Joseph Maynor

Shyness about telling the truth is what enables bullying and bullies. If you look at someone right in the eyes and tell the truth about what they're doing, almost everything they do after that is put into question. Truth is the antidote to all manipulation. And if they try to gaslight you about truth, tell them you know that's what they're doing too. "Now you're gonna gaslight me about truth too!" "You must think I'm a moron." You can play with people like this. But you have to have the guts to tell the truth and stick to your guns. But you don't need to be hostile. Firm, but with a slight smile like you can't believe they think you're that stupid is best!

There are other interpretations of how to deal with the issue of monality, duality, triality, and quadrality. E.g., a triality would be this: past vs. present vs. future. Transduality is different from nonduality. Transduality is different from duality. Aristotle: Finding the "middle way" between two ends of a duality, if such a middle way is best (and it isn't always). Derrida: Finding the interplay and rupture between the ends of dualities, trialities, and quadralities. Nonduality: Realizing dualities are an illusion from an absolute perspective. Me: There's a "working with" between the poles of dualities, trialities, and quadralities. Examples: Monality: Love Duality: Love vs. Hate; Subject vs. Object Triality: Past vs. Present vs. Future Quadrality: Important/Urgent vs. Non-important/Urgent vs. Important/Non-Urgent vs. Non-Important/Non-Urgent

The way to "punch a bully in the nose" is to let them know, in any way you can, that you're onto their schtick. You have to consent for a bully to even be able to function in your life. Nobody is going to come and rescue you. You have to do that.

@Faith ❤️ Thanks. You filled in the part that I didn't understand.

Who's not a hypocrite? Which ego/"individual" is not a hypocrite? This is a structural issue that we understand. This is the reason why we question the self.

We're all in this together. Leo is integrating many of the lessons we're suggesting. His newest video shows this. I think it's important for us to connect rather than fragment. We're a whole.

@Aware Wolf I know right now for whatever reason you don't want to hear my message, but maybe one day you will. Be compassionate. We're not being fair in this thread. I will fight for fairness if I'm provoked - you'll watch me. I'll make a series of 3 hour YouTube videos on this sh*t. I'm not going to stand for people being bullied on my watch. Folks, stop abusing people. It ain't right! Check yourself! Face your own unhappiness instead of blaming Leo Gura for your troubles. I'm gonna fight for what I think is right, I don't care who you are. My life is based on taking right action as I see it.

I know. I'm just trying to right something that I think is out of balance. I'm not sure how much this drama benefits us though. We'll have to wait and see. It's an intuition/feeling that I have that may not express itself wholly in concepts or words or whatever. But, it's a feeling that we're not doing right. We're not taking right action ourselves. We can't criticize someone for taking wrong actions if we're doing this too. This is the whole @Cupcake issue. And we're doing it too. This goes deeper than most are able to see. We're looking for a ledge to stand on, but there's never going to be one the way we're approaching this. The way out of this is something -- obviously -- none of us see at present. It's the blind leading the blind; not just here but also there. We're no better than @Cupcake. We're doing what she's doing but at least she has the guts to be honest about it. That's noble and straightforward, and she's honorable in that way. She's not hiding like so many of us are.

It's also kind underhanded to have this kind of discussion without Leo being able to respond. I understand there are 2 lengthy threads on Actualized that do this to Phil (Nahm) too. But one of the most fundamental principles of good faith communication is to give the person being complained about (1) notice of the complaint and (2) an ability to be heard in response (3) in a fair proceeding.

I feel like it ain't right to continue to talk smack about Leo. Remember this, Leo can respond too if he wants to. So far he hasn't. If you sow the seeds of bad karma, bad things come from that. What goes around comes around. Poor guy is obviously not making videos and is probably going through something. I don't know what more needs to be said here. If you disagree with this, let's try to keep the conversation from digressing into being triggered.

I think there are people who need to integrate the feminine and people who need to integrate the masculine as follows: (1) If you're over-confident, conceptual, manipulative, sociopathic, egotistical, selfish, tone-deaf regarding feelings, have no sense of spirituality -- you need to integrate the feminine. And this is a particular type of development work. (2) People who need to integrate the masculine are too passive, too chaotic, too emotional, don't know how to stand up for themselves effectively, lack a sense of self-sovereignty and self-leadership, lack an ability to be self-independent financially and otherwise. And this is a type of development work. It's important to see when people need (1) or (2) or both, and then to find a teacher or teachers who can help you develop these as needed for you.

Stop giving people the crazy/dramatic reaction they're salivating over. And the way to do this would be to improve your life so you feel secure, powerful, sovereign, at peace, supported, etc. Nobody bullies a person that exudes confidence, wealth, prestige, value, etc. People who are bullied are people that give off a signal of low self-esteem or some other kind of lack of self-care or vulnerability. There are people at stage red who will try to control people who have deficiencies in self-esteem or other disabilities. Don't go to people, let them come to you. If you have an inherent divine value, that's there for you. That will always be there. So you have that value, and others will appreciate this if it's given from a perspective of abundance. But you have to wait, be patient, and not needy. Let people suffer your absence. I would say halve (50% decrease) the time spent online on social media and use that time in other ways to begin. Isolation is good. It can just be mindfulness meditation, habits, planning, clarifying values, talking to real people, walking around outside, going to places where people are (like the mall or the grocery store, etc.). The way to start this would be to keep a log of daily time spent on social media. It's just like dealing with any kind of addiction. People who can't do anything about their condition are bullied and vulnerable. What I try to do is help these people become independent and invulnerable. You can't avoid avoid bullying, but what you can do is change up your approach to the bully, and also have people in your life that can coach you in dealing with a bully. I would say the key way to deal with a bully is to deeply know and protect your own value and worth. People tend to think, this person doesn't even care for themselves, so why should I care for them? But something that cares for itself exudes a kind of energy that says "I'm valuable and I know it." And then others kind of take you at your own genuine estimation of yourself. But it has to be real, it can't be fake. We humans can sniff out deficiencies in self-worth like a hawk.

It is. I know. What changed me is I became much happier in my life and then it's almost like I'm immune to bullying now. If someone does bully me I know how to make them look totally ridiculous fast. So you do need to know how to punch back. But there's a way to punch back that makes the bully go away for good. It's a delicate thing because on the one hand you want to work on being less reactive, but on the other hand you need to make sure when you take a punch that you nail them squarely in the nose. You know when you're good at this when the bullies seem to scatter when you're around. Other people are only going to come to your aid and help you fight one of your bullies if they determine you're reasonable in doing what you're doing. If you dole it out as much as you get it from others -- that cancels out your complaint in the minds of reasonable people. Others have to see that you're working on yourself and trying to improve this issue, and then they will come to your defense.

I hear you, but you haven't heard this yet -- the way to have anti-bully repellant is to stop giving them the delicious reactions. Every time you explode, you must understand, it's delicious to the provoker and to everyone else. You're never going to be able to control reality to fit what you want. I remember I used to be like this too. It doesn't work. If you want something, you must change yourself and then the garbage takes itself out.

@Cupcake Your dramatic reactions are what people who attack you become addicted to. It's like poking the bear and laughing at the response. People used to do this to me when I was on Actualized and was very reactive as well. Here's the secret -- when you stop reacting in such an entertaining, extreme way, they'll leave you alone. It's like a group of kids laughing at another kid who explodes under pressure as a form of entertainment. It's very primal. People love to see someone lose it. It's one of the most entertaining things from a very primal level because the whole point of ego is to keep things under control. It's like shadow integration for someone who has a dense ego to appreciate the chaos of those they can provoke. They like you paradoxically. You're helping them integrate the feminine. It's very rewarding for them to experience that chaos because chaos is in their shadow. The person who explodes is Godlike too. So, I would say they like you, but for reasons that don't really benefit your ego. If you stopped giving them that, they would leave you alone. I would suggest that you start making YouTube videos. Expressing in text only is too limited -- and at this point you've gone about as far with that as you probably can. Start making videos and share them in your journal on here and on Actualized. That will help us get to know you, all of you. In order to make real friends, you have to start by revealing all of who you are -- and video is a much better medium for this than text alone!

This sounds healthy to me. I will try to do this too. I'm working on balancing many things in my life and also removing toxic things. This forum is one of the good things and I want to make sure I'm healthy when I post on here. I'm going to work on doing less posts -- maybe 1 post per day or less. I still have a lot to respond to as well. My point is, I have more than enough work to do with what I've already posted that there's no need for me to post more at this time. That posting tendency can become neurotic. The need to post and post and post multiple times per day is something that all of us should try to get under control if it's a problem.

This is key. Online social media communities should be a supplement to a good life not the center of someone's life. So, it's on every person to work on their life while also participating in an online spiritual community. This also helps with flare ups too. The other thing I think can help with flare ups is when they happen, these people want to be heard. When they feel like they're not heard or that they're wrong, that is deeply provocative and hard to take. There's a lot of this kind of -- "I'm more spiritually enlightened than you, so I get to school you" mentality -- which is a twisted little game because lasting change comes from within not from being humiliated or put on the spot in a scenario that clearly is not going to be fair to the person being challenged due to the nature of this format: both the technological nature and the social nature. I notice certain people (including myself) would really do themselves a favor by strictly monitoring the time they spend online. For those people, us, I would recommend keeping a time log of the intervals of time you're spending on online social media sites on a daily basis. And then, slowly dial down these intervals by replacing them with real life tasks and projects. And this advice applies to myself first and foremost.

You sound like Leo's lawyer. If you want to have a reasonable discussion about something there's more nuance to it. if you want to be a lawyer, this is what you'll give and this is what you'll get back from the lawyer on the other side. The truth is somewhere in the middle, somewhere in-between the lines of this entire thread. Anyone who really wants to understand every dimension of what's going on here should review this entire thread. "Leo is a kind human being." -- None of us are this good including myself. This is very black and white thinking. "Joseph Maynor is a kind human being". Hmm? Where did my shadow side go? How about this one -- "Joseph Maynor is an unkind human being". Hmm? Is that right? Again, something seems to be omitted in the other direction. This one seems most fair -- "Joseph Maynor is both a kind and unkind human being depending on place, time, and circumstance." It's the reasonable person who can get in-between disputes who helps resolve them, not someone who plays the role of prosecuting lawyer or the defense lawyer. The mediator or retired judge working to settle a dispute is not a lawyer.

@Lester Retsel I can see how it's frustrating to get the "nondual explaining away" of every bad quality a person raises as "you're the one who's projecting" line. You can't trump the relative with the absolute. The nondual insight has to both be integrated and then transcended. I feel like in nondual communities it's not kosher to ever say anyone is a bad actor or bad character -- and that if you do this, you're the one who needs reform. This is where it goes too far and starts to condition you that your feelings and gut feel about someone or something is wrong or should be repressed or changed. I'm not calling out any particular person in this post and I don't want to trigger anyone with this either. This is just a pattern I've seen again and again within the nondual community that's kind of a trap. It's a half-integrated spiritual enlightenment when you are still spiritually bypassing in these kinds of abstract, theoretical ways -- always blaming the victim as the perpetrator and leaving the perpetrator with a kind of abstract but nonexistent "love". It's a philosophical love, a kind of mental bypassing that does nothing but excuse the person doing this (the person explaining things away in this manner) from taking responsibility for their own judgment in life. There's a danger of "hiding your human" inside of abstraction on the nondual path. To live fully in the relative, in the human, requires a full appreciation for judgment and for good and evil. When I see someone who is spiritually bypassing in nonduality in a kind of abstract way that privileges the absolute over the relative, that tells me they're "stuck in the middle" of the spiritual enlightenment path. The point of all this work is to develop your human life and the humans, animals, things, and events that come into contact with you. When someone is relating to you in the relative, it can be incredibly tempting but also unsatisfying (and inappropriate) to respond with an "absolute treatment" like you're some kind of deaf but overly self-assured therapist. If you want to teach nondual insights to people, the best way is to set a foundation in the right context, not when someone must go against themselves in order to agree with you. What you're communicating to that person in that moment is they're nuts -- that everything they think is wrong, says you! This is a judgment issue regarding how people should be engaged with or not and in what manner in which specific contexts. I think it's important to draw people out on their own terms. This is what I try to do. I draw people out and give them a sense of confidence in their own feeling and perception. When people feel heard and trust is established, only then can advice be transferred. And then I realize too that my advice to another person is only hearsay from my perspective. But we build a relationship. But my main goal is to get people to trust their feelings and perceptions again after many years of being told that they're wrong -- they need this development of self-esteem and personal sovereignty. It's important to develop the skill of listening and drawing people out and making them feel ok about being themselves. We can come off as arrogant -- and this is something to look at as any kind of influence on another person.

I wasn't directing anything to you. I appreciate your move here to clarify this though.

I agree. If we're getting triggered by this stuff to the extent that it's causing us lots and lots of pain, I recommend staying away from the topic and the person behind the topic. I always like to say this when I get consumed over media -- they're getting paid to do this and I'm not. That applies to Leo Gura as well. He's getting paid to do this and we're not. I totally understand the trigger though because as you've all seen, I caught it in this thread too. It's almost impossible not to. So, my sympathies go out to you all and I know you'll come back around. I think we need to be learn how to handle things better when people get really frustrated -- we just don't know what to do. And then telling people that it's their ego seems like blaming the victim to the person that advice goes to. Think about this -- your kid comes up to you as their parent or as an adult and complains about their other parent, and instead of helping them, you tell them something is wrong with their reaction to that parent. This could be in part true, but that ain't gonna sound right to the child. I'm not saying anyone is a child or that there's anything wrong or significant about the complainer being a child. Also, I'm not calling anyone a child, I just use this to paint an example. And also nonattachment in spiritual enlightenment work doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the way you feel about things. Quite the opposite I find. It means honoring the way you feel even more so than you're been taught. I made a video about this a few days ago.

It's weird because in some sense you're only talking within you, but in another sense you're talking to the collective or plurality too. It's a linguistic/conceptual paradox. It's the paradox between ego vs. no ego. It's the paradox between the infinite and the finite. Most people don't know how to respond to paradox until they start to move into Stage Yellow on up the spiral. Maybe advanced Stage Green can start to see this.