Were all of these posted on Substack before now? Several don't look familiar.
Rare is the one who can - and even rarer the one who publicly does - reflect upon their own work so objectively, without attachment. A beacon of Light in dark times. If only to be a fly on the wall to see where you'll be in forty years....
You may need to take to a sabbatical year to allow the laggards, including myself, to catch up.
And according to Steiner, you should have begun the list from the end of the year :-). Joking aside, maybe it would in fact lead to new insights...
The capacity to speak from your own authority has been well-earned; it is a rare and precious capacity, and I look forward to seeing where it takes you.
I guess '40' can be experienced as a kind of concrescence of your thirties? (It's another conversation, but while reading, I also wondered how the living systems idea of concrescence might inform or be informed by the more esoteric idea of 'the law of three' in Gurdjieff/Bourgeault, which is sometimes summarised by saying: "The interweaving of the three produces a fourth in a new dimension.")
Your talk at Harvard Divinity was a bright spot of that conference for me Matt. I'd just come back into the building from taking a morning reset and sat in the back of the hall. I didn't even know I was holding my breath until I felt it exhaling. My relief was not in the content of your presentation but in the quality of your attention.
I'd been struck the first day of the conference at all the talking about, thinking about, judging from self-distance. Entering my 21st year of engaging with Steiner's work, something became freshly concrete for me: te Holy aesthetics of self discovery is a freedom, but it is no escape!
You paid the greatest homage to Steiner and the greatest respect to us listening by not resisting the personal transformation the ethical moment requires. Your artistry with thinking models the possibility of it's flight and union like music between musician, instrument, listener and hall.
I affirm your New Year's resolution and am thankful to be able to perceive the results:
"In 2026 I want to risk a new kind of directness with fewer guided tours through other people’s ideas, more open air construction in the wild fields where metaphysics meets practice, where cosmology becomes ethics, where ideas are tested not only by argument but by the quality of attention and relationship they make possible."
Its nice to have a few biographical details about you here. I've hurt my own feelings more than a few times thinking you might not be a real person. I've been trying to figure out why that should matter... Or, rather how I should word why it matters. Let's just say that if I'm going down a rabbit hole with someone we should probably have some similar constraints. That's vague, but I'll get back to it at some point. It has something to do with consequences.
I first saw /heard Matt on Jeffrey Mishlove's New Thinking Allowed, so always knew he's real. There are others on Substack who I do wonder about, or conclude are bots.
Since I am not formally educated I cannot speak to much except to say I am so grateful for the values that you bring to these dialogues.
Were all of these posted on Substack before now? Several don't look familiar.
Rare is the one who can - and even rarer the one who publicly does - reflect upon their own work so objectively, without attachment. A beacon of Light in dark times. If only to be a fly on the wall to see where you'll be in forty years....
You may need to take to a sabbatical year to allow the laggards, including myself, to catch up.
And according to Steiner, you should have begun the list from the end of the year :-). Joking aside, maybe it would in fact lead to new insights...
Matt, I love how you float from flower to flower, both as bee and as flower. I am a flowerer of yours in this astonishing adventure.
Long may the epic quest continue!
The capacity to speak from your own authority has been well-earned; it is a rare and precious capacity, and I look forward to seeing where it takes you.
I guess '40' can be experienced as a kind of concrescence of your thirties? (It's another conversation, but while reading, I also wondered how the living systems idea of concrescence might inform or be informed by the more esoteric idea of 'the law of three' in Gurdjieff/Bourgeault, which is sometimes summarised by saying: "The interweaving of the three produces a fourth in a new dimension.")
I’ll take it!
Your talk at Harvard Divinity was a bright spot of that conference for me Matt. I'd just come back into the building from taking a morning reset and sat in the back of the hall. I didn't even know I was holding my breath until I felt it exhaling. My relief was not in the content of your presentation but in the quality of your attention.
I'd been struck the first day of the conference at all the talking about, thinking about, judging from self-distance. Entering my 21st year of engaging with Steiner's work, something became freshly concrete for me: te Holy aesthetics of self discovery is a freedom, but it is no escape!
You paid the greatest homage to Steiner and the greatest respect to us listening by not resisting the personal transformation the ethical moment requires. Your artistry with thinking models the possibility of it's flight and union like music between musician, instrument, listener and hall.
I affirm your New Year's resolution and am thankful to be able to perceive the results:
"In 2026 I want to risk a new kind of directness with fewer guided tours through other people’s ideas, more open air construction in the wild fields where metaphysics meets practice, where cosmology becomes ethics, where ideas are tested not only by argument but by the quality of attention and relationship they make possible."
Its nice to have a few biographical details about you here. I've hurt my own feelings more than a few times thinking you might not be a real person. I've been trying to figure out why that should matter... Or, rather how I should word why it matters. Let's just say that if I'm going down a rabbit hole with someone we should probably have some similar constraints. That's vague, but I'll get back to it at some point. It has something to do with consequences.
I first saw /heard Matt on Jeffrey Mishlove's New Thinking Allowed, so always knew he's real. There are others on Substack who I do wonder about, or conclude are bots.