Understanding Addressing The Pain

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Writing this in 2024 it seems that conspiracy theories flourish in spiritual and mystical communities we’d not expect to see them in. To flip through Instagram or podcasts and hear some “crunchy” New Age yoga teacher swing from positions to WHO conspiracies and Hillary-Clinton-Is-A-Clone is disturbing. Worse, like the more standard conspiracy theories we’re used, to there’s a violent trend in these communities.

The Starseeds are buying guns, the Yoga enthusiasts want to hang doctors, and we’re wondering what the shit is going on.

Well first, if you’re surprised metaphysical communities have issues with conspiracies, fascism, and violent imagery, you’re not paying attention. This has always happened, from grifters to cultic spinoffs to political manipulation. We’re just a bit surprised by it since too many of us still, unconsciously, think of these as some fusion of hippies and peace-and-love New Agers.

But let us not forget that many people seek out magical and metaphysical practices out of pain.

That ache that won’t go away so you try yoga. The spiritual void from consumer culture that leads you to a Buddhist church. The bad year that leads you to magic in hope for understanding and influence. So many of us take to the mystical out of ennui or agony or need.

This is not always a bad thing of course. Those moments of waking up are vital for us to get what’s going on and realize what we have to do differently. But sometimes, the pain leads you down terrible paths, to grift, to fanaticism, to worse.

Conspiracy theories for many are an attempt to soothe pain as well. To explain problems you can’t explain easily. To seek assurance of meaning, even if the meaning is horrible. To give you some way to channel that rage inside you left from your bad job or bad family. Conspiracy theories, used by grifters and manipulators, are also something that can make people feel better for awhile.

So many of us turn to “The Big Picture” in a moment of pain. But it might not be waking up, just finding new ways to numb ourselves.

As much as the conspiracism and tilts towards revenge fantasies bother me in many communities of the metaphysical, keeping this in mind helps. It helps us understand how to handle people better, protect them from falling into traps, and maybe avoid the traps ourselves.

It also reminds us that these days, some of these folks might turn violent as we’ve seen, and we can keep an eye out.

– Xenofact

Don’t Know It Until I Say It

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Those of us who engage in mystical, magical, and meditative activity face a paradox of recording information. It’s useful, it lets us review things, but there’s also, well, some problems.

Sure, it helps to write things down as you might read them. Also, after awhile you end up with a pile of notes and no time to read them. There’s also a little self-pressure to review such things. It takes the fun out of “holy shit, I had an insight.”

Yeah, you may write down great wisdom. But sometimes mystical insights are of the moment, and the future readings might not help. “The mind is a bird on fire” might be a good album name, but what were you talking about? Were you high? Can you remember?

Writing down deep experiences can become its own purpose – and squeeze out your other activity. When you’re trying to record your deep experiences, you might focus on the record and not the doing. When you’re ready to write it down, you might not do the meditation or spellcasting or whatever you need to do to have something to write down.

These are what I’ve experienced. I assume, perhaps arrogantly, you’ve experienced some of them. I also assume you found who other issues of writing down mystic experiences I’ve not had – or aren’t aware of. Let’s commiserate if you want to email me.

Anyway, such negatives are almost enough to make you not want to record your insights for posterity – or whatever.. But I actually have found a very good reason to do so that has nothing to do with future review or recording the wisdom of your ages. To write down or otherwise portray your mystic experiences helps you understand and process them.

You know how it goes, you have something in your head and you can’t quite understand it. But when you write it down, sketch it out, do something to put it in an understandable form you learn. The act of communicating helps you understand what you experienced.

Sometimes you write things down or whatever to talk to yourself. You might not look back on it or reread it or whatever, but at least you get it when you record it. That’s fine, but maybe the act of writing down an experience lets you process it.

I found this doing a mix of art and trying to figure how to write down my various experiences. I noticed when I wrote down things that happened in meditation as small bits of text, like the little chapterlets of The Tao Te Ching, I got them. The target audience was me at that moment, but worked better than just taking direct notes.

So when you record your various experiences in magic or meditation, remember one reason is to figure out whats’ going on right then. Don’t ignore the moment.

Even if you find the moment is the only time you pay attention to what you wrote down.

– Xenofact

Are They Even Trying Anymore?

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After the Key Bridge Disaster and the April 8th 2024 eclipse, I listened to several podcasts on conspiracy theories. A strange consistency emerged that I had also witnessed – it seemed people weren’t really trying to craft conspiracy theories.

Oh there was the usual stuff. The rapture and chemtrails, cyberattacks and secret plots. But it was all things we’d heard before. Some of it, especially the eclipse conspiracy theories seemed laughable like some extremely predictable astronomical event was a magical/occult/divine arrangement that was important for some reason. It was lukewarm and recycled.

There was bigotry and biases, of course, especially in the Key Bridge Disaster. Plenty of racist crap was spewed online about various people and the city of Baltimore. It was no different than any of the racism and bigotry the day before, just shifted around a bit. It was racists being racists because of racism.

Finally, there was a lack of coherence to the conspiracy theories. There wasn’t any grand overarching plan or narrative – even “God” apparently didn’t have one. There was no chart with red string, no colorful complex graphic explaining it all circulating online. It was so low effort.

A lot of what I saw, and what the podcasts I followed saw, seemed to be people essentially tossing out old ideas and biases and calling it a day – or mentioning disconnected points and saying, essentially, “suspicious?” Maybe both if you got some really ambitious person with an online handle like “EagleFlightPatriotAlpha1776” and AN AI avatar with ten-pack abs and thirteen total fingers.

But man, the usual suspects and newcomers to stringing together bullshit weren’t trying. Maybe they were tired, maybe it was just the confluence of events and non-events, but I mean I had expectations. However I wonder.

Is conspiracy theory culture tapped out in America? I mean we’ve done it all, from space super-soldiers fighting reptoids (which are just anti-semetic tropes) to gigantic financial and political conspiracies (which are just anti-semetic tropes). Maybe people are out of ideas, maybe we’ve hit a kind of saturation.

Perhaps people are ALL trying to do the old trick of spewing random things and seeing what audiences want. Maybe everyone wants to get hits by low effort, give in to audience capture, and do whatever. Maybe we’re hitting even more widespread, but lazy grift.

Could it be that current news (Trump, Israel, and Ukraine as of this writing) has sucked all the oxygen out of the room? Has reality occupied too much time of people’s minds?

Were these events just too reality-based to get a good theory going?

Or maybe we’re all just worn out from continuous crap and it’s even hit people who are Too Online.

I mean I’d be glad if Conspiracy Culture is somehow worn out, winding down, and maybe falling apart. Maybe we can get some reality in there But I suppose I have to know what’s going on, just in case.

Which I guess makes me a bit like a Conspiracy Theorist.

– Xenofact