Category: General

Listen! Here’s all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.

That’s it. That’s the whole deal; a complete teaching of enlightenment, a complete practice.

If you ever have any questions or problems—no matter what the question or problem is—the answer is always exactly the same: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.

In other words, go jump off a cliff. Don’t go near the cliff and contemplate jumping off. Don’t read a book about jumping off. Don’t study the art and science of jumping off. Don’t join a support group for jumping off. Don’t write poems about jumping off. Don’t kiss the ass of someone else who jumped off. Just jump.

Jed McKenna
Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

I love this. It feels like the last two decades of my life I’ve been researching how to jump off a cliff…without actually doing it.

I think this is why so many people live their lives through other people today (i.e. celebrities, etc).

In other words, if you want to truly live, you have to embrace dying…that being letting go of your old sense of self that’s holding you back from making the leap to truly living.

Something recently reminded me of a book I had read a long time ago on non-duality called Spiritual Enlightenment: The Darnedest Thing by Jed McKenna. Jumping back to it and skimming some of the passages I had highlighted in the past, something jumped out at me when he spoke about a process called Spiritual Autolysis.

Here’s a Google AI Overview of it below.

Spiritual autolysis, as described by Jed McKenna, is a process of using self-reflection and critical thinking to dismantle false beliefs and uncover truth. It involves questioning everything one believes to be true, examining the underlying assumptions, and discarding those that cannot be proven or are found to be untrue.

Now initially someone might think this is similar to personal knowledge management, especially considering the quotes by Jed below. 

The reason for writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru—judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.

…and I can assure you that while you’re in this process of self-digestion you’re going to develop a voracious appetite for all sorts of knowledge—religious, esoteric, metaphysical, spiritual, New Age, Eastern and Western philosophy, all that and more. You’ll be relying on the knowledge and experience of men and women from throughout history without regard to race or nationality, but your search will take you far beyond human intelligence.

When you’re doing the writing, Spiritual Autolysis, do it for someone else. Write it for someone else. Express your knowledge for someone else’s benefit. Write it for publication, as if the whole world will see it. Or write it as a series of letters to your son, or to an imaginary friend, or to the child you once were. Whatever. Use the process of Spiritual Autolysis as a means of expressing your own highest knowledge for someone else’s benefit.

But this goes far beyond PKM, especially when you read these other quotes about what this process feels like when you’re undertaking it.  

No. This isn’t about personal awareness or self-exploration. It’s not about feelings or insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what you are is true. With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth. Anytime you go back to read something you wrote, even if it was only yesterday, you should be surprised by how far you’ve come since then. It’s actually a painful and vicious process, somewhat akin to self-mutilation. It creates wounds that will never heal and burns bridges that can never be rebuilt and the only real reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.

Spiritual Autolysis is an intellectual endeavor, but I balk at calling it a path of intellect. It’s a process of discrimination, of unknowing what is untrue, of progressively stripping away the false and leaving only what is true. Discrimination is used in a machete-like manner for hacking one’s way through the dense underbrush of delusion, or, if you prefer, in a swordlike manner for hacking off one’s own delusion-riddled head. Intellect is used as the sword with which ego commits a slow and agonizing suicide—the death of a thousand cuts.

For some reason these words resonated with me but I couldn’t figure out why. Then when I read the following, something clicked. 

It doesn’t matter where you start. You could start by using Ramana Maharshi’s query, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is me?’, and then just work at it. Just try to say something true and keep at it until you do. Write and rewrite. Make it cleaner and cut out the excess and ego and follow it wherever it leads until you’re done.

This quote above sums up my life since 2001, when my entire world turned upside down and I start looking for a new way of working and a new way of being. In effect, I wasn’t just questioning the conventional concept of work. I was questioning the concept of who I was, my identity.

And like I mentioned above, this lead me on an adventure exploring knowledge I wasn’t even aware of before 2001. It began with the future of work, led to creativity, and eventually to vertical development (of which non-duality is usually embraced by people within the latter stages of psychological development).

And more recently over the past decade, I’ve mentioned more and more about having frustrations at being able to express and communicate things that I find are almost impossible to explain to conventional minded people, so much so that it feels like I’m being ripped apart in the process.

What I’m trying to say here is this. 

What if I’ve been undergoing this process for more than two decades but I’ve been completely unaware of it?

And what if the experience of feeling like I’m being ripped apart in trying to express these things I’m learning in my own life aren’t a sign that I’m stuck but paradoxically a a sign that I’m going in the right direction?

Ya, imagine that? Feeling like you’re being ripped apart and that’s a sign you’re actually going in the right direction…and not the wrong direction?

Why this is starting to make sense to me in an absurdly strange way is because for the last year or two, ChatGPT has been explaining something to me that I couldn’t fully understand and wrap my head around.

It was saying that the ambiguity and uncertainty of the experiences I was going through are why I’m more aware and knowledgeable of what it means to embody a Self-Transforming Mind than I believed myself.

However it said the reason I feel confused is because I’m assuming my role is to teach people “knowledge” to help them on their journey. But it isn’t. That’s a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of my Self-Authoring Mind still trying to maintain control of me.

To put this another way, what if this threshold I’m crossing is something that can’t be explained to be understood?

What if it can only be experienced to be understood. 

What I’m getting at here is what if this isn’t about knowledge accumulation?

What if it’s about identity acclimatization?

What I mean by acclimatization is understanding something by immersing yourself within that environment and fully experiencing it firsthand.

Examples of this would be like learning to swim or learning about a different culture in another country. You really have to immerse yourself within it and experience it firsthand to fully understand it.

Now here’s the kicker.

What if the switch that flips everything around for me is simply embracing the very experience I’m pushing away from?

In effect, instead of running away from the uncertainty and ambiguity of trying to express who I am and what my life is about as my life’s work, it’s intentionally stepping into it every day and fully immersing myself in this uncertainty and ambiguity.

To put this another way, what if it’s recognizing that this is where I’m actually supposed to be, as it’s the next stage of my journey?

So even though this expression of my truth in my life feels like I’m dying in going through the process, this “dying” serves a purpose, as it is a shedding of who I thought I was, thus allowing me to be who I truly am.

This is actually funny because it reminds me of something veteran Eve Online players realize is essential for new players to understand about the game. They basically teach the new players how to fly a ship but then they also teach them how to die in them.

Why? Because you won’t know what it’s like until you actually experience it. So the more you experience it, the more you’re used to it and know how to handle it. In fact, you eventually realize death is an integral part of the game. 

And that’s what vertical development is about as well, especially as you approach the latter stages of it.

It’s about metaphorically dying enough times that you become used to it and realize it’s an integral part of the role-playing game called Life, so much so that you embody it in your daily life.

That I believe is the adventure calling me right now.

It’s asking me to express what I know and believe to be to true, as much as possible, even though the process feels like I’m being ripped apart and dying because I’m having to fully and intentionally step into a space that feels impossible to step into, let alone exist within continually. 

This is what I think the Hero’s Journey embodies, this metaphoric death and rebirth.

In effect, it’s about standing at the edge of something that feels impossible to do…and then stepping forward and doing it anyway.  

And in doing so, what if the very space that I felt like I was stuck and dying within…actually becomes the very space I’m reborn to live within?

There’s only one way to find out.

Something is changing. 

I feel Iike I’m floating more, not feeling the need to be doing anything or the need to react to anything immediately.

It’s like I’m just waiting for something to emerge instead. 

Yet is floating doing “nothing”?

For example, what about listening.

Is listening “doing nothing”?

To most people, it may appear you’re “doing nothing” when listening but in actuality it’s a skill that requires a lot of awareness and focus. 

So if I feel like I’m just floating and doing nothing, am I actually doing nothing?

No, I don’t think so.

I feel like I’m actively listening and more aware…more receptive to what wants to emerge.

It’s funny. My wife recently retired and before we used to plan out evening dinners in advance.

Now that we aren’t following a set work schedule for her, we often go out and may have a large meal at lunch. Thus later, when nearing dinner, even though we may have planned to make something earlier that day, I find we’re full and shouldn’t be eating a large meal just because we planned to do so.

In effect, it feels like we need to be more in the moment and make decisions based in the moment, rather than following previous plans just because we made them. 

My life feels the same way now. I feel like I was following all of these planned scripts and roles that society expected of me and now I’m just floating in this space of possibilities, attentively listening to what wants to emerge instead.

So it’s strange. The old me would see me as doing nothing. But this new emerging me, sees this as doing something incredibly important and meaningful.

It’s weird.

I started this off by describing floating. 

It’s like I’m floating in an ocean of my larger unknown Self and I’m like a surfer waiting for the next wave to come.

I’m feeling and presencing the moment, fully creating a deeper contact with the ocean, so as to connect with it and become it.

Yet what is emerging?

I still don’t know.

But still I float…and listen, feeling into the process. 

I’ve been reflecting upon a lot the last few days and I think part of the problem I’ve been having is that there is so much within my mind, that it can feel overwhelming in scope at times. Yet at the same time, I feel like I’m trying to create a thread that can weave through everything and bring it all together within a cohesive way.

This thought reminded me of something John Thackara said below within his book, In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World.

Although information overload is frequently discussed in the media—which help cause it—our dilemma is not that we receive too much information. We don’t receive anywhere near the quantity of data it takes to overload our neurons; our minds are capable of processing and analyzing many gigabits of data per second—a lot more data than any of today’s supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel flooded because we’re getting information unfiltered, unsorted, and unframed. We lack ways to select what’s important. The design task is to make information digestible, not to keep it out.

John Thackara
In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World

What I’m trying to say here is that if I can encapsulate or package this massive amount of seemingly overwhelming information within a story or narrative, then it becomes more accessible and understandable.

With this in mind, I asked ChatGPT to create a narrative of my life the last couple of decades but rather than describe the details of my life’s journey, I asked it to describe the essence of the journey as a simple narrative instead. This is what it wrote below. (Although I believe the intro to #5 does need to be tweaked in some way, as it is vertical development that can feel too abstract and the Hero’s Journey allegory expanded into an MMORPG allegory is what can make it more tangible).

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1. Work Isn’t Working

For decades, we’ve operated within a conventional concept of work that no longer serves us. Instead of empowering individuals, it has become a system that limits creativity, fosters burnout, and works against our well-being and growth. Many of us feel stuck, searching for something more meaningful and sustainable.

2. The Future of Work

The answer lies in reimagining work itself. The Future of Work isn’t just about new tools or trends—it’s a shift in mindset. It’s about aligning work with purpose, collaboration, and adaptability, creating a space where individuals can thrive and contribute authentically. This future is about working with our humanity, not against it.

3. Creativity as the Catalyst

Transforming the way we work begins with transforming the way we think. Creativity is the key that unlocks this process, allowing us to break free from old identities and worldviews. It’s through creativity that we reimagine possibilities, rewrite our stories, and build the bridges that lead to the future we envision.

4. Vertical Development: The Journey Within

This transformation isn’t one-size-fits-all. Vertical development helps us understand that we’re all on this journey at different stages, moving from seeing the world as it is to seeing the world as it could be. Each stage represents a deeper understanding of ourselves and the systems around us, enabling us to grow beyond limitations and embrace complexity.

5. Life as an MMORPG: Understanding the Journey

The Hero’s Journey offers a powerful allegory for this growth, but it can feel abstract. Viewing life as an MMORPG makes it more tangible: we’re all players navigating the adventure of life, leveling up by facing challenges, expanding our perspectives, and unlocking new ways of being. It’s a metaphor that shows us how to transform our identity, worldview, and ultimately the way we live and work.

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What I find interesting about this narrative is that at each stage, it goes deeper and broader, encompassing more and more of life. For example, a lot of people think that the future of work is just about implementing newer technologies. It’s not. It’s about transforming how we see ourselves (i.e. identity) and our world (i.e. worldview). So exploring creativity beyond the future of work, helps us to understand what the future of work is really about at its core.

What’s also interesting is that this narrative can be seen as this “bigger picture” I’ve been talking about for some time. The further along in the narrative, the bigger the picture becomes.

And finally, we can see how the narrative links back upon itself at each step.

For example, when we explore creativity, we discover how it can transform our identity, and it makes us realize that when we feel like work isn’t working and our identity feels like it’s shattering, this is the beginning of the creative process that we need to embrace rather than avoid.

And then later in the narrative, when we learn about vertical development, we discover that the creative process is embodied within and a part of the vertical development process itself.

So with each step in the narrative, what we previously learnt becomes embedded as a part of a larger process within life as a whole (which embodies the Russian nesting dolls metaphor used to help understand vertical development itself).

Within hours of fooling around with the idea I mentioned in my previous post, I already think I’m going in the wrong direction. In effect, I’m trying to start from the bottom and build upwards. I think I need to start from the top and work my way down.

In effect, I think I need to create my backstory as a narrative identity arc and then link that back to content maps in the note system that break down into smaller notes / concepts.

For example, a part of my narrative identity might say, “I began seriously exploring vertical development in 2010.” That would link to a content map in my notes on “vertical development” that breaks down into smaller notes that describe vertical development in detail.

In other words, I intuitively think bigger picture first and then I can work backwards into small pieces. Once that’s done, then I can start working forwards, bottom up, as the bigger picture will already be seen by me and I can see where things will connect to easier then.

This is why I think I have a hard time with the evergreen notes method in the first place. It’s because it’s starting small and building to something bigger. Whereas I want to start big, seeing the bigger picture and structure, and then mapping out the connections and relationships by breaking it down into smaller, detailed pieces.

In writing my last post, there’s something that popped into my mind at the end of it that I need to write down before I forget it because it’s fundamental to my journey, the paradoxical feeling and experience of it as a whole.

Initially this feeling is one of loneliness.

Why? Because you’re stepping beyond the limited boundaries of the conventional known world of what people believe being a human being means and exploring new ways of being.

So it feels like the threads of your being are disconnecting from the social fabric of society at first.

But this is only because you need to let go of the limiting beliefs that are bounding you and caging you to this conventional space.

Once you step beyond the horizon of your mind and begin exploring a whole new way of being (along with a whole new worldview), you begin to have feelings and experiences of freedom and liberation which feel rapturous.

But while having those feelings, you will continually flip back to feelings of loneliness, as having stepped beyond the conventional boundaries of a societal mindset (which Robert Kegan calls a Socialized Mind).

So you will be riding this rollercoaster of emotions and feelings both of being lonely but also of a profound sense of solitude and connection with something much larger than yourself.

This is you having both a deeper, intrapersonal journey with yourself by exploring the depths of yourself but also have a broader journey with the life as a whole.

That’s because both are entwined. In effect, you can’t transform the way you perceive the world until you can transform the way you perceive your “self.”

The key point I’m trying to make here is this.

You will initially feel like you are detaching and distancing yourself from society (and even those friends and family you love) but what’s really happening is that you are connecting and integrating with something much larger within you and around you that was previously invisible to you.

The best way I can describe this is as this.

It will feel like you are stepping beyond the walls of society as a city and into the borderlands around it to begin to discover yourself. These courageous forays will help you to realize who you truly are rather than what society expects you to be.

And when you have become comfortable with the solitude of the road and the rhythmic, natural way of its being it provides you, you will be ready for the wilderness which lies beyond the borderlands.

It is within this wilderness that you will discover your wild heart, allowing you to shed your bulky armour and walk freely without fear within the nature that lies there. Because that nature is also your nature unbounded.

It is something much larger than most of us can conventionally conceive but with which lies dormant and hidden at the very core of each of us, a boundless potential.

You are not leaving behind something so much as you are embracing something much larger than you can possibly imagine. Something that helps you see yourself, others, the world, and the universe as all part of a larger whole.

This is the paradox of the journey.

If you ask the average person about their personality type, especially Myers-Briggs, you’ll either get back a passionate response about their type, which they feel resonates with who they are, or a just as passionate response saying Myers-Briggs is all garbage, saying their “type” doesn’t make any sense or relate to who they are.

I think the main problem that people have in understanding their personality type though is that it doesn’t describe who you are right now (although it may partially) but who you can grow into and become. Thus a lot of it won’t make sense and have any meaning, until you’ve grow and had experiences that make sense of it as a whole. This is why I believe that personality types should be paired with development psychology, so as to understand this more fully.

For myself, while I try to remain open to everything, I obviously at the same try to use critical thinking to assess the accuracy of things. More recently though, over the past decade or so, I’ve seen dramatic improvements with regards to people building upon these systems and creating hybrid systems that seem much more accurate in assessing your personality type.

For example, 16 Personalities is one such organization doing this, as they combine the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with the Big Five personality traits, as discussed in their framework. And while they don’t delve into developmental psychology, they clearly indicate that becoming your best self has a lot to do with personal development and growth in understanding yourself which allows you to leverage your strengths and overcome your weaknesses.

Now while I’ve used their site some years back to assess my personality type as a Mediator (INFP-T), which I found fairly accurate, they’ve upgraded their site and add some newer services. Noticing their Premium Personality Report was only $9 US, I decided to give it a try. Upon purchasing it, it provided a PDF titled Mediators Guide to Careers, as well as had me undergo a further assessment test of questions that helped them to further refine their understanding of me.

While I found the test results fairly accurate, especially in terms of my weaknesses (that I was already aware of that I needed to work on), it was the Mediators Guide to Careers PDF that completely blew me away when I started reading it.

Big Picture Thinker

What I mean by this is that how I think and process information to learn something new is radically different from how other people normally do so. For example, someone might learn something by following a curriculum and learning each facet of the new domain of knowledge, piece by piece.

I instead prefer learning in a more open, curious way, almost like you’re exploring a new world. So I’ll be all over the place initially, getting a bigger perspective and outline of the world, by first figuring out its edges. Then after that, I will often deep dive into areas within it. (And hilariously enough, I even do this within MMORPGs, whereby I’ll traverse through zones of a much higher than my own, just so I can get a bigger picture of the world I’m exploring within first.)

So while someone else has completed the first part of their formal course, I’ve gotten an outline of the whole course but haven’t dived into the details yet (although I will probably still have rough grasp of the basics of it).

This is what the 16 Personalities Mediators Guide to Careers PDF also revealed and thus helped me to understand about myself in a much deeper way.

Metaphorical Thinker

Even more so, one other way that I process large amounts of information, so as to make sense of it quickly, is to utilize metaphors to understand it as a whole. Yet of course, when I describe these metaphors to someone else, even if they’re familiar with the metaphor, it can go completely over their head.

For example, this is effectively what I’m doing with my Life as a MMORPG framework. I’m using metaphors within an overarching allegory to package and make sense of highly complex knowledge (i.e. Life as a Role-Playing Game = Developmental Psychology).

This again was highlighted in the 16 Personalities Mediators Guide to Careers PDF but they described this as the ability as creative mnemonics which helps people with my personality type to learn new things, since traditional bottom-up learning methods can bore us to death. Yet I’m obviously using it at a scale and complexity that is way beyond the norm.

Mnemonic: a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations that assists in remembering something

The Devils in the Details

Now while my ability to see the bigger picture and understand it more easily using metaphors or allegories is an amazing strength, my weakness in relation to this is all but obvious, especially now that I reflect back upon the last couple of decades of my research.

You see, my big picture approach stems from my intuition which allows me to almost magically grasp things much more quickly than other people normally can. But what’s happening when I use my intuition is that I’m making these leaps that let me grasp this big picture much more easily (i.e. exploring the edges of the world as a domain of knowledge).

For myself, this is my ability to 1) see patterns, 2) see the relationships between the patterns, and then 3) see the identity of the system as a whole.

Again think of the patterns as the edges of a new world of knowledge and the relationships helps triangulate these patterns, thus seeing the identity of it as a whole, almost like I’m mapping out this world.

But here’s my weakness. I’m so focused on the bigger picture that the details can often be vague or even unknown.

Now this doesn’t mean I can’t provide an overview of what I intuitively know and for that knowledge overview to be accurate.

But it does mean I have a hard time articulating the details of my life’s work because I often can’t find the rational words to describe it, even though I may have a ton of metaphorical words to use to describe my work as a whole.

Deconstructing My Worldview Brick by Brick

So this is what I need to be doing and this was something I validated some months ago but I’m still struggling with how best to do this.

So again, what I need to do here now is the reverse of what a conventional person would do who learns the foundational elements of a new domain of knowledge first and then builds it up to eventually understand it as a whole.

I need to deconstruct this new domain of knowledge that I’ve created and break it down into bite sized pieces so that others can understand it and learn it in a conventional bottom up way.

But again, upon reflecting back, if I had an implemented something like an evergreen note system which I wasn’t aware of back then, I could have built up this knowledge in bite sized pieces which I could have then just shared with others, as I was learning.

But again, remember that that is not how my mind works. I’m constantly looking for the bigger picture first.

Explains My Difficulties with Note-Taking Systems

Actually what’s really funny, now that I think about it, is that this probably explains why I’m having a hard time grasping how to implement an evergreen notes system. It’s because I’m big picture focused rather than detailed focused on the smaller pieces.

So when I read something in my mind that relates to something else that I read elsewhere in the past, it’s like the relationship between the two pieces of information is more important than the pieces of information themselves because I’m so focused on seeing the bigger picture (which the relationship provides).

Creating a Portal to a New World

And yet, without focusing on the details, it continually feels like I have no solid ground to stand upon which in turn would allow me to build upon it.

Thus it feels like I’m a ghost who is eternally stuck in an ephemeral, liminal world that only I can see as a whole but with which I can’t rationally articulate a pathway to it for other conventional minds.

All said and done though, the more I read this Mediators Guide to Careers, the more I’m beginning to understand my strengths that I can leverage even more so but also my weaknesses that I need to overcome, especially if I want to make my worldview a tangible reality for others.

More importantly though, what it is revealing to me is that I’m not crazy or incompetent, as my struggles in articulating myself and my work often make me feel. I’m just different. And if I can leverage that difference, understanding it as a whole, then I can transform the way I work and translate my work in such a way that others will begin to understand it.

That statement is profound because I’ve describe this metaphorically before. I’ve said that it feels like I’ve discovered this tome of wisdom deep within the depths of myself and a lot of my journey now is in trying to decipher and translate the details of it for others to understand. And that effectively embodies Return stage of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

I think part of the problem with growth and development is that so often our beliefs are double-edge swords. They both empower us by allowing us to work within a new space of possibilities but also disempower us by preventing us from seeing newer spaces beyond the one we are already within.

For myself, I think my greatest weakness in this regards is my disbelief in myself which arises from societal expectations and beliefs that I place upon myself and thus beat myself up with. It’s almost like my ego is a bully standing in my own way, crushing my confidence on a daily basis.

This is the main thing I need to let go of. My disbelief in my self, my journey so far, and what is possible for me in the future.

For example, I’ve been on this journey for over twenty years now, since 2001, and no matter how many amazing moments of synchronicity occur in my life, guiding me like quest givers within an MMORPG, I still continually disbelieve all of the amazing things I’ve learnt along the way. That’s because it requires me to let go of the external, societal belongingness that I so desperately seek and instead replace it with a truer sense of sovereign belongingness found within the realm of my inner self.

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

Brene Brown
Braving the Wilderness

Even though I grew up within a religious family, going to church each Sunday as a kid, I wouldn’t really call myself a religious person, so much as I’d describe myself as a spiritual person.

The differentiation for me is important because I think this is the transition and journey my mother went through in her own life. She was deeply religious when I was a kid but by the time I reached my teenage years, she was finding the church life cynical and petty, with people often judging others so that they themselves wouldn’t be judged by others themselves (aka psychological projection).

So she went on a journey beyond religion and stepped into the realm of the spiritual, finding her own way, which gave her life a lot more meaning and gave her a much more personal inner journey and understanding of the basic tenets of religion that I think a lot of religious people today are completely missing. It’s not about what’s happening out there and what other people are doing wrong. But about what’s happening within you and how you can let go of these things that are not letting you be the person you want to be (and who you already are deep down inside).

This touches upon my discovery (via Margaret Wheatley) in the past of Thomas Merton, an American monk and writer, and some of the quotes from his writings that I’ve only recently read in-depth.

For example, this quote below touches upon a mantra of mine which is “work on living what you’ve learnt through play.”

A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

What I find fascinating about his work and writings though is that in some of his most famous quotes, you can see someone who is on a spiritual journey of self-discovery that resonates closely with what Joseph Campbell describes as The Hero Path, where at “the center of our existence” we aren’t alone but “shall find God” and “be with all the world.”

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world…

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.

Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

I think this is in the deeper sense the connectedness that underlies all religions, yet is somewhat sadly blocked by most religions, as each one often sees their view of the world as superior and right compared to the wrongness of others. So often most religions stand in their own way, just as our own ego stands in our own way as well.

If you can get past this limiting view of the world though, as Thomas Merton did, you can discover a whole new way of being and a whole new way of perceiving the world. This is just another way of describing what vertical development is to me without calling it “vertical development.”

It is liking climbing a mountain into your “self” but with each progressive vista completely shattering and upending the way you view the world and your “self” as a whole.

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”

Thomas Merton

I use the Flipboard app almost on a daily basis, so much so that I often end up doom flipping through it. I think this is a weakness of my explorer mindset in that I’m constantly exploring for new things that relate to my life’s work. Yet this can obviously pull me down rabbit holes where I completely lose track of time, wasting away the day.

Even though I love the way the Flipboard app works in terms of flipping between articles, my number one issue with is that it no longer supports native RSS feeds (even though it is at least embracing the Fediverse).

Another huge issue with Flipboard is that it’s main “For You” feed continually dumps in news that you may not be interested in. Yes you can use the filtering options to say you want “more” or “less” of certain topics (although it very confusing how this works) and you can also completely “mute” a news site if you like as well.

However muting sites actually occurs locally on your device rather than the cloud, so on slower, older machines, it can dramatically slow down the Flipboard experience, as you could end up waiting multiple seconds everyone once in while between flips, as your device filters out certain new sites you no longer want to see from the newer articles being loaded.

Realizing that using Flipboard is overwhelming me by continually distracting me, I’ve decided to go back to an RSS feed app on my iPad called Unread that I used briefly before.

While the basic functions of the app are free (with advanced features included for a monthly or yearly subscription), I find the basic functionality more than sufficient for my needs. In fact, if I was to pay for it, I’d prefer a single payment lifetime option, as well as more options for changing the formatting of what you’re reading (i.e. line height, width, etc).

Nevertheless, it still meets my simple needs in a simple way. And I’m enjoying reading again from people I’ve subscribed to in the past, as well as some newer people as well.

The best thing of all is that when I’m finished reading and go back to my overall list of feeds, I eventually reach a point where there is nothing left to read which gives this strange feeling of being able to just breathe again. Almost like you can finally exhale again after inhaling too much.

But I guess that relates to the rhythm of being creative. Breathe in for inspiration. Breathe out for creation (which hopefully connects with and inspires someone else in turn).