💭Spirituality & Philosophy

Instead, I simply want to posit one idea for your consideration: Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention.1

In other words, what if we experience the world as disenchanted because, in part, enchantment is an effect of a certain kind of attention we bring to bear on the world and we are now generally habituated against this req... See more

As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, ra

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Better, I believe, to maintain hope amid life’s uncertainties—but to distinguish hope from optimism. Many people use the terms almost interchangeably, but they are different. Optimism involves an element of prediction—as we just saw, expecting a good outcome in a way that may be borderline delusional. Hope involves a belief that even if a disappoin... See more

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience.

Without prejudice toward either philosopher, what we can say with confidence is that you will have a better chance of realizing happiness if you can see yourself as a dynamic agent of your own progress. If you’d like to become more Aristotelian in your self-understanding, here are three steps to get you started.

1. Find the person you want to be.

To ... See more

When anything difficult arises—any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful—instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close o... See more

“Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.”

Cultivating equanimity through maintaining a mind like space is not some form of escapism by way of turning a blind eye to what is happening. Instead, the mind that is like space is simply too vast to be overwhelmed by the pettiness of any contact through the six senses. The vastness of space puts things into a wider context; it thereby helps fores... See more

People derive a lot more happiness from high-skill activities that require learning than they do from low-skill ones that don’t, yet we typically settle for the latter. In other words, you will probably be much happier reading about philosophy or science than you will if you just scroll social media—so why are you still scrolling? The obvious answe... See more