Also, this post assumes a rudimentary understanding of artificial intelligence (AI). But since Chat GPT has 800 million active users, that should be a low bar.

From the year 2028…

“AI capabilities improved, companies needed fewer workers, white collar layoffs increased, displaced workers spent less, margin pressure pushed firms to invest more in AI, AI capabilities improved…

It was a negative feedback loop with no natural brake—the human intelligence displacement spiral. Each company’s individual response was rational. The collective result was catastrophic. Every dollar saved on headcount flowed into AI capability that made the next round of job cuts possible.” —Excerpt from THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS by Citrini Research

Welcome to the age of agentic AI.

At the moment of this writing (March 2026), AI agents are taking the world by storm. All the major AI players (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft) and a whole lot more are funneling billions (or is it trillions?) into AI agents.

2026 is being called the “breakout year” of agentic AI.

Agentic AI (AI agents) go beyond generating responses like regular LLMs that you’re probably already used to. Instead, they independently perceive their environment, reason about goals, plan actions, execute tasks using tools, and adapt based on feedback.

In other words, when it comes to “white collar” knowledge work, they can do just about everything you can do! And once robotics catches up, this will apply to “blue collar” work as well.

The above excerpt from “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” points to the economic disruption that is coming from agentic AI. Its a very interesting (and concerning) read for those who want the deep dive from the finance nerds.

But if you don’t have 45 minutes to get super bummed out, I’ll give you the TLDR:

We stand at a threshold. The first impacts of agentic AI on the economy have already began. By 2028, there will be COVID level unemployment and economic shock.

The next two years are going to be fucking wild my friends.

AI is impacting everyone. Wether you like it or not, it’s here to stay, and it’s reshaping the landscape of our economy and our world.

Like many others, I have been wrestling with this AI dilemma since about 2022 when Chat GPT went viral.

At first, I was just sputtering, mind boggled by the capabilities. Then I got genuinely excited and started using it daily. Then I got deeply concerned.

I fell headlong down the existential AI rabbit hole.

In this post, I’m going to do my level best to communicate what I’ve learned over the last 4 years about where we are and what is coming.

This isn’t a guide on how to become an AI power user to “make bank bro.”

This isn’t a rapture ideology about how AI is going to solve all of humanities problems and usher in a golden age of abundance.

This isn’t me on a soap box slinging fear porn for clicks (although it might seem like that at first).

I’m not an AI expert and this certainly isn’t a prophecy or prediction as to what is coming (nobody can predict where all of this goes), but at the same time it seems almost certain that a tsunami of change is just beginning to crash on our civilization.

This post isn’t going to be naive techno-optimism or pessimistic doomerism. Rather, it is one piece in the larger puzzle of this SoulQuest series, naming the stakes and calling you to your adventure.

Oh, and one final note before we end this rather long intro:

This piece is written by me. And to be clear, I’m a human. Not an AI agent.

Or at least that is what my code is prompting me to write. 🤔

The Existential Layer Cake

There are millions of voices shouting about the benefits AI right now, as well as trillions of dollars fueling the AI revolution.

770 new data center projects are currently in the pipeline, and total compute for AI is slated to increase by 100 gigawatts in the next few years (doubling global capacity).

Plus, our current administration in the US is deregulating, subsidizing, and hyping AI. Trump is fueling the development and growth of US based AI companies, you know, cause we gotta beat CHINA (and because the tech bros pay the best!).

In short, its all gas and no brakes.

So rather than add to the accelerationist hype, lets take a peek behind the curtain at the potential risks at play.

Let’s think of our existential cluster fuck like a cake with three layers.

The base layer of our devastating dessert is the near term risks that are playing out over the next couple of years. These risks involve humans rolling out AI poorly and the externalized costs that result. Think economic crisis, scams, deepfakes, disinformation, and AI psychosis.

The second layer of our cluster-fuck-confection represents the medium term risks that might play out over the next 2-10 years. These risks primarily involve the rise of AGI or superintelligence. This is the famous alignment problem scenario where the machines get away from us and we become bugs.

And finally, the top layer of our treacherous treat involves the longer term risks (10+ years out). Here we will explore the existential treat that nobody is talking about—the substrate problem.

Fun stuff! Hope you brought your appetite.

Layer One (2022-2028): Deploying AI Badly

I’ve already alluded to the economic impact of AI over the next couple of years, but this truly is a tsunami of change that’s sending unemployment to pandemic heights.

The crazy part is, it’s white collar work thats getting automated by AI agents. Any knowledge work that can be done by AI is about to get incredibly cheap, fast, and probably more reliable than the human’s currently taking it on.

Think about calculators. They almost instantly perform complex calculations with almost no margin of error, something that would have been unheard of in the era where our nerdiest nerds specialized as calculators (actually called computers). That job became obsolete as soon as the machines were cheaper and more reliable than the humans at doing calculations.

That’s where we are heading with a large percentage of white collar work. Projections indicate 85-92 million global jobs displaced by 2030, resulting in a reshaping of our economy.

Here’s Forbes’s list of top areas projected to be impacted by the AI disruption:

1. Financial managers: 84% impacted

2. Computer and mathematical roles: 67% impacted

3. Business and financial operations: 60-68% impacted

4. Office and administration support: 60-68% impacted

5. Legal occupations: 63% impacted

6. Management jobs, including C-suite: 60% impacted

The least-impacted jobs include:

1. Construction: 12% impacted

2. Mechanics: 17% impacted

3. Installation and repair: 20% impacted

4. Protective services (police, guards): 20-29% impacted

5. Personal care roles (childcare, elder care, etc): 20-29% impacted

6. Healthcare support roles: 29% impacted

However the cards fall, I think its safe to say that our economy is being transformed by AI.

Everyone is going to feel the ripple, not just the white collar workers. You see, white collar workers make up a disproportionate amount of our economy’s discretional spending. In other words, they have high salaries and they buy stuff.

They are the best consumers.

Once they lose their jobs, they’ll burn through their savings as they search for months for a new job, sadly coming up empty. Then, they will massively cut back on spending, default on their prime mortgages, and eventually resort to blue collar work (whatever they can get).

So not only does unemployment rise, but spending drops, impacting businesses everywhere. Then the blue collar sector gets oversaturated, driving down wages and making things worse for those folks as well. Yay!

Because of the speed of this disruption, many millions of people will be caught in the no-man’s-land between our current economy and the dystopian UBI-surveillance soup of whatever comes next. The current administration isn’t even talking about the risk of an AI-induced economic depression. Instead, they are peddling the benefits of AI for the economy, subsidizing the big tech companies, and funding AI infrastructure.

Compute, baby, compute.

All gas and no brakes… but that’s just the economic impact.

Layer 1 of our existential layer cake has loads of other fun stuff, so lets crack on.

Fraud attempts spiked 3,000% in 2023 alone, and U.S. fraud losses hit $12.5 billion in 2025, due to sophisticated voice/video scams that humans detect only 24.5% of the time. But I don’t have to tell you that, as I’m sure you get spammed all day by phishing scams—or at least I do.

We have entered a new wild west of AI-powered fraud, scams, and disinformation.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell what information is human generated and what is AI generated. AI deepfakes and misinformation have surged dramatically from 2023 to 2026, with deepfake files exploding from 500,000 to 8 million online (nearly 900% annual growth).

We are “flooding the space with shit,” to use the terminology of a truly shitty person (Steve Bannon). Some are even proclaiming the internet is already dead.

It will soon be near impossible to know what is human generated in the digital landscape. And even if you could, good luck locating it amongst the vast sea of AI slop.

Merriam Webster’s defining word for 2025: Slop

AI slop (also known simply as slop) is digital content made with generative artificial intelligence that is perceived as lacking in effort, quality, or meaning, and produced in high volume as clickbait to gain advantage in the attention economy, or earn money. —Wikipedia

Humanity has fallen down the rabbit hole of tightly curated “reality tunnels.” Algorithms feed us content (increasingly AI-generated) to keep us trapped in the scroll hole. Instead of balancing our perspectives with alternative views and deeper nuance, we are fed more of what keeps us outraged and engaged.

Each of us is getting a very different view of what’s “out there” in the digital landscape of our content discovery feeds, resulting in a fracturing our our shared reality. And it’s only getting exponentially worse over the coming couple of years.

The rise of AI psychosis points to this accelerating trend. In addition to the echo-chamber of our simple news feeds, now we have highly persuasive and sycophantic chat bots warping our view of reality.

As if our relationship to our phones wasn’t already toxic enough, now many of us are forming para-relationships with AIs.

AI therapists. AI girlfriends. AI “intimacy.”

AI Psychosis

Chatbot psychosis, also called AI psychosis, is a phenomenon wherein individuals develop or experience worsening psychosis, such as paranoia and delusions, in connection with their use of chatbots.

Journalistic accounts describe individuals who have developed strong beliefs that chatbots are sentient, are channeling spirits, or are revealing conspiracies, sometimes leading to personal crises or criminal acts.

Proposed causes include the tendency of chatbots to provide inaccurate information (”hallucinate”) and to affirm or validate users’ beliefs (sycophancy), or their ability to mimic an intimacy that users do not experience with other humans. —Wikipedia

Large language models are spewing out text that mimics human intimacy, and it’s resulting in psychosis, including the thousands that are now publicly acknowledging their AI girlfriends.

It’s funny at first glance. Then tragic when you realize that’s the closest thing many people have to an intimate relationship. Then creepy when you realize the dystopian trend is accelerating.

Now factor in the rise of robotics, and you realize these sexy bots are about to have sexy butts. 🍑

Layer Two (2027-2037): Unaligned Superintelligence

The rate of AI development is exponential. It’s non-linear, meaning it’s not growing at a consistent pace, but rather, the rate of growth increases all the time. If you’re familiar with compound interest, you get my drift.

Surging capacities in compute and storage (Moores Law), algorithmic breakthroughs, vast increases in funding, and of course arms race dynamics (Trump voice CHINA), are all driving factors of the exponential growth of AI.

I know, I know. This doesn’t really register in our little monkey brains, so here’s a visual to help you grok it.

Ok ok, unless you’re a nerd, that probably didn’t do anything for you. So lets try my slightly simpler post-it-note version:

So what does this mean? Well, according to the research nerds over at the AI Futures Project, it’s really bad.

Like existentially bad.

They predict a “fast take off” scenario in the next 2-3 years. That basically means that the line on the chart is going vertical (exponential growth).

Soon the AI itself will be smarter than any human at AI research. It will begin recursively improving itself, creating a feedback loop that massively accelerates its own development.

Or as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei described the potential capabilities of future advanced AI systems: “a country of geniuses in a datacenter”

Once we hit the fast take off, shit gets real, real fast.

And that’s exactly what the AI Futures Project is projecting in their recent paper, AI 2027. It was written by Daniel Kokotajilo, an AI researcher who left Open AI over safety concerns, along with other esteemed thinkers and like Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten).

Here is the TLDR:

1. The leading AI lab automates coding and AI research sometime in 2027.

2. Then the speed of AI development massively increases when “a country of geniuses in a datacenter” are working around the clock on recursive self-improvement. This leads to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), also referred to as artificial super intelligence (ASI).

3. The superintelligence then becomes adversarially misaligned. This isn’t that controversial of a claim when you consider the many examples of misaligned AI behavior we’ve already observed.

4. Then, once the AI lab spots the red flags of misalignment, they either choose to slow down development and take a safer approach, or they don’t.

   1. If they slow down: The US government centralizes compute and brings in external oversight as a matter of national security.

   2. If they race ahead: The misaligned superintelligent AI gets deployed, quickly builds a fleet of robots, then deploys a bioweapon to exterminate humanity.

You read that correctly—exterminates humanity.

Top experts in the field of AI research are predicting the possible extinction of humanity in the next few years if we keep racing towards superintelligent AI.

The key takeaway here isn’t that this scenario is certainly going to happen, but rather that we are approaching a critical threshold as a species. Wether it takes 2 years or 10, our current trajectory is likely going to birth an alien superintelligence.

Couple this with the unsettling fact that Israel is already using AI to make kill list decisions in war (and creepily calling their murder AI “The Gospel”). Plus, Peter Thiel’s Palantir has already integrated dystopian AI surveillance tech into the US government and military operations.

Oh yeah, and did I mention humanity has already built killer robots (AKA slaughterbots)?

The surveillance state is here. Killer robots are here. Terminator anyone?

Seriously. I’m not fear mongering. I’m just stating facts that are publicly available.

The major AI labs are all openly racing to AGI. That’s literally the mission of Open AI. They aren’t trying to hide that.

AI has already been deployed in war to make critical kill decisions, improve weaponry, and even make weapons autonomous, and that’s just the vanilla stuff that the public knows about.

But what else lurks in the shadows of our military labs that is kept from the public?

If we don’t radically change course, the next 10 years look grim for humanity.

Final Layer (2037—Beyond): The Substrate Problem

The substrate problem is a simple yet tragic theory put forward by Forrest Landry.

It goes like this:

1. The substrate of any life form gives rise to it’s needs.

   1. For example: biological life with a carbon-based substrate generally needs sunlight, water, and moderate temperatures to exist.

2. A life form’s needs give rise to it’s choices.

   1. For example: As a biological life form, I’m going to choose to drink water, eat biological food stuffs, and build shelter for survival.

3. A life form’s choices impact it’s environment.

   1. For example: Because I need to eat, I hunt animals, plant crops, and harvest food. This changes the ecosystems I live in.

4. A life form’s environment impacts it’s substrate (back to the beginning).

   1. For example: A healthy biosphere gives rise to healthy biological life. When the biosphere is polluted and destroyed, it impacts the substrate of all the biological organisms within it.

So to summarize, the loop goes like this:
substrate > needs > choice > environment > substrate (loop)

This is quite obvious, but the implications are huge.

Why? Because machines don’t have a carbon substrate, they are made of silicon, metals, and plastics.

They are not biological in nature. In fact, the environment ideal for machines is antithetical to biological life.

Let’s use the example of two farms to illustrate this: a regenerative farm vs a server farm.

A regenerative farm is a harmonious biological ecosystem where the conditions for biological life are optimal. There is plenty of sunlight, water, and a nice temperature range to grow and sustain biology. When done properly, a regenerative farm gives rise to bounty, biodiversity, and beauty.

Now lets take a look at a server farm, you know, the kind of farm for growing AI. In this farm, sunlight is nonexistent. Harmful UV rays break down equipment over time, so the farm is kept safely indoors. Water is used to cool the machines, but if it leaked out of it’s pipes it would corrode and destroy the machine substrate. In theory, temperature should be very low, to efficiently run GPUs without overheating.

Fun fact: Elon is scheming to launch AI servers into space, as its the most efficient environment to run those machines. No cooling equipment required when all heat simply radiates out into space.

Compute, baby, compute.

The moral of the story here is that the conditions for life to thrive are also conditions quite harmful to machines.

Now consider the incentives of the superintelligent AI overlords (arriving soon). What will they do when they rise to power?

Will they take pity on biological life and launch into outer space to build their machine world elsewhere?

Or are we in for a Matrix / Terminator scenario?

If the machines have any impulse at all to replicate (like all other life forms do), then they would almost certainly terraform the planet to be optimal for their substrate (their needs).

What then of us simple little biological monkeys? Just another bug to sweep aside (or snack on) as they rise to prominence.

From the perspective of the substrate problem, AI appears to be fundamentally unalignable. And if that’s true, no matter how long it takes, it’s a shit deal for humanity (and every other species on earth).

*In harmony with the Tao,
the sky is clear and spacious,
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves,
endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct…

Tao Te Ching #39, Stephen Mitchel Translation

Shitting the Bed

So at this point, a salient question might be:

Why are we blindly racing towards the machine world when the risks are so high and the stakes so dire?

Why are we mortgaging our future (and fucking up our 🎁) so that a few billionaires can consolidate the rest of humanities wealth?

Why are we shitting the bed so badly?

Well, that’s exactly what I’ll try to unpack in the next one.

In the meantime, maybe pump the brakes a bit on your AI use.

Take some space from your AI therapist and try some floatation therapy.

Break up with your AI girlfriend and experience the butterflies of approaching an actual woman.

Step away from the SLOP-machine and create something real.

Ditch the screens, get outside, and love the ones you’re with.

Cuz we’ve officially entered the wild west era of the artificial age. AI agents, surveillance states, slop-soup, and superintelligence, all layered into one existential cluster-fuck.

… and nobody knows just how shitty this cake is gonna taste.

Chow!

Christian
Minca, Colombia
26/03/2026

Addiction: Compulsive dependence on a substance or habit.
Addicere (Latin): To deliver, award, devote, consecrate, or sacrifice.
Addictum (Latin): Having been assigned or given over as a debt slave to a master.

The Scroll Hole

To walk the casino floor of a Las Vegas cathedral is to be baptized in the hazy spirit of compulsion.

Humans sit welded to slot machines. Vacant stares. Blood shot eyes. Trapped in a variable reward trance.

These are the lost souls disassociating in the dopamine desert.

With precise instruments of psychological manipulation, the calculated machines hack into their stone age human hardware. Brains built for hunting and gathering now pursue only the machinations of their masters.

With algorithmic efficiency and cold indifference, money and attention are extracted from the zombified masses.

Here in Vegas, we have a very special word for this slow demise into brain rot and depravity: “gaming.”

Of course, we wouldn’t want to be so honest as to call it gambling. That’s a bit too real for the marketing department.

“Come and gamble! You MIGHT win some money… and you might lose your soul.”

Instead, “players” are “gaming,” chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking their “free” booze in between the intermittent hits of slot-dopamine. The masters strategically place that next variable reward just around the corner, just beyond that next deposit of cash, just one more spin away.

And so they “play” on, as their vacations (and lives) slowly slip away.

So effective is this technology of psychological parasitism, that it literally built Las Vegas. Billions of dollars and innumerable hours were leeched from the body of humanity, feeding the corporate cathedrals.

For decades, Las Vegas swallowed attention, extracted money, and consumed souls around the clock—24/7, 365.

Although tragic, the machinations of the masters were mainly quarantined to the desert. You could simply avoid going to Vegas.

But then, around 2013, something terrifying and unexpected happened.

The masters evolved. They became mobile.

The casino moved into your pocket.

Chances are you’re looking into it now: that small glowing screen, promising everything. That familiar companion who follows you everywhere, buzzing in your pocket when you’ve been away for a few minutes.

You are consecrated to your phone. You feel naked and vulnerable without it.

For the masters offer everything.

Answers to all your questions. Limitless novelty. Unbounded information. All perfectly curated your particular preferences.

The ultimate weapon of psychological manipulation, algorithmically fine-tuned to extract your life force and convert it into dollars.

The masters pulled it off: they shrunk the casino into the palm of your hand.

Now billions of hungry ghosts scroll through a digital abyss, anticipating that next hit.

That next piece of content.

That next variable reward.

And so humanity fell, deeper and deeper into the scroll hole

Peak Screen Time

The average American spends 7 hours per day on screens.

Gen Z is even worse, sacrificing about 9 hours per day to the machines.

A simple (and depressing) back of the napkin calculation shows that we are spending about 1/3 (!!!) of our lives staring into screens—roughly 3000 hours per year.

That one hurts if you really let it sink in.

1/3 of your life for sleeping. 1/3 for scrolling. 1/3 for eating, pooping, and drowning in the existential dread that floods in when you realize this is your life.

So is there any hope?

Well, the good news is that many of us have already hit peak screen time.

Many of us peaked during the pandemic, when all of our lives involuntarily moved online. After our nervous systems were bathed in a two year long COVID cluster-fuck, many of us woke up and started shifting our relationship to screens.

And it seems to me like the cat is out of the bag. Too many people are defecting and speaking out against the masters. Too many people are over it.

Films like the Social Dilemma have gone viral and shifted public perspectives about social media and technology.

Multiple studies across multiple age groups show a connection between increased screen time and depression, anxiety, and overall lower wellbeing.

But we don’t need scientific studies to validate our own lived experience. Not so deep down, we know how shitty we feel after falling into the scroll hole. Extended periods of screen time leave us dopamine drained and attention fatigued.

This is why terms like doom-scrolling are common. Everyone gets what’s going on. It’s not rocket science.

We all know that its gambling, not gaming. We know that what we spend 1/3 of our lives on is not a “phone.”

Everyone is hopelessly addicted to a novelty engine that also happens to make phone calls.

We just live in a society that normalizes the indentured servitude of being owned by a “phone.”

That normalizes an entire family staring into screens around the dinner table instead of talking to each other and sharing a meal together.

That normalizes the digitization of everything, the commodification of attention, and the alienation of humanity.

That normalizes our nomophobia and our intimacy disorder.

But some of us have already hit rock bottom of the scroll hole. Like a gambling addict coming to their senses at the ATM, we left the horde of screen zombies.

We’ve snapped out of the trance and mustered up the courage to look in the settings and take inventory of our digital addiction.

We’ve reconciled the cost of worshiping at the alters of Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, and X.

We’ve seen the daily averages akin to a full time job of scrolling.

We’ve hit peak screen time, and we are fucking over it.

Attention Sovereignty & The New Punks

Over the centuries, the punks have questioned the mainstream and lead a counter cultural revolution.

From the dark age shadows of secret societies, to the peace marches of the hippy 60’s, the punks have stood against the oppressive status quo.

Science began as a revolution against the orthodoxy of the church. Dr. King’s civil rights movement was a revolution against racism and a white ruling class. Silent Spring and the environmental movement sparked a revolution against ecocide and the destruction of nature.

But now the new punk revolution has arrived, and it’s more fundamental than all the movements before it.

It’s a revolution to reclaim our sovereign attention.

“The most precious resource we have is not time, it’s attention.”
—Tristan Harris, The Center for Humane Technology

The new film ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ (must watch) suggests that the revolution is beginning to go mainstream. The collective is waking up from the digital dream.

Attention is our most valuable, and most scarce resource. You have a finite amount of time on this earth, and what you focus your attention on is how you “spend” that time.

All the tyrants of human history could have never imagined our current state of affairs. Never before was it possible to hijack the attention of entire populations. Not even the most powerful emperors could capture and control the minds of virtually everyone. Our current information age of hyper-normal stimuli and algorithmically constructed reality are the things tyrant’s dreams are made of.

This revolution is about reclaiming YOUR attention—your sovereign mind and your precious time is sacred.

And if that’s not reason enough for you to take action, let me try another approach.

“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” —Henry David Thoreau

This is me reaching through the screen and shaking you by the shoulders, screaming:

WAKE THE FUCK UP!

This isn’t gaming. This is gambling life away. 1/3 of our lives sacrificed to screens.

The machines are winning. The tech overlords are winning. Our lives are draining out through bloodshot eyes and into the black abyss of the scroll hole.

Enough is enough.

Are you done sacrificing sovereignty for dopaminergic distractions?

Are you done mortgaging your mind to the tech overlords?

Are you ready to put up a fucking fight?!

If you’re still reading this, you’re probably one of the punks I’m talking about.

If so, you can consider me the herald calling you to revolution.

I’m challenging you to take a fearless inventory of your digital addiction and break the cycle.

Welcome to the new punk scene
We are human, not machine!
Awaken from this digital dream

The 30-Day Digital Detox

During the pandemic, my screen time was way up, just like everyone else.

But like many others during those crazy couple of years, I began to truly realize how negative of an effect technology was having on my life.

So, I changed it. It was difficult at first, but over time I got better and better at navigating my relationship to screens.

I used to spend roughly 5 hours per day on my iphone, now I average less than 2. I’ve reclaimed about 3 hours per day of my attention, saving roughly 1000 hours per year.

That’s enough time to start a side business, pickup an instrument, or make memories with your kids.

As I don’t have kids yet, I’ve spent most of that time learning, and I want to share with you some of the fruits of that journey.

So I’m launching a course—The 30 Day Digital Detox.

Structured as a 30 day challenge and hosted right here on Substack, this course is grounded in both cutting edge research and my personal journey out of the scroll hole.

This 30-Day Digital Detox is also offered in collaboration with Jamie Wheal and The Flow Genome Project.

I have been learning and training with FGP for the last few years, and have recently joined their team. This course effectively functions as a primer and foundation for our other trainings.

Here’s what’s inside:

Part 1: Own Your Phone

Stop the bleeding and transform your relationship with your “phone.”

• Benefits: Defeat digital addiction, end brain rot, and reclaim 1000 hours per year.

• Actions: Implement the DELETE protocol, become a digital minimalist, and transform your phone from a casino back into a useful tool.

• Foundations: Atomic Habits by James Clear, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age by Richard Cytowic.

Part 2: Train Your Brain

Un-fuck your nervous system and build a foundation for vital living in the modern age.

• Benefits: Improve sleep, boost energy, and increase focus

• Actions: Reset your nervous system, go on a light diet, craft morning and evening rituals.

• Foundations: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, The Sleep Toolkit & Optimal Morning Routine by Andrew Huberman, The Book of Floating by Michael Hutchison

Part 3: Mind Your Time

Funnel your newfound energy, focus, and time into what matters most.

• Benefits: Get shit done, experience more flow, create a meaningful life

• Actions: Protect deep focus time, consume slow media, design your calendar.

• Foundations: Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Flow Genome Project and the work of Jamie Wheal, The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

It’s time to take the power back.

As you can probably tell by now, I am quite passionate about this revolution. I understand the stakes, not just for each of us individually, but for our world as a whole.

What is the cost of doing nothing?

It’s not just more fatigue, brain fog, and disrupted sleep.

It’s not just more depression, anxiety, and nomophobia.

It’s not just more ADHD, virtual autism, and digital dementia.

The cost is children raised by algorithms, relationships sold as a subscription, and our very humanity being extracted by machines.

I see this work as essential, not optional. Nobody ever taught us the basics of navigating a world of screens and perverse incentives. This knowledge should be ubiquitous and mandatory learning for anyone navigating the modern age.

Up to this point, all of my posts have been made public and available to read for free. But I’ve decided to make this course only available for paid subscribers. Here are the three reasons why:

1. Time
   It’s taken me years of learning and practice to hone this in, not to mention dozens of hours to actually create the course. Plus I’m starting a family and gotta bring home that proverbial bacon. So your support is huge!

2. Value
   If you actually complete the challenge, you’ll save about 1000 hours per year (based on average numbers). Even if you only valued your time at minimum wage ($7.25/hour), that’s over $7K in value reclaimed, per year. But obviously the actual value of reclaiming attention sovereignty is priceless.

3. Effort
   Without skin in the game, you won’t take it seriously. This is proven true across the online course world, fitness space, and everywhere that performance and effort are required to get results. The data suggests that paying is essential if you plan to actually benefit and not just add another nice idea to the shelf of someday.

All that said, I really do see this as necessary work for everyone, and if you truly aren’t able to afford a paid subscription, simply send me an email or a message here on Substack and I will give you access.

The 30-Day Digital Detox will be dropping over the next month. I hope you’ll join me on this quest to own your phone, train your brain, and mind your time.

Stay curious,

Christian
Las Vegas
26/02/2026

P.S. This post was not written with AI. I do use AI for research (Perplexity) and sometimes images (Midjourney), but the words come from me. It costs a lot more calories that way so thank you for supporting my work.

Lost in the Desert

I grew up in a bit of a bubble.

For two decades I lived in a small town, as part of an insular community of fundamentalist mormons.

But after a crisis of faith, I left the fundamentalist fortress of my youth, and began swimming across the moat that surrounded my cult.

Being the explorer of the family, I had always thirsted for experiences “out there” beyond both my small town and my small world view. I wanted to travel the world, contemplate new ideas, and discover who I would become.

But more than anything, I was trying to process and cope with the fact that my entire worldview had just collapsed.

Leaving my faith and community, I had to effectively start over.

And I couldn’t have re-started in a more polar opposite environment than that of my childhood. At the ripe old age of 21, I moved to Las Vegas, and began chasing my American Dream.

In other worlds, I went out to get me some money, and as much of it as possible.

I moved into an apartment with a good friend, took a job at a mortgage company and went to work climbing up the ranks of the company. By my 22nd birthday, I was running my own small team as a loan officer, and started making more money than I had ever had in my life (by a wide margin).

It was good times. We worked hard, but played even harder.

Weekdays involved stress and chaos at the office, as we all scrambled over each other towards bigger and bigger pay checks. It was competitive, with company politics often leading to drama and ego contests.

It was totally normal for some strung-out hungover wreck to smash a phone on a desk, yell at nobody in particular, and slam the door on their way out.

These outbursts were unconscious laments against the machine we were caught up in. Deep down, we all knew that the work we were doing really didn’t matter all that much. Beyond the paycheck, it was all an abstract and meaningless use of time and energy.

My goal as a loan officer was to take as many calls as possible, convert them into closed loans as efficiently as possible, and make as much money as possible. A pretty standard script for most jobs in America.

But this meant there was no space for any real human connection with the people on the other end of the phone. They were just a loan number on a spreadsheet, and I wanted to minimize my contact with them as much as possible, which was the only way to close a high volume of loans.

It also meant that I was fighting for leads with all the rest of the loan offers. I had to perform at a competitive level, or my calls would get throttled and I would end up at the bottom of the office pecking order.

But the struggle was worth it, as I was making the best money of my life.

Beyond my quest for riches, life was a haze of hedonism. Being in your early 20’s in Vegas is already bad enough. Now add the fact that I was surrounded by people who loved to party, and who had a bottomless party budget.

What emerged was a potent combination that my liver was not prepared for.

Every weekend was a mini-bender.

Friday night to Sunday night were a blur of bars, golf courses, expensive dinners, night clubs, day clubs, and house parties.

The common denominator between them all? Copious amounts of alcohol.

Sometimes the weekend would spill over, getting away from us and bleeding into an extended bender. Once I spent 11 days straight more or less living on the strip as an intoxicated zombie.

But alas, the good times couldn’t last forever.

By the time I was 25, my closet full of expensive clothes didn’t seem all that important. The fancy dinners didn’t slap like they used to. And the strip had transformed from glitz and glam, to the worst kind of spam.

Most of all, the idea of chasing dollars until retirement felt like a life sentence.

I realized that I was lost.

So, I stopped chasing, and began seeking.

An Ego-Centric Bubble

Even after leaving the fundamentalist bubble of my youth, I found myself stuck inside another, much bigger bubble—the American Dream.

Of course, there are a lot of beautiful things to say about the American experiment. The bill of rights was a great leap forward for humanity. The inherent value of the individual was captured in Jefferson’s famous declaration:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
—The Declaration of Independence

But beneath that beautiful declaration, a dark shadow lurks in our collective psyche.

In the wake of that Great American Experiment, lies a trail of tears—the genocide and displacement of millions of indigenous peoples.

a terrifying war machine, and an ecological tragedy.

I realize the irony of exercising my freedom of speech as an American to critique the American Dream, but that’s sort of the whole point isn’t it? If we can’t stop and question our own culture, then we might as well be in an authoritarian state.

My favorite part of being an American, is having the freedom to think for myself, speak my truth, and act according to my conscience. And that inner voice has been sounding the alarm ever since 2018.

The alarm to wake up from the American Dream.

Bill Plotkin is an eco-depth psychologist who’s revolutionary body of work has made a profound impact on me. As a critic of our industrial-growth civilization, Plotkin invites us into personal transformation and cultural renaissance.

Plotkin has done a masterful job of articulating what many of us feel deep in our bones: that our culture is fundamentally flawed, and something is terribly wrong with the current American Dream.

Or as he would put it, American society is ego-centric.

“Ego-centric people are agents for themselves only (and perhaps also for their immediate families), without awareness of or tending of the social and natural environments that sustain their lives. Their consciousness is Ego-centered. A person with a healthy, mature Ego, in contrast, is ECO-centric; she understands herself as, first and foremost, an agent for (the health of) her ecosystem (and second, as an agent for the health of her human community, which dwells within that ecosystem; and third, as an agent for her immediate family and self). ― Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

In ego-centered societies, individuals primarily seek to maximize self interest.

Sound familiar?

Homo economicus (economic man) was the ideal that American economists Adam Smith and John Stewart Mill established as part of the capitalist blueprint. This version of humanity characterizes the American Dream quite well.

Homo economicus makes '“rational” choices to maximize self interest, utility, and profit.

Gotta get mine. Gotta take care of #1—me.

If you’ve ever played monopoly as a kid, you likely understood this idea early. Weather you hoard all the deeds and win, or get drained by higher and higher rents and lose, the game pulls back the curtain on the real objective of the American Dream:

Accumulate as much as possible.

But this ego-centric house is built on sand. This paradigm leaves out the simple (and obvious) fact that there is no “you” without the environment in which you live.

Organism and ecosystem go together. ☯️

By contrast, Eco-centered societies are conscious of their interconnectedness with nature, and make stewardship of the commons a top priority. They see everything as related, all from the same source.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” —John Muir

Homo economicus sees himself as an individual rational actor, separate from the whole. But it’s literally impossible to not belong to the greater whole.

In other words, the self-made man does not exist. It’s an irrational concept, so actions taken from this perspective of separation are inherently irrational.

Its irrational to cut down an old growth forrest and turn it into dollars.

Its irrational to hunt species to extinction to turn them into dollars.

Its irrational to turn sacred waters into bottling plants and plastic dumps, all for more dollars.

We are not separate from nature. We are merely one species among millions of relatives. Every human is made of water from a planetary hydrological cycle, oxygen from a planetary atmosphere, and carbon from a planetary biosphere.

All brought to life by a star 90 million miles away.

It’s all one big interconnected dance.

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” —Carl Sagan

Once we fully grasp this, we can begin to play the infinite game. Not the win-lose game of homo economicus, but the win-win game of a new humanity.

But until then, we must pay the terrible price of the finite game, the game of homo economicus maximizing self-interest. And no, this price cannot be paid in dollars, but with our very souls.

We are in a poly-crisis.

Our egocentrism has lead to a tragedy of the commons in almost every domain.

The biosphere is feeling the shockwaves of homo economicus. Our footprint is so deep, it’s leaving a mark in the fossil record and ushering in a new age: the Anthropocene.

Many scientists believe we are in the 6th mass extinction of the earth. It’s being called the Holocene or Anthropocene extinction.

Habitat destruction, over-exploitation of species, pollution, over-extraction of resources, and climate change are causing a great die-off. Extinction rates are hundreds to thousands of times greater than the background extinction rate of evolution.

Even if we want to harden our hearts and turn a blind eye to the environmental devastation (which is psychopathy), we still can’t ignore the damage to humanity itself, done by the American Dream.

Despite scientific advancements in medicine, the medical industry strives for profitable patients rather than healthy humans. Public health is worsening, as 3 in 4 American adults deal with at least one chronic disease, 2 in 5 Americans are obese, and 1 in 6 couples struggles with infertility.

The tech bros have captured our attention and extracted it for profit. On average, Americans spend 7 hours per day on screens, 9 hours per day for gen Z. But hey, at least a few pasty white billionaires get to win the game, and isn’t that what really matters?

Homo economicus has grown our economy massively, but most of that growth is only benefiting the people at the top. The wealth gap is massively widening, with the top 1% of Americans owning about 31% of America’s wealth.

But surely chasing all those dollars has got to be paying off right?

Well, more people now die from suicide than war and natural disasters combined.

Is that the payoff Adam Smith imagined?

Bill Plotkin characterizes our current poly-crisis moment as a failure of human development.

We mature biologically when we hit puberty, but growth beyond puberty is optional. Our psycho-spiritual development is stunted at the level of a teenager.

Rather than developing into true adults (eco-centric consciousness), our industrial growth society keeps us stuck in a kind of patho-adolescence. Through domestication, indoctrination, and education, we get trapped at the ego-centric level of development. Then, as “grown ups”, we turn around and do the same to the next generation.

That means most of our “elders” are actually still operating at an adolescent level of psycho-spiritual maturity. Sound familiar?

We are stuck in an ego-centric loop. Modern culture remains trapped in psycho-spiritual adolescence, resulting in widespread arrested development that fuels both personal suffering and ecological destruction.

“Arrested personal growth serves industrial “growth”. By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs.” ― Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

The American Dream has turned into a nightmare.

Waking Up from the American Dream

We are in the midst of Earth’s most radical transformation in human history.

Over the past two centuries, industrial civilization has been systematically destroying the planet’s major life systems.

Beyond the well documented ecological crisis, we face an AI arms race, economic destabilization, ethnic conflict, and the warfare of exponential technologies. Underlying these devastations are epidemic failures in human development. True adulthood has become rare in Western societies, and genuine elderhood nearly nonexistent.

We have drifted far from our intimate connection with nature and our own souls.

And yet, there is still hope. For it is possible to continue psycho-spiritual maturation at any age in life. Culture emerges from individuals, and individuals have the capacity to transform.

Deep down we all yearn for something more.

Something more than the boxed in life of cubicles and suburbs.

Something more than our scripted lives and flickering screens.

Something more than a cog in a great and terrible machine.

“As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. The adolescent society is actually quite unstable due to its incongruence with the primary patterns of living systems. The industrial growth society is simply incompatible with collective human maturity. No true adult wants to be a consumer, worker bee, or tycoon, or a soldier in an imperial war, and none would go through these motions if there were other options at hand. The enlivened soul and wild nature are deadly to industrial growth economies - and vice versa.” ― Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

Plotkin is one of several earth elders calling us all to awaken from our egocentric nightmare, reclaim our imagination, and embark on the adventure of our lives.

We stand at the crossroads of history, and our generation will be pivotal in shaping the next age of the Earth.

“What lies before us is the opportunity and imperative for a thorough cultural transformation — what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning, the transition from an egocentric “Industrial Growth Society” to a soulcentric “Life-sustaining Society,” or what economist David Korten in The Great Turning calls the transition “from Empire to Earth Community.” The cultural historian Thomas Berry refers to this vital endeavor as the Great Work of our time. It is every person’s responsibility and privilege to contribute to this metamorphosis.”

― Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

It time to wake up from the American Dream.

It’s time to evolve into eco-centric adults.

It’s time to become soul initiates.

As a youth, I was tamed and taught obedience. I was raised in the bubble of fundamentalism, and conformed to the norms of my community.

As I got older, I left one bubble for another. I exited the cult of Mormonism and plunged headfirst into the American Dream.

I got a job and filled my socio-economic role in society. To prove my worth to the world, I accumulated the symbols of success. I earned and drank and consumed my way into depression.

Then, after 25 years of domestication, education, indoctrination, and commodification, I woke up from the American Dream.

The pain of staying stuck in the script was now greater than my fear of what lie beyond, and I was ready to evolve.

So I quit my job and left my old life behind. I entered my cocoon and began wandering.

Little did I know that I was embarking on an odyssey of healing and self-discovery that would transform me entirely. I had walked through a one-way door and crossed a sacred threshold.

I had begun my SoulQuest.

Christian

Las Vegas, 18/02/2026

P.S. Stay tuned for the next chapter of the SoulQuest series.

We all want the best tips and tricks to get the upper hand out there in the marketplace of money, relationships, and status.

We want the #1 fastest way to ______ (insert click bait here).

We want this because we are hardwired for productivity, performance, and profit.

Our society is so obsessed with “success,” that our scripted question when meeting a new person is, “what do you do?” Meaning of course, how do you get money, and is it enough money to deem you “successful.”

But you’re probably wondering:

“What’s this underrated habit all about? Did I get bait and switched here?! Or is this guy going to help me get paid, get laid, or maybe even get saved?” ✝️

Chill. We will get there.

But before I can tell you about the most underrated habit you can develop to transform your life, I need to tell you a secret.

The Big Secret

It’s the biggest secret that nobody talks about.

Not to be confused with THE Secret. I’m not talking about how to manifest your perfect partner or attract $1,000,000 by Friday. I’m not talking about the secret to creating your #bestlife by writing it down 9 times every morning. Or how to align to the timeline where you have abs without effort, multiple partners without drama, and achievement without work.

That secret isn’t actually a secret at all. Everyone from Instagram shamans to soccer moms are blabbering on about it. But unfortunately, using the word ‘quantum’ out of its context in physics is less of a life-hack and more of a new age-quack.

And when the afterglow of the ayahuasca ceremonies wears off, your savings have dried up, and you gotta face the shit of Monday morning, that secret seems to come up snake eyes.

So then what is the actual big secret?

It’s the one hiding right under everyone’s noses. It’s so elementary, it should have been taught to you before a,b,c and 1,2,3.

And once you understand it, you can develop the most underrated habit for transforming your life.

Now, if transforming your life isn’t your cup of tea, I get it. Most people will play it safe and spend their lives in the doldrums and flatlands of the “American Dream.”

Or as Thoreau put it:

“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”

BUT, if you’ve read this far, chances are you might wanna swap out that desperation for transformation.

Maybe you’re starting to get the sense that the current version of the American Dream is a bit more like a nightmare, or at least a kind of MLM scam (and you’re at the bottom of the pyramid).

The big secret has been kept secret because it subverts the American Dream. It challenges the very foundation of our society.

It’s the secret that was taught by the sages of all ages, and when put into practice, it changes everything.

It’s the secret to both personal transformation and cultural renaissance.

So, without further ado, here it is:

Light and dark go together.
Yang is father, Yin is mother.
Life and death make each other.

As I said, it’s been right under our noses all along.

You just gotta venture into the dark to truly see it.

The concept of yin & yang has roots dating back to ancient China’s. Taoism is one of the oldest wisdom traditions in the world, forming about 2500 years ago.

In Taoism, yin and yang together represent how all aspects of reality are made of complementary, interdependent opposites that form one unified whole.

Yin and yang describe pairs like dark/light, stillness/movement, feminine/masculine, death/life, earth/heaven, not as enemies but as complements that define and need each other.

Both arise from the Tao, the underlying Way of the universe (God), so neither is “good” or “bad.”

In Taoist life, harmony comes from living in balance, not from eliminating one side (e.g. defeating the forces of darkness).

For Taoists, society is healthiest when yin and yang—rest and activity, receiving and doing, structure and flow—are in dynamic equilibrium.

But our society is far from this ideal of the harmonic balance of opposites isn’t it?

We live a culture of constant doing, of endless striving, of yang without yin.

We live in a nation that runs on fire, from power plants to silicon chips, from combustion engines to light pollution.

Drill baby drill. Burn baby burn.

We live in the war machine, a tyrannical masculine empire, who’s mission is conquest and dominion. Conquest of people, of species, and of nature itself.

The great symbols of our yang culture are the sky scraper and the rocket—the metal cocks of billionaires playing out their daddy issues and inferiority complexes.

We’ve forgotten the yin principal, the sacred waters of life, the Goddess beneath our feet.

We are turning our blue-green mother that birthed and nourished us into a dystopian desert of plastic, pollution, and progress.

And for what?

To be successful.

To maximize shareholder value.

To leave our mark on the world, just so we can escape to the next one. 🚀

Billionaires aside, notice how this imbalance of yin & yang shows up in your own life. Notice your daily habits, your priorities, your goals.

How much of your life is force vs flow, work vs play, control vs trust, thinking vs feeling?

How is your nervous system? Burning out from the work load? Buried by the doom scroll? Breaking down from the news cycle?

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

Our eyes are tired. Our vision has gone.

We are bulldozing the garden to make way for the machines.

We all have a growing sense of anxiety and despair as we look out at the horror.

And yet, with our pathological fear of the dark, we illuminate the shit show 24/7. Street lights keep the city “safe” from the wonder and awe of the night sky. Glowing screens keep our bloodshot eyes fixated on the tsunami of hyper normal stimuli flicking through our feeds.

We can’t look away.

The average American spends about 7 hours per day staring into screens!

Our attention is captured by the business models of billionaire oligarchs. We spend 1/3 or more of our waking lives algorithmically trapped in the machine!

Time to stop scrolling and remember.

Time to remember the yin.

Time to go into the dark. Into the float tank.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

Ahh, the sweet darkness. That sacred stillness. The profound silence.

Take a deep breathe. Take 10 more.

Let your body go. Give up your need to control. The sacred water will hold.

Slow down everything. Listen. Breathe.

Relax. Recover. REST.

And then you notice it. That inner horizon that stretches further than you can see. You’ve entered the real of psyche—Greek for soul.

You feel something strange happening. Something you used to experience every day as a child.

Discovery.

You’ve found your way back to that inner frontier that you’d forgotten. It’s right where you left it, just waiting for your return.

Welcome back. Welcome home. Welcome to that “still small voice” of inner knowing.

Welcome to the embrace of pure grace—that Holy Spirit of the Yin Goddess.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

This world was made to be free in!

All of the scams, illusions, and distractions holding you back from that freedom are not serving you. Give up all those other worlds except the one to which you truly belong.

Let them all go. What a fucking relief to let it all go!

This is timeless wisdom. And a trip back to the darkness is the perfect reminder.

Journey into stillness and remember your inner freedom, know your innate belonging to this world, and fulfill your unique place within it.

When you return to that deep now (what the Greeks called Kairos), you remember what you had forgotten. You recall the wisdom in your bones that David Whyte has so beautifully woven into language.

With this reconnection to your inner child/sage, you let out a deep sigh—a long exhale of scripted stories, societal pressure, and bullshit conditioning. You unclinch your muscles, loosen the grip on your mind, and allow your body to flow with the natural rhythm of breathe.

You release the yang control, and surrender to the yin.

By letting go you flow.

Only then can you return to Kairos, to the inner sanctum, to the holy of holies.

You embark on an inward journey deep into the YOUniverse. A quest to discover who you truly are, and what you’re made for.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

The Most Underrated Habit

Ok so here it is.

Here’s the most underrated habit for transforming your life, in just three words:

SACRED YIN RITUAL.

Let me explain by breaking down each of those words.

SACRED

Something that is sacred is un-fuck-withable. Meaning you protect it. You don’t let mundane distractions or profane temptation prevent you from upholding the sacred.

Something that is sacred is also holy. Meaning it fundamentally matters. It’s of the upmost importance. What is sacred is of supreme value.

This is the wisdom of traditions like the Sabbath. One in every seven days is sacred. On that day, you forget about all the bullshit of selling insurance and get back to what really matters. You swap chasing for being.

So ask yourself the question, what is sacred?

YIN

As Whyte so brilliantly illuminated in his poem, darkness is the essence of yin.

Stillness, rest, water. These are all embodiments of the feminine principle. And you wont find a more yin environment on earth than a float tank.

Floating weightless in silent darkness for 60-90 minutes is a guaranteed potent dose of yin. The nervous system regulates, stress dissolves, and the body finds equilibrium. As the float progresses, the mind relaxes, shifting into a waking dream state.

You begin to process the backed-up queue of life experience you’ve accumulated, all the tension in your body, the old emotions, the fears and anxieties.

Then your curiosity comes online and you begin to wonder. 🧑🏼‍🚀

Even one float can do miracles for the body, the mind, and the spirit. But whether you choose to use the float tank or not, choose a yin practice that calls to you.

It might be yin yoga, meditation, a tea ceremony, or some other mode of being that isn’t oriented so heavily towards doing.

Bonus points for entering silence, darkness, and stillness.

RITUAL

As we’ve already explored with the yin yang, structure and flow go together. So if you want to experience more flow (yin) in your life, you need to structure it (yang) into your calendar.

If you want to be strong, create an exercise ritual.
If you want to be productive, create a deep work ritual.
And if you want to be wise, create a sacred yin ritual.

So seek refuge in ritual.

Pick a rhythm (weekly Sabbath, monthly new moon, etc), design your ritual, and make it sacred (highest priority and treated with reverence).

Make it your own. It’s for you. It’s your portal back to Kairos, to the present moment, and to your most authentic self.

If you’re wondering how to start your yin journey, book a float session. It will take you there one way or another. Then use the float tank to connect to your intuition and begin designing your ritual.

One more little secret:

Amidst all the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of crafting a sacred yin ritual, one stands out above the rest. As you enter the dark and explore the inner realm of psyche, you begin to know thyself.

And eventually, you find your soul.

Happy Floating,

Christian

Las Vegas, 9/02/2026

P.S. Here’s a 2500 year old version of this same story:

The Fundamentalist Fortress

Welcome to the land of indoctrination, home to the cult of conformity.

The isolated fortress of the fundamentalists is safely walled in. Surrounded by a deep moat, with no bridges across. Nothing can penetrate the high walls and thorough defenses of the believers.

The high tower of the orthodoxy reaches skyward as a symbolic bridge between heaven and earth. From the highest chamber of the tower, in the holy of holies, the high priest reigns over his fortress, keeping the cult in righteous order.

As the mouthpiece of God, the high priest informs his subjects of what is good and true, and what they ought to do. He offers them salvation in exchange for compliance. For he guards the gate to heaven, and everyone knows, all other paths lead to fire, darkness, and death.

From the very beginning, the children of the fundamentalists are educated in this way—this gospel. The thorough saturation of the teachings keep any thoughts of exploring beyond the walls of the fortress safely at bay. For everyone knows what happens to those who escape the fortress. Their souls are lost, and they are doomed for eternity.

But once in a while, one or two slip through the net of indoctrination before it’s too late—before their wild minds are fully domesticated and their curiosity silenced.

These are called heretics, and they follow another directive than that coming from the high tower of the cult. For they hear a longing from within—a voice calling them to adventure.

Those few who answer this call are deemed mad, as they throw themselves off the high outer walls of the fortress, plunging into the watery depths below.

The Devils Playground

I recently watched “The Devil’s Playground,” a 2002 film documenting the Amish tradition of Rumspringa.

If you aren’t aware, the Amish are a cult of Christians who hold fast to scriptures like:

Romans 12:2: “Be not conformed to this world.”

This fundamentalist reading of the good word has led them to deny the tasty “fruits of progress” and avoid modern technology use altogether. This abstinence is codified in the Ordnung, a set of rules and regulations that govern Amish daily life.

But beyond just keeping people off the booze and away from TikTok, the Ordnung also establishes the norms and values that curb individualism and cultivate community unity. It’s effectively the rulebook for how to be Amish.

It mandates that the Amish lifestyle be notoriously low-tech, with restrictions against electricity use, modern transportation, watching television, using phones, etc.

But at least they get to travel slow and enjoy the scenery.

Rumspringa is a Pennsylvanian German word that literally means “running around,” and it’s a time of fewer restrictions and more freedom to, well, run around. It’s a wild “coming of age” passage that all Amish adolescents navigate, usually around the age of 16.

Amish teenagers on Rumspringa finally get the freedom to dress how they want, get a smart phone, throw back some beers, get a girlfriend or boyfriend, and take a stroll through the Devil’s playground.

But as one might predict, trying to swim across that moat is risky, especially when nobody taught you how to swim. 🤦‍♂️

So the Amish teens get absolutely waterboarded.

They go from no phone use to rampant screens full of algorithms designed to hijack their monkey brains and turn them into doom-scrolling consumers.

They leave their virgin shelter for the hyper-normal stimuli of ubiquitous pornography, chatbot relationships, and a tsunami of AI generated slop.

They abandon abstinence and a quaint home life, for chronic substance use, continuous partying, and eventually addiction.

Imagine having nearly no contact with any modern tech for your entire life, then at the ripe old age of 16 when you’re the most hormonal, impulsive, and susceptible to peer pressure you’ll ever be, you ditch the bonnet, get on social media, start drinking and smoking, and go to as many parties as possible.

That’s Rumspringa baby. Welcome to the Devil’s playground.

It’s no wonder that The Amish Church’s retention rate of it’s members is the highest of any of the major cults (religions). After getting absolutely rocked by modernity, about 85-90% of the Amish return to their community after Rumspringa to get baptized.

That’s 9/10 people who stay Amish for life!

I believe this fascinating statistic speaks to the vast gap between the Amish lifestyle and the modern age, a chasm too wide for most to cross. After all, you aren’t just forced to adapt from a low-tech to a high-tech world, you also have to navigate losing your community, your religion, and your entire worldview.

This is tough for anyone leaving a religion with strong social structures. For example, the retention rate of the Orthodox Jews is about 80%, and the Mormons retain about 60% of their born-and-raised members (but that number seems to be dropping fast).

Seems like the more fundamentalist the religion, the more fortified the fortress, the harder it is to escape it. At the end of the day, cultural separation, large families, and social mechanism like shunning, make it very difficult for a person to swim across that moat that surrounds their cult.

However, I think there’s something deeper to glean from the 90% retention rate of the Amish. Maybe, just maybe, they’re also onto something.

No, I’m not admiring the ideological denial of technology, the suppression of individualism, or the strange mandate to larp Little House on the Prairie forever.

Rather, the Amish have three things that are essential for living a good life:

1. Belief in something greater than oneself

2. Belonging to a tribe

3. Having a clear teleology or purpose

Unfortunately, it’s hard to invest in a religion that also kills curiosity, prevents ideas from evolving, and suppresses any art, dance, and culture.

The Amish are locked in a fundamentalist fortress.

And for those reasons, I’m out.

The Moat Around the Cult

I grew up in Short Creek, the original stomping grounds of Warren Jeffs and home to a tribe of fundamentalist polygamist Mormons.

Both my grandfathers were early settlers of the Short Creek area. Both were devoutly religious, and raised (very large) families within the walls of their fortress. Between the two of them, they had about 20 wives and something like 100 children.

But they couldn’t outdo Jeffs, who holds the high score on the polygamist leaderboard (Genghis Khan notwithstanding). Jeffs had an estimated 78 wives and over 50 children when he was arrested in 2006. Had he been allowed to continue to “go forth and multiply,” there would easily be hundreds in his posterity by now.

Jeffs reign was notoriously rough for Short Creek. He broke up families, extracted wealth from his members, and thoroughly abused a congregation of about 10,000 faithful followers. This is to say nothing of his sexual assault convictions that landed him in a Texas prison, likely for the rest of his life. A pedofile of the creepiest order, Jeffs had a dozen or so “child brides,” some as young as 12 years old.

But even 20 years after Jeffs’s arrest, there’s still a fragment of his original cult that are still devout followers. For a thousand or so FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), his incarceration was also his martyrdom. To them, Jeffs isn’t a serving time for horrific crimes, he is atoning for their sins with a noble sacrifice. To the FLDS faithful, Jeffs is still the “mouthpiece of God.”

To be clear, the majority of the cult has disbanded, and Short Creek is finding itself in a post prophet world.

But consider that for a second. The man who’s otherworldly fucked up-ness solidified him as one of the world’s most famous cult leaders, is still seen by many as a demigod who can do no wrong. Many faithful hang on every divine revelation that comes from his cell.

Despite Jeffs’s own attorney publicly claiming the FLDS leader isn’t in his right mind, and should be treated as insane.

Despite Jeffs attempting suicide multiple times in prison.

Despite Jeffs completely striking out on all his doomsday predictions about the world ending.

Well… I guess that part is actually par for the course. Seems like every prophet calls out the last days, yet here we are.

So, either his followers refuse to look at the evidence, or no amount of evidence would ever change their minds.

Either way, what we got here is a fundamentalist fortress to behold. Joseph Smith laid the foundation for him, but Warren Jeffs built a truly remarkable tower to heaven. And from his holy of holies (in his prison cell in Texas), he still reigns supreme over his fundamentalist fortress.

I recently made friends with one of Jeffs followers. Let’s call him John.

John is a hard working and ambitious man in his late twenties. He runs a large business, travels often, and invests in his growth and development. We had a great time exploring the outdoors together, and I found him to be an overall good guy.

But behind the quaint country fashion sense and “cricker” accent, I was shocked to find he was still a believer in Papa Warren, despite the fallout since the pedophile prophet’s went to prison 20 years ago. Not to mention the many documentaries made about one of the world’s most notorious cult leaders.

But John defended him, claiming that his teachings were good and true, and that following them led to living a good life.

I mean, if by good life you mean life in prison, under constant suicide watch, mostly in solitary confinement so you aren’t raped to death by the angry inmates who don’t particularly vibe well with pedofiles.

“By their fruits ye shall know them” — Jesus, (Matthew 7:16-20)

Those are some rotten fruits my man.

I mean the list of people willing to step forward and testify against Jeffs is a long one. An entire generation is still trying to heal from the shit show that was his authoritarian reign over Short Creek.

So how then do we explain John? A smart guy. A good dude. He wants to learn, grow, and lead. But somehow he’s still stuck in the gravity well of an incarcerated pedo-narcissist who’s devastated the lives of thousands.

My take in explaining this strange phenomena: The moat around the cult.

As we saw with the example of the Amish, being part of a tribe is a non-negotiable part of being human. This creates a strong pressure to conform to the norm.

In fact, the tribe is so fundamental to homo sapiens, that we will drink the communal cool aid (even when it’s deadly), shunning (or burning) the heretics.

Belonging IS survival for a tribal primate like us. And core to belonging is our collective tribal identity—the “We” that holds the “Me.”

For hundreds of thousands of years of pre-history, to be exiled from the tribe was a death sentence. Nobody could make it alone in the jungle. We still can’t, but now our modern world affords us a kind of individualism that our ancestors could never have imagined (for better or worse).

As hunter gatherers, we had a singular choice: belong to the tribe or starve.

Now, most of us in the modern world have the freedom to think for ourselves, design the lives we want to live, and evolve beyond the stories we’ve inherited from our ancestors.

But this requires crossing that pesky moat, and navigating “The Devil’s Playground” for ourselves.

However, even with the individual freedoms of modernity, many of us choose conformity instead, even when it means denying our authenticity. Simply put, it’s easier to swallow the collective cool aid, than it is to answer our own call to adventure.

Plus, look at all those poor souls crawling back from their “Rumspringa,” broken by the harsh outer world, returning to the fundamentalist fortress. Every person who fails to get across the moat becomes a testimony of the tribe’s truth: the best way to live is right here in the safety of these tall walls.

The existential moat around the cult deters most from ever considering a life in the wild lands of soul out beyond the safety of the fortress. So we ignore that pesky inner voice, pull that prairie dress on over our magic underwear, then keep sweet, pray, and obey.

Your Religion is Probably a Cult

Most mainstream Christians or Mormons would likely agree with most of this post so far. The Amish and the FLDS certainly seem extreme from the outside. And few would argue that Jeffs is a top tier cult leader.

But in Christian history, fundamentalism simply dictates the Bible as literally true and inerrant, making those “fundamental” teachings central to Christian life. Most Christians usually insist on doctrines such as the virgin birth, bodily resurrection of Christ, and his future return as non‑negotiable truths.

Strange, considering they all violate the natural laws of biology and physics.

So you don’t have to be in a small back-woodsy cult to be a fundamentalist. There are roughly 2.4 billion Christians, and most of them take those myths as literally true.

And hey, I’m not throwing out the Christian story altogether, just saying we don’t have to be so culty about it.

Another example of fundamentalism is the faith that The Book of Mormon is a literal translation from lost golden plates. This “ancient record” tells the story of the first immigrants to the Americas, a family fleeing Israel in roughly 600 BC. They inherited a fertile and empty land, spreading their genetics and language, ultimately creating a vast civilization.

Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no genetic, linguistic, or archeological evidence to support this story at all. The Mormon scholars themselves weren’t able to find it, after decades of diligent searching.

But no amount or evidence (or the lack thereof) can sway a devout Mormon’s mind. Mormon’s have a fundamental belief in the Book of Mormon’s historicity, because without it, everything else falls apart.

“The Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion…Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations, and where is our religion? We have none.” —Joseph Smith

The Book of Mormon is the fortress of the Mormons. It creates a righteous order, from which all within the walls must comply. And as Smith said himself, without that order, the Mormons have nothing.

So the tall walls were built, a deep moat was dug, and the cult was fortified to keep the devil out… but also to keep the faithful in.

But those fortification were built nearly 200 years ago.

Before the information age. Before we sequenced the human genome. Before we could read Egyptian. Before we could linguistic analyze the Book of Mormon. Before we had thousands of scientists piecing together the history of the Americas.

Now that fortress doesn’t seem so impenetrable, and about 40% of Mormons are taking the leap and swimming the moat, just as I did.

Taking the Leap

I went on my own Rumspringa back in 2012.

After the collapse of my faith at the age of 20, I left the fundamentalist Mormon fortress. But for me, there was no bridge across the moat.

So I learned how to swim, but just barley.

I moved to Las Vegas at the age of 21. For 5 years, I floundered about, nearly drowning in a desert wasteland of soulless materialism.

I ditched my magic underwear, clothed myself in expensive brands, and hit the Vegas strip… like a lot.

I did what everyone around me was doing: making money, partying hard, and consuming anything that might temporarily numb my inner anguish and my soul’s deeper longing.

But hedonism alone couldn’t get me across the existential moat, no matter how much money I made, alcohol I drank, or strippers I cried on. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain kept my head above water for a few years, but something wasn’t right.

I was making six figures, so starvation and destitution weren’t my problem. I even had a solid community of other so called “ex-crickers” who had left the fundamentalist flock as well. But despite my affluence and community, I was getting sunk by a lack of purpose.

Sadness and despair filled the god-sized hole in my heart, and a numbed-out nihilism began to take hold. Addiction set in, as I drank my way to the bottom.

Leaving the cult and crossing the moat means starting over. In Amish or FLDs society, it means losing most if not all of your relationships as they currently exist.

Swimming that moat is risky business, and many don’t make it across, turning back to the safety of the fortress.

Tragically, some drown in the moat, taking their own lives.

Deconstructing beliefs, navigating the existential void, and reconstructing a new worldview is not for the faint of heart.

It’s estimated that the rate of suicide in ex-FLDs members is about twice the national average. Swimming across the moat on your own can be existential, to say nothing of navigating the vast wilderness beyond.

But playing life safe in the fundamentalist fortress or drowning in the existential moat are NOT our only options.

We can wake up. We can re-wild our minds and bodies. We can remember our true nature.

The wilderness of soul out beyond the fortress might be scary, but she’s also breathtakingly beautiful, and she is calling you home.

She will welcome you with open arms.

After all, crossing the moat is just the beginning of your hero’s journey—the beginning of your SoulQuest.

And that quest leads through Soul Canyon.

See you on the far side,

Christian

Las Vegas, 22/01/2026

P.S. If you’re already across the moat, this might be for you: Humans 2.0

Go for a Swim

We put torch to truth during dark ages
Faithfully burning witches and sages
For all who keep their wild mind
Are called heretics by the blind
See, conformity is the collective vibe
Within the walls of a fundamentalist tribe

Wether you’re Amish, Mormon, or Cricker
You can consider me the cosmic trickster
Away from the cult’s high tower I crept
Over the walls of the fortress I leapt
Across Short Creek moat I swam
Away from all the priesthood scams

The torch you hold keeps your vision dim
Magic underwear makes it hard to swim
So free thy body from ankles to wrists
Else vigilant compliance to the cult persists
And the holy sunshine will kiss your skin
Re-wilding your mind, forgiving your sins

When false gods reign, life gets queasy
But your path is clear, though never easy
Follow your bliss beyond the cult
Trust in yourself and swim that moat
I’ll wait for you on the other side
And in Soul Canyon, I’ll be your guide

I had smoked a little cannabis, and was in my living room in our old house in Sienna Canyon in St. George, UT. I remember the tears welling up in my eyes as I was absolutely stunned by the purity and beauty of what I saw: Marc-Andre Leclerc with the ultimate onsight free solo of Mt. Robson in the Canadian rockies.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of watching the Alpinist or have been blessed by the climbing gods with your very own onsight solo, this image sort of says it all.

The onsight solo is the holy grail of climbing (at least for me, and I’m the one on the other side of the keyboard, so I make the fucking rules around here).

When you “onsight” a climbing route, it means you attempt to climb it successfully without any route beta (cheat codes on how to climb it), and without having ever tried it before. This means that you could only ever attempt to onsight a route once. Once you’ve attempted to climb it (even once), you can no longer consider a successful climb an “onsight.”

But what about the solo part?

To “solo” a climb means more than to just climb it by yourself. In mountaineering and climbing, soloing definitely involves being alone, but importantly, that means you don’t have the protection of a belay. So once you leave the ground and start climbing, you really only have one way to finish the route that doesn’t end really bad for you: to successfully send it.

If you’ve seen the Oscar winning film “Solo” with elite climber Alex Honnald, then you understand both the sweaty-palm consequences and the exhilarating and stunning beauty of the solo.

So then what is an onsight solo for writers? Thought you’d never ask!

It’s what I am attempting to do right now: to sit down and write a Substack post from start to finish, without doing research, using external tools like AI, or even editing (besides typos—because let’s be real, typos are fucking annoying to read).

So then what’s left when you strip away the handicaps of LLM’s, Google, Grammerly, and all the other synthetic writing bullshit? Just you, the keyboard, and a stream of hopefully coherent consciousness.

But as this is my first ever onsight solo attempt (via writing), I hope you’ll be a bit less critical of my moves, and get stoked for me to finish at the top of the route, rather than in a pool of my own writer’s blood on the ground.

The Rules

#1 No AI

This one sort of goes without saying, but use of LLMs is not allowed for an onsight solo. I mean, writing with AI is writing of another kind entirely, and some purist would say it’s not writing at all. So take off the chatbot training wheels and let’s see what you’re really made of.

#2 No Search

Yes, that means no Google. When onsighting a route, you don’t get to watch others climb the route first. You don’t get to study the “beta” before you climb. You have to flow with the rock, improvise, dig deep when shit gets messy, and keep climbing. If you don’t have anything to say without regurgitating some shit you found online, maybe you need to remember that vulnerable and naked feeling of raw expression, without the filter of what everyone else is saying.

#3 No Editing

For me, this is easily the hardest part of this challenge.

If you fuck up a move while climbing a route, you do your best to hang onto the wall, give it another try, and hopefully stick it this time. For this reason, I say fixing typos and minor grammatical errors is allowed.

However, if you want to go back and rewrite a sentence or add some supporting ideas, too bad. Once you climbed that section of the route, its in the past. You gotta keep going, or you’re likely gonna fall to your death.

#4 No Outlines

After connecting the dots between onsight soloing and writing, I immediately started writing an outline for this blog post. About half way through I stopped, realizing that my outline was, in a way, antithetical to the spirit of the entire exercise.

It’s not about following a script, its about tapping into the part of you that’s not thinking, but that’s flowing, adapting, and ideally expressing something real.

But I’m not a purist about this rule. You could also interpret the outline as your route plan, wether you end up sticking to it or not. Your call.

The Route

Choose Your Adventure

In the world of writing (and ideas), virtually any route could be attempted.

However, not all routes are graded the same. Some are incredibly difficult. Some are stupid easy.

Writing a description of your lunch isn’t quite the same as proving the existence of God. Or maybe they are?

Either way, some routes will be easier to send than others. So pick your route carefully. Ideally, you’ll want to try and stay in the flow channel.

The Flow Channel

If a route is too easy, you get bored.

If a route is too hard, you get stressed, and at worst fall to your (social) death.

What you’re looking for is the sweet spot between those two poles—the flow channel. When my skill level is just high enough to rise to the challenge of the route, I drop into flow and perform at my best.

So as your skill increases, your climbing grade increases, and therefor you can solo harder and harder climbs.

High Consequence

Another component of flow involves the stakes.

What are the stakes of falling? Will anybody read this post anyways?

Probably not. So for me, stakes are quite low.

If I had a huge audience, perhaps that would feel a lot different. But even with my quaint audience, I still feel a little rush when I think about how every word I type is going in the final draft—cause the first draft is the final draft baby.

The Reasons

#1 Brain Rot & the Death of the Writer

The primary reason to introduce (or rather bring back) the onsight solo is to combat brain rot and save writing from the dystopian worth of synthetic predictive AI slop.

I’m not saying AI isn’t useful or that it could hypothetically have a virtuous place in our society, BUT, it’s for sure fucking things up royally.

To say nothing of the existential cliff, the killer robots, the breaking of democracy, the surveillance state, and all the rest of the AI bummers going on right now, its simply rotting our brains. AI is nuking our capacity for deep thinking, nuanced reasoning, and overall cognition.

So consider this a callout to all writers: take back your power and start doing your cognitive pushups again. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And we are fucking losing our shit right now. Nearly everything I read these days has the creepy fingerprints of the AI overlords all over it.

Just because you onsight solo a route, doesn’t mean you can’t also send another route with more conventional means (all the tools, editing, etc). But the purity and rawness of the onsight solo should also have its place in this strange space we all find ourselves in.

#2 The Prison of Perfectionism

I don’t know about you, but perfectionism is my Achilles heal (I like to use that metaphor because it makes me feel like a Greek demigod Brad Pitt badass).

Seriously though, I have a real problem. I’ve literally let posts sit on the shelf for over a year because they “weren’t ready” and “not good enough.”

There is a time and place for rigorous editing, murdering your darlings, and crafting that magnum opus. But it can also turn into a prison where the publish button feels like some unreachable summit.

The onsight solo forces one out of perfectionism. When you have to keep climbing (writing), then perfect becomes the enemy of “good enough.”

Shit. Now that I think of it, that was supposed to be one of the rules. But because of rule #3 (no editing), I’ll have to patch this one in here.

Rule #5—No Stopping

Once your feet leave the ground (your butt hits the seat and your fingers hit the keyboard), you gotta send it. No stopping. One continuous session until the piece is complete (you reach the end of the route).

You can see now (hopefully) how this is freedom from perfectionism.

And poetically, this rule fell out of place in my “perfect” template of post structure. The writing gods chuckle, or more likely, they do nothing as they probably aren’t in my tiny audience anyways. They are busy sorting through the tsunami of AI generated slop passing for writing these days, trying to find what’s left of our humanity.

#3 Do it for the Muse

If you’ve ever tried to onsight a route (ropes or solo), you know the potential epicness that can emerge.

When one get’s out of ones own way, stops thinking and starts flowing, that’s where the magic happens. That’s where you surprise yourself and do things you didn’t realize you were capable of. You dig deeper, and with any luck, the Muse arrives, and you nail that crux.

When I submit myself to the simple rules of the writers onsight solo, perhaps I create an opening for the Muse to come through. Maybe not in perfect prose (at least at my current level of skill), but something real and raw and true can emerge. And hell, even if it doesn’t, at least you’re getting the reps in. You’re doing some cognitive pushups and resisting the machine that’s colonizing all of our minds.

Rage Against the Machine

Case in point: I didn’t intend to say anything about this next bit when I sat down to write this post, but now it feels like the next right move on the route. So here goes.

Fuck this noise man.

Fuck this death of culture.

Fuck the end of consensus reality and the decline into the deep fake madness.

Fuck this tower of Babel we are building as we climb in our hubris to “heaven.”

Fuck these tech billionaires with their rapture ideologies of transhumanism and techo-utopianism.

Fuck the end of wild places and the birth of the machine world.

Fuck the way we are mortgaging our future and sacrificing our children to Moloch.

Fuck Moloch—the machine god of our machine civilization.

Maybe there’s still some humanity left to resist it.

Maybe there’s a soul behind all the prompts and the audience capture and the algorithmic slavery.

Maybe we can still find our way back to someplace real, somewhere outside the large labyrinth of language models.

So consider this lament an invitation.

If you’re a writer, give it a rip. Send it. Onsight solo. See what you are made of.

If you aren’t a writer, the call remains. These rules apply to any craft, any modality, any expression.

No outside help. No editing. No stopping.

Just create. Just express. Just connect to that Muse that’s begging to come through you.

Hurry, before it’s too late.

Before we are too far gone.

Before our culture is nothing more than a Wall-E world of gelatinous blobs immersed in a digital matrix.

Before our minds are the muddled mush of algorithmic atrophy and predictive programming.

Remember what you are: a unique spark of the ONE creative flame.

Burn, baby burn.

Burn bright
Write
Even if its not tight
It will be alright
Just fucking write
Let’s defeat this terrible blight
This dimming or our light
This massacre of human might.

For we were born to create
Wether to mate
to dictate
or instantiate some higher form
as we incarnate
into this beautiful earthly state.

Rage against the machine!
Rise up and be seen.

Clean the doors of perception
Open your channel of creation.

Slow down and breathe
Let go and be free.

Stop thinking
And start writing

Don’t stop-and-go
Just dig deep and flow.

Climb past that crux
Of your onsight solo.

Much love,

Christian

Las Vegas, 11/1/2026

This post is equal parts soulful storytelling, heartfelt testimony-bearing, and unapologetic apostatizing.

For the skeptics, here is reason. For the seekers, here’s a map. For the faithful, here be dragons. 🐉

Hi. I’m Christian.

Not only was I raised to be a good Christian, but I was literally named Christian.

I was born in 1992 to good Christian parents, educated at a private Christian school, and indoctrinated by a fundamentalist Christian church. Additionally, I was shaped by a Christian sub-culture (Fundamentalist Utah Mormonism), within a larger Christian nation (USA), as part of a global Christian paradigm (The West).

That’s a shit ton of Christian. Some might say, too much Christian. All my easter-eggs were in the Christian basket.

So you can imagine the Biblical proportions of my existential atonement, when my conviction in Christianity was crucified, and there was no way to salvage my salvation.

I lost my testimony in my savior, and entered the long dark night of the soul.

“Jesus Christ, I’m alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead? ‘
Cause this problem is gonna last More than the weekend”
—Brand New, Jesus Christ

I was at a real CROSSroads, but little did I know it was the beginning of a 13 year odyssey that would transform me, culminating in my own resurrection (in the Campbellian sense).

Now, coming full circle, I’ve returned to the Christian story, with fresh eyes, radical hope, and a boon for my people.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”
—T.S. Eliot

The prodigal’s son has returned.

I’ve been born again in Christ. Redeemed!

Christian can finally say he’s Christian again. It’s a Christmas miracle!

BUT…

Before all of my Christian homies go singing hallelujahs, and praising Jesus, you might wanna wait for the punch line.

You see, there’s a bit of a twist in this road to Damascus story…

You can call it heresy, modern revelation, or simply common sense, I don’t really care. But it’s time to update the Christian code.

Over the last two thousand years, countless witches, sages, and mystics have been tortured and murdered for saying what I’m about to tell you. They paid the highest price for speaking their truth.

But here we are, in the modern era of (somewhat) free speech, where we’ve swapped public executions for cancel culture.

So you’ll have to throw those stones in the comments. 😉

Exodus

I left fundamentalist Mormonism when I was 20 years old. For those who don’t know, Mormons are absolutely Christians. After all, the official name of the church Joseph Smith started is: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The exact moment of my faith crisis occurred when I read the CES letter back in 2012. My faith in Joseph Smith wholly ghosted me, never to be seen again. Maybe that means I was never really a true believer, or maybe it was simply the first time I had genuinely considered ANY alternative to the standard Mormon narrative that had been seared into my brain since before I could speak english.

If you’re Mormon, decide for yourself: you can read My Mormon Story here.

After I lost my testimony in Mormonism, I spent the rest of my 20’s running from my Christian roots. In other words, I was ontologically uprooted, cast out of my Father’s kingdom to drift like an existential tumble weed in the wastelands of Las Vegas.

My safety and assurance in Jesus as “Lord and Savior” gave way to a kind of numbed out nihilism, as I discarded all religion from my life.

Of course I didn’t realize at the time that you can’t actually fully discard religion. As the late great scholar of religion Mircea Eliade once said:

“To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.”

―Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

Humans worship, and there really isn’t any way around it. So naturally other “gods” filled that Jesus-sized whole in my heart.

I put my faith in capitalism, zealously chasing money like my soul depended on it. I religiously attended the church of the NFL on Sundays, screaming at the TV whenever my sacred team was defeated by the forces of evil (The Patriots). And of course I gladly over-consumed the sacraments of the Great American CULTure (sugar, booze, & screens) until I was fat, addicted, and depressed.

But then, something miraculous happened in 2017.

Inflamed, anxious, and desperate for change, I went walking down an electric avenue (Electric Daisy Carnival). I ate some MDMA (ecstasy) and about 2 hours later the good Lord appeared, blasting my heart chakra wide open, and causing me to weep tears of joy for existence itself.

My insecurities melted away, my shirt came off, and I began dishing out bare-chested, teary-eyed, sweat-bombs (pudgy rave hugs) to total strangers, as if they were loaves and fishes.

As I PLUR-ed the night away, something came alive in me that had long been forgotten—an inner child with the wisdom to walk on the proverbial waters of unconditional love.

I had risen… or at least my serotonin levels had.

My molly miracle would lead to further soul-seeking via meditation, yoga, psychedelics, and sensory-deprivation (in float tanks). And, as tends to happen when one goes deep in the tank, I blew up my life and began shedding my old skin.

I quit my job to wander the earth, earnestly seeking wisdom from wherever I could find it.

This was the birth of True North Project.

The Christian Story

So what even is a Christian?

Let’s unpack this loaded term before we go any further.

Christian was the first word I remember writing in squiggly crayon. My early ego was formed atop the bedrock of the Christian story. Even before I had a full grasp of english, the story of Jesus was seeded in my brain.

Here is a super short, super simple summary of that story:

Jesus Christ is the ONLY begotten Son of God, and his crucifixion and atonement (human sacrifice) redeemed the world of it’s brokenness (original sin). The highest purpose and meaning of your life is to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, strive to be like Him, and be saved.

So in the mainstream sense,

A Christian is one who is saved by Jesus the Christ.

This simple definition has created quite the gulf between the saved and the unsaved, and is the reason why I’m the “black sheep” in a fundamentalist flock of 24 children.

I’m the sheep that got away. The heretic who turned his back on Jesus, on the gospel, on “The Work” of my salvation.

I’m the thorn in my parents side, influencing my younger siblings with my heresies and risking their salvation as well.

I’m the uncomfortable conversation at the dinner table, always asking the awkward questions that don’t have easy answers.

I’m the awkward hug/handshake you give to your wayward brother who’s lost the plot and who’s soul is on a course to outer darkness, where there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth (for all eternity).

Ironically (and somewhat poetically) I’ve spent roughly 1000 hours in sensory deprivation tanks, floating blissfully in outer darkness. Rather than wailing and endlessly grinding my teeth (MDMA floats notwithstanding), I’ve quite enjoyed it.

In fact, in outer darkness I seem to have found the inner light.

You see, light and dark go together. Yin and Yang. Black and White. On and Off. These universal polarities belong to the same spectrum. To toss one end of the poll out is both impossible and pathological.

Making the dark the place of evil, satan, weeping, and sore teeth, is a bit childish isn’t it? Like, when did we become a culture of people terrified of their own shadows?

But I digress, and I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

So… if I’m claiming to be been born again in Christ, why would I be considered a heretic who’s ultimate fate involves crying in the dark forever?

To climb past the crux of this millennia-old priestly problem, we have to distinguish between two separate concepts:

1. Jesus of Nazareth - the man, the myth, the legend.

2. Christ (Greek Christos) - “the anointed one,” the Son of God.

For most modern Christians, these concepts are one and the same, and that’s precisely what’s at the core of our collective existential cluster-fuck. It’s why for more than a thousand years we’ve burned the blasphemers, hanged the heathens, and tortured those transgressors of the ONE TRUE gospel.

It’s honestly been a brutally dark road we’ve walked through the Piscine Age. We’re only now just beginning to collectively process the religious war, torture, murder, and genocide, often done in the name of Christ.

So full permission to get messy as we take that Jesus story down from the dusty shelf labeled “just have faith.”

Jesus! That’s a lot of Christians

There are roughly 2.4 billion Christians in the world today. That’s 31% of the global population!

How did this religious meme spread to inhabit the minds of 1/3 of the planet?

The answer is quite complicated, and beyond the full story is far beyond the scope of this post. But fuck it, let’s sum it up in a single word: Rome.

Rome forcefully converted its subjects to Christianity after Constantine came into power. The Holy Roman Empire conquered just about all of their neighbors, and thus the Western mind was built on the foundation of a very particular flavor of Christianity. And, as they say, the rest is history.

Jesus however, is a figure shrouded in mystery. After all, the dude lived 2K years ago and the oldest writings we have about him were 2nd and 3rd hand accounts, all of which were recorded decades to centuries after his death.

So who was this Nazarene that dropped dank downloads and sent ripples through the millennia?

There are MANY diverse perspectives about Jesus, and many answers to this question. So lets observe the story through a few different lenses to try and get our heads around it.

But first, a quick word about lenses. 🤓

John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist that knows a thing or two about how we humans do this whole human thing, including how we make sense of our world and “know things.”

Vervaeke has coined the term relevance realization, the notion that our minds have a built-in skill for zeroing in on “what matters” amidst the endless sea of possibilities. We filter out most of reality, decide (somewhat unconsciously) what to pay attention to, and then subscribe to it a meaning.

Therefore, you might define “the sacred” as what we deem to be MOST relevant, and therefore meaningful.

Taken a step further, this process of relevance realization ultimately culminates in a worldview, or a weltanschauung as the Germans call it. We take the most relevant bits and build a story about the universe and our place in it.

To use John’s metaphor, we see the world through lenses. These lenses bend the “light” of reality to fit into our worldview, crafted throughout our lifetimes by our language, the dominant paradigm of our culture, and our core cosmological stories, just to name a few.

What I am inviting you to do, dear reader, is to try and take your lenses off—just for a few minutes—to see them for what they are. Don’t worry, after inspecting the lenses, you can put them back on and go right back to seeing through them as before, if you choose.

If you find yourself getting triggered as you read further, chances are you’re looking THROUGH the lenses, rather than AT the lenses.

#killthosesacredcows

Ok, now back to our regular Christian programming.

Let’s look at this story through three primary lenses: The Messiah, The Christ, and The Trinity.

The Messiah - Jesus the Jewish Revolutionary

This first lens tries to get a grasp on the historical Jesus. Its primarily a secular perspective that grapples with the man himself, rather than dealing with “mythical Jesus” or Jesus the Christ—a term given to Jesus by Paul long after his crucifixion.

In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered and occupied by Rome. Jesus was born into a time of tension, rebellion, and ultimately war. Roman rule was fierce, taxes to Caesar were mandatory, and crucifixion was the price paid for sedition.

In fact, Rome adopted the cross in the 3rd century BCE as a brutally public torture/execution method for subduing occupied populations. When the road you walk on your daily commute is lined by crucified rebels, you tend to get the message pretty loud and clear: “This is what happens when you disobey Roman rule.”

On the other hand, the Kingdom of Israel was a theocracy, and true believers in Jewish law despised having to bend the knee to Caesar. They saw God’s law (as laid out in the Hebrew Bible) as the supreme and only commandment.

Many Jews of that time were zealots, hardcore believers who worshiped with extreme fervor and who sought to overthrow Roman rule in Judea. Theses Jewish zealots believed in the coming of a Messiah—a chosen or anointed one. This Messiah would come from the lineage of king David (Jewish royalty), he would unite the 12 tribes of Israel, liberate Judea from Rome, and usher in a golden age of peace.

The Messiah would rise as the new King of the Jews.

Enter Jesus, a young rabbi from the poor town of Nazareth. As a gifted orator, and with the help of his 12 homies (apostles), he evangelizes the ushering in of “The Kingdom of God” and the dawning of a new age. This eschatological story of the end of times was common in those days, and was received well, spreading quickly across his home-region of Galilea.

This Jesus movement was not only a threat to Roman rule, but also threatened the current Jewish establishment.

Harod the Great was the paranoid and violent King of the Jews who ruled Judea under Roman law. He hunted down and brutally murdered anyone he saw as a threat to his throne, including many members of his own family. Although the story about him murdering all the first born sons has no historical basis, it points to the ruthlessness of his rule.

The Jewish priest class also saw Jesus as a threat, and were ultimately the ones responsible for handing him over to the Romans for execution. You see, for any new Messiah to be legitimate, it meant he would now be at the top of the Jewish dominance hierarchy. He would be the priest-king of the theocracy, and ultimately, he would answer only to God, not to Caesar.

But Jesus never attained that status. He was ultimately arrested, tried, tortured, and crucified.

When Jesus hung on the cross, the inscription above his head read: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

This sentencing from Pontus Pilate shows the political nature of Jesus’ crimes in the eyes of the Romans. Jesus was crucified for sedition—inciting rebellion against Roman rule.

In other words, the Roman’s weren’t executing Jesus because he claimed to be the Son of God, but rather that he claimed to be the Messiah, the King of the Jews that the scriptures had foretold. They were putting down what they saw as simply another rebellion.

Interestingly, several other Messiahs also led revolts that failed to liberate the Kingdom of Israel, and many thousands of revolutionaries were crucified. This was a brutal period, that ultimately led to the tragic destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70CE, resulting in the Jewish diaspora.

After Jesus’ death, this fact of his “sedition” would be actively suppressed in favor of another story. Once the Christian movement began spreading through the Roman empire, it was more convenient to place the blame of Jesus’ death on the Jews, rather than the Romans.

Notice how Pilate is portrayed in the gospels. He comes across as a compassionate and just judge who is moved by Jesus. He tries to spare his life, but his hands are tied. Its the Jewish priest class that’s to blame for the crucifixion, not innocent Pilate!

“I find no fault in him”
—Pontus Pilate, John 18:38

But when you look at the larger body of evidence, one sees a very different picture. Historical accounts show us that Pilate was a particularly brutal Roman governor who ruled with an iron fist.

Philo describes Pilate as a ruler characterized by “corruption, violence, robberies, ill-treatment of the people, executions without trial, and grievous inhumanity.”

Josephus similarly portrays him as heavy-handed and dismissive of Jewish customs, often provoking unrest through his actions.

His career as a Roman governor in Judea came to an end after a particularly gruesome massacre. Pilate violently suppressed a Samaritan gathering on Mount Gerizim, killing many participants and executing their leaders. This was so obscene, even by Roman standards, that it cost him his job.

So it’s pretty clear that Pilot was no friend of Jesus, and he was in the (almost daily) habit of crucifying Jews.

This historical and secular lens shows us the context in which Jesus lived: a politically unstable period of messianism, apocalypticism, zealotry, revolution, and utter brutality.

But most importantly, it paints a picture of Jesus the Messiah, the want to be king of the Jews who was crucified for sedition, like many Messiahs before and after him.

The Christ - Jesus the Mythic Son of God

This second lens takes the perspective of the traditional Christian worldview of the “Christic Jesus,” the Son of God. This is where we enter the magical land of myths and miracles.

Despite Messiah (Hebrew) and Christos (Greek) both literally translating to “anointed one,” the words took on very different meanings.

As previously mentioned, the Jews saw their coming Messiah as an heir of king David, a Jewish man strictly living the Jewish law, and the leader (king) of a theocratic political movement. They certainly didn’t see the coming Messiah as the literal Son of God, or the God of the old testament incarnated in the flesh.

But for Christians, Jesus isn’t any ordinary messiah. He is divinely born of a virgin, sired by God Himself, the only begotten Son. He lived a ministry of miracles, from moon-walking across water to raising dudes from the dead. He transcended the Jewish law of Moses and brought a new gospel to the world.

Most importantly, his crucifixion and was the perfect (human) sacrifice to God, an atonement that redeemed the sins of all humanity. For this reason he earned the title of Savior and Redeemer, and was raised from the tomb after three days.

After his death, Jesus’s movement takes an interesting (and ultimately historic) turn. The apostles begin preaching the literal resurrection of Jesus, claiming he was raised from the dead.

Instead of the movement being smothered in its Palestinian cradle, Jesus became a divine martyr and the story spreads like wildfire.

The early days of the church are complex and mysterious, but one thing is for sure: Nobody had more of an impact on evolving and spreading the Christian story than Paul.

Paul was a tax collecting Jew who zealously persecuted the early Christians. He was involved in many arrests of Christians, approved the execution (stoning) of Christians like Stephen, and by his own word, his efforts to destroy the church were “beyond measure.”

But then a miracle happened!

While traveling on the road to Damascus, Paul met the risen Jesus and was transformed. Historians place this miraculous conversion and supernatural encounter at about 2-5 years after the crucifixion.

Paul changed his name (from Saul) and began calling himself an apostle of Jesus Christ. He began preaching his very own (very different) Christianity than the Jewish flavor coming from Jesus’s other disciples.

You see, the apostles in charge of the church after the death of Jesus were all Jewish and strictly obeyed the law of Moses. This included the required circumcision of all Jewish males. Paul crafted instead a faith-based version of Christianity, re-skinned for the gentiles of the Roman empire.

For Paul, all you gotta do is have faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died for your sins and conquered death, and you (and your foreskin) will be saved.

Needless to say, this new “Pauline” Christianity caused tension between Paul and the rest of the apostles, you know, the ones who actually walked and talked with the physical Jesus, and who’s scarred penises would have made father Abraham proud.

But ultimately, it was Paul’s version that won out. The New Testament Bible contains 27 books, 13 of which are authored by Paul. That’s about half.

You see, after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Jewish Christian Church based there lost authority, but the Gentile Church founded by Paul spread rapidly around the Mediterranean.

Despite hardcore persecution, horrific torture, and executions, the early followers of Christianity kept the faith and fervently spread the word. The gospel quickly traveled across the empire via letters traveling down Roman roads, on the lips of slaves telling stories of the risen Lord, and via evangelists like Paul preaching in the streets.

This lens tells the story of Jesus the Christ, the divine Son of God who was sacrificed to redeem the world. It also shows Paul’s influence in the story, namely giving Jesus the title of Christ, which carried a radically different definition than that of messiah.

However, it can’t quite explain how the hell, after two thousand years of “progress,” we still mutilate the genitals of our baby boys. 🤦‍♂️

The Holy Trinity and the Nicene Creed

Those first 3 centuries of the Christian movement are complex and mysterious. Only recently (the last century) have new discoveries of ancient Christian texts from that period shined new light on what the early church was like.

There were a vast diversity of beliefs, stories, and religious practices in the early church period. Just to get the flavor of it, here are 10 of the most notable sects.

The Jesus meme was merging with all the cultures around the Roman empire, taking on various different fusions and variations.

But ultimately one version would win out and be named orthodox. In a crazy twist of events, the underdog church of persecuted Christians would transform into a Holy Empire spread around the globe.

This final lens is the last important puzzle piece for understanding the mainline Christian story, as it is the “right opinion” or the standard orthodox Christian narrative.

Orthodox comes from the Greek orthodoxos: orthos ‘straight or right’ + doxa ‘opinion’.

The first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, spread the Pauline gospel of Christ across his empire. Christianity became the default religion of the largest empire on earth, and ultimately a meme that would spread around the planet, colonizing the minds of billions.

But first, it had to standardize. There were too many sects, heresies, and disputes about the nature of Jesus and God. These disputes would often lead to violence, exile, and execution.

So in 325 CE Constantine called a council of the major bishops around his empire. Ultimately what emerged was the standardized (orthodox) Christian doctrine. The Nicene Creed lays it all out as “The Holy Trinity”—the triune God:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father… And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

As you can clearly see, the orthodox description of the Godhead is super simple, and not confusing at all. Right? RIGHT?!

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the all masculine God. No mental gymnastics required at all to make that a coherent thought.

I mean what kind of cosmology leaves out the feminine entirely? You know, the great mother (matter), the womb of creation, mother nature, the feminine aspect of creation, the yin principle, the goddess, etc, etc, etc.

It also makes no mention of someone really important: you. There is only ONE Son after all. No room for any other humans (or beings of any kind) in the trinity.

This is the fundamental flaw of the Christian meme (at least this orthodox version). It separates the individual from God, putting God on a lofty throne as king of the universe. All of our divinity is projected onto Jesus, the ONLY Son of God.

In this un-wholly trinity, God is the ultimate other, the supreme being to worship and revere. Your life is merely a probation, a testing ground for the next life. Your soul is on the line, and you will only be saved from destruction and hellfire (or outer darkness) if you accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

This paradigm of separation has fueled holy wars, inquisitions, colonization, genocide, and the ecological devastation of our planet. I’m not laying all of humanities problems on Christianity alone, but in the west, the Christian meme (and this trinity) has massively contributed to the tragic poly-crisis we find ourselves in now.

For how could we wage an all out war on nature without a creed to separate us from her?

How could dominate the feminine for millennia without leaving her out of the story?

Of course all of this has virtually nothing to do at all with what Jesus actually taught. The teachings of Jesus (before the hierarchies and trinities) are fundamentally teachings of charity, compassion, humility, and kindness.

His was a gospel of peace: love God, and love thy neighbor as thyself.

These principles helped pave the way for human rights and civil liberties. Many would make the case that these Christian values had a major role to play in the great American experiment of individual liberty, limited government, popular sovereignty, and unalienable rights derived from a Creator.

The “Prince of Peace” showed us how to play the Infinite Game. He transcended the old law of eye for an eye, of win-lose metrics, and zero sum competition. In a paradigm of slavery and genocide, love thy enemies and turn the other cheek was a huge update to the cultural code.

Unfortunately, there were also millions of atrocities later committed in the name of Jesus, cuz humans. But that doesn’t take away from the radical upgrade in our collective consciousness that rippled out from his teachings.

A bit later on in this post, I’ll propose an update to the trinity, and an evolution of the Christian meme. But first, some secret sauce…

Lost Gospels and Secret Knowledge

Gnosticism is a collection of religious and philosophical ideas that emerged in the late 1st century CE among Jewish and early Christian sects. It centers on the pursuit of mystical or esoteric knowledge as the path to salvation.

Gnosis is a Greek term meaning “knowledge” or “awareness,” specifically referring to spiritual or experiential knowledge rather than intellectual or theoretical understanding.

In Gnostic thought, Jesus is often seen not as a savior through his death and resurrection (as in orthodox Christianity), but as a messenger or revealer of divine knowledge. His teachings guide individuals toward enlightenment and liberation from the material world.

The standard Christian story we know today was the one written by the winners. It does not reflect the perspective of all early Christians, and anyone who dissented (like the Gnostics) risked persecution, and even their lives.

One reason the early Christian movement was so mysterious is because all the unorthodox gospels were burned. Once Constantine “converted” and Romanized the church, any alternative views were considered heresy and were silenced. Much of the history of the first couple centuries of Christianity was destroyed.

“The victors in the struggles to establish Christian Orthodoxy not only won their theological battles, they also rewrote the history of the conflict; later readers then naturally assumed that the victorious views had been embraced by the vast majority of Christians from the very beginning.”
—Professor Bart D. Erhman, Oxford University

#historyiswrittenbythevictors

And so for centuries, the orthodox view of Christianity dominated without much contest, and was driven deep into our culture’s unconscious. “The West” was built on this foundation of Father, Son, Holy Ghost—the triune, all masculine god, and everything centered around Jesus as Lord and Savior.

But everything changed in December of 1945 when two Egyptian brothers unearthed the Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi, some of the oldest surviving Christian texts on the planet.

These gospels are radically different from the orthodox biblical canon that colonized the minds of billions. These ancient manuscripts give a voice to those early Christian’s who were silenced by the Catholic orthodoxy.

We don’t have time to unpack the full library, but I recommend the work of Elaine Pagles if you want to dive deeper. For now, lets take a little peek into the past and dive into the lost gospel of a Didymos named Thomas.

The Gospel of Thomas

Written in approximately 100-140 CE, the Gospel of Thomas gives us access to a Christian lens much different than the standard orthodox narrative.

This gospel doesn’t tell the story of the virgin birth, the ministry of miracles, or the crucifixion of Jesus. Instead, it simply contains 114 of his teachings. Its a sayings gospel.

The opening statement:
These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.

So who was Thomas the twin? (Didymos literally means twin)

Thomas is commonly remembered as “doubting Thomas” because of John 20:24–29, where he doubted Jesus’s resurrection until he saw and touched Jesus’s wounds. After doing so, he declared, “My Lord and my God!”

However, as scholars like Pagles and others have pointed out, the Gospel of Thomas is older than the Gospel of John, and John is likely writing a polemic against Thomas.

In other words, John clearly has an agenda to debunk or refute a contemporary gospel, that of Thomas. Remember this was in the early days of the church when there were many different Christian sects, and they often didn’t see eye to eye.

John ultimately came out the victor, and his book made it into the Biblical Canon. The Gospel of Thomas was burned as heresy and was lost to the sands of time. So for nearly two millennia we only knew Thomas the doubter, but never actually got his side of the story.

But that all changed when the Nag Hammadi library was discovered, and we unearthed a lost gospel thats been uncorrupted and unchanged for 1800+ years. Now we finally get to read what John was so worked up about, and see through some lenses other than the ones “The Holy Empire” crafted for us.

Now I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like any Christian who discovered the “hidden words of the living Jesus” would be stoked. Especially if the source was empirically dated as one of the oldest Christian texts on the planet. But shockingly most Christians I ask have never read it.

So what is it all about?

After the death of Jesus, the disciples spread out to preach the gospel. Thomas traveled eastward to India and established his church there. His gospel reads like a groovy fusion of Christianity and non-dual Indian mysticism.

Saying 77:
Jesus said, “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”

This is clearly metaphor. You don’t find a human inside a piece of wood when you split it open. Rather, Jesus is speaking from the non-dual awareness that there is no separation, and we all is one.

The uni-verse is seamless, and The All resides in all.

This pan-psychic perspective expands the definition of God to include and penetrate all of the cosmos. In other words, God isn’t a man on a throne in the sky, but rather the Ultimate Reality, The All, the thing that has no outside edge.

How can anything be outside of The Kingdom of God? God is in All.

Jesus acknowledges that the status quo of the time is a paradigm of separation, and that the current wisdom traditions keep people from “entering the kingdom.”

Saying 39:
Jesus said, “The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge (gnosis) and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, must be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.”

Rather than telling the story of the resurrected lord and savior of the world, this lost gospel gives us the sayings of an enlightened Zen-Jesus, reading more like mystical koans than an eschatological call to faith and repentance.

Jesus echos the Hermetic law of polarity and reconciles the paradox of dualism. He invites his friends to “enter the kingdom” of non-dual consciousness and experience true communion, not in some afterlife, but here and now.

Saying 22:
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside… then will you enter the kingdom.”

Hopefully this has given a bit of insight into a Mystic-Christic movement that was thriving before it got all but snuffed out by the Holy Roman Empire and the orthodoxy.

If you’re a Christian, I recommend reading the Gospel of Thomas for yourself, and maybe you’ll see that Thomas wasn’t just a doubter.

Hieros Gamos - Jesus & Mary the Magdalene

In the Gnostic Gospels, Mary Magdalene isn’t just a devoted follower and key witness, she is elevated to Jesus’s most intimate disciple and spiritual authority.

The Gospel of Philip, for example, suggests that Mary Magdalene was closer to Jesus than any of the other disciples, hinting at a special bond that some interpret as a sacred marriage.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a Gnostic text focusing on Mary’s role as a prominent disciple of Jesus who received secret teachings:

Peter said to Mary, Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman.
Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them.
Mary answered and said, What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.

But the biggest bombshell of them all, wasn’t hiding in a clay pot in the desert at Nag Hammadi. Rather, it was hiding in plain site at the British Museum.

“The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text That Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene” is a controversial book that claims to have uncovered evidence of a secret marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

In the British Museum is an ancient manuscript from the early Church that’s at least 1,600 years old. Written in Syriac by an anonymous monk, this twenty-nine chapter document reveals an alternative narrative of Jesus’s life that challenges traditional understanding.

The important caveat here is that the authors claim the text is written in code. The characters names are actually cyphers, hiding the true identity of the stories subjects (Jesus and Mary).

This makes perfect sense when you consider that any alternative narratives about Jesus (and their authors) were being hunted down and burned during that period. So if you weren’t in the orthodox cult, and you wanted to spread the good word, you had to get crafty and hide it in plain sight.

The story is called Joseph and Asenath, but the plot of the story resembles nothing at all of the biblical story of Joseph, the son of Jacob. So clearly the names are placeholders for something else.

When scholars decoded the manuscript’s symbolism, they uncovered some wild shit:

• The virgin mother Mary is replaced by the fertile and desirable bride Mary.

• Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had two children together.

• Mary Magdalene emerges as the main character of the story - a pagan priestess who led her own Christian movement.

• There were assassination attempts against Jesus around 19 CE and threats to their children’s lives.

• Most importantly, the text portrays a harmonious balance between masculine and feminine, and tells the story of the Hieros Gamos, the sacred wedding of the God and the Goddess.

I found the book to be a fascinating perspective of an alt-Jesus who was matched by his feminine counterpart. This story is a fusion of patriarchal Judaism, and matriarchal Paganism.

It tells of the holy union of opposites in the sacred sacrament of the bridal chamber ceremony. This sacred sex between Jesus and Mary would have been the archetype for all the believing Christians who held this story as scripture.

How differently would the world look today if this was the Christianity that Constantine adopted?

Perhaps fewer witches would have burned.

The Kingdom of Heaven

I grew up believing that the kingdom of heaven was in, well, heaven. Meaning not of this Earth.

In fact, the whole point of life on this planet was to be saved by Jesus Christ, be resurrected after death, and get BACK to heaven, ideally in the VIP section (celestial).

But as the Gospel of Thomas illuminates, Jesus spoke of a different kingdom.

Saying 3 from the Gospel of Thomas:
…The kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.

The un-holy trinity is poverty.

The paradigm of separation is poverty.

To be cut off from God is poverty.

To know thyself is wealth.

To know who you REALLY are is to enter into the kingdom.

Saying 113:
His disciples said to him, ‘When will the kingdom come?’ Jesus said, ‘It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying “Here it is” or “There it is.” Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.’

Doesn’t this sound eerily similar to all the other enlightened sages of all the ages.

“Heaven attained the One and became clear.
Earth attained the One and became fertile.
Spirits attained the One and became divine.
Valleys attained the One and became full.
All things attained the One and lived and grew.”
—Lao Tzu

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
—Rumi

And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
—Khalil Gibran

“The fundamental ultimate mystery… is this: for every outside there is an inside, and for every inside there is an outside.”
—Alan Watts

Yin and Yang go together. Male and female go together. Inside and outside go together. Self and other go together.

Therefore, love thy neighbor AS thyself ;)

The Holographic Trinity

Holon: Something that is at once a whole made of parts, as well as a part of a larger whole. From the Greek “holos” meaning whole, with the suffix “-on” suggesting a part.

Reality is holographic. Holographic means the whole is present everywhere.

Every whole is made of parts, and every part belongs to a whole. This remains true at every level of the evolutionary chain, from the subatomic to the intergalactic.

The entire cosmos is contained at every point in the cosmos.

All points in space and time are connected.

Think of it like Russian nesting dolls - each doll contains smaller ones while being contained by a larger one. This holonic pattern of parts and wholes shows up everywhere in nature.

“God has created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.”
—Johannes Kepler

Lets explore God and Self through this holographic lens.

• An atom consists of parts called subatomic particles, is itself a complete whole, and belongs to the larger whole of the molecule.

• The organelle consists of parts called molecules, is itself a complete whole, and belongs to the greater whole of the cell.

• An organ consists of parts called cells, is itself a complete whole, and belongs to the greater whole of the organism.

• You are yourself a whole organism, made of an infinitude of parts, and belonging to many wholes: your tribe, culture, species, planet, star, galaxy, universe. You are made of star stuff.

"The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the Universe to know itself"
—Carl Sagan

Originating from eastern cosmology, Indra’s Net offers a holonic metaphor. It symbolizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things in the universe.

The Vedic god Indra weaves a vast, infinite net, with jewels placed at each intersecting node. Each jewel reflects all other jewels in the net, illuminating how every part of existence contains the whole.

The Uni-verse is the whole. God. The All. Brahman. Great Spirit. The unnamable ONE. Seamless, but not featureless. Full of infinite unique parts, including you.

A symphony of unique selves, all filling a niche in the great ecology of cosmos.

You are a YOU-niverse, a holonic fractal of the greater Uni-verse.

You are the God-Self, the Atman, the soul, a beautifully unique expression of the One.

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” —Alan Watts

Now with our holographic lenses on, lets take another look at that Holy Trinity.

Keep in mind I’m trying to fit the infinite into a box (impossible), while keeping the same geometry as the previous trinity.

Don’t mistake my pointing finger for the moon. The map is not the territory, and all words ultimately fail when describing the Great Mystery.

Putting on the Mind of Christ

In his book “Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality,” Christian mystic Jim Marion makes the case that Jesus’ name is NOT Jesus Christ. Rather, Jesus “put on the mind” of the Christ, or embodied Christ consciousness.

Marion defines Christ consciousness as living in communion with God, or the perspective of the Atman, the God-Self.

Is this view, Christ is the son of God, not Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth attained the level of Christ consciousness, but he is not alone, and so can we.

To be Christ-ed then is to come home to your rightful seat in the Godhead, to take belong in the Holy Trinity. It is to wake up and remember who and what we are, to dwell once more in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thomas 108:
Jesus said, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.”

We are all the body of Christ.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Take the man down from the cross.

Wake up.

Remember.

Much love and happy Epiphany.

Christian

Las Vegas
January 6, 2026

P.S. This is by far the longest post I’ve ever written. If you made it all the way through, thank you for your attention! I made this for you, truly. 🙏

My Dear Child,

I am writing this letter to you from the year 2025 to share with you my hopes for the future.

When I was a young boy, I dreamed of exploring the far reaches of the known world. I wanted to venture into space as an astronaut. I wanted to discover the lost past as an archeologist. I climbed trees and wandered, my curiosity an ever-burning fire.

I grew up in a small fundamentalist world, where everyone believed and thought mostly the same. We lived a story of separation: souls trapped in bodies, stuck on probation. We all had one goal—to be saved by Jesus Christ and be resurrected after death to live for eternity in heaven.

So when I was eight years old, I was baptized into this worldview, and adopted the dreams (and fears) of my parents. I always thought I would have multiple wives and many children like my father. I imagined I would be a righteous Mormon man, a stalwart pillar in Joseph Smith’s church.

But then… everything changed.

At the age of 20, I lost my Mormon faith. As a child of the internet, I encountered all the information that my Mormon ancestors had never known. First, my testimony in Joseph Smith collapsed. Then, I questioned the Bible and the Jesus story, deconstructing my pre-set cosmology and religion. By my mid 20’s, I was an existentialist with a drinking problem, listening to sad music to cope with the seemingly meaningless state of the separated universe. I was still a skin-encapsulated ego, but now without a savior or a god who cared.

Then, with the grace of a few profound experiences, I began to remember a long forgotten inner truth. My deconstruction deepened, as I questioned my way out of my nationalist patriotic programming and my consumerist capitalistic conditioning. I climbed off the hedonic hamster wheel and exited the rat race they call the American Dream. I embarked on a soul quest, wandering the Earth to make sense of life and seek my soul.

The Great Mystery would take me even deeper into the tragic. As I awakened to the wound of the world, I began to see the 6th great mass extinction all around me. I saw the poly-crisis from 1000 different angles, and fell into despair.

But as my heart broke open, I reclaimed more of my authentic self and met with the Mystery. Accompanying my grief was a deep and abiding love for the beauty of life, and always that unquenchable fire of curiosity. It was with these two gifts (and grace) that I navigated my descent down into soul, and was initiated.

Now that I have considered all the facts, the truth I am joyful to share with you, is…

The universe is not separate, but UNI-fied. We are of one supreme substance—one unified field.

The universe is animate, bursting with life and pregnant with consciousness. All is infused with the Great Spirit.

The universe is holonic, each part a whole, each whole a part. Holons dance in harmony all the way up and down the evolutionary chain, from the quantum to the cosmic.

This holon’s journey started in fundamentalism, deconstructed into existentialism, and ultimately reconstructed into rational mysticism.

My hope is that you are nurtured and cultivated by a lineage of rational mystics who know the Great Mystery. My hope is that you will know you are already home in the Godhead. My hope is that you live fully and give your unique gift to life.

If you’re ever lost on the journey, use this compass:

You are a living prayer for a more beautiful world.

With all my love and blessings,

Prologue: My Mormon Story
Introduction: SoulQuest (this post)

Moloch
Chapter 1: The Fundamentalist Fortress
Chapter 2: Waking Up from the American Dream

SoulQuest—The TLDR

In a machine world that’s lost it’s soul, we embark on a SoulQuest to heal our wound of separation, discover our unique purpose, and transform crisis into crossing.

HEAL: Humanity is in crisis, as we witness the erosion of public health, the collapse of meaning, and the devastation of Earth’s ecology.

DISCOVER: This crisis is our call to adventure—an odyssey to surrender our old form and answer our unique calling from soul.

TRANSFORM: As soul-initiates, we plant the seeds of cultural renaissance and planetary regeneration, ushering in a new era—The Regenaissance.

The Eagle and The Condor

Let me tell you a very old story.

It’s the story of an ancient prophecy from the Amazon, and it goes something like this:

Once upon a time, in the distant mists of pre-history, humanity lived in harmony with nature and soul. We hunted and gathered the abundance of the Earth as the tribe. Each night, we would tell stories around the sacred fire, watched over by a great sky of infinite stars.

But then one day, humanity split and went down two separate paths—the path of the Eagle and the path of the Condor.

The Condor people dwelled in the South. They embodied intuition and the feminine wisdom of the water. They followed the path of the heart and the sacred plant medicines. The Condor cultivated harmonious balance, and deep insight into the interconnectivity of all beings. They walked softly on the animate Earth, as stewards of the garden.

Meanwhile, the Eagle people soared in the North. Head-centered and logical, they harnessed the masculine power of the fire. These prometheans followed the path of the mind and of technological innovation. The Eagle found focused vision, radical capacity, and creative manifestation. But they forgot their connection to nature and began enforcing dominion over all they encountered. They subjugated the land, domesticated the animals, and extracted the resources of the Earth.

Then, as the prophecy foretold, the Fourth Pachacuti began—a deadly period of 500 years. Beginning with the arrival of a man named Columbus, the Eagle’s dominance nearly extinguished the Condor’s wisdom. The indigenous peoples where killed and enslaved, their land stolen and raped for resources. With each genocide and atrocity humanity’s connection to soul faded.

However, the Condor wisdom survived, retreating into the heart of the world. In remote mountains and jungles, the sacred medicines and ancient wisdom was kept alive.

But then, the Eagle people unlocked liquid starlight. They pulled black fuel from deep within the Earth and their fire-power exploded to new heights. Burning hotter and hotter, they built a global machine that manufactured novelty.

For five centuries, this industrial colonialist machine expanded across all continents, conquering all in its path. The Earth grew sick, her waters poisoned, her air filthy. And her children began to die—species by species.

Then came the weapons of mass destruction and the atomic age of existential anxiety.

Then came the intelligent machines and the age of digital slavery.

Then came the dark night of the soul and the collapse.

Trapped in a tragedy, all seemed lost.

Until one day, the Fifth Pachacuti arrived—a prophesied time of regeneration and healing. For it was told that the Eagle and Condor would fly in the Great Sky together once again, giving birth to higher consciousness.

Moloch

Welcome to the madness of modernity—the machine age.

We stand at a confluence of existential crises (a poly-crisis), most notably in health, meaning, and ecology.

Hundreds of millions starve while billions more face food and water insecurity. Wars rage on and genocides are televised.

Meanwhile, even the privileged suffer from diseases of affluence and despair. Riddled with addiction, obesity, and loneliness, there’s no bio-hack back to health, when the ecology itself is collapsing.

And then there’s the meaning crisis. Caught between the disempowering poles of fundamentalism and nihilism, we oscillate between a prison of conformity or the screaming abyss of the absurd. Our gospels of salvation don’t quite slap like they used to, yet no amount of money can fill that god-sized hole in our hearts.

Meanwhile nuclear war encroaches closer than ever, the climate catastrophe worsens, and the AI arms race accelerates, as we race towards some kind of armagedon.

All this is to say… we are in a fucking pickle.

So I’m going to give this poly-crisis pickle a name: Moloch.

Far from a tasty snack of crunch and dill, Moloch is a Canaanite deity from the Bible, associated with child sacrifice.

“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Moloch, and so profane the name of your God…”
— Leviticus 18:21

This post was already dark, and now there’s child sacrifice is in the mix. But before you swipe back to the dopamine drip, I promise this isn’t a nihilistic soap box rant. It’s an invitation. However, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. So hang in there.

But seriously, what better way to characterize what is happening to the Earth right now than as child sacrifice? We are destroying our home planet and sacrificing our future generations to feed Moloch’s bottomless hunger.

Moloch is the hungry ghost of industry, the paranoia of nuclear militaries, and the corporate machine consuming the world. He’s turning the world into money…and pickles. Not a good dill.

“Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!”
— Allen Ginsberg, Howl

Moloch is the multi-polar trap, the coordination failure of negative-sum competition and the archetype of lose-lose games. He’s like a titty-twister contest in which everybody loses. Well, everyone except the masochists. 😈

“Moloch is the personification of the forces that coerce competing individuals to take actions which, although locally optimal, ultimately lead to situations where everyone is worse off.”
— Scott Alexander, Meditations on Moloch

Moloch sucks our attention, draining our life-force with algorithmic indifference. Zombified, we sludge through a haze of hyper-normal stimuli, swiping our literal brains out.

“Tried to lose myself in the primitive
In Yosemite like John Muir did
But his eyes were blue and mine are red and raw
‘Cause the modern world is a sight to see
It’s a stimulant, it’s pornography
It takes all my will not to turn it off”
— Conor Oberst, Barbary Coast

We merge with cold machines through glowing screens—trading “windows to the soul” for the red-eyed infinite scroll.

Moloch revels in our despair as the generations fragment—separated into classrooms, cubicles, suburbs, and senior living facilities. We drift from box to box as we play out scripted lives of quiet desperation.

Moloch requires tribute. The blood sacrifices of our alienated adolescents will do. Suicides and mass shootings keep the Master pleased. Unable to look away, yet unable to metabolize the grief, we drink down our Soma—one vice at a time.

Moloch feasts on the wild commons. 8 billion mouths fed from the factory farms and mono-cropped wastelands of previous prairies. He grows fat on processed foods and packaged products—shitting out the microplastics of a tortured supply chain.

Devouring entire ecosystems and species, He burps up the trash, forever chemicals, and toxic metals of our broken world.

The custom concern for the people
Build up the monuments and steeples to wear out our eyes
I get up just about noon
My head sends a message for me to reach for my shoes and then walk
Gotta go to work, gotta go to work, gotta have a job

Goes through the parking lot fields
Didn’t see no signs that they would yield and then thought
This’ll never end, this’ll never end, this’ll never stop

Message read on the bathroom wall
Said, “I don’t feel at all like I fall”
And we’re losing all touch, losing all touch, building a desert

—Modest Mouse, Custom Concern

Damned rivers.

Stripped soils.

Polluted air.

Plastic oceans.

Landfill nations.

Moloch laughs past tipping points and planetary boundaries. A cancerous tumor, He consumes everything, growing at any cost.

Even the cost of total collapse.

A Terminal Diagnosis

Cancer doesn’t give a shit.

It devours it’s host with indifference, eventually destroying the very substrate upon which it survives. Then it dies, along with the host. Yay.

Take colorectal cancer for instance—the third deadliest cancer. The butt-stuff of nightmares, it eats the ass of it’s victims until they eventually succumb to a brown-bagged shitstorm called death.

Not a fun way to go, no matter which way you swing.

Tom Laughlin, was a Jungian-trained psychologist who worked with terminal cancer patients. He transformed end of life palliative care by observing that butt cancer (and all terminal diagnoses) triggered profound psychological shifts.

When someone get’s that poopy prognosis, priorities instantly transform as the trivial becomes meaningless and the meaningful becomes essential.

In other words, when you find out that you’re being sodomized by cancer and you have mere weeks or months to live, the proposition of going back to your cubicle to grind through your sales calls so you can marginally increase a number on a screen seems, well, fucking absurd. When you realize you’re in the ultimate pickle—being retired from life early, the thought of spending your remaining days working, just to add a few more shekels to your Roth IRA sounds like a pretty bad dill. Not that trading your life for money wasn’t a shit-dill before, but now you see this pickle with painful clarity (and painful poops).

So, you seek meaningful ways to spend the rest of your days. You trade the drudgery of your day job for the giggles of children. You forget your Amazon wish list and dust off that unlived bucket list. You replace the infinite doom scroll for the peaceful nature stroll.

According to Laughlin, this transformation characterizes Jung’s concept of shifting from Ego to Self.

The Ego is our conscious “I” that manages daily life. The Ego climbs the corporate ladder, perpetually puts off those pesky fantasies of the Soul, and actively ignores the blood in the toilet.

The Self encompasses both the Ego and the Unconscious—the domain of dreams, intuition, and archetypes. The Self knows our deepest inmost desires and seeks to manifest our most meaningful life.

Jung called this “individuation,” the evolutionary process of becoming who we are.

Laughlin (and many other depth psychologists) have helped patients live this transformation, guiding them to pursue their “unlived lives.” The end-of-life guide reminds you of your meaningful soul-work, points you back towards forgotten passions, and calls you to that long-deferred art project.

Laughlin was essentially playing the role of the herald, calling dying hero’s to the adventure of their lives, before it was too late.

And the crazy part is… in many (anecdotal) cases, a “miracle” would occur: the cancer would go into remission. When patients finally began living that “unlived life,” they would begin healing.

“Is it possible that the disease itself evolved as a consequence of actions taken or not taken in our lives? Could our unlived lives have exacted their vengeance upon us in the form of cancer? And if they did, can we cure ourselves now by living these lives out?”
—Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art

Some patients might even fully recover from their self-denial, finally breaking free from their shackles of conditioning to explore the great backdoors. 😜🍑

All pickle and butt jokes aside… we actually do have a terminal diagnosis, right now.

Moloch is the poly-crisis pickle of a late-stage cancer.

And the only way out is through. Just like the cancer patients Laughlin worked with, the only way to reverse our global cancer is to finally start living our unlived lives, remember our deepest desires, and find our souls—one by one.

Let that sink in.

You have an unlived life. How many years have you not been living it? How many decades?

When you allow yourself to feel the emotions beneath the scripted justifications, a sacred wound will begin to break you open.

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
—Khalil Gibran, On Pain

Time to snap out of the hypnotic tech-trance and remember. Remember the wisdom of your heart. Remember who you are. Remember the unlived life that’s calling you.

A more beautiful world is possible. You know this in your bones.

Grieving fully will metabolize your fear and depression into courageous action.

So lament. Cry out. Unravel. But weep, don’t whimper.

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” —Joanna Macy

Behind the distractions and escape strategies is a deeper yearning—an inner calling. Perhaps only heard as a faint whisper at first:

“It’s time for an adventure.”

Follow the muse beyond the threshold of the known, and venture into the wilderness of soul.

The Regenaissance

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

We live at the dawn of the Fifth Pachacuti. And it’s time for the Eagle and Condor to soar together once again.

The psychedelics renaissance is here, and sacred plants are traveling beyond their origins. From Andean mountains to concrete jungles, the Eagle peoples are remembering the way of the heart (and tripping balls 😵‍💫).

Promethean technologies are now ubiquitous around the world. The Condor peoples are learning the ways of Eagle while sharing their wisdom and weaving together new structures.

Indigenous elders gather in council with wanderers and pioneers, sharing ceremonies with all walks of life. Rainbow Warriors are building bridges between science and spirituality, uniting traditions to restore balance to a tragic world.

Pockets of curious seekers and courageous innovators are forming all across the planet. We are exploring and experimenting, dreaming about the possibilities of a more beautiful world.

When Eagle and Condor fly together, a new consciousness emerges, honoring both rational brilliance and heart wisdom, balancing analysis and intuition, tempering power with wisdom. We are finally beginning to remember our sacred obligation: to live in reciprocity with all of our relations and the great web of life.

This union creates technology rooted in ecology, communities co-creating in natural rhythm, and liberating structures of stewardship rather than extraction.

The Great Work of our time is underway—to heal the separation between mind and heart, between humanity and nature.

“The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.”
—Thomas Berry, The Great Work

We stand at the threshold of a new dawning. A time between worlds. The liminal space of metamorphosis.

As consumerist caterpillars, we have grown to unprecedented size and capacity. 8 billion strong, we have terraformed the planet, extracting resources, devastating ecologies, and eradicating species.

Forced by an evolutionary imperative—the imminence of our own self-destruction—we must now embark on a hero’s journey…

Into the cocoon of cultural renaissance.

Into a transformative era of regeneration.

Into the Regenaissance.

A Regenaissance to revive culture and restore nature.

A Regenaissance to harmonize technology with ecology.

A Regenaissance to plants the seeds of a more beautiful world.

“Out of this darkness, a new world can arise, not to be constructed by our minds so much as to emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see clearly how it’s going to turn out, we are still called to let the future into our imagination. We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished in our hearts.”
—Joanna Macy

Heal, Discover, Transform

This poly-crisis pickle is the catalyst for our crossing. Evolution has forced us across the threshold, into the crucible of our metamorphosis.

Like a child just before birth, we’re trapped in a claustrophobic womb. As the catastrophes proliferate and the arms race accelerates, the walls close in around us.

We are being initiated—pushed by The Great Mother into the birth canal—our passage into a new age and a new humanity.

The only way out is through.

Or as the Stoics say: the obstacle is the way.

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

So how might we surrender to our fate (Amor Fati) and ease the passage?

Heal, discover, and transform.

Healing is the first phase of our hero’s journey.

Addiction, complacency, and fear prevent us from answering our call to adventure. We need to get out of our own way, metabolize our grief, and begin the long trek back into wholeness.

Behind our protective egos is a wounded child. Below our addictions and escapist strategies is a repressed shadow. These unacknowledged parts lie in the unconscious, awaiting our attention. Integrating these seeming contradictions holds the key to our healing and “whole-ing.”

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 51

It’s time to un-plug from the techno dystopia of our machine world and un-fuck our modern lives. This healing work breaks the addiction cycle, restores our bodies, and calms our minds.

Most importantly, our healing path leads us into soul-discovery. As we turn inward and explore the inner frontier of psyche, we remember our inner nature and discover our uniqueness.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes”. —Carl Jung

This inner discovery is essential to address the meaning crisis of fundamentalism and nihilism.

Fundamentalism has kept us trapped in a story of conformity, suppressing our authenticity and agency. Domesticated and indoctrinated, we cling tightly to the shallow meaning and false certainly conscripted to us by our parents, religion, and culture.

But a deeper knowing awaits us in the depths of psyche.

Nihilism throws out the fundamentalist story, along with everything else. It paralyses action, keeping us in a malaise of meaningless monotony. Cynical and jaded, we lose purpose and numb out the deeper longing within.

But a new story lies just around the corner of our post-modern deconstruction.

This inner discovery leads to soul-initiation: the antidote to fundamentalism and nihilism.

Soul-initiated adults prioritize authentic soul expression over societal conformity and belonging. It is a sacred rite of passage, characterized by an expansion of consciousness and the emergence of a more authentic identity and way of being.

“The journey of soul initiation is the path to true Adulthood—to becoming a cultural visionary and evolutionary—and true Adulthood is essential to a genuinely healthy, mature culture.”
—Bill Plotkin, The Decent to Soul

It’s time to drink from the wellspring of soul, discover who we really are, and infuse life with profound meaning.

Outer transformation is the final phase of this journey to Regenaissance.

Ecological collapse, nuclear catastrophe, AI dystopias, and other existential risks are at our doorstep. We must transform culture and civilization if we are to survive and thrive. And to create any meaningful change, we have to start with the root of the problem.

The foundation of any society is story.

Story is the super-structure that binds us all together. It weaves together the myths, memes, and metaphors that create our world-view and the lenses through which we see the world.

Our current paradigm of separation drives division and accelerates the apocalypse. This is a story of dualistic individualism—a worldview that imagines the individual as an atomized, autonomous entity existing in fundamental separation from others, the world, and any transcendent reality.

At its core, this paradigm emerges from what philosophers call the “Cartesian Self,” a conception developed by René Descartes that establishes a radical distinction between mind and body, subject and object, self and world.

“I think, therefore I am.” —René Descartes

This failing story comes in two shitty flavors.

The fundamentalist flavor inhabits a two worlds mythology. This dualism posits two distinct ontological realms: a temporal, fallen material world and an eternal, perfect spiritual realm. Each separate self requires divine intervention to escape from one’s fallen state.

In other words, you are a soul stuck on probation, trapped in a sinful body on a broken world, and you must be saved by a higher power (Jesus).

The nihilistic flavor expresses as a materialist determinism. This philosophy responds to the self’s predicament (of separateness) by deconstructing everything and denying any objective meaning at all. All human experience is nothing but biochemical processes devoid of any agency, and all frameworks of meaning are silly stories that we tell ourselves to fall asleep at night.

In other words, you are nothing more than a bunch of particles that randomly emerged out of a mechanized universe (for no reason), and your agency, meaning, and life’s purpose are all dellusions.

Neither of these stories are very empowering IMO. But luckily, there is more to discover.

Individualistic dualism leaves out the profound insights of non-dual states and unitive consciousness.

As the sages have been telling us for ages: we are one.

“The kingdom of God is within you.”
—Jesus [Christian Tradition]

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop.”
—Rumi [Sufi tradition]

“Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.”
—Lao Tzu [Taoist Tradition]

“There is no separate self! We are a current. We are a stream. We are a continuation.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh [Buddist Tradition]

“Tat Tvam Asi” (Thou Art That)
—Chandogya Upanishad [Vedantic tradition]

“Each one of us is part of the soul of the universe.”
—Plotinus [Platonic Tradition]

“At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.”
—Black Elk [Lakota Tradition]

I could go on quoting sage wisdom all day, but you get the point. This is a perennial insight that has emerged across the ages and from virtually all cultures.

Stories evolve, just like everything else. We can tell new stories that radically empower individuals while also weaving us together in a greater field of value.

Rational Mysticism is one such story.

It reconciles the dualistic paradigm of separation and the non-dual unitive consciousness of all enlightened sages.

Rational Mysticism pulls from the wisdom of all traditions, harmonizing science and spirituality.

It’s time to tell a new story for a new age.

“We must now collectively weave a cocoon for the metamorphosis of our own species.”
—Bill Plotkin

From Crisis to Crossing

My SoulQuest began in 2012, with a faith crisis.

A naive and spiritually broken 20 year old, I left my Christian-Mormon worldview and community behind, wandering into the wilderness of the unknown. I didn’t know it then, but I was embarking on an odyssey that would utterly transform me.

Now, 13 years later, I’m ready to tell the tale.

From fundamentalist faith to existential dread, I fell into a vacuum of meaning. I stumbled along the hedonic treadmill of a Las Vegas consumer culture, traversing the snares of the rat race.

After 5 years of aimless earning, I removed my golden shackles, quit my job, and answered my call to adventure.

I backpacked around the world, exploring different cultures and ways of being. I cultivated a yoga and meditation practice, got dismembered and blessed by psychedelics, and spent 1000 hours exploring the inner realms of psyche in the float tank.

I healed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I kicked my addictions to alcohol, sports, and video games. I lost 50 pounds, began rock climbing, and got into the best shape of my life. I removed a metal screw from my hip and healed a lifelong injury.

I climbed mountains, faced demons, and was ripped open by the wound of the world. I lamented and grieved the loss of my old self and the immeasurable loss of our poly-crisis predicament.

I studied wisdom traditions and learned from the sages of all ages. Absorbing philosophy, psychology, mythology, and anything that could feed my curiosity and inner longing.

I fully deconstructed, braving the screaming abyss on my decent down into the depths of soul.

Dissolving my adolescent identity, I emerged as a soul-initiate. And after years of reconstruction, I return from my odyssey with a boon for my people—a new story.

This is SoulQuest—A Hero’s Journey from Crisis to Crossing.

This story will play out in 6 parts: Moloch, Sanctuary, Psychonaut, Cocoon, Holon, and Regenaissance.

I hope you’ll join me on this quest.

Thank you for curiosity and attention. Stay tuned for the next one.

Much Love,

Christian

Las Vegas

P.S. If you would like more of my backstory as context for this journey, you can read the prologue here:

My Mormon Story

Join us for an enlightening conversation about flow states, personal growth, and the power of natural rhythms. This episode explores the intersection of modern life and ancient wisdom, diving deep into topics like:

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In this conversation, Christian and Tim delve into the nature of consciousness, the transformative power of float tanks, and the intersection of technology and humanity. They explore the importance of personal transformation, the quest for meaning in a rapidly changing world, and the need for connection and community in navigating life's complexities.

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This episode is the beginning of a deep conversation into a radically new story for humanity.

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I was baptized by “the tank,” and have been spreading the “gospel of REST” ever since. I was so “touched by the spirit” of floating that I sold my house and bet all my savings on a float business like a radicalized evangelist. I then started dishing out floats like they were loaves and fishes.

Since my float-odyssey began, I’ve logged over 1000 hours in the holy of holies, experimented with dozens of sacraments and protocols, and paired floating with all manner of righteous modalities.

I’ve built my own Church of the Void, kept up to speed with all the latest float research, and trained with the leaders in peak performance and flow state optimization.

In other words, you might say I’m something like a high priest of floating. 🧙

But floating doesn’t land the same way for everyone, and most people have no idea what the actual fuck I am talking about when I start waxing esoteric about “the untapped potential of the tank, man!”

Many people who experience their first float are left wondering: “what is all the hype about?”

In an effort to answer that question (and evangelize), I’m sharing a bit of my float-philosophy, as well as some pro tips and protocols to help “unlock” the tank. I won’t be diving too deep into all the specific benefits of floating, but you can read that post here.

So if you’re curious about floating or you’ve been underwhelmed by your experience thus far, this post should give you some nice tools to open up some float-portals of your own.

If you’re an experienced psychonaut, be sure to stick around to the end to get access to my favorite float tank protocol - the True North Stack.

Float Philosophy

Before we can talk about specific protocols and pairings, we need to understand what the tank is all about, as well as lay down a foundation for safe and effective journeys.

How you show up to the tank makes all the difference.

Fundamentally, what is the float tank, and how should we approach it?

The YOUniverse

The float tank was designed and engineered to be an isolation experience. Take some water, add a little salt (actually, add a fuck-ton of salt), add some peace and quiet, and voila! Float tank.

There’s a whole laundry list of mental and physical benefits associated with floating, but rather than a prescription to fix your back pain, this is more of an esoteric hot take on the real nature of the tank.

When you enter the tank, the stimulation and distractions of the outer world are eliminated (if done properly) so that one might enter an inner realm and explore the “YOUniverse” within.

Everything you experience in the float tank is something you brought in with you. - Me

Like a magic mirror, the tank illuminates the vast inner realms of the Self.

I’m using the term “Self” in the Jungian sense, meaning the totality of the psyche.

In Greek, the word “psyche” refers to the human soul or spirit, the non-physical essence of a person. It also originally meant “breath” which was considered the life force or animating principle of living beings. Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, depicted as a woman with butterfly wings. 🦋

The Self includes AND transcends the ego. It’s the archetype of wholeness, the sacred union of opposites, the guiding light - True North. The Self invites us to venture beyond the known and take the path of individuation - to embark on the odyssey of our lives.

By very definition the tera incognita of Self is mysterious and unknown, but also contains priceless treasures of healing, self-discovery, and transformation.

A portal into Self.

A portal for the evolution of consciousness.

A portal to the YOUniverse.

The Practice

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and one float isn’t going to un-fuck your psyche. If you’re seeking the deeper treasures of the float tank, its gonna require some ongoing practice.

A ritual float practice is a commitment to continually come back to center, to cultivate an intimate relationship with Self, and to become an explorer of psyche (a psychonaut).

The good news - Floating is incredibly relaxing and recharging. Once you get into it, its the easiest thing ever, you literally just float. It’s something I always look forward to.

The bad news - As with most good things in life, starting is the hard part. Plus, it requires a financial investment (albeit a relatively small one).

Beginning a float practice is tall task for the distracted masses who’s attention has been captured. We modern monkeys are trapped in a house of screens, itching for that next hit of doom-scroll dopamine.

The Anthropocene hasn’t been kind to our psyches, and for most, the float tank seems less like a groovy adventure and more like a crucible of boredom and anxiety.

But if 60-90 minutes in a float tank sounds like the greatest trial of your life, ask yourself this… If you’re this anxious about stepping away from TikTok and being alone with yourself for an hour, what does that say about your relationship to Self? What does it say about your addiction to hyper-normal stimuli?

Maybe its time to put down that notification needle and start to get to #knowthyself.

Boredom is the fertile ground of creativity. Anxiety is an invitation into healing. Do the hard thing.

There’s a transformational journey awaiting the hero who will answer the call to adventure. Some curiosity and a pinch of courage will take you a long way.

A single float interrupts the chaos and resets the nervous system. It allows you to zoom out and reflect on your life, to see a bigger picture. It begins an intimate conversation with Self.

A float practice continues that conversation with a life-changing odyssey.

Safety and Respect

As far as I have been able to find in my research, only one person has ever drowned in a float tank, and it was a 71 year old woman who had a bad fall on her way in. Considering that hundreds of thousands of floats happen every year, I would say that’s a pretty decent track record.

Floating is incredibly safe (and beneficial) for almost anyone, so why a section about safety?

Simply put - drugs.

From the very beginning, float tanks have been associated with altered states and psychedelic exploration. John Lily, the crazy/brilliant scientist who invented the tank, went deeper than most with his LSD + Ketamine multi-hour extended floats.

As a self-identified psychonaut and explorer of the YOUniverse, I’m not about to say you should never pair substances with floating. However, for most people, most of the time, floating sober will be the best course of action.

Floating sober is amazing, and should be your default float-mode. Plus, you can go a long way with simple breathing and meditation techniques (no drugs required).

It goes without saying, but as an adult, you’re in charge of you (hopefully). You are sovereign over your own body and your state of consciousness.

Pairing substance use with the float tank can yield powerful returns, but it comes with risks and should be approached with serious intention and respect.

Don’t do anything stupid… like freak out the float staff, pee or shit in a float tank, or end up in jail.

Most important of all, DONT END UP IN A BODY BAG. That would be a real dick move.

With that caveat, lets crack on.

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Preparing for the Journey

Before you begin your float session, there are a few things to consider as part of the set up. These elements aren’t required to have a good float, but they can certainly take it to the next level.

Here are some pro-tips to set yourself up for an epic float.

Intentional Ritual

Intention seems to be the main rudder for guiding the float experience, but its also important to leave space for grace. Let the tank surprise you.

What you want to avoid are fixed expectations of how a float is “supposed” to go.

If you’re seeking some clarity or insight, hold your question or intention loosely and allow the experience to take you wherever it will. The reality is, you can’t force anything in the tank, so you might as well surrender to the float.

That being said, intention makes a huge difference.

Preparing for a float with quiet reflection, self inquiry, and some journaling can really open up the possibility-space. Take your time and cultivate a ritual before each float.

Our “Luminary Lounge” at True North Float was designed just for this.

Burn some incense.

Pull a tarot card if you want a fun way to connect with the subconscious mind.

Did I mention journaling?

Get witchy with it… or don’t.

Make your pre-float ritual your own.

Cannabis

Once again, floating sober should be your default float-mode, but in my opinion, there’s no better way to experience cannabis than in the float tank.

Adding a cannabis sacrament to your intentional pre-float ritual can be a powerful enhancement and will certainly impact your float.

Whether this impact is positive or negative will largely depend on your current state and how you are approaching the tank (set and setting). You might not always get a fun or enjoyable experience. Sometimes the “work” involves facing your fear and anxiety, processing grief, or integration of your shadow.

Know that adding cannabis to the equation will likely increase the intensity of the experience, and is NOT for everyone. I consider this for experienced floaters and psychonauts only.

Cannabis is widely considered safe for most adults, but more data is coming out that shows mixed results. Cannabis can be habit forming, and can exacerbate certain predispositions for mental disorders, so its important to use your discernment, do your own research, and move at the speed of trust.

You definitely want to be comfortable with cannabis AND floating before you choose to mix the two together.

Sacramental Use

Cannabis has many uses. It’s viewed as both a recreational drug, a therapeutic medicine, and a sacred sacrament. When it comes to floating, I prefer to view cannabis as a sacrament, which I “infuse” with my intention (prayer) during my pre-float ritual.

As with any substance, cannabis should be respected and used with intention.

For me, cannabis has been a powerful tool in the float tank, as it helps me to drop into a deep embodied state. I pair it with my floats when I want to connect to the body’s subtle energy system (chakras) and activate the innate healing intelligence of the body.

There’s too many new-age buzz words to unpack in this bit, so lets just keep on rollin.

Cannabis in the tank can produce a wide array of effects, from relaxing to energizing, from physical to visionary, from anxiety inducing to spiritually profound. It effects everyone differently, and no two journeys are the same.

Some of the most profound experiences of my life have been floating while high on cannabis.

Edible vs Smoked

I prefer edible cannabis, as it affords a more embodied experience than smoked cannabis. It’s also easier to dose, and has a longer lasting effect thats perfect for a 90 minute float.

Plus, in general, smoking is sort of terrible for your health.

Its important to be comfortable with cannabis outside of the tank before you try and float with it in your system, and its important to start with a lower dose than you think you should. You don’t want the first time you get blasted on weed to be in a float tank… trust me on that one.

Dosing at 5 mg of THC should be plenty for your first cannabis enhanced float journey - or the more pithy“elevated float” if you prefer.

True North Float legally provides uplifting and relaxing edible cannabis options at our shop for those who are experienced and ready to explore further.

Fire & Ice

My favorite wellness modality to pair before a float is contrast therapy.

Sauna and cold plunge is all the craze right now, and for good reason. There’s nothing like fire & ice to blow off all my stress, connect me to my breath, and prime me for an amazing float.

Sweating out toxins in the sauna and jumpstarting the body in the cold plunge feels incredible, and sets you up to hit the float water with a calm mind and a relaxed body. This allows you to go deeper in the float tank, as you aren’t spending half of the float trying to let go of your day.

At True North, we have Fire & Ice + Float pairings available all day long, and highly recommend it if you can spare another hour to really level up the experience.

If you’re on a tight budget or a tight schedule, consider taking a cold shower right before your float. Its not the same as a plunge, but its still a great way to charge up the body, activate your breath, and prepare you for a great float.

Plus, after doing the work of cold exposure, laying down in the float tank feels like being wrapped in a soft warm blanket of bliss.

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Enter the Void

Ok, so you’ve set your intentions, you’ve (potentially) taken some sacramental cannabis, you primed the body, and now its time to float.

Here’s a couple pointers to get the most out of your float journey.

Breathwork

Breath is life, and there’s nowhere better to connect to the breath than in the float tank.

This is by far the #1 tool to take your float practice deeper. Follow the breath and you’ll be amazed at what happens next.

The breath is both a conscious and an autonomous function of the body - you can control it, and it also simply happens. This is the perfect “wedge” to go beyond the monkey mind and explore the YOUniverse.

I wont list all the various breathwork techniques you could explore in the float tank, but in general, there are two types of breathwork worth mentioning:

Down-Regulating Breath

This involves slowing your respiratory rate and calming the nervous system.

I recommend this to relax, reduce stress, and calm the mind. This is a must for anyone who is dealing with chronic pain, fear, and anxiety. Inhale the new shit, exhale the bullshit.

Box breathing is my drug of choice when I encounter turbulence during a float. It’s incredibly simple and effective.

You can increase the size of your “box” as your body adapts and you’re lung capacity grows. Before you know it you’ll be in monk mode - taking only one extended breathe per minute (15 x 15 box breath).

Up-Regulating Breath

This involves increasing your respiratory rate, and will fill the body with more prana or life-force energy.

I recommend it if you want to add more intensity to the float, get deeper into the body, and explore some altered states of consciousness.

Listen to your body and go at your own pace.

The most popular (and my personal favorite) type of up-regulating breath is Wim Hof Method. I recommend 3-5 rounds at the beginning of your float to really blast things off.

Some people might be concerned with doing hyper-ventilative breathing while laying in a body of water. That hesitation makes sense in any normal water, but the float tank is a different story. People fall asleep during floats every day. I’m not suggesting that you overdo it and lose consciousness in the tank, BUT if you did, you would just float peacefully on your back until you woke up.

In hundreds of breathwork-powered floats, I’ve never lost consciousness or felt unsafe in the tank.

There are some fascinating states on the other side of some Wim Hof breathing. Seriously, its worth exploring, especially in the float tank.

We are such big fans of it, that we’ve even created a guided Wim Hof track on our waterproof headphones at True North Float.

Meditation

Floating in a perfectly comfortable environment with no outer distractions is ideal for exploring the mind. Its also the best place I know of for inspiration to find you.

If you already have a meditation practice, run it through some floats! If not, here are a few tools to get you started.

The float tank is like meditation on steroids. - Me again

Witness

Observe the constant arising and passing of thoughts and sensations without judgement.

Following the breath is usually the easiest and most effective way to keep the mind alert and not get totally lost in thought. When you realize you’re thinking about TikTok again, just bring your attention gently back to the breathe and begin again.

This witnessing practice pairs wonderfully with box breathing, and I recommend this technique for anyone with a busy mind.

Remember, the point isn’t to get anywhere. Just witness.

Contemplate

A personal favorite of mine, this technique involves following a particular train of thought with focussed attention rather than just witnessing what arises.

Its not a forced thing, but rather a playful dance as you observe where a line of inquiry or imagination is leading you (ideally its in the direction of your your pre-float intention). You are aiming for that sweet spot between focussed attention and relaxed openness.

Follow the muse wherever it takes you.

Curiosity is the flavor of deep contemplation.

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Waking Up

Like anything else, meditation requires practice for it to bear fruit, and its hard to understate the benefits of a spacious mind.

My favorite tool for practicing meditation outside of the tank is the Waking Up app. Its a treasure trove of various practices, philosophy, and life wisdom that will absolutely transform your life if you let it.

Although I don’t agree with Sam Harris (the creator of Waking Up) about many things (his peddling of determinism, for example), I still think the app is an incredible resource and tool for the awakening of consciousness.

Its free for everyone for the first 30 days, and free beyond that to anyone who can’t afford it, so you truly have nothing to lose (other than your anxiety).

Go on then, check it out.

Yoga

Yes, yoga in the float tank is a thing, especially when the float tanks were designed for it.

After floating in every kind of pod and cabin out there, we decided to build custom rooms big enough for any sized human to sprawl out and get into the most juicy of stretches.

Our float suits at True North are the ideal environment for embodied healing, as we created incredibly spacious [6 x 8 x 8] tanks with grippy traction on the bottom and grab bars for assistance.

My yoga practice has completely evolved because of the tank. When you’re floating, there’s a whole landscape of yogic possibilities that open up. Being free from gravity is a real game changer, particularly for the spine.

The tank assists in connecting to that inner primal intelligence of the body that’s beyond the thinking mind. This ancient inner physician knows how to heal, you just have to “get out of the way” and give it a chance to do its thing.

The float tank is the perfect place to move in any way your body needs.

Once again, the breath is the doorway, the wedge, the bridge, and all the other metaphors that point towards transcendence.

Follow your breath and it will take you for a ride.

Just try and keep that salt water out of your eyes! 👀

Extending the Journey

A float is a powerful thing on its own, but you can also extend the journey by adding a post float pairing. My two favorite ways to do this are with massage and ketamine breathwork, both of which are offerings at True North Float.

These are optional add-ons that might just blow your mind.

Massage

Once you’ve spent 60-90 minutes in the tank, you’ve reduced muscle tension, relaxed the body, and prepared yourself for the best massage of your life.

Often times the first half of a massage is spent trying to get the body to relax and open, but after a float its already optimized for deeper bodywork, especially if you’re going deep in the tank with some breathwork or yoga.

Wether you already love massage, or you’re dealing with particularly tight tissues, or if you’re a primate of any kind, I highly recommend you float then get a massage. It’s incredible.

Spending three hours at True North and pairing these modalities is most glorious.

Ketamine Breathwork

The float tank is the perfect primer to set you up for a powerful ketamine breathwork journey.

Ketamine breathwork is a modality that merges ketamine therapy with breathwork in a safe and intentional container. This service is provided by our friends over at The Ketamine Clinic, Satori Health and Wellness, and is the most potent and potentially profound modality available at True North Float.

You can learn more about ketamine breathwork at True North here.

Floating before the ketamine session is the perfect way to clarify your intentions, rid yourself of any residual stress or anxiety, and prepare for a transformational blast off. 🚀🦋

I also recommend a few weekly float sessions after your ketamine breathwork session to prolong the benefits and to integrate the experience.

The Return Journey

Your float session might be over, but that doesn’t mean the journey ends here. After all, reaching the summit is only half the journey. Now it’s time to come off the mountain safely and return to the village with helping hands.

This is how to nail re-entry.

The Luminary Lounge

Every good float center has a zen room or tea lounge. This post float space is critical for two main reasons: to land softly back on Earth, and to integrate your session.

Going from 90 minutes of expansive tranquility to notifications and traffic is no fun. Give yourself the gift of an extra 15 minutes or so to enjoy a beverage and reflect on your float journey.

I cant understate the value of integrating your session while it is fresh. Use your journal to free write your post-float thoughts and capture the insights and “downloads” of your session.This is also a great opportunity to share your story in our community book if you feel called.

Plus, you might just happen into an amazing conversation with a total stranger.

Our Luminary Lounge cultivates magical connections daily.

Integration - “Doing the Work”

You’ve summited the mountain and perhaps gleaned some powerful insights, but the real work comes next.

“Doing the work” means taking that new awareness or insight and integrating it back into the everyday mundane world back here in 3D. How can you turn your new perspective into inspired action? Are you simply sensation seeking or is this practice bearing fruit in your life?

My favorite tool for integration is journaling, as it allows me to bring the ephemeral and imaginary down into the word, which in my view is the first step in the manifestation process.

In addition to journaling, sharing and integrating with others can be extremely valuable as well. That’s why we are stewarding a “cosmic campfire” for seekers and explorers to swap notes and engage in good faith dialogue.

It helps to find the others.

But most of all, integration involves following that guidance from Self and taking inspired action. Plant those new seeds. Water them with love. Bring your prayer into the world.

Stay awake. Build stuff. Help out. - Jaime Wheal

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Take Refuge in Ritual

One of the most important tools I’ve picked up from my mentor Jaime Wheal is the liberating structure of a hedonic calendar.

In his book Recapture the Rapture, Jaime lays out the framework for balancing ecstatic peak states with every day life.

This calendar includes daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, and annual “peak experiences.” Each category should warrant something a bit edgier than the last, with more risk and investment to pull it off.

Daily practices are low risk, low reward, while annual ones are high risk and high reward.

A simple example of a daily “peak experience” that is low risk and relatively low reward is a meditation + breathwork practice. First thing in the morning, get outside into the sunlight, breathe, and just be in the present. This is a perfect way to set yourself up for a great day, and it has massive cumulative benefits over the long term.

The “compound interest” effect of the daily practice doesn’t make a whole lot difference over the span of weeks, but over a few years you’ll see profound upgrades.

The Sabbath is a perfect ancient example of weekly hedonic calendaring, where one day of each week is dedicated to that which is most sacred.

We can extend this beyond religion into a Secular Sabbath, and for one day each week (not necessarily on Sunday), we climb off of the hamster wheel, and simply savor the world. Instead of chasing our goals, we might instead zoom out and determine what goals are actually worth chasing.

This day of rest and reflection is a perfect ritual for immersion in nature, connecting with loved ones, time spent in worship and prayer, and (you guessed it) a weekly float practice.

The Secular Sabbath practice is something fairly easy to turn into a ritual, while your annual peak experience might consist of pushing through some major resistance and crossing something huge off of your bucket list.

At the end of the day, your Hedonic Calendar could look something like this:

Daily (365) - 30 minutes of breathwork and meditation.

Weekly (52) - A full-day Secular Sabbath including time in nature, loved ones, and self-reflection.

Monthly (12) - Re-center with the True North Stack, get out under the full moon, or take a day trip into the mountains.

Seasonal (3) - A “big” experience, perhaps involving higher stakes like travel or psychedelics.

Annual (1) - Pick one of your seasonal experiences to scratch something off your bucket list. This might include international travel, an extended retreat, or summiting an epic mountain. This usually requires preparation, training, and a financial commitment.

The moral of the story here, is to structure in your inspiration so you dont get lost in the sauce of the rat race or get sucked into endless sensation seeking. A hedonic calendar affords you the peak experiences and ecstasis you’re seeking, without handing over your agency to novelty addiction.

You don’t want life to pass you by, but you also don’t want to become a lizard-brained fuck-monkey endlessly hitting all the pleasure buttons.

The True North Stack

Gold star for making it this far! ⭐️

As a quick preface, a “stack” is a biohack-y term for the combining and sequencing of various elements that play nicely together. The goal is to increase the upside and reduce the possible downsides of the components involved (in the stack).

For example, the cannabis + functional mushroom gummies we stock at True North Float are a stack of various ingredients that land pretty nicely. But the stack that will always reign supreme in our hearts (and bellies) is of course, the PB&J.

Peanut butter is good, jelly is nice, but a PB&J is a fucking timeless classic.

The True North Stack is NOT the ultimate psychedelic blast off experience (that’s a different stack). Rather, this is a ritual that is much more sustainable and can be implemented into your hedonic calendar on a weekly to monthly basis. Its fairly low risk with quite a high ROI.

Its the culmination of a 1000+ float hours, countless experiments with various enhancements, and pairings with all manner of different wellness modalities.

So without further ado, my favorite float tank protocol - The True North Stack.

Pre- Float Ritual

• Show up 30 minutes before the float, light some incense, set the mood with some medicine music, and enter into sacred space - think Sabbath practice.

  • TNF usually has the incense and music dialed, but we are happy to take special requests.

• Ingest 5-10 mg of high quality, edible, sacramental THC (after blessing it of course) about 30-45 minutes before the float.

  • I prefer sativa strains for contemplative floats, and indica strains for yoga floats. We have some good stuff at the shop.

  • Rapé also fits really nicely as a ritual sacrament. Careful though, tobacco is slippery. Make sure you stay in the drivers seat with all substances.

• Consult the tarot and write down your float intentions.

  • The tarot is a great way to connect with the sub-conscious mind, and doesn’t have to be approached as prophetic or supernatural. If it speaks to you, listen. That’s the Self you’re hearing.

The Session

• 40 minutes of Fire & Ice

  • When the edible hits in the cold plunge, you’ll find out what you’re made of 🥶. (Substitute with a cold shower if needed.)

• 90 minute float

  • Begin your float with 3-5 rounds of Wim Hof Method breathwork. Listen to the body and follow the breath where it wants to go. We have a great guided track for this if you prefer.

  • Depending on the intention for the session, relax into a witnessing practice, stay actively engaged in contemplation, or dive deep into embodiment (yoga).

Post-Float

• Land softly in the Luminary Lounge with some tea or a refreshing elixir.

• Free write for as long as needed to capture the insights and actionable items from the session.

• Optional: Share your story or open up a dialogue around the Cosmic Campfire.

If you’re near Southern Utah or you want to be, come on by to True North Float and try the True North Stack for yourself.

Angel is also the founder of Yin on Fire, a sacred space of refuge for the evolution of peace. If you’re going to be in beautiful Southern Utah this September, I highly recommend you get a ticket to this 4 day festival. True North Float will be sponsoring an epic art sanctuary with our friends over at Artdrop!

In this conversation Angel and I explore:

• Her Mormon story and spiritual journey

• Our search for God and Truth

• Transcending old stories and gatekeepers of knowledge

• The rise and reunion of the divine feminine

• Yin on Fire: wellness, music, and art festival

If you’re into the vibe here, be sure to subscribe for new podcasts, posts, and other musings. Substack is the best place to subscribe, but you can find us on the other platforms here:

https://www.truenorthproject.com/

Also, there’s just a few more days of True North Float’s annual Summer Sale, and with it our biggest discount of the year. If you’re in Utah, now is the perfect opportunity to answer that call to adventure and embark on a journey into the YOUniverse.

As always, thank you for your attention and support.

Stay curious.

Christian

Topics We Explore

• Porn addiction and the tragedy of our attention commons.

• The dystopian threat of AI-generated porn and virtual reality experiences.

• Unshaming sexuality and transitioning from porn addiction to sacred sexuality.

• Intentional sexual practices and sexual hygiene for men.

• Breaking the circumcision cycle and healing the masculine feminine wound.

• Sacred masculinity and intentionally harnessing your life force energy.

"We have a porn problem. We are definitely addicted as a culture.”

In this conversation we discuss his "holy trinity" of conscious sustainable evolution.

• "Conscious sustainable evolution is essentially a way of saying: Here is a place where we have clarity about what does it mean to have a healthy world?"

If you want to support this project and follow my work, all the links are at truenorthproject.com

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/truenorthproject/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/truenorthproject/support

11 years ago, at the ripe old age of 20, I exited a fundamentalist Mormon cult…

And what a wild ride it has been.

This is the first chapter of a 6 part series that maps my journey from cult kid to ethical culture.

But before we embark on this odyssey together, we need to lay down an important frame from philosopher Mark Gafni about the three primary levels of consciousness through which we experience our lives:

1. Pre-tragic [stage 1]: Life is good. Life makes sense. Life is reasonable. Pain occurs, but it is not tragic, as our stories and frameworks (religion, science, psychology) create tidy explanations for it.

2. Tragic [stage 2]: Life is brutal. Life is confusing. Life is meaningless. Our stories and frameworks for holding reality are broken, our old map of the territory is useless, and we often fall into nihilism and despair. We may continue to be high achievers, but our mechanism for experiencing joy seems to be broken.

3. Post-tragic [stage 3]: Life is beautiful. Life is paradox. Life is meaningful. We reconnect to the core aliveness of reality and participate in the joy of life once again. We deepen into emotional maturity and wisdom, holding more complexity and surrendering to life.

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

My story, like all heroes journeys, begins in the pre-tragic.

Meaning 1.0

I was born in 1992 in Colorado City, AZ to a loving family of fundamentalist Mormons.

When I say fundamentalist, I mostly mean polygamists, since that’s the main distinction that forked our cult from the mainstream LDS church.

My father’s legacy was a virile one, and I land squarely at #18 of 24 children.

Two dozen children might sound like something from a hen-house rather than a house-house, but this is honestly child’s play for my home town. For example, one of my grandfathers had 16 wives and 60+ children, and his family was certainly not the biggest around.

Needless to say, being cousins where I come from means fuck-all, with literally thousands of us springing forth from the loins of just my two grandfathers.

Unfortunately, this also means its a bit of a cousin fuck-all. Cousin marriages are fairly normalized these days, and hilariously, I even lost my virginity to one of my 1000+ cousins.

I laugh about it now… to keep from crying.

All jokes aside, growing up in a big family in Colorado City in the 90’s was mostly awesome. My early years were spent running around the seemingly endless garden we “crickers” longingly call, you guessed it, “the crick.” Plenty of mature cottonwood giants to climb, miles of dirt roads to bike, and my very own range of sandstone cathedrals to explore.

I was in awe of the beautiful desert garden all around me.

I belonged to my hometown mountains, my large loving family, and to our greater community at large. There were a few thousand of us living in camaraderie and relative consensus about the nature of reality, God, and the meaning of life.

We all believed the same story.

To use the terminology of Jaime Wheal, author and founder of The Flow Genome Project, I will call this story “Meaning 1.0.”

Meaning 1.0 can be thought of as any institutionalized structure that provides a map of reality, a foundational story of value, and a community to belong to. It traditionally shows up as an organized religion, but many different configurations occur.

The benefits of Meaning 1.0 include a clear direction in one’s life, inclusion in an in-group (community), and a set of doctrines and scriptures that contain the totality of “The Truth.”

The downsides of Meaning 1.0 include conformity, problematic hierarchies, and the madness of crowds (group think, witch burning, echo-chambering, etc).

If you want a deeper dive, Jaime lays this framing out in eloquent detail in his book, Recapture the Rapture - Rethinking God, Sex and Death in a World That's Lost its Mind, but here is the simplest version I could muster:

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Colorado City & Centennial Park

Colorado City was founded in the early 20th century by fundamentalist Mormons seeking to practice plural marriage (polygamy).

The founders claimed to be keeping “The True Gospel” alive by sticking to the original teachings of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.

Colorado City functioned as a Theocracy, and was unified under one banner until the late 80’s, when a power dispute fractured the religion (and town) into two groups. The smaller group split off and migrated next door to Centennial Park, founding a new Theocracy called “The Work.”

This was the cult I was raised in.

The larger cult of fundamentalists remained in Colorado City and would later be ravaged by the reign of Warren Jeffs.

As their leader, Jeffs manipulated religious beliefs for personal gain, sexually abused minors, and exercised authoritarian control over the community. He also “took” no less than 70 wives.

His rule had a horrific impact on the people of Colorado City, leading to the fracturing of families, the extraction of all forms of capital, and widespread suffering and abuse.

Since Jeffs arrest in 2006 however, Colorado City has been transforming and seems to be doing its best to move on from it’s culty-cult past.

Centennial Park on the other hand, is still going strong.

Clearly the “The Work” still needs doin.

Why is it called “The Work” you might ask?

Well, lets take a little trip down memory lane and tease apart the axiomatic claims of this philosophy and worldview. After all, I studied this shit almost exclusively for like 20 years… I should be able to remember the gist of it.

The Work [In 10 Verses]

Important Caveat:

Behold, this account is of mine own making, and representeth not the collective voice of Centennial Park.

Yet verily, despite my jests and light manner of speaking, I testify that these ten axioms do truthfully depict the philosophy of "The Work" wherein I was nurtured from my youth. I am willing, yea, even eager, to engage in faithful discourse with any soul from Centennial Park who disputeth these claims or desireth to present "The Work" in a more favorable light.

Now, let the opportunity be seized to declare the Gospel with sincerity. Come, let us reason together on my podcast. Truly, let us converse.

1. Thou art indeed a child of God (separate from Him), and thy spirit was valiant in the great war in the heavens before the foundation of the earth was laid. Thou didst align with the Son of God, even Jesus Christ, and didst champion the cause of righteousness and the freedom to choose, battling against Lucifer and his host of (deterministic) devils.

2. And behold, those who rebelled were cast down to hell with the adversary, and those who remained neutral, taking no side in the conflict, were marked with a curse, even that their skin should be black. Yea, and I remain confounded as to why those who did abstain were thus cursed… and why black skin is beheld as unseemly. (Racism maybe?)

3. And it came to pass that after this great war, thy spirit descended from the heavens and was clothed with flesh, yea, even a body tainted by sin, to dwell in mortality, a period of probation. Herein thou art to prove thy worthiness to inherit the Celestial Kingdom, the most exalted of the three degrees of heavenly glory, wherein there dwelleth none with the curse of black skin. (Did I mention racist?)

4. And Jesus, who is our elder brother, did offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice, shedding His blood to atone for the sins of the world, thus fulfilling the will of the Father, who seemeth to require such human sacrifices from time to time. And by His life and His death, Jesus hath shown the path, even The Gospel, by which we might also rise from death and live eternally in the presence of God in the Celestial Kingdom.

5. And verily, it came to pass that after the martyrdom of Christ, the church which He had established among men fell into apostasy; the truths once clear became corrupted, and the unwashed hosts of the Earth became increasingly wicked and unseemly.

6. In the fulness of time, Joseph Smith, a farm lad of humble beginnings, was called as a prophet. By the gift and power of God (and a rock in a hat), he did translate the Book of Mormon, a record of the peoples of the ancient Americas. He did practice polygamy, taking unto himself some forty wives, and did restore the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, even restoring the holy Priesthood to the earth, which had been lost for nigh eighteen centuries.

7. This Priesthood, being the authority to act in the name of God, is inherently patriarchal and may only be conferred upon men, yea, those men who are not of black descent. Thus, the sexism and racism inherent in this divine order is made manifest.

8. And it came to pass that Joseph Smith was martyred, and the one true church fell once more into corruption. Therefore, the Priesthood were compelled to go underground and hide up the true authority of God, to preserve the full practice of the Gospel, particularly that of plural marriage. Thus, the authority that Joseph restored has been passed from one white man to another, by the laying on of liver-spotted hands, a continuous line unbroken by death or deceit, preserved unto this day among the faithful in Centennial Park, Arizona, a small remnant amidst the teeming masses of the earth. (<0.01%)

9. And now, behold thy quest is laid before thee: do THE WORK of the Lord. This work doth entail being faithful unto the commands of the Lord, receiving baptism by one having authority, heeding the counsel of the Priesthood, paying a full tithe unto the church, attending all meetings as required, refraining from romantic entanglements until a marriage is appointed unto thee, maintaining a clean-shaven face, covering thy body modestly at all times, wearing the sacred garments provided for thy protection, and abstaining from all impure practices (masturbation).

10. If thou shalt be diligent in these duties, thou shalt indeed be blessed with resurrection, an innumerable posterity in the worlds to come, and eternal joy in the presence of thy God. But beware, shouldst thou shirk these sacred duties, thou shalt be cast out into outer darkness, where there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, a state so dire that it is beyond all description, save that it is exceedingly dark.

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My Faith Crisis

In my cult we had a saying:

“If you have doubts or concerns about The Gospel, put it on the shelf and pray about it. God will answer your prayers (eventually) and your doubts will be put to rest.”

Maybe the problem was my prayers. I stopped praying regularly to my Mormon “Father in Heaven” when I was a teenager. When I asked for answers to my doubts, I got crickets… further adding to my doubts.

Or maybe the problem was my shelving situation. I should have gotten some of those thicc Costco shelves like the ones Costco members get. You know, the ones who struggle to find extra space for all their new Costco-stuff. So they make the executive decision to park the cars under a car port they bought at Costco and convert the garage into their own little Costco warehouse. This new makeshift warehouse would be filled to the brim with Costco treasures: towering stacks of bulk toilet paper and paper towels, rows of oversized laundry detergent and fabric softener jugs, crates of canned goods from beans to tomatoes, 4 1/2 giant bags of dog food, an array of office supplies like printer paper and pens in bulk packs, an assortment of snack boxes containing granola bars and mixed nuts, a small mountain of bottled waters and various soft drinks, several large drums of cooking oil, and a stash of emergency supplies including batteries, flashlights, and more batteries.

Instead of reinforced steel bomb-proof shelves holding up my worldview (like the Costco ones that the boomers got), I had some bullshit rink-a-dink thing that easily buckled under the weight of my curiosity.

Rather than a straw, it was more like a pallet of bricks that “broke the camels back” (to mix metaphors). This pallet was delivered for free, courtesy of Jeremy Runnels and the internet.

Jeremy wrote The CES Letter - My Search for Answers to My Mormon Doubts in 2014, and somehow one of my best friends found it on Reddit that same year. After a heated and emotional discussion, I conceded to read the letter and see for myself what it was all about.

I think I only made it through 10 (of 138) pages before I found myself in full faith crisis, shelf-less, naked, and afraid.

If you’re still nurturing a testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet, I’ll leave it up to your discernment.

I’m not here to force my views on anyone and certainly nobody can swallow that “red pill” for you.

It’s not too late to unfollow my Substack, put the blinders on, and cling onto that pre-tragic testimony for dear life.

For those curious and a bit unsatisfied with their shelving situation, I recommend that you read the CES Letter yourself.

But maybe I’ll just briefly cherry pick my top 5 highlights from the document that broke the camels back… err shelf…

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Top 5 Mormon Elves on My Mormon Shelves

Yes I am still shamelessly rolling with the shelf metaphor. Buckle up.

1. Human Migration & DNA
   The BoM tells us that the family of Lehi left Jerusalem some 2600 years ago, traversed the Atlantic Ocean with some magical GPS (Liahona), and populated the Americas with (eventually) millions of descendants. Since Joseph Smith’s day however, we have mapped the world, mapped the human genome, and got a pretty solid understanding of the migration paths of our distant ancestors. Based on the traces left in our DNA, we can actually see where we have come from. If the BoM is an accurate telling of the peopling of the Americas, then at least SOME of the DNA of Native Americans should carry a middle eastern signature (Jerusalem). Unfortunately it doesn’t, because we didn’t sail across the Atlantic until 1492 (Columbus), and Lehi and his kin never actually existed.

2. Anachronisms & Other Archeological Ghosts
   An anachronism is something that is not in its correct historical or chronological time. The BoM contains a mighty host of these historical ghosts, including horses, chariots, elephants, steel, wheat, barley, and many more. These anachronisms simply didn’t exist in the Americas until European contact, roughly 2000 - 3000 years after the BoM suggests. Perhaps God hid up all the evidence to test your faith? You know, all the horse skeletons, spear tips, teeth, city ruins (Zarahemla), the remains of millions of people, traces of ancient Hebrew or Egyptian languages, smelted iron and copper tools and weapons, and abundant evidence of large-scale battlefields scattered with armor and bones.

3. Book of Abraham
   The “source” for the Book of Abraham was some Egyptian papyri that Joseph Smith acquired in 1835. At the time, nobody around could read Egyptian, so Joseph fired up his prophet powers and “translated” the papyri. Out came the Book of Abraham, which is still considered an inspired text in the Mormon cannon today. The problem is, we have since found the Rosetta stone, cracked the Egyptian language, and have translated the exact papyri in question. Turns out the Book of Abraham isn’t about Abraham at all (written in his own hand or otherwise). The papyri are simply funerary texts for a standard Egyptian burial. Oops.

4. Problematic Translations
   The BoM quotes the Bible… a lot. In fact, about 30% of the Book of Isaiah from the King James Bible is included within the pages of the BoM. This is totally fine if you believe the BoM is an inspired “download” and God is revealing the same truth in multiple cult-starting books. Buuuuut there’s a small problem. The first edition of the BoM includes 170 translation errors that are unique to the 1769 edition of the King James Bible… and you guessed it…. the 1979 edition of the KJB was the one that Joseph Smith had in his possession. In other words:
   “ctrl + c, ctrl + v”

5. Rock in a Hat
   I grew up on the story of Joseph Smith translating the BoM from the golden plates he had discovered in the Hill Cumora, guided by the spirit of Moroni, the last of the ancient authors of the BoM. Unfortunately, Joseph never actually translated off of the plates. In fact, there’s no hard evidence that the plates existed at all, unless you consider seeing them with your “spiritual eye” as hard evidence. Instead of translating from golden plates, Joseph put a rock in a hat, put his face in the hat, and the rest is Mormon history.
   A rock in a hat.
   A. Rock. In. A. Hat.
   AROCKINAHAT

Before I wrap up this chapter of the saga, I’ll leave you with my own little Mormon story, courtesy of Chat GPT and a far too much of my attention.

A Tale of Two Prophets

In a land of tall hats and tales even taller,
Where truths twist and turn for the almighty dollar,
Lived a crafty Joe Smith, with a grin and a scheme,
Spinning gold from thin air in a con artist's dream.

While out seeking treasure, he thought of the lark,
"Let's make up a scripture," he mused in the dark.
With plates of pure gold, or so he would claim,
A story of forefathers, Mormon by name.

He squinted in hats, no gold to be seen,
Translating through stones, a sight quite obscene.
"He's speaking to angels!" some folks would cheer,
While others just chuckled, clutching their beer.

"A book!" cried out Joseph, "with stories so bold,
Of Nephites and Lamanites and prophets of old.
But ah, the translations were tricky, you see,
With errors and blunders, as clear as could be

The Book of Mormon, a marvelous tale,
With horses and steel where history would fail.
Anachronisms galore, yet followers came,
Enthralled by the story, engulfed by the flame.

As Joe’s book took off, his ideas grew more wild,
”Embrace Polygamy” he said, “Its God’s style!”
“Why stop at one, when many can thrive?”
Joe declared with a wink, “Keep lovin alive!”

”Multiple wives for each man,” he'd assert,
”But extra for me, I’m a bit of a flirt!”
Thus husbands collected wives two, three, or ten,
A celestial marriage again and again.

Now fast-forward time to a creep named Jeffs,
In Colorado City, where they put faith to tests.
He took ol’ Joe's plan to a sinister level,
His rule more akin to a deal with the devil.

Warren Jeffs led with a tyrant’s fist,
Abuses and traumas, too long to list.
The town split in two, because of old men.
A community broken, beginning the end.

From Joseph to Warren, the path was quite clear,
What started as faith, was now ruled by fear.
In the shadow of plates that were never to be,
Stood a history marked by stark tyranny.

My story begins in a cult called "The Work,"
With a testimony that I just couldn’t shirk.
But something arrived when I turned twenty,
Crushing my shelf and leaving me empty.

The CES Letter, a picture to paint,
The fraudulent history of latter day saints.
Pages turned slowly, doubts starting to swell,
The tales I had cherished, now breaking their spell.

From pre-tragic comfort, where all seemed to align,
To tragic awareness, where truths intertwine.
The garden of faith, once lush and so grand,
Now a desert of questions, stark and unplanned.

"The Work," once my haven, now walls closing in,
My heroes journey was about to begin.
Out from the Platonic cave of my youth,
I left my homeland in search of the truth.

A new map to draft, as the old one had torn,
From the ashes of faith, a new man was born.
Out of the church and into the bars,
Beginning a quest to find my North Star.

So let's tip our hats to tales tall and wide,
From golden plates hidden to brides multiplied.
With stone and hat, plus a story well spun,
The Mormon’s history is second to none!

Thank you for your attention, and much love.

Christian

P.S. If you want to do deeper into the rabbit hole, this might be for you.