Thank you, sage, for illuminating this for us. This really helped, similar to how one figures out finally the name and nature of an illness after decades of unconscious attempts and activities to cure it. I've read many things, but this one hits the way one needs to be hit to wake up.
Coming from a Zizekian/Lacanian angle, this sounds exactly like surplus enjoyment. Repression of satisfaction becomes satisfaction of repression. Arguably the basis of civilization.
very interesting! sounds like a powerful idea. I haven't heard of it before.
Repression is categorically different to release though. At least that's what I'd posit; repression involves an active pushing down of something, whereas Shaktimaxxing is a passive release of something. Do Zizek and Lacan speak to that at all? Like in repression some force is still being exerted on a desire to crush it, and letting go is very not that!
Ah, I might not have explained myself well. Surplus enjoyment is like an enjoyment that is one layer removed from a given activity itself, even when that activity is in itself unpleasant.
An example is like when Schwarzenegger infamously described intense weightlifting as an orgasmic experience, despite (or because of) the pain -- here, not only is there "no pain, no gain", but surplus enjoyment manifesting itself where the pain, conditioned as a signifier of gain, becomes a gain in itself, a pleasure in itself. Surplus enjoyment can also occur with a pleasurable activity, like when someone feels comfort in putting on weight when preparing for chemotherapy (this is a basic medical practice) while also having the more direct enjoyment of tasty food.
Repression is not so critical to surplus enjoyment, I just used the phrasing because it's an example of it that I think Zizek borrowed from Judith Butler, which he quotes somewhat often. The original phrase was "Repression of desire becomes a desire for repression," I think.
In the case of "Shaktimaxxing", the surplus enjoyment here is in the redefinition of the discomfort -- or, to borrow the weightlifting frame, "pain" -- in *not* scratching an itch as actually a "gain" of excess psychic-spiritual energy, a literal surplus!
If I have any qualms about this piece, it's that I don't believe this practice is unique to the sort of Buddhist-Taoist realm that is your theme. Puritanism is precisely about this: the less you enjoy directly, the more you enjoy fidelity to God, and whatnot. Diet culture is about this: the less you enjoy your food (whether by less food or less palatable "health food"), the more you gain towards a desirable self-image or quasi-athletic performance.
Surplus enjoyment is simply a broad phenomena, neither necessarily good or bad, moreso anatomical, is my point, and that "Shaktimaxxing" is one such another form of it. I wonder if I should be "Shaktimaxxing" my "itch" to check up on my friends, or to feed my pets, or to mourn the loss of either of them, just to illustrate the amoral dimension of surplus enjoyment for you.
it's interesting that your most impressive thing is learning a cool song on the guitar. You say that this was a GigaDesire, not a Shakti accumulator. But to achieve a GigaDesire, don't you need a lot of Shakti in the bank? What's the difference between whatever you're doing now to accumulate Shakti and whatever you were doing then? Why is the more direct ShaktiMaxxing better than minmaxing Shakti to achieve your GigaDesire? Very curious to understand why you feel like Shakti should be mined directly (internally?), and not indirectly by achieving awesome + impressive things.
sage thank you for these thoughtful questions--I've been mulling on them a bit.
To acheive a large desire or goal, certainly you need some Shakti in the bank, and every human has some by default. Acheiving desires is a mixture of Shakti and Karma (aka your previous circumstances). You might want to graduate college with a 4.0, and if you studied a lot in highschool and learned how best to do that, then that Karma will make reaching the goal much easier than for the person who didn't learn to study in highschool. Comparatively less Shakti needed.
The difference between now and then is that in the past, the mental was not directly addressed. I was focused upon doing external actions to achieve an external goal. But as mentioned, ~90+% of actions are mental actions, AND mental actions can have a very real effect on the external (mosquito bite itch (internal) causes scratch (external)). Leaving the mental unaddressed is like thinking you have full control of a small boat in a stormy sea; you might still get somewhere, but it's easy to capsize. Addressing the mental is like being able to calm the waters of the sea itself, then sailing the boat becomes ezpz baby
Also a note that Shaktimaxxing is specifically about letting go of desires. Acheiving things is certainly implied within that, but there is no inherent "direction" to Shaktimaxxing. Just release release release, shave away shave away shave away. You're not trying to go somewhere, you're just saying "no thanks" to going in xyz directions over and over. A path naturally arises out of that, but it's not the point. The point is the releasing.
Direct Shaktimaxxing is better because the OG Shaktimaxxers realized one very important thing: the attainment of any desire is ultimately temporary and unfulfilling. You get the lambo, it's cool for a month then you never look at it. Some cool achievements can stick around for longer, but you come into this life with nothing and leave with nothing.
Another reason is that most people today don't have a grasp of what they truly want, and Shaktimaxxing helps to clarify things by pruning away the small and irrelevant desires. I'll also say that if someone already has the "inner power" to 1. know their dreams and 2. achieve them, then more power to them! That's wonderful, and perhaps this info wouldn't be of much interest or help to them.
Shaktimaxxing was NOT developed for the purpose of acheiving awesome & impressive things. In its original context, Shakti should never be leaked for the purpose of achieving anything material. It's much deeper than that. But that gets into the weird spiritual stuff which is beyond the scope of this essay--perhaps a part 2 that goes into that stuff is warranted. And my own understanding of the deeper spiritual side of stuff with this is also limited. But the tldr is that they were goin for enlightenment and Shaktimaxxing is a path to that.
Please let me know if that clears things up or if you have any other questions--as with all things, use if useful :)
thanks! i thought this was a great essay. I'm full of mental itches that would improve my life to ignore, and this was super clarifying as to what's going on/what the reward is for letting the mental twitch pass by.
Not opening twitter out of habit feels like one part of shakti preservation - is the other part just sitting really still and ignoring whatever else you want to do? I've tried out some noting practice and haven't really stuck with it - what were you doing when you first started doing meditation?
oh yes and another very valid meditation technique is to stay completely still. Like don't even move a fkn muscle for 20min aside from breathing. Quite hard! But very effective.
what you said is spot on! Just sitting through the itch to open twitter is a massive shakti boost, because twitter and all social media are massive shakti drains (they pull your mind in 1000 different directions every .08 seconds).
The other part is yes essentially what you said as well. I have another post coming soon about my start with meditation (it was very recent, approaching 200 days which is very little on the time scale of meditation~!). I started with chanting a mantra, not really knowing what I was doing. I'd say if you enjoy singing or making music, Om chanting can be very good. If you're a more visual person, and/or enjoy the feeling of staring into a campfire, candle gazing (trataka) is great. I've done that a bit. I've also tried a third eye meditation where you focus on your breath and try to breathe into the space between your nostrils. This was and still is difficult for me, but one or two times I've glimpsed the first little part of what's possible with this technique. It's very interesting! Definitely something there. If any of those sound interesting, let me know and I'll link to a resource on how to perform them properly~!
Any technique has the ability to max tf outta shakti at the end of the day--just picking one and brute forcing it is one way, but i've found it much easier to do a technique I actually enjoy at least at the beginning~
Thank you, sage, for illuminating this for us. This really helped, similar to how one figures out finally the name and nature of an illness after decades of unconscious attempts and activities to cure it. I've read many things, but this one hits the way one needs to be hit to wake up.
Coming from a Zizekian/Lacanian angle, this sounds exactly like surplus enjoyment. Repression of satisfaction becomes satisfaction of repression. Arguably the basis of civilization.
very interesting! sounds like a powerful idea. I haven't heard of it before.
Repression is categorically different to release though. At least that's what I'd posit; repression involves an active pushing down of something, whereas Shaktimaxxing is a passive release of something. Do Zizek and Lacan speak to that at all? Like in repression some force is still being exerted on a desire to crush it, and letting go is very not that!
Ah, I might not have explained myself well. Surplus enjoyment is like an enjoyment that is one layer removed from a given activity itself, even when that activity is in itself unpleasant.
An example is like when Schwarzenegger infamously described intense weightlifting as an orgasmic experience, despite (or because of) the pain -- here, not only is there "no pain, no gain", but surplus enjoyment manifesting itself where the pain, conditioned as a signifier of gain, becomes a gain in itself, a pleasure in itself. Surplus enjoyment can also occur with a pleasurable activity, like when someone feels comfort in putting on weight when preparing for chemotherapy (this is a basic medical practice) while also having the more direct enjoyment of tasty food.
Repression is not so critical to surplus enjoyment, I just used the phrasing because it's an example of it that I think Zizek borrowed from Judith Butler, which he quotes somewhat often. The original phrase was "Repression of desire becomes a desire for repression," I think.
In the case of "Shaktimaxxing", the surplus enjoyment here is in the redefinition of the discomfort -- or, to borrow the weightlifting frame, "pain" -- in *not* scratching an itch as actually a "gain" of excess psychic-spiritual energy, a literal surplus!
If I have any qualms about this piece, it's that I don't believe this practice is unique to the sort of Buddhist-Taoist realm that is your theme. Puritanism is precisely about this: the less you enjoy directly, the more you enjoy fidelity to God, and whatnot. Diet culture is about this: the less you enjoy your food (whether by less food or less palatable "health food"), the more you gain towards a desirable self-image or quasi-athletic performance.
Surplus enjoyment is simply a broad phenomena, neither necessarily good or bad, moreso anatomical, is my point, and that "Shaktimaxxing" is one such another form of it. I wonder if I should be "Shaktimaxxing" my "itch" to check up on my friends, or to feed my pets, or to mourn the loss of either of them, just to illustrate the amoral dimension of surplus enjoyment for you.
Took me a moment to process “yote” as the past tense of “yeet.” Brill.
This helps! All the reading and effort I’ve plunged into this topic haven’t broken it town in such a digestible and sense-making way.
Please accept my deepest benediction.
it's interesting that your most impressive thing is learning a cool song on the guitar. You say that this was a GigaDesire, not a Shakti accumulator. But to achieve a GigaDesire, don't you need a lot of Shakti in the bank? What's the difference between whatever you're doing now to accumulate Shakti and whatever you were doing then? Why is the more direct ShaktiMaxxing better than minmaxing Shakti to achieve your GigaDesire? Very curious to understand why you feel like Shakti should be mined directly (internally?), and not indirectly by achieving awesome + impressive things.
sage thank you for these thoughtful questions--I've been mulling on them a bit.
To acheive a large desire or goal, certainly you need some Shakti in the bank, and every human has some by default. Acheiving desires is a mixture of Shakti and Karma (aka your previous circumstances). You might want to graduate college with a 4.0, and if you studied a lot in highschool and learned how best to do that, then that Karma will make reaching the goal much easier than for the person who didn't learn to study in highschool. Comparatively less Shakti needed.
The difference between now and then is that in the past, the mental was not directly addressed. I was focused upon doing external actions to achieve an external goal. But as mentioned, ~90+% of actions are mental actions, AND mental actions can have a very real effect on the external (mosquito bite itch (internal) causes scratch (external)). Leaving the mental unaddressed is like thinking you have full control of a small boat in a stormy sea; you might still get somewhere, but it's easy to capsize. Addressing the mental is like being able to calm the waters of the sea itself, then sailing the boat becomes ezpz baby
Also a note that Shaktimaxxing is specifically about letting go of desires. Acheiving things is certainly implied within that, but there is no inherent "direction" to Shaktimaxxing. Just release release release, shave away shave away shave away. You're not trying to go somewhere, you're just saying "no thanks" to going in xyz directions over and over. A path naturally arises out of that, but it's not the point. The point is the releasing.
Direct Shaktimaxxing is better because the OG Shaktimaxxers realized one very important thing: the attainment of any desire is ultimately temporary and unfulfilling. You get the lambo, it's cool for a month then you never look at it. Some cool achievements can stick around for longer, but you come into this life with nothing and leave with nothing.
Another reason is that most people today don't have a grasp of what they truly want, and Shaktimaxxing helps to clarify things by pruning away the small and irrelevant desires. I'll also say that if someone already has the "inner power" to 1. know their dreams and 2. achieve them, then more power to them! That's wonderful, and perhaps this info wouldn't be of much interest or help to them.
Shaktimaxxing was NOT developed for the purpose of acheiving awesome & impressive things. In its original context, Shakti should never be leaked for the purpose of achieving anything material. It's much deeper than that. But that gets into the weird spiritual stuff which is beyond the scope of this essay--perhaps a part 2 that goes into that stuff is warranted. And my own understanding of the deeper spiritual side of stuff with this is also limited. But the tldr is that they were goin for enlightenment and Shaktimaxxing is a path to that.
Please let me know if that clears things up or if you have any other questions--as with all things, use if useful :)
thanks! i thought this was a great essay. I'm full of mental itches that would improve my life to ignore, and this was super clarifying as to what's going on/what the reward is for letting the mental twitch pass by.
Not opening twitter out of habit feels like one part of shakti preservation - is the other part just sitting really still and ignoring whatever else you want to do? I've tried out some noting practice and haven't really stuck with it - what were you doing when you first started doing meditation?
oh yes and another very valid meditation technique is to stay completely still. Like don't even move a fkn muscle for 20min aside from breathing. Quite hard! But very effective.
what you said is spot on! Just sitting through the itch to open twitter is a massive shakti boost, because twitter and all social media are massive shakti drains (they pull your mind in 1000 different directions every .08 seconds).
The other part is yes essentially what you said as well. I have another post coming soon about my start with meditation (it was very recent, approaching 200 days which is very little on the time scale of meditation~!). I started with chanting a mantra, not really knowing what I was doing. I'd say if you enjoy singing or making music, Om chanting can be very good. If you're a more visual person, and/or enjoy the feeling of staring into a campfire, candle gazing (trataka) is great. I've done that a bit. I've also tried a third eye meditation where you focus on your breath and try to breathe into the space between your nostrils. This was and still is difficult for me, but one or two times I've glimpsed the first little part of what's possible with this technique. It's very interesting! Definitely something there. If any of those sound interesting, let me know and I'll link to a resource on how to perform them properly~!
Any technique has the ability to max tf outta shakti at the end of the day--just picking one and brute forcing it is one way, but i've found it much easier to do a technique I actually enjoy at least at the beginning~