Daily Insight

  • |

    #46 Feigned feelings

    ByLukas

    feigned feelings lead to forced forging
    of a bond, brittle, easily broken

    but when i learn to listen
    to the winds whirling within
    stop seeing them as a sin

    when i hold them back no more
    forceful feelings finally roar
    revealing a hidden song
    sung secretly for so long

    my true self set free
    softly I breathe
    my melody into your mind
    feelings mingle, sometimes grind
    leaving the shyness far behind

    and hearing our songs entwined
    I am no longer blind
    to the insight
    that we’ve been singing the same song
    of a wordless world where we all belong

    at last I feel strong
    for we were always one
    blessed by a bond
    that can’t be undone

    Lukas Van Vyve
  • | |

    #45 The tragedy of the spoken word

    ByLukas

    Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.

    Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.

    Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.

    But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.

    How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?

    How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?

    there’s an eternal song
    drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
    a wordless melody that once made sense
    until our brain started blurring it with a lens
    narrowing it down
    neglecting its nuances through verbs and nouns

    with all its might language wants us to abide
    but the wordless world it tries to hide
    will forever be inside

    Lukas Van Vyve
  • | |

    #44 Choices

    ByLukas

    I can write today, resent myself for not writing… or stop caring at all about writing.

    I can publish a blog post today, resent myself for not posting, or stop caring at all about blog posts.

    Taking action on something I care about is a valid choice.

    Stopping to care about taking a certain action is an equally valid choice.

    Resenting myself for not taking an action I care about… that’s a choice for self-torture.

    Put your actions where your mouth is.

  • | | |

    #43 Quick-Start Guide to Stream of Consciousness Journaling (Morning Pages)

    ByLukas

    On 1. January 2021, I started writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling a day. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s 663 days in a row: an inner dialogues of 1989 pages poured in to piles of journals.

    Stream-of-consciousness journaling is also often called Morning Pages (a term coined by Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way“).

    The idea is that you wake up in the morning and before you do anything else, take a journal and pen, and you start externalizing the voice talking to yourself in your head on the page.

    You don’t stop to think about perfect phrasing (your inner voice never stops talking, either). In fact, you don’t lift your pen off the paper at all until you’ve filled 3 pages.

    Shopping lists, to-dos, dreams, interactions, worries, fears, excitement, goals, friends, family, memories, ideas, goals,… whatever’s on your mind.

    No poetry, no perfect prose, no structured sentences, no coherent insights – unless that’s what flows out of you.

    No judgment either. You never even have to read this back.

    Nothing but pure, unfiltered stream of consciousness.

    This simple practice has transformed me.

    Why write Morning Pages?

    • The feeling of liberation once you’re able to relax your mind and channel your stream of consciousness. Like an athlete “in the zone”, your mind becomes one with the pen in your hand, and words flow from your head and heart onto the paper. Once you get it, writing 3 pages becomes easy – after all, your inner voice never shuts up.
    • Intentionality. When I write them by hand, it seems to slow me down just enough to get in the zone, calm my racing thoughts and think more slowly and deliberately.
    • Creative breakthroughs. You start by writing down everything on your mind in an unfiltered way, free of judgment and stress. Then, you start “sculpting away, day by day.
    • Externalizing thought patterns, loops, destructive self-talk. Once they’re on the page, it’s hard to ignore the way you speak to yourself.
    • Recognize recurring patterns and topics that come back over and over again.

    Tips for success:

    • Write 3 pages today. Not more, not less. But do it today. Cut yourself off when you reach 3 pages. Today. Repeat tomorrow.
    • Don’t read your notes back. Don’t show them to anyone. You want this to be pure, raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness. This is not publication material, this is a representation of your messy internal dialogue.
    • If you have a creative breakthrough or interesting idea while writing your Morning Pages, keep writing until the 3 pages are full; then make a separate note about the idea or insight you had.
    • See it as a huge unpolished pile of thoughts with interesting connections; then use that to uncover interesting connections, good ideas that you can further develop. Good ideas and insights will be buried in a sea of fluff – and that’s fine. Volume matters. (again, sculpting away, day by day)
    • Julia Cameron suggests writing your Morning Pages right after you get out of bed – before your ego wakes up.

    Or don’t do any of the above and just write.

    Write first thing tomorrow morning.

    Don’t overthink it, just write.

    Don’t read it back, just write.

    Don’t worry about grammar, just write.

    Then when you’re done, write some more.

  • |

    #41 Unaligned agendas

    ByLukas

    Benefit and harm all depend on your perspective. The futurist John Smart suggests looking at phenomena, trends, and events through four different lenses (the “Foresight Tetrad“):

    • Personal
    • Organizational (=collective)
    • Global
    • Universal

    Every level has its own agenda, but their interests are rarely fully aligned.

    For example: for evolution and natural selection to work, a life form must have a reasonably short lifespan, reproduce quickly, and most importantly, not clone their DNA perfectly. Because small genetic reproduction errors help a species evolve and become better adapted to our environment.

    Sn an organizational/collective level (taking all of humanity together) those genetic errors are a good thing. In fact, without them, human beings in our current brain, with our current intelligence, wouldn’t even exist. Not at a species level, and not at an individual level.

    But to stumble upon a couple of beneficial “genetic errors”, evolution also needs tons of harmful genetic errors.

    That means that every newborn runs the risk of genetic errors that can cause medical conditions, pain, and suffering – on an individual level.

    We suffer individually to evolve collectively.

    Another example: in our quest to improve the condition of humanity as a whole (at the organizational/collective level), we’re harming other species and change the climate (at a global level).

    Ignoring the principles the universe and the earth as an ecosystem might well lead to collapse of that ecosystem – and result in the collapse of humanity.

    The universe has an agenda.
    Natural selection has an agenda.
    The global earth has an agenda.
    Humanity as a whole has an agenda.
    Individuals have an agenda.

    We can’t afford to ignore any.

  • |

    #40 Pushing a destructive frontier

    ByLukas

    5 billion years ago, our solar system didn’t exist in its current form – but the laws of our universe already held the promise that one day, an earth like ours would revolve around a sun.

    That earth has been revolving around the sun long before any human started observing planetary orbits and realized we’re not the center of the universe.

    Animals, plants, mountains and oceans have instinctively dealt with the law of gravity long before an apple fell on Newton’s head.

    Energy and mass have been two sides of the same coind long before Einstein proposed a formula for mass-energy equivalence (E = mc²).

    Knowledge: invented or discovered?

    More importantly: what do we do with all that knowledge – and the power it give us?

    100 years ago, nuclear weapons didn’t exist yet – but the atomic building blocks and reactions making it possible have always been hidden inside the earth and the universe.

    50 years ago, the internet wasn’t “invented” yet – but the concept of an internet has always been possible.

    Today, general artificial intelligence don’t exist yet. Yet it seems that the laws of the universe have always made developing artificial life a possibility – even if it means biological life becomes obsolete.

    Do we pursue power
    persistently pushing the frontier
    even if we run the risk
    that we destroy everything we hold dear?

    Lukas Van Vyve
  • | |

    #39 Knowledge transfer and time collapse

    ByLukas

    Knowledge transfer always implies time collapse. Because learning an insight from someone else usually takes less long than figuring it out yourself.

    Take books. The writer usually spent considerable time researching and distilling the topic and coming to good insights (time I might not be able to dedicate).

    Thanks to that writer, I can now consume that knowledge in, say 6-12 hours of reading the book. A considerable time collapse…

    But when does time collapse go to far?

    Can I read a 1-page summary of that book and truly say I grasp the topic?

    When your brain gets space to breathe, knowledge grows and nuance shows. It needs time and repeated exposure to absorb information, make connections, and discover new insights.

    So a one-page summary isn’t necessarily too shallow… On the contrary: it collapses time so much that information becomes very dense.

    What with the evolution towards short-form online content? The primary purpose of TikTok videos and Instagram reels might be to entertain, but the trend is clear and spills over into education, our attention span, and knowledge transfer: shorter, more shallow, yet more dense.

    Too little time collapse and we can’t make progress.
    Too much time collapse and knowledge collapses with it.

  • |

    #38 Regret, worry, forget

    ByLukas

    We regret the past, worry about the future, and forget about the now.

    What if I:

    • learn from and let go of the past
    • create an empowering vision of the future, informed by your imagination AND lessons of the past
    • act in the now, confident that every action you take brings you closer towards that vision

    To let go of the past:

    • Write Morning Pages – Stream of Consciousness journaling
    • Did I give it my all? Whether my actions were aligned or misguided, did I go for it 100%?
    • Did I allow myself to learn something and see the silver lining?

    To create a future with fewer worries:

    To be in the moment:

    • Write Morning Pages – Stream of Consciousness journaling
    • Breathe
    • Walk in nature
    • Create something
    • Talk… and listen

    The constant: write Morning Pages.

  • #37 The time you’re living anyway

    ByLukas

    Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano?

    Answer: The same age you will be if you don’t.

    Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

    Some skills take years of practice before I’m any good at them. But I’m living those years anyway. And while society and systemic pressure might push me down a certain path, I still have a say in how I spend every day.

    Whether I publish a blog post today or not, I’ll go to bed tonight and the sun will still come up tomorrow.

    Whether I write every day in the coming 10 years or not, in 10 years I’ll still turn 40.

    The only difference: will I feel that my actions were aligned with who I want to be? Or will I feel regret instead?

    Some aspirations are worth the time you’re living anyway.

  • #36 Life isn’t better when you’re a bad forgetter

    ByLukas

    Perfect recall is paralyzing.

    Not everything is worth remembering.

    And life isn’t better when you’re a bad forgetter.

    Maybe life becomes easier to navigate if we remember the fact that we’ll always make mistakes – and the lessons we learn from them – yet forget (forgive) the specific slip-ups we and others make.

End of content

End of content