Acceptance is the difference between neurosis and nirvana.  A single u-turn covers the entire journey from neurosis to nirvana.  What u-turn?  A choice to accept what is, one moment at a time.

Resources: Present Perfect/Lotus Effect

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Meaning is an association of what is now with what once was…

Take a look at any object in your immediate environment: say, you are looking at a “so-called” (I’ll explain the “so-called” parenthetical in a few moments) cup. Say, I picked it up from your desk and asked: “What is this?” You’d say: “A cup.” And I’d say: “No, what is this?” After a moment of bemusement, you might offer: “A mug?” And I – with the best of the poker faces – would stay firm: “No, what is this?”

After a pause and/or after a little friendly prodding from me, you might suggest: “A container for liquids?” To welcome the emerging looseness of your associations, I’d kick the door of your mind with a more clue-like question: “Yes… What else could this object be?” With this prompt, you’d likely fire off a series of ideas: “A paper-weight, a weapon if you throw it, a small hand-held shovel…”

So here we are: what used to be a cup now has acquired some additional meanings, by virtue of re-association…

Where am I going with this? Okay: let me reiterate the thesis: meaning is an association. When, as kids, we first encounter a new object, we ask: “Mom/Dad, what is this?” “It’s a fork,” Mom/Dad programs our mind… “And this (fill in the blank)?” Mom/Dad: “This is (fill in the blank).”

There is an “om” in Mom. 

Remember to chant it today.

At least once.

The fire of presence is still burning among us!

We used to live all day, every day, non-stop; now we work and wait, work and wait, as we live for the weekend.

We used to forage and hunt, now we gather information.  Here’s a glimpse of the Hadza Zen, a glimpse of your past, Informational Hunter-Gatherer.

Who are the Hadza?

Location: northern Tanzania; “About a thousand Hadza live in their traditional homeland, a broad plain encompassing shallow, salty Lake Eyasi… Genetic testing indicates that they represent one of the primary roots of the human family tree – perhaps more than 100,000 years old.”

Language: “not closely related to any other [language] that still exists”

Dorion Sagan writes in Biospheres:

There is no history… nor future… but only always the language-filled present.  Linguistic convention creates the illusion of time’s arrow… We are steeped in the medium we discuss.

There was a time when I wouldn’t’ve had a clue as to what Sagan means to say with this thought.  But, thankfully, with ceaseless introspections and meditations, I have figured it out.

Have you?

I hope you have.

Insights such as these – in my opinion – cannot be taught.  These revelations have to be personally and immediately discovered.  And once personally understood, they are forever crystallized and deepened.

You know what I am saying?

Edward De Bono, a paradigm-shifting thinker, introduced a verbal device designed to provoke original (“lateral”) thought processes.  This word is “po.” 

Po is a kind of signal to open your mind and consider a seemingly crazy idea with the hope that doing so will help you turn off your conceptual autopilots.  In De Bono’s own words, po is a kind “laxative” for the mind, and its function is to facilitate “rearrangement of information to create new patterns” (1990, 226-227).

So, I’ve got a po for you.

Po: there is no potential.

Indeed, show me your potential now.  Where is this potential you identify with?  There’s you, on a chair, on a couch, in a recliner, on your bed, standing on a subway train, reading this post.  But where’s this potential you talk about?  Step away from the computer (put your smart phone aside) and show yourself your potential right now. 

You say to-may-toes, I say to-mah-toes, who's right?

Minds are fundamentally subjective: we all have opinions of what is but no objective knowledge of what is.  After all, to define reality objectively, we would have to be outside of it.  But we aren’t.  To define reality objectively, we would also have to be outside of our subjective minds.  But we aren’t.

Subjectivity isn’t objectivity, and an opinion isn’t a fact.

To understand the arbitrary nature of any evaluation, we have to understand the concept of value. 

No One Makes Mistakes On Purpose (Sabotage Notwithstanding)

The phrase “to make a mistake” implies purposive, conscious, planned action.  That’s utterly inaccurate: there are no intentional mistakes, no one consciously sets out to fail.

When we fail on purpose, when we make a mistake by design, we are actually succeeding with some kind of covert plan.  Therefore, even an act of conscious sabotage isn’t a mistake (to you) even if takes the form of a mistake (to others).

Bottom-line: No one makes mistakes because no one ever makes a mistake on purpose (sabotage notwithstanding). 

Timelessness isn’t when time stops. Timelessness is when you stop paying attention to time.

Trance music is a good choice to facilitate a sense of timelessness.

Trance typically doesn’t have lyrics: it doesn’t pump semantic information into your mind. When you follow lyrics, you are participating in a memory, rather than participating in the present. Memory is a distraction from what is.

Trance is structurally progressive: it carries you forward with ever changing increments of melody and avoids the repetitive, looping quality of non-trance music. Trance tracks are continuously remixed which preempts any expectation sets. The tracks are long and seamlessly stitched together.

Spinoza's Study

“Modernity dethrones humankind.  It reduces all our thoughts, purposes, and hopes to the object of scientific inquiry.  It makes laboratory rats of us all.  Spinoza actively embraces this collapse of the human into mere nature.  Leibniz abhors it.

[...] Leibniz intends to demonstrate that we are the most special of all beings in nature.  In the entire universe, [Leibniz] says, there is nothing more real or more permanent or more worthy of love than the individual human soul.  We belong to the innermost reality of things.  The human being is the new God, he announces:  Each of us is “a small divinity and eminently a universe.” (1)