PEER Summit VII - 2025

Ritual

Here we are together, housed beings

In so many ways, we are tender things

A coat to keep the storm at bay

a marvel of joy at simply what a friend has to say

What warm food does for these bellies,

How laughter heals us, it’s amazing really

When our defenses are surrendered, our attention stretches to its outermost limits

Inviting that calm quality that marks many of our fondest moments

I want to try it right right now

We learn to be tough too of course

It’s not always nice

you didn’t like years of debank?

Let my special project get tanked?

Rugged on each flank?

Double wielding chokepoint

Treated like the funkiest stank?

Are we powered by locke’s social contract or dictatorial fuel?

Agreed upon governance or my fist sets the rules?

This is negative power

the obvious example is master and slave

It’s the cutting of the main trunk to achieve suppression

its chemical trading pair? feelings of repression

Punished by freedom also makes an appearance in crypto here

It is obsession when not actualizing our full potential is what we fear

Anything is possible if we just try hard enough,

So muster and optimize and get ready, get tough,

It’s convincing the tree it can for sure  grow to the sky

It can happen my friend, trust me, you just have to really try

Crypto’s hallmark quality is to the moon possibility

belief in the improbable is our great asset and (sometimes for our personal well being sometimes ) liability

Openness to this can lead to our  pinnacle achievement

Hurling our scheme to become a sparkling fixture of the firmament

I am a fan, I live this way! I do!

It’s just, evolution favors anxiety over comfort to ensure hedonic adaptation

Survival my dears, don’t you ever rest!  Keep building this species a foundation!

Ruled by possibility over process means we auto-exploit as both slave and master

Burnout wins if we over-identify with results only compelled by this ruthless tasker

Negative power suppressing,

positive power obsessing

all the while the distraction economy

just keeps pressing

I have no advice for living a balanced life, it is a myth if you are tending a fire

But without properly housing all this energy, it can be too much current for the wire,

Nature has proof that she already knows these lessons well,

Wrapping our hearts with calcium chainmail

Or try imposing negative power by cutting a main branch of a tree

The disrupted hormonal balance sends cytokinin in a growing spree

Or too much relative growth above ground

And auxins will trickle to slow it all down

Yes nature knows balance, but as Geertz points out, we don’t live among the rocks and trees

We live suspended above it in our loves and betrayals and infinite possibilities

Rituals are human conventions to adapt to this suspended frontier (2x)

They are temporal housing, they are sanctuary from fear

Because rituals break the stream of negative and positive powers’ endless flow

It’s the space in between where you just feel what you feel and know what you know

Ritual is the prayer before eating to remind us that as we sit at the great feast of life,

To be enthusiastic and grateful not with violence and strife

One philosopher’s advice to ritual is to employ the ancient version of Eros

Which is simply when the other, in their entirety and wholeness, is our sole focus

These next few come from you

Meditation, time in nature, a transactionless conversation that just rips

a run, a bike ride, a smoke break, an instrument at our lips

You know it’s working if it makes a wheel not too tight and not too loose,

When we are in charge of how we feel and there is no one left to accuse

Ritual is when we stop trying to get something out of life, constantly

And realize we are precious life and then surf that wave of vulnerability

Ritual is our companion for that moment in a hospital bed,

when all we have left is the honesty in our head

Ritual is the steel beam of the temple you imagine in the part of you where you most care, 2x

Where you discriminate what gets let in,  listened to vs simply what you hear

Ritual is what invites you to be relaxed but still ready

Calm under siege while acknowledging there actually is no safety

Ritual is at a graveside

to say something

to give something

to connect with lost things

Ritual is what damns up the stream of cursory information flowing

To be a person for a moment and pause the endless pursuit of knowing

Ritual is when so much presence and conscious attention are poured into a person that they cannot be fazed

They cannot be brutalized by the whip of criticism or controlled by praise

Rituals reveal how beautiful it is when you don’t need to say what gives us our unity

Communities without conversation over conversation without community

Ritual is something only you can find and define for yourself

It’s one trick in life that has to come from your very own shelf

A sign you your ritual is right

is that it may not make sense

It’s the part that doesn’t rhyme

It has no financial utility

it coheres with nothing

Your parents don’t get it

No one wants to mimick you

It’s not all the other things you do

That is solid gold, solid bitcoin ritual

And ritual is the seed of a practice (2x)

And practice is process over outcomes (2x)

Just to do the work, for the privilege of doing it well.

In zen bhuddism all the work

Is just called practice

There isn’t another word,

if you have done it one day or 10,000 days

It’s still just practice

I mention all this now, tonight, because the age of exponential possibilities is upon us

Suppression, punishing freedom, and pure unknown means having tools like these (and this, hand in a circle) is a must

What a group with whom to embark on this journey!

Thank you for sharing your rituals, practices and strength.

Enjoy peer summit VII!