the inexplicable draw to one person and not another is still universal love, recognizing itself through a face it can only wear once

TIL there's a mountain in japan where women have been banned for over 1300 years. the reasoning:

the author could not possibly have anticipated the ways in which language would evolve

reichian bioenergetics implies that you can get big naturals from the right trauma (ie stuck energy in the chest). who is studying this

in spiritual circles i often hear people express a longing to return to premodern traditions that held more spiritual wisdom. but perhaps civilizationally we're more like infants dwelling in oceanic unity who've tumbled into dualism, without which we could never recognize our birthright of nonduality. maybe the alienation of all our scientific materialism and hyperindividualism is the Fall that births a truer synthesis: our earthly, holy New Jerusalem

one of the most striking phenomenological effects of meditation is how much sensory interference goes down, and how beautifully vivid the resulting sparsity feels. ordinary perception generates cross-channel noise—when you feel your body, you may also notice the mental image of a body. when you hear a sound, you experience subtle concepts (bird! loved one! like! dislike!) that interfere with the raw perception of sound. this kind of generalized synesthesia can be enjoyable, but a different, surprisingly intrinsic beauty is available in simple, unelaborated perception.

the double bind of projection onto your loved ones is the illusion that you can claim your golden shadow by proximity, and destroy your negative shadow through manipulation and control. in reality, it does the opposite—the traits you secretly desire become more distantly other, and the traits you despise are invested with psychic power

if your buddhism is boring you have the wrong buddhism

the closing of the heart is our deepest survival reflex

if you're curious about the benefits of ecstatic dance but dislike woo music: the most psychoactive form of ecstatic dance is set to music that evokes the strongest emotional response in you. for me, that was never going to be tribal house. i went through spotify and recalled the songs that had really meant something to me. the first pop song i ever heard (my mom only let me listen to classical, then "down" by jay sean hit me like crack). the song i looped for weeks after my first real breakup at 23. songs i'll forever associate with people whose faces i can barely remember. put on those songs, close your eyes, and let your body naturally remember what it was like to be five and afraid of the world, or madly in love for the first time. without performance or self-consciousness, let it move what did not move then.

i wish i'd known earlier that there's a time for emotional release, and a time for emotional containment (ie just sitting with the emotion) both are ways of feeling what's unfelt. but the former helps the emotion move, the latter helps the emotion stay take rage: if your pattern is to choke it down, release gets it unstuck, while containment reinforces the belief that "i can't let this out". on the other hand, if your pattern is to lash out immediately, you need to learn how to just be with it; release merely reinforces the belief that "i must do something with this feeling".