anamnesis

I've been planning to explore another country. I've taken some reconnaissance trips and enjoyed what I've seen. I think I'll be commuting soon. I'm not talking about Ecuador. Although sometimes the outer reflects the inner. And vice-versa. Nope. I'm talking about a place inside. Or at least, it feels like I'm going inside to get there. I suspect it might connect to outside in some strange ways but dividing experience into inside and outside is problematic anyway. Once in this place, awareness of the body starts to fade. I may forget what position my arm or leg is in. I feel a sort of "condensation" or focus of my awareness from a little outside my head, behind me. And I repeat a mantra I learned long ago: "mind awake, body asleep" and the body starts to fall more and more away. My vision is only of blackness at first. I start thinking of scenes in a loose way, things I like to see. Nature, space, forms, colors. Not in any specific ...

I have a theory that anyone could lower their baseline stress by practicing deep relaxation for 30 minutes a day. Relaxing, but not falling asleep -that time wouldn't count. Because when we sleep our bodies can still be tense , however, when we allow muscles and organs to just let go, consciously unbinding, opening, releasing them into gravity , we can achieve deeper relaxation than even our deepest stages of sleep. How we do this is idiosyncratic to the individual, but it is easy to calibrate , to know when what we are doing is working. Someone who can consciously relax deeply and well, will soon discover that, besides health benefits, it is extremely pleasurable. It's where drugs like morphine take people and there is no bottom limit to how deeply one can sink into this ecstasy. And you will be surprised that if you approach any part of your body, it listens, it follows you – it is your body! With closed eyes, go inside the body from the toe to the head searching for any ...

I have been working over a week now on a statement that started as "where I wanted to be 5 years hence." I have done these before, but this time something clicked. I’d probably been doing them wrong from the onset, but when I dropped all the big plans and obvious goals and started letting this vision reflect and articulate my deepest intentions, oldest dreams and buried passions, it became something completely different. More like a quest, than a statement. I’ve revised it several times. I review and think about it daily. It’s becoming more finely tuned, more accurate of my true desires. By writing it out, expressing it, even just to myself, it is a clarification almost every part of my mind seems to champion. It’s becoming something concrete, something I can back with all of my being and engage in with my total essence. A powerful spell, and I find the words and phrasings matter immensely. “When you are 50 years old, you should know your destiny” -Confucius...

It's all well and good getting charged up about how we want to change, why it's important to us and how we see ourselves afterwards. All very motivational. And it may last for a week or two. When our energy is high or our disgust is visceral. But what determines if we stick to it? Instead of dropping it once again and picking it up later for the 1000th time? I think it boils down to this: have we clearly assessed, based on our past experience and present conditions, what kind of obstacles we are going to put in our own way? And do we have a strategy for how we are going to deal with each and every one of the obstacles we will throw up for ourselves? So this time, when that initial burst of motivated energy runs out, and we are far from the starting line and fanfare and inauguration of the great event, the great life change, what we need is a strategy to sidestep those predictable, inevitable potholes that will send us limping back. He who conquers himself is the m...

Before you turn on the tv, before you check your mail or facebook, before you surf the web and passively consume even more trivial cud for the mind... create something. Write in your journal while your mind is not yet filtering all the triggers from the external world, when you can explore the moment a little deeper and with less reactivity. Draw a picture, work on a project, do something. Express something. Move some energy out into the world and make some space. You've been a good little sponge up to now, it's time to start squeezing something out.You'll feel much better. Lighter. Creatively engaged. Trust me.

... to have something different than what we've always had, we have to trade, like our native ancestors knew. There is always an exchange. We can't get something for nothing, we have to give up something we own, to get something we don't. We have to give up something we are to be something else. If there is something we wish to receive, we should think of what we must offer in return. Even our breath, tells us so. As we give, so shall we receive, this is not a moral code, it's the mechanism of the universe. And to draw some new cards, better to our liking, we may need to discard a few...

Reality. What a blast. Got these funny vehicles we call bodies, funny things called brains that like to try to solve problems with thinking and seek pleasure like good organisms should. We're riding the waves of existence with infinite possibilities, so what do we do. What do we do...

as I reduce my possessions to a small and efficient set of qualitative choices, I will also strive to release the baggage accumulated with my identity, so in both respects I can move more freely and lightly in the world, inside and out "I clean out all excess clutter in my life. I phase out all trash. I give away my neglected things that others may use them. I make room for the many, many blessings coming my way. I joyfully bestow my blessings by sharing my excess abundance with others. And, as the useless and the unwanted depart, I experience the freedom and the lightness of an unburdened life. What then comes in to fill the void spaces will be a joy and a delight."

If I wasn't aware of it -it's new to me- is my definition of news. Yet a collective... (group? weirdly normalized demographic? meme herd?) ...races to limits of jittering (GO away spell checker with your red squigly furloughs!)(but thanks for the help with "furloughs") attention spans to the edge of know the instant something is known, and deride those arriving late with derivatives or repostings, a day, or perhaps hours later. Your channel policies may vary. My personal news sphere works a little more chilled. Since it's all history anyway, it may be years old and still be relevant. Maybe even more so. Like this young man who seems to know what's going on in his country, much to the surprise of the news media crew. It's an intelligence politicians try to marginalize or ostracize and all those other tricky social instrumentation functions that reduce the chance that they will be listened to by the law of large numbers. Us small numbers don't matter, ...

An underlying sense, always at the baseline of being, that everything is ok, and everything will always be ok. Getting as excited, worried, joyful, depressed in the moment as much as we like, but always at the core of our being, when we return, is this vibration, this bigger picture than our little self that doesn't know what's going on, and fears the worst, or thinks the best will last forever, if it can only catch it for good this time. And it's ok -that we're running amok, because we are so much larger and so much more than these monkey minds and primate hearts, that we are almost bemused spectators to the antics of our attachments. And this is not a running away, it's a making a space for us to participate fully but it doesn't define us. We are not of any of our experiences. It's not a new skill, it's been with us all along, we just never gave it much thought, but we notice one day there's always been this part of our awareness that's ...

 Speaking into the void. A black hole. Even read by a million eyes through-out history and beyond, any missive, any form of expression, communication, is only received, only processed for a flash in time and then  *poof*  it is gone from any individual mind. Only in the collective is its relevance. Visiting kin in the South while growing up I was privy to warm nights like blankets and the smell of growing earth in open fields of fireflies. Like fire flowers on the stalks of long grass. We collected them bare-foot, in jars, on magical dusks. The few captured we released, after close scrutiny. Maybe a worse for the wear. Information today reminds me of these fireflies. The best hope a burst could have would be to trigger or resonate with something larger in the psyches of the reader or viewer. Words take up with the thinking mind, but they can trigger the feeling mind and even create images or things like images. portraits maybe. we don't have the words for aggregates ...

I could totally make stories for each of these unique faces.

Bigotry is a curious impulse to make the world more like ourselves. Because of the fear of those unlike us and the fear of the unknown. We are wired to bet on safety, we are wired for life in the herd. It will take time for these instincts to encompass more than our families, our countries, religion, gender or race or even our own species, much less other indigenous life forms. We are still a primitive and precarious stage of evolution that could go either way, for both our own survival and that of much of our planet. In the long run, it may not matter, I think other intelligences are at work and it's not just up to us. I just hope we have it within our species to give our best showing before we are destroyed by our own ignorance. Nature may just write it off as a path explored, with some fatal flaws, but somehow I think we take it more personally. Which may be part of the problem.  

"In trying to improve myself, I'm always trying to find underlying principles that influence large swaths of my behavior." I read this article today, quoted above, from a friend's tweet. I've been thinking about similar themes of late. He makes a good point regarding the "long term aggregate" as a lens to look at how our day to day decisions impact both how we ended up here and now and where we may be headed in the future. Neither deferred pleasure nor immediate satisfaction but rather daily actions that reflect and demonstrate our core values, most of the time. There's an authentic part of each of us that is never fooled or impressed by words or intentions, only what it observes repeatedly in our behavior. I believe much of our self-esteem is an unconscious tally of these actions.  The note I scribbled to myself last night, that made the article particularly relevant, was this: Great goals and proclamations are lies and bullshit It's wha...

probably my most important insight with age has been this simple adage from the Dokkodo by Miyamoto Musashi, one of my greatest mentors and respected guides: "Accept Everything Just The Way It Is." and go from there. most of his other guidelines are pretty much embedded in conscience at this point...

was reading an article about choosing a "theme" for the new year instead of a set of resolutions, and also watching an Udemy course exploring Ben Franklin's thought that instead of doing the 30 days to make a new habit stuff, take a path requiring minimal will by picking 13 virtues, one per week to focus on, which cycles 4 times during the year. I liked parts of both of these and derived the following... Weekly missions of focus on one thing, but without much planning in advance. So I have the day to day of my own routines and following my established goals (like the 12 projects) , but each week will also have a particular in-depth focus that's completely independent of routines and long term goals...this beats both the superficial scattering or the long boring lock-in in favor of something completed in a week. It will be the most interesting dive I can think of doing in that span. And without predicting, week to week, what this will be, I'm having fun already ...

process over goal enhanced through time but self sufficient to the moment and can always be realized now expansive experience, not description requires a degree of mindfulness a condition of freedom in this are clusters of words birds flitting on thermal currents of intersections centeredlightness of being stillness letting go sovereignty relaxation words about state about places roads between destinations time slows on the interstates does not matterneed not be in external pursuits, holding a quality of internal state more than the thing or happening the space it happens within mindful  cultivation of state less derailed by circumstance recenters more quickly still need daily reminders though not to mistake means for ends

I decided to write some mobile applications. And publish them (to introduce a certain rigor.) I plan to write 12. An arbitrary number, but one that feels right, para aprender, in order to learn. I chose to use Corona, so I could jump right in and start making stuff. I like the idea of just a canvas, a set of apis and a minimalist language (Lua, which is awesome.) It has limitations, but it also has a pretty wide swathe of a sweet spot; of things it can do well, cross platform, and these things involve interesting conceptual spaces: graphics, ai, game mechanics, physics engines, particle systems. I couldn't write a very decent business app with it, but I can work some other mojo. That’s the hypothesis. The 12 apps are both the curriculum and metrics of progress. I finished the first app this week and rolled it out to both google/android and apple play stores (an education in its own right.) It may never get more than a dozen downloads and dire reviews but I that wasn’t the p...

The wars have receded, rebuilding the land, a few minor skirmishes to mop up. Before the next wars. Some preparation to do with the planning mind, but mostly it is about the spirit. Facing what is, adapting with resourcefulness and skill, utilizing experience. Knowing when to rest, be silent and consolidate for a moment before fiercely re-engaging. Keeping a clarity in the present to monitor traitorous thoughts and sabotaging emotion. Not in order to suppress or escape them, but to meet them head-on with acid inquiry: how are you beneficial? what purpose do you serve?  The minor harpies slink away from this scrutiny, they had nothing to offer but abrasions to the soul. The big ones, the gremlins, were once important, perhaps. But now they are old records with broken logic and tired solutions to problems that exist only in the past. They act as if they have paid their dues to stay, and I should be grateful for their insults and slander, and act betrayed when I lock them out in the c...

Yesterday I played with gephi . I extracted my 'social graph' from facebook (gimme! mine!) and loaded it with gephi on my desktop. Gephi is a tool to explore the connections between things ---any things--- in order to gain insight about what their relationships may mean. Kind of like a scope or lens into what isn't really visual in an immediate sense ---but maybe should be. Network models can reveal patterns in social interactions, viruses, forest fires, terrorist cells, galaxies, bees, banking, cancer, aids, basically anywhere 2 or more things interact. Or even one thing by itself, if it's hard up. So kind of a useful approach I think. The view into my modest (meager?) social net paints a curious picture based on interaction with content on my wall. Like, hey, there are no connections between your professional and family relations? And, we've spotted a few 'bridge' people between a couple of hubs that may have a foot in both worlds. (btw, I turned off...