Table of Contents and Overview
A guide to the contents of this repository
Note: Slightly revised versions of selected essays featured in this Substack are now available as a hardcover book (here) and as an e-book (here). See full notice here.
I've grouped the posts into areas of consideration, ordered them, and created a narrative through-lines that connects them.
There can be no perfect consistency of language here, because when linguistic consistency is made paramount, language that was gesturing towards experiential gnosis devolves into a symbolic framework referring only to itself.
Front Matter
Searchless Responsiveness
The Search: how responsivity is lost
Realization of Completeness: the foundation of searchless responsiveness
The Space of Affordances in Unelaborated Umwelt: the unity of body and environment
Existential Inertia, Conceptuality, Identities, and Selves: embracing commonly rejected aspects
The Happen of the Nature of States: care, power, and intrinsic satisfaction
Recognizing the Nature of States: familiarization with the free play of perceptual transformation
The Simplest "Exercise" of Searchlessness: a preliminary practice for exploring Searchlessness
The Simplest “Exercise” of Responsiveness: a preliminary practice for exploring Responsiveness
The Resonant Wealth: relating the sense-fields
The Path of Disorientation: the wellspring of freshness
The Seven Non-Progressive Intimacies of the Nature of States: a practice of existential intimacy
Another "Simplest" Exercise of Searchlessness: further exploration of Searchlessness
Searchless Directionality: what projects look like without a final project
The Fields of Flux: the aspects of sensation, affordances, and care
Clarification of Self via Inversion of Skies: The clarity and bliss of the union of interiority and exteriority
Streaming
Responsiveness: the temporal fusion of true nihilism and dynamic eternalism
Surrender to the Life Current: sensory-motor coupling with the world
At Play among Lifeworlds: patterns of engagement and care
All Energy Maps Are True, but Only Some Are Useful: relating to energy maps
Dimensions of Energy: exploring some dimensions of energy
The Incarnation of Fluid Nebulosity: a pattern language of energy
The Imaginal Kinesthetic: naturalizing a common family of energy practices
Streaming Conductivity: methods for coming into fuller engagement
Conductivity/Responsiveness: dwelling in the feeling of being
Formless Arousal: an exercise of searchless sexuality
Another "Simplest" Exercise of Responsiveness: responsiveness to feeling-textures
Physicality
Cultures of Embodiment: against mind-made body
Shaping the Kinesthetic Field: foundations of bodily experience, part I
Body Image, and the Image of the Other's Body: foundations of bodily experience, part II
Moving Just Because: physicality as an aesthetic experience
Some notes on the mechanical aspects of breath: fundamentals of breath
Weightlifting Tantra: applying the breath in weightlifting
Visionary Weightlifting: ecstasy in weightlifting
Every Ground Is a Wealth: enjoying the sensation of running
Don’t Watch Where You're Going: removing vision to enhance bodily awareness
Relationship
Streaming Contact: bodily intimacy
Transforming Hugs into Art: hugs as a core relational practice
Dynamic Tradition and Children: taking children seriously
The Beauty and Horror of People as Hurricanes: allowing people to be as they are
Developing a Personal Vocabulary of Other-Visions: playful explorations of the other
Life Integration
Becoming the Body of Automobile: integrating with being a driver
Better Self-Improvement through Intentional Self-Undermining: general principles of integration
My Principles for an Ecology of Practice: musing on life integration
Discourse
How Wonderful That Someone Is Wrong on the Internet: relating to discourse
In Praise of Incoherent Visions: embracing both magical and materialist worldview
Fractally Embracing and Rejecting Ideas: beyond correct and incorrect
Non-curiosity Cures False Precision: allowing “no reason”
Art
The Beauty of Meaninglessness in Cinema: enjoying disorientation in cinema
Cinema With Realistic Texture: what brings realism to cinema
The One Taste of Elevator Music and Demonic Screamo: the beauty of polarized aesthetic experiences
Repetition as Novelty: repetition in aesthetic experiences
Personality
Personality as a Stance: the fundamentals of personality
Responding to Emotions: a simple guide
The Search, part 2: no emotion is the lynchpin of an existential dilemma
First, I is I. Then I is not I. Then I is I: re-embracing identity
Trying to Be Completely Un-Fucked Can Fuck You Up: the limitations of personal growth
Rhapsodies
Back Matter
Related Material
The Union of Form and Emptiness
The Nyams of Dzogchen (Sasha Vezhnevets)
Nyam-Nyid (Sasha Vezhnevets)
Personality and Emptiness (Sasha Vezhnevets)
Opening Awareness (Charlie Awbery)
The Option Attitude: Mystic Pragmatism
Happy Motivation: (Bruce Di Marsico)
The Unhappy Condition (Max Soweski)
How to be Happy, Basically (Andrew Blevins)
The Option Method: The Myth of Unhappiness (Bruce Di Marsco)
Paperback: Vol 1., Vol 2, Vol 3The Option Method: Selected Audio (Bruce Di Marsico)
The Union of Shiva and Shakti
The Joy within the Ordinary (Shiv Sengupta)
Entanglement (Shiv Sengupta)