si dawson

Escaping From Escapism

I've been thinking about escapism for a while now. What is escapism? Essentially, anything that takes us away from being fully present. So, this would include: Watching TV/movies (a personal favourite) Booze (ditto) Sex (can be — depending on context) Food (any emotional altering food — carbs to dampen, sugars to elevate, etc) Daydreaming Worrying (ie, …

May 1, 2011 | | Posted in healing | Comments (7)

Dissociating From Subconscious Impulses

One of the trickiest thing with healing (read: improving our lives) is that so much of what affects us happens below our level of consciousness. We are, indeed, icebergs. So, while intellectually we know things to be true: we want to be happy, loving, at peace; in reality our lives are often far different. The …

April 26, 2011 | | Posted in healing, self-improvement | Comments (0)

How To Love Your Life

I've been giving quite a lot of thought to the saying "What you resist persists" (variously attributed to either Carl Jung, or Werner Erhard). The logic of this is reasonably straight forward. Our brains don't understand negatives particularly well. This is why when you drive a car, you look where you want to go, not …

April 17, 2011 | | Posted in healing, life, self-improvement | Comments (8)

Rebecca Black vs The Internet

In case you weren't paying attention (or were distracted by, I don't know, important things) Rebecca Black has become something of an internet sensation. The short story: Rebecca Black's mother paid a company $4000 to produce a music video for 13 year old Rebecca, which was then released on Feb 10 2011. It received a …

April 7, 2011 | | Posted in fun | Comments (0)

How To End Procrastination Forever

I had a realisation about procrastination that I just had to share. In essence, procrastination is the end result of us having an aversion (or several) to the task at hand. If you let go of all of those aversions, well, there'll be nothing to stop you doing it, right? Ok, so there are several ways to …

March 30, 2011 | | Posted in life, self-improvement | Comments (6)

My Beautiful Dojo

I thought I'd share where I train Aikido four days a week. It's one of the most beautiful spots I know of in Melbourne. This was taken in the middle of the day, so normally when we train there's a lot more shade than this. Given that it hits 45degC (113F) here, training in the …

March 15, 2011 | | Posted in life | Comments (5)

TV Is Heroin Crossed With Hypnosis

I haven't owned a TV in almost 20 years. I don't miss it at all. Note that I didn't say I don't watch TV. I and everyone I know does. TV is everywhere these days: your phone; the internet; public spaces; download & watch it on your computer. The only real changes are the increased ease of …

March 13, 2011 | | Posted in life, self-improvement | Comments (9)

Are You Using The Internet, Or Is The Internet Using You?

I've been giving my internet use a bit of thought recently. I realised (wild generalisation alert!), there are two primary ways I use the internet: To waste time To find information and, of course, a few secondary ways: To build, create, produce, expand (eg, write a blog post, build a business, send love to people) To …

March 11, 2011 | | Posted in communication, geek, life, self-improvement | Comments (3)

My Life's Purpose: Loving Through Service

In Oct 2009, I started Twit Cleaner. This business has been through some ups & downs, but over the last year or so I noticed myself disconnecting almost completely. I'd lost all motivation for it, and for life in general. I've kept working, of course, but my heart just hasn't been in it. I knew (some …

February 25, 2011 | | Posted in life, self-improvement | Comments (8)

Living Off The Grid

The other night I went to hang out with a friend's dad who has lived off the grid for 20 years. I first started hearing about this sort of thing in detail shortly before the Y2K debacle. Lots of tech guys who knew way too much got super convinced that the end of the world was …

September 7, 2010 | | Posted in home, life | Comments (9)