Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: mind

  • Theme:

    Grasping Desire

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    1–2 minutes

    We have a desire; we chase it, catch it, and consume it. We then need another passion. Our hands are full, but as we grasp for more, we inevitably drop once meaningful pieces of ourselves.

    There is a "one-in-one-out" policy when we relate to desire as captured objects. You can clutch them to you but only hold so many; thus, they fall away as you dart about in pursuit.

    Or, you can let them pass through you as they arise, enjoying them without possessing them. This is love without attachment or ego making demands or expecting reciprocation. And you are still present and full of enjoyment without the grasping.

  • Theme:

    Ignore the Anomaly

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    1–2 minutes

    To be curious about the anomaly requires us to spend time and effort studying what does not fit in. Our fixation is disruptive to the standard ways of thinking.

    Most people don’t want new ways of thinking or unique insight: we want stability. Even when presented with a new truth, we graft it onto our old ideas, slightly expanding our worldview without having to rethink or dismiss our intuitive normalcy.

  • Theme:

    curiosity is insubordination

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    1–2 minutes

    To wonder and pry at the cracks is a threat. We claim to praise curiosity while we actively hinder it because it destroys the steady normative contentment we flow along.
    idea from Vladimir Nabokov

  • Theme:

    Self-help is not a fix, but a focus

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    1–2 minutes

    Reading self-help or jumping into therapy doesn’t fix you; it focuses you.
    You will not remember or fulfill all the advice: we change slowly with vast effort over extended periods.
    Our biological imperative is to bypass the hard work of change in favor of novelty and laziness, and we must surround ourselves with persistent reminders.

  • Theme:

    Repeated Idiocy: Frustration as Life

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    1–2 minutes

    I know what works: watch the tutorial first, follow along. And yet, every time I waste half a day thinking I can figure it out alone. This jump-in-first behavior is hubris, but “figuring it out” is also an adventure.

    To repeatedly frustrate yourself is puzzling, but the pleasure is in the puzzle: life is in the idiocy of challenge, not dwelling in the known.

  • Theme:

    Calm amidst rage: detached observation

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    1–2 minutes

    You can be fine, even happy, amid anxiety and outrage. These feelings come over us, but we can watch them and not identify with them.
    I can’t do it for long, but sometimes when my contentment is attacked, I realize fighting empowers the negativity while simply observing without connecting causes it to dissolve.

    More importantly, I can only do this when I know I am scared or threatened.
    Then I must ask why I fear: nothing can destroy "me," just my attachment to my illusory social standing.

  • Theme:

    The joy of losing yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    I am happiest when I cease to identify with myself. When I am actively engaged in a project (or entertainment) and find myself grinning and humming with no thought of "I," it is when I recharge and discover the world as positive.
    The paradox is to consider who you are making happy: if the "I" goes missing when you experience joy, what is doing the enjoying? Perhaps the "me" beneath the ego.

  • Theme:

    Your attention is your state

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    1–2 minutes

    Where your attention goes is your state of being.
    Depression, anger, and resentment are good at drawing and maintaining attention, so we identify with that state.
    Unfortunately, humans are not very good at predicting what will make us happy (what will draw our attention) long-term: we tend to normalize positivity quickly, crashing back into negative wool-gathering.

    For example, a new car or pay raise makes us happy only for a short time, but these are major life-altering positives we predicted would bring us contentment or joy.

    To be happy, we must balance pleasure and purpose, but we tend to gravitate towards pleasure without considering extended fulfillment by focusing on our life goals.

    – ideas from Paul Dolan

  • Theme:

    If tolerance = resilience then group-think = fragility

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    1–2 minutes

    Tolerance is said to build resilience.
    Then like-minded bubbles produce fragility.
    Are you remaining comfortable and weakening yourself, or are you challenging your assumptions?

  • Theme:

    Your renunciation binds you

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    1–2 minutes

    To renounce something is to tie yourself to it forever: you are now in a constant battle.
    Your energy spent fighting empowers it in direct proportion.
    The only way to drop a desire is to understand it: to see through it, then it drops itself.
    (from Anthony DeMello)