@visakanv @QiaochuYuan @yhazony Oh man and I wanted to find Qiaochu's tweet again and this time I found it by searching "from:malcolm_ocean qiaochuyuan searching" to find THIS tweet. Wat.
August 2019
@Meaningness Searched twitter for ngöndro to see what Dave might have written about it and came across this thread. And I believe that draft was finished & published a month ago! And I'm in favor of following up on open threads on twitter, no matter how old 😛 vividness.live/2019/07/05/som…
Fuck. How is music so good.
@QiaochuYuan if you haven't seen the comments down here, I'd recommend having a look. Discussion of the relation of circling & tantra &+ (scroll up and see context first)
A friend of mine is looking to raise funds to go to @LambdaSchool rather than go be homeless! She is savvy and subtle and has the chillest dog I have ever met. gofundme.com/f/empowering-e…
Thread · Suddenly grokking the wisdom behind old platitudes · 1 of 4 tweets
> "It's damn annoying when you feel like you've finally unlocked the wisdom behind what used to sound like old platitudes, & feel like this gives you superpowers, but you also feel that you can't communicate the insight to anyone b/c they'd just hear the old platitudes." -@xuenay
Loving this Hafiz quote from a page-a-day calendar. Particularly loving how the translation includes the word "compute". What did that word, whatever it was in 14th-century arabic, mean to Hafiz?
"Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred.... Now is the time for you to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but grace." — Hafiz
Who was the first person to use the metaphor of "spooning?" Humans were presumably spooning long before we had spoons... #showerthoughts (okay actually #breakfastthoughts)
Looking for a word in #ProductDesign that is something in the space of: - metaphor/conceit/skeumorph - affordance/reification - groove/default/pattern - concept/handle/language Genuinely not sure this word exists but I've got major #tipofmytongue happening here.
"conceit" kind of feels closest, in the sense of "elaborate metaphor". But that sort of feels off also (especially because it has a negative or fanciful connotation). I might expand this thread later with more examples & desiderata but for now I figure I'll just see what ppl say
Thread · Tracking meditation on Beeminder and practicing shi-nè
The last year and a half of my meditation goal on @bmndr. The slope used to be steeper but in Jan'18 I made it really shallow because I wanted to just use it for tracking. In June I went to the @MonasticAcademy for a week, and... yeah.
If it had been a meditation-focused retreat, and not a BioEmotive+WeSpace retreat, then I would have done more meditation in that one week (4620h) than in the entire rest of my life so far. (this is based on someone saying those retreats have 11 hours/day of meditation)
The type of meditation that I did at MAPLE and that I'm doing afterwards is mostly shi-nè, from the Aro Buddhism meditation email course: aromeditation.org I quite like it! If you're trying it too (as I believe @QiaochuYuan and @gmws82 are) I'd love to talk about exps.
When I cannot for the life of me count my outbreaths, I shift to Adyashanti's True Meditation, which has one instruction: "No manipulation."
This is a delightfully perplexing little koan. I am sitting. My face is itchy. Do I scratch it? If I scratch, am I manipulating my sensations? If I inhibit my urge to scratch, am I manipulating my behavior?
Note that I imagine for many people this inquiry would mostly be a frustrating exercise, but I've been working with similar right-hemisphere practice in other domains for a long time (conversation, dance, & life in general) so it cuts right to the core for me.
Replying to @FateOfTwist_
@FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff One further clarification that may or may not be helpful: when you say "is a brick" are you referring to the conceptness of brick or below-conceptual level of the brick that would be just as available to someone who had never seen nor heard of a brick before?
Replying to @FateOfTwist_
@FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff (I'm pretty sure I'm only somewhat following the content here, but wanting to say that I am deeply appreciating the rigor with which you two are pursuing clarity here on twitter. @Conaw I think this is a 💯🔥 example of a thread where Roam+++ would be make a huge difference.)
@JeffLadish This always slightly irked me too ♥
@Conaw @FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff And interestingly I'm actually referring perhaps to a slightly older vision of Roam as being for argument-mapping etc moreso than Zettelkasting. Which I'm sure you'll get to as well, just noting that that stuff has been less of a focus lately I think. Stoked to check it out!
@EvanSandhoefner cf this fantastic post by @KevinSimler summarizing some parts of a book called Why Do People Sing?: Music in Human Evolution (cc @ClayNichols) meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human…
Ugh, got in all of 4 interesting conversations on twitter and my notifications are a complete mess. Notifs totally have not caught up to the world of threading. It's a tough design challenge to do a stellar job, but there are simple improvements from the current situation
The main improvement would just be to cluster them so I can explore all of the notifications from a given blob. Not sure what to call the blobs, but maybe make a reference to the latest tweet from me or that I was directly mentioned in, or the latest I'd read...
So right now for me this would be: - the music thread - the thread about WriteMapper & @Conaw's Roam - the thread about dzogchen, tantra, circling, and mustaches - the thread comparing endogenous neurotransmitters (opioids & cannabinoids) to drugs
Grouping these threads in notifs would means I can click into the thread & scroll/click through all the new tweets, rather than having to guess based on topic & person whether this is a separate thing or just part of the same tweet.
Replying to @FateOfTwist_
@FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff Oooh, have you checked out McGilchrist's work on brain hemispheres? It has interesting implications about concepts, tools, & affordances, not to mention consciousness & enlightenment. Decent intro podcast: metalearn.net/podcasts/ml41-… My threads about it:
@Triquetrea @leashless @Meaningness @dthorson The cosmology is ludicrous but the underlying structures for navigating the world tend to be remarkably persistent even in the absence of specific beliefs. I have a blog-post-to-write about how most atheists I know relate to feedback as if they're afraid of hell.
Replying to @FateOfTwist_
@FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff Thanks AIXI 🤨🙃😉
@jayvidyarthi @joulee Yeah, it takes more than just going meta or phrasing-as-we to cultivate a sense of samesidedness! There's a whole emotional stance to it. @reasonisfun this is a pretty straightforward take on how meta-convo can be valuable. Can be samesided on meta about nonSSness on object-lvl
Retweeted @jayvidyarthi
Love this "Meta-Conversation" tactic from @joulee - though it does kind of assume a very high level of self-awareness and…
Retweeted @Prigoose
TWITTER AND FRIENDSHIP The "three conditions necessary to make close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; a…
@IonaItalia @visakanv @LetterWiki Finally got to reading this exchange between DSW and MP and it feels like such a slog! I'm interested in the topic and found it high-friction to read. Vaguely reminded me of high-school parliamentary debate... 🤨 Anyway! The platform continues to be very exciting to me!
Just set myself up on @IonaItalia's site letter.wiki. Send me a letter if you'd like to have longform(ish) public correspondence about some topic you're interested in! letter.wiki/MalcolmOcean
Context: I was musing about the idea of starting an epistolary group blog, and it seems like letter.wiki is basically made for this already! Tagging some people from that thread: @reasonisfun, @QiaochuYuan, @made_in_cosmos, @jondubin
@IonaItalia @visakanv @LetterWiki I'll let you know as I try out the platform & have thoughts. Enjoying the minimalist design so far 🙂
@jondubin Yeah I'm a quarter of the way through it, and enjoying it a lot. Definitely jives with McGilchrist's models about the right hemisphere, as you noted.
The particular meme in question is pretty tame visually but (afaict) is related to election misinformation. I feel less comfortable on twitter based on the idea that a misstep could get my account banned (false positives?). There's got to be a solution that creates less fear.🤔 twitter.com/Grummz/status/…
@Triquetrea @leashless @Meaningness @dthorson I think it's both easier and in a different way harder, because it can't be challenged as directly. Something similarly subtle:
@Triquetrea @leashless @Meaningness @dthorson To be clear, on net "easier" is much more predominant. Challenging directly didn't necessarily work in the first place. A couple centuries ago this conversation wasn't possible.
@meditationstuff @FateOfTwist_ @DavidDeutschOxf provides a very clear & simple explanation for this in his book The Beginning of Infinity. The jist is that in memetic evolution, one fixed point is "no innovation". Traumatizing people into non-awakenedness makes them uncreative.
@meditationstuff @FateOfTwist_ @DavidDeutschOxf This is obviously not adaptive for individual well-being, but it's adaptive for having coherent cultures that aren't constantly changing, and since humans are dependant on cultural knowledge for survival, the selection pressures on cultures to maintain existing knowledge is high.
@meditationstuff @FateOfTwist_ @DavidDeutschOxf (Further on the relationship between human cultural evolution and human biological evolution in Joseph Henrich's book The Secret Of Our Success)
@Meaningness Sometimes it seems in your writing "meta-systematicity" & "fluidity" are somewhat interchangeable, but sometimes not. Wondering if the distinction includes something like "in a fluid society, kids would grow up in fluid mode the whole time but still need to learn systems"?
@Meaningness (I'm aware of the context of dzogchen etc and the "you are already in the complete stance", which also seems like it might be related.)
Replying to @FateOfTwist_
@FateOfTwist_ @meditationstuff Oooh yeah. I think I used to talk more like that than I do now. I understand the "the brain doesn't exist" piece more based on this thread from Jul 28, thanks.
@Meaningness Mmm. So what distinction, if any, would you make between: - fluid mode - the complete stance - meta-systematicity (If this is in one of your posts and I've just forgotten about it, feel free to point me there.)
@discomfrtble @ANNELAMOTT You might like this article I wrote about different kinds of expectations, only one of which ("entitlements") has this particular quality. malcolmocean.com/2017/09/the-th…
timelines timeliness ...neat pair of words!
Interesting linguistic thing: I notice that if I say "I'm going to take my nap now" (vs "*a* nap") it much more strongly implies that the nap already exists as an intention and the decision is just about the timing.
When I try to reason about why, the main thing that comes to mind is that "my", as a "possessive determiner", implies the definite article, so it's like saying "the nap" instead of "a nap"
Double Adversarial Neural Net Idea: - train neural net to identify porn (this has been done ofc) - train neural net to identify what gets most upvotes on various porn subreddits Combine them somehow to see if you can generate abstract arousing images that somehow aren't porn
@jaffathecake not sure who to tell about this but I'm pretty sure this page of documentation is out of date and is recommending deprecated features that don't work anymore. developer.chrome.com/apps/offline_s…
Retweeted @dthorson
🎙New episode of Emerge with Daniel Scmachtenberger. We discuss the generator functions of x-risk, the 'state of the phase sh…
@TheAnnaGat @utotranslucence @thom_ivy_1 @ElenAwalom @visakanv @QiaochuYuan for sure
Retweeted @visakanv
@Malcolm_Ocean You can’t change the people on your timeline but you can change the people on your timeline
Retweeted @HuanWin
beginning to feel that 'strangely earnest' Twitter is best Twitter
@discomfrtble @ANNELAMOTT What'd you think? 🙃
Summary: positive correlation between working memory and ability to work through relationship challenges. Makes sense to me! Important to keep an open mind about how much of this is fixed vs changeable.
I've seen profound transformations in people's apparent intelligence, including working memory etc, based on stress levels, mindset, scarcity, etc. (To all of the evbio folks out there, I'm not denying that there are are genetic diffs too. Ofc there are, but how does that help?)
Fantastic book called Scarcity by Eldar Shafir & Senhil Mullainathan (@m_sendhil) summarizes a bunch of studies showing how much worse people are at thinking when experiencing scarcity (as mindset or as chronic or acute situation).
Major question for me atm is how to create contexts where people can access more of their intelligence together. Making substantial headway on it, including for myself. It's amazing to see people unfurl and blossom, and yeah, it has a profound effect on relationship quality.
Retweeted @Conaw
Hire a Speaker for the Dead twitter.com/juliagalef/sta…
@aaronzlewis Wide range but also huge gaps. Here's 2 custom emoji I add to any slack I'm in a lot. Dunno if plotting's an emotion, but it's defs a mood. :happycry: is so vital. Its absence from the standard emoji set is bizarre and disturbing to me. I'd feel :happycry: if they added it.
Retweeted @visakanv
Been telling a few friends lately (was the topic of my previous tinyletter) about my sense that feelings are under-appreciate…
Thread · Fragments extracted from longer works that stand on their own · 1 of 6 tweets
Similar elevation from a book by @visakanv
Umm @slack, this has got to be a bug. 🐛 (I could see this being not-a-bug for like... a music player that was storing a bunch of songs offline, or similar. But that's not you.)
Thread · Trying to pin down what metadharma means
What is #metadharma? (Seems to be a coinage of @BuddhistGeeks... with @ryanoelke & @VincentHorn self-describing as metadharma teachers) And @OortCloudAtlas & @Meaningness have also been using the term.
Google found this @BuddhistGeeks episode: ~> This series, on Metadharma, will explore the ways that three jewels of the Buddhist contemplative tradition, Buddha/Dharma/Sangha, may be understood in light of emergence of a Integral/Metamodern orientation. art19.com/shows/buddhist…
Is metadharma simply metamodern dharma? What would such a "simply" even mean?
Aha, further scrolling through twitter search results yielded this: twitter.com/VincentHorn/st…
Which is partway down a thread that starts here: twitter.com/VincentHorn/st…
Okay, so I sort of have my answer! Figure I'll publish this thread anyway, as there's lots of further surface area to explore here. #ThinkingOutLoud
I'm feeling particularly aware of Stephen Batchelor's book Buddhism Without Beliefs, where he says something like "I tried to write this book with minimal jargon, but I couldn't for the life of me find an adequate translation for 'dharma'."
I then mused that one verbose translation for "dharma" might be ~ "instructions for how to wake up" 👁️ Then, since normally waking isn't something one can consciously do (as the very need to wake necessitates unconsciousness) there's no natural metaphor for such instructions!
Thus #metadharma might be (diff. uses of "meta") - instructions for how to generate instructions for how to wake up - instructions for how to wake up, that are self-aware of their context/role as instructions - instructions for how to wake up our "instructions for how to wake up"
These 3 meanings don't contradict! I think the last framing most directly connects with @VincentHorn's usage, particularly the second sentence in this tweet: twitter.com/VincentHorn/st…
There is a sense in which dharma is known. There's also a sense in which it is always evolving & contextual. While the evolution is slow enough, perhaps, it stays dharma. When the evolution becomes conscious & part of the dharma itself, it becomes metadharma. Does this resonate?
Here's a page I was reading this morning in the Foreword of Roaring Silence by the arobuddhism.org folks. It seems that if language is living, one might be able to awaken the language itself.
I'm excited to watch & participate in the evolution of this term! What are your thoughts? (Also these podcast episodes are probably a good next thing to explore, although I haven't yet looked at them and am sorta just freestyling based on the word: 👇)
@LapsusLima @aaronzlewis I tweet about twitter (search from:Malcolm_Ocean #TwitterReplacement) and also about things meta!
life is bootstrapping
Retweeted @tasshinfogleman
trust is the opposite of rushing. trust is the opposite of hesitating. trust is the opposite of planning. that means t…
@kevinstuttle It seems it was created to train kids to sit still and follow orders & rules. Now it functions as at best daycare, and at worst prison-for-kids.
@kevinstuttle Related: (click through to see the QT he's referring to and subsequent thread)
Retweeted @julianweisser
If 95% of the companies being built in 2019 could be built with ‘no-code’ tools in 2029 it will mean: 1) more startups…
Nice one Google. #utilitarianism
This legit was invented by google's algorithms, probably based on people searching "jeremy bentham can they suffer?" (I am concluding this because as of now there are no google search results for "can jeremy bentham suffer" in quotes)
Retweeted @WilliamAEden
This is what you need to do to make progress in today’s incrementalist, risk-averse academy. twitter.com/wolfejosh/stat…
@_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing Yeah I'm usually not on the ball, so the top screen is eye-height. Can't find any photos with me in it, but here's my current set-up, including what it looks like at night.
@discomfrtble @ANNELAMOTT Yeah I think we're basically on the same page here. Eg I would say that a should applied to a discernment is a judgment. (Not everybody uses these words the same way, but the underlying structure remains)
@ClayNichols I was interpreting your remark not as saying "you got the causal arrows backwards" but as saying "there's also a causal arrow the other way" which yields: healthier relationship ↓ more working memory ↓ healthier relationship ↓ more working memory ↓ healthier relationship etc
@_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing This goes back to the very first sentence of the original Q! Laptops are intrinsically anti-ergonomic. It's geometrically impossible to simultaneously achieve: - straight spine - screen at eye-level - hands on keyboard ...without separating screen & keys
@_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing (Technically there's a way to do it, which requires having the laptop at eye level and either kinda far away and your arms straight out, or up close and your arms held up like Kilroy, but both of these are kinda weird and I've basically never seen anyone do them.)
@_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing The original tweet/question, for context. My new reflection in relation to this, if you want to be able to travel & work ergonomically, is to get a portable bluetooth keyboard and a collapsible laptop stand, so you can lift it to eye-level.
@WilliamAEden @_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing I think if you had a shoulder-height desk you could in principle stretch your arms out straight and rest them on the desk? But I agree this seems awkward.
@WilliamAEden @_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing We could add "wrists relaxed/straight" as a constraint, and then that would rule out the kilroy/t-rex/thriller option.
@tasshinfogleman @threadreaderapp unroll this so I can more easily print it
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit To me it seems something like "just because peoples' explanations for X are clearly inaccurate/fabricated/confabulated, doesn't mean X isn't real" I'd want to hear a take on the flat-mind thesis from someone who groks its research & also brain hemispheres.
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit Hemispheres are core to a lot of this, including: - wtf is introspection - wtf is consciousness - wtf is unconscious - wide vs narrow vision - parallel vs serial processing - apparent coherence of things - confabulation - autopilot - beliefs - intuition - meaning & metaphor
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit I am currently in the frustrating situation of feeling like whenever anyone is saying something substantial about the brain or mind and isn't referencing the hemispheres, it's like hearing people trying to talk about chemical reactions and they aren't using the concept of "atoms"
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit ...not super satisfied with this analogy... others might be: - trying to talk about geopolitics without "country" - talking about sarcasm without "tone of voice" And it's not about the absence of the term but about the implied sense that the whole concept is irrelevant.
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @noididntreadit Quote from Dzogchen book Roaring Silence that I like: > "Intellect itself needs to taste the manner in which it functions as a method of obscuring the nature of Mind." It captures a piece of the value I got from learning McGilchrist's hemisphere model: showed LH what it is.
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @noididntreadit I initially brought it in as sort of an argument, but then noticed that viewed from a different angle, it also points at the piece of wisdom you're expressing here, which is that models can overshadow phenomological insight.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @noididntreadit Quote from Dzogchen book Roaring Silence that I like: > "Intellect itself ne…
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit Elaborate?
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit Do wares have subjective experience?
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @noididntreadit Do you have to enter the stream before you cross it?
@Timber_22 just saw your bio "Gupta-Schmachtenberger 02020" and... damn. Amazing. Expired: fantasy football Tired: shipping fictional characters Wired: custom presidential ballot tickets
@meditationstuff @Timber_22 @noididntreadit Well especially since we were already in a subthread spawned by the "a ware" pun.
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Aha yeah, this is good shit. Screenshotting for easy reference in-thread. The second translation (or one much like it) is one that showed up in my page-a-day zen calendar awhile ago and I pulled it out at the time. Not sure where it is now though.
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Also I briefly picked up a book at the @MonasticAcademy called Wild Awakening: The Heart of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, and it seems that the two schools (?) have a major connection, and Tilopa is based in Mahamudra, or something like that.
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Culadasa has supposedly read The Master and his Emissary and "has expressed how left hemisphere (LH) function is highly related to attention, while right hemisphere (RH) function is highly related to awareness." reddit.com/r/streamentry/…
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Not sure how much McGilchrist's model has influenced Culadasa's teaching, implicitly or explicitly. (Implicitly = informing how he explains things) (Explicitly = he actually talks about that model & the hemispheres in his teaching)
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Huh, not seeing how hemispheres relate to the parallels between mahamudra & dzogchen, beyond "both are modeling reality and so is McGilchrist's model"
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin ...music too!
@Timber_22 @meditationstuff @noididntreadit @jondubin Yeah take your time, I need to go eat 😋
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 makes a direct connection between Tilopa's ancient meditation advice and the left hemisphere. (Link is to mid-convo... scroll up in that thread for a lot of other cool stuff)
Thread · Triune brain, hemispheres, and using oversimplified maps
Aha, just saw this again, after @DougTataryn's BioEmotive retreat, and my perspective has shifted a bit. There's definitely something real to the triune brain model. Details can be debated but the prefrontal cortex does different stuff than the hippocampus & amygdala! 🧠
When I say "there's something real to the triune brain model" what I'm saying is basically "a 3-part model of intellectual, emotional, physical brain is better than not having those distinctions". Not dissimilar to this remark about hemispheres:
Now my perspective is that when people I know say "S1 & S2", half the time they're talking about their hemispheres, and half the time they're talking about their emotional brain. The actual specific dual-process S1/S2 model is almost never what is meant.
I don't have a coherent integration of McGilchrist's hemisphere model with this other major structure of the brain but I'm working on it.
The various dichotomies such as feelings vs reason are muddled in many ways.
Here's my best one-tweet sketch of the difference between the emotional brain and the right neocortex.
But to the left neocortex, it's all either verbal/coherent or not.
These models I'm presenting are tremendously oversimplified. The map is not the territory. But a sketched map of the territory is better than no map, as long as it doesn't contain grave errors and you don't take it to be more accurate than it is.
The important thing when using a map that isn't *extremely* precise (read: almost all maps) is to keep most of your attention on the actual world, and just refer to the map periodically.
And within this sketch of a model, I'll suggest that if you imagine two hikers hiking together, the left hemisphere is the one staring at the map the whole time and the right hemisphere is the one looking at the world. They need to communicate to navigate effectively.
I've found McGilchrist's model so valuable because it finally helped my left hemisphere identify *what it is* and *what it does*. And therefore also what it isn't, and what it doesn't need to do!
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 Long thread integrating 3+ other twitter conversations, connecting the hemispheres with the triune brain model (intellectual, emotional, physical) and talking about false dichotomies and the value of having models anyway.
@namiiMercurii @reasonisfun @diviacaroline @Aella_Girl @rothosphere I wrote another thread that elaborated on some of the stuff in this thread:
@jondubin @QiaochuYuan @Conaw @HareeshWallis I wrote another thread collecting & elaborating on some of this stuff. Still lots of work to do on actually improving my models.
Thread · Why McGilchrist's hemisphere model beats System 1/System 2 talk · 1 of 7 tweets
Also I've written a new thread with updated thoughts about the triune brain model and how it relates to the hemispheres.
Fixed Mindset ↔ Growth Mindset (Dweck) Inward Mindset ↔ Outward Mindset (Arbinger) What else?
@_awbery_ @mimercha @JaredJanes @utotranslucence @context_ing Tiago's got one he likes:
Thread · Meditation journal: losing the breath count and thought addiction · 26 of 27 tweets
🧘✍️🧵I'm going to share some recent things from my meditation journal, because it seems something unusual is happening... So either that's of interest, or ppl can tell me "nope, this isn't unusual, carry on!" In any case, maybe some of the imagery here will be helpful.
For context, I've been following the arobuddhism.org meditation course, and I've been doing a consistent 20-30min sit in the morning for the last 3 weeks. They suggest starting smaller but I'm with other people who are meditating that long, so!
Until this week my practice has been ~"count outbreaths up to 21 & back down to 1, repeat." This seemed to work quite well when I was at MAPLE in June, but the last few weeks... within 5mins into the meditation I'm barely remembering to count.
Getting lost in thought is a common, expected part of meditation, but when I do remember to count, I would typically count about 1 or 2 breaths before being gone again for multiple minutes.
Even moments of some awareness often lack a sense of "instructions: count breaths". Feels like walking into the kitchen & forgetting why. If someone asked "what are you doing?" I could tell them "well I'm supposedly counting breaths" but I can't seem to ask myself the Q.
To be clear: at the start of the meditation, I can often make it all the way up to 21, and sometimes all the way back down and part of the way back up again before I get disrupted. So this isn't just the "can't count to 3", it's specifically that it gets WAY harder as I keep on.
Anyway, yesterday the instructions said to drop the count and just become your breath. And it said "if you're lost in thought, return to counting". And I was like "Umm guys I can't even stay focused on counting."
So, yesterday I tried that for the first time. Here are edited notes on that first experience: Tried week-6 instruction, and it worked about as well as I anticipated, which is to say that I spent multiple minutes totally unaware of any intention to follow that instruction.
Had been reading Roaring Silence before meditation this morning, and it talks about shi-nè as painfully boring and as being the cognitive equivalent of quitting heroin cold turkey. Addiction to thoughts.
And now I'm thinking about the first night of the BioEmotive retreat, when I tried to ask @DougTataryn about my experience, and I said something like "I end up just thinking about interesting stuff during the meditation" and he said "you know that's not meditating, right?"
...I'm not actually sure which of these 2 things he might mean: - joke: of course you're thinking during meditation; if you were you wouldn't need to meditate - serious: if you're serious about meditation, you need to be committed to following the instruction/intention (Or both!)
And the intro to Roaring Silence talks about the importance of commitment. So all of this raises the question of whether on some level I'm not committed to kicking my addiction to compulsive thinking. Which might generate a kind of undermining, a forgetting of the instructions.
(And all of this is particularly rich in the context of having reading the section of Sane Asylum yesterday that talks about the backstories of various drug addicts that go to the Delancey Street Foundation.)
But it's really hard to talk clearly about competing commitments in the context of overcoming an addictive pattern, since the nature of addiction is that it's made of competing commitments.
It would be interesting to analyze the thought addiction (in me in particular) in terms of its goodself and badself dynamics.
Oh, I think the confusing thing maybe, for me, unlike someone with anxiety, is that my thoughts tend to be/feel rewarding. So there's actually a way in which the badself feels like the nonthinker. This might be the weird thing that feels turned around backwards in my case.
I'm noting that this seems weirdly in opposition to my remark to Benjamin in 2013. I asked "why meditate?" He said "helps me let go of thoughts" I said "what I need is help *holding onto thoughts* rather than help letting go." (ADHD...? 🤔) Oh, but not on a different level!
If we look at not the behavior but the sense of priority, then a self who expressed wanting to hold onto thoughts is expressing a stance of thoughts as valuable, as opposed to the antagonistic relationship someone with depression, anxiety, or an otherwise toxic DMN might have.
And if there is a pressure to think more/valuable thoughts, that would undermine the commitment to doing something other than thinking. (Inasmuch as this thread has an insight, I think this is it)
It feels somewhat structurally similar to the difference between being really present & receptive in a group conversation versus spending the whole time thinking of something witty to say when it's your turn to speak. Although I'm maybe better at listening than counting breaths.
Anyway, today I figured I'd just go back to counting—I don't think I'm ready to become my breath. Result: Wow. Even more distracted than yesterday. I set out to count but lost it by maybe 5mins in.
At one point, about 10mins in, I found an analogy. I've heard others describe the experience of becoming more calm, grounded, present as the meditation progresses, but this is definitely the opposite of my experience. (I've had this happen to me 2-3 times maybe)
Meditation analogy: I was wading out into the water and it was getting deeper and eventually I would lose my footing altogether and just be flailing. And then it occurred to me: "I float, so in principle I can stop flailing and it'll be fine"
...I think I managed this somewhat, which was pretty cool while it happened. Reminded me a bit of True Meditation or the first Aro course meditation 👇 ...and then I lost track of that instruction just like I'd lost track of the breathing/counting instructions.
...This thread got super long. I'm very curious to hear others thoughts on it! Do you resonate with anything here? Does any of it surprise you? Even just hearing yesses or nos to those two questions would help me orient, I think. 🙏
Tagging some peeps I know who have thoughts on meditation 👁️ @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Click here to go to the top of the thread 👇
@PeterBorah @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Something something enneagram—exactly.
Replying to @minobenjo
@SlaytonBenjamin Bahaha I had the same thought about the arbitrariness & 1111111 but also I liked the counting a lot at first. (And it's not totally arbitrary; a different kind of attention is needed to remember 1 what the previous count was and 2 whether one is going up or down)
Replying to @minobenjo
@SlaytonBenjamin Ooh this seems helpful and similar to other things I've experimented with.
@_awbery_ Mmm appreciating your perspective. I've read this post before and just had another look. The only direct comparison between shi-nè and shamatha I saw was eyes & "Mind state noticeably ‘calm’ but not so vibrant/clear/open/spacious as I’m used to with four naljors practice. "
@_awbery_ This is also making me wonder to what extent you've practiced the other 3 naljors, after shi-nè!
@_awbery_ (Oh you were directing me at the whole series, not just that first post. I'll read more!)
and now it's now
I read a short story online a few years ago, in which a young man from a tribe learns to read, then comes to distrust & question his culture's inherited wisdom, including the belief that his tribe (NOT the neighboring one) is the true heir of something. Anyone know it?
Just found this book Love in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating the Relationships We Need to Thrive by @drumbaker. I've barely skimmed the ToC but the cover is already affecting me. Alt title: Lovers In a Dangerous Clime ♫ amzn.to/2KO0VSY
Walking downtown. Seeing a woman in a cute skirt. Checking her out. Suddenly wondering what it would feel to look at everyone that way. Trying that. ...wow.
Reflecting on this later, I'm not quite sure how to articulate what mental motion I was making here. It wasn't "objectify everyone's body". It wasn't "consider everyone's fashion sense". It was more like... "see everyone as beautiful".
But not just "beautiful" like a painting. Beautiful like "hot damn, wow!" But again, not about just bodies or outfits, but each person's presence & complex existence. I just felt absolutely delighted that all of these people were here on this street.
@Free2PlaySquid It was like that, except often that realization feels overwhelming or surreal or existential, whereas this time it felt exciting and delightful.
@davidklaing Chiang! Yes, I was vaguely thinking it was a scifi author that I knew well. Thanks 🍻
Retweeted @thomasngmorris
This is cool. Spearmint and caraway get their distinctive flavours from the same molecule. The reason they taste diffe…
@davidklaing Here's a link to read the story online, for anyone curious: web.archive.org/web/2016071516…
Retweeted @richmintz
Just finished setting up a new task management integration among @CompliceGoals, @WorkFlowy, and @insightly, so if anyone ha…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Stumped to describe this roadside sculpture as anything other than: "A folksy, polka-dotted Baphomet, commissioned by a…
@utotranslucence Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove
Retweeted @backus
20-somethings play a valuable ecological role in Twitter communities IMO: Discovering ideas/content for the first time, which o…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
@GwendolynHuot @dthorson Hey! Yes, we did do a transcript of the Schmachtenberger episode, and the DAO one! "We" = firs…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
@chrxn @GwendolynHuot @heatherwattsart @spearofsolomon @RyanGady @cognazor @antonjw @peternlimberg @JaredJanes @macterra…
@mattgoldenberg Another favorite of mine is to imitate the facial expressions of everybody I see, and imagine how they might be feeling, as I describe in the second verse of Lost & Found (lyrics: malcolmocean.com/2015/07/lost-a…) youtube.com/watch?v=VkJe3W…
@Meaningness @The_Lagrangian @DogUmwelt Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that! *searches twitter...* Aha, here's the context:
@Meaningness @The_Lagrangian @DogUmwelt Responding to this "dream syllabus" from @_awbery_
Retweeted @Conaw
@fortelabs Couldn't agree less. You should keep old notes like the ship of Theseus, or your Grandfather's Axe - as evidence of…
Replying to @leashless
@leashless Are 11-41 missing or never recorded in the first place? Or am I reading too much into the numbers? (BTW: if someone finds these tweets in a few years & Vinay's link is down then contact me and I'll probably have them somewhere.)
@speakerjohnash @spearofsolomon @divided_brain Yeah the neuroplasticity in human brains is wild. I'd also say not just split brain stuff but the dramatic differences in temperament, personality, etc between people who have a LH stroke vs a RH stroke are pretty significant.
@PeterBorah @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Also I'm coming back to this and thinking I want meditations that are more like this. I think actually the first Aro meditation course instructions were?
@PeterBorah @meditationstuff @Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jondubin @utotranslucence @_awbery_ Ah yeah: > When thoughts come – let them come. When thoughts go – let them go. If you find yourself involved in a stream of thoughts, let go of your involvement with them. Keep letting go of involvement. Remain uninvolved. Just let go. Whatever happens – let it be as it is.
@fortelabs Assuming this is an actual law (in the case of you two) and not just a coincidence, I'm guessing it has something to do with either lighting or distance & the 3D shapes of your faces (or both). Faces look different from up-close vs far away, because they aren't flat!
@Aella_Girl Lots happening for me & the people I'm with. Exciting stuff. A lot of challenging learning. Takes a lot of consciousness to feel like I'm surfing rather than falling into the wave, and I'm managing! Also your Q reminded me immediately of my 4yo blog post malcolmocean.com/2015/10/whats-…
missing the point as the point
Retweeted @TheMusingMind
So it looks like @waitbutwhy is writing a mega-post on emergence - among other things - and I think I might explode as a…
Man cannot live on love alone. ...but *together*... 🤔🥰🙃
Thread · Things I want to exist: apps, tools, and funding mechanisms · 1 of 21 tweets
Phone call to your future self: (this could be built by one dev in a day with @twilio probably)
@aaronzlewis @futureme I've added this to my list of things I want to exist:
@visakanv @GKhuyen I am excited about this!
Retweeted @VincentHorn
A meditator comes onto YouTube to argue with me about my assertion that meditation is inherently social, thus proving my p…
"We tried to interview the meta-modernists, but they just kept asking *us* questions!" - hypothetical person, as conceived by @SarahAMcManus
Retweeted @sfiscience
It's that time again! If you haven't taken our Intro to Complexity #MOOC, join us this fall for a world-class entry-level e…
@reasonisfun we talked last year about the difference between complex systems and complicated systems... found myself thinking you might get a lot out of this course!
@danlistensto (50,90)
@aaronzlewis @futureme Ehh it's not the same as having your phone actually ring and it's you on the other end. There's something just aesthetically beautiful about that. The app could also probably record any responses you have, too.
@aaronzlewis @futureme I've experimented with a very short-timescale "talk out loud to your future self" thing in a different context: before bed, record a 2min voice memo & set as alarm for the next morning. I'd love to have an app that streamlines this too!
Thread · An alarm clock app that plays last night's voice recording · 6 of 9 tweets
#ThingsIwantToExist: An app that lets me easily record myself talking and have that be my alarmclock sound the next day.
Issues with using separate voice-recorder & alarm clock apps: • too many steps to set it • end up with a bunch of random little files • needs amplifying (often talking quietly because housemates sleeping, but alarm needs to be loud) • forget to record, get yesterday's instead
So the solution would: • be basically one step: record (alarm timing settings are separate) • keep track of files by date • amplify audio to ensure it's loud enough to wake you & be understood • allow setting a default track for if you don't record • remind you each eve
Ideal further options: • play a song/bell before/after the voice part • record for friend/partner instead • if you don't set, it would use text-to-speech to tell you the date & time & stuff-on-your-calendar & complice.co intentions-for-the-day
Oooh, and extending the friend feature further you could also connect it with a podcasty concept and allow people to broadcast a daily wake-up track. eg "Hi Nerdfighters, it's Saturday August 31. Some of you are probably heading back to school very soon. What are you most..."
I legit think that a savvy person with adequate code/design skills could make a business out of this. 🤑 I'll be your first customer! (Unless it's iOS-only or iOS-first)
@aaronzlewis @futureme Thread on this:
Thread · Things I want to exist: apps, tools, and funding mechanisms · 1 of 21 tweets
@twilio Very relatedly but also different: An app to make it easy to wake up to a reflection from the night before, as a way to create more continuity between going to bed and waking up.
Thread · An alarm clock app that plays last night's voice recording · 3 of 9 tweets
Realized that I didn't actually give my WHY in this thread. Why do I want this? I've often found each day to be a climb from disoriented into oriented into excited into stoked, and then somehow I wake up disoriented again every time. I want to be able to create more continuity.
Like I'm laying in bed thinking "oh man there's all these things I'm excited to do, but I have to sleep." and then when I wake up I'm like "ugh I don't feel like doing anything" and the idea was that if I woke up to the sound of night-before me being stoked... it'd jumpstart me.
As implied above, I tested this a little bit using a voice memos app and manually setting the track as an alarm, but as I said, it was a bit too inconvenient and inaudible. But it seemed promising and so I'd love to have a better system.