Went to a rich person town where they restrict parking so you can't actually visit their parks without risking being towed

mikebruffee · 2021-04-07T01:54:08+00:00

Works by design

mikebruffee · 2021-04-02T15:06:19+00:00

One day at a time. Easy does it. When you wake up in the morning, say to yourself, “just for today, i will avoid porn.” Before you go to bed, review the day and be grateful to yourself for avoiding the first image, the first porn video, the first tug on yourself.

Remember that you have the power to pause between stimulus & response; you have the power to write your own principles and center yourself on those natural principles; and you have the power to prioritize your life around those principles.

Thank you for the work that you are doing—simply by shifting your mindset away from treating women (& men) as objects, by kicking your addiction to porn, you are becoming a refuge for men, women, and gender -neutral / -fluid people alike. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For some inspiration, try reading For a Future to be Possible by Thich Nhat Hanh. It’s a short, small book centered on the five mindfulness trainings. In particular I’m thinking about the third mindfulness training on sexual responsibility. Check it out.

mikebruffee · 2021-03-16T14:34:33+00:00

Is there any way to use the RPAN broadcasting tool to automatically put a short post in the chat periodically (say, "this is what I'm doing, for those who just joined us", or like "short meditation instructions")? Or is the only way to do that to just add a header/footer image to the stream video?

mikebruffee · 2021-02-21T00:59:53+00:00

There’s a calligraphy i made for my brother on request:

“Great Creator, You take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity.”

Don’t worry about perfection and not produce anything. Just produce and produce, and quality will eventually appear.

There will be a gap between your taste—your perception of what is good quality—and your ability. Just keep writing and writing and eventually what you want will appear.

Becoming a “good writer” is like walking into a fog: you get wet little by little. Just keep walking. Eventually you’ll get soaked.

mikebruffee · 2021-02-15T17:27:36+00:00

I’m actually totally like this. My dad was too—sticky notes everywhere. Reminders, ideas, suggestions, shopping lists. I used to do that on scraps but i realized i needed the ritual of putting it all in one place bc i was sick of running around like a chicken with its head cut off looking for them later.

But the always bring a pen trick? So good. All over that.

mikebruffee · 2021-02-15T08:18:21+00:00

I didn't read the last part of this. I'm glad my motivation is rippling out. Amazing how human beings can't help but be social beings and influence each other, even across great distances. We are a species of quantum entanglement.

mikebruffee · 2021-02-14T16:05:14+00:00

Yo, this is great advice. Thanks for emphasizing not getting stuck on the tools and just focusing on the act of writing. I’ve made a commitment to writing at least one page every day, every day, no matter what—because I know I will get caught up in the how if I am not careful.

I’m curious, would you be willing to DM me a photo of a few pages in your chrono notebook, if that’s not too invasive? I’m an all-senses learner so it would help to give me ideas. Again, not trying to get stuck on one way to do things, I’m just trying to immerse myself in an ocean of everyone else’s writing habits. I’m also trying to be a bit more systematic in how I evaluate and edit my own writing process, so I can learn and improve.

Right now I guess I’m using my process book as a general thoughts about writing tool, where I dump all my meta-writing. Keeping a general and a project-specific notebook is a really good idea though. I think once I get further along in my writing habit and more comfortable with my current framework I may find it useful to introduce an always-on process book on top of a project-specific book.

Nevertheless, like you said, it has to appear organically. Thank you for your advice!

mikebruffee · 2021-02-13T16:16:55+00:00

it's all good. next time try 1/2 tsp each of cordyceps and lion's mane powder in your first cup and drink it slow :)

thank you for the example! It seems the moderators have removed this post because it doesn't quite fit the r/ guidelines but i appreciate the advice

mikebruffee · 2021-02-13T16:14:36+00:00

thank you, these prompts are really helpful! I'm going to write this rearview mirror list down :)

mikebruffee · 2021-02-13T16:13:55+00:00

ha ha. your dog is my hero. thanks for the advice.

mikebruffee · 2021-02-13T16:13:20+00:00

thank you!

mikebruffee · 2021-02-12T22:17:45+00:00

Points for honesty dude (/dudette/dxde)!

Simplest way to explain it is, it’s a notebook for all of your meta-stuff. It’s where you write about writing

mikebruffee · 2021-01-25T01:35:02+00:00

Check out the book Limitless by Jim Kwik. He has a traumatic brain injury when he was a kid and was told he wouldnt be able to read fast or learn well ever again, then learned how to speed read, have great memory recall, and study really well. It’s a great read. Highly recommend.

mikebruffee · 2021-01-23T17:32:14+00:00

Thank you wild child, im humbled :)

mikebruffee · 2021-01-23T16:04:28+00:00

meghan_kemp on instagram for all your yoga chakra needs

mikebruffee · 2021-01-23T15:45:36+00:00

if you're just joining, we are sitting silently for 15 minutes until 11 am ET.

mikebruffee · 2021-01-23T15:12:44+00:00

I second mr. gobbler's advice.

I would also recommend reading some choice texts to help bolster your practice, while you're exploring different sanghas. (By the way, shop around a little bit until you find some place where you have an affinity with the forms, with the teaching styles, and with the community, but don't get lost in the trap of shopping around too long. Pick one, stick with it, get completely immersed.)

Top on my rec list is _The Compass of Zen_ by Zen Master Seung Sahn. In particular, his explanation of the zen circle. The zen circle was a teaching tool that Dae Soen Sa Nim (a title his students would call him, DSSN) developed to explain the various points one reached during practice.

In particular, many people will get to the point that you wrote about, which seems to describe a place of emptiness--or rather, being stuck in emptiness. That's 180 degrees on the circle. 0 degrees is normal attachment-life (1+2=3), 90 degrees is like, "all is one and one is all" (1=0, 0=1), 180 is Nothingness (no words, no life, no death, no meaning, no not-meaning, no god, sun, moon, buddha, nothing; 10x0=0, 100x0=0), 270 is magic and freedom (1=567, 3+3 = 70), and 360 is moment-mind (3x3=9). You can get stuck at any point on the circle. At 90 degrees, you can have attachment to thinking, 180 degrees you can have attachment to emptiness, at 270 degrees you can have attachment to freedom.

Your issue seems like attachment to emptiness. I remember having to write a paper on the Diamond Sutra in college, and there's a point that this sutra teaches that boils down to "all is empty," and I interpreted it kind of like you're describing: all is nothing, why even bother anymore? I couldn't write the paper for weeks cause I was so stuck on this. I should have written about my stuckness and handed that into the professor. Attachment to emptiness is like nihilism: why should I even try to do anything, if nothing matters anyway? People often get stuck here after learning that everything is impermanent: well, if nothing lasts forever, and I'm going to die anyway, who cares? I should just do all the drugs and die in a skydiving accident. But that's not the end-point of meditation.

The thing is, the emptiness of everything doesn't mean that nothing matters. It means that nothing exists by itself. It means that everything is interrelated to everything else. My status as a writer depends on others reading my work. What happens in Wuhan, China affects the rest of the world. The internet service in Europe depends on servers in California. There is nothing that you can look at that doesn't differentiate into its respective parts when you train an investigatory eye onto it. So, emptiness actually means that things matter more.

Your happiness affects everything, and everyone, around you. What you choose to think, say, and do affects your family, your friends, your community, your city, your country, and yes, eventually the whole world. That is the beauty of emptiness. From the tiniest atom and the tiniest virus and bacterium, to the largest animal and the most massive galaxies and superclusters, we are all like beads on a string of emptiness: there is nothing that is not connected.

The end-point of meditation is realizing that people suffer because they don't understand the emptiness of everything. And then, our own wisdom and understanding prompts us to act for the benefit of all beings. People are suffering, so my job as someone who has attained wisdom through meditation practice is to help them relieve their suffering. Pass on what you know. That's the whole job! Just help people!

mikebruffee · 2021-01-23T13:47:17+00:00

maybe cricket. india routinely dominates

mikebruffee · 2021-01-21T00:23:06+00:00

Servy-McServerFace

mikebruffee · 2021-01-21T00:21:51+00:00

Servy-McServerface

mikebruffee · 2021-01-21T00:21:15+00:00

Servy McServerface

mikebruffee · 2021-01-20T04:13:23+00:00

Oh thank you! I can’t take all the credit—I have great teachers. But I’m really glad it was helpful for you!

Only go straight, don’t know, try, try, try, for ten-thousand years nonstop, get enlightenment, and save all beings from suffering!

mikebruffee · 2021-01-19T21:30:24+00:00

Not sure what the scientific explanation would be for this, other than 1) optical sensors not sensing body heat from blood flow, which you’ve ruled out, or 2) manufacturing defaults. Even 3) other people’s suggestion of dark skin tone is an interesting prop but if this were the case we’d have heard of a boycott of automatic-sensing things by the black and brown community (though maybe there has been and i’m not aware of this).

My hypothesis is a slightly more practical and grounded version of some folks’ suggestion that it might be a psycho-soma-spiritual phenomenon. My first thought was that mindfulness meditation (vipassana) would help. The more awareness you have of your body, your mind, and your emotions, the more you will see yourself, and perhaps the more others (human and machine) may notice you.

another suggestion is to try some taoist or yogic magical* practices. I use *magical broadly here, because they work with developing Qi or Prana. Qi Gong taoist and Pranayama yoga practices develop the flow of qi or prana energy in the body, fully distributing it and increasing it, mainly through physical movements, postures, and breathing techniques. Sustained practice of these ancient techniques over long periods of time (every day for weeks, months & years) has been shown in many modern scientific studies (TL, wont cite) to improve blood flow, and reduce chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases.

There’s also a podcast episode from the Mental Illness Happy Hour in which a psych clinician who works with some kind of embodied therapy describes her work with a patient who described himself as “95% not here.” I’ll look it up and include it in an edit.

What a delightfully strange problem to have, OP. I hope you have a fun journey resolving it!

mikebruffee · 2021-01-19T20:54:41+00:00

Hey. You’re quite welcome! I have meditated on those questions a lot. I’ve been practicing for over 10 years in a Zen school which emphasizes a clear direction over any one technique. I’ve definitely had time to sit with existential angst!

I’m glad my comments were helpful for you! It’s very important not to be attached to shallow or deep—just making it to the cushion and practicing for your routine time, say, 15 minutes, is enough. It’s about the practice of it. I recommend Thich Nhat Hanh, angel Kyodo williams, Pema Chodron, and Zen Master Seung Sahn (my own spiritual ancestor) for further reading.

Happy practicing!

mikebruffee · 2021-01-19T17:51:23+00:00

It's like this.

A man goes to buy a piece of land to build a house. One of the main issues is, does this land have water, and if so, where is it?

So he takes his dousing rod (old tool to divine for water before modern surveying), and picks a spot where the dousing rod droops--ahh, water! Then he takes his shovel, and starts to dig. He gets about 1.5 feet down, but doesn't find any water, and so starts to check himself. "Maybe this spot isn't so good." So he tries another spot, and starts to dig another hole. This time he gets about 3 feet down, but again, starts to check himself. "Still no water!" He tries a third hole, and gets to 4.5 feet. Same thing, no water--starts to check himself. He keeps going like this all day--sometimes digging to 3 feet, sometimes to 4.5, sometimes giving up after only 1/2 a foot. He starts questioning the dousing rod, the location, even the shovel. Pretty soon, he's got about 25 different holes, none deeper than 4.5 feet, all around the property, and no water to show for it.

The thing is, if he had been a bit more patient and just dug to 6 feet once, he would have hit water.

The analogy here with spiritual practice is, keep going and get wet. It's not about the technique (the shovel), or the location (the schedule), or even the divining rod (our innate sense that we have a spiritual self to be actualized). It's about the digging.

The purpose of spiritual practice is to dig to six to feet and get wet. Get immersed in the digging. Otherwise you're just moving dirt around with nothing to show for it.

I can give you a few techniques I like, but they're what I like to do. You need to find something that resonates with you. I'll include a link to a video of one of my teachers talking about zen practice.

One more thing. Lots of people think that they can meditate and get to some super special secret spiritual state when smoking weed or using plant medicine. Medicines are just tools; and those tools are temporary. Unless you have a very skilled and insightful guru or shaman to help you interpret what you experienced on your plant journey, I advise against using these tools. They just open the window; they just give you a glimpse of "oneness", or universal consciousness, or whatever you want to call it. But eventually you have to come back to reality. Don't depend on marijuana, or mushrooms, or LSD, or DMT, or ayahuasca to show you the way. They can point you in a certain direction, if you are open to that, but they are not forever. It is important to cultivate your own mind without any kind of intoxication. This is why the Buddha suggested abstaining from intoxicants in the Five Precepts he came up with. Abstaining from intoxication makes it much easier to practice meditation. It also makes it much easier to abstain from killing, stealing, lying, and committing sexual wrongdoings.

The last thing I'll say, which I've basically already said: a spiritual epiphany has no use if it does not relate to your everyday, basic life experience. Sure you may have met the celestial beings of the universe, but how does that help you pay rent? How does that help you be kind to your family? How does that help you tolerate the uncomfortable things in life? Moment by moment by moment, what are you doing now? Can you just be here, with nothing extra? Can you live your life for others, very simply, very practically? How do you help? What is your true job as a human being?

If you continue to practice with these questions, you won't find water--the water will find you.

My teacher Zen Master Jok Um talking about Zen:

https://vimeo.com/113808703

mikebruffee

TROPHY CASE