identity and self

What is the 'Metacrisis' and How Do We Solve It? (AMA). Rewatch the live AMA conversation with Layman Pascal 

I just noticed how the "no-self" doctrine supports the "materialist industrial epistemological complex". My friend Divia has coined this intense-but-great phrase "So “materialist epistemology industrial complex” is my own mental handle, and it might be silly but I like it for now.

I claim that there’s some memeset that launders legitimacy from “everything is made out of stuff in a refuctionistic way, seems like the laws of physics" 

And today I was noticing how the Buddhist doctrine of 'no-self' contributes to this whole way of thinking—

by denying that there's a self (claiming instead what we call a "self" are five aggregrates/skandas that interact in a way that seems selfy but doesn't actually constitute a real thing) this thinking can fall trap to leaving the so-called objective/external world pre-existent, out-there, reducing it to just physics.

—at least as its imported into the USA. And probably not how it is interpreted by deep Mahayana practitioners, for example, or people who have actually reached the nondual nirvana state advertised by the practice and that gave rise to the doctrine, who would experience this as a false duality and notice that whatever we normally think of a subject would need to be included/accounted for in/as the object.

Can someone actually have any Teal if they score 0% Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta? Going through the scores of the Better Political Conversations quiz is fascinating. (reference: https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/we0q1pq/run)

Now, this very well could have been someone running an experiment to test the scoring, or to try to get a sense of a friend or family member, but they did give a name where a lot of people leave that blank.

Their scores are:
Teal 55%
Green 45%
Orange 0%
Amber 0%
Red 0%
Magenta 0%

Is it at all possible that someone could select every single response at Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta as False, wrong, or just doesn’t make sense and have any actual Teal?

Also interesting, I got an email from someone who thinks of himself as primarily Orange, but was surprised that his quiz results came out 0% Orange. He referenced his Meyers-Briggs results as a reference in support. Utterly fascinated, I’ve asked him to let me know what correlation he sees between the Integral levels and Meyers-Briggs, and I’ve asked him what statements at Orange would have had his quiz results come out accurate for him.

Each time I make a significant edit in the content of the project I make a note of the change in the google sheet where I’m keeping track of scores. Here are the averages of the currently 75 scores:

Amber 26%
Green 25%
Teal 21%
Red 12%
Orange 11%
Magenta 5%

One blatant pattern I’m seeing is that high Green scores ALWAYS pair with a high score in Amber, and that people who have that pairing always score exceedingly low in Red and quite low in Orange.

What if everything was low stakes? I’ve been learning to rope flow for several weeks. It’s a challenge to learn new movements and coordinate my body but it’s fun. I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself to do it. What’s amazing is that I can spend time practicing, take a break from it for a few days, and then come back to it with more mastery than before the break.

The way I’ve approached learning rope flow has changed my experience of learning to dance the Argentine Tango. In the past, I would put a lot of pressure on myself to get it right. In my mind, the stakes were higher because I was dancing with others and I believed that getting it right would prevent being judged as a bad dancer. The problem was that no matter how hard I worked at it, it was never right enough and I wasn’t having any fun.

Then I realized that learning Tango can be like how I’m learning rope flow. Be easy on myself. No pressure to get it right. I’m just learning skills. Since this shift, I’ve been having more fun learning and dancing. And, I’m getting better faster.

So this got me thinking about how I’ve been approaching my coaching business. I’ve been putting a ton of pressure on myself to get it right because the stakes appear even higher. I need to earn money, pay bills, etc. But honestly, it has felt like a chore, I’m not having much fun, and it doesn’t feel like there’s much traction.

Does this actually have higher stakes? Perhaps I’ve merely assigned it as so.

I start to wonder what’s possible if I approach growing my coaching business with the same low-stakes attitude as I have with learning rope flow or Tango.