Reality Laughs

Your words mean nothing. Your intentions mean nothing.

Do stuff. Do it well.

The universe will reward you.

Aspire to be competent.

You become competent by taking action. The noob who takes action is a competent noob. Your first time painting your house? Your first oil change? Your first day at the range with a pistol in your hand? Your first time having sex? Be a competent noob.

Everything else after that is refinement. You will develop and expand you skill through repetition of action, whether as a house painter, auto mechanic, pistolero, or sexor.

Take action. Then do it again. Maybe take @visakanv’s advice and do it 100 times and see what happens.

Write 100 songs, cook 100 omelettes, talk to 100 people. It never seems like a huge deal until you try it yourself. It’s manageable, and yet it stretches you, and you’ll be observably different at the end of it. Effective way to get a foothold on a new thing

https://mobile.twitter.com/visakanv/status/1330985556872818689

And ignore the wordcels.

Inspired by this: https://alexandertechnique.com/articles2/howmanylessons/

I don’t even know what the Alexander Technique is. But the article is a tremendous example of reframing a question.

A student wants to learn the Alexander Technique and asks the teacher how long this will take. She writes:

Now, my student is expecting a certain type of answer to this question, probably either a time-related answer (x number of months) or an answer about application (depends on how much you practice). Instead, I asked a question in return, and asked the class to answer it. How about you have a go, too!

How long does it take to learn the violin?

She answers her own question:

How quickly you progress in anything does depend on the quality and frequency of your practice. And learning is indeed a constantly evolving process. But if we settle for these answers, when will be finished learning how to play the violin?

Never.

That’s a depressing way to frame reality, isn’t it? You will be shoveling snow uphill in Hell in the summertime. Forever.

Why even bother. Let’s just die right now, shall we?

Here’s the reframing:

So what if we turned this on its head? Try this for size. As soon as we know that if we pluck or draw a bow across the string of the violin, and that we can change the note by changing the length of the string, we can play the violin. Everything else is refinement.

Can you see that this way of looking at the issue is instantly empowering? A couple of basic facts, and we have the basic tools to go away and work the rest out entirely by ourselves, if we choose to. How fantastic!

When am I going to have a good life? When am I going to be happy? When am I going to be skilled in activity X? Now. And then you refine and expand it forever, as far as you care to go.

I have demonstrated this in my own life. Every five years or so I think “Well, I have this nailed.” (Whatever “this” happens to be, but most noticeably in my spiritual development.) “I’m so advanced, sophisticated, and enlightened. Unlike that dumb, arrogant know-it-all bastard I was five years ago. He was fucking clueless.”

This has continued for thirty-plus years. Constant work on self. Reading. Thinking. Talking about these principles. Help and guidance from others.

There is no reason to expect this to stop.

World without end, Amen.

Social justice warriors or indeed politically-charged people of any stripe seem to be outwardly motivated, and furthermore motivated by resentment. “I see bad stuff, therefore they—whoever they are—must be changed against their will.”

As a result they inflict terrible damage on everyone around them.

Which leads to a thought about personal change. Is it motivated by outward resentment aimed at externals? Or seeming attraction toward the shiny external? “Big house” or Ferrari or whatever. But outside of you.

Resentment is hard to sustain over the long haul. External rewards feel like dust in the mouth after a while.

Are there examples of people who made massive change by being inwardly-focused? The Kingdom of God is within. Etc.

Become the man you want to be and then let it radiate from there. That seems much more sustainable over the long haul. Especially if you’re content to be yourself even if nothing else ever happens.

Because “be the change you want to see in the world” is nonviable if the true underlying motive is “People will weep with gratitude when remembering my name, throughout history” and you see yourself as Ghandi 2.0.

Inward. What do I control? What is out of my control?

poetically, action is the best forcing function for knowledge-systematiziation, the best philosophy stress-tester, argument-sharpener, mind-clarifier

@visakanv

Hence . . . Into Action.

That Tweet by @visakanv was in response to a light-hearted Tweet:

Litany of the age: Once all my knowledge is systematised and my philosophy is built airtight and my arguments are razor sharp and my mind is Buddhist monk clear, then I’ll actually *do* something to change the world.

https://mobile.twitter.com/krishnanrohit/status/1489520567019577347

Jen Sincero pp 141 – 142

The stories you tell yourself have a beneficial psychic payoff that you want. Change the story, change the payoff.

Also maybe it’s possible to examine the payoffs to identify hidden stories — because sometimes self does not reveal self to self upon direct inspection.

The interesting thing is the payoff is not superficially what you want but second order effects are what you want.

What stories am I telling myself?

This is when I wish I had the kindle version instead of the paper book. Most of the time paper is better. But when I want cut and paste . . . .

Think to yourself, “What do I have to do or not do, or think or not think, right now, to be happy?” And if the answer is “let the jackass think he’s right,” then so be it.

Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass, pp. 125-126.

there’s something interesting that happens when you void the warranty on your received indoctrination and get really into tinkering with your own mind – there comes this weird point where there’s a full-stack, full-spectrum teardown of everything from physiology to philosophy

https://mobile.twitter.com/visakanv/status/1487465133123448832

That was the catch-phrase from an old advertisement. “Be all that you can be . . . in the Army.”

You cannot stop the shitshow by trying to stop the shitshow. (American society is a shitshow right now but — spoiler alert — it has been a shitshow in one way or another for my entire life.)

You be as strong as you can possibly be. That’s how you change the shitshow. The Kingdom of God is not in the sky. It is in you.

[Y]our job is to be as you as you can be.”

Jen Sincero, You are a Badass, page 50.

I needed that insight today.

The Kingdom of God is within. Seek God there, not Out There.

Achievement is within, not Out There.

Infinity is within, not Out There.

Be as Me as possible. Don’t be as Elon Musk as possible. Or be rich, famous, admired, whatever.

Hmmm. Having the book in my lap and having tapped this out with my thumbs on my phone . . . what’s that emptiness I feel?

If you are in “save the whales” mode, stop and ask what the inner reality is that you’re trying to run away from. It’s ok, baby. Who hurt you? Let’s make it better.

Excessive concern about abstraction—externalities—tells me that something is wrong inside.

Look inside. Deal with the trauma you are avoiding. Then, if you want, go save the whales.

And by “save the whales” I am, of course, referencing any do-good feel-good amorphous bullshit. Example: “society is so racist!” Something’s going on inside you. Deal with it. Heal the inside man, not “society.” And if you’re truly concerned with racism, go be kind to one human being. Change the world retail-style, not wholesale.

And global warming. And microplastics. And communists. And suggestive lyrics in the music kids are listening to these days. And those gyrating hips on that young man, Elvis Presley. He is going to corrupt the youth. There oughta be a law. And everything else that alarms you.

It ain’t the outside stuff that you think needs fixing. Your reaction tells you that there’s something that needs attention inside you.

Greta Thunberg’s inner life just might be a shitshow. That doesn’t matter. She can live a shitshow-filled life if she wants. You do you.

It is a spiritual axiom that when we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. Good quote, right? That sentence has stuck with me for decades.

Also reference Gurdjieff’s idea of people as machines, and how so many are broken machines. If you push the button on your coffee maker and it makes coffee, that’s one thing. But if you push the button and it starts throwing knives across the kitchen, that’s another.

The information is in your reaction, not in the thing you’re reacting to.

If you use the word “triggered” for any reason other than a joke, it’s time for introspection and inner healing.

And for that matter, remember Bob’s assertion: “There is no such thing as a joke.” Meaning that jokes are disguised spears of truth thrown straight at the heart of a hidden problem. Though he used it mostly in the tall poppy context, of seeing one person try to cut another person down by using a joke. “Just kidding, man! It’s a joke!” Yeah but it still hurts.

Put on your own oxygen mask first.

Save yourself and you’ll inadvertently save the whales. The reverse is false.