The Round Year

We call them omens, signs, kismet, synchronicities, and they simultaneously hearten and distress us, because they dismantle our illusion reality is random.

We call it God’s will and surrender to it, or fate, and fight it at every turn, proud to withstand its unfair grip.

We never think to just sit and listen to what reality has to say.

She is not your enemy. It’s a partner who enjoys offering guidance, especially when you’re distracted and frazzled and can’t be bothered with nonsense. Most of the misfortunes of our lives come from our failure to listen.

We like to think life whispers softly, and sure, sometimes that is the case, but it could blare at you through a megaphone and you still wouldn’t hear it because it’s not something that belongs in your frame of reference.

It speaks to you through dreams, passing references, inspiration, feelings and memories, sudden changes in plans, meaningful encounters, strikes of luck and intractable circumstances.

It stops short of putting a label on those, saying, ‘here, take this, this is yours’.

It draws attention by using your favorite things, and irritating pet peeves, to make sure you got the message, and you get it, because you’re emotionally programmed to pay attention to it, but discard it like unsolicited mail.

Once you realize you’re in an interactive environment, where you send out a signal and get back a response, you ask yourself what is it reality wants from you. Who is to say it wants anything? We always relate everything in our environment to ourselves.

Most of the time it just puts up a giant sign to remind you, ‘I’m here, don’t dismiss me’.

You’d be surprised how many times we remove what is from the equation, focused as we are on what ought to be. We all aspire to bend circumstances to our will, but here’s the secret: nobody puts effort into reshaping the irrelevant.

What is matters.

Treat it like it matters.

Yes, the blinding flash of the obvious.

We end up fighting it, eventually. It’s human nature to take luck for granted and find misfortune unfair, but what life keeps patiently telling us is some goals and expectations are like fancy ill-fitting garments; they cost you a fortune and just make you look bad and you have permission not to wear them.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* Reality is interactive: you send out a signal, and it sends back a response. Read the response.

* Feedback comes through dreams, chance encounters, inspiration, feelings and memories, meaningful connections, sudden changes in plans, luck and unavoidable circumstances.

* Emotional associations are powerful attention grabbers; your likes and dislikes often highlight important details.

* Nobody wastes energy on wrestling something irrelevant into submission. What is matters. Treat it like it matters.

* Some goals and expectations waste your energy and don’t fit you and you have permission not to pursue them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

Remember the old maps with boundaries beyond which anything could happen? They always said here be dragons, even in the middle of the ocean.

When we try to think past the limits of our understanding, we always assume we would envision a blank space, a vast emptiness, but that’s not what actually happens.

We fill every gap in knowledge with weird versions of our familiar models.

It works for everything, from imagining what alien life forms might be like to what lies beyond the edges of our visible universe.

The answer always seems to be more of the same, but different.

This goes a lot farther than people think. Not only can’t we imagine “different” we’ve never seen before, we can’t see it. We see variations on the theme of what we already know.

The universe is infinite, therefore what lies beyond the edges of our sight must be more universe.

We can’t conceive of a world without time, therefore before the universe began there must have been another universe.

No matter how powerful our telescopes get, all we see is more universe, like people walking through a hall of mirrors see endless copies of themselves.

From a historical perspective, whatever we extrapolate from existing knowledge has no connection to how things actually are: the foul humors theory did not come close to approximating microbiology, and the Flower of Venus is not an expression of the divine finding pleasure in beautiful geometry.

There is no such thing as color, just variations in light wavelengths. Parallel lines eventually meet. Retro-causality is a genuine phenomenon, scientifically replicable. Light bends. Water can stay liquid below its freezing point.

There is also the category of things we observe and take for granted, but don’t actually exist.

The horizon is not where the earth ends. What we see as four stars may be just one, mirrored by gravitational lensing, nowhere near that location. Bicycle wheels don’t start spinning backwards at certain speeds. Stars don’t change color to cause the red shift.

Two things our minds can’t process, nothing and infinity, so nothing had to become undifferentiated untapped potential for being and infinity always has a beginning and never veers off course.

There is no guarantee Pi’s decimal digits will not start repeating eventually, or stop altogether (I just figured I’d trigger the automatic response that starts with you don’t understand math and ends with non-Euclidean geometry).

Just a simple example of more of the same, but different.

In short, we’re WYSIWYG.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* The mind can’t process nothing and infinity, so it turned nothing into potential and infinity into beginning and filled both with slightly weirder versions of its familiar models.

* Just because we observe things, that doesn’t mean they are really happening, as seen in gravitational lensing, bicycle wheels seeming to spin backwards, the redshift, sunrise and sunset.

* Not only we can’t imagine things we haven’t experienced before, we can’t see them. The mind replaces them with models we can understand.

* Our mental models often have no relationship to the real thing, but we take them for granted and use them until offered irrefutable proof to the contrary.

* We see what we think is there. What you see is what you get.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

Life works in probabilities. Everything is a gradient of maybe between yes and no. Since nothing is impossible, and nothing is absolute, life plans only make sense in broad strokes, and obsessing over their specific details is frequently doomed to failure.

Events tend to cluster around coherent outcomes and we get drawn towards those clusters without even realizing.

Between intent and outcome an entire tree of possibilities unfolds, whose branches intertwine with other people’s intents and probabilities, and the final outcome is not an instance, but a range of acceptable developments.

Many of those are surprising and unplanned, because we don’t have enough data during the planning phase.

In retrospect, our decision-making process looks more like this: there are things we would avoid at all costs, things we bitterly settle for, things that are alright, circumstances considered, lucky breaks, and dreams we’d do almost anything to accomplish.

Circumstances are constantly in motion and subject to sudden changes, like a giant game of marbles with too many players.

That doesn’t mean focusing on your intentions is pointless, quite the opposite: wishes and desires draw us closer to the clustering of circumstances with the highest probability of making them real.

Of course, that highest probability may be less than their manifestation threshold, or worse yet, you may end up in the one percent of a ninety-nine percent sure bet.

Nothing is certain until it actually happened, for good or for bad.

If you want to guess where you’re going, track your past trajectory, which is no longer subject to change. This is a great way to test the decision-making theory above, and a good way to see the choices you actually made, as opposed to the ones you rationalize you made.

Remember, you never choose your desires, or even your moral convictions. You always choose the higher value in a comparison game between evenly matched values.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* Life doesn’t work in certainties, it works in probabilities.

* All circumstances are subject to sudden change and are continuously in motionWishes and desires get unconsciously drawn towards the clustering of circumstances with the highest likelihood of making them come true.

* Nothing is certain until it actually happened.

* The highest probability of something happening may be below the threshold that will make it manifest, or you may end up on the wrong side of almost certain odds.

* If you want to know what your choices truly are, and, in consequence, where you’re going, track your past trajectory, which is no longer subject to change.

* We never choose what we think we want, we always choose our values. Specifically, the higher value in a comparison between evenly matched competing values.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

What is a ritual? Any activity which carries or can carry symbolic meaning.

Rituals appeal to our desire for recognizable patterns, our need to place ourselves into a familiar frame of reference that connects past, present and future and inside which we can anticipate and plan. They reinforce the knowledge shortcuts we create for ourselves to make sense of the world.

A ritual never changes, and that is its power as well as its tedium. Through endless repetition, the tedium dissolves into muscle memory to appeal to deeper and otherwise inaccessible areas of the mind, below the threshold of our awareness.

Rituals transform the most mundane objects and activities and imbue them with memories, values, intentions.

A wedding dress, a favorite flower, a traditional greeting, typing a password, always placing the keys in the same pocket, these are conscious and unconscious rituals that make us feel safe and settled in our lives and reduce the number of details we need to remember in order to function.

We instinctively impart important events in our lives with symbolic meaning, we wear special attire, we use special words and phrases, we create traditions around them. Traditions are nothing more than collections of rituals, born of the emotional life of a community and strengthened by their repeated use over centuries, often by many generations.

That does’t mean rituals are foreign constructions that intrude upon us from outside. We create our own rituals all the time, with of without the awareness of this fact: the way we drink our coffee, our morning routines, the way we wash our hands, the way we check ourselves in the mirror, cooking habits, sleeping patterns, interacting with nature and pets.

We comb our hair, we brush our teeth, we put our coats on the same way, day in, day out, without even realizing, such is the power of habit, of routine.

Any routine can be actively associated with meaning, and thus become a ritual.

This symbolic association is more than an intellectual exercise, it gets embodied, it sinks into our automatic responses in the same way we no longer have to make effort to remember motion sequences when we play the piano or drive a car. It becomes a shortcut for reframing perception.

A true ritual is not a special activity, it connects to daily routines, the more it is repeated, the more its symbolic meaning connects to the deeper self and becomes a part of us. The words spoken, the gestures associated with it, bond to our emotions to become powerful and invisible psychological tools.

Here is a simple exercise. People take off their ring or their watch when they wash their hands. Next time notice this gesture is automatic, the object is always placed in the same location, and always in the same way. Try to associate a sound, or a color, to this automatic gesture. Always remember to do it when you wash your hands. Soon your gesture of removing the accessory and placing it in its spot will become that sound and that color.

If a mundane gesture can become a sound or a color, it can also become any abstract object you choose, from happiness to mathematical concepts, images, emotions, any mental content.

If there is one thing worth remembering, is that the power of a ritual resides in its repetition and familiarity, which allows it to access the unconscious and shape emotions without a fight.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* A ritual is any activity that carries or can carry symbolic meaning.

* Rituals work below the threshold of awareness. The tedium of their repetition dissolves into muscle memory to appeal to deeper and otherwise inaccessible areas of our mind.

* Rituals imbue mundane objects and activities with emotions, memories, values, intentions. They are invisible but powerful psychological tools.

* Any routine can be actively associated with meaning, and thus become a ritual.

* A true ritual is not a special activity, it draws from daily life.

* The symbolic association of a ritual gesture gets embodied, it sinks into our automatic responses like playing the piano or driving a car.

* Rituals access emotions directly, without any interference from the conscious mind.

*

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

The inability to share ineffable experiences is a limitation of our human condition, which makes us feel helpless and sublime at the same time. These moments are by definition impossible to put into words, but their characteristics and circumstances are broadly recognizable. They often attempt to find expression in metaphor – an open sky, an endless void, a pregnant silence, an all-encompassing presence – but they rarely emerge from it with their meanings unaltered.

What unites these experiences is they are removed from time, with which they have no relationship, and essentially different from normal sensory perception, with which they can never be confused.

They belong to a reality we can’t recognize, one for which we have no emotions or mental structures, and one which engenders awe, but defies expectations.

Thus they are never frightening.

They are unrepeatable, these ineffable moments, and not informed by one’s life experiences or emotional states at all; they seem to appear from nowhere, unexpectedly.

They are life altering.

A single instance of genuine awe can elevate one’s priorities, motivations, and outlook beyond decades of dedication and effort. They are often pivotal moments in one’s life.

They are deeply personal.

Like faith, love, or ecstasy, once experienced, they can’t be dismissed, forgotten, or undone. There is often a feeling of being initiated into a new state of being associated with them.

They are unquestionably real.

They feel just as real as this current moment, and sometimes more.

They often hint at a broader context, a higher level of being, a much larger reality we can’t perceive in our normal lives, but whose existence becomes unquestionable henceforth.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* Ineffable experiences are removed from time and normal sensory perception. They seem to appear from nowhere, unexpectedly.

* They inform our normal lives in ways that make them unquestionably real.

* They are deeply personal and are often accompanied by an initiatory feeling.

* They hint at a larger reality beyond our perception, but are never scary, because we have no frame of reference for them. They engender awe and defy expectations..

* They are life’s pivotal moments. A single interaction with the sublime can elevate a person’s entire outlook on life beyond decades of dedication and effort.

*

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

The round year is an ideal that got lost in our modern experience of time, but which is so deeply embedded in old spiritual systems, it often goes unquestioned.

It is a simple concept, really. We don’t live years; we live the Year in perpetuity. When the Year ends, the Year begins again. The concept of round time.

People attuned to the cycles of nature, who spend a lot of their life outdoors, have a deep instinct about this way of experiencing time, and feel its truth to the core of their being, because they are closer to its patterns and can’t help seeing them repeating.

Keeping a nature journal especially helps one see how precise the changes of the seasons are, worthy of the most sophisticated clockwork in existence.

The movements of the planets and stars create exquisite embroideries in the night sky, completing and restarting themselves with delicate precision, and if you have any idle time, I recommend taking the look at the petals of Venus, one of the most beautiful planetary orbits you will ever gaze upon.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

People picture their memory as a large body of water in which they’re immersed, one which challenges their sense of control, as they struggle to swim against its currents, or allows them the enjoyment of floating, relaxed, on its calm surface when the influx is pleasant.

Frequently, its driving currents drag the unfortunate mind into a whirlpool it can’t control, and drown it in weakening and defeating feelings.

The thoughts you are compelled to host against your will diminish and controlyou.

Fighting them only gives them more power, and trigger the consciousness stream to which they belong to call up more of the same quality. They will use your mind as their power source, draining you to grow stronger, and leave you cored out and structurally damaged inside.

Think of this as replacing an object that sits on a pressure plate connected to an alarm with its equivalent weight, thus bypassing the trigger.

The process requires some planning, because you need to have replacements lined up before the toxic mental streak descends upon your mind like a Harpie. While you’re in its throws, you won’t be able to conjure anything else on the spot, much like a drowning man has no other option than taking the next breath before another wave pulls him under. Things are just a little better if there’s a raft to hold on to nearby.

I call this planning process the building of a memory library, and it’s something that needs to be done during quiet and happy times, when remembering wonderful things comes easy.

Anything that qualifies as a happy moment belongs in it.

The moments you pick to populate this library should be constantly refreshed, to keep them in your active memory, and painted in such exquisite detail that bringing them to the forefront of your thought becomes effortless.

Better yet, they should be connected to the unconscious workings of your mind, to record their smell, sense their ambient temperature, minor ancillary details associated with them, the sounds in the background.

Having multiple points of access, especially of the kind not accessible to the rational mind, where all the caustic blather lives, is especially useful.

Those mental objects should feel as real as the physical things and circumstances which surround you right now.

No happy memories? No problem. Make some up. The mind doesn’t distinguish between an actual memory and an artificial one. Clean up your memory banks to feel less encumbered.

Despite unconscious body language, like gazing left instead of right, depending on remembering or imagining something, your mental processes are the same for both of them.

It’s bad enough when circumstances like serious illness, hardship or grief don’t allow you a single breath out of the pain, why suffer through the pointless daily sludge of irritating thoughts as well?

Externally imposed, innocuous, chit-chat driven memory attacks, are relentless and insidious, and overwhelmingly negative, but even for those unavoidable situations there will be enough material in your memory library to refashion the meaning of what was said and reduce its toxic load.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* Actively navigate your memory instead of being caught by its rip currents.

* The thoughts your mind hosts against its will weaken and diminish you. Fighting them gives them more power, and they drain that power out of you, making you more vulnerable to their attacks in the future.

* Keep replacement memories on standby for immediate availability during a defeating mental attack.

* Those thoughts should be selected ahead of time and reinforced until they rise to the surface automatically.

* Make the memory library components painstakingly detailed, sensory connected and fresh, and give them several access points, independent of the rational processing if possible.

* They should be vivid enough to overpower what they’re replacing.

* Don’t restrict yourself to real memories, create what you wish.

* The mind can’t tell the difference between processing an actual memory and an artificially constructed one.

* There is only so much stuff you can remember at once. Fill up that space with content of your choosing and there won’t be much room left for random negative thoughts.

* Use your memory library to refashion the meaning of toxic allusions and dental drill chit-chat.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

Whose thoughts run your head? That is a strange question. We take for granted we are the ones who think our thoughts, when in fact they are only in part our production, if at all. This article is a perfect example of that.

We act like resonators for other people’s minds, contemporary intellectual currents, commonly held unquestioned beliefs, willful influences, and overpowering models.

Our thoughts are socially constructed composites inside which those mental influencers weave themselves around our personal circumstances and general zeitgeist.

This is a truth we keep parked under normal circumstances. Thoughts are thoughts; whether you think them or they’re visiting, how are you going to function without them?

They were designed to be useful, and evolved to present themselves as such, even when they are obsessive and defeating.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

There are truly powerful forces at work in our universe, forces so awe-inspiring our minds can’t comprehend them: giant black holes of near infinite gravity, invisible waves that propagate through vast expanses at speeds that bend space and time, energy rays which permeate all the matter in their path, enormous forces in something as small as a neutron, patterns that organize entire galaxies with impeccable precision.

If there is anything we humans understand, is power. We run our lives by it, struggle to negotiate it, acquire it, maintain it. Power rules everything that is made of matter.

In the unseen realms of reality, the subtle currents which shape life, society and progress, the equivalent of power is will.

Will is the guiding force of sentience, and it’s frequently confused with power, since we fused these two words into one, and now use will and willpower interchangeably, but that is a misunderstanding of the words’ meaning.

We impose willpower on things we want in order to control them, because as yet, we don’t. We express our will through things we control without even having to think about them.

Will guides gently beneath the threshold of reason. It senses synchronicities, recognizes unique opportunities, shields us from unapparent dangers.

Will is the very purpose of one’s life, a purpose we often aren’t consciously aware of.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com

Once upon a time, emotions were the key to our survival. They are fast, much faster than thoughts, and can assess a situation at lightning speed, before our rational analysis, before our senses even; they are a lost superpower we forgot how to wield.

Unlike instincts, which are devoid of information, emotions are pre-analyzed: they’re shortcuts to things we already know, they make connections between seemingly unrelated data, and they’re rarely wrong.

Much as we like to think of ourselves as rational, emotions still run the show silently in the background.

Nothing that matters, nothing of value is ever achieved without their input, even if we like to make a big deal out of explaining them away in retrospect.

What do emotions advise us on? Trust, danger, opportunity, odds of success, probability of future events, health, our place in society.

It is emotion, not thought, that guides our purpose and empowers our will.

We dismiss it at our peril, because it shows up to inform, and the information is usually related to fundamental issues: survival, life’s direction, goals, affinities and trust.

Emotions are our primary drivers. There is no true self-control when they are ignored.

People often mistake suppressing emotions with demonstrating willpower and are surprised to see the consequences of that attempt run opposite to what they were trying to accomplish.

One can’t erase emotions and one shouldn’t try. They’re soul energy, and like all energy, they can’t be destroyed. Their powerful fuel can be channeled, sublimated and used, focused towards one’s goals. They are precious and powerful and they should be revered and protected.

Pilfering away emotional power is like wasting time: you only have so much of it and once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.

Wasted emotional energy results in a lack of willpower.

Contrary to popular belief, these powerful levers are hardly outside of our control. They’re just as easy or hard to develop as reason, and they take just as long.

One attends school for decades to gain the requisite knowledge, but one expects emotions to roll over on command at the drop of a hat.

When you devote time and attention to them, you start to see their effects, expect them, and understand how to make them work to your benefit and not your peril.

You make connections between the outcomes and their invisible causes, you cultivate the beneficial emotions and learn to amplify them at will. You find safe outlets for the negative ones and learn how to transmute their energy so it’s not wasted.

Just like the wind, you can’t see your true emotions, only their consequences, and every lesson is learned the hard way, through life experiences.

The markers of a healthy emotional landscape are never in your mind, they always lie outside of you, they are right in front of your eyes and all around you.

They are reflected in loving relationships, physical and financial health, trusted friendships, enjoyable and peaceful surroundings, safety and long life.

No amount of intelligence can make up for not having your emotions under control, and learning to master them is an elusive, life long process that is hard to put into words.

The simplest way to figure out where you got off track is to look around you and notice what’s broken. There’s your emotional deficit, right behind that problem. As within, so without.

If reason is at odds with emotions, emotions always win. We’ve all been taught that continuing to dig in the wrong place is a test of resolve. We are in fact throwing good money after bad, ironically increasing the frustration that kept us from our goal in the first place.

Desire, loyalty, perseverance, admiration, inquiring spirit, aspirations, all the drivers of society are powered by emotions and by those who understand them and know how to use them.

Negative emotions are a legacy of our ancestral survival instincts.

Never dismiss them! They are a lot more powerful than positive ones and, left unchecked, manifest as destruction.

It’s tempting to use negative emotions, because they are so powerful and fast their consequences can be seen immediately, and their active use doesn’t require time, knowledge, patience or trust.

They’re usually deployed as weapons, loaded on top of other emotions, also negative, and their combined firepower inflicts exponential damage on both their user and the intended target.

Because they work so fast and require no training, and because they feed upon themselves and all the ugly instincts and frustrations people shove in the dark corners of their minds to maintain a presentable persona, negative emotions end up running out of control, in a cascade effect of damage, tragedy and failure, like a wheel picking up speed while rolling down a rocky hill.

There is always a cost associated with letting anger, hatred, and guilt run the show, a cost we incur as grief and loss.

So, if they’re so destructive, why did we need to have negative emotions in the first place?

They are useful in life-threatening situations when they instinctively kick in to bypass learned civilized behavior and increase our chances of survival.

Love your life. Love your body. Love your family and friends. Love your home. What you love thrives. Love is the law. What you truly believe and feel manifests in reality. It is the ultimate lie detector machine.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

* Emotions are faster and more powerful than reason and senses.

* They are the guidance system to our survival. They detect danger, assess trustworthiness, orient us towards our goals, and define our life path.

* You can’t see your true feelings, only their consequences. Your emotional life is not hidden inside; it’s right in front of your eyes, reflected in your circumstances, relationships, and even physical surroundings.

* Don’t waste your feelings on trivial matters. They come in a limited supply, and just like time, once they’re gone, you can’t get them back. Most of the ills that drain our days are not worth the emotional damage we allow them to inflict.

* Wasted emotional energy results in a loss of willpower.

* Negative emotions are addictive, fast, and powerful. They require no skill to deploy, and for this reason they are always abused. This misuse of power eventually runs out of control in a cascade of failure, tragedy and loss.

* You can’t dissimulate genuine emotions because their consequences manifest as real outcomes in your environment.

* What you love and pay attention to grows and thrives. What you neglect withers on the vine.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theroundyear.substack.com