TEMPLE_ARCHIVE
STATUS: INACTIVE // READ-ONLY
Did Jordan Peterson invent “cultural Marxism”? Is oppression real? Do we have to take down Bill Gates in order to become rich? In this special episode of the Self-Defined Human Podcast, we take a break from meditation and offend some people who never gave a damn about meditation in the first place.
Let me try to lay this out in a logical, step-by-step progression:
Meditation helps you understand yourself.
Understanding yourself helps you understand other people.
Understanding other people helps you have empathy for people who do bad things to you.
Having empathy for people who do bad things to you helps you become aware of why they do bad things.
Becoming aware of why they do bad things helps you understand why your reaction to their behavior only makes things worse.
Understanding why your reaction makes things worse leads to better reactions from you.
Better reactions from you leads to more of whatever it is that you want.
Conclusion: meditation leads to more of whatever it is that you want.
But, it can’t just be any ole’ meditation. It has to be the kind of meditation that leads to greater self-awareness.
This is what I teach in No Problem.
Get started now.
—Michael
Do you identify as “having anxiety”?
If so, you’re probably in the habit of telling long, convoluted stories about why things are the way they are, and about why you’re afraid to do things, and about why other people are wrong for having done what they’ve done.
I hate reading those stories.
They’re too long.
Stories don’t need to be long to make a point. Usually, the point is pointless anyway.
Don’t take your stories so seriously.
Learn to meditate.
(it will help you see stories as stories, so you can stop defining yourself by the story and get on with your life and do the thing you were trying to do before your ex-boyfriend became a jerk and started calling you in the middle of the night and you got anxiety and had to write 10 paragraphs about it on facebook when you could have just shut your phone off and gone back to sleep.)
You can do it here.
—Michael
Here’s something I just posted in the Radical Acceptance Through Meditation Facebook group:
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If it doesn’t have a goal, how do you know you’re doing it right?
Look, it’s all well and good to “just sit” if that’s working for you. But, you know as well as I do it doesn’t work all the time. No matter how much you tell yourself “meditation has no goal” or “things are fine just as they are”, you still avoid meditation because you’re not sure if you’re doing it right, or because you’re not sure what the point is.
The only way you’re going to figure that out is by setting a goal and trying to achieve it.
No wonder you’re so bored.
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Are you a member of the group? If not, join.
—Michael
Sometimes the problem isn’t that reality sucks (is that ever actually the problem?), but rather that you’re just not synchronized with reality.
When you’re not synchronized with reality, your performance is going to be subpar. It’s just the nature of it.
A couple years ago, I was going to figure drawing sessions regularly. 3 hours of continuous drawing, with only short breaks here and there. My whole body hurt. I was frustrated. For the first few sessions, I was miserable.
But then, my mind started to synchronize with my drawing.
It’s not a permanent shift. It happens once in a while, and it stays synchronized for a period of time, and then it falls back.
That’s why you warm up.
Until you’re warmed up, you should expect that everything you do will suck. You warm up by moving the pencil on the paper randomly, allowing things to catch up.
Your mind is too fast.
Don’t try to slow it down.
Let it speed up and force everything else to catch up to it.
This is the point of meditation. It’s why it was invented. It’s a deliberate practice of synchronizing the mind with reality (that’s what “enlightenment” means).
It’s not an all-or-nothing deal. There are levels to it. But that’s the point.
If you’re not meditating by this point, you’re probably not interested, and there’s nothing I can say that will save you.
However, maybe there’s a chance you just haven’t heard the message yet.
So, here’s the message: sign up for No Problem and learn to synchronize.
—Michael
