Becoming A Bodhisattva
On turning poison into nectar
Iāve been experiencing a lot of dissolving lately. I have had three major experiences of dissolution since the summer (e.g., this one), but Iāve also been abiding inside of dissolution itself, in an increasingly abiding way.
There are many pleasant parts to this. They include accessing a larger sense of vibrancy, continuity, and equanimity. Presenting myself in totality, unconditionally, to my friends.
There are many unpleasant parts to this. The main one is losing access to most of the markers that people use to orient and define themselves.
There are many mixed aspects to this. Perception has become much more synesthetic and fluid. My mind doesnāt cut reality into categories and neat sensory channels nearly as much.
There seems to be an endless abyss of grief and heartbreak. Would be nice to have some relief from that.
I will focus here on some particular relational struggles that are arising along the path, but I will need to build up to them by explaining some other developmental stages.
One of the goals, if not the main goal, of entering into relationship with another is to generate a vehicle that emancipates both. Frustratingly, things get stuck and tangled up.
When it comes to interpersonal affairs, what are the places we get caught?
1. Basic decency
Iām not sure I have much to say here. Iāve never really been blocked on this. Remembering to say hello and goodbye during a conversation. Putting your hot tea on a coaster when youāre a guest at their house. Leaving space for others on the sidewalk to pass you.
The people who struggle with this stuff ā especially as adults ā are severely addicted, traumatized, overwhelmed, or lazy. I wish them well. I have little interest in working with them.
2. More systematic ethics
Basic public morality. Picking up your trash in the middle of a hike. Emailing someone back to check in on them.
The right small-scale procedures. Developing habits that serve others and oneself simultaneously. Dispute resolution in a crowded room.
Some complications arise when entering and integrating into a new subculture. These are easily overcome. Just ask questions to fill in the gaps. Practice, and correct when you have made mistakes.
Learn what it takes to earn respect and then do it. Sadly, respect doesnāt convert to dignity, which is a hard lesson Iāve had to learn.
Iāve also never really been blocked on this. The people who struggle with this type of problem clearly benefit from being told by Jordan Peterson figures to āmake sure to wash their penis every dayā and other similar things.
I lapse into bad schemas, of course. Iām an ultra-gooner. Iām under-fathered. I fall into despair. At times, I need to be shocked out of my mess by a just authority.
However, if anything, I spent twenty years suffering from the opposite problem: over-regulation, and an impulse to conscientiousness thicker than bricks. Maybe itās time to wallow in the mess and develop an affection for it.
3. Handling complex edge cases
This is where things start to become existential, because Iām a walking edge case.
Making the right call in the midst of convoluted tradeoffs. Strategically contravening established processes that are constricting growth. Tactically injecting chaos to reorganize a stale ecosystem.
Iāve never been great at economics. Though Iām better at social and home than at capital. I want to learn how to leverage and insure against risk more effectively.
This is also primarily where loneliness begins. Actually succeeding in these matters means making a bunch of people hate you. They will, in fact, get angry at you for resolving their issues, and sometimes even punish you. Especially if they refuse spiritual sobriety, e.g., the nutcases, parasites, and resentful.
I donāt even act how a plurality of vital men do in the modern workplace or modern relationships ā brashly and clumsily. Iām measured and thoughtful 95% of the time. My masochism has its limits, though. Iām never going back to corporate.
You have to move on from them.
Right now, I witness most of the world stuck in this stage. This is particularly true when you examine the modern Jewish and Hindu religions.
If you want to be a policy-maker as such, in a pragmatic sense, go learn from people such as Peter Banks and Moritz Bierling. They can actually teach you something worthwhile. And they wonāt be overbearing about it while they do it.
Most others are far more interested in treating divinity as a series of arguments to be made about which ritual practices to study and perfect. Thatās why Iāve lost interest in engaging on this plane. At least for now. Thereās nothing in these spaces to salvage. Only exasperation remains.
The real priest-pioneers who want to move forward are taking what they can and building the rest out of a melted swamp.
There comes a point where you start to emerge outside the confines of strict interpersonal constraints.
There is a phrase that Christians often use: that to follow Christ is to be in the world, but not of the world.
The above three types of circumstances are what I could call challenges related to ābeing in the worldā.
I would say that they are important, and even sometimes stimulating, but they are not particularly interesting or urgent, aside from how they consistently cause persistent isolation.
You still need to get dressed and put on deodorant and comb your hair and hug your mom.
Raising a healthy family, too. That intersects with everything. Maybe someday Iāll have the privilege of doing that. Looking bleak in that department, though.
If you are reading this right now and you find yourself empathizing, then perhaps you are stuck on the second part: how to be ānot of this worldā.
4. The private, inner matters
These are the most fundamental. They donāt matter intrinsically, in some universal sense. They exist only in the silence between you and God. But this is exactly why they matter most! No one will ever know how you decide about them.
But you will know. You could cheat. You could cheat, and it still wouldnāt matter, and you still have you choose not to cheat, and you wonāt ever get credit for not cheating.
This is Harry Potter asking the Sorting Hat not to be put in Slytherin. He is still an untalented, blithering, Deus Ex Machina factory, and no one is under any obligation to admire his character.
But itās of utmost relevance to him to request this. Because how he chooses in those moments reveals who he is, and the āwhoā that he brings into his relationships from there on.
There is a stupid philosophical thought experiment that goes: āIf a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?ā
This is an incoherent question, and anyone who takes it seriously is a buffoon. This is where some people go crazy and just decide to become materialist nihilists.
No, motherfucker.
It matters precisely because you heard it. Your conscience is calling you on the psychic telephone; the energetic texture of your being is receiving a hand-stamped letter; and you have a choice as to open up and let in what it says.
When Jesus makes his second coming, the fire and brimstone he brings wonāt be some dramatic apocalypse. No, it will be more like a FAANG phone screen interview. He will ask you questions about the 3-7 pivotal moments you faced in your life, where it was up to you to take up internal responsibility.
Both you and He will already know the answers. And if you fail to repent as appropriate, He will gently, lovingly scorch your face off with a heavenly flamethrower and cut out your internal organs one-by-one. And this will be the merciful action to take against you.
Now, it is also true that refusing the call in this way does cause sinful consequences to accumulate here in the āreal worldā. That is entirely the wrong frame to adopt. That is still defining things exclusively in terms of their outward effect.
You are trying to slot situations of this nature into the second problem type, described above. This is the same reason why many consequentialist utilitarians are in the lap of Satan, and are almost all going straight to hell ā they will claim that something without a measurable effect does not exist.
Being correct about āobject-levelā actions is close to worthless in this realm.
The worst part is as follows: wrestling with God is a privilege precisely to the degree that itās a burden!
Insentient, unreflective animals ā which includes 85% of āhuman beingsā ā who demonstrate no compulsion toward awakening also have no obligation to strive toward goodness.
If youāve made it this far: congratulations, you are one of the lucky few.
There are no final answers here.
What is the instruction manual for this layer on the path? Iāll try to say some things that I can look back on in ten years and approve of.
Every child is told the story of how Shiva swallowed and turned the ą¤¹ą¤²ą¤¾ą¤¹ą¤² (poison) from the oceanās churning into ą¤ ą¤®ą„ą¤¤ (nectar). Thereās lots of energy stuck in my throat, too.
The process of exfoliating irritants within oneās being and either releasing them or alchemizing them into medicine is highly exothermic. Moving up and down the cycles of energy as you shed more & more layers of identity requires deep internal persistence. And curiosity. And playfulness. And rest.
Too many things in short supply.
Paradox is an object of liberation.
Say it once more for those in the back.
For example, I am the horniest Iāve ever been in my life, and yet I have the lowest compulsion to seek out sexual activity Iāve ever experienced.
Partly this is because when you sufficiently dissolve the bottlenecks to a smoothly flowing erotic, it returns to its original state of unconditioned massive charge, but remains content cycling back into itself on its own, without the need to fulfill its movements with anotherās body.
The only exception that still feels out of control is when Iām caught up a particularly rajasic arc, and I happen to see an unbelievably handsome man or unbelievably beautiful woman walking down the street.
The other problem, as Iāve discussed elsewhere, is that most people are more interested in having an orgasm than making love. Trying to teach another the importance of engaging in the full sexual process is exhausting ā if Iām going to get with you, I expect you at a minimum to assign a baseline significance to this dance.
Here is another example.
My ambition is the most forward-looking it has ever been in a decade, and my strongest impulses are to seek to exit society and its endless noise. The social and cultural entropy that is currently produced by ācivilizationā is overwhelming.
Iām a strong guy. Iām not sure I have to strength to wake up every day and face the stream of static that pours in from the endless digital civil wars. The cacophonous buzz finds a way in, especially when you try too hard to block it out. Thatās part of the game.
I wonder if Iāll ever be less melancholic by default.
I was sent this video recently. My favorite part is at close to the 18m mark.
With any representational pattern, you are always looking through a window in to something outside [that window] ... using symbolic perception, you can look through phenomena at objects outside [of them], and that by aiming at them, you can break through what otherwise appear to be uncrossable barriers.
I often use plants to describe my nature. Especially those with strange shapes.
Cactus.
Lotus.
Orchid.
These creatures form a hologram whose resolution I must keep pursuing, come pleasure or pain.
Iām making a bet that whoever looks back at me through the mirror someday will be worth cherishing.
Itās not like I have anything better to do anyway.
Itās 2026.