October 30, 2024

Yes, we’re shrinking. Maybe we have to do some we will have to do some new communication efforts about what it is that we’re doing. But before we do that, because at some point I will and maybe you will too, and help me with that. To get like a new vibe going, I would like it to be about the storytelling and I would like to get the stories up and running so that will be the main component of what we’re doing.

Okay. So we don’t have the online template yet. Could those five questions that we have, those five prompts, could we put those into the anonymous, the chat room. And then at least we can start. If we tell a story between now and next week, we can use those five prompts. It’s not then in a template and interactive, but at least we can already test the prompts.

And so the idea would be to iterate on that a bit. So to try the storytelling in the chat room to use those five prompts. And then ideally we would be very happy. With this story framework, how it works for us. And then we would use that to open this up again and get more people to join in the writing process.

And then I’d like to open this group again and ask all of you to help with that, to communicate on LinkedIn, because that’s our favorite platform to see if we can get new people fresh joyful people based on the storytelling exercise. So we’re going to start saying that’s what it’s about, because that’s is then what it is about.

So eventually what the story template will look is like this you, after you create, you create a story, it will give you this. And the first prop prompt is setting the scene. It will say, recall a specific moment in your life when you felt heavily burdened by your sense of self, where were you and what was happening to you? So that’s the first one. And then you have the inner dilemma that says next.

And then the unexpected shift. So it’s really this contraction and expansion thing that we were talking about last time. It really guides you through that. And then the moment of confusion here. And the last one is the joyful realization.

So that’s basically the story template. And then what you all will be able to see is, and I can preview here and you can see it. So there’s one, two, three, four, five questions and once you fill them out, you will be able to see them all together. You’ll be able to see the full story.

What this is based on is classic Zen teaching stories. We worked with Claude AI, based on the joy of being someone, and then the expansion of not needing to be a someone, to put that in this five step framework that on the backend it would create an anonymous teaching story.

So S’s experience of standing in front of a room and speaking and feeling the contraction of, Oh, I need to be someone here. I need to be the expert. I need to know what I’m talking about. And then the shift into the freedom of, I don’t know anything, I don’t need to know anything. And how that felt. That ends up being an anonymous teaching story. And teaching is maybe the wrong word, but that’s where it comes from.

So the anonymous part is that your name is not in it. It’s eventually not tied to you, but that’s something to take into account when you describe this, that you don’t put in details that make it clear it’s about you, unless you want to, right?

I’m already using this in multiple facets. So I was just saying, there are a lot of different applications, how this is playing out, at least in what we’ve done, I think it’s valuable to bring in more people. Everyone I tell about this seems to be excited. I think what we’ve accomplished in a very short time has been really interesting both from a structure point of view and content actually. So I think it will be interesting to have more join and participate in it.

Was there a hypothesis going into this? Like it feels like a bit of an experiment, which I’m fully here for, but generally when you experiment, there was some loose hypothesis.

Yeah, the guiding idea for this whole joy book community was the original idea: can we write a book in a group? Without there being individual authors, not like a collection of authors, but instead co-writing, co.authoring a book. And then we came to this idea of doing that online, like you write Wikipedia articles. Or like people write code together without it being attributed to specific individuals.

And then of course the other idea is about sharing the joy of what you could call a nondual understanding or this freedom of not needing to be stuck in the ego, in the identity, in the self, and the joy of that, and sharing that with a general audience. So how we would we share this with people who have never heard the word non duality and don’t care?

So those were the two things going in. And then over time we found very quickly, the way we speak here without needing to show up as someone who knows anything about this, without without anything, we started off very theoretical and we’re talking about thoughts and some people left because it was too theoretical. But that was the experiment, right? We were getting to where we wanted to go. And then I think after two or three sessions, we quickly figured out that it was the direct experience, the sharing of direct first-person experience that was so powerful and made the sessions more interesting for all of us.

And you can see that if you go back in the transcripts. Then we came up with the story idea. So if we enjoy this the most, and if it’s the most powerful when we tell our own direct experience stories, then let’s put those in this anonymous template format and start experimenting with that.

And that’s where we are now really. Except for the idea to expand again. As soon as we have some way that this could work. Let’s bring it out again and ask people to join us. And I imagine we could have some kind of things like instead of a weekly meeting, we could have something like story slams, so we just come together with a larger group and share these stories, how I’m not sure yet. And the anonymous part. I don’t know. T me, it’s opening up again and then it’s all open. But that’s precisely what I want, what this group is for, to figure that out as well.

Does it need to be anonymous?

Yes and no. So I think we need to offer both. So it doesn’t have to be anonymous. There are people for whom doesn’t it doesn’t matter, many people don’t need the anonymity. They’re fine. But some people won’t share these stories unless they are anonymous.

I think that’s the power of it that we would offer both. I guess in the telling, when you see, when we come together and tell the stories, it would not be anonymous in that moment because you see the person and you know who they are, but that the back end is anonymous.

But I think there’s power in that because no one is everyone, right? So then your story, because I don’t know who you are, it’s not tied to you, becomes my story.

Are you going to like delegate like what we’re going to write stories about? Or is that just whatever comes up for us that you want us to, because I’m not good at that. I need to tell me what to do.

No. I don’t know. I want to start broad and not narrow it down too much.

On the other hand, didn’t we start with a bunch of different topics that we were going to talk about every time and stuff? Isn’t, is that what we’re doing anymore? Or have we changed that? Or I’m not sure.

So, the stories are now just these five prompts. They’re very general again. But I can imagine we can go back to saying, okay, there’s a template for the joy of not needing to believe thoughts, or there’s the joy of this or that, and each of these are availalble as templates, but I don’t want to overcomplicate it.

So I don’t know, my feeling is we’re now opening it up again. We’re narrowing the format. But we’re opening up the container again for the content, except that it’s about the joy of not needing to be a someone. So it’s not the story about last Christmas unless that was about the joy of not needing to be a someone.

 Are you saying you would need more specific prompts?

Yeah, because I’ve got so many other things, and I’m just constantly writing and I’m constantly thinking and changing everything. So I’m happy to contribute but I just think I need more. I don’t really know where to start. All I can say is it would make it easier if I had some things to talk about, and now you just said about last Christmas, I could write a whole story about that.

So this is making me think what we might end up doing is creating an idea generator along with the template. We could have all these aspects of the joy of not needing to be a someone, right? Different topic areas. So we could have these types of prompts along with the five prompts for the flow of the story and that would be a random generator. And for those who don’t need that it would just be, tell whatever comes up for you.

The thing is the back end of this is very customizable So we can play with it.

But what I would like to do in this group first is to test what we have now.

So test these five steps in the framework, that’s the most important thing now. Does it invite you to tell a specific story, or does it confuse you, or would you want different wording, or is there a duplicate in there, would you want a different order, so those types of things.

I just I’m just trying to understand how to do this on a deep level, because every time I try and think of a story, I’m going to my mind and the whole point of the realization is I’m not in my mind so it forces me back. I feel like I’m being forced back down into thinking what happened like historically, biographically and when I go into my biography I don’t like doing that.

I’m not saying I couldn’t do it, but I’ve got an antipathy to do that because it makes me think, why am I doing this? Then it feels contrived.

And then there’s a more like direct experiential form of living outside of trying to get a biographical story. So that’s the thing I’m a little bit struggling with. How do I make sense of this request? Because if I go back into the, oh when I was 19 years old and this happened to me, that happened to me. And then as I said I’m not too sure exactly what’s the expectation. If there’s nothing there, that’s fine. But I don’t really know how to write a story about awakening. It’s just so subtle. That’s the problem. I could say on a human level, I could make comments like, I’ve noticed after in hindsight, for the last X number of years, I feel I’ve psychologically suffered markedly less. Those sorts of things.

When was the last time you felt a contraction as a self into your person?

I’m having to think about it. There’s contractions going on all the time.

Exactly. So pick one.

But it’s not something which I’m controlling and it’s not something that I respond to. So I don’t think, oh, I’ve got to do something about this contraction or something like that. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, that’s not what the prompts are asking.

So I, I’m not sure if I approached it the wrong way or what. When I read the prompts I’m not thinking of my biography. I’m not thinking of my past. Something will come up into my head. That is what I write. Like I’m not, there’s no deciding. Because when I went back to like meander and look to do it again because mine got erased so I went to do it again. None of those answers would have been the same at all. It was completely spontaneous, whatever came into my mind. So there was no autobiography going on at all. It was just what popped in. I think that’s the goal.

Yes, that is totally the goal. So this is not storytelling in the sense of when I was 19, this is what happened to me. Just whatever comes up due to the prompt. But when you read it, just what comes up and if nothing comes up, then nothing comes up. That’s totally fine.

So it’s not like a story. It’s more like a document of how the experience of being occurs.

It’s not a story in that sense. It’s maybe a vignette or it’s more like a document of what happened to me last week kind of thing. Yeah. I had this big contraction and then Yes. Then I did this and then something happened to me. It’s just like a series of events that were happening. Yes. So there was a contraction. Then there was a aha, and there was an expansion, and that is being described. That’s it.

I think the prompts are specifically there so we don’t think about the story at all. Like we just answer the thing and then the AI, whatever’s going on in the background will pull it all together. I think we are not really supposed to think about that.

But again, this is the testing we’d like you to try, instead of theoretically, because when you do that, when you try it fair and you notice, this is putting me back into my biography and it doesn’t work, and then please just make a note of that and maybe think of something that would work for you because that’s exactly the type of feedback we’d like. The way this is written, it doesn’t work for me. It puts me into some kind of mind thing.

But you’ll see that when you can relate to it on the level of asking me what has been your experience? What is your experience? I think what’s throwing me is the word story. That’s what was throwing me.

Yeah, okay, so let’s forget about the story. It’s direct experience sharing.

Direct experience, yeah, I see.

But the reason I use the word story is because what comes out of it on the other end is what you could call in many traditions, these are teaching stories in the sense of, in Sufism, they have a lot of these.

But this isn’t the same as that. This is different to me, because I write teaching stories. I use them in my work.

Okay. Let’s just forget about all of that. This is not a story. It’s not a teaching story. We’ll just see what it is when we find out what it is.

I think what I did with the prompt was that when you read the prompt, if something comes up, you write, if it doesn’t come up, then you don’t write because that’s the purpose of the prompt. It is not to be tailor made. If nothing comes up, then nothing comes up, I think that’s better. So it’s not a forced thing, but what I felt when I read the prompt was that something instantly came up and I wrote, although it did not save, but then I was not worried. If it did not save, it did not save. So that’s the spontaneity in it you don’t feel that I am supposed to write it. I am supposed to answer every prompt or I must answer, I must write something. If nothing comes up, it means nothing comes up.

It’s just crazy that we think and we’re just sitting here saying that we’re waiting for something to come. We’re waiting for it to show up. We don’t think at all. We just sit and wait for something good to show up. If the world could just see this. Yeah. This is like the epitome of everything we’re trying to tell you.

Okay. So recall a specific moment in your life when you felt heavily burdened by your sense of self. Yes. And then it asks you to describe that. Where were you and what was happening around you? Now, if you’re the type of person who goes back into your biography, then you will, right? You might think of something that happened to you when you were four.

But if that no longer occurs for you because you don’t go into your past, I rarely, if ever, think about my past. But now this prompt, what does it trigger right now? And it could be just the second to last moment. It could be this morning. It could be a week ago. But for some, it might trigger something from 30 years ago.

So when did I feel heavily burdened? Burdened by my sense of self.

And the thing that comes up for me right now is the sense of being the body and the sense of being stuck in a body was there very strongly during the night. So that’s the interpretation of the sensations, but that is what comes up right now. And if I look at this prompt. Five minutes from now, something else will come up.

Okay. So if we go to the next one, then you describe that, and the cool thing about this, when it starts working, is that it can be just a couple of words, or it can be five sentences. It can be beautiful literature and great English, or it can just be a couple of bullet points. Because we’re going to throw it into AI.

So in that sense, it’s also not your story anymore, because it’s not going to be the thing that your mind came up with it’s going to be collated and that’s part of the experiment. So we don’t know yet.

And the idea is, after a week you wrote fully or you didn’t write and complete it. It doesn’t matter. That’s it. We’re capturing that as a snapshot and moving on so it’s not you have an answer, you write an answer, you have no answer. That’s fine. And same applies to any of those steps. And ideally we don’t want you writing too much as well.

Once you hit 500 words, this is going to start getting red. So because we’re going to ask AI to trim it down as well. So the idea to be as concise as possible, but if you go over, it’s fine. But we’re going to work with it. So we’re going to mutate the text again and then formulate it around. We don’t know how well it’s going to work just to be clear, but that’s the idea.

And I think we’re hoping that there’ll be something there. And that’s why we need this testing phase before we ask other people to join us because we have this kind of thing going on between us. We can hopefully take it, but if we start bringing in new people, they’re going to be like, what is this? What are you doing to my story? So we need to have a working version that we’re happy with. So this is not set in stone. This is not how it’s going to be. It’s just a test version.

I think, for me, there’s still a sense of freedom with the prompts and which I, for me, I really, like it. There is a global storytelling community that also meets online. And I once joined one of the sessions, but there was a lot of rules around that. So you weren’t allowed to read it. That had to be in six minutes. So I just joined one of those sessions and not again, because for me it felt too much like acting and trying to achieve something. Where with this, I feel, I get what was said about the story side and the storytelling and the more bringing in your direct experience. But for me it helps to put this non duality journey that I’m in, it is more sense making for me. I like it.

And thank you very much for that, because that is exactly what we’re trying to do. And so it would be very helpful, while you do this, take some notes on that aspect of it, just so we don’t lose that because I think those of us who’ve been thinking about this, reading about this, the whole non dual thing for almost too long, there’s almost too much background. And we almost know too much for this uncovering the joy and the freedom right now.

In any case, I think they can be really powerful exactly for that reason. So they’re not teaching philosophy. They’re not explaining concepts. It’s just, this is what happened to this person. And here it is, and that’s always what’s missing if you read a book on non duality or you hear people talk about this.

People will be like, yeah, but what happens? What actually goes on? Tell me what changes. This is what changes. And then there are little stories in all these little aspects of life. I was standing in the kitchen. There was a contraction that I needed to know what I would say at the meeting tomorrow, then there was the realization that it doesn’t matter. Then there was freedom.

These types of things make it powerful, I think, and the fact that we don’t have many modern versions of this. So the only book I know that does this is Byron Katie’s A Thousand Names for joy. It’s the only book I know that has direct experiential description of freedom and joy

Angelo DiLullo’s book Awake was pretty good for that. I think this is tremendous for the same reasons. Like I read about all of this for a long time ago and it seems very far away. And the idea of hearing, for lack of a better term, real people talk about this opens up the art of the possible, I think. So I wish this was around, 20 years ago when I was first introduced to the whole concept.

Thank you. Real people talking about this. That is real people talking about real experiences that demonstrate this. That is exactly it yes. Thank you.

I was reading the words modern non duality today. And that just really jumped out at me, that it’s not guru satsang kind of non duality that we have to sit but it really is modern non duality. I love that

Okay. Yeah. Modern contemporary examples for our daily lives now. For example, a teaching metaphor, you see the snake and then you realize it’s a rope. These type of analogies are used. It’s great, but snakes and ropes are not part of my daily life that much.

Standing in the kitchen worrying about my presentation tomorrow is very much a part of my life. And then realizing, oh, there is no one to hold a presentation, but the description is not in the sense of, I’m going to explain to you theoretically that I realized that there was no self.

So also Sam Harris’s book, waking up. Yeah, it’s tremendous. But the fun thing is that when you have a modern understanding it opens up all the esoteric texts. Like all of them, all of that feels possible and real rather than you reading about aliens. Like it feels, all of a sudden, this is, oh, this is all actually within the realm of the possible.

And these are not enlightened people who’ve spent, 300 lives meditating. This is just, S. from Sweden in her kitchen with a cookie and it’s complete non dual realization.

Okay. I have the feeling that’s it for today. At least from this side of the zoom unity.

Something that I realized in the last week, just from my very short journey with non duality. It’s just that I’ve been struggling with fear of abandonment for 40 years. And just in the last two weeks, for the first time in my life, I could notice myself going into a spiral of abandonment and down that pathway. And just by bringing myself back to the reality and not going back into the past and the self and all of that, could actually catch myself and not go down that spiral.

And for me, it’s. It’s been an amazing change, I don’t know where it’s coming from, but yeah, it’s just really good for me.

Yeah, wow, I used to call those rabbit holes. It’s like you see the hole and then you notice that like you go down them and before you realize what’s happening you’re way down in the rabbit hole and stuck there and then at a certain point you start seeing the rabbit hole when it shows up and you can just step over it.

Yeah, it’s exactly that.

Yeah, because did it feel like okay that’s not gonna happen anymore?

Yeah no, it’s sort of a more the attachment to the frail point, the storyline of always going with abandonment and realizing that it’s not that realization just comes a lot faster.

So, I hope I made a case for testing these Des, the template, if something comes up for you, so we’ll put the five prompts in the chat. If something comes up for you at some point during this week, think of going to the chat and then see if something arises with the prompts.

Just because I would like to test this week, whether they work or not, and take a note of anything that comes up for you, if you say this throws me, or I just get totally blocked when I read this word, or I don’t know where this is going, or I would have liked prompt five before prompt three. Whatever comes up for you about the process, please write that down. And then we will talk about that next week and maybe create a better version.

The five prompts:

1. Recall a specific moment in your life when you felt heavily burdened by your sense of self. Where were you, and what was happening around you?

2. What personal struggle or expectation were you grappling with? How was the idea of being a ‘someone’ creating conflict or suffering for you?

3. Describe an unexpected event, insight, or encounter that challenged your notion of being a separate self. What made this moment stand out?

4. What was your immediate internal reaction to this shift? How did it feel to have your familiar sense of self suddenly questioned or shaken?

5. How did this experience ultimately reveal a sense of joy and freedom? What changed in your understanding of yourself and your life once you glimpsed the illusion of being a ‘someone’?