“They say: ‘THAT was MORE REAL! That was REALLY REAL! And because of my desire to be in contact with what’s real, I’m going to change myself, and I’m going to change my world.’ They start to transform their whole lives and their whole self. The whole agent-arena relationship is radically and revolutionarily restructured.” John…
“We are touchingly prone to mistaking our models of reality for reality itself, mistaking the strength of our certainty for the strength of the evidence, thus moving through a dream of our own making that we call life.” Maria Popova “The very same machinery that makes you so adaptively intelligent is the same machinery that…
One thing I intend to never do again for the rest of my life: Camp out on the internet and gawk. Lapping-up hot takes about what is unfolding in the world, and allow it to poison my entire sense of the world and existence. So silly… There is more beauty in the world than ugliness.…
“The psychedelic ‘hook’ goes in way deeper than anything merely addictive. It’s a ‘conversionary’ stimulus of overwhelming personal ‘inspiration’ induced in many (not all) that ‘changes everything’ for those now exalted as ‘touched’ by that ‘angel’ – igniting a compulsion every bit as consuming and destructive as any addiction. But where an addict is driven…
“A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call the ‘Universe.’ He experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage [or illusion] is the only object of true religion. Not nurturing the illusion…
A human mind is a miraculous survival tool. An idle human mind, bored, freed from the wilderness, hallucinates all sorts of reasons to be worried, anxious, creative, frustrated, driven absolutely wild. A billion idle human minds, hooked up to the internet with AI chatbots. Uh oh. Fear not, buckle up. “Everybody is sort of living…
Dear Jay [Just returned from a 3 day retreat as a novice] Retreat was overall positive. I think I went in with the wrong expectations/goals and suffered a bit for it and also didn’t devote myself to the practice as much as I would’ve liked…frankly, it was very hard to try to remain mindful all…
Common sense might have you assume psychedelics are terrifying, and meditation is rather pointless. Rigorous science, on the other hand, is excavating another story- the emphasis being neither psychedelics nor meditation, but instead, the “important and transformative” question they irrevocably illuminate: Who the F, Are You? Below is one the most beautifully articulated 5-minute clips I’ve…
“All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Henry David Thoreau “We work so damn hard just to simply be alive. There’s no need to strive toward a place you already are.” What is “progress”? Humanity’s been at it a while. We’re roughly ten thousand years beyond agricultural abundance, written language, the…
Once upon a time in early adulthood, I was driving down the road with two friends during summer. It was a brief reprieve from full-throttle partying… a transitory moment between day festivities and night festivities. We were riding in silence, windows down, enjoying the golden hour breeze. My friend who was riding shotgun suddenly announced…
Four years ago on New Years Day 2019, I wrote the following distress-email to a career-oriented therapist. As I re-read and reflect, the concerns feel foreign and distant. Dear Doctor January 1, 2019 Hi Dr Smith, After about 18 years of professional life, I have ascended into one of the best possible positions, and now…
There you are, going about life. Just like any other day. If you’re fortunate – things are ok but something feels off – missing. You’re stuck with this never-ending yearning, an itchiness, that comes and goes. What now? What new goal can you find? What new pleasure can you obtain? What can you learn… who…
If Sam Harris could leave one sentence behind for all humankind to lead their best lives, this would be it.
“Took me exactly 53 trips around the sun to realize that right now I’m as young as I’ll ever be, and as old as I’ve ever been, here in the honeyhole between already and not yet.” Matthew McConaughey When’s the last time you stopped in your tracks, completely absorbed with what was going on in…
The word “spirituality” is problematic. Typically it suggests religion, or spookiness, or cult-like belief systems. While some religions can be spiritual, spirituality is NOT: religion, blind faith, belief in magic, mysticism, rules, or woo woo. There is actually something perfectly rational and reasonable here… Spirituality, in short, is embarking upon the never-ending journey to understand…
The most incredible joy- a complete and utter absence of hunger or desire, a total ease which needs no improvement whatsoever, can be discovered within. When one glimpses this, even only briefly, even only once, all subsequent behaviors and drives can be considered in relation. It becomes apparent, despite even the most Herculean skepticism, all…
“The false needs time and what needs time is false. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false. You need not wait to be what you are. You must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in search.”– Nisargadatta Maharaj What is home? I don’t want to die tomorrow. But…
My life has unquestionably changed over two years, leaving me simultaneously comforted and puzzled. Familiar desires, goals, and sense of identity, have melted away. While trying to explain this shift, I found Buddhism. I don’t mean becoming a Buddhist – I mean – discovering my own epiphanies apparently already laid-out in Buddhist precepts. “How bizarre.”…
One of life’s greatest addictions is flight from boredom, in myriad ways, as opposed to embracing it. Sitting with it. Being with nothing. Inviting boredom as a dear friend, feeling its space, isn’t only rejuvenating but arguably THE greatest privilege. The pearl of all effort. That, is all.
And so Castles Made of Sand Fall in The Sea Eventually I’ve heard Jimi’s lyric countless times over many years. Today is the day I truly heard it, unlike any time in the past. As one commenter notes: “This is the inevitability of death, but also the beauty and fragility of life represented by a…
Contents: Plato’s Cave; Default vs. Meta Reality In 380 BC, Plato described prisoners held captive in a cave since birth. The cave allowed some light in – prisoners watched shadows cast upon the wall as people and animals walked by. The shadows were the only representation of the world they knew. One day a prisoner…
2023 is a year of important paralysis. Urges to express are defeated by a question: “why?”. Having no good answer, I decline. Between 2020 and 2023, my “why” was unraveling the yarn of my life. Looking to dissect myself, only to finally realize there was nobody there. From this position, what more is there to…
100 something essays later… My aim with this blog: to “know myself” and “help people suffer less”. I feel good about the first part – the journey to “know myself” is now quite alive, and will carry on as long as I do. As for “help people suffer less”, I never really knew what to…
“Wisdom is one of the grandest and oddest words out there, so lofty it doesn’t sound like something one could ever consciously strive to be. Nevertheless, it deserves to be an aspiration.” Alain de Botton “Wisdom is one of those qualities that is difficult to define—because it encompasses so much—but which people generally recognize when…
“A crisis of wisdom as the defining crisis of our time? This diagnosis, and from a scientist and scholar at that, is unusual. Science, psychology and even the multitude of modern and postmodern therapies and social practices, have not been able to fill the vacuum.” Thomas Steininger “Who wants to be wise anymore? People want…
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