Joseph Maynor

Not to be rude, but I don't think very many people can answer this question authentically. And when I mean authentically, I mean in a way that's actually convincing to you. Anybody can quote me a bit of theory, that's easy. What's hard is for you to tell me what it means to you in the sense of how you square it in your life.

How do you know you're right and not just living in Ego?

Here a couple of good videos on point to watch for this discussion.

But are they pointing to the same thing? If so, what?

What's the same end that they're pointing to? I'm trying to withhold my answer to probe all of yours. I'll reveal my take on it at some point in the discussion.

I changed 'me' to lowercase to not elude to any theory. I don't want to imply any theory.

You know what's funny is I pursued it because I thought I was pursuing my Life Purpose of being a Personal Development teacher. Now I don't even want to be a Personal Development teacher. It turned me into a monk basically. It took away my Life Purpose. It took away my desire to change the world with my teachings. I realize now that the only Personal Development that matters is very mundane work on my own life. And when I say mundane I actually mean mundane. Things like my basic life requirements, no frills. It made me realize that focus 'out there' is a distraction away from focus 'in here'. I'm still interested in Personal Development, but applying it to get the basics of my own life handled. It made me want to spend most of my time being keenly mindful. Because I realize now that the end of suffering comes from being keenly mindful all the time. Mindful that all there is is me. Suffering is caused only by forgetting that. The more mindfulness you have, the more illusions you can spot. The more illusions you can spot, the less suffering you'll have. So, it's really the practicing of mindfulness which is more important than changing the world with my teachings. But again, this is just swinging the pendulum from 'out there' to 'in here'.

The path has a worth to it even if it leaves you with nothing and none of your prior dreams intact. It's like a huge purge of stuff that you never would want to purge. The emptying of the cup. Video on point to watch:

The Tao Te Ching is the best work written on Enlightenment in my opinion. That was written God knows when in ancient China.

The best thing you can do for Enlightenment Work is self-observation. That's why the ancients could be Enlightened too. Enlightenment Work is not rocket science. It's quite the opposite actually. It's boring, mundane, keen-mindfulness work that the Ego doesn't want to do. And so people get into all kinds of distractions with Enlightenment Work. If you're not focusing inward, you're not doing Enlightenment Work. You wanna be questioning all your beliefs about reality and looking at reality as it is not as the Mind takes it to be. Enlightenment is for people who love Truth so much that they'll follow it off a cliff literally. That's what Enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not about science, it's about reality. And the ancients could see reality just as well as we can. You might say that Enlightenment is seeing through more B.S. than most people -- but on the deepest level. If you already have a good B.S. detector, you're gonna have an advantage in Enlightenment Work, because you're gonna need it -- and then some!

Real versus unreal is a seeing not a conceptual distinction alone. This is what makes spotting illusion possible.

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?