Joseph Maynor

You can't love everything. But what you can do is accept everything that has already happened. The Ego-Mind can never be impartial and love everything, that's a load of horsesh*t. But you can definitely become much more tolerant than you already are by work transcending the Ego-Mind, which does not mean killing or removing the Ego-Mind -- it means seeing through the Ego-Mind.

Because you don't really have no free will. That's a mere thought only. The Mind loves to project that thought and think it's found something really profound, but it's actually irrelevant to your life. You'll still put your pants on one leg at a time like you always have before.

Giving the best you can to another while also giving the best to yourself within the connection of the relationship by sharing intimacy and experiences.

An entry that I recently wrote in my Journal that you might appreciate: Nobody wants a real Enlightenment teacher around. It's too devastating to your cherished beliefs and your Ego-Mind will resist it. Teaching Transcendence of the Mind is like asking to be on the business end of a horse kick to the mouth. What people want is either entertainment, distraction, or corroboration of their strongly held beliefs in an Enlightenment teacher. But these are not real Enlightenment teachers. A real Enlightenment teacher is a gadfly, a Socrates, someone who you probably can't stand, and somebody whose motive you probably misunderstand -- someone who eventually either gets killed or thrown out of the community. It's just the way things must be.

I resonate with this. You've got enough work to do on your own life. Shore that up first and then worry about other things. Never neglect your own life, that's what's right under your nose. That's what matters most. A lot of intellectuals hide out in theory because they are avoiding working on their own life. I know because I did that for many years in fact. I regret doing that though, sort of. There were pros and cons to it. Make your own day to day great -- and then expand outward from an abundance that spills out your own life if you have that abundance. But don't neglect your own life to save everybody else, that's a trap in my view. That's the trap of the martyr.

It's weird I've always kind of attracted criticism and almost relished people criticizing me. And I would always beat them in a debate and make them look like idiots. I don't do this much as I used to like in my 20's. When I was in college I was really bad like this. I would debate anybody and not care what they thought of me or what anybody thought of me. I had no shame. I only had shame if I thought I said something stupid or if someone actually proved that I was stupid or wrong. But I've always been way more intuitive than almost everybody else, so this has rarely been a problem for me. But people have been jealous of me and have always desired to knock me own a peg, but they always have to resort to taking a cheap-shot to do so. I used to raise my hand in class and say the most controversial things with no shame. All the other sheep in the class were beneath me insofar as I was concerned. I was a real Army of One. I've always been kind of a Socrates, kind of an iconoclast, kind of a gadfly.

I pay it no mind. I could give a sh*t less actually.

No. But performing in front of an audience can benefit from a healthy Ego otherwise you don't have the confidence needed to do performance art. Playing jazz is a performance art. You gotta have a lot of balls to stand on a bandstand and play jazz in front of an audience. The same holds true for any band or musician who plays live. Without a healthy Ego you're not gonna be able to pull that off well. And I'm speaking from experience from having played jazz trumpet live. Plus you're gonna catch sh*t from other musicians sometimes and their inflated Egos and comments, so you need a big Ego yourself to rise above that criticism. Otherwise you'll quit or go away. You gotta be prepared for people to tell you you suck or that they don't like what you're doing musically. It can be harsh.

Ooh. You found one of my favorite videos by Eckhart Tolle. That's a good one. I'll try to find another video to match that one. You're smart, I can tell. You're not getting caught up in all these mental traps that a lot of other people do on the Path.

I wish you would share that here with all of us. That would be most ideal.

No, I want you to tell me about it. I'm all ears. It's the elephant in the room regarding your whole belief structure.

How do you know all these things about God? Did you go up to the Mountain and get tablets? Maybe you had a little pow-wow with God up there.

I liked the old simple black tee. Those are my go to shirts. I have then in different colors. Very basic, cool, and classic. White looks good on me but man does it stain easily, so I don't really wear white shirts. The closest thing I wear to white is baby blue. I love baby blue in a shirt. It looks great on me too. You don't wanna over do it though. That's what I love about black, you can get away with overdoing black. Black is very versatile as a color, and it's probably my favorite color. Black is also a power color too without being a power color.

Well, there's only one way to find out, and no one has come back from it to tell us what's what. So, here we are.

You can say whatever you want, that won't stop your death. Death is a funny thing that way, you can't take anything with you. It's the Great Wiping Away.

You will indeed die, make no mistake about it. There's two certainties in life, death and taxes.

You guys crack me up for all the wrong reasons lolz. Oy vey. Hehe. Oy.

A belief is a linear statement (a type of thought) purported to be true or reasonable to accept by the Ego-Mind; or a linear statement that the Ego-Mind has a vested interest in assuming is true or reasonable to accept for whatever reason.

@Zetxil I always capitalize Mind, Ego, Enlightenment, and Ego-Mind. But for some reason I never capitalize being which is odd. It's just how I roll.

The Ego is a concept but it has utilitarian use or what you might call a "cash value" because it can be used in actual situations to raise consciousness about what happened or what you’re doing. It’s a concept that may not be true per se, but it’s useful so we stick it in our knowledge grab-bag and bring it out every now and again to solve actual problems situations in contexts.

Yep, because He’s a concept — or more accurately, a family of often more or less but not always related concepts.

Yes, but in many matters and in many contexts reasonable persons can arrive at different conclusions regarding the same issues. The Mind likes to think of truth as this oversimplified thing, a quality that the Mind projects on a lot of concepts and scenarios. The Mind likes to abstract this “truth” as an analogy to very specific empirically verifiable facts. But there’s a hidden analogy being used by the Mind there. It’s that abstraction and projection that the Mind does.

What is truth? Another word with associated meaning(s) that you decide to cling to or not?