contemplative practice - Casey Rae’s Apocrypha

Casey Rae’s Apocrypha

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contemplative practice

A collection of 14 posts

Fire on the Mountain

contemplative practice

Fire on the Mountain

An unexpected lesson in body memory—and a long-awaited update on Dead Dharma.

Embracing the Gap

Embracing the Gap

Holding space for a crisis and relaxing into an unhurried weekend aren't separate states. It is the same attunement, aimed outward or inward.

In Defense of the Difficult

In Defense of the Difficult

Making a case for art that makes you work for it.

Presence Over Pattern Matching

Presence Over Pattern Matching

Machines only know suffering by concept. Humans know it by condition. The distinction is crucial for care.

Getting Soft in Hard Times

Getting Soft in Hard Times

The antidote to a bruising world isn't a tougher shell, but a softer heart.

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Oil on canvas.

Mind Out of Time, Time Out of Mind

Some say we should live in the present, but try to pin it down and it vanishes. So do ideas about past and future. Might as well take that long lunch break.

Political Unease as Spiritual Crisis

Political Unease as Spiritual Crisis

Anxiety over the state of the world is driving many to seek psychotherapy. Is it enough?

The Empathy-Compassion Distinction

The Empathy-Compassion Distinction

“Compassion fatigue” is one of those phrases that sounds right—but it may miss the mark. What most caregivers and clinicians are actually experiencing is empathy fatigue, and the distinction matters.

Reflecting on Religious Hypocrisy

religious hypocrisy

Reflecting on Religious Hypocrisy

As a human being, I have numerous blind spots, where ignorance conditions reactivity. I don’t love that, but I also don’t shy away from the reality. Some of the points of activation I feel most deeply are around religious hypocrisy. For most of my life, I would not

Middle Management: Notes on the Threshold

contemplative practice

Middle Management: Notes on the Threshold

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that arrives not at the end of something hard but somewhere in the middle. You’ve been in the shit long enough for the shock to have worn off but the light at the end of the tunnel remains an inky maw. The

Why (You Think) You Can’t Put it Down

Why (You Think) You Can’t Put it Down

A war with Iran in its fourth week—a nuclear plant struck, the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil up nearly 60%. Arctic sea ice at a record low, global warming accelerating, the planet on course to breach 1.5°C before 2030. Cuba going dark under a US oil blockade,

Running Scared: Wind Season in a Fire Horse Year

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Running Scared: Wind Season in a Fire Horse Year

The Tibetan medical tradition has a name for what a lot of us are feeling right now. Loong (rLung)—wind energy, the element that governs breath, nervous system, and the movement of mind—is constitutionally volatile in spring. Add a Fire Horse year, in which flame and wind feed each

IFS Is Having a Moment. So Is the Backlash.

IFS Is Having a Moment. So Is the Backlash.

IFS—aka Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic model built around working with distinct “parts” of the psyche—is having a moment. It’s all over wellness culture right now—TikTok therapists, podcast guests, airport bookstore self-help—and with that kind of buzz comes backlash. The Cut recently published a

Wanting Otherwise: On Inevitability and Refuge

Wanting Otherwise: On Inevitability and Refuge

I’ve been thinking about inevitability. The inevitability of falling apart. The inevitability of sickness, old age—if we’re so lucky—and death. The inevitability of phase change, from the smallest, tiniest repositioning of the elementary particles that comprise the light show we call our human embodiment, to the