From Me to Me

(& Maybe You Too)

May 11, 2025

Cinerama Dome, Hiroshi Sugimoto 1993

Visualization

There's something in the air - I keep getting nudged toward visualization. A handful of my favorite thinkers reference a practice, and I’ve learned to listen when the signals start to insist. Maybe there’s something to it - I'll learn a few techniques and find out:

The Silva Method, José Silva
Awakening Spirits, Tom Brown Jr.
My Lessons with Kumi, Michael Colgrass
Transforming Your Self, Steve Andreas
Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz

Golden Pagoda in Rangoon, Hiroshi Yoshida 1938

J U N G

Then again…

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world - all because they can’t get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls."

I probably have all the information I need already. I can either (1) keep chain-smoking podcasts and YouTube videos - never really thinking - or (2) bring myself to stillness and tune into my quiet center, trusting that the answers I seek are in the silence I'm avoiding.

Theta Play

“Dreams are postcards from the subconscious - inner self to outer self, right brain trying to cross that moat to the left. All too often, they come back unread - ‘Return to sender. Address unknown.’ That's a shame, too, because there's a whole different world out there - or in here, depending on your point of view.”

A few times this week, I didn’t jump out of bed like I usually do. I lingered in the in-between - half-awake, half-asleep - letting the edges stay blurred a little longer. I then sent back a postcard in the form of a question:

What do you need me to remember?

For a moment, it felt like something was listening. I didn’t get a clear answer - just a few fragments - but more than that, I felt a new sense of connection. To what? I’m not sure, but it felt significant.

Fever Dreams, Billy Bagilhole 2022

If You Want To Be Happy

“If you want to be happy, be content with a life free from care and a little good fortune every day; don’t be drawn into the gamble of a grand passion.”

I know this is probably right.

I agree with it - in theory.

And yet, if some supernatural power said to me: “Break this glass, and your life will be just so” - I might not have the courage to break it. Too much of me still hopes for the extraordinary, even knowing what it costs.

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Ai Weiwei 1995

My Grand Passion

On Thursday I watched a film screening at the Patagonia store in Austin. The documentary was lovely, but I spent most of it thinking about something I’d read in The New Yorker regarding the founder, Yvon Chouinard:

“He made it more comfortable - and more glamorous - to be outside, in harsh conditions.”

It struck me how philosophy does the same for internal difficulties - how it makes being with discomfort not only bearable, but noble. And I thought about my own hope for good materialism, and how it might follow a similar arc: where “functional innovations become fashion, and fashion matures into cultural convention.” That’s the vision.

I’ll put it out there.

At this stage of my life, I’m looking for people who: