Amphion built the walls of Thebes with a lyre. His brother Zethus hauled stone on his back; Amphion walked ahead and played, and the stones followed the music into place like magic. A city is something you can sing into order. To spell a word and to cast a spell come from one root, the old word for story. A story does work on the world. The work cuts both ways. Take the beauty out of order and you get glamour: the word is grammar without the beauty, sister to grimoire, the book of spells that coerce. Plato put manipulative speech in that same family, cosmetics, adornment impersonating order. He also said the soul is cured by charms, and charms are beautiful words. Be measured. Be beautiful with your words. Build, don't coerce.

Trying out @Nostrich store front for the first time and this is super cool!

When one fasts, especially in the modern age, it is a practice of learning to not follow the impulses of the mind. With our modern fridges, it is so easy to open one up and indulge, to satisfy the feelings of hunger. The practice of fasting teaches one to be aware of the mind, yet to pursue discipline in resisting the urges, so that one forms a different relationship with the mind. One thing we all indulge in constantly is our thinking mind itself. Our modern society glorifies it, and indeed it was built because of our ability to perform logic and reason. However, all things require balance, and it is important that we also practice mindfulness: to have a single pointed awareness of the present moment, our body and our breath, so that we can calm the mind in the manner where we can hear the true song of our world. Modern technology makes this even harder. Social media and now AI are akin to the refrigerator: they provide us a constant outlet to indulge our mind and to feed our ego. However, the computer, which includes both AI and Bitcoin, can be viewed as a tool that can equally liberate us. For the extent of recorded history, we have been using our intellectual mind to build an ivory tower, this amazing civilization all around us, but the overuse of our mind in this manner is making us sick. AI and Bitcoin can be a means to liberate us from that burden, as they can take the weight of thinking off of our shoulders, to continue to build this ivory tower on our behalf while we return to a more natural way of being. We all are in a kind of prison, and many of us carry it everywhere we go. We can either use technology to free us from it, or it can enslave us more. What will you choose?

Prometheus made us. He stole fire from the gods and gave it to us. That fire is our ability to reason. Reason made us the dominant species on earth. Zeus chained him to a rock for it, and an eagle forever eats his liver. While the punishment seems cruel on the surface, it was wisdom. Zeus knew the fire would sever us from the gods. Every other creature experiences the holy directly. Our thinking clouds us from it. The gift made us powerful. It cost us the divine.

In the ancient Chinese text, the Yijing (《易經》), the first hexagram (gua 卦) is Qian (乾), representing Heaven; the second is Kun (Kun, 坤), representing Earth. In traditional commentaries, the phonetic component 倝 (gàn) has been interpreted to evoke the sun with grass and roots below it, suggesting generative growth under divine light. This connection to vitality is made explicit in the Shuogua zhuan (《說卦傳》, Explaining the Trigrams), which glosses the line: 「乾，健也」, relating Qian to jian (健), meaning vigorous, robust, and healthy. A parallel structure appears in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European pantheon. The divine father is reconstructed as *Dyēus ph₂tḗr, the root that yields both Zeus (Greek Zeus, gen. Dios) and Jupiter (Latin Iuppiter). As the Sky Father, he represents the luminous life-giving realm above, and is paired with the Earth Mother (*Dʰéǵʰōm). Later, Apollo, son of Zeus, becomes identified with the Sun in subsequent Hellenistic tradition and is venerated as the deity of healing, truth, and oracular divination. Across these traditions we see a striking similarity. Sacred teachings in both East and West preserve an apparent understanding of a divine synergy among the sky, the Sun, and the Earth: one that is generative and, most importantly, healing.

By its very nature, the mind's trains of thought are vulnerable to being hijacked by those who seek to manipulate and control. What cannot be hijacked arises from a truth discovered only in the absence of thought.

What happened to us building great cathedrals? What happened to us devoting ourselves to something greater? There does seem to be a spiritual aspect to money.

I wrote this article when reflecting on the work of @Jack K. Hopefully it can stimulate discussion that leads to more peace, civility, harmony, cohesion, and resolution in the Bitcoin community. How many blocks does it take? View article →

Just listened to “The Last Honest Market” Much respect to you @npub1cn4t...3vle