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An Overview of NT

2025-05-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

A. The Skull and the World Made by Mind

There’s a story in Zen about a monk named Won Hyo. He’s traveling through the night and stops to rest in a cave. It’s dark. He’s thirsty. He finds a bowl of water, drinks from it, feels refreshed, and falls asleep. When morning comes and light enters the cave, he sees that the bowl was a human skull filled with stagnant rainwater. Maggots. Decay. He vomits.

But then something happens. He laughs. Because nothing changed. The water was always what it was. His experience—the peace, the comfort, the disgust—came entirely from how he saw it. His perception made the thing.

That’s the insight that begins all of this: the mind shapes what we experience. Not just mood. Not just opinion. Our entire felt world.

This might sound like basic cognitive psychology, but it’s deeper. It’s not that we see things through bias, or that we project onto situations. It’s that we live inside those projections and mistake them for reality. That confusion—between what’s actually happening and what we think is happening—is what I call Saran Wrap.

Saran Wrap is the invisible film of interpretation that coats everything. It's subtle. The moment you think someone doesn’t respect you, or that something isn’t fair, or that your life is off-track, or that you’re failing, that interpretation becomes reality. You react to it. You plan around it. You get sad, or hopeful, or ashamed. And all the while, you forget that what you’re reacting to is a layer you created—an overlay on top of the situation, not the situation itself.

We don’t usually catch that overlay, because we’re inside it. Saran Wrap is transparent. To see it, you have to get really close. You have to catch the moment when perception turns into belief. And that’s rare, because most of the time, we're not really seeing—we're just thinking.

The Mind Doesn’t Just Comment—It Constructs

Most of us believe the mind is there to observe and analyze, like a narrator. But what NT is pointing at is something more intrusive: the mind actually generates what we experience as the world. Or more precisely, our experience is a combination of external inputs (what’s really happening) and the narratives our mind is applying to those inputs.

Experience = world + story.

Those stories form quickly. They’re emotional. They’re often recycled. And they’re usually invisible to us, because they feel like truth. When someone makes a face and we suddenly feel insecure, we don’t think, “Ah, my interpretation engine is activating.” We think, “They think I’m annoying.” And we feel it. In the body. We tighten. We self-monitor. We adjust. That’s the power of narrative.

Delusion Isn’t a Mental Health Problem—It’s the Default Mode

The deeper problem isn’t just that we misinterpret things. It’s that we mistake those interpretations for life itself. We become entangled in them. We live inside them. And eventually, we forget we’re doing it.

That’s what NT calls delusion. Not in the sense of hallucination or psychosis, but in the ordinary sense of thinking your constructed world is the world. That’s how we end up stuck, anxious, fighting, confused. We’re not in touch with reality—we’re in touch with our thinking about reality.

Delusion doesn’t always feel bad. Sometimes it feels good. Love drunk, ego highs, spiritual pride, obsession. But it always has the same structure: perception + narrative + identification. And it always limits our ability to see clearly.

Narrative Theory as a Response

Narrative Theory starts by recognizing this: you can’t trust your perception blindly. It’s too wrapped up in thought. It’s too susceptible to shifts in mood, energy, and unconscious programming. The only real way out isn’t more thinking—it’s seeing. Catching the moment where a belief forms. Watching a narrative emerge and noticing it as a construction, not a fact.

Sometimes that happens gradually, like realizing you’ve been upset about something that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it happens all at once, like Won Hyo in the cave. Either way, it requires stillness, honesty, and a kind of sober intimacy with your own mind.

The deeper you go, the more radical this gets. At the surface, it’s about seeing your judgments or projections more clearly. At the deepest level, it’s about seeing through the entire concept of a stable, separate self—because the self is the most persistent narrative of all.

That’s where this is headed. Not to self-improvement. To freedom. To seeing clearly, without the film.

B. What Are Narratives?

If you start watching your thoughts, you’ll see that they’re not random. They’re shaped. Some are short and flicker away, like reactions or internal monologue. But others hold together. They gather meaning, assign value, and frame a situation. These are narratives.

A narrative isn’t just a sentence in your head. It’s a mental-emotional structure. It includes a subject, a point of view, and a conclusion—even if the conclusion is vague. There’s a target—some event, person, relationship, mood, the future, or yourself—and that target is being interpreted in a specific way. It’s being evaluated, judged, explained, and felt through. That’s narrative. It doesn’t just describe experience. It produces it.

That production happens quickly. Something happens: someone doesn’t respond to a text. A feeling shows up. That’s the raw event. Then the narrative starts: “They’re pulling away,” “I shouldn’t have said that,” “They’re busy,” “This always happens.” Each narrative creates a different version of reality, and a different emotional response. Same facts. Totally different lived experience.

We don’t notice this happening because it feels like perception. It feels like we’re seeing the truth. But we’re not. We’re seeing a mental frame that's gotten enough energy and confidence to feel solid. That’s what makes narrative powerful and also dangerous. It’s not happening on a screen—we’re inside it.

Inner Monologue vs. Narrative

Narrative isn’t the same thing as inner monologue. Monologue is just the verbal layer. The chatter. Narrative is the structure underneath the chatter. It’s what gives the chatter its shape and emotional direction.

If you’re walking into a room and your inner voice says, “Don’t say something stupid,” the underlying narrative might be, “I’m being evaluated,” or, “I’m socially inferior.” You could replace the monologue with something more affirming, but the narrative might still be there underneath. The self-evaluation. The rank. The idea that this is a test.

Narrative Targets

Narratives form around anything, but certain targets repeat:

the self
other people
relationships
situations
the future
the world as a whole
feelings

They emerge quickly and usually contain some mixture of judgment, conclusion, and expectation. “He’s not listening.” “I’m getting better.” “I’ll never find someone.” “The world’s falling apart.” Each of these isn’t just a thought—it’s a little architecture. A frame that you start inhabiting.

Narratives Have Duration

Narratives don’t just come and go randomly. They have lifespans. They activate, stay active for a while, and then either resolve or get replaced. Sometimes it’s hours. Sometimes it’s years.

You can be convinced something is over—your relationship, your career, your chance at something—and then you sleep, or go for a walk, and the whole thing feels different. The facts didn’t change. The narrative did. This shows that the narrative wasn’t the truth—it was just the current lens.

Narratives often fall away not through effort, but through exhaustion. Something gives. Your body relaxes, your attention shifts, and suddenly the thing you were gripping isn’t gripping you anymore. The sense of certainty fades. The thought might still be around, but it no longer defines your experience.

Narrative Layers: Conscious, Available, Ambient

Narratives live at different levels of awareness.

Conscious narratives are the ones you’re aware of. You can hear them forming and playing out in real time.
Available narratives aren’t active, but they’re nearby. You can access them when asked. “Why are you upset?” “What do you think is going on?”
Ambient narratives are further out of reach. They shape how you feel and see things, but they don’t announce themselves. You only notice them when they shift.

Alcohol is a clean example. It doesn’t just lower inhibition—it shifts ambient narratives. It changes how you feel about yourself, your body, your social status, your options. You start behaving differently not because you’re thinking new thoughts, but because the baseline frame has shifted. You’re operating from a different flavor of self.

Ambient narratives aren’t visible until you leave them. That’s why people say, “I feel like a different person.” The narrative structure changed. Their self, as experienced, changed with it.

Self as Narrative

The self isn’t a fixed object. It’s a story. Or more precisely, a set of overlapping stories. Stories about what you’re like, how you’ve been, what you’re capable of, how others see you, what your limits are, what your value is. Some of these are conscious. Most aren’t.

When one of those stories changes, the self changes. And that change ripples out. Mood shifts. Memory changes tone. Options appear or disappear. A person who sees themselves as worthless or behind will move through the world very differently than someone who sees themselves as steady or on track—even if their life circumstances are identical.

This is one of the places people get stuck. They assume the self is something they’re discovering or repairing. But what they’re actually doing is maintaining a story. Fixing its weak spots, reinforcing it, defending it. All of that effort is invisible, because it’s being done from inside the story.

There’s no clean exit from that structure, but there are cracks. There are moments when a narrative loses its grip, and something else—simpler, more direct—starts to come through. That’s where this is heading. Not a better self, but the loosening of the one that’s always being narrated.

C. Narrative Properties

Narratives don’t just vary in content—they vary in form. Once you start watching them, you start to notice patterns: some come with a kind of charge, some lock in, some fade quickly, some shift based on energy or social context. These patterns are what I call narrative properties. They're not accessories to the narrative—they shape the experience of the narrative and determine how long it lasts, how influential it is, and how much you're identified with it.

Rank

Narratives are almost always tied to rank. How we see ourselves. How we see others. Who’s above, who’s below. Sometimes that’s explicit: someone gets praised, someone gets ignored. But often it’s subtle and ambient. You walk into a room and feel like you don’t belong. That’s not coming from nowhere—it’s coming from a narrative about your value in the group. The social mind is always doing this. Tracking who's in, who's out, who’s secure, who’s performative, who’s trying too hard, who can relax.

Rank is perception. We hallucinate it. But once hallucinated, it becomes real—because it affects how we behave. When we rank someone above us, we pedestal them. We self-monitor. We adapt to their frame. When we rank ourselves higher, we become looser, more directive. Sometimes generous, sometimes blind. All of this happens quickly. Often in the space of seconds.

Rank is a type of value assignment. And almost all narrative tension—whether in self-talk or in relationships—has a rank component embedded in it.

Locus of Normal

The locus of normal is the internal setting for what feels okay, acceptable, within bounds. It’s like your personal default thermostat. What kinds of feelings, behaviors, or outcomes feel “normal” to you? What can happen without you freaking out?

This changes across moods, relationships, and energy states. It also reflects internalized narratives about what kind of life you’re allowed to have. If your locus is low, good things might feel suspect or undeserved. If it’s high, conflict or intimacy might feel easier to navigate.

The locus of normal often transfers during arguments—whoever’s more confident can “drag” the other person into their frame of what’s okay. It’s one of the hidden power plays in relationships. The argument isn’t really about what’s fair—it’s about what kind of reality should be accepted as the baseline.

Narrative Lock

Lock is when a narrative hardens. It becomes unchangeable. You don’t just think something—you believe it, deeply. That belief usually comes with a physiological charge. Anger, shame, fear. That charge stabilizes the story, which is what makes it feel undeniable.

Lock isn’t just confidence. It’s the refusal or inability to update. The more emotional intensity behind a narrative, the more likely it is to lock. Once it’s locked, alternative interpretations can’t break through. You see what you're looking for. You collect confirming evidence. You project suspicion onto anything that contradicts it. This is how fights escalate. It’s how we get stuck in identity roles. It’s how trauma stories persist years after the events that triggered them.

Some narratives lock easily in some people. Others move in and out of lock depending on context—who they’re with, what mode they’re in, what their energy state is doing that day.

Confidence and Attraction

Confidence isn’t a quality—it’s a narrative state. It's what happens when you believe your own narrative strongly and fluently. That belief then communicates itself through behavior, voice, stillness, rhythm. Confidence feels stable. It’s not about certainty of outcome. It’s more like: “If things don’t go how I want, I’m still fine.”

That inner stance is attractive, because most people are narratively unstable. They’re fluctuating, self-monitoring, re-centering. When someone walks in with a coherent narrative and no flinching, it generates attention. That attention is what we call charisma. It’s not about content—it’s about stability. Rank and confidence are tied together here too: someone who feels high in the rank hierarchy will behave more confidently, and that behavior reinforces their rank.

Attraction often follows this pattern. Not because we think someone is “objectively” hot or compelling, but because we sense that their internal narrative is unshakable. And we want to be near that, or seen by it, or aligned with it.

Modes

Modes are bundles of thought, behavior, posture, narrative, and energy. They’re like psychological presets. You enter one when a certain condition is met—external or internal—and it colors everything. The way you see yourself, the way you talk, the kind of thoughts you have, your sense of agency and possibility.

Modes aren’t just feelings. They’re full mental environments. There’s a tone, a speed, a kind of vision, a set of probable actions. In “bar mode,” you act one way. In “conflict mode,” you’re strategic, vigilant, and short-tempered. In “retreat mode,” you disappear inward. The mode contains not just your behavior, but your range of possible narratives. It decides which stories are available to you and which are not.

Some modes are triggered unconsciously. Some are habitual. Some are tied to energy depletion or overload. You can switch modes quickly, but sometimes you get stuck in one for hours, days, or longer. That’s when it starts to feel like a personality or a diagnosis, even though it’s actually just a temporary structure.

Modes also reflect rank and narrative lock. A low-rank, low-energy mode will filter in stories of helplessness, failure, comparison. A high-rank, charged mode might generate stories about competence, superiority, charisma. Modes don’t just color your view—they decide which views are available to you at all.

This is one of the most important parts of NT: you’re not just shifting thoughts. You’re shifting operating systems. And if you don’t see the structure of the mode you’re in, you’ll believe everything it tells you.

D. Flowcharts and Mapping the Mind

At a certain point, you stop thinking of narratives as random and start seeing them as sequences. They run like little programs: a trigger, a shift in perception, a body reaction, a behavior, a resolution—or a loop back to the start. That’s what a flowchart is in Narrative Theory: a map of how your inner world responds to experience over time.

The point of flowcharting isn’t just insight. It’s to see the pattern while it’s happening—or at least shortly after—so that it doesn’t define your reality without your consent.

Loops and Sequences

Everything you do when you're caught in a mode has a logic to it. A loop. Something happens, and a pattern gets activated. It’s not just a narrative—it’s a full sequence: physical, mental, behavioral, energetic.

"A loop is a sequence in time of narratives and impulses, movements (behaviors), changes in breathing and in tensions in body rhythms over time..."

What’s important here is that the loop has structure. It might start with a drop in energy or a perceived slight. Then a narrative activates—maybe about failure, rejection, threat. Then a behavior: withdraw, seek reassurance, lash out. Then something happens in the environment, and either the loop ends or resets.

These loops are subtle, fast, and mostly invisible. But they’re patterned. Which means they’re learnable.

Flowcharts as a Way of Seeing

People don’t live in free-floating thoughts. They live in modes—temporary operating systems that come with their own logic, vibe, and options. And every mode has its own flowchart.

Some flowcharts are pretty stable: this thing triggers that response. Others are more layered. A person’s dominant narrative might be waiting under a more “functional” one until they get tired, hungry, or stressed. Then the deeper loop takes over.

Understanding someone—including yourself—means asking:

What activates this mode?
What does the person perceive from inside it?
What are they trying to do with it? Avoid shame? Assert control? Earn closeness?
What actions or outcomes does the loop lead to?

This is the work of mapping. Not diagnosing. Understanding. You’re trying to see how someone got there, and what keeps the loop alive.

Mode Profiling

Modes are complex systems. You can profile them the same way you'd map a habitat: what's growing there, what animals show up, what the weather’s like. In NT, a mode profile includes:

Energy state – Is the system charged or deflated? Anxious, aggressive, collapsed, social, flat?
N state / N style – The flavor and tone of the narrative. Is it controlling? Defeated? Grandiose? Judgmental?
Flowchart – Trigger → interpretation → body → behavior → outcome.
Perception filter – What information gets in? What gets ignored?
Projection – What’s being silently assumed or imposed on others? What’s the Saran?
Body – Tension? Stillness? Breath? Gaze? Posture?
Common triggers – Situations that start the loop.
Common resolutions – How it tends to end.
Follow-up modes – Where it leads next.

The point of building a profile isn’t to categorize yourself. It’s to see the pattern. Not as “who you are,” but as a thing you pass through. A temporary weather system.

Narrative Economy and Feedback Loops

Narrative doesn’t exist in isolation. It lives inside a larger feedback system made of:

Energy state
Body feedback
Narrative structure
Perception filtering
Behavior
External reinforcement or rejection

These layers constantly shape each other. You feel a little shame, and your energy dips. That makes shame-related narratives easier to access. That changes how you breathe. That affects what behaviors seem appropriate. That shifts how others respond, which either confirms or destabilizes the narrative. That’s the loop.

This is why insight alone often doesn’t help. If the energy state and body state don’t shift, the loop stays intact. It just gets more intellectually complicated.

Flowcharting is about understanding yourself and your mind habits. It helps you stop treating a passing mode like an identity. You get to say: “Ah. This is what’s happening.” And once you say that, you’re not in it in the same way anymore. You're watching it. That’s where change starts. Not by fixing, but by seeing.

E. Mental Health, Relationships, and Speculation

Narratives don’t just shape perception. They define what’s possible for a person—what they feel, how they act, what they think the world is. When those narratives collapse or conflict, we experience suffering. That suffering gets called anxiety, depression, or relationship problems, but underneath the labels, it's all the same basic structure: you’re trapped in a story, and the story is malfunctioning.

Depression

Depression isn’t just feeling bad—it’s a form of narrative collapse. The self-narrative that kept you moving, striving, interpreting things with some kind of optimism or momentum has shut down. There's still a story running, but it's stripped of options. The story is usually some version of “nothing matters,” “I can’t change anything,” or “I’m not worth much.”

Depression has a distinct texture. Not just in thought, but in energy. It’s slow, gray, repetitive. The mind doesn’t generate new ideas—it loops. The body doesn’t want to move. Breathing gets shallow. Memory picks out only the things that confirm the current story.

The problem isn’t that the depressed narrative is wrong—it’s that it’s locked. Nothing updates it. No input gets in. That lock-in is what makes it feel real. But like all narratives, it’s temporary, even when it feels absolute.

Anxiety

Anxiety is narrative acceleration. You’re trying to get ahead of something—some kind of threat—but you’re doing it with thought. The body feels tight or hot, the breath shortens, and the mind starts generating scenarios: what’s going to happen, what’s wrong with me, what do they think, what if this feeling never ends.

But the real engine of anxiety isn’t fear of an event—it’s the belief that you have to control the state you’re in. That if you don’t fix it fast, something worse will happen. That urgency creates more narrative. You end up trying to narrate your way out of a narrative problem. It doesn’t work.

The shift comes when you stop arguing. You let the feeling be. You stop energizing it with explanation or resistance. When that happens, the state loses its fuel. The moment opens back up.

Conflict

Conflict always feels like a clash between people or positions. But in NT, conflict is better understood as a clash between narratives. You’re not fighting someone—you’re fighting their frame. Their version of the story. And because they’re inside it, it feels just as real to them as yours does to you.

That’s why conflict is tense. It’s not just disagreement—it’s a threat to your structure. When someone rejects your frame, it can feel like they’re rejecting your intelligence, your worth, your sense of justice. So you defend. They defend. No one’s really hearing. It escalates.

But under the surface, all conflict is the same shape: a refusal to accept what’s already here. That refusal can be mild or loud. It can be internal or interpersonal. Either way, it’s a demand for something else—a different feeling, behavior, outcome. Which makes conflict not a pathology, but a tension between reality and desire.

Narrative Adoption and Opposition

Narratives don’t just arise—they’re shared. We pick them up from others. This is most visible in families, relationships, and social groups. If someone you rely on strongly believes something about you or the world, it's hard not to absorb that. Especially when belonging is on the line.

This is narrative adoption—taking on someone else’s frame, sometimes without noticing. You start talking like them. Thinking like them. It can look like maturity or alignment, but often it’s just submission.

The opposite happens too: when someone’s frame threatens your autonomy, you oppose it. Even if it's accurate, you reject it. You push against their narrative, not because it’s wrong, but because you can’t afford to lose your own. That’s narrative opposition. It feels principled, but it’s often reactive.

This dynamic explains a lot of relationship fights. People aren’t just disagreeing—they’re defending narrative territory. Sometimes the goal is to merge stories. Sometimes it’s to win. Sometimes it’s just to not disappear.

Modes and Conflict

Modes complicate this. Once you’re in a mode, your story, posture, and emotional logic change. A mode has its own priorities. You can go from caring to combative without realizing anything shifted. The same conversation turns into a totally different interaction because the mode changed. And now the narratives are operating under different rules.

Conflict in this case isn’t just between people—it’s between systems. Each person is being pulled by a different feedback loop. Until one or both of them step outside the loop, nothing can really change.

Speculative: Projective Power

Some people don’t just hold narratives—they radiate them. It’s not just confidence. It’s a kind of gravity. Their frame becomes the default. Others defer to it without noticing. This might be called charisma, but it’s more structural. It’s frame strength.

There’s a possibility that people like this can actually stabilize narratives in others, not just emotionally but perceptually. Being around someone who doesn’t wobble might make you less wobbly. Being around someone delusional might make you start to believe it too.

Whether that’s energetic, social, or something more unusual isn’t clear. But it happens. And if you’re not aware of it, you can end up running a story that’s not yours, without knowing how it got there.

F. The Shift

The shift is a collapse in wanting. Not a decision to want less. A real collapse. It happens when your thinking starts to lose its grip, and with it, the entire project of managing, planning, defending, performing, or becoming. You don’t make it happen by force. You burn out on effort. You get tired of trying. And something falls. And what's left isn’t despair. It’s clarity.

In NT, this is the moment that healing starts. Not insight. Not catharsis. The shift. A change in consciousness where the resistance drops away and your mind stops generating so much. Thought stops clinging. Feeling stops expanding into narratives. You’re left with just this. Not some idealized Now. Just whatever’s actually here.

This shows up in grief. In meditation. In exhaustion. In real surrender. You stop trying to figure it all out. You stop trying to get somewhere. And for a few seconds—or longer—you’re not being pulled. You’re just here.

Stillness Doesn’t Mean Blankness

Stillness doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. It means you’re not fighting. Thinking may still come, but it’s slower, looser, not goal-directed. You’re not trying to “win” with your thinking. You’re not trying to fix or prepare. And because the whole organism isn’t contracted around wanting, the nervous system calms down. Breath appears. Muscles unwind. And you might find that you can see things with detail and softness at the same time.

Some people only feel this kind of clarity after loss or during psychedelics. But it’s always there. The way is always the same: stop interfering. Let things be unremarkable, unresolved, even confused. Let the mind unravel on its own.

Returning to the Body (Maybe)

There’s a common idea that to quiet the mind, you should return to the body. It’s mostly right. Attention on the body is a way out of the loops. Breath, posture, stomach, throat, jaw. That shift in attention interrupts the flow of thought and allows your nervous system to reset.

But even this can become another strategy. Another project. “I need to be in my body now.” That intention becomes another thought, which reactivates the same loop you were trying to escape. So even “returning to the body” has to be done loosely. Lightly. As a shift, not as a tactic.

If you do it right, it’s not even you doing it. It just happens. You realize: there’s breath. There’s my jaw. There’s the chair. There’s no one managing it. It’s just true again.

Letting Thought Unwind

You can’t fix thought with thought. Most people try. They try to resolve narrative with better narrative. Insight with more analysis. But all that does is reinforce the problem: you’re still running the program. Letting thought unwind is different. It means not participating. Not energizing. Not indulging or pushing back.

When you stop doing anything with thought, thought starts to slow. When you stop feeding it attention or resistance, it dissolves on its own. And underneath it isn’t emptiness. It’s something quieter. Something more intact. The clarity that was always there before the stories started.

After the Shift

When the shift happens, you don’t become enlightened. You don’t become wise. You just stop doing. And in that stopping, there’s space. Space is what lets clarity emerge. What lets kindness emerge. Not because you’ve cultivated it, but because nothing is in the way.

You don’t feel better. You feel real. And you realize that almost everything else—everything you were chasing—was you trying not to be here. Trying to get somewhere better. Trying to win, or arrive, or finally feel okay. But it’s here. Not special. Just real.

And the mind doesn’t need to do anything about that. That’s the shift.

G. Self and Enlightenment

Most of the narratives we live in are about the self. What kind of person you are. What you're capable of. How you compare. Whether you're okay. Whether you matter. These stories are so constant they don’t feel like stories. They feel like truth. Or identity. But when you start looking at them directly—especially through stillness—you find there’s no one actually holding them up. There’s no core self underneath.

The self is a construction. It’s not an illusion in the mystical sense—it’s a useful fiction. A process. A bundle of thought-forms, emotional tendencies, and learned associations all wired around the question: “what am I?” We keep building and reinforcing that self-story, and at some point forget it was a story at all.

We try to protect that story. Or improve it. Or make it impressive. That’s what most of our effort goes toward—earning value inside the imagined world that self is built to survive in. But it’s all internal. All Saran. And it all depends on belief in that central figure. That’s the structure that has to break if anything real is going to come through.

What Is the Self?

The self isn’t one thing. It’s a shifting set of configurations depending on context and state. Social self. Private self. Self around authority. Self in retreat. All of them feel like “you” while you’re in them. But they contradict each other. They use different voices. They remember different things. They want different outcomes.

That doesn’t mean they’re fake. It just means the self isn’t stable. It’s assembled on the fly from memory, mood, energy, relationship dynamics, and subtle cues. Which means any story you tell about who you are is always partial. It's always based on the mode you're in.

The Illusion of Separation

The mistake isn't just thinking the self is stable. The deeper mistake is thinking it’s separate. That it lives on one side of a border, with everything else on the other side. That it’s an observer, or a protagonist, or a manager of experience.

That sense of separateness is the basic illusion that underwrites craving. Because once there’s a separate self, it needs something. It needs protection. It needs control. It needs love, rank, clarity, peace, stimulation. Whatever your nervous system has decided is missing, that becomes the project. You start chasing. Or defending. Or managing. And you start suffering.

But the separateness itself is a mirage. You never actually find a boundary. There’s just experience. Sounds, breath, flickers of intention, waves of perception. The belief that it all belongs to a “me” is something that gets added after the fact. And once that belief drops away—even briefly—what’s left is simplicity. Not transcendence. Just no extra layers.

Boddhidharma’s “I’ve Pacified It”

There’s a story in Zen where a student asks Boddhidharma to help him settle his mind. “Bring me your mind,” Boddhidharma says, “and I will pacify it.” The student looks and says, “I can’t find it.” Boddhidharma says, “There. I’ve pacified it.”

The point isn’t to find peace. It’s to look for the mind and not find it. To search for the self and come up empty. That’s the pacification. Not a calm state. A recognition that the thing you were trying to control doesn’t exist in the way you thought.

The Great Mirror Has No Stand

Another line from Zen: “The great mirror has no stand.” There’s perception, but no one holding it up. No one behind it. Just seeing. Just hearing. Just feeling. When you look for the self that’s supposed to be operating the mirror, you don’t find anything solid.

That isn’t meant to be poetic. It’s a description of direct experience when thought quiets down. When narrative lets go of the steering wheel. The mirror still reflects, but it doesn’t belong to anyone.

The End of Wanting

When the belief in the separate self collapses, so does wanting. Not because you got what you wanted. Because there’s no one there who needs to chase anything anymore. The energy that was driving all the projects—self-worth, status, romantic fulfillment, spiritual success—drains out.

What’s left is rest. Not bliss. Just stillness. Neutrality. Maybe even boredom. But it’s clean. It’s not filled with strategy. It doesn’t require narration. There’s nothing to perform.

People spend years trying to relax and never really get there, because the self is still active. Still doing something. Still watching. Still managing impressions. Real relaxation comes when the manager shuts off. You’re not trying to relax—you’re not trying at all.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment isn’t a glow. It’s not a cosmic truth. It’s not a spiritual identity. It’s the end of the belief that there’s someone to improve. It’s what’s left when the drive to become falls away. It’s a default mode, before the stories start up again.

You can still think. You can still care. But you’re not doing it to fix yourself. You’re not trying to succeed inside a fictional world. You’re not trying to win. You’re just responding to what’s happening. Without story. Without commentary. Without needing to be someone.

And in that space, sometimes wisdom shows up. Sometimes compassion. Not because you decided to be a better person. But because nothing is in the way.

A Zen Manifesto

2023-08-14T15:44:00.002-07:00

The Zen Manifesto is a synthesis of my views on Zen practice, why people should practice, how, and some of the issues that arise in the course of practice. If I had only one compact document to share with people, this would be it. My aim is that it’s complete enough that one wouldn’t have to look elsewhere.

It’s ironic that human beings rarely know how to be. Our society, language, upbringing, and culture have all conspired to make thinking the centerpiece of our personal identity. We’re lost in thought non-stop. While thinking is an incredibly useful tool, when it goes unmanaged and unchecked, it can complicate and distort our lives and relationships and even our understanding of reality itself.

Our thinking generates an entire world of meaning that we project out onto our experience and confuse with reality itself. I like this, I don’t like that. This person is smart, this person is an idiot. This is scary, that is useless. It layers onto our experience seamlessly, like Saran Wrap, so much that we usually don’t even notice it unless either we’ve really engaged in intense introspection, or it occasionally snaps. It really is like a delusion because we don’t even know it’s happening. We create stories about others and relate to them through our stories and associations which are sometimes positive but often negative. We react prematurely, misinterpret, and hold contempt for others because we see them through the filter of our thinking.

We also see ourselves through these filters and hold ourselves at a distance, punishing and resenting who we think we are. Living in our thoughts is similar to dreaming (the Hindu name for it is maya meaning dream or illusion). And the thinking just makes it all the harder to repair situations, restore harmony, and feel connected. We’re experiencing this all in a very real way in today’s society, both with intimate relationships as well as along political lines.

Thinking separates us from our best parts. When thinking is rampant, it stifles our natural wisdom, strength, clarity, and determination. It distances us from what we actually care about. It stops us from feeling whole. It stops us from feeling the peace we already have in our hearts. It throws our calm energy into disarray.

Why are we always thinking? Habit is a big reason, and our society, language, and technology encourage thinking and rarely encourage its opposite: being. But the real driver of thinking is an inherent need to be constantly changing and improving things--Buddha called this “desire” but I like to think of it as a mild, perpetual desperation. In addition to the obvious tasks and goals we have, our thinking is often aimed at improving our immediate situation, planning for the future, or somehow working problems out in our head, often with our career, family, or relationships. Each person’s thinking content, style, and frequency is different and it’s worth examining your own to see when and how you think.

If the root of thinking is a mild desperation to change things, the root of this mild desperation is our identity. The identity I’m talking about is the thing we refer to when we say “me,” “my,” or “I”. We engage in campaigns to improve things on behalf of our identity. We might daydream about what we’re going to say to a colleague because we don’t want to be disrespected and have our identity contract. We judge others for being different so we feel better about how normal we are. We dwell on the state of the economy because we don’t want to lose materials we associate with this “I”.

But what is our identity? We’re convinced that this very thinking is actually the essence of who we are. The stream of thinking that never ends is assumed to be who we are--the thinker--i.e., the one who does the thinking. But is this thinker a real thing or is it an illusion? We also have streams of visual input, auditory input, body feedback, but we never take these to be our essence. We consider our thoughts to be closer to our essence. We’re so intimate with them, and they’re often so continuous that they seem like they’re who we are. But are they really?

You can look at your life and likely identify moments where your thinking wasn’t really yours anymore. Maybe you experienced your anxious thoughts not as you but as happening to you. That’s an interesting shift in perspective that can have an immediate impact on your wellbeing. But if your anxious thoughts aren’t you but happening to you, it just begs the question who is the real you? And why are anxious thoughts not you, whereas other thoughts are? Maybe none of them are you. But then what are you? Where does that leave things?

The real purpose of Zen, practice or any practice with the spirit of Zen, is to examine the question of identity in a very precise, scientific, and deep way. The conclusion of Eastern philosophers and mystics is that the self, the “I”, isn’t what we think it is (literally). It’s not the stream of thoughts passing through consciousness. That stream of thoughts can’t help us understand our identity because to understand our identity, we have to experience it. And in order to experience it, we have to go outside of our thinking. So, the real purpose of Zen is to wind down our thinking and then interrogate that question of “what am I?”

With quiet reflection we can experience that our identity literally can’t be the stream of thinking because that stream is constantly changing and reformulating itself. It may not sound like a major problem, but actually it completely dismantles the idea of a separate and continuous self that we take ourselves to be. By looking closely at the self during deep contemplation, we see that every component of our experience--what we see, what we hear, what we can feel, and even what we think--has this quality of inexorable change. Furthermore, when we look at our senses, we see that each is actually completely composed of something other than you. For example, you see people, streets, buildings; you hear chatter, airplanes, traffic. None of these things are you, and yet they comprise your experience. By changing all the time they lack an essence, and therefore can't be used to form a lasting identity we'd consider a self, or a “me”. This is called the doctrine of emptiness.

Emptiness implies that there’s nowhere a self could ever exist because the raw materials we have to work with--our experience--are in constant flux and aren't even you to begin with. It’s an environment that’s unsuitable for any type of continuous entity such as the self, the “I”. That radically changes our worldview. Rather than a “me” who experiences things, there’s just experience. Technically speaking I don’t hear a bird’s song; there’s just the sound of a bird song. There’s no I that mediates or receives the experience. It’s even a mistake to say that we are the bird song itself since that disappears in an instant. This insight is the central insight of Zen and Buddhism and is referred to as the doctrine of non-self.

Remember this isn’t just an intellectual philosophy: It’s an experience you must have that exists outside (or before) thought. For that reason my Zen Master (Seung Sahn) would often say “understanding cannot help you!”. Look at your experience right now. Listen to the sounds you hear. Is there just sound, or does there need to be a you-entity to observe it? Zen mythology is filled with stories of students attaining enlightenment by perceiving sounds clearly. One monk attained enlightenment while sweeping when a rock struck a piece of bamboo.

Once the idea of our self, the “I”, as an entity dissolves, all the needs--the desperation--that drive thinking and the dream world it generates also dissolve. We feel immediately awake, connected, clear, and compassionate. Alive. Our wisdom blossoms and a deep sense of ease washes over our mind and activity. Our mind is open. We aren’t driven by our habits, fears, resentments, and insecurities anymore. We can live with wisdom and purpose and restore harmony to any area of our lives with courage and focus.

To summarize the human condition:

A concept of I → Desire for change → Thinking → Living in a dream world → Disconnection, distortion, complication, friction

So how do we stop thinking? Before you get started on your journey, it’s worth taking a minute to reflect on moments in your life where you weren’t caught up in the mental narrative. Maybe it’s through camping, maybe it’s from meditation, maybe it’s just a few moments in your life where you felt absolute freedom from thinking. For me, it was while bowling once amidst a high-anxiety moment. For a friend of mind it was running away from a bear or taking a gold swing. There are experiences that sometimes take you out of thinking entirely and dump you right into your body and environment. You feel it.

The biggest complication in trying to stop your thinking is that a technique that’s aimed at stopping thinking can just produce more thinking. And this happens often. If I try not to think and then think, I’m liable to get frustrated and think about how bad I am at not thinking. Any goal we hold tightly in our mind is more thinking. So we need to think (pun intended) of a way to get around this problem, a technique that isn’t a technique, or a method that’s not really a method.

There are a few non-methods that have developed over time and I’ll briefly discuss each. I encourage people to experiment with all of them.

Concentration (with gentle focus away from thinking)

This category includes focus on the breath, counting breaths, mantra repetition, chanting, and focusing on a visual object. The basic method (or non-method) involves sitting quietly and concentrating attention on something simple like the breath. In focusing on the breath, the practitioner focuses on the experience, i.e., the physical sensations, rather than one’s thoughts about the breath. However one breathes is okay although sometimes the practitioner is encouraged to try and elongate the exhalations. I don’t do this personally.

When thinking comes up, whether it’s 6 times a minute or 6 times a second, the practitioner just ignores it or lets it pass through consciousness without fuss. There is no special way to experience the breath. Whatever happens happens. After some time, this practice can lead to the second method, just being.

Just Being (giving up desire)

This technique naturally arises when thinking starts to slow down to the point whether the practitioner is just sitting there. The japanese style of meditation called shikantaza literally translates to “just sitting”. With this method there really is no more meditation in the sense that there’s no longer a goal of trying to meditate. The state of being is entirely goalless and one could say that it’s not so much a mental state as an absence of one. A sense of presence in one’s environment and presence in one’s body arises naturally.

With effort, the practitioner can carry this non-state into other areas of their lives. For example, when walking they are just walking, not lost in the mental dream, not caught up in trying to meditate or even trying to walk mindfully. The same goes for eating or even talking with a friend. In this case, thinking arises but it no longer overwhelms the mind and happens against a backdrop of inner silence that comes to the foreground when thinking is no longer needed. Through it’s goallessness, the method of Just Being cuts to the heart of desire and thinking altogether. In that way it simulates the experience of enlightenment (or its aftermath) and in fact is regarded that way in the Soto Zen tradition.

This practice is similar to mindfulness, but mindfulness ends up being the product of not trying to do anything, rather than the product of trying to be mindful. Many Zen stories and koans can be understood as pointing to this state of mind. Often in Zen, this state of goallessness is produced by frustrating the practitioner or putting them in a predicament where they’re forced to give up trying and strategizing because it doesn’t help solve the dilemma.

Exhaustion

Exhaustion overwhelms the body and forces the practitioner to focus on their body to the exclusion of their narrative stream. Exhaustion practices in traditional Zen include bowing, but anaerobic activities like running, yoga, playing basketball, or hiking (really anything but ping pong) can also be effective.

Inquiry

In Zen, the 3 methods above are combined with some type of inquiry practice that targets and challenges our notions of self. The techniques vary. In some forms of Buddhism there’s a systematic analysis of the components of self with particular attention to their empty qualities. In some Zen schools, practitioners are encouraged to ask “what am I?” or “what is this?” during moments of deep contemplation. In other Zen schools practitioners are taught to obsess about the question of self and use it as a meditative tool. I personally practice the second technique mentioned.

Whichever method you choose, it’s good to find a teacher to help you with your journey. A good teacher will be experienced with different methods and will listen and guide you appropriately. Progress in meditation can happen quickly or gradually and usually happens both ways at different points in the journey. Even when you think you aren’t making progress, you are, slowly, and the effects will sneak up on you.

If there’s one thing I could leave you with it would be this: take a breath right now. Feel what it feels like to just breathe. See if you can come out of your mind a bit. Feel your body, right now, not in any special way. What do you feel? Just listen to your experience in no special way, but maybe just open your heart a tiny bit to listen without expectations. Neither placing expectations on yourself nor on your experience. See the quiet that’s there. You are awake and I love you.

How to Perceive Things as They Are

2020-12-12T23:20:00.003-08:00

I'm not really sure when it started, or when people first noticed it, but my friends have always made fun of me for saying things are "interesting." Some exes would even get upset when I'd use it and not clarify. But the truth is, I find lots of things interesting and always have.

People sometimes ask -- good interesting or bad interesting? I say neither. It's just interesting. Maybe I just never lost my curiosity. Maybe no one has.

But I think what's really happening is waking up to what things actually are, and what exists.

Now it's really easy to look that over as just a sentence, but it's actually a special kind of experience that involves understanding, seeing clearly, waking up, and not having any additional thoughts or opinions. It's just perception, or witnessing (or mindfulness) or Zen. It's perception of things as they are. I like to call it Vision.

Vision has a lot to do with science, but it's a slightly different form and comes at the same experience from a different (but maybe not opposite) direction. It's related (but not entirely) what Einstein was alluding to when he said that Religion and Science were the same question and that they were codependent. (Not like your ex is, just interdependent.) Science tries to ask what exists and how to describe it and understand it, especially its components. Spirituality or "waking up" -- remember "Buddha" means "awakened one"-- is just seeing things as they are without excess mental activity. Without fighting it. With acceptance. It's a way of living that the Taoists and Zen Masters obsessed with and mastered. With of course the added objective of transforming one's life and approach to it.

This "Vision" is also a fundamental component of wisdom. Wisdom is the result of inner, true calmness that teaches you what ends are worthy of pursuit and clarity of knowing how to help someone (or yourself) get there. After my month-long silent retreat, this quality emerged sharply for a few weeks. The ends we guide others too are always towards Surrender. Vision is the outcome of Surrender.

And that brings us to the skills portion of this post that no one will read. I'm using Surrender here in the Alan Wattsian way, or in the Zen way; Surrender (capitalized) is the act of not trying to get anywhere and letting the body relax. Let's do an exercise. You can skip to 8, but the first 7 steps are important set up.

1. Sitting where you are take a deep breath that feels good. Not like a homework assignment. You're not trying to take a certain KIND OF BREATH or achieve a "peaceful" or "relaxed" state. At least, you will, but not by trying to. You'll only achieve it like a visitor who stops by unannounced, which is to say, when you're not expecting it to come. You just make an environment for it, like putting out a picnic blanket.

2. Take a couple more deep breaths. Easy ones.

3. Start tracking the full extent of your breath. You don't have to change it but try and keep it "smooth". Expanding and contracting at a groovy, melty rate.

4. Relax your shoulders and the muscles around your neck. Like you were coming out of the best not awkward massage of your life. (I find them all awkward.)

5. Start to feel the sensations in your chest too a bit or maybe somewhere else if you feel it.

6. Don't get too involved with your thoughts. Don't make a whole technique out of trying to experience some type of special breathing experience. It's not going to work that way. You'll only be "tight" and thinking the whole time, but your thinking will be "monitoring mind" or what the Kwan Um School of Zen's Founding Teacher (ZMSS) used to call "checking mind."

7. Just kinda chill there. It's okay if your mind wanders. Don't be a security guard. Or, just be a cool one. Like Carl Winslow from Die Hard. (Yes, I know I made a mistake. Multiple.) Just hear what's going on. See what's going on. Without an opinion. Without necessarily thinking it's amazing.

8. Ask yourself gently: "what is it?" This is where Zen and spirituality kind of part ways with this technique. Asking "what is it?" is like asking "what am I looking at? what is it? what is the actual event happening? without all my opinions and thoughts about it. Then just perceive.

I use this technique to think about things and analyze situations. I use it to understand people, politics, relationship issues, conflict, and life predicaments. And people usually like what I have to say.

They say it's interesting.

Do you believe people can develop spiritual abilities?

2020-10-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

Hey Edahn,

Many individuals from India claim to either have special powers or have witnessed other people using special powers such as scent manifestation and the ability to conjure a physical object with the power of the mind and will alone. Others yet claim that there are individuals who have graced the Earth for centuries in the same physical body and that they don’t need any form of sustenance.

What are your thoughts on the subject?

I THINK THERE'S SOME TRUTH to it. But I also think there's some bullshit to it too. People walking around in the same physical body? Ehhhh. I don't think so. People being about to manifest objects? Ehhhh. Don't think so. People being more attuned to nature and being able to predict the future (in small doses)? Yes, I can see that.

My hunch is that if there abilities do exist, they would be associated with some atypical personality traits or states of consciousness. If Joe Schmoe said he could read minds, I would call bullshit. I would be less inclined to call bullshit if it was a lifelong meditator or someone who had developed deep self-acceptance and compassion or focus. I would still be skeptical, but I would be open.

I've had some experiences that have been difficult to explain and would seem to fall into a "supernatural" category. (As an aside, I don't think anything that's real is supernatural...I think we just haven't articulated the science behind it.) I go back and forth about whether these experiences were authentic or whether they had more boring explanations. For example, when you know something about someone that you shouldn't know. Is it real precognition or is it just unconsciously reading subtle clues? I'm still undecided. It feels authentic, but I'm not certain.

This wasn't part of the question, but I will give the standard Buddhist admonition I've heard since forever: it's easy to get attached to fantasies about having special abilities. Even if you have these abilities. If they come as a byproduct of your spiritual practice, great. But if you make it the focus of your practice, you can kind of get lost and veer off-course. Amassing power is about feeding one's conceptual identity, whereas genuine spiritual practice is about seeing through the illusion of one's conceptual identity.

Is Addiction a Choice?

2020-10-16T13:36:00.002-07:00

Dear Edahn,

I'm curious on your thoughts about addiction as a disease vs. choice. My life went down some unexpected places and I found myself trying to escape. After a couple of rehabs, and various 12 step programs, I realized that wasn't the path for me. It's hard to see that a blanket treatment works for all, whether its food, gambling or drugs. Cognitive-behavioral therapy would seem to be a better path. Ultimately fixing your path, for me it's finding success in a career. I'm working on it as I have a tendency for self sabotage on jobs. So not following my usual tendencies has worked out so far. I just never could handle the "powerless" aspect of the disease model.

PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE a choice to make their lives better. You may not have control over the contents of your body and mind (including your urges), but you certainly have control over how you see and respond to those urges. That applies for all addictions.

To break it down, you're sitting there on your couch and you're like man, I wish I was [fill in the blank]. High? Drunk? Playing a video game? Watching TV? Scrolling on Instagram? Meeting hot single moms in your area? The impulse isn't consciously chosen; it's the product of years of conditioning. (Lifetimes if you subscribe to Buddhist reincarnation.) That's what karma really is, it's not an invisible X-Man.

But there's nothing that forces you to seek out that reward. There's pressure, sure. And you might experience more pressure than others in some particular domain. But that doesn't mean you're compelled to do it. That's loser talk. That's giving-up-your-independence talk. That's not-taking-responsibility-for-your-life talk.

You mentioned self-sabotage. I can relate. I will say a few things about that. One, don't dismiss the power of your mind to figure out what's at the bottom of your habits, impulses, and addictions. Don't be satisfied with what other people pass off as scientific explanation or psychology. Both, in my opinion, have weaknesses in their explanatory power.

Science tends to think explanations end with biology (like the disease model). I've always found that strange since our biology is just the physical mirror image of what's happening in the mind. One doesn't cause the other. It's the same thing. Oh well. Psychology has different limitations. The point is, don't let that be the end of your understanding. Use your own experience and mind to look carefully and openly at what's going on in your mind and body to see what's really going on. What is it seeking? How's it operating?

If it's self-sabotage, then maybe you're getting some kind of payoff through that process. Maybe you're relieving the stress of feeling judged by others. Maybe you lose a part of yourself in trying to please others that you regain when you're alone. Or maybe you regain in a moment of deep depression. Maybe the addiction is to self-hatred. The mind is tricky, and the things it finds satisfying (its addictions) are not always obvious. But the more you study it, the more you'll start to realize how it ties to other parts of your life. You'll also get better at recognizing when it starts to creep into your experience.

The next big step is figuring out how to respond to all that content (your urges to do whatever) that comes up. Is it taking a walk? Letting it pass through you? Ignoring it? Laughing at it ironically? Giving it a big, resounding NOPE? You're already trying to figure that out. I'm a big proponent of continuing to experiment and see what happens.

Ultimately, we all have the same fundamental job in life: to learn to perceive our karma--i.e., our habitual, addictive patterns of thinking and feeling--instead of becoming it. We're all struggling with addiction, and we all have the power to choose what to do with it.

Introducing Narrative Theory (tm) (Name Pending)

2019-08-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'm officially introducing Narrative Theory (tm) Name Pending. Yep, that's the official name for now, until I can think of a better one.

A little bit about what this theory is, what it isn't, and it's origin. First, the origin.

THE ORIGIN OF NARRATIVE THEORY

This theory is the culmination of years of thinking about myself (did you hear that? that's the sound of all my exes rolling their eyes), about others, about thinking, and trying to synthesize the patterns by which everything operates. It what happens when an attorney with a passion for logic marries a therapist with a passion for understanding life and improving herself. Then they have a kid with super-high anxiety and a habit of introspecting and introverting.

This theory is very much built upon my understanding of the mechanics of my happiness and happiness in general based on years of meditating, reflecting, and attending retreats. It's rooted in my belief in science, which is to say, the best way to apprehend how things work is through logic, experimentation, and observation, rather than faith. But the experimentation we're going to talk about is on a super-subtle level, involving variables essential to the scientific process themselves such as our thinking and our desire to understand. My hope is that we'll come to see that the natural (as opposed to metaphysical) laws that govern the mind are the same mechanics that govern so-called "spiritual" experiences.

This theory is also the result of my experience counseling others, both formally and informally, and the result of my education in university and as a therapist. It's based on things I've absorbed deeply, the things that have made me narrow my eyes in skepticism, and the things that have left me utterly confused. In fact, it's mostly about the last one. I've always felt like there were so many basic features of life, psychology, personality, and relationships that just lacked an adequate system or framework for explaining and understanding. Narrative Theory (tm) Name Pending is that framework. It's the broad framework upon which we can understand and begin making sense of our experience.

WHAT NARRATIVE THEORY IS

Narrative theory is an ambitious attempt to deconstruct, organize, and classify the fundamental components of our experience that are essential to our sense of self, our interactions with others, and our well-being.

We'll start with a deconstruction of experience to identify the fundamental elements of narratives. We'll look at how those building blocks function together to build perspectives and, along the way, introduce some new concepts to help us get there. We'll introduce a classification system to help make sense of our various narrative styles. And we'll talk about meta-properties of narratives that will have some interesting consequences later on.

Next we'll look at some applications of narrative theory as they relate to the individual. We'll talk about our sense of self and value, the rules by which we come to determine that value, and how that value plays an integral role in our interactions and the fate of our narratives. We'll look at some common issues that people encounter like depression and anxiety through the lens of narrative to gain a deeper understanding of them. Then we'll talk about addressing those issues with different techniques.

Third, we'll look at conflict. We'll look at how narratives interact with each other out in the wild. We'll look at the situations in which narrative conflict arises--relationships, law, the workplace, family and friends, and political disputes--and we'll analyze them through the lens of Narrative Theory. We'll identify the rules that govern narrative interaction and discuss dispute resolution.

We'll talk about attraction and relationships, and the role of framing in meeting people, and leaving people.

Finally, we'll talk about special topics: things that don't fit neatly into the organization above but are too cool not to mention.

The word theory here is being used not to describe a hypothetical idea, as in, when people say "I have a theory about something." It's more a system for understanding events, in the same way Einstein's theory of relativity was a framework for understanding time, space, and matter. In the same way that Einstein's theory made predictions that made the theory testable, Narrative Theory (tm) Name Pending will make testable predictions.

THE 3 GOALS: INSIGHT, WISDOM, AND COLLABORATION

My first goal is that this theory gives you insight into human nature and more importantly, your own nature. My wish is that you come away with a better understanding of the fluctuations and vicissitudes of your own mind. I want you to have deeper insight and clarity when it comes to conflict, including what's happening, how to defend yourself, and how to resolve it.

The second goal is based on the first, and that is, that insight will spur wise action. It's not enough to know. We have to know what to do with that information, and here we might have to travel outside of the realm of science and into something else. It's not faith, but it's something else.

Third, I want this framework to serve as a foundation for others to develop more ideas and expand and enrich this framework. For as long as I can remember I've fantasized about the democritization of science and the collection of information, while simultaneously expressing a disdain for the business of science and publishing that's exercised control over the "gates of knowledge" like an asshole bouncer that only lets in people who look rich. Not only has it led to a sequestering of knowledge and harmful stratification of people into scientists and everyone else, it's led to a drastic metering of scientific and intellectual pursuit, one that's desperately needed in today's age. Let's bring science back to the people and make discoveries together.

This Life is Dedicated to . . .

2019-07-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've last posted here, and a lot has been going on. I've been working on some ideas and frameworks that, I hope, will provide a useful model for social interactions, conflict, thinking, and psychology, all inspired and informed by my Zen practice. I'm tentatively calling it Narrative Theory and I may start explicating it here on this blog.

I've also had a few more serious things happen in my life that have taken my emotions and thoughts for a journey lately. And along that journey, I've made a few observations I thought were worthy of sharing. Also, I need to break the ice somehow, so here goes.

I was exercising at the gym on Friday after work and the television was on. It was Chris Cuomo on CNN, serving the outrage du jour. I considered listening which would have had the intended consequence of pissing me off for 2 reasons: first, whatever Trump's administration was plotting in this week's episode of Whitehouse Shitstorm always seems to boil my blood; second, because it would have interrupted an ongoing 3-day marathon of Rhianna's Needed Me (I'm still listening on repeat as of 2:45pm Sunday, god help me).

But instead, what struck me is the polish and status of Cuomo. A handsome guy, telling us what's up, broadcast on national television. He's made it. He's achieved success and all its symptoms: fame, beauty, money, respect, influence. Right?

Brief detour: when I was a kid my best friends and I used to play the arcade game Area 51 almost religiously. It was a shooting game where you had to kill aliens, avoid killing humans, and along the way could collect different power-ups like better weapons and shoot barrels and windows to earn more points.

Area 51 arcade game screenshot. I bet you didn't know aliens wore berets.

At the end of the level, the game would show you how many point you had accumulated in all the different categories: kills, damage, accuracy, etc., and your overall score.

Life is the same way, and I wouldn't be surprised if competitive games clicked with our culture because of the way it mimics life. We're all trying to accumulate maximum points before our game is over. The question is what categories the points come in. We're going to call it THE SCORING SYSTEM.

The categories in the modern world have some degree of uniformity: material wealth, popularity, influence, beauty, security, and offspring with similar qualities. Chris Cuomo has it. Celebrities are portrayed as having it. And we're all constantly told these categories matter by the way others praise these qualities, subtly and overtly. You see it on Instagram and Facebook all the time. You hear the way others talk about people's achievements and failures over brunch or drinks.

The scoring system is transmitted within culture through multiple channels and from various sources. So it's no wonder we all end up wanting the same things, trying to score points in the same categories, making similar life decisions with similar goals in mind.

But there's a problem.

As long as we're trying to earn points in a scoring system that we've inherited, rather than consciously selected, we're always going to be living inauthentic lives, and the "success" we achieve (and the satisfaction that follows it) will always dissolve. It won't bring you closer to the feeling you think is waiting for you when you cross the finish line, because you'll realizing you were running in the wrong race.

If we want to live authentic lives that bring meaning, we need to arrive at a PERSONAL SCORING SYSTEM. We have to transcend the default scoring system and decide what categories matter to us. The method for doing that is introspection, inquiry, fearlessness, and brutal honesty. We have to ask ourselves what truly matters in this life. What experiences? What principles? What virtues? What outcomes? The answer has to come from the gut, in a flash of intuition rather than analytical thinking. When it comes, it hits you. It strikes a chord that's both rare and familiar. It's an experience you have to have. If you're not emotionally aroused, you aren't there yet.

The path you take to earn points in our scoring system will depend on the person you are, your innate talents (discovered and latent), the situation you're in, the challenges you've conquered, and the ones you've yet to conquer. Dedicate your life to what matters to you.

I'm not going to pretend like I'm the first person to say this. Platitudes about life are traded more often than fur pelts in New France in 1612 (too soon?). But there's a difference between talking about this stuff and putting it into practice. So I challenge you, the reader, to ask yourself what you stand for, what matters, and what you'll dedicate your life to, no matter the cost.

Kyol Che: My Month of Silence and Meditation

2018-08-24T00:00:00.004-07:00

Diamond Hill Monastery, Cumberland, RI

In July I attended a month-long silent retreat. Tonight someone asked me if my retreat was worth it, or whether it was it just “some hippy shit I already knew.” Kudos for calling all of Eastern philosophy hippy shit, but even more kudos for asking a question so directly. In response I thought I’d write a blog post about the retreat experience. Partly for myself--I was contemplating this post for the entire retreat--and partly because I know there are people out there interested in retreats, in spirituality, or in hearing a story about me in pain. Whatever floats your boat.

Retreat Basics

The retreat was right outside Providence, RI on the grounds of the head temple of the Kwan Um School of Zen, a Korean style of Zen that made its way to the US in the 70s (I think). The temple where most of the retreat was held was in the middle of the woods, abutting a small lake that was teeming with frogs, birds, insects, and even fireflies. It was hot, but you really felt like you were in nature. The retreat had about 20 people on average and lasted 4 weeks. People would enter and exit twice a week. Most people stayed a week, but a few of us (7) stayed for the duration.

The Typical Day

The dharma room (not full), where we meditated

Each day consisted of a combination of bowing (15 minutes), chanting (2 hours), sitting meditation (a million hours) (okay more like 8), walking meditation (2 hours), work period (like chores, 1 hour), formal Zen meals (1.5 hours), and rest (3 hours). Wake up at 4:30am (1:30am Pacific time) and lights out at 9:40pm. It was tough in the beginning but you settle into a routine, and then it was tough at the end asI was anitpicating going back home and counting the hours. The bowing is not a deity since Buddhism doesn’t really concern itself with a deity and is different than a typical devotional religion like classical Judeo-Christian religions. The entire retreat is held in silence except for formal Zen “interviews” with teachers. The interviews are opportunities to ask questions and deepen your practice with koans, which are kind of like riddles that you can’t answer with normal thinking. You have to go beyond (or before) thinking to answer them. That’s a whole other story.

Formal Zen meals are held in silence and are very prescriptive; they’re almost like a ceremony with tons of forms and rules to abide by. Kinda stressful at first but you pick it up quickly. The food was roughly the same every day, although the soup we ate for lunch and dinner every day changed from day to day. The food was actually pretty good, even though it was basically the same. In formal Zen meals, you have to eat everything you take, and you don't take anything yourself, you're served food from others. It's actually quite beautiful to see a "you first" mentality instead of the typical "me first."

So What the Fuck Did You Do?

Founding Teacher and 78th Patriarch,
Zen Master Seung Sahn (d. 2004)

Well, a whole lotta nothin. But nothing is a lot different from what we’re normally doing, which is making noise and being distracted. Let’s break down the goal of Zen practice and the means of achieving that goal.

Zen Buddhism starts with the Buddha trying to find a way out of suffering. But the goal of Zen Buddhism isn’t just happiness, but also purpose and meaning and wisdom. All of these come from quieting the mind and investigating the nature of your identity and whether or not it’s truly separate from the rest of the universe, or just a part of it, in the same way that black and white parts of the yin-yang symbol are a part of a greater whole. (That’s not just an analogy; it’s the origin and meaning of that symbol.)

To get to a place of non-thinking, we can apply certain techniques, but we have to be careful with techniques, because if we apply a technique with an expectation of a result, we find ourselves back in the domain of thinking. It’s like a rat wearing a little hat and carrying a clipboard trying to tell you that you have a rat problem--your solution just reintroduces the problem.

So instead, we take the approach of non-attachment or the Middle Way, where we drop all expectations of changing and making progress and try and face what’s already happening right this very moment without thinking about it or analyzing it or evaluating it. We just watch what’s coming into our experience--whether sounds, visuals, smells, tensions in the body, the breath, or even thoughts. They’re all coming and going and we don’t really futz with them. We just watch them come and go, like a breeze blowing through a window. We’re the window, watching things pass through. It’s almost like we’re not applying any technique at all. I sometimes like to ask myself “what is it I’m trying to run away from?” and then just sit with that, letting it all just happen without interference.

This technique, if we can really even call it that, takes some time to really understand. And in the end, it’s not really an understanding at all, since that’s just a form of thinking. It’s a practice. After a while of not engaging the mind, the mind starts to slow down and your awareness of whatever’s already going on becomes heightened. You feel more present. Sounds and visuals become amplified. It’s not magic; it’s because that’s all that’s really left in your experience because you’ve subtracted the thoughts out. The present moment and your sense of being in it is just the remainder.

What Did You Get Out of It?

Porch for walking meditation

When your thoughts aren’t pulling you every which way and distracting you, you naturally start to feel more aware of your present situation. But it’s a lot more than that, because you realize how your excess, wandering thinking really impacts your experience. You can see how without excessive thinking you’re calmer. You have less anxiety and self-doubt. You’re more optimistic and you can see things working out and not falling apart. Not because you’re naive, but because you’re just not so negative. You feel more authentic, more yourself. You can relate to people more authentically and have a desire to connect to anyone. You have a desire to help and care for them--anyone, not just people you know. You don’t want to sacrifice yourself, but you want to be kind. And you feel happy. And you start to feel other people starting to feel happy by being around you. I think that was the most inspiring part.

You develop insight into people and situations, not because of your thinking but actually because you’re not thinking. Situations seem more clear and solutions appear naturally--solutions that lead to balance and harmony.

You also start to make connections between meditation and your daily life because meditation becomes a kind of template for everyday life. You see how your approach to meditation and frustrations with it are symbolic of the same frustrations and problems you encounter in your relationships with others, job, and in your relationship with yourself. For example, I got to see clearly how I tend to find problems with situations and people and myself in the same way I find problems with the quality of my meditation. I’m always fixing and working on everything instead of letting it be. And the fears I have of disconnection and failure arise in my relationships (I’ve had social anxiety since forever) the same way they do in my meditation.

My Experience: Overall, Highs, & Lows

Overall, it was tough but not impossible. I was tired and my knees and back and shoulder hurt for most of the retreat. I would vacillate between frustration and release/surrender, until one teach showed me that all of those evaluations were just more thinking.

Highs included moments of deep, deep quiet, moments of extreme self-love, laughing and crying harder than I have in years, moments of insights, friends, and something that, I hope, will never go away. There was a moment where we were eating in silence, in a dimly lit room, in the pouring rain...that was one of the most beautiful moments. The other was at dawn, where the sunlight painted the dharma room a warm orange and made the trees outside glow. I wrote a few poems, a few jokes, and a whole bunch of short ideas on meditation practice.

Lows were body pain and fatigue and the heat.

Conclusion

I started practicing years ago but went on this retreat to investigate some parts of myself, my direction in life and career, and my experience. I went in with questions and got some answers, but they didn’t really take the form I was expecting. It’s like solving an equation in an unexpected way, and with only a part of the answer, but you know you’re onto something, I guess. I can’t really say more than that because there are parts of my experience I’m keeping private and am still processing.
If you’re interested, I encourage you to go to a class or find a Zen center in your area and talk to a teacher. Be brave and go on an adventure. It’ll change your life.

How to Keep the Sex Drive Alive

2017-11-07T17:44:00.001-08:00

Hi Edahn,

Not sure if you still reply to stuff, but I guess I can still try. I found you through your responses on Psychcentral and you seem very knowledgeable. I am 30 and I've been on a relationship for about 4.5 years with a girl. We did LDR for about 2 years.

In all my relationships, I can kiss and think about (or have) sex with the girl at the beginning. After a while, I feel repulsed. As if the girl was family. I think my girlfriend is beautiful but something blocks me from seeing her as a sexual person, though I have sexual desire for other women. Once things get serious, I just don't feel aroused.

I did some online research. I feel like it is a Madonna-Whore syndrome. I also thought this could be some kind of asexuality (fraysexuality to be more accurate). I saw your answer about the attachment disorder (avoidant type), but I can't really see myself as an avoidant. Also, I was religious until my very early 20s, protestant, which means I had my first sexual experience quite late (mid 20s). I grow up hearing sex is for married couples, and even kissing without commitment should be avoided, which is why I avoided teenager parties and stuff like that when I was young. I do believe all this could have some impact on my problem.

HERE'S THE THING. You go around life thinking other people have got something you don't. It's a syndrome that applies to people--not just you, not just guys, hell, maybe not just people. It's ubiquitous. You think people can do something that you can't, because they have something that you don't. "They're wired differently. They had a different mother and father. They grew up in a different culture."

It's bullshit. We're all the same and we're all struggling with the same shit. Some people find ways out, some don't. You just haven't found your way out yet.

Every guy deals with that you're experiencing because of genetics. We're wired to mate, not to be in relationships. You have to think about things from the standpoint of biology and evolution, and from that standpoint, what's most important is the number of potential kids you're having, not the quality of of your long-term relationship. Read more about EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE EXPERIENCING here (forget the Madonna-Whore stuff).

If you want to have a long-term relationship you need to figure out how to work around the biological barriers. The barriers are the boredom that you're experiencing, the lack of sexual motivation, the attraction to novelty, the feeling of being alone, of routine and responsibility, and the loss of your personal edge, which is connected to your sexuality. All that stuff is how evolution makes sure that you go and have more children with more people. (We're personifying evolution here; it doesn't have any real motivation.) It's the internal mechanism that makes you turn off.

Your job is to hack it. Find a way to get your edge back, and to get your happiness back. Find a way to outsmart your own body. Not by being a fake--we never pretend. But by finding what, in your relationship, satisfies you. Being open, being intimate, having a go-to person, being sexual without being cringey, being independent and non-needy while still trusting and enjoying companionship.

Right now, take a deep breath. Picture yourself in a relationship. Maybe it's with this person, maybe it isn't. But I want you to picture yourself happy. Picture going through your relationship with someone you trust. Picture sharing. Picturing being funny and witty and having that mirrored in your partner. Picture having new experiences, exploring new places, trying new things (obligatory not just anal) and fucking up and laughing about it. Picture getting through arguments and returning to your baseline of closeness. Picture interesting conversation. Picture bad jokes and people rolling their eyes but secretly loving it. Picture having sex, not because it's Sunday morning at 10am (I'm looking at my neighbors as I write that) but because you feel close and want to express your closeness.

Make that vision of yourself personal to you. Internalize it and keep it somewhere sacred. Trust it and work towards it by being the person you want to be in a relationship. Make room for your partner to be the kind of person you want to be with--not just qualities like "nice" but behaviors that create and sustain chemistry like humor, intelligence, creativity, adventurousness, and attentiveness. Don't demand that she be that, just allow it to come out, and if it doesn't come out, move on. Good luck.

Got a question? Email askedahn@gmail.com. Posts are kept anonymous.

Finding the One

2016-10-25T19:27:00.004-07:00

Neo thinks he's the One

Hi Edahn,

Recently, I feel as though my thoughts and actions are taken over by the need to find a person that I can connect with at some capacity. It's mentally exhausting, and I don't believe/enjoy online dating so much. I mean, don't get me wrong, I try using them then soon after get disappointed and immediately delete them. Right now I am on a "no dating" hiatus and I would like to think it's very empowering. People ask me out and I politely decline. It feels great (not rejecting people, I'm not that cruel lol) because I have the ability to somehow have time to do the whole self-improvement thing. Yet, I'm still controlled by this societal pressure of having a significant other or just the natural longing for human connection.

I'm rambling. I'm feeling held back because I may have met the said "one" - a person that I can connect with deeply. When we're together I feel as if he knows everything I am feeling and vice versa. All the stars in the universe align. I know I sound a bit crazy but I never felt that feeling with anyone else before, it truly was a beautiful thing.

The problem is my friend was and may quite possibly still be interested in him. I never could make a move in fear that I would lose my friend. To add to it, he's moving to another state in a few months. Dare I say, he is going to become my very own - "the one that got away."

What do I do?! Accept that maybe we were kindred spirits that passed through each other's lives for some purpose and leave it to rest? Do I tell him how I feel?

I'LL TELL YOU THE absolute honest truth, something I really haven't told anyone: for a short period of time, I think every person I meet might be my soulmate. Girl at the bar? Check. Barista? Double check especially if she ignores me. Friend's friend from Europe? Czech. It's automatic, even though I'm pretty sure I don't even believe in soulmates (although I have my own definitions).

It's a residue of the same genetic and social pressure you're describing. It's also the product of the desire ~~to end this eternal lonely existence~~ for companionship. The need to find someone distorts our perception so we see what we want to see; we see the solution to our problems. In my experience, the stronger my need for companionship, the stronger my projection of "soulmate status."

Conversely, there are moments where I'm not projecting anything; I'm just taking in what's there, and I know that if it doesn't work out--whatever. I'll go on. What's different? It's the desperation that's gone. The desperation to find someone, to mate, to get your life in order, to rid yourself of loneliness, to fit in, to check someone off your life list. What the cause of the desperation? Now we're getting into esoteric territory, but there's no other way out. The desperation is exactly what Buddha meant by "desire" being the cause of all suffering. The desperation is a product of thinking too much and getting lost in your thoughts. All you need to do is reconnect with your body and heart and you'll see it melt right away. (More posts on meditation here if you're interested and have 17 hours to kill.)

Onto your situation. I'm not in a position to say whether this guy is a great match (I really don't believe in soulmates) or whether you've just projected soulmate status on him. And truthfully, you might not know that either. My advice: go answer that question. Find out who he is, and do it with respect and care toward your friend. Approach it delicately and in person by asking what type of connection they share, and let her know what kind of connection you shared with him. Tell her how you would feel if you were in her shoes, wanting her to be happy and letting go if it wasn't special enough. If she feels the same way about him, maybe you back off, but if he's just the infatuation of the month, then ask her to let you pursue him, and to support you as only she could do. Give her the option to say no so she doesn't feel cornered. If you get the green light, I would just come out and ask the guy if he felt a similar connection, and if he did, if he'd like to ~~come over and watch Netflix~~ hang out sometime, hopefully within the next 3 months.

*ehhh

Anyone home?

2016-10-21T23:07:00.001-07:00

hi!

do you still respond to these??

Yup.

--Edahn

My Involuntary 3 Month Vow of Silence

2016-06-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

So on Monday I had surgery on my throat. Following a wicked cold when I got back from Thailand (pics here for the stalkers), my throat got inflamed and never really got better. It turned into a granuloma, which sounds worse than it is. Hopefully, right? Biopsy results coming in todayish.

To prevent people with granulomas from getting another granuloma, they Botox your vocal chords so you can't talk. For. Three. Months. Technically, I'm not even supposed to laugh. So naturally I thought I'd go Harpo Marx on this, but my doctor said whistling transforms your vocal chords, so I can't do that either.

So now I have to figure out how to communicate without speaking. "You're doing it right now, idiot!" you all say. True, but oral communication happens at a much faster clip. Got a witty comeback? Oh no you don't. Because by the time you finish writing it out and having someone read it, 9 other things have happened to respond to.

So I may just end up taking a vow of silence for a little while. Reflect on things. I've been wanted to do that for a while, as I sometimes feel like I've drifted too far from my true direction in a bunch of different ways. Mostly, psychologically and emotionally. The best person I am is the person who's vulnerable, emotionally available, nonjudgmental, raw, and principled. It's not that I'm none of those things, but certainly not to the degree I want to develop.

These last 10 years I've been somewhat of a tracker tracking his own footsteps. We take some many steps without realizing where we've traveled. But we end up getting to places that inspire us and give us a feeling of purpose. The next task is to trace our footsteps and see how we got there.

Meditation seems to do it, but only when I'm not trying too hard to meditate. Listening, in general seems to do it too. Drumming can kind of do it too. It almost seems, though, that the more effort one makes to be peaceful, the less peaceful they are. And yet if we don't try at all, we just end up drifting.

On Listening

2016-03-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Listening isn't just an act, is a mindset. We're used to listening to music or to other people, but you can listen to anything. You can listen to yourself, to the world, and even to silence. Listening to silence is called meditation.

The essence of listening is simply not talking. Not just talking out loud, but even talking to yourself. When you listen to a person and talk at the same time, whether judging or figuring out what's wrong with what they're saying, you can really only hear yourself. The best you can hope for is to get a version of the truth that's mixed up with your preconceptions and ideas. That's not very good.

When you listen you get a new perspective. In the same way that you can view a sculpture from different vantage points, you can look at a situation, or more generally, reality, from different perspectives and see new things. In the case of listening, the new perspective doesn't come from getting something new, but subtracting. Subtracting your preconceptions and usual dialogue about a problem or situation. Listening makes room for me insights into a situation, another person, and often, yourself.

You don't just listen with your ears; you listen with your whole body. You listen with questions rather than answers. With silence rather than speech. With gentleness rather than cynicism. When you listen you find room to accept and even appreciate and the capacity to experience love and forgiveness without any pretensions.

How to Deal with Narcissists

2016-03-22T00:11:00.003-07:00

Kind of a drastic way in his case, but it worked I guess

Dear Edahn,

I am feeling very hurt by my ex boyfriend. I am 22 years old. He is 33 years old. We were friends before we started dating, in October of last year. Everything was great because we were already so comfortable with each other. In January, he broke up with me for the first time..after our first real fight over something stupid. A week later, feeling desperate and lonely, i texted him saying i forgave him and let's be friends. He wanted to see me later that night...and the cycle began! We slept together and started dating again. Ever since then, it has been an emotional rollercoaster!! He breaks up with me because he does not know what he wants and after a fight, and the break ups get longer each time. It is almost as if I AM BEING PUNISHED EACH TIME. But I am an idiot, because I take him back.

I am feeling crazy and insecure at this point. I hate the person i have become. Please help me with what to do. I feel like because of him, I am forever damaged. I am petrified to get into another relationship because of him. He makes me feel like I am not beautiful anymore because we're through. I think he does this on purpose.

LET'S START WITH making sense of what's happening with him and with your relationship. I think he's a very emotional guy. When he's not with you, his emotions erupt and he thinks about you as his perfect match. But after you reunite, everything flips and he thinks about all the things that make you incompatible. You're both his angel and his demon. Why he flips? I don't think it's a simple answer, but I think he probably lacks self-esteem and self-connection and prematurely idealizes others so that he can feel something other than emptiness and self-hatred. But that's followed by devaluation because the idealization is ultimately an illusion built on imagined intimacy. It's like flying really high with faulty wings; you're eventually going to crash really hard.

He takes you on the emotional ride that he goes on--highs and lows--and in the end, leaves you feeling rejected and unworthy of love, which makes you somewhat vulnerable to the same type of behavior he exhibits because they're both rooted in a deep self-rejection.

Now we get to you. Part of dating, and life, truth be told, involves knowing when you walk away from something bad and knowing what you deserve. You should have walked away after he first broke up with you. If someone doesn't want to be with you, fuck them (figuratively). Don't fall into the trap of reuniting and fucking them (literally) because it sends a message, both to him and to you, that it's fine to treat you that way because you're not the kind of person who needs to be treated well. You gave him permission. So in a way you're both responsible for eroding your self-esteem. He pushed it, but you let it slide.

The question is how to move forward. Well, for one thing, you need to identify where your boundaries are. When you don't feel like you're being treated with integrity, hold the line: speak up, set a boundary, and if that person can't honor it, walk the fuck away. If they over-complicate things and make elaborate arguments, just leave and say you're not going to wait for them to figure out how to treat you, and that someone else out there already knows how. Second, and more importantly, you need to dial into what makes you respect and even love yourself. What are those qualities? What makes you a good person? Not in a religious or philosophical way, just a good person. Someone who cares, listens, helps, reflects, contributes joy and wisdom to the world rather than friction and conflict. Concentrate on those qualities and keep them close to you so you can start to rebuild your own self-respect. The boundaries are just a way to protect that once you realize how precious it is in the big picture.

Good related post here.

Edahn
Questions? askedahn@gmail.com

How to Find a Wife or Husband

2015-12-17T12:50:00.001-08:00

Hi Edahn,

I am a 30 year old woman single mommy of one son. I am almost done with my BA at university and plan to go to the Law School shortly after for corporate law, but I am so utterly driven by finding a husband or at least a boyfriend it's awful.

I am very intelligent and I don't drink. I think these are some reasons men don't approach me. I'm fairly attractive as well (verified with a PG-rated pic sent in–Edahn) so my friends say I might be intimidating. I think it's my kiddo sometimes because most men don't want that... So what the heck am I do wrong? I've tried online dating and met a BUNCH of weirdos and I go out with my friends and look pretty n wait but nothing. My mom says I should dye my hair brown because I look like a bimbo and then when people talk to me they realize I am intelligent and it's not working? Where should I go to meet a decent man? I really want more children.

MY REACTION TO the “weirdos” from the online dating world:

In the course of dating, people tend to acquire a lot of baggage. Some of the baggage is obvious and external, meaning, dating changes the way you perceive the dating world. Most people become jaded and resentful and form pretty depressing views of others. The other type of baggage is internal, and it’s a lot more subtle. That type of baggage is the way dating changes your view of yourself. In some cases, you might start to think you’re undateable because you’re not good enough for others. (Some of these ideas might have already been swimming around since childhood and now have an opportunity to resurface.) Other times you might start to think you’re undateable because you’re too good. It gets even trickier: sometimes dating changes the way you think about yourself because it makes the parts of your personality that others consider important more salient, so you start caring more about them.

Okay, so what the hell am I talking about? You’ve got you. Who are you? What makes you you? We could argue for hours and cite philosophers and therapists, but really, what makes you you is a fundamental kindness, a goodness, something fragile that’s also incredibly strong and humble. Someone who wants to connect with others, cared and be cared for, and live with joy and subtle smiles. There’s humor, intelligence, and a gentle capacity for reflection, not just in you, but in all of us. That person is the person who’s always there and has been there since childhood. That’s the person who is guaranteed to lead a satisfying life composed of a series of beautiful moments, regardless of whether they get married or not. That’s the real you.

We forget that all the time, sometimes for years at a time. Some people never even remember it, and that’s the worst tragedy. We start to think of ourselves as different people as we identify with the roles we play. At work, we identify with our work roles, then we go home and identify with our family roles or our social roles. When people ask us casually to tell them about who we are, we launch into a set of facts and stories that conjure up an image of who we are, but it’s only an image, like a hologram. Our education, jobs, income, looks, health, all holograms. The struggles we face, our luck, our philosophies and world of preferences, all holograms. It’s not that they’re not real—it’s that they’re not the real you.

As long as you think of yourself as a person with challenges, as a person who’s pretty (too pretty, even) or too educated, or even as a person with a child, you’re always going to be out of touch with the real you (your spirit for lack of better term). Being in touch with the real you isn’t just the best way to make a connection with another being, it’s the only way to make a connection with a person. Everything else is just intellectual heady bullshit—holograms meeting holograms.

I want you to think about these ideas. Just be open to them, even if they don’t seem to solve your problem right away and even if some things don’t seem to fit into your worldview just yet. Let it marinate for a bit. Visualize the real you and how she might look if she was at a park with her son, talking to a nice stranger, or at the beach, taking a stroll and talking to a neighbor with a warm smile and patient eyes, no makeup, talking about how beautiful the colors of the sunset look. Feel how it feels to be her. See how she has no baggage in that moment? She’s just who she is, without the burdens and pressures of…well…everything. Remember what it’s like to be her, and I think you’ll find what it is you’re looking for. Maybe you’re not really looking for a guy after all, but something even greater.

Peace & Kindness,
Edahn

Send questions to askedahn@gmail.com
.

BREAKING: AskEdahn gets a makeover; owner still same old ugly thug

2015-05-17T12:05:00.002-07:00

Hi everyone! (anyone?)

AskEdahn got a much-needed makeover this morning. I've rolled out some of the new branding I've been working on, and a new master brand logo, my ugly mug and beard. The idea for the logo came from a very talented designer from my past. Big thanks to her.

I also made some functional tweaks, adding the submission form on the top, and a row of links. Two new links--design and about me--were also added this morning.

Hope you guys like the new design! I certainly do.

Thanks,

Edahn

Feel like asking anything?

2015-03-24T22:46:00.003-07:00

It's been a while since I've answered or solicited questions from my adoring and not-so-adoring fans, but I want to open up the floor again for questions. Whatever ya got, it's anonymous. Ask away.

Edahn

ANONYMOUS COMMENT

NONYMOUS EMAIL

Saturday musings

2015-02-28T14:05:00.002-08:00

The idea that every riddle has a solution can be very motivating and exciting. The idea that some riddles don't have solutions is utterly fascinating.

A Tribute to Art

2015-01-18T16:27:00.000-08:00

There are all types of things in the universe that, when paid proper attention to, inspire a sense of wonder and admiration. I first noticed this with the question. Literally, a question, is an amazing thing. The way a sentence is structured and given an upward inflection towards the end makes a listener go into an information gathering, structuring, and verbalizing process, culminating in an answer. That whole process is really incredible and interesting, and it all happens with a question. When did questions arise? How did they arise? Who asked the first question in history? What happened to a group that didn't have questions? Where would we be?

Anyway, there are tons of these things in the world to ponder and admire and my small mind can only fathom of few of these things, although I think with more time and attention, we can notice more. Today's tribute is to art.

I have my own definition of art, and it comes from my experience, oddly enough, in meditation. Everyone can have their own definition of art, and arguing about which one is "right" seems to be a completely futile exercise, since we're ultimately just talking about which word gets attached to which experience or thing, rather than asking what the thing is and how it operates. That's a much more interesting question.

I first understand art as a process of letting go, although I didn't really know it was art yet. In meditation, a person surrenders their need to fight things, especially the mind itself, and they make peace, guiding subtly using wisdom and care. In my practice, I'd often have an urge to write after sitting. The writing was usually a poem (or sorts--I'm not a very good poet) about breathing, letting go, and the emotional qualities of sitting silently. The strange thing was that the quality of writing seemed different. It was almost like the pen was dancing in my hand, writing what was important. I'd even doodle a little, just shapes, but it was a non-judgmental, flowing kind of drawing, where the pen strokes all worked in harmony. It didn't look like anything really interesting, but when I looked at it, I could recognize that it was written in a special conflict-free state of mind.

Later, I began designing and creating things visually. The struggles of creative types were real for me: feeling like I wasn't in the zone, nothing was clicking, everything seemed boring and formulaic. But then there were small moments where, with the help of music, maybe tea, maybe some exhaustion, and the right mood, I was able to drop everything--every need to create something great, every expectation I put on myself. My thoughts and ego dissolved somehow into the music and space I was in, and my hand, my mouse, my mind, all started to dance and create things. The things would get better the more I learned how to design and build things.

And this brings us to the essence of art. Art isn't just about the person, it's about moving out of the way of things and letting them do their own thing with your guidance. The materials in your hand, whether they be the materials of a fine artist, a sculptor, a writer, a designer, a musician, come together at their own pace, with their own force. The artist's job is to guide them without forcing them in a direction they aren't naturally moving.

A good analogy is with a tether ball. As the ball swings around the pole, another person can choose to apply a certain degree of force that's consistent with the direction the ball's already moving, or orthogonal to it, but if he or she goes against hit, hitting it in the opposite direction, they're be in conflict with it.

Aikido is another good example. Aikido literally means together + spirit + tao (the way). In Aikido, the defender recognizes the natural motion of a person (the aggressor) and joins it, rather than fighting against it. The defender applies force that complements the force of the aggressor, or guides it in a direction that's consistent with its original trajectory, much like a person hitting the tether ball without opposing its momentum, but remaining consistent with it.

The same is true of art. The materials have a natural tendency, and the artist's job is to move with them, not against them--not in conflict. This happens in the art state of mind because by definition, that state of mind is free of conflict (or has minimal conflict in it). Conflict can't live in that space. The artist just helps guide the materials into their form.

Zooming out one more step, the process of art is really about harmony. It's about man living in harmony with the universe, not against it, but still participating. Art is harmonious joint cooperation in the universe. You might think of it as an existential teamwork. It's a rare thing in today's world to witness true art because people are so wrapped up in the consequences of their lives that they live in constant conflict with the universe, thinking they can beat it into submission to get what they want. Sometimes they do, for sure. But it has an ugly quality to it.

When we see people in harmony with the universe, we can instantly recognize the quality of true beauty that it possesses, not just in the process, but also in the product. We can take it a step further and make it personal. Finding harmony with the universe is our general mission in life because of the peace of mind it creates, and more importantly, because when you have it, you realize its meaning and power. This isn't something that can be argued logically; it's based on experience and everyone can experience it.

I believe, based on my experiences, that unhappiness comes from living in conflict with the general way of things, the opposite of Aikido, you could say. The tricky thing is, when people try and climb out of their suffering, they may very well start fighting with their own existence, more specifically, with the moment they're in and the qualities of that moment--their thoughts, emotions, surroundings, with others and their imagined thoughts about them. That creates more unhappiness in the long run because it keeps them in conflict.

The answer isn't just giving up, although giving up helps orient and clarify thinking and intention sometimes. I think the answer is a sort of mental Aikido--handling our disappointments and heartache with wisdom and clarity, without fighting against it. Those thinking styles can be cultivated in meditation, but need to be brought out into life to really work. With mental aikido, one can discover ways of redirecting threatening mental and emotional forces and thereby neutralize them, restoring a sense of calm and relaxation.

The same principles apply to restoring beauty and harmony in our outer world, whether we decide to fix a broken political system or social system, help a sick person or nation, or otherwise.

In essence, we are bringing the practice of art into our inner lives, our outer lives, extending it past the studio and past the meditation hall. We're making our lives, inner and outer, into works of art.

Manifesto of Hope

2014-12-31T18:21:00.002-08:00

I don't think anyone still reads this blog, but in the off chance that someone does, here's something.

We're in a very shitty situation right now as a species. People are acting out, out of greed, fear, and absolute delusion. Here in the US, especially in metropolitan areas, we've become completely estranged from our neighbors. We're confused. We don't know how to quench our thirst for happiness, comfort, love, and security. We have ideas and we're experimenting, but we're not sure. Something seems off.

Corruption is rampant. Private corporations have managed to infiltrate our healthcare systems, financial systems, education systems, legal systems, and political systems. They've trampled the environment and its inhabitants. They've managed to systematically drain the people of their resources, their intelligence, and their hope. Lobbying is a euphemism for bribery. The corruption is now systemic, reinforced by politicians and laws that have both been sponsored by the corporate entities they serve.

Overseas, the situation has become even more chaotic that dangerous. In Africa, intolerance and disease, In Europe and the Middle East, the rise of fundamentalism and all the militant responses it engenders. In Russia, an imperialistic posture threatens to destabilize the region and perhaps the rest of the world.

It feels like everything is burning down, and when we try to make a change, we experience gridlock. Resistance. There's too much to fix, and all the channels needed to fix it are already corrupted. It's like trying to fix a pipe with a broken wrench.

And yet, there's a hope. There's a hope that our generation, inspired by our personal values and compassion, will wake up, band together, and force change, not through violence, but through our intelligence and ingenuity. Touching hearts, touching minds, touching the humanity in our neighbors and our enemies. Finding our moral backbone and courage, we set on a path, determined to flush the organs of society of their toxic elements. We start to build a new society with new systems and traditions. We follow in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers, who also saw the need to create an alternative to the injustice they experienced.

Words and ideas are not enough. It's time for us to unite and take action to create a society we know in our hearts and minds is balanced, good, and just. We can't just wait for someone else to start. We need to be the start--the spark. Others will join because they know, deep down, that the world is sick and needs healing. What will I do? What will you do? What will we do?

#YearOfHope

How do I handle my jealousy?

2014-07-02T23:37:00.001-07:00

Hi Edahn,

I read your posts on psychcentral and felt you really knew what you were talking about and maybe could help me. The issue I am have is trying to eliminate or control my extreme insecurities. My fiance told me last night after thinking about this in his head for 4 months that he doesn't know what to do other than postponing the wedding because he feels trapped, helpless, and walking on eggshells. I know I do have a problem since it have dealt with a lot of things in my life such as anorexia, supporting myself, having a father who would verbally abuse me. I am constantly facing anxiety, depression, negative thoughts, and while I do trust my fiance wholeheartedly it comes off to him otherwise.

Some of the things I do include: asking him why is he looking at a girl and did he think she is attractive and if he wants to be with her. I know that is crazy. I have gotten better since we started dating, however it isn't enough for my fiance to not feel this way. I need advice on what I can do to cop with my insecurities and what you feel we should do about the wedding?

I'M GOING TO save you years of therapy by giving you some big clues as to what's going on. Your dad put you down when you were young. He made you feel like you were useless and lacked value. When people are in relationships, they're deepest fears bubble up to the surface and start making a mess. For you, it's the thought that you lack value, and that people will leave you for someone better. There's more to it, including the fact that everyone's born with this fear (in my opinion, at least). But that core fear has been agitated and worsened for you because of your difficult upbringing.

You've been dealing with that fear by sending it out for verification (asking/accusing your fiance) and then, once you've been assured that he isn't leaving you or thinking about it (and that you're valued), your fears are muted...until the next time. What you need to do is learn a totally new way of addressing your fears and thoughts. It starts with recognizing what's happening, which you can now start doing...right? Right. Maybe you hold his hand or hold your own hand, figuratively. You're learning how to live in peace, with joy, without succumbing to persistent fears.

Going deeper, you'll benefit more from making an even broader shift in your life. Pay attention to the stories in your imagination and find themes...jealousy, conflict, admiration, attention. We all have them. Find a way to be compassionate to yourself. Be curious. Improve yourself but love yourself as you do it. Open your heart to others. Keep your mind sharp. These are things that everyone has to do, not just you, but it'll pay off.

As for your marriage, it's not my place to tell you what to do. It's your life. You decide how to decide, you take the risks, you live with the results. Find peace in your heart, even for 5 minutes, and think about your situation again. See what feels right and trust it.

What should I do if my friends won't help me?

2014-06-24T22:57:00.004-07:00

Hi,

I was browsing Google for help and stumbled upon one of your answers at Psychcentral. If you still like giving advice and have the time I would truly appreciate it. You have an interesting take on relationships and what to expect from others. I only have one friend which is my ex-boyfriend. We were, and still are, incredibly close. He broke up with me because I have some depression-like issues and he was not happy having to care for me all the time. He says it brings him down, so while I cry he would just ignore me. I started acting like a child to get his attention.

Since he is my only friend and person I can come to with my problem, my need for his care when I feel depressed of course did not vanish because he broke up with me. I now feel worse than ever. I am not looking for advice on what to do for myself (I have a plan on what I need to do), but I am so torn between if I should remain friends with him or not. If he is not there for me when I need him, and he ignores my crying while I am reaching out, should I just stop hanging out with him altogether? I literally have no one else.

WELLLLL, I THINK THE first issue is how you see the problem. You seem to think that your plan of what to do for yourself and your issue with him are separate, but they're not. They're linked to one another. You're turning to him to soothe your feelings of discomfort, and he does it through feeling bad for you. He's literally taking your bad feeling away by feeling bad himself. Now it gets complicated, because on the one hand, we expect our partners and friends to listen to us and support us, but on the other hand, we have to solve our problems wisely.

What's happening now is that your feelings are turning outwards and becoming his problem. They're not really healing, just being soothed for a few hours, and at his expense. Instead, you need to find better ways to heal in the long-term, and better ways to deal with your depression in the short-term. You've been dealing with it the same way for 4 years, which means it's going to take some time to develop new habits, new insights, new ways of perceiving and reacting. A good therapist, some careful introspection and analysis, an open mind, and discipline will help you develop new coping skills. Most of all, you have to be patient and honest with yourself--not getting upset at how "damaged" you might feel, but also not making excuses for yourself to indulge in your feelings and feel sorry for yourself. I think the more you're able to "hold" those feelings and moods on your own, the easier you'll make new friends and keep the ones you already have.

Send all your good, bad, and WTF questions to askedahn@gmail.com.

Some Big Fundamental Truths

2014-04-19T15:44:00.002-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted, and I want to write something, but I don't have a prompt. So I'm going to just go ahead and spill the contents of my brain onto this blog post. Ready go.

The reason the world is all fucked up is that we don't really value virtues like honesty and character. We glorify attributes like success regardless of its cost, which is often integrity. If people can get away with lying or bending the truth, they're encouraged. There's no real accountability, and no honesty. People fuck things up like the environment or an ecosystem, take as much as they can, and then ignore their conscience that says quietly "hey. shithead. don't do that. that's not right." Without that voice, people take all sorts of liberties, hurting others, lying, bending the truth, rigging systems, taking what hasn't been given to them, and generally causing imbalance and pain. It's not a failure of religion; it's a failure of society.
Part of the reason for the lack of virtues is that we don't have any allegiance to our communities--no pride. We don't feel responsible to be good people because we don't feel like anything bad will happen, and we don't feel guilty because we don't know the people we're fucking over. Our societies are overcrowded and we don't have ways to meet naturally in safe, wholesome environments. Our meeting places--bars, clubs--are too goal-oriented and the alcohol brings out people's sexual needs rather than their social needs. How many of us actually know our neighbors? How many people in your neighborhood have you eaten with? This isn't a failure of people; it's a failure of urban planning.
Lots of us are single, and even people that aren't single are probably living like they are, in the sense of how alone they feel deep down. It's even worse when you're in a relationship and you feel lonely. As a therapist, I've run into a lot of clients who've shared the same story structure. Bad relationships all resemble each other because their architecture is fundamentally identical. The story is this: people are happy. They get into a relationship and it's exciting. Then they start to feel self-conscious. They try and bury it or ignore it, but deep down, it's there. It makes them unhappy, and they start to identify traits in their partner that they believe is triggering their unhappiness. It is triggering, but the unhappiness was already there. It's there because people think they're going to get kicked away when someone realizes they're not that great.

The antidote is simple: kindness. Look at your experience carefully and you see that fear preys on desperation: a nervous and flighty mind. You can't have desperation where your heart is open. Your instinct is just to accept and help and stay calm. True kindness--when you're just helping without trying to get recognition--whether public or private--is the kind of action that opens hearts and changes the way you process the world.

That's all for now. Peace out. Write me a question if you've got one.

New Presentation: The Quotable Pope

2013-12-30T17:55:00.001-08:00

I like this new Pope guy, so I created this presentations for fun, to spread some positive gossip about him. Enjoy!

The Quotable Pope - 12 Inspiring Quotes from 2013 from Edahn Small / VISUALI.SE

When Life Doesn't Meet Your Expectations, also, Babies

2013-12-27T16:12:00.001-08:00

Hi Edahn,

I found your blog just a few weeks ago and I find your humor and wisdom incredibly comforting. I'm hoping that you can help me with something.

Does anyone in a stable, heterosexual relationship on this site find it necessary to have the "what would you want if I were to get pregnant discussion?" I think it's an important discussion to have, and one I've had with two men in our late 20s who I have been in stable relationships with. They've both answered that they know for sure they would want an abortion since they're not ready to have kids until they're independently wealthy.

I'm firmly pro-choice, but I've always known that, for myself, at my age (28), I would want to keep the child. Hopefully I'm never faced with that choice, but emotionally and financially I know that keeping the child would feel right to me. However, knowing that child wouldn't be wanted by my partner puts a definite kink in things. I feel like I would be compelled to have an abortion if the child wasn't wanted by my partner as well.

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that these men have no emotional attachment to pregnancy. To have their minds made up that an abortion would be their definite preference in any unplanned scenario just strikes me as a bit callous and extreme. I didn't realize there are so many men out there whose first instinct is actually abortion, even in a stable relationship with a partner they trust.

I can't help but take this all a bit personally. Any insight you can provide about what is going through a man's head when faced with this question? Are there any men out there who understand that pregnancy is a possible outcome from sex, even protected sex? And that abortion isn't just a given if that happens?

A VERY WISE PERSON I know once told me that life doesn't always unfold according to your expectations. She was right, and she touched about a personality trait that, I think, lies at the bottom of your dilemma.

Some cultures (American, Canadian, British, German, Chinese, Eastern European) place a high premium on planning, strategy, and stability and eschew improvisation. Members of that culture are expected to carve out a path and walk it, carefully. When obstacles arise on the path, their habit is to remove them. Other cultures (French, Spanish, Latin, and Italian come to mind) are more comfortable with improvisation and creating new plans to replace old ones.

I think what you're experiencing in these men is their commitment to their plans. In those plans, babies come after financial security is achieved (and probably marriage), so the pregnancy is out of order. Sounds pretty harsh, huh? They're less emotional about their decision because they haven't really embraced the emotional impact of bringing a baby into the world. It doesn't reach that point.

The experience is very different from the person bearing the child, because (1) the alternative scenario is much more salient, due to the fact that you're the carrier, and (2) you've probably fantasized about the experience much more than any man you're dating, seeing as how bearing children is something that distinguishes you from half of the planet. Other factors are probably also at play, like your personality, your comfort with improvisation, and your own criteria for bearing children, which might be lower than your partners'.

So where does that leave you? On the one hand, you could try dating people who are more spontaneous and comfortable with changing plans, but I think the planning mentality is probably attractive to many people--men or women--because it signals security. I think you should talk about your thoughts with your partners. You might freak them the fuck out, but you might also encourage them to broaden their approach to life. As the Tao says, "To bend like the reed in the wind, that is the real strength."

Thanks for the great question. Keep working through it. I think it'll help you grow. I hope you find someone special to have those babies with. --ES