Keep Thy Mind in Hell …
Hey everyone,
For the Daniel Schmachtenberger event tomorrow, I spoke with Daniel and we agreed to have the last two sessions be focused on the following theme: personal development and personal practice during the meta-crisis.
To manage expectations, we will not be engaging in more abstract topics, such as system change or the war on sensemaking. If you intend on coming and would like to ask a question, you can ask it here.
Also, be sure to check out the video from last week’s session:
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath: Sunrise Edition w/ Steve Beattie. Every Monday @ 6:15 AM ET.RSVP here.
Metamodern Deep-Dives: Art, Spirituality, Sexuality, and Faith w/ Daniel Görtz. October 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th. 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Effective Altruism w/ William MacAskill. October 19th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Digital Porch w/ Daniel Schmachtenberger. October 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th @ 7:30 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Rap Unbattles w/ Tyson Wagner. Every Monday from October 5th to October 26th @ 9:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
The Dawn of the Metatribe w/ Tyler Alterman. October 20th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
Tyler Alterman visits The Stoa to discuss his thoughts on the dawning of the “metatribe.” Check out his epic Twitter thread on the metatribe here.
p.s. The screenshot in the event ad above was from a conversation (where the term metatribe was mentioned) between five of us “meta podcasters”: Jason Synder, Jared Janes, Collin Morris, Tim Adalin, and myself. I know we look like Power Rangers in that photo, but we were actually doing a bro meditation together.
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October 18, 2020
Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not.
That is what God said to Saint Silvanus the Athonite, an Eastern Orthodox monk, when he was under demonic duress. My friend Rorik, who is becoming somewhat of a spiritual advisor to me, told me to look up Saint Athonite after he read my demonic possession entry. Rorik is the guy who thought I was having a “Kundalini Awakening” back in April.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which Rorik and I belong to, they recommend we pray to the saints. There is something called “intercession of saints,” where you pray to Christian saints to seek their help. As Rorik told me: We have the saints who are always available to intercede for us, and to help us; all we have to do is call upon them, listen to their teachings, act on their guidance, and demonstrate some obedience and integrity.
He went on to say: Some saints become a lifelong devotion for some people.
I asked him about Saint Peter, and he said: St. Peter is the patron of fishermen, nets, and shipbuilding, and he is also the patron saint of locksmiths - which to my mind indicates that he is about opening doors, and locking doors . . . a valuable service when dealing with demons.
Rorik added: Fishers of men come to mind as well. It seems that you are already engaged in that business.
And he also said: Peter was dense, a screw up, and even denied his Lord three times, but he repented.
Heh. I am liking Saint Peter, he seems pretty relatable. I asked Rorik about Saint Peter because a song mysteriously played on my Spotify playlist, from Bill Callahan called I've Made Up My Mind. I got chills when I heard the following lyrics …
Jesus told Peter
"Make up your mind
Then strengthen your brethren
Follow me all the time"
Peter was not crazy
He turned the world upside down
And he followed Jesus
And he wore that shining crown
The reason why this gave me the chills was because when I was going a little mad back in April I experienced some synchronicities that felt archetypal, in addition to all the Kundalini-esque stuff I was experiencing. David Fuller witnessed some of the madness, and he said there is something called penetrative archetypal patterns, which he suggested might have been occurring with me. Basically it is when somebody is tapped in an archetypal pattern.
There was so much trippy stuff happening to me the day I heard the music. Maybe I will write about it one day, but that day is not today. A narrative was forming during the madness though, that I was plugged into the archetype of Saint Peter.
When Bonnitta Roy was advising me about the psychotic break thing, she said: You might want to listen to some of your more "rational" friends.
Yo, where my Street Epistemology brahs be at?!
I am good at being rational myself though, and I can bust out an Ockham's razor or two. I am somewhat concerned about bringing this all up, but I do not like holding secrets, and if you have been reading for a while, I hope I have demonstrated rational discernment here.
I am very careful in “guarding my premises,” in order not to overcommit to my propositions. This is why I use words like “sense” so much. Yeah, I sense something is true, but that does not mean I think or believe it is true.
What I sense is true here, with the archetype of Saint Peter thing, is that it was good that it happened. I say this because after I was on the other side, it was a huge confidence boosting event.
Now that “normal consciousness” has been restored for me (since June), and I've experienced and processed that over-the-top post-madness sadness, I feel much more individuated than I did before this whole project started.
The guy who weirdly tried to blackmail me criticized me before by saying something like: the problem with you is that you are agnostic. He was referring to my politics and was mad at me because I am not publicly supportive of the politics he proselytizes.
I like being “politically aporic,” for now, and when it comes to the meta-crisis, it seems like I am more interested in “spiritual politics.” When I think about “my agnosticism,” this quote from Daniel Klein from his fun book Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live comes to mind:
Agnostics' dirty little secret is… that they hope god exists.
Shhhh...
What does this all have to do with the quote that started this entry? I have the capacity of not only repurposing mental models from various reality tunnels, but I can jump into the reality tunnels themselves, and be in each one's intellectual architecture in a way that allows me to feel the world through it.
And when I hop into the reality tunnel I was baptized in, things feel more real, and there is a certain gravitas that comes with that realness. Hell is not just a state you visit on a psychological spectrum in some meta-systematic framework. It is much more than that, because now there is an entire spiritual war surrounding the state.
I am listening to that Bill Callahan song now, and I just heard these lyrics ...
The devil says, "You're crazy"
And he pulls at my will
But my destination
Is the top of Holy Hill
The devil is the father of all lies. He is the apex sociopath if you will; what James Carse called a “master player” when it comes to all the Cluster B manipulative stuff. It is best to be on guard, and not believe in his lies, especially if he says shit like evil or hell does not exist.
That lie is a very powerful power move, and yes, I sense God was right when he told Saint Silvanus to have his mind on Hell, and not to despair. That is like playing the Stoic premeditatio malorum game on hard mode. Negative visualizing the hellish states that evil can invoke on the world is way more motivating to get one's shit together than any meta-systematic masturbation to the meta-crisis can do.
This is why the QAnon tribe, with its religious overtones of a “Great Awakening,” currently has such a powerful momentum behind it. Try to do some Empathy Circling for a moment, and hop into their reality tunnel, and imagine you really thought the bad guys are a bunch of sick fucks running an elite pedo ring that is engaged in “satanic ritual abuse.” Now imagine this to the point where you felt like it was real, then hell yeah, you’d be pretty motivated to stop that shit.
In a previous entry, I wrote about how Peterson had one hell of a bookshelf in his office:
He had one whole bookshelf on evil: books full of atrocities, serial killers, and demons. Reflecting on my conversations with him now, and on some of the things he alluded to, I get the sense he was tapped into this primordial language, and felt the presence of the devil and his minions. This is why, I imagine, there was a holy gravitas about him, which made him so different from the Intellectual Yet Idiots of the Blue Church intelligentsia.
The dude was plugged into what evil and hell is all about. That is why, dare I say, he “woke” a lot of people up, on all sides of the culture war. You did not respond so much to what he said, but how he said it. He thought and felt that evil existed, and that permeated through every word he spoke.
I could point you to some wild memetic tribes, such as Satanic ones like the “Order of Nine Angles,” in order to show you that people consciously want to spread evil for its own sake. I can also point you to things like “hurtcore.” I do not throw “trigger warnings” around often but I will for this one, because it is a very dark rabbit hole.
Reading about the things Peter Scully and Matthew Falder were up to will not only give you nightmares, but it shows you that evil exists. Falder even gravitated towards online names such as “666devil” and “evilmind.” He was also a Cambridge academic researching geophysics. So yeah, evil can possess high IQ types operating in prestigious institutions. Reflect on that for a moment.
Rebecca Fox, my skeptic friend who is a facilitator at The Stoa, read my “demonic possession” entry, and said that we probably need new language beyond “psychic breaks” and “demonic possessions” to explain what I went through. She said: the first just doesn’t capture the experience and the latter carries way too much baggage. She added: funny they both have their sacred texts—DSM/The Bible!
I would also say we need a new language for evil. One that is not used in a “shaming” way, but also keeps us argus-eyed to all of the realities of it, so it cannot slip through the conceptual cracks this time. I was fumbling my way towards something like this when I introduced the “emotosphere” idea.
I am sure there are better concepts out there to help grok this. If not, us meta weirdos might have to create new ones.
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