Joseph Maynor

I recall a story about the Philosopher Herbert Spencer who upon losing a game of chess to a rival, chastised him for investing so much time becoming so good at a playing such a useless game as chess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

All there is is me. That’s the thing that a lot of people don’t yet understand. It takes keen mindfulness regarding Metaphysics to see this — namely, a serious inquiry into the question: What is real? And ‘all there is is me’ is seen, it’s not merely a Thought.

Faking it until you make it can cause suffering because that’s Ego. Love can be a very Egoic thing paradoxically. If your compassion isn’t Metaphysically grounded, it could actually backfire and cause you a lot of suffering. Think of Stage Green as a great example of this. Stage Turquoise falls victim to ungrounded compassion as well. Ungrounded compassion is you getting lost in Egoic distraction.

Meditation is like daily medicine for monkey mind. Meditation is like exercise, you don’t realize how good it is for your life until you do it for a while and then abruptly stop doing it. These things like exercise, sleep, diet, and meditation all keep your monkey mind at bay and allow you to be keenly mindful throughout your day. They’re investments that we might consider to be authentic Spiritual Practices. I call them the ‘Big Four’ Spiritual Practices.

STAGE RED (POWER GOD) IS AN APING OF STAGE CORAL (GOD AWARENESS) Realize there are better ways to go through life than manipulating everybody all the time. The problem with Red is it buries a lot of bodies and develops a hatred in its wake. Yeah you get a lot done, but you’re gonna be hated and attacked a lot too. It’s just not the best strategy to go through life. Red needs to discover Yellow (the sustainable strategic thinker) basically — and then eventually Coral (God Awareness). Red is actually striving to be Coral without even realizing it, they’re just so distracted by Ego that they’ll never get there. Red is aping Coral. Red doesn’t realize that they’re already God ‘in here’; they mistakenly think they have to prove that they're God ‘out there’.

You’re doing good! Keep up the good work. Enlightenment a.k.a Truth-seeking is 100% B.S. detector work.

The person in the coma is inside your consciousness either as a Thought or an Experience or both. Is there more than one mind in your consciousness? Think about it.

Love is all part of the illusion of Maya. I think the highest form of love is compassion which comes from seeing the self in the other. When you can see the self in the other, that enables compassion. When you see the other as different than you, that’s what enables lack of compassion. You would never want lack of compassion to be directed towards your self. So lack of compassion is caused by an ‘othering’ of reality — there’s a ‘not me’ quality to lack of compassion.

Truth has to overpower amusement. I'm not saying you're falling into this trap, and I'm not talking about you in what I say that follows here, this is a general statement: I do see a certain kind of Enlightened person sometimes who seems to flutter around amusing themselves in Ego thinking that's what being Enlightened is. Enlightenment is about the death of Maya -- so it's Truth that's really the only value in Enlightenment work. Enlightenment a.k.a. Truth-seeking is 100% B.S. detector work at the highest level, no more and no less. A lot of people become half-Enlightened because they don't value Truth enough, thus they stay ensnared in Maya by choice or by omission. I was one of those people too, so I get it. Nobody wants the literal death of Maya.

Yeah but you don’t wanna endulge in Ego. Do it if you want to, but it’s not helpful in this work.

You buy into the number stuff? I’m a little surprised.

Yeah but quantifying Enlightenment is particularly deceptive. I think Leo is kinda taking it seriously not just in jest. So, I thought it was helpful to put a pin through that balloon right away even if I’m seen as a less fun guy in so doing. Enlightenment requires that Truth be valued higher than all else, even desire for fun.

All the number stuff is total B.S. All there is is you. You’re talking to yourself assigning yourself numbers. The LOC numbering system is uber self-deceptive. I’m surprised you even buy into that frankly. All there is is you and you’re all alone talking to yourself. What number is that? See. That number stuff is an Egoic distraction. When Thought and Experience become dead to you, what number do we give that? See. It’s ridiculous.

Sort of. Remember the person is 20 years old though. I found most of the posts a little too blunt. It’s good to be encouraging too. I always think back to what I wanted to hear at 20. Remember, 20 is quite young. Just my take. When you’re 20 you need encouragement from people. When you’re 30 you maybe should be given a little tough medicine because you should know better by then. When you’re 40 you can actually appreciate bluntness from people. I did get a sense of lack of compassion in the tone of some of the posts here. That’s an issue for us not for the OP. If the 20 year old you (recall back) were coming on here asking for help, what would you wanna hear?

Meditation is amazing when done daily for months on end. 1 hour of do nothing meditation per day is what I do. I like to do it in the morning if possible. And then do my exercise routine and cook some breakfast. I'll eat a snack before I meditate (a couple of raw carrots usually, just enough to take the edge off hunger when I wake up). Meditation does a lot of very beneficial things for you on the Path. I'm a fan. I wanna meditate for the rest of my life. It makes you feel good and it builds your keen mindfulness. Video on point to watch:

Meditation is the best thing you can do as a daily spiritual practice. Then exercise (cardio and resistance), adequate sleep, and excellent diet. Those are the big four.

There is a downside to being a public figure even if you’re trying to do good. Like I said, working for money sucks anyway you slice it. You think you’re doing this great thing by becoming a famous self-help teacher, but really you’re putting your peace of mind in the meat-grinder.

I’m 20 years older than you are. Keep coming on the Forum. It’s a long road. But you can learn on here. The bottom line is you’re always learning your whole life. Being on the Forum can accelerate your growth though because you’re gonna see things that you’ll never see as quickly on your own. This is the place to hang out if you’re someone who has a passion to learn and a passion to self-observe. There are people on here that can save you time! If I came on here when I was 20 how great that would’ve been! There are people on here at all levels of growth from the very beginner to the insanely advanced. Not to sound too dorky, but what you wanna do is become part of the conversation and tap into learning from everyone on here. That's what I did basically. And now I'm one of the insanely advanced people on here. But I've been working on Personal Development since I was 20 years old -- so I've been doing self-improvement work for 20 years now. I've been doing Personal Development work since I was 10 but I don't wanna sound cocky. I had a childhood that required me attach to self-improvement very early for a few different reasons. By problem was I had to be my own teacher pretty much for a lot of that time. But I worked hard on my own, majored in Philosophy, etc. And the few teachers that I've learned from I milked dry. You gotta be a tenacious motherf*cker to become great at Personal Development. There's gotta be some suffering in your life to drive you. Think about it, if your life is fine, what use is Personal Development to you? So, I think people who become masters at Personal Development had some kind of suffering in their life's background driving them forward with this work.

The only relevant question is: What am I doing?

The Devil is lures into Maya a.k.a. lures into Thought and Experience. The Devil wants you to forget your true Self and get embedded in illusory Thought and Experience.

The book would have two words on only one page. The words would be 'Focus inward.'

What's odd is you would think this video would be one of the least controversial.

You don't want to face the literal death of reality. No one wants to. But with death comes new life.

I think one of the worst things we do is believe our own Thoughts. We cling to them. And that keeps us embedded in Maya, in Ego. An illusion of our own making. A prison of our own design. 'Thoughts are sticky', someone said that I recall. Whoever said that was a smart dude. Hell just is believing in your own Thoughts.