Some people I follow on Twitter talk about jhanas sometimes. (The epicenter of this seems to be this guy Nick. e.g. megathread. I find him very persuasive.) I want that! I want a magic button that I can press to feel great for an hour anytime. I want to be able to reach jhanas.

I think I am too “goal-oriented” about it; I spend a lot of time daydreaming about how great it will be when I can do jhanas, which AFAICT is inversely proportional to my ability to get there. I also spend a lot of time frustrated that I’m not there yet. C’est la vie.

A couple resources:

• Discovering bliss states by Tasshin Fogleman, which seems like a good place to start. Has good resources like:
• How to Jhana by Michael Taft - a pretty approachable 24-min talk
• Right Concentration by Leigh Brasington - a book that gets me very excited about jhanas; I only read up through jhanas 1 and 2 because I don’t want to do even more daydreaming.
• This post by Maija Haavisto, which argues for metta meditation as the route in. Sometimes I come across stuff like this and then spend a lot of brain cycles worrying about whether I should try a new technique or stick with my old one. So I haven’t tried it yet.

other things

I don’t know what the “Neuromeditation Institute” is, but their little quiz will tell you which of their meditation styles you might find easiest. I have no idea (speaking of “not trying new techniques”) but I hope it works; I would love for someone to say “you, Dan, should try this technique” mostly so I can stop worrying if I’m doing the right one.

on the weirdly coordinated language about the (probably nonexistent) “SF crime wave."

the Abilene paradox, or “that thing where nobody wants to do X but you end up doing X because everyone thinks everyone else wants to do X.”

I love this image where you cannot name any single thing in it. (the mcmansion hell post before it is pretty good too.) The internet says it’s a “simulation of having a stroke”, but finding zero evidence of that, I call shenaniGANs.

thread about “fractal insights” - insights you get on psychedelics that you can apply to other parts of your life, at higher/lower levels of abstraction. For example, seeing someone sitting very still, noticing that they are staying still even while things seem crazy to you, appreciating that they are sitting very still, and later gaining an appreciation for the virtue of being non-reactive even while other things seem crazy.