Interstitial Final + 2

Some bon mots to clear the palate

On Meaning

“Meaning”, elementally, is simply patterns of relationship between sensation and motor action. Conventional “meaning”, as in “the meaning of life”, is emergent orders of abstraction on sensorimotorivity. Want meaning in life? It starts with simple sensorimotor engagement.

Meaning is constrained but not determined by what is. Everyday life is a display of what is, ornamented by meaning. We have little control over the details of the ever-shifting ornamentation, but there is freedom in existentially recognizing the situation.

The landscape of meaning, like any natural landscape, can be manipulated to some minor extent. To make up a number: you can control 20% of your meaning. Natural freaks of meaning will try to sell what worked for them as universal salve.

Meaning comes in and out like waves on a shore. It’s most fun surfing when a strong inbound wave; an inevitable crash follows peak meaning. And then, meaning recedes, sometimes with an undertow pulling you under. Inevitably followed by a new wave of meaning on its way in.

On Energy

Energy is for use, not mere cultivation. One must imagine Scrooge McDuck diving into a giant vault of chi.

Conductivity is the art of duality from non-dual view. Full-contact improvisatory dance is a model. “Energy flow” refers to patterns of interaction. Conductivity is when these patterns both fully lead and fully follow.

Money, Food, Power, and Sex are four everyday circumstances of energetic conductivity. Basic impediments to conductivity with respect to each: compulsive abstention, compulsive accumulation, compulsive throwing-off of energy.

On Aesthetics

Most of what I do, I don’t have reasons for, but it could be said I do them because I find the interaction the most aesthetically pleasing way of participating in life that I see at the moment.

Aesthetics, in my view, is higher than any moral or contemplative framework. Many such systems have universalizing arguments. When you realize the arguments are irresolvable, then why choose? It’s dynamic aesthetic preference.

On What Works

A diverse portfolio of simple frameworks is a toolkit. Each framework plainly false as a description of the world. Each framework impacting the world differently. Trying to operate from a “true understanding of the world” is like trying to have the “one true carpenter’s tool”.

What “works” in spiritual life is what untangles. You get sensitive to when it’s happening. For a given person, a given method might gain momentum, be highly effective, and then wane in potency. Years later, you may encounter a tangle where the method is again applicable.

The appropriate end-game of spiritual practice in most cases is similar to having mastered your personal sleep routine: an individualized part of your life that “just works” and doesn’t merit much discussion. Its effects are demonstrated in activity beyond the practice.

The highest level of practice is founded on inspiration, not grinding. This is because activity without inspiration arises from felt existential compulsion—the search for ‘solving’ of which constitutes the ‘problem’ in itself. However, inspired grinding is incredibly potent.

On Wisdom

A central skill of discriminating wisdom is separating the wise words of the wise man from the foolish words of the wise man.

Teachers often have wisdom that varies in quality over time. The early era, middle era, or late era could be their best stuff. And they often have a fractal edge of wisdom and veer into mediocrity or idiocy. Errors with the mixed bag: dismissing the best, embracing the worst.

On Love

Conventional “love” is not the universal answer. “Responsive interaction” is the nearest to “love” that is close to a universal answer. In the domain of people-with-whom-you-want-a-workable-relationship, it may round to “love”. Elsewhere, it may even round to “violence”.

The simplest “exercise” of responsiveness is surrendering to full participation; the “sign” is the vanishing of the feeling of relatedness. One does not “relate” to the hands or the heart: relatedness is a feeling reserved for “that with which there is not full participation”.