this state is vivid centeredness, wherein one is fully within their body, their spirit balanced, and hence able to channel the transcendent directly; while possible to enter intentionally through these practice, one can also live their life in such a way they naturally emerge
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RT @nickcammarata
Even just random bits of the ground sparkle and come to life
https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1477036765944844288

I find myself in this state often when my life is going well, when I've got my shit together and everything feels Right; a simple walk around the neighborhood becomes a veritable font of inspiration. I see beauty everywhere I look, absolutely churning out the photos of Quality

Quality is a characteristic systems can possess, an ineffable je ne sais quoi setting them apart. While typically treated like obscenity ("I know it when I see it") many have tried to pin it down, most notoriously Pirsig in the infamous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

one of my favorite books, it follows a technical writer embarking on a motorcycle journey through the backroads of America with his troubled son, both as a bonding exercise and to find some way to help him; rife with unreliable narrator tropes, as the father himself is unwell

this man is obsessed with the question of Quality, what it is, how to define it, how to systematize its identification; without giving too much away, this search drives him quite mad

I've undergone a similar journey myself, a sort of There and Back Again of the spirit

I encountered this book at a pivotal time in my life, when I had dropped out of college & was wandering the spiritual & epistemic wilds, trying to make sense of my experiences & the patterns I saw in the world; I deeply felt that I was onto something, but struggled to quantify it

this book served as both a warning sign and a handbook, cautioning me against the protagonists fate, while also handing me the concepts I needed to grapple with these difficult questions; not an exaggeration to say it was lifechanging.

his followup, Lila, helped systematize this

that sequel was more sober & dry, less a frenetic hero's journey & more a methodical contemplation of the same ideas; it was the chaser to the former's shot. together these two books shaped the way I think about transcendence & its mundane manifestation

but seeing it is not easy

to see Quality in the world requires one to be atypical in some way, bimodally; either deeply disturbed & far off the beaten path of sanity, or highly centered and in tune with the world-spirit. i highly recommend the latter, altho many take a journey thru the former to get there

the ability to channel the transcendent is vividness, and the ability to not get swept away by it is centeredness; should one want to burn bright but not be destroyed in the process, both are necessary.

many have one or the other, but much fewer are able to access both