lucky. phenomenology appreciator. founder. dancer. chop & carry.
Joined August 2012
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brent retweeted
I love Job for many reasons, but mainly because it does a very clever jujitsu move on you as a reader. You start out thinking you've seen behind the curtain -- the scene in heaven w/ God & Satan making bets about Job.
So then after Job's trials, as his four friends come visit him to give their theories of why Job is in the predicament he's in, you've got your own little theory based on the opening scene, right? You're essentially the fifth friend who has their own read of the situation.
Then God comes in at the end and is like, "all your theories are wrong. None of you were there at The Beginning, and none of you know enough of the real backstory to really understand what's happening here. None of you can actually tame the chaos monster and organize all the things into a coherent whole. Only I can do that."
You, the reader, think God is calling out Job and maybe his four friends. But He's calling you out, too. You, the reader, are in the same boat as Job and his four friends. You think you have enough info about what is going on with Job because you saw the opening scene in heaven, but actually you're just as clueless and limited as the story's characters.
So the opener of the story is actually a trap, and the conclusion springs it on you. You think you have the backstory via some special perspective, but you're just like all the other confused people in the story. You don't really know and you're not ever going to know, either.
Job's lesson is that not only does God not owe you a theodicy (so stop expecting one), but even if you could see into the unseen realm you still wouldn't have a clue. You're never going to have enough information to put the whole, chaotic picture together in some satisfactory way. It's never going to all hang together in a coherent way that makes sense.
In some ways, I think Job is a coming of age story. This is one of things you learn in midlife -- that the pieces actually didn't ever fit together like you once thought they did, and the fact that it used to make coherent sense to you says more about who you were in that phase of life than it does about any larger meaning behind the events themselves.
The Job story is literally yelling at you that you cannot organize the chaos of life events into a coherent "why" -- it's simply beyond you. That you once thought you could was the arrogance of youth. God is actually the only one strong enough to tame the chaos monster & split its carcass into a neat, ordered, coherent structure.
This isn't the answer anyone wants, but it's the only answer that's telling you like it is.
Anyway, Job is a great book. The haters are wrong. I like it because I don't like to be lied to.
there’s a flavor of bad feeling that happens when i’m 5% activated and other (sensitive) people notice, then have their own reactions (soothing, fixing, rejecting)
1. stop! let me feel in private!
2. ty for pointing me to a way i’m taking responsibility for your emotions
brent retweeted
Here Roger is talking about the foolishness (my words, not his) of comparing moments. Increasingly I experience the same comparing *people*. When you're young, sure, you have no concepts, no insight, you see very few dimensions so it seems possible to compare people, or even think one is strictly superior to another or to plot them (!) or make plus-and-minuses lists of them comparing them (!!). But, as I've grown, I've found this impossible. Everyone is incredibly unique. Not just their personality but even — and this is why I link this video — their faces: it's getting impossible to say someone is "beautiful" or "ugly" or like… That is far from the first thing noticed, the first thing I notice is just how INCREDIBLY INSANELY MIND-BLOWINGLY unique each and every single face is. Same for each and every single personality/being.
Equanimity is characterised by acceptance of what's taking place.
Valence (positive and negative) comes about via comparison. Feeling good = sense that this is getting better (or not worse). Feeling bad = sense that this is getting worse (or not better). And those comparisons don't have to be all inclusive, but are bundles of small comparisons on many dimensions, hence why most positions are mixed valence.
Insight into dependent origination (that things come about according to the conditions that give rise to them) leads to equanimity because the deeper we get it the more it reduces comparison. The more we understand how unique every moment is, and why something other for someone else at another time is different (because it has different conditions), then it makes less and less sense to judge two moments from one another. You are where/how you are in this moment because of the conditions that bring about this moment, and if anything were even slightly different then this moment would be different and not this moment (sounds cliché I know but is really profound)
This is a process of levelling valence gradients and developing more equanimity.
brent retweeted
I hate it when people say there’s no such thing as a bad trip but I have to admit the worst LSD trip I had was in hindsight one of the best. during my nomad years, I was invited to help run a hackathon in the forest in middle of nowhere Sweden. brilliant event, 50% nerds and 50% hot people. on the last day someone proposed we trip together to cap it off. I thought YOLO, why not. but then the next suggestion was that we go hiking off into the mountains... to a rock formation called the Troll Church... where the Vikings used to make human sacrifices... I had my misgivings but not wanting to be a spoilsport I went along with the herd. now as you can guess, the LSD was a much bigger dose than I anticipated, I was extremely super high, and finding myself in a historic location charged with weird pagan energies was rather overwhelming. I felt like that scene in Inception when the horizon suddenly lifts up overhead and I am being rolled under the bedrock like being tumbled by big surf, I am smeared out, crushed by geological time and glaciers and ice ages, pulverised until there was nothing left of me not even lichen or moss and the old trolly spirits of the mountain had their way with me. in brief: anguish and terror. now by this stage I had been on the road for a few years, travelling from place to place with my dear wife, and the old gods told me my karmic balance was waaaaaay out of whack, because everywhere I go, from a friend’s couch to a hotel or airbnb, I’m always a guest, and the ancient right of hospitality is not just a privilege it’s also a responsibility, you have to give more than you take. I felt confronted with the spiritual debt I had been racking up these past few years. anyway I admitted to my friends that I am in no shape to move, I am incapacitated, I have become a liability to the hiking party, and I will need physical assistance to make it back to the cabin. thankfully two giant Scandinavian men, one icelander and one dane, picked me up bodily, hugged the warmth back into me, and took turns to lift me like a sack of potatoes back home. over the next few hours as I sobered up I made sense of the whole distressing enterprise and concluded that starting immediately, I needed to stop being a guest and start being a host. I need to balance the ledger. from that day I decided I would only live in a house with a guest room. that was nearly a decade ago. now I live in a 6000 sqft house with 10 guest rooms and hospitality is my only spiritual practice and indeed in this house we cast magic spells of healing and protection on a regular basis. in retrospect what a surprising way to discover your mission in life. and incidentally what a lovely way to discover true intimacy with men. in conclusion, acid sucks, everyone should do it.
rule #2 of clubbing: you are not here to earn money. you are not here to gain insights. you are not here to process emotions (though any of these may happen on their own).
you are here to rave: to exist between beats, to measure the time in songs, to converse with vibration and earth.
this is an invitation to drop your goals and do nothing in motion til your hips wear out and your feet walk you home in the midday sun 🌞
a teacher of mine asked me to ball up my fist, then let go into an open palm. “unclenching.”
he then asked me to tighten my fist as hard as i could. “clench is empty/openness too.”
with that i wasn’t enlightened but i did say “ohhh nice insight sick”
xitter.cf/techgnostic/status/209…
i did ~a year of low dose 5meo 2-3x per week ending last fall. it was very, very good overall.
i wrote about the risks here, but would be curious for any other questions about the experience.
xitter.cf/_brentbaum/status/2098…
regular low dose 5meo risks:
+ can aggrevate tinnitus, stops a couple months after regular dosing
+ can push you into god realm a bit more than is proportional to circumstances (everything is ok / unfolding / deep sigh yes)
+ can bring up deeper stuff, often somatically. usually in a natural “next knot to untie way.” can be good if well regulated w gf + job. gf + job are natural dharma protectors.
+ 5meo eyes are real but don’t kick in till deeper doses
+ low but present addiction profile for people outside community who are habitually disregulated. instant access to deep calm can be quite alluring
+ using multiple times per week = lots of neuroplasticity. easy to build good habits! also easy to accelerate bad habits!
+ can go through phases of discomfort the first 5-10 minutes. i recommend 10m of spontaneous movement or dancing beforehand if this starts happening and is unpleasant
+ finally, very high risk of becoming hotter. this might not be desirable! lower facial tension might bring too many cuties to ponder on your visage and like what they see
an analogy I like for low dose 5 is applying an even repulsive magnetic force to each point in a tangled pair of airpods. they'll spontaneously unknot themselves in ways that are hard to predict. (h/t @algekalipso)
this leads to weird system dynamics! the knot may turn itself over, or flip inside out... but it's headed from a high entropy high information density knotted structure to a low entropy low information density smooth line.
discovered a synth shop 5 minutes away from my house. just me & drum machines alone in there for hours. god is good
coming to peace that my dharma in this phase of the ai takeoff is dancing to a lot of house music and rooting in what it means to be maximally human
this hasn't always been the case, and I don't think this will always be the case, but for now... we need house, i'm afraid
brent retweeted
Flavours of fatherly metta are something like: "may you be strong and not need saving." It's provides sturdy presence with care, securing of safety, but without intervening. "I love and respect you, and trust you can do this yourself." "May you recognise you're not a victim". This is slightly different from wishing more immediate ease and wellness to another, but encouraging their growing edge.
in april i was cornered by two of my closest friends and given a homework assignment:
we want you to feel as delighted about yourself when you’re alone as we feel about you when we’re together.
hard at first. then easier. big gift.
xitter.cf/_brentbaum/status/2094…
brent retweeted
Two years later and we had a life changing summer of ‘26. Who could’ve known? Not me. Our grandchildren will never hear the end of it. Bless god.
