It’s blinding when I see something put clearly and realize just how stuck I’ve been on my own imperfect understanding. Here, have 6 what-ifs.
What if, to the contrary, positive thinking represents a biased grasp of reality? What if, when I was depressed, I learned something valuable, that I wouldn’t be able to learn at a lower cost? What if it was a collapse of illusions – the collapse of unrealistic thinking – and the glimpse of a reality that actually caused my anxiety? What if, when depressed, we actually perceive reality more accurately? What if both my need to be happy and the demand of psychotherapy to heal depression are based on the same illusion? What if the so-called gold standard of therapy is just a comforting pseudoscience itself?
All of those sentences are just couched as what-ifs to entice people to read them and consider. My opinion? Just delete all the “What if” parts and capitalize the new first letter of each of those statements. Go ahead, reread them as statements instead of questions. What if, indeed.
I picked up this book off someone’s bookshelf, thumbed through it, gave it the page 88 test, and decided it was interesting enough… and borrowed it. (It is vanishingly rare that I borrow books. I normally just buy my own and hand the potentially borrowed book back to its owner.) Over a year passed with the book untouched.
I picked it up again and spent an hour with it hopping around and again decided I did want to read it. So I bought my own copy and returned the loaner. Then one day I was preparing for some podcast conversation and (as I often do) I thought about what books I might have which are related… and, for the third time I landed in this book. I dove into the index, found something interesting related to the podcast conversation I was preparing for and got lost reading for an hour.
Okay, fine. Apparently, it’s important that I read this book. So the other day, I cracked it open at the very beginning. I find that while I often skip chapters in a book, it’s always useful to read the introduction, preface, foreword, etc. Below is the literal first paragraph in this book, which I’d not seen in my first three visits.
During rare, spontaneous moments, experiences of very special quality and great import emerge from the depths of the human brain. To each person, these awakenings seem awesomely new. What they convey is not. It is the simplest, oldest wisdom in the world. The message is that ultimate meaning is to be found in this present moment, infusing our everyday lives, here and now. But one can’t predict such major peaks of enlightenment. Their insight-wisdom is next to impossible to describe. Even so, these fragile events inspired our major religions in ways that still shape our cultural development.
If you see the book, you’ll think it’s going to be some left-brain, hyper-analytical, what forest? …it’s just trees, sort of thing. At least, that’s what I thought, each of those first three times I visited. Turns out, it’s actually 850 pages of, “Woa! That’s interesting…”
I’ve recently started reading a book about the importance of having exactly one thing upon which to focus. As with priority, becoming priorities, focusing on exactly one thing soon becomes two, and then three. Suddenly, it’s 23 things. And since the first 90% of any thing is vastly easier than the second 90%, in short order I’m busy, overwhelmed, sprinting in multiple directions. As the Russians say: Chase two rabbits and you’ll catch neither.
Do you want to be the artist who loses their joy for the process, who has strip-mined their soul in such a way that there is nothing left to draw upon? Burn out or fade away—that was the question in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note. How is that even a dilemma?
To answer Holiday’s first question I say emphatically, no! Thus I’m currently well into clearing the decks of multiple focuses. I’m imagining endings for things, major pivots and minor adjustments. There’s a great quote from Epictetus about how any idiot can steer the ship when the wind, sea and weather are good, but in challenging times all it takes is but an instant of distraction to lose the whole ship.
In college (which was before the Internet was readily accessible; before the Web was invented) was when I first encountered true information and opportunity overload. In hindsight, there really should have been a class about how that’s a real thing, and ways that one should embrace it. Not fight it. Not try to control it… but ways to embrace it.
The tradition of the commonplace book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association. The historian Robert Darnton describes this tangled mix of writing and reading […]
The point that it’s the tension that feels uncomfortable is the key that unlocked for me. Yes, there’s tension from all the complexity and voluminous information. That’s a feature to be used and leveraged, not a problem to be resolved.
Are you heading toward what you already understand or toward your unknown?
In a conversation exploring the depths of dialogue and presence, Craig and Jesse get into the intriguing parallels between Quaker meetings and Gurdjieff groups, revealing how these practices foster a deeply present state of mind, akin to a slow, thoughtful game of chess.
I Think that there’s a beautiful edge of curiosity here, around looking at the unknown, which is the utter willingness to show up, like dumbfounded, or stupid.
~ Jesse Danger (12:59)
[…] leaning into the asking-as-a-five-year-old, or asking-for-a-friend-meme. I also think [our] challenge needs to contain, letting go of the urge to control the result. [When] asking as a five-year-old, I’m not hiding from the possibility that people are going to respond, “that’s stupid, Craig.” I’m not hiding from that. I’m asking as a five year old because it challenges me to ask the simplest question.
~ Craig (13:41)
In the conversation, Craig and Jesse dig into the intricacies of meaningful dialogue, emphasizing the value of approaching conversations without an agenda or purpose. They discuss the concept of dialogue as proposed by David Bohm in his book “On Dialogue”, emphasizing the importance of creating a space free from authority or hierarchy. This concept aligns with Jesse’s experiences in Gurdjieff groups and Quaker meetings, where a deeply present state of mind is cultivated, devoid of ego and personal agendas.
The dialogue further explores the idea of conversations being like a slow, thoughtful game of chess, requiring patience, presence, and a willingness to engage with the unknown. They discuss the challenge of asking questions with the innocence of a child, free from the fear of appearing ignorant or the need to control the conversation’s outcome. This approach, they argue, opens up new possibilities for exploration and understanding in conversations, whether in structured groups like the Gurdjieff or Quaker meetings or in everyday interactions.
Resources
David Bohm’s book, On Dialogue — Craig references this book as an inspiration for their discussion on dialogue. David Bohm, a renowned physicist and philosopher, explores the concept of dialogue as a free-flowing and agenda-less conversation that isn’t bound by authority or hierarchy, emphasizing its potential for creative and transformative understanding​​.
Gurdjieff groups — Jesse mentions participating in Gurdjieff groups, which are based on the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a mystic and spiritual teacher. These groups focus on self-awareness and deep presence, aligning with the Quaker meetings’ approach to deep, mindful engagement​​.
Quaker Meetings — Both Jesse and Craig discuss the Quaker meetings’ influence on their views of presence and dialogue. Quaker meetings, known for their simplicity and emphasis on inner guidance, involve participants speaking from a deeply present and relevant place, akin to a form of spiritual expression​​.
I truly don’t mind the cold; I enjoy snow and blustery winds and cozy fires and hot cocoa. Arguably, I suffer much more in unusually hot weather than I do in unusually cold weather. But even I have a limit.
The man felt like a speck in the frozen nothingness. Every direction he turned, he could see ice stretching to the edge of the Earth: white ice and blue ice, glacial-ice tongues and ice wedges. There were no living creatures in sight. Not a bear or even a bird. Nothing but him.
I often remind myself that there’s nothing new under the sun. Of course, that’s not actually true, but it reminds me to temper my insanity. Enthusiasm is wonderful fuel for getting things done, but I’m too often sprinting up in the insanity range, rather than gleefully skipping along in the enthusiastic range. I digress.
Xanadu, the ultimate hypertext information system, began as Ted Nelson’s quest for personal liberation. The inventor’s hummingbird mind and his inability to keep track of anything left him relatively helpless. He wanted to be a writer and a filmmaker, but he needed a way to avoid getting lost in the frantic multiplication of associations his brain produced. His great inspiration was to imagine a computer program that could keep track of all the divergent paths of his thinking and writing. To this concept of branching, nonlinear writing, Nelson gave the name hypertext.
I’ve spent a lot of time learning about, and tinkering with, personal knowledge systems. To my embarrassment, I don’t actually recall ever learning about Xanadu. I vaguely knew that the “hypertext” of the HyperText Transfer Protocol—the HT in the HTTP and HTTPS—wasn’t a fresh invention; The Web as we saw it invented did not also invent hyptertext. But I’d never seen this Wired article by Wolf.
Without over-explaining how the soup gets made, I’ll just mention that this, and the third, things for you to savor this week are exceptionally nerdy this week. I’m not sure whether I’m more excited by the contents of this essay (which to be fair, I only skimmed) or the fact that it’s from like 1992.
[I]n having a body, we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the spatial arrangement of items around us is not an afterthought: it is an integral part of the way we think, plan, and behave.
Those four sentences are a good start at explaining what it means to be human. I heard Ido Portal (on a podcast) say something like that… about our legs for moving, arms for manipulating, and our spine for orienting ourselves. Just some random thoughts today around space (not “outer”) and ourselves.
As I’ve written before, sometimes I find something that just makes me raise my eyebrows… and back away slowly… and, okay, lots more people should actually see this. Thus I present to you everything you never even thought to wonder about how the Athenians process-ified Democracy.
The Athenians had to keep those bodies flowing smoothly, then, and that was largely a matter of keeping track of who belonged where and when. They also had to maintain a smooth and dependable flow of the information generated by those bodies — the votes, the decrees, the endless speechifying. They had, in short, to do a lot of stuff that modern information technology would have helped them tremendously to do, and nonetheless they managed pretty well, with the materials at hand, to build the tools they needed to make their system work.
Those tools — the info tech of ancient Athenian democracy — are the subject of the following Notes. I present them now without further ado.
Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck—and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.
The negative point in the quote below is obvious, but it bears repeating since, somewhere, there’s some excited youngling rushing to build technology and online communities . . .
We thought that we could build new communities online that could replace the ones we’d built in real life (IRL), but we were wrong. As internet usage has gone up and face time has gone down, we’ve become more isolated, depressed, and in some cases, violent. We are as unhappy as we have been in a long time.
How can mindfulness and meditation be integrated into physical training to enhance strength, mobility, and self-awareness?
Iron Gump joins Craig Constantine to share how meditative strength training bridges the gap between physical exertion and mindful awareness.
This is what you were talking about earlier. The meditative aspect. What I call it is meditative strength training (MiST). The meditative aspect is developing the awareness as you move, and then maintaining that awareness as you move. So taking very simple exercises— […] So that people feel, ‘Okay, I’m not going into this super extreme odd space where I don’t know what to do.’
~ Iron Gump (13:17)
Craig and Iron Gump explore the integration of mindfulness with physical training, discussing how meditative practices can enhance strength exercises. Iron Gump shares his progression from traditional Chinese martial arts in his teenage years to weight training and eventually to a blend of both disciplines. He emphasizes the significance of combining body alignment and breath work with exercises like squats and lunges, transforming them into meditative practices. This approach, which he calls “meditative strength training,” helps individuals develop a deeper awareness of their movements and maintain mindfulness throughout their workouts.
They also discuss the benefits of barefoot training, with Iron Gump recounting his experiences running and hiking barefoot in various terrains. He explains how this practice improves sensitivity and proprioception, leading to better reaction times and overall body awareness.
Additionally, Iron Gump shares his teaching experiences with diverse groups, from elderly women in Maui to fighters in a South Philly gym. He highlights how slowing down movements and focusing on alignment can reveal hidden weaknesses and enhance overall strength and conditioning, drawing on principles from Tai Chi and other martial arts.
Takeaways
Exploring meditative strength training — emphasizes the combination of body alignment and breath work with exercises like squats and lunges to develop mindfulness.
Importance of mindfulness in physical training — highlights how being aware of movements and maintaining that awareness enhances workout effectiveness.
The role of traditional Chinese martial arts — discusses the influence of martial arts in developing physical and meditative aspects of training.
Benefits of barefoot training — describes how running and hiking barefoot improve sensitivity, proprioception, and reaction times.
Challenges and rewards of teaching diverse groups — shares experiences working with elderly women and fighters, adapting training methods to suit different populations.
Transforming everyday exercises — illustrates how simple exercises can become meditative by incorporating alignment and breath work.
Connection between slow movements and strength — explains how slowing down movements and focusing on alignment can reveal weaknesses and improve strength.
Integration of martial arts principles in fitness — talks about applying Tai Chi and other martial arts concepts to modern strength and conditioning routines.
Developing body awareness — emphasizes the importance of understanding body mechanics and alignment in enhancing physical training.
Adapting traditional practices for modern fitness — discusses how traditional exercises can be made relevant and beneficial for contemporary fitness enthusiasts.
A man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all the doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false.
