Fortnightly Issue #6
Meditation, long-term thinking, and more
Hello, friends!
These two weeks were intense: I’ve found the motivation to continue doing what I do and inspiration to try something novel. I also experienced my very own “I know kung fu” moment during a meditation session and I want it to be the first topic today.
Meditation
Several days ago, I performed a short meditation. I had nothing special planned for that one, just a common 5-minute session before work. But as I closed my eyes, two words — “ego death” — entered my mind. I vaguely remembered that I had seen them mentioned on Twitter a day before. And then, I realized something is stirring inside my head, almost asking to be visualized.
It appeared in the form of a big, tumor-like outgrowth protruding out of my chest, about half the size of my body. That swollen sack contained all the spite and grudges, all resentment and self-denial I somehow happened to accumulate over the years. I had absolutely no clue something that nasty was dwelling inside me. So I did the only right thing: I cut it out and incinerated it on the spot.
I’ve had different emotional and spiritual experiences throughout my life, some even chemically induced, and I’ve certainly had euphoric states and periods of apathy and boredom. What ensued from my recent experience was nothing of the kind. I’m pretty sure it has little to do with actual ego death from psychology though I don’t care. The clarity I feel hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still with me. I feel as if I cannot be offended, cannot hold a grudge against anyone, not even for a minute.
Is this real adulthood? Something less? Something more? Or something different? Emotionally, it was close to what I think Neo could have experienced when they uploaded a bunch of martial art techniques up his shaved skull.
Whatever it is, such moments are not to neglect. The main lesson I learned from this is not the state of serenity — this is a gift, not a lesson — but an approach to meditation. Even if your sessions are short or rare, don’t forget about them. And the more regular are your sittings, the more often opportunity windows will open. A meditation session that yields tremendous effect may be brief and can happen without much preparation. What you need is the right combination of ideas coming together at the right time. And what if not frequent attempts provide fertile ground for change?
One more thing. While knowing kung fu is great, don’t get too satisfied with it. There is a long journey ahead, always preparing a new turnaround for you.
Long-term thinking
While checking up on recently resolved Metaculus questions, I’ve discovered that my long-term predictions have become more valuable to me as I’ve started getting positive feedback on them. Prediction platforms can not only boost our predictive skills per se but also shift our perspective toward a farther future, make us more resilient to local peaks and troughs. To build a lasting civilization, we need perspective, and prediction markets are here to help us with this.
Another great tool to build up perspective and gain robustness against hardships is this wonderful framework proposed by @visakanv:
Doing something even 10 times is quite worthy already but doing it 100 times totally changes the game. This very newsletter is one of my “do it 100 times” pilgrimages — though I certainly don’t intend to stop there. I’m only 8 entries in but the effect is tangible. Like, I guess the first several issues were devoid of any value, they were meaningless even if neatly written. I’m working now to make new ones useful.
I have several other “do 100” missions and I will share them with you in due time, when some noticeable progress is made on them.
Stray insights
Safe rejecting
It’s important to formulate. We should always respect the opportunity of other people to reject our requests. We should feel safe to ask and reject each other. Here’s a comic:
Naming days
About a week ago, I invented a practice of naming my days. It goes like this:
The Day I Started Counting Calories and Naming Days.
Or this:
The Day I Still Haven't Started Learning Haskell.
If you feel like it, try it! Naming your days will allow you to see your life through the lenses of story arcs and build a funny narrative around it.
All this being written, I thank you for reading and wish you good luck!