flâneur

Last year my mind exploded and now I'm in spiritual puberty again

sashachapin.substack.com · 3,214 words · saved by 1 readers

Over 16 years of on-and-off spiritual and therapeutic practice, I’ve experienced a series of shocking changes, especially in the last five years. Stuff I thought you couldn’t change about a mind has been profoundly altered. For example, the perceived boundary between me and the world dropped away, my heart opened up, and my sense of identity shifted from feeling like a heavy burden to a deliciously insubstantial waveform. It’s been an unbelievable gift, and I’ve chronicled much of it in public writing. After the last huge shift, in 2023, which I’d describe as “getting the cosmic joke,” I, naively, thought I’d been through all of the big watershed moments. Instead, last year, everything I knew was shattered. The life I once lived is very distant to me now, even though the superficial features are similar. It happened during a pretty normal period in meditation practice. In late winter 2024, I noticed that I wasn’t living up to my stated policy of trying to accept every emotion passing t

Over 16 years of on-and-off spiritual and therapeutic practice, I’ve experienced a series of shocking changes, especially in the last five years. Stuff I thought you couldn’t change about a mind has been profoundly altered. For example, the perceived boundary between me and the world dropped away, my heart opened up, and my sense of identity shifted from feeling like a heavy burden to a deliciously insubstantial waveform. It’s been an unbelievable gift, and I’ve chronicled much of it in public writing. After the last huge shift, in 2023, which I’d describe as “getting the cosmic joke,” I,…

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