general inquiry

How should I landscape my house? I am working on landscaping the home I bought in October, starting with the front yard due to a couple of issues. First, there is a big dip in the yard that floods every time it rains heavily. Second, the driveway is right in front of my bedroom window, causing headlights to shine into my room when people come and go, and limiting my ability to open the windows due to privacy concerns.

I’ve hired a permaculture landscaper who is currently working on a design. Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do about the driveway and whether to add a carport.

I could really use some opinions on the following:

• How would you deal with the flooding issue?
• What would you suggest for the driveway or adding a carport? I can move the driveway to the other side of the house or leave it as is.

I can post photos if there’s a way to do that. I have many ideas also but curious to hear what folks think with this info.

🕊️“Awakening” and “enlightenment” are terribly vague terms for most people. 🕊️Awakening and enlightenment are terribly vague terms for most people.

sometimes referring to the universal, undeniable sense of being that is so simple and everpresently already here that we almost never think to pay attention to it (without training), except when something is so beautiful or horrible that it knocks us out of meaning making and we’re confronted with the immensity of experience.

Sometimes we mean an abiding realization/resting in the conscious knowing of that alwaysness: nonduality; a persistent state of nonsymbolic experience; seeing that the constructed nature of the world and self are so ephemeral and empty that our experience is better understood as a dream; union with a divine quality of love and surrender into the fullness of experience.

Other times we mean a total perfection of being human—not just the abiding realization, but some obviation of all shadow material (cleaning up)—repressed and split off self-bits, unconscious motivations, unhealthy or self-destructive habits).

Race and IQ. I recently got dinner at a hole-in-the-wall asian spot with a geneticist named Razib Khan. Over noodles, and with a concerned glance over his shoulder, he admitted that the science is clear: race is absolutely tied to IQ. Jews are the smartest. Pretty much everyone on the continent of Africa is at the bottom.

This fact alone is controversial, but we have to be able to talk about it, and here’s why:

I nodded, and asked: How many generations does this take to change?

Razib: As little as three generations. For example, the Egyptians used to be the smartest, but a century of inbreeding knocked them to the bottom. Incest drops IQ by 10 points in the first generation. After that the effect weakens.

This is huge. At first glance, the controversial statement seems like a slamdunk for racists the world over. But dig into the details, and you find out 3 generations is enough to change things—this means that race and IQ are not inherently linked as far as we know, they’re just linked in today’s world, because of today’s policies and systems.

Knowing this could actually help us target where we need to focus our interventions for the next three decades. Let’s get us all up!

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

It's time to make circumcision illegal. Here’s the deal.

I believe it’s time to abandon this outdated procedure. It’s easy to maintain personal hygiene today and have access to healthcare, which were the two, IMO, worthy arguments for allowing this procedure.

The others- cultural, religious, or aesthetic arguments are outdated.

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

Navigating Unique Soul vs Surrender to Truth/God. I had a surprise event in last few days where my long term plans were seriously challenged.

And it brought into seeming conflict my personal vision of what I’ve been trying to build the past 6 months versus surrendering to life and letting it unfold me.

I could see that holding onto what I thought was firm was causing me suffering and needed to let the sadness let go of this future expectation. But, it also felt like letting go of my vision.

It’s hard because I know there’s a failure, bad case of both extremes.

Surrender to God/Equanimity can be taken as a resigned fatalism/passivism.
Empowering Unique Soul can be taken as narcissistic egoism.

I know there’s a third way yet right now it’s hard for me to see it?

Session 2 "instructions" (May 22): Bigger Discussions. Suggested action this week, if you’re on at the same time 3p central us:

1. We each spend the first 5-10 min creating a new post
2. For the rest of the time, we try to converge onto one or two discussion threads

• Figuring out how to converge, what works and what doesn’t, is part of what we’re testing, so we’re intentionally not prescribing a way to do this

Questions:

• Is it easy to find active threads?
• How is it participating in a large, branching discussion? How is it different from other platforms?
• Do you use your inbox? Does it work for you?

Optional Zoom

with Pete at least, for faces, questions, help, etc: