👁 Top Insights #122 - Working with Emotions, Wisdom & Creative Tension, & Invitation into Deeper Transformation
A process for working with emotions, why creative tension is key to wisdom, & an invitation into deeper transformation
“Top Insights” is a monthly newsletter that shares mind-expanding podcasts, transformational frameworks, and insightful links that help you go beyond conventional development.
Happy July and for those in the States happy Independence Day!
I hope you take this day to unwind and spend time with your loved ones.
Working with Emotions 😢😡😧
Two weekends ago I participated in a 3 day Working with Emotions retreat with Lama Lena - a profound and eccentric Vajrayana teacher.
Held online the retreat consisted of a daily 2-hour teaching/Q & A session and encouraged us to have at least 3-4 practice sessions daily while remaining in practical silence.
The instructions for the practice were as follows:
Choose an emotion to work with ((anger, fear, lust, jealousy, & sadness)
Think about a story that triggers the emotion
Allow emotional sensations to arise in the body
Drop the story and the categorization of the emotion
Notice where the sensations are without focusing on them
Remain in open awareness and allow the sensations to play out in whichever way they do
From my understanding the stronger the emotions we generate the greater the transformational potential of this practice.
And as the Tibetans say…..
“If you want a really big bon fire you need a really big pile of wood.”
I tried to gather wood by replaying many of the memories and scenarios that trigger me in daily life however they failed to elicit the emotional intensity I usually feel.
Any emotions that sparked up went out as soon I stopped pouring the fuel of story.
The strongest emotion I felt was fear when a bee landed on me but that too quickly subsided.
I appreciate this practice for further illuminating the role that stories play in amplifying our emotions however I imagine it being more fruitful to engage with it in daily life given the difficulty I experienced with generating strong emotions through imagination.
Aside from working with emotions, I spent the rest of my time doing Mahamudra insight practice, particularly seeing thoughts as inseperable from awareness.
In retrospect, I recognize how powerful it can be to drop everything and focus on practice even if it’s only for three days.
Post-retreat I’m enjoying a newfound spaciousness, less compulsion to use social media/ consume information, and an increased motivation to go deeper into my practice.
Wisdom & Creative Tension 🎨😅
According to wisdom researcher & cognitive scientist John Vervaeke a critical aspect of wisdom is the ability to hold Tonos - the Greek word for creative tension.
Veraveke speaks to this tension existing between transcendence and finitude and that instead of holding this tension people usually collapse into one pole or another.
Those who strictly pursue transcendence usually fall into spiritual bypassing while those who give up transcendence end up in some form of nihilism.
The creative tension between finitude and transcendence also exists in the Buddha’s teachings of the middle way.
To live in the middle way is to hold the creative tension between conventional truth (everything appears to be real) with mystical truth (nothing is inherently solid).
Vajrayana practitioner Bruce Tift speaks to this paradoxical view when he writes…
“Holding both opposites at the same time turns out to be a better approximation of the nondivided nature of our experiencing than trying to resolve which of these energies we should take sides with. if I hold my contradictory experiences as equally valid, my “sense of self” is left in some open space in the middle of these positions. This may be a useful understanding of the Buddhist idea of “middle way”—not “half of this and half of that,” but rather an open creative awareness that holds contradictory versions of reality, without a need to be identified with any of them. A Buddhist summary of this view is “not two, not one,” meaning that it’s not entirely accurate to say that everything is separate, but it’s also not entirely accurate to say that we’re all one.”
May we all discover the capacity to hold the creative tension between finitude and transcendence, between being human & being Buddhas.
Invitation into Deeper Transformation 📩
One of the biggest barriers people face on their developmental journeys is a lack of community.
It doesn't matter what you're trying to learn or what skill you want to develop doing so in a well-curated group is likely to improve and accelerate this process.
Extensive evidence shows that people are better at reasoning and thinking in groups.
Healing is also inherently relational.
Yet many of us try to do our inner work while staying isolated in personal bubbles.
Don’t get me wrong solitude and personal time are just as necessary as relationality but in today’s hyper-individualized world, they become overemphasized.
Further, our development becomes meaningless if it’s not in service of something greater than ourselves.
Transformational communities that serve as incubators for our development and amplifiers of our gifts are critical to helping us become people capable of addressing the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
Today there is a growing number of such communities that speak to this ethos.
I see each one of them as nodes in a larger network of wisdom communities all working together to help us live lives of truth, meaning, and wholeness.
In the coming months, I’m looking to expand Insighter beyond ideas that we consume individually into a space where we engage collectively in transformational practices.
If you’ve felt resonance with my writing or the conversations on my podcast and want to go deeper click the button below and fill out a short interest form for the Insighter community. ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
Elevating Consciousness Podcast 🎙
In case you missed it here is the podcast episode I released this past month.
How to Synthesize Wisdom like a Wizard with Kyle Kowalski - Kyle Kowalski is an ex-marketing executive turned solopreneuer. After experiencing an existential crisis he left the corporate world and founded Sloww – a digital knowledge base and community which shares insights into the art of living for students of life. He is an interdisciplinary dot collector and synthesizer who creates in-depth book summaries, e-books, and a wisdom-packed weekly newsletter. His work integrates slow living with meaning, purpose, money mastery, transformational learning, and human development. In this episode, we speak about how Kyle built his audience, monetized Sloww & overcame imposter syndrome, the impact of ego development theory, why the meta-crisis is a me crisis, the various challenges of post-conventional life, balancing knowledge consumption with direct experience and Kyle’s brand new Synthesizer course.
Insightful Links 🔗
The Psychological Drivers of the Meta-Crisis - An enlightening conversation between Daniel Schmachtenberger, John Vervaeke, and Iain McGhilchrist who are some of the most important thinkers in today’s world.
Mahamudra Meditations - Beautiful, concise, and precise meditations with a perfect balance of silence and guidance. I originally got this link from
who shared it in one of his posts. If you’re into Buddhism/meditation you’d enjoy his substack.A Second Renaissance Eco-System Map - A helpful resource mapping the growing network of individuals, organizations, communities, and initiatives that are developing ideas, practices, and infrastructures for radical transformation.
Quintessential Quote ✍️
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”
―Nisargadatta Maharaj
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