26 Dec 2016
“My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded saying which are capable of immediate practice application – not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speed – and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different matter from they way they tell the people to live. People prone to every fault the denounce are walking advertisements of the uselessness of their training. That kind of man can be of no more help to me as an instructor than a steersman who is seasick in a storm…” — seneca, letter cviii (108)
i think this post go could in a very finger-pointing, critique direction, but i’ll not take it there. although part of me feels like that could be a little fun, i’m more interested in what that passage means for me.
there are a lot of people who say a lot of stuff. but like seneca, i think little irks me more than when people say one thing and live a different one. it happens in individuals and in organizations. the number of organizations it happens in is astounding.
so the older i get, the more tuned i am to people and organizations that live their values & wisdom. in fact, i think what i’m noticing is that the only peple worth listening to are the ones who do that. anyone who doesn’t is likely teaching something that isn’t quite right.
i just finished the velvet rage and this idea connects to a great (and not at all unique) idea in there about integrity. integrity, by definition, is when all parts of something are connected. that applies physically but also to one’s character. if you’re teaching one thing, but living another, it’s difficult to have integrity and be authentic (genuine) because must be something untrue or unbelievable to yourself about your teachings in order to live a life that doesn’t match them.
so then i take a look at myself and think, damn. i can’t even count on my fingers and toes all the ways that i’m not living authentically.
in some other letter, seneca said that the truest pursuit in life is to find out how to live truly in alignment with ones values. maybe that’ll be my big picture goal for 2017: to be living more authentically by the end of the year than i am at the beginning.
i don’t even really know what that looks like, but i guess it’ll probably start with me making some lists. i think maybe i’ll review my vision statement, see where the discrepancies are between that and my life, and then work to close the gaps.
hm!
writing: 12:09
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25 Dec 2016
in an episode of on being that i listened to recently (sharon salzberg and robert thurman – meeting our enemies and our suffering), an indian buddhist teacher named manindra was quoted as having said the following:
“Sometimes people in the West remind me of people sitting in a rowboat, and with great sincerity and earnestness, they’re rowing and rowing and rowing, but they refuse to untie the boat from the dock. Sometimes I think people are mostly interested in these great transcendent experiences and altered states of consciousness, but they’re not all that interested in how they speak to their neighbor or how they are with their children.”
this resonates a ton with things i’ve been noticing as well as a thought my friend ambroise shared with me a few weeks ago. the basic thought is this: if individuals (and society by extension) aren’t actually desiring change, practicing yoga and meditation in these shallow ways are just hobbies. i think about all the yoga studios i’ve been to where people are clearly there to get exercise and not much else. or all the people i know who talk about meditating as a way to reduce stress… and yet they never seem to recognize the sources of stress in their lives.
these practices are, at their sources, situated in larger/broader spiritual practices with goals nothing short of life transformation. but, like many things extracted from their sources, without the overarching framework these practices originated in, the practices themselves are little more than pastimes.
ambroise was telling me he’s already experienced a similar type of disillusionment with yoga in its modern incarnation. i can’t remember if we talked about this or i read his writing about it [insert link someday maybe], but either way, it’s happened. and for him it’s gotten so bad that he’s actually decided to step away from it because the results that it can deliver are gained by so few people.
in light of manidra’s words, it’s likely that the people practicing don’t actually want to disconnect from the dock.
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24 Dec 2016
i just finished the velvet rage: overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world. it has brought a lot of light to my understanding of gay men in my life. it has some pretty serious limitations in its lessons and audience (i.e. the lessons are clearly drawn from the experiences of and directed towards gay men who are mostly white and wealthy), but it’s still pretty good overall.
here are some major points that i want to be able to remember in the future:
the three stages of dealing with shame for gay men
- [being] overwhelmed by shame
- compensating for shame
- cultivating authenticity
note: rage is the result of unacknowledged and process shame.
the three things that make up contentment:
- passion
- the repeated experience of joy in doing something
- love
- (definition by downs was weak, imo, so i’ll still with bell hooks’ thinking on love)
- integrity
- the state of being undivided; able to connect all parts of oneself
what mom didn’t know & dad couldn’t accept – lessons on being an authentic gay man
- don’t let your sexual tastes be the filter for allowing people into your life
- adopt a nonjudgmental stance as often as possible
- when you have a problem with someone, speak with him/her about it first (instead of everyone else)
- it’s never a bad idea to be completely honest about the facts.
- others are often put off by perfection
- don’t act on every emotion you feel
- put off having sex until you feel comfortable that you really know him
- actively practice accepting your body as it is right now
- intentionally validate those you love, but never validate the invalid
- whenever you encourage a relationship problem, first assess your own responsibility before blaming someone else
ps - huge shoutout to will for not only saying i should read this, but giving me his copy to make it happen. +1.
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24 Dec 2016
there is some tension between these three quotes below, but they’re related for me. the first two are from seneca’s letter to lucilius titled ‘on taking one’s own life.’. the last is a quote from a popular talk by alan watts on the acceptance of death and the meaning of life.
“An ordinary journey will be incomplete if you come to a stop in the middle of it, but life is never incomplete if it is an honourable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is a whole.” –– seneca, letter LXXVII
“Every life without exception is a short one… As it is with a play, so it is with life – what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. It is not important at what point you stop. Stop wherever you will – only make sure that you round it off with a good ending.” –– seneca, letter LXXVII
“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.” –– alan w. watts
as i sort of stew (in the best way) in my thinking about death this week, i keep coming back to an idea about living and dying. what keeps sticking is that we must be (culturally) afraid of dying because we haven’t figured out how to live.
seneca’s line about life being complete as long as it’s honorable definitely reminds me of how i think about living each day. the 2nd and 3rd quotes are, to me, similarly about the important of knowing how to live well.
there is a strange, but coherent irony in our fear of death as it manifests in our continued avoidance of the one question that would end that fear. how should one live?
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23 Dec 2016
a few people have asked what this is so i figured it was time to write it out. i’ve found that one of the highest values of writing out my thoughts is being able to direct people to them.
so. my personal retreat.
what is it?
it’s where i take some time at the beginning of the (gregorian) calendar year to focus on me.
where/when did it start?
in january 2015, my roommate, annemarie and i just went to a coffeeshop (RIP darwin’s ltd on mass ave. in cambridge, ma). i don’t totally remember why we did it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
what do you do?
if you want to see the long, detailed explanation of what i do, it’s over here. below is the agenda/checklist version:
day 1 (1 jan 2017): review 2016
- review and finalize my infinite growth vision statement
- review and reflect on how i spent time in 2016 (details on this in the long version)
- review annual budget
- guiding question: did my time spent align w/ my values?
day 2 (2 jan 2017): plan for 2017
- reconfigure calendar and time protocols
- plan budget
- organize files
day 3 (3 jan 2017): project launches
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writing 15:34
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