also, if i can find a ferry service that links to jaffna peninsula, i may visit northern sri lanka before going back to kathmandu

On Sat, Jul 9, 2022 at 12:01 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

I’m in. Loving the updates.?

415-609-5938

On Sat, Jul 9, 2022 at 6:00 AM Todd Rhoads <todd@...> wrote:

Hey yeah I have WhatsApp, under my cell 858 344 9227

If any of you'all don't have WhatsApp i reccomend it, for free international or even just communicating to internationals you know as many of them use, and also for wifi usage when don't have good cellular service, also it solves the Android-iPhone issues that pop up?

On Sat, Jul 9, 2022, 3:31 AM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

Hey yeah I have WhatsApp, under my cell 858 344 9227

If any of you'all don't have WhatsApp i reccomend it, for free international or even just communicating to internationals you know as many of them use, and also for wifi usage when don't have good cellular service, also it solves the Android-iPhone issues that pop up?

On Sat, Jul 9, 2022, 3:31 AM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

so, a question for all in the circle: do you have whatsapp accounts, and, if so, would you be interested in opening a group message thread? ?my main reason for asking is i have lots and lots of photos and videos but there seems to be complications sending them through this particular groups feature. if any of you is interested, you can send me your whatsapp contact numbers and i can make the group. i refuse to do it unless everyone is on board. ?no, i don't actually mean that; in fact i would be surprised if everyone participated

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:22 PM David E. Ford Jr. via <ottoemezz=[email protected]> wrote:

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

so, the advice i would?give?for useful practices now (more and more i tend to avoid the word "spiritual" because it implies a dualism, spiritual/material, that i think does not exist) would be no different than the advice i would have given before i came out here this time, which is to start a daily meditation practice. this is where all of this began for me and it continues to be the most consequential change i have ever made in my life. i started meditating more or less exactly three years ago, summer 2019, because at the time i was experiencing a real issue with anger responses. when i started back then i picked up a book (in my case i got the audiobook) called the mind illuminated, by an american neuroscientist and buddhist practitioner named john yates. buy a book or don't buy a book, the basic technique that i used to begin with was simply watching the breath. so, for 45 minutes every morning before i did literally anything else, i sat on a cushion in the so called lotus position, which isn't necessary, but i find it useful because it provides good bodily stability and helps to keep the back straight, which seems to be a critical thing, and i focused on the physical sensation of breath entering and exiting my nose. breathing normally, and calmly through my nose. from time to time (very very frequently at first) my mind would begin to wander. as soon as you notice that happening, just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the inbreath and outbreath. when i started i kept my eyes closed during meditation, which was helpful because it reduces the potential for distractions, though now i do so with my eyes open. find the way that works best for you and do that. when i started, i made a commitment of one year, i would do it every day for one year and if by that time i didn't notice any improvement it seemed i could safely discard the practice. but it only took maybe a week or so before i started noticing profound changes. seriously, at the beginning, the impact is profound, and this can be a problem for some people because that profundity starts to go away and it starts to seem very everyday. that's actually a good thing, but as humans we tend to gravitate toward the extraordinary and we want to cultivate that and preserve that. so my advice is try not to have any expectations and definitely resist the impulse to seek out extraordinary experiences, because that in itself is a kind of a trap.?

here's what meditation did for me (and i think there are many others who will say something similar): by sitting with my mind and avoiding distractions, i began to have an understanding of how my mind works. the thing that i always suspected, but now i know with remarkable certainty, is that our commonsense understanding about who and what we are and what our minds are and how they work is not really correct. thoughts are a real tough nut because we habitually think of thoughts as something we do, like we are in control of them or make them happen, which isn't actually true. thoughts come to us the same way sensory stimuli come to us and then we can use those to help us to understand what is happening and how to respond, but we don't make them. they come and nobody can actually say where they come from and, just like some particular sensory stimulus, like a bird flying past our view, we can choose to give them importance or not, based on the other information we have about the world we have before us at any given moment. we tend to privilege thoughts and give them much more significance than they deserve, and this is a trap that most of us fall into from time to time (or all the time as the case may be). think of a question like "how do i make these terrible, unwanted thoughts go away?" the fact that this is a pretty common question people have might be enough to show you that we don't control this stuff. ?like, we all have thoughts, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes we have thoughts that we wouldn't share with anyone because we think that they reflect poorly on us, like noticing a beautiful adolescent girl and feeling sexual feelings in response. that shit just happens, and we don't need to give it any importance and we certainly don't need to act on them or stick to them or entertain them. that's the choice we have, not what thoughts we have, but what we do with them.?

i've got fucking so much more to say, obviously, but i think just addressing that basic question is enough for now. to give you an update on where i am and what i'm doing: early monday morning (5:40) i caught a train in delhi that, after 52 hours, brought me to the far southwestern indian state of kerala. this is an extremely special place and one i visited when my friend andy and i traveled to india in late-2019/early-2020. i am in a small village in the mountains (western ghats) called neriamangalam. kerala is basically a jungle state, with rain forest covered mountains that is lush and green and wet as hell. it is also monsoon time so that wet is about as wet a place as i've ever experienced. i came back here not just because the place is beautiful but because when we were here two and half years ago we met this local guy called ebrahim. ebrahim, who is muslim, obviously, is one of the most special people i have ever known and i can say with sincerity that i've learned as much from knowing him as i have from reading the books written by the tibetan lama who is kind of my personal favorite. he is from a very humble family whose main source of income is a small vegetables shop in the village. i think probably i will have more to say about ebrahim and why he is so special to me and why this place is so special to me, but for now i will just say that today is friday, so it is the holy day for muslims. after ebrahim went to the masjid with his father and brothers, he came to pick me up at my hotel and took me to his home for the first time since he brought us there back in 2020 and his mother and grandmother had made a special meal in my honor and fuck if it wasn't without a doubt the most exquisite meal i've had during this entire time.

okay, i will end this now but as i say there is much much more to tell. but i guess the main thing i would say is that call my travels spiritual or not, think about it how you will, but i think it's important to say that everything i have learned here i didn't learn here because it is india. i could learn the same things if i went back to georgia, for example, or just traveled anywhere else outside of my comfort zone and therefore was forced to rely on people from a very foreign culture to help me and teach me along the way. ?india is special, but not in the way that many people think it is. it is special in the way that every place is special, including springdale, or bowie or san diego or venezuela or israel or burkina faso or even russia or china, which tend to be the big bogeymen for people like us right now.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Joe Steinberger <joe@...> wrote:

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

Dave, please continue to keep us posted on your spiritual journey… and if perchance you have suggestions, practices, exercises that you recommend for us laymen, please share.?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 1:20 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

i nursed a powerful crush on ss throughout my 20s and i continue to find her very funny and smart and she seems to be one of the relatively honorable well known entertainers out there . . . not at all mad about this observation

On Jul 6, 2022, at 17:07, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I am driving with my mother cross country now.....will be in Houston in 4 hours

Finally listening to The Last Laugh podcast...various comedians I like.

And I noticed that when you listen to this one particular comedian, there are definite similarities between the way she talks and the way David Ford does.

And that comedian's name is Sarah Silverman

i know bb i'm only teasing you because you are by far the most nostalgic person in my experience?

On Jun 22, 2022, at 23:06, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

I'm not a magician. I truly woke up from that dream and had those feelings and memories and wanted to share them

On Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 12:33 PM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

acha acha . . . i still think you're doing some misdirection.?

On Jun 22, 2022, at 22:48, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

No the real thing that happened was ..Eric and I talked about 25 years ago stuff last year and I forgot to tell you how I discovered how nostalgic he is

On Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 11:51 AM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

to be sure i understand what's happening here, your evidence for blooms nostalgia comes from a dream you had?

all i know for sure is that eric is the kindest hearted person with whom i've ever gotten simultaneous handjobs with?

On Jun 22, 2022, at 15:27, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

Out of all of us... Every member of Dannysic. I never knew until a year ago and just remembered to share with all of you that the most nostalgic person of all of us is....

Eric Bloom

I thought it was just now because I woke up from a dream and in the dream I Zoomed with Eric before I went to bed. And he has such a sweet soul. Like Zooming with Paul Rudd. And it was a little gay.?

About the nostalgia Eric showed me some things he has saved from college. SketchUp related. One of them was a speech that he was excited to show me because I wrote it. And as I looked at it he described the whole event to me. I knew that I was never at that event and I never wrote it. We decided it was Christian who wrote it. Or somebody else.?

Maybe he doesn't have the best memory. But the point of this is that Eric has the kindest heart of all of us as far as I know. Nostalgic. Emo.?

acha acha . . . i still think you're doing some misdirection.?

On Jun 22, 2022, at 22:48, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

No the real thing that happened was ..Eric and I talked about 25 years ago stuff last year and I forgot to tell you how I discovered how nostalgic he is

On Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 11:51 AM David E. Ford Jr. <ottoemezz@...> wrote:

to be sure i understand what's happening here, your evidence for blooms nostalgia comes from a dream you had?

all i know for sure is that eric is the kindest hearted person with whom i've ever gotten simultaneous handjobs with?

On Jun 22, 2022, at 15:27, Dan Buck <vertpurple@...> wrote:

?

Out of all of us... Every member of Dannysic. I never knew until a year ago and just remembered to share with all of you that the most nostalgic person of all of us is....

Eric Bloom

I thought it was just now because I woke up from a dream and in the dream I Zoomed with Eric before I went to bed. And he has such a sweet soul. Like Zooming with Paul Rudd. And it was a little gay.?

About the nostalgia Eric showed me some things he has saved from college. SketchUp related. One of them was a speech that he was excited to show me because I wrote it. And as I looked at it he described the whole event to me. I knew that I was never at that event and I never wrote it. We decided it was Christian who wrote it. Or somebody else.?

Maybe he doesn't have the best memory. But the point of this is that Eric has the kindest heart of all of us as far as I know. Nostalgic. Emo.?