MANY Ω 🪬

There was a point in my life where I found myself in a scenario akin to house arrest, for the duration of several months. I was quite literally not allowed to set foot off the property. And although it may have sucked while going through it... I now look back at that period SO fondly, as it preceded a once in a lifetime adventure. At the beginning of the whole ordeal, I knew one thing very clearly: that I would stay perfectly sane so long as I'm chewing on something intellectually demanding enough. I needed something SUBSTANTIAL to really sink my teeth into, something large and rich enough that I could fully absorbed into for a while... and so I chose The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P Hall I had "read" through it before, but never really STUDIED the work, there is a gigantic difference. That mfer is highlighted and annotated like you cannot believe. Endless notes taken. Extensive cross referencing... Etc. Whole sections revisited again and again until I felt I had actually UNDERSTOOD what MPH was trying to transmit and communicate. All the while listening to the same song Red Sex RESTRUNG - Vessel on repeat. I love reading with music on particularly. And if I hear that song I am INSTANTLY back there. Same room. Same book. Same feeling. There are even certain smells, aromas similar to the foods I ate during that period, which will suddenly pull the entire memory back into consciousness with an absurd level of detail and clarity. And what stands out for me from that time was the INTENSITY. The intensity of the experience as a whole, certainly, but even more than that, the intensity with which I dedicated myself to pour trough that tomb. I went through it carefully, at a pace only as fast as I was understanding what I was taking in. If that meant spending several hours on several pages, then that is what happened. I wasn't interested in going through it carefully just to be able to say that I did. But rather, I wanted the ideas to actually ENTER me (pause). I wanted them to be so deeply integrated that they began reorganising the way I perceived evverything else. And THAT is the part people underestimate about serious study. If you give yourself to a sufficiently deep body of knowledge with enough intensity, you do not merely become filled with information. YOUR PERCEPTION CHANGES. You start noticing things that were always there, but which you previously lacked the conceptual machinery to recognise. Symbols become louder. Patterns connect. History looks different. Religion looks different. Human behaviour looks different. Art looks different. Even ordinary conversations begin revealing structures and assumptions that you would have previously simply ignored... You come out looking through a different pair of eyes. And I think this is one of the great losses of modern life. People consume constantly. But very rarely do they IMMERSE. Ten pages here. Watch twenty minutes there. Save 50 videos to Watch Later that they'll never watch later. Podcast while they doing stuff around the house. Everyday of their lives they brush against a thousand ideas and penetrate almost none of them. There is something magical about being MONOMANIACAL about ONE THING. So I would actually encourage you to manufacture an experience like this for yourself. (minus the house arrest): Pick something worthy of your COMPLETE attention. A book. A subject. A craft. A teacher. Or a problem you have wanted to solve for years... Then give yourself a period of time where you go ALL THE WAY IN. TEN TOES DOWN. Choose your thing. Give it your full attention. Go DEEP ENOUGH inside that you come out the other side touched, changed,. transformed. Because there is something magical about being ALL in one ONE THING. If YOU are going ALL IN? REPLY THIS UNDERNEATH: "ALL IN; ONE THING."