don't we? Like a computer executing a bit of code, we're programmed with it. It's a default-position that almost everybody has assumed is reasonable to accept. I just noticed this too. It popped into my head because I'm doing positive thinking work right now. I got Leo's Zen story ingrained in my mind lol. Watch Leo's "Positive Thinking" video to find out what I'm talking about there. It's unsettling some of my default-positions. Or at least putting some in high-relief that I've never noticed before. What is fear anyway? Maybe we have so many fears because we're looking for them all the time! It's a self-fulfilling prophesy effect! The law of attraction in action. That's just a hypothesis. Food for thought. I know you guys are probably like -- Get to work already Joe! I am working. Very much. I'm synergizing with you guys on here. I'm always working at something, it just might not be what is top priority for other reasons. That's a different issue. That's not laziness, and that's not fear. It's more like a conflict of priorities, a conflict between the internal priorities and the external priorities. A lack of synchronicity there. I'm starting to wonder whether I "have" any fears at all now. Damn! What does it mean to have a fear anyway? That seems kind of vague to me now, and I'm not sure what the hell it even refers to. With the exception of actual primal fears, what does the proposition "I have a fear" even refer to? Some suppressed entity in the murky "subconscious mind" (another fictional entity we made up)? These made-up fears are not out in the open though. Not like primal fears are. They're always hiding somewhere, notice that! It seems as though we took primal fears and then extrapolated-out a theory that added new types of fears to that set. Like fears in complex-space for all you Math nerds out there! (I was once one too .) Imaginary fears. I think we got imaginary fears folks! Am I right?

Can you explain this phenomenon?

I don't think Leo will ever get his version of enlightenment. He keeps looking for it though.

@Prabhaker That's awesome. What I like about you is you don't seem to get trapped by all the theory that others do pertaining to enlightenment. Enlightenment is not rocket science. I agree. Enlightenment is you changing your view of your self and your actions towards your thoughts. That's it.

@Nahm I can choose to focus on positive things and go after those. So you are a fan of law of attraction and positive thinking I assume? I am choosing to focus negatively. That's so true. And it's easy to not do it too. You just need mindfulness on that issue and a reminder process to keep you on track. You seem to believe in free choice and free will too, no? I do too. I don't think Leo does.

@Nahm Wow. You're very full of love. How did you get that way? And what is love? What is the source of love?

@Prabhaker Interesting. I'd love to see you and Leo debate this.

39 Leo since Summer 2014

@Prabhaker Very nice description! So you have no ego then?

@Anna1 So you never really lose the ego entirely in your view? It's interesting that people have different theories of all these concepts.

@Dizzy Very nice! I think I'm hitting the ego-transcendence stage now. I'm losing a lot of emotions. All my negative emotions are disappearing more and more. More peace rather than positive emotions. Peace and acceptance. I love your definition of ego-death. I went through that stage distinctly last March. Have you experienced it?

@Zephyr He's full of it huh? I love this saying -- Are you gonna trust me or your lying eyes? One of my favorite sayings✌?

@Fidelio Are you enlightened in Leo's sense of the term? Post-cracking stage?

@Emerald And you just like Leo are making a career teaching this stuff which means you are always gonna be up to your eyeballs with the theory. You're never gonna be able to escape it. That's a hindrance to your growth paradoxically. I've advised Leo before to just take like 2 years off and go live somewhere where there are no books and just practice. Purge the ideas from his awareness. And just be. Like a fisherman fishing on a boat. Still as a Japanese pond. Being a teacher causes you to hit a glass ceiling with personal development because, paradoxically, you ensure you will never be able to do this. You stunt your own growth by necessity because you are always clinging clinging clinging to notions and theories. It's like your mind is being stung by biting flies all the time. What you really need to do is -- at a certain point -- is to get rid of those flies. And let your mind heal. And go be at peace from all those ideas. Like detoxing from them in a way. I never thought of it like that before until now. Because you are teaching this stuff, you are like a carbonated soda all the time, boiling-over with so many concepts, neurotically being mastered to teach other people who are at lower stages of personal growth than you are. You are reaching down all the time instead of up. You gotta cut that cord at some point and realize that the teacher is the true Bodhisattva, the martyr. She foregoes nirvana for herself to help others. That's a high price to pay though, and you might want to consider the costs of this. The person who achieves nirvana decides to cut the cord and take that selfish act. Let others fend for themselves at a certain point, and set your self free. It must be done. Martyrdom is too costly a strategy in the long run.

I think this is my very favorite Leo video, and in my opinion one of the most profound personal development hacks you can practice. The hack is called positive thinking. Watch the video to refresh your memory of this awesome strategy. And comment on it below, so I can get my hands dirty getting my own positive thinking strategies in place. This is work I wanna be doing now. It seems simple, but it is really advanced personal development work. It takes a lot of awareness.

@Prabhaker Ah Prabhaker. Another beacon of genuineness, just like Emerald. You know, I was tough on enlightenment and all this spiritual-striving in my previous post, but the day I had my ego-death experience, which was last March, was the first day of my life. It was the day I went from a caterpillar to a butterfly. I'll never be the same again. So, enlightenment is not to be underestimated. But I think there's a balance there you can find with this work. And that's what the wisest people find. That balance. That peace. That end to striving so much. A turning away from the burn and more towards love. Love and acceptance. You don't have to work that hard. Just be. That's what's I've discovered. It's like you discover the Tao. Wu Wei. Non-action action. Striving via love not force. A gentle steady wind versus a tornado. Tornados cause a lot of collateral damage, even to the tornado itself.

@Emerald Sometimes I feel that this enlightenment stuff is not necessarily 100% healthy. It is actually pretty neurotic at times. I've had to find a balance in my life. A peace. But at the same time I wanna be killing it on my life-purpose, which is huge. I'm writing a philosophy book, not necessarily a minor feat. So, it's kinda paradoxical. But you can get sucked too far down the rabbit hole of the enlightenment theory route, and kinda lose sight of the trail. You end up kinda off-center so to speak. A bit too radical. A bit too bought-in. You end up being a conformist in your quest not to be one. Kinda like punk rockers. Saddling yourself and guilting yourself with all that theory.

@Emerald Yeah I know. You beat yourself up a lot. I have a history of doing that too. I've kinda made shifts away from doing that in the last couple of months. But I can appreciate your striving. Just make sure you aren't being too rough on yourself.

It's not just a compliment. I don't know you personally, but it is like calling a spade a spade. That's not a compliment, it is a fact. You can take it as a compliment if you wish. I am very genuine too. Or at least I try to be. I can be ornery too from time to time though. Especially when my ego gets rubbed the wrong way. I'm very sensitive to criticism and get very competitive very fast. If I don't watch myself I will turn into a crazy person, a mad-man. But I don't do that as much anymore. I've burned enough bridges in my life.