(Wrote this initially on twitter after waking up from a rather psychedelic dream after sleeping for just 3 hours)
I think the core thing about introspect that has been driving me mad– and I’ve alluded to this in many places, circled around it, approached it obliquely– the core thing is – that there are some things one can “know” to be true more deeply than other things. Our words fall short. Words like “perceive”, “believe”, “feel”, “think”, are all loaded, they’re all clouded, they’re all approximations. There is a knowing that is beyond knowing and I’m so, so sorry that there is no way to convey it directly in words. I’m not saying this is spiritual or religious… those too are clouded, loaded words. As all words are.
The core thing about Introspect – also just a word, it’s really important not to get hung up on any particular word – is the pursuit of this truth. To be more precise, it’s not something to be “pursued” like prey, since it’s already within you. Rather, it’s about the unfolding of it. It’s about tuning out the random noise and external programming that tries to get into your head to confuse you. It’s not entirely clear whether the confusion is deliberate or innocuous – I think both versions exist, and sometimes the innocuous strains can be worse than the deliberate ones. But it’s almost irrelevant, secondary to the fact that there is something you know within yourself. Ironically, I may have written a lot of my book without properly centering this truth, because it really didn’t become truly clear and resonant for me until the late stages of writing it.
I know within myself that my job is to be a bit of a shaman, a bit of a threshold guardian, and I have had to relive my own terror of reality in the process of stepping into this role. A substantial part of my terror is the realisation that there is just no way that I can promise to facilitate this magic for you. I can’t. I’ve written the same book 9 different times to try and and “fix” it, and it’s a much better book for it, but the thing that finally breaks through is admission: you cannot explain the Tao, you can at best allow it to explain itself through you. And you have to be okay that it might just not work out. You cannot guarantee a good time, you cannot guarantee enlightenment, it will always elude you if you demand it.
I have been living with this anxious fear that someone will read my book and think “this is bullshit”. But I think I can own it now. It *is* bullshit. It’s an approximation of the best bullshit I got, but it *is* bullshit. Everything is theatrics and shadow puppets… the point of which is to *get you to see what you already know*. what only you can “explain” to yourself using the language of your own heart, feeling the waves of your own body. “Explain”? also a loaded word. There is nothing to explain. You seek freedom from explanation. And yes, good explanations are tremendously better than bad ones, I have a whole section on this. A good explanation has more of the resonance of truth, truth is a harmony that passes through and beyond the doors of our perception.
What we seek *is that resonance*. It’s not the *words* of truth, because words are loaded. There is no magic phrase. there is only magic. we want to cultivate the courage to stand before the splendor of existence in our small naked silly cowardly selves and see that we too are Of It, we too are waves in its ocean. Every artist, every author, seeks their own path to conveying this same fundamental truth through the language of their own person. The story is retold a billion times in a billion ways, And That’s Good Actually. Because it’s not the story that’s magic, *it’s the telling*.
We have played ourselves for absolute fools, lmfao. And we do this on purpose because we are scared. and we hide our fear, from each other and from ourselves, so that we may go on with the business of living. And to be fair, it’s pretty important business. The shaman respects the baker, both of their work is legitimate and important, one feeds the body, the other feeds the spirit.
We will find ourselves caught up in a huge tangle of contradictions, some of this can be solved and that’s useful in the domain of logic and thought, but also, at a larger scale, contradictions are non-trivially consequence of tricks the mind plays on itself. Existence, reality, is One Big Ongoing Thing, every person is a facet of an infinite diamond, separation is a hoax, life is a dream. None of these things are *literally* true and if you get hung up on that you’ll have a bad time.
Fantasy is the thread that allows us to sync disjointed realities. if we do not do this thoughtfully and consciously, it will be done for us by our subconscious, and sometimes in vicious and ugly ways. Returning to the core glimmer of truth that had me shooting out of bed to write this in the first place: there are some things we know that are truer than others. some things are more fundamental. I can NOT tell you what your truths are. your task is to awaken your own resonance.
In between you and your resonance is suppression, oppression, fear, uncertainty, doubt, blah blah all sorts of shit. Again, I don’t know what that shit is. I can make suggestions. Your job is to not take my suggestions too seriously. Don’t listen to me. Listen to you!! I am just a babbling fool. Sometimes a babbling fool can say things that might move you, help you connect certain things, feel more at peace in the world. Would be beautiful if it did. It’s totally fine if it doesn’t. Caveat emptor. Don’t expect too much from babbling fools.