The Secret Of The Golden Flower
As Buddhism’s influence expanded in Asia, it encountered many different cultures that appropriated elements of it. There was always a pressure to make these philosophies fit normal human relationships and worldliness. One of the examples of this is Taoism, which when Buddhism encountered it in China, ushered in a mutual influence. Meditation could be hermitic, but there could also be applications found for dealing with the business of daily life. In both philosophies, rumination is to be let go of, and harmony with others balanced. The ultimate source of consciousness of course was to be looked at as not an experience or a thing, but in the world of perception, there is always a compromise. As quoted in the Lankavatara Sutra nirvana is not a real thing to be sought after in the conventional way. “Mine isn’t a nirvana that exists, a created one or one with attributes, the consciousness that projects what we know. The cessation of this is my nirvana.” In the Taoist Discourse on Sitting and Forgetting, there are “three commandments of ‘reducing involvement in mundane affairs’, ‘having no desires’ and ‘calming the mind,’” where the “‘Dao will come to those who observe these three commandments regularly and constantly, even when they are not purposely seeking the Dao.'” As the practice develops “‘inwardly, one becomes unaware of one’s body, and outwardly, one becomes unaware of the universe’; ‘one penetrates a subtle communion with Dao and all worries disappear’; and when ‘one forgets both the world and himself, neither of these two instances are reflected in the mind.'” There is a deeper rest with these methods as conscious experience itself is relaxed, but it’s not a place to rest permanently when one is engaged with the world. It becomes a source for replenishing energy when needed, and in the longer term a weaning practice.
In The Secret of the Golden Flower, labels and metaphors are applied to this supreme rest as a guide for daily life. “The original spirit is also called the celestial mind, or the natural mind. A mode of awareness subtler and more direct than thought or imagination, it is central to the blossoming of the mind.” Because perception, craving, and action are so omnipresent in day to day experience, there’s an endless need to use negation as a way to point out what this source is not. “Using neither idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to the root source of awareness itself. The aim of this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation on its own contents…The experience of the blossoming of the golden flower is likened to light in the sky, a sky of awareness vaster than images, thoughts, and feelings, an unimpeded space containing everything without being filled. Thus it opens up an avenue to an endless source of intuition, creativity, and inspiration.” The concept of Oneness comes from encountering boundlessness in meditation.
Typical of all spirituality is the trap of always using the mind that is hooked on advertising, and the mind’s need to find a variety forms of treasure in the outer world, and to treat meditation in that same way. All that searching involves more rumination and controlled movements of the attention span. “There are very many alchemical teachings but all of them make temporary use of effort to arrive at effortlessness; they are not teachings of total transcendence and direct penetration. The doctrine I transmit directly brings up working with essence and does not fall into a secondary method. That is the best thing about it.” The rub of course is the need for effortful concentration, but it becomes a double-edged sword when the mind doesn’t know how to concentrate with less effort. Regardless, both insight and concentration has to work together as the mind gradually lets go of the habit of obsessive rumination. For many people, they will get more out of long periods of concentration than direct insight at the beginning, but when concentration becomes too dull with mastery, the mind is now ripe for insight. As I’ve mentioned many times before, an effortless waiting for the breath to move on its own, an acceptance of how automatic sensations work, leads to a reduced need to tighten and control muscles in the body, including the head. When approaching meditation for the first time, it may not be so easy to do, and an experience of Flow, or Jhana, is required to provide a comparison with the typical daily consciousness full of rumination. “On the whole beginners suffer from two kinds of problems: oblivion and distraction. There is a device to get rid of them, which is simply to rest the mind on the breath…The light is easily stirred and hard to stabilize. When you have turned it around for a long time, the light crystallizes…Generally speaking, the two afflictions of oblivion and distraction just require quieting practice to continue unbroken day after day until complete cessation and rest occur spontaneously…”
Mindfulness: Nirvana: https://rumble.com/v1grcgx-mindfulness-nirvana.html
How to gain Flow in 7 steps: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html
As things become more effortless, they never really become completely effortless. Concentration is always needed to bring the mind back to those bodily anchors, which in this case is to have some of the control to take a backseat and let the waiting and listening for bodily nature and self-regulating operations, to be as they are. When you notice distraction, you are already back and you can commence waiting for the breath to move independently. “The light itself is the creative; to turn it around is to restore it…Just persist in this method…It is also essential to understand that this device is not mechanical or forced. Just maintain a subtle looking and listening.” Any subtle movement of the attention span requires some effort. At first, one may react with a non-preference for thinking, but later on, a subtle awareness of tension in the head and body, related to thinking, is enough for awareness to naturally return to the body. A looping judgement about thinking and intellectualization can be efficiently worked out of habit and economized. “When you are not sitting quietly, you may be distracted without knowing it; but once you are aware of it, distraction itself becomes a mechanism for getting rid of distraction.” On the other hand, if you do any math problems, ruminate about how to handle difficult people, make any complicated plans, the reality is that you need some effort to use memories and plans to think, control, and act. Any attempts at control involve effort, and a resistance can be detected when what is not preferential arises. One can easily notice energy expended when this is happening in real time. For example, when in a meditative state, one can scientifically compare the tension between a clear mind and one that is beginning to rehearse or ruminate. There can also conversely be an appreciation for the thoughts that arise spontaneously in the clear mind, because they are often the most creative and sharp when the mind is well rested. Even if there is some effort encountered in those situations, there’s often a zest to them, and there is an insight that a complete shutdown of creativity would be just a derangement, or a self-induced forgetting or dementia.
Deep meditation is simply for deeper rest, not for a lobotomy. In fact, mental rehearsal is a big factor in developing skills, so a minimal effort is required before a skill gradually becomes more effortless. Accepting that there is no conscious panacea in spirituality, unless one is effortlessly dead, can reduce the clinging to some absolute perfect rest that is unattainable in the midst of vigorous thinking and activity. This is especially true when the mind is well rested and interested, where effort is actually enjoyable and the “problem” is moot. Also from the understanding of psychoanalysis, the practice of free association, which is just a repackaged form of meditation, it releases past resentments with the Oedipus Complex, which in general is an anger towards human obstacles of all kinds. There’s a great need to vent, rage, and exhaust emotions related to any conflicts about goals, property, and boundaries. From the point of view of spirituality, one has to be willing to let go of worldliness with the insight that those things people fight over are not worth it in the long run. No object or experience in the past has ever given complete satisfaction, as can be proven by one’s further desires for new things. Each individual has to pick their battles to not be a doormat, but a lot of things can be let go of on the periphery. Businesses, governments, acquaintance groups, and families are all full of subtle or more overt conflicts and resentments. Toxic people also leave their wake all over society so a sense of pragmatic minimalism makes more sense for a contemplative lifestyle in the modern world. Since all good experiences require memory to appreciate, the height of conventional appreciation is a Proustian recall that happens when a past experience cannot be relived, then the precious memory becomes a perfume of appreciation, precisely because we desire what we cannot access, assuming one still has good enough memory in old age. One can use this as a guide for what to chuck out of one’s home, or as Marie Kondo suggested, “the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.”
Meditation: Trap Doors: https://rumble.com/v1grer7-meditation-trap-doors.html
Knight of Cups | The Awakening 9:48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFVFqVlfe8Y
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
There is an awareness in these spiritual texts that conditioning is powerful and can only be gradually weakened. “The ancients’ method of transcending the world, refining away the dregs of darkness to restore pure light, is just a matter of dissolving the lower soul and making the higher soul whole…’The light rays of the human body all flow upward into the aperture of space.’ If you get this, long life is herein, and so is transcendence of life.” The rest is in this aperture, but it’s all encompassing. ‘The words focus on the center are more sublime. The center is omnipresent; the whole universe is within it. This indicates the mechanism of Creation; you focus on this to enter the gate, that is all. To focus means to focus on this as a hint, not to become rigidly fixated. The meaning of the word focus has life to it; it is very subtle.” The searching for this center has to eventually surrender to what is effortless. “The terms stopping and seeing basically cannot be separated. They mean concentration and insight. Hereafter, whenever thoughts arise, you don’t need to sit still as before, but you should investigate this thought: where is it? Where does it come from? Where does it disappear? Push this inquiry on and on over and over until you realize it cannot be grasped; then you will see where the thought arises. You don’t need to seek out the point of arising any more. ‘Having looked for my mind, I realize it cannot be grasped.’ ‘I have pacified your mind for you.'”
Since thoughts arise out of nothing, the need to find the source of thoughts becomes another burden to put down. “So should one have no thoughts? It is impossible to have no thoughts. Should one not breathe? It is impossible not to breathe. Nothing compares to making the affliction itself into medicine, which means to have mind and breath rest on each other. Therefore tuning the breath should be included in turning the light around.” This is the beginning of integration of spirituality and worldly life. Different senses and perceptions point to the same effortless source. “This method makes use of two lights. One is the light of the ears, one is the light of the eyes. The light of the eyes means the external sun and moon, combining their lights; the light of the ears means the internal sun and moon, combining their vitalities. However, vitality is congealed and stabilized light; ‘they have the same source but different names.’ Therefore clarity of hearing and seeing are both one and the same spiritual light.”
Activities of daily life include thinking and awareness, and concentration is more about prioritizing peace and focusing on what to do now, while staying away from distraction about the past and irrelevant future. “Killing the mind does not mean quietism, it means undivided concentration. Buddha said, ‘Place the mind on one point, and everything can be done.'” Even as distractions return, the habit of awareness can permeate them to a certain extent and reduce the amount of time that one is carried away. “As for unawares oblivion and oblivion of which you become aware, there is an inconceivable distance between them. Unawares oblivion is real oblivion; oblivion that you notice is not completely oblivious, clear light is in this…Oblivion means the lower soul is in complete control, whereas the lower soul is a lingering presence in distraction. Oblivion is ruled by pure darkness and negativity.” Integration can further be developed by including this kind of rest in action, so that actions are without too much effort, or too little. Even “looking inward” is more like resting in natural awareness without fixating too much one way or another. “What is ‘looking’? It is the light of the eyes spontaneously shining…What is ‘listening’? It is the light of the ears spontaneously listening…Listening means listening to the soundless; looking means looking at the formless.” One needs to recognize form, but without fixation. This can help Buddhist students understand better the value of sensation and being with the body, while treating thoughts as passing sensations, as read in the Bahiya Sutta. “Then, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bahiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress.”
The Bahiya Sutta: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.1.10.than.html
As resting in the natural develops, with a combination of insight and continuity of attention, non-hedonic pleasure begins to flower. “When there is uninterrupted continuity in quiet, the spirit and feelings are joyful and happy, as if one where intoxicated, or in a bath. This is called positive harmony pervading the body, its golden efflorescence suddenly blooming. Once ‘myriad pipes are all silent,’ and ‘the bright moon is in the sky,’ you feel the whole earth as a realm of light. This is the opening up of the luminosity that is the substance of mind, the proper release of the golden flower.” The promise of this practice is to provide a spiritual strength, when non-hedonic peace is preferred over other pleasures. This new stability of mind can make one more adventurous, because the seclusion becomes more portable. “Once the whole body is filled completely, you do not fear wind or frost. When you meet things that make people feel desolate in facing them, your vital spirit shines even brighter. The house is built of yellow gold, the terrace is white jade; the rotten things of the world you bring to life with a puff of true energy. Red blood becomes milk, the physical body is all gold and jewels. This is the great stabilization of the golden flower…As you go along practicing turning the light around, you need not give up your normal occupation. An ancient said, ‘When matters come up, one should respond; when things come up, one should discern…’ If you manage affairs with accurate mindfulness, then the light is not overcome by things, so it will do to repeat this formless turning around of the light time and again.” This is the form of renunciation that is authentic, because it’s not a forcing out with internal conflict, ambivalence, and miserliness. Taoist integration can deepen, and activity can continue because one is choosing available and accessible activities. Effort is not too much or too little. “If you can look back again and again into the source of mind, whatever you are doing, not sticking to any image of person or self at all, then this is ‘turning the light around wherever you are.’ This is the finest practice…The essence of the great Way is to act purposefully without striving. Because of not striving yet acting purposefully, one does not fall into indifferent emptiness, dead voidness.”
The final perfection, which I think is practically impossible, is one that requires a lot more boundaries and a monastic, hermitic lifestyle at a minimum. One still requires donations to connect one’s feeding to the general economy, which again means someone has to strive, work and donate for others to live according to this perfection. In a world of violence and threats, there’s always situations where one has to resort to survival reactivity for self-defence. It may be possible for some people to achieve this by purposefully neglecting survival, but I suspect that it’s only a goal or principle to guide one closer to that inhuman ideal. “Now when you turn the light around to shine inward, [the mind] is not aroused by things; negative energy then stops, and the flower of light radiates a concentrated glow, which is pure positive energy…Now if in all activity and rest you abide in heaven while in the midst of humanity, the sovereign is then the real human being. When it moves, you move with it; the movement is the root of heaven. When it is at rest, you rest with it; the rest is the moon cavern.”
Zen Master Gu Ja – Just eat, sleep and shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HHFH2oQxNA
What feels more realistic is the trial and error attempts at integration that creates true knowledge through experience and bodily anchoring. “If the celestial mind keeps still and you miss the right timing in action, then that is an error of weakness. If you act in response to it after the celestial mind has acted, this is an error of staleness…Once the celestial mind stirs, then use pure attention to raise it up to the chamber of the creative, with the light of spirit focused on the crown of the head to guide it. This is acting in time.” The translator Thomas Cleary, summarizes that “the golden flower practice can stop thoughts temporarily, but it does not warp reason. It enables one to think deliberately rather than compulsively. This use of mind opens a wider space for thought, with the ability to think and observe thought with detached clarity, so that one can put down useless thoughts and take up useful thoughts by means of independent discernment and will. The speed of its direct perception can also see at a glance where a train of thought will lead, conserving untold mental energy.”
The Way of Flow
The reality for most people is that there are numerous micro-tensions in action, and because there’s always some subtle use of energy, real life obstacles can cause considerable frustration for people at any level of meditative skill. It’s not always how we miss the right timing to match an effortless breath with an action. So much of our intellectual life requires mental processing power, thoughts about choices that do matter to us emotionally, and unless a person is a complete renunciant, any form of pleasure that is experienced will have a natural clinging to want to repeat. The vast majority of readers are not going be like that. For most people, meditation is for rest, and even with integration, there is an enjoyment with thinking and acting that was never seen as problematic. What is often not talked enough about in spirituality is the value of concentration in daily life and how it can facilitate moments of effortlessness, or how Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi labels it: Flow.
For Csikszentmihalyi, our desires are helpful in maintaining a cohesive self. When you want to understand beauty, develop a new skill, and try to keep your body and mind intact and ordered against chaos, there is a kind of Tao in that. In Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology, he went beyond the typical need to match skills and challenges, with the intention of avoiding boredom and stress, so as to understand the psychological necessity in concentration. There is a kind of Tao in how he integrated so many of his earlier influences in psychology and philosophy, so the applicability is universal. Just like in Freudian psychoanalysis, self-preoccupation, a form of tiring narcissism that can appear when there is insecurity, it can force one to over effort into mimicry, acting and inauthenticity. People can’t easily be themselves, and like in The Cure song Jumping Someone Else’s Train, it’s easy to be distracted by others who seem to be absorbed and happy. “According to the classical theories, a young person wants to imitate an adult who has status and power, someone who has control over desired resources, who can reward and punish. Socialization is supposed to be based primarily on fear, envy, and greed.” Of course, the solution is to get absorbed in your own projects. The great thing about people is that they have different talents and abilities, so their point of absorption where skills meet challenges will be different, and therefore move against a hive mind. Society also requires differences between people to facilitate trade, and to reduce conflict over scarcity.
The Cure – Jumping Someone Else’s Train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1oWf07FRCw
Being distracted by others and what they are doing has two pathways. One is that of envy, with self-preoccupation, or that of inspiration and concentration. For Mihaly, those inspirational moments should send one into an absorption afterwards, and so life goes on and time flies when you’re having fun, or at least you’ve found yourself being interested. This is much better than being a wet blanket where “…self-awareness interrupts involvement in an [otherwise] enjoyable activity.” Going further than that, the concentration itself works with activity to build a sense of self. Someone fractured by endless imitation and distraction will be stuck. “The self shows itself as a pattern of information in consciousness; more specifically, it is information that stands for, or represents, the information-processing organism itself. It is composed of past experiences strung together by acts of intentionality and shaped by feedback…Being a pattern, the self requires inputs of energy to keep its order intact. Like consciousness itself, of which it is one of the contents, the self does not keep its shape unless appropriate information is constantly provided to perpetuate its existence. To put it in the simplest possible terms, the self survives by assimilating feedback to intentions.”
The monastic attitude in all religions is against endless Flow, because the distractions and interruptions can be jarring, but at the same time, many who meditate don’t want to completely destroy the sense of self, and even many in spiritual practices have no intention of destroying their mental narrative or attempt to forget it. “This is the reason why religions that try to abolish the self prescribe giving up desires and purposeful actions. Renouncing worldly attachments is the central method used to destructure the self in Zen, Sufi, Yoga, Judeo-Christian, and several other spiritual traditions…Most people in most cultures, however, learn to develop their selves rather than aiming to dismantle them. In fact, once a self system is established in consciousness, it will try to maintain itself and increase its power. It can do so by directing the energies of the organism to produce feedback congruent with its intentions…Paradoxically, when we focus attention on the self, by so doing we deprive it of the sustenance it needs…”
“By contrast, concentration on an activity produces feedback which nurtures the self. This is especially true if the activity is freely chosen, if it presents opportunities for complex interactions and allows the formulation of increasingly unpredictable intentions. As a result of such an activity—and assuming it was moderately successful—the self emerges strengthened from the evidence of its accomplishments. So the self gets lost when we search for it, and reveals itself when we forget it…A non alienated self and the ability to find flow are the best predictors of happiness. Another way to view this pattern is within Mead’s conceptual framework. Attending to the self reveals the ‘me,’ or the self as object. Strictly speaking, the ‘I’ can never be found in consciousness. We can only sense it in action, so to speak; we know of it through its works. At best the ‘I’ appears as a flicker at the periphery of vision as we pursue some difficult or improbable task. For only then is the ‘I,’ or the active, self-determining agency of the self, revealed…” This means that the self appears ephemerally when we control the environment in a successful way and feel some sort of elation or satisfaction. What is left after the feeling vanishes is the conceptual self and evidence of the work completed. Alienation happens when others sabotage the work, criticize it unfairly, or try to take credit for it. Alienation also appears when attention from authority figures becomes the goal. Intrinsic motivation is seeing for oneself the value of one’s work and how it helps oneself and loved ones. Surplus work can be traded on the market for the desired surplus of others. Imitation is necessary to find examples of pleasure and enjoyment for learning, as long as the pleasures are authentic and one is honest about the consequences. Those who imitate run the danger of imitating all the bad things from the role model in the effort to assimilate the good.
“Enjoyment builds the self. But the self destroys enjoyment; that is, when we reflect on the self, the interaction is interrupted, concentration collapses, and the feedback stops. Thus in the long run self-awareness is inimical to the self, because it interferes with the flow of information that is necessary to maintain it…Consciousness and the self are fragile structures of order that need constant inputs of information energy to expand or even to keep their form intact. The kind of information which can do this has certain common properties: it can be assimilated with neither too little nor too much difficulty; it presents opportunities for interaction with clear goals, rules and feedback; it allows concentration without distraction or ambiguity.”
Now, there is a need for some self-preoccupation so that one can be aware of what one is doing wrong, but without concentration, the energy needed to make changes, the self-esteem energy, can be depleted and cause analysis paralysis. With endless imitation with our electronic devices, advertising, and pressures to keep up with the Joneses, it’s easy to be found “jumping someone else’s train.” Meditation in the modern world isn’t necessarily about going to nirvana and to remove survival attachment from the world, but to use it as a way to find rest and to regenerate interest. The intuition found in meditation often knows where to find those spots where skills and challenges meet in a good way and slowing down can be a way to get in touch with authentic inspiration. Some of the things we like and want often have a lot of entropy, wear and tear. Addictions can appear where the sensitivity to consequences is dulled. Resting in meditation can help to relax impulsivity and the mental peace created can provide space for intuition that has been stifled. One can also be more assertive and interact with those intuitions and ask questions. Anita Moorjani provided some examples: “What is my body trying to tell me?” “How can I love myself more?” “Why do I attract these relationships?” “How do I let go of these relationships?” There are endless examples to pay attention to, but it can be simplified by assessing how energetic or how heavy intuitions are. Is there any excitement, lightness or peace? Sometimes you think you want to do something and you get a relief when you realize that it’s much better not to do anything at all.
Connecting with Inner Guidance – Anita Moorjani: https://youtu.be/AJjpTeAFw30?si=Ejm8i_p3OJjMo7fG
How to connect with your inner wisdom – Michele Theberge: https://youtu.be/1evyf4CiATA?si=0iYcWMrCjFS2auA6
How To Use Your Intuition (The Inner Voice) – Teal Swan: https://youtu.be/eiiJBfIVmJo?si=_kradTlbdlZ9EkUw
The Hidden Link Between Anger and Self-Loyalty – Teal Swan: https://youtu.be/ehkhdfWf5B0?si=tmyNTkqJ3FqLEih1
A Foundation in Silence – Adyashanti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-EsjO8lndM
Still small voice – Adyashanti: https://youtube.com/shorts/W_h5PqrDIbg?si=Kk3lIUylOXDTftHP
Some people want to formally remember any perceptions and jot them down in notes. Some of the crazier, stranger, cryptic symbols can take longer periods of time to fit into an understanding. Different camps arise where positivity is more emphasized, but others find that negativity has a lot of truth to it. One of the pleasant elements of dealing with the negative is that if there are any areas where actions are possible, you can relax and not ruminate when those problems are in the past. Conversely, positive intuition tends to point to environments and situations where activities and behaviors can be optimized. What environments would be best for these skills? This is a big clue for those interested in career advancement or career change. The smaller the leap between transferrable skills and a new position, the more successful that transition will be. You don’t need a career counselor to tell you how you should feel. Author Alain De Botton, a very successful writer for example, job shadowed a career counselor in his The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, and you would think that his test results would confirm that. Instead he was assessed as a “candidate [displaying] average abilities which would render him well-suited to a range of middle-ranking administrative and commercial posts.” Since all transitions have gaps in knowledge, one can drop a perfectionist attitude towards an unending seamless life experience. A lower expectation can help people tolerate imperfection, and the role of concentration now increases in importance. Being able to breathe effortlessly while waiting for a slow computer, for example, can save pockets of energy. For Alain, high expectations have to be supported with large doses of reality, or self-preoccupation will return and destroy any potential pleasures that could exist in more mundane jobs. Concentration allows for appreciation in a normal humdrum daily life, but high expectations could lead to disappointment, resentment, and maybe revolution. “I left the [Career Counseling] company newly aware of the unthinking cruelty discreetly coiled within the magnanimous bourgeois assurance that everyone can discover happiness through [Freud’s] work and love. It isn’t that these two entities are invariably incapable of delivering fulfillment, only that they almost never do so.” When you make success an entitlement, whole populations can potentially hate their own being and motivate them to “burn it all down,” so to say. This is why comparison and envy can be so destructive, yet a person who is currently in concentration is consciously experiencing greater well-being than a rich person stuck in self-preoccupation.
Because things aren’t optimum, one doesn’t have to be overly afraid of some negative feelings arising from self-preoccupation, from time to time, because if those situations are used as a compass, then opposite situations can be sought out as a way to create meaning and provide fresh new goals. Role models who are more positive tend to be more authentic teachers and provide a crucial healthy avenue for an onlooker stuck in self-preoccupation. “It is, rather, the conviction they conveyed that what they were doing was worth doing, that it was intrinsically valuable…He could not fake enthusiasm, conviction, or belief either for our sake or for his own…Meaning cannot be taught; it can only be demonstrated in one’s own actions.” In Mihaly’s definition of an inspirational teacher, positive role models provide examples of a possible future for students. Inauthentic teachers do the opposite. “Education fails when becoming an adult is no longer a desirable option…To be convinced, a youth has to feel that being an adult can be meaningful. This in turn requires exposure to persons who derive intrinsic rewards from adult roles. Similarly, young people will not want to become philosophers or scientists if their teachers do not enjoy philosophy or science.”
Not everyone of course is mentally healthy enough for this. Some may dread the most basic actions because of their woundedness and depression. Mihaly quoted a healthy example from Dante. “In every action…the main intention of the agent is to express his own image; thus it is that every agent, whenever he acts, enjoys the action. Because everything that exists desires to be, and by acting, the agent unfolds his being, [so] action is naturally enjoyable.” Mihaly wanted a playfulness in agents, but not to the point of being aimless. There also has to be enough seriousness to try to do something well. The power of the role model is when their pleasure becomes confirmation that certain challenges can be fun. “It is important for teachers and parents not to emphasize too much the instrumental aspects of education. The more learning is talked about as simply a ticket to a well-paying job, the less easy it will be for students to realize its intrinsic rewards. The most effective message is one that is embodied in the adults’ living example. A parent or teacher who reads complex books for enjoyment, who listens to stimulating music in free time, who gets involved in ideas and in challenging conversations, is a concrete proof that learning can be rewarding in and of itself.” In this case, the intrinsic benefits would be the pleasure that manifests when performance is good in one way or another.
People have to take in rules at times from society, like the rules of a sport, but eventually the agent has to be able to assess for themselves if they are getting better. When the activity is discontinued, the intuition can light up to return to the activity when a viable way to improve dawns on the mind. It’s always pointing to the appropriate challenges and skills. “People voluntarily concentrate on tasks when they perceive environmental demands for action matching their capacity to act. In other words, when situational challenges balance personal skills, a person tends to attend willingly.” This means that the new information being assimilated can’t be too overwhelming. “It seems that every time people enjoy what they are doing, or in any way transcend ordinary states of existence, they report specific changes in attentional processes. To be conscious of pleasurable experiences one must narrow the focus of attention exclusively on the stimuli involved. What we usually call ‘concentration’ is this intensely focused attention on a narrow range of stimuli…[For example,] a university professor described his state of mind when rock climbing, which is his favorite leisure activity: ‘When I start to climb, it’s as if my memory input had been cut off. All I can remember is the last thirty seconds, and all I can think ahead is the next five minutes…With tremendous concentration the normal world is forgotten.'” Like in a good meditation, the mind focuses on the just right amount of information to engage in the activity without being distracted. “Optimal experiences occur when a person voluntarily focuses his attention on a limited stimulus field, while aversive experiences involve involuntary focusing of attention.”
Because of this, Mihaly has a reminder for social engineers who want to bend the world in their direction. “The intense concentration required for complex achievement appears to be available only when given willingly…” Therefore the “voluntary focusing of attention on a limited stimulus field is necessary to achieve socially valued goals.” This emphasis can also be applied to parenting, to allow children some freedom of choose, and a relaxed concentration can be role modeled to convince kids that it can be enjoyable when concentration is chosen freely. Children that can develop concentration and apply it to as many activities as possible will stand a good chance of enjoying life and have the ability to make their own life choices independently and authentically. Surrendering desire then becomes an aid for rest and provides many experiences to help people practice facing their own mortality.
WEF Spokesman Unwittingly Endorses Trump For President! – The Jimmy Dore Show: https://youtu.be/Y3-ICqFkjjU?si=bSCWbfO7s0hF2d9p
Worldly life, Negotiation, and Conflict
In a modern world full of digital trappings, and no matter how hermitic and secluded a person’s lifestyle is, it’s all interdependent. Because families, economies, political environments, and technologies are all interconnected, a monastic lifestyle cannot teach enough skills that are suited for a householder lifestyle. Even further, the pathological side of worldly life is not something you can shield yourself from all the time. Violence, crime, and conflicts of all kinds can potentially arise with a regularity, especially in big cities where a larger population is competing for space. The Buddhist Papañca typically in these situations with others, goes into thinking about those others, and how to predict their behavior. In psychoanalysis, it’s ruminating about objects, or thinking about people you find difficult, and having the pressure to predict how they will behave. It leads to those automatic thoughts and plans for the kind of responses you would like to perform. As noted in my episode on Trap Doors in regards to spirituality, one has to have people skills, especially if one is to have boundaries and have the ability to say no in worldly life. Negotiation is a worldly skill.
An irony in spirituality is that when you apply boundaries, you kind of are a little hermitic already. For example, people who have suffered the abuse cycle, of intermittent reinforcement, that gradually increases the punishments, a predictable C-PTSD that arises afterwards makes many want to be hermitic once more. The cycle is typically a form of idealization (rewards and praise), devaluation (punishment and criticism), triangulation (playing people off of each other), and discard (rejection). That cycle is in businesses, governments, families, friendships, and intimate relationships. The irony of modern life after the introduction of digital creativity is that many people are already living a hermitic lifestyle because of these toxic relationships. Some people didn’t wait for a discard phase and just left because it was so predictable. Adding even more heaps of irony is the fact that spiritual institutions are also supplying these toxic patterns for your astonishment, and what was a promised escape often ends in absurdity. In response to that, many modern people find themselves floating around in schizoid lifestyles with a mastery for sublimation in personal projects. This is to the point where they can’t be easily labeled as Schizoid when their personal projects are the only ones they have enough confidence in to control and achieve a modicum of fulfillment. Unfortunately, introverts are often times treated as if they are potentially anti-social dangerous people, when in a lot of cases they are busy and engaged, and sometimes more so than than those criticizing them. And it also doesn’t help single people when they try to make friends and end up becoming a third wheel or a potential rival for a mate, which often happens when psychologists push patients to get into the love and work dynamic more assertively. Alone and single people also have to deal with lost employment with those employers who dislike the independence of single workers and who prefer those who have marriages, children and mortgages. Those types can’t uproot so easily and are forced to be obsequious to bosses, no matter how unfair the treatment.
Meditation: Trap Doors: https://rumble.com/v1grer7-meditation-trap-doors.html
We Don’t Get It Until We Go Through It – NARCDAILY -You Are Not Alone: https://youtu.be/VaNlx8PHjro?si=eK6enlQixrNvnacF
Why Your Silence Is The Key To Healing – NARCDAILY -You Are Not Alone: https://youtu.be/D0kj7cJ2QS4?si=wUwNFe-Z0nAcFMuW
Sublimation – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gv2fr-sublimation-sigmund-freud.html
Schizoid Trailer: https://youtu.be/az1RqTxCIvs?si=g9DRNbljlMdY2AE_
Schizoid Personality Disorder | InternetKindness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lowhBuZambA
Discrimination Against Singles – Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/happy-singlehood/202201/discrimination-against-singles
Why I Don’t Have Many Friends – Natasha Newton: https://youtu.be/N6wdBDOVAqg?si=oCnKRqEvmDfZbSzQ
I have no friends (in my 50’s) The Unexpected Gypsy: https://youtu.be/ZDxc7OAOq_E?si=mrqGlurCj2IkE_ce
I didn’t have friends most of my life – being ‘unsocial’ and finding belonging – The Cottage Fairy: https://youtu.be/9vcQqPLDDgo?si=ywGSnc7e0tgDJfyP
The reason why I have no friends – Verdant Vanille: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5GjobP6dRA
I Have No Friends | Why I Don’t and How I’ve Learned to be Okay – Emily Joy: https://youtu.be/umpAC4pKFV4?si=QSEXcwQH-GqIU1tw
Loneliness improved my Art and Mindset – Valerie Lin: https://youtu.be/fR-37iygzsY?si=LIABk9DcQ76SBDN2
Live ALONE- you are enough – Reflections of Life: https://youtu.be/VfgWldeGsIQ?si=xCLXKGW7o7EF6JH3
Being ugly: My Experience – Never Give Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n5nOEJtrYA
Why Being Ugly is a Blessing – James Ray Gregory: https://youtu.be/r50r3r0ahFc?si=9AkKlU0cAZ2JrXM-
In a metropolitan modern life, many are also experimenting with worldly lifestyles by moving to different countries. There are both people wanting to live in another country where they become a visible minority, and there are those who grew up as a minority and want to move to countries of origin, to escape the feeling of being “Othered.” In a New York Times article Blaxit, by Colette Coleman, African Americans described the burdens they left behind in the U.S. “Mr. Bradley, 63, who moved with his wife, Marlene, 69, from Los Angeles to Rwanda in 2021 before settling in Zanzibar, said that arriving in Kigali felt like ‘a load off my shoulders’…Mrs. Bradley also felt relieved and safer in Africa. ‘You don’t feel like you’re looking over your shoulder,’ she said…In Uganda, [Mrs. Kirya-Ziraba] no longer faces ‘a thousand cuts’ of racism, she said. For years she had made accommodations, big and small, to try to control other people’s perceptions: smiling to appear nonthreatening, buying nicer clothes to avoid being mistaken for a domestic worker, and straightening her hair to be seen as more professional. She knew she had been acquiescing, but, she said, ‘I didn’t know the extent until I didn’t have to do any of that.'” The reality of why there’s so much conflict becomes the buried-lead in the story. African Americans in their example do have cultural aspects that are different from the ones found in many African countries, so the feeling of escape can be short-lived. For example, some countries are very militant against LGBT individuals. “In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act enacted last year punishes gay sex with life imprisonment and in some cases death. Similar bills have been introduced in other African countries, such as Ghana and Kenya.”
Blaxit: Tired of Racism, Black Americans Try Life in Africa – Colette Coleman: https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2024%2F02%2F16%2Frealestate%2Fafrican-americans-africa.html
10 Reasons Why African Americans Leave Africa And Never Return – Freedom Chasers: https://youtu.be/7ikjODzn1BA?si=CgZRxetujQCrpjNb
3 Reasons People Don’t Stay in Africa – Awaken With Mark: https://youtu.be/udz9jaPK6eM?si=VUQFbakf3y9qQE3q
10 Reasons Why You Should NOT Move To Africa – Freedom Chasers: https://youtu.be/HB51GPOjL_Q?si=VPlT6Go2_1KazyRe
Ugly Truths About Ghana by Gabby Mack: https://youtu.be/Mjvu8SqxMOc?si=QYX4ZHqqAsrSLG4q
Why are you gay? – Poopoophobic Pasta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLU-Q2KlH4
Eat the Poo Poo extended – Poopoophobic Pasta: https://youtu.be/KhmUqJzu9eI?si=qXthHV5J9UG058x5
Uganda president signs anti-gay law that includes death penalty – NBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l7_e8_BqTQ
Why Western Men Are Manipulated By Thai Women: https://youtu.be/fh7S8X5oA7Y?si=YAmaW3G3Qx8y4uq9
Do Black People Face Racism in Japan? – Seeds Of Success: https://youtu.be/aT3r4BX29sw?si=DctOxy9dbvb6l0-f
“Don’t Come To Tokyo …” – The Black Experience Japan: https://youtu.be/srXYLdW15sM?si=mbuxD8OLNTUxD3j6
Why South Koreans are so racist towards people from certain countries – Korean Jin: https://youtu.be/b8Hib_epDGY?si=CWNAV0kjDqcpIucG
India being racist to China vs China being racist to India – Mexico-Columbia: https://youtube.com/shorts/jAoRkThRAD8?si=ld_O71Fpx5i0XnaZ
Are Indians racist? – Hindustan Times: https://youtu.be/HPsAFmtrupc?si=pPmgamgyV2ufmNxs
Is the South racist? We asked South Carolinians | AJ+: https://youtu.be/h2TPlxBIvOQ?si=ZiAjZqHoSDVyrJ6y
Visit The South – 10 Things That Will SHOCK You About The South USA – Wolters World: https://youtu.be/szbyA3Bic_w?si=q_h1M9H55qC8sk6h
What’s Dating In Russia Like For Black People – Afro Russia TV: https://youtu.be/mjNfMft86kE?si=cz4OcviQDp21qlca
Racism in Russia is Tough – Agent Nesty: https://youtu.be/QhUFXrU75dA?si=0OJUQPQF7zzx1whv
When trying to love and work, clashes over values remind readers that what people are truly fighting about goes deeper than culture and goes right down to personality preferences, ethical preferences, and skill levels. People want to work with others where skills match comfortably and workers are cooperative. As soon as that becomes impossible, there is a realization that it often doesn’t matter what country a person is living in or which cultures are involved. Clashes of preferences continue. “You’re coming here and you’re expecting that everybody’s Black, so I’m going to be OK,” Ms. Davis said. ‘But then you get here and then you’re being ‘othered’ — viewed as different and separate…The ‘othering’ goes both ways. Some Ghanaians feel discrimination from Black Americans, said Ekua Otoo, 36, a Ghanaian in Accra. Black American communities there can be insular, she said, and their businesses often prefer to hire Black Americans, or Indians and Lebanese, for senior positions, while qualified Ghanaians are excluded or underpaid. ‘If you’re leaving the U.S. to come to Ghana thinking about ‘I’m coming to the motherland,’ at least treat us right,’ Ms. Otoo said.”
Since people can gaslight and be defensive, the psychology ideal to treat people only according to their actions and behaviors, can be hard because you have to watch yourself all the time. When criticizing someone for their work, accuracy and fairness of the criticism is important, but it may not be taken that way by the employee, and if certain cultures are preferred, because work communication and training goes more smoothly, you end up more with a valu-ism that underlies what people feel as racism. All employees that feel daunted when they know they have to learn a new skill also have to watch if they are deflecting their negative emotions and blaming others. Because everyone has some values, including professed nihilists, who would protest if they were ever robbed and beaten, there is always a potential for conflict. This gets compounded by the fact that humans are social animals, and therefore influence and imitate. All humans in all cultures seduce, proselytize, convince, argue, debate, protest and demand cooperation and conformity. Clear communication about values and what is expected on the job has to be applied with fairness and no favoritism so that people can trust the environment will reward good work when it’s done. Anything that goes into identity politics is destined for conflict and resentment. Of course, nepotism and cronyism is alive and well in all countries so the challenge continues on. The patterns can be found everywhere if you are willing to look, but those businesses that can learn to bridge the gap between cultures, who provide excellent training, flexible jobs, and fair treatment will likely end up with the highest ratings and be the most sought after by workers with the highest skills. Those with the lowest skills typically have to tolerate worse conditions until they are able to negotiate with their experience, and possibly trade-up into better work environments. Absurdity shadows all human endeavor and can’t be eliminated completely.
Because the world is absurd in many ways, absurdity has to be included in philosophical thoughts about engagement with the world, and it can only be the world as it is. Albert Camus understood absurdity and its constant presence. “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
The Secret of the Golden Flower – Thomas Cleary: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780062501936/
Daoist Meditation – Wu Jyh Cherng: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781848192119/
The Lankavatara Sutra – Red Pine: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781619020993/
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781607747307/
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Intrinsic Motivation and Effective Teaching In Applications of Flow in Human Development and Education. Springer, Dordrecht.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Toward a Psychology of Optimal Experience. Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology, 209–226.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1978). Attention and the Holistic Approach to Behavior. In: Pope, K.S., Singer, J.L. (eds) The Stream of Consciousness. Emotions, Personality, and Psychotherapy. Springer, Boston, MA.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work – Alain De Botton: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780771026034/
Robert Dubin, Joseph E. Champoux, Central life interests and job satisfaction, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Volume 18, Issue 2, 1977, Pages 366-377
The Myth of Sisyphus – Albert Camus: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780525564454/
Contemplative Practice: https://psychreviews.org/category/contemplativepractice/