The illusion of having "seen it all" is like the illusion of having found a "formula" for prime numbers that works up to some point. Of course the number of primes is infinite, but you can convince yourself you've seen them all if the next one is too far away for you to count to
Conversation
Half of all meditation techniques are about regaining the easy-to-surprise beginner mind so ordinary magic of life can surprise in delight you again.
The other half of meditation techniques are to console yourself because the first half doesn't work as well as advertised 😆
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But "beginner mind" idea is right in essence. Except you have to generate the surprise within yourself. Thanks to our enormous capacities for denial etc. some of the deepest reserves for mystery and surprise are within you. You just have to be willing to look foolish to tap them
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People dimly recognize this and try to pick up new skills and brave early-learning-curve awkwardness as a way to inject freshness into life again. That's not quite right. If you're an advanced pianist, fumbling at tennis won't really help rediscover the surprisability of age 9.
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What WILL help is to blow up things where you think you already know it all and find ways to go all fumbling and awkward again. So our notional pianist has to find a way to be a fumbling beginner *at the piano* again.
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Self-disruption basically. Trying to inject novelty into your life by learning unrelated new things is like trying to do 3 undergraduate degrees instead of 1 PhD. A series of degrees is a scripted series of self-disruptions. MS mind disrupts BS mind. PhD mind disrupts MS mind.
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Doesn't work very well, but the more informal, less scripted version of developing a sense for when you've plateaued in some activity and blowing it up at the right time, to make it new again, but WITHOUT losing the experience earned... that's the real skill of surprise-seeking
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Thank you for reading my long-winded justification for my writing mostly sucking this last year 😆
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Addendum: there is a big element of surrender in accessing surprisal latent in the universe, and it becomes harder to surrender with age because we become addicted to agency. Even when risks are low, we resist. Kids surprise more easily because they surrender more easily.
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Replying to
Have you read Pollan's How to Change Your Mind? He talks about the use of psychedelics to get unstuck from the middle-aged sense of having seen it all, and to clear the 'plaque' of experience from your brain. If not to regain surprise then at least to see things with fresh eyes
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Many people claim this. I’ve seen no evidence from their behavior that it’s actually true, and a good deal that it can make things worse.
I am nevertheless curious to try it. more for the sake of brain reset it seems capable of . But yeah, it's not without risks of bad trip.


