kyle

stop scrolling, start creating. a note to myself

@BecomingCritter what’s my tweet rating ser

there are a surprising number of lowbies who have GREAT replies, and then their personal tweets pale in comparison if this is you, just QT more with your clever reply, that’s all it takes

@fadule_ john “busting in your crush” fadule

Top 10 feelings: -when your friend tells you he got promoted -busting inside your crush -road trips with exactly 3 people -mowing the lawn shirtless getting Sun -30-minute walk playing white girl pop throwbacks -first shower after a haircut -pizza mid-party after banging your wife in an upstairs bedroom -when your friend trusts you to drive his car -when a bartender in her late 30s touches your hand and calls you “love” -the hooking up phase -Coke Zero at 2PM -Daughters by John Mayer -realizing you’re living a phase of your life you already know you’re gonna wanna re-live one day (this makes you 10% sad 90% wildly grateful to be alive)

@nosilverv @AngularOcean ah yes, the buzzfeed hogwarts quiz to chatgpt self-diagnosis pipeline

Things I'm increasingly convinced are mind viruses*: — The spread of pop psychology and subsequent casual self- and other- psychologization — Scientism, making people replace their phenomenology and received tradition with the fake precision of scientific speech — "Theory of change": the idea you need a THEORY to do things * = meaning beliefs that (1) disempower you and (2) spread from person to person

@nosilverv @myhandle chat is such a good example of this the “4th person” superego

@myhandle "raising awareness" 🤮 "social media as superego, e.g. r/AmITheAsshole" 'what do we think, chat?' — ????

@namyakhann @vilinskyy yes x.com/NicoleBehnam/s…

@vilinskyy this is why “i’ll be happy when…” is such a scam the goalpost just keeps moving, you can’t fill an internal gap with external things

I bought all of these and I didn't feel the way I thought I would feel.

@rachcorrine ok bb

PROPAGANDA I’M PUSHING: - go to the gym - or go for a run - eat real food - sit in sun - take a breath - get some sleep - joymaxx bb - you should be having fun with this - double. down. - stay hopelessly optimistic - ruin them with your enthusiasm - be kind. but take no shit. - quality over quantity every single time - tell the truth. over and over again you tell the truth - drink your coffee slow - say hi to strangers - denim. white tees. leather. - just be hot (hotness as a state of being, has nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with how you act)

@mahlenr yesss the dalai lama said if every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world in one generation. also i'm a big fan of your bio

I think most of my optimism about the future comes from truly believing that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible in a world full of kids raised with love, respect and agency; that then go on to become adults

*emotionally* is the key word here if you're fundamentally unhappy, it doesn't matter if you're crying in a ferrari or a toyota in fact if you're outwardly successful but internally discontent you'll wish you didn't waste all those years chasing a hollow nothingburger fantasy

emotionally is the key word here

@liquidprismata ooh interesting, i've never thought about the mind/body/heart mapping even though that's a model i really like head/heart/gut, tripartite soul etc can u explain which ones (be here/do less/have fun) u think map onto which of the 3?

“be here, do less, have fun.” @kylejunlong's bio… corresponds (as dost all trinities…) to the Enneagram's Mind, Body, & Heart…

@liquidprismata @RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan i'm really starting to sound like a dr k shill these days lol

@liquidprismata @RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan the bhagavad gita (which describes some different yogic paths, namely karma yoga - action - sankhya yoga - knowledge - and bhakti yoga - devotion) also trying some kundalini practices (chakra/energy work stuff) Dr K has some stuff on this too in his meditation guide/membership

i've had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind for years that i "should" meditate more or be more western-buddhist and i think i am really just not temperamentally western-buddhist actually. there are plenty of people who i like and respect who have gone down this path and it seems to have been good for them but i've never been able to stay motivated with a meditation practice, i don't care about awakening as a goal at all, burbea or whoever has never moved my heart in any real way i think the nagging feeling for me comes from this implicit sales pitch that is like "if you meditate enough you will uncover the true structure of how minds work in a way that would be incomprehensible to you otherwise" i.e. western buddhism as a true completion of the rationalist project. and as an ex-rationalist i am tempted by this sales pitch! like i really do wanna know if i'm missing anything incredibly important about minds work, that is relevant to my interests. and it's epistemically horrifying to think that if i don't meditate enough i might die fundamentally confused about the nature of things but. western buddhism as a structure, overall, seems incredibly individualist to me in a way i don't like personally and that i also don't think is the right direction for solving the meaning crisis or whatever. in practice its entire discourse is focused on individual experience. i have always felt like the "for the benefit of all beings" meme is a cop-out that deprioritizes the specific beings you are already entangled in a web of mutual debt and duty and obligation with. there is this huge weird religious shadow i don't understand about ways in which western buddhism was created in competition with christianity while also being wishy-washy about whether it's a real religion or not to maintain a certain kind of respectability that i don't care about the most concrete thing is that western buddhism, compared to christianity, does not seem to prioritize creating structures to raise families in. i visited a few churches a few years back and this was by far my biggest takeaway; that a church is a place where you bring your whole family, you bring the kids and you bring grandma and grandpa. there was a church i visited in seattle where after the service there was a sort of afterparty (sorry i'm sure this has a real name), families relaxing, eating snacks, hanging out, catching up, gossiping, kids running around, then a pastor (?) did a lesson for the kids. incredibly wholesome, amazingly wholesome, left a big impression on me. nothing i've seen in the hippie / authentic relating / buddhist / meditation / psychedelic spaces has ever compared, really, and i doubt that's going to change because again, all of these spaces are situated in a discourse that prioritizes individual experience over everything else i have further doubts about the specific strain of rational-techno-buddhism that appears to quietly have gotten popular in parts of silicon valley and its function as a political tool but that is even more half-baked and i gotta chew on it more first

@liquidprismata @RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan x.com/romeostevens76…

@RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan I don't know what yogic practices are where might someone like me begin?

@RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan Dr K talks about how he manages TV time with his kids by asking them to compare how much they expect to enjoy TV, checking in every 30min, then comparing to playing in the park shows how awareness alone is so simple yet so powerful thank you for reminding me of this practice!

@QiaochuYuan You've already by necessity fine the things where you pay super close attention to how did actually makes you feel. Possible to do the same for rest. Freeform hatha to do the same for interoception. Starting to feel when energy retreats from parts of the body.

true spirituality isn’t sitting in a cave meditating. it’s engaging with your life in a way without constantly clinging to pleasure and running away from pain prolonged stillness is cope; just another form of of escape rooted in status anxiety “yoga is equanimity in action”

@RomeoStevens76 @QiaochuYuan started reading the Bhagavad Gita recently and this is so based

@QiaochuYuan forgot another important bit, most of the people trying to do buddhism are putting the cart before the horse and should be doing some variation of yogic practices aimed at improving life in straightforward ways.

if you call yourself a hedonist and you don’t meditate… all i can say is you’re leaving a lot on the table

having a few glasses of wine and an edible and watching the pendulum swing from yearning for my narcissistic fantasies to craving divine union with all beings