Category: Uncategorized

. . . you will start to find it.

The near-perfect digital nomad “office” has been located. It is a small wine store on via Vitani in Como.

I say near-perfect only because it is a wine store. I want a place with coffee, not wine.

But that’s the place. If you find it you will know why: get an outdoor table, bring a notebook and pen, and spend thirty minutes watching ideas arrive—some to be captured, some to be allowed to roam free. Fill a page or leave it blank. It’s all the same.

On a cold, rainy day go inside. Same experience: a place to let the brain sediment settle. Clear, slow mind. Something, nothing. It’s all the same.

“If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.”

~ Adyashanti

For your souls, it is an important to remember the arrow of causation and not get it backwards. Hence the “wet roads cause rain” headline, borrowed from Nassim Taleb.

In this quote the author points out that your state of mind has an arrow of causation. “I am at peace because I actively work at stuffing down the sadness and despair.” No. You are sad and despair of finding peace because you are fighting against something you see as “sad” and you despair of ever finding calm because you resist confusion.

Focus. Focus on what you want more of. Not on what you want less of.

Acceptance. We stopped fighting everyone and everything. Thy will be done.

Consider perhaps that you are installing fear. Installing despair. Installing confusion.

The answer you seek is already here. You already know the answer. The Kingdom of God is within, to quote an ancient saying.

“Resist not evil.” There’s another ancient quote from the same guy.

That’s all very well, but what do I DO?

I have said that to my teachers repeatedly. Desperate for change, hearing the spiritual principles, but frozen. How do I put those spiritual principles into practice and experience the transformation that my teacher experienced?

Take the quote above. If you feel sad, accept the feeling BUT GO TAKE A LONG WALK. Don’t fight the sad feeling, and don’t wallow in it. Don’t fight the despair—you think your life is falling apart and dreadful things are happening. Don’t scheme and analyze and figure things out to fix whatever has befallen you.

Allow all of these feelings to be, but pay it no attention. Turn your attention elsewhere.

In short, don’t resist—ignore, just for a moment.

Go outside, walk around for a while.

Look at trees. Aren’t they spectacular? Spreading above and below the earth, connecting two worlds. If you could live below-ground and walk around as you can on the surface, the root system would spread in a self-organized glory just as trunk, branches, and leaves spread themselves in the sky above the ground.

Look at the sky. Blue. No—really! Look. BLUE. And big. So big. So impossibly big. How far can you see when you look straight up? Look deeply at the sky, as a child. Look at the clouds and marvel.

Return home and drink cold pure water. Ahhh.

All is well.

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” — Epictetus

I feel like I have hit life’s jackpot when I just am.

When I just am, I’m not Striving, Hustling, Achieving, Gaining Knowledge, Leveling Up.

I’m curious. I poke at stuff. I notice stuff. And I’m OK.

It’s like running and noticing where my foot hits the ground. Out in front of me? I’m stressing and pushing, and sooner or later my heels will hurt because I’m hammering them by lengthening my stride. I will be thinking about time and speed.

I did something last night. Shortened my stride, hinged to lean forward a bit at the ankles, kept my feet beneath my body (shorter stride) and just felt how my feet landed.

I could have run forever, but soon enough my 5k loop was finished and I never even breathed hard.

Notice the bottom of my feet. Just notice. Notice how they land. Notice how they feel, where they feel. The sound of the footfalls—it’s different.

Do one thing. Notice it. The tiniest part of it is enchanting.

Or the other night at the little mini picnic/free summer music thing. Just there. People all around us. Kids, dogs, my family, music in the distance barely audible because we are so far away from the stage.

Or the business. Sit with pen and paper. Not “the right pen” (it’s at my office), just a generic pen. Outline my thoughts. Rewrite. Huh! Wouldya lookidat!

That’s interesting—all of a sudden I see connections I never saw before in my day job stuff, which is a knowledge-worker thing and I’ve been doing it a long time so you would think I would know stuff. Apparently there is much to learn. Apparently I’m a journeyman and maybe that’s the default position for contentment.

The point. Look around. Just sit and look. Everything happening around me. The tree growing as I look at it. Squirrel on the cables on the telephone poles running along the back fence.

Or close your eyes and just listen. All the sounds: air conditioner. Dog moving about. Tinnitus ringing in my ears. Car goes by, tires making tire sounds. My brain chatter chattering. Small plane flying overhead. In my head and outside my head. Sounds.

It’s all happening and I am part of that happening.

And that’s the jackpot.

I think a lot about the alternate universe idea and how of a million different lives I could have lived what are the odds that I would live this one. If you gave me a chance to roll the dice and get a do-over, I wouldn’t take it. This roll of the dice turned out to be sweet.

That’s another sign that I won the jackpot.

Now it’s just a matter of maintaining the spiritual conditions to create the jackpot. This is fairly straightforward (not to say that I do it well, though).

Taleb says something somewhere in Skin In the Game that there is no reason why things exist (why for all of the randomness did I end up HERE?). But there are good reasons why things die (evolution quickly snuffs out random variations that aren’t useful for survival). (Or approximately that thought).

So just address the main reasons why I would not stay in the jackpot, just like I focus on avoiding the major causes of premature death. That’s how to stay in the jackpot. Via negativa, to use another Talebism.

The Golden Key is a via negativa path that keeps me in the jackpot.

Imo you should learn at least just ONE THING really well. This is so you know how hard it is and so you can’t bs yourself that you know things you don’t AND that you can – via necessity – develop heuristics for how to navigate areas where you’ll just. not. know.

https://x.com/nosilverv/status/1822292628433482110

Yeah. Getting all the way wet — not just up-to-your-knees-oh-so-cold-let’s-go-sit-on-the-beach—in my chosen craft is an eye-opener.

You know what Good looks like. What it takes to create something Good. That you are capable of Good. And you can smell Not Good a mile away.

Killer.

Risk cannot be destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

That’s from a write-up by a finance pro about covered-call option strategy.

I suspect this rule can be extended to most of Life.

Including in my professional life where the things that I build for customers do not zero out a problem. The problem is transformed. It might be transformed into a time-bounded risk (the risk goes away at a specific date in the future but you’re exposed to the cruel wind in the meantime). It might be transformed from the risk you don’t want into a friction you will accept.

“I don’t want none of THAT” is a common position for my customers. Yeah but you will have to give something to get rid of some of “that” — and you might not be willing to pay the price needed to get rid of ALL of “that.”

So, too, in personal life. I want a happy family. Ok are you willing to pay whatever price is asked of you, with the possibility that you might not get what you want?

In short, “risk” (to use the financial jargon) is a mathematical constant. Like energy. You might transform electricity into light into heat but the energy is there.

No free lunch, if you look at it from a high-enough vantage point.

That’s the Golden Rule.

And of course, there is the Silver Rule (h/t Nassim Taleb): don’t focus on what you want less of.

(To give a blindingly obvious current-day example: you want less racism? Stop looking for racism. Fucking Idiots.)

Anyway. This quick thought is brought to you by my eclectic X.com feed, which tossed this Neville Goddard quote (yes in all caps) at me:

DO NOT DWELL ON THE IMPERFECTION OF YOURSELF OR OTHERS. TO DO SO IS TO IMPRESS THE SUBCONSCIOUS WITH THESE LIMITATIONS. WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT DONE UNTO YOU, DO NOT FEEL THAT IT IS DONE UNTO YOU OR ANOTHER.” — NEVILLE GODDARD

Silver Rule. Do it.

Compare to Emmet Fox’s Golden Key: turn away from thinking about the problem, and think about God instead.

Same thing.

The question to be explored is how far out can I get? How lost without being utterly lost?

Alan Watts.

LFG — way way way out.

Still don’t have statistics here. Still don’t care.

It’s even easier to not care ever since WordPress split off the internal stats into Jetpack. They helpfully put stats one more gratuitous complexity task out of my reach.

The hidden power of tiny bits of friction to keep me on The Path—again revealed.

Of course, tiny bits of friction can keep you firmly in The Wilderness, too.

But in this case, the choice to ignore visitor statistics is clearly The Way. Just considering the question (“are people reading this?”) elicits emotions with a clear signal: wrong way! And “don’t care, just type with your thumbs” feels right.

I can feel the change.

I decided to adopt a new persona. In the same way that I feel like a different man in Milan, I feel like a different man at home. Deliberately.

One day, he decided to be different.

And it worked. Or is working.

It is easy to be different—just do different stuff. Do it enough and it’s a permanent change.

Not permanent-permanent. You know how they say that every cell in your body is replaced every seven years? (True or not, I believe this for the purpose of the point I’m about to make). I think character traits can be seen to cycle out over some period of time. A whole new (behavioral, psychological) you, every whatever number of years.

At least, if you are growing spiritually.

See the words above: “it worked” is not right. Nothing is static. Especially consciousness. “It is working” is right. Change is happening.

If you let it.