I help people reconnect with who they really are, through the practice of mind:body attunement ๐ work with me ๐
Victoria, British Columbia
Joined June 2021
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trust in life = โI will do everything in my power to serve what I feel called to serve, and I trust in what will unfold from thatโ
not passivity. not apathy. ferocious devotion, courageous surrender
scott ๐ retweeted
โIf you are not the free person you want to be, you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself.โ
โโ Anne Carson
is self-love the answer to all internal knots? maybe, but only if it comes in two forms
a) self-love that is permissive, nurturing, accepting, gentle -> "I follow what feels natural to me"
b) self-love that is challenging, encouraging, aspirational, disciplined -> "I take care of what's important to me"
since we live in a hyper-competitive meritocracy, most people tend to be too hard on themselves. as a result, self-help culture has oriented towards pushing (a) from the above - helping people soften
but even from an aggressively self-critical person, (a) is only part of the picture. (a) turns down the volume of the self-criticism, loosening the grip of the inner father. but it doesn't redeem him
often, an emphasis on gentle self-love leads to oscillation: a person goes back and forth between intense self-criticism and gentle self-forgiveness. they swing back and forth wildly. that's an improvement over pure harshness, but not by much
a truly integrated personality requires that we also know when & how to push ourselves - to be generative, responsible, dutiful human beings. we need to be able to take on the transpersonal quest
it is self-love - in that it is a way of orienting towards yourself that is fundamentally loving - but it also is demanding. that's the missing ingredient for many people - how to do that well
scott ๐ retweeted
i don't think our purpose in life is to get married, build a business, become successful, or achieve some extraordinary version of ourselves. those can all be beautiful expressions of life, but i don't think they're why we're here.
i think we're here to fall in love with the human being we came here to experience.
there's something beautiful about realizing that the one person who's been with you through every version of yourself is you. through every mistake, every heartbreak, every achievement, every moment of uncertainty. you've witnessed it all from within, in a way nobody else ever could.
and maybe that's what the deepest form of self-love really is. learning to look at yourself the way a loving parent looks at their child. not because they're perfect, but because they're theirs. allowing yourself to grow without hating who you are, forgiving yourself without making excuses, and understanding yourself with the same patience you so willingly extend to others.
we spend so much of our lives trying to become someone worthy of being chosen. chasing success to feel accomplished, relationships to feel wanted, and validation to feel enough. somewhere along the way, we start treating ourselves as projects that need fixing rather than people worth experiencing.
but there's a difference between wanting to be loved and making someone else's love the condition upon which you allow yourself to love your own life.
you can want someone without needing to convince them to choose you. you can love deeply without abandoning yourself. you can experience rejection without turning it into a verdict on your worth.
and perhaps when you stop chasing love as proof that you're enough, you begin approaching life from a place of love instead of a fear of not receiving it.
you stop trying so hard to be loved, and start becoming someone who knows how to love, including themselves.
maybe that's the whole point. not to become extraordinary enough to deserve love, but to realize you never needed to become extraordinary to deserve it in the first place.
after all, the longest relationship you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself. might as well make it a beautiful one.
any psychological advice gets one-shotted by โit dependsโ
โฆ which means the skill is discernment - knowing when to apply what
how do you build that skill? well, it depends
itโs not that judging others is necessarily โbadโ, itโs just that itโs the most likely place for our hidden egocentric beliefs to reveal themselves
seeing more & more the destructive effects of the belief โI ought to be able to be exceptionalโ
itโs one that seems true and even helpful at first glanceโฆ but leads to subtle distortions in relationship with world/self
will write more about this soon
scott ๐ retweeted
Hello. You are probably leaning forwards slightly.
Without changing anything, I'd like to remind you that there is space above and behind you.
What if you let your body expand into that space above and behind?
Have a nice day!
you can delay this, by optimizing for optionalitt
but sooner or later we all have to come to it: we are only going to be one particular person, limited in innumerable ways
but also in that - free from endless Potential & its fantasies. instead, working in the Real
two things that are becoming clear with AI & intellectual work:
a) we should try not to lose our ability to think deeply
b) we should try to focus on work that AI canโt easily replicate
so yes, doing hard cognitive work is part of it. but must find the human edge
The point of intellectual work is not just to arrive at answers no one else has found yet. The process of working through something can change the questions we ask, and open up possibilities we hadnโt even considered. Why would AI reaching the same conclusions make that any less worthwhile? Poverty mindset.
extremely bullish on shadow work in the age of AI, because if you have access to infinite intelligence that can construct a reasonable-sounding argument for any perspective, the limiting factor is in the discernment of the human being - and that discernment gets better or worse depending on their ability to pay attention to their own blindspots & complexes
scott ๐ retweeted
"Just do the thing" + "I see and love the parts of me that don't want to and I don't need them to go away" + "I let go of the fantasy that those parts will go fully quiet one day and only then will I be equipped to do the thing"
โjust do the thingโ is lazy advice
99% of people who are stuck or hesitating arenโt doing it due to a failure of will
theyโre doing it because their whole internal belief system is making it seem necessary to hesitate
โwhy donโt you just take actionโ ignores the complexity (usually in a way that allows the dispenser of the advice to act superior)
better to acknowledge the complexity while still pointing out the end destination of doing the thingโฆ especially since shame about paralysis tends to make people MORE paralyzed, not less
scott ๐ retweeted
Intentionally moving towards what your nervous system is resisting solves a lot ultimately. Some people think that nervous system freaking out = intuitive info about what to avoid but itโs usually the opposite actually. Intuition is about feeling for an energy thatโs beyond what the nervous system is bringing up altogether - itโs not even emotional info usually
being โaction-orientedโ CAN be a lot of anxious thrashing
to not shrink from anxiety means to not let it drive your actions, which means sometimes doing nothing when everything within you is screaming for movement. and then the opposite, to move when the fear says โbe stillโ
notice the difference between โI want to do great workโ and โI need to be specialโ
the former can create amazing results from a place of humility & service. the latter is an ego-drive that tries to separate you from the rest of humanity
โYou must believe you are special - then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. Wage a daily war against the ordinary outcome until the belief you invented from nothing, alone in a room, has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.โ
scott ๐ retweeted
David Tacey explains the term 'neurosis'.
From his book, ๐๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐จ.
ALT For Jung, the personality is constantly getting stuck in narrow limits, unable to move forward, and is menaced by an other, an antagonist who stands in its path. This other is what psychotherapy calls a neurosis, that is, an emotional disorder in which feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts and physical complaints dominate the personality. The aim of therapy is not exactly to get rid of the neurosis, but to transform and deepen it by understanding why it arose in the first place. Typically, a neurosis emerges when a person's consciousness is not broad enough to encompass the contents of the psyche that demand to be lived and seek expression. The psyche does not tolerate artificial constriction, caused for instance by a morbidly narrow moral view, by an inadequate self-image or by attitudes that stifle and abuse the energies of the personality. The unlived life manifests in neurotic form, and within the neurosis lie the answers that the patient seeks. โDavid Tacey
โjust do the thingโ is lazy advice
99% of people who are stuck or hesitating arenโt doing it due to a failure of will
theyโre doing it because their whole internal belief system is making it seem necessary to hesitate
โwhy donโt you just take actionโ ignores the complexity (usually in a way that allows the dispenser of the advice to act superior)
better to acknowledge the complexity while still pointing out the end destination of doing the thingโฆ especially since shame about paralysis tends to make people MORE paralyzed, not less
the categorical error that leads many people to unsatisfying lives is a refusal to live YOUR lifeโฆ with all its joys & limitations
a rejection of your particular constraints & ambitions ends up being a cage of your own making
you could read hundreds of my tweets and theyโd help you less than sitting down for five minutes and noticing whatโs happening in your body
