The Monsters They Brought With Them

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There’s something wrong with so many famous people, rich people, and famous rich people. They’re ranting about conspiracy theories and weird reproductive obsessions. There’s talk of aliens and hallucinatory trips, drug usage, and secret history from people supposedly directing our future.. Something is off with these folks.

It’s not just things they say or believe for a profit or fame – I mean they do say these things for profit and fame. But it seems they really believe some of this crap, at least before they find something else to freak out about. There is some real fear there under the usual isolated-rich-famous-weirdo delusions.

It seems weird to be so afraid of everything. I mean you got money and fame and everything, why be so terrified? Why be so terrified of things that are clearly bullshit?

Well beyond daddy issues and the usual problems that make people fall into conspiracy thinking, I think one issue is these people are so isolated.

You’re rich, you can do anything you want. But also you depend on other people, people who say what you want to here so they stay on the gravy train. You are flattered and complimented. You are isolated and detached from reality.

You’re famous. People love you, talk about you, follow you (often for almost no good reason). Of course that means once again you exist in an isolated world. You are of course flattered and complimented, probably even moreso if you were just rich.

If you’re rich, famous, or both you exist in a kind of bubble, separate from reality. You’re in a kind of virtual reality crossed with an isolation tank. There’s no reality, there’s just what you brought with you.

And many people bring monsters with them.

Fears and delusions rampage through their minds, echoing off of the walls of their strange isolation. No one is going to correct them or even help them. That might make them angry and cut off the money train.

Told what they want to hear, they operate in unreality. Reality will shift to what they want to hear, delivered by hangers-on, investors, and an adoring public. But that also means their own terrors and insecurities can find root in their fallow minds. People who want to get ahead may also play off of their concerns.

Most of all, I suspect many of them know this isn’t real. You know people are lying, are flattering you. The news cycle constantly reminds you of your mistakes and fallabilities. You’re out there, famous, rich, exposed to the eye of reality and the eye of yourself. Every day, maybe every minute on social media, someone is reminding you you’re not right, you’re not perfect, you’re just a bank account and a PR department wrapped in flesh.

The rich, the famous in our world are so disconnected I wonder how much of their strange paranoia is just their own bouncing off the walls of their own unreal prison.

Unfortunately they make decisions about our lives.

–Xenofact

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