Ant or Elephant

You can build towards a point where you have the capacity to relax deeply. When you have gotten over the struggles between the ins and outs, and you have a deep sense that you, and what matters to you, can handle whatever life throws your way. That is about developing a philosophy that works for you. 

If you look at the “Om” symbol used in Yoga, there are three connected semi-circles separated from a dot by a fourth semi-circle. The dot is our individualized version of ourselves, separated by an illusion/ interpretation/ experience of everything else. Our real self is the whole, but we can get cornered, battered, constrained, and held back by the way we box, package, describe, and present ourselves. 

Our reality becomes a controlled hallucination where we interpret the information we receive through various sources. We process that information, and “make sense” of it. Sometimes our hallucination is shared with others, and sometimes it is ours alone. 

Like an ant, or an elephant, the scale at which we see is different and relative. When you grow up, chairs are huge. You may just peer over the table. When you return to visit your pre-school, it will be much tinier than in your memory. 

You need a process/practice to unpack the shadows and echoes of the pulsing hallucination when you realise your philosophy is an evolving tool to operate in the world. A philosophy with a pinch of salt, so that as you learn, you can see the world differently. Our perception becomes conversational.

Reframing

Reframing my internal conversation by “thinking in paths” opened things up for me, and allowed me to participate in the chanting in yoga. In yoga, the chants aren’t about the literal meaning of the words/sounds. The sounds themselves are intended to connect you to the world. 

In a non-yogic sense, this made sense to me. One of my favourite TED talks is by Jill Bolte Taylor, where she (as a brain scientist) describes her first hand experience of a stroke. She describes the bit of the brain that allows you to realise that you are separate from everything else. She describes how her stroke stilled that part, and how she had a magical moment where she felt deeply connected to everything and everyone. Which is basically what yoga is about. Our interpretation of reality is both the way we connect to people, and what separates us from people. 

I had fond memories of all the songs and singing at church even though I didn’t believe the words. I like the sound of the Sanskrit chants and I was able to use the music rather than thinking about it. That allowed me to go deeper into my yoga rather than feeling like a spectator because of a niggle. I was working long hours. I would get home from work just before the yoga class started at 8pm. After the 90 minute class, I would finish the day with some yogi soup.

Frame Makers

Holding the Knife

The market decides the price of pie. The one holding the knife decides the size of the slices. Price is not value. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Value is deeply personal. To become a good business, something has to depersonalise and scale. To create a market, you need something strangers recognise and trust. Something that lots of people value, but that not lots of people provide. You need a product. You need the required capital. Then you need a container. A pie dish. The market will help find the price based on how many people want pie, and how many people sell pie. Based on what the alternative choices are to pie. Once sold, how the profit gets split depends on who holds the knife. There is no internal market. Only the ability for people to stay or go. The person with the knife has to (1) pay people enough to stay if they want them to, and (2) create an illusion of the pie pieces relating to their contribution. The person with a knife has to pretend in a way markets don’t have to. Markets simply reflect supply and demand.

All for Show