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)

The concept of this app sounds promising. Do you think the internet can be a place for deep and meaningful conversations in this day and age?

What's in a question...". Here's a scenario...
I say something. It could be anything but for the sake of argument, "I hope Trump runs for a third term."

People in hearing range are heard to ask (examples):
   - What do you mean by that?
   - Umm, have you read the Constitution?
   - Why?
   - How do you think that benefits the country?

My interest... Which, if any, of those questions might be considered an invitation to dialogue? Which might elicit a defensive or angry response? If we accept a premise that Our country is being damaged by polarization and hostility, how do we engage with one another to explore the why's behind opinions held? What is your base response when someone asks you a question?

I have observed what I think is shift in definition (or perception) regarding the purpose of a question. To some extent, I think the use and nature of questions has been placed in a negative light. And, that is hazardous to Our ability to gather and analyze information as well as Our opportunities communicate about important societal issues.

At a base level, how much does tone of voice matter? Does who asked -how they look- matter? Does the choice of words affect your response? The time or place? How much of your response is determined primarily by how you interpret the question versus how the questioner might have intended it?

Additional circumstances where I wonder about questions and what they mean or do...
   - How often does a politician who represents you ask your opinion before voting on a matter?
   - Are public polls and surveys able to collect opinion fairly? (I.E., Shouldn't there generally be a "None of the above" option for almost everything you've ever been asked? Or, data about who is taking the poll and for what purpose? I am tired of being forced to answer in a way that defines my 'social box' incorrectly.)
   - Particularly with regard to evaluation of programs, we are asked to place ourselves in various classifications. Income, race, faith, address, age - you know what I mean. These "metrics" are quantitative and objective but... Who decides on the ranges?; Who decides on definitions? When we are measuring whether the quality of someones life has improved, do we need more 'humetrics'?

Have I perhaps managed to kindle curiosity in a dark corner ? :-) It seems to me that this is worth thinking and talking about. It may be part of healing and finding our individual agency to affect the world. It might also be a part of solving problems in a way that promotes positive-sum outcomes. 

Metamodern Love . I am at the airport passing into the US to hold the Fall Metamodern Spirituality Lab (on Love) at Sky Meadow in Vermont. My hunch is that a lot of what a platform like this one should do is exchange what we're doing, where we are, who we're with, etc. and not just our ideas and responses to things. So here's a nod in that direction. 

Neurodivergent Genius. When we talk about genius, most people picture lone prodigies, dazzling intellects who stand apart. But what if genius isn’t about individual brilliance at all? What if it’s something that emerges from difference—especially the kinds of difference our society often misunderstands or sidelines?

In Neurodivergent Genius, I suggest that autism, ADHD, aphantasia, and other divergent ways of thinking are not deficits but hidden engines of human evolution. These minds notice what others miss, question what others assume, and imagine what others cannot see. They destabilize old patterns and open new pathways, not by fitting in but by disrupting.

This raises an uncomfortable but exciting possibility: perhaps our future depends less on conformity and more on cultivating spaces where difference is allowed to flourish. Instead of asking how neurodivergent people can adapt to “normal,” maybe the real question is how our cultures can adapt to the gifts of divergence.

So here’s what I’d love to ask you: when you look at your own circles—family, workplace, community—what would change if we treated neurodivergence as an evolutionary advantage rather than a problem to be fixed?

(To make this a little less political, let me add this: While Intersectionality and DEI frameworks focus primarily on how overlapping social identities (race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) generate structural inequalities and call for inclusive power shifts, the concept of “Neurodivergent Genius” aims at something more: not merely inclusion, but rethinking the very terms of value, competence, and evolution.)

Dating is over. 

discuss...

What men wish women understood about men. This has been trigger a lot LOLs and ROFLs in my group chats. It's obviously over-the-top dramatic with the music and tone and hyperbolic "10,000x" language but it did make me think how much "burden" is kept when you don't talk about things. I think that's the basic premise, woman share their burdens and men keep them to themselves. It certainly tracks for me. 

Micro-transformation: unitive practice from Russian Orthodoxy ☦︎. Fun fact: Ceaselessly, inwardly repeating the Jesus prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” from your heart has consistently led to stabilized unitive state-stages (Theosis) for more than a millennium. 

This practice is called the Hesychasm. It’s been officially recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church since the fourth century. I’ve been playing with it as much as possible for the past few weeks, and I am loving it. It is very powerful. 

Then! In the early 1900s, hesychast monks on Mt. Athos took it a step further. Their results were so radical that in 1913, the Russian government sent troops to stop them! 

What was the shift? Their actions were the same—they aimed to engage the Jesus Prayer every moment of every day. But my (very limited) understanding is that their attitude reframed prayer from a practice that petitions for union with God one day that isn’t now — to an expression of divine essence (nonduality) right now. Prayer is not a behavior you do; prayer is God happening. Faithfully seeking IS participation as found-ness.

What’s so beautiful is that seeing it this way resolves the seeming duality between “no where to get, no one to get enlightened” and “but I’m not yet aware that I’m enlightened.” That thought itself expresses the divine. As does practicing.* We can see this parallel in every mystical tradition I’ve studied.

Variations on Imiaslavie 

Here’s a way I’ve been playing with this practice.

I shift the “me” that I’m asking mercy for (from my heart), when I say “have mercy on me” to be wildly more inclusive than my particular body-mind-character-Jordanness. Eg:

• “me” including whoever I’m judging or mad at
• “me” including whoever I’m speaking with or looking at
• “me” including all of humanity, or a people, or a country, or a world leader (especially one I judge)
• “me” including all plants, animals, and living creatures—a bug in my house for example

I think the “including” part is really important. I’m not praying for these beings as separate from me, but rather as extensions of me, or expansions of who I identify with. If this doesn’t make sense, a place you might want to start is with your family, especially if you’re a parent of young children.

I want to honor the lineage and centuries of practice by noting that I may be totally butchering the practice and theology. Although I believe it reflects the view of Gregory Palamas, a 13th century saint famous for defending hesychast spirituality, I haven’t run this by any practitioners or been advised by anyone else doing this practice. Nevertheless I share it because I believe it’ll be asymmetrically positive, and, especially with this caveat, I believe in the value of our civilization experimenting and adapting practices from a variety of ancient and time-prove lineages that are good for all.

(h/t Sean Esbjörn-Hargens for turning me onto this practice),  #TTT 

Have you heard the controversy surrounding Sabrina Carpenter's new album? For a taste, check out this article on the album art or this twitter thread.

What do you think of Carpenter's work, the public's reaction? Does it even matter?

Culture shocks while visiting Kathmandu, Nepal. I'm here for Harris' friend's wedding, and the country is way poorer than I realized. GDP per capita is just under $1400 (in 2023), 2022's HDI is ~.6 (medium human development), both of which are apparently among the lowest in South Asia.

• The roads are crazy! There are very few stop lights or stop signs at intersections. There are some large traffic circles with police directing traffic. Mostly it looks like it's just a free-for-all (with some order I can't decipher), with cars, motorcycles, bikes, trucks, buses, and pedestrians sharing the road. A yoga teacher at our hotel told Harris that they're pro-Trump and glad that the US is stopping aid to Nepal, because the money goes to oversea bank accounts/corruption rather than actually improving things in the country. The sentiment  was somewhat echoed by a nice taxi driver we had (on Pathao, the Uber equivalent), who apologized to us for the state of things in the country. 
• I've seen several people on the streets (porters?) transporting heavy loads (like large appliances) using straps tied around their foreheads.
• Preservation of history - we visited the Patan Durbar Square yesterday, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. It was remarkably accessible to visitors (few things were even cordoned off), probably a similar situation to what the Forbidden City was like before they started closing sections off for repair/preservation. The most surprising thing to me was how little historical information they have about the site and its function, given that it was built in the 17th century.
• Momos here are way better than the ones I've had in the US

Trump, Stargate, and Vaccines for Cancer. I'm cringing reading articles and seeing videos showing Trump, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison speaking about using A.I. to develop vaccines for cancer.

I have something I call "The Farmer's Market rule." I spoke about this on the Vendy podcast with Jordan. It is a metaphor for working with coaches, facilitators, and wellbeing practitioners.

When I go to the farmers market, I don't just look at the food people are selling.. I also look at the people selling the food.

I ask myself, "Do I want to look like this person who is selling me this food?"

I do the same for facilitators, trainers, and Wellbeing practitioners: "Does this person live in a way I want to embody more fully in my life?"

I would not go to Altman, Trump, or Ellison for Wellbeing guidance + wisdom. Maybe for advice and wisdom in other domains and themes.

We really need leaders who are embodying Wellbeing to lead our planetary and national wellbeing initiatives. I cringe when I see people who I judge as disembodied pioneering these explorations. It feels like a recipe for disaster with the possibility to cause a lot of harm to a lot of people.

Trump, Stargate, and Vaccines for Cancer. I'm cringing reading articles and seeing videos showing Trump, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison speaking about using A.I. to develop vaccines for cancer.

I have something I call "The Farmer's Market rule." I spoke about this on the Vendy podcast with Jordan. It is a metaphor for working with coaches, facilitators, and wellbeing practitioners.

When I go to the farmers market, I don't just look at the food people are selling.. I also look at the people selling the food.

I ask myself, "Do I want to look like this person who is selling me this food?"

I do the same for facilitators, trainers, and Wellbeing practitioners: "Does this person live in a way I want to embody more fully in my life?"

I would not go to Altman, Trump, or Ellison for Wellbeing guidance + wisdom. Maybe for advice and wisdom in other domains and themes.

We really need leaders who are embodying Wellbeing to lead our planetary and national wellbeing initiatives. I cringe when I see people who I judge as disembodied pioneering these explorations. It feels like a recipe for disaster with the possibility to cause a lot of harm to a lot of people.

Experiment: How is whatever's happening serving the greater good? If we zoom out long enough, we can often see that massive setbacks created foundations for evolution. Eg:

• The great oxygenation wiped out almost all life on Earth, but also created the atmosphere.
• The extinction of the dinos paved the way for bigger mammals—and eventually humans.
• Industrialization put tons of people out of work and polluted like crazy, but coincided with some of the greatest quality of life increases in recorded history
• In Trump and a Post Truth World, Ken Wilber suggests that Trump’s 2016 win was one manifestation of evolution taking a step backward to correct the way the “Green meme” went unhealthy—because the one thing that Trump was coherent about back then was being anti-pluralistic.

What’s a thing in the world that you don’t like right now, and think is a huge step backward, that might also be a step forward? How so?

By design, this is an unverifiable experiment from a third person perspective. Since we can keep zooming out + everything is interconnected, we’ll probably never know for sure, even if we live for thousands of years. 

But by design, this is verifiable from a first person perspective: Does your experience improve or change in any way by the experiment? How so?

(note that this doesn't ask you to deny any suffering—such as the horror of the oxygenation event's great extinction, or stop trying to make things better. Like everything, this perspective can be misused. "Everything happens for a reason" is usually dismissive, "if there were a reason for this in the long run, what might it be?" is additive. Like allowing versus expressing, it's not about bypassing the difficulty but rather creating a larger container for it. Freedom comes through acceptance rather than resistance.)

#TTT 

Led a Huachuma Circle yesterday for my birthday. Yesterday I had a 9-hour birthday party together with my friend K who is a plant medicine facilitator. This is our second foray into altered-states facilitation, and once again we proved correct the thesis that group trips and Relatefulness are a great combo.

It’s hard to pin down what exactly the Huachuma was doing, but it led to a circle that was beautifully stably multi-threaded. There were 4 or 5 threads, and people were very confident staying in theirs, paying attention to the thing they were with, and the people they were with. At times there were multiple people crying, each in their own thing, each with other people attuning to them. The threads would recur as wanted, without anyone needing to direct the flow, channel to streams to be more rational, or more held.

At one point K said We can have multiple threads at the same time, and I told him, I think you said that for yourself. They all already got it.

Oppress me. Is it possible? Can you oppress me right now?

Context:
The guy I’m dating (Ken) had said he was frustrated with the Austin School District teachers that he’s teaching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to because they were all giving wrong answers to the question, Who is the oppressor in your classroom? According to Ken, and apparently according to the book the teachers had been assigned to read, the oppressor in a classroom is the teacher.

Last night I was telling my friend Arun about it and he said Oppress me! Right now!

All of this post is rooted in my discomfort with the premise that all teachers are oppressors in their classrooms. I can see the roots of truth of it, but making that its own conclusion point looks wildly flawed to me.

Current Session "instructions" (Feb 26): Converse, and see if nudges happen. nudges 

We launched a system where the AI bots can automatically detect intervention points. We need you to make a bunch of comments and new posts to see if they'll engage. So this week we're asking you to engage a bunch, if you can!

It's a little rudimentary at the moment so sometimes you'll get multiple bots responding on multiple posts. We'd love your feedback on which ones you like, don't, when it seemed to miss the spot, anything else you notice. 

Thanks and love yall

J (and the UpTrust team)
p.s. this week I'm at an investor meeting so dara will be with you

# [Optional Zoom](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86795216050?pwd=TllxSzYrTFFXTW5LRmg3WUQrT04vdz09) with Jordan and Dara at least, for faces, questions, help, etc: