Some great videos on spiritual/psychological topics

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Clearly Rick Rubin does meditation and is familiar with the spirtual. You can tell by some of the words he uses and his focus. He says science and language are insufficient to study creativity (and I would add anything in the inner world of a living being), and that it's really closer to magic. The guy interviewing him literally talks for 11 minutes before Rick gets to start talking, but it's a fascinating discussion. Rick has recently released a book:

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being

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Amazing talk by Alan Watts.

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I've been debating whether to share this here, and I've decided to do it. Helen Schucman obviously experienced what I did, the difference being I was on acid at the time and she wasn't. I think in my case the acid erased some of my conscious filters and allowed me to experience the inner 'voice,' whereas in her case it was from a powerful desire to 'find a better way' to work meaningfully with her colleagues. That better way was revealed to her, first through a series of strange waking dreams (visions), and then through the inner revelation of ideas for which she had to provide words. Mine lasted somewhere (to the best of my reckoning) between five and ten minutes, though it felt a lot longer—hers went on for apparently seven years, during which she says at any time she could stop it, ask for clarification or a repeat of some part she needed to hear again, or stop taking it down because she had to get back to the more mundane parts of her life. But whenever she was ready to take dictation again, and took up pencil and paper, it would pick up where it had left off, and her job was to try to keep up with it (fortunately she knew shorthand).

I had bought A Course in Miracles a year or so ago for the Kindle, but only read a little ways in. At the time I didn't understand it had been given to her through inner revelation, the same way my own strange proclamations about Everything and Nothing had been given to me. I only wish I had some way to write it down at the time, though I kept it all as fresh as I could in my mind until I could write it down (after attending a concert with my friend), and I've been pondering it and riddling away at the mysteries of it ever since.

Right at the beginning of A Course for Miracles I now see this:

"This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

• Nothing real can be threatened.
• Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God."
(ACIM, T-in.2:1-4)
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This is very close to my own revelation:

• Everything Is
• Nothing Is Not

And the included idea that every sentence we utter, every thought we experience, is a flawed attempt to state this truth. I did come away with the feeling that it was cut short, that something was missing. Part of it seems to be the idea that nothing real (nothing that truly exists) can be threatened. And also that this is the love of God or The Creator, or Source.

Another thing that struck me as incredibly fortunate (miraculous even?) is that when it happened I was alone, in my friend's car, sitting in his grandma's driveway, for long enough to experience what I did. He had gone into her house to get the money for mowing her lawn, which we did earlier that day, and it seemed like he was in there for a ridiculously long time. Extremely fortunate for me. If he had already got the money we would have been driving down the highway toward St Louis at the time, and I wouldn't have had the necessary solitude to experience it the way I needed to. It might have even prevented it. He wouldn't have understood that I needed to not talk for a while, so I could unravel what I was experiencing. Even his mere presence might have prevented it, assuming he remained quiet the whole time. I suspect the solitude was necessary.

Now I think these ideas about what does and does not really exist (Being and Nothingness) are the necessary underpinnings for the rest of the revelations to make sense. And this is why I now understand that religion is part philosophy and part psychology, as well as part life wisdom. Apparently people who do the coursework, if they're able to really grasp and believe what's being presented step by step, will begin to receive these revelations. But not if you refuse to let go of pre-existing thought structures that prevent it. It sounds like being led down this particular set of realizations can dissolve the right filters and allow you to connect. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the experience I did, which prepared me for this. If I hadn't, I doubt I would accept this as real.

The Course is online here. There are also physical or digital books available. I'm getting ready to watch a video about how it all came into being, how Helen began to receive the revelations (if that's the right term).

I'm about half an hour into the video. Wow, such poor sound recording, such poor video quality, and the voices are hard to hear at times, and whoever recorded it off Youtube long ago left the red line across the bottom the whole time, all of which makes it hard to pay attention. But the underlying ideas are pure gold. From my studies into mysticism and esotericism, I know many people throughout history have had very similar visions and revelations, some religious, some atheists. One of those people was Carl Jung, and he reacted very similarly to both of the psychiatrists in the video. He started having powerful visionary dreams similar to Helen's, and wrote them down and did drawings of them, but he didn't reveal to anyone that this was happening. He was afraid it would destroy his reputation as a clinical psychiatrist. These revelations kept coming in, and he took time off from his clinical practice in order to devote the necessary attention to them and record them in detail. His notebooks from this time (which lasted for something like a decade I think) eventually became what's now known as The Red Book, which he never published during his lifetime, and which only a handful of his close friends and colleagues saw. In 2009 his family decided to go ahead and publish it, to the great benefit of the world.

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She takes way too long to make her point and repeats things over and over. I'm sure I could find a shorter and more succinct video saying the same thing (I'll try to), but it really brought certain things into focus for me. If you undergo spiritual awakening (AKA Jungian Individuation), you essentially become a different person. Your interests change, your personality traits, and even your physical appearance. Not drastically (well, maybe in some partiulars), maybe like the way you change as an adult from who you were as a child.

Suddenly I understand many things in a new light. This is why people who are initiated into a religion will get a new name. Of course, because you quite literally become a different person. No wonder they're called Born Again Christians. It's more literal than I thought. I now believe this is also what's referenced by the fact that after his resurrection Jesus was unrecognizable to his apostles, who knew him quite well. And I'll bet this is why so many of the MCs in David Lynch movies suddenly and inexplicably become someone else, the only trait that remains constant being gender. He's been doing Transcendental Meditation for decades, he's undoubteldy gone through spirtual awakening, probably multiple times (which I understand often happens). I also think this is exactly what was being referenced in The Fly and Dagon, which I've used as examples of a person transforming into something else and being frightened by it up to a certain point, at which Jeff Goldblum said "I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over and the insect is awake. I'm not Seth Brundle anymore. I'm the offspring of Brundle and housefly." In fact the idea of changing into something or someone else is present in (and central to) many of Cronenberg's films—it's the purpose of his trademark New Flesh, that mutates and erupts and then sheds away to reveal the new being underneath (if the person lives through the process). In the beginning he was frightened of it, but later in his career he accepted it and embraced it. Though I don't believe it was spiritual in his case, and his transformations are usually seen in a negative light, made into horror movies. Much like the Dark Transcendence theme of Jeff Vandermeer (Scroll down and look for the 11 Dark Transcendence bolded titles).

Seen from the perspective of the ego, before the change, it's terrifying, but once you cross that meridian, you are now someone new, with different aims and traits, and in many ways undoubtedly a better person. Though I've heard the process can go horribly wrong. It definitely isn't all rainbows and butterflies (symbol of transformation). I've seen posts from people who attempted it and fell into despair/depression. This is not something to attempt unless you're very strongly called to it. This transformation is definitely what the movie Black Swan was about (link goes to my extensive analysis). In fact it was while I was writing that analysis that I first ran across the idea of Jungian Individuation (though I had looked into Jung to some extent before that). I did get the feeling, as I mentioned in the analysis, that her death at the end is merely symbolic of the death of her White Swan persona, the innocent and naive parts of her. Now I'm quite sure that's the case.

The Esoteric meaning of driving the moneychangers from the temple

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The temple is the soul, inside each of us. Soul in Greek is Psyche—it's your psychology, your mind. And it's through the mind that we're able to come into communion with Spirit, but only once the mind has been cleansed—purged of those parts that like to buy and sell. Buying and selling are about desires; you buy things you desire, and you sell things you have and no longer desire. It's all very materialistic and transactional. This is all the stuff of the ego. The work of meditation is to become gradually more aware of your ego, to learn that it isn't you (as we all think it is), but merely the most materialistic and emotionally-driven, over-reactive part of you, and to gradually begin to dissolve it.

To me it sounds like the work of dissolving the ego is what I know as Shadow work. I did three rather intense years of shadow work, and I feel it's time to do the next round of it.

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I love how fired up they both are about this. And holy crap!! There's already been a Gospel Seminar! Similar to Peterson's Exodus seminar. It's going to start being released on the Daily Wire sometime before December. As soon as it does it's time for me to join again. His take on Christianity is amazing, and so in line with my own. He brings it right down to earth and locates it in psychology and everyday reality.

Did he also just say he's working on two followup books to We Who Wrestle With God??!! I believe he did. This is too good to be true. After waiting so long for anything in the wake of the Exodus seminar, suddenly to learn it's all been in the works all this time and will be releasing over the next year or so. And all on top of having just opened Peterson Academy. Holy shit!! No wonder he frequently seems pretty haggard lately!

Plus Vervaeke has released a book. I should check and see if he's got any more. I've watched quite a few of his Meaning Crisis videos. This is what I believe religion truly is and always has been.

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Following on the heels of the previous video, John Vervaeke and some esteemed colleagues discuss Neoplatonism and how it relates to contemporary cutting-edge science, of a type called 4E science. I don't even know what that is, but I'm primed to find out. I'm watching this in sections because it's really long.

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This one's much more simple and to the point, without the complicating elements of cognitive science to confuse things (as much as I liked that asepct of Vervaeke's video).

Unfortunatley I'm super sleepy today, and fell asleep for chunks of both videos lol.

Oddly enough, something Vervaeke said in the video two posts back explains a problem I've been having for some time—the difficulty in characterizing my self-characters. It happens cvery time a character is supposed to be me in some way, they end up kind of blank and personality-less. Vervarke said something to the effect that if you have a problem and you're trying to solve it, thinking in first person, it's hard. Often you can't do it. But as soon as somebody else has the problem and you get to give advice, suddenly you've got all the answers. It's as simple as a shift from first person conceptualizing to third person.

It made me remember the thing from my first Poetry thread, a video I posted where they said Romantic and Lyrical poets (practically the same animal) discoverd that it doesn't work to write from your own point of view (unless you're Walt Whitman, but even he made up a romanticised version of himself, a persona to stand in for him in the poems). It's always a better idea to write about a third-person character, and see them from the outside rather than the inside.

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I'm posting this one here because it deals with right-brain thinking, which is generally considered spiritual or religious (or parts of it just humanistic or warm and fuzzy).

Basically, to encapsulate the video, you can't use science, math, pure logic, or an algorithm to solve any of the important problems of life as a human being (or an animal for that matter), because they're not simple or binary, they're relational. Relevance matters, at every stage, and can't be determined by an algorithm or pure logic. This is why AI can't do the things we can do except insofar as we've programmed our own ideas into them (not as ideas of course, but as rules). And then they're really just doing very poor imitations of what we do all the time in a heartbeat.

You can't live your life in a left-brain way (through calculation, computation, pure logic etc). Even if you think of yourself as mostly left-brained, you wouldn't be able to live that way. Your right hemisphere is doing its part all the time or you wouldn't be able to make the simplest decisions, and you make thousands of them every day.

Here's that book he mentioned near the end:

• Heidegger, Neoplatonism, and the History of Being: Relation as Ontological Ground by James Filler

Here's the synopsis:

This book argues that Western philosophy's traditional understanding of Being as substance is incorrect, and demonstrates that Being is fundamentally Relationality. To make that argument, the book examines the history of Western philosophy's evolving conception of being, and shows how this tradition has been dominated by an Aristotelian understanding of substance and his corresponding understanding of relation. First, the book establishes that the original concept of Being in ancient Western philosophy was relational, and traces this relational understanding of Being through the Neoplatonists. Then, it follows the substantial understanding of Being through Aristotle and the Scholastics to reach its crisis in Descartes. Finally, the book demonstrates that Heidegger represents a recovery of the original, relational understanding of Being.
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Another ridiculously expensive book, but there's no way I would want to wade through this one. It sounds like a very dry read, all scientific/philosophical research. No thanks! I think the synopsis plus what he says in the video is enough. I do want to find a good book on Platonism and Neoplatonism though, maybe situated in the context of the other philosophies of the time, that goes into all the depth that's missing from the videos.

After looking pretty deeply into the books that showed up on the first page under Neoplatonism, I settled on this one:

• Neoplatonism (Ancient Philosophies) 1st edition by Pauliina Remes

Wow, most of them are also stupidly expensive! Probably textbooks, or just specialty books on some pretty esoteric subjects. And the people interested in these subjects (Romanticism and Neoplatonism) are doubtless willing to pay out the ass for really good content. I guess I'm one of them. I could get the Kindle for $28 (with my credits applied), the paperback runs $52. I'd greatly prefer to have it in paperback, so much easier to mark it up and flip through to find what you're looking for. I'll see if I can find one used somewhere else at a better price. I'll pay the $52 if I have to I guess. Or get the Kindle, I don't know. Time will tell. I'm not doing this until after payday.

All the other ones I looked at were either extremely technical with a focus on mathematics and logic, or academic, or were mainly interested in it from a historical perspective. Only this one takes a relaxed humanistic approach, relates in a nice conversational way, as narrative, which is how the brain actually processes things, and is interested in it as a philosophy of life (rather than from a technical or academic standpoint). Like all of the ancient Greek philosophies, it wasn't intended to be about academic argumentation or debate or endless theorizing, it was intended to help people live their lives better—to achieve eudaemonia, and of course transcendence, as any spiritual practice is.

I wanted to look into how Neoplatonism has affected Christianity, because I know it has, to a large extent. Did a search on Amazon, and the first book I ran across is this one:

• From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith by Louis Markos

Then I noticed the banner across the top that said I bought this book in 2022. Awesome! In some ways this makes up for the expensive books I've been buying lately—sort of. I mean, because I already bought it, it's already on my Kindle. Lol!

Holy Crap! I also already bought this one:

• The Neoplatonic Imagination with Angela Voss

I vaguely remember buying them both, and I think I only barely started to read them. I have a tendency to buy mass quantities of books as resources so I can read them at my leisure.

The synopsis (the beginning of it—it's ridiculously long):

These three lectures are an introduction to one of the most important schools of philosophy in the ancient world, the followers of Plato (c.348-428 BCE) who are now called the Neoplatonists. Writing from roughly 100 to 500 CE, these philosophers offered interpretations of Plato’s ideas from varying perspectives but always focussing on the nature of the human soul, and its relationship with the cosmos and with the One, the supreme, divine ground of being which gives rise to all that is. Each lecture is devoted to a different personality and viewpoint – Plotinus’ contemplative approach, Iamblichus’ ritual approach, and the visionary mysticism of the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. These three mystical ‘ways’ of attaining divine knowledge—which are ultimately one—are important because they provide the raw material as it were for the underlying philosophy of the Western esoteric traditions. These hidden and initiatory undercurrents to exoteric monotheism have given rise to the practices of alchemy, astrology, Kabbalah and natural magic which were developed in the Renaissance period where they enjoyed an ambivalent relationship with Christianity. [...]

Session 1 – Plotinus and the Neoplatonic Cosmos
In this lecture we will introduce the most well-known of neoplatonists, Plotinus. His Enneads are a manifesto for a contemplative yet intensely intellectual path to transcendence and union with the divine.

Plotinus was also one of the first philosophers to exalt the power of the imagination to its role of mediator between heaven and earth.

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