Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: motivation

  • Theme:

    Finding yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    Your identity is your form, which is an act. To be “you” is to behave as people imagine you should, even as you imagine “you” should.

    However, beneath the act is a profound awareness that is not identifiable: it is formless and still you.

    From this formless awareness, the fears, wants, and concerns of the self (the act of “you”) are merely passing desires to which we desperately cling to maintain a recognizable shape.

    The idea that “to find yourself,” you double down on “you” only increases the identification with fear, wanting, and desire: you build a stronger shape/form which you then need to maintain.

    To find peace, we need “to lose yourself.”

  • Theme:

    You never notice the good drivers

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    1–2 minutes

    A friend commented on this, illustrating the prevalence of negativity to shape your perception of the world, and our blindness to mundane excellence.

    Similarly, we are not rewarded for insights, but are punished for errors: we try harder not to make mistakes than we do to grow.

  • Theme:

    Approach/Retreat: We frustrate ourselves

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    1–2 minutes

    To desire is to want something beyond you, and in approaching it your psychology dredges forth all the pains of wanting and not receiving, all the failures of the past. 

    Even if we receive what we crave it disgorges the toxins simultaneously, causing us to flinch away as we grasp, causing sabotage as we approach fulfillment. 

    This desire/repulsion creates a loop of approach and retreat: a self-frustrating and painful cycle. 

  • Theme:

    Memory is redundant

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    1–2 minutes

    Memory is redundant: its repetition makes remembrance more significant.
    Perhaps you only see something once, yet its oddity makes it significant enough to multiply, having an inflationary effect that drowns out other details. Our memory is captivated by intensity and novelty, shaping our remembrance further with the weight of excessive repetition.
    (inspired by Italo Calvino)

  • 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)

  • Theme:

    Passion relies on possibility

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    1–2 minutes

    There is only passion (and argument) when a situation is unsettled.
    If thoroughly confirmed and believed, the situation enters the state of fact: an operating condition of reality, not a possibility or hope.

  • Theme:

    Mimetic Desire Training

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    1–2 minutes

    You don’t want what you want. What you wish for has been introduced to you.

    Take control of your mimetic desire by choosing to love what you have and surrounding yourself with a reinforcing group that values perennial values.

  • Theme:

    You become your feelings

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    1–2 minutes

    Your feeling becomes your emotions, which drive your thinking, which in turn becomes your performance in the world.
    You are your actions, and if you don’t want to be who you are, start debating the feelings that drive you.

  • Theme:

    The problem of wanting nothing

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    1–2 minutes

    Personal realization: I don’t want anything. I only wish to feel no discomfort.

    The unfortunate aspect of this epiphany is the corresponding lack of drive and a tendency towards avoidance.

    It is not life-affirming, and without active purpose, I am subconsciously afloat and vulnerable to manipulation.

  • Theme:

    Good days require perspective: purpose/meaning

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    1–2 minutes

    Knowing what you care about is another way to keep events in perspective: everything else falls away when you have one shiny goal. Truly knowing your purpose does not mean harmonization and balance but passionate pursuit and upheaval in your life as you bend your heart towards your desire.