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line 7, column 62: Self reference doesn't match document location [help]

  <link href="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml" rel="self" />
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<title type="text">Armand Reads</title>
<id>http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml</id>
<updated>2024-01-10T16:47:32.289000Z</updated>
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<title type="text">Warriorborn by Jim Butcher</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/warriorborn-by-jim-butcher</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:48.733000Z</updated>
<published>2023-09-21T05:03:45Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/warriorborn-by-jim-butcher" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CD921ZLY&location=18">Location 18</a>:Sir Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, Knight of Albion, newly minted lieutenant of the Spirearch’s Guard, strode into the Spirearch’s garden and into a storm of olfactory sensation. <hr /></div>
</content>
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<title type="text">Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/agent-to-the-stars-by-john-scalzi</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:49.681000Z</updated>
<published>2023-09-05T20:26:33Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/agent-to-the-stars-by-john-scalzi" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYC96&location=119">Location 119</a>:I just closed the biggest deal of the year to date, earned one and a quarter million for my company and myself, and still had ninety seconds before the meeting with Carl. More than enough time to pee. When you’re good, you’re good. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, Katherine Addison</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/a-year-and-a-day-in-old-theradane-by-scott-lynch-elizabeth-bear-katherine-addison</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:48.761000Z</updated>
<published>2023-08-20T09:29:56Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/a-year-and-a-day-in-old-theradane-by-scott-lynch-elizabeth-bear-katherine-addison" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07TMMB3HB&location=44">Location 44</a>:It was raining when Amarelle Parathis went out just after sunset to find a drink, and there was strange magic in the rain. <hr /></div>
</content>
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<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-republic-of-thieves-by-scott-lynch</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:57.305000Z</updated>
<published>2023-08-13T08:10:32Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-republic-of-thieves-by-scott-lynch" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004J4WLIM&location=1204">Location 1204</a>:But Chains could be disappointed. Oh, yes. On the steps of the temple he could marshal his mysterious powers to sway passersby, to plead logically or sermonize furiously until they parted with hard-earned coins, and in his tutelage he focused those same powers on Locke until it seemed that Chains’ disappointment was a rebuke worse than a beating. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004J4WLIM&location=4201">Location 4201</a>:"I don’t expect life to make sense," he said after a few moments, "but it would certainly be pleasant if it would stop kicking us in the balls." <hr /></div>
</content>
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<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-by-gabrielle-zevin</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:58.295000Z</updated>
<published>2023-07-31T01:32:18Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-by-gabrielle-zevin" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=38">Location 38</a>:That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love; It is enough, the freight should be Proportioned to the groove. —emily dickinson <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=71">Location 71</a>:Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur—a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds—and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=97">Location 97</a>:Marx saying, "Weren’t you even curious what it was? There’s a world of people and things, if you can manage to stop being a misanthrope for a second." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=109">Location 109</a>:But there she was: Sadie Green, in the flesh. And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. There’s Sadie, he thought. Yes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=222">Location 222</a>:"You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=267">Location 267</a>:Sadie liked the phrase "an abundance of caution." It reminded her of a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves. She imagined that "caution" was a creature of some kind—maybe, a cross between a Saint Bernard and an elephant. A large, intelligent, friendly animal that could be counted on to defend the Green sisters from threats, existential and otherwise. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Aug 02, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=5927">Location 5927</a>:At a certain age—in Sadie’s case, thirty-four—there comes a time when life largely consists of having meals with old friends who are passing through town. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Aug 02, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=401">Location 401</a>:To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love. Many years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, "There is no more intimate act than play, even sex." The internet responded: no one who had had good sex would ever say that, and there must be something seriously wrong with Sam. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=437">Location 437</a>:"Friendship is friendship, and charity is charity," Freda said. "You know very well that I was in Germany as a child, and you have heard the stories, so I won’t tell them to you again. But I can tell you that the people who give you charity are never your friends. It is not possible to receive charity from a friend." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=987">Location 987</a>:And so it went. Marx helped Sam with everything while never appearing to be helping Sam at all. And so, coats miraculously materialized in plastic bags, just waiting for Sam to ask about them. And gift certificates for restaurants were always left before the holidays when Sam couldn’t travel home. And when it became clear that Sam struggled to take the stairs in the dormitory they’d been assigned to, and that the elevator was only intermittently functional, Marx announced his intention to live off campus. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=995">Location 995</a>:Why did Marx do this for this strange boy, who most people found vaguely unpleasant? He liked Sam. He had spent his childhood among rich and supposedly interesting people, and he knew that truly unusual minds were rare. He felt that when Harvard had assigned them to be roommates, Sam had become his responsibility. So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1060">Location 1060</a>:"Promise me, we won’t ever do this again," Sadie said. "Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you." These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1100">Location 1100</a>:One of Sam’s eventual strengths as an artist and as a businessman was that he knew the importance of drama, of setting the scene. He wanted to ask her to work with him at a special place—the occasion of their prospective creative union should be memorable. Even then, he felt that if they made a game, and if the game became what he knew it could be, he would want there to be a story about the day Sam Masur and Sadie Green had decided to work together. He was already imagining Sam-and-Sadie lore, and he didn’t even have a definitive idea for a game yet. But this was classic Sam—he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1161">Location 1161</a>:There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1257">Location 1257</a>:"If music be the food of love, play on." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1309">Location 1309</a>:Sadie knew that the key to making a video game on limited resources was to make the limitations part of the style. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1318">Location 1318</a>:And as they were coming up with the character design for their "child," they found themselves drawn to Japanese references over and over: the deceptively innocent paintings of Yoshitomo Nara; Miyazaki anime like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke; other, more adult anime like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, both of which Sam had loved; and of course, Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, the first of which is The Great Wave. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1337">Location 1337</a>:mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1342">Location 1342</a>:And as any mixed-race person will tell you—to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1590">Location 1590</a>:But for Marx, the world was like a breakfast at a five-star hotel in an Asian country—the abundance of it was almost overwhelming. Who wouldn’t want a pineapple smoothie, a roast pork bun, an omelet, pickled vegetables, sushi, and a green-tea-flavored croissant? They were all there for the taking and delicious, in their own way. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1599">Location 1599</a>:Marx was a prodigious reader, and he felt like Sadie might be the kind of book that one could read many times, and always come away with something new. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1740">Location 1740</a>:It made sense that Anders should find him. Anders, born in Sweden, was exactly the kind of decent, guileless person who did not look away when presented with the scourge of homelessness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=1753">Location 1753</a>:Marx usually enjoyed the experience of making love to an ex, and this evening was no exception. It was interesting to note the way your body had changed and how their body had changed in the time since you’d last been intimate. There was a pleasant Weltschmerz that came over him. It was the nostalgia one experienced when visiting an old school and finding that the desks were so much smaller than in one’s memory. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=2462">Location 2462</a>:Zoe joked—or maybe it wasn’t a joke—that her first sexual experience had been with her cello. Before she’d become a composer, she’d been a child cello prodigy, and she’d loved nothing so much as going outside, stripping, and playing by herself. Her mother had once discovered her this way behind their house and had made Zoe see a therapist. (The therapist determined that Zoe had the healthiest body image of any teenage girl he’d ever met.) <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=3115">Location 3115</a>:Sam’s doctor said to him, "The good news is that the pain is in your head." But I am in my head, Sam thought. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=3955">Location 3955</a>:Sadie and Marx would buy a house together, somewhere in Laurel Canyon or maybe Palisades. And they’d get a dog—a big, rangy, mixed-breed thing, or if not that, a Borzoi called Zelda or Rosella. They’d throw big dinner parties. The house would be the kind of place where everyone wanted to congregate because Sadie and Marx had great taste. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=4640">Location 4640</a>:You thank the Worths for coming in and you tell them that you will discuss Our Infinite Days with Sadie and Sam when they’re back from New York. You promise they’ll hear from you no later than the end of next week. You look at Charlotte and Adam, and you see how much they need you to make this game with them. You see how many times they must have been told no, the wanting in their eyes. You wonder what they’re doing for day jobs and how long their relationship will survive if it isn’t bolstered by some success. (They say success kills relationships, but the lack of it will do it just as quickly.) One of the absolute best parts of your own job is being able to tell an artist, Yes. I see you. I get what you’re doing. Let’s do this thing. Even though it’s a breach of professional protocol, you contemplate telling them your company is going to make Our Infinite Days right now. You like these people; you want to play this game; it’s a no-brainer. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=4898">Location 4898</a>:The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=4956">Location 4956</a>:You are in the strawberry field. You are dead. A prompt comes up on the screen: Start game from the beginning? Yes, you think. Why not? If you play again, you might win. Suddenly, there you are, brand-new, feathers restored, bones unbroken, sanguine with fresh blood. You are flying more slowly than last time, because you don’t want to miss any of it. The cows. The lavender. The woman humming Beethoven. The distant bees. The sad-faced man and the couple in the pond. The beat of your heart before you go onstage. The feel of a lace sleeve against your skin. Your mother singing Beatles songs to you, trying to sound like she’s from Liverpool. The first playthrough of Ichigo. The rooftop on Abbot Kinney. The taste of Sadie mixed with Hefeweizen beer. Sam’s round head in your hands. A thousand paper cranes. Yellow-tinted sunglasses. A perfect peach. This world, you think. You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap. This time, you keep flying. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=5438">Location 5438</a>:Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09JBCGQB8&location=5483">Location 5483</a>:A traveler disembarks from the train. The land is covered with a thin layer of frost, and the ground crunches beneath the traveler’s boot. Look closely: Is that grass pushing through the ice? Could it be the white head of a crocus? Yes, it is almost spring. A text box appears on the screen: Welcome, Stranger. <hr /></div>
</content>
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<title type="text">How to Not Die Alone by Logan Ury</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/how-to-not-die-alone-by-logan-ury</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:56.389000Z</updated>
<published>2023-07-29T14:27:32Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/how-to-not-die-alone-by-logan-ury" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08BZVKX75&location=39">Location 39</a>:Great relationships are built, not discovered. A lasting relationship doesn’t just happen. It is the culmination of a series of decisions, including when to get out there, whom to date, how to end it with the wrong person, when to settle down with the right one, and everything in between. Make good decisions, and you propel yourself toward a great love story. Make bad ones, and you veer off course, doomed to repeat the same harmful patterns over and over. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08BZVKX75&location=78">Location 78</a>:Behavior change is a two-step process. First we’ll learn about the invisible forces driving your behavior, those errors in judgment that lead to costly mistakes. Mistakes like refusing to commit because you always wonder if there’s someone better out there (Chapter 4), pursuing the prom date instead of the life partner (Chapter 7), or staying in bad relationships after their expiration date (Chapter 14). But awareness on its own doesn’t lead to action. (Knowing you shouldn’t date "bad boys" or "manic pixie dream girls" doesn’t make them any less appealing.) You have to actually do something about it. That’s where the second part of behavioral science comes in. Tried-and-tested techniques can help you jump from knowing that information to doing something about it. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Art of Clear Thinking by Hasard Lee</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-art-of-clear-thinking-by-hasard-lee</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:58.631000Z</updated>
<published>2023-07-26T02:22:27Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-art-of-clear-thinking-by-hasard-lee" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=75">Location 75</a>:Today it represents one of the great human achievements where, despite nearly one hundred thousand flights taking off per day, U.S. airlines haven’t had a single fatal crash in more than a decade. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=130">Location 130</a>:I didn’t have time to think through each option, so I fell back on the mantra, "There’s no problem so bad you can’t make it worse." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=159">Location 159</a>:Though we have talented pilots, the mantra that we bet our lives on is that a good pilot uses superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of superior skill. Clean and clear decision-making will nearly always beat talent alone. The ability to make a correct decision with incomplete information and a limited amount of time is not just for fighter pilots, though—it’s a universal skill. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=171">Location 171</a>:The average person, despite physically generating only one hundred watts of electricity—about what a light bulb uses—now consumes over twelve thousand watts of energy. That energy powers the technology that amplifies our decisions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=235">Location 235</a>:The most important part is being deliberate in making decisions and then debriefing afterward on how to improve. It’s this iteration that over the last fifty years has developed United States fighter pilots into the most capable air force in the world—one that hasn’t lost a U.S. soldier to enemy aircraft since April 15, 1953, and hasn’t lost in an air-to-air engagement in over fifty years. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=321">Location 321</a>:Next was analyzing the situation. Developing a proper understanding of the problem is the first step to solving it. Our instinct is often to bypass this critical step and begin acting. It’s a cognitive bias for many people and organizations, whereby we believe that the sooner we start fixing a problem, the sooner we’ll solve it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=654">Location 654</a>:Because power laws can have such an outsize effect on outcomes, it’s important to be able to quickly identify them and understand their implications. For a multitude of reasons, people consistently fail to account for them, which often leads to a skewed assessment of the problem they’re facing and results in a poor decision. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=796">Location 796</a>:Today, Google—founded by the former Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin—is worth over $1.5 trillion. There’s no way to tell whether Excite would have gone on to be as successful as Google if George had bought the students’ algorithm that day. However, passing on it is now considered one of the worst business decisions in history, one that eventually contributed to the company’s collapse. The root cause is that George didn’t understand power laws on a deep enough level and how they related to the problems he was facing. He didn’t see how the exponential growth of the internet would radically alter the system within which he was working. Hiring teams of journalists to review websites was a linear solution. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jul 31, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=808">Location 808</a>:Pioneered by Robert Metcalfe, one of the early inventors of the Ethernet, the power law, known as Metcalfe’s Law, states that the value of a network grows exponentially with the total number of users. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Aug 04, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=818">Location 818</a>:In biology, for instance, Kleiber’s law demonstrates that an animal’s metabolism doesn’t scale linearly with its size but rather adheres to a power law. For example, a cat, despite weighing over one hundred times more than a mouse, only requires thirty-two times the energy to sustain itself. It’s a form of economies of scale whereby a doubling of the size doesn’t require a doubling of the energy consumption. This law surprisingly holds true throughout much of the animal kingdom—the same is true for a cow, which is one hundred times heavier than a cat, and a whale, which is one hundred times heavier than a cow. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=848">Location 848</a>:The long-tail power law forms the basis for the economist Vilfredo Pareto’s famous 80–20 rule, where he noticed that 20 percent of the people in Italy owned 80 percent of the land. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B9KTLJR1&location=853">Location 853</a>:For example, named after George Zipf, Zipf’s law shows that the most frequent word used in a language will occur twice as often as the second-most-frequent word, three times as often as the third-most-frequent word, and so on. In the English language, the is the most frequent word used and accounts for nearly 5 percent of all words, followed by of, which accounts for just over 3.5 percent, and then and, which accounts for 2.4 percent. It’s a surprisingly consistent law that holds true throughout nearly all languages. The takeaway for a new speaker is that by just learning the top 135 words of a language, they can speak half of all the words used by a native speaker. <hr /></div>
</content>
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<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson and Aliya Chen</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/yumi-and-the-nightmare-painter-by-brandon-sanderson-and-aliya-chen</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:57.298000Z</updated>
<published>2023-07-23T15:09:07Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/yumi-and-the-nightmare-painter-by-brandon-sanderson-and-aliya-chen" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BPN9JT6M&location=1062">Location 1062</a>:She was just so hopeful. Emotions flowed inside him like blood from wounds, warm and sharp. How long had it been since he’d felt needed, wanted? He didn’t mean to lie. He wasn’t really lying, was he? Her spirits had chosen him, brought him here, perhaps to paint them. In that moment, he wanted so badly to be the hero someone needed. To have a chance to make up for the mistakes of his past. To become something. It wasn’t arrogance, as some of you might assume. It was more desperation. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BPN9JT6M&location=1424">Location 1424</a>:Perhaps nightmares are Cultivation’s method of giving us a way of surviving trauma in a strangely safe environment. (At least safe physically.) A way to put it behind us, forget the details, but retain the growth. Nightmares are vicarious living done in our own minds. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-myth-of-normal-by-gabor-mate</id>
<updated>2023-09-28T17:41:56.090000Z</updated>
<published>2023-06-21T11:50:28Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-myth-of-normal-by-gabor-mate" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=226">Location 226</a>:The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. —Erich Fromm, The Sane Society <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=230">Location 230</a>:In the most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well. Health and wellness have become a modern fixation. Multibillion-dollar industries bank on people’s ongoing investment—mental and emotional, not to mention financial—in endless quests to eat better, look younger, live longer, or feel livelier, or simply to suffer fewer symptoms. We encounter would-be bombshells of "breaking health news" on magazine covers, in TV news stories, omnipresent advertising, and the daily deluge of viral online content, all pushing this or that mode of self-betterment. We do our best to keep up: we take supplements, join yoga studios, serially switch diets, shell out for genetic testing, strategize to prevent cancer or dementia, and seek medical advice or alternative therapies for maladies of the body, psyche, and soul. And yet our collective health is deteriorating. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=251">Location 251</a>:Another way of saying it: chronic illness—mental or physical—is to a large extent a function or feature of the way things are and not a glitch; a consequence of how we live, not a mysterious aberration. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=265">Location 265</a>:It is my contention that by its very nature our social and economic culture generates chronic stressors that undermine well-being in the most serious of ways, as they have done with increasing force over the past several decades. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=267">Location 267</a>:Here’s an analogy I find helpful. In a laboratory, a culture is a biochemical broth custom-made to promote the development of this or that organism. Assuming the microbes in question start out with a clean bill of health and genetic fitness, a suitable and well-maintained culture should allow for their happy, healthy growth and proliferation. If the same organisms begin showing pathologies at unprecedented rates, or fail to thrive, it’s either because the culture has become contaminated or because it was the wrong mixture in the first place. Whichever the case, we could rightly call this a toxic culture—unsuitable for the creatures it is meant to support. Or worse: dangerous to their existence. It is the same with human societies. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098PXTS5K&location=278">Location 278</a>:In the United States, the richest country in history and the epicenter of the globalized economic system, 60 percent of adults have a chronic disorder such as high blood pressure or diabetes, and over 40 percent have two or more such conditions.[4] Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two.[5] <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/fourth-wing-by-rebecca-yarros</id>
<updated>2023-06-25T19:48:17.211000Z</updated>
<published>2023-06-13T09:33:03Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/fourth-wing-by-rebecca-yarros" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BGDM197Q&location=2562">Location 2562</a>:"Here’s the thing, Sorrengail. Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">How to Live by Derek Sivers</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/how-to-live-by-derek-sivers</id>
<updated>2023-08-30T21:22:48.821000Z</updated>
<published>2023-06-13T09:33:03Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/how-to-live-by-derek-sivers" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09Y7P4DR6&location=23">Location 23</a>:All misery comes from dependency. If you weren’t dependent on income, people, or technology, you would be truly free. The only way to be deeply happy is to break all dependencies. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09Y7P4DR6&location=25">Location 25</a>:Most problems are interpersonal. To be part of society is to lose a part of yourself. Cut ties with society. Don’t engage. Don’t even rebel, because that’s reacting. Instead, do what you’d do if you were the only person on Earth. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 21, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09Y7P4DR6&location=31">Location 31</a>:Rules and norms were created by the upper class to protect their privilege — to categorize people into high versus low society. None of it applies to you. Long ago, people had to follow norms to have high social status, otherwise they’d be ostracized and couldn’t survive. But now you can survive, mate, and thrive without social status. So it’s both irrational and unwise to follow those norms. Dogs bark. People speak. It doesn’t mean a thing. What they say and do has nothing to do with you, even if it seems directed your way. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/conversations-on-love-by-natasha-lunn</id>
<updated>2023-08-30T21:22:47.696000Z</updated>
<published>2023-06-02T08:59:40Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/conversations-on-love-by-natasha-lunn" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=103">Location 103</a>:‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.’ (M. Scott Peck) <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 07, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=141">Location 141</a>:My pattern was often the same: I’d date someone new, idealize them, keep parts of myself hidden, and perform the role of a woman more palatable than I believed myself to be. This woman never asked for anything. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=146">Location 146</a>:When you are not being honest in a relationship – to another person or to yourself – it is a little like screwing on the top of a jam jar when the ridges are out of line. An onlooker might think you are screwing it on just fine, but you can feel a stiffness developing that warns you it’s not on properly, and you know then that, however hard you try to keep turning it, the lid will never tightly seal. In this way I could always feel something in these relationships was out of sync from the beginning. Moving through the motions of intimacy with this dread pulling at the back of my mind was an anxious state to exist in, always suspecting that a person did not want to be with me but being too afraid to ask. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=159">Location 159</a>:I learnt that the loneliest place of all is lying in bed at night next to someone who makes you feel small, with your back to theirs, still hoping they will turn over and put their arms around you. At the time, I recognized this suppressing of the self as a private, graceless shame; only now do I understand it to be an unoriginal problem. I’ve spoken to countless people who – despite feeling confident at work, with family, with friends – have lost themselves in relationships. Have squashed their personalities into a different shape and forgotten their own needs and desires in an attempt to second-guess a partner’s. This shrinking of the self starts in small ways: pretending you want to see a horror film at the cinema; making Spotify playlists of songs that might impress them instead of the ones you really want to listen to; buying a dress you can’t afford just because you think they’ll like it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=176">Location 176</a>:Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give." ’ When I looked up the original Jane Eyre line I found the one that precedes Rich’s quote: ‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me to do so.’ <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=205">Location 205</a>:I still believed the act of showing yourself fully to a new person was a risk, but somewhere inside me a fresh knowledge was unfolding: that the risk of not doing so – of never being seen, of never expressing needs, of never giving and accepting real love – was far greater. After years of feeling passive in love, I understood then that we do have a choice, even if it’s difficult to see. Mine was this: to stay in the fantasies inside my head, or to climb out and live. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=224">Location 224</a>:When I was searching for love in my twenties, there seemed to be two types of people who were looking for romantic relationships: those who easily fell into them and were content in the spaces between when they were – albeit briefly – single. And those who found falling in love an impossible task, who couldn’t seem to find happiness on their own, but couldn’t get past the starting-block stage of a relationship either. I had always been in the latter camp. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 11, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=236">Location 236</a>:And later from his book The Course of Love, I learnt about the challenges of intimacy long after the initial sheen of desire has worn off. Few people chronicle love with as much meticulous rigour and pragmatism as Alain. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=242">Location 242</a>:It suggests that if the search for a partner didn’t work out then it would be a tragedy, that your life would essentially have been wasted. That sets up a frantic, unhelpful backdrop to the search for love. The best frame of mind to be in – for anything you want – is an ability to walk away from it, were it not to come right. Otherwise you put yourself at the mercy of chance and people abusing your desperation. So the capacity to say, ‘I could be alone,’ is strangely one of the most important guarantees of one day being with somebody else in a happy way. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jul 02, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=275">Location 275</a>:When it comes to self-love it’s not so much about loving yourself, but accepting that all human beings have their less impressive sides, and so your less impressive sides don’t cut you off from the possibility of having a good relationship. They don’t mean that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve love. They just mean you are part of the human family. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=280">Location 280</a>:It sounds odd that you could lose touch with your own self. How could that be possible? You are you; how could you become less you by being in contact with somebody else? But we receive data from our senses and emotional selves, which can be overruled by data we get from other people. A classic example is if you say, ‘I’m a bit sad,’ and another person goes, ‘No, you’re not, you’re fine. You’re doing so well.’ You might then think, my point of view is not legitimate. They are right, I’m fine. When actually, it might be important for you to step back and acknowledge that things are difficult. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B098JMNK11&location=286">Location 286</a>:Because, frequently, anyone you’re in a relationship with has a view on what’s right for you, or what’s right or wrong in the world. And the capacity to say, ‘That’s interesting, but I’ve got my own reality, and I’m not sure that fits in,’ depends on whether that’s a muscle that’s been exercised in childhood. Often it hasn’t been, because many aspects of a child’s reality are overruled by parents. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Will of the Many by James Islington</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-will-of-the-many-by-james-islington</id>
<updated>2023-06-25T19:48:15.750000Z</updated>
<published>2023-05-31T07:59:41Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-will-of-the-many-by-james-islington" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BHTMBW5B&location=3764">Location 3764</a>:"Nervousness means there’s a fear to be faced ahead, Diago. The man who is never nervous, never does anything hard. The man who is never nervous, never grows." He stroked my hair. "Do all you can to think of it as an opportunity. A blessing. No matter how it makes you feel in here." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/excellent-advice-for-living-by-kevin-kelly</id>
<updated>2023-08-30T21:22:48.788000Z</updated>
<published>2023-05-11T03:34:56Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/excellent-advice-for-living-by-kevin-kelly" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=53">Location 53</a>:Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=55">Location 55</a>:Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them "Is there more?" until there is no more. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=65">Location 65</a>:When you forgive others they may not notice but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=77">Location 77</a>:Taking a break is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=88">Location 88</a>:Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 14, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=96">Location 96</a>:If you are looking for something in your house and you finally find it when you’re done with it don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=100">Location 100</a>:Movement plus variety equals health. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=105">Location 105</a>:A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=107">Location 107</a>:The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high so even if your effort falls short it may exceed an ordinary success. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=114">Location 114</a>:Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind be kind. No exceptions. Don’t confuse kindness with weakness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=117">Location 117</a>:We lack rites of passage. Create a memorable family ceremony when your child reaches legal adulthood between eighteen and twenty-one. This moment will become a significant touchstone in their life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=122">Location 122</a>:Recipe for greatness: Become just a teeny bit better than you were last year. Repeat every year. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=133">Location 133</a>:Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=141">Location 141</a>:Rule of 3 in conversation: To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and then once more. The third time’s answer is the one closest to the truth. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=144">Location 144</a>:Pros make as many mistakes as amateurs; they’ve just learned how to gracefully recover from their mistakes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=147">Location 147</a>:Don’t be the best. Be the only. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=148">Location 148</a>:Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them; they are waiting for you to send them an email; they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=151">Location 151</a>:The more you are interested in others the more interesting they’ll find you. To be interesting, be interested. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 17, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=154">Location 154</a>:Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=157">Location 157</a>:The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=163">Location 163</a>:When you are young, spend at least 6 months to 1 year living as cheaply as you can owning as little as you possibly can eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent. That way any time you have to risk something in the future, you won’t be afraid of the "worst-case" scenario. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=167">Location 167</a>:Trust me: There is no "them." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=170">Location 170</a>:You lead by letting others know what you expect of them which may exceed what they themselves expect. Provide them a reputation that they can step up to. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=173">Location 173</a>:If you ask for someone’s feedback you’ll get a critic. But if instead you ask for advice you’ll get a partner. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=178">Location 178</a>:To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=188">Location 188</a>:Shorten your to-do list by asking yourself "What is the worst that will happen if this does not get done?" Eliminate all but the disasters. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=192">Location 192</a>:Nothing elevates a person higher than taking responsibility for their mistakes. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=204">Location 204</a>:Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=210">Location 210</a>:If you are not falling down occasionally you are just coasting. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 20, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=211">Location 211</a>:Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=214">Location 214</a>:Keep showing up. 99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just persistence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=242">Location 242</a>:Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=252">Location 252</a>:On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first bypassing the cities and then return to the big city at the end. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar conveniences of a busy city on the way back. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=256">Location 256</a>:When you get invited to do something in the future ask yourself: Would I do this tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=278">Location 278</a>:When someone is nasty, hateful, or mean toward you treat their behavior like an affliction or illness they have. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=293">Location 293</a>:That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult —if you don’t lose it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=296">Location 296</a>:Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better path for most youth is "master something." Through mastery of one thing you’ll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=304">Location 304</a>:You are never too young to wonder "Why am I still doing this?" You need to have an excellent answer. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=310">Location 310</a>:Investing small amounts of money over a long time works miracles but no one wants to get rich slow. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=312">Location 312</a>:The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=316">Location 316</a>:To build strong children reinforce their sense of belonging to a family by articulating exactly what is distinctive about your family. They should be able to say with pride "Our family does X." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=319">Location 319</a>:If you are not embarrassed by your past self you have probably not grown up yet. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=321">Location 321</a>:Outlaw the word "you" during domestic arguments. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 20, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=365">Location 365</a>:On the way to a grand goal celebrate the smallest victories as if each one were the final goal. That way, no matter where it ends you are victorious. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=380">Location 380</a>:Most overnight successes —in fact, any significant successes— take at least 5 years. Budget your life accordingly. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=390">Location 390</a>:For marital bliss take turns allowing each partner to be always right. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=404">Location 404</a>:Fear makes people do stupid things so don’t trust anything made in fear. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=408">Location 408</a>:If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=452">Location 452</a>:Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=459">Location 459</a>:It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change you seek. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=466">Location 466</a>:Avoid hitting the snooze button. That’s just training you to oversleep. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=500">Location 500</a>:Children totally accept —and crave—family rules. "In our family we have a rule for X" is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact, "I have a rule for X" is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 31, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=537">Location 537</a>:If you are buying stock, the person selling it thinks it is worth less than you do. If you are selling, they think it is worth more than you do. Each time you are ready to buy or sell stock ask yourself "What do I know that they don’t?" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=544">Location 544</a>:About 99% of the time the right time is right now. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=547">Location 547</a>:Cultivate 12 people who love you because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=550">Location 550</a>:Always be quick to give credit and to take blame. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=552">Location 552</a>:Be frugal in all things except in your passions. Select a few interests that you gleefully splurge on. In fact, be all-around thrifty so that you can splurge on your passions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=554">Location 554</a>:To manage yourself use your head; to manage others use your heart. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=557">Location 557</a>:Dance with your hips. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=564">Location 564</a>:Take one simple thing —almost anything— but take it extremely seriously as if it is the only thing in the world —or maybe the entire world is in it— and by taking it seriously you’ll light up the sky. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=572">Location 572</a>:Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=582">Location 582</a>:Figure out what time of day you are most productive and protect that time period. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=584">Location 584</a>:Experiences are fun and having influence is rewarding but only mattering makes us happy. Do stuff that matters. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=586">Location 586</a>:Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term. To achieve greatness requires a long view. Raise your time horizon to raise your goal. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=594">Location 594</a>:You have to first follow the rules with diligence in order to break them productively. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=598">Location 598</a>:Learning probability and statistics is far more useful than learning algebra and calculus. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=601">Location 601</a>:If winning becomes too important in a game change the rules to make it more fun. Changing rules can become the new game. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=603">Location 603</a>:The greatest teacher is called "doing." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=605">Location 605</a>:Anything you say before the word "but" does not count. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=613">Location 613</a>:The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day which is way more important than what you do occasionally. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=616">Location 616</a>:When you lead your real job is to create more leaders not more followers. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=621">Location 621</a>:Efficiency is highly overrated; goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=628">Location 628</a>:Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=631">Location 631</a>:Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage. This is 100% true of backpacking. It is liberating to realize how little you really need. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=636">Location 636</a>:The biggest lie we tell ourselves is "I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=640">Location 640</a>:Don’t keep making the same mistakes; try to make new mistakes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=642">Location 642</a>:Your growth as a mature being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=651">Location 651</a>:Immediately pay what you owe to vendors, workers, contractors. If you do, they will go out of their way to work with you first next time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=654">Location 654</a>:The four most powerful words in any negotiation should be uttered by you: "Can you do better?" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=661">Location 661</a>:There is no such thing as being "on time." Either you are late or you are early. Your choice. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=666">Location 666</a>:In a genuine survival situation, you can go 3 weeks without food and 3 days without water but only 3 hours without warmth or shade. So don’t worry about food. Focus on temperature and water. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=674">Location 674</a>:When you feel like quitting just do five more: 5 more minutes, 5 more pages 5 more steps. Then repeat. Sometimes you can break through and keep going but even if you can’t, you ended five ahead. Tell yourself that you will quit tomorrow but not today. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=683">Location 683</a>:Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=688">Location 688</a>:When speaking to an audience pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way pause after you have said something you believe is important and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=693">Location 693</a>:You’ll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior especially in children and animals. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=698">Location 698</a>:When you’re checking references for a job applicant, their employer may be prohibited from saying anything negative so leave or send a message that says "Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great." If they don’t reply, take that as a negative. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=713">Location 713</a>:When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be real. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you with your unique talents and experience can do then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are the ordained. It is your destiny to work on things that only you can do. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=720">Location 720</a>:When you don’t know how much to pay someone for a particular task ask them, "What would be fair?" and their answer usually is. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=722">Location 722</a>:The general strategy for real estate is to buy the worst property on the best street. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=736">Location 736</a>:Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. Disagreements will appear to be edge cases. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=739">Location 739</a>:90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 02, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=750">Location 750</a>:Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact, only apply to jobs you are unqualified for. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=756">Location 756</a>:A wise man said: Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, "Is it true?" At the second gate ask, "Is it necessary?" At the third gate ask, "Is it kind?" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=765">Location 765</a>:The best investing advice: Average returns, maintained for above-average periods of time will yield extraordinary results. Buy and hold. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=768">Location 768</a>:Take the stairs. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=776">Location 776</a>:Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript. Start with the action. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=778">Location 778</a>:Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone because when you trust the best in others they generally treat you best. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=781">Location 781</a>:It’s possible that a not-so-smart person who can communicate well can do much better than a super-smart person who can’t communicate well. That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=788">Location 788</a>:For the best results with your children spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 03, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=794">Location 794</a>:Art is whatever you can get away with. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=803">Location 803</a>:When you are stuck explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make "explaining the problem" part of your troubleshooting process. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=809">Location 809</a>:When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to four or say to yourself, "I see you." You’ll both remember each other. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=811">Location 811</a>:Your group can achieve great things way beyond your means simply by showing people that they are appreciated. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=813">Location 813</a>:Be a pro. Back up your backup. Have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. Have more than one of each. How much would you pay to retrieve all your data, photos, notes if you lost them? Backups are cheap compared to regrets. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=817">Location 817</a>:Prescription for popular success: do something strange. Make a habit of your weird. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=820">Location 820</a>:Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out anything that no longer gives you joy in order to make room for those that do. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=822">Location 822</a>:To signal an emergency use the rule of 3: 3 shouts, 3 horn blasts, or 3 whistles. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=826">Location 826</a>:Explore or optimize? Do you optimize what you know will sell or explore with something new? Do you order a restaurant dish you are sure is great (optimize) or do you try something new? Do you keep dating new folks (explore) or try to commit to someone you met? The ideal balance for exploring new things vs. optimizing those already found is ⅓. Spend ⅓ of your time on exploring and ⅔ on optimizing and deepening. As you mature it is harder to devote time to exploring because it seems unproductive but aim for ⅓. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=837">Location 837</a>:Don’t bother fighting the old just build the new. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=849">Location 849</a>:When negotiating don’t aim for a bigger piece of the pie; aim to create a bigger pie. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=858">Location 858</a>:Do more of what looks like work to others but is play for you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=867">Location 867</a>:If you repeated what you did today 365 more times will you be where you want to be next year? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=869">Location 869</a>:The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment after they say they want you and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=878">Location 878</a>:Reading to your children regularly is the best school they will ever get. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=912">Location 912</a>:A superpower worth cultivating is learning from people you don’t like. It is called "humility." This is the courage to let dumb, stupid, hateful, crazy, mean people teach you something because despite their character flaws they each know something you don’t. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=922">Location 922</a>:The trick to making wise decisions is to evaluate your choices as if you were looking back 25 years from today. What would your future self think? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=925">Location 925</a>:To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=927">Location 927</a>:When speaking to an audience it’s better to fix your gaze on a few people than to "spray" your gaze across the room. Your eyes telegraph to others whether you really believe what you are saying. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=930">Location 930</a>:The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff. To let it all go easily you need to be convinced that there is "more where that came from." You get that in steady production. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=933">Location 933</a>:The real test of your character is not how you deal with adversity— although that will teach you much. The real test is how you deal with power. The only cure for power is humility and the admission that your power comes from luck. The small person believes they are superior; the superior person knows they are lucky. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=942">Location 942</a>:It is easy to get trapped by your own success. Say no to tasks you probably won’t fail at and say yes to what you could fail at. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=945">Location 945</a>:Unhappiness comes from wanting what others have. Happiness comes from wanting what you already have. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=949">Location 949</a>:To get your message across follow this formula used by ad writers everywhere: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=958">Location 958</a>:The very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=972">Location 972</a>:If we all threw our troubles into a big pile and we saw everyone else’s problems we would immediately grab ours back. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=975">Location 975</a>:Your heart needs to be as educated as your mind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=982">Location 982</a>:Let your children choose their punishments. They’ll be tougher than you will. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=986">Location 986</a>:Fully embrace "What is the worst that can happen?" at each juncture in life. Rehearsing your response to the "worst" can reveal it as an adventure and rob it of its power to stall you. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jun 05, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=989">Location 989</a>:Make one to throw away. The only way to write a great book is to first write an awful book. Ditto for a movie, song, piece of furniture or anything. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=997">Location 997</a>:Anger is not the proper response to anger. When you see someone angry you are seeing their pain. Compassion is the proper response to anger. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=999">Location 999</a>:When you find something you really enjoy do it slowly. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1008">Location 1008</a>:Your flaws and your strengths are two poles of the same traits. For instance, there is only a tiny difference between stubbornness and perseverance or between courage and foolishness. The sole difference is in the goal. It’s stupid stubbornness and reckless foolishness if the goal does not matter, and relentless perseverance and courage if it does. To earn dignity with your flaws own up to them, and make sure you push on things that matter. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1016">Location 1016</a>:It is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1030">Location 1030</a>:Be extremely stingy in making promises because you must be generous in keeping them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1037">Location 1037</a>:The best way to advise young people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1041">Location 1041</a>:The big dirty secret is that everyone especially the famous are just making it up as they go along. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1045">Location 1045</a>:You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1050">Location 1050</a>:To lower tensions during a dispute, mirror the other person’s body language. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1052">Location 1052</a>:For a great payoff be especially curious about the things you are not interested in. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1061">Location 1061</a>:When you can’t decide ask yourself, "Which choice will pay off more later than now?" The easy choice pays off right away. The best choice will pay off at the end. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1076">Location 1076</a>:Measure your wealth not by the things you can buy but by the things that no money can buy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1078">Location 1078</a>:To learn from your mistakes first laugh at your mistakes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1082">Location 1082</a>:Your opinion on a contentious issue gains power when you can argue the opposite side as well as they can. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1094">Location 1094</a>:The purpose of listening is not to reply, but to hear what is not being said. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1106">Location 1106</a>:Spending as little as 15 minutes (1% of your day) on improving how you do your thing, is the most powerful way to amplify and advance your thing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1108">Location 1108</a>:Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1110">Location 1110</a>:The greatest killer of happiness is comparison. If you must compare, compare yourself to you yesterday. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1113">Location 1113</a>:Your 20s are the perfect time to do a few things that are unusual, weird, bold, risky, unexplainable, crazy, unprofitable, and look nothing like "success." For the rest of your life these experiences will serve as your muse. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1118">Location 1118</a>:To succeed once focus on the outcome; to keep succeeding focus on the process that makes the outcome. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1125">Location 1125</a>:If you are stuck in life travel to a place you have never heard of. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1138">Location 1138</a>:Your best photo portrait will be taken not while you are smiling but when you are quiet a moment after you have been laughing. Use a photographer who makes you laugh. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1143">Location 1143</a>:When making plans you must allow yourself to get lost in order to find the thing you didn’t know you were looking for. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1145">Location 1145</a>:The natural state of all possessions is to need repair and maintenance. What you own will eventually own you. Choose selectively. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1150">Location 1150</a>:Commit to doing no work no business no income one day a week. Call it a sabbath (or not). Use that day for resting, recharging, and cultivating the most important things in life. Counterintuitively, this sabbath will prove to be your most productive act all week. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1155">Location 1155</a>:Embrace pronoia which is the opposite of paranoia. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1161">Location 1161</a>:When you are stuck, make a long list of everything that cannot possibly work. On that list will be a seed that leads to a solution that will work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1169">Location 1169</a>:Re-visioning the ordinary is what art, literature, and comedy do. You can elevate mundane details into magical wonders simply by noticing them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1176">Location 1176</a>:Invent as many family rituals as you can handle with ease. Anything done on a schedule —large or small, significant or silly— can become a ritual. Repeated consistently small routines become legendary. Anticipation is key. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1180">Location 1180</a>:The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BCF78T14&location=1190">Location 1190</a>:Your goal is to be able to say on the day before you die that you have fully become yourself. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Seeing That Frees by Rob Burbea</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/seeing-that-frees-by-rob-burbea</id>
<updated>2023-08-30T21:22:48.679000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-25T14:03:12Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/seeing-that-frees-by-rob-burbea" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=203">Location 203</a>:Revered in the tradition as the ‘crown jewels’ of the Dharma, the Buddha’s teachings on emptiness and dependent arising point and pave the way to the most beautiful possibilities for us as human beings. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=205">Location 205</a>:Emptiness – in Pali, suññatā, in Sanskrit, śūnyatā, <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=217">Location 217</a>:To many people, and often even to meditators, the very word ‘emptiness’ can evoke emotional associations with a sense of barrenness, bleakness, meaninglessness, or even depression. But that is definitely not what Buddhist teachings mean by the word emptiness. On the contrary, they point to this realization as something wonderful, supremely joyful, and profoundly liberating. It might also be imagined that voidness is some kind of thing that can be obtained; but it is not a thing. Nor is it a state of mind or a state of consciousness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=234">Location 234</a>:Why do we crave? And the answer the Buddha gave and wanted us to understand is that craving is based on a fundamental mistake in the way we see and intuitively sense our selves and the whole world of inner and outer phenomena. We feel and take for granted that selves and things are as real as they seem to be, that they exist, as they appear to, in a substantial way, in and of themselves, ‘from their own side’, as it were. Their reality seems obvious. We assume, in a way that involves no thinking, that our bodies or this book, for instance, exist independently of other things and independently of the mind that knows them. We feel that a thing has an inherent existence – that its existence, its being, inheres in itself alone. Believing then that this real self can really gain or lose real things or experiences which have real qualities, grasping and aversion, and thus dukkha, arise inevitably. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=241">Location 241</a>:We can, at least for now, define emptiness as the absence of this inherent existence that things appear to naturally and undeniably have. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=247">Location 247</a>:To illustrate this and begin to get a hint of what it means we could consider a wooden chair thrown onto a big fire. The chair begins to burn, then gradually deform and fall apart, slowly turning to ashes. At what point exactly is it no longer a chair? Is it not the mind perceiving and conceiving of it one way or another that determines whether it is ‘a chair’ at a certain moment in time after catching fire? Its chair-ness is given by the mind, and does not reside in it independently of the mind. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 26, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=282">Location 282</a>:Unquestioningly but mistakenly then, we intuitively sense and believe in this inherent existence of phenomena, in ‘real’ experiences of a ‘real’ self in a world of ‘real’ things. Now, in itself, this may strike some as a rather abstract or irrelevant piece of metaphysical philosophizing. But as alluded to earlier, the complete dissolution of this error in our sense and understanding of things is the primary thrust of the Buddha’s message of liberation. This mistaken seeing is the deepest level of what the Buddha calls the ignorance or fundamental delusion (Skt: avidya; Pali: avijjā) that we share as sentient beings. We cling, and so suffer, because of the way we see. Although it may not be obvious at first, any clinging whatsoever requires this mistaken intuitive sense – of the reality of what we are clinging to, and of the self as something real and so ‘invested in’ through clinging. But we do not cling to what we know is not real. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=291">Location 291</a>:As the Buddha said, One who… knows with regard to the world that ‘all this is unreal’ abandons the near shore and the far, like a snake its worn-out old skin.5 <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=298">Location 298</a>:To the degree, depth, and comprehensiveness that we can realize the emptiness, the illusory nature, of phenomena, to that degree, depth, and comprehensiveness is freedom then available to us. Thus in his Catuḥśataka, Āryadeva wrote, concerning this fact of the voidness of all things: When one sees reality one achieves the supreme abode. [But] even by seeing the slightest bit of it, one is better off. Therefore the wise should always cultivate such insight in contemplating phenomena.7 And thus the Buddha encouraged those who seek freedom to View the world as void. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=307">Location 307</a>:Imagine that one day when out walking you turn a street corner and suddenly hear a loud and menacing growling nearby. A ferocious and hungry-looking tiger appears in front of you seemingly about to leap. The distress of a reaction of terror there would be quite understandable. But if you notice on closer inspection that this tiger is not real, that it is actually a holographic projection with accompanying sound recording from a nearby hologram projector, the fear and the problem simply dissolve. The release from the suffering of the situation here comes not from simply being mindful or accepting of the tiger so much as from the realization of its illusory nature. It is this that hopefully your mindfulness can reveal. And such an understanding will not seem abstract and irrelevant; it will matter. Sometimes it is assumed that realizations of voidness will create some kind of ‘disconnection from reality’ or ‘ungroundedness’ in a person. But here we can see that to realize that this tiger is illusory is, in fact, to be more ‘grounded in reality’ than otherwise; and that it will make a considerable difference to how you feel. We can even say that from the point of view of what brings release from dukkha, the most profoundly significant and fundamental thing to understand about this tiger is its emptiness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=317">Location 317</a>:As Nāgārjuna wrote: Whenever there is belief that things are real… desire and hatred are generated… Without that belief no defilements can occur… And when this is completely understood, all views and afflictions dissolve… [This] the supreme knower of truth [the Buddha] has taught. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=339">Location 339</a>:To say that all things are void, however, is not to say that they don’t exist at all. Emptiness is not nihilism. Clearly and undeniably there are appearances of things and those appearances follow reliable laws and function in terms of predictable cause and effect. It turns out, rather, that to see that something is empty is to see that it is beyond the categories of ‘existing’ or ‘not existing’. Asked by the monk Kaccāyana about Right View, the Buddha answered: That things exist, O Kaccāyana, is one extreme [of view]. That they do not exist is another. Rejecting both these extremes, the Tathāgata points out the Dhamma via the middle. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=357">Location 357</a>:The concern that emptiness implies a kind of moral nihilism, an attitude that ‘we can do whatever we want because everything is empty’, and that following this path we will not care for the plight of others and the world, we can also test through our own practice. But we will find that as insight into these teachings deepens, we become, as a matter of course, more easily moved to concern for the world, and more sensitive to ethics and the consequences of our actions. Opening to voidness should definitely not lead to a lack of care, to indifference, cold aloofness, or a closing of the heart. If I find that my practice is somehow making me less compassionate, less generous, less caring about ethics, then something is wrong in my understanding or at the very least out of balance in my approach, and I need to modify how I am practising. Generally speaking, and although it may at first seem paradoxical, as we travel this meditative journey into emptiness we find that the more we taste the voidness of all things, the more loving-kindness, compassion, generosity, and deep care for the world open naturally as a consequence in the heart. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=372">Location 372</a>:And as we learn to deepen our understanding through meditation, we discover that not only does seeing into emptiness bring a rare and crucial freedom, sweet relief, joy, and love, there is in the seeing of it more and more a sense of beauty, of mystery. It becomes indeed a mystical understanding. We uncover a dimension of wonder in things that we hadn’t known before, because the voidness of things is something truly magical when experienced deeply. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=381">Location 381</a>:As the Zen saying puts it: "True emptiness equals wondrous being." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=428">Location 428</a>:Likewise, when we hear or read that what is meant by the voidness of a thing is simply the fact of its dependence on causes and conditions, the central import of this dependence on mind may go unrecognized. While at one level it is certainly an accurate statement to say that something is empty because it depends on various elements and conditions, it is vital to open out completely just what this means. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=434">Location 434</a>:It is this dependence of all phenomena on the mind that is most significant and that needs to be understood. Teachings on voidness are offered in the service of liberation, yet it may be that an explanation of emptiness as meaning ‘dependence on causes and conditions’ is grasped in only a limited way, and so yields only very limited freedom, if any at all, and misses the profundity of what is being communicated. If, for example, I own an expensive china vase, my knowledge of the many and rare conditions which had to come together for its creation – the particular mix of clays sourced perhaps from various barely accessible mountains, all the conditions involved in the formation of those clays over time, the conditions for their extraction, all the conditions involved in the development and handing down of the techniques used by the artisan who crafted it, the conditions sustaining the life of that artisan, and so on – rather than leading to my letting go of attachment to the vase, might actually increase my attachment to it. Acknowledging dependency on causes and conditions merely at this level of materiality will only sometimes bring a release of clinging. It will often do little to undermine our sense of the reality of objects. And as we have explained, it is this belief in their reality which supports our clinging, and so our dukkha. A level of insight that sees the dependency of phenomena on the mind, however, will open an understanding of their being beyond existing and not existing, and so bring freedom much more powerfully. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=463">Location 463</a>:Imagine that you enter a room that is dark except for a lamp in one corner. There you see your friend, huddled next to the lamp in a state of great anxiety and staring transfixed at the wall opposite. "A wolf! A wolf!", he is whimpering in fear. Turning to look at the wall, you see a large silhouette of a wolf but very quickly realize that it is just the shadow of your friend’s hands, cast by the lamplight on the wall. In his fear he is completely unaware of his hands or how he is holding them, or the fact that the wolf shape is merely their shadow. What will you say to him? The ramifications for freedom here are of course similar to those in the case of the holographic tiger. This illustration has the slight advantage, however, of implicating our involvement somehow in fabricating the illusion and the appearances of things. In this scenario, although your friend may have been trying to ‘be with’ the wolf, ‘accept’ its presence, even remind himself of the impermanence of all things, at the deepest and most significant level ‘insight’ and ‘wisdom’ here must mean seeing that the wolf is a fabrication that he himself has been fabricating. Pointing this out to him would also be the most compassionate response to his plight that you could offer him, if he was ready to hear it and to let go of the wolf. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=496">Location 496</a>:If we are not careful, we may simply assume a common default position – happily admitting that some experiences and phenomena are somehow fabricated (illusory), while tacitly, or even more explicitly, presuming others to be true (not fabricated, not illusory). <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=514">Location 514</a>:It is not that while everything else is fabricated by the mind, the mind itself is somehow real, a really existing basis for the fabrication. The mind, whether conceived as mental processes or ‘Awareness’ – even the awareness that we can know as vast and unperturbed, that seems natural and effortless – is also fabricated in the process. We find, in the end, that there is no ‘ground’ to fabrication. And as if that were not cause enough for amazement, we eventually also recognize, taking this exploration of dependent arising deeper and deeper still, that even this profound realization of the fabricated nature of all phenomena is only a relative truth. Fabrication itself is empty too. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=520">Location 520</a>:What we come to understand is that the way things truly are is beautifully beyond the capacities of our conception. Practising with dependent arising forms a thread, though, that can be followed to such great depths. For in doing so, insights of greater and greater profundity are progressively opened, until this thread ultimately dissolves even itself. It leads and opens beyond itself. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 27, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=609">Location 609</a>:I have found, in my own practice and through teaching, that the realization of emptiness deepens and brings more felt fruits in life if it is approached not only gradually, but also primarily in relation to whatever is immediate in our experience, including, and even especially, any dukkha that may be present in the moment – these sensations, this emotion, these thoughts, and also this physical pain, this heartache, this contracted self-view – learning to see their emptiness, and then deepening and widening the range of experienced phenomena we can recognize to be empty. As we learn to let go of grosser dukkha and experiences through realizing their voidness, meditation naturally refines. Then we can work skilfully with more subtle dukkha and phenomena, and insight too becomes correspondingly subtle. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=635">Location 635</a>:We might emphasize too the importance of kindness in meditation in general. And in particular, the gradually transformative and inexorable healing power that comes through devotion to regular loving-kindness (mettā) practice should not be underestimated. Here again, it is absolutely vital to find ways of cultivating mettā that work for you. There is no one ‘right’ way of doing that. Creativity, playfulness, and experimentation are indispensable. Often untapped, there is also an equally great power accessible in heartfully connecting with our own deepest aspirations. Self-criticism tends to squash these aspirations and obscure our connection with them. Conversely though, tuning into and sustaining a focus on the felt force of these aspirations within oneself – in ways that allow them to gather strength, and allow the being to open to that strength – can significantly undermine the dynamics of self-criticism. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=647">Location 647</a>:As we begin to experience the liberating effects of insight and the heart is touched, the whole process starts to take on a momentum of its own. While at first these may have seemed such strange ways of looking at things, and still probably involve some effort, the mind begins to gravitate towards exposing the emptiness of this and that, of situations and perspectives that we would have solidified before. To the heart is revealed a sense of beauty in the open, space-like nature of things. More able to shift ways of looking, less locked into any perspective, it wants to see the emptiness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=671">Location 671</a>:For now, let us take as a loose definition of insight: any realization, understanding, or way of seeing things that brings, to any degree, a dissolution of, or a decrease in, dukkha. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 28, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=676">Location 676</a>:Just knowing, for example, that dukkha, grasping, or reactivity is present is hardly ever enough to free us from it even in that moment. And it certainly will not be enough to exhaust or eradicate the latent tendencies of craving and aversion. What is needed is an understanding that cuts or melts something or other more fundamental on which that dukkha relies, thus eradicating, or at least diminishing, that dukkha. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=694">Location 694</a>:Insight, then, may loosely be described as any ‘seeing’ that frees. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=724">Location 724</a>:You ‘have’ or ‘get’ an insight. There is an ‘aha!’ moment: suddenly or gradually, you see something, you realize something, and it makes a difference to the dukkha. Such an insight arose as a result of mindfulness, or of qualities like calm or investigation. This mode of insight practice is in contrast to another mode in which we can also work at times, where insight itself is more a starting point, a cause, more itself the method. In this second mode of insight practice we more deliberately attempt to sustain a ‘way of looking’ at experience – a view of, or relationship with, experience – that is already informed by a certain insight or other. Here, rather than ‘getting’ (or hoping to ‘get’) an insight, we are using an insight. This does not mean merely to ‘think something insightful’, for instance that "all things are impermanent" – thinking may or may not be involved – but actually to shift into a mode where we are looking through the lens of a particular insight (looking deliberately for and at the impermanence and change in everything, for example). <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 03, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=757">Location 757</a>:Sooner or later we come to realize that perhaps the most fundamental, and most fundamentally important, fact about any experience is that it depends on the way of looking. That is to say, it is empty.4 Other than what we can perceive through different ways of looking, there is no ‘objective reality’ existing independently; and there is no way of looking that reveals some ‘objective reality’. And as we shall also see, in states of ‘just being’ which we might imagine are devoid of self, a subtle self is actually being constructed anyway.5 This fact too needs to be recognized. Generally speaking, a full conviction that all this is the case will only be available through the deepening realizations which come mostly as emptiness practices progress. It must be pointed out, however, that all that is needed right now is an acknowledgment that different ways of looking are, at least sometimes, possible. Together with a willingness to experiment with various ways of looking, and to notice their effects on dukkha and on appearances, this will be enough to gradually unfold more profound insights. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=766">Location 766</a>:It may also be that in the past a meditator has tried at times to adopt an approach somewhat similar to what is being described here, but felt discouraged for some reason and discontinued it. Perhaps there was a feeling of quickly becoming a little tired of engaging ways of looking deliberately, and then wanting to revert to a practice of ‘just being with things as they appear’. Two things can be said about this here. First, as we shall explain, it is relatively easy to learn to minimize such fatigue – through learning the skills of subtle responsiveness to effort levels; and also through learning to include and enjoy the feelings such as release, freedom, and ease that insight ways of looking open. Second, in the context of this approach to insight, a temporary reversion to basic mindfulness practice is not necessarily a problem in itself. Significantly however, without conceiving of practice in terms of ways of looking, it will be very likely that this reversion becomes a default and de facto reversion back to the assumption of ‘being with things as they are’, without realizing it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=778">Location 778</a>:This mode of approach, of actively cultivating a range of skilful ways of looking, is premised, then, on the understanding that we are always and inevitably engaged in some way of looking at or relating to experience anyway. But we are not usually aware of this fact. Nor are we usually aware of how we are looking – what exactly the view is – at any time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=784">Location 784</a>:Now crucially, in any moment we are either engaging a way of looking at experience, self, and the world, that is creating, perpetuating, or compounding dukkha to some degree, or we are looking in a way that, to some degree, frees. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=795">Location 795</a>:My experience in my own practice, in teaching, and in talking and listening to others, is that meditations using only the first mode of insight – that is, relying mostly on insight as a ‘result’ – will very probably not be enough on their own to overcome the force of deeply engrained habitual delusion that perceives and intuitively feels things to have inherent existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=798">Location 798</a>:The overwhelming tendency is to unconsciously impute inherent existence to things, not to see emptiness. We need, therefore, to practise views that actually dissolve or remove this illusion of inherent existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=816">Location 816</a>:1. A gradually deepening inquiry into fabrication – of the self and of all experience Here we are developing a certain kind of understanding of all experience, including meditation experiences. We begin by noticing the range of variability in our perceptions of self and the world. Sometimes I perceive myself or some thing one way, and at other times quite differently; and yet each time, what I perceive seems true, truly how I am, or how this thing is. What, though, is the ‘real’ way any thing is? I realize that how things appear always depends on how I look. And I realize too, moreover, that I cannot find or arrive at a way of looking that reveals how a thing really is in itself. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=824">Location 824</a>:More than this though, as mentioned we can gradually develop ways of looking that fabricate, in this very moment, less and less dukkha. Clearly such skills will be helpful for us. The insights uncovered, however, are even more crucial. We realize, first, that dukkha depends on the way of looking. And, as briefly alluded to above, with deepening exploration we find we can discover and cultivate ways of looking that fabricate not only progressively less dukkha, but also less and less self, and eventually, as we shall explain, even less and less experience. Not to try and stay forever in some kind of unconstructed state, as if that were even possible, but to understand something wondrous about all experience in a way that fundamentally frees our whole sense of existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=830">Location 830</a>:2. Realizing the impossibility of inherent existence Here we are engaging in a thorough search for the self or for the essence of any thing. Such a search in practice considers and exhausts all the possible places or ways that it might exist, and so reveals that it simply cannot exist in the way that we perceive and feel it to. We see for ourselves and our conviction grows: not only is it unfindable, but it is impossible for it to exist with inherent existence as it seems to. In these kinds of practices, the way of looking hunts for, and then exposes the lack of, inherent existence in one or all phenomena. It then works to sustain the view of that lack, that emptiness, as it continues to regard that phenomenon or all phenomena. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=843">Location 843</a>:In addition to these two more formal groups of approaches, it is important to mention a third. For it is very possible at times that something in the heart and mind – we could call it intuitive wisdom – feels the intimations of a different sense of things, intuits somehow and to some degree the truth of emptiness. Sometimes the perspective opens up dramatically and very forcefully; at other times much more faintly – perhaps we feel a subtle quality that infuses appearances with a suggestion, a whisper, of their voidness, or even of a kind of silence, a transcendent and mystical dimension, that seems to lie ‘beyond’ those very appearances, yet that somehow ‘shines’ timelessly through them, changing our relationship with them, rendering them diaphanous, less substantial. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=867">Location 867</a>:Vital to our path and of uncountable benefit is the quality of samādhi. This word samādhi is usually translated as ‘concentration’, but in many respects that does not convey the fullness, or the beauty, of what it really means. Therefore we shall keep it in the original language throughout this book. For samādhi involves more than just holding the attention fixed on an object with a minimum of wavering. And it certainly does not necessarily imply a spatially narrowed focus of the mind on a small area. Instead here we will emphasize that what characterizes states of samādhi is some degree of collectedness and unification of mind and body in a sense of well-being. Included in any such state will also be some degree of harmonization of the internal energies of the mind and body. Steadiness of mind, then, is only one part of that. Such a unification in well-being can come about in many ways. In this book we will embrace in our meaning of samādhi both states that have arisen through holding the attention on one object, as well as those that have arisen through insight ways of looking. And we will also include both states where the attention is more narrowly focused on one object, and those where the awareness is more open. This chapter, however, primarily explores some more general aspects of those practices that do involve holding the attention to one thing (for example, the breath, mettā, or body) as a way of developing samādhi. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=878">Location 878</a>:And although, as the Buddha did, we can certainly delineate a range of discrete states of samādhi (the jhānas), in this present context let us rather view it mostly as a continuum: of depth of meditation, of well-being, of non-entanglement, and of refinement of consciousness. Among other benefits suitable to our purpose, there is also less chance then that the relationship with practice becomes fraught through wondering too much if one ‘has it’ or ‘doesn’t have it’, is ‘succeeding’ or ‘failing’, is ‘in’ or ‘out’. Instead of relating to samādhi practice in terms of measurement or achievement of some goal, it is usually much more helpful, more kind, and less self-alienating to conceive of it as a caring, both in the present and in the long term, for the heart and mind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=905">Location 905</a>:Among its many benefits, a dedication to samādhi can bring a certain ‘juiciness’ to practice and to life, and this can provide a vital resource of wholesome and profound nourishment. In particular, the well-being that it includes can be crucial. There may be times, for example, when we know it would be best to let go of an unhelpful attachment but somehow we just can’t. Perhaps at a certain level we feel somewhat desperate, and unable to imagine that we could be okay without this thing that we are clinging to. Perhaps even unconsciously we worry that letting it go would render us bereft of what we believe we need for our happiness or even our survival. If, however, we can have access to, and develop, a reservoir of profound inner well-being, it makes letting go of what is not so helpful much easier. We feel that we have enough, so letting go is not so scary. Over the long term, repeated and regular immersion in such well-being supports the emergence of a steadiness of genuine confidence. We come to know, beyond doubt, that happiness is possible for us in this life. And because this deep happiness we are experiencing is originating from within us, we begin to feel less vulnerable to and dependent on the uncertainties of changing external conditions. We may also find that a relatively frequent taste of some degree of samādhi helps our confidence in the path to become much more firmly established. Gaining confidence in these ways will have a profound effect on the sense we have of our own lives and their potential, without making us aloof. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=919">Location 919</a>:We could in fact list a whole host of potential blessings that samādhi can bring which likewise overflow from practice well beyond the meditation session or retreat. Deep rest and rejuvenation of the whole being, emotional (and, at times, physical) healing, vitality, openings of the intuition, emotional strength that is yet pliable, increase in the heart’s capacity and in our availabilities to others, steadiness of energy and of commitment in creative and service work – these, and more, are part of the broad range of long-term benefits that samādhi can make available to the whole of one’s life. In general, to the degree that we can find ways to nourish this quality of samādhi, we will find that it nourishes us profoundly and widely in turn. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 12, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=973">Location 973</a>:For even before the arising of any well-being or much steadiness of attention, beautiful and always helpful qualities are being strengthened and developed: patience, perseverance, and mindfulness, for example, as well as the kind of ‘muscle’ or power of mind that gradually accrues on returning over and over to our meditation theme. Hopefully too we are cultivating kindness in our attitude to our mind, and also gently erasing the habit of judging ourselves. These seeds too are being sown, and it may be that all these qualities are just as significant in the big picture of our practice as any others we have discussed. Consciously acknowledging and reminding yourself of this bigger picture of what is being nourished before a formal meditation session, and as you work on samādhi, can be very helpful in keeping the citta buoyant and inspired, and in preventing the tightness or dryness that comes when the view of practice is contracted in any way. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=982">Location 982</a>:But it is important to recognize too that, to a certain extent, samādhi is itself also dependent on happiness. Except in rare instances, and then usually not for very long, we cannot force the mind into stilling. The process is aided more by our taking care of a certain degree of well-being that can then serve as a foundation for samādhi to develop. Thus, whether on or off retreat, it can be immensely helpful to give some attention to nurturing, just as much as possible, the kinds of elements that contribute to a climate supportive for the ongoing deepening of samādhi practice. Qualities such as: • inner and outer kindness • some simplicity • a degree of receptivity, connection, and openness to beauty and also to nature • a love of the Dharma • appreciation and gratitude for whatever and whoever is around you and supporting your practice – these may not seem relevant at first glance, but they all nourish the citta profoundly. Caring for and supporting these qualities and attitudes should not be overlooked then, for they are indispensable to the cultivation of samādhi. It is definitely not simply a matter of ‘trying harder’. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=997">Location 997</a>:Allowing and encouraging a quality of play and experimentation in practice is vital, and vitalizing. I can’t emphasize this enough. Usually that’s how we learn best as human beings, and it keeps things from getting rigid and feeling heavy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=999">Location 999</a>:Central to the progress of practice, and particularly of samādhi, is our whole relationship with ‘the five hindrances’ – sense desire, ill-will or aversion, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and worry, and doubt. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1009">Location 1009</a>:Further, if care is not taken, the habit for most is that the mind gets swept up by the perspectives of a hindrance when it is present. We believe what they say, their ‘take’ on our selves and the world. It is as if a hindrance is like a seed that has tiny hooks, and these hooks are looking for something, anything, to sink into, to suck sustenance from. When they find something, then they can grow and the whole complex of the hindrance and the thing they have hooked into grows too. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1015">Location 1015</a>:Over time though, we learn to recognize the wily ways of the hindrances and need not be taken for a ride to such an extent. We understand what is happening, and buy into their perspectives much less. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1017">Location 1017</a>:It is crucial to realize that a dedication to cultivating samādhi necessarily involves working with the hindrances. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1022">Location 1022</a>:And if we can maintain a stance that, no matter what the conditions, asks always, "What can I learn here?", the times of hindrances in samādhi practice can be as genuinely valuable as the times that feel good. As we shall shortly see, even the hindrances are useful for insight into emptiness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1033">Location 1033</a>:A state of samādhi is essentially a state of energized calm. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1035">Location 1035</a>:Although it might feel relatively pleasant, too much calmness without enough energy is a kind of subtly dull state, sometimes referred to as ‘sinking’. The mind and the body can feel slightly heavy when this is the case and the quality of brightness is not so manifest in the mind. On the other hand, too much energy without the calm to balance it can create a subtle form of restlessness, often referred to as ‘drifting’. Here, the body does not feel so settled, the attention may skit off the object more frequently, and there seem to be more thoughts or images being thrown up by the mind. Noticing these subtler manifestations of the hindrances, and playing and experimenting to discover some of the many possible ways to energize or to calm the energy body in meditation are important strands in enabling practice to deepen. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1041">Location 1041</a>:For practitioners who already have a little experience in meditation, probably the most common difficulty and the biggest hurdle encountered in trying to develop samādhi is the feeling of tightness that can arise at times, both emotionally and physically. Indeed it is often a recurring experience of tightness that causes a person to despair and give up samādhi practice in favour of another kind of approach – usually of ‘just letting things be’. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1050">Location 1050</a>:First: Tightness is a state of contraction of the mind and body energy. So too, in fact, is any restlessness – gross or subtle (as in drifting) – and any dullness or drowsiness (including sinking). It can be very helpful, therefore, when any of these are present in samādhi practice, to find ways of opening up more space for the awareness, without abandoning the primary object. Awareness of the whole body is one way this can be effected. Even if you are working with a method of breath meditation, for example, that involves a spatially narrow focus of attention as ‘foreground’, it is often beneficial to lightly maintain, as the ‘background’ to this ‘foreground’, a global awareness permeating fully and ‘filling out’ the whole body in an alive way. Among other advantages, this will automatically introduce more of a sense of space into the meditation, which can help to ease the contraction of tightness when it arises. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1057">Location 1057</a>:Second: Tightness is usually a result of, and indicates, slightly too much effort in the concentration at that time. Similarly, a slight over-efforting can underlie both sinking and drifting. There, however, the situation can be a little more complex, because both sinking and drifting may arise at any time as a result of marginally too much effort and also of too little effort. It can be difficult to tell, for instance, whether this drifting state that is present right now is caused by ‘squeezing’ the mind slightly too hard, so that, like a gas under pressure, it actually becomes more agitated and generates even more random thoughts and images; or whether the object in our attention needs to be held a little more firmly, and with more intimacy, to prevent its wandering. Again, we need a willingness to experiment, to play and respond. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1063">Location 1063</a>:In any case, it is necessary to gradually learn to include in our awareness a sensitivity to our moment-to-moment level and quality of effort. This is part of the art of samādhi practice. Such sensitivity and responsiveness to the effort level is not something we ‘grow beyond’ and then forget about. In fact, it only gets more subtle. Nor should we expect to find, in any one meditation session, a balanced quality and level of effort and hope to keep it statically there, on ‘cruise control’, with the ‘effort dial’ set at ‘5’. Part of the refinement, and beauty too, of this art of samādhi practice is the moment-to-moment play of sensitivity and responsiveness… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1069">Location 1069</a>:What can help greatly in developing this subtler sensitivity to effort levels is, again, an awareness of the whole body and how it feels. Even a slight over-efforting the body will reveal, through tension or tightness somewhere in particular, or through a subtle sense of contraction of the space of the whole body. Relaxing the body in those moments can be helpful, helping organically to relax the effort in turn. More ease is opened in the practice in that moment, and this supports the samādhi. Additionally though, since tightness is often an indicator of a degree of over-effort, we need not view its presence only as a difficulty. We can actually use the feeling of tightness when it appears somewhere in the body as a helpful signal to slightly back off the effort in… <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1099">Location 1099</a>:A light feather faintly brushing, touching so delicately the sensations of the breath or the body can take the meditation deeper at times than a laser beam of probing. Sometimes ‘less is more’. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1101">Location 1101</a>:In contrast to a concentration of the attention on a small area, another way of working is to focus primarily on the wider field of feeling of the whole body – the felt sense, the ‘texture’, ‘tone’, vibration, and energy of the whole space of the body – and to fill that space with an aliveness of awareness, of presence, that permeates the entire body. • This feeling of the energy of the whole body space can be made the sole focus of attention. • Alternatively, it may be mixed with the awareness of another object such as the breath or mettā – by paying attention to the changing effects of the breath or the mettā on the body’s energy field. • Either way, there will be a tendency for the attention thus deployed to keep shrinking to a smaller area. It will therefore be necessary to keep stretching the field of awareness out, expanding it so that attention pervades and encompasses the whole field of the body. • Oftentimes just remaining lightly, delicately open and sensitive to the whole body in this way begins to reveal a subtle pleasantness to the way the space of the body feels. It can be extremely helpful to learn to ‘tune into’ this, and to enjoy it. • Of course, many times we will find on inspection that there is a mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant ‘frequencies’, or a range of qualities, coexisting in the tone and vibration of the body space. With practice we can learn, if we wish, to tune into whichever of these frequencies we choose. Attuning to and enjoying the more pleasant frequencies in the mix is an immensely helpful skill to learn and very valuable in fostering samādhi. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 20, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1133">Location 1133</a>:And when there is a state of agitation or anxiety, we can play with ways of breathing or practising the mettā, and also ways of sensing the breath or mettā, that feel as if they soothe the subtle body and smooth out its energies. Delicately tuning into the felt experience of these qualities of soothing or smoothing-out will help them to gradually gain strength, and help the agitated energies to slowly subside. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1137">Location 1137</a>:The imagination, too, can be skilfully employed in order to gently encourage this sense of pleasure or well-being in the subtle body. While simultaneously pervading the whole body space with an awareness sensitive to the texture and tone of the energy of that whole field, it is possible, for example, to imagine the subtle body as a body of radiant light; then to open to and explore what that feels like. Any image formed in this way does not necessarily need to appear in precise detail, or even completely distinctly. It is, rather, the energetic sense of pleasure or well-being which it supports that is primary, since this is what primarily supports the samādhi. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1142">Location 1142</a>:Likewise, one may experiment with imagining various luminous lines of energy in the body – for example, between the perineum and the crown of the head, or from the lower belly out through the legs – and sense how any such line of energy supports the whole body to feel upright, open, and energized. The imagination here may be visual or kinaesthetic, or a combination of the two. And it need not always follow exactly the anatomical contours of the physical body or its posture. For instance, if sitting or kneeling with the legs crossed or bent, the luminous lines of energy imagined radiating from the lower belly or base of the spine need not bend… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1148">Location 1148</a>:If there is tension, or even pain, in one area of the body, rather than always conceiving of it in anatomical or physiological terms, it can sometimes be more helpful to conceive of and perceive that area in energetic terms, and to play with the perception of… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1151">Location 1151</a>:There are many ways we may discover to bring about some sense of energetic openness and well-being in the subtle body. And as it is accessed more and more, this altered body feeling is one that eventually we can ‘remember’ and learn to deliberately recall – to summon by a gentle intention. We can then move, usually gradually, into the focused steadiness of samādhi from that… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1155">Location 1155</a>:Whether it has arisen through being deliberately recalled, or through focusing on the breath or mettā, there are again a number of possible ways of using the sense of pleasure or comfort to help guide the citta into the unification of samādhi. • Once it is easily sustaining for some minutes, we can gently begin to take that bodily feeling of well-being as the primary object of our focus. It is important not to ‘snatch at it’, but rather to ease the attention toward it gracefully, and gradually… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1161">Location 1161</a>:• The attention can at times probe it, burrowing into one area of the pleasure, perhaps where it feels strongest. • Or, at other times, a mode of ‘receiving’ it, really trying to open up to it, can be employed. • Either way, one attempts all the while to remain intimate with its texture, and actually to relish the pleasure as much as possible. In these ways (and in others that can be discovered) we can delicately work to gently sustain the bodily feeling of well-being, and to absorb the attention more fully into it. • Alternatively, it is… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1182">Location 1182</a>:Along with the steadiness of the feelings of well-being, and of the attention on those feelings, we are also gently aiming at eventually having the whole space of the body suffused by and saturated with the feeling of well-being or pleasure. Sometimes this happens by itself. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1191">Location 1191</a>:Having said that, it is in fact also possible at times to gently encourage the feeling of pleasure or well-being to spread – for instance by simply opening up the space of the awareness to embrace a larger area of the body. Sometimes then the pleasant feeling will automatically start to expand to fill that space. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1194">Location 1194</a>:Alternatively, the breath may be used to gently ‘massage’ the sense of well-being into other areas of the body. Although there is not space to enter into a full description of possibilities here, with practice the breath energy may be felt and perceived throughout the body, entering and flowing in all kinds of ways beyond the strictly anatomical movement of air into the wind-pipe and lungs. We can learn to sense the breath energy in and through the whole body. And as alluded to earlier, the breath energy can be mixed with the pleasure, so that the perceived movements of breath in the whole body space move and spread the perception of the pleasure. • There is also, again, no reason why one cannot just imagine the feeling of well-being permeating the body space more fully. The perception then often begins to follow the image. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1227">Location 1227</a>:Mindful observation will reveal that any craving or clinging is always accompanied by, and reflected in, blocks and knots in the subtle body. Now, insight, we have said, cuts that on which dukkha depends. And dukkha depends on craving. Thus, according to our definition, insight is any way of looking that releases craving. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: May 23, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1295">Location 1295</a>:that I see. Attachment to the pleasure of samādhi usually only occurs if experiences of samādhi are rare. A meditator may then hanker after it unskilfully because, even if they are told they shouldn’t, and even if they know it is impermanent, they do not have the confidence that such pleasure, though not permanent, is regularly accessible. When we know we can fairly readily experience that kind of pleasure again, we naturally relax our clinging, letting it go when it dissolves. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1295">Location 1295</a>:that I see. Attachment to the pleasure of samādhi usually only occurs if experiences of samādhi are rare. A meditator may then hanker after it unskilfully because, even if they are told they shouldn’t, and even if they know it is impermanent, they do not have the confidence that such pleasure, though not permanent, is regularly accessible. When we know we can fairly readily experience that kind of pleasure again, we naturally relax our clinging, letting it go when it dissolves. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1302">Location 1302</a>:A second possible way of becoming attached to samādhi is through pride – believing that we are somehow special because we can experience, even at will, such states of bliss and peace. But this kind of pride usually does not last very long at all. With dedicated practice and a minimum of intelligent attention, a meditator sees fairly quickly that samādhi is essentially dependent on the right conditions coming together in the mind and body. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1302">Location 1302</a>:A second possible way of becoming attached to samādhi is through pride – believing that we are somehow special because we can experience, even at will, such states of bliss and peace. But this kind of pride usually does not last very long at all. With dedicated practice and a minimum of intelligent attention, a meditator sees fairly quickly that samādhi is essentially dependent on the right conditions coming together in the mind and body. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1309">Location 1309</a>:The third and, as mentioned, most insidious way that meditation can provide an object of attachment pertains as much to states of insight meditation as it does to states of samādhi. For there can easily arise attachment to the view opened up or implied through any state or insight. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1309">Location 1309</a>:The third and, as mentioned, most insidious way that meditation can provide an object of attachment pertains as much to states of insight meditation as it does to states of samādhi. For there can easily arise attachment to the view opened up or implied through any state or insight. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1326">Location 1326</a>:None of the views that are implied or impressed upon us through any of these states, however, (and certainly none of those states themselves), is complete in the depth and comprehensiveness of its insight. None is the final truth. Though necessarily relying on these awesome perceptions and openings and the partial understandings they bring, we will still need to understand just how exactly they are fabricated. It is this that will deliver for us the fuller understanding of the emptiness of all things. And it is to the very beginning practices of this journey of understanding that we now turn. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1326">Location 1326</a>:None of the views that are implied or impressed upon us through any of these states, however, (and certainly none of those states themselves), is complete in the depth and comprehensiveness of its insight. None is the final truth. Though necessarily relying on these awesome perceptions and openings and the partial understandings they bring, we will still need to understand just how exactly they are fabricated. It is this that will deliver for us the fuller understanding of the emptiness of all things. And it is to the very beginning practices of this journey of understanding that we now turn. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1366">Location 1366</a>:Especially when supported by a devotion to cultivating samādhi, the meditation practices that reveal just how experience is fabricated are immensely powerful. So too are those practices that expose the impossibility of any thing’s inherent existence. When developed, such practices are capable of cutting through the reifications of avijjā at the deepest levels and with respect to all things. All possible notions of self and all phenomena can thus be seen to be empty, including even those which seem to be the most fundamental givens of existence – awareness, space, time and the present moment, for instance – where subtle reification is usually unrecognized and unquestioningly entrenched. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1366">Location 1366</a>:Especially when supported by a devotion to cultivating samādhi, the meditation practices that reveal just how experience is fabricated are immensely powerful. So too are those practices that expose the impossibility of any thing’s inherent existence. When developed, such practices are capable of cutting through the reifications of avijjā at the deepest levels and with respect to all things. All possible notions of self and all phenomena can thus be seen to be empty, including even those which seem to be the most fundamental givens of existence – awareness, space, time and the present moment, for instance – where subtle reification is usually unrecognized and unquestioningly entrenched. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1372">Location 1372</a>:But there are many situations in life where a significant degree of dukkha can be released through recognizing voidnesses that are not so hard to see at all. Through just a small shift in, or refinement of, our way of looking we realize that some element or other involved is a fabrication, and that it has no inherent existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1372">Location 1372</a>:But there are many situations in life where a significant degree of dukkha can be released through recognizing voidnesses that are not so hard to see at all. Through just a small shift in, or refinement of, our way of looking we realize that some element or other involved is a fabrication, and that it has no inherent existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1379">Location 1379</a>:The whole area of social conventions is one in which we can experience all kinds of suffering. Yet often with just a little reflection we can recognize the emptiness of some convention that we have reified, and this realization can bring some freedom. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1379">Location 1379</a>:The whole area of social conventions is one in which we can experience all kinds of suffering. Yet often with just a little reflection we can recognize the emptiness of some convention that we have reified, and this realization can bring some freedom. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1392">Location 1392</a>:It will probably be helpful in fact. But when the patently fabricated nature of countries is not recognized, the concept of ‘this country’, or ‘my country’, can gain an overwhelming force and solidity in human minds. The belief in the country as something real can give rise to a strength and rigidity of feeling beyond even the biological impulse for survival. How much violence and suffering in human history has there been with roots in this reification? How much willingness to kill and to die dependent on such a belief? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1392">Location 1392</a>:It will probably be helpful in fact. But when the patently fabricated nature of countries is not recognized, the concept of ‘this country’, or ‘my country’, can gain an overwhelming force and solidity in human minds. The belief in the country as something real can give rise to a strength and rigidity of feeling beyond even the biological impulse for survival. How much violence and suffering in human history has there been with roots in this reification? How much willingness to kill and to die dependent on such a belief? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1406">Location 1406</a>:Although not always easy to recognize, it is important to acknowledge too how often our opinions and our feelings about many things are conditioned by the views prevalent in the society we live in. Particularly significant in this regard is the conditioning of our sense of values, and thus also of our sense of what is valuable. In itself, cultural conditioning is not necessarily wrong. But it matters what we are ‘taught’ in this way. We are exposed to almost incessant messages from our society about what is of value, and much of this, while actually not serving our genuine happiness, is also more insidiously powerful than we might assume. The endless tidal-wave of advertising that manipulates values and desires, and thus culture, in consumerist economies is only one, glaringly obvious, example. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1406">Location 1406</a>:Although not always easy to recognize, it is important to acknowledge too how often our opinions and our feelings about many things are conditioned by the views prevalent in the society we live in. Particularly significant in this regard is the conditioning of our sense of values, and thus also of our sense of what is valuable. In itself, cultural conditioning is not necessarily wrong. But it matters what we are ‘taught’ in this way. We are exposed to almost incessant messages from our society about what is of value, and much of this, while actually not serving our genuine happiness, is also more insidiously powerful than we might assume. The endless tidal-wave of advertising that manipulates values and desires, and thus culture, in consumerist economies is only one, glaringly obvious, example. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1423">Location 1423</a>:Fifteen thousand years ago, my prowess as a hunter of woolly mammoths would probably have accorded me more status in the culture than my ability to handle the kinds of abstract mathematical concepts involved, for example, in twelfth grade differential calculus. I need to see: one is not inherently more valuable than another; I am not inherently worth more or less dependent on these abilities. If I can see this, I open a door to a more natural sense of self-worth, and to a degree of freedom. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1423">Location 1423</a>:Fifteen thousand years ago, my prowess as a hunter of woolly mammoths would probably have accorded me more status in the culture than my ability to handle the kinds of abstract mathematical concepts involved, for example, in twelfth grade differential calculus. I need to see: one is not inherently more valuable than another; I am not inherently worth more or less dependent on these abilities. If I can see this, I open a door to a more natural sense of self-worth, and to a degree of freedom. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1428">Location 1428</a>:There are probably countless examples, large and small, where it is possible to shake off the shackles of the dominant view and expose a lack of intrinsic truth to some assumption or ideology that may be widely agreed on in our social world. Sometimes the belief in a value system is shattered in an instant of penetrating insight. Other times it is melted away more gradually. Either way, although undoubtedly we do not need meditation to reflect in the kinds of ways described, it does take a certain boldness to trust in one’s own capacity to question views and to think for oneself. And while these qualities of boldness and trust are dependent on and empowered by many factors, let us mention a couple which may actually be supported by a more meditative approach. The first is including in one’s awareness the sense of strength as it manifests in the body. This sense can often be neglected, especially if we are not accustomed to having faith in ourselves in this way. But noticing, allowing, inhabiting, and even enjoying the bodily feelings that accompany the sense of confidence in our own seeing will greatly help that conviction, self-trust, and strength to take root and flourish in the being. Even if these bodily feelings are only fleeting at first, it can be a significant step in their consolidation to learn to open to them in this way. Then as our sense of strength and independence grows, it becomes easier for us to see that, just because most people around us believe it, we don’t have to fall for any view that has solidified and raised what is only a convention to the status of an objective truth. Connected to this, the second helpful element is a skilful awareness, and holding, of any difficult emotions that are evoked by what is being considered. In order for freedom to be possible, it is vital not to ignore feelings such as anger, hurt, or powerlessness that may be associated with an issue being reflected on. Such emotions may well need caring for, in various ways, as part of the process of liberating the mind. Equally though, it is important not to sink in feelings like these, or to be consistently overwhelmed by them, or pulled down into a state where there is no space or opportunity for creative responses and movements of mind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1428">Location 1428</a>:There are probably countless examples, large and small, where it is possible to shake off the shackles of the dominant view and expose a lack of intrinsic truth to some assumption or ideology that may be widely agreed on in our social world. Sometimes the belief in a value system is shattered in an instant of penetrating insight. Other times it is melted away more gradually. Either way, although undoubtedly we do not need meditation to reflect in the kinds of ways described, it does take a certain boldness to trust in one’s own capacity to question views and to think for oneself. And while these qualities of boldness and trust are dependent on and empowered by many factors, let us mention a couple which may actually be supported by a more meditative approach. The first is including in one’s awareness the sense of strength as it manifests in the body. This sense can often be neglected, especially if we are not accustomed to having faith in ourselves in this way. But noticing, allowing, inhabiting, and even enjoying the bodily feelings that accompany the sense of confidence in our own seeing will greatly help that conviction, self-trust, and strength to take root and flourish in the being. Even if these bodily feelings are only fleeting at first, it can be a significant step in their consolidation to learn to open to them in this way. Then as our sense of strength and independence grows, it becomes easier for us to see that, just because most people around us believe it, we don’t have to fall for any view that has solidified and raised what is only a convention to the status of an objective truth. Connected to this, the second helpful element is a skilful awareness, and holding, of any difficult emotions that are evoked by what is being considered. In order for freedom to be possible, it is vital not to ignore feelings such as anger, hurt, or powerlessness that may be associated with an issue being reflected on. Such emotions may well need caring for, in various ways, as part of the process of liberating the mind. Equally though, it is important not to sink in feelings like these, or to be consistently overwhelmed by them, or pulled down into a state where there is no space or opportunity for creative responses and movements of mind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1445">Location 1445</a>:Practice: Opening to freedom and strength through reflection Take a little time to settle in meditation. Then see if it is possible to allow, and to tune into, a sense of energetic alignment along the central axis of the body. Feel the strength that comes from this alignment of energy, including the body as a whole in your awareness. (Alternatively, you could think of something which stimulates a sense of strength in you, then tune into the feeling of energy in the body that is present, and allow that to align the body sense.) Let yourself enjoy it for some time if you like. Trying to stay connected to, and supported by, this sense of strength and alignment in the body as much as you are able, begin to reflect on your life and your social environment, asking yourself if there are any values or beliefs that you have absorbed from the culture and from your social environment that are contributing to suffering of some sort and that might be questionable. Notice, allow, and feel as fully as you can any emotional and energetic responses to what you see, and notice also the mental responses. If it seems that something arises emotionally that needs holding and attention before continuing, take time to do that now. When you feel ready, see if it is possible to reflect in a way that challenges this belief, or that recognizes it is not inherently true. Perhaps you can uncover the assumptions it rests on, or expose it as merely an agreed-upon conventionality. Again, as you do this, notice, allow, and feel as fully as you can any emotional, energetic, and mental responses. Especially with regard to any sense of strength that may surface, it might be important to try to let go of any preconceptions about what it should feel like. Strength can have a softness and pliancy to it; it need not feel brittle at all. Then if any feeling of strength and/or freedom arises, see if you can allow that to fill out in the body, and enjoy it. (It can be particularly helpful to feel the quality of strength filling the lower belly and the legs.) Let yourself linger in any feelings of strength or freedom that emerge. If strong anger arises, is it possible to find the quality of strength within the anger, and to tune into that, thus helping it to become a more wholesome emotion? If grief or sadness arise, what does it feel like they need right now?… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1445">Location 1445</a>:Practice: Opening to freedom and strength through reflection Take a little time to settle in meditation. Then see if it is possible to allow, and to tune into, a sense of energetic alignment along the central axis of the body. Feel the strength that comes from this alignment of energy, including the body as a whole in your awareness. (Alternatively, you could think of something which stimulates a sense of strength in you, then tune into the feeling of energy in the body that is present, and allow that to align the body sense.) Let yourself enjoy it for some time if you like. Trying to stay connected to, and supported by, this sense of strength and alignment in the body as much as you are able, begin to reflect on your life and your social environment, asking yourself if there are any values or beliefs that you have absorbed from the culture and from your social environment that are contributing to suffering of some sort and that might be questionable. Notice, allow, and feel as fully as you can any emotional and energetic responses to what you see, and notice also the mental responses. If it seems that something arises emotionally that needs holding and attention before continuing, take time to do that now. When you feel ready, see if it is possible to reflect in a way that challenges this belief, or that recognizes it is not inherently true. Perhaps you can uncover the assumptions it rests on, or expose it as merely an agreed-upon conventionality. Again, as you do this, notice, allow, and feel as fully as you can any emotional, energetic, and mental responses. Especially with regard to any sense of strength that may surface, it might be important to try to let go of any preconceptions about what it should feel like. Strength can have a softness and pliancy to it; it need not feel brittle at all. Then if any feeling of strength and/or freedom arises, see if you can allow that to fill out in the body, and enjoy it. (It can be particularly helpful to feel the quality of strength filling the lower belly and the legs.) Let yourself linger in any feelings of strength or freedom that emerge. If strong anger arises, is it possible to find the quality of strength within the anger, and to tune into that, thus helping it to become a more wholesome emotion? If grief or sadness arise, what does it feel like they need right now?… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1481">Location 1481</a>:And although I could, I need not conceive of myself as ‘The Resident Teacher’ as I am simply walking down the corridor, or reading a book, or sitting on the toilet. Even if I tried, I would probably forget at times! If I pay attention, I see there are countless such ‘holes’ – moments and stretches in any day when I am not, and do not have to be, ‘The Resident Teacher’. And I can also see that this role is actually only one of the various roles I have in my life at present. I am at times a friend to friends who have nothing to do with Gaia House, or even the Dharma; at other times I am a musician, a poet, a writer, a citizen, a neighbour, a brother, a son, an uncle, a room cleaner, an activist, a cook… So easily one role gets over-emphasized in an unwise way and we contract around it in identification. It becomes charged for us then, and it may begin to feel like a painful weight. Opening out the seeing to recognize the wider context can open out the contraction, so that vitality, interest, and creativity can flow more freely and widely. The psychology involved here is not often simple, but in addition to acknowledging the life in other roles, this seeing of the ‘holes’ in any role can be immensely helpful in exposing its lack of solidity. By seeing these gaps, we burst a bubble we’ve believed in and felt constricted by, and reveal a spaciousness in which we can then move more freely. We find that it is very possible to be fully committed to the responsibilities a role entails, and to feel profoundly the sense of meaningfulness it may have for us, without solidifying or over-identifying with that role. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00SI7PQD8&location=1481">Location 1481</a>:And although I could, I need not conceive of myself as ‘The Resident Teacher’ as I am simply walking down the corridor, or reading a book, or sitting on the toilet. Even if I tried, I would probably forget at times! If I pay attention, I see there are countless such ‘holes’ – moments and stretches in any day when I am not, and do not have to be, ‘The Resident Teacher’. And I can also see that this role is actually only one of the various roles I have in my life at present. I am at times a friend to friends who have nothing to do with Gaia House, or even the Dharma; at other times I am a musician, a poet, a writer, a citizen, a neighbour, a brother, a son, an uncle, a room cleaner, an activist, a cook… So easily one role gets over-emphasized in an unwise way and we contract around it in identification. It becomes charged for us then, and it may begin to feel like a painful weight. Opening out the seeing to recognize the wider context can open out the contraction, so that vitality, interest, and creativity can flow more freely and widely. The psychology involved here is not often simple, but in addition to acknowledging the life in other roles, this seeing of the ‘holes’ in any role can be immensely helpful in exposing its lack of solidity. By seeing these gaps, we burst a bubble we’ve believed in and felt constricted by, and reveal a spaciousness in which we can then move more freely. We find that it is very possible to be fully committed to the responsibilities a role entails, and to feel profoundly the sense of meaningfulness it may have for us, without solidifying or over-identifying with that role. <hr /></div>
</content>
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<title type="text">Old Man's War by John Scalzi</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/old-man-s-war-by-john-scalzi</id>
<updated>2023-06-25T19:48:29.394000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-25T14:03:12Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/old-man-s-war-by-john-scalzi" />
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<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000SEIK2S&location=2235">Location 2235</a>:Do not mourn me, friends I fall as a shooting star Into the next life <hr /></div>
</content>
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<title type="text">The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-consuming-fire-by-john-scalzi</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:05.244000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-25T14:03:11Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-consuming-fire-by-john-scalzi" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078X255Y1&location=1107">Location 1107</a>:There were more than a few scientists who knew one little thing, and then thought that knowledge was universally applicable to every other problem, to the point of excluding or discounting information from people whose specialty was that other problem. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078X255Y1&location=4051">Location 4051</a>:"It’s this: Confidence isn’t about knowing you’re right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right. You have doubts because it makes sense for you to have doubts. Just like it made sense for me to have doubts. But remember the plan is not the goal. What is your goal?" "To save as many lives as possible, through every means possible." "Be confident in that, and everything else will follow." <hr /></div>
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<title type="text">One Blade of Grass by Henry Shukman</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/one-blade-of-grass-by-henry-shukman</id>
<updated>2024-01-10T16:47:32.289000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-25T14:03:11Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/one-blade-of-grass-by-henry-shukman" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=165">Location 165</a>:Reculer pour mieux sauter, as the French say: to retreat in order to leap better. And sometimes we’ll find what we’re looking for only when we stop looking. If what we’re looking for lies outside of imagination or calculation, we can’t know what it is until it hits us. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=181">Location 181</a>:In our quest for efficiency, the old ways of proceeding through a slow, patient training over many years under an experienced guide may go the way of the dinosaurs, replaced entirely by short-term methods, even surgery or new, as yet unknown neurological interventions. Will something be lost? Is meditation merely an instrument to induce desired changes? For one thing, in its paradoxical way, it tends not to work so well if we are too directly seeking its benefits. For another, the chance to apprentice with a teacher, to entrust ourselves to an authentic guide, is a privilege like no other. And if the modern approaches end up supplanting the ancient, transformative insights into what it means to be human, they will have lost their true power to help our world. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=187">Location 187</a>:THIS BOOK IS ABOUT HOW I found a path when I didn’t even know I was looking for one. For a long time I didn’t know where I wanted to be; I just knew I wasn’t there. I tell this story not because it holds any special interest. Far from it; my challenges have been unremarkable. It’s a tale of everyday desperation, such as many know, that healed through meditation practice. That’s why I hope it may be helpful: to show that the practice can steer and jolt even a common dolt into kinder, better ways of living, without divine intervention though with moments of grace. For those who feel, as I once did, like giving up on life, perhaps this little narrative may incline them to think again. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=235">Location 235</a>:ONE NIGHT AT THE TAIL end of summer, when I was twelve years old, there was a thudding on the back door of our family home, a dilapidated cottage up the Cherwell Valley. Our mother opened up, and we heard her cry out in surprise and delight. It was a rainy night, and we gathered round to see what was going on. "Come in, come in," Mum called, and out of the weather stepped a windswept heap of a man wrapped in a damp, hairy overcoat, with two dogs at his heels. I guessed it must be Speedy. We’d all heard of Speedy, and even caught glimpses of him on the far sides of fields, in his shaggy greatcoat, the same color as his spreading ginger beard. Staff in hand, he’d be pressing along, his two dogs weaving in and out of hedgerows in his wake. But I’d never seen him up close before, face-to-face. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=248">Location 248</a>:This was the mid-1970s, when there were still bona fide tramps stalking the byways of England, old-school "men of the road" such as had been beating the footpaths for at least a century, or maybe much longer. We’d heard of tramps, with a mixture of fear and fascination. The autumn evening Speedy rapped on our door, rain was lashing down. He stood under the little porch, his hairy coat dripping. He brushed himself down, opened up his front, and pulled out a little puppy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=255">Location 255</a>:While she was gone, Speedy looked down at us kids. We’d never seen a face like it. First off, hidden between his beard, hat, and hair, it was hard even to see his cheeks. Then when you realized you were looking at them, it was a shock to see skin so brown and ruddy. It looked more like animal hide. Then you landed on the eyes, shimmering, alive. They shocked you when you stole a glance at them, there was so much life and light in them. It was like having a wild animal in the room. Only when I did did I realize he was smiling. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=279">Location 279</a>:BY THE TIME SPEEDY WALKED away that night, I realized there was another way of being human. It was unlike anything I’d known. It was as if the room itself had just been shocked, and a stunned peace fizzed among the furniture. An aliveness that was new, and not my own, welled up inside me. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=312">Location 312</a>:It was also the summer we got to know Speedy for real. He befriended us, and taught us some of his tricks. How to make a rabbit snare out of garden twine and set it on secret rabbit paths. How to catch and smoke fish. He told us of his winters on the south coast, his life on the open road. Roped in his hairy overcoat, stringed into his boots, he liked to sit still and watch things, he said. You could learn a lot if only you just sat yerself still. Everybody else, the whole world, is rushing about all day long, they don’t have time to learn nothing, if they just stopped still a moment they’d be amazed what they’d learn. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=333">Location 333</a>:The young dog would always come with us when we slept out. She couldn’t resist the pull of the old fields she’d known as a puppy. She would disappear into reeds by the riverbanks. We’d hear her thrash through them, then burst out in excitement. She came alive on the land. This was the life she had been made for: tramping the fields, rivers, and woods of her native territory. She didn’t have to think why. She was made for it, and it for her. At the end of a day she would sit at the foot of my sleeping bag, a pale triangle, looking out across the dark land into the night, and not curl up until everyone else was asleep. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=566">Location 566</a>:Had we ever hated? he wanted to know. He said how hate could be strong—like love in some ways. It made you think about the person all the time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=622">Location 622</a>:Meanwhile the simple food, the fitness, the hard work, the trekking, the mental work of recording it all changed me. It was all so different in South America. To be among people who had grown up in close contact with the mountains, streams, llamas, potato fields, and earthen homes where they lived—it seemed to make them more at peace with themselves. The infants were constantly on someone’s back, whether an older sibling, aunt, or mother—a bundle in a blanket, eyes gleaming at you from over a shoulder. What would it do to a child to live unseparated from a human body the first year or two of its life? What kind of security in its own being would a child imbibe, growing like a tree in the mulch cultivated by generations of its own kind? Was that the difference? These people had less irritability and anxiety. They were calm. They had a depth you could feel. They were friendly and hospitable. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=657">Location 657</a>:He had the little beach all to himself. It felt like he’d put down a burden he didn’t know he had been carrying. Something in him rose by itself as your arms do when you set down a heavy weight. All his life he had been trammeling his mind, he realized, keeping it in channels so it could communicate with others. Now he didn’t have to. He was free, totally free, in a way that felt so good he wanted it always. A large old fishing boat was anchored off shore. As he stared into the blinding light on the sea the boat vanished, swallowed by the brilliance. Then it reappeared for an instant, a black shape, then disappeared, a ghost-hull flickering on and off like a stain on the retina. It seemed so beautiful he could hardly comprehend it. And suddenly all the past months of travel seemed like nothing more than a dream-like series of images that had passed before his eyes. A young man, a beach, a boat on the water: there was nothing to tell him what year it was. He could have been any young man in any century, gazing over any water. And the water was fascinating, blindingly white yet completely dark. Scales of brilliance slid over darkness, so it alternated between thick matt black and blinding light. But water was transparent, so was air, yet there the surface was, the sea’s skin, thick as elephant hide. What was he actually seeing? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=685">Location 685</a>:Back in my cabana, I lay on my bunk in the gloom with the wooden ceiling just overhead while a flame burned in my chest like the flame of my kerosene camping stove, which was fierce but ghostly. It was a fire of love, and it kept pouring out of me. I’d never known anything like it. Yet somehow it was familiar, as if it had been with me all my life, just unnoticed. The walls of weathered plywood gleamed in the dark. I lay listening to the rustle and murmur of water outside. Previously there had always been a limit to beauty, but now it was everywhere. Nothing was left out. All I had to do was lie here, with love pouring out of my breast in a swift, silent stream, like a Roman candle. I felt like I’d been claimed by immemorial love. That night I lay awake a long time, the watch fire in the heart burning long into the night. It seemed I would never need to sleep again. I’d found something larger than the world, and didn’t need to. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1040">Location 1040</a>:Sometimes a kind old friend from school days would drag me out of my lairs into his network of conviviality, where I would skulk and long for the events to be over. Or else quaff potations and think I was the soul of the party. In time, alongside Mr. Morbid I evolved another personality: Mr. Fun, who was flirtatious and gregarious, but brittle and oversensitive, and emerged during bouts of drinking, arranging his clothing and hair to hide any ailing skin to the point where he could banish it from consciousness, and despise it almost as someone else’s blight. My friend introduced me to a series of achingly desirable young women, reared at expensive schools, after whom I’d hanker. But in spite of Mr. Fun’s bonhomie, they picked up an untrustworthy shadow of oddness on their radar. They could tell something was off, they just weren’t sure what. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1233">Location 1233</a>:These days psychologists say a traumatic event can trigger not only the fight-or-flight response but also a freeze. We go into lockdown, all the more likely in the case of a nervous system already debilitated by an ongoing stressor, such as a chronic ailment. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1264">Location 1264</a>:THE BEACH: BY NOW I knew others had been there, too. In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, for example, I had been astonished to come across this passage: Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1274">Location 1274</a>:Thirty years later, when he came to compose his great play, O’Neill was still writing about it. It still tugged at him. Well, why wouldn’t it? What could matter more? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1282">Location 1282</a>:At the time it happened to O’Neill, once his ship docked he went straight to the nearest dive and drank himself nearly to death. The experience had not delivered him from despair. Like me, he had had no way to deepen or stabilize it or make it intelligible, or link it to his life. For me, too, it had been a random windfall, a sudden, marvelous rend in the fabric of life. Then it blew on and left the tear behind, flapping in the breeze. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1294">Location 1294</a>:Only the odd twinkle of sun to guide you. I remembered what it was like to figure out where a stream was, and to find it after pushing through dark undergrowth—a babble of clear light in the gloom of bushes. Days turned into weeks, following the footpaths, pounding out twenty-five-mile days that had me laying my exhausted limbs on the hard ground each night. I kept going, and picked up the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Poems started to creep up from the ground, and a flicker of life rekindled somewhere near the heart. I remembered what Speedy had said about "old roads" you couldn’t see but which were there, spanning great distances across the land, and now and then I wondered if I wasn’t catching a glimpse of one. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1307">Location 1307</a>:After a week in the refugee camps, then another driving around in the back of a stripped-down Land Rover with a squad of guerrillas, sleeping under the stars, spying on enemy positions with binoculars, drinking tiny glasses of strong tea, smoking fierce tobacco out of small bronze pipes, eating strange stews cooked over open fires, and coming under occasional artillery fire—we’d hear a pair of thuds somewhere in the distance, followed a few seconds later by two crashes or booms, depending on how far away the shells landed—I came back to life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1405">Location 1405</a>:The strange thing wasn’t just that the sleep debt came in with such force, but that it cleared just as suddenly. On the seventh morning, I woke up, made breakfast, and had coffee, fully expecting to need to stagger straight back to bed, but instead I felt clear, luminous, refreshed in a way I couldn’t remember feeling since being a boy—actually, since I couldn’t remember when. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1432">Location 1432</a>:Often while meditating, after a few minutes of restlessness a sense of soothing would come on, as if I were being salved inside and out. In neurophysiological terms, this was the parasympathetic nervous system engaging, turning down the dial on the stress response. I had lived with a dysregulated nervous system for so long that I hadn’t considered the possibility that maybe the anxiety I ordinarily felt wasn’t 100 percent necessary. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1476">Location 1476</a>:He sabotaged himself: that was the diagnosis. Deep down he felt he didn’t deserve to win. There is a legendary moment in the show. During a therapy session, the racer, quietly goaded by Harvey, leaps off the couch, flies across the room, and pulls Harvey to the floor. The producer jumps into the frame and tugs him off, you can hear the cameraman shouting in the background, and the sound guy leaps in, too, and it was all on film. That was the turning point in the young man’s therapy. The moment he let his rage out, he could no longer deny his pain. On-screen he collapsed, sobbing, while Harvey straightened his glasses and put his hand on the client’s shaking back. The driver went on to become British GT champion. One day I tore Harvey’s door off its hinges. Instead of trying to stop me, he sat and watched. He was very pleased. He had been goading me. "You’re basically a piece of shit," he kept murmuring in his mellow Californian tones. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1489">Location 1489</a>:I was white-hot inside. I could barely walk. I was a two-year-old. I pushed against the door, I hit it, pummeled it, then fell, got up again, shaky on my legs, and beat harder, rattled the handle, tugged it, fell again. Then up and at it, then down on the floor in a raging, hopeless heap. This went on for a while. Harvey said nothing. He wanted to see what would happen. In the end I pulled the door down, then tore it to pieces. "Good therapy," Harvey said, and he got out his Polaroid camera to commemorate the two of us standing on top of the heap, me holding the remains of the door handle like a trophy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1495">Location 1495</a>:The incident with the door became my doorway. I could no longer pretend. Whatever my parents had done or not done, it had hurt. Dad was an amazing man, but not an amazing dad. He was half right about being a bastard. He hadn’t provided all a boy needed by way of love. Mum had done her best, but her own early history cast its shadow, and the marital circumstances had been so hard. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1565">Location 1565</a>:The change of location, the new job, the therapy, the publishers, quitting the PhD: they had all happened once I took up meditation. Was it possible that just sitting still twice a day could bring order to a disordered psychophysiology, and regulate a dysregulated life? On top of that, in fits and starts, my skin was getting better. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1618">Location 1618</a>:I had a diagnosis now: dysthymia. Persistent, low-grade, shame-based depression. It was tricky, because one of its symptoms was a denial of symptoms prompted by shame at the symptoms—the shame itself being one of the symptoms. Cleverly circular. But the new cognitive-behavioral approach was actually helping. I never knew what diabolical habits of mind I’d had. It turned out that as long as I could remember, I’d been thinking myself into misery. I beat myself up, put myself down, shoulded myself to death, catastrophized and awfulized. I was an inveterate musturbator: I must do this, that must work out, et cetera. As I exposed and gave up these habitual cognitions, to be alive became stranger and more interesting. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1625">Location 1625</a>:It reminded me of Derek Walcott’s poem where he meets himself in the mirror: You will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome … You will love again the stranger who was your self. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1675">Location 1675</a>:In fact, the reason I was a travel writer myself was that I had read Lawrence in my teens, and his writing about place had burned a hole in my imagination. When I went abroad at eighteen, it was his writing that inspired me to try my hand at it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1690">Location 1690</a>:Her approach came from Zen. She called it "writing practice." Zen was popular in American letters. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Peter Matthiessen—many writers made no secret of their affiliation with Zen. Natalie was another. "First thought, best thought" was the maxim. Get the page covered, outrun the internal censor. There was something about her—a stillness, a quiet radiance. I’d never known anything exactly like it. As if some kind of jewel shone inside her. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1706">Location 1706</a>:ONE DAY NATALIE AND I were sitting on the porch overlooking her small lawn, enclosed by an adobe wall that was just beginning to glow as the New Mexico afternoon thickened toward evening. Cottonwood trees with long silvery leaves overhung the neighborhood like willows, silent in the late air. A cat sprang onto the broad, rounded top of the wall and sat down to lick its paws. I watched the cat. The trees, the shadows, the waning light, the quiet sounds of a neighborhood concluding its day, and the cat fluffing itself up and resting—all caught me with their beauty. Things seemed to go slower when you were around Natalie. They took the time to show themselves to you. It reminded me of how in my teen years, as an aspiring poet, I’d learned to see beauty in ordinary things. A white cat sheltering from rain under a dark bush. A streetlamp illuminating stucco at night. The hiss of traffic on a wet street heard from a second-floor window. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1713">Location 1713</a>:Natalie opened up a book on Zen and read aloud from it. It was a passage by Dogen Zenji, a Japanese Zen master from the thirteenth century.* In her slow, Jewish New Yorkese (a "Lorne Guyland" accent, as Martin Amis called it), she read: Mountains do not lack the qualities of mountains. Therefore they always abide in ease and always walk. You should examine in detail this quality of the mountains walking. Mountains’ walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking. She put the book down and looked around, a little dazed, and said, "Wow," shaking her head. "Isn’t he mind-blowing?" I hummed noncommittally. I couldn’t make head or tail of what I’d just heard. Was it supposed to be nonsense, like Edward Lear or something? Mountains walking? I asked her for the book and took a look myself. The chapter was called "The Mountains and Rivers Sutra." Whatever that meant. I reread the paragraph to myself. Then she asked me to read it out loud, so I did. I couldn’t understand it at all, and said so. She said she couldn’t, either, but loved it anyway. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1731">Location 1731</a>:As soon as I thought of it, I felt it had to be right. What else could make sense of Dogen’s apparent nonsense? But the beach moment would make complete sense of it. Not that I could exactly explain why. But everything had been there, all at once, in the empty fire I had seen, that single seething, ghostly reality in which all time and space were present. Anything was possible there—everything was possible. How could it not be, if the universe were one single fabric and one was made of that fabric oneself? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1756">Location 1756</a>:It was a nice room. It hit you immediately: a peace about it. It was pretty much square, made out of thick adobe, like most of Santa Fe, and was cool and quiet. There was no furniture, the whole space bare except for a row of black mats lined up around the walls, about a dozen of them, each with a small black cushion in the middle. The room ought to have felt spartan. Instead it felt thick with peace, with restfulness. A small Buddha made of wood sat on an altar with a candle. As Robert lit the candle and made a bow to the altar, I noticed a shaving nick on the back of his scalp. Then he pulled out two of the black cushions. There wasn’t much to zazen. He showed me different possible positions for the legs, and I settled on what he called "quarter lotus." He taught me the correct alignment of the spine, and the way to hold my hands in my lap, and told me to start counting my breaths in sequences of ten. And that was it. "Nothing else?" I asked. "Not really," he said. "That’s about it." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1773">Location 1773</a>:As I walked away down the path into the trees and down a drop into the little gulch of the stream along which ran the track where I had left my bike, it came to me that what I had just tasted was the reality of being alive. It was frightening, as it should be. Normally, I realized, I pulled away from the bare fact of being alive. I didn’t know how not to. But now I did. It was zazen. Meditation in the Zen style. It somehow was no surprise that the other form of meditation I had been doing did not offer this kind of taste. The TM was restorative, ameliorative, medicinal almost. It helped you relax and sleep and restore. But this zazen—it didn’t seem to be interested in those things. Instead, without any deliberation on its part, it simply let you know what it was to be alive. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1784">Location 1784</a>:I began to do zazen daily. Over the weeks I grew to love it: a sense of clarity, a watery quality to everything, would come on. Zen was done with the eyes open, which made one’s sense of the world while meditating more vivid. I’d feel a warmth, a pressure in my chest. Sometimes, for no reason, I’d start crying. Sometimes a strange wind seemed to riffle through me and through the surroundings as I sat, reminding me of Sappho’s famous line about love shaking her the way the wind shakes the oak trees on the mountainside. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1789">Location 1789</a>:I fell in love with the hills around Santa Fe, hills of chunky red earth, fragrant with small pines and juniper. I fell in love with the town too, its ocher mud buildings sitting squat and hunched under the sky, fragrant with the woodsmoke that began to be burned as autumn rolled in, overseen every day by sunsets that were apocalyptic, with pillars of cloud smoking over the city, and late sunlight flooding the streets. Thick as concentrated orange juice, it was light you could have scooped up in your fingers. It was palpable, you could feel it in your chest, it enveloped you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1794">Location 1794</a>:Eventually I fell in love for real, with a woman from Wisconsin, a singer-songwriter recovering from the recent cancer deaths of both her parents. She was the kind of woman I could never have imagined being with, a sensitive, wheat-haired, long-limbed goddess from the album covers of my youth, when American country rock took over the English airwaves for a few summers in the mid-seventies. Andi was a little older than me. It was a relief. She had been through more, she was ahead of me in care of the soul. I trusted her. I didn’t have to prove anything. She showed me it was okay to be open to one’s wounds. One didn’t constantly have to be outrunning them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1817">Location 1817</a>:He told me about the discipline of living as an artist, the need to practice your art every day without fail, how you should get up early each morning to work before you did anything else. You needed to trust your instincts and cultivate wonder. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1836">Location 1836</a>:"It’s okay to take care of yourself, you know." Frankly, I didn’t. I lived in fear of being self-indulgent, and was confused about where to draw the line between that and self-care. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1854">Location 1854</a>:I had heard that sesshin retreats were the heart of Zen training. The word—ses-shin—literally meant "encountering or touching the heart." Natalie explained that in Japanese the word shin meant both "heart" and "mind." That right there was the difference between East and West, she said. We cut off the heart from the mind. Not so the East. And according to Zen, our true heart-mind was infinite, knowing no bounds or limits, and included everything. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1906">Location 1906</a>:The Japanese word zen derived from the Chinese ch’an, which in turn came from the Sanskrit dhyana and meant "meditative absorption." But unlike other kinds of meditation, it was short on detailed instructions. The advice Robert the Zen priest had first given me—to count breaths in sets of ten—was about as elaborate as it got. Zen had "lineages" of masters who had "confirmed" one another down through the ages. What they had confirmed was that the student had had the same insights into the nature of consciousness or reality that the master had, and had learned to live by them in daily life. It was weird: it was about some kind of radical experience that shifted one’s view of things, yet it was also about absolute ordinariness. If you saw reality more clearly, ordinary things became miraculous. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1958">Location 1958</a>:ZEN IS NOT EASY. ZEN is baffling. Zen is impossible to pin down. On the one hand, it’s easy to pin down: it’s about sitting on a cushion every day. You try to be aware of what is going on. Breathing, mostly, and thoughts that come and, you hope, go. It’s nice when they go. You can find yourself in a state of exhilarating peace. Zen is a journey back to radical simplicity. No mantras, no "sacred syllables," no sacred anything. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1972">Location 1972</a>:The emperor asked Bodhidharma how much merit he had acquired through his support for Buddhism. Bodhidharma said, "No merit whatsoever." Not a reply the emperor had been expecting. According to George, Zen didn’t believe in reincarnation, let alone a cosmic moral bank account. Then he asked the holy man to expound his highest, holiest teaching. Bodhidharma answered, "No holiness. Vast and void." In Zen there was no such thing as holy. It didn’t separate sacred and profane at all. This was more like it. I found myself starting to like Zen again, and Bodhidharma. In frustration, the emperor then asked Bodhidharma who on earth he was, this man standing before him. To which Bodhidharma answered, "I don’t know." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=1996">Location 1996</a>:ZEN CALLED ITSELF THE "SUDDEN school," George explained. You didn’t have to go through a gradual process, through stages of practice. Instead, in one sudden leap, you could find all you were looking for. Bodhidharma said the practice wasn’t based on scripture or words, but rather "directly pointed to the human mind." "Sudden teaching." You didn’t have to travel by stages. Some how, in spite of the torment, I recognized that too. The answer to life was right here already. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2061">Location 2061</a>:THE FOURTH DAY WAS WARM, and in the afternoon George decided to have us sit outside in the long grass. "Let the wind give us a dharma talk," he said. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2069">Location 2069</a>:On the other hand, a principle of Zen, George had told us, was the discovery that we had been wrong about everything. There was great relief in that, he assured us. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2075">Location 2075</a>:According to George, Zen’s view was that we were busy being wrong all the time in ways we didn’t realize. "Awakening" was nothing other than to see this. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2095">Location 2095</a>:I had found the answer to the teacher’s question. Who was I? I was no one. I had made myself up. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2102">Location 2102</a>:Not only that, but without me, there was no past or future. Every phenomenon that arose was happening for the first and only time, and filled all awareness entirely. That made it an absolute treasure. The rest of that day I was in bliss. Peace suffused everything. A love burned in my chest like a watch fire. I could hear the grass growing, a faint high singing sound, like the sibilance of a new snowfall coming down. I remembered the Jewish saying: "No blade of grass but has an angel bending over it, whispering, ‘Grow, grow.’" Every blade of grass deserved that. Each blade was an angel. I cried. My heart was mush. Somehow it felt as though the grass were growing in my own chest. Every object contained an inner lamp, and now I could see it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2416">Location 2416</a>:But I was doing the same thing with Zen. I thought the point was to get cooked by it so you no longer needed it. The plan was to do it, "get" it, and discard it. I had trouble getting my head around the maintenance model: that you might keep doing things for their own sake. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2777">Location 2777</a>:"What was your original face before your parents were born?" This is a famous "barrier" koan in Zen, the teacher explained: a question given to novices that may help precipitate a breakthrough. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2854">Location 2854</a>:Imagine a pane of opaque glass. A hole is driven through it, and suddenly we see that there’s a world on the other side of the glass: that’s kensho. Koan study seeks to enlarge the hole, and create new holes, until over time the whole pane becomes riddled with holes, small and large, loses its structural integrity, and collapses. Then the separation between that world and this world is gone. John gave me my first koan there and then, the original ur-koan described by Zen master Mumon in the thirteenth century as "the Gateless Barrier of the Zen sect": A monk asked Joshu* in all earnestness: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" Joshu answered, "Mu." I’d heard about this koan in talks given by various teachers in other centers. Literally, mu means "not." But the real meaning of the koan is something else, something unspeakable. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2867">Location 2867</a>:Mu is traditionally the first koan. The student uses mu as a kind of mantra. On every out-breath, while sitting, they silently voice the sound mu. The student is encouraged not to think about its meaning. The koan has work to do. Its work cannot be done by the conscious mind. Only mu itself can work on the practitioner, releasing them from a kind of prison they didn’t realize they had been caught in. While the conscious mind is kept busy attending to the sound "mu," the "real" mu can slip in unnoticed through the back door. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2943">Location 2943</a>:But a few things had to be in place: a steady daily practice, a life sufficiently in order not to create constant demands on our nerves, a reasonably stable psychology (though the practice itself should help with that), and two final pieces: a community of practitioners and a guide. I used to think I shouldn’t need a teacher. I should be able to handle things myself. Wasn’t that the measure of a competent, responsible adult? To the extent you didn’t handle it, life would knock you around until you did. It would teach you the lessons you needed to learn. But it was between you and life. It was a long time before it occurred to me that one of the lessons life had been trying to teach me was that sometimes you needed a teacher. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=2985">Location 2985</a>:Zen’s demands were few: daily sitting, occasional retreats, being open to what life brought in each moment. It had benefits for others: It made me more attentive, less fretful. It opened up more love, and I’d return from the retreats with vivid eagerness to be with the family. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3008">Location 3008</a>:The room is suffused with the last of the sunlight. I bend down to give her a plate, fork balanced on the rim. "Thank you," she says. I stand up straight for a moment, my own plate in hand. I’m about to sit down but get arrested by a scene in the movie where Roger Rabbit’s tail is singed on a stove, and he proceeds to accelerate faster and faster round a kitchen, trying to outrun his flaming rear, turning the kitchen cabinets into a centrifuge, like a biker on the Wall of Death. I remember loving this scene years ago when the movie first came out. I start laughing. Something happens. A tingling, a whirring inside me. I notice how malleable the apparently solid surfaces in the cartoon are. The tingle becomes a flywheel in my belly, spinning faster and faster, until it is almost unbearable, a sweet agony. It’s in my chest now, and at once my heart just about breaks and the sensation whips itself into a cyclone, a dust devil, a whirlwind, and spins up the throat into the skull. My head explodes. A thunderbolt hits the room. I black out—except I don’t; I’m still standing. Everything else blacks out. All the circuitry that keeps the world going snaps off. A fuse blows. I find I’m not standing on anything. Below, a chasm; above, a void; all around, in every direction, nothing. Dark, radiant nothing. I let out a whoop and start laughing. Clare looks up from the bed. "Oh, God," she groans, "it’s not that Zen again." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3038">Location 3038</a>:"Not one speck of cloud to mar the view," an old Zen saying has it. Not one thought in the whole universe. Nothing exists! All this earnest training of the mind that we did in Zen—or thought we did—and there was no mind! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3041">Location 3041</a>:IN THE ROOM, EVERYTHING IS bathed in rich light, a dark, lucent limpidity drenching the bed, the window, the TV, the three other people sprawled on it. Giddy, dizzy, I totter downstairs with my untouched plate, delirious with joy, feeling like any moment I might topple into the abyss and not caring. How is it even possible to take a step, to be suspended on this imaginary surface called the floor? It’s all a dream, a floating illusion, a mirage-like reflection, a ghost of something on nothing. The food looks magnificent on my plate, like a still life from a seventeenth-century master. I can’t imagine what to do except admire it. I can’t imagine what to do at all. Everything is one glorious abyss of peace that fizzes with energy. I pull a cushion off the sofa, fold it in half, and sit down in zazen. I can’t think what else to do. At the end of twenty minutes, the carpet, sofa, and cushions are all still alive with energy. A flicker of alarm: Am I going mad? Will this never end? I let myself out and go for a walk around the dusky neighborhood. Billows of smoky energy seethe everywhere. The houses hang still and quiet in the gray-blue dusk. They, too, are smoky and alive, poised between being there and not being there. The mind is a wisp of smoke, the remains of a blown-out candle. Not just the houses but the seeing of the houses is the same: there and not there. I could go up and knock on their doors, tap on their windows, but "being there" isn’t what it seems. The world "out there" is a reflection quivering on nothing, even when you rap on a door. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3054">Location 3054</a>:ONCE AGAIN, EVERYTHING ANSWERED AND fulfilled. I still can’t put into words what it was—indeed, words were one of the principal devices for screening this reality—but when you saw it, when it appeared, it folded up everyday reality like a piece of paper and dropped it in a furnace. This reality, unbearably real, loved us fiercely, it loved all things—it was like discovering that the whole world was one heart. Yet at the same time it wasn’t anything. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3062">Location 3062</a>:I had no answers. Only what I felt. Which was that, by some miraculous power, I had just been granted a glimpse into reality, into the true fabric of the universe—into its DNA, as it were, and what I had seen there implicated me too, so that it was clear that, like everything else, I was a child of the universe. I wasn’t separate from it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3071">Location 3071</a>:Then he started plying me with odd questions about the koan mu. They seemed like nonsense, yet I found responses stirring in me, and when I let them out, John would smile at my ridiculousness and agree, and tell me that I had just given one of the traditional answers. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3111">Location 3111</a>:THERE WERE SEVERAL "FIRST KOANS" to work through. One of them was about a "distant temple bell." I don’t want to give too much away—koan training is an intimate thing, not to be bandied about in loose talk—but I can say a little. The koan about the distant bell is pivotal, in that it’s the first of the major "presentation" koans, meaning a koan where no amount of discussion will help. The student has to come up with a wordless "presentation" of the koan, to show it, embody it, be it. It’s no use talking about it. The whole thrust of koan study is away from language into liberation from language. The great silence of all things opens up, where words are just flotsam and jetsam. I sat with the koan about the bell for quite a few weeks. Already the recent experience was turning itself into a metaphysical understanding in my mind, and that held me up with the new koan. Had John not been there, had he not known so instinctively how to work with me, it would probably have gone the way of the other experiences and become a troubling memory. But here he was, and he’d given me the strange koan about the bell. "Stop the sound of the distant temple bell," it runs. How on earth do you do that? "There’s no place for discussion," John kept telling me. "We have to do it. Trust the experience you had. Let it show you how." After several dokusan, with John probing and prodding me, finally one evening in the dokusan room, after I thought I’d exhausted every imaginable possibility, an urge came and I randomly trusted it. As soon as I did, I fell into a groove of centuries of practice worn smooth by others. I no longer cared if I was making the "right" presentation. The koan disappeared, a great expansiveness opened up, as I did what I did. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3173">Location 3173</a>:Dad was not just a bright-burning intelligence, as well as a warm and sometimes quite lazy man whose laziness did not trouble him, but he was domestic: he loved being at home. He was solid. A mensch. His priorities were straight. He loved people—people were his great pleasure. He would be fast friends with new people so quickly I used to wonder if he already knew them, and ponder how he possibly could. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3178">Location 3178</a>:Dad and I had had our ups and downs. But one way or another, through therapy and Zen, through being partnered with a clear-eyed woman, things had changed for me. Perhaps I had finally done enough of what Harvey had said: "give yourself the parenting you didn’t get as a child." I’d have the odd flare-up of rage or sunburst of shame, but I had learned to meet him as he was, and on those terms we enjoyed ourselves together. After all, we were still two literary-minded Jews who enjoyed a good bit of argumentation and debate together. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3185">Location 3185</a>:In other zendos where I had sat, I had sometimes sensed a chilly trace of fear discernible in the room. But in this humble house in Oxford, although the sitting was the deepest and stillest I had yet encountered, I felt a warm responsiveness. The teacher conveyed the teachings in such a human way, not as a cold formality to be enforced but as a way of living to be shared. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3215">Location 3215</a>:JOHN WAS A DILIGENT, LOVING teacher. It was unlike any relationship I’d had before. He was unlike anyone I’d known. No sense of being exceptional, no claims to anything remarkable: just an ex-lawyer with a deep devotion to the dharma and a clear conviction that, while it was nothing special, while it was here all the time and was the intrinsic nature of life, Zen was also precious. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3244">Location 3244</a>:I understood more clearly why Zen had its historical affinity for poetry. It accentuated the senses, it opened up a capacity for cherishing the things of the world—a curtain stirring in a breeze, an unpeeled potato waiting patiently on a counter, a bar of soap in a beam of sun. The part of us that loved things Zen revived. It also helped with our manifest inadequacies. Or mine, anyway. Since Zen accepted everything as it was, it accepted us, too, as we were. Procrastinating, letting the bills pile up, drinking too much coffee, acting selfishly, stubbornly—whatever our shortcomings, Zen liked us just the same, and enabled us not to mind ourselves so much, and because of that, it made it easier to roll up the sleeves and work on what needed working on. One old master, when asked what Zen really was, thought for a while and said, "Zen is doing what needs to be done." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3352">Location 3352</a>:In kensho, consciousness is plunged into a bath of formless, nameless love. That we afterwards fall short of what we "realize" can be an incentive to train with our teachers until we do find durable peace. At least we know that it might be possible now. Kensho is the inverse of trauma. Here, unlike in trauma, the shock is of love and belonging, not pain and hurt. Researchers in psychology are now finding that a true epiphany can leave a beneficent shadow on the psyche, a positive counterpart to PTSD. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3465">Location 3465</a>:It’s a famous koan of Master Unmon. "I don’t ask about before the fifteenth day; bring me a phrase about after the fifteenth day," he says. None of the monks can respond, so he answers for them: "Every day is a good day." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3477">Location 3477</a>:Nevertheless, having had at least a few upheavals in my sense of reality by now, I wonder why I’m still as prone as I am to unease, still a bit dysthymic, and I can’t honestly say that every day is a good day. Often, in fact, I think just the opposite. Sometimes I’ll catch myself thinking not just that a day is anything but good but that it’s positively bad, even that a whole week is bad, even a month. Even a year. Yet I’m a moderately "advanced" Zen student. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3496">Location 3496</a>:Joan has given hundreds of talks over the years. Maybe thousands. She is formidable. Quiet, slight, silver-haired, gentle, tender, but made of iron. She is a powerhouse, a treasure house, a storehouse of human energy and clarity. Yet modest, unassuming, outwardly unremarkable. This is how mature Zen practitioners should be, they say: indistinguishable from an ordinary person. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3547">Location 3547</a>:Both Joan and John are manifestly at peace. Both are ready to give up inordinate amounts of time to help others in this strange training, with minimal ostensible reward except for the joy of sharing it, and both seem to have given up their own agenda in favor of others’. And they enjoy their lives more than anyone else I know. You feel it when you’re with them. You see it in their eyes. They’re at peace, free, full of quiet energy, acutely intelligent, and loving. That’s another thing. This dharma training seemed to make people uncommonly articulate, engaging, sensitive, intuitive. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3560">Location 3560</a>:WOULD GET THIS FEELING around Joan, that everything near her flourished. Her world was one of gentle well-being. It was one of the happiest things I’d ever known. At first I’d feel it in her house, then it would spread to the garden outside, then the neighborhood. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3634">Location 3634</a>:Dogen said that ordinary beings have no illumination in their consciousness, but Buddhas have no consciousness in their illumination. Awareness has to be extinguished, all trace of a witness gone, for the path of Zen to flourish. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3708">Location 3708</a>:By chance I had recently met a maverick dreamworker from Vermont, brilliant, controversial, confrontational. A former mailman with an MA in philosophy, Marc Bregman had stumbled into a workshop led by the Jungian James Hillman long ago and never looked back. He had developed his own potent form of dream therapy. Dreams were guiding us. We had to surrender to them and receive their guidance: that was the basic message. Nine times out of ten, they wanted us to open to our long-buried wounds. That was the way to healing of the soul. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3720">Location 3720</a>:I had learned that the secret to a happy relationship was not believing that it must be with the right person, but that your partner was the right person. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3758">Location 3758</a>:Then, hard on the heels of the first two days, this morning, the third, you wake up so clearheaded, so fresh, awake, and lively to the new sensations of the day—the soft dawn filtering under your curtain, the rich shush when you turn on the basin tap, the delicious creaking outside your room as someone walks down the corridor—that you forgo even your morning cup of tea. You don’t want to disturb the sumptuous peace with anything, not even tea. The zendo seems so beautiful your heart almost breaks—the black cushions, the gray twilight, the single star of a candle on the altar. When the bell rings for the first period, its note is as clear-throated as a nightingale’s. The faint dawn breeze from an open window brushes over your bare hands. You taste it in your skin, sweet as ice cream. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3792">Location 3792</a>:Then things get weird. You’re in Egypt, in an ancient temple. There’s some kind of stone plinth, and the foot of a giant statue. You’re in the statue’s shadow, there’s sandy desert all around, dry air, the scent of dust. Then you’re in a theater. Paris or London in the 1890s. A gold proscenium arch rises high overhead, with the shaded stage pit before you, the glow of footlights. You sense the quiet expectancy of an audience. A slow joy rises like yeast in dough. It’s wonderful to be sitting in the glow of past centuries. Then you become superconscious of your breathing, but it’s no longer yours. It’s like watching an animal breathe, as if through a lens. You ask, Who is it breathing? There’s the rustle of inhalation followed by exhalation. Whose breath is it? You switch your attention to your sight. The question spontaneously arises: Whose sight is it? And there’s hearing: some kind of faint hiss in the room, and a soft rumble perhaps of a boiler in the basement, deep under the floor. Again: Who is hearing? It’s as if some unknown being has usurped your senses. As you receive these sense experiences—breathing, seeing, hearing—you try to find out who it really is sitting in the middle of them. What is there, in the space between hearing, seeing, breathing? There must be something there, because that’s where you are. But the more deeply you examine this space in the middle, the harder it is to identify who’s in there. Suddenly it’s clear: there’s no one there. Just empty space. Breathing is happening, but there’s no one breathing. Where there ought to be a breather, only space. There’s hearing, but no one hearing. Where there should be a hearer, just space. It’s this again: no one. Like on the mountain in New Mexico. Except it’s not the same. This time it’s a flattening. Breathing, hearing, seeing: they flatten against one another, two-dimensional. Whatever was in the middle is squeezed out. Somehow, as a result of that, where "I" should be, there is nothing but space. A rush of joy. Why joy? Because it’s like putting down the heaviest burden, a weight as absolute and dreadful as Jehovah. It was a lie all along. One tweak in the angle of vision and it’s gone. No me. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3816">Location 3816</a>:This is what the famous "just" of Zen means. Zen often says: Just sit. Just walk. Just eat. But "just walking" doesn’t mean: keep your mind only on walking and don’t think about anything else. It means: there is no mind to put on walking. There is only walking. There truly is just walking. Right now, it’s just seeing, just breathing, just hearing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3869">Location 3869</a>:Everything gone. All the hard work of holding together the world as Henry knew it—gone. No more Henry, no more world. Nothing. No more Zen. Truly, nothing. True nothing. Everything annihilated. Nothing left. Nothing at all. It’s hard to know what exactly happened, but when I look back on it, there’s simply nothing. Not even awareness of nothing. A gap. But not even a gap. Blackness. But not even that. It’s hard to know what to call it. Death, perhaps. "Death" seems the aptest term. One impossible fact: nothing at all. Not emptiness, which might still suggest space with nothing in it, but nothing. Nothing to see, no one to see, no seeing. It was like a boot kicking out the lamp that had illuminated all things. Not vast space: that was still something. Not everything being one: that was still something. Not no-self: somehow there was still an awareness of that. This was reality at last. Nothing. Not even a witness. The ultimate joke. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3971">Location 3971</a>:I WALKED ABOUT IN A daze of gratitude for days, weeks, months. At first I assumed it would all wear off. But gradually it dawned on me that it was never going to. This last shift hadn’t been so much an "experience" as just that—a real shift. Years on, it still hasn’t really faded. Zen had actually done the impossible: it had changed me. Over time, I stopped being able to tell whether it had "worn off" or not. It no longer mattered. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=3986">Location 3986</a>:In Japanese they say: mu ichi motsu—mu ju zo. "Not one single thing—an inexhaustible treasury." They also say: shin ku—myo u. "True goneness—wondrous being." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4004">Location 4004</a>:I had found what seekers through the ages had sought. There was a resolution to human life. It wasn’t easy to find, even if we had the good fortune to stumble across teachers who could point us down a path to it. But it existed, and it was true. All it took was to give ourselves up. Previously, the teaching of the various kensho experiences hadn’t penetrated deep enough. Now it was as if the very I who experienced them had been dug out at the root. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4045">Location 4045</a>:Gradually it became clearer how this reality got obscured: it was through thinking and then believing the thoughts. It was a subtle process, but ubiquitous. But once this dark, radiant fact opened up, we had an alternative. It was possible to see the obscuring process in action, and cherish it without being caught by it. It, too, was empty, after all. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4057">Location 4057</a>:I DON’T MEAN TO BRAG about any of this. A real danger in practice is to seek, then become proud of, our "awakenings." The Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa dubbed it "spiritual materialism," and it’s just another form of self-serving egotism. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4067">Location 4067</a>:"Kick out the bottom of the black lacquer bucket," goes an ancient Zen saying. Lose every last bit of consciousness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4191">Location 4191</a>:No need to achieve: all was achieved already. The great project of this life had been to realize that. Dogen said, "The great Way is intrinsically accomplished; the principle of Zen is complete freedom." All that came next was service, love, trying to be helpful and open. I sat a lot each morning and evening. It was like walking through a pine forest, the earth soft underfoot, the canopy high overhead, and a quietness, a limitless twilight among the trees that went on forever: neither light nor dark, both light and dark. Time, day, night, and epochs opened like petals, and the "mind-flower" bloomed. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4224">Location 4224</a>:I MADE A HABIT OF sitting through the night, usually on the last night of a retreat, not as a feat of endurance but because it was easy. Something was alive in me, and when I sat it could fulfill itself and grow stronger. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4354">Location 4354</a>:Somehow, with seemingly inexhaustible energy, Ruben would find time between other commitments for one or two or sometimes more long dokusan per day, unleashing his passionate Zen wisdom from a multitude of angles, firing koans at me, expecting instant mind-free responses, wearing down any lingering "stickiness" of mind, again and again blowing away the dust, as he put it, quickening my sluggish Zen activity, battering the encrustations of self-clinging, opening new vistas of unencumbered dharma. He once called it "romping through the universe together." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4364">Location 4364</a>:At the annual teacher training retreats there would be awe-inspiring seminars where powerful masters did "dharma combat" over a koan, until gradually the circle settled down to the most salient truth the koan opened up. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4431">Location 4431</a>:One reason for writing it was that I was concerned it would soon all be gone. "I was here—once and no more." Before the land disappeared entirely, I wanted to make a record of the old road I’d found and followed, in case it might help anyone else searching for a path like this. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4448">Location 4448</a>:Zen opened an unknown wellspring that gushed like the watch fire of love, the Roman candle in the heart I first tasted many years ago on the beach in South America: a fount of love that never ceased welling up. As Juan de la Cruz said in the sixteenth century: How well I know that fountain which gushes and flows though it be in the dark of night. After which there is nothing to do but share and serve. In the end it’s all a fairy tale. In the end, all Zen saves us from is ourselves. It may be a little inaccurate but not unreasonable to say that in the end, all Zen is is love. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4542">Location 4542</a>:SO IS "ENLIGHTENMENT" REAL? I’VE no idea, but: Experiences wherein space and time disappear and all is revealed as one infinite consciousness; or as utterly without form and void; or where we ourselves vanish into empty sky; or where no trace of anything, including any witness, remains—real. Experiences that leave indelible, beneficent changes in the psyche—real. Becoming more filled with love, more concerned for others—real. Lasting, positive character change, meaning less aversion and anger, less craving and clinging, more ease with the arising and passing of things as we live with less domination by self-centeredness—real. Perhaps we can claim the personality can get just a little bit better through practice, that’s all: small improvements, but they’re enough. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=4553">Location 4553</a>:Second, some of us are going to need other kinds of help, along with meditation: dream therapy, cognitive therapy, somatic work, yoga, whatever it may be. The more the different approaches understand and respect one another, the better. Third, one common misunderstanding of meditation in the West is that it’s an individual undertaking. I fell for that, and fell foul of it. In fact it’s collaborative and relational, at least if you want to make real progress. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 10, 2024 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07N8ZGFQB&location=657">Location 657</a>:He had the little beach all to himself. It felt like he’d put down a burden he didn’t know he had been carrying. Something in him rose by itself as your arms do when you set down a heavy weight. All his life he had been trammeling his mind, he realized, keeping it in channels so it could communicate with others. Now he didn’t have to. He was free, totally free, in a way that felt so good he wanted it always. A large old fishing boat was anchored off shore. As he stared into the blinding light on the sea the boat vanished, swallowed by the brilliance. Then it reappeared for an instant, a black shape, then disappeared, a ghost-hull flickering on and off like a stain on the retina. It seemed so beautiful he could hardly comprehend it. And suddenly all the past months of travel seemed like nothing more than a dream-like series of images that had passed before his eyes. A young man, a beach, a boat on the water: there was nothing to tell him what year it was. He could have been any young man in any century, gazing over any water. And the water was fascinating, blindingly white yet completely dark. Scales of brilliance slid over darkness, so it alternated between thick matt black and blinding light. But water was transparent, so was air, yet there the surface was, the sea’s skin, thick as elephant hide. What was he actually seeing? As he pondered this question, suddenly the sight was no longer in front of him. It was inside him. Or he was inside it, as if he’d stepped into the scene and become part of it. He could no longer tell inside from outside. At the same instant the whole world, around, above, below—the sand, the sea, the light on the water—turned into a single field of sparks. A fire kindled in his chest, his fingers tingled, in fact everything tingled. The fire was not just in his chest but everywhere. Everything was made of drifting sparks. The whole universe turned to fire. He was made of one and the same fabric as the whole universe. It wasn’t enough to say he belonged in it. It was him. He was it. The beginning and end of time were right here, so close his nose seemed to press against them. Suddenly he knew why he had been born: it was to find this. This reality. His life was resolved, the purpose of his birth fulfilled, and now he could die happy. He could die that very night and all would be well. Two arms of black lava enclosed the little beach. They lay like lazy iguanas with their noses to the water, and they too were implicit in this truth. That it was true he knew beyond doubt. It was more true than anything else. This was the way things always had been and always would be. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/eastern-body-western-mind-by-anodea-judith</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:03.932000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-25T14:03:10Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/eastern-body-western-mind-by-anodea-judith" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004G8PAH0&location=277">Location 277</a>:Each of the seven chakras has also come to represent a major area of human psychological health, which can be briefly summarized as follows: (1) survival, (2) sexuality, (3) power, (4) love, (5) communication, (6) intuition, and (7) consciousness itself (see Figure 0.2). Metaphorically, the chakras relate to the following archetypal elements: (1) earth, (2) water, (3) fire, (4) air, (5) sound, (6) light, and (7) thought. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004G8PAH0&location=308">Location 308</a>:In this analogy the body is the hardware, our programming is the software, and the Self is the user. However, we did not write all of these programs, and some of their language is so archaic it is unintelligible. It is a heroic challenge, indeed, to identify our programs and rewrite them all while continuing to live our lives, yet this is the task of healing. It becomes even more difficult when we realize that each of our personal programs is part of a larger cultural system over which we have had little or no control. The chakra system is an evolutionary program and can be used to reprogram our lives. If we can learn this on an individual level, perhaps we can apply the same methods to our culture and environment. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson and Steve Argyle</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-frugal-wizards-handbook-for-surviving-medieval-england-by-brandon-sanderson-and-steve-argyle</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:02.354000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-15T08:52:22Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-frugal-wizards-handbook-for-surviving-medieval-england-by-brandon-sanderson-and-steve-argyle" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BPN6KC4T&location=3612">Location 3612</a>:"And thousands of smaller ones," I said. "One city in my world probably covers more land than we’ve traveled since leaving Stenford." At least, if you included the suburbs, the nuances of which I didn’t want to explain at the moment. "Gods…" Sefawynn said. "It’s so…" "Crowded?" I asked. "Peaceful." Peaceful? I hadn’t been expecting that. "So many people living together," she said, "but not fighting. You only learned to fight as a contest, for others to watch. There might be people among you who…who have never seen someone die…" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BPN6KC4T&location=4475">Location 4475</a>:I can trace the original idea back to a story I told myself at night sometime in 2019. You see, as I’m going to bed each night, I tend to imagine a story. Like telling myself a bedtime story. This is how my brain works. If I close my eyes, movies start playing. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Elegant Failure by Richard Shrobe</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/elegant-failure-by-richard-shrobe</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:03.867000Z</updated>
<published>2023-04-14T03:15:41Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/elegant-failure-by-richard-shrobe" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01JJOYE5E&location=195">Location 195</a>:For us, attention primarily has to do with caring. If you attend to something, you care for it and give time to it. To give time and attention is to give caring. To pay attention to the mundane, simple, small details of everyday life is to live in the world with a spirit of caring, as if each and every thing were in your stewardship, as if you have a responsibility to care for every moment and each thing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01JJOYE5E&location=202">Location 202</a>:A monk said to Zen Master Ching-ch’ing (Kyosei; Gyeong Cheong), "Master, I’m pecking out. You, please, peck in." That offers an image of student and teacher in accord with each other: I’m trying to break out. You, please, break in, so the two of us together can connect, mind to mind. Ching-ch’ing shouted at the monk, "Are you alive or not?" That was his pecking in. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01JJOYE5E&location=234">Location 234</a>:But essentially, if you are going to practice the Zen way, you have to lose all your hopes and all your expectations. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01JJOYE5E&location=334">Location 334</a>:meditation seat three times, hit his staff, and stood there motionless. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01JJOYE5E&location=439">Location 439</a>:When Yao-shan arrived at Ma-tsu’s temple, he asked Ma-tsu the same question: "I understand the canonical teaching of Buddhism, but I hear that in Zen you teach looking into the essence of mind, realizing true nature, and becoming buddha. This I don’t understand. Can you please explain it to me?" Ma-tsu immediately said, "Sometimes I make him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes. Sometimes I don’t make him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes. Sometimes raising his eyebrows and blinking his eyes is correct. And sometimes raising his eyebrows and blinking his eyes is not correct. How about you?" At that moment—ptchh—Yao-shan had an awakening experience. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han and Daniel Steuer</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-disappearance-of-rituals-by-byung-chul-han-and-daniel-steuer</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:00.975000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-27T06:57:43Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-disappearance-of-rituals-by-byung-chul-han-and-daniel-steuer" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KH9DDJ7&location=122">Location 122</a>:Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Gratitude by Oliver Sacks</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/gratitude-by-oliver-sacks</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:39:03.027000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-27T06:57:42Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/gratitude-by-oliver-sacks" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=73">Location 73</a>:Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers. At eleven, I could say "I am sodium" (element 11), and now at seventy-nine, I am gold. A few years ago, when I gave a friend a bottle of mercury for his eightieth birthday—a special bottle that could neither leak nor break—he gave me a peculiar look, but later sent me a charming letter in which he joked, "I take a little every morning for my health." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=76">Location 76</a>:Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over. My mother was the sixteenth of eighteen children; I was the youngest of her four sons, and almost the youngest of the vast cousinhood on her side of the family. I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=89">Location 89</a>:I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at eighty as I was at twenty; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=101">Location 101</a>:Perhaps, with luck, I will make it, more or less intact, for another few years and be granted the liberty to continue to love and work, the two most important things, Freud insisted, in life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=103">Location 103</a>:When my time comes, I hope I can die in harness, as Francis Crick did. When he was told that his colon cancer had returned, at first he said nothing; he simply looked into the distance for a minute and then resumed his previous train of thought. When pressed about his diagnosis a few weeks later, he said, "Whatever has a beginning must have an ending." When he died, at eighty-eight, he was still fully engaged in his most creative work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=106">Location 106</a>:My father, who lived to ninety-four, often said that the eighties had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’ too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At eighty, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was forty or sixty. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together. I am looking forward to being eighty. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=119">Location 119</a>:At eighty-one, I still swim a mile a day. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=137">Location 137</a>:I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=144">Location 144</a>:I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work, and my friends. I shall no longer look at the NewsHour every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=153">Location 153</a>:I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=176">Location 176</a>:A FEW WEEKS AGO, in the country, far from the lights of the city, I saw the entire sky "powdered with stars" (in Milton’s words); such a sky, I imagined, could be seen only on high, dry plateaus like that of Atacama in Chile (where some of the world’s most powerful telescopes are). It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how little time, how little life, I had left. My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience—and death. I told my friends Kate and Allen, "I would like to see such a sky again when I am dying." "We’ll wheel you outside," they said. I have been comforted, since I wrote in February about having metastatic cancer, by the hundreds of letters I have received, the expressions of love and appreciation, and the sense that (despite everything) I may have lived a good and useful life. I remain very glad and grateful for all this—yet none of it hits me as did that night sky full of stars. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B016GRO8BC&location=205">Location 205</a>:I started a new sort of treatment—immunotherapy—last week. It is not without its hazards, but I hope it will give me a few more good months. But before beginning this, I wanted to have a little fun: a trip to North Carolina to see the wonderful lemur research center at Duke University. Lemurs are close to the ancestral stock from which all primates arose, and I am happy to think that one of my own ancestors, fifty million years ago, was a little tree-dwelling creature not so dissimilar to the lemurs of today. I love their leaping vitality, their inquisitive nature. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Fidelity by Wendell Berry</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/fidelity-by-wendell-berry</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:57.769000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-16T18:05:53Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/fidelity-by-wendell-berry" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=74">Location 74</a>:Mat Feltner was my grandfather on my mother’s side. Saying it thus, I force myself to reckon again with the strangeness of that verb was. The man of whom I once was pleased to say, "He is my grandfather," has become the dead man who was my grandfather. He was, and is no more. And this is a part of the great mystery we call time. But the past is present also. And this, I think, is a part of the greater mystery we call eternity. Though Mat Feltner has been dead for twenty-five years, and I am now older than he was when I was born and have grandchildren of my own, I know his hands, their way of holding a hammer or a hoe or a set of checklines, as well as I know my own. I know his way of talking, his way of cocking his head when he began a story, the smoking pipe stem held an inch from his lips. I have in my mind, not just as a memory but as a consolation, his welcome to me when I returned home from the university and, later, from jobs in distant cities. When I sat down beside him, his hand would clap lightly onto my leg above the knee; my absence might have lasted many months, but he would say as though we had been together the day before, "Hello, Andy." The shape of his hand is printed on the flesh of my thigh as vividly as a birthmark. This man who was my grandfather is present in me, as I felt always his father to be present in him. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=85">Location 85</a>:When I stand in the road that passes through Port William, I am standing on the strata of my history that go down through the known past into the unknown: the blacktop rests on state gravel, which rests on county gravel, which rests on the creek rock and cinders laid down by the town when it was still mostly beyond the reach of the county; and under the creek rock and cinders is the dirt track of the town’s beginning, the buffalo trace that was the way we came. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=399">Location 399</a>:Ben Feltner never had believed in working on Sunday, and he did not believe in not working on workdays. Those two principles had shaped all his weeks. He liked to make his hay cuttings and begin other large, urgent jobs as early in the week as possible in order to have them finished before Sunday. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 17, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=437">Location 437</a>:"That mule could kick the lard out of a biscuit." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=445">Location 445</a>:For what seemed a long time Mat knelt there with his father’s dead wrist in his hand, while his mind arrived and arrived and yet arrived at that place and time and that body lying still on the soiled and bloodied stones. When he looked up again, he did not look like the man they had known at all. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=505">Location 505</a>:She was already wearing black. She had borne four children and raised one. Two of her children she had buried in the same week of a diphtheria epidemic, of which she had nearly died herself. After the third child had died, she never wore colors again. It was not that she chose to be ostentatiously bereaved. She could not have chosen to be ostentatious about anything. She was, in fact, a woman possessed of a strong native cheerfulness. And yet she had accepted a certain darkness that she had lived in too intimately to deny. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=612">Location 612</a>:Her face, it seemed, had been made to smile. It was a face that assented wholly to the being of whatever and whomever she looked at. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=632">Location 632</a>:"People sometimes talk of God’s love as if it’s a pleasant thing. But it is terrible, in a way. Think of all it includes. It included Thad Coulter, drunk and mean and foolish, before he killed Mr. Feltner, and it included him afterwards." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=739">Location 739</a>:Mat Feltner dealt with Ben’s murder by not talking about it and thus keeping it in the past. In his last years, I liked to get him to tell me about the violent old times of the town, the hard drinking and the fighting. And he would oblige me up to a point, enjoying the outrageous old stories himself, I think. But always there would come a time in the midst of the telling when he would become silent, shake his head, lift one hand and let it fall; and I would know—I know better now than I did then—that he had remembered his father’s death. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=751">Location 751</a>:As soon as the porch was cleared, he retrieved his hat from the hall tree and walked quietly out across the yard under the maples and the descending night. So as not to be waylaid by talk, he walked rapidly down the middle of the road to where he had tied his horse. Lamps had now been lighted in the stores and the houses. As he approached, his horse nickered to him. "I know it," Jack said. As soon as the horse felt the rider’s weight in the stirrup, he started. Soon the lights and noises of the town were behind them, and there were only a few stars, a low red streak in the west, and the horse’s eager footfalls on the road. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 10, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=768">Location 768</a>:He put sugar and cream in his coffee and stirred rapidly with the spoon. Now he lingered a little. He did not indulge himself often, but this was one of his moments of leisure. He gave himself to his pleasures as concentratedly as to his work. He was never partial about anything; he never felt two ways at the same time. It was, she thought, a kind of childishness in him. When he was happy, he was entirely happy, and he could be as entirely sad or angry. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=771">Location 771</a>:His glooms were the darkest she had ever seen. He worked as a hungry dog ate, and yet he could play at croquet or cards with the self-forgetful exuberance of a little boy. It was for his concentratedness, she supposed, if such a thing could be supposed about, that she loved him. That and her yen just to look at him, for it was wonderful to her the way he was himself in his slightest look or gesture. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=776">Location 776</a>:Though he might loiter a moment over his coffee, the day, she knew, had already possessed him; its momentum was on him. When he rose from bed in the morning, he stepped into the day’s work, impelled into it by the tension, never apart from him, between what he wanted to do and what he could do. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=781">Location 781</a>:This morning, delaying his own plowing, he was going to help Walter Cotman plow his corn ground. She could feel the knowledge of what he had to do tightening in him like a spring. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=809">Location 809</a>:She had never seen anybody like him. He had a wild way of rejoicing, like a healthy child, singing songs, joking, driving his old car as if he were drunk and the road not wide enough. He could make her weak with laughing at him. And yet he was already a man as few men were. He had been making his own living since he was fourteen, when he had quit school. His father had been dead by then for five years. He had hated his stepfather. When a neighbor had offered him crop ground, room, and wages, he had taken charge of himself and, though he was still a boy, he had become a man. He wanted, he said, to have to say thank you to nobody. Or to nobody but her. He would be glad, he said with a large grin, to say thank you to her. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=945">Location 945</a>:She knew he would rather die than be beaten. It was maybe not the best way to be, she thought, but it was the way he was, and she loved him. It was both a trouble and a comfort to her to know that he would always require the most of himself. And he was beautiful, the way he moved in his work. It stirred her. She could feel ambition constantly pressing in him. He could do more than he had done, and he was always looking for the way. He was like an axman at work in a tangled thicket, cutting and cutting at the brush and the vines and the low limbs, trying to make room for a full swing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=953">Location 953</a>:She had learned that she could do, and do well and gladly enough, whatever she would have to do. She had no fear. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=959">Location 959</a>:Her parents’ pride was social, belonging, even in its extremity, to their kind and time. But Elton’s pride was merely creaturely, albeit that of an extraordinary creature; it was a creature’s naked claim on the right to respect itself, a claim that no creature’s life, of itself, could invariably support. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=966">Location 966</a>:At his best, Elton was a man in love—with her but not just with her. He was in love too with the world, with their place in the world, with that scanty farm, with his own life, with farming. At those times she lived in his love as in a spacious house. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B078JVV2L7&location=1250">Location 1250</a>:And then he heard his father’s voice riding up in his throat as he had never heard it, and he saw that his father had turned to the boy and was speaking to him: "Honey, run yonder to the house. Tell your granny to set on another plate. For we have our own that was gone and has come again." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/tao-te-ching-by-lao-tzu</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:57.369000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-16T00:21:30Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/tao-te-ching-by-lao-tzu" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=178">Location 178</a>:Even the meaning of his name is uncertain (the most likely interpretations: "the Old Master" or, more picturesquely, "the Old Boy"). <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=185">Location 185</a>:wei wu wei, literally "doing not-doing," <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=202">Location 202</a>:The teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest sense. Unencumbered by any concept of sin, the Master doesn’t see evil as a force to resist, but simply as an opaqueness, a state of self-absorption which is in disharmony with the universal process, so that, as with a dirty window, the light can’t shine through. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=229">Location 229</a>:The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 16, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=240">Location 240</a>:When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other. Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=260">Location 260</a>:Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=262">Location 262</a>:The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don’t know who gave birth to it. It is older than God. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=284">Location 284</a>:The Master stays behind; that is why she is ahead. She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them. Because she has let go of herself, she is perfectly fulfilled. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=296">Location 296</a>:When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=299">Location 299</a>:Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=331">Location 331</a>:The Master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is open as the sky. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=408">Location 408</a>:Stop thinking, and end your problems. What difference between yes and no? What difference between success and failure? Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid? How ridiculous! Other people are excited, as though they were at a parade. I alone don’t care, I alone am expressionless, like an infant before it can smile. Other people have what they need; I alone possess nothing. I alone drift about, like someone without a home. I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty. Other people are bright; I alone am dark. Other people are sharp; I alone am dull. Other people have a purpose; I alone don’t know. I drift like a wave on the ocean, I blow as aimless as the wind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=448">Location 448</a>:When the ancient Masters said, "If you want to be given everything, give everything up," they weren’t using empty phrases. Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 11, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=513">Location 513</a>:If you receive the world, the Tao will never leave you and you will be like a little child. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=517">Location 517</a>:If you are a pattern for the world, the Tao will be strong inside you and there will be nothing you can’t do. Know the personal, yet keep to the impersonal: accept the world as it is. If you accept the world, the Tao will be luminous inside you and you will return to your primal self. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=536">Location 536</a>:The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=548">Location 548</a>:Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need others’ approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=568">Location 568</a>:If powerful men and women could remain centered in the Tao, all things would be in harmony. The world would become a paradise. All people would be at peace, and the law would be written in their hearts. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=623">Location 623</a>:The Master doesn’t try to be powerful; thus he is truly powerful. The ordinary man keeps reaching for power; thus he never has enough. The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=633">Location 633</a>:When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=659">Location 659</a>:When a superior man hears of the Tao, he immediately begins to embody it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he half believes it, half doubts it. When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao. Thus it is said: The path into the light seems dark, the path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long, true power seems weak, true purity seems tarnished, true steadfastness seems changeable, true clarity seems obscure, the greatest art seems unsophisticated, the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=695">Location 695</a>:Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=710">Location 710</a>:There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=723">Location 723</a>:In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=742">Location 742</a>:The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=804">Location 804</a>:He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=820">Location 820</a>:If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself. The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be. The more subsidies you have, the less self-reliant people will be. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=836">Location 836</a>:When the will to power is in charge, the higher the ideals, the lower the results. Try to make people happy, and you lay the groundwork for misery. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice. Thus the Master is content to serve as an example and not to impose her will. She is pointed, but doesn’t pierce. Straightforward, but supple. Radiant, but easy on the eyes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=890">Location 890</a>:Act without doing; work without effort. Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts. The Master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn’t cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=909">Location 909</a>:Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose. What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=943">Location 943</a>:I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=972">Location 972</a>:My teachings are easy to understand and easy to put into practice. Yet your intellect will never grasp them, and if you try to practice them, you’ll fail. My teachings are older than the world. How can you grasp their meaning? If you want to know me, look inside your heart. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=999">Location 999</a>:If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you aren’t afraid of dying, there is nothing you can’t achieve. Trying to control the future is like trying to take the master carpenter’s place. When you handle the master carpenter’s tools, chances are that you’ll cut yourself. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1009">Location 1009</a>:Act for the people’s benefit. Trust them; leave them alone. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1203">Location 1203</a>:Jayata said to Vasubandu, "If you have nothing to ask for in your mind, that state of mind is called the Tao." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1223">Location 1223</a>:Philo said, "Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Months and years and all periods of time are concepts of men, who gauge everything by number; but the true name of eternity is Today." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1225">Location 1225</a>:If you want to become whole, etc.: Unless you accept yourself, you can’t let go of yourself. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1251">Location 1251</a>:Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1335">Location 1335</a>:Honoring the Tao means respecting the way things are. There is a wonderful Japanese story (adapted here from Zenkei Shibayama Roshi’s A Flower Does Not Talk) which portrays this attitude: A hundred and fifty years ago there lived a woman named Sono, whose devotion and purity of heart were respected far and wide. One day a fellow Buddhist, having made a long trip to see her, asked, "What can I do to put my heart at rest?" She said, "Every morning and every evening, and whenever anything happens to you, keep on saying, ‘Thanks for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.’" The man did as he was instructed, for a whole year, but his heart was still not at peace. He returned to Sono, crestfallen. "I’ve said your prayer over and over, and yet nothing in my life has changed; I’m still the same selfish person as before. What should I do now?" Sono immediately said, "‘Thanks for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.’" On hearing these words, the man was able to open his spiritual eye, and returned home with a great joy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1346">Location 1346</a>:The great Way is easy: Zen Master Seng-ts’an said, The great Way is not difficult if you don’t cling to good and bad. Just let go of your preferences: and everything will be perfectly clear. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003SHDM8O&location=1401">Location 1401</a>:no one can compete with her: She sees everyone as her equal. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Be Not Afraid of Life by William James, John Kaag, and Jonathan van Belle</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/be-not-afraid-of-life-by-william-james-john-kaag-and-jonathan-van-belle</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:55.496000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-16T00:21:30Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/be-not-afraid-of-life-by-william-james-john-kaag-and-jonathan-van-belle" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B6MXQL5F&location=173">Location 173</a>:"William expressed himself and his environment to perfection when he replied to my question about his house at Chocorua, ‘Oh, it’s the most delightful house you ever saw; has 14 doors all opening outside.’ His brain isn’t limited to 14, perhaps unfortunately." It is quite like James, perhaps the most humane and welcoming philosopher, to celebrate a wealth of doors, so many standing invitations for guests to come and go as they like, for light and fresh air to flow freely. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B6MXQL5F&location=239">Location 239</a>:"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day," James advised in the Principles, "That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B6MXQL5F&location=377">Location 377</a>:My beloved old Tom, <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B6MXQL5F&location=378">Location 378</a>:Take for granted that you’ve got a temperament from which you must make up your mind to expect twenty times as much anguish as other people need to get along with. Regard it as something as external to you as possible, like the curl of your hair. Remember when old December’s darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first morning of creation; and the hour is just as fit as any hour that ever was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">P53 by Sue Armstrong</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/p53-by-sue-armstrong</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:52.877000Z</updated>
<published>2023-03-16T00:21:30Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/p53-by-sue-armstrong" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=125">Location 125</a>:It has become the most studied single gene in the history of molecular biology, generating over 70,000 research papers <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=133">Location 133</a>:Vogelstein, who was born and brought up in the shadow of Johns Hopkins in the 1940s and went to medical school there, has been involved with p53 since its earliest days. His lab, housed today in a tall modern building of glass and light which looks out over Baltimore and down onto the warm red bricks of the old hospital, has provided some of the most important insights into the workings of the gene. ‘I think you could safely say that it’s impossible – or very difficult – to get a malignant tumour without the activity of p53 being disrupted.’ <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=151">Location 151</a>:the role of p53 in nailing the tobacco industry by furnishing unequivocal proof that smoking is a direct cause of cancer. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=176">Location 176</a>:‘The question that’s obsessed me for the whole of my career is: why is cancer so rare?’ Gerard Evan, <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=188">Location 188</a>:the ‘last universal common ancestor’ of all life on earth (often referred to by the acronym LUCA), whose existence was first proposed by Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859. In other words, some of our genes are more than 3.5 million years old and have been passed down faithfully from one generation to the next over unimaginable eons of time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=192">Location 192</a>:The great majority of cancers – well over 80 per cent – are carcinomas, which means they are in the epithelial cells that form the outer membranes of all the organs, tubes and cavities in our bodies, and include our skin. The connective tissue, which provides the structural framework for our bodies, and support and packaging for the other tissues and organs – it includes, for example, bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue such as tendons and ligaments, collagen and fatty tissue – appears extremely resistant to turning malignant. Sarcomas, which are cancers of the connective tissue, account for only about one in a hundred cases. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=213">Location 213</a>:The growing tumour is parasitic: it competes with the normal cells around it for nutrients and oxygen, and it can’t grow much beyond 1–2mm (1/25th–1/12th of an inch) in diameter unless it develops its own blood supply. What distinguishes a malignant tumour from a benign one is the former’s ability to spread – to send out microscopic shoots that penetrate the walls and invade neighbouring tissue, and to seed itself in distant sites from breakaway cells carried in the bloodstream or lymph system. Blood-borne dissemination is particularly efficient at spreading cancer, with the blood depositing its cargo of delinquent cells along natural drainage sites, most commonly the liver and lungs. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=238">Location 238</a>:‘The Hallmarks of Cancer’ was published in 2000 and far from disappearing ‘like a stone thrown into a quiet pond’, as Hanahan and Weinberg had predicted, knowing how quickly most journal articles are read and forgotten, their paper has become the descriptive cornerstone of cancer biology <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=240">Location 240</a>:The six characteristics they identified as being common to virtually every cancerous cell are that, in lay terms: • the forces pushing them to grow and divide come from within the corrupted cell itself, rather than being signals from outside; • cancer cells are insensitive to forces that normally stop cell division at appropriate times; • they are resistant to being killed by the mechanisms that normally remove corrupted cells; • they are immortal, meaning they can divide indefinitely, whereas normal cells have a finite number of divisions controlled by an internal ‘clock’ before they stop dividing, become senescent and eventually die off; • they develop and maintain their own blood supply; • they can spread to other organs and tissues and set up satellite colonies, or metastases. In 2011 the two scientists updated and refined their ‘Hallmarks’ paper, adding further general principles, including the fact that the metabolism in cancer cells – particularly the way they use glucose to provide energy – tends to be abnormal; and that they are able to evade detection and destruction by the body’s immune system. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=256">Location 256</a>:‘There are many genes that have a mechanistic role in one hallmark trait or another, and this will spill over to two or three hallmarks. But p53 is the one that links all the hallmarks together. This means that from a molecular viewpoint there is one basic condition to get a cancer: p53 must be switched off. If p53 is on, and hence functioning properly, cancer will not develop.’ <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=272">Location 272</a>:In 2003 a team from Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, led by radiologist Bruce Rothschild, travelled around the museums of North America scanning the bones of 700 dinosaur exhibits. They found evidence of tumours in 29 bone samples from duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs from the Cretaceous period some 70 million years ago. And evidence of tumours has been found also in the bones of dinosaurs from the Jurassic period between 199 and 145 million years ago. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=275">Location 275</a>:Hippocrates, living in ancient Greece around 460 BC, was the first person to recognise the difference between benign tumours that don’t invade surrounding tissue or spread to other parts of the body, and malignant tumours that do. The blood vessels branching out from the fleshy growths he found in his patients so reminded him of the claws of a crab that he gave this mysterious disease the name karkinos, the Greek word for crab, which has translated into English as carcinoma. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00NB14L6Y&location=286">Location 286</a>:And in 1775 an English surgeon, Percivall Pott, <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-broken-eye-by-brent-weeks</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:58.376000Z</updated>
<published>2023-02-16T14:58:13Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-broken-eye-by-brent-weeks" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=127">Location 127</a>:The man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god. —ARISTOTLE <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=869">Location 869</a>:"You cannot give up and die," Karris said angrily. "You’re the best there is. No one can replace you." Unexpectedly, the White chuckled. "Words every megalomaniac longs to hear. But true only of the truly bad and the monumentally great. I am neither, Karris. I am merely competent, my failures significant and sadly frequent. That I am not bad perhaps makes me better than many a White before me, but the good and the great are two disparate camps that rarely overlap." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 18, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=3732">Location 3732</a>:Kip quickly filled in the relevant blanks, and as Quentin watched him, perplexed, he walked over to Commander Ironfist. "Can you sign this for me, sir?" He handed him the quill, already dipped in ink. "Breaker, do you know how many ways I could disable you with this quill?" "No, sir." "Do you want to find out?" "Only if that knowledge is academic rather than experiential, sir." The corner of Ironfist’s mouth twitched, but it might have been Kip’s imagination. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 18, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=4058">Location 4058</a>:"Unavailable. I may have missed things." But he was examining Kip sharply. "Boy, I am ferocious when crossed, I don’t deny it. I find being led by fools intolerable. But I am magnanimous in victory. I do what needs to be done to win and without putting on a false display of sorrow or reluctance; you think that makes me hideous? Others pay homage to common pieties with their lips but betray them by their actions. I am simply more forthright. Orholam needs even honest men, does he not?" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=5147">Location 5147</a>:"Knowing I would die for you, how would you live if you were worthy of that sacrifice? Live that way," Cruxer said. "Simple, huh?" Kip asked sardonically. "Simple. Not easy." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 18, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00H25FCNG&location=7075">Location 7075</a>:"Well, not personally. Brandy?" "No, I don’t want your damn brandy!" "That’s too bad." Andross poured two glasses anyway, and put one in front of Kip. He sat in his chair and gestured for Kip to sit across from him. "Knowledge of fine alcohols is mostly an affectation, but an important one. Men respect those who have greater knowledge of the trivial than they do, when that trivia is costly. Nothing more so than spirits." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Black Prism by Brent Weeks</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-black-prism-by-brent-weeks</id>
<updated>2023-04-26T18:38:54.996000Z</updated>
<published>2023-02-12T14:23:48Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-black-prism-by-brent-weeks" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003JTHY76&location=82">Location 82</a>:To my wife, Kristi, who’s spent the better part of a decade proving me right. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/warbreaker-by-brandon-sanderson</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:43.268000Z</updated>
<published>2023-02-03T19:47:45Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/warbreaker-by-brandon-sanderson" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002KYHZHA&location=2674">Location 2674</a>:"My dear," Lightsong said, glancing backward. "I at least have to chat with her. Nothing would be more intolerable than being overthrown by a person with whom I’d never even had a nice conversation." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Lying by Sam Harris</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/lying-by-sam-harris</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:44.005000Z</updated>
<published>2023-01-16T20:07:11Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/lying-by-sam-harris" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=10">Location 10</a>:Among the many paradoxes of human life, this is perhaps the most peculiar and consequential: We often behave in ways that are guaranteed to make us unhappy. Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, regret, guilt, and disappointment.And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=24">Location 24</a>:I do not remember what I thought about lying before I took "The Ethical Analyst," but the course accomplished as close to a firmware upgrade of my brain as I have ever experienced. I came away convinced that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly damages personal relationships and public trust. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=80">Location 80</a>:The opportunity to deceive others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever cross. Few of us are murderers or thieves, but we have all been liars. And many of us will be unable to get safely into our beds tonight without having told several lies over the course of the day. What does this say about us and about the life we are making with one another? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=86">Location 86</a>:At least one study suggests that 10 percent of communication between spouses is deceptive.[4] Another has found that 38 percent of encounters among college students contain lies.[5] However, researchers have discovered that even liars rate their deceptive interactions as less pleasant than truthful ones. This is not terribly surprising: We know that trust is deeply rewarding and that deception and suspicion are two sides of the same coin. Research suggests that all forms of lying—including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others—are associated with poorer-quality relationships.[6] <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=94">Location 94</a>:Once one commits to telling the truth, one begins to notice how unusual it is to meet someone who shares this commitment. Honest people are a refuge: You know they mean what they say; you know they will not say one thing to your face and another behind your back; you know they will tell you when they think you have failed—and for this reason their praise cannot be mistaken for mere flattery. Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=112">Location 112</a>:Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow, but haven’t. I remember learning that I was to be the class valedictorian at my high school. I declined the honor, saying that I felt that someone who had been at the school longer should give the graduation speech. But that was a lie. The truth was that I was terrified of public speaking and would do almost anything to avoid it. Apparently, I wasn’t ready to confront this fact about myself—and my willingness to lie at that moment allowed me to avoid doing so for many years. Had I been forced to tell my high school principal the truth, he might have begun a conversation with me that would have been well worth having. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=281">Location 281</a>:There have been moments in my life when I was devoted to a project that was simply doomed, in which I had months—in one case, years—invested, and where honest feedback could have spared me an immense amount of wasted effort. At other times, I received frank criticism just when I needed it and was able to change course quickly, knowing that I had avoided a lot of painful and unnecessary work. The difference between these two fates is hard to exaggerate. Yes, it can be unpleasant to be told that we have wasted time, or that we are not performing as well as we imagined, but if the criticism is valid, it is precisely what we most need to hear to find our way in the world. And yet we are often tempted to encourage others with insincere praise. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=292">Location 292</a>:I have a friend who is a very successful writer. Early in his career, he wrote a script that I thought was terrible, and I told him so. That was not easy to do, because he had spent the better part of a year working on it—but it happened to be the truth. Now, when I tell him that I love something he has written, he knows that I love it. He also knows that I respect his talent enough to tell him when I don’t. I am sure there are people in his life he can’t say that about. Why would I want to be one of them? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=383">Location 383</a>:One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=466">Location 466</a>:As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship. By lying, we deny others a view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they can make—and in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is a direct assault upon the autonomy of those we lie to. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005N0KL5G&location=481">Location 481</a>:How would your relationships change if you resolved never to lie again? What truths might suddenly come into view in your life? What kind of person would you become? And how might you change the people around you? It is worth finding out. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-dichotomy-of-leadership-by-jocko-willink-leif-babin</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:44.852000Z</updated>
<published>2023-01-08T02:00:18Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-dichotomy-of-leadership-by-jocko-willink-leif-babin" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079Y51FC3&location=44">Location 44</a>:The foremost requirement for potent leadership is humility, so that leaders can fully understand and appreciate their own shortfalls. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B079Y51FC3&location=121">Location 121</a>:After many a vicious gunfight in Ramadi, "stand by to get some" was a running joke that eased the tension right when we knew trouble was coming. The more nonchalantly it could be said under the direst of circumstances, the funnier it was. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Anxiety Rx by Russell Kennedy</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/anxiety-rx-by-russell-kennedy</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:47.832000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-30T06:51:03Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/anxiety-rx-by-russell-kennedy" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=130">Location 130</a>:"It’s not your fault; it’s no one’s fault, Love Dad." - Beverly Lorne Germa, January 12, 1987 <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=165">Location 165</a>:So here it goes. Are you ready for a consistent and predictable definition? Please stay with me, as your quality of life depends on it. Anxiety is a thinking process of the mind. That’s it. Ready for another revelation? Anxiety is not painful. This may surprise you and may even cause you to doubt my credibility. If you feel resistance to this concept of anxiety being a painless thought process, let me assure you making this distinction has allowed me (and many others) to heal from chronic, relentless, persistent worrisome—or fear-inducing—thoughts. Quite simply, anxiety itself doesn’t hurt. The painful part comes from anxiety’s evil twin: alarm. And I would tell you that you are confusing anxiety (the process that produces potentially fearful thoughts in your mind) with a painful feeling in your body. The thoughts themselves are not painful. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=193">Location 193</a>:"All anxiety is separation anxiety." That, along with many other things Dr. Neufeld said, has stuck with me to this day. Anxiety and alarm almost always result from a break in attachment during childhood—in other words, an experience of separation. When we are separated from our attachment figures, either physically or emotionally, our bodies go into a state of alarm. This is an activated state, a fight-or-flight type reaction the body mounts automatically when we sense real or perceived separation. However, instead of fighting or fleeing, that activated response is initially not about fighting or fleeing at all. It is an activated reaction to mobilize us to pursue a lost connection. That’s right, the reason for our fight-or-flight reactions is usually not about a threat to our physical safety. In our modern world, it is much more often about a threat to our emotional safety. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=207">Location 207</a>:If you struggle with chronic anxious thoughts, it is highly probable you have a version of this state of alarm in your system, likely from a time in your life where you felt separated from your attachment figures and you were unable to close the gap. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=217">Location 217</a>:What we call anxiety is a combination of an alarm state in the body and anxious thoughts in the mind. I have found immeasurable relief in addressing the alarm of the body separately from the anxious thoughts of the mind. A considerable part of my healing was due to using the term anxiety simply to refer to the anxious thoughts of the mind. In this way, I divorced anxiety of the mind from the alarm state in the body. In distilling alarm and anxiety down to their essence, I was able to break the cycle by showing the component parts were separate and therefore separable. I will continue to use the term anxiety in this book only to refer to the machinations and worrisome thoughts of the mind. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08KPN8ZPV&location=251">Location 251</a>:The reason you became anxious is that once upon a time you left yourself, often to look after a parent or it was just too unbearable to be in your body. As a result, you learned to judge, abandon, blame, and shame yourself (in short, take JABS at yourself). Those JABS insidiously set traps or blocks to self-compassion and self-care—blocks that prevent you from having a mind and body that are in sync. As a result, you are blocked from becoming securely attached to yourself, and this separation energy creates what you have called "anxiety." To heal, you need to reestablish this secure attachment to yourself so your mind and body get back in sync. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/discipline-is-destiny-by-ryan-holiday</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:46.429000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-29T16:51:02Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/discipline-is-destiny-by-ryan-holiday" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=147">Location 147</a>:Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. Publilius Syrus <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=159">Location 159</a>:Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the "opportunity for self-discipline." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=203">Location 203</a>:Emerging from the war, he was a victor of victors, having achieved conquest at a level no man-at-arms ever has or hopefully will ever again. Then, as president, overseeing a newfound arsenal of nuclear weapons, he was literally the most powerful human being in the world. There was almost no one or nothing that could tell him what to do, nothing that could stop him, no one who did not look up at him in admiration or away from him in fear. Yet his presidency involved no new wars, no use of those horrible weapons, no escalation of conflict, and he left office with prescient warnings about the machinery that creates war, the so-called military-industrial complex. Indeed, Eisenhower’s most notable use of force in office came when he sent the 101st Airborne Division to protect a group of black children on their way to school for the first time. And where were the scandals? Public enrichment? Broken promises? There weren’t any. His greatness, like all true greatness, was not rooted in aggression or ego or his appetites or a vast fortune, but in simplicity and restraint—in how he commanded himself, which in turn made him worthy of commanding others. Contrast him with the conquerors of his time: Hitler. Mussolini. Stalin. Contrast him even with his contemporaries: MacArthur. Patton. Montgomery. Contrast him with his peers of the past: Alexander the Great. Xerxes. Napoleon. In the end, what endures, what we truly marvel at, is not the ambition but the self-mastery. The self-awareness. The temperance. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=214">Location 214</a>:As a young man, Eisenhower’s mother had quoted him a verse from the Book of Proverbs, "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty," she had told him, "and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." She taught him the same lesson that Seneca himself tried to instill in the rulers he advised, that "Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." And so it goes that Eisenhower quite literally conquered the world by conquering himself first. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=230">Location 230</a>:It is through discipline that not only are all things possible, but also that all things are enhanced. Name someone truly great without self-discipline. Name one calamitous undoing that was not, at least in part, rooted in a lack of self-discipline. More than talent, life is about temperament. And temperance. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=268">Location 268</a>:Not because he was never injured or sick, but because he was an Iron Horse of a man who refused to quit, who pushed through pain and physical limits that others would have used as an excuse. At some point, Gehrig’s hands were X-rayed, and stunned doctors found at least seventeen healed fractures. Over the course of his career, he’d broken nearly every one of his fingers—and it not only hadn’t slowed him down, but he’d failed to say a word about it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=297">Location 297</a>:He worked harder than anyone. "Fitness was almost a religion to him," one teammate would say of him. "I am a slave to baseball," Gehrig said. A willing slave, a slave who loved the job and remained forever grateful at just the opportunity to play. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=318">Location 318</a>:As a rookie, Joe DiMaggio once asked Gehrig who he thought was going to pitch for the opposing team, hoping perhaps, to hear it was someone easy to hit. "Never worry about that, Joe," Gehrig explained. "Just remember they always save the best for the Yankees." And by extension, he expected every member of the Yankees to bring their best with them too. That was the deal: To whom much is given, much is expected. The obligation of a champion is to act like a champion . . . while working as hard as somebody with something to prove. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=364">Location 364</a>:"I guess the streak’s over," a pitcher joked after knocking Gehrig unconscious with a pitch in June 1934. For five terrible minutes, he lay there, unmoving, dead to the world—death being a real possibility in the era before helmets. He was rushed to the hospital, and most expected he’d be out for two weeks even if the X-ray for a skull fracture came back negative. Again, he was back in the batter’s box the next day. Still, you might have expected a hesitation, a flinch when the next ball came hurtling toward him. That’s why pitchers will bean a batter from time to time—because it makes them cautious, the batter’s instinct for self-preservation causes them to step back, in a game where a millimeter may make all the difference. Instead, Gehrig leaned in . . . and hit a triple. A few innings later, he hit another. And before the game was rained out, he hit his third . . . while recovering from a nearly fatal blow to the brain. "A thing like that can’t stop us Dutchmen," was his only postgame comment. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=385">Location 385</a>:Just a sample of Gehrig’s schedule in August 1938: The Yankees played thirty-six games in thirty-five days. Ten games were doubleheaders; in one case, there were five consecutive days of them. He traveled to five cities, covering thousands of miles by train. He hit .329 with nine home runs and thirty-eight RBIs. For an athlete to do this without missing a game, without missing an inning, in their midthirties, is impressive. But Lou Gehrig did it as the early stages of ALS ravaged his body, slowing his motor skills, weakening his muscles, and cramping his hands and feet. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=399">Location 399</a>:It was Churchill who told the young boys at Harrow School to "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty . . . Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=423">Location 423</a>:The funeral lasted just eight minutes. Looking out over the man’s friends and teammates, the priest found a flowery eulogy unnecessary. "We need none," the preacher said of the man, "because you all knew him." No tribute was needed, his life, his example, spoke for itself. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Dec 30, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=443">Location 443</a>:"Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact," she’d later reflect, "where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=453">Location 453</a>:There she was, starting her first novel in 1965, freshly divorced, thirty-four years old and struggling as one of the few black women in an incredibly white, male industry. Yet in her mind, this was "the height of life." She was no longer a child, and yet for all her responsibilities, everything was quite simple: Her kids needed her to be an adult. So did her unfinished novel. Wake up. Show up. Be present. Give it everything you’ve got. Which she did. Even after The Bluest Eye was published to rave reviews in 1970. She followed it with ten more novels, nine nonfiction works, five children’s books, two plays, and short stories. And she earned herself a National Book Award, a Nobel Prize, and a Presidential Medal. Yet for all the plaudits, she must have been most proud of having done it while being a great mother, a great working mother. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=560">Location 560</a>:"Few figures in public life have had Dwight D. Eisenhower’s willpower," the biographer Jean Edward Smith wrote. "A lifetime smoker of three to four packs of cigarettes a day, Eisenhower quit cold turkey . . . and never touched a cigarette again." "The only way to stop is to stop," he would tell an aide, "and I stopped." No one "made him,"—no one could have—but he saw it as his duty to enforce it on himself. It would add years to his life. And by protecting and mastering his body, it allowed him to be of service to the world, first leading NATO and then assuming the American presidency, in a fraught and tense period. But what about you? What are you hooked on? What do you have trouble doing without? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=687">Location 687</a>:As the novelist Gustave Flaubert commands: Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Clean up your desk. Make your bed. Get your things in order. Now get after it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=815">Location 815</a>:Because it was in accordance with his favorite saying, festina lente. That is, to make haste slowly. As we learn from the historian Suetonius, "He thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness," Suetonius wrote. "And, accordingly, favorite sayings of his were: ‘More haste, less speed’; ‘Better a safe commander than a bold’; and ‘That is done quickly enough which is done well enough.’ " <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=838">Location 838</a>:"Slowly," the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez would say, "you do everything correctly." That’s true with leadership as well as lifting weights, running as well as writing. Hustle isn’t always about hurrying. It is about getting things done, properly. It’s okay to move slowly . . . provided that you never stop. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=898">Location 898</a>:Joyce Carol Oates worked and taught. Taught and worked. She published. "I come from a part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it," she said. "And so if you feel that you just can’t write, or you’re too tired, or this, that, and the other, just stop thinking about it and go and work." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 05, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=989">Location 989</a>:Yet every so often, for a few days, he would eat only the scantest fare and wear his coarsest clothing. He would actively seek out discomfort, mimicking abject poverty and harsher life conditions. He slept on the ground and deprived himself of everything but bread and water. Now, you might think that this is just a precious, even condescending hobby for privileged people, like ice baths or camping. But it was a lot more than that. First off, Seneca took pains to make sure the struggle was serious. "The pallet must be a real one," he wrote to a friend advising him to try this voluntary discomfort, "and the same applies to your smock, and your bread must be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes more, so it is a genuine trial and not an amusement." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=1090">Location 1090</a>:To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. Not just rest, but relax, too, have fun too. (After all, what kind of success is it if you can never lay it down?) The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery, to push yourself too hard, too fast, to overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=1147">Location 1147</a>:How did he do it? How did he not only survive but emerge unbroken, undaunted, from this experience? His family motto tells us: Fortitudine vincimus. By endurance we conquer. Fittingly, this was the name of his ship as well: the Endurance. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 08, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=1224">Location 1224</a>:An observer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt once quipped that the man had a "second-class intellect and a first-class temperament." Given what disease took from Roosevelt’s body, the truth of the remark is all the more illustrative: Temperament is everything. Our head and our heart combine to form a kind of command system that rules our lives. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09PB1SB72&location=1224">Location 1224</a>:An observer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt once quipped that the man had a "second-class intellect and a first-class temperament." Given what disease took from Roosevelt’s body, the truth of the remark is all the more illustrative: Temperament is everything. Our head and our heart combine to form a kind of command system that rules our lives. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Nurturing Resilience by Kathy L. Kain, Stephen J. Terrell</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/nurturing-resilience-by-kathy-l-kain-stephen-j-terrell</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:43.382000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-28T05:51:02Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/nurturing-resilience-by-kathy-l-kain-stephen-j-terrell" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074S68WSX&location=461">Location 461</a>:Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child suggests that "the single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074S68WSX&location=528">Location 528</a>:Safety and security are the underpinnings of resilience and are key in supporting the capacity for self-regulation. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Loving What Is by Byron Katie and Stephen Mitchell</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/loving-what-is-by-byron-katie-and-stephen-mitchell</id>
<updated>2023-03-13T08:37:22.573000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-21T13:35:48Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/loving-what-is-by-byron-katie-and-stephen-mitchell" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08YNMK69N&location=104">Location 104</a>:When I discovered The Work—when it discovered me—I realized that reality is always good, whatever form it appears in. Every experience is supplied by a friendly universe. Every experience is a gift. It’s falling down; it’s getting up; it’s your everyday chores; it’s the smell of fresh strawberries, the smell of a dead mouse; it’s the death of a loved one; it’s your husband falling in love with another woman; it’s everything that happens in your life, whether you believe that it’s good or bad. People with questioned minds see the apparently bad as good, because they no longer live in the world of opposites, the world in which there is any thought powerful enough to override the true nature of things. They have realized this goodness so deeply that they can live it every moment of their lives. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 13, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08YNMK69N&location=114">Location 114</a>:I experience reality as something so benevolent, so beautiful, so pure, that there is no word for it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08YNMK69N&location=119">Location 119</a>:Everything is fair, everything is right, everything is beautiful, and if you see anything in your life as unfair, you realize that it’s your next opportunity to question what you’re believing and remove yourself from ignorance. Anything that would darken your awareness is simply the next thing to question. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Permutation City by Greg Egan</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/permutation-city-by-greg-egan</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:46.238000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-16T18:50:09Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/permutation-city-by-greg-egan" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00FDWCPV2&location=1596">Location 1596</a>:Francesca said, "Don’t you ever want to give thanks to God, when things are going well for you? Don’t you ever want to ask God for strength, when you need it?" "No." "Well, I do. Even though I know God makes no difference. And if God is the reason for everything, then God includes the urge to use the word God. So whenever I gain some strength, or comfort, or meaning, from that urge, then God is the source of that strength, that comfort, that meaning. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00FDWCPV2&location=2430">Location 2430</a>:"What difference? We perceive – we inhabit – one arrangement of the set of events. But why should that arrangement be unique? There’s no reason to believe that the pattern we’ve found is the only coherent way of ordering the dust. There must be billions of other universes coexisting with us, made of the very same stuff – just differently arranged. If I can perceive events thousands of kilometers and hundreds of seconds apart to be side-by-side and simultaneous, there could be worlds, and creatures, built up from what we’d think of as points in space-time scattered all over the galaxy, all over the universe. We’re one possible solution to a giant cosmic anagram … but it would be ludicrous to believe that we’re the only one." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Never Finished by David Goggins</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/never-finished-by-david-goggins</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:43.090000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-12T06:01:47Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/never-finished-by-david-goggins" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=43">Location 43</a>:This is not a self-help book. Nobody needs another sermon about the ten steps or seven stages or sixteen hours a week that will deliver them from their stalled or fucked-up life. Hit the local bookstore or surf Amazon and you will slip into a bottomless pit of self-help hype. Must feel good to consume because it sure does sell. Too bad most of it won’t work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=65">Location 65</a>:I love this experiment, but hope isn’t what got into those rats. How long does hope really last? It may have triggered something initially, but no creature is going to swim for their life for sixty hours straight, without food, powered by hope alone. They needed something a lot stronger to keep them breathing, kicking, and fighting. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=76">Location 76</a>:There are two levels to belief. There’s the surface level, which our coaches, teachers, therapists, and parents love to preach. "Believe in yourself," they all say, as if the thought alone can keep us afloat when the odds are against us in the battle of our lives. But once exhaustion sets in, doubt and insecurity tend to penetrate and dissipate that flimsy brand of belief. Then there’s the belief born in resilience. It comes from working your way through layers of pain, fatigue, and reason, and ignoring the ever-present temptation to quit until you strike a source of fuel you didn’t even know existed. One that eliminates all doubt, makes you certain of your strength and the fact that eventually, you will prevail, so long as you keep moving forward. That is the level of belief that can defy the expectations of scientists and change everything. It’s not an emotion to be shared or an intellectual concept, and nobody else can give it to you. It must bubble up from within. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=103">Location 103</a>:Social media has compounded and spread this virus of dissatisfaction, which is why the world is now populated by damaged people consuming airy gratification, hunting an immediate dopamine fix with no substance at all behind it. Instead of staying focused on growth, millions of minds have been infected with lack, leaving them feeling even lesser than. Their internal dialogue becomes that much more toxic, as this population of weak-ass, entitled victims of life itself multiplies. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=128">Location 128</a>:Rise up, motherfuckers. Let’s work! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=180">Location 180</a>:I was twenty-four years old when I realized I was broken inside. Something had gone numb in my soul, and that numbness, that lack of deep feeling, dictated what my life had become. It’s why I quit going after my goals, my biggest dreams, whenever things got hard. Quitting was just another detour. It never bothered me much because when you’re numb, you can’t process what’s happening to you or within you. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=329">Location 329</a>:Once I’d liberated myself and begun to evolve, I learned that it is the rare warrior who embraces the adversity of being born into hell and then, with their own free will, chooses to add as much suck as they can find to turn each day into a boot camp of resiliency. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=403">Location 403</a>:When that happens, a lot of motherfuckers look for a cozy place to hunker down and hide out until the storm passes. "I’m only human," they say. When holy hell rains down upon them and they feel drained and powerless, they cannot conceive of a way to keep going. I understand that impulse, but if I had succumbed to the "I’m only human" mentality, I never would have dug myself out of the deep hole I was in at twenty-four years old. Because the second you utter those words, the white towel is fluttering in the air, and your mind stops looking for more fuel. I didn’t know for sure if I’d ever find my way out of the darkness. I just knew that I could not throw in the towel, and neither can you. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Dec 12, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=614">Location 614</a>:Everything must be utilized. Especially the energy in volatile, potentially damaging emotions like fear and hate. You have to learn how to handle them—how to mine them—and once you master that craft, any negative emotion or event that bubbles up in your brain or gets lobbed your way, like a grenade, can be used as fuel to make you better. But to get there, you must literally listen to yourself. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Dec 29, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=659">Location 659</a>:Many people wake up with dread or doubt day after day. They dread their workouts, their class load, or their job. Maybe they have a test or presentation that makes them nervous, or they know that the day’s workout will hurt. While they linger in bed, they tune into their soft, forgiving self-talk, which doesn’t make it any easier to get up and moving. Most people rise up eventually, but they remain in a daze for hours because they aren’t fully engaged with their lives. Their self-talk has made them numb to the moment, and they sleepwalk through half the day before they finally perk the fuck up. The way we speak to ourselves in moments of doubt is crucial, whether or not the stakes are high. Because our words become actions, and our actions build habits that can coat our minds and bodies with the plaque of ambivalence, hesitancy, and passivity and separate us from our own lives. If any of this sounds familiar, grab your phone and record your inner dialogue as soon as you wake up. Don’t hold back. Spill all your dread, laziness, and stress into the mic. Now listen to it. Nine times out of ten, you won’t like what you hear. It will make you cringe. You wouldn’t want your girlfriend or boyfriend, your boss, or your kids to hear your unfiltered weakness. But you should. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=672">Location 672</a>:Do it again the next morning, but this time, once you get through listening to all your whining about the shit you don’t want to do, sit up in bed and lay down a second take. Pretend you’re motivating a friend or loved one who is going through challenges. Be respectful of the issues they face, but be positive, forceful, and realistic too. This is a skill that demands repetition, and if you do it regularly, you’ll find that it won’t take long for your self-talk to flip from doubt and dread to optimism and empowerment. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=710">Location 710</a>:I’d always felt most at home in the margins. During my military career, I’d go on my longest runs and rucks before anyone else woke up. While others were relaxing or partying after a hard day or week of work, I stayed in to study my dive tables, pack and repack my parachute, or run and grind in the gym deep into the night. Everything I did on my own time was for my own personal fulfillment and growth. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=739">Location 739</a>:In my Lab, each physical workout became a test of my mental fortitude. I stopped caring about how my body looked. You don’t need six-pack abs when your mind is steel-plated. From that point on, each run, every hour on the pull-up bar, and all my late-night study sessions became experiments conducted to see how long my mind would hold out when I continued to apply more and more pressure. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=744">Location 744</a>:Those same experiments continued for the next twenty years, and through all my countless trials, tumbles, and failures, I cultivated an alter-ego—a savage who refused to quit under almost any circumstance. Someone capable of overcoming any and all obstacles. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=749">Location 749</a>:If you don’t feel like you’re good enough, if your life lacks meaning and time feels like it’s slipping through your fingers, there is only one option. Recreate yourself in your own Mental Lab. Somewhere you can be alone with your thoughts and wrestle with the substance of what and who you want to be in your one short life on earth. If it feels right, create an alter ego to access some of that dark matter in your own mind. That’s what I did. In my mind, David Goggins wasn’t the savage motherfucker who accomplished all the hard shit. It was Goggins who did that. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=1559">Location 1559</a>:When a half-assed job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self-respect in the work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half-ass your life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BJMN7RMV&location=1707">Location 1707</a>:Once, those task lists were a burden. Today, I burn with an inner drive shaped by doing the shit I didn’t want to do over and over again. And it won’t let me relax until I’ve done what needs to be done every damn day. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Emotional by Leonard Mlodinow</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/emotional-by-leonard-mlodinow</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:48.930000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-12T06:01:46Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/emotional-by-leonard-mlodinow" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B091PJ8BSJ&location=158">Location 158</a>:Said another leader in the field, "If you are like most people, you feel convinced that because you have emotions, you know a lot about what emotions are, and how they work…you are almost certainly wrong." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/paladin-of-souls-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:42.843000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-12T06:01:46Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/paladin-of-souls-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC138Q&location=7779">Location 7779</a>:"You are unfinished. They are discerning Patrons, but not, I think, impossible to please. The Bastard said to me, from His own lips—" Dy Cabon’s breath drew in. "—that the gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
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<title type="text">A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-by-becky-chambers</id>
<updated>2023-02-04T23:52:45.007000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-03T05:26:30Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-by-becky-chambers" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=24">Location 24</a>:For anybody who could use a break. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=59">Location 59</a>:Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=62">Location 62</a>:The City was beautiful, it really was. A towering architectural celebration of curves and polish and colored light, laced with the connective threads of elevated rail lines and smooth footpaths, flocked with leaves that spilled lushly from every balcony and center divider, each inhaled breath perfumed with cooking spice, fresh nectar, laundry drying in the pristine air. The City was a healthy place, a thriving place. A never-ending harmony of making, doing, growing, trying, laughing, running, living. Sibling Dex was so tired of it. The urge to leave began with the idea of cricket song. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=140">Location 140</a>:Everybody knew what a tea monk did, and so Dex wasn’t too worried about getting started. Tea service wasn’t anything arcane. People came to the wagon with their problems and left with a fresh-brewed cup. Dex had taken respite in tea parlors plenty of times, as everyone did, and they’d read plenty of books about the particulars of the practice. Endless electronic ink had been spilled over the old tradition, but all of it could be boiled down to listen to people, give tea. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=1686">Location 1686</a>:"What’s the purpose of a robot, Sibling Dex?" Mosscap tapped its chest; the sound echoed lightly. "What’s the purpose of me?" "You’re here to learn about people." "That’s something I’m doing. That’s not my reason for being. When I am done with this, I will do other things. I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?" "Because…" Dex itched at where this conversation had gone. "Because we’re different." "Are you," Mosscap said flatly. "And here I thought things had changed since the Factory Age. You keep telling me how humans understand their place in things now." "We do!" "You don’t, if you believe that. You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=1711">Location 1711</a>:Dex turned the mug over and over in their hands. "It doesn’t bother you?" Dex said. "The thought that your life might mean nothing in the end?" "That’s true for all life I’ve observed. Why would it bother me?" Mosscap’s eyes glowed brightly. "Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08H831J18&location=1725">Location 1725</a>:"I didn’t choose impermanence," Mosscap said. "The originals did, but I did not. I had to learn my circumstances just as you did." "Then how," Dex said, "how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?" Mosscap considered. "Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful," it said. There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgment, a simple truth shared. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary, Alex MacCaw, and Misha Talavera</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-great-ceo-within-by-matt-mochary-alex-maccaw-and-misha-talavera</id>
<updated>2023-04-15T08:52:27.736000Z</updated>
<published>2022-12-03T05:26:30Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-great-ceo-within-by-matt-mochary-alex-maccaw-and-misha-talavera" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=87">Location 87</a>:To put it simply, learning how to run a company while running a company is extremely hard. It always seemed like there was just no time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=94">Location 94</a>:So in 2015 I became the "one-day-a-week shadow CEO" at a company called NeoReach. During that one day each week, I held all the company’s internal meetings (one-on-ones with each executive, and the executive team meeting). I ran those meetings and was able to show the founding CEO my method. After only a few months, the knowledge transfer was complete. The founding CEO was able to run the meetings (and the system) as well as I could and so took back over. I have since served as a one-day-a-week shadow CEO at other companies—Brex, OpenAI, Clearbit, Bolt, and AngelList—and will likely continue to do so at others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=100">Location 100</a>:In my coaching, I found several things: I repeatedly see the same core issues in nearly every company, and I work with my mentees to address them. While there are many books out there with excellent and relevant knowledge for founding CEOs, there is no single book that is a compendium of all the things CEOs need to learn. Becoming a great CEO requires training. For a founding CEO, there is precious little time to get that training, especially if the company is succeeding. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=130">Location 130</a>:There are many reasons to create a company, but only one good one: to deeply understand real customers (living humans!) and their problem, and then solve that problem. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=140">Location 140</a>:Solo founders have high rates of burnout. The emotional burden is just too high. As with any trend, there are exceptions. But the rule generally holds. Y Combinator has a strong bias toward accepting co-founder teams (versus solo founders) for this reason. Owning much of something is better than owning 100 percent of nothing. Find a partner, someone who has complementary skills to yours. Share the emotional burden with them. That will ease the load significantly. Give up a large percentage of the company. It’s worth it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=161">Location 161</a>:Y Combinator has another strong belief: founding teams should never grow beyond six until there is true product-market fit. Product-market fit (PMF) is the milestone of having created a product that customers are finding so much value in that they are willing to both buy it (after their test phase) and recommend it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=161">Location 161</a>:Combinator has another strong belief: founding teams should never grow beyond six until there is true product-market fit. Product-market fit (PMF) is the milestone of having created a product that customers are finding so much value in that they are willing to both buy it (after their test phase) and recommend it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=164">Location 164</a>:The first goal of the company should be to achieve real PMF, not vanity metrics that fool people inside and outside the company that PMF has been achieved. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Dec 12, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=211">Location 211</a>:Tasks should be written as single actions (as opposed to broad goals). The key is to not have to think about what needs to be done again once the next action has been written down. The next action should be written so clearly that all you need to do is follow its direction when you read it next. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=268">Location 268</a>:In startups, fires never cease to burn. One of the most common complaints I hear from CEOs is that on a day-to-day basis, they seem to have infinite things to do, yet weeks will go by and they don’t feel like they have accomplished anything. This is the result of getting bogged down with the small, immediate things and losing track of the important, long-term ones. The top goal framework will help you fix this. Greg McKeown, who wrote a phenomenal book on productivity called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, boils this down to one key concept: Schedule two hours each day (i.e., put an event in your calendar) to work on your top goal only. And do this every single workday. Period. The earlier in the day you schedule this top goal time, the better, so as to avoid other issues (and people) from pressing for your attention. Research shows that we have more decision-making and thought-processing energy early in the day when our brain is freshly rested. Take advantage of this high-quality brain functioning by doing the important stuff first. During this top goal time, do not respond to emails, texts, calls, and messages. Only work on your top priority (your top goal for the current quarter) during these two hours. If you follow this pattern each workday, you will achieve amazing things. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=301">Location 301</a>:When in meetings, I often see CEOs making the mistake of constantly checking their messages. They cannot get away from being "on," if even for a second. This is not only disrespectful but also defeats the purpose of the meeting, which is collaboration with the attendees present. It sends a message that the meeting’s content is relatively unimportant. Furthermore, it also breeds a bad habit for the entire company—one that will be hard, if not impossible, to break down the line. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=308">Location 308</a>:Whenever you find yourself saying something for a second time (to a second audience or in a second situation), it is highly likely that you will end up saying it again and again in the future. To vastly improve the quality of the communication and reduce the amount of time that you spend communicating the information, write it down. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 24, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=323">Location 323</a>:It turns out that we perform our best when we are having fun and feeling good about ourselves. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=334">Location 334</a>:The easiest trigger, in this case, is a piece of paper with the word gratitude printed on it and taped to your night table, the wall by your bed, or the mirror in your bathroom. When you see it each morning, you say the phrase "I am grateful for ________" five times with a different ending each time. (You don’t have to say it out loud; you can say it silently to yourself.) The key is to be as specific as possible when you declare what you are grateful for. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=343">Location 343</a>:Life and company building don’t have to be hard or painful. Daily gratitude helps us realize that. Appreciation is simply an outward extension of gratitude. In gratitude, you speak to yourself. In appreciation, you speak to others. The content is the same. When you catch yourself feeling grateful about someone or something that they have done, let them know. When you hear something nice said about someone, let them know. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=350">Location 350</a>:In a First Round Review article titled "How to Become Insanely Well-Connected," Chris Fralic of First Round Capital says that he reserves one hour each week for follow-ups and outreach, most of which include appreciations. I recommend that you do the same. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=359">Location 359</a>:Get two highlighters, pens, or pencils of different colors (red and green are ideal, but any will do). Print out the last week of your calendar when you were working. Go through each workday hour by hour and ask yourself, "Did that activity give me energy or drain my energy?" Highlight in green those that gave you energy, and highlight in red those that drained your energy. There are no neutrals; every hour must be marked one color or the other. When finished, look for patterns of where and how your energy is drained. Now think of ways to outsource or eliminate those activities. Keep doing this energy audit each month until 75 percent or more of your time is spent doing things that give you energy. If you do, you will be able to achieve far more in less time because you will perform far better. You will be in your Zone of Genius. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=365">Location 365</a>:What is the Zone of Genius? Well, there are four zones: Zone of Incompetence Zone of Competence Zone of Excellence Zone of Genius Tasks in the Zone of Incompetence are the things that other people probably do better than you (e.g., fix your car), and therefore you should outsource if they don’t give you joy. Tasks in the Zone of Competence are the things that you do just fine, but others are as good as you (e.g., clean your bathroom), and therefore you should outsource if they don’t give you joy. Tasks in the Zone of Excellence are the things that you are excellent at (i.e., better than others) but don’t love doing. This is the danger zone. Many people will want you to keep doing these things (because they gain significant value from you doing them), but this is the area that you should also look to move away from. This is the hard one! Finally, tasks in the Zone of Genius are the things that you are uniquely good at in the world and that you love to do (so much so that time and space seem to disappear when you do them). This is where you can add most value to the world and yourself. This is where you should be driving toward spending most, if not all, of your time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=432">Location 432</a>:Leaving Engineering I almost think that it’s easier for founders with less technical ability to become great CEOs. They build version one of the product, hire engineers, realize they are quickly out of their depth technically, and focus on acquiring the skills needed to become a great CEO. On the other hand, founders with a deep love of programming often struggle to focus on other areas of the business. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=477">Location 477</a>:Many CEOs that I coach find that they sleep far less now than they did before they were running a company. For some, that means waking up in the middle of the night thinking about an issue or a to-do. For others, that means going to sleep late (to finish emails, etc.) and then being woken up by the alarm clock to make it to their first meeting. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 25, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=518">Location 518</a>:Instead, know that there are two absolute numbers that are significant: $10 million and $100 million. Most people at $10 million of liquid net worth have the feeling of safety. They breathe a sigh of relief. They are no longer at risk. However, once they sit with that number for a while (and start to raise a family), their mind begins to play through disaster scenarios of how that net worth could disappear completely. Once their liquid net worth grows past $100 million, the catastrophe scenarios dry up and a sense of abundance follows. This is what you are driving for. The reality is that $10 million is more than enough to live a wonderful life. But give the mind what it wants. After $100 million, each additional dollar will likely not add in any way to your life but may well create a burden (if you buy assets that need to be maintained and supervised). Therefore, as soon as your company’s equity begins to have significant value, start to sell secondary shares until you have sold $10–100 million. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=540">Location 540</a>:So start by placing your liquid assets in a brokerage firm. Then invest all the cash into US Treasuries while you decide on your investment strategy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=543">Location 543</a>:David F. Swensen is the chief investment officer for the Yale University Endowment. He is considered the grandfather of portfolio management. He wrote a book specifically for the individual investor titled Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment. I consider it the bible for individual asset management. In it, he convincingly describes how professional money managers’ ability to create alpha is exceedingly rare, and what few of these managers there are, you likely will never meet them, as they will choose to raise capital only from the most desirable LPs (e.g., Yale University). The money managers you do encounter will likely never create positive net returns for you (after they siphon off their fees and carried interest) when compared to the public equity markets. Therefore, the best approach is for you to simply invest in low-cost index funds (e.g., Vanguard) according to a specific allocation (he recommends about 30 percent US equities, 25 percent non-US equities, 15 percent real estate, and 30 percent US Treasuries) and then rebalance as often as possible. Unfortunately, rebalancing means putting in lots of trades, and that is painful. Luckily, someone built a tool to solve that problem. Wealthfront (wealthfront.com) is the leading auto-rebalancing investment engine. Many others have copied it, but as of this writing, it is still my preferred vehicle. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=568">Location 568</a>:The methods to making a decision are as follows: • Method 1: The manager makes the decision, announces it to the team, and answers questions. ○ Pro: Takes very little time. ○ Cons: Creates very little buy-in from the team. Gets no benefit from the team’s collective knowledge and experience. • Method 2: The manager creates (or assigns someone to create) a written straw man (a hypothetical answer designed to inspire discussion), shares it with the team, invites the team to give feedback (written and verbal), facilitates group discussion, and determines the final answer. ○ Pros: Creates more buy-in. Gets some minimal benefit from the collective wisdom of the team. ○ Con: Takes more time. • Method 3: The manager invites the team to a meeting where the dilemma is discussed from scratch with no straw man. The manager and the team equally share ideas. The manager acknowledges each idea before making a final decision. ○ Pros: Creates the most buy-in. Gets a lot of benefit from the collective wisdom of the team. ○ Cons: Takes the most time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=592">Location 592</a>:Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, requires that anyone who wants to bring up an issue or proposal must write up the item fully before the decision meeting (with someone else writing up a counterproposal if necessary). The meeting is then spent reading the write-ups. Once the decision-making team has read them all, a decision is made. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=626">Location 626</a>:Peter Reinhardt, CEO and co-founder of Segment, says, "Apparently at Amazon they require the most junior people to speak and ask questions first. [This] also becomes a great way to show off junior talent, give more senior folks a chance to observe and give feedback, etc." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=706">Location 706</a>:A very common cause of inefficiency in startups is sloppy agreements. People don’t show up to meetings on time, and they don’t complete the goals that they declare (or they don’t declare goals at all). The result is a spreading virus of unproductiveness and decreased morale. The antidote for this is simple: impeccable agreements. These are (a) precisely defined and (b) fully agreed to (which almost always means written) by all relevant people. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=735">Location 735</a>:Your team members are smart. When there are problems, they know it. Hiding negative information from them does not make them feel better. If anything, it makes them more anxious. Just as you don’t know if your team members will share negative information with you until they do so for the first time, your team members don’t know if you are willing to share negative information with them until you do. Our imaginations are much more powerful than reality. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Apr 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=758">Location 758</a>:At any point, a leader is either above the line or below the line. If you are above it, you are leading consciously, and if you are below it, you are not. Above the line, one is open, curious, and committed to learning. Below the line, one is closed, defensive, and committed to being right. Many people lead from below the line—it’s a common state stemming from millions of years of evolution. As soon as we sense the first whiff of conflict, our lizard brain kicks in. Fear and anger rise up, then we get defensive and double down on being right. At this point we’re firmly below the line. Knowing that you’re below the line is more important than being below the line. The first mark of conscious leadership is self-awareness and the search for truth. The second is pausing, taking a second, shifting yourself into an open and curious state, and rising above the line. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=769">Location 769</a>:I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life and for my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. I commit to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=780">Location 780</a>:I commit to growing in self-awareness. I commit to regarding every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I commit to curiosity as a path to rapid learning. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=854">Location 854</a>:Most leaders resist play because they think they will fall behind if they aren’t seriously working hard. Organizations that take breaks to rest and play are actually more productive and creative. Energy is maximized when rest, renewal, and personal rhythms are honored. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=864">Location 864</a>:Spiritual teacher and author David Deida goes one step beyond recognizing and releasing negative feelings and teaches that empathy is the key to success. To truly feel the feelings of those around you—customers, investors, and team members alike—you must get very curious about their situations and then really imagine yourself in their shoes. If you do this, people will sense it and immediately trust and like you, because they will feel that you care about them and understand their circumstances. They’ll trust you to lead them because they know you’ll truly consider their interests in your guidance. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=869">Location 869</a>:When people start diving into the conscious leadership work, they quickly lose their fear. And just as quickly, they realize that fear was their primary motivator—fear of failure, fear of letting people down. Once fear is gone, their life becomes much better, but their business suffers. If you find yourself in this situation, keep pushing forward with the conscious leadership work quickly to get to a place where you are motivated by joy. Then you will have the best of all worlds. Joy is an even better motivator than fear, so your business will thrive. And your life will be amazing! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=879">Location 879</a>:The first: Have each person imagine that they are the CEO and ask themselves the question, "What are the most important issues (maximum three) for me to solve in the next ninety days?" Allowing people to put themselves in the CEO role gives them permission to think like an owner. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=882">Location 882</a>:At every quarterly off-site meeting that I facilitate for team bonding, we do the following exercise: 1. I ask all team members to open a document that only they have access to and write down their thoughts about the company when they source their joy, excitement, sadness, anger, and fear. 2. For their thoughts of anger and fear, each person writes: a. Fact. This is what a video camera captured. There is no judgment or opinion here, only physical actions that have occurred that no one would dispute. Keep this short. b. Story. These are all the thoughts, opinions, and judgments that you have on the facts above. c. Proposed solution. These should be very specific action items with DRIs and due dates. 3. While they are doing that, I create a document with those headings and give access to all. 4. Then I ask everyone to copy and paste their writings (with no attribution) under the correct heading in the group document. 5. We all read the document. a. The writings of joy and excitement make us all feel inspired and renew our feeling of group success. b. The writings of sadness allow us to feel bonded over shared loss. c. The issues and solutions posed in anger and fear give us an issues roadmap to be unpacked and resolved one by one in the weekly leadership meetings over the course of the upcoming quarter. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=904">Location 904</a>:If you start sharing your perspective, I will be uncompelled and unwilling to truly listen, because you haven’t been willing to consider mine. And the cycle spirals downward to distrust and dislike. There is a simple fix. I only need to prove to you that I have "heard" you. And to do that, I only need to repeat back what you’ve said in summary form (by saying, "I think I heard you say…") until you say, "That’s right!" Then you will feel heard. You will now be open to hearing what I have to say. Here is an experiment that proves this principle. The next time you encounter a person who is repeating themselves, stop them and ask if you can state back what they’ve already said. They will say yes. You then summarize what they’ve said and ask if you got it right. If they say yes again, then watch to see if they continue to repeat themselves. They will not. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=910">Location 910</a>:For you, as a company leader, to resolve conflict, you only need to get each person to state their deepest, darkest thoughts, and then prove that each has heard what the other has said. This can be done verbally or in writing. I prefer the written method, as it takes about a third of the time, requires almost no facilitation (i.e., it’s easy to stay on script), and the action items that come out of it are impeccable agreements. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=913">Location 913</a>:If you are the facilitator, here’s how the written method works. First, get both people in the same room. Have them bring their laptops so they can share their documents with each other at the appropriate times. Then go through the following steps: Step 1: Ask each person to write down their deepest work-related thoughts about the other person. You say: 1. Open up a document. Please give me (the facilitator) access, but do not give access to the other person yet. On the document, write five categories: a. Anger (present) b. Fear (future) c. Sadness (past) d. Joy (present and past) e. Excitement (future) 2. In every major relationship that we have, we have feelings of anger, fear, sadness, joy, and excitement. When you think about the other person and you focus on the anger that you feel, what thoughts come to mind? Please state those thoughts in the following way: a. Feeling: Anger b. Fact: You did or said… (This should be only what a video camera would have seen; no opinion, thought, or judgment.) c. Story: The thought that I had was… d. Request: You do or say… (This should be an action that the other person can take to fully address this situation.) Here is an example: a. Feeling: Anger b. Fact: You walked by me the other day and I didn’t hear you say hello. c. Story: The thought that I had was that you purposely ignored me and thus were really saying "screw you!" to me. d. Request: From now on, when you walk by me, please say hello. As the facilitator, look at both documents and make sure that they are filled out correctly. Encourage the separation of fact and judgment as much as possible. Make sure they are as specific as possible about the actions the other person did and how it made them feel. Realize that any conclusions drawn from the other person’s actions are simply stories in their head, only the feelings one has, and any specific actions are facts. If one or both are reluctant to say anything, which is often the case, you supply the thoughts that you might have if you were in their shoes. Be dramatic. Become an actor. Get into the role. State the thoughts as explicitly as they would appear in your own mind. Use swear words. The participants will start to guide you. They are likely to say, "That’s close but not quite it. The thoughts I have are more like…" When they slow down or don’t seem willing to go further, again state the thoughts for… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1021">Location 1021</a>:When creating company culture, do not underestimate the value of fun. If people are having fun, they spend more time, energy, and awareness at the company. This leads to better problem-solving and collaboration, which leads to a stronger company that creates more value. Host events that you enjoy, and then invite (but don’t require) your team members to join you. Your litmus test is whether your team members are hanging out with you and one another outside of work. If yes, you are likely creating good culture. If not, increase your efforts to practice conscious leadership (chapter 15) and keep working to create buy-in for your values. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1049">Location 1049</a>:Remember to always lead by example. Be the first one to show up each day. Be the last one to leave. Once you have department heads, they should also set this example for their departments. Do not hire department heads who are unwilling to do so. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1068">Location 1068</a>:It often begins very innocently: "Excuse me, can I please talk to you about a raise? I have been at this company for a year now and have shown utter dedication by doing such-and-such, and I believe that I now deserve a raise…" This sounds compelling, and you, of course, want to reward dedication. But if you give a raise based on this conversation, then the whole company will learn that the way to get a raise is to simply ask you for it. Suddenly everyone will be trying to curry your favor. Be very careful here. You may enjoy this behavior, but it is toxic for the company. The only way to prevent politics is to never allow lobbying to be successful, and the only way to do this is to have a written policy about as many situations as possible, particularly around compensation, raises, and promotions. Apply this policy to all team members, all the time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1075">Location 1075</a>:The most successful method I know of is called grade level planning (GLP)—at least, that’s what Tesla calls it (another common term is "Levels and Ladders"). It calls for a very detailed definition of every position in the company and every seniority level, along with specific compensation metrics for each position and level. This is then shared throughout the company. Team members can then clearly see what they need to do to receive the next compensation and title level. Managers must not deviate from this written schema. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1135">Location 1135</a>:Whenever two people form an agreement, it should be recorded in the task-tracking system and have an owner, a comprehensive description, and a due date. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1148">Location 1148</a>:Create a document that lists all of the company’s functions and, for each, the directly responsible individual. This is the AOR list. It serves as a routing layer for any questions and ensures that no functions fall through the cracks. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1162">Location 1162</a>:A well-run company has no single point of failure. To create a team with no single points of failure, do two things: Write down all processes. As soon as you or your team members find yourselves doing something for the second time (see chapters 7 and 19), you should write down the steps of that process exactly. Place these written processes in a company-wide wiki. Cross-train a second person for each role. Map each function in the company (from the AORs) to a backup person. Have the backup person co-work with the primary until the backup knows how to perform the role. (Of course, having all the processes already written down will vastly improve this training process. So have your team write down all the processes first.) It’s a good standard practice for at least two people to know how to do any given task in the company so that if the lead person is too busy, is sick, or leaves the company, they can request that the secondary person assume the responsibility. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1179">Location 1179</a>:Determine the company’s five or six most significant KPIs, then track them religiously and make them available for the entire company to easily see on a daily basis. Post the metrics on a TV screen in a central place in the office, using a tool such as Geckoboard. As we learned from Andy Grove, former Intel CEO and author of the book High Output Management, it is also important to define and track countermetrics to provide necessary context, because metrics are sometimes optimized to a fault. For example, engineering tickets will vary in importance, so if your engineers have closed the critical tickets, they’re doing better than if they close most tickets but only the easiest ones. Similarly, if half of candidates who accept your job offers are less skilled than the half who decline, then you’re doing worse than the raw percentage indicates. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1252">Location 1252</a>:In a First Round Review article titled "Why You Need Two Chiefs in the Executive Office," Mark Organ, CEO of Influitive, gives a thorough description of COS best practices. To me, the two priorities in creating a great COS are (1) their background and (2) how you train them. When it comes to background, the best chiefs of staff that I have seen are highly organized, are excellent communicators (both written and oral), and have broad strategic business knowledge. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07ZLGQZYC&location=1263">Location 1263</a>:Most senior candidates are not attracted to the COS role because they view it as an assistant role (and in many companies it is). When you’re recruiting, dispel this concern by showing the candidate that they will have full access to all the information that you do. Being a COS in this capacity is the single best training for becoming a CEO (or head of any department) that exists. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">There's a Hole in My Sidewalk by Portia Nelson</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/there-s-a-hole-in-my-sidewalk-by-portia-nelson</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:14.649000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-29T04:29:13Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/there-s-a-hole-in-my-sidewalk-by-portia-nelson" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=31">Location 31</a>:I am part of all that I have met." —TENNYSON To all of you, whoever you are, I humbly dedicate this book. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=63">Location 63</a>:My life has been a series of wonderful experiences. It’s a pity I wasn’t there for most of them. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=65">Location 65</a>:AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS Chapter One I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost …. I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter Two I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in this same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. Chapter Three I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. Chapter Four I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Chapter Five I walk down another street. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=78">Location 78</a>:I don’t know what I want sometimes, But I know that I want to know what I want. I know that once I know what I want I will be able to get it. Of course, I may not want what I get when I get it …. But, at least I’ll know I don’t want that! Then, I can move on to something else I don’t know if I want. That’s progress! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=95">Location 95</a>:I know why we are friends. It’s because I don’t always approve of you. You don’t think you deserve approval. So … if I gave it to you, you would not approve of me and I would lose your trust. Friendship is based on trust and I want you to trust me because I need your approval. However, if I get your approval, I will not trust you because I don’t think I deserve approval either. I know why we are friends. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=118">Location 118</a>:You have made a fool of me! I know that I am not the most beautiful, the most talented, the most intelligent person in the world … but I liked you … and I wanted you to think I was. So … I tried to be beautiful talented and intelligent for you. However, since I succeeded in making you believe it, naturally, I immediately lost respect for you for not seeing that I had fooled you. Now … I am intelligent enough, beautiful enough and talented enough not to be associated with fools … and I am incensed that I didn’t see how foolish you were at once. But … I liked you then … and … it drove me to make you believe what I wanted you to believe …. Except … I was so convincing, I began to believe it myself! Now … anybody who believes things like that about me is a fool. That makes me a fool! And if it weren’t for you believing what I wanted you to believe, I wouldn’t know that. I hate you for making a fool of me! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=131">Location 131</a>:Will you please stop trying to finish my sentences before I do? It’s humiliating! After all … it’s my sentence! Let me show it off! I know you are really trying to let me know how sensitive and smart you are … and how deeply you understand me …. But … if you are that smart … please let me think that I am smarter than you by not impressing me with how smart you are in the middle of my sentences! Of course, if I am smart enough to be aware of what you are up to … Then, I should be smart enough to know it doesn’t matter what you do in the middle of my sentences. Maybe I’m not so smart! Now, that is humiliating! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=209">Location 209</a>:How wise of you to wait … to fill the shy, awkward spaces with white wine and cushioned conversation. I am aware that you are allowing me time to become accustomed to the cities of your smile … and to window shop your eyes … until, at last, I am so full of you, that I no longer blush on my way into your arms. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=235">Location 235</a>:It’s a dreary day …. Let’s just stay inside. We can pretend that Kisses are brushes and that we are each other’s canvases. We won’t need a northern light … or any light at all, for that matter …. And who cares if we ever finish the picture, anyway. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=279">Location 279</a>:I would give you everything … if I could … but, the only gift worth giving is freedom … the freedom to grow … away from me if necessary. Of course, one can’t give freedom, but, at least I know that. Maybe that’s the gift then … the knowing …. And I couldn’t tie a ribbon around it even if I wanted to. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 29, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=371">Location 371</a>:The softer I walk The louder I hear. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=387">Location 387</a>:The real growth is in recognizing that we do always get what we want in life … one way or another. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=393">Location 393</a>:Listen to what you criticize most severely And you will hear what you most fear you are. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=399">Location 399</a>:The nicest thing about my life, now, is that I am here with me most of the time. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=419">Location 419</a>:To live happily with a pet, one must first accept the responsibility of disciplining it consistently and firmly with much love! To live happily with ourselves … it is the same. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=425">Location 425</a>:I can tell how secure I am now. I no longer clean the house the day before the maid comes! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=430">Location 430</a>:In youth … man seems to satisfy loneliness with passion …. And in maturity … aloneness … with compassion. What a pity the difference is most often discovered after muscle and bone can no longer climb to the top of the mountain. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=433">Location 433</a>:I have come to regard unrequited love like a hole in a sock. Mend it, or discard it! Don’t just stand there with cold feet! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=435">Location 435</a>:Disciplining one’s self can be carried too far. It is alright to relax part of the time. Even the soils is richer when it rests every seven years. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007EDOSD6&location=449">Location 449</a>:I walk down another street. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Babel by R. F. Kuang</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/babel-by-r-f-kuang</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:15.099000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-29T04:29:12Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/babel-by-r-f-kuang" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09MD95S5V&location=502">Location 502</a>:‘But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.’ <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09MD95S5V&location=847">Location 847</a>:But this shall never be: to us remains One city that has nothing of the beast, That was not built for gross, material gains, Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09MD95S5V&location=2530">Location 2530</a>:‘Oh, they’re easy enough,’ said Ramy. ‘To Pendennis, Esq., Infernal beast, I will give you lashings of booze tonight. Confound you, your enemy, Mirza. No?’ <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09MD95S5V&location=3038">Location 3038</a>:Sitzfleisch,’ Professor Playfair said pleasantly when Ramy protested that they had over forty hours of reading a week. ‘Translated literally, it means "sitting meat". Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.’ <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/trillion-dollar-coach-by-eric-schmidt-jonathan-rosenberg-alan-eagle</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:14.245000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-29T04:29:12Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/trillion-dollar-coach-by-eric-schmidt-jonathan-rosenberg-alan-eagle" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=72">Location 72</a>:The five key factors could have been taken right out of Bill Campbell’s playbook. Excellent teams at Google had psychological safety (people knew that if they took risks, their manager would have their back). The teams had clear goals, each role was meaningful, and members were reliable and confident that the team’s mission would make a difference. You’ll see that Bill was a master at establishing those conditions: he went to extraordinary lengths to build safety, clarity, meaning, dependability, and impact into each team he coached. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=76">Location 76</a>:Sheryl Sandberg and I have often lamented that every bookstore has a self-help section, but there isn’t a help-others section. Trillion Dollar Coach belongs in the help-others section: <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=316">Location 316</a>:There is another, equally critical, factor for success in companies: teams that act as communities, integrating interests and putting aside differences to be individually and collectively obsessed with what’s good for the company. Research shows that when people feel like they are part of a supportive community at work, they are more engaged with their jobs and more productive. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=336">Location 336</a>:To balance the tension and mold a team into a community, you need a coach, someone who works not only with individuals but also with the team as a whole to smooth out the constant tension, continuously nurture the community, and make sure it is aligned around a common vision and set of goals. Sometimes this coach may just work with the team leader, the executive in charge. But to be most effective—and this was Bill’s model—the coach works with the entire team. At Google, Bill didn’t just meet with Eric. He worked with Jonathan and several other people, and he attended Eric’s staff meetings on a regular basis. This can be a hard thing for an executive to accept—having a "coach" getting involved in staff meetings and other things can seem like a sign of lack of confidence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=462">Location 462</a>:Or, as Bill liked to say: "If you’re a great manager, your people will make you a leader. They acclaim that, not you." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=468">Location 468</a>:"Bill, your title makes you a manager; your people make you a leader."* Bill took that to heart. He once sent a note to a valuable manager who was struggling, counseling him that "you have demanded respect, rather than having it accrue to you. You need to project humility, a selflessness, that projects that you care about the company and about people." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=497">Location 497</a>:IT’S THE PEOPLE People are the foundation of any company’s success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust. Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people’s skills. Great managers help people excel and grow. Respect means understanding people’s unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that’s consistent with the needs of the company. Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=521">Location 521</a>:Bill Walsh and Bill Campbell: "Great coaches lie awake at night thinking about how to make you better. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=591">Location 591</a>:In teaching his management seminar at Google, Bill advocated that each person should put his or her list on the board—a simultaneous reveal. That way everyone could see where there was overlap and make sure to cover those topics. He felt that the process of merging the two agendas could serve as a lesson in prioritization. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=603">Location 603</a>:From the (not so) small talk, Bill moved to performance: What are you working on? How is it going? How could he help? Then, we would always get to peer relationships, which Bill thought were more important than relationships with your manager and other higher-ups. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B076ZHG3H3&location=609">Location 609</a>:From peer relationships, Bill would move on to teams. He always wanted to know, were we setting a clear direction for them, and constantly reinforcing it? Did we understand what they were doing? If they were off on something, we would discuss how we could course correct them and get them back on track. <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-lost-metal-by-brandon-sanderson</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:11.864000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-17T11:38:02Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-lost-metal-by-brandon-sanderson" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09MBS37W9&location=7911">Location 7911</a>:"These seven years," Armal said. "Have you used them? Have you appreciated them? I spent them wishing I could have even one more day of my old life. That I could show my children a world of lights and life, instead of stone and shadow. Please. Tell me you lived those years of freedom." "I…" Marasi said. Had she? She had spent much of that time with Allik, and that had been wonderful. And she’d accomplished much in her career. But was it what she wanted, ultimately? <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Learned Optimism by Martin E.P. Seligman</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/learned-optimism-by-martin-e-p-seligman</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:15.607000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-17T11:38:01Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/learned-optimism-by-martin-e-p-seligman" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=119">Location 119</a>:I am not against self-esteem, but I believe that self-esteem is just a meter that reads out the state of the system. It is not an end in itself. When you are doing well in school or work, when you are doing well with the people you love, when you are doing well in play, the meter will register high. When you are doing badly, it will register low. I have scoured the self-esteem literature looking for the causality as opposed to correlation, looking for any evidence that high self-esteem among youngsters causes better grades, more popularity, less teenage pregnancy, less dependence on welfare, as the California report contends. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=127">Location 127</a>:Until January 1996, I believed that self-esteem was merely a meter with little, if any, causal efficacy. The lead article in the Psychological Review convinced me that I was wrong, and that self-esteem is causal: Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (1996)3 reviewed the literature on genocidal killers, on hit men, on gang leaders, and on violent criminals. They argued that these perpetrators have high self-esteem, and that their unwarranted self-esteem causes violence. Baumeister’s work suggests that if you teach unwarrantedly high self-esteem to children, problems will ensue. A sub-group of these children will also have a mean streak in them. When these children confront the real world, and it tells them they are not as great as they have been taught, they will lash out with violence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=176">Location 176</a>:As you read this book, you will see that there is an epidemic of depression among adults and among children in the United States today. As Chapters 6–10 document, depression is not just about mental suffering; it is also about lowered productivity and worsened physical health. If this epidemic continues, I believe that America’s place in the world will be in jeopardy. America will lose its economic place to less pessimistic nations than ours, and this pessimism will sap our will to bring about social justice in our own country. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=202">Location 202</a>:yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=284">Location 284</a>:Later in this book we will see that judiciously employed, mild pessimism has its uses. But twenty-five years of study has convinced me that if we habitually believe, as does the pessimist, that misfortune is our fault, is enduring, and will undermine everything we do, more of it will befall us than if we believe otherwise. I am also convinced that if we are in the grip of this view, we will get depressed easily, we will accomplish less than our potential, and we will even get physically sick more often. Pessimistic prophecies are self-fulfilling. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=388">Location 388</a>:Worst of all, the biomedical approach makes patients out of essentially normal people and makes them dependent on outside forces—pills dispensed by a benevolent physician. Antidepressant drugs are not addicting in the usual sense; the patient does not crave them when they are withdrawn. Rather, when the successfully treated patient stops taking his drugs, the depression often returns. The effectively drugged patient cannot credit himself for carving out his happiness and his ability to function with a semblance of normality; he must credit the pills. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=395">Location 395</a>:What if depression is not something you are motivated to bring upon yourself but something that just descends upon you? What if depression is not an illness but a severe low mood? What if you are not a prisoner of past conflicts in the way you react? What if depression is in fact set off by present troubles? What if you are not a prisoner of your genes or your brain chemistry, either? What if depression arises from mistaken inferences we make from the tragedies and setbacks we all experience over the course of a life? What if depression occurs merely when we harbor pessimistic beliefs about the causes of our setbacks? What if we can unlearn pessimism and acquire the skills of looking at setbacks optimistically? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=414">Location 414</a>:What if there is a third factor—optimism or pessimism—that matters as much as talent or desire? What if you can have all the talent and desire necessary—yet, if you are a pessimist, still fail? What if optimists do better at school, at work, and on the playing field? What if optimism is a learned skill, one that can be permanently acquired? What if we can instill this skill in our children? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=450">Location 450</a>:Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter. Explanatory style is the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen. It is the great modulator of learned helplessness. An optimistic explanatory style stops helplessness, whereas a pessimistic explanatory style spreads helplessness. Your way of explaining events to yourself determines how helpless you can become, or how energized, when you encounter the everyday setbacks as well as momentous defeats. I think of your explanatory style as reflecting "the word in your heart." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=455">Location 455</a>:Each of us carries a word in his heart, a "no" or a "yes." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=689">Location 689</a>:The phrase "adding epicycles" came to be applied to scientists in any field who, having trouble defending a tottering thesis, desperately postulate unlikely subtheses in hopes of buttressing it. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 18, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=998">Location 998</a>:This view ran against the existing belief about achievement, the classic demonstration of which was called PREE—the partial reinforcement extinction effect. PREE is an old chestnut of learning theory. If you give a rat a food pellet every time he presses a bar, this is called "continuous reinforcement"; the ratio of reward to effort is one-to-one, one pellet for one bar-press. If you then stop giving him food for pressing the bar ("extinction"), he’ll press the bar three or four times and then quit completely, because he can see he’s never getting fed anymore, since the contrast is so great. If, on the other hand, instead of one-for-one reinforcement, you give the rat "partial" reinforcement—say, an average of only one pellet for every five or ten times he presses—and then start extinction, he’ll press the bar a hundred times before he gives up. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1010">Location 1010</a>:It was the explanations people made, and not the schedule of reinforcement they’d been on, which determined their susceptibility to PREE. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1027">Location 1027</a>:Throughout my career, I’ve never had much use for the tendency among psychologists to shun criticism. It’s a longstanding tradition acquired from the field of psychiatry, with its medical authoritarianism and its reluctance to admit error. Going back at least to Freud, the world of the research psychiatrists has been dominated by a handful of despots who treat dissenters like invading barbarians usurping their domain. One critical word from a young disciple and he was banished. I’ve preferred the humanistic tradition. To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1035">Location 1035</a>:I had always stressed to my students the importance of welcoming criticism. "I want to be told," I had always said. "In this lab, the payoff is for originality, not toadyism." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1061">Location 1061</a>:HOW DO you think about the causes of the misfortunes, small and large, that befall you? Some people, the ones who give up easily, habitually say of their misfortunes: "It’s me, it’s going to last forever, it’s going to undermine everything I do." Others, those who resist giving in to misfortune, say: "It was just circumstances, it’s going away quickly anyway, and, besides, there’s much more in life." Your habitual way of explaining bad events, your explanatory style, is more than just the words you mouth when you fail. It is a habit of thought, learned in childhood and adolescence. Your explanatory style stems directly from your view of your place in the world—whether you think you are valuable and deserving, or worthless and hopeless. It is the hallmark of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1068">Location 1068</a>:THERE ARE three crucial dimensions to your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1070">Location 1070</a>:PEOPLE WHO give up easily believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent: The bad events will persist, will always be there to affect their lives. People who resist helplessness believe the causes of bad events are temporary. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1080">Location 1080</a>:If you think about bad things in always’s and never’s and abiding traits, you have a permanent, pessimistic style. If you think in sometimes’s and lately’s, if you use qualifiers and blame bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1098">Location 1098</a>:THE optimistic style of explaining good events is just the opposite of the optimistic style of explaining bad events. People who believe good events have permanent causes are more optimistic than people who believe they have temporary causes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1106">Location 1106</a>:Optimistic people explain good events to themselves in terms of permanent causes: traits, abilities, always’s. Pessimists name transient causes: moods, effort, sometimes’s. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1118">Location 1118</a>:PERMANENCE is about time. Pervasiveness is about space. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1124">Location 1124</a>:Some people can put their troubles neatly into a box and go about their lives even when one important aspect of it—their job, for example, or their love life—is suffering. Others bleed all over everything. They catastrophize. When one thread of their lives snaps, the whole fabric unravels. It comes down to this: People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area. People who make specific explanations may become helpless in that one part of their lives yet march stalwartly on in the others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1153">Location 1153</a>:Now for the converse. The optimistic explanatory style for good events is opposite that for bad events. The optimist believes that bad events have specific causes, while good events will enhance everything he does; the pessimist believes that bad events have universal causes and that good events are caused by specific factors. When Nora was offered temporary work back at the company, she thought: "They finally realized they can’t get along without me." When Kevin got the same offer he thought: "They must really be shorthanded." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1174">Location 1174</a>:Whether or not we have hope depends on two dimensions of our explanatory style: pervasiveness and permanence. Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation. On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors. Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1189">Location 1189</a>:People who make permanent and universal explanations for their troubles tend to collapse under pressure, both for a long time and across situations. No other single score is as important as your hope score. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 19, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1196">Location 1196</a>:When bad things happen, we can blame ourselves (internalize) or we can blame other people or circumstances (externalize). People who blame themselves when they fail have low self-esteem as a consequence. They think they are worthless, talentless, and unlovable. People who blame external events do not lose self-esteem when bad events strike. On the whole, they like themselves better than people who blame themselves do. Low self-esteem usually comes from an internal style for bad events. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1212">Location 1212</a>:Of the three dimensions of explanatory style, personalization is the easiest to understand. After all, one of the first things a child learns to say is "He did it, not me!" Personalization is also the easiest dimension to overrate. It controls only how you feel about yourself, but pervasiveness and permanence—the more important dimensions—control what you do: how long you are helpless and across how many situations. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1219">Location 1219</a>:Here’s one last piece of information for you, before you get your totals: The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It’s internal rather than external. People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1260">Location 1260</a>:There is a deeper matter to deal with here: the question of why people should own up to their failures in the first place. The answer, I believe, is that we want people to change, and we know they will not change if they do not assume responsibility. If we want people to change, internality is not as crucial as the permanence dimension is. If you believe the cause of your mess is permanent—stupidity, lack of talent, ugliness—you will not act to change it. You will not act to improve yourself. If, however, you believe the cause is temporary—a bad mood, too little effort, overweight—you can act to change it. If we want people to be responsible for what they do, then yes, we want them to have an internal style. More important, people must have a temporary style for bad events—they must believe that whatever the cause of the bad event, it can be changed. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1267">Location 1267</a>:IT MATTERS a great deal if your explanatory style is pessimistic. If you scored poorly, there are four areas where you will encounter (and probably already have encountered) trouble. First, as we will see in the next chapter, you are likely to get depressed easily. Second, you are probably achieving less at work than your talents warrant. Third, your physical health—and your immune function—are probably not what they should be, and this may get even worse as you get older. Finally, life is not as pleasurable as it should be. Pessimistic explanatory style is a misery. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1347">Location 1347</a>:When you’re depressed, small obstacles seem like insurmountable barriers. You believe everything you touch turns to ashes. You have an endless supply of reasons why each of your successes is really a failure. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1647">Location 1647</a>:We knew the cause of learned helplessness, and now we could see it as the cause of depression: the belief that your actions will be futile. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1673">Location 1673</a>:Ellis was as outrageous in his new field as he’d been in the old. Gaunt and angular, always in motion, he sounded like a (very effective) vacuum-cleaner salesman. With patients, he pushed and pushed until he had persuaded them to give up the irrational beliefs that sustained their depression. "What do you mean you can’t live without love?" he would cry. "Utter nonsense. Love comes rarely in life, and if you waste your life mooning over its all too ordinary absence, you are bringing on your own depression. You are living under a tyranny of should’s. Stop ‘should-ing’ on yourself!" Ellis believed that what others thought of as deep neurotic conflict was simply bad thinking—"stupid behavior on the part of nonstupid people," he called it—and in a loud, propagandistic way (he called himself a counterpropagandist) he would demand that his patients stop thinking wrong and start thinking right. Surprisingly, most of his patients got better. Ellis successfully challenged the hallowed belief that mental illness is an enormously intricate, even mysterious phenomenon, curable only when deep unconscious conflicts are brought to light or a medical illness is rooted out. In the complexified world of psychology, this stripped-down approach came off as revolutionary. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1694">Location 1694</a>:Depressives think awful things about themselves and their future. Maybe that’s all there is to depression, Tim reasoned. Maybe what looks like a symptom of depression—negative thinking—is the disease. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1726">Location 1726</a>:Depression is nothing more than its symptoms. It is caused by conscious negative thoughts. There is no deep underlying disorder to be rooted out: not unresolved childhood conflicts, not our unconscious anger, and not even our brain chemistry. Emotion comes directly from what we think: Think "I am in danger" and you feel anxiety. Think "I am being trespassed against" and you feel anger. Think "Loss" and you feel sadness. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1746">Location 1746</a>:Rumination combined with pessimistic explanatory style is the recipe for severe depression. This ends the bad news. The good news is that both pessimistic explanatory style and rumination can be changed, and changed permanently. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1794">Location 1794</a>:Thirty percent of the people who (by their own definition of failure) failed the midterm got very depressed. And 30 percent of the people who were pessimists in September did, too. But 70 percent of the people who both were pessimists in September and failed the exam got depressed. So a recipe for severe depression is preexisting pessimism encountering failure. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1809">Location 1809</a>:We found that the children who started out as pessimists were the ones most likely, over the four years, to get depressed and stay depressed. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1960">Location 1960</a>:The same pattern held in a diary study in which men and women wrote down everything they did as bad moods struck: Women thought and analyzed their mood; men distracted themselves. In a study of couples in conflict, each person dictated into a tape recorder what he or she did every time there was marital trouble. In overwhelming proportions the women focused on and expressed their emotion, and the men distracted themselves or decided not to be concerned with their mood. Finally, in a laboratory study, men and women were offered a choice of two tasks when they were sad. They could choose to list the words that best described their mood (a task focusing on the depression) or rank a list of nations in order of their wealth (a distracting task). Seventy percent of the women chose the emotion-focused task, listing the words that described their mood. With men, however, the percentages were reversed. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=1966">Location 1966</a>:So analyzing and wallowing in emotion when distressed seems a likely explanation for why women are more depressed than men. This implies that men and women experience mild depression at the same rate, but in women, who dwell on the state, the mild depression escalates; men, on the other hand, dissolve the state by distracting themselves, by action or perhaps by drinking it away. We are left with two plausible views that have some support. One is that women learn more helplessness and pessimism, and the second is that women’s likelier first reaction to trouble—rumination—leads right into depression. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2009">Location 2009</a>:Cognitive therapy uses five tactics. First, you learn to recognize the automatic thoughts flitting through your consciousness at the times you feel worst. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2015">Location 2015</a>:Second, you learn to dispute the automatic thoughts by marshaling contrary evidence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2018">Location 2018</a>:Third, you learn to make different explanations, called reattributions, and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2023">Location 2023</a>:Fourth, you learn how to distract yourself from depressing thoughts. The mother learns that thinking these negative things now is not inevitable. Rumination, particularly when one is under pressure to perform well, makes the situation even worse. Often it is better to put off thinking, in order to do your best. You can learn to control not only what you think but when you think it. Fifth, you learn to recognize and question the depression-sowing assumptions governing so much of what you do: <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2082">Location 2082</a>:Leslie was persistent, a full-blown optimist who seemed to have no doubt that I would be enthralled by his words of wisdom. And in fact, as the plane neared Nevada, with the snowcapped Sierras beneath us, I found myself being drawn in. "My people," he announced, "developed the video recorder for Ampex. That was the most creative group I ever led." "What separates your creative groups from your turkeys?" I asked. "Each person," he said, "every one of them, believes he can walk on water." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2310">Location 2310</a>:‘One thing bothers me still,’ John said. "Every business is stuck with some pessimists. Some are entrenched by seniority, others are around because they’re good at what they do. As I’ve gotten older," he continued, "I find the pessimists weigh on me more and more. They always tell me what I can’t do. They only tell me what’s wrong. I know it’s not their intention, but they curdle action, imagination, and initiative. I believe that most of them—and certainly the company—would be better off if they were more optimistic. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2357">Location 2357</a>:These have been the consistent findings over the last decade. Depressed people—most of whom turn out to be pessimists—accurately judge how much control they have. Nondepressed people—optimists, for the most part—believe they have much more control over things than they actually do, particularly when they are helpless and have no control at all. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2364">Location 2364</a>:As judged by a panel of observers, depressed patients weren’t very persuasive or likable; poor social skills are a symptom of depression. Depressed patients judged their lack of skill accurately. The surprising finding was from the nondepressed group. They markedly overestimated their skills, judging themselves as much more persuasive and appealing than the judges thought they were. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2427">Location 2427</a>:Pessimism promotes depression. Pessimism produces inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks. Pessimism feels bad subjectively—blue, down, worried, anxious. Pessimism is self-fulfilling. Pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges, and therefore fail more frequently—even when success is attainable. Pessimism is associated with poor physical health (see chapter ten). Pessimists are defeated when they try for high office (see chapter eleven). Even when pessimists are right and things turn out badly, they still feel worse. Their explanatory style now converts the predicted setback into a disaster, a disaster into a catastrophe. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2497">Location 2497</a>:CHILDREN’S ATTRIBUTIONAL STYLE QUESTIONNAIRE (CASQ) <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 20, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=2921">Location 2921</a>:SO WE HAVE evidence for three kinds of influences on your child’s explanatory style. First, the form of the everyday causal analyses he hears from you—especially if you are his mother: If yours are optimistic, his will be too. Second, the form of the criticisms he hears when he fails: If they are permanent and pervasive, his view of himself will turn toward pessimism. Third, the reality of his early losses and traumas: If they remit, he will develop the theory that bad events can be changed and conquered. But if they are, in fact, permanent and pervasive, the seeds of hopelessness have been deeply planted. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 21, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3059">Location 3059</a>:We hypothesized that there are two major risk factors for depression and poor achievement among children: • Pessimistic explanatory style. Children who see bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal will over time get depressed and do badly in school. • Bad life events. Children who suffer the most bad events—parents separating, family deaths, family job loss—will do worst. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3283">Location 3283</a>:Bertrand Russell said that the mark of a civilized human being is the ability to read a column of numbers and then weep. Is the American public as "uncivilized" as the news producers think? Are we incapable of understanding statistical arguments or do we only understand anecdotes? You only have to spend an afternoon in any baseball park in America to know how badly the general public’s capacity to appreciate and enjoy statistics has been underestimated by our tastemakers. Every child over six in the park knows what a .300 hitter is and knows Tony Gwynn is more likely to get a hit than Juan Samuel is. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3564">Location 3564</a>:Within a month, 50 percent of the rats not shocked had died, and the other 50 percent of the no-shock rats had rejected the tumor; this was the normal ratio. As for the rats that mastered shock by pressing a bar to turn it off, 70 percent rejected the tumor. But only 27 percent of the helpless rats, the rats that had experienced uncontrollable shock, rejected the tumor. Madelon Visintainer thus became the first person to demonstrate that a psychological state—learned helplessness—could cause cancer. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3629">Location 3629</a>:A third way in which optimism should matter for health concerns the sheer number of bad life events encountered. It has been shown statistically that the more bad events a person encounters in any given time period, the more illness he will have. People who in the same six months move, get fired, and get divorced are at greater risk for infectious illness—and even for heart attacks and cancer—than are people who lead uneventful lives. This is why when major change occurs in your life, it is important to have physical checkups more frequently than usual. Even if you are feeling fine, it is particularly important to watch your health carefully when you change jobs, leave a relationship, or retire, or when someone you love dies. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3658">Location 3658</a>:Other studies looked at breast cancer. In a pioneering British study, sixty-nine women with breast cancer were followed for five years. Women who did not suffer a recurrence tended to be those who responded to cancer with a "fighting spirit," whereas those who died or who suffered a recurrence tended to respond to their initial diagnosis with helplessness and stoic acceptance. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3679">Location 3679</a>:I do not believe that when a patient has such a lethal load of cancer as to be deemed "terminal," psychological processes can do much good. At the margin, however, when tumor load is small, when illness is beginning to progress, optimism might spell the difference between life and death. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=3779">Location 3779</a>:What we saw was that health at age sixty was strongly related to optimism at age twenty-five. The pessimistic men had started to come down with the diseases of middle age earlier and more severely than the optimistic men, and the differences in health by age forty-five were already large. Before age forty-five optimism has no effect on health. Until that age the men remained in the same state of health as at age twenty-five. But at age forty-five the male body starts its decline. How fast and how severely it does so is well predicted by pessimism twenty-five years earlier. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4276">Location 4276</a>:The fundamental guideline for not deploying optimism is to ask what the cost of failure is in the particular situation. If the cost of failure is high, optimism is the wrong strategy. The pilot in the cockpit deciding whether to de-ice the plane one more time, the partygoer deciding whether to drive home after drinking, the frustrated spouse deciding whether to start an affair that, should it come to light, would break up the marriage should not use optimism. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4280">Location 4280</a>:On the other hand, if the cost of failure is low, use optimism. The sales agent deciding whether to make one more call loses only his time if he fails. The shy person deciding whether to attempt to open a conversation risks only rejection. The teenager contemplating learning a new sport risks only frustration. The disgruntled executive, passed over for promotion, risks only some refusals if he quietly puts out feelers for a new position. All should use optimism. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4314">Location 4314</a>:The first step is to see the connection between adversity, belief, and consequence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4396">Location 4396</a>:THERE ARE TWO general ways for you to deal with your pessimistic beliefs once you are aware of them. The first is simply to distract yourself when they occur—try to think of something else. The second is to dispute them. Disputing is more effective in the long run, because successfully disputed beliefs are less likely to recur when the same situation presents itself again. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4409">Location 4409</a>:You probably find that you have almost no capacity to refrain from thinking about the pie. But you do have the capacity to redeploy your attention. Think about the pie again. Got it. Mouth-watering? Now stand up and slam the palm of your hand against the wall and shout "STOP!" The image of the pie disappeared, didn’t it? This is one of several simple but highly effective thought-stopping techniques used by people who are trying to interrupt habitual thought patterns. Some people ring a loud bell, others carry a three-by-five card with the word STOP in enormous red letters. Many people find it works well to wear a rubber band around their wrists and snap it hard to stop their ruminating. If you combine one of these physical techniques with a technique called attention shifting, you will get longer-lasting results. To keep your thoughts from returning to a negative belief after interruption (by snapping a rubber band or whatever), now direct your attention elsewhere. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005DB6S7K&location=4419">Location 4419</a>:Finally, you can undercut ruminations by taking advantage of their very nature. Their nature is to circle around in your mind, so that you will not forget them, so that you will act on them. When adversity strikes, schedule some time—later—for thinking things over … say, this evening at six P.M. Now, when something disturbing happens and you find the thoughts hard to stop, you can say to yourself, "Stop. I’ll think this over later … at [such and such a time]." <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk MD</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/the-body-keeps-the-score-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md</id>
<updated>2023-02-05T06:59:15.193000Z</updated>
<published>2022-11-15T02:23:25Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/the-body-keeps-the-score-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=225">Location 225</a>:One does not have to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.1 <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=403">Location 403</a>:Maybe even worse for Tom than the recurrent flashbacks of the ambush was the memory of what happened afterward. I could easily imagine how Tom’s rage about his friend’s death had led to the calamity that followed. It took him months of dealing with his paralyzing shame before he could tell me about it. Since time immemorial veterans, like Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, have responded to the death of their comrades with unspeakable acts of revenge. The day after the ambush Tom went into a frenzy to a neighboring village, killing children, shooting an innocent farmer, and raping a Vietnamese woman. After that it became truly impossible for him to go home again in any meaningful way. How can you face your sweetheart and tell her that you brutally raped a woman just like her, or watch your son take his first step when you are reminded of the child you murdered? Tom experienced the death of Alex as if part of himself had been forever destroyed—the part that was good and honorable and trustworthy. Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=701">Location 701</a>:Antipsychotic drugs were a major factor in reducing the number of people living in mental hospitals in the United States, from over 500,000 in 1955 to fewer than 100,000 in 1996.7 For people today who did not know the world before the advent of these treatments, the change is almost unimaginable. As a first-year medical student I visited Kankakee State Hospital in Illinois and saw a burly ward attendant hose down dozens of filthy, naked, incoherent patients in an unfurnished dayroom supplied with gutters for the runoff water. This memory now seems more like a nightmare than like something I witnessed with my own eyes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=732">Location 732</a>:After administering several courses of electric shock, the researchers opened the doors of the cages and then shocked the dogs again. A group of control dogs who had never been shocked before immediately ran away, but the dogs who had earlier been subjected to inescapable shock made no attempt to flee, even when the door was wide open—they just lay there, whimpering and defecating. The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized animals, or people, take the road to freedom. Like Maier and Seligman’s dogs, many traumatized people simply give up. Rather than risk experimenting with new options they stay stuck in the fear they know. I was riveted by Maier’s account. What they had done to these poor dogs was exactly what had happened to my traumatized human patients. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=780">Location 780</a>:Freud had a term for such traumatic reenactments: "the compulsion to repeat." He and many of his followers believed that reenactments were an unconscious attempt to get control over a painful situation and that they eventually could lead to mastery and resolution. There is no evidence for that theory—repetition leads only to further pain and self-hatred. In fact, even reliving the trauma repeatedly in therapy may reinforce preoccupation and fixation. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=878">Location 878</a>:After conducting numerous studies of medications for PTSD, I have come to realize that psychiatric medications have a serious downside, as they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=881">Location 881</a>:Consider the case of antidepressants. If they were indeed as effective as we have been led to believe, depression should by now have become a minor issue in our society. Instead, even as antidepressant use continues to increase, it has not made a dent in hospital admissions for depression. The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades, and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants.24 <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 17, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1532">Location 1532</a>:The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is responsible for arousal, including the fight-or-flight response (Darwin’s "escape or avoidance behavior"). Almost two thousand years ago the Roman physician Galen gave it the name "sympathetic" because he observed that it functioned with the emotions (sym pathos). <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1536">Location 1536</a>:The second branch of the ANS is the parasympathetic ("against emotions") nervous system (PNS), which promotes self-preservative functions like digestion and wound healing. It triggers the release of acetylcholine to put a brake on arousal, slowing the heart down, relaxing muscles, and returning breathing to normal. As Darwin pointed out, "feeding, shelter, and mating activities" depend on the PNS. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Dec 12, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1569">Location 1569</a>:If we look beyond the list of specific symptoms that entail formal psychiatric diagnoses, we find that almost all mental suffering involves either trouble in creating workable and satisfying relationships or difficulties in regulating arousal (as in the case of habitually becoming enraged, shut down, overexcited, or disorganized). Usually it’s a combination of both. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1576">Location 1576</a>:Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Numerous studies of disaster response around the globe have shown that social support is the most powerful protection against becoming overwhelmed by stress and trauma. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1579">Location 1579</a>:Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 10, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=293">Location 293</a>:Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. . . . It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it. —Jessica Stern, Denial: A Memoir of Terror <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=572">Location 572</a>:Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=576">Location 576</a>:For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=580">Location 580</a>:The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening. —C.-C. Chang, The Practice of Zen <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=670">Location 670</a>:Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people "acknowledge, experience, and bear" the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves," he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel. I remember being surprised to hear this distinguished old Harvard professor confess how comforted he was to feel his wife’s bum against him as he fell asleep at night. By disclosing such simple human needs in himself he helped us recognize how basic they were to our lives. Failure to attend to them results in a stunted existence, no matter how lofty our thoughts and worldly accomplishments. Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=732">Location 732</a>:After administering several courses of electric shock, the researchers opened the doors of the cages and then shocked the dogs again. A group of control dogs who had never been shocked before immediately ran away, but the dogs who had earlier been subjected to inescapable shock made no attempt to flee, even when the door was wide open—they just lay there, whimpering and defecating. The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized animals, or people, take the road to freedom. Like Maier and Seligman’s dogs, many traumatized people simply give up. Rather than risk experimenting with new options they stay stuck in the fear they know. I was riveted by Maier’s account. What they had done to these poor dogs was exactly what had happened to my traumatized human patients. They, too, had been exposed to somebody (or something) who had inflicted terrible harm on them—harm they had no way of escaping. I made a rapid mental review of the patients I had treated. Almost all had in some way been trapped or immobilized, unable to take action to stave off the inevitable. Their fight/flight response had been thwarted, and the result was either extreme agitation or collapse. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=805">Location 805</a>:We concluded that Beecher’s speculation that "strong emotions can block pain" was the result of the release of morphinelike substances manufactured in the brain. This suggested that for many traumatized people, reexposure to stress might provide a similar relief from anxiety.17 It was an interesting experiment, but it did not fully explain why Julia kept going back to her violent pimp. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=811">Location 811</a>:Gray’s data showed that the sensitivity of the amygdala depended, at least in part, on the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin in that part of the brain. Animals with low serotonin levels were hyperreactive to stressful stimuli (like loud sounds), while higher levels of serotonin dampened their fear system, making them less likely to become aggressive or frozen in response to potential threats.18 <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=817">Location 817</a>:Other researchers had shown that dominant male monkeys had much higher levels of brain serotonin than lower-ranking animals but that their serotonin levels dropped when they were prevented from maintaining eye contact with the monkeys they had once lorded over. In contrast, low-ranking monkeys who were given serotonin supplements emerged from the pack to assume leadership. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=827">Location 827</a>:On Monday, February 8, 1988, Prozac was released by the drug company Eli Lilly. The first patient I saw that day was a young woman with a horrendous history of childhood abuse who was now struggling with bulimia—she basically spent much of her life bingeing and purging. I gave her a prescription for this brand-new drug, and when she returned on Thursday she said, "I’ve had a very different last few days: I ate when I was hungry, and the rest of the time I did my schoolwork." This was one of the most dramatic statements I had ever heard in my office. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=896">Location 896</a>:Half a million children in the United States currently take antipsychotic drugs. Children from low-income families are four times as likely as privately insured children to receive antipsychotic medicines. These medications often are used to make abused and neglected children more tractable. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=992">Location 992</a>:Broca’s area is one of the speech centers of the brain, which is often affected in stroke patients when the blood supply to that region is cut off. Without a functioning Broca’s area, you cannot put your thoughts and feelings into words. Our scans showed that Broca’s area went offline whenever a flashback was triggered. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1000">Location 1000</a>:Even years later traumatized people often have enormous difficulty telling other people what has happened to them. Their bodies reexperience terror, rage, and helplessness, as well as the impulse to fight or flee, but these feelings are almost impossible to articulate. Trauma by nature drives us to the edge of comprehension, cutting us off from language based on common experience or an imaginable past. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1020">Location 1020</a>:However, our scans clearly showed that images of past trauma activate the right hemisphere of the brain and deactivate the left. We now know that the two halves of the brain do speak different languages. The right is intuitive, emotional, visual, spatial, and tactual, and the left is linguistic, sequential, and analytical. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1052">Location 1052</a>:The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1070">Location 1070</a>:For a hundred years or more, every textbook of psychology and psychotherapy has advised that some method of talking about distressing feelings can resolve them. However, as we’ve seen, the experience of trauma itself gets in the way of being able to do that. No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1107">Location 1107</a>:At the time the disaster occurred, he was able to take an active role by running away from it, thus becoming an agent in his own rescue. And once he had reached the safety of home, the alarm bells in his brain and body quieted. This freed his mind to make some sense of what had happened and even to imagine a creative alternative to what he had seen—a lifesaving trampoline. In contrast to Noam, traumatized people become stuck, stopped in their growth because they can’t integrate new experiences into their lives. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1112">Location 1112</a>:Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1141">Location 1141</a>:Being able to move and do something to protect oneself is a critical factor in determining whether or not a horrible experience will leave long-lasting scars. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00G3L1C2K&location=1474">Location 1474</a>:Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood. We are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are. —Mickey Hart <hr /></div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry xml:base="http://armand.postach.io/feed.xml">
<title type="text">Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/existential-kink-by-carolyn-elliott</id>
<updated>2023-03-13T08:37:24.187000Z</updated>
<published>2022-03-28T16:19:00Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/existential-kink-by-carolyn-elliott" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=93">Location 93</a>:My deep dive into psychology taught me that we human beings have a major habit of taking unconscious pleasure in the "bad stuff" in our lives. This was well-known to the founding giants of psychology like Freud, Jung, and Lacan. Freud called it "psychic masochism," Jung recognized it as "the Shadow," and Lacan called it jouissance—pleasure that's so intense we repress it. All of these psychologists recognized that a major component of helping people involved getting them to acknowledge and "own" this kind of weird underlying desire for and pleasure in stuff that they ostensibly hate and feel very frustrated by. It's strange, but it's true. Jung said—and I'll repeat it a few times throughout this book—"Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=102">Location 102</a>:I learned first-hand that by embracing my "psychic masochism," by recognizing and empowering the darkness of my "shadow," and in the end taking "pleasure" in my yucky stuff that I could do something amazing. I could completely integrate my "good" self with my "bad" self and become a whole person. Healed. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=119">Location 119</a>:This is an insight that can be very, very offensive to our egos: the idea that on some level we could want or enjoy "awful" things in our lives is scary and troubling to most people. We tend to think we only want or enjoy "good" things, or that we should only want "good" things. But acknowledging our secret bliss in "the bad stuff" doesn't have to be a troubling recognition; it's just a normal part of human nature. We all do it, and there doesn't need to be any shame or blame in it at all. In fact, setting aside shame and blame is what allows us to make the enjoyment conscious, and thereby lets us remove its power to sneakily control us. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=128">Location 128</a>:The very good news is, the minute that we're willing to make that previously unconscious pleasure a conscious one—-the minute we're willing to deliberately celebrate it and savor it—we create a massive pattern interrupt. We allow ourselves to finally receive the "dark secret joy" we've been (unbeknownst to ourselves!) seeking. We let the desire that motivated the negative pattern be fully known and satisfied, and then we're free to move beyond it and create something new. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=138">Location 138</a>:As Milton said, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Nov 02, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=221">Location 221</a>:What if, deep within you, you had a never-ending reservoir of wrongness? Like, what if deep down inside, everything about you was totally detestable, dangerous, a source of pain to yourself and other people? And what if that was absolutely great? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=224">Location 224</a>:I've noticed that pretty much all of us human beings who aren't completely enlightened (so: the population of earth minus Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, the Dalai Lama, and some humble shamans who lack PR agents), all of us feel, at some level, that there's something unbearably deficient, horrible, ugly, and lacking about ourselves that we need to cover over (to hide, to bury, to run from) and we cover it over with accomplishment, with the approval of others, or with black tar heroin. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=237">Location 237</a>:Even those in the "functional adult" camp with relatively mild addictive tendencies often find that despite their best efforts and intentions, dark patterns repeat in their lives. And repeat. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=240">Location 240</a>:Somehow, one way or another, for the majority of us humans—whether it's through our addictions or through our lousy patterns, our hidden sense of wrongness makes itself felt. So a question arises: what the fuck are we gonna do about this? I say: let's transmute that feeling of "wrongness" into raw, hot, glorious power. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=252">Location 252</a>:God is one kinky-ass motherfucker. God—the divine—whatever He/She/IT is—creates this world, and this world is a gonzo horror show of war and rape and abuse and addiction and disaster. If God is running the show, God must like it this way! Now, you might guess that a thought like that would lead to some kind of terrible nihilistic breakdown. But for me . . . actually, it didn't. Instead, it made me smile—perversely—and gave me a feeling of lightness, play, and possibility. Because I had also stumbled upon this further thought: maybe I'm one freaky-ass motherfucker too! What if—seriously what if—all the bad stuff had manifested in my life because I like it that way? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=262">Location 262</a>:Then he'd come back, there'd be some nice kissing, and within minutes we'd be back to yelling and he'd be throwing things at me (coffee mugs, books, etc.). I hated how controlling and violent my partner was. And yet, after much inquiry and reflection, I realized I actually loved how controlling and violent he was. Loved, loved, loved it. I adored the feeling of being important that came from having this guy treat me like I was a supply of heroin that he had to manage in order to have it available at all times. In other words, my existence had meaning. Just as in the tale of Persephone and Pluto, I could use him to keep me contained, so that I didn't have to risk exploring myself or the world without him. Part of what kept me hooked into the relationship was the joy of resenting him and his controlling violence. Another part of what kept me hooked in was the feeling that I could only have this terrible relationship because I was terrible, and if I could just become un-terrible, then I could leave him. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=279">Location 279</a>:I allowed myself to consciously feel the previously unconscious pleasure I felt in being violently controlled. It was in fact a previously unconscious turn-on. My "aha" moment. Turn-on is magnetic. Now I was faced with the stark realization that I had been unconsciously magnetizing abuse and scarcity and rejection to myself all my life. It occurred to me that I had been unconsciously enjoying and magnetizing self-devaluation for years, but I had never before let myself know it because it's a shameful, freaky, weird thing to be turned on by devaluation and scarcity in real life. I mean, in sophisticated circles it's totally cool to be turned on by devaluation in some spicy S&M bedroom scene—but in real life? That's just fucked up. And then it dawned on me: Shit, I don't just have bedroom kink, I have existential kink. I have perverse desires for pain and bondage in my daily existence. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=288">Location 288</a>:Well if God is a kinky freak and I'm a part of God like all these "spiritual" people say, maybe deep down I'm a kinky freak too. And maybe I can get more in touch with my divine nature by giving myself permission to like all the scary stuff in life, instead of just resenting it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=310">Location 310</a>:You see, what I'll be sharing with you here is Existential Kink, a radical, somatic, hot, and eminently practical & quick method of coming to love the previously hidden and shamed parts of your own self, so that your old negative patterns dissolve. Those hidden and shamed parts? That's your shadow. And in the course of this book, you'll meet your shadow and learn how to dance with it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=351">Location 351</a>:As Jung emphasized: "Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate." But Jung also pointed out: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 22, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=356">Location 356</a>:Jung's observation that "Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate" means that your unconscious desires and curiosities have great power to shape your experience. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 23, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=416">Location 416</a>:What this book proposes is a different method—the "EK" method—a method for rapidly making the unconscious, conscious—so that your unconscious desires and curiosities no longer rule you. When that happens, a huge vista of possibility opens up in your life. This method of integration works within days, weeks, and months rather than within years and decades. Why? Because Existential Kink doesn't just identify your shadow self. Existential Kink teaches you to embrace and love your shadow self. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 24, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=373">Location 373</a>:To his unconscious, this is a giant victory and a great fulfillment of the deep underlying desire—his desire to want to be taken care of. Unconsciously, Alex is enjoying living with his parents and being taken care of. The ironic thing is: as long as Alex resists allowing himself to consciously experience his job loss and his being "taken care of" by his parents as a great victory and fulfillment (in other words, as long as he resists consenting to experience it as kinkily awesome the very same way his unconscious experiences it), then the more he will feel out-of-control and cursed by Fate. As long as Alex refuses to consciously enjoy his circumstance, he'll be inclined to see himself as a loser and a failure, he'll lose confidence, and he'll stay stuck. Paradoxically, the moment Alex becomes willing to "get on the side" of his taboo unconscious desire for dependence and goes ahead and deeply savors its victory—at that moment he can feel empowered again. He can realize that his taboo wish to be dependent has been fulfilled, and let himself receive the hot weird pleasure of that. Then, rather than being a loser, Alex is actually a massively fulfilled person. From this vantage point of deciding to consciously allow himself to enjoy and be satisfied by his previously unconscious pleasure, it's then much easier for him to go ahead and make his way in the world. In essence, he's no longer guilty; he's not beating himself up anymore. He's no longer resisting his situation, so it doesn't need to persist. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=411">Location 411</a>:Dissolving unconscious patterns by making them conscious (and thereby integrating your being, your will) allows you to wake up out of this powerlessness and become the captain of the ship of your own life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=429">Location 429</a>:Through consciously enjoying and giving approval to these previously unconscious "guilty pleasures," we interrupt and end the stuck patterns so that we can get what we really want in our lives. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=449">Location 449</a>:Let's return to a point mentioned in the Introduction: if the ancient wisdom of Vedas are correct and the whole universe is just God playing elaborate rounds of hide'n'seek with Godself, then God is a super-freak. We need only look around our planet to see that God's idea of a fun time includes some seriously edgy, ultra-taboo, hard-core stuff—including war and poverty and pain and ravaging and abuse and atrocities of all variety. That's a whole lot of sadism and masochism, dominance and submission, bondage and torture—in both extreme and subtle forms—that God enjoys playing out with Godself. I propose that all our suffering and stuckness in life comes from forgetting that we're divine sparks playing a wild kinky game and that great miracles can come forth in our lives when we reverse the process of forgetting by deliberately reclaiming the pleasure of the game—not just in our minds, but in our hearts and genitals. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Jan 26, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=478">Location 478</a>:And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=478">Location 478</a>:And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 05, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=502">Location 502</a>:The unio mentalis is a being that is not in conflict with itself; it's undivided and thus is extremely powerful. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=542">Location 542</a>:"Until you make your unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate." In other words, the emotions and desires and positions that our ego disowns inevitably haunt us (personally and collectively) by generating painful synchronous experiences that urge us to confront and reintegrate the disdained side of a polarity. This is what Jung's predecessor, Sigmund Freud, called "the return of the repressed." Polarities include all sets of "opposites"—masculine and feminine, fire and ice, night and day, violence and healing, creation and destruction, good and evil, fulfillment and deprivation, power and powerlessness, etc. Let me give you an example: most of us have grown up in a society that exalts wealth, and we have disowned and denied the other side of the polarity: a love of scarcity. In doing so we make our love of scarcity unconscious, and thus scarcity synchronously shows up in our lives, until we agree to consciously, deliberately, "insanely," shamelessly love it. The Great Work involves making the unconscious, conscious and thus changing the locus of our agency and taking charge of our own fate. To change the locus of your agency means to stop aligning yourself with your ego's one-sided choices (the ego tends to want only what it labels "the good stuff") and to instead align yourself with the kinkier, more adventurous choices of the underlying total divine presence that we all are: the strange, vast Self which enjoys and is very curious about absolutely everything. To do this, we have to greatly humble our ego's denial and fictional (if we were feeling feisty we might even say delusional) sorting of all experience into "good" (what appears to benefit me) and "bad" (what appears to not benefit me). When we succeed in this, the ego loses layers of its absorption in the fiction of separation, and comes more and more to see itself as just a particular (rather funny) expression of a much larger divine whole, the Self. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=561">Location 561</a>:In waking up out of our absorbing fiction of separation, we link up the gigantic sexual, taboo, electrical energy (the shakti, the turn-on) in our bodies with our most inspired ideals and intentions. Then our ideals and our intentions gain the high-voltage electric "oomph" that they've been previously missing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=565">Location 565</a>:The Basque word for witch, sorginak, means "one who makes her own fate." What I'm presenting to you here is a way to make your own fate: a witchy, tricksy, feminine path to enlightenment that's quite a bit different than the more publicly vaunted, masculine routes of asceticism, contemplation, and yogic saintliness. The witchy path of the Great Work involves learning to get off on (and thus to tangibly, viscerally reintegrate) the darkest, scariest dimensions of ourselves and our existence. It's a sexual, worldly, orgasmic, ecstatic path which bears a good deal in common with Hindu and Buddhist tantric traditions. To be completely blunt, this Existential Kink work is the left-hand path. The left-hand path is also… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=580">Location 580</a>:If you want to know who you unconsciously believe you are, just take a look at your life, your surroundings, your relationship. Your life mirrors those deep beliefs. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=590">Location 590</a>:I'm going to make explicit a concept that I will probably repeat many times, because it's key to this work. Please learn it. The concept is this: You are not who you think you are. Whoever you happen to think you are, I assure you, you are not that. I suggest that you remind yourself of this often, because it makes this work easier. When you brush your teeth in the morning, think to yourself, "I'm not at all who I imagine myself to be. I'm something entirely different and far more vast and strange. Hmmmm. I wonder what I really am?" Who you think you are is largely a societally constructed fiction held together by some compulsively repetitive thoughts and stories, and it bears little or no resemblance to the being that you actually are. As the wise and pithy magician Mr. Lon Milo Duquette says: "Magic is indeed all in your head, but your head is a hell of a lot bigger than you think it is." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=614">Location 614</a>:You see, the super-power of the spirit is total approval, total embrace, total celebration, the total perception of the already-existing perfection of life. When the spirit exclaims "perfect!" the conscious mind/the ego tends to hear that as "make things more perfect! They suck now!"—but actually what the spirit is saying is "everything is perfect right now!" Yes, everything. The world and our selves in all their fucked-up glory. That experience of total approval and total embrace, total absence of shame or aversion, is what the spirit is always trying to teach us about and it's ironically what our conscious mind mistranslates as all those "shoulds" and judgments. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=621">Location 621</a>:Existential Kink is a potent form of magic (also known as: "psychological integration") in which the receptive feminine—the unconscious, the disowned and denied, the soul—becomes pregnant with the perfection-vision of our spirit—the masculine, projective part of our being, and eventually gives birth to positive synchronous manifestations in our lives. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=628">Location 628</a>:What that means is you're going to take all the embracing-approval-seeking-inherent-perfection-perceiving power of your spirit, tell your ego "thanks but you can shut the fuck up for a while," and send all that embracing-approval-seeking-inherent-perfection-perceiving down to your actual life, body, emotions, and present situation. In the process of Existential Kink you invite your spirit to have the realization that your life on earth—right now, right here, in this animal, human body—is actually exactly what it has always wanted to celebrate with its exultant songs of perfection. Another way of saying that is that the practice of Existential Kink is the work of becoming attuned to practical magic; you decide to fully incarnate, to agree fully to be who you already are, however messy or stinky that may be—with no reservation, no hold-back, no "if-only," no judgment, no shame. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=640">Location 640</a>:The paradox is that once you fully commit to being who you already are, having what you already have, and hugely celebrating it, you become a masterful practical magician, a force of nature capable of shifting circumstances very easily. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 06, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=478">Location 478</a>:And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=478">Location 478</a>:And contrary to some airy Law of Attraction notions, we rarely get what we consciously want (unless we do the kind of deep solve work addressed in this book), but we always get what we unconsciously want. And if you're curious as to what you unconsciously want, you don't need thirty years of psychoanalysis to figure it out: you can just take a look at what you currently have in your life and know that that's exactly what your unconscious wants, because what your unconscious wants, it gets. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=680">Location 680</a>:"Having is evidence of wanting" is another way of phrasing the pithy quote that we previously read from the old wizard Carl Jung: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=683">Location 683</a>:Whatever desires are in your unconscious, will be "born," will happen, and the results of those desires will seem to be come toward you from some unfathomable outside agency—in other words, "fate." The good news is, when you do the uncomfortable work of making these strong, unconscious desire-curiosities conscious, by giving them a vast, taboo-level of approval, they lose their fateful power to fuck with you. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 08, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=707">Location 707</a>:Here's a rule of thumb: If we're talking about an annoying pattern that seems to recur specifically for you, and you know a lot of other folks who are free of that particular pattern, chances are good that it's something that's being created specifically by your own personal unconscious. But if we're talking about endemic human problems like war or racism or child abuse, odds are it's more of a collective unconscious issue. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=727">Location 727</a>:A more extreme example: childbirth is a notoriously painful process, often depicted in modern media as filled with screams and groans and facilitated by numbing drugs. And yet there's something called the Orgasmic Birth movement, which consists of women who train themselves to experience the intense sensations of child birth as pleasure, and many women are indeed able to experience their births as an orgasm instead of a horrible painful ordeal. That's not to say that it's easy to train oneself to experience the very intense sensations of childbirth as pleasurable, but just that it's possible. And the fact that it's possible points very directly to the immensely flexible capacity of the human organism to choose how it perceives sensation. Exercising choice over how you perceive the sensations of happenings in your life and psyche is a profound step in releasing attachment to being "helpless" and at the mercy of "cruel fate." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=736">Location 736</a>:It was in reflecting on this phenomenon of sexual kink/BDSM especially that Existential Kink was born. I started to wonder why it is that we don't usually experience the painful parts of life as similar playful pleasure. I think it has to do with the matter of choice. People participating in BDSM consciously choose to be tied up and flogged, and that element of deliberate choice allows them to experience that pain and bondage as a kind of play, as something fun. But usually when painful things happen in our lives, we don't feel that we have a "choice" whether or not to experience them as pain, so we don't find it very fun—instead we tend to experience it as very disempowering and defeating. So a big part of Existential Kink involves deciding to at least start by "pretending" (i.e., experimentally accepting the axiom "having is evidence of wanting") that some hitherto-unconscious part of you playfully, humorously, curiously chooses and desires a given painful situation, behavior, stream of thought, or mood. When you make a kinky game of it, you greatly expand your sense of agency, you unite your will, and you open up room for a sense of fun and playfulness to come into the scene. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=747">Location 747</a>:The notion of "getting off on every stroke" is something I learned while in the Orgasmic Meditation movement. In Orgasmic Meditation, a "stroker" strokes a woman's clitoris very lightly for fifteen minutes, within a very specific container involving a timer, gloves, lube, and a "nest" of pillows and blankets. Orgasmic Meditation is a kind of very simplified, "Zen" sort of tantric practice (if you look up traditional Hindu or Buddhist Tantra you'll see they're quite complicated) where the goal is to focus on the sensation at the point of contact between finger and clitoris, much like the point of Vipassana meditation is to focus on the sensation at the point of the breath entering the nose. If you're a woman being stroked in Orgasmic Meditation, you soon notice that there are certain kinds of clitoral strokes that you automatically prefer and enjoy, and some that don't feel as good, or even that feel a little uncomfortable or painful. So an advanced challenge in the Orgasmic Meditation practice is to attempt to open oneself to enjoy, to be turned on by, and "get off on" strokes that are outside one's automatic range of preference. In this way, one learns to expand one's experience of orgasmic (i.e., pleasure) energy (in Orgasmic Meditation, as in Existential Kink, the definition of "orgasm" or "getting off" is not… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=775">Location 775</a>:It's possible to experience exactly the same set of events in a way that's a turn-on, or in a way that's a turn-off and this includes the "internal events" of your emotions and thoughts. How turned on and approving you are tends to have a lot to do with whether you're willing to playfully perceive your life as a wild, kinky game or whether you're hell-bent on taking it seriously and believing that it "should" follow a certain ego-pleasing pattern. The more you allow yourself to be "turned on," the less resistance you offer to the positive, creative current that's always attempting to move through you into manifestation. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=780">Location 780</a>:It's possible to be sad, angry, disappointed—in a turned-on way. It's just a matter of giving yourself permission to fully feel the raw sensation that those emotions present, to meet the sensation with your innocence rather than your cynical judgment and "stories" about what these emotional sensations mean. In other words, it's magically useful to take an aesthetic, imaginative, artistic approach to your life and feelings rather than a dire, moralizing approach. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=784">Location 784</a>:Let's take the feeling of sadness as an example. An open, receptive approach to this emotion might be, "Ah, a deep heavy feeling of sadness, how exquisite. Hmm, let me feel into this, what is the texture, the sound? It's rather spongy, and when I pay close attention, I notice in my heart it sounds like a slow xylophone melody playing in a rainy alley." As opposed to, "Oh no, a deep heavy feeling of sadness. This must mean I'm a failure and my life sucks and I'm screwed.… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=790">Location 790</a>:As Oscar Wilde once observed in a letter to a magazine in response to criticisms of The Picture of Dorian Gray, "If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=796">Location 796</a>:We have all these unconscious desire-curiosities, and many of them are quite taboo and "wrong" according to the standard of our conscious mind. Some of these include the desire for scarcity and limitation, the desire to feel wronged, the desire to feel rejected, the desire to feel not good enough, the desire to feel offended. Even though these unconscious desires are met in our lives by circumstances and events, we tend to miss a crucial step: celebration of fulfillment. We don't usually allow ourselves to consciously experience a turned-on sense of fulfillment and joy when these desires are met, because we habitually deny having them in the first place. The longer we deny the fact that these dark, "fucked-up" desire-curiosities are a part of us, and that we enjoy their fulfillment, the more they continue to shape our lives. When we deliberately allow ourselves to gratefully feel, celebrate, and receive the fulfillment of our previously denied and disowned desires, we give those desires freedom. We give them space and light in which to evolve and change. For example: once I've realized that I'm fulfilling my previously unconscious desire to feel "not… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=808">Location 808</a>:can know right away that anything in my life, any attitude, any feeling, any situation I have shame about, that's an area of my life where I am accidentally suppressing my magic, and seeding the procreation of what we would call negative synchronicities—bad luck. The more you give yourself permission to be shameless, the more the channel of communication between your conscious and unconscious mind opens, and the more effectively you can… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=845">Location 845</a>:1) Get yourself into a relaxed state. Do whatever it is that helps you to relax. You could simply sit or lie down and breathe deeply for some moments, or you could precede your EK work by taking a nice hot salt bath or doing your favorite yoga stretches. Be flexible and experimental in how you go about getting yourself relaxed. Relaxation is key. I recommend relaxing yourself as part of EK because the more relaxed your body is, the easier it is to feel subtle sensations flowing within it, and this practice is all about sensation. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=851">Location 851</a>:2) Create a container for yourself by lighting a candle and some incense, and setting a timer for 15 minutes. Creating a container means setting up some basic bounds of space and time to contain your experience so that you can more deeply sink into it. When you have a container, you don't need to worry about getting "lost" in this far-out bizarro meditation, because you have set aside a special, finite time and place for it. I suggest that you create a spatial container for this work by going into a comfortable room where you can close the door and not be disturbed. I also suggest that you create a temporal container for this work by setting a timer for fifteen minutes and lighting a candle and/or burning some incense. If incense smoke doesn't agree with you, you could spray some rose water or Agua de Florida. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=861">Location 861</a>:Lighting a candle and burning some incense also signal to your deep unconscious that you are doing important transformational work, something special and outside your ordinary activity. Sending this kind of signal to yourself can help you feel more grounded and centered in the process. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=865">Location 865</a>:3) Identify a situation in your life that your conscious mind, your ego, does not like. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=873">Location 873</a>:Also, EK is best applied to "don't like" situations that are repeating, persistent patterns in your life. If you've been fired from three jobs for the same reason, then yes, that would be something to work on after processing your grief. If it's a bit of a random happening that you've been let go from your job, then perhaps just grieve it and apply your EK work to things that are more recurrent issues in your life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=876">Location 876</a>:4) Identify exactly what feelings and emotions you associate with this situation. This is important because EK works best when we do it on the feelings, emotions, and sensations associated with a situation, and not on the fact of the situation itself. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=880">Location 880</a>:Here's an example: one of my clients, Elsie, used to get tremendously anxious whenever she felt criticized or judged by someone in her social group. She practiced Existential Kink on the matter and discovered that the very same sensations that she had initially perceived as painful anxiety were actually kinky excitement. This reminded me of psychotherapist Fritz Perls' famous observation: "Fear is just excitement without breath." In other words, fear is just excitement without embrace and approval for the sensations. Through EK, Elsie discovered that she actually loved the intensity of attention and the feeling of theatrical momentousness that came with being criticized. Indeed, it turned her on immensely. It literally created arousal in her body: flushed cheeks, a faster heartbeat—the same physiological response that comes from being alone with a lover. When Elsie got very honest with herself and looked at her behavior, she noticed that she would unconsciously provoke people into confronting her with criticism because she got so much shadowy satisfaction out of it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=896">Location 896</a>:So to emphasize: focus on allowing yourself to take sadomasochistic pleasure in the sensations and emotions stirred up by your "don't like" situation. Don't put your energy into trying to get yourself to like the bare facts of what you "don't like." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=900">Location 900</a>:5) Gently allow yourself to get in touch with the part of yourself that actually, passionately enjoys the feelings and emotions associated with your "don't like" situation. This step of the Existential Kink meditation process is to take some time to gently, vulnerably allow yourself to get in touch with the previously unconscious, kinky part of you that enjoys this "don't like" situation. Consider that fear or aversion and desire always go hand-in-hand. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 12, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=907">Location 907</a>:Remember, "having is evidence of wanting"—if there's a situation or a feeling that's present in your life, no matter how awful it is, it's present with you not because it's "true" or "real" but because some part of the vast, strange, kinky Self that you are finds it fascinating, compelling, beautiful. And it's time to let that part of yourself and its taboo pleasures come to your conscious agreement and embrace. Softly, temporarily put aside your ego and your usual judgments about who you are and what you want. To increase your self-honesty here, it can help to strongly imagine that the "don't like" situation will be utterly and completely removed from your life in just one month from now, as if "by the hand of God." Since the "don't like" situation is going to be inevitably, totally removed anyway (you allow yourself to imagine), you can relax, open up, and allow yourself to feel just how very much a secret, taboo part of you enjoys it and cherishes it right now. That part of you has been silent up to now because your conscious mind has been shaming the enjoyment of the "bad" things in life, like scarcity, rejection, and self-hatred. So you need to carefully coax it out. Experiment with playfully saying the following EK statements to yourself: "I'm willing to stop pretending I don't enjoy XYZ tremendously." or "I'm willing to allow myself to know about my secret, weird pleasure in XYZ." or "It's okay for me to feel my forbidden,… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=931">Location 931</a>:Alternatively, you can take a coy, indirect, teasing approach to help disarm the defenses of the conscious mind. So sometimes in EK I like to say things to myself with sexy sarcasm (as if begging a devastatingly hot Dom not to whip me): "Oh no no no, not feeling wrong & bad, anything but that! Please, please, no, I just can't stand feeling . . . mmmmm . . . wrong & bad!" It's a bit silly, I know, but it works. Often the enjoyment in Existential Kink can be felt as jolts of electricity or genital sensation. Just as often it can be felt as a movement of emotional energy. Sometimes it's felt as lightness and laughter, or just a soft sense of relief. That's "getting off" in Existential Kink. "Getting off" in… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=944">Location 944</a>:Get on the side of your shadow (your previously unconscious sense of desire/curiosity/enjoyment) and deliberately, consciously, humbly allow yourself to receive, feel big gratitude for, and get off on the situation your unconscious so brilliantly created. This part of the Existential Kink process is crucial. Until you deliberately let your unconscious self fully receive and enjoy and delight in the situation and emotions she's creating (however "fucked up" it may be), that situation will just hang around and stay the same. The scarcity/romantic rejection/self-hatred will stay there, because your unconscious will keep just keep enjoying what she enjoys. Why? because you haven't consciously given her the freedom to shamelessly receive and experience the fulfillment of her desire, to receive and delight in all the bloody, operatic, nasty, spectacular fulfillment of her perfectly reasonable enjoyment of scarcity/romantic rejection/self-hatred, etc. It is through gratitude, deep receiving, and orgasmically enjoying the result you've already created (unconsciously) that you make space for your conscious and unconscious minds to sexually (magically) merge, fertilize each other, and eventually give birth to a new upward spiral of positive synchronicity in your life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=960">Location 960</a>:You can experiment with more EK statements like: "This unconscious enjoyment matters just as much as any other enjoyment in my life." "My enjoyment of this fucked-up stuff is just as worthwhile and important as my enjoyment of sunshine and roses." "I honor this desire. I respect it. I'm allowed to enjoy this as exactly much as I do." "I embrace and receive these sensations." "I'm willing to feel the depth of my love for this." "I open up to feeling wild, insane gratitude and excitement about these sensations and this situation." This is the "kink" part of Existential Kink. In BDSM kink, people get off on things that they normally don't like. Pain, flogging, being bossed around. Well, in life in general, we have the same opportunity to interact playfully with pain. All we need to do is shift the context in our imagination from one of "awful thing happening to me against my will" to "kinky fun thing happening that I fully consent to." Get off on this thing, this situation, this feeling that your ego thinks that you hate. Feel the freedom of that, the liberation of it. Allow yourself to be touched by the magnetism and electric spark of the "awful" thing that's present. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1000">Location 1000</a>:Like "Ooooooh, what if I somehow forget something totally important and then I just FAIL and everyone, the whole internet, just hates me, for good reason, because I completely suck. . . ." You get the idea. I was basically obsessed with how hot and vulnerable it would be if I totally screwed something up. So when I really let myself feel that, it helped make it clear to me that my anxiety is something I choose to do to myself instead of some horrible automatic fate I can't control. And then once I saw that, it was a lot easier to let it go. You can also do this kind of future-oriented EK on discomfort associated with completing tasks that you usually avoid, but that you know are good for you, like deep cleaning your home or cooking and eating lots of vegetables. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1010">Location 1010</a>:So, I practiced doing EK on the pain and awkwardness that I imagined I would feel in doing core exercises, taking perverse pleasure in it. I reminded myself that going right into my aversions is how magic happens. A part of me still hates core exercises (and what a joy it is to hate them!), but by perversely savoring my awkwardness and hatred, I've also gotten my core much stronger than it's ever been. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1057">Location 1057</a>:Probably the biggest barrier to "getting off" in Existential Kink is feeling so much guilt about an unconscious enjoyment that we tighten up and thus refuse to feel the enjoyment and make it conscious. With especially sticky unpleasant feelings, like guilt, it can be tough to feel the pure underlying, kinky desire for that feeling, but it can be simple to get in touch with the motivation for that feeling if only we're willing to investigate. And if you think about it, finding the motivation for something is quite similar to finding the desire for it. You see, every unpleasant feeling we have has an unconscious motivation. Some part of us believes that by feeling the yucky feeling, we'll "get" something that will enhance our survival. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1073">Location 1073</a>:Does this feeling of guilt come from a sense of wanting to control the situation? By feeling guilty, do I think I'll somehow change the situation, or at least get the approval of others? Am I willing to stop trying to use this feeling of guilt to get a sense of control? Am I willing to stop trying to use this feeling of guilt to manipulate others into approving of me? Would it be okay if the ability to use guilt to get approval or control just left me? What would it be like to live my life without ever using the feeling of guilt? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1087">Location 1087</a>:Here are some example answers to the prompt: As an all-powerful being, I currently find it richly entertaining to play a game wherein it seems my ultimate value and strength are dependent on what other people think of me. . . . so I need to meet certain qualifications to "prove" that I'm valuable and "win" the game. Other people and the judgments that they have are my adversaries in this game. I'm trying to be so perfect that "they" can't possibly negatively judge me. When I play this game, I work myself into a state of feeling anxious and spread-thin. Whenever I fail to meet "the qualifications," I get to feel guilty and afraid. The more I do this, the more separate and alienated I feel. It's amazing. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1217">Location 1217</a>:"Shame is the magic killer." <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1242">Location 1242</a>:"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness visible." —CARL JUNG <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1284">Location 1284</a>:Finding and healing the unconscious, lack-obsessed part of you with deep erotic love (not weak-sauce "acceptance") is the essence of Existential Kink. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 15, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1339">Location 1339</a>:Do Existential Kink on both the pain of pursuing your desire and the pain of not already having it, (i.e., the pain of your current "don't like" situation of not yet having the new boyfriend, or the completed novel, or the cash, or the liberation of all sentient beings). I really just dare you to cherish both kinds of pain, as they're equally wonderful. At the end of three months, if you've stayed focused on pursuing your reason-less desire, you will have your shit vastly more together than it is right now. At such a juncture, either decide to keep pursuing the same reason-less desire, or choose a new one. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1345">Location 1345</a>:The idea behind Deepest Fear Inventory comes from Marianne Williamson's famous, wise observation in her book A Return to Love, that "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure." Many of us would do anything to avoid the intense sensations of having giant power. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 20, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1427">Location 1427</a>:Uncover your real values and commitments, the ones you actually already live by, the ones that actually govern your moment-to-moment actions and emotions, and fully, consciously embrace them, at least temporarily. To fully, consciously embrace your sadistic "operating instructions" is to stop shaming your villainous <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1432">Location 1432</a>:Here's example "operating instructions" to get you started: I will guilt myself for at least three hours if I offend or disappoint anyone for any reason. Feeling supported and safe is utterly forbidden, no matter what. I must always find flaws with the people stupid enough to love me. I am totally, 100% committed to doubting my own value and worth. If I fail to meet any of my responsibilities, I will hate myself intensely. I am utterly not allowed to feel total self-forgiveness. Feeling a little bit of self-forgiveness is okay, but feeling total self-forgiveness is not allowed, ever. The more I reject my own work and being, the more I can get approval from authority figures. I completely agree that my value is fully dependent upon other people's perception of me. I decide to relentlessly shame and repress my aggressive and sexual feelings towards others so that I can only experience them as free-floating anxiety or depression. I am 1000% committed to insulting myself whenever I fail at anything. My deepest value is to feel bad about myself and to help my loved ones feel bad about themselves by relentlessly pointing out the ways they let me down. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1445">Location 1445</a>:Next, try treating your list like "reverse psychology affirmations." Read these affirmations in front of the mirror in the morning with great enthusiasm or with a Disney villain cackle every day for the next week and see what happens. Remember, the point of this exercise is never to bring yourself down. The point is to notice what inner sadistic prohibitions are already operating in you at a previously unconscious level and to make those prohibitions explicit and conscious by spelling them out, giving them your full conscious agreement, and savoring their extreme Villain-esque sadistic ridiculousness. When you make… <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1451">Location 1451</a>:Take the sadistic operating instructions, "I am absolutely never allowed to feel good about . . . XYZ . . . (my worth, my body, my creativity, etc.)" Ridiculous, right? You are totally allowed to feel good and loving and fabulous all the time, about every part of you and your life. But if you don't already feel completely good about XYZ, then it's a guarantee that there is indeed some major part of you that unconsciously already agrees and believes in the sadistic prohibition to not feel good about it. So the trick is to make space and time to honor that sadistic part of you, to affirm the dictates of the Inner Villain in their full glory, to stop resisting them for a… <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 20, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1484">Location 1484</a>:Be infinitely willing to feel and experience all the bad stuff endlessly because a part of you already is infinitely willing anyway. You don't have to "try" to love all the fucked-up stuff in your life: the simple fact is that you already do love it, immensely. All you need is honesty. Just be honest with yourself about the subtle erotic joy you get from dwelling on/fearing all the "bad things." Be honest about how exciting it is that you'll definitely die, and in dying, you will totally fail to keep your ego projects in motion. You're a complete failure no matter what. A dead failure. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1578">Location 1578</a>:The more I thought about other people absolutely refusing to highly value me and my work, the more aroused I got. Gradually it dawned on me: Well of course I don't make $1000 an hour; I am so turned on by being devalued and rejected! Turn-on enthusiasm is always magnetic, and now I was sitting with the stark realization that I had unconsciously been magnetizing scarcity and rejection to myself all along. It occurred to me that I had been unconsciously enjoying and magnetizing devaluation for years, but I had never before let myself know it because it's a shameful, freaky, weird thing to be turned on by devaluation and scarcity in real life. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Feb 25, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1427">Location 1427</a>:Uncover your real values and commitments, the ones you actually already live by, the ones that actually govern your moment-to-moment actions and emotions, and fully, consciously embrace them, at least temporarily. To fully, consciously embrace your sadistic "operating instructions" is to stop shaming your villainous sadistic aggression and instead to celebrate it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1612">Location 1612</a>:By imagining myself being paid "staggering sums" for my work, I practiced being willing to experience the sensations of being highly valued. And then I discovered something even more odd: as I consciously, deliberately got off on my scarcity kink and practiced growing my havingness level, I felt fulfilled and I simply lost my kinky hunger for scarcity, poverty, and humiliation. It just left. I lost my ability to take my empty bank account personally. My poverty no longer felt remotely relevant to me anymore, either as a kink or as a sorrow. Instead, I would think about being paid a staggering sum for my coaching, and it no longer felt impossible or intimidating; rather it felt hot. I started getting turned on by lots of money, rather than turned off by it. With this new kind of turn-on, I became willing to take mundane actions towards growing my business that in the past I had totally avoided, like building an email list. Suddenly, business-growth efforts that had sounded too scary or too intimidating to me in the past looked simple and obvious. I found I had huge creative energy to take these steps. I discovered that all along there were things I could do, that were not that difficult, to rapidly grow my business. I simply wasn't able to even see them until I changed my havingness level. It felt like having a veil lifted from my eyes. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1636">Location 1636</a>:Why? Because the Law of Attraction ideas always seemed a little—well, how to say this diplomatically?—extremely stupid to me, but I could never put my finger on exactly why. But now I could put my finger on precisely why: the usual Law of Attraction crowd strikes me as so dumb because they're only half-right, I realized. We do always get what we deeply desire, but most of us aren't that aware that much of what we deeply desire is some highly unpleasant, painful, secret, repressed, fucked-up shit. As it happens, the way to have profound success in altering your inner state and thereby altering your outer experience isn't through endless "positive thinking"—it's by being willing to look at the darkest, most twisted stuff in your experience and in your own heart and to feel great gratitude for it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1657">Location 1657</a>:Imagine that you're a kind of cosmic masochistic slut (and I mean that in the nicest possible way—yay sluts!) who just beamed down into your life and body. She feels the heart-pounding panic of impending doom too, and she loves it. She feels the pressure of having to find a way to make ends meet again this month, and it turns her on. She feels the stretch and strain of having to prove herself worthy of support in this hard, cold world, and she trembles and moans and asks for more. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1678">Location 1678</a>:Both scarcity and bounty are highly sensational. The flavors of sensation that they carry are just a bit different. You can choose to have all the sensations that go along with wealth, but first you need to get crystal clear on your fondness for all the sensations that go along with scarcity. Why? Because if you keep truly believing that you "hate being broke" or "want to get rid of this anxiety about paying the bills"—you're likely to hold onto being broke and anxious about paying the bills, for the simple fact that the game is still totally absorbing you, because you won't let yourself realize it's a game. Once you accept how thoroughly you cherish being broke and having this anxiety about paying the bills, the entrancing spell of the game is broken, and you'll find yourself drawn into a new game, with new stakes that are more mesmerizing than the last ones. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 03, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1706">Location 1706</a>:Once, in the midst of a harrowing adventure, a dear friend said to me: "Carolyn, tell me something funny!" I looked at her, with her eyes squeezed shut, and said, "What, the fact that we're all gonna die isn't funny enough for you?" Her eyes opened with shock and then she doubled over with laughter. Mortality is tragic, but it's also hilarious because it's so common and inescapable. We habitually think that we're our personalities, our bodies, our histories, our thoughts, our feelings, but all of that is just content, and it will all dissolve when we die. Ultimately, what we all are is the context in which our lives happen. Even if people remember our life's story and accomplishments for thousands of years after our death, eventually, the last person who remembers us will die and then it will be as if we never existed at all. Vanity is called vanity because it's in vain. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1706">Location 1706</a>:Once, in the midst of a harrowing adventure, a dear friend said to me: "Carolyn, tell me something funny!" I looked at her, with her eyes squeezed shut, and said, "What, the fact that we're all gonna die isn't funny enough for you?" Her eyes opened with shock and then she doubled over with laughter. Mortality is tragic, but it's also hilarious because it's so common and inescapable. We habitually think that we're our personalities, our bodies, our histories, our thoughts, our feelings, but all of that is just content, and it will all dissolve when we die. Ultimately, what we all are is the context in which our lives happen. Even if people remember our life's story and accomplishments for thousands of years after our death, eventually, the last person who remembers us will die and then it will be as if we never existed at all. Vanity is called vanity because it's in vain. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1743">Location 1743</a>:After becoming proficient in that fundamental "move," of Existential Kink—of getting off on "the ugliness" in such a profound way that it no longer strikes you as ugly, but as an adorable, funny part of the whole—the next step is to practice allowing yourself to feel, receive, and truly get off on how wonderful your life already is. That's right. And I'm not talking about just some dusty old "gratitude" or "appreciation." I'm talking about soul-ripping, heart-pounding, genital-throbbing, gut-busting reception. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1743">Location 1743</a>:After becoming proficient in that fundamental "move," of Existential Kink—of getting off on "the ugliness" in such a profound way that it no longer strikes you as ugly, but as an adorable, funny part of the whole—the next step is to practice allowing yourself to feel, receive, and truly get off on how wonderful your life already is. That's right. And I'm not talking about just some dusty old "gratitude" or "appreciation." I'm talking about soul-ripping, heart-pounding, genital-throbbing, gut-busting reception. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1755">Location 1755</a>:You tell yourself you might get "it" if you just worked hard enough, improved yourself enough, figured out enough—if you got the right relationship, the right career, or the right level of fitness. But the real reason the big fulfillment still feels out of reach is not because you haven't gotten it yet. It feels out of reach because you already have it, but you're actively (unconsciously) avoiding it. Life, the universe, is already stroking you right on your most sensitive, hottest, most fulfilling spot with the situations and feelings present in your life right now. But you won't let yourself feel or receive or even consciously know that the Big Fulfillment is right here, right now—because to do so would make all of that worry, doubt, complaint, and resentment utterly ridiculous. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1755">Location 1755</a>:You tell yourself you might get "it" if you just worked hard enough, improved yourself enough, figured out enough—if you got the right relationship, the right career, or the right level of fitness. But the real reason the big fulfillment still feels out of reach is not because you haven't gotten it yet. It feels out of reach because you already have it, but you're actively (unconsciously) avoiding it. Life, the universe, is already stroking you right on your most sensitive, hottest, most fulfilling spot with the situations and feelings present in your life right now. But you won't let yourself feel or receive or even consciously know that the Big Fulfillment is right here, right now—because to do so would make all of that worry, doubt, complaint, and resentment utterly ridiculous. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 04, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1775">Location 1775</a>:A Simple Havingness Check-In Close your eyes for a moment and feel into your current state. Are you holding any resentments? Judgments of yourself or other people? Worries? Criticisms about the state of the world? Complaints about your body, your work, your life? Is it possible that these judgments, complaints, criticisms, resentments are mechanisms whose sole purpose is to help you avoid feeling tremendously good, loved, valued, inspired? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1787">Location 1787</a>:One way to do that is by closing your eyes, checking in with your state of being, and asking yourself, as we just did: "Is it possible that these judgments, complaints, criticisms, resentments are meaningless mechanisms whose sole purpose is to help me avoid feeling tremendously good, loved, valued, inspired?" When you're wrapped up in feeling miserable about something, it often seems that the content of what you're miserable about is very real and important. What if it's just not? What if it has no intrinsic meaning whatsoever? What if whatever "problem" you're hung up about is just a vehicle for numbing yourself to the massive turned-on joy and fulfillment you could otherwise be feeling? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1797">Location 1797</a>:If, as I do, you want to take seriously the experience of thousands of yogis throughout the millennia who emphasize that the fundamental nature of existence feels like bliss (i.e., Eros, pleasure, enjoyment), then it's worth getting really suspicious about your relationship with reality whenever you're not blissful. In other words, if the content of your experience feels awful, if your thoughts are grim, your energy leaden, your feelings flush with self-pity: I suggest getting very, very curious about what element of reality you're denying, repressing, and hiding from. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1806">Location 1806</a>:I want you to begin to get sensitive to your own habits of distortion. Specifically, I would like you to notice when you feel some flavor of "good"—close, connected, energized happy, hopeful, prosperous, etc., . . . . . . and then to also notice exactly how long you are willing to tolerate feeling good before you start to turn yourself off with worrying, doubting, getting offended. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1821">Location 1821</a>:Notice whenever you feel good and notice when you turn yourself off, and exactly how you turn yourself off. What's your favorite mode of turning yourself off? Is it worry about the future? Or maybe doubting your own value and capability? Regretting a past mistake? Or saying something snippy to your partner to start an argument? How exactly do you turn yourself off? How often? Your task is to become the world's foremost expert on this subject, and to record your thoughts and reflections on the subject in your Magical Diary. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1838">Location 1838</a>:To continue with our noticing—I would also like you to get curious: What if you just kept feeling really, really good for a whole week? Why not? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1867">Location 1867</a>:To be "turned on" about any feeling state, including feeling any variation of "turned off," just means to be in total, unreserved approval of that state. When you're in total, turned-on approval of your state, you're deciding to see that state as a way that you are "good for yourself" rather than as a way that you are "bad for yourself." So rather than resenting that something made you angry, try getting excited that you're angry. Rather than thinking you shouldn't be sad, try celebrating the tender exaltation of your sadness. Instead of being annoyed with yourself for being so self-pitying, give the most fan-girl level of approval you are capable of giving to your self-pity—the kind of approval that you might normally reserve only for your favorite musician or movie star. I'm saying: Adopt an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude to your feeling states. In doing this, you practice being the artist of your life rather than the judge of it. As an experiment, the next time you feel funky, rather than judging how you feel, just savor it as if it was a virtual reality experience crafted for you by the world's foremost artist. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1899">Location 1899</a>:Feeling tremendously guilty when you've disappointed someone (A way to cover up awareness of sadistic desire to inflict pain) Feeling very anxious in social situations (A way to cover up feelings of budding connection and intimacy, and also vicious aggression—usually both) <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 06, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1911">Location 1911</a>:The most repressed item in your unconscious is your own total grace. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1916">Location 1916</a>:The thing about the ego is that it needs a sense of opposition, of refusal, of rejection in order to maintain itself. It has to say: "No! That is awful! I don't like that! No, that's not me!" to something in order to define itself as separate from the undulating whole of the weird fractal hologram of life. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1921">Location 1921</a>:In fact, according to some of the most touching myths we have, the divine often actively seeks out extreme experiences of pain in order to show off how divinely accepting it is. Odin, for example, put out his right eye and hung from a tree for nine days in order to gain knowledge of the mysteries. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1936">Location 1936</a>:The next time you notice yourself feeling guilty or resentful in the course of your day (hint: it's usually a sticky, stinky combination of both that's otherwise known as "feeling bad" or "feelin' some kinda way")—try this: Take a moment and imagine as strongly and as vividly that you can that there is a very loud, very colorful chorus of utterly fabulous, silly, adorable, over-the-top cheerleaders celebrating your guilty resentful yuck. They're dancing, they're shaking their butts, they're shaking their pom-poms, they're jumping up and down, trying to do splits and failing at it, jumping back up and grinning. They're splashing rainbow glitter paint around. Maybe they're all drag queens, maybe they're all roly-poly pink elephants, maybe they're all your best friends in super-goofy sequined outfits. They're chanting, "How do we want to feel? LACKING AND WRONG!" "When do we want to feel it? NOW!" "WOOOOOO-HOOOO! FUCK YEAH! Go Team Wrong and Bad! Go Go GO!" Just visualizing this can be great; it's even better if you also join in and start jumping up and down and shaking what your mama gave you along with your imaginary pom-poms. "We're injured! We're hurt! We're wounded!" "We suck! THEY SUCK! We suck so much! They suck worse!" "nah-NAH-nah-HEY-hey-HEY life SUCKS!" "YEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1952">Location 1952</a>:The more you do this, the more you associate feeling bad / wrong/resentful with hilarious, sexy quirky silliness, which—wait for it—is its true nature. After practicing The Cheerleaders for a good while, you'll eventually feel the twitches of a guilt trip or a blame session coming on and you'll automatically find it funny. By the way, this is a very deep and super-serious mystical teaching. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=1982">Location 1982</a>:Tonglen Meditation Notice the pain that you're feeling. It could be a specific pain somewhere in your body, or it could be an emotional pain that comes from judging your body as "not good enough" in some way. Take a moment to imagine all the millions of people in the world who are currently feeling exactly the same way that you are right now. There are millions of people with fibromyalgia, millions with acid reflux, or with an ache in their shoulders. Millions who feel shame and guilt about the shape and size of their bodies. Bring these people who share your particular affliction to mind. Decide that you're heroically willing to experience all the pain and suffering of these others. Decide that you're infinitely, courageously willing to experience the total sensation, without an ounce of reservation or holding back. Inhale slowly. Imagine that as you breathe in, you're breathing in a thick, cold, heavy smoke filled with all the pain of "this ache" or "this shame" that's experienced by millions of people around the world and down your block who are suffering with the same suffering that you have. You're breathing in the pain and experiencing it fully on their behalf, so they don't have to. You are dropping all your resistance, all your resentment, all your refusal of this pain and instead you are opening your heart fully to it. Hold your breath for a few moments. Imagine as you hold your breath that the cold, acrid smoke dissolves a brittle shell around your heart. Now, with its brittle shell dissolved by the pain of others, your heart is tender and exposed and shining a gold light. Imagine that the gold light transforms and purifies the cold black smoke of pain that you've just breathed in. Exhale slowly. As you exhale, imagine a warm golden healing light pouring out from your heart, riding your breath, and touching all the other people in the world who feel the same pain and suffering in their bodies that you do. Breathe normally for a few minutes while you visualize people in your neighborhood and around the world being healed, and warmed and made happy by the golden light emanating from your bare heart. After a few minutes of seeing everyone who shares your affliction freed of it, again take in a deep breath of thick cold black smoke, full of the pain that you feel and that others feel. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2006">Location 2006</a>:For a single session of Tonglen, aim to do ten taking-and-sending breaths, giving yourself ample time between taking-and-sending breaths to breathe normally while you visualize the healing of others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2019">Location 2019</a>:When pain and suffering are thought of as universal, and not personal, they can no longer prove that you are uniquely deserving of them. In other words, you come to realize that you're not and you never have been uniquely terrible or wonderful. Instead, you're a "a garden variety human" just like "a garden variety cabbage." <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 07, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2060">Location 2060</a>:It is a truth universally acknowledged that most of us suck at love, at least a little bit. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2061">Location 2061</a>:What is less universally acknowledged is that our partners (or lack of partners) are always exactly as we unconsciously wish them to be. You knew I was going to say that, didn't you? <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2169">Location 2169</a>:Demartini's Breakthrough Experience process is very thorough. You take an influential person in your life (say, your mom or your husband) and make lists of every quality you enjoy and don't enjoy about them, then make a list of at least a handful of other people who would say that you have the exact same quality to the exact same degree. Then, you write about how the other person having the not-enjoyed qualities has actually benefitted you, and about how you having the same not-enjoyed qualities have benefitted others, then write about how the other person's enjoyed qualities have actually harmed you, and how your having the enjoyed qualities has harmed others. Whew. After doing work like that, it's miraculously impossible to maintain self-righteousness. In doing this kind of examination of how the other people in our lives reflect qualities in our own selves, we thereby take the unconscious creative power of our perception and belief, and begin to make it conscious. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2221">Location 2221</a>:Likewise, as long as you believe that only the deprivation of rich fulfillment that you perceive in your love life is real, you will continue to perceive only deprivation. You will experience your partner as "lacking" in some way. Or, you'll perceive yourself as "lacking" a partner altogether. But the minute the hungry ghost gains enough awareness to see that in truth, a mechanism of ever-present, seamless, circular, self-confirming fulfillment is at work, then he perceives that fulfillment is actually much more real than deprivation. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 11, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2262">Location 2262</a>:Here's a common example among spiritual, growth-oriented types: let's say you're always about a half an hour late to everything you commit to. Now obviously, this has negative effects for you—it's embarrassing; you might risk losing jobs or relationships due to this habit. But when you go to EK it, you start to notice that what lies underneath your compulsion to be late all the time is a shadowy desire to make other people wait, to put your needs ahead of theirs, to make yourself important. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2262">Location 2262</a>:Here's a common example among spiritual, growth-oriented types: let's say you're always about a half an hour late to everything you commit to. Now obviously, this has negative effects for you—it's embarrassing; you might risk losing jobs or relationships due to this habit. But when you go to EK it, you start to notice that what lies underneath your compulsion to be late all the time is a shadowy desire to make other people wait, to put your needs ahead of theirs, to make yourself important. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2272">Location 2272</a>:When you "get off" on patterns that unpleasantly impact others, you are allowing yourself to fully feel, with genuine shamelessness, the sensations and the underlying human desires of a situation. The desire to make others wait is a desire for power. Similarly (to mention some other common patterns you may have), the desire to pick fights with your partner to get attention, the desire to troll people on social media, the desire to bad-mouth colleagues as a way of gaining leverage at work, are all sideways manifestations of a desire for power. This desire for power, this desire to have an impact on the world around you and to be significant, is an immensely normal, lovely, garden-variety human desire. The fact that you have it doesn't make you uniquely evil; it makes you just like the rest of us. Folks who don't humble themselves enough to accept that their lust for power is both completely wonderful and utterly, unremarkably ordinary tend to either hide and suppress it into "nice" personas thoroughly laced with passive-aggressive behavior (like always being late) or, to mix this basic drive with grandiose resentment and to give it extraneous justifications like, "I must rise to power so I can eliminate all the evil-doers! I will implement THE FINAL SOLUTION!" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2272">Location 2272</a>:When you "get off" on patterns that unpleasantly impact others, you are allowing yourself to fully feel, with genuine shamelessness, the sensations and the underlying human desires of a situation. The desire to make others wait is a desire for power. Similarly (to mention some other common patterns you may have), the desire to pick fights with your partner to get attention, the desire to troll people on social media, the desire to bad-mouth colleagues as a way of gaining leverage at work, are all sideways manifestations of a desire for power. This desire for power, this desire to have an impact on the world around you and to be significant, is an immensely normal, lovely, garden-variety human desire. The fact that you have it doesn't make you uniquely evil; it makes you just like the rest of us. Folks who don't humble themselves enough to accept that their lust for power is both completely wonderful and utterly, unremarkably ordinary tend to either hide and suppress it into "nice" personas thoroughly laced with passive-aggressive behavior (like always being late) or, to mix this basic drive with grandiose resentment and to give it extraneous justifications like, "I must rise to power so I can eliminate all the evil-doers! I will implement THE FINAL SOLUTION!" <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2285">Location 2285</a>:All nonhumble reactions to the human, all-too-human thirst for power have the effect of warping that natural, beautiful drive into numbness that steamrolls over other people instead of inspiring and uplifting them like genuine, epic power can. If you boldly claim and revel in your previously suppressed desire for power, allowing yourself to savor the intense secret pleasure of all the times you've "accidentally" inconvenienced or upset others, you will find this doesn't morph you into a murderous fascist. Instead it gives you the opportunity to compassionately feel your connection to all us other "awful" humans out there who have the exact same desire for power, and it liberates your awareness and energy so that you can start finding energizing, gorgeous ways to make your power felt in the world rather than acting it out in sideways, resentful, passive-aggressive fashions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2285">Location 2285</a>:All nonhumble reactions to the human, all-too-human thirst for power have the effect of warping that natural, beautiful drive into numbness that steamrolls over other people instead of inspiring and uplifting them like genuine, epic power can. If you boldly claim and revel in your previously suppressed desire for power, allowing yourself to savor the intense secret pleasure of all the times you've "accidentally" inconvenienced or upset others, you will find this doesn't morph you into a murderous fascist. Instead it gives you the opportunity to compassionately feel your connection to all us other "awful" humans out there who have the exact same desire for power, and it liberates your awareness and energy so that you can start finding energizing, gorgeous ways to make your power felt in the world rather than acting it out in sideways, resentful, passive-aggressive fashions. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2292">Location 2292</a>:One of the amazing insights that Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers of the Light/Dark Institute passed onto me is that sadism isn't necessarily the desire to inflict pain; it's the desire to inflict sensation, to make oneself felt. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2292">Location 2292</a>:One of the amazing insights that Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers of the Light/Dark Institute passed onto me is that sadism isn't necessarily the desire to inflict pain; it's the desire to inflict sensation, to make oneself felt. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2294">Location 2294</a>:So if you're working on dissolving a passive-aggressive pattern that negatively impacts you and others, I encourage you to consider all the ways that you hold yourself back from giving others the exact sensations that it would truly please you to give them. For example, maybe you're late all the time (thus inflicting sensations of frustration on others) and this is a compensation because you never let yourself inflict the kind of sensations on others that would be actually fun and inspiring to you to inflict—like your sexiness or your gut-busting zany humor. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2294">Location 2294</a>:So if you're working on dissolving a passive-aggressive pattern that negatively impacts you and others, I encourage you to consider all the ways that you hold yourself back from giving others the exact sensations that it would truly please you to give them. For example, maybe you're late all the time (thus inflicting sensations of frustration on others) and this is a compensation because you never let yourself inflict the kind of sensations on others that would be actually fun and inspiring to you to inflict—like your sexiness or your gut-busting zany humor. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2303">Location 2303</a>:Make it into a fine art. Consider the idea that all the best artists and the most inspiring leaders are masters of torture. They torture us by getting us to feel deep emotions, by exposing taboos, by leading us through almost-unbearable sensations of anticipation, surprise, and revelation. Your problem is not that you torture others; it's that you don't torture them exquisitely enough. So stop shaming yourself for torturing us, get off on all the sensation you've already inflicted, and learn to torture us in much better, more beautiful and consenting ways. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2303">Location 2303</a>:Make it into a fine art. Consider the idea that all the best artists and the most inspiring leaders are masters of torture. They torture us by getting us to feel deep emotions, by exposing taboos, by leading us through almost-unbearable sensations of anticipation, surprise, and revelation. Your problem is not that you torture others; it's that you don't torture them exquisitely enough. So stop shaming yourself for torturing us, get off on all the sensation you've already inflicted, and learn to torture us in much better, more beautiful and consenting ways. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2312">Location 2312</a>:What if your brain is tuned to cynicism and dread? Maybe you've just had a lot of hard-knocks in your life and it's tough to trust that everything will suddenly get all rosy for no reason? Well, there's a way to leverage that. Faith in an outcome is just a sensation of certainty. So you can take the very same well-developed brain muscles that you use to get a sensation of certainty about the negative stuff you dread, and turn that around into certainty about positive outcomes. Here's how: dread the wonderful. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2312">Location 2312</a>:What if your brain is tuned to cynicism and dread? Maybe you've just had a lot of hard-knocks in your life and it's tough to trust that everything will suddenly get all rosy for no reason? Well, there's a way to leverage that. Faith in an outcome is just a sensation of certainty. So you can take the very same well-developed brain muscles that you use to get a sensation of certainty about the negative stuff you dread, and turn that around into certainty about positive outcomes. Here's how: dread the wonderful. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2326">Location 2326</a>:Here's how it works. Try leveraging your dread by saying this to yourself: "Oh no, if only there was something I could do to stop the inevitable arrival of this magnificent new partner in my life. This is so awful. Now I have someone sane and healthy and hot who adores me. It's utterly disgusting. I'm really grieving that my singlehood is coming to this tragic and decisive end. It's just that I'm powerless over this new romance thing; I just know it's unavoidably going to happen—ugh. I really wish it was somehow possible for me to escape this relentless, terrifying fate of being completely fulfilled in love." Ahhhhh, can you feel the honesty there? Refreshing, isn't it? Because there is some shadowy part of you that's disgusted and miserable at the idea of fresh new love, isn't there? Otherwise you'd be such a radiant beacon of romance that you'd get swept off the scene in a hot minute. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2326">Location 2326</a>:Here's how it works. Try leveraging your dread by saying this to yourself: "Oh no, if only there was something I could do to stop the inevitable arrival of this magnificent new partner in my life. This is so awful. Now I have someone sane and healthy and hot who adores me. It's utterly disgusting. I'm really grieving that my singlehood is coming to this tragic and decisive end. It's just that I'm powerless over this new romance thing; I just know it's unavoidably going to happen—ugh. I really wish it was somehow possible for me to escape this relentless, terrifying fate of being completely fulfilled in love." Ahhhhh, can you feel the honesty there? Refreshing, isn't it? Because there is some shadowy part of you that's disgusted and miserable at the idea of fresh new love, isn't there? Otherwise you'd be such a radiant beacon of romance that you'd get swept off the scene in a hot minute. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2353">Location 2353</a>:In an argument where I don't even remember the subject (it wasn't remotely important in the end), I again found myself giving in, letting go of my desire, and letting my partner get what they wanted at the expense of my own plans. Instead of feeling disgusted with myself or berating myself for being weak, I relaxed into the feeling and gave myself permission to enjoy it. And enjoy it I did. The thought "I love being a martyr to other people's decisions" brought an amazing rush of physical pleasure and mental clarity. On a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, I enjoy being bound by other people's beliefs and desires. It makes me feel self-righteous, and I take a huge amount of pleasure in making them feel guilty over how they've made me a victim. I really, really don't hate to say, "I told you so." Standing up for myself robs me of the opportunity to experience the bliss of martyrdom. (See, therapists? It's not self-esteem.) <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2353">Location 2353</a>:In an argument where I don't even remember the subject (it wasn't remotely important in the end), I again found myself giving in, letting go of my desire, and letting my partner get what they wanted at the expense of my own plans. Instead of feeling disgusted with myself or berating myself for being weak, I relaxed into the feeling and gave myself permission to enjoy it. And enjoy it I did. The thought "I love being a martyr to other people's decisions" brought an amazing rush of physical pleasure and mental clarity. On a physical, emotional, and intellectual level, I enjoy being bound by other people's beliefs and desires. It makes me feel self-righteous, and I take a huge amount of pleasure in making them feel guilty over how they've made me a victim. I really, really don't hate to say, "I told you so." Standing up for myself robs me of the opportunity to experience the bliss of martyrdom. (See, therapists? It's not self-esteem.) <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 12, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2519">Location 2519</a>:So if we humans love dark pain and horror as entertainment soooo much, don't you think it's just a little bit possible that we might unconsciously create painful and horrible situations in our own lives—not because we "deserve them" or because we're "losers" and "failures," but just because we have an attraction to the nail-biting intensity of it? If there was a TV show about healthy people who were totally happy, thriving in all of their work and relationships, with no problems or challenges, absolutely no one would watch it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2519">Location 2519</a>:So if we humans love dark pain and horror as entertainment soooo much, don't you think it's just a little bit possible that we might unconsciously create painful and horrible situations in our own lives—not because we "deserve them" or because we're "losers" and "failures," but just because we have an attraction to the nail-biting intensity of it? If there was a TV show about healthy people who were totally happy, thriving in all of their work and relationships, with no problems or challenges, absolutely no one would watch it. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2532">Location 2532</a>:If you're a habitually miserable, self-pitying person, odds are very, very high that you will find yourself with more and more things to be miserable and self-pitying about; and if you're a grateful, enthusiastic person, the odds are also quite high that you'll find yourself with more and more things to be grateful and enthusiastic about. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2532">Location 2532</a>:If you're a habitually miserable, self-pitying person, odds are very, very high that you will find yourself with more and more things to be miserable and self-pitying about; and if you're a grateful, enthusiastic person, the odds are also quite high that you'll find yourself with more and more things to be grateful and enthusiastic about. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2555">Location 2555</a>:Hell yeah, I generated this! Hell yeah, a part of me fucking loves it and that part of me deserves to enjoy itself too, because every part of me is worthy and awesome, including the perverse shadowy parts! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2555">Location 2555</a>:Hell yeah, I generated this! Hell yeah, a part of me fucking loves it and that part of me deserves to enjoy itself too, because every part of me is worthy and awesome, including the perverse shadowy parts! <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2571">Location 2571</a>:Q. I don't feel anything at all when I try to do Existential Kink. What's going on? A. You might need to relax more before attempting the Existential Kink practice. Try taking a hot bath and taking some deep belly breaths to help you become more present in your body; then try the Existential Kink meditation again. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2571">Location 2571</a>:Q. I don't feel anything at all when I try to do Existential Kink. What's going on? A. You might need to relax more before attempting the Existential Kink practice. Try taking a hot bath and taking some deep belly breaths to help you become more present in your body; then try the Existential Kink meditation again. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2591">Location 2591</a>:When I've been depressed, The Work of Byron Katie inquiry practice has helped me immensely. We humans tend to make ourselves depressed by believing bleak narratives about ourselves and other people. When you question these, often the heavy feelings tend to lift. So, definitely do that. See the Appendix for more information on The Work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2591">Location 2591</a>:When I've been depressed, The Work of Byron Katie inquiry practice has helped me immensely. We humans tend to make ourselves depressed by believing bleak narratives about ourselves and other people. When you question these, often the heavy feelings tend to lift. So, definitely do that. See the Appendix for more information on The Work. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2594">Location 2594</a>:I also (speaking as a human being and not as any kind of psychologist or medical professional, since I'm not those) recommend practicing Brahmavihara meditation as an antidote to depression. The book Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection does an excellent job of explaining how to do the Metta sort of Brahmavihara meditation, which involves sending powerful well-wishes to others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2594">Location 2594</a>:I also (speaking as a human being and not as any kind of psychologist or medical professional, since I'm not those) recommend practicing Brahmavihara meditation as an antidote to depression. The book Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection does an excellent job of explaining how to do the Metta sort of Brahmavihara meditation, which involves sending powerful well-wishes to others. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2608">Location 2608</a>:Q. I can definitely feel some strong electric sensations when I do EK, but so far nothing close to climaxing. Am I doing this right? A. Yes, you are totally doing it right. When I talk about "getting off" in EK, I mean experiencing pretty much any kind of pleasure surrounding a topic that previously only brought frustration. This could be a sexual climax experienced genitally; or it could be sensations of electricity moving in the body; or it could be an emotion of simple relief or of joy and laughter. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2608">Location 2608</a>:Q. I can definitely feel some strong electric sensations when I do EK, but so far nothing close to climaxing. Am I doing this right? A. Yes, you are totally doing it right. When I talk about "getting off" in EK, I mean experiencing pretty much any kind of pleasure surrounding a topic that previously only brought frustration. This could be a sexual climax experienced genitally; or it could be sensations of electricity moving in the body; or it could be an emotion of simple relief or of joy and laughter. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2614">Location 2614</a>:Also, keep in mind: depending on the issue, it may take you a few hours, days, weeks, or even months of practice before you're able to relax fully enough to give yourself permission to "get off." Even if it takes you months, remember, that's still a relatively very brief span of time and effort to permanently change a life-long negative pattern. Consider that most human beings only shift their negative patterns after years of therapy or, you know, never. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2614">Location 2614</a>:Also, keep in mind: depending on the issue, it may take you a few hours, days, weeks, or even months of practice before you're able to relax fully enough to give yourself permission to "get off." Even if it takes you months, remember, that's still a relatively very brief span of time and effort to permanently change a life-long negative pattern. Consider that most human beings only shift their negative patterns after years of therapy or, you know, never. <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 13, 2023 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2639">Location 2639</a>:The Existential Kink approach to life is absolutely not about denial; it's about fully feeling what's honestly there. So if immense grief and feelings of betrayal are what's there, then go all the way into it, mourn in the most profound ways you can. Wear all black. Make performance art about it. Burn effigies of your betrayers. Whatever you gotta do. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2673">Location 2673</a>:Third, traumas require immense grieving. See the Q&A above about EK and grief. Reminder: I am not a psychologist or a medical professional. That said, as another human being who has suffered trauma, I suggest plenty of regular ole' therapy, exploring bodywork and acupuncture, gathering tons of support from friends, and moving heaven and earth to get thyself to many ayahuasca ceremonies and to legal MDMA therapy sessions if you can find them. Ayahuasca is the most useful, beautiful, and rapid means I know of for addressing deep trauma (it has helped me immensely), and studies have shown that MDMA in a therapeutic context is also quite powerful for resolving trauma. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2684">Location 2684</a>:My friends Pam and Brown at the Avatar Centre in Peru are quite experienced and excellent ceremony leaders, and I very strongly recommend (speaking as a human, not a psychologist or medical professional) seeking their help. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2693">Location 2693</a>:You can find free information on how to do The Work at thework.com. You can also find tons of videos on YouTube of Byron Katie leading people through the process. If The Work interests you, I suggest that you invest in Byron Katie's books, Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2696">Location 2696</a>:Similar to the Work but less well-known, the Option Method also involves investigating one's habitual perceptions. You can find instructions on the Option Method at www.optionmethodnetwork.com. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2699">Location 2699</a>:This form of Inquiry is perhaps the most direct of the bunch, focused on "letting go" of difficult emotions. You can find the basic instructions for the Sedona Method at www.sedona.com. If the Sedona Method interests you, I also recommend buying and reading The Sedona Method book because it contains more detailed context and perspective that makes the practice more helpful. David Hawkins' book Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender also focuses on principles related to the Sedona Method. <hr /> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07XMG4BWN&location=2704">Location 2704</a>:My general advice for practicing any form of Inquiry is to approach the practice with a willingness to set aside everything you think you know to be true and to simply investigate with a radically open mind. Gradually, with Inquiry, you might discover that when a statement or proposition is true for you it feels different in your body than a fictional statement. True statements (or your being giving an affirmative answer to a question) tends to feel warm, soft, expansive, resonant, and open in the heart. Untrue statements (or your being giving a negative answer to a question) tend to feel tight, heavy, weakening, and constricting. For example, in doing the Work, if I write down a judgment and ask myself "Is it true?" (the first question of the Work) and find only a tight, heavy, weak, and constricted feeling in my body, that's a clue to me that the judgment is not true, that it's an unhappy fiction. <hr /></div>
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<title type="text">Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold</title>
<id>https://armand.postach.io/post/brothers-in-arms-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold</id>
<updated>2022-03-15T00:26:42.379000Z</updated>
<published>2022-03-08T07:06:58Z</published>
<link href="https://armand.postach.io/post/brothers-in-arms-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold" />
<author>
<name>Armand Cognetta</name>
</author>
<content type="html"><div> <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005S4FLCK&location=2456">Location 2456</a>:Miles shook his head. "I’ll allow you know the man better than I do. And yet . . . well, people do get hypnotized by the hard choices. And stop looking for alternatives. The will to be stupid is a very powerful force— <hr /></div>
<div><hr />Updated: Mar 15, 2022 <a href="https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005S4FLCK&location=2456">Location 2456</a>:Miles shook his head. "I’ll allow you know the man better than I do. And yet . . . well, people do get hypnotized by the hard choices. And stop looking for alternatives. The will to be stupid is a very powerful force—" <hr /></div>
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