Paean to Kĩrĩ Nyaga

Alone and rugged, brings tears to eye,
Broken stone spear tip touches sky,
White-flecked peaks push mind to fly,
To majestic abode of ancient Ngai;

Behind feathered clouds peeks blue sky,
Radiance sun-founded blinds man’s eye,
Green verdant forests carpet-like lie,
Wind flows sings screams never shy.

Crow caws, bird sings, tree undulates,
Eye and mind time at different rates,
Another tear rolls down soul’s gates,
For mere words forever fail nature’s states.

Majestic, magnificent, old beyond measure,
His sight itself an incredible treasure,
Silent in earth-spanning sky’s embrasure,
In him world-weary minds find leisure.

Human story circles back to self,
Thus I cycle back to soul’s shell,
Rock spire-seated, mind weaves spell,
Invisible motion to where thee dwell.

Note:
This poem was originally published on Medium on Mar. 29, 2020.

Answers?

Together we sit, dance deep on the brink;
Eyes meet; breaths prance in sync;

An intimacy; no need to disrobe;
Thus do we see; behind this teary globe:

Lies a person like me;
Vast and infinite is she;
A dreamer like me

Unknowable, unconquerable, and unquenchable;
Her butterfly mind counterpoint to my stable.

This poem is but a story, nay, a parable;
The cipher not caught; ’tis mere babble.

She turns away; I look even deeper;
Would you run? Would she?
Does thee burn? Is it for me?
She flees my sway; I pull ever closer.

A sharp flame rises; the night darkens;
The moment suffices; the soul harkens.

She is my muse; my rhythm and my blues;
Is she but a ruse? A silently smoldering lit fuse?

’Tis the story of me;
A yearning for the sea;
The quest to be free

Heart of crisis; shifting soul of the Pisces.
Blue dawn rises; mind still surmises;

Breathe, stillness, silence; do you see?
Chaos, perfect balance; as all things must be.

Note:
This poem was originally published on Medium on Dec 25, 2019.

A Dragon Awakens

**Note**
This article was originally published on Medium on Dec. 18, 2019. It was originally titled ‘The Awakening’.
**End Note**

My cave trembles under the tremendous assault of battle magic. I instinctively barrel outside and lash out both physically and magically. Bodies and blood fly, and I realize I am under attack by humans.

I curse my luck.

The damn vermin will never leave me alone now. I will either have to kill all of them or relocate my cave. They may be tiny and underpowered, but we dragons have always admired their tenacity.

But why do they attack me?

I will probably never know — the motivations of the tiny creatures are as alien as those of the starriders.

My throat constricts as a powerful force clamps around it. I laugh in disbelief. We discovered the three magicks, developed them for centuries, built our cities around them, and these creatures think they can fight me using it? They would have a better chance of defeating me if they threw pebbles at me.

Perhaps one would hit me in my remaining eye and blind me.

Behind my incredulity, I feel another emotion rising — one I had thought lost to me. Anger comes slowly to me but I know from the old days that my rage is something to be feared.

Dark thoughts tumble through my mind, memories I have suppressed for all these years.

I remember the last battle of the Second Drakonian War. I remember my fall from the sky. I remember seeing my mate fall after me and the ambition in my heart turning to horror. I remember the crater I created when I let loose, the cries and screams as I lost my mind and killed without mercy or compunction, reason deserting me as I slaughtered friend and foe, dragon and human. I remember the horror in my brood’s eyes as I killed them one by one.

I did not care.

I had just lost my love.

I remember the pity tainting the air as my friends looked upon my flight from the great roosts of Dawnflight. The great dragonlord himself, exiled from the same city he ruled for a thousand years. An unprecedented event, but an unavoidable one. I had proven myself unstable, erratic. Who knew when I would lose my mind again?

The council spoke, and I left Dawnflight in disgrace.

All this flashes through my mind in seconds. The old anger rises in my breast and I know that my passion is not dead yet. I am no mammal, to cower under attack. I shall not run.

Not again.

My attack is swift and deadly. Three out of the four battle mages lie dead, and a healer frantically attempts to revive the fourth human. Rows of soldiers start marching towards me, the ones in the front row shaking. I recall my studies on humans and smile as I realize the strange, single-scented creatures are scared. I roar in hilarity and several soldiers break and run as they realize I am laughing. They are scared?

They should be.

I pick up the healer effortlessly and levitate him to eye level. I search my mind for the Ariendale link and push into his mind. I overestimate my strength, and he screams, his head exploding into a red mist. My scales ruffle in disgust and I turn my focus to the surviving mage. The soldiers’ faces look whiter. Several more seem to be running away from me. Evasive maneuvers or retreat? I cannot tell.

I do not understand these mammals.

I flap my wings and soar over them and the soldiers launch massive bolts after me. I roar in amusement. I am no ordinary drake, to be brought down by mechanical ballistae.

I am a dragon and I show the soldiers the magnitude of their error. I unleash my full strength on the humans. Even a full-grown dragon would have difficulty resisting my attacks.

The humans stand no chance.

Some die where they stand. Others die running. Regardless, they die. Massive swathes of the ground are blackened by my fires. Great trees topple or explode into shards that cut through the corpses. I feel no satisfaction. They are too far beneath me to allow for any real battle.

The mage who first attacked me remains alive, but barely. Red liquid (blood, I remember from my human studies) spreads out in a perfect circle around him. I rack my brain for human healing spells, but I have never focused too much on healing. I have always been better at dealing death and destruction.

I try the Ariendale link again. This time, it works.

‘Why did you attack me?’

The human mutters something about a princess and kidnapping. Nonplussed, I toss him aside and crush him underfoot. I roar as the numbness in my heart lifts and I feel more alive than I have in decades. I know what I have to do now. Before I set out to Dawnflight, I glance back at the dead humans.

Strange creatures. What would I do with a princess?

Two Phantoms in an Inn

**Note**
This article was originally published on Medium on Nov. 27, 2019.
**End Note**

Our tale begins with two friends sitting at an uncomfortably warm and poorly lit inn, sipping the watered-down ale that the bastard innkeeper is overcharging them for. They complain about the weather, their health, traders, and generally everything. You look at them once and nothing stands out. Like most people, you don’t give either a second glance. However, you notice some rather interesting details if you make it to the second glance.

While both seem animated at first, their arms are rather stiff for two conversationalists. Their hands hover around their belts. Their surprisingly hard-bitten eyes constantly search the room as they punctuate their conversations with uproarious laughter. If something gives them away, it is their eyes.

One lacks an arm.

Yes, it is strange to see a one-armed man seated at the inn buying cheap swill — the fringes of the Empire are not friendly to amputees.

The innkeeper lounges at the counter, continuously shooting dirty glances at the men — he knows they mean bad news. Further still, you see a man propped up on a corner seat, cursing incoherently and scratching his head as he holds a one-way conversation. The two friends take notice of him and, as they watch, he slowly turns to face them. Delight, indecision, and horror war on his face, and he stands up, seemingly unsure whether he wants to back out of the room or throw himself at the two men.

The inn is empty, setting the stage for the unfolding drama.

The innkeeper curses and starts as he prepares to intercept the madman, but a gesture from the amputee stops him in his tracks. The innkeeper’s face twists in an ugly grimace and he grudgingly spits in the amputee’s general direction — to be ordered by one who is not whole is degrading to him. He snarls and turns, leaving the madman to his fate.

The madman walks towards the two friends, his legs twitching and shaking as if he does not remember how to walk.

The air is humming with tension.

The man with both arms unsheathes his sword and places it on the table. The amputee cracks his neck and waits warily. Their conversation has died down — their target approaches them.

The madman continues gibbering but the anguish in his eyes belies the incoherency of his words. He knows something is happening to him. He knows he is not well. Tears well up in his eyes and he makes an attempt to regain control over his traitorous body. His lips trembling so hard he can barely be understood, he squeaks out a single word.

“Please,” he moans, before sinking to the floor in pain and weariness.

The amputee redundantly prompts his trainee to pay attention with a look. He squints and seems to move, although no motion is visible. The innkeeper cringes back, the trainee exhales as he sees the act, and the madman screams as the thing inside him comprehends the situation.

The trainee hovers over the madman as the thing inside him tries to struggle, but it is far too late. He sees that the amputee too strong for the demon. He sees his superior capture it, absorbing it into his phantom arm. This is the first time he is seeing the process. Fear and awe course through his system.

Their job is done.

The amputee gestures to his subordinate and both men walk out of the door, the amputee tossing a couple of coins into the inn with his nonexistent arm. The innkeeper realizes they are gold coins, enough to buy his inn a couple of times over.

The ex-madman remains on the floor, gasping for air and crying tears of joy. The innkeeper mutters darkly and slams the door shut, all the while directing even darker glances at the man writhing on the floor.

Deep inside, under the layer of superstition and conditioning, a deeper fear begins to take root. What has he seen? What could it mean?

He knows he will probably never know, and the dissatisfaction pulls at his heart as he locks up and kicks the man out. He wants nothing to do with the magic of the Empire.

“What could it all mean?” he ponders, late at night, as sleep eludes his weary grasp.

“What could it all mean?”

“What could it all mean?”

The Day the Music Died

**Note**
This article was originally published on Medium on Nov. 24, 2019.
**End Note**

When NASA first found out how bad the meteor strike would be, they kept it a secret from the general public. At least until a do-gooder decided that the information was too important to be hidden and leaked the news to the press.

Dozens of national space agencies counterchecked the calculations. The vice president looked like he was about to throw up as he announced what was basically the end of the world. He walked out of the conference room, pulled out an unregistered firearm, and put a bullet in his brain.

People noticed.

Panic and pandemonium erupted around the world. Social conflict rose on an unprecedented scale as people turned against each other, first on class lines, then on race lines, then on religious lines.

Civilization had collapsed. We slowly reverted to the beasts we had always been suppressing. The final paroxysms of the dying organism that was humanity were the worst. Cities fell, societies collapsed, entire countries turned into gigantic conflagrations in minutes.

The observant reader will even now be asking me about the enclaves, but keep in mind that almost nobody knew about them at the time.

A few humans survived. They were lucky, of course, that a group of intellectuals, activists, and general do-gooders across the world spent their last days deactivating the nukes.

Why they did that was a question nobody could answer. Why would you spend your final days disarming nukes when the world was going to end in a week?

I watched the mess from my satellite uplink and wept. BBC stopped broadcasting news three days into the chaos, but some enterprising soul kept up a constant stream of 80s and 90s hits that we listened to as we went about our daily tasks. There was little chaos amongst us, for we were the few who had renounced the earth.

We hadn’t believed it at first. Then we raged, first at each other and then at the world. We tried bargaining, sending messages to out-system AIs to no avail. We were in the penultimate stage now. Despair put dangerous questions in our minds, but we had been selected for mental toughness.

Nobody succumbed to despair.

One or two made trouble, but the psychologists rooted them out quickly enough. We forced them out of our little bubble with tears in our eyes.

As we neared the fateful hour, the chaos seemed to subside, as if humanity had exhausted itself with its death throes and was now merely waiting for the end. We watched with bated breath, hoping against hope that the agencies were wrong — but knowing deep in our hearts that the earth was doomed. Our physicists had confirmed it, and they were never wrong.

A few minutes to the end, as the faint strands of music drifted to my ears, I heard Jan scream in disbelief. I quickly made my way to my station, and the blinking notification icon almost knocked me to the floor. I had thought us forgotten.

My, my, Miss American Pie…

‘Open it!’

My sharp command snapped him out of his daze. As he clicked on the icon, the message loaded.

“However long it takes — save us.”

Jan stared at me, and I almost couldn’t bear the hope in his eyes. The others filed in, ready for anything after Jan’s scream. Whispers spread through the group as the message disseminated across the crew, and I could see everyone’s spirits rise.

We had reached the depths of despair, but the message gave us something that, at that moment, I felt was the most beautiful thing ever.

Hope.

As Jan composed a reply, I heard the last strains of the song. I couldn’t help but feel their purport.

The day the music died…

As the music faded and the meteor hurtled ever closer, a second message popped up.

A single word.

PLEASE.

Under a Moonless Night

**Note**
This article was originally published on Medium on Oct. 30, 2019.
**End Note**

There was no moon, and the world was all the more beautiful for it.

Pinpricks of twinkling light punctured the utter darkness. He saw them everywhere he looked, ancient stars whose light had traveled an unimaginable distance to assail his mortal eyes. He gazed into the vast night sky, unlittered by clouds, and lost himself.

The constellations looked exactly the same as they had during those long nights he spent staring up as a child.

“It happens to all of us.

We grow up. We grow old. We remember our childhood. We remember the warmth and comfort. We remember the love and freedom. We remember how it was and compare to how it is.”

He turned his attention to the girl beside him. Her warmth astonished him every time he touched her. The blood pulsing through her body screamed to him.

“HERE IS LIFE, ” it bellowed indomitably, “HERE SOMEONE EXISTS.”

How could her very presence not amaze her when his own never failed to do the same? How often had he looked upon his own hand and marveled at the magnificence of him, the sheer artistry of his being, the interplay of muscle and vein and nerve that allowed him to function as he did?

This was why he came out here.

The wondrous joy of the night sky, untamed by artificial light for hundreds of kilometers in either direction. If he could, he would make it compulsory for every human, all seven billion of them, to visit this spot once in their lifetime.

“But humans take what is and make it theirs.

’Tis both their greatest strength and their biggest weakness.”

How he missed home. How he wished he could return. But there was no going back.

“Going back is an idea, a concept that never matches up to reality. It is the drive fueled by that most pernicious and tricky part of human nature: hope.”

What keeps us going every day but the hope of a better tomorrow? Why do we not collectively lose our minds, flip the world off, and go out in a defiant blaze of glory? Because we hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

And so Leo hoped.

Now her breath drew his attention. Her strong, steady breath. He hadn’t wanted to bring her here at first. But she had insisted, and he could find no reason to deny her except his own unease at the idea.

She didn’t get it. The entire idea was foreign to her. The night sky? Constellations? Why would anyone care?

Which made it all the sweeter that she had come all this way, sacrificed a tiny portion of her finite life, just to be close to him. It made him want to cry, but when he was out here, everything made him want to cry.

He never cried.

She murmured sleepily as he brought his lips to her throat. He felt the familiar stirring in his loins. Her breath quickened at his touch.

He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t control himself. He bit deep into her neck and drank and drank and drank, oh the sweet sweet lifeblood that he lived for, he could feel it restoring him, he could feel the thundering roar of her heartbeat in his body and it grew and grew and consumed him…

And suddenly, it was over.

He inclined his head over her respectfully, thanking her for providing him with the lifeblood he needed to maintain his long and storied life. In this remote location, nobody would discover a body.

Just like that, she was gone. Snuffed out like a candle. No goodbyes, no tears, no last words. One moment she was, the next she wasn’t. The universe continued existing. The stars still twinkled, the planets still shone, comets and meteors still trailed under the dome of the night sky.

It made him want to cry, but when he was out here, everything made him want to cry.

He never cried.

Nuclear Magery

**Note**
This story is the third of a trio I wrote in 2017. I originally titled it “The Mage”. I think this is easily the best of the three.
**End Note**

What would he do with it?

That was the question, wasn’t it?

It had taken him ages to pore over the dusty tomes in the Great Library, but he had finally stumbled upon it.

The books spoke of a time before sorcery, before Will-sapping magic was available to everyone – at least to some extent.

They spoke of tiny particles that made up everything. Different substances had different kinds making them up, and they combined in different ways to create different things.

He was skeptical at first – the old ones had certainly believed in these particles, but did they still exist?

The old ones had warped reality, allowing us to change existence with our very thoughts. Had they warped the nature of reality as well?

But he didn’t give up.

He was a mage, after all. Chosen as much for his sharpness as for his affinity for the talent, he was no ordinary person.

He stuck to his task long after anyone sane would have given up. But finally, his search bore fruit.

It all began with a simple combination spell. A flash of Will burned hot in his veins, and he felt faint for a moment before the adrenaline kicked in. It was a simple enough procedure, designed to provide the caster extra energy after casting a spell.

And it wasn’t even necessary. There was no result. Nothing at all, as far as he could see.

But then why that flash of Will?

He went back to the dusty tomes. Days and days passed, and there were times when he felt his head would split.

But he didn’t give up.

He was a mage, after all.

Until finally, he understood. Something had manifested due to his combination spell, but that something was much too small to be seen or felt.

He tried again and again. For months he kept at it.

He poured all his Will into it.

He was one of the strongest, and he was unknowingly practising.

Until one day, he managed to do it. The flash of Will. The moment of faintness. The adrenaline kicking in.

He thought he had failed again until he looked down at his hands.

They were wet.

With concrete proof of success and countless possibilities before him, he ventured out into the world.

He gathered money and power, but always, he was learning more and more.

He built a circle – twelve people who he started teaching. Many did not survive and fell by the wayside, sapped and drained of Will. But he maintained the circle of twelve, and slowly started teaching them the basics.

Until one day, the emperor struck.

Shaken by the mage’s ever-increasing power, he ordered his chancellor to turn one of the circle. He knew he could not openly march upon the mage, for the mage’s power was formidable.

And one of the twelve was bought. Money, land, and a title was promised.

But the mage toiled on, struggling to unravel all the mysteries of the universe.

Until one day, the traitor smuggled poison into his mentor’s drink. But the drink did not reach its intended victim – instead, it killed another of the circle.

The mage was enraged, and he followed the poison’s trail to the traitor using far more mundane magical means.

He tore the traitor apart from the inside out, gifting him a prolonged and unmerciful death. But before the traitor died, he spilled all the secrets of the Emperor, hoping for mercy.

That day, no mercy was shown.

The remaining members of the circle watched as their mentor killed one of their own. They watched as he withdrew into a shell of his own making. They watched, and they feared.

But fear slowly turned to anger, and anger into self-righteous rage.

One day, they confronted the mage in their combined power, battering him back with waves of Will-shaped weapons. And while the mage could disintegrate them, he had no direct control over Will itself. For Will was of man, an ugly imposition on the nature of reality.

And when he realized he could not win, he wept. He wept as Will-cast attacks broke his body. He wept as Will-shaped weapons bled him dry.

He wept as he died.

And as he died, his mind started doing the unthinkable, the one thing he had sworn never to do. He had only a smidgen of Will remaining, but it was enough.

One particle was all it would take. One particle…

It was not an easy task, but he did it.

He was a mage, after all.

That night, the Empire fell. That night, the Great Library was torn asunder.

That night, the circle was crushed into actual dust, blowing past the remains of the once mighty Empire it could have ruled.

That night, a good man died.

The Urge

**Note**
This story is the second of a trio I wrote in 2017. It’s interesting to see how my writing has developed in the meantime.
**End Note**

Who am I?

A question I asked myself often enough when growing up.

Do you normal people think of such things?

I am not normal.

The fact that I’m answering a question I asked myself should give you a clue or two. A clue or two… is that alliteration? Or rhyme?

Anyway, why am I abnormal?

It’s all because of the urge.

They all told me that it would end up hurting someone. But it’s an intrinsic part of me, so I guess that means I would be the one hurting someone.

They blabbered on about masters and servants but, truthfully, I wasn’t even listening. Why would it be a bad master? How would it even be my master?

Why would it be a bad master? How would it even be my master?

Right now, the very notion is laughable. But back then, it made sense. Perfect, terrifying sense. I knew that I was an abomination. I knew the madness that resided in my soul.

And sense wasn’t enough to hold me back.

It started small. Very small, with matchsticks and magnifying lenses. And that was normal. Every kid plays with it. Everyone is fascinated by the bewitching dance of destruction that fire portends.

But for me, it went further than mere fascination. It went deeper than a passing fancy.

Each time, I went a little further. First with pages out of a notebook. Then with old clothes and rags. Once an old car in the woods.

That was a bad time. It caused a forest fire that raged for half a day. Maybe not much in the grand scheme of forest fires, but still… how many animals died? Did any person perish in the fire I called up?

To this day, I don’t know. I ran. Ran and ran until I knew not where I was.

But then, everything changed.

The call came.

It came as a tingling sensation in my veins. A half-formed thought roaring through my body. A nascent power awakening.

You may laugh if you want to.

I would too, if I heard a stranger saying this. But I’m merely telling you what happened.

What was I saying?

Oh yes… pyromancy.

What happens when a myth materializes within you? What happens when the manifestation of that myth aligns with your deepest, darkest, desires?

What happens when a pyromaniac discovers pyromancy?

I happen.

This is my secret. No longer do I have to fear a flame. No longer do I have to hope for the best every time the urge calls. No longer do I have to worry about my loved ones.

It started small. Very small, with sparks bending to my will. And that was abnormal, very abnormal. Nobody can control that raging force of destruction. Nobody should be able to.

Each time, I went a little further. First with embers in my room. Then with fist-sized flames in the woods. Once I roamed an entire day with a ball of flame suspended in my pocket.

My power could be used for greatness. There would be countless applications. Not to mention that my very existence would imply the existence of others.

Others like me.

They could generate infinite amounts of electricity using our power. They would find dozens of medical applications.

But they would push us. Scientists and militaries alike are never satisfied with boundaries. There is always a great evil to conquer; there is always an end that justifies the means.

They would help me break my constraints. They would push me to near-infinite power.

They would turn me into a weapon of mass destruction.

And that I cannot condone. That alone, I fear.

But till then, till they find me, I live simply.

No heroics. No supervillains. No deaths of loved ones.

For I am selfish.

But even more than that, I am happy.

I am content.

Rebirth

**Note**
This story is the first of a trio I wrote in 2017. It’s interesting to see how my writing has developed in the meantime.
**End Note**

He walked through the streets of the burning city, mind numb, body sagging.

If anyone had seen him, they’d have wondered how and why this once-revered defender of the city had fallen so far.

But he did not wonder. He did not think. He did not care.

For him, it was catharsis.

And under the excitement and exultation, a small part of him knew he wouldn’t survive this.

Was this madness? This bleak, desolate maze his mind wandered in, was it insanity?

It was just a dream. He would wake up any moment now and find himself with her. His baby. How he loved her.

But no. Even the bleakness was better than that.

He couldn’t bear the pain that ravaged him, worse than any of the physical injuries he had suffered. He couldn’t think of her, not now, not never.

He was old. And now he was broken as well.

He tossed his head back and laughed.

***********************************************************************************************

A loud laugh broke the silence that had settled over the burning city like a shroud over a corpse. An apt analogy, he thought, since the city was more dead than alive.

Those residents who hadn’t died in the initial waves of destruction had fled the hero’s wrath. All that remained were those too weak, helpless, or hopeless to run.

And then there were people like him. Those too mad to escape. He was mad, wasn’t he? That’s what they had told him in Hell. He hadn’t believed it at first, but they couldn’t all have been lying to him. Or could they?

The continuing laughter snapped him out of his reverie as it changed. It almost sounded like sobs. But beneath the sadness, the anguish, there was another note. What was it?

Oh.

Hilarity.

Was there another madman around? Maybe he ought to talk to him. Madman to madman. That would be fun.

He rose and walked towards the laughter.

***********************************************************************************************

A figure approached him. No fear, no anger, no judgement, nothing in his gait or face. He couldn’t see the stranger’s face.

The stranger peered down at him.

“Why do you laugh?”

He considered the question. His daughter was dead. His wife would have been better off dead. His beloved city in flames. And yet he laughed?

Was he insane?

“Because I’m mad.”

The stranger looked at him for a long five seconds. He idly wondered whether he should disintegrate the stranger. Why not?

As he began to form the thought that would accomplish the deed, the stranger did something entirely unexpected.

He broke into laughter. Low, pensive, chilling laughter.

But underneath the pensiveness, below the chill, he heard something else. What was it?

Oh.

Hilarity.

Finally, someone who understood. Finally, a friend. His old friends were de- no that hurt too much as well. Better to be mad than to experience such anguish. Was he mad?

He joined the stranger in his laughter.

A Practical Guide to Growth and Self-Development…

…and some thoughts on Integral theory

Who am I? What should I do? What is the meaning of life?

Million dollar questions. 

Nobody knows the right answers, or even if the questions have ‘right’ answers. Most people don’t ask. They follow the path their ancestors and the world pave without looking up to notice the chaos, madness, and near-infinite potential of life.

I am not one of those. 

I ask, and then ask, and then ask again. Then I query, and then I probe. And then I wander rugged landscapes of abstract thought, sometimes devoid of any connection to my daily life. 

In the course of my musings, I realized that any philosophy divorced from my day-to-day actions is useless. I may never find the answers to those million-dollar questions but, in the meantime, I have a life to live. At the very least, I ensure that I live well.

How I do so and how I recommend you do so is the subject of this article. 

In this article, I will go on tangents and discuss barely relevant ideas. If this frustrates you, return here and click to the TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) for a summary.

Introduction

I will divide this article into two main sections: 

  • The basics of an integral approach, and
  • Practical ideas for improving personal wellness

Since my desire is to make this article more practical than theoretical, I will not focus much on the former. However, I also want to share the basics of my philosophy (which goes well beyond what I will share today) and gauge your interest in learning more about it. 

If you are interested in Integral theory, express your interest in the comments and I will consider developing it fully in another essay. 

What is an Integral Approach?

An integral approach is a holistic approach. It integrates as many perspectives as possible.

The Levels of Life

An integral approach encompasses the levels of human experience, which at minimum include:

  • Body: The physical body
  • Mind: The brain lies in the body, but the perception of the body lies in the brain. The mind contains the body and adds more to it. Its components include:
    • Sensations
    • Emotions
    • Thoughts
    • Experiences
    • The ego (sense of I)
  • Psyche: You are not just a body and a mind. You are also a spirit (a psyche). The psyche includes all aspects of the mind, conscious and unconscious. If we take psychology to be the study of the psyche as its etymology suggests, psychology and spirituality become analogs.  

These levels are not like rungs of a ladder but like peels of an onion. Mind includes body and adds to it; psyche includes mind and adds to it. The levels are interlinked. A change at one level reverberates through the entirety of your self. 

Lines of Development

An integral approach also considers lines of development. Psychologists have mapped out multiple lines including cognition (Piaget), morality (Kohlberg), psycho-sexuality (Freud), psycho-sociality (Erikson), gender identity (Sroufe, Shaffer), emotion (Saarni), ego (Loevinger), and many others. 

We embark on multiple (and possibly infinite) lines of development simultaneously. A person can be highly cognitively developed but have very low moral development. Generally, development in one line leads to development in many other lines. In other words, if you grow in one area, you will grow in many areas. If you become a better artist or writer or become more emotionally intelligent, these improvements will cascade to other parts of your life.

Improving Your Personal Wellness

As I mentioned earlier, theory means nothing if you can’t translate it to real life. While the previous section was all theory, the following section is almost entirely practical. It’s based on solid scientific research – you can always look at my references. 

Let’s begin. 

Diet

Science doesn’t define the perfect diet. 

We know that a good diet involves maximizing plenty of fruits, vegetables, and proteins. 

Minimize sugar, salt, and fats. Eat a balanced diet. Limit red meat consumption. Ensure you aren’t missing out on macronutrients. If you are vegan, take B12 supplements. 

You don’t have to follow all of these strictly. Even if you follow them only as general rules, you will feel a lot better in your body. Considering that the body, mind, and psyche are linked, you will feel a lot better in your overall life.  

Sleep

You cannot live well if you are not sleeping enough, although ‘enough’ varies from person to person.

Sleep is the best meditation.

– Dalai Lama, 1979

The human organism restores itself during sleep. When you sleep, the brain removes metabolic waste that it builds up during waking hours.

Sleep improves both major types of memory: declarative memory, which remembers facts and procedural memory, which stores skills.

Humans sleep for about a third of their lives – if you cut your life into three time periods, one is spent asleep. That’s a lot of time. Take your sleep seriously, because it’s a major part of your life. 

Sleep doesn’t require so much effort. Everybody does it, every day. But how do you get quality sleep? 

  • Set aside a ‘sleep’ area, where the only thing you do is sleep. Your mind associates this place with sleep and this association prevents distractions and allows you to drift off without issue. 
  • Have a consistent sleep schedule. Wake up at the same time every day, and you will soon start falling asleep at the same time every day. 
  • Get 6-8 hours of sleep. The exact number varies per person, so figure out how much you need and stick to that. 
  • Read or meditate before bed. These activities calm a racing mind and ease your passage into the land of sleep. 

Remember, it is not important to follow any of the suggestions that I give above. The goal is to get enough quality sleep. The methods you use to achieve the goal are unimportant, so do not get caught up in figuring out the best tips and life hacks. Try different things, experiment with yourself, and make a decision that works for you.  

Exercise

Exercise and mobility are incredibly important for a healthy life. 

Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise a day (such as jogging) leads to: 

  • Persistent improvements in specific cognitive functions such as focusing, solving problems, and making decisions, among other things.
  • Increased neuroplasticity and behavioral plasticity. Your brain and behavior adapt more efficiently to different circumstances. 
  • Enhanced attention control.
  • Improved declarative memory (facts-related), spatial memory (related to the physical space you live in and around), and working memory (where your brain temporarily holds information before deciding what to do with it). 
  • Improved stress coping.
  • Improved mood and self-esteem.

Exercise has been clinically proven to help sufferers of major depressive disorder (clinical depression) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Emerging clinical evidence supports the use of exercise for the treatment of drug addictions. Regular exercise reduces the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. 

If you cannot work out in a gym, go for a jog. If you can not go for a jog, take a brisk walk. If you cannot take a brisk walk, stroll every day. 

The human organism evolved to move and exert itself, and you ignore your evolutionary roots at your own peril. 

Socialisation

Human beings are social animals. We have some of the most complex social networks in the animal kingdom, yet our modern lifestyle isolates us and hides the importance of our society. 

When we eat food, we fail to see the farmers, middlemen, road builders, fertilizer manufacturers, construction workers, packagers, researchers and many more that get the food to our table. When we go to the hospital, we similarly fail to see the hundreds of years of science that go into our treatments, not to mention the actual physical processes that build our hospitals, manufacture our medicines, train our doctors, and so much more. 

Our society is a global one, yet we feel ever more isolated. 

Isolation leads to bigotry – we fail to see how certain groups of people contribute to the lifestyle we live and classify them as useless, allowing us to hate them. 

How can a radical feminist blame all the bad in the world on the patriarchy without acknowledging its positive contributions? How can a foreigner living in an African country say “Africans are stupid” while living a life that would be impossible without the contribution of those same people at every level of the economy and society? How can a Kenyan say “Europeans are evil” without considering the European contributions to science, technology, and democracy that make their lifestyle possible? How can a radical male rights activist say all women are horrible, hypergamic creatures without acknowledging the integral role that women have played throughout human history? 

To clarify: the patriarchy is problematic in its ignorance of minority perspectives; political and economic institutions in many African countries are often severely inadequate; neo-colonialism is a very real and dangerous issue; and some women are the horrible, solipsistic creatures that radical male-rights activists paint all women as.

The deeper point here is that polarisation of any sort prevents one from developing a realistic view of our complex world.

All the perspectives I attack above may be true to a certain extent, but they focus on only one aspect of the situation. The world is insanely complex, and groups of people can seldom be described in black and white terms. The world fades into shades of gray when you look at it qualitatively. Collapsing these shades of gray into polarised positions is self-defeating, incomplete, and generally harmful. 

The easiest way to fight the polarisation problem is to talk to as many people as possible, while assuming that what they are saying is correct, at least from their perspective. Talk to people from different areas. Learn their stories. Ask about where they come from and how their lives are and were. You will learn an incredible amount about the differences in people. 

I find older people most interesting because they come from a time so completely different from ours that my generation will never really understand it. It blows my mind to realize that 80 years from now, the world will be as different from today as today is from 1940 

To give a brief summary of the world in 1940, the Internet didn’t exist, most of Africa and parts of Asia were colonies, World War II hadn’t happened, the US wasn’t a hegemon, man hadn’t been to space, women had only gotten the right to vote twenty years earlier, DNA hadn’t been discovered, HIV/AIDs hadn’t been documented, digital computers had just been discovered, etc.

The world will change so dramatically in the next 80 years that it would most probably be incomprehensible to us humans of today.

Let us connect with as many people as possible, and realize that everybody is ultimately a human being.

Newness

Growth lies outside your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is:

  1. The people you interact with daily
  2. The things you do daily
  3. The places you visit daily

Change those three things and you will not fail to grow. 

Use your brain. Don’t throw yourself off a cliff (both literally and metaphorically) saying the ground is outside your comfort zone.

Enough said. 

Reading

Reading changes you as a human being. It shows you the world through somebody’s mind. Movies, TV shows, and music do the same but are not as active as reading. You can zone out while watching a movie or listening to music but it is more difficult to dissociate when reading. 

We are gods among animals, and our godliness is sustained in part because we can pass on information from generation to generation more efficiently than other animals. Every other animal passes on information through genes and imitation, but the human animal writes down its thoughts and ideas. Its contribution to human society lasts for thousands of years. 

Earlier this year, I read Meditations, a private journal by Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius was a Roman emperor who ruled almost two thousand years ago. Incredibly, I share many struggles with this man who was born in 121AD. To put that in context, his great-grandfather was alive at the same time as Jesus Christ. 

How lucky am I that I can read the words of an emperor’s private journal and apply them to my life? 

Returning to the benefits of reading, the activity involves comprehension at three levels. The reader must:

  • understand what each word means
  • put words together in a sentence and parse meaning from the sentence
  • combine meaning extracted from sentences and paragraphs to understand the whole text

Operating on these levels of understanding gives you a broader perspective of how things fit into a whole and allow you to understand your world better.

To summarize, reading is important because it:

  • Gifts you knowledge from different sections of the human race
  • Exposes you to new ideas and new ways of thinking
  • Gives you practical knowledge on how to navigate the world
  • Improves your vocabulary and general linguistic abilities
  • Teaches you to understand abstractions. Our world today is run by abstractions. Economies, democracies, languages, memes, the Internet, etc. are abstractions that do not exist as physical objects. 
  • Improves your memory. You need to remember multiple things to understand the story. If you don’t remember the characters, the narrative flow, important plot points, etc., you won’t go very far with your book. 

Gratitude

A large part of modern psychology focuses on curing problematic behavior. It focuses more on ‘fixing’ traumas and improving the negative conditions of the mind. 

An integral approach to psychology also includes a positive psychology: a study of the mind that focuses on how to improve positivity, well-being, and happiness. The pioneers of positive psychology were the humanists: Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and many others. 

In the early days of psychology, we had three main approaches to psychology. The behaviorists concentrated on how human behavior could be predicted and learned through experimentation. The psychoanalysts revealed that parts of the mind (the unconscious) were hidden in day to day life but operated as a part of a complete personality. The humanists studied the mind to enhance human creativity, wisdom, positivity, and happiness. 

Too many people think psychology focuses only on mental illnesses. 

Psychology is the study of mental processes and human behavior. Psychology lies behind political science, economics, and social sciences since all of these, when broken down, involve human beings. 

Psychology is important in organizations and companies because they are made up of human beings. Psychology is important in relationships because relationships happen between human beings. Psychology is important in each and every science because human beings are the ones studying these sciences. Psychology is important in every field because human beings are the ones involved in these fields

Now that I’m done waxing poetic about psychology, let’s get back to gratitude. 

Martin Seligman is one of the most well-known positive psychologists. In 2005, with a colleague named Tracy Steen, he worked on a revelatory study at the University of Pennsylvania. They measured over 500 people’s depression and happiness levels, had them do a series of tasks, and measured the participants’ depression and happiness levels after the tasks. 

Some tasks improved happiness levels and reduced depression levels. The two most effective tasks were:

  1. A gratitude visit. Participants had to write a letter of gratitude to someone who had been important to them but who they had never thanked.
    The gratitude visit spiked happiness levels and tanked depression levels spectacularly. However, the effects faded. Both happiness and depression were back at pre-test levels six months down the line. 
  2. Three good things. Participants had to write three things that went well every day for a week. This exercise made participants slightly happier at the end of the week. They continued getting happier, and their happiness peaked around six months after the test.
    Participants also displayed lower depression after the week was over, and remained less depressed six months down the line.
    Keep in mind that these results were caused by performing this exercise for a single week.

Gratitude is a powerful psychological tool.

Writing

As far back as 1986, Pennebaker and Beall found that college students who wrote about the most traumatic and upsetting experiences of their lives experienced significant improvements in their physical health. 

When you write about your deepest thoughts and feelings, you bring them to life outside of yourselves. It is freeing to see what is inside of you unshackled from the chaos of your subjective experience. 

When you write about deep issues, you will experience an immediate increase in stress and negative mood. In the long-term, you will experience less stress, improved immune system function, reduced blood pressure, improved lung function, improved liver function, improved mood, and a greater feeling of well-being. 

Writing forces you to turn your thoughts into a coherent narrative. It is easy to bullshit yourself when you think in your head. It is slightly harder to paper over inconsistencies in your thoughts when you speak to other people. It is almost impossible to stick to logical inconsistencies when you see your thoughts appear in front of you in black and white.

Writing helps you formulate your thoughts into cogent arguments, which you can articulate to others.  

If you are intelligent and have trouble articulating yourself, writing is the best solution to your ailment. In today’s society, an intelligent person who can clearly express themselves is a powerful person indeed. 

Journaling is the oldest and most common form of writing therapy. Journaling involves recording thoughts, feelings, or experiences that strike you throughout your day. It puts the brakes on neurotic repetition, where you fall into an endless cycle of repeating a troubling thought. When you vomit your thoughts onto paper or a screen, you see them as more distinct from you. They lose power over you. 

Journalling allows you to literally read your own mind. 

Don’t deny yourself such an incredible superpower. 

Meditation

Meditation refers to a wide range of practices that involve training your awareness and attention. As a side-effect, many people achieve mental clarity and emotional stability. The earliest records of meditative practices come from ancient Hindu philosophies. 

Let a man meditate on the syllable Om

Verse 1, Chapter 1, Khandogya Upanishad

Unlike the rest of the practices I have covered in this article, scientific research is still inconclusive on the benefits of meditation. People who try it out report improvements in their lifestyle – they claim meditation makes them less reactive, stabilises their mood, and generally gives them greater control over how they live their lives. 

The literature that we do have generally reports that meditation has an effect on reducing anxiety, increasing awareness, and reducing pain sensitivity. 

Experienced meditators generally say that the effects felt after a week or a month of meditation are nothing compared to the effects felt after meditation for a year. If you do meditate, try to meditate continuously for at least two weeks before deciding whether to continue permanently. 

Some avoid meditation because they are skeptics. It is easy to be wary when reading about “energy flowing through your body”, “chakras”, and “third eyes opening”. It seems very wishy-washy.

To those people, I say, try meditating for the simple reason that it will improve your attention. Forget all the woo-woo and focus on the practical benefits. 

The simplest way of meditating is to sit down and focus on your breath. Set a timer before you begin. When your mind wanders, return it to your breath. Repeat until your timer buzzes. 

Over time, as you grow as a meditator, you will find some forms of meditation more effective than others. Maybe you will decide to meditate while walking, a zazen practice called kinhin. Maybe you will find yourself unreasonably attracted to koans. Maybe you will decide you want more awareness of your body and take up tai chi. The options are endless.

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?

Zen Koan

I have personally meditated for over a month. When I look at my daily life, I see a noticeable difference. I am more aware of my actions and thoughts. I am more aware when I flinch and try to escape from the present. I am more aware of my emotions and can integrate them better into my life. 

I do not feel any different. Meditation has changed my life, but it has not changed how I feel about my life. I am happier and more open than before. I can laugh and express myself more than I could before. But life seems to be the same, and if I wasn’t journaling I might not have noticed any differences. 

Going back for a second, let’s talk more about the ‘flinch’. The flinch is when we disappear somewhere, dissociate from the present moment, and let ourselves deal with the present situation on autopilot. 

Sometimes this dissociation is useful, like when we are brushing our teeth. Imagine having to decide the direction and force of every single brushstroke every time we brushed. 

Other times, it is dangerous. When dealing with ourselves and other people, we often behave in ways that we would not like to. If we consciously think about it, our behavior does not make sense. These are flinches. Identifying these ‘flinches’ and facing the buried beliefs and traumas that cause them is an important part of growth.

Once again, I will divert and talk about another fashionable idea for many in my generation – that healing is an end-goal in itself. This is where you get ideas such as “being is enough” and “focus on healing, everything else will work out for you”. 

I strongly disagree. 

Communion with yourself is necessary and desirable, but it is not enough. The other side of the coin is agency. Human beings need to work to live. There is no escaping this. At the very least, you need to work to drink water. You need to breathe. You need to eat. 

Denying that work is a requirement for life is a denial of reality. 

How, then, do you develop agency? By doing, and by doing well. Whatever you do, however small or unimportant it seems, do it well. 

The two opposing ideals are: always being content and at peace with yourself, and always doing things to the best of your ability. Coincidentally, these two are the healthy versions of stereotypically male and female ideals.

Yin|Yang: The idea of complements coming together to create something more

Remember that all of these ideals are aims. They are goals to work towards. You will not achieve them every day. You may never achieve them in your lifetime. 

That’s okay. 

Keep striving, and make that journey your ‘being’.

Conclusion

If you made it to the end of this incredibly long article, congratulations! 

You deserve it. Not many reached this far. 

Hopefully, you learned something. Maybe you even learned a lot of things. 

It’s now time to apply.

 Knowledge is potential. Start using your newfound knowledge and your life will change. You may not notice it. Everything may seem the same. If you journal and measure where you are daily, you will see the progress. 

Choosing an integral approach to self-improvement is a monumental task. The self is massive beyond comprehension, so improving the self is obviously a massive subject. You could write about it for years and not even scratch the surface. 

If you’re interested in seeing a second installment to this article or just want to share your thoughts on my writing, let me know in the comments below.

I’ll be glad to hear from you. 

Peace. 

TL; DR. 

  • An integral approach looks at a subject from multiple angles and tries to gather insights from different perspectives. 
  • The levels of a human being are, at minimum, body, mind, and spirit (psyche). Wholistic self-improvement focuses on all three at once.
  • Eating and sleeping well will improve your life incredibly.
  • Exercise daily, since twenty minutes of aerobic activity can have an effect on your mood equivalent to anti-depressants.
  • Connect with others with the understanding that their life is as important to them as yours is to you.
  • Step out of your comfort zone to grow. Your comfort zone includes the people you interact with, the places you visit, and the activities you perform. Change them and you will grow.
  • Read more books. They give you knowledge and knowledge is power.
  • Write down three things that went well during your day every night to become happier and less depressed.
  • Write about your ideas because it is difficult to lie to yourself in writing. Journal as much as possible because journaling allows you to read your own mind.
  • Meditate. Focus on your breath for five minutes a day for two weeks.