A Zen Stoic, New York, NY (2026)

02/18/2026

I often remind myself to not take it personally
when someone can’t be happy for me.

I have come to the conclusion that
more often than not, it has very little to do with me.

Some people are fighting battles we’ll never see.
Living inside narratives that tell them they’re behind.
Comparing quietly.
Measuring themselves against timelines of others.
Or comparing their chapter one to
someone's chapter 20...

There are many reasons why this can happen.
It could be envy, or just the simple fact that
we’re not the center of anyone else’s world.
And they’re not the center of ours.

Many people are too absorbed in their own struggles,
comparisons, and internal turmoil to genuinely
celebrate someone else.
Not out of malice.
Just preoccupation.

So, in this situations perhaps
it's better to not take it personal
and be resentful in return.

Some are measuring their progress against yours.
Some are fighting quiet insecurities.
Some are simply stuck in their own heads.

And when someone isn’t happy with their own life,
it becomes difficult to feel joy for someone else’s.

We all experience that tightening at some point.
That moment where comparison tries to distort perspective.

The difference is what we do with it.

So don’t shrink your growth or standards
to make others comfortable.
And don’t carry resentment either.

Not every silence is hostility.
And not every lack of applause is opposition.

Sometimes it’s just someone else
still trying to sort themselves out.

Life is to fleeting to nourish
resentment for such reasons.
But we also need to be careful,
not to turn this into a way of
ignoring things out of vanity.
If we do, we end up feeding our
own narcissism without even realizing it.

This frame of mind is more pure when it just
comes from empathy or at least, understanding.

02/17/2026

Perspective changes a lot in the way we frame events.

People often underestimate what one small, honest effort can do.

One extra round.
One page read.
One difficult conversation handled better than yesterday.
One habit repeated instead of skipped.

It doesn’t look like much in the moment.

It won’t impress anyone.
It won’t feel dramatic.

But life has a way of teaching us that improvement
was never built on dramatic days.
It was built on consistent ones.

Today’s mind wants transformation overnight.
The ego wants visible progress now.
Social media has amplified the
comparison effect, thus triggering
these ambition or greed mechanisms
in us even more.

Trust this: If you chose one thing each day,
just one,
that made you slightly stronger, clearer, more disciplined…

A year from now, you will witness a great gap from
the person who kept choosing comfort instead.

The difference between stagnation and momentum
is rarely talent.

It’s intelligent repetition.

Not perfection.
Not intensity.
Just daily alignment.

it’s a universal law of cause and effect.

At times, you overcome crisis by taking a step back and renewing for a while.
And some other times, you just need to move one step forward often enough,
that stagnation no longer feels normal.
—

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02/16/2026

Oftentimes, the one who caused the damage
learns to speak the language of hurt
with a very convincing performance.

Why?
Perhaps because it’s easier to narrate pain
than to face responsibility.

It’s strange how quickly the story can flip.

The person who crossed the line
becomes the misunderstood one.
The one who reacted
becomes the “aggressive” one...

And if you’re not careful,
you start questioning your own memory.
That’s typical gaslighting.

This is how distortion works.
Not by being evident.
Not dramatically.
Just subtly enough to make you doubt what you felt.

Surely, playing the victim isn’t always conscious manipulation.
Sometimes it’s self-protection.
An ego unwilling to sit with the weight of what it’s done.

Admitting harm requires inner strength.
Deflecting it requires manipulative skill.

And some people become very skilled
at appearing wounded
by consequences they created.

That’s why clarity matters.

Compassion doesn’t mean rewriting reality.
Understanding someone’s pain doesn’t erase what they caused.

So, you can acknowledge someone’s struggle
without surrendering your truth.

Not everyone who cries is innocent.
And not everyone who stays quiet is wrong.
Learn to see past appearances.

Being centered also means
refusing to carry blame
that was never yours to begin with.

—
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02/14/2026

📌 Some things don’t collapse,
with a snap of fingers.
They slowly starve.

Projects.
Relationships.
Groups.
Versions of yourself.

From the outside, it looks like defeat.
Like it just “didn’t work.”

But sometimes the truth is quieter than that.

You stopped feeding it with your real energy.

You showed up, but not fully.
You stayed involved, but not honestly.
With “Makoto”, as it is known in Japan.
You kept it alive with merely effort, not full presence.

Authentic energy is different.
It’s focused.
It’s intentional.
It carries conviction.
It is the Ki,
again, as it is known in Japan.
Your most authentic vital energy.

When that disappears, things don’t vanish at the go.
They weaken.

More often than not, they don’t dissolve because they were impossible,
but because they were sustained by something that was no longer there.

It’s uncomfortable to admit.

Just labeling it as failure,
or purely as bad luck, feels cleaner.
It protects the ego.

But this kind of ‘starvation’ tells a different story.

It asks a harder question:

𝘿𝙞𝙙 𝙄 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙮 𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙢𝙮 𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣?
𝙊𝙧 𝙙𝙞𝙙 𝙄 𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙥𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙢𝙮𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙞𝙩 𝙘𝙞𝙧𝙘𝙪𝙢𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚?

Surely, not everything needs to be ‘revived’.
Some things were meant to end.

But before labeling something as “a failure,”
it’s worth asking whether it died
or whether it was slowly left unfed.

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02/09/2026

When someone manages to provoke us,
it’s worth noticing that something inside
us agreed to the exchange.

Epictetus hinted at this gently, that no one truly
reaches us without our participation.

We may receive the words, the behavior,
but the reaction is negotiated internally.
It always is, even when it seems like it doesn’t.
I just happens so fast that we don’t notice.

One doesn’t notice it because they haven’t
trained their mind for intrapersonal observation.
This means noticing and reflecting on
what’s happening inside us,
like our thoughts, feelings, motivations,
reactions, and mental patterns.

Sometimes the mind accepts it because it’s tired.
Sometimes because the words or behavior triggered a wound.
And sometimes because the ego wants to defend an image it hasn’t questioned yet.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about responsibility.

We don’t control what others bring toward us,
but we do have a say in what gets past the gate.

And every time we pause long enough to see that moment of consent
(that brief inner “yes”), we regain something important.

Not control over them. But a bit more ownership of ourselves.
That’s where inner freedom quietly begins.

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02/07/2026

Integrity is not when our inner voice and
our external life are always in agreement,
but rather when they are in a state of "conversation."

Every contradiction is quickly labeled hypocritical.
However, dishonesty is not the only source of internal conflict.
Lack of a moral core is frequently a sign of hypocrisy.
It's choosing to say one thing while purposefully saying another.
Convenience at all costs, not because of confusion.

However, it is frequently mistaken for cognitive dissonance.
Dissonance in cognition is different.
It is not the result of dishonesty.

It results from not fully understanding who you are yet.
From undefined values.
From incompletely integrated shadows.
From different parts of you pulling you apart
in different directions, each thinking it's correct...

Integrity can be compromised by both, but in different ways.

Integrity is undermined by hypocrisy through neglect.
And dissonance strains it through tension.

One escapes accountability.
And the other often has an inner struggle with it.

It is important to distinguish between them because of this.
If it’s hypocrisy, the work is with our moral compass.
It demands discipline, alignment, and a more powerful sense of direction.

The work is deeper introspection if it's dissonance.
It requires patience, honesty, and the guts to examine things you'd prefer to ignore.

Being conflict-free is not what integrity is all about.
It also involves not deceiving yourself about your motivations.

And before demanding consistency, it’s worth asking a quieter question:
𝘼𝙢 𝙄 𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙞𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬, 𝙤𝙧 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙄 𝙙𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙮𝙚𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙙?

02/06/2026

There are moments in life where you reach a
“rock solid” ceiling you can’t push through with effort alone.

The startegy, grit, and strength as you’ve known it,
doesn’t seem abough enough to help you go through this limit.

These moments don’t arrive just as clear lessons.
They arrive as limits.
That’s why they leave people confused,
and at times, in crisis.

Something in you keeps burning,
a pattern, a fear, a wound you can’t outwork or outrun.

And for a long time, it feels like punishment.

Some people break there.

Not necessarily loudly, but quietly.
They harden and become
a shadow of their former self.

They become careful in places
where they used to be alive.
They lack enthusiasm where
their spirit used to fuel with living force.

Others survive, but only as a version
of themselves that feels dulled, disconnected.

But I’m starting to wonder if that
fire isn’t there to destroy us,
at least not in the way we fear.

Maybe it’s there to burn what
we mistook for a final identity.
The armor that once protected us.
The stories that helped us survive,
but now keep us limited.

This kind of “fire” doesn’t ask for resistance.
It asks for honesty.

To sit long enough to see what remains
when the image collapses.

When the old coping stops working.
When the shadow steps forward
and asks to be faced, not fought.

Going beyond the fire doesn’t mean conquering it.
It means letting it take what was never truly you.

And what’s left,
if you’re willing to stay...
is something quieter.
Less defended.
More whole.

Not untouched by the fire.
But no longer owned by it.

02/05/2026

Would it make sense that the Divine doesn't speak in words? Or at least, not just with words?

Would it make sense that the divine is in truth something ordinary, but our minds are programmed to dismiss it and take it for granted?

For many, it seems to do so through timing.
Through coincidence that feels a little too precise to ignore.
Through moments that don’t explain themselves, but linger...

Jung called these synchronicities, which are
meaningful coincidences where something inside us
lines up with something outside, at times without a clear reason why.
Not proof of anything. Just patterns that invite attention.

You think of a question you’ve been carrying quietly,
and an unexpected event nudges it into focus.
You’re stuck in indecision, and life answers not with clarity, but with circumstance.
Nothing supernatural. Nothing dramatic.
Just… strangely appropriate.

Jung didn’t claim this was the universe speaking to us in a literal sense.
He was careful. He suggested that psyche and matter might not be as separate as we assume, and that sometimes they move together, for reasons we don’t yet fully understand.

Not literal messages.
More like echoes.

What stands out to me is that these moments don’t use language.
They don’t argue. And certainly they don't force the message, they don’t persuade.
They simply happen, and the meaning is something we feel before we can explain it.

Maybe that’s why they’re easy to dismiss.
And also why they stay with us when we don’t.

Is this the unconscious, or the divine in us, doing what it does best -finding patterns?
I only know that certain moments arrive with a weight that feels different.

Not commanding.
Not instructive.
Just quietly suggestive.
Yet powerful, of different kind.

And maybe that’s enough.

Not fanatic certainty.
Just attention.

Not answers.
Just a willingness to notice when something inside and something outside seem, briefly, to touch.

02/04/2026

Oftentimes, things start working out
when we stop replaying in
our mind all the ways it could fail.

In these situations, we might think
we are taking measures to prevent
pain, but we’re past way that phase,
and more in the ruminating zone.

Risks won’t disappear with a snap of fingers.
And yes, overcoming fear is a process.

But what’s more important is
that we stop feeding it.

Many things don’t fall apart
because they can’t work.
They fall apart because doubt
gets more attention than effort.

We often experience a healthy balance
between doubt and confidence.
And by fixating on every step, we actively
contribute in breaking this balance.

So, when we find ourselves stuck,
perhaps it’s a sign that we have to
let go of the need to predict a
flawless outcome.

Do the work.
Adjust as you go.

Sometimes things work out not
because we were 100% certain,
but because we didn’t let
every reason it wouldn’t, stop us from trying.

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02/01/2026

Here’s the broader text for context—Fihi Ma Fihi, Discourse 38:

Rumi said: Well, intention first exists in the
inner world before entering this world of form.
So if form does not matter, what is the purpose of
this world?

If you plant only the kernel of an
apricot stone, nothing will grow.
If you plant it with its husk, then it becomes a tree.

From this we know that form also has a function.
Yes, prayer is an inward matter:

“There is no prayer without
the heart being present.”
But it is still necessary to
bring the prayer into form.
With outward words,
genuflection, and prostration,
you gain benefit
and attain your desire.

The outer form of prayer is temporary, the
inner spirit never ends.
For the Spirit of the world
is an infinite ocean,
the body but a limited shore.

Therefore, continual prayer belongs only to the
spirit, but that inward prayer must manifest.
Until intention and form are wedded,
there are no children born.

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01/30/2026

……………………………
( )

01/29/2026

This needs context, otherwise it’s easy to misunderstand.

When Don Juan says “you felt too damn important,”
he’s not speaking about healthy self-worth.
He’s pointing to something else entirely.

He’s talking about a fragile, inflated ego,
the kind that needs control, certainty, and protection at all costs.
The kind that cannot tolerate vulnerability
without calling it weakness.

That kind of “importance” makes you heavy.
You cling to rigid identities.
You defend images.
You retreat the moment something threatens how you see yourself.

On the path of self-knowledge, that weight becomes a liability.

Because learning requires being wrong.
Growth requires exposure.
Strength requires passing through moments
where you don’t feel powerful, special, or in control...

A man or woman of knowledge must be light,
not careless, but flexible.
Able to move, adapt, let go.
Able to face uncertainty without armor.

This isn’t about losing respect for yourself.
It’s about loosening the grip of an ego
that confuses inflated/fragile ego,
or a fragile self-image with strength.

True inner strength doesn’t come
from protecting an image.
It comes from being able to walk forward
even when the image cracks.

The moment you stop carrying
the weight of “importance,”
you regain fluidity.
And with it, the capacity to actually learn.

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A Zen Stoic

02/18/2026

02/17/2026

02/16/2026

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02/09/2026

02/07/2026

02/06/2026

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