“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…
“[Life] sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.” Albert Camus What does it mean to embody freedom? An interview with no self, for the sake of no self. Dear self, you are hard to pin. When I think I’ve found you,…
“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…
The last of three essays regarding (apparent) aimless chaos of the human species. It is mystifying to watch humanity, seemingly, shoot itself in the foot. Meanwhile, it is simultaneously awesome and bewildering to watch culture become increasingly complex. These two forces seem to collude with one another… traditional governance and information spaces are in disarray.…
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…
This phrase – “spontaneous celibacy” – isn’t a “thing”. It’s an imperfect term that arose while trying to describe myself to someone. It’s the best I can conjure – bearing in mind the utter failure of “labels” to ever actually fulfill their obligation. “Spontaneous celibacy? Oh, you poor thing…” Imaginary reaction from the human population…
“YOU CAN’T EAT DONUTS UNTIL 1 HOUR AFTER COMMUNION!” My mom, to the nun: “F Off”. 7-year-old me: [watching… donut-in-hand — bewildered] I cherish this memory – the precise moment Catholic dogmatism collided spectacularly with my mom’s veteran pragmatism. There I was, just completed my “first communion” ceremony, in the church basement for coffee and donuts…
Look in the mirror. Better yet, close your eyes. Look inside. Whether or not you care for Harry Potter – there is one scene absolutely burned into my memory. Harry has a premonition. He observes himself, looking across a lake, and his deceased father appears as a deer and saves everyone from some catastrophic dementor…
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…
The implicit or explicit TLDR of spirituality is Let Go. Let go of what? Everything. And, OK, fine, but does that mean, give up on life? No! It means moving artfully, skillfully. In alignment with the flow of things. Not forcing it. This is beautifully captured in the concept of Wu Wei, as articulated here…
What if the greatest companion you will ever discover is actually yourself? What if, upon discovering this, any other time with any other human in any capacity, was pure bonus?
For reasons shared previously, I don’t enjoy using the word “spirituality”. It’s fraught with misunderstanding… hocus pocus and religion. But there is something simple and legitimate at its core – I see it as the following: Spirituality, in short, is embarking upon the never-ending journey to understand who you are and why you do everything…
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…
“At certain moments, when alone, we feel a great lack deep within ourselves. This lack is the central one giving rise to all the others. The need to fill this lack, quench this thirst, urges us to think and act. Without even questioning it, we run away from this insufficiency. We try to fill it…
“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.”…
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…
What does it mean to be Buddhist? All I’ve ever done is study it casually – no monkhood, no monastery, no meditation retreats. At the very least, I AM a sincere admirer and explorer of its ideas. And if Buddhism were somehow wiped from the human record tonight, I am convinced something like it would…
Note-to-self: While orienting to this absolutely wild shift in perception, heed the following. One hazard of “perceiving reality for what it is”… is the ego coopting the experience – resting in some enclave of detachment and retreat. In other words, an identity of non-identity, which, undermines embodiment, or, the integration of insight with everyday life.…
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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