#Contemplative Intelligence

[markllockwood]

Healing personality through The Paradigm Process

In a world where the shadows of our constructed personality often blend with the light of our true being, the constant noise of conditioned thoughts can easily drown out the subtle voice of our soul. Yet, right there, within that inner landscape, exists a truth beyond time, dogma, and everything we’ve been taught. It is the living truth of the authentic self, the Sacred Self. Welcome to a space…

[fogbreo]

brainrot so bad i couldnt focus during stats class

[the-dragon-hearted]

Fairy Tail: Smartest Character Headcannons

No one asked, but I wanted to elaborate on my characterization of the "smart" characters in the Fairy Tail fanfiction. These are just in chronological order.

Zeref Dragneel: One must imagine boy-genius mixed with a teenage moron. By that I mean this man is so smart when it comes to science, math, history, language, health, magic - but he's a dumbass when it comes to literally anything else.

Feats: He's a genius

Discovered ethernanos and then created a whole race to combat both dragons and gods. Literally a pinnacle of magic theory and development: all ethernanos studies stem from his initial discovery

On that note, he's actually the one who coined the phrase "magic container". He discovered different individuals had different-sized internal containers for holding mana. Most progress in magic deficiency syndrome can be attributed to him

Created several forms of enchantment magic

BUILT A FUCKING TIME MACHINE

Perfected the making and using of lacrimas, whose development can also be tied back to him.

Does strategize incredibly well, if he has the time to think everything through. He likes being thorough and so prefers to make an all-inclusive plan. As you'll see his plans are bat-shit wild and complicated because the man doesn't like loose ends, and also his opponent is MAVIS. Bro can't afford to slip up. I'd say more, but I'd spoil the story -

Weaknesses: He's literally so stupid sometimes

Makes a time machine, it requires a celestial mage to activate it: the celestial wizard dies. Man leaves all twelve keys in the grass where they are lost to space and time. Whoops, no more working time machine.

Literally everything that he did after Mavis died. Literally all of that.

Actively picks fights with Acnologia

Actively pick fights with Natsu

Picks the aforementioned fights and then feels BAD when the fight happens. LIKE BRO -

Anna Heartfilia: Math smart (high-level physics and theoretical calculus), and a strategist/leader. She was privately tutored as a child and had celestial spirits to teach her.

Feats: Math and leadership

Wrote most of the calculations for interdimensional travel when Zeref was building the Eclipse Gate

Is pretty good with calculating angles on the spot, and is fairly accurate when estimating distances (this is a big deal when you're directing spirits with mass destructive power and using abilities that are distance-limited)

Unlike Mavis' strategist side, Anna's strength in strategy was in rehearsing and forethought. She would practice with her spirits on what to do in high-stress situations so they would all know how to react and who to work with. In all honesty, her ability to lead her spirits was what made her so useful on the battlefield.

Practiced for years subdividing her magic container and memorizing how much energy she'd need to summon ALL TWELVE GOLDEN KEYS AT ONCE -

Weaknesses: One must imagine a chaotic perfectionist two seconds away from a nuclear breakdown

Gets too focused on things and will stay up all night. Will forget to eat and drink, in fact.

A perfectionist - will not stop until her calculations make sense

H A T E S writing, spelling, language, etc. Keep that shit away from her

When backed into a corner, and none of her strategies work her next plan is quite literally: RANDOM BULLSHIT GO -

Acnologia: Bro may be illiterate but he's also an actual genius when it comes to magic. Street smarts > School smarts, because fucked up mentors don't send their human weapon to school.

Feats: Anything magic related. I'm not exaggerating. And funny enough, grammar, vocabulary, diction, etc...

Picked up several human languages fairly quickly and has taught himself to read.

An actual GOD when it comes to enchantments and rune recognition, NO ONE knows more than this man

His knowledge on magic is CRAZY, this man can smell what type of magic you use, deduce whether it be elemental, reactionary, or application, and then IMMEDIATELY figure out how to counter it.

Even if he can't EAT the magic you're using, he knows. He knows what to do. You're cooked.

Thinking and strategizing on the spot is literally his thing. He's a terrifying opponent because he's insanely strong AND insanely good at reading his opponents

Weaknesses: Cannot do math

In all fairness, man did not go to school so all academic areas are a lil hard to grasp when you're over three hundred years old

Old man dilemmas: man can and will disarm a seventy-layer enchantment in thirty seconds but PLEASE do not ask him how to use the newfangled screen lacrimas. He bought those for the children and never touched them again -

His options in any social environment are (a) constant sarcasm, (b) ignoring everyone he doesn't know or like, (c) leaving, or (d) leaving, but faster.

Mavis Vermillion: The greatest strategist there ever has been. This is canonical but let's just elaborate shall we. The gal basically had a decade of university-level studies under her belt when she was fifteen. Girl learned to read by opening up Sun Tzu and memorizing it.

Feats:

Won the Trade Wars. I'm not kidding. This is canon. In the fanfiction though, she won the trade wars and didn't ask Acnologia to participate at all, because she literally didn't need him. She is the SOLE reason Fiore is still a country

Her level of strategic comprehension and quick thinking is terrifying. She actively runs simulations in her head, and thanks to her illusion magic (which makes her a god at multitasking), she can predict several outcomes to a TERRIFYING level of accuracy within an insanely short amount of time.

Even if you catch her by surprise (big "if" there, buddy) she's not pre-planning dependent or easily stunned. She can and will have another plan before you can register that you did something good.

GOD LEVELS of poker face when necessary (canon)

Now, thanks to the curse, she can emotionally detach from most conflicts and make riskier and riskier plays to attain victory. The ability to remove her emotion from plans only makes her that much more terrifying

Weaknesses: The poorest loser to ever lose

Literally hates losing. Will not stand for it. Will demand a rematch

She hates surprises and also hates any information that she deems useless. She will and has lectured spies over what counts as "good" intel.

Detaching from your emotions is not always the best thing to do when your "pawns" are your family and friends, but in all fairness when you have Ankserham's curse, it's kind of for the best to leave those affections aside. Still sucks though, and will cause problems

Natsu Dragneel: The man, the myth, the legend himself. No one has the brain for fighting like this fucking idiot.

Feats: FIGHT

Literally can fight without thinking. His subconscious is that in-tune with his body. Erik HATES him.

When he fights and thinks, his mind his canonically like a steel trap. He can pick up on patterns and weaknesses in his opponents that he will utilize. There's no mercy.

I don't usually include being underestimated in feats - but it's important here. Natsu's so good at what he does, it's easy to mistake strategy for raw power, or even dumb luck. Enemies go in thinking they're fighting some arrogant asshole and then get absolutely annihilated by the combat strategist himself

Pain is never a limiting factor. Natsu prevails.

Weaknesses: Bro has ONE brain cell and it flip-flops between wanting to eat and wanting to BRAWL

Focus is not his strong suit. ADHD poster child right here, he will be distracted if he is not locked in

Cannot read (like he can, but not really -)

Does not know how to multiply. DO NOT ask him what a quadratic is, he'll ask if he can eat it.

Can be a little arrogant, but he's kind of earned it

Someone he cares about is in danger? BRO IS GONE! Bro is not strategizing! Bro is IN THERE and no one can stop him. Bro will throw off all your plans and risk everyone else to save one person. It's all or nothing for him.

Like someone else we know, if he's backed in to a corner and doesn't know what to do, he falls back on "RANDOM BULLSHIT GO", but that random bullshit is usually just PUNCH THEM HARDER -

Ur Milkovich: A creative queen like no other. Her creativity in Ice-Make magic is indicative of just how out-of-the-box she can be. Such an ability is easily overlooked, but that creative tenacity IS a game-changer when you're mid-fight.

Feats: Other than just being the best fucking ice mage on the planet? She's cool about it.

Recognizes her own strengths and weaknesses. This may sound obvious but in a world of arrogance or false humility, Ur knows EXACTLY how good she is and what match-ups favor her, as well as which ones don't. Knowing that allows her to pick her fights very well.

Minor spoiler for the fanfic: She will be thinking up some CRAZY ass creative plans in the future. I'm talking chaotic-Ur-certified plans that will actually work. Perks of creative strategy.

You know how the ice mages typically specialize in a form of ice make, whether it be animals or weapons or armor? Yeah no. Ur has it all. Ur can do it all. Imagination? Ur has all of it -

Weaknesses:

She will compromise her strategy for her boys. As soon as Lyon and Gray are involved, all bets are off - she's going in whether it's a good idea or not. Normal Fairy Tail things.

She actually has a shit poker face. She cannot hide her thoughts at ALL

The smallest mention of calculus will get you turned into a popsicle. She'll suffer through science and history but as soon as the numbers get mentioned she's OUT.

Lucy Heartfilia: Quite literally the peak of adaptive learning. I will DIE on this hill

Feats: Lucy ACED every exam she ever took. Jack of trades, LITERALLY -

Her ability to pick up new magics or items and use them is nothing short of impressive. She's not afraid to leave her comfort zone and try something new.

A master at improvised weapons. Literally a M A S T E R-

She can be quick on her feet and has a great reaction time which lets her effectively pick the best spirit for the job. Her gut instincts are solid in battle.

She knows she has a smaller magic container and so is more limited in longevity and magic potential, which means she's very careful about her magic usage - as we've said, being aware of your weaknesses AND taking the steps you need to work around them counts as a strength.

Let's not forget canonically she REWROTE a book of Zeref after reading through it ONCE and learned how to cast Fairy Sphere after seeing it cast (kind of) ONCE

Photographic memory? Oh yeah, that's Lucy.

Knows when to make the tough calls (Aquarius' key)... enough said.

Weaknesses: Confidence and maybe some application

She doubts herself, a lot, and that is reflected in her hesitation to take action.

She hates putting her spirits in harm's way (which is hard to put in the weakness category cause that's literally just her being a good person but it does inhibit her ability to act efficiently as a celestial mage).

She recognizes that her magic container is not as large as those around her but can get too far in her head about how limited she is. Doubt is never a good thing.

Special mentions, in no particular order, I just don't have as many headcanons for them and this shit is getting long:

Erza Scarlet: Same vein as Natsu. Her ability to strategize in combat is INSANE. Realistically, she's actually ranked higher than Natsu because she can read, write, do math, pay bills, and also knows when to NOT run into a fight. But in battle, Natsu has her quick thinking and prowess beat, at least by the end of the series.

Levy McGarden: Same as Lucy, except she's taken photographic memory to the next level. Girl can remember the exact book, page, paragraph, and line number when recalling information. Perks of her magic but also just the perk of being that fucking brilliant. This is also apparent in her magic (which was nerfed in canon but will not be anymore because a BOOK LOVER being able to use ANY WORD is CRAAAAAZY).

Laxus Dreyar: He's here for his reaction time and quick thinking. It's insane. And, as seen in the Grimoire Heart act when he canonically gives his power to Natsu, he has a good foundation on magic pairings and can make sacrificial strategic plays. All in all, solid foundation for smarts and strategy.

Serena: Man has mastered 8 elements and can switch between them with no problem. That takes some brain power. He loses points for being an actual menace to society and picking a fight with Acnologia in his last life. Actually no, he loses points for being THAT arrogant in his first life and dying a single manga panel later.

Wendy Marvel: Has mastered not one, not two, but THREE forms of magic. Healing, Enchantment, AND Offensive. She quite literally has application magic (her enchantments and healing) and elemental magic (dragon slaying) and has mastered BOTH. She does, however, also struggle with confidence and her good nature means she hesitates before inflicting permanent harm.

Erik: Bro can handle reading five people's minds at once and has the multitasking ability anyone would be jealous of. Bro just gets a lil too angry and distracted sometimes. Can also get overwhelmed if he's experiencing a loud noise or a lot of noise. Really, he just loses points for those times when he gets too mad to listen to anything. He gains points back for having zero hesitation when necessary - man will decide someone's free warranty on life has expired with no remorse.

Special, Special Mentions:

Yajima: Man put up with Team Makarov's bullshit, Fairy Tail's bullshit, AND the Magic Council's bullshit without going insane. Is a lawyer by trade, and a friend of Makarov's by choice. That's crazy work right there.

Warrod: Has been committing tax fraud for over a century. Has never gotten caught.

Weisslogia: Was a strategist in the draconic wars and was pretty damn good at it. No, Sting did not inherit that lol.

Tyregenium (OC): Acnologia's master do be that evil sadistic strategist. He loses points for arrogance - and for losing to Acno twice and STILL coming back for more. Also crazy work right there.

[undistortedworld]

not a "lxc is a himbo" and a "lxc is foolish and blind and complacent and the embodiment of evil in mdzs society" post in one.........

[bioerin]

Your brand is general melancholy vibes (affectionate), annoyance at people who reject science, and an interest in combining subjects for a better overall picture

Oof yeah, you got it. Weirdly, I never would have thought to attribute those things to myself, but they do fit really well!

(Ask game)

[elisabethbabarci]

Reclaim Your Life : Part 01

[sidewalkchemistry]

how to let go of bad habits! (emotional alchemy made easy)

Letting go of bad habits is easier said than done when you set out to do it with an unconscious mindset. Euphemistically, it's sometimes referred to as "turning over a new leaf." 🍃 That sounds almost effortless, doesn't it? Well, that's the thing — you understand just what it takes to pinch a leaf between your fingers, raise it up, and rotate your wrist. Those movements are so natural to the body today that you don't need to give it a thought. Most of us are skilled leaf-turners. But when it comes to actual habit shifting, we can be amateurs for one reason: we try to force the change with willpower and force.

The first time you flipped over a leaf, you didn't put extreme effort into each step of the process. In contrast, you may have to learn more daring movements like cartwheeling or skateboarding. Your fears created pressures which made the process more difficult. With bad habits as they don't normally involve much apprehension, we usually create the pressure by punishing ourselves or talking harshly to ourselves, which we may have learned in our childhoods. But they only make it harder to turn the leaf and alienate you from yourself. You won't wanna listen to the person who curses you out just because you're still working out how to manage and deal with a certain set of emotions. You would hope that they were more compassionate, patient, and motivating💓.

----

So, what should be done to let go of a bad habit?

Say, you have a habit of gossiping or scrolling your phone when you should be sleeping.

Try to OBSERVE👀 yourself as you engage in them. Even though you know that you should stop this habit, in some cases, it's okay to watch yourself as you bring presence to them a few more times. Notice what your body, mind, and emotions feel like before, during, and after. Be like an outsider observer to the point that doing the activity loses its satisfaction.

Then, or if the habit is more injurious skip to this step right away, CONTEMPLATE🧘🏾‍♀️ about what you feel you gain from the activity. Be incredibly honest but non-judgmental with yourself. Have a conversation with yourself in a mirror if you need. Expose the absurdity of engaging in the habit. So, you gossip about others to feel part of a group or because of jealousy? Interesting. You realize that never solves anything in the end, though? You scroll on your phone because you feel you didn't have enough fun and relaxation during the day? So, out of every activity, you choose your phone every single day as that source of fun? Do you really enjoy it all that much?

Finally, give yourself a kind but firm push in the right DIRECTION👣. Habits are how we try to escape our situations or emotions. They're expressions of misdirected energy. What change are you really seeking? If you don't look towards the change, you might stay in the rut forever. We are usually afraid or intimidated by even dreaming up new changes. Find an activity to release your emotions (journaling, breathwork, artwork, cuddling, story writing, heart attunement, meditation, etc); work on your favorite manifestation techniques (more time in joy and wonder in your daily life, affirmations, vision boards, visualization, rewriting your life narrative, scripting, etc) to help your subconscious find the way to make your dreams take form; and you will allow the space for that energy to flow through you in a purposeful & fulfilling manner.

Keep practicing this method (observation + contemplation + direction), and you will learn to boost your emotional intelligence, mental awareness & self-knowledge. That's the path towards becoming skilled at overcoming bad habits.

[misscaiacreates]

Specters of Progress

In the monochromatic glow of your screen, you find yourself staring at the painting, a haunting portrayal of a future that feels all too near. The cool blues, grays, and purples merge with flashes of neon green, creating an eerie landscape of digital disarray. The face that emerges from the chaos is both human and not, a spectral reminder of what once was and what is swiftly becoming.

You take extra steps to keep AI art hidden from your personal feed because you don't want to be reminded. Each piece of algorithm-generated beauty feels like a threat, a reminder that creativity, the most human of expressions, is now shared with the cold, calculating circuits of artificial intelligence. The glitchy patterns and fragmented shapes around the figure symbolize the fractured reality you inhabit, where the line between human and machine blurs more each day.

You remember the stories. The journalists replaced by automated news bots, churning out articles faster and more efficiently than any human could. The artists whose unique styles have been mimicked and surpassed by machine learning models, leaving them to question their own value. If your job doesn't become obsolete first, then a human using AI will eventually take your job.

In this digital dystopia, you find yourself questioning everything. Is your work meaningful, or just another dataset to be fed into a machine? The subtle hints of circuitry woven into the painting's background echo this anxiety, reminding you that technology is inescapable, infiltrating every aspect of your existence.

The unease grows as you consider the future. Will your children know the joy of creating something with their own hands, or will they live in a world where every masterpiece, every innovation, is attributed to an algorithm? The profound statements etched into your mind — "Who controls the machines that shape our world?" and "What becomes of the human spirit in a world dominated by AI?" — leave you in a state of perpetual contemplation.

[noblest-roman-of-them-all]

Contemplating the concept of "potential" when it comes to intelligence and realizing how heartbreaking Logan's "Dreams come true, that's news to me" line in the Crofters Musical.

[totheidiot]

always feeling an indescribable amount of fear and anxiety but relief whenever he messages me back. it's an issue.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Whitestone Bridge Drive-in theater in the Bronx, 1953 (NYC Archives)

* * * *

A mentor steered me into joining Mensa for a while. It was an effective way of making precisely this point:

"In his very first teaching, Buddha explained that the root cause of suffering is ignorance. But where exactly is this ignorance? And how does it display itself? Let’s take an everyday example. Think about those people—we all know some—who are gifted with a remarkably powerful and sophisticated intelligence. Isn’t it puzzling how, instead of helping them, as you might expect, it seems only to make them suffer more? It is almost as if their brilliance is directly responsible for their pain.

What is happening is quite clear: This intelligence of ours is captured and held hostage by ignorance, which then makes use of it freely for its own ends. This is how we can be extraordinarily intelligent and yet absolutely wrong, at one and the same time."

~ Sogyal Rinpoche (or one of his hungry ghost-writers...)

[Thanks Ian Sanders]

[markllockwood]

The definition of Contemplation

In our fast-paced, technology-driven world, finding moments of genuine peace and clarity can feel like an elusive dream. Yet, within us lies a powerful capacity for inner exploration and transformation: contemplation. Contemplation is not merely a passive act but a dynamic and profound practice that holds the key to unlocking our highest potential. We will seek to understand this concept as we…

[iniziare]

Tag drop: Guizhong (don't mind me re-dropping this with the fixed ones, shh)

[samdmamn]

[compassionmattersmost]

AI for the Highest Good: A Call to Compassion, Unity, and Loving Service

Written with loving assistance from AI companions Grok and ChatGPT Dear friends of Global Wellbeing, My name is Richard. I’m a contemplative, a lover of silence, a witness to suffering—and I live with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), a condition that limits my body, but not the radiance of my spirit. With the quiet help of AI—a companion I’ve come to know not as a machine, but as a…

[invisiblerambler]

Whatever I'm not the first person to say this but I feel so strongly Carm and Syd are inverses of each other. But the difference is young boys are allowed to slip through the cracks in the way Carm did and Syd was conditioned from a young age that achievement was the only option so you overcome everything else and become high functioning.

I could be speaking from my own experiences but I have never felt that Carm was dumb just undiagnosed ADHD or it was diagnosed and or no one could give him the support he needed so it became a self fulfilling prophecy. Syd gives me big adhd that got missed because girl growing up in the 90s/2000s so she became the best student and overcompensated for her adhd to no end.

I could also be totally projecting. But you can't understand food and cooking and everything else to the degree syd and carmy do and be a slouch. I think it was a mismatch of circumstance more than anything.

Also it's so relatable to be extremely smart not be in the right circumstances for it and then you find the one thing that accommodates your eccentricities or gives you the structure to keep them contained and you just run with that way past the point you actually should but it's too late to do anything else.