I see now that I cannot produce any shadowless thought, leading me to second-guess the nobility of my efforts. And on a larger scale, I question what the appropriate posture of ego-consciousness should be towards the shadow. How can I trust myself to utter anything, knowing that introspection will lead to the discovery of corruption? I live and breathe contradiction. Each apparently benevolent intention is enthusiastically projected onto other conscious beings around me. But conscious projection comes with an unconscious antithesis of similar intensity. Just because you say you have good intentions, and really do believe it, that doesn’t mean you aren’t simultaneously and unconsciously embodying the opposite.

If you weren’t blind, you would recognize that the louder you proclaim your benevolence the better your shadow becomes at evading the revelatory light of consciousness. I once thought I was honest because I only spoke what I knew to be true. But inside was a world of deception, secrecy, and willful blindness. My definition of truth was discrete and could not account for the experience that multiple contradicting realities can simultaneously be true. Not only can truth exist in contradiction, it is the only way anything can exist.

During one of my psychedelic journies, I saw multiple contradictory interpretations of the geometry of the corner of my room’s 2 walls and ceiling. Multiple conflicting interpretations of reality are becoming more of a collective conundrum as we become increasingly untethered from the religious foundations in which reason and rationality were grown to operate in. We simply don’t realize that the precondition for truth is more important than a particular manifestation of truth because it’s one of many. We can become conscious that something in us is choosing interpretations of reality like fruit on a platter. Perhaps more controversial is my repeated observation that when flexibility in available modes of perception is exercised, it’s present also externally in other people.

Jordan Peterson thinks the Bible is the prerequisite for truth. I would phrase it differently, but see a truth to which that claim is pointing. I think we are blind and stupid if we think that we can personally or collectively reject religious dogma without simultaneously and blindly adopting a more primitive, immature dogma as a necessary replacement. Dogma is a collection of fundamental presuppositions that act as the foundation for the structures of meaning which naturally grow out of it. There can be no civilization without a shared set of core presuppositions from which meaning can be generated. More pressing than the collapse of civilization in the absence of such a thing is the collapse of the individual psyche, which mirrors the external world. In other words, the inner and the outer structures of meaning would collapse simultaneously. And it seems that we Westerners have found ourselves in such a situation presently.

Congratulations, you found a point of contention between our Judeo-Christian values and modern life. Oh, and you also found a solution? How wonderful. And you don’t see your solution creating secondary problems which the original issue pales in comparison to? Amazing! Let’s realize your intellectual masturbation by creating a large-scale social policy to give life to your shadow’s diverse collection of demons hiding in plain sight only from you. And even better if we can make it compulsory by presenting it as a moral obligation.

Carl Jung wrote:

“Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious.” (CW 18, PAR. 1358).

A few days ago I had a beautiful philosophical conversation with two friends, one of whom brought up antinatalism. The Wikipedia TLDR is “Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the ethical view that negatively values procreation. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is morally wrong.” Antinatalism is an example of a philosophy claiming roots in compassion - the desire to alleviate the suffering of conscious beings. But what I hear are the rationalizations of an intellect disconnected from the ground of being, blind to its own demons.

As the artificial chasm between the primitive psyche and modern psyche grows, we become increasingly inhabited by unconscious elements (could say demons) that resonate with malevolent ideas. When the spiritual world was cast out of the natural world, its inhabitants took refuge in our unconscious (Jungian idea). We are unconsciously run by the devils of our own creation who hunger through us and who we unwittingly sacrifice to. Our collective ego-consciousness is too weak to face its shadow and be sufficiently repelled by it, so it settles for blindness.

Here’s a relevant quote from Jesus:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16 NKJV)

Or, if you’re allergic to Jesus and prefer to hear it from Jordan Peterson when apparently quoting Jung (although I can’t seem to find where Jung ever said this):

“If you can't understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences.”

To know someone by their fruits could be seen as the test of time, but it could also be seen as a test of “causal distance”. That is, observing the consequences within a radius of influence in the world, not just the central point.

I find myself listening with great interest to the troubles of others. When someone presents me with some conflict, I am surprised by how often the problem cannot be understood because of deceit or willful blindness. Whether it’s conscious deceit or staying silent when one needs to say something important, the lack of truth reveals itself to be at the core of many relational problems. Largely influenced by the wisdom of Jordan Peterson, the path forward I take is usually encouraging people to come face to face with the truth.

People bounce around the core of an issue if they can’t handle the core, so I help them find the center, watching them every step along the way. I know we’re onto something when they get uncomfortable, I see them trying to squirm away from something. The revelation isn’t something new, but that which they already know but couldn’t admit to themselves because they weren’t willing to handle it. Or couldn’t.

I don’t consciously aim to get down to the core because of some agenda, instead, I am naturally drawn to it out of curiosity. Maybe this is why some people trust me in this process. I stumble along with them, asking questions and putting forward my thoughts to gauge if I’m on the right track. And sometimes, without necessarily intending to, I strike at the core (or, as close as I can manage) of the issue. Something seems to click within the individual when that happens, which sometimes takes a few moments, and they go… oh shit.

They come across some truth that is hard to swallow, and they’re trying to figure out what to do with it. It’s critical that I consciously come to that point in the conversation with the appropriate spirit. And that spirit, which has never failed me, is Truth in the service of Love. Because at that moment feedback is able to penetrate the surface layers.

If I abuse that opportunity by projecting onto them my own complexes, or worse, some ideological virus, they’ll be left off worse. If I judge and condemn them as individuals, what that means is I took a specific issue in a specific context and abstracted that out to assume it represents the entire self. Part of an individual can transform, and go through death and rebirth - there is hope. But the entire self? That’s too much for anyone to bear. And why would I think it’s a good idea to abstract out part of an individual and assume that represents all the other parts of an individual? Who am I to proclaim such a thing?

What I do instead is go as deeply as I can into the experience of seeing them, avoiding all distractions of condemnation (of which there are many), until I find an ember of the flame of Love. Loving isn’t judging what they’re doing right or good, but rather the recognition that even the darkest aspects of their being have within them an element of the divine that is capable of transforming by coming into contact with the light of Truth. And that process is done in the spirit of Love - otherwise, the darkness recedes further if given no opportunity to transform. That is the essence of redeeming grace, which I try to be the instrument of.

Fundamental to this process is my faith that the individual is more capable than they are willing to admit of positive transformation. Christianity’s thesis is that humanity is in its nature sinful, and Jesus is the only one who can offer sufficient grace. Non-Christians who are embedded in the Judeo-Christian values of the West are very similar psychologically to the Christians (relative to the other historical modes of being, all things considered), except they lack the framework to go about contending with the darker aspects of themselves. Without putting myself on either side of the argument, I encourage people to see they can handle more of the truth than they give themselves credit for.

In the state of consciousness where I love them and see them as truly beautiful, I can start speaking the truth. This is difficult for me and requires deliberate practice. That is the essence of truth in the service of love - it’s not just some truth. It’s the truth through which transformation oriented towards increased resonance with love can take place. And the more I resonate with it, the more likely that our exploration will produce fruit that is harmonious with that resonance. But this rather ethereal attitude I take on has to be brought down to earth and realized, to be practical.

The individual with the revelation usually has a hard time sitting with it. Often times they realize there’s something important they need to take responsibility for, and the appropriate thing to do is not let them be overwhelmed with the weight of the responsibility. I try to help them strategize how to handle their newfound responsibility by breaking it up into small enough chunks that they can chew on. This is what I do when all goes well, rather than what I necessarily manage to do every time. And if I try to go deeper than what I’m capable of handling myself, I turn into The Blind Leading the Blind.

This process I often naturally find myself facilitating can be helpful to both me and the other participant, but it has to be in the right context and we both have to be in the right frame of mind. It’s necessary for me to stretch my insight muscles and know the limits of how much truth I can handle. And it works only when I’m speaking from my own wisdom. People don’t react well to preaching because it’s wisdom on someone else’s behalf - which I do not have authority to. It’s ingenuine to encourage others to tell the truth and not have that be my guiding principle. How can I recommend someone go where I haven’t yet explored? I’d inevitably lead others astray.

To end this piece off, here’s a relevant renaissance painting called The Blind Leading the Blind.

When I walk around a city that hasn’t completely lost its natural foundation, I look at the mixture of trees, grass, roads, houses, and electricity lines, and choose to see it in one of two ways. My default state (for my entire adult life), is where I see meaning in the artificial parts of the city. The other possible state is the one where nature is the main thing and we are embedded in it - not the other way around.

Let’s say I walk on the sidewalk, cars pass by me, and there are some trees and grass around. In my default state, I don’t see the intricacies and beauty of the natural world. I’m embedded in the artificial world. I think in terms of social constructs such as:

sidewalk - this is a place of walking

Cars - the things that move people and make a noise and go on the road in a structured manner

Trees - the things that are in the places where the road and buildings are not

Houses - the place where others can see me and make sure I’m behaving

And so on.

Jordan Peterson talks about how we don’t see things in the world and infer meaning, we see meaning and infer things. And the psyche of modern humans in the West sees meaning through our current iteration of the socially generated framework, which is partially why we can get along on a massive scale. But let’s dig into the framework that we all unconsciously participate in. The framework is a psychic manifestation, in each individual who participates in it, of the Spirit of the Times.

Aside: I haven’t read this article by C. Boeree, but I like the way they use the ‘biological’ and ‘social’ unconscious in the following diagram to make a distinction between ancient and modern parts of the collective. I’ll start using the term Social Collective Unconscious, or Social Unconscious from now on, to stop confusing myself.

Aside 2.0: Without going into too much detail, which I will get lost in, the Spirit of the Times inhabits the ‘Social Unconscious’, which is the most recent, variable part of the Collective Unconscious. It’s socially mediated and takes different forms in different cultures at different ages. This is my take on a diagram that the original author might angrily disagree about, but that’s okay. I’ll consider going through a ‘derivation’ at some point later. No wonder Physicists shriek at these sorts of things…

Final aside: I use the term resonance quite frequently because it’s the best analogy I can think of for Spirit in the Spirit-Matter duality. It’s similar to an atomic vibrational mode. The Spirit of the Times is like a particular vibrational mode that culture can resonate in. Not everyone resonates the same way, to the same degree in the Spirit of the Times. In the same way that no one culture is homogeneous - there is some variation inside a culture and usually some overlap with cultures around it.

Bringing this back to the roads and the cars that I see out in the world, the reason why people driving on the highway don’t constantly crash into each other is that they resonate with the same “Spirit” while driving. But Sam, I’m choosing to follow the rules of the road. I’m not having a ‘spiritual’ experience. To some degree, you are a conscious agent following the rules of the road. But over time, in doing so you increasingly develop inner structures that get better at resonating with culturally predetermined patterns of behaviour.

And what is Spirit, if not that which appears as pattern?

And if the Spirit which inhabits your inner psychic foundation is shared by your culture, why not call it the Spirit of the Times? (Jungian terminology)

And if we all develop these inner structures of behaviour that participate in the Spirit of the Times, why not call that “mode” of the psyche the Social Collective Unconscious? (New terminology from C. Boeree in the article above)

The degree to which you allow yourself to step outside the patterns of the Social Unconscious is the degree to which you begin to be capable of experiencing the meaning of reality differently.

I was forced to do so because there was too much inner disagreement between the different parts of my unconscious. Something had to give, and for many years it was the biological and personal unconscious that were sacrificed. One of the transformations that most significantly shook up my identity was learning to transgress against the Spirit of the Times. This began by recognizing that it’s become sick, as we can all see, but continually attempts to hide this conclusion by presenting itself as having God-given authority (at least in the West), making people afraid to step outside it.

And there are good reasons for that, if everyone experimented by stepping outside the Spirit of the Times, our society in its current form would quickly crumble and something else would (over a long period of time) begin to take its place. However, if no one steps outside the Spirit of the Times, it will become stagnant, oppressive, and outdated. We need a healthy mixture of rule followers and rule-breakers.

The prerequisite for a healthy cultural mixture is to stop condemning each other. We must understand on both sides what the other is contributing to our society’s wellbeing. The immediate conflict arising from the interaction of socially conservative and progressive elements comes out of a lack of insight into the nature of the process both are participating in, and out of the inability to see how necessary we are to each other.

We are confused to think those who play the various roles chose to play them. Maybe this is too controversial, or foolish, but it seems to me when people constantly think and try to strategize their lives, they get in the way of the role, personally and socially, that they’ve been set up to play. Set up by everything around them - nature, the Spirit of the Times, their particular temperament, etc. Part of our confusion about our purpose arises from the condemnation of certain states that are deemed socially weird/unacceptable/illegal.

One of my relatively harmless contributions is dancing outside on the street, in broad daylight. It’s become clear to me that this is one of the roles I must play and accept the opposition I experience from those around me who are embodying the Spirit of the Times, but such is the nature of rebellion. And it’s not in spite of the Spirit of the Times - it’s not to make people confused and angry because I want them to feel bad, but rather it’s an act of love: the Spirit of the Times must serve the wellbeing of its members. The Spirit manifests its disagreement through individuals who might judge me, and I accept that response as a prerequisite to helping the Spirit of the Times heal. Doesn’t this sound like that part in the villain’s backstory where they justify their extreme measures for the “greater good”? LMAO.

By helping individuals recognize the absurdity of their judgements against me, I use their embodiment of the social unconscious, as a node of the collective network, to communicate with the overall collective unconscious. You can see how that’s physically true because those people are connected to other people, who also have an element of the social unconscious within them, and over time the Social Unconscious updates. You can also see how that’s spiritually true, because the spirit inhabiting an individual, when it gets updated, interacts with other people’s spirits, which seek to align. I’m not privy to what that process looks like, but certainly, the Spirit of the Times has a degree of autonomy.

To a large extent I’ve learned to recognize the common patterns people present me with to show that what I’m doing is disagreeable. And it used to flatten me, it used to be devastating to not be accepted. But now it does quite the opposite - when I do something I know to be right, such as dancing on the street, and I see the judgement, instead of resonating with the judgment as condemnation, I’ve learned to experience the judgement in the context of other things being projected at me. Such as motherly concern for my safety. Or the keen fatherly eye that tests my conviction to ensure I’m not blindly stepping outside the constraints placed on me socially. The recognition that judgement is usually made up of various, oftentimes caring aspects, is what allowed me to experience the judgement, feel it deeply, and understand it, in order to ensure that I am wisely transgressing, rather than blinding myself to judgment. It’s no longer personally hurtful because it’s not even personal.

And this is one of the primary difficulties I see between the younger generation and the older generations. We are unable to sit with their judgment and feel its implication because we don’t have sufficient conviction in what we’re doing as being the right thing. We should be able to stand up for ourselves and say, I know this is right. And if we want to succeed, we have to show the older generation we’re not blind to their wisdom - that we understand deeply what they’re trying to tell us rather than blinding ourselves to their wisdom because we can’t handle it. And if, after understanding their wisdom, we still think we’re doing the right thing, then we should do everything in our power to help them understand. And this is where the difficult task begins. Dialogue.

Can I make a small prediction? In that dialogue we will discover that many of the things we ‘found out for ourselves’ are shallow and foolish and naive, it’s just that the older generation didn’t have the words to communicate that - so they resort to other means of trying to warn us. But words will never reach the depths of ancient sublingual wisdom, which can only be communicated with language indirectly, through symbolism. For the “real thing” we’ll need to learn how to re-engage with our own depths.

I first heard about Carl Jung back in 2017 from Jordan Peterson’s lectures on YouTube. At the time JP was at the center of controversy, I was spending all my free time annihilating his content, and it seems there were many doing the same. When I first heard JP speak I couldn’t understand him. His speech significantly differed from anything I had encountered before and I was mesmerized. Looking back, the feeling was this: when I normally hear people talk, their words strike true partially. But when JP spoke, I became aware that my entire being was resonating with his words. They felt deeply true, not like the here’s my unoriginal, half-ass opinion about X controversial thing going on right now kind of “true”.

It took me several frustrating months to begin understanding what JP was going on about. My initial reaction to him was this is too much, I can’t handle it, so I put him on hold. I glimpsed truth that I wasn’t ready for, but desperately needed, so I kept coming back. Slowly, over a period of months (and years if I’m being honest), I started to understand his words, but more importantly the spirit animating the words.

Seeing as JP thought so highly of Jung, I decided to approach Jung. The same kind of thing happened as with JP, but way more intensely. Again I had the feeling that Jung, like JP, was onto something BIG and I had to know. But I could not understand a word he wrote. Not because he used terminology I couldn’t understand, but because he spoke more truth than I could handle. Like an inside joke that I wasn’t privy to.

That was 5 years ago, and between then and today, I tried reading Jung’s work again a few more times. A year ago I managed to get through a few chapters of Jung on Active Imagination, but the process was hysterical: I would read a paragraph, realize he spoke truth, get overwhelmed with the intensity of the meaning and put the book down to write for an hour. He asked and answered questions that ran so close to the ones I had been working on, that it felt wrong to continue reading before trying to answer them myself.

Aside: Recently I had an intense experience on 3 grams of mushrooms ;) which helped me deal with paradoxes in a new way (more on that in a future essay, perhaps?)

Anyways this is already getting boring. Bla bla bla TLDR I started reading The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology and Modern Life and I can now handle his writing. I read slowly and write a lot, but he is no longer this mythical character with an impossible grasp on… everything. He certainly was one of a kind, and the fruits of his work are only beginning to show. But I’m convinced there is nothing unattainable about his or anyone else’s knowledge and wisdom.

Another aside: Jung described himself as repulsive to those who exist solely as a persona. They are allergic to him because he is incapable of speaking anything but the truth, which they can’t tolerate. You might criticize him for thinking so highly of himself. But if you were incapable of lying, and don’t lie, how else would you describe yourself?

I’m not one for quotes but this one has been on my mind for months: “The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.” - Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

Coming across the writing of someone who speaks more truth than we can handle can be infuriating, but there’s no reason to push ourselves beyond what we’re capable of handling. If it’s important, we’ll be drawn to it again when we’re ready. Sitting with that feeling can open up horizons previously unseen. And the thrill of having new landscapes to explore makes life worth living to those… blessed? Or should I say cursed? with an insatiable curiosity (high Openness to Experience).

For nearly 2 years now I’ve been obsessed with shape. I used to paint but didn’t (and still don’t) really get colour. So I shifted my focus to form instead. Over time I’ve learned to differentiate between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ curves. This drawing is filled with natural curvature which makes it very satisfying to me.

Oh, let’s try something. Comment on Substack what you see in the drawing!

Every morning I wake up and continue dreaming. My natural state as I wake is for my body to be in all sorts of pain, and my mind to be in a state of daydreaming, not unlike the nightdreaming I had just woken up from.

If I do nothing about this, my morning and likely the rest of my day will be spent with the: imagination, intellect, consciousness (modern psyche), dissociated from: intuitions, instincts, and body (primitive psyche). An inner tension that can only be resolved by consciously surrendering authoritative power from the modern elements of consciousness to the ancient unconscious machinery. The keyword is surrender - it’s not a matter of consciously twisting and turning and trying to force a relationship. That’s an exertion of power where consciousness predetermines what the inner connection and trajectory should look like, instead of listening to the unconscious to figure out what it wants.

We are not so much at odds with our unconscious, as much as we are at odds with particular unconscious expressions if we allow them to embody through us at any given moment. The role of consciousness is not to permanently surrender to the unconscious. If that were the case, why develop consciousness in the first place? Instead, it’s to create a practice of surrender so that consciousness might learn to understand the underlying needs of the unconscious by embodying its expression in various scenarios. The precondition to understanding the patterns of the unconscious is to embody the unconscious desires and pay attention to what they do through you.

It’s like a corporation where a CEO (consciousness) sits at the top and tells its employees (the unconscious) what to do, micromanaging each one of them rather than letting them do their job. The intervention is for the CEO to stop trying to control every movement of their employees and simply observe. Or, the radical alternative is to fully surrender to your unconscious, letting it take you where it feels right all the time. I’m just throwing it out there...

The links between the ancient inner machinery and the modern machinery are strengthened through conscious acts of kindness from the seat of consciousness to the unconscious. The autonomous aspects of the psyche, not unlike a neglected child, can find themselves deeply resentful of being ignored through the constant exertion of conscious power against the will of those aspects. The modern psyche denies their expression because of consciousness’ overly-dependent resonance with the spirit of the times, which places demands on the individual to behave in a very narrow window of possibility. There are some examples of that gone terribly well, like driving. When driving a car, you must inhabit a very particular state of consciousness in which your motor movements are in perfect obedience to the conscious mind. To allow the expression of the instincts while on the highway is to risk death. The consequences are grave for surrendering consciousness at the wrong time.

The individual, as the arbiter of collective ethics, refuses to hear the wisdom of the autonomous aspects of the psyche not only when it goes against the expected behaviour, but, at this point in our Western psychological evolution, as the first line of defence, out of fear of being overwhelmed by the unknown patterns and desires of the unconscious. We fear dipping our toes into the depth of the psyche because of the possibility that something unseen will come up from the depths, grab us by the toe, and pull us into the darkness. That fear is not unfounded.

Look at what happened in the 60s and 70s psychedelic revolution. Some people permanently signed out of modern Western existence in exchange for a more natural lifestyle. Turned away from the concerns of the society they were embedded in and decided it was a lost cause. They would only be satisfied with a full system reboot. To me, they embodied a return to the primitive psyche at the expense of the modern psyche. Their opponents in the culture wars that ensued represent the dissociated consciousness warning how dangerously naive such an undertaking is.

Neither the hippies nor their critics got it quite right. However, the condemnation each projected onto the other was always the real problem, as both should seek reconciliation rather than dissociation from one another. Let’s aim to overcome the fear of association with the ‘other’, and with humility seek the wisdom of our enemy. Because that which we need most is found where we least want to look.

This drawing began on another page, as I found myself pulled towards shapes that might appear symbolic but without explicit meaning. I began drawing these ‘characters’, constrained in shape and complexity by… some arbitrary rule that had popped into my head. Each one I drew invited me to begin the next, and the next. Eventually, I decided to start on a new page and see if I could draw these hieroglyphs from left to right. And so I did, until eventually the symbols decided that two big eyes were necessary and that the symbols needed to start unravelling into various shapes. The rules governing the drawing of the hieroglyphs started breaking down and towards the end it’s a bunch of shapes like the ones I find myself usually drawing. Who knows what any of this means.

I recognize within myself condemnation of whole categories of people, and how my posture towards individuals that are members of a certain category is a lot more aggressive and unforgiving. Condemnation is the removal of humanity as one of the variables from a human. Pre-judgement, it wouldn’t take so much evidence to see an individual or group favourably, but after condemnation, they need to prove themselves beyond doubt to be seen favourably in the future. Their ideas are rejected, their humanity and kindness are seen with suspicion, and conflicting evidence to oppose the narrative needs to be overwhelming for your opinions to have a chance of changing.

The problem is, and this is the real kicker: we allow ourselves to do this because we can endlessly construct arguments for our judgement. We think that rationalizing an idea or opinion is a good enough reason to hold that idea. It’s the spirit of argumentative rationalization that came from the Greeks, or maybe from the scientific method psychologized during the last several centuries in the West. It’s most clearly present in the house of commons, in Canada and the UK. I mean, does it get any more obvious than this image:

Two opposing political sides, all dressed the same way, all have the same argumentative posture, but sit opposing each other with a divide in the middle.

And the icing on the cake is the speaker in the middle, through which all interactions are mediated. The opposing sides don’t even speak to each other! They are not trusted to! On one hand, the speaker ensures some sort of order and civility. But at what cost? The opinions that the two sides have of each other aren’t properly expressed. They suppress their true feelings and try to direct them at each other with increasingly passive-aggressive comments. So the true thoughts of the people don’t ever show. This insistence on verbal and physical civility, when enforced in the ‘you’re not allowed to call them that’ fashion, creates a real divide between the inner thoughts and the outer expressions. And the outer expressions are further separated from the other side by the speaker, through which the outer expressions are routed. None of these problems would be a particularly big deal if these rules were only part of the interaction. But they’re the entire interaction, and individuals adapt their behaviour to account for this structure. And in the end? A spectacle.

The tribalism is absurdly obvious. No one will explicitly say it, but the spirit of interaction is combative. We are here, you are there. We believe this (and if you’re a part of WE you better support us on this), and you believe the opposite. And even if there is agreement about most things, it is implicit and not a problem, so not discussed. It’s not made explicit and celebrated together. What the fuck, why? Why don’t these two opposing political parties, before going into this hall to condemn and shout at each other, first connect through their shared beliefs? Their shared Canadian values. The people in these groups are more similar than different, and the physical divide creates a psychological divide. I would say that it should be a requirement that the people on both sides need to have a physically embodied relationship of love and understanding towards each other.

This is what the church was for. These people would have seen each other under the same roof, under the same law - the law of God to supersede the motivations and arguments of the house of commons. Imagine these people who shout at each other, what the interactions would look like if they all attended the same umbrella (a cathedral) where they all got down on their knees and gave up their judgements and hatred for each other, and aligned themselves with the highest good. Together, communally, able to embrace each other, cry with each other, and support each other with loving-kindness. Watch any debate in the house of commons, and imagine these people embracing each other and loving each other. You can’t! The image is absurd, a caricature.

Even better if they all brawled with each other like in Jiu-Jitsu, not for the purpose of hurting each other, but specifically to demonstrate whether they would hurt each other if given the opportunity. And to allow their inner thoughts and feelings to embody physically and be witnessed by all. If someone tries to hurt another member physically in Jiu-Jitsu, everyone can tell. They shouldn’t be debating with each other, pretending to be civil, when in their hearts lies malice. What would the debates look like if that WAS the case?

At the same time, it could be much worse. If they all came in from different entrances, or if they were not there in person. If the whole thing was indirectly run, say, over zoom or some shit like that. The humanity of the other side is stripped further and further, until all that remains in the opposing side is the evil within, projected through a narrower and narrower channel of communication, allowing the imagination to run wild with ideas about what the other side really thinks and why.

And I know how this sounds. Hippie ideas about peace and love, and how these things never work in the real world. I am skeptical of unnatural implementations of peace and love, and whatever ideas I may come up with, are unlikely to be accepted by individuals on either side. We don’t want to stop vilifying others because then it means that the evil we have identified as being ‘somewhere’ must therefore exist elsewhere. Maybe even within ourselves. The exercise is very simple: what if they’re right about vilifying you. If you’re right, sometimes, about them being bad in some sort of way, and they’re sometimes right about you. Or even worse, what if you’re both usually right. That means that at least sometimes, there is an element of evil within you. If you accept the level of argument happening, then you can either be defensive and tribal and say no, the evil is all within the other. But if you are Christian, you say no, the evil is within me. Matthew 7:5, Jesus said “You hypocrite! First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

And if you’d like to take it one layer behind this level of analysis, you’d say there is no evil unless I specify it. Unless I condemn it as being evil and attach those qualities to it. Then I create a representation of that evil within me and interact with it as if it is evil, and its external manifestation will present itself to me henceforth as evil. We should actively seek to recognize the validity of the different sides, truly and deeply. Not the ‘understanding why they’re wrong’ kind of recognition, but the ‘this makes perfect sense to me and I am unable to condemn them for it’ kind of recognition. But don’t stop there. Having understood their position from their perspective, and from yours, move beyond the idea that one truth must mean another isn’t true, and into the realm of paradoxes and contradictions. In the land of contradictions, we absolutely must seek a deeper truth that encompasses the contradiction and allows it to exist peacefully.

Previous essays can be found here:

decodingthemind.substack.com

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Our imagination is useful but can become a prison. The better we are at imagining the future, the more difficult it is to be aware of what is happening to us right now. We can suffer in plain sight, and it’s important to recognize that.

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We carry in our minds ideas that are analogous to biological viruses. Ideologies that we download from an external source, without fully understanding them and judging them as good or bad or manipulative. These ‘mind viruses’, as I’ve started calling them, are present in most people and can be seen without any special powers. Mind viruses are counterproductive and often manipulative, contagious versions of ideas embodied as tools and technologies in the psyche. These are technologies learned from an external source, which we build our lives upon. Technology, as we are all well aware, can be used for good or for bad goals. Acceptance of others and their differences is a wonderful thing, but adapting another’s ideas is dangerous. And we often confuse accepting someone as the automatic adaptation of their beliefs and their psychological tools. Because people who have mind viruses are unaware that they have mind viruses and may argue vehemently that they arrived at their own conclusions, or they understand where the ideas well enough to adopt them. But the most effective and dangerous mind viruses, just like the best computer viruses, are sneaky and hide in plain sight. A virus that is clearly harmful, we can usually judge immediately as being harmful to the individual. But mind viruses that are sweet as candy on the outside, but bitter on the inside, are much more difficult to resist or to detect.

We all have, to varying degrees, the ability to filter out ideas as they come at us. We filter ideas because if we simply adopted each new idea, we would be scattered and easily manipulated. In the information age, there are many different ideas flying around, and we disagree to a great extent on what methods we should use to judge ideas as good or bad.

Now, we trust ideas that come from sources we trust. From people who are close to us in our network, or close (similar) to us in the way they see the world. For people who are high trust and high integrity in our eyes, we filter ideas less intently. We are less skeptical of our close friends, as we should be. That’s a strategic move, not one based on naivety. Similarly, we are more likely to accept computer viruses if our trusted friends send them to us. This is why we choose our friends carefully and take time to build trust with people before we can really have a flowing and loving conversation with them. Because as soon as we detect the signs of a mind virus being projected onto us, and the virus is asking to be downloaded by someone we trust, we are likely to agree with them and download it. But if we listen to our conscience and intuition (antivirus protection), we recognize the mind virus for what it is, and the flowing dancing conversation comes to a halt.

Now, this is where the really interesting part comes in. We then either leave the conversation or adopt a more rigid and skeptical posture towards the person with the virus. And all of this is unconscious. The conversation, if continued, usually becomes more argumentative. Because psychological and emotional distance is increased, to allow us time and space to judge ideas more intently. This is (again unconsciously) immediately obvious to the host with the virus, who takes offence to the distance created and the attitude of the accusor. The host goes ‘oh no, they think my idea is a virus!’.

The right attitude in that situation, as a possible host of a virus, is to dig as deeply as possible into why someone we trust is treating us as a host, because they may be right! The ego finds this difficult to the extent that the mind virus has latched onto the host and the extent of its influence on the host’s life. However, if you are very confident that this is not a maladaptive idea/tool/technology, that you don’t have this mind virus, but instead THE ACCUSER is the one who actually has the mind virus, then you have a problem. One or both of you has a mind virus, and you will now begin to argue to figure out who has it.

We now enter the arena where the individuals have to separate the virus or technology from their identity to the extent they can and allow their idea/tool/technology (which is potentially a mind virus) to fight to the death. The host of the virus must embody and bring on the strongest case they have for their potential virus, and allow it to fight the other’s technology or virus, so the strongest may win. We want conflicting ideas to fight to the death because we want to get along with each other. This process doesn’t have to be personal, but it often is, because we struggle to be mindful enough to separate our identity and ego from the idea. We must learn to tell apart the ideas in us that are based on our own experience in the world from those adopted from an outside source. The extent to which we can let go of our ego’s grasp on ideas we hold, and let them battle, is the extent to which we can remove from ourselves mind viruses and adopt increasingly useful and good ideas/tools/technologies on top of which we can build our lives.

If we refuse to let our ideas fight with other ideas, we risk building our lives on ideas that are maladaptive or actively harmful to us and to others. If we are unable to temporarily remove our identity, our sense of self, from our ideas, and let them fight on their own merit rather than be supported by our sense of self, then we make it very, very difficult for those who love us to help us find and remove mind viruses. Because when we tie our identities and emotions into the battle of ideas, our ideas are given a leg up in the fight, and we make it more difficult for others to battle with us. We make it unpleasant to do so, we make it seem that they are harming us in the battle. This is a dirty trick that the mind viruses use to protect themselves.

And this is where the virus analogy really shines. The virus uses the host, sabotaging them, to propel themselves forward. So the more tied up our egos are with our mind viruses, the more the viruses win and we lose. We as humans put ourselves in harm’s way, conversationally and operationally in the world, to defend mind viruses that are actively sucking the life force out of us and killing us slowly from the inside. Just like a biological virus.

One way to actively purge ourselves of mind viruses in a conversation with someone we love is to strongman the other’s argument. Consciously and actively help the other, who might struggle (for various reasons) to make a good case against our mind viruses. We help them, encourage them, to go further and further and help us recognize and understand our potential mind viruses. In doing so, our ego disentangles from the mind virus (it must, to steel man someone else's argument), and we direct the defence system inward, with humility and in the spirit of love. We actively seek to understand our mind viruses with the intention of cleansing ourselves. And we show those we love that we take their accusations seriously when we are accused of being the hosts of mind viruses. We show that we appreciate others for helping us see what we couldn’t, and encourage them to do so again.

Wouldn’t that be good?

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Mastering yourself means the rest of your system becomes a slave to one aspect of the psyche. Instead, let's try collaboration.