you struggle to find community because you don’t care about things. functioning organic third places— the town square, the pub, the church— work because a group of people care about a common other cause. maybe it’s god, an idea, the way the local government allocates resources,

in a bar by the freeway, winter sunlight slants across brick. a beer bottle becomes a sundial. a plain white napkin startles into reality. how real it all is. it takes your breath away

secure attachment is like noticing the non-duality of the womb and the world. it is experiencing the world itself as essentially a kind of warm, loving holding— like the womb. some think change is scary because it reminds us of our death— the final and ultimate change. but it

my most aligned STEM and philosophy friends aim not to wrest material outcomes from the world, but to know the mind of god. my most integrated feelings and arts and humanities and service and relationship friends aim not to produce transcendent value, but to know the heart of

people want to believe a well-regulated nervous system is one that is always calm, cool, and collected but a well-regulated nervous system is outraged in unjust circumstances, depressed in hopeless circumstances, joyful in buoyant circumstances, fearful in dangerous

every cultural artifact (like this tweet, or a work of art, or a technical paper) presupposes and defends a particular view of what Reality essentially is, and what Reality is for. art implies the limits of what one could do in the world, what one should do, why one might do

internal family systems? sometimes i have internal societal-historical systems. there gotta be at least like 8-9 great civilizations within me. there are good kings and holy wars and revolutions and dark ages and dark parts and famines and plagues and eons of cosmic nothingness

“believing” in god very nice. realizing how much god believes in you is life-changing there’s a Jewish prayer, the Modeh Ani, that’s often recited in the morning, as soon as wakefulness has been restored after sleep. it goes: “I thank You, living and eternal King, for returning

❌ drive theory: you have a fixed set of biological needs you need to meet somehow ✅ adornment theory: you creatively arrange the specifics of your life the way a jeweler arranges gems on a necklace. the dazzling particulars of your personality are means of ornamenting Being.

ambivalence and half-heartedness is a sign of maturity, not confusion can you recognize all your conflicted complex feelings without having to suppress some for the comfort of artificial clarity? can you make effective choices in the world despite having mixed feelings? or do

it’s an option to simply appreciate your difficulties. you don’t have to extract meaning from them or justify them as building character or teaching you any particular lessons. you can appreciate whatever didn’t kill you, even if it didn’t necessarily make you stronger. you can

your life is like a thing you wear; your life is like a place you live. it can be tastefully designed as such. you can make life choices the same way you might curate a decent wardrobe or furnish a home: look for pieces and life decisions that strike you as above all, beautiful

why meditate? why exist? why, in general? (from my most recent post, grantbelsterling.com/blog/why-medit…) Science and religion both purport to answer the question: “why?” Why do the tides rise and fall, like all the human lives on this earth? Science: the interacting gravitational forces

kinda messed up how actually caring about things means you’re forced to watch the things you love most get trampled by time and careless people. love might be the answer, but some answers hurt

the spiritual path is often described as an increase in spaciousness: there’s more mental space, there’s more emotional capacity, maybe we even contact the vastness of awareness. the buddhists use the evocative term emptiness. it seems it is the nature of inner space to expand

meditation is learning to empathize with god. it is spending time with the all-pervasive void nature of being and learning to see things from its point of view, rather than just the point of view of your small separate self. this perspective is all-encompassing, cosmic and

everybody talks about “agency” being entirely good but the flipside is that a high sense of agency also means that everything that goes wrong in your life becomes your fault, something you could have done better. which understandably leads to dramatic feelings of inferiority

do you ever weep for how beautiful and fleeting this place is? do you ever break for how brutal and never-ending this place is?

teaching meditation and helping facilitate healing spaces is still the coolest thing i’ve been lucky enough to do ❤️‍🔥 the weekly group is growing!! we might need to find a real venue that isn’t mel 🫀☁️ or kasra living room soon

you think a caterpillar is having fun as it dissolves its own body into goo? suffering isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. suffering is a sign that things are changing, that a new way of life is about to be born. the caterpillar is drawn into its own death by its