Another mishmash of ideas and thoughts swirling around. This time with some talk on meditation, which won’t make much sense.

You should trial before you commit.

I backed out of a house purchase, basically the day before exchanging contracts.

Spending £500,000 at a time when I value freedom above all else is not a smart decision.

I’ve been thinking about making large decisions and come to the conclusion that you should trial before you commit.

If you want to live in a new location, rent for a while and stay in the area.

If you want to work in a new sector, don’t just jump ship. See if you can arrange 2-3 months to see if you actually like working as a software engineer/plumber/doctor. Or at least observe what they do day to day!

If you want to buy a house, see if you can arrange to live there for a month or two (I don’t know why this isn’t done routinely. You can’t sleep a single night in a house before making one of the largest financial decisions of your life).

If you want to live together, get married, have kids, it makes sense to incrementally trial these things to see if you get along.

If you want to start a new hobby, trial some taster sessions.

The goal in trialling a situation is to see if you actually want what you want. You like the *idea of wanting the thing but maybe not the actual thing itself.

To write is to choose to live twice

Writing allows you to turn the mundane into something more sacred. A second deeper more examined reinterpretation.

A thought I had recently is : that all my favourite people are writers.

The fundamental human delusion

‘Once I get this, I’ll be content’.

It reminds me of this joke: A blonde goes out for a training run. She comes to a river and looks for a bridge or crossing but can’t find any. She spots another blonde on the opposite side of the river. “Excuse me” she shouts, “How can I get to the other side?”The second blonde looks up the river then down the river then shouts back, “You’re already on the other side!”

Metta in Zen

With traditional metta practice, you wish yourself wish and work outwards in concentric circles (your family, your friends, neighbourhood, city, country, world etc). Or the other way around.

For me, it tends to be all or nothing. It’s either a torrent of love and compassion with tears running down my face, or nothing.

Henry Shukman approaches metta from a different perspective. ‘Original Love’. It looks at the love that’s already there when sat in awareness. I’ve found it to be invaluable. It approaches love and compassion through insight.

4 Inns of Practice

Henry Shukman describes 4 inns of practice in his new book.

1. Mindfulness
2. Support
3. Absorption
4. Awakening

A balance of all 4 ‘paths’ is required.

Specifically, for me, the realm of support has been neglected. This has led to feelings of seperateness and deep loneliness, when not paying attention and lost in thought.

To awaken to support is to recognise that our life is an intricately woven web of dependences

To understand and deepen into support is to realise that you can fall back into uncertainty and invisible arms will catch you. In fact, in the falling, there is just the world, and a boundless sense of love towards it.

Practicing metta is a part of this.

But also the broader category that Shukman describes as ‘soul work’. Deepening to the rich texture of life through poetry, time in nature, psychotherapy, body work, dance, movement, sports etc. This is an endless ever changing endeavour with no ‘end point’ necessarily. It shouldn’t be a solitary endeavour and cultivating good relationships is a part of this sense of support.

Another aspect that Shukman talks about is more immaterial forms of support - supplicating ‘imaginal’ deities and ideas for support. Archetypal figures and stories. A decade ago, I would be scared away reading this, the rational scientific part of my brain dismissing it all. But in practice, they’re just stories that evoke a sense of connection. Art allows us to get to places we wouldn’t normally be able to ourselves. It’s ok to feel a sense of support through this.

Quotes I’m pondering

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see

Instructions for living a life
Pay attention\ Be astonished.\ Tell about it.
Mary Oliver

Before you know kindness, you must lose things.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
Richard Dawkins

Amateur

“You say ‘amateur’ as if it was a dirty word. ‘Amateur’ comes from the Latin word ‘amare’, which means to love. To do things for the love of it.”
Mozart in the Jungle

What I’m reading /listening to:

1. Leave breadcrumbs

Leave a trail of your digital self. A secret hidden trail that a stranger can stumble upon and delve into the rabbit hole of your psyche. Maybe they’ll like it! Create things in public.

Let every small thing you do be as careful and good as it can be. The virtuous person should live so well that they leave breadcrumbs of virtue everywhere

2. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Veong

Heartbreaking. Each sentence is essentially poetry.

3. Looking for Alice

4. Henry Shukman on Deconstructing Yourself Podcast and his book ‘Original Love’

5. The Mainstreaming of Loserdom

I am terrified of becoming a consumption addict. It seems that more and more people in their 20’s are just living life through a screen. I’m not demonising technology, I think it’s the way you use it.

You can create, explore, read, synthesise. Or you can mindlessly consume, and forget/not apply anything you consume.

Consume good art, sure. But it seems the way out of becoming a pure content consumption zombie, is to actually create it. Or alternatively, opt out entirely and don’t consume hyper stimulating content.

6. Equanimity and sensitivity

The concept of equanimity (how comfortable you remain in difficult circumstances) and sensitivity (the depth of your experience)

You can be

• Low equanimity, low sensitivity (zombie/drugged out/addicted)
• Low equanimity, high sensitivity (‘soft’ - feelings control you)
• High equanimity, low sensitivity (military)
• High equanimity, high sensitivity - the sage, the buddha, the wise man.

How to be this?

1. Feel deeply, let the emotions arise. Don’t ignore them or distract yourself (succumbing to the zombie state)
2. Observe the feelings and realise that they are ephemeral, transient. They don’t run the show. This process is akin to pulling the mask of the scary scoobie doo villain, and realising its just some guy who works at the supermarket down the road

Both sensitivity and equanimity matter

Sensitivity - because to feel deeply is to be connected. To be connected to not yourself, but by extension the world and others.

Equanimity - to be comfortable in the face of difficulty. Without equanimity, the depth of experience can overwhelm you. Good and bad fling you about from one end to another. Equanimity to sitting with the good and bad, and realising that they are two sides of the same coin.

7. Thick vs Thin cultures