Carolyn Elliott, author of Existential Kink, talks with Pinchbeck about where her method came from. The two trace their acquaintance to Pinchbeck's Evolver network and Reality Sandwich magazine and an Evolver conference in 2012. Elliott describes getting involved around 2013 with OneTaste and its practice of orgasmic meditation, led by Nicole Daedone, which she treats as both a real teaching and a nefarious organization. From it she took the idea that people accept only a narrow band of sensation and reject everything outside it, and that the band can be deliberately widened. She extends the logic of BDSM containers to a person's relationship with their own circumstances. The closing turns to fear of death as the mechanism of social control.
Guest: Carolyn Elliott
In brief
- Elliott says her concept originated in a guided OneTaste session where an instruction to open beyond her usual conceptions produced a sober but psychedelic experience that changed her relationship to sensation.
- Elliott describes OneTaste as both magically wondrous and darkly nefarious, a notorious cult whose central teaching she nonetheless found deep.
- Elliott argues most people receive only a very small range of sensation as acceptable, and that deliberately expanding what they are willing to welcome deepens both sex and ordinary life.
- Elliott says her interest in BDSM is largely metaphorical, and that its real lesson is that a container and an agreement can convert pain into play and intimacy.
- Elliott contends that obsession with material wealth traces to a fear of death produced by both dogmatic Christianity and secular science's claim that nothing follows.
- Elliott holds that cultures most successful at resisting enslavement and colonization were those unafraid to die, and that the fear of death is what renders modern people compliant.
Full text
hey folks i'm here today with caroline elliott author of existential kink uh who i've known for many many years and i only discovered recently that she had become a legendary uh figure uh in the world so so caroline how did we meet originally yeah well so the first i remember hearing of you was um i wandered into a really cool party and i asked the people throwing the party uh how they all knew each other and they said we met on a social forum network thing organized by daniel pinchbeck and i said okay cool i guess i gotta find out more about this so i checked out the evolver website and i checked out the reality sandwich magazine and i started to get more familiar with you and your work and your book 2012 time for change and also um yeah 20 i mean it made it it was so giant in pittsburgh we were all it made a big impact on us and um yeah and but the very first time we met i think we had organized um a conference for the evolver network in 2012 and you came and visited the conference yeah it was awesome and were you already into this material back then or is it was this something you figured we should work through later no um definitely came about later so after um let's see so around 2013 i think i started getting involved with one taste which is the notorious cult i hear they're gonna have a netflix expose soon and um i it was a fascinating want to tell people a little bit about what that was yeah i knew i never did any of their workshops but i was friends with uh nicole de don't i guess for a while yes so uh one taste was both a magically wondrous and a sort of darkly nefarious place to be um one taste was centered around the teaching of a practice called orgasmic meditation which sort of a simplified zen version of tantra where one partner uh strokes the clitoris of another partner in a very sort of defined way very lightly um with there's like a whole specific protocol with like gloves and lube and cushions and a timer and um so one taste used the erotic energy the energy of pleasure of orgasm as a metaphor for all of life and all of communication and it was a very very deep teaching um and one of the things i learned there was so nicole the leader would always say that the truth is sensational and that's hard to argue with like when you're talking about like deep embodied emotional truth you know when you tell somebody that you love them for the first time like there's a there's a bodily response to that so um i got interested in the relationship between the response of my body to truth um and of course i was also really exploring there was this notion in one taste that it was possible to explore the range of sensation that one received as orgasm or as pleasure with the idea being that most people have a very very small range of sensation both in actual sex and in their lives that they will receive and be like yay i like this and then there's like this whole other spectrum of sensation outside of that little narrow range where people are like no i don't want this gotta get this to go away i hate this so the idea is that um you can have a deeper broader experience of orgasm in sex and a deeper richer experience of pleasure and surrender in life if you deliberately practice expanding that range that you are willing to welcome and embrace and say yes to i noticed in the book you talked about the orgasm meditation you were saying that even within that very specific tiny little practice like people would be would be uncomfortable in certain ways that they were touched or not touched um and then you were saying that that could also be converted into like a positive energetic charge in a way if if you got away from those you know kind of uh rejection and acceptance modes in a way yeah absolutely so like for example the practice was very specific just like teeny tiny strokes on like the upper left-hand quadrant of the clitoris just like the most yep the most sensitive part and very very light very very slow strokes for the most part but still you know for some women for some people that's uncomfortable it would wouldn't feel good and so the practice was pretty cool in that it included you know people asking more specifically for what they wanted um so like asking for somebody to move or try a different stroke or a different pressure or location but there is also often the invitation to just practice just see like if you don't like the way that something feels can you practice dropping your story about it can you practice just surrendering into and opening up into it instead of like yeah resisting instead of contracting yes so that was one clue for you um in terms of what became sort of the whole concept of existential kink it was a major clue for me because one day i was in a guided home so one of the founders of practice is a beautiful man named ken blackman who stroked thousands of clitorises all over the world and really deeply understood the practice and he was giving a guided home and i was being stroked by somebody and he gave one of these instructions to you know just open up wider than you ever have like beyond your you know usual conceptions of things and i i did and i had this experience that was like absolutely you know transcendent psychedelic totally sober just high on pure sexual energy and it really revolutionized my experience of life made it i mean it occurred to me like wow i can completely change my relationship to the sensations that i'm experiencing and instead of having them be painful they can be pleasurable was there also your book obviously talks a little bit about s m bdsm practices was that something you were exploring personally or is it just sort of metaphorical allegorical in a way yeah good question i mean i think i've probably explored it much more in metaphor and allegory in my mind than i ever did personally i mean i did i have done some stuff but i mean i'm certainly other people have done much more but just knowing that there was a whole community of people a whole thing out there in the world where people would undergo experiences that normally humans seek to avoid like being in chains or being hit or you know all of these experiences and that they would undergo them in such a way that um they set up containers they set up agreements they would give themselves um a chance to experience it as play to experience the pain as a kind of play and a kind of intimacy and i just was thinking about that and i was like wow how i wonder if it's possible to engage my relationship with life in such a way that all of these things that are happening that seem so painful and terrible to me what if what if i could create a container and experience those as play and experience those as intimacy and as opportunities for surrender and pleasure instead of just as um you know poor me being fortunate oh god damn another horrible thing how did this happen and so then uh yeah i mean you know i i definitely i mean i i sense that a lot of people are reading your book and getting really excited about it i don't i don't know what you what what what what you know what your sales figures are or whatever but i've seen people around talking about it and reading it and so on um and i definitely felt um resonant like i felt that personally uh and it just certain level conscious but your book may be amped up you know you know i'm still sort of i think growing with the with the way you're expressing it like um how yeah sometimes we sabotage ourselves or destroy ourselves or do things to ourselves almost because we want to feel this like kinky pleasure as sort of this this consciousness which outside of our individuality is just exploring its full range of potentiality is that kind of the idea yes definitely sort of um the notion that all manifestation is god playing hide and seek with god's self and god is one kinky ass so it's like um you know we can there's always that option to stay in feeling like wow i'm just like this poor ego that's so put upon and um i mean everything will certainly seem to confirm that like no matter how lucky we are we all eventually there's old age and death awaiting us like the buddha noticed so the practice of beginning to like open up say like hey perhaps there's something you know psyche is larger than my ego perhaps there are some other parts of me that are just really having a ball and can i get on the side of those other parts those shadowy repressed bits of my being so somebody might actually on some level be enjoying being like broke and like having like a miserable experience like not not able to find money to live properly and stuff like that i certainly did that was certainly my experience that i talk about in the book i was and of course i never like until it fully dawned on me i would have been so offended if somebody had suggested that to me i would have been like what are you talking about i'm miserable this is horrible but when i i was really really interested in that question of like what is the relate like the truth is sensational you know in your own life you've been like like what kind of work have you been doing you've been looking for different jobs or uh oh yeah well i had gotten i'd spent the first seven years of my adult life getting a phd phd in critical and cultural studies and then um i hated academia and i didn't want to be there anymore so what can you do with an english degree well whatever you can do without one so i was working sort of like freelance copywriting jobs as scraping pennies together living on the couches of friends and uh i didn't have money for food so i had to go stand in line at the local food bank and it was freezing cold and i was just like standing there one december morning being like wow this sucks so much and i'm also curious you know i've read all this freud i've read all this young i know that it's possible for human beings to have desires that are outside of their conscious mind's knowledge it's like i wonder if some part of me really really likes this i wonder if this right here is the fulfillment of something for some unconscious part of me and i just started getting really curious about that and i just kept paying attention and like seeing um you know the sensations that would arise in connection with the poverty that i was experiencing like the anxiety about how am i gonna pay for this how am i gonna pay for that am i gonna be stuck here forever like really dropping into those sensations as much as possible without story um and seeing what was there and particularly also experimenting with exaggerating the story so i would exa i would i would play with like you know because my conscious mind thinks okay people should want to pay me lots of money for my services but if i turn that around so i was like doing the work of byron katie which i highly recommend it goes really hand in hand with this um if i turn that around too nobody should ever want to pay me anything for my services i found that i had this like this like rush of like oh my god that's so hot like my whole body just responded to that and when i noticed that i was like oh my god no wonder i can't get paid no wonder i can't make money i am so turned on by the thought of being devalued so um i decided all right well so clearly the part of me who wants to be devalued is deeply satisfied by this broke couch living food bank going situation so i don't know how to change it i've been telling myself that i want to change it i want it to be so much better i don't know how to do that i'm just going to relax for a while in whatever this enjoyment is that is present whatever this fulfillment is that's already occurring and i did that i just started to see and it was weird because the more that i just concentrated on that just concentrated on like hey i don't have to understand it nobody else has to understand it but i'm actually getting i'm deeply fulfilled like i can't explain it to anybody i must be a crazy woman but this is my deep fulfillment and i'm just going to let myself have it and the more that i just dwelt in that energy of feeling the fulfillment that was present in the great romance of my being totally devalued by society and just like undesired and unwanted it was really weird because now suddenly instead of seeing myself as this like you know poor wronged put upon misunderstood intellectual who was just completely you know devalued by society now i saw myself as like i'm just a freaky fulfilled lady doing what i'm doing and um there was something magnificent about that and from that energy all sorts of inspirations started coming towards me and um it was kind of crazy because within three months i had changed my whole life i was i went from making like like a thousand dollars a month to ten thousand dollars a month i went from living in pittsburgh to living in bali it was just like this it was this like dropping into this huge um portal what actually happened in those three months just out of curiosity not too good in two deaths well so your attitude like your your inner compass had shifted and how did the outer world then kind of like respond to that yeah so uh it happened in a rather mundane way so it was as if like me being in this energy of fulfillment just made myself just made it possible for me to see options that i was like completely blind to before like utterly and completely blind to so for example the i was doing coaching at a time at the time and getting like poorly paid for one-on-one coaching and i had the idea like oh hey i'm a writer i could write an online course and i could sell that and that's what i could do and so it's not like i mean billions of men about billions many of people have thought of this this is not like the most original idea ever but it was like completely outside of my vision of possibility that i could write an online course and learn how to sell it and set it up and everything so it was just like following these simple impulses that previously had you know bridges outside the realm of my identity what was that first course about the first course that i wrote was called thrill and it was actually about building an online audience through writing viral articles which i had done because um i had written an article called seven traits of magical people and i'd gotten like something like it was like 50 000 people in a facebook group based on that article and then my clients came from people in that facebook group so it was just teaching other people how to do that essentially all right so then it just sort of scaled up from there yes so what do you mean by um having is evidence of wanting yeah so that's an axiom that i use to investigate um what unconscious fulfillments might already be present in my life so the idea is that whatever is going on in my life there is some unconscious part of me that is being fulfilled in relationship with it so the challenge is to surrender my ego enough to get on the side of that part of me that is having what it wants in whatever the experience is you know so here's an example um i i said something that a lot of people found offensive on instagram last year i got like thousands of people telling me what an evil monster i was um well what was it that you said yeah well the essence of it yeah well i'll say what i was i was trying to express is that all people are indigenous to the earth and deserve respect and access to medicines but the way i said it i think was a bit rude and confrontational and hit buttons which was i said hi i'm indigenous too which i am i am indigenous planet earth my people were originally in tribes just like everybody else's but anyways people people lost their at a white lady saying hi i'm indigenous too and i knew that it would be controversial but i didn't realize like how controversial it would be and of course anyways so it blew up my entire business like this um i lost hundreds of customers i lost tons of revenue i had people like demanding that wiser stop publishing my book i had um you know my best friend and business partner broke up with me it was hard it was very very painful and i can definitely just from one state just from one statement on instagram one well i mean it was a whole post um it was a whole thing that i said but yeah it it was i was you know it was a clumsy effort to express a non-dual truth yeah and um and i was feeling feisty mercury was an aries i think i did like hashtag social justice hashtag whatever and i basically was like trolling liberals and um oh boy they did not like that so anyways um i learned my lesson i don't know i'm still actually still thinking about what the lesson is but anyways so here i was how do you feel like yeah there is like uh we are in a sort of situation where um like people are feeling that they can't say what they actually want to say or what they think because if it goes off so you know so that everybody's in this sort of marketing mindset where everyone is just trying to like create this perfect front for the you know other uh so you know it's that's very unhealthy and that's also i think yeah there's a weird way between the way that you know liberals and conservatives have switched places whereas you know the right wing are now defending freedom of speech and hating on the fbi while the liberals and the the you know the quote-unquote left who used to defend freedom of speech and hating on the fbi are now pro-fbi and kind of like suspicious of uh you know freedom of speech and kind of promoting censorship so it's actually a very confounding circumstance i hope that the you know quote-unquote left uh remembers to toggle back you know to uh allowing for expression you know even if it's because you know whatever people you know as you know as somebody who's interested in psychoanalysis and so on you know what you resist persists what doesn't was it what is it allowed to be expressed is just going to descend into the unconscious and find another avenue of expression absolutely yeah so um so i had this so just sort of to complete the little story here um yeah this experience of all of these people being really upset with me very distressing like basically there was no level on which my ego was winning in this situation and i of course i teach this work i teach you know this axiom of exploration having this as evidence of wanting so i had to get really serious with myself and ask okay carolyn where is it where can you find the part of you that wanted this to go down and you know gradually i found there was this part of me that found it really um was really attracted to being seen as harmful as evil as bad as guilty as responsible for the suffering of others and that part of me was unsatisfied being seen as a nice spiritual teacher lady who was very very unsatisfied and wanted to like really be seen as like just terrible and so i got that experience for myself and it was deeply fulfilling i got to be seen as this incredible wretched villain by people who had previously respected me um and it was also deeply freeing too because it took me out of um you know i can't say that i would do it again or that i necessarily recommend it but it did clear out from my field everybody who was there projecting on me that i was always going to be their nice compassionate mommy figure who completely agreed with their political views and grievances whatever they were and just like blasted that out and it made room for um me to find the people that i actually truly connected with and vibed with which opened the portal for um me founding the sleepover mystery school which has been like the absolutely like the most beautiful creation that i've ever experienced so what what is what is this what's the sleepover mystery school yeah so the sleepover mystery school is a nine-month program we have four live in-person immersions in various locations around the u. s and it's in the tradition of the ellustinian mystery school as filtered through the hermetic order of the golden dawn and fellaima um crossed with you know eternal teenage slumber party naughty sexy vibes so we do crazy intense ritual magic we do guided sex magic experiences we do um we have adventures and gorgeous crazy things happen and people like forge profound connections we just took about 25 people through this experience so we just finished our first one and it was um i mean i'm still like there were synchronicities that occurred in doing this that have like pretty much like permanently blown my mind like i don't mean i'm just like yeah conclusively linear time is a lie so anyways it's been very rewarding for me so what i'm trying to say is that this deep rewarding thing um came out of this giant big mess and um and allowing the part of myself that wanted to be seen as wrong and bad and terrible and was so you know my conscious mind is so so afraid of being seen as wrong and bad and terrible that giving myself that taboo experience and deeply receiving it was actually really freeing so how did the how did the this experience engender this mystery school well very directly in that um i was so devastated there were so many people who had previously been friends with me been close to me would no longer talk to me like were completely they were just disgusted by me and the people who so how do i say this um but the people who really really got existential kink at a deep level like at the level that i understand it they were coming to me and saying like caroline you did like we understand what you were trying to say we just want you to say it more say it like do it do it express it in poetry express it in ritual like express this non-dual truth um and so basically it was like um sorting the wheat from the chaff kind of thing like the the friends who could really be um on my team in bringing forth what i wanted to bring forth suddenly became very clear and i became well how do i say this i was actually vulnerable for the first time in a long time so for years i had been a fancy rich internet spiritual teacher lady and i had my old friends from growing up in pittsburgh but i really didn't have barely any new friends because everybody was my student and so these people so um it's layla layla bernard and lucy mcnaught are the organizers of sleepover mystery school with me and they were my students they came to my previous retreats they came to my um i did an existential kink life coach training program and they were the ones who were still like totally down and totally like ready to play and create with me at a time when like other people were turning their backs because i had disappointed their fantasy of who i was so um yeah it made room for me to so it's hard to tell the story because it's all jumbled together but like i said i was actually vulnerable i was actually in the market for new friends like i needed people to really see me and so the people who could really see me and feel me um became closer to me and then a creative current moved through us that generated this thing that is so so beautiful i'm eternally grateful for it i would get canceled 50 million more times um you have a family right do you have a family member yeah yeah i'm married to um well he used to go by josh lee he now goes by david lovewell i don't know if you remember him used to have dreads back in the day he was in our evolver group in pittsburgh so david and i are married and we have um a three-year-old daughter named elusis lulu and um he has two sons from his previous relationship so i have stepsons too beautiful um so let's see let's take some other quotes from your book whichever as i said i was just been enjoying so much uh let kinky pleasure be its own reward and don't worry about trying to fix your life with integration can you extrapolate on that a little bit yeah so i've taught this process many times to people and the tricky thing about it is is it is a transformative process and i have to be honest about it when i teach that but also sometimes people hear like oh so um i'll just get off on this thing and then i will get the thing that i really want that is way better than i'll get rid of this shitty stuff that i hate and it's like and so they'll exercise like uh i think in the book yeah yes so then they are not approaching the practice in the attitude that needs to be approached which is like this super deep surrender so like it like doing it with this um sort of attitude of like well i don't really like this thing like i guess i'll pretend to like it so that i can get rid of it that's just still the ego control mechanism but but i mean there's still still this idea that the process would lead to people you know getting this thing that they want in some way once they've surrendered i mean how how does that then come about well yeah um yeah it's it's just been the experience of many people that i've taught this to and it's been my own experience again and again that when i can get to the point of um deeply relaxing with what is present and deeply feeling the fulfillment and the pleasure and no longer resisting like just super opening up and it's it it really is an identity shift because um the ego maintains its sense of separation through not liking so i can i mean think about it if there was absolutely nothing that we had any objection to how would you know where where anything ended or beginning like it's only through this sense of protest and resistance that the sense of separation is maintained so um let me how do i when i tell it in the way that it's a useful metaphor okay so one one way that i think about it is it's the process of an alchemical marriage so there is when the deep surrender happens there is actually a union and a fertilization that happens where the conscious mind fertilizes the unconscious mind with the conscious mind's desire but in order for that fertilization to actually happen you know repeating affirmations is not enough usually visualization's not enough all of these things that people have been taught really aren't what does it the one way we can imagine it is that the unconscious mind is the beautiful lady and she is just creating everything that is already in our experience she is giving birth to it it is just like blossoming out of her and the conscious mind is like a knight and the conscious mind has a goal in mind he has a quest he wants to go accomplish something he wants to change something he wants to make something happen but he can't do it if he doesn't have the power of the lady if he doesn't have this generative power moving through his quest is going to fail so in order for the alchemical union to happen what has to occur is the knight the conscious mind has to get down on his knees and completely praise completely surrender to the lady exactly as she is exactly with what she's already doing not telling her that any ounce of it should be different in any way just completely being like i'm here with you i want to love you and celebrate you as you are and that that deep surrender of like the masculine conscious part of us allows the alchemical marriage to happen where the conscious mind and the unconscious mind can finally come together and like i said when that coming together happens there is a fertilization the unconscious mind gets planted with the seeds of what the conscious mind all along has thought would be great to experience and those um those seeds get planted in the unconscious and they get birthed as synchronicities as opportunities as new things happening and sometimes birthed very quickly yeah that's so fascinating beautiful beautiful metaphor i love that um i mean i was kind of um you know i i mean i wrote recently about like joe dispenza a little bit in tony robbins and kind of like um some so my issue around kind of like part of the new age which is very much about you know kind of like uh you create your own reality you know kind of um you know you sort of address this in the book you you talk about sort of the question of okay but what about all these people who really can't make a positive shift for themselves like you know kids in ukraine who are getting their legs blown off or all these people in pakistan who are losing everything in the flood you know and so on i mean how how does this type of uh kind of understanding applied to people who are in such you know adverse circumstances yeah a profound question well so the thing is is that it's always not just our personal unconscious that's at work there's also the collective consciousness and the collective unconscious that's created this world that we have where war is a thing where scarcity is a thing so we all certainly are within that um and i guess my general answer to it would be like first of all we can i can notice like in my own situation with like poverty stuff that i was dealing with i could notice like okay this seems to be a personal hang up that i have there are other people who grew up around me who went to the same schools who did the and they're doing fine so clearly something is like particularly going awry with me so there's that the yeah these deep deep collective problems that humanity has been going through so the main little piece that i would say is that even somebody in a terrible dark situation generated by the collective still can have a more empowered magical beautiful experience of life if they manage to figure out how to get into this you know how to get into surrender and um praise instead of being in that you know the attitude of grievance and resentment it may be a thousand billion times justified and it still is a weakening energy that doesn't open up to whatever you know so for example like not that this is analogous to um war but just that it was a hard experience the hard experience that i was talking about with getting canceled people have committed suicide under those conditions like i could have just been like well you know nobody likes me everybody hates me guess i'll shut up like i could just feel like super resentful for people who turned their backs on me i could get super you know in any adversity that we're confronted with in life we can use that as a reason to get hateful or we can use that as a reason to expand the context of who we are to expand our love and our surrender uh yeah i guess i mean yeah you also mentioned that maybe i mean um people choose difficult circumstances maybe in one lifetime or something we just don't know i mean but that you have to be careful obviously because then that can lead into a very detached kind of view i mean i you know i loved actually the part where you talked about um many of us intelligent spiritually inclined folk have had a profound realization there's no reason to do anything at all uh you know you said it just doesn't matter we're all just fluids swirling emanations of an endless number reality so in an ultimate sense it doesn't matter whether or not you pay your bills find true love save the world raise a family or get enlightened there's no rock solid not ideological dogma dogma free purity to get in shape go to the dentist have a baby build a non-profit foundation or anything else um that's uh that's that's that's interesting i mean um what is that and so what does that mean for people when they've integrated that that they're free in a way is that kind of the idea well yeah and if you're doing anything you're like do it because you want to do it not because you should or you have to or i mean so uh it's yeah i mean it is the ultimate truth emptiness is the ultimate truth um and of course like the buddhists always emphasize you might as well focus on compassion if you're going to be aware of profound emptiness um just because because why not like you know but what about for instance the um you know the climate emergency like you know i mean one reason that i started the evolver network was my dream of kind of like creating a network where we like you know shifted out of materialism and into all these like transformational practices then we didn't like you know we didn't we lost our interest in accumulation of like goods and money and stuff like that um and you know yeah it looks like the climate emergency is you know going to get worse and worse over the next years you know i guess my my concern with this you know um even though i completely agree with what you're saying here is how do you motivate people you know is there any reason to try to motivate people collectively to i mean i you know my friends in london for instance who created that movement extinction rebellion and i've tried to get all these people organized to uh you know do very unpleasant things like civil unrest i mean um yeah i mean i'm just curious how your philosophy kind of jibes with these other situations you know in a way yeah it is a fascinating question so um you know you having that ambition to get people to do something about climate change sort of like a quest right like a goal a chosen ambition of sports i don't know if i have it anymore in the same way um but um okay yeah but once once upon a time you did and in pursuing that chosen aim you met all sorts of people you had you know various adventures you learned things cool stuff happened right yeah um and if you had simply sat and meditated somewhere that would have been cool too yeah yeah um so what you do is kind of present people with this sort of choice in a way like like a wider range of choice you know in terms of how they can follow their their you know kinky and unkinky desires is that kind of it um yeah so i i think it is generally more useful for human for humans to approach questions of how to live life from an aesthetic point of view rather than a moralizing point of view because moralizing um it just locks us into these like dramas of oppressed and oppressor rescuer and helpless one you know it it's not it's kind of it just it gets a little it's gotten kind of super repetitive it's gotten kind of super dull so i think it's more interesting to to ask oneself like what would it be beautiful for me to do what would it be um you know inspiring or opening to do not what should i do or who needs who do i have to rescue or anything like that because they ultimately like they're it's all we're all just like dancing dream characters in the mind of god so i think beautiful dreams are definitely my preference i like dreams of love and harmony i like those much more than uh you know violence and torture and things like that so i do i follow the advice that the sages of of my tradition have passed down about this is how you create beauty and love and symmetry around you you do these things so um i mean that's my choice and of course i'm on this i have a mission too my mission is to um teach alchemical literacy which is i want to empower at least 10 000 people to really know how to do this move of making the unconscious conscious creating this much wider bridge of communication between the conscious and the unconscious minds which is essentially the work of magic especially the way that aleister crowley talked about it so basically bringing magic and mystery to the forefront of culture that's the mission that i choose for myself i love it that's yeah it's fun it keeps me busy and you know get to feel like i'm doing something but you know does it matter like ultimately no because i'm the merest flicker of a dream yeah um it's and so are we all but it's like well apparently i'm in this level of the dream but it moves a little slow um seems like i have the option to do stuff if i want to do it so it's a creative canvas and um yeah so i guess i i just think that there is strength in taking in letting that choice be an aesthetic choice because when we have when we frame the choice about what we will do with our lives in moralizing terms it tends to come as like some sort of like well i have to do this or i have to do that i have to save the children somewhere i have to do like no you don't like they're just happening in in the great dream of the universe that's you do it if you want to if you truly want to if that's like what anyways i could go on and on very very interesting no i mean um no because i often struggle uh with a lot of um you know i would say anger uh and frustration because i feel like people take the easy way out and you know make a lot of money doing things that to me feel um like they don't have a positive benefit or even have a negative benefit you know for the world whereas i feel that if you try to do the you know the things that you feel are better for the world uh you often get you know knocked down and humiliated and projected upon and so on so yes you're getting rewarded that's that's the that's the reward of virtue it has ever been thus and why is that uh how would you know that it was the virtuous thing to do if you were not punished for it interesting could you explain a little bit it was completely easy if it was if you were completely materially rewarded for doing it what would be virtuous about it that's interesting all right fair enough but um what about feeling all this like vicious anger at people who in my mind like take the easy way out and you know go for the money and have like these incredible lifestyles and so on you know oh yeah tell me more about this vicious anger what do you want to do to them like bang their heads against walls until their like brains burst well i mean maybe perhaps i don't know but i mean you know more like it just feels like we're we're squandering our uh human opportunity to create you know something that would be better for everybody you know because people are so focused on their own self-interest yeah so people are focused on their own self-interest and that's why we are squandering our opportunity to do something much more beautiful for everybody exactly exactly yeah like we go back to like the iroquois confederacy you know which was you know what the us constitution was kind of based on you know they were the native people living here and for instance they believed in like the equitable distribution of uh goods and resources you know so it wasn't a situation where somebody would amass a huge amount and everybody else would be kind of deprived and um they also the people who are the chiefs or the leaders were often the ones who had the least because they would distribute anything they got through the community and that was actually how they earned kind of the rank of leader whereas here in our society it feels very disturbed because you know we um see as virtue in a sense virtuous or culturally uh we give a lot of credit to those people who are able to amass a huge amount of resources which usually means that they have done things like you know shaft workers of money or you know destroyed ecosystems or privatized the public goods you know privatize things that could be common property like the commons like yes the villains are materially winning yeah materially winning at the at the you know the problem is in that process they're also dooming you know a lot of other people like um you know let's say pakistan for instance at the moment yes and i totally hear you yeah the doom and the uh like enormous iniquity and imbalance is really staggering and so i guess like to me the question becomes so i guess what i'm what i'm hearing daniel and i'm hearing like and i feel like all of a sudden it's beautiful i feel like we're suddenly in a coaching session all of a sudden but okay go for it yeah well if i may yeah please i feel like um i feel like your gorgeous compassion is really entertained by like wanting the drama of the material world to be really really super important and real but how do i say this i don't want to diminish that at all because it is in a way in a way it certainly is but i guess what i wanna what i wanna get to is like a way for you to be present with that present with the great drama like i agree it's it's um it's a terrifying situation that the world is in and yet i'm curious is there a way to be present with it that is more playful than angry or resentful i certainly try you know um but um well let me ask you this grief also annoying yeah yeah well grief certainly yeah well so you mentioned the self-interest and i guess like the self-interest of the the big villains who are you know despoiling the earth and jeopardizing so many other people i guess the way that i just always take it in my practice is whatever i seem to be upset with anybody else about i find that as an as a very interesting thing to get curious about in myself so if i were in the same situation like you're describing like feeling really angry at the plutocrats and you know i'm judging them like wow they're serving their self-interest at the expense of everybody else i would get curious where is you know how is my resentment or my anger serving the self-interest of some small part of me at the expense of the whole rest of my being so like and and for me if i was answering that question um it would be like the more anger and resentment i get to feel the more sense of moral superiority i get to feel like i can see like what you're doing is wrong i hate you for it and because i can see how wrong it is and how evil it is i get an identity of being the one who knows better i don't feel that's my issue i mean i don't feel any moral superiority nor do i even feel judgment actually um it's just more of a disappointment almost in a way because um i totally understand i can understand what drives you know people you know to take a job that pays them you know hundreds of thousands of dollars so they can go to burning man and all the fancy goods and gal bent around the world but actually what they're doing is something that you know has a negative you know from my perception a negative value um whether it's you know mining cryptocurrencies at a great energy cost or you know making television shows that demean and degrade you know the consciousness of the mass the masses and so on um and i think you know part of me is i could see that i could have done all of those things you know i mean i i would have been smart enough to you know put on a kind of like manipulative marketing apparatus and figure out how to you know advertise some some junk or something but a way i feel frustrated because you know i i could have set up a life where i didn't you know have such somewhat constrained economic conditions um if i had you know i've been sort of trapped by my own like you know moral principles in a way in some areas in other areas um i didn't always act you know in ways that were morally proper you know that well that totally makes sense like the disappointment the frustration the feeling like geez i could have made different choices i guess what i would just be curious about is i mean are you are you satisfied with your principles as they are and your adherence to them like are do you want to change anything about what you're doing or do you want to like continue enjoying it that's a good question i'm gonna i'm a mull on that caroline okay i mean yeah and and i don't mean to like it it is just the question because like i can see there is a deep satisfaction like a deep gift that you have given yourself in adhering to your principles the way that you have like there's something precious that you gave yourself there right but don't you also feel that in some ways we do have a kind of um i mean i i understand the emptiness perspective but i mean look at a society like tibetan you know the tibetan buddhist society which very much operates on these types of principles that you're espousing um i mean that was a very uh collective or let's say communal cooperative society you know if you i mean they they were and you know you know there was this dalai lama there were llamas you know but they weren't really you know the material wealth was really just an expression of a spiritual purpose uh in our in our in our modern society and this is even what somebody like um julia savola you know writes a lot about that we've like we've flipped it and so we see material accumulation as somehow a mark of um you know something good you know uh whereas for these other cultures that would have been totally ridiculous um if that makes any sense yeah well it does make sense and like i completely agree with you that like western culture whatever we've i mean it's a nutty town it's no way to have a culture it's essentially a non-culture it's like it's not actually um uh so i hear that you're like there's like this deep curiosity you have about like what's it going to take to for the culture to turn into an actual culture that actually reveres spirit and understands that matter is an expression of spirit and not that it's like the end-all be-all of everything yes i mean because i think that would be the only way to reckon with um these other ways kind of runaway destructive forces which we may have already missed our off off-ramp uh you know in terms of uh interrupting that you know yes certainly i mean it's uh i guess something that interests me a question that interests me is um what is the purpose of evil like does evil have any purpose or is it just like this pointless thing that we should be angry and resentful at like is the only purpose of evil to attract grief and anger and resentment i mean i guess i've heard some buddhist perspectives there really isn't evil evil as such that evil is just ignorance in various forms but what's your what's what's your thinking on that well i guess my my general inclination is to hold it in such a way that the evil that i experience in my direct uh field so there's the evil of the that the collective is doing to itself there's the evil that people are doing specifically to me um like for example i was sexually abused as a child so like that was a very deep encounter with evil that i've had to reckon with um for me i've come to see all of that as um as something that compels me to shift my identity shift my perspective from what i previously thought it was um and the example that i always think about with this is have you ever seen the tv show westworld uh the new one or the yeah yeah yeah so the first the first season was particularly good in the first two seasons so like for example there's this android lady she's going through the motions of her life and she just gets she continually encounters this evil dude in black who's raping her murdering her again and again and again and again and weirdly enough he's actually doing it because he loves her and he wants her to be actually sentient and actually like aware of who she is and gosh darn the plan works eventually there's like so much um trauma and memory of pain that something in her wakes up and says like i am larger than this character that i seem to be i am much more powerful than this little limited character that i seem to be um and then more adventures ensue but i guess i just see it as that is what um consciousness is doing to itself like there's these extremes and um we are certainly at this very extreme point in our experience on earth certainly there were other times other cultures that were much more wise and are harmonious and we've gotten ourselves into this deeply extremely imbalanced depraved state where there's you know rape and plundering of psyches of resources of people all over the place and um to me it's like the evil just keeps coming out of some because in a deep deep sense out of love but trying to wake itself up like the dreamer in the dream that keeps thinking that it's separate that keeps thinking there's somebody to save there's somebody there's something to get there's something to win just keeps coming at itself and be like really do you want to keep holding that because as long as you do you're going gonna suffer honey so keep holding it here comes more suffering here comes more suffering until finally you're like i give up i i i just like go into like you know god is just this like freaky perpetually orgasming perpetually grieving laughing murdering birthing singularity and uh well so that's why i like mystery and magic rather than activism or anything because i i guess my theory if if if i can imagine any way that our culture renews or becomes wise comes harmonious and beautiful to me that happens through a uh a renaissance of of mystery magic and people getting in touch with the fact that they are in fact characters and a dream that god is dreaming and not um not super serious whatevers we've all been taking ourselves so seriously and it's like and this whole notion that um you know why are people so obsessed with material wealth well the more material wealth and power you have the better you can ensure your own survival why are we so obsessed with ensuring our own survival well we've had thousands of years of first dogmatic religion in the west you know christianity is saying you're gonna go to hell probably or science secularism saying there is nothing after death there's just you just disappear so people don't want to die but none of that is true that's just not true it's like there's a continuity of consciousness which is what all of the mystery schools all of the shamanic religions tibetan buddhism you know egyptian stuff is all about the continuity of consciousness and the adventure that happens when we die and that there's really no reason to fear death whatsoever in fact the cultures that were most successful throughout history at maintaining their independence from being enslaved or colonized were cultures that were super excited to die in battle um so it's like there's a way in which um of course like when i think about modern america like of course we're enslaved of course we have these like this sad you know consumer wage slave situation of course we're being poisoned by the government of course we're being controlled by propaganda like of course because we are all unwilling to die like we are all terrified of it and think that it's a great tragedy and will do anything to prevent it and oh no people might die from a virus we have to shut down all of society like the level of insanity that comes from the fear of death renders us slaves yeah so um beautiful um that's been like an hour of chatting i'm so happy to re-encounter you and i love what you're what you're bringing and uh yeah it's really fantastic um and i hope we get to hang out some more and chat more i'm gonna look into your uh school yeah yeah mystery school is fun thank you so much daniel it's been wonderful reconnecting all right cola we'll talk soon and uh have an amazing day
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.