The Algorithm Is You: Why Stillness Beats Optimization
“Time goes from present to past. This is absurd, but in our practice sometimes we realize it’s true.”
The algorithm isn’t out there—it’s in here. A mirror of the self.
The next level of performance isn’t a hack. It’s waking up.
Most people are being moved—not moving. They scroll, react, argue, perform. They feel smart, busy, and maybe even self-aware. But if you’re still mistaking that for freedom, or you think you’re in control, you’re in the algorithm. You don’t escape it by turning off your phone or switching platforms. That’s cosmetic.
This is because the source of the algorithm is inside you.
And to deliver your highest, most authentically powerful self—you can’t be enslaved to it.
You’re Not Driving
Simply put—If you don’t know your algorithm, you’re probably being run by it. Period.
That algorithm is:
What you seek (think attachments to pleasure, comfort, praise)
What you avoid (think aversions to discomfort, criticism, being told you’re wrong)
How you reflexively defend your self-image
What keeps your nervous system busy enough to avoid (uncomfortable) silence
It’s reinforced externally by systems that feed you back what you put out—creating a cycle of amplification. Hate, fear, desire, opinion, identity—it all gets looped. Left vs. right? That’s an outrage algorithm. Our emotionality, an essentially unevolved system over thousands, possibly millions, of years, is both fueling the external apparatus of a rapidly advancing and sophisticated function (think social media, news curated by AI, based on your preferences) that is in turn feeding the emotionality source to make it bigger. It is like a snake eating its own tail.
Most people live as mere extensions of a loop they never chose and never questioned. Truth is we are driven by our emotions more than our thinking and our emotions are still as primitive as they were thousands of years ago.
The Algorithm Is You
What you see is just what’s being fed back to you. And it’s learning faster than you are.
That external feed—news, trends, AI-driven recommendations—it’s not foreign to self. It’s a mirror of the self. It reflects your attachments and aversions. Your preferences, your fears, your identity scaffolding. Now with tech that’s continuously learning your likes and dislikes and feeding the next stream of information to you based on that, the more you engage these attachments and aversions, the stronger they become.
Internally, your mind does the same thing:
It serves you the same thought loops, because they match your emotional history (the mind finds comfort in sameness).
It filters out anything that threatens the version of yourself you’re trying to protect.
It drives you toward action—not from clarity, but from compulsion to maintain control.
Same algorithm. Different skin.
AI Is Evolving. But, Are You?
Primitive reactions reflected. Ancient emotions, modern mirrors.
It’s not sci-fi. It’s not robots taking over the world.
The real threat is that AI now evolves faster than your internal capacity to deal with it. Faster than your reflection. Faster than your awareness. And it’s shaping your behavior before you even know it because it’s working on emotion and the unconscious. It’s like having two gears in the same system but they are becoming uncoupled because one is running much faster than the other.
Meanwhile, most people haven’t even updated the firmware of their own nervous system. They are still running decades-old scripts based on childhood narratives.
The algorithm is accelerating, and if you don’t step out, you get absorbed and lose your true potential of self.
The Exit Isn’t Where You’re Looking
Stillness.
And no, not the burn some incense and “just be calm” variety. This isn’t about self-care or vacations or some vague concept of mindfulness. This is about stopping the loop—not numbing out from it.
Modern physics tells us time isn’t strictly linear.
This isn’t just a spiritual metaphor—it’s embedded in relativity and supported by some quantum models. The past, present, and future don’t necessarily unfold like a straight line—they may exist as part of a larger, unified field. In some interpretations, all points in time co-exist, and what we experience as “now” is simply where our awareness happens to land (past, present and future are all now).
Zen taught this centuries ago. Dōgen wrote that each moment contains all of existence—a complete expression of being-time. And:
“Each moment is all being, is the entire world.” – Dōgen, Uji (13th century)
Each moment isn’t just now—it’s the whole system rebooting.
Even on the neurochemical level, each time we remember something, the memory is reassembled—new, dynamic, not fixed.
That means every breath, every moment of pure stillness, is a doorway.
You want out? Step through. You just have to trust yourself.
Freedom Only Exists Now
Not the past. That’s memory, rumination, trauma. It no longer exists.
Not the future. That’s projection, anxiety, illusion. It doesn’t exist yet.
Right now is the only point where anything real happens.
This isn’t conceptual—it’s operational.
In this moment:
Your body is here.
Your nervous system is active.
Your mind has a chance to see itself.
Anything outside of this is speculation. And performance lives in what is actual—not theoretical.
Stillness Is the Performance Edge
Stillness lets you see the loop before it fires.
It exposes the pattern and short-circuits the emotions-based reflex.
That’s clarity. That’s freedom.
From a neuroscience angle, this engages the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—a region responsible for attentional control, self-regulation, and overriding automatic responses. Stillness sharpens this system—not through force, but through clarity and resilience.
High performers stay stuck not because they’re weak, but because they’re too conditioned. Too reactive. Too “optimized”.
Stillness is unpredictability.
Stillness is sovereignty.
Stillness is power.
Stillness isn’t retreat. It’s return—to clarity, presence, and self.
Make It Real
Don’t overthink it.
Sit down.
Breathe.
Feel your body.
When a thought arises—notice it. Don’t follow. Don’t fight. Don’t engage the story or create a story.
Come back to the breath.
Repeat.
Ten minutes. Every day.
This isn’t meditation as an escape. It’s precision calibration of self.
Brian Mendenhall, DO
