miscellaneous pith notes and tidbits:

• In the spirit of Daniel Ingram's (and others', of course) noting/​noticing, or Shinzen Young's "subtle is significant", leave out nothing, including nothing (or is that misleading?!). Anything and everything is fair game, but even this can lead to inappropriate reification or ontological fixation.

• You can't leave anything out and you can't speed-run it. There is/​ no corner-cutting, shortcuts. Haste, hurrying, rushing are illusory. (And momentum is problematic.) For both/​all of these, if they are there, you eventually have to go back and "clean up," and do so "perfectly." Nothing can be left out. (But also nothing is left out--and correct practice is enough to find it all. Something vaguely in the spirit of the meta protocol helps but also the system, as it were, wants to find everything, as it were, will spontaneously reach for everything, as it were; it always/​already knows what to do, and you can long-run trust/​rest into that.) All that said, as per usual, there might still be miles and miles of all these, (in part) because they were already previously there, latent in the sysem. So if there is ongoing attempted corner-cutting, ongoing haste, hurrying, rushing, etc., they doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, and that doesn't mean you aren't proceeeding even optimally. Finally, there is one sense in which things can be a bit faster, which is, sometimes, things vaguely in the spirit of the meta protocol, good teaching material, and useful interactions can mean less wrong turns and backtracking. That's sort of the only thing can "speed things up," long term. But, I think those sorts of improvements will be potentially dwarfed by sort of just the raw practice time, as it were, that's needed. And those sorts of things can overtly or subtly send people in the wrong direction, too. And, also, ultimately, it sort of has to come from you, you have to ultimately be omni-self-generative. But, that is, deep-down, a spontaneously intrinsic property of the system, so that's ok. (Wrong turns and backtracking are included in the "10,000 hours" thing.)

• change (even like when learning quantum mechanics or something) is "never" "merely cognitive"; there's "always" involvement of of "the entire motor plant."; and/which is always ultimately non-algorithmic, non-rule-based (cf. deutschian popperian critical rationalism)

• comment from elsewhere re "happiness because you've flexibly and exquisitely handled your shit": yeah this is hard. because like, not necessarily, but probably, just as one example, people are going to eventually die, or friends or family will die. so like there sort of has to be refactoring of like metaphysics, identity, cosmology somewhere in there. so it's more like "solve" and/or dissolve your problems. and "handle all your shit" was sort of a polemic equal and opposite advice for people who wanted happiness independent of conditions, but it's possibly misleading in isolation. this is a thing i could be more clear on in the doc.

• [...] might be worth mentioning that someone will get increasingly efficient and meta efficient at exploring the search space as they go, even as big as it is. "meditation proceeds by exhaustive process of elimination; and this is sufficient to do the job; it's enough", if not hit by meteor or bus, etc. etc.

• [...] might be worth calling out how problematic "effort" is, as well as being careful to not "burn in" effort," and how tacking towards effortlessness (pushing with a feather and then even less" is an extraordinary heuristic (and yet still just a heuristic) for going in the right direction

• There is a reflexive thing at the heart of suffering, but I think there’s maybe a few of these. There’s the suffering one, and then there’s a like “armature of attention” one, and then there’s a “sensations trying to control other sensations” one. The uncoiling of each of these (possibly still in progress) have felt qualitatively really really different. Like the “qualia feel” is really different, though they all have a very similar flavor of reflexiveness or loopiness, manifest in their (also similar-feeling) “uncoiling” or untwisting. Anyway fwiw (edited)
  Er qualia-feel is really different but still all seamless something something, can-in-fact-get-there-from-here etc etc

• The "armature of attention"-y thing is like the initial heavyweight unnecessary-ness of attention, the thing-ness of it that’s like going out to things and sort of curling back to look back at itself-ish, that’s entangled too much with subtle muscle activity that becomes lighter and lighter and "flatter and flatter" and like recedes backwards into itself, spreads out, sort of (cf. luminosity / in the seeing, just the seen; in the hearing, just the heard, etc., etc.) as it self-untangles. See also: attention is not fundamental. "Armature" is also evocatively mentioned one or two other times if search in doc.

• Layering sometimes kind of feels like "pushing something away" (and sometimes that's the right thing to do! technical debt is sometimes useful! also, sometimes you can't help it!) scratch note: "not 'pushing away'/'pushing elsewhere' is sort of the inverse operation of layering. or like takes advantage of superficial layering lability"

• "strong negative preferences" like "just hate X" can sometimes have interesting reasons **

• noting isn't value neutral

• (experimental note to self: Effortlessly notice — no-self, no witness, and non-registration)

• X does not need to be managed, for often or usually or generally quite extreme, or extreme feeling, X

• X takes care of itself. Don’t need to add anything. Happening now. Things change.

  • Don’t need to add anything. --> essence of non-escalatory

  • Happening now. / Things change. --> (.) Freedom?

• 20230514 Some possibly triggering pith stuff I'm currently using to get through hard things. Note: it's changing every day; this is just a snapshot or a notes file on a particular day; if you're looking for possibly useful stuff and something doesn't work for you or is triggering or doesn't make sense don't assume it's coming from a super wise place. I have so much to learn, and I'm still making gazillions and gazillions of "spiritual" mistakes.

  • "try to enjoy it;" "is there a way to do this with less suffering and more X"; "X does not need to be managed/escalated"; "[deterministic total] surrender to unfolding now; all is happening now including thoughts of future, etc."; "[ultimately, absolutely] can't predict the future"; something-something live in the now cf. friend-of-digestion meditation; "try closing eyes just for 20-30 min; that's all you have to do; don't have to try or make anything happen"; "just don't know; anything could happen"; "no escape even for people who are healthy, now. this is life."

  • Given this is going to end, for me and everyone, what's my goal? (sort of: what's balance or integration between acceptance/understanding and "fighting"/or proactiveness?) <--I'm still working on this one!