First off, I would say to stop thinking about it as being easy or relaxing. It’s an active practice, and it takes a lot of work to get started.

In most mindfulness practices, you aren’t really trying to just empty your head and think of absolutely nothing the whole time - the point is more that you are intentionally focusing on one thing (your breath, or a candle flame, or the feeling of love or whatever), and when your mind wanders, which it will constantly, the whole practice is about recognizing that and bringing your focus back to where you want it to be. Boom, one rep. Your mind wanders again, you see that and bring it back. Another rep.

So the idea really is not that you are emptying your mind, but rather that you are training your focus to go where you want it to go, and eventually to stay there better.

It’s like training to hold a kettle bell at arms length. When you start off its just hard, and you won’t be able to do it long, but by putting the weight back up and trying again, you’re getting stronger in those muscles, and the next time you can do it longer. Similarly, you can really only train so much at once, and you’re going to need to take a break and come back again later. In many ways, that’s the reps that you are doing, which is to come back to the practice again after being away. You do all you can for one day, and then when you come back and sit down the next day, boom that’s a rep.

It’s a thing that doesn’t really get easier, you just get better at doing it.

Your focus is a muscle, and you’re probably not used to training on it so specifically. Much like how if you go out and play a sport or just roughhouse with some friends, you’re using your muscles and getting stronger, but you’re not specifically training your muscles, and that type of training will only make you so strong. If you want to be able to bench press 200 lbs or whatever, you’ll almost certainly never be able to do that just by playing a lot of baseball at the park; you need to go to a gym and use the equipment in a very particular way. Similarly, if you want your focus muscle to be able to instantly drill down and focus on a particular thing and hold it without wavering, then you need to sit in zazen and practice directing and holding your focus, and the breath is the perfect target for that - largely because it is truly boring, but it’s always there, and you can feel it, and you will know exactly when you are not focused on it.

The kinda side benefit of making that focus muscle strong is that you get way better at using it without even trying. You’ll be able to at least be present in the moment with minimal or zero effort as your practice develops, and then down the road you’ll be able to achieve the full meditative state at will, even just standing in line at the grocery store or when you are experiencing something you really want to be present for. It gets hard to turn off, eventually. By that point you’ll know what to do with it, but you will definitely not be the same.

Haha I literally read this line and thought, “Jesus who do you think you are, UlyssesT??”.

Anyways, welcome back brotherino.

I feel like all the magic has flowed down into the smaller regional burns at this point. Those are obviously hit or miss depending on your local scene, and you don’t get quite the same huge community pieces as the big burn, but there’s usually plenty enough to keep you busy just checking everything out for the whole event anyways, let alone a thousand times that if you really get involved with volunteering/organizing. Hell in a previous state I lived in, there were a few smaller local burns and then a bigger state-wide one, so even then you could kinda pick and choose how big and crazy of a thing you wanted to attend/do.

I need to start looking at local options around here…

My favorite line on this subject: only call the police when the situation would be improved by the addition of an easily frightened maniac with a gun.

That is to say, usually don’t.

Maybe! I don’t think it’s so much about blaming people for their own suffering, but more of a recognition that suffering is just another state of being, and in a larger context that being is a part of everything else that is.

In a broader sense I don’t think that mindfulness practice needs to directly lead to nihilism, but it certainly can without an underpinning of philosophy that can make sense of what’s left after dismissing the subjective as the only truth.

Much like the monk that remains seated while self-immolating, it is possible to remain mindful and even euphoric in even the most extreme forms of suffering, but that said it would be disgusting to try and proffer that example as a way to dismiss the suffering of others in a current state. “hey that guy could do it, so why don’t you just sit and be one and then you won’t have any problems?” Of course that is rediculous. But it is a practice that can lead to reduced suffering, and it is available to everyone. But it’s much like the tech bros that tell people suffering from poverty to “just learn to code”. Like yeah, it’s an option, and a thing that can help some people, but just because it’s a thing that worked for you doesn’t mean it’s going to fix everyone else’s problems, especially not right here in the now when that suffering is happening.

Anyways, your last line is real. It’s part of why I got off track of a regular practice years ago - it really did feel weird to be disconnected from people in that way. I felt like Dr Manhattan, being tired of these people and their problems, as goofy as that sounds. I’d like to think that’s not how everyone reacts, maybe that was just my young adult narcissism in action.

In another way though, it was almost like everyone in the world was on fire, and I had just jumped in a lake - why is everyone out there still running around screaming in pain, and insisting that I was the weird one for being wet?

There’s probably a balance there somewhere. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this lol, but I appreciate your viewpoint is what I’m trying to say.

They would be bald-ass stealing a Rick-n-Morty quote to make this useless point too, natch.

Love love love this song. It came up as a spotify suggestion, at just the right moment in my life, and probably since I’d been big into The Books years before (same guy).

Always happy to recommend this track to people, though few real bites into it so far lol. Glad to hear that there’s love out here for it! (lot of really nice comments on the video too)

Yeah probably from a naive approach I’m sure it would wear off pretty quick. If you just happened to find a way to wiggle a muscle in your body or brain that triggers feel-good, I’m sure it would get old pretty quick. But with some guiding philosophy and intentional practice, it really can keep feeling good! (not always or every time, obvs, but it’s still in you! Try again!)

In all seriousness, it is a little like that! One thing I found during regular mindfulness practice is that you get to this place of all around contentedness, and you start embracing the oneness of all things and the impermanence of subjectivity, and all of a sudden stuff starts to matter a lot less. And like, that’s great when you’re dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression and stress, since it’s a lot less crushing, but also I found that it also killed some of the drive that led to action, as there was no urgent need to escape all of those feelings. It helped to a certain degree though, since that stuff also got in the way just as or more often than it was motivating.

And in that way, it was also a little alienating from other people, since all of their petty dramas and overblown concerns just felt very petty and overblown, but you could tell that they were truly and deeply invested in them. It was like, do you not realize that none of that (or truly anything) really matters?

So yeah, in some ways I would call deep mindfulness practice a little bit masturbatory (in a mostly good way). But still, very little to do with cum.

They are like, so close to catching on to something here. You can feel so good!

To quote my favorite Zammuto track:

Your blood pumps through your heart

And flows to the other parts of your body

Let yourself feel your own heart

Beating and pumping

You know what a heart looks like

That good feeling is always there

You can feel so good

And it’s true! You can learn how to capture those good feelings that are usually only fleeting in life and harness them, and make them available to yourself at any time. It’s really powerful!

But it’s really more a trick of like, TM or mindfulness practice. It has very little to do with cum.

Some of my favorite SW novels back in the day were the “Tales From Mos Eisley Cantina” and “Tales From Jabba’s Palace” books. Basically every chapter just takes one of the random background characters from those scenes and tells their whole story. Really interesting way to get a lot of back story about characters that never seem to get any other real love.

Also, the story of the rancor trainer is really heartbreaking (seriously). Good stuff.

Tbh Biden probably has a better chance that way (still low but better than more debates and a general).

Ok she seems awesome, and I’ve heard the PSL endorsed by at least a few Marxists I trust, but what do yall think about them and their platform? Any weird gotchas in there or history of grossness from her or the organization?

This is great! Checking out Blame! now.

Seriously, I’m always telling people about this. The most adament speeders are always the “fuck the government”, you can’t tell me what to do, come-and-take-it types, and it just baffles me because like, yeah, they will come and take it; in fact they love to!

You are giving the pigs a free pass to fully legally and justifiably pull you over any time they feel like it.

Obviously they’ll still pull over anyone at any time and retroactively make up a reason, but at least then they are starting on shaky ground, and you’ve got a way better chance of beating any charges later.

If you hate the pigs so much, why would you make their job so easy? Especially if you’re riding dirty in any way, then that just multiplies everything above a thousand times. And naturally, those that are the most cavalier about doing that always seems to be the ones that love speeding the most.

This was (and is) always my dream car as a ignorant but car-loving little burglerite. Just so cool and fast and nothing else.

I think that terrible short-lived show of the same name probably planted a worm pretty deep in my tiny child brain, so that might be part of it.

Yeah I can’t really stand the guy, haven’t really like him since anything after “Snowball Fight”, but I gotta admit his late night show is easily the best out of any of them right now. Notwithstanding of course previous goats like Conan (or Ferguson a little).

Definitely! They’ve got a lot of understated but really cool instrumentation on this one. I tried drumming along to a few of the tracks, and it’s easy enough to get a decent groove, but the subtleties they’re actually playing are just completely wild. Like a jazz drummer just going nuts and doing his own thing, but just softly and real gently mixed. It’s pretty impressive.

They just dropped a new album, “Only God Was Above Us”, and as much as I was totally ready to hate it, it’s actually really good. Nowhere near as saccharine as this track, but just real nice, very chill.

Congratulations, you have a conscience, and are therefore unsuited for management.