Stephen Zerfas @stephen_zerfas Twitter profile

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Stephen Zerfas

8 months

We started Jhourney to make life-changing meditation accessible to everyone. Here’s what happened in 2023, including with the metrics we think matter most. 👇🏼

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Skin-in-the-game, bigger-than-self purpose I think is an open secret life hack (up there with jhanas and finding a baseline happy life partner). It’s so good that I felt cheated when I (finally) became a founder. I thought “why did everyone tell me this is hard instead of

Tyler Alterman

@TylerAlterman

8 months

I wrote & analyzed a 20-person list of anyone I've seen go sustainedly super-saiyan (i.e., anyone who's become radically more capable of creating what they want to see in the world). 18/20 all did the same thing. Can you guess what it was? Hint – it wasn't a: • transformative

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Jhourney's looking for some volunteers in the Bay Area interested in being our first guinea pigs next week for our earliest attempts at jhana-accelerating biofeedback. Will require ~4 hours. We'll pull out everything we've got to try and teach you the jhanas.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

7 months

It’s exciting to see the Atlantic do a full story on @jhanatech and the potential for taking jhanas to scale. . A year ago, the biggest jhana story might have been Astral Codex Ten comments debating whether or not they’re real! I love to see mainstream

The Meditation Start-Up That’s Selling Bliss on Demand

Here come the Jhana bros.

www.theatlantic.com

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Recently I was interviewing someone about a recent meditation, and they said “I got a nice feeling.” 10 min later I got suspicious and went back and asked “how nice?” They said, “Oh, by far the most pleasurable thing that’s happened to me in over a year.”

Nick

@nickcammarata

1 year

I don’t know why meditation teachers downplay how helpful meditation has been to them. They constantly talk about how meditation doesn’t solve everything, they still suffer etc. But ask them to quantify it and they’re like oh lol my worst day now is 10x better than an old good

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

After dozens of hours of interviewing jhana meditators, we've got a list of experimental ideas for teaching the jhanas quickly. Want to experiment with us? We're hosting a retreat next weekend at the Alembic (July 29th and 30th) to see what we might discover together.

Alex Gruver

@Alex_Gruver1

1 year

Extremely excited to announce that we'll be running a weekend retreat at the Berkley Alembic next weekend (29th & 30th)! Sign up at the link below to join us for a weekend of Jhana-based experimentation

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

6 months

I might be unusually slow, but I've found a lot of nondual pointers insufficiently specific ("just look!") or seemingly with legitimate answers without any effect ("who/what am I?" always points to loosely in my head). But I finally have one that's dropped me into a warmish

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

6 months

One of my favorite jhana learning stories was a guy who trained himself in middle school to experience the euphoria of his crush independent of thinking about the girl after seeing someone else kiss her. He realized the euphoria was entirely in his own head (“She didn’t even

Guy

@nosilverv

6 months

You FALL in love You DROP into jhana ... COINCIDENCE???????

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Few things communicate the importance of self-compassion in meditation than the legendary story of the Dalai Lama thinking "self-hate" was a translation error.

Lady Red on that Girlie era!

@ladymcscope

1 year

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 month

Two ideas that, if they have limits, I don’t seem to be close to finding them: 1) making a game out of finding ways to find gratitude / compassion for everything / everyone in day to day activities, especially tough ones. 2) making a game out of asking myself in any moment what

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

After six months of lugging around a couple hundred thousand dollars in EEG equipment and coaxing our ML infrastructure to spit out different numbers, last summer we had our zero to one moment! Our ML model began detecting jhanas with ~75% accuracy across subjects. In this

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

20 days

I got goosebumps the first time I read about predictive processing, and it changed my meditation practice. I thought “Maybe I don’t want to parse the breath with razor-like precision. Maybe I want it to overwhelm me, and learn to *feel* what it’s like to turn off my priors, a new

Ruben Laukkonen

@RubenLaukkonen

25 days

Our new theory of consciousness reveals meditation, psychedelics, and the future of AI in a whole new light. Suggests meditation may boost the “general” nature of intelligence. ⚡️1/60⚡️

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

10 months

I talk about jhanas every day. Every day I worry about over claiming. And every day I meditate and think “I can’t believe this is real” And they’re not even the end of road: from materialistic personality change to further spiritual development, the jhanas can be a start.

Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson

@algekalipso

10 months

@aswathkrishnan Strong cravings broadly, sense of not having enough, sense of being deprived, boredom (e.g. standing in line feeling bad), mild to moderate pain (but not strong pain), anxiety (if access to 3rd), and more

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

We recently collected 40 hours of biodata from expert jhana meditators. Then we asked GPT-4 to write an "inspiring but not over-the-top" blog post updating our investors and followers. It's inspiring. No comment on whether or not it's over-the-top.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 months

TIME did a great job capturing the enormous potential of accessible jhanas: “Come for the bliss, stay for the personal growth.” The striking thing about the jhanas is the in-the-moment bliss-peace. The most valuable thing about them is how learning how to navigate into jhanas

Naina Bajekal 🔸

@naina_bajekal

2 months

In my final piece for @TIME , I wrote about the surging interest in the jhanas, the fraught debates over commercializing ancient spiritual practices, and my surreal experiences at a @jhanatech meditation retreat this spring. Read at the link below👇or in the next issue of TIME

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

This is exactly why we're building . Just closed our first fundraising round, and early pilot data is encouraging! Yesterday @kathryndevaney and I had a "holy sh*t, this is really going to work" moment watching live EEG data change during jhanas.

bayes

@bayeslord

2 years

@bryan_johnson @KernelCo can we get Leigh Brasington (and other jhana experts) into a Flow study? This could go a long way towards better characterization of these states. Even a 1% of getting a jhana trainer app out of such a project seems worth it

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

After 9 months of burning midnight oil, cortisol, and adrenaline to keep burn low enough to survive, we saw our first real success. Our first two retreats resulted in ~70% of people in jhana and ~80% NPS. Testimonials were **hyperbolic**:

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

A few years ago I decided to cut my life-savings in half, quit my job, and budget 2-3 years of deadweight career loss in an attempt to get just one person into life-altering states of meditation. Sharing is a dream come true. 🙏🏻🥰

Guy

@nosilverv

8 months

Just realised I can and should convince all my interent friends to do a Jhourney Jhana retreat. Possible most EV thing you can engage in in your LIFE (other than getting married, having kids, etc.)

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

First Jhourney retreat designed for novices happening in Sept. We’re engineers, not dharma teachers; if that excites you, we’d love to have you — spots are limited. This retreat will focus on low-tech innovations; we’ll track success rates and layer on tech over time.

Alex Gruver

@Alex_Gruver1

1 year

Incredibly excited to announce that we'll be running an in-person retreat focused on teaching a secular interpretation of the Jhanas at Mount Madonna Center from September 21st - 30th! More details:

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We figured if cut the guesswork, we'd make jhanas at least 10x faster to learn. So we set out to collect a biosensor dataset big enough to train ML models that would make jhanas easy-to-verify. Imagine the music or instruction you're listening changing in realtime based on your

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

10 months

They (a) show you in an undeniable and unforgettable way that everything you do, from career choices to conduct in relationships, is in search of and response to feelings, (b) that everything you seek — the full spectrum of experience from bliss to peace — can be found within

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

The last third of the Shamil - Sam Harris discussion was my favorite podcast in 2023. @shamilch trained in the jhanas (“MDMA without the drug”) for years before nonduality, and he's mentioned elsewhere the jhanas may be the most important secrets in the world right now, up

Jason Scott

@TranscendCEO

1 year

A fascinating take on consciousness, love & non-duality from Sam Harris and @shamilch , inspired by Sam's recent experience meditating on MDMA... *I've often thought that the overemphasis on emptiness & freedom in meditative traditions is the result of these systems being

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

@noampomsky My girlfriend insisted i have a piece of her favorite chocolate every time i came over for the first 6 months of our relationship when I said on the first date I wasn’t a fan of chocolate. We’re now engaged and I love her favorite chocolate.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Excited to announce the first "Jhanas for Beginners" online retreat, accessible anywhere from Pacific Time. We'll be accompanied by a variety of visiting expert teachers across multiple jhana traditions.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

There’s a point in meditation in which you can see/feel tanha in real-time arise as mental tension, and forever after you can’t unsee it — happiness is more often found by subtraction not addition, it follow releasing/relaxing, and it’s been hiding in plain sight

Nick

@nickcammarata

2 years

The secret to happiness turns out to be not doing a specific fast clenching mechanic called tanha that we’ve known about for 1000y+, is easily reproducible by tons of people, and we don’t teach people about ever. It all feels like a cheesy plot point from a fiction novel

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

@nickcammarata @kathryndevaney It's still very, very early and far, far from conclusive. Our shared moment of excitement was in watching visible changes raw EEG as our subject moved up and down J1-J4. Lots of testing, replication, and controlling in front of us. Below: J2 right, J4 left.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

4 months

Gal may have just used @nayafia 's instructions to crack jhana in an hour. It's always so fun to hear stories like these.

Gal Tal-Hochberg

@itsgalth

4 months

@stephen_zerfas @impromptuvision It felt like everything will be okay + sunlight filtering through leaves onto my skin with a light breeze + the world is beatiful + I love and I am loved, in an overwhelming yet not painfully intense way. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt, but 9/

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

We're hosting a last-minute, hypnosis-for-jhana experiment on Friday. Our hypnotherapist is doing a PhD in clinical psychology at Baylor, specializing in hypnosis for mystical experiences. Join us! We've got limited spots.

Experimental jhana hypnosis workshop · Luma

Interested in participating in an experiment to learn advanced meditative states in record speed? The jhanas are blissful, therapeutic, and prosocial altered…

lu.ma

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

I've learned as much or more from how meditation teachers have spoken than from what they've said.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

5 months

One of the best parts about doing work you love is getting to chat with people you admire

Michael Taft (simulation)

@OortCloudAtlas

5 months

In which I talk with @stephen_zerfas about his meditation background, teaching jhanas, and the goals of his company @jhanatech .

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Mistaking phenomenology as irrelevant metaphysics might be the biggest reason our most powerful psychotech today, from jhanas to nonduality, has gone under-explored and under-utilized for decades. Probably tied up in the multi-decade set back of psychedelics too!

Emily

@the_aiju

8 months

IMO #1 mistake that people with too much scientific training make about religion is that what they think is metaphysics is actually phenomenology

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

11 months

Enlightenment tech has all the properties of a Silicon Valley “secret”: an idea hidden in the shadow of what you’re culturally not allowed to think about (the ‘woo’), that few people are building, and w large opportunity cost after perspective-changing personal experience

Nick

@nickcammarata

11 months

awakening tech might be doable in the next few years (eg transcranial ultrasound) and have a bigger addressable market than anything but AGI the most common willingness to pay is 100% of their money without any more info on what it even is

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

@sashachapin I’ve decided the TWIM intro to jhana instructions are my favorite: - use metta b/c faster than breath - the goal is to find some warm feeling in the chest, like that of watching puppies, and make it grow

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

The idea that there is no goal in meditation I think is well-meaning, but confuses what is true with what is useful, and I think has done more harm good.

Jhourney

@jhanatech

9 months

New blog post! "Navigating paradox: meditation can and should have goals" Much of meditation culture suggests you should not have goals, or even think about improvement. Jhourney disagrees - there's always a goal to meditation. Link in next tweet!

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

This is very trainable, with large benefits — helpful for jhanas, improves mentality of abundance (and can prime better decisions), great way to increase baseline happiness, etc. I love playing with this and still amazed at how big my knowing-doing gap is.

owen

@blissbrah

1 year

enjoying metta as my main. fun trying to keep metta vibes going while at gym, driving, walking.. wild how often i’ve tensed up when around others i want to radiate metta vibes within and outwards continually. doing so most of the time on auto pilot feels like a trainable skill

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

It's electrifying to work on something so important, tractable, and neglected.

Nick

@nickcammarata

2 years

We live in a world where jhana exists and less than five people are working on a jhana helmet

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

Love to see another learn-to-jhana journey! Second-order effects often dwarf first-order effects, and the jhanas are no exception -- the mentality of abundance that comes from pleasure on-demand could be the biggest mental health win we see in our generation.

bayes

@bayeslord

2 years

After a while working with them, I can confirm jhanas are based. The counterintuitive claims made by @nickcammarata and others abt how instant access to pleasure+happy feelings leads to more hedonic balance, less craving, etc. have truth ime … which remains super surprising

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We also confirmed a long-held suspicion of ours: lifetime meditation hours do NOT correlate with jhana access. If anything, novices may actually be easier to teach than experienced meditators because they have fewer habits to unlearn.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

@ejames_c @tasshinfogleman I’d hit a bug, ask for help, and my wizard colleagues would give infuriatingly correct but mysterious solutions. Then I started asking explicitly for cues, expectations, and alternative actions, and voila, I gradually started anticipating their thought processes. Even wrote a

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

10 months

Excited to share we've started a podcast! We've had so many fascinating conversations with jhana meditators, especially now that we're running retreats, it's overdue that we capture and share.

Jhourney

@jhanatech

10 months

Jhourney's launching a podcast, Collection of Jhourneys! We'll be talking to everyday meditators, adept practitioners, and researchers about jhana states and the profound effects they can bring to people's lives. Check link in bio & next tweet to subscribe!

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

At some point, I decided people who seemed much happier than me but had funny explanations for WHY they were happy, were still special people to interview about HOW they became happy. And boy did I interrogate some of them. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

Guy

@nosilverv

1 year

Here's an example of a reasonable path into woo

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

4 months

“It’s extremely difficult to be top 1% in any field. But if you’re top 20% in two fields, you’re likely top 1% at their intersection. Your skills become rare and valuable when you combine ‘pretty goods.’” (Paraphrased) — @ScottAdamsSays

hermit the cat

@hermittoday

4 months

knowledge synthesizers start slowly and get ignored for a long while, but make the biggest ripples in the long run

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

10 months

I’m no therapist, these states haven’t been studied in a clinical context, and we don’t want to over-claim. But Scott’s fascinating podcast captures our excitement: the jhanas are more accessible than most think, and those who’ve learned them cite step-changes in wellbeing.

Scott Britton

@britton

10 months

Have you heard of Jhanas? They are deep states often accompanied by ecstatic bliss accessed through meditation. Many people considered these type of experiences only accessible to advanced practitioners, but @zerfas33 and the team at @jhanatech believe otherwise. What if after

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We love to give "Run your own experiments!" as meditation instruction. In a preverbal and invisible space, you're the only who can solve the puzzle. Running a guru's algorithm on infinite loop in your own head is a high stakes gamble. Good experimenting requires triangulation.

Nick

@nickcammarata

8 months

Important to average over at least like three people you respect, language is terrible for this kind of field, misinterpreting what someone is saying is almost guaranteed to some extent, averaging over a few people makes it a bit less likely to be misinterpreting too badly

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

Oxford's @shamilch 's new talk "Meditation and the Bayesian Brain" is fantastic. It's as rich in theory as it is in pointers to practice: a framework for the relationship between jhanas, deconstruction, and nondual techniques can change how we explore each

The Bayesian Brain and Meditation

A predictive processing account of radical changes in the character of phenomenal experience. Talk delivered on the 11th October 2022, University of Oxford....

www.youtube.com

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

I want to soon start aggregating little tips like these. Words are so reductive in meditation; it can be helpful to have a bunch of little micro tips from different people. And traditional student-teacher processes mean crowdsourcing/peer-sharing is neglected.

Nick

@nickcammarata

1 year

@algekalipso It feels a little less like a button and more like asking the body for joy, but it’s a felt-sense ask not lingual. Then whatever was previously on the “canvas” starts washing away and the joy arises and fills it up

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Interested in the jhanas? Follow my cofounder @Alex_Gruver1 and the company @jhanatech . Check out our podcast Subscribe to our listserv And check out our upcoming retreats!

Jhourney

Expanding access to jhana meditation via neurotech and meditation retreats. The jhanas are life-changing altered states of wellbeing that *you* can learn to access.

www.jhourney.io

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Oh man, heart breaks right open reading this 🥰

nibras ꩜ ◡̈

@heynibras

8 months

so far my experience with @jhanatech is: a field of green flags there’s so much i like and respect about the work, approach, team, the atmosphere and their integrity one of the clearest and cleanest (read: unconflicted) experiences i’ve had with a retreat/course so far

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

7 months

Does anyone have a trick for reminding themselves of all the behavior change they want to implement on a periodic basis as opposed to an everyday/habit basis. I tuck insights I want to change my behavior into Anki and then scroll it like I scroll twitter — high value dopamine

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

@algekalipso My fiancée, who doesn’t have a meditation habit, thought she’d been in J1/2 a few times. They were “nice”. Last week she had the real thing, complete with 6hr afterglows. She’s gotten up earlier than me every day for the first time in 3 years to meditate since.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We were delighted by the hundreds of people that expressed interest. And some of our ideas worked! 10% of people on our weekend retreat and 25% in the cohort had a peak experience they said was the best thing that happened to them in a year or more!

Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Jhourney's looking for some volunteers in the Bay Area interested in being our first guinea pigs next week for our earliest attempts at jhana-accelerating biofeedback. Will require ~4 hours. We'll pull out everything we've got to try and teach you the jhanas.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Success rates were high enough and testimonials strong enough, that suddenly our retreats offered more than just a way to collect data: they began doubling as recruiting, fundraising, product development, and revenue-generating tools all at once. 💪

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

Starting a running list of the best critiques I've seen of EA. 👇🏻 I'm a big fan of EA (with the caveat that I don't understand why the movement doesn't appear interested in valence studies), and so want to pressure-test my thinking best I can.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

From here, our priorities are: 1) hit default-alive at 60 retreatants per month (currently 30) 2) get time-to-jhana as as possible 3) spread the word about one of the greatest secrets on the planet: the average person can experience meditation like “MDMA without the drug”

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

4 months

Maybe the most lucid, straightforward descriptions of how to jhana out there

Nadia Asparouhova

@nayafia

4 months

On my second @jhanatech retreat, I voluntarily switched off my consciousness with less than 3 hours of practice. After experiencing what's called "cessation," my jhana practice feels complete. I wrote up instructions for those who are curious to try it:

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

Are we all massively underinvesting in lucid dreaming? Huge ROI left on the table if all my sleep hours could also be meditation hours.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

@jonnym1ller @ChrisWillx @jhanatech @nickcammarata 65%-90% success in getting people into jhana and even those not in jhana reporting a strongly positive experience: NPS 80-100%

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

The jhanas present a very similar non-pharmological, volitionally-produced opportunity to "MDMA safer than coffee"

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We’re just getting started, and think more 10x improvements in accessibility are around the corner. Like our upcoming bookend-the-workweek model. Over 70% of our novices that reach jhana have done so in 4 full days on retreat, so perhaps 2 weekends with heavy meditation dose

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

One of the most valuable things I read in 2020 was @ejames_c ’s blog series on learning from experts faster. It’s fun and a little surreal that he just added an interview with me to the series. Cedric’s series describes a process for better understanding an expert’s thought

Lucca

@lucca_dev

8 months

@commoncog Feeling like Christmas again! Finally one of my favorite topics with one of my other favorite topics!

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

This was ambitious, but first principles said it was do-able. Breakthroughs in neurofeedback for meditation, decreasing consumer-hardware prices, and advancements in ML for EEG suggested it was a signal processing rather than a neuroscience problem.

Victor Mota

@vimota

2 years

Perhaps the coolest neuroscience research no one is talking about: Jhourney (founded by @zerfas33 ). They're attempting to develop ways to identify and study Jhana states, eventually improving teaching methods reducing time to first Jhana.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

@sashachapin “Everyone wants to be interesting but the vitalizing thing is to be interested.” — John Gardner

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 months

This job can be so fun

virajcz

@virajcz

2 months

just hit jhana 1, a day ago and still can't comprehend how this could be real this feels like an esoteric secret that I not only intellectually know of but have experienced on a deeply somatic level

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

There are a few life skills that are disproportionately valuable and largely invisible across the population, which makes it hard to identify best practices. Internal thought habits are top of my list. This is a rare and valuable window from @nickcammarata .

Visakan Veerasamy

@visakanv

3 years

@nickcammarata @metaphorician @metaLulie wait hold up. all day you're talking to your parts? can we get a monologue demonstration?

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

How on Earth could we incentivize someone to spend hours under our equipment? We realized we had to learn how to teach jhanas the old-fashion way. If we could teach jhanas, then we could collect novice data before, during, and after their first magic moments.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

4 months

Vox's latest article by @OshanJarow captures some of the most exciting questions and potential around the growing mainstream interest in the jhanas. Some of my favorite quotes: “...basic mindfulness does not exactly topple one’s understanding of how consciousness works — the

Oshan Jarow

@OshanJarow

4 months

wrote about the rise of jhana meditation, where people are quickly entering wildly altered states of bliss & rediscovering a neglected tradition. mindfulness is nice — the jhanas are shocking, & raise exciting questions about what minds can learn to do

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

One of the most important things I've ever read was in @GregoryMcKeown 's Essentialism. He describes a suggesting learned helplessness is stimuli-dependent, not task-dependent! If true, we're all likely exhibiting far less agency than we could be, and we have no idea we're

Cate Hall

@catehall

9 months

IME agency is extremely learnable but rarely taught A large % of people who learn it do so early enough that we mostly mistake it for something innate

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Started making a list for myself and realized this is better shared. Who on jhana twitter am I missing?

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We’ve now run 6 total retreats: 70% of people in jhana 70% of those in jhana say it’s the best thing they’ve experienced 6 months or more, 30% say in a year or more, and 15% or in their entire life! 80% overall NPS (Apple’s is ~75%)

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

The world needs an answer to this question. Blissful, MDMA-like meditation currently has a challenging marketing problem.

bayes

@bayeslord

1 year

ok what should we rename the jhanas to in order to ready them for public consumption? correct answers only

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We decided to target jhanas because they have an extraordinary set of characteristics – if you can get someone into jhana, it's likely you'll change their life.

Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

10 months

I talk about jhanas every day. Every day I worry about over claiming. And every day I meditate and think “I can’t believe this is real” And they’re not even the end of road: from materialistic personality change to further spiritual development, the jhanas can be a start.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

3 months

It's amazing all the sneaky ways I find myself trying to avoid feeling something unpleasant

Richard Ludlow

@richardludlow

5 months

I keep finding myself surprised that “you’ll be happier if you fully feel difficult emotions instead of resisting them” is not at all a mainstream belief, even though it’s something I’ve only absorbed in the past 18 months.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

We need a master thread on acknowledging and addressing concerns about wireheading and the jhanas.

Dominic St-Laurent

@DominicStLaure5

2 years

@zerfas33 Having a front seat, do you think there is a good chance that this lead to dangerous wireheading? And if not, why?

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

4 months

It’s all a Trojan Horse. Whether you crack jhanas or not, come for the bliss and stay for the personal growth.

Alex Krusz | krusz.eth

@AlexKrusz

4 months

I spent a year working towards jhana and all I got was my daily happiness going from 2.5 to 7.5, a better understanding of my subjective experience, greater skill working with my body sensations, and a vastly improved relationship with my wife.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

In true startup fashion, we experimented in order of cost, starting with the cheapest things we could think of: - just seeing if the model worked on novices out of the box (it didn't) - running “Jhana in 2 hour” workshops - weekend retreat - 6-weeks remote async cohort

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

Started commenting on Scott's post about Nick and the jhanas and ended up with a post of my own.

A response to ACX’s “Nick Cammarata and Jhana” post — Jhourney

The below started as a comment to Scott Alexander’s post and became a post of its own. I’m the founder of Jhourney , a neurotech company attempting to map the neural correlates of the jhanas and use...

www.jhourney.io

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

The five hour window on memory reconsolidation is fascinating. May support combining jhana + insight and jhana + forgiveness. I used to call this “personal brainwashing.” Reminds me of @johnsonmxe and @algekalipso ’s idea of annealing.

Jonny Miller

@jonnym1ller

8 months

Something I'm super interested in understanding is the difference between peak state-induced emotional catharsis (common) vs. lasting neuroplastic change (rare)? How does one know if that somatic process they went through rewired anything on a nervous system level? In the book

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Giving away the jhana, or metta-gladness when you’re pre-jhana, is the best way to expand the jhana I’m aware of.

RomeoStevens

@RomeoStevens76

1 year

Surrender can be a tricky concept. Something that arose the first time I experienced spontaneous jhana was directing the pleasure and any merit accrued to others. It was an obvious volume dial, cling and the volume turned down, give it away and the volume turned up.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

We're hosting a jhana measurement weekend retreat. We'd love to have you if you're in the Bay Area 12/17 - 12/18 and practice the jhanas. @kathryndevaney

BYO Jhana Practice (and help with EEG data collection!)

A 2-day non-residential retreat at The Alembic. Meditators will wear simple EEG headsets and indicate state transitions in & out of jhana

www.eventbrite.com

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

As soon as we showed the problem was tractable with experts, we set out to make our tools useful for novices. But we needed hundreds of hours of biosensor data from novices.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

@JakeOrthwein @nosilverv @jhanatech I think (a) lay-accessible jhanas aren’t hard to learn (b) and western & meditation memeplexes have a few implicit ideas unhelpful for jhanas, like: - pleasure is bad - metaphysics are important - self-criticism is productive They also don’t always emphasize things like: -

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

3 months

One of the best things about building a jhana pipeline is that it throws off data that will make us better over time. I've wanted evidence to say whether or not prior meditation experience affects probability of jhana for years!

Nadia Asparouhova

@nayafia

3 months

I teamed up with @jhanatech to figure out if meditation experience is predictive of jhana success. Our analysis found no correlation: All the more reason to try it!

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

Daunted by the expertise we needed to learn to teach jhanas, we invited 8 teachers on retreat to watch us coach 10-15 students 1-on-1 daily and give feedback after each. Within 6 weeks we reached hundreds of deliberate practice reps immediately followed by expert feedback.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

6 months

For open-aware jhana fans, it reminds me a lot of the move to release mental tension in going from J4 or J5 to J6 using compassion, but doesn't feel as strongly as everything-is-so-beautiful-I-could-cry unless I really sink in (which might just be another way to get to an

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

@sashachapin - if you don’t find warmth, try gratitude - if that doesn’t work, assume you’re blocked and use forgiveness meditation of self and others, looking for your block, - return to metta once resolved

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

This was intimidating. Surely we couldn’t teach jhanas ourselves! Meditation teachers often apprentice for years or decades before setting out on their own, and we could only budget 3 months’ burn at most.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 years

We're currently looking for an EEG experimentalist at Jhourney. If you know someone with 3+ years professional EEG experience or similar who might be interested in applying their talents to mapping and scaling the jhanas, let us know!

Senior neuroscience research lead

Senior neuroscience research lead 9 December 2022 Jhourney is hiring an ambitious, talented neuroscientist to form our founding team and lead research on the neural correlates of altered states of...

docs.google.com

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

Biggest obstacles to jhanas might be awareness and limiting belief.

Jason Scott

@TranscendCEO

9 months

I just did one of these meditations from @algekalipso for the first time and quite effortlessly reached the most ecstatic non-psychedelic meditative state of my life. I was pretty confused at first, like I’d walked into a class exercise halfway through and missed the initial

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

> don’t worry about jhanas, do it to learn about meditation and joy every now and then we debate dropping the word "jhana." there's a world of play and exploration out there, no labels needed!

nibras ꩜ ◡̈

@heynibras

8 months

rn i wish them all the best. i want to see them continue succeeding and flourishing and want to do all i can to support that if you’re on the fence about doing their retreats: i wholeheartedly say do it. don’t worry about jhanas, do it to learn about meditation and joy

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

@sashachapin - focus 90% metta feeling, 10% on the idea of giving it away (helps it grow) - when distracted, assume literal tension in the head, find and relax it, also find something to relax physically - this literal mental release and physical relax is essential - return to metta, repeat

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

I don't think @exdiegesis is the only one with this concern: it'd be a shame if meditation made you less altruistic, motivated, or effective. Fortunately, I think it does the opposite. Why? Mostly nervous system mastery: you become aware of states and emotions earlier and at

ΔHope

@exdiegesis

9 months

@stephen_zerfas @shamilch As far as I understand, a lot of happiness from meditation comes from the skill of letting go of your desires ("absence of seeking"). I don't wish to try, because I fear it will work, and I will lose motivation to save the world. (Yes, this is my most true rejection.)

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

IIRC, dogs were divided into three groups. Each dog was put into a cell. One group was shocked and could pull a lever to get it to stop. Another was shocked but the lever but it did nothing. A third wasn't shocked. Then all dogs were put in a very different cell and

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 months

One of the most exciting teams and ideas I know of in neurotech

Fred Ehrsam

@FEhrsam

2 months

I founded @nudge with @quintinfrerichs . We’re building an ultrasound headset to enhance human experience. Press a button to shift your brain state: go to sleep, boost focus, break habits, elevate mood, etc. We believe this device has the potential to improve people’s daily lives

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

This is all 10xing our understanding of what it will take for tech to succeed. Our tech roadmap shifted after 10 people reached jhana, and shifted again after 50. We’ll get more shots on goal for jhana biofeedback, each one more accurate than we ever thought.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

9 months

Such hyperbolic claims scream untapped potential for research and scale. But nonduality may so far be relatively more widespread. Following my last nondual retreat, my leading guess is this is due to misunderstandings about open-aware jhanas, which have gained popularity only

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We initially believed conventional wisdom that jhanas typically require hundreds of hours of practice. Why? Because meditation is hard-to-verify.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

21 days

Love this use of pay for results in personal development / therapy.

Chris Lakin

@ChrisChipMonk

22 days

I became a bounty hunter! But instead of hunting outlaws, I hunt the biggest bottlenecks to thriving. For example, Bob was bottlenecked by lifelong anxiety. So he offered a $3k bounty to resolve it. We resolved it in a single conversation.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

1 year

Sometimes I think the feeling of everything snapping into place, like the aha moment of solving a puzzle, or a moment of genius in sports or art, has a similar quality to deeply meditative states. Perhaps we know God as moments of harmony throughout the nervous system.

Alexey Guzey

@alexeyguzey

1 year

Over the years, I've noticed how many of the people I admire the most have a very deep feeling of God, despite this feeling usually being looked down upon in their circles. A few quotes I’ve been returning over the years:

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

2 months

I started to appreciate some opportunities may be worth all the others combined in my late 20s. I still feel like I was over a decade late.

Jack Altman

@jaltma

2 months

The degree of path dependence in careers is crazy. A little luck early on leads to an accumulation of network / resources / learning in a way that’s hard to believe until you see it.

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Stephen Zerfas

@stephen_zerfas

8 months

We successfully tested an online to make it 10x cheaper and 10x more successful.

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