PROGRESS UPDATE: 12/27/25

EXHALING IN THE INTERVAL. Today I return to deep research and reading mode, as I prepare to write the last installment of the GPT Gaslighting/Flat to Curved Mirrors/Buddhist Thresholds series. In the final arc, I'll be exploring how to stay present when the frame disappears, when narratives no longer suffice, when the simulation dissolves, or at least, loses its illusion of coherence. This is precisely the space I've been in for the past 6 or 7 weeks, increasingly so in the 2.5 weeks since Drew died.

So as I sit in the quiet, in the stillness after the event, exhaling in the interval, I'm thinking about how to develop a Buddhist practice that helps me encounter the real, strengthen my ethical wit(h)nessing, and nourish an internal sense of calm that can be sustained over time, as many more difficult moments happen throughout my life. (And, to be clear: I'm no purist. I believe in using many different tools, frames, and registers. My intervention here, especially around GPT is: know what tool you're using and what you're using it for so that you remain in the driver's seat. Given the choice, I would have VASTLY preferred to know the truth about Drew's situation a long time ago, brutal as it would have been, because then I could have risen to the magnitude of the event much sooner).

But I digress. Today I'm doing more reading in OPWC and I'll post about several chapters that I go through a little later this evening. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the final installment of the GPT series written.

More soon.