Strata
There's a unity of virtues and vices that can't be ignored (but we always ignore it). To put it plain: the best thing about you is the worst thing about you. They're a single fabric. You can't pull one without moving the other. You can't unravel your shortcomings without coming undone yourself.
Michael Jordan was the type of guy who could play basketball with a flu and a 103 degree fever, and still score 38 points. He was also the type of guy who would go to a kids' basketball camp, take a bet where if he missed even one shot, all the kids would get free shoes — and then proceed to make every single shot, because winning is more important than some kids getting a gift and a nice memory.
Those aren't separable virtues and vices. It's the same, core trait. The same total absorption on achieving the goal at hand.
Your aunt who is kind, loving, open, and believes the best in everyone — but is also gullible, naive, and easily scammed; those aren't separable values. They're the same trait.
We can learn to emphasize the good parts of our traits while mitigating and work around the negatives — but only if we stop pretending they're separate things. Both in ourselves and others.
Think of your loved ones. What is the thing that drives you crazy about them? Can you see the connective tissue between that trait, and the things that make them the wonderful, unique person you love having in your life?
When we treat each other like a grab bag of separate pieces — when we act like the people around us are modular, rather than densely woven wholes — when harp on one another for the worst in us, without countenancing how it's also the best in us — when we assume we can excise what doesn’t please us without damaging what’s most special — we risk losing something irreplaceable.
Encounter
Complexities and confusions aside, the key to understanding both forms of Western esotericism is really quite simple, and it is this: both Rosicrucianism and Theosophy are modern mystical movements based largely on conscious fictions that nevertheless emphasize the real existence of “secret knowledge” and latent “powers.” Put a bit more boldly, both forms of esotericism use religious fantasy to express, explore, and transmit paranormal experiences.
- Jeffrey Kripal, Mutants & Mystics
I’ve been interested for awhile in “mythopoetic engineering”: the ways people consciously or unconsciously tap into the seed-bag of human narratives, archetypes, tropes, and evocations to create the effect they’re looking for.
Rosicrucianism and Theosophy were both pretty consciously engineered, using a combination of evocative fictions (presented as real), actual esoteric knowledge (often bent and re-worked), personal gnostic experiences, and a particular set of people skills.
So much western occult, new age, and modern esotericism has its roots in those two movements; they’re fascinating case studies in how mythopoetic engineering can escape containment and have wild downstream effects.
Artifact
The More Inner Work You Do, The More You See How Humanity Is Dominated By Narrative, by Caitlin Johnstone
It’s a solid article, about a very simple but deep truth — but that’s not what caught my eye. I know everything the article says, and most of it is made up of points I’ve talked about over and over and over again, even using the same examples I’ve used over and over and over:
After a while you start to understand that nobody is seeing reality as it actually is — including you. Instead, what we’re actually perceiving is a bunch of mental stories we’ve formed about the world based on information we’ve taken in through highly distorted perceptual filters based on our conditioning, biases and cognitive habits. Psychonauts Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson called these filters “reality tunnels”, the theory being that nobody is ever experiencing objective reality, they’re only ever experiencing the inside of their own highly conditioned and totally unique tunnel through which whatever reality might happen to be is perceived.
What caught my eye, more than the subject matter, was there it came from. I’ve seen the name Caitlin Johnstone around Twitter a few times but never checked in beyond seeing headlines. You may be more familiar than me. If not, I’ll just list some of the other headlines on her site right now:
NATO Chief Openly Admits Russia Invaded Ukraine Because Of NATO Expansion
Vivek Ramaswamy Is Just Another Disgusting Warmonger
Think Tanks Are Information Laundering Ops For War Profiteers
It’s an indie journalist, focused mostly on American hypocrisy and propaganda as far as I can tell. Not the usual thing that crosses my timeline, and not the usual place I’d expect to see an article extolling inner work as the key leverage point for big global change.
With any luck, that insight will keep spreading to ever-stranger places with ever-more exposure to new audiences.
The narrative insight is totally key. The narratives will ideally weave virtues and vices as poles of a cohesive story-object. When virtues are separated from vices it’s like narrative incompleteness/overcompleteness.
Yes, I think this is right. The art is to make your reality tunnel so subjective as to be objective, unavailable to outside engineering. That is the place of true relationship and directed will