*Originated from [[Weekly Wondering 2024-W52]]* I haven't been as self-reflective as I used to be. In my senior year of high school, at the start of my personal growth journey, I frequently tuned into my inner world through deep reflective sessions where I would vividly journal my thoughts into Obsidian. But after developing some form of emotional bluntness from different areas of life — some mix of heartbreak, ADHD medication, and burnout, trying to re-engage with such a mindset hasn't come as naturally to me. Instead, I operate from the mind, valuing rationality over emotions or embodied feelings. I've wanted to work on finding a healthier balance, but of course, the rational part guards any paths to try and do so. It fears the neuroticism that can emerge if it relinquishes complete control. But unexpectedly, watching [[After Socrates Episode 7 - Daimonion Dr. John Vervaeke|After Socrates Episode 7]] gave me a new path to follow, leading me to re-experience the vitality self-awareness brings. To provide some context, a primary focus in the *After Socrates* series is learning how to cultivate a life of wisdom modeled on Socrates's values. A fundamental part of being wise is being rational—not [[Rationality]] meaning how logical you are, but rather your capacity to overcome self-deception. To be connected and in deeper contact with reality. *But isn't logic and science what helps us overcome our biases by viewing things objectively?* Yes, but it's only a taste of [[Types of Knowing|the full depths at which we can understand something]]. It helps us with self-deception but only further hinders connection. We can't create such personal significance, such meaning in our lives if we don't also get to see and engage with the world through our [[Self]]. %% Take dating, for example. You begin feeling jealous when you find someone intimate with some of their friends who are their type. Your thoughts spiral, thinking they're probably into them more than you. Logically, it makes sense — the signs are there! But what if it was a [[Perspectival knowing|Framing]] problem? Your [[Self-deception]], based on previous beliefs and experiences, distorts reality's true nature to keep you in an illusionary world, like [[Platos Cave]]. If you reflect, you realize you feel jealous because of childhood experiences where friends abandoned you for other classmates. If we put that aside, we recognize that in reality, they're generally really kind to everyone, including you Second, it's one thing to read books like [[How to Not Die Alone]] and refer to their science-backed suggestions as objective qualities to assess our compatibility with someone. So we use this as a compass, but unfortunately, everything falls flat because we If we only stick to th You aren't aware enough to realize what key features are of [[Relevance]] to you, which prevents us from having a deep connection between ourselves and the world that affords [[Meta-meaning]]. The only problem is… you don't have a chance to do so. When they try to invite you to dates, you say no last second because you have an avoidant attachment style and are afraid of vulnerability. You miss out on opportunities to connect with them deeply because past traumas burden you. xxx The best way I can think about it is through making YouTube videos. You know the "best practices" when it comes to creating a script that has the best benefits. Maybe you don't even realize how this person is deeply compatible with you in the first place because you're indoctrinated by the "universal red flags" on TikTok (a.k.a. [[Bullshit]]) and haven't reflected enough to believe otherwise. As a result, we fail to see and engage with reality in its true depth and beauty. %% But if we do some inner work, we can begin reconstructing the bridge between the depths of our psyche and the depths of reality. For me, this has come in the form of learning and practicing [[Internal Family Systems (IFS)]]. After reading the recommended [[Self-Therapy A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, a New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy|Self-Therapy Book]], I started following the exercises and doing practice sessions. In short, IFS is a form of [[Psychotherapy]] that sees the [[Self]] as not one entity but many different [[IFS Parts]] — the [[Dialogical self]]. We personify them into beings we can get to know, with the primary goal of developing trust and healing past burdens, all through the support of a compassionate and curious self. At first, I felt internal friction when I gave myself time and permission to explore. A protective part of me didn't want to open up some potential emotions I'd suppressed over the past few years, as doing so could harm my current productivity and stability. However, I spent time compassionately listening to and caring for these concerned parts, realizing their underlying positive intent and nature. I then began collaborating with them and learning more about them. As a result, my protectors no longer saw me as a threat. They let me speak with the neglected parts with suppressed emotions from experiences I couldn't process previously. Conversations that led to an emergence of self-awareness beyond what I was familiar with. Recently, I've been attributing my extreme coding obsession over the past few months to ADHD hyper-fixation — learning mobile development fuels me through novelty, and the autonomy of building out your vision from scratch is incredibly fulfilling. But could that be enough reason to spend all my waking hours over a weekend making the MVP? To be enough reason to neglect other parts of my life? Little did I know, it was only the tip of my motivation iceberg. My determination to build the app came from a darker motivation. It manifested when I quit mid-trial for a dream company because I felt incompetent as a developer. I couldn't deal with this belief then because I felt burnt out from trying to manage it on top of my existing job and other responsibilities, so it retreated into my unconscious. As a result, this determined part of me has been working overtime to prevent myself from feeling this way again, especially now that I'm fully responsible for the features I implement. By putting all this effort into this MVP, I could feel confident enough to be proud of my developer identity. To facilitate these inner explorations, I've been using tools like Claude and Obsidian. In doing so, I felt reawakened and aligned with my mission of Digital Self-Actualization: to use these modern tools not to do more but rather to work towards our ideal self on a meaningful level. It's easy to see AI as a means to generate more output through written AI slop or to do our work for us, but what about its ability to assist in actualizing a self that we may not be able to on our own through the power of the internet's and its collective intelligence? Obsidian already promotes a space for making personal sense of information through [[Note-making]], but what if we use linked notes to explore our inner world? In a way, my whole experience came full circle. By working on myself, I've also deepened my appreciation for the tools that let me do so in [[Anagoge|anagogic fashion]]. Integrating the parts from IFS into weekly reviews has personified the process to become a meaningful dialogue with myself beyond just answering prompts. Fortunately, this reframing couldn't have come at a better time — to be in a prime headspace for my annual review. If you want to learn more about the process and the experience, you can check out my highlights in the various links and sources I mentioned above throughout this newsletter section :) I also recorded a podcast episode with Aidan covering these ideas, but I don't think it'll be uploaded until next week 😅