Its like driving through fog and you really wanna turn back and go home. Then you get short pockets of clarity, and it's back to skill in uncertainty until ... finally. It opens up to the morning sun caressing fields of low lying mist. And then it's just beautiful. It speaks.

Thank you, Taylor, Chris, Guy and John...Thank you for all the hard work and love before this moment and thank you for being here and now with us open and reachable. Thanks a lot!

Phenomenal

This is like a bridge in Tension, doing the work right before your eyes!

Sophrosine reminds me of a wisdom practice in CBT known as the Wise Mind, it wisely and efficiently decides between the emotional and the rational mind, it remains functional, comfortable, and motivated, and its actions and thoughts are justified through their deep contemplation and open-minded empathy. (my definition) The visual metaphor given is as follows: "We can imagine a steel ball on various surfaces. The practiced, wise mind creates a v shape to contain the ball, when reality shakes it, the ball bearing returns to equilibrium quickly. Most people are in a u-shape, when reality shakes, it takes longer for them to stabilize and find resolution. Some people are on a flat plane, where they remain reactive and respond to anger with anger, overly criticize, or seek joy and fawn, via exterroception, and it takes another person to guide us back to center. Then there is the concave shape, where we fall off and remain stuck in a state of only exterroception or only interroception. “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” So sophrosine is essentially finding an optimal grip between when it's appropriate to apply interroceptive and exterrocpetive awareness in each situation.

I really appreciate these 2 episodes (!0a+b). They all make sense now after watching all the videos of your teaching from the "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis." These 2 episodes are experiential to me, "know thyself" is the key to wisdom. The 50 episodes of the "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" are theories of the ancient teachings. In particular, I love watching your interactions with your students. They're so beautiful and lucky to be guided by you who has so much knowledge and wisdom from the ancient philosophers. Thank you so much Dr. John Vervaeke! Namaste!!

This was beautiful and inspiring! Thank you John!

I really appreciated seeing the various aspects of the virtue gather more light with each additional proposal, the moment where Chris pointed out how it had become like a presence circumambulated by the four of you was a pleasant surprise. Being a spectator to something like this is not just a passive experience either, in so far as I was trying to set aside my own preconceived idea of Sophrosyne and follow the presence.

I am proposing that Sophrosyne is when reasons of love align with reasons of pleasure and reasons of duty creating harmony between the dimensions of meaning, of self-interest, and of morality! I was just reading Susan Wolf's book "Meaning in Life and Why It Matters" and I had this insight that made me remember this particular episode so I felt like coming here to share it with the world 😀.

I propose that we revise the structure of all modern political discourse around this. Debates, congressional sessions, jury deliberation, etc.

This was amazing, thank you very much John. I have a mood disorder, but just watching you flow somehow made me feel better, it put myself into "exploration state", "curiosity-wonder state", wanting to put this into practice with someone else.

OMG listening to you guys IS my inner dialog! I love you guys and thank you so much for everything, especially the open-ness and vulnerability 🙏

So helpful, inspiring and encouraging and authentically intimate. Thank you all for sharing this. Respect from Tracy in Wales.

These two last episodes have taken me to the flow state I perceived myself to be in during parts of some of the AFTMC episodes. It's also simply beautiful to see how much respect and care for each other you have within the group that engaged in the practices. On the improvement areas side of things, there were some somewhat distracting issues with the audio (microphones and volume, mostly). Nothing major, though, and I'm sure it'll all be fine in the next episodes. Looking forward to watching the next episode soon!

Holy fuck, bro. Focusing boka, just blew my mind. Dropped me down to the well of meaning. And revealed my own taste for meaninglessness. Fucking Vervaeke. That it. I'm rebranding myselfe as a Vervaekian.

Why is it in this corner that whenever someone invokes self-organization, the inquiry stops and everybody falls silent with reverence? Why is everybody here in such an awe of self-organization? To me its absolutely bizarre. If anything, invoking self-organization completely explodes the space of possibilities for inquiry. Where, how, why does SO occur? What are the sufficient conditions for it? Why is answer to everything here opponent processing and SO?

Grateful 🙏

Thanks so much John for this labor of love: I can't imagine all the time and effort that went into this! I'm listening to this series very slowly, pausing and taking notes, and then reviewing -- so it'll be awhile before I finish. But that's ok: I'm finding this approach very rewarding! Thanks again John--we are indebted to you!

Amazing. Thank you!

The dialogos is the sage - it guides us. Acts as a guide to an ecology of practices Ecology births requests for guidance. Dialogos cares for curation of practices

I would love to see more Virtues being explored this way!

The part of the conversation about a self-organizing system navigating a combinatorially explosive arena and collapsing in order to create balance reminded me so much of lightning. A charge is generated in the storm, and the only release is that charge branching blindly through the air, creating a single brilliant line when it's drawn inevitable to its destination and the charges are balanced. But the lightning doesn't just happen spontaneously, nor is it forced. It's the natural result of the immense charge generated by the storm. In that way, I see Sophrosine as the ability to generate a storm inside yourself, that generates the recognition of the difference between the good embodied in the world and the lack of it in you, an immense charge that can only be balanced by a brilliant, involuntary bolt of action towards that good. And for the greatest storms, again and again.

I very much appreciate this (10a and 10b). I can feel that it's transformative. I was thinking of when John talked about how Socrates exemplified "courage". This is, too, definitely courageous, but it's even more. Is it also exemplified philía? I think so. I have seen you do dialectic before, but it was special seeing you do it in the same physical room. I want to say thank you to all the participants.

If I’m not mistaken, at the end, when guy repeats that sophrosyne is “the way the good embodies the world” he asks why he couldn’t have said that to begin with. I think however that he did say that to be begin with, and through dialectic into dialogos you all were able to glimpse a piece of truth that rediscovered itself through the course of your discussion. Having such a full circle moment on camera is, like you all said, only possible today. I’m truly grateful to be watching such a historic video. Thanks

I feel like as far as spirit between you and I, you’re building a bridge and crossing it to meet each other In that you’re allowing spirit to flourish between you and are connecting through it.

I think it needs a little dissonance maybe there us a case for adverse processing. Maybe there needs to be a pinch of salt

Great to see this develop in real time. I would love to see you working on proposals like - "How do we change dysfunctional power structures within society?" "How do we address the climate crisis?"

Great

45:00 I find Chris' insight about the one possibility that best symbolizes all the other possibilities very intriguing. I would ask Chris thusly: could it be that sophrosyne is your ability to look for the holon (the bead of water reflecting universe on its surface, the minute particular reflecting the One)? Could it be that to the extent that you reflect the One in your life you're able to resonate (pre-cognitive perception) with the representative holon (i. e. the starting point for the task of calling your friends)? Is then sophrosyne the flexibly to track the points of resonance across time? #metaoptimalgrip #compression

It seems like this is a type of renewing the mind and adapting to a rhythm of cultivation through discipline. It's less about allowing change and more allowing change to be and not allowing oneself to give into the temptation to take control of the change. Remembering- Re- Member- ing (member- parts) - putting pieces together to form a place of peace to envelope and become a part, of peace and becoming at peace (be- coming) or arriving at that place of peace- being a part of peace as well as coming in peace , and not in pieces. And then naturally piecing together - adding unto the peace, peace being the place where one is at one with what is meant to be and is contributing as part of the flow of that is already present. This is not a place that one gets stuck in, but one needs to be aware of how to handle the scenario that is a reverse where one becomes stuck in one's own mind and there's a barrier between being able to connect properly or clearly. To handle that is to simply be aware of the blockage, acknowledge that it was there and through calling that out as what it is and then being drawn out and back into peace , this is where being still can help. Be still and know. Enter into the time that is now, the present moment, and become aware of one's own inner and outer senses anchoring in groundedness via gratitude, but we're only 15 minutes in and I am going to probably adjust this comment later.

During the discussion of embodiment towards the end of the episode it struck me that something in this combines John's work on metaphor with Relevance Realisation. I would propose that the embodied nature of our conscious experience means that when we are trying to understand complex ideas we are dramatically aided by using physical experiences of our body as a metaphor through which we can come to frame the concept more concretely and precisely. This works particularly well because so many complex phenomena occur at a sub- or pre-conscious level to enable physical movements or our embodiment in general, that certain movements can capture a depth of meaning and nuance that words struggle to capture until the metaphor has first taken some simplified conceptual structure, which could be visual (e.g. in a molecular diagram or other form of info-graphic), embodied (the stretching/elasticity example at 1:06hr) or otherwise.

There’s a difference between thinking what is the good and actually feeling it in an embodied sense, so I think that’s where there is a tension and a stumbling block on embarking on the acting out of the goodness, so maybe sophrosyne lies in that general place Edit: ok yeah alright you guys got to that in the second half, my bad I should have watched the whole thing before commenting

Dialogos - we aspire to speak to the whole/self of the person, not to the part of the person. Even though we cannot fully see whole/self/throughline of other, we can be in right relation and get in touch with it

This was amazing! It's curious how the conversation was deeply religious, without any overt religious references. I do wish that someone explored the religious side a bit more deeply. I couldn't help but be reminded of Jonathan Pageau: I feel I was hearing some of his ideas (e.g. idea of worship as proper attention). Is there any chance that you could do this again with him in the mix?

43:34 Jordan Peterson: The purpose of profound religious contemplation.. the purpose of profound philosophical contemplation.. is to learn how to be in the right place at the right time, all the time. That's meaning.

💓

Edensjoy! ❤

Is sophrosyne the beneficial aspect of culture? When your surroundings inclines you to the good (defined within the different cultures)

The GuQin was the philosopher's musical instrument in ancient China. The setar is the prefered instrument of Sufi mystics. Which instrument is the philosopher's instrument in the globalized modern world?

Focusing, the book, by the way, by Glendlin.

I've learned some things over the years from JV's content. But when he's in dialogue with Mastropietro, that guy gives off such pretentious and performative vibes, it is so off putting to me and I am no longer receptive. I felt that in previous series, but here it's at another level altogether and I just had to comment. I can't be the only one, surely others get weird vibes from him.

I think so ( at 9:59)

I think it would be good to tell ourselves to strive for that healthy sophrosine middle ground, but I'm wary of the way Masterpietro described at the beginning, similar to how I'm worried about how people interpreted nietzsche. I believe it's unattainable. The gestures made by golden locks man to depict the centerpoint rotating between his fingertips reminded me of a collapsed star, whose center is unattainable and cannot directly be perceived, similar to how we can never truly perceive god, and never truly perceive the true single right thing to do. We can only ever hope to pursue what's closest to sophrosine, and be wary of terminology like "sage" or "enlightened one..." If you catch my drift. The most responsible thing to do would be to remain a hermit, and reduce one's interaction with the world to reduce risk of harming it anyways. Also, what I fear is that this line of thinking has unfortunately avoided considering free will as not real,or the role of determinstic causality in this discussion. Next time, perhaps! Great hearing this discussion, brilliant minds all around, dialogos needs to be taught in schools!

Is there like a discord server doing this?

So you say "everything real about a virtue is in silence". What we human beings enact as being virtue in our relationships would be fantasy ?Also, if clarity also is a value, this talk is very confused.

John, maybe see if old mate can use his shaft to help release that burden.

Are we still talking about talking in the first 20 minutes 😭

wtf