👁️ Top Insights #129 - dYINg Energy, Dialogue Between Healing & Awakening, and Discovering Relational Alignment
What winter asks of us, integrating spirituality and psychotherapy, trusting your instinct about people, a radical parenting approach, & telepathy studies.
“Top Insights” is a monthly newsletter that shares mind-expanding podcasts, transformational frameworks, and insightful links that help you go beyond conventional development.
Welcome to the February 2025 edition of Top Insights ❤️
May you find warmth and love in the coldest month of the year.
Embracing the dYINg Energy 💀 ❄️
Well, January was fun.
I spent most of the month sick including a week laid out with the flu.
It was the sickest I have been since I had co-vid several years back.
There is a difference between having a cold and being so sick that you can only get out from underneath your blanket to use the bathroom before crawling your way back to your deathbed.
Yes, there were two or three days where I felt so bad that death might have been preferable but even as I got better I have been experiencing lingering symptoms and a lack of motivation/low-grade depression.
Winter is a time of rest & renewal but it’s also the season of grief.
Particularly in January & February, there is this vacuum in the air that can suck all the life out of one’s body.
The dYINg energy is not easy to be with but it’s a natural part of life.
It’s a reminder that all our creating is done on borrowed time and that any moment may be the one in which we are asked to surrender.
How does such a realization change what I’m creating right now?
It alleviates all the pressure.
Because if this isn’t good enough then nothing is.
There can be fear in insignificance but there is also freedom.
To realize that one’s life is merely a wave in an ocean of infinity.
That in the grand scheme of things you can’t truly succeed but nor can you truly fail.
You are unfolding as you are in each moment imperfectly perfect.
Each breath and heartbeat never to be repeated.
A cascading waterfall in the cosmos.
The Dialogue Between Healing & Awakening ❤️ 👁️
One of my favorite books I read last year was “Already Free” by Bruce Tift. I also had the privilege to interview Bruce which you can check out here.
In “Already Free,” Bruce attempts to explain how the path of awakening (the Frutional View) intersects with the path of healing (the Developmental View).
Here are some essential notes from this wonderful work:
“The Developmental view is central to the Western psychotherapeutic approach. It’s based on the idea that the experiences we have as children, mostly in our families of origin, have a profound impact on the rest of our lives.”
“The developmental view looks at how, as children, we all create strategies to survive and function well in our families of origin.”
“These survival strategies necessitate a type of aggression toward—a disowning of—the parts of ourselves that are not welcomed by our world.”
“This self-aggression allows us to function and to get the greatest amount of support, love, and approval possible.
“The fruitional approach takes the view that this split does not actually exist.”
“It says that any experience of being divided against ourselves—or divided against life—is created and maintained through a lot of effort, moment by moment.”
“The developmental view is especially useful in articulating and working with patterns that exist over time, in recognizing how powerfully our conditioned history shapes the ways in which we relate to our immediate experience.”
“The fruitional view is very helpful in training ourselves to participate consciously in each immediate moment, which is the only moment in which we will ever find ourselves, and to discover if what used to be true is what’s true now.”
“Psychotherapy is mostly focused on the quality of our constructed experience, especially in the realms of emotion and meaning—how can we bring our out-of-date versions of reality into more current and accurate versions of reality? Buddhism investigates the ways in which we construct any version of reality, moment by moment. The focus is more on the process of constructing than on what is constructed.”
“Both views have a common intention to relieve unnecessary suffering, and both agree that the experience of split or division is at the heart of that suffering.”
“The developmental approach could be understood as a gradual approach, while the fruitional approach could be seen as a sudden approach. Within Buddhism, these two approaches actually represent two different traditions. Some schools advocate for a gradual approach to enlightenment, and others focus on a more sudden experience of enlightenment.”
“We could also use the language of being and becoming to describe these views. The developmental approach is about becoming: we’re always looking for ways to improve our experience. How can we live to our full potential? The fruitional approach is about being—accepting and relaxing into being at peace with the immediate moment.
“The apparent contradiction between these two energies points us toward a larger question: How can we hold contradictory energies simultaneously, with no fantasy of resolution?
“We want more freedom, but we also want security. But perhaps this is not a problem to be resolved. “
“Dualistic experience is not the problem; taking this experience seriously and trying to resolve it is. The unconditional acceptance of our human experience as we find it to be is at the heart of the fruitional approach.”
“The intention of each of these views is the same: to dissolve the experience of there being any split or division.”
“In developmental work, we’re dissolving the apparent split between the conscious self and the unconscious or repressed self, while in the fruitional view, we’re dissolving the apparent split between personal self—including all relative experience, both conscious and unconscious—and the larger context of nonpersonal awareness.”
“While Western therapy can result in an endless project of improving our experience, there are those clients—especially spiritual practitioners—who try to do only fruitional work. In that case, the problem can become something we call “spiritual bypassing.”
“Developmental work supports our fruitional path: reducing drama, taking better care of ourselves, and acting as an adult help us relax our chronically contracted attention and feel more able to investigate our immediate experiencing. Fruitional practices support our developmental work: dissolving our sense of being a divided, problematic self helps us feel less identified with and invested in our familiar survival strategies and more able to tolerate the anxiety that’s inseparable from challenging them.”
Discovering Relational Alignment ☯️
I’m fascinated by relationships, relating, and the dynamics that attract us to certain people.
Through engaging in relational practices I’ve discovered that there is a depth, complexity, and mystery to every person that is beyond anything we can know about them.
I’ve also come to accept that as finite humans we need to use heuristics and snap judgments.
We simply don’t have enough time to unearth the depth of every single person we encounter.
That’s why I increasingly trust my gut instinct with people.
If I feel drawn to someone I follow my curiosity and pursue further connection.
And if I don’t I wish them all the best and keep walking my path.
In the past, I’ve felt a conflict between holding the Bodhisattva vow (the commitment to help liberate all beings) and making distinctions with who I want to spend my timeEnergy with.
I’m learning that I can keep my heart open to all while still following the aliveness that is calling me forth.
I believe we can learn from everyone and sometimes what we learn is that a particular vibe or energy is not one that we need to get entangled with.
We can’t help everyone and everyone can’t help us.
But when we connect with the “right” people there is a high likelihood that the relationship will catalyze mutual transformation.
Insightful Links 🔗
The Telepathy Tapes - I’ve been hearing about this podcast for months and after learning that it surpassed the Joe Rogan Experience as the #1 listened-to show I decided to give it a go. The Telepathy Tapes explores potential telepathic ability in non-speaking autistic children. I tend to be very skeptical of supernatural claims but I have to admit the evidence in this show is beyond compelling. I’ve yet to listen to all of the episodes, watch the videos of the experiments as well as read some of the popular critiques but thus far I can say this is worth a listen especially for the highly skeptical and critical-minded.
How to Raise a Sovereign Child - This Tim Ferris podcast is a deep-dive dialogue exploring the radical parenting approach known as Taking Children Seriously. Tim debates Naval Ravikant and Aaron Stupple, both of who are currently implementing to varying degrees the TCS method with their children. In the previous edition of this newsletter, I shared that I was inspired by the TCS parenting approach and after this podcast, I feel even more inclined to start implementing this with my kids.
Circling Documentary - What’s it like to be you right now? Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4 - A beautiful documentary on the relational practice of Circling including my friends John, Sean, and Els who I’ve undergone the Circling facilitator training with. It’s a mystery to me why this documentary is unlisted.
Resonant Read 📕
After watching the How to Raise a Sovereign Child Tim Ferris podcast I decided to dive further into Aaron Stupple’s book which explores the Taking Children Seriously philosophy. It’s some radical stuff but it resonates with me far more than any other parenting book I have read. This approach is not for everyone but it might be for you. You can access it for free here.
Quintessential Quote ✍️
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this read click the “Subscribe now” button below to subscribe. If you're already a subscriber click the “Share Insighter” button to share with a friend or the “Leave a comment” button to share some thoughts.