I will someday… I just want to pick your brain on everything from religion and education to polyphasic sleep!

I often read blog posts where the author claims that people tell him he’s too young and inexperienced to accomplish something, but I never believed that someone would actually be ignorant enough to say that out loud to a person. 

The comments on this post have proved me wrong. 

“I have read this blog post, although i’m not sure why it popped up on my Facebook as i thought i had hidden all your posts” – Katieh_v

^What a dick! Why would you even mention that?!

“You don’t know these things… you got this one wrong” – Josh

^This was what I was talking about when I said I couldn’t believe anyone could be this ignorant! I’m kind of surprised you even bothered to reply to his comment, but I do agree with the last part of your response, that you probably didn’t as well of a job “scoping” the post as you could have. Then again, depression is a tough thing to just scope out. 

So two questions, one more important than the other:

Have you ever read Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence”? and

I’m new to your blog, but I’m very impressed with what I’ve read so far. Do you have any posts on your atheism and if it was a primary catalyst in your seemingly voracious consumption of knowledge you’ve undertaken? If so, I’ll find it soon enough. If not – it’s an idea!

Thanks, and keep it up. 

Thanks for sharing these talks. They both were great. Though I think both were only mildly associated with the specific ground I was exploring in this post, mainly because I’m no longer married to spiritually-averse atheistic rationalism, although I was at some points in the last 2-3 years, and because I don’t believe happiness is the goal. 

I really like the Experiencing Self Vs. Remembering Self dichotomy, and it’s further evidence that we need to stop seeing ourselves as one “I’ but rather a mind that is collection of many different parts often in conflict. 

I was reading the abstract of a neuroscience paper recently that used similar language. From the abstract: “”To characterise these two aspects of awareness, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine monitoring of enduring traits (’narrative’ focus, NF) or momentary experience (’experiential’ focus, EF)”

Here’s the paper - Attending to the present: mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566754/)

In Sam Harris’ talk his cadence strangely resembled Peter Thiel’s very closely, as well as Reid Hoffman’s. I wonder if there’s some pattern around a worldview inducing a particular way of speaking. 

And with respect to his points about finding bliss retreating to the cave in solitude, I think David Deida is wise to point out that this type of endeavor is strictly a masculine expression. A feminine exploration beyond a life of “reiterating our pleasures” would be pursued more communally and in energetic fullness, rather than expansive emptiness. 

The first is a talk by Sam Harris on happiness and spiritual experience (http://youtu.be/SpaVLLObU80). This talk was excerpted from a conference of atheists in ’07. So it’s a bit of a beginner talk, but nevertheless: he starts from the perennial question of whether happiness can *precede* and therefore be *independent of* any temporal or material change (sense pleasure, creative success, etc). It’s a wonderful talk by someone who has depth in both the creative and the still.

The second is a TED talk by Daniel Kahneman (http://bit.ly/tckdrh). In it he draws the distinction between two essential selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. One could use this distinction as a reference point from which to interpret the progression Wilber describes (or Kegan in CDT – http://bit.ly/vVtTpi). I hope this talk sparks something for you, as it has for me.