In this work, how far you get depends on how much you can bear. What you learn to bear is the reality of your own life, and the bearing happens in the body. B's last trip to the Swamp was unpleasant, and he was steadier in it than before. Book a mentoring session: https://negativephilosophy.com/booking.html
#spinoza — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #spinoza, aggregated by home.social.
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Everyone who stays in the work goes back to the Swamp again and again, because the body carries a causal history. B's last visit was this past week. It was old material, and it was less sticky than it used to be. Book a mentoring session: https://negativephilosophy.com/booking.html
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Under B's pretense was a fear of inadequacy and unworthiness, and under that a fear of not knowing anything at all. What he brought into the work was exactly what was holding him back. He thought he knew a great deal, and he did not. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/Npkwg
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B wanted the practice to box his life in so he could figure it all out. That wish gives a false sense of control in a world that is overwhelmingly uncertain. When he projected a power of mind he did not have, he was telling on himself. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/O7hr7
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B had been a pretender to knowledge, and when he finally saw it, he and his mentor laughed about it. Seeing a pattern clearly is what lets you live without it, because the old responses stop showing up the way they did. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/wLSDv
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The first pattern B caught in himself was what he calls the wiseacre revelation. He used his mind as a sword and a shield, bored everyone around him and could not see it. It took him about a year to see it as a pattern. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/kljOH
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When B began sensing, he found that his thoughts had a physical address. Uncertainty went into his neck and stomach, keeping up a social front went into exhaustion, and inadequacy turned into anger at himself. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/7052O
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No thing can be good or evil
unless it has something in common with us.Spinoza ~ Ethics
Photo Kasia Derwinska
The Tree of Knowledge -
Finalmente un film su Spinoza! @Adrianogallina
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrwiJXpVbzQ&pp=0gcJCYsCo7VqN5tD
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What B left out of his journal was the powerlessness and hopelessness under everything else. He was putting on a competent face for his mentor, and his mentor saw through it. Writing to show how far along you are turns the journal into a report for a judge. Book a mentoring session: https://negativephilosophy.com/booking.html
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B's first journal entries were long and detailed, mostly a history of his past written to bring his mentor up to speed. When he reread them, he saw that his mind had taken over the page and his body barely appeared in it. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/vCloD
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You cannot bring hope into this work without bringing fear in with it. Spinoza treats them as one doubt about one future. B came in carrying both, which is how most people come in. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/2gla2
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B hoped philosophy would let him work the whole thing out, or armor him against the world. He suspected even then that it would not, and he can see the folly in it now. The Swamp does not hand you a finished account of your life. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/Wb8Hh
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Friendships, relationships and every high-striving ambition had gone sour for B. He had no enthusiasm left and was running on the momentum of the life he had already built. Most people enter the Swamp in some version of that state. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/kYF47
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B came to the practice in his early thirties, after injury, illness, burnout and the deaths of people close to him. He had run out of the question of what comes next. Many people arrive that way, and it is where the work starts. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/7mvCE
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The first instruction in the Swamp is to let the mud cling to your boots. You sense the body, keep a journal and let the emotions and the overthinking exist without forcing an order on them or explaining your life away. Book a mentoring session: https://negativephilosophy.com/booking.html
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The Swamp is the first stage of the practice. Anastasios talks to B, one of our mentors, about the soft ground, the mist and the standing water that most people walk into limping. It is ordinary life, seen as it is for the first time. Book a mentoring session: https://zurl.co/9Vygn