Slowing Down to Hear the Daemon
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling w/ Peter Limberg and Co-Hosts. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck and Co-Hosts. Every Second Friday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Newly posted events:
Learning Stoicism: A Systematic Approach to Stoic Praxis w/ Jon Brooks. July 14th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
How the Culture War Creates Integral Consciousness w/ Jeff Salzman. July 15th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
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July 8th, 2021
I have been slowing down these days, and doing so has been for the good. I am still privately journaling every day at the “Collective Journaling” sessions with the beautiful people at The Stoa, and during these sessions I am attempting to get into the right relationship with everything. The small things, the unexciting things, the always-in-front-of-me things.
One thing I have gotten into a better relationship with is my relationship with correspondences. By correspondences I mean the following: texts, emails, and social media. I’ve downloaded all of these productivity apps to help with this, like “Inbox When Ready” and “BlockSite,” and I have created systems and protocols around correspondences, e.g. only process correspondences twice a day, during times that are timeblocked in my calendar.
Downloading productivity apps and creating systems and protocols was the fun and easy part, it was the more nebulous felt-sense stuff associated with the internet that was the tough part. In one of my journals I called this the “siren call of the internet.” I sensed into this internet siren, and its pull on me was strong. It was like I was being called, seduced even.
As a good Weird Stoic I gave voice to this seductive pull that was coming from this internet siren, and this is what it was saying to me …
Come online. Something is happening here. Something that you really need to know. If you miss out, you’ll be missing out on something really important. You’ll be missing out on life. Come now, before it is too late!
This voice usually comes when I really do not need to go online, which is most of the time, but the siren was good at tricking me with existential FOMO. I often capitulated to the seduction, and went online, and I was always disappointed when I did. I was entertained and infotained for some unconscious time, but my life was not enriched for doing so.
I confronted this siren in my journals, and tried to dialogue with it. I agreed with it in some places, and disagreed with it in other places. It was not the best interlocutor, as it was always trying to seduce me, and not trying to reason with me, but I held onto my sovereignty, saw the seductive tricks, or better said, felt them.
Something popped during this exchange, and now the pull that comes from the siren is no longer here. It comes back sometimes, but the pull is weak now, and I am more sophisticated at sensing into its seductive moves. I am not the type of guy who likes being seduced by something that is not whole, aka unholy.
I am on my computer less now, and it feels like I am rarely on my phone as well. It has been great really, as it has given me more time with myself, and more awareness of what is happening within me. It has also been pretty heavy though, as there is this low-grade angst that is often here. It has this frustrated quality, and when I sense into the frustration, and give it voice, it implores me to do more.
More of what? It does not care, just doing more of anything is what it is asking. I do not want to be pressured to do more, the doing-more-for-its-own-sake days are over for me. I only want to do more if it is coming from a place of wisdom, hence why I am slowing down. I want to sense into what is wise, and move from that spot.
I am called to write more here, in front of you, as I really like writing here in front of you, but this will not be happening for the next while. I sense there might be another creative and thumotic burst from me in September and October, and I might be writing on a daily basis again, but maybe I won’t be.
Maybe my public journal days are nearing their end. I might find out they were coming from that place of the pressure to do more, for more's sake. They might have been coming from that unwhole place, and I do not want to operate from unwhole places.
I am ready to find out. I am ready to be surprised. I am ready for the daemon to slowly point me towards something new.
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