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.

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.

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. 👁️