Spiritual Narcissism
My friends,
We had a really fun session today with A.J. Bond called Loving Cringe Meditation. We watched that celebrity Imagine sing-a-long video organized by Gal Gadot, and collectively felt judgment, before shining love on the judgment itself. Later in the day, Daniel Kazand hosted another Metagame Mastermind meeting, which had a great vibe about it.
Also, I had a really plugged in conversation with Raven Connolly, who facilitates the Socratic Speed Dating sessions at The Stoa. You can watch it here.
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. April 12th @ 10:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Making Friends With Fear w/ Caveh Zahedi. April 12th @ 9:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
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April 11, 2020
What wants to be written?
I think this might be a good go-to prompt when I do not know how to start writing. I slept in today, and felt weak and exhausted upon waking. I wanted to continue to sleep. I felt that I had lost access to the daemon in that moment. But by sinking into the shitty feelings, with complete acceptance, I started to hear the whispers once again. Being here now, drinking my morning espresso and listening to weird music, I feel I am slowly attuning to right relationship again.
I had more interesting experiences yesterday, and I imagine I am going to continue to have them, but today I am less creeped out by them. Maybe I am developing certain spiritual capacities, or maybe I am just tripping out on the trip I am on. Whatever it is, I am not feeling fear about it at the moment.
This may sound silly, and it feels silly writing it, but one thing I was afraid of is becoming this weird spiritual guy, someone who is interpersonally unrelatable and who looks weird. Someone who dresses funny and stares at people. I am starting to understand the allure of people with spiritual capacities. People have the desire to be seen, really seen. There is a hunger for it, and if somebody has the capacity to see you, with only love in their eyes, then that could be very enticing. Devilishly so, if you become addicted to being seen.
And those spiritual gurus, with their unique capacities, could quickly become unethical if they are not grounded in prudence and if they allow their followers' addiction to them to manifest. This is why I think developing an ecology of practices is essential, to be well-rounded and to keep in check powerful capacities. This is why philosophy is needed. My hunch is that we Stoics not only need to get spiritual, but we also need to keep the spiritual types in check, so their spiritual narcissism does not get the better of them. Or us.
Circling back to the spiritual aesthetics and the weirdness I see with the guru types, I had an insight last night (which I think has some truth to it). Let us separate the capacities of those who are spiritual with the aesthetics of those who are spiritual. I think the latter exists because, during their journey towards spirituality, they were LARPing Buddha or Jesus and the style stuck.
Also, if you are meditating by yourself in a cave or something, I imagine you do not have much time to practice good interpersonal skills. So imagine this dude, with great spiritual capacities, who looks like somebody from the 4th century, and who has zero social skills. Yeah, that is going to create weird dynamics, and understandably so.
Daniel Thorson and I were talking about aesthetics last year, as we both gravitate to the normcore style. Even though I am sort of weird, I want to be and look relatable. I do not want to be looked up to, nor down on. There are things I am willing to sacrifice, but I still want to drink beer, make fart jokes, and listen to music with people who have bad singing voices.
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