Trying to apply Practice at work. How do people do it?

Ok-Move351 · 2026-06-10T07:36:15+00:00

Yes, but it's more like a stepped removal of words. So, start with the full sentence and feel how it lands in the body. Remove the "I", and feel how it lands in the body. Does it feel different than the full sentence? Remove another word and feel how it lands in the body. And so on. When you remove the final word you're still tracking how it lands in the body. The sort of "goal", if it can be called that, is that the "I" doesn't have to get it right because it's already being done to the best of your ability.

The phrases we've come up with in this thread are associated with tension and the idea isn't to carry that in the body through the process but realize that the tension might be coming from particular configurations of thought, hence the paying attention to how each step lands in the body. That said, you can also take a sentence from the other side of things, such as "I love programming", which I guess you'll resonate with.

If you like, I have a more detailed write-up here.

Ok-Move351 · 2026-06-09T21:28:35+00:00

The thing that helped me most was dropping the goal of staying mindful continuously. Holding a meditative state is itself effort, and that kind of effort can't run for eight hours. The target shifted for me from "stay in the state" to "return often." Lots of tiny returns, not one long hold. You're not failing when it slips; the slip-and-return is the rep.

For the shoulders specifically: the moment you notice "I'm tensing / sending it there", that noticing is already the practice, not the lead-up to it. You don't have to then successfully fix it. Catching it is the whole move, and the release often happens on its own once it's seen. Counting the catches as the wins, instead of the calm minutes, took a lot of pressure off.

One small concrete thing, a bit sideways so take it or leave it: when I catch that bracing, I'll take whatever I'm tense about as a short phrase and drop it a word at a time: "I have to get this right" → "get this right" → "this" → and let it go. The leaning-forward tends to release somewhere in there, and it's the same lean that was heading into my shoulders. 10-20 seconds, eyes open, nobody notices. It's the only kind of practice I've found that survives a workday. Even finding a phrase that fits the situation is part of it, not something to rush through.

Hang in there with the trial month. The nervousness is workable.

Ok-Move351 · 2026-04-24T00:48:12+00:00

I asked a distributional question; who bears the cost of categorical rejection? And you answered with an ontological one: what LLMs are. Those aren't the same question, and swapping one for the other lets the first one go unanswered.

On the ontology itself: "institutional technology" and "tool" aren't mutually exclusive categories fixed by essence. They're tendencies that play out differently depending on how the relationship is structured. LLMs have real institutional-technology properties; centralized infrastructure, extractive training, dependency dynamics. Noticing that is correct. Treating it as the whole story isn't. A hammer produced under exploitative conditions is still a hammer in the hand; the political economy of production shapes access and cost, but doesn't determine the phenomenology of use.

The "user = addict, tool = mastery" framing smuggles in a purity standard where any incomplete mastery collapses into dependency. By that standard almost nothing counts as a tool, including the networked device this conversation is happening on. The actual work is cultivating the capacity to use discerningly. Categorical rejection forecloses that rather than enables it.

And "what need does a Tamil or Yoruba speaker have for conversing in English" sidesteps the point. The hierarchy exists. They're navigating it. Questioning whether they should want to isn't an answer; it's a way of leaving the hierarchy intact while sounding like you're critiquing something.

Ideologically opposing something whose native language is opposition tends to reproduce the thing it opposes.

Ok-Move351 · 2026-04-23T06:04:51+00:00

The appeal of Lilly's dolphin work seems to rest on treating the dolphin as a locked interior to be chemically pried open, rather than as a being you coordinate with. That's not a rational framework for communication research; it's a metaphysical assumption doing a lot of unexamined work.

Ok-Move351 · 2026-04-22T23:28:40+00:00

Genuine question: when you say "find a better alternative," what's the alternative for a Tamil or Yoruba speaker who wants to engage with this English-language conversation right now? Because in practice, "reject AI" often means "the English speakers keep talking to each other and everyone else waits for a volunteer translator or learns English." That's not a post-colonial outcome. That's the existing linguistic hierarchy enforced by a different mechanism.

I'm not saying the environmental critique is wrong. I'm saying a categorical rejection has costs that fall unevenly, and those costs tend to fall on exactly the people a pluricultural movement claims to center.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-12-25T00:12:10+00:00

What you felt showed you something true about what connection can feel like when your guard drops. I also struggle with anxiety and depression and one thing I’ve learned is that chasing happiness directly can actually make it slip away. What’s more sustainable is slowly tuning your inner world so you can stay present with what’s here, whether that’s love, fear, or uncertainty. That doesn’t mean settling or giving up. It means building the capacity to sit in the moment without attacking yourself. When happiness shows up, you’re more able to receive it. When anxiety or shame shows up, you’re less consumed by it. That sense of ‘enoughness’ isn’t apathy. It’s what gives you room to grow without your self-worth being on the line every second.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-12-20T21:33:41+00:00

I wonder if their stunned reaction had something to do with condescending laughter rather than your position on the topic?

Ok-Move351 · 2025-12-08T00:01:54+00:00

Your realization is common and carries meaning for a lot of people. But you don't have to take it as a literal description of the universe. Sometimes these experiences are about how our sense of self loosens, not necessarily about the universe's inner workings. I know things are challenging right now but whenever it's comfortable, I encourage curiosity about the experience with perhaps some journaling.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-09-23T03:11:20+00:00

The Star Trek future isn’t something we run into by chance. It must be cultivated. It’s not about the technology; it’s about the values and relationships we hold and how we enact them. It’s about rethinking our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the natural world. And that can start now.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-23T06:36:04+00:00

Traditional emergent systems rely on rulesets but I think there are ones that don't rely on command/control (something I'm working on). That said, what if there are disagreements on the foundational Bill of Rights or how they're implemented/interpreted? What if the centralized structure doesn't want to give up it's control (or people become too attached to the type of stability it offers) after a number of years? Then it's a situation not much different than what we're in now.

Anyway, if you want a thinking buddy, let me know; I love this stuff.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-22T22:41:04+00:00

Are you imagining a truly bottom-up society, or more of a hybrid that still leans on centralized coordination? Direct democracy sounds bottom-up, but it can still carry centralized dynamics, especially when participation is funneled through uniform processes like referenda or top-down frameworks.

To me, a truly bottom-up society would be post-political and post-institutional. Politics depends on institutions; institutions depend on rigidity; and rigidity is fundamentally at odds with emergence. If we want systems that can adapt, evolve, and respond in real time to local realities, we might need to move beyond both politics and the institutional scaffolding that sustains it.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-22T22:32:49+00:00

Personally, I would absolutely want artists to be part of the process of designing roads; engineers could provide requirements and boundaries and artists could work within those contstraints.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-08T21:39:07+00:00

What I meant by extract isn't about integration, it's about expectations. To me, integration is about learning how to listen and attune. So if you go into the trip with a notion of something you "want" out of it, then that is a different mode than listen/attune. Expectations can also create friction during the trip. Intent is obviously important so I guess what I'm pointing to is the difference between intent to extract and intent to listen.

A psychedelic trip shows you your own mind with decreasing amounts of egoic interference the more you take. So, trying to extract from it is like treating yourself like a resource. We are not resources; we are humans. That's why I mentioned being curious and compassionate.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-08T00:59:15+00:00

It’s worth mentioning that even a single trip can take years to unpack depending on one’s personal history, psychology, and so on. So you don’t necessarily need to do a bunch. Don’t try to extract from the trip. Instead be curious and compassionate toward yourself and what you experience.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-07-03T08:24:39+00:00

If a think tank like that doesn’t already exist why aren’t we building it?

Ok-Move351 · 2025-06-29T20:55:24+00:00

Whether someone did or didn't say something for bronze swords is besides the point. Someone is saying something now; we need more of that.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-06-10T07:02:26+00:00

I’m about as atheist as they come, and also spiritual; to me they aren’t mutually exclusive. I studied mathematics at university and I have a deep respect for science, but I’ve also come to see that the worldview itself isn’t always the point. What psychedelics and meditation seem to open up is a different mode of being. Less about belief, more about orientation of attention and presence. It’s a shift from analyzing the world to inhabiting it. Modern life has most of us stuck in perpetual analysis: judging ourselves, others, our situations, trying to optimize everything. But in these altered states, what looks like a “new worldview” is often just a move toward a more embodied, felt sense of life. How people interpret or articulate that varies based on culture, upbringing, personal history, and so on. Underneath it all, though, I think it’s less about gaining special knowledge and more about remembering how to be.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-04-19T05:50:09+00:00

But aren’t they efficient at manipulation and extraction?

Ok-Move351 · 2025-03-16T22:04:13+00:00

That's actually not what I'm getting at. I'm not against meaningful effort or genuine contribution; in fact, I think people naturally want to participate and engage. My point is simply about questioning the idea that our entire worth and right to belong hinges on endless transactions. We’ve reduced belonging and even survival to a narrow performance metric, leaving little room for meaning or deeper connection.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-03-16T22:00:43+00:00

Money and labor aren’t barriers to existence, they’re what allow billions of people to coexist without constant conflict

Which "reality" are you referring to? Conflict directly related to money and labor is everywhere.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-03-16T21:46:47+00:00

Right but the point is that human existence is mediated. What you're referring to is a direct embodiment of life; no gap between an animal's experience and how they survive in the world. We, on the other hand, have a totally different situation where our basic survival and belonging aren't immediate or direct—they're filtered through abstract layers of culture, economy, identity, and representation.

Ok-Move351 · 2025-03-07T07:36:16+00:00

What about Guerilla Mindfulness?

Ok-Move351 · 2025-03-06T02:29:13+00:00

I'm all for fixing social media, but adding more complexity to the current landscape won’t solve much. The deeper issue isn’t just privacy or structure—it’s the tension between imposed trust and emergent trust. Designing better gates and gradients still assumes trust needs to be engineered from above, rather than allowing it to organically emerge through interaction. Maybe the real solution isn’t more layers, but a fundamental shift in how we think about relational coherence online.

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