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October 9 - October 17, 2018
MaiTai Global, started in 2006 by venture capitalist Bill Tai 31 and kitesurfing legend Susi Mai, uses action sports (mostly surfing and kitesurfing) as a stimulant for group flow and entrepreneurship.
learning to kitesurf has a lot of parallels with the challenges of entrepreneurship,” Mai explains. “If someone has the grit and presence of mind required by the sport, then it shows a lot about their character and how they show up more broadly in life.”
many Millennials have reached stages of adult development43 (with all their associated increases in capacity) that took their parents until middle age to attain.
According to a 2013 study published in a journal of the National Institutes of Health,52 the most common motivations are to “enhance mystical experiences, introspection and curiosity.” Transcendence, not decadence, appears to be driving use forward.
there’s more capacity, resilience, innovation, and creativity in all of us collectively than in any of us alone.
other than the obvious external cues—the fiery explosions, wild costumes, and all-night dance parties—what’s really going on is happening in people’s minds.
The euphoric neurochemistry of effortlessness, as John Lilly realized, can create dependency on whoever can administer that next hit of bliss.
“there was no discernible way to tell the difference between the ways subjects’ brains reacted to powerful brands35 and the way they reacted to religious icons and figures. . . . Clearly, our emotional engagement with powerful brands. . . . shares strong parallels with our feelings about religion.”
Could this state of consciousness play a role in prompting buying behavior? Could the mechanics of ecstasis be used to drive market share?
That’s a positive “transformation” that many are willing to suffer and pay a premium for.
Video games raise dopamine to the same degree that sex does, and almost as much as cocaine does. So this combo of adrenaline and dopamine are a potent one-two punch with regards to addiction.”
Physiological data alone was enough to predict future spending.
Imagine newscasters or politicians wielding similar technology, able to pluck heartstrings, stoke outrage, inspire hope, and even trigger communitas, just by reading and tuning our neurobiology.
“It’s very easy to imagine a company that succeeds in dominating the VR universe44 quickly stockpiling intimate data on not just what you and three billion other people ‘favorite’ but . . . a thousand other details. To do that in real life would be expensive and intrusive. To do that in VR will be invisible and cheap.”
pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that our fears will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
while the possibility of a nation deliberately invading our minds to shape and control behavior may feel like a relic of Cold War paranoia, the prospect of multinational corporations deliberately tweaking our subconscious desires to sell us more stuff is already here.
It’s why Burning Man advises people to not make any life-changing decisions for at least a month following the event,3 and why online psychedelic message boards like Erowid are filled with advice like “Don’t believe everything you think.” In nonordinary states, dopamine often skyrockets, while
So no matter what comes up, no matter how fantastical your experience, it helps to remember: It’s not about you. Take an encounter with selflessness for all the possibility it suggests, but fold those lessons back into your everyday roles and responsibilities.
Under normal conditions, with an active prefrontal cortex constantly scanning scenarios in the past and the future, we spend very little time living completely in the present.
So when a nonordinary state plunges us into the immediacy of the deep now, it brings an added sense of gravitas to the moment.
Which is fine if we anticipate it, but demoralizing if we don’t. “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year,”11 Bill Gates once said, “and underestimate what they can do in ten.”
In bringing back ecstatic insights, it’s critical that we calibrate the difference between the reach-out-and-touch-it immediacy of the “deep now” with the frustratingly incremental unfolding of the day-to-day.
“the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
So do the hard thing and the rest becomes much easier: Enjoy the state, but be sure to do the work. And no matter how tempting it is: Don’t become a Bliss Junkie.
That feeling is called “the rapture of the deep,” a euphoric high produced by alterations in the lungs’ gaseous chemistry, and it’s responsible for one in ten of all dive fatalities.
“What one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits.”
If he was right, and there really are no limits to consciousness, then the point is not to keep going until we find it all, but to come back before we’ve lost it all.
what’s the best way to get into the zone?” To which we respond: it depends. It depends on your tolerance for risk, and how far over the edge you’re willing to hang.
“the precise amount of sweetness [or saltiness or fattiness]—no more, no less—that makes food and drink most enjoyable.”
“What is the best way to get into the zone?” then we need to add an additional concept here—hedonic calendaring—which helps us figure out how often we should get into the zone.
you spend all of your time blissed out, zenned out, drunk, stoned, sexed up, or anything else, then you’ve lost all the contrast that initially made those experiences so rich—what made them “altered” in the first place.
By dismantling the “oughts and “shoulds” of the orthodox approach, while avoiding the pitfalls of “if it feels good, do it” sensation seeking, we up the odds of getting to our destination in one piece.
Balancing the bright lights of the ecstatic path with the darkness of the human condition is essential. Otherwise, we become unstable, top-heavy, our roots too shallow to ground us.
“Love tells me I am everything. Wisdom tells me I am nothing.28 And between these two banks, flows the river of my life.”
The Japanese get at this same idea with the concept of wabi sabi30—or the ability to find beauty in imperfection.
