Turn attention upon itself by looking for the seat of attention, the self, or the thinker of thoughts. This inspects the default sense of being a subject separate from experience and helps recognize the illusion of self.
Look for your head in your visual field, as if you don’t see it where it’s supposed to be, only the world. This helps recognize the openness of experience and that there is no center to it, revealing the illusion of self.
View people, even those you strongly disagree with, as helplessly acting out prior causes and conditions, like forces of nature, rather than malicious agents. This serves as a direct antidote to hatred, as hatred makes no sense for a force of nature.
Cultivate an inner voice that acts as a wise, compassionate best friend, consistently giving good advice and guiding you to solve problems effectively. This helps you treat yourself with the same care you would a friend, rather than making problems more excruciating.
Practice mindfulness to break the spell of identification with thoughts, recognizing them as mere appearances in consciousness. This helps you wake up from the ‘dream’ of being lost in thought and gain psychological freedom.
Treat ordinary glitches and annoyances in life as mindfulness bells, making them salient opportunities to pay attention more reliably. This helps you avoid getting lost in dualistic reactivity to minor frustrations, which often consume more daily attention than major crises.
Consistently notice the impermanence of all phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, and sensations, recognizing that everything arises and passes away. This brings radical freedom and reduces suffering by highlighting the non-negotiable truth that nothing is stable.
Be vigilant in noticing ‘counterfeits to mindfulness,’ where you subtly try to change or push away an experience (e.g., anxiety) while thinking you are being mindful. This covert agenda, rooted in aversion or greed, corrupts the practice and prevents true, non-averse mindfulness.
Ride the feeling of your agency to make good decisions and improve the quality of your life, even if free will is an illusion. This practical approach can lead to a visceral experience of the illusion of self and free will, ultimately leading to greater freedom.
Act on the sound, wise, actionable advice you would give to others or that you know is good for yourself. Most of the time, we know exactly what’s beneficial, and following this advice leads to material improvement and avoids regret.
Use stoic reframing by recognizing how much worse things could be or could have been in the moment. This helps you reset your perspective and feel better about current problems by comparing them to adjacently possible, more dire alternatives.
Cultivate non-attachment to material possessions and the time and attention invested in them. This helps avoid suffering when they are threatened or lost, as everything is impermanent and subject to entropy.
Practice mindfulness of your emotions, allowing fear, anger, and frustration to come without compulsively re-upping them. This allows emotions to pass naturally, enabling better decision-making on the other side.
Practice walking meditation with eyes open, asking ‘what is knowing all of this?’ or ‘who is even asking this question?’. The visual input can make the shift from duality to non-duality more vivid and help recognize the ‘yawning chasm of knowing’ without a self.
During walking meditation or as a passenger in a car, toggle between the sensation of moving through space and the sensation of the world moving toward you. This practice helps pass through the ‘fulcrum of non-dual insight’ and recognize the absence of a fixed self.
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