Belly Button Lint

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Tag: mind

  • Theme:

    the paradox of self-loss in flow

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    1–2 minutes

    Identity begins to dissolve when in deep engagement with a task, marked by a diminished awareness of the ego’s voice (the small self).

    This detachment from self-conscious thoughts and existential contemplations simplifies the engaged task at hand. Absent personal ruminations, no conundrum exists to unravel; the work becomes the focal point of resolution. This immersion births tranquility through self-loss.

    More intriguingly, task mastery heightens as one relinquishes control. In this “flow state,” guidance becomes redundant; the process itself becomes the mentor.

    Ironically, the task commands an absent self, directing a “you” that has transcended self-identification.

  • Theme:

    Discarding Meaning and Systems: Living

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    1–2 minutes

    We seek understanding and purpose, motivators that lend meaning to our work and life. Yet, could this desire be misplaced, a faulty attribution, leading us further from life?

    As a driven individual, each life change—be it adopting a new scheduling tool, relocating, or job switching—ushers in a phase of engaged positivity (a kind of stressful happiness), until the novelty fades into routine, diminishing your passion, which leads you to seek more novelty.

    Consider that true aliveness may not stem from new meanings or intentions, but from relinquishing old ones. In this brief interlude, free from old systemic constraints, we engage with the world as it truly is, before new routines and purposes obscure our view of life.


  • Theme:

    The hero and the dark side

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    1–2 minutes

    To be a hero is to encounter a system and learn through trials. The journey changes your consciousness.

    Joseph Campbell reminds us that the brain is a secondary organ. Leaning too heavily on one’s intellect is to separate oneself from nature and one’s humanity, effectively enslaving oneself. This is the “dark side,” which is powerful but stunts and warps us: it keeps us emotionally larval.

    The hero’s task is more difficult: they must recognize the system and maintain their humanity amidst pressures to be locked into a routine that the consciousness and body decry. Gradually, finding itself captured, the body will rebel against the will of the mind, forcing a schizophrenic split.

    The hero is the one who can maintain their humanity while guiding us through the system. The maverick (rebel) is one who rejects the system but has perhaps not found a way to sublate and reconcile the system with remaining human.

  • Theme:

    Pruning: Self-growth from self-disgust

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    1–2 minutes

    Self-growth is unlikely to happen without self-disgust, which requires you to recognize your flaws.

    The world does not inherently love you for who you are, but for how you respond to its challenges.

    You must fight to be unique while simultaneously adhering to the game’s rules (society/family). This is a painfully tricky skill to develop. You must first recognize the worst aspects of yourself, gauge how they affect others, and convert that self-awareness into growth without losing your positive traits.

    Although pride and self-worth are also excellent growth motivators, we tend to abundantly fertilize them while avoiding pruning.

  • Theme:

    What vs. Why

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    1–2 minutes

    You may think you know who you are and you have a relationship with yourself, but we only know our “intellectualized self.” This is, in essence, a causal, scientific, and even deductive version of the self, which is reductive.

    We examine who we are by asking “Why?” which leads to a specific, limited response: a fixed label of your motivation, often located in shame, guilt, or victimhood.
    (example: Why am I feeling this way?)

    Alternatively, if we ask “what?” we can label emotions and generate new multiple responses, which can be healing.
    (example: What am I feeling?)

    This is odd: Asking “why” limits and implies singularity, while “what” labels and remains productively open.

    The counterargument is that only labeling (asking what) dodges taking the onerous responsibility of fixing a flaw: it remains at the naming and acceptance stage rather than engaging the process of taking responsibility.

  • Theme:

    Honor as a Mirror

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    1–2 minutes

    To maintain honor is to behold yourself as others behold you.

    The mirror of society is the distortion that maintains our shape.

  • Theme:

    Prior Understanding

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    1–2 minutes

    Before we understood the science of harmonics, we instinctively knew about octaves. For example, the note of A was recognized with two common octaves before we named it. Using science, we confirmed our perception: we discovered the halving of octave frequencies (880 Hz to 440 Hz).

    This embodied knowledge -our body as a tuning fork- can pick up on realities beyond our mental cognition, yet it does not make these realities mystical. What does seem magical, indeed mysterious, is the ability of notes in sequence to create an altered state in humans.

  • Theme:

    The “knower” doesn’t know

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    1–2 minutes

    How we communicate can determine how we think.

    Alan Watts shares that, grammatically, we have a noun perform a verb or interact with an action; we must have a “knower,” who is “knowing,” or a person (noun) having emotions (verb-y feelings).

    More accurately, as Buddhists or Deleuze might say, “you” is a process: the noun is a verb happening.

    You don’t have feelings, but feelings are happening. They show up unbidden and uncontrolled amid an entity called “you.” At best, the “knower” is partially aware, but is acted upon and is an action becoming, tenuously holding onto the continuity of noun-ness.

  • Theme:

    to see is to cease

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    1–2 minutes

    Thoughts have an amplifying power, reinforcing themself, until we believe.

    However, once you recognize a thought as a transient, often false, assumption it loses its power to define you. (Belief/ideas dissolve upon investigation.)

    The paradox is that we are who we think we are until we recognize the belief (ourself) as thought.

    When we see “we” cease.

  • Theme:

    Speed up the folly

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    1–2 minutes

    One thing Buddhist masters figured out was that you cannot control the mind, thoughts, or emotions. However, people cannot give up trying, so you have to force the issue.

    The first step is to tell somebody not to desire. After trying not to desire (to control desire) the student will say “I no longer desire.”

    The teacher will point out, “you now desire not to desire.”

    The paradox of control is to always end up within a larger process: You think you were having an “experience” but it is all experience. Your refined, increased control only proves your rigidity and what you cannot control.

    The only way to teach this concept is not intellectual: you must speed up the eventual failure, which will -then- allow one to relax and see differently.

    From from [[Alan Watts]]