https://awakin.org/read/ iJourney passages are a weekly email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom. It all started with couple folks getting together on Wednesdays in the Silicon Valley. en Thu, 16 Apr 2026 18:02:44 -0700 ServiceSpace iJourney passages are a weekly email service that delivers a little bit of wisdom. It all started with couple folks getting together on Wednesdays in the Silicon Valley. ServiceSpace tow@charityfocus.org no tow@charityfocus.org (ServiceSpace) https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2576 I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so: Why does this matter?  I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful. I ended up in physics through stubbornness, and an unusual willingness to suffer for the sake of grades. As an undergraduate, I was not particularly passionate about quarks, quasars, or quantum mechanics, but I was academically very competitive, and once I’d settled on physics as my major I determined to place myself at the top of my class. I did so by throwing myself into the hardest classes and putting in the hours required to ace the tests. This was, to put it mildly, a bad idea. I got a sort of grim pleasure from vanquishing my classmates in these academic slogs, but I was basically miserable. So why’d I keep it up? When multiple people are striving towards a shared goal, they often rank themselves by progress within their peer group. This was my mistake — I swapped an absolute goal (figuring out how bits of nature work) with a relative one (scoring higher on tests than my classmates). Later, when I found myself unhappy, I couldn’t leave without feeling like I’d lost something. That social capital sunk cost was the first part of the trap I found myself in. The second was a positive feedback loop that encouraged me to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on my work. Humans inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what to value by imitating our peers. As my desire to excel academically grew, I spent greater amounts of time in and around the physics department. The more time I spent there, the greater my desire to excel. I’d never given physics much thought at all before my senior year in high school — but once I was surrounded by other physics students, competing for the same pool of grades and research positions, I could think of little else. This inherited desire was unchecked because I had no life outside of academics — no fixed reference point. Although quitting would have made me happier, I felt like I had nowhere to quit to. My tunnel vision left me with few concrete notions of alternative pursuits, and without a destination, I could not seriously contemplate leaving.  Plans are never plausible until they contain specifics, and implausible plans tend to be discarded. Many of my peers in physics only added incredulity, consciously or otherwise. The result was a reality distortion field — quitting was not just painful, but unimaginable, unthinkable. I ended up in graduate school not because I wanted to toe the bleeding edge of natural science, but because I simply couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go. It decouples the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. If you value the process itself, that’s fine. I didn’t. Cowardice kept me from acting on this, and after a while I came to believe I had to succeed in this field I’d fallen into essentially by chance. “Why does this matter?” is an excellent way to gauge if you’ve drifted into a mimetic trap. If you find this question impossible to answer honestly, you’re probably wasting your time. Getting out is the hard part — that requires courage and diligent planning. It’s much easier to avoid falling in. But in either case, you’ll benefit from building a system that steers you towards productive, meaningful activity in the long run. tow-2576 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so: Why does this matter?  I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful. I ended up in physics through stubbornness, and an unusual willingness to suffer for the sake of grades. As an undergraduate, I was not particularly passionate about quarks, quasars, or quantum mechanics, but I was academically very competitive, and once I’d settled on physics as my major I determined to place myself at the top of my class. I did so by throwing myself into the hardest classes and putting in the hours required to ace the tests. This was, to put it mildly, a bad idea. I got a sort of grim pleasure from vanquishing my classmates in these academic slogs, but I was basically miserable. So why’d I keep it up? When multiple people are striving towards a shared goal, they often rank themselves by progress within their peer group. This was my mistake — I swapped an absolute goal (figuring out how bits of nature work) with a relative one (scoring higher on tests than my classmates). Later, when I found myself unhappy, I couldn’t leave without feeling like I’d lost something. That social capital sunk cost was the first part of the trap I found myself in. The second was a positive feedback loop that encouraged me to spend ever-increasing amounts of time on my work. Humans inherit convictions mimetically from each other — we learn what to value by imitating our peers. As my desire to excel academically grew, I spent greater amounts of time in and around the physics department. The more time I spent there, the greater my desire to excel. I’d never given physics much thought at all before my senior year in high school — but once I was surrounded by other physics students, competing for the same pool of grades and research positions, I could think of little else. This inherited desire was unchecked because I had no life outside of academics — no fixed reference point. Although quitting would have made me happier, I felt like I had nowhere to quit to. My tunnel vision left me with few concrete notions of alternative pursuits, and without a destination, I could not seriously contemplate leaving.  Plans are never plausible until they contain specifics, and implausible plans tend to be discarded. Many of my peers in physics only added incredulity, consciously or otherwise. The result was a reality distortion field — quitting was not just painful, but unimaginable, unthinkable. I ended up in graduate school not because I wanted to toe the bleeding edge of natural science, but because I simply couldn’t imagine doing anything else. That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go. It decouples the social reward signal from the rest of objective reality — you can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable. If you value the process itself, that’s fine. I didn’t. Cowardice kept me from acting on this, and after a while I came to believe I had to succeed in this field I’d fallen into essentially by chance. “Why does this matter?” is an excellent way to gauge if you’ve drifted into a mimetic trap. If you find this question impossible to answer honestly, you’re probably wasting your time. Getting out is the hard part — that requires courage and diligent planning. It’s much easier to avoid falling in. But in either case, you’ll benefit from building a system that steers you towards productive, meaningful activity in the long run. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2554 Narration, with the teacher as narrator, leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. [But] education can begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation. But the humanist revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to materialize. From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them. tow-2554 Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Narration, with the teacher as narrator, leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. [But] education can begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation. But the humanist revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to materialize. From the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2600 The energy is expressing itself because you stored it in there. Every way you think — "I've been this way since I was little" — that's because something happened and you got patterns. Your mind is not your enemy. Your lower heart is not your enemy. They are actually the same as your body, trying to push impurities out. That's why you get a fever, that's why a boil comes up. We don't like it, but it's trying to push impurities out. Your mind is doing the exact same thing, and your heart is doing the exact same thing. They're saying: you stored all this stuff inside of me — stuff you didn't like, stuff you're not comfortable with — and I need to push it out. So if you can learn to not get pulled down into these energies, but to allow them to be and just let them come up, the natural process of transmutation is going to take place. What does that mean? The energy was lower. It was anger. It was fear. It was embarrassment. That's what got stimulated from inside, from the past. What are you going to do about it? You relax and realize this is stuff from the past coming up inside of you. And so you relax. Well, what happens to that embarrassing energy? All of a sudden there's nothing pushing it back down. There's nothing resisting at all. It comes up. "But now I feel a lot of embarrassment." Relax. "Now I feel the most embarrassment I ever felt. My God, it's really hot." Relax. Keep your hands off. And all of a sudden it becomes love. The energy came up to a higher level. It's all the same energy. There's only one energy in there. It's just expressing itself differently because of these different patterns you carved inside yourself. As you let it go, now it doesn't have to be in there anymore. The energy that's behind it — pushing this pattern out of the way — all of a sudden you start to feel Shakti. It will turn into Shakti. That's called transmuting the nature of the energy. It was expressing itself as anger, as fear, as embarrassment or guilt. And because you were willing to say, "Come on up" — get the blockage out of the way — behind the blockage is Shakti, and you will start to feel that more and more, until eventually you realize that's what this is all about. tow-2600 Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 The energy is expressing itself because you stored it in there. Every way you think — "I've been this way since I was little" — that's because something happened and you got patterns. Your mind is not your enemy. Your lower heart is not your enemy. They are actually the same as your body, trying to push impurities out. That's why you get a fever, that's why a boil comes up. We don't like it, but it's trying to push impurities out. Your mind is doing the exact same thing, and your heart is doing the exact same thing. They're saying: you stored all this stuff inside of me — stuff you didn't like, stuff you're not comfortable with — and I need to push it out. So if you can learn to not get pulled down into these energies, but to allow them to be and just let them come up, the natural process of transmutation is going to take place. What does that mean? The energy was lower. It was anger. It was fear. It was embarrassment. That's what got stimulated from inside, from the past. What are you going to do about it? You relax and realize this is stuff from the past coming up inside of you. And so you relax. Well, what happens to that embarrassing energy? All of a sudden there's nothing pushing it back down. There's nothing resisting at all. It comes up. "But now I feel a lot of embarrassment." Relax. "Now I feel the most embarrassment I ever felt. My God, it's really hot." Relax. Keep your hands off. And all of a sudden it becomes love. The energy came up to a higher level. It's all the same energy. There's only one energy in there. It's just expressing itself differently because of these different patterns you carved inside yourself. As you let it go, now it doesn't have to be in there anymore. The energy that's behind it — pushing this pattern out of the way — all of a sudden you start to feel Shakti. It will turn into Shakti. That's called transmuting the nature of the energy. It was expressing itself as anger, as fear, as embarrassment or guilt. And because you were willing to say, "Come on up" — get the blockage out of the way — behind the blockage is Shakti, and you will start to feel that more and more, until eventually you realize that's what this is all about. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2607 In English, to “cook something up” means to prepare food, but also to invent stories or schemes, to concoct something out of fantasy. When I first started writing, I also baked a lot, mostly on days when the writing wasn’t going well. It soothed me, alongside the slow and intangible creation of a novel, to cook up something that was quickly ready and edible. A cake can bring simple, instant self-gratification and appreciation from others, whereas writing – for all its rewards – is always accompanied by self-doubt. Moreover, the reactions of others, even when positive, are rarely enough for me. I am perpetually hungry for some extra validation, which nobody in the world can give. Only in the act of writing is that hunger satisfied, for I become, briefly, bigger than myself, capable of hosting the world and yet treating every single person in it as if they were my only guest. This feat feeds and sates my ravenous self, my need to be and to have everything. Stories enact a form of mutual hospitality. What is story if not an enticement to stay? You are invited in, but right away you must reciprocate and host the story back, through concentration: whether you read or hear a narrative – from a book or a person – you need to listen to really understand. Granting complete attention is like giving a silent ovation. Story and listener open, unfold into and harbour each other. A recipe is a story that cannot be plagiarised. Compare cookbooks and you will find recipes that are almost identical, distinguished by minor variations of quantity or slight deviations in procedure. Debts are gladly acknowledged, sometimes in the name – “Julia’s Apple Tart” – or in a sub-line – “Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi”. Recipes represent one of the easiest, most generous forms of exchange between people and cultures, especially now, with food blogs abounding and once-exotic ingredients available at your local supermarket. Recipes are the original open source, offering building blocks that may be adjusted across time, place and seasons to create infinite dishes. You only need to successfully make a recipe once to feel it is your own. Make it three more times and suddenly it is tradition. No wonder different societies claim the same food as their definitive, national dish. In the Middle East, hummus may well be the most contested case in point. Fed up of the endless, inconclusive debates about the true origins of this popular chickpea dish, a group of Lebanese aficionados decided to settle the matter once and for all by setting the record for making the largest tub of hummus ever, in the hope that the feat would irrevocably associate hummus with Lebanon above all. The idea of consolidating their credentials by producing such an excess is fitting in the context of the famously profuse Arab hospitality, summed up in the half-joking warning to guests: you will need to fast for two days before and two days after eating in an Arab household. Being asked how you made something is the ultimate compliment for most cooks. Recipes passed on this way come marinated in the memory of previous incarnations. Recipes can be both continuity and change. Stuck to, modified, lost, recovered … recipes are records of individual or national defeats and conquests. In this sense, little is strictly “authentic”: everything is influenced by someone or somewhere else. This is true for food, and for culture as a whole. The quest for authenticity is often more of a crusade for authority, an attempt to exclude, single out and thus narrow things down – the very opposite of hospitality. [...] Hospitality, were I to draw it, would be a series of potentially endless concentric circles extending outwards from each of us. In their crisscrossing and overlapping, in the expanse of their reach, might be the critical pattern of our time. A pattern revealing – just as contour lines on a map indicate the gradient of the land – the true topography of a society: its landscape of reciprocity, its borders of generosity, its peaks and depths of give and take. Yet, however far those circles spread, unconditional hospitality remains outside their furthest perimeter. It lies, for the most part, in unknown territory, off the map. tow-2607 Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 In English, to “cook something up” means to prepare food, but also to invent stories or schemes, to concoct something out of fantasy. When I first started writing, I also baked a lot, mostly on days when the writing wasn’t going well. It soothed me, alongside the slow and intangible creation of a novel, to cook up something that was quickly ready and edible. A cake can bring simple, instant self-gratification and appreciation from others, whereas writing – for all its rewards – is always accompanied by self-doubt. Moreover, the reactions of others, even when positive, are rarely enough for me. I am perpetually hungry for some extra validation, which nobody in the world can give. Only in the act of writing is that hunger satisfied, for I become, briefly, bigger than myself, capable of hosting the world and yet treating every single person in it as if they were my only guest. This feat feeds and sates my ravenous self, my need to be and to have everything. Stories enact a form of mutual hospitality. What is story if not an enticement to stay? You are invited in, but right away you must reciprocate and host the story back, through concentration: whether you read or hear a narrative – from a book or a person – you need to listen to really understand. Granting complete attention is like giving a silent ovation. Story and listener open, unfold into and harbour each other. A recipe is a story that cannot be plagiarised. Compare cookbooks and you will find recipes that are almost identical, distinguished by minor variations of quantity or slight deviations in procedure. Debts are gladly acknowledged, sometimes in the name – “Julia’s Apple Tart” – or in a sub-line – “Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi”. Recipes represent one of the easiest, most generous forms of exchange between people and cultures, especially now, with food blogs abounding and once-exotic ingredients available at your local supermarket. Recipes are the original open source, offering building blocks that may be adjusted across time, place and seasons to create infinite dishes. You only need to successfully make a recipe once to feel it is your own. Make it three more times and suddenly it is tradition. No wonder different societies claim the same food as their definitive, national dish. In the Middle East, hummus may well be the most contested case in point. Fed up of the endless, inconclusive debates about the true origins of this popular chickpea dish, a group of Lebanese aficionados decided to settle the matter once and for all by setting the record for making the largest tub of hummus ever, in the hope that the feat would irrevocably associate hummus with Lebanon above all. The idea of consolidating their credentials by producing such an excess is fitting in the context of the famously profuse Arab hospitality, summed up in the half-joking warning to guests: you will need to fast for two days before and two days after eating in an Arab household. Being asked how you made something is the ultimate compliment for most cooks. Recipes passed on this way come marinated in the memory of previous incarnations. Recipes can be both continuity and change. Stuck to, modified, lost, recovered … recipes are records of individual or national defeats and conquests. In this sense, little is strictly “authentic”: everything is influenced by someone or somewhere else. This is true for food, and for culture as a whole. The quest for authenticity is often more of a crusade for authority, an attempt to exclude, single out and thus narrow things down – the very opposite of hospitality. [...] Hospitality, were I to draw it, would be a series of potentially endless concentric circles extending outwards from each of us. In their crisscrossing and overlapping, in the expanse of their reach, might be the critical pattern of our time. A pattern revealing – just as contour lines on a map indicate the gradient of the land – the true topography of a society: its landscape of reciprocity, its borders of generosity, its peaks and depths of give and take. Yet, however far those circles spread, unconditional hospitality remains outside their furthest perimeter. It lies, for the most part, in unknown territory, off the map. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2641 Why is it that many priests and monks perform marriage rites when they themselves are celibate? I have conducted many marriage ceremonies in my time. Once I even performed a celebrity wedding and had my photo appear in the Malaysian edition of the gossip magazine Hello! During the ceremony, I have to give the dewy- eyed young couple some wise words of advice. So at the ceremony I tell them “The Secret” to a happy marriage. At the right moment in the proceedings, usually after the rings have been exchanged, I look into the eyes of the new bride and tell her, “You are a married woman now. From this moment on, you must never think of yourself.” She immediately nods and smiles sweetly. Then I look at the groom and say, “You are now a married man. You also must not think of yourself anymore.” I don’t know what it is about guys, but the groom usually pauses for a few seconds before saying “Yes.”Still looking at the groom, I continue, “And from this time on, you must never think of your wife.” Then quickly turning to the bride, I say to her, “And you must not think of your husband from now on.”I enjoy watching the confused expressions appear on the couple’s faces. You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what they are thinking: “What is this crazy monk on about!” Confusion is a very effective teaching device. Once people are engaged in trying to solve a riddle, then you can teach them the answer and they pay attention. “Once you are married,” I explain, “you should not think of yourselves; otherwise you will be making no contribution to your marriage." Also, once you are married, you should not always think of your partner; otherwise you will only be giving, giving, giving, until there’s nothing left in your marriage. “Instead, once you are married, think only of ‘us.’ You are in this together.” The couple then turn to each other and smile. They get it straight away. Marriage is about “us,” not about me, not about him, not about her. To make sure they understand “The Secret,” I ask them, “When any problem arises in your marriage, whose problem is it?” “Our problem,” they answer together. :) tow-2641 Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Why is it that many priests and monks perform marriage rites when they themselves are celibate? I have conducted many marriage ceremonies in my time. Once I even performed a celebrity wedding and had my photo appear in the Malaysian edition of the gossip magazine Hello! During the ceremony, I have to give the dewy- eyed young couple some wise words of advice. So at the ceremony I tell them “The Secret” to a happy marriage. At the right moment in the proceedings, usually after the rings have been exchanged, I look into the eyes of the new bride and tell her, “You are a married woman now. From this moment on, you must never think of yourself.” She immediately nods and smiles sweetly. Then I look at the groom and say, “You are now a married man. You also must not think of yourself anymore.” I don’t know what it is about guys, but the groom usually pauses for a few seconds before saying “Yes.”Still looking at the groom, I continue, “And from this time on, you must never think of your wife.” Then quickly turning to the bride, I say to her, “And you must not think of your husband from now on.”I enjoy watching the confused expressions appear on the couple’s faces. You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what they are thinking: “What is this crazy monk on about!” Confusion is a very effective teaching device. Once people are engaged in trying to solve a riddle, then you can teach them the answer and they pay attention. “Once you are married,” I explain, “you should not think of yourselves; otherwise you will be making no contribution to your marriage." Also, once you are married, you should not always think of your partner; otherwise you will only be giving, giving, giving, until there’s nothing left in your marriage. “Instead, once you are married, think only of ‘us.’ You are in this together.” The couple then turn to each other and smile. They get it straight away. Marriage is about “us,” not about me, not about him, not about her. To make sure they understand “The Secret,” I ask them, “When any problem arises in your marriage, whose problem is it?” “Our problem,” they answer together. :) https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2779 Meditation entails the difficult task of cultivating concentrated attention on one’s moment-to-moment experience—the endless stream of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions—without judging or interpreting them, or allowing them to take immediate control of our actions. In its simplest form, meditation is a skill that undercuts all our evolved drives: planning for the future, learning from the past, following our desires to eat, drink, avoid pain, etc. Instead, during meditation practice one simply allows the feelings, thoughts, and perceptions to come into and out of being, and in doing so, these experiences begin to take on a different character than they do in daily life. The Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem (FBT), developed by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, claims that the way evolutionary processes succeed is by hiding the truth (the underlying reality). In other words, the less a system models the true nature of the universe, the more likely it is to survive. Our experience of seeing the color green, for example, is useful for navigating the world but gives us no indication of the underlying phenomena of lightwaves bouncing off a leaf, entering the retina, and being processed by the brain. FBT simply goes a few steps further, arguing that all of our experiences—even of space and time itself—are misleading us about the true nature of reality. That’s not to say that our perceptions aren’t good maps of reality—if they weren’t, they obviously wouldn’t be evolutionarily advantageous. “Green” is a great way to compress a lot of information into a single experience, but our experience of seeing green tells us nothing about lightwaves, etc., and it causes us to believe there is “green” outside of our experience of it. If FBT is correct, as I’m convinced it is, it would make sense that meditation training has the potential to help us better understand a more fundamental layer of reality, as it is in part an exercise in “un-training” our evolved perceptions. Perhaps we shouldn’t find it surprising that people regularly experience spaceless and timeless states in meditation, embodied as a “oneness” that no longer takes on the character of being a separate “self.” All three of these perceptions—space, time, and self— have been revealed by neuroscience and physics to be a distortion of what we now understand to be the underlying physical reality. These perceptions can even be considered illusions in one sense of the word. That’s not to say that meditation practice should cause us to lose appreciation for our lives as evolved human beings. Quite the opposite. By expanding one’s curiosity, freedom, and ability to be present, meditation helps people more naturally find beauty and awe in the full range of human experience. But it is no surprise that cultivating this particular skill might also serve as a tool to help us perceive reality more accurately in some instances. If evolution hides the truth from us by definition, it would make sense that training the mind to unravel our conscious experience to the purest form we have access to—letting go of our evolved perceptions and drives for minutes, hours, or days at a time—could give us a clearer window on to the universe in which we are embedded. tow-2779 Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 Meditation entails the difficult task of cultivating concentrated attention on one’s moment-to-moment experience—the endless stream of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions—without judging or interpreting them, or allowing them to take immediate control of our actions. In its simplest form, meditation is a skill that undercuts all our evolved drives: planning for the future, learning from the past, following our desires to eat, drink, avoid pain, etc. Instead, during meditation practice one simply allows the feelings, thoughts, and perceptions to come into and out of being, and in doing so, these experiences begin to take on a different character than they do in daily life. The Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem (FBT), developed by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, claims that the way evolutionary processes succeed is by hiding the truth (the underlying reality). In other words, the less a system models the true nature of the universe, the more likely it is to survive. Our experience of seeing the color green, for example, is useful for navigating the world but gives us no indication of the underlying phenomena of lightwaves bouncing off a leaf, entering the retina, and being processed by the brain. FBT simply goes a few steps further, arguing that all of our experiences—even of space and time itself—are misleading us about the true nature of reality. That’s not to say that our perceptions aren’t good maps of reality—if they weren’t, they obviously wouldn’t be evolutionarily advantageous. “Green” is a great way to compress a lot of information into a single experience, but our experience of seeing green tells us nothing about lightwaves, etc., and it causes us to believe there is “green” outside of our experience of it. If FBT is correct, as I’m convinced it is, it would make sense that meditation training has the potential to help us better understand a more fundamental layer of reality, as it is in part an exercise in “un-training” our evolved perceptions. Perhaps we shouldn’t find it surprising that people regularly experience spaceless and timeless states in meditation, embodied as a “oneness” that no longer takes on the character of being a separate “self.” All three of these perceptions—space, time, and self— have been revealed by neuroscience and physics to be a distortion of what we now understand to be the underlying physical reality. These perceptions can even be considered illusions in one sense of the word. That’s not to say that meditation practice should cause us to lose appreciation for our lives as evolved human beings. Quite the opposite. By expanding one’s curiosity, freedom, and ability to be present, meditation helps people more naturally find beauty and awe in the full range of human experience. But it is no surprise that cultivating this particular skill might also serve as a tool to help us perceive reality more accurately in some instances. If evolution hides the truth from us by definition, it would make sense that training the mind to unravel our conscious experience to the purest form we have access to—letting go of our evolved perceptions and drives for minutes, hours, or days at a time—could give us a clearer window on to the universe in which we are embedded. https://awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2778 Lord I cannot preach like Martin Lurther King, Jr.or turn a poetic phrase like Maya Angeloubut I care and am willing to serve. I do not have Fred Shuttlesworth's and HarrietTubman's courage or Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's political skillsbut I care and am willing to serve. I cannot sing like Fannie Lou Hameror organize like Ella Baker and Bayard Rustinbut I care and am willing to serve. I am not holy like Archbishop Tutu,forgiving like Mandela, or disciplined like Gandhibut I care and am willing to serve. I am not brilliant like Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois orElizabeth Cady Stanton, or as eloquent asSojourner Truth and Booker T. Washingtonbut I care and am willing to serve. 1/2 I have not Mother Teresa's saintliness,Dorothy Day's love or Cesar Chavez'sgentle tough spiritbut I care and am willing to serve. God it is not as easy as it used to beto frame an issue and forge a solutionbut I care and am willing to serve. My mind and body are not so swift as in youthand my energy comes in spurtsbut I care and am willing to serve. I'm so youngnobody will listenI'm not sure what to say or dobut I care and am willing to serve. I can't see or hear wellspeak good English, stutter sometimes, am afraid of criticismand get real scared standing up before othersbut I care and am willing to serve. tow-2778 Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0800 Lord I cannot preach like Martin Lurther King, Jr.or turn a poetic phrase like Maya Angeloubut I care and am willing to serve. I do not have Fred Shuttlesworth's and HarrietTubman's courage or Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's political skillsbut I care and am willing to serve. I cannot sing like Fannie Lou Hameror organize like Ella Baker and Bayard Rustinbut I care and am willing to serve. I am not holy like Archbishop Tutu,forgiving like Mandela, or disciplined like Gandhibut I care and am willing to serve. I am not brilliant like Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois orElizabeth Cady Stanton, or as eloquent asSojourner Truth and Booker T. Washingtonbut I care and am willing to serve. 1/2 I have not Mother Teresa's saintliness,Dorothy Day's love or Cesar Chavez'sgentle tough spiritbut I care and am willing to serve. God it is not as easy as it used to beto frame an issue and forge a solutionbut I care and am willing to serve. My mind and body are not so swift as in youthand my energy comes in spurtsbut I care and am willing to serve. I'm so youngnobody will listenI'm not sure what to say or dobut I care and am willing to serve. I can't see or hear wellspeak good English, stutter sometimes, am afraid of criticismand get real scared standing up before othersbut I care and am willing to serve.