"The number-one-by-a-mile way that people avoid living their values is by going out into the world and telling everyone else how important those values are and how everyone needs to be living them."
Whoa, this is a REALLY good essay. Like it’s directly pointing at the thing and addressing it in an actually helpful way. Time to go vibrate my goop in the intended direction
Love this, River. Our way of being replicates - another way of talking about karma. Living our values points towards this too. Excited to see how these ideas evolve for you.
Wow. This is beautiful and lands powerfully for me. I’ve just come out the other side of a process that involved a lot of painful letting go and feel amazing! At the same time, I’m aware there’s more to do, more unfolding yet to come. And there are definitely things calling for my attention to be shaped and crystallized around them.
Really powerful river. Your experience of rebuilding the self really, really resonates. I'm so glad to see you well and able to share all this. THank you.
"Throughout this process, I had the imagery of evolutionary balance in my head. One of these images was like a massive cavern filled with ropes and pulleys and anchors, tons of lines of force pulling in all different directions from all sorts of centers and anchors. One moment it was stable, a tensegral stillness — and then, the next moment, 3 cables all broke at once, sending everything else jerking around, which then snapped a few more cables, sending even more jerking around, continuing until the whole cavern was an erratic hyperdimensional poly-pendulum of destruction.
The other image was of a crystal. There was a nice-looking crystal that had lost its molecular structure and dissolved into goop. And somehow or other, I knew that the goo could either stay goo, and then harden into a puddle-shaped rock... or, I could vibrate the goo at certain frequencies, and those frequencies would vibrate its molecular structure in particular ways, such that when it hardened, it would be an even clearer, even more beautiful and durable crystal than it had been before."
Hey, sincerely thanks for this. I really like your image of crystal goop and resonating it back into coherence.
I’ve been cud-chewing (ruminating) on similar periods of dissolution and metamorphosis, and kinda realized I’ve been stuck in fire-the-crucible-melt-back-to-goop mode. I worked and reworked a piece on similar ideas called the soup (if you wanna take a peek), and am in the process of realizing that I gotta hone attention towards what I want instead of what I reject, tell myself different stories
"The number-one-by-a-mile way that people avoid living their values is by going out into the world and telling everyone else how important those values are and how everyone needs to be living them."
Nice. Ouch.
Thank you for this, River.
Whoa, this is a REALLY good essay. Like it’s directly pointing at the thing and addressing it in an actually helpful way. Time to go vibrate my goop in the intended direction
Love this, River. Our way of being replicates - another way of talking about karma. Living our values points towards this too. Excited to see how these ideas evolve for you.
Wow. This is beautiful and lands powerfully for me. I’ve just come out the other side of a process that involved a lot of painful letting go and feel amazing! At the same time, I’m aware there’s more to do, more unfolding yet to come. And there are definitely things calling for my attention to be shaped and crystallized around them.
Thank you for writing this, River.
river, this is my favorite thing you've written. goddam
Thanks man, it was vulnerable but fun to put together
Really powerful river. Your experience of rebuilding the self really, really resonates. I'm so glad to see you well and able to share all this. THank you.
"Throughout this process, I had the imagery of evolutionary balance in my head. One of these images was like a massive cavern filled with ropes and pulleys and anchors, tons of lines of force pulling in all different directions from all sorts of centers and anchors. One moment it was stable, a tensegral stillness — and then, the next moment, 3 cables all broke at once, sending everything else jerking around, which then snapped a few more cables, sending even more jerking around, continuing until the whole cavern was an erratic hyperdimensional poly-pendulum of destruction.
The other image was of a crystal. There was a nice-looking crystal that had lost its molecular structure and dissolved into goop. And somehow or other, I knew that the goo could either stay goo, and then harden into a puddle-shaped rock... or, I could vibrate the goo at certain frequencies, and those frequencies would vibrate its molecular structure in particular ways, such that when it hardened, it would be an even clearer, even more beautiful and durable crystal than it had been before."
Exquisite.
Exquisite writing as per usual. I particularly appreciate (that is to say, need!) your thoughts on Attention.
Hey, sincerely thanks for this. I really like your image of crystal goop and resonating it back into coherence.
I’ve been cud-chewing (ruminating) on similar periods of dissolution and metamorphosis, and kinda realized I’ve been stuck in fire-the-crucible-melt-back-to-goop mode. I worked and reworked a piece on similar ideas called the soup (if you wanna take a peek), and am in the process of realizing that I gotta hone attention towards what I want instead of what I reject, tell myself different stories
So well written, River ♥️