I just started a Substack! If you enjoy my writing, please consider subscribing here (for free!): tvachaw.substack.com/subscri… Or help me get if off the ground by QTing / RTing + liking this post to help me counteract the deboosting these sorts of articles get on here. The first post is a longform article about the Amazonian tree I've often discussed here that is said to have achieved enlightenment. After you subscribe, you'll see it as the first article on my Substack home page. Enjoy!

Pa-Auk Sayadaw, Light of Wisdom 👁️💀

The early Buddhist texts described love in its various forms as the “heavenly dwellings”. They taught that cultivating love was a portal to essentially transforming your life into heaven on earth. Unlike today, when the goals of Buddhism get a little mashed together, the early Buddha taught people different techniques depending on what their goal was. If someone wanted to be liberated from rebirth and identities grounded in sense-desire he taught them one technique. If they wanted to just live a happy, comfortable and ethical individual life he taught them another. But he also had another technique for those who wanted to be “reborn in heavenly realms.” I would argue that most modern practitioners of meditation want something closer to what the Buddha called “rebirth in heavenly realms” than what he called “complete awakening.” Both the technique (renunciation of acts motivated by desire) and the goal (ending rebirth) of what he called “complete awakening” are actually quite alienating or even irrelevant to the concerns of most modern lay people. Whereas the goal of “being reborn in heavenly realms” - namely to cultivate an individual life of continuous unbroken joy, love and happiness whilst still immersed in the sense realms - probably sounds quite appealing to most modern people. It’s even more appealing when one understands that this technique wasn’t just about some future rebirth but about how to live this current life in a way that feels like heaven on earth. The technique itself was simply to cultivate what the Buddha called the “brahmavihārās” - “the heavenly dwellings.” These were loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and peace. They were called “heavenly dwellings” because the Buddha believed that states of love and peace were a bit like homes that one could live in. To have a heart full of love, compassion, sympathetic joy and peace was, for him, to live in a kind of heaven on earth. We didn’t have to wait until death to experience something like heaven - we simply had to bring heaven into life via cultivating the different flavours of love in our heart. Although the Buddha did also teach that this has the added bonus that we’d be reborn in a literal heaven realm after death if we’d cultivated sufficient love, as our future lives are determined by the quality of our hearts. I think there’s a lot of confusion in the modern west about what complete awakening looks like in Buddhism. There are many people chasing it who don’t really understand what it is, and if they did they probably wouldn’t want it. But how wonderful that the Buddha also taught a path that is deeply appealing and intuitive to most modern people: That we can live in a continuous state of heaven on earth in this lifetime. And all we have to do is maximally cultivate love in our hearts.

If one's spiritual path is going well, one should start feeling not just more peaceful and happy, but also more powerful. Especially in modern Buddhist circles, many people associate spiritual growth with a kind of almost insipid passivity. But the Buddha himself put a great emphasis on developing spiritual power. He even outlined the 4 Bases of Spiritual Power, which for him are: 1. Zeal / Enthusiasm 2. Heroic effort 3. Collectiveness of mind 4. An enquiring, curious, investigative mind This paints a very different picture to the kind of low-energy quietude that many associate with meditators. If one's spiritual path is going well, they should be observably vital, enthusiastic, and energetically investigating reality. Beyond meditation though, I think these are some of the qualities I see in the most successful and powerful people in daily life. Not every successful or powerful person is the smartest or most talented. But the qualities I almost always see in them is that they have an indefatigable enthusiasm for their tasks and goals and in indefatigable curiosity about the world. These active qualities are also the qualities that allow one to ultimately access a deeper peace than just acting out a quiet passivity. Deep peace is discovered by coming into fully contact with reality. And to come it full contact with reality we must investigate reality with an attitude of enthusiasm, curiosity and inquisitiveness.

People who’ve been through severe addiction and come out the other end are well set up for an accelerated spiritual path. They’ve seen into the heart of the mechanics that drive so much of the human experiences. But magnified a thousandfold. If we bring almost any human desire into full consciousness, we’ll see it follows similar pattern to addiction. We chase something. We consume it. We enjoy it. We have a comedown. We want more of it. We suffer when we don’t have it. Because the addictive aspect of most of our desires is so subtle, it can be hard to spot. Overcoming severe addictions gives a framework and lens to spot micro-addictions more easily. And see that almost everything a regular human being does has a micro addictive component to it. It also provides the motivation to get clean from all our microaddictions. And the path to spiritual awakening can largely be seen as the path of getting clean of *all* our microaddictions.

G.K. Chesterton on mysticism

G.K. Chesterton on mysticism

Yeah, I think you’re right that where our divergences exist, they probably rest on different views of what reality really is and who we really are. So then what we’re optimizing for is naturally going to diverge. For me, “ultimate reality” really just means “what reality looks like when viewed with maximal awareness. I dont deny that for as long as our default genetic conditioning is in place, a thriving social life is likely to be beneficial for our wellbeing over the course of an individual human life. But I do believe there is an even deeper freedom available via waking up from that conditioning. And when we do wake up from it, the whole notion of “an individual human life” gets less and less coherent, and different goals / priorities come into view (along with a nervous systems whose wiring becomes fundamentally altered by waking up from this conditioning). In many ways, these two views don’t need to come massively into conflict. For as long as our default conditioning is active, these meditative tools can help us more skilfully meet the needs of that conditioning. But I do think as that conditioning starts to fall away, a different process starts to unfold. I would concede that this picture I’m painting is somewhat complicated by the fact that spiritual community of a certain kind can be a powerful tool in the process of affecting this waking up process. Anyway, thanks for an interesting and thoughtful exchange of views ❤️ 🙏

One trick for feeling more energetic is to put more focus on the *feeling* part and less on the *energetic* part. We can often feel more energetic not by gaining more energy but by more effectively tuning into the energy we already have. Like many things, much of this boils down to developing a more granular awareness of your body and mind. When we feel “low energy” it’s often a very low resolution signal. That is, there are often parts of us that feel energetic and parts that don’t. But our mind abstracts that together to construct a generalized “low energy” signal. If we simply accept that signal as it is, we will feel low energy and activity will be difficult. But instead, we can also interrogate and question that feeling. We can ask ourselves, where in our body this “low energy” feeling is located, how intense it is and if it genuinely restricts action. When doing so, we may often notice that the “low energy” feeling is: - very localized - low in intensity - not actually a very accurate picture of the overall energy available to us in that moment. What we’ve labelled as a “low energy feeling” can often just be just a minor numbness or heaviness that when felt deeply isn’t actually restricting our action in any real way. Actually, it’s not a “low energy feeling” at all. It’s a group of sensations that our mind has attached the label “low energy” to. In detaching the “low energy” label from the bodily sensations, we’ll also make space for other signals to arise in our body and notice places where energy does actually feel available to us. The basic premise of this practice is generalizable to a lot of emotions that restrict our freedom. When we deconstruct them into their sense components and really look at what is present without labels, they lose their power. In general, it is not our feelings that restrict our freedom, but the second-order labels our mind ours on them. By detaching the feeling from the label, the feeling becomes *information*, instead of an *instruction*. And space opens for us to live a more free life, governed by our deepest wisdom instead of the whims of the shifting sensations of our bodymind.

One of the best ways to increase your agency is learning how to see life in higher resolution. To understand why, we have to understand what it is that gets in the way of agency. The opposite of agency is compulsion - actions we perform reactively, seemingly against our will. Compulsions largely fall into two categories: resistance and grasping. In general, automatic resistances and graspings fall downstream of low resolution perceptual processing. That is, the mind labels what is actually quite a complex and constantly changing set of sensations with a simple, unchanging tag such as "good" or "bad" or "pleasant" or "unpleasant". It is only once a certain group of dynamic, granular sensations have been reduced to a simple "good" / "bad" that the compulsive reactivity takes place. It works something like this: Complex dynamic sensations > labelled "bad" > automatic resistance Or Complex dynamic sensations > labelled "good" > automatic grasping The best way to break this chain is to start processing our sensations and perceptions in higher resolution. What this means is staying in contact with the actual moment by moment changes of the sensations / perceptions *prior to* them being labelled into simple binaries like "good" / "bad" / "pleasant" / "unpleasant" etc.. If we can stay in contact with reality at a high frequency rate, we will always notice constant changes and fluctuations to any given sensation or perception. This makes it harder for the mind to arbitrarily group any set of evolving sensations into a simple label. Not just "good" or "bad" but even labels like "hot" / "cold", "comfortable" / "uncomfortable" and so on tend to break down upon high resolution analysis. eg a "hot" sensation when we tune into it at a high frequency reveals a fluctuating experience of temperature that usually even has discernable split-second gaps between each moment of temperature-sensation. It may sound like a very abstract skill but it turns out that when we are paying close moment-by-moment attention - and when we increase how many moments we notice in a given timeframe - it is a lot harder for the mind to collapse into the low resolution labels that are the breeding ground for reactivity and involuntary action. Not only does this lead to greater agency and freedom, but it also gives us greater sensory clarity which allows us to perceive more beauty and vibrancy in our day to day lives.

Bricklayer, 49, travels 1,200 miles for dream girl - only to discover she's AI-generated trib.al/3CcGOfk

There is a fundamental vibratory hum or pulse to reality that we notice when we look very closely. The universe appears to flicker in and out of existence like the wings of a rainbow colored butterfly. The Buddhists call this Udayabbaya - the unceasing arising and passing away of phenomena. We train our concentration and perceptual sensitivity in part to perceive it more clearly. In Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra they call it spanda: the dynamic throbbing of consciousness. The tantrikas use the metaphor of God’s eyes opening and closing in each moment to manifest and withdraw the universe. Their language calls to mind the image of God’s REM conjuring the dream we call reality. Recently, scientific papers like the one QTd below are finding correlations to this phenomena in brain activity. The brain seeming to flicker between processing conscious and unconscious content at a rate of ~15 Hz (15 times per second). Like a fractal microcosm of the universe, we call forth our own dream of reality in this vibratory trance. This is why seeing this process more clearly is so important to the process of waking up from the dream. In some Buddhist systems we seek to become so sensitive to these arisings and passings aways that we start to see between their cracks. In doing so, we experience “bhanga” - the dissolution of our mind’s dream of a stable, continuous reality. But in the gaps between consciousness, we find not a blank nothingness but a reality beyond words. Something we might call luminous, empty and deeply blissful but of course is really none of these things because these are all words. Likewise, the tantric Shaivites seek to see in between the gaps between moments of perception in order - in their more theological language - to experience the everpresent luminosity of God (Shiva). Whether you are a Buddhist, a Shaivite, an atheist or something else entirely, learning to sensitize to the fundamentally vibratory nature of reality is one of the most powerful spiritual skills you can learn in this life. To peer between the cracks of existence. To find the numinous, luminous truths that wait for us there. To wake up from this flickering trance of a dream that we call reality.

There is a fundamental vibratory hum or pulse to reality that we notice when we look very closely. The universe appears to flicker in and out of existence like the wings of a rainbow colored butterfly. The Buddhists call this Udayabbaya - the unceasing arising and passing away of phenomena. We train our concentration and perceptual sensitivity in part to perceive it more clearly. In Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra they call it spanda: the dynamic throbbing of consciousness. The tantrikas use the metaphor of God’s eyes opening and closing in each moment to manifest and withdraw the universe. Their language calls to mind the image of God’s REM conjuring the dream we call reality. Recently, scientific papers like the one QTd below are finding correlations to this phenomena in brain activity. The brain seeming to flicker between processing conscious and unconscious content at a rate of ~15 Hz (15 times per second). Like a fractal microcosm of the universe, we call forth our own dream of reality in this vibratory trance. This is why seeing this process more clearly is so important to the process of waking up from the dream. In some Buddhist systems we seek to become so sensitive to these arisings and passings aways that we start to see between their cracks. In doing so, we experience “bhanga” - the dissolution of our mind’s dream of a stable, continuous reality. But in the gaps between consciousness, we find not a blank nothingness but a reality beyond words. Something we might call luminous, empty and deeply blissful but of course is really none of these things because these are all words. Likewise, the tantric Shaivites seek to see in between the gaps between moments of perception in order - in their more theological language - to experience the everpresent luminosity of God (Shiva). Whether you are a Buddhist, a Shaivite, an atheist or something else entirely, learning to sensitize to the fundamentally vibratory nature of reality is one of the most powerful spiritual skills you can learn in this life. To peer between the cracks of existence. To find the numinous, luminous truths that wait for us there. To wake up from this flickering trance of a dream that we call reality.

I have a little exercise that gives early access to direct perception of sensory quanta. Lightly rest thumb nails in the pads of the index fingers. Feel the almost imperceptible throbbing of the pulse. Alternate paying attention to the throb in left and right fingers. Then feel pay attention to both at once. Synchonise attention to the slightly throb on left and right. Then slightly desynchronise, so you feel one just slightly after the other. Realise that if you can slightly desynchronise it, it cannot be the pulse, but is rather the arising and passing away of sensation ! 😎

There is a fundamental vibratory hum or pulse to reality that we notice when we look very closely. The universe appears to flicker in and out of existence like the wings of a rainbow colored butterfly. The Buddhists call this Udayabbaya - the unceasing arising and passing away of phenomena. We train our concentration and perceptual sensitivity in part to perceive it more clearly. In Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra they call it spanda: the dynamic throbbing of consciousness. The tantrikas use the metaphor of God’s eyes opening and closing in each moment to manifest and withdraw the universe. Their language calls to mind the image of God’s REM conjuring the dream we call reality. Recently, scientific papers like the one QTd below are finding correlations to this phenomena in brain activity. The brain seeming to flicker between processing conscious and unconscious content at a rate of ~15 Hz (15 times per second). Like a fractal microcosm of the universe, we call forth our own dream of reality in this vibratory trance. This is why seeing this process more clearly is so important to the process of waking up from the dream. In some Buddhist systems we seek to become so sensitive to these arisings and passings aways that we start to see between their cracks. In doing so, we experience “bhanga” - the dissolution of our mind’s dream of a stable, continuous reality. But in the gaps between consciousness, we find not a blank nothingness but a reality beyond words. Something we might call luminous, empty and deeply blissful but of course is really none of these things because these are all words. Likewise, the tantric Shaivites seek to see in between the gaps between moments of perception in order - in their more theological language - to experience the everpresent luminosity of God (Shiva). Whether you are a Buddhist, a Shaivite, an atheist or something else entirely, learning to sensitize to the fundamentally vibratory nature of reality is one of the most powerful spiritual skills you can learn in this life. To peer between the cracks of existence. To find the numinous, luminous truths that wait for us there. To wake up from this flickering trance of a dream that we call reality.

There is a fundamental vibratory hum or pulse to reality that we notice when we look very closely. The universe appears to flicker in and out of existence like the wings of a rainbow colored butterfly. The Buddhists call this Udayabbaya - the unceasing arising and passing away of phenomena. We train our concentration and perceptual sensitivity in part to perceive it more clearly. In Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra they call it spanda: the dynamic throbbing of consciousness. The tantrikas use the metaphor of God’s eyes opening and closing in each moment to manifest and withdraw the universe. Their language calls to mind the image of God’s REM conjuring the dream we call reality. Recently, scientific papers like the one QTd below are finding correlations to this phenomena in brain activity. The brain seeming to flicker between processing conscious and unconscious content at a rate of ~15 Hz (15 times per second). Like a fractal microcosm of the universe, we call forth our own dream of reality in this vibratory trance. This is why seeing this process more clearly is so important to the process of waking up from the dream. In some Buddhist systems we seek to become so sensitive to these arisings and passings aways that we start to see between their cracks. In doing so, we experience “bhanga” - the dissolution of our mind’s dream of a stable, continuous reality. But in the gaps between consciousness, we find not a blank nothingness but a reality beyond words. Something we might call luminous, empty and deeply blissful but of course is really none of these things because these are all words. Likewise, the tantric Shaivites seek to see in between the gaps between moments of perception in order - in their more theological language - to experience the everpresent luminosity of God (Shiva). Whether you are a Buddhist, a Shaivite, an atheist or something else entirely, learning to sensitize to the fundamentally vibratory nature of reality is one of the most powerful spiritual skills you can learn in this life. To peer between the cracks of existence. To find the numinous, luminous truths that wait for us there. To wake up from this flickering trance of a dream that we call reality.

1/ We discovered something totally unexpected about the neural structure of consciousness that overturns decades of thinking on its biological basis and brings us significantly closer to the recipe for generating conscious awareness. New preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… (led by @HesseJanis, with @FrankLanfranchi, @_conor_mcgrory, @Yuelin_Shi, and @EngelTatiana)