Just Fucking Send It
Hey beautiful people,
I hope you are well. :)
FUN day at The Stoa tomorrow!
Praxis to Collective Wisdom: Presence, Warm Data, and Insight w/ Bonnitta Roy, Nora Bateson, and Ria Baeck. August 27th @ 12:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Bio-Emotive Framework: Live Emotional Processing w/ Doug Tataryn. August 27, 2020. 2:15 PM ET. RSVP here. 30 mins.
Shame Breakthrough Bootcamp w/ A.J. Bond. Every Thursday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
Newly posted:
Unity 2020 w/ Bret Weinstein. September 21st @ 6:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
***
August 26, 2020
I am outside writing this. It is brisk. It feels like a fall morning already and I have that feeling I used to get during the beginning of a University semester. Those times were awesome. You get to start wearing stylish fall clothes while meeting interesting new people and sipping on lattes while reading interesting new books.
My buddy Ari Delashmutt has just supported me via Patreon, and I received this message from him: Things seem to be coming together for me, and I think of you as a crazy inspiration for me. You just fucking sent it, full speed, zero knowing and a big smile. Proud of you. Thanks Peter, keep crushing. Tons of love.
I just fucking sent it. Yeah. I was at full speed. With no knowing, or goals, or mind. My smile was big and I was always horny, while feeling wild with a delicious possibility. That describes my experience from April to June. The months of July and August were different. I was experiencing the summer doldrums, and my motivation was not fast coming. My thumos was inconsistent and the daemon was playing hard to get.
I was wrestling with feelings of inadequacies and patheticness. Some of which I alluded to here, others I kept close to myself. When I was not journaling here, I was privately journaling to myself. Those private entries were too raw, too naked, too ugly. I could not release those. I want to be pretty in front of you. The spiritual striptease had to stop.
The thing you avoid, the thing that really is painful to face, will find its way to you. I had an empire of habits to protect me from this thing, but that empire came crashing down, and it was here, with me, feeling like a massive weight crushing my chest.
This thing got lifted though, and it happened on Sunday, during a private journal session. I did some propositional aikido and I sense I came to terms with it. I feel more myself now, which does not feel good exactly, nor does it feel bad. I could go into more detail, but the way I understand myself to myself is too bespoke, and it is good to keep some mystery.
I sense the pressure I was putting on myself about entering the normie work world was not coming from a place of sovereign reasoning. It was coming from reasoning that was running away from shame. I may still return to that type of work but the workload of The Stoa has become the equivalent of a full-time job, and it needs me to do the work to keep it alive.
The Metamodern Stoicism event with Daniel Schmachtenberger on Monday was really special. Around 150 people were in the Zoom room, the chat box was lit, and the questions were on point. Somebody in the chats said: this session really feels like the Stoa.
The Stoa is not just a website, a Zoom room, or a series of events. It is also a concept that points to a type of place. The Stoa Poikile, or “Painted Porch”, was the place where the original Stoics hung out and it was not a place designed to talk about Stoicism. From the American School of Classical Studies website:
The stoa, unlike many of the buildings of the Agora, was a true public building, with no one official, group, or function claiming priority for its use. It was built and used as a popular hangout, and as such attracted huge crowds and those whose business required an audience: jugglers, sword-swallowers, beggars, and fire-eaters. Among those who plied their trade in the building were the philosophers of Athens, in particular Zeno, who came to Athens from Cyprus in ca. 300 B.C. and so preferred the Painted Stoa as his classroom that he and his followers became known as the Stoics.
The Stoa is a public space, where people come and go. No official group, or any memetic tribe roaming in the noosphere, claims ownership.
Daniel really enjoyed himself on Monday. He is coming back next Monday to do a session on his “Dharma Inquiry” questions. He also agreed to be a part of the “Sensemaker in Residence” series at The Stoa. This series will be called “The Digital Porch,” which will be in the spirit of the original Stoa.
The next two months The Stoa is going to be pretty awesome. We have a wide variety of guests visiting. People will be giving talks and delivering workshops on the following: Wadley Maps, Street Epistemology, Applied Complexity, Bioenergetics, the Alexander Technique, etc.
Many thinkers have agreed to come as well. Anges Callard and Bayo Akomolafe have just agreed, which I am really stoked for. Noam Chomsky may visit in the fall, and even Aleksandr Dugin, the most dangerous philosopher in the world, has tentatively agreed to visit. That visit might get me in trouble, but what is an adventure without trouble?
This is not up to me anymore. This place wants to come into existence, with or without me. I have gotten out of the way, by getting out of my own way.
***
The Stoa has hosted over 300+ free events since the pandemic started, and it will continue to do so, but it could use your support to continue to do so with quality and integrity. Support The Stoa @ https://www.patreon.com/the_stoa