Playing Chess With Demons

The Keith Johnstone session yesterday was really special. It was a joyous session, and I felt the joy spread throughout the Zoom room.

I needed that joyous moment, because I am writing about demons again, and when I write about demons, things get existentially heavy. Yeah, spiritual strip teases are fun, until the demons start showing.

I imagine people will start wondering what my metaphysical beliefs are. I can metaphysically code-switch well enough. I add the “right” qualifiers before making any wild statements, and I signal enough to the new atheist types to scramble their pattern-matching algorithm, in order to avoid being placed in their “woo-woo” category. This will buy me some time to figure out what my metaphysics really are.

I was “spiritually popping” again yesterday, lightly, and I briefly entered what felt like a “primordial realm.” This happened to me back in April, and it lasted almost three months. When you are in this realm, everything seems thick with meaning; it is like you are swimming in meaningfulness. In this realm everything feels connected.

Because everything is connected.

No one man can “know” how it is connected though. If you enter into the primordial realm, with a map of reality that you think is complete, you will misconnect concepts in a way that disconnects you from reality. It is also dangerous to enter into this realm with a demanding ego, or narcissistic proclivities, because then the “everything is connected” thing will quickly turn into an “everything is connected to me” thing.  Everything feels very delicious in this realm though. You do not notice there is a meaning crisis “outside,” because there is a really awesome meaning party happening on the inside. 

I was corresponding with Bonnitta about my last entry, seeking her guidance about the “following the daemon leads to the demons” thing, and she basically advised me not to put on the breaks, and recommended for me to keep going. She said that the worst that could happen is me having a psychotic break, or me publicly embarrassing myself. 

I have already experienced both of those to a degree, and ultimately they are good character building exercises, if you can get through to the other side that is. I am not that worried about psychotic breaks or embarrassing myself though. I've got Stoicism for that shit. It is this demon shit that I am more concerned with. 

My former therapist, Jordan Peterson, believes Christianity had the best understanding of evil. It is the religion that is not shy about stating it exists. Years ago a demon visited me, and brought me to “hell,” which ultimately led me to become Peterson’s client.

In Daniel Görtz’s latest “Metamodern Deep-Dives” session he discussed spirituality, and showed us this really cool spectrum of the various states we can find ourselves in. Heavenly states are at the top, and hellish states are at the bottom. He actually used the word hell, and how he described the state is exactly what I experienced before. I do not wish this state on anyone.

In that state life was moving at the slowest speed it could possibly move, every second felt like a century. I was stuck in this primordial slowness, and this primordial slowness was coupled with all of these intense emotions. The type of emotions which come when you are afraid that you will be forever alone due to going publicly insane.

I was flittering back and forth through the spectrum Daniel presented. There were moments I was thrown into heaven, and there were moments where it felt like a holy voice was being channelled through me. It did feel like a war between heaven and hell was going on in my body.

This happened during the summer of 2013, and this was all happening in public. A crowd was forming around me. Camille was also there, angelically holding space. I recall one moment asking for a pen and paper, because the holy voice was telling me to write, and I had a vision that I was responsible for writing something very important.

I self-harmed during this episode, by violently smashing my head on the ground multiple times. I was saying some wild shit as well, and I assaulted a police officer. I recall there was a method to this madness though, and I had good reason at the time for doing all of this.

I kept asking the people surrounding me to call the police, so they could arrest me. Nobody was listening though, they were just telling me to breath and take it easy. I did all of that crazy stuff so the police could come and take me away, which is what eventually happened.

Why I wanted the police to take me away was because a demonic energy was coursing through my body. It was so dark, and so many intrusive thoughts were invading my mind. I was losing myself to this energy, and it was like this energy was trying to take over my body.

And there were moments where it did, and my movements were no longer my own, and those movements were not in service to heaven. My strategy did work, and the police took me to the hospital. I recall having incredible strength there, and at one point around six men were holding me down, while I was screaming. They eventually strapped me into a hospital bed.

When I was in a room guarded by a security officer, and not being able to move due to the straps that were on me, my mind suddenly turned to Marcus Aurelius, and I remembered this thing I am into called Stoicism. I radically started focusing on what was in my control, and reasoned my way back to reality, and the demonic energy eventually went away.

It came back though, along with the intrusive thoughts, in April of this year. It was another close call, but I had better chess moves this time, and I managed to capture the energy. My dear friend Lubomir Arsov, who has strong spiritual sensibilities, advised me to pour love on the demon. I did, and it went away.

A buddy of mine, who is a “tradcath,” which means he is a Traditionalist Catholic that disapproves of the Second Vatican Council, believes in demons and demonic possession. He took me to a conference on demonic possession and exorcism. It was very trippy being in a room with a bunch of priests and hardcore Catholics who believe in this stuff.

I felt the massive epistemic gap just being there. It was the perfect place for weird meta Pete to hang out though, as I learned a lot from that experience, even if it was just to take away the metaphoric value of what was spoken about.

So what is my metaphysics when it comes to demons? I do not like answering questions like these, but I will say this: at the very least I do think there are dark forces out there, which can spread from person to person, and there are people who want to spread these hellish states for their own sake.

Maybe the daemon will lead me to more demons, ones that come through me or through others. I will listen to Bonnitta though, and I will keep following the daemon. This chess player is ready to seriously play, or is at least ready enough to.

If we are going to steal this culture, we will have to seduce this culture, and once we do, we will be responsible to heal this culture. There are things out there that do not want this healing to occur, and it is naïve to think otherwise.

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