There is an insight I'd like to discuss with you guys! I've been contemplating Emotion recently. Not individual emotions, but the entire domain: What is Emotion? What is the stuff it is made of? Does it have a connection with the body? I was influenced by this idea from somatic psychology that emotions show up in the body, and so, I took them to be more real than thoughts. I took this idea literally. I thought: "Hmm, the body is an object, and if emotions show up in the body, then they must be as real as the objects. Maybe that's how the movement of the hormones feels!" Suddenly, it occurred to me that emotions are a type of thought! They are nowhere - not in the walls of the room, nor does my stomach suddenly change colour when I get angry or happy. They seem to influence the body, but so do verbal thoughts. Just like verbal thoughts are viewed as happening in the head, emotions are viewed as happening in different areas of the body. That connection is a belief! So, there are different types of thought: inner voice, remembering, staging a scene, creating images, knowing how a door works, and... emotion! I'm curious about your feedback on my contemplation. Is there anything I'm not seeing?

Context: I'm at a dance intensive in Paris right now. It's fun. Nothing Cheng Hsin or consciousness work related. Just a freestyle dance workshop with a world-class teacher. Here's what I've been doing and it's producing great results. Every time the teacher explains some concept or framework that they have going on in the world of hip-hop, I simply try and unpack it and figure out what is the experience that they are trying to communicate is and get it for myself. For example today they were talking about "dancing IN the music and dancing ON the music". Which, as you can imagine kind of melted my used-to-Ralston ears. What the heck do they actually mean?! Well... Instead of just sitting there and silently demanding that a Ralston-like teacher shows up and communicates it in a language that I understand better - I asked myself "okay, figure out their experience of what they are talking about". Then I just sat and watched the demonstration as openly as I could manage. The teacher danced and was demonstrating "IN the music" first. What is he relating to now? What is his experience like? Where is his attention? How does his body feel? How does he perceive himself in relationship to the music? I got something. Then he showed "dancing ON the music". Similar process. Then noticed I was making up answers. Dropped those and kept listening, observing and questioning. And then I actually got it. Fast contemplation. When he's talking about "IN the music", he meant that his primary relationship is to the music itself. He is expressing the music. When he was dancing ON the music, he was just taking a hint from the music on what the experience that the artist who was creating the music was actually pointing to. And his primary relationship there was with the 'experience' sitting "ON TOP" of the music. The one that the music is an expression of. So he wasn't expressing the music, but was expressing what the music itself is expressing. (Excuse my less-than ideal framing of the insight, I'm sure there are better ways to articulate it)

Great community session led by Ethan yesterday! During the session, I realised a simple truth: I have no idea what another is experiencing. Of course, right? The last time I thought about it was when I was a five-year-old child. Then I learnt to make conclusions about others' experiences and take them as true - it was part of becoming an adult. It is so obvious to me now: The only way to get a taste of another's experience is by asking them to describe it, and hoping they describe it truthfully. Perhaps, if I'm sensitive and attentive, I can experience their experience, prompted by their description - but I have to listen first. I like to ask other people questions about their experience, and this recognition takes my curiosity much, much deeper. It's not just what we think of each other. We may be holding reality in completely different ways. We may be seeing different colours. I may be seeing dragons, and you won't know :) How interesting!

Hey folks! I want to share a recent insight. I was listening to the latest episode of The Consciousness Podcast when it struck me what alignment with what's true really entails. 1. Simply being - not being a self. 2. Living knowing, that the past and the future don't exist. 3. Calling a belief a belief when it comes up. 4. Saying "I don't know" when I don't know. Living from these discoveries is such a shift! I find that in my experience, 3 and 4 are relatively easy to act from, but 1 and 2 take practice. But I'm making progress! Regarding 1, I didn't get upset today when my husband blamed me for something. There was no suppression - simply no upset. It was so easy to move on. I joked he might as well take revenge on me someday, and we laughed together. That story didn't get to stay with me as a 'psychological episode', unlike before, when I believed I was a person, and my feelings mattered! 😅 Regarding 2, I noticed I tend to feel quite tense if an important meeting is planned in the future. So now, when there's a meeting, I notice how I create 'tense' by imagining the context of future and reacting to my thoughts in a way that produces tension. So nice to see all of this is happening in the now. Just need a bit more experience with this, and then I'll get settled in it. Thanks to everyone who read this. Are there any truths you are learning to align with? Hope to see everyone someday soon! (future ah!.. 😋 Unescapable!)

Hey guys, Lately I've stumbled across a realization on the nature of what has limited me in my communications with others, and now I feel I can start to drop them and live life from a different self or social context. In a nutshell, I've seen that a lot of the ways I interact with others comes down to feeling like I have to hide a true expression of myself. This was NOT something I consciously thought of, in fact, I can often say the opposite! I'm one of the types of guys who can yap on and on about honesty and authenticity and things like that, coming from a sort of Cheng Hsin influence. Yet, I've noticed in my patterns a sense that I can't fully open up to others for fear of... Something happening? Like I always have to be the nice, cheery, upbeat "love you" type guy. And I have that, to a degree, yet a big part of how I interact with others can come from this, and I'm now starting to see it as limiting, or unnecessary. When I am busy being "that person," I feel I am one step removed from that other person, as well as them being one step removed from me, so to speak. I feel that that's a powerful realization in my communications, because I feel it really opens me up to communucating in a whole new way, that i haven't really done in a while. Even more importantly, I feel I can become more authentic and honest with myself, and begin to orient my perceptions and actions toward the truth instead of whatever I'm simply trying to chase after. As a side note, isn't that interesting? What we WANT can steer us towards any direction. If I only stick with what I "want", I could've just as easily kept pursuing being this charming guy and not made any breakthrough on real communication. It's starting to seem better to pursue what's true instead. From "within us" or "without." Might take some courage, but I feel I'm starting to walk the path. Thank you guyz