The Psychology of People Who Don't Care About Professiona...

People who don't obsess over sports often have what psychologists call lower tribal instincts. Their identity isn't as strongly tied to being part of a group. They're more individualistic. They're more likely to say, "I don't need to belong to something bigger to feel complete." And there's actual research on this. A 2019 study found that people with low sports interest showed way less us versus them thinking. translation, they don't automatically hate the other team just because they're not ...

 Rigidness is a Symptom of Death

As Lao-tzu put it two thousand years ago: Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death he is rigid and hard. Plants when young are sinuous and moist, but when old are brittle and dry. Thus suppleness and tenderness are signs of life, While rigidity and hardness are signs of death.

 Every Brain Plays Its Own World

All knowledge, all experience could be said to be a neural situation inside the skull, and the brain is not merely a receiver and recorder of input through the senses: it also has output because the way in which it structures its senses and nerve patterns shapes the input in the same way that a harpist, by selective plucking, brings formal melody out of a row of uniformly scaled and otherwise silent strings. Thus the brain evokes the sensible world by sounding the strings of all those vibrati...

 How the Tarot Works

The Tarot is where the past and the present meet, where pictures and stories come together—that is how it works its magic. We tell stories about our lives constantly—both to other people and ourselves. Just remembering what happened last night or talking about your day involve storytelling. What's more difficult is understanding what is going on below the surface of these stories. One of the most difficult things any of us can do is to get a perspective on our lives from outside of our co...

 Mindfulness to Avoid Attachment

...if you meet someone you feel strong desire toward, you can try to remember someone you were extremely attracted to in the past where that attraction turned into something unpleasant or painful. Think about all the problems that came from your excessive feelings of desire and then think that other sentient beings may have gone through a similar experience as a result of their obsession. Imagine you are absorbing all their pain, relieving them of their anguish. Then make the following mental...

 The Scientific Method Produces General Principles by Whic...

Just as the first means by which science reduces the danger of error is the continual comparison of ideas and concepts, the second is the formulation of general principles by means of which we can understand cause-and-effect or sequential relationships among events. The function of a general principle or scientific law is twofold; to organize discrete objects and events in systematic order so that we can deal with them more effectively and exercise greater control over them; and to provide a ...

 Observation Provides Data on Problems, but Cannot Solve Them

A good illustration of the scientific method, in which observations are made for the purpose of identifying difficulties and analyzing situations, is the procedure followed by a physician when he makes a diagnosis. A doctor does not write a prescription solely on the basis of what his patient tells him; he uses instruments to take the patient’s temperature to examine his feces, and to analyze his urine. It is only after he has made these examinations that he writes his prescription; without...

 Rabbit-Holing Responsible for Some Divorces

“We really expect our romantic partners to have this shared reality — a similar view or understanding of the world to ours,” Van Duyn said. “It is much more important in romantic relationships than in other types of relationships because we are more dependent and interwoven in our day-to-day lives with our partners. Scholars have found that this shared sense of reality is really important for the success and happiness of romantic partnerships because it fosters closeness.” Partners...

 Releasing the Cramp in the Mind

One method of muscular relaxation is to begin by increasing tension in the muscles so as to have a clear feeling of what not to do.15 In this sense there is some point in using the initial koan as a means of intensifying the mind's absurd effort to grasp itself. But to identify satori with the consequent feeling of relief, with the sense of relaxation, is quite misleading, for the satori is the letting go and not the feeling of it. The conscious aspect of the Zen life is not, therefore, sator...