Spiritual Awakening
My friends,
I hope everybody is doing well.
It was a fun day at The Stoa. In the morning Peter Wang delivered an important talk on The Consequential Gap (video here). In the evening Yancey Strickler delivered a presentation on his Bentoism technique. And our favorite existential dancer, Collin Morris, ended the day with another Existential Dance Party that had a special theme of thumos.
Tomorrow’s events:
The Psychotechnology Playground w/ Bonnitta Roy. April 10th @ 10:00 AM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Liminal War: The Rise of Info Militias w/ Jack Murphy. April 10th @ 4:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly. April 10th @ 7:00 PM ET. Learn more. RSVP here.
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April 9, 2020
I am feeling normal right now. I woke up feeling this way, and I am very relieved that I am. I desire to be normal. But I am going on this wild adventure led by the daemon, and I have no idea where he or she is asking me to go, but I am going, and it is fun. We both know I am going to follow wherever the daemon leads.
A part of me does not want to follow. I would like to move to a small town with my wife and our little cat, Socrates, where we can be simple and live simple lives, and forget about all of this. But reading those words I just wrote did not feel alive. I think I desire to escape to normalcy because of the weirdness I have been experiencing over the past few days.
I am going to proceed cautiously here. I do not want to make any mistakes with my words. I am getting a little emotional writing this, tears are bubbling up. Over the last few days, I have been experiencing things, things I do not want to overread or underread—and am therefore tempted not to read at all. And I worry about your reading them, whoever you are.
I admit that yesterday I asked myself: Am I in a process of spiritual awakening? There was a feeling of not recognizing myself last night and my wife did not recognize me either. We talked about it pretty soberly, though, and agreed that we both had to build a relationship with this new me, if indeed this new me was going to stay. We made love afterward, for the first time since I started these journals. Falling asleep in each other's arms brought peace to my body.
I am glad that I am feeling normal right now. I am more comfortable in this state. Besides the foreignness of yesterday's experience, narcissistic thoughts were trying to attach themselves to the situation, which was interesting to watch. It was like an overused sticky note that keeps falling off.
Besides the projections of my own mind, I was concerned about coming across as weird or inaccessible. People might have thought I am crazy, or having a breakdown, or something. If I am indeed going through these things, I have a desire to be reassuring. I can handle it, or at least I definitely think I can. I trust that my Stoicism will see me through this.
But I mention this mainly because I do not want to be alone. I do not want to be judged. I want to be loved. I want communitas. I am listening to this song on repeat while writing this. The lyrics he starts repeating at 3:20 feel like a battle cry for my soul.
A desire is coming over me to delete everything I just wrote in this entry, I want to hide this, I do not want to share. I do not want you to know about it. Should I post this? I can always delete it and write something that feels safer. Let us pause, give it a moment, and see what the daemon suggests.
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