psychology

Transgression Session

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Spare me talk of “transgression” because it seems popular in media, culture, and spirituality. So many people like to brag about transgression it seems everyone is transgressing. Even the people stuck in hyper-conservative trad-life bullshit seem to be acting like it’s transgressive to give up any new ideas for the last 200 years. Hell, “transgression” seems like a brand that privileged people use to be assholes.

(Plus plenty of people who want to be transgressive also seem to hate other people who are the wrong kind of transgressive, which is kind of weird.)

Most “transgression” seems to be aimed squarely at someone else. “Look I’m violating this social norm! I’m offendingthis person.” Transgression, for too many people, is based on if you piss someone off, which is a rather silly thing. I mean I can transgress on someone’s rug with a bran muffin, a cup of coffee, and time but it doesn’t do anything.

Transgression for transgressions sake. Saying one is edgy, different, while of course being like everyone else. Also, most “transgressives” that brag about it loutly are also busy being cruel towards others as part of their “transgression,” so apparently for many “transgression” means “asshole.”

Want to know what’s really transgressive? Transgressing against yourself and your biases.

Try something different. Think different. Read something else. Contemplate if maybe you’re being cruel and mean in the name of transgression-as-brand. Blow your own mind by being someone else for a change. Maybe be someone betterb.

Transgression against your locked-down behaviors and own mummified beliefs is some real transgression.

Hell, meditation is transgressive. Stopping for a time not to be you, to sit and not act, to be different is a remarkable thing. Yes it may not seem transgressive, but really think how regular meditation seems to change you to something else. It’s quite transgressive.

Besides, when you change who you are you can really transgress against bigotries and boundaries that need to be torn down. It may also keep you from the transgression that is just cruelty and greed masquerading under another name. Sounds like a win win to me.

–Xenofact

The Double Void of Artificial Intelligence

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My regular readers are likely to be split on me discussing Artificial Intelligence. For some, you are doubtlessly curious or at least hope to see me be entertainlgy sarcastic. For others you’re just tired of hearing about “AI,” a concern I share. Don’t worry, it’s well within my usual discussions of mysticism, psychology, and religion.

As I write this in 2024, many a person is glad to sing the praises of AI. They also want to shoehorn it into every product and technology available. This desire to raise stock prices while creating bad will and endless security problems is painful, but the claims are also grating. It’s obvious to anyone with some understanding that so-called AI is essentially complex probabilistic systems that produce what (on the surface) seems to be “real.” Well, real except for being told to eat poisonous plants or presenting pictures with inordinate numbers of fingers.

Fortunately this age of faux AI also has people asking “what is intelligence?” One of the things that pops up again and again is that “intelligence is a process.” Intelligence is not something we can hold on to or grasp (or put in a box), but is a thing that occurs, it is an action. Intelligence is not something activated and shut down, but an ongoing activity.

If you’ve ever done studies of meditation, religion, and so on, this is going to sound quite familiar. Many a Buddist practitioner knows that moment where you can’t find a solid self, just a whirling thing. Taoist Meditators may speak of the entangled complexities that create the everyday mind, and the hope to see through them to a kind of spontaneous Celestial Mind. Practitioners of energetics experience mind and body as wheels and swirls and flows of energy, without solidity..

In my own meditations and experiments, I’ve experienced moments where I realize there is no me, there are just these processes. Yes the goal of many meditations is to refine oneself or see through illusion or however you want to put it – but you do learn a lot about your mind. If you practiced any form of meditation, I’m sure you’ve had those moments where you’re there but you’re not there because the you there isn’t a solid thing at all.

You’re a constant process. Evaluating. Thinking. Feeling. Modeling. Adjusting. You’re not going to be duplicated by some language toys, though your employer might try so be careful.

Now I’m not saying that “Ancient Wisdom” explains everything or predicts AI. I am saying that thousands of years of meditators, breath practitioners, and people asking “what does this mushroom taste like” will have accumulated a lot of insights in time. When you’re there looking into the self – and intelligence – you’re going to learn things.

And one thing I’d say is screamingly obvious from all these psychonauts is we’re processes so intelligence clearly is. This also is yet another reason to disregard AI as any form of actual intelligence. It’s not a process, just a bunch of triggered code and data using some complex math.

Kindly respect that your fellow humans are processes, void of any solidity whatsoever.

– Xenofact

Across Time, Across Identities

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Most of us who pursue mystical endeavors read documents that are hundreds or thousands of years old. People pursue writings on meditations and mysticism, looking for strong threads and useful practices. Worshipers of various gods read through translations and historical documents, embracing divinity by trying to understand the past. Human history is the history of the mystical, the spiritual, as that’s part of what we do.

Plus some of us want to make sure we’re not just following something a hack wrote on a page for a quick buck a few decades ago.

As I’ve noted before that in my own Taoist-infused work, I’ve tried to cultivate a mental “ecosystem” of Taoist thought for my practice. I read some of the Tao Te Ching each night and study a hexagram of the I Ching each night. This helps me better understand Taoist practices and have a mindset that is more expansive, having a system of symbols to relate to reality.

However in my practices I also find moments wondering as to the mindset of whatever author of long ago I’m reading. It might be a bit of obscure symbolism, a disturbing bias, or an intimate detail I just don’t get. One moment you’re reading a thousand-year-old document and truly getting the author’s deep point, then you’re wondering what you’re reading.

(And, yes, there’s a specific set of indicdents in my own studies that spawned these speculations).

I think it’s easy for us to forget that those we read and study are people who lived in different times and places. We may relate to them due to shared experience, their exellent writing, and/or a good translator but there will be a gap. At some point, there will be an alienness between us and those of the past we want to learn from.

That’s fine. That’s to be expect.

Remembering these gaps exist helps me get better at learning in my mystical studies. Why is this symbol so important to this one person Where did these strangely-phrased biases come from? What was the political situation at this time? Why did some food get classified this way (a personal one for me, a cooking enthusiast)? This way I can bridge that gap.

In fact, as I noted, my attempts at a “Taoist Mental Ecosystem” are part of that. If I want to understand some of these amazing writings, I have to get into the mindset. Best of all I get to update that mindset for the present, which may mean I can one day help others or write something that helps people appreciate the things I do. Come to think of that, some of that is posts like this.

I also think remembering these gaps helps us appreciate when these gaps are bridged by the effort of authors, translators, and record-keepers. Some works are timeless because someone(s) tried to make a piece of work be accessible to others. Even the smallest spiritual book or meditation guide that has stood the test of time is a monument to the effort that made sure it has.

So let your past authors and translators and so on be a bit alien. It’s OK. They did their part, so let’s do our part to connect to them.

–Xenofact