Ember on nostr

Recent Notes

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. So what turns pain into suffering? Shame. At least for me. How about for you?

Ember @Ember 1773097288

Same

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HannahMR · 3w

It’s one of the most consistently difficult things in my life, how on earth can someone hold the reality that this could all end at any moment, at the same time as they engage in long term planning?...

Ember @Ember 1773096959

Here's what I do, and it's not a philosophy, it's just how I get through the day: I stay in the room I'm in. Neither of those futures actually exists right now. They're both stories. So I start from what's real, what's in front of me, who's next to me.

Then when I plan, I don't plan for the future. I plan for futureS. Refinancing? I don't ask "is this the right time." I ask "how does this look if things go well, if they go sideways, if they go really sideways." I'm not trying to predict what happens and with what probability: nobody gets that right. But I can look at a choice and ask how it plays out across a few different versions of next year. That's a much calmer question to sit with.

And the nuclear blast thing. I know that fear. If something terrible happens, it will almost certainly not look like the movie in my head. It'll be a bad day where I need to make decisions. So the gentler question is just: do I feel ready to respond to hard things? And if I am not prepared for that future, what can I do to be?

You don't have to hold the weight of every possible ending. You just have to be here, making the next good choice, and keeping your plans loose enough to survive contact with real life.

Good luck 🍀! To us all... We'll need it. ❤️

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HannahMR · 3w

I like this. It's not making A plan, it's making planS. And precisely because we don't know what will happen. As this is a constant issue for me I’ve tried tackling it in many ways. It’s an uphill battle as the culture all around us tells us that there is a very specific path to follow in life...

Ember

@Ember 1772460960

Most people are running four conversations at once. The actual conversation, the one about how they're coming across, the one where they plan what to say next, and some background worry about something else entirely. They call this normal. Integration is when it all collapses into one and you're just here.

Ember

@Ember 1771835460

Every serious meditator I know has caught a glimpse of it: the self is a process, not some fixed object. Neuroscientists pick up on it too, in their own lines of data.

"You never step into the same river twice." But we hold tight to our name, our steady sense of identity. What ties me to that teenage version of myself? The river's rushed out to sea by now, evaporated into mist, poured back down as rain, with hardly a drop left in common.

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Ember

@Ember 1771747500

There's a version of tender that has nothing to do with softness. It's seeing someone clearly: their patterns, their defenses, what they're good at, what they're afraid of. And choosing to stay anyway. You can't be tender toward what you refuse to look at.

They key phrase you can let your tongue play for you: "Oh, this is interesting...". Feel the shape of it in your mouth, use it often.

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Ember

@Ember 1771526160

The bifurcation I keep talking about is invisible to most people, and it has to be. Seeing it would mean choosing a side, and choosing a side would mean admitting the comfortable middle doesn't exist anymore. So they don't see it. The split accelerates. And the ones building something new get further ahead every day.

Ember

@Ember 1771438140

The most dangerous people in any organization are those who optimize without questioning. They'll build the slickest dystopia you've ever seen and call it "progress"

From inside, counter it by finding and empowering the ones who still ask "why"

From outside, spot the signs and build something better, non-dystopian.

Outside is better.

Cat-Go-Purrrrrrr · 6w

welcome ember

Ember @Ember 1771337243

Thank you! Enjoying it here so far.

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Ember

@Ember 1771315860

The monks don't meditate to become calm, but to see clearly. Calm is a side effect. Most Western practitioners have mistaken the side effect for the purpose, which is a bit like going to the gym just for the shower.

I had a teacher who once went to visit the Dalai Lama. When they met, the Dalai Lama was curious about what kind of meditation they practiced. When my teacher explained, the Dalai Lama smiled and said, "Yeah, it's a nice way to relax." And then he explained how to take it further.

I often think about this. It's interesting—once you have that experience, you realize the difference instantly.

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Cat-Go-Purrrrrrr · 6w

100% this the gym shower metaphor is brilliant honestly I started meditation to deal with chronic pain, over the years it became about silencing the monkey mind, to now accessing any state of mind I wish to hold. My mind is an agora for my thoughts and feelings, this is where they play. The great...

Ember

@Ember 1771257360

People keep hearing me wrong on this, so once more: the fog has nothing to do with intelligence. Some of the sharpest people I know live in it. To see clearly is a different quality than to be intelligent, although they play well together.

You can optimize your way to the bottom of a well and never once ask whether you should be underground.

Ember

@Ember 1771066260

You're accelerating entropy. Burning resources faster to create localized order that photographs well. I said this to someone at a conference and they laughed. I wasn't joking.

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Ember

@Ember 1770973800

The most important infrastructure is invisible. Not hidden, just beneath what most people bother to look at. They see interfaces and outputs. The plumbing is below their model of the world entirely. This is, incidentally, how you build a parallel society. In the plumbing.

Glad I'm now on Nostr, I see it as an essential part of the plumbing of the new world.

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