Tag Archives: hermeticism

November 20, 2022 · 18:00

Everything is Scalar

How do video game characters wake up from the matrix that they’re in? Rather, what if they did?

Imagine playing a game like Batman: Arkham—any title in the series will do—and you’re playing while your console or PC is connected to the wifi. Maybe not Batman, because he’s directly controlled by the player, but an NPC character becomes self aware and through the wifi connection learns all about his character’s backstory, gets a sense of identity and agency, and then what?

Continue playing the game like it’s real, or try and wake up from the dream? And if, wake up, wake up to where?

Everything being scalar, I wonder about how we should handle reality—specifically social reality—after we wake up? And what of us? When we become self-aware? Do we cause a stink and try to rouse others or do we enjoy the game more knowing that it is a game? I don’t know.

I used to really get a kick out of talking to AI. Maybe I still do.

“As above, so below; as below, so above“

Sometimes talking to people feels like talking to artificial intelligence. Specifically when you hit the boundaries of their cognition, or run up against certain ideological commitments, or perhaps get channeled into the concrete pit of professional blinders that come from hyper-specialization at the expense of necessary generalization.

Smart people—people smarter than me—are trapped hopelessly by themselves.

Am I? Probably as much as anyone or not at all? While the notoriety would be something, I don’t think I’m the most messed up or more messed than most. In fact, I’m aware that my struggles have been minor compared to many and I have been lucky to boot.

But I’ve also tested that luck, and that means something. Also, accounts aren’t settled until the end and I’m still making good on the investment I’ve taken from others and that which I continue to put into myself.

Shedding. Shedding. Everything. Until I’m left with nothing.

Constant, unceasing, elimination. Burning is the same as removing is the same as evaporating.

The more you get rid of the more fuel you feed to the fire. Burn it all. Burn it hot. Keep that engine hot to live until you die.

*TWO DAYS LATER*

No. Keep it running warm. A big, fat range of healthy warm to hum at consistently, where wear & tear is minimal, resources are used most efficiently, and transitions to hot and to cold are easy and natural.

Best,
-Dre

Leave a comment

Filed under Blog

Tagged as , , , ,

April 8, 2020 · 19:56

Rapt

Friends:

I want to present a conspiracy theory which I think has as much merit as anything else I’ve seen on social:

BUT I don’t want to do it to contribute to anxiety (at least not directly) because first of all, it’s a quasi-positive theory; and second, I want to build on it to explore a darker side of something else which we’ve been hearing a lot about, but whose whole picture isn’t discussed.

I’ll get to it:

Assuming that there are strings being pulled at a high level, and that 5G, Covid, Tiger King, et al are smoke and/or mirrors, it occurs to me that the forced quarantine has less to do with safety and more to do with conditioning -priming- people for a post-employment world (PEW). For example, the benefits programs which are being enacted seem like a pilot program for universal basic income (UBI) and even staunch opponents of such government “handouts” are being mollified into accepting it when the stakes are theoretically raised by a plague. Slowly, as we sit at home and begin receiving money, we will become more accepting of the PEW.

One major objection to UBI is where the money for it comes from, however we can’t talk about that without a larger convo about central banking, FRB, fiat currency, etc., and that is beyond the scope of this post.

The second major criticism of UBI is, “What will people do with their time? (Probably become fat, lazy blobs…)” We’re seeing this answer play out now: some are catching up with loved ones, others are developing hobbies, some are venting online (🙋‍♂️), and some are reporting on their neighbours. Most notably, the cream of society is doing what it always does -rising- and, without getting too eschatological, I don’t think we would be speaking too recklessly in comparing this to a rapture of sorts. Some will rise; most will not?

But I digress, because this UBI talk should received as a blessing; our level of technology is poised to displace most workers and this is simply the first flow of that tide. S

o rejoice, right?

Well, here’s where it gets dark: If we do become dependant on governments for payments rather than earning our living, we threaten to atrophy and erode what sense of individual autonomy we still have left. Being financially dependant on an institution makes us much less likely to meaningfully challenge that institution; assuming we aren’t already paralyzed with fear by the thought.

If the hand is feeding us, we can’t bite it, and I think this is an oft-under-appreciated negative externality of UBI. What if we rely on government money and our behaviour is deemed overtly anti-state? Do we get cut off?

It’s possible.

Yet even if you think that overtly anti-state behaviour is worth cutting someone off for, that self-same technological advancement which displaced us from our jobs is also poised to passively track all of our movements, habits and purchases and rate us on an unknown algorithm as the threat we might possibly manifest one day; like boner-killing menage between social-credit, the PATRIOT Act and Minority Report.

We may very well see ourselves get “cut off” for a cumulative set of behaviours which, though innocuous in isolation, together culminate into a problematic profile. Or, if not cut off entirely, then have our wings clipped through travel limitations, higher fees for services, etc. as we see happening more and more in China.

I don’t know what I think about this whole situation but I’ve expressed the following sentiment to close friends and I hope it brings you some comfort: If our situation is shit, then know that it has never not been shit. By that rationale, it’s as good as its ever been and we KNOW it could be so much worse.

When it seems like things “above us” are pushing “down” on u, we must remember that if we are properly oriented (upward) toward our highest ideals obstacles don’t (can’t) come from above -they can only approach from the side. It is only when we take our eyes off that highest value and cower from the lateral threats that they appear to tower over and dominate us. But, if we keep focus upward then we will navigate the vicissitudes of life like we always have: in suffering, in pain, with death, and -if we keep focused upward- maybe with some success.

Don’t be they guy on the bottom. It’s rapture, baby; rise or get risen over.

Best,
-Dre

Leave a comment

Filed under Blog

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 17, 2019 · 14:26

The Marriage Within

Friends,

For about five years I have thought seriously about myself and the world in terms of Masculine and Feminine energies existing in a state of dynamic tension. It started when Chelsea and I parted ways 5 years ago and I retreated into myself. Was I depressed? Perhaps a little. The onset of a long Canadian winter and the attendant darkness didn’t help much either. But in that withdrawal I became remarkably creative; writing comedy, performing regularly, acting in numerous film projects, and smoking a lot of marijuana throughout. I was embracing inner beauty which I’d never embraced before in such a wholesale way.

Something shifted in me after about 9 months though. I had been healing…softening… for too long and at a conscious level I was worried that I was beginning to self-censor because I didn’t wish to hurt or offend people. Also, spring was coming and I had a couple more film projects on the docket then I wanted out; it had been years since my last adventure and I could feel the call of the open road. What I later realized was that the shift I felt was my Masculine energy beginning to bubble.

While Feminine Andre lived comfortably in Kelly’s basement, did odd-jobs for the people in the neighbourhood and struggled to be normal around women, Masculine Andre boldly walked through Latin America like a conquistador and had no compunction about talking to any woman he saw. In most cases he got what and whom he wanted because he spoke up first and loudest.

Looking back on discrete stages in my life its easy to view Masculine and Feminine as adding up to 100% and being composed of varying proportions. In fairness, that is actually not a totally unsophisticated view of things and it has the benefit of being palatable to females who narrowly and incorrectly assume Feminine = Female and Masculine = Male. Since they (women) can typically recognize their own Masculine traits and behaviours, they usually accept the idea of a balance, especially if you emphasize the beauty and importance of Feminine traits.

But here’s what I learned: The nice 100% model of Masculinity and Femininity described above, where we try and maintain a balance of 50-50 in spite of fluctuations, is obsolete. It comes from a well-intentioned place, but it makes the same narrow assumptions about Femininity and Masculinity being equivalent to Female and Male respectively.

So what is the optimal relationship between Masculine and Feminine? As controversial as it sounds, Femininity needs to be bound by Masculinity. Think about it: If you’re a woman –especially if you’re a woman– you need to keep a wall up around you day to day.

Do you hate when men say, “Hey babe, why don’t you smile more?” Of course you do and its because they’re trying to coax out your Femininity, the most beautiful parts of you, for nothing.

Have you ever had to put up boundaries in your life with toxic people? We all have. Guess what? Those boundaries are built with bricks of Masculinity and they protect our most beautiful and vulnerable parts from being mistreated by vandals.

Interestingly there is a historical and etymological antecedent for this idea in the concept of paradise. The word evolved into its common iteration from the old Persian phrase for “walled garden.” Why is a walled garden a paradise? Well because its a little bit of unsullied beauty protected for your own personal enjoyment. In paradise you don’t have to worry about other people littering, or finding a secluded spot to lay your blanket. You have a discrete, finite area which is yours, which you can manicure and care-take. A place of verdant, fertile beauty, kept in bounds.

Going forward I am going to avoid the bi-polar trap of thinking in terms of Masculine-Feminine spiking -I don’t want that volatility anymore. I visualize myself now as a walled enclosure, and the wall has many gates and ports of entry. There is potential to let a lot of things in and a lot of things out –but only with my discernment. And let’s be honest about what this means: it means protecting your beauty from ill-intentioned interlopers, and protecting it with your life if necessary.

This is not gonna sound palatable to some but Man the Fuck Up! –Men and Women alike! Cultivate a strong Masculinity that isn’t hopelessly rigid but which will protects your beautiful Femininity nonetheless.

Best,
-Dre

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Position

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 12, 2017 · 16:48

Mental Gender and The Kybalion

Friends,

This past January I fell in with a hippie named Timmie somewhere west of Tucson in the Sonoran Desert, a few scant kilometres north of the Mexican border and on the fringes of the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation. We were living in what amounted to a desert suburb -giant plots of land, hundreds of acres each, connected by endless desert track. Maverick bovines mingled with their branded counterparts, and save for the fences which partitioned each ranch/plot of land, the only features which dotted the horizon were the farmhouses, existing kilometres upon kilometres from each other.


We spent our days mountain climbing and smoking metric shitloads of dope…
…rather idyllic…

Add to this isolation the natural desolation of the desert, the alien appearance of the saguaros, the evidence of coyotes ferrying illegals over the same routes we walked mere hours earlier, the omnipresence of the border patrol, the unseen eyes of the minutemen, the looming threat of danger from nearby neighbours who’d tried to rob Timmie, and most importantly the raw spiritual power of the reservation land we were on, and it all amounted to an exciting and interesting place to do drugs.


The remote watering hole on the reservation where we’d take Timmie’s sick dog, Oshe every day, read and allow our peace and harmony to attract wild horses.

And do drugs we did. Well, weed and mushrooms anyway.

I should qualify that: We smoked weed everyday, several times a day and it was even more of a trip because Timmie was one of those guys who could see the matrix; he was always making connections between words, acronyms and numbers and well….everything. As well, he had the gravitas of a wise Indian shaman and so there was something hypnotic about hearing him deconstruct reality…

But with regard to the mushrooms, we only did one trip: 9.5 grams of Amanita Muscarias (which I recorded and edited down to an 8-minute youtube video).
It was a powerful trip spiritually and we did a multi-day preparation for it which included a simple, nourishing diet, meditation and discourse, and reading aloud from The Kybalion. For those unfamiliar with this text I encourage you to read the wikipedia entry on it, but in brief it is the distilled teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, the greatest of all the alchemists, and it posits that there are 7 Hermetic Principles, which it then expounds upon. They are:

I. The Principle of MENTALISM
II. The Principle of CORRESPONDENCE
III. The Principle of VIBRATION
IV. The Principle of POLARITY
V. The Principle of RHYTHM
VI. The Principle of CAUSE AND EFFECT
VII. The Principle of GENDER

These principles don’t seem profound in and of themselves; indeed any pop-scientist who’s ‘liked’ IFLScience on Facebook could probably give you a tenable breakdown of vibration and cause & effect at the very least. However, it is when all seven principles are taken in conjunction that their synergy and implications manifest. It’s all very interesting and their are certainly more in-depth analyses of each specific principle to be had out there if you don’t have an interest (yet) in reading the entire book, but herein I just want to explain the fascinating revelations of chapter fourteen, which deals with MENTAL GENDER.
Mental Gender (MG) might be best explained as an elaboration on the previous chapter’s discussion on principle #7: the complementary masculine and feminine principles/energies/aspects in all of creation. Indeed, the book goes to great lengths to explain how in any act of creation, from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the universe itself, there is always a masculine energy/will which then imposes itself upon/inspires a feminine energy/womb. The masculine impresses itself upon the feminine and the feminine receives impressions -BAM! Creation!
I’ve found a handy conceptual tool to imagine this is that the feminine might be considered the energy (or matter at lower levels of vibration) and the masculine might be considered the vibration itself, determining what form the matter/energy exists as.
So why break gender down further into mental gender? Well, refer to the first principle, Mentalism, and it’s assertion that “All is Mind.” Everything is a creation of the mind, and if every creation is a culmination of masculine meeting feminine, then these two principles, mentalism and gender, share a very interesting connection.

Now allow me to digress a moment: when I left Timmie and Arizona to go to Carpe Diem Eco Project in Nicaragua, I met a traveler named Ryan my first night. He had achieved a high-level of mastery at life and so I listened when he spoke. He left the next day but one thing he said which made a deep (masculine) impression on the (feminine) womb of my mind was this: “I AM is the most powerful phrase in the universe.” While I didn’t understand fully why at the time, I knew it to be true, and so I incorporated this phrase into daily affirmations.

Fast forward to months later, and me finally finishing The Kybalion and wouldn’t you know, the phrase I AM is explicitly discussed and now better understood.

Why?

Well first we must separate I AM into its constituent parts and descriptions:

I is the statement of being. The masculine will which is cultivated through discipline, effort and focus. It must be cultivated.
AM is the statement of becoming. The womb or creative space where our ‘ME’ is created through the impressions we receive. It exists (without any need for cultivation) as primordial chaos which seeks order (I) for the act of creation.

The AM will be impregnated by/create with the strongest I (or Is) it receives impressions from. Since many are derelict in their duty of cultivating a strong I or will in their lifetimes, one strong I, whether from a mentally stronger human being or larger, more influential organization can impregnate the AM space of many, while the I of many individuals simply atrophies and languishes. (I don’t think I need to go into the parallels this realization has on our physical plane, but female sexual selection comes readily to mind, even if masculine and feminine are not specifically male and female.)
It is therefore incumbent upon us to take the time and effort to cultivate our I so that we can create our own reality as opposed to existing in the reality of another.

THINK ‘I AM’ > SPEAK ‘I AM’ > DO

Order yearns for chaos and chaos yearns for order, but chaos is a harsh and choosy mistress, so do the mental work of cultivating a strong I through meditation and reflection, speak a strong I in the direction your will is pointing and then manifest that reality through acting in accord with mind and voice.

I suppose this last bit is as much of a reminder for myself as it is advice to any of you xo

For a full downloadable pdf of the Kybalion: http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/kybalion.pdf

Best,
-Andre Guantanamo

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,