Flow 🧘⛩️👁️

Nothing of this is "real" & your mind's on autopilot.

Psychologist. Writer. Psychodynamic therapist in training. Musician. Meditation. Tai Chi. #Psychodhamma.

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

I must grudgingly admit, I "like" this:
😂

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@TheHeadless235 I'll just curiously watch out. 🙏

[𝓁𝓊𝓂𝓅 🫴🏼🫀 @lumpwazhere]

i am once again asking for help:

how do i even begin helping my mom clear the hoard at her current apartment and move into her new place?

obstacles include:
- my mom is the main reason i have cptsd. she activates it every time i deal with her. pic attached is a live depiction of what dealing with her feels like
- the hoard is a level 3 hoard (the worst kind)
- i am potentially a source of trauma for my mom (these days, instead of her getting angry with me for no reason, it’s me getting angry at her and my heart and soul can’t handle being this way all the time)
- i don’t have a car, nor a license* (can’t just rent a moving truck)
- it’s just me and her & we’re both physically limited. she can’t really stand. i can hardly walk down the street without pain, let alone bending down/lifting boxes
- i don’t have enough money to just throw at the situation (hence a GoFndMe)
- i could invite my friends to help but i fear ruining the friendships (dealing with my mom causes me to blow up; she is the only person capable of making me react like this, and i don’t want my friends to see me like that)
- i have to commute to her on the commuter rail to get to and from her apartment, which takes a lot out of me
- i have nearly full time work hours/a training i can’t miss
- i have a serious mental illness (psychotic disorder) that can get triggered by her
- the new apartment is a 40 min drive one way from current apartment

what i do have:
- some funds from the GoFndMe (don’t know how to spend it yet, like where to start - hire a professional organizer? a cleanup service later? - which won’t sort but only toss stuff? then hire movers? i don’t think i have enough for all three)
- a week off in the end of november (still have to do a virtual training in the evening though)
- a couple of friends who may be willing to help, but i haven’t asked them directly yet
- my mom does have a car and can drive it
- we have until the end of the year to clear it out
- the hoard is on a first floor apartment, a 1 bedroom apartment
- pure grit, gumption, resilience, determination, even if i have breakdowns and say “i can’t do this anymore” - i usually recover within a day or so and keep going

i really am in over my head and don’t know where to start… advice/suggestions/ideas please 🙏🏽

*don’t judge me. i moved to a walking city when i had a driver’s permit. it expired. i never needed a car. i also have a disability that could potentially make me a dangerous driver. i’d still like to get my license eventually.

[Edward A. Perin - Psychologist @DoctorPerin]

Asked one of our most senior analysts how he works with transference and he just sent me this:

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@shannon_again Safe journey! 🙏🪷

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@lumpwazhere May you feel proud.
May you and your family be safe. 🙏

[jordan @jordanticus]

PSA:

Generally speaking, acronym therapies are commodified products.

CBT, ACT, DBT, ERP, etc.

They are dumbed-down, shortened, enshittified and simplified versions of therapy designed to be sold for profit. The acronym itself is a result of this process.

Acronym therapies are born in academia because they're measurable. When it comes to the human mind, the more measurable something is the less its actually capturing something meaningful and truthful.

Then health insurers, large companies, etc. adopt these acronym therapies because they're easily marketable for the same reasons they're easily measurable.

Most people who've benefitted from acronym therapies are unaware they've simply received the best help from a line-up of inferior services with no high-quality service to compare it to.

TLDR, 'evidence-based' is functionally equivalent to a coffee shop that advertises 'the world's best cup of coffee'.

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@TheHeadless235 I'll take it into account! 🫡

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@appleMechanic Happy Birthday, TT. 🎂🙏

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

True. 😬😅

[fabian @fabianstelzer]

German government folks celebrating their immunity to the cyber apocalypse as they’re still running on Fax

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

Reincarnated. Again. 🫣🙏

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

Hell yeah! 🤗

[bobby devito @bobbydevito]

You’ve just died, the 6th picture in your phone gallery is what killed you.

Seems legit 😆

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@appleMechanic I at least know this kind of feeling, too, from group therapy sessions. 😅

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@TheHeadless235 JB, I'll take a reading. 📚🙏

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

New Game ➕

[zen @zencephalon]

When starting a New Game of Life, U can choose curses.

Curses cripple your early game build, but U also get extra character points, so U might get to maxx a favored stat harder.

Each curse also gives U a quest. Completing the quest removes the malady and unlocks new abilities

[Vacha @TVachaW]

Stephen, I respect and admire a lot of your work and you clearly have a special talent for meditative pedagogy. So I offer these comments in the spirit of truth-seeking rather than as some kind of dunk.

But you must know that you are relying on a dishonest sleight of hand when you push this line that the type of jhanas you teach at Jhourney are ones that were normally thought to take years previously.

From what I understand, Jhourney teaches non-nimitta based jhanas.

Since at least 40 years ago when Ayya Khema started raising more widespread public awareness of non-nimitta based jhanas (which were widely practiced traditionally long before then), it’s always been taught that they are very much achievable within a matter of days.

By contrast, it is the nimitta-based jhanas that are taught to take months or more to master. This, as I’m sure you know, is a different type of meditation with different fruits.

Literally every teacher for decades that has ever taught non-nimitta based jhanas has spoken to them being largely accessible within a matter of days.

Ayya Khema’s own students report that on her one week retreats had a ~50% success rate of experiencing Jhana. 95% for the month long retreats.

TWIM, who’ve been teaching since the 90s, report that 80% of their students hit 4th jhana on their 10 day retreats, and say the 1st jhana usually takes significantly less time.

Thanissaro Bikkhu - who has also been teaching non-nimitta based jhanas since the 90s - discourages people from placing too much emphasis on time-based goals, but he has run 7 day retreats that he says are aimed at hitting jhana and every indication is that he sees it as very feasible in these sorts of time frames.

Leigh Brasington tends to suggest 10 days is more optimal, but we’re still talking a short amount of days, not *years*.

If we were to seek a gray area exception, it would be Rob Burbea who preferred to have a month (not years!) to teach non-nimitta based jhanas, but this was more down to his philosophy that deliberately marinating in pre-jhana piti and then taking a long time to really acclimatise to each jhana was highly beneficial, rather than some limit on the efficacy of his technique.

Honestly, in the 20+ years since I first heard about the jhanas, I’ve never met or otherwise heard of a single person that teaches non-nimitta jhanas who says they take anything more than a matter of days, or at most weeks, to attain (with the latter always a question of preference and value rather than pedagogical potency).

As I’m sure you well know, it’s the nimitta-based jhanas that are said to more often take months or years to master.

This is because nimitta-based jhanas are an entirely different meditation technique.

The general consensus from people who have mastered both nimitta-based jhanas and non-nimitta-based jhanas is that the latter are a different phenomena - usually experienced as a much deeper absorption - hence the different time frame.

That’s not to say nimitta-based jhanas are inherently “better” than non-nimitta based jhanas for any given goal someone might have.

It’s just to say they are different techniques with different fruits and hence have different timeframes.

So when you say something like:

“Jhana has a reputation as something that takes years [but] 58.5% of our students reached it within a week.”

What you’re really saying is:

“[Nimitta-Based] Jhana has a reputation as something that takes years [but] 58.5% of our students reach [Non-Nimitta-Based jhanas] within a week [which is roughly consistent with how long it’s always taken non-nimitta jhanas to be reached when taught by other teachers and organizations historically]”

By leaving out the bit in brackets, it’s clear you’re trying to give the impression that Jhourney has achieved a remarkable breakthrough in reducing jhana timescales, when in reality you’re conflating two different sub-categories of meditation and presenting results that are entirely ordinary for the category you actually teach.

The repeated pushing of this rhetoric is polluting the spiritual commons.

It’s giving people the impression that if they don’t pay multiple thousands of dollars to attend your retreat they’re missing out on some super duper secret method of getting into non-nimitta jhana 52x+ quicker than normal, which simply isn’t the case.

It’s also spreading implicit mistruth about the rest of the jhana teaching ecosystem.

Given that Jhourney’s vision is to educate people about the jhanas, spreading this kind of disinformation seems very counter to your mission.

It also seems totally unnecessary when by all accounts Jhourney is an extremely successful business, with very high demand from organic word of mouth and you are very good at what you do.

As a big advocate of both nimitta-based and non-nimitta-based jhanas, I find so much to admire about your mission to bring non-nimitta-jhanas to new audiences

And I can see why this sort of hyperbole might seem tempting when bootstrapping a business.

But at what point do you think perpetuating this myth becomes irresponsible and, actually, unnecessary?

[Jess @frideswyth]

All anybody wants is loving attention
Learning to give it is the sacred work of this life

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@TheHeadless235 Looking forward to it. 😉🙏

[Flow 🧘⛩️👁️ @FloPopp]

@TheHeadless235 Wohoo! 🥳