Joseph Maynor
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Posts posted by Joseph Maynor
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3 hours ago, Blessed2 said:
I actually tried to block the forum website, but I haven't found a way to do so on my android phone. Do you know some apps or chrome settings where this is possible?
I know how to do it on my iPhone and have used this. Let me explain it and maybe you can find a way to do it analogously. For iPhone users, here's the path: Setting => Screen Time => Context & Privacy Restrictions => Content Restrictions => Web Content => Limit Adult Websites => Then enter in the website you want to block in the "Never Allow" category. For Google I use an extension called "Blocksite" which you can find by Googling it. This will allow you to block specific sites.
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I tend to respect the duality between self and other but I also realize the ends of that duality fold in on each other as well.
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14 minutes ago, Cupcake said:
I want a deeply committed, loyal monogamous partner.
Can you tell me how to know if one is truly loyal and committed for the long haul?
Don't attach to me. Just allow my words to sit with you and maybe influence/inspire you. I try to help people where I see they could use something that I see. I don't want any relations. I'm kind of a solitary monk of a person haha. I try to stay above things and provide care where I see it could be useful in certain situations. I try to share my experiences in a way that saves others the time/sh*t I had to deal with to learn. As you/me/we get older, you/I/we learn more and your/my/our younger days look ridiculous to you/me/us. There's a benefit to getting older besides the drawbacks. I look back at myself 5 years ago and realize I was way more foolish than I am now. I assume this continues as we age. I think it's important to remove the earplugs and observe and listen to people, which is hard for us because most people have limited exposure to other people.
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10 minutes ago, Cupcake said:
This wasn't a very practical answer but anyway.
No, it's very practical. It's excessively/deliberately practical from my perspective. I don't think I could be more practical in words than what I wrote.
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There are good people out there. There are people that are better than me/you out there, and most of us don't consider this regularly/routinely because of our limited exposure! Most people are good if you approach them in the right way even if they're bad. It's on them if they're limited and most people don't want to feel limited. And most people will respond in a good way if you approach them in the right way. One of the points to get to is where you can talk to anybody even if they're like a scammer or schemer or player of whatever. Nobody wants to feel bad or be bad if there's a better option for themselves/ourselves/myself. If you talk to others in the right way, you can bring out their humanity. The high-consciousness person has no enemies because they can relate to everyone without losing anything. People think when they're talking to me that they're in their wheelhouse, but they're in my wheelhouse. I know exactly what's happening, and I draw them out and try to relate to them in way that leaves a mark of inspiration for them in my own way. Sometimes people just need to be heard and to feel superior, but see that's an opportunity you have to soothe them and to leave a footprint/trace with them to encourage/soothe/inspire them from where they're at and the signals they're providing you/us as to what they need.
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As you experiment with it, let us know. I'm a musician myself (I play trumpet). There's a whole world to explore in that instrument. There's something about making music that is incredible. Make sure you get every string tuned right. The most important thing in music is proper tuning and then you can go from there. But when your instrument is out of tune, that's like a garbage in garbage out situation. The most important aspect of music is sound, a good sound. And good sound starts/begins with good tuning. This is so exciting! I feel good for you. I remember when I got my first semi-pro trumpet and I could finally play in tune. With trumpets, the cheaper ones are more out of tune typically, but there are some great sounding student horns; you have to actually play them to find out typically. One of my favorite horns to play is a student horn that I have. It just has an amazing sound even though the pitches are not as accurate as my other pro horns. My main pro trumpet that I play is very accurate in pitch which I like a lot. The more developed ear you get, the more proper pitch becomes almost a necessity because when you start to work on developing music -- those ideas depend on intervals being right, or it doesn't work the same way with the same impact that you could otherwise have with your musical ideas, whether composed in advance and/or improvised in the moment.
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If you're willing to learn a little bit about web dev and set up a daily practice of coding yourself, you might benefit from Brad Traversy's Udemy courses like the one below. Most people don't want to learn to code themselves, but for those that do, you might benefit from this course and his other more beginner courses. This is a pretty advanced course, but what I'm trying to show here is it is possible to do your own web development and code your own e-commerce site if that's something you're willing to take on. I love coding, I do it a little bit every day.
https://www.udemy.com/course/mern-ecommerce/
https://www.udemy.com/user/brad-traversy/ -
I've worked with the Abraham Hicks model. The positive emotions are as follows:
1. Joy/Appreciation/Empowerment/Freedom/Love (JAEFL "Jayful" is how I remember this one)
2. Passion (It's interesting that passion is placed higher than happiness)
3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness (Notice Enthusiasm is one of the 2 sub-traits of Extroversion in the Big 5 Model)
4. Positive Expectation/Positive Belief (it's interesting to contrast the difference between an expectation and a belief with this one)
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment (This is the first positive emotion)
I haven't worked with the negative emotions part of the scale yet. I also haven't practiced her method for moving up the scale from one step to the next.
https://pepaeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Emotional-Guidance-Scale.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_structure_of_the_Big_Five -
I think energy is an aspect of feminine metaphysics. Gilles Deleuze broadened the field of feminine metaphysics by introducing the Rhizome as a central concept. The central concept of masculine metaphysics is things. I think energy is another aspect of feminine metaphysics. Maybe in the future philosophers will account for this. Today people want to reduce energy to the way physicists define it. I tend to think energy is a useful metaphysical concept/tool. I mention Deleuze to show lots of work has been done in feminine metaphysics but there's still a lot more that needs to be done in that area including accounting for energy/vibe/gut feel/feeling/intuition etc. Feeling in this sense goes beyond what we typically call emotions. Emotions are a kind of psychic feeling although Spinoza thought emotions were bodily perturbations, so you can have different metaphysical accounts of emotions. Thinking of emotions as an aspect of consciousness is common, but then we have to have a metaphysics that allows consciousness to be in it, and not all do. The masculine likes to emphasize the intellect when thinking of the metaphysics of mind. But metaphysics has accounted for consciousness, which is an aspect of the feminine metaphysics of mind. Philosophers have also accounted for process and connectedness which are also aspects of feminine metaphysics.
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On 3/14/2022 at 10:12 AM, Nowt said:
I live about a mile from a castle that dates back around 1000 years. Next to the castle is a monastery and a church and on the church is a clock. It got me wondering when I drove past the other day whether the church clock used to strike every hour when the castle was still occupied (yeah I know - I don't get out much😆)
I looked up the history of pendulum clocks that would be found in the church and they weren't invented until the 1600s, with pocket watches used before that from the 1300s. Prior to that there were sun dials that measured temporal hours which were of different lengths depending on the seasons.
It's interesting to imagine what happened before the sun dials and how people might have lived without the concept of time. The majority simply accept that time is something that exists in the same way that a tree does for example.
I mentioned this to a friend and his answer highlighted this perfectly...
"Time still existed but we just had no way of measuring it!"
It was a trip when I went to Athens Greece in 2014 and walked around the ancient forum where Socrates, Plato, the Stoics, Aristotle, Epicurus used to hang out and I went into the bushes a little bit so I could have some privacy and I laid down so I was staring straight up into the sky. And all of a sudden 2500 years went away (since those folks were around) and I realized I'm looking at the same unique sky full of weirdly beautiful, dramatic, cumulous clouds that those guys also saw, the same ground they walked on, the same natural olive trees everywhere, the same unique tempestuous, wafty breeze and nobby and numerous hills that they saw 2500 years ago, and it seemed like time just went away. I had so many spiritual experiences like this when I visited Athens. I'd be walking down a modern street, and all of a sudden there would emerge ruins that date back thousands of years that would just show up on the side of the road preserved by time and I would instantly get teleported back to then. Ditto for seeing like you say medieval Christian churches that are still functional and still used that were built in like 500 AD just popping up, nestled in some overgrowth of city structures built around it like weeds. To go inside those churches was totally surreal because they're small, dark, very intimate. It really felt I was teleported back to that time. And the funny thing is, I realized there's no difference between then and now. Time is a very superficial thing in a certain human way, although our accoutrements change, the same basic things don't change. The magical feel of the ground under my feet as I walked around the ancient agora was the same for me as it was for so many other people for thousands of years. It did have an energy to it that comes from being a special place that the whole Western world admires and preserves, which comes out it/comes from it like a child coming out of a parent.
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5 hours ago, Isomorphic said:
@Joseph Maynor Well spotted, and I agree with all you just stated. I also understand well your issues about teaching enlightenment, though I would not say that I am so myself.
Though there are such a thing as Kantian forms of a priori sensible intuitions, such things that are more than abstractions. That which abstractions pertains to and are made of. That which we are both limited and potentiated by, that which can be held in thought without being themselves merely an "abstraction".
We are imposed by these things as long as we live, and we would be so wherever we went. These are a predicate for consciousness, yet also impossible without consciousness.
That's a really good comment. There are many ways to interpret what a thought is. This gets into the problem of universals in philosophy and beyond that. Frege would say that only sentences that refer to statements that can be true or false are candidates for complete thoughts. Spinoza would say ideas are concepts/thoughts and can be complete thoughts if they correspond to reality (what he calls true ideas). Images and emotions might be considered thoughts too. Spinoza considered emotions to be bodily perturbations not thoughts. But if what we're talking about is using language, which is what I was assuming, the four modern schools there world be conceptualism, nominalism, phenomenalism, and realism. Conceptualism thinks of words (and statements) as concepts. Nominalism thinks of words (and statements) as a concatenation of names or symbols. So, let's look at a sentence: "I am God." The conceptualist interprets this as a thing in the intellect/a conceptual thing. The phenomenologist interprets this as pointing to experience within consciousness. The nominalist interprets this as a use of language that points to or refers to the world in a naming kind of way. The realist interprets this as pointing directly to reality. What further complicates this is we tend to think of thoughts as including both concepts and statements. And then there are these issues: Are memories thoughts? What about daydreams? What about night dreams? Are feelings thoughts? Is gut feel a thought? Is vibe a thought? Is awareness a thought? Is consciousness a thought? Is personal identity a thought? Is The Other (as in other people maybe) a thought? Are specific tastes, smells, sounds, touching thoughts? If I dip my finger into a bowl of cold Jello and feel that distinct sensation, is that a thought?
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7 hours ago, Ges said:
Hard to assess what paradigm you're asking from, so I'll start with: I don't know.
I find it useful to consider/frame two broad ways human beings understand. There's intellectual understanding by means of words usually. And then there's intuitive understanding/practical understanding, like when you realize a bear is about to attack you in the forest and run. We can call the first type masculine understanding which was to do with symbols and meaning, and the second type feminine understanding which has to do with consciousness, intuition, and practical non-linguistic understanding like learning how to tie your shoes. When I say thoughts, I'm usually referring to the masculine way of understanding meaning by the use of symbols. The feminine way of understanding might involve thoughts but not in the same way. If I showed you a picture of your father, that would be a form of thoughtless understanding in that sense. Awareness/consciousness in do nothing meditation is a forum of thoughtless understanding which is feminine understanding. I do have a scheme that I use (usually the masculine vs. feminine duality) but I don't cling to it ideologically, I use it to open/widen my mind. Understanding someone's gestures naturally is also a form of feminine understanding, it's a bodily rather than a mental/conceptual/symbolic/abstract understanding (which is masculine understanding). Understanding via feelings, emotions, gut feel, vibe is feminine understanding as well.
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19 minutes ago, Ges said:
Thoughts.
Is consciousness a thought?
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39 minutes ago, Zeroguy said:
Psychological maturity +spiritual enlightenment=jackpot
I'll add one more to your jackpot idea: Being able to "stay human" and become more human despite your "growth" = jackpot.
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If I reframe this as "Is spiritual enlightenment painful," then my answer in my experience would be no. It's exactly the opposite. There might be some painful aspects to maturing, but that's always been part of your life. It was actually quite pleasurable for me to broaden my horizons and has actually reduced a lot of pain that came before from a more narrow channel of looking at things and being in the world.
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On 3/17/2022 at 3:54 PM, Orb said:
@Joseph Maynor @Mandy @BlendingInfinite @Isomorphic @MetaSage @Nowt
From reading your posts and looking into direct experience, I see that reading is a very powerful skill because it sharpens our cognitive abilities (Memory, planning, problem solving, etc.).
So reading a book is like using a sharpening stone for the mind. Knowledge can still arise, its just a question of can one use knowledge when necessary and then just turn it off.
Im inspired to read many books that feel good to me! Im currently reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, such a good book!
When looked at in the right way reading is like exercise for your brain. I think we overestimate reading because we forget most of what we read. But if you read to exercise your brain, and you do it as a catalyst for new insights to emerge, that a good usage. But if you're doing it to collect information and try to possess it/own it, that's more precarious because we don't remember most of what we read as time passes anyway. The other caveat which I mentioned before and I'll repeat is it's good practice to let voices occupy your consciousness without letting them manipulate/hijack you. You can realize that every text leaves a bunch out and has a kind of symbolic nature and biased nature. It's also practice for not letting the voices of people hijack you in a similar way. You can entertain voices without letting them hijack/dominate your consciousness. I study a lot, not just books, but audiobooks, courses, YouTube videos. Another thing I often recommend to people is to start a YouTube channel and let what you read inform your content there because then you don't lose it because you've used it to manifest the videos you make. I also find that reading is exercise for my eyes too, all the muscles around your eyes, and even though my vision is getting a little worse as I age I find that reading forces me to keep my vision as sharp as possible until I do need glasses at some point. I listen to audiobooks when I walk as exercise. I watch YouTube videos in the mornings. So, I have a whole course of study that I continually do. But then I make sure I take the earbuds out and enjoy practicing trumpet and walking through Golden Gate Park which I do daily when I practice trumpet. You don't want to live your life in the books, but there's a balance, it's not a strict, bright-line either/or. Humans clearly benefit from information -- all we have to do is look at people who have benefitted enormously from self-education to see that.
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It's so weird to teach spiritual enlightenment because I can only teach my path. So if I agree with someone when I don't feel that way, that doesn't feel right to me. And then when I say something that pisses everybody off, that doesn't feel right to me either. And when I say something that's so abstract that everyone agrees with, that doesn't feel right to me either. This is why the only place that I truly teach spiritual enlightenment (from my pov) anymore is people who come to me and ask me. That said, let me offer something that may help you because I've written this much I might as well address your question. Nature in this context means essence. Essence is a noun, a thought. When we say the essence of a tree is treeness, that's kind of what we're doing when we're asking about the nature of me -- what is the me-ness? But me is a pronoun, an abstract thought. So when you start with words/abstraction you're going to end with that too. Once you're on a railway you're confined to go in that direction. Words and abstraction narrow your gaze, but see we're trained to find the one right conceptual answer that lies behind the scenes that's true now and forever, but that's a stance, a very intellectual stance that some people (not all) eventually see the limitations of/the pros and cons of.
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@lxlichael That's a great response, thank you. The only thing that kind of bugs me about Sadhguru is his know-it-all attitude, but there's no question that he's a fountain of wisdom. I really don't think any person has the "one-size-fits-all right answer" regarding spiritual enlightenment work. He seems to want to reduce spiritual enlightenment not to philosophy but to science, which I think is a trap. I think tradition has pros and cons because instead of teaching your raw insights, what happens is that thoughts/concepts/words spread like historical memes/viruses from one "teacher" to the next, and so we get abstraction/concepts being offered rather than genuine insight from a single perspective who comes at it fresh from their perspective. It would be cool if Sadhguru would say he's only offering pointers from his own perspective rather than taking the stance that he's telling the truth -- which sort of puts him in the same league as everyone else who pontificates in that way. But he does leave me with useful insights which I appreciate. But then again, this is just my perspective on spiritual enlightenment, and I work not to let it crystalize into too much of a teaching/rigid habit otherwise I'm walking around will a full cup and no longer learning.
There is something to be said for practicing the art of not knowing because that keeps your cup empty and paradoxically clears the lens of what you see. When we focus on thoughts we're not seeing, we're thinking, and we're trying to dominate reality/hunker down using those thoughts, like trying to take something and fit that into a mold that we want instead of letting things be what they are without linguistic interference. It reminds me of seeing what you want to see in your intimate partner (or friend) and insisting on that instead of letting them be what they are. It's like saying, "No, you can't be what you are, you must be how I desire to think about you." Allowing mystery to be here is so underrated. So many people can't tolerate mystery and not knowing. I'm fine with allowing mystery to be here, and I think that approach is one of the overlooked keys to spiritual enlightenment work. Notice how this contrasts with seeking truth. It's an attempt to encircle, to capture, to take possession of/own that marks the stance of truth. And notice that when you take the stance of truth, now something must be not true, and so that sets up a kind of problem (bright-line duality) on the path of spiritual enlightenment.
I'm fine using the word "true" in many circumstances, don't get me wrong, but when we're talking about spiritual enlightenment work and guiding ourselves and others on the path, we're dealing with a special subject area that's not philosophy, science, religion, art/poetry, consciousness, etc. -- as tempting as it might be to reduce it to one of those to obtain/hunt for/seek a "clearer picture." But this kind of attempt to take possession of/own/encircle/capture/dominate spiritual enlightenment will take a person 500 miles in the wrong direction of it. Truth seeking works like a bloodhound catching a scent, now it's off following that scent in a mechanical/machine-like/goal-directed way, but it's gaze is hunkered-down/limited/restricted/narrowed. Truth is fine if we're talking about many things, but often I want to give a caution about it often when it comes to spiritual enlightenment work.
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2 hours ago, lxlichael said:
And for anyone that may be confused in light of the introductory post on my journal, this is not humour. I am serious. I have nothing to gain, though I do see it as the collective good. I am not a personal development teacher nor do I wish to be (though perhaps in ten years) so I don't see him as competition, though I do wish to make a positive difference on culture through alternate means so his actions undermine my own agenda. He is not the only person or group that I will be removing overtime. It is an easy decision for me because there is now too much evidence against his name. I may also be getting rid of Bentinho after I do proper investigation into the man.
I think we all have a kernel of truth to give but the problem is when someone starts to hold themselves out as a teacher they often lose it. It's like a coach in sports, he/she doesn't play anymore because they're the coach, and they must give up playing to be the coach. When you're looking at one thing it's hard to look at another. So when you're focused on teaching you're no longer simply doing the work, you're taking a kind of meta perspective on it and focusing outward instead of inward. I think it's important for all of us to teach, that's part of it; the danger comes when you attach to being not only a teacher but the teacher, and because you have to be the teacher now you're deaf to many things. This is an interesting video along these lines. The 12 min mark is where Sadhguru comes on.
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In my opinion thinking in terms of truth and God is a trap on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Those are rabbit holes, concepts. You're gonna be looking in the wrong place until this is seen. I love philosophy, but if what we're talking about is spiritual enlightenment we're "doing" and "thinking" about a subject matter that's entirely unique and different from concepts/language/talk. It can be pointed to like a finger pointing to the moon, but even that has dangers to it because we want to find language that corresponds to "reality" and that's exactly what spiritual enlightenment works to get "beyond" or "behind." There are pros and cons to talk when it comes to spiritual enlightenment work. It's so easy to miss it when you start to hunt for it, especially conceptually. There's a role for philosophy in life, but spiritual enlightenment is really not reducible to philosophy. It's a totally different project/animal and should be taken on its own "terms." Yes, I'm intentionally using scare quotes. It's not that concepts or words are bad, it's just when we're talking about the subject of spiritual enlightenment, the way concepts relate to that is different from how we normally value/habitually use them in other subject areas like philosophy, science, everyday life. Spiritual enlightenment is a totally different "inquiry." Spiritual enlightenment is not above these other relative things like philosophy, you can have it all, once you learn how to "interpret" things without making lots of "category mistakes"/reductionisms/and so on. One thing doesn't need to lord over another or erase another once you learn to "interpret" adequately (I say adequately rather than properly on purpose because properly implies a kind of exclusion/domination).
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1 minute ago, Forza21 said:
Thank you!
Did you go through solipsism on your way? How did it help you, and how did you see it's falsehood? I would love to hear that from the perspective of someone who's been there.The word falsehood is a philosophical word as is truth. One of the things I disagree with Leo Gura is his need to reduce spiritual enlightenment to philosophy. Out of respect for Phil I want to keep my theories to myself, but I'll say this, I do think it's useful to question the duality between mind and body, self and other on the path. But all the work I've done where I've gotten results from spiritual enlightenment work has been orthogonal to belief and philosophy. Solipsism never resonated with me as a truth because it's a stance, a philosophy, a belief -- and you can take the opposite belief too -- we can play with beliefs all day long, that doesn't tell me who or what I am pre-or-post belief.
My thoughts of Leo and actualize.org. What do you think?
in The Path
Posted · Edited by Joseph Maynor
The absolute doesn't trounce the relative. You must be able to learn both, and if you're a teacher you must find a way to teach both.