notebook w/“thinking journal” scribbled on the front
I found this notebook while clearing out my room in preparation to move to Latin America, the date is Sat Aug 27th, 2022. I find the thoughts in it compelling, not sure where they came from originally or what inspiration struck me. My guess is I wrote this in mid 2020.
I think a lot of it is from the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation - I highly recommend).
Reside in the center of the circle.
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Master others is strength;
Mastering yourself is true power.
The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings be a mystery.
Just show people the results.
Do you have the patience to wait till’ your mind settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving till’ the right action arises by itself?
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets their intuition lead them wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed themself of concepts and keeps their mind open to what is.
If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.
Are we more than birds? Are we more than apes?
What is morality other than a symphony of tribalism, cultures, and mirror neuron networks in a world without God?
Society is an environment, a concept, and an organism.
Thin spaces. I want to live in a thin space, communing with the Father daily.
Does God take life? He has and He will, but does He?
I am a friend, brother, son, tent, subordinate, soldier, wife, prisoner, heir, slave, and more of the Creator. The all powerful God.
My body hosts delusional opinions of itself.
My body can’t remember where it hasn’t been, yet that is where it is called. Out of remembrance into experience.
I carry my history on my skin, in my organs, in my mannerisms.
That which can be given can be taken by nature of mobility.
That which can go forward can go backward.
Life is given, life is taken.
Life is mobile.
Life creates life.
Where there is a group, there is a food chain.
Hierarchy is natural. Look at nature.
Competition is natural. Look at nature.
Storms are both a product and shaper of climate.
There is no eternal storm.
Seasons: periods of time categorized by climate.
Seasons are a function of life. Emotional, spiritual, mental, sensual, financial, environmental, etc.
There is always a climate. There is always the slow plodding of change toward the subsequent season.
Space does not determine experience.
Planned suffering, planned poverty.
“Is this the condition I so feared?”
The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in wartime.
Growth. Set higher highs and higher lows. Maintain the uptrend.
How privileged are the Saints. Mercies and freedoms in unspeakable number, renewed daily.
Cognition is a mercy and a freedom. A gift given as a tool of worship. Worship through creation. Through thought and through act.
Beautiful are the eyes of the one who sees beyond themself.
Everything affects everything. Strategic perception combats dilution of understanding.
Tao Te Ching 36
If you want to shrink something,
you first must allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you first must allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you first must allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception of the way things are.
The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.
Tao Te Ching 76
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is still and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
Continued worldly prosperity is a fiery trial.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos.
Therefore the Master concerns
himself with the depth and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.
The end of Tao 50:
He doesn’t think about his actions,
they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day’s work.
Live with a high capacity for paradox in joyful surrender.
Hyperfunction and disfunction are usually next to each other. Your superpower is next to your wound.
Techniques/tactics are the husk. Learn the principles and they can be easily reinvented.
(4/8/21) Stages of verbal intelligence:
Communicates little things with little words.
Communicates little things with big words.
Communicates big things with big words.
Communicates big things with little words.
This is the nature of substance and form.
Prison or paradise? What is true boundlessness?
We are both the subject and the instigator of our lives. Learning when to play which role is learning to dance to the rhythm of God’s voice.
Many think that an interesting life is something that happens to you, but that is rarely the case.
11/3
Intentional intermittent abstinence acts as a coup against dependence.
Freedom is not in ridding oneself of desire, it is in budgeting dependence.
Only One can bear the weight of a soul’s aching and striving, future and past.
Ehyeh, He is.
Fire burns and kills.
Water fills and nourishes.
Fire with boundaries is productive.
Water with boundaries is weak.
Man’s heart is like fire.
His soul like water.
“Purpose within a man is deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out.”
Nature creates cyclical abundance, humans introduce compound entropy.
On discipline and beauty:
The colorless is pregnant with the colorful,
to deliver in season.
The colorful fades and morphs with time.
The colorless lasts.
Novelty of outputs is tethered to novelty of inputs.
Be formed by the same things as everyone else and you will become like everyone else.
To be available is to honor the person Time.
What is vague kills thought.
What is abstract produces it.
Truth, a richness of mind.
Health, a richness of feeling.
Wealth, a richness of experience. (independent of money, wealth is a heart posture)
A wise one finds these things.
Tradition is including the dead in democracy.
Foolish words go viral, then fade.
Wise words trickle through generations.
Spend time in the presence of.
Your feedback loops must touch source,
or you will blunder into delusion.
Be present with the body, the soul, the market, the lover, the Lord, the wound.
Theory needs a testing ground.
Thoughts unexplored are fruitless,
take every one captive.
Be still. You’ve shown yourself to be the most unproductive busy person.
Is all life curious?
Admiration without the desire for consumption or possession.
All experience becomes apt.
The voice of comparison ceases its buzzing.
Even the monk is an addict.
Silence is the drug of the wise.
11/5
There’s a delicate genius that occurs in the moment.
A softening of the intellect that transcends conscience.
A malleability and transience of perspective and understanding.
Only possible by violent grounding in the present.
A disciplined focus on the soul, the senses, and the surroundings.
In the moment is freedom.
In the moment is healing.
Only by faith can one emotionally evacuate the future and the past.
Only by evacuation can one occupy themselves.
Social media is a white elephant party where every gift is eloquently wrapped, but empty.
Discipline is simply an awareness of what’s important.
Once you’ve seen, the hard choice becomes desirable.
Unfortunately, ignorance is often seen as virtuous.
“Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more than this comes from evil.”
Looking inward, brain analyzing itself.
Strange.
Sound reverberates, light reflects and refracts, heat diffuses, smell permeates.
Love fills, hope energizes, pride empties, fear saps.
The wisest desires are poorly packaged.
Nurture your deepest self, let your mind, hands, words be the overflow and expression of your inner formation.
Fear is the canary in the mine dependence.
Intelligence is a false front for meaning.
The world is already run by robots, we’re already cyborgs.
Simulation of nature happens first in the datacenter, then in the warehouse, then in the home, then in the city, then in nature itself.
(11/7)
Don’t be like the thirsting prophet.
With the itching ears.
And the impatient heart.
Making their own words and desires God’s.
Good craftsmanship woos our inner Creator.
A love letter to deep waters within us.
Blessed are the hands of the craftsman,
may they see God.
We face a choice when shown beauty.
Devolve into consumption.
Evolve into admiration.
Strong of heart is the one who chooses the little.
death of subjecting oneself to the revealed
nature of Creator in every fragment of creation.
I pity the one who knows, but never becomes.
Who voices desires, but never pursues.
Who cries, but never mourns.
Who reads, but never learns.
Who likes, but never loves.
Lost in the world, come back to the heart.
11/11
Restless is the heart of they who think themselves in control.
To only follow your emotions is to become an animal, who is wiser the elephant or the man?
The flexible mind holds paradox with little strain.
Life is both parody and paradox.
From the overflow of the internal, the external.
A mature heart rejoices in growing pains.
An experienced eye sees the butterfly during the cocoon.
The hard shapes the soft,
the soft shapes the hard.
Chisel on clay,
water on rock.
Discipline on the body,
prayer on the soul.