woke up to @selentelechia writing a wonderful thread about mine on self-love as feeling like you're with a crush
a few day ago I decided to be a bit more open about my phenomenology and protocol for getting there, so I'll try to respond to some of the things she brought up!
I'm doing-it-live so don't know what it will say but quick infohazard warning. Reading about someone's mostly successful attempt to get to a better emotional state can be painful, or remind you of things you may not be in a great place for right now. You can always read it later!
I regret just listing the crush part but I didn't feel comfortable going deep into what I was feeling when I wrote the original thread (bc of hurting people :/)
On a valence arousal axes it's always positive-valence but all range of arousal
so sometimes it feels like a crush on myself, like when I read the original thread. I dance with myself a few times a day, sang Billy Joel's Vienna really loud with myself yesterday alone at home in bed. It feels like I'm "with myself", not "by myself"
but most times are chill
this is the best descriptor I have, from a document writing out a specific protocol I came up with and followed. Since the protocol is N=1 so far, it includes a short bit on my personal phenomenology, and the reviewers generally agreed this was the best part of it
in her thread @selentelechia mentions that if having a crush is about constant objectification that sounds exhausting, and I agree! It sounds like her crush feeling is a warmth/affection + logical objectification. In my thread there's no second part
constant judgement can be useful, giving that up has drawbacks. It's just like "it's cool how you like and make coffee!!" (making a chemex rn). @xuenay parodied this well :). I can still sit down and analyze, but it is more purposeful, and kinder
also with this stuff I feel a bit like of a fraud bc it's not *every moment*. But it's like 10-50x more common than a few years ago for me (95% of time I'm attending on myself?). Being me used to be constant self-judgment. Please reduce everything I say here to "usually"
attending part is key. I'm usually not focusing on myself, eg right now I'm just writing this. But when I do (eg see myself in a mirror, like washing my hands after restroom) I'm thrown into a weak metta-state. I've done ~500-1k hours of metta, i think paved neural path for that
ah, @selentelechia says "being with myself" is exhausting. For me right now, it's more like I'm an eyeball watching my life happen, I'm not "doing" much. It's hard to imagine how it would even be exhausting. I don't know how to describe it better :/
in an attempt to be clear while still being super unclear, I don't think I'm in a high-level meditation state. I tried to get there a few years ago, failed, but on the path it felt different. This is more simple, affectionate, less cerebral. Diff direction than like, LSD
i spent a few minutes feeling and the closest thing I have is "simple and friendly"? Like, there's nothing yelling at me anymore. I can stably watch thoughts somewhat easily now (thank u concentration-meditation!!), cant remember any neg judgmental thoughts last couple months
there's *definitely* judgment sometimes. Like "oh he
def doesn't like you" "that steak sucked" "you weren't that productive today" but it's more just like.. something I'm noticing? There' no bite to it. I just play with that like hmm ya.. why wasn't I productive today?
oh yeah, also forgot to mention, I don't have much of an inner voice, did before. Got here through memory-editing, so it's a bit hard for me to remember before, which is why I forgot to bring it up. But I've always journaled a lot, so I have lots of stuff to compare to
it's just feelings (non-verbal, except sometimes) all the time. Almost all my life is is watching those feelings and figuring out what to do for the next like 30 seconds. Feelings usually really warm towards whoever I'm talking to or myself. Not much neg judgment towards things
okay leaving Twitter dot com to work for a while! I'll check later if anyone has questions feel free to reply or DM. Honestly I don't think this was very helpful, but maybe it'll help like one person like 500 hours into their metta practice or something? Would have helped me!
my main message for anyone not on a serious psychological path already: you can be in a radically *radically* different mental place than where you started. It's never an accident. The people who get *really* happy try to. The ones who get to high-level meditation states try to
side thought while working: one of the biggest diffs is crying. I cried literally zero times from 14yo-22yo. Now I cry about 5-10 times a day, for about 30 seconds at time, mostly for trivial things (eg someone tweets that they feel happy today). I bet I can outcry @QiaochuYuan
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give to twitter and it gives back just trust the process
almost everyone I know who got really into twitter had their lives transformed in ways they couldn’t have anticipated. We need an MTV Cribs of twitter where people just talk about how it improved their lives
there's usually like an eight month delay though
twitter wont give you its treasure if it thinks you'll leave it in the morning, needs to know you're committed
how many magical long-term relationships has the term and idea of a “serious relationship” prevented?
my most magical several year and decade long relationships had about 5 minutes of seriousness in them each
Incidentally my awkward 5 minute conversations from the 3 networking events I accidentally walked into in the last decade also had 5 minutes of seriousness
consider self love. Are you looking to start a serious relationship with yourself or just a fling? Neither I.. just want to love myself.. and feel comfortable and at home.. forever?
After a few years of reading the scientific literature and brewing on it myself I couldn’t be less confident about awareness and basically what’s really going on in the universe. Being merely 95% confused seems impossibly far away
behold my intellectual bounty from thousands of hours of thinking: causality may be important, maybe?
until someone tells me what's really going on I choose to believe the fundamental unit of the universe is kisses 😘
definitely follow @noampomsky even if you aren't doing this though. Her reward system is broken, allowing her to see magic in everything, and I highly suggest breaking yourself in the same way
going down street or at stoplights I’m usually dancing and like half of days I notice a backseat teen smiling and recording me and I wish I could see a big collage of all of these snapchats and whatever over the last 10y (happened twice this coffee run)
also the correlation between how much I notice that I’m autodancing and my previous night’s HRV is crazy. Under 60 no dancing, > 100 it’s just excessive and annoying even to me
propranolol kills the natural urge to dance :( alcohol increases but it gets too much v easily and I fall over, phenibut increases it, makes me auto start conversations with random people walking by me on the street