Cipher

people like to say “your thoughts create your reality.” bullshit. it’s not your thoughts that create your reality but your relationship with them. when you learn to consciously observe and judge them, you get to decide which ones become your reality. full guide to meta-cognition below 👇

after 7 months of besieging tyre, with his army exhausted and his generals urging him to move on, alexander the great was ready to give up. that night, he dreamed of a satyr dancing just out of reach. he chased it, and caught it. his seers split the word in two. sa tyros. “tyre is yours.” the next assault broke the walls.

in 1910, rudolf steiner published occult science. one of the foundational techniques in it was “the needle”. sounds like some demonic ritual, but it’s the most trivial exercise ever: focus all your thoughts on a simple object, like a pen or a needle, and let nothing else in. do it before every work block and watch your attention span SKYROCKET in a matter of weeks.

read old books. write by hand. lift heavy. draw what you see. walk without headphones. learn one instrument badly. study one great man at a time. sit in silence before deciding. sleep before midnight. train the body, the mind and the spirit. become IMPOSSIBLE to put in a box.

the first law of hermetic philosophy is the one everyone uses daily without knowing it. everything you’ve ever bought, built or become started in one place first: your mind.

in 2002, a dyslexic school dropout memorized 54 shuffled decks of cards. 2,808 cards, each seen once. a straight-A student studies 5 hours a day and can’t remember a single chapter. the difference isn’t talent, nor hard work. it’s a very specific method of learning and consolidating incoming information. nobody ever taught you HOW TO LEARN, so... i’m gonna do it. thank me later.

how to build your first memory palace tonight: > pick a place you know by heart. your home, your street > walk it in the same order every time. door, hallway, kitchen, desk > put one thing on each spot > make every image absurd, violent or funny > walk the route forwards, then backwards > repeat until you know it by heart

in 1909, carl jung had a strange dream. he found himself walking down through the layers of a house. first a lived-in salon, then dark medieval rooms, further down into a roman cellar, until he reached the very bottom: a cave scattered with prehistoric bones and skulls. he thought about the dream for years, until he finally built on top of it his life’s work: the theory of the collective unconscious. the cave at the very bottom symbolizes the deepest, most ancient layer of the psyche, containing the universal archetypes. 4 of them secretly guide every man’s life.

learnmaxxing 101: > 5 minutes staring at one object before every session > divide your study into 60–90 min blocks. max 3 a day > survey the whole chapter before reading a line > turn every headline into a question and guess the answer > read it by hunting for answers. never read page by page > close the book. answer from memory > go back only to what you missed, then do it again > review before sleep. recall after waking up

this paragraph alone is the antidote to every “find your niche” advice on the internet. “let him be educated, skilful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine…” vitruvius wrote it 2,000 years ago, describing the ideal of the man. true enlightenment is coming to the realization that you don’t have to limit yourself to one interest, but dive into as many as you want, and let every branch of your knowledge feed the others. SPECIALIZATION is the modern cage. 🜂

in 1998, at the weizmann institute in israel, physicists ran one of the strangest experiments in physics. they fired electrons at a barrier with two openings. when unobserved, the electrons passed through like a wave. but when they placed a detector to watch them, something strange happened: the wave pattern began to disappear. the more they watched, the weaker it became. the mere act of watching completely changed the final form of the electrons. and here’s the twist: metacognition shows that your thoughts work the same way. the mere act of observing a thought changes what it becomes. 👁️

throughout thousands of years of evolution, civilizations from different parts of the globe shared the exact same figures, despite never having contact with each other. the same symbols painted on stones. the same creation stories told in mythology. the exact same patterns reappearing in the dreams. how? according to carl jung, beneath your standard, conscious mind lies a deeper layer: the collective unconscious. a shared layer between all of humanity containing the primordial images he called 'archetypes.' 4 of them rule the mind of every man. read carefully and you will spot yours ↓

nothing expands your mind as much as writing. when putting your thoughts on paper, you are forced to recalibrate your messy subconscious pathways into logical, conscious expressions. every great man wrote: philosophers, emperors, artists, generals. napoleon wrote an entire romance novella before conquering europe. you don’t need to be a writer. you just need a blank page, a head full of thoughts, and the patience to structure the chaos.

everybody wants to "find a purpose". nobody reads what the greatest minds of history had to say about this process. read: plato's myth of er, the apology of socrates, hillman's the soul's code or jung's red book. easily the 4 best texts ever written on the subject.

the universal blueprint stamped on every man’s psyche: the mechanics of collective mind, the shadow it casts on your life and the exact 3-step method to recognize & integrate your dominant archetype

"solve et coagula" is one of the oldest instructions in alchemy, yet most people don't know what it asks of you. dissolve. then coagulate. you have to burn down who you are in order to rise into something larger.

every great man in history believed something larger-than-life was guiding him. alexander the great crossed the libyan desert to siwa to consult the oracle on the matter. once he came out, he claimed to be the son of zeus. caesar believed his bloodline went back to the goddess venus and made her name his army's battle cry. napoleon spoke of his star all the time and, as he said, he felt "driven towards an end he did not know". this invisible force has a name: the daimon.