A year ago today I set up the Discord community Mind Is the Gap to discuss things like meditation, lucid dreaming, hypnosis, breathwork, bodywork, IFS and other self-therapy. Very quickly ít grew to be my family and totally changed my life.
Maija Haavisto
@DiamonDie
Past: 17 books (novels, medical, poetry etc). Now guiding: metta, IFS/SE, imaginal, hypnosis, trauma, nondual. Buddhism, AT, kirtan, art, food, plants, CFS/ME.
Maija Haavisto’s Tweets
The most intense journey-ish shared practice I’ve done took place at a parking lot next to a Lidl at 8 AM on a Sunday morning, because sometimes spacetime works in mysterious ways and sometimes you just need your stuff held and hand held and then to get ice cream from Lidl.
7
My lovely Discord community Mind is the Gap has been on fire again, discussing stuff like violent religious sects, Tao Te Ching vs. Buddhism, dark nights vs. stress, nonduality, ADHD meds and capitalism jhanas.
1
5
I got so overwired yesterday and on Tuesday that I went into my "kamikaze writing" mode and wrote a total of 5K, probably not the best idea but oh well.
1
7
Someone wrote a book chapter on whether nuclear waste from Fukushima has Buddhanature according to Dogen (spoiler: yes).
1
I have like 50 cookbooks, but when I was able to cook and bake actively, Isa Chandra's were used by far the most, more than all others combined. These cookies I made so many times and it was a delight to get to make them last week with blueberry jam.
1
9
It was nice to experiment with hypnosis again recently after a bit of a break. Used my relax/Elman induction on a friend who was a total hypnosis newbie and e.g. relaxed a part that was afraid of singing in public and gave him an anchor to enter a relaxation state at will. :-)
5
Pretty well put. And Mickey D’s might not hire you _because_ you have a PhD :-P
Quote Tweet
Replying to @burny_tech @sidewayskoyote and 2 others
Getting enlightened for higher wellbeing is like getting a PhD to get a job at McDonald's, it's just completely unnecessary and probably the wrong thing for most people. It's totally rewriting your perspective on reality, most people are just not in a place to benefit from that
7
I haven't been on Twitter much recently. There's been so much going on and so much to say yet somehow I just haven't really felt like saying anything and even talking about not feeling like saying stuff feels so banal.
2
14
Adam Hunt is an absolutely hilarious name for a researcher of evolutionary medicine.
Quote Tweet
A new theory suggests that some mental disorders are evolved cognitive styles that benefit the group, including bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and schizophrenia, writes @justin_garson bit.ly/3T0xqhs
3
Yeah, definitely experienced a lot of this: almost all the friends who have adored me have just been lovebombing as a trauma response and the next minute they're already demonizing me. Luckily not always the case when people hit it off quickly.
Quote Tweet
If someone has only been in your life for 30 seconds and they’re already telling you how inspiring and interesting you are and how fascinated they are by you it will almost always end in them violently resenting and actively disliking you
Show this thread
1
6
How can people still believe stuff like in this thread, e.g. that jhanas are “advanced states” (kids get to them!), that they’re concentration states (no and high concentration renders them useless) or that they take hundreds of hours to get to (come on!).
Quote Tweet
The Jhanas are advanced meditative states accessed via concentration.
They are accompanied by psychological effects including extreme bliss. According to practitioners, the bliss of the jhanas far exceeds what we experience in daily life.
More info: leighb.com/jhanas.htm
2/7
Show this thread
5
10
(From Jon Kabat-Zinn talking about MBSR here: association-mindfulness.org/docs/Kabat_Zin If only doctors saw the Hippocratic Oath more like that...)
Show this thread
“The Hippocratic Oath is mirrored in the Bodhisattva Vow to attend completely to the suffering and liberation of an infinite number of beings before attending to one’s own. From the non-dual perspective, the infinite number of beings and oneself are not separate, and never were.”
1
3
Show this thread
Some papers have found a strong association with narcissism and belief in #COVID19 conspiracy theories (narcissism tends to cause magical thinking). Avoidant attachment + ignoring the pandemic also seems like a strong connection, at least one paper came to that conclusion too.
1
9
Improvised a nice simple dish: chanterelles, wood hedgehog mushroom, chopped mixed roasted nuts, toasted sunflower seeds, fresh lemon thyme, a little soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.
2
11
The new anthology “Close Up: Poems on Cancer, Grief, Hope, and Healing” has a poem from me that’s about ascites, denial and Advaita-type spiritual bypassing.
6
It's a bit curious how almost all DBT critique is from the patient community. Many pros have admitted it's highly abusive yet don't feel comfortable to criticize it openly? And where's all the criticism for it being ""Buddhist"" when it's antithetical to actual Buddhism?
1
4
A seven-year-old made me a friendship bracelet, I'm 38 and this is the first friendship bracelet I've ever had. :'-)
1
22
This seems like a promising avenue of research, but I'm curious if blocking that pathway has some weird, unexpected effects.
1
"Karma" feels like a concept that is very rarely useful, as different people mean very different things by it and a lot of the framings are either abusive or say nothing. If you refer to e.g. trauma, interconnectedness or dependent origination, better use those words.
1
2
5
My body has been really weird recently, but at least mostly in a good way (very overwired instead of a SNS collapse, which does have significant downsides too, but energy-wise it's great). I wrote 4,500 words in four days which in the past wouldn't have been much, but now it is.
10
CTS isn't PTSD and whether any DSM-5 criteria needs to be inclusive of it is questionable, as it's not considered a psychiatric condition so much as a natural reaction to overwhelming current circumstances. Perhaps some kind of a footnote would be nice.
1
A bit annoying how much parts/energy stuff are affecting my appearance at the moment. A few weeks ago it seemed more about lymph flow (facial puffiness + inflamed lymph nodes elsewhere), but recently my cheeks/jawline change in fullness near-daily, others have noticed this too.
5
I bought a fancy vegan chocolate treat (that wasn't too pricey) that looked like a large praline or maybe some sort of a raw treat. It turned out to be a gourmet version of Bounty. Have never felt as cheated.
2
2
Spiritual standup comedy: "Good evening, thanks for coming everyone! It's great to be here tonight! My life has become so peaceful and chill since I started meditating."
*audience roars in laughter*
*comedian starts crying and shaking uncontrollably*
2
12
I did a lot of gesture drawing in June 2021, and got pretty good, but then very little for over a year until recently. It was annoying how rusty I got in the meantime, took quite a bunch of pieces to get anywhere again. Weirdly I realized I prefer a ballpoint pen to a pencil.
2
I recently had a very far out spiritual scifi poem published in the New Myths magazine, "The Surface of Last Scattering" was inspired by e.g. cosmology and hypnotherapy.
2
My Italian friend may block me, but pizza with hedgehog mushroom, sundried tomato, smoked tofu and pink grapes works well. The grapes weirdly have notes of caramelized onion.
My sister: "WTF." Me: "You make grape focaccia..." Sis: "Not pizza!" Me: "Focaccia's just boring pizza."
7
Janina Fisher, who has authored the best book on IFS for people with severe dissociation, is doing a free webinar on parts and shame on Oct 7.
There seems to exist a rainbow-colored version of a weird number of animal species, I’m the human equivalent.
Quote Tweet
1
1
7
Honestly Milton Erickson was such a disabled legend. He was ND and had chronic pain, slurred speech and used a wheelchair because of post-polio. He gave one of his famous hypnosis demos at an event where he was super unwell. Yet he commanded incredible power over other people.
4
Completely forgot to tweet about this, because things have been thing-y, but I got this lovely crochet mandala as a gift from the lovely . It will likely be in my altar/woo area once I figure out how to elevate it 20-30 cm from the floor without attaching it to the wall.
read image description
ALT
3
11
Cool, a food-themed journal accepted multiple poems and a drabble from me. :-)
1
16
A friend bought a water-themed "oracle deck" with me in mind and has drawn me a few cards. The first one stunned me, as it contained an insight I had the previous night in front of the pictured thing. The second one was extremely timely. The third one fit so well I got angry. :-P
1
11
The most extreme reaction to this announcement that I saw was a Reddit user who said that their son's birth used to be the best thing that happened on September 30th, but isn't anymore. :-P
Quote Tweet
It was already basically confirmed recently, but #SixSeasonsAndAMovie is happening! yahoo.com/video/communit
A few days ago, I was pondering why I currently feel a bit less compelled to "help all beings" and more compelled to help my own life compared to before. Then a part said "Maija, you are all beings". The only time a part has left me speechless. :-P
1
1
27
2
1
6
Been listening to this lovely Vedic song a lot recently. The video has some gorgeous drone footage set in Ireland, but it's not just eyecandy, it illustrates the message. :-)





