emotional expression

It appears there is very strong opinion these days about issues like corruption and misconduct. Either people are 100% sure it's happening on a large scale, or they refuse to believe the possibility even exists. Is it strictly a belief system thing, maybe just creating divide,... Any insight or ideas about this? 

Huh? I thought this was supposed to be social media for music people.  First thing I see is political.  I'm out!!!

AMA with Hannah Aline Taylor. Wednesday 2/4 at 4:00 PM CT

love, boundaries, and mistakes in relating, community, and peopling together (+ thank god love doesn’t look like you expect it to)

(Alignment of "Us"- Excerpt #159 from an epistolary I'm releasing next year). Dear Johan,

A great example of alignment is when someone knows that I love them even when, in the moment, I can’t feel it.

A great example of alignment is when what I do, when I’m not trying to signal, signals to the other person that I love them.

A great example of alignment is when a person is at the edge of how they understand themselves and they look me in the eye and we can both tell that we’ll still be in love after we find out more.

A great example of alignment is when someone does a behavior I usually feel shame about doing myself, but when they do it I see innocence and beauty.

A great example of alignment is…

I want to cry right now. The Texas Supreme Court voted to allow judges to refuse to marry gay couples based on religious beliefs.

I don’t seem to be in alignment with the Texas Supreme Court.

I don’t seem to be in alignment with Republicans or Christian Nationalists.

If I’m not in alignment with a person I can just go somewhere else.

I don’t really understand how to participate with people with whom I don’t share alignment.

I can feel the part of me that could just wander off. What stops me is thoughts of the people who can’t wander off, people that have to stay.

Jordan just called me. I really needed him to call. He’s telling me he doesn’t know what to do…

I told him it’s so weird to be so flat-footed spiritually. I can’t sense the direction of love.

He just asked me if I was upset because I can’t find forgiveness. I said that feels secondary. It doesn’t feel like I can even think of forgiveness until I understand how to protect anyone.

I cannot let my tribe face this alone.

But Jordan’s not a homo. So he wouldn’t lose any rights if he did nothing and he’s telling me he’s my tribe.

He’s my “us”. He’s always in a stand that we can’t be in an us vs them. I really listen to him and watch him when he says that. I tell him that and he’s quick to tell me that I can certainly take some time to us vs them. But that’s what the last years have been for me. I already know where all that goes.

When so many people are calling me inhuman, it’s hard to still call them human…but I’m resolving now.

It means so much that he called. He’s showing me that I don’t understand all the shapes yet. In my brain there’s a picture of the word “them” being crossed out.

We stayed in a little longer and, like a pebble floating to the bottom of a pond, I found my skin in the game.

This is all about family. I didn’t think I could have a family when I was young if I wanted to be gay. When I met T and J and realized that I could have a family, I was heartbroken that I had been bamboozled into a limiting belief.

I don’t want anyone else to be bamboozled.

The pebble settles on the bottom and I can feel a truth: I’m not above duties that are perpetual. 

It’s like the laundry. Jordan says it’s just like Arjuna. Now he’s saying that an unwinnable fight can still be worth fighting. I can feel myself arising now to gather the crops from the field. God isn’t picking on me. It’s just time to work.

Grief of progress: Jordan is talking about how surprised he is…he thought we had come further than this. 

I note that I feel a kind of sureness inside. In Avatar (blue aliens not airbenders) there’s a part where the animals themselves rise up and defeat the bad humans. I thought that the Republican-Christian-Nationalists wouldn’t dare to poke the bear. 

I am the bear and there is no them. Just an us. My whole body feels toward this now…it feels like how it feels when I’m in a friend’s house at night looking for the bathroom light switch.

But right now I’m not afraid.

I hope you had a great night,

Mike

Appreciation With Great Difficulty. (Originally published on substack. This was unusually scary and vulnerable to publish)

There’s this Buddhist poem. I don’t know if it’s a poem. They say it’s “a set of contemplations.”

It’s called “The Four Reminders,” and the first time I read it, it kicked me to the floor. And every time after, too.

Here’s Trungpa’s translation.

—

Joyful to have
such a human birth.
Difficult to find,
Free and well-favored.

But death is real,
comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.

Unalterable
are the laws of karma;
cause and effect
cannot be escaped.

Samsara
is an ocean of suffering.
Unendurable,
unbearably intense.

—

When I was first learning coaching, one of my teachers said “An unwanted present state will stay stuck until it’s fully appreciated.”

To appreciate something is not to say “I like this” or “I condone this” or “I value this”. It’s to let it in. Just let it in to your heart. You must let the things into your heart that you’ve excluded. Make space for them in your heart, or they’ll be chains around your ankles.

To fully appreciate the present state, to love the world as it is. To allow the world into you fully, and not keep out parts, not try to keep yourself separate, but let the world belong to you and let yourself belong to the world.

This requires a letting go. A surrender to life, to what will happen. “Amor Fati,” Nietzsche said. “Love your fate.”

Or as Tyler Durden put it “Stop trying to control everything and just let go”

When you do that, you get the benefit of belonging to life. You are just life, living. You are the world and the world is you.

But Goddam it’s a lot to take.

I don’t know war, outside of news, and social media, history books, and Hollywood. And it’s already more than I want to know.

But what if the only way to stop war is to let it into your heart? For each of us to let it into our hearts. Not to love it. But to allow it. To allow it to exist. To not resist*, but include it in your heart, and include your love of peace. To include those two things together is to break your heart.

Things don’t care whether you want them or not.

So we allow war to be. In this moment, when it is, we allow it. We appreciate it. Things are not different than how they are. And when you do that, also feel your love of peace, and the pain of all the suffering war is causing, and your own fear about your suffering and your death and the suffering and death of your loved ones, and remember, your love of peace, your longing for peace.

Just try, right now. Include all that in your heart. Pause. Close your eyes. And feel your love of peace and the fact of war, together in your heart.

It’s too much. I can’t do it. I’m sure I don’t even come close.

But trying just now, I sink down. It’s like lowering myself into a hot bath of vibrating sensation. Or descending from the pristine clouds into the hot, chaotic jungle. I feel now that I belong to the world and my heart cracks, and I want to cry.

And then I can’t stay, and I rise back up, out of that intensity.

But for a moment, I felt I belonged to the world.

Maybe trying this practice with something as huge, horrendous, and abstract as “war” is setting us up to fail. But what happens if you try it with something in your own life? Find that knot, that persistent place where life keeps being the same, painful way. What’s the the thing in your own life that feels hardest to appreciate?

Now again, close your eyes and let it into your heart. It can sit right there along with your desire and longing that it be different. You have to make room in your heart for what is so, as well as your wanting something else. When you do that, and breathe, and feel it all together, as part of the wholeness of life, what happens? What happens in your heart? And what happens in your life? I’d love to know.

Of course, I only get to explore these territories because of how much peace surrounds me. This blessed peace, that allows me to stop and feel life in this way. This precious peace, this delicate, sometimes punctured, peace, that I pray remains, that I pray grows stronger. I pray that you are surrounded by this peace too, and all the people you love, and all the ones they love and so on, out across the whole world.

—

* This is not to say real world actions are unnecessary. I’m not talking about quietism. You can include a rabid dog in your heart, even as you’re putting it down.

The best compliiment from a 3 year old. I was searching my FB profile feed for something and came across a post (from 2023) about the best compliment I received from my 3-year-old grandson.

"Nat, you're really good at being silly!" 

"Why did our friends stop posting on social media? | BBC Global". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN4MNdCAnWA  <-- the first 30 seconds speaks directly to why we think UpTrust is desirable for individuals.

#whyUpTrust 

Wanting to help with the LA fires. Write posts in my head often and do not actually write them. There is some block on having a good idea and believing it's worth sharing and then not actually sharing it.  Liked the intro here on uptrust: "What's Good.."  and it inspired me to write even though it's not feeling like it's a response to what is good.  Let me try.  What is good - having ideas, thoughts, suggestions. 

Right now wanting to ask our county and city officials to organize something for residents to participate in clean up. Specifically along the ocean.  The good is that i'm not alone in this craving to help and the importance we feel in keeping the ocean clean.  Surprised to find friends who don't like sand or getting wet caring bout this issue as well. There is no way to go there, the military will not let you pass thru.  it seems like a warzone, completely blocked off to all of us who want to help.  Some how wishing this wasn't just an idea and was something city officials were actively working on.  How to use the funding to provide protective gear for citizens with trucks to go to the area and get as much off the beach as possible.  Know thousands or more would show up.  Maybe we need rsepirators and of course gloves (most of us have the basics like gloves and masks). I have a hazmat suit passed along from my aunt in Maui who got these supplies from fema after the fire there.  So there would be some costs for that supplies, but there would be so much free labor.  Sure liability and safety protocols and awareness of what is possible.  But if the governor can suspend red tape for rebuilds, how bout suspend red tape for volunteer clean up.

As i type this, i feel my heart racing. The powerlessness. Who can i reach? Actually a friend asked me to reach out to her friend on the Malibu city council and suggest these ideas.  That was a few hours ago.  Instead of getting this idea to Haylin.  Hearing Forest talk bout posting on fb, i can feel the fear in my body as well. AND this is just about volunteers, but the powerlessness. 

What's good? The idea is good. The desire to share, help is good. The freeze to share is what i'm facing and glad to have shared this here. Thank you. 

Navigating Buying or Walking. For those of you who are good at saving your money. 💰 What inspires you to not buy? 

Say you’re in a store or online and you see something cool. What do you do? What are your criteria for buying or walking away? 

Asking because while I love knowing money is being put away, I also love to shop. It can be as simple as, I’m in Manchester (like I am right now) and want to buy something unique that I can’t buy at home. Or I don’t have a something in that color, fabric or design. I don’t need it. I just like it and will enjoy it.  

How do you navigate this? What’s your approach?

My best attempt ever to make Integral Theory accessible to first tier. https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/we0q1pq/run

I’ve put all of my energy about this political season into creating the most helpful thing I can imagine. It’s called Better Political Conversations, a quiz and mini-course that uses Integral perspectives to help people be able to see where each other is coming from more clearly.

This is my most genuine effort to be the change I wish to see in the world. My aim is that this is something that people of any perspective, worldview, or political opinion could find value in.

My standards building it were Pareto Principle on precision of information with a massive intention to make the concepts and wording comprehensible and relatable to folks in first tier. I aimed to honor every worldview as much as possible and not to compromise info in any ways that are misleading.

I already have about 25 quiz results, and I wonder why I’m so surprised how many people’s highest percentage is in Amber.

Israel framing in VP debate. I was looking to see how Watlz framed the Isreal/Gaza war. And I felt heartened that he started by making a clear point that Israel experienced a massacre. Such a clear, strong statement like that was not something that I heard during the presidential debate.

And then I was curious how he would describe Gaza/Hamas’s perspective, and he called it a Humanitarian Crisis, and that seemed tactful.

Finally they learned to cut off people's mics. Hot take: If the media wasn’t so Green and did this in 2016, I think Hillary would have won.

Finally they learned to cut off people's mics. Hot take: If the media wasn’t so Green and did this in 2016, I think Hillary would have won.

The Relateful Company should embrace more job titles. We’re under-appreciating orange.

We’ve included the green critiques, like the classic:

What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so - V. F. Ridgway, 1956

But we need to embrace more healthy competition, striving for excellence, even rankings.

one way we can do this is to make more liberal use of titles, and brag on people. @Valerie Daniel is the MANAGING DIRECTOR, and we should have her listed as such in emails and things

What else is healthy orange and how can we transclude it?
What do we already do that is already healthy orange?

Gun violence in the USA schools. This weekend Stephanie got onto an instagram rabbithole which took her into some dark, near-conspiracy places about gun violence. The sad bit was of course the increase in polarization, rather than an increase in compassion, or even solutions focus. It’s much easier to blame an other than try to sort out a super complex, nuanced, and ambiguous problem.

This topic is interesting in general to me, and it kicked off a beautiful discussion on the UpTrust slack thread (it seems we’re influencing ourselves to be better online conversationalists everywhere!), but it also made we wonder how to solve the school-shooting issue in the USA? What are the nuanced, synthetic perspectives? For example, even comparing data about school shootings across the world can be shaped, interpreted, mixed. Many of the countries that have fewer school shootings (all of them) have much higher death-by-firearm rates, or death by gang-violence, or war, etc. So it’s difficult to get good comparisons, even if we ignore cultural approaches. Also

How do we take an integral approach which addresses all four quadrants?
- UL psyche: mental health—but what does this mean? Where does the money come from to increase such mental health?
- LL culture: US roots in revolution and gun ownership, media, glorification of shooters
- UR behavior: Gun safety training? mandatory? What can we learn from Israel and Switzerland, who have similar or higher gun ownership rates but no school shootings? Quick research: it seems like increasing metal detectors and stuff is NOT a solution that works. What other behavior changes do?
- LR systems: Gun control—even as a gun owning Texan, I think it’s obvious at this point that things need to change. I don’t have much research or understanding so probably people have a lot to say about the nuanced ways of doing this, and I’m sure I’m naive in my suggestion here but it seems like there could be various licenses like there are for driving; the more dangerous a weapon is, the more training you have to prove you’ve had like getting a commercial driver’s license. It also seems like we could clearly do a two year experiment: Write a new law that expires in two years and look at the data: did we stop the shootings?

anyway this is super inchoate, but I’d love to get the collective brain’s nuanced take that can genuinely steel man all sides, understanding and including the validity of the right-wing arguments as well as seeing the problems of the left-wing solutions, the bits left on the table.

Spiritual Promiscuity, do I need a condom? I’ve discovered something about myself that I knew, but didn’t allow myself to acknowledge. I have a natural and lifelong delight in transgressing boundaries playfully, and a fear of abusing that ability.

When I consider this, I come up with the following as a statement of intent:

The art of promiscuity applied to the challenge of evolving empowerment to empower evolution tickles my soul in profound ways

As I’m leaning into this as in intention for myself and letting go of my own arrogance, I find the lifeforce behind the joyousness of Leela (Hinda Gamefulness or playfulness) in transformation, and I want to invite other children to knock down sand castles of late stage capitalism, not with malice, but fully in delight (and not taking oneself too seriously).

Am I a gift or a curse?

Failing to Learn to Drive. After I got my learner’s permit, my mom took me to a large parking lot near our house to teach me how to drive. She had a manual car, because that’s what she learned back in Uruguay and she liked it better.

She explained to me how the clutch, break and accelerator work (I had no model of it before this). and how to do the gentle handoff between letting go of the clutch as you engage the accelerator. But there was a problem - she told me the clutch and the break reversed, meaning she told me the clutch was the break pedal, and the break was the clutch.

When I tried to start the car and put it into gear, the car would start jerking violently back and forth, and then stall. i did this again and again for an hour. Every once in a while we’d trade seats, and my mom would carefully pay attention to how she was doing it, and then proceed to explain it to me wrong again and again. At some point I said I must be doing something wrong and she said Clearly! in anger. I was totally convinced I’d never be able to learn how to drive.

Somehow every one in twenty attempts worked, and I was able to get the car into first gear and drive around. I would then try to get into second gear and the same thing would happen again - jerk violently and then stall.

At some point I managed to get into second gear by miracle, and after driving around the parking lot a few times, she suggested we take it out into the street and drive home. When I got to the first intersection, I got in a collision with a car that turned illegaly (I had the green light). there was no damage to my car, but the other guy broke his headlight. He then drove off in a hurry instead of exchanging information.

I was now stuck in the middle of the intersection, in a panic, with cars waiting in every direction, and I couldn’t get the car started. i was trying but it kept jerking and stalling every time. eventually we traded seats, in front of everyone, and drove home. I was super embarrassed.
I never asked my mom to teach me to drive (or anything else) after that, and for the next two years I commuted to college via subway, an hour and a half each way, every day.
It wasn’t until late sophomore year that I made a friend, Elkin, who was willing to patiently and kindly teach me to drive manual. He drove me to the driving exam, which I then failed. Three times. Motor skills don’t come easy to me. Finally the fourth time I passed.

Thank you Elkin for your help. you were a great friend.

Failing to Learn to Drive. After I got my learner’s permit, my mom took me to a large parking lot near our house to teach me how to drive. She had a manual car, because that’s what she learned back in Uruguay and she liked it better.

She explained to me how the clutch, break and accelerator work (I had no model of it before this). and how to do the gentle handoff between letting go of the clutch as you engage the accelerator. But there was a problem - she told me the clutch and the break reversed, meaning she told me the clutch was the break pedal, and the break was the clutch.

When I tried to start the car and put it into gear, the car would start jerking violently back and forth, and then stall. i did this again and again for an hour. Every once in a while we’d trade seats, and my mom would carefully pay attention to how she was doing it, and then proceed to explain it to me wrong again and again. At some point I said I must be doing something wrong and she said Clearly! in anger. I was totally convinced I’d never be able to learn how to drive.

Somehow every one in twenty attempts worked, and I was able to get the car into first gear and drive around. I would then try to get into second gear and the same thing would happen again - jerk violently and then stall.

At some point I managed to get into second gear by miracle, and after driving around the parking lot a few times, she suggested we take it out into the street and drive home. When I got to the first intersection, I got in a collision with a car that turned illegaly (I had the green light). there was no damage to my car, but the other guy broke his headlight. He then drove off in a hurry instead of exchanging information.

I was now stuck in the middle of the intersection, in a panic, with cars waiting in every direction, and I couldn’t get the car started. i was trying but it kept jerking and stalling every time. eventually we traded seats, in front of everyone, and drove home. I was super embarrassed.
I never asked my mom to teach me to drive (or anything else) after that, and for the next two years I commuted to college via subway, an hour and a half each way, every day.
It wasn’t until late sophomore year that I made a friend, Elkin, who was willing to patiently and kindly teach me to drive manual. He drove me to the driving exam, which I then failed. Three times. Motor skills don’t come easy to me. Finally the fourth time I passed.

Thank you Elkin for your help. you were a great friend.

Monogamy v polyamory. Is monogamy better? Is poly better? Is there an overall norm for people, with exceptions? Is it totally pluralistic? Here are some points for monogamy, with some counter points, to convey some of my uncertainty but nevertheless leaning into what I’ve chosen:

• Point: I don’t know a single polyamorous couple that’s lasted more than a decade, whereas I know a ton of lifelong monogamous couples.
  • Counterpoint: many of the lifelong monogamous couples are not healthy relationships
    • Counter-counter-point: perhaps being in a lifelong commitment, even if the relationship isn’t ideal, is more healthy than being hyper-independent, especially as you get older. This runs right up against boundaries, how to know what to tolerate/love as is, when to leave, etc
• Point: The poly focus of attention tends to be the relationships themselves, often a kind of relational narcissism, rather than the relationship being a foundation for engaging the world in love (ironically). This is my version of the poly is impractical argument. Most of the people I meet practicing polyamory are constantly putting tons and tons and tons of life energy into their relational problems, and it seems like their relationships are often built around addressing these problems rather than enjoying life together. The fact that it takes so much time and energy points to something being a little off. Monogamous relating also takes energy but it usually seems less self-referential; they’re more often helping each other face and engage the world, rather than face and engage each other and their relationship.
  • potential counterpoint: You’re making a developmental point Jordan, not a mono/poly point. Most people practice poly from a Red ego-centric POV; most people practice sex from Red as well. If you practice from a genuine Green+ polyamory, this doesn’t happen.
• Point: Humans are largely monogamous; it’s instinctual
  • Counterpoint: How would we know if its cultural versus biological versus systemic versus psychological per person/family? it only takes a couple of generations of evolution to make massive physical changes, so even if it is biological, how could we know what’s possible for the future?
  • Counterpoint: people wanna fuck, especially dudes
  • Cheating, mistresses, polygamy, Sex at Dawn etc…
• Point: Many poly people avoid endings, boundaries, standards, and facing their own karma by just jumping from relationships to relationship. Sure monogamous people do too, but many of them end up getting married and that crucible forces them to face their stuff. Far fewer poly people get married, and when they do they can still use other relationships to avoid their shit
  • Counterpoint: we can use absolutely everything to avoid our shit.

there’s tons more, just want to get the convo started…