To learn how to relax effectively, we need to learn how to relax *into* stressful emotions. Often it can feel more intuitive to do the opposite. When stress arises, we relax away from it into pleasant stimulation or numbness. This doesn't actually relax the stress but just blocks it out of awareness. To relax into a stressful emotion, we must hold it in awareness. Holding it in awareness, we see that just as eg breath can be a support for relaxation, so too can stressful emotions. The stress itself can be the sensation that we relax into. The stress itself is the support for our relaxation. In doing so, it goes from a perceived threat into an ally. And, often, will naturally release itself, removing any need to hide from it or numb it out.

The more outlandish claims of popular theistic systems give atheist-as-identity types too easy an out when it comes to justifying their worldview. It's like, yes, sure, most of these old religious books make lots of dubious claims. But putting that to one side, do you believe there is a deeper significance to the universe than mere particles and waves bumping into each other? Do you believe there is meaning to life? Do you beleive there are objective ethical standards our behaviour can be held to? Do you believe love matters beyond biological convenience? Almost anything that fills that role could rightfully be called "God." And I've rarely met someone whose behaviour doesn't suggest such a belief even if their words don't, at least outside the population of suicidal depressives and psychopaths.

Do you want to speak to your heart and have it speak to you? Here’s a simple technique to get started: - Tune into your heartbeat and feel the life-force inherent in it - Imagine when you are breathing that the air is going into your heart not your lungs - Try to *feel* the *energy* of the breath going into your heart - As you breathe in and out, observe how the sensations around your heart fluctuate with your breath - Now with the next in-breath feel your mental *perspective* sink down to your heart with the energy of your breath. - Then, ask your heart a question. - Before putting words the answer, try to sense the feeling tone in your heart that the question gives rise to - Take that feeling tone as a meditation object and bathe in it for a time. - Then let whatever intuitions want to arise from it rise into your mind. - At first it should feel more like intuition that thoughts - But you can then ask your mind to translate that intuition into thoughts or even words - Thank your heart for sharing - See if you can let your perspective continue to rest in the heart after the practice is finished You may find that you have a new best friend and that they live inside you.

It’s deeply irrational to be a “rationalist”. There are obviously many more valid sources of understanding than just pure rationality. Their empirical cousins who treat science as the only valid way to gain insight are just as bad. And both the rationalism and scientism cults are fundamentally dishonest. 99%+ of all human decisions, even big ones, are made on non-rational & non-scientific grounds. Nobody decides who to marry on the basis of logical deduction, formal statistics, or peer-reviewed papers. Nor do they choose their best friends, where to live, or when to have kids / start a business etc etc on this basis. All these decisions and the beliefs that drive them rest on a diverse array of inputs: Intuition, personal experience, emotion, reason, cultural story-telling, tradition, relational trust. The everyday wisdom we glean from living. Yet rationalists and purveyors of scientism want to disallow all this when it comes to matters of spirituality and ethics. It’s an arbitrary and incoherent position. And one that’s dishonest about how they actually form most of their beliefs / decisions / actions in life. Of course completely ignoring rationality or scientific enquiry is just as bad. Like most of these needlessly polarized positions in modern society, there’s no need to treat it as either / or. We can value logical deduction, statistical modelling and science. And simultaneously value intuition, introspection, tradition, emotional intelligence and personal experience. We can also determine which lenses are which appropriate to which situations without fetishizing one as the be all and end all. To deny any of these modalities is to deny ourselves valid sources of knowledge. It is also to deny ourselves the full possibilities that being a human offers.