Naval Profile picture
May 16, 2020 48 tweets 8 min read Read on X
Meditation - The Art of Doing Nothing:
Meditation is your birthright. It's your natural state.
It requires no one, needs no thing, and has no technique.

If something requires a guru, a mantra, or a teaching, it isn't universal, and it won't free you.
We say that we want peace of mind but what we really want is peace from mind.
“No technique of the mind will free you from the mind.”
All chases, whether flow, drugs, beauty, thrills, orgasm, or devotion, are attempts to escape from the mind.

Meditation is the direct path.
In an age of mental gluttony, meditation is fasting for the mind.

Before paying a therapist to listen to you, listen to yourself.

Before clearing your inbox, clear your mind.
Just as the sky rains when the clouds are heavy, and the body sleeps when the limbs are tired, meditation arrives when the mind is calm.
Prepare for meditation by sitting quietly in the morning, with eyes closed and back upright, in any comfortable position that will minimize movement.
Sixty minutes are easier than thirty, as it takes time for the mind to settle down.

Sixty consecutive days are needed, just as it takes time for the body to go from unfit to fit.
Realize that at this moment, you are the only person in the world and there is no one to instruct you, praise you, or judge you.
Make no effort for or against anything.

Whatever happens, happens.

Surrender to yourself in the moment.

Resist nothing and reject nothing, including the urge to resist and reject.
Meditation is not going through thoughts but rather letting thoughts go through you.

The thought “I am meditating” is also a thought.
Meditation isn’t holy or spiritual or magical. It’s literally nothing.
No focus, no mantra, no dharma, no chakras, no Buddhas, no gurus, no gratitude, no scripture, no temple, no music, no gadgets, no apps are required.

Some may be helpful, but eventually all will have to be left behind. Start simply, because that's where this all ends.
There are many meditation methods, but "no effort" is the universal method. Every creature at all times can choose to do nothing.
There's no need to get up to record a thought. If the idea was good, it’ll come back. If it doesn’t come back, it wasn’t that good.
Meditation is a single player game. There is no point in comparing to other meditators or to even your own previous meditations.
If meditation was easy, you’d do nothing else.
The point of meditation is not to become "a meditator" - in reality, there's no such thing. If it doesn’t bring lasting and effortless change, drop it, before it becomes another struggle and another chase.
There is nothing to say and nothing on offer. No one is taking you anywhere, selling you anything, or making you promises. Reading or talking about meditation will do nothing for you.
You cannot fail at meditation.
Ignore all advice on meditation, including this thread.

“Meditation is good for nothing. That's why you do it.”
-@amirmotlagh
The closer you get to the truth, the more silent you become inside.
The ability to be content and at peace, by yourself, is freedom.

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More from @naval

Apr 22
Introducing USVC - a single basket of high-growth venture capital, for everyone.

No accreditation required, SEC-registered, and a very low $500 minimum.

Includes OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Sierra, Crusoe, Legora, and Vercel. As USVC adds more companies, investors will own a piece of that too.

Liquidity typically comes when companies exit, but we’re aiming to let investors redeem up to 5% of the fund every quarter. This isn’t guaranteed, but if we can make it work, you won’t be locked up like in a traditional venture fund.

It runs on AngelList, which already supports $125 billion of investor capital.

And I’ve joined USVC as the Chairman of its Investment Committee.


Go back to the 1500s, you set sail for the new world to find tons of gold - that was adventure capital.

Early-stage technology is the modern version. It says we are going to create something new, and it’s risky. It’s daring.

But ordinary people can’t invest until it’s old, until it’s no longer interesting, until everybody has access to it. By the time a stock IPOs, most of the alpha is gone. The adventure is gone. Public market investors are literally last in line.

This problem has become farcical in the last decade. Startups are reaching trillion dollar valuations in the private markets while ordinary investors have their noses up to the glass, wondering when they’ll be let in.

Investing in private markets isn’t easy. You need feet on the ground. You need judgment built over years. Most people don’t have the patience to wait ten or twenty years for an investment to come to fruition.

But there is no more productive, harder-working way to deploy a dollar than in true venture capital.

USVC enables you to invest in venture capital in a broad, accessible, professionally-managed way, through a single basket of innovation, focused on high-growth startups, at all stages.

It is how you bet on the future of tech: the smartest young people in the world, working insane hours, leveraged to the max, with code, hardware, capital, media, and community. Your dollar doesn’t work harder anywhere.

There is an old line - in the future, either you are telling a computer what to do, or a computer is telling you what to do. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that transaction.

USVC lets you buy the future, but you buy it now. Then you wait, and if you are right, you get paid.

Get access here:

usvc.com
Read 4 tweets
Oct 13, 2024
The Scientific and the Spiritual.

(a thread, recorded on ) air.chat
“Truth and love” or, “the scientific and the spiritual.”

They seem mutually contradictory, but they’re not.
Scientists used to be religious, but now not so much.

The idea of an old man in the sky issuing edicts seems ludicrous.

Now, it's fashionable to be an atheist.
Read 34 tweets
Oct 4, 2022
The four most important questions on my mind right now:

• Does Putin set off a nuke?

• Does Elon buy Twitter?

• Does Bitcoin decouple from risk assets?

• Does SF Bay Area retain its monopoly on tech?
Does Putin set off a nuke?
Does Elon buy Twitter?
Read 5 tweets
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We can be pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia, and still acknowledge that NATO should not risk a global thermonuclear war to defend a non-NATO country.
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May 12, 2022
Selfish morality:
The selfish reason to be honest is to clear the mind of exhausting lies and to navigate towards people and situations where you can be completely authentic.
The selfish reason to love is that it feels better to be in love than to be loved (but don’t expect much back).
Read 12 tweets
Jul 8, 2021
Instead of pivoting your startup, jump.
A startup is a theory about something the market wants, but doesn’t yet exist.
If the theory underlying your startup is wrong, a pivot is rarely the correct answer.
Read 8 tweets

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