Reality Laughs

You already know enough. You don’t need to get smart. You just need to do. Get that spreadsheet done.

I’m talking to me, not to you.

Benefits at scale come with, consistently, wanting to go from observation, to general principles, to particular application, to mass application …

From a comment on HN.

• See a thing.
• Assert general principle, usually empirically in my experience. “Yeah, this is probably why” is as good as I get.
• Apply principle to get more (or less) of that thing. Hmm. Works or doesn’t.
• Go big or go home.

The key seems to be the willingness to take that second step. Are you willing to may bold, semi-plausible wild-ass guesses (step two) and expose those guesses to sunlight (step three) to see what happens?

I don’t have anything.

I don’t have anything.

I don’t have anything.

This house. The dog. Wife, children. Business. Career. Money in the bank. Skills.

None of that is mine.

All there is is Am. All there is is Is.

The present moment with all it contains. That’s all there is.

The sound of the air conditioner running at the next-door neighbor’s house. The sprinklers running in the front yard. The voices of the people walking by on the sidewalk out front. There and gone. The feel of cool outside air coming into the house through open windows and doors. The sound of the plane flying overhead. Parrots and crows squawking.

Immediately gone. A memory stored and quickly dismissed.

Today is a good day to be. To feel the Is.

Don’t even think about the Is. Thinking about the Is is pointless—I’m thinking about the Was as soon as I try to think about the Is.

Bob was onto something. “Don’t use your brain to think.”

I am living in the Is—whether I want to or not. I can be living in the yesterdays or tomorrows in my head, but in truth I’m in the Is now, whether I know it or not. What Is is at odds with the Should have tomorrow and If Only of the past.

That’s the source of discomfort. Get back to Is.

The stock market took a dump and the funny little numbers on my phone are lower than the funny little numbers on my phone were a week ago.

So?

Politics. It’s an election year. Noise from all sources. We are all doomed if X happens. Or X doesn’t happen.

So?

What Is?

Life is real only in the Is.

Let’s go to the gym. It’s a good day to be alive.

God is with me now.

Thinking this morning of the two cosmic moments I have experienced — stone cold sober, walking around.

Remembering the one in which I was not, in fact, sober—decades before.

What a difference.

The “not” — me as observer, separate. Everything else as small, distant, angular, mechanical and infinite. Receding from view.

The two walking-around moments—enveloped in all that is, simultaneously insignificant and essential, powerless and in control, empathetic and detached.

Here and gone within a couple of seconds, and I remember the feeling of the moment dissipating, with resigned sadness. Of course I cannot live in that moment forever. (Or can I?)

I wonder if I will ever have another moment like that?

Interesting that both moments came while walking. Both on random urban sidewalks. Both in the midst of deep immersion into esoteric matters—primarily Fourth Way, and New Thought authors like Emmet Fox. Esoteric Christianity, basically. And deep in the program, of course.

Cosmic connection through chemical assistance? Limited and limiting. Seek light the slow way.

Display the contents of your mind in public. Let those who are interested stay with you.

Attraction, not promotion.

Everything around me, at one point, was merely a thought. Someone thought a thought, and made it real.

Except for reading some article and clicking through to something on x.com, no contact. I.e., no browsing the timeline. And I feel better.

No x.com.

The universe will deliver what you ask for. Be sensitive to the signals.

Today, my inbox contained two signals.

• “I would pay for your course on this topic if you offered it.”
• “How much for $project?”

The first is my heart’s desire. (To echo Emmet Fox). The latter is quick money.

I didn’t put these side by side for a while. Once I saw the two signals, both asking me for time and attention, I couldn’t unsee it.

Your Heart’s Desire? Or the easier, softer way?

Attention sovereignty. Pay attention to what you want. And slow down so you see what’s right in front of you.